How to Stay Idealistic Without Being Naive: Varun Sharma

0:00Varun Sharma: This episode is brought to you by Granola and Quince. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai.com. That's granola.ai.com to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai.com. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. Playing it safe is easy.

0:39Varun Sharma: Playing it safe is comfortable. But here's the problem. Playing it safe and playing by rules that were never meant for you will never take you to the next level. If you've got what it takes to hit the ball out of the park, the only thing holding you back is whether you're brave enough to take a big swing. I'm Kwame Christian, and this is Big Swings Only. Every week, we're telling you the stories of people who fought their fear, chased the life they actually wanted, and became who they had to become to get it. This show is built for people who are meant for more, because if you really want to get to the next level, you've got to do something big.

1:13Varun Sharma: So the question isn't whether or not you've got what it takes. The question is whether or not you're going to swing. You were built for more, and this show was built for you. Subscribe now.

1:27Kwame Christian: So all of the geopolitical conflicts and all of this, you know, it resurged only recently. And, you know, my dad was in the military. And I started to think that it's really important that countries are defensive and strong enough to survive in today's world, because there's geopolitical conflicts turning into military conflicts all over the planet right now. right and um i was conflicted because i always wanted to focus on you know sapien ventures so upgrading humanity right and and it was it was an internal conflict at the same time i obviously know all the stories you know my dad's been in war situations um and uh i was wondering what drove him and why he did it.

2:19Kwame Christian: But I think a lot of people who are in the military, when they start, they're so young, they're not thinking about all of these things, right? They're young, they have a lot of energy. You know, you could even say, especially men, they're a bit hot-blooded. And so they get into it. And then eventually over time, as they get older, they get indoctrinated in a way, even I'd say. But I was thinking, okay, I understand this part. I worked in government. I worked in, you know, democratization of entrepreneurship and other things, which I'd love to do. But what happens if you're being attacked? You know, I see that in Ukraine, which is right next to Estonia, Russia's borders, bordering with Estonia.

3:00Kwame Christian: And so it was quite a quite an interesting internal conflict. I spoke to a few friends, a few people. And eventually what I realized, especially now with all the oil crisis also going on, that the best path isn't on the left side of the aisle or the right side. It's somewhere in the center. And I think as a people, we've all forgotten that. We tend to be more polarized. so everything is left-wing or right-wing republican democrat either I like working with this person or I dislike working with this person it's not about how can we just get along sometimes you may not agree with someone but you know you still end up working with them and this is something that I had already learned when I was working in government because a lot of times you might not agree but you learn how to find common ground right and so for me it was more about finding that common ground with myself because now there are some solutions so for example with the hydrogen fuel cells you know hydrogen fuel cells that's green energy right but hydrogen fuel cells can also be stealth power for the military because there is no noise there's no smoke there's zero heat signature so drones can't spot the energy source because normally when you have these drones flying around they would look for heat signatures right because you have a diesel generator or a gasoline generator running but in this case you don't see it and at the same time you're like okay do i really want to venture in the military space and be part of that whole military industrial complex and all of that right but at the same time if you don't have defensive posture then you're open to being aggressed by someone else and act and and and how it started how it started coming down for me was I started thinking, why do you go to the gym?

4:57Kwame Christian: Is it just because you want to stay fit? Because to stay fit, you could also just go running, right? But a lot of guys and also more and more women, they want to go build muscle because they want to look strong, right? You want to have those big arms and a broad chest and, you know, bouldering shoulders. and why is that because you want to portray strength but that doesn't mean you're going to go and attack every second person on the street actually it's quite the opposite right so when you are strong you don't end up aggressing other people and also you don't invite that much aggression from other people it's just there is this primal instinct which will probably always be part of us until the next evolution happens, which who knows how long it'll take.

