I Spent Years Working Hard and Found Out It Was ALL WRONG

Sean Weisbrot: Yasir Drabu is the founder and CEO of Tazaa, Inc. A product design and software development company in the us. I wanted to talk with him because we bonded over the idea of leaving something better off than the way you found it. We got into the psychology of. Improvement in incremental improvement. We talked about climate change, dystopian situations, which would cause us to question whether leaving things better off is even possible. We talked about what he learned from running his business, what he learned from having children, how having children changed his view of the world and, and, uh, working with his clients. So this is a pretty heavy philosophical conversation, but I know that it's something you're going to enjoy. So let's get to it now. Thank you. Yes, sir. We bonded over the idea of leaving something better off than the way we found it. Do you think this is. A common idea that you come across when interacting with other humans?

Yasir Drabu: Yes. I believe in general, uh, I think most, uh, most people who, who I interact with, uh, whether it's in the business world, um, my team members, they're all definitely striving to make things better, uh, in their own way. So I, I would say that's gently true. I mean, I think that's one of the core tenets of.

Sean Weisbrot: Is it though?

Yasir Drabu: Yeah, it's, it's a good question. We can, we can challenge that, but, you know, uh, I'm not a philosopher, I'm a business person. But if you look at, if, if you look at the spectrum of, uh, philosophy on one end you have nihilism, which is a pretty depressing thought, that nothing matters, and then you kind of graduate towards the other end of the spectrum where you try to make some meaning out of life. In some cases, I think, uh, I think in some cases there is, there's, there's, you know, I, I, there are theory, there are some philosophies that, that lend themselves to, uh, this, this tenant where you're leading a good life, which means you are actually trying to, uh. Make things better. Now, having a good life could mean many different things to many people. You know, it could be on a yard, having a good vacation and not doing anything all at all. But for people who try to then search for deeper meaning, uh, this definitely is a gravitational tenant of their, uh, making things better than before, I guess. So based on your definition. I am probably one of the weirdest people you'll ever meet. Okay. Because I feel like I'm an nihilist in that I believe nothing matters because I don't believe there's something after we die. Sure. But even though I de, I believe that, I also believe it's important to not hurt other people. I mean, I look down when I walk to make sure I'm not stepping on insects. Yeah. Even if nothing matters, their life has value to the planet. Yep. And therefore, I have a, I have, uh. Uh, I don't know how, I don't know how to really express it, but basically I'm not allowed to hurt them. It's not my place to, to use any sort of violence. It's not my place to hurt. So I'm kind of like a, a pacifist, nihilist. Passivist, okay. Yeah. Who believes in karma? Something like this. Something like that. So, see, uh, I, I think there's, uh, element of, uh, spirituality in everybody, right? So if you go bored, dogmatic, you get into organized religion, which I'm not gonna touch. But, uh, generally you go from, uh, nihilism to the. I've, I've looked at Sufism, given my background from a, you know, eastern, uh, uh, background, which is also, it's the love of something spiritual to, uh, to, you know, what I really resonate with, which is stoicism, which is, you know, what is the meaning of leading a great, uh, good life? You know, how do you strive to get better? Uh. In my definition that is making the lives of other people a little bit better. Uh, while that, I think, I don't know whether we are wired in the, in the sense, you know, if you spend, uh, you do a shopping spree, most you feel a little bit of high, and then you later. Feel like, you know, generally either that effect wears off or you feel guilty that you've spent on things that don't matter that I've seen both. Whereas when you give or you help somebody, uh, whether it's through charity directly or meaningful work that you do on a day-to-day basis, I think the, uh, the effect of that, just for selfish reasons is, uh, leaves you a little bit happier. At least in my case. It does, and I'm not trying to generalize this and I think it's true of many. So, so this concept that, hey, can we, uh, can we leave the place a little bit better for the, the lives that we touch may have inherently an selfish reason for me to seek that joy out of it. But in the process, if I can make somebody else's life better, uh, in some capacity, whether it is, uh. In our case, from a business standpoint, the software that you're using a little bit better and easier to use are the team who has an aspirational career path, which we are trying to enable or, uh, a client's objective to make meaningful, uh, meaningfully help the people that they're serving. I think that, that, that thread carries in sub capacity. I'm not saying it's all or nothing, but it, it definitely. Uh, goes from that, uh, you know, at least takes away from yes, nothing matters, to be honest. I, I feel sometimes I am, I, I don't think there's, you die and you're done. But, um, but what, what, what are the life that you have here and the fact that we are conscious animals? What, what do we, what do we do to make it better for us in the current situation and for our future generations? And, you know, how do you, how do you live in harmony with nature and. The people around us, I guess, uh, you know, as you said, you don't wanna hurt any animals. I, I think we should be preserving ecosystems as well, and that that also hurts them. Right. So, yeah. Right.

