Angela McCourt 0:00
Let's get ready for some serious shift. This is a podcast shifting Inside Out hosted by your quantum shifter Angela McCourt, we are diving into ways to empower and enable a quantum shift. Inspiring topics hacks and guest speakers take us on a journey around authenticity, challenging status quo, personal power and living a purpose filled life.

I just published love your gifts permission to revolutionize authenticity and leadership. But number two, it is available on Kindle, as well as via print on amazon.com. So just go out search, Angela McCourt, and you will see both of my books out there. And I'm really excited about this book, because one of the big things that I've noticed over time, is how leadership has evolved and changed. And over the past couple of years, the evolution of leadership has become such a significant need, not just what's actually happening, but what needs to happen in leadership, not just in the business environment or in corporate environment, but throughout every compartment in our world and in our life. And so in this book, I go through all of the blocks, I go through all of the gifts and how to integrate Authentic Leadership into your style. My hope is that this will help the speed of the evolution of authentic leadership. And I'm very excited about getting this book in your hands. If you want to go ahead and also review the book after you've read it, I would very much appreciate that. In this episode broth, or Ben Natasha on goes through his journey. And one of the really important pieces that I just loved, although it was a little bit of a moment was when he said it's okay to be average. I think we are so programmed that everything we do has to be above average. And I just love how he reinstated reiterated and totally shared his inflections that he's experienced for himself around how he has basically set his goalposts without moving them to be it's okay. And it's good to celebrate being average, and then go for the upside. And honestly, as I think about this, and as I think about what this can do for us as a whole is really releases the expectations that we have put on ourselves or that we assume others have put on us, and really allows us to just be and the other flip side to this, from a mindset perspective, is it really allows us to take advantage of new opportunities without fear of failure to take risks, where today we may not just because we're so afraid of not being perfect or not being able to be above average for these things. And instead, what I love that Brock puts in place or those goalposts and does not move them. But he does say go for the upside. And we get into this in a really deep way. And I think it's really amazing to hear His message about allowing yourself to celebrate your own achievements. In his mind. It is all about just truly being impressed with our individual journeys, and really being content with the fantastic achievements that we've all accomplished. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. As you listen. You can find me on LinkedIn at Angie belts McCourt, or on Instagram at Angie underscore McCourt.

Roth Welcome to shifting inside out. I'm so grateful to have you on this episode. To get started. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Ben Natarajan 3:58
Wonderful. Thank you. First of all, what a privilege to be here. Angie. Absolutely. Pleasure to be here. So broth Natarajan seminoma has been Rajan I think early in my career when Piper off and then later on in my career. I've changed that to Ben, I'll talk about that. If we need to around why I made that shift just made my life much easier. And I currently work as a Senior Director for partner go to market and strategy at Ceridian. And I've spent quite a lot of time in the tech sector and have had the fortunate pleasure of having worked with you in a previous life. So thank you for having me.

Angela McCourt 4:33
Yeah, thank you for being here as well. That's so amazing. And I'm so happy to have you on. I've always had such a great admiration for you and you've taken on so many incredible I want to call them projects, but that really minimizes like, when we talk about innovation we talk about like bringing new things to life like you've been involved in so much in the tech industry. So I think it'll be really great for the listeners to hear your journey. Let's get started. Why don't we just give them a little bit more about Brock? Okay, so I have a few quick round questions just for the listeners to get to know you. The first one is what is your morning ritual.

Ben Natarajan 5:12
So I have to, you'll get to hear a little bit about just who I am through this episode. But I'm very much the average bear and I do all the things that the online pundits say you shouldn't do. So I wake up, I look at my phone, I look at the news and see what's going on unraveling in the world. I peruse the gossip on LinkedIn, it's the only social media I'm on I will turn the TV on roll around in bed, you know, all the things that they say you shouldn't do is what I am. And I'm completely okay with it. I'm content doing that. And then I'll probably just stroll down and try to get a beverage or something like that. So very good.

