Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Think Big, Act Bigger, with Jeffrey Hayzlett (Media, Business, Leadership, Innovation, Change Management)

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REMASTERED: Think Big, Act Bigger, with Jeffrey Hayzlett (Media, Business, Leadership, Innovation, Change Management) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:12
  Host: Today's show is going to compel you. Jeffrey Hayzlett,
• 0:16
  who you're about to hear from, is the host on a primetime
• 0:19
  television show called C Suite. And he's the chairman of the C
• 0:22
  Suite Network. He also was on Celebrity Apprentice, he has a
• 0:26
  book called Think Big, Act Bigger. We're going to talk
• 0:30
  through some of that today. He was the CMO of Kodak and was an
• 0:34
  executive for several large organizations. And so he's the
• 0:37
  real deal. And he spent a little time with us, Jeff, thanks for
• 0:40
  being here.
• 0:40
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Hey, thanks for having me. I really
• 0:42
  appreciate it. And thanks for saying that. I'm real. I like
• 0:44
  that. I, you know, I love teachers without question. But I
• 0:47
  like people who really get dirty, who really get it done.
• 0:50
  And I've always been about that, you know, I bought and sold over
• 0:52
  250 businesses, my career 25 billion in transaction, I've had
• 0:56
  some businesses that have been huge success, and some that have
• 0:59
  lost, you know, I've started them with the hopes of cornering
• 1:02
  the market, and I found out there wasn't one so I've done it
• 1:04
  all.
• 1:09
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: company and I had a CEO, as a friend of mine
• 1:16
  is now working as a CEO for me and another company. And he had
• 1:24
  the HR director came in, said, Jeff, it's like a big Mack
• 1:26
  truck. And she told me that in the meeting, so and I said, and
• 1:30
  your point, what's your problem? You know, that's my job. My job
• 1:32
  is to be like that my job is to go through obstacles around
• 1:35
  obstacles over obstacles to create things to happen. I'm the
• 1:38
  kind of guy that you bring in for that. And if you want touchy
• 1:40
  feely, and all those, yeah, I can give you some of that. But
• 1:42
  that's not what I'm about. My job is to make things happen.
• 1:46
  And I do it with great respect of other people, and individuals
• 1:49
  and ideas and so forth. But in the end, someone's got to pay
• 1:52
  the bills. In the end, someone's got to deliver on the promise
• 1:55
  that we've just made. And that's really what it's about. So I
• 1:58
  really focus in on those promises and being pigheaded
• 2:00
  about that saying, hey, no, we said we were going to hit this
• 2:03
  goal mean this number, this this profitability, this net realized
• 2:07
  rate, whatever it might be, we use terms in sales. And that's
• 2:12
  what we're going to do. And we're not accepting anything
• 2:14
  less than that. So that's what we mean by being pigheaded. So I
• 2:18
  take that as a great compliment.
• 2:19
  Host: Well, but you don't, that doesn't necessarily fly in the
• 2:21
  face of you don't care about culture.
• 2:25
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Culture is as Gerber once said, you know, I
• 2:28
  think was Gerber. You know, culture eats strategy for lunch.
• 2:32
  I mean, it does. I mean, you and I are always talking about mood,
• 2:35
  I think moods, one of the most important things you can have
• 2:37
  inside of a business is you have a great mood, you can overcome
• 2:40
  culture, you know, getting people but you know, if you have
• 2:43
  a bad mood, even the culture is really tough to break into. If
• 2:46
  you ever watched a television show you'd like let's say, West
• 2:49
  Wing, or pick any show that you see, you can see that has an
• 2:52
  energy to it a cadence that you can see, as you watch the show,
• 2:57
  well, the same thing walks into an office, you can walk into
• 2:59
  someone's office, and they immediately feel the culture,
• 3:03
  immediately feel the cadence of the company. Are they stuffy?
• 3:07
  Are they slow? Are they fast? Are they quick? Are they nimble?
• 3:11
  And I think the leaders have to do that, you know, it's like,
• 3:14
  let's get it done.
• 3:16
  Host: So your kind of style and your approach, which has been
• 3:19
  very successful is is just exactly what you said. It's
• 3:22
  knocked down barriers, your blow through walls, do whatever it
• 3:25
  takes, what are some examples of companies that have kind of
• 3:28
  steamrolled their way through stuff?
