Speaker 1: Welcome to possible Now. Some people predict the future, others
Speaker 1: shape it. My today's guest has spent his career doing
Speaker 1: both and is someone I not only deeply respect, but
Speaker 1: also genuinely enjoy talking to, because every conversation with him
Speaker 1: leaves you thinking in new ways. Richard Tobakowala has spent
Speaker 1: decades shaping how we understand business, marketing, and the future
Speaker 1: of work. He became a global key leader at Publicis
Speaker 1: Group and lived through the massive transformation and the area
Speaker 1: of mergers, consolidation and disruption of the ad industry firsthand.
Speaker 1: But to call him an ad executive would be like
Speaker 1: calling Da Vinci a painter. It barely scratches the surface.
Speaker 1: What I love most about Richard is that he never
Speaker 1: stops evolving, always questioning, always rethinking. Since twenty nineteen, he
Speaker 1: has embraced a new role as the thought leader, advisor,
Speaker 1: guide and author, helping companies and individuals and navigate change.
Speaker 1: His books Restoring the Soul of Business and Rethinking Work
Speaker 1: offer deep insights. While his sub stack The Future does
Speaker 1: not fit into the containers of the past and podcast
Speaker 1: What Next are Must Follows. Risha has a rare ability
Speaker 1: to make complex shifts in business and society feel clear,
Speaker 1: even inevitable. He doesn't just talk about the future. He
Speaker 1: helps us see it, understand it, and most importantly, navigate
Speaker 1: this And today we get to tap into that wisdom. Risha,
Speaker 1: my friend, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Christian, thank you for that amazing introduction. Now hopefully we'll
Speaker 2: have a conversation that tries to make that introduction somewhat
Speaker 2: sane and not insane. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure, Risha, and we always kick off this
Speaker 1: podcast with a personal question and hopefully information to share
Speaker 1: with our audience. In your case, you worked with some
Speaker 1: of the biggest names in business, You advise leaders, you
Speaker 1: wrote books that challenge how we think about work and life.
Speaker 1: But I'm couriers and I'm sure everybody else as well.
Speaker 1: What's something small, maybe even ordinary, that brings you joy
Speaker 1: every day?
Speaker 2: Well, there are many, many things, And in fact, today
Speaker 2: I was listening to a podcast that basically said, there
Speaker 2: are three reasons people are happy. One of them happens
Speaker 2: to be Oh, what a good life is, And it's
Speaker 2: a combination of happiness, meaning, and new experiences, which is
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. But in the happiness phase, which is
Speaker 2: the question you have. Yeah, they basically say, there are
Speaker 2: big things that make you happy, like when you get married,
Speaker 2: you get promoted, But the things that really make you
Speaker 2: happy on long term basis is not the intensity of
Speaker 2: the happiness but the frequency. So if you can have
Speaker 2: fine happiness in small things, which is very much what
Speaker 2: you basically mention at any given day, I have a
Speaker 2: lot of small things, but the ones that seem to
Speaker 2: be every day is I love working out, so I
Speaker 2: either swim or run or you know, do some weights.
Speaker 2: It's become a daily habit. It's almost an addiction, but
Speaker 2: it gives me, you know, great joy. I also, interestingly
Speaker 2: love reading, and I set aside an hour every day
Speaker 2: to read regardless, I call it my reading hour. And
Speaker 2: the other thing that gives me a lot of joy is,
Speaker 2: you know, spending time with my family. So right now
Speaker 2: I'm in New York. My wife is in India visiting
Speaker 2: her mom, and I'm hanging out with our two daughters
Speaker 2: in New York City.
Speaker 3: And so those things, which is you.
Speaker 2: Know, family, a little bit of keeping myself mentally sane
Speaker 2: and physically saying so I basically talk about those three
Speaker 2: as the physical, mental, and emotional operating systems, and I
Speaker 2: try to basically utilize or experience them daily, and that
Speaker 2: makes everything else, even when things don't go right. When
Speaker 2: I was like in real business and you had tough clients, etc.
Speaker 2: It made you do okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you can also follow those kind of routines when
Speaker 1: you're traveling because you travel a lot, you do for decades.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: I travel a lot. I keep track of my flights,
Speaker 2: and as someone who is self employed and not working
Speaker 2: for a company, last year, I did ninety five flights.
Speaker 2: These are flight segments, not ninety five trips. And this year,
Speaker 2: which is you know, we're five or six weeks, six
Speaker 2: weeks into the year, I've already.
Speaker 3: Done fifteen, oh man.
Speaker 2: And so I have a feeling that I might track
Speaker 2: and break my record, which was Publicist. My record when
Speaker 2: a particular year at Publicist was one hundred and twenty five,
Speaker 2: and I think I will break it this year with
Speaker 2: what I can see, assuming health stays okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, obviously this there's a good reason behind and quite
Speaker 1: often I know from our previous talks, you know, you
Speaker 1: try to combine business with some good private reasons, you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, visiting your daughters in New York, or
Speaker 1: do some troops as your wife. But mainly it's about business.
Speaker 1: And I always interviewed once and I said, receiving so
Speaker 1: many miles or points or whatever it's called, depending on
Speaker 1: the airline, that's not an award because it means normally
Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time on your own, yes,
Speaker 1: sitting in airplanes and launches and hotel rooms, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people know that I like dragging, like adding
Speaker 2: stuff to every place I go, and I usually go
Speaker 2: with one of usually with my wife, and so sometimes,
Speaker 2: like recently, someone wanted me to come to Panama City
Speaker 2: and they basically said, hey, we will fly you and
Speaker 2: your wife. Will you come if we fly you and
Speaker 2: your wife? So I said, okay, that's interesting, of course
Speaker 2: I will. So I'm going at the end of this
Speaker 2: month for three days to Patama City with her. So,
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of interesting, which is my whole
Speaker 2: stuff is talk about sort of work life balance, and
Speaker 2: it's really work life integration more than work life balance.
Speaker 2: And in my particular case, it's become sort of a
Speaker 2: passion about making things happen. And then you know, with
Speaker 2: people I'm passionate about, and that doesn't have to be
Speaker 2: my family. It's basically friends and lots of people. You
Speaker 2: and I have known each other, and so I like
Speaker 2: spending time with people, which you can also do and
Speaker 2: meet lots of different people as you go around the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for sharing this, Richard. People Also, as
Speaker 1: I described in my introduction, people call you a consultant,
Speaker 1: call you a futurist, a strategist, and of course more
Speaker 1: than that, and all of those fit. That's my impression.
Speaker 1: But if you had to choose just one title that
Speaker 1: describes what you're currently doing, what would it be.
Speaker 2: So it's actually a sentence versus a word, and the
Speaker 2: sentence is I help people see, think and feel differently
Speaker 2: about how to grow themselves, their team and their business
Speaker 2: or some combination of those. So the idea really is
Speaker 2: it's about growth, but to help either an individual or
Speaker 2: a team or a company grow. But the value I
Speaker 2: add is I leave them feeling different about how they
Speaker 2: were thinking about things, but not different in a way
Speaker 2: that they're oh, I didn't think about it completely correct.
