The Head & the Heart with Ravi & Shaman Ahuja - podcast episode cover

The Head & the Heart with Ravi & Shaman Ahuja

Sep 14, 202338 minSeason 2Ep. 6
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Episode description

Think you know big data?

This week we explore the world of AI-powered transportation with Ravi Ahuja, the founder and CEO of Optym, and Shaman Ahuja, the Deputy CEO. Ravi shares his journey from academia to entrepreneurship and explains how it can take millions of data points to solve certain supply chain problems.

Shaman shares how he has been shaped by his father's experiences and his own pursuit of success while exploring the what the future may look like as he takes over the family business one day.

Working as a father-son duo they navigate complex dynamics by sharing how their life principles intertwine with the way they conduct business. 




Brought to you by Rapido and Bitfreighter.

Transcript

The Origins and Vision of Optum

Nate

Hello and welcome to the Bootstrapers Guide to Logistics , the podcast highlighting founders doing it the way that doesn't get a lot of attention . We're here to change that by sharing their stories and inspiring others to take the leap .

Ravi

It's a roller coaster ride . You might ultimately fail .

Nate

That's when I kind of knew I was on to something .

Shaman

It was very hard . It truly is building a legacy .

Speaker 3

The more life you live , the more wisdom you have , because we are where we're supposed to be , kind of answering the call . Don't shoulder entrepreneurship on your own .

Nate

I'm your host , nate Shoots . Let's build something together from the ground up . Good afternoon , everybody , and welcome back to the show this week . I'm excited we're going to explore a long journey from academia to entrepreneurship and how to navigate the dynamics of business and family .

We also have a first for you today , in that we have two guests that I'm pleased to get to introduce . The first is a professor , author , researcher and algorithm designer who also happens to be a founder and CEO of Optum , ravi Ahuja , followed by supply chain product management and development expert , as well as deputy CEO of Optum , shaman Ahuja .

Thank you both very much for being here today and so inviting us to this talk . Absolutely . Can we maybe start at the beginning with the origins of Optum and how it came to be in the first place ?

Shaman

As you know I was a professor for 20 plus years . I did my research masters in PhD in the field of network optimization how to move goods in a network in the best possible way Then finished my PhD in 1982 and then I started my academic career span almost 20 years . I started in India at IIT , kanpur , then MIT and then to the University of Florida .

I've written quite a number of research papers 100 , wrote very popular textbook in the field of networks . After doing all that I got some board . I saw that I'm teaching similar kind of courses , supervising students writing papers , but my research is not really making an impact . Whatever I'm doing is for academic entertainment .

I write papers on which other researchers write more papers , and I'd build and write more papers on top of that , but it's not really making an impact to the industry . So I thought let me do something different , do something useful . Whatever research I have done , how can I bring to the industry and make some meaningful impact ?

It's focusing from political side to the practical and societal impact side .

Nate

There seem to be few folks that can make that transition . If you're in business and you move to academia , it sometimes feels like it moves way too slow and the pace of it is glacier like . Or if you're on the academic side and moving into practice . I've heard of several struggling to make that change .

So have you always found yourself to be adaptable that way ?

Shaman

I would say few things you need in order to make the transition . First , that you need to become a salesperson . You know that the main reason 95% of the startups don't survive the first five years is they could not maintain the revenue to keep the business money . So when you are an academic you're in professor , your salary is guaranteed .

But when you start a venture , the salary is not guaranteed . The higher the salary is not guaranteed unless you bring money to support that . And without regular source of income coming , you can't support employees and employees won't work with you .

So many academicians have tried to become entrepreneurs but they have failed for the reason that they could not maintain a sufficient revenue stream to keep the company going . So the first transition I need to make was to turn myself into a salesperson . In the first 10 years of opt-in I was the only salesperson .

So I let go of my academic height and bought the sales side . So I started visiting companies , started selling our technology , our skillset . So that's a transition . So I had to adapt myself and I would say that one day they were successful , that we were able to successfully sell our skills .

