Ja-Nae Duane Show
Welcome to the Ja-Nae Duane Show. My name is well, Ja-Nae Duane.
In this show, we will explore the systems that shape human behavior in society through the eyes of technologists, scientists, executives, and leaders, from the algorithms that govern our digital lives to the future of work. We'll be taking a closer look at how these systems function and their implications on our lives.
But really, what sets this show apart is how these future systems will impact humanity. We will ponder what transportation will look like over the next century.
How will artificial intelligence impact our economy? How can we reimagine smart cities to revolutionize urban living? The possibilities are truly endless. Now, you may be wondering, who am I? I'm a behavioral scientist who conducts research at Brown and MIT. My passions lie at the intersection of human behavior and technology so that we can understand that beautiful relationship a little bit better and understand not only how we influence technology but also how technology influences us.
Ja-Nae Duane Show
Ja-Nae Duane Show EP 7 - Connecting Humanity with Lakshmi Pratury
Lakshmi Pratury shares her fascinating journey from gold medalist in applied mathematics to founder and CEO of InkTalks, revealing how embracing curiosity across multiple domains can lead to a more fulfilling life than specializing in just one area.
• Growing up in Hyderabad, India without gender boundaries shaped Lakshmi's independent thinking and courage to challenge norms
• The concept of "horizontality" - being good at many things rather than exceptional at just one - offers an alternative path to success
• Looking at life in 10-year intervals rather than day-to-day provides perspective and resilience through inevitable ups and downs
• Building genuine relationships without transactional intentions is the foundation of trust and community
• Creating meaningful experiences for others makes us "billionaires of moments" - a more fulfilling measure of success than financial wealth
• Asking for what you deserve is essential, despite the discomfort and potential rejection
• Surrounding yourself with the right team members who complement your strengths is crucial for entrepreneurial success
• Putting your "oxygen mask on first" by prioritizing your own wellbeing enables you to better serve others
If you have the capability to make a difference to someone, make it - it's the biggest contribution you can offer to the world.
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For over 20 years, behavioral scientist Dr. Ja-Naé Duane dedicated herself to one mission: Make life better for one billion people. This award-winning innovator and expert on global systems focuses on helping corporations, governments, and universities understand and develop systems of the future using emerging technology such as VR/AR, AI, and blockchain. Ja-Nae guides companies forward, helping them get out of their own way to create exponential innovation and future forecasting. She has had the pleasure of working with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, Yum Brands, Samsonite, Natixis, AIG, and Deloitte. A top-rated speaker within the Singularity University community and the author of the bestseller, “The Startup Equation,” Ja-Nae at helping both startups and multinational firms identify new business models and pathways for global scale. Her next book SuperShifts is due out in April 2025.
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Hello and welcome to the Janai Dwayne Show, where she explores the systems that shape human behavior in society through the eyes of technologists, scientists, executives and leaders. From the algorithms that govern our digital lives to what the future of work will look like, we'll be taking a closer look at how these systems function and the implications they have on our lives.
Ja-Nae:Hello everyone, welcome to theNai Dwayne Show. This is the last of my first three episodes that I recorded, actually a year ago, and what I wanted to do when I recorded these was when I recorded these was how do I get three of some of my favorite people in a room and just talk to them throughout the day? And that's exactly what I did, and this was an episode that was extremely special to me and a conversation that was extremely special to me, and so I'd like to introduce you to Lakshmi Parthori. So Lakshmi, in many ways, is a visionary, she's a storyteller and absolutely is a community builder.
Ja-Nae:She's the founder and CEO of InkTalks, and Lakshmi has spent years really curating global thought leaders and game changers. She's a sought after speaker, entrepreneur, writer with an incredible career spanning from Intel to VC to global nonprofits. She co-hosted the first ever TED India conference and then brought Singularity University to India as well. So in this conversation, we dive into really the power of storytelling, redefining success, no matter what career path you're on, as well as how collaboration can really shape the future, and to me, lakshmi truly brings wisdom and energy and insight that I think you're just going to love. I know I love talking to her. So with that let's get started, and here is my conversation with Lakshmi Perturi. Okay, we're pretty much ready to go.
Ja-Nae:All right, okay, all right. You know I'm super excited that you said yes to chatting with me, because the dinner party in which you invited me to, which was the last time I saw you, ended up being a wild ride in which I now tell people about. So you when. I think about you, Lakshmi, like you are queen of adventure when I think about you People adventure.
Lakshmi:Well, that's so. That's really interesting.
Ja-Nae:So before, because I want to talk about that, because I actually think you love, I've seen you do this. I've seen you do this in India. I've seen you do this here in the United States, like you are a, you are a connector of, of people. But there's there's deeper things there. But in doing research about you, I had no idea that you were a gold medalist in applied mathematics.
Ja-Nae:So wait so tell me a little bit about your background, that I mean, I obviously didn't know, and that I know our viewers and listeners don't know, yeah, so I was brought up in India, hyderabad, india, and like all nice South Indian families, I went to a good school.
Lakshmi:There was a lot of focus on education. My father was a single parent because my mother passed away very young. So I grew up without having any boundaries of this is what being a girl is, etc. And I went to an all-girls school which was run by my aunt. So I always thought women were always in positions of power. So I never knew that. You know, women can't do this, can't do that was never part of the vocabulary either at school.
Lakshmi:From kindergarten to 10th grade I went to the same school, or at home, and also at school we had such amazing teachers who made me go to debates and essay writing and things like that. I mean, I remember in fifth or sixth grade I got so scared I hid under the bench because I didn't want to talk, I didn't want to give a talk. So my teacher pulled me out and said you are giving a talk. I was so petrified, but it's like we had that kind of teachers who sent us and we competed with boys' schools and never felt we were any less. We beat them all the time and stuff. So in a very interesting way in India where in some ways there's a lot of rules of what women should be. I grew up in a microcosm where those rules didn't exist and but at the same time things would once in a while, like my teacher would pull me aside at school and say now you're in ninth grade, so you should wear half saris, you shouldn't wear frocks or something, and I didn't understand why I should do that and I would come home and fight with my dad that why is she saying that? She's saying you're the principal's daughter, you're so and so doctor's daughter and you have to behave a certain way. I just didn't understand it. My dad would say choose your battles, just wear the long skirt, it doesn't matter, as long as you get to do whatever you wanna do. Don't fight these small battles.
Lakshmi:So mathematics came kind of in a very weird way. Actually, in eighth grade I almost flunked mathematics and it's like it requires 35 percent to pass and I literally had 35 percent to pass and I was very good in debates. I was very good in Telugu, which is our local language, english, everything. And I used to paint. I used to win all the awards in all kinds of painting, drawing and stuff. But in ninth grade I had this teacher, augustine, teacher for math, who was so good, like I really wanted to please her and I really felt this poetry in mathematics, you know, like you start with something, you end with something and there are some steps in between. She made it so interesting for me, like you find a solution through certain steps, and I became so particular, like my question would be in red, my answer, each step, would be in blue, the answer would be in green. It had to visually look stunning, like each question I answered. Like I was that particular, you know. So I did it.
Lakshmi:And then, but you know, when you finish in India, you're like are you doing engineering or medicine? You know there's one or the two that you do and I did not want to do medicine. So that option was out for me because my house was filled with doctors, I was tired of formaldehyde, smell and dining room and I'm like I'm not going to be a doctor. So it's like my life in some ways has been defined by what I don't want to be instead of what I want to be. So I said I don't want to be a doctor. Then what you want to be an engineer, okay, engineer.
Lakshmi:Then I went to the engineering interview. I got into chemical engineering and chemistry is the one subject that I almost flunked. So I'm like I cannot do chemical engineering. So I'm like I cannot do chemical engineering. So I came home and told my dad I didn't get into engineering. I lied, and so the next best was a pure mathematics. So I wanted mathematics but didn't want chemistry. So the only option was pure math, math, applied math, statistics. So I took that. So it's very interesting, like I never thought I would become a mathematician per se. Interesting like I never thought I would become a mathematician per se. So, but I wanted to study art painting, actually.
Lakshmi:And there is this Indian author, rabindranath Tagore, who I admired. He started something called Shantiniketan, which is a school in West Bengal. I wanted to go there, sit under the trees and paint. I was like in my dream world and I told this to my dad and my father said look, every woman in this house we were three sisters every woman in this house has to have a degree by which she can make money, because you have to be economically independent. You cannot depend on anybody.
Lakshmi:Art I'm not sure you'll ever make any money with it, or you have to struggle for a very long time. If you study math or engineering, you'll get a job and you have to be economically independent. So no art, you study math. So I was like, okay, you know, I was very disheartened, I was very disappointed, but I could see what he was saying. So I studied math and to me it was like from the time I was a kid, extremely competitive, like whatever I do, I have to be the first. If I did not come first in class, I would just not talk to anybody. Like till that thing came back the girl who came first, I wouldn't even talk to her. Like till that thing came back the girl who came first, I wouldn't even talk to her. I was like that bad that competitive.
Lakshmi:So that sort of so. When I took mathematics, I'm like it is possible to get a gold medal because you can technically get 100% in every subject. You know it is possible. It's not possible with English or somewhere else it is possible. It's not possible with English or somewhere else it is possible here. So it was, I think, more competitiveness than even learning. To be honest, I cracked the system. If you ask me some mathematical things today, I won't remember anything. I just figured out the system and I cracked it.
Lakshmi:So that's the story of my mathematics is it was by what I did not want to do, and if I'm doing it anyway, I might as well be at the top of it.
Ja-Nae:I want to stay in this thread of your childhood because, well, one I didn't know, your mom had passed when you were so young. It sounds like your father what an incredible man to. And it sounds like the way in which he was raising you and your sisters. It sounds very, very counterintuitive to at least what I know culturally. And then, from what I've heard from from my friends, tell me a little bit about if, if, if I may ask how did you view your father?
Ja-Nae:as you know the soul, you know the soul parent bringing you up. Did you know? Was that a good relationship? It sounds like it very much formed, also your thinking and how you still sort of trail you know blaze the trail before you now.
