Jatin "Jiten" Lalwani's Journey to Success: Failure, Growth, and Entrepreneurship

Join Paige Buan in the latest episode of Leader Unlocked as she sits down with Jiten Lalwani, a seasoned entrepreneur, and investor.

In this engaging conversation, Jiten shares his journey from humble beginnings to becoming a successful serial entrepreneur. He shares valuable insights on building startups, making smart investment decisions, and the impact of technology on society. Jiten stresses the importance of emotional intelligence, creating a positive culture, and the need to prioritize sleep, fitness, and mental clarity in daily routines.

With practical advice and a forward-thinking mindset, Jiten's wisdom will inspire and enlighten aspiring entrepreneurs and investors alike. Tune in now to gain valuable knowledge from this successful business leader!

ABOUT THE GUEST
Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani is a visionary leader with a passion for promoting globalized supply chains to make quality goods accessible to everyone. As the Founder and CEO of Market Reach International, he has successfully established a global distribution network for the highest quality consumer goods from the Philippines, enabling people across four continents to access their favorite products. With 13 years of experience and over 60 trading partners, Jiten is known for his ability to source any product.

He's also an active investor in innovative ventures across various industries. His impressive educational background includes De La Salle University, Ateneo Graduate School of Business, and Harvard Business School.

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Transcript

Welcome to Leader Unlocked Podcast. My name is Paige Buan. In this episode, we have Jiten Lalwani, the Founder and CEO of Market Reach International. Jiten is a serial entrepreneur, investor and leader. He talks about his early career journey, including his experience with starting and scaling companies in the technology and e-commerce space. He shares his insights on success and failure, growth and practical advice on leadership and entrepreneurship.

Paige Buan
Welcome to the Leader Unlocked Podcast. Jiten, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Thanks for having me. Great pleasure to be here.

Paige Buan
Awesome. So ever since we started this podcast, we’ve talked to a lot of people. Our guests even suggest other guests that we can also have here who have a lot of these stories. A former guest of ours highly recommended you to be on the podcast. “You need to talk to this person. He is a serial entrepreneur. He has a lot of stories that I think would be so helpful to so many people.”

I'm very curious, can you please tell us about your journey as a serial entrepreneur? How you started all of your companies?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, I think I know who it is. And I think- I'm not sure what he needs from me. I'll take that compliment.

Yes, I think serial entrepreneur is maybe a misnomer. It's more like a person doing too many things for his own good. But yeah, I think the journey has been fun. It has been littered with pain. It's been adventure. It's been something I needed to do. I think it's just in my DNA. A lot of it happened by being in the right time at the right place, or happy accidents and such.

And ever since I was little, it was always about creating something and making it work and making it move things around. So that was generally more of why I got started with many things in the first place.

Paige Buan
Curiosity.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Curiosity, wanting to have some impact, wanting to get a group of people together, wanting to move product or service from one culture to the other. There is a bit of a nomad in me. And because I kept moving around, I was exposed to different cultures, exposed to different nationalities, different countries that then created the need and want to move what I saw into the other and vice versa.

Paige Buan
That’s interesting.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
A lot of the things I do have that global sort of touch because of being a third citizen, meaning as Indian heritage living in the Philippines, who studied in the UK and also in the US, and moving around the world. Many times I saw the gaps of what could work here, can work there, and what I can sell here may not sell there. So there was all that things and realizations which came around.

Paige Buan
Interesting. I'm curious to know what's your why? Because a lot of people who have the experiences- maybe not exactly the same experiences that you've had, we'll just stick to a path, a straight line, if you will. But no, you went ahead and experienced a lot of these things. You mentioned all of the success, of the failure. Sounds to me like you're a very courageous person and that you're brave enough to take all of these on. I am curious to know your thoughts about that.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yeah, I think the "what's my why" part, it’s something that a lot of the books will tell you. You need your why very early. And I still struggle to find my why, or maybe I don't know how to define it yet. Right? Earlier on in your 20s, your why is money. I need to make money, and I want to build this empire. You don't realize that running a business is almost a death wish, because you deal with people, you deal with regulation, you deal with markets. The why is being crafted, and it starts coming in after you know your own limitations, and you know what you're good in or what you believe you're good at and what other people tell you what you're good in. And then you start having very early semblances of the why.

