Boundless Parenting: How To Raise Happy, World-Changing & Impactful Children, With Entrepreneur & Philanthropist Naveen Jain.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, it's not about taking your children to the water and making them drink. It is about creating a thirst so they will find their water and they will drink. And the thirst comes from creating that intellectual curiosity. I always told them that their success will never be measured by how much money they have in the bank, but their success will always be measured by how many lives they improved every moment. We found we didn't teach them about life. And that's what the education comes from.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

So the podcast that you're about to hear was recorded as a part of my upcoming Boundless Parenting book, which you can find by the way@boundlessparenting.com BoundlessParenting.com is where the book resides and my guest on today's show is Naveen Jain. I'm interviewing a host of amazing parents for this book and what this dude has done with his children, who are already world changing children in their own right, is absolutely amazing. So Naveen's been on the show before, but we haven't taken a deep dive into the special insider techniques that he used with his kids to really create extremely purposeful and impactful children. So I really think you're going to dig this one new sign of Naveen that you may not have seen before. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com NaveenJain BenGreenfieldFitness.com n A V E E N J A I N that's where all the show notes are. And you can also check out the new book or at least get signed up to know when the new book is about to come out. If you go to BoundlessParentingBook.com Foreign.

Folks. Well, I'm excited because not only am I on a beautiful walk in my backyard here in Spokane, but I'm talking to a dear friend of mine who I've known for quite some time who's actually been on the podcast before. And you know, well, I imagine you have probably heard me talk with this individual about health and biohacking and the microbiome and all the fantastic philanthropy and entrepreneurial work that he's committed his life to. You know, today what we really want to talk about for you was family and parenting. See, I'm working on a new book about parenting and I'm looking at all these individuals who I know who have produced amazing and impactful children who preferably have not yet wound up in prison.

And people who seem to really be good present parents who are impactful for their children, but impactful for the world simultaneously. And as a part of this book project, I have got some questions that I am asking these individuals, these amazing parents. And my guest on today's podcast is one of those people. His name is Naveen Jain. Naveen is an entrepreneur. He's a philanthropist. He has been a guy who has helped to found a variety of companies from Viome to Moon Express, the World Innovation Institute, Talentwise, Intellius, InfoSpace. He's just this intensely curious entrepreneur with a real love for life and a real passion. Very well spoken, with just an amazing audacious vision and important and relevant to this podcast. Today, his entire family is an entrepreneurial family. He and his wife Anu have the Naveen and Anu Jain Family foundation to empower girls in wisdom and focus on health and wellness and educating youth and promoting entrepreneurship. And they of course also have these amazing children who Naveen, I'm sure is going to be able to tell you about on today's show. All the shownotes for everything that you hear Naveen and I talk about today you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com NaveenJain N A V E N J A I n and@BenGreenfieldFitness.com NaveenJain I will also link to previous podcasts that I've done with Naveen about Viome and the microbiome and some of his other work. So Naveen, welcome back to the show, man.

First of all, but it's so good to hear your voice. And I think you are a role model for so many of us out there and I know I salute you for all the great work you do.

Oh, geez. Well, thanks man. The feeling's mutual. And you know, I would love to just give you an opportunity, a little humble brag moment to fill us in on your family, on your kids. You've told me some stories about your kids and what they do and how even when they were young, you used to bring them to conferences with you and make them a part of your business. But now I want to hear from you. Tell me about your kids.

So first of all, I mean, you know, any one of us, you look at our life and we see what is the biggest accomplishment we have in our life. And whenever I reflect on my life, I always look back and think my biggest source of happiness actually comes from our children. And there is no bigger source of happiness that I get Watching them really becoming a productive citizen of the society, really doing things, not only what they enjoy, but really contributing back to the humanity. And, you know, a lot of the times I think about and say, you know, every one of us always sometimes focuses on leaving the better world for our children, and we all want to do that, but I really think that's not sufficient. I really think we also need to focus on leaving the better children for our world because they are the one who are going to be stewards of this, the thing that we leave behind. So I think from that perspective, we have three children and my oldest is Ankur, who runs, he's a third unicorn right now. But before we focus on the money part, let me just give you. So he is actually focused on affordability. And his whole theme is around how does the middle class that is becoming larger and larger in our country, how are they going to be able to afford to live a good life like we did as parents? So he's focused on providing an affordable apartment, affordable housing, to be able to do things that middle class never imagined they could do. Our daughter went, you know, whether he went to Wharton, Wharton School of Business undergrad. And I just say this is his third company that he has started. Our daughter went to Stanford and she's Stanford Stamp Fellow, Stanford Mayfield Fellow. And the first company she worked was on removing the gender bias from hiring using machine learning and AI. And she recently, about a year ago, started a women's health company and again focusing on women's health because she felt that is 50% of our population is actually not being addressed. Until recently, the women weren't even allowed to participate in the clinical research because all the people were doing the clinical research thought women have way too many things that change about them. Their hormones and stuff. They're just not a good subject. And discovered.

