Parenting Secrets From A Billionaire: How To Raise Successful Kids feat. Naveen Jain

Running a company is no different than a family. And many of you as an entrepreneur, always wonder, how do you balance between the family life and a work life? Right? And to me, anyone who asks that has fundamentally determined the family life and the work life are mutually exclusive, and they can't stay together. And that's the only reason you try to find a balance. The things that can't come together. And what I find is having done so many companies is life, personal life and work life is a continuum. In that continuum, there is some days there are more of one, and there are other days more of others. But there is no balance. There is never a balance.

A man who needs no introduction. Give it up for Naveen J. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

So what I'd love to do is have you maybe define how you think about scaling a business, and then let's take Q and A for maybe just three people or something.

Whatever you decide, this is your time. So let me just give you a simple 21 minutes. Oh, somebody's.

No, no, no.

We're gonna. Can you set the timer for somebody's 20 minutes over? That's all I know.

Yeah, it's Jason's fault. Let's do it at 15. We'll do 15.

Okay. So first of all, I'm just gonna give you some ideas about when you start a business. What. What are the things you should be thinking about? And as I spent the last day here talking to many of you, what I realized is that so many of us focus on what to say. And thing that I realized over the time I'm older than most of you here, is that people will forget what you tell them. They will never forget how you made them feel. Right? So don't focus on what you say. Just remember how you're making them feel. It doesn't matter. You give them a metal business card. It doesn't matter. You give them a plastic business card. What they're gonna remember is when they met, how they felt. If they think you're an asshole, that's the only thing. And the people will ask them, what did he say? I can't remember what he said, but I didn't like the guy or I love the guy. And you ask them, what did he say? I can't remember, but I love the guy. So focus on how you make people feel, not what you're saying. And second thing is, I was talking about parenting. And to me, running a company is no different than a family. And many of you as an entrepreneur, always wonder, how do you balance between the family life and a work life. And to me, anyone who asks that has fundamentally determined that the family life and the work life are mutually exclusive and they can't stay together. And that's the only reason you try to find a balance. The things that can't come together. And what I find is having done so many companies is life, personal life and work life is a continuum. In that continuum, there is some days there are more of one and there are other days more of others. But there is no balance. There is never a balance. The thing that I do with my children, which I thought was just amazing, is that there's never a time it doesn't matter what I am doing, when they call, that call will be answered, period. I don't care who I am talking to, I don't care who I'm meeting. There is no one who is that important that I won't talk to them. And here's the reason what happens. I remember a public company, I was speaking at a Goldman Sachs Investor Conference. 5000 Portfolio Manager. There must be a trillion dollars of money management in the. My son called and I said, excuse me, I'm speaking at that time. And I said, I gotta take this call. I promised my son I'm gonna take the call. And I took that call. Amazing thing happened. The stock went up by $4 billion that day because people remembered the guy who makes a promise, he keeps the promise. I didn't say just this time I'm in front of people, I'm not gonna take that call. And that is an amazing power of keeping that. So when you say this is a family, it doesn't matter if I'm sleeping. Someone from the office calls, that call will be taken because they are a family. Raising the children in a fluent family is an amazing trick. How do you do that? Separating between you love them and you approve of them. So one thing I told our children was my love for you is unconditional. But my approval is not right. You never have to worry do I love you. But I will only tell you when you do something that aligns with our value system. I'm proud of you. I am proud of you. Is something you have to earn. I love you, you never have to earn. And that's just that slight difference is same thing you apply in the company. You never have to worry about do I care about you as an employee? Of course I do. But when you do things that align with the value of the company, I walk up to you and say, I am so proud of what you did. Whether it's a customer, whether it's a product or anything, you tell them I'm proud of you. Then they go out and do things to make you proud of them. When you're raising your children, that's all you have to do is the children. Just like employees, when you tell them something, the first thing they say is whatever, right? They don't care what you have to say. But interesting thing is they spend all their life doing things you told them what will make you proud of them. I remember my young man, he was 10 years old and I just on the top of the world. He born in 90. So it's year 2000. The company is absolutely top of the world. One day I've just finished a CNBC interview, I come home and he tells me, dad, I'm going to make more money than you did. I could have put my arm around him and say good luck son. But that would have been the wrong lesson because that's what he would have done rest of his life chasing that goal. I sat him down and I said, uncle, I'm surprised you think of the success in this way. I had a misfortune of not starting until I was mid-30s. Your success will be dependent on how many lives have you improved and I hope you'll be more successful than I am because I started so late and he said whatever dad. And interestingly now I can tell you that he was 10 years old, 17 year old, he's at Wharton and he calls me dad. I have an idea. What would you like to do?

