Lessons Learnt From Over 200 Business Acquisitions & Exits w/Jeffrey Hayzlett (Former CMO of Kodak)
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Hustle will get you a long way. Trust me, I love hustlers, but it's better to work a lot smarter and smarter says automate, delegate, eliminate. Entrepreneurs, it's very easy for them to be yes, yes, yes. And then not understand like the ROI and the opportunity cost of that.

Every day you should be looking up, waking and saying, yeah, I might have all these things on my calendar, but that might not get me where I want to go. What are the five key things I want to do every day? And do I have enough time blocked out for me to be able to get those things done? There's an old saying content is King.

Activation is queen, but context is the kingdom. It used to be a game of what I would call eyeballs and ears, and now it's a game of hearts and minds. You don't need millions and millions of people watching. You just need the right people watching or listening. It's that context, being able to put that content and your story, the value of what you do in front of the right people at the right time. That's magical. That's what you have to do today.

My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. We have an awesome show today. We're going to talk big picture marketing, how to buy and sell companies, and everything in between.

I've got my man Jeffrey Hazlett on the show. Welcome, buddy. Hey, good to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

So I know you've done a lot and we don't have a lot of time, but let's dive in. I know, you know, I want to talk about all the acquisitions and exits, right? Over 200, you know, your experience from being the CMO at Kodak, massive billion dollar company, and then the TV side and all the network you're doing now. And if someone doesn't know who you are, I would love a 60 second overview of everything you've done and are doing.

I tell you right now, I'm just driving businesses. I'm leading the C-suite network. I serve on about 12 corporate boards. Four of them are public companies. So I take investments in a number of different companies and, of course, leading the C-suite network, building out a trusted network of C-suite executives. And that's got my full time outside of being a grandfather. I'm a grandfather now. So that's a big part of it, too.

That's great. And I know there's been a good journey up until that. One thing I would love to talk about is the business side and how you built businesses, exited business. And then like we said offline, the blend between corporate marketing, big box, billion dollar brand marketing, and then the entrepreneurial marketing, because I know you've kind of touched all of those spectrums. But

um for someone that you know is just kind of learning about you for the first time how how did you go you know how did you start how did you get here right because you said first of all you said it was a good journey i don't know if it was always good there's a lot of bumps along the way you know because we're always going to fail and everybody talks about that what's the biggest failure you've ever made and i said i know i haven't done it yet which means i'm always going to do one that's bigger each and every time

Yeah, you know, I, you know, I got in starting my own business, just like everybody else and bought another business, bought another business, bought another business, started leveraging and figuring out, hey, I could, you know, I started in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Now, most people don't know where that's at. That's flyover country.

And, you know, and I could literally see Iowa from my house. So I started, you know, doing the work that I was doing. And I was a big thing there, you know, so to speak, or at least I thought I was. And then I said, hey, I could go do this in Iowa. I could go do this in other states. And that led me to actually doing it all over the world in a bigger way. Because, you know, Rudy, what I found like,

you know this, there's no difference between a small business on Main Street of Sioux Falls, South Dakota and a business on Wall Street. It's just the numbers, man. It's just the way in which we look at it. And sometimes the intensity, although I've seen some great young entrepreneurs who have great intensity, you know, we just got to give them the chops they need to be able to do that billion dollars. And I've

going, hey, man, this place is screwed up. Somebody ought to do something. And only to realize it was me. And, you know, and when I started gaining the confidence and gaining the kinds of things I needed, well, then I started, you know, moving a lot faster and a lot bigger. I love that. And I think

I love that. And I think what's interesting is a lot of entrepreneurs I actually work with, they don't even understand the acquisition route, you know? And I think that's why I say so many of them get stuck at that sub 10 million mark, because what happens is,

I think they only think the way to grow is hustle, hustle, hustle, one business, try and scale. And I've learned, you know, through people like Kevin, who we talked about and other mentors, like the power of acquisitions. And I think you said over 200 exits, right? So how did you get there? And, you know, what's your opinion on the building to sell model?

