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Summary

What if someone were to tell you the healthcare system was designed to make you sick? That patient preservation wasn’t the #1 priority of the healthcare system, but the preservation of the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the regulatory bodies was instead?

What if someone were to tell you that the education system was no longer interested in educating you or your children, because it was more interested in preserving itself and its wealth? In keeping Department of Education leaders well-paid, and school administrators’ pockets lined?

Would you dismiss those comments out of hand, and call them “crazy”? Or would you sit quietly and ask to learn more?

That’s the decision you’ll have to make when you sit down to hear host Josh Felber interview today’s Making Bank guest, Naveen Jain.

Healthcare and education are two of many established industries Naveen isn’t afraid to speak critically of or disrupt. A successful entrepreneur who grew up in an incredibly impoverished family outside of New Delhi in Uttar Pradesh, India, Naveen knows staying silent is not the way to climb to the top.

Several of his innovations were vital to the success of Microsoft’s Windows 95 platform, and he used his accomplishments at the company as a springboard for a successful entrepreneurial career. To date, he’s launched Moon Express, World Innovation Institute, iNome, TalentWise, Intelius, and Infospace—all companies designed to solve the world’s challenges through innovation.

Sit-down and strap-in for this exciting, almost hour-long interview where Josh and Naveen discuss touch on a variety of interesting ideas, including…

• What it takes to transform big dreams into real action
• How massive cultural change can be spurred through technology and vice versa
• Why it’s so important to encourage people to chase the impossible
• The difference between showing your children love and pride
• Why money is the most important thing a socially-conscious entrepreneur can earn

And more…

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How to Help a Billion People with Guest Naveen Jain: MakingBank S2E34

Josh Felber:        Welcome to Making Bank, I am Josh Felber where we uncover the success strategies and the mindsets of the one percent so you can amplify and transform your life and your business today. I’m really excited and honored for today’s guest. Flew out to Seattle, Bellevue actually, Washington to interview him. His name is Naveen Jain. He’s an entrepreneur and philanthropist driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges through innovation. He has founded several successful companies, including Moon Express, Blue Dot, Viome and Talent Wise and InfoSpace.

Moon Express is the only company currently to have permission from the US government to leave the earth’s orbit and land on the moon, so if you want to get to the moon, get yourself some moon rock, Naveen’s the place to go. He’s developing technologies to harvest planetary resources on the moon for the benefit of humanity. His current company Viome, is focused on disrupting the healthcare market space by making sickness elective. We do this by recommending personalized diet and nutrition and identifying predictive biomarkers of disease based on deep analysis of microbiome.

Naveen Jain is a trustee of the board and vision circle member of X PRIZE Foundation where he’s focused on finding entrepreneurial solutions to address the global challenges in health, education, women empowerment, agriculture, and energy. He’s launched a multi-million dollar woman’s safety X PRIZE to empower women all around the world.

He’s also on the board of Singularity University and entered inter disciplinarian university with the mission to educate and inspire leaders to address humanities grand challenges through innovative technologies. Naveen, I want to welcome you today to Making Bank.

Naveen Jain:      Well, thank you very much Josh. It’s pleasure to be here.

Josh Felber:        For sure. I’m excited we got to connect a few months back.

Naveen Jain:      Yes

Josh Felber:        And really kind of started to talk about and one of the key things that you mentioned when you were up on stage talking I think it was somebody asked about what are your daily habits and you’re like, “No, that’s not the right question.” I think that as soon as you said that I was like the key is asking the right question. You said, “It’s all about what my mindset, what my thought process is throughout the day.”

Naveen Jain:      Yes.

Josh Felber:        That got me, man I got to talk to this guy. That is just a prolific statement. I’m excited to have you here today and want to welcome you to the show, for sure.

Naveen Jain:      Well, thank you Josh. Glad to be here.

Josh Felber:        Tell me a little bit about, I know when … what got you started as an entrepreneur because I think when we were talking before you came to this country, you only had a little bit of money in your pocket and to be able to transform from where you came to where you are today.

Naveen Jain:      Yes, as an entrepreneur, you know everybody claims that they want to be an entrepreneur.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      To them, being an entrepreneur means it’s starting a company. Really to me, the entrepreneur’s are the one that solve the problem.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      In my world there are three types of people. People who think of a problem and says all of us are really good about bitching about the problems, let’s just call them human beings, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Some of us are smart enough to come up with a solution to a problem and these are the visionaries and the other people who are really to some extent are scientist who come up with a solution to the problem. There’s only one breed of people who actually goes out and solves the problem and these are the people we call them entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs are the problem solvers. That means any time you see a problem, go out and do something about it. As an entrepreneur I went on the journey because I felt there were problems that I cared enough about that I was going to dedicate my life to solving them.

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      To me, the best way to know what is it you’re calling in life is to find something that you’re willing to die for and then live for it. If you do that, you actually will find something that you care enough that you will go out and solve it.

Josh Felber:        I know I think that a lot of people are trying to find their passion and oh what’s my passion, you know whatever. I guess, how does that differentiate from find something you would die for, but then live for?

Naveen Jain:      That’s one and other we have actually to be in more practical terms. The best way to find what your true passion is to start thinking what if I had billion dollars, an amazing family, everything that I always wanted, I have it now. What would I do? If you do that today, you will get everything that you want, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Focusing on making money is actually is a wrong thing to do.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      The way to think about it like making money is really like having an orgasm. When you focus on it, you’ll never get it. If you don’t focus on it, just enjoy the process of doing it, you will obviously get what you want, but you can’t focus on it.

