A Founder's Life
Join me as I explore the powerful intersection of entrepreneurship, health & wellness, and parenthood. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing inspiring individuals who excel in one or more of these areas, sharing their stories, insights, and lessons. My goal is to provide valuable takeaways that can help you thrive both personally and professionally.
A Founder's Life
Building Trust, Media, and Community at Scale - Jeffrey Hayzlett - S5 - E17
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👤 Connect with Today’s Guest – Jeffrey Hayzlett
Website: https://c-suitenetwork.com/
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Podcast: All Business with Jeffrey Hayzlett
What happens when an entrepreneur stops chasing plans—and starts building momentum instead?
In this episode, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chairman of the C-Suite Network, former Fortune 100 CMO, media executive, and serial entrepreneur, shares his unfiltered journey from early entrepreneurship to Kodak, Bloomberg, Celebrity Apprentice, and building one of the largest trusted executive networks in the world.
We talk about leadership, time protection, media as a business strategy, family, health, mentorship, and why success comes from focusing on hearts and minds—not just scale.
What you’ll learn:
• Why most careers aren’t planned—and why that’s okay
• How Jeffrey built and sold hundreds of companies
• Why leaders must guard their time relentlessly
• The shift from “spray and pray” marketing to community
• How family, health, and mentors shaped his leadership
⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 – Entrepreneurial Beginnings & Early Wins
3:42 – Kodak, Media, and the Shift to Digital Leadership
6:30 – Building the C-Suite Network & Trusted Communities
16:03 – Family, Health & Personal Rhythms
32:04 – Mentorship, Pivotal Moments & Advice for Founders
Website
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Welcome to a founder's life. I'm your host, Leo Castetna. On this show, we dive into the real stories behind the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and how we pursue a more balanced and meaningful life along the way. This podcast is brought to you by Thanks, helping founders like us scale with reliable remote talent. Email founders at Thanks.com, that's T-H-A-N-K Z.com with the subject line A Founder's Life to receive some preferred pricing. Now I'm excited to be joined today by Jeffrey Hazlet. Jeff, uh, thanks for joining. Would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure. I've always enjoyed my conversations, and this is going to be a great one as well. I'm Jeffrey Hazlet. I'm the chairman of the C-Suite Network, and I'm also host of All Business with Jeffrey Hazlet, which is on C Suite Radio, C Suite TV, and we shoot live from the New York Stock Exchange. I'm a former Fortune 100 officer, former host on Bloomberg Television worldwide, a former chief marketing officer. I've bought and sold hundreds of businesses and la-da-da. A grandfather. I've been married to one wife, one woman. She saw she always tells me that I'm her first wife and only wife. So that's what it is, or that she is my first and only wife. There you go. That's that's a little bit about me.
SPEAKER_02That was nice little snippet. So talk to us a little more about your journey that brought you where you are today, and then a little more about sort of your, let's call it conglomerate, your C-suite collection of companies, sort of what what you're doing with these people as well.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. I the journey is a little bit of the movie Good, Bad, and Ugly. It's uh, I think a little bit of all that. You know, and it's interesting. A lot of I do a lot of interviews, probably one or two a day. And the in the interviews, everybody's asked, you know, what was the what was your path? What was your how did you, you know, uh orchestrate it? What are you talking about? Orchestrating? What was my plan? I had no plan for this, it just happened. I started off like a simple entrepreneur. I was more involved in politics years ago. I was working on campaigns, and then I found out, geez, you could go do this for businesses in the same way you were getting people elected or passing ballot initiatives, and I was a lobbyist for a number of years, and then I just decided, well, geez, I bought a printing company because I was doing all this printing for all these groups and so forth, and I was about half their business. So that was my first real kind of