Chandrika Tandon: Leading the Way in Education and the Arts

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Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. The Remarkable People team and I, we're on a mission to make you remarkable. Our guest today is Chandrika Tandon. She is a business leader, humanitarian and Grammy nominated musician. Her mission is to elevate economic and emotional well being through education and the arts. Tanjrika has been recognized for her leadership in higher education. As the chair of the board of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She has overseen the school's steady climb in rankings, groundbreaking global research and enhanced access for first generation and female students. Yet Chandrika is not focused solely on economic well being. Through her soulful music compositions, she aims to nurture emotional health as well. Chandjika has produced several albums, performed in venues worldwide and in 2019 was nominated for a Grammy Award. Her latest album is entitled Amu's Treasures and celebrates intergenerational love through a rich fusion of styles. With experience in leading firms such as McKinsey and Company, Chandrika has an impressive professional background, but it is her humanitarian spirit and creative passion that truly set her apart. Tanjika endeavors to lift up people in communities across the globe. I can't wait for you to meet her. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now here is the remarkable Chandrika Tandon. You were a partner at McKinsey, your Wall street financial mogul, Grammy nominated musician, NYU business school named after you. And then your sister, CEO of Pepsi. And then you have this brilliant brother. I'm seeing a pattern here. So was it the environment or was it the DNA in your family?

The waters of Chennai, Madras, India.

Where can I buy some?

I But we grew up with a grandfather and I was the oldest and we were in a very small town, Guy in Chennai, Madras, it's called now. And we had no Internet. Our walls were very tiny and our world was very tiny. But the way the windows and doors were open to me was through books. So at the tender age of 10, I was reading Thackeray and I was reading the multiple plays of Shakespeare. 37 to be exact. I knew by memory about 200 poems from daffodils to elegy written in a country churchyard. So my world inside was very vast. From an ambition perspective. I was never going to be limited because however limited it was, it was the world of books. And the other side of it is my mother was always playing music in the house. And we only had two radio stations in Madras at that time. And those two radio stations started playing music at 5am or something like that. And they would finish at 11. And those two radio stations were on in different rooms all the time. So you didn't have a choice to pick. Oh, let me listen to jazz right now.

Tell me about your grandfather, because I catch this thread that your grandfather was very influential.

Yes, very. We lived in his house. We lived with him. My mother was taking care of him because my father would be traveling all the time, and my father was the main son of the family. So my day began with my grandfather and my evenings and night ended with my grandfather. He was 92 when he died, and he was the most special person in my life. So he would work with us, he would study with us, he would learn any hobby that I got engaged with, whether it was chess or whether it was Scrabble or whatever interests I had. He developed crossword puzzles. It was an incredible loving figure to have in my life. And because my grandfather was a judge, he opened all kinds of doors to me that I never thought existed, that I could never have envisioned in my little town of Madras with this very cloistered life that I was living. But I saw the world. I saw Cornwall through the eyes of Thackeray, and I saw England through the eyes of every British author. So that's what happened in my life.

One thread of thought here is that anybody listening should understand how much they can influence their children and grandchildren by broadening their horizons.

Right. This awareness is so raw and it's so big and so visceral in my consciousness, Guy. Because what my grandfather did with me has stuck with me so many years later, consciously and unconsciously, and has changed the course of my life in a lot of ways. I've got grandchildren now, and I've been spending a lot of time with them whenever I can, but trying to use that time very focused on sharing with them what it is that I can, whatever it is. In my case, it was songs. It's nostalgia through songs. It's messages through songs. That's one avenue I've chosen. But I think we all have so much intergenerational wisdom and love and nostalgia and memories and experiences to share, which are going to have ripple effects for generations.

Your story is remarkable. Going from Chennai to Citibank to McKinsey to New York to Grammy to philanthropy. Can you give us the gist of how that journey played out in a.

