Rishad Tobbacowala: One Career Shift Away From Digital Pioneer

By Brian Wish

Rishad Tobaccowala is an author, speaker, teacher, and advisor with four decades of experience specializing in helping people, organizations, and teams re-invent themselves to remain relevant in changing times. He specializes in unleashing talent and turbo-charging productivity by delivering perspectives, points of view, provocations, and plans of action. Rishad’s best-selling book “Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data” was published globally by HarperCollins and focuses on helping people think, feel, and see differently about how to grow their companies, their teams, and themselves during transformative times.

Rishad is a prominent public speaker who presents on change, future trends, and transforming workforces to a range of industries including platforms, technology, media, blue-chip firms, Financial Firms, and Industry Associations. He teaches several highly popular workshops (virtual and in-person) on eight different subjects. His workshop titles include Change Management, Upgrading Your Mental Operating System, and Re-Thinking Organizations for the Future of Work. Rishad is a frequent guest lecturer at The University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and NYU. Rishad is also the chairman of The Tobaccowala Foundation, which helps over 10,000 people gain better access to health and education in India.

In this episode, Rishad and Bryan discuss:

– How companies need to adapt their cultures
– How offering services for free can build goodwill and trust
– Using storytelling to build trust and guide customers to the solution to their problem

Transcript:

Bryan Wish:

Rishad, welcome to the One Away Show.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Thank you very much. I’m so glad to be here, Bryan.

Bryan Wish:

Thank you. Well, it’s great to have you. Where shall we begin today? What is the One Away moment that you would like to share with us today?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

I think the One Away moment is when I was asked to move from the account services department of Leo Burnett into its direct marketing and database group. This was in 1992, which was now almost 20, 30 years ago. And that particular shift gave rise to my next 30 year career, which included being a leader in digital and data driven marketing, which happens to have taken off exactly at the same time in 1993 with the worldwide web.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Wow. Absolutely. Well, it seems like a shift for you in your career that led to a lot of good things, prior to maybe that switch into the director marketing department. What were you doing? What did you think you would do in your career?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Well I joined an advertising agency in the 1980s and 1990s at Leo Burnett, particularly the advertising agency I joined was a combination of an advertising agency in marketing services at a strategy firm, where a lot of marketing of our clients was also done by the agency, which is not true today, but it was in the 1980s and 1990s. And so I thought I would basically rise to run an account or two. We had big accounts like Kelloggs and McDonald’s and Heinz and United Airlines. And the career trajectory was you kept getting additional titles, you went from account to executive, to account supervisor, to account director, to vice president, to senior vice president, to executive vice president. And you did those probably after a certain point, three to five years apart, and you got to 58 and it was a privately held company and you then retired.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

That was the plot. And switch in the plot occurred 10 years into this journey when I was looking to get promoted. And my client that I had been working on had become very interested in direct marketing. We had brought in a new group of people to help direct marketing because advertising agencies didn’t do that. We were doing TV and radio and other ads. And I learned a little bit of direct marketing and as a result of that, I was asked by our management to go and become the number two person in the direct marketing department. Not because I was an expert in direct marketing, but because I understood the rest of the company and the rest of the agency. So I could integrate the direct marketing department back into the rest of the agency who didn’t understand the conversation.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So that shift suddenly made me no longer be an account person, managing client relationships and building strategies and television advertising, but someone who had to both understand and learn direct and database marketing and find ways to integrate it into a client’s marketing. And this is where direct marketing was primarily done by catalogs and people who sold knives in the middle of the night at 3:00 AM. Database marketing was some elegant use of spreadsheets, at that stage. And that’s how it was a dramatic shift, it’s almost like saying I want to be a carpenter and then you end up instead being a dog walker. Okay. So it’s a little bit different.

Bryan Wish:

Absolutely. I think you completely shifted the skill sets or the way your brain was working in which you had to succeed at your job.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yes, yes.

