Interview with Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman, Host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett and Executive Perspectives LIVE on C-Suite TV
Lightening struck Jeffrey Hayzlett, celebrity speaker and entertainment mogul, both literally and figuratively. Listen in to a riveting story about a cowboy from South Dakota. #CSuite
Transcript:
Julie: 00:00 Welcome, everybody, back to the Conversational. I am here with the fabulous Jeffrey Hayzlett, and I can say that because I've actually known him a long time, and I can attest that it's true. Jeffrey's a global business celebrity. "Celebrity" actually I think is great because he was on The Celebrity Apprentice, so it's doubly true. He's primetime television and a podcast host. He's a bestselling author. He's a sought-after keynote speaker. Sometimes he's a cowboy.
Julie: 00:27 Hayzlett is former Bloomberg contributing editor and prime time host, and has appeared as guest celebrity judge, as I mentioned, on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump for three seasons. That gets a lot of conversation, I bet, these days. He is the associate producer of a number of global television projects and is a frequent contributor to the American marketing association's AMA TV and marketing news publications.
Julie: 00:49 He hosts C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett, and I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that I am a part of his C-Suite network. I was a very honored to be part of his early on advisory committee, and now I'm a customer of his with C-Suite Radio, which my podcast is being brought to you on.
Julie: 01:11 Executive Perspectives Live on C-suite TV is another one of his programs, where he takes viewers inside the C-suite of some of the world's biggest companies, including Domino's, Dunkin Donuts, Cadillac, and more. On the Executive Perspectives Live, Hayzlett interviews business executives, thought leaders, and innovators. Lots of good stuff with exciting people.
Julie: 01:31 He's also the host of All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett, which airs on C-suite Radio. Again, I'm a big fan of that. This a show is a collection of great conversations around the most compelling topics in business today.
Julie: 01:44 He's the author of four business best-sellers. Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless, Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits, Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing, and The Hero Factor: How Great Leaders Transform Organizations and Create Winning Cultures.
Julie: 02:03 He's been inducted to four professional hall of fames that honor professional achievements, including the National Speakers Association's Speaking Hall of Fame and the Business Marketing Hall of Fame. I literally could go on, because he's on ... How many boards are you on?
Jeffrey: 02:16 14.
Julie: 02:16 14 boards. He's on 14. I literally could go on. I think people get the picture.
Jeffrey: 02:25 That's it. The interview's over.
Julie: 02:26 He's a busy guy. He-
Jeffrey: 02:27 We only see each other about every six months, but it's like we haven't missed a beat.
Julie: 02:31 Yeah.
Jeffrey: 02:31 It's been that way for at least four or five years.
Julie: 02:34 Yes. Four or five years. You and I met back when we were doing the reality show that never aired, so people won't know Jingles.
Jeffrey: 02:42 Jingles. They should have aired that show. You were great on it. The judges were great on it. Of course I didn't get along with Gene Simmons, but other than that ... I didn't get along with Gene. I got him fired on Celebrity Apprentice.
Julie: 02:53 That's so funny. Was that after Jingles?
Jeffrey: 02:56 That was before.
Julie: 02:59 It was before Jingles. That's why-
Jeffrey: 02:59 That's one of the reasons why Mark Burnett wanted me on the show, because we fought all the time.
Julie: 03:02 Also great TV. Of course.
Jeffrey: 03:05 Yeah. I was on one of the few judges ... I came back on the ... It was the first season, and, of course, Gene and I didn't get along for obvious reasons. A lot of reasons. But, no, I ended up being on his Family Jewel show. We wanted to do a show together. Then Jingles was one of the things they really wanted to push because we fought. We fought on Jimmy Kimmel's show, we fought on Conan O'Brien. It went on. They actually had me back on the finale, live with Gene Simmons. I remember the final thing was Gene Simmons kept telling me how stupid I was. I was wrong, I was wrong. Trump, just the Donald-
Julie: 03:43 Just "The Donald" then.
Jeffrey: 03:43 Yeah. Turned and said, "Jeff, what do you got to say about that?" I said, "Listen, I doubled sales and he got fired. Who was right?" That was the last line. Boom. Off camera. Mic drop.
Julie: 03:52 Mic drop. Right.
Jeffrey: 03:52 It was good.
Julie: 03:54 That's funny. For those of you ... Jingles was a TV show. Mark Burnett produced it. This was back in '07, so this was a while ago. The premise was kind of a combination between The Apprentice and Survivor, in that they went out and they found people who felt like they could write jingles for commercials.
Jeffrey: 04:11 Either music, advertising ...
Julie: 04:13 Anything, right? But they couldn't have been professional jingle writers. They had to be amateurs. They came on. Then every episode we had a different sponsor. This was back when Jeffrey was CMO of Kodak. He came in as a sponsor, and we were going to bring the Polaroids back. What happens is the people then went away and they wrote a jingle, but they also then had to perform and act the jingle out in front of the guests, which included myself, Linda Kaplan Thaler-
Jeffrey: 04:38 Linda Kaplan Thaler.