5:46Kwame Christian: But it's really important that you have strong posture, right? And that's the middle ground. So we apply it to ourselves at an individual level, but then we start getting idealistic because we want to be accepted by each other. And so we don't want to talk about, oh, yes, I deal with military equipment. why is that so looked down upon or for that matter i work in the oil and gas business you know whenever someone says that you're like oh yeah okay you're like those wall street guys you know you only care about the money but maybe that's not true because now with the straight of our moose closed the whole world's suffering because there's no oil available right and logistics is is it's total chaos and now even the good guys and the good businesses they're suffering right so i think there is a transition and we should recognize that we're in a moment of transition and for that transition to happen you have to recognize the dark side of what we still require it's essential because if you don't have that if you're not a nuclear power probably russia or the u.s will come and attack you or i won't say the u.s i'll say trump will come and attack you right um not to make it political but that's the reality of what we see right now right um india has been a nuclear power for a very long time and even though we have very tense relations with pakistan with china you don't see us uh fighting all the time and one of the main reasons is because they're both nuclear powers so there is that you know deterrence of mutually assured destruction and so that's where now i've come up with the fact that if we want to keep upgrading humanity and keep doing net positive things then you have to recognize the dark side of things you can't just be all about idealism it has to be pragmatic idealism right that's the point

7:51Varun Sharma: yes oh there's so much to explore here varun because i think a lot of folks we would love to be the angels, the angelic figures in the world, the doves, the folks who go out and help and solve problems and things like that. And it comes from a very good place. I know both of us have that element in us, but then we also have to recognize that sometimes in order to effectuate our goals effectively, we find ourselves in a position where we have to make really difficult calculations. every decision comes with consequences every decision has collateral damage in war it's real actual collateral damage in a physical or structural type of way but in our lives if i'm making a decision that's beneficial to me it's often the case that it might have some unintended downstream consequences to people who would have rather me done something else right so if i'm just simply selecting between different contractors or different vendors that i would like to use by choosing one, I am by definition, not choosing another, which causes harm to them.

8:56Varun Sharma: But that doesn't absolve me of the responsibility of making the right decision for myself. Right. And so sometimes we have to just appreciate the fact that the world is complex and we have to do the best we can. And that's why I love that idea of pragmatic realism too. And the, I think one of the things that we don't fully, I think there are some people who are very uncomfortable with the reality of power and the power of power. I think we underestimate it sometimes. So one of the things that I've started to do in some of my trainings is ask the audience this question. And it's very interesting to see which way the people land.

9:34Varun Sharma: And then it spurs a very interesting strategic, but also philosophical question. So let's say if you have a situation, you could either have 100 % of the negotiation skills available to humans. So you have all of the best negotiation skills, strategies, and tactics at your disposal at all time with perfect execution versus having no negotiation skills at all, but all of the power, all of the power and all of the leverage on your side. And now you're walking into a negotiation, which would you rather have? And it's interesting because a lot of people say negotiation skills. And I say, okay, cool.

10:18Varun Sharma: Well, now let's put you up against an almighty toddler that all they say is no. Then what do you do? You put the best negotiation expert against a toddler, the toddler isn't guaranteed to do what you want. And we can't do anything if we don't have power. And when people would ask me when I lift, like, why do you lift so heavy? And yes, there's an enjoyment thing. I like the endorphins. There's community. But I would also add this point. I say, well, my goal is to be strong enough to deter aggression. So I am proudly O and O. Zero wins, zero losses in fights in my whole life because nobody wants to try.

11:00Varun Sharma: And I think you can become, what's interesting is that you can navigate the world with more warmth and compassion if you don't just focus on the good things that you want to create in the world, but also making sure that you're taking the time to protect yourself effectively so you don't need to be on guard all the time. And so there's that pragmatism to it. And I think it would be cool to see when it comes to your worldview and the change that you want to see in the world, how does this mentality, along with your recent business shift, how does that manifest itself with the way that you are effectuating change in the world that you see?

11:38Kwame Christian: So right now, I'm further building my B2B go-to-market advisory practice. And I'm taking on also defense adjacent businesses. And what I mean by that is anything which would increase geopolitical defensive posture and strengthen it, I'm absolutely open to taking them on as a client, introducing them to my network. You know, I've worked in the public sector. We talked about it last time. So I have those contacts. I wouldn't have done it, I think, maybe five years ago. But in the past five years, the world has started to change. And, you know, all of these changes, they show us something, right so they show us that we need to take that middle ground i'll give you a small example and maybe you know or other people know their own versions of this example so i was on stage last december there's adipav which is the business you know the financial times of estonia right and they had this conference on balanced economy and the last question i got on stage was about you know, Europe is regressing, the West is regressing, and energy is one of the big topics because I've been working in green energy and hydrogen and all of that for a while.

13:04And they said, what are your thoughts?

