This story is part of CNBC Make It’s The Moment series, where highly successful people reveal the critical moment that changed the trajectory of their lives and careers, discussing what drove them to make the leap into the unknown.

Jay Chaudhry never thought he’d run a business, amass a fortune or help popularize an entire industry. Not growing up in rural India, not upon moving to the U.S. in 1980 to study engineering and marketing, not even after landing jobs at tech giants IBM and Unisys.

“I have no background of entrepreneurship in my family of small-scale farmers. So if you asked me, ‘Did I ever think about becoming an entrepreneur in my childhood [or] early years of my career?’ Not really,” Chaudhry, the billionaire founder and CEO of cloud security company Zscaler, tells CNBC Make It.

It took Silicon Valley’s dot-com boom — the wild success stories of tech startups like Netscape — to get Chaudhry thinking in 1996, “Why shouldn’t I start a company?” He made the rash decision to quit his job as an executive at Atlanta-based tech company IQ Software, and his wife Jyoti quit her job as a systems analyst at telecommunications giant BellSouth.

Together, they plunged their life savings — roughly $500,000 — into SecureIT, a cybersecurity software startup they co-founded in 1997. At the time, “maybe less than 5% of Fortune 500 companies had firewalls,” Chaudhry says. “Within 18 months, we had deployed firewalls in about 50% of [the] Fortune 500.”

His timing was perfect: In 1998, Chaudhry sold SecureIT to VeriSign in an all-stock deal worth nearly $70 million. Over the ensuing decade, the husband-and-wife duo founded two more cybersecurity companies and an e-commerce business, each of which got acquired.

By 2007, they were already wealthy entrepreneurs, and Chaudhry — who gets “bored” without something to work on — decided it was time to launch “one big company and put 200% focus on that,” he says.

That company was Zscaler, which aimed to help companies transition away from outdated firewalls and into the cloud era. The couple invested $50 million of their own money, says Chaudhry. Today, it brings in $1.6 billion in annual revenue and has a market value of roughly $30 billion.

Chaudhry’s own net worth is estimated at $11.5 billion by Forbes.

Here, Chaudhry talks about putting his family’s savings on the line to follow his gut, how his upbringing influenced his relationship with money and the advice he’d give someone who wants to quit their job to start a business.

CNBC Make It: What prompted you to stake your entire life’s savings on a startup idea — in an industry that didn’t really exist yet?

Chaudhry: This thing happened because I love to read and I love technology.

In 1996, Netscape had just launched and gone public, and I was fascinated by it. I said, “If [Netscape co-founder] Marc Andreessen could start a company — he was a young guy [right] out of college — why shouldn’t I start a company?”

My wife and I talked a few times, and the more we thought about it, the more conviction we got around it: [Netscape’s web browser] is the way to access information, and it should become popular. But if every company is connected to the internet, that means there will be security risks.

That was my simple thinking. There was no IDC or Gartner study about the market size. It was largely based on what the gut told us.

A gut feeling is one thing. Betting every dollar to your name is another.

It started out with us saying, “Let’s go get venture capital funding.” I had no experience raising funds, and I realized soon that it wasn’t that easy. This was [1996], Atlanta was not a VC mecca and we kept hearing, “Hey, you don’t have any experience.”

We were disappointed, but our conviction was building, which led to me saying, “Why don’t we put our life-savings on the line?”

I didn’t know anything. So, I really didn’t know how big the risk was. I couldn’t quantify it.

How did you make peace with that risk?

After talking back and forth, we asked each other, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” The company could shut down, we’d lose all of our savings.

The next question was, “Can we find jobs?” There was lots of confidence that we could.

I never had money in my early childhood, so there was never a notion that I must buy A and B and C. Our lifestyle was pretty simple. Our house in Alpharetta, Georgia, was $200,000 — a nice, typical middle-class house at that time — and we didn’t have any fancy cars or fancy payments.

Our only child at that time was going to a public school. There wasn’t a lot of overhead. We said, “Let’s take a chance.”

When a bet pays off, does that success make you more confident to take on bigger risks? Were any of your other ventures as risky as that first one?

