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From Adversity to Achievement: Ed's Leadership Journey · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I am Jacqueline Stominger, your host, and I have the most amazing guest for you today.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Ed.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Jim.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, can I get that right?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: You got it right?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he and so what guys, I just, you know, listeners, I want you to know, Ed has had an absolutely amazing career in the corporate world.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Great companies, financial services.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's done a lot of amazing things.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what he is doing right now, he is sharing his story and the principles and pieces of knowledge that he has gained from a very interesting childhood.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he has written an autobiography and an amazing fable it's gonna call it the Islands of Four P's.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is really, really great because you know what when you read a fable, you actually really remember things because it's a story.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is an amazing story as well that you will actually remember too.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it's we start lessons and we keep going.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I am so excited to welcome Ed to the show uh to learn a lot and hear about your principles, your story, and how it pertains to leadership.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I know there are going to be an amazing uh wealth of nuggets.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: So nice to be here.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, it is such a pleasure.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what you know, first when I was looking at your bio, I was like, oh my God, like I saw the you know, University of Rochester.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at where you, you know, was reading your story, and there's so many questions I could ask, but you know, I really am just amazed that you started, you know, three years old.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: You had something crazy, tragic in a way happen.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I'm and the the biggest thing is well tell us a little bit about that, but how on earth did you go down your the path you went on versus where some people may have gone down a path of destruction.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You went to a path of success.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just find that just so fantastic.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to define it.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I I I'm gonna write another book called From Black Leather Jacket to it to a bronze statue, but we'll we'll leave that one out.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it I the question you ask has been asked me number number of times, and I've really had a lot of thinking about it because I was kidnapped by my father at three, and I spent my first 18 years in 15 or so different places, including five foster homes, spent the summer in the YMCA on 34th Street in a hotel in Coney Island, and then two orphanages.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, at age 17 or 18, uh I became a ward of the state.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: My father disappeared completely.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Father's story is a long one, uh, and it wasn't his fault, so I'm not gonna go into that.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I I from there, I mean, I look back on those 18 years and say, you know, why didn't I make the wrong turn and I made the right turn?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of things.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Along the way, there were mentors, especially at the last orphanage.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, I was raised early on.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: My father had some principles, and although he spent very little time with me, the letters which I kept had messages.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Always work hard, always do this, always do that.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: But then the second step was five Catholic elementary schools, where the nuns made it very clear that, you know, there's a golden rule, and they put it out with the golden rule of if you didn't pay attention.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: They also, you know, said if you do the right things, you go to that good place.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to the wrong things, you go to that other place.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, when I was a child, when you went to the movies every Saturday afternoon, there were heroes.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: They were complete heroes.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So those were the kind of three things that said to me, there's a better life out there.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: If I do the right thing, I'll get ahead.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got a break.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: When I graduated from high school, I had no money at all.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and I, but uh, but my the mentor at the orphanage said, you got to go to a private college.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how I'd get there.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't have many scholarships in those days.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the scholarship I thought I would get was a New York State scholarship.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get it, but I got the NRTC scholarship.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that gave me the chance to go any place I wanted to go or could get in.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to go to Cornell, but they said the NRTC scholarships is five years.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: The Navy only paid for four, didn't know how to do it.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to Rochester, which was really a third choice.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my first real home.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And although the first year was very tough, because I I didn't have the right clothes, I got rejected by all the fraternities and so forth.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: As I always say to people, the food was better than the food at the orphanage.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of living with a bunch of guys, I was living with one person, so things were better.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, from there I I've lived the American dream, and I'm I'm I feel the biggest principle I have now today is gratitude.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a very, very lucky person.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you describe my life today, I had a very successful business career.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had a simultaneous career in education, and I have a the most important thing.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I've been married for 60 years next August, and I have three children.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations, that's huge.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's huge, and you know, and and it's her her her credit.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: We have three children, and we have eight grandchildren.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have seven grandsons.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what what I started with essentially one, I now have 16 with my in-laws.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh, you know, I'm a very lucky person, and I've that's why when I wrote this book from I was first of all, when I graduated from high school, I went to college, I decided to bury my background.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't gonna tell anybody, I didn't want anybody to give me anything because of my background.