Very high level way? I was lucky enough to go on a hunger strike and be able to go to a great college and do a bachelor's degree in commerce or in business, and then to really fight to go to business. School, the top business school in India. And then the journey continued over the years. I had a very singular business career for a long time. I say singular because my mind was focused on business. Even though I love music, I loved a lot of other things. I would always be working, maybe even part of my 40s. I never saw the light of day. I just worked hard. I worked really hard. But what I would do, Guy, because I love music so much, I'd be all over the world traveling for business. But at 10 o' clock at night, I would finish my client work and I would try to go to a piano bar, not try to. Most nights I would go to wherever music was. So that's where I heard the great Brazilian musicians like Caetano Veloso or Gilberto Giel or a lot of those great people. When I was living in Brazil and in France, in Australia, wherever in the world I was, I would seek out music. But business was my main focus. But that went on and about 20 some years ago I had a. The best way to describe it is a crisis of spirit because I had to ask myself the question, what am I trying to do? What is my point? What is enough? How much success? What is success? What do I want to keep doing? And I'm so lucky that I got to ask those questions, Guy, because that changed the trajectory of my life. That's when I really started to focus intentionally on this answer, which is my joy. My happiest moments had something to do with music. Always something to do with music. I loved my business world, but I really was me when I was doing my music. And it wasn't because I was trying to get anywhere. I wasn't trying to win awards. I wasn't what it was about. I just loved singing, I loved learning and I loved sharing the music with people. And the second thing I made a decision about is that I would also spend a life doing something which had purity of purpose, that I would spend time serving whatever in a small way could be a random act of kindness or just something which is bigger than myself. Because we get so wrapped up in thinking about oh me, me. So I was going to make a decision. I made a decision to step away from myself. And that's what began this incredible journey, Guy, where I went from a singular, single dimensional, business focused person into really building the music side and really building the service side, which is how NYU came into the picture. And at that time I found the dean of the business school and said to him, can I help in some way? I'm not Looking for anything. I just want to help. And he said, oh, come on in. Please come in. Become what they call it, executive in residence. Of course, I had a lot of years of business experience, and I started to teach classes. I started to work with the dean on different things for the school. And that's how my whole association with NYU began, till we gave a major gift for the engineering school and for the music side, this is what happened, but again, by accident. So it wasn't that I was setting out to be anything. My promise 22 years ago was I would live a very authentic life. A life which really focused on clarity, on what happiness was to me, and a life that I would share whatever I had with other people in whatever degree I can, and that I wouldn't beat myself up. And this is an important part I want to touch on, because until then, so much of me was wearing this badge of, I'm a perfectionist with great honor. I was always going to do better. I wasn't good enough, and I wanted to do more. And, oh, goodness, did I not do enough of this. I wasn't a good enough wife, a good enough mother, good enough this, good enough that. I just started to drop all that. I went from I'm a perfectionist to I am perfection at this moment. I just. But let me live intentionally. Let me live authentically. So that has become the mantra. Do I. Am I 100% every day doing that? No. But I'm a lot more clear and intentional about it than I have ever been. And each year, each month, each day, it gets easier. It's much more unconscious. It was in 1999. That's 24 years ago. So that would be when I was. I'm 60. I'm 68 now, so. Going to be 69 soon.

We're the same age.

Oh, we are. Wonderful. Yep. It was about 20, 24 years ago.

And you said something in your answer that I need you to explain, because I don't mean to make this into a joke, but when somebody from India says, I went on a hunger strike, it has a lot more meaning than a random person. And you said you went on a hunger strike to get your education. Can you explain that? Because I don't think you meant it in the Gandhi sense.

In my own little way, it was pretty Gandhian because I did go without food for two full. It was two days for which was a lot. For the first time. I was 14 when I did it, because my mother wouldn't let me go to a college, which I wanted to go to to study business because the college was about an hour away and it was mostly men. And she wasn't going to have any of that because she said, and this was the only college open for women to study business at that time. It was a top college. It was a very prestigious program. And I got in and she wouldn't let me. And I was determined that I was not going to be stopped. And so I did, in fact, stop eating. It was pretty Gambian because she's a tough woman, and I had never quite fought her before in such a profound way.

What did Grandpa say when this was happening?

