David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Well, my guest today has an amazing resume, unlike anyone I know. Joe Mowgli is the former head coach of Coastal Carolina University and the former chairman and CEO of TD Ameritrade. I mean, there just aren't a lot of people out there who can be both an award winning coach and a world class CEO. And yet, Joe has an incredibly consistent leadership style, no matter what he's doing. For him. It's all about the people he serves, whether he's leading football players or salespeople, he knows it's not about him, it's about his team. They're the ones out there getting stuff done. And his job is to support them and serve them and coach them to success. When you approach leadership with a coaching mentality like that, everything changes. And Joe is the perfect leader to show us how it's done. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Joe muglia.

I really want to dive deep into how you lead. But But first, I have to ask you, you've had so much success as a football coach and as a business leader, how do you balance the the combination of being confident the confidence it takes to succeed with the humility to stay grounded?

Joe Moglia 1:45 

Well, the question is a good question. But one of the key qualities, your leader has to have his record the recognition that I call love. And in this case, he called the commitment of well being of others. And you've got to recognize that leadership is not about you. It's about your people. So by definition, just the fact that you understand that humbles you, whether it's in the business world, whether it's in the military, whether it's in education, whether it's in football, it's not about you, it's about others. So when you achieve things you recognize, what you've done is you feel proud, because you've done a good job, organizing, bringing the group together, doing all the things you needed to do, but they were the ones that executed that and you recognize that they're the ones that you try to take care of. They're the ones you're trying to serve. So just by definition, that whole principle of commitment, love keeps you grounded. You

David Novak 2:32 

know, you mentioned love, you know, and not many business leaders would bring up love, you know, is one of the things that they believe in and you know, and I know you're, you know, really hard driving charging executive yet, you know, you use this idea of love. You know, why is that? Well, I

Joe Moglia 2:48 

had my first head high school job when I was 22 years old. And I grew up as a gang kid in New York City, I had never been more than 25 miles or so outside of the city. And my first job was a place called Archer Academy. Claymont Delaware, by the way, total segue. That's also where Joe Biden went, and all of his children went. So for me to leave New York and go there, there had to be another reason. And I knew that it was because the impact they knew would have on the kids. It wasn't just football. So why was I doing this, and I came up with whatever months I thought about this, it came up with my leadership philosophy, which was standing your own two feet, take responsibility for yourself, treat others with dignity, respect, and live with the consequences of actions. So as you move forward in your career plan, whether that's again, regardless of what that might be, that was my passionate, that's how I built the foundation upon which everything I did later on. So whether it's my personal life, or whether it's the business world, or whether it's the world of football, that's a little bit what gave me a competitive advantage. But that's also what made me tick. That's what allowed me to do whatever I've done,

David Novak 3:54 

it seems that business leadership, thankfully has evolved from what I would call the boss mentality to one of being a coach, tell us a story of when a hit you that being a coach would be a key to your business success.

Joe Moglia 4:08 

My goal was to play football and baseball in college, my girlfriend got pregnant, so I needed to take on bigger responsibility, but I still want to go to college. And then my father never finished eighth grade. He was an Italian immigrant. We sold bananas and apples. You know, Brock's and I worked for him at the time was 10 at the time, I was 22. So he thought this was okay because now he should work full time in the food store. I really thought it needed to go to college. And he said, well remember there's no money so okay, I'll figure that out. And he said, Well, you think about this you really should think about this as you know you got responsibilities, your father, your husband, etc. I said I will couple days later said that I really think I gotta go to college. I'm gonna go to college and said, You're making a big mistake now. Just put that in perspective with your own out. 18 years old, get ready to go to college, and he'd been told by his find a tough situation being told by his dad. This is not what he's supposed to do. Okay, so my freshman year I'm responsible for my wife, my daughter, and 100% of my education. I'm driving in New York City taxi cab, I'm driving the truck for the post office out of old Chelsea station on 18th Street and working on my father's fruits. So now, David, this is going to surprise you. But that's probably not the most fun. Typical college freshman ever had. And was also the first year I didn't have sports. So I went to Fordham prep on the same campus, Fordham University in the Bronx. And I had a good career there, they offered me a coaching job to be the assistant, the football team. So I did that. So my sophomore junior senior year, I coach high school ball worked at my father's fruit store, the rest of the year, majored in economics, really want to go to Wall Street. But by the time I got to be a senior, and this is where it hit me, I really loved the impact I had on the players. I thought I could be a head coach, I could have a career there. But I know I want to go to Wall Street. So I decided if I get ahead High School Java pursue that. I gotta head high school job, iceberg Academy Claymont, Delaware. That's where I began it 22 years old. So when it was time to go to the business world, I had already been coaches 16 years, I had gone through a divorce, I had four kids. So Merrill Lynch puts me in their institutional MBA training program. 16 years as a coach, I transferred to the business world. And Maryland's gives me the opportunity there 26 as 26 people in the class, 25 MBAs and one football coach, and everybody said his football guys never gonna make it here. But I did. But it was all based on those principles. I knew I could have an impact on others, it didn't matter what the field was, you know,

