We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP493: Should CEOs Have Term Limits? w/ Bill George

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey guys, I'm really excited to share an upcoming event hosted by the Investors Podcast Network. Beginning on Monday, October 17th, we are launching a stock pitch competition for all of you to compete in. And the first place winner will receive $1,000 plus a year-long subscription to our TIP finance tool and more. So don't miss your chance to win $1,000. If you're interested, please visit the investorspodcast.com slash stock-dash competition for more information. The last day to submit your stock analysis will be Sunday, November 27th. And to compete, please make sure you're signed up for our daily newsletter.

Starting point is 00:00:37 We study markets, where we'll announce the winners. All entries can be submitted to the email newsletters at the investorspodcast.com. Good luck. My guest today is Bill George. Bill is a very impressive guy. Early in his career, he was an executive with Honeywell and Lytton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense. He then became CEO at Medtronic, where he took the company from $1.1 billion to $60 billion in 10 years.

Starting point is 00:01:05 The 10 years is interesting because he actually created a 10-year term limit for his time as CEO. From there, he became a professor at Harvard Business School, where he taught leadership for 19 years and has written nine great books, most notably True North and now True North Emerging Leaders Edition. Along the way, he's served as a director of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, the Mayo Clinic, and the World Economic Forum, USA, and has received honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Auburs College, and Bryant University. In this episode, we discuss how to find your own True North and how to determine whether a company's leader is following their own. Bill's early crucibles that helped him evolve into an empathetic leader. How Bill took Medtronic to $60 billion while cultivating an inclusive culture, why Bill set a 10-year term limit for his time at Medtronic. CEOs that handled the pandemic the right way, including Sacha Nadella of Microsoft,

Starting point is 00:02:05 Mary Barra of GM, Corey Berry of Best Buy, and others, teaching Tracy Britt Cool at Harvard who became Warren Buffett's protege, where CEOs go wrong, and much, much more. Bill is as humble as he is successful, which in my opinion is the most impressive. the thing about him. It was a joy to chat with Bill and learn more about cultivating leadership and how to find it in our investments. At times, it almost felt like a personal coaching session, and I got a glimpse of Bill's magic as a coach and leader. So without further ado, I hope you enjoyed this discussion with Bill George. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires

Starting point is 00:02:49 the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Welcome to the Investors podcast. I'm your host, Trey Lockerby. And before we get into today's interview with Bill George, where we talk a lot about what it takes to lead a great company, I brought on our co-host, Clay Fink, to talk about Berkshire Hathaway's Q3 earnings that just came out, mainly because when I think about leadership, I think of Warren Buffett, because I think he's one of the greatest business leaders of our time. And I'm always eagerly awaiting these earnings reports so I can dig in and see exactly how Warren's thinking. Clay, I know that you do the exact same thing. And I wanted to get your thoughts especially because I know you just did an episode

Starting point is 00:03:31 you guys talked about Berkshire a little bit with Stig. So I want to get your high level opinion on these quarterly earnings that just came out. It is always interesting to see what Buffett is doing in terms of buying and selling stocks, what he's doing in terms of repurchasing shares and that. So I can give you a quick rundown on what I saw looking over the quarterly report. They were a net buyer of stocks overall as they purchased roughly $2 billion in Occidental. They had $3.7 billion in net purchases. So a lot of it was that Occidental position. Their 13F for Q3 is going to be coming out here in mid-November.

Starting point is 00:04:06 So we can't look into that to see the full details of what else he was purchasing. But looking at the Q2-13F filing, I saw that their Occidental position then was around $9 billion. So that's roughly 20% increase in their position, roughly. So not too much of a change. really to their stock portfolio relative to what we saw when we saw him in person at the meeting earlier this year when he was purchasing tens of billions of stock then. Turning to their earnings, their operating earnings totaled around $7.7 billion in the third quarter.

Starting point is 00:04:36 That was up 20% year over year, which might kind of surprise some people in this environment. But Chris Bloomstrand made a really good point that you need to adjust the operating earnings for their currency gains. So after making that adjustment for the currency gains, the increase in the the operating earnings only ends up being 10.1% year every year for that quarter. So Chris also made the really good point that the S&P 500 overall, the operating profits for the S&P 500 are flat over the year. So that just goes to show how resilient Berkshire has been through 2022 with this higher inflation. In terms of repurchases, they repurchase roughly $1 billion worth of stock. Stig brought

Starting point is 00:05:16 up a really good point during my conversation with him. That's going to be coming out here in a couple weeks, we talk about Berkshire Hathaway. Stig kind of assumed that Berkshire is probably looking to purchase other stocks outside of their own company when the market's down, because on a relative basis, you might find some cheaper companies since Berkshire isn't trading down near as much as a lot of other stocks. So their nine-month total repurchases on the year are $5.25 billion. And for those of you who looked at the reports, you might have noticed a $2.7 billion loss that was posted. And for those of you that are familiar with the accounting rules, we know that, you know, their stock portfolio is essentially market on their income statement. So, you know, you can't really

Starting point is 00:05:59 look at those, that profit and loss at face value because it assumes that, you know, stocks that are down, you know, they're selling some of them at a loss, which we know Berkshire isn't selling. I was also curious to get an update on the year to day performance on Berkshire relative to the overall market. And, man, it's really held up really well. The Berkshire has shit. are down 2% on the year. The S&P 500 is down 20% and the ARC fund is down 63%. Berkshire actually received approval to purchase over 50% of Occidental. So there's some speculation going around that they may just go ahead and purchase the entire company. So that is interesting given that Buffett has increased his stake in energy substantially over this year.

Starting point is 00:06:42 His cash pile is at around $109 billion at the end of September and that's compared to $105 billion. at the end of June this year. Another figure that really stood out to me when doing some research on Berkshire was that 70% of their equity portfolio is in just five companies. A lot of that's Apple. And then the other four are Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Chevron, and American Express. So a couple really interesting points there. You mentioned Oxy, which we've all been watching really closely. And the equity position there is really astounding. I'm not sure people actually realize this. But basically, if you calculate the warrant, that are actually included in this deal, which are now $1.1 billion in the money.

Starting point is 00:07:24 And if you assume Berkshire actually exercises those warrants, they would control 29.2% of Oxy. So this is a staggering amount of the company that is consuming. He's obviously very bullish on energy. Occidental today is around a $63 billion company. So if you own 30% of the company there, that would be an $18 billion position, just some rough math, 18 or 19 billion. You also mentioned ARC. Berkshire has now outperformed the flagship funded arc since 2020.

