Supply Chain Expert: Choosing Uncertainty Over Comfort

You can do everything “right” and still feel stuck. That’s the tension at the heart of my conversation with Niraj Jha, a guy whose life is basically a case study in reinvention. He grows up in India in a culture where the default success path is loud and clear, then chooses something almost no one around him understands: life at sea as a merchant marine, learning by doing, traveling constantly, and building real confidence in high-stakes environments.

We start with something deceptively simple: the stock market. Not as hype, but as a brutally honest teacher. When your own money is on the line, you’re forced to understand interest rates, the Fed, geopolitics, and how the economy actually works. Niraj explains why most people should probably stick with low-cost index funds, yet still argues that studying markets can sharpen your thinking about business, manufacturing, and the global supply chain.

From there, we zoom out into bigger questions: how self-awareness shapes career decisions, how to take risks without being reckless, and why a safety net changes everything. Niraj shares what it felt like to walk away from a stable, high-paying path to pursue an MBA in the United States, plus the part people don’t talk about enough: culture shock, loneliness, and the emotional price of leaving friends and family behind.

We close on parenting and humility, because once you’ve fought for your own path, it’s tempting to hand your kids a perfect template. Niraj challenges that instinct and focuses on health, mental health, and raising decent humans first. If this conversation hits you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it. What’s one “safe” choice you’re rethinking right now?

Transcript

Seven-Year-Old Boss And Subscribe

Paul 0:02

See how easy that is?

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Yeah.

Paul 0:05

Adrian, hold on, I'm gonna ask Adrian a question. Adrian. What did you make?

SPEAKER_01 0:10

The same thing that I did for lunch.

Paul 0:12

Okay, so like a like a turkey cheese.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Mayonnaise sandwich. Okay. Grilled. All right. Shh, but uh butt. Remember? Yeah. But sometimes we're cannot most of the time. I think we're gonna break. No, I'm not sure.

Niraj’s Reinvention Story Setup

Market Jitters And Risk Discipline

Paul 0:34

All right. Let's see if you say that next week. If he's still on more responsibility. Hi, Let's Red listeners. Quick thing before we start. This podcast technically has a boss. His name is Adrian. He's seven. He checks the subscriber numbers every week. He sets aggressive targets. And I've been told just try harder is his full management philosophy. So follow or subscribe and tell a friend to do the same. It'll help me keep my job. And stick around because this is a real-time journey. Learning, parenting, work, life. I'm sorting through all of it out loud for your entertainment. So come on this journey with us. Now let's ride. Our guest today was born and raised in India, the son of two doctors and a seemingly predestined career set for him, but decided to create his own path and becomes a merchant marine, living on ships, traveling the world, learning by doing. Then he walked away from a high-paying stable career and came to the US to get his MBA. From there he ran high-speed manufacturing lines and built a career in supply chain. But what makes this conversation different is how he thinks about life. We talk about self-awareness early on, knowing how you actually learn, and having the courage to walk away from paths that don't fit. We talk about taking risks the right way, building a safety net, then betting on yourself. And we get into the tensions he's lived with his entire life, between stability and exploration, between staying comfortable and chasing something bigger. There's a moment he describes standing at a crossroads with a great career and a clear path forward and still choosing to walk away because he knew if he stayed too long, he'd feel stuck. That's what this episode is about. Not just career moves, but the decisions that shape the life that you actually want to live. Our guest today is Niraj Jah. Rod, what's going on, man? I gotta tell you. So to start, you know, you and I work together, but one thing you and I have in common is we like talking stock market and things like that. About five minutes before I hit record on this, I had a sell for my uh my QQQ index. And I'm just like, man, do I need to sell this? What the heck's going on right now? We we just hit a correction level. Are we gonna hit a bear market? And I said, but I got this interview with Naraj, what do I do? And so I just pulled the trigger, man. I just sold off about a third of the portfolio. I said, I don't know what the heck's going on with all this, you know, geopolitical tension. So no one has a crystal ball, but you know, you and I I always tell you about my big trade.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

So I'll tell you about that one because that Yeah, taking some risk off the table never hurts, especially if you've had a great uh 12 to 18 months, and you know, if you just take some money off the table, it's never a bad thing. It's too r it's too scary. I know everybody says that when it's scary, don't sell, buy. But ask that question when your portfolio starts dipping deep in the red.

Paul 3:55

Yeah. We won't get too deep into it, but I will say I think I enjoy having those conversations with you because one, I feel like a lot of people don't. I think the stock market maybe scares them, or they're just kind of the um the type of investor that maybe puts in their 401k or or they put it in index fund and they just kind of set it and forget it. And long term, that's definitely the way to go. Just leave it alone. You're better off than just, you know, looking at this stuff every day and making rash decisions like I might have just made and shooting yourself and k and shooting yourself in the foot. But I I do think there is something to understanding the broader, you know, the levers that get pulled, the things that make it go up and down. And I think you've got a pretty good grasp on that. So, where did that interest come from for you to just want to understand uh those things and and why you have such a fascination with the stock market?

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, thank you for that question, and I'll give you the long version of the answer.