Speaker 3: What am I going to do?
Speaker 2: It's just say, if you look at it from this
Speaker 2: particular angle, you might find a new type of solution.
Speaker 2: And so what I try to basically do is sort
Speaker 2: of give people a gift if that's what it is
Speaker 2: of forty two years of my experience, and try to
Speaker 2: do it in every interaction. And usually what that leaves
Speaker 2: them with is I feel I have grown. So usually
Speaker 2: when I talk to a company or a person or
Speaker 2: a team, you know, my idea whether I have been
Speaker 2: productive and successful is if they think they have grown
Speaker 2: due to that interaction.
Speaker 1: Right right, And obviously quite often this is just a
Speaker 1: hidden kind of you know, issued solve or solution to find,
Speaker 1: but you're definitely one who digs it out for them
Speaker 1: in their individual case.
Speaker 2: And if there was a word, if there was a
Speaker 2: single word, yeah, you know I've had been forced a
Speaker 2: single word, not a sentence, it would be reinventing, reinventing.
Speaker 2: I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that. So we definitely come to your recent
Speaker 1: books and your key messages along with that in a second.
Speaker 1: But you also spent decades in the ad industry, especially
Speaker 1: with agencies. In the nineties and early two thousands, the
Speaker 1: ad industry saw massive consolidations, mergers, acquisitions, everything shrinking into
Speaker 1: a few players and it's history repeating itself right now?
Speaker 1: Or do you see significant differences? I mean, especially when
Speaker 1: we think about the agency world, the consultant the world.
Speaker 1: You are self employed, you run your own business. Now,
Speaker 1: is this so different compared to what you've seen years ago?
Speaker 3: Well, what it is is consolidation has always happened, and
Speaker 3: in some cases consolidation has happened and then there's been deconsolidation.
Speaker 3: There were these big, massive conclomerations of like General Electric, right,
Speaker 3: which then deconsolidated. There was the original Travelers, which included
Speaker 3: City and a few other places, and they deconsolidated. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, because of global markets, because of the
Speaker 3: cost of technology, because of the importance of data, the
Speaker 3: need for the buyer to have scale based pricing cost advantages,
Speaker 3: there has been, I think, definitely in the marketing services industry,
Speaker 3: a major drive to consolidation. And I was just reading
Speaker 3: a statement which I believe is true because I not
Speaker 3: only read the statement, but the option to speak to
Speaker 3: this gentleman in person when we were together about two
Speaker 3: three weeks ago. And in the advertising business in the
Speaker 3: I think a lot of twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: ninety percent of all the pitches were won by the
Speaker 3: top four companies, and in the last quarter, and I
Speaker 3: don't define, I don't exactly what the last quarter is.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was a fourth quarter of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: one hundred percent were won by the top four. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about the bigger pitches, not like you know, the
Speaker 2: local store, et cetera. And now those four are becoming three.
Speaker 2: And you used to even remember among big holding companies
Speaker 2: used to have. There used to be like seven and
Speaker 2: you would have names like Havas and then so and
Speaker 2: now look like it's going to be an omnicopg WPP
Speaker 2: and publicists world. But that's one way of looking at it.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, because marketing services has become
Speaker 2: very broad, I would say it's also an Accentia world
Speaker 2: and a Deloittte world, right, And on the edges you
Speaker 2: might say it's a Google and Meta world too.
Speaker 3: So we're back to the seven.
Speaker 2: But the seven are no longer necessarily the agencies holding companies.
Speaker 2: Three of them are agency holding companies that have survived, right,
Speaker 2: And there are four other providers who work and deliver
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of marketing services to clients.
Speaker 1: Okay, my impression was similar. But at the same time
Speaker 1: I also felt that the independents, which the bigger independent
Speaker 1: agencies stag Wold for example, Yeah, Horzon and many more,
Speaker 1: are more visible than ten twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: Yes, So what basically happens is the way I defied
Speaker 2: them is you have these and it's a chapter in
Speaker 2: my book, not specifically to the advertising industry, but where
Speaker 2: things are going to go. I basically say that what
Speaker 2: we're going to have is the ecosystem of most industries
Speaker 2: is going to be whales and plankton, and then occasionally
Speaker 2: there's going to be a squid. So the way I
Speaker 2: describe a whale in a plankton is YouTube is a whale.
Speaker 2: If you think about it, the creator who makes money
Speaker 2: and uses YouTube is a plankton, and the ecosystem feeds
Speaker 2: off each other. The wheel takes thirty percent of the
Speaker 2: revenue of the plankton. The plankton could not be global
Speaker 2: without the whale. And then once in a while there are,
Speaker 2: like is a squid. So while there is this consolidation
Speaker 2: at the top, to your point, there also happens to
Speaker 2: be a little bit different. But what happens is the
Speaker 2: reason I call it a squid, and I don't. It's
Speaker 2: something in between a wheel and a plankton, like a
Speaker 2: half wheel half blankton is Being in the middle without
Speaker 2: differentiation is death, okay, because you neither have the scale
Speaker 2: based advantages of the large players nor the agility and
Speaker 2: expertise of the two three ten person company. So if
Speaker 2: you see it today, Stagwell s for bran Tech, those
Speaker 2: are three companies, right, so off the three from outside.
Speaker 2: And again I'm no longer in the industry, so I'm
Speaker 2: not one hundred percent sure what I'm saying. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: don't pay that much attention. It appears that S four
Speaker 2: try to be a scale based player without scale and
Speaker 2: has suffered deeply because of it, and Stagwell has tried
Speaker 2: to be more like a squid and has done okay
Speaker 2: because of it. And I'm not sure exactly where bran
Speaker 2: Tech is. But what you're basically seeing is often what
Speaker 2: a client might ask.
Speaker 3: Is or in any particular company, can I get.
Speaker 2: The smart people who are available in small places at
Speaker 2: independent and can I then bundle them with these large players?
Speaker 3: And so then if you're a middle player.
Speaker 2: You have to explain what you're doing in the movie, right,
Speaker 2: and so I think what you're going to have is, yes,
Speaker 2: there will be continued there will be the middle level.
Speaker 2: But everywhere, including in the world of Germany, and Germany's
Speaker 2: industrial base was really built on the middle, the middle
Speaker 2: stat is having big problems because you have to be
Speaker 2: big or you have to be small. Anything in between
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to work. And I think that's what you're
Speaker 2: basically seeing is one of the reasons, by the way,
Speaker 2: that you're seeing a lot of middle sized companies being acquired. Okay,
Speaker 2: so just in the last year, among many things, you know,
Speaker 2: Public has acquired firms like Mars and Influential, and each
Speaker 2: of those were not small companies. There were five hundred
Speaker 2: plus companies, five hundred employees, two thousand employee companies. I mean,
Speaker 2: Mars was very big. And so what happens is people
Speaker 2: are beginning to realize that they have to be stay connected.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the things I've sort of learned.
