Thank you. Good morning, Atlanta. How are you? You doing good? Come on, you can give me a louder look. You doing good? It's still 4 a.m. in the morning for me, so you have no reason to be asleep. I had to wake up at 2 am this morning to be here at 5. But I'm excited to be here. I used to make a number of trips to Atlanta when I was a VMware CEO that we bought an incredible company here called Airwatch. Uh yes, Mo, they were mostly Georgia Tech grads, but I don't get in the middle of yellow jackets and bulldogs. I'm not from here, but it was a fantastic company. Some of you may have been from that company. So, I would take the red eye from San Francisco to Atlanta and really love the city. It's great to be here every time I'm here. I want to share a little bit of my story over the next few minutes. Um, that was great. Can we give it up for Mo once again? Was that a great story? Fantastic. Thank you.
Like him, I am also an immigrant. I came to this country in the late 80s, a little older than Mo. I was 18 years old. My parents, India for those of you who know the country is about 85% Hindu, 11% Muslim and one or two percent of the country are Christian. My parents and my family been Christian many generations. My dad was an officer in the Indian Navy, very well, but then felt a calling from God to plant churches and he's actually a very well-known name, his name is Zach in India. My mom was a who helped in the 60s in leprosy hospitals. Leprosy was a common disease in the 50s and 60s. So I came from a family that was very around service but I wanted to have nothing to do with that just not because I was anti, I just didn't want that scrutiny any kids of having the flashlights on you all the time and I wanted to move as far. So when the opportunity came there were few universities in the US that were offering scholarships. Um, I got a scholarship to Dartmouth College. I can tell you there's a big difference between Bangalore and Hanover, New Hampshire. Okay. Uh, it's extremely cold in Hanover, New Hampshire. Uh, I remember my first winter I thought my ears are going to fall off literally.
But and you know, it's sort of like Animal House literally. I just was surprised, you know, never people drank so much beer and all that kind of stuff having grown up. But I wanted to be 20,000 miles away from where my parents were, not having that scrutiny. But God had a plan for my life. And that's what I want to talk to you about some of the things that I that was a different path than what my parents have been through and how I've over the last 30 years in the tech industry understood that all the success the tech industry can give you is not going to ultimately give me happiness and that's what I want to share with you a little bit of kind of what can I think most of you are in the tech industry. I'm grateful to Bill Leonard and the people who organized this. I spoke a few years ago at the Dallas breakfast and I think that's why I was invited here. Uh but you know for many of us who come from a different culture, it's an incredible country, it's a melting pot. And it's amazing I always tell people if you work hard anything is possible in America but cultures are different. When I first came to you know around this time of the year end of October, what's the end of October? 31st is okay. Good. There is no Halloween in India. Um I remember the first Halloween I was with my roommate and these kids come to your door and they mumble something and they've got a bag in front of you. I had no idea what they were saying, so I just took a bunch of chocolates out of their bag. I mean, you know, these are the things you realize you're supposed to give chocolates, not take. My roommates, Americans standing behind me laughing, dude, you're supposed to give chocolates, not supposed to take it. But these are things you realize very early on.
And I was very grateful through those years both in college and then after college I moved to Silicon Valley and worked at Apple. I wanted to follow my dream of being an engineer and I was so enamored by the years that you know Steve Jobs had built that company. But you know from my perspective through those years there were people and there were influences in my life that brought me back to my own path, finding my own path, not you know holding on to the coattails of my parents or folks who had had faith but finding my own path of what that straight and narrow needed to be. And I found that my own calling was to be a Daniel in the workplace. How many of you know heard the... I know there's some folks here who go to church, some who haven't. Daniel was this amazing man who sort of like Mo's story and my own went to a distant land in his teenager at age 13, 15 as a slave and into Babylon. And he honored the God that he served with a very simple principle. He was going to stand true with conviction when a lot of people around him were compromising conviction and God just surrounded him with people that helped him in that cause at a very young age.