In my journey of almost two decades, I'm slowly but surely getting there. And I’m, right now, in this version, it's more about delivering happiness to people. A lot of my business is providing the product that a certain consumer needs. Like one of them is an export-related business where we export OFW products to Filipinos who live abroad, which is close to about, depends on who you ask, about 10 million, so they need the products from their home.

Paige Buan
Right.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
When they get products from their home, they're happy.

Paige Buan
Of course.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
And the other element of our business is we bring products from different parts of the world to other parts of the world. If you were to bring imported products into the Philippines, Filipinos have a natural affinity and love for imported products. Then again, you're delivering happiness.

So I think being in businesses where you can create an enterprise of leaders and sell a product or service that can deliver happiness, I think I'm veering towards that path. That is my why for now. Will it change? I don't know. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But right now, that's my version of the why.

Paige Buan
That's interesting because a lot of the conversation is you need to know your why before you get to do anything successful. And it's a good conversation to always have, always talking about one's why. But I also see other people getting stuck trying to find their why and trying to figure out what their purpose is. It's good to know that there's also another side, which is you can uncover that or it will unravel as you go along.

You mentioned happiness. Do you believe in the saying, "If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life?”

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I don't believe in that. I think that's a millennial language for confusing young adults or people who go into work. And many people use that as an excuse for not starting something.

Sadly, in some countries, certain industries don't pay as well, right? If I'm a painter, for example, and I lived in the Philippines in the 1990s, and if it didn't pay well, then everybody would sort of ridicule me and say, "Oh, look, look, what you're doing.”

Paige Buan
You’re just an artist.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes. And then if you listen to advice like this, you'd be like, "Oh, I'm stuck. Maybe I shouldn't do something new."

My saying, I'd like to change that, is like you should do what people think you're good at. And then when you have enough financial freedom and flexibility, then you can do what you're good at. If you want to own a bar, go own the bar. If you want to go skiing, you want to go diving, and if you're good at that, and you want to create an institution or a diving center, then do so. But first earn some experience, first earn some financial freedom, then you do what you like to do.

With that being said, there are the 1% of the 1% who naturally just- some guy loves filmmaking, he made a movie, the movie did well, the guy got lucky, and then that became it.

But I think for the vast majority, do what people believe you're good at, rather than what you think you're good at. Right?

Paige Buan
That's a very valuable lesson there, especially to a lot of the generations who are finishing or going to college or about to choose a course. Because I don't know about a lot of the people in college now, but before, there wasn't that much thought. It would be whatever made more money after graduation. That's why you have a huge population of the workforce who studied something completely different and are doing something different after.

Did you already know what you wanted to do before pursuing education? Or did you kind of research on that?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I didn't know actually. And I was very guilty of what you just said. Because before, rather than now, things were, at least globally, there was a 10-year cycle for jobs.

So when we were growing up, whenever that was, I think it's 20 years ago now, it was IT. Everybody and their mother wanted to do IT, right?

Paige Buan
Yes.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
You'd ask anybody who knows me, I'm a dinosaur. I do not know basic concept, operating a simple laptop. And I got into IT. And I struggled and I wasn't able to complete.

But now, in this post-2010s era where social media and the Internet have ramped up, I think what is necessary or what society makes you believe to be necessary has shrunk into two or three-year sort of loops. Where three years ago or two years ago, if you were into crypto, you're like you are the next best thing. Or you need to get into AI. And now it's AI or you need to get into something.

So many times, by the time you're done with your degree, in many cases, you're no longer relevant because that fad or that thing is no longer as relevant anymore, right? And you would never know, no one would ever know, right? So follow a bit of your heart into what you like, and don't crucify or judge yourself if after you graduate or you're done with whatever you've learned, or that's no longer the higher or highest paying job at that time. Because I look at it as you got experience. You were part of the university, you made friends, you made networks, you learned something, whatever it was because those are the life skills you learn in the university.