entrepreneurial effort was buying a printing company. And I owned that for four years, and then while I was doing that, I bought a cell phone company, bought this, bought that, bought that. And, you know, by the time I was 26, I had made my first million and and then moving up and moving on. And so, and then I one day realized I was doing all this work in South Dakota, where I'm sitting right now, and I thought, geez, I can do this in Iowa. Oh my gosh, I could do this in Chicago, I could do this in in Tokyo, I could, you know, and so I started to add zeros to those numbers and started expanding, you know, so to the point where I was helping people do deals and put together companies together, but I you know, bought and sold over 250 companies for about 25 billion uh dollars in my career. And then eventually one of the bigger companies that bought out some of the other companies that I did said, we want you on board. And that was Eastman Kodak. And I became the chief marketing officer of that company and was there for four years, and that was probably one of the highlights of my career, even though Kodak was having some major difficulties as we mostly know. They were living through it. And I was part of the team to help prolong that, try to shift them more to the digital side. Very difficult to do when you have 139 years in front of you of non-digital, and you were so embedded in you know into a box of film, and yet you were having this wonderful technology, all of these patents and over 35,000 patents, one of the biggest patent leaders in the world, but yet couldn't get out of the mindset of what they were at. And then while I was there, Leo, you might remember this. I became a judge on celebrity apprentice with now President Donald Trump for three years, uh, four seasons that I was on that particular show. And, you know, so someone decided this was eye candy. So then I went on to Bloomberg and started a show there called the C-suite with Jeffrey Hazlitt, where I took people into the C-suite, into the boardrooms of companies where 99% of the people never get to go, you know, that work for the company. And you, you know that in the corporate world. There's a lot of people that never get up to that floor, never get into that room. And and so I was there and uh that show was uh wildly successful. And while I was doing that show, I thought, my gosh, I love the nature of the C-suite. And and C-suite leaders love to talk to other C-suite leaders, billion-dollar companies like to talk to billion-dollar companies, you know, CEOs like to talk to CEOs, CFOs to CFO. Whoa, what if we built this trusted community? And I started looking at where digital was going and the need for trusted networks that I kicked off the C-suite network. And now we have 350,000 C-suite executives who are part of the network. We have a hundred million downloads on our podcast. We have C-Suite Radio, which is our podcasting network. We have C-Suite TV, C-Suite Book Club, we have C-Suite bestseller list now. We took that over from the Wall Street Journal when they got out of the business. We said we'll grab that. And, you know, we're building this, and then we're doing branded services. We basically have content, we have communities inside of that underneath this big giant sequoia tree, I call the C-suite, because it's like a giant canopy with a slush ecosystem. And then we have commerce. And so we're going to market with things like we're, as the show comes out, we'll have C-suite coaching, we have C-suite loans, C-suite legal, C-suite business valuations, a C-suite finance, C-suite, you know, tax council. So we've created all these entities where we find great partners and we go to market to help people scale their business with a trusted partner. And that's that's really what we're doing, Leo. And having a blast, you know. I met you along this journey, and sorry to keep going, but man, you put the quarter and you get to go for the full ride here, you know. But when I was still building this and I'm building it, I tell everybody, what's it gonna be? I don't know it's all gonna be. I'm just gonna keep going. You know, I'm I'm building this thing as I'm flying it, I'm having a blast. The only thing I don't want to do is crash land it. That's it. So as long as it's flying, I'm good. I'm happy. So, you know, and just having a blast with it and helping businesses every single day. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_02That's funny. I hadn't actually heard the part of the story where the network mobilization really spun out of a TV show. It did.