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was ashamed of it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want any special privileges for it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I this really my wife didn't know the whole story, but in my 70s, when I became the chairman of the Board of Trustees at Rochester, they wanted to know more.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then my wife said she wanted to know more.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then the kids came hard on and said, You've got to do it.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I sat down and started to write it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And as I started to write, first of all, I couldn't write my my childhood.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter, who's a writer, wrote the first draft of it.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Once she got it done, I was able to just couldn't, there were so many things I buried that I didn't didn't want to remember.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so but I when I started writing, I started to learn things about it.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then I started to say to myself, you know, these are maybe commun ideas I can communicate to other people.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I said when I finished the book, it took me four ghostwriters, but but when I finished the book, I sent it out, and I 15 people asked to write blurbs.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: They said, you cannot not take this public.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So a publisher came running in and said he would publish it.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that would be great because I had nothing else to do.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, publishers don't do anything.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hire a publicist, so you get a whole people like yourself.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a publicist now.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: The publisher was good though, because he did a brilliant job on the second book, at least it's a beautiful book.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: He also introduced me to a person who did the audibles, and the audibles are great.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: The second book has six voices, and you can do it in about two and a half hours.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It really is a she she got rid of the all of the work at the end of each chapter, made it a real story all the way through.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one of my weaknesses, I should have said this earlier, is answering short questions long.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: My daughter's a TED talk, she said, Dad, that's your problem.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna stop now and give it back to you if I can.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, I it's it's uh it's actually it's it's so fascinating.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to go back a few different questions.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So at what age did you say that you finally started telling your wife and your family about your my wife knew my wife knew most of it, probably 75% of it because I saved all my letters for my father.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when he died, he saved all the letters from me.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: But we I I really buried it and I didn't want to talk about it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was in my I was in my early 70s, and you know, and and then but Horatio Alger came along and finished it off.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Rochester dug into it because they had to tell a story, but Horatio Alger came and said, you know, we really like to become a Horatio Alger uh, you know, member, and then I had to go public with it.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And one of my videos is my going public with that, telling the story to the to the world.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I sat up to 1,200 people and I I told them my story, and then they did a video and it went public and so forth.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: So when it was out there, and once I got comfortable with it, you know, I really felt there was a, you know, there it's inspirational.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the kids say my main, I have three messages.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Anything is possible.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm proof of that, because I was a runt too.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't I I wasn't five feet or I didn't weigh a hundred pounds when I entered high school.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I I had all the problems.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, anything's possible.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Education is the solution to everything.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's my life.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the last but not least is one of my I have a lot of little little edisms, they call them.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Last one is is never be a victim.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Never be a victim because you have the energy you use in the victim, you need to use on what's next.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna hear this what's next to me a number of times this evening, because that's the answer to a lot of problems.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Take that energy, and it's not easy to find out what's next.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I have a couple of examples in my life that I just I wasn't I mean, you're gonna be a victim for a couple hours or days, but get rid of that and focus on what's next.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the that that's you can't dwell on the negative.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot dwell in the negative.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't do you any good.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I at points in times I could have probably made up made a point of really hurting somebody who hurt me.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, onward.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Next.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it and and so that's that brings me to my some of the kind of key questions that or things that really big aha's because I want you to share this.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You said like you did not fault your father.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not and don't and and kind of staying in in the same place of of don't don't wallow in being the victim mode.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's you know, leaders, I really want you to listen to that because it's really big.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you did not fault your father.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And was there a point in time where you like where like maybe a minute of the time?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we we we we we had a break, a very bad break after I got out of the Navy.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But writing the book has helped me not to fault my father.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, but he loved me more than anything else.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's why he kidnapped me my mother when they got divorced.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And in his letters was he basically sent me the message that in my mind, the one thing you give people is unconditional love.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, there's a letter when I was 10 years old, which I kept, and it's in the book.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, he I wrote him a letter and said, Dad, I'm not as good a kid as you think.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes am a bad kid, you know, because I had to convince him because he would never, I could do no wrong.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that that message also is one of the things that sent me forward.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But also, you know, when I reflect on people's lives, it's got to be contextual.