The Business Executive’s Benefit – Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman & CEO of C-Suite Network – Maximizing Efficiency for the Business Executive on the Go

Richard Jacobs: Hello. This is Richard Jacobs with the Future Tech Podcasts. I have a Jeffrey Hayzlett. He’s the chairman of a C-suite network, Podcast network that’s not only doing podcasting but many other things. So Jeff, thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: I’m doing great, Thanks for having me.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah! Tell me about the C-suite. What’s the premise of the company?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  Well, we have 350,000 C-suite executives. In our network, we have a community of the members itself, and most of those are made up of various councils or subject matter experts or subject specialty interest subject matters or geography. So they’re based on all those position roles, dollar amounts in terms of size of companies or types of companies, or they’re gathered together by industry. Then we have a media side, we certainly have a big newsletter that goes out every couple of weeks, but we have 59 television shows.

We have 139 podcasts. And both of those categories growing for us, and academy we have over 60 meetings around North America going on at any given time and then on top of what we help with kind of connecting people with services and products and the consultants and trainers, and so that makes up an entire ecosystem of a trusted and vetted network that we serve.

Richard Jacobs: So the goal is to support C-suite executives and everything they do.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  Yeah! I’ve been a former fortune 100 executive myself and when I was managing a budget of a 17 billion marketing spend. I want to be able to reach out and get connected to people. I want to make sure I’m doing the right kinds of things and with the right people in the shortest amount of, or more efficient use of my time.

And so it’s tough to do that today. You look at LinkedIn and hell, I can’t tell who’s big and who’s small. I can’t tell if they’re real or not. I can’t tell if that picture of that person is even real, and so you need a lot of cases some guy who’s acting like he’s a woman, an executive of such and such and from India or wherever it might be. And reaching out, trying to set appointments with me.

When I get there, it’s not the same person. So that kind of thing. I don’t have time to waste time is inventory when it comes to executives. And so you know, and I also want to do it at the highest levels possible. So where am I going to do that? I’m going to be driving that as a real opportunity. I want to be able to do it in the best way possible.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! What are some of the goals may be the next year for C-suite, you know, what are some of the milestones you’re looking to hit?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  We’re going to grow. I mean, that’s the key. We’re gonna grow. I mean, that’s the biggest thing that we’re doing. So we’re increasing our depth. I mean, it depends on which group we have, for instance, we have our hero club. I recently did a book called the hero factor, which outlines hero companies. What makes them different than all other companies is one of our fastest-growing group though the overall C-suite network has grown about 117% a year, or at least this year over last year. So we’ll double our overall growth. In terms of the whole company, some of our other groups, we’ll see 10 x fold in terms of growth.

So it depends on which area. You know, we’ve got, we’re up on listenership we’re up 47% on our podcast listeners over last quarter alone so I’ve got different goals for different things but all of them are about high growth.

Richard Jacobs: What’s the point of having a podcast network? You know, like I do my own podcast, you guys have many of them, but what have you seen as the benefits of doing a podcast network?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  A couple of different things. One is by affiliating with a network, you typically are found by other people who are looking or who are already in listening to shows in that network. Just like you would go to CNBC and you watch a business show, you get to see another business show, otherwise, you’re just La La land with everybody else on apple or Roku or whatever it might be.

So it really makes it tough for people to be able to find you. So affiliation is one of those things. And then of course with the network, you’ve got amplification on the amplification side, we’re out there pushing all of our shows. You don’t have anybody. If you’re having a show today that’s pushing your show besides you, which is great, but it doesn’t help you it’s just you talking to your audience and to the same people. So it makes it a little tougher. The next thing is then with the systems that you have as a network where there’s all kinds of analytics, all kinds of things that we can provide in a bigger way than you can get through say a Lipson or something like that. And then last but not least we do we sell advertising, so you got revenue.

