John Wood: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

Would you leave a dream job working for one of the richest men on the planet to start a non-profit organization to spread literacy worldwide? John Wood did, author of “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.” This extraordinary man’s story has been recognized on the Oprah Winfrey show and in major publications throughout the world.

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Randy Webster: Hello everyone I am Randy Webster and welcome to BookBlade were we are educating the world one book at a time.  Today I am sitting down with John Wood the founder of Room to Read and the author of “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.”  John Wood and Room to Read has been featured in prestigious magazines publications such as Forbes, Time Magazine as well as… you were on the Oprah Show.

John Wood: Indeed.

Randy Webster: Indeed he was.  John, thank you so much for being here.

John wood: Thanks for having me.

Randy Webster: You bet! I first heard about “Room to Read” from LitLiberation and author of “The 4 Hour Work Week” Tim Ferris.  I was hooked immediately and wanted to be part of John’s mission. So, here I am today interviewing John, which is amazing. First I want to talk a little bit about the known.  You worked for Microsoft, you worked for one of the richest men in the world in a bellwether company and then you took a leap into the unknown, “Room to Read”.  So, I will let you take it from here.  And the background you give to it.

John Wood: Okay. The decision to start Room to Read really caught me off guard.  And I really went trekking in Nepal just to escape from Microsoft, to escape from the corporate 7/24 lifestyle and while I was trekking, I met the headmaster of this completely dilapidated school with 450 kids and what struck me most was not just the conditions which were terrible, mud floor or dirt floor but it turned into mud during the rainy season and the sheet metal roof leaked but the most important thing was that the library had no books. I asked the head master: How can you have a library that has no books in it?  And he said, we are too poor to afford education but until we have education we’ll always be poor.  And that to me summarized the whole situation for the poorest billion people of the world.  Every one of us has an ancestor, it could be a parent or a grandparent, could be somebody in our generation who has used education as a way to escape from poverty.  It happened in my family because my father that got a college scholarship.  So, I looked at that and said, well maybe I should help your school because there is no reason that if 450 kids show up every day, there is no reason they shouldn’t have a library. So that is how it got started as kind of a one off project and in my book I talk about the fact that it kind of morphed then, it started as a hobby and then it became a bit of an obsession. And I remember getting these emails from Bill Gate’s assistant saying, you’re not responding to our emails about Bill’s trip to China. And I’m like yeah, yeah, yeah, but I’m working on this book drive over here. I am trying to get Dr. Seuss books. So eventually I had to quit and do this full time.

Randy Webster: Right! So, what was your background in Microsoft because when I read it, I am saying, my God! What a dream!  What a job!?

John Wood: Well you know, Bill reported to me.  I don’t know if you know that or not.  No, I mean it was definitely a dream job in many ways, came with a lot of, probably like a lot of your viewers, a lot of responsibility, and then a lot of, your payoff is pretty big as a result of that, but what had happened for me is as I traveled around the world building markets for Microsoft, like on the weekends or on Holidays I would go backpacking in places like Cambodia, Vietnam, India, South Africa, and the pattern always seemed to be there. The unique kids who would ask you for a pencil and there is something both simultaneously hopeful but also kind of pathetic, that a child would lack something as basic as a pencil, so, kids lacking books, kids lacking, you know… kids I would meet in Vietnam that couldn’t go to school because they could not afford a uniform and a uniform costs like 8 dollars and I thought: that’s the difference between a child going to school and not going to school?  And I know that people know those numbers, but when you look at it, and say there are 300 hundred million kids who don’t go to school every day in the developing world, there’s 800 hundred million people who are illiterate and 98% of them are in the developing world.  It just, to me, it was only natural to leave Microsoft at age 35.  It seemed weird because usually you are supposed to have your whole career ark and then do philanthropy. I was choosing to basically, abandon the career ark and go straight to philanthropy at age 35.

Randy Webster: Yeah, and that’s young, I mean that’s really young, at age 35 I was still trying to find myself.

John Wood: So was I actually, it’s just that I happened to find it through this.

Randy Webster: So you built a non-profit based on the best corporate principles from Microsoft and built Room to Read off those principles?