Paul 4:44

Give it to me, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

So, like you, as you rightly mentioned, right? Putting something in a low-cost index fund and forgetting about it, it's it's a tried and tested method. And and some of the greatest investors have said that hey, when you're dying, right before you are done with your life, if someone comes and tells you that for all the effort you took, you did not beat the index. How will you feel about it? If you will feel really bad about it, then don't do it, don't touch this thing. Because most fund managers, forget about people who dabble at it as a hobby. Most professional fund managers will not beat the index. Right. So, with that understanding, I'm gonna come back to you know why I care, right? So to me, this extends beyond just the money part of it to be able to truly understand how this world functions. And and again, just like you, I've gone through a very formal set of education, the undergrad, the grad, and all of that good stuff. And I realized over time and that that a lot of that education, while it kind of helped me scratch the surface, it didn't really help me understand how the world really functions. Or fortunately, staff market has really been that vehicle that has truly helped me understand how finances work. Now I've paid a big price for it, but I I look at it like my MBA. I spend a lot of money on my MBA, and and similarly, in this education, I've had some fair degree of hits and some wins, but all in all, what it has really helped me is that I function in this universe, and this universe goes around a very set set of principles, and so many things happen that impact our life, not just short term, but also long term, and then stock market sort of really becomes that mirror that helps you unravel what the hell is going on in the world. I never thought of myself as a finance person, but by simply dabbling into this space, and at times, you know, it takes a certain degree of learning when your own money is at risk. Nothing forces you to go out there and learn about interest rates, about Fed, about what exactly it means when FOMC cut rates. You could have said, hey, you could have learned all this 10 years ago in business school, but it doesn't sink in until you have your money on the line, until you're supposed to learn. So to me, that's really what it's been about, right? It's really helped me mature as an individual. And I work in business, I work in supply chain and manufacturing, and it is all inherently tied together.

Paul 7:02

Uh and and so so that's sort of my long-drawn answer to what Yeah, you know, it it's like you're it's I I think what you're as you're talking, I'm thinking about this huge tangled tangled ball of yarn, right? That's just that you're trying to unravel and you take one string and you start to unravel and it just tightens up a different area and you loosen a little portion, you think you made progress, and then you have to reverse course. Like it's it's like that. And I think that's how most people think about it. And so then they just avoid it entirely. And when I look at your LinkedIn, for example, I mean you're there trying to break down AI, you're there trying to break down automation, global supply chain. You even talk about farming and shipping and just so many concepts that I think for so many people is so complex. Like I said, they just decide not to address it at all. So I really respect the depth that you go in. You could tell that you spend a lot of time on your own just researching these different topics, probably going down rabbit holes, truly trying to understand these concepts. So you touched on it a little bit, but what is it that drives? It's like this constant thirst for education, it seems like. You mentioned like how that is in terms of impacting money, but you also mentioned the part that's not money related, which is just, hey, maybe not burying your head in the sand and just saying, hey, I'm not interested in what's going around me because it's too complicated. I I truly want to understand this. Like, where do you think that drive for continued education comes from?

Investing To Understand The World

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Thank you for those glowing notes about being a course. But but to answer that question again, I'm not gonna lie, I do get excited about a lot of this stuff at a very inherent level, right? So whether I make money using any of this or not, regardless, the fact that I live in an universe today, which I did not 20 years ago, knowledge was very much dated, right? Uh 20 years ago, when I 25 years ago, when I was in middle school and I wanted to participate in a quiz contest, the guy who had the best encyclopedias in his personal library would beat me. Because we did not live in this universe where your intent decided how much you can learn. So I inherently feel blessed about the fact that if I want to understand how small modular nuclear reactors work today, I will not be held back by my um membership to a library or my ability to buy a$500 book. Now, I might not be able to build one, but hey, I had this question and I'm trying to answer this question to myself. So I I really feel inherently excited about living in an ecosystem right now where a lot of things which was absolutely information, you know, just gated information and it was impossible to find out is very much possible today. So I try to leverage that. One right. Number two, I've also been blessed with having worked in very different facets of business. I started my career as a merchant marine. I used to work and live on ships, sail on ships. That sort of gave me a little bit of a perspective of the world. Then I ran high-speed manufacturing plants, then I've been in supply chain. I've been surrounded by so many different types of people across my lifespan that I am able to relate to a lot of these things, right? I am able to relate to a shift mechanic on what he struggles with while trying to fix a blow molder. As much as I'm relate, I'm able to relate to you, Paul Estrada, who's trying to buy billions of dollars worth of Fred every year and make sure this complicated web of logistics falls together in a perfect place, understanding the micro. So, you know, I've been blessed with having encountered so many different facets of people and life, and and that kind of just keeps me excited. And I want to make sure I just keep adding fuel to it.

