EP78: PARACLETE with Vineet Rajan, CEO & Co-Founder of Forte, Stanford MBA, and former US Marine Corps Major

About the Guest:
Vineet Rajan is a former United States Marine Corps major who has seamlessly transitioned into the role of a serial entrepreneur. Not only has Vineet served his country with distinction, but he has also pursued higher education with vigor, securing a Master's in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from Stanford. His post-military career led him to the entrepreneurial path, where he skillfully combined his leadership skills and business acumen to co-found and lead Forte, a mental wellness startup focused on providing resources to support employees in organizations.

Episode Summary:
In this introspective episode of "Becoming UnDone," Toby Brooks invites Vineet Rajan to share his journey from being a decorated Marine officer to becoming a pioneering entrepreneur. Opening with a reflective dialogue on Vineet's decision to leave the military at the peak of his career, the episode delves into the lessons of leadership, the challenges of entrepreneurship, and the significance of mental well-being.

Vineet discusses the profound moment of leaving the Marines, despite all the success, to pursue a calling that directed him towards entrepreneurship. He details the birth of his mental wellness startup, Forte, born out of his own experience with identity and purpose post-service. The company aims to proactively address mental wellness in the workforce, serving as a testament to Vineet's ongoing commitment to serving others beyond the battlefield.

www.getforte.com

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:00 - (Vineet Rajan): And everything was going so well. And yet, in my quiet time, in my contemplation time, I felt like God was saying, it's not me to leave. And, Toby, I did not want to leave. I really did not want to leave. I was like, wait. I've done all the hard things. I've got the medals. I've got the rank. This is the time of my career where I'm going to start really enjoying, maybe to a certain degree, the fruits of my labor.
0:00:21 - (Vineet Rajan): But what I realized in that process was the reason he was asking me to leave was because I started believing in the perception. I started worrying about what people thought of me externally and ignoring what was more important inside. And that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my entire life. I think the biggest lessons of life are when those setbacks come. I think the biggest lesson that I'm learning in this season of entrepreneurship is how convicted am I on the idea? This thing is so hard. Every day you wake up and you're like, you have so much self doubt. You have so much concern for the teammates. There are strangers that I didn't know three years ago that are now getting a paycheck at Forte to deliver this service we believe in to thousands and tens of thousands of people around the United States.
0:01:04 - (Vineet Rajan): And I wake up every morning with that burden of thinking, am I stewarding these people? Well, hi. I am vinit Roger. And I am undone.
0:01:20 - (Toby Brooks): Hey, friend. I am glad you're here. Welcome to another episode of Becoming Undone, the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. I'm Toby Brooks, a speaker, an author, and a professor. I've spent much of the last two decades working as an athletic trainer and strength coach in the professional, college, and high school sports settings. And over the years, I've grown more and more fascinated with what sets high achievers apart and how failures that can hurt in the moment can end up being exactly the push we needed to propel us along our path to success.
0:01:51 - (Toby Brooks): Each week on becoming undone, I invite new guests to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. I'd like to emphasize that this show is entirely separate from my role as a professor, but it's my attempt to apply what I've learned and what I'm learning and to share with others about the mindsets of high achievers. This is your first episode. I sincerely hope that you love it.
0:02:11 - (Toby Brooks): Over this past year, plus, I've had the pleasure of interviewing some incredible guests. So if you're feeling this one, be sure to scroll back through the archives and pick out some other previous episodes from high achievers who didn't let failure or setbacks stand in the way of their eventual victories. And if you're a regular, welcome back. I got to admit, this season of life with a senior in high school and a junior in college, job and work demands, they've made a regular production schedule tough.
0:02:38 - (Toby Brooks): Thank you so much for sticking with me. I sincerely appreciate you. For Maryland native Vinit Rajan, early high school experiences were focused on working hard and playing hard, with a number of sports occupying his time but no clear plans for the future. However, all that changed, like it did for so many Americans on 911, when he felt an undeniable urge to serve his country in, by his own words, the most intense way possible.
0:03:08 - (Toby Brooks): So he met with a US Marine Corps recruiter and eventually talked his parents into giving him their blessing. It would be just the beginning of an incredible journey that would include meeting his wife his first semester in college, going to Stanford for his MBA, and now his latest of a series of entrepreneurial pursuits. Forte, a mental wellness focused startup that allows employers to best support their most important asset, their people, by coming alongside and providing resources to help employees be present, find focus, and live a more fulfilled life.
0:03:39 - (Toby Brooks): Vanitz found himself leveraging many of the lessons he learned years ago, but now in a new and impactful way. I hope you'll enjoy this second in my series celebrating the work accomplishments and impacts of two incredible former us servicemen in episode 78, paraclete with Vanit Rajan. Joining us today is former marine Corps major and now serial entrepreneur Vanit Rajan.
0:04:06 - (Vineet Rajan): Thank you so much for having me. It's a little pleasure to be here.
0:04:09 - (Toby Brooks): I'm super glad you're here today. It's been a long time coming. We connected back before the holidays, and I was really intrigued by your bio. You've had a lot of former athletes on the show and now more recently former military and a few entrepreneurs. So you check a lot of those boxes. So I'm looking forward to digging into your story and seeing what you can share with us about your journey. So I always start at the beginning.
0:04:33 - (Toby Brooks): What did you want to be growing up and why?
0:04:35 - (Vineet Rajan): That's a great question. I came to the United States from India when I was six, and so thinking about growing up in the United States, I had no clue what I want to do. I knew I liked playing sports, and I thought by the time I got to high school, I'll just get a normal job somewhere. But I didn't have any aspiration to be like an astronaut like my son is today. So honestly, it was just more about playing sports and being outside than anything else.
0:04:58 - (Toby Brooks): That's great. So those dreams, oftentimes we really have to go through some life experiences, and we experience some successes and some failures, and they steer us on this path. And so you ended up in the Marine Corps, but you didn't make that decision right away. And so talk me through the beginning, your early childhood experiences that led you to a career in the military.
0:05:21 - (Vineet Rajan): Totally. So my parents are people of faith. I grew up in a christian household where respect was a real value in our house. Discipline was a real value in our house. And my father worked at many blue collar jobs most of his life. And so work was a real thing in our home. And so those kind of values of working hard, being respectful, having self discipline were pretty much integrated into our life from a very young age. Our parents pretty much made us to get up at 05:00 in the morning to read before we went to school, which felt crazy back in the day. But now thinking about it was a really good discipline for who I am today. It really set me up for success.
0:06:00 - (Vineet Rajan): And then I ended up, I didn't really like academics in middle school or high school, but sports kept me alive in school. I was not a great athlete necessarily, but I did play football. I wrestled, and I was a decent runner in track. And so I played sports every season of high school, which probably all of those experiences combined. It isn't shocking, necessarily that the Marine Corps came into my eye when the time came to graduate.
