self-reflection

208: Ajit Nawalkha: I believe I can live big

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast, where we explore convenient yet effective shortcuts that will help you get ahead and move forward faster by becoming a better leader. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion today I’m excited because on the show today I have somebody who is going to tell us and help us with a core tenet on what it takes to be an effective leader. Ajit Nawalkha, was born and raised in Jaipur Rajasthan, India. He grew up in a home with 23 other family members under one roof. Clearly in such condition space and money were limited. Early in life he decided that he wanted a bigger life. So he learned that if he was to make it in life the choice laid between three options a career of a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer. Trying all the traditional path, Ajit, opted for the latest only to be standing in front of his family a few years later announcing that he has chosen a path of an entrepreneur. Online education was at its early stages. Facebook had just come out and believing there were any money or success in that field felt rather as an insanity. Despite family concerns he dropped his engineering study to pursue a career in business. He started as a non-profit intern in Mine Valley, the same company where he one day would become a CEO.

Joining the company he felt like he was finally surrounded by people who understood him and spoke his language. Finally having found his natural environment, Ajit, started growing at exponential rate. He quickly moved from a non-profit intern to a department head and then to CEO of the company, that seemed like a dream come true. Ajit had also started his career as an entrepreneur and business investor. He started working with business owners, teachers, healers, helping them to grow their business. Suddenly the position of CEO did not seem like the top of his career. Ajit felt his passion and purpose revolved around helping coaches, authors, speakers, and entrepreneurs create a positive impact in the greater world. So having achieved what seemed like a pic of the business career before 30 he was starting fresh once again. His company, Ever Coach, was born. Ever Coach, is a virtual hub for coaches. Ajit life was transformed by smart, gifted coaches, and mentors and this motivated him to become a coach himself. 

His mission is to empower dedicated educator, coaches and teachers to facilitate positive change in the world. Ajit formulated his own leadership approach confronting traditional business education/ He advocates for leader of none approach. Believing you are only as brilliant as the people that follow you. Over the past decade he has helped build training and coaching companies to inspire the coming generation transform entrepreneurs to live on purpose while enjoying their lives while increasing profits. Ajit currently lives in Los Angeles, California and loves to explore the world, learn different cuisines, and write and spending time with his wife Nita and his son. Ajit Nawalkha, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Ajit Nawalkha:     I’m absolutely excited to be here Jim. 

Jim Rembach:    Well I’m glad you’re here. I’ve actually been following you for a number of years so I’m really excited that you’re here. I’ve given my Legion a little bit about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Ajit Nawalkha:     My current passion apart from family of course that’s my primary driver, at this point is just to take care of the family and really spend time with them. But at the same time what I’m passionate about is to be able to create positive change in the world. I do that by building businesses or helping businesses around different types of education sector and different type of education that are around adult development, not just child development. But also by writing books, by writing articles, creating videos that inspire, motivate and help people take action towards creating greater reality for themselves. I’m a researcher in that context. I research, I test, I find different idea, I build them together and I try to create greater philosophies that can help humanity move forward. 

Jim Rembach:     Yeah, and I really like I mean I like—like I’ve been following you for a couple years and talking about that whole exploring and testing and talking about adult learning. One of the things that you and I had the opportunity to chat before we got on the interview was this whole concept of—for me trying to develop that existing frontline leader in customer care environments and how oftentimes they’re just given and bestowed the responsibility with not a whole lot of opportunity to develop themselves. But yet they are given the responsibility to develop others. What’s the problem with that? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Well there’s a lot of problems to that. It happened with me also early on in my career where, like you said I was an intern in the company Mind Valley which I’m also a co-founder of. But when I was an intern in the company what had happened was the person that was supposed to lead me had been recently demoted because of some internal challenges in their performance. And because of that I was kind of made the leader of the team. But I didn’t know anything about how online marketing works, how business works. I was learning it but—I was a 24 year old kid I didn’t really know what to do. And at that point what had happened was because of that responsibility I know I built some really bad habits as a leader. As much as you can get this responsibility if you don’t have the right training it becomes a bit of a challenge. Because as a leader you’re not really playing only the role of being a role model but you’re also being somebody who needs to create the role models. You need to be able to inspire the team to be able to take action. You’re just being good at your job doesn’t make you a really good leader it just makes you really good at your job. 