Paige Buan
Right.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
So if it happens to be in the same industry, it's a bonus. If it doesn't, don't think too much about it.

Paige Buan
Just keep learning. There’s always an opportunity out there.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yeah. You look at every entrepreneur. You go on the Forbes list of top 10, top 20, top 30. Chances are 70% of them haven't- Well, some haven't done a degree, some did something else completely unrelated. So yeah, who's judging who's weighing what is success? And what you should have done? No one knows.

Paige Buan
Right. And I think it's also very important to highlight the fact that the word success, it's very different for each one. That definition of success that was highlighted before was very much “You're successful if you have a title.”

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes.

Paige Buan
“If you earn a certain amount, if you're able to buy certain things.” It's different for everybody.

And you have had the opportunity to travel abroad to meet a lot of people in different industries and different countries, different cultures. Have you seen a difference for Filipinos?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
No, I think now the internet has made the world smaller, right?

Paige Buan
Yeah.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
So some young 25-year-old fellow in the Philippines or Nigeria or Italy or Israel now wants the same things, right? It wasn't how it was in our parents' time or a bit of our time where information was coming a little slower to the Philippines and Asia.

Now you could see there's a lot of struggle mentally, right? Mental imbalances, anxiety, fears because our definition of why we do things is very short. We're looking for social capital, right? And many times, more often than not, it's money, it's acceptance, right? But as you get older, and I think this is a rite of passage, you need to go through failures and difficulties.

Success, I think, is- I like to use this thing I learned from a friend, it's better to sleep well than eat well, right? There's nothing like a good night's sleep without being worried about the next day- you know, how much we'll eat, right? Somebody making PHP 15,000 or PHP 20,000 a month versus somebody making a million a month, yes, everybody would rather be the million guy. But that million guy's probably having a tough family issue, tough employee issue. And he will always say, "Oh, I remember the time when we started our business. I remember when I was in high school."

Paige Buan
Simpler times.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Simpler times. Everybody you look at will always allude to the simpler time because there was less stress. There was less “wanting to run out of that hamster wheel” as such, but it's very hard to tell people. They won't believe you. But in their quiet moments, they will agree that this is true. So that is success, right?

Paige Buan
That's a good way to talk about success.

Let's talk about failure. I don't think a lot of conversation around failure is really highlighted. When you see somebody building a company, you know the success, you know them, you know Apple, you know Tesla, but you don't really hear the stories and the struggles that they've had. What were your failures that led to a lot of the learnings and how you became “the serial entrepreneur?”

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
So I think failure is the best college degree you can get. I think I have a PhD in failure. I have failed far more times than I've succeeded, if I've succeeded at all. You don't realize so many things when you start. You look at things as rosy. Okay, today, you're going to start selling phones, for example, or an app. In that moment, you don't take good advice, you think everything's gonna work, you don't listen to judgment, you run it anyway, and you fail, right? When you fail, you either pick yourself up. You've learned one or two lessons from that. And then you learn one or two lessons from the next one, and then that and then that.

So for me, don't take failure too hard. Again, this will probably not be appreciated by a lot of people. At the same time, allow yourself to heal when you fail. It's gonna cause some heartache.

Paige Buan
Of course.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
And at the same time, be at peace with failure. And if you see something not working, you're rather off failing fast, so fail fast.

Paige Buan
Yes, fail fast.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Fail fast is a very important mantra in any times of any business, but more so spoken about now. So start something. If it doesn't work, fail fast. Move on to the next thing.

Paige Buan
Can we talk about your other company? Four eyes?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes. Yeah.

Paige Buan
So that was very interesting. There was a lot of potential there. But you mentioned it started too early.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes. So among other things, I'm in consumer goods, we're in exports, we're in distribution, agriculture, road making, and a few other things, women's wellness as well.

