EVERYTHING You've Been Taught About Achieving Success IS WRONG! | Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

There are a thousand choices between you and success. And I cannot promise you that the success you'll get at the end is the one you originally thought it may or may not be. But I can tell you that if you keep aiming for impact in every single choice, cumulatively, you will have an outsized career.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The school of greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howitzer.

What would make this the most powerful interview you've ever done?

That's a really hard question. I'm thinking about the answer. And very rarely do I say, don't have an answer. I could say candor. We're gonna have candor. I could say engagement. We're gonna have engagement. I'm trying to think about what message maybe the most powerful thing would be. Like, the whole reason I wrote the book is not for money. Right. It's to land the idea that people have just a total misconception about how risk and reward work. So maybe if you and I landed an interview that sort of brings that home, that kind of singular message, and people take it, maybe. I don't know. It's a really high bar. What would make it, what, like, you've done 1100 plus interviews. What would make this a home run for you? Let's ask.

It's probably the same challenge that we go deep on things that maybe we wouldn't necessarily go deep on, that we get vulnerable, that we reveal things, both of us, that connect to people's hearts, that would get out of our heads.

Awesome.

And tap into the soul.

Okay. If you want to tap into the soul, you have to ask me about my father.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

If you want to go, like, straight.

Back, I'm watching stuff about your dad. Yeah, yeah.

Because I think, like, the book is a business book that has an undercurrent of how I was raised. But if you flipped it, I would say, like, Sea of the Soul is more my book than I just had.

Gary or Gary.

Gary Zuka by now. So if you think about the messages in Sea of the Soul, I remember I went to an event that Sheryl Sandberg hosted with Oprah at her house back in the Valley. Winter. She used to do these events that were like 25 women. And Oprah came, and Oprah was talking about Gary Zukob's book, and that was the first time I heard of it. You know, she was. And so I read See the Soul, and I just remember reading it. I was like, wow. Like, this book, this is, like, the way I was. Right. So if you, like, so if you want to talk about soulful stuff, like, that's the stuff I talk about with my coach and my.

That's what's gonna move my audience. The analytical, heady stuff. They're gonna be. They don't come.

Then let's talk about the soulful stuff, like how you live your life, because I am totally down for that conversation. So if you said, like, what's the deepest we can get? The deepest we can get is like, why are we all here? What are the experiences you have that convince you that there's something more? Like. And for me, just to be clear. And now you're getting me Terri. I fundamentally believe that the reason I'm on the way I'm gonna express all my gifts or impact on the world is through business. 100%. Yeah, 100%. And my father definitely saw that in me. He was like, that will be the way. And he was the most religious, spiritual person I knew. No. And also impactful and also the most entrepreneurial. So, like, I just look at it. I'm like, yeah, yeah. That's the standard. So if you read my book, you'd be like, I don't.

I don't.

Like, oh, my. You know, my. My hero is Richard Branson. Or like, of course. Like, of course I admire all these, you know, But I'm like, no, here's my dad. Like, his life and his purpose and his vocation and his impact were all the exact same thing.

Wow.

Right? Completely integrated.

That's cool.

Aligned, aligned. Completely integrated and aligned.

That's cool.

Yeah. Which is not a conversation I have with most people. I have it with my coach. I have it with my priest. I have it with my mom. My mom read the book, and she said because I hadn't told her I wrote the book, I was like, you know what? I need to tell her. And then she was like, what are you so busy with? I said, mom, I'm writing a book. I wrote a book, and I want to give it to her for Mother's Day. So I gave it to her, and. And she called me yesterday, and she's like, I finished the book. I was like, great. What do you think? And then she started sobbing, and she said, I read the acknowledgments. I'm like, well, I'm like, hopefully you feel acknowledged. And she said, but I also read the last chapter in the book, which is all about your father. And she just was, like, bawling her eyes out. And she's like, you never talk about this stuff. But she's Like, I read it, and I think, like, sorry, you can get me teary. I read it. I think, like, you must think about him all the time. I'm like, all the time.

Wow.

And she said. And she said. She said. And then she was crying. She's like, you know, he was love my life. I told you. He was a special person. And the whole world saw him as a special person. I was like, yeah, of course. I'm like, that last chapter is exactly what I believe. And I think about my dad all the time. And she said. And she said, like, she's just like. And she's like, like, it was beautiful. She's like. But I. It just made me remember how much I miss him. And sorry. Anyway, so, like, you want to get deep. That'll be deep.

When you think about your dad, what do you think about?

I think about the integration as we talked about. I think about. And I write about it in the book. I think about the fact that, like, most people move through this world, including all the people you and I know, and they really think that power is to be harnessed, right? Like, powers to be harnessed. And my dad. My dad, like, he just gave. Like, I was. I called the concept in the book power flow. Most people, like, dream of being powerful. I'm like, my father was the most powerful person I know. Most. But it's because he had power flow. He was like this abundant source of energy, right? So you bring it, like, he could just give energy away to people. You know what I mean? He never said I ever. Like, I say I all the time. He just never said I.

What did he say?

He would just be like, well, what do you want? I just don't know how to describe it. He talked about, like, he just helped people connect with their purpose, and he made them feel really good. You know those people who are like, when you're with them, they're so present that they make you feel like their time with you is like a gift to you. So my father was that person, right? Conversation. And there was nobody who didn't leave a conversation with him. Just totally energized, like, 100%. Nobody would feel bad about themselves. They were slept. People say to me, like, oh, my God, you, like, have so much energy, make me feel anxious or nervous or like, whatever. Like, my dad just made everybody feel more full of themselves, right? That was his gift. And so I call that power flow. Once you understand that, like, you, like, energy that you have is to be given away because, you know, it's a Pretty abundant. If you can generate it for yourself, you. You can just keep giving energy to other people. Right. So that was his gift.

Power flow.

I call it power flow, not powerful.

Interesting.

Yeah. I'm like, so why are you so, like, why you all want to harness power? Like, people think you're powerful. I'm like, people would say my dad was the most powerful person they knew. He could give a. About, like, holding power. I don't even think he would think about it that way. Just be like, you know, just like, keep flowing from him. And the more they flow from him, the more that would. Yeah, a mask to him. Right. But he didn't care about being powerful. I'm just saying that was his impact. Right. If you could make other people impactful, like, think about that gift.

What was the. Or the three biggest lessons he taught you growing up?

Possibilities and small acts as well as big acts.

Possibilities in small acts as well as.

Big acts, we tend to think of, like, risk taking. And possibility is like, if you don't. Can't do something big, don't do it at all. Right. But what if possibility is like, you know, and I, for sure, he was an entrepreneur, so I think that he would say possibilities in little acts. Like, it might be in doing your taxes. It might be in, you know, trying to come up with a creative name for your medical practice, which he did. It might be like, helping your daughter build, like, you know, a working model of the human eye in the second grade, which he did with me. So I just felt like he was always striving for possibility in little and big things. So, like, possibility had all these dimensions, little and big. Little big. Little big.

Yeah.

As opposed to, like, waiting for one big act. Right. That was one big. A big lesson. Yeah, one big lesson, like, number two, probably, that we're all meant to express some sort of like. Like, you're here to give purpose and.

Service to other people.

Right. So he would never say, like, what does that need to be? You know, he just, like, exemplified it. I don't know how to.

It's his way of being.

It's his way of being.

Like, when somebody didn't say, he just wasn't.

Yeah, he just wasn't. Like, you know, there's, like, conversations about these things. Right. It's just like, you see this living embodiment of it. So I'd say that his second lesson was probably about just like, you're here to be of service and to have impact. Right. So I think that's probably second lesson, maybe the third. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe the third is something much more simple. I mean, my parents just told me, though, like, you think if you think it's all about you, you're totally mistaken. Like, you know, it's not, like, quite destiny, but, like, you know, you live in a universe that's far more powerful than you. And, like, you think you're in control of everything, you're in control of nothing. So. And it's weird, right, because you can say, how can you live with somebody who says, well, like, the whole universe is moving around you. If you think it's all about you, you're wildly mistaken. So my dad had this way of understanding that, like, we're small in a very big universe, yet still making you feel empowered. Right? So that's an interesting lesson.

You're insignificant, but you're significant.

Yes. You're insignificant, but everything is possible. You understand? Like, and so I understand both those things. I'm like. I can both say, like, hey, I feel completely empowered. Yet I realize, like, if I think this act is all about me, like, that's a totally ridiculous.

Right.

That's why I feel like. I mean, I love leaders like that. Right? They're very confident and yet they're very humble.

Yes.

Because I look. And my father was that, like, he was like, like the most confident, like, grounded in himself person I could ever imagine. He had complete humility because he's just like, yeah, I. Like, I'm a speck on the back of a universe for a period of time. Yet while you're here, do something useful. So both can be true, right? You can both be insignificant. Yet while you're here, you're meant to do something totally, totally significant.

Is there a conversation that you really repeat in your mind over and over that he either shared with you, whether it was an intentional conversation or something he said, you know, off the cuff, that really resonates and sticks with you still.

No, it's interesting. I honestly can say it's not a single conversation because, like I said, there were no lectures at our table. You know, it wasn't my doubts, like, you must do this or whatever. Like, he would say it constantly. And I think. I think I'm very guilty of this. So he would literally say, like, why you ever be in sentences with it? Like, I. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he wouldn't say that. He wasn't scolding me. He was just like, this just reminder that, like, I do it all the time. We do it. Like, I am so. You know what I mean? But he was like, he just kind of had the absence of ego. So, no, I. Honestly, there was no big talk conversation. There was just no, like, seminal moment where he sat me down and told me these things. It was just like. It's just like. Just watching him be. But, like, there's a story in the book that I tell that is very emblematic of my father. This is what I mean when I say small acts of possibility for other people. Right. So my dad was a doctor. He loved being a doctor.

What type of doctor?

He was a general practitioner, but he also loved being an entrepreneur. Like, he loved both. And we had. And he grew up in Africa and immigrated to Canada late in his life. And so one of his dear friends passed away, but his son was, like, my age, like a teenager, and came to stay with us for, like, one summer. He lived in England and came to stay with us. So we get, you know, family, friends, son comes to stay with us, we become close to him, this kid Bobby. And Bobby went on and became a surgeon.

Your dad's son or your dad's friend's son?

My dad's friend's son.

Gotcha.

Just friend of family, you know. So I got to know Bobby and my dad's funeral. You can probably tell. My dad was pretty religious. So our. The church we follow, believe it or not, is in England. So multiple times a year, we would go to England.

Really?

Yeah. And literally live in the church and do service, like, twice. Twice a year. So, like, when other people went to Disneyland, I mean, like, literally Christmas vacation a week and summer, we would go to England. England, live at this church. Because my dad was, like, not atheist, but agnostic. But then he had this, like, spiritual awakening in his early 40s.

So he didn't follow a specific religion, but he followed no or Sikh.

He followed. He was curious about all religions and believed generally in God. But, like, I mean, this is why, like, getting way deep here. So maybe.

Want to tell me this is fascinating. So he was interested in all religions.

Interested in all religions, but Sikh, like, you know, in Sikh, you know, turbans, what have you. But I think sometime in his early 40s, before I was born, met a man who he became. Became his physician, who was the head of a Sikh church. And he literally thought he met the embodiment of God. So, like, overnight, my mom says, like, he came home and he was a changed man. He stopped drinking, he stopped gambling. He became, like, he got baptized in the Sikh religion, and he began following this person before.

He wasn't Sikh, though.

He was Sikh, but he Wasn't Orthodox.

He wasn't all in.

Yeah, like, he wasn't all in.

Like, he was turban. He was cultural. He was Sikh, but, you know, like, loosely Sikh. You know, he didn't want to get baptized. It's like becoming the equivalent of, like, you're Jewish and then you're Orthodox. Right. So he was generally interested in religion and curious about the world and all those things. But then he literally met a man who changed his life, and so he became his physician. He started following him. My mom was like, overnight, he just became uninterested in all sorts of material things and became much more spiritual. Wow.

What do you think that was that he saw or that he said to himself?

He literally said he felt like. I mean, it was a saintly person. He literally said, like, I feel like I met, like, you know, met a saint. Wow. And so that sainted it, like, founded a specific ski. Sikh church. You know, there's Sikhs all over the world. And in England, he moved from Africa to England, and he has a church that has thousands of people. So my dad subscribed to that church, so we all did. We still do. And so anyway, my point overall is that you said. You said sort of. So we all subscribed to this church. Bobby's dad was, you know, at this church. So my dad literally passed away in an airport in England because he had a heart attack when our. It's okay. It's okay. It was 20 years ago when my.

20 years ago.

Yeah, he was. He, like, I said he would go to the church two times a year. Right. So even after we grew up, my.

Dad and I went to the church.

No, he was at the church. The church was. Had rented a plane at Heathrow Airport. And, like, they not rented a plane. They were all on the same plane flying to Kenya, in Africa, to do service. To do service. Like, literally, our church does service in India and Africa. So they were all flying to Africa together, and my dad and my mom were going. And I was in my 20s, and my dad was in the airport, and he had a heart attack because he was just, like, trying to get to the gate too fast at Heathrow and passed away at Heathrow and passed away, like, in the airport. Anyway. But the benefit of that whole thing is my dad was in England at the church that he loved when he passed. So we flew there for the funeral. So at his funeral, Boddy, who I saw after many years, was Saint. No, Bobby, the son. The son of a friend. The saint is like, the saint had long passed and, you know, successor saints run the. Run the church. Bobby, the son of my dad's good friend who became a surgeon who had come to visit us, right? So I knew Bobby. You know, we're in our teens. He comes, hangs out. You know, I go on and have my grown up life. Bobby is his grown up life. But my dad sees Bobby all the time because he visits England twice a year. And Bobby's at the same church, so he knows Bobby's story. Bobby goes on to medical school, becomes a surgeon, what have you. Anyway, I see Bobby at my dad's funeral. He's like, did I ever tell you the story about your dad? I was like, what story? Bobby. No, he didn't. He's like. He's like, you know, well, you remember I visited you in Canada, and then I was thinking about what to do with my career, and I was thinking about, you know, becoming a doctor and becoming a surgeon. And so I sought out your dad one year when he was, like, visiting the church in England. I was like, what do you think? And he said, you know what your dad did for me? I was like, no, what did he do? He's like, he took both my hands. He turned them up and down. He looked at me like. And he just, like, said to me with this, like, big, deep smile, he's like, bobby, these are the hands of a surgeon. Wow. You know, and like, just like me, like, a little lack, like, nothing to him. Bobby's like, I always remember it because he, like, he looked me in the eye and he gave me this big smile, and he's like, bobby. And he turned my hands up. He's like, these are the hands of a surgeon. He's like, and then I went to medical school and I became a surgeon.

And he's like.

He's like, I always remember that point with your dad.

Wow, that's beautiful.

That was my dad. So, like, you know, it's no, like, sit down. Big lecture. Like, just lots of conversations and, like, gems like this everywhere. So, like, clearly, like, something for Bobby triggered, right? He's like, oh, like, he just told me I should go become a surgeon. Or, like, he gave me a blessing or something.