David Novak 6:34 

a lot of times, you could be in one profession, okay? Like you were coaching and now you're shifting, you're going to Merrill Lynch, you're going to this business world, you're hanging with all these MBAs, and you might think that your style would have to change or you'd have to do something different. But you took your coaching mentality into that job. Was that something you knew you were going to do from the get go? Yeah, I

Joe Moglia 6:57 

didn't know anything else. So I recognized they had had far more sophisticated academic pedigree than I did. I recognized that for more understanding, they knew all the buzzwords going on, I didn't know how to spell the word stock, I couldn't spell the word bond. I didn't understand that piece, but understood kind of the general concept of what was going around. And I kind of felt I knew I could do that I knew I would fit in. And I thought that would be a good fit for my skill sets. And it'd be something I'd really love and be passionate about. So they hadn't done that. They most of them had kind of privilege upbringings, which I didn't have, for me to be able to compete in that group, I just needed to learn from an academic perspective, all the different things that happen. And that wasn't necessarily easy for me to be able to do. But I did that. And the things that I was good at were the things that really made a difference.

David Novak 7:44 

You immediately um, you know, within two years, you were the top producer in that group? What was it that separated you? I mean, what made you so good at getting it done?

Joe Moglia 7:52 

Well, it was four years, and I was number one producer in the world. Okay, so that may well, that's even better. It is better. But I'm proud of that. The No, I think that the separation was part of it. I just shared and that was, I already gone through a real life, a real career, etc. So my maturity, and my ability to handle myself on distress was far beyond what theirs were. I also was a great listener. So I didn't need to raise my hand, I didn't didn't need to show off terms of what I knew. I wanted to keep learning and learning more. So when I became a sales guy, it was more an opportunity to learn. I learned how my portfolio managers, people I was covering, I was in fixed income bonds. And I learned their job as well as, almost as if they had to go on a vacation for a week, I could take over for them. I knew how they get paid and how they got their bonuses, etc. Well, I took all that information and tried to develop portfolio strategies that would help them do a better job and what they had to do in a way where we could do the business, but Merrill Lynch would take no risk. Well, those were homeruns, somebody else was doing a $10 million trade, I'm doing a billion dollar trade. So I had a maturity level the other day, and I listened really well. But I did a wonderful job handling stuff under stress.

David Novak 9:05 

Can you give me an example of when you had that kind of stress and you you rose to the occasion, every

Joe Moglia 9:12 

day you have stressed with right being a bond salesman, you on a trading floor, you got to be able to get business done a lot of stuff going on. A typical retail salesperson probably covers 500 accounts, a typical institutional salesperson probably covers 15, to 20. But even that's probably too many. So we put together teams. And there were like four of us. And we picked our best accounts. And we covered four of us cover 3540 accounts. Now Sorry, I'm in charge. Now, the only reason why I have credibility is because I became the number one salesman. So that gave me credibility with the rest of the sales force. But what I did was I changed the entire United States organization, to you have to work in teams, and we're no longer going to grade you on your production credits. So if you have JP Morgan as a client, you can have great production credits, but if you're a sixth with them, you could do much better. So to me, it's all about reaching your potential. So I said if you're not Number one with the account, which may be number one and number two, if you're not, if you're number three, you got one more year to get to number one, number two, that would determine your bonus. So I don't get how big your number is, if you're a six, you should be far better than what you're doing, you're not going to keep that account anymore. So when I did that, that had never been done on Wall Street before. And when he did that, our teams reluctantly bought in, frankly, because of what I had already done, that it had national responsibility, then the gaming global responsibility, I did the same thing in Europe did the same thing in Asia did the same thing in Japan. That was at the time, incredibly, never thought of. But that was a home run home run home run. And that was almost easy for me to see that was where we needed to go.

David Novak 10:43 

You know, you talk about the importance of finding your competitive advantage. How do you go through the process of doing that? And what would you recommend to others?

