77. Rajeev Kapur: Author of Chase Greatness

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 77 of our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author Rajiv Kapoor. Rajiv is a seasoned high-tech executive who's an expert at leading and driving innovation at entrepreneurial startups, $20 to $100 million plus mid-sized companies, and Fortune 500 companies such as Dell, where he built winning teams globally, including in China and India. Rajeev is currently the CEO of 1105 Media, a leading provider of B2B marketing, where he oversees a diverse portfolio of companies. He's also a member of YPO and has keynoted tech events around the world. Our conversation today is all about his brand new book, Chase Greatness: Enlightened Leadership for the Next Generation of Disruption. As you'll hear today, I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and I'm actively working to change my leadership style as a result. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with Rajeev Kapoor. Well, Rajiv, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

Fantastic, Nick. Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

Yeah, and congratulations on the new book. So before we dive into it, I'd love to have you introduce yourself to the audience and tell everybody a little bit about who you are.

Absolutely. But first, again, thank you so much. I really appreciate this. I think you do an amazing job and great work. So thank you to everything that you do to help promote books and leaders and everything that you do. So I think it's awesome. So a little bit about myself, obviously my name, Rajiv Kapoor. I am I'm currently CEO of my third company. It's a B2B marketing and media services company called 1105. No special meaning behind that name. It just is what it is. But I've kind of been a CEO leader for the last 15, 16 years. Prior to that, I was an executive at Dell for a long time, where I did everything from starting off on phone sales, worked for Michael for a little while, managed the Western region, eventually went to Asia for Dell, helped in China, launched India, a bunch of other stuff. And so Master's from USC, married, got 2 great sons. I have a 3rd son called Chewy, who's my Labradoodle dog, who's laying at my feet right now. As you know, much to your chagrin, I'm a big Laker fan, and unfortunately today's the 2nd anniversary of Kobe's passing. So I like to write a little bit in my spare time. So as you know, I wrote the book, and then for fun, I wrote a movie screenplay, and I got an agent recently. So that was kind of cool. So that's kind of a little bit of a high-level thing. And hopefully that resonates and connects with some people.

No, I think it does. I think you've done a lot. I think when I look at you, I say, wow, I wish I, I can accomplish that much over the next X number of years. So I think you have a lot of—

I'm way older than you. So you got plenty of time. I think you're gonna pass me up.

Well, I'm excited to see what happens. But there's a lot to unpack there. So first, let's talk a little bit about the book Chase Greatness. It's newly released. And why don't you tell everybody a little bit about why you wrote the book, sort of the 30,000-foot view of what the book is about and maybe who the target audience was when you were writing it?

Yeah, I know. Happy to. So why I wrote the book. So I had the concept of the book in my head for the last 4 or 5 years and something I've always wanted to do. And I just never did it. Just work and life and kids and everything takes over and I'll do it tomorrow. And Then a couple things happened in 2020, right? First, obviously, you know, Kobe passed and, you know, you wake up one morning and you realize you're not promised tomorrow, right?

Hmm.

There was that. And then COVID hit. And when COVID hit, we lost half our business and— or I lost half my business, I should say. And in the process of that, you know, I needed something to do for my own mental wellness and my own kind of ability to kind of compartmentalize things of what was happening in the world. And so I said, you know what, I'm gonna write this book. And so I took out all the notes I had and there was chicken scratch everywhere and Post-it notes everywhere and stuff on my laptop and stuff in a folder and stuff on, you know, so I kind of started rearranging things and I said, I think I got some— I think I got something here. And it was about leadership. And one of the things I started doing was researching what was happening with leadership, what's happening in the workforce. And mind you, this was back in 2020. And I think we're seeing a lot of it, what's happening today. I kind of was thinking about a couple of years ago. And so, I just said, you know what? I'm going to start writing this book and I did. I found a publisher and I'm a member of this organization called YPO, which stands for Young Presidents Organization. Obviously, I'm a lot older now but I joined it when I was younger. It's a great organization if you ever want to be the president and CEO of a company, you're looking for like a place to go to for like-minded people to learn. It's a great thing to be a part of. I found a publisher through there and we talked about it and he saw what I was doing and he realized I needed some help on the editing side and some other things and so, So I did that. Look, ultimately the book is essentially about what I call the future of leadership. And what I found in my research, Nick, was that in the next 3 years or so, the majority of the workforce is going to be Gen Z, millennial. And in that, it's going to be women and it's going to be a much more diverse workforce. And it's going to be also a much more inclusive workforce. Right. And that's not just in the States. It's going to be all over the world.

Right?