Speaker 2: Even me, who I works like, I'm a one person
Speaker 2: quote unquote company, if that's me, But if you see
Speaker 2: who I work with and how I work, I'm a
Speaker 2: plank and I stay very close to the whales, including
Speaker 2: the clients who are whales, because by myself I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to survive.
Speaker 1: And the fun part is that we know that the
Speaker 1: next wave, the next development, the next change, is ahead
Speaker 1: of us. So maybe just the beginning of this wave
Speaker 1: with this type of consolidation, but it will change again
Speaker 1: in a couple of years time. This is what we know,
Speaker 1: but maybe not know exactly how it will look like then.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And in fact, if I were to basically say
Speaker 2: where the advantage is going to go, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: the advantage is going to go to the small players.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, would you agree shifts just shifting priorities and shifting opportunities.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a reason, and the reason basically is is
Speaker 2: because the small players. And it's one of the things
Speaker 2: in my book that between twenty twenty March and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three March in the United States, all the net
Speaker 2: employment growth was in companies with less than a thousand people,
Speaker 2: all of it okay, And today apparently in a matter
Speaker 2: is going to lay off five percent of its non
Speaker 2: productive players. The demand for software engineers has fallen, and
Speaker 2: so what you're basically beginning to see is AI is
Speaker 2: now the stone that allows David to bring down Goliath.
Speaker 2: And what people don't realize is AI is actually an
Speaker 2: advantage to the small versus the large. Yes, you need
Speaker 2: the large scale en videos and Taiwan Semiconductor, but I
Speaker 2: can prove to any com company that I have better
Speaker 2: AI than a Fortune five hundred company. Who is it,
Speaker 2: you know, either Google or someone like that. And that's
Speaker 2: primarily because it's only cost twenty dollars a month two
Speaker 2: hundred dollars a month to access world class technology.
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned AI, You've mentioned the potential benefits for
Speaker 1: the smaller and not just the bigger. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about this. In your first book, which I think you
Speaker 1: published during COVID, Restoring the Soul of Business, you argue
Speaker 1: that companies thrive when they balance data and technology with
Speaker 1: human intuition, creativity, and empathy to create meaningful growth and innovation.
Speaker 1: In today's AI driven world, do you think businesses are
Speaker 1: getting better or worse at striking that balance?
Speaker 2: So I believe what will happen is businesses were getting
Speaker 2: better at striking that balance and then recently have sort
Speaker 2: of gone backwards for a variety of reasons. But they
Speaker 2: are now waking up in one of the reasons they
Speaker 2: went backward is because a they believed that they could
Speaker 2: use AI to replace people. They began to believe that
Speaker 2: the labor capital or labor to people who hire employee
Speaker 2: to company balance of power was going back to the company.
Speaker 2: And they basically began to believe that for a variety
Speaker 2: of reasons. Even before the recent elections in the United States,
Speaker 2: it's pretty prevalent all over the world that DEI was
Speaker 2: a bad word. Okay, So the whole idea was power
Speaker 2: is coming back to me. AI will let me replace you.
Speaker 2: DEI is a bad word, and so there was this
Speaker 2: tendency to go back to the bad ways or old ways.
Speaker 2: It may not be bad ways, I ins them bad
Speaker 2: ways when we're old ways. I think every single company
Speaker 2: who's doing that is going to get the shock of
Speaker 2: their lives in twenty twenty five. I'm not even saying
Speaker 2: twenty six, twenty twenty seven. They are going to get
Speaker 2: a shock because almost no senior management, no very few
Speaker 2: senior management know what's about a hit him, okay, in
Speaker 2: the world of work, and including in the world of AI. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, here are three things that they say which
Speaker 2: are absolute crap crap, Okay, and they go around saying
Speaker 2: it and my whole stuff is like, someone's going to
Speaker 2: stop you. So Number one, I am going to have
Speaker 2: an AI strategy to succeed. That's number one. Number Two,
Speaker 2: I am going to use AI as a differentiator. Number three,
Speaker 2: everybody come back to the office five days a week
Speaker 2: or you're fired. So okay, thank you very much. Now
Speaker 2: let me understand this simple questions.
Speaker 3: Simple thing.
Speaker 2: You as a company go running around saying your personalization
Speaker 2: agile and flexible, and now what you've just basically done
Speaker 2: is you've forced everybody with a one size fits all
Speaker 2: model to come back to the office regardless of the
Speaker 2: client needs. It's regardless of the seniority, regardless of their
Speaker 2: life issues, regardless of what actually it is. So the
Speaker 2: fact you're basically saying you're going to be agile, flexible,
Speaker 2: and personalized, but you're not going to do it for
Speaker 2: the people who actually create all those agile, personal and
Speaker 2: flexible that's BS, which meant you don't know what agile,
Speaker 2: flexible and personalization is. Number two is this whole idea
Speaker 2: of I'm king and my whole thing or queen, my
Speaker 2: old stuff is, Hey, ladies and gentlemen, the issue is
Speaker 2: not that people don't want to come back to the office.
Speaker 2: I'm a big believer and in person interaction. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be in the office, says I remind people.
Speaker 2: When I was in the company, when we wanted to
Speaker 2: creative brainstorming, we'd go to off sites. When we wanted
Speaker 2: to learn and network. We've got to things like possible
Speaker 2: or bars and network and restaurants. So none of the things.
Speaker 2: And by the way, there's no water coolers. Also at
Speaker 2: these places. This whole idea of people running around to
Speaker 2: a water cooler, those also don't exist. So this is
Speaker 2: total bs, total bs. Right, So my old stuff is
Speaker 2: that that isn't happening. So that's the other the city
Speaker 2: thing that doesn't matter. But here's a problem. It's not
Speaker 2: the place that they're not coming back to. They don't
Speaker 2: want to come back to you, lady and gentlemen, because
Speaker 2: we've entered an age of de bossification.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants you.
Speaker 2: That's your issue if you're if you're not in the office,
Speaker 2: people will come back, right, which is which is one
Speaker 2: of the interesting things.
Speaker 1: So obviously, boss, how do you describe is not the
Speaker 1: best thing in the world. Being a typical boss. So,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about leaders. I've heard recently a great
Speaker 1: interview where do you make the point between those two
Speaker 1: groups of people and a boss and a leader and
Speaker 1: senior executives. That's called it like this, So please explain
Speaker 1: this in a way that everybody really understands.
Speaker 3: Okay, So here's what happens.
Speaker 2: So a boss is somebody who at the core operates
Speaker 2: through a zone of control. And by a zone of control,
Speaker 2: they basically monitor, measure, allocate, delegate and check it. That's
Speaker 2: what they do. And by the way, you need every
Speaker 2: leader needs to have some of those boss like tendencies.
Speaker 2: You can't operate a company without some of those. But
Speaker 2: many of these things, people who are bosses spend seventy
Speaker 2: eighty ninety percent of their time doing that. What does
Speaker 2: the leader do? Yes, the leader needs to do some
Speaker 2: of that, maybe twenty five to thirty percent of their time.
