Think Big, Act Bigger | Jeffrey Hayzlett

About Jeffrey Hayzlett

Jeffrey Hayzlett is a global business celebrity and former Fortune 100 c-suite executive. From small business to international corporations, he puts his creativity and extraordinary entrepreneurial skills into play, launching ventures blending his leadership perspectives, insights into professional development, mass marketing prowess and affinity for social media.

Jeffrey is a leading business expert, cited in Forbes, SUCCESS, Mashable, Marketing Week and Chief Executive, among many others. He shares his executive insight and commentary on television networks like Bloomberg, MSNBC, Fox Business, and C-Suite TV. Hayzlett is a former Bloomberg contributing editor and primetime host, and has appeared as a guest celebrity judge on NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump for three seasons. He is executive producer of a number of global television projects and Celebrity Editor of the largest circulation social media and business magazines in the world. With a strong following in business and social media communities, he’s recognized as one of the Top 10 c-suite Twitterers and a key influencer in the social media landscape.

Jeffrey is author of 2 bestselling business books The Mirror Test and Running the Gauntlet, which received critical acclaim and are on numerous bestseller lists.

Currently, Jeffrey leads C-Suite Network, The Hayzlett Group, and TallGrass Public Relations. Drawing upon an eclectic background in business, he was inducted into the 2015 National Speakers Association Hall of Fame for his stellar keynote speaking. Jeffrey energizes his deep cowboy roots role to deliver and drive change. He is a turnaround architect of the highest order, a maverick marketer who delivers scalable campaigns, embraces traditional modes of customer engagement, and possesses a remarkable cachet of mentorship, corporate governance and brand building.

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Jeffrey Hayzlett. He’s author of the book of thanks big X bigger. Jeff.

Jeff
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Alan
So Jeff, you’ve done many things in your life aside from writing your recent book, but for our listeners, can you take us on your timeline background, and how’d you get to where you are today?

Jeff
Like most people, it’s not a normal path, right? You always do different things that you think you’re not going to do. But you do. I started off as an entrepreneur, like a lot of different people, I worked in the House and Senate, in political campaigns, and then that led me to go and create my own public relations firm. From there, I started buying up companies I bought and sold over 250 companies in my career led me to, you know, become a sales and marketing leader in a major company, a billion dollar company, that got taken over. So I got fired from that job. When the new guys came in, which is normal, the way it works for guys like me, and then I went on to become the Chief Marketing Officer for Fortune 100 company, Eastman Kodak, left there six years ago, and now started my own television shows my own radio shows, and then leading the C suite network. So it’s a little bit not a normal path. But you know, a path that I say, Wow, that was a great ride so far,

Alan
You know, it’s a remarkable background that you have, and when they give a lot of credibility to how you how you set the stage for Think big, act bigger, what was your inspiration behind this.

Jeff
You know, so many times, entrepreneurs, leaders, businesses, businesses, we put obstacles in front of us, we, in their self imposed for no other reason, we can’t do this, we can’t do that. Or we tried that before. You know, in, quite frankly, in corporate America, I got tired of hearing about it. And so I decided to write this book, Think big, act bigger, to talk about how we need to just move through, move around and move over them, ignore those obstacles, and do the things we want to do. You know, it’s not the lucky who win. It’s the relentless, and in my career, I’m not the smartest guy, I’m not the brightest guy. I’m not the quickest guy. And maybe the best looking guy. I don’t know about that. But But nonetheless, you know, I wasn’t born with silver spoon are a lot of money. But I’ve been extremely successful, what I’ve been able to do, mostly by just being relentless. And that is saying, This is what I want to do. And I’m gonna go get it done. And I won’t accept no for an answer. It might be a setback for a period of time. But that’s really what the book is about. It’s as much as self help book as it is about, this is the way you should plan your business.

Alan
When you’re starting out, though, and everyone has a vision, everyone has a dream, but but how do you move from thinking about it to actually putting it in place?

Jeff
Well, it’s not that difficult. It’s just taking one step at a time. We all like to think, you know, it’s like the first time I did Celebrity Apprentice, someone said, How’d you get on the show? I said, Well, I called Donald Trump, you know? And Well, how’d you do that? Why would you do that? I said, Well, I picked up the phone called 411 got the information and call enough to message. I mean, it’s literally is that simple. And it’s a matter of just saying one step at a time, baby steps. And I have a philosophy of crawl, walk, run. And that’s really what we do in life from the time we’re a little child all the way to the time that we die, we crawl, we walk, we run. And so in everything that we first start with, we’re always a beginner, you know, you don’t become a maestro, you have to play a lot of bad notes. And so it’s always that first step. It’s that first uplink on a piano or that first, you know, strum with a violin. It’s that very first time. And that’s just really what it has to do to pick it up and do it.

Alan
So Jeff, you know, in life, you’ll often run across people say, Yeah, Jeff, I get it. I need to take the first step. But I don’t even know who I am and what I what my passions are.

