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Speech Transcript (very little editing so not exact)

L. Scott Ferguson: [00:00:00] Time to shine today podcast varsity squad. This is Scott Ferguson, and I am super excited to bring on my good friend. Manuj Aggarwal. He’s over on the left coast out in the British Columbia, Vancouver, Columbia, and it’s he’s really into AI. And I we just had an awesome conversation off mic about You know how we can really use a I and get over the fears.

And the kind of the downtrodden stuff that you hear from the old college kids are going to write their papers with it. You know, all this kind of stuff. And like the news really knows how to use it to help you level off. And he is a thought leader in a I and startups who has impacted over 10 million lives and generated over 500 million in value with experience working with clients like Microsoft and IBM.

He’s spoken at the U. N. Alongside the secretary general and Nobel Peace Prize. Winner. And his work has been mentioned by president Barack Obama and Bill Gates with four patents in AI. He’s the perfect person to learn from about how AI can benefit [00:01:00] you all. He’s a founder of tetra noodle and thank you for coming out.

Please introduce yourself to time to shine today, podcast, varsity squad. But first what’s your favorite color and why?

Manuj Aggarwal: Well, first of all, thanks for having me excited to be here. My, my favorite color is red. I think the reason is like, it, it stands for life. It stands for excitement adventure, you know?

So when you see red. I mean, generally the red is for stopping, but I feel like red is you know, it sort of invigorates you to

L. Scott Ferguson: do more. Absolutely. Kind of like Tiger Woods always wears red, right? He’s kind of my neighbor. He lives just a couple of miles away and you know, he’s kind of a big deal around here, I guess in the world too, but no red is perfect for you, man.

Look at, you got it in your background. And if you’re watching on YouTube or Vimeo squad, he’s a handsome devil and he knows a lot about a lot. His podcast is a top 1 percent globally. So out of over 3 million podcasts, he’s a top 1 percent or I’m only a top 2 percent or I’m trying to catch [00:02:00] up to him. But yeah, Manish, can you get to the roots of where you kind of started?

And, you know, what brought you up to how you level up the masses, like literally the masses, bro. I mean, you’re a humble dude, but you did some damage in this world and in a good way.

Manuj Aggarwal: Well yeah, my journey started like, you know, like quite, quite humble beginning. Like a lot of people I used to work in a factory in India for 2 a day.

working six days a week 12 hours a day. And basically I, you know, it was the toughest life you can imagine, but that gave me the motivation to find new ways to improve my life, to uplift myself. And I found that in technology. So I became passionate about technology and I learned that I was good at it.

And Once those things started to put in to fall in place, I realized that the power that technology has, because what I could do was I could [00:03:00] write a line of code on my computer and put it out there on the internet and it can impact that line of code can help probably a million people. So with one hour of my time, you know, I could make a huge impact.

So when I started realizing it, I started doing it more and more and also started going into sectors and industries which have direct impact on large populations. So meaning education and healthcare and housing, real estate, transportation, these are the things that everyday people use. And so when you build technology for these industries, the impact is humongous.

And and that’s Those are the, you know, sort of simple principles that I apply in my work today, even to see, okay, is this project going to impact a lot of people or not? Is this technology going to help me make an impact on large amount of people or not? And once [00:04:00] you start to adopt those sort of criteria for your work, other people who have aligned values.

Like the names that you mentioned, President Obama and Bill Gates those guys, those kind of people are also you know, looking for these similar solutions. So if you go down this path, some, sometimes you’ll find. You know, their priorities and your priorities overlap. It’s not, not by design, you know, I, I didn’t even know until the project was done and we delivered it and the results came out.

And a year later, Bill Gates mentioned it you know, two years later, president Obama mentioned it. So you don’t know that you, you don’t know when you’re going through it, what, what you are actually creating in the world. But if you are, if your intention is the right one, it’s sort of

L. Scott Ferguson: flourishes. Thank you.

I love that you’re the intention part of it. And it’s, it’s kind of like, a lot of people say, I believe it when I see it, right? Like you and I, we kind of see it [00:05:00] when we believe it, like we believe in something so much that can help the masses, you know in the, what you’re doing with helping the masses and those segments of real estate and industry and stuff.