Lakshmi:So and you know my father was an amazing person and he you know he lost a son when my I had an older brother, when he was eight years old or something, to leukemia. And my father was pursuing to be a pediatrician. And he would say that you know, every time you get really proud of something, some force hits you to bring the humility. So for a pediatrician there's nothing worse than losing your child. And my father was studying in the US at that time, I mean in the 50s. He came to the US to pursue his masters and stuff. So he was studying here and then he got the call he had to go back and my brother passed away.
Lakshmi:So I was sort of like a consolation child. My sisters are 18 and 12 years older than me. My mom went into such depression that my father thought if we have another child she would come out of it. So my mom was an older parent. She was 39 when she was pregnant with me. My sisters were already 17 and 11 and so and she started coming out. I mean, she kind of started coming out of her depression. She was kind of looking forward to another child coming and us having a new life. And we decided to move. We were staying in Vizag and we decided to move to Hyderabad. My dad thought new beginning for everything you know.
Lakshmi:So they were gonna move. Everything was planned and one night my my mother put. My two sisters were fighting and then she said how will you take care of your younger brother or sister if you fight among yourselves? You know you should take care of your younger brother and sister, so stop fighting. And then she fed them dinner and they went to bed and at about 1 am my mom got up and she said I don't feel comfortable. So my father rushed her to the hospital and her usual doctor was not there. Everything that could go against was going against. They had to do a c-section. They did the c-section.
Lakshmi:I came out. I wasn't crying when I came out, so it was the pre, and so my dad said he turned me upside down and whacked me. So I started crying. And as soon as I started crying the nurse said doctor, I don't feel the pulse. And my dad turned around and my mom passed away and he always said that it's like as though her life came into me. And and he said that's why I can never say no to anything for you. Everything your mother wanted to do, she's doing it through you.
Lakshmi:So you know, in India especially, it's a very superstitious country and I've had other cousins etc who same thing happened. But their families told the children that you killed your mother, whereas I it's just the luck of the draw For me I came into a family that said you are a gift from her. So my sisters became my two mothers, my father became my mother. Then my mother was an only child to my grandparents. So they asked my father if they could take me, because they all were sure my dad was going to get married again, because he was only 41, 42 at that time and or something like that. And then my dad said if I died, would you have asked your daughter to get married again? And they said no. I said the same rule works for me. I will never get married again. If you want to be with your granddaughter, you come, stay with me. I will not give my daughter to anybody.
Lakshmi:So my grandparents shut down their whole life in their village. My grandfather was a very famous doctor. My grandmother was a freedom fighter, everything and moved to Hyderabad to stay with us to raise me. So for me, in some ways I lost a mother before I knew her, and in other ways I had many mothers. My grandmother was her, life was me. I never knew she was a freedom fighter. I never knew she had a life because I always took for granted she was there for me. That's it 24-7, you know. And then my two sisters were 18 and 12 years older than me. They became my mothers. Even now, you know, no matter how old I am, they treat me like I'm three years older.
Ja-Nae:Well, you are the baby of the family. They want to know where are you going?
Lakshmi:When will you be back? You know, be careful. You know, like, on the way here, my second sister called me and every morning we talk and stuff. So I think I was very lucky that I truly had, you know, genetic lottery. Genetic lottery, that I was born in a house where they really treated me like I was truly a gift from my mother and and so my father raised us so he had no idea what it is to raise a girl or to be a girl or anything like that. You know, we never had like the girl talks I would have had with the mother or anything like that.
Lakshmi:But I went everywhere with him. You know, he was a doctor, he was a poet, he was a script writer, he was a freedom fighter. I would go to political rallies with him, I would go to functions with him where his books were released. I would sit in his clinic while he was treating people. So I just, he just took me everywhere.
Lakshmi:So I was raised with being interested in everything, you know, not just one thing. And he never cared about money. He really cared about influence, like what can you do with money? And he was always running around trying to find this one a job, that one a job. He'll find some random singer he found and say, let's give him some opportunity to sing. And we would all be like who are all these people you're bringing home, you know, and stuff?
Lakshmi:So I think I was very lucky to be raised by women who were incredibly independent and also a man who really raised us like there was no difference and there was. I mean, there are many prejudices, like in India there's a lot of prejudice around color of the skin, and one day an uncle who was staying with us was talking to me and I was like maybe 14 or something like that, and then he told me he said, if you were only a little lighter, it would have been easier to find a guy to marry you. And, unbeknownst to him, my father just happened to walk in and he pulled him by his collar and said you want to live in this house. You better never say that to anybody in this house. She's beautiful and you can never talk about anything superficial in this house. You want to live in this house. Not another word from you. So I not only saw the prejudice, I saw how to stand up to it also. So he was very. I mean he would.
Lakshmi:I think as a young person he really embarrassed me so much because he would fight for everything, like once. I remember a teacher like hit me with a ruler on my hands and my fingers were swollen. Next day my dad was in the school saying'm a pediatrician. This is not the way to raise children. You can never hit children. Giving a lecture to my teacher and I was like, oh my god just let this go.
Lakshmi:Just let this go, you know, and but he was like one of those who wouldn't put up with anything, especially anything to do with me. So I would be like very afraid to tell him anything because we'd make a scene about it. Unfortunately, I have become him now. I was gonna say.
Ja-Nae:There's so many similarities from what I know and what I have seen of you as a person to hear that that was embodied in your father yeah, I mean wow, what a lovely way to continue yeah, what I can. I consider such amazing traits right because to me, you are a powerhouse like to me. When I think about independent women who, just it comes naturally to be authentic in every way, in every instance, I mean you, just you are the first person I think of when I think of those things and to know that so much of that came from your upbringing and being raised by.
Ja-Nae:It sounds like an amazing father and then a you know a tribe of women you know strong, independent women that. What great examples of that.
Lakshmi:Yeah, wow, okay. So my only solace is every time my son is embarrassed of me now I feel someday he'll be proud of me, because there was a time I was so embarrassed of my father Tell him it's coming, it's coming. You don't know when it's coming, but it's coming at some point.
Ja-Nae:It'll be here. So I want to transition a little bit because what I know of you and you've talked a little bit about this with heading into mathematics but also wanting to do art and I know that you have a degree I believe you have a degree in art as well. You have such a curiosity for many, many topics which is I think and your eyes sparkle whenever I see you starting to question something.
Ja-Nae:Tell me a little bit about that and what it means to be in pursuit of of curiosity and exploration for you yeah, I know, I think it's um, I mean, it's really that's what I've seen at home.
Lakshmi:I think my father was my sister, my older sister. They're so curious about everything and they never said why this, why that I was you know, they put me in like a music class and I would like skip that and play sports, but they never questioned why this. They just put me in a lot of things. So one is while growing up I saw that, I think. And the other thing is just recently I saw an interview. It's Ted finished 40 years, ted at 40.
Lakshmi:So there was a conversation between Chris Anderson and Richard Saul Worman, two men who have been most influential for my current career, and I've known Ricky Richard Saul Warman for a long time. I've been going to TED since 93, so I've known him since then. He said something finally, I feel I know how to define myself. It's always difficult for me when people say what do you do Like? Who are you? I don't know whether to say I'm an executive, I'm a CEO, I'm this, I'm that. Nothing seems like right for me. He said something very interesting. He said there are people who are vertical, there are, there are ways in which you can be vertical or horizontal. Horizontality is a state of being, you know, for me of I'm curious about everything you know. I'm just curious about people like what makes them who they are? Because people accomplish amazing things and people do horrible things, and so what is it that makes us be great and be horrible? Because I have been horrible and I have been great. I've been, so I'm really interested in understanding myself through others. So, and also I love explaining things. I think it's this thing I told about.
Lakshmi:You start with a problem, you come with an answer in mathematics and you do it beautifully in between. You look at that piece of paper. You feel so good. I mean, to me all my exam papers would be. It has to be pieces of art, like if it's a biology thing, if I draw the brain or something, I would put different colors. The arrows have to be straight. I would use a ruler to do the arrows, so it has to look visually perfect when I write something. So explaining things is beautiful. I mean, when I don't understand something, I want to know how it works and be able to explain to someone. That way, I can go only so far in explaining any subject, not beyond that.
Lakshmi:But I'm curious about so many things and I'm not okay doing just one thing for the rest of my life. So that's why, even in mathematics, I went to IIT, which was very tough to get into. I had to fight with the whole household to go there. Once I went there, I realized I love math, but I'm not interested in being a mathematician. You know, it's like all these philosophy, theoretical stuff, stuff, imaginary numbers, imagine this, imagine that. I'm like no, I'm not interested in that. I just want to give me a differential equation, I'll solve it. I'm done. I don't want to do this philosophy, because mathematics is philosophy. You know, I wasn't interested in that. So I was like oh my god. I fought with everybody and came here Now what do I do? I don't want to do this. And I could see all the people doing PhD in math. I'm like, I don't want to be like them. They look like boring people.
Lakshmi:I don't want to be that, but I didn't know what I want to be. So again I'm at. I don't want to be this, but I don't know what I want to be. So I asked people around what do people do after they finish IIT? They said oh, they go to America. I said that was out of question for me. How will anybody go to America? So I said what is there in India? Oh, you can do an MBA. I said what is an MBA? It's like a business. I had no idea what business was, but I knew it was prestigious. If I got into a business school, my father cannot say no, that's all I knew. So I went and gave an entrance exam, not even knowing what an MBA was. Then they said there's a group discussion. What is it? We put ten people together and you have to talk about a subject. I said that I can do. So I got into an MBA not knowing what an MBA was. It's just a way to get out of IIT. I wanted to get out of doing mathematics and do something else. So that's the first time for me.