So we’re outselling all the shows collectively we’re a lot bigger than just individually. So almost every, well, everyone is making some level of advertising revenue that some much bigger than others. Just depends on how popular they are.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! That makes sense. What’s the goal with the podcast network? Just growing it or would there be any turning points? Do you think you’ll hit once you reach a certain size, where are you going to be able to do more for your podcast shows are for listeners?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  Sure, sure! So we’re always adding different channels, different ways. You know we haven’t announced this yet, but you’ll hear it here. We’re about to be and all the tablets and all the hotel rooms. That’s awesome. So somebody, you know, they’re putting tablets, I iPad tablets or tablets and iPads or tablets and all the hotel rooms and almost every hotel room there is so that you can control the lights, the TV order room service checkout, do all those kinds of things that you could do it through and maybe through an app. But most people don’t use the app whether in the room. So they use the iPad, which is then connected to the TV or just the iPad itself. and now you can download and not only listened to all of our shows, TV shows, or watch our TV shows, but you’ll also be able to listen to all of our podcasts, that’s a pretty cool thing to have and unless you’re part of a network, you wouldn’t be able to get that.

So growing that network is pretty critical for us and then also certainly the revenue side of it in terms of being able to find more and more people that want to spend money on the network. So for us, I mean as a couple we’re just positioning it to get bigger. We are already the world’s largest business podcast network, so you know we continued to dominate that and continue to be a lot bigger at it.

Richard Jacobs: Are there other podcasts that work that people might know the names of that are out there?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  I’m not even sure what other ones. I mean there’s Gimlet, Pam, Panoply and there are some others that I can’t even remember. Wonder or wonder, I think is another one. I don’t pay attention to most of the consumer networks because I just don’t care. But I mean there’s NPR and others we’re all about business, so I only pay attention to what’s in business. I mean, people ask me all the time, hey, you know, this sports person, you know, this or some had an office with Daymond John From Shark tank and some of the times a lot of these famous celebrities come walking in and somebody says, Hey! You there? I don’t even know who the hell they are. I have not. And I really don’t care because they’re not in business. So, you know, we’re all in our own little worlds about what we do and how we do it. And I’m one of those.

Richard Jacobs: Okay! That makes sense. In terms of CEO, what do you see as the biggest need for supporting C – Suite executives and people in business? You just had to make more money or to protect your health while you’re running a business? Is it entrepreneurship for small business versus large concerns? What do you identify as the trends?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  Well, there’s no difference between businesses in the main street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota than one that’s on Wall Street. The only differences are Zeros so what are people primarily looking for all given time while they want to be served. Look they only have so much time. They only have so much money. Right? You have only so many resources. So what can you do to be of value to them in a way? So let’s, let’s go back to my days of the fortune 100 officer.

When I was one of those officers, my time was extremely valuable and not because I’m snotty or just whatever, just look they pay me a lot of money to do what I do and you know, we don’t want to waste his or her time at that level if you want to be as efficient as possible. Every dollar counts, every minute counts I was managing a $17 billion marketing budget. That’s just marketing as $187 billion company. So that’s real money.

So when I was at a trade show and someone I got to go somewhere at seven o’clock, they meet me outside my door at seven o’clock, someone had my diet mountain dew cause I used to drink diet mountain dew but then in the morning I was addicted to it, and then I had my Friday egg sandwich cause I loved the Friday, everybody’s got to love a good fried egg sandwich, and so they would give it, that was all be there. Someone would brief me as we started to walk, somebody walks ahead of us to make sure they pressed the elevator button so the elevator would be waiting. So we didn’t have to wait for, they had pre walked the routes of where we were going in the Ho in the convention centers or the hotels or whatever. So that we were taking the most efficient, safest ways there and well when you think that you go to a good restaurant, do you have a restaurant that you like that you go to all the time and they know who you are?

Richard Jacobs: Yeah.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  And when you walk in, do they know what you like to drink? It’s nice when they know you and it’s personalized.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  So the same thing holds true with C suite executives. That’s what we do with a C suite network. So whether we get to know your habits, what you do, what you need, what you want the kind of people you want to associate with, what the overall goals you want to do. We know that you like to drink this kind of scotch, we put it in the restaurant, view you like to sit at this table, you like to have this server, this waiter, and you like to have this kind of steak at this temperature. That’s the same thing. It’s no different than serving an executive as serving them dinner, as serving those services and information and connections and talent.