Nate

What was the vision that you had for Optum at that point ? Because it had to evolve over time , I would imagine .

Shaman

Actually Bisan has not evolved that much . Actually , I wanted even at that time , if I was asking what you wish to do , I said that I want an option to run transportation in different modes . My business has all been consistent that right now humans are running the business , running the operations . I want algorithm to run the operation .

So my business has been AI over 20 years ago when it was cool . So now we are thinking about algorithms running , ai running . But it has been all along . So in 2000 , when they started , my business was that machines running , either running it or augmenting human decision making . This is complete human , right now manual . How we can augment it by algorithm .

So that we've been all along . Bisan has not changed . But however , the discipline we are applied , that Bisan has changed . When it started it was focused more on railroad , then went into the airlines and then into trucking . They are now getting back into airlines because the need has not changed . Transformation has not happened .

We have still out of 100% decision making , maybe 5% is algorithmic , 95% is still manual . So I think that we want to be a leading player in the space of a Bisan augmentation , bisan automation , bisan optimization in the field of transportation .

Nate

Well , shaman , I'm going to kick it over to you then . Welcome to the conversation . Thank you for being here as well . I'd love to hear your perspective , then , on how do you describe Optim to somebody who doesn't know transportation or logistics at all .

Ravi

Yeah , so a lot of buzzwords Oftentimes it has to do with . So I like to use an analogy . So I say we optimize operations and the analogy that I always use , or the example that I always use , is the airlines , which is where I spent majority of my career at Optim .

So to give an example of a type of problem that we'll solve , we entered into the airline space by doing work with Southwest Airlines .

The problem that they were looking to solve was at the time they had around 600 , 650 planes , several thousand flights on a daily basis , and then a scheduler needs to come up with an optimal timing for each of those flights , an optimal routing for each of those flights and also optimal assignment . They have four different self-leads .

How do you determine which plane type should operate each flight and how it should be routed through their network ? And the timing of one flight affects the timing of the next flight . And then there's also passengers connecting from various origin cities and going to various destination cities .

So the timing of one flight impacts the passenger itineraries where passengers traveling across various odys . You can imagine the complexity of that problem across those thousands of flights on a daily basis . And then there's a concept of the patterns by variance over day of week .

So just describing that problem , people see the magnitude of the work that we do and I would say airlines is just one of the many areas that we have created an impact .

Nate

Airlines is a great example , I think also because it's relatable . People understand that as passengers , and it was only a handful of months ago that one of the or a handful of the major airlines experienced significant delays and disruptions because they didn't have modern labor planning equipment or software to model .

When do we need to have the right number of pilots and flight attendants and gate attendants ?

And when it all snarls into a big mess , the general public really begins to care about airlines because it starts to affect them and it's such a multivariate , moving problem that there's no way a human mind could keep track of all of that and come up with a solution .

A technology question for you how many different decision points or nodes or layers of an algorithm does it take to do airline planning well ?

Ravi

So , dad , do you remember what the problem size was for Southwest in terms of the number of variables ? That's generally how we define it .

Shaman

The number of variables were in millions when you formulated the entire problem , and so millions of variables , and when you have to decide the values of those millions of variables , so the number of possible combinations will go into trillions . Just finding a feasible solution , feasible schedule that meets all of their official constraints and optimize certain objective .

Even that was a very complex and challenging business problem . So you need to do fair amount of R&D , apply different techniques , hit and trial . So it took us about a year for us to really solve the problem .

Ravi

Yeah , and the early versions of the model would take 24 to 36 hours to run .

Nate

For how long of a solution Would that create ? A solution that would last for seven days , or what does that look like ? One week , one week , okay . So take 36 hours to solve for seven days .

Ravi

But it's not exactly the seven days because , the way most of your online schedule , they'll have a specific period and then they'll build a typical week for that period and then copy and paste that week over the duration of the period and then make adjustments on specific so that typical week could be for two months .

Shaman

Let me also interject . They generally they create a schedule about nine to 12 months ahead of time , so they spend about a month .