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I want to start an entrepreneur network because I see so many wonderful smart children. They all grew up in middle class families. They don't have the mentor network that you gave me. I'm going to start something that's going to bring them the same mentor network that you created for me to create that mentor network for them. And that's how I'm going to impact the lives of millions of people around the world. When he said whatever, in his mind he knew what dad wanted and the first chance he got was he did that. Today that entity when he started a 17 year old is called Kairos Society. Is world's largest college entrepreneurship thing. When he hosts the event, Richard Branson, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and the CEO Viacom, the CEO Rupert Murdoch, Everybody comes there because Ankur invited them to come and help these college entrepreneurs. Guess what happened along the lines he built. Even though he did it for the good of every college entrepreneur, he had the best network anyone could have created. So when you google him, he'll say, 21 year old, the most connected human being. Because everybody, every CEO knew he was doing it for the right reasons. He was there not to ask anything for himself. He was saying, would you do this for these young kids who need help? And I still remember one of the other things that I did is I took our children to every company meeting, every board meeting, every analyst meeting. I wanted him to feel what it feels to be running a business. And when he came to these meetings at dinner, I don't care who was having dinner with me. If my son could come, he's coming. And if somebody has an objection to it, I. I walk away from the dinner, he's with me, and if you don't like it, you don't have to have dinner with me. It didn't matter. That was what I was gonna do. So I wanted to expose him to everything. Interesting thing is, other example, I was gonna give you that. And I don't know why I'm talking about parenting, but that's what it is. Joe told me to talk about it, so I'm gonna talk about things I care about, right? So, interesting thing is, I remember my daughter was 16 year old, and I can tell you this is really something most of you probably had. She came and said, dad, I found my true passion. That is what I want to pursue. I know you love science and technology. I want nothing to do with it, so just get used to it. I could have said, oh my God, I'm so glad you found your passion. I'm going to find the world's best at it and I'm going to help you get there. That would have been the same thing as my saying, I don't give a flying shit. Just do whatever you want. Because same thing. You know what I told her? I said, I call her my sweet doll. I said, doll, you got to let the dad do his job. What's dad's job? Dad's job is really simple. Let me expose you to enough things so you know what you don't know? How can you have a passion? You are just so young. Because I haven't even given you the tools that you need yet? What would you like me to do? I said, I'm glad you asked. I want you to go to Singularity University. I want you to learn about nanotechnology, neuroscience, genetics and artificial intelligence. And she rolled her eyes and she said, dad, I knew you don't hear a word I say. Did I just not tell you I have nothing to do with science and technology? And I said, I heard you loud and clear. So here's what we should do. If you promise me you're going to go there with an open mind, wanting to like and wanting to learn. And if you give me that promise, you will do that, you come back and you can do whatever you want and I promise you I'll support you. And she said, you know dad, if you promise me that I will go there. She goes there and she comes back and she opens the door. And by the way, I wrote about this thing in an Inc. Magazine article called An Entrepreneur versus His Eye Rolling Teenage Daughter. And I think if any one of you have a daughter, something or kid, you should sit down and read that article with them. I'm just going to give you the punchline here. She comes down, she comes home and says, dad, I did my part. Now I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. And my first words were, oh shit. I said, all right darl, since I gave you the promise, tell me, what would you like me to do? He said, dad, I've decided I'm going to be a neuroscientist or genetist. I took a deep breath and I said, at the risk of you changing your mind, would you tell me exactly what happened? He said, dad, you're just so dumb. He says, I am in high school I go to these science classes, I mix these things, something happens, I go to these figures classes. I'm thinking, why do I care? It just does not interest me. When I went to Singularity University, I realized something. The science and technology is not the destination. It's simply the tools for me to do what I care to do. You know, I care about girls education. I, you know, I care about girls health. How am I going to improve the girl's education if I don't even know how the brain works? How am I going to take care of their health if I don't even know how their body works? And that's the reason I'm going to go learn that, so I can empower women. And by the way, interesting thing is she graduated from Stanford. Stanford Stamp Fellow, Stanford Mayfield Fellow, Board of Stanford Women in Business, Youth ambassador for UN and what is she doing now? Women empowerment. She works for. She started artificial intelligence company to remove the gender bias. They worked with Unilever and when they did that, 300% more women were hired because they removed the gender bias completely. Right. Point was she, if I had let her decide when she was 16 year old what her passion was, we have no idea. She would have lost out on our true calling and world would have lost out on a great human being. So my point is don't do simply out of love because you say, oh she has a passion, let her pursue the passion. Your job is to expose them to enough things before they find their passion. But if not, you are actually doing them a disservice. So Now I have 3 minutes and 32 seconds left here. So if, do you have any questions, keep talking. Okay. So anyway, so point I was trying to make is that what you, you know, doing things out of love sometimes requires you to make tough decisions, right? And unless you are willing to make those tough decisions, whether as a CEO, whether as a leader or as a father, you are to some extent are not being true to yourself and you're taking an easy way out. Being a parent is the tough things to do because the children don't come with the manual that says here is the owner's manual, read it and we'll figure it out, right? Every day you are learning, every day you're trying to figure out are you doing the right thing. Because you, every one of us, if you asked me yesterday, I asked you what are you willing to die for? Every one of us would say our children, not our spouse, not our parents, our children is something we're willing to die for. And I can tell you that many of the people in this room are the last thing they do is think about their children, right? They become the least important while you're living and that is something you're willing to die for. Think for a second before you do things and you say I'm not going to take a call from my children or I'm not going to take them to the meeting because it's so important they that my business partner may not like it or my client may not like it, how your children are going to be exposed to them. So the fact is, I started taking my oldest son to the company in the analyst meeting and some of the toughest meeting, I swear I knew they were going to be the toughest meeting I'm going to have. I took him there and he was sitting on the sofa. And there was this guy and I knew the guy says, I want you to pay us 100k per month. I was paying them about 10k. Why? Is there something extra you're going to deliver? You're making so much money, I just want to take more. And I'm just. I say, if you're not delivering any value, how can I pay you more? That's what we want. And now my son is sitting there and watching me. How am I going to react? And I'm angry and I'm frustrated. And the only thing I say to Guy was, you're too close to the window. If I were you, I would not be that close to the window. Because I have my feeling is I'm going to take you, grab you right now, I'm gonna throw you out of the window. And my son is like, oh my God, my dad has lost it. But I wanted him to see the dad is not perfect. Every time that after that I sat this guy down and we figured out what was troubling him. What was troubling him was he says, you are creating all the value for all the tools that I created, right? So think about a webinar. Guy is thinking, I'm charging you 997, you're making $100 million. I just want more. Right? Point was that was a meeting I wanted him to see. An interesting thing happened as he saw me operate. He started to get so comfortable with every situation. It didn't matter who he wanted. He was able to talk to them, he was able to call. I did not give him everything he wanted. I remember he wanted a pair of shoes that was, you know, that gravity shoes. So he thought he could jump. I could have told him, the brown guys don't jump, but that's. But nonetheless he said, dad, I want these shoes. These shoes are $100. I'm not buying them for you. You know what he did? He called the CEO, he says, sir, I'm going to start a website here that's going to be giving the things for teenager what they should be using. And I'm happy to feature you, but I can't feature anything unless I've used them myself. Would you send them a top of the line pair from me? Guess what happened? My point was that's how we expose them to start getting comfortable talking to adults. I remember the CEO of one of the large company, we had done a deal with them and my son started a website that as I was mentioning and he said, dad, you have this great deal I think I should have the same deal. I said, go make a call. You can always make a call saying that you are my son, but the rest is yours. So one of the other interesting thing that I find is that I was talking to some young people and I just want to say it, and then I'm going to just, uh. Oh, time is over, Joe. Should I stop here, Joe?