• 3:31
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Can you say Uber? Can you say, Uber, I mean,
• 3:34
  there's a prime example where people said, we're not gonna
• 3:37
  allow them, and we're gonna put up barriers, there's, you know,
• 3:41
  legislative or regulatory kinds of things. And these guys are
• 3:44
  just running right through it and say, Nope, we're not
• 3:46
  accepting that this is what we're doing is that we're doing
• 3:48
  it, people said to it's gonna be more expensive, they're going to
• 3:50
  have surge pricing, they're going to charge you outrageous
• 3:52
  prices yet, look at that growth, look at what they're doing,
• 3:56
  because they have a service that people really want. And no
• 3:59
  matter what those critics might say, they're driving through it.
• 4:01
  And even when they've done some really stupid bonehead moves, I
• 4:05
  mean, and said things they shouldn't have said, but yet,
• 4:08
  you can see that they've steamrolled through those
• 4:10
  obstacles, and they're just making it happen. And in there's
• 4:14
  tons of other companies that I can cite as examples of that,
• 4:17
  that continually, so success after success in terms of just
• 4:21
  saying, here's our goal, here's where we're at, and we're gonna
• 4:23
  get there and no matter what it takes, you know, this, this
• 4:26
  passion for getting to that, you know, to that ultimate utopia,
• 4:30
  and my question to you most people who are listening right
• 4:33
  now is why not? Why not? Well, you know, you get to build
• 4:36
  anything you want to do you get to do it any way you want to do
• 4:38
  it. Why would you do it that way? And when people say, well,
• 4:41
  we can't do it that way. Well, why? Why did someone put a gun
• 4:44
  to your head? Someone holding your children hostage and saying
• 4:46
  you can't do this? I don't get it someone you know, I use
• 4:50
  examples in my book where I think big guy bigger where, you
• 4:53
  know, people come to me I said, Look, you know, I know the value
• 4:56
  of a network. I know the value of being a TV, being in radio
• 4:59
  being books, you know, speaking, like yourself, have, you know,
• 5:03
  have a consulting practice that your community is important to
• 5:06
  you. So I told my team, hey, go out and start making sure I'm
• 5:09
  engaging more with my followers show me how to do that. Show me
• 5:12
  ways in which I can get more people. And yet when I first
• 5:14
  they first did this, well, we can't do that. I said, Well, why
• 5:17
  not? And they said, well, because of the budget, I said,
• 5:19
  who gave me a frickin budget? I said, Go do it. It's up to me to
• 5:23
  decide whether it's too expensive or not. You're to tell
• 5:26
  me how to go do that. You tell me what I have to do? Do I have
• 5:29
  to run ads on Twitter? Do I have to run ads on Facebook? Do I
• 5:33
  have to? Do I have to, you know, tweet more, and I have to do
• 5:35
  more video, you tell me? What will help do that so I can adopt
• 5:40
  the best practices and be real because it's me that's doing it
• 5:44
  by the way, it's not somebody else. And and so those are the
• 5:46
  kinds of things when we talk about being pigheaded. And just
• 5:49
  running through obstacles?
• 5:50
  Host: Well you mentioned the word passion. Where does
• 5:52
  passion fall in the equation of the things that are important to
• 5:56
  the success of that company?
• 5:57
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, passion alone will pay the bills, all
• 6:00
  right. It's great to have passion, but you got to eat to
• 6:03
  write, I mean, I love to have romance with my wife all the
• 6:07
  time. But I you know, I gotta go out and get you know, bring in
• 6:10
  the money to pay for the things so I can have the candles in the
• 6:12
  in the in the champagne, and have the chocolates and all the
• 6:15
  things that go with the passion of our relationship as well. And
• 6:19
  the little accoutrements, so to speak of that, that's probably
• 6:23
  going to get me in trouble with my wife hope she's not watching
• 6:25
  her listening right now. But my point is, if it were passionate
• 6:29
  alone, Kodak would still be standing the way it was, I mean,
• 6:32
  people were passionate about film, but that That era is over.