Joe Moglia 10:53 

The reality is they that in my opinion, I think most of us really don't know who you are, we think we do we say we do, but we don't. So for example, if you have a career decision to be able to make, you gotta go, you know, your career, you know, your own skill sets, what are the skill sets required to be really, really good at a particular job, whatever it is, do I have those skill sets, if I don't, I don't care for my mother or father, I don't care, watch me in it, don't go down that path, you will never be really happy in that. But if you do have those skill sets, you still got to ask yourself one more question. Is this something to be passionate about? And if you can answer yes, to the skill sets and the passion, your pick the real good career path for you to go down. Because you probably have a competitive advantage over the other people in that. If not, you're gonna wind up having a job jobs or a drag a career path is really something special. So that's where I think you find a competitive advantage, whether it's football, whether your personal life, whether it's business was Wall Street, whether it's Yum, we're wherever it is, knowing who you are. translating that to the business world, and making decisions based on that is absolute competitive advantage,

David Novak 11:55 

you have very few people really get to that core essence. And when you have it, it's very powerful, you know, and in business in sports, you have to develop a winning gameplan. And you've certainly done that throughout your entire career on both sides of the fence. Tell us the story on on how you got your players ready to play in an absolute, you know, freezing environment

Joe Moglia 12:18 

in Montana. Alright, so by this time, if it was I think it was our third year at coastal and we had already turned it around, we were doing well. And again, with me the leadership philosophy, take responsibility for yourself. There are no excuses. None. It's too easy making shoes. My coach doesn't like me, my teacher doesn't like me, I got a problem. My girlfriend, my parents don't understand me. You know, the Fed is too aggressive. My legal department is too much on me. Compliance doesn't get it. one excuse after another after another. Well, my leads roughly there are no excuses. So we're getting a we're like 11 one or something. And we're ranked seventh in the country. We're playing my tennis ranked fourth in the country. But we're playing at Montana. And that's going to be the coldest day in the history of college sports. So the entire time we're playing to minus 26 degree weather. So we're getting ready to have a great season, make some noise here. And I just said, a different attitude in the room kind of getting ready. And I stopped the media. But haven't I said, Guys what's going on. And one of our coaches had coached me know what I mean. We're playing my parent. And we know we could play with my talent, but not minus 26 degrees said, we just fit we just played last week. And we practice and 72 degree weather. We got 15 guys in the team that don't own coach, we got 15 guys that never physically seen snow. So I said okay, so the problem is the weather I said, let's stop, I said, recognize what we're doing is making a mistake would make us an excuse. So we're going to lose the game. And we're going to blame it on the weather. So therefore it's okay. Subconsciously, whenever you make an excuse you let yourself off the hook. We're not doing that. So that's the issue then how do we fix this? Let's address the weather. So we started contact people that we had some relationship with and knew somebody that knew somebody that had had experience do research like in the Arctic, and like how are we going to handle this? Alright, that we spent every we spent 30 minute meeting every day about how we're going to handle the cold and we practice that way even though it was only 75 degrees at our place we made believe was like like minus 25 We went there a day early. We're getting off the plane. I remember telling the guys that I'm preparing you for this. Once you get off the plane you're gonna get a shock of cold like you never felt in your life before. So bottom line game day comes and we dressed all over the place. I have a picture here somewhere that I can show you like just you could only see this in my face because I'm so covered up. We have special salve on it centered but what we did we have one bench, the players come off the field. First thing you do is take your helmet off, they didn't take the helmet off, they kept the helmet on till he gets to the bench they sit on the bench. Then they take it off put it between their feet and he say we have these little little tot torpedo heaters which are like little jet engines. This should heat on the underneath. We have radiant heat as above I had so so we I gotta be on the field for an hour but we're only going to be on three For five minutes at a time, so by the time we go back on the field, our feet are warm our shoes a warm, our hands are warm ahead is warm, and we're going back on the field, okay? Coaches can be very charismatic can be very smart. I made a living coaching football for 25 years. tremendous respect for the profession, but we can all be blockheads. So part of that block had mentalities. Hey, don't worry about the cold. It's not that cold. Does that really rain and it's not that hot, because mind over matter, You're tougher than that. And here we got these little punks coming in from Coastal Carolina that live at the beach, The Beach Boys, and they're playing us with a mountain man where the Grizzlies were the Cowboys. Okay, they're coming out tough, then I can have a chance here. Why did my homework on this and I saw that in December in Montana averages 22 degrees they've ever had to minus 26 degrees. So that's where the bad attitude is, when you see people come out in the field real cold, like short sleeves, because they're tougher than you are. We're warming up. They come out in the field wearing short sleeve, they go Yeah, we got a shot here. We got a shot here. And we're doing really well at the end of three minutes without 14 Nothing. But we score the next 35 points on answer at halftime is 3514 we win the game. And the biggest reason why we won the game wasn't because we did a credible job of executing I feel we did a pretty good job of that. But because we were prepared for the biggest obstacle we had, which was the cold, there are no excuses. Doesn't matter what the environment might be like what profession you're in, or whether it's your family. There are no excuses. You got to figure out how to get it done.

