Hi, I’m Srikumar Rao,

– founder of The Rao Institute and creator of the pioneering program, Creativity & Personal Mastery.

I came to America in 1972 to do my Ph.D. in Business at Columbia Business School. I did not have much interest in doing a Ph.D. but I had a huge interest in coming to America and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that it is an excellent idea to come on somebody else’s nickel if you can manage it.

And here were all these great universities asking me to come for a doctoral program and offering me fellowships – that means money! – so I came.

I selected Columbia because it was in New York and Marketing as my discipline because Columbia had the best Marketing program in the world at the time.

Basically, I was drifting.

New York, then as now, was expensive so I quickly got a job to earn enough to live well.

I joined Warner Communications and got a lucky break right away.

I helped shape the advertising strategy for a movie that became a blockbuster. It is still on several lists of greatest box-office hits after nearly fifty years.

That movie was The Exorcist and it did wonders for my career.

Do you remember the advertisement for the movie that shows a man with a hat and a briefcase standing in front of a half open door and casting a long shadow?

That was my contribution to Americana.

From Corporate Burnout to Academia ...

I got burnt out by corporate politics so I went into academia thinking that every one would be imbued with a quest for pure knowledge and there would be no politics.

I was sadly mistaken.

Very mistaken.

My one-time peers in the corporate world continued in corporate and far surpassed me financially.

And in renown and power and impact.

I felt sorry for myself. Really sorry.

I felt I had blown my life and would be stuck as a mediocre has-been after a brilliant beginning.

I had been reading all my life – mystical autobiographies, spiritual accounts and teachings. And they would take me to a wonderful place.

A place of great calm and serenity.

Then I came back to my life and it sucked.

I remember thinking that if all this stuff was useful only if you were sitting quietly and thinking peaceful thoughts and not when you came to the hurly-burly, then it was useless.

Some instinct told me that this was not true.

It was very valuable.

I just had not figured out a way to make use of it.

One day I came up with an idea that would change my life.

And that of many, many others.

I decided to take the teachings of the world’s greatest masters, strip them of religious and cultural connotations and adapt them into exercises acceptable to intelligent people in a post-industrial society.

The thought of creating such a course made me come alive. I needed to do it.

The course did well.

I moved it to Columbia Business School in 1999. After a year or so it exploded. It was written up in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, the Financial Times, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, the London Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the New York Observer, Fast Company, Huffington Post, India Today, Management Today, Training and dozens of other publications.

It spread by word of mouth and I taught it at other top business schools such as Kellogg, Berkeley and London Business School. I conducted workshops for alumni of Stanford and Harvard Business School.

I stated right there in the syllabus, “I expect that this course will profoundly change your life. If it does not, then we have both failed.”
Newton said that if he saw further than most, it was because he was standing on the shoulders of giants.

That is exactly the case with me. The reason my program changes lives is that the ideas and concepts I propagate were taken from great masters who completely understood the human predicament and came up with solutions to the dilemmas we face.

They have been tested over millennia and they absolutely work.

The Secret I Discovered:

I discovered, quite by accident, a great secret.

Like The Purloined Letter this secret is right out in the open but very few see it.

Here is that secret: The teachings of the masters will help you progress spiritually.

They will also lead you to great material success.

The masters knew this but they did not speak about it much and they certainly did not emphasize it.

There is a catch.

If you start on this path for the sake of material gain, it does not work.

Because success in this realm does not come from striving. It comes as a by-product of a life of service.

Some persons understand this immediately at a deep level.

They intuitively grasp that both happiness and abundance come from within.

They are not acquired.

They are created and manifested.

If you recognize this as a profound truth, then you are the type of person I am seeking.

How I Aim To Help Those Who Work With Me:

I help a highly select few to:

1) Leapfrog several levels to reach an entirely different plateau of accomplishment;
2) Banish stress from their life and experience Zen-like focus and joy;
3) Join and contribute to a community, a sangha, that is changing the world.

I have a few years left before I retire and would like to work with a limited number of high potential individuals who are ready to leave their footprints on the sands of time.

I invite you to explore whether we are right for each other.

Click “Join Our Community”, enter your details and introduce yourself. You will receive my weekly message and you may unsubscribe at any time for any reason. You will also learn about my programs and, after you have been with me for some time, you may well decide that you would like to enroll in one of them.

Here is to your continued success and happiness and the two are inextricably linked.

Peace!