0:06:24 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, I think in this day and age, a lot of parents fall for the trap of early sports specialization with their kids. They think, if my child's going to have a chance to play in college, then they've got to play travel ball. And if they're going to play travel ball, then they have to play year round. And so I think that model of playing as many different sports and teaching your body how to move and how skills can carry over some of the best athletes I've ever known were wrestlers. Just the speed, the agility, the quickness that it takes really translates into just about every other sport.
0:06:57 - (Toby Brooks): And like you said, that helped cultivate you as a good, well rounded athlete, which in a branch like the Marine Corps, obviously is very highly coveted. So you end up in the Marine Corps. Talk me through that experience and what training was like for you and how you transformed as a result of that experience.
0:07:18 - (Vineet Rajan): Again, I didn't have really any plans in high school to graduate and go to college, necessarily. And 911 happened when I was a high school senior, so I grew up in Maryland, so not far from DC. My mother at the time was working at the World Bank, 45 minutes south of our home in DC. And as you will remember, as many Americans do, 911 was a terrifying day.
0:07:36 - (Toby Brooks): For all of us.
0:07:37 - (Vineet Rajan): And our school shut down early. People were crying in school, and we got sent home. I don't know what got into me, Toby, but the next week or so, I was pretty much ready to join the Marines. Never really said those words out loud. It was a crazy time. And I wanted to serve our country. And I thought, what organization would I join? That's insane. I was an intense person back then. I'm still a little bit intense now.
0:08:00 - (Vineet Rajan): And I thought, the Marines are the only way to go and serve. And so I talked to a recruiter at my father's displeasure, by the way. He was a prior enlisted man, and when he came home, he was a little surprised to see a marine recruiter at our house. That conversation did not go as well as I would have liked. And long story short, I ended up with his blessing, my mom's blessing, to join the Marines. And I got a scholarship to go to school.
0:08:22 - (Vineet Rajan): I didn't know what I was signing up for. Toby, honestly, I had no idea. But I went to college because to be an officer, you have to have a degree. And the best thing that came out of that experience in school in Philly was I met my wife the first term of college. And after following Jesus, she's the best decision ever made on this earth. The Marine Corps has been one of the proudest moments of my life.
0:08:45 - (Vineet Rajan): I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have served in an organization like the Marines and have had the privilege of taking Marines into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. It transformed me. The Marine Corps has really good advertisement and marketing, but they live up to what they say. They transform people, regular people like me, into people that will run towards the sound of battle. And I learned what it meant to lead by serving others.
0:09:09 - (Vineet Rajan): I learned what it meant to put it all on the line. I learned what it meant to make decisions under duress without all the information we wanted. And so I'm eternally grateful for having that experience and having the privilege of leading in a service like that.
0:09:21 - (Toby Brooks): That's fantastic. Do thank you for your service. The Sunday school class that I used to be a part of was an interesting mix because we actually had one representative from all the four major branches. And it was hilarious to hear them go at each other. And Barbs, the one guy who was in the air force, they always made fun of him for being in the chair force. And the Marine guy, it was good natured fun, just brothers loving on each other in the way the brothers do.
0:09:48 - (Toby Brooks): But certainly, like you mentioned, there's a mystique around the Marine Corps and being physical and tough and just resilient. And I've had a couple of other guests who talked about this, and I would argue that maybe more so in the Marine Corps than maybe the other branches is this idea that toughness comes at a cost and resilience and being vulnerable is not something that is embraced in athletic cultures. It's not something that's embraced in the military.
0:10:19 - (Toby Brooks): And so when those seasons of doubt come in or when you're sad for being away from home, you really don't have any way to express that. How would you rate or reflect back on the mental aspect of your service?
0:10:34 - (Vineet Rajan): Yeah. By the way, phenomenal question. That's a really astute observation. I think in many ways.
0:10:43 - (Toby Brooks): I have to point something out here. I started this interview off with an absolute brain lapse. I got the pronunciation of Anit's last name wrong at the start of the interview, and not just once. In what I can only describe as my brain temporarily slipping into neutral. I asked for clarification and then proceeded to say his name wrong again four times. Four times. Benit, however, was a great sport. Other guests likely would have been offended, or at the very least, made me feel less than and honestly, deservedly so. It was a screw up, but not vanit.
0:11:20 - (Toby Brooks): What's more, early in the interview, he compliments my question. And I can tell you, knowing I screwed up in such an embarrassing way, that was humiliating. I was mortified that I'd blown it with anyone, let alone someone as accomplished as vanit. But he helped me save face, and in a way, his graciousness restored me so that the interview could go on. It was a class move from an absolute class guest, and what he had to say next was no less impactful.
0:11:47 - (Vineet Rajan): It's all related, right? I think the Marines, I would say from a mental perspective, they're probably the most mentally sharp, toughest people I know in many ways. And that's not me being biased, it's just me trying to be dispassionate and look across all the organizations that I've been a part of and got the privilege of getting to know people. They're great tacticians, marines are, and some of them are the greatest strategic people I've met as well.
0:12:11 - (Vineet Rajan): But the point that you're making is there's this courage, this external presence that we carry, which is required in battle. Right. If you're leading a bunch of men and women into battle, you have to. Even on the inside, even though you're freaking out on the inside, on the outside, you got to provide that presence and that calming leadership, because everybody else is freaking out. Because, again, shot at or things are blowing up and people are getting hurt, God forbid.
0:12:37 - (Vineet Rajan): And there isn't, at least when I was in the service, a great opportunity to process those thoughts and feelings in a collaborative way. We have chaplaincy in the Marine Corps. It's not a Marine. It's a naval officer, typically, that is associated with us. And you can leverage the chaplaincy to talk about all the things that might be on your heart and your mind, which is a really huge blessing and gift.
0:12:58 - (Vineet Rajan): However, it's not as well received or taken advantage of, in my opinion. I think that the Marine Corps today, even though I've been out of the service for seven years, recognizes the importance of mental resiliency from an emotional, spiritual perspective. Right. They're trying to integrate that more. So I think we pride ourselves as being a learning organization, but there's a lot more to be done there.
0:13:19 - (Vineet Rajan): I think that also really feeds into why Forte, the company I currently lead, exists because, quite frankly, all leaders, all people, have these thoughts and feelings and emotions, and that doesn't make us less courageous. In fact, it's despite the fear that makes us brave than when we do the things that we do. And I know that marines are of that ilk. We just haven't talked about it well enough and inculcated that as an organization, in my opinion, to make that as well as received as it should be. Now. Things are different now, probably, but not when I was there.
0:13:49 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, there's definitely been a spotlight shown on this. I believe it was during the lockdowns when Michael Phelps came out with his documentary the way to Gold, where he talks about the toll that the Olympic Games takes on elite level athletes and how when that's gone, the bottom drops out of your world. What now? What's my purpose? Where am I going to go with this? And the rate of suicide and depression.
