Speaker 1: Life never stops teaching. It is us who stop learning.
Speaker 1: The day you stop learning is the day you start dying.
Speaker 1: The best selling authoring most the number one health and
Speaker 1: wellness podcast and Purpose with Jay Sheetty.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one
Speaker 2: health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every
Speaker 2: one of you that come back every week to become happier,
Speaker 2: healthier and more healed, which is our mission here On
Speaker 2: Purpose to help you live happier, healthier, more healed lives.
Speaker 2: And today's guest is someone who's been on the show before,
Speaker 2: but someone that I always find fascinating, not just because
Speaker 2: of his insights or takeaways, but more so how he
Speaker 2: approaches problems, how he.
Speaker 3: Thinks about goals.
Speaker 2: I've always been really intrigued by how he can look
Speaker 2: at things from completely different angles and perspectives. I'm speaking
Speaker 2: about none other than Navine Jane Award winning book Moonshots,
Speaker 2: Creating a World of Abundance. Navin's current Moonshot adventures are
Speaker 2: and Moon Express and as a serial entrepreneur, Navien previously
Speaker 2: founded Infospace Intellius and talent Wise. Andome's singular mission is
Speaker 2: to make illness optional, which I find so brilliant and
Speaker 2: I'm so curious about. Navin has been the recipient of
Speaker 2: many honors for his entrepreneurial successes. These awards include Entrepreneur
Speaker 2: of the Year by Ernst and Young, and Most Creative
Speaker 2: Person by Fast Company and Top twenty Entrepreneurs. Please welcome
Speaker 2: to the show, Navin, Jane Navin, it's good to have
Speaker 2: you back on on Purpose. It's good to have you
Speaker 2: back on the show.
Speaker 1: Well, jaf First of all, it's always such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to see you. It's such a pleasure to be on
Speaker 1: your show, and I think your energy and your positivity
Speaker 1: always brings such a joy to my life.
Speaker 3: Thank you, well, you're very kind.
Speaker 2: I meant what I said that whenever I sit down
Speaker 2: with you, you're one of the few people in the
Speaker 2: world I genuinely believe that approaches problems from the most
Speaker 2: unique perspectives and the question you ask about the world
Speaker 2: and solving the world's biggest problems. I rarely people can
Speaker 2: talk about the theory of that, but I've experienced you
Speaker 2: do it, and I think that that's a remarkable gift
Speaker 2: and I want to start there because I want people
Speaker 2: to experience that too. When you came up with this
Speaker 2: idea of making illness optional. Talk to me about a
Speaker 2: bit about how you think that way. Because most people
Speaker 2: are trying to end illness, or most people are trying
Speaker 2: to avoid illness, you t about making it optional. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about how you create these moonshots and create
Speaker 2: these ideas.
Speaker 1: You know to me, the questions you ask is the
Speaker 1: problem you solve, So fundamentally asking the question is the
Speaker 1: most I would say, the best skill you can ever
Speaker 1: learn as an entrepreneur. But as an entrepreneur, what most
Speaker 1: people somehow think that if they do something small, it's
Speaker 1: easier to get started. And what I learned is it
Speaker 1: is so much easier to do something audacious, something that's
Speaker 1: going to change the trajectory of how humanity is going
Speaker 1: to live, something that can impact the lives of billions
Speaker 1: of people around the world, and that's so much easier
Speaker 1: to do. So every time I start a new company,
Speaker 1: I ask myself three questions, why this, Why now? And
Speaker 1: why me? And why this is really simple? You start
Speaker 1: backward and say, God forbid, I am actually successful in
Speaker 1: solving this problem? Would it help a billion people live
Speaker 1: a better life? And the reason for that it's not
Speaker 1: just because a philanthropic thing to do. It is really
Speaker 1: easy from a capitalistic point of view to see that
Speaker 1: if you can build any product, any service that helps
Speaker 1: a billion people live a better life, you can create
Speaker 1: a hundred billion dollar company. But you don't wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning and say, I'm want to create a
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollar company. What should I do? Making money
Speaker 1: is simply a byproduct of doing things that improve people's life.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to repeat everything you do. Ask yourself,
Speaker 1: how is it making someone else's life better? Because if
Speaker 1: you do that, they become your most loyal customer. And
Speaker 1: if you have most loyal customers, you have a great business.
Speaker 1: Right But people somehow always think I want to make
Speaker 1: money rather than I want to do something that helps people. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's why this So in the case of Wyome, we
Speaker 1: started thinking that, you know, we as humanity are suffering
Speaker 1: through this epidemic of chronic diseases.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We call them with different names, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, anxiety.
Speaker 1: You know, call them Parkinson's, Alzheimer or God forbid cancer.
Speaker 1: These are all the diseases. Younger and younger people are
Speaker 1: getting them, and literally every one of us during our
Speaker 1: lifetime is expected to have these chronic diseases. And it
Speaker 1: occurred to me that we as humans as haven't evolved
Speaker 1: in the last fifty or one hundred years. It's millennials to
Speaker 1: change human genes. Then why is it in the last
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred years this epidemic is growing. And it occurred
Speaker 1: to me, if it is actually growing, there's got to
Speaker 1: be a way to actually slow it down and reverse it, right,
Speaker 1: And our thought was, what if we can understand the
Speaker 1: human body at a molecular level and find a way
Speaker 1: to use guess what food as a medicine? What a
Speaker 1: new concept right to be able to actually understand what
Speaker 1: foods are good for you and what foods are not.
Speaker 1: People say, oh my god, such brilliant and I tell
Speaker 1: them that brilliant idea came twenty five hundred years ago
Speaker 1: when hypocritics says, let food be thy medicine. So I
Speaker 1: am not inventing anything. I'm reinventing right, And that's the
Speaker 1: you know, it's beauty of the thing. So we say, look,
Speaker 1: what if we can understand and make illness optional? And
Speaker 1: why did we say make illness optional? Because I don't
Speaker 1: think I, or you or anyone has power to eradicate
Speaker 1: chronic diseases, but each one of us has a power
Speaker 1: to do something about ourselves. That means being healthy is
Speaker 1: a choice, and that means being sick is a choice.
Speaker 1: And that's how you make it optional by empowering each
Speaker 1: person to know what they should be doing and what
Speaker 1: they should not be doing. Right, So, now, the second
Speaker 1: part of the moonshot puzzle is why now? Why now?
Speaker 1: Is very interesting in a sense that you have to
Speaker 1: ask yourself what had changed in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, what do you expect to change in
Speaker 1: the next three to five years that will allow you
Speaker 1: to solve this problem at scale in three to five years.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, this problem couldn't have been solved five
Speaker 1: years ago, because when something could have been done five
Speaker 1: years ago, that means that technology already existed for someone
Speaker 1: to solve it. And the fact it's not being solved
Speaker 1: is a very different problem. Right, so, you say, can
Speaker 1: I intercept tomorrow's technology is to solve tomorrow's problem rather
Speaker 1: than use yesterday's technology to solve tomorrow's problem. And then
Speaker 1: the most important question in my mind is why me?
Speaker 1: And why me? Goes back to the question you ask,
Speaker 1: what question am I asking? That is different from what
Speaker 1: everyone else in the industry is asking, because, as I say,
Speaker 1: the questions you ask is the problem you solve. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it a couple of framework here,
Speaker 1: because that's, to me, is a crux of why people fail.
Speaker 1: So in my previous company, Moon Express, we were our
Speaker 1: mission is to go to the Moon and settle on
Speaker 1: the moon, and someday we can talk about why do that.
Speaker 1: But every time I say that we're going to go
Speaker 1: become a multiplanetary society, everyone will ask the same question,
Speaker 1: which is how are you going to grow the food
Speaker 1: on the moon? And to me, that question is generally
Speaker 1: a good question, except the wrong question, because when you
Speaker 1: ask a question how to grow the food on the moon,
Speaker 1: the only solution is to find a way to grow
Speaker 1: the food. But if you ask a slightly different question
Speaker 1: that says why do we eat food? Just by asking
Speaker 1: why do we eat food? We say, oh, only reason
Speaker 1: we need food is for energy and for nutrition. What
Speaker 1: are the different ways can we get energy? Plants get
Speaker 1: energy from photosynthesis. A lot of bacteria who grow in
Speaker 1: radioactive nuclear waste they get from radiation. They get energy.