One of the earlier things that me and my co-founder started was Four Eyes. We had referred to it as the Warby Parker of Asia. I think we were probably the third in the world in ordering prescription glasses online. We were way ahead  of our times. We had proprietary software on the website, and that was very new at that time. It cost us an arm and a leg. We hired great people, we had a great product, but this was also 2013 and 2014. And many times people say there should be the right timing, but most people would think that, "Oh, you're late." Well, in that case, we were very early. We got in, I would say, three years before the right inflection point. Of course, that company no longer exists now. But would I consider it as a failure? Maybe then I would, but now I would say that's the best college degree I got. Right.

Paige Buan
Right.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
We were early. We foresaw an opportunity that, at that time, no one believed in. We invested quite heavily on that platform. And had we waited a little longer, then we would be probably a very successful company right now.

Paige Buan
You learned a lot of lessons from it.

You also mentioned bias earlier, which I don't think a lot of people realize how impactful bias is with building businesses and building companies. If you really want to do it, even if somebody is telling you maybe now's not the right time, the bias is actually stopping you from making the right decision.

Did you have anybody telling you, at the time, maybe it's too early?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I think at that point, you hear voices in your head.

Paige Buan
Oh.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
And those voices are like, don't do this, you know, set up an offline platform as well, because it's omnichannel. Do this. Don't do that. So sometimes your mind tells you, but you refuse to listen because you're married to that idea. Right? And a few good media articles: we were on the news. We had one of the best startups in some conference. We were able to raise money. So you were also worried about not seeing it through because people had already talked about you. You were already on the front page of the news and on certain publications. And so you're like, “We cannot fail now, right?”

Paige Buan
Yeah.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
And I think that was also one of the reasons that maybe we should have pulled out earlier, maybe we should have gone into an omnichannel approach, which was also advised to us but we didn't take it. But now, so many years later, you need to surround yourself with not just Yes Men, but people who can look you in the eye and say, “Hey, that's BS. That's not gonna work.” Before doing that, you need to build a certain maturity for yourself and not be afraid of rejection, right?

Now, who are these people? These people are people that you can trust. In bigger companies, they call them board of directors. 99.9% won't have board of directors. You can have three or four advisors who you respect, who can come in and sit with you monthly or every quarterly and say, “What you guys are doing is great, but X, Y and Z can be changed. You need to pivot here. You need to pivot there.” I've been doing this for a long time. We have an advisory board who are composed of great people that I respect, but who I don't necessarily have the same view on, on certain matters. And in that room, or in the one-on-ones, it could get a little heated, but it should be that way.

Paige Buan
Yeah.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
If it isn't, then you will always win because it's your business. So I think that's the way it has worked best for me.

Paige Buan
Interesting. You're not the hippo. Are you familiar with the term hippo? The highest paid person in the room?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes, yeah.

Paige Buan
A lot of people wouldn't surround themselves or they would, but they will still not listen. And that's dangerous. When you have something so good, and you know that it's a good idea, that you have this notion that “I can't stop now. I have to see this through.” You mentioned that earlier. When do you know when it's time to, “Okay, that's it”?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
it's what stage you are in your life, right? In your 20s, I have this idea. Let's do it.

So as you age, you understand that there's this thing called life. You have a spouse, you have kids, you have bills to pay. Not every idea is a good idea, because there's so much time and effort that one has to put in. In many cases, a normal 20 to 30 year old would not understand the time commitment, what it takes to make the business succeed. And then here you are, you are getting into the second thing or third thing or fourth thing because they were good ideas, then it fails because you cannot stretch too much of yourself.

Now I've learned that ideas are cheap. More important than ideas are execution, more important than execution is money, funding. A lot of people call it funding. So if you have yes to three then do it. If you don't, don't do it, do what you're already doing now.

Paige Buan
If a lot of people are already you, “That is a good idea.” You know how to execute it and you know the time it takes but you don't have the funding.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Correct.

Paige Buan
Can you give advice on what the next steps would be for that?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Right. So now the way I evaluate an idea, even before I talk to people, think of it as, "Okay, I have this product in my hand.” It is something that's semi-proprietary or not even- maybe, I'm a distributor of a brand. So I then have to first look at the market size. Right?