0:14:12 - (Toby Brooks): We don't talk about it because it's an ugly truth and it's a scary truth to think that our heroes are somehow human. And the emotions that they're dealing with, they're bigger than that. Superheroes don't cry. And in a lot of ways, I esteem our military servicemen and women as heroes and to think about them processing emotions, but it's a human thing. They don't train you how to be antiseptic and non emotional. They train you how to be steady under fire and pay attention to the details, even when everything around you is screaming at you to crumble to those emotions. You have to stay strong in the face of that.
0:14:51 - (Toby Brooks): But I think you alluded to this. Not everything is battle. And there's a big difference between being in a helicopter in a war zone and dealing with your family on a regular Tuesday. And it's sometimes really difficult to separate those things out and to recognize that sometimes I have to suppress this. But other times, I really need to process this.
0:15:15 - (Vineet Rajan): What I would say is, actually your daughter having a hard day, which affects you as a father or mother, or you having an awkward conversation with your partner, fundamentally affects how we show up to work, whether we're on a helicopter or behind a computer terminal. I was an intel officer in the Marine, so I was trained to compartmentalize as many things as possible. Right. Because there's things that one port of my mind probably ought not to know about the other side.
0:15:40 - (Vineet Rajan): Depending on who I talk to, certain conversations are allowed to be discussed. But we often find ourselves trying to comportment our lives like that. And actually, it is injurious to us as human beings. You really said, hey, heroes are just. Some of these heroes are just humans. I actually would say that all of us humans are heroes just for the fact that we're humans. Right? Life is hard for all of us. You don't need to have a rank or a title or some badges on your chest to know that when we wake every morning, our body hurts. We got aging parents, we got challenges at work.
0:16:11 - (Vineet Rajan): Our kids are doing some things that we don't like or love or whatever the case might be. It's just hard being a human. So just every day taking a step towards contributing more to our society, contributing more to this beauty of life. We're heroes for doing that. And I think when we talk about heroes as only athletes or military, I think it takes away from all of our journeys now that, I think that actually, if we could integrate all of our experiences together, we would be so much better suited for the moments where quote unquote, bravery is required, or for the moments where the hard decision in the boardroom or whatever it might be, but to compartmentalize those things actually takes away from our power as humans.
0:16:50 - (Toby Brooks): Wow. That's powerful. And not to mention the fact that I think a lot of us really struggle with a theme that's come across several times in the past few episodes has been this imposter syndrome, where we feel like we're putting on this mask and we're faking it, and it's for the betterment of society. But how much kinder would we be if we recognize that I'm dealing with stuff? But there's a real good chance that the person in the cubicle next to me is dealing with some stuff, too, and maybe I ought not unload on them.
0:17:21 - (Toby Brooks): It's just a different lens and a different approach to how I interact with everyone in my day. And it's a grace approach, as opposed to this constant inflammation that social media or our world today seems to want to cultivate totally.
0:17:36 - (Vineet Rajan): And I think the challenges. There's Bray Brown and so many people who are thought leaders in this space will talk about the importance of being vulnerable and authentic, about who we are as humans. It takes real courage to do that, actually. Right? If you think about it, the way we've been trained is to show up and present our best. This image of who we want ourselves to be perceived as. Reality is we're all scared and nervous and anxious and worried about how we look and how we sound and all those other things. And everybody else is walking along like that, too.
0:18:08 - (Vineet Rajan): It is really hard to fake somebody for the rest of your life. It's a lot easier if you just worry yourself. And once you step out in faith and do that, like, hey, I don't know how this is going to be received, but I'll just be me. Gosh, what I have found is that endears people to you. One of the hardest things to do in the Marine Corps is be human, actually, in some ways, because you have to have this facade as an officer, hey, I don't get hurt. I'm not ever afraid.
0:18:33 - (Vineet Rajan): I'm just going to keep going. You can pile it on. You can bring on the suck. I'm just going to keep going forward. And that is, in some ways, a real privilege to be able to walk in that kind of aura, if you will, and it serves us well. However, your marines. Our marines are having horrible days like everybody else. And if you could just take a knee with them. Dude, it sucked today. I was scared out of my dang mind. I am so glad we did this or did that, and we did it together.
0:19:01 - (Vineet Rajan): Just being a little bit vulnerable with that person is like, man, this guy's a human, too. And then all of a sudden, they perform at a different level. They just want to be with you because they see a commonality that they share with you. Now, I think that's true in the corporate space, too, right? It doesn't matter what your title is. If you walk around and you actually are just a little bit more of who you are, people will love that because it's different and it's really nice.
0:19:28 - (Toby Brooks): That's powerful. As you're talking, I'm thinking perfection. A lot of us are perfectionists, and a lot of my listeners, high achievers. You want to do your best. You want the straight a's, you want the promotions. You want all those things. And we strive for perfection, but perfection is vapor. There's only one man on this walk. This earth has been perfect. And as my dad often said, they nailed him to a tree. And so perfection is aspirational, but in many ways, it's isolating.
0:19:57 - (Toby Brooks): If you think I'm perfect, then you don't have any connection points with me, because in your mind, you recognize I'm not perfect. Even though to the outside world, people may see that, they may see your vita, your accomplishments, and they're like, vanit is perfect. All of us is walking around with the truth inside. And so we curate this reality, but on the inside, we feel fake. And in the process, if I think you're perfect, I'm less likely to, like you said, take a knee and share where it sucked. There's just a real authenticity to that that can't be replaced. And I applaud you for the work that you're doing, and the genesis of it is where we're going.
0:20:37 - (Toby Brooks): So, you mentioned before we started rolling and before I stumbled all over the pronunciation of your name and other things of that nature, that you left the Marine Corps. You didn't retire from the Marine Corps. And so talk me through the thought process of that transition in your life.
0:20:54 - (Vineet Rajan): Totally. I think it could start a little bit from the beginning, so bear with me. When I talked to that recruiter, I was 16, and my father asked, hey, what about officer programs? And the recruiter said, some remark that wasn't well received, but all that is to say is that he thought that I wasn't qualified or ready to be an officer. Then I joined the Marines. I got a scholarship anyhow. And I got to be honest, Toby, nobody thought, last of all, me, a skinny little immigrant indian kid, would do well in the Marine Corps, not a time of war.
0:21:22 - (Vineet Rajan): And the opposite seemed to be true, right? And I was this little kid that was walking around that the inside of me was like, I can't believe things are working out the way they're going. This is nuts. I would come home and tell my wife. I was like, I have no idea what's happening, but people think I'm actually doing really well here, and it would happen over and over again. So the challenge is now I'm carrying around this weight of perceived perfection, right? This is the problem, right?