Julie: 04:39 Right, of the-
Jeffrey: 04:39 Yeah. She's written more jingles than probably anyone in the ad agency.
Julie: 04:43 Right? Huge business. Then, of course, the famous Gene Simmons, who was a huge character. If people just see him as a rock figure, this is not about Gene, he's wicked smart.
Jeffrey: 04:52 No, he's wicked smart, he's very good. I always kid him about ... He's always got to be right. Then sometimes you're not always right. That's just the way it is.
Julie: 05:02 Yeah. That's true.
Jeffrey: 05:04 I still have a picture of you on set in big curlers. I remember ... Just now, all these things are flashing back. We're talking about those big, honking curlers that are like six inches around, and your entire hair was done up. I remember, there you were, and Linda, and then Gene.
Julie: 05:22 Gene, who didn't use curlers, by the way. It was too bad. Mark Burnett produced it. CBS did buy it, but it was a mid-season replacement show and there was never a need for a replacement, so we're in the archives somewhere.
Jeffrey: 05:33 There was more to that. I'll tell you the big story behind that. I remember because I was an advertiser in that show. I spent a couple million bucks there to get it off the ground. Really what happened was, another exec came in, didn't like the guy before, and kills the show.
Julie: 05:48 That's sad.
Jeffrey: 05:49 That's what you see. That's the pettiness that you see sometimes.
Julie: 05:51 In this business.
Jeffrey: 05:53 Not just in this business. Look, we just saw it in Congress. Are you kidding me? With the State of the Union Address. Same kind of pettiness. When people don't do the right things for the right reason, which I'm sick of. That's why I just founded the C-Suite Network, trusted organization. That's why we're doing the things that we're doing.
Julie: 06:07 Yeah. It's awesome. All right, I'm going to back you up, though. We know about the cowboy thing. Tell me, where were you born?
Jeffrey: 06:13 I was born in Charleston, West Virginia. My dad was in the Air Force. I was the second child. My first brother had actually passed from pneumonia, and I was born, just, literally nine months after that.
Jeffrey: 06:29 My mother was, at that time, kind of a housekeeper, and would do different jobs. She went on to become a bookkeeper. My dad was in the United States Air Force for his entire career. Then my parents divorced when I was about 14. He came back from his third tour in 'Nam. I remember that.
Jeffrey: 06:47 Let me just tell you the story. This is all these stories about things. I can remember, he stepped off the plane, in Macon or Atlanta, I can't remember which one.
Julie: 06:57 Were you there?
Jeffrey: 06:57 We were in Georgia. Yeah. We went to go meet him. The first thing he said to me, he turned to me and says, "You're getting a haircut." I had long hair. It was the '70s. It was like '74. 1974.
Julie: 07:06 Right at the end of the ...
Jeffrey: 07:07 Yeah. Then I also was wearing a jean jacket with patches. You know, back then you had the patches.
Julie: 07:11 Peace? Got the peace-
Jeffrey: 07:11 Yeah. I had the peace sign.
Julie: 07:13 I bet, yeah.
Jeffrey: 07:13 And I had an American flag on my jean jacket. He says, "Take that off, now." My dad was kind of a hard ass about that. Then he made me read an entire book on the treatment of the United States flag.
Jeffrey: 07:24 I, to this day, can fold a flag, tell you how to display it. I actually walk into conventions and meetings and tell people the flag's wrong. "You need to flip that around. You need to move the flag to the left." The American flag always has to be on the far left. Things like that you learn. That was lessons from your dad.
Julie: 07:43 But that was instilled in you. Was your dad then a part of your life after the divorce, still, heavily?
Jeffrey: 07:47 Yeah, sure. My parents divorced. They both remarried. My dad ended up marrying a gal that was six years older than I was. Go figure that, right? That was interesting.
Jeffrey: 08:03 My mother remarried a couple of times and finally found a great guy who's a father figure to us, and a family. My mother passed about five years ago, but ... He's still alive. I go down and see him every time I can. I go down to Georgia and I go see him. He's remarried now to another woman, and she's now part of our family, which is cool.
Jeffrey: 08:26 I've got a stepbrothers and sisters there. Because my mother was married to him for 30 some years, 37 years, he's as much as a family.
Julie: 08:36 As anybody else.
Jeffrey: 08:38 Yeah, exactly.
Julie: 08:39 When your parents split, you were 14. Did you finish your lower-
Jeffrey: 08:44 I was in junior high. At that time I stayed with my mother. My dad went off to another tour of duty. Stayed with my mom. She remarried this guy who didn't like me. It was just really weird.
Jeffrey: 08:57 Finally, after about a year, year and a half of that, I said, "I'm going to go ... " My dad was stationed in South Dakota. We had lived there once before, and I really loved it as a kid because, just, hunting and fishing, and just good memories. I went to live with my dad, and then, just, that, it wasn't the greatest experience in the life.
