Motivation Daily by Motiversity - THE MINDSET OF A HIGH ACHIEVER - Keith Krach

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

Subscribe to our channel The Icons to watch the full 30-minute interview with American Businessman and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Keith Krach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kemcW...Keith Krach, former CEO of Docusign, VP at GM, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee and co-founder of Ariba, shares his mindset and business secrets. An original interview."The best way to deal with the future, is to invent it." – Keith KrachSpeaker:Keith Krach: https://twitter.com/KeithJKrachMusic:Epidemic Sound Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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New episodes are being released every week. The link is in the description. I've had a good fortune of living the American dream. I just kind of had an itching to go run my own thing. You know, the only way it could be a failure is not to have failed. To be honest, the first company I went up was a total disaster. It was like running a hundred-yard dash and being smacked in the face with a two-by-four. I'll never forget.

I think it was my second day on the job. The CEO said, Keith, I want me to say this at the next board meeting. And I go, Maria, I will not say that. That would be a lie. You get that big pit in your stomach and you just turn warm and say, I go, I just made the biggest mistake of my life.

You know, obviously, my drive comes from my upbringing, and it's about paying it forward and giving it back. You know, one of the things my dad always said is the key is when the world hands you a sack of sour lemon. It's the objective of the game. He was a turner to sweet lemon A. I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. And I ended up hooking up with three PhD scientists from the IBM research labs that had

a technology. It would change the way mechanical engineering was done. And it took about two and a half years, but it worked. And we changed the way mechanical engineering is done with that software from RAS. And we created a thing called mechanical design synthesis and design optimization. We were all set to take it public and then a company called Paramert Technology came in and bought it from us. So let's talk about Ariba.

So Ariba starts right after RASNA. Our revenue doubled quarter over quarter for 12 quarters in a row. We took it, you know, we took it public after two and three quarters years, got up to 40 billion, and to this day, 3.7 trillion of transaction. Trillion. Oh, trillion. More than all the trade in the Western Hemisphere, more than eBay, Alibaba, and Amazon combined. Go through that Areba network.

the lesson I learned, and it was always straight in front of my face. You know, I grew up in the Midwest, great Midwestern values, integrity was key, same at General Motors, Purdue, all of that, and there was a different value system. So from there on out, always job was to make sure every organization, every company, had a great set of values and integrity, because people can say, hey, I don't like how you look. I don't like where you went to school, but they can't take your integrity away. You know, it's a tremendous honor to be here. This truly is my happy place.

And so for the class of 2021, and your parents, your families, and your friends, I just have one question for you. Is Purdue the greatest university or what? First of all, you ever trust yourself. and you know that's because you can't trust anybody else unless you trust yourself and you know i found a way to build that trust is keep jumping in water over your head but we can come back to that but so you go into a new environment going to a new company something like that so how do you how do you build trust well you do it one-on-one and so the question is can you build trust at a launch can you do it at a dinner and what i found one of the

the things that works is you can't be afraid to be vulnerable because when you're vulnerable with somebody about 95% of the time they'll reciprocate in kind and when both sides are vulnerable that forms a connection and that that is a way that I found all the time or also another one is tell me your story everybody loves to tell their story and I'm just naturally a curious person so I love here That never bores me. So it's really the power of one-on-one relationships. We need to go back to this playbook. You went through it really quick,

but it feels like this playbook has built a couple multi-billion dollar businesses that conduct trillions of dollars worth of business. Walk us through that playbook again. The vision, right? And so for your vision, and our vision at Aribu is really simple. We said we want to build a great sustaining company

into the 21st century. The mission is all about leadership. because the object of the game, particularly in Silicon Valley, is to be the category king. Because when you're the category king, you get 80% of the industry resources and 80% of market cap. Players 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they fight over the scrap. So our mission was to create a category called Business to Business Electronic Commerce and to be the leader. And then the next thing under that is your values. So, right, integrity is there.

courage, high ambition, accountability, respect, the basics. And then we had a set of team rules that kind of personify those values. And by the way, same team rules for all the companies. The first one is direct open and honest communication. In a word, the truth. Because I had seen General Motors, when you go through 15 levels, you know, I started at the lowest of the low production form to the highest of the high where I was a staff for the board of director.