Oh, I always love to do that. I think you should always be looking to sell your company in any given time. My companies are always for sale for the right kinds of prices, right? That's the only difference. I'm involved in a couple of those right now. I'm involved in a couple of acquisitions.

on some of the boards that i've set and even our own company and buying piece of the business you know hustle will get you a long way trust me i love hustlers because you know if you're out hustling the competition you by far are going to win and i i win many times just by pure brute strength the brute force of pushing something through don't get me wrong and i prove that every every day to my team and and to other board members when they say you can't do this or you want to watch me i'll do this but

you know, it's better to work a lot smarter and smarter says, how can I go out? And, you know, I live by the phrase automate, delegate, eliminate. I look at that every single day. So I'm constantly looking at how to be more efficient. How can I grow, get bigger, do it faster. And, and buying companies is a great way of doing it. Buying market share, buying up, you know, books of business, getting the right kinds of salespeople on my team or team members that have

done there been there you know have done it before so to speak and you get into experience so smart is being a big part of it so i you know i think that's a good move you know and if you want to scale you want to scale faster well then you buy up everybody that's that's walking on the face of the earth and my biggest acquisition was doing about 118 about 118 119 printers in one year

and rolled it up to $2 billion and we took it public. So, you know, and then I've been on boards like DocuSign where we went public for 6 billion bucks, you know? So, you know, there's lots of different ways to be able to do that. And hustle's one thing, brother, but doing it smart's better. Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, there's an air show here. They're just trying to get in on the action, man. Everybody's trying to get to that big red chair. That's just the engines trying to get to that chair. So

So and I think what's interesting with the acquisition side is most entrepreneurs don't understand that they can do that. They have limited beliefs around that because a lot of them started out of a hobby, then built something somewhat successful. And a lot of it when I work with, you know, my clients and community is getting over the limiting beliefs that, hey, buying a business isn't that complicated, you know.

And then once you start doing a couple of them, you realize, hey, maybe this is a secret to unlocking growth. And I often reference Facebook and Apple and all these companies. They've done hundreds of acquisitions to bolt on and grow faster. So yeah, I think that's an important first step is just realizing everyone can do it. Obviously, you need good legal and advisors around you to pull it off, but it is going to unlock fast growth.

Well, what for you have you seen as big catalysts around the time of these consensus? Well, I think the biggest thing is knowing what problem you're solving. You know, a lot of businesses don't spend enough time and understanding, you know, they think, oh, I can go do this. But are you solving something for somebody else in terms of making real value? And so I think that's the very first thing you have to sit down and really, truly solve is, hey, what problem are we solving for somebody else to really give back to your value?

By the way, that also relates in terms of acquisition. I was sitting down with a company yesterday and they said, well, we buy on EBITDA. I said, I don't care if you buy on EBITDA or not. This is my price. You could put it at 115 times EBITDA or you can take it times six to eight times gross revenues.

I don't care. This is the price. This is what we're selling. So let's agree to that. However, you back into it. So the other piece of that is understanding your own self-worth of what you've got, the assets that you have, and then sell against it. I mean, don't give one freaking inch

of value back in terms of understanding that this is what I'm worth and I'm worth getting paid for that. So that's another big piece of it. And I think those are two great valuable lessons that I've learned being an entrepreneur. And I am an entrepreneur, even though I've worked in billion dollar companies, had different roles, now more of a chairman of companies than an operating leader. Although, let me tell you, I get down into the details as well.

Yeah, and I would love to talk about, you know, getting into the details because we also talked about, you know, your CMO experience with big brands versus how entrepreneurs market and run their business. And you've obviously been on both sides of that spectrum. What are the differences and what are the similarities between Kodak versus a startup?

Well, I think startups, you don't use the data near as much as other companies would. You know, I want to look at a big company. I'm looking at data. I want to understand. Kodak, you know, I might be out marketing a product or selling a product that I'm selling. Let's say I've got different divisions. I've got 20 different divisions, 20 different business lines that we have to worry about. And I got to think about things like householding and people go, what's that?

Well, householding is when I'm selling somebody a camera and a printer, and the next day our gallery says, if you don't spend $5, I'm canceling your account. Whoa, I just bought $400 worth of products over here. So you have to look at data to make sure before you go and tell somebody I'm going to get rid of you if you don't spend some money that you...

know that they spent money over here or to be able to look at if you're selling million dollar printers or $10 million printers, which we were doing at Kodak to understand who's the list of our customers. Where do we get that business from?