Josh Felber:        Sure. Yeah, no that makes sense and so for you when you first came here, what was that thing you were looking for? That problem you were trying to solve?

Naveen Jain:      Obviously, my first entrepreneur adventure was about twenty-plus years ago. There were no smart phones at that time, so imagine it’s now year 2000. This is seven years before Steve Jobs introduced iPhone. At that time, my fundamental belief was that people want information at their fingertips. There’s really an interesting interview in the Washington Post, I think the report on Leslie Walker and it starts and saying, “One day people are going to have a phone in their pocket that you’ll be able to get your email. You’ll be able to get your weather and stock holds.” And she’s saying, “What are you talking about.” I said, “Imagine if your phone one day is going to become your credit card. You’ll be able to use your phone to make a payment. You’re going to go drive by Starbucks and get a coupon for Starbucks.” And she said, “I have no idea sir what you’re talking about. It’s not going to happen in our lifetime.” And that lifetime was seven years.

Josh Felber:        Seven years. Yeah.

Naveen Jain:      My point was, I felt that that time will come when people will do that. I built a company based on that belief and that company was InfoSpace, even though there were no smartphones, that company with that vision went on to become a 40-billion dollar market gap.

Josh Felber:        Wow.

Naveen Jain:      Right. The point is even though the technology wasn’t ready, the people actually believed the vision was the right vision and people were willing to back on it. To me, what I have found time and time again is people want to associate themselves with the successes. That means, they want to believe in you and if you are an entrepreneur or a sales person, most sales people tend to sell the product or a service they are building. That to me is the wrong approach. The minute you are asking me to buy something and you tell me what is it you’re selling, now I’m in the mode of competing your service and your product to your competitor. Well, you don’t have these features. They charge this much money, you charge more and now it’s all about essentially you’re a commodity competing in that market.

When you start with a simple belief or selling of your vision. What is that audacious goal you have? What is the big problem you’re trying to solve? If people believe in you and you sell yourself, they will buy everything you have because they believe you’re going to be successful and they want to associate themselves with successes. Even if your product may not have all the bells and whistle, they’ll come back and say, “You know what Josh, I love the thing I want to work with you, can you add the following two features in your next workshop?” And they will still work with you. You need to sell yourself. Sell your vision. Sell the passion. The why you would die and give the last drop of blood before you let this fail.

Josh Felber:        I think, yeah that’s outstanding. I think with that is creating that culture or that following of people that align with what you feel and how you think.

Naveen Jain:      Yes.

Josh Felber:        Steve Jobs did that obviously.

Naveen Jain:      Attracted great talent. You can only attract a great talent when you give them an audacious goal to go after. If you simply said, “Hey dude, I’m trying to make some money here.” Who wants to join a person who simply focused on making more money for themselves?

Josh Felber:        Right, for sure.

Naveen Jain:      People want to join a company that says, “Imagine if the world we can create this world.” Whatever that vision of that world is. When I started my healthcare company with a simple vision, imagine if we can create a world where being sick could be a matter choice, not a matter of bad luck. What if we could eliminate all chronic diseases? Now, that vision attracted some of the best talent that I would have ever found.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      We got the head of the Wasaue Research to come and join and say, “That problem I care enough that I’m going to quit my million dollar a year job to work for you.” That attracted a group of people that say, “You know what? I have a very cushy job. I had very successful career, but that’s a goal I want to be part of.”

Josh Felber:        That’s Viome right? That’s your recent company.

Naveen Jain:      That’s my recent thing. Same thing happened with Moon Express. When we went out and say, “What if we could land on the moon? What if we could create a multi-planet society? What if we could save the humanity from extinction?”

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Right, when you set out those audacious goal, there are people who would think you are crazy.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Those are the people that you want to avoid because those people will never align. They just can’t dream big enough, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      You want to align with useful people who say, “You are God damn crazy, but I want to be a part of the crazy dream.”

Josh Felber:        Well, what has gave you that dream to be able to go land on the moon, to be able to harvest moon rock? I remember you’re talking about the moon rock’s going to be the next diamond.

Naveen Jain:      Well, that just my point, it’s the idea of Buddhist clapping. Other thing that goal is still the same, can we save the humanity from extinction? Which is, imagine we are living on a spacecraft, which is called planet earth and it’s whirling into space with extremely dangerous. It’s only a matter of time we get hit by a large astroid and we can all be a dinosaur, completely extinct. Would we as humans want to be the next dinosaurs? Imagine if you could listen to a dinosaur rolling in their grave. What would they be saying? Wish they had one good entrepreneur dinosaur, they would still be living on the moon and the Mars and beyond right?

Josh Felber:        I understand you. It all comes back to again, how can we extend humanity? How can we make humanity and give them that opportunity?

Naveen Jain:      Yes, to save ourselves and if you’re living on three, four, ten different planets, then suddenly you have a distributor system that even if one of the planets get wiped out, the humanity as such, would survive, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure, okay.

Naveen Jain:      The second part of the thing is how do you go from here to that audacious dream? You say, well in the meantime what if we could start to use the water on the moon to create a fuel depot so other people who are going to deeper space can use us. What if we can just bring the platinum grade material to be able to essentially create enough money to be able to go out and solve this big problem? What if you could also bring helium three that could become the ultimate clean energy source that could power the planet earth for generations to come? What if you just brought the moon rock and completely disrupted the diamond industry to bootstrap the goal of what you’re trying to do? This is not an end goal. This is simply is a stepping stone to what you want to do. Everyone gives someone a diamond, if you love her enough, you give her the moon.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, and so you came with Moon Express, right? With the big audacious goal and that and you’re putting it out there and people are seeing these different pieces that are aligning with that goal, then how do you take that path to get there? How do you make that connection to drive that vehicle there?