Grandpa just would look very sadly at me because I was the love of his life. And he would basically go to my mother and say, let her do whatever she wants. But what my grandpa gave me the courage to do, which is the most wonderful thing that happened, is he told me, why don't you ask your headmistress in school to help you? Because I was crying so much. And so I went to school because I was still in school at that time. I went to school and spoke to my headmistress, who was from the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Sister Mary Nessen. And she was in a habit, in a white habit. And I'll tell you, Guy, I've been in that school. I had been in that school from whatever kindergarten or Pre kindergarten until 11th grade. At that time, I had never seen her outside the school premises. For the first time in my life, she came to my little street wearing her white habit in a black car. She came in to meet my mother, which the whole street was standing outside to watch this nun walk in. And then she said, Mrs. Krishnamurti, your daughter will be fine. You have to let her go. She was an Irish nun. And ultimately, I think that's how my mother relented. So the second time I went on a hunger strike, which is to go to business school. I was a pro at that. So my mom and I, by now had our negotiating strategies worked out. She knew I wasn't going to give up, and I knew I was going to win. But in this time, I straight away went to my professor at the head of my school at college, where I just finished my business degree. And he came straight away with a whole army of people to tell my mother she had to let me go to business school. But this time I had to leave home completely, which I understand how difficult it was for her to let her firstborn daughter, who was supposed to uphold the family honor. Here I was going off into a den of men in the first case. And then I was going to be away from home, outside of her control the second time. And so I understand her angst. What was I going to do? How was I going to behave? Was I going to be respectable? When I came back, I almost fell.

Off the chair there.

I do, but now I get it. But at that time I was single mind in my pursuit was going to business school. Plus the thing I'm going to tell you Guy is an uncle of mine. The reason I even applied to business school was an uncle of mine. And I told him I don't apply to this business school. It was a lark because my professor told me I should apply. He said, oh, you'll never get in. It's like a Nobel prize. You're just a three year degree. Because most people who get in are much more experienced. You're never going to get in. That time I was going to get in or at least I was going to try hard. And since I got in, there was no way my mom or anyone was going to stop me now. So it was like a wonderful fight. And I really, I must say, even though I talk about this, I really honor the fact that my mother who could have hunger strike or no hunger strike, she could have still put her foot down and said no and I wouldn't have done it. I really have to hand it to her that she let me go finally.

Is. Is she still alive?

92 and in great health and very lucid and will now tell you that she was the greatest proponent of my doing all these things.

Is she in Chennai?

She's in New York, right nearby.

Maybe I should interview.

She will tell you that she's so proud of everything we have done.

Now the entire arc of your life could have changed if she went on a hunger strike and said if you went to these schools, I'm not gonna eat.

It was something like that. Both of us were. And our fights were epic. My mother and my fights were epic. Because see, my sister had it easy because she was a year behind. So there were no fights. In her case, I had already done all the fighting to go to business school, to go to college. And she followed me to the exact same college without nary a protest at business school. Forget it. As I proudly think to myself, this is the path of whoever tries to pioneer something that's off the beaten track.

Dare I ask, what are your family reunions like? Is Indra bringing cases of Pepsi and you're bringing your musical instruments and your brother and must be a hell of.

A Reunion music was always part of how we all interacted with each other. India would have a lot of power cuts and load shedding when the whole house would be plunged into darkness. So there wasn't anything else you could do. So our family would get together and sing. So we would all sing songs together. And the second thing we would do is make jokes. And we had a lot of uncles and aunts, my mother one of a big family, my father's one of a big family. And everybody would be just sitting there telling jokes, just happy family jokes. So I'd say most of our family reunions are around a lot of jokes. And now our children are all into music and so on. So I just think music and jokes are always part of how we interact. Though I would say, as life has gotten a lot busier, Guy, it's that much harder to find time for real family reunions all the time, because we've all gone in different directions. And interestingly enough, all of us came independent of each other. We didn't bring. This wasn't a chain migration here. Each of us came on independent paths for independent accomplishments or independent pursuits. Rather, we came in for. I came to McKinsey, my sister came here to do a business degree. My brother came here to go to Yale for his undergraduate. So all of us came completely on our own paths.

Not exactly like all moving to Florida.

No, we love Florida for certain parts of the winter. But I came into New York City in 1979, and I literally love the city so much. I've been here forever and wherever I go, and I go to many places because most of my work has been outside and over all over the world. New York is home to me. This is the longest I've lived anywhere. And I love the city. I'm very involved in different parts of the city, the universities, the cultural events. And the wonderful thing here, guy, is that New York City is many countries in one. We talk of melting pots, but there are so many epicenters, because whatever your interests are, you can find your epicenter. If you like music, you can find it. If you like Brazilian music, Some of the best Brazilian singers I've heard are in New York. In fact, Astro Gilberto would be here and I would book tickets, like three nights in a row she was performing. And the same thing when you had French singers or Stan Getz or any great person, Joan Byers. I've heard all of them in New York. The greatest Indian singers, in fact, in the early years, many of them would come and stay with me because you know, you have greater access to the cultural scene. So I just feel blessed and privileged to be here and to be able to partake of the city. And the other thing, being part of a university in whatever way allows me to connect with the research, the students, the young thoughts, the brilliant minds in areas I'm not that familiar with. So it's been like a continuous education over the last 20 years.