Speaker 1: The point is, now you have many more ways of
Speaker 1: solving a problem than simply growing the food that are different.
Speaker 1: So by asking slightly different questions, you end up finding
Speaker 1: solutions that no expert would have ever thought about, because
Speaker 1: that was not the problem they were solving. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: coming back to Yome, the problem we were trying to
Speaker 1: solve was finding the way to make illness optional or
Speaker 1: finding the way to solve the chronic diseases. We noticed
Speaker 1: that every expert was asking the same question. They want
Speaker 1: to know about what's in my DNA or my genes,
Speaker 1: and somehow, if I know your DNA, your genes can
Speaker 1: solve the problem. Now, I am not a doctor or
Speaker 1: a scientist. It occurred to me, like anyone else will
Speaker 1: tell you you DNA never changes. So I am born
Speaker 1: with my DNA that I get from my mom and dad. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine somebody did my DNA test and told me here
Speaker 1: is what you should be eating. God forbid, I gained
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds. My DNA is still the same. Should
Speaker 1: I keep eating the same thing? Probably not. Now I
Speaker 1: get diabetes, my DNA is still the same. Should I
Speaker 1: change my diet? One would say, hope, so, But DNA
Speaker 1: hasn't changed. Now I get heart disease, my DNA hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: And then I die, and you were to look at
Speaker 1: my DNA ten years after I die, it's still the same.
Speaker 1: You can look at the DNA of a dinosaur, right.
Speaker 1: So if DNA can't even tell you you're dead or alive,
Speaker 1: how will it ever tell you you're healthy or sick.
Speaker 1: But what's always changing is not your genes, but your
Speaker 1: gene expression called RNA or m RNA. And we thought, wow,
Speaker 1: why can't we imagine RNA. We didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do it, we didn't even know it could be we done.
Speaker 1: But simply asking the question, we're not going to look
Speaker 1: at genes, We're going to look at you gene expression
Speaker 1: allowed us to look at the problem so differently. And
Speaker 1: the second part that was very interesting to me was
Speaker 1: I read a lot. It's just like you, just like
Speaker 1: our friend Jim Quick or others. We just read a lot.
Speaker 1: And I was reading all the scientific papers and it
Speaker 1: turns out every single disease is connected to something called microbiome.
Speaker 1: And for a life of me, I don't understand what
Speaker 1: this microbiome was. And you can google, by the way,
Speaker 1: Parkinson's and microbiome, cancer and microbiome, Alzheimer and microbiome, diabetes
Speaker 1: and microbiom Anything you want is connected to microbiome. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking what you said. If everyone believes that diseases
Speaker 1: are caused or somehow impacted by microbiome, and the ten
Speaker 1: companies doing microbiome testing, then why is this problem not
Speaker 1: getting solved? So it's not a uraka moment. I'm thinking, Navien,
Speaker 1: you are a moron. This can't be a problem. And
Speaker 1: then it occurred to me to go back to the
Speaker 1: first principle, what question are they asking? It turns out Jay,
Speaker 1: to date, every single company that looks at your microbiome
Speaker 1: is asking the same question. What organisms are in Ja's gut?
Speaker 1: What organisms are in the beans cut? And there's somehow
Speaker 1: thought that will help you solve problem. Now, not being
Speaker 1: an expert, it occurred to me, I don't know what
Speaker 1: these organisms are. They probably like a tiny human beings
Speaker 1: in my mind right, And I thought, Wow, what if
Speaker 1: the ten thousand different organisms could be producing the same
Speaker 1: thing that's making me sick? So it's not about who
Speaker 1: they are, but what they're doing, or the same organism
Speaker 1: can produce something good in your gut environment, and the
Speaker 1: same organisms can produce something bad in my bad gut environment.
Speaker 1: So take a person in put them in a good
Speaker 1: environment good behavior, put them in a bad environment bad behavior.
Speaker 1: So our thought was, what if we can find out
Speaker 1: what they are doing and how to changing our human
Speaker 1: gene expression, we can solve this problem. Right, So punish
Speaker 1: the sin, not the sinner. As Gandhi's here, The idea
Speaker 1: was a focus on what is it they're doing that's wrong,
Speaker 1: and then focus on that right, And that literally was
Speaker 1: the concept behind WYO. Well, it turns out all the
Speaker 1: story that we didn't know how to do RNA testing
Speaker 1: and no one has ever done it. In fact, no
Speaker 1: one does it today other than Wyome, because we found
Speaker 1: the technology at Los Almos National Lab where they were
Speaker 1: doing a biodefense project, and this was one of the
Speaker 1: project was to find out if we're going to protect
Speaker 1: our country against bioterrorism, when the organisms are there, what
Speaker 1: they are producing, that's how they can create antidote for it.
Speaker 1: And they had developed the technology, so we licensed the technology,
Speaker 1: hired the people and build this thing to help humanity
Speaker 1: live better. And that's the only reason they gave me
Speaker 1: the license because they realize I am not simply building
Speaker 1: a company to make money. I'm doing it for the
Speaker 1: benefit of humanity, and since our taxpayer dollars were spent,
Speaker 1: and they say that is a perfectly good application of that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, and I'm so glad. I mean, I've done
Speaker 2: the test myself and it was the results were fantastic
Speaker 2: as well, very useful, very insightful.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean, we tell you what's happening
Speaker 1: in your body, Jay, right, So we tell you what's
Speaker 1: your biological age, what's your immune health. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you do the test recently. It tells you
Speaker 1: your heart health, it tells you your cognitive health, it
Speaker 1: tells you your oral health, your dental health, your gum health,
Speaker 1: and it tells you everything that's happening in your body.
Speaker 1: And then as you know, it tells you don't eat
Speaker 1: these foods. And here is why. So for me, don't
Speaker 1: eat broccoli and bristles is spot even though everyone thinks
Speaker 1: is healthy, and we say no, your self fide production
Speaker 1: is too high. Don't eat it, right, or don't eat
Speaker 1: spinach because your oxlate production is not good. Now you
Speaker 1: can tell here are the foods you should not eat
Speaker 1: and why. Here are the foods you should eat and why.
Speaker 1: And then we go step further. Don't take vitamin B
Speaker 1: three because your uric acid production is too high, or
Speaker 1: don't take calcumen because you bile acid is too high.
Speaker 1: But you do need twenty two milligram of LC open,
Speaker 1: you need eleven milligram of barbary, you do need twenty
Speaker 1: seven milligram of amilies. And we go through every vitem
Speaker 1: in mineral, herbs, digestive enzyme, amino acid, probiotic and prebiotic.
Speaker 1: And guess what. We built a robotic compounding pharmacy where
Speaker 1: we make these capsule with only the ingredients in the
Speaker 1: doses that you need on the spot for each individual
Speaker 1: and ship them to every month. Now, six months later
Speaker 1: they can do a retest. So no longer is it
Speaker 1: working or is not working. It's no longer based on faith,
Speaker 1: It's based on fact, right, And so you can see
Speaker 1: the progress you're making. And I think, to me, what
Speaker 1: satisfies me ja most is we have now analyzed over
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand people and there is not a day
Speaker 1: goes by where we don't get emails or messages from
Speaker 1: people that you change my life. I sleep better, I
Speaker 1: have lost weight, I no longer have brainfall, I have
Speaker 1: more energy, right, I no longer have you know, things
Speaker 1: like depression, anxiety, all the things or even batter skin
Speaker 1: people who are acne or eczema. And to me, not
Speaker 1: being a doctor and watching changes people's life is what
Speaker 1: allows us to do hard work every day. And just
Speaker 1: like you, I think today, I get up every single
Speaker 1: day at four am. In my life, every day, seven
Speaker 1: days a week, I get up at four am and
Speaker 1: I jump out of the bed every day because I believe,
Speaker 1: if I may use the word, I think I'm doing
Speaker 1: God's work. It gives me joy, It brings me the
Speaker 1: pleasure that things I am doing is making people's life better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's UNBELIEVABLEHO know, it's really special, and I know
Speaker 2: that that's always been your mission. And I want to
Speaker 2: go backwards for people because I think when people hear
Speaker 2: about these incredible ideas and the idea that you told
Speaker 2: to us about now, the idea of asking the question
Speaker 2: of why do we need to eat? Like why do
Speaker 2: we need food? That's such a unique, rare way of thinking.
