JCIP #368 - Sunil Jindal - Part 2

In episode 368 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked back in with Sunil Jindal. 

Sunil is the former Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Magic AI, a fitness-technology company which produces a Fitness Mirror, completely powered by AI. 

Sunil and our Founder Freddie went to the same sixth-form college and have been friends for over 15 years.

We first checked in with Sunil in November 2023 in JCIP #207. We discussed his love of table tennis and founding the Ping Pong Society, work-life balance, the shyness he had as a child and how he overcame it as an entrepreneur and adult. 

Since we last checked in, MAGIC AI has gone from strength to strength and grown hugely. 

However, Sunil has made the decision to leave the company and we talk about the new challenges he hopes to take on going forward and his vision for what his future looks like. 

For Sunil’s continued mental health journey, we discuss the importance of having a strong support network in your life and why he has more gratitude for that in the last few months.

We finish by talking about several health scares his grandmother had and the mental health impact that had on him. 

As always, #itsokaytovent

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hi Venters, welcome back to another episode of the Just Checking In Podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Cocker, and this podcast is brought to you by Vent, a place where everyone, but especially men and boys, can open up about their mental health issues, break down stigmas, and start conversations. In each episode, I check in with a special guest. We have a natter and a chat about all things mental health, as well as anything and everything else they are passionate about. If it helps that person with their mental health, we discuss it. In this episode, I'm checking back in with an old friend of mine called Sunil Jindal. Sunil is the former co-founder and chief product officer at Magic AI, a fitness technology company which produces a fitness mirror, completely powered by AI. Sunil and I also went to the same sixth form college and has been my friend for over 15 years. I first checked in with Sunil in November 2023 in JCP 207, where we discussed his love of table tennis and founding the Ping Pong Society, work-life balance and the shyness he had as a child and how he overcame it as an entrepreneur and adult. Since we last checked in, Magic AI has gone from strength to strength and grown hugely. However, Sunil has made the decision to leave the company and we talk about the new challenges he hopes to take on going forward and his vision for what his future looks like. For Sunil's continued mental health journey, we discuss the importance of having a strong support network in your life and why he has more gratitude for that in the last few months, and two health scares his grandmother had and the mental health impact that had on him and his family. So this is how part two of my conversation with my old friend Sunil Jindal went. Jin, welcome back to Just Checking In Pod. Thank you so much for letting me check in with you, bro. We have gone from you lurking in part one, I believe. I think I think you were lurking. This is an in-joke for the listeners who didn't go to our school. And that was me pouncing to get you back on. How are you, bro? And would you say you're lurking or pouncing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

I am always lurking. And very much pouncing. Good to be here. Great to be back for part two.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

I cannot believe it's been three years since we first checked in, bro. We've got lots to discuss. We've got lots of room for tangents as well. So without further ado, are you ready to start the show and talk all about this chapter of your journey? Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Three years. Doesn't feel like it's been that long at all.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

We're going to start your part two, Podmate, by checking back in with your professional journey first. So since we last checked in, Magic AI has grown massively, but you have now left the company. Your podcast episode listens did along with it, grown massively, I must say. You're now third on the all-time list. How has this next chapter of your journey been like? And just take me through from when we last checked in to now.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, sure. So yeah, like I said earlier, three years, it doesn't feel like it's been that long at all. A lot has definitely changed. So, yeah, as you mentioned, moved on from magic. The business itself has come a long way. So back when we previously spoke, I believe we were a team of five people, and now company has around 20 people, grown a lot, moved into Stephen Bartlett's old office, expanding to the US. The company itself has come a long way, and I have with that as well. I've moved on now. So a lot has changed during that time. A lot of great moments. You know, as you said, the podcast has really taken off, and uh, I'm sure quite a lot of that is down to the success of your podcast, but also the success of magic as well. More you, bro. And uh, you know, hopefully we can get this to the number one on your all-times list, right? So we've got number three, and now let's get this to number one.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Before we talk about the next chapter, I just want to go back to magic if we can, because like you said, you expanded from a team of five to twenty. As CPO at the time, how did you adapt to that growth? How did you overcome that? Because it's a positive challenge, but it's still a challenge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