Who's doing more than the other guy? Who's using more ink than this particular customer? What are the applications they're using? What can we take from those applications and help them to go and do it over here? And then, of course, bring their business volume. Or if I'm selling at that time products to Target and Walmart and Best Buy, I'd want to know what my NRRs are. I'd want to know all

all the little things and nuances about my inventory, how fast it's moving and so forth. These are things that sometimes as an entrepreneur, we don't always think of.

And so you might want to think about when I start this way, what will the end look, you know, towards the end as I start to mature and get better? Because I might want to build some of those systems into the at the base and know that I don't have to redo something in software or redo something, you know, a little bit further down the road.

Yeah, I think, you know, in my business, I reference to my team a lot about the McDonald's model. Like I always try and build systems where you can create this conveyor belt and then you can roll it out across thousands of franchises around America. Right. Like to me, that's a true business where it's scalable and,

And I think most entrepreneurs, it's like, get this live, we'll figure it out later. And then it catches up with you when you start doing millions and millions of dollars. And I've definitely experienced that. So I like everything you said there around understanding the ecosystem and tracking it and

And then also, you know how, like you mentioned earlier, automating stuff, delegating stuff, eliminating stuff, because I think entrepreneurs, it's very easy for them to be yes, yes, yes. And then not understand like the ROI and the opportunity cost of that.

Well, you got to realize that a lot of it, you know, for every entrepreneur, every business leader, time is inventory. Your time is very valuable. And you got to decide, well, where's the best use of my time? Every day you should be looking up, waking and saying, yeah, I might have all these things on my calendar, but that might not get me where I want to go.

So I need to cancel everything today and focus in on the one, two, three, or maybe five things. And that's what I try to do. What are the five key things I want to do every day? And do I have enough time blocked out for me to be able to get those things done if I have to do them? Or I've got to be able to sit with a team to delegate that work to them and make sure that gets done. And that's just one of the lessons I've learned over the years.

is the one to have a great team. I'm not good at some things. I like to think I'm good at everything, but that's not true. But of the things I'm good at, I'm good. And that's not bragging if it's true, by the way. It's not bragging. But the things that I'm not good at, I really have to have great team members around me and to say, help me. In fact, I said this morning to the team, I'm holding you up because I'm not getting these things done. You know I'm holding you up.

I'm holding you accountable now to hold me accountable to get those things done so we get them done. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the whole team dynamic, it changes everything, right? Because again, a lot of...

entrepreneurs we were with they start by themselves couple of the VA's and then you know we scaled up to 120 employees last year and you know you move from doing everything like I used to do the tech the copy the design the Facebook ads the customer service and now I do nothing you know I just say yes

Well, your job, your job, and at some point it gets to that. You're like my job today. My job is to hit a mark for the most part. My job is not to be the smartest person in the room. It's to be the most strategic person as a C-suite leader. And that's what I'm supposed to bring. My job in the things that I do in the C-suite network, well, I've got a very talented CEO. I've got a very talented partner and other execs in the company. My job is to hit a mark now.

it's to hit a certain place at a certain time and do what i need to do for them and for them to be able to accelerate and scale and that's my job i'm i'm here to cause healthy tension in the business you know to push and push and push and when people say hey we're going to do this no we're not we're going to do this and we're going to do it this way and here's why and then and to push them or to say wait a second like one of the team members the other day said oh we're going to give some of your books away i said why

You know, why are you doing that? That cost me money out of my pocket. What am I getting in return for that? I got that I got thousands of books sitting over here in the inventory and you want to give them away, but I want to know what I get out of it. And if you can't answer that question, we're not doing it.

Yeah, great. I love that. And yeah, I think sometimes it's the people have ideas, but then the like, what is the strategic actual, you know, backing behind it sometimes lags. And I think that's what makes great entrepreneurs is they have, you know, the best entrepreneurs, they have the visionary ideas, the long shot ideas, but they have a lot of the strategic ideas.

ideas along the way and I always say you need a mix of both you need some you know big long shots but then lots of little successful hits along the way too and I think

I think that's a skill that a lot of great entrepreneurs have. And talking of that, I would love to talk about, you know, the entertainment side, right? We're talking a little about Shark Tank and all the other entertainment side. How have you kind of breached into that? And then also, you know, the Kodak and then all these companies. And what are the differences between like a physical product business and then the entertainment side?