Paul 10:28

So yeah, and I think uh I want to so I mean there's a lot of great talking points there. I'll go back to the first one, and that is the very fascinating perspective that I think today, and if you live in the United States, you take for granted the access to education and to Wikipedia and to everything, right? Like I never even thought about that because that's never been an issue for me. And we didn't touch on this yet, but I think maybe it's worth going there now, is that you you were not born in the United States, right? You were born in India, and so I think you offer a very fascinating perspective of maybe um a place where there's I mean, there's haves and have nots everywhere, but you know, I think it's interesting. So I want to touch on that a little bit. And so I know we talked about, I actually just learned this recently that I believe both of your parents were doctors, right? Yeah, yeah. So you are kind of just you have this pedigree, you maybe it's it's in your genes already. You are gonna be a very intelligent person. So I'm gonna just throw that out there. But even still, what I'm hearing from you is that even though you had very well-educated parents yourself, access to education and information was still hard to get. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, I mean, there was pretty much I'm talking pre-internet, right? Uh, and again, I was uh I'm gonna give up my age here. Yeah. I was born in in 1982, and I grew up in an India which was very much in line with the rest of the world. Still, uh, the information age had not hit us. So, like you mentioned, I was very privileged with my upbringing, having, you know, been born in a home with two doctors, had an excellent set of just intellectually simulating conversations, if you will. I also was blessed to have been born in a very special city in India that was synonymous with the industrial house of the Tatars. And I did have access to a lot of things that were considered uh not very accessible for the rest of the world, right? Whether it's stadiums or large libraries. So that really sort of set in motion my foundation for knowledge and for being able to continuously learn and be excited about what you are surrounded with. Uh, but to your point, yes, there was pre-Google. Uh I could not just go ahead and access Wikipedia, Google. There were not that many YouTube content creators who would hold my hand and teach me about options. Uh so I'm more of someone who learns well. I'm in a collaborative space. So yeah, I mean, that definitely was something that I remember between now and then on how much that information age has helped me.

Paul 12:44

And I mentioned, you know, you you come from a family of two, you know, two doctors, your mother and father both being doctors. Does that did they how hard did they push education and this thirst for knowledge? Is that where the baseline came from? Or was that just naturally within you already? Like I said, maybe it was just in your genes, or like to what extent was that education piece maybe part of uh this foundation that seems to have carried on with you into well into adulthood?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

That definitely has been a big inspiring force behind me. And you know, to be honest, I still struggle that I did not become a doctor. Yeah. My mom wanted me to be a doctor very much, but they never put any pressure on me. They let me be who I wanted to be. But I was surrounded by a lot of them. My mom was a doctor, my mom's younger sister was a doctor, her husband was a doctor, and and there was just a bunch of people where we grew up in an era where service to the society through education was one of the key themes, right? Um now I I was a little bit more bent towards business and then entrepreneurship, if you will. So if I look back, I still feel I brosely fell short, right?

India Upbringing And Education Culture

Paul 13:48

I think it's interesting because it's like I do feel like there's a lot of pressure in those, and this is from an outsider looking in. There's a lot of pressure um to become a doctor, following your parents' footsteps. So I find it one fascinating that you had parents that said, hey, be your own person. Um, but two, I'm curious to know from you, like when you literally are being, I wouldn't say pushed because they're not pushing you, but like everything around you, your environment is telling you to become a doctor. Is part of it just like if you have like maybe a slightly defiant personality, or you have a, hey, I'm trying to be my own person. Like, what is it that when everything, all these signs are pointing in this direction that you decided to pivot and go a different direction?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah, I mean, that that's I still think about it and and I ponder over it. What made me do what I did? I went on this, I decided to go work on a ship very early on. I went to a marine academy. Uh, it was a very different decision. Nobody, there was no ocean around where I stayed. Nobody in my family had ever heard of that profession. I had this um bone in me which wanted to do different things. I wanted to go see the world, and that kind of career just stuck with me very early on. I personally had made that decision after a little bit of a research on what I wanted to do, and I still remember it. There was a lot of confusion in my family. Now they were very supportive. There was a lot of confusion. Like, are you gonna go work on a ship? A port? Why would you want to do that to yourself? And I still remember there was a moment in time where I did feel a little bit validated. You know, you never feel fully validated, but there was a moment in time where I was working on a it was a brand new ship. We had just taken the ship's delivery from a shipyard in South Korea, and we were lucky enough to call on a port in Mumbai, Bombay. And because the ship was coming to India, I called my parents and said, Hey, this is a great opportunity if you wanted to come see the ship. Uh, it's very rare, we don't often call on Indian ports. So they flew down from my city to Bombay, and there was a lot of arrangements made to come have them visit the ship. And I still remember that day when my mom walked down the engine room and and it was a spanking new ship that helped. And she was like, Wow, I didn't realize that you work in such a technologically advanced environment. This is awesome. I'm so proud of you. Uh, and that stays with me. So, to answer your question, what took me down that path was I was not just my parents, just the city I grew up in. It was all about education and science. It was all about saying, hey, you're gonna be a doctor or you'll be an engineer and you will go crack the exam for IIT. That's pretty much everyone who was considered intellectually capable was expected to do. It was in the air, right? There was no way to escape it. Uh, from the time you were in ninth grade to the time you finished 12th grade, that's all the conversation was. Right, people who made it through these um esteemed universities were celebrated or like almost celebrities in the cities, their name would their names would be on papers. And uh growing up around that was was not easy, right? Because I one, I was like, man, I'm not sure I'll be able to do all of this, first of all, right? It it's it is so damn competitive. But a part of me was also very, very much um, you know, infatuated by the ability to go out in the world, you know, just just visit different countries. I mean, yeah, some of it was very much me thinking smart, saying, Do I really want to be a part of this craziness? Uh can I still go and achieve some professional success while meeting some of the core needs of my personality? And and somehow it that fit because this was not a normal engineering college, it was more of a marine academy, um, very much like a military style of setup. And it was a lot of fun, right? Uh it was very hard, but from the time I went on my first ship, I had that rush to be able to just go do things that nobody in my family had ever heard about. So yeah.

