Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous! This is episode number 259. And we have the amazing business celebrity Jeffrey Hayzlett back on the show today.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [0:10]
Hi, this is Jeffrey Hayzlett you’re listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:17]
Well after our last episode “Change, Adapt or Die” I am so excited to have Jeffrey back on the show today. He has so often reinvented himself into our Hall of Fame speaker of Fortune 100 CMO, a TV personality, a podcaster, best selling author, and obviously an entrepreneur. He has bought and sold over 250 businesses in his lifetime and billions of dollars in transactions. So I am so pumped that he is back. He’s also the Chairman and CEO of C-Suite Network, and that is the home of the world’s most trusted network of C-Suite Leaders and best selling authors. His latest book is “The Hero Factor”. How great leaders transform organizations and create winning cultures. And we will dive into this topic because it’s really important that you create a hero business, that you stand out from the crowd that your team knows your values and your values and your team’s values are aligned, so you can have a bigger and better impact. So enjoy this next episode. This Jeffrey Hayzlett. Well, I am so super excited to have you back on the show. Jeffrey, welcome.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [1:32]
Thank you very much.

Christine Schlonski [1:34]
So I loved our first conversation, especially the piece about taking action, right? Don’t I always say like, Don’t sit on your couch, the pizza guy is not gonna deliver your dream, you have to do something for it, and you will fail as well. And so your latest book is “The Hero Factor” where you actually talk about kind of what it takes to be an exceptional Hero Leader. so to speak.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [2:01]
Right?

Christine Schlonski [2:02]
What is the difference between just a great leader to a hero leader?

Jeffrey Hayzlett [2:06]
Well, it’s all about the team. It’s all about a hero culture. It’s about creating a culture that’s more than just about what the leader wants. It’s about having the other employees lead, and therefore you become a hero business. You know no CEO or leader that I know, wants to, you know, says, Hey, I’m a hero. I’m a hero. You know, I’m so good. I’m a hero. No, but no, but I don’t think they do that. In fact, most hero leaders that I know, when you start talking about may just say move on move on stop stop stop because it’s all about the team. It’s all about what they do and how they do it, how they set up a hero culture. And what do we mean by that? Well, we mean a business that sets itself apart by its values, the values that they believe in, and all the company believes in and they can expose them, you know, 58% of the people who work for a company can’t even tell you what are the values of the company. That’s not good. You know, they don’t see it put into practice when you put it in. to practice your values, when the hard things happen, the values come through, you know, in terms of whether it’s about the quality about standing up for people, diversity, inclusion, whatever it might be you, you pick it, you see that real value come through. And we were seeing that you know, today with even the stuff that we’re seeing around the Coronavirus is how people react and the way in which they react and on some, you know, for instance, a billionaire is setting up a GoFundMe page for his company employees. Are you nuts? You’re a billionaire. You know, why aren’t you know, those are your employees. Why don’t you cut some of your billions and put it back to the company and the people that helped you get there? You know, that’s the kind of thing I would expect from a hero leader not from you know, that’s a bottom-line person that’s you’ll see that in the book.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [3:50]
If you go to theherofactorbook.com you can get a free assessment and actually see how you line up if you’re a wannabe company if you’re a do better. If you’re a good co, are you you’re a hero company or, maybe you’re, you know an asset company as well, which is some of these guys are and gals guys and gals it’s equal because some real assets are women as well as be Queer Theranos and some other companies that just lied about everything they’ve ever stood for and what they do. And they were going for the almighty buck or the almighty euro. And in this case, they did everything they could to get the money and took it and ran rather than going. And they put people’s risk at lives. I mean, that lives at risk. And even that just as amazing to see those kinds of things. So, hero businesses stand apart from everyone. That’s one of the things we found.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [4:45]
I was tapped by a guy named Rob Ryan, who had started “The Hero Club” came to me and said, hey, I want to expand it. I want to do more with it. And I said, well, what is it tell me more about it. He started telling me more about the company and it came about when Rob sold his company for $20.4 billion. And when he sold his company, he gave up a piece of that company to all the employees making the single largest number of millionaires ever created in one day. It’s never been surpassed, in fact, that tech record for the sale actually was stood for 17 years until Microsoft bought LinkedIn, LinkedIn in 2016 for 24 billion. But when he and his wife Terry, Terry was chief legal officer, the company decided to set aside this money all these employees run up to them say Mr. Ryan, Mrs. Ryan, you don’t know me, but I’m the nightwatchman and I can send my kids to college or I’m the janitor and my mother in law’s got cancer and she has no health insurance and I can pay for the operations he’s going to live in and they would say you’re my hero. And they didn’t intend to be heroes. But, but what they did was they said, Hey, we can go do something like this. We can go show other people how to do this. And thus they created “The Hero Club”, and we took it over a few years ago now and had 27 members at the time and now we have 270 members today. So it’s about taking that core value of we can go and do things because we can for the right reasons. And so we now ask business leaders to sign a pledge and to run their business with great values. And “The Westley Hero Cultures” and by reading, hero cultures will change the way that business is done.