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: This man was born in 1900.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: At 14 years old, he went through the Spanish flu.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: At 18, he was in the First World War.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Then from the First World War, you know, a couple good years where he made lots of money, became very successful, then lost it all.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Then went through the Depression and the Second World War.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that that leaves very big scars.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, he was just unlucky.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Unlike people today, the last 40 years have been almost besides 9-11, non-stop straight up.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different period of history.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Also, he was an immigrant and so on and so forth.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you know, it it and and he did what he could do, and he he tried hard.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, he abandoned me when I was 15 at the orphanage, and I had to become a ward of the state.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't find out why until 50 years later, when Tom Dewey, the governor of New York's papers, came to Rochester.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's too long a story to tell.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it wasn't his fault.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I writing the book and studying the thing, I found out that he did what he could do, and that's all we can do, you know.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I also don't blame people.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Excuse me.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that's true.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't blame people, right?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You we don't blame people.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: So something that you said that I really kind of want to want to bring out, and then I want to talk about, you know, how we're talking about how this all kind of goes into leadership too, but you said lucky, and I and I would say maybe not the right word because we create our own luck, you create your own destiny, and maybe things fell into place for you, but I also so I kind of want to get your take on that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what's what do you think?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what do you thought?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: The the context to me is I was born in the right time, I was born in the right country, you know, and I got I got a break when I was at, you know, I I did study hard.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: I became a varsity athlete and I did well in math and science and so forth.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I went into my physical for this this uh this scholarship, and you had to weigh 125 pounds, and I weighed 122 pounds, and I ate three pounds of bananas that morning, and I walked in and got on a scale, and I didn't make it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the the corpsman says, You didn't make it.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I gotta make it, I have no money.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Okay, 125, get out of here.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the luck, you know, that this guy was willing to pass me through, all right?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then or just going to the second orphanage, when I became a warden of the state, they could have sent me to a reform school, like some wonderful lady found another orphanage in Yonkers, which was close to a high school, and that high school, 80% of the kids went to a private college.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I got an epiphany then.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: This was my ticket out of my predicament.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: These people are doing something that shows me the way.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So those are all, but also lucky.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've been America for the last 40 years has been something to behold.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just simple things.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: 1983 I became the chairman, the managing partner of a investment bank, all right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: This the stock market was 1,000 or 600.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Today it's 45,000.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's that's the wind has been at my back, you know, that respect so forth.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, it's I mean, you could have you could have messed it up.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's no two ways about that.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: People have.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I I feel you have to have a certain amount of luck.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in my book, you'll find out in the chapter under plans, after all the studying they do, they spend an afternoon in a festival where there's lots of games of chance.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just to give that little extra, you need that little extra little bit of luck.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Marrying the right woman.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I mean, we always Barbara and I kid each other.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we didn't know each other that well.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: We were in love, we didn't know each other that well.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And 60 years later, I mean, I wouldn't be here without her.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's no two ways about that.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she's a real partner, and and my P for partner, P1 is the most important decision you're gonna make.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Get someone you can share your life with, someone will support you.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, even in your business life, my wife has a much better sense for people than I do.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: She can tell a bad, bad guy from you know, and by the way, the network of women that you're around, you know, they know when something is wrong.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's it's shocking, and I wouldn't want to go into that, but she, you know, some person that I was getting very close to, she said, shook her head and she was dead right.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I stayed away, and that was very good.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's a whole process you have to go through, I think.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I am I've been lucky, you can't, you just you know, you you don't go from where I was to where I am today without a little bit of luck, you know, or a lot of luck.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right, you know, yeah.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you do make your own luck.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I did I did put my head down at age 15 and I said, I'm going to a private college.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: How do I get there?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna study and I'm I'm gonna work.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: I worked at uh after school too, it's not the same kind of thing.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, and when I went to graduate school, you know, I didn't work.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: I borrowed all the money to go to graduate school because I felt that college I didn't do that well.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I did that well is I'm working in laundry, in a post office, you know, high boy hamburger, all that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had about seven jobs going at the same time.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that that took away from the studies at some some expense.
