Ep499: Padmini Janaki – Nothing Is More Important Than Health

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever, stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks, but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. To reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I have created from the lessons I've learned from more than 470 guests, it's time to start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest Popmoney Janicki Popmoney. Are you ready to join our mission?

Padmini Janaki 00:51
Hello, Andrew. So excited. So excited. I've been listening to your podcasts. And finally being here is so beautiful. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Andrew Stotz 01:01
Yeah. And I'm excited to have you on and having listened a little bit, you and I have discussed a little bit about your story. I think that there's a lot of value for young people to hear your story and what you learn. So let me introduce you to the audience. Pat man, he is the CEO and co founder of mine and mom, an AI app that predicts pregnancy abnormalities and cures. She is also the author of myths and millennials, which has 35,000 readers worldwide, her mission is to save women's health globally, and stop maternal death. My goodness, Popmoney, take a minute and tell us a bit about the value that you bring to the world.

Padmini Janaki 01:47
When it comes to value, it is not always about you know, money, or the kind of value that we believe in the real value is health. And as women, we go through four to 22% of some of the other types of health issues, and the number is only increasing every single year PCOD is increasing. Cervical cancer is increasing, and so much more. So my one value that could help another women is that, bring that awareness, bring that value of the whole health. So the women can be aware and be sure about their own health. And that's one value I bring in. But apart from that, I also like first generation graduates becoming something in their, you know, in the ecosystem, because it's so important. It's the starting point. And countries like India, we should see more and more educated and graduates people coming in there. You could have seen people from India, you know, doing really well in the US on in the public, you know, companies publicly traded companies, but then there are quite a lot of people in tier two, tier three cities still will have to come and try for it. So that's on another end I'm very passionate about.

Andrew Stotz 03:10
Yeah, I mean, having traveled throughout different cities in India, you definitely get the feeling like it's competitive. And a young person coming out of universities is really, really facing a lot of challenges, to get into the right places to do the right things. And then you've got family pressures that you know, parents want you to do this and that. And I just can definitely I could feel that the pressures are on in India. And so it's going to be interesting to hear more, I think now it's, I think it's good time to transition into the question, it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to an Intel us your story.

Padmini Janaki 03:54
I'm sure when you first asked me for this podcast, when I was thinking about the worst investment of course, I was thinking about the money invested in stocks. I was thinking about, you know, times invested on relationships, and so and so. But then I realized there is one thing that I have done, which had done something really bad to my entire a decade of life. And I felt listeners can have a lot of takeaway from that investment, bad investment, that at least they can stop doing it at one point in time. So like you said, in India, it's very, very competitive. It's because the biggest pro pros of you know being in India, and also the cons of being in India as the population requires a lot of people like you see people everywhere. 1.7 billion to be precise, right? Everywhere. every corner, every city, it's highly highly populated. So for you to stand out and be something unknown. Something is very, very, very hard. And for somebody like me who comes from a lower middle class family of a single mother, it was not a choice to be successful, it was the thing you are born and raised to be successful, to be financially stable. So I was in that manual mode, I came out of my university, and then I started working. And from that day one, I've been working, working, and only working, I've been thinking, going up in the corporate ladder, and going up and you know, salary getting more resorts or making more money is the only thing I need to be doing. So in that case, I wasn't like focusing on anything else. My focus was only on how to be successful. So here, success is very subjective, right? But my version of success was making money. And then being very popular and being very, you know, getting promotions every year, and so many things, which sounds very funny to me, right? When I, you know, reflect on what I have done. So I was doing that non stop, like, even I haven't taken more maternity leaves. In India, they give you more maternity leaves, and you know, they give you that leeway of taking some more time, but then I was like, no, like, in that case, I will, you know, go back in the career journey, then I have to go back to work very soon. So things are things have been so crazy, but you know, I thought this is the path to the right level of success, in which I call it by itself. Then one fine day, in my late 20s, I forgotten to feed my daughter, like I was having a late night calls. Most of the clients are in the US, most of your counterparts are in the US. And then you go on and on and on. Then I forgotten to give food to my daughter. And that is when she slept with our food. And then the next morning, she told me man, did you know that you forgot to give me food? That was the moment. I was like, Hey, wait, what am I doing? Am I doing the right thing in my life? Am I like losing out everything? Because I'm investing all my energy, all my myself into this career. So yeah, that was the moment.

Andrew Stotz 07:27
And so how did it change? When you went from that? I mean, I can see that moment and awareness that you got with your daughter. Just give us a wrap up of how did it change? Sure.

Padmini Janaki 07:39
So I think one thing that really, really changed my perspective after that was, I got into yoga, I got into meditation, though I am from India, where yoga and meditation was born. It's so funny when I went to the US, all of my friend who was from the US with American, he told me, he taught me I think you should try yoga. And it's so funny, you know, are you seeing Do you think it's working out? He said, Yeah, it is working out, you know, you should do this, ask now for the mental health and all that. I was like, Okay, it's interesting. So maybe, you know, let me try it. And then he sent me some of Indian gurus and their meditation videos. And they Oh my God, I've never heard of them. Let me just go give a try. So I think that was the moment of change. The whole thing is like funny because, you know, it came from Robert Clarkson who is from the US and but that to me is the changing moment and where I started focusing on myself, a on my mental health be on my well being on overall fitness. And that's when I started thinking clearer.

Andrew Stotz 08:55
Got it? So tell us what lessons did you learn from this experience?