13:07Kwame Christian: You know, what can we do about it? And I said, the thing that you can do about it is be structured in transitioning. And Europe has this problem. And I think the US, it has gone a little bit to the other extreme now, since Trump came into power. Now, Europe has always had this problem, or not always, but for quite some time now, that they want to be idealists, right? They want to save the world. It happened with the migration crisis. You know, there was an influx of refugees. It created unrest societally. People weren't able to adapt. And it didn't do good for anyone. Neither did it do good for the people who ended up coming in from Syria, the Middle East, Africa, you know, wherever.

13:50Kwame Christian: nor did it do any good for the Germans or the Italians or you know other places right Portugal I was just in Lisbon and you you see that and it's not great what Switzerland on the other hand and I lived there and I studied in Lausanne you know for seven years and what they did very interestingly was when there was a geopolitical conflict happening in Sri Lanka they brought in people as well but they made sure that they had a plan where they helped them settle in and so now those people get along with everyone else you know you see that happen actually the only country in the world where you see that happen in the most beautiful and interesting manner is actually the us right um but then somehow problems have now started to emerge um but then you can also look at a modern day example of Dubai.

14:46Kwame Christian: The whole world is there, right? There's Muslims, Hindus, Christians, there's even Palestinians and Israelis, there's Indians and Pakistanis, there's Russians and Ukrainians. And sure, there's heated discussions. I was just there before this whole conflict started actually. And I left because this was kicking off, because I had this inkling that something might happen as unfortunately it did but um i had friends who got stuck there i still have friends who i'm speaking to and now things have started to calm down and they all tell me yes there's tensions but here everyone understands that this is the melting pot and this is not who they are right and for them it's important that we understand each other we get along and it's interesting that these places exist because then they speak to people back home and tell them the other side of the story, which otherwise they would never see on the mainstream news or the news that they're consuming or the YouTube content or the Facebook content that they're following, because that's what they keep seeing more of, right?

15:54Kwame Christian: And so that's my focus right now. So it's very much on finding that sweet spot where the transition can happen. You might end up working on oil and gas deals. But that doesn't mean that you're, you know, a rich oil mongerer who doesn't care about the planet or any of that. You're actually solving a problem. What's important is if you get proceeds from those deals, then the majority of it goes into transitioning. Right. So I think there's a there's a sweet spot. But being so polarized, it's not doing this any good. It's creating more rifts when maybe we needed to go there. But I think it's high time that we start to come to the middle ground, politically, energy-wise, whichever way, right?

16:52Yeah.

16:53Varun Sharma: So it sounds like, if we were to encapsulate this, Varun, it sounds like the point that you're making is bigger than any of these individual examples. It is the recognition that today everything is so polarized, everything is so extreme, even when it comes to our strategic considerations. We're doing ourselves a disservice by not recognizing that there has to be some kind of transition from where we currently are to where we want to be. So, for example, we understand that we are in the present and then we can acknowledge that there are problems or challenges around us. And then we can determine a preferred end goal, an end state in maybe two, three, five years, whatever it happens to be.

17:36Varun Sharma: But then we have to recognize that the way that we get there will look different in different circumstances. And that process might make us put us in a position where we have to make really difficult decisions that might need to that might require us to compromise a certain element of ourself. But it is a strategic compromise because we're doing it in this moment to move us forward. So example, when it comes to defense or oil or whatever it happens to be, you might recognize that even though we have an aspirational change in mind when we want to create this green future that's a little bit more sustainable, we have to recognize that we are still constrained by the fact that the majority of what is required to stay alive is tethered to oil.

18:20Varun Sharma: We're seeing that now when it comes to the effects of what's happening in the Middle East with the Strait of Hormuz closing and inflation going up and prices for everything going up. We can't deny the reality of the current importance of oil. So when we transition, we have to keep that in mind. And it might cause us to have to make strategic compromises in the moment. But we have to stay focused on the end goal and take the most effective path there while being pragmatic in the process. us i i think you phrased it very well the one thing i i noticed and i just pointing it out

18:56Kwame Christian: right so you you you talked about compromise and when we hear that word we already start to feel a little bit constricted right um because we're thinking about this situation like it's a compromise it's not a compromise it is just the reality of the situation right that's a good point so So and that's the thing that when we use these words, you know, whatever we're telling ourselves, you start to feel guilty. Right. And that starts to bother your conscience. It happened with me very recently when I was talking about the defense thing. Right. And I was like, but I don't want to have blood on my hands.