Speaker 2: Were you always like that in school? Was that a
Speaker 2: way of thinking you developed and build over time. Let's
Speaker 2: go backwards a little bit, because I think the way
Speaker 2: you approach problems is so different. And it is and
Speaker 2: hence why you're saying that. Most people would ask like,
Speaker 2: how can you live on the mood? So how did
Speaker 2: you develop that ability? Was it something that was God
Speaker 2: given you were born with it? Is it something you
Speaker 2: developed and where did you start to develop it and when?
Speaker 1: Well, the interesting thing is every one of us had
Speaker 1: this idea that we were born with certain things, and
Speaker 1: then you it's easy to blame someone else for all
Speaker 1: your problems. I am like this because it is missing
Speaker 1: my genes. This is what I was dealt with the
Speaker 1: bad cards, right, That is an excuse because remember, your
Speaker 1: genes are not your destiny, like we talked about in
Speaker 1: your health, it is your gene expression. You get to
Speaker 1: control your gene expression changing your environment. Your environment controls
Speaker 1: your gene expression. Even though people say like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: born with these genes and they are mutation that may
Speaker 1: cause alzheimer, Now think about it for a second. There
Speaker 1: are very very few diseases that are genetic diseases, and
Speaker 1: never want to undermine them. They have a special name
Speaker 1: they call rare genetic diseases. And the reason they call
Speaker 1: rare genetic diseasions is because they are rare. Most other
Speaker 1: diseases are not genetic diseases. So when someone tells you
Speaker 1: you have a gene that is going to cause you Alzheimer,
Speaker 1: I ask them a simple question, Am I born with that? Yes?
Speaker 1: So this gene is I am born with. It sits
Speaker 1: in my body for sixty years, seventy years. One day
Speaker 1: it wakes up and says, I think I completely forgot
Speaker 1: to why partly your memory. I'm going to do that
Speaker 1: right now. It can't possibly happen. It has to change
Speaker 1: expression of it. That means there has to be a
Speaker 1: trigger that causes it to do something. And if you
Speaker 1: can take the triger away, does it matter what gens
Speaker 1: you have. So point is, don't blame anyone except yourself,
Speaker 1: including I think I learned from you. Don't tell someone
Speaker 1: my wife makes me angry or someone else makes me angry.
Speaker 1: Only you have that power to make yourself angry. Right, So,
Speaker 1: coming back to answer your question, nurturing or the environment
Speaker 1: changes who you become. And most people who want to
Speaker 1: know there is you know? Is there a particular event
Speaker 1: that happened that made you different. Right. But as you
Speaker 1: and I both know, life is full of experiences. Every
Speaker 1: interaction we have changes who we become. People think it's
Speaker 1: the last straw that broke the camel back, and we
Speaker 1: all know it's the straws before that it broke the
Speaker 1: camel back. Right. So my point I'm going to make
Speaker 1: is that in the simple words, that every day, the
Speaker 1: people people you surround yourself with changes the way you think.
Speaker 1: So the most important thing you can do is to
Speaker 1: find the people who uplift you, people who believe in you,
Speaker 1: people who inspire you to be better, not simply tell
Speaker 1: you you are good, they push you to be even better. Right,
Speaker 1: every day, ask yourself, Am I better intellectually today than
Speaker 1: I was yesterday? Am I emotionally better than I was yesterday?
Speaker 1: Am I spiritually better than today than I was yesterday?
Speaker 1: And grow every day?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I can agree with you more.
Speaker 2: I'm really glad though, how you answer that question from
Speaker 2: a gene point of view. I didn't expect to go
Speaker 2: down that road, and I really like that context of
Speaker 2: how to think about who we are and who we
Speaker 2: are becoming. And you are right that it's not one
Speaker 2: event that transforms our life or it's not one moment,
Speaker 2: but it's a collection of thoughts and a collection of
Speaker 2: people and collection of ideas. When you were young, what
Speaker 2: did you think big? Did you always have these lofty
Speaker 2: goals or did you have.
Speaker 3: To learn to do that?
Speaker 2: I guess is what I'm getting is because and who
Speaker 2: were you exposed to like when I grew up? I
Speaker 2: always say that in my area, I didn't really grow
Speaker 2: up around anyone who inspired or motivated me in my
Speaker 2: field of people I met. But my dad would give
Speaker 2: me the biographies of people like Martin Luther King and
Speaker 2: Malcolm X and people like that, and those people became
Speaker 2: the people that inspired me. So most of the people
Speaker 2: that inspired me were in books, Yes, they weren't anywhere else.
Speaker 2: Who were those people for you? Where did you interact
Speaker 2: with them? How did you connect with them? And how
Speaker 2: did they change the way you thought?
Speaker 1: You know, obviously, as you know, I grew up in India.
Speaker 1: We were very poor. We didn't have you food to eat,
Speaker 1: we didn't have places to stay. But the thing that
Speaker 1: none of us lack really is imagination. And it's really
Speaker 1: let your imagination run wild while everybody's trying to contain
Speaker 1: you into what who you are and define you who
Speaker 1: you are, and trying to protect you by telling you
Speaker 1: what you can't do. Right. Everyone will say, oh, you
Speaker 1: are born in a poor family. Your destiny is pre written.
Speaker 1: You can at the most become an accountant and go
Speaker 1: find a government job that will actually be there for
Speaker 1: you rest of your life. Anything you're trying other than
Speaker 1: that is you're going down the wrong path. And out
Speaker 1: of purely a good intention to protect you, they actually
Speaker 1: want to contain you to say that is not possible
Speaker 1: for you, so they're limiting your belief. And what really
Speaker 1: interesting I found was my mom just wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: she's alive. She's this unbelievable amount of faith in me.
Speaker 1: So my dad will say, you know you will never
Speaker 1: go anywhere, So why are you trying here? Just go
Speaker 1: get the damn degree in accounting or something so you
Speaker 1: can have a job. And my mom says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's very smart. He can do anything he wants. And
Speaker 1: then she would say sky is the limit. And later
Speaker 1: I realize in my life that sky doesn't exist. Sky
Speaker 1: is simply a figment of our imagination. And what she
Speaker 1: was telling me was in her own way. Your imagination
Speaker 1: is the only thing that limits to what you can do.
Speaker 1: We create our own sky. Like when you go from
Speaker 1: here to the moon, you don't say, mom, I just
Speaker 1: pass the sky. There is no sky. So point is
Speaker 1: we create these imaginary boundaries for ourselves. I come from
Speaker 1: this background, so this is my sky. I'm a woman,
Speaker 1: this is my sky. I'm a brown person. This is
Speaker 1: my sky. And everyone creates the sky until you get
Speaker 1: there and you realize that was all in my mind.
Speaker 1: It never existed, right. So when I was young, I
Speaker 1: would look at the moon, and what really interesting to
Speaker 1: me was I am looking at the same object that
Speaker 1: the richest person in the world, and he doesn't look
Speaker 1: at it any different than I can. So I am
Speaker 1: that richest person in the world because I have the
Speaker 1: same power that they do. And in my mind it
Speaker 1: was about there is nothing that I'm sitting here when
Speaker 1: I look at that star that anyone else can do
Speaker 1: any differently than I can. In fact, I can look
Speaker 1: at them better because I am sitting in darkness, and
Speaker 1: the sky is so much more beautiful than in a
Speaker 1: city under the light. You can't even see the stars.
Speaker 1: Right as I came to the United States, and then
Speaker 1: I started to meet and learn from different people. And
Speaker 1: as I continue to grow, I started to surround myself
Speaker 1: with people who had, you know, even bigger. So I
Speaker 1: thought I was a big fish in the small pond,
Speaker 1: until I realized there was a big pond out there,
Speaker 1: and I was a small fish. And then I grow again, right,
Speaker 1: And I think you know, a lot of the people
Speaker 1: that have inspired each one of us have been the
Speaker 1: people who have gone on to change the industry. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously you not today, you and I probably know most
Speaker 1: of them, and we met them. But when I actually
Speaker 1: were being inspired, I knew their name, but I've never
Speaker 1: met them. Now we get to meet with them, and
Speaker 1: now you can at least look at them and saying
Speaker 1: how much they change your life. But I can tell
Speaker 1: you that the biggest inspiration for me, or biggest mentor
Speaker 1: for me, has been my own life. Life never stops teaching.