In order to— in that group that's coming up, which is kind of your generation and a lot of people probably listening, they require a different type of leadership. I mean, look, Gen Z and millennials speak a whole kind of different language, right? I mean, I'm from the age of like, I was in high school when Cobra Kai was Karate Kid, right? And so times change, right? And so our thinking, if you're kind of in that 40 to 50+ range, 60 range, your thinking has to change with it. Otherwise, your culture won't evolve at the company you're at. And if it doesn't evolve, you're going to lose people. And if you lose people, it's going to cost you millions of dollars in retraining people and lost productivity and whatever the case might be, right? And I think we're seeing that now, and it's all down to the fact that companies don't have really strong culture. So, so that was the essential premise of what I wanted to do after I saw that. But then the other thing I saw is not only did you have this changing diversity and inclusive workforce that's coming. You also have a huge jump in side hustles, a huge jump in startups. And you started seeing that Gen Z and millennials wanted to— they literally have to have second jobs in order to kind of make ends meet. They want to have a lot more passive income. They want to do other things and sell stuff on Amazon or Etsy or Airbnb something out, right? Or whatever it is.

That's how BookThinkers started.

Or like Fiverr or whatever it is, right? So you started seeing this happening. I'm like, whoa, that's crazy. Like, I didn't have to do that, right? I mean, I could pay my rent, I could buy a house, I could afford a car, right? And I started realizing that a lot of this generation coming up is going to struggle with that, right? So then the other thing I saw— so you have this enlightenment thing happening, right? So the Age of Enlightenment is what I call it in the book, right? So you have this age of enlightenment. I didn't coin that, obviously, because there were Age of Enlightenments before this, but you have an Age of Enlightenment coming in my view because a lot more art's getting done. Like, you could be an artist in India and have 50,000 followers and sell your artwork and make a ton of money. Right. You, you could be, you know, somebody who does pottery in, you know, in the middle of Siberia and have access to a smartphone and figure out how to do something. Right. And monetize it. Right. I read a story about a guy in Kenya who's 22, 20, maybe, you know, maybe around your age who decided he was going to start making little TikTok videos about life hacks in Africa. And now he's worth like $2 million. So there's a whole new creative world happening. Like, like there's this enlightenment happening, a different kind of enlightenment. It's not like Picasso and Rembrandt, but it's a whole different kind of thing, right? But then on the other side, you have this amazing emergence of AI and technology and metaverse and IoT and all these other things. And for the first time, you're seeing an enlightened kind of period and a revolution, an industrial revolution or technology revolution kind of merging for the first time. So you have that happening, that happening, and then you got a whole new workforce coming coming up on top of that. So all those things combined are going to change the way we do work. And if you want to be successful, your leadership style has to change. So that was the premise of the book. You know, that was saying, look, you know what? You have to change. And the other thing in the book, right? And, you know, I don't want to talk too much about this, but I do take a little bit of a shot at politicians. Right. Because, look, you can't write a leadership book and not talk about politics just a little bit. You have to do that. Right. Because It doesn't matter if you're right or left or whatever, whatever side of the spectrum you fall on. The bottom line here is this younger generation doesn't trust anybody. And so, but you know who they want to trust? They want to trust their CEO. They want to trust their president. They want to trust the leader of their business. And it's up to the leaders of the business to realize we're going to do more than think about what's happening in the walls of the business. We're also going to try to make it a better life for our employees outside the walls of the business. And that's what I call enlightened Leadership.

Yeah, we're gonna dive a little bit more into the definition of enlightened leadership and talk a little bit about servant leadership in just a couple of minutes. But before we get there, I noticed in the acknowledgments section that you highlight your wife, Mina, for sort of helping you start the book, design it, give you the space to finish it. So what was the writing process like for you? I, I ask selfishly, because I'm in the process of starting my first book. And so I always like to get a little bit of insight Like, how long did it take you? What was the timeline? What was the most difficult part? That sort of stuff.

So it took about 18 months. And, you know, my kids are older, right? Sean is a junior at USC, Nick's a freshman at the University of Miami. And so, you know, we didn't really have a lot of kid demands. And so I'd come home from work, and there's evenings, and, you know, my in-laws were living with us at the time. And I found that I had time to do other things, and it was my way of doing it. And so, you know, it was— she was very supportive, and so that was great. I really appreciate that. She obviously gave feedback on the COVID and we took that feedback to other family and friends, and they all kind of liked her thoughts and ideas. So there was there, and so she just, you know, very supportive. So we're really grateful for that. But yeah, the overall process really was, you know, you got— you just start writing, right? And I write how I talk, and so it doesn't make for a real cohesive book because sometimes I'm all over the place with my thoughts and my talking. And so You know, I did need to get some help, so I did get that editor from the publisher. And what I found when writing the book is there was gaps. So in the book, when you read the book, you know, there's the story about Napoleon, right?

Mm-hmm.

