Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lew Frankfort - Coach CEO's Untold Story | The Fear and Depression That Fueled My Success

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Lew Frankfort - Coach CEO's Untold Story | The Fear and Depression That Fueled My Success · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  My adult children pushed me to tell an authentic story. My driver excellence, fear of failure and the
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  depressive episodes, they experienced when I was going through that. In my case, over the decades,
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  I sought out help and learned to really listen to my body. He turned a small accessory shop into a
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  global luxury icon. Lou Frankfurt is the visionary behind the rise of coach, transforming it from a
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  niche leather goods company to a worldwide lifestyle brand. When you're running a growing business,
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  you can never be complacent. Even with success, you need to be relentless. You need to make
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  raw and career decisions to find the right destiny. The logic comes from analytic collaboration and
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  the magic comes from imagination and belief. His leadership is about more than growth. It's about
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  craftsmanship, authenticity and sustainable legacy building. Through bold risks and unwavering
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  values, he redefined what a luxury brand could be. Be open to possibilities, maintain a feeling that
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  things are possible. Life is a journey, challenge itself to become a better version of yourself.
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  So Lou, first of all, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm really excited about this.
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  I guess my main question to just kick this off is 10 years after you left coach, a decade after you,
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  you know, quote unquote, retired from that season of your life. What prompted you to
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  codify your life, put it in writing, speak about the things that you went through? What was the thing
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  right now that's made you write a bagman, which is the book that's coming out, the story behind
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  the improbable rise of coach? What was the inflection point right now that pushed you to do that and
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  write that? It's a great question. And succinctly, my adult children, all of whom are involved in
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  some way in business, who I'm very close with, actually pushed me to tell an authentic story,
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  that not only discusses my values and building an iconic brand, but my driver excellence,
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  fear, failure, and the depressive episodes that they experienced as my children when I was going
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  through them. And one of the reasons they wanted me to do this is was because I've been mentoring
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  people, Gen Z millennials, even Gen X and baby boomers, people of all ages are both in portfolio
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  companies where we're active, as well as friends of friends who have been going through transitions.
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  And almost invariably, when I meet with someone who is going through some form of transition,
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  there's anxiety, there's fear, there's, and they get heartened when I'm able to share with them
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  that they're not alone, that it's very frequent and very common place. And where I discuss the
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  techniques that I've used both to identify low periods as they were coming. And the actions I took
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  to prevent them from slipping further and to avoid them, because your body doesn't lie to you. So
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  when you're all under stress, what you're feeling can turn into, insomnia, it can turn into
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  waking up with terrible dreams and sweats, fatigue, loss of mojo, a feeling that you might even be
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  an imposter, or you don't really have, you can lose a lot of confidence. And so I'm someone who
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  went through a lot of this very, although in my case, over the decades, I sought out help
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  in a variety of areas and learned to really listen to my body, and I encourage others to do that.
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  Talk to me about some of the things that you have, like some just high level themes about
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  going through high pressure, high environment situations, because again, you grew coach from
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  successful to just ultra successful over the course of your career IPO, like I think 12 billion
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  plus minus around the time when you were at its peak, that's not a low stress environment.
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  So when somebody is operating at that level, what are the things that they are dealing with,
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  that the public, that the outside doesn't see that you are dealing with internally, that you've
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  had to deal with through your life? When you're running a growing business, particularly a
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  rapidly growing business, especially in discretionary categories where fashion or style makes a
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  difference, you can never be complacent, even with success. So whenever you reach a milestone,
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  yes, it's important to acknowledge and celebrate, but you need to be relentless. And in being
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  relentless, CEO jobs are 24-7. And I'm really talking about share of mind. And it's really very
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  important to find ways to turn that off, to be able to compartmentalize, not only for balance
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  in life, but for renewal and refreshing. And I start with exercise, very important. I mentioned
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  earlier listening to your body and that might lead to massage, it might lead to acupuncture,
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  it might lead to yoga, it might lead to therapy. And all of these things can be really helpful
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  depending on where you are. And in your journey, and to your point, Gen Z is a very different
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  generation. And when we talk about societal shifts, they're occurring at galactic speed,
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  and attention spans are going down. Younger people are looking for self-actualization,
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  are looking for fulfillment. It wasn't long ago when you looked at a 30-year-old who was a
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  college graduate, and you asked, how many jobs did they have since school, maybe 1.3? Today,
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  it's 6-7. And when your parents and I went to work, the thought was it was a career, and that
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  you weren't looking to self-actualize, you were looking to imagine those hierarchy, depending on
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  where you sat, you went to the better life for yourself, for those around you.