For sure, yeah. As a company evolves over time, the needs change, you know, what your role is changes over time just as the company grows. So when you're a team of five, you know, it's very much uh the feeling of being more of an individual contributor rather than an actual manager because there's very few people to manage. But as the team grows, you know, there's a lot more management work that's required, a lot more leadership. And typically in a startup, at that stage, at least you're still an individual contributor. So I suppose one of the changes, or I suppose one of the difficulties you could say, one of the challenges was how do you work as an individual contributor whilst at the same time, you know, leading this growing team. And one of the things you notice is as you have more people involved, the lines of communication increase. So if you have just two people in a company, let's say that's just one line of communication, but as you add another person, that's three lines of communication in total. And so you can just imagine as the team grows more and more, the lines of communications grow so deeply with it. And it creates a lot of internal chatter, a lot of additional communication to manage. So I would say that you know, as the company grows, one of the things I discovered was that not only, you know, do you still have to be an individual contributor, but the communication increases non-linearly, it increases quite a lot, which can make things more difficult in some ways. Obviously, you have more ideas, more sort of ideas on the table, you have more sort of input, which can also be great as well. But yeah, you do get a lot of challenges that come along with that too.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

You go from five to twenty. You're still classified as an SME in both of those, an early stage startup. However, the growth was very, very quick as well. Did you have to adapt your mindset as well? So you obviously came into it literally as a startup. Did you have to adapt your mindset to expand your own horizons?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I would say so, yeah. Like as the company grows, you always have to change your mindset. I suppose one of the ways of thinking is that every day you're burning through more money because you've got more people that you're paying. Uh, typically you're spending more on marketing, bigger office space, there's a lot more cost to account for. I do find that as companies grow, you do start feeling more pressure. You know, when you're early stage, especially if you haven't achieved something of that level of success before, the expectations aren't very high. So if you fail, you know, obviously it's not great, but you don't feel as much pressure. But as the company grows, because you know you're investing more and more time into something that is succeeding and that is growing, and that is serving more and more people, your customer base you know increases a huge amount, pressure grows, you're accountable to investors, you have a team that you're accountable to as well. And so that level of pressure does start to grow. And as I said earlier, you know, you've more team members involved as well, so more people can be asking you questions, and so that in itself can become quite challenging. And so I think you do naturally start feeling like you need to potentially move quicker, you need to keep growing. It can become harder to sleep as well because you know you feel this growing level of pressure. And I think as we spoke about in my previous podcast, one of the ways that I tend to deal with this is to have other sources of happiness. So for me, you know, table tennis is a big part of my life. I make sure that I put a conscious effort into switching off. So when I'm not working, I make sure to switch off at a good time, and then I make sure that when I am switched off, I'm not working. I'm you know doing something that is really helping me to recover, to recover hard. So playing intense table tennis as an example is something that really helps with that. So when I go back to working the next day, I feel energized instead of drained. So yeah, the mindset does have to change because the needs of the company changes. The kind of experiences that you have day to day changes as the company grows.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

Since we first checked in, you've done a lot more media interviews when you were part of Magic and now post-Magic. So without me taking too much credit here, I'm gonna still take a little bit. Did that pod give you more confidence, do more public speaking, put yourself out there and adapt and grow alongside Magic's growth too?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

I think being third on your all-time list definitely gave me some confidence. I would say that every sort of new experience, I suppose, kind of gives you that extra bit of confidence and that those extra learnings that you then hopefully take away to any sort of further podcast that you do. So I wouldn't say it did, but I would say any podcast does.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