They have a entire , not a planning department which creates hundreds of scenarios under hundreds of operational constraints , parameter values , analyze those scenarios , find one scenario and then push into production nine months ahead of time , so they have a month to find a solution .

So , even if the model takes 24 to 30 hours to run , they have hundreds of scenarios running in parallel . So there's a lot of number crunching taking place and during data and analyze scenarios before they leave for home , they actually hit the run button . So next day most scenarios are there for them to realize .

So for a month you're analyzing hundreds of scenarios from different point of view , find the best scenario , you push into production which will become live nine months from .

Nate

So , as supply chain continues to get more and more complex , with more parties and digital connections and such , do you see that as just a massive opportunity for Optum to go out there and capture that complexity and distill it down to something that humans can actually understand ? Do you just see opportunity ?

Shaman

everywhere . I see this opportunity everywhere , the sun making all across the entire transportation business , even in non-transportation as well . We saw this problem of creating airline schedules months ahead of time , but let us look at the day of operations . In the day of operations , things don't go according to the plan .

The aircraft had a maintenance out for two , three hours and that pain was going to take other flights . Now those flights need to be cancelled or you have to redirect some other plane to do it . It leads to passengers missing their connections , crew missing their connections After meeting their maintenance .

It creates a disruption and this leads to the cascading impact years , much more so how to recover , how to create a new plan so that passengers are still able to reach their destinations aircraft go for maintenance is . This is something mathematically quite complex because you have to do it in minutes . You don't have hours there .

You have to decide quickly and this is an open problem . Right now , most airlines are doing it pretty much manually . And a big opportunity that how airlines can do deviation or disruption management using algorithm , using AI .

Ravi

Yeah , I would say there's basically two classifications or problems . There's planning solutions and execution solutions . So the work that we did in the airline space , it was a planning solution . So how can we create the great schedule on paper and publish it , and then we'll see what happens nine months from now when the plane actually takes off ?

Then there's the actual execution piece , on the day of operations , of routing the plane and making sure that the pilots and the crew are there , making sure the gate attendants are there , making sure that people below the plane are working efficiently . So there's that is obviously way more complicated the actual execution piece .

So if you can create a flight schedule on an Excel sheet and share it with you , I can create all of the operations of an airline on Excel sheet , or I probably could probably take 50 sheets .

Nate

Well , you mentioned Excel .

Speaker 3

That's to me big data is when there's two tabs on an Excel sheet and for you , you're looking at this as no , the big data we got to get into the trillions before it's big .

Nate

I'm glad that there are people with different skill sets in the world , because I simply could not do that . I have my own unique gifts and abilities , and it is not math , it is not algorithms , and yet the world runs on that and it requires that we have rare folks like you , ravi , that can actually understand that .

I can maybe talk around it or about it , but I don't actually have a depth of understanding in it . And yet , when I'm 30,000 feet in the air on a Boeing 747 , I'm very , very glad that somebody did the math to make sure that that would work .

It also brings up a human part of it , in that we all each do have distinct strengths and weaknesses , or things that we enjoy or things that we avoid .

So , with both of you as leaders in the company , are there particular areas that you love doing , that you could do 20 hours a day , and it's not even work , and are there other areas that you think , man , I really don't want to do that ?

Shaman

Yeah , I think as an entrepreneur , you do not have the privilege to say this is not my job . Your job is to do everything . It is just like your baby . You won't say that , well , I will do this for my baby , I will not do this for him . You have to do everything that needs to do in order to help the baby .

So when it is your baby , you do everything possible . You will go and sell , you will market , you will write , you will program , build algorithm , you will do human resources , accounting , finance , it . You will do everything possible .

So if you say that , if you have these preferences , you're not very successful , so you have to let go of the preferences , I would say one is that I've been successful , that I did everything that needed to be done , and I think that has been , and every entrepreneur who does that number one , let go of the preferences and do everything that needs to be done

to get the

Focus, Family Dynamics in Business

work done . Number one second thing is focus that you have to be extremely focused , like , for example , I've been . What I'm doing right now is what I did 45 years ago and I was doing a master's thesis . So depth is very important . With focus comes the depth , some like a 10,000 hour rule .

