Betting on Yourself: From Junior Engineer to E Ink

[00:00:03] Welcome to The Courageous Choice, a podcast about what it really takes to lead at the edge of change. Because here's the truth, strategy isn't enough anymore. The world of work is moving faster than ever, and the leaders who stand out aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones willing to make bold decisions in moments of uncertainty. This podcast is about those moments, about those leaders, and because leadership today isn't about certainty, it's about courage. The courage to see differently, act decisively, and step forward anyway.

[00:00:33] Welcome to this episode of The Courageous Choice. Today it's my honor to welcome Sri Pruvivemba, and he spent more than three decades at the center of the tech industry, not chasing trends, but building the markets that other people would later chase. As Chief Marketing Officer at E Ink, he helped take electronic paper from a niche idea to a billion dollar global category. He's since built a career as a fractional CMO, a board director, a trusted advisor to hardware and display companies around the world. Sitting on boards,

[00:01:03] and cheering the board at OmniPly. But what I find most interesting about his story is the courage underneath it. The choice to keep stepping into new roles, even new countries, new industries, new kinds of leadership again and again, instead of settling into one lane. He's also spent years giving back, mentoring the next generation of tech leaders, and I can't wait to hear about all of that today. Thanks so much for joining us Sri. Sri. No, thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:29] We had the pleasure of meeting, and it was so inspiring just as you started sharing in the short time that we had together your journey. And I would really, I'm so excited to start. Let's go to the beginning, right? You were in India, you were successful, you had a career, and you made a choice to leave it. So I'd love for you to share from your perspective.

[00:01:50] No, happy to. Yeah, so I grew up in India, lower middle class family, graduated from engineering school, got a job, maybe a week before the final results for the exams came out. And I was doing quite well there. Within the first two years, I was able to achieve results better than people who were designated as senior engineers.

[00:02:13] I was a junior engineer. And so I walk over to my boss and I say, and back in those days, probably still is, India is a very hierarchical kind of system in terms of corporate. So I go to him and I say, hey, I'm achieving more results than the senior colleague. Why am I a junior? I should get promoted to senior. And that's when I hit the glass ceiling. It turns out that you have glass ceilings everywhere in the world.

[00:02:39] Even though we were only people of Indian origin, there were no other people. And I was male, not female, for all of those stereotype reasons why we feel this glass ceiling. But I sure hit it. And I was told that it takes X number of years to get a promotion. I said, so it clearly wasn't due to merit. It was based on tenure. I said, I can't wait. And then I was fairly young and I was definitely stupid. So I argued with my boss. Usually, usually good tactic. Yeah.

[00:03:09] It's not a good idea, but you learn good manners and good tactics with that experience. Rough edges for sure. And he got annoyed too. I got a rice out of him. And he said, you have no gray hair. How dare you speak with me? By the way, this doesn't translate in English at all. No, I totally get it. It does very well in local Indian language. And I go all around the world giving talks now. And I point at my hair and say, if I was waiting for gray hair, I'd still be waiting 40 years later. You'll be a junior engineer.

[00:03:41] But so I went off and got some additional education. I went to this Indian Institute of Science, which is considered the number one university in all of India, probably still is. I got a certificate from there. I was trying to do different things. None of those really got me a step change. So I said, OK, I'm going to really make a big change in my life. And I will go to the U.S. and start as a student. That was the only way to get to the U.S. to get a visa.

[00:04:11] And so you come in as a student and you graduate and then you can apply for change of that visa. Sure. Working thing. But I had a very nice job. This is one of the largest private electronics companies in India. The company's name was App Lab. They still exist. Amazing company. Amazing products. And my pay was so good that my entire salary went into the bank. Just what the per diem they paid us for travel and everything was good enough to run all of my expenses.

[00:04:42] And then I spent all of that translating that into dollars and bought a few months before I left India. The government devalued the currency. So my savings in India was the same, but in dollars they became half. So I went from feeling on top of the world to now a really broke student. So I came in. I didn't have enough money to pay the full first semester fees, which I did before the devaluation.

