Jason (00:00)
Hi Rishad, how are ya?

Rishad (00:01)
I'm doing very, very well. Jason, how are you?

Jason (00:04)
I am great. It's great to see you. Thanks for making time for the Wise in Five

Rishad (00:08)
Well, you know, you at least have an owl on your head. So that much we know. Right.

Jason (00:13)
Well, there's a little wisdom, right? If it's

not internally, it's externally. So on this beautiful, bright, sunny day, I thought we'd dive in to the five questions. But before we do, if you wouldn't mind just giving our listeners, our viewers, just a little bit about your amazing journey, how you got to where you are.

Rishad (00:17)
Perfect.

Sure, absolutely. So my amazing journey is I'm now a self-employed entrepreneur, which is I'm a company of one. So it's very easy. You wake up in the morning and you can be a company of one. But getting here was a little bit different. So very quickly, I grew up in India, got a math degree, got an MBA from the University of Chicago, joined a company called Leo Burnett in Chicago, which was an advertising agency.

And in the course of 37 years, through a combination of mergers and being acquired, I ended up at the end of the 37 years being the chief strategist and growth officer and on the Directorie of the Publicis Groupe, which is today the world's largest both in revenue as well as market cap among the advertising services companies.

I, in that journey, I did a lot of things by launching digital operations like that, know, Giant Step and Starcom IP, media companies like Publicis Groupe Media, and I was chairman of companies like Digitas and Razorfish. Then about six and a half years ago, when my boss, Maurice Levy, moved from

or eight and a half years ago when he moved from CEO to executive chairman, I suggested that this should be a good time for me to do something differently. The incoming CEO asked me to stay for another couple of years, which I did. And then I started this career number two, which is a one person company where I help people see, and feel differently about how they grow themselves, their teams and their business. And I do it through speaking and writing and

advising and my writing includes a free sub stack two books including the most recent one called Rethinking Work speaking I speak all over the world I do also sort of executive offsides and workshops and then I do some light The Wisory work which includes Publicis and so that's about me

Jason (02:29)
That's an amazing journey. And you just threw out some of those companies. Oh, I was chairman of Digitas. did Leo Burnett and Giant Step. But those were massive transformational organizations over the past 15, 20 years.

Rishad (02:44)
They definitely were. So I was fortunate to be both in the right place with the right people and added my own catalytic Tabasco sauce to the pizza to add some value.

Jason (02:56)
Made it spicy. I love it. Well, so why don't we dive in and I'm going to ask you the question I ask all my guests, which is where do you find inspiration just in daily life?

Rishad (02:58)
Yes.

So I find it in three different areas. I first find it very often from other people. And those could be people that I know or I see or I hear. And then I deep dive into those people. And they can be a spectrum. They could be someone like a Jeffrey Hinton who I do not know who was very...

or like a Dennis Hassabis who's basically at Google, who basically helped create a lot of deep mind AI future things. Dennis has, he's not only remarkable, but he has a Nobel Prize. So I listened to him. They could be people who I do not know and who I think have a very interesting perspective. And I learned from like a Scott Galloway.

for instance. There are other people like Ann Mukherjee who used to be the CEO of Pernod Ricard and president of SC Johnson. And she's very much focused on people and how to make people part of the organization work. And then, so that's one set of people, which is people that I know I don't know in the world of business. Another set of people obviously would be my family and friends, which are many.

And then a second set are a lot of dead people called writers. Okay, so I read a lot. So I would say probably the single most inspirational person is Shakespeare. And if you actually read Shakespeare, you realize how remarkable he is. So I read a lot. then, so it's people in the arts. So people who make film. So I'm a big fan of...

in a Stanley Kubrick Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, that sort of era, but also modern people. And then the last sort of group are business people, which is people I've worked with. So a Jack Klues or a Renata McCann or a Maurice Levy. lots of different places. So my thing is it's, the question is it's very easy to find inspiration.

if you are lucky enough to pay attention. Right. And I tell people here, listen, a majority of the people I get inspiration from, I do not know and they do not know I exist. Okay. But today in the modern world of the web with everything from podcasts and YouTube videos and everything else, you can learn from people who you do not necessarily know. And that's what you're doing with The Wisory which is, you know, people can potentially learn from

people who are part of The Wisory even though you don't know them, you can actually get to meet with them and learn. And why that's really important is I, to this date, like yesterday and day before, I got two LinkedIn messages from people who met with me eight years ago and 15 years ago and said, you said this and that changed the way I did things and it's made a very big difference in my life. Right. And so

My whole thing is if you are really, really interested in getting better, A, you have to take charge of your own career and B, you have to invest in it by going and interacting with these people, which is what you're making possible. But in the days before you could not, like, you know, I couldn't get to Scott Galloway, OK, because it wasn't possible or I couldn't get to different people. But now it's different ways it's possible.