Speaker 2: A leader bills, creates, solves, sells, inspires, guides. Okay, So
Speaker 2: my basic belief is if we had a few more leaders,
Speaker 2: people would go to where the leaders are, whether they're
Speaker 2: in an office or in a cave. But you can
Speaker 2: basically be a boss, give free food in an exotic
Speaker 2: office somewhere and people won't come. The problem simply is,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the examples I give is the
Speaker 2: animals have left the cage. Regardless of what meat you
Speaker 2: put in there, they're not coming back.
Speaker 3: Okay, so get over get over it.
Speaker 2: The whole idea is it's a rejection of the old way,
Speaker 2: So just get over it.
Speaker 1: And then you're saying it's independent from the size of
Speaker 1: a company, you know, with more reporting and controlling.
Speaker 2: Its incompletely independent of the size of a company.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I've done so much research with
Speaker 2: so much data, including modern what's going on? So let
Speaker 2: me give you three pieces of information which everyone's hiding
Speaker 2: from everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Number one, many of these companies who are forcing people
Speaker 2: back five days into the office really aren't expecting that
Speaker 2: to happen. They're using it to do severance lay off
Speaker 2: without severans. That's what they're doing. That's what Amazon was doing,
Speaker 2: That's what everybody was doing. Okay. Now let me give
Speaker 2: you another thing. According to analysis that I've seen, Omnicom
Speaker 2: and IPG and maybe WPP grew about twenty percent since
Speaker 2: COVID to now in headcount and basically got rid of
Speaker 2: between twenty and thirty percent of their real life state. Okay, okay, So,
Speaker 2: by the way, if everybody comes into the office, they
Speaker 2: don't fit. That's already happening at Amazon. So there's a
Speaker 2: bullshit like your physical infrastructure doesn't defend it. You're trying
Speaker 2: to get people. But here's the other one that most
Speaker 2: people don't realize.
Speaker 3: Probe.
Speaker 2: I went to all these people and said, are you
Speaker 2: really making one size fits model for everybody?
Speaker 3: And they said not really.
Speaker 2: In most companies, about thirty percent of the teams are
Speaker 2: allowed to do whatever they want. Okay, and so in fact,
Speaker 2: this is not a one size fits model, right, it's
Speaker 2: completely ps what they're saying about. Unfortunately, the way they're
Speaker 2: doing it is they're alienating people for no reason because
Speaker 2: they're not actually following such draconian things. There's almost no
Speaker 2: company that's following such a draconian thing that their announcement.
Speaker 2: This is the first time I've heard of companies putting
Speaker 2: out a PR statement that's worse than their product. Usually
Speaker 2: you put out a PR statement that's better than your product.
Speaker 3: Yep, right, None of.
Speaker 2: These leaders are doing anything like five days a week
Speaker 2: for everybody.
Speaker 3: None of them.
Speaker 2: And I remind also the leaders because I used to
Speaker 2: be one.
Speaker 3: Remember I told you.
Speaker 2: One hundred and forty four flights a year, or one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five flights. Where do you think I was.
Speaker 2: I wasn't in the office when I was flying around.
Speaker 2: I wasn't flying into our offices. Yeah, once in a
Speaker 2: while I might flew into Paris because my boss was there.
Speaker 2: But I wasn't flying around. I was flying to see
Speaker 2: people and clients. Never in the office, right. I was
Speaker 2: going to conferences to learn things.
Speaker 3: I was doing all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: So the reality of it is most of the leaders
Speaker 2: don't operate out of the office that they're forcing people
Speaker 2: back into. So when you actually listen to them, you
Speaker 2: begin to realize how craddy the thinking is. And then
Speaker 2: the other stuff that's really important is I don't even
Speaker 2: care where somebody works. My basic belief is if I
Speaker 2: was starting a company tomorrow, I do two things. Number One,
Speaker 2: I probably pull my team together all together for maybe
Speaker 2: twenty five thirty days every day besides the weekends ease.
Speaker 2: I wanted to build relationships, understand culture, etc. And then
Speaker 2: I say, okay, we'll get together maybe one week every quarter,
Speaker 2: let's go forth and prosper right, But the other one
Speaker 2: is this. This is the other thing that's important. Ask
Speaker 2: any C level executive with everything they know today, including
Speaker 2: the rise of AI, four generations at work, modern technology marketplaces,
Speaker 2: would any company start being located in one place by
Speaker 2: expensive real estate, limiting their talent to people who can
Speaker 2: move into that real estate. Zero And that's the companies
Speaker 2: they're going to be competing with in the future. So
Speaker 2: my whole thing is strategically you're wrong, Emotionally you're wrong.
Speaker 2: Talent whyse you're wrong, And by the way, where you
Speaker 2: work is irrelevant to the future of work anyway, So
Speaker 2: you don't even understand what that is going on. And
Speaker 2: now you're saying you want to be a leader.
Speaker 1: This is great to hear in many ways because I
Speaker 1: one hundred percent agree with you. And also because as
Speaker 1: we started possible at the company behind during COVID and
Speaker 1: of COVID, it was exactly the situation described. We had
Speaker 1: no office. We technically still don't have our office. I
Speaker 1: mean now we got acquiet last year, so now, of
Speaker 1: course the company can provide an office, but my people
Speaker 1: are not going back three, four or five days a week.
Speaker 1: We are still a remote team as we started and
Speaker 1: we started and make this created this business without any
Speaker 1: physical office, and we met maybe once a quarter in person.
Speaker 1: And this is exactly how you described it, right.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the two other things that are
Speaker 2: very interesting because because of my graduate degree advanced mathematics,
Speaker 2: everything I do remember a story and spreadsheet. I have
Speaker 2: the story, but I got better spreadsheets than anybody with data, yes,
Speaker 2: three pieces of data. I just read the most recent
Speaker 2: McKinsey study. Across the United States, the average number of
Speaker 2: people white collar workers go to work is three point
Speaker 2: two out of five days. After all this noise, it's
Speaker 2: still only three point two or of five. That's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two is a majority of the fast growing companies
Speaker 2: and small companies tend to have zero to one day.
Speaker 2: And so one of the reasons you see these large
Speaker 2: companies bring like donkeys, okay, is because they're no longer
Speaker 2: growing and they think by forcing people back is the
Speaker 2: way they're going to grow. It's exactly the opposite, because
Speaker 2: we are competitors are agile and fast and they're slow
Speaker 2: and moving like I don't know what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we touched a bit on AI and as
Speaker 1: you can imagine was possible coming up very soon in
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks time. It is on our agenda
Speaker 1: as well. Everybody wants that, everybody needs an opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk about this. My impression is there's so much noise
Speaker 1: around still telling people what the changes might be in
Speaker 1: the future, but there is a gap of real case studies,
Speaker 1: real learnings, especially from the last couple of years or
Speaker 1: weeks or months. And you, I'm sure you ask for
Speaker 1: you inside so many times on AI? Is there a
Speaker 1: question which comes up over and over and what could
Speaker 1: be a question people are not asking about AI that
Speaker 1: they should be So maybe give us also a kind
Speaker 1: of advice and our audience for the event in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks time, how we should cover this.