Christine Schlonski [6:26]
That’s beautiful. So if somebody is listening and things like, well, you know, I’m hustling way too much. I really need to have that bigger picture in mind to do good at the end of the day because that’s why I started the whole endeavor. And now I’m kind of trapped in the daily hustle in making it work. It’s not really flowing the way I envisioned it. What would be a good advice on how people can get on that path to more success?

Jeffrey Hayzlett [6:59]
Well First of all, never stop hustling. Okay? Just because we have to understand our values doesn’t mean we have to slow it down. Now you might have to take some time to really write those down. In fact, we take you through that in the book and there’s a worksheet, and there’s some other pieces that I put in there. But the first thing that you have to do, Christine, as I think you have to say, what are my throwaway values? What are my walkaway values? That’s a better phrase. In fact, that’s what I call the book is walkaway values. Walk away values are those things that you would challenge me on. And if we were doing business together, I would say I’d walk away. That’s unacceptable. And not enough of us think through those things, right? We’re chasing, we’re chasing, we’re chasing. So sometimes we don’t always think about these things. And so

Jeffrey Hayzlett [7:45]
It’s important for us to be grounded in what things are the ways that I want to work in and what parameters do I want to do that work? What are my values, because if you do that, then you’re more focused. You’re more driven by that. And you don’t have to, you know, question yourself when something comes up. So if you say we’re going to live to this kind of value, whatever that is, we’re going to treat people with respect. We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that when you’re challenged. It’s an easy decision. And everybody knows it. I mean, let’s give a good example. I put in the book when two African American young men walked into a “Starbucks” in “Philadelphia” and they sit down, and they didn’t order any coffee. They just pull up their laptops or their phone and they were doing some stuff there waiting for somebody to stop by. So they can have a meeting. That’s what we found out later. But the manager came over and said, are you going to order coffee? And they said, No, we’re waiting for a meeting, but we might order some later. And they said, well, you’re gonna have to leave if you’re not ordering coffee. And you have to ask yourself, why was that because they were African American because they weren’t a customer or what? But they said, no, we’ll wait for the guy and they go, no, you have to do it now or leave. And they said, well, we’re not leaving. And so the police were called and they were arrested. Now, if anyone knows anything about Starbucks, Starbucks isn’t necessarily just a company that does coffee, they say that they’re a place for people to come and meet, and it’s a community. So I know people who have been in Starbucks who have said they’re all flipping day and never ordered a cup of coffee, and they use it as almost their office, that’s safe because it is a core place for people to meet or community where you can feel safe. And, and that’s what you know, Howard started, Howard Schultz started the company on that belief. So they had to come to the realization they weren’t living in their values. And if you remember, they shut the company down for the day, to go and do some training of their people to remind them of what their value is because as they scaled, they lost touch with that value, right? And therefore we’re out of belief for their values and I see this would Starbucks actually a couple of different times there’s a thing in the United States there are open carry laws where you can actually carry firearms, you know, you can actually carry a firearm on your hip. Well, if you look at anything about Starbucks, you would understand their leadership is probably the most liberal leadership there is. And they believe in you know, same-sex marriages they believe in, you know, the things that most people would consider to be left-leaning, whereas a right to carry would be a right-leaning kind of belief, you know, and yet they every year there’s a protest or a march that happens encouraged in states where they have the open carry law, where people carry firearms down the road and you know, show off and they carry AK and AK 47, they carry, ar fifteens whatever, they carry all kinds of just crazy stuff. But they walk into Starbucks. They walk into a Starbucks and they order coffee. Now that’s it goes against probably every belief that the leadership and beliefs but how Howard and the company have said we will honor the laws that are in our local communities, and that they allow that that’s what we allow. And yet that goes against their, their, you know, their personal beliefs, but their values are that they honor those things. I think that’s a unique kind of wow, holy crap.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [11:19]
On one side, you got this and the other side that tested that test company. You know Daniel Truett Cathy the CEO-Founder of “Chick Fil A” he closes on Sundays. You can’t get a chicken sandwich from “Chick Fil A” on Sundays that ticks me off. You know, but that’s his belief. You know, he doesn’t believe in same-sex marriages. But you know, and he thinks it’s an abomination. Well, that’s his belief. He has those beliefs, but he doesn’t let that get in the way of producing a good chicken sandwich. So there’s, you know, I even talked about this in the book. And I think, you know, oh, this is going to be controversial. I actually think Trump is good for this country in this World, why? Not because I think he’s a good President, because he’s making people think about what their values are. Actually, I’ve never seen as much debate as much conversation that has gone on as it is today about what you really believe in. And I, so, you know, I give him credit for that, because he’s so crazy. He’s so nuts, right, that people actually have to think and have real conversations. I think that’s awesome.

Christine Schlonski [12:31]
I think it’s really important to understand what your values are and the walkaway values. Right? Like, how far do you go until you say, well, I’m off like, this is not gonna work for me. There’s not a single chance that I will close this deal or do business with this person, or whatever it is, like Starbuck they could have chosen not to open up a Starbucks and you know if it’s not in accordance with their values.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [13:01]
Or if it was in an unsafe environment or something like that but that’s not what it was this was about a fundamental belief that we serve these people and this is what you get to do in our community. It’s a consequence it’s a great thing to be thinking about and the more that you think about it the better because well let’s imagine you weren’t quite ready or ready for prime time to ship a product but you said on December the 1st we’re shipping the product and here it is November the 30th the night before and you’re not quite ready but we promised so we got to ship it even if it’s not quite ready we would so what we said well if you live in your values, you know your core values are we don’t ship a product that’s not ready. So then you take the head and you say I’m sorry, it’s not quite ready, we believe to do it this way. So you know, it’s like right now, I think a lot of values are being tested, you know, even with Coronavirus. It’s making people think what’s important for themselves and I think that’s a great thing for business leaders and for human beings period.

Christine Schlonski [13:58]
Yeah, yeah. I think when you really come from your heart when you understand who you are and that you are also fine with it. Right knowing that you can always grow and become the person you want to become or grow into the person you want to become, then there are basically no limits. Absolutely, it’s just a decision.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [14:18]
Right? Which is the way it should be?

Christine Schlonski [14:21]
Yeah,

Jeffrey Hayzlett [14:22]
It’s just a decision. And if and, you know, don’t let it go against those walkaway values that you have you know, in, in you know, start to think about the real things that are important inclusion, diversity, you know, the things that will actually help you in your business not hurt you and your business. You know, to go and find the right person of color go and find the right female executive for the position. Because this world is 51% female and 50% in 49% male, but yet most of those positions are dominated by men. What men don’t make sense. Or your company expanding to China. So you put, so you grab your person who’s sitting next to you and you send them to China to go open up the market. Well, they don’t look maybe, you know, maybe in China in all the billions of people that are there, or if you go to India, and all the billions of people that are in India, you could maybe find someone that’s talented enough from there. You know, that’s the kind of thing I mean, remember Kodak people came to me and said, Jeff, I want to go run marketing in China. Why do you like Chinese food? You know you don’t even look Chinese you’re not even Chinese. You do not even know what, you can’t even speak Chinese. Why would I have you go? Why wouldn’t I take somebody from there? Why wouldn’t I have diversity inclusion? Why would I include someone from there? Why would I send somebody yeah, I got that you’re my most talented asset that we’ve got. I appreciate that. But you know let’s go find, about you use your talent to go find the right person. You know, and watch us expand more because we know the difference between one region to the other. After all, they know we don’t. These are the kind of things I think are important for us to think if you didn’t have that if you weren’t grounded in values, you just say, Yeah, let’s go do that sounds like a great idea.

Christine Schlonski [16:12]
Yeah, again, I mean, it’s an easy way, right? You get presented a solution. You don’t really need to think about it or work and you can just give it a try. Right? If

Jeffrey Hayzlett [16:22]
But any chances are it would work. Chances are it’s gonna work, you know, maybe work great, but is that your values?

Christine Schlonski [16:31]
Yeah.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [16:32]
You Know.

Christine Schlonski [16:33]
Awesome. Well, is there any book that you like that comes to mind? Obviously, you have written 4 yourself that is really amazing. But like, what is a book that has influenced you? That really stands out of all the books you read. Like what’s coming to mind and why

Jeffrey Hayzlett [16:52]
Oh the one book one of the very first business books I ever read was “Barbarians At The Gate” and it was the step by step takeover RJR Reynolds Nabisco, which was one of the biggest the other business. I’ll tell you some of the business books that changed my life and still do “Think and Grow Rich” okay? “The Salesman” by Og Mandino “How To Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Okay? “The Biography of Lee Iacocca”. Now, I love to read biographies and that was one. Now I’m much more philosophical, I’m reading a book of 5 Part Series on “The Life of George Washington” you know. I’m now more deeper, but you know, back then, I like reading how they did it? Why they did it? What was it? You know, those are exciting to me to understand how you know, what was in his mind? Like Lee Iacocca tells you the time he had Henry Ford, the 2nd or 3rd whatever it was, come over to his house for a barbecue and Lee Iacocca found out that Henry Ford in the executive dining room said that was the best cheeseburger that he’d ever eaten in his life was this cheeseburger in the Ford Executive Dining. Of course, back then they used to have an executive dining room for the execs, and then everybody else. And so Lee Iacocca is going to do a huge barbecue at his house that weekend and he wants to make sure the boss is impressed by his cheeseburgers. So he goes to the executive chef, he says, Chef, you got to tell him your secret man. The boss says this is the best cheeseburger in the world. What do you do that’s so different? We took them over to the freezer, or the refrigerator went in there the meat locker pulled out a flame and yon steak, took a flaming yon, put it through the meat grinder and then made it into a hamburger patty. Yeah, no wonder it was a great burger. Okay. So you know, the story of that is you get insights like that, of the of how one how far he went to take care of his boss, but more importantly, the reason it was so good, it was a fillet, so we started with the best, to begin with. Now you’d have a lot of goo burger or something like that. That would be the thing, but by the way, if you put bacon on it, it’s always going to be good.

Christine Schlonski [19:08]
Hey, I know you’re a big fan of bacon.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [19:10]
I’m a huge bacon fan.

Christine Schlonski [19:12]
Yeah, bacon and you like a Scottish whiskey “Glenfiddich”

Jeffrey Hayzlett [19:15]
Oh, I love Scotch. Yeah, like last night, I actually held a scotch night with the online and drew hundreds of people. So it was fun.

Christine Schlonski [19:23]
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so, so much for your time. I’m gonna send people over to check out the assessment with your books, so they know that if they have “The Hero Factor” or maybe find out what’s missing and thank you for such an inspirational interview. To really get people thinking about the values about what they stand for what they stand against, right? It’s both parties that have to make a decision so that you know what you’re going for. And when it’s time to leave.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [19:57]
That’s it, that’s always a good thing. You got to know when you got to leave the Party too.

Christine Schlonski [20:01]
Yeah. Thank you so, so much. Unfortunately, we run out of time, but I just loved every minute. So thank you so much for having spent your valuable time with Heart Sells! Podcast today.

Jeffrey Hayzlett [20:13]
My pleasure.

Christine Schlonski [20:14]
Well, I just love that hero story and how it came all about. I hope you had a wonderful episode. And please, don’t just take notes. Now go and implement. What did you learn in this episode? What are the action steps you are going to take from here on? How do you create your own hero business, even if you’re starting out small if you are a one-person business, you can grow into a hero business in no time by getting clear about your values and by creating that impact for the other people so that they see you and your business as a hero business.

Christine Schlonski [20:51]
Hop on over to christineschlonski.com and check out the episode you don’t just have the transcript and the show notes. But all the links to Jeffrey are just one click away. And I would really invite you to connect with him on social media to follow his past to be inspired by what he does with his amazing work. And once you’re over there also sign up for the empowerment notes, because that is empowerment right into your inbox, where I do share things that I usually do not share on social media, and where you also get all the updates on Heart Sells! Podcast. And from time to time you get a really special invitation, maybe enrollment for the Heart Sells! Members Community is open. That is basically a member’s community about heart-centered business building. So really, really cool. Check that out as well. Once you’re over there at christineschlonski.com find the podcast tab and dive into the content and enjoy it. Looking forward to having you back on the next episode and next week’s amazing guests After this Variety Friday is the wonderful Nikki Rausch, who is a Sales Maven. So you do not want to miss that. Thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world and I’m saying bye for now.