Jason (06:11)
Absolutely.

That's right, that's right. I love that. And thanks for the call out to The Wisory I'm very proud and excited about the direction the business is going and thank you for being an amazing advisor on The Wisory

Rishad (06:35)
You're most welcome.

You're most welcome. I really believe in this because I truly believe that you can learn a lot from people and it can make a huge difference more than, know, it's, even though I read the books, I learn about the people behind the books and that can be as important as what they've written.

Jason (06:50)
Exactly right. As an author, I'm sure people will find that when they talk with you. So speaking of that, because your first book was about the soul of business, right? So a question on this, which is, we work with a lot of mid-sized businesses. So how can mid-sized business leaders balance the soul of their business, their story and culture, fitting into the soul, against the demands of performance data and analysis and achieving those results?

Rishad (06:52)
Right.

Yeah, so you know, I believe that we are living in a world where and the premise of my first book was how do you integrate the story and the spreadsheet? So if you want to go away from higher level things which people may say are, you know, crazy like soul and meaning. So let's just say story and spreadsheet. Every business. Has a story in a spreadsheet. They have a spreadsheet which.

has to both on the income statement and on the balance sheet eventually look civil enough to raise money and run an operation. But everybody's got spreadsheets. What you get, whether you get customers, you get talent, or you get employees, or you get investment, is the story you tell. So wherever you go, eventually people will say, I am funding a story.

And if you think about it, brands are stories. Your company is a story. If you are the founder of your company, you started with an idea, you went on a journey. Occasionally a shock comes to town like a stranger, right? Or a competitor. And so how do you combine those? And the reason that's important is

People either go all story or they go all spreadsheet. And if you go all story, you end up like WeWork, you get blown away because you've got nothing underlying it. That's a great story. It raised a lot of money, right? But there was nothing underneath it. It was basically a real estate company with some good beer. wasn't some technological company. Yeah, it was basically Regus with better furniture and beer. ⁓

Jason (08:43)
I, it was Regus, essentially.

a hipper regus

Rishad (08:50)
Yeah. then the second, so, but if you're all spreadsheet, here's what begins to happen. As a business person, if you're all spreadsheet, there are three very big problems. And by the way, I have an advanced degree in math and an MBA in finance, so I'm not anti-spreadsheet. The first thing is if you only operate your company through a spreadsheet, you should be replaced by AI very quickly. There's no need for you. Number one.

Number two, I've never basically found somebody basically saying, I'm going to join this company because they've got a great income statement and a balance sheet.

Nobody does that, right? So that's second reason. And the third, which is very, important, is nobody comes to work because today only 27 % of people in the United States are engaged at work. And that's because they don't find people are actually telling them something meaningful and purposeful. And so in the end,

Jason (09:24)
Very true.

Rishad (09:44)
just like a brand or like a product, we choose with our hearts and we use numbers to justify what we just did. And we need both. If you have no numbers, it's very hard to choose with your heart. It's delusional. But if it's all numbers, you're replaceable. So it's that combination. And it's in that combination is where the folks who run these businesses, small and medium business,

is where their magic will eventually lie because that's what they bring to the company.

Jason (10:10)
That's exactly right. Actually, I'm going to drink a cup of wisdom to that answer.

Rishad (10:15)
You know what's really interesting is the way your cup looks at it. What you actually see is not Wisory when you lift it. It's S-O-R-Y, sorry.

So you have to put the oil. Yes, that's it. That's that's better. That's better. Right. Right.

Jason (10:25)
Can I turn it around a little bit? ⁓ Thank you for letting me know.

next question, question number three, Rishad. So as disruption continues, right? Because we're living as we've talked about, and we have a roundtable with you and Larry Weber coming up about ⁓ disruption and tectonic times. What should mid-sized businesses do to future proof themselves without chasing every trend?

that's coming along. I don't view AI as a trend right now, but what should they be doing to future proof themselves?

