Russell 00.00
Hi, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and today with me is Jeffrey Hayzlett. I'm very much looking forward to our conversation, but just a quick word. I might have a little bit of problems with sound today. I'm in a funny place, and sometimes that can get away in there for sound quality. So, bear with us if there's some excitement in the sound department, and we'll do our very best. So first of all, good afternoon, Jeffrey. How are you?
Jeffrey:Wonderful, Russell. Thanks for having me. With sound, we have to do as best we can for the listeners because we're inside their head. Being inside their head sounds always important. So, thank you for taking care of that for everybody.
Russell:No worries. Well, Jeffrey, I can hear from your accent that you're not in the UK. By the sounds of things. Oh, well, you may be, of course, but it sounds if you hail from foreign shores where are you from?
Jeffrey:I do, although my family came over from Ireland back in 1757 into the United States. You're catching me right now at my ranch in South Dakota, which is for those in the UK or for around the world that are listening in, it's in the middle, the upper middle part of the United States, what's called the Great Plains area. If you ever watch the movie Dances With Wolves, that is South Dakota. All that terrain is South Dakota.
Russell:Huge space.
Jeffrey:It is. I've got a little ranch. I'm looking outside the window right now, and there's a river in front of me I own the oldest bridge in South Dakota it was built in 1898. Of course, that's just modern times for you guys in the UK. But that's old-time stuff for South Dakota. It's an old steel structure bridge about 170 yards long. So, it's kind of fun to have that history in my backyard, so to speak.
Russell:Yeah, and have you got cattle in the ranch?
Jeffrey:Yeah, we do. We've got a couple of horses and some cattle, and we mostly raise beans and corn, so most people would call it a farm. But so many people who don't know about farming or agriculture, they just call it a ranch. So, I just go with it. It's a lot easier to say ranch.
Russell:It's quite glamorous as well. Let's be honest.
Jeffrey:I wish it were. It's a lot of hard work. I'm sore from yesterday. I spent the weekend out and about on the ranch. I got back from a big event in Dallas and a couple of speeches, and then decided that this weekend I had to get some other work done outside.
Russell:Perfect. Well, tell us a bit about yourself and what it is that you do.
Jeffrey:I bought and sold over 250 businesses in my career, about 25 billion in transaction. I'm a former Fortune 100 officer, travelled around the world and had global responsibilities. I then went on to do my own TV show and podcast for CBS and for Bloomberg Television Business Network. I did that for a while and then started the C Suite Network, which we now lead, and which has over 350,000 members and hundreds of podcasts and television shows, and of course lots of great business authors and consultants and trainers and speakers. So, we've been busy last couple of years building that.
Russell:And is this instead of MNA or is it this as well.
03:19 Jeffrey
I still do that. I serve on 14 corporate boards a day. Four of them are publicly traded companies, a few of them are mine, but I still do a lot of that work. I've got a big transaction closing this week, which will be great heading into our 4 July week next week. So, I'm pretty excited about that. I'll have some money to spend, to have available. Yeah, so I still do quite a bit of that. I do a lot of executive consulting or strategic consulting to companies on hypergrowth. That's kind of what I'm known for, is being able to build brands fairly quickly. And in building brands, or at least the visibility of brands very quickly, brands take a while, brands are nothing but a promise delivered, so you have to make sure you're delivering on all the promises. But in terms of being able to discover brands reach discovery and then conversion is really critical.
Russell:Yeah. So, what's the secret of hypergrowth as opposed to adequate growth?
Jeffrey:Be good. The biggest part is to be good; everybody needs to sit back. They like to build the next best widget, but it doesn't make a difference. You build the next best widget if it doesn't capture customer behaviour, if it doesn't lead to what people want or how they want to use it or solve some kind of problem. So, I always sit down and focus with the companies on what problem is that we're solving. And if you know what problem we're solving, well, then you can usually do a pretty good job. But then the key after that is then to make sure that you capture customer behaviour with that. So, if you're not capturing customer behaviour, you try to change customer behaviour. Of course you'll run a lot of difficulties in trying to get that accomplished.
Russell:So just unpack that a bit more for me about the capturing customer behaviour. What does it mean then?
Jeffrey:Well, there's an old movie, what was it? Field of Dreams. Kevin Costner. I like to refer to movies, I guess being I used to be at Kodak, so we did a lot of motion pictures in my career. In the film he built a baseball field and said build it and they will come. It doesn't work that way with products or with services. You have to really be solving something. So, when you sit there about capturing customer behaviour, even like this, about building up your social profile building up your reach and discovery that I mentioned earlier, a lot of people say, well, I like Facebook, so that's where I'm going to concentrate. Well, if your customers aren't on Facebook, it's kind of a waste of time. If you're a B to B business and you're focusing all your video on YouTube, you're not going to do very well unless you're a how to product, right?