Oh yeah, and by the way, I've mentioned that fact before on shows that I've done about, you know, we hear, you know, oh, fast for 12 to 16 hours a day or, you know, take X grams of protein or, you know, certain types of medicines and supplements. And then you look at the research and, you know, some, some people think that it's relevant to all humankind when in fact the research is mostly done on males. You know, male humans, if you're luck, male rodents sometimes, but rarely females.

That's right. And so she decided that that's what she's going to dedicate her life to. And she started this company called Evvy E V V Y. And the whole idea is really looking at the vaginal microbiome, understanding the female body and actually be able to come up with the recommendations that are matter to them, not just general population. Because so far the women have been considered a small man. And you know, you and I both know they're not a small man. They are, you know, I hate to say, to some extent a completely different species.

No, no, no, no, you're wrong. You're wrong. Haven't you seen the pregnant man emoji? Naveen? We're all the same.

And then we have a youngest son who actually also went to Stanford and he became a Schwarzman scholar. As a Schwarzman Scholar, he focuses now primarily on again, the middle class people who own a home. How do they make their life simpler as they starting to look at their mortgage payments and things like that. So again, every one of them is focused on solving a problem that can improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people around the world. And to me, that is fundamentally how we need to define our success. And I think as you and I have talked in the past, when our kids were young, I always told them that their success will never be measured by how much money they have in the bank, but their success will always be measured by how many lives they improved. And if that is the kind of measure we use for our children, I think we all can actually look at our children and see how successful they have become irrespective of what they are doing. Are they contributing for the betterment of the society or not? How many lives are they able to improve? And I think, Ben, again, not to make you blush, but I have seen you as one of our greatest parents. The people outside look at you, this fitness geek who does everything. But you are a, you are a family man. At the end of the day, you are a family man. You involve your family into everything. You do the workout with your kids. And I've seen you and I in fact recorded a video with you playing for your children before night. You were singing the song you're playing.

And to me that is a great part of, you know, your kids feeling that their dad actually is human being. That matters, right? And I think, you know, as we go along, I will give you more examples I think that you and I share about. I've always taught our children about that. Our love for you is unconditional, but our approval is not. And what I mean by that is really simple. They never have to ever question, do we love them? There is not a time we will not love them. And will do anything for them. But I'm not going to tell them I'm proud of them until they do things that make us proud. And that is really the very interesting part is even though your children, when they're young and you tell them what makes you proud of them, they may say, whatever, dad. Whatever, mom. But guess what? Every child lives their life to make their parents proud. And all we have to do is let them know what makes us proud of them, and they will actually deliver that. And all we said was, I'll be very proud of you. If you live your life, that will improve the life of everyone around you in the community, in the society, in the world. That means do the things that are for the betterment of humanity. And that's what they did.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, in addition to that unique aspect of training them up to have this mentality of success not being about money, but about the lives touched, I know that there are other things that you did that were kind of unique as a part of your parenting approach. You know, one that I should get out of the way right off the bat, because I remember you telling me about this, and I wanted to bring it back up was you talked about how you traveled with your kids, specifically, you brought them to conferences with you to kind of see data in action. Tell me about that.

So I think I'm going to get to this in a second. The second part in terms of parenting that I really feel is really important, that I want everyone to know that we need to create the, what I would say, inherent curiosity in our children. And that is the theme that you're going to hear from me. A lot of the times that it's not about taking your children to the water and making them drink. It is about creating a thirst so they will find their water and they will drink. And the thirst comes from creating that intellectual curiosity. Because once you make the children curious, they never stop learning. They will always be finding things. Why not this way? What if this could be done? Imagine if this is what we could do. And that what once you do that, they will constantly push their things forward. They'll constantly push the boundaries of what is possible forward. And that is the big thing that we did. And the way you create curiosity is every time they say it can't be done, you sit them down and say, imagine, what if this could be done? What would the world look like and have them imagine that. And I still remember when they were young, instead of reading them stories, and this is something I found that really fascinating. Instead of reading them stories. We will create stories. And I would give them things. I say, I want you to tell me a story about a stone, an ocean, and a leaf and a monkey. And. Because these things are completely disconnected, but I wanted them to start creating a thing that connects everything that's out there. That means every dot. Every dot can be connected if you think creatively. And I wanted them to start thinking like that. And they will give me the. They will give me the toughest thing. Okay, dad, now your turn. I want you to tell me a story about a glass and a plastic and this and that. And they're like, oh, okay, right. And, you know, that was our bonding, which. But creating that kind of thing, that everything in the world is interconnected. So you look at them as a completely separate, disparate things, but they all can be connected together in a coherent story. Now, coming back to the point that you asked about.

In terms of taking our kids, to me, it was a really big deal. It's not about conferences. I took them to office when they were 10 years old. I would take them to the analyst meeting. I would take them to the dinners with the top CEOs. And very rarely, I only remember once there was one CEO, tells me, oh, I thought we're going to have a professional meeting. Didn't realize it was a social media. And I said, I'm sorry, you must have misunderstood me. I'm having dinner with.

