10 Things Rishad Tobaccowala Wants PR Pros to Stop Getting Wrong About Their Careers
Rishad Tobaccowala spent 37 years at Publicis. He now runs a one-person advisory practice, writes a Substack read by 32,000 people, has three podcasts, and flies more than he’d probably like. He has thoughts.
Excerpted from our full member session with him on “Future Proofing Your Career.”
1. The job is not the work and that distinction will define your next decade.
Tobaccowala’s thesis is that we may have passed peak full-time jobs in the United States in 2025. “Jobs are a silly phase that work is going through,” he quips. Work is what you do. A job is just the current arrangement for getting paid to do it. He maintains that jobs matter for income, identity, community, and growth. But the container is changing. Sixty-seven percent of Gen Z full-time employees already have a side gig. Others are using their day job as venture capital for a passion project.
2. Think like a company of one, even if you have no intention of going anywhere.
Tobaccowala spent nearly four decades at a global holding company precisely because he built himself as a company of one. “Because I had options, the company knew I had options. They treated me in a particular way.” When you have a brand, a reputation, and transferable skills, you become an asset worth retaining. He recommends going through an exercise called Career Architecting to identify your skills, build your reputation, and start thinking beyond your current org chart.
3. Stop picking the prestigious account. Pick the best person.
“Your success is highly correlated to who you work for, much more than the company you work for.” Tobaccowala passed on McDonald’s and Kellogg to work on Glad trash bags and Heinz Pet Products because those teams had the best people. Those people ended up running the company. Find the best leader in your orbit and attach yourself to them. Let the prestige take care of itself.
4. If you don’t know AI well by 2027, you’re out.
He put it plainly: I”I doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO.” The boards he sits on are already thinking about it. The average agency generates $125,000 of revenue per person. Google and Meta generate $1 million. AI-first companies are generating $4 million. The AI your company gave you is probably six to nine months old and one tool. Tobaccowala’s personal set-up involves seven platforms at their latest versions. His advice is to spend $20–$60 a month on paid versions of Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.
5. Use AI to get promoted.
The mistake companies make is trying to use AI to replace human intelligence. Tobaccowala’s reframe: start with the “alien intelligence” (his term for AI), then ask what human invention, imagination, and intuition adds to it. “When you do that, you have amazing new opportunities and massive growth engines.” If you use AI to do more work faster, you free yourself to operate at a higher level. Higher-level work gets you promoted.
6. Clients have gone “polyamorous.” Your brand is your actual competitive advantage.
“Our clients go to whoever they can find,” says Rishad, which means if you’re world-class, they’ll find you. If you’re not, they’ll pretend to use your expertise while quietly going elsewhere. Build a reputation. Build a brand. Know what your nine-word bio is and who needs to hear it.
7. Invest in an experience stack, not just a tech stack.
When asked about the dehumanization of client relationships, Tobaccowala had a simple answer: get out from behind the screen. Make sure you meet someone face-to-face at least a few times a week. The PR professionals who will thrive are the ones clients trust enough to take into the future, and trust gets built in person.
8. Every career has a midnight hour. Leave at five to midnight.
Tobaccowala on senior professionals who stay too long: “I see too many senior people hanging on to dear life to something they’ve outgrown or they’re past their sell-by date.” The alternative is a portfolio career — a mix of advisory work, passion projects, board roles, and gigs. He models it himself via his Substack, two books, three podcasts, and an advisory practice. “You’re looking at the entire company. Me.” Plan for a 50-year career broken into three 17-year chapters — beginning, middle, and later — and start building the next chapter before you’re forced to.
9. Don’t live in other people’s minds.
For mid-career professionals in particular: stop obsessing over what your peers think. “Don’t give the remote control of your future to somebody else.” It’s important to get peer feedback, but competing against Jill and John is a losing strategy. The goal is to be better than yourself tomorrow than you were today. Help Jill and John get better too because generosity compounds, and no one’s going to go to bat for you if they don’t like you.
10. McKinsey had 45,000 employees three years ago. Today they have 40,000 humans and 15,000 agents.
Their plan by the end of the decade is 30,000 humans and 30,000 agents. These are the people visiting your clients and telling them how to run their companies. If you’re still treating AI as a trend to wait out, this is the number to sit with. The knowledge that used to live in expensive proprietary databases now lives in Claude, for free. The consultants who remain valuable bring what Rishad calls “crystallized intelligence” — the ability to connect dots that comes from real experience — and the judgment to know what the AI got wrong.
Rishad Tobaccowala is a former Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, author of Rethinking Work, and host of the Rethinking Work Show. His writing is available free at rishadtobaccowala.com/100, and his Substack at rishad.substack.com.