That’s, that’s fantastic. But with those roots, you’re kind of working for peanuts. You know you’re in India and I have a lot of Indian friends, man. I’m not trying to stereotype anything here, but was your parents trying to push you to be that doctor or engineer or anything else like that? I’m just curious.

Manuj Aggarwal: You know, the interesting thing in my case was that my so the factory that I worked in, it actually was my dad’s factory and he raised me as a factory worker with a, with a deliberate sort of, you know, deliberate intention to make me a hardworking person. I understand that now. During as I was going through that, you know, that was, that was terrible.

Right. So my parents actually did not want me to study at all. They [00:06:00] wanted me to become this this machine who can produce a lot of money and sort of, you know, build a business and all of that. They were trying to push me towards that. And I, I still don’t have a very you know how can I say it?

Like prestigious education. I have very humble education, but refreshing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, but the, but the positive effect of this upbringing was that I learned. Create massive returns with little resources because that’s what I had to do, you know, over and over again to figure out, okay, I only have this much.

I only have a little bit of time, a little bit of money, no contacts. How do I get to the top? And once you start to mold your brain into that, you can start to find a lot of solutions. In fact, I’m kind of thankful I didn’t go into like a traditional education system because I feel like. The education system today, it sort of numbs you down.

It’s sort of, [00:07:00] you know, it

L. Scott Ferguson: pigeonholes you. Yeah. Yeah. Boom. It’s like, yes. What if that job goes away? It’s tough. You know, I did seven years in the military, went to college for two semesters and luckily my fraternity. Burnt my house and burnt the house down, right? And so a guy that owned the house was a legacy or an alumni of the fraternity, right?

And again, I only went to school for like three semesters. But he’s like, hey, you’re older. Cause that’s 25 when I got out of the military, right? And here I am hanging out with these 18, 20 year old kids. And he’s like, won’t you help me buy a house, a new house? And I was like, oh. And that’s how real estate kind of rolled in, right?

Like my dad worked on the line at General Motors in Detroit, building cars. You know, he was like, you know, you and I probably take the hard work that was instilled in us and just learn to make it smarter in a sense, but we still have that discipline and we know how to get down if we have to. I love that, man.

Yeah. So let’s dig in just because of time. I really want to get into AI with you. If you don’t mind here, and [00:08:00] let’s go with the benefits that you’re seeing of AI to society, to businesses, to personal, like, what are your feelings on the benefits of AI?

Manuj Aggarwal: Well, a lot of people don’t realize you know, how AI has already been a part of our lives for the last 20 years.

So I’ll give you a few examples of how we have implemented AI. So we have helped people with joint pains. Using AI and 3D printing, we help them fix their joint pains, improve their stamina, improve their performance. We have helped students learn better by providing personalized curriculums to them.

Because, you know, today, if you go into a classroom of 30, every student is getting the same curriculum, even though we know as human beings, some students are more advanced and some need more help. So why don’t we give personal curriculums to each student based on their level? Yes. Right. [00:09:00] Then you know, we We built systems for sales and marketing because small businesses even large businesses, their main challenge is always cash flow and sales and revenue.

So with AI today, you can create virtual sales agents who can sort of go out and find that perfect client for you while you’re sleeping and just book the appointments on your calendar. So all of these practical things are happening. And and it has. Created tremendous amount of wealth already in, in, in the world.

If you, if you look at the richest people in the world, Jeff Bezos, Amazon is all AI. Elon Musk you know, Tesla is actually not a car company. It’s actually an AI company. It’s a data company. Right. So you can see the wealth that has already been created, but now the exciting part is with the release of chat GPT, everyone.