Maybe you can train people on it, maybe. But that also is a whole different skill a whole different gamut of area that you need to kind of consider and work towards. So just getting assigned to become a leader while you’re just great at your job is actually very wrong in context of the stress that it creates for the person that takes those leadership roles. Because that is why also we see so much conflict internally in the team it’s because the leader themselves have to first figure themselves out before they are stepping into the role of saying, oh, I can help other people. One of the biggest roles of a leader is not really to do their job but actually to help other people do their job. And that’s really the role of a leader in a way. 

Jim Rembach:     As you started talking I started thinking about some of the studies that I have reviewed. One of them talking about, the glass ceiling when you hit a certain point. Meaning that your technical skills and abilities will get you so far and for a lot of people in organizations that will get them to a senior level role. But in order for them to get into that next level where they’re actually leading the people who are in those roles it kind of flips. Your technical skill while it’s important and having that know-how is there but you now have to be one who leads and, oh by the way, I have this technical benefit. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Exactly. Think about it like this, as you move up the ranks—for all the listeners that are thinking about taking a leadership role or have taken a leadership role, look at your leaders job role see how much of your leaders job is to not actually do what technically needs to be done. You might think, oh they don’t do anything they just sit around and don’t know anything, but that is actually their job to actually sit around. It’s not that they’re not doing anything what they’re doing is exactly getting you to do your job in an effective powerful way. Good leaders, you will love them for not doing anything. The bad leaders are the ones where you go, oh they’re not doing anything I’m the one who does all the work. The other one who does all the work, yes, because you are not leading the team yet. Leaders are supposed to not actually do the job. Because if that would be the case, it will all be based on technical know-how. And technical know-how has a limit. 

After a point there is no greater technical know-how there’s a greater experience which basically tells you what mistakes you don’t need to do but it’s not new technical know-how. If you know a language encoded in the particular language everybody knows that language it’s all about the quality of the skill that they might have. But a leader of the team not just leader in superiority in the technical know-how but leader of the team is usually the person or should be the person that actually knows how to inspire the team, how to coach the team, actually knows what the team should be doing in times of stress and in times of concern. So there are more people who rile people up and bring them together to create a team to create an atmosphere of high performance. Not necessarily people who are the greatest technical advanced human being in the team that’s not what they are there for.

On this particular study you don’t put an age on it they’ve said when people kind of hit their mid-40s and. Oftentimes we hear about this midlife crisis, mid-career crisis, and I dare to suspect that a lot of it happens at that time where you get this technical skill and ability not being able to take you to the next level and you get this stagnation that occurs because you haven’t been coached on how to lead all along the way. That’s one of the greatest things that are missing in the corporate environment right now. People are moving up the ranks without actually being trained for it, without being coached for it. That’s why they start to struggle the moment they go up and they start to get into conflicts. 

Jim Rembach:     So when you start looking at—talking about the diversity of the coaches that you’ve had the opportunity to work with, and you start putting in the context of that people moving to that next level of responsibility. I’m also a firm believer that growth doesn’t mean dis-movement doesn’t mean upward, growth happens this way as well. You’re talking about impacting the world and humanity it isn’t necessarily that I’m at the top and being able to coat down on humanity in order to be able to teach but I have to be you amongst them within it, so I see growth in different ways. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Absolutely. 

Jim Rembach:     But when you start talking about being able to get people to effectively move in that direction and looking all the diversity of coaches, where do you find the most success? What type of discipline or what type of area?

Ajit Nawalkha:     In coaching or even in training or just as human beings what I’ve found is the more people start to work on themselves. It’s a very diverse field working on themselves. It’s not an easy play. It’s probably one of the most complicated things to do and most ignored thing to do. And that’s the dialogue of our education system. In education system it’s all about technical. It’s all about what’s the technical thing that you need to learn. It’s all about the strategies. It’s the things that we can make sense of, it’s what we teach in school. You can make sense of—you’ll write this or this is the Newton’s law, this is whatever law and those laws make sense so we can teach it and so we work on that and that’s what we teach. But what we do is we train the kids to learn only the technical things. And they feel that the progress in life associated to their technical growth. What we know for sure at this point and this is not just me saying it here but like you quoted a study that you read there are multiple studies that had been done which shows that people who progress in life are people who work on themselves. 

There’s a reason why readers are leaders. Those lines are not just hypothetical these are studies that have been done again and again these are questions that have been asked to leaders again and again—top entrepreneurs, top celebrities, top professionals again and again and again. The single biggest attitude that these individuals tend to have is they constantly focus on their personal growth. And as they grow personally they tend to grow academically they tend to grow spiritually they tend to grow career-wise they tend to grow in dimensions that otherwise they didn’t even know they had the bandwidth to be able to grow. Because after all humans are working with humans in some capacity. 