Naveen Jain:      Yeah, so anytime you have a big audacious goal and you say that is our goal and then you say what are the smallest steps I can take to move towards that goal? That means everything you do is a stepping stone in that direction. That means you can’t execute on the big thing. You start executing on the slices. One slice at a time and by the time you’re done, you actually completed the whole circle, right?

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      The idea is that if you’re going to go to the moon or if I’m going to solve the problem around sickness, what you have to do is to say, okay what can I do today right now that can help people to get in the direction? I need to get enough information about what is causing people to be obese. What’s causing people to have diabetes? What’s causing people to have Parkinson’s disease? What’s causing people to have cancer?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      It turns out, almost all the chronic diseases are fundamentally have the same root cause, which is the imbalance of our gut.

Josh Felber:        Right, okay.

Naveen Jain:      What surprised me most as I started looking towards that, 99% of the genes that are expressed in our body don’t come from our DNA. They come from the microorganism that live inside our gut.

Josh Felber:        Oh, wow.

Naveen Jain:      Think about that. There is 50 years ago, we believed the best healthy human being is the one that’s completely free of bacteria and viruses. Little that we know we are an ecosystem and they are the one that provide us all the nutrients. The minute you kill them through antibiotics, you essentially become so horrible to their environment because they are no longer there to protect you. That’s how people get autoimmune diseases. That’s how people get all kinds of diseases because their ecosystem is no longer saving them.

Josh Felber:        Instead of saying, “Hey kids, don’t play in the dirt.” We need to let them in the dirt.

Naveen Jain:      Actually, that is why you would see that 21st century diseases as we move to the urban areas, these are the new type of diseases that our grandparents never saw. People who were living on the farm in the agricultural society, they never saw never autoimmune disease because they were constantly surrounded by the chickens and the cows and all that so you’re constantly essentially your immune system was constantly actually being tuned by these guys.

When you live in the urban area with all kinds of filters in your house, nobody’s playing in the dirt, suddenly any type of thing you see a pollen and your body says, “Holy cows, we’re dying.”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Right. Take a chill pill. It’s a pollen. It’s not going to kill you. Our immune system, we’re just not used to dealing with it.

Josh Felber:        Right, or they go to the hospital and they take drugs and everything to suppress that.

Naveen Jain:      Exactly. Our whole healthcare system Josh, is so screwed up. Any other system it has become an organism in itself and the [inaudible 00:15:42] has taken hold, which is survival of the organism is the only goal, not the purpose of the organism, which was to save the patient.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, right. Initially.

Naveen Jain:      So, patient is no longer the stakeholder. Here’s a very interesting story. I went to one of the events, it’s called Future of Healthcare. There were people from all industries and they wrote down what the stakeholder’s on the healthcare system saw. The doctors, the hospitals, the insurance company, the regulatory bodies, I asked them what about the patient? You know what they say? “Patient is not the stakeholder.” Why is that? Patient does not pay. We don’t care about the patient because the patient is no longer part of the system that pays us. Ignore the patient. Let’s take care of everything else. Imagine the organism that’s saying, my only purpose was to take care of the patient is no longer part of.

Josh Felber:        Right, because the insurance company and the hospitals.

Naveen Jain:      Same thing with education. The student is no longer the stakeholder. The stakeholder’s are the teachers union, right?

Josh Felber:        Yeah, the university.

Naveen Jain:      The department of education. The administration. The politics. Those are the stakeholders. What about the poor student that you’re suppose to actually teach.

Josh Felber:        Right, learn something and make some changes in the world.

Naveen Jain:      Yeah.

Josh Felber:        I’d like to dive back a little bit on Viome. We were talking about the microbiomes and they got bacteria and everything. With your testing and everything because I’ve gone through the test and weighed down my results and all that. What is that going to come back and tell us? How’s that going to help eliminate a lot of that?

Naveen Jain:      Of course, so if you think about it you know you look at our body, our gut organism are actually providing the nutrients our body needs. If you don’t feed them, they don’t feed us. For example, the short chain fatty acids are the nutrients our body needs. They are being produced by our gut organism so if they are not there or we’re not feeding them properly, they’re not giving us the things that we want. If you don’t eat the right food, that’s right for you, so one of things that’s really fundamentally changing here is that you and I, our DNA is over 99% of our DNA’s exactly the same. In fact, me and the plant, 90% of our DNA’s the same. So I’m not much different than a [inaudible 00:18:06], right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      A lot of people have heard about microbiome, but in the early days of the microbiome technology, which is what people are using today, it is fundamentally a snake [inaudible 00:18:15] so when you look at companies like uBiome or others, they are using a technology that essentially looks at these microbiome, only the bacteria first of all and no other species. Only 50 to 70% of bacteria and only at a genius level. What’s a genius level? So if you say, Naveen you come from India, can you tell me a little bit more about India at a genius level? I was of course, Josh, there are some men, there are some women, there are some children, there are some young people, there are some old people. And you say, “Oh wow, that just sounds like America.”

At a genius level we look the same, so when you do the current microbiome testing, 97% of any human being you pick two are identical.

Josh Felber:        Got you, okay.

Naveen Jain:      What we do is the technology that we got from actually Los Alamo National Lab where they had designed it for the bio defense work for the national security.

Josh Felber:        Oh, wow.