Speaker 2: I will basically say, hey, look, here are my five
Speaker 2: points out make on AI. Number one is, despite everything
Speaker 2: we have heard, AI is still under hyped.
Speaker 3: It's not overhyped.
Speaker 2: In the forty years that I've been working here, including
Speaker 2: seeing everything from digital to internet to mobile, this thing
Speaker 2: is bigger than all of those things combined and moving
Speaker 2: much f and I have a lot of data to
Speaker 2: show that The second is AI itself is going to
Speaker 2: be a commodity like electricity, and companies aren't going to
Speaker 2: go running around saying we're differentiating ourselves because of AI.
Speaker 3: No company will be able to operate without AI.
Speaker 2: But no company will differentiate themselves with AI because I
Speaker 2: don't go around and saying reshart to back while at
Speaker 2: LLC is better than Christian MUKA LLC right because I
Speaker 2: use electricity. Well, Christian also uses electricity unless he's in
Speaker 2: a romantic dinner with his wife with candlelight. He doesn't
Speaker 2: work through candlelight. Right. So when people say AI is
Speaker 2: going to be my differentiator, I said, really, well, everybody
Speaker 2: is going to have exactly the same AI and usually
Speaker 2: from the same seven l N models. Okay, you put
Speaker 2: some of your unique data. That's number two. So AI
Speaker 2: is under hyped. Aas don't going to be a differentiator.
Speaker 2: The third one is this that in effect what a
Speaker 2: lot of people are rightly focusing on. And there are
Speaker 2: some initial experiences by the way of AI A making
Speaker 2: things more efficient and be making things more effective. So
Speaker 2: for instance, it could do versioning of creative much faster,
Speaker 2: and it could actually make much more interesting personalized messaging
Speaker 2: to even have more effective So you'll be cheaper in
Speaker 2: producing and more impactful with the customer consumer viewer. So
Speaker 2: those are important, and there are lots of cases and
Speaker 2: they will continue to grow, I believe. And this is
Speaker 2: one that I was asked to run a workshop at
Speaker 2: the ib ALM where you and I met most recently,
Speaker 2: I mean we met me often, but most recently ten
Speaker 2: twelve days ago, And my thing there to a bunch
Speaker 2: of marketers and other leaders was just the third one
Speaker 2: that we should be focusing on, not just the first two.
Speaker 2: First two are important, by the way, there's the third one.
Speaker 2: We are not focusing en half off, which is not
Speaker 2: just effectiveness and efficiency, but existential opportunity and risk.
Speaker 3: And what do I mean by existential opportunity and risk?
Speaker 2: I think AI is such a huge deal that it
Speaker 2: will allow a company to rethink its entire business, but
Speaker 2: it will also put itself at risk with someone who
Speaker 2: starts with a fresheet of paper. So someone who starts
Speaker 2: with a fresheet of paper and says I've got modern marketplaces,
Speaker 2: modern talent streams, and modern AI, I'm coming after you,
Speaker 2: they might come up with some very interesting ideas to
Speaker 2: take you on. And this is the version, This is
Speaker 2: the equivalent, it's not the exact equivalent.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: I would say there's a very good likelihood that five
Speaker 2: years from now there will be only three significant automobile
Speaker 2: companies in the world, and their names are going to
Speaker 2: basically be Tesla, Uber, and Weimo from Google and maybe
Speaker 2: some Chinese equivalent of that. Okay, but in the US
Speaker 2: it would basically be those three Ten years ago, General Motors,
Speaker 2: Ford Teyota were not thinking about any of these three companies, correct,
Speaker 2: And all of these three companies basically said, ask the
Speaker 2: following three questions, and these are called existential questions. So
Speaker 2: number one is the future of cars electric or internal
Speaker 2: combustion engine? Could the future of cars not be about
Speaker 2: hardware but about software? And third is do you actually
Speaker 2: need to buy a car? So think of people running
Speaker 2: these companies, what were their background? Hardware engineers, salespeople, and
Speaker 2: financial people. So somebody came around and said, I'm starting
Speaker 2: with the sheet of paper. I'm going to come and
Speaker 2: disrupt you. And today, even without the Trump bump, Tesla
Speaker 2: was worth five hundred billion dollars more than the next
Speaker 2: ten companies in the space, and the market has seen it.
Speaker 2: Now that's going to happen with AI in every category.
Speaker 2: And so the idea that I basically say is, don't
Speaker 2: just think about efficiency. Just don't think about effectiveness, think
Speaker 2: about existential opportunity to reimagine your business or existential threat.
Speaker 2: And in the digital world, the example I gave is
Speaker 2: very simple. In the digital world, in two thousand and two,
Speaker 2: I gave a talk to the newspaper society of some
Speaker 2: newspaper deal that was invited to speak to, and I
Speaker 2: basically said, ladies and gentlemen, you must readvent your industry
Speaker 2: because your real competition is this company that you're not
Speaker 2: paying attention to called Google. And it laughed at me.
Speaker 2: They were much bigger at that time. Okay, Google hadn't
Speaker 2: gone public. It was just before Google had gone public.
Speaker 2: Two years later, Google was bigger than the entire newspaper industry.
Speaker 2: Now it's very interesting. Let's suppose you when the newspaper
Speaker 2: industry and I told you about digital, and you thought
Speaker 2: about digital like AI, Oh, that's really cool.
Speaker 3: How do I make it more efficient and effective?
Speaker 2: So? How do I make my printing presses work faster?
Speaker 2: And how do I make my trucks the logistics of
Speaker 2: my truck moves so that they can deliver newspapers faster
Speaker 2: with less fuel. That's being efficient and effective. But the
Speaker 2: existential risk an opportunity was you don't need trucks or
Speaker 2: printing presses, right, And that is what most companies are
Speaker 2: not paying attention to, which is you're making an existing
Speaker 2: business model more efficient and effective. Yes, you need to
Speaker 2: do that, but could it be that your business model
Speaker 2: itself makes no sense in the new world.
Speaker 1: So you also said, AI of course provides a different
Speaker 1: level of access to knowledge, and it will be cost free.
Speaker 2: Knowledge will be completely free, so it'll be absolutely free.
Speaker 1: So what does it means for all type of advisors
Speaker 1: in today's world? And we talk about the agency world,
Speaker 1: the consultancy world, what about yourself as a kind of advisor.