Even if you’re working with a software code you’re kind of working to replicate a human nature in some way. The task that human beings do that’s kind of you’re trying to replicate. So you have an understanding of human beings. You have an understanding of emotions. Greater you understand yourself, greater you understand your capabilities greater you understand the outside world. And that’s one of the biggest skills that you can have as a professional, as an entrepreneur for you to be able to go, hey, what is the inner dialogue that I can work on? It’s hard, it’s not easy it looks easy because we always touch the surface and we can say, oh, I know my inner dialogue but that’s not your inner dialogue most of the time it’s a reflection of society that you see on the surface. 

Your inner dialogue is way, way, way deep and it’s uncomfortable but it’s important as more and more of that you do. And which is what you do for example Jim, like you help people really figure that dialogue out when you’re coaching them, you’re training them on leadership. Leadership training is personal development that is personal development. People think it’s something different, it’s not it’s the same. You’re talking about communication. You’re talking about understanding of the human being that is personal development. 

Jim Rembach:    That is so true. And even when you were talking I started thinking about something that I saw where Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, was talking about how our education system is seriously flawed with what you were referring to where we were teaching them how to do this stuff and all this technical stuff when we should actually having even more of the arts even more of the creative side. As he was saying with the way that we’re going a lot of that technical stuff is going to be machine stuff anyway. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Yeah, because that’s what humanity is. Human humanity is always making that progress. We want to make things easier. The reason why we want things easier is because we want to actually be more creative. We want to be more in follow we want to be more in our bodies we want to be more in the nature so it seemed like for the longest time we wanted to do more but we actually want to do less as human beings. It’s not that we want to sit around and get bored it’s we want to do less of things that we don’t like that’s what I really mean. We don’t want to sit on the desk all day long nobody enjoys that. I have not met one person who says, I love that I don’t get to interact with anyone. Even introverts are not like that. Introverts are like, yep, I will like my desk but I can read a book I can do this I can do that I don’t have to look at my computer all day. Nobody likes that absolutely no one.

Jim Rembach:    To me as you were talking I’m like, okay, the world’s coming back around to you Ajit. We need to learn how to be even better humans and then we have been. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Yeah, absolutely. And we are great humans it’s just that because of all the social noise, it’s called a social comparison theory it’s been research by I think Stanford, where they talk about that we as human beings have start to compare ourselves relative to other people. We have always been like that but now it’s magnified thanks to social media because we’re looking at other people’s lives at all times. So what we do is we draw comparatives and we look at our life in context to somebody else’s life. Instead of looking at our life in context of our life which should be the way because we are a different unique DNA versus anybody else. So why compare to a different DNA when our DNA is completely different, that is the challenge right now that we face as humanity. We are all perfect in our own unique way. It may seem imperfect in comparison but direct comparison to ourselves we are usually very perfect human beings. If we make progress towards what our greatest strengths are and work a little bit on weaknesses as well we would create great progress for our reality. 

Jim Rembach:    I can only imagine that with all of the coaches that you’ve worked with and all these different disciplines, even your work at Mind Valley, you’ve been inspired in so many different ways. Like I said it’s one reason why I follow you because of your inspirational message. On the show we like sharing quotes and I’m sure you probably have tons that you love to share. But is there one or two that you can actually share with us?

Ajit Nawalkha:     There quite a few like you said. And I usually misquoted so think of it as a paraphrase and usually I don’t really necessarily try to remember who said it because what I love is the essence of things. I think the essence is what is important not necessarily the quote itself. The first essence that I love is, if you think you can if you think you can you’re always right. So basically the decision of you saying, can you do something or can’t you do something? Because it’s not can or can’t that’s not what you’re really evaluating you’re evaluating is your intention to want to do it or not want to do it because you’re always right. If you say you can’t do something it’s because your intention is to not be able to do it. But if you say you can do some that’s your intention. So you play your intention and that will always be right in the larger context of the outcome that you create. 

Another one that I love is, you don’t solve a problem by solving the problem you solve a problem by creating a new reality.  Usually people think that, oh, there’s a problem let’s fix the problem. But usually the problem originates from a very different reality that we have in our life. It’s either embodied in us in our ecosystem in our systems in a company and usually tackling the problem is a very temporary solution. Sometimes you need to do that temporary solution but most of the times you actually need to create a new reality that is not in alignment with the old reality that you had that is creating the problems. Does that make sense? 