And you can go write a piece of information on education and inspiration. So it’s the same thing. So that’s what the C-suite network does. It’s the EC. It’s a community that has a platform that provides educations and connections and then services so become a bigger marketplace.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah. You know, I’ve always wondered, you’d have a much better perspective on this. What does the head of like Apple do all day? Yeah. What are the heads of like these large companies do all day? No. I know they literally can’t work in the business, but what do they do all day? I’m just curious.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: They’re literally going from meeting to meeting. That’s what they’re mostly doing. So when they walk into a meeting, many times the people that are presenting to them know more about what they’re about to hear about than they know. But so they don’t have a chance to always check what’s going on with the stock. What’s going on with a, oh my gosh, there was this in the news or this in the news. Because they’re literally don’t even have time to go to the bathroom. Okay. Because from the time in which they stepped into the building, their time is being managed. Okay. And so how were they going to find extra time? Well, they’re not so, they’re going to need trusted assets, trusted advisors, trusted guides to be able to provide them with the kind of information that they need to make the decisions that they do or to provide them with the connections. So if you want the best widget, if you want the best kind of, look, we’re up for, you know, we’re up to the creek without a paddle on this particular issue. Who the hell is going to get us out of this? Who should we call? Well, then you need to have people that you can trust to be able to do it. Literally, the best time to reach an executive as well before seven in the morning while after seven at night. Cause usually that’s the least their time to some extent. But for some of us even dubbed until 10, 11 o’clock you don’t, you know, I’m taking calls until midnight. Yeah. And then back up at four or five the next morning and out the door before seven.

Richard Jacobs: So you fit with that kind of a schedule. Do you feel efficient or do you feel like your whole day is and what does it feel like? Do you just feel drained at the end of the day or be welded or what is it like?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: If you’re doing it right, you feel inspired and motivated. You can’t wait to go to bed at night so you can hurry up and get up in the morning. Right. That’s what you want. So, I mean, that’s what I like to feel like. So that I could hurry up. I want to hurry up and go to bed so I can get up right away so I can get going. That’s the way I try to view it. But to do that, sometimes you have to step back. You have to start again to get efficient. You have to delegate a great deal more. As a C-suite executive, you have to prioritize your time. So that you can be much more efficient in the things that you’re doing and get to your goal so if they’re not on your goals, if they’re not on the things that are your conditions of satisfaction, then you don’t put them on your list. Like, I’m not doing that. You know, I just got to have a meeting with one of my execs and a minute ago and they had a pre-meeting before my meeting and I, and wait, wait, you, you spend time in a pre-meeting before my meeting to get ready for this meeting? Then I don’t need to do the meeting. You already made the decision. What do I need to do? Why do I need to look at it? Yeah. If it doesn’t have the things I want in it, that’s you’re going to have to deal with that. But if you’re going to have a pre-meeting at a meeting, which I didn’t ask you to do, to begin with, you know, then this meeting is a waste of my time. I’m off, click, bye, you know, and not trying to be an ass, but it’s just like, well, but you know, Jeff, I’m trying to save your time. Well I appreciate that, but I didn’t ask you to, I’m doing this exercise because I want to also learn and understand the processes and steps and now you want to take that away from me. Now that I didn’t ask you for that. So let’s be clear about our conditions of satisfaction. So that’s the kind of stuff kind of think through.