Rishad (10:58)
So depending on the size of the business, if you're a medium size and you have, let's say, more than 200 employees, I'll give you one piece of advice. And that is,

following pieces of advice for both small and medium, but then what to do, I'll do slightly different from small and medium. So step one for was the same for small and medium, which is take some of your team and basically identify a problem or a challenge. And say, if I had all the assets of my company and no constraints excepting legal

and scientifically possible and if I need to break even in X number of months and X can be 6 to 18, what would I do? So what you basically do is you decide that there are no constraints excepting some economic, legal and scientific, which is you can't do things that isn't technologically possible. What would you do?

Because what tends to basically happen is, and you sometimes have to have an alcohol or two drink to do that. Because often when people say, I can't do this, it's because we stop ourselves. And I say, almost everything that you stop is you're stopping yourself. You're oppressing yourself. Because the reality of it, it's, if it's technologically not an issue and legally not an issue, then the fact that you are not addressing the problem or looking at that opportunity, it basically means why aren't you?

So that's what I a blank sheet of paper with only those three constraints, right? The other one is basically say, how would I put my own business out of business? And so take the same team and say, let's attack us and let's put us out of business. And once you do that, you then decide how you're going to stop that from happening. That prevents, that basically helps you on disruption. Does that make sense? Now, the slight difference in

Jason (12:38)
Yep. It does absolutely make sense.

Rishad (12:43)
So those two exercises work for both people, but for small people, small companies, I basically say, whatever you come out from those two exercises, just start doing it. For the larger or medium sized to a little larger company, I'd say take some of your people and make them start doing it while running the rest of your business the way you currently are. Right? So you want to...

So Andy Grove said only the paranoid will survive. And I say at some particular size and higher, only the schizophrenic will thrive. So you run two models, right? And you, who has the CEO, the leader, owner of the company has both the models reporting to you. But one is optimized for today and one is optimized for tomorrow. But there was one thing that's very important. Recognize initially you're gonna lose money in the tomorrow, but it's

Jason (13:14)
Hahaha

Rishad (13:32)
Better you do that than lose money completely in all your business over time. And the other is make sure that you have some of your best people working on the Tomorrow Project and not just all your best people working on your current clients and current projects.

Jason (13:46)
Great advice, obviously hard. mean, this is changing the tires on the car while you're driving down the highway at 100 miles an hour, right? And making sure that it's about risk management, right? And so if you're a mid-sized business, I think it's terrific advice to say, figure out, we always used to say, take 10 % of your investment, at least 10 % of your investment, 10 % of your people, and work on the future.

Rishad (13:54)
Yes.

Jason (14:14)
know, versus just working on today. And I think that's what you're saying.

Rishad (14:18)
Yes, yes, exactly.

That's the, here's why. And people say, why should I care about the future? So I said, the only reason you want to care about the future is you're to spend the rest of your life there.

Jason (14:28)
Hahaha

Great, I love it. So you are an amazing mentor, right? To companies, to individuals, and I'm curious, as you've gone through your journey and even today, who have been your mentors? Who do you go to as you're taking on something new where you wanna validate an approach that you're taking on currently?

Rishad (14:48)
So I often will speak to two sets, people who used to be my mentors, but many of them are now, I would say, stopped working for a few years, or are not as in the field as they used to be. Like a Jack Klues is not as much in the field. A Maurice is, but maybe a little harder to get to as he's getting older. So I reach out to them.

Right. People who I've worked with who used to be my mentors and what they do is they provide me with a greater perspective based on their knowledge of my weaknesses and other things. So they'll say, don't do that shit. You aren't capable. But when it comes down to like, if I want to know about where the world is right now, I'll go to other people who are still in the field, like a David Kenny.

again, like Ann Mukherjee, you know, et cetera. And the other group of people that I look at is the exact reverse. So I actually get mentored by people who are far, far younger than myself. So every Friday, every second Friday now at 6 a.m. Chicago time, I get an hour training by a gentleman on what's the latest in technology.

Okay, so I have different people who I reach out to and say I'm trying to figure out this thing Right and they say okay Either I can help you or here's the best person you can go so I go reach out to those people some I know some I don't know right and Because of my background the whole stuff is like you seriously want us to teach you stuff I said, uh-huh and they said why are you coming to us? I said because I hear you're one of the best people in the Whatever in the market in this

So would you spend time doing it? And I said the quid pro quo is if you want, can pay you, right? But they said, no, we'll do it, but you will teach us other things. Okay, so what they do is like, they'll tell me and they say, okay, we have this thing, we are having trouble selling this to management. So I'll say, okay, explain it to me. And then I'll say, this is how you position it. And they said, wow, that's magic. And I think they're magic because they're explaining stuff to me.