Jeff
But then starts but start going somewhere. If you’re going in direction, you’ll fail, you’ll figure it out. I don’t know, you know, someone wants to ask me. So what’s my greatest achievement or my more my biggest failure said, I don’t know, I haven’t done it yet. And that’s the really, I think the way in which you should do I don’t think the leaders of these major major companies, I happen to know who they are a lot of them. They didn’t start off with that in mind. They start off doing something maybe they were working at McDonald’s, maybe they were working at Pizza Hut and maybe they were working, you know, a local saddle shop, whatever it might be from wherever you are, but they started somewhere and they figured out along the way, the most important thing with business we’re gonna learn for most of us to do things if unless you’re operating heavy machinery, or you’re operating on someone, you make a mistake, no one’s gonna die. And that’s really what it’s about. So go try it. You’ll find something that works for you. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

Alan
Made it nice and busy here today with Jeff Hayzlett. He’s off to the birth of Think big, act bigger, we need to take a break and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, come visit me here today with Jeff Hayzlett He’s authored the book of Think Big act ticker. And Jeff, in the first place per segment we were talking about, you know, people that really weren’t able to understand who they are get their mindset in place, but you know, common excuses What have people come up with to say, why can’t they do.

Jeff
This, you know, I actually my book, Think big bigger, I actually listed pages of excuses, I went out and crowdsource amongst my friends and said, Give me the list of excuses. Well, we can activate that on on Thursday, because the best day to activate contents on Tuesday, or we tried to before, or it’s not in the budget, which is a common one, you know, it’s all about making choices. That’s what you have to do in life, you have to decide if that’s what I want to do. With everything, there’s pain, there always is pain of learning, pain, of love pain of everything. And you have to learn that you have to give up something to get something. And that’s the first step of realization of being able on that journey is to figure out what that pain is going to be and understand, again, no one’s going to die in the process. So you have to make those decisions early on that I want to go to this place. I want to do this. And you’re going to have to make choices and sacrifices along the way.

Alan
Yeah, I love the way that you put that in order to get humans first give, without really understanding what’s going to happen.

Jeff
You know, I had a great person, I was inducted into the speaker Hall of Fame here and about a year ago, and someone got up and spoke and said, in order to get you have to give, give, give. And if you give, give give, you get get get. I’ve always found that to be the case. And so, you know, one of the things that I cost of doing business is always help other people. And by helping other people. And many people come to me and say, Well, would you get out of that? Nothing. Eventually, I probably will nothing else, I learned something new about the person I was helping or about their business or what they did. So it’s an important thing to do. It’s a good thing to mention.

Alan
So when you work through this, how important are relationships as you’re trying to solve business problems there are moved through.

Jeff
It’s it’s interesting, you say relationships, I was at a recent seminar, or conference, and someone got upset, and relationships, all about relationships now. And I said, I looked around I said, when did it stop? It’s always been about relationships. And and the best business I’ve ever done in my life, the best things I’ve ever done in my life have been always around relationships. And people should nurture that, especially those that are going out and trying to be thought leaders today or even businesses trying to, you know, take care of their customers. It’s about that community that we’re building. And you want to nurture that community. So that relationship with that, with that customer, that relationship with your spouse, that relationship with your children, most important thing you can possibly do you nurture that.

Alan
So Jeff, in business, what comes first the relationship or the business, you started?

Jeff
Well, you can always master relationships and build from that. But I really think the business comes first. And here’s why I say that. I think you want to focus in on what is it I want to be when I grow up as a business. So what are my conditions of satisfaction? What is it that I want to do? And then get other people to buy it from me. So you establish that relationship, that action cycle that we have, and I make a promise with you the customer?

Alan
And in the in the acting big? What exactly does that mean?

Jeff
You know, it’s always about not you, we think we can only do this I use it my own personal example when I’ve talked to my team about helping build my own social media profile. At first we thought 50,000 was a big number for followers on Twitter. Now we have over 300,000 And I would have thought jeez, if I just got to 100 It was okay. Now I’m thinking let’s get to half a million let why half a million? How about a million? You know, so it’s about adding zeros and that’s what we need to do. Don’t restrict yourself. I came from South Dakota. I’m gonna replace that most people don’t know on a map yet. I’m one of the most successful business people out there today. Why? Because I thought bigger I figured out I could do this in Iowa. I could do this in Minnesota. I could do this all over the world. And that’s what thinking is all about.

Alan
And visiting here today with Jeff Hayzlett. He’s authored the books I think big act bigger. Jeff, I need to take a quick break and we’ll be right back after this.

Alan
Welcome back. I’ve been visiting here today with Jeff Hayzlett. He’s off his list to think big act bigger. Jeff, we we talked about getting started in launching companies but you know, you’re you’re a veteran out there. So doing some 250 companies and and then your celebrity approach So getting Donald Trump to play chime, but I want to move into your current project is C suite.