Angela McCourt 5:54
I love the fact that you're just like, This is how it is. This is what I enjoy. Dammit, I'm doing it. I

Ben Natarajan 6:01
don't care what I do. You know, I don't drink coffee. Neither Christian or I, my wife, we don't drink coffee. So if somebody's looking for inspiration and not getting it from my response, I will say that I after I come downstairs, I heat up a cup of water and I put some Tumeric in it. And I put some honey and that's my sort of hate the systems are going now it's the fuel for my day, if you will, so

Angela McCourt 6:25
well. And that's so good for you too. So all the inflammation we have in our bodies I bet you don't. Fantastic. How do you renew your energy?

Ben Natarajan 6:36
The long answer is I love to travel, I love to change scenery. I think I'm terribly inspired when I go somewhere new and I learned something new. So that would be the sort of really a big energy shift. On a day to day transactional level I love being outdoors. And that could be stand up paddleboard or just walking around. So I always try to spend some point of the day outdoors. And for some of us that live in Florida that can be a challenge this time of the year in the summer. But I do even despite that try to get outdoors and and really just rejuvenates me when I'm with flowers and nature and just the sounds of waves and etc. So

Angela McCourt 7:18
beautiful. Yeah, so water is energy and then in the trees and plants are all energy. So yeah, a lot of folks, I think have been cooped up a lot. And it is one of the easiest ways to renew your energy is go sit out in nature. Yeah. And just connect back into nature, especially if you're feeling stuck. Yeah. Okay, what is your guilty pleasure?

Ben Natarajan 7:40
Oh, this so I'll sort of take two, two versions of this food is obviously a pleasure I travel to eat. And I know a lot of people have this sort of, Oh, I love food. But no, I love food, I will eat food. And to to the point of being gluttonous. I mean, sometimes I regret having eaten something that I've enjoyed terribly. The other guilty pleasure for me is just knowledge. And I say that a lot of people like to learn so they can sound smart and tell other people how much they've learned about something. That's great. More power to you. I just love to just learn. And I'm always trying to learn new things. And it's mostly stuff that I'm going to forget. But I just love the idea of completely undoing a previous version of truth in my mind. So I eat a lot, I read a lot of nonfiction. And so it is a guilty pleasure. I always joke that if I get sent to prison for long periods of time for something that I've done, hopefully that'll never happen. I just want a big library. So I can sit over meet a bunch and not feel guilty.

Angela McCourt 8:50
Oh, I love that. Oh, it's amazing. And I love the fact too, that you're like willing to release it. Because you do have to make capacity for new right. But I wonder if the practice that you're going through is there's so much new new research done around neuroplasticity nowadays. And it's really starting to come out about how our brains can continue to evolve, you know, even up to like over 65 years old. That I wonder if going through that practice of learning and purging and learning and releasing and learning and purging like does that actually expand your mental capacity? In some way? Does it actually, like activate both sides of your brain and like a different way than most humans? Like? I guarantee it. If you were a science experiment, like you would find they would find that what you're doing is actually truly growing your brain even if you're not holding on to the information.

Ben Natarajan 9:40
I don't know. I mean, I was like, that's true. I feel like I forget more than I actually learn these days. So that's okay. But I do it just because it's so much fun. And sometimes I think I'm open minded enough that I'm completely okay with somebody changing Something that I thought was Foundation. He told me tomorrow that we've misunderstood gravity for the last 100 years. I'm all in and told me. So that's the kind of stuff that I this juice for my, for my brain. I love it. So

Angela McCourt 10:14
okay, so what you'll really love is quantum physics, because it's debunking science right now too, and filling in the gaps that science couldn't prove. Yeah.

Ben Natarajan 10:23
Fantastic. I mean, most of the stuff that we think is fact is probably about 200 years old. Yeah, at the most. And so things change, and I love it. In my short lifetime, I've had to rethink things that I thought were absolute fact. I mean, this is good. This is bad. You know, there's such, there's so much gray now. And I love that. So

Angela McCourt 10:44
yes, yeah, it's, it's so nice to sit in the gray. I love it. So one of the things that I have admired about you is that you've had just an incredible journey. And I've had the experience of having conversations with you in the past and getting to know a little bit about your journey. And I thought it would be really great for listeners to just hear how your journey has been, how you've gotten up to this point that we can go into deeper conversation. So if you want to just go ahead and share your journey, that would be amazing.