Richard Jacobs: Interesting. As an executive, any delegations that you were surprised you had to do that to an outside person would be like either funny or weird or strange.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Yeah, there’s some of those. I mean you know, back when I was at that level as an executive, you know, we had corporate points and I flew on corporate planes all the time and Ray asked, what do you miss the most about being out of that? And I always say the people, but then I really missed the point. So let’s be clear, you know let’s be honest. But you know, they would sometimes they would take my luggage and unpack it. So I literally get off the plane. I wouldn’t even touch my luggage. They’d take my luggage to the hotel because they would give me my hotel keys. Right as I got off the plane. And I’m jumping a dilemma because let’s say I flew to Germany and I arrived that morning, then immediately meetings start. Okay. And they picked me up whether I’ve had sleep or not. And I go and Mike my room key, I didn’t know what my room number is or what the hotel is though. We’re going to take me to it later that night. It’s on a temporary of course. But, and then when I would get there, my clothes would be a quilt. My clothes would have been ironed and unpacked. Hmm. That’s kind of weird, people touching your underwear, that kind of stuff. And I got to be where I would go. Like, you don’t need to do that. Don’t do that. You know? And they go, yeah, but we want you to not, don’t do, that’s my stuff. I don’t want you, I don’t want you to touch him or underwear, you know, no offense Lisa and I love you and you’re a great person, but no we won’t do that. Okay. Yeah. So there’s stuff like that or you know, they went, I always carry your bag or stuff like, oh, like I’m, I’m, I can carry my own bag, you know? Sure. You know, things like that, that they like to do for you and the other thing I think that it’s important for you to do those things yourself is that you don’t lose touch. Right. What it’s like to be a real, you know, and you can get caught up in that stuff as you can imagine. Too caught up in that. Real quick.

Richard Jacobs: What does family life, what happens to it? You know, when you become a top executive, does it blend into the business world and you find yourself mentally confusing family with business sometimes. Somehow.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, let’s, yeah, let’s be clear. You can’t have it all, can you? I mean, people think he can. I want it all, it doesn’t work that way. It’s Kind of like being on a seesaw. Remember a seesaw when you’re a kid?

Richard Jacobs:  Yup.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Yeah. And, and let’s say. I’m a big guy, so, and I don’t know what you, what size you are, what’s made you’re smaller than me. If I sit on a seesaw, you’re stuck up in the air. So if you’re trying to balance stuff out, they never balanced. The life’s like a seesaw. So if you’re going to be really successful, you’re going to have to give up something else. And so it’s hard to find the balance. That’s the one thing that you’ll struggle within this is always the balance. Now, Stephen Covey was a friend of mine many, many years ago. I knew him when I was a young man and shared stages with him and he wrote the seven habits of most highly successful people. It’s a great book by the leash. Read it. Don’t listen to it because Steven was fairly boring. But the book itself and you know, he said in there, you have to balance it between four things. You know your business, your personal life, your spiritual life, and your friends. So I think that’s those four pretty good, my opinion, you know, your business life, your business, your personal life, your spirituality and then your friends. Right? and if you had those, one of those poor ways teeter-totters okay. You know what one that used to spin around a little bit and you put one of those goals in each one, I’m telling you, they can’t ever be balanced. It’s really tough. And so you just have to learn to set certain parameters or what I would call walkaway values. So it’s important for you to have the walkaway values that, you know, like, so for instance, in the nineties I was very much involved in Japan and a lot of business over there, but I flew home almost every weekend. Because my children were growing up and I wanted to be part of their lives, so at least dad’s going to be home on the weekends. So, and there were times when I would fly to Australia for a day, literally have a meeting and fly back the same night, you know?

Richard Jacobs: Oh my God, it’s horrible.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, you can say that but I got to see my kid’s game, you know?