Naveen Jain:      They look at not just at this genius level, not even the species level, at this green level. 100% of every bacteria, 100% of every wires and the tree tops, DNA wires or any wires or even the bacteria [inaudible 00:19:23]. Bacteria [inaudible 00:19:23] are the viruses that only adapt to bacteria and then we see every yeast, every mold, every fungus, and we also see the humanality. We know if your gut is being inflamed and by knowing what these things are, we know what … since we are looking at the [inaudible 00:19:39], which is literally what they are doing, not only who they are, but what they are actually doing. We know what they are producing and what they’re not producing and then we can say, “Hey, Josh, you need to be eating the following food and as your body changes in three months, we test you again.”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      And then we retest you every three months because your body’s constantly changing and adapting. Let me give you some antidotal thing, which I thought was more fascinating.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      So, I’ve been trying to lose ten pounds and my glucose level is pre diabetic right now. I thought I’m a healthy person. I want to start eating healthy. I cut down all the carbs because I was told carbs are your enemy. No carbs, no starch, since I’m a vegetarian, I was only eating lentils and legumes and tofu and beans and veggies. I thought I started while I’m going to do my first victim and I’m going to go my test and I’m going to come up with A-plus and they’re going to put my picture of healthy person. What that looks like.

Josh Felber:        Right on the website.

Naveen Jain:      Right on the website. Turned out, not so. It turns out my body actually cannot digest protein well. It digest the carbohydrates well.

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      I switched over to eating complex carbs, lost two pounds and my blood glucose came down.

Josh Felber:        Wow.

Naveen Jain:      So, imagine when people having you know victimizing, saying “Oh my God the carbs are bad for you.”

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      What really happens is when you look at the gut organisms at the detail we talk about, less that 3% is same between the two people. 97% is different between any two people.

Josh Felber:        Wow. Okay.

Naveen Jain:      How can same diet work for you and me and our family at the same time? When my wife did the test, it was completely different for her. She needs to be eating more lentils and legumes and veggies. I need to be eating more carbs. So, even the whole idea pf sitting as a family eating the same meal, goes away.

Josh Felber:        Right. That’s when we were growing up as kids, that’s everybody had the same thing and now even the same way.

Naveen Jain:      What we have to do is start to personalize who we are and to me the biggest change that we are starting to see and we talked briefly about it, next ten years are going to be probably change the projectory of how humanity lives. There’s so much innovation that’s happening that everything that we know will fundamentally change. Whether it is our bodies, the more understand about our body, massive amount of data we can collect, right? So, how does our immune system work? How does our mitochondria, which use to be an ancient bacteria in our cell. That produces the energy, so when said you’re tired, we’re getting a mental fog, it’s because your mitochondria it’s not doing its function.

We are looking at all of the things that what your mitochondria doing. What’s inflammatory biomarkers? Are you getting inflammation? As you can obviously guess, almost every chronic disease is inflammatory disease.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Alzheimer is inflammatory disease. Parkinson’s inflammatory, right? In fact, in the last five years, every disease they fundamentally found to be influenced by microbiome. If you google Parkinson’s in the gut, it will tell you Parkinson’s it starts in your gut, not in your brain.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      The recent study just came out last week that says now they’re using autism by simply changing the gut through the fecal matter transplant. They are actually finding great results in autism, so it starts in your gut. They found that the gluten allergy comes from a specific virus called reovirus, right?

Josh Felber:        Right, okay.

Naveen Jain:      It’s the gut virus that causes that celiac disease and the gluten sensitivity. They found specifically that even the cancer cure, forget about causing cancer, even the chemotherapy or immunol therapy, whether it works or does not work it depends on your gut. Imagine that.

Josh Felber:        Wow.

Naveen Jain:      So, heart disease, all these things that really are basically go back to the thousands of years. I come from India, they use to have these signs called [inaudible 00:23:56].

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      Signs of life and they used to talk about it’s all about balancing the body. Didn’t know the scientific terms like microbiome.

Josh Felber:        Super simple.

Naveen Jain:      More simple. Eat the right food and balance your body.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      So, we’re back to the future.

Josh Felber:        No, I mean with what that’s able to tell us and I mean help us customize what we eat and like you said whether your wife or you and my wife and even my kids, you know I think is dramatic.

Naveen Jain:      More than that, a diet even that’s good for you today, may not be good for you three months from now. That’s why you have to just like your car, you can say, “I tuned it last year, what do you mean I have to tune it again? You mean I have to change the oil again? What are you talking about?” So, every three months you have to back and look at how have your body changing and adapting because every time you eat food, you breathe air, the people you meet, you know inhaling the microbiome, the food comes from the microbiome. Your body’s constantly changing.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      You have to constantly adapt so a diet that’s good for you may not be good for your wife. A diet that’s good for you today might not be good for you three months from now.

Josh Felber:        Wow, so then with the Viome and being able to test every three months or so.

Naveen Jain:      Every three months then we get a new recommendation. We tell you what you have, what problems and very specific recommendation. Eat this, don’t eat this. Minimize this, eat as much of this. Very very specific food and is specifically designed just for you and then we are adding things like, hey if you’re eating at home, here’s a recipe. If you’re going out, here are the restaurant you can order this meal.

Josh Felber:        Oh really?

Naveen Jain:      Yeah.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. I think when I was talking about your intro introducing you for the show, you’re disrupting the healthcare market.

Naveen Jain:      More than disrupting. We can broaden the healthcare market because it’s designed for you to be sick, right?

Josh Felber:        For sickness, right. Yeah.

Naveen Jain:      What if you’re not sick? The whole organism dies and to me the best thing you and I can do is to kill the organism that’s not taking care of us and make each person CEO of their own health.

Josh Felber:        Make them change.

Naveen Jain:      I should [inaudible 00:26:07] when I am sick, who cares more about me than me? I know more about my disease than any doctor.

Josh Felber:        For sure.

