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Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Turning Personal Grief Into a Global Mission for Happiness | Mo Gawdat | E103
01:04:02
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- [00:00]
Ilana Gershon
Wow. This show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast track to leadership land, dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in.
- [00:36]
Mo Gaudet
You're born happy. Happiness is 100% a choice.
- [00:40]
Ilana Gershon
Mo Gaudet, former Chief Business Officer in Google X. Mo made a major leap after an unthinkable personal loss. He is now a 4x bestselling author podcaster who has huge mission to make people happier and unstressable.
- [00:58]
Mo Gaudet
I was the happiest person ever until the death of my wonderful son Ali the surgeon does five mistakes in a row. Every one of them was preventable. I felt a physical part of my heart disappear. Suddenly, life is put in perspective. My capitalist hat turns from I want to finish my life a billionaire to I want to finish my life a billionaire of happiness. And there I am. I'm no longer a corporate executive. I no longer have stocks falling into my bank bank account every week. And I've never been happier. It's not the events of your life that stress you, it's the way you deal with them that does. We say there are four quadrants of stress. We call them.
- [01:51]
Ilana Gershon
Today I have a really special episode for you. If you're trying to leap, you're trying to do a 180 on your career, you're in a career transition or something personally happen in your life, lean in. You might have tears, you might have smiles, but you're going to have a lot of fun. Mo Gaudet, former Chief Business Officer in Google X this is the moonshot factory of Google. Mo made a major leap after an unthinkable personal loss. He is now a 4x bestselling author podcaster who has huge mission to make people happier and unstressable. I can't wait to talk to you, Mo. Thank you for joining me here.
- [02:32]
Mo Gaudet
Thank you so much. It's an honor. You're setting me up now for people to expect quite a bit. I don't have that much probably, but let's give it a try. Thank you for having me.
- [02:43]
Ilana Gershon
Very when I listened Chief Business Officer of one of the biggest, coolest project on the planet. And then on the other hand, you grew up in Egypt. You, you don't have all the connections. So take us back in time. You loved engineering, but you didn't even go to tech right away. Take us a little bit back in time to Egypt.
- [03:04]
Mo Gaudet
It is actually quite an odd story if you ask me. I always say that when I was hired as the chief business officer of Google X, there would have probably been at least 10,000Americans that were more fit for that job than I am, right? That knew the market better, lived in California, already understood Silicon Valley better. My wonderful daughter normally tells me that I was paid in advance, which is probably the core of my story. But let's go back to the beginning. As you said, I was born and raised in Egypt, Public school, public university in Egypt. My mom was an academic who loved reading and learning. She taught English, so she taught me badly, as you can see, with my weird accent. And my dad was a math geek and a very serious engineer. Interestingly, in our family, my mom was more the order and discipline. My dad was the heart, even though you can see the interesting mix because he was a real geek. Right. I was born a little bit on the spectrum, which was not diagnosed, but became very clear when I became older and had conversations with my mom about what it was like when I was a child where I completely understood mathematics way better than I understood English or Arabic at the time in my hometown in Cairo. That's not what kids want you to do, to be able to be friends. They wanted me to play soccer and basically talk about silly stuff. And it was quite complex for me because I would hide to read my physics books. And I thought of myself as, something is wrong with me. And you know, in a way, as I say, it's probably my diversity that made me not worry that much about them and continue to invest in what I loved in the background. And I have to say, I think it was my parents, probably my mom, a bit more than my dad, but my dad was very supportive who encouraged me to try absolutely everything, anything I asked for. I remember when I was maybe 11, I asked to play the piano. So they bought me one of those electric pianos. I failed miserably. And then a week later I said, can I play the guitar? And you'd probably expect them to say no, right? We were not rich, but they were so supportive. Four weeks later I bought a guitar. And I played really, really well for so many years of my life. And it was that constant ability to try and fail and then try something different and fail. That, I think made a massive difference. I married a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. She's no longer my wife, but she completely impacted my life. When I graduated, she was not very comfortable living in Egypt. And so she was the one that urged me to start exploring the world a little more.
- [06:08]
Ilana Gershon
So you want to marry your wife, but somehow that gets you into tech. And I want to understand, like, what happened.
- [06:14]
Mo Gaudet
What got me into tech is very early, actually. I started coding on a Sinclair. You were born like 20 years later, right? And I coded on a Sinclair, a Commodore, and then of course, on an IBM compatible. At the time, that's what we called it. And what really flipped my life upside down, believe it or not, is my parents wanted to renovate our apartment. And my brothers, my two elder brothers were teenagers at the time. I was probably nine or something. And my parents basically said, someone has to be at home to open the door for the workers and just make sure that their needs are met. Can you stay at home for two months in summer? I was like, I am a teenager. It's my summer vacation. At least you should buy me an IBM compatible PC so that I can actually learn to code. And so that was the deal I cut with my dad. I traded two months of my life for an IBM compatible. And by the end of the two months, I remember vividly, I wrote a code that basically took musical notes and turned them into musical sheets for my guitar playing, because at the time you couldn't actually get tabs and so on. You had to buy books for that. And I became a very serious developer just with those two months, because basically I'd wake up in the morning and I have eight hours of nothing but reading the manuals. And it improved my English, it improved my understanding of logic and algorithms and so on. So that was really, really an interesting turning point. And another turning point, of course, is I loved my dad so much, and my mom, of course. But my dad was a distinguished engineer. He was probably one of the top civil engineers in his generation in Egypt because he was responsible for the road and traffic system. And so my elder brothers both did not choose civil engineering. And my dad came to me when it was time to apply for universities, and he said, would you be a civil engineer for me? At least one of my kids should follow my trail. And I was like, yeah, no problem. And I basically a civil engineer because he wanted me to. But I was a horrendous geek. I basically just finished whatever my uni wanted me to do in half an hour a day, and then spent the rest of the day in front of a computer. But then I graduated and I decided I wanted to be a carpenter. And again because of my parents. And so they bought me all the books, all the tools, but I became a really, really, really. I love it so much. Until today, I still build projects almost every week. So I basically didn't understand money or capitalism or success or anything other than I understood. I wanted to marry Nibel, my first wife, which we were together six years by then, and she was like, it's time. And so in my culture at the time, you'd had to propose to her father. And of course her father wouldn't give her to me if I was a carpenter. So I needed to find the job, right?