Ben Natarajan 11:12
Sure. You know, first of all privilege to even talk about this, and I will sort of, in a synopsis, I'm probably the luckiest human being you've ever met in your life. I don't think that and this is sort of my perspective on my life, I've been very lucky. I grew up in a completely different place. So I if some of you may know, but I was born in India to Indian parents. And as a toddler, my parents moved to Sub Saharan Africa, to a recently independent at the time, a former British colony of Zimbabwe, what used to be known as Rhodesia. And it was a fantastic time for me to be there, because there was so much change. It was a time when segregated schools were for the first time brought together so I was in the first cohort of children that came from different histories and sort of had to be with each other. And because of that experience, I should say, I had very modest goals. I just wanted to have a middle class life, hopefully had a career that could pay the bills. And I was a very average student, academically, sport, art, you name it. And I was completely okay with being average. And that's perhaps if there's a theme that goes through this entire thing. I think there's a lot of feeling in our society these days, that average is not good enough. And that wasn't my way of it. For me, I average was good enough. And everything else was upside. And so I I ended up going through school, all my formative years in Africa. And then I went to engineering as my undergrad and my graduate degree results in engineering at the University of South Florida, where I met some fantastic people. One of who you've interviewed, Nico was was actually in my class. At some point, when I was at USF, we actually were on the same intramural baseball team. And if you had told me at any point in my life, before I came to the US, and even after had come to the US that I was going to be a tech Exec. Talking to you about my life, in 20 years, I would have genuinely thought you were crazy. So I have far exceeded every single goal I've had for myself. That makes my life much easier because because of exceeded all the goals I had for my life. All of this is just icing and upside. And therefore I can take wonderful risks with my career or with my just how I live my life, because I'm not worried about failing from here on because I've already done more than I have ever thought. And I think one of the principles I would say my journey was also I didn't want to change the goalposts on myself for what success was. So after I was in college, I would also qualify that every job I've gotten so far has been through a relationship. And I've have hardly ever needed to apply for a job. And perhaps if I did I, miserably fail. I, I was hired into my first job in Tampa, because I was standing in line at a banquet at the University of South Florida behind the CEO of the company. And we ended up sitting next to each other and she thought I was a very articulate young man. She said, when you graduate, give me a call. And I did. So I got my first job there that then a former boss from there and moved to Tech Data. And I follow that gentleman, Frank shines, and other wonderful gentleman that I worked with. And then it's sort of cascaded through tech, and I had a great tenure at Tech Data. I learned all my formative career lessons there. Just to bution is a place where you cut your teeth. It's a very difficult place. It's a place sometimes that people have to feel apologetic for. But having been there, I feel it's probably the best place to have a wholesome experience of technology, across hardware software, you know, virtual stuff dropship, like the whole shebang. Right, yeah. It's like doing a PhD in technology, without having to actually go spend the money. Imagine getting paid to do a PhD. Yeah, exactly. I did that for several years, but eight years, went to Oracle, which was my first call it big tech company loved it, the culture was very different than than Tech Data. Tech Data, as I said, is a little bit of a

silent beast, if you will, everybody is very thoughtful, and very self doubting. Whereas big tech on the West Coast, and Oracle, everybody's very confident. And so it was a big cultural change. For me, I'm going over all these smart people around me. And they're, they're effectively saying we've got the best, we are the best, and we don't care about others. And there was a punch them in the face attitude. On here, I'd come from distribution where it was very much, I just got punched, I think versus the other way around. And then I spent some time at IBM, which also is a very different culture, I would say if I could just share one place that I think everyone should spend some point of their career, it's IBM, it's just a wonderful company from a culture perspective. And then subsequent IBM, now I'm with again, I feel like I'm doing a cycle here, a smaller tech company that's in the scale out mode, it's a great product, and they're looking to go big. And so they were interested in somebody with the skills to be able to sort of take that and move partnerships to the next level, etc. So from a career perspective, that's a little bit of my journey. All through that I think my greatest highlight has been learning a lot about myself. And I wouldn't have been able to distill that without these experiences. And now I kind of have a sense of what I'm good at, versus what I'm not good at. And I also am very average, and the majority of things, probably a couple of things a bit above average. And I think that has done wonders for me. So that's, again, I'm very lucky circumstances, good fortune, good parenting, whatever you want to call it. I've just had good air cover, and I've had a fortunate career.

