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OhHello - Rob Wilk (part 1)
36 Plays1 year ago
OhHello!
It's episode 71 and we're doing a back-2-back two-parter today and tomorrow w/ one of our highest demanded "Hellos", Rob Wilk! Rob started his career with some luminaries like Scott Hess and Howard Tullman and then went on to lead sales at Yahoo, Foursquare, Microsoft (where he was the global head of MSFT Advertising), etc.
Mentorship and helping others are paramount to Rob.
"Work should bring you joy," and there is zero doubt that this 1:1 with Rob will too.
Hit the bell next to my name, comment, and subscribe to the pod to be the first to lean in tomorrow for part 2.
More importantly, go book time w/ Rob at OhHello.io!
https://lnkd.in/gV8XDMta
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Transcript
Introduction & Humorous Weather Talk
00:00:04
Speaker
There we go, Rob. That was one of the best yet. Oh, hello, Rob. How are you? Let's see that hat. Let me see that beanie. Let's see that beanie. She's beautiful. That's gorgeous. The ironies were showing this hat and it's 70 degrees in Chicago and 52 in New York on February 27. I don't know what's happening.
Meet Rob: A Legendary New Friend
00:00:29
Speaker
those that question climate change. Anyway, with that said, Rob, wonderful face. I'm genuinely excited to have you on the pod, on the VOD. You're a legend within our ecosystem. You have become a new friend over the past several months.
00:00:47
Speaker
Why don't you tell us a little bit about who I have the pleasure of speaking with right now? Who are you?
Rob's Personal Wall: Family & Positivity
00:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I said this to you. But for the folks listening, if you look behind me, my I have a very carefully curated wall of the things that are most important to me. And I'll just say very quickly,
00:01:05
Speaker
you'll see a banner at the top, what does this make possible? That's become sort of my go-to rallying cry when things are hard, just to be able to look at it differently and say, hey, it started with COVID, obviously, where things were really hard. And I read this article that just knocked me on my socks of, hey, you can talk about all the things that are bad right now, or you can ask yourself a very important question. And that question is,
00:01:30
Speaker
Okay, got it. Things are tough. But what does it make possible? And it's just a way to open your mind and sort of open up your thinking to, you know, more positive thoughts. So I just fell in love with that. And then you'll see my three boys here when they were young and now they've got beards and they're two out of the three are taller than me. And there's a lot of music around here. I'm a huge, huge music fan. So, you know, for me, who
Rob's Career Journey in Digital Media
00:01:58
Speaker
am I? I am a family first.
00:02:00
Speaker
very proud father of three boys. I've known my wife for 35 years. We went to summer camp together. That's amazing. Yeah, we've been married 20 years. She's she's my favorite person in the world. And then there's the work side, you know, and it purposely comes in that order because that is how I feel and that is how I view the world. And
00:02:20
Speaker
I got super lucky. I was an early digital guy, actually worked my first digital job was a Chicago based company. No one who's listening to this will know who this is, but it was a company called tunes.com. T U N E S Scott. And that's where I met Scott Hess. Uh, and I worked for a legend, Howard Tolman, uh, that was in the late nineties, but I sort of fell in love with digital very early. Um,
00:02:44
Speaker
I was lucky enough to be the first sales rep at Rollingstone.com when they launched their first ever website, which is pretty awesome. But then I fell in love with this new thing and it was called Search, which no one knew what it was. But I worked for a company that had just rebranded from GoTo to Overture. And I was like employee number six in New York. And we were selling Search ads before Search ads was a thing. This was 2002, so 22 years ago.
00:03:11
Speaker
They got acquired by Yahoo. I worked at Yahoo for a long time and then moved to Microsoft and did some other startup things in between.
A Commitment to Giving Back with Oh, hello
00:03:18
Speaker
But I would say, I just love our industry. I love our business and I love what it does for people. I love what it does for businesses. And I've always had a piece of me throughout all of this, which was, how do I give back? And that's a big part of my life. It's a big part of my work life.
00:03:40
Speaker
And certainly, you know, the reason I got so excited about Oh, hello was, yes, this idea to give back, but give back in two ways, give back to people who need it, who need some, you know, career advice, some help. But obviously, you know, you've built a platform that allows people to decide, you know,
00:03:57
Speaker
1% or 100% or anywhere in between to go to a charity. In such a similar way, that's why I have the pictures of my family over my left shoulder, over my right shoulder, and everything strategically neatly placed outside of my phone charger being there.