Wow, that's beautiful.

Dude. What are we doing? Like, we're supposed to talk about the book.

This is the book.

It is, it is, but it is the undertone of the book. Like, this book is like, this is.

What'S made you who are business.

Yeah. But this book is the business manifestation.

Yeah. I'm fascinated by your story and obviously the story of Your father has made a massive impact on who you've become as a human being. And it seems like without his presence and his being, you wouldn't be the successful person you are. You wouldn't be the caring mother, partner, executive, all these things that's driven you here.

No. And look, I appreciate your getting to the heart of it, but the reality is, as we discussed, the reality is just that, you know, I think we can come to a place in our lives where what we do and who we are are integrated. That's sort of like. Right. That's the highest.

That's authentic power.

That's authentic power. It's what we talked about. And so when all. Whenever people ask me about these lessons, they're so intertwined.

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, I know that most people. I see a lot of people who think about, like, what I do is different from who I am, and I have a very hard time separating them the two.

Obviously, as you can tell, explain that more like, your job is not who you are.

Yes. Your job is not who you are. Right. So if you think about, like, you spend. And by the way, I'm not saying, like, have a job that leaves you with, like, no perspective on, you know, what's important in your life. Right. But I'm saying that who you are at work and how you express your gift is as important. You know, think about spending 10, 12 hours a day at something, finding a passionate work that expresses who you are. And as I keep coming back to your unique gift and strength for impact. Yeah. I think that's very purposeful. And I think a lot of people think like, oh, there's my day job and how I make money, and then there's what I care about. And I'm like, well, my example, my lifetime. Not just my dad, by the way, we give him a lot of credit. But my mom, she was a doctor as well. She didn't love entrepreneurship the way my dad did, but she loved serving people. I'm like, why can't they be integrated? Why shouldn't they be integrated?

Right.

Right. So I. Yeah. So obviously, I'm somebody who takes work too personally, while I think other people maybe have more distance from it. But I think it's all a reflection.

This is my job. And then I come home and I live my authentic life.

Yes, exactly.

But what if you could live your authentic life all the time?

All the time. And by the way, we all look.

And there's gonna be things you don't enjoy doing about your work or your job.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just like, everyone.

But if you could be yourself and use most of your gifts in that.

Role, it would be great, right? Yeah. And of course. And you know, we live in an E. And most people want to go to work and feel even more so than ever that who they are is welcome and that they are included and what their values are fit. And I want the same thing. But this is not to suggest, by the way, I live some perfectly integrated life. I'm like, this is making. You know, this has a risk of people thinking I'm really good at this. What I would say is, this is my. To your point, this is my intention, and this is my worldview. So, as I said, I'm pretty convinced that the way I'm meant to express my gifts is through business and that that's totally okay. And more than okay.

Yes. How do you express your gifts in business?

Well, I think you do it if you.

How do you personally do it?

How do I personally do it?

Like, when you're leading a company, how are you expressing your gifts?

Well, two. Two things I try and be. I try and bring three things to any situation in business. Number one, I wake up most days feeling pretty grateful for the amazingly talented people I get to work with.

Yes. Your team.

And so I guess, whatever. When I work as CEO, I think of, like, both leverage and my gift is making other people able to be even more successful and think of themselves and accelerate their journey.

Yes.

Right. So I think I have that gift because I don't think I wake up every day thinking I'm the, you know, the best person in the room. I think I wake up every day going like, wow, these are really talented people. And so what I know I can do for people is give them energy and excitement and passion and help, you know, help them maybe drive faster than they thought they could go. So I think that's one of my unique gifts.

That's great.

Number two, again, not that I think I'm so smart, but I love consuming information. You know, I like thinking fast and acting fast. And so I like to think that, you know, maybe a conversation, you know, with me is one where people learn faster and where I learn faster. Like, that's a very. So it's not just my gift. Right. It's what I enjoy. So I love interactions where you and I, like, we have this interaction, we both leave, and it's like a super rewarding interaction. Right. I consume a lot of information. I can give you insight, you can give me insight, and off we both go. And so I think I'M pretty good at consuming information and helping people give insight and gain insight by just asking lots of questions. So I think I process information. That's a gift, I think, but it's a gift to be used, right. To help accelerate outcomes for people and for businesses. Those are probably the two big ones. Just processing power and, you know, passion, energy, ability to get people excited and make them realize that they're capable of more.

What are the three most interesting questions you think we should be asking other human beings, whether it be in business or life in general? What do you think are three most fascinating questions?

Yeah, I think these are. Well, I think the questions to ask yourself. First and foremost, I think everybody should ask themselves, what are my unique gifts? Like, I. As we talked about, like, I think that these, you know, this is a question I would ask you, but it's a question I think you should ask yourself, right? Like, what are my unique gifts? Because I think that when we can articulate what those are, it's not like we're full of ourselves in a bad way. We understand how maybe we can have the most impact, and we seek out environments where that impact can be kind of known, seen, practice.

Yes.

And realized. So I think that is the number one question people should ask themselves is, you know, you know, what are my most authentic gifts? Number two. And of course, I. And about others, I feel like I. I also, I. I believe people should deeply know what they're not great at. Like, and not just like, what, like, what are my unique vulnerabilities? Not in, like, the, like, the. The areas I have. Like, I will. All that will always be my work to improve. Like, this is one point. Like, I sound like. Like I'm sitting on some pedestal. I'm not. I can tell you. Like, my kids, I drive them crazy. Like, all of these same things that are gifts as, you know, have an edge to them that are pretty brutal, right. My kids would be like, mom, what.

Are your unique vulnerabilities?

Well, they all are the downsides of my edges, Right. I would wish that, like my father, I could make people feel. I know I can make people that feel energized. But that same energy makes people feel pretty nervous, right. It has a dark side where it's like, people. People can feel like, well, am I not enough? Like, what do I do to keep up with tikinder? Like, that's not really the point, Right. I'm not here to make you feel less of yourself. I'm here, like, so I speed people up. Do you know what I mean, start talking. I start talking. People are going faster, faster. So I'm pretty impatient. So, like, if you have high energy and it's always trying to be deployed, you're pretty impatient, right? You may not wait for someone to finish their sentence. You make somebody else feel nervous. So, like, that will always be my word, right? And that is the downside of being, like, a highly energized person, like, controlling that energy and that passion, right? So it's always at its most productive edge. That is it by a mile. That is like, that will be my work. And I have lots of other vulnerabilities, but. And lots of like. Well, we. You and I both agree vulnerability is a good word. So I hate using that word. I have lots of other areas for development, areas for growth, Areas for growth. Like tons. Like tons. Right? But. But I would say, like, what I'm aware of in myself is that one vein sprouts so many. You know, it's like the root of a lot of evils, right? So that's probably my biggest by far.

Okay. And then the third question we should.

All ask, and the third question I would say that people should ask themselves. I think it's maybe not a question you ask once. It's a question you ask. It's a question you ask many, many times, which is, what's possible now in.

Just any area of life, in any.

Like, if you stopped and said, like, what's possible now that I'm not doing? Because I think that people as. Remember we started this conversation, I said, people think the possibilities in big acts, right? And I think possibilities in small acts. So if I see it, it's like, what's possible today? Maybe that's the question. What's possible today? If I wanted, you know, if I wanted to find more joy in a certain area, if I want to find more joy at work, what's possible today if I want it? And by the way, again, like, make no mistake, it's not like I'm perfect at this practice, right? I'm sure there's lots of things I should do. And I'm like, oh, you know, what's possible at home that I'm not doing today? But I do think that there's a lot of power in small acts. And starting now, right? And to your point, getting in that imperfect motion versus waiting for the day where every possibility will be perfect, that day never comes.

Never.

It never comes. So I think if you ask yourself what's possible today, you probably unlock something today, right? I'm not saying. And I'm not saying any of us are gonna be able to unlock it all. Like, I live no perfect day where I unlock all the possibilities in my life. But yeah, I do know, you know, I do know the power that comes from unlocking even one possibility.

Right. That sounds like. What's the lesson? Your dad, you said from your dad as well, small and big possibilities.

Yeah.

When do you feel the most loved?

When do I feel the most loved?

When you're doing or receiving what?

Yeah, we all feel loved, I guess. Loved differently. Well, first and foremost, for me, I feel the most loved when I feel accepted for who I am.

Gosh, I was having this conversation this morning with someone.

You were?

Literally an hour ago. I was like, I'm so grateful and appreciative to be around people that fully accept me for who I am. Don't judge me, don't try to change me, but accept my authentic power.

Yes, that's totally right. And I would say I feel like I feel completely loved when people accept me for who I am. Including my imperfections.

Yes.

And maybe also I feel loved when people see who I am. Right. So like, we'll leave this conversation and I'll reflect and it's like, oh, that person saw a lot more of me, right?

Yes.

So I think when people see us fully, we feel loved.

So true. Why does it seem like in general there are a lot of us who surround ourselves with people who don't accept us fully? Why does that happen? Well, first of all, if we stay in like friendships or relationships where someone doesn't fully accept the other person.

Yeah, it's a good question. Well, first of all, remember that on the other side of that equation is somebody else who's also looking for, for acceptance. So it's never like a one way. Right. So while we're all going through our own journeys looking for to be see, seen and loved, so is the other person. So I think part of the reason, like it's sort of like ships in the night, Right. Everybody is looking to be seen. So maybe what that means is when we stay in relationships, yes, we're hoping to be seen, but the other person is hoping the same thing. Maybe neither of us are engaging in like an authentic enough conversation with the other. Or, you know, like we're so used to looking for it ourselves. And you're right, it's a surprise that we don't stop to give it to the other person. And maybe it's a two way relationship. I don't know. It's a good question. Oh, Yeah, I mean, you could. You could. You know, you could give the. I don't. I'm sure you have many more capable people on this podcast on this question than me. I'm not a psychologist. I am not. You know, all I can come to is, you know, when we love ourselves, obviously, two things happen. Number one, maybe we have our own renewable source of energy. That's enough. So while we want to be seen by other people, when we love ourselves. Right. We come to any relationship able to do two things more. Number one, see other people. You know what I mean? You're not so starved yourself that all you want to do from that relationship is take. But you can see other people, ask them the questions about how they want to be seen. But, yeah, we also want to be seen as well. So I don't. I think I'm just rambling. I don't think I have an answer to your question.

I like this. Was there a moment when you fully fell in love with yourself?

I don't think I'm fully in love with myself even now. Really, man. I mean, I think that I'm very.

Like, fully love and accepted yourself not from, like, an ego standpoint.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I understand. No, I mean, look, I still have all the same work everybody else does. I still wake up with imposter syndrome. I still wake up. Of course, I still wake up ashamed of some of the things I have. You know, not ashamed. Not shame in the past. Like, ashamed of the things I haven't achieved or, you know, the impact I still haven't had. Like, look, the book is an attempted impact, right? So clearly I'm still striving to do something, so. But I would say. So I don't consider myself all the way there by any standard.

What do you feel an imposter about?

I feel like an imposter in a good way, like lots of people do every time. Look, I think if you're somebody who wakes up and says, my job is to have impact. Right.

It's never finished.

No, it's never finished. And if you have the humility to understand that you are like, you know, like, as we talked about, like, you're a speck in this universe. Right? Yeah. Most days I just want to wake up and make the most of the time I have. I realize it's finite and that I think I'm here for some purpose. That's what I was trained to believe. My own family, spiritually. Like, we're all here for some purpose, to give. Then mostly I'm just like, Constantly worried that I'm not fulfilling that promise. So, yeah, so it's not like a bad kind of. Like, it's not like I wake up and say I don't accept myself. It's more like I was like, wow, if I'm not pushing myself to do more and to have more impact, then I'm not really taking full advantage of why I'm here. So that's the kind of. And so by that definition, you're always putting yourself in situations where you may not be enough, but you realize the only way, like you're going to have the impact you want is if you put yourself at risk. And so you put yourself at risk. You feel like an imposter. You're like, oh, because you're practicing some act you've never done yet. Right. So anyway, it's like, I'm good with it. Like, I'm good with it. So to your point, I don't.

You're not beating yourself up?

I don't beat myself up. I've mostly accepted that I have a worldview that says it's okay to be imperfect. It's okay that I never feel fully, you know, capable. I'm pretty comfortable with being like, personally uncomfortable.

Yeah.

And I'm. And I feel like that's okay. I feel like that's a way to, you know, pursue impact. And. Yeah. So if I'm uncomfortable, but I get the chances and more impact, isn't that worth it?

Absolutely. What are your thoughts on the culture of, like, I consider you a high achiever, high performer. You're in high executive positions, running big companies. And you mentioned something about like, am I creating more? Am I doing this enough or creating more impact? What about the people that say, you know, I want to do less, I want to have like less stress, less worry. How can I, how can I create more without the pressure and the stress?

Yes.

Or anxiety that might seem to come with it. How can I create it and also have inner peace? Is that possible? As someone in your position as a high level CEO and executive and running billion dollar companies, is it possible to have inner peace while also creating massive impact?

Sure. So, like, as an example, I identified for you, first of all, here's why I think this is why I think it is possible. You talked about this idea of self love and acceptance and understanding, like what drives you and who you are and why you're here. Like, I may not be peaceful every day, but I am at peace. Does that make sense? Of course. So I think it's different for different people. Like, I just want to be clear. Like, I'm good with being a CEO. I'm good that that's my path of impact. I am good that there is a higher universe that I may or may not achieve everything I want. Like, I. I am, like, totally good with it. So I consider myself at peace because I know that anything may come my way and it will be okay. Like. Like, look, I could fail miserably and I'll be okay because I have a very good sense of, like. Like my sense of the universe, that I am loved by God. Like, I, like, literally that I am loved that I am. You know, I'm a full human being. That I am. Yeah. Anyway, so I think that if you say, how do you find peace? Look, peace means different things for different people. For me, peace means that I, like, I am in a role and every day waking up and have a way to express my gifts. That for me is peaceful. You know, when I don't feel peaceful, I feel. I don't feel at peace when I don't know what it is. So does that make sense? So, like, my zone may be a zone of anxiety, because every day I think I'm pushing myself to express my gifts, but I'm at peace with that. So I don't know. Like, it depends what you mean by peace. There are people for whom being present in a moment, expressing who they full, authentic, who they fully authentically are is completely different. And so I think peace means different things to different people. For me, I'm at peace when I'm like, going 100 miles an hour.

Right, right, right. Because that, to me, chaos is ensuing.

And not even chaos, but, like, I'm in pursuit of impact and purpose. Right. Fully.

And that can be messy. Fully functioning, and that can be messy.

And it's messy. But, like, maybe part of my gift is I can deal with mess. If you're a CEO, you deal with mess all the time. You deal with grit. You deal with big possibility and small possibility. You deal with problems. You deal with people being upset. So maybe that's part of my gift, right? That I can handle all those things.