You've left Magic Now, that's in the rearview mirror. Now you're moving forward as an entrepreneur in your own right. How have you gone about that? What's next?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, so I think one of the first things I actually did was to switch off. So I went away on holiday for a little while just to decompress a little bit and to sort of process everything that's happened. Because when you're working in a startup, especially one that's moving as fast as magic, you know, you know, your day-to-day tends to be very busy. So it was important to take a step back to decompress. And then I'm a product guy, so I started delving a bit deeper into Claude and seeing what I can do with AI. And my personal website, it was quite old, so I thought, okay, let's use Claude to revamp this. And during that process, I went down a bit of a sort of creative rabbit hole and sort of thought through loads of different things, built a personal roadmap for myself in terms of some of the things I want to achieve over the next few months. And what I have started calling this kind of phase of my life is the exploration phase. So I think when you've spent four and a half years so deep working on one thing, you lose sight of the many other things going on in the world, especially right now in the age of AI, things are moving so quickly. And so I thought it was important for me to look at things from our higher level and start exploring all of the various things out there. So right now I'm in this phase where I'm very keen just to uh explore various things and and learn a load of different things. I'm trying to set up a second brain at the moment, so using AI to create a duplicate of myself to hopefully make some things in my life easier to do. I mean, I'm at the very early stages of this, but this is a thing that is trending now that people are starting to do. And being a product person, again, I can see this happening and I can see the potential. So I'm going quite deep into exploring that. But yeah, my biggest focus right now is exploration, you know, kind of let's see what's out there, what we can do. And the second brain is definitely one of those things that I'm looking into. That's mad.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah, that's a big one. When it comes to this exploration phase, mate, you sound like you'd probably want to start something yourself rather than join something next. Would that be fair or not?

SPEAKER_00 11:29

So I think that's something that I have been toying with a little bit to really think through. So that there are two other things I am doing at the moment. So one is my company, so the Ping Pong Society. I recently ran a corporate tournament and we held the finals at Wembley Arena. Wow. So we It's come a long way, brother. It's come a huge way, yeah. So we played the final of this competition at Wembley Arena alongside the World Championship. So we had the best players in the world playing next to us. So whilst we were playing our final of our corporate competition, we were playing alongside the best players in the world. So next to us, you had Sweden, China was in the room, we had all of these amazing players who were playing alongside us. And this was the hundredth anniversary of the world championships, and it took place at Wembley Arena, and London is actually where table tennis was, or sorry, the UK is actually where table tennis was invented. So this was a really awesome competition. So right now I've got all of this amazing footage. We had England's best ever player, Sally, who's the CEO of Table Tennis England. Both of them were involved, and we've got a lot of content that we filmed. So currently I'm actually in a bit of a process of trying to get my head around sort of social media remarketing and trying to sort of get that content out in the best way I possibly can. And I also have started doing some work with a company called the Automandri, so I'm working with them to basically help scale their founder sports community globally. So these are two things that I I'm currently doing. And I would say that it's important to, for me at least, to I didn't want to put myself in a position where I was doing nothing. I think it's important to decompress and to take a break. I wanted to be part of a team. I know from previous experiences when I've left a role in the past and started to build something by myself, it can be quite a lonely journey. So what we do with the Art of Mondays actually is we serve these people, a lot of them who are solopreneurs who are building by themselves. And I know firsthand that you know when you're building something by yourself, it can be quite lonely. So I think from going from this experience with magic, you know, building this amazing product with this amazing team, to suddenly working on something by yourself, I was, to be honest, probably a little bit afraid of that transition. So I wanted to make sure that I remained part of a team that shared my values. And Artumande is a great group of people who really share what I believe, and at the same time giving myself space to continue exploring and seeing what else I can do. So I'm quite happy with that transition. And yeah, as I said, I'm working on other things like building a second brain, and I'm sure other things will come up as well. But just a little thing there.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah, you've come a long way since organizing those table tennis tournaments in the Officer Econ Room, eh, mate? When we spoke off air, you were quite keen to talk about how important your parents have been in this transition out of magic and into this new chapter. Just tell me a little bit more about that, mate.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah, sure. So I think probably one of the difficulties that a lot of Asians tend to feel is that I think the sort of classic route that Asians tend to take is this South Asians?