Starting point is 00:07:51 You see all these charts going around where Kathy Wood was just going parabolic against Berkshire. Well, it's now come crashing all the way back down to where Buffett is now ahead. It's always the tortoise and the hair race with Berkshire. And Buffett, as he does, gets the last laugh. Just shows the consistency of Berkshire and why you want to own it, a defensive stock like this in an environment like brand. Since you bring up the distinction between growth and value and we're discussing Berkshire Hathaway, I wanted to mention that I've been doing quite a bit of research on how different asset classes actually end up performing during times of inflation, which, you know, something we've all

Starting point is 00:08:27 kind of studied up on this year as inflation finally showed up. I wanted to share two of my big takeaways from prior inflationary periods. And I think the first big takeaway is that when inflation comes, oftentimes it doesn't just go away like many would just hope, especially if it gets as high as it's gotten recently. So, I believe that investors should be prepared for potentially an inflationary decade ahead. Think about if your portfolio is positioned to weather through that type of environment. The two inflationary decades that come to mind in prior periods were the 1940s and the 1970s. Inflation wasn't persistent throughout the entire decade.

Starting point is 00:09:08 It somewhat showed up in waves or had these inflationary spikes. So we may see inflation come down in the near term, but due to, to unforeseen circumstances or the way our economy is structured with just in time delivery. We could very well see it spike back up in late 2023 or 2024. Really, who knows when. Just using the 1970s as an example, inflation first started to show up in 1969 and 1970. And it really didn't get back down consistently below 4% until the early 1990s. So that's a 20-year period of these inflationary spikes and it never really stayed below that.

Starting point is 00:09:44 4% mark, just as an example. So it can be really difficult for policymakers to tackle that inflation problem, especially today with the debt to GDP that we have in our economy. And that just makes it so difficult to continue to raise rates as the overall system is essentially reliant on this lower interest rate environment. Again, I think the first thing to keep in mind is that when inflation does show up, it tends to stick around for a long period of time or longer than people would expect. And that's just looking at prior periods. Second, I wanted to to mention that during these inflationary periods, we see a good dispersion between the performance of growth and value stocks. Historically, value stocks do outperform growth stocks on a relative basis,

Starting point is 00:10:28 but of course, there are some periods where growth does outperform, such as the 2010s that we've just come out of. Because of what investors saw during the 2010s, I think a lot of people can have a bias towards growth investing and have that recency bias where they saw that recent outperformance and just assume that it's going to continue. But I think it's really important to zoom out and study history because the 2010s are almost the exception to the rule in terms of value investing, outperforming, growth investing. Given the data, I am much more interested in investing in something like a Berkshire Hathaway or a value type fund or value type company, you know, given what we've seen in past period. Lynn Alden put together this great chart in our article titled

Starting point is 00:11:10 investing during stackflation. And it shows the relative performance between value and growth. And value stocks far outperformed during the 1940s, the 1970s, and 80s, as well as the 2000s. And three of those had relatively high levels of inflation. I think it was the 2000s. It wasn't super inflationary relative to those other three periods. And when looking at the previous 50 years, the only times that growth outperformed value were around the 1990 time frame during the late 90s and then from 2010 up to 2022. And that trend has drastically turned the other way. A lot of that performance that we saw during the 2010s, I believe, was due to two reasons. First, we saw the mega caps carrying the indexes and the fang stocks carrying the indices. And I think that was

Starting point is 00:11:58 one big driver of the overall stock returns, especially for the growth. The other reason I think is that investors were almost just forced out onto the risk curve because of artificially low interest rates. So If we end up, you know, seeing higher inflation, seeing a more normalized interest rate environment, then I would really expect that value play to work a lot better than the growth play, especially after what we've seen in 2022. Well, Clay, thank you so much. I always appreciate your insights, especially with Berkshire. We got to see a little bit more here about how Buffett is leading his company.

Starting point is 00:12:29 Now we're going to get to know a little bit more about what to look for in a great company and its leadership with Bill George. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Ray. Good to be here. I'm honored. I'm really excited to chat with you. You've written this incredible book or at least kind of updated a book that was previously a big hit and you've updated it with a lot of cool new leaders in the space, especially who have endured or maybe even thrived through COVID. And I want to touch on the concept of the book. It's called True North. From what I'm gathering from the book, in order to develop a true north, you need to have this clear idea of your purpose, both in business and in life. So I'm curious what purpose is driving you. to write the book and update it now and also be out promoting it as much as you've been

Starting point is 00:13:13 because I've seen you've been very hard at work getting the word out here. So what's the purpose that's driving you? I figured out, you know, I've done a lot of things in my life, been in business, worked in the government for a while, you know, ran a company called Medtronic and then went been at Harvard teaching the last 19 years. So what's the through line to all that? And for me, it's enabling people to reach their full potential. So these days, I'm not leading anything. I always thought I wanted to be a leader, and I did have the privilege of leading a lot of organizations. But my whole goal right now is to enable everyone listening in this podcast to reach their full potential. And I've been working very hard at that. I do a lot of mentoring, a lot of teaching

Starting point is 00:13:53 and writing. By the way, this book is almost entirely new. We held the title True North, because people really seem to resonate with that. And the idea that, which I haven't mentioned, is before you can figure out your purpose, you really have to know who you are. You have to know what's important to you? Where do you find fulfillment? Where do you find joy? If you jump too fast to the purpose, like, I want to change the world, well, that's interesting, but how are you going to do that? A lot of people have tried and have been unsuccessful. So, you know, where do you want to concentrate your energies? Yeah, you know, I just went through an exercise like this with my own coach and his question to me was, why does Trey exist? It's a great question to kind of

Starting point is 00:14:31 ponder, right, and say, why am I here? And the exercise we went through was actually kind of adapting the Jim Collins approach, if you will, where you establish some core values, purpose and what Jim would call a big, hairy, audacious goal. But I'm kind of curious, does this approach still resonate with today's corporations or is there an evolution or even clarification needed to this approach in your opinion? Well, I think finally it is resonating. I went to a lot of time in business where it was all about maximizing shareholder value, hitting the quarterly earnings, buying back stock to raise the stock price, all this stuff that really kind of lost side of the humanity

Starting point is 00:15:10 and the people then. So I think it definitely does resonate with people more than ever. And everyone, all the corporations, I'm talking about purpose. But the key is, okay, there's a corporate person. Can I align with that? Do I feel a part of that? Is that something, those values that resonate with me? Is that how I want to put my life? You only got one life to live and you ought to be doing what you really love to do. You shouldn't be trapped in trying to serve someone else. One thing I'm particularly interested is the big audacious goal. How important is that maybe even personally and professionally, but even more so personally

Starting point is 00:15:44 to have a big audacious goal? Because I think the downside of that is that it could potentially be limiting in some ways. It might make you close-minded. But at the same time, you really need focus in order to achieve any kind of goal, right? So what's the balance there? Well, for you, it might be, you know, I've been creating these great drinks and we want to create a whole family of drinks to really make people healthy.

Starting point is 00:16:04 that's a big audacious goal. Or I've got a podcast and, you know, there's a lot of really interesting stuff here. I want everyone to listen in because I didn't even give no one listens. For me, my big goal, now it almost sounds arrogant and almost says it to mention it, but I really want to change leadership because I grew up in an era of the command and control and saw a lot of toxic leaders that were just ordering people what to do. And they created pretty poisonous environments in the workplace. And if I could change it, I would have people that really are interested.

