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That company was Zscaler, which aimed to help companies transition away from outdated firewalls and into the cloud era.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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One key trait separates the best CEOs from all others, according to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

While some leaders can get complacent in their lofty roles, a great CEO prioritizes learning, inquisitive conversations and taking genuine interest in other people’s points of view, Dimon, 68, told LinkedIn’s “This is Working” video series last week.

“I think leaders have to get out [from behind their desks],” Dimon said. “They have to get out all the time. They have to be curious, ask a million questions. They’re learning from competitors, they’re learning from clients.”

One of Dimon’s top priorities for himself is meeting with clients and competitors — so he can ask questions and get firsthand accounts about where his company is excelling or doing poorly, he said.

“I always tell a client, ‘When you complain to us, you’re doing us a favor. If we’re torturing you, we’re probably torturing another 10,000 [or] 100,000 people,’” Dimon said. “I think CEOs, any business leader, who can’t get out [or is] too busy, they’re making a huge mistake.”

Dimon isn’t the only CEO who values inquiring minds in the workplace: The trait separates highly successful employees and leaders from their peers, according to Amazon boss Andy Jassy. 

“You have to be ravenous and hungry to find ways to learn,” Jassy said last week in a video published by Amazon, about the company’s list of 16 leadership principles. The biggest difference between people with successful careers and those who remain “stagnant” is a constant, humble drive for knowledge and self-improvement, he added.

“For some people, at a certain point, they find it too threatening or too difficult to keep learning,” said Jassy. “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.”

Curiosity and desire to learn can take you further in your career than your technical skills, LinkedIn vice president and workforce expert Aneesh Raman told CNBC Make It in March. The two traits are especially beneficial for young professionals, helping them stand out in the hiring market and reframe setbacks as learning opportunities, he said.

″[A growth mindset] is the new degree, the way that you’ve been looking for a Harvard degree,” said Raman.

To strengthen your inquisitiveness, try dedicating 20 to 30 minutes each day to learning something new, TedX speaker and organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote in the Harvard Business Review last year. You could research a subject you’ve always been interested in, set up a coffee chat to learn more about a colleague or read a challenging book about an unfamiliar subject. 

Ask yourself questions like, “What area do I want to be an expert in?” and “What topics could I spend all day thinking about?” Chamorro-Premuzic wrote.

Continuing to learn and explore, in both familiar and new areas of interest, helps people avoid “complacency” and build the “heart and grit” they need to advance their careers, said Dimon.

“If you don’t have an accurate assessment of the real world out there, what’s changing, what the ideas are, you will eventually fail,” he said.

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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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In April 2021, Paul Lee took a vacation to Thailand. Five months later, he decided to leave the United States behind and make a permanent move to the Asian country.

Lee, originally from Georgia, had been living in New York City and grossing around $1 million a year thanks to his e-commerce business. Despite doing well enough to pay for his parent’s retirement, the 28-year-old tells CNBC Make It he found himself without purpose, feeling depressed, and needing to make a change.

“When I first arrived to Thailand, I just felt rejuvenated. Everything was completely new to me, and I felt like it was a fresh new start,” Lee says. “The more and more I live here, the more and more I fall in love with the city.”

Since moving to Bangkok, Lee has been making around US $150,000 a year as a content creator and real estate agent, according to documents reviewed.

Working in real estate helped Lee find several living arrangements in Bangkok, including luxury condos. The apartment he’s in now is a one-bedroom in the Thonglor neighborhood which Lee says is “the Soho of Bangkok.”

It’s a 650-square-feet unit that costs 20,000 baht — around USD $544 — in monthly rent. Lee also pays $20 for Wi-Fi, $80 for electricity, and $3 for water each month. The apartment came furnished, and Lee has access to amenities, including a pool and a gym.

To move in, Lee had to pay a security deposit of two months’ rent or about $1,088.

Despite lower grocery costs in Bangkok, Lee eats out for every meal and spends $500 a month on food. “I’m not gonna lie, the food in New York City was very good as well, but I think in Thailand, it’s just a lot more homey, a lot more local, and a lot spicier,” Lee says.

His other expenses include a $93 monthly gym membership which is a bit of a splurge considering Lee has free access to a gym in his building. But the cost is worth it for Lee, because he can take advantage of the co-working space, coffee, and numerous networking opportunities in the space.