19:39Kwame Christian: But that's pushing it too far. By not doing anything also, you have blood on your hands. Right. I'm sure all of us know that movie, A Few Good Men. right you know because the guys didn't help that soldier right they were still guilty because they didn't take action and that's very true in life if you're not doing something about you know what's happening in the world then you're you're still party to it because you're just sitting and waiting and watching and you're saying oh i don't want to get involved in that well why not you know of course there's a balance and you have to define that balance for yourself up to what degree and in what way you want to be part of it but you have to do your part and you need to figure out what works for you and it's honestly i can't tell you what that is you can't tell someone what that is it's a feeling it's a sense you know there are certain things we can talk about on the podcast or in life and then there's a lot of things that you just feel and i think that's the other thing that people forget to experience life and really see what are they feeling about a certain situation do you feel good about it you know if you're not feeling comfortable about something or negotiating with someone or doing business with someone even if you can't put your finger on it it's already telling you something because 90 of communication is body language perhaps right and then there's also aspects around energy and all of that i believe in it you know and it's not just a belief to be very honest it's true you know um we we understand probably two percent of the known universe because 98 is dark matter or the percentages might differ but you know 90 plus percent is dark matter and we understand a little bit and then we say oh you know i can reason and rationalize everything and it's just not how it work so you have to feel the world around yourself you have to experience it and then decide okay this is where i am and this is what works for me and this is the balanced middle path that i'm going to take on you know what i'm doing and this is how i support my country um i'll give you an interesting example especially because i think most of your audience is american and when um You know, I've been in Estonia for 10 years and it's right next to Russia.

22:05Kwame Christian: And the NATO forward, let's say, headquarters in a way on the eastern front is very much in Estonia. Right. And a lot of my friends have been American special forces guys or, you know, people who are working for the U.S. embassy. And I've had discussions. Some were pro-Trump, some were anti-Trump. some had internal conflicts in their own families where the parents were pro-Trump but they were like oh my god I don't know how to talk to my family anymore all of that and there was a time when I was younger when I was like yeah you know he's a terrible guy and you know everything he does is wrong but if you look at it he's definitely not the best speaker but there is some sense in some of the things that he has done.

22:58Kwame Christian: I'll give you an interesting example. So, and this is coming from someone who has been working in sustainable energy and green energy for quite some time now. I used to even co-organize the largest sustainability conference in Northern Europe. He came in and he said, you know, we're done with batteries, EV, all of this out, right? And hydrogen, you know, we don't care about it right now too expensive too whatever we're going to focus on drill baby drill and oil is everything and of course that you know focus is also not great but what was happening earlier is the reliance on evs and batteries has been growing and increasing at a very exponential rate right the us is one of if not i think it is the largest consumer market in the world Who's the largest supplier?

23:53China.

23:55Varun Sharma: Yeah, yeah.

23:56Kwame Christian: They're the largest producers of batteries. They're doing it extremely well. I mean, you see BYD right now, the blade battery and everything. And they already have massive manufacturing facilities, which are totally automated. Right? They're also the largest hydrogen market in the world. and they do it for one-tenth, if not less, of the price versus even Europe, right? But if we were to all start immediately moving towards EVs and hydrogen only, then also what would happen is there would be a geopolitical shift in the world. And I'm not sure if we'd want to live in a world where China is now the new superpower and communism is all over the world and we live in autocratic societies, I don't know how many of us would want to live in that kind of world.

24:52So when we're preaching green energy, ecotourism, all of that,

24:59Kwame Christian: then it's very important to consider the broader implications. So Trump isn't stupid. He's very intelligent, right? Because he saw that happening. And so what he did is, because maybe he's a firm believer that the U.S. should always be in power, right? And he sort of went the complete opposite way. But I think there is a middle ground somewhere where we continue to transition. But the transitioning shouldn't mean that all of a sudden we sell ourselves to countries perhaps whose way of governance and values don't really align with ours in the free world. right yeah so those are things that i think it's it's really important for us to sit with ourselves um and and think about them because you know it's very easy to criticize someone just because of what they're saying but maybe we should dig deeper and also understand why are they doing that and i haven't seen this being reported by the way on mainstream media either but if you just reason And if you worked in geopolitics and geoeconomics, as I have, you know, international trade, you can pick up on these little things.

26:14Kwame Christian: And it makes total sense, right?

26:16Varun Sharma: Right. This is fascinating because it speaks to the complexity of all of these issues. Yeah. So you could be somebody who is green and wants to create positive change in that way. And then also recognize, like you described, there might be some policies that consider things that you have yet to consider. Because if you're just looking at it through one vertical, then life becomes very simple. But when you add the fact that everything is intertwined and interconnected in some kind of way, life becomes more complex. And then every decision requires a set of different trade-offs that you have to consider.