• 6:36
  And you can you can stop reason, rationality strategy, and in the
• 6:41
  implementation of new technology that replaces those things. So
• 6:45
  passion alone is not enough, it helps without question, it will
• 6:48
  carry you through a lot of different places. So whatever
• 6:51
  you're doing, you should be extremely passionate about it.
• 6:53
  But don't just let the passion blind you to the real facts, and
• 6:57
  the real way of doing things. And that's why it's important
• 7:00
  for you know, people like yourself, and others who, who
• 7:02
  help these businesses, you know, understand that the systematic
• 7:06
  approach and way in which you have to do things, you know,
• 7:09
  you're passionate, I'm passionate about sales, I'm
• 7:10
  passionate about all these different products and these
• 7:13
  different ways of doing it. But in the end, I got to make sure I
• 7:16
  got good email, open rates, I gotta have, you know, a regular
• 7:19
  campaign, I got to run ads, I got to do this, I got to do that
• 7:22
  I, you know, I have to backup the passion. Great example, let
• 7:26
  me tell you, you know, just in business books, you know, we own
• 7:28
  the C suite network, and the C suite, book club, C suite, TV, C
• 7:31
  suite radios, we're building out what I call LinkedIn on steroids
• 7:34
  recur, creating an alter powerful community of business
• 7:37
  leaders. And it's the upper echelon of the business world,
• 7:41
  that's what we're going after. But when you think about books,
• 7:44
  there's 390,000 new business books this year 398,000,
• 7:48
  published in North America alone, and the average business
• 7:51
  book will sell 7500 copies. Now, when somebody like myself and I
• 7:56
  just recently sold, you know, like 300,000 copies of Think Big
• 7:58
  act bigger, that means somebody else is losing. And so yeah, the
• 8:03
  Pat, you have to know these facts and figures. And so a lot
• 8:05
  of people think, Well, I just published my book, where's the
• 8:08
  business? You know, you got to start months ahead of time, I
• 8:11
  even tell people a year ahead of time, before you you start
• 8:15
  going, as you know, we market our book very well. It's what we
• 8:18
  do. We're very good at it. And in the results. That's why we
• 8:22
  have publishers lined up saying, Hey, where's my next book, and
• 8:25
  I'm just been, my books only been out for three months. And
• 8:27
  now they're asking me, where's the next one? You know?
• 8:29
  Host: Right? You really understand that machine. And
• 8:33
  what about, there's this thing in the book that you talk about,
• 8:35
  called the Caitlin rule?
• 8:38
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Love that rule. It was written at this
• 8:42
  very desk. So I'm sitting here in New York City, we help take
• 8:46
  companies public, we own a company called Tallgrass. Now
• 8:48
  Tallgrass is a public relations and social media company, its
• 8:52
  slogan says, If you want to run with the big dogs, you gotta
• 8:54
  learn to pee in the tall grass. That's, that's, that's the name
• 8:57
  of the company, and only works with high growth companies while
• 9:00
  we take companies public, or help them elevate their
• 9:03
  visibility or celebrities and a host of other, you know,
• 9:06
  businesses out there. And we were about to go and meet with
• 9:10
  the CEO of a company about 20 blocks from here to talk to him
• 9:13
  about taking the company public. So Caitlyn stopped by my desk,
• 9:18
  young woman, and I turned to her. And she says, Jeff, should
• 9:21
  we take color copies of the presentation? I said, Caitlin, I
• 9:26
  said, You're new here. You've only been here for a couple of
• 9:28
  weeks. You get to ask me 21 questions. I'm going to call it
• 9:32
  the Kaitlan rule. And I'd made it up right there on the spot.
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  And I said, I said 21 question. I don't know why I pulled it out
• 9:38
  of my room with a flashlight. But here's what the rule is.
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  From now on. You can ask me any question you want. You can ask
• 9:42
  me about the meaning of life. You can ask me where the best
• 9:44
  Italian restaurant is. You can ask me which train to go take
• 9:47
  across you can ask me do I think your boyfriend's really serious
• 9:49
  about you? Any question that you want? Is that one of your
• 9:52
  frickin questions? And she turned to me right here at this
• 9:55
  desk right here and said, I don't think so. And I turned
• 9:58
  back to her and said good career Move, because if I have to
• 10:01
  answer that question, what do I need you for? Now? Some people
• 10:05
  would say, That's man, is that a little harsh? No, it's setting
• 10:08
  levels of expectations are what I call conditions of
• 10:11
  satisfaction. And I turned to her said, Caitlin, my job is to
• 10:15
  get in front of that client and give them the advice that's in
• 10:17
  his head, and give them my vast experience of the things I do.