Bryan Wish:

It was a whole new world. I mean, it was very timely back then, when you were getting into it.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah. So initially I did it because it was a way to get promoted. It was a faster way to get promoted to being an account director. But once I started doing it, I began to realize that I was building an expertise and my expertise was not on how to manage a client, my expertise was how to think about direct and database marketing. And why that was very important is while doing that, I started discovering online marketing and I then built the case that we should launch an interactive marketing group. And they agreed as long as I was willing to do that by myself. So I was running a group of a hundred and they said, “You can do interactive marketing and be paid the same, but it’s going to be by yourself. And maybe we’ll give you one little person to work with you.” And I decided, yes, that I was going to do that. So that would never have happened if I hadn’t moved to the direct and database marketing department. So that’s probably the seminal moment that changed things, your show.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

But the other seminal thing was while doing that, was recognizing that the future of direct and database marketing was going to be as much online and now today it’s dominantly online, versus utilizing catalogs and mails and other things. And that shift eventually got me to convince the Urban Editor to take its name off the door and with a couple of other folks, start a new type of agency called Giant Step. It then got me to come back and create another expertise group with some other of my colleagues, which is the media operations and build those out. Then build the case that we needed to make acquisitions of companies like Digitas and Razorfish, which I became the chairman of. And then over time, I basically became known as a futurist digital pioneer, all because somebody basically said, “Your client thinks you’re pretty good at database marketing. We need someone from this culture to go to that culture. This is a way for you to get promoted. Will you do it?” And I said, “Yes.”

Bryan Wish:

Well, to me it just sounds like an evolution of stacking of layers or bricks.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

On top of the other, going from basic algebra to pre-calc to calc, but in marketing form.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yes, but somewhere along, I switched from being an English major to a math major, that’s the first thing. And then I start building all these other skill sets.

Bryan Wish:

Interesting. So I’m just curious, marketing has been where you’ve landed and planted and expanded, but why marketing? Take us back to your interest in marketing, what got you into this space? You’ve had a deep track record in it, but where was maybe the initial seed?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So the initial seed was the fact that I was two things. I was an immigrant who had come to the United States to get an MBA. So I wasn’t an immigrant, but as a foreign student who had come to get an MBA at the University of Chicago, and what I found fascinating was the strategy classes. I found the marketing classes fascinating and I found the finance classes interesting, but a little bit dull because you didn’t deal with people and I like dealing with people. But I also found that I had a significant gap in my learning and knowledge. And that was, I did not understand American culture. I had grown up in India. I did not understand a lot of other things that I should have been trained in because in India, they focus on trading you stuff that gets you a job. So you do little less of the arts and a little bit more of the sciences, at least at that time.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And I said, “Hmm, where do I combine this love of marketing with strategy, understanding culture?” And it’s probably marketing and here’s this company called Leo Burnett in Chicago, which is where I went to school, that has built brands like United airlines and Marlboro, and Tony The Tiger and the anticipation work for Heinz Ketchup and Pillsbury Doughboy. I should go and work here because that’ll teach me marketing, it’ll teach culture, it’ll teach me creativity. And maybe after two, three years of doing that, I try something else, maybe I go to applied, maybe I’ll do something else. But apparently I was unemployable for 37 years, so I stayed in the same place. And the only way I left is I employed myself because no one was going to employ me. So I employed myself. So I’m a company of one. So one of my big clients continues to be Publicist.

Bryan Wish:

Wow. Yeah. That’s a fascinating journey. I mean, it seems like you picked a notable player in the space to really learn and build education on.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

You could continue to build off [inaudible 00:09:37] and build off of.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah. So there is, and maybe in the show notes you can leave this, so there’s a piece I wrote after I worked for 35 years called 12 Career Lessons.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Actually, over 35 years, it was called 10 Career Lessons and last year I rewrote it as 12 Career Lessons, which you’ll find in my Substack, which is rishad.substack, 12 Career Lessons. And among the things I say, building on what you mentioned, was when you start your career, what’s very important is to find the least sucky job you can, but at a good company. Because the company will make a difference and then over time as a company grows, you will grow. And then at some particular stage, in addition to finding a good company, try to find a good boss and a good company and a good boss makes 70 to 80% of someone’s success. And then the other one is just thinking long term and showing up when they kick you on the floor, you still come back. Okay. Outside of those three, the rest of it is a combination of luck and chance.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