- [09:17]
Ilana Gershon
Oh, my God.
- [09:18]
Mo Gaudet
Remember, I finished as a civil engineer. But my graduation project, they gave us a very complex road network. And instead of doing it the way they did, I wrote code, basically, which solved the entire network. And my supervisor was like, you're going to fail. I was like, just give me a couple of weeks. And then, poof. I went in with a. At the time, we had dot metrics, printers, so an entire report of every little elevation in every bit of the road. And before I even started drawing, I started to get job offers to be a civil engineer in the top companies in the country. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. I want to be a carpenter. Until one day, I don't know if this is interesting or if we're chit chatting just because people need to know that a lot of life is luck when you really, really think about it. Now I need to marry Nibel. I need to find a good job. But I'm a freaking carpenter. I love what I do. And one day I have a fender bender with a friend of mine. You know, I hit him in a traffic light. So he's opening his door, coming out, ready to shout at me, and he goes like, oh, my God, Mo, how have you been? I've been looking for you. I don't really have your contacts. And he basically said, we're looking for a civil engineer that, that knows computer science. And you are the only one we could think of. Can you come join us? That was IBM.
- [10:43]
Ilana Gershon
Oh, my God.
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Mo Gaudet
And so that was my life. And it's a series of fortunate events. The way I was hired at Google, the way I went to Google X, it is, as my daughter always says, I was paid in advance. God. I believe in God, but you know, if you don't, the universe Wanted me to be in a certain place at a certain time. And so he sort of just always gave me a tiny little cheat. A cheat that worked against being born in Egypt or being educated in a public school or whatever. It was always a tiny bit favoring me life.
- [11:20]
Ilana Gershon
Yeah. But I'll put a mirror mode. The way I look at it, I think we all get cheats, but some of us don't take actions on them 100%. And I think you do. Right. And I think that's just so beautiful. And we create our own luck to some extent. Yes, you also need 100% and I love that about you. So you're basically from Egypt, you're joining IBM. What is it like to start in the tech world?
- [11:47]
Mo Gaudet
I always say every time I joined a company it felt like home. And every time I left it felt really, really alien. A massive pivotal point for me was in my second year on IBM, Egypt was struck with a 7 point something rector scale earthquake. And a lot of the schools were cracked and so children stayed at home. And then the international aid started to pour in and the government started to put in money in a place called the Educational Buildings Organization. The only condition for all of the aid was that they do everything now with fresh modern technology. So they wanted CAD systems, they wanted database systems, they wanted GIS systems, they wanted everything to be state of the art. I was a good salesman. I went in, they had a bid. So I responded to the bid. They picked IBM. I wouldn't have designed the systems those way, but I was responding to the bid anyway. Six weeks later I realized that the configuration they're asking is not going to work and that my systems are not the best systems. It was a $4.2 million deal, which in IBM Egypt at the time was quite sizable. Anyway, so I wake up one morning knowing that it will probably cost me my job. I walk to the minister's office, sit outside and say I need to meet the Minister of Education. And they go like, who are you? And I'm like the IBM account manager, 25 year old. And basically I sat there until 7pm from 9am I walk in at 7pm and I say, sir, I really advise you to cancel my order. I think this, this and this are perfect. From IBM. This, this and that you should get from Sun Microsystems. This you should ask Oracle to do and I can help you, but I'm sure your technical team can do it. And he said, are you mad? I was like, no, no, no. I want to give you something that works. And the Next morning, he calls his team in and he cancels the order. So I end up with around 2 million of the 4.2. And then he tells his team, ask this guy, he said, sun and Oracle. And so I give them genuine advice and they give the orders to other businesses. A few months later, the minister calls me to his office directly. No bids, no nothing. He says, I want to build this. Can you build it? So I said, yes, sir, I can build this, this, this, this and that. Comfort zone for me. This I think you should go to Dell. That I think you should do this way. And ended up with a $16.4 million direct order from the government four months later. And I have to say, from then onwards, I never sold anything other than what the customer exactly wanted. And my God, I basically didn't have to work ever again. I swear, I'd go sit with my clients at top levels at Google's years. In my very last years at Google, these were billions of dollars sometimes. And yeah, sit there and the customer would say what they want and I listen attentively. And half of the time I'd say, can't help you. Okay. And then occasionally I would say, oh yeah, I can ace this one.
- [14:53]
Ilana Gershon
And I think it's not just about what they want, it's what they need.
- [14:57]
Mo Gaudet
Absolutely. Once I said that, every one of my clients, which by then I had known for 20 years, would go like, and how much would it be? And I go like, I'll tell you tomorrow. And then I send them a proposal and they say, yes, it's as simple as that. I have to say, there is a bit of my eastern side in this. I was born and raised in the east with the traditions of the east. And then I was educated and worked my entire adult life in the west, you know, the west, because of the okrs, if you want the measurements of success, basically, really, really values. Working hard, pushing through, being profitable, making money. And the top two values I found in the west were freedom. And it's the individual, really. So it's my individual benefit and freedom in the East. It's not how we're raised at all. In the east, it's all about the community and it's about respect. And I think that obsession with the success of the community, I think really made me a good businessman. Because if you really don't look at the short term of the quarterly pressure, building those deep relationships, when I was a salesman at IBM or Microsoft, or sales manager at Microsoft or whatever, or regional director at Microsoft and so on, all of Those roles, those people became prime ministers. Just 10, 15 years later, they became the CEOs of all of those organizations. And so when Sergey Brin would ask me to do something very, very complex from a governmental point of view, like self driving cars, for example, or whatever, to get approvals for them, I would literally pick up the phone and call the Minister of Transport in Singapore or call the minister of the Prime Minister here in the UAE or whatever. And they basically knew me as someone they trusted.