In the early part of the book, the story about Napoleon. And the editor helped me figure that out, right? The editor helped me say, you know, help me kind of find those filler pieces as you go chapter to chapter to chapter to help make a point, you know. But it was that, and then it was just a matter of figuring out what type of book do I want to— do I want to just write a book that people just read once and put away. I did want to write a book where people could refer back to it. So that's why in the book— so I have these little stories, right? I have the Steve Jobs story and I have these little stories that kind of kick off each chapter. But then at the end of the book, I have questions that you should ask yourself as a leader. Right. So I have those questions. And the idea there is that I kind of wanted to make the book a little bit— have a little bit of a workbook feel to it as well, where after you read the chapter and you have those questions. So, for example, I think at the end of the first chapter, one of the questions is, hey, as a CEO, or as a leader, ask your employees if they were offered the same exact money doing the exact same thing for another company, would they leave? And if the answer is yes, you've got a culture problem, right? So I wanted to have that at the end of every chapter, kind of thought-provoking questions for them to sit down and think and maybe refer back to, right? Take that book and give it to the HR person or give it to their team or their staff or whatever the case might be to say, hey, take a look at this. Have we ever thought about doing that? So I did that. And then at the end of the book, You know, I knew, especially in the day of social media, I've come up with these kind of Kapur rules or Kapur lessons, you know, whatever you want to call them. But it's called Kapur Rules and small little bite-sized things that people could take and learn and just kind of keep in the back of their heads, you know, motivationally type things, you know, things like that. And so we use those on social media. There's 32 of them in the book. I've got another 180 of them in my phone all saved up. So, so that's something we'll keep adding to it as well. So I knew it kind of had the structure in place, but then I did need some help fill it in and all those kinds of things. So, so you have to put your ego aside a little bit and realize, you know, you need help. So I asked for the help and I got it.

Now, I appreciate that insight. And I like— I mean, we'll talk a little bit about some of those questions at the end of each chapter and the stories because they do make things feel actionable. And you talked about, is this a one-time experience or does somebody go back to this book over and over? And I think those questions, they cause you to go back over and over and they cause you to apply what you're reading directly into your life. And so books that can become prescriptive instead of just descriptive, I think that's a very important step to take as an author. So I'm happy that you did that. Last question before we actually dive into the meat and potatoes here. So in the foreword, I know Matthew Dean talks about your old school sales skills. And as a guy that grew up in a software sales environment right out of college and applied a lot of the same things that he talked about, I'd love to have you describe maybe some of the more wacky things that you did to get the attention of a potential customer.

Wow. So we used to do things on— so when I was at So I was kind of always a natural salesperson kind of thing. That was my thing, you know? So remember The Wolf of Wall Street where he says, sell me this pencil, right? Sell me this pen. We used to do that in interview questions back in the early '90s at Dell. I mean, so that was not new, right? So we used to do that stuff to candidates all the time, right? But I think the wackiest thing we used to do, the things I've done, is we used to run what I call plays, like a football play, right? And this past weekend of football was probably the greatest weekend of football I think I've ever seen. Yeah, it was. It was crazy, right? But we used to run what we call plays. And a play is figuring out who's the decision maker at the company you want to go after. So let's say, for example, let me ask you a question. If you could get in front of any decision maker at any company, you know, to maybe buy your services, whatever it might be, who would it be?

For me, it'd be the CEO, person in charge. Yeah, at a publishing house or, or at a large book.

So let's just say Random House.

Yep.

just for the sake of argument, or Simon& Schuster, doesn't matter, right? Okay. So you're going to want to go after the CEO because he or she is the top decision maker at this place. So we used to run what we call play. So we will always— at Dell and these places, we wanted to go after the CIO, right? Or the CTO, because, you know, they were the key decision makers. They controlled the budgets of what technology deployed with desktops, laptops, servers, storage, all those things that they wanted, licensing stuff. So we used to run plays. And so what we did was the sales team would work with the marketing teams. We gave them a list of, okay, these are the people we want to go after. Marketing would then go and my team would create these things called plays. And what we would do is we would run different things. So we would send, for example, one of the things we did is we worked with them. So in New York, for example, in your case, what we would do is if I was your marketing guy, we would find, you know, these guys are all in New York, right? So we would go to a New York bakery And we would have them bake a pie. All right. And we would have them bake the pie with one piece of pie missing. Right. So just like a Trivial Pursuit piece missing, we'd have them have that piece missing. And we would have them place a little note in there that says, hey, with Nick and BookThinkers, you get the whole pie. And then we have that pie delivered to the secretary, to the CEO's Assistant or secretary, right? Wow! I just got a pie. This is cool. No one ever does that. So that's an example. So then you call up and say, "Hey, John, Jane, whatever the person's name is. Did you get my pie? Oh my God! That was so sweet of you. Very nice. I really want to get in and see Rajiv. And you got some time, you know, Nick. Okay, great. You either get in or tell you what. Send me the information. I'll make sure that he or she gets it." put it on their desk, or tell you what, they're really busy, reach back out to me in a couple months, or you know what, there's just not going to be an opportunity for you, right? But you get an engagement, right? So that's an example of a play. And when we do those kinds of plays, we probably saw 70% engagement at some levels. You know, another one we used to do, one of the— another one we did was we, we took old, you know, the golf clubs where you can screw them together. So we sent golf kits. That one we did in a partnership with Microsoft, and we unscrewed the head of the golf club We just gave them the shaft. So we'd send them the golf club with a ball and said, hey, if you want the head, please call us and we'll come by and deliver it for a quick discussion. And there was some other kind of marketing jargon that go with it, but they all wanted it because they wanted the head of the golf club, right? So everybody said yes. Another one we did was before smartphones, right? There was a time before smartphones. Remember walkie-talkies? So I remember we would send them one walkie-talkie And on that, with a note that says, hey, with Dell and your sales team, you're going to have great 2-way communication. So if you want the second walkie-talkie, call us, we'll deliver it. Right? So stuff like that, right? So those are things that we, that we would do to try to get people's attention. And this kind of data, you have to be different, right? And, and that's, I think, a good segue into the fact that the workforce is going to be very different in the future as well.