[00:05:11] So I paid half of the first semester fees and so on. Within a couple of weeks, I was fortunate I was able to get a scholarship and go from there. I couldn't even open my first bank account because they needed a minimum deposit. I didn't have that much money for the minimum deposit. So I said, I'll wait for a week for the first paycheck to come around. And it was a decision. I was determined that I wanted to do something different. And this was a path I chose and worked out. That's really incredible.

[00:05:40] So I'm sure people around you were wondering why you were making that decision. What were your friends and family saying? I worked for a retired brigadier in the Army, Brigadier Borwankar. And he very reluctantly encouraged me to take a step. And he was going to lose somebody who would basically follow his directions, if you will. And I was one of the highest producing people in that particular office.

[00:06:10] But yet he was kind enough to give me good advice. Whereas within the broader family, not my immediate family, my dad was a big supporter. He just said, go, just go. You got to do this. But outside of that, in India, families tend to be very large. And some of these families came and spoke to my mom and others and said, why are you doing this? It's not going to be good for you. If I'm in India, it's better for the larger family and so on.

[00:06:38] And so there were a number of people who said that. And there were also enough people to say that there are certain values and benefits of living in India, which you would lose if you go to the U.S. Yeah. I think if they look at your path now, the risk might have been worth the reward. Okay. So keep us on your journey. So you show up, you scrape it, you pay half for the deposit, then you get that scholarship, you finish school. And?

[00:07:07] And my first job was in Illinois near Chicago. And the only reason I went there was because I had a roommate from college that would give me free accommodation for a few days until I could find a job. I took it. And within a few weeks, I was able to get a job at this company called Suntronic in a town called Crystal Lake, Illinois, where I stood. This is one of these amazing things that happened with this company. And we talk about the American dream. Right.

[00:07:36] That one year in my first job is an example of how that American dream could look like. I started as a junior engineer, sort of a thing. And I had a master's degree now with a management background and so on. But still, I started there. I worked for this really forward-looking boss. His name is Ron Sarton. And when he interviewed me, apparently he told the VP of the company, saying, I think I'm hiring my future boss. Which, by the way, turned out to be true many months later. I love that.

[00:08:05] But he gave me a great opportunity. He just said, just go do your thing. But in those days, I lived in a pokey little studio apartment. Didn't have air conditioning. The heater worked only after 20, 30 minutes. So you've got to go home. First thing you do is turn on the heater in the winter and wait and kind of thing. Yeah, Illinois. Yeah. I'd much rather be in the office because the office had central air. And by the way, the vending machine was subsidized.

[00:08:34] And I used junk food those days. Coke and candy was my dinner. And the only thing I had to be careful about was I had to leave the office by 10 p.m. Because Ken, one of my colleagues, he was in the second shift. He would leave at 10 p.m. And he had a better car than mine. Mine was a used car. And my car may not start in the winter. And one time it didn't start. And he had to help me take me home and so on and so forth. That was my stop. I would work up to 10 p.m. almost every day.

[00:09:03] And once people left the office at 5, 5 to 10, I can be much more productive. And after a few days, I ran out of work to do. I went to my boss, Ron, and he said, Ron, do you have fish fires? And Ron says, what are fish fires? He said, the stuff that you take from your boss, which is Mike, our CEO, or somebody else. And the longer it sits, the more it stinks. Oh, that's funny. That's the definition of a fish file.

[00:09:32] And he says, oh, yeah, I've got those fish files. And he gives me a stack of things that he had accepted from. Sometimes they're from customer requests and so on. Anyway, we used to make software in those days. And software have had bugs. And a customer reported. We couldn't replicate it. Unless you replicate it, you cannot fix it. Right. But you have to try it and test it. So he gave me a lot of these projects. And they were done within a few weeks. Then I go back to him and I say, Ron, I'm done with this. He says, you cleaned out all my fish files. I have nothing else for you.