My son, and if you seem to have a problem, you can have a dinner by yourself and. And we can have a meetup.

And interestingly, what he learned through that was amazing because now he was able to see how adults interact, how dad gets frustrated when things are not going his way. How does he react to all that? And guess what? By the time, you know, he turned 11 or 12, he was able to build a company called anybody in the world and say, I want to do this business deal, and this is my. These are my terms, because he has seen me work like that. Right. So my point was, don't be afraid to bring your children into your professional life. Don't worry about what others are going to think of them. In fact, I challenge our people, my executive team. I said, I don't see your kids here. What is the problem?

Oh, wow.

Aren't you proud of them? Aren't they proud of you? Or aren't you proud of yourself that you want your kids to see what you're doing?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that's something that a lot of people think is odd, especially a Lot of parents think that they're going to be singled out or they might lose their job or they might have a child who's bugging other people at work. But I tell you what, like that idea of just unashamedly bringing a child to work with you and letting them, them shadow you. I mean, I don't know what you think about this, Naveen. I'd love to hear your take on this. But you know, prior to formal education, you know, a lot of a child's relationship with their parent and relationship with their potential vocation was cemented by them actually accompanying their, you know, usually the son with his father or the daughter with her mother to their work or you know, to where they were actually creating their career. And you know, it was a very experiential based education in a career based environment for a young person.

Absolutely agree with you. I mean, you know, other thing that I want people to be, you know, clear about that is even though you bring them to your profession, you want them to be exposed to everything else or else they will actually end up just following what you do because they have not been exposed to anything else. And that's the reason, you know, the kids of the lawyer become lawyer and the kids of doctor become doctor. In the case of in a fitness person become fitness geek. Right. But yeah, what, what we did was very interesting. That. And this is a story actually I wrote I in an Inc. Magazine about a column and I'm going to give you the story about it. And the story title was a An Entrepreneur versus His Eye Rolling Teenage Daughter.

And this was the actual conversation I had with my daughter when she was about 16 or so.

She came to me one day and said dad, I know you love science and technology. I have found my passion and I want nothing to do with science and technology. And I looked at her as opposed to saying, oh my God, I'm so glad you found your passion and let me help you. I says sweetie, you're too young to have a passion. Dad has not done his job of exposing you to everything else yet. Because until you know what you don't know, how can you tell me you don't like it so. And she said, dad, I don't understand what you mean by that. I am in order. I'm in high school, I see everything and I have no interest in physics and chemistry and all these things that make any sense to me.

Sure. So the wisdom of a high schooler.

Wisdom of a high schooler. Right. And then I said, sweetie.

You need to go understand what These things mean and how you can use them. And I actually sent her to Singularity University. And I said, sweetie, here is my promise to you. If you go there for a month with an open mind, wanting to learn and wanting to like, and I give you my promise that when you come back, I will let you do whatever you want. And she went there and she came back after a month and she said, dad, I made up my mind. And my first words were, oh, shit. And I said, sweetie, I gave you my word. Tell me what you want to do. And she said, dad, I've decided I'm going to be either a neuroscientist or a geneticist. I'm like, oh, my God. At the risk of you changing your mind, can you tell me what happened? She said, dad, you're so dumb. High school, when I go and mix the things and something blows up and changes the color, I'm thinking, why would I ever use this in my life? When I went to Singularity University, I learned that science and technology is simply the tools in my tool chest for me to do what I care about. And, you know, I care about women. And I realized, how can I help women if I don't understand how their body works, how their brain works? So I'm going to learn everything so I can help the women live better. And guess what? That's the girl. If I had not done what I did, would have never found her true passion, and the world would have lost out on a great entrepreneur, because that's the girl who went out and build the first company to remove the gender bias in hiring, using AI. And the second company, building the women's health company called Abby. And that trick story is that most parents, when you tell someone whatever the kid wants to do and say, great, let me help you, what you're really saying is, I really don't care what you do. I don't have time for it.

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I had a complete distaste for math and science, particularly all the way up until college, because I didn't understand the relevancy. My college professor in math, thankfully enough my freshman year, taught his entire course around the mathematics of banking and finances. And one thing I did like was to make and to save money. So all of a sudden, math became very relevant to me. As a matter of fact, my son's math curriculum right now is the same thing. It's all based around finances. Stocks, bonds, curves, interest rates, et cetera, because. Relevant to them because they're interested in it. But you did mention Something really interesting there, the Singularity University. Tell me about that.