Jeffrey: 09:17 He basically said ... This is what happened. I remember flying to South Dakota. Was right in August. He said-
Julie: 09:25 You just graduated from high school?
Jeffrey: 09:26 No, I'm still in junior high.
Julie: 09:29 You're still in junior high.
Jeffrey: 09:29 No, I just finished the ninth grade. I'm going to be a sophomore in high school. I land in South Dakota. In the truck as we're driving to the base, he says, "I pay your mother $63 in child support a month for each one of you. You get $63 to live on."
Julie: 09:45 Oh, my God.
Jeffrey: 09:46 That's a true story. For the three years in high school, I got $63 every month from my dad. That's what I bought, school lunches, clothes, and did anything on.
Julie: 09:58 Paper, or whatever, pencils, you needed. Right.
Jeffrey: 10:00 Yeah. If I needed a bedspread. I mean anything.
Julie: 10:03 Really?
Jeffrey: 10:04 It wasn't the prettiest kind of a thing.
Julie: 10:07 It's tough.
Jeffrey: 10:07 Yeah, it was tough. It was very tough. Most people wouldn't want to go through that. I always had to get a job, always had to work. Actually, I wasn't going to play football, but I actually went out, I was going to run cross country, if you can believe it. I'm six foot three, 280 some pounds. Back then I was a lot smaller than that. I ended up being in high school All American, by the way.
Jeffrey: 10:32 Anyway, I wasn't going to play, because I thought, "I'll run cross country." I really liked running at that time. Then the football coach said, "Would you come try out?" I said, "Sure." It was the next day. I tried out and I won the starting spot, only sophomore on the team, that kind of thing. Then he ... I said-
Julie: 10:48 What position?
Jeffrey: 10:49 I was an offensive center. I remember I said, "I can't play, though." He goes, "Why?" I said, "I got to get a job. I got to eat. This is cutting into the thing." He says, "I'll make sure you have lunches."
Julie: 11:02 Really?
Jeffrey: 11:04 His name was [Dave Lyon 00:00:11:05]. He played for the Lions at one time. He coached for two years, and for two years he made sure I had lunches.
Julie: 11:11 That's amazing.
Jeffrey: 11:12 Yeah. I had people like that in my life. Now you're going to make me tear up. There were people like that in my life who, if they hadn't come along at that time, you just wouldn't be where you're at.
Julie: 11:24 Right. We talk about these "Holy shit" moments, right? That was-
Jeffrey: 11:26 Yeah. My whole life is like that.
Julie: 11:29 Yeah. You've turned it into something. That's the point of this, is to hear these things that happened. As a child, you're young, and it's your parent, and you've got this vision.
Jeffrey: 11:37 Julie, people talk about that. My wife, who I've been married to for 37 years, together for 39 ... I know me. I wouldn't be married to me. I'm very grateful to have her in my life. She went to a one-room school house in South Dakota, and then she went to the town school. She lived in the same house, the same farm, her entire young ... All the way up to adult. The family's still there on that same farm, and everything.
PART 1 OF 3 ENDS [00:12:04]
Jeffrey: 12:00 All the way up into adult. The family's still there on that same farm and everything. Sometimes I'll be in conversations with their family and said, "Wasn't your life weird or unhealthy or weird?" I go, "No, that's what I thought was normal. What you do is weird." The same house though.
Julie: 12:15 Right. That's right.
Jeffrey: 12:16 It's always different perspectives. You don't know-
Julie: 12:18 What you don't know.
Jeffrey: 12:20 Right. You don't know what you don't know. Some of those things, you don't know that it's not normal. You don't know that that's not the way other people live. I find out 20 years later, shit, you didn't get 63 bucks a month? You didn't have to do that stuff?
Julie: 12:32 That's-
Jeffrey: 12:32 You find those things out. Or you find out... Because my brother and sister stayed with my mother, so it was a lot different. Their experience... And they had Gene, who was a much better father. I say this to my own father today, my biological father, who's still my father... He's still my father. He passed, but... I'd just be open with him. He was that way. I still love him.
Julie: 12:56 Of course, right. No, we have to accept people for who they are, right?
Jeffrey: 12:59 Yeah, I always think about... I never had the chance to talk to him about what his life was like.
Julie: 13:02 Really?
Jeffrey: 13:03 Well, you've got to think about that. I don't think somebody wakes up and goes, "I can't wait to be an asshole." So what caused him to do the things he did in that manner? What was his insecurities? What were his things? So I look at like that. I don't think somebody just wakes up to do that kind of stuff.
Julie: 13:21 Right. I'm sure that's true. Especially to your child, right? He-
Jeffrey: 13:25 Yeah. But he made me tough. There's some good things and some bad things.
Julie: 13:31 Of course.