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  What was the framework or the decision-free that you went through in your head to figure out
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  where you wanted to end up? Said differently, did you always think that you wanted to be a leader,
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  you wanted to work in corporate, you wanted to build something great? Was that something that you
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  knew from a young age, or did this journey into CEO of coach? Was that more just something that
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  happened through just figuring things out and trying different things and learning up and
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  ending in different places along the way? It's a combination of things. One of the things I,
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  for my experience and many others, what I often say is you need to
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  make wrong career decisions to find the right destiny. And I encourage people who have
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  the discretion to explore, to see what really gives them fulfillment. For myself,
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  from the early days, I felt I was a natural leader. I was present in my student body,
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  hunter college, in my senior year. And I ran as an activist on anti-war platform.
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  The Vietnam War had divided the country. I felt social justice was very important. And I always
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  was valued driven. And when I went into city government, I knew that I wanted to be a service.
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  I wanted to improve the quality of life of New York in New York. And I went to work initially for
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  an inspirational mayor, John Lindsay. And over the next 10 years, I had a series of positions
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  culminating in running head start and daycare during the city's fiscal crisis. And I felt my
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  customer, so to speak, was children and their families. And I wanted to do everything I can
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  to give them the highest level service with qualified staff in clean facilities with the
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  right type of support programs. So I was very focused on service. And I built
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  a team of like-minded individuals who were looking out for the greater good.
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  Now, that period of your life, there was a point where I find this very interesting in your story.
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  You were called Two Principled. And that's what led to that particular,
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  Two Principled. You were passed over for promotion. And that was a catalyst that eventually put
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  you on the path to coach. So speak to me about the concept of being Two Principled, what that
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  actually means. And what does that say to who you are as a person and your character and sort of
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  what you're put on this earth to do? I've always been a believer in speaking truth to power.
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  And I'd like to say informed truth to power, not just the highest paid opinion, but a studied
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  view looking at all of the constituencies and all of the issues involved. And when I first started
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  in city government, I was not in an environment where my leaders were concerned with the greater
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  good to the extent that I felt was appropriate and warranted. And I found an opportunity
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  with someone who became a mentor and eventually a very close friend who was really focused on
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  reducing education, educational inequality who was concerned with the immigrants and
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  and let's call it the underclass people who were coming into the United States to give them
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  the type of tools that where they could have a better life for themselves and their families.
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  And that was very motivational. When I took the job of running head start in daycare during
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  the city's fiscal crisis, I said to the deputy mayor at the time, if I do this, I want no political
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  interference because it's a hard enough job as it is. And the job was to really bring
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  the programs into compliance with feather on state law, which meant that I had to
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  with analytics look at the number, the percentage of children who were eligible who were receiving care
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  because you needed to be below a certain household income. You also needed to have staff
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  within these programs who were qualified. I got no interference from city hall.
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  However, there was a congressman at the time at Koch who came to my office and I had been
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  for one that he was interested in protecting a particular program. And by this time,
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  my team and I, we did analytics and try to understand against the set of criteria we ranked
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  programs and that particular program was in the bottom 10% of programs that only had as an example
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  15% eligible children, meaning because only find income verification for one other seven kids,
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  the other six kids presumably came from more affluent households. And I said to him
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  and congressman, I like to just share with you why I don't think that's possible. He said,
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  I don't want to see that. I just want you to say the program. Very polite. He walked out.
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  Little did I realize that he would become my boss about 18 months later when he was elected mayor
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  of the city of New York. So he became mayor and I continued to work in the agency for child
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  development, they care, head start. And there was an opportunity to basically have a, be able to
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  shape union contracts and the workforce in the city in New York. I'm a very big believer in
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  meritocracy and really a big believer that you need to have metrics to measure how people work
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  whether it was in government or elsewhere. And I was passed over despite lots of support
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  within the city in New York. And when I went to see the mayor, he said to me privately,
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  Luya just too principled. And what he basically meant was that he could not trust that I would follow
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  his position or authority as mayor in situations where I felt the city would be better off doing
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  something else. When you think about after this period in your life and you think about the next
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  career step, it would also be obviously there's lots of good corporations out there, but I think there's
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  lots of corporations where I think people would also find that being too principled would actually be a
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  detriment to your growth within the corporation, depending on the company. So talk to me about
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  I know your personality. I know what you stand for. How did you make the entrance into corporate
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  America into leadership? Being who you are and wanting to work with a company that works with
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  people who are of the same sort of caliber and ethos as you was coach the first stop or were there
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  other things along the way that didn't work out? Great question. Coach was actually the first
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  and only stop after government. And it was serendipity. I had not even updated by resume yet.