Speaker 1: It is us who stop learning. So just every experience
Speaker 1: we have, if we keep an open mind, we can
Speaker 1: learn from every single person we meet, even that homeless person.
Speaker 1: If you can give him five minutes of your time,
Speaker 1: he will tell you about his life story, what got
Speaker 1: him into where he is, and maybe hopefully you will
Speaker 1: make that mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's I've often thought that the
Speaker 2: people that are always learning in any situation naturally succeed
Speaker 2: in whatever endever they have. And when I'm hearing you
Speaker 2: speak about these ideas, which which resonate with me completely,
Speaker 2: like very strongly, I start thinking, like today, the challenges
Speaker 2: that we're not always choosing effectively and curating carefully who
Speaker 2: influences us, because there's just so much influence. I was
Speaker 2: reading a study the other day that said the average
Speaker 2: human is exposed to seventy four gigabytes of information every day.
Speaker 2: The average iPhone is two hundred and fifty six gigabytes,
Speaker 2: and a fancy iPhone is one terabyte. Yeah, which means
Speaker 2: that seventy four gigabytes a day. You know, give it
Speaker 2: like less than four days and you're already at a
Speaker 2: full storage of an iPhone. Yes, that's a lot of information,
Speaker 2: and it's hot odd to know what's useful, what's useless,
Speaker 2: what's a waste, what's an investment? Because we're just inundated.
Speaker 2: How could you recommend to people to learn to filter
Speaker 2: and choose what to give. I'll give you and I'll
Speaker 2: give you a tum an example. Like, you know, a
Speaker 2: couple of years ago, it's like everyone's like, you have
Speaker 2: to be in NFTs, you have to do this, you
Speaker 2: have to like you know, and then everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you have to invest in the stock market because now
Speaker 2: it's this, and like then it's like, oh, you have
Speaker 2: to be an entrepreneur, and it's like everyone's getting oh,
Speaker 2: now you have to hustle.
Speaker 3: We're in hustle culture.
Speaker 2: And so you see this like messaging fat, fat message,
Speaker 2: fat message that just constantly pushes people. Yeah, And because
Speaker 2: people don't know their own values and they're not sure
Speaker 2: about what they really want from life, it becomes very
Speaker 2: easy to get distracted. How would you guide people into
Speaker 2: not getting distracted and knowing what is right to focus on?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you go back and saying why am
Speaker 1: I doing it? Let's assume whether there's picking thing you want,
Speaker 1: whether it's the NFT or a crypto or whatever, how
Speaker 1: is that what I'm going to do is going to
Speaker 1: improve someone else's life? Would it improve a billion people's
Speaker 1: life because I've bought NFT. If the answer is no,
Speaker 1: then why are you wasting your time? Right? So to me,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing to learn in life is curiosity. If
Speaker 1: you ask me, there is one gift you could give
Speaker 1: someone you love the most. And I hate to say that,
Speaker 1: the biggest love I have for anyone this world's probably
Speaker 1: be your children. Anyone I think is your children are
Speaker 1: the one that you know. They give you unconditional love,
Speaker 1: and you give them unconditional love. And the biggest gift
Speaker 1: you can give them is that. So our job as
Speaker 1: a parent is not to take them to the water
Speaker 1: and make them drink. Our job is to make them thirsty.
Speaker 1: How do you make them thirsty? Is make them intellectually curious.
Speaker 1: Once you give the curiosity to the children, guess what,
Speaker 1: they will never stop learning. They will always be learning,
Speaker 1: they'll always find their water, and they'll always be drinking.
Speaker 1: And that's your goal, is to make them curious. And
Speaker 1: what makes them curious is to constantly think about what
Speaker 1: is possible, not what is not possible, what if it
Speaker 1: was possible? And the two most beautiful worlds in English
Speaker 1: language are imagine and what if? Imagine if this was possible?
Speaker 1: What if I could do it right? And that's it.
Speaker 1: And then they'll constantly and become like a child. Why
Speaker 1: why why it can't be done? Why I why it
Speaker 1: couldn't be done before? Right, and asking why makes you curious,
Speaker 1: and that's how allows you to dig deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper. If I may continue on that chart, Jay,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about you know Edjustate. I have
Speaker 1: three children, and I want to talk about them for
Speaker 1: many reasons. One is to show people what really matters
Speaker 1: in life. It's not just simply about leaving the better
Speaker 1: world for our children. It's also about leaving the better
Speaker 1: children for the world to continue to go where not
Speaker 1: only you get to push the humanity forward, you actually
Speaker 1: have trained them and made them curious enough for them
Speaker 1: to be able to continue to push the humanity forward. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I have three children. Our oldest is thirty two. He
Speaker 1: went to what and when he was seventeen he started
Speaker 1: his first company, and that was simply about helping young
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs as a nonprofit to help young entrepreneurs find mentors
Speaker 1: for them so they can be successful. And his reasoning,
Speaker 1: what my dad brought me mentors, and these kids did
Speaker 1: not have that opportunity, So I'm going to create it
Speaker 1: for them. Now imagine what happened. He could call anyone
Speaker 1: in the world and say I want you to help
Speaker 1: these young kids. Nobody says no to helping someone. In
Speaker 1: the turn, he built one of the big network he
Speaker 1: could find of the most influential people. So when he
Speaker 1: started a for profit company, everyone wanted to be part
Speaker 1: of this. Right. In fact, just today, my son was
Speaker 1: oldest was NCNBC in Bloomberg and announcing that he's solving
Speaker 1: this problem that all the kids of age were suffering from.
Speaker 1: I go their two problems. I graduate, I can get
Speaker 1: a job, and generally a decent enough job where I
Speaker 1: can actually find an apartment. But I don't have the
Speaker 1: money to pay first month rent, last month land and
Speaker 1: security deposit. And he said, you know what, what if
Speaker 1: we don't have that and simply spend five dollars a
Speaker 1: month on insurance and ensure the landlords so you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a deposit. And he started that company.
Speaker 1: Then he realized that everyone was complaining and say, that's great, Ancore,
Speaker 1: we keep wasting our money on a rent, we get
Speaker 1: nothing for it. Right, I got to buy a home.
Speaker 1: He started this company called Built Bilt, Built Rewards, and
Speaker 1: just I was posting on my Instagram, he announced today
Speaker 1: he is fifty million at one point five billion pre
Speaker 1: money valuation. That region I'm talking about, not the money
Speaker 1: is what he did is so phenomenal. He came up
Speaker 1: with the concept of a credit card where you can
Speaker 1: put a rent on a credit card with no credit
Speaker 1: card fees, no annual fee. Normally, when you put something
Speaker 1: on a credit card, you pay three and a halfs
Speaker 1: two and a half three percent. He convinced the master
Speaker 1: card to wave that fee for rent, and then he's
Speaker 1: able to now earn points on something you haven't paid anything,
Speaker 1: and you can use the point to actually buy a home,
Speaker 1: down payment for a home, or use one to one
Speaker 1: on any airlines, on a hotel, on Expedia, on Amazon,
Speaker 1: you can use the points to earn the points on
Speaker 1: rent and with no credit cards. Gere, what's happening. Landlords
Speaker 1: love it because they are able to bill you on
Speaker 1: day one, day two. They have the money you as
Speaker 1: a renter are not paying a dime more and your
Speaker 1: twenty one day float to pay your credit card bill.
Speaker 1: In turn, you earn the points that were completely wasted,
Speaker 1: and now you can travel, or you can use them
Speaker 1: for next month rent, or you can use them a
Speaker 1: down payment and a home, solving the problem that impacted
Speaker 1: all these people. In turn, he created a great company.
Speaker 1: Our daughter, our daughter Prianca, went to Stanford Stanford stamp Fellow,
Speaker 1: Stanford Mayfield Fellow only cared about women's women's education, women's health.
Speaker 1: First company. She worked removing gender buyers from hiring using AI.
Speaker 1: Started a company called av Evvy Women's Health company, and
Speaker 1: just today fast Company recognized as the fastest and the
Speaker 1: most disruptive company that she started year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: So she's completely changing the idea of how women's health.
Speaker 1: What I did not realize, what she told me is
Speaker 1: until about twenty years ago, women want allowed to be
Speaker 1: in a clinical studies. That means every drug we have
Speaker 1: were never designed for women. They're only designed for men.