So it is actually neither a university and not about singular. This is basically an executive program where you learn about the cutting edge technologies, where they are, where they are going and how they can be applied to improve the lives of billions of people. So whole team is around, how can you help a billion people in 10 years using the technology that we have today and what we are going to have in the next 10 years, that means the things that are growing exponentially, things that are doubling every year, like a processing power, like AI, like, you know, storage. The things that are constantly making, going so fast, how can you use their technology to actually do something? So cost of sequencing is falling, the cost of storage is falling, cost of analyzing is getting cheaper and cheaper. That allows you to not analyze the human body to find out why people are getting sick or why people are having these diseases, or by the way, why certain, why there are certain cross sections always have a traffic jam, Right. But the point is you can use the data and machine learning to be able to solve many of the problem because these technologies are now available to every one of us with cloud computing. So you don't have to build a massive data center for just for your own company. You can actually go out and do that. Right. And that is the kind of things that you learn when you go to Singularity University. And I sent all three of our children there and I think to me that was one of the best thing I did to expose them to all the different things. It didn't matter whether it's in neuroscience, whether it is genetics, networking or it is about. And when I say networking, I mean the computer computing, network networking. Yeah. But point was, by learning about all these technologies, they came back and said, dad, I can apply this and this to solve this problem. I can use this and this to solve this problem. It gave them an open mind because now they had a tool chest, right? Otherwise if you only thing you have is a hammer in your tool chest, then everything looks like a nail. But if you give them a screwdriver and you give them a Phillips screwdriver and a flat screwdriver and you give them a wrench, they suddenly see that now they have lots of tools in their tool chest to be able to apply that to the right problem.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, the Singularity University thing, just real quick, from a logistical standpoint, if a parent is listening and they think, oh, that's interesting, my kid might want to look into that, do they, Is this something they Attend online or did you actually send them somewhere for this?

Well, so it's interestingly now they do, in those days they used to have a month program and six weeks program and now they only do one week program. And when our daughter did, what I did was I actually went there with her because they would take her, she was a, she wasn't an adult so they would not take the responsibility. So guess what happened? I went with her and I sat through the class with her so because she could learn.

And where, where is, where is the university?

It's in the Mountain View, California.

Oh, okay, cool.

Yeah. So I basically just went with her and just sat with her and I said okay, so if you're not going to take a minor, I will be the person responsible for her.

Yeah. Wow. And so this idea of supplementing their education with something like that is very interesting to me. But it kind of begs the question, did your kids go to like a traditional high school? And then you added on top of that some of the unique educational aspects that you've woven in.

Absolutely. So and other thing is that a lot of people believe the education happens in school. That's where it starts and that's where it ends. In my humble opinion, it. That is just simply one part of education. Education starts at home and it ends at home and everything else you do is supplementary. So yes, all of our kids went to school, traditional school in the high school they went to, as I said, Stanford and Wharton and but it didn't mean every moment we found with them. We didn't teach them about life. And that's what education comes from.

You know, a little bit different than education. This concept of, you know, some type of a rite of passage or some type of a formal or a ceremonial recognition of a young man or a young woman kind of moving forward in life or even progressing from adolescence into adulthood or boyhood or girlhood into adolescence. Did you have anything that you included in your kids upbringing that was just basically like a, like a formal experience that they went through that that was kind of like their, their coming of age type of experience or some type of a rite of passage or anything like that?

Yes. And, but you're not going to like the answer I had. What we did was by the time they actually became 10 or 11 years old, we actually asked them to start a non profit that they start not joining nonprofit, not be part of one, but start one that's something they care about and go out and start to raise money for it, start to build awareness for it. Because that showed them that it wasn't about doing things. They're learning about building a business, but they're doing it for. Not for themselves, but for others. It was nonprofit, but that gave them all the skills they need to actually build a company without having to be forced into looking at generating revenue. So our daughter would hold the mother daughter tea to actually raise money for girls in Africa to build a school in Afghanistan. My point was, she was. An interesting thing happened when you do that. She no longer cared about herself because she said, oh, my God, I'm so blessed. I have all this. And all these girls around the world don't have anything that I have, so I'm going to focus on them. Guess what? All of her teenage years, all the stuff that you would see, oh, my God, how do I look? What do the boys think of me? She didn't care anymore because she was more focused on others than herself. And that's really interesting way of doing it. And that was our rite of passage. You are old enough now to actually go out and start contributing to the society. And every one of the kid had to do that. And interestingly, that thing became one of their biggest thing they did for their college application. Because every college counselor looks at this stuff and say, wow, not only are great kids, but look, they care a lot about this world. And they don't just care, they do something about it. And guess what? They have skills to be able to build the organization by starting it. Not simply saying, I went to Galapagos to save the turtles because my parents are very rich.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, that's not something that a lot of parents do have. Their. Have their sons or daughters start a nonprofit at the age of 10 or 11 years old. But it really kind of makes me wonder, you know, did you ever kind of think at the back of your mind, like, oh, maybe I'm. I'm having my kids become an adult too soon. Or maybe they. Maybe they. I need to let the kids be kids. Or do you feel like they. They kind of still had the opportunity to. To be kids? You know what I mean?

Of course, of course. By the way, just so you know, these guys party a lot. So there was never about them not doing it, but not at the cost of not becoming a good citizen of the society. So our rules were very, very simple. You get to do what you want. As long as you're giving your best for your education and you're giving your best to the community, that means you go out and do the service and you get good grades and not the good grades. In terms of the best you can be, the only good grade mantle was that is your best effort. And what you get is good enough for me. But it needs to be your best effort. It can't be. I am partying and doing drafts and I just don't have time for school. That's not acceptable. So when a kid came to us and they had B plus, my only question to them was, I'm fine with B plus. Can you tell me, look in my eyes and say, dad, I did my best and that was the best I could get. I'm totally fine with that. But what I'm not fine with that is the dad I was slacking off and I could have done better.