SPEAKER_00So it's almost come full circle because you Yeah, and yeah, now it's back into TV, you know, we're and but which really gets to the premise of what we kind of teach as well, that you know this, you have to be a media company today. You have to create content. You you know, it used to be that we would sit back in a business, and I you know, last business I was at, I spent I had a $17 billion marketing budget. $17 billion, right, you know, driving sales of over about $90 billion. And and I learned that, you know, we we go out and we we advertise, we market way out here to this wide funnel in order to get it into this pipeline. Well, what I've learned is what if we create great content that people are attracted to, and then you build a community around that that want to listen to it. And it's it's no longer about, you know, spray and pray. It's no longer about eyeballs and ears, you know, it's about hearts and minds. And so the key isn't about attracting a hundred thousand people to be your friends, all right, to like. It's about getting the right 100. And and so it's about getting them, you know, really into that pipeline and make the pipeline even narrower so you're not talking to all these people that aren't interested in you. I mean, I I love it when we send out, and by the way, we send out hundreds of thousands of emails in a in a month, but I like it when people say, don't send me stuff, because then I don't have to waste my time on it. It's great, it's fine, you know, and I'd much rather be there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's uh that's that's one of those things in America. I remember when I first moved to America, somebody said to me, the difference between say the UK and America. The UK, you'll talk to 20 people and maybe you'll get one yes, and that's a real yes. In America, you'll talk to those 20 people, you'll get 10 yeses, but it might be that none of them are real yes. So yeah, I mean you you you you you want to know is someone actually interested or not?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I am yeah, I'm I'm only interested if you know, if you really want to talk and if you've got the money to talk. That's you know, that's the other piece of it. I mean, I have people want to talk to me all the day. I've I had texted earlier and I went to my assistant said, call this person, see what they want. So call this person see what they want, because you know, I I know they're just asking a general question or something, and that's I don't have time for that. You know, like or you know how Leo, somebody will say, Let's get together for coffee, you know? And I always write back, I don't drink coffee, so what do you want? You know, and it's not to be rude, it's just like, can we just get to the damn discussion? I'm I'm kind of I'm kind of guarded with my time. The you know, the only thing we've really got that's of great the greatest value that we have is our time, right? Because it's it goes dwindling every day. So yeah, I I'm just very protective of it.
SPEAKER_02That is true. Although I I had a funny conversation the other day. You know, I'm very much like get to know somebody, like if I'm on the phone with someone, it can be a you know, a sales call, them pitching me, me pitching them, whatever, but I still want to get to know them.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that's part of my relationship. You want the chemistry, you want the chemistry, you want it be intrigued. You know, I personal condition my I have uh conditions of satisfaction, you know. One of them is I want to build wealth, the other one is I want to learn new things, and third, I want to have fun. You know, I'd really like to do all those together. 100%.
SPEAKER_02And you know, so I uh when I get on the phone with someone, I'm asking about you know what they've been up to, family, you know. I like I want to get known. Anyway, I got on a call with someone the other day, much corporate, um, and I said, and we're chatting, and I said to him, So have you got any kids? And he goes to me, why do you want to know that? Like, I'm just I'm like, it's just being friendly.
SPEAKER_00I'm like, by the way, I got kids, here am I by the way like once those social security numbers, but then so just just just so I can check. No, you know, it's like what what do you want to know? Like, dude, I just want to get to know you. What what the heck's the deal? What's the deal? Yeah, it's called being friendly. Yeah, it's called being friendly. Well, God forbid.
SPEAKER_02Gotta enjoy life. Like, I want to talk to like you know, I I've got, as I'm sure you do as well, a no arseholes rule. Like, I have no interest in doing what people. There's plenty of people I do business with who I may want not want to be best friends with, that's fine. But I just don't want to do business with people who are assholes.
SPEAKER_00No, period. Yeah, I just, in fact, you know, no, walk away. I've had people want to give me money, and you, yeah, I'm sure you have too. And I they go, like, and I say no, and they go, wait, wait, we're gonna give you money. I said, Yeah, but I don't like you. I just don't get no. I just there's not, you know. I had someone who just the other day, they were asking me about this the other day. We were working with somebody, and in the end, the guy just said, I'm not paying you. And he was, you know, strong arm New York tactics. That's what it was. Guys in New York, strong arm construction kind of guy. And that's just how he did it. And I just was polite for the rest of the meal because he was buying the meal. And after the meal, I shook his hand and he's now called me 50 sometimes. I'm never gonna go back, never gonna talk to him, never not interested, not gonna have a show. And by the way, he tried to hire my one of my CEO in front of me. In front of me, my CEO, who, you know, is like my best friend as well as worked with me, my partner in the business. And I thought, you have no class whatsoever, dude. And one of I'm very rich, very successful, but now you can see how he's gotten to where he's at. Now, I don't want to do business with I up until that point, I had had had a hint of something, but not until I just saw it. And he he just chose to strong arm, and you could do that, but I always have a choice. No, not interest. Just just no different than I'm at an airport counter and someone's rude, and I say, I'm not gonna be on the flight. And he goes, Well, sir, you're gonna miss this flight. I understand, but that airline over there is gonna be a little bit nicer. I have no problem. Thank you. And I just walk, you know, boom. There's there's there's there's a price for those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and you know what? It a little bit of niceness doesn't cost anything.