But we overthink all these other things, “Is it my mission? Does it fit with my… Can I have a great impact? Is it me? Does it line up with my passion? Should I switch every two, three years to increase my capability of learning?” All that is complete and utter bullshit. Okay. Complete and utter bullshit. Successful people recognize that if you are lucky enough to join a great company and find a good boss, you can run many, many years of great success. I of course was there for my entire career, I’m not suggesting that, but I asked people to think about their careers in three to five year periods and not six months to one year periods.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. I mean our generation, I mean people in the 20s today, even 30s switch every few years and no one goes with long term skills thinking or transferable skills. And it’s a shame, I’m sure you can speak to that.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah. So the three reasons that people are switching and two of the three are completely justified. All three might be justified, but the first two are justified. What is a lot of people switch for external reasons that have nothing to do with the job. Okay. They switch because a, they like the job, but they aren’t paid well enough and someone paying them a lot more money because they may be having kids or whatever. Or for personal reasons, either because of a partner, a daily parent or something or the other, they have to physically move. And this is either before COVID, before distributed work. “My company doesn’t have an office in a place I have to move. I have to leave.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So one is people tended to basically go for these external reasons, which is, “I need to get more money. I love my job, but I have to get more money. I have to go with my partner somewhere.” Okay. Those are completely justifiable. That’s number one. Because after all you live for yourself, you don’t live for the company. So number one. Number two, is people basically leave their bosses, they aren’t actually leaving their company. They’re basically saying, “Company’s fine, but this lady or this guy not very fine.” Okay. And two out of three people aren’t leaving companies, they’re leaving bosses, which is why I focus a lot on management and a lot of exit interviews and say, “How do we fight people who turn away people?” Or if someone is leaving say, “Look, we change your boss without any problem to you, we’ll keep you here.” So those are two reasons that people leave, which are justifiable, but those we have to address those, have better bosses, pay them better and give them more flexible work options.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

That’s fine. The last one is half justified and half not justified, which is no one is looking after their careers. The half not justified or half justified is, “Why I would work at a company where they don’t look after my career?” But the reason I turned that around is I said, “You should never outsource your career to somebody else.” Okay. The day you outsource your career to somebody else, you basically saying, “I don’t care about my future. I’m giving it to somewhere else to navigate.” Why? Of course, you want help from other people, but you should have agency over your own career. So what a lot of what I tell people is, “Don’t run from place, one to one. Think about your career.” That’s why I wrote this 12 Career Lessons, which is so popular. Think about these things at these steps in your career.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And people say, “How come nobody told me?” So I said, “Now I’m telling you, read it.” And that’s what’s basically happened. And obviously there’s a different world today, there’s a different world in the fact that more and more people today want to be entrepreneurs and there are ways to be entrepreneurs today, which you couldn’t have before. 50 million people in the US call themselves creators. One, because they probably are. Second is maybe because they made an Instagram picture. Okay. But whatever it is, they call themselves creators and they’re in the making and creating. And so that has accelerated some turnover along with the fact that rightfully, they also say, “Just because you spend three, four years at each gig to learn and get promoted, I can learn and be done in one year. So if your company forces me to spend three years, when I have learned everything that I need to and contributed in one year, then I’m not staying because it’s my time.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So that is some of the things that we ourselves are training our own senior management, or I call season management on, this is no longer the career, the landscape and the world that we grew up in, some of it is still applicable, but some of it is not applicable. And there are companies that are struggling with it right now, great companies. So right now there’s obviously an amazing company and I’m a big fan of and big subscriber to which is the New York Times. So the New York times just started to lose one or two, obviously they hire everybody, great, but they started to lose some of two or three of their top people, and especially the younger top people. And one of the reasons is because they do not like people building their own personal brands. So they want it to be the New York Times brand.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Well, they give people the byline, they don’t want people to build their own personal brand. That is a pretty ridiculous in today’s world where you may have to switch careers every three, four years, the world is changing, you need to be known for certain things. So you have to let people build their own personal brands, but here is a company that is amazing, but is struggling. And because the senior management grew up in one way and they keep trying to impose that way upon a new world. A lot of what they know is very useful, very purpose driven, very important, but not everything that they know is such. And so this whole idea of how to unlearn and how to tell the difference between what’s important and what just is out of style needs to be kept in mind.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. This whole thought through, I love what you said about the beginning. There are some unforeseen circumstances where people have to move, a partner, family, whatever this might be. But to your point though, we need to take personal agency over our future and be a driver.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yes.