Starting point is 00:16:34 and inspiring people of their purpose and unifying them are on a common goal and a common set of values and getting rid of all the toxic leaders. So that's kind of my big audacious goal. And so in writing a book, just like your podcast, you want people to read it. So the reason I wrote the Emerging Leader Edition is because I think it's time for new generation leaders because a lot of the baby boomers don't really get it. They're thinking, all these millennials, they're a bunch of slackers. I said, no, no, they're not.

Starting point is 00:17:03 They change jobs because you're coming. company has no sense of purpose. They're not just working for a third party. They want to actually make a difference. And why are you making them stand in line? Give them the opportunity right now. And that's how you're going to inspire them. Yeah, you know, I heard a phrase the other day that kind of resonated, which is that people don't quit companies. They quit management. There's something to that, right? And you have a theory that you need to endure a crucible or two, I don't know maybe, but at least want to truly find out who you really are. And the last few years have felt like nothing but one long crucible for most leaders.

Starting point is 00:17:37 Could you share maybe your own crucible that has shaped your life and given you this realization? Sure, back when I'm an only child of older parents, my father thought he was a failure. So back when I'm nine, 10 years old, he's saying, son, I'd like you to become the leader. I never became. and I'd like you to run a major company. He even named the companies that, you know, you could be CEO of Coca-Cola. I've held stock in that company or Procter & Gamble or IBM. Of course, I didn't know these companies.

Starting point is 00:18:06 I'm a little boy. But kind of even on pushing him away at the same time, subliminally puts the idea I'm going to be head of a major company. So I never got elected to lead anything because I hadn't learned what leadership was all about. I finally ran to the president's senior class high school and lost by margin at two to one. So then I went off eight-hour miles from home to Georgia. of tech, ran six more times, plus all six. So it's pretty clear. I had a lot to learn. I remember some seniors pulled me aside and said, Bill, no one's ever going to work with you, much less be led by you because you're moving so fast to get ahead, you don't take time for other

Starting point is 00:18:38 people. And you know what? They were spot on. And so I had to do a lot of rethinking. But you know, it's interesting, then I did come back and have a chance to lead a lot of organization. But interesting, then I'm at Honeywell. I'm now early to mid-40s. and I'm on route to become that CEO. My father wanted me to come. And got a nice family. My wife and I've been married for some time. We have two kids in junior high school.

Starting point is 00:19:01 You know what? One day I'm driving home, I look at myself in the rearview mirror and I see that ugly side of Bill George and I realize I'm miserable. I'm kind of faking it to make it and telling you, oh, I'm doing great. We're turning around these business. Actually, it was deeply unhappy. And that's when I decided to go to Medtronic. And it was the best thing I ever did.

Starting point is 00:19:21 But I think if I hadn't really faced myself and realized how unhappy it was, I went home and told my wife and she said, Bill, I've been trying to tell you a year, you just didn't want to listen. And she was right. And I was kind of traveling 80% of the time and didn't love the business. And so, you know, is it striving for a position? I'd kind of gotten away from what I really wanted to do is make a difference in the lives of other people. And I was new to nothing but chasing numbers.

Starting point is 00:19:46 So I had to get out of that environment, say I'm giving up on being head of a major company. and I'm going to take this wonderful company, Metroni, with great mission and values, and it's the best thing ever did. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right, I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord,

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Starting point is 00:24:16 you didn't have a purpose in that role or just wasn't fulfilling in some way? What was driving that kind of deep unhappiness you mentioned? Well, the company's purpose was making money. And so I couldn't get excited about vows in the boiler room and things like that. But I could get excited about it was metronic. We're restoring people to full life and health. So I remember talking to the founder. He didn't even interview me about what I had done. He just wanted to know, can you align? Can you get excited about this mission? We're trying to restore health, extend life and alleviate pain. Yeah, I can get excited about that.

Starting point is 00:24:47 I'm not a medical guy. They bet on me that I could learn that and bring people together to lead them. But it really had to do with the mission. And I led, you know, I was so engaged with that and used to be with new employees and everyone I came up with talking about the mission of the company and the values, it's all tied together. And so it's really, it's really. And that's why I met trying to go so successful because people were so committed.

Starting point is 00:25:09 We used to measure ourselves, Trey, not by. We measured ourselves by how many seconds to take until another person's life is restored by a metronic product. It used to be 100 seconds. So I left to a seven today. It's two per second. So, yeah, we're helping a lot more people. That's what inspired our people.

Starting point is 00:25:27 They weren't inspired by, you know, just making $2.90 want to share. Now, as I understand it, you were driven by, I think, what you call adulation, where you turned down Medtronic three times, I believe. I think they were for the role of president, right, which is kind of the number two. guy, and I think you were striving for that to be number one. So that just kind of shows everyone the type of drive you had back then. So was there a sense of swallowing your ego or something? Was there a moment there where you kind of had to self-reflect and say, hey, it's not number one, but that's okay because of X, Y, Z. And it was the mission that was kind of filling in that blank.

Starting point is 00:26:02 Absolutely. That was it. And it had to do more with my father's desire how many run a big company, which Honeywell was, yes. And it's a great company a day. It didn't be wrong. versus doing what I really wanted to do, what I was passionate to and going to a mid-sized company. And, of course, I never dream that trying to grow so fast and be so big. But it was more someplace where this is where I really fit. I remember when I first went in the door, I'd had all my interviews off. So I felt like I was coming home, coming home to a place I'd never been before. I felt like, hey, this is where I ought to be.

Starting point is 00:26:33 It just, I had the ego, as you say, in front of it and getting caught up with that. You know, and I always tell you'll don't get caught up with money, fame, and power. of the title. Now, you mentioned you grew to a big company, and as I've read it here, you grew Medtronic from around $1.1 billion to $60 billion in 10 years, which is an insane amount of growth during that time. What were some of, or maybe a few of crucibles you experienced during your time there? Because that growth, you know, sometimes can come at a cost, right?

Starting point is 00:27:03 Yeah, yeah. And they weren't somewhat personal crucible. I did have one with my wife's health. But in terms of that, it was more, you know, we've focused. a lot of money in our deal. I had the new products and it took three or four years and it wasn't happening and it took forever to get the FDA approve our new defibrillators, which were key to the growth. And finally we did. So that was a challenge. And also, you know, I made some mistakes. I promoted some of the president of Europe and finally I was running a bribery fund. So I got,

Starting point is 00:27:30 you know, I had to bet my own mistakes. But I think it was more, I could see the future. And we did have a big, broad goal, not just to be the world's leading pacemaker defibrillator company, but to be the world's leaving medical technology company. And we set that on place. I did about a year after I arrived, even though I wasn't CEO at that time. And my boss said, well, what's wrong with being all we are? No, I saw potential to do a lot more good for a lot more people. And so I took on some of those things and that were quite challenging, but we got everyone inspired around doing it. Speaking of getting everyone inspired, culture is a big component of success, right? And in order to get everyone running in the same direction, you have to

Starting point is 00:28:09 really have a really good culture. So I'm curious how the, The culture was different between Honeywell and Medtronic and how you helped shape Medtronic. What were maybe the first things you helped do to get the team rowing in the same direction? Well, at Honeywell, it was the people were great, was an engineer's company, very dedicated. You weren't allowed to bring your passions inside the door. They had good values. You didn't talk about them. It was just everything straight.