Can feel and touch and [00:10:00] utilize the power of AI. That is the, that is the game changer because AI was being used by large companies or people who, you know, who knew the power of it and had deep pockets, like I have benefited tremendously from AI, but now the exciting part is everybody can benefit from it.

L. Scott Ferguson: Sure. And so let’s open up that proverbial can around here. People thinking, you know, professors and stuff that are like, Oh, kids are going to write term papers. You know, we’re going to cheat our way this up because I’m 100 percent on board with this. I, we, we talked off Mike and how it really leveled up this podcast alone.

Right. With downloads and just exposure and it’s when you wrote, were you. You said that you created a lot with a little AI can really help you do that. Now, how the naysayers that are out there, that are the pushback that you’re getting, how are you handling that?

Manuj Aggarwal: [00:11:00] See this is no different than any other any other sort of technology wave that has happened in the past.

Right. Like, so not even like go back to the time when a cave man. wanted to store some food for his or her family because, you know, the caveman had to go out and hunt for food every day. But then one day they said, Oh, well, how about if I kill a big animal? And I store it in my cave and you know, I can eat for 30 days, right?

Since that time, humans have always feared new ways of doing things, new inventions. We have always been afraid, Oh, you know, what will happen? You know, this will take away my job or, or, you know, AI is going to take over the world. If you are old enough, you remember, you may remember. The Y2K problem, when the internet sort of came out, Y2K problem was that in the year 2000, people were afraid there’s not going to be any [00:12:00] groceries left in the grocery store.

The power power grids are going to fail. So much fear. Armageddon, right? Exactly. Exactly. And nothing came out of that, right? And then so it’s the same thing now. The only unfortunate thing is people have been affected disproportionately by the depiction of Hollywood. You know, the Terminator the movie Terminator and similar, similar movies.

But the fact is AI is just a tool. Like, you know, if you don’t like it, just switch it off. That’s it. Right. You know it’s not going to take over humanity if you don’t use it. And then in terms of taking away jobs, that’s another concern. It’s, it’s never the technology takes away your job. But if you don’t adapt to the new environment, somebody else will take away your job.

So imagine if you’re applying for a job today and you say, Oh, you know, I don’t use email. I don’t want to use email. I don’t have an email address. How far do you think you will get in that job application? [00:13:00] Right? So somebody else with an email address, even though they have, you know, lower qualifications, they’ll get the job.

It’s the same thing with AI, right? And now talking about you know, students are going to write their papers with AI. This is an antiquated phenomena about education itself. So we should think about what is education? Is it about remembering things or is it about understanding things? Right. So it’s, is it about if it is about understanding things and if the, if the computer can help us remember the fact we don’t need to really remember the fact, but if we understand the premise of the situation, what was the lesson learned and how should I apply in my life.

Right. Then I don’t even need to write a paper. This, this, this education system is going to be antiquated in the next 10 years, right? So we, we really need to reinvent our our our world. And that is, that is the impact of AI. That is why it is such a game changer. And that’s why. You know, [00:14:00] people like me are sort of yelling from the top of the mind.

Do you know what is happening? Do you know what’s coming?

L. Scott Ferguson: Right. I love that you’re doing that too. And you know, I mean, the freaking calculator was AI for years. You know, if you look at it, like if you had a calculator in school, I don’t, I don’t know how old you are. I’m 51. So I was in school in the seventies and eighties.

So if you had a calculator in school, You’re pretty cool to have it, but teachers like put that stuff away. Remember that dude? You don’t even show up without one. Yeah. That’s how AI is going, right? Absolutely. Okay. I love it. I love it, man. So what, when you start talking to people about AI and stuff like that, what, is there any question that you wish they would ask you?

But never do

Manuj Aggarwal: about A. I. Yeah, they never asked about how it will change their business. What is like? I think what people lack [00:15:00] is imagination. You know, they just look at the surface of what is happening with the eye. You know, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of content being generated by which is which is the surface level solution that we can apply.