Yeah, just, just real quick, one of the ones that I did back in the day, because I, like I said, I used to read about all of these sales tactics, and I love both of those. I didn't, I didn't ever tried either of those. But I would buy these little toy clocks on Amazon. And I would set the hands to 5 minutes apart. So it'd be like 12:05 or something like that. And I would just put a little business card in there that said, hey, I'd love 5 minutes of your time. And so, you know, how often are these people getting physical pieces of mail these days? Everybody just sends one LinkedIn message and okay, now my prospecting is over. I mean, obviously, you're operating at a very high level. So it's pretty cool to see into the mind of a great sales guy. And I can see that you're a great sales guy. In the way that you approach the world. And Matthew talks about your secret to success being empathy. So we'll kind of— we'll dive into some of the meat and potatoes of the book, because I want to make sure that we highlight some of this information so that potential listeners can determine if the book is going to be a good fit for them and their businesses.

Yeah.

Let's see. So you just talked about the workforce being different as a good transition point. You said that 75% of the workforce by 2025 is going to be Gen Zs and millennials. Is that true?

Yeah, that's what the research shows.

Yeah, it's a big difference.

Well, if you think about what's happening, right, is boomers are retiring, right? And so, you know, the next 3 years, the kids that were born in 2020, 2021, 2022 are all going to be 25, 24, 23-year-olds. And you think about back in Dell in the early '90s, you know what the average age of the company was when I joined Dell in 1993? It was 23 years old. Yeah.

And you say that these, these younger Gen Z and millennial types, they care more about who they're working for. They've got an activist mindset. And so that's part of this enlightened leadership idea is that you need to integrate some of these social movements, and some of these outside things that, that these Gen Zs and millennials care about. Otherwise, they're not going to work at your business, they will leave and employee turnover will be even higher than it is today.

Yeah. I mean, look, ultimately at the end of the day, I don't care what anybody says, money's going to be an important thing. Money will always be an important thing, especially right now with a shortage of workers. Supply and demand just tells you that raise and inflation, salaries are going to be going up. But ultimately the money might get the employee in the door, but your culture, how you treat people, how you treat your customers is what's going to keep them in the door. So that's what's important. And if you don't have that focus, if you're not focusing on that culture, if you're not focusing on what I call the key hot buttons that Gen Z and millennials are really into, then you're going to have a problem. You're going to have turnover. I'll give you an example. Right now, look, my company average age is a little bit older for what we do. We kind of have a group where it's about 30 to 40% is kind of younger workers and the rest are kind of older workers. And what I mean by that is older is kind of over 40 kind of But we, right now, our turnover rates, knock on wood, are really, really low. We've had people boomerang back in. Why? Because we spent a ton of time every day thinking about how we can continue to build a great culture at 1105. You know, to me, and what I tell the team, is my internal customer is all my employees. To me, my internal customer is just as important as my external customer, because I know that if I'm taking care of my internal customer, then my external customers are going to be great because the team's happy. We're doing well. We're doing great. Right. So that's what's key. And that's a little bit of backward thinking, right? Most people say, oh, just take care of your customer, external customer. Like, oh my God, you got to take care of Dell. You got to take care of Random House. Yeah, that's fine. You do. But if you've got great teams, right, if you've got great people working, then, you know, then they're going to automatically— you give them the tools to do the job, you know, they're going to take care of those people. And so, you know, when you think about how the workforce is changing, if you think about what's important, if you just think about millennials, right, Millennials have gone through quite a bit. Y2K dot-com bubble burst. They were young. They saw their parents go through that. 9/11. 2000, 2000, 2007, 2008 economic collapse. Pandemic. Work from homes. Whatever the case might be. My older son is a junior at USC, but this back in September was the first day he stepped foot on campus in 2 years. So kids are missing out on those things. And so the young adults are missing out on those things. So they need that sense of community from the places they work? And what are some of those hot buttons? I call them the Jedi. This group is interested in things like justice, social justice, in the environment, what's happening with climate change. They're interested in diversity and they're interested in inclusion. So that's how I get my Jedi. That's my Star Wars reference for the talk.