If you want to be an expert in this area , you have to spend at least 10,000 hours . So focus is extremely important . I don't think I have any special skills the kind of intelligence I have thousands of people have that intelligence but I've been extremely focused and I've done the same thing for 20 years in the academics .

I remain very focused , develop expertise and then next 20 years I hone that expertise for solving practical problems . So with this 40 plus years of expertise has come the insights and the knowledge that makes you optimally in a very unique position to solve the business problem , which I would say that no one in the world can do .

That has come with 40 years of constant focus , digging deep at one place again and again went down 1000 feet . I would say that is needed for success . Let go of these preferences . Do whatever that needs to be done . Become so focused , such a deep expertise and sense of excellence . Don't do things incomplete . Have a sense of excellence .

Ravi

Whatever you do , it has to be so , going back to your BB analogy , everybody loves playing with a baby and watching them sleep , but they probably don't enjoy cleaning up after their throw up or poop . So you can't say that you don't have a preference between the two .

So I'll give you an example of something I know for a fact you don't like , which is at the end of every year we have this thing called performance evaluation and we have to determine evaluations for all the employees and come up with new salaries and determine who we're promoting and to what level .

And the month after that is always a crap shoot because inevitably you're going to upset some people and no matter how generous you are , it will not be good enough . So I would say that is an aspect . There's no way you can say you enjoy doing it and , yes , it is a necessary part of the business .

You will still have a preference that , hey , this is just a necessary evil associated with the job . Would you agree to that ?

Shaman

Yeah , you have the preferences . At the same time , the work needs to be done . You will do it , irrespective of preferences .

Ravi

Yes . Now , in that light , what is the thing that you do enjoy doing Like algorithm design , creating PowerPoints ? I love playing in Excel and even just formatting Excel sheets . I do that for my own personal enjoyment , for my personal life outside of work , so this is just something that I could spend days in Excel . What about you ?

Shaman

What I like most is designing systems and solving business problems designing interfaces , designing algorithms , getting those implemented and packaging . So I would say solution scoping , designing and implementation is what I like most . Moving forward as the company grows . I would like to spend more time there and less time in due to their administrative functions .

Ravi

So basically , solving new problems is something that I think he values highly . That is both good and bad , because sometimes the best thing for the business is not to solve new problems but improve the solution to an existing problem . That's where that focus piece comes in . So historically we've solved problems that we probably should not have solved .

It was just a distraction in the grand scheme of the business .

Nate

I can relate , because I love organizing the work I'm about to do . I get satisfaction out of having everything in its place . Now , sometimes that comes at the expense of actually getting the work done , because I prepare to get the work done , and that's enjoyable .

I also relate to you , shaman , in that when my wife and I got married , we had to come up with a guest list and then where everyone was going to sit . She was still getting to know me at this time and I had a color-coded Excel chart with all of these different layers . I mean to me this is big data .

Now I've got four variables and she looked at this spreadsheet and she said , oh , my goodness , I know who you are now for the very first time . That's what you like to do . And I said , yeah , I could spend hours on this , because I personally enjoy seeing things in their place and organized , and so you and I share that in common .

So , shaman , let's actually move over to you then , too . We're talking about the work of raising a baby and the good and the bad parts . What has it been like growing up as the son of an entrepreneur and then stepping into that business knowing that you were the actual baby that he raised , and then you became an employee . What was that like ?

Ravi

So I would say for me , my dad wasn't always an entrepreneur . For a lot of my early years he was a teacher and growing up I actually wanted to follow in his footsteps and be a teacher , but I also wanted to make a lot of money . I remember going to him . There was just this like as a kid I was obsessed with money .

Literally , I would just collect money .