Jeffrey: 13:32 There's always something. You have to look for that. That's why I've got somebody really great in my life today who's... She'll say something like, "Well, it's our nephew's such and such. We've got to go do this." I'm going like, "First of all, I can't remember our nephew's name." That's part of my thing. No, anyway, I'm kind of joking. But I'm like that. I'm like that. I'm not very good at that stuff. Then I'll think, "Holy crap. That was very thoughtful. I wouldn't have thought of that." That's why I know she's in my life to help me.
Julie: 14:02 Good balance.
Jeffrey: 14:02 Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Julie: 14:03 Right. Yeah. When you were you... You obviously made it through with the help of some friends, right?
Jeffrey: 14:09 Yeah.
Julie: 14:09 And your coaches and things, which is great. What were you thinking that you were going to do in life? I mean, I can't imagine this.
Jeffrey: 14:14 Politics.
Julie: 14:15 Really?
Jeffrey: 14:15 Yeah, I was huge in politics. In fact, this is bringing out all kinds of stuff. When I was in... In between my junior and senior year in high school, I ran for the governor of state of South Dakota. lieutenant governor.
Julie: 14:26 You did?
Jeffrey: 14:27 Yeah, I ran for lieutenant governor of the state of South Dakota. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:14:29].
Julie: 14:29 Oh my gosh. Did-
Jeffrey: 14:31 Yeah. I would have had to quit high school if we won, but... Yeah, I ran with this Sioux Indian by the name of Ed Driving Hawk. He and I ran. We met at Boise State, and we decided to run. Yeah, it was a... So I did. I was very big in politics.
Jeffrey: 14:45 I got very involved with politics. I ended up working for a number of politicians for a number of years, doing campaigns, running all over the country, doing campaigns, presidential campaigns, everything. Did that for a long time before... Then I... Just one day, I left. Then I went to work for the American Diabetes Association.
Julie: 15:06 Really?
Jeffrey: 15:07 Yeah. I became the executive director of the Dakotas, and then I became their lobbyist. Yeah.
Julie: 15:12 Okay, so you finished high school there. Did you go to college or did you go right into politics?
Jeffrey: 15:17 No, I finished high school in 1979. Then I went to Augustana College, a small Lutheran school. Lutherans live in constant fear that some time, some place, somewhere someone's having a good time. Yeah, so I went to this small... Which I... I had no idea why. I didn't even know what a Lutheran was. I just liked the college. I swear.
Jeffrey: 15:35 This is how stupid I was. I remember being on the campus and they're doing communion. On the first day, they're doing a communion at this Lutheran... During... All the students have to... Freshmen have to get together and they're doing a communion. I'm going... I turn to the guy and go, "What are we doing?" They go, "We're doing communion." I go, "But it's not Easter. It's not..." I was Baptist. We only do it like twice, maybe three times a year. I don't even know how many times officially. He goes, "But we're Lutheran now." I said to him, "Well, what's Lutheran?" I remember that.
Julie: 16:04 Yeah, what's that?
Jeffrey: 16:05 Yeah, yeah. Ended up going to college. I never finished because I got so involved in campaigns.
Julie: 16:10 In politics.
Jeffrey: 16:10 Yeah. I worked for George McGovern.
Julie: 16:12 Did you move out to DC?
Jeffrey: 16:13 Yeah, yeah. I lived in DC for awhile, and then... I've always been drawn back to South Dakota. South Dakota is my-
Julie: 16:18 Touchstone?
Jeffrey: 16:20 ... spiritual home. That's always the place that I just love to spend time with and want to be at at all times.
Julie: 16:26 Going to the McGovern thing, because I... McGovern is such a... I mean, multiple president... Did he not run multiple times?
Jeffrey: 16:33 Well, he ran in '68. Didn't do too good. Ran in '72. He was the democratic nominee. Of course, Watergate and all that stuff. Then in 1979, my freshman year... After my freshman, I quit and I went to work for McGovern. Stayed on the campaign, finished it out. Of course, we lost. That was the Reagan landslide.
Jeffrey: 16:52 But yeah, I mean, to this... If the Senator were alive today, I used to... Every once in a while he would call me and say, "Hey, would you travel with me?"
Julie: 16:59 That's amazing.
Jeffrey: 17:00 Yeah. That's the kind of... I still have this one framed picture. I took him home on the night that Reagan won. I took him home, him and his wife, Eleanor, in my... At that time, I had a Ford Gran Torino, 1974 Ford Gran Torino. I wish I still had that car. I took him home to the apartment where he was staying with Floyd. He owned a television station. A big media guy. Midco Communications. I took the Senator and Mrs. McGovern home to that apartment. In the back seat was Chuck Roach, George Will, and Tony who I can't remember, for The New York Times. They drove with me as I took him home and I escorted him to the door. He sit next to me, and Eleanor, Mrs. McGovern, sit on the... She was a very small, petite woman. She sat on the passenger side. There was silence the entire ride.
Jeffrey: 17:57 I remember I pulled up to the apartment, I opened the door... Rushed out and of course helped Mrs. McGovern and helped the Senator out. Then I walked them both to the door. She hugged and kissed me. She went inside. Then he gave me a big hug and said, "Thank you for working so hard." Of course, I picked him up the next day too. But I was kind of like his... I traveled everywhere with him.