0:21:51 - (Vineet Rajan): Not that I was seeking it. It's happened in some ways. The perception was that I knew what I was doing, and all the time I had this imposter syndrome. They're going to find me out at some point that I'm just doing my best, but I don't know. So much of my career was the first guy to do this, the first guy to do that. There was no previous person to learn from necessarily. At the end of that time around, I thought that I joined the marines for four years, served my country, and then if I made it out of there, I'll figure out what to do. I'll be an adult. In some ways, Iraq and Afghanistan came through, and then I got to work as a congressional fellow. And then next thing I realized I was a major on exchange tour with the british government, the first guy to do it as an intel guy.
0:22:31 - (Vineet Rajan): And everything was going so well. And yet in my quiet time, in my contemplation time, I felt like God was saying, it's not Doby. I did not want to leave. I really did not want to leave. I was like, wait. I've done all the hard things. I've got the medals. I've got the rank. This is the time of my career where I'm going to start really enjoying, maybe to a certain degree, the fruits of my labor. But what I realized in that process was the reason he was asking me to leave was because I started believing in the perception.
0:23:04 - (Vineet Rajan): I started worrying about what people thought of me externally and ignoring what was more important inside of me. And that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make in my entire life. I talk about the people. Don't cry. I cried for a year straight. I was walking. I lived in the historic town of Cambridge in the UK, and the river cam was there. And I spent hours every day and morning and nighttime wondering, what is God asking me to do here? Why would he ask me to do that? And I'm so grateful that he did, because the mistake that I made, I think a lot of mistakes all of us make in some ways, in seasons of life is that we mistaken our identity for what we do instead of who we are.
0:23:41 - (Vineet Rajan): I did right, and I promised when I left the Marine Corps as I tendered my resignation, and I thought, what am I going to do? I had no plan. I thought, I'll never make that mistake again. I'll never mistaken my value as a human for what I do. I will always remember that I'm valued because of who I am as a human. And so forte was birthed out of that extreme pain in the fact of a loss of identity, a loss of purpose, a loss of meaning.
0:24:06 - (Vineet Rajan): And I thought, I'm going to help myself, remind myself every single day, because I got to say these words every single day, but also help others who your seasons are going to change, right? That's why they're called seasons. They have a beginning and they have an end. If our value and identity is anchored off just that one season, we're going to be in a world of suck all the time. We want to get off that track. And so that's how forte was actually birthed is through that kind of painful.
0:24:29 - (Toby Brooks): Experience that's wonderful and tragic all at the same time. Sometimes going through that is the last thing you want to do. I'm encountering this with my kids. I'm a little bit older than you, so I got a daughter in college and a son who's a senior. And there is no changing this timeline. I looked on my calendar yesterday, and I saw his high school graduation date. It's there. It's on the calendar. When they were five or six years old, it was this mythical time, sometime in this undefined future, and now it's staring me in the face. There's no change.
0:25:04 - (Toby Brooks): And I can either sulk about it and complain and cry and whine, or what I've chosen to do for this season is just drink it in. Just be as gratitude filled as I can. The old quote, don't regret that it ended. Be thankful that it happened. And that's where I'm at with this. And so in that time, your hand wasn't forced. You felt a calling out, and you felt like this was something you needed to do. But you also alluded to the fact that this had become your identity.
0:25:36 - (Toby Brooks): How did you introduce yourself at that time? Rank or branch or whatever. And when that's gone, what's left? And so talk me through that initial transition out and what that loss of connection to the Marine Corps meant to you personally.
0:25:53 - (Vineet Rajan): Yeah. The shadow of the Marine Corps looms large in my life today. There isn't a day that I don't see my friends who are getting promoted and continuing to serve our country on active duty and wonder and wish and think about being in the service. I miss it. I love it. It was great. But I'm also grateful that I've had the experience and to have given up something, as you said freely, that loss of identity, though, was so. It was a mess, Toby. There was nothing pretty about it. I was just trying to figure out, who am I?
0:26:24 - (Vineet Rajan): The Marine Corps tells you what to wear, how to shave your face, how to cut your hair. It tells you everything. There's like a playbook, right? We know how to execute things, and there is a rulebook for everything possible. All of a sudden, the next day, you're no longer a US Marine. You're like, what do I wear? Do I shave my all? It just sounds stupid to people. But when you're associated with something for so long, it's really jarring. I'm sure it's not different for an athlete in some ways, because if you're a football player, you have practice and you train and you wear pads and you have playbooks, you study, and all of a sudden, you're not doing them. Like, what do you do all day? What is the thing?
0:27:02 - (Vineet Rajan): So, thankfully for me, I had a pretty amazing transition period called business school. Right? So I left the service, and shortly thereafter, I was in business school. So I had two years where nobody had a job. Our job was student. Our title was student at business school. So that was a really huge gift to me because I got to figure out who I was in those two years of wandering around another campus along with a bunch of other people.
0:27:29 - (Vineet Rajan): So I didn't feel that pressure, necessarily to come up with something. I had time, in effect, to really contemplate who I really was at my core. Without that time, without that transition to business school, I think it would have been much harder.
0:27:42 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah. So you end up completing a master's in international relations from the University of Cambridge, MBA from Stanford, and then this is when this entrepreneurship journey really starts to germinate for you. Got some experience in venture capital and then a couple of different companies that you helped found. So where did the impetus for entrepreneur? Sounds like those seeds were maybe planted. I think we're a lot alike. My dad was blue collar, and the thought of being an entrepreneur.
0:28:10 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, there's a lot of commonalities. Like, my dad was a mechanic, and he showed up to work on time and he worked overtime when he could. That work ethic was just absolutely hardwire programmed into me. But he never wanted to own his own business. He didn't want to be in charge. He was always going to be the model employee, and I found myself really wrestling with that. I'm in higher education now, and I've dabbled in entrepreneurship, but they're two different things. It's a big difference between following orders in the Marine Corps and basically drafting all the policies and procedures and starting something from scratch. So where did that genesis for entrepreneurship really start to take root?
0:28:52 - (Vineet Rajan): If you think about the Marine Corps, what we're known to do, what we're designed to do, is win, right? There's a lot of things we can do. It's a pretty amazing organization if you think about it as a civilian, but that's what we're known to do. Battle is the most ferocious kind of entrepreneurship you can think of. It's a startup, because actually there's, to use this metaphor, there's you and your team, and then there's, like, the market or the enemy, if you will, in some ways, and you have to adjust pretty live to what's happening in your environment.
0:29:20 - (Vineet Rajan): In this case, you'll die if you don't. So it's pretty crazy. It's volatile. There's not enough resources. You're always on the verge of extinction in many ways, and that's what startup life is like. It's volatile. You don't have enough cash. You're always trying to adjust to the market. And so I think being in Iraq and Afghanistan, it actually trained me in many ways to make those decisions under uncertainty, do it quickly with not enough resources, and to always move forward.
0:29:46 - (Vineet Rajan): So that was a really classic preparation. The other thing, as I mentioned, is most of my time in the doing the first guy to do this, I was the first guy to do that. I was the first guy. So I was doing a lot of entrepreneurship in the marines. Right. And I had to draft the policies and all this other stuff. And so it was a really good training ground. And obviously, business school certainly helps in giving you some knowledge under, hey, how does quote unquote right looks like?