[00:10:02] He said, let's go talk to Jim O'Hagan, who was the head of marketing. So we go to Jim. Jim says, oh, your background is very good. I'm hiring for a product manager. So I went from a junior engineer to a product manager. And he said, but we finalized the candidates. And today we are hoping to make an offer. But you're welcome to attend the interview. I was lucky that the people who interviewed, I had already met them before in the few weeks

[00:10:31] I'd been in the company and had a good rapport with them. And those interviews went well. And Jim himself is another amazing boss that I had. So he gave me the job. So I went within like a few weeks or maybe a couple of months from this engineering role to a product manager. And then a month or so later, Jim gets promoted and he says, Shri, I want you to be a director of marketing. So I become director of marketing. I inherit this team.

[00:11:00] And then another few moments go by. And I'm in front of a customer in another town. And I'm pitching the company's products. And my cell phone goes off. In those days, we had these bricks. They were Nokia cell phones you put in your belt and a little clip. And I tell the customer, I got to take this. It's from the office. I pick up. It's a CEO. I didn't work for the CEO. He was a big chief. And I knew him. Of course, I had met him. And it's very rare to get a call from the CEO.

[00:11:30] And he says, hey, where are you? I said, I'm in front of the customer. I took a break to talk to you. And he says, when are you coming back home? I said, tonight. I land tonight. He says, from the airport, don't go home. Come to my house. I said, OK. And then I said, I got to go back. I go back. I pitch. I win the business. Nice. In those days. That was a good day. Yeah, it was a great day. I get this purchase order in writing. And it's got three copies there. Oh, yeah. Where you tear. Yeah. Correct.

[00:12:00] You have the yellow and the pink and those kind of things. And I have it. Right. And I put in my leather briefcase. We carried in those days. And on the way to the airport, I called my boss, Jim. And I said, Jim, I get a call from our CEO, Mike. And he wants me to go to his house. And Jim says, I know what it is. But he has told me not to tell anybody. He will tell you yourself. I was not comforting. So I called another person in the company who said, you're relatively new to the U.S.

[00:12:29] If the CEO calls, there's only two reasons. One, you're going to get promoted. Other, you're going to lose your job. Okay. That wasn't comforting at all. So, but it turned out he lived on this golf course. So I drove a beautiful house. I walk in. His wife treats me. She's in the back porch facing the golf course. I go sit there and so on. And he tells me, I've been observing you. You're doing a great job. I want you to be vice president of the company.

[00:12:57] We'll announce it tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. But I want you to come to the office about 10 minutes later than you usually do. I said, why? He says, they had hired another vice president a few months ago. And he was going to fire that vice president and then give that job to me. And that's what happened. So in about roughly about a year's time, I had these four promotions and became the VP.

[00:13:25] It was a relatively small company, but it was a great growing company in Chicago. We were leaders in this software that we supplied into the petroleum industry. And we also had hardware products. And that to me is a true American dream where everybody's supportive. And the only criteria for growing was merit rather than who you know or any other criteria other than merit. I think it's really important.

[00:13:55] People like Ron and Jim in an environment where they recognize the talent. Ron to say, I basically have hired my boss. He wasn't intimidated. He was inspired and he supported your growth. We see so many examples similar to what you expressed from India where the organizational system. I remember once, oh, you have to be a leader at two sites to be able to get to the next level. Whatever these things that we make up, right? These constructs. And then we lose good talent, which is what happened there.

[00:14:23] And then the other example here where they basically recognize it and support it and they benefit from it. Right? That's such a great story. So how did you, what was the path then to get to, I want to talk a little bit about e-ink, but then I know that's not the full story. But how did you, let's get there for the audience. A few days after or a year or so after this promotion to VP at this company, our company was going to be sold. And Mike tells me about this.

[00:14:53] And I get worried because I'm on a visa and in a visa, if your company gets sold, your visa status may change. And I have to reapply and find another job. I was able to find another job fairly quickly and got into the electronic display industry. Went not far from Chicago all the way to Madison, Wisconsin, where I lived. I worked in a little town called Lake Mills between Madison and Milwaukee. Hardcore Midwest. More snow. All of that.