Sean Weisbrot: And, and for that same reason, I don't consume animals. I don't eat meat. I don't eat fish. And this is something that I've been doing for four and a half years. And does it make me feel better about myself? Does it make me look at the world any differently? No. But at least I know I'm not hurting animals. Sure. And so that, you know, it, it's not something I like, walk up to someone and say, ah, you know, you shouldn't kill animals. Right. There's other, you know, and everyone's on a different journey. That's, this is kind of a, a tangent, I guess. Let's, let's avoid the, I'm gonna avoid the tangent. Just like you wanna avoid the political aspect of it or the religious aspect of it. Fair, fair enough. How do you. Feel like you came across this idea of wanting to do something better?

Yasir Drabu: Uh, I think it, it, it, it's been an iterative evolution like everything else. Right? So you, you distill down, uh, you distill down, uh, uh, an idea of how, you know how. You, you start where you start, right? So for example, when, when, when you're just barely trying to make ends meet, you don't care. You're just, just like, I need to do some work, uh, on some money so that I can establish a baseline. So from there, your ambitions kind of scale. Okay, now what else can I do? Right? So it, uh, you can do ma there's so many paths and so many journeys. For me, what resonated with me was, hey, uh, we, we, we did, we built a software that helped actually, uh. A patient do X, Y, ZI, I don't wanna get into the specifics of those incidents, but really what happened was we built some software that was, uh, helping, uh, monitor and communicate better with patients. Uh, and those outcomes really helped the patient, uh, in certain situations get. You know, get, uh, scanned. And they, they were able to prevent something that would have really hurt them, uh, if they hadn't taken care of it in a timely manner. So we built some of that software. I was like, that story stuck with me more than how much I actually made building that software. Right. So it was like, wow, we actually built something that. Help pe people in real life to, uh, to save somebody's life. That, that, that being the extreme case. But then as we continued building different software, uh, we've heard things like, Hey, what you built for us saved us hundreds of hours, and that's the direction we are eventually evolving as humanity. Right? So, so this is, I'll, I'll get to that in a second, but. Uh, these are the factors that are like, okay, this is the part that I would like to pick, right? So where I can, uh, I can find meaningful ways to help, uh, help the people that I can in touch with, whether it's immediate friends, family, my team as a whole, and our clients, and anybody I, whose life I can touch. How do I make it, how I, uh, how can I help in any meaningful way to. Uh, make it better. So this kind of evolved over time. I, I don't think it's a, it's like a aha moment that one morning I woke up and this is what it is. It, you kind of iterate and you have life experiences that kind of permeate into your thought process and your daily actions that slowly, uh, shape your, you know, as you get older. And those things kind of start shaping how, how you want to lead the rest of your life. So,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah, I mean, when I look at. The way I do business, it's all about solving problems for people. I've always enjoyed the process of solving a problem. So for example, I just got off of a call literally five minutes ago with a potential client who has an app that they sell that help, uh, people who are photographers to. Speed up the process of editing. So not just, uh, pho photographers, but also videographers mm-hmm. To edit faster using AI tools that they've built. Mm-hmm. And they were selling a lot, but then meta changed their algorithms and their ad spend got messed up, which caused them their revenue to tank and their accounts got banned from meta. And so they're, they're encountering all of these roadblocks to re renewing their success that they had. You know, over the last few years. And so I looked at it as, well, there's two things we can do. One, we can get you this kind of a thing that'll help you do this. And then we, I got another person who can do so. I, my brain works like that. It's like, okay, well this is your problem. I have the solution. The solution comes from two different service providers. They do two different things. This is what they can do. Do you wanna introduce them? And I, I got one of the. People on the call live just right there. I was like, Hey, I need you on the phone right now. And he's like, okay, cool. He jumped on the call and we continued talking about it with the, the potential client. 'cause I wanna move as fast as possible because this is painful for the business. Mm-hmm. If they didn't have this problem preventing them from serving their customers, then we wouldn't be talking.

