Today's guest is Mahesh Guruswami, the chief product and technology officer at Kickstarter,

and the author of a powerful new book called How to Deliver Bad News and Get Away with it,

a manager's guide. And this is a no-nonsense exploration of leadership, authenticity, and mastering

tough conversations. Mahesh's story is the definition of courage and perspective. He went from earning

$40,000 a year in his first tech job to leading teams at one of the biggest companies in the world.

And along the way, he learned that real success isn't just about climbing higher. It's about

gratitude, clarity, and making bold choices when fear tells you to play it safe.

In this episode, we talk about the mindset that drives great leaders, the immigrant experience

that shaped him and his brilliant one-way door versus two-way door framework, a simple but

game-changing way to make better decisions in life and business.

This conversation will remind you that growth

doesn't always come from moving faster. Sometimes it comes from stepping back, taking a breath,

and rolling the dice on what truly matters. Let's jump in. So I'm like 40-some years old,

and I came here as an immigrant.

And, you know, for the last 20-some years, I've been in tech.

And, you know, like in the day-to-day workings of what you go through, you have all these problems, right?

It's like, this project is delayed. This conversation was not great. You know, this thing is like painful. But today I like

went out for a run and I came back and I told myself, I'm like way too blessed to be able to do

what I have to do, what I I can do be able to like live the

life that I can live and I think it's just like people should be more grateful for what they what they have

and it's obviously there's a lot of like hard work like bloods and sweat and tears like associated with it

which which I'm on a discount because we did work really hard to get to where we are. But, you know, just the fact that

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