Starting point is 00:28:32 But when you got to the very top, it was all about how do you make earnings per share. And there are a lot of gamesmen in the room that kind of played games. and that's not who I am, I'm pretty straightforward. And so this gamesmanship or a lot more selfishness among the top 20, 30 people just made me very uncomfortable. It was who looks good and how can you make yourself? Maybe we aren't growing our business, but we beat our plan. That's the gamesmanship. So at Metronic, it was kind of, everyone's out there.

Starting point is 00:29:01 They show you their strengths or weaknesses and put it all out on the table. And so there wasn't this. And so that made me a lot more comfortable. And so I tried to build it. around that. And we did bring in and we did grow the business rapidly, but we never had enough leaders. So we had to grow a lot of leaders into the business that people probably didn't think they could lead, but they did a great job ultimately. How did your leadership style evolve over your 10-year-a-metronic? Well, I've always wanted to be a later year. I started my career,

Starting point is 00:29:30 the first 10 years running the starting the consumer microwave oven business for living industries. And that was ideal. I loved it. And it was 27 years old. And I did that for nine years. half years and it was just great. I loved everything about it, building a team. I didn't like the parent company. I didn't want to buy into their culture out in Beverly Hills. So I went to Honeywell thinking this is the place. And it was hard for me to change that culture. It was kind of a locked in culture, slow moving, did not move innovatively. And so I'm much more a kind of person that likes to be out with employees, to be out with customers. And that was not, it was much more but let's have a meeting and customers are up to the sales department.

Starting point is 00:30:09 And that was true in those days of a lot of companies. I remember Alamo Lolly wanted to visit a factory. When he came CEO of Ford and he said, oh, no, our executives don't visit factories. Well, I didn't know what's going on. So when I got to Metronics, totally customer-oriented. I went in and gowned up, put on the greens, saw between 700 and 1,000 procedures while it was 12 years of Medtronic. So that was my kind of place and just wandering around, talking to people in their offices,

Starting point is 00:30:33 going into the R&D labs and finding out what the engineers are working on, going to the production lines or going to the lunchroom and having, you know, having a lunch with the group of factory employees or used to have breakfast with Bill. Every time I met, I went to a different location, just the first line people, no supervisor, just say, because I had to figure out what was going on. So that's what I love. That's what I love to be. And I think big corporation to fall into the trap of too many meetings,

Starting point is 00:30:58 too many PowerPoint charts, and not enough engagement with the people who are doing the work. What are some questions we should ask ourselves if we're trying to establish our own True North? Well, I think the most important one is your one to coach ask him, what do you want out of your life? What's important to you? Who are you really? Let's overcome the what you are, where you went to school, your race, religion, all those things, the identity things everyone's talking about these days. Let's get down to what's his tray want out of its life? What would feel really good at the end of the day if you could look back and say, you know, here's some things I've done.

Starting point is 00:31:33 here's some things. Here's what I've stood for. Here are my values. And I'm going to stay true to these values. It may cost me some money. It may cost me some opportunities, but that's what I'm going to do. So I think that's that everyone on this call needs to look at, decide that for themselves. And it's hard. You know, I think you have to process your life story as you ask me. You have to process your crucible, the difficult times you face before you can really figure that out. Look, when you're doing well and you go through school and you get good grades, you got a good job, you get promoteric up that. You start to think you're better than you are.

Starting point is 00:32:05 And it's only when you get knocked down a peg. You lose your job. Maybe the boss comes in. You can't stand them. You have to resign. You have troubles in your own marriage. I don't know. But you have those difficulties.

Starting point is 00:32:15 That's when you learn, you know, who you really are. What's really important in your life. And a lot of times we don't figure that out until our 40s. Like I didn't, you know, that it wasn't important to be CEO of a big company. It was important to work somewhere I felt like it make a difference and work with group of people that I think we're all going the same way and trying to make a difference in the lives that people we serve. We have a lot of listeners who are investors.

Starting point is 00:32:39 I know that they would want to understand what questions we should ask or what we should look for in CEOs that are leading companies that we might want to invest in. Great question. I wish more investors did this, looked at the leadership. Let me give me an example. Somebody has a feature in the book. Microsoft was a company I love to hate. I tried to work with him back in the late 90s, early.

Starting point is 00:32:59 early 2000. And they were the most arrogant group people I've ever met. They thought they were God's gift of creation. Steve Bomber was CEO, 14 years. They went nowhere. Sachin Adela comes in. Great dear. I'd say he's good or maybe better than any leader in the world today. He totally transformed the organization. But he brought, said, we have to have empathy, which he had learned from his own son who had cerebral palsy. We have to bring empathy and compassion to people to our customers who are struggling. And if you want to work here and you can't be a know-it-all, you've got to be a learner at all. And I would invest in Microsoft just because of Satcha and the organization he's created.

Starting point is 00:33:34 It's going to have ups and downs, all tech stocks do. I invest in Facebook because of the character integrity of Tim Cook. I wouldn't invest in Facebook, even though that because the stock's not down 60% of until you invest in a year ago, you would be way out. But look at the character of the people, because it may feel good now, but if you're investing in something without character and values, you better know when to get out. And so leadership changes make bigger difference in corporates rise in excess than any other single factor, more than the economy, more than the, you can ride through the economy, you can ride through difficult time.