And the same is true in the workplace whether you're a person of faith or not there is a lot of folks you see compromise the extreme extent people go to jail but there is a way in which can with conviction in a place where compromise exists where you can have your faith and your values you can stand true to that conviction and that's what I saw the story of Daniel is what inspired me and I thought to just kind of use if you can bring up the first slide, um, title my talk there to be a Daniel. This is a beautiful part of the Daniel story where he's got three friends, was actually on a business trip I think at the time, and His three friends were asked to bow down to a golden statue and they as conviction they felt that was not what they were going to do and God honored their conviction so much so that when they were thrown in the fire for violating that command God stood through them they were not burned. In fact the story goes the hair of their hand did not even smell of fire but the ropes that bound them burned. You think about it, ropes and your hair are made of the same type of material. It's sort of fiber. And I mean, it's a tremendous story that when you stand for conviction in a midst of where everybody, including many of their own friends, Jewish friends, God allowed them, you will have plenty of opportunity, especially those in our tech industry, to stand up for your conviction, whatever it might be.
There's another part of the story that actually happened before this that's always impressed me. Daniel was a young 17, 18, for his own conviction felt like he was only going to drink water and eat vegetables in the midst of what other people were eating wine and meat. Not that he was vegetarian. He passed the wine and meat was offered to idols and he had a conviction and at the end of the story goes that God honored him so much so that he was 10 times smarter than everybody else. And I often in my own work pray not necessarily that I will be 10 times smarter but that I would be seven to 10 times more productive. All of us can be productive and many of us in our tech world we're trying to get things done fast and you've got a puzzle to solve. Your boss has given you what feels like an impossible task. And that's the best time you go, you know, you can go and ask your creator to ask for help. And I found that to be incredible. The God of Daniel from that time thousands of years ago I'm here to tell you is very much alive today and can help you through the impossible task.
Here's another one from the story of Daniel that's always... the book of Daniel in the Bible is amazing full of stories that are very relevant to any workplace but I think especially tech. Imagine your boss gave you an assignment of this kind which is and remember a lot of us in the tech industry even if me as a CEO we get assignments from our board but many of you have a project you got to finish by a particular time. Imagine you got an assignment of this kind okay from your boss. Your boss comes and tells you one day, I had a dream the previous night okay and I can't remember my dream. You have 24 hours to come back and tell me what the dream is and you don't, you're going to be fired. Any of you had a high-tech project of that kind? Nobody. That was the assignment Daniel got. And he goes back to his room and he prays because he's desperate. I don't think he was afraid of death, but he believed that God was going to reveal that. You know the rest of the story. Those of you who know that story, he and his friends prayed and there was a breakthrough. So, I'm here to tell you the God of Daniel can answer that prayer. What is a small coding project? Okay. Or a little puzzle that you're facing in your business. And that's the prayer I pray, which is God, dear God, Emmanuel, I got a project today that I'm really struggling with. I got to get this assignment done in the next eight hours, the next six hours. I'm in tremendous pressure. I want to go and watch my kids game, but I've also got to do this project. That can give you enormous amount of productivity.
There's another picture in the in Daniel that's always impressed me. Here is Daniel at age 70. And again, standing true to God in the midst of everybody who and as you you know as you stand true for conviction, you will make enemies. There will be people who want to tear you down. Throughout his life, Daniel had enemies. But the amazing thing about the Daniel story, he was the number two person in three different kings. Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius. It's almost like imagine and those countries were the most powerful countries in the world. So imagine someone who was the number two person in the United States in three different administrations, Republican, Democrat, Republican, didn't matter. They all wanted Daniel because he was this incredible man. And at age 70, this is Daniel at age 70, still has this conviction that he wants to pray before maybe a meal or something of that kind. And he has enemies that want him down and they kind of plot to put him in the lion's den. And here he is at age 70. This beautiful painting stood out to me because as the story goes, God shut the mouth. And I'm here to tell you that when you face hostility, you will face hostility. There really people seem to tear you down. I've had a lot of political elements in my career. This is the type of prayer I pray. Lord, give me the ability to stand. Um sometimes you know many of the first century Christians were eaten up by lions doesn't mean but none of us have faced death so far. We wouldn't be here. So this same God of Daniel is very much true and I've had that same experience through much of it.