Yasir Drabu: Right. Right.

Sean Weisbrot: So, but the original question I was asking you was. What happened in your life that made you want to dedicate yourself to solving problems in a way that helps people?

Yasir Drabu: I, uh, was there a, was there a single episode or event that led with Probably not, right? No. So it's, it's, it's been, it's been, it's been incremental, right? So it's been, uh, it kind of has a self. Perpetuating feedback loop where you do something small and then it helps somebody, and then you're like, okay, can I do this? At a larger scale and larger scale and larger scale. So as I said, there were some, um, maybe it started in college when I was helping people build their computers and they were like, man, buying in India, buying a Dell, uh, desktop is too expensive. I said. It's only six components, right? You, you need, you need a motherboard and, uh, and a graphics card and a processor and some memory and a hard drive. How hard is it to build? So I go help my friend. Instead of spending maybe $2,000 in India, which was a significant, we got it done, done in like, uh, $900, just buying off the shelf components. So it started there maybe, uh, again, and then it, it, it evolved into, uh, helping, uh. Helping people. Uh, when I came here, I, I, I, I did some work at, uh, on, on campus. I could simply do my job and leave it as is. They're like, Hey, we need this data from here to here and, uh, let's, let's get that data. Uh, as a student who's getting paid minimum wage, you know, you're like, sure, I can do that and move on with my life. But instead, I had a conversation with a lot of different, uh, people in business. Uh, well this is actually a broader problem. Every time we have students come in, we had to pull this data from seven different sources and I helped them build a centralized, uh, API, and this is 20 years ago in college. I said now, and I spoke to somebody about four years ago. They were still using that same framework. They had modernized it, of course, a little bit. Wow. But they were still using that same framework to get that data through that. So. I don't know whether that was, I don't know where that comes from. Maybe it comes from the fact that I, I'm from a little village in India, KMIR and I, I've always worked my way to challenge the status quo, but. That that always was there. How do we make things better and easier and why? And asking the questions before just jumping blindly into doing things. I think that those small successes and feedback from, Hey, okay, this what you actually built 20 years ago for us, actually helped us save hundreds of hours and made our lives easier. While building other systems like lock access control, onboarding of new residents in the, uh, on campus. A lot of things were made easier by that, right from there to then eventually, uh, you know the example I gave you, we built some medical software, uh, for a screening company that helped save some lives to, uh, me going to New York and, uh, sitting in a cab and I'm like, I. I can, I see his app and he's selecting the trip. I'm like, that software looks familiar. And two seconds later I'm like, oh my God, that's the software we built. And he's like, this has made my life so much easier because I can get all my dispatch information right, right here. And while it's not a Uber disruptor, but it made their life easier at that point. So, so I think it kept scaling in that sense to, uh, so iteratively, I think it's like that continuous feedback loop on what resonates, what makes you, uh, you know. What makes you get up in the morning and go to work? What inspires you? Everybody has different, uh, motivations and inspirations based on their life's journey and experiences. So it's hard to say Mine is, mine is my journey, but, um, it's still evolving so. Hopefully that answers the question To some degree.