• 16:11
  unknown: Right.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's it, it's very interesting.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, one of the things, you know, and you just you said this, and I and I want to talk about the peas because your peas align a lot with what I think are really key principles in leadership.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I talk a lot about you know, leveraging that communication, and that communication actually is what you say to yourself.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's and that what you say to yourself is your vision and your mission.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you talk about your passions and it's and find the things that excite and motivate you.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, and you just said one of the most important parts is partner too, as one of the other P's.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to tie talk about those two things because uh I'm a real believer that companies today need to really look, whether you're the CEO and you got a hundred thousand employees or you got three employees.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're not employees, they're partners.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're partners.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're partners.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so I wanted you to talk a little bit about you know, that's you you you've got it, you've got it nailed.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I had a during my lifetime, I had a particular period of my life where I had three employees, and at Rochester I had 30, 30, or 40,000 employees that I was the chairman.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had this whole my company firm and sales when we sold finally at 800, started with 70 employees, ended up with 800.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I I've had this whole process.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And getting back to that whole leadership kind of what's what's your passion?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, let me just to let me give you the the the road of my passion.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: When you're a teen, you get a lot of passion, you want to be an astronaut and so forth, but somewhere in your teenage years, you start to isolate your passion.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Passion is not overused word, it's your talents, your interests, your likes, your dislikes.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Mine in high school was math and science, baseball and basketball, and girls, probably in that reverse order.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I went to college, that that morphed.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, into first of all, math and science morphed first into physics, which was a mistake, and then into engineering.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the the baseball and basketball freshman year was over.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't going to be a freshman athlete.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: That morphed into extracurricular activities.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Extracurricular activities really, I found my passion.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: In my junior year taking organic and physical chemistry, I started something called a humor magazine.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had wanted to get a look alike, like the Lampoon at Harvard, because I felt that Rochester was a place where fun went to die.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I said, you know, I'm going to have a little more humor.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's against it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: The president was against it, the provost was against it, the library was against it.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I put 30 people together and I truly found my passion.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Looking back, was to put people together to solve a problem.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Put people together to create a product.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And inside that, there's another passion, which I discovered 10, 15 years later, was I really got a kick out of helping people do better than they thought they could.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that became a very big leadership principle for me.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because people, when a young man came in about 10 or 15 years later when I was working, I was at a division, he came in and said, Mr.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hajim, he said, I know why you're successful.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, What do you mean?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Because you really want me to be better than I really think I am.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I copied that down.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really what my passion.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, when you develop, you understand your passions, you say, I've got to add principles to that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that principle there was, which I have on my wall.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing that someone can't do if he doesn't worry about who gets the credit.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: You connect that.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's a leadership trait.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: People recognize that you're not trying to take the credit.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, is I added to that later on in my life, a little bit later, after I got enough credit, I said, I started to deflect credit.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Every time someone said to me, You've done a great job, I would say, no, no.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I did okay.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: But Mary Sue and Jose, they did a great job.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Without them, I couldn't do it.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, today's world, you'd never do anything alone anyway.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: But when you do that, you get a trifecta.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: You feel good.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: The person who spoke with you said, he's really a good guy.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when Mary Sue and Jose find out, they feel good.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So those are what I call transferring your passions and developing your principles to basically, you know, make those passions happen.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I did I love putting people together.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then that that there's another other principle which I found to be very, very important, is give people as much responsibility as you can possibly do and leave them alone.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because the only thing you have the greatest satisfaction in life is doing something yourself.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, and then and then then then the two major words there are uh two major words are are congratulate and celebrate.