SPEAKER_00I you know, every once in a while I'm my breakdown and I'm not as nice as I should be, and I'm always regret that, you know. But by and large, I try to be nice. I try to call everybody back, I try to take care of them in every single which way. Text I'm a little different about because you're just kind of intruding me and you're writing to me on that. That's not my preferred platform for that. You know, I kind of keep that for personal stuff more than anything. I do business stuff, but most of my time is, you know, email me. And I'm actually faster with email than I am with text.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I actually prefer emails because I'm less afraid to lose it, believe it or not. Like a text. The problem is if it's not a text I want to deal with right now, and then a few other people text me, yours has fallen down the list and it's gone.
SPEAKER_00Amen, brother. Amen. You know, sometimes I get three or four hundred texts, and it's like, no. And the other thing is my workflow. I I try to communicate with people based upon their preference for what they like. So if you are a texter, then I'm probably gonna text you if I find that out. If you're an emailer, then I'm gonna use that, so forth and so on. Or sometimes even phone calls or video calls. Uh, depends on what's best for uh us to do that. But uh for me, uh, my ecosystem, meaning my support team and everything is on the email side. So, you know, if you text me, I gotta make a copy of it. Then I gotta, it's like people with virtual cards now. Everybody has a freaking virtual card and they want to connect and link it to your phone. If you connect it and go into my context, I will never find you again. But if you give me your card or give me that information and I put it in my CRM system, I'll put, I'm at Leo, Lima Peru, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I'll always remember that. And then, you know, that's not where we met, but I'm you you get where I'm going. People just assume that you do business the way they do business. Well, no, that doesn't work. It doesn't always work. Yeah, you ought to meet them in uh wherever they want to be met. That's what and by the way, that's what I believe right now with content and TV and video and audio is you know, a lot of people go, Oh, I'm just gonna be on the major six engines. Okay, make a mistake because there's 1900 of them out there. People change it, put their content anyway. No, if you put your content in 24 minutes or 48 minutes, much better because now you can repurpose that for streaming. You can repurpose for broadcast, you know, a lot of those kinds of things. So I like to in, you know, it's like somebody said, Everything's on YouTube. Well, yeah, some of it, not all of it. Most of the stuff I see on YouTube that's business content is a place to go to put your videos for 37 people to watch. So, you know, go to where the people are, go to where your audience is. That's what you have to do. And if that's YouTube, great. If that's if that's streaming, if that's uh LG, if it's Sony, if it's Visio, if it's you know, wherever it might be, even, you know, I I can tell you that my show has been on American Airlines. It's the longest running show on American Airlines. I get more things from American Airlines, from people watching me and recommending me and all kinds of things than probably anywhere else. It's amazing. And tell us a little bit about family, how family looks for you. Well, I've got, I mentioned a wife who's we've been married together for 43 years and I and and then two engaged for two, so I caught I count those. So 45 years, and she says it's the best 11 non-consecutive years of her life. So, because I'm always traveling, I'm always gone, but I think that's been part of the allure for us, which is great, you know. And although we have a rule that if I'm somewhere for more than three days, typically she'll join me. Now, we broke a lot of that during COVID, so now we're getting back into our rhythm of how we can do that. But but I'm traveling so much these days, one day here, one day here, and so forth. Uh we've we've been settling a little bit more in Roatan, which is an island off of Honduras, and we've been I go down there about seven days a month, which is just wonderful to be able there and see friends and see people, and we're building out that. Uh, I've got a couple of children, and with from those two children and their spouses, we have three grandchildren, ten, eight, and two. You have one grand, and they're all girls. I have one granddaughter in New York and two in South Dakota, so which makes it great because I'm back and forth all the time as much as I can between the two. Although the eight and ten-year-olds at the age were, you know, grandpa's still kind of cool, but you know, I got sports, I got this, I got that. So it's uh the two-year-old, I'm still in that great uh playground stage where I'm just a big playground for the for the little one. So and I read books. Um, I, you know, I buy, she asked for a horses book. Uh she's two, very smart. She the counts, speaks a couple like she actually speaks a couple languages. And um, and now I had to buy her a horse book, and you know, last weekend I read it 50 times. So it was, you know, 50 times to her.
