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OhHello - Richy Glassberg
36 Plays1 year ago
Part 2 of the convo with Richy Glassberg is absolute 🔥
The valuable insights you'll get watching this vod and booking time with Richy via OhHello.io 🌞☕️...
⚡ Importance of Mentorship: Richy emphasized the significance of mentorship in shaping his career trajectory. He acknowledged the pivotal role his mentors played in providing guidance, support, and valuable insights that helped him navigate the complexities of the advertising industry.
🏔 Learning from Experience: Richy highlighted the importance of learning from hands-on experience and being open to new opportunities. He emphasized the value of embracing challenges and leveraging them as opportunities for growth and professional development.
🦋 Adaptability and Resilience: Richy underscored the importance of adaptability and resilience in the face of adversity. He discussed how his mentors instilled in him the mindset to embrace change, remain flexible, and persevere through obstacles in order to achieve success in the fast-paced and ever-evolving landscape of online advertising.
📚Continuous Learning: Richy emphasized the significance of continuous learning and staying abreast of industry trends and developments. He stressed the importance of seeking out new knowledge, honing skills, and staying curious in order to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive in the dynamic field of digital marketing.
There were way too many industry luminaries to tag, but MONA KLIGMAN Bob Pittman Kevin Hamburger Geraldine Laybourne Irwin Gotlieb and others were mentioned.
We're stoked to have Richy on the OhHello platform! Go book time with him here:
https://lnkd.in/gc23H69v
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Transcript
Career Defined by Failures and Experimentation
00:00:00
Speaker
Look i think i will say this one of the words i use describe my career is a lot of failure and you know jeremy like why failure because i think i think a career is all about
00:00:13
Speaker
failing and trying new things, right? And it's nobody knew what the internet was going to be. Nobody knew how to sell this. Anybody who tells you it did is just full of horse stuff,
Struggles of Selling CNN.com
00:00:24
Speaker
right? That's just crap. We failed at every effort we made in that first year and a half to sell CNN.com and we kept trying new things and we kept iterating and trying new things.
00:00:34
Speaker
Rachel Fergie and I failed a ton starting the IIV. We were the only volunteer trade group. People wanted to merge with us. We just kept failing and we kept talking to people and asking people for advice and getting guidance and we just kept muddling through and we had a North Star, right?
Creation and Mission of Breastcancer.org
00:00:54
Speaker
And the same thing with breastcancer.org. Most breast cancer sites are raising money for research. And we didn't want to do that. And Dr. Weiss wrote this incredibly famous book, Living Beyond Breast Cancer. And our thesis was, what is the internet for? The actual internet was for the dissemination of information democratively and freely through different nodes. And we decided to build
00:01:19
Speaker
the best information site for women, and our thesis was very simple. You're a woman, you go to the doctor, they say you got breast cancer, everything else you hear is blah, blah, blah, like the peanuts lady you're leading, you go home, you tell your family, everybody cries, three o'clock in the morning, you should bolt up right in bed, you're like, oh my God, you go to Google and you type in breast cancer. Today, if you go do that, I think we're the first or second not paid thing that comes up, because everybody's paying for shit.
00:01:46
Speaker
And we had every disease state, every treatment state, we had every...
00:01:52
Speaker
You know, the community groups all had a moderator, so you couldn't come in and say, I cured breast cancer with a witch hazel. We did it right so that women could figure out what their path, because it's a very complicated disease. We do it in English, we do it in Spanish, we're thinking about Mandarin. So the thesis was, where do you go at three in the morning? And that's what we built. And there was a lot of trial and error in getting there too, right? You know, running a charity's heart.
00:02:17
Speaker
But that was my karma, give back thing. Every job I've done is how do we iterate?
Importance of a Clear Business Goal
00:02:24
Speaker
How do we fail? How do we figure out what? I mean, like CNN.com was true to the brand of CNN. I mean, I'm talking about CNN now, then.
00:02:34
Speaker
It was an incredible, so you gotta start with the North Star. When I started Phase Two Media, it was, I wanna build the first premium rep firm in the industry, because all you could buy as a buyer at an agency was DoubleClick and 24-7. There was nothing wrong with it, but you have to understand, back then, DoubleClick and 24-7 was 5,000 sites that you didn't know. And General Motors didn't wanna advertise on richyandjeremy.com.