Bryan Wish:

A passenger. To your point of companies need to empower their employees and help them develop. It also gives them that freedom to build those brands up for themselves because it’s where things are going, companies should support-

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Exactly, exactly. That is exactly. Those things are so, so important that people sometimes forget that. And so a lot of what I now do is I teach, maybe the wrong word, I help people figure some of these things out, including for instance, how you do build yourself a brand. I truly believe it’s very important that you build yourself a brand and building yourself a brand doesn’t it mean it is at the expense of the company you are working for. And in fact, I believe that the best companies will have lots and lots of brands just like Procter & Gamble is not a Procter & Gamble company, it’s Tide and Pampers and Shaman and a whole bunch of other things. So why can’t a superb team have world class players that everybody knows about? A sports team. So my basic belief is it’s not counter purposes, in fact the most world class players and well known brands you have in a company, the better the company does, because the company helps the individuals, the individuals helps the company.

Bryan Wish:

Great picture about Procter & Gamble at the corporate level, but [inaudible 00:18:33] a personal level. Totally.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

Now we could talk about this all day. I mean, I know the conversation shifted here. I want to bring down a little bit to you, but we are fully aligned.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

I’ve seen it on both sides, and maybe we can come back to it. So I want to get back to what you were talking about with yourself. So director of marketing, I’m sorry you-

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

Direct marketing.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

And then the shift to online marketing. You said something that was really, really interesting about how the online marketing space was really an extension of the direct marketing with the list and [inaudible 00:19:17] files? Can you, just for the audience who maybe is doesn’t have that knowledge, can you explain how direct marketing shifted into digital marketing?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Sure, absolutely. So in the days of direct marketing, there were three key things that direct marketing invented/optimized that were very important later on for other [inaudible 00:19:41] marketing. So what is… Direct marketing basically says, “Let’s find the audience and let’s reach just the people who are in the market for your product or service.” And the way they would do it, I worked on a cat food, so we would go to a cat magazine and we would buy their mailing list, which is the names with the people who get the magazine, because it basically says, “If you get a cat magazine, it’s very likely you own a cat.” Otherwise, why would you get a cat magazine? So that’s one. Then we go and figure out from other studies who are the people who lived in zip codes that had higher income.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So now we had cat owners who are living in higher incomes, and that’s where we marketed a very expensive cat food called Amore. So the first thing that direct marketing did is it allows you to find, versus advertising on television, where the number of people who buy expensive cat food is less than 10% of the US. So are you advertising to everybody when less than 10% is your addressable market and maybe only 5%? So this idea of targeting was a big thing that came from direct marketing. The other thing that came from direct marketing is as someone responded, because you would send them an email, there’s no email, you would send them a regular piece of mail and when you sent them the regular piece of mail, you’d give them a coupon, but the coupon would be marked. So when they executed the coupon, they used the coupon.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