He actually used to incentivize my grades by paying me for every aid that I got , and then I would collect all of that and I just had like a stack of cash that I would just accumulate in over the years and I would literally just fan it out , look at it and all its glory , and then I would put it back and I was also became like the personal bank within

the family . So whenever they like didn't have time to run with the ATM and needed cash , I literally felt like a bank . I was like how much do you need ? I was too young to know the concept of interest . I will say there's a lot of money that I left on the table , but yeah , so I was obsessed with cash .

We would have dinner parties and I would ask guests what their salary was , not knowing that that's not like I'm . Like dad . Does he make more than you ?

Shaman

Actually , once we walked in in his bedroom , he lived upstairs and he had spread all the cash on his bed and he was lying on it Fucking the movies , Just like rolling in money . Rolling in money virtually .

Ravi

I then realized that , ok , maybe teaching is not the right path for me if I'm so obsessed with money or like accumulating wealth . For me it was like my dad's a teacher . I want to be a teacher , I enjoy teaching , I would tutor my friends in school . But I realized that that was not the long term path . So I asked him what I should do .

At the time he had just I think Optum was in his very early stages he was just doing consulting . So for me he was like he's a teacher and he does consulting . And then he was like oh , the world is shifting towards computers , so you should study computer science . And so he sent me down this path .

I don't know whether his intention was to have me come back around and take over the family business at the time or whether he was just saying well , you want to make money , this is a path to make money . So I don't know how manipulative he was at the time .

Shaman

I was not manipulative . Actually I asked him that what you're really good at , what you're passionate about . He said I'm good in math and I'm good in logic , and that was clear that he was that way . I would say you're good in math and logic and you want to pursue that . So you have two disciplines for you .

Since I'm a technical person , either you could pursue math or you can pursue computer science . Both are math based In math you don't make much money . In computer science you do . So I would say that if you want to make money and put in math and logic , you should pursue computer science .

Nate

That's why it's counsel from someone who can calculate things well off into the future , because clearly it worked and now you're working together every day . So what are the dynamics like between the two of you in the business ? How do team members and employees navigate family dynamics ?

Ravi

I would say it has changed over the years and my brother actually is one of the oldest employees , so I have an older brother who also works in the business and he leads the creative department joined right out of college so I knew that when I joined Optum I would be in it for the long haul . So I wanted to get experience doing something outside of Optum .

So I ended up working at the biggest bank on Wall Street where I got a job at Goldman Sachs like complete opposite end of the spectrum of small startup in Gainesville Florida , big bank in Manhattan and I absolutely loved living in Manhattan and I really hated my hometown of Gainesville Florida .

I got to live the New York life , which I loved , but then I would say that charm faded after a while and then I joined Optum and I would say there was definitely a honeymoon phase where it was nice to go from . In Goldman You're basically nobody Like . I was an entry level analyst , thousands of employees there's 5,000 people in the building alone .

I basically had no say to leave that and then join the family business where I have instant clout . Anything I say everybody holds with high regard . So it was nice to just have that instant respect and the family dynamics I would say has changed over the years . Obviously , I'm not the same person I was back in 2014 .

I've grown as an individual contributor and leader and then I'm also , I hope , matured . At the end of the day , I'm still his son , so that sometimes the son will come out rather than the employee .

Nate

Is there ever a full separation between work and home life ? Absolutely not .

Ravi

Like dinner table conversations will be about what's going on in the business . Sometimes my mom will get very upset and then she'll just have to draw a line and like , no , we're done talking about work , especially when the conversation gets heated .

Nate

I can imagine that makes for interesting conversations . I'd love to be a fly on that wall sometime

Optum's Future and Father-Son Dynamics

. Ravi , I'm curious . As I just mentioned , it was recently Father's Day and you're the father in the room . I'm curious . What do you when you see Shaman at work and living out this life that you had envisioned for him ? Are you proud , are you super excited for the future , for both Optum and for him ?

What do you think of when you step back for a minute , I would say definitely .