00:02:59
Speaker
They wanted to advertise on, we represented the NHL around the world, the Sydney Olympics around the world, Maxim magazine, Hurt, Hachette magazines, brands at the time, and you still see it today. Brands want to advertise in places that enhance their brand. And that was my North Star in almost every company I've built. What's the goal? What's the DNA? And how do you deliver on that DNA?
Embracing Failure and Growth
00:03:28
Speaker
So looking back, Richie, what advice would you give your younger self? If you could, for those, for our viewers and listeners that look to you and someone who has been an executive at multiple companies that has created startups that has been both an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur, help us understand like, when you look back, if you could change one thing or something that you're most proud of, of just, is it just going for it? Is it?
00:03:56
Speaker
being fearless, help us understand. We'll have you back.
00:04:07
Speaker
Failure is such an important thing, and it just scares all of us as human beings. We're so afraid to fail, and the anxiety that it caused, if I could tell myself earlier that it's okay to fail. I mean, the people that told me I was throwing away my career to stop CNN sales and do CNN.com,
00:04:27
Speaker
And we all hear that in whichever company, oh, don't make that move. That's a risk, right? And I think that's the biggest thing is it's okay. And the anxiety that I gave myself.
00:04:42
Speaker
You know, if I could just tell myself, it's okay. And it doesn't matter if the company fails or the company goes, I mean, that's not the point. The point is, what did you do? How did you make it better? How did you build? What did you create? How are you making the world a better place? How are you making your industry a better place? I mean, look at my career. I tried to do things for the industry. I tried to do things for myself, for the company I was in, and for the world.
00:05:08
Speaker
There's a lot of anxiety in that. I think people get too focused. This culture today, I have to have a 5.0. Wait, I thought 4.0 was enough.
00:05:17
Speaker
It's okay to have a 2.6. You can still be successful. And everybody is so wrapped up in perfection. I got as many failures as I have successes. I think the failures make me better, but the anxiety of accepting that, it caused a lot of pain in my younger self.
00:05:42
Speaker
You answered that so well. So we didn't know that I was going to ask you that particular question. And the fact that you, you know, you thought you weren't going to be able to answer, but that was just so insightful. It's okay to fail. It's okay. We learn from our failures and failures. It's part of, it's part of life. It's part of learning. It's part of growing. So I appreciate you pointing that out.
Value of Mentorship in Business
00:06:03
Speaker
When we, when you think about your professional mentors that have had a profound impact, who are some of them and why?
00:06:09
Speaker
I have a ton. I got out of college and I wanted to get into sales and an alumni who I love, Kevin Hamburger, was running engineering at MTV and he got me into a woman named Mona Kligman who was very famous. She was one of the first production managers as a woman.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's I'm very lucky. I was born a white male and I have to acknowledge that and doors are open and And some of my best mentors or women or people that overcame things and they gave me some of the best messages and Mona I you know I'm in my little College interview suit trying to I said I want to be in sales. It was an information interview and she after five minutes She said shut up
00:06:52
Speaker
You're a snot nose kid. You don't know what you want to do. You just graduated. You have no idea. She said, come work for me. Learn how to make television. If you learn how to make the product, you can sell it. I got to tell you, that was some of the best advice to this day I ever got. She literally told me, if you don't understand how to build it, how can you sell it? Cheers to Mona.
00:07:14
Speaker
I mean, I'm serious, break that down. You can't be a founder if, you know, my company today, do I write the code? No, but I don't know how to write it, but I know how to build it, I know what's right, I know, because I built things. And every step of the way, I learned everything about the early interactive that I could at CNN. I learned everything about selling cable, the ratings, all that. And she taught me that in that lesson, Mona Kligman,
00:07:41
Speaker
You know, she's an angel. And, you know, Jerry Laboyne, the CEO of Nickelodeon, she was an incredible business executive at the time when there was, I don't think there was any other female CEOs of networks. And she was brilliant, smart, compassionate, empathetic, tough, all those things. She was great. So, you know, you go from there and then Harvey Guineau who gave me a break and they were just hiring people from rep firms. It was all cookie cutters and he gave me a break.
