In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Carol B. Tomé CEO of UPS

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

How will drones and AI impact the logistics industry? And how does Carol Tomé manage 500 000 people?UPS delivers 21 million packages each day to over 220 countries around the world, equivalent to 2% of world GDP. You don’t want to miss this one. The production team on this episode were PLAN-B’s Nikolai Ovenberg and Niklas Figenschau Johansen. Background research was done by Sigurd Brekke with input from portfolio manager Venetia Baden-Powell.Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to our podcast, In Good Company. I'm Nikolaj Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Wealth Fund. In this podcast, I talk to the leaders of some of the largest companies we are invested in so that you can learn what we own and meet these impressive leaders. Today, I'm speaking to Carol Thomae, CEO of UPS. UPS is a 114-year-old logistics company which moves 2% of world GDP. Wow. logistics company, which moves 2% of world GDP. Wow. They have 500,000 people working in 220 countries, and they deliver 24 million packages every day. We own almost 1% of UPS, translating

into 12 billion kroner or more than 1 billion US dollars. How will drones and AI impact UPS? And why did Carol decide to return from retirement to take this huge job? Stay tuned. Hi, Carol. How are you doing? Fine. How are you? Very good. Very good. Lovely to see you and to meet you. Carol, big thanks for taking the time. My pleasure.

Lovely to see you and to meet you. Carol, big thanks for taking the time. My pleasure. Now, you run a company with 500,000 people. I believe you deliver 24 million packages every day to 220 countries. Now, what's the most kind of original or unusual package delivery story that you've heard? Oh, my goodness gracious. Well, first, let me just say how thrilled I am to be joining your podcast today. And it's great to spend some time with you.

I think one of the most interesting deliveries we ever made was the delivery of a whale shark to the Georgia Aquarium carried by one of our big freighters. That was way cool. Wow. And you personally, what's the most unusual experience you've had? The most unusual experience I had? Well, I like to actually get my hands dirty and I love to deliver packages. So I was out during the Christmas holiday delivering packages for our customers and it was all going very well until my last delivery. We don't park our package cars in the driveways. We actually park on the street and then walk to the driveways. We actually park on the street

and then walk to the house. Well, I parked on the street and looked at the house, which was on a hilltop, and the delivery was seven cases of wine. I'm like, how am I going to deliver seven cases of wine? So I had to call in for some help. Yeah, well, that makes sense. That makes sense. Now, for those of us in Europe who don't know UPS as well as perhaps the American audience, just in a few words, what's the kind of the size, the magnitude of UPS? Well, last year, our revenues were $100 billion. And most of our business is in the United States, but we have a great presence in Europe. In fact, there are three key players in the small package business in Europe, DHL, FedEx, and UPS. We knocked FedEx and now are the number two player.

And we have a terrific business model in Europe because we use outside service providers to do a lot of the delivery for us. Now, when you look at the space and you look at the innovations coming up, what impresses you the most? What are you excited about? Well, I'm excited about technology. Aren't we all? But we are leaning in technology in new ways, first to improve the end-to-end customer experience, secondly, to drive productivity. And I'll give you one example of that. We are introducing RFID tags on all of our packages, which will allow us to know where the package is anywhere in our network. We have labels today, but these are electronic labels, which is going to drive productivity because every package needs to be loaded onto a package car before it's delivered to the customer.

Those loads are made by people. Sometimes the packages are misloaded onto the wrong package car, which means they go out for delivery and they can't be delivered. They have to come back and go through the process all over again. Our misloads were running 1 in 400 packages. Our misloads were running 1 in 400 packages. With this new tag, where, oh, by the way, the car recognizes the package. It says, yes, this package should be in my car. Our misloads have improved to 1 in 1,000.

That's Six Sigma perfection. It's going to drive a better customer experience and better productivity. I'm also excited about the use of robots inside of our buildings for automatic labeling and automated bagging. Just think of these manual processes that are all going to be automated with technology. And then maybe one more, if I could share this with you. I'm really excited about battery-powered aircraft, cargo aircraft. We all know about drones. Well, we've invested with a company called Beta Technologies, who's creating a battery-powered cargo aircraft. It can carry about 1,400 pounds of cargo. That's not a lot, but it's a start, and it could surely be used for feeder or short flights.