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  I was in the yellow taxi with someone who was an adjunct professor at Columbia University
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  and also an HEW official in Washington who had oversight for programs like Head Start and was
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  familiar with my work. I had just spoken at one of his graduate classes where there was a case study
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  on the work I did in daycare. We share a taxi going down town and he said, what do you do for
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  an encore? And I said, great question. I have no idea, but I need to leave government. And he said,
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  well, I have a friend who has a small pocket the company, a childhood friend on his 60 years old
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  and he's looking for a protege from outside the industry who has good values.
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  And I thought to myself, well, I think I have good values and I'm certainly from outside the
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  industry. And he set up an appointment for me with the founder of the business. And what occurred
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  in the appointment time to my getting the job and taking it early on being eternally curious,
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  I did some due diligence because I had barely heard of coach. Someone would need to mention
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  the name coach for me to know that it was a handbag company. I wouldn't be able to have done that
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  and unated a winner. So I pretended to be a business week reporter. And I called and visited places
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  where I spoke with the Bloomingdale's buyer, the Bunwattella general manager and others who said
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  that coach was a small brand on very strong following the founder regulated production and they
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  often ran out of product by Thanksgiving. But people really loved coach. For my last interview,
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  I visited a small handbag store on the west side of Manhattan on 70th Secretary. There were
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  back then in the 70s. There were many, many small groups of stores, mom and pop stores, small chains.
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  It was before the department stores basically drove for most of the amount of business.
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  And so I go into this specialty store and I say, I don't see a coach back and I say,
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  dear, carry coach. And the younger said, yes. And when under the counter lifted one coach back and
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  she said, it's not just I only have one bag now. And it's reserved for a loyal coach consumer.
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  And they said, tell me about coach. And she said, it had a cult following. And that intrigued me,
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  the idea that people felt passionate about coach and it gave me a sense of purpose to try to understand
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  what were the qualities of the brand that resonated with people that encouraged them to buy
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  coach rather than another brand or a no-name brand. And that curiosity I brought two coach
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  and early on, consumer insights and data analytics became a cornerstone of the way in which I
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  learned the business and to some extent led the business. Do you feel like it's a little bit of a
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  superpower to have no preconceived notions as a leader going in just blank slate but also
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  following up on that? How do you do it successfully when a lot of people from outside industries
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  try and go into them and they don't they don't actually work out? I don't think it's actually a
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  superpower. What I do believe for the right person who is curious coming in with no predisposition
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  and having a willingness and openness to explore best practices, trends, understanding the 360
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  perspective of a company which is product, brand, marketplace, team and so forth is I think something
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  that people can learn from the outside without predispositions and in fact it shows up in corporate
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  do you think was because now you have your in coach they have a cult following so obviously they
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  have a cult I guess you can define it as like not an enormous group of very like a very niche
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  group of people that absolutely love the brand so your job now is to carry on a legacy is I guess
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  the founder wants to to retire at some point and you have to find a way to take the cult appeal and then
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  and then you have to find a way to get the world to have that same love for the brand is this
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  is a smaller group of people but you also at the same time can't dilute what made it special to
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  those small that small group so what do you end up what do you end up doing that is so successful
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  what's sure what's the magic well before we get to the magic I will sort of as a combination of
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  magic and logic when you I realized I was going from a position where I had three or 400
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  people that reported directly into me within the agency to a situation where it's going to have
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  it a desk outside the founders office so first thing I needed to do was build this confidence that
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  I could actually get things done and and I also had to work within the guidelines that he allowed
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  me to operate and to the founders credit he believed that there was an opportunity for us to
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  reach consumers directly without middlemen because when I joined coach we sold to anyone who paid
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  their bills even late and we had no direct no direct consumer business so one of the very
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  first assignments I undertook was starting to get a mail or the business a catalog business
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  and in order to do that I had to learn the catalog business and I had to learn what success looked
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  like and I used my investigative skills to to meet veterans in the industry study best practices