Paige Buan
Okay.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Number two, let's take a look at two things. Okay. You're looking at a new revolutionary diaper, which you don't need to change every two hours versus a pinhead. You've seen a pinhead, right? The thing that covers the pin.

Paige Buan
Yes.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Okay. Now in both, it's a new product. You have to gauge them. How big is the market? If you look at the baby diaper-disrupting idea, the population is 110 million, our growth rate is 7% a year. You look at 7 million, whatever the number is, babies will keep buying that in the next, you know…

The pinhead. Somebody buys a pinhead once, and they don't buy one again. Right? No disrespect to pinhead manufacturers. I love them. I don't know who you are. But you know, I'm just using this as an example.

Second is how much gross margins are you making? Many people fail to understand and realize that you need to calculate the gross margins right?

Then third is the network effects. How viral can this go? Will people talk about it to other people? Now that plays in my head now when I think of ideas, otherwise, it goes back into, you know, the recycle bin.

And then moving to what you said funding, right? Once it goes out of your head, onto your lips, on to people who you know who tell you it's a good idea, then you get a little confidence boost. When you get that confidence boost, you then have people who are probably at a little more advanced level in life or in business or entrepreneurship, who you can pitch that idea to after doing your macroeconomic numbers and your margins and whatnot.

I think we live in far easier times now because there are so many new VC funds, angel investors, literally every block. Even within the Philippines, there are these Angel meetings. There are these many ex-startup founders who are either successful or not successful, who are like literally willing more than willing to lend time and effort and they'll tell you how to raise, right? And raising is not as difficult as it used to be, say, 10 years ago because many financial institutions are ready. They have a certain part of their borrowing or lending or investing is geared towards that. I would say look around, start in your ecosystem. You'll be surprised to see the amount of people who are there.

Paige Buan
Networking is very, very important. And it's a lot easier now than it was before because now you have all of these social media platforms. It's just important to know who to ask.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes.

Paige Buan
So that’s just one idea. We’ve already talked about one company, one idea, but you have a lot. So how do you balance all of your companies while making sure that each one receives the necessary attention to succeed?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, it's a tough juggling act, right? Many of these mistakes or happy accidents, rather, happened in my 20s, early 30s. You know, I thought I could scale my time and do many things. I'm happy I did them. Of course, it comes with a lot of anxiety, mental stress and such like that. It's a combination of a few things. One, you need to have great people that you trust running it or other co-founders. You can always, in year three of your business, say, "I want to bring on a co-founder." A co-founder doesn't just happen on day one when you both wrote an idea on the back of a napkin, no. You can bring on a co-founder leader, you can have partners that you trust, who may be financially invested, invested in time, but everything starts with trust.

When you bring on those people, you start trusting them. Once you have trust, once you make some kind of financial success in the form of profit or raising money, then there comes confidence. And then from then on, you start learning. You need to hire more people, you need to fix certain processes. It sort of finds its way after that. So the key is people.

Paige Buan
People.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
People or partners, or co-founders. It depends what level of openness you want to run the business with. The more you are open with people that you trust, the better it is.

Paige Buan
That's interesting. Let's talk about people then. What qualities do you look for in people you work with or people you hire?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, that's a good question. I think for me, it used to be a few things like integrity, hunger, humility, and willingness to learn. But I removed integrity because I think, by default, you should have some ethics and some integrity in you. Otherwise, like shame on you, and shame on the circumstances, and your parents and people around you.

So we look at good people, whether it's via a third-party agency or referrals. We prefer referrals, right? So I look for hunger, humility, and willingness to learn. Hunger because of the drive, humility because you always know you're not the smartest guy or girl and you want to learn, right? And humility is you can keep failing and failing and or- being successful. And when you're successful, many people change in attitude, right? But anything can happen in a minute. And if you're not humble, then you forget that and then your attitude changes and you forget to live in those circumstances and network in any of those circles. And it's the end of you, pretty much.