00:08:09
Speaker
You know, there's just so many people. Erwin Gottlieb, I started calling on Erwin when I was at MTV Networks in 1987, when he was running Benton and Bowles, which then became Televest. And I was this kid, and he took a chance on me, a name that no one will know here, Bill Crowsdale, who's running Backer Spielboga Bades. He took a chance on me. I was this kid in sales that they could have just said, oh, whatever, go call on my buyers and don't talk to me.
00:08:35
Speaker
And I ask questions, and I ask for help. And when you ask for help, people want to give it. And I think that's one of the things that people don't realize. I would say, look, I'm brand new at MTV. I was Nickelodeon at MTV. There was a lot of problems. There's problems in everything, especially in sales. And I went in, and I said, look, I'm the new guy. They put me here to fix this. I don't know what I'm doing. Help me. What do you need? And I kept asking, what do you need? And Erwin has been,
00:09:03
Speaker
one of my closest my father figure in the industry since 1987 because i started out by not saying hey i'm going to sell you this i said i don't know what i'm doing i'm a young sales guy i know my product but what do you need
00:09:15
Speaker
I love that it's asking the right questions of just understanding what your clients, what your customers, what actual people need to excel and succeed in their jobs, just saying, what
Client-Centric Sales Approach
00:09:27
Speaker
do you need? How can I help you? Because they're- Solve your problem. Yes. Don't tell what you got. Solve your problem. And by the way, internally, it's just as hard to go back and say, look, I know you wanted me to sell X. They don't want X, but they needed Y, so can I sell them Y? Most salespeople just think, oh, I'm just-
00:09:42
Speaker
Selling is a collaborative two-way thing. If you're not meeting your customer's needs, you may make the sale, you'll never make the repeat sale. You're so right, Richie. So I mean, there's literally, I can't even name all the people that have helped me in my career. It's unfair in 15 minutes. But Rick Cervitis at Turner, as a young kid, I mean, Ted Turner, there's a lot of issues about Ted. He's a brilliant visionary person.
00:10:10
Speaker
I would crawl on glass for him. Was he the most polished person? Of course not. Was he an amazing leader who cared about before the Time Warner purchase? He literally cared about every single, there were people there for 30, 40 years that just loved him. He knew who you were. He cared about you. He talked to you. It was just amazing. I definitely want to have you on for a second one, but let me ask you this one question.
Career Advice and Personal Growth
00:10:34
Speaker
What parting words of wisdom do you have just for the Oh Hello community as a mentor, as someone who gives a damn about making a difference, who wants to be able to give back, who has seen it and done it. When you think through just what, you know, parting words of wisdom before we end this version, this one. Life is really hard. Your career is not a vector up and to the right.
00:11:03
Speaker
There's many paths up the mountain. Some people go straight, some people go curve. Sometimes the best career move is to take a step back. I did that in my career and it was the greatest accelerator that ever happened. I took a demotion, I took a move, I took a step back, and it allowed me to go forward. Life's hard. Don't expect everything right away. Understand that it's a sine wave and you're gonna have a lot of bumps in the road.
00:11:31
Speaker
And I would say the last thing I'd say is you got to be, I hate when people say, file your passion. I'm not going to say that, but you got to be true to yourself. Okay. The only thing you have is your reputation. You have nothing else. When you, what you don't realize is you go for a job and they're going to call 20 people, especially in today's world with LinkedIn, they're going to call 20 people. You don't know they're making the call. And if one of those 20 people says, eh,
00:11:57
Speaker
That may be it. Treat everybody with respect. Don't ghost people. Help people out. Be brutally honest.
00:12:06
Speaker
Your reputation is all that matters. If you can't help somebody say, look, I'd love to help you, but I can't. It's not what I do. And they'll respect that and understand that the only thing that matters is your reputation. They've never made a burial shroud with pockets. You can't take it with you. Give back, help people, and not everybody's going to like you. It doesn't matter. But everybody needs to trust you and believe that you can do the job.
00:12:34
Speaker
Richie, you are awesome. Richie, CEO of Safeguard Privacy. Let's see your hat just so we can get some visual right there. Appreciate you, my friend. This was great. This was such a good episode. I'm going to put on some music. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Read the comics every day. It's the best, right?