Koula Callahan 16:34 

Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asks his guest? Well, I do and I know a lot of you do, too. My name is Kula Callaghan. And together with David I host the three more questions podcasts that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes. And in them I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career leading yum brands. And all of His answers are super practical and inspiring. Like this great insight David shared and one of our most recent, three more questions episodes,

David Novak 17:16 

I think you gotta realize that the most important thing you can do is have great people, the right amount of people, and people who are going to take your enterprise to the next level. So you don't delegate the idea of recruiting, you are very engaged with the recruiting process, what's working, what's not working. And when you have a chance as a leader to bring in a top talent, you go after that person personally, you support the people on your team, you help them get that person and you do everything you can to bring the star players into your organization, and then keep them you know, one way to keep your recruiting needs down is to keep the great talent that you have. And that's why I think it's so important also to really create a great culture.

Koula Callahan 18:03 

Get the three more questions, podcasts and your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know and love. Just subscribe to how leaders lead wherever you get your podcasts

David Novak 18:22 

you talked about the importance of eliminating Yes, men. Let's say someone falls in that category. Have you ever been able to turn a person like that into a truth teller?

Joe Moglia 18:33 

So first of all the the person is Yes, man. You figure it out pretty quickly. But what's more important than that is whether or not they're doing their job. Now whether or not they give me good feedback is one thing that's sort of on me if they're doing a good job in their job. And they're yes, me to death. Okay. I've had the baton 350 I'm okay. Yes real you want as long as you keep betting 350. You're doing a great job, Ron and technology doing a great job. Back at Merrill Lynch running out of Japanese institutional Salesforce. Great, that's okay. Let me be much of as many as you want of the people that are good at your job that you know, give you honest feedback. And I want that I welcome that all the time. The they're the people that they're going to be your more valuable players. But remember, it's twofold thing. It's not like they give you good feedback. It's the fact they get their job done. And then they also give you good feedback, then they help you think more thoughtfully, but they're getting their job done. If you're getting your job done our career Yes, man, you

David Novak 19:30 

know, along these lines, I got to segue for a second and have you tell the story of how you had your stepson tryout for one of your teams. And why this is this was I joined this one.

Joe Moglia 19:43 

When I decide to go back to football. I spent two years in Nebraska. And then the UFL was around that. And it was their third year and the owners of the UFL were people like Bill Hambrick. Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, the guy that was CEO First Boston so they had plenty of money to put into the league. And they spent tremendous amount of money the first couple of years and frankly they were struggling because of that they spent too much money. They ran it poorly as a business but they Hi Jim Foster was the head foot one of the head coaches won a Super Bowl with the Giants Danny green played in the Super Bowl with the Minnesota Vikings. Marty Marty Marty Schottenheimer at fifth one, he has coached history, the NFL, Jerry Glanville, who wasn't quite as big as the other guys, but the big personnel were all NFL guys. And yet, period. So we have we had a franchise, you know, Mark with your mind Nighthawks and Jeff jagged Zelensky, who's a previous head coach at Boston College, and off his court at Tampa Bay, he was the head coach, but they weren't doing well. And they were firing him. Plus they were business people, they watch the people that own the league, and they filled my background, they could actually be pretty good choice to be the head coach and on my notes, which I was excited about. So I've got that now. So we have drafts, we have trials, we have all those things kind of a little bit similar to the NFL, but triads go to matter. So we had three or four tryouts all around, and one of those was in Dallas. Now my step son went to SMU, and he was either in SMU at the time, we just grabbed from SMU, but he's still in Dallas. So Jeff, Jeff did play high school football. He played on the JV. And he was a backup. Okay, but he played he could pitch baseball, she could throw a ball, okay, but he was slow with all those things. So just as a goof we said why don't you just show up? Because was an open tryout? Why don't you show it the most of the guys are college athletes. Why do you show up just kind of go off a quarterback. It was kind of I was playing around with it. So he does that. So so he's been with the quarterbacks, alright. So by the way at the end, and he presumably he's breaking the team down. And he showed a little possess but nobody knows except me. And one other guy. So later on, the staff is getting together. So Okay, which of the kids we want to keep? And then we get around the quarterback and the quarterback coach and off? Of course, okay, well, this kid, you know, 16. But that's Jeff. That's myself. So forget about him. So I go, Whoa, what do you mean, forget about him. You're willing, he can't throw you can't run. He can't do this. Can't do that. I said, yeah. But do you see us leadership is with us yesterday and tag team, both kids out at the end? He goes, Coach, you said he can't play for us. I hear well, we don't know what allyship is. And we're no guy like that could become really good at that. You got to coach him. And I could see all the faces in the room going Oh, my God, this guy's our head coach. Oh, my God. So I let the guys go on rants? Well, let's debate it. Let they go around for seven, eight minutes. They said, Oh, and one of the things was, you know, and he's really slow as well. How do you know he's really slow? We have his 40 time. And what's his 40 time it goes, they take out his notes they go is 40 times five for now that's really, really, really bad for those of your listeners that don't necessarily know that. But then they asked another question. I said, I said, Well, what's his experience? And he goes, Yeah, Jeff was funny. He wrote on the four form that he felt other guys, you know, I played for I was a quarterback at Texas, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, and he goes, Well, my experience, I was a backup JV player in high school. But I threw the ball around with my buddies. So the guys are looking at me said, Coach, you really can be here. And then I stopped and I started I said, guys, that's my stepson. This was just a goof. And everybody just cracked up. And it was just a fun thing. They cracked up but they were relieved. That wasn't a nut job. That was a great story. I don't get a chance to tell that much. That was a great story.