But as I said earlier, there are much deeper solutions. You can start to develop, you can start to focus on, you know, finding cure for diseases. You can start to focus on finding solutions for climate change. You can start to focus on how to motivate people, things that are not even linked with AI. You can start to basically.

What AI is, is a, is a add on to your human mind. Okay. So imagine, imagine like you, you, you get an X you know, you, you get a pair of Nike runners, which make you run faster. Yeah. It’s just, it’s, it’s the same thing with your mind with AI. Like it, it will, it is actually enhancing your IQ to a thousand like, like that overnight.

And now it is up to you to. [00:16:00] figure out what do you want to do with this IQ of 1000. Right. So that, that is what I wish people were looking at it more. And I, I mean, of course it takes time. It will happen organically, but I think if people started to realize the power, they will start to ask deeper questions and the impact will be much, much higher.

L. Scott Ferguson: I love that. And it’s helped me in a situation that not even what we had talked about before. But a friend of mine said, put this Max AI Google plugin on your computer, right? So I did it. And I was in the middle of a coaching session and this client I’ll just say she was on the cover of people magazine 12 times.

Okay. I’m blessed to have her but I was stuck dude Okay, and I even told her about this. Okay after the fact dude, I opened up that little side panel I put in the scenario. I said give me five questions to ask in a coaching situation this dude Save the session Bro, like that is money, you know, for me, [00:17:00] it was like, wow.

And, and she’s, she’s, she’s actually super cool about it because it changed the whole trajectory, you know, but because of AI, I probably would have survived when there used to be honest with you, but I thrived. Because yeah, you know what I’m saying? That’s awesome. So let me ask you something. Have you seen the movie Back to the Future?

Yes, of course. Let’s get in that DeLorean with Marty McFly. Okay, let’s go back to the double deuce, the 22 year old Manouche. Okay, what kind of knowledge nuggets, that’s what we call them here at Time to Shine Today, what kind of knowledge nuggets would you drop on him? Not so much to change anything because your journey, Gates, Obama, I mean, it’s been pretty damn good.

But what would you tell him to maybe shorten the learning curve or blast through maybe just a little bit quicker?

Manuj Aggarwal: I think The biggest thing is not to worry, worry and anxiety and stress about the future is what holds everyone back and it held me back for a number of years, but but I think if, if I just trusted things will just work out, I would have been you know, [00:18:00] much further ahead, but I, but I think it’s just a journey that every human being has to take.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yeah, people get that paralysis, you know, that kind of hits me. I mean, before, before I first bought my first investment property, you know, I thought about it. Finally, luckily I had some guys that were just, that had bought ones. It’s like, Fergie, just do it. And now, you know, I, that’s how I’m retiring is with investment property.

So I love that with the stress. And if you don’t know something, my good friend, Leah Woodford once said, get your asking gear. Right. Ask people. Now you have AI. ask AI a lot. Exactly. Beautiful. So how do you want your dash remembered? That little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration date, your life date and death date.

Hopefully it’s way down the road. Okay. But how do you, how does Manoj want his dash

Manuj Aggarwal: remembered? I, I want to be remembered as somebody who transformed at least a billion lives with technology. And I have a crazy mission in life to help 20 people win the Nobel prize. So if that happens, You know, I, [00:19:00] you know that’ll be pretty cool.

And I hope that people will remember me for that.

L. Scott Ferguson: Bro, and I can see you doing it. It’s a huge goal. And there’s no way they can’t be transformed. And even the millions of people you’ve already have, I mean, that’s fantastic. So what do you think people misunderstand the most about you?

Manuj Aggarwal: I think well, I mean, the, the obvious is that you know, there’s, there are Millions of Indians talking about technology and you know what, why, why

L. Scott Ferguson: is the truth, man?

Yeah, yeah,

Manuj Aggarwal: yeah. So why should people listen to me? You know, and it’s, it, that, that is that is the first barrier I have to cross before people pay attention to, to me, what, what I’m saying. Other than that, once they have started listening to what I’ve say, Then they, then they are you know, they, they pay more attention because they know that what I’m sharing with them is for their benefit, not only their benefit, but for their future generations benefit.