When do you think you'll have it up and running? We're hoping to have it up and running later this year. Oh, wow. And how do drones come into it? Well, it's interesting about drones. The commercial application isn't proven yet because at least in the United States, you still have to have a person on the ground with his or her eyes on the drone. So you're not getting the

productivity that you expect. Also, if the wind increases to a certain knot, you can't fly the drone. So we haven't really cracked the commercial code yet, but we have used it for philanthropic purposes, which I'm very excited about. We were the first integrator to deliver COVID-19 vaccines when those vaccines became available on the market. We've delivered over a billion vaccines in over 100 countries, including vaccines delivered by drones in certain parts of the world where it was really hard to get the vaccine to, like Rwanda. Yeah. And now we've had people like Bill Gates and, you know, Jensen Huang on lately, who of course are super enthusiastic about AI. How do you think that's going to change your business?

Well, I'm super excited about it and a little bit scared, but I have to be more excited about it. Join the club. Yeah, exactly. We do need some guardrails, right? We need to make sure that we have guardrails. We have to understand that there are inherent biases that can be built as the machine is learning. So we've got to work through this. But the opportunity to improve the customer experience is enormous. Imagine this.

We have 12,000 people in our company that handle customer concerns. 12,000. That's because of the complexity of intercommerce and different trade lanes and all the rules and regulations that we have to deal with. If I could have the machine understand all of this and learn from the customer experience, it would be better for the customers as well as for productivity.

And when do you think this could make an impact? What's the timeframe? We're going to start some use cases this year. Again, understanding that we do need to build the guardrails, but we're going to start this year. Now, you have, as opposed to FedEx, which has got two systems, you've got one integrated system. How do you get a decentralized organization like UPS to pull in one direction? I mean, I guess it helps to have a charismatic leader like yourself, but what are the other things? Well, you know, when I onboarded back in March of 20, I talked to the team about our purpose, our why. We knew what we did. We moved

2% of the world's GDP every day. We knew what we did, but we hadn't declared our why. And I thought if we declared our why, that would be a rallying cry for the more than 500,000 people, UPSers around the world. So we put together a cross-functional team and they did a masterful job of interviewing existing employees, retirees, customers, suppliers, communities, and they iterated and iterated and landed on our why. And I'll share it with you. It's moving our world forward by delivering what matters. And what we love about this is you can unpack it in so many different ways. It's not just about delivering goods, but doing good too. And no matter what job you have at UPS, you can understand that, right? Moving our role forward by delivering

what matters. Fascinating. Wow. 2% of world GDP. That's quite something. Now, how do you think that will grow? What do you think your role would be in moving this world forward? So, so interesting because what we've seen as a result of the pandemic, that companies are rethinking supply chains. They're rethinking where they're sourcing. And we do see trade lanes changing. We see sourcing moving out of China into other Asian countries like Malaysia and Taiwan, Vietnam. So we are following our customers as they move. We see some nearshoring to the United States where manufacturing is being moved to, for example, Mexico. So it does mean the trade lanes will change, and we need to follow those customers as they go.

Our plan is to grow as the economies grow, understanding that there are cycles that economies go through, of course. One of our key areas of focus is healthcare logistics. Healthcare logistics is a very complicated supply chain because oftentimes you need to understand cold chain. Pharmaceuticals need to be accompanied by dry ice or some other mechanism that keeps them chilled. It's very complicated, but we are experts at this. that keeps them chilled. It's very complicated, but we are experts at this. We've been in the healthcare logistics business for a couple of decades now.

Our healthcare logistics business is about a $10 billion business. We think we can double that in the near term. So that's a really exciting area of growth for us. It's important too, because when you think about, well, sadly, aging population needs more healthcare, as well as just what's happening in the pharmaceutical world. Some really great, great developments are occurring in that space.