You can hold the space for thousands of employees, problems and ups and downs and challenges.

That's right. And maybe that's part of what I meant to do right. In the world to help people. And the. By the way, there's many different ways to express your gifts. As we come back to. So is it possible to be a CEO and be at peace? Yes, it depends on what you're pursuing. And I think to be at peace with yourself, you just need to know what makes you happy, what makes you fulfilled, like, what gives you fulfillment. And for me, the pursuit of impact gives me fulfillment.

How does someone discover what the unique gift is if they don't know what it is?

I would say to people, if you don't know what it is, ask someone else. Ask the people who know you the best.

Ask what? What's my gift?

No, it's interesting. So I'll give you an example. Like, people are like, so when I give business talks, people you know, I started any conversation with, like, do you know your superpowers? And, you know, like, whether it's MBAs or like, new grads or CEOs, like, a third of the room puts up their hand, which I find annoying. Annoying. And, like, not annoying in a bad way, but kind of. I'm like, annoying annoying for the older people, not the young people. I'm like, okay, if you're telling me that you've gotten this far in your career and you're being falsely modest, that's not that helpful. Because if you're a leader and you don't know what your gifts are or your areas of vulnerability, how do you ever. You need to know.

Right?

So that's false modesty. And if you're younger, I say, if you don't know, ask the people around you. Like, you know, what do you think I'm uniquely gifted at? And I think sometimes the answers will surprise you, but you'll find the threads of who you are. So I don't think that we're really good when we're younger at getting feedback on who we are and what makes us shine. What we get feedback on is, are we good in school or are we smart or what have you. But, like, what your unique gifts are. I think your friends and family and even your colleagues will use two or three words to describe you. You may not say, what's my unique gifts? You just, like, you know, like, what do you think I'm great at? You know? Or what do you think? Where do you think I shine? And I think you'll hear words that come up again and again and again from all the people in your life. They know you professionally and personally.

That's interesting.

And I just don't think people move through the world with that, you know, with that understanding.

Yeah. Do you think we should be pursuing fulfillment, then, in our gifts over happiness?

I guess I believe that fulfillment, Fulfillment can lead to happiness, and they think that an impact can lead to happiness. And I know there Are other people who are like, hey, just be happy in what you're doing every day and the tasks of what you do, and that leads to fulfillment. And I think it's bi. Directional. Like, if you want to pursue happiness and happiness gives you fulfillment, great. If you want to pursue fulfillment and fulfillment gives you happiness, great. They're two sides of the same coin. So, Yeah, I don't know that I think that there's something ethereal about when you say to people like, happiness, be happy today. I'm like, okay, you can be happy today, but you still need to have bifocals on. Right. Like, happy today. Maybe some people, their best life is they'd maximize happiness every day. And for other people, their best life is they might minimize happiness on a given day, but maximize happiness over a cycle. Both are possible. It's not an either or. But if somebody says to me, pursue happiness every day, I'd be like, well, actually, by virtue of being a CEO, like, every day is not happy. You deal with a lot of messy problems that are very stressful. Right. But over the course of your career, you find fulfillment and you look back and you're like, I wouldn't have it any other way. So is that happiness too? So do. But I. But I see both. Like, my. My husband is a very different person for me. We're kind of very complimentary. And I think my husband, in a good way, you know, like, pursues happiness every day. That's a great way to be. There are days I wake up and I wish I could pursue happiness every day. Right. Like, so I'm saying the two sides of the same coin. So is his life better than mine or worse than mine? No, they're just different. Like, he maximizes his happiness, I think, every day or every week, and I maximize mine over maybe two years, like five years or like, you know, a month. It doesn't matter. Right. We're. We're both in pursuit of the same thing.

Yeah.

What about you? Do you pursue happiness every day or do you pursue. Do you have this arc and you're willing to take a lot of unhappiness every day to be.

I pursue growth and impact every day.

Yes. You pursue fulfillment leading to happiness, not happiness leading to fulfillment.

But I'm also. I pursue delayed gratification as well. Like, I pursue pain.

Yeah.

So that I can stay healthy.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's like, I do things that are uncomfortable consistently so that I live a.

Happier, healthier life long term as opposed.

To short term, like happiness or Relief or.

Oh yes. And by the way, like I would say my husband is like that. He's a former athlete, so a professional athlete. So to your point, on the physical front and so on, he will pursue good health every day. And actually I make poorer choices every day. But we're probably both trying to optimize for delay gratification in different ways.

Yeah, that's great. Okay, I want to shift the conversation. There's a stat that I saw around 65% of businesses failed during the first 10 years. And you worked with a lot of multi billion dollar companies as well as some failed.

Yeah, startups.

Why do you think most businesses fail and what can we do to build stronger businesses?

I think a lot of businesses fail for two or three different reasons. But I'm going to outline the couple that are most important. It comes back to what I believe about people too. First and foremost in anything we execute as entrepreneurs. Let's take the example of being an entrepreneur because it's totally related to running a startup. We tend to believe that it's all about us. Remember that worldview I just talked about? We think it's all about us.

Right, Right.

But most times when you look at businesses, there's like macro and micro businesses. Like I would say, if you want to understand why you're failing and succeeding, you can say it all comes down to my execution. What could I be doing better? Right. And that's true. You should go take the feedback on what you can be doing and optimizing. We're going to talk about in a moment. But first I'm like, lift your head up. What's going on around you that's impacting your success or failure? So when you look at businesses that thrive, I'm always like, okay, look at the tailwinds that they're riding or look at tailwinds that they might be riding or the headwinds they're facing. So I'm like. So I think the first reason that businesses might succeed or fail is they are overly attuned to their execution and maybe not as attuned to the macro tailwinds and headwinds. In the book, I give a story of my. The story of my sister who ran an optometry practice and for many years it was going really well.

Yes.

By the way, much more than 10. Like probably probably ran that practice for 12, 15 years. Always growing. Right? Growing. And she had employees, had thoughtful fold at work, all of those things, her own boss, all those things. And then it started to go into decline. Why so. And it started in steady decline. And every year she was eating into more of her savings. And I said, well, Nikki is like, okay, so let's step back. So let's step back and understand why your business isn't declined. By the way, she knows she's very smart. She's like, well, I'm in a mall. This mall has less foot traffic. There are now three optometrists in this mall. So more competition. The mall itself has less foot traffic because more people are shopping online. Oh, and wait, there's also a lot of companies that are starting to sell you glasses online. So an optometrist makes their money not just by doing eye exams, but the most lucrative part of the practice is guessing.

Selling product.

Selling products. Okay, so now you look at those macro trends. So Nikki's business is starting to decline. And I'm like, nikki, let's look at your choices. She's like, well, this is all I know. This is what I know. Like, I am.

I've been doing this for 20 years. I've been training.

So let's look at this, right? So a business that's doing well then turns into decline. So you could say, Nikki, run faster. Keep, keep your, you know, hours up late, you know, spend more. Right. Get better inventory. Okay, let's stop a moment. Your location is in decline. You have more competition. Like, this trend is not going anywhere. Right? Like, and by the way, the mall charges you fixed rent and wants to increase the rent. Okay, so like, at the macro level, is this scenario going to work? You can try and out execute your way out of this mousetrap. Is it going to work? And so then we charted a course and she, you know, we laid out five new options and ultimately my sister ended up taking one after five or six years and sold her practice and moved to a new location and worked for a growing franchise of optometry practices that bought her practice and that's closer to her home and, you know, are able to compete because they have the dollars and capital to go figure out how they're going to drive people to their own location.

It's not all on her making all the money.

It's not on her. Right. And so that's a perfect example of when I say macro versus micro, you have to lift your head up and assess the tailwinds and headwinds of your macro situation.

Yes.

So the first flaw is many people think it's all about them. It's not all about them. Okay, that's piece one. Now let's come to the part that is all about you, which is we sort of want to make one decision and stick with it. And I think this is sort of a big part of the thesis for why I wrote the book. We think it's one decision to success. We think it's one choice to. To success. And I'm like, okay, well, whether you want to or not, the conditions around you keep changing. You may want them to stay static, but they're not. And so what if I told you that for you to keep succeeding, you need to keep choosing? It's like actively keep choosing.

You have to choose.

Choosing new decisions, taking new risks, getting in tighter feedback loops, adjusting, adjusting, adjusting, right? Always, always. So obviously, tech is very good at this, right? But we're not this good at this in small businesses or in our own careers. You say, you know how you want to just do something and set it right, set it and forget it. Life doesn't work that way, right? So businesses don't work that way. So you want to set it and forget it. But as my old CTO at StubHub would say, product market fit is elusive. You think that you do something and then you have it, but then something adjusts, and then you need to adjust, and then you need to keep adjusting. So, like, this is the way our lives unfold. This is the way businesses unfold. So if you said to me, like, you know, why do. And I think Paul Graham at YC talks about this, like, sometimes to make it, you have to survive. And surviving is about pivoting, pivoting, pivoting, pivoting, pivoting constantly, constantly. And so I think if you want to set it and forget it, I don't know if many businesses now that work that way, because every single business is being disrupted. And by the way, if they're not being disrupted by technology, even small businesses.

Being disrupted by the pandemic or politics.

Or this or whatever, local politics, a competitor down the street, right? So you have to keep adjusting some.

New innovation that comes out or some new technology.

So whether it's micro or macro, remember we said life lives in possibility. So you have to keep pursuing the next possibility. Because at the minute, you're like at stasis, whether you're a small business or whether you're a gigantic startup with plenty of money, you have to keep adjusting. So first of all, I think people are not nearly heads down enough when it comes to adjustments. Adjusting.

They're not willing to adjust.

Yeah, not willing to adjust. Like, you know, it's like, as I said, they want to set it and forget it. And I think, number two, so you have to keep pivoting to keep products that fit. And then number two, so I'm like, you have to be heads down, but heads down to pivoting. And then you have to be heads up to like, the environment around you and the stuff that's not all about you and then find your responses. So I know that sounds like a very simplistic thing for like, why do some businesses, you know, take 10 years to, you know, just like, look, the board list is five years old. It's my own startup, right? It just raised season funding. The board list is always adjusting. Like, I can't tell you what it'll be in five years.

It's not the same thing now as it was when it started.

It wasn't. And by the way, if we want to be there in five years, like, we're going to have to keep adjusting as we go. And like, there's going to be new entrants and new competition and new legislation and like, and so sometimes I understand that that's like tiring, but that's the.

Way the world, that's the way business will thrive. The only way it'll thrive, the only.

Way it will thrive is if you're willing to keep adjusting. Now, the good news is, like, if it's a small business, that doesn't mean you have to go, you know, like, your adjustments might be micro adjustments, right? But it's like this.

You have to change your whole product line and everything.

Yeah, exactly right. And maybe you're going to make a thousand adjustments and one day you'll end up in an entirely new business. Or maybe you'll make a thousand adjustments and your business will be just a better version of what it is today. I don't know the answer, but if you say to me, like, why do startups fail? And I know that's a long question, a long answer to your question, I'm sort of like, first of all, it's not all about you. Heads up. And then the part that is about you is about adjusting and pivoting. So like, heads down, keep pivoting. Keep it. Yeah, right.

How do you learn to keep pivoting? When part of business success and growth and scale is like automating systems, having processes in place, having procedures that are constantly. Then, okay, we've got to constantly shift these processes and shift the. Well, actually, I think the software and change these things.

Yeah, I should have used a better word than pivoting. Let's call it iterating.

Yeah.

So, you know, businesses are iterative cycles of focus. So that's sort of my point. So like, let's say you're in your company and competition is like, you know, is, is increasing. You know, as I said, there's like 10 painting companies down the road that have just emerged and you run exterior paint company. I'm like, okay, this is when I, when I shouldn't say pivoting. What I mean is like constantly iterating on the part that needs it. Right. So you have to sequentially say, like, okay, hold the rest of this part. I now need to go figure out what my marketing strategy is. Okay. When that's done, there will be yet another thing to iterate on. So I think pivoting probably has a higher connotation, as if you're not focused. What I'm suggesting is you have to serially iterate and focus on different and it's going full way around a circle and then maybe coming all the way back. So that's what I mean. More. It's like iterating.

This is good stuff. I mean, I feel like a lot of people had to learn that lesson the hard way during the pandemic because if you didn't pivot or iterate, then you're failing.

Yeah, yeah.

The pandemic forced you to fail if you weren't willing to evolve.

Right. Well, don't you think? So again, just sort of like, this is the whole reason, this is a good time to have a conversation about risk taking and how to evolve and grow yourself. Right. Because I felt like in the pandemic people really learned a lot more about their risk taking ability. When times were tough, they either like.

Held back or they went all in on something.

Right, you got it. Right. But either way, don't you believe that in the pandemic people learned a lot more about their agility and resilience and ability to pivot fast than they learned when times were good.

Absolutely.

Right. So when we're trying to avoid harm, active harm, we often are actually more risk taking than we are like in our daily, safe lives. And you're like, what's that all about? This is, is a good time to ask that question, which is why I think that the pandemic should have given us all confidence that we're much more capable of response than we think. Agile response. Right. And so your opportunity is okay if you know that about yourself, what holds you back when times are good? And it's often things like ego.

Right.

Like personal fear of personal failure. Right. And that's why I'm like, okay, believe in, like, what's possible today and try it. And if it's not, you iterate your way out of it. Like, I sort of am believer that you can. If this book's bad, I'm gonna iterate my way out of it. If, like, people are like, oh, my God, she's a crier, like, this podcast gets a 2 rating. I'm gonna iterate my way out of it. Right? So I just believe that people learned a lot more about their capacity to respond. And so it gives us all a lot more choice than we think we have.

Do you feel like you took bigger risks during the pandemic, or did you.

Oh, for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I took big risks and small risks at work. As you know, I was running StubHub, and we had just sold the company.

A month before you sold it, right?

Yeah, we sold it on the. We sold it on February 13 and on March 13. Our business, Crazy, you know, our business collapsed. Like, everybody in line in live events. And so. And it's really interesting because I was running StubHub. I'd been bought in to run StubHub by eBay, which was the parent company of StubHub. And I would say ebay was attracted to me as StubHub CEO because I had just come from being an entrepreneur. I'd been at Google early in my career and scaled, and then I'd been an entrepreneur for seven years. And so I think ebay wanted that entrepreneurial energy back at StubHub, because StubHub had been, at that point, was owned by almost 10 years by eBay, and its growth was slowing and costs were, you know, maybe higher than they should be. Margin was declining. And so I think I was bought in to bring that entrepreneurial energy. Right. And help stub up, pivot so and find new services and all sorts of things. So I felt like I spent and we hit a. I love the team we had at StubHub. They're just a great group of humans. But I still felt like we spent. I spent one and a half, 1.9 months out of my two years of tenure trying to train people to be more agile. I'm like, okay, guys, you have to make multiple moves, and we can come there next if you want. I have a thesis on what it takes for businesses to really succeed. And the research would say it doesn't take one move. It takes multiple moves for you to be an outperformer. So we'll talk about that. So I'm trying To train to be agile. It's like, look over here, we need to cut costs. Over here, we need to get international going. Over here, we need to try new services. Over here, we need to reinvest in the core. You're trying to create a portfolio strategy, but teaching people to be more agile. Right? And so here we are for nine months working at changing the culture and getting people to take more risks at work and all those things. And people, we're making progress, leadership development and all of those things. Right? And then what happens? The pandemic happens and the entire company goes into crisis mode.