[00:15:24] Sorry? I think there's a butter company called Lake Mills. Or there's a bank of Lake Mills. I know that one too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't think that is in Wisconsin. I think it's in Minnesota. But yeah, it was definitely cheese and butter country for sure. And it was a great experience. And our company had got acquired by a West Coast company out of Oregon. We brought in a new CEO who said anybody at this level and higher have to move to corporate headquarters. So we moved to Oregon. And that CEO was making changes that I did not like.

[00:15:53] So I spoke to a company in Arizona. And it turned out they just passed on the call to the CEO, a guy named Jack Saltage. And I talked to him and he invited me to come over to look at a business they had purchased in Massachusetts. And after they purchased, the revenue had tipped by 80%. And they wanted me to help recover that or turn it around. Otherwise, there was a big goodwill on the books. It was a publicly traded company that will have to be written off. And we were very fortunate.

[00:16:22] I worked with some really amazing people. And we turned it around in less time than they had allowed us. And he gave me a very nice bonus check. So anyway, I was happy there. Two years into this, Jack comes to me and says, I need you to sell your business to generate cash to buy something else. When you sell your business, your job goes with it. The company that acquired us kept everybody on my team. And the only they would let the general manager go. That was me. And they put me on the board.

[00:16:51] The board doesn't pay a salary. They would give me these stock options. And you can eat stock options, it turns out. I then looked for a job, found a job at Sharp. I was working at Sharp. Sharp at that time was the most profitable display company in the world. It was making more money than a Samsung and a LG and all these big name companies of today. And I had a fairly large P&L I was running. It was the most profitable display business in all of Sharp.

[00:17:20] And in the midst of all of this, I get a call from a recruiter. His name is Chuck Pearson. I love that you remember everybody's names, by the way. I think that's phenomenal. No, these are the people that helped me climb that ladder, right? And they're more important than technology or any of these other things. They are the reason. And Chuck tells me I should go look at this company called E-Ink. It's a little startup company out of Boston. And I was saying, why would I do that?

[00:17:48] I'm in the best display company in the world. And I'm managing a massive P&L and so on. And Chuck said, but you're still a number because there's, I don't know how many employees we had. Tens of thousands of employees and so on. I said, no, this is important. I have a nice team. I had a fairly large team. We were doing all these wonderful things. And so I was managing industrial medical. I was doing signage. I was doing TV. Yeah. So I can rewind. Okay.

[00:18:18] I get this call from Chuck Pearson to go interview for E-Ink. And most of the decisions I make in my life are on a spreadsheet. And so, and I can describe the spreadsheet for you. On the rows are the things that are most important for me. And then I wait them, right? In a job. And by the way, I do this when I purchase a home. I purchase some expensive stuff. You know, all kinds of things. So I have, on the rows, I have the career opportunity, the compensation.

[00:18:47] Obviously, the compensation is broken into base pay and bonus and, you know, so on and so forth. Then comes where do you live? What's the opportunity? You know, there are a number of things that are important for me. And you wait them. And then on the columns are, I have a career job, which is sharp. And I knew it well. I could score it extremely accurately. Then I have this E-Ink opportunity, which is somewhat known, but not fully known because I haven't joined them yet.

[00:19:16] Then the third one is an ideal job opportunity. So I made that happen. And I still have that spreadsheet. So the one that caused my wife, Sheila, and I to get stuck and not make a decision on the same day was it snows in Boston. You know, we've had enough of snow. We're not going back to the land of snow. So Chuck said, you will be in number.

[00:19:42] So the same day, as a coincidence, I was able to save roughly about $10 million business for Sharp, something that they had anticipated. This was some inventory somebody in Japan built, and I was able to find a home for it. They didn't have to write it off for that fiscal. It was a big deal. I am so happy. And my boss was out of town. The president of Sharp had asked me to take this on. I go barge into his office, and I say, hey, I accomplished this.