Well, I tell you, there are a lot of similarities between the two because they're businesses. First of all, that's the most important piece of it. So you're there to make money, whether you're entertaining or delivering in one way or another, you're delivering something of great value, which is important. But when I was at Kodak, you know how I got into the entertainment side, I became a judge on Celebrity Apprentice for three years and was on like nine episodes.

of that show standing side by side with Trump at the time and other business leaders and a lot of celebrities, so to speak.

And selling products. So I learned that. That led me to go on and do my own show on Bloomberg, which led me to come up with the idea for C-Suite TV, C-Suite Radio, C-Suite Book Club, you know, over 119 properties with the C-Suite name on it. And we built the C-Suite network. And now we're running, you know, 450 podcast shows, 70 million downloads and, you know, 70 plus TV shows. I'm going to be expanding that. And of course, we've got your show now on that network.

which we're just so pleased as punch to have i mean you you rudy you light up the place brother which is great in a in a boring business environment it's good to see somebody with your flair and your business acumen to be able to come forward and be a part of it and bring that audience and so you know in selling that is is an important thing because today

Every brand has to be a media company. You have to be able to tell your story. You tell the story. Content drives community and community drives commerce. And today you can't just buy ads. You can't just do advertising. You can't just do marketing campaigns. You've got to become the story. I tell people if you're a, I don't know, a dry cleaner in St. Louis, you have to become the doctor of spot.

You have to be able to tell people, here's how you get blood out of a shirt. Here's how do you get grass stains out of jeans, you know? And by telling people, you become a trusted advisor. You become somebody that they like and then you start to build that community. And of course, they want to come and do their dry cleaning with you. And it's really that simple.

Yeah, I often teach, you know, nowadays people want to be educated. They want to be inspired and they want to be entertained. Right. And I always say five, 10 years ago, you could run great ads with a great offer, great product, and it would sell. Now people want to do business with the people they love, the social media influences, the celebrities and the brands. And that's really what, you know, shifted for me was I was a great marketer. I made a lot of money marketing products, which is with my great marketing skills.

And then I kind of saw this riding on the wall for the future. And, you know, I've, I've done many videos where I say, you know, the attention is the new currency and controlling and owning and having your own platform to own and control that attention. I think it's like, uh, it's like real estate was 40 years ago, right? If you had the monopoly of the houses on the street of all the shops on the street or the mall, you did very well. And I think now that's translated into attention on socials and, uh,

So yeah, it's interesting that you've seen that over the years and you see that growing and continually growing over the next 20 years.

Oh, without question. I mean, we look at just podcasting alone and you were to compare it to a human being. We're still in the teenage years of where we're at and it's just going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And video, as it continues to expand and get better with tools like we're using right now to be able to create TV shows on the fly, you know, setting in a room with a big chair and

You're there in Miami, I'm here in South Dakota and on my studio in South Dakota, who would have thought that we could have created TV this way? And that's what's happening. And so, you know, there's an old saying, content is king, activation is queen, but context is the kingdom. And that's what we have to think about. It used to be a game where we would play, Rudy, you knew this, as a marketer, you would build people's followers. If you got millions of followers, you burn that organically, but everybody thought they had to do that. And that's not the case anymore.

It's great when you can get it, and I have that as well. It's super fantastic, makes you feel good. It doesn't always translate into dollars. So it used to be a game of what I would call eyeballs and ears, all right? And now it's a game of hearts and minds.

And so really, truly, you don't need millions and millions of people watching. You just need the right people watching or listening. So it's that context of being able to put that content and your story, the value of what you do in front of the right people at the right time. That's magical. That's what you have to do today. Yeah, it's a bit of quality and quantity. Like we have some members that...

have 10,000 followers, but they make hundreds of thousands of dollars from it. And I work with celebrities that have 30 million followers and don't, you know, and my job there is to help the 30 million followers monetize it and actually build a brand around it. And then on the other side of the spectrum is, hey, we've got the business model here. Now, how do we 10X your attention? Because that will just, you know, it will grow in a linear fashion, right? So,

And of course, the best of both worlds is if you have millions of followers and it's a loyal tribe and you have the business behind it. That's where you get the billion dollar celebrity brands. And, you know, people like Mr. Beast are building these media empires nowadays. Right.

yeah and then it's really truly about the engagement if you're doing good stuff you know people are going to watch it and you know when we first started with television on you know digital television streaming television and doing what we were doing with c-suite TV people would say geez why are you taking that show it's two guys on Skype you know uh with headphones you know talking about this and they you know I said they got 50 000 people watching them yeah

That might not be 50 million, but it's 50,000 people that are watching them and they seem very, very engaged with what they're doing and they're turning it into a big brand. You know, and let's keep in mind what's a big brand. A brand is nothing but a promise delivered. They're delivering a promise to the people that want to engage with them. That's valuable. That's money. Take that to the bank every day.