David Novak 23:18 

What do you think is a leadership lesson from that? Number one, you

Joe Moglia 23:21 

got to be totally objective in terms of who you're evaluating. But as you do that, there are intangibles that you might see in an individual that might require a little bit more. Look, give them a little bit longer look for that for those reasons. But again, you don't know what you have until you had a chance to really work with somebody under stress, that technically everybody in a tryout is under stress, but the leadership principles, what are the skill sets you need to get the job done? What are the skill sets of the candidates you're looking at to get that job done? And if they had those that somebody can look at, now, they have that and they have some sort of kind of the intangible quality around them. Attitude, sense of humor, leadership, whatever it might be, well, those are pluses. But again, if you don't have the right person, if you don't have the right skill sets, you're gonna have the right athlete and the situation to do what they need to do to get the job done. You can't you can't recruit the kid you can't you can't hire the kid. You can't play the guy. You

David Novak 24:13 

know, I thought you were gonna say it was just it created the fun and camaraderie you needed to have with your with your group of coaches. Okay, so I

Joe Moglia 24:22 

think you can have fun and camaraderie, but you got to get the job done first. So you so in this case, I made him all this was funny, really funny. And I thought we I want our guys to laugh. But far more importantly than that, I want to really prepare to put together a good game plan. I want to make sure the game plan we're putting together stuff that our guys can execute. I want to make sure that no matter how sophisticated our strategy is, we're smart enough to break it down really is in a simplest forms. By the way, David, whether it's young was AmeriTrade was Merrill Lynch or whether it's Coach Carolina football, that it's got to be simple enough for your people to execute. So it's Sounds good in a board room sounds good when you're talking to the press. But if not simple enough, you people can execute it. So the wisdom is you have all the contingencies here, and the plus or minus here, but then you take it, bring it down so your group can execute. And that's what I had that first and my staff were my executives. And then we're on the way, we'll make it as much fun as possible just by people's senses of humor, somebody kind of you know, that's where it happens most is that you don't try to create the environment. It's just part of the environment that people you handle. You

David Novak 25:28 

know, you had back to business. You had incredible success at Ameritrade and really turned the business around grew the business exponentially amazing results. And then you end up selling it to swab. Yeah, take us through how you thought about that. Because at that point in time, I'm sure this this had to be your baby. Well,

