By Dan Mitchell, MLM Blog Correspondent

From Business Standard:

All of us have a story to tell, but most of us hide our stories,” says Rick Goings, chairman and CEO of Tupperware, sitting in a plush conference room at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi. For Goings, however, this is not a time to “hide” anything: His company, after all, has just posted a turnover of $5 billion this year, apart from winning the prestigious Red Dot award for the best design team of 2009. But it is not just his professional success that Goings will talk about. Instead, he is ready to share, without a hint of embarrassment, his own incredible journey, from rags to riches.

“Most people who look at me think, ‘Oh, here’s a guy who was perhaps raised in a well-off family, studied at Yale and therefore did well in life,’” he says. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In his younger days, says Goings, he had to join the US Navy only because he couldn’t afford to complete full-time school anywhere else. He went on to become a navigator on a ship, but then decided to do “something different” after a while. “When I joined the Navy, I was glad that I’d never go hungry like I had in my childhood. But after a while, I definitely wanted to do something different, something else. That’s when I realised it was time to navigate the course of my own life, too,” he says.

Opting out of the Navy, Goings went on to complete his education with the help of the government funding offered to underprivileged students in the USA. To supplement his income, he worked in a men’s clothing store, after study hours. And he turned entrepreneur. While still in college, Goings became drawn to Buddhism, meditation and the teachings of Gandhi, and, though it had nothing to do with philosophy, also started a small company that leveraged the direct sales marketing methods. Today, he says, he combines number crunching with philosophy and often uses his marketing skills to understand “why some people succeed and most don’t”. In his view, success is not an art, it’s a science.

Is Tupperware’s success scientific? Goings, who is at no loss for words otherwise, searches for an answer: “We have a 50,000-strong sales force in India and it is one of the top five markets for our company.” Tupperware, when it was launched 12 years ago, he says after some thought, was “too shallow and too wide. After lots of tweaking and changes, it is today recognised as a superbrand.”

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