L. Scott Ferguson: Wow. That’s, that’s, [00:20:00] sometimes they don’t want to hear it, right? But you’re doing it to share for the benefit of future generations. That’s, that’s amazing. That’s fantastic. So, what if anything then keeps you up at night?

Manuj Aggarwal: Actually, now that I understand a lot more about the world, I don’t, I don’t have any worries because I know whatever, whatever challenges come my way two things will happen.

Either I will learn or I will overcome that challenge and move to the next level.

L. Scott Ferguson: That’s what we call it in martial arts called win or learn. You don’t lose dude. Exactly. You, you, you learn from it. That’s, that’s awesome. So what are your non negotiables in life?

Manuj Aggarwal: Family, my sense for adventure my sense of curiosity to learn about the world.

I was just going to

L. Scott Ferguson: say dude, curiosity is your superpower, man, to do what you do, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I [00:21:00] love it. So what is What’s Manush’s definition of a life well lived?

Manuj Aggarwal: You know, the thing is that a lot of people don’t know much about themselves. So I think the first insight I had was how to develop self awareness.

So when you ask me, what are your non negotiables? If you had asked me that question, like two years ago, I will be like, I don’t know what that means, but now I do. So life well lived is to figure out what your non negotiables are. And then every day make every decision based on those non negotiables.

If you are able to do that every day, that’s a life well lived. Hell yes.

L. Scott Ferguson: Absolutely, man. I know that. I mean, you take care of yourself, your body and stuff like that. That’s, that’s where I have to start because things hurt now that never hurt before. That’s my non negotiable. I have a rebounder, like a trampoline.

I’m on it. I have my like 15 minutes in the morning and then it’s [00:22:00] really getting into serving the rest of myself, my mind and stuff. But I love what you just said. That’s awesome. And squad, we’re going to take my good friend Manuj through our leveling up lightning round just as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors and affiliates.

Time to shine today. Podcast Varsity Squad, we are back and Manoj, we’re going to meet up someday. I know we are and we’ll talk about some of these questions in person, probably talk 15, 20 minutes on them. But today you got five seconds with no explanations and they can all be answered that way. I promise you.

You ready to level up? Sounds good. Let’s do it. Manoj, what is the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received?

Manuj Aggarwal: It is what it is. Just keep going. I

L. Scott Ferguson: love it. Share one of your personal habits that contributes to your success.

Manuj Aggarwal: Meditation.

L. Scott Ferguson: Beautiful. You see me walking down the street, you know, you’re like, man, Fergie looks like he’s in his doldrums a little bit.

What book might you hand me?

Manuj Aggarwal: Principles of Work and Life from Ray Dalio.

L. Scott Ferguson: Yes. Dalio, Dalio. Love it. Love it. What’s your most commonly used emoji, if any, when you [00:23:00] text? Smiley. Excellent. Nicknames growing up? Manu. Manu. Beautiful. Any hidden talent or superpower that nobody knows about until now?

Manuj Aggarwal: Breakdancing.

No way. Can I ask how old you are? I’m 48.

L. Scott Ferguson: Okay, so we’re right there man. So you’re in the 80s with break in and I love it. I love it. Yeah. Chess checkers or monopoly? Monopoly. All right, me too. Headline for your life.

Manuj Aggarwal: Bootstrapping your dreams.

L. Scott Ferguson: Any superstitions you carry around with you? Not anymore.

Not anymore? Okay, very cool, very cool. That’s a super sign of maturity, man. I used to have some really weird ones and then they’re not even around anymore. Thank you for saying it like that. It’s beautiful. Go to ice cream flavor? Vanilla. Beautiful. There’s a sandwich called the Bootstrap Manu. Build that sandwich

Manuj Aggarwal: for me.

[00:24:00] I think lots of vegetables, lots of spices. I think let’s just keep it veggie and spicy. Keep it simple. Yeah.