Lakshmi:In IIT I faced failure. You know, imagine being a gold medalist in mathematics top of your university and going somewhere where everybody is better than you and you are the bottom of the pile. And for the first time I saw the letter D in my life. You know, anything less than the 90s, even in English, was like a you know palpitation for me. So I was like I've never gotten this kind of grades and I've never felt this dumb. You know, not even dumb. I was not interested and I'm one of those people. If I'm not interested, I cannot apply myself. Yeah, you check out.
Lakshmi:I'm just out. So I tasted once. I tasted that failure. My journey became I just want to learn, I don't care what grade. So by the time I went to my MBA I only pursued things I really liked and I really loved being there. I loved my classmates, I loved the course. There were many setbacks Again, I flunked in finance, but it was okay. Some friend helped me and I passed. In irony of ironies, my first job out of college in US was in finance, but anyway. So I was okay with failure by then. I think at a very young age by the time I was 20, 21, I learned you can get out of failure, it's okay, it's not a big deal. And so that's when I realized I'm interested in many things. So MBA really opened up. There's marketing, there's operations, there's finance, there's HR, there's organizational development. There's marketing, there's operations, there's finance, there's HR, there's organizational development, there is market research.
Lakshmi:I mean it was like a toy store for me, like, wow, so many things to learn. And then when I did my second MBA in US because I already did one MBA it was easy for me so I could take classes, they said in America. They said you could take class in any department, like really like you go to a library and you can take as many books as you want, keep as many days as you want. I mean, even in IIT we had one textbook that ten of us had to share. So you check it out of the library for a day, you study as much as you can give it to somebody and there are no photocopier or something, so you have to copy it To come into America and I went to Portland State University, which is not Stanford or Harvard or anything. It was beautiful and so many resources and they're like you can take classes anywhere.
Lakshmi:I was like, wow, I took tennis, I took golf horrible at it. Then I took something else and I landed in theater and I felt I found my calling. So I did my MBA with a minor in theater arts. So that's when. And then I took creative writing classes. I would act in local theater, I would write for local papers and stuff and I was acing my MBA. I was a graduate assistant doing research, worked in the first computer lab that was set up, and so I was like, yes, I can do all these things.
Lakshmi:I may not be, I was not the best actor, but I got pretty good roles. My writing didn't win awards, but still it got published and I was an, a student. I was not the top of the class, but you know good GPA and all that stuff. So I realized I love being good at a lot of things but not great at only one thing at the expense of all other things. So the thing that Richard talks about, that horizontality, I think I embraced it in my 20s without knowing that's what it was. You know you only understand life in retrospect. You don't understand when you're going through it. Now, when I look back, every job I chose, every profession, every company, it always embraced horizontality and not vertical.
Ja-Nae:Yeah, it's hard for us to try to make sense in the moment, right, Because so much of what we it's all sense making I mean, and you're really you need those pieces of the puzzle, that you're trying to string them all together.
Ja-Nae:You know, it's really interesting to hear from you and to know that you rail in many ways against many of the titles that you know have been bestowed upon you. Um, but I also find and this is what I want to, I want to dive into I find that we're in a culture that really embraces us as individuals to go deep on something, but not necessarily horizontally across, and be curious across multiple things. And I don't know why and I don't know if you have any insight or have any thoughts around that, but I'm curious if you have, if you've thought about that, and also if you have any thoughts about folks who are like you, who prefer to explore a little more horizontally rather than to just go deep into one thing and have categorically that one label. I don't know what are your thoughts.
Lakshmi:I think in the world people don't mind horizontality as long as you're excellent in one thing, like, for example, there was Andy Grove who was the CEO of a company, blah, blah, blah. He also bicycled a lot, he also did something. He also did something. You're okay with that, we want them to be, to call them a success, you want them to be an expert in one vertical, and then we are okay with horizontality. But for someone like me, who I've given up so many positions where they said, oh, you can become a VP if you can build this division, I'm like, oh my God, that sounds so boring to me, like I cannot like just cannot, cannot.
Lakshmi:I mean I love the invention and now we know it's a product. Now to sit for the next three years and make sure it's made to spec and all that. That's just not me. So I always gave up those titles to go into completely new technology. I mean when I was at Intel for 12 years I was in eight completely different divisions and different jobs. That have nothing to do with each other.
Ja-Nae:So how did that happen? I mean to be at a company for eight years or 12 years, rather, how did you find yourself?
Lakshmi:navigating that yeah, you know, I'm like I always thought I I've never applied for a job. I always created my job. You know, first I was in finance which was like, okay, I need to get my green card, this is a job that's available, I will do it. I knew it enough to be dangerous. I did okay. Finally, my boss called me nick dierer. I still remember he was such an amazing guy. Boss called me Nick Deerer. I still remember he was such an amazing guy.
Lakshmi:He called me and said you did enough in marketing and finance. I think you should move to marketing now, because I would go to all the managers and tell them you know, we are planning to cut 10% of all your budgets, so please pad them by 10% so that you won't really. You know like I would go tell these things. My boss is like you're not supposed to tell them. I said but it's stupid to say we'll just cut 10% carte blanche. We should like say, okay, let's not do this one activity, so we'll save 50% here, instead of saying everybody arbitrarily cut 10%. So if I didn't understand something, I would like do all these. You know things. So my boss would laugh and then he'd say, okay, I think in finance we need very different kinds of people. So I think you should move to marketing, and he found me a job in marketing that's a very gentle way to move you to another department.
Lakshmi:But let me tell you before I was like pretty much on um, I forgot what they called at intel. They put you on like this uh, trial period, like in this, three months if you don't prove yourself.
Ja-Nae:they're going to fire you yeah like probation kind of a thing.
Lakshmi:My boss said look, I really don't want you to go through that because you're almost there, but you're so good in marketing, let's send you there. And that was my first lesson in everybody's good at something. When they're not doing a good job, they're just not fit for that job. So if my boss just fired me, I would have always felt like a lousy finance person, because I was a lousy finance person but I was a great marketing person. But he could see that and actually take the effort to move me there to say that, okay, I'll carry your salary for another two months, let's find what you need and go talk to other managers and tell them that you know she's really good and you know to not tell them I'm like going to be on this probation or something so again, I really you know like first, at know like first.
Lakshmi:I had the genetic lottery. Then I had a professional lottery of really amazing bosses who just loved me. You know, they just wanted to see me do well. And if I didn't do well, they understood it's because it's just not. I'm not good at that but I must be good at something else. So I think so like that. I mean I would just Avram Miller. I went to a conference and I was coming back.
Lakshmi:I happened to be sitting next to Avram Miller and he was the talk he gave like mesmerized me. And he was talking about this is in 91 or so. He was talking about how entertainment and technology, all of them would come together, intel should invest in all these things and all that stuff. And I went to him and said I want to work for you. And then he's like I and technology, all of them would come together, intel should invest in all these things and all that stuff. And I went to him and said I want to work for you. And then he's like I don't have a job. I said but let's create one. He's like I don't want to create one, I don't want too many people working for me.
Lakshmi:But we had such a great conversation. I just kept pestering him and he said I want to have only as many people that can fit in my car. I said you only have three people now so I can come, so that will still fit your car. So I want to be in this job. So I said, make me your technical assistant. It's sort of like in Intel we had every VP had a chief of staff kind of a thing, so they helped them with everything. I said, let me be that. And he thought about it. I think. Finally, after harassing him for so many months, he was like okay, fine, come on board. And then I got to work with him and with my colleagues on everything from digital content to living room TV to entertainment. We had a lab in CAA where we were teaching all these entertainment people this is Internet and all these kinds of stuff. And so just because I pursued that, that opened up so many doors afterwards that I could jump one thing to the other to be part of the first team to bring e-commerce. You know what are all the things that come together? And when we talked about e-commerce, you know what are all the things that come together? And I mean we talked about e-commerce in 94 and things like that.
Lakshmi:So I think it's like I can see who I want to work with. I never pursued a job. I pursued a person like. I love the way this person thinks and I want to learn from them. So I go to them and say, hey, let's, let's do something together. And even now, when we do the conference or any project, I just go to somebody I really like and say, let's do a project together. So it's not a business plan of we should do this kind of projects like this, et cetera.
Lakshmi:I work with sponsors, I like. I work with speakers, I like, and so I feel life's too short to have a lousy day, you know. So it's like, whatever you do, you should enjoy what you're doing, but there's a price to pay for it. And this is what I tell a lot of young people is that there's always a price to pay. You want that huge house, you want that big paycheck. You want that. There is a price to pay. You want to have my lifestyle of.
Lakshmi:I love horizontality, I am like this digital nomad and all these kinds of stuff. There's a price to pay for that. You ought to be okay with it. So the price I had to pay is that I never had a vice president title, I never had a CEO of a Fortune president title, I never had a CEO of a Fortune 500 title. I don't think I'll ever make you know the most influential women of the Time magazine or something, because I embraced horizontality and that's the price I have to be willing to pay, even though it upsets me that, hey, I'm as good as Indra Nooyi, so why aren't you recognizing me? Why do you recognize only the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company? But that's okay, you know. I mean, it's okay to be petty, it's okay to be upset all those things as long as you can get over it and move on. So I feel that's my dedication in my life is to get people to understand why horizontality is equally important. You know, people in your company that make the world go around are important, not just the one who's closing the sales or who's a chief scientist. There are people in every company who make the thing go around and you have to honor them as much as you honor everybody else. So I want to bring a lot of respect and money to horizontality.
Lakshmi:I really and I have to thank Richard for coming up with that term because I always suffered I didn't know how to describe myself and as a curious person like how you're doing now with me, like when you ask questions of someone, the focus is on that person, it's not on you. But when you ask the right questions and uncover the right thing in that person, there's something you're bringing to the table also. But we forget that, like people always forget the moderator, they always forget the interviewer. The focus is only on who is on the panel. But for me, I'm always looking at the, because that's what I am, I think, is that I'm in awe of people who can bring things out. I'm in awe of somebody who actually reaches out to someone and says, hey, I want to talk to you, and so I think to me. By bringing attention to me, I'm bringing attention to horizontality. I'm bringing attention to the importance of the middlemen, women, of instigators, of investigators, of behind the scenes people who make the things go around. So I think horizontality is just as important.