Paul 17:42

I think the part that, I mean, a lot of that stood out to me, but one in one thing in particular was it sounds like you were driven by this thirst for for exploration, right? So I'm assuming then that while your parents achieved these really great careers, it was, you know, within your country or within, you know, your locality, um, and that there was something pulling at you that said, hey, I need I want to get out and see the world and explore. And I think a lot of us have those inclinations or those thoughts that are pulling at us, but we just choose not to follow it. And I think you did. And so again, I I just the last thing I want to touch on with relation to this topic is you had this path that was probably pretty clear-cut and set up for you. And it was a let's I want to call it a guaranteed, I don't know if it was guaranteed, but more or less guaranteed path to success. And you kind of just say, like, yeah, that may be the case, but I want to gamble a little bit. Let me go pull this card. And I don't know where it's gonna take me, but at least I feel like I'm gonna be a little bit more fulfilled, at least in the short term. Was there any fear in your mind that crept in? And what do you think was ultimately the the one thing that you're just like, no, I I really just have to do this?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

No, I mean, you you definitely hit a point there, right? And and and I would say that when I go back and I some of that memories is are like crystal clear in my head. Uh, some of those days like literally come back to me like this from I had a very restless bone in me. It was very difficult for me to just sit in a place and be in an extended state of even though I love knowledge, but I I really that was one of the things that defied my personality, right? From very early on. I learned better while doing things. I learned better by being surrounded by people who were doing things versus sort of just being with the bulk alone and being trying to trying to do that. So if I were to sum it up in one word I would say self-awareness, I did have a very high degree of self-awareness. And wherever there was a lack of in my personality, whether it comes to being able to just very much focus on intellectual pursuit in a one-on-one basis, I try to compensate it with my self-awareness. Now, going back all of these years, you were absolutely right. I had this really restless born in me to wanted to get out of that small city I was born in, go see the world. A lot of it came from uh my dad, right? My my dad had his undergrad education in in Europe, and a big chunk of his medical education was over there, and he still came back. He was very clear that he never wanted to live there, and I had always seen his pictures uh growing up, and those were not the kind of pictures you see on the phone now, where the life from the photo is kind of taken away. These are like weird sizes uh tucked away in files, uh, and then you just sometimes sit around and watch all of this, and that had a very, very uh big impact on how I saw the world. I literally saw the world through those pictures uh with those bell bottoms and long hairs and people looking just yeah different. I was like, man, he you must have had a good experience, and he never lied about it. He was like, Yeah, it was an awesome experience. I loved every bit of being an international student in an unknown country, having to learn a foreign language. And you know, he had grown up in a village, he had not grown up in a city like me. So for him, that sort of bridge was even more crazy. So a lot of that set my first pillar of decision making where I was like, I absolutely have to go out and experience the world. That's a must. And then from there on, uh, you know, I had a lot of um misgivings about how to get there. Uh believe it or not, when I was still in my tenth grade, I ended up answering the SAD exams for the US education.

Paul 21:18

Okay.

Defying Expectations To Sail

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Having no idea what to do with it. But I just did it. Right? And and I was like, so so that that thing was already there. But when I did decide to go on the ship, a lot of my misgivings and fears were around I have no idea what happens there. Will I survive? I don't know anybody, not one soul, who could tell me that hey, this is how this works. And from there on, once I got in, I was very clear that I had to clear my licenses. That career is governed by STCW licenses, which is a very hard set of exams and orals governed by governments, and you cannot go work on a ship as a watchkeeping officer unless you clear that. So once I was sort of halfway through it, I was like, I want. To build this base for myself. And once I have built this base, I can take on a lot more risks so that I always can fall back here.

Paul 22:07

Yeah. Well, I think there's a really important thing that I want to go back to again. I feel like you keep going back, but you just so many gems in here. And and the one thing there was I think as parents, you don't necessarily have to explicitly say something in words for your kids to pick up on thoughts and ideas that that you're giving out. And so when you're saying that, I was thinking about my own upbringing. And that was my dad was a police officer. And he would come home and just rave about how much he loved that job. Like we would literally be sitting at the dinner table, and he would just be telling stories, these very, very interesting, high-energy, like adventurous stories about something that he had done at work the previous day. And it had gotten to the point where my mom was just like, hey, no more police stories at the dinner table. But we were f we were as kids, we were fascinated by it. And same thing with his military experience. He was in the in the US Marine Corps and he would glorify and talk about his experience there. Um, so much so that I saw no other, and again, he never said, Paul, go to the military, Paul, go become a police officer. Just in the way that he had told those stories, it had kind of become an in my mind that, like, okay, well, you've lived this really exciting, fulfilled life, and you've been able to provide for your family in a way that is, you know, really above average. And so that's really checking a lot of boxes here. Why would I not want to follow exactly in your footsteps and do that? Because, right. And so I never had that conversation with him until it got to a point where I, you know, was getting ready to graduate from college. And I tell my dad I'm gonna go apply for the Brea Police Department. He's like, wait, what? I'm like, yeah, I mean, what did you expect? Like, I've been hearing about this, you know, my whole life. And he said, No, no, no. The whole idea of you going to college was so that you wouldn't do this. And I said, Okay, I'm confused then because like you've been talking this up for so long. And so um, I guess my point there is just, you know, we get excited as parents about different things, and I don't think we even realize that we are inherently giving these ideas to our children, and they're we don't necessarily know which of those ideas they're picking up on, but they are picking up on some of them, and we don't know how that's gonna manifest itself as they become older, but until they tell us a story of, well, hey dad, I remember when I was eight years old and this happened. I'm like, oh shoot, I don't. That was like an afterthought in my mind, but to them it was like this very seminal moment that like set the career trajectory of their lives, right? Am I thinking too big about that? Or does that mean that's what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