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Let's be specific here. Come on. I don't want to homogenize the entire race.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Let's say South Asian. So South Asians tend to become, you know, what is it, doctors, dentists, lawyers. That's what you engineers, of course, engineers. That's what your parents advocate for in ISO.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Stereotypically, please don't cancel me. Sunil was stereo saying this stereotypically on average.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah, very much being stereotypical here. But um I suppose I myself, like I studied physics at Imperial, and I suppose the expectation from my parents was that I go and work a corporate job earning six figures pretty quickly after university, and you know, nothing against my parents at all. They obviously you know want what's best, and especially my parents coming from a corporate background, that is typically the sort of pathway that a lot of South Asian parents expect for their kids, and I haven't really followed that path. So when I left university, I joined Hubble as part of the founding team there. Actually, started off as an intern, and I think one of the sort of difficulties that you can have when you have sort of stereotypical South Asian parents is that they can look down on that, and they might not necessarily look at that in a positive way. And I think one of the difficulties is to continue persevering through something that you believe in, even when you know those closest to you might not necessarily agree that it's the best path for you. And I think, yeah, that's something that I have seen, you know, at so many points in my life. Like that was definitely one moment. And then when I started working on you know the ping pong society after I left Hubble, that was another sort of moment where you know suddenly I've left this job. I'm trying to build something by myself, obviously, not making very little money at the time. And you know, I can understand obviously, you know, parents kind of pushing back and kind of worrying, but being an entrepreneur, I also know that it can take time to build something, and so one of the important things when you are building something is to make sure you're in a culture of positivity where people are lifting you up, and I think that isn't necessarily the case if your parents believe that you know you should be earning lots of money in a in a corporate job, and probably one of the sort of more recent difficulties was when I was going through the process of transitioning away from magic. It was you know a very difficult process, not easy in any way. But uh I was fortunate enough that I had a lot of great friends that I could rely on. One of the problems was that obviously my parents, you know, being so close to them, I knew it was important to discuss this with them. But I also knew that they probably aren't qualified enough to give me the the best advice that I need. Being from a different background, I knew that if I had asked them, their advice probably wouldn't have been the thing that would have been most useful. But also at the same time, it's probably the piece of advice that I would have listened most to because they're my parents. So I had to make a difficult decision to not discuss my departure until I had decided for myself what I was going to do, which was very difficult, but it's it's one of the sort of yeah situations that I find myself in. But yeah, I was fortunate enough that I had a lot of really good, really experienced friends who I could discuss the situation with and figure out how to approach.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Nice commendable you say that, mate, because I wasn't expecting that answer to be fair. I was expecting a different one. Fair play to you. I'd also provide a counter argument in that, you know, you were chief product officer, so you kind of were an engineer.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yeah, that's true. Um, yeah, in some ways you could say that. I think um just a different type of one. Yeah, a different type of one in a startup and not in a big fancy bank, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

You weren't an aerospace engineer, but you were an engineer in tech, let's be real. What does the next chapter hold for you then, mate? What do you hope to get out of it? What do you hope to achieve? What do you hope to overcome, maybe? What challenges do you want to take on? I think.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