SPEAKER_02So it was a you got any horses on the uh ranch in South Dakota?
SPEAKER_00I used to have some horses a couple years ago during COVID. You know, I had horses have accidents from time to time, broke legs, and uh in in such a way that they uh could not be repaired. So lost to lost both of my great horses who I had for decades. Uh and but you you know it's one of those things too, Leo. Right now I'm in the traveling stage. You gotta be home. You want to be home to have, you know, if you got a dog, you want to be home. If you got horses, not so much with horses, because our horses are kind of working horses, and you know, they you know, somebody said, What barns you got? And we don't have barns. We they live out in the field, you know. They they where they drink from. There's a creek right there, you know. So little things like that. So it's a little different up in our part of the country uh than the maybe the genteel English pastures you might have known, you know. Funny. And what do you like to see for house? For health? Mostly drink scotch and eat bacon. That's that's probably that's uh I you know, I enjoy walking. I I work a lot when I'm home in South Dakota. It is my funnest and greatest time. And is because I I work outside, you know, I get my Kubota, my four-wheeler, I'm popping trees, I'm moving, I'm moving brush, you know, doing, I'm mowing, you know, pushing snow. We were talking about that uh earlier. Um, and that's the extent of most of my real health, is that I do a lot of walking. I do uh, you know, I'm in New York, I walk everywhere. I don't like taking cabs, so walk 40, 50 blocks, nothing for me, you know. So I, you know, I get my I like keeping track of my steps, you know. And I'm right now within five pounds of my of the lightest I've been in 20 years, so it's just really cool. So I'm you know, I'm feel I feel good. I feel good. Nice.
SPEAKER_02I think it's uh, you know, health for me, yes, there's those aspects. There's also sleep. You know, as we were discussing earlier, you've got your aura ring. Yep. Uh, you know, there's lots of aspects that that kick into that.
SPEAKER_00Well, my I will tell you that I don't sleep, but I've always been one of those persons that doesn't sleep a lot. I mean, I sleep four or five hours, and then every once in a while I catch up, you know, and I my aura rings tell me I'm eight hours behind right now from my optimum. So I need that's my they said it's a my gap. I think it's my gap. But I'm learning a lot about my sleep, you know, in terms of monitoring that that I'm that I'm enjoying that part of it. I'm still learning what the ring will do and what what wearables will do, because I think wearables are very good for everybody in terms of you know giving you indicators that you didn't know what you didn't know. Because I think a lot of us blow it off. We don't pay attention to some of the things that we should pay attention to, especially with hydration and a couple of other things. But yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's you know, you'll see the aura will start telling you it becomes noticeable if you're drinking at night or if you're eating a meal too late. You'll you'll see how that actually affects quality of sleep and harmony.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like I need another person telling me I'm doing things wrong, eating and drinking, Leo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I got a friend who actually stopped wearing his wearable because he got fed up with the fact that it was telling him that it was a bad idea to be smoking weed before bed.