Padmini Janaki 08:59
So first thing, first lesson that I've learned is nothing or nobody is as important as you are. You have to invest a lot on yourself. It could be working out it could be, you know, focusing on your overall mental health, or you could be learning something new. That's so important. So I've been thinking in corporate life that you know, I have to be working hard impressing the boss, impressing the people around, that's the only way to be successful in life. But then I realized, I think just being on yourself and then doing something you are passionate about can take you like 10 Next of what hitters forget about career, ladder or corporate ladder, whatever, right? You can be on your own, make the same money, bring the same value, and give a lot more value and be happy about it and have a much more balanced life.

Andrew Stotz 09:57
Maybe I'll share a little takeaway. Is that I got I mean, the first one is, you know, you're talking about health. If we don't have health, we have nothing you can. So you know, I, I do yoga. And I've learned about it in Thailand here. And so I've done it. And I really get a lot of benefit from it. And I think the harder that you work on it, you know, the more that you do it, the more benefit you get. It's interesting, because when you think about health, the world is a sick place. Nowadays, if you go back to when I graduated from high school in 1982, as an example, this current pandemic wouldn't even have happened, because obesity was almost non existent. The quality of the food that people ate was still very, very good. And we weren't also trying to extend older people's lives through pharmaceuticals. And I think that's something that I see a lot of happening when particularly I learned a lot about that with my mom. And, and when she was in the nursing home, they said, it's just a cycle of drugs, basically. And, and this, this, I think you're what you remind me is to go back to taking care of our health, no government's going to do it, no company is going to do it, you have to take responsibility for your health. The second thing that I take away is, you know, I built a corporate career for 20 years. And I basically, I almost never went out after work, I went home. And I didn't stay late. I did start early, a lot of days. But I never, I never ran myself down to the ground. And I saw a lot of people doing that. And basically, I just didn't do it. And I had a successful career. And I just want to highlight that to the listeners out there. Like, if, if you think that you've got to be a slave to the business, you've got to be on that hamster wheel all the time, you know, your boss is going to perceive that and they're just going to dump stuff on you. But if you have limits, and you set those limits, people are going to respect that. And so the point is, you don't have to destroy yourself and your health in a business, you can set your limits. So those are the two things that I take away. Anything that you would add to that.

Padmini Janaki 12:17
Absolutely, absolutely. Health is one thing and you understanding yourself, sometimes, you know, you need a lot of attention with health, and you need a lot of attention with, you know, being yourself or having the right boundaries, absolutely these, this is something you can define it for yourself, and you will have to spend time to find it for yourself.

Andrew Stotz 12:39
So based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn in your life, what one action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate.

Padmini Janaki 12:49
So one action item that I really think that we can do is learning at least one thing new every single day, like you know, you put it on your calendar for 4:30pm, or you know, 6:30am, whenever you're comfortable with like 30 minutes, an action item. And in this moment, in this 30 minutes or one hour, I will learn something new, it could be reading a book or watching a YouTube video which talks about something new, or it could be something irrelevant to you also, like you know, you could be in a management sector and you learn something about agriculture, it's still okay, this over time culminates into something exciting. And it gives you a different level of ideas, different level of perspective, start thinking about people around you. And it also gives you a lot of topics to talk in conversations, and so on. So I think this is one habit that I have picked in the late 20s. And really, really helps me when I think of anything else

Andrew Stotz 13:49
that's inspiring. And I know from my own experience in this world is that if you devote yourself to learning, any topic in let's say you consistently learn on that one topic. Very quickly, you'll be at the top of your, you know, your cohort of other people that are working in your area, because most people aren't. So what's one resource that you would recommend that our listeners could benefit from?

Padmini Janaki 14:12
When it comes to resource, obviously, you know, I can tell about my book and you know, book I have written and I can tell you about my YouTube channel and so on. But then I personally think I personally think books are like, you know, the source of everything. And you can pick any book depending upon the life and the phase of your life. And read that book. If you do not have the habit of reading books. I think it's high time you pick that reading habit, or at least audio books. Audiobooks are pretty good too. I mean, you sort of get that like a fruit juice. You can just drink in a few minutes, right? So books are the best and if you think you want to read about The whole ecosystem of how women's life is in India, the kind of myths that women live in India, my book myths, and millennials are something that I refer to if you think you are in the phase where you would love to learn about the women's life and the myths in India, please give a read to myths and millennials available on Amazon.

Andrew Stotz 15:20
Fantastic. And we'll have a link to that book, as well as YouTube and all your other resources. So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Padmini Janaki 15:33
So my number one goal is to do with my startup, my midsummer, sorry, can I say that? Yeah. Okay. I'm with my startup mind, and more. So with mine and more, we've been serving 50,000 pregnant women already. Now the plan is to go into infertility, and also more women. And in next five years, we want to serve 20 million women. And in next 12 months, we're going to be serving 500k women, which is, which is the biggest goal and then help them have a better health. And this is my biggest goal. And I'm passionate about it. I'm not like you know, running everywhere to get that. But I since I'm like, super happy and passionate about doing that. It comes naturally and beautifully.

Andrew Stotz 16:22
Fantastic. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com Right now, and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude Pat money, I want to thank you again, for joining our mission. On behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status returning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Padmini Janaki 16:55
I'm so happy to be here. Like I said and listeners and Andrew, whatever you're doing, it could be very smaller, very big. Whatever you're doing today, when you're listening to it, do it with your full heart and you know, just love that and do it and I'm sure it's gonna turn out to be something even more lovelier. So, have a great day and have a great year ahead.

Andrew Stotz 17:18
And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, this podcast is about one guest. One story, one mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.