Dr. Varun Gandhi, an environmental engineer turned entrepreneur who helped grow a weekly community meal effort past 200,000 meals, joins Niiamah Ashong on the Outlier's Edge Podcast to talk about noticing signs and acting on them. He shares how meditation slowed him down enough to see the signs, and how he builds anything new by showing up and iterating. In a live coaching segment, Niiamah coaches him on expressing himself with more ease, and what emerged is a fresh way to treat nerves as a sign of a bigger game.
Episode at a glance
- Guest: Varun Gandhi, Environmental engineer with a PhD, entrepreneur and organizer of a weekly community meal effort
- Host: Niiamah Ashong, coach to outlier leaders
- Show: Outlier’s Edge Podcast, released August 23, 2022
- Format: conversation, 43 minutes
- Topics: Acting on signs, Serving the community every Sunday, Building a meditation habit, Quick action and iteration, The stories people create, Expressing oneself with ease
What Varun brought to the conversation
Varun Gandhi holds a master's and a PhD in environmental engineering, worked for a couple of years, then switched to entrepreneurship and tried many different things to understand where he belongs. He helped create a community organization from scratch that grew to about 2,000 members in two years, and he has held leadership roles in a public speaking organization. During the pandemic he helped start a Sunday effort that grew from grocery bags into hot meals, crossing 200,000 meals, and the team is creating a template so others can replicate it in their own cities. He also helps heart-based entrepreneurs with the technology side of their businesses, is creating a self-discovery course about the stories people create, and calls himself a water doctor who reminds people to drink more water.
What emerged
Niiamah Ashong noticed a pattern running through Varun Gandhi's stories: he answers the call, starts simple, and iterates quickly with a strong feedback loop, whether building a meditation habit toward five minutes or turning grocery bags into hot meals by week two. In the live coaching that followed, Varun named what would change the game for him: being more at ease expressing himself. Niiamah's invitation was to name the nerves out loud instead of carrying them, and to treat that sensation as a sign he's stepping into something new and playing a bigger game. Varun's own insight was that he is much closer on this than before and has gotten a whole lot better at it.
Questions this episode answers
How do you act on signs instead of just noticing them?
Varun Gandhi sees the sign, then sits with it for a while to feel whether it feels right in the body before he moves forward. When he says yes to everything it becomes too much, so he pulls back and says no to a few things. He credits meditation with slowing him down enough to pay attention to the signs.
How did a weekly food effort grow into hundreds of thousands of meals?
Early in the pandemic, Varun Gandhi and a team met on a Sunday to put together grocery bags and hand them out, then kept coming back, assembling about 8,400 bags over more than 20 Sundays. By week two they asked what else they could do and began cooking hot meals in a commercial kitchen, growing to 1,500 to 2,000 meals every Sunday and crossing 200,000 meals, with 500,000 as the next mark.
How do you build a new habit like meditation from scratch?
Varun Gandhi set a goal of just five minutes, sat facing a corner with his distractions behind him, set a timer and kept his phone far away. It took him about three months to reach five minutes, and he says the key was coming back the next day and showing up consistently, then fine-tuning toward the kind of meditation he enjoys.
What does it mean that people are always creating a story?
Varun Gandhi says that when people connect the dots between events, they draw on their own experiences and memories, so two people can create completely different stories from the same situation. Using the image of a film inside a projector, his course invites people to edit and reframe that film so it takes them where they want to go.
How can a leader express themselves more freely when the camera is on?
Niiamah Ashong invites Varun Gandhi to tell people up front that he's excited and has felt nerves before, so energy isn't spent holding it in. He also reframes the sensation as a sign of stepping into something new, and invites Varun to run toward the opportunities that bring it up.
In their words
Universe is constantly sending us signs and these messages or inklings to move in a particular direction, so I pay attention to that.
Varun Gandhi
The key is I would come back to it the next day.
Varun Gandhi
At every moment of our lives we're creating a story.
Varun Gandhi
Key moments
02:03 – From engineering to entrepreneurship
05:38 – Answering the call to feed people
09:13 – Paying attention to the signs
16:51 – A five-minute meditation goal
19:24 – Showing up and coming back
22:28 – Exploring all the other dots
24:32 – Every moment creates a story
29:37 – Stepping into live coaching
36:16 – Naming the nerves up front
38:49 – Nerves as a sign of growth
About Niiamah Ashong
Niiamah Ashong is a coach to outlier leaders, host of the Outlier’s Edge Podcast, and founder of the Trailblazer Collective. He coaches leaders who are creating something only they can make: a company, a body of work or a movement. Make a difference with your difference.
Work with Niiamah: 1:1 with Niiamah | World of Difference
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