0:30:11 - (Vineet Rajan): But I think at my core, I would rather do something, and this is what I got from marines for sure, that I felt was right and that I was willing to put something at risk and do the hard thing first. And that's what startups are like. You have to be this kind of crazy person. I want to bring in something to the world that doesn't exist, and I'm willing to put something at risk and work hard every single day and knowing that there's a high chance that I'm going to fail at it.
0:30:35 - (Vineet Rajan): So I felt like I got a master class in the marines, actually, on how to be an entrepreneur.
0:30:40 - (Toby Brooks): That's a fantastic perspective. I had a question this week, and I'm taking an entrepreneurship class right now, and the question was, what's the relationship between entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation? And I'm curious, from your perspective, where does creativity fall? I think the stereotype is that military individuals are taught to take orders, and your ability to express your creativity maybe is suppressed or certainly at certain levels. No one wants to hear your opinion on things. They just want you to follow orders.
0:31:15 - (Toby Brooks): But I think there are times when creativity has a real place in innovation. Obviously, you're building something brand new that no one's ever done. It comes from a creative place. So how would you describe the connection between creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship?
0:31:32 - (Vineet Rajan): Yeah, so I would say, again, there's a lot of perception about what the service is like. The service is not like we're robots and we just follow orders and mechanically execute things. There's a wide latitude. If that was the case, it wouldn't need humans. We just have a bunch of robots running around creativity. There's a long latitude of creativity in the service, because, actually, if you think you got to go from point a to point b and there's enemy there, you got to be pretty creative to figure out how to get there from here to there without being called or killed, actually, there's no more risky creativity than that, actually, in my opinion.
0:32:03 - (Vineet Rajan): So your question about creativity, innovation, and what was the last one?
0:32:07 - (Toby Brooks): Entrepreneurship.
0:32:08 - (Vineet Rajan): Okay, so let's talk about. I think the order that you suggested. You're the professor, is absolutely correct. Right. Creativity is the seed for the other two. But what does it mean to be creative? Actually think about it. You have to create something, means that you have to have something inside of you that you can let out. The problem in today's society is we're so busy consuming a bunch of things that there's no time to be reflective and then be able to germinate something out of you.
0:32:35 - (Vineet Rajan): So creativity absolutely has a seed. And there's a lot of studies that suggest that actually contemplation and actually mental well being, physical fitness, all of these things are core requirements for you to be creative. That creativity, if you actually spend some time and all of us are creative, that we're made to be creative. It doesn't matter who you are, you are creative. You got to learn how to harvest that and let it out is the seedlings for innovation. And innovation is fundamentally this idea that you can change a process or a product in a way that hasn't been done before.
0:33:06 - (Vineet Rajan): There's lots of ways to do that. If you're a parent, you're innovating every single day. Every parent knows when your daughter comes up and wants a third dessert, you got to find an innovative way, a creative way to be able to get her to not eat that dessert and go to bed without having a super temper tantrum. That's like a daily experience, most of us parents, right. You're innovating all the time.
0:33:28 - (Vineet Rajan): Right. That innovation, then, is the opportunity for you to be an entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is really taking that innovation that you think is going to work and trying it out in the marketplace for real for the first time. All entrepreneurship is like actually taking some finite amount of resources and then be able to then apply those resources in a more efficient and effective way in the marketplace. And to do that, well, you have to have innovation to do that in a profitable way.
0:33:53 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, for sure. And I think that's where risk comes into the equation. I don't think it's necessarily risky to be creative. There are a lot of starving artists that have genius abilities, but they're not able to necessarily translate that into an innovation that solves a pain point or addresses a need that society may have. As I perceive it, there's ascending levels of risk involved. And I read a quote just this week that said, the people closest to you won't believe in you until they start to see complete strangers start to hop on your train. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, you're a dreamer. You've got these grand visions, and, okay, we'll wait and see. And then when it happens. Oh, I believed in you all along.
0:34:38 - (Toby Brooks): People are quick to see the successes of entrepreneurs once you arrive, but they don't always recognize the failures or the setbacks or the obstacles that you encounter along the way. What has been the hardest part of this season of entrepreneurship as you've now iterated, I believe, two businesses, and most recently with Forte. What did that setback or adversity teach you about yourself that success wouldn't have?
0:35:03 - (Vineet Rajan): I think the biggest lessons of life are when those setbacks come, right? They're not. When it's really easy to be thought of, perceived perfectionist. When you're succeeding all the time, going from high to high, every entrepreneur will tell you there's a bazillion lows in between every one of those mountaintops right? I think the biggest lesson that I'm learning today, or in this season of entrepreneurship is how convicted am I on the idea? This thing is so hard.
0:35:32 - (Vineet Rajan): Every day you wake up and you're like, you have so much self doubt, you have so much concern for the teammates who, to your point, there are strangers that I didn't know three years ago that are now getting a paycheck at Forte to deliver this service we believe in to thousands and tens of thousands of people around the United States. And I wake up every morning with that burden of thinking, am I stewarding these people? Well.
0:35:55 - (Toby Brooks): I have to jump in here really quick because this quote from Benit absolutely resonated with me this week. Let me back up a bit, though, as it's kind of a convoluted story, but stick with me. I promise I'm going somewhere with it. If you're like me, a guilty pleasure in your downtime is to mindlessly scroll your phone and watch short form videos. If you're young and trendy, it's probably TikTok. If you're a little older, little less cool, maybe Instagram reels.
0:36:20 - (Toby Brooks): If you're a little older still, maybe a little less cool, Facebook. Or like me, maybe a little bit of all three. At any rate, as you watch, the algorithm doesn't take long to drill down and pigeonhole you into an obscure corner or two of the interwebs, and you end up with a steady stream of curated content. For me, for some reason, lately I'm getting a lot of plumbing videos, baseball stuff, some fairly standard cat videos, and for the past few years, marching band stuff.
0:36:50 - (Toby Brooks): This week I stumbled across a fantastic clip of the auburn marching band playing a piece from the Marvel series Loki. The caption read the burden of glorious purpose. Now, I'll admit I watched the Loki series, but I wasn't super into it. I'm sure I recall hearing the quote unquote God of mischief say something self aggrandizing to that effect. But it never really registered, because when someone so insecure and petty and arrogant as the character Loki says it, it just comes off as kind of gross.
0:37:24 - (Toby Brooks): But as I read those words this time, I was thinking about it from my perspective, as someone hoping to make a difference in the world, from others'perspectives, from the perspective of a servant leader. So when Vanit acknowledges how he left the Marine Corps to pursue a business degree, how he leveraged that into a series of successful startups, and how the success of his current venture forte is carried as a burden of thinking, how am I stewarding those people, it clicks.