Angela McCourt 17:39
Yeah. And you obviously took opportunities as they opened up to you. Because, you know, it could have been a test that CEO, right, you know, at the banquet was, yeah, give me a call when you graduate, you know, how many people actually do that? Probably, like 1%. So you took the chance, you, you, you follow through? And you know, it seems like you know, that was a lot of your path, like, you're just very open to the new challenge open to the new model, the new business model, the new approach to the new technology, you know, so that's, I think it makes a difference when you're in this mindset of possibility versus structured like, this is my path, like, you could have easily stayed at Tech Data for 20 years. And then in that comfort zone, once you figured it out, it was like a comfort zone. Right. But you decided to challenge yourself, and you know, you ended up taking those opportunities. So I think that's a really interesting, great quality of yours, by the way. So hopefully, that's in one of your above average strength.

Ben Natarajan 18:40
Even a high?

Angela McCourt 18:41
Yeah. So, um, when when you think about, you know, these kind of inflection points along the way for yourself. What were some of the things that you realize, looking back, were really great ways to almost better understand yourself, you know, really accept strengths, and that you could share with listeners that might be really good for them to, you know, kind of fall in this journey?

Ben Natarajan 19:10
No, I think my first point, I think I've sort of belabor that quite a bit, which is average is good. It's not bad, right? And then the other thing I'd say is, we should be very kind to ourselves. I think that and I sort of said this a little bit. I think that we spend too much time trying to achieve goals that are thrust upon you by others. And I think I spent far less time worrying about that, because again, I had such low expectations myself. I far exceeded that strategy. Yeah, no, it is it has worked out for me. So I think if you're kind to yourself, You know best. Every one of us knows best. What makes us happy and we should just personally, I think oftentimes we will listen to external guy Aiden's and we take it almost like the rule, I would consider that a data point, and sort of that. So if you would ask me my inflection points, I think one of the big things that I learned when I was younger is build meaningful relationships. So I'm trying to distill down attendees that you made a difference. And I would say, I have spent an inordinate amount of time maintaining relationships, building relationships, and meaningful relationships. And I feel like that's a skill that I think is a little above average for me. And I enjoy it, it's it sort of comes naturally to me. The second thing I would say, is telling stories. I love those stories, perhaps to a fault. And what I tried to do is, I tried to take all my experiences distill down that just sort of the moral of the story and then use that context to explain to people, here's why I did this, or here's why you should do this. So to me, I think that that piece has been really good. And my, my childhood, my formative years, have been great contextual elements to draw stories from. And then the final thing is, for me attention to detail. I love the detail, I love to get in the weeds. So it has always helped me be successful when I pay attention to the some of the subtleties that others probably just overlook. That business cards that I got from the CEO stayed with me until the day that I graduated, it was a matter of detail. Yeah, I wanted to send an email out. So So yeah, I mean, I think those three things have been really inflection points and learnings for me, you know, detail is telling stories and building relationships. And I think, if I could give one piece of advice, it's a lot of times we, we talk about the derivatives of that, hey, I'm really good at algebra, or I'm really good at selling to this account. But you have to distill down to kind of find out what that skill actually roots from. It's usually something very simple. And then you feel really good about it, because you know that about yourself. So yeah, yeah,