26:53Varun Sharma: And you have to do a cost-benefit analysis that sometimes can feel near impossible, which is one of the many reasons why so few people actually step into the arena and have these types of conversations and do these types of things because of that complexity. but it allows you to be in a very safe place to be able to point and criticize and say, look, look at this, look at the thing, the bad thing this person did or, or what. But if you look at it in isolation, the analysis is very, is very simple. But when you think about the interconnectedness of the decision-making, it becomes very, very difficult.

27:30Varun Sharma: And I, I think about the, um, the Dunning-Kruger effect where the, uh, the less, you know, the more confident you are because you can only see but so much or know so much. And, you know, for me, I didn't do any international policy work, but I did study domestic policy, like U.S. policy and whatnot. And I just recognize, again, it is very difficult and very complex. And usually, not all the time, but usually, if I hear somebody say, why did they do this? Because all you need to do is, I'm like, And anybody who says all you need to do, they are most likely missing a large chunk of the calculus.

28:14Kwame Christian: I totally agree. And with all of this, there's always another perspective. And that's why I said what's important is when you have this conversation with yourself, and I'll go as far as saying it's actually common sense, at least like how it comes to me. and i think sometimes we end up over intellectualizing things you know so uh if you just sit with certain situations and what's happening in the world you can understand why they're happening you know i i explained one of them right um and of course there's details and there's you history and and a lot of stuff which is which is great but if you want to find because for me when I think about these things right it's always to find okay I have all of these pieces of information what am I going to do with it for myself and that I am actually working with these things right it's not just to read and be an academic scholar that's not who I am I'm a practitioner right I enjoy being you know in action and seeing that okay if I did something there's a result that's one of the reasons I left working for the government because it takes quite a while for you to start seeing those results you stay involved in the process for a long time and at times especially I think if you're young you feel you're you're stuck in this process and nothing's happening and in some ways that's a good thing because then you end up leaving like I did and trying to do something on your own and hopefully can grow it to a level that you're able to make a meaningful impact now whether that's positive or negative it's always debatable right but what's important is that you are comfortable with it if you yourself are conflicted and that's when the problems start right because then you're not happy you're not you know um sleeping well uh you're not performing well as a result you're probably not being a good parent or a good spouse or a good sibling, whatever it might be.

30:34Kwame Christian: And that's when the world becomes a more sad and negative place to live in, right? So all of these things, I think they're so interconnected. But for you or for me, what's important is whatever we're doing, we are comfortable with it. And if you and I sit across the table and you have a conversation with me around Varun, You know, why are you right now focusing on defense technologies and helping them enter new markets or this cross exchange of training and information? Then I can tell you, well, Kwame, you see the world we live in. This is what's needed. It's the same thing. You know, if you have conversations and most of this generation has unfortunately passed away or they're very old.

31:23Kwame Christian: I mean, Second World War, right? You talk to your great grandparents, or for some, maybe even their grandparents, but what choice did they have, right? You had to be a conscript. You had to go to the battlefield. And they were engineers and authors and philosophers and, you know, psychologists and all of that. And they had to go into war and either be killed or kill. right because you're fighting for your life uh and we don't want to face that because we're like you know we're more advanced we're more evolved we live in the future um yeah but we still have the same uh human biology you know and the and the psychology and so there will be conflicts and sometimes it turns into a physical fight what can you do about it right when i remember when i was

32:20Varun Sharma: practicing law more frequently. That was one of the conversations I had to have with the clients very frequently. It's somebody, there's a difficult situation. We might need to sue somebody or, you know, it gets a little bit contentious and they don't want to engage. And I let them know there's, that's truly not an option because you have to react to what just happened. It's not just going to go away. And the thing that I would always say is sometimes the war chooses you. And it's your responsibility to protect yourself in those situations. And when you think about the pragmatic idealism, you realize when it comes to this, there are constant wars.

33:02Varun Sharma: And it doesn't need to be war in the traditional sense where we have warring factions engaging in like actual militaristic war on a national scale. there are things that we have to fight every day. Whatever it is that you care about, there's some kind of battle or striving that has to occur. And whenever you're trying to move in a specific direction, there will always be resistance in some kind of way pushing back. Even if you're going for a bike ride, if you go fast enough, you're going to feel the wind on your face. There's some kind of resistance and we have to be ready for it. So when you think about your own life and the big moves that you have made over the course of your life, what are the things that have given you the resilience to overcome that resistance and make difficult decisions?