SPEAKER_00Well, at least, you know, I don't know if you heard in the States uh Trump made it less less of a crime. At least it's not at least smoking weed's not so bad that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, also, I mean, I think the big reason he did it from what I've read, which 100% makes sense, is you can actually do medical research now because it was illegal to do medical research before. Wow because it was a class. It was a class one and now it's a class three or whatever it is. But but you can actually now do medical research about the benefits of marijuana and CBD.
SPEAKER_00I I you remember Billy's last name. He was the guy in Midnight Express. Um, he was the if you remember the movie The Midnight Express, where the guy was trying to smuggle hashish, amp serving years in prison, and finally he was, you know, he was raped in prison, beaten in prison, abused in prison. This was all during the Nixon era, and uh, and then he he he escaped. His dad sent him money in secret ways and so forth, and he was able to break out of prison and uh escape and get out of Turkey and get back to the United States. And I met him and then he did a one-man play. And I'd watched the movie, I read the book, and then I watched him in a one-man play in New York City. And in in New York, because of my followers and and because I tend to text and so share socially and so forth, I get invited to a lot of plays. I get invited to a lot of events, which is I'm I'm so lucky, I'm wonderful. You know, I get invited to Irish consulate me, you know, because I'm Irish and you know, and so forth. So I get to go to all these cool things. He invited me. I'm on a list where they invite celebrities to these kinds of plays in hopes that you will tweet about them and and post about them, and then more people will want to come and watch. That's the cool that's a cool list to be on. And so I went and I listened to him, and he talked about the whores, and I thought, all of this over pot, all of this because a guy wanted to smoke some more hash or you know, hash or or or weed, and I'm going, what bullshit. It's you know, and then I think about the people that are in prison because of marijuana, just marijuana or the the guilt that's to touch, which just you know, anyway. And now we find, you know, I can give my 94-year-old stepfather um, you know, a little a little few drops, and it helps his Parkinson's. You know, or my my brother-in-law, who's mentally incapable of doing certain things, he operates like a 12-year-old. He's um he he's mentally handicapped. His way the term has different terms, I'll just say it like that. Cards and letters keep them coming. But that's what that's the term I would use, or has cognitive dissonance. That's what I think the new term is these days. But you know, he has he has all kinds of issues of stress and so forth. One drop of C B D oil on under his tongue, and he's he's he's in it, he's in the zone, he's cool, it's great, and then but Imagine what that would have been like a couple years ago. It was illegal. Couldn't use it. Couldn't do it. You know? J it just stopped. Stopped us. Insanity. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh uh certainly. We need to, as we learn more and we know more, we definitely need to evolve a little more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean meth, ca cocaine, things like that. That's different, my opinion. But weed? I mean, come on. I've never I've never seen a violent weed criminal.
SPEAKER_02I've never seen I I went to uh a talk they were taught a long time ago. They were talking uh I don't know, four or five years ago, they they were talking about there was this professor from uh one top universities and he studies um marijuana and stuff. And uh he's uh he said in China, you know, like they've been doing this for thousands of years, and and it's like I think it's the same word as health or something like that. It they were like it it's a medicinal product. Yeah, it's not the same as cocaine, and it's not like a gateway drug, it's not uh Well, and I think we're gonna find other uses.