I bet that people listening to this are wondering, how do I know when? And it's time to make a big career shift? And in particular, how do I know when it's a false flag, like when I should not shift and I should stick it out, because kind of two conflicting bodies of thought, right, that you stick it out and you grit it out and you gut it out. And the other is to make these transitions like you did. So how do you know when the time is right?

This is a really great question, guy. So I don't think it's about the time. I think it's about having the time to reflect on what it is that drives your happiness and your passion. If you're someone who loves to connect with people through podcasts, it doesn't matter what the age is. You owe it to yourself to find the time to do that. Whatever your age, other job may or may not be over a period of time, perhaps this will transition into a full job, maybe it won't. But you're not doing this because you want another job, because you want to transition. I went to music because I felt my soul would collapse. My whole being would shrink. And it was shrinking without it having a center space in my life. It wasn't that I gave up everything and moved to a musical refuge and started singing for the next several years. No, it was an incredible struggle for me because I had for a period of time to think about how to balance my business life. I was still a mother, I was still a wife. I still had all kinds of responsibilities. I still had a company to run and I wanted to fit in music. And this is why I've told other people before, I would get up on Saturdays at 4, 4am in the morning every Saturday. And I would work intense schedules during the week. 4am to 6am I would drive for two hours to Wesleyan, have a class from 8am from 6am to 8am and then drive back again and be back by 10, 10, 15, because my little baby would wake up. She'd be waking up by about 11, thank goodness. She was a late riser, but. And it's fine on a summer's day to do that. But try doing it when you're scraping ice off your car in middle of winter and you're not even sure how how icy the roads are at 4:30 in the morning. And I wasn't a particularly adventurous driver, so these used to be terrifying moments. So sometimes I would leave at 3:15 just so I could drive slowly. But I was going to get to my class. So it required a lot of adjustments in my life. And working with NYU in the early years and even now, to some degree, guy, nobody even knew I was doing it. I was doing it for myself. I wasn't doing it because I wanted fame or fortune. I would spend hours at the school, I would spend hours with the students. Not because anyone cared, but because I felt this is what I should be doing. I didn't give up anything else. I just rearranged some of the hours in the day. I stopped watching mindless tv. I stopped doing some of the great movies, the great shows. They all suffered a little bit until I found my rhythm.

You attribute much of your success to your mentors and now you are being a mentor. Can you give us insights into finding a mentor using a mentor, optimizing mentorship and then flip it around. How does one be a great mentor.

In terms of finding a mentor? One has to look at two sides of this coin. One. One is people will very openly and actively and energetically mentor you if you have done something good for them. There's something that they have to see. Every mentor of mine were mostly some of my teachers and I really worked very hard in their classes. They remembered what I did in their classes, so they were my best mentors and I can name them. From the time I went to lower school, kindergarten, I've had mentors and my headmistress. But I did very well in school. But it wasn't that I was academically good. I just took on a lot of jobs at school. So this is one of the things I would say to myself, my younger self and to everybody else. You don't just walk into somebody and say, oh please be my mentor. You have to do something. Go beyond what is your call of duty. A lot of my clients have really stepped up for me. It's like a cycle of karma. But I did a lot for them in years when I didn't even know I was doing a lot for them because I didn't care as much about myself. I was very, very focused on their success or the institution success. Karma has got a very long reach and it comes back in good and bad ways. And this is like the great karma coming back to help you. Now, the second side of it of this brilliant question you asked me is how do you become a mentor? This requires a generosity of spirit. It's so easy to decide not to do anything. There's so many other ways one can spend your time. To decide to be a mentor is not just saying, oh, I'm your mentor, thank you very much. How nice to see you. Very often it requires time. It requires many, many sessions with them. It requires sometimes putting yourself on the line to help them and really make sure when they're in a difficult situation, to help them through it. So there's so many shades of responsibilities that being a mentor carries, and very often younger people are afraid to come and ask you about it. So you have to seek out opportunities. And I'm very lucky because being in a university and being very available gives me a lot of opportunities to connect with many kids. Now it's conscious and unconscious. I think many times many kids write to me and say, oh, I heard you speak, I heard you say this, I heard you do this. I was inspired and I'm going to do that. But I'm going to say one thing to you. And this happened to me this weekend. I was in Washington, D.C. i was training a group of high school children to sing. We're going to sing together in two weeks. There were 250 of them. And one of the kids asked me, oh, I'm so inspired by you. How can I follow in your footsteps? And what advice do you have that I can follow in your footsteps? And so on. What I said to her, and this is something I've been thinking about all weekend, I said to her, it would be most awful if you followed in my footsteps, because what you have is footsteps that are so giant, with so much power and so much potential that you're going to be creating big footsteps and big strides and big parts for yourself. Take lessons from everyone. Good lessons, bad lessons, but it's up to each and every one of us to create our own footsteps, our own strides, our own paths. And I think to me, the greatest power I want a lot of young people to have is this power of curiosity and this power of asking questions and the power of asking for help which will give you apparent and less apparent mentors who will have great impact on everyone's lives.