33:51Kwame Christian: I think over the years, it's changed. What's given me that resilience and the motivation to change. It's been different things. And it's interesting that you also see it in the world with people like different things drive them so with some it's fear because maybe they grew up really poor and then they work really hard to build their lives for me I think at one point it was frustration because I was frustrated of working in process-oriented things where things would never go anywhere and I was like listen I want to do something on my own but I also had this fear but the frustration it reaches a point where it crosses the fear so you're like you know what i'm done i don't care about being scared anymore but i need to do something about it right and and then you start doing it but eventually i'd say now um i've reached a pretty good place and i i developed a very deep sense of faith and when i say that i believe in god but for some people it might be the universe as i see it it's all the same thing there is definitely something higher um i don't want to say supernatural but a higher intelligence at play right uh if there's too many coincidences sometimes and you catch yourself like why is all this happening around me it's not just a coincidence right then there's a pattern and you have to be honest that i recognize a pattern or could there be a pattern right you'll have to ask that question and when i developed this uh or reconnected with this deeper sense of faith i'd say i realized that sometimes things happen and you can stay calm you know you can be patient you were asking this question around if you had a hundred negotiation skills and you were having this power struggle or you know whatever with a toddler one of the biggest skills as a negotiator that you would have is amazing patience right and if you are amazingly patient with a toddler you will win that negotiation but it's it's it's a test of patience isn't it right right so uh so i'd always choose because if you have those skills on negotiation on patience um listening uh all of that then uh you have power you have the leverage and that's real power you know because it's not um out there it's very calm it's it's grounded it.

36:42Kwame Christian: And that takes experience, I think, real practitioner experience. You can learn a lot about it on the YouTube videos, on listening to podcasts, like, you know, we're speaking right now. But I think you really internalize this when you have those experiences. Right.

37:02Varun Sharma: Oh, it's very, very good. This is great. And Simone, I know you're listening. I want to get you in what what is coming to mind for you my friend i want to share with you a personal anecdote my sister last month she lost her job to ai and as it's happening in argentina and that's happening all over the world right so some people i was listening in the news in argentina some people saying that they have to find a way to regulate AI technology and to try to stop AI from doing that. And then I was debating about that inside of myself, right? And said, okay, what happens if we do it ourselves here in the US, Canada, South America, and Europe?

37:50Varun Sharma: And we create our own way to censor or to stop AI from developing, but no one will do it in other countries. So what will happen in terms of defense, businesses, and everything if we stop our developments, but there are other countries that won't do it. How do you envision the future with AI if we do something like that? Because I see that many people are asking for a way to regulate or stop AI from maybe doing like workforce or those agents. And there are other countries that don't care about it. They just work on that and develop AI faster than us.

38:38Kwame Christian: so we're we're giving them too much power isn't that absolutely uh if if we get left behind and i'm even talking about us as individuals if we get left behind and not upskilling ourselves and learn how to use ai we're doing ourselves and the people that we're responsible to a disservice and why i'm saying this is because this is it's it is a massive shift and if you look at ai itself right like in the past five years first the models came out and all you could do is have a conversation right and even those sometimes were glitchy you know people were posting funny things like i asked i don't know something around a calculation and it gave me a wrong number or whatever and there were little glitches right and now ai is at a level already where it can do sales you know and the people i can give you my own example so right now what i'm doing with ai is i've always had these really amazing ideas around how sales should happen but i've never been able to do it because i can't be a whole sales team you know but i understand the whole process because I've done outreaching and in sales and as it is in negotiation, Kwame, and maybe you can come in here, the devil lies in the details, right?

40:07Kwame Christian: So it's a little thing, the way you sit across someone, the way you look at them, you know, the timbre of your voice, how you speak to someone, the kind of messages and the words you use and all of that, right? But AI today has enabled us and will continue to enable us to do this at an exponential rate. And that was my point. In the past five years, if you see how AI has grown, it's the typical hockey stick. And that's normally the case with technology development, right? So initially, it was these basic models, and then the new ones came out and was just conversational. Now, there's open claw.