Joe Moglia 25:50 

it was my baby for the beginning. So the 2006. So I began there 2001 and 2006, we were having private discussions in Chicago at some private room someplace. But whether or not it made sense, if we had done the deal, at that time, I would have been the CEO of the combined company. But Chuck became uncomfortable with it, we just dropped it off. We went went went our separate ways. Then around 2017, I get a call from well, better who's the CEO of Schwab. And you know, you know, we always thought this made sense, we should be looking at this now, I already stepped out a CEO. So I'm going to run by he's got to run the place. And I'm Chairman now, I believe strongly in this, whether it's your baby or not, you always got to do what you really believe is the right thing for the overall organization, whether that's your team, whether it's AmeriTrade with Yum, whether it's your family, whatever it is, and I thought the combination of what AmeriTrade had done and what AmeriTrade had gone through, we went from 24 billion client assets to 1.7 trillion, we went from $700 million market cap to 24 $25 billion market cap. But we really good on that transaction and the trading, Schwab had begun gathering assets from back in 1975. And they were had a great brand. And they were great at what they did in terms of gathering assets, they had like 6 trillion in assets, something along those lines. And they were great gathering assets, we were great in the online trading place. The combination of those, especially in an environment where transaction fees were going to zero, which they did, you got to have a lot of assets that will offset that. So if you have seven or $8 trillion in assets, you make a 25 basis point tweak someplace. That's billions of dollars, right. So that will easily offset, not charging 595, five or $6 or $7, for for a trade. So I always believe the combination of the two would be the premier private client business in the United States focused at the middle masses, some high net worth individuals, but I recognize we don't have all the things that truly high net worth families need to have. I understand that. There's a lot of, again, we got a trillion in assets. There's a lot of people out there that can benefit from what we've got. I always thought that was by far the best thing long term for AmeriTrade. And I recognize that one day we were going to do that trade. And then probably you know, we're gonna have to give up our name probably gonna move on. But that was the right thing to do. And I think too often, executives, CEOs very much influenced the board. And too often, they want to do a deal that is in their best interest. And they don't want to do a deal that's not in their best interest. Of course, they never say that. And they sway the board one way or the other, basically, that you're thinking about yourself that, again, it's not about you, it's about the people you're responsible for doing the Schwab deal makes Schwab far far more better than they were. It takes AmeriTrade to a level that we would not have been able to get to without that. Now the sacrifice it was this was a sad part. No, we gave up our name. They gave up our control. But we did that because we thought long term was the right thing for our shareholders and our clients.

David Novak 29:00 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Joe Mowgli, and just a moment. Great leaders like Joe understand that it's all about the people they serve. And they know how to unlock the power of those people working together as a team. That's certainly the leadership style of Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors.

Steve Kerr 29:19 

It's very natural, very human, for all of us to come in when you're leading an organization to want to act like you've you've got all the answers, but it's actually much more powerful if you're comfortable in your own skin of walking into a room and getting command of the room with your personality with your values with your communication, and then really openly admitting, hey, I need help in this area. I think that's one of the most powerful things a leader can do. Because you're trying to empower the people around you. And if they know that you actually need their help. They're not going to look at you as weak. That's probably the fear hear that some of us have as new leaders, I can't let anyone know I have a weakness. It's not a weakness, it's a strength. Because if you know what you're missing, then you're going to be able to fill that void and the company or the team is going to be stronger as a result. And that person is going to feel really good about being counted on to provide that information.

David Novak 30:19 

With the NBA season really starting to heat up, it's the perfect time to go back and listen to my entire conversation with Coach Kerr, Episode 63 here on how leaders lead.

Then you have this monumental decision that you had to make again, which is what am I going to do next, and you decide to go back into coaching, what made you return to coaching, I have a feeling it's your spiritual soundness