SPEAKER_00I think we're gonna, you know, right now I think we're gonna go swinging back to more what I would call natural remedies. You know, I've got over here I've got you know dandelion tea, which I absolutely uh love. And it's what a great thing. Dandelion tea. Now I never heard of that 20, 30 years ago, right? Now everybody's drinking it, and I've and I've been drinking it for the last couple of years. I love it, you know. So things like that. Natural, good, homopathic kinds of things. I love it. And if alcohol was introduced now, it would be an illegal drug. Yeah, well in the states it was in the states it was illegal for a while. Yes, yeah. So what do you like to do for fun? I enjoy hunting. I I enjoy it a great deal. I love go, you know, I love Roatan, I love the beach. I love just, you know, quite frankly, relaxing setting. I love sun. I love being out in the sun, out anything outdoors, even you know, downhill skiing and cross-country skiing, things like that, I enjoy a great deal. I'm not a good water skier, but you know, I've done that stuff, but I'm more out in the in the wild. That that to me is the greatest thing. I love traveling a great deal, obviously. And I I just love learning. I'm an avid reader. I have stacks and stacks of books everywhere. When I try to, I'm reading a book on Alexander Hamilton right now. Uh I've been reading a book on Israel and uh Jerusalem, Mono Monofori's book on Jerusalem, because you just try to understand that, you know. So just things like that. That's that's what I do. And obviously, I love great food and wine and drink and great company. I love conversations. I love, especially conversations where you take on a tough topic, then you're over here and someone else is over here, and somehow you come more closer together because it's a greater understanding. Because, you know, I do I host an event on Sunday nights called Scotch Sunday, where I just get together with people and we just drink scotch. It's a reason to drink scotch or whiskey or anything mostly brown. You're not allowed to bring anything pink. No, no rose. You bring a rose, we we'll toss you out, okay? But you can bring a red wine, a white wine. Basically, pick something. You know, make a s make a decision, pick a side. That's what that's the way it is. So rose doesn't count. That's like that's that fake wine, okay? So, but we get together, we talk about topics, and usually we're way off. But my thing about those conversations, it's like sitting around a pub with all the crazy people that you know, and you're having a discussion about politics, religion, sex, everything. Everything that's taboo, and yet you're still friends, you still have great conversations, and it's not my not my intent to to change your mind, but my intent is to understand who you are a little bit better. And and if we all go about it like that, we can have we have civil. And then right before someone reaches through the screen and punches someone, I change the topic. So that's what that's usually the way we I think you're right.
SPEAKER_02It is it is fun having those conversations with people who think a little differently, as long as they're not so closed-mine that they can't hear anything else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're well, you have those people. And it's good to, by the way, it's good to find them. It's good to find out who they are. They usually don't always come back, you know. That's okay. You know, we enjoyed you. It was fun. You were great entertainment, but you know, maybe this isn't the place for you. But yeah, you know, Leo, I think you and I have had some really good conversations over the years, and we don't always agree about things. But look, when we get together, you know, once once in a while we find each other again, you know, it was like we picked up where we left off, and it it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02And not always agreeing is the fun part, as in if everyone thinks exactly the same, life will be very boring. It's just ideally people who are actually a little open to hearing another opinion.
SPEAKER_00They don't need to be completely. Yeah, and let's be all clear, most of us are all nuts in some way, shape, or form. There's this it's a little bit of that. So that's okay. I think it's great. I love it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We're we're we're we're all an acquired taste for someone. Exactly. Some of us are just better vintages than others. And uh so talk to us a little bit about that sort of thread of let's call it a balanced life. So, in other words, you know, you're working hard, you're always working hard, but you know, yeah, you're finding time for family, yeah, health, whatever that is, going for your walks, dropping down some trees, having some. How do you find a balance?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, balance is an interesting word. I don't always think it's balanced at the time, right? But you have to refill the buckets. I think they're I call them buckets, and you carry these buckets around, you gotta remember, and so one of them is one of them is business, one of them is is your you know, your family, one of them's religion, you know, and and and one of them's your friends. Stephen Covey said that. He said there's four things, like a four-way teeter totter. I think you have to add health to that. I don't think uh, and I think there's more of an emphasis on health than there was 20, 30, 40 years ago. I think it was important, but not like it is today. And I both physical as well as mental health. And I I think there's a lot more. Trisha Ben, who's our CEO here at C Suite Network, she and I were talking about that today. There's a lot more emphasis on that, a lot more discussion on it, a lot more openness to have those discussions. You know, we recently here in the U.S., um, you know, Carl Reiner's son murdered him and his his wife, and he's had issues for years and years and years. And so, you know, to be able to talk about those things is very interesting. And I, you know, we and we also have all these shootings and everything else that are going on, certainly in the U.S., but around the world, we're seeing that everywhere. But I do think you have to be aware of those, you know. I I call I call them the five. And then I need to work on am I being spiritual enough? Am I doing enough with my family? Am I doing enough for myself? Am I doing enough with my friends, you know? And certainly business is always at the forefront for guys like me, but you have to step back and remember what you're doing it for and uh and then refill those buckets. Yeah, uh hundred percent.