- [16:47]
Ilana Gershon
So the trust was a big.
- [16:49]
Mo Gaudet
Makes a massive difference.
- [16:51]
Ilana Gershon
So at this point, you're on this amazing career trajectory. Microsoft, Google. But it becomes almost like a little bit of a melting pot as far as what I'm hearing, because you're getting more and more and more stressed and harder and harder working.
- [17:05]
Mo Gaudet
Oh, yeah. It's not an unusual story, is it?
- [17:07]
Ilana Gershon
Oh, no. I felt every single moment.
- [17:10]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah. I was completely miserable. I was clinically depressed. And there is a difference between being unhappy because you can't make ends meet and being unhappy when you can just pour money on anything. Fancy cars, beautiful home. I had two wonderful kids. The dream of anyone. My beautiful loving wife. I could go anywhere on vacation, anytime I wanted. First class or business class. I could buy fancy suits, fancy cars, anything. And I was clinically depressed.
- [17:46]
Ilana Gershon
Tell me more about that, because I think this is something that happened to me. And I felt very miserable because I can't complain to anybody. I have it all.
- [17:55]
Mo Gaudet
I was the happiest person ever, until, believe it or not, I decided. And I remember the moments vividly. I remember when my son Ali was born, and I'm like, oh, my God, I love you. Right? And I was literally, this thing is never gonna need anything ever. And I went mad working. And when Ayah was due, my daughter, which is life itself, Ayah is the sunshine of this world. When she was supposed to get into kindergarten and we could get Ali into a beautiful one, but we couldn't afford to get a there. I remember vividly, I walked into my boss's office in IBM and I said, look, you're paying me 680. I need 740 because I have to get my daughter into the same kindergarten. And he said, that's not how it works in IBM. You know, there is committees and promotions. And I was like, okay, then I'm gonna resign. I'm gonna leave in four months and I'm gonna find another job. And from then I just. Money, money, money, money. Things, things, things, things. And you know how it is. You succeed, you create a lifestyle for your family. That becomes normalized and then you now have to succeed more and create a higher lifestyle. But the thing is, you're born happy. Happiness changes when you change your choices. So I do a reverse engineering, a simple exercise where I tell myself I'm going to record every moment in my life where I ever felt happy. Every moment I can recall where I felt unhappy. I'm gonna try to plot them on different charts. Basically, if I could find the fitting line that joins all of the moments where I was happy, then I can have an algorithm and then I can almost code that within me that I'm gonna always chase that algorithm. And then suddenly it hits you, okay, There is never a single experience of life that always makes you happy. There's never a single experience of life that always makes you unhappy. Rain makes you happy if you wanna water your plant. Or if it boyfriend's wedding, it makes you unhappy. If it's your wedding, it's always that comparison events minus expectations, events minus expectations. And you end up with a value that is either zero or higher or negative. But by the way, it's also your perceptions. So think about it this way. You could be stuck in traffic and telling yourself, oh my God, this is going to take 40 minutes. I'm miserable, I'm wasting my life. What have I done to deserve this? Life is against me. Or you could be stuck in traffic telling yourself, oh, I have a car, I have a place to go. Oh, the car is air conditioned. Oh, by the way, I actually am amazed by the fact that I don't have to walk those 30 miles.
- [20:39]
Ilana Gershon
Or I can listen to an amazing episode, right?
- [20:41]
Mo Gaudet
Or I can listen to an amazing episode. There you go, right? And then suddenly it's the same exact situation, but your perception could be very different. And here is the statement that upsets a lot of people when I say it. It's your perceptions and your expectations. Which means What? Happiness is 100% a choice. Unless you have chronic pain or you're really, really struggling, you can't make ends meet, you can't put food on the table unless you're in a very, very traumatic place like some of the war zones around the world today or whatever. I honestly and truly believe that if you're fortunate enough to have a device where you can watch this conversation on or listen to this conversation on, which means you have a roof on top of your head so you're safe, which means you're not starving to death, you're probably one of the luckiest 1% alive. And once you see it, that way and you realize that you could have been born in Syria and you would now be bombed with no mistake on your side. Suddenly you go like, oh, it's not really that bad that my boyfriend's annoying. Boyfriends are supposed to be annoying, right? That's expectations.
- [21:51]
Ilana Gershon
If you're feeling stuck, underpaid, or unappreciated, or you're simply ready to take your career in life to the next level, I have the perfect solution for you. We have a program that helps you fast track and leap your reputation and career, become the best version of yourself, get the dream role you deserve, move up to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or even build a portfolio career. This program helps hundreds a year and it will help you gain the income, influence and impact that will transform the second part of your life. Watch our free training today@leapacademy.com free training. The link is in the show Notes. Now back to the show. So take me there for a second.
- [22:33]
Mo Gaudet
Moving.
- [22:34]
Ilana Gershon
You're in Microsoft, but you're still not taking time off and leaving everything. In fact, you're going to another decade of working even harder. Do you feel that competition between yourself or do you just lean in? What is it for you?
- [22:52]
Mo Gaudet
That turning moment for me was quite pivotal in many ways. I'm a geek, as you've probably figured out by now, right?
- [22:58]
Ilana Gershon
Sucking.