And I mean, even the next generation, like the Twitch stream, and it blows my mind. Like you get tens of thousands of people live and the person's just playing a computer game, talking or maybe not even doing anything, just literally browsing the Internet, talking. It's like, you know, all TV is going to be going away in the next two generations. And this is taking over.

who would have thought that you could have got paid opening boxes on youtube i mean seriously you know it's no different than thinking about years ago if you'd have told me 20 20 years ago somebody would make a brand where somebody could come and stay at my house and and sit naked on my couch and they would give me money for it and it would be called airbnb i would have told you you're you're freaking nuts so there's lots of different ways to to engage with people be innovative

and to make money from it if you tap into the right kind of audience and you deliver a great product.

For sure. And look, you know, I think this episode has been so good. You know, surface level, I think we could have a single episode on all the entertainment side and one on the acquisition and exit side and everything you're doing with C-Suite. But I would love to wrap with one question I like to ask a lot of our guests. You know, you talked about failures and I agree, you know, the failures just get bigger, but you also get better at handling them over time. But what about the lessons, right? I always say if you're

to your younger self and teach yourself and other entrepreneurs, what would be some of the lessons you would teach?

well the biggest one i learned around failures they're coming they just understand it's not about failing fast everybody talks about oh you got to fail fast and a lot of people take great pride in the fact they fail a lot of times okay good felling sucks let's just be very clear it sucks who wants to fail but it's you're going to fail all the way through everything you do it's about winning fast so get the mindset about how i'm going to win fast

And people ask me about my failures all the time. I can't remember them, quite frankly, because I just put them behind me because I just don't care because they're steps on getting to the win. And that's what you want to remember. It's always about winning fast. And that's the lesson that I've taken the most from

in my entire career is just to go out and win, win, win. I'm going to fail. Trust me. I'm going to screw it up. I say things wrong all the time. I send out letters incorrectly. I do all, I mean, you can name it. I pretty much have done it, but I also win and I win a lot. And it's because of those failures that got me to the wins.

Yeah, and I think that's the difference is I think what I see a lot of beginner entrepreneurs is the failures hold them back mentally. Like with people like us, we just go, go, go. So it's like fail, fail, win, fail, fail, win. But those wins are so big and they're so fast and close together. Whereas beginner entrepreneurs, they spend a year planning something that doesn't work now. And then they spend months like, you know, feeling sorry for themselves. And then they'll slowly start something else. And it's like, hey, in two years,

you tried three things, we tried 35 things, or 300 things in those two years, right? And that's the difference. - I even had somebody who was doing a keynote and said, "I'm not quite ready to sell the keynote yet because I haven't finished writing it." I said, "Go sell the keynote before you write it." He goes, "Why?" I said, "Because it'll force you to get the dang thing done. And you would have sold something and then you can get there, trust me." And he goes, "Well, what happens if I screw it up?" I said, "You're still gonna get paid. You're just not gonna get paid by them again."

Okay. So you can, and you'll improve it as you go. And that, I think that's what you got to learn. You know, done is better than perfect, but once done strive for perfect. Well, and then when you become, you know, even better that I've spoke over 200 times and now I'm doing my slides seven minutes before I'm supposed to get on the stage, you know, it's,

email in the Google slide to the, the, the AB team that are waiting for me. So yeah, I mean, most successful people are, you know, they move way faster than you think and they don't get, you know, analysts, you know, they don't overanalyze everything. So anyway, look, it's been awesome to have you on and just really get an intro to your world and your experience. And I know there'll be lots of followup from this. Um,

Where do people find you and everything you're doing with C-Suite just to wrap the show today? Yeah, just go to c-suitenetwork.com or come see me at hazelit.com, any place. And look for me, Jeffrey Hazelit. You can find me anywhere. I love it. All right, guys, that's a wrap. Until next time, keep living the red light.