Starting point is 00:34:06 But if you choose the wrong leader, it's not going to end well. If you choose the right leader, it could be great. Ebert Jolie, my good friend, I feature in the book on purpose. Best Buy was a disaster. I thought it was going out of business. And he comes in, they lose out to Amazon every time they turn around. He comes in, totally turns coming around, a great leader. and he had learned to his own hard docs how to lead,

Starting point is 00:34:29 but he totally turned that company around. Now, Corey Berry is sticking it on to the next level. But that's the kind of leader I would invest in. So I tend to, look, I'm not, if you want to be a day trader, my advice is not good for you. But if you want to be a long-term investor, then you like Warren Buffett, invest in people for the long-term are going to get you there

Starting point is 00:34:47 and figure who they are. And then watch the transitions. Look at GE was the world's most valuable company. Jeff M. L. comes in. It lost more money and shareholder value in any company in history. 320 billion, 80% of its value. And so just not have the right leadership. So that's my recommendation, not just coming the image, but who's leading it? You set a 10-year term for your role as CEO at Medtronic, which I found very, very interesting

Starting point is 00:35:14 because, you know, over 10 years, you learn a lot. I'm sure with that level of success as well, going from, you know, 1 to 60 billion, you probably are feeling like you're, you're got a lot of momentum. There's things you maybe still want to do. So how did you decide to set a limit at 10 years? And do you think this should be a standard policy for most companies? I had studied a lot of leaders who had stayed 13, 14, 15, 16. They always did less well than they did in the first 10. First 10 they did better. I think high tech companies that come from need new creative leadership every decade. And things change. You know, you have a great leader in health care at Mayo in the last 10 years, but we need a new leader that can figure out

Starting point is 00:35:58 what's going to have in the next 10. So I believe in this new leadership. Also, when you have a new leader, you open up opportunities for everyone else. Otherwise, you tend to keep people around you've had. The young people don't have a shot. So now that's on the professional side. On the personal side, you only go around once in life. And so I figured I wanted to see what else I can do. I didn't know. I was going to come teacher or writer. And, you know, last thing I thought I was going to become an author. And, you know, but you do this and you say, that's the way I want to fulfill. My goal is to, as I said earlier, help the people reach our full potential. Well, how can I reach? And by writing, I can reach a lot more people. So I hope everyone reads the book, but then they're going to

Starting point is 00:36:37 write it if no one reads it. So that's how I look at that. And that's why I'm not going to set a rigid rule. Maybe it's 12. Who knows? But maybe it's eight for some people. But I think the point is that you only are on months in life. So you've got to look at all the things you can do. When you're looking to invest in a company, are there any quantitative metrics that can tell you whether a company has strong leadership or not? Well, I think sustainability of the revenues, their culture, you mentioned culture earlier, and their values.

Starting point is 00:37:12 And quantitative measures, I'd look at revenue growth because if revenues, you know, companies, great company, either building up or they're declining when they're. start taking the company apart, you know it's not going to end well. They may just be 5,000 layoffs a day and stock price goes up because the short-term investors think you've got a good thing. I'd look at that because when you have, when your revenues are growing, you know people are liking what you do. I mean, one company, you look at PepsiCo. Since 2018, the revenue is just taken off compared to other food and beverage companies. What's going on? You know, they have a very positive culture and they're winning. And so you look at things like,

Starting point is 00:37:49 that. I think boards ought to stop looking at quarterly earnings and I'll look at market share and how your customers feel about you. And then they'll look at employee surveys to see what's the engagement. If your employees aren't engaged, you're not going to have a great company. Very interesting. When you're leading through a crisis, how do you think through focusing on the realities at hand versus a more hopeful or aspirational focus? So, for example, you know, going through COVID, you want to address the elephant in the room or even now, hey, we're entering recession. How do you balance the reality or being reactive versus proactive and also reality versus aspirational? I think today leaders have be very agile because we're,

Starting point is 00:38:32 that's why we need a new generation leaders that have led in crisis, not in good times back in the 80s and 90s, but people who can adapt. We now have, instead of one crisis, like say, 9-11 or the financial meltdown in 2008, now we have multiple intersecting crises, you know, for Russia's war in Ukraine to the post-COVID psychological fallout to 9% inflation and supply chain shortage and you can't hire anyone, you know, 11 million open job. So I think we need leaders to know how to lead through that. It keep their center, know what their purpose and the company's purpose, they stay on that, but they adapt very quickly. I'll give you an example, Corey Berry. When COVID hit early in March, mid-March, that was very early in COVID of 2020.

Starting point is 00:39:13 She made the decision to close 1,000, 26 stores and furlough 52,000 people. Very painful. They didn't believe in that. She waited a month so it could be tied in the government subsidies. But, hey, that was a very courageous move. But she said she never mentioned earnings per share. She mentioned that we're going to come out of this even stronger. And they changed her whole business model instead of just being a showroom where people

Starting point is 00:39:36 went in and bought products. They did so much online. And people could stop in and get the product. And, you know, it was a whole different approach she had to take. So that's the kind of adaptability. Now, Corey was 44 at the time. So I think younger people tend to be more adaptable, not set in their ways. That's how we need more young leaders.

Starting point is 00:39:54 But I think you keep what's really important, your purpose, mission, your values, and your culture. And the culture itself, in a big organization, has to adapt rapidly to change the conditions. If you can't, then you're going to be in trouble. So that's my recommendation. And as I understand from the book, Corey didn't, she was very reluctant to even become CEO, right? So what does that say about Corey and her ability to adapt Best Buy through the pandemic? Is that a good sign if you want someone who's a little reluctant? Is it to show humility or just some characteristic there that is important?

Starting point is 00:40:28 Well, she, you know, and that's true. A lot of women, they, you know, he asked in a classroom, who's ready to take his job. People like me all put up with their hands. A lot of the women say, I'm not so sure. I'm not perfect. And she had concern. She was very young, 43 at the time. And she got the job. And should she show her hat in the ring? And she got encouragement by her mentor, Hubert Jolie, encouraged her to do it. And she turned out to be a fantastic leader. Amazing. But he saw qualities in her. Maybe she didn't see in herself. And so he had to go through with her. She even wrote him a 10-page memo saying why she shouldn't take the job. And he just went down each of the 10, each of the points of the 10-page memo. saying how she can do it. And yeah, now she's much more confident.

Starting point is 00:41:13 But yeah, sometimes you get over the hurdle. She's not the first one that someone need to encourage them to step up. And they became great leaders because people saw in them qualities they didn't see in themselves. You mentioned Satya Nadella. And he's operating a nearly $2 trillion company, right? So I'm kind of curious, when you're practicing what you call servant leadership, is it different if you're running a $2 trillion company versus maybe a smaller company? because you can't interface with everybody at the company that you don't have that same kind of

Starting point is 00:41:42 maybe daily touch point with a lot of the team. So how do you kind of manage that or how does it scale? Well, you've got to be out with your people no matter how big you are. And if CEOs, we did a study at Harvard. My colleagues did. I didn't do it. 72% of the time of CEOs spent in meetings, average hour, average length, hour and a half, and 5% with employees and 3% with customers. This is a disaster. You know, if you're in the tea business, you'd go out to retail and say, how are people responding to your product? Do they like it or not? Talk to people that drink it. You know, what would they like? What don't they have? And that's what, you know, the people like Satcha got out. And he's available for any customer any time to call. Any express concern, complaint. That totally unlike his predecessor, you couldn't get through. You can't get through to Amazon, by the way. You could certainly go to Jeff Bezos. But I think this is really important that CEOs spend time with their customers. I think we need to play. it upside down because if you think about it, people that really leave the lasting impression your customers are all the frontline people. You know, the people are concerned about quality and the production line, the people front line in stores, hotels, restaurants, you name it.