No, I love it. I love how you go through some of those categories or the descriptive characteristics of the activist mindset, because it's important for a leader listening to today's show to know sort of what those words are and how they can start to work towards including them in their leadership style. Now, in the ways that I've been describing enlightened leadership to my friends and family over the past couple of weeks, as I jumped into the book and started to understand it a little bit more, I sort of use servant leadership as the base and then build on top of it. So can you describe sort of how you define it in the book by using servant leadership as a, as the base and then sort of growing on top of it? Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any Premium Selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up, but I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now, back to today's episode. Yeah.

Well, you said the right thing, right? So servant— first of all, what is servant leadership? Servant leadership is, hey, I work— CEO, I'm the CEO, Nick, and I work for you. I'm here to make sure that you are successful. You use me however you want to use me, point me in that direction to help you take that hill kind of a thing. I work for you. And servant leadership is very much focused on the inner workings of what's happening in the business. It's a— people who practice servant leadership are not authoritarian. They're much more diverse in their thinking. You know, decision-making is not solely done at the CEO level. It's kind of a bit broader, a little bit, maybe, maybe one layer down below, right? So Quite a few people practice servant leadership, and I think it's great. But to me, with the changing workforce, I think the foundation of servant leadership is going to be strong, is going to be needed, but I think we're going to have to go one level above. And that's what I call enlightened leadership. This is not about being woke or anything, right? It's just about being able to step back and realize we got to do a little bit more. So what does that mean? Number one, it means that you want to try to do everything you can to make your decision— your decision-making happen closer to the customer. So you want to be able to diversify your workforce, you want to diversify your decision-making that says, okay, you know, we're going to do everything we can to push decisions out of the corporate executive management team and down closer to the customer as possible. We want to make sure we empower our team more. That's kind of number one. But number two is it's about realizing and understanding that because this changing workforce is happening, because this great realignment is happening, because people want to make sure that they can go to the beach in the future, that there's going to be a place that they can be able to enjoy things that their parents, their grandparents, great-grandparents were able to enjoy, you have to be able to step back for a second and say, okay, the bottom line is incredibly important. Because after all, if we're not making any profit, we're not driving cash, we're not going to have a business. People are not going to have jobs. That's fine. I get it. No problem. I'm a CEO. I do it. We had a great year last year. We had a record-breaking year in terms of what we've been able to do from our profitability, from our cash and all those things. But at the same time, We made big donations to an organization called Operation Smile, where we donated $10 for every campaign we ran as a company. We gave our employees a paid day off to go vote. We made Juneteenth a holiday. So we offer now 2 mental wellness days. So my point here is that you want to start thinking beyond just the inner workings of the business and the bottom line and ask yourself, what is some of the purpose that we can drive for our employees outside the walls of the business? And that's essentially what enlightened leadership Enlightened leadership is saying, not only going to take care of you inside the walls of the business, we're going to do the things— we're going to do everything we can to help you outside of the walls of the business. And that's basically what enlightened leadership is.

Now, I know a big portion of my audience is young, so they are the Gen Zers and they are the millennials. I'm a millennial. I'm right on the cusp. So how can this book benefit an employee who's not in a leadership position yet, but is looking to sort of lead up the change and voice their opinion about activism and make sure that their leaders are aware of these concepts outside of just handing the book to them, which I'm sure could be a good solution? But what are some of the things that an employee can do?

Look, that's a terrific question. Look, number one is I think the book is a great— obviously I'm biased, but from what I've heard and from other people have read and seen, and I think, you know, I'll let you comment as well. From what I've read, from what I've seen and I've heard from people and people that— and I've had people now starting to reach out to me randomly on LinkedIn and Instagram and other places about how the book is really changing how they think about work and how their life and all those kinds of things— is that the book is a great guide on how to kind of start working your way up that chain to become a CEO or become— or to become in that C-suite, whatever the case might be. It might take a little bit of time. So it's definitely— so there's definitely that. But the most important thing that they can do in terms of trying to effect change within the company is, is to start small with themselves. Ask yourself, you know, what can you start doing in your day-to-day work to become a little bit more enlightened? And then start having those conversations with some of your teammates. Then sit down in your one-on-ones with your managers and say, hey, you know what? I think we've got a great idea that if we do this, you know, and if we can blow through these targets, perhaps maybe we can take some money and donate it to a a local food bank, you know, for example, right? Is being able to come up with those kinds of things. And right now is the time because, you know, there's, there's, you know, the workforce is changing. I think, I think HR departments are very open to some of these ideas and some of these suggestions. But at the same time, it's not going to be easy because, you know, remember, you know, it's like turning a ship. It's like turning an aircraft carrier, right? You know, you got it. It's going to take time. It's going to be slow, but you can't give up. You can't— you can get frustrated at times. I'm sure that there's probably things that I do that my team doesn't like, you know, that maybe I'm still slow to adapt to. But, you know, but if you're open-minded and if you are— if you're willing to take that feedback, it'll work. It'll eventually, you know, make its way up. But, you know, you just got to be patient. And you got to just, you know, and start small. You know, don't go for the home run swing because what will happen is most likely you might miss and then you might get frustrated and you might say, F it. I'm going to put it away. I'm not going to do anything. So no, start small, take baby steps, get your small little wins, and then just go from there.