• 10:20
  It's like hitting a mark on a stage as a speaker, or as a
• 10:23
  television host. It's about me showing up being prepared and
• 10:26
  being ready on that spot, lights go on, I start talking, that's
• 10:30
  what I'm supposed to do your job is to make sure that I hit that
• 10:33
  mark, anything up to that mark? Is your responsibility. And if I
• 10:37
  have to do that, what do I need you for? I hired you because
• 10:41
  you're a big dog. That's what big dogs do. And tall grass,
• 10:43
  nothing but big dogs, you're you're going to take my job here
• 10:46
  someday, you're gonna take and beat become the President's
• 10:49
  company. That's what I saw on you. I can't wait to do that. If
• 10:51
  I have to answer these questions for you. I don't need you.
• 10:54
  You're not a big dog. And so that's really what that's about.
• 10:56
  So. So what are you doing in your organization, when people
• 10:59
  come to you, and asking you questions are doing things that
• 11:02
  they shouldn't be doing themselves, and you're not
• 11:04
  empowering them to do it or telling them that you truly
• 11:07
  expect them to do it and hold their feet to fire to get it
• 11:10
  done. That's what the Kaitlan rule is all about.
• 11:12
  Host: You have to be, if you're going to be one of the big dogs,
• 11:14
  to figure it out, you find a way you don't come to me with that
• 11:17
  kind of stuff.
• 11:18
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Or I'll do it once you know, you know, like,
• 11:21
  I've already asked you the answer the question, what do you
• 11:22
  think we should do? Well, we should take our copies. And I
• 11:25
  turned to her and I said, Do you have time to make them? And she
• 11:27
  said no. I said don't lie to him. He asked me a question. And
• 11:31
  you know, and in but that's I think we have to call people in
• 11:34
  the carpet for those kinds of things. If you're not calling
• 11:36
  them on the carpet, you don't set expectations you don't, you
• 11:39
  know, it's like it's like a coach talking to a player and
• 11:41
  saying, you can run that faster, why you sloughing off, you know,
• 11:44
  you know, I know what she could do she that's why we got her in,
• 11:48
  I can see people think I'm a jerk, I think I'm I think I'm
• 11:50
  being a very good leader and saying, This is what I expect
• 11:53
  you to do, we set the bar, I expect you to hit the bar, or go
• 11:56
  over the bar, if you don't hit the bar and you're below par
• 11:59
  player, I don't want below bar players in my operation. I only
• 12:03
  want big dogs. And this is what we do. And that's not a big dog
• 12:06
  decision. That's not a responsible person that's on my
• 12:10
  team, you're letting me down. That's what that's all about.
• 12:13
  Host: Well, and you're training them to think for themselves,
• 12:15
  which is one of the best gifts that you can actually give the
• 12:17
  person. Tell me really quick, I have a couple more questions for
• 12:20
  you, but the conditions of satisfaction, I just want you to
• 12:22
  hit that really quick. Can you explain what is that? What does
• 12:25
  that mean? How does it come into play?