John Wood: Yeah, I would say not just Microsoft principles just the principles that I learned as an MBA student, the idea that any business idea has to have scale and if it doesn’t scale there’s no point in doing it. You know, it’s the classic business thing, go big or go home. Would be kind of like something that Steve Ballmer would say. My though about this was if eight hundred million people are illiterate, you cant just do one library or two libraries, that might make you feel good and you might pat yourself on the back but you got to go a lot bigger than that. The second business principle we brought to bare at Room to Read is the idea that anybody can know exactly where the money goes.  We publish our price list, like a Chinese menu if you will. If you want to build a school in Nepal, it costs thirty-two thousand dollars, a school in Sri Lanka twenty-eight thousand dollars.  Maybe you do not have that much money.  You want to just build a library: we can do a library for five thousand dollars.  You want to sponsor a girl’s scholarship; two fifty per girl, per year puts a girl in school and keeps her in school.  So, that’s one of the other principles. Don’t have this weird thing, where you give the money to a charity and you do not know where the money goes. We can tell you exactly where the money goes.  You can see the school, or the library visit it, see photos of it, take your kids, go trek to it, whatever it might be. And then the third and final of these principles that we tried to bring was low overhead, having an efficiency of operations. In the private sector if you get costs out of control, what happens?  You get run out of business.  Well, on the charity world, why are charities allowed to survive if they are spending 50 cents on your dollar on fund raising and administration. So we are a very low overhead model, we call in favors; we borrow office space from companies like “Credit Suisse”.  One of my board members gives me three million frequent flier miles every year to fly around the world for free.  We try to do everything in our power to keep the costs low, so the money goes to where it is needed, to kids in places like Cambodia, South Africa and Nepal.

Randy Webster: Wow that’s amazing! When I was reading your book what struck me was, when you were looking for venture capitalists, you were talking to William Draper I guess, which is an interesting story. What you put in there is that you didn’t even have a business plan at that point?

John Wood: Yeah it was up here, but it wasn’t on paper.

Randy Webster: You did it overnight.  Which I was laughing about, because you’re like, just get started, just do it, so they asked for a business plan and you did it in one night.  But when Draper came and, I guess he looked at your business plan, he turned to page seventeen and he wanted to see who your people were. Is that what happened? Who is John, who are your people to run this organization?

John Wood: Yes, we talked a lot with him about, I mean, he is a venture capitalist, he invests in people and we talked a lot about the strong local teams. That was the most important part of Room to Read. It’s not me, it was having guys like Dinesh in Nepal and Mr. Nam in Vietnam and Boramy in Cambodia, and Sunisha in India, these strong local teams.  I don’t believe in the model that a lot of charities have of sending highly paid expats overseas to go boss local people around while driving around in seventy five thousand dollar Land Rovers.  The whole idea of American expats bossing local people around hasn’t historically worked all that well. So, the idea was to get strong local teams and power them to make the decisions. I tell our country directors very clearly I say: I work for you.  My job is to get you the resources you need, so you can build hundreds and then thousands of schools and you can build thousands and then tens of thousands of libraries.  So those local teams are really, one of the things that convinced  leading venture capitalists entrepreneurs Jeff Skoll, the first President of E-bay,  brilliant philanthropist,  Don Valentine the founder of Sequoia Capital, guys like Bill Draper to invest in us when we were very very young, guys like Marc Andreessen who wrote checks early, early on and said: I believe in this cause.

Randy Webster: Now, when you did that did you have fear come up, obstacles you met, and how you overcame obstacles if you did, I mean, I’m sure we all do.

John Wood: When I started?  Yeah there were definitely a lot of fears and I think the key thing is that, were we live, you know in America, when your status is derived from your title.  You know, you’re going to have to when people ask you?

Randy Webster: Yeah, what do you do?

John Wood: What do you do? And I was going from having the flashy title and the flashy car.  I am Director of Business Development for Microsoft,  China region, blah, blah, blah.  And then I was kind of going,  I deliver books in the back of a Yak to rural Himalayan villages.  And you are kind of left standing alone at the chip dip at that point, ‘cuz nobody wants to talk to you so you’re like this crazy loonie guy who smells like a yak.  That was a definite loss of status.

Randy Webster: Amazing story, I mean, yeah. So, you beat Carnegie.  I mean, Andrew, as far as, that was one of your, I guess, milestones. I don’t know, your mentors?

John Wood: Yeah, one of my heroes. Carnegie, I mean, when Carnegie grew up, Andrew Carnegie redeemed himself in, late in life, because when he grew if you were poor you didn’t have access to books, and that was the chief barrier to knowledge, but 90%of the people at that time in America, 1890, were considered poor.  So Carnegie opened three thousand libraries across North America. They picked dividends for tens of millions of people, for generation after generation, after generation. Busiest library in America, want to guess where it is? Queens.

Randy Webster: New York?

