Speaker 1: Hi. This is Malayan Vervier and this is Kim Azarelli.
Speaker 1: We are co authors of the book Fast Forward, How
Speaker 1: Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose. And you're listening to
Speaker 1: Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose, brought to you
Speaker 1: by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Rick Goings has been in the business of empowering women
Speaker 1: his entire career. As the former CEO and chairman of
Speaker 1: the multibillion dollar company, the Tupperware Brands, Rick recognized early
Speaker 1: on that the success of his company depended on the
Speaker 1: success of women. Rick joined me at the Seneca Women
Speaker 1: Forum at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss his
Speaker 1: unexpected career path in direct selling, the business case for
Speaker 1: empowering women, and the role of men in achieving gender
Speaker 1: or equality. Enjoy our conversation and stick around after for
Speaker 1: my top takeaways. We'll be back after this break. I
Speaker 1: don't think Rick Goings is much introduction. Former CEO and
Speaker 1: chairman of Tupperware. We share a love of direct selling
Speaker 1: and he is one of the men who really gets it.
Speaker 1: We always say there are men are get it, and
Speaker 1: no one gets it better than Rick. So Rick, we're
Speaker 1: delighted to have you here could be here. So nearly
Speaker 1: your entire career has been being in the business of
Speaker 1: empowering women, and you have seen a huge sea change
Speaker 1: in what that means or the last ten or twenty years.
Speaker 1: Can we just start with your own journey and how
Speaker 1: you started this and how you got into the direct
Speaker 1: selling business after school the Navy, I started my own company,
Speaker 1: did one underfully. I thought I was a rock star
Speaker 1: in my twenties, and then nothing I did in my
Speaker 1: thirties worked, and so Avon recruited me. And I've had
Speaker 1: people ask me why did you go to Avon? I said,
Speaker 1: let's see, I needed a job at that time. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was a fabulous journey. I headed strategy in
Speaker 1: New York. Then I went to Europe, then UH I
Speaker 1: was a group president Asia Pacific open most of those
Speaker 1: markets those were during the house in years. Came back
Speaker 1: as the chairman's number two. So it was a wonderful journey.
Speaker 1: And that's where the whole thing was illuminating for me.
Speaker 1: Of no matter what country I was in and different cultures,
Speaker 1: different religions, I would see that the power was was women.
Speaker 1: It was this hiding in plain sight kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: Fred Smith once said to me, the founder of fed Express,
Speaker 1: he said, the way to look really smart is find
Speaker 1: a good parade and get in front of it. And
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, I mean I started to
Speaker 1: see that where I was in New Orland, and I
Speaker 1: got a recruit it away for and for twenty five
Speaker 1: years ran ran Tupperware to work with over three million women.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Well, I have to say this former
Speaker 1: Avon person, that was Avon's loss, but Tupperware's game. Because
Speaker 1: what you did with Tupperware is quite extraordinary. And when
Speaker 1: you talk about being in front of that parade, you're
Speaker 1: talking about countries all over the world. Have you seen
Speaker 1: sort of a difference between countries or what have you
Speaker 1: seen in your journeys? Yeah, and that's an important question too,
Speaker 1: because here's one of the This is not a criticism,
Speaker 1: This is an observation about most events in the United
Speaker 1: States regarding women's empower meant it generally is a Western
Speaker 1: American mindset. Only four of the of the world's population
Speaker 1: lives here, and I think there is a very big
Speaker 1: need to bifurcate it and start to understanding and appreciate that. Hey,
Speaker 1: the issues in in many of these countries. Is not
Speaker 1: a glass ceiling. That is an issue, but it's not
Speaker 1: the first one. It's the grimy floor. It's abuse, it's
Speaker 1: not letting in even being let into the economy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's why it needs to have a different conversation.
Speaker 1: And this forty years of doing it boys camps, it
Speaker 1: sensitized me too. You can have those conversation. So we've
Speaker 1: seen actually talk about the glass ceiling, and we go
Speaker 1: to Davos together. We see still though that we're stuck. Right,
Speaker 1: So we are still stuck after these forty years, and
Speaker 1: I know you've been making the business case in every
Speaker 1: corner of the world. Why are we still stuck? Well,
Speaker 1: I think personally at Davo since Milana, we worked on
Speaker 1: this with you for so so long. Uh. Ten twelve
Speaker 1: years ago, we never had in that congress hall even
Speaker 1: one dialogue about women's issues. And I would then go
Speaker 1: and do TV interviews and criticized Davos and I said,
Speaker 1: Chairman Plaus is not going to invite me back again.
Speaker 1: But then we started making headway. One session, two sessions,
Speaker 1: three sessions, I mean there were a dozen last year.