Speaker 1: And no wonder these drugs don't even work for women
Speaker 1: because they were never on a clinical trial. And she's
Speaker 1: changing that industry. Our youngest went to stand for became
Speaker 1: a Schwartzman scholar, and now he's solving the problem of
Speaker 1: home mortgages. Again, it doesn't matter. The point is they
Speaker 1: find the biggest problem and they realize they can go
Speaker 1: out and solve it. And why is it? How did
Speaker 1: that happen. And Jay, you don't have kids yet, but
Speaker 1: one day you do, I'm going to give you some
Speaker 1: of the parenting lesson because I have thirty two year twenty.
Speaker 3: I'm very open to that.
Speaker 1: Right. So here's what happens. These kids were growing up
Speaker 1: on an a fluent family, unlike I grew up in
Speaker 1: a poor family. We told them, they're our love for
Speaker 1: you is unconditional, but our approval is not. That means
Speaker 1: I'll always tell you I love you, but I will
Speaker 1: never tell you I'm proud of you. To be proud
Speaker 1: of you, you have to do things that make us
Speaker 1: proud of you. And I told them that we will
Speaker 1: be proud of you when you do things that make
Speaker 1: other people's life better. That means your success is never
Speaker 1: going to be defined by how much money you have
Speaker 1: in the bank. It will be defined by how many
Speaker 1: lives you improve. They may when they were young they
Speaker 1: will say whatever Dad, but guess what. Every one of
Speaker 1: them remembered what dad wants, and they want to make
Speaker 1: you they're dead proud. And I told them, and I say,
Speaker 1: I'm proud of you when you do the things that
Speaker 1: make us proud. We told them that their self worth
Speaker 1: doesn't come from what they own, it comes from what
Speaker 1: they create. That means you own a lot, but you
Speaker 1: haven't created anything. You're still a parasite on society, right,
Speaker 1: So don't be a parasite. An ultimate goal of the
Speaker 1: children was always for them to focus on what can
Speaker 1: they do and make them believe nothing was impossible. So
Speaker 1: I remember when their kids were born, I was running
Speaker 1: a very successful company and instead of when I retire,
Speaker 1: when I sold that company and I realized they were
Speaker 1: very young, I had two choices. I could sit at
Speaker 1: home to say, hey, my kids are young, I want
Speaker 1: to spend time with my family, which is a normal
Speaker 1: thing to do. It occurred to me, what are what
Speaker 1: would they be thinking? So imagine if I had told
Speaker 1: them it's not about money, but Dad just made a
Speaker 1: lot of money and Dad is now at home. When
Speaker 1: they go to ski school, what do they see Dad
Speaker 1: sitting on the sofa watching CNBC. They come back from school,
Speaker 1: they see dad. He's still at home, and Dad tells
Speaker 1: them go to your room, work hard, finish your homework.
Speaker 1: Hard work is what it takes and money doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And they say, I watch my dad sitting on the
Speaker 1: sofa when I grow up. I want to be just
Speaker 1: like my dad, sit on the sofa and watch TV.
Speaker 1: And because Dad has money, he can do that, and
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going to do. Instead, what they saw
Speaker 1: was Dad started a second company, Dad started a third company.
Speaker 1: Dad goes crazy, We're going to go to the moon. Dad,
Speaker 1: No private company has gone to the moon. You're crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: let me show you how that's done. Dad turns fifty eight.
Speaker 1: Dad wants to start a healthcare company. We're going to
Speaker 1: make illness optional. Dad's time to retire. Well, I haven't
Speaker 1: showed you how it's done yet. The point was they
Speaker 1: realized at the end of the day that Dad does
Speaker 1: it because he loves what he does. He doesn't care
Speaker 1: about making money. He does it because that's what brings
Speaker 1: him happiness. And anything difficult can be solved. And that's
Speaker 1: why every one of them is taking on audacious challenges
Speaker 1: because they see the dad do that. So why we
Speaker 1: tell our kids what to do? We never show them what.
Speaker 2: Did Yeah, I mean congratulations, by the way, And it's
Speaker 2: amazing to hear about these incredible new companies coming into
Speaker 2: the world, so needed, so powerful, and so beautiful to
Speaker 2: see so many purpose driven companies coming into the world,
Speaker 2: especially in a world where we're constantly hearing everyone wanting
Speaker 2: to build a billion dollar company and everything, which is
Speaker 2: just such a it boss me nuts.
Speaker 1: So but if everyone who's listening to it, if I'm
Speaker 1: should go to avvy E v v Y, and if
Speaker 1: you're a woman, we sign up for a v's a
Speaker 1: women's health company using vaginal microbiome. And the reason I
Speaker 1: say that is I want her to realize that these
Speaker 1: are the problems she can solve. Her generation is the
Speaker 1: first generation that had a shot at solving problem that
Speaker 1: our generation failed at, failed women at them, and she
Speaker 1: can solve that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, that's incredible. Yeah no, we'll put that.
Speaker 2: We'll put that link into the into the show notes
Speaker 2: as well so that people can access it. I guess
Speaker 2: when I when I'm listening to you right now, you
Speaker 2: raised a few points. Then I was thinking that you
Speaker 2: gave the example of dad watching TV, and I was
Speaker 2: thinking that so much of our society today has been
Speaker 2: and actually going back again, you talked about the two
Speaker 2: most important phrases like imagine and what if.
Speaker 1: Yes, so much of.
Speaker 2: Our society today has become numb to curiosity and imagination
Speaker 2: because we simply watch TV. Now, TV and TV shows
Speaker 2: and movies can be incredible for imagination if we watch
Speaker 2: them in that way, because the people that made them
Speaker 2: are very imaginative, the people that made them are very creative.
Speaker 2: But what's really interesting is that when we simply subject
Speaker 2: ourselves to sitting in front of a screen and let
Speaker 2: those images come to us and we don't use them creatively,
Speaker 2: we actually become numbs. And I find that the majority
Speaker 2: of media makes us less creative, less curious, even though
Speaker 2: the people that made it are curious and creative.
Speaker 1: Absolutely correct.
Speaker 2: So I guess so many people feel like at the
Speaker 2: end of their workday because they wake up they do something.
Speaker 2: A lot of people do something they don't love, a
Speaker 2: lot of people maybe do something they kind of like,
Speaker 2: and by the end of the work day when they
Speaker 2: get home, they just want to switch off the TV,
Speaker 2: to switch off, that's right, and it's like switch on
Speaker 2: the TV, switch off your mind. Yes, and then that's
Speaker 2: how the next few hours pass. How do people find
Speaker 2: the energy the ability to say, actually, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm going to use this time to be more curious,
Speaker 2: to be more creative, because that's going to lead to
Speaker 2: a better world for me and for others.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, no one should be doing things
Speaker 1: that they don't enjoy. So I have a very simple
Speaker 1: rule in my life. As I said, I wake up
Speaker 1: at four am in the day. I feel when I
Speaker 1: wake up at four am, I'm not jumping out of
Speaker 1: the bed. That means I'm doing things I don't enjoy.
Speaker 1: So rule number one, when you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: and if you're not jumping out of the bed, you
Speaker 1: should quit what you're doing because that's not your calling.
Speaker 1: When you find your true purpose, find your you know
Speaker 1: not star, you can never ever just lie down because
Speaker 1: you're so driven to solve that problem. I I may say,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people talk about passion. I
Speaker 1: think the passion is for hobbies. Passion is for losers.