0:37:54 - (Toby Brooks): It is a burden of glorious purpose. Forte isn't just some hobby. Founded in 2021, the Maryland based company formerly known as Paraclete Works with organizations to make their and their employees lives easier. The company recently announced expansion plans as a result of a successful $3.3 million seed round of funding in December 2023, which followed a 1.5 million precede round in 2022. That word paraclete is worth examining.
0:38:25 - (Toby Brooks): It comes from the greek paracletos, and when you break it down, para means to come beside and kalian means to call. It's found five times in the Bible, first in John 1416, and I will pray the father and he will give you another helper, and he may abide with you forever. Helper when I was at Liberty University working with a football team, the football booster club was called the Paracletes, and their logo was, you guessed it, a pair of cleats.
0:38:54 - (Toby Brooks): But dad jokes aside, what Vanit and his company have done are continuing to do is to help equip companies with skilled support that can come alongside and help team members be their best through an innovative and creative program. After receiving their clients'employee roster, Forte sends each one a personal invitation to create an account which presents them with these guide options that are matched to their preferences.
0:39:19 - (Toby Brooks): Turns out being a paraclete is a burden of glorious purpose. It's one that vanit carries well.
0:39:27 - (Vineet Rajan): I did not know how heavy that would hit me. I was expecting that in the marines. And for some reason, I thought in the Marine Corps, my mind was, all these people at the time, they were all men. All these men joined, they knew exactly what they were getting into. And we're ready to go. This is startup, right? This is not that kind of crazy thing. And as the employer, in some ways, you're always wondering, am I convicted enough to continue to push this ball up the hill with all these people?
0:39:51 - (Vineet Rajan): Such that they're willing to continue to follow me and such that they're willing to keep sacrificing to see this thing go to the top. And it's hard because we're not anywhere close to the top. We're so early in our experience and that our teammates continue having to sacrifice to be able to continue to serve. And thankfully, our culture is such that we attract people who want to serve. Like Forte. Our ethos is about serving other people.
0:40:14 - (Vineet Rajan): It's not shocking, given my background, however, that allows me to track the right kind of people who are willing to sacrifice. But the biggest thing for me is check your heart. Are you convicted enough about the thing? And are you willing to sacrifice first and the most for this thing to come to fruition so that your teammates can actually see where we're heading? That's something that I struggle with every day.
0:40:35 - (Toby Brooks): That's powerful, too. As you're talking, the servant leader in you just bubbles out. And leadership. One of the appeals of entrepreneurship early in my journey, when I'm a tenured professor now, they can't fire me unless. I don't know, unless I do something wrong. I guess they could, but that's, like, the opposite of entrepreneurship. There's no risk involved at this point. I'm committed to doing a good job because I believe that's the right thing to do. But I've still got these business interests, and I dabble in this entrepreneurship space, and it's a completely different thing.
0:41:09 - (Toby Brooks): Early in my journey, I thought, oh, if I could just be my own boss, then I wouldn't have to answer to anybody. And what I've discovered is entrepreneurs have to answer to everybody. And especially at the top, it's not a title that you just brandish. It is a responsibility that you bear. And I think you hit the nail on the head, and sometimes heavy is the head that wears the crown. Right. When you're in charge and your decisions are impacting not just your people, but their families and maybe even their family's families, and people moving and their futures are in many ways being directed by the choices you make.
0:41:51 - (Toby Brooks): So what has been the take home for you in this process, as far as your leadership skills go? You alluded to that. But what has being the CEO done or changed within you that maybe even your service to our country didn't?
0:42:10 - (Vineet Rajan): That's a great question. I think in the rake War, you have a rank and you have a title. You're the commanding officer of this. You're the whatever of that. And in the service, you get assigned a team, right? I come into a unit. I'm the commanding officer or whatever the case might be. There's an organizational structure. There's a way to do things right. In business and startups, yes, we have titles, but in a startup, titles are great. It's really about get on the boat and start rowing. Right. Everybody's rowing.
0:42:38 - (Vineet Rajan): If your title is more important than the rowing, you probably shouldn't be on the boat. Right. What I've learned in this season about leadership is how much more I have to learn to lead. Right. Just like I know nothing about leadership. I thought it was one of my biggest strengths it is in many ways, but I just know how little I know about leading humans, what it looks like, what good looks like, and I get to learn every day from great people.
0:43:02 - (Vineet Rajan): And so, actually, the more humble I can learn to be, the more willing I am able to hear their thoughts and their feedback and learn with them, the better I am as a leader, but the better we are as an.org. And if that's the North Star is, hey, let's serve people well. And that requires the need to learn from everybody as fast as possible. That makes us a better and actually learning. Just. I've also learned how uncomfortable I am with the title of CEO, and that's something that I'm still gripping with. Right. I don't know why.
0:43:31 - (Vineet Rajan): Because I want to do this for serving people, and that's all I care about. That is what keeps me up in the morning and gets me up in the day. And I am so grateful for the team that I have. Biggest thing I've gotten the privilege of honor of doing so far, having these people who voluntarily join on this crazy thing and said, yeah, we believe with you, Vinny, and we're going to row like crazy.
0:43:56 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah.
0:43:56 - (Vineet Rajan): And so I'm so grateful for that.
0:43:58 - (Toby Brooks): That's fantastic. I read a quote that said, if you knew you had one day left to live, what would you do? And the flip of that was, jesus chose to wash feet. And it's just that servant's heart. And just recognizing that it doesn't matter if I've got years left or days left, ultimately, my people matter the most. And not necessarily just. I'm talking specifically about the three, two and a half under my roof.
0:44:22 - (Toby Brooks): The one in college is only here periodically, but still, those are my people. But then beyond that, the people that I serve at work and the people that I serve in the community and those kinds of things, we've nibbled around the edges of forte. Talk to me about your latest business venture and what your day to day looks like and what Forte does.
0:44:39 - (Vineet Rajan): Yeah, it's great. So, Forte is a mental wellness benefit that actually benefits everyone at the company. And what we do at our core is connect employees with our certified, trained guides so they can have unlimited conversations about things that matter. And the reason we do that is all this talking that we talk about now is really about, hey, we have to be courageous humans, heroic humans, as we might have talked about earlier. But underneath that heroism in all of us are things that matter to the heart and mind and soul.
0:45:06 - (Vineet Rajan): And if we don't contemplate those and reflect on those things, then we're going to get burnt out. We're not going to contribute and be creative as we're designed to do. And we realize that actually providing that benefit to employees changes the employees life, changes their family's life. We have evidence of that now, and it changes the organizational's trajectory. The reason we started that company, one, because I had an identity crisis in many ways and allowed what I did for a living to define who I am as a human and never want to make that mistake, and I don't want people to do.