Jeffrey:But if you're a coach, trainer or consultant, people are going to watch videos on YouTube, typically in terms of mass volume to solve problems outside of, like, how to fix your faucet or fix your bathtub or shower or something along those lines. YouTube is great for that. But again, you want to capture customer behaviour. You want to go where the people are. And of course, that's LinkedIn and then some other social medias, or at least where your customers are. So, I spend time finding out what my customers want, where they're at, where they hang out, where they're looking, what they search. A lot of times authors will write a book and they'll ask other authors to give them input about, do you think this is good? Well, why are you asking them? Ask your customers. Ask your target audience and the folks you're trying to reach.
Russell:And that's interesting, isn't it? A lot of successful businesses often have a technocrat at the top and a good sales and marketing person. The old BMO entrepreneur, the four cornerstones even builds on that, doesn't it? And it's often very hard to find a solo entrepreneur, whatever the word is, who's good at both things. Is that fair?
Jeffrey:Yeah, I think that is fair. I'm a baby. What is a baby boomer and a millennial baby. So, I tend to like the digital, like that side of it. It is a little difficult to find that now if you've done a lot of it over the years. Well, it's a little easier. You recognise it, you've trained yourself into it to some extent through the experience. But, yeah, it is a little difficult. And that's why it's important for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs typically start off as one man or one-woman bands, and then they add devout followers. So, they look around and say, hey, can you bounce? Then you're head of finance. And so, they tend to grab whoever's next to them and then they throw them into the breach. And then the next level is then adding the skilled practitioners, the experts, the pros.
Jeffrey:And that's where, quite frankly, a lot of entrepreneurs fail. And I talked to a CEO this morning that is working on, I won't say the industry, but he raised about $20 million in less than a year and a half. It's gone. Russell if he doesn't get funding this week, he's got to shut the doors. And it's just like, dude, you made so many stupid mistakes. You did bring in some experts, but you didn't listen to them. You didn't pay attention to them. There wasn't a decision that wasn't made in that company that you didn't get involved in, and to some extent, you shouldn't have. And a lot of times the people that this particular entrepreneur brought in, he didn't even pay attention to their opinions or to what they could do because he thought he knew better. Well, it doesn't work that way. If you got a heart problem, go to Cardiologist. You got a muffler problem, don't run down to the gas station on the corner. Go down to the people that just do breaks.
Russell:And I wonder if actually the speaker market, the guru market, is partly to bring for this, because you're looking at people who are extremely rare, who are the very few people sometimes who have created the market, like the Steve Jobs thing. Everybody thinks they can emulate Steve Jobs, but he is an absolute flash in the pan. The vast majority of businesses are dull. They've got a good, sensible product. They market it really well. They're solving a relatively widespread, lucrative market area. And, I mean, you can make of a lot of money out of sewage. You can make a of a lot of money out of things that are not glamorous. And I think a lot of people mistake this idea with hypergrowth, don't they? That they have to be creating something that's never been created before
Jeffrey:I've done a lot of that in my career and building things that I've done, especially on the digital TV side. I've lost millions of dollars to try to get it to where it is today and still not where I want it to be. But a couple of things that you kind of want to peel back on that. Russell first of all, do you want to be Steve Jobs? I mean, I knew Steve, used to work with him, used to call him up, and he and I would yell at each other all the time because of business things that were at odds with. He wasn't the nicest guy in the world, but nonetheless, I don't want to disparage him in any way. He did a good job. But you just got to decide, first of all, be yourself, whatever that is. Be yourself, be authentically you.
Jeffrey:And by doing so, at least you don't have to explain yourself to a lot of other people. But when you get into these gurus, which many of them you can kind of call false prophets because there's quite a number of them, false prophets like the Bible and false prophets like the bottom line, who tell you hey, let me teach you the secret behind door number one, only to find out there's really oh, let me say door number two and door number three. Today you have 18-year-old life coaches. Yeah. At 18/19 you're not a life coach, you're a teen coach. Let's just be clear. Social has kind of done this to us a little bit. Some people started believing that the model was the flash rather than the substance is the real model the doing, the bottom line, the experience. And some of this other stuff is just somebody who builds 2 million followers on Instagram.
Jeffrey:And then she's hired to sell T shirts as an influencer, and she got paid a lot of money and she sold two T shirts. That tells you about her engagement. And it can't all be flash and it's got to be real substance to it. That's what a brand is. A brand is nothing but a promise delivered. So, what's the promise? What do you want to deliver?