When you say like that as a as a parent now, it even scares me, right? Uh that that's so much of what uh our kids absorbs are are just like subconscious stuff that's happening around them. But you you bring up an excellent point, and there's definitely there's a lot to it, not just about life, but about parenting, about being humble as a parent, and and you thinking that, hey, this is what I'm telling my child, but the child ends up perceiving something else more based on what they are seeing. No, you are 100% right there, and uh like like I said, it's it's a little bit scary once you become a parent to realize 20, 30 years down the line, uh, when your kid would be sitting in an interview like that somewhere, uh, I wonder what they would be saying. Exactly.

Paul 25:29

We just gotta be on our best behavior and hope for the best. So, all right, so we've established that you are an explorer, you're an adventure seeker. You said um you're the restless bones in your body. Uh, you spent a couple years sailing the world, and eventually you find your your way to the United States uh going to business school. What kind of triggered the thought of, okay, I, you know, you'd started this career, I don't know if you liked it or not, or you just said, okay, you know what, this has run its course. Now it's time for me to go get more educated. And specifically, I want to go get educated in the United States, or how did that come about?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

That was one of the most thought-through, but at the same time, difficult decisions for me. Um, I still very much remember standing at that sort of a precipice of that decision, if you will, and and thinking, should I go or should I not? I had a great career. I was making a lot of money. I was a relatively young kid in India, earning in US dollars. Life was really good. I'm not gonna lie about it. Right? I still remember so many different snippets from that life that made me feel just like I've arrived. But you know, there was always that element in me where I knew that if I extended it beyond a certain point, living would be impossible. I mean, this is a profession that that as you graduate and get more licenses and become more senior on a ship, uh, you do get paid a lot. There is a lot of prestige associated with it. The stickiness of the job is like 500 million percent. You literally have to just pick up the phone and tell someone, hey, I want to be on a ship, and the next moment you are on a ship. Uh, that's just how that profession works. Uh but like I said, there was a piece of me that felt restricted, uh, being more technically focused on a ship. And I wanted to get exposed to more larger ecosystem of how business runs, how the world runs. Uh, and there were multiple universities across the world that I considered, primarily driven by the fact that I had some of my own money saved up. So that that really made me feel very liberated to screw it up in lack of other words, right? I had the liberation to say, uh, okay, what's the worst that'll happen? I'll go somewhere, mess it all up, destroy all my money, but it's still my money. I'm not gonna take a single penny alone. Uh, and then I'm just gonna come back to work on a shit. Worst case, right? That's sort of how I got that freedom to make that choice, right? And I looked at different universities across the world. One of the things that kept bringing me back to the US was again, I always considered it the mecca of capitalism. I was like, hey, you want to be in business, you want to make money. Okay. Why are you even thinking about another country? There's a lot of great countries, including from where I come from, but what I was looking for was more to be able to ex get exposure to the global business ecosystem. And having English as a primary language definitely helped. Versus, let's say, uh picking a European country uh where I would have at least never been a native speaker, and I'm still not, I have a heavy accent, but still I can converse in that language. I've always been able to. So, I mean, I always had a soft corner for here. Like I said, I'd answered ICT when I was in 10th grade. I've always been a huge fan of basketball. I've grown up watching basketball even in India. There were so many different facets of life here that I kind of felt connected to just beyond the education and business aspect of it. And when I did apply to universities, most of the universities I applied to were in the US. So if I applied to, let's say, uh 10 or 15, almost 70-80% of them were US-based. Um, I I got a couple of admissions. Uh, there was something that stood out, that word was California. I was like, man, this is a brand, probably bigger, than many brands. And that's what made me choose. I wanted to be closer to an ocean. Not that I served for anything, but that was just a thought. I liked that idea, and that's how I ended up at UCI.

Paul 29:22

Yeah, UCI. So uh University of California, Irvine, uh, in Orange County, and it's probably the most I've talked about this area before, but the most manicured, uh, like no blade of grass is out of place. It's just like almost like a movie set. So I'm curious, uh and I've seen pictures of of where you grew up in India, very different. Um, so I'm just curious like what the culture shock was like, uh kind of coming specifically to that. I mean, because you could go to any area, right? But that area specifically is like the complete, like highest end you could possibly get to. What do you remember about those early days of just kind of exploring this new environment and what was going through your head at that time?