Julie: 18:16 What happened with politics? I mean, you obviously... What-
Jeffrey: 18:20 I enjoyed it, but it's a different game. Then I got into marketing. It's the same thing.
Julie: 18:25 Well, so-
Jeffrey: 18:25 Sell box of soap, a political candidate, a cure for disease. I mean, it's the same, it's just packaging.
Julie: 18:30 But how did you... What led you... You finished the McGovern. Did you just-
Jeffrey: 18:32 I liked the money better in the corporate sense.
Julie: 18:34 Well, yeah, I would imagine.
Jeffrey: 18:35 I mean, that's where... I got very entrepreneurial. I went on, I did a bunch of campaigns, I was running campaigns. I started a public relations firm. Then we were running campaigns, doing issues. I did term limits. Back in 1992, I put term limits on 28 states' ballots. Had more votes than Ross Perot did when he ran for president.
Julie: 18:55 Wow.
Jeffrey: 18:55 Yeah, I did stuff like that. Yeah, I was consulting a lot of campaigns around the country, a lot of senate campaigns. Of course, at that time, then I went to work for Tom Daschle.
Julie: 19:07 Wow.
Jeffrey: 19:08 Tom Daschle was in the House. Of course, he went to the Senate. When he went to the Senate, who was the chair? He was the chairman of the reelection for democratic reelection. There were three or four of us that were working in South Dakota. We did all of the advertising buys, the... Yeah, all of-
Julie: 19:25 That's where you started to get big into the... Okay.
Jeffrey: 19:27 Marketing side. Yeah, that took me there. Then that took me... And then the company needs it rather than the candidate. Okay.
Julie: 19:33 Right. You did that. Okay, so along the way, you met your... Did you meet your wife back in South Dakota when you were at school there?
Jeffrey: 19:39 Yeah, I met her the first night at college.
Julie: 19:42 You did?
Jeffrey: 19:42 Yeah.
Julie: 19:42 She was going to the same college, the-
Jeffrey: 19:44 Yeah, went to the same college. The freshmen back then, we did a panty raid. It was tradition that you did a panty raid. We went to the girls' dorm and floors and did a panty raid. I busted in her door. I knocked her down. I didn't know that at the time because she's a little tiny thing. And broke her toe. Then later that week, I'm emceeing, if you can imagine, I'm emceeing the freshmen frosh varieties, a talent show. And she's limping. I'm going, "What's wrong with your foot?" She said, "You broke my toe."
Julie: 20:12 Oh my God.
Jeffrey: 20:13 I go, "Well, it wasn't me. It was these other guys." She was dating some guy and I convinced her to get rid of him. Then-
Julie: 20:19 Marketing all over again.
Jeffrey: 20:20 Totally. I've never stopped selling. I mean, I saw her that day and said, "It's over." Yeah, we were dating by January. That was August, September. We knew each other and so forth, but I was dating all the senior cheerleaders and all that stuff, even as a freshman. Then got that out of my system. Then January... Well, January, we went out for our first date.
Julie: 20:45 And that was it.
Jeffrey: 20:45 Yeah, it was the movie, Being There, with Peter Sellers.
Julie: 20:49 Really?
Jeffrey: 20:49 One of my favorite movies of all time.
Julie: 20:51 That's your-
Jeffrey: 20:52 And Shirley MacLaine. Shirley MacLaine, who I met years later at Mark Burnett's house for Christmas. She sat next to me. Guess who sat on the left side of me.
Julie: 21:02 Not Gene.
Jeffrey: 21:03 No, Barbra Streisand.
Julie: 21:05 Oh my gosh. Wow.
Jeffrey: 21:06 Yeah, there was a private party for Christmas. He invited Tammy and I. We walk into the room going, "We are not worthy of this crowd."
Julie: 21:14 Oh, boy.
Jeffrey: 21:15 Yeah, because there's the Duchess of York, and Quincy Jones.
Julie: 21:18 Oh my goodness.
Jeffrey: 21:18 This is all of his neighbors. It was his neighbors. He had neighbors and then he invited... Joan Rivers was there, Melissa was there. The chairman of Macy's was there. Glanzer was there. A couple of other actors. A gal from My Big Fat Greek Wedding and her husband who's now in that cougar show or whatever. And David Solberg. Yeah. But all of his neighbors, and then us.
Julie: 21:45 And you. That's amazing.
Jeffrey: 21:45 Yeah, it was... I'm sitting next to... Literally, "Hello, Ms. Streisand. How are you?" And, "Mr. Broin, good to meet you." He's tall. Yeah.
Julie: 21:53 Yeah, big guy.
Jeffrey: 21:54 Who's the other guy that... The guy that did... He was a Bond too. An English guy. Big, tall.
Julie: 22:00 Are you talking about... Remington Steele?
Jeffrey: 22:01 He was in Mrs. Doubtfire. Yeah.