Sean Weisbrot: It would've been nice to hear something like earlier in your childhood, but you know, college is still a formative time in your life. So,

Yasir Drabu: yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: Um, that's still pretty cool on both accounts. Helping them to, uh, centralize information and for the drivers to make it so they can see their dispatches is pretty cool. Um, I think for me, one of the first things that I remember. That was inspirational for me in this regard was that my dad is a dentist and he had his own business and I spent a majority of my childhood watching him. You know, I'd go there several days a week and I'd hang out for a few hours sometimes, and I would talk with the patients and I would talk with the employees, and I was like, you know, five, six years old, 7, 8, 9. I got to know their, their names, their stories, their family members, you know, why they were there and what my dad was doing on them. And you'd go in and you see these people have pain and you'd see them walk out and they'd be happy because people are afraid of the dentist. And my dad made them feel comfortable. That's hard to do. And, and not only is that difficult to do, but it's difficult to do such a high quality job that people are satisfied the first time around. With the quality of, of the result and seeing how my dad felt good about helping those people to feel better about themselves and to get out of pain and to fear the dentist less, I think that's a really inspiring thing, and that, I think that was one of the things that motivated me to want to be like that. And the first job I ever had, well, I, I worked for him, but. Um, the second job I had, I was, uh, a camp counselor, uh, in college. And then my first job as an adult, I was a teacher. Uh, I was taught Engli, uh, English to, to non-natives. Obviously I was living in China, so that's like one of the easiest jobs to be able to get overseas. So my entire teenage college and in and twenties was around. Helping people, serving people, teaching them skills. So I think that was, I, I think being around my dad as a kid kind of brought me towards all those things. And my major was psychology. So I learned about how people work so that I will know how to help them. That's,

Yasir Drabu: that's beautiful. I mean, you have a very, uh, you know, here typically your parents serve as a lot of inspiration and in my life too, they have, uh, has it been a singular thing? Probably not. But they, they've, the values that they instill and how they approach life and how, uh, how. How they have guided me over the years has been a lot. I mean, I cannot distinctly articulate a story like yours, but, uh, there's been a, there's been a lot of small, uh, things that over the period of time have helped. Now, what has been unique in my journey, as you know, growing up, I ended up, I did my, uh, education in India and I. Ended up going to a, a Christian missionary school. I was in a boarding school, which was a astrom where, uh, where, which was largely driven by Hindu philosophy and I, I, I've been exposed to multiple religions and their theologies, so that, that helped me kind of distill that most of these things are while the, if. Ceremony and the dogma out of it. At, at its core, uh, their, their message is to serve others and, uh, you know, uh, help others. Right? So that, that seems to be a driving force, even, you know, if it, if you take it at the distal value and. My personal experiences in helping others and, uh, and how it made me, uh, feel and think have, have, have, have constantly reinforced that same, how do you, how do you do, how do you do things to make life better? You, you mentioned that AI story just now. I think ultimately the people who have the brainpower to build the AI systems and models, they're doing the same thing. Ultimately, we're as humans. Designed to work seven to nine every day. And you know, our eight to five in most cases. Uh, uh, if, if AI makes us more productive and we truly get to like a four day work week and people can actually enjoy time with family and friends, uh, and still we maintain the global productivity levels at the same thing. Is that a good thing? Uh, you know, do do we get more free time or does it actually devolve into being joblessness, which is, which is a dystopian view of ai. But I think there's a, there's a, there's a spectrum in between where the optimists are hoping we can, uh, we can appeal to our higher self and actually spend time on what makes us more human in forming human connections and doing other things. So. Um, again, they're trying to make the world a better place in their own way, I guess.

Sean Weisbrot: So there's two ways that I, I'm thinking, I want to take this conversation and I'm not sure. One of them is kind of dystopian and one of them is kind of religious. Take your pick.