John Wood: Highest proportion of first generation immigrants in America.  The first thing they do, take their kids to the library, get them a library card, and tell them: start reading. And that is one of the things that made our country as great as it is.  And yet, 100+ years after Carnegie, nobody has done for the developing world what Carnegie did for America.  That just, to me, it seems insane.  It’s a hand up, not a hand out, its the best way to help people help themselves and yet here we are, we flush tens of billions of dollars of foreign aid away every single year.  Yet there has never been a sustained effort to take a Carnegiesque approach to building thousands of libraries. So, Carnegie’s been a hero of mine and one of my goals, I think, the way you salute your heroes is by actually doing better than them. So Carnegie opened three thousand libraries, we are now at seven thousand five hundred libraries opened in less than a decade.  And Next year in April we’re on track to open our ten thousandth library.

Randy Webster: Unbelievable. I mean, that’s amazing.

John Wood: But that’s because I have a great team. It is not about me.  It is about the great team I have.  I’m very lucky.

Randy Webster: You have a great team.

John Wood: Yeah, I am just the lucky guy at the head of the parade, but I try to stop myself from saying I, and saying we, ‘cuz we just have a fantastic team around the world.

Randy Webster: But now, you’ve done all this, great accomplishments, I mean you’ve changed lives, and that will multiply forever, when we are long gone, I mean that’s the kind of effect it has.  It is the legacy…

John Wood: The Legacy Effect.

Randy Webster: The Legacy Effect, absolutely.  Now, how, as a leader, how do you keep the momentum going? Is it just, is it the feedback from what you are getting, or is it just, it just keeps going?

John Wood: One of the things that keep the momentum going is by traveling, by being out, and then again I make jokes about Steve Ballmer, but he was a very inspiring guy to learn under,  because he is just always traveling. You know, the guy is worth billions of dollars, he doesn’t have to be out you know with a blanket over his head trying to catch the red eye between Singapore and Sidney trying to get some sleep.  Yet he did, he was out every day building the company.

Randy Webster: Wow.

John Wood: And I use this as an example,  this week, I am in L.A. today,  San Francisco tomorrow, then I go to Boston,  I go to New York, I go to London,  I go back to New York, I go to Seattle and then I am home. I see my home again seventeen days later. And that is a normal thing for me. I spent, probably about 7 days a month in San Francisco where my home is and the other 23 days of the month out on the road.  And one of the reasons, you know, we’ve been able to grow Rooms to Read so quickly are these fundraising chapters, you know, we have 41 cities around the world, and I hope you viewers will check out our chapter map at www.roomtoread.org.  41 cities around the world where people raise money for us as volunteers.  That’s our version of volunteering, it’s not, go pick up a hammer and pound nails in Cambodia.  The local people are willing to pound the nails; they have a strong work ethic and we want to have the local people be empowered to build the schools and build the libraries.  Our version of volunteering is: raise money in your community, it can be as small as a thousand dollars. That let’s us print a thousand local children’s books and it can be as big as throwing a party and saying, let’s raise the roof.  Let’s build a whole school with the proceeds from the party.  Those 41 chapters around the world, literally is like from Atlanta, to Boston, to Boulder Colorado, to Calgary, to Chicago, to Dubai, and through to Tokyo and Zurich, they need me to be there.  I say, if you can assemble the crowd I’ll monetize the crowd.  You don’t have to ask the crowd for money.  I will do a slide show, I hopefully will inspire them and speak to the heart, speak to the head, and those fund raising chapters have raised over twenty million dollars, during the last four years.  Twenty million dollars is a lot of money, here in Los Angeles, 20 million is a heck of a lot more money when you go to the developing world, where the money goes 100 times as far.

Randy Webster: So, you do not know the word no.

John Wood: I do not like that word. The thing that kills me though is that you literally, with seventy five hundred libraries open, everyone that is watching us who is a book fan is that it is a nice number but what is more depressing is that we are saying no to thousands of villages that do want it.  So we have to use the word no because it is capital, you have to raise enough money to say yes to more villages.  So, it is kind of pathetic to me that if a library costs five thousand dollars to set up in a place like Cambodia, or Nepal. How can we be saying no to that opportunity, we have to be able to say yes.  Fortunately the good news is that this year alone we are going to open about two thousand libraries this year alone.

Randy Webster: Wow.

John Wood: So it’s five libraries a day. That’s a new library opening every four hours and forty minutes opening somewhere in the developing world.

Randy Webster: Wow. You are definitely a motivated human being because; correct me if I’m wrong, you ran the Boston Marathon in 3 hours and four minutes.