Also his current gym’s price is nothing compared to luxury gyms in New York, like Equinox, where memberships can start at $240 a month.

Lee has only returned to the U.S. one time since his big move to Thailand — for his sister’s wedding. He tells CNBC Make It he chose to leave New York City because he found himself being too materialistic and living in an “environment that was just very individualistic, very doggish, and very hyper-aggressive.”

“Bangkok stood out to me because it seemed very metropolis. It seemed very fun. It seemed very affordable and it just had a very good culture and didn’t really have any major compromises to me,” Lee says.

Lee has made a new life for himself in Thailand, he says, and returning to the U.S. doesn’t feel likely.

“I had to go through this journey of being poor and becoming quite wealthy to realize all this wealth that I had accumulated didn’t really give me what I wanted and didn’t give me the satisfaction I was looking for,” Lee says.

His parents were initially shocked he’d moved so far but ended up following in his footsteps when they moved to South Korea. They visit him in Bangkok from time to time, and Lee travels to see them, too. He says it’s one of the best perks of his new life in Thailand.

“At the end of the day, even though I don’t make nearly as much money as I made in New York City, I am far… wealthier in terms of my happiness, in terms of my well-being, my peace,” he added. “These are things I never was able to achieve back home in the States.”

Conversions from Thai baht to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 baht to 0.02 USD on July 1, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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Teens in the U.S. are more stressed out than ever, and it’s causing their mental health to suffer. 

Parents need to avoid adding to that pressure, says award-winning journalist and parenting researcher Jennifer Breheny Wallace. As much as you might worry about how your child fared on a big test, or if they earned a spot on a varsity sports team, you risk compounding your teen’s anxiety by asking probing questions as soon as they walk in the door, Wallace tells CNBC Make It.

Wallace is the author of the book “Never Enough: When Achievement Pressure Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It,” for which she interviewed numerous psychologists and worked with a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to survey 6,500 parents across the U.S. (Wallace herself holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard.)

Her research for the book inspired her to make a big change to her parenting style when it comes to her own three children, she says.

“When my kids come in the door, instead of asking them, ‘How’d you do on the Spanish quiz?’ — which I used to do before I wrote the book — I now ask them, ‘What did you have for lunch?’” says Wallace. “I lead with lunch. I talk about things that have nothing to do with their achievements.”

Wallace talked with psychologists who were adamant that parents can spread their own anxiety to their children, through a process called emotional contagion, she says.

She learned that being overly-focused on your child’s achievements can also send a potentially harmful message: Their value is contingent on their performance.

Focusing too much on how your child is performing, like congratulating them on a high grade instead of praising their effort, is an example of “achievement culture becoming toxic,” Wallace says. “What I mean by that is: When our sense of self is tangled up in our achievements, we can’t separate ourselves — our inherent worth — from our external achievements or external failures.”

Wallace interviewed students across the U.S. for her book, and says the ones who outwardly struggled the most with anxiety were “the kids who felt like their value as a person was contingent on their performance” in school or other activities.

Don’t miss: Parents who raise successful kids never use these 5 toxic phrases, says Ivy League child psychologist

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t push your children, or want to know how they performed on a difficult test. Just avoid framing the bulk of your conversations around grades or other achievement-specific results, psychotherapist Tina Payne Bryson told Wallace.

As for that big test: Sometimes you need to let your kids initiate the conversation, says Wallace.

“Guess what? My kids are going to tell me. It’s on their minds,” she says. “They don’t have to think that I’ve been worrying all day about one Spanish quiz. Instead, they should be getting the messaging from me that I care about them as a whole person.”

One of Wallace’s children is currently applying to colleges. As a mom, Wallace says she tries to be “very mindful of how many times we talk about college in a week.”

Specifically, she follows the advice of psychologists she interviewed, who suggested limiting potentially stressful conversations with your kids to “one hour over the weekend.”

“If [my son] wants to bring it up, that’s fine,” says Wallace. “But from my perspective, as a parent, I wait and I hold my thoughts until the weekend …. I want to enjoy my child’s last year living at home and I don’t want it clogged up with stressful conversations about college.”

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