Bonus: H&R Block CEO Jeff Jones on leading a company with purpose

how are you? Hi? Everyone? As I said, another world ago. But just to set the scene for you, it was the Monday after the Super Bowl and we had Jeff Jones, the CEO of H and R block in from Kansas City. Everyone, and welcome to Next Question Live. It's great to have everyone here. You know, it had been fifty three years since the Kansas City Chiefs went to the Super Bowl.

Back then they were crushed by the Green Babys. I'm sorry to remind you, so last night's victory was especially sweet for Chiefs fans, including the one sitting here with me right now. Jeff Jones is the CEO of h and R Block. The company's headquartered in Kansas City, and you can imagine there's still quite a few people celebrating the victory at the Super Bowl. Jeff, welcome, Thank you, Thank you so much for coming in very late night last night. I was gonna say tell us about it.

We have such a nice conversation, but we had to hold the release for obvious reasons. But now here we are, it's July, and we're nearing the new and extended tax deadline of July. So I was reminded of my chat with Jeff. You know, he's such a fascinating guy with this really atypical background for CEO, and we talked about the road that led to this job, how he's changing workplace culture, and he also offered really thoughtful career advice.

So I wanted to share this conversation with you today, I mean, if not now, when, so I hope you enjoy. We should talk about your love with sports, because you played baseball as a kid growing up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and um I was asking you earlier, we were chatting if that was your ticket out, But it wasn't so much baseball. It was actually military school. It was military school, that's right. So I was. You know, I'm from a really small town. I was a way better than average

baseball player, but I was a terrible student. And I had a high school coach that said to me, so imagine in today's world as a high school senior. I never taken a standardized test. I had no family that had ever gone to college. We didn't have a college counselor. But I had a coach say to me, Hey, Jones, were you going to go to school next year? And I said, I have no idea. And this coach named Chris Wegman said to me, you should go to Fork Union Military Academy. I didn't know what that was, and

obviously there was no mobile phones or internet. And so my mom called and we got a packet in the mail, and I ended up going. I won't borry with the whole story, but it changed my life. That was one year. So this was after you graduated from college. I went as a PG after high school before I went to college, A sorry, a post graduate of high school. In athletes, there's a common PG year that you do after high school, and a lot of colleges will send kids there instead

of red shirting him. So at Fork Union Military Academy in Southern Virginia and Southern virgin Union, Virginia kind of right between Charlottesville and Richmond, and that's where you were. And I'm from Virginia and I went to u v A, so I know that area. But that's where you really got your act together. And so when you graduated from high school, you were kind of unimpressive. I was extremely unimpressive. I'm not sure I'm in pressive now, but I was

definitely not impressive. Impressive now, but I'm just saying, you know, you didn't have great grades, as you said, So you went to military school, you did well, and then you ended up at the University of Dayton that's into school. And I learned in that process that I wasn't good enough to play baseball professionally. I was a catcher, and you'd go to all these pro tryout camps and I had an average arm. I was a really good batter, and I was slow, and they just said, we can't

make you faster. You can't play at the next level if you're slow. And so I just gave up baseball and started studying more. And you you obviously have a lot of hustle. Was there a moment where things just suddenly clicked? What happened? You know, there's no question that I think the hustle of my parents is where it starts. My parents are entrepreneurs, small mom and pop entrepreneurs and a lot of ups and downs. But I think you

learned resilience from that fork. Union was a chance, and I knew when I went there that I just didn't want to blow that chance, and so I made the mo most of it. That launched into going to university. And in university, I learned that I was obsessed with how consumers behave, why they do what they do. What did you major in? I majored in communications and marketing And my dream job was to work at LEO Burnett in Chicago. And you got your drinks and I got

my dream job. But I got rejected four times. I was considered what they call off the street. I wasn't at a school they recruited at, I didn't have an m b A. I moved to Chicago without a job, and um, I got hired and that's what started my career. So how did you finally convince them? Because you said you were rejected four times, so what what was the fifth time? Must have been a charm. So what happened,