Speaker 2: So yes, what basically happens is the good news is well,
Speaker 2: knowledge will be free, insight, intelligence, and wisdom will not
Speaker 2: that's number one. Yeah, But there is a real threat
Speaker 2: and it's one of the reasons that the advising part
Speaker 2: of my business is becoming smaller and smaller because I've
Speaker 2: sort of decided that that might be the one that's
Speaker 2: most under threat, and some other parts of it are
Speaker 2: currently growing, but even they might come under threat. You know,
Speaker 2: my book could be better written maybe by the next
Speaker 2: generation of you know, CHFGPT or whatever. But I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what the big difference is. This, what is basically
Speaker 2: happening is if you're most senior and let's say a
Speaker 2: consulting company and the consulting companies have three things that
Speaker 2: are really really I mean, consulting companies have lots of
Speaker 2: skill sets. But let's look at a McKenzie or a
Speaker 2: Bane or a BCG, all of whom I know well.
Speaker 2: And they're amazing companies with amazing talent. But what do
Speaker 2: they actually sell. They sell three things. One is they
Speaker 2: sell a body of knowledge and case studies through power
Speaker 2: point techs. Second is they sell CYA cover your ass
Speaker 2: the sea already knows what they want. They need to
Speaker 2: cover your ass person, okay. And the third thing is
Speaker 2: they sell the crystallized intelligence of their senior people who
Speaker 2: have seen so many things that they can connect dots
Speaker 2: and new ways. So I believe the connect dots and
Speaker 2: new ways and cover your ass part of their business
Speaker 2: is safe as long as there's still human beings running
Speaker 2: these companies, right. But the other part of their business,
Speaker 2: which is selling knowledge and databases and putting them all
Speaker 2: together in interesting ways. That is a significant threat. And
Speaker 2: to see that, and you already begin to see it.
Speaker 2: Almost every consulting company has delayed by a year many
Speaker 2: of the new people that they're taking in and have
Speaker 2: reduced the number of partners. So you're already seeing that.
Speaker 2: But to really see the threat to the white collar industry,
Speaker 2: you don't have to basically go to the consulting companies.
Speaker 2: You have to go to the law firms. Because the
Speaker 2: law firms are completely based on knowledge that's gone before, right,
Speaker 2: so everything is based on precedent. And what they had
Speaker 2: is they had lots of young associates who came from
Speaker 2: law school who spent five, six, seven years learning the
Speaker 2: law and precedent, and then they became you know, junior
Speaker 2: partner or whatever the hierarchy was. Now their whole stuff
Speaker 2: is I got chat, GPT or more importantly, what's really
Speaker 2: impressive for those people who haven't tried it, you know,
Speaker 2: try right now deep research from open Air.
Speaker 3: I haven't tried that.
Speaker 2: I've been playing because that came out about four five
Speaker 2: years ago and I've been running around, but I've been
Speaker 2: using prior to that, Google Deep Research and they can
Speaker 2: turn out such amazing decks so fast. So in effect,
Speaker 2: I think the law firms and the consulting firms will
Speaker 2: still be needed, but they'll be much smaller. Okay. And
Speaker 2: here's the issue, the fact that consulting firms are not
Speaker 2: adding significant number of employees when they is a littually
Speaker 2: a bonanza.
Speaker 3: Of work because of AI.
Speaker 2: So every company is asking them, the McKenzie and main
Speaker 2: and BCG about AI. So the demand is going through
Speaker 2: the roof, but they're not seeing the same amount of
Speaker 2: people being hired. So you're seeing already and there's demand
Speaker 2: for AI will not go forever through the roof.
Speaker 3: Then what happens?
Speaker 2: So I would basically say, I would almost you know.
Speaker 2: And that's that was a theme in my first book.
Speaker 2: So my first book had a chapter called how to
Speaker 2: upgrade your Mental Operating System. I now basically advise people
Speaker 2: how to upgrade your mental and emotional operating system. Okay,
Speaker 2: because the left part of our brain is going to
Speaker 2: be done easier by the machine. And I have an
Speaker 2: advanced degree in math, I know it's going to be
Speaker 2: done easier by the machine. The part of the business
Speaker 2: that's messy, which has to do with people and emotions
Speaker 2: and provenance and design and feeling will be what we'll
Speaker 2: still be at. And so it'll be how AI plus
Speaker 2: HI work. But HI is not just human intelligence, but
Speaker 2: it's human intuition, human imagination, human insight. So to that,
Speaker 2: and then the last thing I would sell people is
Speaker 2: because a lot of people say, how do you future
Speaker 2: proof your career? So I said, here's what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to future proof my career. And I haven't had a
Speaker 2: forty two year career, but I hope to have another
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen year career. And I'm always scared that
Speaker 2: I'll be irrelevant tomorrow. And I said, the fact that
Speaker 2: I'm running around scared to depth that I'll become irrelevant
Speaker 2: tomorrow and you, who are in your mid thirties and
Speaker 2: forties aren't makes me either think that I'm stupid or
Speaker 2: you're not awake one of those two. And maybe I'm stupid, Okay,
Speaker 2: But I said, yes, what I would do, I would
Speaker 2: basically spend time to learn the sixties and the six
Speaker 2: sies I tell people is cognition. Spend an hour a
Speaker 2: day learning creativity, which is connecting dots and due ways.
Speaker 2: What you do right Curiosity by asking new questions. And
Speaker 2: the other is we're going to be working with other
Speaker 2: people in these alien machines, so collaboration, convincing, which is
Speaker 2: how do you sell because everyone will have the same data.
Speaker 2: And the last thing, which is kind of very old school,
Speaker 2: is go back to school and learn how to write
Speaker 2: and speak because you have to be a really good
Speaker 2: writer a very good speaker otherwise people will read the
Speaker 2: crap that comes out of these machines.
Speaker 1: To be a storyteller, right, this is what we still love.
Speaker 1: So obviously we already moved into this core area of
Speaker 1: your new book, rethinking work for those who haven't had
Speaker 1: a chance to bite yet or to read it yet,
Speaker 1: tell people what is this all about? And also covering
Speaker 1: the five forces, the five trends you came up with,
Speaker 1: you know, which defines that huge impact to all of
Speaker 1: today's work.
Speaker 3: So very much.
Speaker 2: Simply, the reason I wrote the book is because I
Speaker 2: began to realize that there are three things that.
Speaker 3: Keep people happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the things that keep people happy tend to
Speaker 2: be physical and mental health, quality of relationships, and meaning
Speaker 2: and purpose at work. So if you have a good job,
Speaker 2: you're getting paid well, you enjoy yourself you're pretty good. Relationships,
Speaker 2: you're not pretty good life. To have a good life
Speaker 2: is pretty high. What I also began to realize is
Speaker 2: that if you have a meaningful and good job, you're
Speaker 2: likely to live longer and you tend to have better relationships.
Speaker 2: So work becomes very central. But work will change more
Speaker 2: between twenty twenty and twenty thirty than it has in
Speaker 2: the previous fifty years. And people basically are fixating on
Speaker 2: one thing, which is the least important of the five shifts,
Speaker 2: which is the impact on COVID on where you worked.
Speaker 2: And so this book basically says, wake up and smell
Speaker 2: the coffee. Work is changing, and even if COVID never
Speaker 2: happened and no one thought about where you worked, work
Speaker 2: would change dramatically this decade, more than it has before.