Naveen Jain:      When I go see a doctor, by the time I start opening my mouth, he’s already writing a prescription.

Josh Felber:        Right, yeah.

Naveen Jain:      He doesn’t care.

Josh Felber:        Okay, yeah whatever, here you go.

Naveen Jain:      And it always is the last [inaudible 00:26:26] they saw. Doctor you’re not prescribing a Lipitor? Josh walks in. Josh is getting a Lipitor.

Josh Felber:        Right. You’re behind on your scrips. I mean just I guess what, obviously all drives back to helping humanity and your big focus and everything.

Naveen Jain:      It’s not I don’t do the things just to help humanity. To me, doing good and doing well are actually come together. If you want to create a 10 billion dollar company, you solve the problem that affects a billion people, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      I help a billion people, not just out of goodness of my heart, obviously, I want to do good, but best way to do good is to create a profitable venture. Even if you are the richest man in the world and if you don’t create a profitable venture, sooner or later you’re going to run out of money. You can do a small good in the world by giving money, but if you want to do large good in the world, you create a profit enterprise and then you can go impact billions of people. Never be afraid to tell someone the things you do make money, so don’t be afraid. Every entrepreneur, oh well I’m trying to do good, you know I’m a social entrepreneur, no social entrepreneur means you are shitty entrepreneur.

Josh Felber:        It’s interesting you say this because I’ve interviewed a few people over the last couple of years and they talk about oh, I’m a social entrepreneur and this. I just recommended them to somebody else the other day and the person messaged me and was like “Hey the website’s not there anymore.” “What do you mean?” And I went and I checked it and it’s not there anymore. I messaged the guy, I haven’t heard from him. I think they closed and went out of business because that was their focus was making as little as possible, but trying to help and do good and put it out there.

Naveen Jain:      You can do both, right? The point is a entrepreneur is an entrepreneur is an entrepreneur. There is no adjective in front of it other than great entrepreneur or shitty entrepreneur.

Josh Felber:        Right. I think people are scared to say, hey I make money.

Naveen Jain:      Yeah.

Josh Felber:        They think it’s a bad thing as we talked about earlier, making bank or you know, “I can’t make money or I can’t.” …

Naveen Jain:      That is the oil for doing good. If you can’t make money you can only do small good, how can you go out and impact the lives of 7 billion people without having the profit or scalable engine?

Josh Felber:        For sure. For you, all your ventures have been, not all, but majority of your ventures have been very successful. For you, you’re now in a position you know obviously, being a billionaire and everything to help impact and help make those changes in the marketplace and in the world and everything.

Naveen Jain:      Even from the day one, the success comes to people who actually are going out and solving a big problem, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Knock on this granite. Every single venture that I have started has been widely successful because I start with a single goal of what is it that I’m trying to do? I’m going to dedicate my next four, five, tens of my life making that happen. Anytime you have to ask yourself when you start a company, God forbid if I’m actually successful in doing what I’m doing, is it going to move the needle? Is it big enough idea? Is it going to really impact hundred million people or billion people? If the answer is no, why would you want to dedicate 10 years of your life to doing something that’s going to really have very impact even if you’re successful?

Josh Felber:        For sure, so I’m going to shift the topic a little bit.

Naveen Jain:      Yeah, please.

Josh Felber:        I know your son recently I’ve seen him in the news and everything else, so congratulations. He’s following in the footsteps of being an entrepreneur as you and everything so I think that’s so amazing. What, you know raising kids and everything, so my kids are all young right now, six and eight. What would you say, hey these are my top three or five strategies to help raise awesome kids?

Naveen Jain:      Absolutely. I’m glad you asked because if you ask me despite all my successful ventures, the biggest accomplishment I have really made is our children. We have three children and they have been amazingly wonderful. Our oldest has started a [inaudible 00:30:39] society when he was 17-years-old and, which is now world’s largest college entrepreneurship. When he graduated from Wharton he started a company called Human got acquired and now he’s starting a second company.

Our daughter just graduated from Stanford. She’s working on a neuroscience to start up in batteries so she’s a Stanford [inaudible 00:30:54], the Stanford [inaudible 00:30:56]. She’s on the board of the Stanford for women in business. She’s a UN ambassador for women empowerment.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Our youngest one is a junior at Stanford, right? So unbelievably successful people, so here are the things, couple of tips that I as a parent I think you would enjoy. Number one is separating what is it that you expect the children to do. Let them know that your love for them is unconditional, but your approval is not.

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      So, separate them. Let them know what makes you proud of them, but they never have to ever ask for you love. You’ll always there be there for them, but you don’t have to say I’m proud of you. Let them earn that you are proud of them, right. That’s number one. Number two thing is letting them know that their self worth doesn’t come from owning it comes from creating. A lot of people in middle east they are wealthy, but they are worthless in my opinion because they haven’t created anything that’s … they inherent tremendous wealth, right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      The point is I tell our children, your self worth comes from not what you own, it comes from what you create and if you haven’t created anything as far as society concerned, you’re still a worthless parasite on society.

Josh Felber:        Sure. No, it’s the truth.

Naveen Jain:      Third thing is for them to know how will they know when they actually become successful and to me, the humility is a sign of success. The day you become humble is the day you become successful. If you still have iota of arrogance left in you and you’re still trying to prove something to yourself or someone else and that’s why I believe our President will never be successful because you’re always telling people, “You know how rich I am.” Look, people who are rich don’t go out and say, “Hey you know how rich I am?”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      To me, it’s really about that is that being comfortable in your own skin and growing up and being humble about who you are and where you come from, from your roots. A lot of other parenting thing that would be is exposing your children to the things. Here is very counterintuitive thing, I don’t know if you care, how old are your kids, Josh?

