Part 2 - How This Bollywood Dancer Turned To A Successful Entrepreneur

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I don't know what the culture is in India, but did you have problems growing up trying to make your way in the world? And did you find the world confusing or tough or perplexing or getting along with, you know, you know, did you have a sports or you have things where you could throw your energy into and establish yourself, or was it just.

School work or what?

No, not at all. So I am a competitive Bollywood dancer, so I think dance was like the one big thing where all of my energy was channeled, and it was what I did after school, and it was like my passion and it was something I love to do. But while in school, I was definitely more belligerent. I think I never understood why people studied so much to come first in class, because I never saw what would happen once you came first. So I was someone who was like top 10, 15. I just did not understand why I should study more to come first, because that person who got first didn't get anything else that I didn't get at 10th, you know?

Yeah, that's funny, because I grew up a competitive Bollywood dancer myself.

Oh, my God. Right there. Can you tell me a little bit more?

I didn't. I didn't sell that very well, did I? Okay, you didn't believe that for a microsecond. Okay. All right, now, when you decided to go to school, you know, after, you know, college and university, what were you looking for?

Right. So as an Asian kid, I was told I have to go to college. And when I went to college, I just thought I was going to college, period. And it is wild to me that at that point I had no articulation of what exactly I needed from college, because now in life, I reflect a lot. But back then, it just felt like one of those paths I had to go through. And actually, my mom is a housewife. Coming from a small town in India, successful women were mostly housewives. I didn't even know I could do anything else but be a housewife. So I was going to college in Columbia, New York, and I just thought, awesome, I'm going to college and I'll probably just go back to India and be a housewife.

Yeah, but you didn't.

Yes.

And so talk about how what you did before Shark Tank, where you got your experience and your, you know, your. Your in your education.

So I went to Columbia University in New York. I studied computer science, artificial intelligence. And this was from 2009 to 2013. The moment I started studying, I mean, like the moment I hit New York, I just got exposed to a whole new environment. And that was the first time I realized, oh my gosh, people can do anything. There are so many things out there that I can do. And through my college I realized, oh, my friends are applying for internships. Let me do, let me do the same. I realized trading is really exciting. So I then found my way into finance on a trading floor because I thought it was loud, brash, really fun and I wanted to do it.

Yeah. And do you have a knack for that?

Yeah. So I, I think in trading what I realized, a lot of my personality, it just complemented it. Like I found a niche that just fit. Like they were appreciative of people that were aggressive or loud or like actually very data oriented or quick with numbers. And I found myself at home and yeah, so I got a job in New York. I realized it was the best thing, super exciting. I, as someone starting out in finance, imagine like you don't even know what these numbers mean. Like for me, I was running risk for 500 million. What does that mean to like a 22 year old? I don't know. It was really fun. And I think one day I could be up a million or down a million. And I think I could have a thesis and I could say, I believe this will work because of this reason and because of that, let me buy or sell something in my portfolio. And that was very liberating because I loved having conviction and I think it was like the first job that allowed you to do that on some massive scale. Yeah, yeah.

Now let's go back to Columbia. It's, you know, a tough school and lots of personalities, lots of socially maladjusted professors and a lot of professors just working out their time with tenure until they can retire and not excited about teaching. And that's true of every college. And so when you go, you know, you run into with this enthusiasm and this naive attitude about life is exciting and everything. What was the worst things that happened to you while at Columbia?

So I thought, I think number one, which is very, I should have almost foreseen this was like, things got really hard really quickly. Like I used to think of myself as intelligent person. And then sophomore year happened and I just realized I was an idiot. Like there was no, like the coursework of computer science and artificial intelligence. Like it Just stopped making sense. And I think I remember getting to senior year thinking, can I fail a course and then still graduate? Because this is getting pretty damn hard. So I think that was like an eye opener, that not everything is easy. Like, you really have to work for it. And I sort of did. Sort of didn't in some of the courses, but it got really tough. Like, it was hard.

Yeah. And so. So talk about that.

So, for example, like, in my senior year, there was this, like, course on natural language processing and artificial intelligence. And back then it wasn't as sexy. So back then, imagine, like, my professor had this whole course, and then they told us, 50% of your grade is your, like, this programming assignment. And in that assignment, you have to, like, at some point while coding, the program had to learn itself and, like, solve this chess and win at it. And honestly, I got to, like, 50% of it. And I was like, I think that's all I can do. I don't understand how the program will learn by itself. And I think I kind of sat there thinking, maybe I'll just get 50%. And I did, and I passed that class. But I still do not know what was taught in that course till date. Because it was tough. It was really tough.

Yeah. And so what, you know, socially, was it a tough adjustment, the New York lifestyle and, you know, things that were expected?

I wouldn't say tough, but I will say the social norms were completely different. And although originally I was completely unaware, I think I just. I spent a lot of my college in a bubble. Like, I. I just did things that I wanted to. But then I think when it came to, let's say, socially, I don't know, actually, Larry, I'm saying that, and I'm like, no, I don't know. I think it was okay. I just thought everything was exciting. I was. I had my peers. And I think I do know when I graduated, I found myself surrounded by a lot more brown people. And I just thought, wow, where did my diversity go? And I think somehow maybe because I did a lot of Bollywood dancing and a lot of Asian Bollywood dancing, my circle just became a lot more people that looked like me. But I think overall, I don't remember having any social anxiety or social. Yeah.

