The One Percent Project- Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Resilience

About Brendan Boyle: Have you ever wondered how your favourite toys end up in your hands? What makes toy companies such as Lego, Hasbro, and Mattel market leaders, and how have products such as Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars stayed evergreen in a highly competitive industry? My next guest on The One Percent Project is Brendan Boyle. Brendan is a toy inventor, an adjunct professor at Stanford, and the Founder of the IDEO Play Lab. He is also the inventor of the world-famous Jumperoo. Brendan consults companies about redesigning their organisational behaviour to include space for play and co-authored the award-winning encyclopedia of never-before-seen inventions, The Klutz Book of Inventions. Listen in to learn Brendan's insights on designing and working in the toy industry, the value of divergent thinking, how Lego & Mattel have kept themselves relevant and much more. How Lego clicked: the super brand that reinvented itself. Subscribe to the show where ever you are listening to it and sign up to The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development. Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Brendan Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, he talks about: 00:00 Intro 03:44 How designing a toy is similar to design thinking? 04:44 What is the funnel from idea to sales for a toy? 08:15 How divergent thinking generates better ideas? 09:45 Are toys actual concepts in the world? 11:15 How does the toy industry work? 13:10 Why should you read about the history of your industry? 14:45 How have Lego and Barbie (Mattel) kept themselves relevant? 16:19 Why does a global design firm such as IDEO like to hire T-shaped people? 18:47 What has he learnt as an entrepreneur? 21:22 Three books 22:53 Advice to your younger self?

About Aditi Sharma: Aditi Sharma is the co-founder of Grow Commerce. Aditi started her career as a chip designer, did her MBA, and joined McKinsey. Then, she chose to join Grab. When Aditi joined Grab, not only was she expecting her first child, but Grab was in overdrive to enter and grow across South East Asian markets while competing against formidable competitors such as Uber and gojek. It would have been a super caustic high-pressure environment to drive and deliver consistently. Eventually, Grab acquired Uber's South East Asian business in 2018. So Aditi took a leap of faith by not joining Google, but Grab, which at the time did not even have maternity coverage insurance. That was a bold move, especially for an expecting mother. Women often hesitate to take such steps because they feel unsure about managing their personal and professional lives. Therefore, Aditi's journey matters to all who must make bold moves and walk the unchartered path. I recently listened to an interview by Ginni Rometty about her journey to becoming IBM's first female CEO in 2012. She is another corporate leader who exemplifies bold and strategic decision-making. She was born in 1957 in Chicago. Ginni grew up in a family that struggled financially, but through her perseverance, she attended Northwestern University and earned a degree in computer science and electrical engineering in 1979. After graduation, she started her career as a systems engineer at General Motors Institute (now Kettering University). In 1981, Ginni joined IBM as a systems engineer. She quickly rose through the ranks and held several leadership positions in IBM's consulting, services, and sales organizations. In 2009, she was named senior vice president and group executive for IBM's sales, marketing, and strategy division. In 2012, Ginni was appointed CEO of IBM, becoming the first woman to lead the company. She oversaw IBM's transformation from a hardware-focused company to services and software-focused company. Ginni stepped down as the CEO of IBM in April 2020 and was succeeded by Arvind Krishna. Today, she serves on the board of directors of several companies, including JPMorgan Chase and the Mayo Clinic. I recommend reading her latest book, Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World. Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Career_Aditi Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2⁠⁠ YouTube:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube⁠⁠ LinkedIn:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn⁠⁠ Twitter:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1⁠⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

About Rajan Singh: In the modern world, where ample distractions capture our attention and constantly pull it in multiple directions, staying focused and achieving our goals can be a significant challenge. Moreover, with the rise of remote work and the shift towards an increasingly digital lifestyle, maintaining focus and productivity has become even more crucial. My next guest on The One Percent Project is a discipline and routine fanatic, productivity expert and entrepreneur Rajan Singh. Rajan is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and a former Indian Police Service officer who served as the Trivandrum Police Commissioner. But after a few years, Rajan felt a sense of intellectual stagnation in his job, and he decided to quit and restart his career. He then pursued an MBA from Wharton Business School and worked as a consultant with McKinsey in New York before returning to India as an investment professional at New Silk Route, a billion-dollar private equity fund. However, his restlessness did not end there, and he eventually became an entrepreneur, founding a habit-building startup called HabitStrong. At HabitStrong, Rajan helps people improve their lives by inculcating focus, self-discipline, and good habits. Listen in to learn Rajan's insights and strategies for achieving goals and maintaining focus on the things that matter most, his views on entrepreneurship, building products within HabitStrong, his ideas about self-doubt and boredom, and much more. Key Take Aways & Transcript: ⁠https://bit.ly/TOP_Raja⁠n Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp:⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2⁠ YouTube:⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube⁠ LinkedIn:⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn⁠ Twitter:⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1⁠ Instagram:⁠ https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