Really.

And within a month, we restructured the business. We changed policies overnight, we took risks to make sure we survived, and we took them rapidly. And 100% of our employee base was on board. Hands, like, hands on deck, just figuring it out in real time. And it was like one of my proudest moments, those most stressful moments as a CEO, because people all learned about their agility. So we made more decisions and pivoted. Think about running a company for EBITDA and gross part, more margin points of growth and revenue growth for 99% of your tenure. And then all of a sudden you move to a cash flow business. Literally.

Do we have enough cash to pay this month's salaries?

Yeah, yeah, like literally. And by the way, we're no longer owned by ebay. We're owned by another private startup who's cash constrained themselves. Like, do we have enough money? Oh, my God. Customers are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds. Like, where is the money? I mean, like, literally, you go to managing on cash. Like, you go to manage daily, weekly, monthly cash for a company that hasn't been used to that for like the entirety of its last 10 to 15 years. Right. So 10 years at least under ebay. So anyway, long winded way of saying, I think that we learn more in crisis. I learned more certainly as a CEO was the most intense period I've ever been through.

What did you learn about yourself?

What did I learn about myself? Honestly, in the pandemic, I don't think that I learned that much about myself. I don't mean that in a bad way on the business side. Remember, I've been a startup CEO and I've been through crises. I have been through crises. So what I learned about myself is, thank God I have, like, lived the life of, you know, cyclicality and entrepreneurship. That maybe makes me well positioned for this moment. It's not like in the time I was like, I'm well positioned. It's more like I felt stable and secure and capable. I felt capable.

I felt the same thing during the pandemic.

Yeah. Like, I mean, I felt nervous. Don't get me wrong. Like, on edge. Yeah.

Scared a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah, Scared, but capable. Responsible but capable. Like, do you know what I mean? So. So I was. I felt. I felt assured of myself in the moment, but I felt, obviously, a lot of anxiety for our team. So what I learned about myself in the pandemic, that I felt grateful that I'd had the set of experiences before that in that moment of responsibility, I was like, I can do it. What I feel like. What I felt like I learned most is what I already knew about our people, which is, you are capable. Okay? So what I learned in the pandemic is I felt like saying, like, I know you're capable. Wow. Look what you just did. Wow. So, right. So that was the gift of the pandemic, helping other people understand that they are capable, too. And being a leader in that moment, which is like, look what we. Look what we just did. We. We were able to do this, you know, you would never have guessed that you would see this situation. Neither did I. You are capable. Okay. By the way, it's not that we handle it perfectly. It's not. We didn't have pissed off customers, whatever. But we needed to deliver and make sure the company survived, and we did. And that was 2,000 people. That wasn't me, right? That was 2,000 people coming together, cutting their own jobs. Think about this for a moment. People who are like, understand that they're going to have to make sacrifices, give up their own security. It was painful, but people understood they were capable. So I think that's what I learned. And then on the personal side, what did I learn through Covid, I learned the importance of all the things my husband so was telling me. He's like, why are you commuting, for God's sake? You wake up hours a day. And I'm like, I have to seven. I have to. I have to be present for my employees. I have to commute. Like, the only jobs are in San Francisco, you know, My husband, Where are we living? I live in Silicon Valley. So, I mean, keep in mind.

So like, an hour commute an hour each way.

I mean, so for 20 years, right, I've said to my family, man, you know, I have to do this, like that, right? And my husband's like, really? Do you have to do you? And so I would just say, what else did I learn? I was pretty Schooled on all the things, things we think we have to do, you know, that your family tells you, do you have to do this? So for all of us who are CEOs, who make our families sacrifice a ton for our careers and our ambitions, like, I felt like I learned that, in fact, the commune has cost me a lot in terms of my, you know, just in terms of, like, my productivity, my time, energy, being home for dinner, you know, all of those things. And then I felt like many people. The COVID learning for me was like, man, look at all that we, you know, we miss of, like, our families and each other. And again, like, this is not, like, some saintly view. I'm sure I'm going to be capable of many sins as, like, hybrid works comes back, but, you know, just the joy of, like, seeing your kids every day, you know, having them all home for a moment. Like, all of those things. Like, yeah, I saw those moments too, and I was like, wow, what have I missed? So. And of course, as I go back to being a CEO again, I'm inevitably going to screw it up. But I said to my. I said to my family, I was like, can we just keep, like, one or two Covid rituals as everybody goes back to their thing? You know what I mean? The kids go back to practices, and so I like everybody else, I just wants to make for, like, maybe I can hang on to one or two of these things. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna, like, screw it up on a bunch of other things because I just love work too much, and I sacrifice a lot of my personal life to it and my. And. But hopefully we keep a few things, a few Covid practices.

I want to talk about wealth creation and wealth building.

Sure.

What do you think are the three most important steps to building wealth for an individual?

Ownership. Like, literally equity ownership. Like, you look at the most wealthy people in the world, and if you want to be wealthy, you need to be an owner.

They have equity in something.

They have equity in something. You have equity in your small business. You're like my sister. You have equity in your practice, and you sell your patient files to a bigger partnership. Or you're like me, and you have equity in a big company or small company, whether you started it or not. You know, equity ownership is the key to wealth creation. That's why people own their homes. Biggest source of wealth for people, home ownership. Right. You have to be an owner.

Okay.

So, yeah, for sure. That's. That's a. That's a big one. Number two, you Know this. Everybody knows it, but we need to do it. Saving. Saving. Just like saving early and compounding returns. Yeah. I think is the second.

A lot of people don't do that. I started doing that years ago.

Most people don't do it.

Even though I didn't have that much money, I was like, even 500 bucks a year. A thousand. But, you know, when I was.

I know, right?

Something I remember. I remember I started at like 27, maybe starting to like my IRA and then just other investments. And I was like, but I don't have that much to invest, to save in. Yeah, I wasn't making that much. But now, 11 years later, I'm like, oh, look what I've accumulated.

Well, more importantly, saving allows you to do what? Become an owner. You know, you got it. These are inherently related, right? So if you say, like, if you don't save, guess what? The day that equity ownership comes up to buy a piece of a home, or these days, you can't do whatever you want. Or stock market, you know, equity.

Whatever you want to. Yeah.

If you don't have savings, how do you become an owner? It's impossible. So these two things are inherently related, Right. So even if it's fractional ownership, which we all have opportunities for now, so I think in order to become an owner, you need to accumulate savings.

Okay.

So I think that's the. I think that is. Those are my two. I don't have a third. Those are it. Those are the two.

What about the mindset around wealth and creating more financial abundance? How do we shift the narrative from thinking, you know, money's bad, or I don't understand money, or I'm not educated on it so that I'm not going to receive it, how do we. How do we change the mindset of the conversations we have around money? I feel like a lot of people don't talk about it enough.

Yeah, I know people. I mean, and I don't know. There's no shame in wealth creation.

Right.

I mean, but I think there are two things. First of all, financial literacy is so key. You know this. I mean, if you don't have financial literacy, it's hard, right? So. So I was lucky that my. You know, I give my dad so much credit. My dad, like, owned equities. Like, he literally owned stocks. He would call his broker and buy them every day. So I saw stock ownership as a thing. Right. And then I ended up becoming a financial analyst. So of course I got financially literate. But my point is, if you're not literate getting literate about is how you understand savings and ownership, what have you. So I think that literacy is sort of one way and not to be afraid of these conversations.

What are two books you would recommend to someone on becoming more financially literate?

So to be honest, I've never read a book in my life because I did it all on the job.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think I'm a poor person answering just them. Like, if you said, like, have you read a book on financial literature?

You had mentors.

I had mentors. And like, my first job was as a financial analyst. So, like, I went to undergraduate business school, you know, so I did my dad's taxes. Like, understand. I did that. Right. I started teaching us to do his ledgers, like, to literally write like numbers in a ledger when we were 7 or 8. Like, doing his taxes was a family affair.

That's crazy.

Like, no joke. So when I say I was grown financially literate, that's actually true. So I don't think I'm a good person to recommend a book. But you could probably have a client of yours who would give people the best recommendations. So I think literacy is one number two, I think if we are a female in a relationship, we tend to think that there's some shame in asking the other. Like your husband or whatever, whoever is the wealth store. You have to your point, you have to ask.

Ask what questions?

Well, you have to ask, where are our bank accounts? What do we have? It's not just a question of being literate. It's a question of being informed and not just trusting your financial decisions to other people. Right. So like some people, like, if they're not literate, they won't ask. I'd say the converse is true. Like, you can be literate and ask at the same time. So if somebody is managing your money, you better freaking know where it is. And part of getting literate is being comfortable with asking questions like, and if you don't. So. So I think there's literacy and there's information and they're very highly correlated. So I know people who, their husbands or, you know, manage all their money. I know people who give money to their broker and they don't know what their broker's investing in. I'm like, okay, so one is literally, one is like sheer information. So I see a lot of people are like, this is an uncomfortable topic. So I'm just going to also outsource, not just literacy, I'm just going to outsource information. Like somebody else has information on my financial. Well, Being that's a little crazy to me. But I see a lot of people who just don't want to have the conversation, more often women than men. This is why, like, platforms like Elle Vest and others that like, are driving. Driving women to manage their own wealth, I think is so. Is disproportionately important. So I think that. I think that's. I think it's very key.

How can women change the mindset around earning, saving, investing, and becoming more ownership of their money mind?

Well, first of all, I think many women are. But I just think that platforms that do it, I think anything that gives you education without it being intimidating is very critical. So I think that, like, I think women are doing it more and more, but I think that platforms that can accelerate your knowledge or your management of your own money is key. The third thing you can do, as we talked about, take a little risk. Like, if you're too afraid to manage all your money, take 10% of it and say, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna manage this directly. And then the third thing I say to people is, if you wanna start creating wealth, invest in what you know. Okay, so people think that don't invest.

In crypto if you don't understand it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's not just like literate about like, how financial systems work. It's like, literally invest in what you know. So I've become an E Commerce investor over the last 10 years, and a pretty good one, but that's because I was an E Commerce CEO. And so while I understand the business and so I was practicing every day, I thought like, God, like, I know enough about these numbers to know where our numbers look good or bad. But that gives me pattern recognition in becoming an angel investor. So as opposed to like, yes, I had diversification of wealth across different sectors or diversification of angel investments across different sectors of E Commerce. But literally I doubled down on E Commerce because I understood that business when I was an analyst. I was at Merrill lynch and early in my career and I worked on the financial services industry, the savings and loan industry, which is the most, you know, I learned about savings and loans, balance sheet and income statements. And the first stocks I ever bought were in the savings and loan industry because I was like, I understand what good looks like. So I think if you want to create wealth, you need to understand what you're investing in. Let's say you're going to buy real estate. Okay, well, you need to understand the neighborhood, you need to understand the comps. You can't just fall in love with a house and say like, you know, is this a good.

It looks good. I'm just going to buy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, this like one and done. Somebody shows you something, you know. Right. So I think there's generally literate asking about your own money and understanding, like, where it is, who's managing it, like, what's there if you're shy about, like, I think that's. And then I think number three, very specifically literate when you want to invest in something.

Yeah. Someone feels like a failure. Like they have these failure conversations with themselves. They feel like they have a lot of negative thoughts. How can we overcome these negative thoughts and help us get out of a rut if we kind of feel like we're always stuck in that failure mindset?

Yeah, look, I think that when people are looking at failure, one of the reasons I think failure is so daunting for people is because they think of, they think that a choice is binary. So I think there are two things that you need to do if you want to get out of failure mindset. First of all, you have to get out of this idea that you have one shot at glory. Okay. So we fear failure because we think whatever decision we make is what Jeff Bezos calls a one way door. I go through this door, there's no coming back.

It's going to define me forever.

It's going to find me. When Jeff Bezos, in a shareholder letter to Amazon shareholders very clearly said most of the decisions we make at Amazon are two way doors. You go through, doesn't work out, you come back. Right. So I think that most people have the perception that failure is the result of a binary choice. You make one choice, it fails or succeeds. Now, if you believe, like I believe, that actually between you and a reward is probably not one decision, but 30, 40, 100. Should you really overweight the importance of the first decision? I would say you should overweight your ability to keep choosing. If you can keep choosing, you will find a path. It may not be. You may not end up where you started, but you know where you wanted when you started. But there will be a path. But that, like, you have to dismiss this myth that failure is a bimodal binary one way door. It isn't. It's just the first choice in a series of choices you will inevitably have to make. So first of all, stop thinking about failure as like a one choice circumstance. It's just not. Then number two, and I would say this, supposing the decision you're Contemplating is in fact bigger. And it is a one way door. I make it up. You mortgage your house, you're starting a company like, you know, you can't take back the mortgage. You quit your day job, you go to zero salary, and you mortgage your house. Okay, we could agree that's a big one risk. In that mode. I always say to people like, okay, well, if it's a big risk, then as opposed to planning for all the upside that's gonna happen. Plan for the failure mode. Plan for the failure mode in order to get yourself to act. And people are like, what do you mean? I'm like, okay, if something's really, you know, a big and scary risk, I want you to tell me the five choices you'd make. After the choice, tell me, like, what are they? Like, what are the two? What are the four?

If it fails.

If it fails, play through the failure, tell me the five choices, and then I bet that you will find two, three, four recovery paths. But actively think about that. Now park all of your matching of the upside. Okay, that's great. To get what I call your FOMO going, you'll get really excited. Fear of missing out is like, you know, you want to act, you visualize the positive. But when you're trying to overcome failure, I'm like, visualize a failure, work it through. Understand all your contingencies, and then you're probably far more likely to get into action because what you've done is reduce your failure. Because you can actually. You're actively imagining the choices after the choice when it fails.

That's interesting you say that, because I was interviewing UFC fighter Georges St. Pierre, and it was one of the greatest of all time. And he was talking, I think it was him or another UFC fighter that I heard. I can't remember which one it was. But talking about how they trained to be in the most uncomfortable situations. Like, I'm on my back, my arm is behind my back, I've got a hand here, and a guy's just punching me in the face. I. How do I get out of this?

Yes, that's exactly.

How do I get out of it? How do I stay calm? How do I not, like, pass out? How do I, you know, if I'm in the worst position possible? Like, every bad position I train for, and I train to get out of it.

Yeah.

So that when it does happen.

Yes.

I'm like, this sucks and it's uncomfortable, but I know I can get out of it.

Yeah.

And if I can just get back on my feet and stand up again, then I can take the next step.

Right, exactly. And then, and I think for people who are like, I fail, let's say you pick a new job and you left your old job and you cut your ties and it fails. And so I'm like, okay, what that, what then? So play through.