Josh Felber:        I have boys that are six and my daughter’s eight.

Naveen Jain:      Imagine if your daughter when she’s 15 or 16 comes to you and said, “Dad, I have found my true passion and I’m going to go pursue it.” Most dad’s would say, “Sweetheart, tell me what your passion is and I want to find the worlds best and I want you to pursue your passion. The fact you found your passion is an amazing thing.”

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Right? That is same as saying, “I don’t really care what you want, just go do it.”

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      Right, I had the same conversation with my daughter when she was 16. She came to me and said, “Dad, I found my true passion and I want to pursue it.” And I said, “Sweetie, you’re not letting the dad do his job.” What’s dad’s job? Dad’s job is to expose you to enough things because you don’t even know what you don’t know and you’re choosing between the things you know. The idea is to expand their mind. There’s a great article you might enjoy reading I saw in Ink Magazine, it’s called “An Entrepreneur Watches His Eye Rolling Teenager Daughter”. This is my conversation and it turns out what she thought was her passion by the time I sent her to Singular University, she came back and said, “Dad, I want to help girls and I realize that even though I do care about technology, technology is simply the tools for me to do what I care about, which is their health and education.” That’s why she became a neuroscientist.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome, so along the journey then, what did you do to expose your kids then to the different?

Naveen Jain:      One of the things I did is I always as they became about ten-years-old I started to bring them to office. Not just bring to the office for them to sit there. I took them to the board meeting. I took them to customer meetings. I took them to the customer dinners. I wanted them to know their dad is just as vulnerable. He doesn’t have all the answer. He still struggles to find them.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, sure.

Naveen Jain:      Here’s another interesting thing is, despite what you tell your children to do, they watch you do, right?

Josh Felber:        For sure, right.

Naveen Jain:      For example, after my first successful venture what if I said what most people would have done? My kids so young I want to sit back and really spend time with the family.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Now, imagine you did it because you cared about the family. Now, let’s look at it from the kid’s perspective. A kid goes to school and say, “My dad was at home when I left. I come back from school, my dad is still sitting on the sofa and watching TV.” When I grow up I want to be just like my dad.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Instead, what they saw, I built a great successful company and I started the second one, the third one, and fourth one. Now they realize it’s not what I say. It’s not about money.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      They say, “Oh, of course it’s not about my money because my dad went and started second, third, fourth, fifth, it was all about money. He’s doing it because he’s trying to solve the big problems.” That’s why when they go out and say, it’s not … it’s walking the walk not just talking the walk.

Josh Felber:        Sure. Oh yeah, for sure. What along the way, did you point them in certain directions from an educational perspective? What did you expose them to from that frame?

Naveen Jain:      Again, exposing them to as many different things as possible, right? For example, every one of our children, I send them to Singular University. I wanted them to know what the technology can do for them and despite what problem they’re trying to solve, I wanted them to have tools in their tool chest to be able to apply that to what they want.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      If you only have a hammer in your tool chest, everything looks like a nail. I wanted them to know there is a wrench out there. There is a screwdriver out there and I wanted them to be able to see this is screwdriver problem, this is a wrench problem, this is the hammer problem, right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      By sending them for them to learn about neuroscience and genetics and nanotechnology, and the arts and the humanity and history and everything is exposing them educationally and then exposing them through business perspective to be able to go out and see how business is done. I thought they would have enough exposure to find and do what they want to do and what they care about and that’s the time for them to find their passion.

Josh Felber:        Right, no that’s awesome. We try to do something similar now and they always see me with starting different businesses and everything so now about a year ago my daughter started her own pet care company and making pet care products.

Naveen Jain:      You know what amazing will be Josh, if you she was sitting right here listening.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      It’s very different when she watches on the video, watches having this conversation her watching. It is very different when she sees them in person. So, if I were you, every time you find the time during summer when she has off, take her on a three month journey with you to see the greatest people you’re interviewing. She talking to them, not you talking to them before and after the interview. It will change her mind and his mind about what life is and it gets them comfortable in attracting the successful people.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      That is a big change.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ve taken her to different things. We went to an entrepreneur kids thing a few months ago.

Naveen Jain:      But, they’re going with other kids and interacting with other kids. I want you to be interacting with other people. When my youngest son want to do something, he knows how to talk to the CEO of a large telecom company because he saw me do it.

Josh Felber:        He saw you do it.

Naveen Jain:      By the way, he was at the dinner talking to him so he knows how he thinks.

Josh Felber:        Right, it’s good. Next year we’re actually, they’ve been in Montessori so next year they want to all do homeschool so we have somebody full-time coming in, so now they’re going actually be able … they’ll actually travel with us when we go to these different things.

Naveen Jain:      Allow them to interact with the people you’re interviewing. It will fundamentally change how they look at life. Them getting comfortable that just because a person is successful they can talk to them and that is a big skill.

Josh Felber:        That’s great advice, for sure. Let’s talk a little about what we started to in the beginning was it’s not the daily success habits that make you successful, it’s the thought process, the mindset. Dive into a little bit about what your mindset is and your thought process.

Naveen Jain:      Most people in life come from this mindset of scarcity and then mindset of scarcity says that things have value because they are scarce.

Josh Felber:        Right, okay.