Julie: 22:02 Yeah.
Jeffrey: 22:02 Yeah, that guy. I can't remember.
Julie: 22:04 You know.
Jeffrey: 22:04 Yeah, that guy.
Julie: 22:05 Remington Steele. Why is it...
Jeffrey: 22:06 That-
Julie: 22:07 Pierce Brosnan. Boom.
Jeffrey: 22:08 Pierce Brosnan. Yeah.
Julie: 22:08 There we go.
Jeffrey: 22:08 He was there. I mean, I was like, "This is the most..." We, of course, drive up in our Ford Focus, neon Ford Focus rental.
Julie: 22:16 I launched the Ford Focus-
Jeffrey: 22:17 Did you really?
Julie: 22:17 ... in the United States for the first time-
Jeffrey: 22:18 Well, that's a-
Julie: 22:18 ... in '99.
Jeffrey: 22:18 There we go.
Julie: 22:18 I'm super happy about that.
Jeffrey: 22:19 Yeah, cool.
Julie: 22:20 It's nice. I'm sorry it was a rental.
Jeffrey: 22:21 You've done a ton of stuff. I mean, you think... If we put the two of us together, there's nothing else for anybody to do.
Julie: 22:27 Well, okay. Now we talk about these 'holy shit' moments that happened. I know there's several things in your life that had gone on. Tell me about... I know a couple of them, but tell us about 2001. When was the month, your lightning strike?
Jeffrey: 22:42 Yeah, it was 2001, April. I went to a Lutheran social services fundraiser that my wife was chairing or something. We came home and it was a torrential rainstorm, and there was... I mean, just terrible storms going on all day long. Tornado-like storms.
Jeffrey: 22:58 Came home and she had went down to the basement, said, "Hey, there's water in the basement." I said, "There's no water in the basement." So I run down there. I walk over there and stand in the little puddle that was there. Then I reach up and touch the spot where it was hit and lightning struck the house right then and came down through that, through the crack, into the water and into my hand.
Julie: 23:18 Oh my gosh.
Jeffrey: 23:19 In fact, my left hand, I'm holding it right now. It's still numb here.
Julie: 23:22 Really?
Jeffrey: 23:22 Yeah, it knocked me out. When I'm waking up, my neighbor had been driving by, and he's a pathologist.
Julie: 23:30 Oh my.
Jeffrey: 23:31 Yeah. As I'm waking up, he's taking my clothes off, looking for the exit wounds and stuff like that. Then that's when my daughter, who was a teenager at the time, I don't know how old Lindsey was. Probably about 14 maybe or something, maybe younger. She screamed, "The house is on fire."
Jeffrey: 23:48 When I wake up, Tammy's yelling, "Should I call the ambulance? Should I call the doctor?" I can't hear. I can't see. It's all white. But I jumped up because by then, I heard that the house is on fire. So you're thinking what? Oh my gosh, yeah. Then I-
Jeffrey: 24:00 Heard that the house is on fire. So you're thinking what? Oh my gosh. Yeah. And then I had to run up three levels to get up to the area that it hit. It did about $50,000 of damage, knocked out every electronic thing you can think of in a house.
Julie: 24:13 So she smelled the electricity, the smoke. But how are you? What happened?
Jeffrey: 24:16 I ended up having to go to the doctor and my blood pressure was like 400 over like 180 or something. It was really bad. By now the neighbors have shown up and they're all like dragging stuff out of the house. I had this big art collection and we had a house about 7,000 square feet. So a pretty big house.
Jeffrey: 24:37 But neighbors are showing up because there's smoke everywhere and, just as neighbors do in South Dakota. They're hauling stuff out of this room because that's where all the stuff is, all these paintings.
Julie: 24:47 Your art.
Jeffrey: 24:48 And that stuff. I remember I was sitting down and my wife says, well you've got to go to the hospital, you got to go to the hospital and the firemen are running by. And she goes, who should go with you? Should it be our son, Tyler, who is the youngest, or should it be our daughter Lindsay? And then right then Lindsay walked in the front door and we're in this atrium area and we're above it looking down. And she's got the dog and she's got a quilt on.
Jeffrey: 25:17 She's screaming, tell the firemen there's nachos in the microwave. There's nachos in the microwave. She was making nachos at the time. Why she would yell that, and we both looked at each other and go, Tyler. Tyler should go.
Julie: 25:29 Tyler should.
Jeffrey: 25:30 Yeah. Tyler should go.
Julie: 25:31 That helps. Thank you.
Jeffrey: 25:32 And that's become one of those classic signature stories in the family.
Julie: 25:38 In the Hazel household. That's funny.
Jeffrey: 25:39 Whenever Lindsay goes crazy, we'll yell, there's nachos in the microwave.
Julie: 25:44 All right. So everybody's told me to ask you-
Jeffrey: 25:46 What?
Julie: 25:47 ... the pheasant story.
Jeffrey: 25:48 Oh man, that's really digging.
Julie: 25:51 I've had two people, two different people.
Jeffrey: 25:53 It's a signature story that I sometimes tell in a keynote. And years ago in my youth, and I bought and sold over 250 businesses, about 25 billion in transactions and managed billions of dollars of advertising and marketing as well. But years ago I tried to corner the market on pheasants and when I was in my 20s.
Julie: 26:13 What does that mean to corner the market on pheasants?
Jeffrey: 26:15 Well I thought that people would want ... So pheasant farming or pheasant ranching, because South Dakota is a pheasant hunting capital of the world, and it was starting to become a more commercial kind of activity. So they're going to need birds to replenish the birds and so forth and so on. And you and you take one-
Julie: 26:35 It's like sustainability.
Jeffrey: 26:37 Correct. But you try to raise these pheasants. You take a male pheasant, you turn them loose or actually what you do is try to raise as many female pheasants, right? Because one male pheasant will-
Julie: 26:47 Populates lots of females.
Jeffrey: 26:48 26 to 27 on average.
Julie: 26:51 Wow, busy males.
Jeffrey: 26:52 They're very busy. These are just mating, they're more than rabbits. I thought it was going to be a good business except that you got to build these huge pens and they got to be open and you've got to put blinders on them because they fight all the time.
Jeffrey: 27:06 And then I thought, well the other thing is who wouldn't want pheasant under the glass? Who wouldn't want a smoked pheasant? Who wouldn't want to order that is a gift and let's do executive gift packages and all this stuff. And I built it trying to corner the market on pheasants until I finally realized there wasn't one. And one time, I got to tell you that we have these torrential rainstorms. Everything's about rain in South Dakota. And so this rolls across the prairie and one night we had three inches of rain that occurred in less than half an hour. And you can only imagine what it did to these pheasants. I had 10,000 pheasants that basically huddle up together, looked up into the sky, open their beaks and drowned. Yeah. It's a true story. The stupidest fricking birds you've ever seen in your life. So, imagine what that was like having to pull up the next day and now I've got a barrier. They have to have a little funeral for them.
Julie: 27:54 Oh no. Oh no.
Jeffrey: 27:54 Yeah. That cost me a lot of money. Yeah. That cost me a lot of money. But I was ahead of my time. I have a saying, no one died. The pheasants died, but I didn't die so that's all right.
Julie: 28:09 There were no people who were-
Jeffrey: 28:10 The other thing that was the worst thing, and this is a lesson for everybody to listen for marketing or selling, you get into business, go sell it. So I started selling these smoked packages. Of course, pheasants. I was doing these smoked pheasants and I'd say, well, who wants one? And I'd ship them out. Well this was the day before overnight shipping. This was ground shipping only.
Julie: 28:28 Oh God.
Jeffrey: 28:29 Yeah. No joke. So by the time they got to the people, they were rotten. They had mold on them.
Julie: 28:35 It smelled. I could imagine. Oh.
Jeffrey: 28:38 It was so bad. And that's one of my cool, or one of my hard fast lessons is whatever you do to get in, go sell it first, deliver it, and then see if you want to do it. Then you'll figure it out.
Julie: 28:52 I talk about these whole shemos, these whole ... Your whole story is these one thing, but you've got this resilience, one thing after another. It doesn't work, you move. It doesn't work, you move.
Jeffrey: 29:01 Oh yeah. We're going to fail. I mean, that's the key thing. That's a big thing in Silicon Valley now, all these gurus or whatever talking about, fail fast. Well bullshit, you don't want to fail fast. That's bullshit. I hate failing. I can't stand it. Let's be clear. You're always going to fail. What I want to do is win fast. So we're going to fail. You're going to make mistakes. I'm going to make mistakes and people say, hey, what's the biggest one you ever made? I said, I don't know. I haven't done it yet. There's always going to be a bigger one. So that's just how I do.
Julie: 29:26 My last question for you is really about family. So you started by talking about your family. You talked about the first child that died, talked about your parents and the extended. I know you personally, but anybody who follows you on Facebook knows about your two beautiful little granddaughters and you've got this home in South Dakota that you still go back to. Your son, your daughter, they all work for you at C-suite and all of your businesses here. What people may not know, I mean, and people who know you well do, but listening, you're the epitome of the family man. This is a question that usually working moms get, but how do you balance ... You are so tied and connected with your family everywhere. And I can't imagine looking at your CV and all the things that you have done and are doing that you've ever been busier. How do you make that work, because I know family is so important to you?
Jeffrey: 30:17 Yeah. You have to prioritize it. And like you said, you've got to have somebody who's really good that helps me. Look, I'd worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If somebody said, hey, you're going to be in LA tomorrow or here tomorrow or Tokyo. Yeah, okay, let's go. And I would do it. And so I'm lucky to have Tammy who balances me that way. And so you got to have a yin/yang, and she's mine and she does that for me. And so she's my cornerstone. And without her, first of all, I would be dead. And that's a fact, I'd be dead because I would have worked myself into ...