Shaman

I want him to lead CEO and do better than what I could do . A teacher and a father feels very proud when their student and children do better than you . So I want him to be much more successful than I have been . I want him to grow it 10 to 100 fold . I want him to be better than myself .

Nate

How will you know , or will there come a point where you know it's time to hand off the reins and you step away ?

Shaman

I would say that that process already started and it's progressing . I would say that it'll be time for me to step aside when I have the confidence that Optum is in good hands and Optum will do as good or better than me if I'm not there , and also somebody that , whatever day to day work I'm doing , that I stopped doing .

Either the work I'm doing right now is done by someone else or by him , and so I'm able to spend less time that I've done in the past , ensuring that companies continue to grow as pace or a better pace than I have done , and all the shareholders , all the investors and investors , are protected . Shaman , how would you respond to that ?

Ravi

So the first question was are you proud of me ? And then the second question was how will you know when I'm ready ? I would say I feel like for him at some point . He's just going to need to take a leap of faith , because if the moment that he's looking for is , let's say , the business unit that I'm leading is profitable , it could be years .

What he might be looking for is hey , does he do the same types of things that I do ? Then that could be never , because I'm a different person . As you mentioned , we're all different and my approach to business is different than his approach to business . So I would manage the business differently .

And if he wants me to be better and take the business to 10x , 100x , by that logic alone I can't manage the business the same as him , because then it'll just be more the same .

Nate

There's a paradox in all of that . This is super interesting . How do you wrestle with that , ravi ?

Shaman

First , of all , whether I'm proud of him . Definitely I'm proud of him .

Ravi

I just wanted to force that out .

Shaman

I think that he brings some skillset which I don't have . I think that , as far as my contribution to Optimus concerned , I think that I'm peaked out in the sense that if you want to grow Optim 10 , 200x , I do not have the ability at this point in time . I can perhaps acquire those , but I'm not interested in acquiring those .

Nate

Well , I know for certain , the next time I'm in Dallas , I want to come to your house and sit at the dinner table and have good food and good conversation and get to watch the dynamics at play Before the dinner table , you'll have to pass through the hot tub , which is where we christen all people that we do business with .

This sounds like there's a whole lot more to this story . What's the backstory on the hot tub ?

Ravi

Well . So my dad said he had to become a salesperson . I would say his primary sales tool was the hot tub , followed by my mom's home cooking and meal , Both used as a sales tool for clients as well as employees as a retention mechanism .

So the early days of Optim , a lot of our team building events really consisted of having the families of early employees come to the house and just hang out , so that it just became a running joke that I thought it was a metaphor . No , no , it's quite literally . You have to go to the hot tub and there's no excuse .

They're like oh , I didn't bring a bathing suit . Oh , we have 20 spares .

Nate

Well , it sounds very welcoming and inviting . Is that part of the culture of Optum , then , as a family run and family owned business , that becomes a key value and how you attract new talent and retain the talent that you have .

Shaman

I would say it is less about family-owned , I want the company to be employee-owned . So right now , still , we have a maintain Optum as an employee-owned company .

Ravi

We have a zero capital to date , so entirely bootstrapped . Now I'm sure that will change in the upcoming year or two . So we're 100% family-owned . And then obviously gave out shares to employees and he's been very generous with how much equity he's given out . So it's very much an employee-owned company .

Nate

Well , congratulations . Bootstrapping is , as you know , so difficult , and to be able to control your own destiny and values , that affords you that opportunity more than any other method .

Shaman

I read someone that whom you should care of first . I like the quote . You take care of employees first , because take care of the employees , employees will take care of the customers and the clients . So how do you take care of the employees ?

First of all , you treat them well , treat them with respect , empower them , ensure that learning and growing , give them decent wages , make it then a good quality of life and give them sufficient stock so they're sufficient upside for them .

So we have a good stock options plan for our team members now , and we also told them this is where we are right now , this we want to get in , and if you get there , everybody will be immensely successful .