And you delivered millions of COVID vaccines, I believe. And tell us about the ramp up of that whole delivery. Well, it's so fascinating to think about how we did it, because we delivered those vaccines using the assets that we own. Now, we knew that they needed, some some of the vaccines anyway needed to be chilled. So we manufacture our own dry ice. And we have cold chain storage facilities that are able to assist in the process of the movement of those vaccines. But I'll make it real for you. The day that Pfizer announced they had a vaccine ready for delivery, we picked it up

at their manufacturing site using a big brown tail aircraft. So a brown tail would be a UPS aircraft, put those vaccines on an aircraft in the middle part of the United States and flew it to our central air hub in Louisville, Kentucky. When the vaccines arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, they were taken off that big plane. They were processed and labeled and put onto small feeder aircraft that flew to their final destination. Let's pick a city like Atlanta. When the vaccines got to Atlanta, they were taken off the aircraft, put onto a brown package car, the same package car that will deliver your sweater. And that brown package car, the same package car that will deliver your sweater. And that brown package car took them

to the final destination. All the while, we never lost sight of those vaccines. In fact, our delivery efficiency was 99.9%. We never lost those vaccines along the way using the assets that we own. Pretty cool. along the way, using the assets that we own. Pretty cool.

Wow. Amazing story. How did you feel? Oh, you know, I've had lots of moments of just, you know, like goosebump moments where I, you know, I was just so proud of our UPSers. And that day was one of those goosebump days. I bet.

How do you see the continued growth in e-commerce? You think it will just continue to grow? Well, yeah, e-commerce will continue to grow, but the growth rate has certainly slowed down, which makes sense. When we were sheltering in place, people needed essential goods shipped to their homes. Now that the world has opened up, thank goodness, what we see are consumers are still spending. This is true for most parts in the world has opened up, thank goodness, what we see are consumers are still spending. This is true for most parts in the world. Consumers are spending, but they're spending more on services and not goods. They already bought everything they needed to remodel their house.

They already bought all the clothes. Now they want the experience. So they're going on holidays, eating out, which is fantastic. I mean, it's wonderful, But it means that the growth in e-commerce is slowing down. We also see large retailers and even small and medium-sized businesses who are saying, hmm, I have an asset here. My asset is a store. How do I get people into my store? Because if I don't get people into my store, I'm going to devalue my asset. So what we see with many retailers and

small businesses is they're creating services like buy online, pick it up in store, or buy online, return it in store. So that's impacting the growth rate of e-commerce. But I think all of us have learned, even my aging relatives have learned that e-commerce is easy. It's easy. You push the button, it can come to you and you can order order more than one size, and you pick the product that fits you, and you send the rest back. So it's here to stay. Absolutely. How do you work with Amazon? So we have a really great relationship with Amazon.

They are our largest customer. Last year, they made up more than 11% of our total worldwide sales. than 11% of our total worldwide sales. And I'm delighted about the relationship that we have with them because we've come to a mutual agreement about the packages that they will deliver because they do and the packages that we will deliver for them because we can provide a better service than they. One of those examples would be returns. We handle all of Amazon returns. In the United States, we have more than 5,000 UPS stores located within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population. So these stores are very convenient. And if you want to return an Amazon item purchased, you can bring the item to the store. We'll scan the item and take care of the rest for you. It's a seamless experience. Perfect.

Sounds very good. Now, Carol, changing tack a bit here. You announced your retirement in 2019, but then you came back as CEO of UPS in 2020. What happened? Yeah, what happened? It's so interesting. I'd been on the UPS board for a long time, actually. I came on the board in 2003.