MBA Leap And Money Safety Net

SPEAKER_00 30:01

Boy, I struggled. I struggled big time in being able to. I mean, when I came here, I had all of these ideas about university in a foreign country and everything around it. Obviously, I wanted the education, but I also wanted the fun. And I struggled in the sense that everything felt so sanitized. I came from a very high, sort of a high-energy, high tempo ecosystem. I was working on a ship which was sort of chaos. Is this the best way to describe it? I would wake up in a different country so many times. I would just go out, be all all night, and then continue to work in the engine room. That's just the tempo of life I had. Even when I was in India, there was just hyperactivity all the time. Between the small town I lived in to the different cities, I had to go and sort of set a basin to be able to work in this career. And there was just so much going on. There was so much travel involved. Uh, there was so much high tempo activity. Uh, you generally never slept at 9 p.m. And when I came here, it was everything but that. We arrived in a beautiful village uh where everything shut down at 9 p.m. And and people would just happily leave a party at 9:30 or 10 saying, Hey, I gotta walk my doll at 5 a.m. Um no hate there. It was just I was I I was shocked. I was like, man, how am I gonna survive here? I'm yeah, I won't be able to take this silence. I will not be able to just like you know, I did I make a mistake? So yeah, my first year, I mean, I I thought about it multiple times that just forget the education, forget everything that's good that'll come out of it. I might not be able to take this. This is just too soft, too slow. Things not moving the at the pace at which I've been used to. Uh, but then again, uh, you know, you kind of become more of a professional from that point. You start looking at the greater good, you start understanding that it's a good school, uh, you are surrounded by some good companies and people, and then you know, life kind of becomes really busy and you let go of that social part of it. But that was one of my biggest struggles. I mean, people don't realize that when you uh immigrate or you leave behind everything that you had, uh, the emotional impact of it is just sometimes catastrophic, especially if things were awesome, especially if you know you were surrounded by a lot of friends, family, a lot of good things, a lot of positive vibes, and all of a sudden you just completely cut off all of that, right? And it is, I'd say, that's the price you pay. You don't realize it when you're doing it. Uh, but then when you look back, you sometimes ask yourself, how the hell did I emotionally survive that? I have no idea. But yeah, that that was a pretty much of a shock to me.

Paul 32:46

Well, I think this topic fascinates me because, and I just talked about this as a related to my college experience, and that is I was born in California. I was born in Southern California specifically. I grew up in Southern California. I went to college in Southern California. In fact, I just talked about how my college was maybe a 30, 40-minute drive from my childhood home. And I graduated from university. The first job I took was at Niagara, which was 30, 40 minutes from my home, right? So I, aside from a six-month stint I did in Spain for a study abroad, the vast majority of my life has been spent literally like almost like a stone's throw from the hospital I was born in, right? So I've stayed within this bubble, so to speak. And it's a great bubble. I mean, it's California and everything, but the part that most is most important is that fam familial aspect. And that is this idea of being able to be near your friends and family, your brothers and sisters and your grandparents, your extended family, right? And just the richness that can bring to your life. And so one of the things I always think about, especially, you know, like where we work, where there's a lot of people there that were born from outside of the US, or just anybody that's immigrating, like you said, that is sacrificing so much to go, you know, thousands of miles away, maybe 10, 15 hour time zones away to explore careers and making these lives for themselves, um, which is great. And I think they're able to achieve that, but it is coming at a price. And in that price is missing key milestones in your family's lives, birthdays, um, anniversaries, potentially even death of family members that um you're just not there. And thankfully, because of technology, you can FaceTime with people and you can, there's so many ways to stay connected, but there's nothing that's gonna be just physically being there, being able to give your family member a hug or you know, spend a couple hours over a bottle of wine or whatever the case may be. So I should say I understand that at the surface level. I would love to go into more depth into, and you touched on it like that emotional aspect a little bit, but what does that truly feel like? And two, that seems like a massive sacrifice. And has it been worth it? Right? That's ultimately the question.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Yeah, I mean, it's it's such an evolving question, right? And and I could have five different answers on five different days. Uh, but to to sum it all up, right? I mean, you you rightly said it that when you're young, for a lot of us who who have grown up in small town India, we get programmed pretty early to leave home, right? I left home at 18 to just it was a 28-hour train journey from where I was born to where I studied college for four years, right? We kind of leave home early in that sense. Ability to be able to separate yourself from your personal life for a greater good. And at times it's not even driven by any desperate measures. It's not even driven by that, hey, if I don't leave, my life is horrible. It's just a constant evolving process, and that's just what you've seen around you of constantly it's like yeah.

Paul 35:47

Well, let me touch on that real quick, Naraj. So uh it's funny, well, it's not funny, but it's interesting you say that because when you talk about programming, right? We kind of touched on that a little bit earlier, but my my experience of programming was exactly the opposite, where like literally my parents were like, if you want to live in this house until you're 30, you're welcome to do that. Um, so I'm fascinated by this concept of being programmed to actually leave home. And just like very briefly, like, what does that look like when you say that?