So, like I said earlier, this is very much sort of an exploration phase. And so I think one of the sort of big things that I want to be focusing on over the next few months is to look at the world from more of a higher level and see all of the different things that are out there. As we know, I play a lot of table tennis. I'm trying to get to top 100 in England. That has slowed down a little bit with like other things such as magic, you know, sort of taking up some time. But now the focus is to very much get back to that. Quite keen to do some traveling as well. So, my brother, my younger brother is traveling around the world at the moment. You're always reposting his LinkedIn posts, I see. Always. I love it. I do, yes, always liking and always reposting. So he's actually deep into AI himself, and he's hopefully going to find some time to help me build out this concept of a second brain. He's already been working on this for for quite a while, so I'm trying to get uh some time in his calendar for him to help me. But I think, yeah, that is a big focus, traveling, just seeing what's out there. I think again, you know, spending four and a half years focusing so deep on magic, it's time to sort of take a step back and see all the different things out there. Spend some time trying to become great at table tennis, traveling, just learning as much as I can in various different areas. I found like a few areas that I'm pretty weak in that I'd love to learn a little bit about. So we'll see, but like I'm very much taking it day by day and just learning, whilst at the same time, obviously, you know, helping the team at um Artemon Days to build the community and also very much trying to build table tennis as a sport in this country. I think one of the big sort of realisations that I've had, especially during the world championships, was that um I think table tennis doesn't have a great perception in this country. I feel like a lot needs to be done to change the perception of table tennis and to make people realise that it is a proper sport. And I am currently looking to partner with some superstars, some well-known figures, potentially from the Premier League, to become the image or the face of table tennis in some ways and to help to lift its profile in this country so we can grow it. I think one of the one of the sort of frustrations I had was when I went to watch the World Championships at Wembley. Obviously, you know, Wembley Arena, huge event, 100th anniversary of the sport, the best players in the world, you know, in this venue. The attendance was not great, especially for the England matches. You know, you think about how hard the England players train in any sport to become the best. You would hope that they have you know some great support, especially in their home country. But I was watching England versus Brazil and there wasn't really that much support for England, which was very frustrating. And so one of my goals is to, you know, as somebody who loves to play, is to lift the profile of this sport and work closely with England's best ever player, we've got Scotland's best ever player, and you know, hopefully we'll get a few other sort of well known people involved as well to really elevate the sport in this country. So who knows, maybe when we do part three of this podcast, table tennis will be the biggest sport in this country.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Well, let's manifest it, bro. Let's reflect. On your professional journey continued, then what has this chapter taught you about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Oh, that is a tough question. What does this chapter taught me? I wasn't prepared for that one. Um what has it taught me? So I think one of the sort of big things that I've learned is the importance of surrounding yourself with great people. I think as you go through various phases in your life, especially when you're building a company, there's plenty of ups and downs. It's really important to surround yourself with I think it's three levels of people I talk about. So one is those who are at your level, so at a similar stage of life. Let's say if we're talking about sort of building a business, we're thinking of people who are at a similar phase to you. Maybe they're building a company at a similar stage, going through similar problems. These people are great because you can share problems, you can kind of discuss solutions together. And then you have those people who are a little bit further along. So these people can be great mentors, you can learn a lot from them. You can, you know, any sort of lessons that they have had in their life, they can share with you to make sure that you potentially don't repeat the same mistakes. And then you have those who are slightly further behind you. These people, you know, look to you as a mentor. And I, you know, have plenty of people from all three categories. And I think potentially ones that I enjoy the most is actually spending time with those who are slightly further behind me. I think there's a lot that you gain from helping others. That is something I found really rewarding, especially when those people listen and you can see how it's impacting their lives in a positive way. But yeah, it's important to have people at all three levels on a professional level at least. That is something that I've taken away. I think for me, particularly recently, you know, focusing on talking to those who have been through similar hardships or similar kind of stages of life as me has been you know very useful for me over the past year or so.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

We've checked in about your professional journey. Let's check in once more about your mental health journey. So tell me how you reflect on part one. What feedback did you receive? And who's the sun ill we meet now?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Yeah, good question. So, I mean, part one, as you said, three years ago, doesn't feel like it's been that long at all. Hopefully, I haven't aged much, if at all. Um just to stubble, bro. Just to stumble. I should have shaved. But yeah, I mean, the feedback itself has been really positive. I think you've messaged me every few months to give me an update on how amazing part one has been. I like to think that, at least hope that it has helped a lot of people in some way with whatever questions or or challenges they might have in their lives. I think who I am now, other than somebody who might have uh maybe a few more sort of grey hairs.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Me and you both, mate.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