Yasir Drabu: Oh boy, let's go dystopian, because usually people, uh, you know, it's, uh, it's uh, it, it is a view of many people, which is dystopian. But, uh, let, let's try to, let's, let's try to tackle that and if you have time, we can look at the other aspect as well.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. In terms of making the world better, it is my belief. That humans have been biologically programmed. Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are, I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work. And every week we bring you a new guest and a new story, and what we do requires so much love. So that we can bring you something amazing and every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. Thank you very much, and we'll take you back to the show now for Procreation Obvious. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that religion slash society has programmed us to focus on bettering the world so that there's less violence, there's less war, et cetera. But we are facing climate change. We're facing droughts, we're facing scarcity of resources. We're facing population declines. And with those and, and, and, and AI and, and quantum computing. So all of these technologies are working towards removing humans from the loop in order to be economically productive. At the same time, we're seeing less consumers existing because the elderly are dying. The millennials are consuming now, but the younger generations, there's not enough. And so in about 30, 40 years when those younger people are now the supposed to be the producers of the world, but AI and Quantum will have basically rendered their work useless or a majority of it, probably by that time on top of economies struggling slash collapsing because there's not enough people to consume. So there's not enough people producing and there's not enough people consuming. And there's climate change and scarcity difference. How are we supposed to make the world a better place? And how are we supposed to be expected to bring children into the world when we have no way to prove that their life will be better than the life we've had and that life is not getting better?

Yasir Drabu: Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: dystopian enough for you.

Yasir Drabu: Very dystopian. But, uh, again, I think I would, in this area, I would consider myself a cautious optimist. Uh, I, I won't say I'm blindly optimistic, but I. Uh, if, if you look at over the past two, 300 years, um, with each, each evolution there has been good, the good and bad, right? With the industrial, uh, revolution. Yeah. We got more things. The, there were labor challenges and there were other problems, but generally the labor slowly started, uh, improving their life lifestyle. Now with the advent of ai, uh, I think at least in the next 10 years, I, it's gonna hyper boost. The, you know. The mundane tasks and help, uh, help us get more efficient in multiple ways. It includes manufacturing, it includes, uh, you know, uh, growth and production of various things. And it may also help us find creative solutions for climate change itself. Right? Uh, there's always going to be that. Politics of, uh, climate change and people wanna bring back coal jobs, which are, which are not the future, but there is a real promise for fusion, right? Uh, we have seen recent trends. Fusion used to always be 35 years into the future, but we are seeing trends where the net net. Put in, you're getting, uh, something out of it. It's still not sustained at a timescale where, where it can be productionized. But imagine there's abundant energy right now. When you have abundant energy, it, it creates, uh, it creates a lot of opportunity in terms of helping us to reduce, uh, some of the climate change drivers. So there's hope in that direction. I think if we. If we dwell on leaving the world a better place, which is our driving topic, and we focus on, uh, how do, how do we, how do we slow down or get rid of the accidents that are causing, uh. You know, causing climate change. Uh uh, a lot of that is with industrial production, automobiles and other things that are contributing heavily. I don't have the latest stats who's contributing how much, but generally, if we can change those energy structures to come from fusion and uh, more. Cleaner sources of energy. There's a lot of companies that are doing community solar. Solar has gotten about several hundred percent times better. So these are the things that will help mitigate climate change. And this is where human, that driving factor that we want to leave the place. There are, there are enough people who wanna mess up the world, but I think that there's a larger portion that want to make it better so that we can bring in children into this world and happy to see our future generations as we, as our desire to procreate. Remains, hopefully, hopefully otherwise we die as a species. So I think, uh, uh, clean