SPEAKER_02And I think uh, you know, for me, you talk about the health side, you mentioned just there. You know, for me that's about uh health span. So not lifespan, it's that health span of being healthy until I die. That's that's important.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, well, I'm up at the age now where I'm you know get things get a little stiffer, things are, you know, so I gotta, hey, let's what I gotta do to fix that. You know, I gotta stretch more, I gotta move more. You know, that's a good thing about the oreds tell me move, you know. Okay, I gotta remember that because you get so entrenched in front of the computer or on a Zoom call or doing something, it's it's good to have, you know, reminders, you know. Yeah. And um, what has been a pivotal moment in your life? Every day. No, it's like, you know, so usually somebody asks you a question of what's the worst mistake you ever made? And I said, I don't know, I haven't done it yet. Which means that there's always a bigger one, right? So there's lots, been lots of pivots in my life. And I'm gonna tell you, probably it goes way, way back as I just thinking about it. And I could say, hey, Odak was that, Bloomberg was that, uh, Celebrity Apprentice was that, you know, and those kinds of things. But the real ones were the mentors in my life that showed up at pivotal critical times, I don't want to say pivotal, critical times in my life to be a guide for me as a young man. And um, you know, when my dad was in Vietnam, you know, to have a former gunner sergeant by the name of uh uh Jones, Harold Jones was his name. He was a former Marine gunnery sergeant or or machine gun gunist on a helicopter, and uh was shot and injured and finally relocated. But he became my baseball coach and then became my literally, he and his wife became Gail, became my best friends. You know, they were, you know, 10, 15 years older than I were, but they made sure I didn't get in trouble, you know. Or Mr. Penson, Frank Penson, who was a was was in a hunting club and he became my employer and he he was a print, a plumber, and he hired me to go dig ditches and do different stuff because one, he needed somebody, and two, he was keeping me out of trouble because Harold introduced me to him and I he said put this guy to work and and then I joined their hunting club. You know, it's those kinds of men who stepped in at the right time when I could have gone the other way. I could have gone the other way. And then in in adulthood, there was Michael Connor, who I bought his printing operation, who taught me the value of how to read a Z out uh register and and to compare sales and to do this and what you had to do so I didn't lose my my rear end. And then a guy named Mike John Timmer, who was a state representative who was a Republican, um, we didn't always see eye to eye, but he taught me some great things about values and how to stick to your values no matter what the cost. And um, and is it really instilled so people like that, Leo? And you know, I can go on in every decade, every couple years where there's always somebody like that. And what's one piece of advice you'd give from a sparring entrepreneur? Faster. Faster. Add more zeros and faster. You know, we we sometimes we get caught up, you know, like, oh, I'm I'm really great and I'm big in South Dakota. Okay, yeah, big deal. It's South Dakota. How about Iowa? How about Illinois? How about all these other places? And so I learned very quickly that you could you can you know think big and act bigger, and you have to be relentless at it. And so so that's the words that I would use with somebody is faster, man. Just go, go, go, go, stop. As long as no one's dying, go. Nice. And how can people find you? Well, thank you. You can find me uh Jeffrey Hazlet, H-A-Y-Z-L-E-T-T. Look that up. I'm gonna pop up everywhere because it's a name you don't see often. And uh, you can find me on any social media, LinkedIn. You can also find me through the C-suite network, C-Suite TV, C-Suite Radio. Go look us up, you'll find us and just reach out. Love to hear from you.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you, and thank you for being on today.
SPEAKER_00Well, Leo, thank you, my friends. Good to see you again. And next time you fly over the United States or something, just you know, drop us a note, will you?
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed the conversation, don't forget to subscribe to the channel, tell your friends, and please leave a review.