Up next on Remarkable People, Things handed.

On a platter to you. Because you're anything, if you're a model, you have to work really hard if you're a musician, you have to practice for hours. I think immersion in that craft. Whatever the challenges in life, you don't have a choice. So to me, once you have that source of power, it doesn't matter what your other challenges are, but you have this strength that you have going for you.

If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it. Even better, ford it to a friend. A big mahalo to you for doing this. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. Let's say that you have paid it forward as you describe and now you have a mentor. How do you optimize it? How do you not waste their time? How do you get the most you can? How do you make it mutually beneficial?

Very often when people think about mentors is around a couple of areas. One is they want advice about a tricky situation they're in or sometimes they want a network. They want you to connect them to something so they can go forward in some way. Often when I see these networking as the core idea, I think it works less well than when you want genuine help from someone. Somebody said this to me at a very early stage in my life because I was very ambitious and I was very focused on I want to get this and I want to get that. And that person just said, will you just tell me why you're really here? Are you here to really seek my advice or are you just looking for something? This was when I was probably 15, not exactly these terms, but some variation of this conversation that stuck in my mind forever because I think when you just go for take, take from someone, it doesn't work as well. So I think one has to really be clear about what you're asking for and be genuine about that. And people are more ready to give advice. And then very often the people that have a good heart or have an open heart and can help will help. You have to trust that.

But what can a 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 year old kid do for a person like you? What's that part of the bargain?

It's not a question of doing something for me. It is just that you want to have a sense that the conversation you're having with that person is really important and valuable to that person. I don't talk to 15, 16 year olds as much every day, but I definitely talk to a lot of 18, 19 year olds. That is 60% of my life that of people that I talk to. And most of them have lots of great questions. They've got big issues that they're wrestling with. They're big ideas that they're dealing with. And sometimes they have a specific problem they want help with. I'll give you an example we had, and this is a different context. There was five or six, actually more. There was about 31 of them that represented probably about 12 groups of students that were all looking for help and mentorship for each of their associations. The ones that shone were the ones that were so clear about their issues and were honest and open and authentic. You really wanted to figure out what to do because they were so passionate about what it is they wanted to do. They were so passionate about what idea they were trying to pursue. And they dragged you along into their vision. It's not too young to have a vision, even if you're 15 or 16 or 17. I know I had mine. All my visions were from a very young age.

I'd like to be very specific. Give us an example of a really good question that you could ask your mentor and give us example of a dumb question that wastes people's time of.

A mentor, somebody very often you don't even know is a mentor. It could be just a professor. When you're just walking into them, maybe haven't been as connected to them in the classes or whatever, and then you just go in there and then you want all sorts of connections to different schools or different recommendations or lists of different employers. You haven't come prepared. That to me is a kind of what I would call a less prepared version, but a less prepared version of going to a mentor. A more prepared version would be the flip side of this. The great examples, I'll tell you is when somebody comes and tells you, here, this is the club we're all trying to build. We've won all these prizes, but we are short all these ideas. We really need help figuring out where to go. Here are the three four things we've done on our own. Do you have any ideas that you want to add? That was a very thoughtful way to approach this. And they didn't just do it to me. They did it with three or four very senior people. And they were very clear by the time they were done, they not just raised everything they needed. Everybody connected them to other corporations they knew. And this club got much more than what they needed. But I think that to me is an example because they had done their own homework. They knew what each one of us, they had done their research on us. Google is ubiquitous. So they knew what they were saying. Can you help us in these things? Can you help Us find somebody to speak. Can you do this? But they were so passionate. They weren't asking for favors for themselves. They were asking for favors for an idea that was bigger than themselves, themselves. What is wonderful is that the children, what I've seen, and we have many thousand students at our engineering school at Nyu Tandon School of Engineering. I learn from these kids every day. We're talking about questions and so on. These kids are so hungry. They're so hungry not just for themselves. They're so hungry to change the world. They're hungry to make a difference. And yes, they're hungry and ambitious for themselves, too. Nothing wrong with that. That power is what children, kids, students, everyone needs to bring into whatever it is they're doing. And then people will come to you because they're so attracted to the power of your passion.