Joe Moglia 30:51 

that I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think that was a good thing for me to do. And I by the way, over the span of less five decades of my life, any serious decision I had to make, I went back to the spiritual side as exercise this, this really makes sense for me. So I stepped down in 2009. So I was responsible for the company for 2001 2008. Our last five years, we had a 500% return that includes the financial crisis, when Wall Street was blowing up and the world was challenging the financial system United States and never happened before was happening that and we were number one in the world and what we had done and shareholder return versus any any publicly traded company and financial world on the globe. This is AmeriTrade, this is not Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch do this. This is like Wake Forest winning the national championship. This is this was something really special we were doing. But we did it right. We didn't take the risk that everybody took on the balance sheet. We weren't investing in toxic assets. We did the right thing. We did it right. So when I stepped down, the board has to become chairman. So it'd be proud to be chairman. So Sherman, and I had never been been more in demand in my life. Now remember, David, this is coming out of the financial crisis. So there were major major financial firms really, really struggling. I had a couple of incredible, crazy, crazy, athletic superstar type of opportunities to take over a couple of real real, real major names. But I didn't step down from AmeriTrade to do that. One of the reasons why I stepped out is because I thought there might be something else I wanted to do with my life. And if there were, you know, that I can't have the responsibility I've always had for AmeriTrade, because that'll always dictate what I'm going to do my responsibility AmeriTrade So establish step that I was offered the possibility of television show all sorts of different things. Then I get a call from a group of alumni at Yale asking me that football job might be open, would I be interested? Would I be interested in a job? Now, this was a regular phone. But I remember looking at my phone like this thing, guys. I have not coached for 24 years. And he said we know that. But we spend a lot of time looking at the skill sets head coach posts to have, we really believe you have those in fact, got competitive edge the other guys don't have there's only one problem. Oh, yeah, what's that? In 140 years college football, nothing like this has ever happened. So he's got to think a special president that thinks outside the box to be able to do that. But when you think about I did for six months spiritual sadness. At a time alive, we could do anything I wanted to. Going back to film, remember, I said I wanted to be a coach when I was 20. To continue with coaching when I was 23 years old, who the impact that had on others. I felt that in the business world, that's what I felt. That's what gives me the most satisfaction, the business world coaching impact I've had and others. And so now was an opportunity to potentially go back to coaching. And I thought I still knew I could have an impact on others, I could really help boys kind of really grow up become men time I'll ever do anything unwanted. I didn't think you'd do anything that mattered to me more than that, or that was more that was more special to me than that. And a little piece of this may have been originally, when I got out of coaching to go to Wall Street. My goal is to be the head coach at a major major school, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State wherever it might be. And that never happens. So maybe there was a little piece of me that kind of unfinished business where I want to go back kind of prove myself as a head coach. But that's why I went back to football. I spent two years in Nebraska one year the United Football League that I got a call to coach at Coastal Carolina.

David Novak 34:09 

And you know, when you did that I understand there were a lot of naysayers, even though you had been in Kochi for a long time. A lot of people said all they're hiring you because you've made a lot of money. You'll be a big donor for the school someday. How do you deal with naysayers like that?

Joe Moglia 34:24 

Well, number one, one of the things. I don't know how you've handled this, but for 25 years or so, I don't watch myself on TV. I don't watch myself being interviewed. I don't read an interview by myself. There's been a book written about my life. I'm not read, I'm not read it was written 12 years ago, I've not read the book. So when I do those things, I've not listened to blogs. There's no matter how good it is. Most of the time, it's good, but there's always something that's not the way a minute I think that's going to hurt somebody else. There's going to be an issue or somebody's coming out for the wrong reasons. And I don't want to get bogged down with negative I gotta have positive energy in my life. So if I'm reading all those things, and we're allowed, no matter how good it is that one negative pieces of one's gonna bother me. So I want to keep that out of my life. So the naysayers number one, I'm not bothering with them. I know what I'm doing. And when I went to Costa, as you pointed out, like, you know, frankly, they hated me in the beginning, they really hate him in the beginning. And I asked people just why don't you just give me a shot. But people that said, Oh, this is a business guy came down to both the job, they didn't do the homework on me. I coach for 16 years ever two years in Nebraska, and United Football, I was already back three years, they had not done their homework. So I'm not going to pay too much attention to them. So but at the end of the end of the day, I knew we probably were going to struggle in the beginning. We did but we started winning right away, which we're very, very pleased with very, very fortunate about but but the naysayers, you know, they're not the ones in the middle of the arena, they're not the ones making the decisions. They're not the ones on the field, they're not the one calling the shots, they're not the ones that got to worry about what stock prices, then that's not their job. But in football, especially. Everybody's got an opinion. And you know, even we were we were whatever it is, if we went by 30 points, but you know, he should have done a little bit of a better job attacking the permanent, they gave him two touchdown. There's always somebody somebody's gonna be critical. But But I was not I was not welcome, initially a coach Carolina and example of that, my first year there, I got four tickets for driving tickets, speeding tickets, to worth about 40 Something and a 35. They were right by campus. So even though the policemen are coming out. So now we want right away, and I was covered CommScope a year going into playoffs. We win the conference, we win, we win in the playoffs. Everything's great. And by the way, our kids weren't graduating, our kids are getting in trouble. Now our kids are graduating, they're doing well on this. So I go from, we don't want this guy on, you know what this kind of a good guy. And then I said, you know, this is my home now then it became part of the family. So by empirical evidence on that, but first eight months on the job I got for speeding tickets. In the last 10 years, I've been pulled over nine times. No speeding tickets. You can't. You can't have more better empirical evidence that adds to

David Novak 37:13 

that says it all, Joe. You know, this has been so much fun, and I want to have some more with a lightning round of questions that I do. Now. You're ready for this? I'm ready. Hold on, hold on.