Okay, you lose your relationship, you lose your kid, everything. You lose.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you're like, okay, well then what would you do? Yeah, because I think that on small failures, it's enough to know that if you act once, you still have 10 more choices on something that is like truly a one way door. There are very few decisions that truly you can't come back from. And those things, you're like, okay, then what are my contingencies? What do I do? So I believe that like this risk taking equation guides all of, all of us, which is fear of. Fear of missing out is warned with fear of failure, which everyone is, you know, fear of missing out is greater than fear of failure. You'll take action. If fear of failure is greater than fear of missing out, you won't. But most people only want to work one side of that equation, which is think about the positive.

And I'm like, no, you gotta think about both.

Yeah, it's really, it's. Yeah.

One of my coaches, Chris Lee, years ago, probably like seven years ago, I had been training for years already to overcome the fear of public speaking. And I'd been speaking for, I don't know, at this point, 10 years professionally. And I'd made good money on stages and spoken in front of 20,000 people. And I remember saying to him, I was like, gosh, I don't know why, but I still feel like kind of scared and nervous like the day before. I go on, and I don't know why, and I remember calling him like hours before. And I go, I don't know why. I'm still nervous and a little afraid. And he said, because one of the things is you're afraid of how you're gonna look. You're afraid of like being embarrassed or not like saying the right thing or messing up. You're still afraid of that. As opposed to being of service to the audience and knowing you're gonna mess. It's not gonna be perfect. And he put me through an exercise like, well, like a what if or what happens next exercise. Just go, okay, what if you, what if you forget your words? What if you forget that story? Then what?

Then what? Then what?

And you just go, then what?

I call that the choice after the choice Then what?

Well, then I'll be, like, embarrassed. Well, then what? Well, then what's the worst gonna happen? I don't know. Then I just walk off stage and I forget the whole thing. And then what? And then what? Well, everyone laughs at me. Okay, and then what? And then I don't want to come out for a week because I'm so embarrassed. And then what? It's like, eventually you're like, okay, I'm down here and I'll pick myself back up and I'll be okay and I'll start again.

Yeah, I think that that's sort of the point. Like, the then what? Then what? Then what? We sort of have trained ourselves to think that it has to be that. Like I said, it's bimodal. I'm like, it's not bimodal. It's like, what will happen is you'll discover the five choice episodes. Choice. So think those through now.

Yes.

Because in there is comfort.

It's so good. So good. What is the thing that you're most proud of, most people don't know about you?

What I'm most proud of, career wise? And I think what I'm most proud of people most proud of, career wise, is I have had a career of working with exceptionally talented people where I feel like I got to be part of accelerating their journey. That is what I'm most proud of. Like, I'll look back on my life and say, regardless of the companies or whatever, Like, I always say to people, do you know how amazing it is to work with tribes of great people who are by and large, great human beings as well? And then be like, oh, yeah, I will look at my journey and be like, I got to intersect with these amazing people. And maybe for a few of them, or hopefully some meaningful number of them, I was an accelerant. So that's what I'm most proud of. Kind of business wise, what am I most proud of that people wouldn't know about me? Maybe that I think I wake up every day both fully empowered and also pretty clear that I'm, like, pretty far from the center of the universe. Like, I'm proud of the fact that I think that most people would think that. I wake up thinking I sort of must rule the roost. And most days I'm like, no, I wake up pretty empowered, but I. I'm really grounded and clear that, you know, life is a blessing. I'm here for a reason. I'm living my impact. The world is a much, much bigger place than just me. Yet I feel Very stable within it. I don't feel like many things. Nothing's gonna shake me. Yeah. Because I have a sense for why I'm here and what I'm meant to do without thinking that it's all about me. So I'm proud of that.

That's cool.

I'm proud of that.

That's great.

I'm like, I'm good with it.

That's great. The book is about risks, and you say most things won't shake you, but when people take big risks, sometimes it shakes them a lot. What's the biggest myths around risk taking? That we tell ourselves.

Yeah. And by the way, of course, if you read the book, you'll know that many risks I took shook me, which is the whole reason for writing the book, because I'm like, oh, I don't want to shake you. This is what happened to me. So I can't say I've never been shaken by risk, but I think I keep coming back to that singular point. I know it sounds so simple, but it is the point of the entire freaking book. The book is about how. But the point of the book is about, you know, let go of this myth of the single choice. Stop believing that outcomes are binary, that risk and reward is a singular linear game. Like, hey, I take a big risk, I get a big reward, you know, or I have an epic fail. Like, it's just not like that.

Yeah, it's either I win big or I lose it all.

Exactly. That is this bimodal issue. I think that is the biggest misconduct myth around risk taking. And it's the whole reason I wrote the book. I'm like, you have to keep choosing. Stop overweighting the first choice. You know, if you are willing to keep choosing, there are, you know, a thousand choices between you and success, and I cannot promise you that the success you'll get at the end is the one you originally thought. It may or may not be. But I can tell you that if you keep aiming for impact in every single choice, cumulatively, you will have an outsized career, and you will have an outsized life cumulatively. But if you want to measure yourself on every single choice, I can tell you the people I know who succeed greatly are pretty freaking imperfect. They are master risk takers, as measured by small and big acts of possibility, as opposed to this one big, active possibility for which they're famous. No. They roll by becoming a master at the process of risk taking and constantly choosing. They're just right. They're very skilled at continuing to choose.

Yeah, I'M curious, do you believe that it's harder to go from 0 to 10 million like in startup, like here's my idea, I'm launching the business. 0,0 revenue coming into 10 million business or taking over a company from 100 million and taking it to a billion. Which one is harder and why?

Interestingly, I think 0 to 10 is exactly hard.

Right?

It's hard. It's hard. It's hard my friend, because as we talked about, you're trying to find a science central product market fit, you know, and so I think it's just really hard. And you know, when you have a, when you have momentum, everybody wants to work with you, right? So things unlock fast. Like creating momentum is really hard. It takes so much energy. A venture capitalist who was on my board once described like, and I think he said it, he said it the best. I'm not going to do it justice. He said when you're in a startup, you have like your hand on this like gigantic wheel and you're trying to turn it once, one big wheel to get momentum, right? One revolution of the wheel takes so much energy, right? And he's like, and then when you have like a bigger company and you have product market fit, it's like one revolution, first of all, you can get through one revolution very quickly. And just like it creates so like, and you have many, many more turns, each of which are producing more energy. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So it's like trying to get that first revolution to create any momentum. Because if you can't even get the thing, the wheel to turn once I know there's no momentum or energy like net energy output, but once you have energy in a system, then turning the wheel is easier. And every time you turn the wheel, more energy spits out, right?

So yeah, I think Jim Collins in Good to great, I think calls that like the flywheel. It's like just like keep the flywheel going like, you know.

That's one of my favorite books. Is it one of your favorite books? I love that book. It's a classic.

It's very like heady for me. But yeah, like.

Oh really? It's very heady for you. Well, I'll tell you the part of it. Just coming back to our previous conversation.

It'S a great book though, but it's.

A great business book. I understand that it's a little very analytical. Analytical for you. But come back to, there's a point he makes in that book, another point which we did, which I should have brought up. But why didn't we were chatting about the choice after the choice and the then what and the then what and the then what. You probably remember from the book his story about Jim Stockdale and the Vietnam War veteran who talked about, like, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and ended up being. Do you remember this story from the book?

Go ahead.

He basically, like, Jim Stockdale, I think it's Stockdale was decorated Vietnam veteran prisoner of war who helped send Morse codes out and get his whole cohort rescued before the war ended. But he made the point that the people who were pure optimists were the first to get really depressed in camp because they thought they were being rescued tomorrow.

And then the peer, someone's coming, someone's.

Coming, someone's coming every day. And then when they didn't come, they didn't know how to handle that failure. Right, that. Right. So they got very depressed. And then there were other people were like, nobody's ever coming. And they were also depressed. But he said the people who did best in the, you know, in the POW camp were really, like, realistic optimists. They understood that it was unlikely that somebody was coming next day, but they had faith that somebody was coming. Right. And so your job was to survive every day until somebody came. Oh, my gosh, I love that mentality. I'm like, yes, you can be paranoid every day about what it takes to run your business and iterate and pivot and what have you while having faith that if you, like, go through this process and keep doing it, you will survive and you will thrive. Right? So that's what I mean about being bimodal. You can be paranoid every day and be like, I have to iterate and I have to pivot while still being fundamentally an optimist over the long term. But it's that ability to pivot that actually makes you the optimist. Right. It's not like you have to go into it being like, everything's gonna be perfect, everything's gonna be perfect, or everything's gonna be terrible. I'm like, no, no. You need to be a long term optimist and a short term realist.

What's a question you wish more people asked you that? Don't ask.

I think most people ask me sukinder, what would you do? Let's say we're in a league, like, sukinder, what would you do? And I think most people should ask me, like, what do you think I should do given who I am?

Mm.

Right. Everybody comes to a leader and they want the answer. And I think I would love more people to say to me, like, okay, it's not about what I would do. It's about like, here's who I am, here's my goal set, here's my vision. What do you, you know, given this.

Based on that, here's what is the best.

Because I think, you know, like, it's not about me giving somebody an answer, right? It's about like, I want to know, like, who are you and what do you think the answer is? What's your thesis? To which I can respond and try and give you some insight that fits with who you are and what you want and what you believe, where you have conviction. So mostly I think that people should ask me that question stuff like, what would you do? It's not about what I would do, it's about what would you do?

When I call you, I'll make sure to ask that question.

You'd be like, supander. Here's what I'm thinking.

Yeah, yeah, you know, here's my unique gifts.

Yeah, yeah, yes. Here's my thesis. What do you think I should do? Given that information? I'd be like, oh, okay, well, this is what I would reflect to you.

Right?

And don't get me wrong, you know, the problem is if you ask me, like, what should I do? Like I'm gonna give you a straight up answer, then you're gonna think that that's what you should do. And that's not always the right an.

Maybe it is, but it's.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but like, you know, it's the wrong question.

And then if you're taking action based on someone else, what someone else would choose to do, it might ruin the whole thing.

Or might it be the thing? I think we like go through the world asking people who know us, like, what would you do? It might be like, well, here's my reflections. What do you know about me? What do you think I should do, given my own awareness? And like, what do you think? What am I missing about, you know, in this equation? About who I am in this situation? And those people probably have a better reflection for you based on who you are and your unique gifts and capabilities and capacity. But you have to show some self awareness first.

You gotta be self aware, excited about your book. Choose possibility, take risks and thrive even when you fail. And I think a lot of people, it's hard for people to like, have this mindset of failing. But I've always been told that failure is just feedback as an athlete. It's just Like, I failed every day in practice, in games. It's like, you never made 100% of your shots. You never caught the ball 100% of the time. And it's like, okay, that's information. How do I use that to become better and not get down on myself, but to improve myself? And so failure has always been a part of my life because it teaches me something, right? So take risks and thrive even when you fail. But I think a lot of people are just afraid to take the risk because they don't want to fail. They don't want to have that, even a micro failure.

It's like, well, yeah, and I don't think they think. I mean, look, I think there's a couple things that go on. First of all, if you're an athlete or you're, let's say in a startup or what have. You're used to this idea that iterating every iteration is feedback, right? In a feedback loop. You're also used to probabilities. You know that in baseball a.300 batting average is actually amazing, right? Whereas in the NBA it might be, I don't know, maybe the top shooters or 76% or whatever. I mean, it depends like what the, you know, from the field or what have you position. Right. Or you might know that if you're a trader or a hedge fund manager. But you know that it's a game of probabilities. So why do we tell ourselves it's like one shot? Like, why do we think a winning season is like one shot and then we put all of the weight on that choice? I think that is actually the key for all of us. It's that risk taking is a muscle. It can be developed. The book is more about the how than the what, but it's both. It's like, yes, this is the principle. But I think when people say, like, have a growth mindset, I think people need tactics, they need a structure, they need tools. So hopefully the book gives you some of that. But yeah, it's always amazing to me. I'm like, we don't think in probabilities of our own life, right? We think that every single choice is the one that makes or breaks us. Right?

That's not true.

That's not true. Isn't it? It should be freeing for people. Now there are many shots on goal.

Absolutely many shots on goal. Yeah, you've got a lot of different, like, equations in here and different examples. So yeah, it's really cool.

I know. Maybe it's a little too heady for.

You no, it's all right. I'm always impressed with people who can do, like, frameworks and equations and formulas and make it map it out. Because I never know how to explain it and position it that way. More just like, well, this is how I do it. I don't know how to. But, like, when someone could do this, I'm like, I really appreciate it. Even like the self awareness sandwich, you know, it's like the framework. It's okay. I would just try to, like, explain it in my mind. Well, this is how I feel. But you, like, put it into, like a diagram, you know, it's like, okay, that makes more sense. So I'm always appreciative of this. People should get the book. It's called choose, take risks and thrive even when you fail. Sukhinder, I want to acknowledge you for a moment. I've got a couple final questions for you.

Sure.

But I want to acknowledge you, Sukhinder, for your vulnerability and your unique gifts. It's really been a pleasure to connect with you and to hear your stories and hear your connection to your gifts. The lessons from your father, the lessons from your experience as an executive at a high level, being a female executive and founder, the mindset around wealth, which I think a lot of people are afraid of. So I acknowledge you for opening up, for sharing, for being real. And I think we were able to create something inspiring today. So I really acknowledge you for your gift and hopefully we can stay connected and I can help in any way possible. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end called the Three Truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. Live as long as you want, but eventually you got to go to the next one.

You gotta go. Yeah, we talked about this. We're all gonna go. Yeah.

And for whatever reason you've accomplished all your greatest dreams, everything you want to accomplish has happened personally, professionally, everything. But you've got to take your work with you. The book, this message, all your conversations got to go somewhere else, whether with you or not, here on this earth. So no one has access to your information anymore, but you have a piece of paper and a pen and you get to write down the three biggest lessons you learned from your life that you would leave behind. And this is all we would have to remember you by. I call it the three Truths.

Yep.

What would you say are yours?

Number one? Possibility. Lives in acts big and small.

For sure.

So I always say to people you don't know if you don't try. Right. So that is, like, just embodied. I think that, like, just remember possibilities and acts big and small. So, like, get started now. You'll never know if you don't try. I think that's one think. I think number two, I would say. I'd say we're all here, you know, we're all here to maximize our gifts and have impact, so discover yours. And I'd say number three, and maybe this is unique to me, given how I was raised, is like, put it in perspective, you know, it'll all be okay. We're all here. We're all here as part of something much bigger. You know, you're loved, you're seen. Regardless of what happens, you will be okay.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's a good truce. I'm curious, not to get too emotional here, but what do you think your father would say if he saw you now of everything you've created in the last couple of decades?