So you went into the trading.

Yeah.

And you were there for what, six years? Something like that.

So I got a job. I then got deported to London. And I would have been deported as an immigrant visa is always an issue. So they gave me the option to move to London. I said yes, and I did that career for around six and a half years.

Yeah. Now, why are you not doing it still? Why was that not good enough for you? Because people spend their entire life doing trading.

Yep. Good question. When I joined it, I loved it. And for me, at that point, success meant earning money directly proportional. And I thought, amazing, I'm going to earn a lot of it. And after four years, when things started to look really good and my paycheck got pretty big, I started to realize there was something very uni dimensional. Like I went into work every day and the whole purpose was to make money and there was nothing else that I was achieving in, in and around that equation. And I think at that point I started to question. I actually watched the show on Netflix called the Queen of Catway, where this black African kids, they have, they play chess and, and they have ambition to, like, take over the world. And I started crying. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I have no ambition anymore. And I think I just wanted to do something that had bigger purpose. I wanted to build something that had more lasting meaning than just make money every single day, because that's what my job asked me to do.

Well, I guess that ruled out you starting your own hedge fund.

That would be very hypocritical, wouldn't it?

I don't know. I don't know. I won't say that. But now when you, how long did it take you to go from that point to where you had this idea about the chefs? I mean, have you, have you been. Do you have dinner party? Have you grown up having dinner parties and working with private chefs and things like that? How long did it, how many ideas did you go through?

So I used to have a notepad of like, hundred plus ideas where anytime I'll see a problem around me, I'll think, ah, that could be a good idea.

Talk about that. How did you start doing that and when did you start doing that?

I started doing that sort of like four years into trading. I thought, okay, if I want to make a ch. Like, if I want to really build a company, I need to have an idea. And ideas are not going to grow out of anywhere. So instead of just committing all the way, let me just go through life every single day and look and observe. And if I feel something's broken, it's going to go into this, like, notepad of ideas. And by the way, there were a lot of terrible ideas that went in there. For example, once I was. I was stood at this airport and it had like, the most terrible layout where the baggage could claim Was completely different to where I entered. And I wrote in my note pack of ideas, I said, airport should be made more efficient so people can get through checkout faster.

Yeah.

And that's a terrible idea, like in my mind, but I still wrote it because I was trying to build the muscle of observing when things were wrong or could be made better.

Yeah. Now who did you come up with that idea to start making that list? Or did you see it on Netflix?

I mean, everything is a borrowed idea. And to be honest, right now it feels like it was my own idea. But who knows, Maybe I stole it from somewhere.

We're going to give you credit for that.

Okay, great.

But how long did it take you to get up to where you had a hundred ideas? How long did it take you to where the chef idea did that immediately identify? We've got a winner here.

No, not at all. So I have this sort of list of ideas. I probably chilled on this list for like six months, a year. I did it passively on the side.

Did you show it to other people?

No. I was so embarrassed. I just thought like, I don't know, like, you know, it's like so embarrassing that I'm coming up with these stupid little ideas. Of course not. No one ever saw it.

Wow. And so how did it, how did it work? How did you turn it into where the chef, private chef came out the top?

So at some point I went through this exercise of, okay, let me look through these ideas and start ranking them on some sort of scale, like effort it will take how good they could be, how big they could be. Is it actually a pain point or is this made up? How easy would it be to test?

And now you thought of this, you thought of this. Thank you system. This definitely now, now this is a little too sophisticated. You had to steal this idea from somebody.

I did steal it from somewhere. So I actually went through like, it was like some accelerator for like how, how you can create a startup. And they came up with like a very basic ranking system. And I was like, well, that's better than nothing. And I stole it. It was great. Yeah, yeah. And in that ranking system, the chefs came to the top. And the reason was I want like out of all these other ideas where the market, scope, et cetera wasn't great. This was a personal problem because I did grow up in India with chefs and cooks. It's very normal when you grow up in an Asian country, you have home cooked food. But then when you go to developing countries, suddenly it's just restaurants or takeaway or you have to cook yourself. And I knew firsthand that hospitality sector is actually one of the lowest paid professions in uk. So it just kind of didn't make sense that I can't have home cooked food because all these people, people think everyone's Gordon Ramsay and a private chef just costs like so much money. But I knew for a fact that wasn't true. So A, there was a gap, but B, I knew firsthand that stuff like this works and like, you know, people have people over. It's amazing to just have home cooked food. So I think I had this like, special unique insight and it won on a bunch of other Matrix planes. So it was like top of my list.

Yeah, I, I had a friend of mine, he bought, he built this huge, monstrous house in Florida and then he thought, okay, now I'll take the next. The great kitchen. I'll take the next step. I'll get my own private chef. And then after he gained 30 pounds the first month, he had to fire the chef.

Oh my God, that's amazing.

So it's better to bring in the chef periodically rather than have your own permanent private chef.

I would imagine I should hire you as our salesperson. Love it. That's a great angle to it.

Thank you for listening to part two of this episode of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast.

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