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  and and developed we developed a successful catalog business and but even before the catalog
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  business I shared on the founders desire to gain control over our destiny because I also
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  looked at brands around the world even before I started a coach but especially in the first six
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  to 12 months wow a coach and there was one brand that really got my attention and there was a
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  small French brand called Louis Vuitton and they had only about 20 stores at the time and that
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  was the only way they distributed their product they did not sell through the wholesale channel
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  and they had complete control over the environment over service levels over merchandising and I
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  thought to myself that if we could open stores retail stores and actually be able to express the
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  full personality of the brand that it would lead to even faster growth and more loyalty and
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  it would be a laboratory for us to real time here and see what consumers are saying about product
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  two years after I joined coach I convinced the founder to allow us to open a our first full price
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  store which we opened on 65th Street in Madison Avenue and it was in October 40 feet by 11 so 450
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  square feet long and narrow and are with a full basement and for $25,000 we created library walls
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  and treated our bags which at the time one line leather bags on the shelves library styles and
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  you could see the gusset and the range of colors and that Christmas we had lines
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  down outside the store down to the corner about 100 feet away and I knew that we had something
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  that was special and if there was a way for us to scale it we could we would be a very successful
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  what I called multi-channel business at the time there were no other
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  American manufacturers that had a fleet of stores they all sold through third parties and some
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  were starting catalog businesses so we did over a million dollars in the first year and 450 feet
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  the average ticket might have been a hundred dollars which meant lots of transactions
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  why when you say boundless growth opportunities was was was there truly boundless growth opportunities
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  or were there things that had to be layered on to take it to the next level so it's yes multi-channel
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  for sure interesting actually choice that the founder had never gone I guess the the more modern
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  way of saying it is like direct to consumer but that's that's that's that was just a strategic
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  choice at the time and I guess it's a little bit more expensive to take a product and launch a
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  store it's like a little bit more high-risk than going through a style of channels I don't know
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  I've never felt the brand like that it's very capital intensive and of course now that we're in
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  a digital age and perhaps 30% of discretionary purchases in the United States maybe even higher now
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  online the stores brands that have stored up have reduced their physical footprint to adjust
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  to societal changes where people are spending more online catalog is not and it does not require
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  a capital so we started with a mail or the business you don't the capital is the cost of the
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  catalog but you do your economics and you understand when you layer in the course of the product
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  in the course of the market what you would need to break even or be profitable I will say being
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  an outsider even though I have been worn by an insider before he opens the first store that
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  I might need to go back to city government he said because the first store was going to fail
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  for multiple reasons first we would be thrown out of blooming dails which was down the street
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  and second people would not want to buy coach in its own store and well before we opened the store
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  I was asked by my colleague who ran sales revenue to meet with the chairman of blooming dails
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  I know who wasn't who was an icon Marvin Traub and I went to his office and just blocks away from
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  my coach store which was under construction and I went into this conference room formal conference room
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  everyone was wearing suits not me at the time but the department store staff and I was waiting to get
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  blistered by this fellow and Marvin Traub and this guy that was with me and I only brought one
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  one other person with me the rent fellow had the relationships and he said wait until
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  you hear what Marvin says before the meeting started I had seen his picture of course in
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  women's wear daily and elsewhere he came to the conference room and asked that Lou come out
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  and I went outside the conference room just the two of us and he said to me Lou I'm going to tell
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  you when we go into the room that you're doing the most unpartner like thing you can imagine
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  that it's going to jeopardize our future and that you're not a good partner but what I want you to
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  what I want to tell you but you must never say anything about this to anyone particularly
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  the fellow I was working with it's the smartest thing you could do
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  open your own stores because he was a visionary and he understood consumers and he understood trends
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  and consumers were looking to have more intimate experiences with brands that they cherished.