energy and those initiatives and people who are driving these initiatives and innovators who are driving this should help mitigate cl uh, climate change to a large degree over the next 50. There is a balancing act if we don't act fast enough. We may go to a point of no return. I hope not. But that, that is, that is the cautious, optimistic role. You know, yes, this is gonna happen. Do we wanna wait 50 years for this to happen? No. Let's, what can we do today? You know, something small. We switched to a community solar farm to get our electricity. Instead of trying, even though it was costing us more, we decided to make that investment. You know, uh, anything else we can do in. At the individual level, at the state level, at the, at the federal level, and. Orchestrating at each level gets harder and harder. Ob obviously on internet, the PA Paris Treaty while in Syria is great. Implementing it is really hard, right? But can we do something at the state level and the local municipal levels? Yes. I think you can move faster and have a grassroots effort to do that if we can get past the politics of, of uh, you know, uh, so I think climate change. As an cautious, optimistic, there is a horizon where we could get better and bring it back to, uh, some, some, some level of. Control. Now, if we look at other things like, uh, agriculture practices, which are industrial agricultural practices, which are also very bad. Like, you know, you talk about killing animals, right? You know, having, uh, having such a passion for beef in this country causes a lot of problems. So how do we, uh, how do we. Uh, it's very hard to change those behaviors, but how do we, uh, minimize some of those things by offering other greater and better, more alternatives? That's gonna be an education and transition. I don't know that that's a draw. I, I don't think human behavior is gonna change. You know, we can have some people become vegetarians, but others it's gonna be harder to, uh, harder to do that. So now coming to ai, I think, uh. I don't think we will get to like a self-aware AI that's going to make its own decisions as long as we can pull the plug on a set of server forms. I think the, the risk of. Them overtaking human beings on a, on a dystopian scale is limited, but there is definitely a risk. There's definitely risk of making many, many roles redundant, right? You, you're gonna see that, you know you, it's going to democratize my own industry. Which I think is, uh, up for change in the next few years, right? Building softwares was a very expensive proposition. The cost is going to just keep going down because we can do things faster with ai. A lot of repetitive tasks now at that point, team collaboration, ingenuity, creativity to solve problems creatively as a group of human collaborators would. Is what would make us stand out at least for some time till maybe I can even do that. Who knows? But we are not there yet. I think that's a, that's a future state. So I think as a cautious optimist, I think each, you, you, you, you touched on a lot of topics like climate change, AI and jobs and quantum computing itself. Trying and quantum computing has. It's great at solving certain set of problems, right? It's not, some of, some harder problems like common metric problems and encryption problems and those kind of things. It is going to bring some disruption when it achieves its state of, uh, adoption and it gets to maybe, I don't know, 512 to 1024 qubits. At that point, we can start seeing some serious, uh. Uh, you know, serious, um, solutions being solved by quantum computers. I already think they're very promising in certain areas of problems that traditional computers cannot solve. They're not a replacement, right, for traditional computing. So, uh, I think each of these. Areas will bring their own, uh, change. Uh, and we've adapted well as human beings if we can't adopt. You know, the question is do, do you know? Do we, yeah. Do we, do we, that's where the dystopian part comes. If we cannot adapt to these changes and it leads to large scale dystopia, then that is, that is definitely, uh, you know, a question of do we as a species. Have a chance of survival. So that's a, that's an open question that ourselves on a, on a basis, uh. I don't have an answer for that. That's, it depends on how the human collective behaves over the next, uh, you know, 10, 20 years on addressing these problems in a very meaningful manner. And there has to be some level of foresighted and some level of selflessness, and that is very important for us to survive as a species. Everybody's selfish and everybody wants to become a billionaire, and they find the shortest way to do that. Uh. Maybe we don't deserve to be the dominant species on this planet. So do you have kids? I do. I have a teenager. How? I have a 14 year.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you think your view of the world changed when you had your kid? Yes.