Great answer. I would like to hear your advice for raising powerhouse daughters like you and your sister.

We all have different parenting styles. I'm going to tell you one thing. I was in Prague recently. It was on June 30, and it was a performance I was doing with 30 some Ukrainian refugee kids from the ages of 3 to 12 from. With the croaky Dobra, which is a refugee center, they're really working with families that have been displaced. Now, as part of this, the parents wanted to have a Q and A with me. But funnily enough, the questions that came to me were not from the parents. They all came from the children. And all of them asked me, what kind of mother were you? Were you a good mother? Were you a strict mother? What kind of mother were you? And I was thinking to myself that this is a question that. That I have asked myself over the years. And I've also asked myself this question in the context of the last 20 years as my own personality changed, and the Chandrika of 20 years now versus the Chandrika years before, in my 40s. And I think part of being a better parent for me has really become a greater awareness of myself, because very often my vision of what it was about being a mother was to be strict and to be tough. And that's what I knew. There were lots of rules. But the one thing I think I subscribe to is setting very high expectations for your child that there was not an option, that she could not go to school, that she could not go to college, that she couldn't get a master's degree. That was simply not on the cards. She could choose to do whatever she wanted within that framework, but she had to have a Superb education. She didn't have to go to any particular school or study any particular subject. That was a non option. So that was given almost from a very young age that she would go to college. So the expectations were high. She could have chosen in between if she wanted to take a year, take two years, do something else, come back, it's okay, but come back. She. We hoped she would, and it wasn't that we forced her, but it was, I think we inspired her that the possibility of education would just open a world to her that she cannot appreciate. And when she appreciated it, it might be too late for her because life would have intervened. So setting expectations, I think, was very important. I think the part that I wish I had done better if I was being really honest, is that I wish I had been more compassionate with myself and with her and in my profession. You are very. You're always looking at what's wrong. And you think your role as a parent is to make them perfect in some way. But I think we as a parent, to really let their light shine has got to be the motto of one's existence. And we need the introspective ability to be able to understand what is that light that each child has. And you need to understand your own light. Because the other thing that I think I did at times, much less so after I got aware, is her definitions of success mean nothing to what her definition of success might be later on. And I think you have to honor that and really applaud that, not just honor that, even if it's completely different from you. So I think with my daughter and now with my grandchildren, of course it's a different role. I think that's the pathway which I've been finding in a much better way than I did in my early years.

So you just explained how there was a framework of she had to have an education. But what if she came to you and said, mom, I want to be a musician. I don't want to go to college, I want to be a musician. What would you have said?

I would have. Which is what I've said to every kid at Berkeley when I was very involved with Berkeley School of Music. It's wonderful. Do your music and go to the best school for music. But don't forget, you still need life skills. It's pretty important. And in fact, this was my big theme. Look, even if you're a musician, I think it's important. What are the basics of life? You need to understand the basics of finance, the basics of balancing your checkbook, the Basics of dealing with a contract, basics of knowing what's happening in technology. The whole industry is getting upended by a lot of this stuff. If you have the ability, if you've got the wherewithal, why would you not get a well rounded education while you're pursuing your passion, whatever that is. So yes, if she'd come back and said, I want to be a musician, I'd say, wonderful, do it, but you're also going to have some additional things. And I feel this. And by the way, I've been a firm advocate of this. I'll tell you, when we advertised for a job, this is a few years ago, within one hour, this was an administrative assistant job, which within one hour we had 400 applications. And they were all from kids, many of them who'd gone to music schools and were just musicians. If you're a musician, it's wonderful, but you also need life skills, you need livelihood skills. And I feel very strongly about that.

Wait, so your point there is that yes, you can aspire to be a musician, but you still need to pay the bills.