Culture Shock And The Cost Of Leaving

SPEAKER_00 36:13

I I'm only speaking from a perspective of someone who grew up in a small town India, right? And that perspective very they're very different for someone who grew up in big cities. Like you mentioned, people who generally are born and brought up in big cities, they tend to have very little to no reason to leave. The big companies are there, big universities are there, uh, good jobs are there, and they kind of have have have that thought process that, hey, everybody comes here. I don't really have to go anywhere. But for a lot of us who grew up in very small cities in India, it was very early on sort of a known fact. If you have to do anything substantial professionally, you have to back up and leave. First you leave for education, and then you leave for maybe a job or entrepreneurship or whatever, wherever your career takes you. It was almost considered sort of a rite of passage, if you will, it was almost considered something that you very proudly wore on your sort of as an accolade that hey, I left, I didn't just stay back. And and and you don't realize a lot of this stuff when it's happening. But 10, 15, 20 years down the line, when you look back and you meet so many more people, because back then you were in a bubble of your own small town and everybody around you is similar thinking exactly the same. When you grow up and you meet more people, you're like, oh, a lot of people don't have to leave. Is that real? Like I thought everybody has to leave, right? And and it seems kind of stupid and funny to say it like that, but that was there were moments like that where I was like, oh wait, okay, so this this is not that normal. Like you could potentially have a life where you were born in a city, you educated in a city, and you work there, uh surrounded by a large group of friends and family. Uh and then that's when a lot of that sort of uh your life's decisions start sort of setting, and you're like, oh, I don't know, did I do the right thing? Was it all worth it? What did I set out to achieve? And and and a lot of times you will see that there is this inherent dissatisfaction in a lot of people who sort of come from that ecosystem because they're always trying to prove, they're always trying to compensate for everything that they lost, and at times always trying to answer to themselves. I didn't need to do that. Why did I do that? I I wasn't escaping a war-turn country or I wasn't just being persecuted or anything. It was very much a choice I made. How do I continue to make up for it? And that inherent dissatisfaction is sometimes a positive and sometimes it's a negative, right? It's positive where it drives you to constantly never settle and say, Oh, I have a great job, but I don't feel it. I really need to go and grab something else because I really want to make it all worth it. But at times it also becomes negative where it doesn't let you uh enjoy what you have achieved. It doesn't let you just settle in and say, Wow, man, it's been a long and hard road. And can I just take a breather and just smile and be happy? Yeah. It's right. It's quite a thing where you're always trying to overcompensate.

Paul 39:02

And so now we're you're 15, 20 years into that decision. You're still here. Um, how do you kind of and and you still have a long, I mean, you're a young guy still, so you got a long career left ahead of you. But as you kind of think about the next, I don't know, 10, 15 years, what does that look like to you in the context of, okay, you're pretty well started. You almost lived half your life now in the United States as opposed to India, right? So what does that like mean for you going forward? I don't know where like where you're at with like family and stuff that's still in India, but have you like come to terms with like, okay, this is now, this is a rock solid path. I've I've I'm firmly going in this direction, or are you still kind of like, I don't, like what kind of stuff?

Making Peace With Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yeah, I mean, I wish I could answer that with that level of clarity. Uh but you know, I'll I'll I'll break it down into two different facets, the professional piece and the personal piece. The personal piece I've kind of come more or less to a realization. I would say that I've accepted it, that the place I left 15, 20 years ago, that doesn't even exist. It just exists in my mind. Uh everything around it has changed. I am uh I am holding on to this vestige of something that is not even there anymore, right? Uh the city I grew up in, the people I grew up with, uh the emotions, stories, everything uh has has just rapidly evolved, changed. And uh if I keep trying to go and I still try to go there as much as I can, looking for it, longing for it, and I come back. You mean go in there in your mind, right? No, I physically also go to India a lot, almost at least once a year. Okay. And and a lot of times it's that longing that takes you back there to look for stuff that was there. All your golden memories are there, and and then it takes you a while to realize that it doesn't really exist, right? Uh it's it's all in your head. And wherever you are is is is where your home is. Uh, it doesn't matter what part of the world or what part of the country, like people have grown up in small cities in India, but they have moved on to bigger cities, which looks nothing like how they grew up. So while I countries are separated by passports and boundaries, in a lot of senses their experiences are also very similar of being displaced, right? And so so on a personal level, after a while you do come to a realization uh that thing doesn't exist. It's in your head, it's a sweet little memory, and you can preserve it, but trying to go and relive it will really not get you anywhere. Wherever you are is where you need to set up your roots, uh set up your memories, and and just like you are, you had those memories, your kids will now have these memories to kind of go back to wherever they are 20 years down the line. So that's on the personal front. I very much sort of align to the fact that I'm a nomad. Uh and while I am here today, I love it here. Uh, these are this is where I have my family. I have both my kids here. Uh, I'm very much emotionally connected to this space now. But also at the same time, I know a part of me will always be searching for that, right? Now, on the professional front, right, uh, as you would know, because you have gone through a similar process of growth, uh, uh, you know, it gets more and more complicated as you hit a certain level to answer that question, what's next? A part of you wants to acknowledge what you have achieved, a part of you wants to celebrate that, which is absolutely something that should be done. Uh, to be thankful for what you know I've built, not just myself, but with the grace of the company that I work with, right? I've been very fortunate, very blessed with the leaders that have granted me these opportunities. But at the same time, you are always trying to answer that question. Will I be satisfied 20 years later if I were to say that, hey, I said this is great, this is awesome, let me just go in a sense of preservation. And that answer to me is always a hard no. I can never accept that. Right. And whether the reality might not align with my own fascination with constant growth, I just can't um stop thinking about it, right? And like I said, 10 years down the line, 10 years before, those answers were pretty simple. So I was a maintenance man uh supervisor at one point in a manufacturing plant and I had a very clear goal. I want to be a plant director, right? It was pretty black and white. Now, whether I could become one or not is a different story. But the target was set, you laugh loaded and you're like, let's go. There was a point where I was like, I want to do well in HQ, these are some of the targets I want to achieve. Now, from there on, where you are surrounded by some very smart people and growth won't happen at like an on a yearly basis, uh, it again becomes inherently complicated. Do you see growth by constantly learning more? Do you see growth by uh exposing yourself to a higher caliber of work? Uh do you see growth by just doing something completely out of the blue and and risk a lot? Don't have an answer to it. Right. But 100% I can say that I continue to think on how to just accentuate this and then and build on top of it.