Paige Buan
Can you share some of the leadership strategies that you've used to build and scale your businesses?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
In the earlier days, the strategies were just like, one guy wanted to buy this, and I had access to it, and that was the strategy. But now you have to be a little more conscious, you have to be a little more planned, it was pretty much similar to the exercise that I mentioned earlier. You have an idea or a service or a product, then you have to look at the size of the market. You have to scan it. That bit is called scanning it. Then you have to see your go-to-market strategy. How will you go? Who will be the first 3, 4, 5, 8 buyers or consumers? Who are the people that will run it with you? Or run it for you, either/or? Where are you going to get the funding to run that, right?

So marrying these three or four things, and then taking the shot. That is, so far, some of the simpler strategies one can adapt and learn. Then when you have a team, then you can go into a full strategy session, the pricing and everything. But I think the first step is that. The simpler strategies that these four or five methods that I shared earlier. That is what I used to start off with. It’s the product, the people the market, the funding, and how will you execute that.

Paige Buan
Interesting. And as a leader, and you're leading a lot of people and teams, how do you now encourage more innovation and creativity among your team members?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Innovation is very hard, right? We all look at innovation as you create Facebook, or you create ways or you create this technology. But innovation is very simple. You look at innovations every day.

I mean, the guy who put in creamer and coffee, and made it 3-in-1, that's an innovation. Or simply you go into the hospital, and before, there will be 500 people waiting outside, and now somebody just thought of that number that you get and you wait. That is innovation, right?

Paige Buan
Right.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
But innovation, you have to have an open mind. You have to have a willingness to want to do it. So how do you do it in small ways? If you want to do big innovations, then you have to set a certain amount of capital towards it, maybe certain part of your P&L, and you incentivize people with you, or you tell people what are the things that you don't like doing in this company? And how do we automate it, right? And those who automate it get a certain prize. You will be surprised that laziest people have the best ideas because they want to shorten their time frame in doing X, Y and Z.

So the innovation can come as a product innovation, or simply fixing a process in your organization. And that will save time, save money, or make money. So it's few foolproofs like that.

Paige Buan
So you're dealing with a lot of teams, a lot of people, it's a balancing act. It's like a juggling act, you mentioned earlier, how do you maintain a positive culture now across your various businesses and locations?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, that's a hard one, right? You can come in on a Monday morning, having walked around a bit in nature, worked out and coming in, "Hey, I'm going to be very positive today." And then you come in, and there's problems within certain teams.

You have to first learn how to self-regulate, self-modulate, before wanting it for the rest of the people, right? So a lot of that is you work on yourself first. You try to create and understand that not every problem needs to be reacted to immediately. And then you try to espouse on your team. There are going to be small fires every day. As you train your team that these are certain problems, issues, and everything that can be parked, have to be acted on now, or have to be acted on later, then that creates some sort of stability. And then from there, people, yourself, your teams know how to modulate, they know how to and what to address, and that creates some sense of calmness in your mind. Your mind is calm, then you generally, usually, more often than not, want to promote that positivity within your team and your environment.

So it's more of that, right? It's reminding people what are the problems you have to deal with, what's causing you to lose your balance, and then evaluating if those problems are very big, and if they need to be acted on now.

Paige Buan
Now for leadership and also being an entrepreneur, what are the most important qualities to be a successful entrepreneur and leader?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, it's the three Qs , as I call it. It's IQ, EQ, and AQ.

So IQ, of course, I think you know what that means. You have to be somewhat smart.

Then there's EQ, which is emotional quotient, like just being mindful of others. What pains them? What hurts them? What motivates them, what incentivizes them, and how do you bring about the best in them?

And of course, there's the last Q which is AQ, which is adversity quotient, right? A lot of people and a lot of millennial parents, like myself, are not teaching our kids because anything we see wrong, we want to fix for our own children, our own siblings, our own better halves, spouses, what have you.

But among the three, I would say IQ, you know, what you could get your co-founder, your top employees to do for you. You don't even need to be the- you don’t even need to be smart, I would say, I would argue, right? But getting people to work together and knowing how to handle your calm and their calm when problems come, if you can get those 2 super powers, that’s golden already.