Naveen Jain:      Right, so whether it is land, whether it is real estate. People say, location, location, location. What if location didn’t matter? What happens to the real estate? What if the people say there’s abundance of energy and energy can be free, do people still care about energy?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      So, idea is start thinking about people say humans will never have enough, it doesn’t matter what you have they will always fight over it.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Right and I give them an example, how about oxygen? We can sit in the same room and not fight over oxygen because we believe it’s in abundance and it’s everywhere. What if energy can be that oxygen that is so plentiful nobody ever fights a wad over it. What if the food is so abundant that nobody ever starves or fight over it? Here’s the thing, all those things are actually possible. Right?

Josh Felber:        Right, sure.

Naveen Jain:      So, imagine land. We all know just in our own galaxy we are a tiny pale blue dot, right?

Josh Felber:        Yeah, right.

Naveen Jain:      There billions of galaxy just in our system and think about in our universe, how many galaxies are there and how many universes are there in this [inaudible 00:40:58]? We don’t know so where is the scarcity of land if people believe you can’t live somewhere else, so the mindset says you can’t live somewhere else that’s why things are scarce. What if you could live on the moon? What if you could live on the Mars? Would the land still be scarce?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Right, now start to think about everything. What if here on planet earth every 90 minutes, more solar energy falls on planet earth than we use in the whole year. All of our conversion, what if we could convert that into usable energy and we could create so much energy that’s literally free? Will that create abundance of water because we can de sanitize if the energy’s free?

Josh Felber:        For sure, yeah.

Naveen Jain:      We can have plenty of abundance of food, right? If you look at the things as an entrepreneur focusing on the root cause and creating abundance. Today when people talk about sustainability, sustainability has become actually a synonym for conservation.

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      Right, so when people say “Oh, we need to be sustainable.” What they’re saying is use less because right?

Josh Felber:        Because you have to save.

Naveen Jain:      You got to save. You and I both know you don’t become rich by not spending.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      You become rich by making more, right? The idea is if you want to create sustainability, create more of everything you want, not spend less of the things you need.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Right, if I say well, “Let’s start breathing oxygen less.” So you say, “Okay, I will stop breathing every minute I’m going to cut down by 10 seconds.”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Oh, well now you need to cut down to 20 seconds. I need to cut down to 30 seconds.

Josh Felber:        Now I got to hold.

Naveen Jain:      Now you got to hold it for two minutes. You’re going to say, “You know what? I give up. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to die.”

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      But, what if you said, “Let’s have so much of it that you can breathe as much as you want.” Right?

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      That mindset once you change your mindset to abundance, everything becomes possible. Everything. Other thing is to understand how technology is changing everything that we have taken for granted. Think of as an example, people say there is a lack of fresh water in our society and I as an entrepreneur care enough to fix the problem so you go down that path. Until you realize, if you’re a good entrepreneur, why do we have lack of fresh water? You will realize majority of the fresh water is used for agriculture and you say “Ah ha. All I have to do is change the way agriculture is done. Use the aeroponics, aquaponics, or even lightly salted water.” And then I can have abundance of fresh water and you’re feeling really good.

Until you find out the majority of agriculture is used for cattle’s. And you said, “Ah ha. All I have to do provide people the fresh meat without having to raise the cattle.”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      What if I can take a stem cell from a cow and only grow the muscle tissue? That’s what people eat anyway. They don’t eat other things, other parts of the body, so give them the muscle tissue just from the same cow. I’m not talking about vegetarian, I’m talking the same cow exactly the way nature does. Only muscle tissues. So, now your fresh water problem becomes a synthetic biology problem and you would have never gotten there unless you understood how things work.

Same type of thing, understanding how technology are disrupting largest primary industry and what are the other industry get disrupted?

Josh Felber:        Okay.

Naveen Jain:      For example, take a case of self-driving car. Everybody knows what self-car in this world, that’s going to decimate the automobile manufacturing because people are no longer have to own a car because cars will be coming on demand and that will impact the automotive society. Now, if you take a step further you say, “What a sec. If the cars are talking to each other they can drive closer to each other. That means we don’t have build as many freeways.” What happens to the construction companies? Caterpillars of the world.

Josh Felber:        Yeah.

Naveen Jain:      That changes, but the cars are not getting into accident because they are communicating, what happens to the insurance? What happens to the auto insurance we have as a person? We’re no longer driving.

Josh Felber:        Right, we don’t need it.

Naveen Jain:      We don’t need it. What happens now since now the car becomes your office because now you have a holographic office in your car. You can live in suburb. What happens to the real estate where you thought you needed to be next to the office and that’s why the Manhattan is so expensive.

Josh Felber:        Right, because everybody’s there.

Naveen Jain:      Now, the cars don’t need to park next to your office. They can park anywhere. What happens to all the parking lots in the city? What if that becomes affordable housing? Right?

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      Imagine starting to see a single technology has impacted all these industries. Now, imagine combining that with 10 other technologies that are all on the exponential curve? That’s why I believe despite the progress we have made in the last hundred years, next 10 years are going to change every single industry. Half of the fortune 500 companies will not be around in the next 15 years. What that means is the problem will still exist. It won’t be these companies solving it.

Josh Felber:        Solving it, right.

Naveen Jain:      It will be a new company solving it that [inaudible 00:46:21] is dying. You as an entrepreneur has a fair shot at it. Here’s another thing you should remember, just because somebody’s ahead today, exponential technology’s moving so fast that everything is becoming obsolete every five to ten years.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      That means that somebody who’s ahead today by five years, all you have to do is in five years they’ll be obsolete.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      That means you have a change to overtake them and that’s why I believe Uber will become a Kodak before the actually go out. Uber, advantage that Uber has is that they have created a massive marketplace of drivers. With a self driving car, you know who’s the driver? The manufacture. That’s like in create Uber today because everybody had a Tesla app, they have the car, and now they have the network.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      That means instantly they can out Uber Uber with a self driving car. Right?