First of all, I think he would say, remember that, like, all that you've been given is like a gift. Like, just remember that. Remember where it comes from. Like, you know, of course he would acknowledge it and acknowledge my, you know, things I've achieved. But mostly I think he would acknowledge the universe and he would be like, you know, like, I think he. I think he would just say, you know, feel grateful. Feel grateful and understand where it all comes from.

Yeah.

So of course he would make me feel great, but he would also. He would also remind me, which I'm very clear on. Like, I feel just grateful for my. You know, for everything I've been given.

Right. Yeah. Gratitude is key, for sure. Final question before I ask. I want to make sure everyone gets the book. Choose possibility. Where can they go? Sukhikinder Singh on Twitter. You're not on Instagram. I tried to look for you.

No, I hide on Instagram. You know why? It's just another. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm most present on LinkedIn and Twitter. I do have an Instagram account. I never post. I just follow. Because it's just another place to be responsible. Right. And, like, in a world where, like, that's where I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's like, one more thing to, like, take care of. And my life is so full right now.

I know.

So Twitter and LinkedIn. Okay. ChoosePossibility.com. we can get information there. Is there a personal website for you.

As well, or is that, you know. My personal website is a book website.

I don't have a website.

But the best, most active place to find me is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn.

Yeah. That's where you can just find me. Atsi Kinderson. You can find me at. You can actually on LinkedIn, might be atsukindersoncasty. I guarantee if you put my name in the LinkedIn, you're going to find it.

You'll pop up right away. Yes.

And you can follow me there. You can certainly follow me on Twitter. Most importantly, you can buy the book wherever you want to buy books, wherever you buy them. There's an audiobook, Amazon, all the usual places.

Inspiring stories, inspiring frameworks, lessons. I love it all. Final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

It's what we talked about earlier. I think it's people who not only create impact in their own lives, but they create impact and possibility for others. Power flow, my friend. If you want to be great, like, you know, stop just generating possibility for yourself or stop thinking of it as, like, I have more possibility, you have less. If you have possibility, your opportunity is to generate it for other people. Right. So that's. That's greatness.

So, Kendra, thank you so much. Appreciate you very much. Appreciate it. Amazing. Let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content. Coming up right now.

Now, did you know it was going to do pretty well based on, like, previous chefs that you had talked to?

Oh, my gosh, no. Because up until that point, Chef's Table was about typically fine dining chefs, and you're in their beautiful restaurants, and you're in their beautiful kitchens.

You didn't have a restaurant.

We don't have a restaurant in our kitchens. Our, you know, our New York City kitchen, for example, is 11,000 square feet of space. And so I'm thinking, like, we don't use tweezers. We mix cookies in mixers that are big enough for you to take a bubble bath in. Right. And so when they first even approached us, I was like, I don't like. I think maybe you read the wrong article or I think perhaps you have the wrong impression because you're not going to get the story that you typically tell.

1.

The spirit of what we do is very, very democratic in the. We make cookies that are. That are accessible in an ideal world to anyone and everyone. Right. It's a $2 cookie. It's a $3 cookie. You don't have to make a reservation. It does take a team to Put together. But we're doing it in this really big, large, almost Willy Wonka type of factory. And the spirit of these things. It's so different. It's so different. Our stores are open from 7 or 8am until midnight or 1am or 2am it's so different. And they said, no, we know exactly what it is that this episode will be. And we're like, we're into taking the risk.

Wow.

We're into taking the chance. And I think that acknowledgement for me was.

Great.

They're going to stretch. And so committing into this means meeting them at that stretch. Wow.

Yeah.

And what. And it came out when, mid last year?

Yeah, middle of last year.

And what happened afterwards, like the next six months?

Well, I had no concept of. It's kind of interesting. You. You live in your own world. You live in your own head. I do what I do for me. I do what I do for my team. I do what I do because it's what makes sense. Sense to.

In my head.

I have no clue whether or not it's gonna. I don't know it's me. I'm sure it'll resonate with some people, maybe not others. I didn't anticipate that it would sort of like blow up our universe in the most beautiful ways. And I. I mean that in. It affected people in ways that had nothing to do with food. Like, food was really the conduit more so than it was the focal point. I think you get to it because food's interesting and everyone wants to watch like a gooey cookie in like high res on screen. Everyone wants that. But it was really interesting that it became. Our story became almost a metaphor for people that are passionate about life, that are trying to figure out what that means, what it can mean, what it should mean, what it takes to chase down a calling. And that it was. It ended up acting as just like connect. Like connect connectivity. Connective tissue. Like an open hand. Like, hey, do you need a friend or do you need a pal? Or do you need someone that gets what you're going through? And I think also became this real, like, became a thing that people went back to to be encouraged to. Like, you're. We're all just regular normal people. There's nothing special in me that's not in you or you or you. It's just about like, how deep you're willing to dig and what you're willing to do to get to what it takes. And P.S. like, nothing happens overnight, right? Any, like, overnight success is. Yeah. Oh, it Didn't I didn't just wake up one day and start making cookies and I think just kind of like ripping back, bringing down all of the barriers and boundaries that people put up in their heads through a really honest, simple story of, like, we make cookies and cakes and pies and ice cream. We do it on our own terms. And it took a long time to get to the point to even have access to do that. And then once we did it, it took us another 10 years to get to where we are to today. Just being as honest as possible about that somehow resonated, like, in that, like mom always said, honesty is the best policy. It really is.

So for those who haven't haven't seen the special and don't know what we're talking about, you had been a chef at, like, five star restaurants for many years, right? And can you tell the story in a brief amount of, like, what you were doing at the last restaurant and how Milk Bar started to. Me, yeah.

So I moved to New York to become a pastry chef. I went to culinary school because I thought being loving to make dessert in a professional capacity meant being at the top of your game, and being at the top of your game was being in the most expensive fine dining establishment. And I worked my way up. And what I realized in doing that was I loved that pursuit of that craft. But when I took a look at myself in the mirror, I was like, but I really want to go home and make cookies at the end of the day because I want to feed. I love feeding people. And my version of loving to feed people isn't in the fanciest environment, like.

A little thing with the sauce, which.

Is gorgeous and amazing, and I obviously have so much respect for it. It just wasn't what was. It just wasn't what was in me. And so the last restaurant I was at, I was doing that while also trying to figure out what my next step was, because I knew that was I couldn't do that anymore and be true to myself.

You weren't finding fulfillment in the work you were doing necessarily.

Exactly. I was finding fulfillment in the pursuit of a craft, but I wasn't finding fulfillment in, like, the truth of where I needed to be as. As a pastry chef, as a top dog. Like, I wasn't resonating with the. I was resonating with the part of the creation, but not the entirety of the creation.

You were making great money.

Well, no, great money does not really exist when you work in a kitchen. You work really long hours. You don't Make a lot of money. It is a true labor of love.

But you were working at the best places.

I was working at the best places.

So you had credibility.

Credibility looked up to you and respected you. You were like the master of your craft, for sure. Got it.

But I was like, but what's it for? Because I still want to come in early and make crazy brownies or cookies for. For everyone that works in the kitchen, and then I'll go and do my job. My day job, which inevitably, when you work in a restaurant is typically a night job, was I was getting to a place that I was. That I purposefully didn't want. When I decided to work into a kitchen, I was like, I don't want a 9 to 5 job. I don't want to be a grown up. I don't want to fall into a routine. And on some level, that was what that job was. So I needed to get out and figure out my next step was. And my chef at that restaurant introduced me to Dave Chang, who was democratizing savory food. He had a very similar path. He was in fine dining restaurants and then was like, this doesn't make sense to me. And so he opened this, like, hilariously confusing ramen shop and was just like, I'm just gonna cook whatever I want that's delicious, and I'm just gonna open the doors, and if you come in and get a stool, you can eat for 7 or 8 or 9 or $10. And it was. It became a magnet for people that would make a reservation at this fine dining restaurant. And for someone that lived around the block that was like, I'm here for good food. And that made sense to me on so many levels. I saw what he was doing through savory food, and I thought, I know what I wanted. Like, there's a path forward, right? So I started working for him at Momofuku and helping him run operations. I would bake cookies at night and bring them in. And he knew I had a pastry background. And so one day he was like, this is, like, pretty much ridiculous. It's clear what you need to be doing. Like, go and do it. And gave me that push to open milk Bar.

So you were working with him doing operations. You weren't actually cooking or doing things.

There were no desserts on his menu. It was like, wham, bam, you, like, saddle up to this noodle bar, and you go, I'll have some roasted did Brussels sprouts with kimchi puree and smoky bacon, which is something that exists now but didn't exist 12, 13 years ago. And it was kind of like a bunch of cowboys, right? Like, there's a few dudes running the kitchen, and I knew how to hold my own and all of that. But the thought of dessert at that point was like, what do you even make for dessert? Because it's like a ramen bar, but there's kind of pseudo Japanese food, but also not at all. Became a melting pot for food. But also, you need to get people in and out. If you're only charging them a few bucks, you got to get them in and out because you don't want them to sit and eat dessert.

So did you start serving dessert there for customers?

I did. Over time, I started, like, working backwards and going, all right, well, like, what would be. I came up with soft serve ice cream. Like, great people. You don't want people to sit in their chairs for a long time. Give them something that is going to be a beautiful liquid puddle if they don't eat it quickly. Right? And beyond that, I was like, it's this tiny little space. There's no room in the kitchen for a pastry team. So how do you reverse engineer that? And I was like, well, I can make these big, flavorful, delicious milks, if you will, ice cream bases. Put them in a machine in there. I'm a very. I'm very big to nostalgia. And I was like, soft. Everyone loves soft serve ice cream. Everyone has that attached.

But it was different than just soft serve. It had, like, cereal milk.

Yeah.

Something crazy.

They were all different kind of crazy flavors because I was also like, I don't want to make vanilla ice cream. Everyone makes vanilla ice cream. Like, I'm not here to be the second, the third, the fourth of anyone else. I'm here to be the first me. And. And so what does that mean through soft serve ice cream? And that was like. That was where I started to, like, put the pieces together of my own voice through food and my perspective on it. And I was ready when I opened, when Dave was like, this is ridiculous. Like, just go and do it. Just go and do what we both know you want to do and you need to do, and I have your back. And he kind of just me out the door. He said, I mean, literally, right next door.

Right next door.

He said, hey, we got a space here.

I'll help you launch this.

I mean, I was running operations, so I was like, dude, there's this spot next door. It's coming up. We need to be careful, right? Like, a competitor could come in this. That or the other. The landlord could make trouble for us, whatever it was. And it became clear very quickly that I would take over that spot because it was best for the momofuku side of the business. And it checked the box of, like, you'll still be around. It'll still be together. Like, we'll still have each other's backs, but you'll go and do this thing.

So next door. So you open it next door. What happens in the first few months?

We open the door on November 15th of 2008, and there was like, there was a line out the door immediately to the point that I have so many things I'm thankful for. One of the things was that I did not have enough time to worry about any of the things that I worry about now. I didn't have. There was no point in me that I was like, what if no one comes? I worry about that every day when we open. We just opened our 17th store, and I'm like, what if no one comes? Or, what if only five people, right? Like, what if no one comes? What if no one cares? What if people don't get what a compost cookie is? What if calling, like, calling something that has, you know, pretzels and potato chips and chocolate chips and coffee and all of these, like, random in your cupboard things. What if people are like, that's such a weird name. Or what if people are like, the milk that tastes like what's left and you both have to eat all the cereal out of it. Like, okay, I guess I didn't have time to worry about any of that. And so when we opened the doors, we really did open in our truest, like, most honest form of ourselves because we just had this vision, and in a beautiful and terrible way, we hadn't gut checked it. It was just guttural. Like, there was no. Like, is that you didn't have a.

Test group of people be like, tell me your opinion on this flavor, what.

You think of this?

And I was like, we're gonna open at 8am and we'll open until 2am and there was no point of me. That was like, girlfriend, that means you are gonna need to be at work from, like, five o' clock in the morning until, like, when you're done cleaning up, three o' clock in the morning, like, how is that gonna work? Or I had. We were a team of, I think, four or five, where it was like, maybe you're gonna need a few more people if you're gonna do that seven days a week. And so the doors Open. There was a line out the door from the very beginning, and we figured it out. I mean, we took off sprinting and we started climbing, and we. Every day, we figured it out for good and for bad. We made so many mistakes. And the beauty of the mistakes were that we didn't have the opportunity for the mistakes to sit around. So we'd make a mistake and learn and make a mistake real quick, fix it real quick. I mean, I remember that morning of opening day. It was probably like 6:00am and it's like, okay, we're two hours from opening, and we're looking around, and I'm like, oh, my God, we don't have a menu. Like, I knew what we were serving, and it was all loaded into the point of sale system. And we had paper menus, but I was like, you walk in and you can't actually see a physical menu. So we took the legs off of a stainless steel, steel prep tape. We're looking around like, what are we gonna do? Took the legs off of this stainless steel prep table, grabbed a dry erase marker, and I have terrible handwriting at best. And I was just like, keep bake. Like, you know, just trying to, like, direct, like, keep baking. We were just like. We didn't know what to expect. But I think in a beautiful way, it resonated with people because I think when you buy a cookie, you're buying. It's something that's so human. If you have ever had a cookie or a cake or a pie, you've probably had it from someone that's in your family that cares about you. That, like, in a love language way. Making dessert is the ultimate love language. And I think you were just getting this honest team of people that were just, like, they cared so much about what they did and were just figuring it out. So it required a lot of patience from our customers. But you also got the most delicious baked mixed by hand delivered with so much care thing.

And people just came back just serving love all day. You know, love and hugs.

Love and hugs, right?

Oh, my gosh.

Every time I go to New York.

There'S always a line.

It's crazy when I go.

I used to live off Princeton Mulberry, and there's a spot right there.

There's one on Mott. You're right.

So whenever I go back to New York, I always try to go to my old neighborhood and see what's new. And I saw the milk bar, and I was like, man, that's a line.

That one is one of my.

So tiny.

It's Just like a little cupboard.

So one of the reasons there's a line is because the reality of doing business in New York City for New York City stores is like, rent is expensive. You gotta sell a lot of cookies to pay the rent. And, I mean, you're open seven days a week, 365 or 363, 362. But for me, I really think about our stores in New York. And I think in New York, you're there to be a person in the world. Your apartment is small. You're not really cooking at home, really, maybe on a special occasion, but you go home to sleep. You do everything else to be out in the world. And so that store, for me, was really special because it's just a window on the street. It was like, we can try and jam people in. Or that neighborhood is like that sort of like, no, lead us to soho neighborhood is the neighborhood where you. You go to explore.

So sweet.

And so it felt more like we. We have to be a part of the street, of this street of New York City.

That's cool.

And so you just grab it and you go on your way.

That's amazing. So the first store, you were making the. The cookies and cakes in the store.

Yeah.

But now you have this huge warehouse where you have bathtubs of truffle ball butter or whatever it is you have in there that you're mixing all day. From the Netflix series I saw, it's like, okay, how did you learn how to scale it? And when did you realize, like, okay, we can't do this in individual stores anymore? It all has to be in one place and take it to the stores?