Angela McCourt 22:16
absolutely. There is an exercise that I, I learned from the Yale School of Management, women, it's an executive program that I was able to go through, probably about four years ago now. And I do this with my clients too. And it's called best self reflection. And what's incredible is every single person who has ever done this, including myself, you go out and you ask three, three different people, you just ask three people, what value do I bring into, you know, a situation, your life, this, you know, roll, whatever, whatever the relationship is with them. And be specific, give specific examples. Everybody comes back with Oh, my God, I had no idea that I add that specific value in these situations. And sometimes it's the same thing comes back from multiple people. And people are just surprised and shocked by this. But I think it's a really, it's important, because to your point of to really get down to into why am I good at this, what do I What value do I bring into this, that becomes a superpower that becomes something that you can leverage to really make a difference. And if you're focusing on it with intent and attention, then you're able to really just, you know, use that as like a really big opportunity to make an impact. And I love that I think that's so important. You mentioned earlier about moving goalposts, as you have gone through kind of this, you know, set of expectations. You didn't move the goalposts. Can you go into that a little bit further, and why is that so important? Look,

Ben Natarajan 23:51
if if we ask anyone ourselves when you were in college, and somebody said, Hey, what would have success look like in 10 years from now, we'd have all had our sort of scorecard. I want to have a six figure job. I want to be, you know, whatever mid level manager, I want to be in tech, I want to actually do this, that whatever, I want to have a home, I want to have a mortgage free, you know, outcome out of this, I want to be able to get to this level of savings. There's so many things that people have in their minds. And what happens is, because of evolution, the very nature of the human is that once you get to that first goalpost it's not enough. We're insatiable, which is great. It's a human trait. It's why we have evolved to be as successful as we are from an evolutionary trade. But it is an endless cycle. It's a rat race. And so what what I kind of keep reminding myself is, hey, at some point, you've got to draw the line and then say, look, I still want to go after more. But that's all upside. And then I can fail in those sort of endeavors because if I failed, I still met the goalposts that I've already established as the standard. And so in my career, once I got to what I thought was the established goalposts, that I'm not going to move, it allowed me to take a lot more risk. Somebody was saying, Hey, do you want to go try this new role? Sure. Because if I miserably fail at this sort have already been, I've already proven to myself that I'm worthy of whatever I wanted to achieve. So I think it's a big lesson that I've learned for myself. Now, I'm not also saying that your goalposts should be when you were naive and didn't know and you were, oh, I want to be a policeman or I want to be a fireman, whatever that is, it can be something that you said today, for the next five years or for your career. But then you have to be honest with yourself, you know, you can't set a goal that, you know, you're not going to achieve, I can't say I want to be a billionaire, and I want to be a CEO of Microsoft, that's a pretty, you know, difficult goal for me. But you can set a goal that makes sense. And once you achieve it, and I think it really has helped me, and then trying out new things, trying new hobbies, you know, branching out from my comfort zone, because I've already done that. So that's, that, to me, it has had been very helpful. And if I could only give you one guiding principle, it's be honest and be kind to yourself, and don't move the goalposts keep

Angela McCourt 26:31
it now, one of the things that I think is important in kind of stating that it's okay to be average, is it's not average from a, this is all I can be this is all I can offer. I think there's a celebration that goes along with that and celebrating when those over and above things happen when average happens. Because average can give you more control over your entire life, not just the career. And it's okay. And it's actually something to celebrate. Because nowadays, it's really hard for people, you know, work life balance, work life balance, like everybody's talking about work life balance all the time, balance comes from within, you're not going to be able to do it out externally. But the biggest thing there is it's okay to be average in areas of your life so that you can be extraordinary in other areas of your life. Right? When you when you talk about this average, like how do you celebrate those achievements of getting to average? And then also when you go over and above?

Ben Natarajan 27:31
Look, I think very few people are above average and everything. I would argue that there's almost nobody that does. And we can take exalt exemplary people like Steve Jobs, or, you know, Bill Gates, whoever people derive their inspiration from, they were terrible at many things. Steve Jobs was terrible at people relationships he was, but they were above average in other things in innovation. And they're like, what, what I try to aspire for is on 95% of the things that I think are important, I want to be at least average. And I can find 234 things that I want to hone and be above average on and appreciate the fact that there's three or 4% of stuff that I'm also terrible at. And that's okay. And I think that if everyone thinks that they have to be above average, then what happens is it just moves the average. And now the new average is better. And you know, I was talking to my dad about this. My dad was suggesting to me recently that I don't know how you kids do it. I don't know how you go to work, and never shut down. In his life. When he went to work. He had a landline in his in his office. And when my mom wanted to reach him, she would call the reception and say I want to speak to so and so. And then if the land rang landline in the office rang and he wasn't there, she didn't know what was happening in his world. He was out in the field doing stuff. He was an agronomist. So he's like when I left work was done. I drove home, I had no cell phone, I came home, there was no email, and now you're just bombarded. But being good at all of this is now considered average. It is way above average for his capability in his mind, but it is average for us. And the next level is obviously going to be average for our kids, etc. So I think that to be a little philosophical, I am completely okay with being on the normal curve right in the top where I know it's safe. And there are some people who are willing to do things that are unnatural. I'm not. Yeah,