[00:20:11] And he says, oh, that's great. That's wonderful. Oh, but what about this other thing? And I'm saying, I don't get to enjoy this even for more than like one microsecond. You're on to this next thing? And that's when I realized I was a number. And once you realize that, it was- I can feel that in my stomach. Yeah. And Chuck's voice was- And, you know, if he hadn't said, if Chuck hadn't mentioned this, I would have gone on as a number and been happy as a number.

[00:20:39] A tiger in a zoo may drink milk. Okay? You feed milk, it'll drink. Once it tastes blood, it's never going to go back to milk. This is the kind of thing. Yeah. Bad example, maybe. Totally. It changed your perception of what you were potentially giving up or leaving. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And obviously, I was going from a very big, strong, stable company, which I thought at that time. Hindsight was not true.

[00:21:07] I went to a startup. I was basically losing money. And it didn't have a product that worked. And it didn't have- It was chasing a market that didn't exist. And it had a down round around that time. And there were a number of things. However, there was something very interesting. I was no longer a number. And I could go create something. And I go there.

[00:21:32] I'm surrounded by extremely smart people who are all scientists, including our CEO who had a Harvard degree. He's a math major. He's just- These are brilliant people. However, nobody in the company had a true marketing background. And so I could actually add a lot of value. Sure. And that was very compelling. And the snow stopped us for about 24 hours. And after that, we said, okay, this was the best mistake I have made.

[00:22:01] And it was very- The outcome was good. So Sheila's risk-align comfort is similar to yours. And she trusts you, is what I'm hearing in this story. I promised her that we'll go try it for a year. If the snow gets to us, we'll find another gig. It's not complicated. And then I said, it's a startup. In a couple of years, we will know whether we make it or not. In our specific industry, about 90% of the companies fail, startup companies.

[00:22:27] And so, and we'll never be smart enough to know which is that 10%. But if you push really hard and if the company's aligned and they do all the right things, then you push yourself from that 90% to that 10% and you succeed. And that's exactly what happened at Eek. Yeah. Just share the growth story for a second because it's pretty amazing. Yeah. So we, when I started there, as I said, we were losing money.

[00:22:54] We were a fairly small team and our customer was Sony. They had launched a device to replace books, an e-reader in Japan. And that product did not succeed for Sony. Of course, subsequently they came relaunching the US and they were successful. In the meanwhile, there was this company called Amazon that wanted to build this thing called the Kindle. It wasn't called the Kindle. Yeah. It wasn't called the Kindle because it was a super secret.

[00:23:21] But Jeff Bezos wanted this company, Lab 126, to remain a secretive incubator in Silicon Valley, far away from their corporate headquarters in the Seattle area. And it was a small team. And they were a very unique customer. They relied on us a lot rather than dictate to us how things had to be done. And so the collaboration was very strong. And so we were both betting on this. And for that company, that business unit, that was the only product.

[00:23:50] That was their first product. And today they have multiple products and they have thousands of employees. Those days they had maybe 25 employees or something like this. Yeah. And we were already a very small company and we had other things, but this was the main thing. And we needed this to succeed. And when we did build it, the product had a ton of problems. I remember we had variability on our product from batch to batch. We couldn't solve it.

[00:24:17] So we would build these things and somebody on the team will bring it. And I represented the customer. So they'd ask me to come. This was in the cafeteria, by the way. Our conference room was not big enough to have all these displays. That's great. I would say, okay, this is okay. This is not okay. And so on. And these poor engineers would take that. And that would be the customer feedback. And we would ship some of this.

[00:24:45] And Amazon was super supportive and the product took off. And Jeff Bezos had an amazing way of marketing this. He went to the Oprah Winfrey show and she said it was her most favorite device. And many of those things cost that to take off. We literally, just as a side note, when she made that announcement, we sold out our inventory and all of Amazon's inventory. That's how powerful her voice was.