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulate anytime someone does something good, make sure you're there.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulate.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then if if if possible, if it really lends itself to celebrate, you know, and you know that that those are two that that that those are managing techniques.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the very last one I want to tell you is never tell anybody you're the boss, never use the word CEO or managing partner.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're a partner, you're just and then he was fixed, and then then you have to have other little techniques, which I always thought there's there are two goodies in being a working company.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: One is money and the other is power, you know.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have both.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: David Kearns at Xerox taught me that.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was the boss, but he didn't make the most money.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Some of my salesmen made more money than I did.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at Firm and Sales, I've worked for them for nearly 20 years.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in only one year, out of the 20 was I was a highest paid player.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And all I was a managing partner the whole time.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are little, those are little things you do, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I found other people did it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I your question, which I I'm answering all your wonderful questions, but I my my my question was everybody has their own strategies based on their personality and that business situation.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't work all the time.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a really ugly situation, you may have to be the boss and go in and beat people up and so on.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I did that, you know, for some short period of time when I had to turn Lehman around because I got there, it was a mess.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: For the first six months there, I really, you know, I really had to fire people and and change things and so forth.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: But as soon as I got some kind of rhythm, I went back to this concept of getting people a feeling that it's their company.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another thing.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: In my firm and sales, I when we bought it back, I distributed the stock to everybody.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we had 200 shareholders, and I always kidded, I didn't have to come to work in the morning.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: They were pulling the rock up the hill.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something that you just said, I I think, I mean, there's so many great little nuggets here, and something that you said that I just kind of that that really kind of hits home is that and I I really want to applaud you for it, and and it's a key takeaway, which is you know, to not say, you know, to not quote unquote always like put yourself out like I'm the boss.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I would even say, even during the time when you may have had to fire people, one of the key things is that you recognize in that you are a partner and you recognize the people who are not playing on the team.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's right.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not necessarily the being the boss, it's maybe more being the captain.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm the captain of the team, and I get to find out who's not playing in the sandbox the best way, so to speak.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to take those people out of the sandbox and find them someplace else where they can thrive.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes by doing that, you can help somebody else be a partner someplace else.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: In your mind, in your mind, you've got to take responsibility when you're eliminating someone to realize that it's at least half your fault.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you believe that and let that person know that, but this is this is my fault as well as yours.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: You just don't feel in fact is one of your answers here is that one of the weaknesses of many managers is they can't do that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: They can't do it effectively where the person doesn't feel like, for example, in 14, almost 20 years at Fern Sales, I think I fired two people, you know, quickly.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: The rest, everybody else was, this is not gonna work out.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go find you another job, I'll write your recommendation, you know.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And my supervisor and I got together, we try to find this person another job because really it is your when you hire someone, it's your responsibility.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: If they don't fit, you know, it's your fault.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've made a mistake, and it's not fair to blame them.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a key thing, and that goes back, I think, also to the principles that if you know bothly that both principles, values, how you want to describe it, I kind of put the principles and values together.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: But if you know your principles and you know the principles of your company and the values that you have, and you can bring people in, let's say, like the top five values, they may not all be in the same order, but maybe the top five.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, somebody might have leadership and type, whatever, but roughly those same five somewhere in their mix, they could be a great fit.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't have those and you don't recognize it, then yes, right?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then it's like, you know what?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: You were not the right fit.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: My fault for not realizing that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's find you someplace else.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And or if you are, and I like to look at things of it in terms of a team within a company, whether it's um if you're leading marketing versus operations versus accounting, whatever, maybe that person has the values better fit with the accounting guy or the marketing person, right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's your job.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: See, see, I had a boss who basically didn't believe that at Lehman Brothers.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: He would fire people.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Just fire.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is one of the guys in the morning.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: I came in, I said, Where is Lou?