you'll never forget it. I finally got that famous informational interview which everyone says, it's a real interview, don't blow it right. So I go in and a guy named Bill Haljan interviewed me and he said, tell me about the last time somebody said to you, that's a great idea. First question, I don't remember what I said to him, but I gave him an answer, and he said, give

me another one. And I gave him an answer, and he said give me another one, and I gave him an answer, and he said, give me an You don't remember any of these was the next one, because the next thing he said to me, we went through that whole thing. And then he said, tell me about a product that does not exist but should exist. And on the spot, I said, fingernail clippers that catch your fingernails. And I got hired, and that is how my career. And then they moved me to Detroit and I worked

in the car business. But that that's how it all got stored. So did you ever invent fingernails? Scissor fingernail clippers that catch your fingernail. Psonally, I learned many years later when I thought I would do it, that someone else had already done it. But he was impressed. You got the job. I got the job, and you were off to the races. When we come back, Jeff Jones on creating a more inclusive work environment, which is topic

A these days. You're listening to Next Question with Katie Curic, and today I'm sharing an interview with H and R Block CEO Jeff Jones. It was recorded live back in February, before COVID completely changed our worlds. But listening back on this conversation, it's interesting how much we covered that is so relevant right now. So let's pick back up with Jeff tell us a really quickly. Your resume started in

the agency business at Burnett over about ten years. Um was actually part of a couple of entrepreneurial ventures that were that were reasonably successful. And then you know, if I just jumped closer to the end, I had an amazing opportunity to be the chief marketing officer at Target. Went to Target's a huge job, an amazing job, and did very well there. Did you do all those cool ads with the red and white. Well, the good news is Target always does lots of cool ads, so it

probably depends on which one. I feel like. I feel like they really changed, you know, when they started to be a cooler place to shop and everyone's calling it targe and their ads were Their ads just seemed to be much more, um, I don't know, eye popping. If you will, it's fun to watch. Were you a part of that, Please say yes, because otherwise I'll be very no. I think I was there at the beginning of them getting their mojo back again. The company now is doing

tremendously well, which is great to see. I also was there at the darkest days of Target, so I was responsible for helping the company navigate out of its data breach. I was there leading crisis communication in the era where we decided to open up our restrooms to transgender, which was incredibly controversial the company. So I was there kind of ups and downs. I then got recruited to go be the president of Uber and it was an incredible opportunity.

Very conflicted to leave what I was doing at Target, i went, and after seven months I left over a big ethical stand and so here I am at this point in my career where I love what I'm doing. I'm doing incredibly well at Target. I make this risky leap and it doesn't work out. What exactly happened and we don't have to dwell on this, But obviously you went there, you were president for seven months. You knew that the culture probably needed some fine tuning, to say

the least, So you went there and what happened. So I was I was hired to help the company grow up. And there's so many things about Uber that are and we're incredibly positive, but it's probably have been well documented now, you know. And I think the start of it is what people call a grow at all cost culture, and that's true. And so I was there when the company

was really struggling through. You know, what are the right things to do in terms of culture and how women are treated, and what growth means and all kinds of things that have been well written about. At the end of the day, you only have two things that matter, your reputation and your relationships. And when I when I realized that I wasn't able to make the change I was brought there to make, I had to decide to leave.

And why weren't you did were you not given the authority because clearly it was a company that was right for change, that really needed somebody of your stature or experience to come in and say this is how we make things better. Uh, did you just run up against people that that weren't going to allow you to do what you felt needed to be done. I think generally growth was the priority. And you know what's interesting now is, in hindsight, I've been gone for three years, you know,

way longer than I was actually there. But I think not only Uber has heard the message, but Silicon Valleys heard of the message, and tech in general's heard the message. So I was at the very beginning. I was going to say, you were a little bit ahead of your time in terms of understanding the importance of culture. And I want to talk about that in a moment, But

first you were. You became CEO of H and R Block in two thousand and seventeen, and I know that during your first six months you traveled around visiting H and R Block franchises to really understand the company, the culture of the people. Why was that so important to you? Well, that's where it happens in a large part. I mean, I think you know, we are a company that is rewriting its story. Very storied company, been around for a long time, very well known, sixty five years, sixty five years, UM.