Angela McCourt 29:44
yeah. Yeah, I think that's amazing. So being part of Gen X. I've had this conversation a few times lately where I almost feel like the newer generations coming up aren't going to be the hard workers like we could have been They're gonna be the smart workers. Like, it's a different way of working. It's a gimme, gimme, give me the ability to work, when I'm at my peak productivity during the day, give me the ability to work, when I'm at my peak creativity during the day, when I'm at my peak intelligence during the day, I think there's going to be much more opportunity to work smarter, not this whole eight to five, you know, everybody's crammed in a box, fend for yourself and try to go above average all the time through hard work. Like, I feel like there's going to be a major shift happening, and that's good. And it's still okay to be average.

Ben Natarajan 30:40
You know, the, let me give you a good lesson that I learned recently, which is, do you care about how it's done? Or do you care about what the outcome is, and if if we collectively care about the outcome, if I gave you a deadline of Friday, this week, I need this done, I should then say, that's the metric. Yeah, I can't then go ahead and tell you, you must do it in this way to get there. Because if I told you how to do it, and you don't get there, it's on me. If I just give you an outcome that I expect, and I let you go do your thing, it's on you. And I don't know if it's hard work a smart work, I just think that we have to be accepting that our metric of success should be qualified, it should be the outcome. And all of the other variables, there's too many shouldn't be something that we should spend a lot of time on. Because then that becomes very paternalistic to say to somebody, Hey, you should do it this way. And there's a lot of things that have changed. You know, I work for a company that's an HCM solution, and they're trying to disrupt pay cycles. And till about a year ago, until I joined this company, I assumed that I get paid every two weeks or in some countries every month. And that's normal. But we've never asked the question, how is that we're okay with floating money for our employer for this amount of time. And the joke was that at some point, 1000 years ago, the guy who went to the quarry and wasn't hammering out rocks didn't get paid that day. And the boss said, Hey, listen up, I got this new system. You just keep working for a month, and then right at the end of the month, I'm gonna give you all of your money, because obviously, that's the right thing to do. And we were all like, that makes sense. Let's do that. So now in our company, what we're trying to do is this thing called streaming pay, if you've worked, and you've you've been approved for those hours, we know how to calculate taxes. We know how to calculate garnishments. Let's get them paid, ASAP, within hours within days. And I use that example because it sort of changes the paradigm of what was normal? Yes, what is absolutely different. Now, the flip side of it, somebody will have a point of view that, hey, well, I don't know if that's a good thing. If you give them money as soon as they've earned it, because they might burn through the money, and they may not have enough money at the end of the month, or whatever the case is. And the question back to them is, if they have bad behaviors today, they're gonna have bad behaviors tomorrow, there's people that go to payday loan centers to get a bridge loan to get to them. Let's save them from those things. And let's give them money as the so this is just an example of what I consider completely changing the paradigm. Yeah, same thing with work. Same thing with the way in which we consume information. It used to be that we really, really prized people who read a lot, you know, anytime somebody says, Hey, I read four books, wow, this guy must be smart. Right? And it was so unfair, because there are people who read and can consume information that way. And anybody who said, Hey, I spent four hours on YouTube will be looked at, he wasted time. But that's the way he consumes, you know, material. So it's okay. on YouTube. At the end of the day, no, we're, we're getting to outcomes, we're learning things, we're being more productive. And I think that's all that matters, honestly. So