You fast forward. There have been other heroes that are more relevant to perhaps the last century. Here's another hero of mine. You heard the athletic story of Mo. Many of you probably watched this movie. An incredible story of Eric Liddell and he was the fastest athlete in the world and for those of you who are training good athletes and run races your peak speed is sort of around that 18 to 22. He's an Olympic athlete going to win the gold medal in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 400 meters but he had a conviction that he wasn't going to run on Sundays. There's nothing against playing a sport on Sunday that's totally his conviction. He wasn't going to do that. So, it turns out the heats for the 100 meters, okay, is on a Sunday and you were weeks and months in advance. He decides not to run that and as a result, he missed the 100 meters. But then he trained for the 400 meters. He's at the starting blocks of the finals of 400 meters and this person who was so impressed by the story, one of his rivals passes him a piece of paper and on the paper is this verse from the Bible, 1st Samuel 2:30, which says, 'Those who honor me, I will honor.' And it's a verse that's always, you know, inspired me. Because when you honor God with conviction, he's not going to be a debtor to you. He's going to honor you. And that's been something that's inspired me. The rest of the story doesn't go on very longer. Uh he leaves his athletic career and becomes a missionary in China. Doesn't live very long, 43 years, dies of brain cancer. But the story of Eric Liddell again, one of somebody who stood for conviction in the midst of everybody else who thought, well, you know, what does it matter? So that's the story that's really impressed me in my life.
And what I thought to do is just give you three principles that can guide you on this sort of journey. Number one, our life is short. We don't know how long our life is going to last. I've had a number of friends through my years who, you know, extremely fit, athletic, one fine day pass away in their 40s, have a heart attack. Um, so, you know, if you were to live and this was your last day, you knew tomorrow, um, you're going to end your life, what's more important? Is it cracking that next big deal, closing? promotion, earning the next million or multiple millions or whatever have you, or is it making sure that you've forgiven everybody? I can tell you in the workplace there's a lot of people who wronged you. Okay? Um, and it's easy to hold a grudge, but when you release that grudge and people, you're a bigger person for it and you actually find that you're relieved. In fact, there's a verse in the Bible always inspired me. You don't forgive someone else, God doesn't forgive you. I've always held that as a high standard. So, if you're here and you've got a grudge against someone, give it up. It's totally okay because if you're living another day, it's an incredible mercy we have.
The second thing I want to leave you with is this picture about humility. What do you see on this graphic here? Can you all see the slide? There is a CEO bird at the top that has nothing on top of him and her. Then you go down the level, you have at the very lowest level, you have the engineer or the sales rep. Those of us in the tech industry, we know who those people are. Okay? Then you have the manager, then you have the director, and you have the VP. And what does that poor person at the very bottom of this tree look up and see? Just sees crap coming down. Just on and a lot of the business world and the tech industry is also this way very command and control top down people who are kissing up and kicking down. Okay, not somebody in this room but somebody you know. That's the world. That's the world we live in. And a lot of people claw over each other to get up to the top. And this is how a lot of the tech industry is built because people believe you get up at the top by doing this. The Jesus view is you invert this completely on its head. Okay? And if I'm the CEO of the company, my job is to be at that bottom of the pyramid completely invert. I call it servant leadership. But whatever you end up calling it, the person who is serving the customer, that's often a salesman or the person who's writing the code, an engineer. Those are the two most important people in my company because they're the people who ultimately get things done and I often tell people any of us who are in management of those things we're a bureaucracy and when you live by those principles all of a sudden the organization is empowered in a very different way. Where did I learn that principle? From someone who was the greatest service leader of all, the person I follow, Jesus, who washed people's feet. And this is now actually it's becoming popular in business to be a servant. You'll find people who are not Christians talking about it. But it's an incredibly freeing place when you talk about live by these values. You can actually build a great company and build a great organization that's focused not on yourself. A lot of the world is focused on themselves. And you start to realize as you build a company and build an organization. It's no longer about yourself. It's about building something that's lasting, building the next generation and servant leadership is an incredible, incredible, incredible grace.
There's a person from India named Rabindranath Tagore who wrote a poem. He's a freedom fighter and the words of the poem have always resonated with me. It goes like this. I went to bed and dreamt that life was boring. I awoke and realized that life was actually service. I acted and lo and behold service was joy. Get it? We all think it's all about joy and that pursuit of the next big thing when we actually realize it is about service. And the third thing I want to talk to you about is a story that's also inspired me about these two brothers, the Brownlee brothers. Um, I don't know how many of you are triathletes, but triathlons are some of the toughest races to run. They got to swim, bike, run. And this was in the searing heat of Mexico. These two brothers, they're twins, so one was older. I think brothers were one older than the other. At the very end of the race, there's something interesting that happened. Let's roll the video.