[00:25:11] And today when I mentor people, I advise companies and so on. I talk about the power of human beings, which is vastly more powerful, in my opinion, than just a technology or a benefit or a feature or a price or whatever those things are to cause new markets to take off. And that happened. And we went, we and our company went from losing money to within two years, having revenues well over a billion dollars. And I was part of that.

[00:25:40] And then as you're successful, we only talk about companies that lose money and then they have to borrow money and so on and so forth because they are not doing well. We were doing well and we were still running out of money because we were spending money on building stuff and we don't get paid the same time that we build. So we needed cash. So we went off and we had a loan pending from an investor in Japan. We had to go pay that off. And people said, rather than give you a loan, we'd rather acquire your company.

[00:26:09] And so we talked to a bunch of different companies, 30 in all, and five or six of them agreed at a minimum bid on our business. And we did all day presentations to the management of some of these big, amazing companies. And a company in Taiwan eventually acquired us for a combination of cash and equity. Oh, that's perfect. And that worked out quite well.

[00:26:38] It's such an interesting story too. I feel like you and I can have 10 different conversations from this because I'm hearing the partnership, right? The partnership between Amazon. I'm hearing about how they actually incubated. Because when you're in those big organizations, there's always that tension around innovation and the rest of the organization and how do you create that? So hearing that was so distinct is really interesting. Even the role that I hear a lot lately because of how things have converged between

[00:27:07] marketing, product, engineering, and sometimes that tension and battle. You and I could have so many side conversations, but I'm going to stay on track for now, but I may take you to lunch if you're open to it. So, okay. So that's, it's really incredible. Certainly the American dream. But I hear it's an American dream that was driven by you, that was driven by your tenacity, by your drive, by your confidence in yourself to bet on yourself.

[00:27:36] Sheila's confidence to bet, to go with you and to do that together. And I imagine, I know that you mentor a lot of people and you can maybe share a little bit about that, but how do you help translate that, right? Because success didn't start because you just overnight had a great idea and it happened. Like success started when you had the courage in India to think bigger than the construct of the organization you were working with.

[00:28:03] So the transition from India to the US was 90% myself, some support from others. Inks success, I was a very small contributor. There was this amazing R&D team, engineering team, management that came with a lot of experience and relatively tough but supportive board, all of these reasons. And the company became very successful.

[00:28:31] When I mentor people, and I mentor about 70 people now, about 20 of them on regular basis and the others are maybe once a year. And a lot of times when we give an example of something that is generic, it never sticks. And therefore they cannot act on it, follow, or they cannot translate it into their own world and do it. And it's impossible for me to spoon feed them all the way to the point where I tell them, take these six actions.

[00:29:00] Like they see their own path. Yeah. Yeah. Correct. Correct. When I give my personal examples and I say, this was a journey, and then the good ones will pick up and say, oh, you did this. Therefore, I can do this. Then I can interact with them. And then they're able to use some of this. And again, some of the things I've done are dated. So therefore, you have to use the new tools and all of this. Yeah. No, I think it's really true.

[00:29:25] That's really why we do this podcast is because I think there's really great inspirational stories. Quite frankly, they're conversations that I want to have. I think they're interesting, inspiring for me personally. But, and it's not that anybody is going to go follow the exact path. But they might see that opportunity in their own world, personal, professional, to make a choice that might take them on a totally different trajectory. So you shared that with all the mentees that you have, you start to see some patterns.

[00:29:55] And you've talked about deliberate choices that you've made in your career. Maybe talk a little bit about some of those patterns and choices. So I've helped about 400 people in their job search in the last 14 years. And this was my way of giving back. And then I volunteer for an industry nonprofit in many different roles. I started their women in technology program. I managed their CEO forum, supporting people. I do a number of things for that nonprofit.

[00:30:23] And in all of these, you notice that, and many of my mentees work at Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta, these kind of companies. And it's varied background. And you notice that there are certain common patterns. Once I recognize a pattern, I know how to help them. And I also tell them this is the pattern they're following. And many of them don't recognize it because it's hard to recognize when you're in the rut. And one of the key things that I notice is hunger.