Paul 43:49

Well, Naraja, I think you've had just uh I mean a fascinating story to tell, and the adventure uh the ex explorer in you is really interesting to learn that. I'm curious. Just to kind of come full circle, you know, you've got uh young children of your own now. As you think about your role as a father and just being a parent, and you think about your own journey that you've been on, how do you think about their journey and where they're going? I know um, you know, they're still relatively young, but just in terms of what you would like to see for them and and how, you know, they what they take away from your your journey to maybe, I don't know, I I kind of feel like maybe get I always think about it in terms of standing on your shoulders and getting to the next level. But how do you think about that, those things? Oh, you saved the hardest question life.

Parenting Without Forcing The Template

SPEAKER_00 44:37

For always. Oh, whenever I talk to my dad these days, I make sure I acknowledge that you you don't know how hard it is to be a parent until you become a parent, right? You just go through so much of your life listening to people about uh things their parents did or did not do for them, uh the missed opportunities they had because of their parents. And there's just so much around it, right? There's always focused on critique. And then you yourself are standing in that role, and every day feels like a constant question to me at least personally. I'm speaking very personally here, on whether I'm doing the right things. You're you're battling this battle between what you want your kids to become, uh, but at the same time uh asking yourself, am I giving them the right incentives, am I giving them the right uh emotions to be able to get there? Uh, also trying to at the same time figure out that maybe they have nothing to do with what I want them to become. And being able to just reconcile everything, you come in from this very high-powered zone of having just built your career. You're kind of just teeming with energy. You're like, man, I figured this out. I do not want them to make a single mistake I made. Like, literally, I have the template. I just take the template, run with it. I have screwed off, I've screwed up so many times, and I have it all written down. This is like that's it. You just have to follow the template. And then you're like, oh man, they're not following the template at all. There's no function. Come on. Yeah. And then you go through that humbling process. It at least it was for me, it was quite a process, to be able to then acknowledge that, okay, well, well, you're talking about it from the vantage point of someone who has seen so much and trying to just like give somebody it is just probably is not the best way to do it. Uh, they will have to go through their own life's experiences, they will stumble and fall. You only hope that they stumble and fall less than you. You only hope that they look at you and say, Hey, you know what? My dad's been through this. I kinda know how this works out. I'm not gonna take that road, or I will take that road, right? And there's this there's so much hopes and aspirations. Uh, and it's almost like, you know, how VCs start off and they're like, we don't know what the outcome will be, but then they put in a bunch of investment and effort and everything. To me, I have come to a realization to look at it in a similar way with a huge dose of humility and and and say that a lot of what I want might not be. So let me try to just sort of stand around, see where I can help, and let this thing play out. Now, now it's very difficult for for someone who has tried to control my own careers, who has to try to control a lot of narrative around you know how things shape up in my life to be that person. But like I said, my my hope and aspirations are all focused on more basic things is is their general health, uh their mental health, them being able to be decent human beings. And as life plays out, if they checkbox these three or four things, a lot of their uh actualization, a lot of their fulfillment uh sort of will be self-correcting in a sense. They will, I'm hoping, get where they have to get if they take care of these three basic things. All right.

Paul 47:46

Well Naraj, I really appreciate you. I get to your knowledge on a daily basis. I'm fortunate enough to spend time with you in the office every day, but um I'm really happy to be able to share you with um the rest of my audience. And so thank you for your time. And you know, next week we got we're gonna have to figure out this whole stock situation because I'm I'm we're getting a little nervous. So we got a lot to talk about next week. Uh, but thank you for sharing your story. It was very fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Appreciate it. It's been uh very fortunate to know you, Paul. I've known you for a while from our early days. I've always enjoyed my conversations with you, learned a lot from you. And just the fact that you're continuing to expand your horizons by doing like a podcast like this, right? It inspires me. That's the kind of stuff that makes me want to get out of bed and say, hey, you know what? I got something to learn from this person. Uh I want to take a leaf of you know, I want to take a book or you know, leaf out of his perk. And so it's always been uh a great experience. And and I'd like to thank you for having me here.

Paul 48:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Anytime. All right, man. We'll talk next week. All right, and uh now that you've sold your triple Q's, we'll be on close watch. We'll see. Maybe this is the bottom. Uh we'll talk next week. We'll see. All right, see you. All right, man. Thank you so much, Paul.