Russell:Yeah, and I mean, we always go back to the old fundamentals of we work in a capitalist world, don't we? So, we have to use capitalist theories and models to make a capitalist organisation work because otherwise you can't operate something that's bizarre in a world that's not constructed that way. Except, of course, for the very few people that can. And this is my point, isn't it? But actually, all we hear about is those few people and we try and create this. I like your thing about the flash because there's also the pan, isn't there? And you've got to create both. You've got to have that thing of solidity and longevity and you have to constantly learn from your mistakes. And those businesspeople who aren't making mistakes aren't taking risks, I would suggest.
Jeffrey:Yeah, but even like, let's take Steve. Steve had a wonderful team around him. Some of the great minds, the CMOS, the CFOs, the CIOs, Head of Technology Wozniak, who was just brillint. He's wacko he's just off the charts. You can tell deep down this guy is deep and his mind's always churning, different things going on. And you've got to be able to attract that. And I think that's important for a leader to do in businesses. You could certainly be the flash. And I think it is important for brands, the leaders of the company, to sell the business. Because if you sell, you're selling the business, sell the business, sell you. And I think a lot of people love the personality of that.
Jeffrey:So where the companies take on that and we miss that with some companies. But I think the companies that have been somewhat enduring to us, like Nike, like Apple, like so many others like that, they always had that sense of personality, and they always had some fairly great leaders or visionaries. I mean, look at Elon Musk right now with everything he's touching, right? Same kind of thing. And to some extent, Bill Gates was like that with Steve Ballmer and Paul White and the team. But what's really good about those businesses at the very top, boy, did they have some people around them.
Russell:But also, there have been lots of other big businesses like that which have crashed and burned and disappeared. Kodaks, one, they outlive their usefulness, don't they? The Hewlett Packard thing. They have to actually evolve and grow, don't they?
Jeffrey:That's my theme on all four books I've written, is change, adapt or die. Right? Because that's it. Kodak. We failed the mirror test. You looked in the mirror and said, what is it you're trying to solve? They would say, well, we're a film company. Well, Kodak was never a film company. They were emotional technology company. I mean, they invented Kodak moments. They captured, they made, they managed, they move images and information. That's what they did. And yet they forgot that. And so therefore, they concentrated everything on saving film, doing film. And the hubris of that success is what killed them. I mean, they invented the first digital camera, sold it off to Apple back in 1995. I mean, they were that powerful at that time and really just did things wrong.
Jeffrey:They did things like buy it. They bought a company called Ofoto, which was a place to store your photos, and they renamed it the Kodak Gallery. When I got there, I said, why did you guys rename this thing? And they go, well, it's Kodak gallery. It's Kodak. And I go, but a gallery is something that you go to once a year, maybe, or you put stuff and you got to go dust them off. I said that's Ofota was a celebratory brand and Kodak was a celebratory brand, but yet they drove it down under the ground.
Russell:It's interesting that what you say there, it's interesting that you talk about two things. You talk about they forgot and the hubris and other two very different things, aren't they? So, one is carelessness and one is lack of competence. And that's a deadly thing, because actually, if you're going to make mistakes, it's how quickly you can bounce back, because you can argue that any bit, like you said, any business must change. We've got to learn the lessons of that change as well, haven't they? But to forget, really, that's you typically forget.
Jeffrey:Here's how you forget by starting to tell stories about yourself. When you start telling stories about yourself, then that's when you really kind of forget. When I first got to Kodak, the first day I was there, they told me and made a presentation as chief marketing officer. I'm coming in. They said, Mr. Hayzlett, every day someone comes to our website. Over a million people come to our website to see the Kodak photo of the day. Well, I was at a seminar or something or event online about a year ago, and here I am, 14/15 years later. I've left Kodak, I'm gone, and they're still using that same fact. And they said, over a million people come a day to see the Kodak photo of the day. And I went, there's a story. So, when you start getting into these stories about who you are, what you are, rather than really look in the mirror and discover this is really what it is, and ask yourself the hard questions, am I really breathing? Am I fogging the mirror? That's when you forget. You forget.
Jeffrey:And part of building an organization is to have that phenomenon, that event. I can never say phenomenon. It's one of my tricky words. Don't know why I tackle it every single time.
Russell:I have verbal dyslexia myself. I just sound like the muppets when I tackle that one. Anyway. But the concept, I think, which is really the true nature of entrepreneur, is this idea of the overnight sensation, where actually you've been working under the radar for ten years, and then suddenly you catch fire. And that's an interesting phenomenon, interesting series of events that can happen these days, isn't it?