And in 2019, when I did retire, UPS was going through succession planning work with the then CEO, David Abney, who was planning to retire. And they created a persona of the skills and attributes that they thought the next CEO should have. And when they matched that persona up against the existing leadership team, they're like, eh, that's a great leadership team, but we don't think anybody really possesses these skills and attributes, at least not today. So they decided to go to the outside. And when they decided to go to the outside, they came to me and said, we'd like you to be considered. And I'm like, me? I'm retired. I'm on my farm. I'm 62. Are you sure? And they're like, yeah,

we'd like you to think about it. So I thought about it. I'm like, well, why would I do this? Why would I get back into the workforce? And there were several reasons. The first is that UPS is a values-based business. Jim Casey founded our company now 116 years ago and top of his list of values, integrity, and top of his list of values, integrity, and top of my list of values, integrity. So I was aligned with the company's values. The second reason is I love to develop people. And with over 500,000 people in our company, I'm like, oh gosh, I could get in there and

develop people and help them reach their highest potential, whatever it may be. And that would be a lot of fun. But at the end of the day, this was the real reason. I talked to my husband. We've been married for nearly 40 years, and he's fully retired. And I said, Ramon, what do you think? I have this opportunity. What do you think? And he said, would you please go back to work? You are driving me crazy. So with that affirmation, I said, yes, I'd like to be considered. And it happened. So I'm really honored and privileged to be leading this great company. Amazing. Now, what was the, after having been on board for a long time, what was the biggest

surprise when you actually sat in the CEO seat? Oh boy, I had a lot of big learnings. Here's really kind of a big picture, big learning. When you're a board member, you go into a board meeting four or five times a year, and management makes presentations, and you ask questions. But you really don't know what's going on until you get into the inside. And one of my big ahas is that we, while we delivered great, great service for our customers, our people weren't all that happy. Now, I asked about employee satisfaction, and I hadn't really done that as a board member, but now that I'm leading our people, I asked about employee satisfaction, and I learned at the time that our likelihood to

recommend, which is a form of satisfaction, how likely are you to recommend UPS as a place to work? I found that our likelihood to recommend was only 51%. And I'm like, 51%? That means that 49% of us wouldn't recommend us as a place to work? I was like, oh my gosh, you know, hair on fire. What are we going to do about it? So we kind of peeled apart the layers of the onion to determine what the drivers of dissatisfaction were and started working on addressing those. I'm really delighted to say we set a goal of being at 80. We're not. What were the reasons?

Oh, gosh. Let's see. One, candidly, and this is going to be true in any company, but compensation. What we learned, it wasn't our compensation package because if you added up the components of the package, we were very competitive. It was the design of the package. We were way low on cash, way high on opportunity and stock. And cash is what you get in your paycheck and how you pay your bills. And people were dissatisfied, and should have been because we were way low. So we fixed the mix. We re-swizzled it and we're higher

on cash now. Didn't change the opportunity. The opportunity stays the same, but just changed the composition so there's more cash. Another dissatisfier was candidly, believe it or not, not able to bring your authentic self to work. And I'll just make this real for you. If you were African American in our company, you could not have natural hair. You could not have a fro, a braid, a twist. You could not have natural hair. If you were a male in our company around the world, you could not have facial hair. Our tattoo policy was more restrictive than that of the U.S. Army. People want to bring their real, genuine, authentic self to work, and we were telling

them that they couldn't. And I'm like, well, of course you can. Our customers aren't going to care about that. You need to be professional, of course. But our customers are not going to care if you have a beard. So we changed all that. It didn't cost a dime, but it showed that this was a different UPS, that we really welcomed authenticity. We were kind of command and control. There's still a little bit of that happening today, I have to admit, but we were

command and control. If you're command and control, it takes away creativity, doesn't it? But when you are 550,000 people, don't you need a certain amount of command and control? I mean, it's not like you can have complete anarchy. No, of course not. We're an engineering-driven company. We run our company by methods. We measure everything to the second. We're not going to lose sight of that. But you know, a lot of the decisions made by the company were made by the CEO. There were committees. There were a number of committees and you had to wait till the committee met before you could raise the issue, whatever you wanted to be working on. And if the committee wasn't satisfied with the presentation, you had to go back and do work again and not present again until the next committee met. That's disempowering. That's not the way I was

going to run the business. So we pushed the decision-making down closer to the customers, closer to the people. I'm like, yeah, I need to be involved in some decisions, but most decisions I do not. I just do not because we've got really talented people running the company. So that's actually been very powerful, and I think it's improved our speed. Now, you also introduced something called Wargaming. Tell us about that.