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  Talk to me about the idea of magic and logic so where did this come into play? When did you first
• 34:09
  think about the concept of magic and logic as it relates to coach so you've obviously now the stores
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  you're building out stores successful the whole brand is going in the right direction
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  why did you come up with this particular philosophy? When we say logic and magic we can say science
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  and art we can say left brain right brain and the way we came up with the term was
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  due to a presentation that we needed to make to the chairman of one of the five leading
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  department stores in Japan and this was back in 1988 the department store name was Mitsukoshi and
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  I was introducing this new concept of coach in Japan and for background Japan at the time did not
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  have local significant local brands the economy in the late eighties as it is today is really
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  act shaped with almost no poverty because of limited immigration and the social support systems
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  basically an act shaped economy middle class of course now there's some needles at the top
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  with people that are billionaires but but the reality was that
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  European luxury brands dominated Japan and they every household that could remotely say
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  afforded food savings had a luxury bag which they coveted and and I'm talking
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  the leading brands at the time was LV Gucci Prada to name a few and the market had not grown for
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  many years so it was a five billion dollar market but the population in Japan really wasn't was
• 36:20
  that growing and people so there weren't more households than these banks or forever so we needed to
• 36:29
  change we needed to provide a distinctive product that would meet the needs of younger people
• 36:43
  and now I'm bridging from your question of magic and logic I'm actually telling you how we
• 36:50
  employed both magic and logic and it was clear to us from all of our research and analytics
• 36:59
  and interviews that I did myself that were translated into English if indeed the person did not
• 37:06
  speak English that Japanese women in 1990 who were graduating from college were looking
• 37:14
  at professional careers they were not looking to be immediately married they wanted to travel
• 37:25
  they wanted to be able to express themselves and with that societal trend which we ever
• 37:33
  danced by tourists coming into our stores in Hawaii into third party retailers like duty free
• 37:41
  shoppers and our own handful of by that time 10 or 15 stores that these were young women looking for
• 37:53
  product that they could relate to emotionally that also gave them good value and we went into
• 38:00
  Japan insinuating ourselves as an alternative to European luxury brands where an average band at
• 38:08
  the time might cost 100,000 yen which would be a thousand dollars from a European luxury brand while
• 38:17
  a coach bag might cost 40,000 yen in Japan that for that 60,000 yen savings a consumer could go
• 38:29
  to Taiwan or Korea for a weekend airfare hotel and expenses or could save that $600 for rent
• 38:39
  towards an apartment and we insinuated ourselves effectively by as an alternative by getting
• 38:47
  prime real estate this is when we open stores so back to 1988 with Mitsukoshi I shared with
• 38:56
  the founder the the notion that there was societal shifts through analytics and research showed that
• 39:04
  the appeal for Japan for American made coach products by our experience with Japanese tourists
• 39:14
  so we had a presentation and we needed to name the presentation and we coined it
• 39:21
  magic and a combination of magic and logic and the founder who at the time was probably 70 years old
• 39:30
  and had been in the position for a career person at Mitsukoshi for 25 or 30 years loved the term
• 39:38
  magic and logic and the logic comes from our analytics consumer research on rigorous application
• 39:53
  of metrics collaboration adaptability and the magic comes from imagination and belief so when
• 40:03
  we talk about I had a belief that we could be successful with a Japanese consumer I really felt
• 40:11
  strongly and it was driven by things that I was familiar with which is analytics and trying to
• 40:20
  measure consumers were had been where they were today and where they were traveling and my
• 40:27
  tire philosophy from the beginning was to meet consumers where they were going not where they were
• 40:34
  today or where they were yesterday and so taking and looking at its new consumers who fuel
• 40:43
  businesses you need satisfied consumers to buy again and again we had lots of satisfied
• 40:52
  consumers in Japan if we were entering the market there would be all new consumers and with that
• 41:00
  phrase he never went into the presentation and for 10 or 15 years afterwards whenever he would see
• 41:07
  me in Japanese he would call me Mr. Magic and Logic so we would have dinners you're Mr. Magic
• 41:14