I could see how that message would change. Right. The second one is no idea is a bad idea. And then we added parentheses, unless CEOs. So because it's all about making a safe environment. And you can make the safe environment when you mock out to CEO. Plus it's fun. The third one is always raise the standard in everything we do in our people, our processes, and our products. And if somebody can't keep up with that standard, you've got to do something about it. Otherwise, you've automatically lowered your standard. Then the fourth one is we're a team first and functional specialist second. So you developers put your feet into customer's shoes.

You sales guys don't make commitments we can't keep. And then the fifth one is the most powerful one of all. And that is hire the best people, especially if they're better than us. And the story out to Silicon Valley is an interesting one for you. I mean, you grew up, small town, Ohio. worked in your dad's machine shop as a welder, went to school to become an engineer, and I think the plan was to go back to the machine shop, but something, it was a curveball that happened there. It starts off in small town, Ohio, where my father ran a machine shop and my mother was a teacher.

At age 12, I became a welder in my dad's shop. In good times, he employed five workers. In tough times, I was his only employee. My father encouraged me to get some college knowledge and come back as an engineer to help him grow the business into a big company of 10 employees. While I did become an engineer, I never went back to work with my dad. But he was so proud I was a boiler maker and just loved the fact that was also the name of his favorite after work adult beverage. Here's two you, pops. And GM came on campus my sophomore year and gave me a full ride. It was a GM scholarship.

So that was a real big turning point because along with that one, you know, amazing summer jobs and all that kind of stuff. And then GM sent me off to graduate school too. And then my dad started to call him generous motors. You're being humble. Summer student, but by age 26, you became the youngest VP in their history. What would they have been seeing in you for that to happen? You know, I think they saw somebody who wasn't afraid to take a risk. and somebody who wasn't afraid to own something.

And this summer before, I started full-time at General Motors between years at business school, I worked in the New York Treasurer's Office, and that basically is a staff for the board of directors. My first job was I was a second shift production foreman on the chassis line of Cadillac. But, you know, what I saw happening at that time was robotics. This was in the early 80s. It was popping up. I had wrote, you know, an equivalent to like a thesis.

at Harvard Business School on utilization robotics in Japanese auto industry. So I went and I pitched the board of directors. General Motors should get in the robotics business. And to buy a surprise, they said, okay, how should we do it? Because they had like the most sophisticated robot technology. I said, you know, we need to join venture because we needed a broad product line.

And then they said, with who? And I go, well, can I come back to the next board meeting? And I'll never forget. I came back and I said, we should join venture with a company called Fujitsu Fanik. Now understand at that time, all those board of directors, they were World War II veterans. And they said, you mean partner with the Japanese? I go, yes, partner with the Japanese. And we built that up. Today, it's the largest manufacturer of industrial robots

in the world. And the average age of that team probably was in the early 30s. And we put GE, IBM, and Westinghouse out of the business. We just became dominant in that area. You talk about ownership, and I think that's a word that probably connects to a lot of our viewers, but, you know, they'd also be thinking, how do I do that? Like, how did you have the confidence, the ownership to say, you know, I'm ready to go pitch to the board? Yeah. You know, I think it comes down to, I built a high performance team as we were getting going, right? And that's the most important job of any CEO.

And I really believe that the organization, the company, with the best people win. then the key is how to get them work together as a team, right? You know, the way I believe in that is you've got to have a North Star, a noble cause. You also need an enemy because, you know, that stops the water cooler talk, nothing gets the blood stir. You know, the United States State Department we call it adversary, but in business we call it an enemy. And then the third thing you need is you need a plan.

And with all these companies that have had a good fortune to build, and these different organizations I ran, we would always have a playbook. And that's basically the vision, the mission, the values, the team rules, long-term goals, strategy all boiled down to execution. So it really was a way to maintain alignment and a tremendous tool when it comes to scaling.

Well, they can go to the Kroc Institute for Tech Diplomacy. That website is techtip.org, Keithcrock.com is another one. I'm on Twitter, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook.