#088 Turning purpose into action with Uma Balasingam

Connect with Uma

https://www.linkedin.com/in/umathana/

Episode Transcript

The transcript is computer generated. There may be errors.

Sharad Lal: Hi, everyone. Welcome to How to Live, a podcast that explores ways to live a good life. I'm your host, Sharad Lal. This is episode 88. I am very excited about today's topic. How do we take a cause that we are passionate about and make a meaningful contribution through it? We have none other than Uma Thana Balasingam to talk about this.

Meet Uma

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Sharad Lal: Uma has championed women's empowerment Right from when she worked in a Fortune 500 company to now when she does it full time. We're going to try and create a playbook on how we take a cause and do something meaningful out of it. Uma, welcome to the How to Live podcast. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Thank you for having me.

Sharad Lal: Good to see you and Uma, congratulations on all the great work you're doing. You're an inspiration to so many people, not only women, to men. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Oh, thank you. That means a lot. 

Sharad Lal: Today, we're going to look at how do we take something meaningful? I know you've taken something meaningful and made a huge impact through it.

So how can people take causes that are important to them? But before we get there, I'd love to understand you've championed women's empowerment. How did that start? What created the interest in this, if there's a story behind it? 

Championing women's empowerment begins with entering a beauty pageant

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Uma Thana Balasingam: when I was 25. For the fun of it, my best friend from university, her name is Gowri. And I decided that we would participate in a beauty pageant. I haven't told this story publicly before. So we're like, Hey, let's just try it out. We show up and somehow we get through all the rounds, as weeks go by and 

everyone who made it to that round so far, before you get to the finals, there was this session about how to dress for work, how to get your resume ready, and as a brown woman and a dark skinned woman that grew up in Malaysia, I didn't learn much from my mother except that I should always use moisturizer.

And she even gave me a lovely fan because she thought I was too dark. I grew up in a country that likened beauty to being fair skin, and I would see friends that would get attention from boys being fairer skin than me as well. So that was basically everything I knew about that. Moisturize your skin, you stay lovely.

And then I get to this beauty pageant, and in this round, they teach you, like, you should wax your arms and all of that, And as I was going through this experience, the one thought that came into my mind was I wonder how many women out there, like me, who are brown and unseen, who will never get to be in these rooms.

And 

Uma Thana Balasingam: I thought, could I ever someday do something to get them into these rooms? That was the start of it. 

Sharad Lal: What a powerful story. So if I understand right, you realize that being yourself, there's a beauty that you can explore, which can give you confidence. And you got that experience, which was authentic to yourself.

And you felt, I would like to bring this to so many other brown women who may not feel the beauty in themselves. 

Beauty pageants taught skills that helped fit in versus standing out

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I certainly felt good about myself. I don't know about authentic charade because I'm looking at it in hindsight, right? 20 plus years later, 

Sharad Lal: I mean, you know, I had no idea who I was then, but for that period of time, I only wore pants because I was an engineer. Then I had my first job in sales. I worked at IBM and all I saw around me were men. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: So I never knew how to actually dress for myself. And that's part of what you learn in the beauty patch and how to use makeup, how to dress professionally. And none of these skills are taught in school, so you just kind of figure your way out. So, yes, I thought. I felt good having that information and then applying that knowledge.

I felt better about myself. I felt more confident. I felt like I could fit in versus standing out as the brown woman who's got hair on her arms. 

Sharad Lal: And once you had that realization and you said, look, I want other people to experience this. How did you go about channeling that energy? 

Peddling hard causes chasing success and bigger priorities

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I didn't do anything about it, to be honest, because I was so busy peddling hard.

I was determined never to end up like my parents, you know. We didn't have a lot of money. My mom raised us on a salary of 500 US dollars then. There were two of us. My dad wasn't working. You know, a hundred of the 500 went to my piano lessons.

Then I wanted to go to music school at age 15 after I finished grade eight. And, you know, good Indian parents said, Nope, doctor, lawyer, engineer, those are your choices. So while this thought came into my mind, I did nothing about it because I had bigger priorities to take care of myself, and I was maniacally focused on getting it. Money, and that meant I had to progress quickly in the workplace. 

Sharad Lal: So it was a money achievement at that stage as a 25 year old given the context you were in. When did this image and thought come back to you later and inspire you to do something towards the women you were thinking about? 

The ambition, challenges, and a book that transformed it all

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I came to Singapore in 2006, and I kept getting bigger and bigger jobs.

And then I noticed, not so much men versus women or the different treatments, just my own experience of getting comments like, every time I said I wanted to be CEO, I would get one of two replies. You're too ambitious or you're very ambitious. and I thought really, should I be rethinking this?

and then I started putting out into the universe about, I wonder if others feel the same way that I do. And in 2015, a colleague. On a Lyft ride said to me, you really should read this book because she was sensing my energy. And I think that's one of the key takeaways is like when you start putting energy out there about what you're seeking, somehow people, things come to you. So she said, you should read Lean In.And Lean In is a book written by Sheryl Sandberg, previously the COO of Metta, and she wrote this book because she was curious about why, after many years of progress, we can define progress in different ways.

Ability for women to drive in some countries, go to school in some countries, starting to get leadership positions in the more mature economies. It all suddenly came to some form of halt, and she was curious why. So she wrote the book. I couldn't put the book down, and it explains so many of these experiences that I was going through, like, You're too ambitious.

Oh, you're very ambitious. I then understood, I wasn't the only one and I can do something about it. 

Sharad Lal: It was such a powerful book. I remember even as a man reading that book, it just opened up a different way of understanding women. And once you read that book, it makes you understand that these things are happening to you.

It's been happening to many other women and you'd had those experiences earlier. What did you do then to try and help some of the other women? 

That unpolished beginning lead to community building

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Uma Thana Balasingam: So I tried in a very unpolished way, to bring women together into a meeting room where I was working.

I was just like, Let's talk about our experiences at work, and then back then, 2015, it's odd. I didn't know how to moderate a conversation. I just knew, I wanted to share this knowledge without shoving a book in their face, and I wanted to hear what their experiences were.

Could we draw any parallels? Could we support each other? So that was, I think, the beginning of this community, 

When universe answers unexpectedly, Lean In Singapore happens

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Sharad Lal: So it was this awkward meeting.

But there may have been something interesting that came out in this awkwardness, which told you, this is something worth pursuing. And that's when you took it further. What was it that you saw there? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: To be honest, it was the question that my mentor asked 

Sharad Lal: me. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: What would you do if you had all the time and money in the world? 

And, from the four hour workweek book, he was distilling it down to me and he said, Look, most people approach life this way. Every time you achieve X, you do Y. When I get my first 100, 000, I'm going to put a down payment on that house.

When I get the next 50,000, I'll think about getting married. so, instead of always having your wife follow your ex, ask yourself, what would you do if you had all the time and money in the world? so, I said out loud to him, I was like,

I want to do something related to women. I want to help women. I just don't know how. then coming back to putting it out to the universe, I get this email because I'm on the INSEAD mailing list.

And there's a lean in Singapore event. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, like lean in here. And I go to this and that's where I meet Helen Deuce. She's got Transcribed A few people in the room, I'd say 80 to 100, and these are people who have found Lean In through a Google search. She had registered the chapter because she had benefited from peer to peer mentorship at INSEAD with a group of women and had read the book. And she said, if anyone's interested to help me, you know, just put down your name card. There were a bunch of name cards. She randomly picks five. I was one of the five. 

Sharad Lal: Oh, wow.

Failing well: It taught me a lot

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Uma Thana Balasingam: And yeah, we built it together. And then, Helen pursued her passion to build her own company. So she stepped out during the pandemic and we had a year of failing well, I would say, of testing what we thought the community wanted. And formats that we thought would work I call it failing well because we learned so much.

And then from the second year onwards, we figured out a format that I'm still using till today. And so you have to test a lot in your first year. 

Sharad Lal: Thank you for sharing that, Uma. I'm just going to distill some lessons for our listeners. I love what you said, what your mentor asked you, if you had all the time and resources, what would you do?

I think that's a good way to figure out what is important to you. And I also love the honesty with which you said that. I wasn't completely sure, but I knew it was in the women area. And then the second lesson I loved, when you know the area you're after, And you manifest it in some way, the universe is going to send you signs, whether it was that email from INSEAD, whether it was being picked as one of those five people who are going to lead it, through that you found yourself running the Lean in Singapore chapter.

Yeah. 

My definition of failing well ends in learning by doing

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Sharad Lal: Wow. And you talked about once you started running that chapter, you failed well. So I'd love to understand like there's an idealistic way that we get into these kinds of causes, but there's always failures and things don't work, So if you can talk a little bit about some of the challenges you faced as you were creating this community, 

Uma Thana Balasingam: I think so. A book business person or entrepreneur will say this, but then you read it and like me, you go like, I know better. they say in the first year, all your assumptions will go out the window. Even now as a later stage entrepreneur, I think I know better, but not really

that's why it's so important to feel well, and my definition of feeling well is Do you know what you want to learn out of all the tests that you do so that you're intentional about the testings, 

For example, we used to invite speakers and one of the things we learned is that people love talking about themselves.

So even though you said you had 15 minutes, they would take half an hour and then that would just throw off our agenda. So the format we use now has no external speakers. 

So, you learn these things and you can only find them out by experiencing them yourself, and learn from them. And that's really how you feel well in the first year. 

Sharad Lal: I love this whole thing of setting it up in such a way.

that you can extract lessons. Like that, you set up various tests and you learn more about it. That's the way to learn.

I love that approach of learning. 

Feedback matters in building community

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Uma Thana Balasingam: Yeah. When you're building communities it's good to ask for feedback. So, we ran a survey and one of the things that was so basic, but we took for granted was how much they appreciated the networking before and after. So now we started six and finished by nine thirty to ten. So the six to seven is the networking. Then we start the event versus. Start the event immediately, and then we always stay back. The speakers always stay back so that people can network after. 

Sharad Lal: That's so good. Learning along the way, seeing what's working, tweaking it till it works right.

The Ripple effect is the OG impact measuring tool

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Sharad Lal: Now, as you're doing this, you're operationalizing it, but you also started with a deeper purpose of making sure that women get access to all this. How were you looking and measuring the impact that you had started with? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Yeah, I get this question a lot.

we have a community of, you know, at any one time, six to 7, 000 and people go like, yeah. Exactly. Actually, for me, it was never about the numbers because the measure of impact and success was always, will one woman walk out of this event doing something differently?

And I have held to that for eight years. And the beauty of it is that even if it's one woman, she will have the ripple effect. You know, I have so many texts because this week I did an event. So many women wrote, one wrote and said, I can't stop talking about your event.

I know I told you there, but I even told my husband about it. Now he wants to come. This is the ripple effect that we create. You know, who's your avatar? Who are you really serving?

And I have always said, one person does something differently. That's success. And it also informs what I invest 

Sharad Lal: in. There's a lot of indirect impact. And I think when you see that one person coming back to you and you see that transformation, that makes you realize the impact that you're having.

A bit about My Avatar Anita

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Sharad Lal: So I love that point. And the second one about having that avatar and creating things around that avatar. So if you can talk a little bit about the concept of avatar. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: An avatar is your ideal Customer profile, at Elevate for our B2C model.

My avatar is Anita. So everything I do, I ask, is this going to help Anita? Is this going to serve Anita? And so it also informs investment decisions. Like if someone on the leadership team for Linen said, Uma, we need new banners because these banners are outdated. Then my question is, how does it help?

Sharad Lal: Anita. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Exactly. 

Sharad Lal: And for Anita, do you have a detail written out in order who Anita is, what she's doing, do you have some mood board kind of a thing, or you just have an understanding of who she is? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: In the beginning for Lean In, nothing was written 

down. We weren't that organized at all.

but now, yes. What are her pain points? How is she consuming information? What are her struggles? In life and in work, does she feel like she's a hidden talent? Is she looking for visibility? Is she struggling with time management, Does she get interrupted in meetings?

The best way to develop an avatar is to go speak to at least three people, prepare your questions based on the product that you're trying to deliver,and get feedback on it. 

Sharad Lal: Very cool. You're doing Lean In, that's 7, 000 people, but that's your part time.

You have your main Fortune 500 company. You're an ambitious person doing very well. How are you juggling these two demands, managing time, managing your energy? 

My exploration, explanation and discovery of "Why"

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I think it goes back to your why. 

So many have wanted to be part of this journey, but have not, either discovered this wasn't their why, not part of the passion that they are, aligned with, and they figured out other passions, or they simply are still discovering their why. 

you know, how many other unseen hidden women that will never get to be in this room can come into this room, right? and that's why I do other things to try and scale. So knowing your why is so important.

Because when you do something. In parallel to a full time job, it is early mornings, late nights and weekends that you put in the effort to do. So it doesn't feel like I really have to open my laptop and create this EDM or look at the Excel spreadsheet and see how many people registered for this event.

We used to do everything manually. We didn't even have an event right now. So people respond by emails or Google forms or whatever. you do all of that work yourself in the beginning. And then as we grew at one point, we had 200 volunteers. Then when you start to scale that way, one of the most important things as a founder is learning to let go. 

Only focusing on what you can do and giving others autonomy to do what they want to do. So one of the rules that Helen and I had comes from the book from Mark Manson on the subtle art of not giving a F U C K. one of the first incidents is we would look at something and we were like, there's a spelling mistake 

And we did that a few times and then we said, look, how many times should we really be stepping in on something like this? How important is that? How does it serve Anita, for example? So we gave ourselves a rule.If it's not at least three fucks, we are going to let it go. So we had that rule. 

Sharad Lal: Excellent. There's this thing if you're getting volunteers, you're scaling up. You also have the rules of letting go of certain things. But also, these people are volunteering and there's also a capability of managing this organization as you and Helen are stepping back.

How do you measure capability among volunteers so that they can take leadership to the next level? 

Volunteering is balancing vision, leadership, and imperfections

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Uma Thana Balasingam: Yeah, that's a really difficult one. And I don't know if I found the answer to this question because when it comes to giving back,a lot of people appear to be motivated.And I think if you have a strong reason, then your motivation is even more cemented.

But Capability is a big question mark because you don't really have a choice. Sometimes whoever can lend in their time, you have to be okay with whatever capability they come with, and be okay with a lot of imperfections. 

Focus on the outcome of making the impact, the second thing is, at one point, it is like running an organization. I don't know if you want to call it politics or, you know, whispers, et cetera. we were told that it's becoming the Helen and Uma show.

And 

Uma Thana Balasingam: We said, okay, we'll take a step back, who would like to take the lead? And what we learned from that experience, which we actually took for granted ourselves, because Helen and I have been people managers and then leaders when you become managers of managers, is that is such an imperative skill to lead. These people are not on your payroll, so they don't actually have to listen to you. So how do you create a vision and then bring people along the journey? And that is not a skill that you practice and develop in a non-profit. And expect that to happen. You actually have to learn to do that. And it takes time.

The balance of passion and capability in leadership

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Sharad Lal: As you're scaling up. These people are volunteering. So you would need people, especially at your leadership team. If you have a few people with that skill level where they can influence, motivate that skill, they've done that. And it may not be the person who has the deepest, why the deepest, why has a role to play, there's a mix of.

Why, as well as capability and figuring out the roles of people because now it's starting to become like an organization and scaling that up. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: I think the why directly impacts the longevity of the person staying and continuing to do. 

Capability is more.

Shorter term without motivation. So at that point in time, I can deliver the skill and do an event, which typically takes two months, six weeks to get off. 

Leaving tech to build Elevate Ground, meeting JingJing and end up dating

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Sharad Lal: So you're doing this and then a year back, you quit and you come full time. into pursuing this course. So if you can talk a little bit about that.

Uma Thana Balasingam: Yes. Well, I was made redundant. It was a great, great journey in tech. Uh, I loved my career.one of my biggest lessons this year is how important it is to grieve for anything that you love. And I don't know how many of us associate love to careers and work, but I absolutely loved my tech career.

I was a senior executive and so by taking a redundancy gave me a financial runway. So I am. Privileged in that way, but, I worked fucking hard to get there, but I just want to recognize that I had the financial runway and I don't have kids, 

These are other considerations for other people. It allowed me to take a step back and to do what I really want to do. so I am building the Elevate group and our mission is to uplift 5 million working women across Asia. I'm partnering with Jingjing Liu, and we have three parts to our business.

One of the best things Jingjing and I did was to date each other before we went into this full time together. And I think anyone, just like in relationships, why shouldn't you date your? Founder, co founders, whatever term you want to use. 

Sharad Lal: You started something on your own, because it was also, of course, a cause, but also tactically right, because you had a good cushion.

not too many dependents on you, so you could do it. So it wasn't like, Hey, I believe in this cause so much, I'm going to give everything up. So I think that's an important thing to look at. And then you found the right co-founder in Jingjing. And you talk about dating.

I'd love to understand that more. What was this dating with Jingjing like? 

From strangers to co-founders, the dating phase with Jingjing

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I chose Jingjing. Out of a pure gut feeling, we didn't have any longstanding relationship. We never worked together. When she found out what I was going to build, she was excited.

She wanted to give her input to it. So we had a little dialogue and then something said to me, like, I should ask her. And I think this is the stillness. And space that when you invite that into your life, you can listen to the messages that the universe is sending you. And that was a very strong message for me because I just felt it so deeply inside me. 

then our dating period looked like we would come together, talk about the business, what would the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days look like?

What's important? How might we brainstorm together? So we would spend a few hours a week and that then evolved to us coming together to say okay, what do we like? What did we not like about working with each other? What do we observe? It was a very short period. It was less than six months of dating 

it was still our Mission of building something bigger if we came together, that tied us together at the start. and one of the most revealing things for my first full year as a founder only without having a job, is how important the founder's relationship. 

Sharad Lal: Absolutely. And 

Uma Thana Balasingam: We've had ups and downs, which. gave us individual growth. It required us to go separately and do therapy and coaching and, whatever works for each of us.just talking through things and,being transparent with each other You know, there's always dynamics, like Jingjing's younger than me, so like she would put me on a pedestal in the beginning and She had to figure out a way to Look at me eye to eye 

So 

Uma Thana Balasingam: She had that to deal with. I had the You know, you are less experienced.

Therefore, I know more. You should just listen to me. and I'm a manifesting generator from the concept of human design. I'm a four lane highway and she's a generator, one lane highway. Do one thing and do it well. You know, there's so many things that we had to learn about each other.

We had a great advisor that, each of us, had such uncomfortable moments throughout the year for both of us. and yeah, a lot of internal fighting with ourselves to come out on the other end. and I'd say this is going to be ongoing, it's the foundation of. Any business that you want to build, I think that no one talks about often.

Sharad Lal: Thank you for sharing that. And as I'm understanding it, there are different personalities, there's different age, there's one looking up to the other kind of, being the most senior person. And then you said you have to go out and do your work because your life, we're clashing.

It's not working. Things are not working right. How did you realize that it's reached a stage that, look, it's not working, I need to really think about it. And what was your process? You said therapy, but if you can talk a little bit about your process of coming back in a different way after thinking about something.

Therapy, honesty, and finding clarity

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I think everyone will experience this differently. For me, my body gets sick first. 

Sharad Lal: 

Uma Thana Balasingam: It's not a normal flu, it's a lingering flu. The first time it happened, I took antibiotics for 20 days. The second time it happened, I knew this was something bigger. It's just actually not my body. And something else is happening.

And so I didn't take antibiotics. And I happened to be away from Singapore. And that gave both of us space. And I said things that I didn't mean that caused her to pause and also reflect. And that's when she came out, because I think, sometimes when it accumulates, it pushes you to a wall.

So. We need to figure out what's going on here and as with everything in life, it's never about the other person. It's always about you, right? So you got to go away and whatever works for you.

For me, it was therapy. I started therapy a while back, but especially this year, it's a big year of change for me.I also dated therapists before choosing one. 

Sharad Lal: That's very advisable. I completely agree with that. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: And I think they all bring different things to the table. So I have three that I can go to depending on the situation.

And I think the most important thing about therapy is that you have to be brutally honest for the other person to help you. And I think if you don't lay all your cards on the table 

and 

Uma Thana Balasingam: You don't give the absolute truth. Because there's no judgment and we are all still filled with ego.

I still have ego, but in therapy, if you really want to come out on the other side. you got to lay all your cards on the table. So can you actually do that? 

Sharad Lal: It takes a lot of courage and bravery to do it.

But like you said, once you do it, you can start getting a better understanding of yourself. In the past year, you've been in a situation where the paycheck isn't coming. You have a new co-founder and you're trying to figure things out and sometimes it's working well. It's clashing, but you're also trying to figure out life and your identity and you're going to therapy. During this entire process as you're reflecting, what are you learning about yourself?

My lesson from a tube of toothpaste

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Uma Thana Balasingam: Firstly, my relationship is about money. The first time I ran out of toothpaste. After I left my job, my helper came up to me. She's like, we gotta buy new toothpaste. And I said, hang on a minute. 

check the travel drawer, I bet I've got two spaces that I've brought back from hotels. And then I looked at my phone. I'm like, Which friends am I going to see? And I remember saying to myself, I bet they've got two spaces. 

I tell this story to my friend, and she's like, you got to stop this. You got to go buy toothpaste, because you're sending this message to the universe of scarcity. 

And 

Uma Thana Balasingam: you need to send a message of abundance.

I did go and buy Two Space and I wanted to buy a really nice one, but my 60 plus year old auntie convinced me I should buy the 2.

00 Darlie Two Space. Then, I went out to get other stuff that I really wanted. I invested in this painting series in my house, which I slept over for two weeks. Had I been working, I would not have slept over it.

I really wanted it in my house and I was like, should I be spending this much money when I'm not working?

But, I'm like, okay. That is going to make me happy. I'm going to be grateful for that.say my gratitude that I can and then welcome more to come into my life. 

That tale of uncertainty and the temptation to return

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Sharad Lal: So two things. One, we've got a message from Hilton that they want their toothpaste back. Second, I just want to underline this point for folks listening.I've seen it across where people who've done pretty well, they still have a huge cushion and they've left their job. This money thing comes up, even though you might have a lot. We think about, Oh, I'm not getting that paycheck. So should I be buying the toothpaste?

should I be not having the meal out? Should I be thinking about the coffee I have in a shop? All these things that you never considered come into mind. So that contraction starts happening and that's a reality in some way. So I want to highlight that to people. Now, when you have that thing about money coming in, and there's, of course, the cause and stuff that you want to go towards.

So there's always the temptation, hey, let me go back to work or let me quickly commercialize it. How do you balance these things? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: So I was actually supposed to go into the next job. 

and it was a very prominent role in a very prominent company. And then a restructure happened in that company.

And they called me and said, look, it's not going to be what we talked to you about. And, would you want to accept it two levels below? And I said, no, thank you. 

. Then something else came up and I was tempted again. I said, I'll do a 30 minute interview with the leader.

I don't even know what I was trying to do. I was like, I'm just gonna have a conversation. I asked different questions to this interview that I never did before. For example, I asked, How do you plan to integrate a diverse candidate like myself into your organization?

And I don't mean gender or race. I'm a multi hyphenate. And this is still so much of a foreign concept. And I didn't get a good answer because I'm willing to bet this leader hasn't. 

Sharad Lal: need to deal 

Uma Thana Balasingam: with that. Everyone does the job and there's nothing else, there's hobbies so that was my second message.

The Multi-Hyphenate identity and the role of title

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Sharad Lal: I found that interesting. I've seen people talk about diversity, but I've never seen people talk about being a multi hyphenate. I have multiple interests. How can that be incorporated into work? 

That's interesting. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Yeah, because I don't want to go into any organization where I'm going to be questioned about my commitment and I'd rather be measured by outcomes, right?

And then. I took the leap and then made it official on LinkedIn. 

That's another big dose of reality is we all forget all the advantages we got are tied to the title we carry. 

Sharad Lal: Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Uma Thana Balasingam: one of my last trips to India, and in one of the cities, the team had come together. You know, there's a lot of them, and they're all in this restaurant, and I was slightly late. So I walk in to go have dinner, and there's this long pathway in the restaurant before I get to the table, And as I'm walking, they all stand up. And you know what I 

Sharad Lal: Did you? Madam Uma has arrived. I 

Uma Thana Balasingam: looked behind me. I was like, what are they standing up for? And then like in a split second I was like, oh my god, they are standing up for you. 

so then I was like, of course, I am the highest ranking leader, right?

It was a sign of respect, it's a dose of reality. I think the most important question in life is who are you? And it's got nothing to do with all these external validations. 

My current identity

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Sharad Lal: What is your current answer to who you are? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: I am a change agent. I'm a trailblazer. I'm usually the first to try and do something. I find energy in that. I'm a connector. I can usually connect with people. I'm an altruist.

I care about social impact and new for this year, a creator. 