  and Logic and he embraced us and it was a very successful partnership which evolved over a 20
• 41:25
  year period and subsequent to that very successful meeting I started to use the term magic and logic
• 41:36
  at coach and this logic in magic and this magic in logic and we helped build a learning culture
• 41:46
  that really focused on collaboration and looking out for the greater good so when we talk about
• 41:54
  a greater good mindset that's logic you need to the magic is having belief and possibilities
• 42:01
  imagination curiosity is most of curiosity is what I call I call that magic as well
• 42:12
  instinct following your gut is magic but you can't follow you can't just use one of them
• 42:20
  it's always a blend of magic and logic in some certain companies and brands and products
• 42:29
  it's more magic others it's more logic I'm now talking about companies that produce physical
• 42:36
  products that have emotional connections to consumers because all a brand is a is a lasting
• 42:45
  sum of images and associations that people have when they see the brand or the product there's a
• 42:52
  set of images and associations and if those associations are positive and and in the case of
• 42:59
  coach it was very positive bags are are a very not intimate object for women because they open
• 43:10
  at 60 at 70 times a day they touch and feel it they kick out their most important possessions
• 43:18
  less so today in a digital age than before because you can almost do everything on an iPhone but
• 43:24
  the iPhone needs a vessel to put it in your keys on grooming products and the alike and in the
• 43:33
  case of coach we used a natural leather which we still do which develops a patina over time
• 43:42
  it burnishes so it gets better over time and today in the marketplace the collectibles are selling
• 43:50
  for more than many of the older bags are selling at prices well more than the new styles being
• 43:58
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• 44:08
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• 44:13
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• 44:18
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• 44:22
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• 44:26
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• 44:31
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• 44:36
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• 44:40
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• 44:44
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• 44:49
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  slash register to get your ticket today well I wanted to sort of get your perspective on on
• 46:58
  leaders who lean more towards magic or more towards logic because now you now you mentor a whole
• 47:05
  bunch of entrepreneurs and leaders and I guess this is again a two-part question first of all
• 47:13
  do you see people leaning towards on average leaning towards one or the other more often than not
• 47:23
  and like is that a detriment to lean on one more often than not and also for somebody who's
• 47:30
  listening to this who is a very say logic or magic driven person visionary or somebody in the
• 47:36
  in the data and they want to have more of a balance is there a way for somebody to become more
• 47:45
  balanced or is that something that you have to hire for to complement your sort of native
• 47:51
  disposition or native proclivities to one versus the other it's a it's also an interesting question
• 48:00
  and not surprisingly it varies by whether it's a service that you're introducing or a physical product
• 48:08
  whether it's a a disposable product where you just buy it every few days versus a discretionary purchase
• 48:19
  which is something that you would keep for a longer time that has a lasting value so it all depends
• 48:26
  one of my jobs in mentoring leaders or in determining whether we're going to invest in a particular
• 48:36
  early stage requirement is to understand the superpowers of that particular person and not only the
• 48:46
  superpowers but they're they're very nature and whether they're collaborative coachable strong
• 48:54
  ethics looking out for others rather than than themselves and clearly when we talk about entrepreneurs
• 49:04
  for the most part they they have the idea and many of them don't have the the training or the
• 49:13
  disciplines to turn it a great idea into a successful business and we what we try to do is complement
• 49:23
  that founder with others who have complementary skills and help the founder respect the value of
• 49:33
  those skills so financial disciplines are absolutely critical to every start up in every business
• 49:42
  and to the extent that the founder has a big idea and is a visionary but isn't really focused on
• 49:51
  profitability or or developing comprehensive strategic plans to sequence things you need to
• 50:00
  look to find people to complement them and vice versa just to summarize and wrap up the story with
• 50:08
  coach talk to me about how that period of your life ended and obviously what you've transitioned
• 50:16
  into now and some of the things that you took from those years at coach and I guess your entire
• 50:22
  career and what what you've you know that was a season of your life now you're in a new season
• 50:29
  of your life what you're focused on now and sort of what that period of your life led you to do
• 50:35
  when I was working at coach I was looking to build a brand that would withstand the test of time
• 50:45
  recognizing that most brands do not and and trying to understand what are the underlying
• 50:54