0:45:35 - (Vineet Rajan): But more importantly, from a theory of change perspective, you're a professor. Our theory of change is, hey, the biggest things in life, the things that affect our kids and our kids, will be things like cancer. And things like cancer aren't going to get solved by a human. They're going to be solved by an organization. And so we need an organization to perform as best they possibly can. And for that to happen, organizations are only legal constructs of people. So we actually got to change the lives of the people because that's the base of analysis. Right.
0:46:00 - (Vineet Rajan): And so forte is really designed on that principle. The base analysis is a fundamental to human, the employee. They are the most valuable input that we have a lever to mess with. And if we do that across the breadth of an organization and at the depth of that person's life, we can actually change the organization. And by doing that, we can actually change our world. So it's a pretty big ambition, but that's what I want to do. That's what our team wants to do.
0:46:23 - (Vineet Rajan): Because I've been to two war zones. I never want to have that experience again. I never want our children or our children's children to experience those kinds of things again. And so we want to change organizations around the world. Forte serves Fortune 500 companies and startups and PE back companies. We serve a lot of educational institutions, public schools, private schools. Honestly, organizations that realize that they're human people, their people are the biggest competitive advantage. They invest in forte because they see the ROI pretty quickly.
0:46:51 - (Vineet Rajan): My day to day looks like it's an insane. There is no day to day. Everything, every hour, changes depending on what's crazy and what's happening. But that's also why I love it. Toby. I don't know what a tenured professor's life looks like. That's beyond my scope of knowledge. But how long did I wake up? And I'm like, I have no idea what's about to happen today. And that energizes me right. That's cool for me. I love doing that.
0:47:13 - (Toby Brooks): Yeah, that's certainly something I loved about serving as an athletic trainer. No two days looked alike, and so those skills that were honed. Rich Davinny, a former navy SEAL, he was a guest on the show, talked about how it's not about skill, it's about the attributes. It's about character, qualities that can be cultivated and nurtured and grown that then can be pulled out of that context, plugged into another and lead you to success.
0:47:38 - (Toby Brooks): And so I think based on your earliest childhood experiences with your family, growing up, military experiences, it's prepared you for this. I know as an educator, I almost hate this. 911 was certainly a seminal event in our world, and it changed your life for sure. And in the years after, we all had this fatigue, are we going to blame everything on this event? There were things that happened in our world, and it felt like 911 was getting the blame. In this generation, it gets the blame for everything.
0:48:09 - (Toby Brooks): This is why we don't wash your towels at your hotel. We're trying to save the world because of COVID But as an educator, I have seen that six months year of our existence is almost like a shared trauma event. And kids that are locked down, some of them are doing their homework, some of them aren't. Some of them are being fed, some of them aren't. Some of them are being abused. I've seen it as a grad professor.
0:48:34 - (Toby Brooks): The attention spans of our students are shorter than they've ever been. Rates of anxiety and depression are higher than they've ever been. The backlog for our students to see a professional counselor is longer than it's ever been. Sometimes, if you're non emergent, it might be six months before you actually get seen. And that's not a Texas tech thing. That's not just unique to us. And you certainly have come along at the right time.
0:49:00 - (Toby Brooks): I think there's two things. The rates at which this is happening are probably greater than at any time in recorded history. We're paying attention to it, and the recognition that maybe I need to talk to somebody. Maybe there's more to this than just carrying it by myself. And I'm my own worst enemy on this. I recognize in myself some of the toxic. Like we alluded to earlier, there's something tough and manly and heroic about just carrying it and not saying anything.
0:49:32 - (Toby Brooks): But that's not ideal. Like you said, the health of the organization and us as a society, our ability to solve these big problems fundamentally boils down to how healthy are our people. And so how have you seen, maybe we talked about creativity and innovation. How has forte seen this change since COVID and iterated in a way that allows companies to serve their people better than they have in the past?
0:50:01 - (Vineet Rajan): Yeah, that's great. First of all, I think there's a wise saying that we both know there's nothing new under the sun, right? Humans are humans still. Before COVID and after Covid, we're the same humans. Our awareness has increased. Right. And the reality is that we're wired. We're made for human to human connection. So if you think about COVID as a nice test case, you're a professor. So let's talk about it a little bit. Is, hey, all these things spiked up risk or the depression, anxiety, and all those other things. But, like, social media was still available.
0:50:34 - (Vineet Rajan): You can still get on Twitter or now called X or LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever your social media of choice. So you could theoretically still do all the social connection you wanted digitally. What we've learned in that process is actually, that does not suffice. Right. I went to one of the best tech business schools in the world, and I love tech, but there's nothing more powerful than another human who knows you individually, authentically and personally.
0:51:00 - (Vineet Rajan): Just. There isn't. We haven't figured it out. I don't think we will. Right. And so forte, while it's novel and innovative and creative in the way we delivered this service, what we're trying to do is go back to how it all started in that we're trying to address the human condition, which is timeless. The human condition is we're a body, soul and a spirit. We have a physical part of our aspect. We have our soul, which what we call as a mindful and the emotional. And we have the spiritual part, which is where we draw our purpose and meaning from, however that comes to you. Right.
0:51:29 - (Vineet Rajan): And to ignore all three facets of who you are as a human is to ignore the way we've been created and the way we've been involved. And the challenge is a lot of the things that are trying to deal with the challenges our society is facing are dealing with the symptom in some ways. Right. The supply of certified therapists and clinicians is far outstripped by the demand of humans who want a real human connection.
0:51:54 - (Vineet Rajan): We're never going to get parity on that. We just aren't. And I think it's fool's errand. Secondly, I don't think we all need to see a specialist. We all are. Normal humans, we have a general practitioner. We see a doctor. The way we're trying to address mental wellness in our society is saying, skip that. Let's go right to the specialist. And the challenge is that's a reactive way to live life. Like, it's like driving your car and waiting for the oil change light to come on and saying that your car is in big trouble and then go and see the mechanic. Actually, we don't do that. I think most of us try to go and schedule six months, do all of our things proactively. So forte is really a proactive, personalized service that actually meets the human for where they are and says, hey, you have stuff in your heart and your mind.
0:52:41 - (Vineet Rajan): Let's use your example. Toby, you have a son who's going to graduate high school, and that generates some feelings. You don't need to see a therapist for that. That's called being a father. Right. Can someone talk to you who isn't in your social structure, who isn't in your employer, who isn't your employer, who isn't your spouse, that you don't have to put any burdens on them? And you can be like, hey, I just want to talk to you about this.
0:53:02 - (Vineet Rajan): I've got my son. He's going to graduate high school. And since I've known you, since I've got to know who you are as a human, both at work and at home, I can help you process the things that matter to you. And actually, you have the wisdom inside of you on what the next step forward is. You just don't have a rail to help you do it. That's what forte does at its core. We're not here to solve the clinical challenges, and those are important things, but they are, statistically speaking, on the edges of our population, from how much of the pop actually needs a clinical intervention.