Paige Buan
That’s a combination there.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Somebody will be smart in that room. They will do something that you cannot do. But getting people together, that's leadership, right?

If this guy is good in, say, climbing, and that guy is good at running, and then you can create an army that way, right? You just need to know how to get people to work together. And then collectively, when times are hard or bad, and dealing with that adversity and knowing that it's not permanent, those are just as important. All three of them are important. But if I were to pick two of the three, it's those two.

Paige Buan
That's awesome. Yes.

And with the AQ, I'm very guilty of the statement that you mentioned, that we're trying to shield our kids from all of the experiences, the negative experiences, but we're actually robbing them of something probably very valuable, yeah, as they grow up.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes, very true. And I'm very guilty of that myself. I've got two kids. The moment you hear your kid crying, I got a one year old, you're literally rushing to see is everything okay? And then you put on the iPad so that they're distracted or give them more milk or a snack. That's bad. I know it's bad, right? You can do it sometimes. But then they sort of get used to that.

Our parents or our siblings or our boss or colleague will clean up our mess, then you create weak future leaders. But that's the story of every generation. You would have seen this entrepreneur who went through difficult times, slept on the train tracks, sold newspapers. And then he promised himself, "When I'm successful, my kids won't see this day." And he did just that. And the kids were successful. And they rode in their Rolls Royce and Benzes and stuff. And then when times are bad, did know how to react, didn't know how to handle this. And then that became the story of them going from riches to rags. And I think this is in every country, every generation. You go back a millennia, two millennia, nothing has changed.

Paige Buan
Well, we're talking a lot about change and how the cycle is a lot shorter now, especially with technology, with AI. Our kids, when they see anything that is shiny and flat, they automatically think that it's a touchscreen. They don't know what it was like before, without the internet.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Yes.

Paige Buan
The thing is, like 20 years ago, if you were to be asked what would happen in the next five years, you could still imagine it. Now it's hard. Now it's hard to imagine what life is gonna look like five years from now for us. And it's a different dynamic for the kids as well. I know I just said it's hard, but shooting a shot, where do you think we'll be five years from now?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Well, that's a very hard one. Like, you know, you rightfully said that our ability to look into the future has changed so much that before we could look 20 years ahead, 10 years ahead. Now you don't know. A lot of things are happening. And I don't worry about it too much. Because if you're in the right circles and around the right people, you kind of are given advance notice before 99% of the world, right? And if you're in the 1% or 2% or happen to be around the right people, listen enough, you see enough, then you can make business decisions rightfully to be at an advantage, right?  That's speaking like a true capitalist.

But if you really care for society and everything, there are certain things that you can already see that's wrong. You can see that there's a lot of battle with anxiety, depression. You can see that our pollution level and the way we throw away plastic and everything is already wrong. Those things you know will attack us in the future. You know that there will be an ever-willing amount of people or citizens who will take those things into their own hands and work on something to that, right? There are some things you know that are not going well. And you kind of can predict that somebody or some people will take over that and make sure that it's run rightfully. So some of those predictions you can make.

Outside of that, either you don't know, or you follow that one or two or three big things like you look at blockchain technology, you look at AI, you look at even more last-minute deliveries, some things like that, that you know will be there at least five years from now. It's gonna be a bit of blockchain, among other things.

Paige Buan
Right. So what are the tips that you can give to people? Like me, what I can get is surround yourself with the right people who can help guide you there. Because right now, the cycles are very, very short. And so continuous learning is also another one that can help our future leaders. Any other advice that you can give?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I think just have an open mind. Be willing to unlearn a lot of what you've learned. That's easier said than done.

Paige Buan
Yeah.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
At the same time, don't worry, I mean, you're not gonna get left behind, and everyone's gonna go ahead. And you will have a brother or a sister or a friend who will and your interest will lie at some level and you will find yourself there. We put too much pressure on ourselves like what should we do now to be prepared for the future. Just continue reading, being aware, understanding, having the thirst for learning, because many industries are about to get disrupted but also many are not going to get disrupted.