Angela McCourt 34:07
yeah, exactly. And, and also everybody learns differently, right? We all receive information differently. And, and it's, it's, it will be interesting because there's so much information out there now that is very opinion in theory and philosophical not necessarily truth. So the truth busting will be the fun part of I think our information intake and our information society as we go forward. Because you know, a lot of stuff that's out there I use Google, by the way, YouTube is like my Google search engine for how to do something. And and literally just ask the question, how do you do this? Why is this not working? You will get some kind of a YouTube to that. It's incredible. And but the resources that we have access to are absolutely however you consume information. They're available. There's so many millions and millions of books published every single year because they Access has gotten easier. You can consume it audibly. You can consume it digitally, you can consume it in a print, you know, there's so many different ways to get access to you go to your library to get access to it for free. I mean, there are like, there's just so much information out there. I think it'll be interesting to see how because we're on kind of this information overload right now. It's how do we either create new internal processes for distilling? Or how do we just go to very specific sources that work for us. And that's like our source of information and where we actually go and seek things out. And learn from that, that will be really interesting over the next few years, how that all shifts and changes for each person sooner,

Ben Natarajan 35:45
right. And I think the paradigm shift is not going to be around access to information because we have too much. It's going to be about curation, and delivery of succinct, truthful, synthesized information. I mean, I would love nothing more than an app that I can have on my phone that I can sort of tell here's what my interests are. And here's how I consider information to be truthful, or whatever else. And the algorithm takes care of the rest. And there's actually an app that I use for news curation, it's called in shorts. And what it does is it only gives you, I think, twice the length of Twitter worth of whatever's in the article, and then I decide if I want to go into the detail and I can go into it, otherwise, okay, I've caught up on the up to speed on it. But I don't need the next level of detail.

Angela McCourt 36:37
And it's more than just the title. Exactly. It's more

Ben Natarajan 36:40
than the title, which is often a grab attention. And so I leading a title usually, yeah, usually, yes, yes.

Angela McCourt 36:49
That's amazing. So one of the things that I think would be really interesting for you to share with listeners is kind of your process that you've gone to, to get to this point of understanding what you want in career in life, that, you know, would create that contentment would create that happiness. You know, how, because a lot of people really struggle with this they honestly struggle with, I know what I don't want, but I'm not quite sure what I do want. So do you have any kind of tips that you can share with the listeners about how you've gone through that process and figured it out?

Ben Natarajan 37:22
Look, I mean, I'm certainly happy to share my perspective on this, I'm not in any way equipped? Or how should I say, a fit to give anyone advice, I can just tell you, I'm a scrappy kid from Africa that made it. And so I look around, and I think of all the people that didn't, and then that I have so many people that would trade their lives with mine. So how could I, for a moment think that I have, I have more to do that I'm entitled to I'm not i Far achieved that. So I certainly don't have a magic mantra, I just think that an honest conversation with yourself, without anyone else's input around what will make you feel like you have satisfied your life's aspirations, and that could be career oriented. But it could also be familiar, like, you know, hey, I want to have productive children who are self sufficient and independent. It could be from from where you've reached in wealth, comfort, how quickly you want to retire all of those things. For me, personally, I wanted to get to a point where I was financially secure, to the degree that one needs to be, and that I could afford myself the opportunity to try out new hobbies, try out new career trajectories, just be able to try things that other people who don't have this level of comfort, don't have. If I was working at Taco Bell 40 hours a week, I couldn't learn how to fly. I don't work at Taco Bell for 40 hours a week. If I have an interest in going to learn how to fly, I want to go do it, what I think we get stuck doing is not actioning the upside, and that's what I want to do is I want to action as much of the upside as possible. Not being silly, obviously not blowing cash because I can go and do a safari every week or something but do something that's a little bit more. So that wouldn't be my thing. It's just to kind of self analyze what makes most sense. I would also suggest a lot of reading or a lot of knowledge gathering and the reason why I say this is I feel the more I learned the more I know, the less than no and then therefore, the less I am equipped to tell somebody that I am I'm accurate on something because I don't know the more I read I realized the less I actually know the more I try above, the less I am likely to know enough about. So if you're willing to to be the sponge, I feel like you learn so much. And then they don't therefore you don't have such a strong opinion on things. And there's a lot of gray that you can play in. And I think, in my younger days, I used to be so opinionated, or at least I had a very strong view on things. And then I realized, man, you know, where am I basing this on what I just learned in the last 10 minutes, if something in other 10 minutes, I'm going to unlearn all of that and learn something else? Yeah, so I don't know if that answers the question. No, I