Jim Rembach:      It doesn’t make sense. And it also makes sense in in a business perspective from a customer experience perspective. I think too many times companies focus on and try fixing the problem that a customer may have when they really need to be figuring out a brand new reality for that customer. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Yeah, brand new reality for that customer. Brand new reality for their company if there’s a repeated problem. That has become a problem it’s probably because there’s something flawed in the company. There’s some process flaw there’s some product flaw there’s some systems flaw there’s some human flaw there is some flaw but you will only be able to figure that flaw out by creating a new reality you won’t be able to figure the flaw any other way. 

Jim Rembach:      That’s very true. Okay, so now  looking at where you’ve come from where you are and also even where you’re headed I know there’s humps that you’ve had to get over and we learn from those. Talking about coaching and reflecting upon self and stuff, one of the ways that we do that if we can’t come back on our own history is we have to learn about others. So is there a story that you can share where we can learn?

Ajit Nawalkha:     Well I think the biggest hump that has happened and tends to come back sometimes even as I go through life is my constant dialogue of self-doubt. Not constant but used to be a constant dialogue of self-doubt and I think that’s a common thing that happens. It is a reflection of not only social- comparison but also of my background. Because I come from not a very abundant background I always doubted if I’m good enough if I’m actually going to be successful. I was a little bit overweight so I didn’t think I was pretty enough or good-looking enough and so on and so forth so I think those were some of the big hurdles that I’ve gotten passed over time. Like constant reprogramming,  constant reprogramming, and really being able to believe in myself and really being able to say that I can be what I—it’s the same quote that I said, you can or you can’t you’re always right to be able to have more dialogues of I can and I believe I have more capabilities than I imagined. If I constantly work towards it and I constantly evaluate it and learn around it I will be able to get past it. 

Jim Rembach:    As you were saying that I picked up on something that I find going back to that whole concept of fixing the system versus creating a new reality and that was your word reprogramming. I think too many times we do that self-reflection we try fixing something about ourselves when in fact we should be trying to do the reprogramming of ourselves. When you talk about reprogramming, what does that really mean? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Well reprogramming means we are all a set of beliefs. If you really think about us as human beings we are a set of values and beliefs that’s what we are really like emotionally and spiritually. We have a certain values and we want to live by those values we are either fighting for those values or we are living those values and we have certain beliefs. Now these values and beliefs, values are mostly intrinsic which means that’s your nature like that’s just how you were born that’s your DNA most of the time. Some values are built over time as well. Some of your core, core, core values is just what gives you joy and pleasure and that is a whole different conversation to really find those values, and I’m not going to go there, but to understand that you have values and you have beliefs and that you live by and that’s why you follow a political party that’s why you follow a particular religion that’s why you follow a particular authority figure whatever that is because you have a set of values you have a set of beliefs. Now these set of values and beliefs serve you and sometimes they don’t serve you. The same set of values and same set of beliefs that may serve you at a point in life does not serve you at a different point of life. It’s just how life is. 

What happens is you have to be able to constant revisit what these values and beliefs are and if they’re serving you or they’re not serving you. If they’re not serving you because most of our values and beliefs are not nature they’re nurture which means you’ve learned from the world as you progress from your childhood to your adulthood in your job in your relationship. You have created these values because this is a protective mechanism for you something that gives you a stand gives you some kind of protection from the outside world. Like for example, if you believe money is the root of all evil which is a popular belief in a lot of religion if that’s a value or a belief that you operate from that will not serve you in making money because you think it’s the root of all evil. So if that value is one of your core values that belief is one of your core beliefs, guess why you are not going to be able to make progress in your career? Because you would think you will get richer. And as you’ll get richer, you become evil especially if you have a negative connotation to evil too, which everybody does. But at the same point and time, money is not equal to evil, evil people with money is evil. Money is not the root of evil. You can replace that value you can replace that value by saying, money is a magnifier. Meaning, if you’re a good person money will only show more people that you are even better person, which is actually the belief that

I have. Money is a magnifier if I’m a good person. If I have more money all you will see is more good which is why more good people should become rich.  But if you’re a bad person well more people will think you’re bad and that’s okay too, that’s just what it is. If I have a belief that money is a magnifier I’m a good person I don’t mind being rich, I will pursue in a direction of making more money. Now this is of course one of the examples that I’m saying, beliefs and values are spread and sprinkled over all our life and we just have to constantly evaluate and say, hey, is this value serving me? Is this belief serving me? Or is it not? Because one of the biggest reasons you may not make progress is because your values and your beliefs are conflicting to your progress. 