40:47Kwame Christian: There's like, you know, clawed mythos, which can expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Countries are talking to each other on how we can be better and how those vulnerabilities shouldn't be exploited. There's China with DeepSeek, and they're not getting the NVIDIA chips, but they're still able to compete with a cloud or OpenAI, ChatGPT, all of that, right? So this is normal. but coming to maybe giving you a different perspective on this i had this conversation with someone the other day and i said um you know how everyone always says that there is a rise in adhd or add i mean you hear people you know everywhere talking about i have an attention deficit disorder and i'm taking this medicine right i see it almost everywhere i don't know about you guys right and uh oh yeah i think i've had it for the longest time i mean if you see i've been jumping around and doing different things for a while of course there's a story behind it but i never really stayed still so maybe i have add right um and it's the way we frame it so it again brings us to the same thing that is this a compromise you know or is this a problem because now and there was some research around this also ai can predict behavioral patterns and you know thinking patterns for people who are normal but if you maybe have a disorder if you are autistic or if you have add then this is not a liability it's an asset and i'll go a little bit deeper why it's an asset for someone who has attention deficit disorder because what do you want you can't keep on one thing for too long right so what you want to do is you want to start stuff and then let it grow as quickly as possible because you can't be focused on one thing for too long but the thing that normally people who i've met at least who have add or adhd they're really good at is seeing the bigger picture and putting all of these pieces together, but they don't want to work on the pieces.

43:05Kwame Christian: They want to work on the big picture. But a lot of times, they obviously don't have the funds to hire a whole team and do it. But now that's possible because you have AI.

43:14Varun Sharma: There is a famous nutritionist in South America.

43:18Kwame Christian: Okay.

43:19Varun Sharma: And he had many patients, many. So it was difficult for him to take care of all his patients. But what he developed, an AI agent in WhatsApp. Okay. So you have your doctor and you go and see your doctor every month. But then the doctor is there so that you can ask questions in WhatsApp every day in case you want. So at 12, the doctor sends you a WhatsApp and says, hey, show me the picture of what you're eating. I want to see if you're eating proteins and everything. So send me the picture via WhatsApp. And so this doctor find the way for AI to give him more workload than before. So he has more patients and more things.

44:09Varun Sharma: So the way we use AI can bring us more job opportunities and more money. So it's not always people losing their jobs through AI, but people making more money through AI too, right? Right. It's just a tool that you can let the tool work against you or you can work with the tool to make more money.

44:32Kwame Christian: Absolutely. And maybe taking this a little bit further. So I've been using it like that right recently. Another example, perhaps, is for research and proposal creation. I literally start Claude and I dictate. and I just speak my thoughts out loud on how things could be and then I'm sometimes conflicted and I'm like you know I don't really know how this will work I'm just thinking out loud and I even record sometimes like on my voice memos on my iPhone and I can copy the transcript and then I take that transcript and I drop it into Claude and I say what do you think and most of the time and i'm really saying 90 of the time it comes back to me with brilliant ideas because it will go and research those ideas um it'll it'll even you know i told you i'm using like this multi-agent approach and i i don't have any coding experience right so i just told claude that hey go connect yourself to gemini and also open ai and for our second opinion ask the other ai sometimes you know because i know like chat gpd is good at generating images and gemini is good at deep research and claude is good at reasoning and writing right so i learned that through experimentation and i was like listen for these things you use those guys but otherwise uh here's my ideas what do you think and it'll take its time and like 10 minutes later or 20 minutes later, it'll come back to me with a full proposal.

46:08And I'm like, I don't even think my

46:11Kwame Christian: whole team could have put that good a proposal together, right? Which is well-cited, sourced, reasoned. And of course, I'm adding input, right? Without me, it would be nonsense, honestly. So I'm still valuable to that process, but I don't need to sit and format a Word document and waste my time.

46:32Varun Sharma: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And you've given me some ideas too, because we got the advanced level of Claude. And so we need to do a little bit more, especially with the agentic elements of it. Because you're right, essentially, bringing it back to what Simone was asking about his sister, it's the unfortunate reality is that people are losing jobs to AI. The other unfortunate reality is that it's essentially the world's greatest game of game theory at the moment, where you can see where, okay, there are some advantages of holding back, implementing regulation to enhance safety, but at the same time, the companies, the countries that are allowed to essentially go wild, wild west on this tech, they can get a lot of investment and do a lot of development.