- [23:01]
Mo Gaudet
But this to me truly explains something. So now I can see an algorithm. Now I can understand the progress and I understand that it's my choice, and I now can understand how to work on this. But then I go to my son, Ali, and Ali was a tiny little Zen monk. He was unbelievable. I don't know if that's frequent, but he never really cried, ever. And he spoke very little. He either joked all the time, but when you spoke about something serious, he would listen like you're talking to Yoda. And then he would say four words, usually four to eight words that would blow your mind. So I go to Ali after I go back from that trip, and I go like you wouldn't believe what I figured out. And I start to describe everything to him. And he treats me like a little child, he must have been eight at the time. And he listens. And then he asks me a couple of questions and clearly just to entertain me. And then he would say what I explained to him, but coming from the heart in a way that would blow my mind. And for the following three years, I work with this tiny little thing explaining to him what I figure out. And he explains it to me like humans figure it out. And Then we build this model, the 6, 7, 5 model. And now suddenly, over four months, I'm the happiest person alive. Literally. You wouldn't put a dent in my happiness. I remember at the time, I still worked at Microsoft, and so I would have to go to Seattle once a month, which meant that I flew from Dubai to jfk. Oh, my God. And Middle Eastern, born and raised. So I did that for four years running. Every single time I'd land in JFK and they would give me a big red envelope and treat me like a freaking criminal and take me to Homeland Security. And it's an insulting experience. And if you look to the side, the officer behind you who's holding a gun, guys like, seriously, I've done nothing. Who's holding a gun, says, look forward, sir. And then you get into that room, they sit you down, and the officer is literally shouting at me. Until the guy behind the counter recognizes me because he saw me last month and the months before and the months before, right? He doesn't remember my name, but he remembers I work at Microsoft. So he would actually, out loud, which is really funny, he goes like, oh, Mr. Gates is back, right? And then he would call me to his desk and say, answer the same 10 questions you answered last month. And so I simply would go, like, my name is this. I work for Microsoft. Here is my invitation letter. I am there for a meeting. My mom's name is this. My dad's name is the same 10 questions, right? And so he would go, like, all right, see you next month. And I'm completely, completely chill, sitting there telling myself, I mean, think about my upbringing. I'm now a senior director. I was at the time responsible for emerging markets for the communication sector at Microsoft, building incredible solutions. Very geeky, very interesting. Loved by everyone, loving everyone. It was lovely, right? And I'm thinking to myself, look at me. Look at how far I've come. Look at how my kids are safe at home. I'm now welcomed into America, which, coming from a third World market, you sort of think of that as a big privilege when you're young. I don't anymore. Just so that you know, and you can frame it that way, you can remember how amazing life is to you, because life is always amazing to you. And I just had no unhappiness in me. As a result, I started to even enjoy working more. I'm now not tired by my Delta flight from jfk, which makes everyone tired to Seattle, right? I'm basically in my full swing, constantly in my full energy, having the time of my life. Joking with everyone, loving everything. But the thing is, you just never stop to recognize how empty that whole thing is. I remember I told myself I would write Solve for Happy in 2009. So whatever I learned with Ali, which was my first book, I wanted to say in a very clear way, these are 40 tips to happiness. And I just told myself, just sit down. You probably could write it in two months and just put it out there. And then a customer calls and I forget about it and just travel to Australia and spend a couple of days and just deal after deal and customer after customer and tech after tech. And I was very senior at the time. I was just leaving my position as vice president of emerging markets, which probably is the biggest privilege ever for anyone. So I was responsible for the next 4 billion users of Google, which, you know, it wasn't really opening a sales office. It was really the making Google understand the market and establishing the Internet and the democracy of information and E commerce. And it really was an incredible privilege. And I was just moving to Google X when it's now four years later after I decided to write that book and I didn't write it. And then life kicks me in the balls, basically.
- [28:15]
Ilana Gershon
And I assume you're talking about 2014.
- [28:18]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah, 2014. I was at Google X at the time, chief Business Officer. Again, every two and a half, three weeks, I get a nagging feeling inside saying, write it. This is a good book. Write it. And I never wrote before and English is not my native language. And at the time, Ali Habibi, he was in Northeastern at the time. He played in a band and he got a gig to open for a famous rock band in summer. I get this strange call. Ali rarely ever calls. And he goes, papa, I feel compelled. I'm quoting, this is his exact words. I feel compelled to come and see you before the tour. Is it okay if I buy a ticket? Ali was that polite. You know, we're multimillionaires at the time. And he would always go, like, is it okay with you if I spend this extra $5? And I say, oh my God, habibi, yes, please, that would be so wonderful. I'll take a couple of weeks off. I called Aya, I said, aya, why don't you come over as well? The family together again. And now I'm the happiest. You know, I love those kids. I really do. Anyway, Ali arrives three days later. He's not himself. He's saying things that are really worrying. I mean, I vividly remember he wanted to Change his major to game design. Video game design. Which meant that he would have to change university and city. He told his mom. I said, yeah, absolutely, but I was busy at the time. I'll talk to him when he comes to Dubai. So I go, you know, for the first three days, I keep telling him, ali, shall we talk about this? Just so that we get it out of the way. And he goes like, no, it's okay, Papa. And then the last time I asked him, the night before he left us, I said, ali, shouldn't we talk about this? And he said again, I quote, he said, papa, it's okay. I'm not gonna make it. Anyway, the next morning, he wakes up with a very severe belly ache. They say they know so good people know when they're leaving. And Ali knew. Ali knew in so many ways. Oh, my God. The day before Habibi took us. It's probably the most touching moment of my life. We went out for lunch two days before. And Ali, as I said, he didn't speak much. Always either joked or said something wise. So we're out there, we're having lunch together, the four of us. And then he says, I have something to say. We go like, yes, Ali has something to say. And he speaks for 45 minutes nonstop. He looks at each of us for in the eyes, and he says, you really know I love you, right? Like a dying grandfather. He says, this is what I really love about you. This is what you taught me when I was this. And he just recites the whole thing, each of us, for like 10, 15 minutes. And then he says, but there are a couple of things I'd like you to do. I think it would make you perfect. Anyway, on the 1st of July, he gets this belly pain. We take him to a hospital. He's diagnosed with an appendix inflammation not even severe. They prescribe an appendectomy, which is the simplest surgery known to humankind. The surgeon does five mistakes in a row. Ali gets into the operating room at 10pm At 4am we lose him. Five mistakes in a row. Every one of them was preventable. Every one of them was fixable. They fixed them wrong. And then suddenly, life is put in perspective. Suddenly you recognize so many things. There is an inevitability to loss that completely beats your ego out of you.
- [31:51]
Ilana Gershon
Well, it's a loss of a son. Like there's nothing.