Starting point is 00:42:52 You need to be out with these people to find out what's going on. You're not just reading statistics. I can tell you at Medtronic, the quality was determined the people of the production, not the quality department. And they would tell you when I would sit and talk to a group of them, they'll tell you exactly what's wrong. So I think we've lost that site. We've gotten so big. So yeah, you're a two trillion-dollar market cap company. You still, you need to be out there and find out. Let's take Microsoft owns LinkedIn. They kept the LinkedIn culture. It's the one site social media I really love because you have to put your whole career history out there, education, everything. So people tend to be very thoughtful on LinkedIn. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, they may just say anything

Starting point is 00:43:32 because you don't know who they are. Yeah, it's almost like some people have different personalities depending on the platform. That's true too. So speaking of that, of consistency, let's say, in order to be a great leader, you have to build trust with your team. And I'm curious how you think through consistency versus flexibility, especially when you're leading with empathy because, I don't know, when I think of empathy and leading with empathy, I think of something that's less rigid, I guess. And I'm trying to find the balance here between consistency and flexibility as a leader. let's start with trust do i trust you to have a good good conversation here okay and i remember i was only once i do a lot of media things a lot of podcasts only once that i go on on a particular

Starting point is 00:44:16 tv station they mocked me because i was teaching at harbour and that that's last time i've been on that whole station just the one person but do i trust you and how do you build trust and once you once you have that trust, if you break it, then I'm not going back to it. I don't deal well with people that I can't trust. So I have no interest in being just to do a transaction with somebody I can't trust. So that trust has got to be consistent. You've got to be trustworthy all the time. And that means you're true to when we speak. You tell me the truth. I tell you the truth. I'm transparent. And that truth, transparency leads to trust. And so that's the consistency. On the other hand, we can adapt. Tray, we've got a problem here. COVID is affecting everyone. We're going to have

Starting point is 00:45:02 to change everything we do. People are not going to be teaching in the classroom and going to be doing it online. We need to find how do we get to them? How can we broaden that base of people we can reach? So you have to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, I think, today, you've got to be very flexible and leaders. So I think you can do that and still be like Cory Verde. You pull you together and say, how do we have to change? Mary Barr is making a mega change in the general motorist culture, but she had to say, you know, we've got to look at things differently. It's a world's electric vehicle. So we're not making any more fossil-fueled cars.

Starting point is 00:45:33 That's big change for GM. They've been doing it throughout their history. So that takes a bold leader. So you have to have the vision of where you want to go, the courage to make the call to do it. But then you have to have the leadership to bring everyone with you. You can't leave them behind. They're not there. So that's what you have to be out with the people and bringing them with you on this change

Starting point is 00:45:55 when you're moving so quickly. In the first edition of the book, you highlighted Bill Campbell, who's now known as the trillion-dollar coach from Eric Schmidt's book. His approach seemed to be this mix of deep care, but also tough love. Does tough love still play a role in today's leadership style? And if so, when is it applicable? Absolutely. And we have the whole, we converted everything in a chapter called the coach, the leader is coach.

Starting point is 00:46:22 And that's an acronym. It starts with care. Because you're not going to give me your heart and soul. You might give me your brains. I mean, heart and soul, you don't think I care about you. And if you're going through a rough time, do I have compassion? Do I recognize that? Or maybe your spouse has a problem or you have a problem with your kids, whatever, do I have care?

Starting point is 00:46:40 But then, you know, I have to organize people in the right places. Bill Campbell is a genius at coaching people. But you've got to help people find their own hearts. That's why I say reach their full potential. But you have to align them around a common goal. But the most thing, everything about Campbell and any good coach, you said you have one is they challenge you. Trey, you know, you have tremendous potential. You're not being as your best game right now.

Starting point is 00:47:02 What's going on? Do you turn off or, you know, you feel like you're in the wrong mode? That's a challenging. And every good coach, I think every good leader challenges people to be better. So when I say, you know, you have so much potential, what can you I do to help you step up to it? So that's the final letter in coaches to help. What can I do to help you step up to greater things? but I am challenging you.

Starting point is 00:47:23 You know, it's not okay just to kind of be on a flat to decline, but I think you can do so much more. So it's kind of interesting. You're both challenging people and you believe in them. Now, my danger is a leader or a teacher, somebody to challenge people too much and shuts them down and scares them. But I don't mean to do that. But I think you really want to challenge people.

Starting point is 00:47:44 Now, does that say more about you or the person you're trying to coach if you're coaching too hard if you are challenging too much? Well, that says more about me, but there are different people. I mean, some people are really up for it. Some people are not. You know what I mean? And you have to sense that. Some people are shy and you might intimidate them.

Starting point is 00:48:02 They might back off. And then you're not bringing it the best time. I made a rule at Medtronic that we never make a decision until we'd gone around the room, got everyone to speak. Because if you just listen to people that are most outspoken, maybe the person most thoughtful idea is a little hesitant to say. So you draw them out and you get those opinions out on the tape. So that's, to me, the engaged style of management, participative style where everyone gets a chance to say what they think.

Starting point is 00:48:27 But I think it's important you draw people out their best qualities and not that you intimidate it. That would be a negative on me. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination. Risk and regulation are ramping up. And customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and bring up.

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Starting point is 00:52:14 said, this is very courageous. Her first week on the first month on the jump, she said, I don't want this crisis ever to go away. I want us to keep it in mind because our job is to produce safe cars, okay? And then she went beyond that and said we want to have zero accidents, zero congestion, and zero emissions, which meant all electric cars. But, you know, she had the courage to do that and then rally people around that. And frankly, she had to make a lot of changes. A lot of the old guard was kind of betting against her. And she had to move some of those people out and bring in a whole new team of people, mostly from inside, that could step up and take these new challenges. They weren't stuck in the old way. Let's put more chrome and aluminum on the car, more fins

Starting point is 00:52:54 and everything else. They'd really want to design great cars because in the old days, their predecessor, every time their decision about cost versus quality, it always went for costs, not for quality. So they're willing to sacrifice quality to get a lower cost car. And then you get a cheap car and don't know pay for it. You look at some cars said, hey, they never fail. Well, General Motors needs to get there and they're catching up. And so she's got a big challenge, but I think she's doing it. You also write about Tracy Britt Cool in the book, who most people might know as being Warren Buffett's protege, so to speak. So at one point, there is even speculation that she might even succeed him and he was kind of tutoring her. What can we learn about Tracy's

Starting point is 00:53:35 style and how does it bear any resemblance to Buffett, in your opinion? Tracy's one of my students from Harvard Business School. And the thing it picks out on Tracy, when we had a case, maybe people were running a number of things like it. She saw the human side, and she brought that out. And that was really important to hers. And she had that great humanity and great depth of understanding of people. And so she actually solicited Warren to try to get a job there.

Starting point is 00:54:00 And he finally gave her a chance. And I think he saw those qualities in her that she could figure out who we can work with. Because Warren's always been a kind of person. If you get this person in position, leave him in the job. A lot of private equity firms turn people over every two or three years. He wanted to keep them for the long term. And so she had that capacity to think about people. Now, he did mentor her.

Starting point is 00:54:21 She got a lot of it. She told us. But on the other hand, she went on formed her own firm with its own sound values. Why? Because Orange Business, Berkshire Hathaway is so large that they have to make many multi-billion dollar investments. I mean, they just made what they make, 200 billion or something like that on Apple. some incredible amount.

Starting point is 00:54:40 And she wanted to work with people that were more in the startup, mid-care, you know, early career stages that could build into great company, but she would invest in them. So it was a different model. And these companies were too small for a virtue of halfway to invest in. But she had the same philosophy, play it for the long term. So she's still a very good human being. In other words, hadn't gone to her head trade.

Starting point is 00:55:03 All right. Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about where CEOs go wrong. So let's just take a couple main ones that everyone knows. Jeff Bezos, for example, has written 40,000 or so words in his annual letters spanning 25 years at Amazon. And a lot of these letters are now used as case studies for strong leadership and clear vision. But recently, Jeff is having trouble getting a half a billion dollar yacht under the Danish bridge. That's been standing for 500 years. So are we seeing a deterioration of leadership from Jeff at this stage in his life, in your opinion?

Starting point is 00:55:37 I think so, yes. I think, look, he built a great company in Amazon. It was a sweatshop. It is a sweatshop. Andy Chassey's trying to change that a bit. But yeah, they drive people pretty hard. And they didn't mind if they had high turnover. Like in Medtronic, I hate turnover. I want to turn it around 3, 4, 5%. I couldn't stand it if it was 10, 12%. But they had 20, 30% because they just burned people out. And I think, you know, maybe they did that in the startup phase. And by the way, they have the world's greatest logistics system. They're in Walmart. So, but I think they have to take a different look. There's a problem of people make too much money. They get into what I call the Adelation trap. Zuckerberg's fall into that. Jeff has, Elon's right on the verge of it right now. You start getting too caught up on how great you are for all the things you've done. You're going to be in deep trouble.

Starting point is 00:56:26 And so, yeah, he goes over and tells the Dutch, take down the bridge, let my yacht out into the harbor. Somebody would have thought about that when he designed it, that maybe they couldn't get it up until the ocean. But, no, but the question is, why is he spending $500 million? One of the people I feature my book is Alan Page, who is an NFL football player for the Vikings here. I know Alan well, we're neighbors. But he's more as an education. He's not so interested in football. He wants young people to have opportunities that many of them haven't had.

Starting point is 00:56:55 That's his passion. So I went to Alan and I said, Alan, how many people have the money that Jeff put into his yacht, how many people could get a college educated or a two-year college? He said 16,000. Now, amazing, if you think about that number, 16,000 people. Where's the charity? The biggest charity come out of Bezos is his wife, McKinsey's former wife, McKinsey, Scott, who is doing a remarkable thing, transformative thing with what used to be his money.

Starting point is 00:57:21 So, yeah, I think there's a danger that you get caught up. That's why he, you know, Mark has clearly gotten caught up in that, but Elon is even on the cusp of it, you know, he is the world's greatest inventor today of our era. There's no better inventor than Elon must, but I wish you'd go back. back to inventing and stop fooling around with Twitter. I don't know what he's going to do that, but he's not going to invent anything there. He might change the model a little bit. But, you know, first he says he's going to fire 75% of the people.

Starting point is 00:57:47 He didn't even own it yet. And so, well, I give me my resume out there. So, you know, we'll see. But I think people do get caught up in their own celebrity and the media. And you can really get entrapped to that. Speaking to Elon, I recently heard this theory, and I have to agree with it, someone was saying that his persona is beginning to overshadow Tesla, meaning when I bought my Tesla in 2019, it was thought of as a luxury car.

Starting point is 00:58:14 And now when people hear Tesla, I feel like there's a lot of almost like baggage. And people think about the kind of cult following that Elon has and his childish Twitter persona. Is this an example of Main Street wanting to hear from the man in charge and getting maybe a little more than they asked for? I think so. You know, you have to realize when you're a founder like that, Howard Schultz at Starbucks, you are the brand, and people identify the brand with you, and you can take your own brand down. Tesla has lost 36% of its value in the last year. Why?

Starting point is 00:58:47 Why they lost so much? But I can say this about Elon. It's amazing what he turned out. I lived in Michigan. I watched, you know, General Motors couldn't turn out. Ford. No one else turned out a car like a BMW. It's amazing what he turned out right out of the show.

Starting point is 00:59:01 shoot. So we got to give him a lot of credit and he is transforming transportation. When John Motor said, we're only going to do electric cars, they're serious. But it probably wouldn't happen if he hadn't stepped into that. And now everyone wants a selection car and they're all behind. So he's a transformative leader. But don't get to caught up in your own celebrity because it actually can hurt your brand. And so I think, you know, I love Howard Schultz. I've got him in the book. Starbucks, amazing what he created. But then they got so focused on growth, they lost site of what was a key thing, was creating a relationship between the Barisa and the customers and a good meeting place. And now it's just, you know, come in, take out and grab your coffee

Starting point is 00:59:41 and go. That's fine, but, and they have long lines, but, you know, are they losing it? And so I think you have to work really hard in Metronic, back to my old company, asked in other different CEOs that has to say very true to we're an innovation company. We have to invest in innovation. That's what we do. We're not just a big, big company. So I think you have to stay true to what you believe. Okay. So you're in the healthy drink business. You want to, you don't want to go into the unhealthy drink business. I don't think, you know. So you want to keep that in mind. How do people identify your brand? People today, particularly millennials, think about the brand a lot and they either identify with it or they don't. But you can lose it too. Like Facebook. Everyone was so excited about

Starting point is 01:00:23 Facebook. What happened? You know, they let, you know, Cambridge Analytica steal 50 million profiles, and it came out that they're selling your profile, my profile, people maybe, you know, I'm selling it to. That's wrong, but they wouldn't change, they haven't changed the model yet. Now, on the flip side of that basis example, you know, Bill Gates just came out saying they're going to increase the foundation contribution investments from roughly $5 billion a year to closer to $9 billion a year. And so he's done an incredible amount of philanthropy upon retiring from Microsoft. And, you know, his reputation, I guess, was a little bit more tyrannical at Microsoft and running a hard, a rigid company. And you mentioned Balmer, his successor, kind of, I think, carrying on that culture, maybe even, you know, building upon it.

Starting point is 01:01:06 Is Gates a better example of someone who is evolving or progressing, in your opinion, you know, going into retirement? Absolutely. And what he has done is spectacular. I mean, and he was the visionary about all the vaccines and pandemics and all that. didn't listen to him. I didn't listen to him. I didn't see this coming. But he's what he's done in health care is in Communiol, Z's, third world. He is amazing what he has done and how he's used his money. And of course, he brought in his bridge playing partner, Goni Moran Buffett, who's given him 40, 50 billion of his money. So that's one of the reasons he can go from five to nine per year of giving it away. But think about the impact he had, which I had that kind of money, you have that kind of impact. Think about the impact that Elon Musk had have. You see any gifts he's made,

Starting point is 01:01:53 worth 250 billion. Like, Trey, I can't imagine we like to be worth a billion, but 250? What are you going to do with it? You know, it was sad that Steve Jobs died. Now his widow is giving way a lot of money. But why not? You can't take it with you. I don't care what your religious philosophy is.