I would say obviously, you definitely you know like to think I'm wiser, learnt a lot, you know, obviously going through the process of magic of going from a team of five to a team of 20, you know, having a lot of success in the business, building table tennis up in this country, and yeah, just kind of seeing where AI has evolved over the past few years. It's all taught me, you know, a lot about myself as a person. And like I think one of the sort of interesting things that I have uh started to think more and more about is that we tend to so when we have conversations with people, we don't always tend to remember all of the key things. And one of the things that I've noticed, and I know this is very common, as you start to become more successful by society's definition of success, I think you tend to become a bit more overwhelmed with people reaching out to you and asking you, you know, various questions, various bits of help. And I enjoy that. Like I love to help people and I love to in some ways maybe be the centre of attention, but it can also become quite overwhelming. And one of the things I have noticed, and something that is very common for a lot of people, is that your WhatsApp conversations tend to grow or your emails tend to grow, you tend to have more people reaching out to you. And one of the things that I am becoming more conscious of is how do I interact with my phone, how do I manage my relationships with various people, and you know, on LinkedIn especially, you can get loads of messages. And one of the sort of realizations I've had is that sometimes you meet the people that you receive cold messages from on LinkedIn. And one of the insights, one of the things that I try to remember is that these are just normal people trying to reach out to you. And I think when you meet them, you become reminded of that. So I try not to ignore people if they message me. Sometimes if I can tell that it's like definitely a templated message, something they're sending to everyone, I might ignore it.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Um it's a pitch straight away that really annoys me. Like message request with a pitch. Like I do that with podcasts, but I think that's a bit different. If if you send a personalized invitation, chances are you're not going to get an accept request if you just send it without one if they don't know you. So I try and do like, oh, so come across you would love to interview you. But like when I get a cold pitch where it's like, hey, it's like, nah, man.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I tend to be quite mindful of that. But if I feel like somebody's messaged me and you know, again, just reminding myself that these are just human beings, and I've probably done this myself in the past. I would try not to ignore them. I would try to help in some way, or at least at a bare minimum, just reply and say, Thanks, I'm not interested. And yeah, there are a few things have changed due to that sort of growing popularity, you could say. And yeah, another thing, like I said, is how to manage WhatsApp conversations. Again, there's opportunity cost, you know, kind of missing out on things, doing something else could mean that you've missed out on something that could have yielded, you know, something quite valuable and quite useful in your life. So these are some of the sort of conundrums that I've been having. But also when I've been meeting out with people, I sometimes what I'll do is I'll spend a day just going into London and sort of having back-to-back meetings with people. And I think especially if you have back-to-back meetings, probably not a great idea to be honest, but you're bombarded with loads of information. And I tend to sort of make sure that when I have these conversations, I'm kind of booking them in with people that I feel would yield like very valuable results. And so, quite often, pretty much all of these conversations have a ton of like super useful information. And I just find myself, even though I might be taking notes, like I might quite often just forget a lot of these things. So we spoke earlier about the concept of a second brain, one of the sort of ideas that I'm currently toying with, which a little bit creepy, but also I think quite interesting. Sending the second brain in your place. Well, that was actually an idea as well, but that's more for video calls. But what I'm thinking is when you actually meeting somebody, just recording every conversation. I actually did this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Spain.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

I was doing a lot of obviously consensually, please, for the love of God, like so I don't get cancelled or GTPR issues.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Yes, getting approval, I think, is it can be important. So I did this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Spain. So I was researching uh ideas and trying to learn as much as I could about customers that we had for this specific product, and I just recorded every conversation, and what that meant was firstly I didn't have to take notes, I could just throw the recording into Claude and be like, hey Claude, this is everything that like we've learned, where everything, all the information, all the data that we have, use this to find some trends and pull together some some useful insights for us. And I feel if I could do this with any sort of day-to-day conversation, sometimes, for example, I met a friend of mine the other day, an old university friend, and we were just catching up, but I just found myself saying some things that I thought were like really insightful and really amazing, and they just came out of the blue. And I thought, you know, if I'd recorded this, you know, this would have been so useful because sometimes you're just in this like deep flow state, and then you say something and then you just forget about it a few minutes later. So for me, I I was quite keen to just record all of these key conversations, throw it into Claude, and link Claude up to some sort of note-taker like Obsidian, and it can log all your key notes and like find trends and create patterns. And essentially, that's kind of my way of at least the initial phase of building this concept of the second brain.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

You spoke earlier about the importance of having a strong support network around you, mate. So, how has this impacted or maybe shaped or even redefined your relationship with gratitude?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

So I recently got really deep into meditation. So I've been meditating for quite a long time. I used to do 40 minutes a day in sort of my prime days, you could say. And I was really fortunate because I was invited to sit on uh a panel at Imperial at my Melbourne University, and there I met the founder of the Imperial Entrepreneur Society, and we connected afterwards, we sort of met up, and we started talking about meditation, and he had started going to the London Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green to meditate, and he invited me down, and so I started going, and that led to me going to one of their meditation retreats. So I spent I think it was five days just offline, no phone, somewhere in the countryside. I think it was in Bury St. Edmunds. I always forget the name, but for some reason I managed to remember just now. And just spending five days just meditating, being part of this community, we spent a couple of days just being silent and you know not talking to anybody. That in itself was a great experience. And one of the meditations that we do is called Metabhavna, which is very much aligned with gratitude and being grateful to people, and we used to sort of express gratitude towards people that are close to us, people we appreciate, also neutral people, so maybe people we don't see or interact with much, so potentially a receptionist at your office, somebody that you hate, so somebody that you might not like so much. And there's a couple of other stages as well. But I think that made me reflect on the people in my life and especially those who have come into my life during my time at Magic and now as well, and just understanding and just consciously thinking and realizing how impactful they have been on my life, sometimes in a negative way, but very much, you know, quite often in a very positive way. And I think that is something that has partly come out from meditation, but also recently working with the Otta Mondays team, they consciously make an effort to express gratitude to people, which I love. We were in Spain for a couple of weeks on a retreat, a residency, spending time together and just working together during dinners. We would so we would do a sort of version of a prayer where we would hold hands sitting around the table, and somebody would lead the group in an expression of gratitude where they would talk through Yeah, like a secular grace, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:21