- [31:54]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah. And at his absolute prime and a loving child and the pride of a father. I mean, that moment when I hugged him before he went into the operating room, Ali was tall Handsome, very wise, very smart, but also very loving. He had this incredible hug. And when he was maybe 15, he was a shorter child than normal. So being an annoying father that I am, I used to call him Shorty. You know, jokingly, not all the time, but like, hey, come here, Shorty. Do you want to, you know, should I, you know, whatever. Play whatever? And he would laugh about it. And then when he was 15, I traveled a lot, but sometimes two, three weeks at a time. And then I come back and he's taller than me. And I'm like, ali, are you taller than me? He answers and says, yes, Fat Hobbit. And from then. From then onwards, you know, I don't get to call him Shorty anymore, and he gets to call me Fat Hobbit. And I hug him before he goes into the operating room, and he goes like, it's gonna be fine, Fat Hobbit. And then he sits on the operating table, and he had a tattoo on his back that he had and never told me that he had. He told his mom again because of how Ali is. He basically said, I'm so upset because I didn't ask Papa if I can use his money to get that tattoo. But then I'm gonna tell him one day, but I'm not ready anyway. So I see it for the first time because it's appearing from his scrubs from the back, and it says the very last sentence that Ali tells me. The gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace.
- [33:37]
Ilana Gershon
Wow.
- [33:37]
Mo Gaudet
That's what the tattoo says. And so I cry when I see it because I saw it without his will. And I go, like, I approve, habibi. It's absolutely fine. It's a lovely tattoo. But then it's the last message he gives me, and 10 hours later, he's gone. And suddenly everything's put in perspective. You know, you're that executive that's been paid all his life to solve problems. This one is not solvable. So you're struggling with it. You're trying to keep your wife and daughter okay. Losing a child just doesn't feel right.
- [34:12]
Ilana Gershon
Oh, it's eating you alive.
- [34:13]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah. I mean, I still have the same pain, but less severe. So I felt a physical part of my heart disappear, so the bottom right hand side, and I still feel it not ever fully healed. Anyway, four days later, Aya walks into my study and basically says, papa, Ali had a dream, and he only told me about it, and I think you should know it. And I go like, yes. Two weeks before he died, he had a Dream. He calls her and says, hey, I had this amazing dream. I dreamt I was everywhere and part of everyone. And it felt so amazing that I didn't want to wake up. Now, of course, if you're spiritual, you learn eventually that when the soul is separated from the body, you're no longer bound by space time. Basically, you have the ability to be everywhere. And if all of our souls come from the same source, if you want, then by returning to the source, you're part of everyone. You're connected to every other soul. I learned that five years later. @ the time, all I heard was my son giving me a quota, which was so weird because then all I heard in my head is Ali telling me, make me everywhere and part of everyone. And at the time, I was a year out of Google into Google X. So I had worked on the 4 billion strategy. I knew how to get to a billion people, right? So I basically said in my head, I was like, okay, habibi, consider it done. That's all I heard myself saying. And then I come up with this devious plan of, I'm gonna write the book, which includes everything he told me about happiness. And then I'm gonna do my own Internet gimmicks thing so that I can get to 10 million people. And if I can get to 10 million people, exactly, if I calculate it correctly, if everyone tells two people who tell two people and so on over 72 years, Ali will be everywhere and part of everyone. That his essence, what he taught me, will be everywhere and part of everyone. And so I basically sit down and write. And it was like I was possessed, really. I would wake up at 3am in the morning, switch on my Mac and type away, and then go back to sleep, forget that I wrote whatever I wrote. And then a week later, I find something on the desktop. So I double click on it and I'm like, oh my God, who wrote this shit? Like, this is good shit. I don't even know that stuff. I swear. It was unbelievable. And I was known at Google X to not be the hardest working person. So I always gave myself thinking time. But literally I would sometimes be in a meeting and then five minutes before the meeting ends, I go, like, guys, I really have to go. I really have to go. And then switch on my Mac in a corner somewhere and type away anyway. And then the world conspired to make it happen. I meet this incredible agent in New York City through a friend of a friend who was going through a tough time at the time. So I sent him a chapter. And he goes like, can you send me another chapter? And then I send him another chapter. And I'm like, until I sent him the whole book. And I'm like, is he going to copy it and put it under his name? But then he basically calls me and says, look, I really want to represent you, if that's okay. Are you ever in New York? I said, I'm going to be in New York on January 3, or something like that. And so literally, we meet, we shake hands. He says, look, I really love this book. I say, and I really feel good about this. Fourteen minutes later, he gets me his standard contract. So I sign it on the spot, don't even read it, and we're still best friends until today. He helps me put the book out in the whole world.
- [37:56]
Ilana Gershon
And you're weeks after Ali died.
- [37:59]
Mo Gaudet
It took me four and a half months to finish the book, but the very early version was 640 pages. Also, remember, I was so afraid that my mentor is gone and that I will forget everything I know about happiness at the time I need to remember. So I was frantically trying to organize what I learned. And, you know, it's that very weird mix between his incredibly human heart and my very algorithmic thinking that comes out on those pages in a way that is truly unusual.
- [38:35]
Ilana Gershon
Well, especially because I think you're writing about happiness when you're probably at the lowest in your life.