We were talking before I pressed record about my reflections on the book so far and analyzing my business at Book Thinkers and the other roles that I have in life and how I can start to be more of an enlightened leader. And so when I look at Book Thinkers, I think, you know what? I don't have a huge team of employees or anything, but I have a really big community that I'm responsible for. And I communicate in front of these people on a regular basis. I was sharing with you that years ago, probably around 2016, I decided to take a big step away from the news. I decided to take a big step away from social issues or social movements that were happening in the world because my community wasn't just in the United States, it was worldwide. And I wanted to make sure that I didn't create any division amongst the people that were learning from these books. I wanted to be sort of agnostic, but now talking with you, reading the book, I think there are certain things that I can do with my community. One small example for the audience is I'm thinking about a way to incorporate a charitable contribution each time I work with an author to help them promote their books. I should be giving back to the community in some other way outside of just sending books and doing giveaways and stuff like that. I should be donating money that I'm earning to some sort of reading-related social movement. And I've got to do some research and figure out what that might look like, but that's just an example of what I'm paying attention to and how I'm starting to reintegrate myself back into the world outside of Book Thinkers.

Yeah, I know that. I'm really proud of you for thinking of that, right? I mean, to me, I would think like, how can you support local libraries? You know, those kinds of things. How can you help maybe underprivileged children, you know, and help fund, you know, some books for them and maybe in communities that might be underserved. So I think you're thinking about the right thing, but that's an example, right? So you're doing well, you're starting to grow your business, you know, knock on wood, you continue to do well. But it's okay to take, you know, a nickel on the dollar to say, hey, you know what, I'm gonna, you know, or a penny on the dollar, whatever you think you can afford. But even if every little small thing helps, but here's the thing about media. Look, I'm in B2B media, so it's really not all that controversial, right? B2B media is probably the most boring media you can find, right?

Yeah.

I mean, look, look, we support companies like Dell and Amazon. No one's going to go to Dell's website for fun, right? No one goes to Dell's website to read the news. If you're going to go to Dell's website, you're either in the market for a computer or you have a problem, right? Now, let's talk about media. To me, Probably about maybe only one of the only things I probably agree with, with our former president, is the media is a real challenge to the world. And the reason why is remember this: media is driven. Media, just like every other company in the world, is driven by money and profitability. Well, here's the thing: controversy creates cash. Right? The more the reason why people stop and look at a car chase. Is because like, oh my God, what's going to happen? Right? People are not going to— you don't see the media throwing up, oh, look at the traffic just moving on nicely. They're only showing the car chase. So for, you know, the media is going to highlight things that are going to get them eyeballs. And if they get more eyeballs, they can charge more advertising. Right? But what gets more eyeballs? Controversy, issues, challenges, negative things that are happening. A disaster, unfortunately, whatever the case may be, those things get eyeballs. The media is going to always skew to finding the extreme side of what's happening. And a lot of times that gets caught up. And that's why I'm not a big fan of the media either. I stopped watching all— it doesn't matter whether it's Fox or CNN or MSNBC or whatever. I've stopped it all. I'll watch CNBC a little bit for stocks and investments. And I kind of filter through on my phone or what I want to watch or read. And So you just got to be careful of those kinds of things. You can't let that stuff poison your mind.

Yeah, no, it's a great perspective. And I think I lumped social movements with media together a little bit too much over the last couple of years. And I, I just decided to take a big step back. I'm like, I just need to have a fresh, sort of clear vision of my business and what I'm working on and ignore the rest. But that's not what an enlightened leader would do. An enlightened leader says, okay, here are the important social issues to integrate into my business and to pay attention to and to talk about. And so those are some things that I'm rethinking. And that's why I'm reading these books. It helps diversify my perspective. And I look at you as somebody who does that really well. And anyway, thank you for that, because I think it's gonna— Oh, you're welcome. It's gonna help additional people through my business. So, okay, chapter 1, you talk about the psychology of leadership. And you even bring it back to names like Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar. So here's my question. You say that power is an amplifier. So whoever we were beforehand simply gets louder once you have more power as a leader. How does that play into leadership moving forward? How does the redistribution of power happen from people who just want to take advantage to people who want to give to other people? Like, how's that going to work?