It's not just pay the bills. You need to have a basic understanding of how life works. Being a musician doesn't mean you have to ignore everything else. You can spend 80% of your time on music and spend 20% of your time making sure you do other things so that you become a well rounded human being in terms of living life.

So I asked the advice of raising powerhouse daughters. Now flipping it around, what's your advice? To become a powerful, effective, accomplished woman.

Nothing's handed on a platter to you because you're anything. If you're a model, you have to work really hard. If you're a musician, you have to practice for hours, I think immersion in that craft. Whatever the challenges in life, you don't have a choice. So to me, once you have that source of power, it doesn't matter what your other challenges are, but you have this strength that you have going for you. So to be the second piece of this is inclusion. People have to understand and inclusion is also another part of it with human beings. Even if you end up working with people, you're going to have to work. Deals and machines and everything don't make the world, people make the world. So you have to be able to celebrate differences of people, work in harmony with different cultures, different people, and see the best in everyone. So that to me is the second part of finding your own power. And the third piece which I spoke about, of the third, I'd say introspection you have to go deep inside and understand your own confidence, your courage. We talk in the business terms and spiritual terms. We speak of being inner directed and other directed. If your entire day is about, he said that, she said that, I'm good. Because you said that if you start to focus very much on what other people are saying, you will be, as a major spiritual master calls it, a football of everyone's opinions. And you will never gain power that way. So you need time to introspect. In fact, if you ask me, what is the greatest advice I would give young people now is reading, writing, arithmetic is incredible. We learn to manage all these academic skills, but you have to find a way to get inside yourself and take the time to understand what makes you angry, what makes you happy, what makes you sad. That's when you'll be able to create success for yourself. It's not how much money you make or whatever. It's when you feel happiness and peace inside. So to me, the three I's is one way I think about it, but there are many ways I think about this question. So when I think of finding one's own power, sometimes I think in terms of a framework of the three I's. And the three I's, in my simplified way of alliteration, is immersion, inclusion, and introspection.

A point of clarification. Earlier you said, quote, I am perfection. Could you explain exactly what you mean by that?

This is a really important point. I spent a lifetime thinking that I wasn't good enough, that I'm a perfectionist, that I need to do better. Being a perfectionist was something I wore. It was like a badge of honor. And what that did for me is create a lot of stress because you're always found wanting. You're not compassionate to yourself because you are always saying to yourself, I'm just not good enough. I could have done that better. Oh, goodness, I wish I had not done this, or wish they had done this differently. I wish everything was what was not. And by the way, if one were to look at it that way, you could spend a whole lifetime looking at what is not. You can look today and say what is not. Or we could look yesterday and say what was not. And then we can start to worry about tomorrow and say what could not be not. So that was what my frame of reference was. Perfectionist. I need to get somewhere now. The big change that I've gone through in the last few years is I went from saying, I'm a perfectionist who's trying to get someplace to this whole framework which says I am perfection at this moment. What does that mean to me? It means that whatever is happening now, as long as I do my very best, and that I will try to do as much as I can, and that I have to believe that everybody is doing their best. And the moment that's come together at this moment, at point, this. This point is a perfect moment. It's meant to be. And that's taken out away 80% of my stress because I'm no longer trying to change something, get somewhere, go somewhere, critique something. Yeah, there's always things that can be better. But right now, this is a perfect moment. Like, this moment is perfection. I'm talking to an incredibly interesting person and we are having a great conversation. And this, to me, is perfection. There's probably lines I could say differently. There's probably things we could all if we wanted to go into that space, but that's not the space I'm in. I just appreciate this moment of perfection.

All I can say is hear, hear. To appreciating every moment of perfection. This was Chandrika Tandon. What a great episode. I guarantee you it will help you be remarkable and make a difference in the world. Speaking of, Madison and I have published a book. It's called Think Remarkable. I hope you'll check it out. It reflects the wisdom and insights of 200 guests, plus 40 years of working in tech. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. My thanks to Chandrika Tandon for appearing here and also the Remarkable People team. That would be Jeff C. And Shannon Hernandez, design engineers Supreme, Madison Knysmer, the Drop In Queen, and producer and co author Tessa Knysmer, who prepares me for these interviews and monitors the quality of our transcripts. And then there's Louise Magana, Alexis Nishimura and Fallon Yates. This is the Remarkable People team. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. This is remarkable people.