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's he I said, This other guy.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, We've Lou Gluckman fired him this morning.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: He told me to get clean out his desk and get out.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Guy was had 11 children.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to his office, hey, what are you doing?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but he taught me that was not the way to do it.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, other people that I'd come in contact, you know, this is and by the way, it costs you so little because what happens if you don't treat people right, all of a sudden, if you're in a business a long period of time, you've got a lot of bad people, people bad mouthing you out there.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you find you help people along the way, they say, you know, Ed did he let me go, but you know, I he treated me right.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that that was very important.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: These are the sort of management techniques that I think are very, very vital, especially in today's world, because it's really a small place.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that that that concept, you've got to act sorry.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: You will hire some incorrectly, or the the company will change too.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's another problem.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: In today's world, I tell young people is that you're gonna have to pivot a number of times because the world's gonna change.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And when everybody says, give me an example.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I used to have black records, then cassettes, then you know, discs, and now I have this, you know.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And think about being in that business all the way through.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you stayed with it, you're dead, you know.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the that's the answer to your major question here is is you know, what are the biggest blind spots for uh for executives and it's what's next?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I no matter what I've ever been in all my life, even myself, we go away on Christmas time and we sit down and say, What's next?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, in my company, I make sure that every year we do something different and new.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, most people get stuck, and I there's some brilliant examples, Kodak is one.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when things are too good, you just can't do what's next.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I was at E.F.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hutton and I ran the he hired me to run the institutional business.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was a retail firm, a wonderful retail firm.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Super retail in fact, it was the best retail firm in the United States, better than Merrill Lynch at that time.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And they were really had carriage trade wonderful.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: He needed an institutional partner, he didn't want it very big, I didn't know that.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hired me to institutional business.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got it going, it was going great guns.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Okay, now you're done, you can run the institute retail business.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: That was a really big job.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: That was really that was wonderful.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I said, You don't understand.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: The way the business is going is institutional is gonna become someday more important than retail.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: He said, No, you don't understand.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to leave Hutton because he didn't look at what's next, and then five years later he was gone because the institutional business became the major business.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Lehman Brothers at the time was building a trading room with 400 seats in it, and it said, we're gonna take advantage of what's coming.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to move in that direction.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think everything you do, I mean, I'm the lead director in the golf club, and every year I say, What are we gonna do?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's next?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: What this year we're redoing the pergola in front of the club and so forth.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So so as I asked you, how how do you think companies find what's next?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or how do leaders find what's next?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: You first of all, your team.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're you know, I I had a requirement that every every day at four o'clock we'd sit around a round table.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of my sneaker secrets of making everybody equal.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Have a round table in the conference room.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no there was no head of the table.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: That was very important.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: And no, but your your team should you you send the message to them, and you spend time thinking about what I call the drivers.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: The economy, demographics, geography, most important, technology.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're drivers.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Keep looking at drivers.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: You should, and if you're if you have enough money and you're a large enough company, you should have an outside service that keeps telling you what the big trends are.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: But your trends really come from your people.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: You ask each person in each of their divisions, you know, what's who what are your competitors doing really well?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what would what what could you do to make you know to take the next step?