[00:30:54] If I stereotype, the kids, whether they were born here or born elsewhere, the ones that came from nothing seem to have greater hunger. It's just a driver. But what if you don't have it? If you were born and raised in a reasonable means and you never went hungry, how do you create that? How do you become successful? You have to artificially create this sense of urgency to yourself.

[00:31:23] And sometimes it's not possible. Then you just focus on a goal. And that goal has to be so much bigger than yourself that it has to motivate. And I noticed that for many immigrant entrepreneurs that come to the U.S., just the drive to achieve financial goals are more than enough to cause that hunger. For many that don't have, they were born and raised in the U.S. and so on and so forth.

[00:31:53] There, it's much more about accomplishing something that they're proud of. And when I see these things, and if I can start with that North Star, the rest of those steps are easy to build. It's so interesting because I like the way you frame it. I know for me, I talk a lot about, like I can remember 2009 sitting in my corner office in a Fortune 50 company and recognizing that I was just disconnected. Right? I was, I'd like achieved these things.

[00:32:23] From the outside, it looked successful. But internally, I was not feeling super connected to it. And then I started on my journey. And the word I use is fear. I realized that fear was playing a role. To your point, it was probably a very significant driver in a positive way. But then it can also derail or, in my case, I think I was just thinking smaller than I might otherwise because of that. Right? That makes sense. Right?

[00:32:51] So that's interesting. So when you talked about your spreadsheets and you talked about making choices, and often when you are making a choice, you're giving something up, right? Or letting go of something to go on to something else that may be known or in your example, and I have examples like this too, maybe not as known. Right?

[00:33:16] Let's talk a little bit about that moment of being willing to give something up. I'll perhaps talk about this in two different contexts. One is I advise a bunch of companies today. They are high-tech companies in my space. And I also serve on a bunch of companies' boards.

[00:33:35] And in many of these cases, if they're a startup, they have to say no to 98% of the things that come to them. Particularly, in all cases, I am usually working with the CEO of a company or the chairman of the board or whoever that is. And being able to say no to 98% of things is very hard for all of us, including myself.

[00:34:00] We are not always very smart to figure out which is the 2%, but we have to take that bet and we have to make it. Even when I help job seekers and I advise them, I say, don't go broad and say I can do these 10 things. Pick this one thing. It's so narrow that you're going to be the best in the world. And it's much actually easier to find a job that way rather than go say I can do these 10 things. And nothing sticks in the mind of whoever is talking to you.

[00:34:27] In case of mentees or in case of other folks in the industry that I talk to, a lot of times it's important for me to put myself in their shoes to fully understand where they're at and what they're able to do. And then in parallel, I also have my set of mentors that I constantly bargain. I'm seeking input and so on and so forth.

[00:34:57] And then you share all of this. And some of it will not change. Like math and chemistry formulas don't change. You can read a book from 50 years ago. It's the same. Whereas if I tell you something about AI today, next week, maybe slightly different. Right. Right. So in the same thing is true for habits, behaviors, these kind of things.

[00:35:22] And you take all of this into context and you give the best possible, you know, advice or support or discussion with whoever, whether it's client, it's a board, it's mentees, whoever. And that seems to be working out fine. Did I answer that question or did I go off on a tangent? A little bit of tangent, but both are good. Sometimes you have to give something up to take a big job. Yeah.

[00:35:47] My personal example has been I gave up a good job in India to become a poor student. And I was broke for years. Right. I even went into debt to pay student loans. All kinds of stuff. Similarly, when I went from one job to another, I may be general manager in a company and now you start as a manager. Those things are not important. You think you're giving up something. But as long as you're aiming towards your North Star. Yeah.

[00:36:18] Asides, a horizontal step is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you know that's your direction you're going to go. And people have a tough time giving up some of these things. Yes. I'll give you a different way to think about it. You look at large companies and one of the reasons they struggle to grow as compactor startup companies is because they're successful. And the success is standing in front of them. Right.