47:20Varun Sharma: And sometimes, like we saw with Mythos, potentially doing a lot of damage at the same time. And so it's a really difficult cost-benefit analysis for us to make on a societal level. Because even if somebody is saying, I want to just put a complete stop on this tech, it doesn't mean that other countries are going to follow suit. And so that's the thing. What is the next best move that we can make, given the circumstances? And to your point, it's one of those situations where you could say, okay, fair enough, you could be a conscientious objector and say, I'm not going to engage in this, I'm not going to use it.

47:55Varun Sharma: And that also would have the consequence of making you less viable in today's marketplace too. So you have to determine what's important to you. How do you want to compete? How do you want to live? What is required to do both of those things? And sometimes what you have to do is recognize, I might have some ethical friction with the tech, but at the same time, I also need to make sure that I'm doing what's best for me and my family and putting myself in the best position to succeed. So it's a perfect example of how these decisions become complex because there's so many cascading consequences personally, professionally, and societally when we think about this in the full context.

48:36Varun Sharma: And I know we're coming up on time, Barun. So I want to see when it comes to, let's see if we can put some kind of mechanism on this so people could try to replicate the way that you navigate the world. So when you're thinking about the shifts that you make, the moves that you make in business and how you focus on getting the pragmatic idealism in your approach when it comes to solving these complex processes or problems. What is your approach for decision making? How do you think through it and then come to a conclusion that you can feel confident in?

49:15Kwame Christian: So I'm going to think out loud, right? Because I'm going to... on this. So I think the first thing that starts to happen with me is the feeling of this conflict, like an internal conflict. And I have, you know, initially you'll feel uneasy or uncomfortable, but eventually the important thing is for you to consciously tell yourself that I'm going to sit with it and as soon as you do that what starts to happen for me is somewhere in my mind and heart some of the things and the pieces start to make sense right and they start to fall in place if i stay in this constant place of disease you know disease or unease however you want to call it then it doesn't go anywhere and it just leads to frustration so i think that's the first thing that you just need to be comfortable with the fact that yes i am conflicted and i don't know the answer but i will figure it out and i need to sit with it so that's step one the next thing is um well there's a lot of tools you have access to you can look things up on the internet to try and get more informed on a certain topic.

50:43Kwame Christian: You can also just look around and talk to people, you know. With the military thing, I sat and talked to my dad. I've had other people or still have other people who are in the military who I spoke with. I've worked in government. I spoke to people in government to get their opinion. and then i realized like it is important that um you have a strong defensive posture otherwise you're opening up yourself to attack right and then i started to think at an individual level so i always try to bring it down to my individual sense right and oftentimes we are terrible at thinking about ourselves but we're great at thinking about our loved ones right so we might not want to do stuff for ourselves, but we will definitely do the best things for sister, children, parents, whatever, right?

51:38Kwame Christian: Or at least I hope that that's how it is. And when we start doing that, then you can break it down at an individual level and think, okay, if this were to happen, then would I or would I not be responsible? And if I am considering that I can change this or I can do something about it, then what should I do?

51:59Varun Sharma: I agree. I agree 100%. And I think that's one of the, like you said, the hardest things, but one of the most rewarding when you can learn to listen to yourself and then make good decisions that appear in the real world. So I appreciate you taking the time and walking us through that. And before you go, because I know you're starting this new approach to your new venture, I want to give you an opportunity to let the listeners know again about what it is that you do and how they can get in touch? Sure. So I have my business.

52:30Kwame Christian: You can look for Sapien Ventures. So it's sapien.ventures. So it's an interesting domain. So everyone will remember. And you can get in touch with me if you want to focus on growing a business that is B2B. My current focus in terms of markets is Europe, Middle East, and Asia, because these are all markets and regions that I've worked in over the years. And it can be a business which might be in a place where, you know, it's oil and gas or it's defense tech, or it's something that's, you know, green energy and sustainability. And I'd be happy to work with you because all of this is relevant right now, right?

53:15Kwame Christian: So once again, the focus is upgrading humanity through pragmatic idealism and focusing on that transition and not just blatant idealism that you know gets us left behind or gets us into trouble

53:34Varun Sharma: right oh that's good i love it so varoon i really appreciate you coming back on the show today so we'll make sure to link to sapien ventures and the previous episode as well so for people who want to learn more i really appreciate the work that you do and excited to see where this goes because I know it's a big transition for you. But I think of all the folks that we've talked to, you're the person who is perfectly situated to pull it off. So I appreciate you, brother. Thanks for coming back on the show.

54:01Kwame Christian: Thanks for inviting me. Always good to see you guys.