Sharad Lal: Of course, I have never 

Uma Thana Balasingam: thought of myself that way, but I am writing now and creating content and I love it. 

The art of time-blocking

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Sharad Lal: How do you choose where you want to put your time? Because there's, business you're creating, 

There's commercializing, there's money, there's multiple parts to you. How do you figure out where to put your time? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: outside of my personal time goes to one mission, that is to uplift women. So for me, it's almost like it's one goal. It's just different vehicles. I don't know how I do it, but the best hack for me is to write down what I need to do and then time block it. 

I time block everything. And Yes, I am the person who never gets everything done a day, so I'm moving the time blocks, 

Sharad Lal: because if I don't time block my to do list, it never happens. 

But after a period of time, is there like a reflection that, I've done so many of these things and I've just got caught up in the noise and now I need to shift and change and remove and simplify. How does that process work for you, especially in the past year? 

 The Eisenhower metrics, KPI and taking control of the power of pivoting

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Uma Thana Balasingam: It's what's urgent and important.

Sharad Lal: The Eisenhower metrics. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: right? So urgent and important is, what's time sensitive and why is it time sensitive? Cause sometimes you create your own timelines and then you say it's time sensitive, but maybe it's not right. And the flexibility with founders is that you can actually.

Create your own timelines. And the biggest thing that Jingjing and I did this year, is Founders KPI. And our number one KPI is that we will always build the business around our lifestyle. So our lifestyle has to come first. And then the business is built around it.

So what's important, number one. and the other thing is, like taking the learnings, So the intentional learnings out of your first year is what did we learn?

What should we repeat? What should we not repeat? How do we pivot? I think if you're not pivoting at the end of year one, there isn't enough learning and you should go and get more learning. This is only my opinion. This is the 

Sharad Lal: opinion for most startups, Okay. Okay.

Uma Thana Balasingam: So if you know that you're going to pivot. Then you prioritize the pivot moves to lay the new foundation. So that's where our energy is going now. I know this episode is coming out later, but it's the holiday season. We're going to take almost a month off because we can.

So what's time sensitive that we need to get done? 

Sharad Lal: I love that fact that you've earned it to design your life and then work can come around that.

We've spoken quite a bit. Is there any area we haven't covered that we should talk about? 

My Dilemma of Returning to Corporate

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I had this conversation with a really important person who sits on my board of advisors.and he said to me, you do realize that you are in your best earning years, right? And I was like, should I go back to corporate? So I'm thinking about that and I don't know if I will or not, 

You know, I'm still struggling with those things. 

I'm gonna take this break and take some long walks and see what messages are going to come to me. 

Sharad Lal: For you, that's the trend I've noticed.

That as you get stillness, the universe points you in that direction. 

Sharad Lal: And maybe I just click on that part where you are a high performer, you're on LinkedIn, you're everywhere, there's so much noise around you. How do you get that stillness for the universe to talk to you? And how do you have that connection with that universe?

Has it happened? Have you been intentional about it? Because that's been a theme across. Your life and career. 

Oprah’s lesson of aligning with a bigger dream

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Uma Thana Balasingam: I am a big fan of Oprah. I grew up watching Oprah. And so it has been ingrained in me that one of her biggest lessons is that your number one job in life is to figure out the biggest dream that the universe has dreamt for you.

And your number one job is to align yourself to that dream. And I'm of the opinion that you cannot do that without stillness. Spirituality, for me, that's gratitude, this has been, difficult year in so many ways, personally, professionally.

For me, there are so many fighting moments with myself, but it is the best year because I have met more of myself than I ever have. And I think, you can only show up to another person to the extent that you've met yourself. So, if I want to meet 5 million women, 

and help them rise, I got to meet myself first. So, that's the work that I'm doing for me. 

Sharad Lal: Such powerful wise words. I have this last question which I ask everyone.At the end of your life, how would you know you've lived a good life? 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Okay, I actually did an exercise this year on what is my definition of a rich life.

it does not involve buying a house. But it does involve drinking great champagne and wine. That would be one of the things that I lived a rich life according to my definition. I lived well, meaning I was mobile. I was coherent. My mind was active and I lived with the people that I loved.

That loved me back. 

Sharad Lal: Thank you Uma for sharing the past one hour with us and having this wonderful conversation. 

Uma Thana Balasingam: Thank you for having me.