That's a good question. So I like to. I like to think about my life, especially when people go like, okay, but, like, how do I get to where you are? And it's like, you have to follow your intuition, and you have to make sure that every decision you make, it doesn't have to be on one straight path. It can be a very curvy path. It can be really wide lanes. But you have to make sure you show up to whatever that path is every day and mean it. So when I think about answering that question, I go, well, every single day leading up to that trained me for that decision and learning how to do it. So when I was first deciding to work in kitchens, I would work in, like, kind of on some level in any kitchen that was compelling to me. And I got a job really early on, before I moved to New York City, someone convinced someone that I was A great baker and like tiny little stand mixer at home. And someone gave me a job running this huge bakery on an island off the coast of New Hampshire where I had to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for 800 people every day. And I showed up and in the spirit of like, you have to rise to the occasion. Someone was like, here's the, here's the mixer. And it was this gigantic thing. And I was like, I have no clue how to run this.

Used to a small one, not a scale.

Yeah, the one that sits on your kitchen counter. But it's like, great. It's just like a honey I shrunk the kids moment. That's fine. How hard could it be? You gotta just lean into it. And I was like, great. So can you just give me the quick 1, 2, 3. How do you lift the bolt up this, that or the other? And I figured out how to do it. Went to New York, went into all this fine dining. Never saw a mixer like that again. But in my mind was like, okay, I know how to feed the masses. So when we opened Milk bar, there was a line out the door. And I was like, our kitchen little thing, Alberto. One at a time, hugely undersized for the demand. And I was like, we're going to need a bigger boat. And it was a lot easier to figure out what that bigger boat looked like because I just started going into my experience and memory of, okay, what does this mean? One day at a time, one step at a time, one huge mixing bowl at a time. Instead of buying, you know, a little pack of butter, we buy a 30 pound case of butter. And instead of buying a 30 pound case of butter, we buy, you know, like a 3,000 pound brick of butter.

Crazy.

And you just make, you just 3,000 bricks. A 3,000 pound brick. It comes like a pallet. And I'm not joking.

It's not like, like a bunch of little bricks. It's one big thing. They make a big brick.

Well, how do you think they make the little sticks? Dude, like, it's crazy, but that.

How much does a 3,000 pound brick of butter cost?

That's a good question. I don't know. I'd have to check a dairy layer.

Just curious. It's crazy.

It's crazy.

How many cookies can I make?

But that's how big. I mean, batches and batch of thousands. Hundreds of thousands of cookies.

Wow.

But that's also the. That's when you start to go. At some point as you grow a business, you have to go, what are my bottlenecks how do I work? Smarter, not harder. And you just have to equip yourself. I think for me one of the biggest like mental realizations was people do it every day.

Right.

Like you're, you're not necessarily any better or worse equipped than someone else. Whether the toilet's clogged or you need to move a light switch or the delivery van breaks down. Right. Like these are people doing things, applicable things that they've learned in the world. And that like empowerment of equipping yourself with as many skills as necessary to solve your problems is really important. And those are for me, those are like the really fun parts.

1.

Yeah. How do you scale up the compost cookie? To go from this to that is trial and error is trying to throw as much of your learnings as possible against it and then learning along the way. Like great. Okay. So when we scale up, we need to always increase salt by 15% or flour needs to, you know, you have to be careful with it or it's a bigger mixer so you're going to develop gluten because it takes more manpower, there's more friction. It's working. The dough and cookie dough, you want to kind of be mixed as little as possible so they're tender and fudgy. But it's, it's, it is not being afraid to, to acknowledge the problem and to solve with it. It's to never work with the problem. But yeah. We went from this tiny store, 750 square ft in New York. We have an 11,000 square foot kitchen in D.C. it's about 4,000 square ft here in LA, it's 3,000 square feet. Feet.

How many stores in LA?

Just one. Just our flagship.

3,000 square feet for one store.

Yeah.

I get to expand them more then.

It's a good question. I don't know.

Dennis and Monica. It's got to get.

I know. I like this is always. Whenever you're hanging out with someone that lives in. They're like. Or just like.

There's.

There's a shop right around the corner from my front door.

There is a place right down the street that just opened up.

Yeah.

I don't know.

WeHo needs it.

It's the tricky part of knowing too much at this point, right? What do you mean knowing too much? Like then now opening a store is totally different than what opening that first store. There's so much more on the line. I mean you gotta know this, right? Like in your career, you work, you work, you work. And then once you start to actually achieve, there's More people counting on you. There's more to lose. There's more things to.

There's money involved.

Investors now visibility, all these things. And your single decision is something that is responsible for so many other things aside from that. It's like, why do people love it? If it were on every corner, does it feel as special? You. You almost worry about breaking it as much as you worry about feeding it and supporting it and growing it. And so when that happens, then I'm like, all right, stop. You gotta get out of your own head. Like, get out of the room. Go for a run, whatever it is. Because now you're treating it in a way that's so precious, and that's also not what it is, but it is. Like, how do we inspire? The big question is, like, how do we inspire celebration? How do we remind people, show people, be a part of people's lives in the big and little ways? Especially the little ways. For me, like, whether it's cheat day, cheat morning with those birthday truffles, or the, like, I just ran the marathon, or the, like, I just broke. I just got dumped, or I just broke up with someone, or I just bought my first car, whatever. The little things that you don't think about, I was on time to work today. Whatever it was, Right. Like, the bigger little things and being a part of that texture in people's lives. And what does that look like? For me, it's not about store count. It's not about measuring milk bar success in any way other than trying to figure out how to measure those, like, really human connections, which are basically possible to measure. But for me, that's why I do it. That's what makes it worth it. And that's kind of what I'm always protecting. But I don't want 100, 200, 300 stores if it means. If we do it, we have to do it in a way that still maintains that philosophy that isn't just about, like, well, we're opening it because we.

Can open it and we don't lose the magic. Yeah. So what's the vision, then? 17 stores right now. Do you call them stores?

Bakeries? What do you call them?

Change it up. Okay.

17 locations.

Milk bars. Milk bars. I mean, every store is different, which is part of the formula. Right. Like, we don't stamp them out. We have a roadmap. But it's really important that each one of them is their own, like, living, breathing thing.

Yeah.

That it's a reflection of the people that are a part of it. And I don't mean on the inside. I do mean on the inside. That I also mean we want to be a part of your life. So if you go to a store, you're part of that. What making us for what it is.

What's the vision then, moving forward? You've been doing it for 10, 11 years.

Almost.

Almost 11 years.

And what's the next?

I mean for me, milk bar. And it's in its, in my most grand vision of it. And I've had to like go back to the dreamscape because every time I get close to the dream, I'm like, girl, you gotta set the bar a little bit further, A little bit further. So my current bar is to make milk bar a thing that would. The 10 year old version of myself growing up in the suburbs of Ohio or Virginia that milk bars reach and presence is there to inspire the 10 year old that is like, that loves cookies and loves doing things to make people feel like supported and a part of something. That loves walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store, that loves like digging into the cupboards and making a total mess that milk to. To make milk bar into a thing that a 10 year old that just has the most basic normal access that anyone in this country might have in that setting, in that suburban setting, that it empowers that person to just. To learn the rules and then maybe learn how to break them a little bit or to say, cool, I get what a chocolate chip cookie is, but what if I like these other things? What if I put them in or I want to do something for someone and it doesn't have to look like a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, that it could be a reflection of the person, that it's an opportunity to really feed, to bring imagination in and to feed someone through this dessert, which is a big one. But I also feel like in my head it makes perfect sense and it's not out of reach. Nothing's out of reach. Wow.

How do you continue to reinvent the dream as you get closer to it? What's the process for dreaming beyond the dream?

That's a good question. I'm very introspective. I'm actually an introvert. So I spend a lot of time, my like recharge time is spent alone, usually baking alone, going on a run alone. So a lot of it is I leave my house in the morning, leave my apartment in the morning. I'm like, okay, you have to let that go and you have to go and be a person for people. But a lot of that like dream Setting and measuring and. And swimming around in my own head. Happens when I'm alone and on my own, which is usually late at night or early in the morning. And I gut check. I'm a very big. I talk about, like, November 15, 2008. I had no time to gut check. It was just guttural. I do all of my editing. Whether it's editing recipe or editing a plan for the business, or editing that, like, big dream. It happens when I'm on my own and I. I run. I run things through my mind.

Crazy.

Whenever I'm running by myself as well. I get the best ideas I'm allowed to. I. I give myself space to reflect on what's working, what's not working, and start to redream as well.

Yeah.

And it's not like a to do list thing. It's not like, all right, so tonight when you're running, this is what we're gonna go through in our head.

Right.

It's almost like letting yourself just be instead of. It's like being versus doing. So interesting. Running is big for you in that space, huh?

It allows me to clear everything in my mind, you know, even if I'm Sometimes listen to music, sometimes I'll listen to an interview, or sometimes I'll do nothing in it. And all three times I get ideas, and I start to reevaluate what's happening in my life. Good and bad or neutral. Just start to reimagine.

It's a meditative space.

Very meditative.

Do you meditate on the regular?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I. I like to say that I'm very consistent, but I miss some days here and there. But I try to do 13 to 15 minutes every morning. Try to. Yeah, I miss this morning.

But.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the missing is also, like, the humanity of it.

I'm not perfect.

I'm not gonna hit the same routine every single day. I do my best.

Yeah.

But a workout, I feel like, is the most meditative thing I can do because it processes any negative energy or any toxic energy or any. Anything and just kind of gets it out.

I like that. It's true. There's some. It's that for me. And it's also this. I think there's, like, for me, I take an insane amount of empowerment in. In running long distances because there's something about, like, once I get in motion, this sense of telling myself and having the relationship with myself, like, you can go forever. You can go forever. It's mind over. It's mind over matter. And also this. You can do in, like, you can do anything. You can do anything. You have to just start, like, taking those. That first step or the second step or the third step in the running for me is like, it's not hard to do. But once I've taken the first three steps, I could.

I.

It could have been my millionth step. It's that, like, mentality of empowerment of, like, just start. Once you start, you'll figure everything else out. You don't have to have all the answers.

For me, I'm not a distance guy.

I'll run maybe four or five miles.

Max on, like, once.

That's a really long amount for most people. I like that you're like, that's not distance, which. Depending on three miles in a vacuum.

Yeah, exactly. I'm more of a sprinter or like, interval sprinting.

So if I do a three or.

Four mile run, the first two minutes is easy. It's like right after mile, I hit mile one, one and a half. It starts to, like, hurt. And then I'm like, okay, I can either stop here or I can continue to push through it. When I push through the pain and the adversity and I get on the other side, it's like I feel like I can run forever. Forever for me is like another two miles. Right.

But it's like I feel like I.

Can run farther than I'm used to running, which is two and a half or three miles. I can go four, four and a half, five. And I hit that zone as well where it doesn't hurt anymore.

Yeah, it's because it's almost like you've. You learn every time anew to quiet the voice in your head. Like the naysayer in your head. You're like, we're not gonna do that right now. But whether you're doing, like, sprints or interval intervals or whatever it is, I feel like it's the same thing of, like, we're not gonna let that voice kind of like, we. The voice is in there. Like, the personalities that you hold. We're not gonna do that right now. We're just gonna be quiet.

What's the worst voice that you have and what's the best voice?

I think the best voice is the one that just, like, puts a smile on my face. I went for a run yesterday morning, and I was like, I think everyone on the street right now must think I'm a lunatic, because it's the most quiet voice that just trans. I was just smiling. I'm like running up a huge hill just smiling, just so Happy and at peace. It's the voice that almost doesn't have a voice. It's the voice that just keeps all the other voices quiet. I think the worst voice is the one that's hypercritical. Whether it's like, you didn't meditate today, that's a problem, or this or that, or you're not this enough, you're not that enough, or you could have, coulda, woulda, shoulda. And I think the best voice is the one that's like, oh, I see you.

Shh.

We're gonna be quiet. Just be quiet. And I think talking about it and acknowledging it is a big part of it, because whether you're talking about working out, you're talking about building a business, you're talking about finding your calling and just in the pursuit of engaging with it. What do they say, like, showing up is 80% of it. And like, learning to showing up, I think is letting that your strongest, most powerful voice, which is your quieting voice.

Tell everything else really quiet, percentage wise throughout your day. What's the percentage of the critical voice versus the positive voice, would you say?

Depends on the day. I am at my best when I am. I know that my relationship with myself that I'm at my best when I'm in just like, a little over my head. Where my drive to be like, you got to keep your head up above water. You got to keep your head up above water is like my middle voice that keeps the critical voice quiet. So I'd say the critical voice comes out most at night and in the morning when I'm quiet and I'm by myself, I try to keep it out of the way the rest of the day by going like, hey, great, why don't you build this bakery into this big magic, magnificent thing?

Wow.

And when I'm focused on that, it can. It'll usually quell everything else, especially the voice that you're like, because you're just.

Focused on taking action and making it happen and figuring it out.

I'm focused. I had my team. I want to serve them. I want them to feel motivated. I want to push them so they're motivating themselves. I have all these other things I'm worried about that are in front of me as opposed to letting that. Yeah, exactly.

Isn't that interesting that you say you love being an introvert, but the times you're alone, you're the most critical person.

Makes no sense.

But you like being alone.

Yeah.

Why do you like being alone if you're critical of yourself?

I Think it's. It's the time that I get to know myself most. I think when you're out. When I'm out all the time.

I'm not.

I don't have, like, a stopping point to check in with myself because I'm just like, go, go, go, go, go. And that stopping point to check in with myself is the place where I have the opportunity to feel the most accomplished, because I don't need. I don't want or need somebody else's recognition to tell me about me and where I'm at and how I'm feeling about the job that I'm doing. It's the place where I have the opportunity for that when I'm alone. But the tricky part is it's also the place where, like, the bad voices have the opportunity to sneak into.

Huh. Do you think you would be as driven and successful as you are.

If.

You weren't critical in those alone times?

No.

So if you.

Because I wouldn't have my own measure.

Right?

Like, if you don't have your own measure of what right from wrong is what. What you want to set up where you're from, falling short, then how do you know? Then you have no measure, then good and bad is all the same thing. Right and wrong is all the same thing. But it's also tricky because you have to be a person in the world and you can't just measure your own feedback for yourself. One of, like, the big things that I've really learned over the past 10 years is it's easy to get defensive when you're like, no, I'm my own worst enemy. So I don't actually need you to give me five feedback. Right. And to open yourself up a bit more to start to understand the things you don't know. You only know what you know. You don't know what you don't know. Wow, that's an interesting balance.

So wait, did you say you.

You don't care about the approval of anyone else?