Well, yeah, you should probably complete your thought.

Okay. And then.

And then if we could do the question for him real quick, that would be great. Okay.

See, I knew there's no way halfway through he's gonna let me stop. Or you won't let him stop. That's the point. I lost my chain of thought. What would I say? Oh, yes, yes, yes. So one of the interesting thing is. Thank you for reminding me. That's good. So a lot of the people are, to some extent, they have their parents who have actually become successful entrepreneur. And the kids growing up and saying, I am growing up in the shadow of my parents and it gets so hard for them to come out of the shell. And I'm just going to give you one quick example. I was with Andy Aldrin, who is the son of Buzz Aldrin. And I'm going to. And so I was interviewing him, he worked for me at the space company. And he says, I asked him and I said, you know, what's one thing you hate most about anything you see in life? And he said, I just hate being son of Buzz Aldrin. And I said, why is that? He said, I am in the space industry. It doesn't matter what I do. People think it's because of my dad. And I just hate that fact. So I took a second, I said, you know what, instead of that, what if you embraced your dad? And you said, dad, I'm just so proud of you. And when someone says to you that your Buddha's son, he said, oh, yes, I am Buzz's son. And every door in this industry gets open for me. But what I do after that, once the door is open, is Andy Aldrin is what opens the door for me. Andy can show you what he can do for you. And that's interesting thing is my son, first time when he launched the thing, he is now, I think it's Wall Street Journal, they wrote a great article about him. And in that article, there was a paragraph, he, he's a son of a successful entrepreneur and he calls me dad. It's all me. Why do they have to mention you? To just take away from what I have Done. And that is exactly the question he asked me. And I said, you know, uncle, remember, I grew up with nothing. I came from the floor. I worked hard, and I'm right now at that level. If I allow, and irrespective of what you may think, that platform I gave you is what made you who you are. Don't go down. I don't want you to go down. All the way to the floor, and you're twice as good. Maybe you rise here. Embrace it. Take that as a platform and go and shoot for the moon. Don't be afraid. I'll always be your dad. And everyone knows, so you should be telling everyone. And, you know, amazing thing happened. Now when I am in, I would say probably 80% of the event, they call me. I am Ankur's dad. I'm not even kidding you. I was the Bill Clinton chief of staff. And I'm meeting the people that he introduces me to, and everyone says, oh, your son, you know, you must be Angkor's dad. He's just so amazing, right? So now I am known as Ankur's dad. He's no longer my son. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay.

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