00:04:15
Speaker
But for that reason too, and you know what, we always need to be plugged in. Look at, I will get it that way.
Creating Safe Spaces for Vulnerability & Mentorship
00:04:20
Speaker
But I love the way that you phrased it and that you brought us all into, into your world because what, what makes Oh, hello so special and what makes it special to have an executive like yourself is it's a place where people could be vulnerable. It's a place where people can drop their guard and understand like, Hey, I've got questions. I'm going through something. Or how do you do this? Or I just want to meet Rob Wilk. I want to meet.
00:04:45
Speaker
this person, that person, and be able to provide guidance because we all go through these different points in our career. What excites you about mentorship and just being a part of the Oh, hello tribe?
The Joy of Mentorship & Helpfulness
00:04:59
Speaker
How much time do you have? We can do a few parter. You know, it's sort of, it's sort of funny, I was thinking about, you know, getting ready to have this conversation with you. And it's in a perverse way,
00:05:10
Speaker
giving back is actually a very selfish endeavor for me. And I know that sounds backwards, but the joy that I get from it is why I do it, whether it is giving money to charity, whether it's raising money, whether it's sitting on a board of a nonprofit, or whether it's giving advice that you just see someone's light bulb go off and they have a smile like, Oh, that was so helpful. You know, I've done tons of mentoring. I've actually just had my first,
00:05:36
Speaker
Oh, hello, mentorship as well. And he was so grateful, you know, he was so grateful just to be able to speak openly and honestly knowing, you know, stays between us. And, you know, this particular person was, was like, Hey, I've been an individual contributor for a long time. I'm ready to step into management. How do I do that?
00:05:56
Speaker
how did you do it what mistakes did you make and believe me i made a non godly amount and we hung up the phone and i just felt great for the rest of the day like my my wife has this thing that she always says to me when when i come home from work uh and i've got a smile on my face she'll know it's because i was able to help someone right and there's a um
00:06:18
Speaker
The folks at Microsoft, if anyone from Microsoft from my team back in the day watches this, they'll know that I'm obsessed with a, she's a European CEO named Margaret Heffernan. She's written so many books, she's got great TED talks. I encourage anyone to learn about her, but she talks a lot about the importance of in your career, a lot of times your success can be aligned with
00:06:47
Speaker
People's perception of your degree of helpfulness. Love it. Yeah. And talking about all the people you've worked with Jeremy over the years, like different companies where they're like, Oh, we have this problem. Who's the go-to person? And there's always someone's name that comes up.
00:07:03
Speaker
She's the one. We got to call her and get her in the room. And what you find is those go-to people are people who are willing to be helpful. And to me, I think it's built into my chromosomes at this point. I love to be helpful. And it feels good for me, and it helps others. So it's just such a win-win.
00:07:24
Speaker
That wasn't perverse. It was I really appreciated the way that you explained
Tackling Joylessness in the Workplace
00:07:28
Speaker
it. I appreciated the references and just also just there's there are few things more important than when your spouse your significant other your family sees that you're happy and what's bringing you joy. Because if you're happy and if you're joyful than the people around you usually are happy as well and it's it's contagious. Being able to. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. You're good. You're good. I'll just say we have a problem in the work world.
00:07:54
Speaker
especially in our, and the problem is it's becoming joyless. Go talk to some of your friends about how is work going right now. Now it's just a weird time and we have, this is a very U S based conversation, but we have a very, you know, contentious election that everyone's looking at.
00:08:11
Speaker
We have some economic concerns. There's still a COVID hangover. But a lot of the people that I know that are very senior to not very senior, it doesn't matter. There is a degree of joylessness that permeates throughout all of my discussions. And I think it's a shame. And I am the biggest cheerleader and an unabashed, passionate believer in work.
00:08:35
Speaker
should bring you joy. It should. It doesn't always have to be a party. That's not my point. But it should fulfill you in a way that makes you happy. And if it doesn't, I think a lot of people think that, well, that's just work. And I'm just going to be unhappy. And I just refuse to believe that that's
Pursuing Happiness at Work
00:08:54
Speaker
true. I just do. I have such a similar philosophy and such a similar belief to you as you do, Rob. Just you have to.
00:09:03
Speaker
you have to be happy you have to you're gonna there's gonna be days and hours of the day that absolutely suck it's life like it comes with it but if you're not having fun at work get out of there go find something else like it's the people around