Yeah. Well, I've run strategy for companies for a long time, and I love wargaming as a strategic exercise. For us, it means assuming the persona of a competitor. So the team would assume a persona of a competitor. Let's say it's DHL. And then as the competitor, you would attack UPS. So the attack would come, and this is all done on whiteboards and in rooms. You're attacking UPS.

Then another team assumes the persona of UPS, because we are UPS, and attacks back. And with the attack back, what you find is opportunities for growth or opportunities for a better customer experience. It's a really great way to get out of your own headspace is to pretend you're somebody else and attack yourself. So it's a really great way to think about growth. Carol, I'd love to talk a bit about leadership and what you think are the important features. How do you prioritize your time? So a third, a third, a third. A third on strategy, a third on business reviews, and a third on talent development.

Tell me more. Like if I divide the day in a third, I'll spend the morning talking about how China is performing. I'll spend the noon time talking about our venture in India. And I'll spend the afternoon time talking about talent. And I do talent in a number of different ways. I write a lot of letters. I write probably 200 letters a week to people, recognizing them. What do you write in these letters?

So it's recognizing them for doing something amazing. It could be a driver this morning, a driver who saw a house on fire, ran to the house and pulled the woman out of her house as it was burning. She didn't know it was burning. I think she was asleep. So I'll recognize the driver for doing that or recognizing we just released our GRI report, our sustainability report. And I challenged the team last year to get it out before our shareholder meeting because we got it out way late last year and they got it out today. Our shareholder meeting is in May. So everybody who worked on that report is getting recognized.

So it just depends on what's happening. How do you make decisions? Where are you on the scale from analysis to gut feel? Oh, huh. It's a really interesting question. I rely on my intuition a lot from a customer perspective and from a strategic perspective, but I'm pretty doggone analytical just because I'm a finance person for most of my career. I've been working for 40 years. But I can go deep, deep, deep in the numbers and then come way up pretty fast. Has there been any personal experiences which has formed or informed your leadership style? Oh, for sure. I was extraordinarily fortunate to be hired into the Home Depot in 1995.

And I worked for the founders of that company, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, amazing retail icons. amazing retail icons. And they had this very unique management construct of an inverted pyramid where the leaders of the company are at the bottom of the pyramid and the people who serve the customers are at the top of the pyramid. Most management constructs are the other way, leaders at the top, people at the bottom. With the inverted pyramid, I learned really what it meant is that at the bottom of the pyramid as a leader, you bear the weight for the actions that you take and the decisions that you make. You bear that weight so that you can free up your people to take care of their customers. And what Bernie said, he said, if you take care of your people, they'll take care of the customers and everything else will

take care of itself. So for me, servant leadership is what it's all about. It's a term that maybe gets overused, but that's how I firmly believe in it. I bear that weight. I bear it so I can free up the team to take care of the customers. How do you work with a union? Well, now we're unionized around the world.

In the United States, we employ about 330,000 teamsters. So more teamsters than any other company. We also work with a pilots union and airline mechanics. So we work with a number of different unions in the United States. And then outside the United States, we work with a number of works councils around the world. We believe that everyone who works for UPS is a UPSer, even if they are employed by some sort of a collective bargaining agreement. And our approach with our union workers is win, win, win. You know, I have their interest at heart. They're our people.

They are UPSers first, I believe. And that's how I approach it. But some of your competitors are looking at it differently. What are the advantages for you to be so constructive with the unions? And it kind of sounds a bit strange for the European audience, but of course, the attitude towards union in the U.S. is very different from what we are used to here. It is different. And I would say one of the advantages is longevity. We have something called the Circle of Honor, where if you drive for us 25 years without an accident, you become a member of the Circle of Honor. That's a big deal, right? 25 years, no accidents.