Nate

What do you say to people that start companies not with that generosity mindset ? That they try to retain 100% of the equity and the other side of the coin is take as much as you can or accumulate as much as you can and share as little as you can . I personally don't understand that mindset . It doesn't resonate with me .

Shaman

I would say it's not an optimal strategy . If you want to maximize the size of the pie , if you want to increase the pie that is in your share , then it makes sense for you to increase the size of the pie , and reducing the percentage of the pie is fine .

Suppose you have 100% of a pie which is 10 inch diameter , or you take 50% of the pie which is 100 inches diameter . The second option is preferred .

Ravi

Yeah , 100% of $1 million is less than 10% of $1 billion . So it's really about what is the best way to get to $1 billion , and oftentimes it has to do with everybody feeling like it's their company rather than , oh , it's that guy's company .

So if I'm just going to make that guy rich , then I'm less inclined to do my best work and if I'm going to make myself rich , then I'm more inclined to do better work .

So I would say it's in your best interest , if the goal is to grow the organization and have it be tremendously successful , to actually give out parts of the organization to the people that you're going to rely on to help grow it .

Nate

That's a huge part of why I enjoy these conversations and like sharing founder stories .

There's a misguided belief , I think , that there's not just one right or one best path for a founder to take , but that they reach , they're going for a destination and they think they have to do it alone and they don't , and that by actually bringing others into that journey , whether it's through a values-based generosity or a mathematical-based it's better for

business . Those two things can work together to bring people together towards a common goal , even if it's as simple or complicated as scheduling airlines , that it doesn't matter sometimes what the thing is . It's more about how you do that thing in a way that honors people and is built on respect and caring for humanity .

I'm detecting that in both of you , in different languages . I can hear it in different styles On what we know or what you've shared now about the past and the future of Optum . What message would you like to share with your team that can help them get to that next place ?

Shaman

We have told our team that entrepreneurs look for two things First , they want to make a broader impact to the field and second , they want to create financial wealth for themselves and for their team , and so each entrepreneur has to determine that . What is the area of focus where they want to make an impact ?

We have chosen to make an impact in the field of transportation and logistics and bring optimization and AI and using this technology to make an impact . So how can we improve a planet , how to create a better planet ? By making transportation most efficient .

Ravi

At the end of the day , all everybody wants to do is kind of leave their mark on the world . Everybody wants to make an impact and obviously the company wants to make an impact , just because we're a collection of people all working towards this common goal .

What I would say to people is oftentimes I mean , I'm victim to this myself is we often tend to be very inwardly focused . How will this benefit me ? How will this help my career ? How can I acquire this new skill ? How can I stop working in the same thing that I've been working on for ages ? How can I make more money ?

The same way that we talked about growing the pie , the best way to grow the pie is actually give up some of the pie . So it's really to think less about your share of the pie , but think of other people's share of the pie .

So what I would say is the best way to really create an impact is to not look inward but look outward and say how can I help somebody else on my team ? How can I help the customer life ? Or how can I help people around me and by virtue of you helping them , just trust the world will pay you back . So this concept of karma and the golden rule .

I would say that's why my personal core values I generally believe that the more you give , the more you'll get back , just not directly .

Nate

It's a wonderful personal philosophy .

Philosophy of Life and Business Success

It's a question I ask founders , not often on the show , but I like to ask what's your philosophy of life and how do you navigate this complicated world that we live in ? And that's a wonderful answer , and I wish both of you nothing but success .

I'd love to connect with you a year from now and get an update and see how many new folks have come through the hot tub in the kitchen and see how the business is doing and how both of you are growing and learning as individuals and as a family .

So thank you very much for opening up and letting us behind the curtain of the Optum story , and we're all rooting for both of you . Thanks for listening to another episode of the Bootstrapers Guide to Logistics , and a special thank you to our sponsors and the team behind the scenes who make it all possible .

Be sure to like , follow or subscribe to the podcast to get the latest updates . To learn more about the show and connect with the growing community of entrepreneurs , visit logisticsfounderscom . And , of course , thank you to all the founders who trust us to share their stories .

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