- [38:41]
Mo Gaudet
17 days. I started 17 days after he died. And actually, that's the first sentence of the book. Seventeen days after the death of my wonderful son Ali, I started to write. What happened then is 10 million happy? Turned out to be a sandbag. And basically, so the book comes out in the UK with macmillan in the US with Simon Schuster, and macmillan, for some reason, managed to get me on a news show in Channel 4. Anyway, some weird events happen and they had to cut the filming and we had to do it again. But then there was a big fly, a big blue fly that walked into the studio while we're filming and then literally goes and lands on my nose. So the producer goes like, cut. Can't do this. They try to find the flight to take it out, they can't find it. But anyway, they film again. And now I'm prompted for the question, so I give an answer that becomes a clip that Channel 4 puts on social media that gets 7 million views the first day, 18 million views the second day, 37 million views the third day, which is the highest ever for Channel 4. Wow. Right. And then a week later, it's 87 million views. At the time, the mission was 10 million happy. But 10 million happy was not about views because that's cheating, honestly. It's about views followed by actions. So we were trying to measure people that would get the message that it's their right to be happy and then either invest in themselves, so seek happiness online, search for more videos or whatever, or basically invest in another person's happiness so they would forward the message or the video or whatever. And so very quickly, 87 million views in one week. Eight weeks after the publication of Soul for Happy. And my team sits me down and says, you're sandbagging, you need a bigger target. So with my Google hat on, I go like, okay, we move from 10 million not to 11 to a billion happy, which I have to say is never going to happen. You know, you really think about it, but it's such an amazing target to have. And then suddenly my capitalist hat turns from I want to finish my life a billionaire to I want to finish my life a billionaire of happiness. So not dollar signs. As a matter of fact, the early team that works together will remember that the mission was we want to get a million people to champion a billion happy. I wrote Solve for happy. Then the little voice in your head, which is my least favorite book, but most of my readers favorite book. Then I took a break from happiness. Remember one billion happy at first was trying to explain happiness, then it was trying to address the reasons for unhappiness. So incessant thought was the first. That was that little voice in your head. AI is the second. That was scary smart. I wrote a book called her about empowering the feminine which I never published. And then I wrote a book called Finders keepers about love and romance that I never published. Then we published Unstressable. Unstressable was times number four bestsellers. And it was written with a wonderful, incredibly feminine co author that complemented my diversity, if you want. And now Alive is out. And Alive is also a bestseller on Substack, which is really, really, really probably my favorite so far because it speaks about life in the age of artificial intelligence. But once again, they're all focused on humanity's well being. If you want. And there I am. I'm no longer a corporate executive. I no longer have stocks falling into my bank account every week. And I've never been happier.
- [42:33]
Ilana Gershon
What an incredible story. So first of all, Mo, thank you for opening your heart and sharing this. I think you started writing, but you need to eventually decide to leave the certainty of Google and say you know what? I'm okay. And I want to go full on on this thing. How scary was it?
- [42:55]
Mo Gaudet
It's quite interesting that you ask this question. It's something I never spoke about in public, but I remember vividly at the time. I mean, I was rich. I'm not anymore, but I was definitely richer than I ever expected. No, no, hold on. I take that back. I'm filthy rich for my needs as we speak, but I'm not Google Vice president rich anymore. But then I remember I sat down. Which tells you how your incessant thinking always looks for misery. I sat down. I mean, remember, Ali left A is almost done with her university. I have reasonable assets, everything's fine. And I start to put down the numbers, sort of trying to convince myself to be afraid, right? Like, you can't leave Google. How can you leave Google? How can you leave this? You're going to starve to death. And I'm like, how can you prove that? Brain. Right. And then my brain starts to come up with scenarios where, what if your car breaks and you need to fix it? Easy, right? What if this happens? Easy, Whatever. Until I remember vividly that my brain then said, what if the US attacks Iran and then that escalates to a nuclear war and then all of your real estate assets in Dubai get wiped out. How will you survive then? And then I found myself laughing out loud saying, well, in that case, I don't think your money is the biggest of your concerns. Right, but isn't that how our brains constantly try to fool us? And then I remembered something I read when I was very young about financial freedom. And financial freedom, interestingly, is never about income. Wealth is about income. And wealth does not make you financially free. Because if you make a million dollars a year, but you want to change your Ferrari and go on a first class cruise every year, you're still poor. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest problems that our world today is that so many citizens and nations, including the world's largest nation, is in so much debt.
- [44:58]
Ilana Gershon
I always laugh that we have here in Silicon Valley tons of broke millionaires. I mean, they're literally millionaires, but they feel broke.
- [45:07]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah. And the idea is, after I found my path to happiness with Ali's help 20 years earlier, suddenly I didn't need an Armani suit anymore and I didn't need a fancy car. I still love fixing them and selling them, as I said, but I don't need it in my life. And so my entire expense is just nothing, really. My daughter's an adult, my ex wife is completely fine and taken care of. Myself and my loved ones are okay. And so when you really think about it, most of your financial freedom happens on your spending side, not your income side. And I think that was really what got things clear in my mind. Because living as the chief business officer of Google X requires you to pay some expenses that may look like things are highly inflated. But when you really sit down and look at your actual expenses, if you don't have to spend on your work, on the image, on the networking, on the travel, if you just take all of those expenses that are actually expenses to get in the revenue, if you take all of those out and you simplify what you actually need, you'll be fine. More interestingly, the other reason is that most people will say, but what if things go wrong? And I think I got first class MBA degree from life in when things go wrong. Because I'll tell you openly, I planned everything for Ali insurance policies on my life in his name. I had properties and real estate in his name. I had started businesses. So Ali changed majors three times. I would start a business in his major so that when he graduates, he runs it and then he dies. So seriously, most of us think that we have to over plan because life is not safe, right? I think you have to under plan because life is not safe. You really have to expect the best because otherwise if the worst happens, it doesn't matter if you're a millionaire or a billionaire or a trillionaire, if something serious. I didn't know Steve Jobs myself, but I knew lots of people who knew him personally. And they'll all tell you the story of how in his last years he finally understood that all of that and I couldn't prevent this. All of the success, all of the money, all of the power, all of the influence. And he really saw it at the end and he started to say some very wise things on his deathbed. And I think that's the idea. The idea is that instead of you worrying about life to the point that you constantly attempt to aggregate more and more to work against life, maybe the only sure thing you have is that you're alive today and healthy today. And so maybe instead of wasting today to aggregate so that you're safe tomorrow, why don't you live today? Who knows what will happen tomorrow?
- [48:04]
Ilana Gershon
You talked a little bit about stress and Unstressable, which is an incredible book. But today there's just so much stress. And I think you also saw it with your father as well. Let's talk about stress, just for a second.