You said, “Aha, Rishad not only is a cat owner living in this zip code, but he has actually bought our cat food.” So therefore we would basically build a database of different types of people. So now we were using targeting, we were using database and then we were starting to test things, which is if I send me a coupon with 50 cents and I send somebody else a coupon for $1 or I send one 50 cents, the other person not $1, but I basically send them some other type of premium, like a free kitty litter, which one gets a greater response? That’s call AB testing. Okay. So we would test different cells, different treatments against different cells. I’ll expose you 50 people to this, I’ll expose you 50 people to this, which one does well? So when you think about this concept of targeting database and AB testing, when it moved into the world of digital, mail became email.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Databases were now easier to do because the databases were already digital versus having to type in things and put things in. And AB testing was much easier because you could do it in real time and almost every day versus doing it, I’m mailing you something, waiting 20 days to figure out what goes on and then does something else. So the tenants of direct marketing is what was really used in the advent of search marketing. Because if you think about it in the case of search marketing, direct marketing, I had to basically create these big arrows. So I had to create an arrow and I had to fling an arrow to each particular target audience. If I know I’ve got 100 of you, I got to send you 100 pieces of email with a little coupon in it. I got to buy the list of these people from Cat Fancy Magazine, but in such, you are typing in cat food and you’re raising your hand.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And when you’re raising your hand automatically, I say, “Hey, this is so much more cost effective. I don’t have to buy a database of names. I don’t have to mail you things.” And when you raise your hand, I put my ad along with the search results. So initially when you think about search engine marketing and e-commerce, which is really about selling those catalogs, the first advent and the most successful companies, which are Amazon and Google in the first era of the world, were basically companies that allowed marketers to take direct marketing and bring it online, or allow people who were not advertising because they could not afford advertising, but in the case of search, you only paid when somebody clicked. So you could afford advertising and you and me have been limited to classified advertising, but now you had something different with search and different with e-commerce.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And even to this day, 60 to 70% of the revenues of a company like Facebook and Google comes from small marketers, people who normally wouldn’t have done television or radio, et cetera. And so that thinking allowed me to then build a lot of thinking about how the world would proceed, based on those underlying fundamentals. And which is why when we then moved to the second age. So the first connected age was 1993 to 2007 and it was primarily connected to transact, connect to discover, which is search and thing. In 2007, we entered the second one, which built on the first one. We were now connected all the time and connected everybody because of mobile phones and social networks. And now, because I had made that switch, I could go to marketers and say, “Now pay attention to mobile and social.” And they did not basically look at me and say, “You are absolutely insane.” Because now I had a 10 year track record and said, “How am I insane? I told you to take Amazon and Google and other companies seriously. So now I’m basically telling you, take Facebook and Apple and others seriously.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Okay. Marketing with them. And now, even though I no longer work at Publicist and I’m supposed to be supposedly a starving author and retired, neither of which I am. So the good news is I’m not starving, I am an author. The book has done well, and I’m not retired. I’ve just started my second career. But I’m now making presentations to top companies all over the world about the next generation of the internet, which I call the third connected age. Some people call it web 3.0 or whatever else. So I call it the third connected age and I show what’s exactly happening. And as a result, even though I am “not working anywhere”, top companies all over the world pay me to talk to them.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

One person, I am now a company of one selling by myself, but their basic belief is you probably know how to think about this better than a Bay and McKinzie or any other company. That’s not true. They’ve got many more smarter people, but I have a certain amount of credibility because I was there when it wasn’t cool. And I learned how to think about it and unlike a lot of these other companies who have much better documentation and much better, probably, people. I’m here to teach you how to learn the new things and I’m not here to sell you anything. So very senior people, when something new is happening are very interested in learning, so they can make the decisions correctly. If I went in there and basically said, “I am the answer, by me.” They would basically say, “Listen Rishad, you’re not the answer to anybody. Just go away.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

But if I basically say, “Here’s how I’m learning about the next connected age. And here’s what you should be thinking about. Thank you very much. And I’m leaving.” They pay attention. And so in effect, something that I did 30 years ago, which is I moved into direct marketing is fueling my career 30 years later, independently, not even outside of the company that I did this switch at. And part of it was I stuck to it and that’s the other thing, when you say people switch, my old stuff is successful people, I wrote a piece called Success Equals To Five Ps. And one of the Ps is persistence. Okay. So anytime you have a setback, anytime you get defeated, anytime you get thrown to the floor and you just whimper or run away or don’t get up, it’s not anything and nobody doesn’t get thrown to the floor. Nobody doesn’t get kicked in the ass. It’s just the way the world works. So what I tell people is practice daily resurrection.

Bryan Wish:

Love it. Well, I appreciate the… I mean, we started at direct marketing and mail and targeting to online and ads and the web 3.0, I mean all in one. I mean, I think it was a beautiful explanation of where you’ve been and obviously the track record and maybe why you’re being sought out today for these opportunities. My question for you is, given your track record, your interest, just the way you see things, how does all this ladder up into web 3.0? And how does the future look based on what you have seen in the past, in your opinion?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So to me here is a key thing. The key thing is we are entering… So I basically call it the third connected age and then I explain web 3.0 as part of it, versus calling it. So just like search and e-commerce are different, but they were part of the first connected age and mobile and social are different though more connected, they were part of the second connected age. I basically look at what underlying technologies are. So the underlying technologies that drove the first connected age, where we were connecting to discover, connecting to transact. The second one was connecting to everybody and connected all the time. So in this new age, it’s data connecting to data, which is machine learning/AI, much faster forms of connection, which is 5G, new ways of connecting, which is augmented reality, voice and virtual reality and new ways of having trusted connections, which is blockchain.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So I said, “These are fundamentally the driving forces.” And one of the things coming out of these driving forces are the following things that are connected, but they’re very different from each other. So I separate web 3.0 from metaverse, I separate those from wallets and tokens and I separate those from distributed autonomous organizations. I separate all of them. I show eventually how they’re connected in some ways, but they’re different. And then I do a deep dive in each one. Where web 3.0 is more of a philosophy. It’s a philosophy about decentralized open and composable. Metaverse already exists, existed in the Second Life, existed in 150 billion industry called gaming. Okay. Exists in cars, augmented reality heads up in cars, or heads up driving in cars. But the future is bigger because of underlying technologies.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So I explain how metaverses work, I explain that wallets will basically be the future of identity, replacing email and Facebook and Google logins. I explain distributed autonomous organizations and how they work. And then I basically connect them and show what the operating, orchestrating, organizing, and ownership rules of these are and how they’re all connected. Which then makes people say, “Oh my God, you have put a roadmap. You’ve explained how the pieces are, how they fit, where they are in English, in English.” And then I say, “Okay, but I don’t know anything yet. So this is how I’m learning. So here is what I suggest you do.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So then I give them step one, step two, step three, of what they should do to learn. And then I say, “Thank you and goodbye.” And then of course I explain to them why it’s important and that is where they listen to me where I say, “This feels very much like 1993 and 2007.” Which means there’ll be a lot of disruption, new wealth creation activities, new business models, new competitors, new opportunities. So pay attention. This is not going to be something that’s going to happen next year. It’s going to scale by 2025. But this is for the next 5 to 10 years where you should be thinking, and by doing it that way, by framing it, timing it, giving people tools, giving people perspectives, guess what happens and not selling a thing?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

The person who looks at this and I’ve be showing it to different people, what do are the take away? Number one is this is important and I now know what to do so I can learn, so I don’t get left behind. Number two, this guy spoke to us in English and he claims he doesn’t know anything, but anybody who could explain it like this must be good. And three, he doesn’t want to actually work for anybody or work anywhere, but maybe we can have him from time to time helping us and we’ll just call him. So what I’ve basically done is got you to feel good about you being better. And then you want to work with me because I make you feel better and make you better, versus I coming out there and saying, “I’m so cool, dude.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And that is what I also try to teach people, which is everyone has got marketing all upside down. They think it’s about talking about all your data and your history and your processes and your other stuff. I said, “No, just show them some cool shit. And then they’ll want to know how your colon works. Don’t tell them how your colon works. Just show them cool shit.”

Bryan Wish:

I saw that article.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

Well, I was going to ask… My train of thought. Oh yeah. I’ll just go back to what you said first. I like how you broke it down into almost five sections, all the technologies, where they’re coming, why people work. What I was going to say to you though, is you said people come to you because you make them feel good. They’re not just buying your data and your process and all the numbers of what you can, all the credibility. I mean that’s a given. We talked about personal brands, when you’re coming in and you’re working with these companies or individuals, you’re giving away, you said, “I make them feel good or make them better about themselves.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yeah.

Bryan Wish:

That’s something that, in my opinion, probably comes from within, you’re you’re always trying to –

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Yes. So I wrote a piece recently called Generosity. And my basic belief is, and this came from the fact that people ask me, “You spend three hours every Sunday.” Or every Saturday, I spend three hours tightly thinking about and writing a piece on Sunday I issue, which takes people’ six minutes to read. So aim for a five to six minute read. So I spent three hours and 40 years of experience writing about a topic like generosity. And then I offer it up to anybody who wants to get it. I don’t even email it to people, you opt in and then you’ll get it. I don’t email it to anyone, you opt in and you get rishad.substack.com, but you get it and it’s free. There’s no upselling that, “Hey, there’s a higher level content that you can buy.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