Yeah, yeah. Did you actually have any disciplines that you had in your house or like hard and fast rules that your kids had to follow?

Actually, not really. Our rules were simply about them going out and having fun with their friends. As long as they were doing the things. For example, they have to make sure they're doing some service to the community, so they have to do that. There was no choice there. And similarly, they have to go and make sure they're studying to get best grade they can and anything they want to do after that was there completely them. They want to go out and party on the board. Great. Go have fun.

Right?

But no, only rules we had was absolutely no drugs. And to date, by the way, our kids, I can't control them. None of the kids ever take drugs because that was our rule where we stopped and said, just absolutely promise no drugs. I'm not going to tell you you can't drink alcohol because everyone does. But the drugs is something you should not do because that's, you know, destroy your brain. Irreversible.

Yeah. Well, it's certainly very easy in very small doses to make a lot of mistakes with drugs. And you know, this whole idea that I think is sometimes dangerous that's bandied about now is, you know, like plant medicines are considered to be very sexy and very laudable and many people just use them as an excuse, you know, saying they're having an elevated state of consciousness when they're just doing drugs. And, you know, I've taught my sons a, most of these things have been researched to cause some significant neuroinflammation or even things like. Things like cannabis stupidity, you know, especially up until a certain age. And they need to be approached with a great deal of caution and respect. And, you know, I don't tell. I tell my kids that God made everything good, but it's to be used with responsibility and with a great deal of education. And most of my own parenting is all based on that idea of consequential based parenting where I don't, you know, I actually don't tell my kids, don't do drugs. I tell them all the horrible things that drugs do, and I tell them, okay, now you make the decision, you.

Know, but that's fine. I mean, the same thing. My point is, ultimately, you have to educate them to know what the consequences are. As you see, people think marijuana is just always food. There's no damage. By the way, as you pointed out, young kids have irreparable, irreversible damage to their brain. There's a lot of research that shows that. And to me, that is really is something that we need to make our kids aware. And I think a lot of the parents take it pretty lightly, and I think they need to know there are things that can damage them forever. And that's not being good parents, in my humble opinion.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, even me, like my sons occasionally have seen me taking a hit on a vape pen before, and they've asked what it is, and I've been very precise with them and told them, you know, that, that it's. That's marijuana. And they, they ask, you know, about how they would feel on it. And I say, well, you know, it's. It's been shown at least until a minimum of age 18 to actually kill brain cells and gray matter in the brain and, and, you know, cause cognitive and memory deficits. And, you know, then I'll just leave the vape pen out on the table and walk away. And they look at it like they never want to go near it in their life just because, you know, I've taught them about that. And, you know, it's that idea of consequential based parenting. And, you know, this leads to another thing that I wanted to ask you about, and that's with you and your wife, did you ever run into situations where you disagreed on certain things? You know, whether it was education or discipline or anything like that? And if so, how'd you handle that?

Well, you know, to some extent, there is always there people involved. There is always a difference of opinion. And one of the things was my wife had this idea of, you know, where she said, don't go on the boat. And then she will say, because the water is too choppy. And our kids will argue whether the water is choppy or not, not about not Going on a boat to me and I said, look, and the things she would think that the kids, you know, or we should give them an allowance on the money. And my philosophy, and she and I disagreed with that. And today we do disagree on that, which is when you focus on money, guess what? Rest of their life. We believe the only way you can have freedom is when you have money. And if you make the money, the main point of what their life is going to be, then they will never actually go out and do things you ask them to do. So don't make it about money. Tell them, look, you don't have to worry about it. Just remember, just because you have it doesn't mean you have to spend it. Right? So go out and figure out, is this what you really want and is this what you really need? And what would this money do for other people around the world if they had the same money? Their lives will change. And do you really want to use that or give it to someone that their life would be substantially better because of it? Yeah.

Yeah. Now, how about one on one time did you carve out specific, you know, calendar or scheduled or intentional time for one on one time with your kids?

You know, honestly, I wish I could say yes. It always was. Life was busy. And you know, to some extent, this really interesting point you bring up that lot of parents feel that spending more time with them is about being a good parent. And I never, never understood that because I remember and I tell you why I feel. And let me give you an example of how it all came about. As you know, I was. Our kids were very young when I built my first company and went on to become a very, very successful company. And so in, you know, in the 99,000 era, it was, you know, worth 40 billion. But all I'm trying to say was we had plenty of things at that time. It was easy for me to just say I'm going to retire and I'm going to spend time with the kids because the kids are young now. Think about what now from the kids perspective. When they go to school.