Jeff
The C suite network? Yeah, we’re building the most vetted network for seasoned executives, when you look across the platform, there’s 28 million businesses, your business is primarily over 10 million account for about 95% of all the spend. And that’s only 600,000 businesses. So we’re targeting those businesses and helping to have those leaders be the most strategic people in the room, but we’re going to vet them. So it’s not like LinkedIn will have a LinkedIn like kind of component for the community so that we can network with each other, online and offline with our events. But we wanted something because I’m getting inundated by all these people coming at me as a C suite executives, and I can’t tell who’s who. And so what we wanted to do is to draw a line in the sand and put kind of a red velvet rope around the community. And that’s what we’ve decided to do. So we’re building a community for C suite executives over 5 million in size, VP, or higher as a safe haven for them, much like a private club. And then we help them facilitate meetings together, we help them facilitate services they get, and then we give them content. Because here’s one of the key things for a lot of C suite executives, when I’m the Chief Marketing Officer of Eastman Kodak, I’m in meetings every minute of the day, from the time I get up in the morning till the time I put my head to bed late, late at night, sometimes even early the next morning. And yet my staff is out there looking at information getting information, and they’re figuring out you know, ahead of me, which is great. But my job is to be strategic, not the smartest person and so what we want to do is help those people be more strategic by feeding the right kinds of things to them.

Alan
As a as a as a become part of that this the network. There’s also an aspect that where they can do their own podcasts?

Jeff
There’s all kinds of pieces, you know, we have, we have the community itself, we have our content, we have foresees the community, that content, our concierge, and our convene or meetings that we have together. So on the community, again, like a LinkedIn, but on steroids and only for those people and vetted, then the content then is those folks that want to produce content, or we curate the content for them in terms of news, podcasts or education, or blogs that are done. And a lot of executives are starting to write more and more blogs, and they wanted to get it out to the right people. So those are the places they can participate.

Alan
And then that let’s go, let’s go through the last TCS.

Jeff
Then we’ll convene I love convened because you need to get people together. And we do everything from big meetings, like we’re having one in September at the New York Times center for about 400 executives, and we were talking about elections and everything else. But we do monthly meetings as well in lots of different communities where we might have a Scotch tasting event, or we might have a wine tasting event, or we might even just have a topic about what’s Brexit happening for the United States or other countries. And so we have small gatherings what we call salons around a particular topic, so that those people who are interested those executives, C level executives are interested can come. And the last C is concierge services. You know, when I was a major, major company, I had a lot of people doing a lot of things for me. And in a smaller company, I wouldn’t have that. So what services might the smaller companies need? And what services might the executive one, you know, beyond what their company can do for them as well. And so we have partners that we like Accenture and a whole host of others that you know, serve up products and services for the members and also for the members companies.

Alan
You know, when you look at the world today, and we’re in a world of constant change, and and you know, recent guest module Q. You know, the Harvard PT came, I said you were in it in we’re inundated with a technology overload. How do we make things simpler? How does this C suite help us do really? Well, one of

Jeff
The things we do especially in the content is putting a learning engine in front so that we’re giving you the kinds of stuff that you’re asking for and the way that you want to do it. You know, let’s imagine that you you’re CEO of a company, and you got four different plants around the country. And one of those is in Wichita. Well, you don’t always get to Wichita, why do you have to go to an app and look and see what’s happening in Wichita, why can’t we feed that information? So you know, like, for instance, weather, well, why was weather important? Let’s imagine that you’re about to have tornado warnings in Wichita near your plant, that would be a smart thing to know about as a CEO. So you can call the plant manager and say, hey, it looks like you’re going to have some rough weather today. Are we ready for tornado warnings? Have we had our practices for our employees? Have we done the right things in order to do it, that’s being strategic and so that’s what we can help to do in terms of give them that information. So it’s that it’s not to say it’s a filter, but it’s a way of saying much like when you go to a good club, or to a restaurant and they know you very well, and you sit down they know what kind of appetizer you’re like or what drink you like, and we’re doing the same thing with the C suite network, anticipating what you need and then giving it to you as you need it.

Alan
You know, with with the network here is the idea that people can pipe in and the technology or Is it actually face to face meetings and in rooms.

Jeff
You have to go where the people are, you know, you can’t build and hope they’ll come you have to capture customer behavior. You know, I was doing a television show on Bloomberg, for instance. And it was a very successful show number one primetime Business Show. But we started having more people watch the show online. They were watching to broadcast. So we said, Let’s capture behavior. If they’re watching it online, or they’re watching it on their app, why aren’t we feeding the content so we immediately changed and adapted so we wouldn’t die and we moved our content online and that’s what you have to be able to do is change it and meet where people want now if they want to do it face to face live let’s set up some face to face meeting but if they want to hide behind an app and watch it they’re okay too.

Alan
So for the listeners who are interested in joining C suite and more information, how do they find go to C suite?

Jeff
Go just go to C suite.com. C suite network.com. C suite tv.com. C suite radio C suite book club, just named C suite look up hashtag C suite on Twitter or Facebook wherever you want to go. You can find us.

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Jeff Haslett, and we’ve been talking about this C suite network. Deflector. Thank you for being on today’s show a pleasure. We’ll be right back after these messages.

 

We hope you enjoyed this interview; “Think Big, Act Bigger | Jeffrey Hayzlett”.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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