- [48:18]
Mo Gaudet
I wrote Unstressable because Alice, my co author, said we should write it. She went to stress school. She really, really struggled in her early 20s, everything. Like, she lost her sister to cancer, then her father to cancer, and then to another. And then before that, they lost all of their wealth and money and, you know, they had to sell their home. She lost her job because her company relocated. Her boyfriend drops her at the same time. It's like, it's really weird. And you see Alice today, freaking angel. She's so calm, so steady. And so I was basically in my typical Silicon Valley mindset. I was like, okay, show me a pilot. Write few pages, and let's see, at the same time, I went out and said, what do I know about stress? You know, it's not something that I experience enough. At least mentally. I have reasonable command over my brain. And so anyway, she comes back and writes this beautiful thing. And I always joke that between my writing and Alice's writing, mine has normally bolded letters and equations and bullet points. And then when I read Alice's work, almost every time when I was editing it, you know, I read and read and I'm like, where the f is she going with this? Like, I have no idea what. Why doesn't she just write it in one line? And then suddenly I feel something in my heart. So she writes so much in the feminine, and I write so much in the masculine. And the book is such a beautiful yin and yang of the topic.
- [49:52]
Ilana Gershon
It's very mixed. Like, you have the equations and you have the personal stories. It's really interesting.
- [49:58]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah, it really is probably one of my favorite books because of that mix. And basically, Alice in her feminine, I sit down and I go like, you know what really explains stress? And she goes like, what? And I go like, stress in physics, don't you understand? When you stress an object, you apply a force to it. The force is not the stress. The stress is the force divided by the cross area of the object. So it's not just the external pressures on the object. It's the resources that the object has to carry that pressure. That is how stress is felt. And in humans, all of the external events, external stressors, and by the way, most stressors are internal. And we can come back to that in a minute. They're applied to you, but they're divided by your skills, your abilities, your contacts, your resources. And the more of those that you have, the less stressed you will feel. The pressure will be there and it will accelerate across your life. But you'll start to feel less stressed by it. And you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand this because stuff that freaked me out when I was 20 I managed to deal with in my 30s. I dealt with ease when I was 40. And then in my 50s, I laugh at it, not because it's easier, but because I started to acquire that. And so she goes like, oh my God, I actually understand this. And then we come up with the slogan of the book, which is, it's not the events of your life that stress you, it's the way you deal with them that does. And the book centers around that idea that life will continue to stress you. We say there are four quadrants of stress. We call them ton, T, O, N N. Traumas are external macro stresses that hit you so hard. O is obsessions, which are internal beliefs and scripts that really have a traumatic effect on you, but they're coming within you. The first N is noise, tiny little niggles that you annoy yourself with all the time. And the second N is nuisances. So little things like, you know, your alarm clock in the morning or whatever. And then suddenly there is a model in place because now that you understand them, of course trauma is outside our control. But trauma is not really the reason for the stress pandemic or epidemic of the world trauma. Good news and bad news, if you want. The bad news is that 91% of everyone you know will get at least one PTSD inducing traumatic event once in their life and many get more. So, you know, when it comes to loss, for example, I lost so many people that I love and each of those counts as a traumatic event. It is an amount of pressure on you that is so high intensity in such a short period of time that it exceeds your ability to carry it. And so you break. So that's the bad news. I hope that our listeners will all be in the 1 out of 10 that don't get that. But likely you're going to be one of the nine.
- [52:48]
Ilana Gershon
You know, life has its way.
- [52:50]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah, yeah, A bad breakup, a loss of a loved one, an accident, whatever. The good news is, which this is from 911 statistics, that 93% of all who get to PTSD, so that's the highest level of stress recover in three months. 96.7% recover in six months. And all of them, or most of them, 98% of them, experience post traumatic growth. So as you put yourself together within the three to six months, you're okay, you're even better than where you were before. So it's not trauma that stresses you. That is the reason for the epidemic of stress in the world today. What stresses you? What breaks you? Interestingly, of those external stressors and internal stressors applied in different ways, it doesn't matter. We went into something that we call the three reasons we break. Okay, so one of them is trauma. We agree it's too intense, too quick. But then the other two are very eye opening. One of them is burnout, which I think most of our listeners will be familiar with. And burnout is everything sub trauma. So you can deal with every day, external or internal, aggregating on top of your head until the sum of all of those forces is too much to bear. So basically, it's the sigma of all of the stressors applied to you multiplied by their intensity, multiplied by duration of application, by frequency of application, which is actually really interesting to understand. So your commute acts as one of those little stressors. If you do it three times a day, it's more stressful than if you do it once a day. If you do it for an hour and a half, it's more stressful than if you do it for 15 minutes and so on. But here's the interesting thing. When it comes to burnout, most of those events don't count as worthy of your attention to remove them because, yeah, you know what? That alarm that wakes me up in the morning, that sounds like a siren, it's not a big deal, I need to wake up. But then you add that alarm to that comment on your Instagram post that you see first thing in the morning to that comment from Donald Trump that shocks you. You keep adding them and probably before you even leave your bedroom, you've had 15 jolts of stress. And then you get into your commute and now you're stressed already. And you know, and it just keeps adding up. One of your colleagues walks in and goes like, do you still have that report? And you, you burst load in their face. And you basically, for those who experienced burnout, it's actually quite interesting because the minute it bursts, you can't get out of bed for a long time. And so the prevention of burnout is not a question of preventing your colleague from saying, where is the report? That's not the issue at all. One of the strategies is a strategy of limiting stressors. And basically one of the exercises I tell people in Unstressable is you need to sit down every single Saturday and write down everything that stressed you the week before and then literally look at them and Scratch out the ones that you're not going to allow in your life again. And the way you deal with it is very straightforward. You can either avoid it altogether. That annoying friend that calls you every two weeks and then sits down and makes your life hell and talks negative shit and tells you bad things about yourself and then leaves. You can either say, I'm never going to go out with them again, or you can send them a text message