Speaker 1: The true winners have obsession, Obsession to solve the problem,
Speaker 1: not obsession about things, Obsession to solve the problem. When
Speaker 1: you're truly obsessed about solving a problem, you go to
Speaker 1: sleep thinking about it and you jump out of the
Speaker 1: bed wanting to do it. And that to me is
Speaker 1: find something that you're willing to die for and live
Speaker 1: for it. Find something that you're willing to dedicate your
Speaker 1: life to solving and then solve it right right. And
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people give up because there
Speaker 1: are any time you do something, there are going to
Speaker 1: be the times that things do not working out exactly
Speaker 1: what you expected. And to me, that's a sign of
Speaker 1: you are alive because you're the only way you know
Speaker 1: when you're alive, because you have a heartbeat, and the
Speaker 1: heartbeat goes up and down and up and down, and
Speaker 1: when it's smooth, you're dead. So if you're looking for
Speaker 1: a life that's a smoothly, you're looking for a life
Speaker 1: of a dead person. Find things when they're going up
Speaker 1: and down. That tells you alive. When you are down,
Speaker 1: just hunker down and know that the next beat is
Speaker 1: going to be up. And when you're on top of
Speaker 1: that beat, never become too arrogant, because always remember the
Speaker 1: winter is coming and winter shall come right. And that
Speaker 1: is the life is that most people spend their life
Speaker 1: thinking they need to make money, so they do something
Speaker 1: they don't enjoy. Guess what, when they come home they
Speaker 1: cannot enjoy because they wasted their life doing things they
Speaker 1: don't enjoy. And they turn the TV on as you
Speaker 1: say to switch off their mind, and now they're being
Speaker 1: bombarded with the most If you're watching news, unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: all about negativity for many reasons. Our mind are amike
Speaker 1: the lies, looking for negative news. So negative news catches
Speaker 1: our attention, and that's the reason newscasters know to get
Speaker 1: your attention. If it bleeds, it leads and want to
Speaker 1: talk about all the negative stuff. So you're bombarded and
Speaker 1: now you're even more negative than you were at work.
Speaker 1: And the thing in life is to get yourself out
Speaker 1: of that mode, not only find your purpose, but truly
Speaker 1: be grateful for the life you're living in. Many of
Speaker 1: us have you know culturally or you know or sometimes religiously,
Speaker 1: we are told before you eat the do grace or
Speaker 1: do the prayer. Why is that? The reason it is
Speaker 1: jay is that your body, when it's in the fight
Speaker 1: of flight response, it stops the digestion. You cannot digest
Speaker 1: your food because remember the reason your body used to
Speaker 1: be in fight a flight response because the tiger chasing you.
Speaker 1: And at that point body says you don't need to
Speaker 1: worry about digesting your food. It shuts down your immune system,
Speaker 1: by the way, because you don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: immune system because you're gonna be lunch for someone else,
Speaker 1: or if you survive, then everything calm down and back
Speaker 1: to normal. Today, we live in this world where when
Speaker 1: we are at work, our boss is stressing us out.
Speaker 1: We come home, your spouse is stressing you out, and
Speaker 1: your constant stress mode and you constantly in flight a
Speaker 1: flight response. And then we eat food in the flight
Speaker 1: of flight response, it doesn't get digested. Our immune system
Speaker 1: is not working, so we get more sick, and then
Speaker 1: we blame everything on the society. And all it takes
Speaker 1: is find the job you love. When you come home,
Speaker 1: be grateful for what you loving family you have, give
Speaker 1: them the love, and in turn you will receive the love.
Speaker 1: And we're just reading about the new book. Jay, You've
Speaker 1: got to tell me about more about the book on
Speaker 1: this love. If you can go figure that out, everything changes,
Speaker 1: because then when you have love, you're always in the
Speaker 1: sympathetic parasympathetic mode rather than sympathetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a great answer. I love the idea
Speaker 2: that saying that we're living in a constant state of flight,
Speaker 2: of fight or flight, in a constant state of stress,
Speaker 2: and so pretty much every activity we do is in
Speaker 2: a state of stress. That perspective of finding what you
Speaker 2: love is so needed, yet so hard and also different
Speaker 2: at different times. Like I remember when I was at
Speaker 2: college and I work. Sorry, even before college, when I
Speaker 2: was at school, I worked. Ever since I was fourteen.
Speaker 2: My parents always wanted me to get a job, and
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful that they set that up. And so
Speaker 2: from the age of fourteen, I was working. I delivered newspapers.
Speaker 2: Then I worked at a grocery store, and then I
Speaker 2: worked in retail, and then I was a tutor. I
Speaker 2: was always working, and I never enjoyed going to the
Speaker 2: grocery store, but I learned valuable skills there that I
Speaker 2: still use today even though I don't work in a
Speaker 2: grocery store. And what I found is that I what
Speaker 2: the skills did.
Speaker 3: You learn at a grocery store?
Speaker 2: I had to Part of my shift was I had
Speaker 2: to whenever the truck would come with a delivery, I
Speaker 2: would have to get one of these handheld palette pullers,
Speaker 2: go into the back of the truck, put it underneath
Speaker 2: the palettes, lift it back up, and pull it out
Speaker 2: and then stack it. Now, I hated doing that. I
Speaker 2: absolutely hateed doing that. And I'll try and avoid at
Speaker 2: any cost. But that genuinely, I believe, gave me the
Speaker 2: skill of the ability to do things I don't enjoy
Speaker 2: doing for something useful in the sense of like I
Speaker 2: didn't enjoy doing that task. I didn't love doing it.
Speaker 2: But there are so many things that you have to do,
Speaker 2: even when you're building your purpose.
Speaker 3: Of course, that you don't want.
Speaker 2: To do that specifically purpose, but you have a purpose
Speaker 2: at the grocery store. I didn't have a purpose, but
Speaker 2: I at least learned to be able to have a
Speaker 2: discipline of when it's your turn, you've got to show up.
Speaker 2: You can't just tap out and say I don't want
Speaker 2: to do it. And again, these are small skills, these
Speaker 2: are not but I definitely knew. I pretty much knew
Speaker 2: everything in every aisle, like I knew where it was,
Speaker 2: so if someone asked me where do I find bread?
Speaker 3: I knew it was all twenty one someone knew. And
Speaker 3: that simple idea.
Speaker 2: Like today, when I'm sitting down and interviewing or I
Speaker 2: have to prepare, I can pretty much sit down and
Speaker 2: memorize things fairly quickly. And I don't think memorization for
Speaker 2: exams is good, but memory is useful in life use
Speaker 2: so so many force and so now when I read books,
Speaker 2: I can memorize what's on a page. I can get
Speaker 2: back to that page because I feel there was a
Speaker 2: lot at that time. So I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 2: is that even if you don't love what you're doing,
Speaker 2: you can learn to love something about it because you
Speaker 2: can extrapolate a skill that will be useful when you
Speaker 2: find your purpose. And so I found that a lot
Speaker 2: of jobs have not been I've worked so many jobs
Speaker 2: that today I live fully in my purpose, so it's
Speaker 2: much easier. But I've lived so many jobs that weren't
Speaker 2: in my purpose, but they've all taught me something that
Speaker 2: is now useful.
Speaker 1: But my point that is, isn't I think what you
Speaker 1: see it that came were just a double click on that?
Speaker 1: Is that even the job that you're doing, find something
Speaker 1: about the job that you fall in love.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, And I think we agree, is
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I just want
Speaker 2: to clarify that for people. Yeah, even if you're doing
Speaker 2: something where you don't love the whole thing, and you
Speaker 2: may not be in a financial position or a family
Speaker 2: position to quit your job at least for now, look
Speaker 2: for the thing about it that you love, because that
Speaker 2: will always stay with you. And so I love the
Speaker 2: direction in which we're going. And I'm glad that we're
Speaker 2: talking about life, We're talking about curiosity, we're talking about
Speaker 2: how you set your kids up. How do you think
Speaker 2: you would have responded or when your kids were younger
Speaker 2: and maybe they weren't so externally successful and they they
Speaker 2: almost may have had some pushback. Of course, I'm wondering
Speaker 2: if the kids had any push but they did, of
Speaker 2: course did, because I feel like I don't know any
Speaker 2: kid who doesn't think. Of course, kids grow up thinking
Speaker 2: their parents are not cool, yes, and then when they
Speaker 2: grow up then they're like, oh no, my parents were right.
Speaker 2: They are much more that I thought they were. Can
Speaker 2: you tell us a bit about some of those moments
Speaker 2: where the kids kind of didn't agree with your philosophy
Speaker 2: or theory and what did that look like?
Speaker 1: Well, you know a lot of these times when the
Speaker 1: kids like, for example, I'm gonna be talking about that
Speaker 1: your sextis is all about the number of lives you improve.
Speaker 1: I remember my oldest son said whatever Dad, and then
Speaker 1: he walks, you know, he says, Dad, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, money matters, and I told them it
Speaker 1: only matters when you actually believe it matters, because most
Speaker 1: of the time you don't need much for it to matter.