The [financial] risk of SecureIT was, like, 1,000 times more than the risk of Zscaler. The amount I invested in Zscaler was a small fraction of my net worth.

But Zscaler was much harder. I put more money in it than all the others combined. I took bigger bets. I hired people more quickly to solve some very hard problems. I wanted to do something big, something lasting.

We were trying to solve a problem that was futuristic. Will it be successful or not? Will the market take off or not? That was all unknown.

So if you asked me the chances of success of Zscaler, there was a much higher risk. Because, with SecureIT, it was fairly obvious that as you connect to the internet, you need firewalls.

What’s your best advice for someone who’s thinking about quitting their job to start their own business?

First, build conviction by learning more about what you want to do. Don’t just do some of the cursory work.

Second, start by putting in your own money. That actually is part of testing your conviction. If you really have conviction, you’ll take a chance on yourself. That also means you’ve done some serious homework, you’re ready, you’re committed.

You can also make decisions the way you want to make decisions. If Zscaler was largely owned by VCs, they probably could have shut it down. It took us a few years to really start getting traction in the market, and VCs can write you off and move on. They say, “It’s one of my 20 investments.”

When you put in your own money, this is the only business you have.

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You have to earn more than $1 million annually to be among the top 1% of earners in the richest U.S. states and Washington, D.C., a new GOBankingRates study reveals.

In D.C., you’re in the top 1% if you make $1,250,029 or more — the highest threshold in the U.S. That’s followed by five states where you also need to come in over the $1 million mark to be a top earner: Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Washington and New Jersey.

The 1% thresholds are based on individual tax return data processed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2022, which has been adjusted by GOBankingRates to reflect 2024 dollar values. Here’s a look at where the 1% earn the most, based on that metric:

1. Washington, D.C.: $1,250,029
2. Connecticut: $1,192,947
3. Massachusetts: $1,152,992
4. California: $1,072,248
5. Washington: $1,024,599
6. New Jersey: $1,010,101
7. New York: $999,747
8. Colorado: $896,273
9. Florida: $882,302
10. Wyoming $872,896

One reason that Washington, D.C. has a higher threshold compared with states like California and New York is that it has a smaller population with a larger concentration of high-income earners. Many of the highest paid D.C. professionals are in the government sector, which includes senior officials, lobbyists and lawyers.

Connecticut also has a smaller population compared with most states. The state’s largest industry is financial services, and it is home to wealthy hedge funds and investment firms that tend to pay high salaries.

Massachusetts ranks third, largely due to an array of lucrative industries with high-paying specialized jobs, including financial services, education, technology and health care.

In contrast, West Virginia has the lowest income threshold for the top 1% of earners, starting at $435,302. Nationwide, the 1% income threshold is a median of $707,296.

Below are the thresholds for each state, in alphabetical order:

• Alabama: $577,017
• Alaska: $642,707
• Arizona: $713,264
• Arkansas: $550,469
• California: $1,072,248
• Colorado: $896,273
• Connecticut: $1,192,947
• Delaware: $640,330
• Florida: $882,302
• Georgia: $725,284
• Hawaii: $631,383
• Idaho: $728,859
• Illinois: $811,004
• Indiana: $572,403
• Iowa: $591,921
• Kansas: $674,225
• Kentucky: $532,013
• Louisiana: $608,143
• Maine: $609,173
• Maryland: $767,688
• Massachusetts: $1,152,992
• Michigan: $625,158
• Minnesota: $755,880
• Mississippi: $456,309
• Missouri: $610,837
• Montana: $741,182
• Nebraska: $651,641
• Nevada: $804,627
• New Hampshire: $839,742
• New Jersey: $1,010,101
• New Mexico: $493,013
• New York: $999,747
• North Carolina: $688,506
• North Dakota: $708,284
• Ohio: $601,685
• Oklahoma: $559,981
• Oregon: $707,296
• Pennsylvania: $720,778
• Rhode Island: $673,902
• South Carolina: $632,805
• South Dakota: $752,849
• Tennessee: $702,934
• Texas: $789,003
• Utah: $811,929
• Vermont: $645,255
• Virginia: $787,471
• Washington: $1,024,599
• Washington, D.C.: $1,250,029
• West Virginia: $435,302
• Wisconsin: $631,993
• Wyoming: $872,896

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It’s almost time for college students to move into their dorms and get ready for the upcoming school year. If that’s you and you haven’t checked “submit my FAFSA” off your to-do list, take care of that ASAP.