I don't. That's not how I measure my own success. I think that approval winning awards, this and that. I think that those are things that are, like, nice to haves. They're nice to haves for my team. Sometimes I think about my day or the commitments I make in terms of, like, I'm not. It's not just me anymore. Right? Like, there are people that show up every single day and make a promise, and I need to make a promise, make a promise to me and to Milk Bar. And it's really important that, that's that it's a two way street, that I'm making a promise to them. But also if something bad comes out, if a bad piece of. A piece of criticism comes out, it doesn't. It also can't mean that you're a total failure. You have to find a space for those two things to exist. I think I always say to the team, like, their perception is our reality. If someone has something positive to say, that's great, but that can't be the only thing. But also if someone has something negative to say, there's truth somewhere in it and that's an opportunity and we shouldn't be, we shouldn't have our guards up so much where we're only barometers of success and measure that we're not open to that.

Yeah.

And that's a, that's a, that's where you kind of. That's where you start to really feel like you're growing and blossoming a bit more. It's a scary place to be, but it's a really good place to be too.

What's the biggest thing you've learned about yourself more the last 11 years?

That's a good one. The biggest thing that I've learned about myself is that I only know what I know. And some days that's a lot, and some days it's just the beginning. And that's. That, I think, comes from, you know, when you're in your 20s, you're feeling great about life, you're feeling yourself like big time. And that it's such an empowering, like, decade of years. And in a really beautiful way, it's so easy to be like, to feel great and feel big and to very quickly have that turn into like defense or closing yourself off to all of the things that you will surely learn in your 30s and in your 40s or whatever it is. And I think when people say, when people ask like, what's your biggest mistake? Would you ever change anything? It's like, no, but I would love to be able to go back to my 20s and just like tap myself and be like, hey, girlfriends, like what you're doing is great and keep going. But like, let people, let people in. Let the conflict in a little bit more, let the criticism in a little bit more because you're so much better off when you do really.

So you weren't letting any criticism in?

I think I was doing the, like, I'm on my long distance run.

Shh.

Like, I've got my armor on. Every day is a battle opening this Business and going, and like, I have to have my back first, like on an extra, extra, extra level. And I think the second you start to actually open yourself up to let other people be a part of that dream and that vision and that business in your life, when you let people be with you, you're so much better for it. And so I was a bit more. I'm a very stubborn person in general, but I was incredibly stubborn in my 20s. And stubborn is what I mean. On, on the tiniest purse string is also what drove me to make Milk Bar what it is and why Milk Bar is what it is on many levels.

But.

It'S opportunity and threat at the same time. Like, if I didn't have that, like, no one gets to tell me who I am and who I'm not, what I'm capable of, what's possible. I mean, in 2008, someone being like, you have how much money in your bank account you're going to open a bakery. That sounds like a really bad idea. I mean, my sweet parents were like, oh my God, they gave you so much opportunity. Why do you want to go work in kitchens? And why this bakery? Like, can you go be like a doctor or a lawyer? Can't you do the safe thing? And I needed, I both needed to be really stubborn and closed minded from other people's opinions to be able to hear myself. But at the same time, I look back and go, oh my God. What worked for me back then does not work for me today. And if I hadn't figured it out, would have been holding me back so much.

Wow.

Yeah.

What are you most proud of that you've done?

This is like, I feel like such a hilarious old lady saying it. Well, one of my biggest pieces of pride from the past few months was we just started offering a 401k program at Milk Bar, which is like, when you work in restaurants, you give it your all. It's a labor of love. Restaurant, like the word restaurant is restorative, right? Like, people come to be restored, but in a really tricky way. People don't. Typically, you don't take care of yourself because you're working crazy long hours on your feet all the time. It's stressful and strenuous and yelly and screamy usually and like all of these things. And there's typically not a program put in place to take. Your job is to restore all these other people. And that's why you love doing. You love feeding and nurturing. But who has your back, I think is the question that I Started asking myself or realizing. And that was like, we offer health insurance and maternity and paternity and all of these other things. But the 401k for me was like, what if when you came into the doors of Milk Bar, you never had to write? You never had to go for another job interview, you never had to write another resume? Like, what if when we grew, you grew? What if Milk Bar is a true reflection of all the people that work in it? And in order to do that, you got to come in and make a promise every day, But I got to make a promise to you, and I want to have your back. And I think that's the one thing when you work in the food industry, you don't really think about the future because you're just so happy in this labor of love. And that was, for me, like, the ultimate. It took a long time, and it's not cheap, and it is so worth it. And it's like that part of it is the funniest. The funniest part of it, because looking back 10 years ago, I mean, I would never. It wouldn't even occur to me that I thought I was opening this bakery because I love to feed people and be a part of people's lives. And I do. I think the people's lives that I underestimated, I would become obsessed with. Being part of was my own teams, was the people that helped me bring it to life.

How many people are working in Milk Bar?

320, 30.

Wow.

It grows every day.

Crazy.

It's crazy.

300 people and super cool.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

The first one started with four or five of you.

Yeah.

17 locations. So you have people working in the storefront, and then you have people working in the. I guess, what do we call it?

The bakeries.

Yeah. In the kitchens, we have people that run, like, the delivery teams driving the cookies and the cakes and the pies. We have the shipping, and. Yeah, you're on it. You're like, you're ready. Ready to be the director of operations, shipping and fulfillment. And then we have the other, like, sticky teams of when we're at, like, an Oscar party. There's. The stores are still open and this, that, and the other. And so we have so many other unsung heroes on the team as well.

Like caterers that are going to these events. Wow.

They, like, show up high kicking and high fiving, and they work their butts off so that when they're there, they have a blast, and they want you to have a blast. Too.

Yeah.

Kind of crazy.

When do you feel the most loved?

When do I feel the most loved? I feel the most loved when I receive a care package from my mom. She sends me. I'm like, technically a grown up. She sends me. It sounds funny, but, like, she sends me a care package. It's usually once a month or once every two months.

She.

She sees me and obviously a very true form of myself. She's known me my entire life. She sends me, I kid you not, a bag of like, little candy, like almost penny candy. So, like, if it's, you know, it's a little bag of Reese's Pieces or it's a tiny little Twix bar, whatever. She sends me that she typically sends me a baked good. Like, she'll send me a 9 by 9 square aluminum pan of brownie or something gooey, butter cake, brownie, whatever. And she knows that I like everything a little, you know, from the movie. I love the gooeyness under baked. It has to be under baked. And so then usually it's like. And so it's usually all smushed on one side. Because she doesn't have, like, a master shipping warehouse the way that we do, right? She has. It's always a bunch of. She lives in the D.C. area, a bunch of D.C. food sections, which is her way of pursuing me, being like, I get it and I support your dream. She always writes me a letter and it's always on some random piece of scrap paper because she's totally a waste not, want not lady. And it's about whatever random thing she was doing that day. Right? There's nothing big about it. It's just the texture of that day and that moment in life. And then maybe there's like a baby quilt. Because we have this tradition in our family. My family, they're all sewers and quilters and they make baby quilts. So anyone that we know that's having a baby gets a baby quilt that's made by hand by the women in my family. It's these layers and blankets of visibility and acceptance. That's when I feel the most loved. Because it's like, it feels like I know that I've been the same person since the moment I left home. I've been the same person. She sends the same care package. And it doesn't matter to her. It doesn't matter to her that she's sending it to this huge office in New York City now. Doesn't matter to her that she's sending a big good that's totally smushed. On one side to a place that has plenty of baked goods. It doesn't matter to her. That's when I feel the most loved because I feel the most seen.

Huh?

You feel the most seen by your mom?

Yeah. And it's always in a cardboard box that's been used six times. You know, like the Sharpie on the side, like it's. Maybe it was like an Amazon package and then it was this and then it was that. And I love it because she's kind of. She. She's also very stubborn where she's like, oh, I see you. Oh, I see you. And it also for me is like the best. I feel the most loved because it's also the biggest anchor for me in a day to get that, to get that, to open it, to share it with the team, to put the newspaper things out. People are like, what is this? And it's like my mom and I usually do like the roll of the eye, like, you know, you can't take her anywhere kind of thing.

But that reminds me of camp when I was growing up. I go to camp, I get care packages, and it reminds me of home and feeling loved as well. There needs to be a business around care packages.

I mean, milkbarstore.com that for me is like the other part of Milk Bar is what we do online that a lot of people know. But I think we're still getting out. Is the. It's easy from a business standpoint to be like, it's E Com, right? Like that's the business term. But for me, it's like the spirit of a care package of feeling loved.

And seen and home.

And some people, like, in a beautiful way, like, send themselves a cake and they're like, hey, girl, stop doing it. So you can see it. You can see it as we're packing it. And for me, that's like, that's fuel. That's like the inspiration.

How many?

So these are care packages. You can send yourself anything or do you have kind of like pre planned?

We have.

You can send almost anything on our menu. We don't ship the soft. The cereal milk, soft serve, but we ship pretty much anything else.

You guys do like scrap paper notes? Do you do.

We'll write a note.

I might.

We should totally do quilts. My mom would have a girlfriend put.

Like a little, little mini.

I do.

Well, I said like every box gives like a little candy thing.

Oh, my God. You want to be the creative director of Milk Bar? We make a great team.

I'm telling you, this Would go even.

Better, I think, if you added like.

Little Reese's Pieces or a Kit Kat or whatever it is. Like every box got just a little thing of candy. Every box got a little square of.

A quilt and a little scrapped off note. It's just like a quote.

Yes.

Something that's like you're loved and seen and it adds a more like homey, less corporate Y, you know, feeling.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Right. Like I got you and the battery's.

Gotta be a little bit too sad.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel like someone would be mad if their crack pie was like a little. They'd be like, that's not what it looked like in the picture when I ordered it. Okay, fine. But yeah, the like, what else goes in the box? Is the question that hilariously we're asking ourselves. And that's the fun part of building the business too, is like bringing that part of being seen in where sometimes the team is like, Christine, we can't do that. And asking like, but why can't we?

Tell me why you couldn't do cereal milk either.

Yeah, there you go. Also, you couldn't pay rent off of selling $3 cookies. Somehow we do.

So how many box care packages do you ship a day? Do you know?

Oh, my gosh.

It depends. Over the holiday season, I mean, hundreds of thousands. We. This, this past holiday season was our biggest one. And we. The only way we could make it work, even in our big kitchen in New York, because we ship some out of la, the LA kitchen, some out of the. And the rest out of the New York City kitchen. We hired these trucks that were refrigerated to literally just drive around to keep the packages cold until UPS or FedEx or the Postal service came to pick it up.

Because you didn't have enough freezer space.

We don't have enough fridge or freezer space.

Right.

Like, that's when you're like, innovation right there.

Yeah.

And also like, this is the coolest thing. And I look at that and I go, I wonder if 10 year old Christina about one of those in the mail. And it's like, probably not. We gotta keep going. But that was like, that's. And that's the, like, we make things funny to keep it real. Obviously it's stressful trying to figure that out, plan for it, package day and night. But when we take a step back, being like, we literally had trucks driving around our kitchens to keep the packages cold. Because that's how many people came out for their care, for their Holiday care about people.

That's cool. I've got three final questions for you. This one's called the three Truths. Okay, so imagine you've accomplished everything you've ever dreamed of. And every dream you get closer to, you have to reinvent the new dream and dream bigger and you achieve everything you want that you can think of. But one day you have to go. You know, it could be a hundred years from now, it could be whenever.

Back to say goodbye to the world.

Gotta go to. Yeah, another place.

Wherever you go to.

Got it.

You gotta die.

And you've accomplished everything. And for whatever reason, all of your.

Message that you put out to the world, this interview, videos, Netflix, whatever books, everything you put out in the world, you've got to take it all with you. So no one has your message anymore. No one has like your words written, audio, video, but you get to write down on the piece of paper this final day, three things you know to be true about all of the lessons you've learned that you would share with the world. Your three truths or lessons. What would you say are yours?

I showed up, I meant it. I made it better. That and like a really. I thought I was like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this? That is my measure of a day. And similar to like I like to think I meditate every day. I don't. I try to do it regularly. The thing I try and do regularly is when I check in with myself before I go to bed and I'm like looking to my own internal voice is like, did you show up? Did you mean it more and more than anything else? Did you make it better? And that can be. It's applicable to everything big and small, especially the small.

I like that. Before I ask the final two questions, how can I. How can we support you? Where can we follow you? How can we show up to Milk Bar in person online?

You gotta come hang out.

I know she lives right across the.

Street from in American Mile area. Yeah.

Can you get that care package?

Okay.

So you can get a care package online.

Yeah.

Milkbarstore.com is our handle, is our website. All of our social handles our website.

I it.

My handle is just my first last name. Christina Tosi. You can go to christinatozi.com I have a bi weekly newsletter that I try to just show up, mean it and make it better in the world and just kind of like share my own personal path of whatever random thing I find joy in, in the moment or I discovered in my week or two come out and Visit us in the stores. For me, it's like, come out in the morning, come out late at night. Like, come and see us and show up and like, we want to connect with you. Let us connect with you. Show up and don't show up prepared, almost. That's like my request. Show up unprepared, show up curious. Show up like, ready to take a leap with us or send someone some love in the mail.

Yeah. It's an experience. So make sure you guys go and check it out, try to sample a few things. What are the main cities you guys are in?

New York, New York, L.A. d.C. Las Vegas, at the Cosmopolitan.

Nice.

And we have a fun little refrigerated cube of a store in Toronto.

Cool.

Yeah.

Any.

Any expansion in the Midwest?

Oh, my gosh. In Boston. What am I talking about? We just opened a store in Boston. I was just there. This is the, like, what day of.

The week is it?

I don't even know. Boston, Harvard Square.

Are you gonna open up in the Midwest at all?

I mean, that's my Christina's attention, like, inspiring that Christina's a 10 year old. What is. How does milk bar get to the Midwest? For me, that's where it all began. That's why the corn cookie exists. Growing up in the corn fields of Ohio is like, that is the ultimate love letter. That's when we'll know that's one of the dreams. How do we get milk bar together?

When you open it up in Columbus, I'll go there.

We'll all show up for the opening, right?

I'm in.

I'm in.

I want to acknowledge you, Christina, for your creativity, your curiosity, and for showing up.

Thank you.

I think it's hard coming from the Midwest and having these big dreams and actually pursuing it. You pursued a craft that you thought you were supposed to take for so many years, and you realize, okay, this is a great job, but it's not where I ultimately want to be. And everyone, almost everyone, said it was kind of crazy to go make cookies now, but you did it anyways. And look what you've created. You've inspired so many people. So I acknowledge you for everything. I acknowledge you for showing up as.

A rainbow, even though I know you. There's a lot of darkness that happens.

Day to day and challenges you have to go through and the grit that you have to have to have to make this happen after 11 years. It's a lot of work. So I acknowledge you for all the work you've done. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness.

My definition of greatness is being able to sit with myself and smile, be happy, to find. To find happiness in just being alone because I'm an introvert. For me, that's greatness. That's something I always wanted to make sure I had in life. And if that's what I leave as my mark or the thing that I have that I know I checked off, that is greatness for me.

Finding your purpose needs to be the most important mission of your life. You know, I always say, if you're.

Not walking in your purpose, you're just working and living to die.

And I hope it shakes people to the core when they hear that.