  equities within a brand that need to be nurtured and developed so that even if the company goes
• 51:03
  through a tough run or bad management it can be revitalized again I really do believe
• 51:13
  coach is a legacy brand because it has endured for multiple generations and today under the
• 51:23
  leadership of Todd Khan and Stuart Vivas it is undergoing a remarkable renaissance
• 51:32
  reaching all-time highs as it focuses on Gen Z continuing to look at societal shifts and
• 51:42
  and have it really responded to what Gen Z is looking for and they actually created a term
• 51:51
  called accessible as call I'm sorry they created a term called expressive luxury we had created a
• 52:00
  term accessible luxury prior to go in public as a moniker for investors in particular to
• 52:08
  understand where we were playing between mass and luxury there was a lot of white space it was
• 52:15
  and you know we had a single lane over the over the following 15 20 years it turned into a
• 52:22
  superhighway accessible luxury because that is what Americans gravitate towards because we don't
• 52:29
  have a history of luxury so bringing it to to other brands and businesses when I look at a when
• 52:40
  we look at a discretionary brand that is entering a new space we look at the unmet need the
• 52:53
  what need perceived or existing they're going to fulfill or even if it's not a known need so in
• 53:01
  the beverage category as an example more than a dozen years ago we got involved in a concept that
• 53:09
  was in a sports drink category called body armor which was developed as an alternative
• 53:18
  to gatorade and powerade that industry was about five billion dollars in the United States and
• 53:25
  not growing the both companies had drinks with unhealthy ingredients artificial sweetness and
• 53:34
  the alike and the visionary founder created a sport sport drink with a great taste with natural
• 53:44
  ingredients tempest and coconut water and and it was clear to me with shifting norms towards
• 53:54
  healthy eating and drinking if we were able to market it correctly and
• 54:01
  reach the hearts and minds of target consumers it could be successful and the category started to
• 54:09
  grow as a result of body armor and ultimately the business was sold to Coca-Cola when we had I
• 54:17
  believe $1.5 billion in sales about 10 or 12 years later and that's an example of
• 54:24
  a visionary with a great idea reinforced by what I would call it second founder who built
• 54:34
  it a world class team of seasoned people to really build this business to its ultimate worth.
• 54:44
  The last thing that I wanted to go into because you've had an incredible career obviously
• 54:52
  you still provide tons of value from a strategic standpoint and a tactical standpoint for the
• 54:58
  founders that you work with and the companies you invest in but a lot of what you speak about in
• 55:02
  your book are some of the not so fun parts and we sort of touch on them at the beginning but you
• 55:08
  speak about fear and depression and anxiety and I'm sure things that every single founder you've
• 55:15
  worked with and every single founder and even non-founder that's planning on doing something
• 55:20
  is dealing with right now why did you why did you think it was important to put this stuff out there
• 55:29
  actually I'll say that differently because it's important to put the stuff out there but
• 55:36
  what was the thing that made you comfortable speaking about this publicly because I think that's
• 55:40
  less common. First I started to clearly I talked openly with my family who witnessed
• 55:50
  my highs as well as experienced my lows and I found over time I was increasingly comfortable
• 56:00
  sharing that with individuals who I was coaching mentoring or even in select cases people are my team
• 56:10
  and when I decided to write my story which I mentioned was motivated by my adult children I wanted
• 56:23
  to tell an authentic story a real story and that's what they wanted me to tell too and the
• 56:31
  reality for me is that I was always driven by a driver excellence and a fear of failure.
• 56:40
  If you only fear failure it doesn't work if you only a driving for excellence and not
• 56:49
  scared that you might fail that can lead to complacency and hubris and so I was always driven
• 56:59
  and continue to be through today by a fear of failure but it's motivated by a driver excellence
• 57:08
  when someone's afraid they can do two three things you can do when you're afraid you can flee
• 57:16
  you can freeze or you can fight and you need to be driven by positive things to fight otherwise
• 57:26
  you can freeze and many of us freeze or you can flee and avoid the tough stuff until
• 57:35
  it explodes because you cannot but that's also a portion of you can freeze of flee you want to fight
• 57:42
  and to fight you need to have belief so the positive side is when you drive for excellence you have
• 57:48
  to believe in what you're doing and you need to lead consistently you need to motivate people and
• 57:55
  there has to be a genuineness because people with people employees customers everyone is smart
• 58:03
  they will know when someone's faking it so I I also say say to people you need to listen
• 58:11
  to your body because your body doesn't lie to you and again if you're if if you're feeling
• 58:20
  like maybe you're an imposter you because you're alone in a big office and you got the world on
• 58:28
  your shoulders and being a CEO it's often very lonely I would say leave your office confide
• 58:36
  in your senior team and work together I also suggest that you get help and there's a lot of
• 58:44