We have over 10,000 UPSers who are Circle of Honor drivers. That's cool. It makes us a safer company for our employees as well as our customers. I don't know. People are people. I just think, you know, on the back of our uniforms, it's UPS. It's not Works Council or Teamster. It's UPS. Do you pay higher wages than your competitors?

Yeah, for sure. So we pay the highest wage of anybody by far. If you drive for us in the United States, if you're a packaged car driver, you make $93,000 a year plus $50,000 of benefits. And you pay nothing for health insurance. And the wages for our works councils are as competitive, more competitive than anybody pays. We're okay with that, actually. And to which extent do you think this explains the fact that you have less disruptions than your competitors? I think it explains a lot.

People want to work for us. And it's not just the money, because the purpose matters too. But people want to work for us. Think about this. Every peak season, peak is the holiday, Christmas holiday, when the volume really peaks up in our network. We have to hire. We don't peak all around the world. We peak in Cologne, for example. We peak in the UK. In the United States, we peak. We have to hire over 100,000 people every holiday season to handle the volume. And we can, even in this labor market, because people want to work for us. You said you spend a lot of time with your people in teledevelopment. What type of people do you promote? Well, this is an ever-evolving discussion here. We tended to look at tenure and seniority as the basis for promotion.

I think tenure and seniority matters a lot, but I think talent matters more. I think tenure and seniority matters a lot, but I think talent matters more. So now we're laser focused on what we call our leadership framework, which is simply head, heart, and hands. Head, can they strategize? Heart, are they empathetic? And hands, can they do? Because we're a do-it company. I mean, I'm oversimplifying it, but that's really what we're looking for is people who exemplify the leadership framework of people that we want to have in leader roles. You have to have all three to be an effective leader anymore. You really do.

And when you look at the really inspiring leaders around the world, who do you admire the most? Who do I admire the most? Oh, boy. Who do I admire the most? I'm going to date myself. This is an interesting time to look for inspirational leaders. And this is the sad thing. I'll just be perfectly frank with you. In the absence of leadership from many of our elected officials, because normally you'd go to an elected official, right? Yeah. In the absence of leadership among so many of our elected officials, what communities are doing is turning to business leaders to look for leadership and inspiration. And there are a number of business leaders I think are extraordinarily inspirational. And I'll just pick on a couple here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we're headquartered, because I so much admire them. Ed Bastian, who runs Delta Airlines,

really admire Ed. Ted Decker, who runs Home Depot, who worked for me for most of his Home Depot career. I don't think there's a better leader out there in terms of someone who's wicked smart, but focused on doing the right thing for customers as well as people. Talking about wicked smart, we checked you out on GPT-4 and we learned that you are a very big reader with a huge library. So what do you read now? So I actually have two houses, and I have two libraries. My sister was an independent bookseller, and we have a lot of books in our home. Right now, I am reading Political Risk, which was a book recently published by Condoleezza Rice,

whom I just spent some time with last week, as well as her colleague, Zagart is the last name. I don't know her well, but Condoleezza is a person I know, and I think she's a brilliant thinker and a brilliant writer. And Political Risk is a good business book because it really helps business leaders think about how they can get crosswise with their stakeholders. How do you relax? How do I relax? Well, I love puzzles. So I do in the morning, I get up really early and I do a number of puzzles. The New York Times Spelling Bee, the New York Times Wordle, the New York Times Mini, then I do Quartle. And I get all those done within 30 minutes or less or else I have to go on about my business. So I really love puzzles. And then I love to read and I love to garden and cook.

Well, I like that. I did my stunt at the Cordon Bleu. Oh, you did? Yeah, I like that. I did my stunt at the Cordon Bleu. Oh, you did? Yeah, I did. Oh, fantastic. That's on my bucket list one day. I want to do it. Very good. I may come and cook with you on your farm at some stage.