Jason (16:45)
So you're bartering.

Rishad (16:45)
Right?

Yeah, it's it's bartering right? But but the fact that go to people who are much younger than me, because the whole idea is mentoring. Sometimes you only think of like older people. That's true. But what older people will do is they will give you wisdom. Right. But there's another bit of mentoring, which is what's the field like today? What's the state of market? What's the state of competition? Right. And so you need to. To.

⁓ two sets and it's rare to have the same person having everything.

Jason (17:14)
Right, right. One is more kind of global wisdom and other is more specific.

Rishad (17:18)
Yeah, specific.

And you've got to know what's basically happening. And to a great extent, there are, and then sometimes they sort of interact if it's specific enough. So like, can't advise anybody on many fields, but if they want to know a little bit about marketing, I'm still enough in it. So I can tell them about life and I can tell them about marketing, right? But if they ask me about,

Jason (17:29)
Mm-hmm.

Rishad (17:43)
Let's say ad tech, I'll say, don't know. I said, last time I touched it was six and a half, seven, eight years ago, I have no clue. Like I read about it, but I'm not at the level that I could, it's moving so fast. And that's the key thing that you eventually are gonna have a sort of a family of mentors, know, like, so one of the reasons I was very excited when you approached me and we talked about The Wisory

Jason (17:53)
It's moving so fast.

Rishad (18:07)
is really what you've created is a kitchen cabinet on demand. You people say you should have a kitchen cabinet. Well, where is that? Where do I find these people? Well, some of the people you can find The Wisory on demand, right? Because otherwise you have to wait for them to come into your kitchen and things like that. And that is a different.

Jason (18:24)
I've heard, thank you for that. I agree and I've heard people describe it as their personal board of directors.

Rishad (18:30)
Yes. Yes, so it's a personal board of directors, but what tends to basically happen is. Is it's? If the difference is, if you actually have this group and what's particularly interesting in a world that's changing so fast, it gives you different perspectives, which is usually very hard, right? To get from just people you know, because.

The people you know, there's a reason you know them. It's sort of, in many ways we tend to be in different bubbles. I might have a very large bubble, but it's still a bubble.

Jason (18:59)
and may come with bias. Exactly. So we are on the last question, my friend. So, and this is ⁓ dealing with AI. I think that's how you pronounce it as AI. So, especially with the shifts that are coming, what leadership principles or philosophies have helped you most when you're advising these companies, whether it's...

Rishad (19:04)
Got it.

Jason (19:18)
transformative organizations that we talked about these mid-sized businesses or larger organizations that are looking to transform. So what principles or philosophies have helped you most when you're talking with these companies?

Rishad (19:30)
So what I would basically say is I've actually distilled everything down into four simple pieces of advice that everybody can do as long as they have between $20 to $40 a month. And I'm assuming the people listening to this can find $20 to $40 a month. Maybe they can't, but hope so. So the first is you need to embrace AI.

Jason (19:50)
Hope so.

Rishad (19:57)
by actually starting with AI on every single question you have and every single thing you do. And it's somewhat easy. You can even get into the habit for free by if you've got Google, you know, click on where it says Google AI, you know, the thing. And you can actually, which I downloaded on my phone, there's a little widget. So there's Google search and then there's the AI button. So I start with that versus the search button. Okay. So think.

AI first versus search first versus doing it first. So that's the first thing to do. So you embrace it and pay 20 bucks for one of the more expensive models. And I would say, I didn't get 40 bucks because I think they're to be two big winners in this. And if you're in coding, they're probably three, but if you like more technical, it's Anthropic and Gemini and OpenAI.

And if you're a little less technical, then it's OpenAI and Gemini. And you can access and pay for the higher versions of those, not the highest version, but the higher version is about 20 bucks a month, so it's just 40 bucks. So that's the first thing. The second thing that you want to basically do is after embracing it, because unless you're using it, it makes no sense. And don't.

You don't have to worry about how to use it for business. Forget about that. Use it for your life. If you're basically into sports, if you're into fishing, if you're into whatever it is, that's what. The second thing that you want to basically do is you want to think about how AI can be supplemented by H.I. And H.I. is not human intelligence. So I hate to tell people that human intelligence is highly overrated and has been overtaken by these AI things.