0:53:32 - (Vineet Rajan): Right. In traditional benefit space, employers have been really good at providing clinical intervention or therapy from the 5% of the pop that will actually use that service in a year, maybe, and executive coaching for the leadership who are going to need to perform better to take the work. But that leaves 90% of the pop largely ignored or underserved. And what has happened after Covid is employees know they have choice and agency on where they work and for whom they work, and that 90% of the pop is no longer going to be ignored. And that's what four things are really here to serve.
0:54:04 - (Toby Brooks): That's fantastic. It definitely is an upstream model of healthcare. A lot of times we treat, like you said, we let things maybe go too long, or we have a tendency to seek medicine. There are preventative steps that can oftentimes not only be more beneficial from the company standpoint, far more cost effective to keep people healthy than it is to treat people who are diseased. And that may be a cynical way to look at it, but the benefit of that is those are people that are happier, healthier, living better lives, able to serve their families and their community, not just their workforce.
0:54:44 - (Toby Brooks): I worked for a company that had a fitness center installed in a tire plant, and I was in charge of that. And the people that used it, they were fitter, but they didn't miss work, and they were happier. And there was just something to this wellness model and this upstream idea where, for pennies of what it would cost us to treat someone, we can help grow them and prevent it. So you're to be applauded. This is definitely an innovative idea that is long overdue in many respects.
0:55:11 - (Toby Brooks): I'll shift gears here a little bit. I always ask this one. I love music and the emotions that it can frequently represent. If we were to watch a montage of your life, what song would you choose to pick in the background and why?
0:55:24 - (Vineet Rajan): Oh, gosh, that is such a good. Toby, you're good. This is a good question, dude. This is where any of your listeners will immediately fall off, because my answers are not going to be very popular. I have learned over the last. So I grew up. This is interesting. I grew up listening to rap, which I think shocks a lot of people. And then over time, I now listen to music with no words in it. All my playlists are just instrumentals. They're instrumentals with beats in it.
0:55:49 - (Vineet Rajan): I really like Chopin. And so classical music is a thing for me now. And my kids have gotten accustomed to this kind of lifestyle. So we drive, we got classical music on or some kind of weird thing. And the reason behind that is it's going back to your creativity thing. All day we are bombarded with input. All day you wake up, input from your phone, input from your computer, input from life. We don't have enough space in our life to be able to hear the creativity that we already have.
0:56:23 - (Vineet Rajan): And so I try to put enough space in my life during the day to find my mind to talk out loud. What do I have in here that I need to get out? And so my montage of music is probably classical music that has no words that nobody will recognize, probably because I love it.
0:56:42 - (Toby Brooks): That's a fantastic answer. I love the idea of giving yourself space to be creative I don't need your words. Let me craft some of my own. That's the most unique answer I've ever heard to that question. I've asked it several times now. Vanit, it's been a pleasure. I want to be respectful of your time. How can listeners connect with you or follow what you're doing and check out Forte and what's available?
0:57:04 - (Vineet Rajan): I would first say to all your listeners, hey, you are creative. You have a lot to contribute, no matter what the world will tell you. And we need you to contribute in our society because our future generations depend on you actually participating in this journey of life together. If you want to follow us on Forte, what forte is doing, just look us up at ww getforte.com. You'll find who we are. And what I want you to remember is we're here to help humans unlock unique contribution. And when we do that one human life at a time, we will change trajectory of the organization and therefore change our world.
0:57:35 - (Vineet Rajan): I'm so privileged and honored to spend this time with you. Toby, thanks for what you're doing and for the stories you're telling. I look forward to continuing to follow your progress.
0:57:43 - (Toby Brooks): Dude, it's been awesome. I really have enjoyed the conversation and you're welcome back anytime.
0:57:49 - (Vineet Rajan): All right, thank you. Hi, I'm Vanit Roger and I am undone.
0:57:53 - (Toby Brooks): For more info on today's episode, be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com ep 78 to see the notes, links and images related to today's guest, Vanit Rajan. I know there are great stories out there to be told and I am always on the lookout. So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by, tell me about it. Surf on over to undonepodcast.com. Click that contact tab in the top menu and drop me a note.
0:58:19 - (Toby Brooks): Coming up, I've got some incredible guests, including Olympic gold medalist Charles Austin also got the chance to interview fitness influencer Jody Dolo. And I can't wait to share the incredible story of endurance athlete turned author Patrick Holcomb. So stay tuned. This and more coming up on becoming undone. Undone is a nitrohive creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for becoming undone, contact me@undonepodcast.com
0:59:05 - (Toby Brooks): follow the show on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn at becoming undone pod and follow me at tobyjbrokes on X Instagram and TikTok. Check out my link tree at linktr ee backslash. Tobyjbrooks. Listen, subscribe, and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts. Till next time, everybody. Keep getting better. Vanit Rayjan, welcome to the show. Vanit. First of all, I should have confirmed that I pronounced your name correctly before we started rolling.
0:59:45 - (Vineet Rajan): It's Vaneet Rajan.
0:59:46 - (Toby Brooks): Let me rerecord that.
0:59:47 - (Vineet Rajan): Then.
0:59:48 - (Toby Brooks): Ordinarily, I would put that up front where I would confirm the phonetics there. It's Rajan.
0:59:54 - (Vineet Rajan): Okay. Sounds like R-A-J-I-N. Roger. Okay, awesome.
0:59:58 - (Toby Brooks): So joining us today is former Marine Corps and now serial entrepreneur Vanit Rajan. I said it wrong again.
1:00:05 - (Vineet Rajan): Sure it is. Rajan, like R A Raj in. Raj in. All good. All good. It's not a big deal, by the way. It'll be fine.
1:00:14 - (Toby Brooks): It is to me. It absolutely is. And I'm so embarrassed already. This is three strikes and I'm out.
1:00:20 - (Vineet Rajan): If my name was Brooks, that'd be a lot easier.
1:00:24 - (Toby Brooks): Rajan. Rajan. I got it. Okay. I keep thinking, like, raging Cajuns.
1:00:30 - (Vineet Rajan): Well, when I was growing up, that's what the people used to say. Actually, you're not wrong in that sense.
1:00:37 - (Toby Brooks): All right, so joining us today is former Marine Corps major and now serial entrepreneur Vanit Ragin.
1:00:47 - (Vineet Rajan): Say raw. And then, like, jen the drake, I guess. Roger.
1:00:50 - (Toby Brooks): There we go.
1:00:51 - (Vineet Rajan): Good morning, I'm Vinit. Or do I just say good morning?
1:00:54 - (Toby Brooks): I can cut it.
1:00:54 - (Vineet Rajan): However, listen to my food for real now. Hi, I'm vinit. Roger. I'm the co founder of Forte, and I'm grateful to be able to provide Metro wall less to every human.
1:01:04 - (Toby Brooks): One life at a time, and I am undone.
1:01:08 - (Vineet Rajan): Oh, shoot.