But as as I say to people, it's a crisis of relevance. Very financially successful, and you know, I think as a leader, you have to listen a lot. And there's no better way to listen than to be with people on the front line serving clients. And you know, we have a huge footprint. So you have what ten thousand, ten thousand UM franchises or what do you call them, ten offices about a third of them or franchise owned.

And so I think my first six or seven months, I went to fifty or sixty different cities, and you know, we operate in every single congressional district in America, so we're in really small communities a lot of places. And you know, that's where I wanted to be. I didn't want to just come to New York, in Chicago and Boston. I wanted to go to the heartland of America and really hear about this relationship that we have with people because it's such a personal topic. Uh. And so it's

an incredible way to start. But if I rewind a second, when I first got the call about going to H and R Block, I literally said to the recruiter, I have a really common name. Are you sure you've got the right Jeff Jones? Because I'm not a financial services guy. You know, I have no tax experience whatsoever. And I literally thought they'd got the wrong person. And I fell in love with the purpose of the company, and I

fell in love with the problem. And the problem again is how do we transform this company to on today's terms. So in terms of why you became less relevant, why H and R block is fighting for relevance, what was it? Was it basically technology, just as we've seen, you know, Barnes and Noble and Amazon and all the all these sort of conflicts between brick brick and mortar stores and getting things online. Was that basically the nub of the problem.

I think there are three main problems. The first one was, for a bunch of retail operating reasons, our quality wasn't as good as it used to be. Related to that, we had just been raising prices year over year over year, really as an effort to grow revenue and deliver quarterly earnings. And then the third thing was the services that we were providing, and like so many legacy companies, we had

been afraid of digital. And it's a weird market because it's not like traditional retail of everyone in the country that gets their taxes done go somewhere for help, so it's not most people do taxes themselves with software. But we can't compete if we're not relevant and offer people choice and transparency about how this is supposed to happen.

And I know that's been the focal point of your latest ads, kind of knowing how much you're going to pay to get your taxes done at the very beginning of the process, instead of being surprised at the very end. It's so crazy. But when we talk to consumers, he said, it's the only thing I buy in my life that I have no idea what I'm going to pay until after it's over. And we just said, that doesn't make

any sense. Why can't we make pricing completely transparent whether you're online or in person and remove that mystery because it's already a stressful topic. You shouldn't have to stress about the price. But what about technology, Jeff, I mean, how are you how is it changing your business and how are you embracing it and combining it with your legacy professional services. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean there's lots of ways. I would almost say in every

way it's impacting our business on the basic level. That's things like having great d I Y software to compete against into it in turbo tax. It's also what we call virtual tax prep, which I really believe is the next the next battle that will happen where what you talk to somebody on the phone and they help you, but you don't have to necessary go into the exact office.

So in today's world, it shouldn't be so paper and manual all the time if you don't want it to be so, why can't everything be an a p I automatically upload to a tax preparer, engage with them on your mobile device, let us do all the work. You e sign and then you're done, but you didn't have

to go anywhere to do it. But does that defeat the purpose of this idea of relationship building because I know one of the things that you're really focused on is how to make how to build a community, and how to emphasize personal relationships over uh, you know, doing things digitally. Yeah. I mean the way we think about it is we have to make it easier, and we have to make it faster, and we have to make

it more personalized, no matter what the channel. If it's a digital engagement, then just knowing who you are and making it faster because you don't have to retype in all of your information. That's a way of relationship. Clearly for millions and millions and millions of consumers, they still want to sit down with somebody and and have that really intimate conversation, and there's there's no better place to

do that than block. You all recently received a score from the Human Rights Campaign that does great work on it on its corporate equality and decks, and you've been recognized as one of the best places to work for lgbt Q equality. Um, you have said being inclusive isn't enough. What more needs to be done. The way we think about it is to be a place where people feel a sense of belonging. So I think is you know,