Speaker 1: After the basic needs are matter, After that, it's all,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Right. He and I would a lot
Speaker 1: of discussions. Say I want to buy this pair of shoes,
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't think that makes sense for
Speaker 1: you to be owning a two hundred dollars pair of
Speaker 1: shoes at this point. And he said, Dad, I'm going
Speaker 1: to go get it and I'm going to go earn it.
Speaker 1: And I said, sure, if that's what you want to do,
Speaker 1: that that's what matters to you, go do it. But
Speaker 1: I would rather have you spend that time in learning
Speaker 1: new skills then trying to go do some menial job
Speaker 1: because you want a pair of shoes, and that is
Speaker 1: very interesting, and I think maybe I want to just
Speaker 1: expand on that. A lot of parents, even the successful parents,
Speaker 1: would say, oh, I don't want to give my kids
Speaker 1: things to spoil them. I want them to work. I
Speaker 1: want them to go do the menial task so they
Speaker 1: understand what the money means to them. And I think
Speaker 1: to some extent, you know, people may disagree with that.
Speaker 1: My philosophy was very different. My philosphy was, my job
Speaker 1: is to teach you as many things as I possibly can,
Speaker 1: and once you learn those set of skills, those are
Speaker 1: the skills you'll have for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: That means, instead of going out and earning money to
Speaker 1: pump the gas, I'd rather have you go out and
Speaker 1: take a summer courses and I'll pay for it, right.
Speaker 1: I would rather have you go and do internship at
Speaker 1: some place where you can learn something and not focus
Speaker 1: on making money, even it's unpaid. But that's a skill
Speaker 1: you want to learn, go do it, even if it's unpaid.
Speaker 1: So it's always about learning, learning, and learning. And the
Speaker 1: best example I can give you something I think you'll
Speaker 1: find funny. When my daughter was sixteen years old, she
Speaker 1: came to me one day and said, Dad, I know
Speaker 1: you love science and technology. I have found my passion
Speaker 1: and that's what I'm going to pursue and I just
Speaker 1: don't want to do anything to do with science and technology.
Speaker 1: And at that point most parents would say, sweety, tell
Speaker 1: me what your passion is and I want to help
Speaker 1: you with that. My response to her was you're too
Speaker 1: young to have a passion. Dad hasn't done his job
Speaker 1: of exposing you to everything. So you don't even know
Speaker 1: the things you don't know? How can you tell me
Speaker 1: you don't like them? So I say so, She said, Dad,
Speaker 1: what is it that you want me to do that?
Speaker 1: And I say, sweety, what I want you to go
Speaker 1: is to go to Singularity University. I want you to
Speaker 1: learn about nanotechnology. I want you to learn a genetics.
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn about artificial intelligence. I want to
Speaker 1: learn about everything. And she rolled her eyes. And by
Speaker 1: the way, and that's the article I wrote on Incmagagine
Speaker 1: if you want to find it's called an entrepreneur versus
Speaker 1: his eye rolling teenage daughter.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 1: I like that now, she says, Dad, I just you
Speaker 1: don't hear a word. I said, I told you I
Speaker 1: don't like science and technology, and it's just, sweety, you
Speaker 1: don't know what these things are, So how can you
Speaker 1: tell me you don't like them? But here's the word.
Speaker 1: Here's what I can do for you if you promise
Speaker 1: me that you're going to go there with my open
Speaker 1: mind wanting to learn and wanting to like. What I
Speaker 1: would promise you is when you come back, you get
Speaker 1: to decide what you want because I have done my
Speaker 1: job of exposing you to things, and you get to
Speaker 1: pick what you want to do. And she said, Dad,
Speaker 1: if you promise me that I'll go there with an
Speaker 1: open mind, and I'll do that. She goes there, comes back,
Speaker 1: and the first thing she opens the door, she said, Dad,
Speaker 1: I've made up my mind. And my first words I
Speaker 1: remember was oh s. And she said I made up
Speaker 1: my mind. I said, tell me what you want, I
Speaker 1: said the Dad, I've decided I'm going to be either
Speaker 1: a genetist or I'm going to be a neuroscientist. I
Speaker 1: shook my head and I said, sweety, at the risk
Speaker 1: of you changing your mind, can you tell me what happened?
Speaker 1: He said, Dad, You're so dumb. I'm in high school.
Speaker 1: I go to these classes and science. I mix things
Speaker 1: and they change color, and I'm thinking, why do I care?
Speaker 1: When I went to Singularity University, what I realized was
Speaker 1: I care about. My passion is about women's health. How
Speaker 1: can I do that if I don't even know how
Speaker 1: their body works? How can I go change women's life
Speaker 1: if I don't even know how they think? So to me,
Speaker 1: the science and technology is simply the tools in my
Speaker 1: tool chest for me to pursue the purpose I want. Right, So,
Speaker 1: guess what if I had done what most parents have done,
Speaker 1: they would have She would have never been exposed to
Speaker 1: these things, she would have never found her true love,
Speaker 1: and world would have missed out on a great entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: Guess what when she graduated, she did first company using
Speaker 1: AI to remove gender bias, and now she's using AI
Speaker 1: to improve women's health. This is simply because we pursued
Speaker 1: her to follow learn rather than simply do something that
Speaker 1: she wanted to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What I like about where this is going is
Speaker 2: that And as you were saying this, I was like,
Speaker 2: I need to talk to another guest that we've had
Speaker 2: on about this. I don't know if you know, doctor
Speaker 2: Gabon matte And is an incredible expert on chow trauma
Speaker 2: and illness and everything. And I now know what I'm
Speaker 2: going to ask him based on this conversation. I've always
Speaker 2: agreed with exposing yourself to as many ideas, thoughts learning
Speaker 2: as possible. Disagree, And it's so funny that I agree
Speaker 2: with your daughter because I thought I hated science at school. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then when I grew up and I started reading
Speaker 2: behavioral science and neuroscience.
Speaker 3: Science was about the brain exactly.
Speaker 2: Science was about like photosynthesis, which I didn't find interesting.
Speaker 2: Or it was about cutting a cell open and looking
Speaker 2: at the layers, which I didn't find interesting exactly. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, but if I knew at fifteen
Speaker 2: or sixteen that science was about you could learn about
Speaker 2: the brain, Oh my god, and how the brain works,
Speaker 2: and how that I would have been glued.
Speaker 1: Every girl in the school would have loved you.
Speaker 3: Changed, like everything would have changed. But I didn't know that, right.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that because the way we were taught
Speaker 2: a certain subject was so not even basic, but it
Speaker 2: was so specific.
Speaker 3: Like plant.
Speaker 2: I've never found plant biology to be interesting, not I
Speaker 2: But if someone told me about the brain, the human brain,
Speaker 2: I find it so interesting. And so I can understand
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't have someone in my life who
Speaker 2: could have sent me the Singularity University, so I missed out.
Speaker 2: But but I can vibe with that. So I think
Speaker 2: exposing yourself to is many new ideas, more learning rather
Speaker 2: than trying to get too fixated too quickly, is a
Speaker 2: really good lesson. And that's and also what you're saying
Speaker 2: that when people when children are growing up. My parents
Speaker 2: encouraged me to do so many things that were uncomfortable
Speaker 2: for me. Yes, that actually turned out to be superpowers.
Speaker 2: And there were also things they encouraged me to do
Speaker 2: that were uncomfortable that did not turn out to be superpowered,
Speaker 2: and both are okay. I remember my parents really wanted
Speaker 2: me to go to the school that I went to,
Speaker 2: high school that I went to, because it was a
Speaker 2: great high school. And if you asked any kid while
Speaker 2: we were in that high school, they hitted it.
Speaker 3: We hated it.
Speaker 2: But now when I look back, I am so grateful
Speaker 2: I went to the high school because I learned so much.
Speaker 2: And now I look back and I feel so happy
Speaker 2: that my parents pushed me to do that, even with
Speaker 2: simple things like my parents were really scared that I
Speaker 2: was going to be a shy kid because I was
Speaker 2: very quiet, I was very self contained. I was very shy,
Speaker 2: and my parents forced me to go to public speaking
Speaker 2: in drama school. I went for seven years to public
Speaker 2: speaking in drama school. Today my whole life is the
Speaker 2: public speaking and I always think about them, like if
Speaker 2: I didn't go and I didn't like going I hate
Speaker 2: it going. It was so uncomfortable to stand in front
Speaker 2: of a teacher and learn how to speak and communicate.