Speaker 1: So I think the first the reason it hasn't it
Speaker 1: it I think starts off with this. We need to
Speaker 1: move this away from just a narrative on social justice. Uh,
Speaker 1: social justice makes victims of women, I do. I believe
Speaker 1: there's a social justice case, yes, But the business case
Speaker 1: is that's when people start to wake up and start
Speaker 1: to say, wait a minute, and so rather than all
Speaker 1: the dial lug because so many women came into leadership
Speaker 1: roles acting like a man. I'll tell you what I did.
Speaker 1: I've told you about this in the past. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: in the largest Muslim population country in the world. We
Speaker 1: have a big business there, Indonesia. Head of our business
Speaker 1: there was a woman. This time, I have each of
Speaker 1: our women leader distributors, bring her husband and I do
Speaker 1: a two hour seminar. I don't speak Bahassa, but I
Speaker 1: use a lot of a v and music and and
Speaker 1: simultaneous translation. And we did it on the difference between
Speaker 1: men and women. And we did it in kind of
Speaker 1: a disarming way that looked at my goodness the power
Speaker 1: of her. And I'll tell you, things started to really
Speaker 1: grow after that. He started went from a belligerent attitude
Speaker 1: to really starting to help her. So I think enlightenment
Speaker 1: is one of the things. You add a little brain
Speaker 1: science to that, as I recall, wasn't a little brain
Speaker 1: science in the presence? Oh god, I take it beyond that.
Speaker 1: I said, guys, let's talk about it. I would sit
Speaker 1: on the stage and here big auditor, and well, all
Speaker 1: these people in it, and I have slides. I said,
Speaker 1: woman's brain. Excuse me, man's brain, and I would show
Speaker 1: the size and how many cells re in it woman's brain.
Speaker 1: Men loved it because a man's brain is larger. And
Speaker 1: I said, not so fast, guys. Click. She scores fourcent
Speaker 1: higher almost always on tests, So more efficient machine. And
Speaker 1: then I'd get into it. What the hell are you
Speaker 1: guys doing with that? Then I would start to identify
Speaker 1: having fun with it that men have nothing box and
Speaker 1: you ask them, what are you thinking about? He says nothing,
Speaker 1: he's because he's not, So I hope you get the feeling.
Speaker 1: We started to have fun with it. Uh, fun with that.
Speaker 1: And then we'd go through she has corpus close and
Speaker 1: then her brain more, which is like WiFi, which means
Speaker 1: she can she's got a right brand and left lane
Speaker 1: and they communicate. It means oh, empowered to multitask. Talk
Speaker 1: to a guy sometimes when he's watching a sporting event,
Speaker 1: he can't even do anything else at that so we
Speaker 1: would have fun. But that there's a redeeming quality of men.
Speaker 1: Just read it. Latest studies are there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that women why she's powerful. Men are generally more
Speaker 1: romantic than women. Number One, he falls in love by
Speaker 1: visual first. Who didn't know that superficial? Okay, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and be attractive. But he but he gets
Speaker 1: to love quicker. So I've got to dig deeper. I
Speaker 1: just saw the initial research this morning. I said, this
Speaker 1: could be fun. Well, this is direct selling style, and
Speaker 1: you guys have to understand that Rick Rick is really
Speaker 1: one of the leaders. I was actually able to participate
Speaker 1: in an Italian direct selling meeting that Rick was hosting,
Speaker 1: and I have to it was an experience. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the role of men.
Speaker 1: So we see that there's so much happening in the
Speaker 1: space right now, there's between me two and time stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just a real focus. But there's a sense to
Speaker 1: that there could be a little bit of a backlash.
Speaker 1: Perhaps some men are feeling challenged and perhaps are over
Speaker 1: correcting in their behavior. So I've been on conference calls
Speaker 1: literally where particularly guys in the private equity world have said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to take There's no way I'm taking
Speaker 1: a woman for lunch, and I'm definitely not going on
Speaker 1: any business trips anymore with women. So we have on
Speaker 1: the one hand, we need women to be mentored more,
Speaker 1: we need women to be sponsored more, we need to
Speaker 1: have um leadership, you know, focusing intentionally as Carol and
Speaker 1: would say, on rising women up. And at the same
Speaker 1: time we have this kind of perhaps over correction on
Speaker 1: on the half of some men. What do you make
Speaker 1: of that, firs. I believe it's true and over correction.
Speaker 1: It is interesting. Tupperware globally is kind of a hugging culture.
Speaker 1: People really work with one another, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden I had people asking me, gosh, can I be
Speaker 1: hugged on stage? We said, now, we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: We started to get backlash in Australia and other markets
Speaker 1: of the world, and but respectfully, you still have to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to do it, and that gets
Speaker 1: down to the responsibility of men, responsible leadership when they're
Speaker 1: in that kind of a role. I've said to you before,
Speaker 1: one of the keys to success to really make it
Speaker 1: fast forward. We started this United Nations called He for She.