Jeffrey:It is, but it's not so much they were working under the radar, they just never made it above it. Which means a lot of times we always strive for perfect. Perfect. And I tell people, look, once done is better than perfect, but once done, strive for perfect. Which means this whole thing, we're afraid of failure. It's not about failure that we should be worried about success. We should be striving for success, get to success. So don't fail fast, succeed fast. And so, if you're that entrepreneur, get out there. I mean, when George Eastman launched Kodak, his product failed 100% for the first number of years. I mean, people would take photographs and they just wouldn't turn out right. He kept it, redo the plates and redo this, and he did it for years and replaced all that stuff. People would send it back to him.
Jeffrey:And you got to imagine what it was like to send plates back or film back at that time was really rough in the 1880s. So the thing for most people to remember is that, yeah, it might take a while, but just keep moving and survive until you can get there and make it happen.
Russell:Yeah. And that's interesting, isn't it? Because those days used to take a long time, and now today, what fast is really fast, isn't it? That's the problem. People underestimate the word fast.
Jeffrey:Yeah, well, COVID helped do that or cause some of that. You know, days became weeks became months became years. And now I think if you look back over Russell, I think we forgot that whole two years. Yeah. First of all, we'll never go through it like we did before. It'll never happen again. People just won't stand for it. But the biggest piece of it is that it's gone. It was like two years now it's taken out of our memory. It's like, now we're done, let's go.
Russell:And that's a powerful thing, isn't it? To be able to forget the past? That's difficult because it is focusing on the future.
Jeffrey:Yeah, I'd like to forget it all. It was a tough time. It was one of the most difficult times for everybody. But for what I would call for folks like you and me and others, business first responders, we talk about the first responders. And I'm not comparing us in any way, shape or form to those that were in the hospitals and working because there were a lot of people who died and a lot of people who were saved by certainly by the first responders. But our job, look, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nurse. I can't sew a mask. I don't even know what to do. But what I could do is help people with businesses. And I never worked so hard in my life as I did during those two years. I was exhausted every single day just from the sheer, like, trying to motivate, inspire, educate, and help anyone that we could in different ways. And it took a toll physically, mentally, and also on the bank account a little bit, too. But at the same time, we come out of it stronger.
Russell:Yeah. And there are lots of businesses to acquire that went to zero, which were worth acquiring. It's that old thing about look after your money in the good times, because actually you really make money in the poor times. And actually, we've got a potential recession coming now. This is the time to really be thinking about strategy and investments and such. Like as long as you've made money in the good times. Exactly. And the trouble is, a lot of people have never known the bad times. They've actually just seen the upturn. They've never seen the bit where in business is interesting, the tricky times.
Jeffrey:Well, if you think back over the recessions that we've had and the worldwide recessions that we've had since 1900, all the way through, some of the greatest companies in the world were born during those recessions. General Motors was born. Let's go into Hewlett Packard was born. Apple, Microsoft were born during that time. CNN here in the United States during the last recession that we had in 2008, 2009. I mean, some of the biggest icons we know today, airbnb, Uber, were born during the middle of that recession. So, my point is, never waste a great recession. Never waste a great, good crisis. Find a job opportunity. Because when there are bad times, there also can be good times. Many companies had double digit growth during that time period. Pet supply companies, obviously, accounting, financial companies did well. Dollar Tree, which is here in the United States, did well.
Jeffrey:And then companies like I said, Airbnb and Uber. Who would have thought that 20 years ago that you would have let your daughter get into a car at 01:00 A.m. If she's been out drinking with somebody she doesn't know? Or you would let someone come over, stay in your house, sit naked on your couch, and they'd pay you money for it. No one would have thought that you would do those kinds of businesses. Yet look at them today. Juggernauts. Juggernauts in the industry.
Russell:Yeah, well, it's not smashing the industry, isn't it? But also, as you say, seeing the opportunity in the crisis. That's good. So, for people that want to know more about you, find out more about your work, consume some of your excellent materials. Where did they find out more?
Jeffrey:Well, there's a couple of places. First go to https://hayzlett.com/c-suite-network/. And, of course, we've got members from all over the world and, of course, podcasts and TV shows and all kinds of information. So, it's all there. And then also hayzlett.com. And of course, it's social media. Reach out on social media. We'll be glad to respond to you.
Russell:And if there's one thought you want to leave people with today, Jeffrey, what would it be?
Jeffrey:You focus right now. Focus on the things that are going to get you there. What problem are you solving? And then how to get to the right audience. That's it.
Russell:Well, and that being said, focus is right. We said 20 minutes. I've stolen another five minutes of your time because I found you absolutely fascinating. So, apologies for that. Hopefully, I'll be forgiven. Thanks so much for your time today. It's been absolutely fascinating.
Jeffrey:My pleasure.
Russell:You take care.