Most of us check the odds before we try something big. MIT-trained engineer and serial founder Sanjay Manandhar, author of The Why Not Advantage, says that's the wrong number to look at. A statistic describes the crowd, not you.

At 16, Sanjay applied to US schools from Kathmandu. He needed a full scholarship and airfare, and his friends asked if he was nuts. In this conversation, he shares the formula he uses to rewrite his odds, what a Nobel Prize winner's 40 years of persistence teaches about timing, and why your odds change the moment you take action.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "probability does not exist," and the difference between the crowd's odds and your personal odds
• The BPCA formula (Belief x Preparation x Context x Action), and why a zero in any one variable takes your odds to zero
• The variable people underestimate most, and why the hardest negotiation is the one with yourself
• What Katalin Karikó's path to the Nobel Prize reveals about preparing for the moment context turns in your favor
• "Activation energy": why progress feels stuck right before a breakthrough, and how to push through
• Why any action beats overthinking when you're stuck, even if it isn't the perfect move
• How to keep your conviction without falling into confirmation bias or following the crowd, with lessons from the dot-com bubble and Theranos
• The deathbed test and the five-year test: two tools to decide what to do this week

About Sanjay Manandhar:
Sanjay Manandhar is a serial technology entrepreneur, mentor, and author of The Why Not Advantage: How Small Probabilities Create Outsized Outcomes. Originally from Nepal, he is an MIT-trained engineer. In 1994, he helped bring the internet to Nepal, and he has since founded and led multiple technology companies. He lives in Cambridge, MA, and loves trekking and motorbiking.

Connect with Sanjay:
Book and author site: https://sanjaymanandhar.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaymanandhar

The Why Not Advantage is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.

Mentioned in this episode:
Bruno de Finetti, Italian mathematician
Katalin Karikó, Nobel laureate and mRNA vaccine pioneer
Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Know someone usure of which path to follow? Send them this episode.

Quotes from Sanjay:
"Your odds change in your favor the moment you take action."
"You don't get to run your venture 1,000 times or your career move 1,000 times. You have one chance, maybe two."
"Negotiating with a counterparty is hard. The harder part is actually negotiating with yourself."

Chapters:
00:00 Agency, and why the odds you're quoted aren't your odds
01:17 "If you think of it, do it": his mother's advice about time
05:01 One talk to 60 people that led to an $80M startup
08:07 "Probability does not exist": the idea behind the book
10:39 The BPCA formula: why one zero sinks your odds
13:11 The Nobel winner who waited 40 years for her moment
18:05 The variable people underestimate most
19:55 Survivorship bias: is beating the odds just luck?
23:29 Why almost everyone who starts a marathon finishes
26:04 Activation energy: why water won't boil at 99.5°C
30:13 Overthinking? Any action beats the perfect action
34:00 Conviction vs. the crowd: lessons from bubbles and Theranos
39:07 The deathbed test: what you'll regret not doing

How do you disagree with a superior or your boss when you see a problem in a decision you still have to deliver? How do you influence senior leaders when you don't have the final say?

In this episode of Speak Your Mind Unapologetically, Ivna Curi explores managing up and upward influence through two real workplace stories from her book, Unapologetic Voice.

Amy spent six months building a business case after senior leaders dismissed a gap she saw in their plan. Rebecca challenged a leader's approach to restructuring by proposing an alternative that addressed his concern about confidentiality.

Their experiences reveal practical ways to challenge a decision, earn consideration for your ideas, and help your organization improve.

You'll discover:

• How to disagree with your boss when your first concern gets dismissed: What to reconsider before repeating the same argument.
• How to get senior leadership buy-in: Connect your recommendation to business consequences and the results leaders want.
• How to push back without sounding combative: Address what the decision-maker is trying to achieve or protect.
• How to build a stronger business case: Use individual conversations to test assumptions, understand objections, and improve your proposal.
• How to recognize progress when you don't get a full yes: Evaluate whether a workable compromise improves the decision.
• Three questions to prepare for a difficult conversation with your boss or a superior: Identify your disagreement, understand their concern, and propose a specific alternative.

If you're a manager, director, or VP navigating a rejected idea, an overlooked risk, or a decision you believe needs reconsideration, this episode is for you.

Share this episode with a colleague working to get a useful perspective heard, and follow Speak Your Mind Unapologetically for more on leadership communication and upward influence.

Being kind at work is easy when things are going well. Smiling, saying thank you, listening, remembering birthdays. The real test is what you do when there is a problem, a conflict, or a disagreement.

This episode is a self-assessment. Twelve everyday workplace moments that look polite on the surface and cost someone else something real. Escalating to a manager before ever telling the colleague what the problem is. Staying silent in a meeting, then criticizing the decision privately afterward. Calling someone disrespectful instead of naming the behavior. Saying yes when you mean no. Redoing a team member's work instead of telling them what to change.

The pattern underneath all twelve is the same. Avoiding an uncomfortable conversation feels like kindness to the person doing the avoiding, and transfers the cost to someone else in the form of lost information, lost time, lost reputation, or a lost opportunity.

Here is the test: if your discomfort leaves someone else worse off on information, time, reputation, or opportunity, that is not kindness.

Go through the twelve. For each one, decide honestly whether you are being kind or protecting your own comfort. Then pick one to change this week.

• Kindness measured in easy moments is worthless as a measure. What counts is how you behave when something is wrong.
• Avoidance is not neutral. It moves the cost off you and onto someone else.
• Directness is part of respect, not the opposite of it. Warmth plus avoidance is still a cost passed to somebody.
• Character labels like difficult, toxic, abrasive, and disrespectful attack identity and give the other person nothing to act on. Behavior plus impact plus a specific request does.
• People can only fix what they know about. Usable information delivered early is the actual kindness.
• Leaders set the standard here. How you handle a disagreement teaches your team what is allowed.

1. Escalating to a manager before telling the colleague what the behavior is
2. Escalating without one conversation plus one reminder first
3. Staying silent in a meeting, which reads as agreement
4. Criticizing the decision privately after the meeting ends
5. Using character labels instead of naming behavior and impact
6. Being warm and polite as a way to avoid the real conversation
7. Saying yes when you mean no, then delaying and under-delivering
8. Passing someone over for an opportunity without naming the gap
9. Ghosting an email because you do not know what to say yet
10. Watching work go the wrong direction for weeks before correcting it
11. Redoing someone's work instead of explaining what needs to change
12. Concluding someone is not ready without ever telling them why