So HI is human insights, human imagination, human intuition, human interaction. So AI is there. What do you do on top of that? Because in effect, that's the value you add. Because think about AI. Don't have an AI strategy. It's like having an electricity strategy. So if you're going to say you're going to win through AI alone, it's like, how do you win through electricity, unless you're competing with people using your candlelight?

So it's what you bring to how you use electricity for your business, right? Becomes the key thing. So you want to basically think how do you supplement? Second. The third, which is the hardest, is actually think about how it may completely change your business model. So there is a, I recently launched a show called Rethinking Work. And one of my guests, and it's at RethinkingWork.io and then.

go click on show. One of my guests has come out with a new book called Reshuffle. And he basically talks about how AI's real opportunity is existential change, that your entire business model might change. So for instance, many of us use Adobe. So why is Adobe struggling versus this new company called Figma? Right, so Figma has gone public. It's actually valued about 75 to 80 % of Adobe or 60, 70 % of Adobe.

Adobe stock has gone down 35, 40 % this year. And it's an incredible company. The reason is Adobe is fixated on the document, the PDF, the Photoshop file. Figma is fixated on collaboration on work. And so what happens is the task changes, then the organizational design changes, and as a result, your competitive set changes.

So one of the key things is after embracing AI, figuring out how to use it to better make your current business, think about how it can actually change your business, which is the really big thing. Like it actually change your business. And the example I give there is if digital was used by the New York Times just to make its trucks faster and its printing presses move better, they wouldn't be the New York Times they are today.

They said, okay, this is not about just how we make our current business better. It means we don't need printing presses. We don't need trucks. We don't need page one meetings. We no longer are print. We're multimedia. We're no longer limited to geography. We're global. Does it make sense? Okay. We're content. Right. So in effect, is the thing you want to think. That's going to potentially be on your business. And then the last one is to...

Jason (23:49)
We're not a newspaper, we're content.

Rishad (24:00)
really sort of recognize that AI is, even with everything you've heard about, very underhyped because what it's going to do is it's going to make the cost of knowledge and current experience go close to zero. And most of us have knowledge bases and lots of experience, which means you have to now be a continuous student of learning and unlearning. So those are my four.

Jason (24:21)
I love it. Well, and it's, we have a similar philosophy for The Wisory for the business, which is AI plus AI equals AI, which is your artificial intelligence plus advisor insights give you actual intelligence. And so what you're saying, what I've seen, and it's going to be dynamic as we go through, which is right now, when you go to an AI tool, whatever that tool is, it's sharing with

with you outcomes. It's not necessarily telling you how it got there. know, what the journey was, what the decisions that were made along that path. And there's a lot of wisdom in the why, not just the what. And so understanding the why and how you got there is just as important. And then there's also AI is not perfect, just like people aren't perfect. being able to, as you called it, the kitchen cabinet or the board of directors, to be able to have people.

who can say, here's what it told you, here's some other things you may want to think about. And you have to be really good at prompts with AI. You have to know what to ask it to get the right answers. And I think there's a lot of people who, as they start to engage with new things, they don't know exactly what to ask. They may know the first thing or the second thing, but the third, fourth, fifth. And I think people like you who have deep experience and can see a direction that someone or a business is going.

can start to add perspectives that an individual may not even know to ask about.

Rishad (25:44)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Jason (25:46)
I'm glad you agree with me on that. ⁓ Well, we are done with the five questions, Rishad, and you pass with flying colors. I have one bonus question for you, and that's as an amazing human and advisor on The Wisory, what questions are you best positioned to answer when people come onto The Wisory and want to book a one-on-one session with you?

Rishad (25:48)
Well, you're wearing the owl, I'm wearing headphones.

Thank you.

So I believe there are three questions. One is how to make sure that the business models that people have are fit for tomorrow. That's number one. Number two is how do they manage, motivate, and get the very best out of their talent as well as their partners, because they work with talent and partners. And the third.

Jason (26:20)
Big one.

Rishad (26:32)
is how do they themselves continue to upgrade their mental operating systems so they remain fit for purpose. Those three.

Jason (26:40)
think those are three very important things that most businesses are contemplating right now. So thank you for that. Rishad, it is always a pleasure to talk with you. I always leave our conversations with a head full of thoughts and also smarter than before we sit down. So thank you for all of it.

Rishad (26:46)
most welcome.

Thank you again and thanks for having me on the show and as part of your adventure. Welcome. You bet.

Jason (27:02)
Thank you. Be well, my friend.