Ja-Nae:So I want to. I love this. There's two things I want to dig into. One is you had mentioned that you're investing in, and yeah in this.
Ja-Nae:But before we get to that, you really strike me as someone who and you've you've struck me this way before, um, but I'm hearing it also in in some of your stories like there is such a deep persistence that runs like the river through you, um, and I. I get the sense a lot of that is just sort of ingrained from your um, from your background. But what about for folks where they struggle with that or they haven't had the father that you've had, who's really helped to nurture that in some ways? What are some ways in which other individuals can bring that out in themselves so they can create their own jobs?
Ja-Nae:Because maybe they want to be more horizontal but they just don't even know how to start that.
Lakshmi:Yeah, I think there are two things that are very important. I think the first one is I've learned to look at life in 10-year intervals. You know, not in one or two years, because you know I mean even for stocks, even for financial things. I always say look at things in 10-year intervals. There will be huge ups and downs, but you will see, in 10 years you're always higher than where you were 10 years ago. You know, or you've disappeared one or the other.
Ja-Nae:Either you're dead or you're better. Something's gonna happen. Something is gonna happen.
Lakshmi:So like, even if you look at companies, say, I could say that I mean, look at the dot-com bust that happened in 2000s or whatever, you know, in 99, things were great and then they're down. But can you imagine without Internet today? You know, it's so pervasive that we cannot imagine life without e-commerce or Internet or whatever. Yes, some things died in between. I think in your life also the same thing happens. If you look at it in 10-year intervals, like when I was 25, my 25th birthday, I was sitting. I didn't have a job. I had a job that had $300 a month on which I had to pay everything. Last five, six days I would not have any money left, so every day I would eat French fries or one slice of pizza. That's why, even today, I cannot eat pizza. It reminds me of being starved. I mean, I still eat it.
Lakshmi:Cicero's pizza I love, but it's sort of. You know, at 25, I remember I came back home from it was my birthday. That day, 25th birthday, one of my friends called me because she just broke up with her boyfriend and the entire evening I spent sitting with her crying. I didn't want to tell her it was my birthday. I had classes, I had my play rehearsals till 10.30. Then I went out with her and around midnight I came home and I still remember to this day, in this dorm room, looking in the mirror room, looking at in the mirror, looking at myself, is saying I'm such a failure.
Lakshmi:I never thought at 25 this is where I would be. You know, I mean I went to one of the top schools in India. I graduated at 22. I came to America. I thought by 25 I would be ABC. And here I am, you know, going to grad school and second MBA. And you know, I mean I felt I still remember that birthday, my 30th birthday, like somehow. My 30th birthday I lost my job at Intel, I mean like in the group, and then I had to search for another job within the group.
Lakshmi:30th birthday, most depressing. Like you're over the hill, you're single, nobody in horizon, blah, blah, bleeblee, all those things horrible. You know, 35th birthday. I was married to somebody who I consider my best friend even to this day, and my family was great. My father, who was in coma, came out of it, learned how to walk and gave me away at my wedding, and we were all in India celebrating our wedding. So if I at 25, it would have looked terrible. But if I looked at 25 to 35, it was a huge jump from this girl making $300 a month to somebody making tenfold of that and have much more in the bank at 35. So that really taught me that you should look at things in 10-year intervals. There'll be some huge ups. You think, oh, wow, I've made it, and there's some terrible downs where you're like I'm a failure. But if you have the patience and say, just let me look at 10-year intervals. So even for companies like when we started Inc, we started on a high because all my friends gave money. I came to India. I'm like, oh, I know how to do this and within a year we'll be this that you know. 10 years later, we are still like.
Lakshmi:10 years after we started, kovit happened, you know, 2010. We started 2020. We were just poised to take off. We had some of the largest assignments. The rug got pulled out of our feet. You know, I said it's OK. If you look at 10 years later, we're still surviving COVID. We started something that nobody thought would be successful. I figured out a way to call myself a CEO. For this horizontality. I have managed to create an amazing community. So if I compared myself from 2010 to 2020, amazing progress. So 2020, rug got pulled out. Let's look at 2030. I'm sure we'll be at a different place.
Lakshmi:So I think that's what resilience is nothing except being able to tell yourself a positive story every day, because you go to bed with a pill in your stomach sometimes, or you wake up with this thing, but between waking up and sleeping, what story can you tell yourself to stay afloat? Positive for that one day, one day at a time. So how do you do it? So, in some ways, it's look at progress every 10 years, but tell the story only for that day, don't worry about tomorrow. You know just how do I get today with being top of the world, and when I go to bed, I maybe whatever, but during the day, how can I keep myself up? I think that's what, whatever, but during the day. How can I keep myself up?
Lakshmi:I think that's what I've learned seeing my father. I mean, he lost a son, he lost a wife. He Could have been a much bigger doctor. He could have been made much, much more money, but he would like sit there in the evening. I would be with him. He had a box there and the patients came, he, he saw them. At the end they put some money in there. He didn't know how much they put in and that was it.
Lakshmi:You know, that was his life and there are times I used to get angry at him like you could have made more money, I would have. You would have lived in a bigger house and all these kinds of things. But I think I've learned from him and I learned from my own life. I learned a little bit from him. But I think you have to constantly learn from your own life. You have to constantly look back and say hey, what happened, where am I? And not pull yourself down all the time, say I have come here. It's very easy to say, oh, compared to yesterday I'm three steps down, but actually, compared to 10 years ago, I'm like 10,000 steps.
Lakshmi:Right you know, so there's always a I'm not dead. That's always a good line to use to stay positive. It's like I'm still breathing.
Ja-Nae:Yeah, it's like going up a mountain. You know, even if you need to take a break, you can't forget how far you've actually climbed already. Yeah, so it sounds like ink, which is your current company. It sounds like that is very much a place to um evangelize this, this horizontal, the, the seekers of horizontality. Did I pronounce it right?
Lakshmi:Yes, I was like. I don't even know if that was right. It's a new term I learned after listening to Richard and what I found?
Ja-Nae:because I've experienced. Here's the thing about you.
Ja-Nae:You and you've already stated this with your math equations, you curate amazing experiences yeah and I still talk to people about my experience in India as being an amazing, transformational one, at a time in my life where I was actually feeling very stuck. So it was what I needed at that time, with the people and the conversations I needed at that time. So I want to talk to you a little bit about how do you, how did that come about? And then how do you curate such great experiences with such great people?
Lakshmi:experiences with such great people. I think you know, to me I still, as I was telling you about TED, in 93 I went for the first TED and in the first hour of the first TED, when I saw Richard on stage and the kinds of talks that were there, I felt this is what I want to do. I mean, it was like I've never felt that before in my life, but it just seemed so unattainable. I mean, this is Richard Saul Worman. You know, like he was God and he would sit on stage and command people to come and go and stuff, and there's no way one could ever be that. I mean and I'm certainly not that, you know, I'm like I do it differently, but he's it was.
Lakshmi:I was in awe, not just of him but the people who were there, because you know, the founder of Intuit was sitting next to me and some other actor was sitting next to me and they were all talking to me like I'm a real person, not like you ordinary folk kind of stuff. They were all so nice and I think a certain environment was created where everyone was so invigorated that they forgot these artificial boundaries we have of status and celebrityhood and all these things were forgotten those three days. I'm sure you know. If you go back later, you know I'm not gonna be.
Lakshmi:You know, having lunch with Reese Witherspoon you know, so it's sort of it just happens there, where there is somehow that camaraderie in that space, and I loved it. I loved that I was sitting there. I was listening to somebody talking about how much mathematics is there in the way a hair moves in animation, to someone talking about psychiatry and then someone talking about an artificial leg, and I was like, wow, this is the kind of people I want to hang out with, because I'm interested in everything and I want to live vicariously through them. I'll never be a paleontologist, but maybe I can go on a trip with this person, so in one week I'll know what it is to be a paleontologist. So I think TED really showed me what's possible. But I was getting my green card, I was working, blah, blah. All that stuff was happening, and then I felt there were two things I was always running away. One is to be able to say this is who I am. I'm Lakshmi, and Lakshmi is this. So it's like, oh, it's Intel, it's American India Foundation, it's something else. It's something else. But I always felt awkward to say I am good at this.
Lakshmi:So when I left all these things, I started something called Lakshmi's Lounge. I was like, hey, I'm just gonna do this and I had my own blog. There was no YouTube in those days, so I just decided every month I'll interview a different person and I would record it, not knowing what to do with it. I interviewed Andy Grove and Gloria Steinem and amazing people like that. I would just go to them and say I want to interview you and it's in your local city, I'm going to hire a room and invite 100 people and I did it and I loved it. I really, really loved it and my blog started. You know, there were hardly any people blogging in those days. So actually, biz Stone, who's the founder of the company that sold to Google and then founder of Twitter, is the guy who taught me how to blog. Oh, he did?
Lakshmi:He did, and, like an idiot, when he started Twitter, he was showing me and I'm like who would want to know where I am all day long? And I should have just given him $10,000 at that time instead of saying, oh, you're such a sweet boy, but I don't know where this is going to go. You're such a sweet boy, but I don't know where this is going to go. And so I blogged and like some 2,000, 3,000 people were reading my blogs and it was great. But then I was like, oh, I have to build an institution and I want to do something like TED. So I started something called Amra Grove, because I told Andy Grove that if I start a company, I'll take your last name. And so I did something called Amra Grove, because I told Andy Grove that if I start a company, I'll take your last name. And so I did something called Amra Grove. Then I did Ted India. Then I started ink. Like I started doing different labels, under which, again, I was hiding, and I was like I feel very awkward to say, come watch my show, lakshmi's Lounge. It's easier to say, oh, come, come to Inc, this is where all of us get together, and all these kinds of stuff.
Lakshmi:But it gave me a certain platform to experiment and to put. I said everything I want to do. I want to put under this company and I'm the CEO of that company. It has no valuation, no nothing. It's just a company. I'm the CEO of that and we we're going to run this conference.