[00:36:43] A company that's shipping product and has got to meet customer expectations is 100% focused on that. And that's why they will fail because that was successful yesterday. But today what they need to do is not give up, but give up a little bit of it in order to look at all the other opportunities. And then one of those other opportunities is going to be better and you have to keep going. And this is very hard for us in our personal lives.

[00:37:12] I'll give you some other examples of things from individuals that always bother me. There are people who live in a certain city and they call me and ask for help because they just got laid off. But they don't want to leave the city. And I'm saying there are no jobs there in your particular sector. And if you're open to it, you have to give that up. And they say, oh, I've got this family. I've got this. Yeah, you do. But once you go, you don't lose it. Right. You actually gain more.

[00:37:39] And sometimes you can come back and start at a completely different level and have a great career trajectory or life trajectory. And these are the kinds of things. And because we are hardware into thinking there are it's these are things we cling on to because our grandparents told us society had this belief and so on. And vast majority of those things were relevant in 1945. Yeah. Not true anymore.

[00:38:06] They're like self-imposed limiting beliefs that often we're just not willing to question or review. And I think like today, I think we are we believe things to be true because to your point, they may have been true at one point. But now it's just an assumption because like you said earlier, the context has changed. The technology has changed. The people have changed. Whatever the systems. Lots of things have changed. And yet maybe are thinking it might be stuck. I first of all, thank you so much for joining us because I want to just keep talking to you.

[00:38:35] There's so many really valuable lessons in this conversation. But before we close for our listeners who may be leaders making challenging conversations, navigating companies themselves or as individuals, leaders making personal choices around career and life. What advice do you have on either or both sides? Your theme is courageous decisions, right?

[00:39:00] And so if you think of I think all of us need to have goals. I usually formulate my goals around October, November for the following year. And many years ago, Lee Iacocca wrote a book. And in one of the things he talks about is you better kick yourself in the backside. Otherwise, somebody else will hurt even more. And I keep myself on the backside every year, which means reset and say, am I still doing the right thing?

[00:39:25] And to some extent, companies do this driven by their board or by activists or whatever those reasons are. Individuals don't. Particularly if you are a professional, like you're an engineer, you're a designer, you're this, that, and the other. And most of the time you're serving your organization, your company, your product, whatever, your customers. You're not serving yourself. And you have to think of yourself. You have to set those goals.

[00:39:52] And you'll actually serve everybody, including society, much better if you have a goal and you're focused on yourself rather than focused on things where there are multiple people thinking about it. And I always ask this question. I said, who do you think thinks about you the most? And people say, my boss, my this. No, it should be you because your boss has 10 other reports. And then the boss has to think about the boss.

[00:40:19] So you get, let's say they have 10% of their time for their staff. In that, you are 110 because they have 10 reports. And then you just get 1%. When you put it in that context, they say, oh, my gosh, there's nobody thinking of me. Yes, damn it. Focus on yourself. Set up the goals. And when you're driven and you're creating opportunity for yourself, you actually list up everybody around you rather than think of arbitrary kind of things that you have.

[00:40:46] And it's much more satisfying when you have a goal and you reach it. It's a personal goal. And you have a greater contribution towards achieving that goal than if you're part of a very large team trying to do something. And if you're part of a 10,000-member team trying to launch a rocket, you can be proud of it. But it's much easier saying, I lost six pounds of weight because I started riding my bicycle. Much more joyful.

[00:41:16] Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. I think this idea of being courageous and bringing people along is also really rewarding. And people don't always recognize that rising, what do they say, the rising tide raises all boats or something like that. Thank you so much, Sri. I am so grateful to have met you and grateful that you spent this time with us. Thank you so much for joining us on The Courageous Choice. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you for listening to The Courageous Choice.

[00:41:43] If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five-star review to help get the word out about the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on any of our future conversations. If you'd like to know more about Gig Talent, please visit gigtalentagency.com or email us at podcast at gigtalentagency.com. See you in the next episode.