About Raja Ganapathy: What is so unique about Ogilvy, Hindustan Unilever, and Sequoia capital that they have stayed market-relevant and built and enabled iconic brands? How Don Valentine, the grandfather of Venture Capital and founder of Sequoia, built a generational brand. If brands and brand-building intrigue, you listen on. My next guest on The One Percent Project is a brand builder, a voracious reader and an eternal optimist Raja Ganapathy. Raja spent his conceptual years learning the ropes of marketing at Ogilvy on accounts such as Hindustan Unilever, and his defining stint was as the Chief Marketing Officer at Sequoia Capital India. At Sequoia, Raja worked with industry-defying founders of Byju's, Free Charge, Healthkart and many more. Today, Raja is the founding partner at Spring Marketing Capital, a skin-in-the-game marketing value-added investment firm to build the brands of tomorrow. Listen in to learn how Raja navigated through his career from Ogilvy to Spring, what is the new world order of marketing, are Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Kunal Shah brands or founders and much more. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Raja Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

About Abhay Maheshwari: My first guest on the career series is Abhay Maheshwari. I met Abhay through the Spotify India and Ideabrew studio LevelUp program for podcasters. I was fascinated by Abhay's story. He took to storytelling, open mics and podcasting only after completing his engineering degree and landing a full-time job. Despite being encouraged and nudged to participate in drama, skits, and cultural activities, he hesitated to deviate from the traditional career path in school and college. Listen in to learn how Abhay became an award-winning storyteller, nationally featured writer and a TEDx speaker. If you have any feedback about this conversation, speaker and topic recommendations, you can drop me a line at pritish@onepercent.live. Subscribe to the show where ever you are listening to it and sign up to The One Percent Project's "Think" newsletter at onepercent.live, which brings highly curated content that adds value to your professional and personal development. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Deepit Follow & Subscribe: YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2

About Guy Kawasaki: My next guest on The One Percent Project is charismatic, enticing and Apple's 2nd evangelist Guy Kawasaki. Guy is the chief evangelist of Canva and the creator of the Remarkable People podcast. He was a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He was a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation. He has authored Wise Guy, The Art of the Start 2.0, The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and eleven other books. In this conversation, Guy reflects on his career that has spanned over 40 years, from counting and selling diamonds, being an evangelist at Apple, how great products and leaders polarise people, the relation between humour and intelligence, the emergence of ChatGPT, Nithin Kamath, the CEO of Zerodha and much more. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Guy Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL): Hindustan Unilever is one of India’s most valuable companies. The book “The CEO Factory: Management Lessons from Hindustan Unilever” by Sudhir Sitapati is a handbook of counterintuitive management insights that he learnt over 20+ years at HUL. The book covers HUL’s 100+ years of history in India and its management lessons in marketing, product, pricing, sales, cost, HR, and company values. Mind map of all my notes from the book: https://bit.ly/TOP_TheCEOFactory Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta

About Deepit Purkayastha:   My next guest on The One Percent Project is Deepit Purkayastha. He is the co-founder of Inshorts & Public app. Deepit's entrepreneurial journey began in an IIT Kharagpur dorm room with his co-founders Azhar & Anunay. 10 years later, Inshorts is India's #1 short news app, with 10 million+ active users, and Public App is India's largest platform for hyperlocal content, with 50 million+ active users.  In this conversation, Deepit talks about how he convinced his parents to take a gap year to pursue Inshorts, his counter-intuitive insights about the Indian consumer, why Inshorts & Public App are unique, their product moat, and much more. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_Deepit Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta 00:00 Intro  01:24 Is a start-up an extreme expression of founders' nature?  02:48 How he convinced his parents to take a gap year to build Inshorts?  04:19 The importance of timing in launching products. 11:30 Why is Inshorts & Public App unique, and what is their product moat?

