Welcome back to The Workaround. I’m Bob 👋
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I’m excited to share the next episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.
My discussion partner this week, Raman Sehgal, is a man of many interests. By day, he is the SVP, Head of Marketing for EDO, a leading TV measurement company. By night, he is the father of two young children, the occasional host of three podcasts, and the biggest fanboy of Andor you’ll ever meet.
Raman is an old and dear friend of mine. I’d like to introduce him here by sharing stories of how we met — and then met again.
I first met Raman in 2005, shortly after I left my job at Procter & Gamble (P&G) to join my friends as a partner at a digital advertising agency, where P&G was our biggest client. Raman was a new hire in a digital marketing role at the company. He saw me speak at a company event and somehow discovered a blog I used to write, called The Challenge Dividend. He liked the content and reached out to see if I would be up for a chat.
Raman, like me, was a true geek about the digital space. We quickly became friends, rather than clients/vendors and found various ways to work and hang out together. Over the next few years, we would trade perspectives on bigger career and life topics.
For me, Raman represented one of the hopes I had in moving to the agency side: finding passionate clients who shared my desire to crack the code on what’s next, along with a desire to truly partner in making it happen. Sadly, I didn’t find too many other clients+friends like Raman in the many years I have been running professional service companies. But that’s a topic for another post.
Eventually, Raman took assignments in Singapore and New York, then left P&G for a media role at Dannon. I left my agency after finishing our sale and began plotting the launch of my first startup. These geographic and career changes prevented us from staying as close as we once were.
But then one day I boarded a plane returning from NYC, and as I settled into my upgraded seat, I saw my old friend, Raman, boarding a few rows back. He was huddled in a window seat, his hoodie pulled over his head, looking troubled. Raman perked up when he recognized me, but I could tell he was feeling down.
Once the wheels were up, I gave up my first-class seat and went to chat with Raman, who had the row to himself. He shared that he was indeed feeling down due to frustrations with his big company career. I told him about my new startup that wasn’t public yet.
I asked him how I could help, and he half-jokingly replied:
“Want to hire me?”
I recall my thought—and answer—was something like, “Hell yes!”
My startup had recently secured funding, and I knew Raman would bring both high energy and a jack-of-all-trades skill set that is critical at the early stages. Plus, I loved and trusted Raman. Working with people like him is a big reason for any success I’ve had in my career.
He immediately perked up, and we spent the rest of the flight in a flurry of conversation about how we could remake the world of marketing together. Just like old times…
Raman came aboard and brought everything I hoped for and more. I went back to my journal and rediscovered some entries about our times together. One example from October 2013, when we finished pitching a large beauty brand:
“It was fun to work closely with Raman again, training him a bit and just having fun with each of us playing our roles very nicely together. It was a business equivalent of two guys jamming on the guitar. However, our instrument was a presentation deck and our crowd was a room of 10 agency and brand folks.”
We experienced many ups and downs together during our struggle to go from 0 to 1. Those days strained our friendship, and it sometimes cracked. But through it all, we grew as leaders and humans, and I think the challenges made our friendship stronger and more mature.
And I know that the universe arranged for us to reconnect on that random flight years ago. Our journeys are intertwined.
Raman is an incredibly thoughtful, creative, quirky, and fun person, so it’s no surprise that we didn’t discuss marketing strategy or startup challenges. Besides, there are plenty of other places you can find that stuff, including your favorite AI tool. Instead, we discussed life and how business has served as a kind of proving ground for our personal development.
Here’s a teaser of some of the juicy topics Raman and I delve into in our discussion:
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Our strategies for finding life partners and planning families—the original startup.
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Discussion of how our fathers influenced our careers and families.
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The ups and downs of working with good friends…including my surprise at learning that I really said something really dumb to Raman about work/life balance.
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Examples of where we discovered that even our most challenging problems are massive learning opportunities.
To enjoy the whole chat, hit the play button above, subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or watch us on YouTube!
Helpful links:
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Modern Minorities – podcast of minority voices run by Raman
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Learning from Leaders, the P&G Alumni Podcast – also run and co-hosted by Raman—and where you’ll find yours truly there every once in a while!
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Quarantined Comics – another one co-hosted by Raman
If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
The Martian Revolution
Another feature of being friends with Raman is his ecstatic sharing of movies, TV shows, and books that move him. I can’t keep up with them all, and I still don’t love Andor, but last week he shared something that blew me away:
Revolutions is a podcast that covers great political revolutions that have defined the modern world. It’s new 12th season covers the Martian Revolution.
Of course, we all learned about the Martian Revolution in school—and our parents still tell us stories of the harm it caused—but historian Mike Duncan takes us through a thoroughly complete yet succinct story of the key issues leading up to the events, and the players that occupied the stage. Much has been said and written, but this is my favorite take yet.
If you like anything in the realms of science fiction or business organizational behavior—and especially if you dig both—you’re in for a real treat. Tell Raman thanks!
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