Lakshmi:And when I talk to somebody interesting, I say, hey, do you want to come to my conference? I have something to invite them to. And so my husband always teases me. He says to me the world is divided into either speakers or audience. Anytime I meet somebody I'm like, hey, do you want to come speak at my conference, or do you want to come to India? You know, like there's only two things I'm interested in. So I think Inc gave that amazing canvas for me to experiment everything I wanted to experiment and create something amazing without being held to some artificial results of. I used my money, I used my reputation, my friends and their friends and their money and people. I told people you don't know what's gonna happen to your money, you know like if you wanna put it in there's no equity, there's no nothing you know like just this is where it's going.
Lakshmi:But I had like had incredible luck to have people who supported that also and had a fantastic time. They would come to the conference and say, ah, this was totally worth it. I would have never met this kind of people ever again. And I think for me I wanted to bring a certain curiosity and also a certain femininity to learning, because learning was always like very competitive, very, you know, technical, very. It has to be this, it has to be that kind of a stuff. I'm like let's learn for the sake of learning, let's just have fun learning, and it's not about being a male or female. I think there is a masculinity and the femininity to everything.
Lakshmi:Like when I run the conference, do we have enough money or not? Is it very? You know there's the conference, do we have enough money or not? There's no question about. Do we have? If not, do I need to withdraw some money and put in it's mathematics? There's nothing questionable about it. But how do we get this person to tell their story in the most interesting way? How do we draw out something about them that's fantastic in 10 minutes? So you listen to them for 20 hours and then you say ah, that's what you should talk about yeah, that's that nugget.
Lakshmi:That thing for the next 15 minutes and then work with them for another 100 hours on bringing that out Not quite 100, but whatever it takes.
Lakshmi:Sometimes, yeah, I mean I have talks where we have gone back and forth bringing that out not quite hundred, but whatever it takes. Sometimes, yes, I mean, I mean I have like talks where we have gone back and forth, like somebody started a 30 page thing and then you I had to like put it all and draw circles to understand what they're saying. But it has to be their talk. You cannot write their talk, so how do you keep asking the questions to bring it out in them? So Inc gave me an amazing platform to meet the most variety of people and also I say yes to a lot of things. So when Singularity University wanted to launch in India, I've been telling them for a while you should come to India, you should come to India. I don't consider it as a competition to Inc. I just think the more the merrier. So many stories need to be told. I can't do them all with my time. So I brought them to India and that's sort of how I met you. So you meet amazing new people because of a new ecosystem. We brought TED to India, we brought Singularity University to India and then ETEC Inc to other places. I took Inc fellows to the TED office, I took them to SU. So the world is about all of us intermingling and helping each other out and there's no competition and people want to come to you and say, please come. There's a billion and a half people, there's so many things to do and we can't do it all ourselves. Just don't do it the same time our conference is. But apart from that, we'll even help you, so I feel you should. I wanna bring the best of the rest of the world to India. Take the best of India to the rest of the world. So Inc gave me that platform. I kinda started it in US sorry, started it in. I actually started it in India after I took TED to India and we said, okay, now what do I do? It was a one-year thing. We did TED India. It was hugely successful. I'm like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. So how do I do it? So I came up with the word Inc and just started, not knowing what we wanted to do.
Lakshmi:The only thing I knew was that there are amazing stories in India and people there don't know how to tell their stories. And for the land of storytelling even that's where India is the land of storytellers. With our epics and all that stuff, we really forgot how to tell our stories, and so, and then it's like. It's like an African proverb I heard it says I mean, I'm rephrasing it. It says something like unless the lions start telling their stories, the story will always, always be of the hunter. So it's sort of I felt everybody is telling India's story except Indians who are there, and I felt we need to find those unheard stories.
Lakshmi:And it's the same 10 stories we hear of the richest person, this person, that house, you know the things that are so superficial. 10 stories we hear of the richest person, this person, that house. You know the things that are so superficial. But even with these richest people, if you get down to how they're doing, what they're doing, who they are, it's fascinating. And those stories are not told. So I felt you need to have the lions tell their stories now. And but I didn't know how. That's why TED was great. It was a great teacher for me. So every experience is a teacher. And I went and I said let's do it. So it's been 13 years now.
Ja-Nae:It's amazing, since we started so you didn't know how you were going to start and you came up with the name. What, then, were your next steps? How did you tread that sort of carve your path? If you will?
Lakshmi:See, I think one of the things that's extremely important to start something is you need to have a community that cheers you already, you know. And that's why when somebody who's going to college says I want to be an entrepreneur right out of college, I'm always like think about it, you know, it's sort of it's okay, you don't need you're 23 or whatever. Don't need to be in a hurry, spend the next. Everybody's in a hurry these days. I want to be, you know, retired by the time I'm 40. Yeah, and do what you know. So take your time. I mean, like experiment, do 20 different things, spend 10 years trying all kinds of things and then be an entrepreneur, because then you're bringing something of value to this world, you know. And so to me, it was like I think I had that tribe with me already and people who believed in India I mean now everybody believes in India.
Lakshmi:It was not the case in 2009. And to you know, my friends like Asha, jaresh Iyer, her husband Rajiv, or people like Susan Wojcicki or Scott from Intuit I mean so many of my friends came to you know, amit and Ben from Google I mean I like went to all these people and said I wanna do this I wanna do ink in India and they each wrote a huge check with nothing in return. I said it's just like I don't know if I'll ever repay it. It's not equity. I just need the money and you just like I don't know if I'll ever repay it.
Ja-Nae:It's not equity, I just need the money and you just asked.
Lakshmi:I just asked, yeah, and I mean, that's one thing I learned is you definitely don't get anything without asking. If you ask, you may get it. You may not get it, but if you don't ask, it's definite zero. You know. So I'm like a master of asking and I just ask and I don't mind the no. You know, it's like my hit rate is one out of 100 maybe, but that's okay.
Lakshmi:Was it hard at first, though it you know it's always hard, is it Always when somebody says no to you? Oh my God, it's like it is a rejection of your idea. You know, even if it's not of you, it's a rejection of your idea. And here everybody thinks my idea is the best thing you know the world is going to change.
Ja-Nae:Yeah, this is going to change everything.
Lakshmi:This is the one that's going to change the world. You know, and most of the people who gave money gave with a lot of trepidation also. They didn't give because, yes, this is the best idea. They're like this is a good enough idea and you're doing it, we trust you, so take the money. But they didn't think the idea was as great as I thought it was. And so rejection is always hard, always hard. But that shouldn't stop you from asking. So this is another one of my most rejected moments.
Lakshmi:In a Thanksgiving holiday, I was by myself house-sitting somebody's place in Oakland and I'm thinking like a complete failure, and she had this quote on her kitchen window. It said unless you've been rejected three times every day, you're not trying hard enough. And that was like snapped me out of my depression. I was like I bought the tickets to phantom of the opera and went by myself to the play and I was just like I'm not gonna sit here and mope, you know. And so it was like that is the thing that keeps me going. It's like I, you know, I sweat, there's a pit in my stomach before I ask, and a lot of times I don't ask. You know, I don't ask for my worst. Even now.
Lakshmi:Even now I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it, don't worry about money, you know, we'll figure it out. And what do you want to give me? Give me whatever you want, you know. Well, I'm saying like you better pay me at least a quarter million dollars because that's what you would have paid another guy.
Lakshmi:You know, but I don't ask. A lot of times I don't ask, but my ask to non-ask ratio has become bigger and my number of hours it takes to get out of rejection has become faster. But it's still tough and it's still hard.
Ja-Nae:That's really interesting, because I wouldn't imagine you feeling those things now. Yeah, I'm almost comforted.
Lakshmi:I mean, I tell you people say, oh, you're so comfortable on stage. Every time we do the conference, every time, before I'm going on stage, I go into my quiet zone. I don't talk to anybody, I don't see anyone. I sit in my room, my palms are sweaty and I'm thinking you know like 50,000 scenarios of tripping on stage and saying something and people not responding. And every time I give a talk it's like it's that girl who went and hid under the table that day. You know it's there, it's always there. You still keep moving forward. You know you still stand on that stage. You still make sure you cover your tummy so they can't see the falls and you still launch. And there are times when people didn't like my talks and it's hurting.
Ja-Nae:Yeah, it does hurt when that happens.
Lakshmi:It's very hurting, like them saying it wasn't what we thought it would be. And for people I really care about saying that really hurts, very hurting, like them saying it wasn't what we thought it would be. For people I really care about saying that really hurts. But you know, you just have to move on. You can't let that. I'll tell you one thing when I was in Portland State, when I was going through all these tough times I didn't have a job, all these things I had a counselor. The school had counselors.
Lakshmi:So there's this one woman I would go to who was, I mean, to this day I think she was an angel that came into my life and she said something extremely profound to me at that time because I went through a relationship.
Lakshmi:I was like gutted that it didn't work and I was really feeling like a failure. And she told me that she said look, you can either go through life thinking every relationship is gonna be like this and be cautious and that will definitely fail, or you can go into every relationship expecting it to work. If it doesn't work, just get over it. You have a choice. You want to take your baggage into every relationship or you want to trust people. So to me, no matter how many times people have fooled me or whatever, I go in with trust, with a little bit more care than before. I'm like like we must sign the MOU, you know, we must have the amount outlined, instead of saying, ah, you know, we'll decide, which is how used to be, like I would take on the biggest assignment, not having an MOU oh, really not knowing what they would pay and that'd be like we'll figure it out.
Lakshmi:You and I mean, we are in situations where we spend a lot of money out of our pocket and it was not reimbursed and we had to face a lot of problems. So I've learned that I can't do it. So now I hire people who do it and I don't go into negotiations because they are like they keep me out of the room. They're like please don't come when we do this negotiation. If you have trouble, we'll tell you. When the creative side comes, you come in Business negotiations, don't come in. So I have like two amazing women who are fantastic at doing this. So I think you'll never change. I will never change. So you just have to hire what you're not good at. You know and know what you're not good at.