  self-administered help exercise is so important to get your adrenaline and no morphins
• 58:57
  meditation therapy massage acupuncture and so on all of these things are really very helpful and
• 59:09
  I also believe you need to create if you want people to perform at their best you need to create
• 59:16
  a culture that allows people to be authentic and honest and where they can explore their issues
• 59:26
  and you could be helpful to them either through culture therapy medical support leaves of absences
• 59:36
  you feel like having a little bit of fear although it can be destructive if it's too much but a
• 59:43
  little bit of fear is actually required for success for for sustained long-term success yes and I
• 59:54
  underscores sustained long-term success and and often times people who don't have the fear
• 1:00:05
  but I might say get complacent or feel the hubris that they're in a moat that no one can get into
• 1:00:14
  a frequently shocked and then they have to do double time to transform their business to catch up
• 1:00:25
  with the new competitors of the changing trends is there is there a specific tactic that you've
• 1:00:32
  used over your life that turns sort of fear into some productive action versus just paralysis
• 1:00:41
  like I mean I know there's stories about when you were pre-IPO when you were stressed out and you
• 1:00:45
  had nightmares how do you work through that tenaciously because it's not really easy and the most
• 1:00:56
  important thing for everyone to know is that you're not alone every family is affected
• 1:01:07
  at some level at some time by issues by mental health issues whether it's a loss of mojo whether
• 1:01:16
  it's depressive episodes whether it's uncertainty about life and that is the human condition and I
• 1:01:25
  think with the ascendancy of Gen Z in the digital age as you said earlier it's much more open people
• 1:01:37
  much more open to therapy are open to becoming better versions of themselves and wanting to lead
• 1:01:45
  a better life what I try to do I'm focused entirely on purpose and relationships at this point
• 1:01:54
  and feel having authentic real relationships is critical as is purpose doing something that I believe in
• 1:02:06
  and when you have belief in something and you're able whether it's a coach on a team or
• 1:02:12
  running a business it is not only renewing it's energizing and very fulfilling so I encourage
• 1:02:22
  people who are going through periods of tough periods to stay active to get help develop routines
• 1:02:31
  that will require them to get out from who they are you cannot dwell and medicine often helps
• 1:02:42
  so if you could go back and tell a word of wisdom to your 20 year old self that would be comforting
• 1:02:48
  that would help them on their career journey what do you think that would be be open to possibilities
• 1:02:55
  maintain a feeling that things are possible optimism is is a critical factor and be willing to
• 1:03:06
  try new things they're not for life because you can often find your best destiny after for after
• 1:03:15
  having another experience that leads you to understand that's not where you want to go be open be
• 1:03:22
  positive be willing to do anything that's required and in in your job also look for to the extent
• 1:03:34
  that you have discretion meaning you have the means not to necessarily earn a paycheck next week
• 1:03:41
  or you have multiple opportunities look for an affirmative culture where your values are
• 1:03:49
  consistent with the values of the company and how they actually practice if you have the opportunity
• 1:03:56
  look for a learning environment where you can find mentors either individuals or because it's a
• 1:04:04
  learning environment classes and courses that you're encouraged to take to help you develop skill sets
• 1:04:11
  and a level of consciousness that you might not have today I like that a lot good answer
• 1:04:21
  very good answer your book so bagman the story behind me improbable rise of coach that's coming out
• 1:04:28
  October 14th and you can get that obviously anywhere you get books I would say if somebody picks
• 1:04:36
  up this book what would be and they could only take one lesson away from it the most important
• 1:04:42
  lesson what would you hope that they take away from this life is a journey be open to possibilities
• 1:04:52
  challenge yourself to become a better version of yourself have humility be able to
• 1:05:02
  listen to others be able to grow from experiences be less judgmental understand that the world
• 1:05:10
  has a lot of gray in it and I think that the last thing that I like to ask and you know even
• 1:05:17
  even before we press record I'm sure you'll have a very good answer for this because you're
• 1:05:22
  speaking to me about your family you're asking me five kids yet and how important it is to you
• 1:05:26
  know that's that's the legacy that's really what we we all do this for so after all the things
• 1:05:32
  that you've learned over your life over your career if you could only pass on one lesson to your
• 1:05:38
  your kids or I guess even your grandkids you can pick one or the other maybe it's the same
• 1:05:42
  same lesson for both what would be the most important thing doesn't have to be about business it
• 1:05:46
  could be but what's the most important life lesson that you would want your kids to take away
• 1:05:51
  live a life that's authentic and real with good values understand that we're part of a global
• 1:06:00
  society and our place in it and it's all about the journey be prepared work hard but look for
• 1:06:09
  special moments and and be sure that you're there for your family along the way