They see their dad at home sitting on the sofa watching cnbc. They come back from school and dad says, grab your bag, go do your homework. It takes hard work to be successful. And they watch the kids, they watch the dad sitting on the sofa watching cnbc. You can tell them anything you want. They know, they want to grow up and be just like that, sit on the sofa and watch cnbc. Instead, what they saw was dad starts a second company because he didn't care. He didn't say it's not about money. He goes out and say, I'm going to solve the second problem. I'm going to go start the third company, going to solve another problem. Dad goes crazy and say we're going to go to the moon because that is worth doing. And kids are thinking that that just completely crazy idea. No one has ever done it. How can it ever be possible? And they say dad goes out and shows them how it can be done. And then dad goes completely senile in his old age saying, I'm going to change healthcare now. And the dad actually, I'm not kidding. You kids really had a family meeting. Dad, you're almost 60 years old. Time to call it a day. No one has ever going to change healthcare. What are you wasting your time? You have a great success in your life, go out and retire now. And I say, oh my God, looks to me that I honestly have wasted my life not teaching about what is not possible. So I got to do this just because you told me it couldn't be done and showed them how it actually can be done. And that became. And that became wild. Now guess what happens? That is what I showed them what to do, not told them what to do. Instead of spending time, I actually showed them it's not about money. So I didn't tell them it's not about money. I showed them it's not about money by doing things that I care about. Right. So that is what they. That's why all three of them went on to say we can solve any problem we want, whether it's a woman's job, whether it's affordability, we can go out and solve any problem we want because it is doable. And if not us, then yeah.

Yeah. And so it sounds to me like what you're saying is that instead of necessarily spending a lot of time figuring out how to carve out one on one time with your children, you instead lived your best life and set an example for them so that they could see what you were doing to be able to go forward and be impactful themselves. But did you, do you, I guess. Do you feel like you got enough time with them though? Like being as successful as you are and working as much as you did?

Absolutely. And that's the point, is that even though you work hard, the kids, I spent plenty of time with them. But remember, whatever time I spent, they realized dad loves me because his time is so important. Even if he could give us four hours to have dinner, that was the most important thing he had in his life and he gave that to us and that was the thing they needed to know is not dad is always at home and he's always wanting us to entertain him because he's just bored to death. He's not doing anything. We got friends to meet, we got things to do. And he just sitting at home and saying, come play with me. It's like, yeah, I'm not here to continue.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, I guess related to that, that idea of time with them. Did you and Anew have any specific things that you would do like each week? You know, like I've talked to some parents, they're like, oh yeah, every Tuesday we go out and play tennis or you know, these five nights of the week we'd always have dinner together as a family or this was a certain vacation that we'd always go on. Do you guys have any like specific traditions that you wove in that you think were really special?

So what we did was every twice a year we had absolutely. It doesn't matter what anyone is doing. Every one our family, five of us together, three of our kids and us, we went together in summer, one vacation and abroad and we did one in winter. And there was absolutely five of us would spend that time together. And that was a rule.

And that, that was, that was a whole family like you and your wife and the three kids.

Yes, absolutely. And that was always the rule that we will spend that time there was going to be going to carve out that time and nobody's going to take that away from. Right. So during summer we will spend, you know, two weeks and during winter we'll spend two weeks and we'll go to different places and we'll go out and see the different things and always spend that time together.

Ah, I got so twice a year, two, two week long vacations, once in the summer and once in the winter.

That's right.

Wow, I love that.

And then we obviously would have dinner together and stuff and you know, obviously all the normal things you would do, you got.

Oh, you guys had dinner together like just all throughout the year. In the evenings.

If I was in.

Town, I mean I would be lying if I stayed out every day.

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. I know you, I know you travel and speaking of that, you know, speaking of your travel and your work and everything, did you, did you figure out a way, you know, as a parent to carve out time for your own self care? You know, like how did, how did you, how did you ensure that you had a balance between finding time to be Naveen and you know, build your businesses and do everything that you've done has been, you know, so big. And yet, you know, you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs whose health suffers because they're juggling family and business and health. So how did you tackle that?

Well, I think as you know, being healthy is a choice, just like being sick is a choice. And to me, if you're not healthy, you can't build a great business. And I think to me the biggest value you bring to any business is your health. Because when you are sick, you only have one wish and when you are healthy, you have many wishes. So you can't go out and build businesses or any business until you are healthy. So to me, that was my way of saying, look, if I want to be successful, I have to stay healthy. I can't be not healthy. And especially now at yom that I'm running, I am the role model. If I am £400 and have all the diseases and who's going to believe that? Here's a guy who you should do. It works, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I've been to your house. I know you got a, you got a home gym and you stay active. You do a lot of walking, don't you?

I sure do. I mean I do, you know, anywhere between six to ten miles a day.