Ja-Nae:Or what you don't want to do, what?
Lakshmi:you don't want to do.
Ja-Nae:Right, I mean because you could be good at it. But you don't necessarily want to do that. Correct, Correct yeah.
Lakshmi:So I think that's another lesson I learned is don't try to be good at everything. Be good at some things you really enjoy and hire the rest. Be willing to spend that money.
Ja-Nae:Because it's money worth spending. It is, you know.
Lakshmi:It is, it is absolutely. Now I have these two, you know, anshulika and Napanah, who work for me. I have like no job. I call them and say do you want me in this meeting? They're like no, I feel so rejected. You know, I'm like wow, I'm not needed dream of you have to work yourself out of a job.
Ja-Nae:But when that actually happens, you're like, oh my god, they really don't need me. You know, do you feel like a sense of um, a lack of belonging?
Lakshmi:I don't want to say a lack of belonging, but there's, there is a detachment right, there is a distance between ink and me now, yeah, you know, than it was before, but it's, you know. My son is 20. Now there's a distance between us than it was when he was my baby, needed me and slept next to me and, like you know, would sit outside my bathroom till I came out because he didn't wanna be alone and stuff. There's a difference, you know. But I still love him and I'm glad there is that attachment. If he was still hanging out in my house saying I need you, I would be worried.
Ja-Nae:That would be a problem. That would be a problem.
Lakshmi:So it's sort of it's a necessary detachment, but it pains, of course. You know it pains to me. My son doesn't need me. It pains that he doesn't come to me to solve all his problems. It pains me that he might be dating somebody. I don't know about it, but I want it also. So it's the same thing with ink is I feel there are people better than me running it now, and I don't know how long I'll have my title CEO. Also, it might belong to somebody else better than me, and it's scary and exhilarating at the same time. It's exactly like raising a child. It's scary and exhilarating and you have to trust that they will need you when the time comes. And meanwhile it's okay, but you have to keep yourself engaged. You cannot sit there hoping. Oh, I hope they'll need me. Now I feel I can do something else. So for the first time for me, I'm embracing my name. You know I've never done that before, and so now I'm actually working with a small team to say let's do a show with the name Lakshmi in it.
Ja-Nae:Okay.
Lakshmi:So what would that be? So what will that be? I don't know. We are on the journey now. I used to write a column called Lakshmi's Lounge, so would it be that, or would it be something else with Lakshmi Prathuri, I don't know, but I am sure the name Lak. I want to be in the front, I want my name to be there, and it's so hard for me to say that.
Ja-Nae:I was gonna ask so how are you feeling about?
Lakshmi:oh my god, every time I say it, every time I say it, I feel like oh my god, it's like I sound like such a diva you know like you know like people must be going.
Lakshmi:Like you know who cares about you. You know like, yes, oprah, but she's been doing this for 40 years. You know we care about I. You know my friends call me the Oprah of India and I feel very proud of it. But, like you know, no people would be like, oh Lakshmi, that's great, can you come moderate a session? Like they don't think I have something to say. They think I can bring people, but they don't look at me as the end in itself.
Lakshmi:A lot of times it's happening now, finally, in my 60s, and so I feel that, hey, you know, I feel I have another 20 years to be me and I want to have my own podcast. I want to write my book. It'll just be me and my experiences and my thoughts. And I have dedicated so much of my life to getting others to tell their stories, to build platforms, to build institutions. A lot of them don't even know I was behind them. Getting others to tell their stories, to build platforms, to build institutions. A lot of them don't even know I was behind them and but just, I feel if I don't do this, I will always regret it. You know that I didn't live to what I set out to do. So I feel I just have to do this, however uncomfortable it is.
Lakshmi:I mean, I am, as you know, very extroverted. I'm out there and I love being on stage and at the same time, I'm an extreme introvert. Like there are days I don't talk to anybody. I need to be by myself. I just go stay and, like when we finish an event in the evening, I don't party with everybody else, I just go off to my room, I just need to be by myself till I go on the stage the next day. I need a lot of alone time.
Lakshmi:And, like, I remember in Jaipur, when we were doing Ink, the whole town got involved and when we came out of the airport, there was a huge billboard with the name Inc written on it with the huge photos of me and three other speakers. Thank God it was not just me, but I was so mortified, you know, to see my face on a billboard. I'm like, oh my god, what will everybody think? Like I'm after like this, you know, beating my chest and being out there, and I was literally like I just had a panic attack.
Lakshmi:I came back and I'm like, can they remove that billboard? And you know, and my marketing person was like you stay out of this. This is my job. Your face needs to be out there. If you don't feel comfortable, tough, you stay out of this. I'm not bringing down that billboard, but I was very uncomfortable. So even now that I have such an amazing team running Inc, I still felt so weird to tell my own team because I was creating another show with a name. So I said it's like Fresh Air with Terry Gross. It's going to be like that.
Lakshmi:And then I had a very poignant conversation with them and said guys, I need your help because I'm running away from me again. I need your help to create something that has Lakshmi. It's Lakshmi's point of view, and I have to do this now. And so I have a small team working with me on that. We are coming up with ideas, et cetera.
Lakshmi:But every day we have the conversation, there's a part of me that wants to run back to fresh air with Terry Gross, but I'm kind of saying, no, we are staying with this and let's see what comes out of it. Because I'm like if I say I'm doing an ink salon company, they'll say, okay, we'll give you money and all that stuff. But if I say Lakshmi's Lounge, they'll be like why would we want to give money for that? I mean I am all after all the preaching. I mean, after all the preaching, even before I try, I'm talking myself out of it. So I have put guardrails around me that ensures I'm not doing that, because, left up to me, I will crawl back into my comfort zone. So I made others responsible for it. Now and I'm saying I'm putting this out there. You have to make sure I do this.
Ja-Nae:And every time I'm trying to run, you have to make sure I do this, and every time I'm trying to run, you're to pull me back. That's your job, what so? I love that you've spent so many years helping to tell, helping others to tell their stories, and you're still doing that like yeah, it's a it's yeah, nice, I will always do.
Lakshmi:Yeah, I don't think that's going away.
Ja-Nae:What I love, though, is that you have these mechanisms for accountability, and again it comes back to a strong community, and strong team.
Lakshmi:You know I mean this is the biggest thing I learned is for a company to be successful, you have to have a very strong team. You need to have people who are better than you. I always knew that, but somehow I have not met them, nor did I have the right funds to hire them. You're always trying to cut the corners. I get two junior people instead of one senior person, all these things. But the biggest lesson out of this for me and I want to say this to anybody who's listening if you had all the money to hire the one right person, do it. They will do all the other jobs. Don't cut corners on hiring the right person and you won't get them at the first shot. You'll make some mistakes and you should be okay with the mistakes, but always go for that best person. Like when I started, I had Nandini, my long-term colleague from Intel, come on board even before I knew what we were doing, even before she knew what we were doing.
Ja-Nae:She just signed up. She just signed up.
Lakshmi:Same thing, anu, my business partner from here. They both signed up. They had no clue what we were going to do, and Anu wrote a $100,000 check, not knowing where it was going. What it was. Twenty of my friends wrote $50,000 checks not knowing where they were going, and it's that trust that got me to where I am. It's important to have that kind of people in my life. Nandini and Anu are with me even today. We started this journey in 2007,. Actually, even now they are with me, and every time Nandini says I'm retiring, I tell her there's only one time we both are gonna retire when our bodies go up in ashes. That's the only time.
Lakshmi:Till then we are together, till death, do us. This is our professional marriage. Know, I mean, even somebody like a vibe of, who worked with me for many years, went away. I still call him and say, what do you think I should do? Or people who worked for me, who were very close to me, and they all call Inc. Hotel California. You know, you never check out.
Lakshmi:So all our ex-employees come back to volunteer when we have the conference and they not only pay to attend, they come and volunteer for free. And so it's important to have the right team, and I think I've been really blessed to have an amazing team that stayed with us. And my always advice to people is just, I mean, I have sacrificed me, going in a business class or my things to put the money to hire the right people. That's the best thing because they bring you happiness, which is much more than business class. So business class is a 16-hour journey. This is a lifelong, 24-7 journey.
Ja-Nae:But how do you pick? So I have two questions. How do you pick the right people, knowing that they're going to make mistakes?
Lakshmi:Yes.
Ja-Nae:And then the second question which I think can build off of it is obviously people have a ton of trust in you. Where does that come from and how do you build that trust? Because many people, particularly you, know we're in Silicon Valley right now. This is not the land of trust. So, how do you cultivate trust in you know in such an environment?
Lakshmi:The first thing about how do you hire good people. I really don't know how, because I made a lot of mistakes. I've hired the wrong people. I've hired the people I had do the wrong jobs where they just weren't good and then we had to change, etc. And all of us even now fail at things that we do. Yeah, I think what I look for in a person is really loyalty, and I really look for I don't know how to say it it's sort of um, you should be willing to do anything like. I don't like people. My first caution was when I hired somebody very senior who said where is my office and who will work for me? And but you know, I will not do that.
Lakshmi:So when, when I'm talking to somebody and they say you know I will not do that, that's like a yeah, that's a red flag for me because when we are doing conference, say for example, the night before, I mean I have like the my most senior guy running around trying to get the color on the screen right or something like that, and we are like all putting chairs, taking chairs out, putting I mean anything could happen, even in a situation today you're doing marketing, tomorrow you're doing something else or whatever. So to me, I always look for people who are willing to jump in when there's a need, who are very good at what they do, but also are not complainers, like I don't like complainers, I like people. This is something I learned in Intel. So anytime you went to a meeting, especially if Andy Groh was there, and you said, oh, this is a problem, he would say, great, go fix it. So it's like now it's your job, what budget do you need? Who do you need to fix it? So I like people who come with solutions instead of problems, and also people who are vulnerable, who will say I'm frustrated, I'm not able to do this, don't try to be strong and say, oh, I can do it. If something is not working, tell me it's not working, we can work it out together, because there will be all kinds of people. It's impossible to have everybody be the same. But in that, be honest, if something is not working, let's have an honest conversation. In part ways it's okay, but when that honesty is not there, it drags. I mean I've done that also. It's like I really don't wanna have this conversation, so it just drags, it never disappears, and even now there are conversations I'm putting off because I just don't know what to tell them, and so it's like it's never perfect.