Speaker 1: He is the gatekeeper of most of the jobs. Only
Speaker 1: five percent of the CEO jobs women have only six
Speaker 1: percent of the countries of the world heads of stator
Speaker 1: women and only a third of colleges. That's why we
Speaker 1: started to say we want to get he in those
Speaker 1: roles and open up and start being a mentor and
Speaker 1: a sponsor. Will you can't be a sponsor if you
Speaker 1: don't spend any time together and get engaged in their uh,
Speaker 1: their their life and engaged in their career. And that's
Speaker 1: why my successor, she's going through a very steep learning
Speaker 1: curve right now. I turned things over two and a
Speaker 1: half years ago. But but I will tell you pulled
Speaker 1: her back from she had Latin America. Before that, she
Speaker 1: was ten years in Europe. I've been in many trips
Speaker 1: with her. You've got to be engaged so that she
Speaker 1: doesn't she gets the same kind of mentorship and sponsorship.
Speaker 1: Interesting study at Bain they looked at belief of getting
Speaker 1: into the c suite from really graduates from the better
Speaker 1: schools men and women. It was about the same at
Speaker 1: the start of her career hers had dropped after ten years.
Speaker 1: Why number one thing, it was not the work of
Speaker 1: their home pressures. It was she didn't have the same
Speaker 1: kind of good old boys network and they're of sponsors
Speaker 1: in there. So I think we've got to manage our
Speaker 1: way through the back of the back the heap forciate
Speaker 1: the backlash from from that need to that was correct,
Speaker 1: but we've got to moderate that because that's where the
Speaker 1: jobs are. So you mentioned the business case earlier, making
Speaker 1: the business case, and I think you've done a really
Speaker 1: good job of the last ten years, especially from your
Speaker 1: position as CEO. I think some people would say that
Speaker 1: despite the business case, we're still having a lot of resistance.
Speaker 1: So where do you think that resistance is coming from?
Speaker 1: Mostly from non enlightened men who were just doing it
Speaker 1: to check the box because they're saying, oh, we're having
Speaker 1: our diversity report to the board, Oh we look good
Speaker 1: this year on it. Their heart's not in it. Not
Speaker 1: enough of them really have had an illumination, you know
Speaker 1: what they always need to do. Whatever that was it
Speaker 1: a pill he took or a psychiatrist. He went to
Speaker 1: remember Mel Gibson the movie What Women Want. When all
Speaker 1: of a sudden he went from he could read your
Speaker 1: mind and he's trying on lipstick and Hosieri. I'm not
Speaker 1: recommending that, but but you really, you really have to
Speaker 1: start to understand of the power that what women bring
Speaker 1: to this uh uh. Nick Kristoff and Nick's a buddy
Speaker 1: from Davos and his his wife, Cheryl Woodung wrote a
Speaker 1: book Half the Sky, basically the concept that women hold
Speaker 1: up half the sky. Why wouldn't you leverage that out there?
Speaker 1: And what we've learned is so much the power of her,
Speaker 1: that her power with regard to relationship. You want to
Speaker 1: build a brand. Percent of all millennials don't believe advertising.
Speaker 1: They will believe a woman who will tell them and
Speaker 1: chow tell a friend and neighbor are relative. That's been
Speaker 1: the power of our our company. We've got to figure
Speaker 1: out more ways to enlighten men. And that's white Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised today we have what five enlightened men
Speaker 1: here in the room, and then you have at Davos.
Speaker 1: We have two thousand people come there. It's hard to
Speaker 1: get a ticket to Davos. So we put pressure on companies.
Speaker 1: You've got to have more women. They're still less than
Speaker 1: still less than I mean it's just we we That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean in Milan and I were talking about it earlier.
Speaker 1: It's the current track right now, before gender parody is reached.
Speaker 1: What do we think it's ready to hundred dealers? Yet
Speaker 1: today I saw a really the pressing article about it
Speaker 1: taking I think it was maybe more than a century
Speaker 1: now to get women into equal positions in computer science.
Speaker 1: And it's maybe never they said hundreds or maybe never.
Speaker 1: Well that's where I said fast forward. I believe business
Speaker 1: models to accelerate things. They need to be simple and scalable.
Speaker 1: And that's why I say three things I want to
Speaker 1: see see happen to make it that happened, and Susan
Speaker 1: and I are going to dedicate a lot of my
Speaker 1: life that have stepped down from heading up Tupperware to
Speaker 1: this with women and children. UH. Number one to really
Speaker 1: change the mindset that yes, I believe in social justice,
Speaker 1: but missed opportunity, the hiding and plain site opportunity of
Speaker 1: the women are out there. You want to include Europe
Speaker 1: and then one point one billion people. There's seven point
Speaker 1: five billion, UH people in the world. That means almost
Speaker 1: four billion women. So number one changed the mindset to
Speaker 1: how do I capture this opportunity to get more guys involved.