this journey has happened for years and years. It started out being more diverse, which means a lot of different things, and then it was how do we be more inclusive? What we say, a block is we want to be a place that everybody feels safe and they can be their full authentic self, that they feel like they belong there, which is a great thing to say, But how do you make it happen? I mean, there are policy changes that we've made, and many of those are what you

have to do to be recognized by HRC. But I think the most important thing that we do is to recognize the discomfort and do everything we can to have the right conversations. Because whether you're managing one other person or in you're in a large group, people are afraid to ask someone a question or to learn more about

the differences, or to talk about what differences are. And from you know, me trying to lead against it to creating the right forms for people to have those conversations, that's where we see the power of change really happening. The other thing that that you care about is purpose. And I'm just curious why is it important in companies,

including a tax preparation services company to have purpose? And are you afraid as people all jump on this bandwagon that's it, that it will feel disingenuous us to both the consumers and to employees. Yeah, I think that's definitely a watch out. I mean, you know, the the shift that we made was to not have a statement of vision or mission, but to have a statement of purpose.

And that was really intentional change in language, because so many times vision mission things are written and they just they kind of go on a wall or a cup and they don't really live every day. But people want purpose, and so companies are people, and so when we change that language, and we wrote our purpose is to provide help and inspire confidence in our clients and communities everywhere. The first thing we did was talked to the Block family.

Henry Block was in the later years and was suffering from dementia, so he wasn't able to be clear with me, but his son Tom Block, was to really know, we don't want to just make something up because there's a new CEO. We want to rediscover who we've been at our best. And that's a way that we really guard against our purpose feeling like it's trite or just another statement. I guess your primary purpose right now, if you want to talk about that in general, is is how to

combat loneliness and social isolation. And that's something you saw on two in two separate ways with with your dad after your mom died, and with your daughters as teenagers. So tell us about that. You know, it's it's such a big ambition for us, and it's not intuitive, you know, when you think about this company's platform and where can we have an impact in the world. There's so many things that happen in the company that are fantastic, but I just said, we have to have something bigger, that's

more systemic. That's something we're all facing in our lives, and that for us is this idea of people are lonely. We recognize because of our humans in all of our offices, we're sitting down with people and every year having these conversations. It's about twelve million hours of conversations every year on really intimate topics. That's the beginning of recognizing that talking to people and connections in kind of the places where

people convene and making them better. We want to spark a movement to recognize loneliness as a problem and human connections is a way to help solve it. When we come back office hours with Jeff, let's return to my conversation with H and R Block CEO Jeff Jones which was recorded back in February in front of a live audience in Manhattan. Remember when those were a thing. We have some great career questions for all these young people who are trying to figure out what they're doing with

their lives. And so it's it's office hours with Jeff. Do you do this or are we just doing this? Do you do office hours, which Jeff I actually do. Yeah, you do it, That's what I thought. I was like, this is your idea, not ours, right. Vincent asked what is the best way to save money when you're starting out in your career. You know, when you're starting in your career and you don't have a lot of money

to save, but you have to pay yourself first. And that's the best advice that anyone's given recognizing make it a priority, and it doesn't matter how small it is. People think there's they've got to save lots of money, a dollar five dollars set aside, starting to demonstrate the power of investing and compounding. But just get started. You'll be you'll be shocked five twenty years from now what you've been able to accomplish by starting very small and

also sacrifice a few things. You know, sometimes you just can't buy that dress or go to that coffee. Okay, Amanda ask I have a seven month old? How do you juggle family in a career. I love asking a man this question because it is perpetually asked of women and never of ment. So how do you do it all? Yeah? I mean, first of all, I recognize that you can't do it all, and so early in my career I had a great boss who just taught me that this

is a dilemma for everyone. It shows up in different ways for different people, and you have to take the stress off trying to fix it. That you're going to have good weeks, good months, good years, and bad weeks, bad months, bad years, and that's normal, that's okay for that to happen. I have tried so hard in my career to just make it a priority to be with