As of July 5, less than half of the high school class of 2024 had submitted a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, according to the National College Attainment Network’s analysis of Federal Student Aid data. FAFSA submissions from this class are down about 11% compared to last year’s, NCAN finds.

It’s not just incoming freshmen, though. Returning college students need to submit a new FAFSA every year to be considered for aid.

While it may have been difficult for students and their families to submit a FAFSA at the beginning of this year’s application cycle, most of the technical issues have been resolved by now. 

“Fill out the FAFSA. Just fill it out,” Jill Desjean, senior policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, tells CNBC Make It.

The deadline to apply for federal aid for the 2024-25 school year isn’t until June 30, 2025. But if you’re starting school in August or September, you’ll probably need to get your school bills — and any applicable aid — figured out by then. 

There is currently an $11 billion surplus of federal Pell Grant funding waiting to go to eligible students, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That doesn’t mean more people will become eligible or that eligible aid recipients will inherently receive more federal aid. Since the Pell program is mostly funded through discretionary appropriations in the congressional budget, it’s designed to carry a surplus from year to year, Desjean says.

So, for example, “in a future year, if more students needed money than was appropriated, they could draw from the surplus, instead of just cutting people off,” she says. Not everyone will qualify, but you don’t know for sure until you fill out a FAFSA.

Pell Grant eligibility was expanded this year to link eligibility to family size and the federal poverty level. Almost 1.5 million more students are eligible for maximum Pell Grants amounts of $7,395 this year, according to the Department of Education.

“Maybe you’ll get a Pell Grant. But [the FAFSA] also unlocks the door to state grants, it opens the door to institutional grants and other types of federal aid as well,” Desjean says.

Even the largest Pell Grant amount available may not seem like a lot of money compared with the total cost of attendance, which can be close to $90,000 a year at some schools. But nearly a quarter of college students say they need to come up with $5,000 to pay for the 2024-25 school year, according to a recent ScholarshipOwl survey. 

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The key to success is to never stop trying to learn new things, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

“You have to be ravenous and hungry to find ways to learn,” Jassy said last week in a video posted by Amazon about the company’s famous list of 16 leadership principles, originally penned by founder Jeff Bezos.

One of those principles, “Learn and Be Curious,” says the best leaders “are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves.” Jassy said he’s seen that ability make the biggest difference between people who successfully grow their careers and those who remain “stagnant.”

“For some people, at a certain point, they find it too threatening or too difficult to keep learning,” he said. “The second you think there’s little left for you to learn is the second that you are unwinding as an individual and as a learning professional.”

Continuing to learn as you age can improve memory and other cognitive abilities, while also making you happier, research shows. And employers are often keen on hiring and advancing workers with a “growth mindset,” where you continuously try to adopt new skills and improve your abilities, LinkedIn workforce expert Aneesh Raman told CNBC Make It in March.

Jassy and Bezos aren’t the only high-profile professionals who think that way: Julia Stewart, the CEO who merged IHOP and Applebee’s into a roughly $530 million restaurant giant, says that “You should be learning for the rest of her life” is her mantra.

Good leaders have to realize they don’t always have every answer, and be comfortable learning from the people around them, Stewart told Make It in May. “I think as you get older and you become successful, you realize: ‘I don’t have to be the smartest person in the room,’” she said. “I’ve never had somebody say, ‘No, I’m not going to help.’” 

Jassy agrees. “You have to think about the idea that you don’t know everything and that there’s a lot to learn,” he said. “Even if you spent many months or years learning a certain area, it may flip upside down very quickly.”

His advice: Stay humble in those upside-down moments, so you can find the joy in learning new things and continue to grow for the rest of your life and career. 