Yasir Drabu: To some it, I think parenthood is a transformative experience. Uh, definitely. Uh, I think you are more thoughtful on how you, from everything, something as small as how you behave at home. So you can set the right example for your kid to all the way to How do you, le how do you ensure that, uh, the world we leave behind for. Better within our scope of impact, right? Obviously, those are some of the things at a, at a high level, uh, that you can talk about. But, but very specifically, there's a lot of micro behavior changes. Just as a parent, you know, the responsibility, the constant worry that is you are going to be okay. Those are, those are all those things that you never think of until you have a kid suddenly start becoming, uh, you know, second nature to you. You have to check and make sure he is okay from those little things to, uh, broader things of, you know, am I being a good role model for him to, am I leaving this world a better place for him? Uh, is always things that have made accelerated to that thought process that, uh, we are talking about. So

Sean Weisbrot: does, do those thoughts supersede your thoughts about your business?

Yasir Drabu: Uh, they are competing interests, so to be very honest, so yes. Uh. Uh, if right now I'm at work, so I'm heavily focused on, uh, work and the thought, and there's times when I'm sitting at dinner thinking about something that went wrong at work. Yes. Uh, I must confess that that's true, but generally, uh, though, if I had to pick, they, they would supersede and take priority any day, uh, by a long margin. It, it's not like, uh, uh, you know, they're at the same level. The taking care of my, being a father. I think it's way more, uh, important than anything else that I have, you know, in a life. So I think the, they do compete for time and attention, but in, if they were truly a priority, uh, I think being a parent and, uh, being with the kid is, uh, has a lot more, uh, priority, so.

Sean Weisbrot: Mm-hmm. The reason why I asked is I've had a business before and I was married before, and I found those thoughts competing with each other, thinking about the relationship, thinking about the business, thinking about how I can balance them, thinking about how they're important and, and how they feed into each other. Just like right now, I'm, I'm obviously no longer married, um, but right now I'm in Florida visiting my family. Even though I am here talking with you, there's this little voice in the back of my head that's just like, it's this constant always on thing. Like thinking about my grandma who's not physically like in this house, but she's nearby, haven't spoken to her in a day or two. It's like, oh, I, you know, hope my grandma's doing well. She's 90. Yeah. You know, I, I've come here to spend time with her. 'cause like every time I leave it's like, well, this could be the last time I see her. Yeah. So I might as well give her quality time. So like, thinking about her and. I'm thinking about my, my friends back in Portugal that I missed, and I've recently started talking to someone and I, I'm thinking about her. Um, so yeah, it's like I am, I feel like I'm giving you 90% of my attention. It's enough. And, and I think a, maybe a lot of people are just constantly doing this, like droning in a way. It's like, I am, I'm here with you. But I still have these other things going on, and they're in the, they're so quiet in the very back of my mind, but I can't get rid of those thoughts.

Yasir Drabu: That's true. Yeah. Uh, they amplify and change depending on where you are and what situation you are. So as I said, there's always a competition for attention and time. Right. So, uh, once I. Leave work. I would love to just check out for, you know, obviously the extreme example is you completely forget about it, but that's never, you know, that's. At work and at home. But that balancing act is, that balancing act is really hard. So, so you just, you just deal with it one day at a time. Even as I'm talking to you, there are things on the back of my mind like, okay, I have to finish this before the end of the day. And those things, they don't go away, so they're just going to be there. Maybe, uh, there's only. And in a very short span that you can give a hundred percent attention to. But after that, you're, as you call it, droning, I call it, you know, uh, background multitasking. Because of engineering, of the engineering background, uh, you're always, you have your conscious mind is. Currently, uh, focused on this conversation, but there's on the, in the back of your mind, three or four other things that you're like trying to, uh, kind of sort itself out. I don't know if that's how the brain functions or whether that's unique to me. I doubt that is, but, uh, it

Sean Weisbrot: might be something unique to people with a DD. Yes, could. Because I, I feel that, and in fact, my thoughts are typically really annoying and fast moving. I don't know how, how they are for you, but I, I get anxiety from them. I, I never, I never got anxiety until I started my, my last business never had anxiety at all. Always felt super calm and peaceful. Meditate every day. Been 20 years, I've been meditating. Nope. And I found that the only thing that makes the anxiety go away that also quiets the, the thoughts is microdosing psilocybin mushrooms. Hmm. Interesting. I tried RI Ritalin as a kid. Mm-hmm. I tried meditation, I tried exercise, and like I'll walk, I'll walk two, three hours a day just to burn energy. Like I have so much energy I don't know how to control, but those thoughts, you, you can get rid of the physical energy, but you can't get rid of the mental energy.

Yasir Drabu: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And so I basically just kind of like tone it down a few bits and. It's like the only way I can function.