About Aditi Shrivastava: My next guest The One Percent Project is the very talented and driven Aditi Srivastava. Aditi is Co-Founder and CEO at Pocket Aces, India’s largest socially distributed content network, which includes five diverse brands: FilterCopy (short fiction), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), Gobble (lifestyle), Nutshell (infotainment), and Jambo (young-adult animation). Pocket Aces also operates Clout India’s largest digital influencer management practice. The company incubated Loco, India’s largest homegrown game streaming and esports app, which was spun off successfully into a separate entity in 2021. Sales are a critical contributor to the success of any business. They are the source of revenue generation, but more importantly, they help build and sustain relationships with clients. Sales offer crucial insight into the efficiencies of a company's marketing and product development initiatives. A competent sales force may assist a company in reaching its objectives by spotting and capitalizing on new possibilities and cultivating and maintaining connections with important clients. Undoubtedly, sales are crucial in any business's long-term existence and expansion. But how does one build a robust sales force? In this contemplative conversation, Aditi shares her understanding of sales through years of hands-on experience in building sales businesses, the role of storytelling in sales, striking a balance between creativity and numbers, the difference between sales and marketing units, building sales teams through the years, if founders should be key salespersons, and much more. Key Take Aways & Transcript: https://bit.ly/TOP_AditiShrivastava Follow & Subscribe: WhatsApp: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 YouTube: https://bit.ly/TOP_Youtube LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/TOP_LinkedIn Twitter: https://bit.ly/TOP_Twitter1 Instagram: https://bit.ly/TOP_Insta In this conversation, she talks about: 00:00 Intro 02:15 A day in Aditi's life 02:50 How as humans, we are constantly selling 04:31 Role of storytelling in sales. 06:22 The balance between creativity and numbers. 07:56 If all salespersons are extroverts? 10:18 Where she draws the line between sales and marketing functions. 13:11 Her insights on building a sales team. 21:09 If she thinks founders can oust revenue generation or business creation from other key members in the initial days? 26:48 How she manages sales rejections? 31:03 The nicest thing anyone has done for her. 32:09 Her legacy.

About Jeremy Utley: My first guest on The One Percent Project this year is the exuberant Jeremy Utley. Jeremy is the Director of Executive Education at Stanford’s d.school and an Adjunct Professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering. He is a celebrated keynote speaker and co-author of the brilliant book "Ideaflow: The Only Business Metric That Matters.". Jeremy co-teaches two wonderful courses at Stanford, Leading Disruptive Innovation (d.leadership) and LaunchPad, which focus on creating real-world impact with design and innovation tools. Jeremy intended to use his time in Africa and South America as a springboard for a career in economic development when he applied to Stanford's Graduate School of Business, but a contact with the d.school while working at an Indian start-up altered his plans. He learned throughout his time as a post-graduate design fellow that how he worked was more significant than what he accomplished. Today, Jeremy works to assist individuals in transforming their established self-perceptions and learn, like him, that it is possible to contribute creatively to the world without being exceptional. Key Take away & Insights: https://bit.ly/TOP_Jeremy Join our No-Spam WhatsApp group: https://bit.ly/TOP_WA2 Entrepreneur: How to generate 100s of ideas in 1 hour? In this conversation, he talks about: 00:00 Intro 03:01 When it comes to creativity, why is quantity more important than quality? 04:28 Why shouldn't you be judging yourself when coming up with ideas? 05:32 What does he mean by "every problem is an idea problem"? 06:42 About Ideaflow 07:22 What is an Idea Ratio- How do you calculate it? 08:41 How does Idea flow co-relate with the success of an organisation? 09:36 How to learn creativity and turn it into a daily activity? 13:14 How to make a hackathon an effective way to drive innovation? 14:33 How to run effective brainstorming sessions? 16:46 How to identify, recruit, and retain innovative people? 19:23 How to use Ideaflow as a metric for organisations, companies and startups? 23:39 How is storytelling tied to idea flow? 24:48 What is his counter-intuitive insight from teaching entrepreneurship? 26:52 The nicest thing