Well, here's the thing, right? Everything has a natural cycle. Everything takes time to evolve. And right now we're going through a leadership evolution. So leadership today is going to— if we had to look 10 years in the future, it's going to be completely different. Right? I mean, servant leadership didn't all of a sudden show up. Servant leadership was introduced back in the early '90s, you know, and it took 10, 15 years for it to kind of catch on. The same thing is here. I hope this idea of enlightened leadership takes off. That'd be great. Right? But look, if, if you are a leader— first of all, let's back up. What you're seeing in the world right now with this great realignment, what you're seeing right now with employees wanting to have more focus on what's— wanting their employers to focus more on what's happening outside the world, it's happening. It just is happening. There's not a single thing anybody on this planet, not Elon Musk, Not President Biden, not Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, me, you— there's not anything anybody can stop it from happening. It's already happening. There's nothing anybody can do. If you don't learn to accept that this is happening, then you will be left behind. Your employees will leave. It's gonna be harder for you to recruit new employees. Every time an employee leaves, you have a brain drain that goes with it. If you lose your top salesperson, you have to hire 5 salespeople to replace that lost productivity of your top salesperson. And oh, by the way, it's going to take 4 or 5, 6 months, maybe a year to replace some of that revenue that was lost. Right? So it's just happening. So doing everything you can to maintain and retain your good employees. I'm not saying if you have bad employees, not doing anything with them, but maintaining and understanding you've got great employees. How can you maintain and keep those employees going and keeping them happy in their business so you can reduce that turnover? So that it just is happening. So if you want to lead from an authoritarian dictatorial approach in your business where all the decisions have to happen at your level, you have to make every decision, then everybody's over— you're going to get surrounded by a bunch of yes men and yes women. And so your ability to innovate is going to be limited because everybody's just going to kowtow to whatever you want to say. And in the book, I talk about if you end up being the smartest person in the room, you got to change the room or you got to change yourself. You just have to because you won't be able to innovate, you won't be able to diversify, you know, you won't be able to understand what's going to be happening because it's not just you that's changing, your customer base is also changing, right? So that's what's key and important.

Yeah, I like how you highlight that an enlightened leader embraces change. And that's a really important characteristic. You talk about the marshmallow test and about how today's leaders are not embracing change, they're frightened of change. So what's the marshmallow test and how do kids differ from older people?

Well, look, I mean, the marshmallow— essentially, here's the thing, right? You know, you are— older people tend to really overthink and analyze situations. Younger kids They don't do that. You know, they haven't been tainted by what's happening around them in the world. You know, you know, younger— it's so the point, the lesson in the marshmallow test is, you know, you just want to be freewheeling. You know, you, you want to be able to just take a step back. You want to be able to just be present in the moment and you want to just go and try, right? You don't want to overthink, overanalyze, and you don't— you want to be in a situation where, you know, you, you know, you also are sharing and learning from each other and you're having kind of fun doing it. That, that's why those MBA kids when they give the marshmallow test, they go build that thing, you know, why they fail and why the 6th graders do great at it. Yeah.

What about chapter 2? You talk about convergence. Can you define that for everybody? What does convergence mean?

Well, that— I mean, talk about that a little bit already, right? So the convergence is what's happening in the workforce, what's happening around you. You've got this greater view of what's happening in terms of these side hustles are popping up everywhere. You know, you've got advance in technology happening, you have a changing workforce, and like all— so you have this, you know, you have more and more, like, for example, you know, the artistic side of people is expanding like crazy thanks to things like TikTok and Instagram and those kinds of things. You know, you have more and more, you know, look, if you look at what's happening in the pandemic, there's so much money being put into— there's so much profitability happening right now in all these, you know, drug companies and science and all these other places. I, I would venture to guess In the next 10 years, you probably find there probably will be cures for cancer and some of these other things. Right. But it's not just that. Right. It's, you know, you're starting to see a convergence happening with things like over the next 5, 10 years, you know, self-driving cars, you know, all those kinds of things. And when that starts happening, there'll be less accidents on the road. And if there's less accidents on the road, there's going to be less people going to the ER. And there are less people going to the ER. That's been less stress on the medical systems, things like that. So you just— my point is, you just have all these things kind of coming together. And it's going to really require that Gen Z and millennial group to really take that and run with it and understand and realize how they can lead a much more enriching lifestyle.

And, and at the end of chapter 2, you go through a list of 5 key business shifts that all businesses will make and that you need to be aware of that come from a leadership consultant. And I thought those were really interesting, but in the essence of time, we'll kind of skip over them. We'll move on to chapter 4. In the beginning of chapter 4, you talk about what enlightened leaders do for the workplace, and you kick off the chapter with a story where you approached a headhunter and said, hey, I want you to help me find a CEO position. And what did that headhunter say to you?