Speaker 2: But today my whole life is based on communication. And
Speaker 2: I was thinking, if my parents didn't push me, if
Speaker 2: my parents didn't encourage me, I would never be able
Speaker 2: to do what I do today.
Speaker 1: So that's what I was. You know, I think when
Speaker 1: I talking about that, it's not in your dreams, it's
Speaker 1: the nurturing. It is what they gave you, the lessons
Speaker 1: and made you uncomfortable. And sometimes what we find in
Speaker 1: life is that if you can learn to love the discomfort,
Speaker 1: the comfort becomes very easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And to constantly move in that direction
Speaker 2: that just because someone finds something uncomfortable that we feel
Speaker 2: we think that if something's uncomfortable, we should avoid it.
Speaker 2: But the truth is that discomfort is where all the
Speaker 2: growth comes. And I again encourage people to try. I
Speaker 2: think the idea of trying more things is being exposed.
Speaker 1: To more ideas and more things, and I think that's
Speaker 1: something we.
Speaker 3: The dots more others you have no dots to connect.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right, and I think, you know, we tend
Speaker 1: to find people who are just like us. Because that's
Speaker 1: what people want. But I think we learn a lot
Speaker 1: from people who are alike us.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, And they did a study at MIT which
Speaker 2: showed that people were more creative, innovative, and productive when
Speaker 2: they knew people who didn't know each other. The idea
Speaker 2: that if you know people who know people who know you,
Speaker 2: you just create an echo chamber where you all have
Speaker 2: the same ideas and you share the same thoughts. Whereas
Speaker 2: if you have someone in your community who thinks differently
Speaker 2: or randomly, or whatever it may be, it can spark
Speaker 2: so much more. I wonder this is the last area
Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about. Is I love
Speaker 2: the idea that you inculcate into your kids, the idea
Speaker 2: of improving other people's lives, doing something good for others.
Speaker 2: How do you find have you also where you were
Speaker 2: aware also as a parent, about how to help them
Speaker 2: with their personal mental health and their personal well being?
Speaker 3: Of course, because what we.
Speaker 2: Find is at the moment we find either role. We
Speaker 2: see people who sacrifice their own well being for the
Speaker 2: well being of others, and we see people who are
Speaker 2: just struggling with their own well being that they can't
Speaker 2: extend themselves to others. I wonder if you were a
Speaker 2: parent that was conscious of also mental health and wellbeing
Speaker 2: and personal well being.
Speaker 1: Well, at the end of the day, there's no parent
Speaker 1: at least I don't know of any parent who don't
Speaker 1: want their kids to be happy. So to me, that
Speaker 1: is just part of in loving someone unconditionally that you
Speaker 1: do anything to make them happy or anything for their happiness. Right,
Speaker 1: And I'm not suggesting you sacrifice. There's you know, go
Speaker 1: slightly tangent. There are things that in life that matter
Speaker 1: the most. Is that unconditional love that you can receive
Speaker 1: or the unconditional love that you can give, And very
Speaker 1: few types of love that, in my humble opinion, that
Speaker 1: are unconditional. You know, we may say we love our
Speaker 1: spouse and conditionally, but that is still you know, it's
Speaker 1: not the same as the love between mom and a child,
Speaker 1: or you know that love is just so strong. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one can ever say that. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: the last time I think when you and I talked
Speaker 1: about I may have shared this story that I still
Speaker 1: to me resonates the best. There was this kid who
Speaker 1: wanted to join the gang, and the gang member says,
Speaker 1: I don't think you're ready and he said, no, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to do anything you want. And he says, if
Speaker 1: you are really that ready, what I would like you
Speaker 1: to do would be to show me that you can
Speaker 1: do anything that needs done. Is to go take your
Speaker 1: mom while she's alive, cut her heart and bring the
Speaker 1: beating heart back to us. Then we know you can
Speaker 1: do this. The kid says, I can do this and
Speaker 1: goes there, literally stabs her mom, takes the beating heart out,
Speaker 1: and he is walking out, he stumbles and falls down,
Speaker 1: and the heart and that he hears the beating heart says, son,
Speaker 1: are you okay? That unconditional lover. Mom says the only
Speaker 1: thing that matters to her was are you okay? Not
Speaker 1: what you did to me? And that kind of unconditional
Speaker 1: love always brings her tears to my eye. That mother
Speaker 1: didn't care. She simply wanted to make sure that my
Speaker 1: son was okay, right because he stumbled and fell down
Speaker 1: right to me, when you want to do things for
Speaker 1: your children, sometimes the children may not think it is
Speaker 1: good for them, and it is your job to be
Speaker 1: an adult and say, in a long term, it is
Speaker 1: going to be good for you, whether it's sending you
Speaker 1: to the school or he speaks, you know, or going
Speaker 1: to the public speaking, but at the same time you
Speaker 1: wanting them to be a mini world jenoff You is
Speaker 1: where I think parents go wrong. The kids should not
Speaker 1: be molded to be another mini me, right, and the
Speaker 1: mini me concept happens more often than we want. The
Speaker 1: kids of the lawyer become lawyer, the kids of the
Speaker 1: doctor become doctor, kids of the teacher become teacher, because
Speaker 1: they all try to make them to be themselves. But
Speaker 1: I think you and I both agree that our job
Speaker 1: is to expose them to as many different things as possible,
Speaker 1: give them as many dots as they can, so someday
Speaker 1: they're able to connect these dots and create their own canvas.
Speaker 1: And give them that open canvas that they get to create.
Speaker 1: And they can only create that canvas when we give
Speaker 1: them also the curiosity and imagination so they can create
Speaker 1: whatever they want to create, and give them that inspiration.
Speaker 1: There is nothing they want to do is impossible, and
Speaker 1: the only thing that's impossible is the one they believe
Speaker 1: is not possible. That means they get to decide what
Speaker 1: is possible and what's not possible. No one else can decide,
Speaker 1: and the ideas when they are different. It's okay to
Speaker 1: be different because when people tell you it's crazy idea,
Speaker 1: those are the ideas that are worth pursuing. Right that,
Speaker 1: when someone tells you it's a crazy idea, it is
Speaker 1: an audacious idea that you can go out with. Right.
Speaker 1: But what you don't want to be doing things is
Speaker 1: is to simply live a comfortable life and live a
Speaker 1: smooth life. Right. That is to me, the day you
Speaker 1: stop learning is the day you start dying.
Speaker 2: Navin, it has been such a pleasure talking to you
Speaker 2: as always. I want to let everyone who know, everyone
Speaker 2: who's watching or listening know as well. If you want
Speaker 2: to know more about how Navin thinks, grab his book Moonshots.
Speaker 2: If you're someone that wants to set goals. If you're
Speaker 2: someone that wants to set audacious goals and try and achieve,
Speaker 2: the Moonshots is the book for you. If you want
Speaker 2: to find out more about your gut microbiome, the company
Speaker 2: is called vyume Vome. We will put the link in
Speaker 2: the show notes as well if you want to get
Speaker 2: a gut test done to understand more about everything that
Speaker 2: we just spoke about from that perspective. And the third
Speaker 2: is heavy about women's health, which we will also add
Speaker 2: into the show notes and Avan. It has been a
Speaker 2: joy sitting down with you again as always my friend,
Speaker 2: and every time I sit with you, I definitely feel
Speaker 2: I can be a little bit more audacious. I feel
Speaker 2: that I'm always being mindful of my gut when I'm
Speaker 2: with you. And today I'm also really really happy that
Speaker 2: I feel the message that has really come through is
Speaker 2: whatever we do, we have to do it to improve
Speaker 2: the world around us and continue to serve humanity at art.
Speaker 2: So thank you from the bottom of my heart for
Speaker 2: coming on today. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thank you Tom Well Jay.
Speaker 1: I just say You're always been on purpose and I
Speaker 1: just love spending time with you and I hope to
Speaker 1: see you again soon to thank.
Speaker 3: You to me.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll love my interview with
Speaker 2: Dr Gabor Matte on understanding your trauma and how to
Speaker 2: heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past.
Speaker 2: There's a difference between being alone and being lonely. Alone
Speaker 2: is just a fact and that we can embrace and
Speaker 2: make decisions about loneliness