Yasir Drabu: Uh, but a DDI think it's, again, I'm not a doctor, so I, my thought is it's at a spectrum, right? You have, you have the amplified spectrum where you truly need, you need medical help, but I think everybody else falls somewhere on the spectrum. You, you are. Constantly multi. There are people who are probably very task oriented and can focus on one thing without distraction, and I'm glad for them. But I think I'm somewhere a little bit further along where I am juggling several things. I usually have 12 to 13 tabs open, dealing with different things from our finance, operation, engineering, uh, trying to bring everything together. I do try, uh, but you brought up meditation. I started meditating when I was in. Uh, yeah, probably beginning of high school, uh, ninth grade or something. And I, I read a book on transcendental meditation and, uh, really, uh, tried practicing. I haven't gone for any retreat or anything, but, uh, I always felt it, but tremendous amount of focus and reflection. Uh. When you could kind of calm your mind. I, I, I haven't gotten to a zen state, but, uh, you know, if you can go from the alpha state to, so I don't remember the state names, but generally, uh, uh, generally helping you kind of, um, get calmer and more thoughtful, I think that really helped, helped me in high school to, from becoming that high energy. Kids to being more thoughtful. And, uh, you know, as I went into grade 11th and 12th, which in India is a different school system, then I realized that I, I had gotten better control over my anger and how I would react to others. And, you know, give them, give them, I, I ended up becoming the peacemaker, uh, from being the travel maker. So, so it, it did, it did help. And, uh, there was also some growth. And, you know, mentoring from my parents and other things that helped. But that definitely was a key tenant to, uh, to that

Yasir Drabu: I, I keep forgetting, you know, life has so many experiences to share. So what's the most important thing you, you feel, you've, your parents have taught you? I think they have

Yasir Drabu: the most important thing they've taught me. So, but I think the way they, uh, treat everybody. And with respect has been phenomenal. I mean, uh, whether it is people of different religion or people of different, um. You know, socioeconomic background, they treat them with immense respect. So that's something that I learned from them. To be thoughtful and kind to everybody that you interact with. Uh, in India it's very common. If you, uh, if you are at a reasonably decent socioeconomic standard, you do have help. In the house, right? You have somebody, uh, you know, taking care of the house from a house, you know, some, somebody cleaning the house, somebody helping in the kitchen. You have a driver. Uh, those kind of, there's a lot of help available, uh, from, but how you, how you treat those people and how you take care of them, uh, uh, is something that my father, uh, especially and even my mom both have taught me to be very, uh, respectful of. And, uh. I think, I think that humility my dad taught me is probably a lot, a lot to do that comes from him.

Sean Weisbrot: what do you think is the most important thing your kids have taught you?

Yasir Drabu: Oh boy. Uh, one of the most important things is that my kid, uh, taught me is about honesty and white lies. So, uh, we keep grinding on him to be honest and earnest. And, uh, there, there was a couple of occasions on a phone call where, uh. It's human nature. You don't want to lead to conflict. So you're trying to avoid conflict by making a simple white lie like, Hey, sorry, IX happened. Because in the grand scheme of things, for an adult, it may not mean so much, but for him, he's like, dad, that was, that's not what happened. Right? You, you would not, you didn't, you would, you didn't miss that because of X. Right? So, uh, I think being brutally honest has been one of the lessons that he has taught me, uh, uh, in the, you know, even if I. If we are on a, I'm driving him to his sports engagements or something like that. If I go above the speed limit, he's like, you are breaking the law. I'm like, I'm learning late. Uh, so those are the kind of things that, uh, he's, uh, you know, growing up we taught him that, Hey, you need to, you need to. Be honest, you need to be truthful. And now he's reminding me of the same lessons in case they're at a smaller scale. But I think that's been a lesson that, uh, I've learned a lot from him.

Sean Weisbrot: : So what's the most important thing your business has taught you?

Yasir Drabu: To be resilient, patient and, uh. Uh, meet people where they are, right? So, you know, you're working with a lot of people. So I think the business has a lot of rollercoasters and everybody has different tolerance levels for risk. And you need to find where, where your tolerance level is and not go beyond that because that generates stress beyond what you, what it's worth in a way. So I think being flexible. Resilient. Uh, being able to meet people where they are and always making sure what you commit to, you do right? The what I call the ratio. If I tell my team, Hey, we'll do X and it never happens, uh, that currency of, uh, trust chips away very quickly. So. Lots of lessons. There's so much, so much life lessons that the business has taught me, but uh, these are some of the one that come to.