Speaker 2: So that's where identify the five forces, and the five
Speaker 2: forces are one is societal changes, like for instance, aging populations.
Speaker 2: The only group that's growing older outside of Africa is
Speaker 2: older people, so you know, they're twenty million people over
Speaker 2: eighty in Japan, over three hundred million people over sixty
Speaker 2: in China, eleven two hundred people turn sixty five every
Speaker 2: day in the United States. The second is declining populations
Speaker 2: outside of seven countries. This year, the population of the
Speaker 2: most countries will be the same or decline. In the
Speaker 2: United States, it takes two point one children per mother
Speaker 2: to keep the population the same. The people who currently
Speaker 2: live in the United States, they make one point six
Speaker 2: children per mother. So if the United States population is
Speaker 2: not going to decline from three thirty three to two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million in the next twenty five to
Speaker 2: thirty five years, you're going to have to let it immigrants.
Speaker 2: So nobody's talking about this, which is like, hey, without immigration,
Speaker 2: the US becomes a fast declining country. And you say,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? I said, go look at
Speaker 2: Korea point eight children per mother. You look at one
Speaker 2: point one the demographic problem of China, look at what's
Speaker 2: happening in northern Europe, even Spain one point three. Why
Speaker 2: that has to do with work is if you have
Speaker 2: fewer and fewer workers, and you have older and older workers,
Speaker 2: you might want to think about how you think about work.
Speaker 2: And then there's mindset differences. So young people would like
Speaker 2: the money and power of the old people, but they
Speaker 2: don't want to be like the old people. So they
Speaker 2: basically believe people who are seasoned like me, I call
Speaker 2: myself seasoned versus old. May have made too many fostian
Speaker 2: bargains to have a good life. We gave up too
Speaker 2: much to get what we had, And there's stuff is
Speaker 2: we can do it differently. But here's the other one.
Speaker 2: Seventy six percent of gen Z want to work for themselves.
Speaker 2: They don't want to work for a bus. So there's
Speaker 2: these these changes. There's obviously technology changes, of which AI
Speaker 2: just happens to be one, there's lots more. Third is marketplaces,
Speaker 2: the ability for you and I to do things like
Speaker 2: plug into marketplaces. You are basically utilizing a technology called riverside,
Speaker 2: which is the same thing that I use. We're basically talking.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know whether you're in New zeal
Speaker 2: in Miami or where you are. But the reality of
Speaker 2: it is when I do my podcast, I'm anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world, my guests are anywhere in the world, my
Speaker 2: showrunner is in Costa Rica, and my studio is in London. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: So this cloud based services change work. Then obviously the
Speaker 2: rise of gig work, where people don't realize is two
Speaker 2: out of three people who are young today who have
Speaker 2: a full time job in America have a side gig
Speaker 2: or side hustle with which they are making money. So
Speaker 2: people are planning optionality. And then there's COVID. But COVID's
Speaker 2: impact is not on where you work. That's the least important.
Speaker 2: It's what we think about work. So what we're now
Speaker 2: asking a question, which is, yes, work is important, but
Speaker 2: so is life. So how do I integrate the two.
Speaker 2: But I'm not going to basically lift to work, right,
Speaker 2: I need to figure out how to fit work into
Speaker 2: my life. I don't need to figure it out how
Speaker 2: to fit life into my work. And obviously all those
Speaker 2: are connected. You now have the ability to do basic things.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why small companies are growing
Speaker 2: so fast is because everyone has figured out that there's
Speaker 2: a new world order that you could do pretty much
Speaker 2: anything you want with modern technology, with modern ecosystems, with
Speaker 2: modern marketplaces, with modern mindsets. And that is fundamentally what
Speaker 2: the book says. But then what's particularly interesting. When I
Speaker 2: was writing the book, I had twelve CEOs read the
Speaker 2: book chapter by chapter who was writing them to get
Speaker 2: their feedback, and at the end of it, they basically said,
Speaker 2: you made us see things that we've never seen before, right,
Speaker 2: because I don't have a screen, I said, I'm just
Speaker 2: giving you facts like I'm not working for anybody. You
Speaker 2: can't call me back into the office, or I can
Speaker 2: make my own office. It doesn't matter for me. But
Speaker 2: I'm just giving you facts as to where you're looking.
Speaker 1: That wasn't super description of And I'm sure everybody's super
Speaker 1: excited to get this book and to jump right in.
Speaker 1: And obviously with all these multi level changes, it feels
Speaker 1: like it won't be called work anymore. Right, we talked
Speaker 1: about the work life balance in some way at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I don't think with doing several jobs at the same time,
Speaker 1: especially with the younger generation, that we won't go back
Speaker 1: into the office as we all knew this, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It won't be called works. It will become
Speaker 1: part of life. And also this description or this term
Speaker 1: will disappear.
Speaker 2: I tell you one of the things that will disappear
Speaker 2: before work disappears, the term that will disappear is a job.
Speaker 2: So jobs will disappear. There will be tasked to be done,
Speaker 2: problems to be solved, opportunities to be explored. And when
Speaker 2: we do that, some people will might call it work,
Speaker 2: others will call it medi but you know, passion, pursue it, craft,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. But that's, you know, one of those
Speaker 2: key things. And what I find particularly interesting, and this
Speaker 2: is for the people who are like more sedia like
Speaker 2: I used to be, or middle management. This book is
Speaker 2: actually very encouraging for middle management and senior people because
Speaker 2: in effect, one of the things that basically says is
Speaker 2: not only can we all update ourselves, but some of
Speaker 2: the knowledge we have, which is this crystallized intelligence, is
Speaker 2: very hard for the b sheets to replicate some of
Speaker 2: the knowledge we have, which is just you know, so
Speaker 2: our experience might be all the things we've gotten, our
Speaker 2: expertise is what's important to be able to connect dots.
Speaker 2: The experience is knowing all where the dots are that
Speaker 2: the machines will have, but how to connect them in
Speaker 2: a world where you have to deal with people, we will.
Speaker 1: Have, right, So, Richard, one of the final questions I
Speaker 1: have for today is which is really interesting for me?
Speaker 1: What's one belief or lesson you once held strongly but
Speaker 1: have since rethought Because we are all part of this,
Speaker 1: you know, changes, as we said, and were evolving every
Speaker 1: day as well. Is there anything you strongly believed in
Speaker 1: recent years where you thought, okay, that needs to be revalued,
Speaker 1: that needs to be rethought. I mean, this is no
Speaker 1: longer you know, I can share with my audience because
Speaker 1: it feels no longer valid or relevant.
Speaker 3: So there are many things.