Jim Rembach:     I think that’s a very valid point. I think a lot of times once we find—I think that’s where people find discomfort with where they are in a place or career. Like you’re talking about I haven’t quite gotten a grasp on myself and then when I do finally get that I realize what that doesn’t align with who I’m working for no wonder why I can’t stand being here. 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Yeah. That’s true if that’s the case, if you find more and more about yourself. But, hey, listen a lot of people might say, should I not find myself? Because if I find myself I might want to quit my job. The most amazing thing about finding yourself is everything becomes easy. If you feel like you need a job and you need to make this much revenue or this much money while you’re at the job and so forth, it actually becomes easier once yourself for you to be able to create that. As much as it will look hard right now, because you’ll be like, oh, what happens if I’m out of my job or if I’m out of my boss? You want to be out of your job or you might not like your boss. If I am not in alignment with my boss, what will happen? You will find a way to become your own boss. Or you will find a way to replace the boss. You’ll find a way because you are so in tune with yourself. Remember, in your job when you see the confident people, when you see the people confident but not assholes, so you got to be careful, they’re confident people and then they’re assholes. They look the same often but they’re not the same. 

Confident people are confident people and sometimes some people who are just not in alignment or assholes also look like confident people. If you look at the confident people, people that you look at and you go, hey, that’s an awesome person that’s a great gal that’s a great guy I love this person and I love their confidence, that’s a confident person most of the time. if you love those people those people are also the people that are full embodiment of their values that’s why they are so confident. Because they’re going, alright, I know exactly who I am I know what I can deliver and I know how to deliver it. So they don’t have a problem progressing in their career, they never have a problem progressing in their career. Look at the confident people they don’t have a problem the reason’s because they are in alignment with themselves. One of the things that you can take away today is if you want to be clearer about your career and if you want to make progress your career, know thyself know yourself more and that will help you. 

Jim Rembach:     That’s fantastic. We had talked earlier—you’re starting a family, the work that you’ve been doing and that you’re still yet to do I know you’ve got a lot of goals, but what would be just one of them? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     My common vision for myself and my family, once our son grows up you’ll see if his values is the same but me and my wife definitely align on this, is to help move the needle. Help move the line. Help create a positive shift towards humanity. Move that needle a little bit more. And that’s really the intention that we show up at every single day. Our values that we know as core to both me and my wife is service and love. We want to operate all this from a place of love and we all always operate from a place of service to be able to help humanity to be able to help our friends to be able to help our families and that’s really the place that we operate from. And because of that every goal, every vision, of ourselves is always in alignment with that. If we can make progress towards a positive greater world that’s what we want to do more of. 

Jim Rembach:     And the Fast Leader Legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor. 

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Alright, here we go Fast Leader Legion it’s time for the Hump day Hoedown. Okay, Ajit, the Hump day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Ajit Nawalkha, are you ready to hoedown? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     I am absolutely ready. Let’s do it. 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. So what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     I take more learning. 

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you have ever received? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Care for people. People matter. 

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe helps you do better in life and in work?

Ajit Nawalkha:     I don’t operate from ego. I am an ego-less man. I have less ego. 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Organization, lots of tools, lots of tech tools. 

Jim Rembach:     What would be one book that you’d recommend to our legion, it could be from any genre? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Well right now I recommend my book, Live Big, it’s coming out now. 

Jim Rembach:     Okay, Fast Leader legion you can find links to that and another bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/ajit nawalkha, and just do Ajit, you’ll be able to find it. Okay, Ajit, this is my last Hump day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age 25. And you could take all the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Ajit Nawalkha:     I think the piece of knowledge that I will take back with me will be the knowing that I’ll be okay. I think I operated a lot from fear and scarcity when I was younger. I think I could do better if I just knew that I’ll be okay and everything will be fine. 

Jim Rembach:     Ajit, thanks for being with us today. How can the Fast Leader Legion connect with you? 

Ajit Nawalkha:     Well, get the book. As you get the book you will see various ways to interact with me. You can get the book at livebigthebook.com. As you go there you’ll get a get a copy of the book as you get the copy of the book you’ll find a secret link in there which allows you to be able to get a free program with us and also be able to interact with me directly. 

Jim Rembach:     Ajit Nawalkha, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion, honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links, from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already. Head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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