that says, hey, did you notice that it's always so negative when we meet? I love you very much. Can we please not be that negative? That goes all the way to little things like your alarm clock in the morning. So instead of having an alarm clock in the morning that jolts you out of bed, just get a nice little meditation music that, you know, ramps up over time. Or by the way, sleep eight hours early so you don't need your alarm. So these are things that you can completely remove from your life. The interesting side is your commute. You can't take your commute away, but you can make it nicer, make it pleasant. Yeah, you can listen to a nice podcast. You can, you know, have a good cup of coffee with you. I remember vividly when I worked for a short few weeks, there was an important project in Google, New York. And you know how New York City is, You know, Manhattan, you have those blocks and you have to walk through them. And I'm in Middle east and I walk slow. So basically, as you're walking in Manhattan, there is a green wave. And unless you walk like a maniac, you're going to have to stop every third pedestrian light. So, you know, first couple of days, I'm like, I can't breathe by the time I get to the office. And then I suddenly decide, you know what, I'm just gonna leave 15 minutes early again. I'm not very good with time. So I leave 12 minutes early, I get myself a good cup of coffee, and I walk like I have nothing to do. I observe all of the manic movements around New York City and I laugh my head off. I enjoy my coffee. I. I get to the office totally refreshed on time. 12 minutes difference. Right? So these are things you can do to remove the reasons, the accumulation of burnout. The third reason for why we break is what I call anticipation of a threat. The stress machinery is all about pumping you up with adrenaline cortisol so that you are ready for fight or flight. And so if a tiger is attacking you, then a bit of stress is wonderful. By the way, we're very Happy? Thank you. Stress machinery save our life. The problem in our modern world is that most of stress is mental. It's something that's not actually attacking you. And most of the time it's in the future. So basically what you're looking at is fear and all of its derivatives. Fear, if you want the simplest form of it, algorithmically, again, like an engineer. Fear is an equation that basically says a moment in the future is less safe than this moment. If you subtract your sense of safety in the future minus your sense of safety right now, if it's a positive answer, then you're afraid. So basically, fear is a moment in the future where I'm less safe. Now, your response to that is natural. You try to address the threat. So if you address the threat, you're less afraid. Understood? The derivatives of fear are the reasons for all of the stress pandemic, especially in younger generations today. These are worry, panic and anxiety. Worry is not that there is a threat in the future, it's that you're.
- [59:04]
Ilana Gershon
Not sure there may be.
- [59:06]
Mo Gaudet
Yeah, yeah. So there may be a threat in the future. And you keep flip flopping. Am I going to lose my job, so I need to go and run and find another job, or am I actually not going to lose my job so I need to double down so I get that promotion? And that uncertainty is the reason why you're stressed. And that uncertainty when you're worried makes you try to address the fear because you're assuming it's a fear, but then suddenly try to run the opposite way because you're not afraid anymore. So my advice to people is if you're worried, don't treat it as fear. Don't pay any attention to what is threatening you. Make up your mind, should I freak out or should I chill? If there is a reason to be afraid, then treat it as fear. Don't change your mind. Again, if there is no reason to be afraid, then drop it and go on with your life. The second is anxiety. And anxiety is probably the most interesting of all of them, because anxiety, when you're anxious, you're not focused on the threat, you're focused on your capabilities to deal with it. And being anxious means I can see a threat approaching me, but I feel inadequate to deal with it. So if you try to address the threat when you're inadequate, what happens is you reassure yourself that you're inadequate and you're more anxious. So don't treat it as fear. What you need to do is, when you're anxious, ask yourself what capabilities Am I missing? First of all, by the way, am I actually not adequate? Second is, if I'm not, what capabilities am I missing? How can I compliment them? Can I ask a friend to come and help me out? Can I learn something, teach myself something? How can I develop myself not deal with the threat? And then finally there is panic. Panic is very straightforward. It's not a question of the threat, it's a question of time. If the threat is imminent, the closer it is to you, the more panicked you are. So when you're panicked, don't try to deal with the threat, try to deal with time, delay the presentation that you have to give. Or again, ask a colleague to come and help you so that you're two hands on deck. Or simply cancel a few meetings and give yourself more time so that you're not panicked anymore. And now you can handle the threat in an easy way. Once you understand those things, I mean, unstressable is a very, very large pool of exercises and knowledge and so on. But once you understand those basics, you end up again like happiness. With a very interesting understanding that being stressed is a choice. While the external stressors are not within your control, most of them are, by the way, and your response to them, you get to decide. And in that case then you can choose to be less stressed by actually taking the right steps.
- [61:41]
Ilana Gershon
What would be maybe one thing that you wish you knew earlier on in your career? If you're looking back and you wish.
- [61:49]
Mo Gaudet
You would tell yourself, Funny that I didn't discover it because I'm a very serious video gamer. I'm esport level video gamer. Life is a video game. As a game, it will throw challenges at you because otherwise, who wants to start a game, push the controller forward and wait 70 years? When I used to game with Ali, being the strategic engineer that I am, I would start the game and run to the end of the leverage and Ali would put his controller down and go like, papa, why? Why are you doing this? And I'm like, the end of the level is here. And he goes like, yeah, but who wants to get to the end of the level we're playing? When you get to the end of the level, you stop playing. And he would run to the parts where there is explosives and smoke. And I go like, but why Ali? Like why? This is the most difficult part of the game. And he goes like, yeah, that's where all the fun is. He used to tell me that's where you develop and grow. That's where you become a better video gamer and actually I only became what I am now after he left. So I tried to honor everything that he did. And one of them was I really started to get serious about gaming. Life as a video game is an infinite game. It's not a finite game. You're not trying to win or get a certain score or finish the game. You have one objective only, which is to become the absolute best gamer you have the potential to become. And the only way you can do that is to play. Literally to enjoy the hell out of the game and play live it all, play it all, enjoy it all.
- [63:13]
Ilana Gershon
Wow, Mo, thank you so, so, so much. This was so powerful.
- [63:19]
Mo Gaudet
Thank you so much for having me. I hope it helps a few people.
- [63:21]
Ilana Gershon
I'm sure it will. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends now. Also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30 minute free training@leapacademy.com training. That's leapacademy.com training. See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana guest show.