Josh Felber:        Right, no, for sure.

Naveen Jain:      That is the fundamentally you have to start thinking about that when things are moving so fast and technology is changing so fast and the people, the company are becoming obsolete so fast, you are never too far behind just because you missed the first bus, the next bus is around the corner.

Josh Felber:        Right. That’s … thinking about that just really changes the way as a lot of people are entrepreneurs and okay cool I’m going to create this product and go sell it or whatever it might be is.

Naveen Jain:      You have to keep reinventing yourself. You have to keep obsoleting yourself. If you don’t obsolete yourself, someone will. Remember, there’s always that 22-year-old kid in a garage thinking about how to take your business away.

Josh Felber:        Right. That’s true. I’ve got a couple minutes left and then we got to wrap up. With the way technology’s changing and everything’s advancing, what would be maybe three to five key success points as entrepreneurs that we could take away and either implement or where things are moving that we need to be focused on that right track.

Naveen Jain:      Number one thing is intellectual curiosity. If you’re not learning every single day, you’re obsoleting every single day. The day you become stop becoming intellectually curious, you actually have died. You have become a zombie.

Josh Felber:        Sure.

Naveen Jain:      If you’re not learning something new, you’re not keeping yourself up, you’re actually day by day you’re actually getting behind. You’re obsoleting yourself, right?

Josh Felber:        Right, okay.

Naveen Jain:      So, number one rule. Number two thing is understand how do you connect the dots. That means you see something here and as opposed to thinking outside the box, you take that and think in a different box. How can you apply this to some completely different industry? Think about a problem that you have and I was looking at the space technology and suddenly we say how about telescope can detect a star from a distance, why can’t we detect a bacteria? They have water flow [inaudible 00:49:30] it’s like a star, so applying a technology that was designated for one thing, applying them in a different box and solving a completely different problem.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome, right.

Naveen Jain:      The third thing is to really dreaming big.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      It takes a same amount of energy to do something that is small then to do something big. Dream so big that people think you’re crazy. As an entrepreneur, never be afraid to fail because you only fail when you give up. Every idea that you had that does not work is simply a stepping stone to do different idea, a bigger idea, right? You only fail when you give up. Everything else is just a pivot.

Josh Felber:        Right. That’s awesome because I think as entrepreneurs we get so that tunnel vision and we’re so focused on one track or thinking outside of the box instead of how can we take this and apply this over there when they’re two totally different market pieces.

Naveen Jain:      That’s right, so basically don’t think outside the box. Think in a different box.

Josh Felber:        Move to a whole different box and put it over there. For sure. No, that’s awesome. The concepts and the way you think and fortunately I got to the movie about Peter [inaudible 00:50:46] and being around him is mind blowing of where how a group of people are thinking to really dramatically change what we’re doing now and create a better place for everybody.

Naveen Jain:      Love Peter. Absolutely love Peter. He is a great mind. He’s an absolutely great mind and every time I’m around him I’m always so blessed.

Josh Felber:        Right and last thing to, I know there was a funny quote. I think it was when you were last week at Mastermind Talks and everything about Elon Musk and Richard Branson weren’t thinking big enough.

Naveen Jain:      You know what I was saying is that really is that even the people the people are really put up on pedal stool, right? Even sometimes they still thinking in a short-term [inaudible 00:51:33] orbit. Everybody thinks that Elon is already going to the space. Well, he’s going to the space station, which is still the [inaudible 00:51:39] orbit.

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      Right and I’m thinking we as an entrepreneur really need to be thinking just like now, Jeff Bezos two weeks ago said, “We’re going to settle on the moon.” I said, “Welcome.”

Josh Felber:        Yeah, finally.

Naveen Jain:      Welcome to the club, right? Elon is saying “We are going to go around the moon.” It’s like let’s go land on the moon, right? My point is that I want everyone of us to challenge each other. I said, “Richard, when are you going to go to the moon?”

Josh Felber:        Right.

Naveen Jain:      I told him, I said, “Richard, where’s your moon? Go as one, never come back as one.”

Josh Felber:        No, but I think that’s a key point what you said is we always all have to be challenging each other. Whether you’re up here and you’re billionaires, how can we challenge each other and push each other to make sure we’re reaching that?

Naveen Jain:      Exactly.

Josh Felber:        And always looking for that thing to make that change or that transformation in the world.

Naveen Jain:      Even think even bigger. Even the greatest thinker, the biggest thinker’s, you can still make them think big. I get jealous all the time, oh my God, if Elon can say he can do in $100,000 people to Mars, I’m going to go do $10,000 to the moon and let’s see how we can achieve that goal. He challenged me to say, hey I can take people to Mars for $100,000. In that case, I’m going to challenge you to take people to moon for $10,000.

Josh Felber:        That’s awesome. That’s so great. Any last words of insights or advice you want to leave our listeners with?

Naveen Jain:      I think the best advice I can do is always stay curious because that is one thing that will take you farther. Keep learning new things. Keep disturbing the things because world is changing so fast and if you’re not moving with it, you’re being left behind.

Josh Felber:        Yeah, no I think that’s great and that’s one thing I always keep talking to my kids about. They ask so many questions of everybody we meet and guys, I’m like keep asking questions. Keep being curious and keep learning so I think that’s one of the major keys for sure.

Thank you again for coming on Making Bank.

Naveen Jain:      Thank you, Josh. What a pleasure and honor.

Josh Felber:        It was an honor to have you here and be able to spend the time with you today, so.

Naveen Jain:      Thank you, Josh.

Josh Felber:        I am Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank. Get out and be extraordinary.