Julie: 30:49 An early grave?
Jeffrey: 30:51 Yeah, she once made me go to a workaholic thing, where they show up to these very famous place.
Jeffrey: 30:56 They had very famous people in it and there was alcoholics, there was a narcotic, an addictive narcotic people, what do you call those? I don't know, a drug addict.
Julie: 31:04 Drug addicts.
Jeffrey: 31:04 Drug addict. There were sex addicts and then there's me, the one work addict, but I'm still an addict just like everybody else. I'm sitting in the back of the room figuring out how many people, how much they paid, what do they probably pay the staff, how much the meal costs. I'm thinking this is a pretty good business. I got to have somebody who helps me overcome that kind of stuff because that's natural for me. But you just have to make it, it has to be a priority. You have to say what are your conditions of satisfaction for your life? What are those things?
Jeffrey: 31:33 And then if you have a spouse, what are your mutual conditions of satisfaction? And then if you have employees or whatever, you can take it that far. Yeah, I had a job once where, I mean I was in Tokyo or Asia. I would land in Tokyo, do a meeting, turn around and come back just to make my daughter's football game to watch her cheer. And was that costly? Yeah, sure. But I had to do that because we needed to do that. And that was a thing. Now, but I also would have the discussions with the kids like, dad, you're never home. Okay, you want that car or do you want me to go? Which is it? Or stay, I'll stay. No problem. And so we had those kinds of discussions and I think that helps a great deal. You just got to have that.
Julie: 32:17 Where are your little granddaughters? Where are they?
Jeffrey: 32:19 They're in South Dakota.
Julie: 32:20 They're in South Dakota.
Jeffrey: 32:20 Yeah, they're in South Dakota. I'm known as Papa. I FaceTime them all the time. And then when I'm back in South Dakota, they either come stay, because I have like a giant playground for kids. And so, or I go see them and I just pop in all the time and yeah, I'm Papa.
Julie: 32:40 Yeah, it's fun. And you get back there because you've got a big ranch there, right still?
Jeffrey: 32:43 Yeah, we've got a place there. I don't get back as much as I'd like to just because of the startup of our C-suite network. C-Suite TV, C-suite radio is so busy right now. But after this year it will be a big thing. The kids are, they're young and I don't know, maybe I got more coming. I hope.
Julie: 33:00 Finger's crossed.
Jeffrey: 33:00 Yeah, finger's crossed. My daughter's not quite married yet, but I'm hoping. So we'll do our best.
Julie: 33:05 I love that.
Jeffrey: 33:06 No pressure there, Lindsay.
Julie: 33:07 Right, if she's listening. A quick story about, I had five generations twice in my life.
Jeffrey: 33:15 Wow.
Julie: 33:16 For my great grandfather, I was 19 and 20 dating and he was in his late 80s and he kept saying, you need to, you need to have some children. I want a great, great grandchild. And I was like, well Papa, I'm not even married yet. He's like, that's okay. And I was like, yeah, but it's not.
Jeffrey: 33:34 He's just checking off the list.
Julie: 33:38 Yeah but no it's not. So I ended up having my first, I had Nick and he was around and we got that five generation photo.
Jeffrey: 33:45 That's awesome.
Julie: 33:46 He wasn't there for his first birthday, but he held him and he knew him. But that whole family, that's a big thing.
Jeffrey: 33:54 That's cool.
Julie: 33:54 I love that about-
Jeffrey: 33:55 It's very primal. My wife and I talk about it. When you get grandkids, it's primal. She says she could smell them out of a lineup.
Julie: 34:02 Really?
Jeffrey: 34:02 I mean she not even seeing them. She's like that. She's so protective and I got two girls, which is different for me because I'm kind of a guys guy. But no, I got to play Barbies and it looks like my house-
Julie: 34:17 I think I've seen you playing like tea time. Right?
Jeffrey: 34:19 Yeah. I do all that stuff. I got to do it. I got a princess tent and we do that, but I'll take them out fishing and we'll do some of that stuff too. But they are girly girls. I mean pink's their favorite color. It's just fun. It's just fun.
Julie: 34:33 Yeah. Well hopefully they'll see the picture of you, just to imagine you with your pink Tiara on. It'd be quite the sight, and your cowboy boots.
Jeffrey: 34:40 Yeah, I know. I haven't done the makeup thing. I'm not letting them do that. But they do a lot of other stuff. They do that to their grandmother.
Julie: 34:45 Maybe they'll get you eventually.
Jeffrey: 34:45 Yeah.
Julie: 34:48 Well thank you for coming and sharing your background.
Jeffrey: 34:50 What a pleasure.
Julie: 34:50 It's been super fun to have you and thank you again for all you've done. The C-suite has been a great help to me, but it's so fun to watch you keep building these things, so keep it going.
Jeffrey: 35:00 Just keep bringing great content. That's what we love. Thank you.
Julie: 35:03 Thank you.