That's what it's called, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

I don't know. Yeah, if it's not tied to a specific religion, then yeah, yeah. Essentially, yes. So we would basically talk through uh we would express gratitude to the group and to the day. And one of the things that I've been doing a bit more of recently is actually just messaging people that uh I'm close to, so good friends, and just expressing gratitude and just being thankful for you know something that they might have done recently to help me.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Where's my text? Come on, bro. Maybe after this, I'll look I'll make I'm just joking, bro.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

I've made a note, so maybe give it a couple of months and I'll send it to you then. Give it a couple of months, and then you'll get one out of the blue. I'll get my second brain test to send you one.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

What a piss take. Oh dear. Before we reflect, mate, you wanted to talk about a couple of health scares that your grandmother had in recent months. She had two very bad falls, and I said to your fair, I was pretty surprised that you had a grandmother left, to be honest, at our age, because that can be pretty surprising for a lot of people, and it's great that you have her, amazing that you have her. Just tell me about how it impacted your mental health and maybe how it's shaped your attitude towards gratitude as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Yeah, that's a great question. So last year, my yeah, my grandma had a couple of falls. So there was one moment where she had a fall, and it was it was really bad. So it was in the middle of the night, she fell over while she was going to the bathroom, and fortunately she doesn't live by herself, she lives with my Marty and Uncle, and the problem was they were fast asleep, so she couldn't stand back up when she fell over. She had to drag herself a little bit, and she was shouting for help. And fortunately, you know, somebody heard and they came down. She'd broken her hip, and she's in her 80s, and you know, when you hurt yourself at that age, uh, not great, especially when it's something as serious as that. And I'm not gonna rant about the NHS, but we know unfortunately what the um sort of situation can be like, especially around where we live, and it was a while until she was seen, she had to sort of wait in the corridor for I think a day, maybe a bit longer, until they could actually operate on her. But she was in a a lot of pain, and I remember going to see her, and one of the moments I think about it now that really sticks with me is when they were moving her from one bed to another, and I remember standing outside with my auntie, and she was screaming in pain. Like I've never heard my grandma scream like that, and obviously, very, very difficult to hear. That was yeah, a very sort of difficult moment. And I remember when she had their operation and she came out, I could still paint for it now. She had no idea where she was. She was doing all sorts of things with her hands. Her hands kept moving, she kept doing this, like she was knitting or doing something. She couldn't recognise anyone. I think eventually the only people at start at first she could recognise was actually me and I think my dad, but nobody else she she could recognise. She thought she was back in India like 40, 50 years in the past.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