Starting point is 01:02:09 You can't take it with you. So why not do some good with it? And so to Gates his credit, he's doing a lot of it. And he shifted from computers to healthcare and look what he has done. You've been a little bit critical of Zuckerberg and meta. mainly because his lack of leadership, in your opinion, and I mean, just the name alone, right, Meta and that change, even though it's at very attractive valuation levels at this point, there's a lot of concern about its future.

Starting point is 01:02:36 I'm kind of curious what you're seeing in the leadership over there at Meta. Well, first of all, the only reason to say the evaluation attracts it because they lost 60% of their value. So no one else is losing that kind of money. I think Apple's down 20. I realize all the tech stocks are down and others are down 20. 29 to 30. But, no, I think Mark built his company on a false premise on Facebook.

Starting point is 01:02:59 And I think when he announced meta, he kind of lost interest in Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. And he's moving on to something new. It could be fantastic. It really could. He's investing $10 billion a year. Can he sustain that? Well, shareholders let him.

Starting point is 01:03:12 It's a public company. Well, they let him continue to spend money without producing anything. I think it's probably a 10-year move. And I'm not sure. I just wouldn't see little kids out running around on a soccer. field or going to national parks, and I would see him just playing with these things like up and down, you know, with all the VR. There's nothing wrong with it, though.

Starting point is 01:03:32 It's going to be a great thing in health care. He's probably going to do some great things. But he almost should split the company. But I worry about the core underlying values you have there as a company. When you get that big and that powerful, you better be thinking about that. So that's what worries me. I hope meta and VR will be successful, and I hope they'll do some good in the world. Now, he's changed up his mentorship a little bit, right?

Starting point is 01:03:56 The leadership and bringing in some younger people, which in a way is kind of aligned with what you've been saying, which is, hey, we need to, you know, the boomers have had their shot. We need to bring in some young blood and get some new energy in here. And it seems like Mark has been doing that. But where has he been going wrong in your opinion with that strategy? Well, they said, you know, power corrupts absolutely, power corrupts absolutely. He's got total power.

Starting point is 01:04:19 His board's more like an advisory board. even if you have some good people on it. They have no power. And he pushed out Cheryl Sandberg, who we thought was a very good leader. I thought one day she'd become CEO. And so, and he used to have a mentor. And Don Graham was on his board former in the Washington Post. And, you know, right now I think you need, I'm not against baby boomers,

Starting point is 01:04:39 but you need wisdom leaders in your life. And so who is advising him? And I think he has some great young people working for him, but I'm not sure he's getting any listening to any advice. So you can get the advice. Like, you have a coach. You don't have to listen to your coach. You can get the advice, but do you really listen to that person?

Starting point is 01:04:56 So that's the key to the whole thing. I'd love to learn a little bit more about who's been teaching you. And I've heard you say that you've had a men's group you've been meeting with for 46 years every week. And, you know, in a CEO peer group myself, I see some benefit obviously from that. But I'm curious how this has shaped your career because this is a very long time. And I'm curious if that's been your main source of mentor. or if you've had someone more of an individual in your life? No, the guys in my men's group, our peers, and we share challenges and problems we all face.

Starting point is 01:05:30 Some of them had some health problems lately, and they were there for me when I was going from Honeywell to Medtronic and had great mentors. Warren Benis was a great mentor of me when I started writing. Unfortunately, he passed away. I had mentors in business, like Ed Spencer and Honeywell, we're a great mentor that unfortunately passed away. I have younger mentors now, the Dean of Harvard Business. Norie is my mentor.

Starting point is 01:05:50 He's 18 years younger. I'm a Jack Clayton, my co-author, who's taught me all about the only millennials and social media and everything. Given the discussion today, how do you think through work-life balance? And is it possible to achieve billionaire status as we study on this show while still also maintaining a work-life balance, in your opinion? I don't know what's like to be a billionaire. Trey, I don't know. You may be, but I have not studied that. But I can tell you this.

Starting point is 01:06:18 When I started out at age 22, I thought it's going to be, I could be quite successful. The thing I wanted to have is I want to have a good home life, a very fulfilling and meaningful home life and a successful career. And I didn't want to have to hold back my home life, sacrifice my home life for my career. And I didn't want to have to sacrifice my career for my homeland. I worked very hard at it, even coaching soccer for 12 years with my son's teams for when I was EPP, Honeywell, and CEO, Medtronic. So, yeah, I think you can do it all, but you got to make some tradeoffs.

Starting point is 01:06:48 And you got to work really hard at it. But I encourage people to do that, have a life. The idea of people you say, I work 100 hours a week, you don't like I have a life, it'd be on your third marriage, or you know it. Nothing gets second marriage is because most of my friends are happier. But I think you really have to think what I want out of life. And how do I get that and have a successful career at the same time?

Starting point is 01:07:08 So I can do both. And I think it's very doable, but it's challenging. So I encourage everyone listening yet, please, please, think about. How do I have the kind of life I want? And most important, can I be the same person at home as I am at work in my community and my personal life? Can I be that integrated person? And if you can do that, then you can look yourself in the mirror and say, I feel good

Starting point is 01:07:29 about myself. If I have to fake it to make it at work, it's not going to work out. So be that same person that can work for having all of it and work hard at it. Where would you like our audience to go to learn more about you and find the book? Well, you can find the book on Amazon. Just you can go to Bill George. You can go to True North. It's not hard to find.

Starting point is 01:07:51 Same at Barnes & Noble, going to the store or online. And, of course, I've got a website, Billgeorge.org. Not, of course, at Billgeorch. And I'm on all social media sites. The LinkedIn's the biggest one. I'm active on Twitter primarily. So anyway, I hope people will read the book.

Starting point is 01:08:07 So thank you for giving me this opportunity. It's a fantastic book. And Bill, I really appreciate the time you've given us today and best of luck with the book. Thank you for having me on. I'm eating person and keep going here. Thanks, right. Thank you.

Starting point is 01:08:21 All right, everybody, that's all we had for you this week. If you're loving the show, don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. And if you'd be so kind, please leave us a review. It really helps the show. If you want to reach out directly, you can find me on Twitter at Trey Lockerby. And don't forget to check out all of the amazing resources we've built for you at the investors podcast.com. You can also simply Google TIP Finance and it should pop right up.

Starting point is 01:08:42 And with that, we'll see you again next time. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional, this show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network.

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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP493: Should CEOs Have Term Limits? w/ Bill George

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