Richard Jacobs: The physical toll on you. I mean, that’s amazing you did that. But the physical toll was to bentley. Big.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: I’ll tell you the people that travel at the level I’ve traveled, you get used to it, you know, you really. I’m very efficient in planes. I enjoy Wayne’s just because I get a lot of stuff done. You know, but nonetheless. When you’ve traveled well as I’ve gotten like 5 million air miles, six maybe 7 million air miles. That’s a lot of air miles, right? So but I know guys that have more than I do, but I have so many air miles that when, when United launch the new Dreamliner, they invited me on the first flight. When they retired their 727. The last flight they invited me on the flight. When they opened the new route from Denver to Tokyo, they asked me on the flight, you know, and I sit in the front row with the CEO. There are some cool things, right? There’s some cool thing. So getting back to this time thing with your family and what you missed and what you’d change. I mean, my children would say, Daddy, Daddy, I want to see you home. Okay. Which of these things do you want me to give up? Okay. So I’m going to come home, but you’re gonna not get to do this. We’re not going on our vacation. We’re not going to do this. So, I had them help choose things. Right and so then they had some say in it, right. And then, I would say, okay, hey, dad’s got to go to Australia. Why don’t you guys come for the week or two weeks and we’ll stick around for another week afterward and we’ll do a vacation together or let’s go to Europe. And so my children got that. They had the ability to do that too. Wherever I had a position or job way, I was always had an apartment or house or something there as well as my place back in South Dakota and so summers were spent in San Francisco, summers were spent in New York, Summers were spent the other places so that they could experience that life as well.

Richard Jacobs: Okay, very good. So you know, you’ve been an executive for a number of years. What has it been, the changes, like what do C-suite executives need today in 2019 versus X number of years ago? How are things evolving?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: The skillsets and the understanding of the adaptation of those things to speed. But things are still the same. I mean, if you listen to most C-suite executives and me interview them on my show, like all business, when Jeffrey hands on my podcast there are themes that come through all the time. And one of those is talent and they’re always looking for the right kind of talent and talent could make or break it. So the things are pretty much the same. It’s just that we’re having to do them faster, more efficiently or differently. And you just have to understand that you need to change, adapt or you will die. And so the mindset has to be a little bit different on some of that stuff.

Richard Jacobs: What about some mechanical differences. As you said, you’d go to Australia for a day for a meeting. I mean nowadays just for the sake of efficiency. Nevertheless, the time when the plane and the physical drain, why not do that over Skype?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Some of that’s good. But you know, and by the way, there’s more and more of that, you know our own operation. We have offices around the country and we use Zoom and we are constantly having conversations in on zoom. And if we’re going to have to talk to each other, we do it, you know, video now. But there are times in which you need to press the flash. There are times of which you can’t, you know, you can’t have a glass of scotch over zoom. You can have it in one place. I can have it any other way. It’s not the same. Right. So the good news about being human. You still have to be human. So and it’s better when you do that because then you feel the emotions and you get to sense all the other things that are beneficial and the reasons why we are who we are.

Richard Jacobs: Hmm. Okay. Well, very good. Any advice for executive nowadays mistakes may be that you made that you could look back on and help them avoid?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:  Yeah, usually there’s a couple of them. I mean, one is the focus, another one is listening and then they’ll always, the last I’ve always found is anytime you’ve ever, never trusted your gut, you’ve always made a mistake. So those are some pretty straightforward ones. And there are some old things, I don’t care if you’re millennial, I don’t care if you’re a baby boomer. I don’t care if you’re next-gen. I don’t give, it doesn’t make a difference. But there were some old things in this world that say, like, the early bird gets the worm, I’ll outweigh brains any day. And whenever you hear those kinds of things, they were said for a reason cause they work. So, you know so just take heed to those things and practice those things. And if you do the golden rule still works. The golden rule still leads you to the goal.

Richard Jacobs: Well, very good. So last question. What are a couple of ways that people can experience the C-suite network and start to get benefit from it?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, thank you. If you’re a CEO, you can go to heroceoclub.com. If you’re one of a C-suite member, come to c-suite network, we’re glad to have you and put you into one of our many, many, many councils that we have. You can watch us on C-suite TV, you can listen to us on C-suite radio or anywhere you get a podcast. And all right, you can come see us at c-suite book club. And so anything with C-suite. You can just go look it up and find us.

Richard Jacobs: Okay, excellent. That’s a great name. Totally applicable. So Jeff, thanks for coming onto the podcast. I appreciate your time.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, thank you, my friend. Cheers