my family. And when you make it a priority, that means I'm want to leave at noon to go do something and I'm want to come back or I'll be online later, and I think there's this perception that I can't or something will happen if I do um. And I think you just have to just have to do what you believe in play offense with your career, and make your own priority decisions. Rosie asked, I'd love advice on how to identify the next challenge or goal, especially

after a promotion, after settling into the new role. Now I'm not sure what I should be working towards. I mean, I think what what I recognize in other people that really starts to distinguish them in their careers are people who just take initiative, Uh, they decide what they want

to work on. They are incredibly curious, and I think the more you make yourself a lifelong learner and you take the initiative to decide and have ideas and recommendations, those become skills that really start to separate you from the pack instead of always being wait for someone to tell you, you know, here's what you should work on. But I also think that sometimes people are so focused on the next they don't do a good job with

the job they have. And I think that that's the best way actually to get promoted and to move forward is to impress somebody with the job you're do, wing that you're actually supposed to do, instead of looking ahead to what am I going to do next? Right? Absolutely. I mean, if I look back in my career, there's so many times I wish I would have told myself

to be more patient. Um and if you think about you know, it's weird to say it this way, but you're going to work in some way for fifty or sixty years, no matter what definition of work that looks like. So you know, have a long view, be patient, demonstrate curiosity, be a lifelong learner. I think those are great things to set you up for success. And in fact, that's a good segue to Dwiena's question, what was the first step you took when you knew what you wanted your

career to be? What fueled you and what did you do next? I mean, I think just that the whole sense of this is a long journey. You know. I had a manager in my first job at Leo Burnett. The company was going through some layoffs and I was terrified. This guy's name was Michael Would, And Michael said to me, listen, you're going to get fired someday, you know, so don't make that such a big deal. He said, what you have to learn is job security is knowing you're good

enough to get another job. And the moment you take ownership for this is about your career and what do you want to do and be insanely curious about learning new things. It just enables a future that doesn't have the pressure of oh my gosh, I have to have it all figured out. That's good advice. I think it also builds a lot of confidence. I think that's right, not worrying about like when the you know when it's going to all be over, right, then I think it

can affect your day to day performance. And finally, John wants to know John Muelner, who I happened to be married to. What business leaders do you most admire? Oprah is at the very top of my list. Why um I have I have an obsession with Oprah. I commissioned a painting of her that hangs in my dining room. That's super weird. It's too much time for now, but I can tell you the story about I had an opportunity to have lunch at her home and I showed

her the picture of herself and which did she call security? Well, this is what I said to her. I said. We sat down and I said, I want to show you something and you're either going to give me a hugger call security and she took her sunglasses off and she pinched in on the picture and she said, why did you do that? And we had a great conversation about

it exactly. You know, I think I spent a lot of time in Chicago in early years, and I just love her life story of where she's been and all the way she's found to be bigger than herself and to give back and stand for important things. Um, she's She's at the top of the list. And are there any other people who you've met along the way who you deeply admire? For sure? I mean I'm a student of business. I I love so many what I would call younger companies today. Um, you know the Harry's Razors.

I love Katrina Lake at St Fix. I mean just this new wave of business leaders that are really building great businesses, not just doing something to flip and sell. Uh So I think Katrina would be someone else really high on my list. You know, there's a concept called reverse mentoring where people who have been around a while learned from these younger people who are doing cool things.

And I can't think of a better position for H and R. Block to be in then to incorporate some of the practices and philosophy of some of these young, you know, startups to getting back to your original issue, increase and and make sure that you remain relevant. That's exactly right. We've embraced the entrepreneurial community in Kansas City in a big way, from making investments to being mentors

and reverse mentoring. It's exactly the right idea. I mean, when you bump into people a lot that just think about speed and innovation and problem solving totally different than you, there's a lot to be learned. All right. Well, Jeff Jones, thank you so much for coming. It was really fun getting to know you, so thank you, good luck, Thanks everybody that was Jeff Jones, CEO of H and R Block, Thank you guys so much for listening to this special

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