• 12:27
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Yeah, I think this is one of the most
• 12:29
  important parts of the book. And I've actually put this in all my
• 12:31
  books about conditions of satisfaction, when I call mutual
• 12:34
  conditions satisfaction. On one side, you always have a
• 12:37
  customer. On the other side, you always have a performer in
• 12:40
  everything we do, whether it's with a customer, a vendor, even
• 12:43
  our employees, even our kids, you ever make a pinky promise,
• 12:46
  those are mutual conditions of satisfaction, where I do
• 12:49
  something for the kids, and then they expect us that's that's
• 12:51
  what it's all about. And if you break that, oh my gosh, you
• 12:54
  can't break a promise, a promise is a promise you can renegotiate
• 12:58
  it. But you have to deliver on those promises. And so there's
• 13:01
  an action cycle that goes with those conditions satisfaction,
• 13:04
  there's an offer, there's the acceptance, there's the doing of
• 13:07
  the work, and there's the delivery of the product, and the
• 13:09
  acceptance of that delivery. So satisfaction in you at the end
• 13:14
  of the in the end of this action cycle, you you always go back to
• 13:17
  the person said, I've just delivered you, you know, this
• 13:20
  book, you know, or this bottle of water, or this cup of coffee
• 13:24
  or whatever it might be. And then you just say, are you
• 13:26
  satisfied? Because once they say they're satisfied, there's no
• 13:29
  going back, there's no pitch and there's no moment. There's no
• 13:31
  renegotiation, there's no missing the payments on the
• 13:34
  bill, you're set. You said you were satisfied. So pay me my
• 13:37
  money, you know, or give me what you said you were gonna do.
• 13:40
  That's the way it works.
• 13:42
  Host: Where do you want people to go to connect with you, get
• 13:44
  to plug into the C Suite, this whole platform that you've got
• 13:47
  going, where's the best place for them to start?
• 13:49
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: You can start right at the Csuitenetwork.com.
• 13:51
  But you can go to Csuitetv.com, Csuiteradio.com,
• 13:56
  Csuitebookclub.com. We own everything around C Suite. If
• 13:58
  you just look up hashtag C suite you'll you'll run into us
• 14:02
  because we have a majority of the conversation or find me at
• 14:04
  hayzlett.com.
• 14:06
  Host: And last little thing for you, Jeff, you have worked at
• 14:09
  these big public companies you've bought and sold
• 14:11
  businesses. You've been a speaker, best selling author, TV
• 14:14
  show, you're on Celebrity Apprentice, what is next for
• 14:18
  you, like what is the thing where you go, "this inspires me,
• 14:21
  this is the next wall that Jeffrey Hayzlett personally is
• 14:24
  going to be blown through"?
• 14:25
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: I'm really working very hard right now on
• 14:27
  the C Suite Network. This is a way for me to be able to help
• 14:30
  business leaders become more strategic and stay the most
• 14:33
  strategic person in the room. today. We're just inundated with
• 14:36
  time inundated with all these different things that are taking
• 14:39
  up the things that we need to do and so I want to help executives
• 14:42
  but continue to be the most strategic people in the room
• 14:45
  that and when Donald Trump's elected, become an ambassador,
• 14:48
  an ambassador for some country. I'm trying to figure out which
• 14:51
  one I should probably go for.
• 14:53
  Host: Well, if you didn't make everybody mad yet, I'm sure you
• 14:56
  got somebody there.
• 14:57
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, I love him as an individual. You know
• 15:00
  what I give him credit for at least at least we're talking
• 15:03
  about elections. And we're talking about issues in ways we
• 15:07
  never have before. And, you know, I'll give him credit for
• 15:09
  that him and quite frankly, Bernie Sanders a credit for
• 15:12
  that, as well, because we're talking about things we never
• 15:14
  would have been talking about, which is awesome. He's always
• 15:16
  promoting himself, which I always think is good. But yeah,
• 15:18
  the one thing I'll tell you about Donald, I've done some
• 15:20
  interviews for the post and a whole bunch of others about Him.
• 15:24
  He loves to throw things out there and then watch people
• 15:27
  attack it. And then he then alters his position based on
• 15:30
  those kinds of conversations. It's called cause causing
• 15:33
  tension. I think great leaders do cause tension and they'll say
• 15:37
  something, push it in order to get people to push it one way or
• 15:39
  the other. Not necessarily the position that he or she always
• 15:43
  believes but great leaders do that. And you know, and great
• 15:45
  leaders have got to have haters as part of the process. That's
• 15:49
  why it works.
• 15:50
  Host: Well. I love it my friend. Thank you for making a little
• 15:51
  time for us here.
• 15:53
  Jeffrey Hayzlett: Don't forget, it's not the lucky who win, it's
• 15:55
  the relentless, so get out there and be relentless everyday and
• 15:57
  think big and act bigger. Appreciate it. It is always a
• 16:00
  pleasure to be with you.