It’s not a freemium new model, it’s a free model. There’s no advertising in it. There’s no affiliate links in it. There’s no data harvesting in it. There’s nothing. It just says, “I’m giving you something for free.” And at my very first edition, I said, “And here is why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because it’ll build goodwill for myself. And that will be worth something in the future.” Okay. “But first I make you feel good about building your skill sets, your business, your capabilities, your teams. And if I do that, what’s the natural thing that happens?” And do it for free. So you don’t even have to think. So I expose my thinking to thousands of people, some of those people, because now it’s read by 25,000 people every week. Some of those people write to me and say, “Can you come and talk on this topic to our company? Or can you help us on this?” That is not free.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Okay. But obviously I’m not suggesting that everybody just give everything away for free because unfortunately food is not free and oil is not free and college educations are not free. But what basically happens is the generosity is the key first step, because it also surprises people, because if you give people they’re not used to it, people are used to a transaction basis, they’re not used to people say, “Yeah, I’m giving this to you.” The other thing that they’re not used to and all of us, it’s just not me, every one of us is really good at some things, I’m good at one or two things, you all are good at something. What people are not used to is I’m not just giving away things, I’m not going in there and saying, “Yeah, let me give you a free key chain.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Okay. I am giving them the thing I’m best at. Okay. So think about you’re an amazing steakhouse and you basically deliver a free steak to somebody. So you’re not basically saying, “Yeah, here is a free drink or here is a one shrimp appetizer.” Okay. My old stuff is, “I sell steaks. Yeah, here is a steak for you for free.” Okay. Now what somebody basically says, “Oh my God, is this a poison steak?” Okay. Let’s say it’s not a poison steak. So it’s the steak. They try it. They say, “This is a pretty good tasting steak.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Say, “Okay, next time, when they need to basically get a steak, what are they going to do?” A, they might call me. B, let’s say, they’re thinking of going somewhere else because it’s more convenient or it’s easier. They may stop for a second and say, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’ll take a little bit more time and go find this clown because he gave me a good steak for free the first time. So why should I go to that other steakhouse that’s near me. Let me go talk to him.” And generosity is at the center of all marketing.

Bryan Wish:

Well, it’s a give and take. And if you got to engage and give with your audience and like you’ve done, you realize spending three hours on an article that only six people will read for six minutes, it could have a 50k ROI to it, you just don’t know. But that’s the reason that you’re doing it. I mean, not the only reason, you always make an impact, but there’s an upside to it. But you’re thinking with, I think, a long term sense and you’re taking the time to learn and explore topics that so many aren’t. So as you think about your own life and the impact and let’s just say legacy. I mean, you seem like a pretty thoughtful person who obviously you’re sharp in business, but you care about the human side of things. How do you think about your future? How do you think about leaving your own dent on society? I know you wrote a book on the Soul Of Business and you’re clearly not your typical transactional person out there. So where do you see it all going for you?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Well for me there, so I’ve defined success as the freedom to spend time the way you want to. Okay. So that’s my definition of success. The freedom to spend time the way you want to. So if you notice it has nothing to do with money, but it has a certain thing to do with money because for people to have the freedom to spend time the way they want to, they either have to have a very bare bones life, or they need to have somebody to afford that. But let’s say somebody wanted to be a fisherman and live in a rural area and that’s what they wanted to do. They could figure out how to fund that life and be that. Or a billionaire decides what gives them joy, which is freedom to spend time the way they want to, or freedom to spend time in the way that gives them joy, is to make the next billion dollars, fine, then you’re a successful person.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So the person who wants to be a fisherman in a rural area, if that’s the way that they find joy with the use of time, then that’s good. And if the leader finds the next billion as joy, that’s good too. So I’m not making a statement. But so one is I’ve achieved that, which is one of my goals, was that I don’t have to take on any assignments. If somebody basically says, “We fire you from everything.” I’ll be okay. Okay. So one is, I got that. So I only take on things I want to do. I don’t take on things that I have to do. So that’s number one. But with that being said, what are the things that I like doing? So that’s the impact. What I liked really doing, and what I really believe in, is I believe in education and training. So I’m helping people get educated in training because I really believe that has a big impact.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And that allows me to help people in a way I can help them, which is through my knowledge, which is number one. Number two, what I particularly like having an impact on is to help people who are disadvantaged through no… Most of us, the reason we are successful or not successful besides the luck and chance, 60, 70% of it is who we were born to and where we were born. So if you’re born in the United States to relatively well off parents, you have a very different life than if you’re a brilliant person born to a poor person in India. Okay. So it’s a different thing. And so when people say, “Oh, it’s all about me and my old stuff.” Yeah, you won the random lottery of life and now you think it’s all about you. Thank you.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So what I try to do is, I run a foundation. So spent time running a foundation in India, which helps 10,000 people. People who are maybe disadvantaged because they are young girls and who can’t get a good education, and part of it is because they can’t get to school. So we buy school buses for the girls to get to school. Or there are people who are autistic and they can’t get the best teachers because the best teachers get other jobs, but the best teachers would love to teach them. So between what the school can pay and what the market rate is, my foundation makes up the difference. So my whole thing is, that’s a fantastic way I like spending time. So I myself, can help people with what I know, but then I can help in different ways.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Other people help people who I know need help, but I can’t help directly. And then the third, which is very important is I have built both good friendships and family. So that is the importance of making sure that you stay on the right side of your wife, which is what I have. And I’ve been married to someone almost 40 years and make sure that your daughters don’t think you’re crazy, I’ve got two girls in their 30s and that’s basically it. So I spend time with my family, I spend time learning. Cause I like learning, which allows me to teach and I help other people. And no one can, outside my wife and daughters, can tell me what I should be doing. Okay. Which is good. So you got to figure out what you want and that’s what a lot of people… My whole stuff is I said to people, “Don’t make money the goal. Money is a fantastic servant. It’s a terrible master.”