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: What takes you to the next level?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: These are kind of words you use all with with people.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what happens.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it it it is a you you do you do it weekly like I did it in a very mild manner, and then kind of on a quarterly basis or some periodic basis, you do it in depth.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: You actually go someplace in a hotel room and you sit around with a with a whiteboard and you you brainstorm.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you do that.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I do that personally every Christmas with my family.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we have, you know, we used to go on a boat.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's great about a boat?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I love giving giving advice to families.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said to them, you know, you go on a boat.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: What's great about a boat is at night, guess what?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Kids can't get away.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hotel, they're gone, you know, skiing, they're gone.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Boat, they're stuck.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, for years our kid, we went down to the British Virgin Islands, a little tiny boat at the beginning, and now a bigger boat.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, but this is a this is what's next has to be a formal experience.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and you gotta you gotta also, this is one of the early things that I've been putting.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Failure is okay.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, uh, I want to you asked the question of how do I handle failure.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Early failure is a gift.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you get it in your life, I'm saying.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: But you also gotta contribute to your guys that the fact if you fail, it's okay.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you you're taking a shot that we all think is a pretty good idea, we're all in it together.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my board meeting used to be like a Quaker meeting where guys would stand up and say, I need some help.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the guys would all help each other, you know, because we were a small firm and we were competing against a lot of big guys.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: But what's next is a it's a process.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not one of these long-term planning things so much.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's little steps, little tiny things.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna add a little of this, you know, I'm gonna do this, you know, I'm gonna hire a salesman to cover this little new area, you know.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that it's little steps.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this business about a long journey starts with a small step, is you know, it's a cliche, but it really is true.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And each person takes a step.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's you know, it and I I talk about I talk about something called two steps to yes.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And two steps is basically because one step doesn't get you anywhere.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Two steps create starts creating the momentum.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to you have to be taking those two little steps, and they get to be bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um automatically gives you a chance to take a second step.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the the interesting thing is that I and I think this is really, really important for our listeners, you know, when it we're talking about leadership, something that I I really want to make sure that you we've talked about this, but I want to really kind of hit it home is that you need to listen.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: You need to to get to that next and find out what's next, you need to keep your ears open, you need to be listening to your team and your partners.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your partners need to be listening to your customers and your clients, and you need to keep your ears open because you will, if your ears are clogged and you're you got them, you're not listening, you're gonna miss.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: It may be the most important word.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: I use that also.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: People ask me, how did you uh spend six years?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: How'd you stay sick married for sixty years?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, one word, listen.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, that and the same thing there, you gotta listen, especially the head the head person.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta listen because if you start putting things out, you don't know how those are accepted.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: But when people come to you with stuff, you know you know if you agree with it, you're on your way.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to listen, absolutely.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think when a person says to me, How do you I say, How do you stay my ass?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because people change, systems change, and if you don't listen to that change, you will get left behind.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: You'll be a stranger in your family, and you'll be a stranger in your job if you don't listen.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: I you you've hit it on the head.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need me.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, and I could talk to you forever.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so how can people find you?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've got, I'll put links to the books.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta make sure I give me links to the books so people can get these.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Seriously, I was reading, I was sitting down yesterday, started to read this one, and I got like probably halfway through it, and I'm like, God, this is really good.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a didn't get to finish it last night, and I cannot wait to read this.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: I read parts of the synopsis, but really, really great.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so where can people find you?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: How can they they named the engineering school after me at the University of Rochester?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I always say, I love that because kids have to pronounce my name correctly.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Having an unusual name is wonderful because if you punch in Ed Hagram into Amazon, you get my two books.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you punch www.edhagram.com into Google, you end up getting a very robust, which is I give my my publicist credit, very robust website.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's you know, it tells the whole story.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I don't like to put people on my website because you don't have to read the books then.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so go to Amazon, get the books, and get download them on download them audible so you can listen to them.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Audible, audible, the the there's six voices in the these and the guy who did the uh they wanted me to do to read the the first my autobiography, but I did uh it took me two hours to eight minutes, and so I got somebody that actually sounds like me, and he's he's quite good.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a lot in common.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: His father and I both, you know, were in the Navy, but both engineers and so forth and so on.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, that is fantastic.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, listeners, I hope you get these books.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you take in some great nuggets and from today's episode.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to understand that leadership, you know, if you're looking at it from the standpoint of what you can learn from this, think about those P's, passions, principles, partners, and plans.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is really important.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Really important.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then and I'm just gonna add in there, add the L in there, make sure that you're listening.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I really, really want you to add that in there.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what can't so I can't spell ear or listen with a P.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: So otherwise I would.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Ed, thank you for being a guest.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight podcast.
• 36:02
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• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our goal is to make better leaders, great leaders out there, and great leaders makes a greater world.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for listening and thank you once again for being an amazing guest.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.