Lakshmi:So I think teams evolve. They're not, they don't come ready-made. They evolve and you have to work at it. You really have to work at it. You have to have one-on-ones, you have to talk to them and you have to accept that you'll have a rapport with some people and you won't with some others. And even with the person you feel most comfortable you love, you have to let them go sometimes, because I mean I had to let some people go during COVID because we just didn't have the money and they needed the money. And I've let some people go because they really want to pursue, try some other things. And you have to accept you're not the end, all and be all for somebody. You know You're. Let them do what they want to do and they always come back. They're in your life, that's all that matters. Whether they work for you 40 hours a week or not, are they in your life? And there's a very important second question you asked.
Lakshmi:About cultivating trust, cultivating trust yeah, this is something for me. I feel the essence of my existence is you have to build relationships just because you cannot build a relationship with a purpose. You cannot say, oh, let me be friends. You cannot say, oh, let me be friends with Jene, because someday, a year from now, she's going to interview me. You have no idea that's going to happen.
Lakshmi:So you have to be genuinely interested in people just to find out who they are and to let them see how great they are. So when I give somebody a compliment, it's not out of you know, let me be magnanimous or something. I mean I really want people to see how great they are. I really love people for who they are, with all their faults. In fact, when I work on talks with people, you really get to see their other side. You know their faults and stuff and I love them more. And so I think if you can love people for who they are in that moment and not expect anything, I think that's what builds the trust.
Lakshmi:So when someone gave me money, they didn't give me out of my business plan. They gave me because they knew me for 10 years. They've seen me do this over and over again. Whether somebody, if 10 people show up or 100 people show up, the quality of my interview is the same, the arrangements are the same, and they've seen me do this. And so I think it comes out of relationships and not out of Transaction, because everything I do has no business sense in that moment. You know, like when we talked about e-commerce in 94, even Andy Grove said I don't know how you.
Lakshmi:Know when you and he was like this is wild west and you guys are pestering me, so here is a few million dollars for you to go experiment Figure it out.
Lakshmi:Figure it out. I mean, when you're sitting on a few billion dollars, it's okay to give a million dollars, you know. But that's the point is, for you to explore something, you need to have enough resources at the outset. If I didn't have enough resources at the outset, I couldn't have done what I've done. Start with $10, make $20, spend $10, again, make 20. Doesn't work that way. You want to try something, you have to have a big part to start with. You're willing to lose. You know you will make mistakes. You will lose it. It's not that company. It'll pivot to be something else or whatever.
Lakshmi:But unless you don't have the right support and this is why I love working with people who are starting to help them, to put them on the same stage as celebrities and say you're as important it's important to give them all that you can give up front and not say you prove yourself, raise all the money and then I'll feature you. Then they don't need me. You know 20,000 people are waiting for them, so you have to. And out of 10 people I feature, only two of them will make it. But I have to treat all 10 as important, not because some of them are going will make it. But I have to treat all 10 as important, not because some of them are going to make it. I genuinely want them to succeed.
Lakshmi:So I think trust comes from building relationships with no transactions in mind, because people can smell an intent, yes, and there have been situations where I went into a relationship pretending to be genuine, hoping God, I hope they sign this check at the end of this meeting. It doesn't work. It does not work. And even if they signed it, it doesn't last. So I think trust there is no shortcut to trust. It's like. This is why you cannot hurry things. You cannot hurry love, you cannot hurry getting over hurt. You cannot hurry loss, you cannot hurry excellence, you cannot hurry trust. So you just have to bide your time. There's no other way around it.
Ja-Nae:I can see why you are a curator and a connector of people, because it takes so much time and so much love to be able to do that.
Lakshmi:And also I realized you have to be able to do this full time. You can't do some other job and do this part time. So I have to figure out to have a community around me who feels it's worthwhile to pay me that, yeah, and I don't want to live a meager life. I want to have a good life because I feel this horizontality is as good as being the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. I need to get paid well, I need need to be able to. I may choose to go economy, but I should be able to go business class. If I want, I should be able to hire whoever I want and pay them whatever their market worth is. I should be able to curate a conference where the stage is stunning. You know to spend the time for the artist to develop that, to take the pains to fly somebody over and pay them. I should be able to do that and I command that of people.
Lakshmi:So when we charge for a conference, we charge a lot of money. We say, well, experience is worth it, so you won't regret it. You know that will create the opportunity for the other hundred who can't afford to be here. You should bring them also, because this is not just for those who can afford it. So it's too, and it's tough. I mean, I had to empty my pocket so many times before others would step in again. I, I started with a big kitty, but you have to prove yourself many, many, many years before someone with resources comes and says I'm with you, and then that has to be the right person. And then you have to say is it the right person or not? And it's. You know, an entrepreneur's journey is never done.
Ja-Nae:I know so many people think that once you reach a certain pinnacle, that's it. I've made it. In my experience there's no making it.
Lakshmi:No, I mean you ask. I mean, the other day the CEO of NVIDIA was talking somewhere. I mean, this is like you can't be any more successful than him, right? If you do things all over again, you'll never be an entrepreneur. It's like you know. I mean, who am I to talk?
Lakshmi:And I always joke that entrepreneur is like a French word or a French-sounding word. It's a fashionable-sounding word. If it was called something like you know, I don't know garbage picker or something like that, nobody would have pursued that. It's just that it sounds so good. People say I want to be an entrepreneur. I'm like do you know what it means? You know it means, you know, having a very strong stomach, and every entrepreneur is not successful. You know you may be ahead of your time, too late.
Lakshmi:Do this too that you have like 50 doors slammed in your face before the 51st opens. Yes, I have 20 speakers on stage, but 80 of them said no and two of them couldn't make it because the flight didn't make it, v-star didn't come, whatever. You are never, ever over a catastrophe. Every day something falls through the cracks. So I think being an entrepreneur is a. It has to be a very intentional journey that you feel you can't think of doing anything else. And as you get older you really can't do anything else because nobody's going to give you a job at this stature, nor can you be a starting product manager, so you have to create your own path. Now I'm at a stage where I have to create my own path. I'm overqualified for many things and underqualified for the things I should be paid. So it's time.
Lakshmi:I mean it's like now. I've stuck to this for 15 years. Now you are. There's no concept called sunk cost in entrepreneurship. It's like it's a continued cost. It's like less. You can reduce your sunk cost, but there's nothing like writing off. You know you have to continue what you're doing.
Ja-Nae:Yeah, I find that I don't know about you. I find that those who can consider entrepreneurship to be more of a mindset, yeah are actually more equipped to be entrepreneurial.
Ja-Nae:Um, because they're not thinking of that you know I need to reach this, whatever, this is right you know, whatever they've envisioned that to be, and those, those who, much like yourself, who you know, it is just ingrained in your heuristics that you know you're just, you're constantly creating. I mean, that's the essence of what entrepreneurship is and that's what, in my mind, what you embody. So if I were to give you a label, I would give you that label.
Lakshmi:It's like an abashed entrepreneur, but the thing is, though, is that you're absolutely right. It's not about is the company my own or somebody else's. That defines you. It's entrepreneurial mindset. Like my entire 12 years at Intel, I had the same mindset as I have now. It was no different, you know, and so I think, even if I were to go back to a big company today, I'm like, okay, I do want to get that, you know, big check and whatever.
Lakshmi:I would love to be like the advisor to a CEO or something. I could never go build a division, you know, run a P&L or something. So I love jobs that are entrepreneurial and not and I can hire people who can do things I'm not good at doing and have a really good assistant, because, heaven forbid, if I manage my own schedule, like half the things will fall through the cracks. So it's like I think you really hit the nail on the head of I think it's not about being an entrepreneur. It's about having that mindset that I don't know how to do this, but I'm going to figure it out. I don't know if you watch Suits, which is one of my favorite shows You're the third person to say that to me.
Lakshmi:There is a character in that called Donna.
Ja-Nae:Okay.
Lakshmi:So Donna is like a verb, it's not a name. It's like you know. People say I want a Donna, you know, like it's sort of she's like the most brilliant secretary and all that stuff. But to me the turning point was when she comes and says I want to be a partner. I've been a legal secretary. I, I want to be a partner. I've been a legal secretary, I've been the best legal secretary that has been there. But I am so much more than that. You guys are not seeing it, but I see it and I'm going to ask for it and being able to say I know you won't make me a partner because I'm not a lawyer, make me a COO.
Lakshmi:I mean, to me that was one of the most brilliant writing in the television history of showing how somebody asks for their worth. And it's a very secretarial talent to see what your boss may need before they know it and do everything for them and all that stuff. But you know what? That's also a COO's job. That's right. That to me was such a poignant moment in that show. It's like in season 8 or something like that. She says, hey, I should be a COO.
Ja-Nae:Well, it sounds like she wasn't even just showing her worth.
Lakshmi:She was embodying her worth and and she had to ask for it and ask for it again and again and again and tell them you are not answering me. You better answer me. Put them in a situation where the two guys who are the partners there have to say yes and realize it's about time. You know they're not doing it as a favor or anything. Literally the firm would fall apart if she walks away.
Lakshmi:It was to me so powerful of you have to ask, and this is what I tell a lot of young women, and this is a reality when you are a woman of color in my case, short and little plump you have so many things stacked against you. You have to get over them. You have to walk into the room as though you belong, even though there are like 50,000 voices going in. I mean I would like walk in and there would be chairs around the table and there would be chairs in the periphery. You know my heart would say just go sit in that back. You're not the VP here, but it's like my body would force, force myself go sit in that chair there. You know people wouldn't dare to say can do you move back? They will not, you know.