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Okay. It’s a terrible master. It’s a fantastic servant. And by the way, “Okay, now you’ve got all the money. Why are you still thinking about it so much?” I mean, my thing is the point of having money is that you don’t have to make every decision like you’re making a money decision. And one of the reasons I could be more, I would say less transactional now, not that I’ve ever been fully transactional, but I can be much, much bigger now on these things is because I don’t have to transact, but 15, 20 years ago when my kids were in school and I probably had to transact more. That’s why I had a full time job and I would do things and those are things that people don’t talk about.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

So their whole stuff is, “We want to be famous.” Okay, for what? “We want to be rich.” I said, “Okay, at what point do you consider rich to be rich?” And are you basically saying, you’re not rich that you’re going to basically have $10 million, $20 million, $5 million? Well, I don’t know. Most people in the world tend to live with a total wealth of less than $25,000. So if you multiply it by 100 times, which is 2.5 million, and you’re not living a life in New York City, and that’s your total wealth, you could live an amazing life ever. So what’s this thing about being a billionaire? What exactly gets you that? It gets you nothing, but the ability to basically show off that you’re a billionaire, which basically means you’ve already lost. You’re living in other people’s minds and not your own. So just like I basically said, don’t let someone take charge of your career, you just let someone hijack your mind.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. They say money only solves money problems. And I think what you’re saying is, you have all the money in the world, but for what good is it if-

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

And by the way I’m all for money. So I strongly recommend people, because to me money is optionality. It gives you options. But once you have the options, try to decide what you want to do. But again, I’m not making a judgment because there are a lot of very happy, successful billionaires who want to make the next billion, but that’s what gives them joy, perfectly fine.

Bryan Wish:

Totally.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Which is cool. So hopefully this was helpful.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, no, this is wonderful. I mean, you have a lot of depth to you, you’re not just, “Here’s my book. Here’s my process kind of guy.” You’re like “No, actually [inaudible 00:47:18] about the things that matter in life.” And I appreciate that, I think the audience of yours appreciates you for doing that and-

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Perfect.

Bryan Wish:

My audience will too. So Rishad, where can people find your Substack, your book, you?

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Sure. So what I would encourage people to do is go to rishad.substackcom, which is R-I-S-H-A-D.substack.com. It’s completely free to sign up and if you don’t want to sign up, just say, “I want to not sign up. I just want to look at the archives.” And you have the entire archives. The other place that I would basically go to is my website, which is rishadtobaccowala.com and there you can click on thought letters, all the writing is there too, but you can then click on something, which basically is about my book, which tells you about my book, how to get it and all the reviews of the book. And it also has both audio and video of me speaking at different things. And it also has some workshops and you don’t have to attend the workshops, you don’t have to buy the workshops. The content of those workshops are also there for you for free. So I continue this thing of generosity. You go to my website, play around and you’ll learn a lot and you won’t ever have to talk to me. Think about that.

Bryan Wish:

Amazing. Well, thank you.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

You’re welcome.

Bryan Wish:

For your time today. Excited to share this and go from here.

Rishad Tobaccowalla:

Perfect, thanks.

 

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This post was previously published on ARCBOUND.COM.

 

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