Speaker 2: That I rethink, and in fact, part of what I
Speaker 2: think to a certain extent has kept me somewhat relevant
Speaker 2: is I've sort of rethought things. But year is one
Speaker 2: that I think we're going to struggle with coming up
Speaker 2: in one which I have myself rethought. The one I've
Speaker 2: rethought is I always used to think that in order
Speaker 2: to get access to people and to have a positive career,
Speaker 2: you needed to work for a company. And what I've
Speaker 2: discovered is you don't need to. And it isn't only
Speaker 2: people of my seasoning, which who's already built a reputation
Speaker 2: on a network. I see a lot of people doing that.
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting people leave their companies, but the opportunities
Speaker 2: and options out there are far bigger than I ever
Speaker 2: used to think. That's number one. Here's the other thing
Speaker 2: that I think that a lot of people are going
Speaker 2: to have to think about, which is most of us
Speaker 2: have thought for years and years that we are marketing
Speaker 2: to people, and then sometimes we used to think maybe
Speaker 2: we're marketing to an algorithm through which we're going to
Speaker 2: get to people. I believe we're about to see that
Speaker 2: we're going to be marketing to agents that represent the people.
Speaker 2: And I don't call an agent an agent. I've had
Speaker 2: this amazing term because what I do is I have
Speaker 2: a lot of different people around the world teaching me.
Speaker 2: So literally, I have five hours a week set aside
Speaker 2: for world class people to teach me. So one hour,
Speaker 2: for instance, is my publicist window where top people from
Speaker 2: publicists come and say here's why you're stupid. Okay, not
Speaker 2: top people, they're talented people, which is maybe different than top,
Speaker 2: but one of them the other day basically said, hey, Richard,
Speaker 2: there are two things you want to think about. Number
Speaker 2: one is we may not be marketing to people, will
Speaker 2: be marketing to agents. But don't call agents agents because
Speaker 2: it sounds really thing. Call them chief of staff. So
Speaker 2: each of us are going to have a chief of staff,
Speaker 2: which will be an agent, and people will have to
Speaker 2: talk to our chief of staff. But our chief of
Speaker 2: staff is deeply rational versus emotional, and I basically be
Speaker 2: saying the one way to sell is through sell through emotion.
Speaker 2: So I'm now big need to say, is that true anymore? Right?
Speaker 3: In a story and spreadsheet world?
Speaker 2: Could the spreadsheet overwhelm the story because I've got a
Speaker 2: chief of staff versus a human being that I'm dealing with,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of one of the issues.
Speaker 3: The other one is the following.
Speaker 2: Most of what we've basically been thinking about in the
Speaker 2: modern world of media has been the world of search
Speaker 2: and the world of streams. So when you think about
Speaker 2: how we interface with digital media, it's either through a
Speaker 2: search thing including chat, GPT or perplexity or Google Search,
Speaker 2: whatever it is, or through streams right TikTok, metter x
Speaker 2: whatever it is on Netflix streams, So those are the streams.
Speaker 2: What happens when the future is conversations, all marketings, conversations.
Speaker 2: Why shouldn't I be able to ask questions, interrogate the
Speaker 2: company or my chief of staff, interrot they get the company.
Speaker 2: What happens in the world when we go from not
Speaker 2: only obviously search will be there, streams will be there,
Speaker 2: but now you've got conversations and what happens in the
Speaker 2: world where instead of basically just talking to people. We're
Speaker 2: talking to the a chief of staff, which happens to
Speaker 2: be these alien life form machines call AI. And I'm
Speaker 2: sitting out there and this is the only time that
Speaker 2: I basically like the fact that I've become seasoned, which
Speaker 2: is my whole stuff is Oh shit, that's such a
Speaker 2: hard problem. Thank god I don't have to solve it.
Speaker 1: But you delivered so much advice also in this what
Speaker 1: is it nearly an hour or so we talk about today,
Speaker 1: and I feel it could go on and on and
Speaker 1: there would be so much more value for leaders, young people,
Speaker 1: everybody who is in this let's call it sil work
Speaker 1: environment of course, that we think about their careers, doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what age. It was an absolute masterclass this conversation.
Speaker 3: And thank you very.
Speaker 2: Much, Ed, Well, thank you for inviting me, and for
Speaker 2: the people who are listening. It'd be great if you
Speaker 2: buy my book, you know, cos whatever, if it's in
Speaker 2: India it's four hundred repees. In the US, it's twenty
Speaker 2: nine dollars because they haven't still discounted it anywhere. But
Speaker 2: let's suppose you can't afford to or you don't want to, Okay,
Speaker 2: I think the book is great. I'm not saying this
Speaker 2: the other stuff I'm about to tell you to replace
Speaker 2: the book. It won't. But a lot of what I
Speaker 2: truly believe, like you question and a lot of other
Speaker 2: senior people who have been fortunate to do well, is
Speaker 2: a lot of joy I get is from teaching people
Speaker 2: and giving stuff away for free. So I write my
Speaker 2: Sunday Substack, which you know, which is now read by
Speaker 2: thirty thousand people every Sunday, and that's free. And then
Speaker 2: I have this podcast where you were a guest and
Speaker 2: I've talked to a lot of different people, which is
Speaker 2: also free, and so you can listen to the podcast.
Speaker 2: We learned from a lot of smart people, not me.
Speaker 2: You can hear from my writing, and my writing is
Speaker 2: sometimes about other people, so it's not about me either.
Speaker 2: And then you know, maybe you'll become so successful you
Speaker 2: can buy the book, but you don't have to buy
Speaker 2: the book to get free stuff. That's right.
Speaker 1: There are so many different ways to get access to
Speaker 1: all your insights and wisdoms, but ideally you do all
Speaker 1: of it right. Because it's a different format, it's a
Speaker 1: different intensity.
Speaker 2: People who read my book love it to people who
Speaker 2: read my book there's the best of my thinking on
Speaker 2: a particular topic. But there's an additional edge to it,
Speaker 2: which is really cool. I've had world class editors, fact checkers,
Speaker 2: aline people, so it's actually one hundred percent legal, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent fact checked, edited because that's what HarperCollins does.
Speaker 2: So you can trust everything in the book. Would you
Speaker 2: may not able to trust something in my substack. There's
Speaker 2: nobody fact checks it. This is one Everything is fact.
Speaker 1: Checked, and the beauty is people have a choice, but
Speaker 1: there is no excuse. You get access to at least
Speaker 1: some of all your insights in different ways, and our
Speaker 1: recommendation and my recommendation to our audience is tried out.
Speaker 1: If you're not subscribing already, it is definitely worth so
Speaker 1: we shall thank you so much. It's been an honor
Speaker 1: and I can't wait for our next conversation and a
Speaker 1: lot of more insights coming from you. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks for tuning in everyone once again. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Christian More. If you have a question or
Speaker 1: suggestion to me, reach out send me DM on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1: If you're curious to learn more about possible sign up
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Speaker 1: at the Possible Show in Miami. Visit Possible event dot com.
Speaker 1: Possible Now is a co production of iHeartMedia and Possible.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Ryan Martz and Yasmin Melandez. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Meredith Barnes. Special thanks to Colleen Lawrence
Speaker 1: Mack from our programming team. Our theme music is composed
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