“Instead of that feeling threatening and scary, you have to think about that as being part of the fun of what you do,” Jassy said.

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When Jen Barnett and Brett Andrews started seriously thinking of leaving the U.S., they had a few parameters for their new home.

The couple from Birmingham, Alabama, wanted to live in a place not too far from the beach, that had a strong middle class, where politics leaned progressive, and maybe most importantly, where people enjoyed a high quality of life for a lower cost of living.

“We say we have red state money — we don’t have blue state money,” Barnett, 52, tells CNBC Make It.

They did well for themselves in corporate America, with Barnett working in marketing and Andrews in software programming, earning them a joint household income of roughly $200,000. They owned their 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house and had enough disposable income to go on vacations, though they weren’t quite “constant jet-setter types,” Barnett says.

The two got serious about leaving the country in 2020 when they transitioned to remote work.

In 2022, they visited Merida, the capital city of the Yucatan state in Mexico, and fell in love.

Merida checked off all the boxes: a 30-minute drive from the coast, friendly people, progressive politics like legal abortion and same-sex marriage, and, at least according to online estimates, a cost-of-living that was at least 30% cheaper than Alabama, Barnett says.

The couple moved to Merida in April 2024 and now run their own travel company, Expatsi. They pay themselves a combined salary of $3,000 per month, “which is close to the average salary in Merida and covers our needs,” Barnett says.

Here’s how some of the costs stack up between Alabama and Mexico.

Going out to restaurants and entertainment options are more affordable in Merida than in Birmingham, Barnett says.

“Unless it is extremely high end, dining out is incredibly affordable,” she says. The two recently split a nice dinner at an Indian restaurant for $45 including tip.

In the U.S., though inflation has eased from recent highs, many Americans still report seeing higher restaurant prices than in recent years.

The cost of dining out reminds Barnett of “Birmingham, but before the pandemic.” Plus there are “infinite options for affordable, delicious street food.”

Another cheaper item: An outing to the movies. A ticket to the movie theater “with reclining leather seats and all that” costs around $4 or $5, Barnett says.

Grooming and other personal services are also much cheaper, she adds. A trip to her new local salon could cost $30 for a set of eyelashes, $50 for a manicure and pedicure, and $100 for a haircut and color appointment.

A recent round of Botox cost her $150.

Health care in general is affordable in Mexico at roughly 60% lower than prices in the U.S., according to OECD data.

“Let’s say you have a cold, and you go to the pharmacy,” Barnett says. “You could see a provider there for $2 and get a prescription on the spot.”

While going out to eat is pretty affordable, Barnett says her grocery shopping trips are a little more expensive than back in the U.S.

That often comes down to the exchange rate, she adds.

Her Costco runs are a good example: “Costco items are pegged to an exchange rate of 20 pesos to the dollar,” and priced at a static rate, Barnett says. When the U.S. dollar becomes weaker in relation to the Mexican peso, things cost more. On one recent trip, the grocer’s famous $1.50 hot dog worked out to be closer to $2 because of the exchange rage.

Plus, “some items are also imported at a premium,” Barnett says.

With time, she’s gotten better at sourcing from local stores, like a butcher shop and delivery service for fish.

“If there was a store like Aldi here for reliably low prices on things like cheeses and pantry staples, I think I’d be below my U.S. spend,” Barnett says. “As it is, I’m still working on it and probably spending about 10% to 20% more.”

In Alabama, the couple’s mortgage on their house was roughly $1,200 a month, including insurance and taxes.

In Merida, the couple rents a 2-bedroom, 2½-bathroom hacienda for 25,000 pesos, or less than $1,400, per month.

Despite the slightly higher cost, Barnett says their housing, which is in a “high-end” neighborhood and is equipped with “top-of-the-line appliances,” is a higher quality than what they had before.

Plus, their home’s solar panels help lower their electricity bills, especially during the summer when the AC is constantly running.

“That can save us $300 a month right there,” Barnett says.

Conversions from Mexican pesos to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 peso to 0.05 USD on July 10, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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