You know, in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, a lot of shoemaking became assembly line and automated, but if you look at a handmade Italian shoe, now it commands more value. Something that's hand-stitched by a very luxury Italian brand, they would market that more than a machine making that.

So the human touch, the human interaction won't go away. I mean, you listen to yourself on a call center or automated phone-in number for a credit card, you'd always want to speak to a person. While 90% of the world will focus on automation, you forget that more value will always be with the people-to-people connection.

So I wouldn't worry because if you're good at that, you will be okay.

Then second, surround yourself with people or institutions that are ahead of the game. A normal subscription to Nat Geo or Bloomberg or something will always keep you ahead of, again, 99% of the world.

And then have the thirst for learning because then you will want to learn, right? And learning is very similar, whether it's learning poker or learning how to stitch something. There are certain nodes in your brain that open up or you need to do X before Y, and then how you do this next, and what you do next.

If you put those things, then I don't think there'll be anything to worry about. You will be prepared better than most.

Paige Buan
Thank you for sharing the advice. That's very helpful. Now, I am very curious to ask this question. You're juggling a lot. You're a dad, you're a successful serial entrepreneur, what does your day look like?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Okay, you need to weigh in on your priorities, right?

In life, you have your priorities, you have your spiritual priority, and you have your own mental priority. You have your family, you have your health, and you have your livelihood, your business, right?

So let me merge the spiritual and self to simplify it because if you sleep well, you wake up well, you're able to reflect, reflection, pray, meditation, whatever religion or thing you believe in, you already start the day with clarity of mind.

Then you work on your fitness. This is something that a lot of people do not understand. But every day we are alive, it's one day closer to the end. The more time you spend on your fitness, whether it's going for a one-hour walk, whether it's doing 20 minutes of yoga, lifting weights, what have you.

Then you've added these two superpowers. You're clear mentally. Physically, you feel like you have drive, then you become a better father, a friend, and everything because then you can fully commit yourself to those little moments you have with your daughter, with your son, with your friend. Then you come into work, no more distractions, because your mind is clear, your body's clear. It's like you made two versions of yourself.

Then there is homeostasis among the four of them for certain months, you know, there's something at work, you will be putting more energy there, and there's going to be a lack of something. Certain months, work is slow. You find yourself now having to do two-hour walks more often than not, and you'll be like, "Oh, I hope work was doing better, but I know nothing's going on. So I've put more time here." So it's going to be seasonalities, and one shouldn't be too hard on themselves, right? You've had more time with family, it's going to move, things will move. There's- it has to be fluid, and don't hold it against yourself.

Paige Buan
Very hard. That's right. It's easier said than done. But it's interesting that it starts with a clear mind first, yourself, working on yourself first before focusing on the rest, and it’s seasonal.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
It is, yeah. So I would say sleep, sunlight, workout, or do something that you enjoy or don't enjoy, or you stretch your physicality, which is doing exercise. And then when you've done these three, the other parts, they find their place.

Paige Buan
So you follow those principles, and you're able to balance everything in a day?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I try. I'm not gonna lie and say that I wake up with, you know, eight hours of sleep every day. No, there are times I sleep or five hours or six hours. But you can see that if you don't sleep well, you don't have time for reflection or meditation, and then the day sort of just goes down.

Paige Buan
Yeah.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
You make poor choices. You're irritable. You don't spend time with your family, the ability to deflect something as basic as simple problems and the way you react. It becomes a domino.

Paige Buan
Yeah, it was a domino effect. And it's more towards the negative. You don't learn how to balance it.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Poor choices is what happens. Yeah.

Paige Buan
Well, thank you so much, Jiten. Do you have any last advice or stories that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
I don't have any advice. I think live your life as you want to live it, don't live in judgment. Success shouldn't only be money or wealth. Success should be something more. It would be contentment, being able to sleep well, being able to spend time with family, with yourself. That should be the definition of success, I think.

Paige Buan
Thank you so much, Jiten, for joining us on the podcast today and sharing all of your stories and wisdom with us.

Jatin “Jiten” Lalwani
Thank you. It's my pleasure, and more power to you guys.