Ja-Nae:I free. I remember you at the dinner party that that you invited me to you actually moved me yeah, in a chair and because I was trying to sit, I was trying to do exactly what. You know. We need to give that chair to someone else. I'm like, yes, lakshmi.
Lakshmi:So I think we have it's. So you know it's conditioning, despite having the kind of upbringing I had, which is so unusual, not just in India anywhere in the world.
Lakshmi:Still, I carry this thing as a woman that somehow, like I, should sacrifice. I should like do this Because that's what the movies say, that's what the books say, that's what you see around you. So it's so easy to fall into that and it's important to have people around you who remind you otherwise. So I remember when I had my son. I had him very late in my 40s and I was so in love with him and like the first month I stayed away from work. I mean, I worked till I was like 10 days from delivery. My team would be like please take off now. I worked in the last minute, but when I had him I was so in love with him that I didn't step out of the house once, not even for a walk, you know. And so after, about toward the end of it, my husband came and we both were having dinner. Then he said look, I just want to tell you that you will feel that you should stay home. You will feel that how can I leave this child and go to work? But you must go back to work. And all the money you make and I was making that much anyway said whatever you're making, you spend it on having five nannies. Whatever I, you don't need to bring any money into this family. Financially, we'll adjust, it's okay. But please work, because if you don't, you will go nuts and you will drive me nuts because you'll be sitting at home saying I've been at home all day, where are you? Why aren't you home? I have a very strenuous job and you belong if you are not the kind of person who will be happy sitting at home. So I have to say this right now, while you're so in love, it feels and of course, I reacted. What do you know about what I feel? And I will never regret it. How can you ask me to leave this child? Love, you know, did the whole thing and then I thought about it and that's exactly what I did.
Lakshmi:I spent all my salary on having two nannies and one of them always traveled with me, with my son, to any place I went for meetings. My son would come with me to all the meetings and they would wait most of the time. If it's a boardroom, we would put him in his chair. He would sit in one of the chairs and I would have my meetings. He would be there. Or if I'm in New York or somewhere while I'm working. I would arrange a card for them to go to the Central Park or whatever, walk around and stuff and be with me. So till he was in second grade I would make him skip school all the time, like I'm going on a trip, you're coming with me Most of the time. As he started growing he was like no, I really don't want to go. And so I spent three times the money because it was just me traveling. Now I have to travel with two others, now they because they're there. I just can't stay in some friend's couch. I have to get a suite with a kitchenette and all these kinds of stuff. Your expenses go up a lot. A child is very expensive without doing all these things.
Lakshmi:But that advice my husband gave was so profound he knew me better than I knew myself that I would have been very unhappy staying home. But I wasn't willing to give this up. So I compromised on the job I had. I never went back to a corporate. I sort of stayed in the kind of jobs that allowed me this and I worked with a foundation where at the back room we converted into a playroom so our nanny could come, he could be there and she would take him for a walk and it was half a mile away from my house. I could see my office from home. So I made certain choices and I think it was worth it. I mean, I did did. I made no money, I, you know, lost out on being at you know, some of the bigger companies that were starting at that time and things like that but it gave me a lot of peace of mind and great, great memories that's amazing to be able to do that and have your son go with you.
Ja-Nae:It actually reminds me of your story of when your father would take you along. I mean, it's such a nice sort of full circle of just figuring out, figuring it out.
Lakshmi:Right and whatever that means for you and what your needs are, but also I mean, who knows, my son may grow up and write a book about what a terrible childhood he had because his mom schlepped him everywhere. Probably that's going to come, but that's okay. That's okay.
Ja-Nae:Well, cross that bridge when you get there. Lakshmi, if you had one thing to say to the audience that you want them to know, no matter what, what would that be?
Lakshmi:So many things, but I think you know, like, what is the ultimate focus of my journey? What is the ultimate thing that excites me? Why am I doing all these different things? Is that I think, when we live up to somebody else's standards, we are not the best versions of ourselves always. And let's not confuse that with oh my, this is my passion, so I'm going to do this, and by doing this job I'm killing my passion. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you don't have honest conversations with yourself and know why you're doing what you're doing, et cetera. It leads to a lot of unhappiness. And the second thing is when you have great ideas and when you don't have the right resources, it is one of the saddest things for me Like a great idea that didn't come into light because they didn't have the right resources.
Lakshmi:I mean, to me, I still feel my father, if he had the right editor and the right assistant, he would have written such brilliant books. You know, I feel like all the time I had all the money I didn't spend enough to say I should have just found a great editor for him, great writer for him. And same thing with my sister who passed away recently. She had so much to give. I mean, I'm reading all the things she wrote now and I'm amazed at how many things she was interested in and how much she did for all of us and she lived her life like a queen. But if she just had a little bit of the right resources she could have been so much more, much more, and so to me it's a talent that could have been, that didn't happen, is the saddest thing in the world. So to me, I feel my life is really dedicated to just. If there's a great thing, it should come to light, and there are.
Lakshmi:Sometimes I try to get people together and I'm like you must talk to each other, because I can see this company becoming big if the three of you talk even though I don't understand the technology and, like you see them get stuck. Especially I hate it. I'm sorry for gross generalization of these men who cannot talk to each other about really what the issue is. Where I can see what the issue is and I'm like I call this person I know this is what you're worried about, just ask that. And I call this person and say I know this is what you're worried about, just ask that. And so to me like a union that should have happened. When that doesn't happen because it's got so many things to offer to the world, it makes me really sad.
Lakshmi:So I feel if there's one thing for me, is if you have the capability to make a difference to someone, make it, because it's the biggest thing you can contribute to the world. So we can all go toward defining success in a very different way, because we are so stuck in this narrow definition of success which leads to the narrow definition of our personal success. It leads to the dissatisfaction. So right now we say it's only making money, how much money you have in the bank is what defines you. But really that's not what defines you at all. Any person who was dying you ask them what's your greatest memory. It's always when my child was born, or this. None of them said that business plan I submitted.
Ja-Nae:Right, exactly. No one said that.
Lakshmi:So we know that, but still we spend our lives pursuing the wrong thing. So again, for me, all the wisdom comes from what I read, what I hear. So there is this quote I heard that says life ought not to be measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away. So I started thinking about it. I said, wow, if that's true, we should be measured by how many great moments we created for others. So we should be billionaires of moments. And Like the mathematician in me came out when I did this, I said this is how you calculate the moments. Like every second Blah-blah is like a unit. And so if I, if I'm having two hours with you, that whatever, 120 minutes times 60, that's how many seconds, that's how much, that's whatever. 120 minutes times 60, that's how many seconds, that's how much moments you collected today. You know if you had a great time. So, like this, you collect and see how long will it take for you to become a billionaire of moments. So it's kind of like to me. We need to redefine success and say it's really about the magical moments you create for others while you're responsible for your own.
Lakshmi:I think we forget to put the oxygen mask first while we take care of everybody else. And that's something I understood very late in my life that I have to take care of my health, my financial success, my family first before I'm there for the world. I've been there for the world for 20 years and not taken care of this, so now my journey is whether I call this the show Lakshmi or I make sure my physicals are having regular intervals, or be in touch with my son to be somewhere close to him, or my family talking to my son to be somewhere close to him, or my family talking to my sisters every morning, whatever it is Really like. Over the last three years after the pandemic, to me it's really been that realization that you have to put your oxygen mask first. So for the first time in my life, I'm asking people or I have somebody else negotiate for me. This is all about you have to pay her.
Lakshmi:I never did that before, I never asked for my worth before and I'm learning it now. So I think it's never too late to learn. And if there's one thing I want people to remember, one phrase I want them to remember, is billionaires of moments. I think we should all redefine. Success and happiness is not about laughing all the time and not having tears. Losses are part of life, grieving is part of life, being poor is part of disease is part of life, but can you make the most of it?
Ja-Nae:I love it. I love it. Well, this has been magical for me and I want to tell you I appreciate you and love you and thank you for the time, my friend yes, thank you, and it's all it took.
Lakshmi:Is that auto ride we gave you in india, I think, the tuk-tuk ride?
Ja-Nae:The little tuk-tuk. Oh, that's it, I was sold. I was sold. You're like. I'm back to India again. Yeah, oh, it's so true, I must say.
Lakshmi:The other magical word for me is India also, I really want the people to create an emotional connection to India because I really feel that's where there's so much to bring out and make it global. It's not about a country or being jingoistic at all, it's just the ideology, all the things I learned from there. I really want them to be spread. So everybody used to tease me. Any conference I go to, any place I go to, I'll always be saying, hey, will you come to India? So this is my standard line. So I feel it's bringing the best.
Lakshmi:It's like when you go to a great site, you wish your family was with you. It's like that for me is when I meet a great person, I wish they could come see India. Because I must just say this is that, even though I'm from there, it's not just because I'm from there. It is the land of the most population, youngest population, over 600 million people under the age of 25, or some numbers, it just keeps going up. And it's like two Americas under the age of 25 or 35, whatever it is, just imagine.
Lakshmi:And a place where we learn the philosophy of the world is one family, you know. And it's not about religion, it's not about even gurus, because the thing that irritates me the most is when people say India, like this feeling comes into their eyes and they're like, oh my guru. And they just go off into that tangent. It's not about any one person. It's like there is a certain vitality that's there because of all its imperfections. Also, there is power. Death is right there in your face, poverty is right there in your face. It's not shoved under a carpet, it's there, deal with it. And so I think if we can form a relationship between the best people in the world that I know, that would be really great, because I think the negative forces unite very easily, but positive forces are too busy staying back and they're like, oh, we really don't want to. So the positive forces have to reunite so we can have many more billionaires of moments.
Ja-Nae:I love it. Well, I'm an evangelist, so yes.
Lakshmi:See you in India soon. There you go, there you go.
Ja-Nae:Thank you, thanks, thank you.
Narrator:Thanks for listening to the podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwjanaeio, as well as on YouTube under Janai Dwayne. See you next time.