L. Scott Ferguson: Favorite charity and organization you’d like to give your time and money to?

Manuj Aggarwal: Make A Wish Foundation. Kids are

L. Scott Ferguson: the, you know. Absolutely. Last question, you can elaborate on this one, but what’s the best decade of music?

60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s?

Manuj Aggarwal: I would say 90s.

L. Scott Ferguson: 90s. All right. All right. Although you have the 80s breakdancing music, man. Yeah.

Manuj Aggarwal: No, no. 80s and 90s. Yeah. Do you have parachute pants? No, I used to have, I used to have I used to have them, but not anymore. I found

L. Scott Ferguson: some blue. I’m kind of a big guy. I’m like six, six, one, two 40.

And I literally found some at like a, a yard, like down here. It’s like heaven’s waiting room. Cause a lot of old people here, unfortunately passed away. And I go to a state sales and there was an eighties party coming up in a couple of weeks. And I was like, I got to send you a picture. You’ll love it. Yeah.

Manuj Aggarwal: Yeah. Yeah. So how can we find you, my friend? [00:25:00] Yeah, just Google my name or find me on LinkedIn or visit my website. Just Google my name. I mean, whatever the first link comes in, just contact me there. Yeah. And

L. Scott Ferguson: Manoj is M A M a N U J. And his last name Agarwal is A G G A R W A. L and that’ll be in the show notes as well as everything else.

And also you got to check out his podcast. It, I listened, I follow, I’ve been following the news for a while. So I’m kind of like trying to tone down the fan boy. You know, thing I got going on here. Cause I’ve been wanting to like really pick his brain and but book bootstrapping your dreams show.

You have, you must check it out. And literally it’s a top one, 1 percent podcast globally under listen notes. So. If you can do me a favor and leave us with one last knowledge nugget about life that we can take with us, internalize and take action on.

Manuj Aggarwal: Well, you know, life is going to give you what you need right now, not what you want.

So start really [00:26:00] learning about who you are inside, because whatever you are inside is going to manifest in your reality.

L. Scott Ferguson: Oh, my gosh, that’s deep. Oh, I have quotes after quotes here in squad. I literally I have three pages of notes, you know, and, you know, you know, my good friend Manoosh came from humble beginnings worked in a factory in India.

He was motivated to really level up and he really found it in technology. You know, he built tech for industries. That people use real estate across the board. You know, he’s been noticed by like Bill Gates and Barack Obama. You know, he wants you to learn like he did to learn to create massive returns with little resources.

And with that AI can be used to help you with that. Remember, you know, when you Reminded us the AI has been in our life for years all the way back to the caveman days that example of killing a bigger animal Well, it was just hit home. That was the serious seriously good knowledge nuggets, you know humans Always [00:27:00] fear the new things until it’s the thing like he said if you look back at the news You watch Katie Couric on what’s that at symbol?

You know, or Brian Gumbel, what’s that? That’s like, we live in that within our emails right now. You know, how can you use AI to really level up your life? You know, he reminded us that education is remembering things, or do we really want to understand things and how you can apply those things that we can understand and so much good as AI is used for climate change, diseases, motivation.

And I told my story and how it really helped save a coaching conversation. You know, he’s, my good friend, Manoj, is doing things for the intention, not the attention. He’s not out there saying, look at me, look at me. He’s doing it to better the world. He’s planting trees he’s never going to sit in the shade of.

You know, he reminded us that life is going to give you what you need, not what you want. We need to look in, really inward, inside. To really manifest that reality. And that’s what my good friend [00:28:00] Manoj does. He levels up his health. He levels up as well. He’s humble. Yeah, he’s hungry. He’s a handsome devil. I absolutely love his guts.

He’s earned his varsity squad letter here at time to shine today. Thank you so, so much for coming on

Manuj Aggarwal: Manoj. Absolutely. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Awesome,

L. Scott Ferguson: man. Chat soon.

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