Yeah, yeah, that's. I've talked to a lot of people who, when they need that time for self care, it seems like walking is just about the lowest hanging fruit. It's pretty rare I meet a healthy, especially like a healthy business person or older person who doesn't have a pretty robust walking habit. You know, typically walking and then, and what about, what about things like meditation? I seem to recall we had a discussion where I asked you what you do on all your plane flights and everything. I think you said something to me like, oh, just sit there and meditate.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the one thing is that I do meditation twice a day. So it doesn't matter how important a meeting I have. My rule is if I can't find 10 minutes to meditate, I should have got, you know, if this meeting was that important, I could have gotten up 10 minutes. Obviously it can't be that important that I didn't get up early. Right. So I'm not going to miss my meditation for this. So I. The good thing is I get up at 4am every day. And one of the rules I have learned in my life is the day when I wake up at 4am and I don't jump out of the bed. It's time for me to quit what I'm doing because I'm no longer loving doing what I'm doing. Because when you love what you do jump out of the bed.

Yeah. Do you have to set an alarm for that? Do you naturally wake up at 4am?

I naturally wake up at 4am it doesn't matter what time I go to sleep, I always wake up at 4am.

Do you have to take any smart drugs or like coffees or things like that because you don't sleep as much?

No, I don't actually. I don't drink, drink caffeine anymore. So I've completely given up. I don't drink any caffeine, any. No coffee, no tea, caffeinated tea. I don't drink any wine. I don't drink any even soda water. I'm just so, I am just, you know, very. From my perspective, I drink plain, plain water and I drink no wine, caffeine or any, any type of pop water.

You have a purpose in life. You have a purpose in life and that's very helpful. You know, that's the main thing is that, you know, I was recently reading a book called the Art of Upside Down Living and it talked about life's purpose and this idea that when you have a really distinct life's purpose, like the energy that you have is just unstoppable, you know, and all these, all these, you know, supplements and medications and energy compounds that people turn to, in many cases they're turning to because they get out of bed in the morning, they don't have a life purpose so they need something to kick their butt and get them going, right?

Yep. I mean main thing is you can't instill the purpose in your kids life. Instill the idea that you can be happy and working. The work doesn't need to be a work. Work can be the retirement. Work can be your purpose. Right. And once you find that you will be happy and your kids will see that happiness and they want to transform themselves because that happy. Right. My point I'm going to make is that if you go to. Actually I'm going to step back, I'm going to give you an example. So one of the guys who used, who worked for me one day came to me said look.

Your kids are so entrepreneurial. I keep telling my kids to be entrepreneurs and they just don't want to do it. What is the secret? And I said there is no secret. The secret is really simple. Tell Me? What did you do most of your life? You worked for a corporate. Corporate. A big, large corporation. You came home and you bitched how fucking life sucks. And then you went back to work the next day. Guess what happened? The kids now realize the safety is more important than actually being happy or loving your work. And guess what they want? They want to join a nice big corporate. They know they're going to hate their job, but that's going to give them a safety because they learned that watching you all their life.

That is what the kids saw. So now if you wanted them to be entrepreneur, you should have started the damn company and showed them how to do it. And do it five times until they say, wow, it looks pretty easy.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, as a work at home dad, a lot of times I'll have frustrations that arise during the day, and occasionally I'll make a mistake. I'll make a mistake and I'll vent about it, or I'll show up, you know, I'll come for lunch and I'll obviously be annoyed and fuming about something and. And I always check myself at the end of the day and I'll typically have a dinner meeting on a day like that with the family and say, hey, look, here's exactly what happened with dad at work. Here's how I handled that the wrong way. Here's how I did not choose happiness when I was free to choose happiness and contentment in that circumstance. So whenever I make a mistake myself and kind of blow up on the job, I make sure that my kids see it's not because I hate my job. It's because I just. I made a mistake that day and I let. No, hey, I love what I do. I love helping people. Sometimes, you know, I'm a human and I get annoyed and I get upset. But please don't think dad doesn't love his job. I love what I do every day. You know, it's just that occasionally, you know, stuff goes south and I don't respond the way that I should. So I use it as a teaching moment.

Do you have, like, I guess, you know, not to get negative or anything, but if you look back, do you think you made any mistakes or do you have any regrets? Like, if you go back over, do you think you'd say, oh, I do this a little bit different?

Honestly, I would not do anything different. And let me tell you why. If you love who you are today and if you are in love with yourself, who you are today, anything you change in the past, a mistake or Thing that you think you could have done differently would have made you a different person. And if you believe you love who you are today, then you shouldn't change one thing about you, because every mistake you made, everything you did, is what made you who you are today.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's similar to. My wife and I, we have philosophy. We say no regrets, only gratefulness. You know, everything is a teaching moment. Everything we're grateful for, you know, even though, you know, like, for me, there are certain things, like I just try to be perfect with the kids, you know, when they were first born. The perfect jogging stroller and.

The perfect bed and the perfect, you know, low EMF baby monitor. And, you know, I think one thing I wish I would have realized was just how. How resilient kids are and how easy they are, really. I think some parents overthink it. You know, even we wanted to take our kids to all these exotic locales when they were kids and travel all over the world. And we realized, gosh, our kids are super happy sitting at home in the mud with a cardboard box in the sunshine.

You know, by the way, it's really interesting. The parents sometimes buy really expensive toys, and when you're moving and they find just a moving box and they have more fun with that than the $200 toy.