John Wood: Yes but that was like a decade ago.  I was a lot younger then.  I couldn’t do that today.  Those were my glory days, going back to my high school statistics.  I appreciate that.

Randy Webster: Now, it was endearing because I was a runner and I atempted to do it, what was it, ten years ago.  It’s a heck of a thing. So, other than that, how is the feedback from the families and the lives that you are touching as far as the students?

John Wood: That is what gets me the most; it’s just how positive the students are and the parents. And, I was in Nepal last week actually, speaking of traveling, but literally I left Nepal 7 days ago and I visited seven of our schools while I was there, seven of our libraries and you have parents there that would come up and hold your hand and say:  I can die now because my daughter has learned to read.  You have teachers come up and say you have done so much for us, and we have so little we can do in return and I can’t explain to them that what they do for me is something that money cannot buy.  I don’t care If I never again own a really expensive car, I don’t really care that much that I am still renting at the age forty five, I’ve given up a lot to start Room to Read.  But when you see these kids, and it’s really for me it’s the kids, I mean, when you take the books and you open the library, the kids come in and they get this look on their face.  They see these books, and we have kids who like petition when the library is being set up, kids are already starting to petition saying why can’t I start coming in now?  And the teachers will say, well the library doesn’t officially open until the school year starts in September and the kids are like: yeah but, yeah but.  In this school in Nepal, where literally like three of these kids were told,  okay you can come in the library but you have to agree to work,  you have to help set up the library.  They said okay, the kids agreed to this, forget about it, the kids came and as soon as they saw the books, forget it, they weren’t going to build the shelves, they’re going to let their parents to do that, they were going to start reading.

Randy Webster: That is amazing.  It is funny because when I was reading this, I said: I know if John Wood was flying over Paul Allen’s yacht right now, he would be looking down and going, wow I could build like ten thousand schools with that thing.  It’s just a different perspective.  Everybody would just be rubbing the marble in there and what it can do for me.

John Wood: Paul’s welcome to contact me.  With just a little bit of his, a little bit of resource.  And that’s a thing about Room to Read, and I’m John@roomtoread.org, Mr. Allan, but I don’t begrudge anyone for whatever they have.  People work hard, they deserve what they have.  All I say to people is, if you’ve made it, your job is not complete, that is the first step.  Carnegie said it “He who dies rich, dies disgraced.”  And my message for the world’s billionaires is very simple follow the example of great entrepreneurs like Irwin Jacobs of Qualcomm, like Bill and Melinda Gates, like Warren Buffett who are pushing a lot of their chips onto the philanthropy table. That is what the world needs.  The world needs the billionaires, but the world also needs just the average people like us to do our bit.  It is really a giant collective effort.  You know, Carnegie opened up three thousand libraries, we have opened seventy five hundred, we’re on track to open ten thousand. Why can we “out Carnegie” Carnegie? Because we built a global network of people.  It is no longer about the old rich white guy who does it, it is about building a global network. So, I would like to invite anyone who’s interested into Room to Read, you know, we want to make this, it’s not about me, It’s about me hopefully leading a parade with tens of thousands of people.

Randy Webster: Wow man.  And this is, this is a heavy subject what you are doing, but also I read in there that you keep a lot of humor too in your office like, you know, you use the laughter and stuff.  So, that was enlightening to keep such a serious mission alive.

John Wood: Employees are required to laugh at my jokes.

Randy Webster: Oh, that is funny…

John Wood: That’s why.

Randy Webster: So, coming to an end here and I thank you for sitting down with us.  Is there anything you want to add, I just have one thing to ask you about your next book, Zak the yak.  Someday you are going to write that book, “Zak the yak, with books on his back”? The children’s book…

John Wood: Yeah, it is actually under production right now.  It starts off…In the land of Nepal the hills are so high, that the snow covered peaks almost block out the sky, the views are so gorgeous you can just stare for hours; these mountains it is said have magical powers. And I’ve got Zak the yak, I know, it needs some work. But I, I’ve got a Nepali artist, Shanta Das, who has actually illustrated a number of our Nepali language books, beautiful artist! He does great animals, you know.  And he’s creating this Iconic Zak the yak character.  I did not want to have a western artist, I wanted to have a Nepali artist because there’s so much talent in the developing world and we need to support these artists and these authors also so that they can make a living from books.  So, “Zak the yak, with books on his back” it will be out, I don’t know, sometime.

Randy Webster: That was funny, I thought at the end of the book, I was like, that’s endearing.  Well,  thank you so much.

John Wood: Thanks for your time.

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