That's a lot of drugs she was probably on, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Yeah, and so you know, it was very, very difficult to see that, and obviously very difficult for her to experience, I'm sure. And when we went to see her one morning, so I wanted my parents to go and see her. We genuinely believed that she might not be alive when we go in to see her. We thought she could have passed away. In my head, in all of our heads, probably, we were preparing for her funeral. That was very difficult. So I remember, you know, my parents were walking into the the hospital and literally I was asking myself, is she alive or she passed away? And we got to her bed and her eyes were closed, so obviously not a great first sign. And the day before my parents went to see her, and when they went to see her, she had asked them to sort of do this little ritual where so she was apparently very weak, and she wasn't too sure about where she was. She asked my dad and I think my uncle to do this little ritual where they feed her something, and apparently that's meant to symbolize I am now going, you know, this is my final day or my final days. And so, yeah, when we were going to see her, obviously, you know, we weren't too sure what to expect. But fortunately, when we got there, I remember she opened her eyes, and that was the first day in a while since before her fall where since before her operation where she actually seemed normal. She could recognize everybody. And obviously in that moment, you know, you feel great, you feel really happy. And I think one of the sort of learnings through that phase was that kind of normal life, like it doesn't stop when you're building a business. There were plenty of hardships that we were going through whilst building magic as you know, as as you go through any company, but normal life just like doesn't stop, right? There's things outside of work that still happen, sometimes good, sometimes bad. In this case, you know, obviously very bad. And she had her fall, and it took her some time to properly recover. She came back home. Unfortunately, what happened was that she became injured again. The second time she didn't fall over, but something had happened where I think they'd kind of fitted a rod into a hip, and that had unfortunately not worked out, and so she had to go back in for another operation. And there's a stat which I I can't remember, but when you have an operation that serious at that age, the chances of survival are not like super high. Compared to someone who's of their relatively healthy age, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, having to sort of go through that process a second time in short succession, I I would assume the chances are even lower. So again, you know, for a second time in that year, we were again thinking, is she going to make it? Again, preparing for her funeral. I'm sure I probably got notes on my phone somewhere about like some of the things I might say at her funeral. So yeah, having to go through that twice, very, very difficult. I remember I had to take a difficult work meeting in the hospital when I was going to sort of see my grandma. I remember sitting in the corridor trying to get some internet whilst uh I think talking through like a product roadmap or something. And that, you know, was a very, very sort of difficult period of my life. I think, you know, obviously New Year's Eve, what we tend to do is all of the sort of wider family, everybody comes together. And I remember sort of thinking that New Year's Eve, you know, I firstly said to myself, I have to be there for this gathering. Sometimes I might go spend time with other people, but this one I had to be at, and I was like, you know, saying to myself, you know, like regardless of anything else that's happened, like I'm just really grateful that you know my grandma is still here with us for this New Year's celebration. So I think, yeah, you know, obviously very emotional, but also very grateful. And I think one of the sort of takeaways, and that this is something actually I've been thinking about for a good few years, is that I've put in my calendar to go and see my grandma once a week. And to be totally honest, I'm not very good at that. I will see her today because it's been a while, but I've not been very good at that, and that's something you know, if we talk about, you know, in podcasts, people often talk about things that kind of make them seem great, but there's plenty of lowlights as well. And probably one of the things that I'd say that I've not been great at, that I need to be better at, is definitely going to see my grandma more often, especially because she lives pretty close to me, so I've not really got much in the way of an excuse. So yeah, very emotional, also very grateful. And as you say, you know, especially at our age, I wouldn't say we're super old, but getting older and do tends to be quite fortunate to still have grandparents around at this age.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Yeah, very much so, mate. Let's reflect on your mental health journey now. So, similar question as the first topic. What has this part of your mental health journey in the last three years taught you about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 41:37

I think it's taught me the importance of slowing down and spending time to reflect. I think that's something that I have done since quite a young age, I suppose, like definitely since university. I think that's something I started to do. But I think it's it's kind of taught me to be more mindful about slowing down. Sometimes you can move quicker by moving slower. You can make more progress by slowing down, I suppose is perhaps a better way of saying that. Giving yourself space to be creative and to rest so you can think more clearly. All of those things definitely help you to make good decisions that can help you to progress faster in whatever it is that you're trying to do. But also, yeah, making sure that you surround yourself with people who share your values, deeply share your values and your beliefs, and represent who you are and who you want to be, and making sure you also give yourself time to share moments, you know, outside of work. Just share great experiences, have fun with those that you appreciate.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Well, at the moment, I'd probably say you're lurking, but when we get you back on for a part three, maybe you'll be pouncing, mate. So, Jins, thank you so much for coming back on the Just Checkin' In podcast and talking to me, bro.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Great to be here and thanks so much for having me on. It's been great fun.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Well, that's all we've got time for on this episode of the Just Checkin' In pod. A big thank you to my old friend Sunil for being my special guest and for letting me check back in with him. As always, thank you to all the vendors who checked in to this episode. Remember, if you've liked what you've heard, give it a share on social media by tagging us at VentHelp UK. We are on all social media platforms. Tell your friends, family, or work colleagues about us. If you're feeling generous, write us a review and give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to support us further, go to patreon.com slash ventshelpuk or make a one-off donation to our PayPal. All of those links are on our link tree. That's linktr.ee slash vent helpuk. We hope to check in with you again very soon. And remember, guys, it is always okay to venture.