Yeah, I know, I know, it's nuts. It's. You know, we've commercialized parenting quite a bit when it comes to all the things and all the gadgets, but it was really, it's very simple. You know, you just. You love a kid and you give them presents and you give them time. And by presence, I don't mean ts, I mean CE presence. But yeah, no, now, you know, if you were to hear your kids talking about you in the veen, you know, let's. Let's say, you know, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you know, maybe when you're. When your dad. What would you want them to be saying about you? Like, what would they remember. Remember you for as a father that you'd really, really love for them to remember you for?

I should tell you what they tell me every day. They said, dad, we just are so proud of you, what you have made us. I mean, they really feel that by giving them the lessons of life, by giving them unconditional love, we actually have given them what they needed in their life to be successful. And that's all I want them to remember means that they had a great dad who worked hard to do the great things for the humanity and taught us things that we learned today to be who we became.

What would your wife say about you? Thing. What would your wife say about you as a father? Like, what do you think she's most impressed? Maybe she's in the other room, you can grab her. Maybe you can just put words in her mouth.

So I think what she would probably say would be extremely determined, extremely focused and driven by things that I want to do. That means I don't do things because someone else wants me to do it. I do things because I want to do it. Because for years she will ask me to work out, and I did. And when I decided I'm going to do it, I do.

Yeah. So from your wife, determination and for your kids, you've equipped them and enabled them to basically be people that you and that the world can be proud of.

That's right, yeah.

Now, if you had, if you had advice for parents, you know, things, things that we haven't talked about yet, and I especially would love to hear what kind of message you'd put on a billboard for parents. But even before we get up to that, that final billboard statement is, are there some, some little bits of wisdom or things that you did that were unique, that, that, that you feel like you still want to pass on that we didn't get a chance to talk about yet?

Well, I mean, I think we touched on most of the subjects that, you know, really creating that intellectual curiosity in children, really believing that, you know, that your source of happiness is really them, watching them succeed in life, giving them the tools that they need in their life to be able to do what they want to do. But always remember what makes you proud of them. Right. So always know that you're going to set a standard for them they're going to live with. Right. That means you always need to know that their success. How are you going to measure their success and give them that yardstick so they can measure their success in life? Right. Give them the life that. What matters. Integrity. You know, in integrity, what is really interesting is you can never be 99% honest because the minute you take one time, I'm not going to go to church because I have this game or I have this meeting or I have this important thing to do. Once you make that, guess what? They'll always be the next time. They'll always be the next thing. They'll always be the next excuse. So either you say, I'm going to do it, it doesn't matter what, or you say it, I just don't care. So My point is you can't be. Either you are honest or you're not. You can't be. I'm 99%.

Yeah. Kids see consistency like we have morning meditation, evening meditation and my heart always sinks if there's ever a morning where I forget or I've got something that comes up or I've got some call that got rescheduled and we don't get to have our family meditation not because you know that means that the whole day is going to be bad but because it starts to send a message to the children that oh well, if something can be sacrificed, it can be my spiritual care or my meditation or my journaling. And I want them to be adults who get out of bed in the morning and the very first thing they do is take care of their spirits and plan the day and journal and engage in something positive like meditation. But yeah, they pay attention. They pay attention because I've seen them kind of give me a funny look when it's like 9am and we haven't meditated yet and I'm headed out the door on a phone call.

Call.

You know, they pick stuff like that up super quick.

Yep, yep. And that's the reason the consistency as you mentioned, knowing that you have to commit to some things and then you have to follow through.

Yeah, yeah. Now, now if you could, if you could put one message on a billboard. Yeah the guy guess the billboard could be as big as you'd like but you know, a billboard esque statement. What kind of message would you put out there to parents on a billboard?

You know, as you said, create intellectually curious kids that are determined to move the humanity forward.

Great. Intellectually curious kids who are determined to move humanity forward. Yeah, I love that.

Wow.

I think that would all fit on a billboard pretty easily. What do you think?

I think so.

If anybody can figure it out, it.

Would be you, Naveen.

All right. Well this has just been fantastic. And for anyone who's listening in, I'm going to put the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Naveenjain N A V E E N J A I N and not only can you go and leave your questions and your comments and your feedback there, Naveen is going to be featured in my upcoming book Boundless Parenting. I'm going to put a lot of this advice in there. You'll be able to access this in written form as well. And you can also go and see what, what each of his impactful children have been up to one more time each of Your kids names?

Naveen Ankur. A N K U R Ankur Jen. Our daughter is Priyanka. P R I Y A N K A Priyanka Jain. And our youngest one is Neil. Jen. N E I L J A I N. Perfect.

Well, you went to the moon, so hopefully they go to Mars. Right?

There you go. Or beyond. Or beyond our solar system into a different galaxy.

Or beyond Pluto, baby. All right, well, Naveen, it's been a pleasure talking to you. It's always fun connecting and I just appreciate you sharing this wisdom because I really have observed what you've done as a parent. I've been very impressed by it.

Thank you, Ben. And I think, you know, my hat's off to you for what you do as a parent. I'm always, always proud of our friendship.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, well folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Naveen Jain signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week.

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