But in the meantime, how do you stay informed? I mean, how do you orient yourself in this information overload environment? Boy, isn't that true? I stay off social media. information overloads environment. Yeah, boy, isn't that, that's true. I stay off social media and I try to get a balanced perspective on news. So I have three newspapers that come to my house,

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Atlanta Journal Constitution. I'll get the Financial Times here on the office electronically. So I just try to get a balanced view. I actually tend to listen to BBC News more than any other news broadcast. If I'm listening to the news, because we tend to be pretty biased here in the United States.

I find it kind of entertaining to look at the biases, but I'm like, just tell me the news, you know, what's happening. I also have some great kind of a personal board of directors, people who are really great thought leaders who I talk to frequently, who will, you know, share with me what they're seeing in their firms. Most of them work for consulting firms. What they're seeing in their firms with their customers, a real lot of thought leadership pieces, just trying to stay up on things and try to make every single day a learning day, every single day. Now, what kind of setbacks have you had in your life? have you had in your life? Oh, golly. I've had a number of setbacks, but I'm blessed that my parents, when I was a little girl, and I grew up in a little town in Wyoming, 3,000 people, you know, my parents told me, you know, I could do anything and be anything that I wanted.

And I believed them. They gave me a lot of self-confidence, you know, self-confidence that if I'm going to, something goes wrong, I can pull myself up and get going again. I also, Nikolai, I learned how to cook and hunt and fish and sew and live off the land. So I'm like, if anything happens, I actually lose a job, I'll be okay because I know how to live. So I've always had kind of that behind me, like I'm going to be okay because I know how to live. But I think with each setback has come a learning and I'll make it real for you. So in 2014-ish, Home Depot was going through a CEO succession planning process. And there were three of us who were being considered as the next CEO. And I love, love the Home Depot. And had they asked me to be the CEO, I would have

immediately said yes. They didn't. They asked one of my colleagues, who was terrific, a great CEO. But I'm like, what? I didn't get it? It was a big blow for me personally. And all my friends were like, you should leave, you should leave, you didn't get it, you should leave. And I'm like, oh, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Luckily, the CEO at the time said to me, Carol, you should think about this through the lens of impact. Where would you have the bigger impact? I'm like, oh, that's pretty good advice. Where would I have the bigger impact? And I thought about the incoming CEO who was terrific, but he didn't have some experience in areas that I did like corporate governance and that sort of thing. And I'm like, you know what?

I think I can stay here and help him and have a bigger impact. And I did. And it was great. I learned so much from that. We had such a good working relationship. We did a whole bunch of great things together, created a lot of value and a lot of jobs for people. And it was a lot of fun. So was it a setback?

Actually, no. It was an unbelievable opportunity. Well, a lot of people would have left in that situation, right? So it has to do with how you frame it, right? Yeah, but guess what it did? It led to this opportunity. Because had I left, I wouldn't be doing this today. I'd be doing something else.

And this is an unbelievable company. The CEO of Goldman Sachs said that if you are happy 75% of the time, you are lucky. And the CEO of Ryanair said if you're happy 50% of the time, you're pretty lucky. What do you think? I think attitude is a choice. And I choose to be happy all the time. Now, I'm not, but I really work on being happy all the time. How do you do that? It's, you know, well, I'm thankful to God for all the blessings that come to me, so I pray an

awful lot. Because I realize to whom much has been given, much is expected. And I'm like, right, I'm here for a reason. I'm here for a purpose. And my personal purpose is simply this, lead to inspire, serve to create, give to remain. And if I stay true to my personal purpose, no matter what comes my way, and a whole bunch of stuff comes my way every day, for sure, no matter what comes my way, I can figure out a way to stay pretty happy. And with that hat on, what kind of advice would you give to young people who listen to these podcasts? give to young people who listen to these podcasts? Well, the piece of advice I love to give to young people comes from my favorite poet, Maya Angelou, who said, don't make money your goal. Instead, do what you love and do it so well that people can't take their eyes off of you. Well, it's a beautiful place to end and you for sure have been true to that poem. a beautiful place to end.

And you for sure have been true to that poem. So thanks a million for taking the time and all the best. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you.