Angela McCourt 40:41
think that I think that was good. I definitely the introspection definitely the knowledge gathering definitely, you know, going to places that are important, whichever, whichever kind of, you know, part of your life that you really want to focus on, you know, setting wants and desires. And all of that, I think is really fantastic. So,

Ben Natarajan 41:02
yeah, just sort of seal also say, don't take other people's facts for you. as fact. Yes. Thank everybody sees a version of you. That is just a part of the larger you, the only person that gets to see all of you, is you. And so therefore, I think that's also really important is don't let somebody project their aspirations onto you. Do it for yourself. Yeah,

Angela McCourt 41:37
exactly. That's what usually a lot of lessons learned by people, either in their 30s or 40s. They finally get to like, yeah, this wasn't really what I wanted to do. This was what my parents wanted me to do. Or this is what a teacher recommended to me in high school, or when and I just stuck with it, because I thought, Okay, well, I'll be good at it, then I'm going to do it right. And a lot of people are like shifting gears then because they realize, wait a minute, I don't know why I'm doing this. This is not what I want to do. Yeah, it's really interesting. Challenge the facts of what people are saying to you. Absolutely. I love it. All right. Do you have anything that you would like to share that kind of broths billboard message with the listeners as we close out?

Ben Natarajan 42:15
Yeah, I mean, I think I've sort of peppered it into the whole conversation. But my message is, it's all upside. The fact that you are sitting over here, whoever you are listening to a podcast, you are successful, you have done fantastic things in your life, you are probably in the top 5% of Lucky human beings on the face of this planet, probably the 1% of all humans that have existed on this planet. So I mean, how can you for a moment think that you're not fantastic. That being said, challenge yourself to go past that, I think, put some fantastic goalposts that you think you can achieve. And then everything beyond that is just upside, and it's all icing on the cake. And I spend my entire adult life enjoying the upside. Because, hey, it's so much easier to do that, to take risks to do unnatural things. When it's all considered upside. So that would be sort of a takeaway. Read a lot. Enjoy the revelant knowledge, whatever that may be. If knitting is your thing, read about knitting or if travel is your thing, read about travel, go experience the world. I would probably leave you with three of my favorite books, if that's sort of Yeah,

Angela McCourt 43:39
I was just going to ask you for any call out. So absolutely. That would be fantastic. So

Ben Natarajan 43:42
three of my favorite books that come with three different flavors of knowledge. My favorite alltime book is a book called Sapiens by Yuval Harare. It's, it's a book about the evolution of us as humans, it's fantastic. Another book is called loon shots, and I forget who the author is. But basically loon shots is like moonshots, but it's crazy ideas that change the world. And I think it's fantastic book because it talks about how we discovered antibiotics or how Xerox discovered something else. And, and it's all of these things that were crazy ideas which away they call loon shots, and then became inflecting points in our life. And then the final book is a book called The some of us, and it is a easy read, but a difficult read for us Americans. It's a little bit about how society is. It has become what it is based on all of our history and the sum total of our experiences. And I think it's a fantastic book for Americans to read in general. So those are three interesting books that I've read in the last five years that I recommend from

Angela McCourt 44:54
Wow. Respect. Yeah, and they're all very different too. So I love the variety. Yeah.

Ben Natarajan 45:00
Yes yes one may not enjoy I think very few will enjoy all three of them because the nature but I'm the crazy guy here so I

Angela McCourt 45:10
am I love it I love I love diversity like that I love I should see my library on Audible it's insane thank you both so much for your time I know that you're very busy and I'm really, really super appreciate you being on the show. If you liked this episode, go ahead and hit me up on LinkedIn at Auntie belts McCourt, and let me know and if you really want to say thank you please leave a review on Apple podcasts. Thanks so much