Well, yeah, so it's interesting. So, you know, I got referred to this headhunter through, through somebody else. For those of you know what a headhunter is, an executive recruiter. So this headhunter, and so he and I were talking And this was back in 2011, I think that's when I wrote the book, 2010, 2011. And he literally told me that if I wanted to be the CEO of a company, I needed to change my name because Rajiv Kapoor being Indian, blah, blah, blah, people might have some microaggression towards that and think I have an accent and whatever, you know, whatever it is, it is. So obviously I wasn't very happy with it. We did not have a very pleasant conversation after that. And quite frankly, I've never heard from that executive recruiting firm ever again. You know, there's not a lot of things out there that probably really upset me, but the idea of racism and those kinds of things really does. And so, just not a fan. And I just don't think anybody should be judged by the color of their skin, period. It doesn't matter if you're white, black, brown, it doesn't matter. So, but that's— it kind of just shows that people have all kind of grown up in different worlds and, you know, they all experience different things. So I, I have not experienced even 1%, maybe, of what someone from the inner cities maybe faced in trying to make their way through the world. So I've been very blessed. And, you know, everybody has lived a different journey. So it's important for CEOs and leaders to understand that everybody in your team has lived and gone through a different path, a different journey.

Well, it's important for you to highlight stories like that, as painful as they might be, so that it gives somebody like me perspective and And I think diversity and inclusion and equality, all of those characteristics that you talked about earlier as part of the activist mindset, they're really important. And like you said, with the convergence piece, they're all getting integrated right now. So you either get on board or you get off the boat.

Yeah, it just happened. Yeah, it just happened. It's just happening. You can't stop this. It's just happening.

And it's positive. Like, those are great things. I mean, a diverse mindset and being inclusive of all people has no downsides. So I'm happy that we're getting rid of all of those preconceived notions and the racism and all of that kind of stuff. I'm happy it's getting thrown out the window and that you're advocating for a type of leadership that embodies the future of business. And so it's really important. It's really important.

Yeah. And it's just important to realize that it's not going to be done tomorrow. It's going to take time. We all have to be patient. Gen Z, millennials, those of you that are listening, you got to be patient. You got to stick with it. You just can't give up. You just can't give up. I mean, you know, we, you know, people have been fighting certain battles for hundreds of years. It doesn't, you know, we're not going to, we're not going to get done fighting it by 2023 or 2024. It just, just, you know, one of the people asked me, what's my idea of a perfect day? You know, my idea of a perfect day, you know, I ask people what's the idea of a perfect day. I ask my team, oh, I want to be on the beach and wear, you know, whatever case might be. That's a perfect day. You know, my idea of a perfect day is my perfect day is, did I wake up and did I move the average up a little bit in my life every day? That to me is an idea of a perfect day for me. If I didn't, then okay, what can I do better? So we got to, you know, we just have to keep understanding, realizing how can we just keep moving the average up a little bit every day in our companies, with our friends, with our family, in the communities that we're in? How do we just keep improving that average every day? That's what's going to be key.

Yeah, I resonate with that a lot. I think my The value at the top of my core values is progress. And that's what Book Thinkers is built around. If I can help the people in my audience make progress in their lives using personal development books as the vehicle to create that change, then I'm fulfilled and I'm happy. And if I didn't do that, then I've got room to improve. Well, Rajiv, we had a great conversation today. We only got to touch on a fraction of your book, but that's the purpose of this podcast is to give an introduction to everybody. And so, if somebody's listening today and they want to learn more about you, they want to learn more about the book or your business, where should they go? What should they do?

Well, the book obviously is available on Amazon. You can just type in Chase Greatness and it'll— my name, Rajiv Kapoor, that's K-A-P-U-R, will pop up. So, you can download. There's a Kindle version and the hardcover. Hopefully by June, July, maybe there might even be an Audible version. Instagram, my Instagram handle is the Rajiv Kapoor because someone already taken Rajiv Kapoor. Twitter, I am @RajivKapoor. I got that one at least. But yeah, and then on LinkedIn, you know, LinkedIn obviously is another great place. So if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, there's only one Rajiv Kapoor who works at 1105 Media and Dundell and all these other things. So please feel free to reach out to me there. And, you know, or they can message you and you can tell them how to get ahold of me.

So. Yeah, absolutely. We'll put some of those links in the show notes. And thank you again for today's conversation. Like I've I've shared with you. This book is impacting me in a very positive way. And you'll see some of those changes sort of ripple out into my community. And I really enjoy conversations like this. It's why I host the podcast. So, thank you again.

No, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Keep doing such an amazing job. I'm really proud of you and really look forward to seeing all your success continuing.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.