Speaker 1: I mean, just get them involved. And it's not forced involvement,
Speaker 1: it's enlightened involvement that they do it because gee, I
Speaker 1: never knew that. Third, and this is a big one.
Speaker 1: We've got to find out more platforms that engage women
Speaker 1: in the economy. And I'm taking this outside the US. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's about four billion women out there. Uh, let's see,
Speaker 1: only twenty percent are still of school age. That means
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the women out there, they're never gonna
Speaker 1: get stem. I'm sorry, how do we get them involved?
Speaker 1: And that's why wonderful things I will tell you, Uh,
Speaker 1: things things like Uber have helped them. I've seen women
Speaker 1: who all of a sudden, she was cleaning house, as
Speaker 1: I've told you about that, and then I interviewed her
Speaker 1: and I said, are you making more? She said twice
Speaker 1: as much. I said, would you have to learn? And
Speaker 1: she said, I knew how to drive, I knew the town,
Speaker 1: and she went through and all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: empowered her and I went through, always keeping my cell phone.
Speaker 1: You have to look up sometime qualities not measured by
Speaker 1: cognitive tests and then you're gonna find is. You're gonna
Speaker 1: find things like self reliance, empathy, determination, creativity. I mean,
Speaker 1: the list goes on, and many of these women who
Speaker 1: are never going to get STEM and are over twenty one,
Speaker 1: they're out there. They're waiting to be discovered. That's what
Speaker 1: I love. What we do. I mean, they say at
Speaker 1: Davos they call it the Tupperware effect. You've heard me
Speaker 1: ask Mohammadona, is this about how come you got the
Speaker 1: Nobel Pride? I said. We micro finance them. You do too.
Speaker 1: We teach them a business path you don't, okay, and
Speaker 1: then we give them confidence. And when she has confidence
Speaker 1: in this business path, then she feels that confidence and
Speaker 1: she's in power. And when she's empowered, she has influenced.
Speaker 1: We gotta find more of these things and create more
Speaker 1: of these Airbnb I mean, I keep looking, uh what
Speaker 1: does what does uh eBay really do? It empowers entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: out there. She didn't have to have degrees. I want
Speaker 1: to keep finding these things, especially in emerging markets. Long answers,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, No, I mean, I'm sorry subject. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to the audience because I get the benefit of getting
Speaker 1: to talk to Rick once in a while and we
Speaker 1: only have a few minutes together. So that's ah, that's
Speaker 1: our loss. But I just also want to mention to
Speaker 1: your point about speaking to men and having men in
Speaker 1: the audience. We've been together involved in the Bloomberger Quality Summit,
Speaker 1: which I know P and G is very involved with
Speaker 1: as well and others in the room, and we've been
Speaker 1: involved with the Bloomberger Quality Summit, and I think that
Speaker 1: maybe Stephen Colban is here is one of those good men. UM.
Speaker 1: The reason why we chose to do that was because
Speaker 1: you're reaching you know, sixty million person audience and a
Speaker 1: very large unders them are men. And so today's forum
Speaker 1: is about something different. We're trying to sort of bring
Speaker 1: all of these opportunities and best practices to These are
Speaker 1: all women corporate leaders. These are all literally leaders of
Speaker 1: companies in this room. So we thank you for being here.
Speaker 1: We thank you for representing a men's man's point of view.
Speaker 1: You're always invited to anything Seneca Women and UM and
Speaker 1: hopefully we can learn more about what you're doing in
Speaker 1: this next chapter. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned for our takeaways after this break. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed my conversation with Rick Goings. It's always so great
Speaker 1: to hear his perspective. My top takeaways. First, as Rick says,
Speaker 1: we need to change mindsets in order to make sure
Speaker 1: that we unlock the true potential of women in the economy.
Speaker 1: This potential is hiding in plain sight, but we need
Speaker 1: to shift our thinking from looking at women as victims
Speaker 1: to of viewing them as partners and growth. Second, dynamic
Speaker 1: women have always been the driving force behind gender equality,
Speaker 1: but we also need to include men. Rick is a
Speaker 1: great example of a business leader who has understood the
Speaker 1: implications of advancing women in the economy, whether that's by
Speaker 1: providing opportunities for women to start their own businesses, or
Speaker 1: whether that's by supporting women at work through recruiting, mentoring,
Speaker 1: and promotion. Lastly, we need to find and support more
Speaker 1: platforms that provide women around the world with earnings opportunities.
Speaker 1: Companies like Etsy, eBay, and even Uber and Left are
Speaker 1: taking a page out of the direct selling handbook and
Speaker 1: providing new opportunities for women to start their own businesses.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Seneca Women Conversations on Power and Purpose,
Speaker 1: brought to you by the Seneca Women Podcast Network and
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