Joe Moglia 37:23 

I want to warm up. Okay, ready to go.

David Novak 37:25 

Okay, Coach, here we go. What's the one word others would use to best describe you?

Joe Moglia 37:31 

impact on others? That's three words, but that's the best I can do.

David Novak 37:34 

What's the one word you would use to best describe you impact on others? Who would play you in a movie? Well, there

Joe Moglia 37:42 

are three people being discussed. Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid, we will see what happens with that one day down the road.

David Novak 37:49 

Have you have you seen the script? I'm not

Joe Moglia 37:52 

seeing the script. But they're a studio has bought the life rights. My life rights, and the book rights for the book was written about me. And that has slowed down in the last five, six months because of the Hollywood writers strike. Hey,

David Novak 38:03 

Joe, I think you should play it. I think that's the answer. If you can be one football coach past or present, who would it be besides yourself? You

Joe Moglia 38:12 

know, I always growing up. I learned a lot by studying Lombardi but there was another guy that I learned a lot from that was John Wooden, totally opposite personality from Lombardi. And I think if I could be the type of coach that I really want to be, although I kind of had the passion and Lombardi but the wisdom of John Wood.

David Novak 38:30 

If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, anybody other than a football coach, who would it be?

Unknown Speaker 38:36 

Harry Truman.

Joe Moglia 38:38 

And the reason why I say that is because the decision he had to make to drop the atom bomb was probably one of the most stressful critical decisions ever made in the world of mankind. So we worry about stress by whether or not you're going to make the team try out. And he's deciding whether he's going to drop the atom bomb on Japan. So I go with him, but there probably be for one day for one day. I could probably give you 29

David Novak 39:01 

Yeah. Do you have a hidden talent?

Joe Moglia 39:03 

I don't know if it's hidden. I think I'm a very, very good listener. I want to tell you, the truth is, you know, I can really sing but I can't sing. I want to say play. I can't play the piano. I hear but what I think I'm good. I like bourbon. And I enjoy dry blues, the blues music and enjoy slow dance. So I think one day I'd like to become the blues singing bourbon ship and slow dancing man.

David Novak 39:25 

That sounds like a good catchy song. What's something about being a CEO, you'd only know if you've been one? I think

Joe Moglia 39:32 

the stress under which you've got to make decisions. That's it. If you're not in that seat, and you've got 10,000 or 100,000 or 1500 people that that you responsible for. There's a lot of responsibility associated with that. And you don't know that if you're not in that seat.

Speaker 1 39:47 

What would your answer be for a football coach?

Joe Moglia 39:51 

It'd be the same thing. You'd be a being in the seat right? The decisions you got to make on the stress whether or not you're going to go for two whether I got a fake upon whether or whether or not You gotta go for the flip down. If you don't make those decisions, you got to be totally hollered, we've criticized, the world doesn't really know, from day to day, week to week, month to month what a CEO is doing. But you know, week to week what a football coach is doing is more media type of pressure or a fan type of pressure on a coach, and that might be on a CEO. The first

David Novak 40:19 

thing that comes to your mind when I say Deion Sanders,

Joe Moglia 40:22 

I gotta say, unbelievable. When he began to Jackson State, I thought, you know, Is he really going to do this? And but he did. He did. He really did this. Then he went to Colorado, and all the changes were making everybody's critical about him. I think he's probably making the right changes. And now he's got this incredible euphoric perspective on it because of the couple wins that he's had. And, and his attitude people criticize him in front of the media, because of the way he's handling interviews. That's why he's always handle interviews. So no, I think I got a lot of respect for the guy and what he's done. I know how hard it is, and how hard it is. So I would say unbelievable.

David Novak 40:55 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? You'd

Joe Moglia 40:59 

hear an eclectic group of music you would hear you would hear country you would hear classical rock, you would hear international stuff, you would hear classical, you hear Italian stuff. You hear blues, the I do like different types. I love music. I really do love music. So you hear all different types of views. I like I like to hearing different things.

David Novak 41:19 

Last question, what's something about you that very few people would know?

Joe Moglia 41:24 

I think the people that are really, really close to me understand if they have really truly sensitive I am and how emotional people on set, but how the emotional impacts me. And when something really positive happens. Or it's something with my loved ones, or kind of what goes on with a team is very, very easy for me to get the most very easy for me to tear up. It's very easy for me to cry. I think only people are really, really lonely would know that, because that's happening in front of them. You

David Novak 41:50 

know, that's the end of the lightning round. Joe, I really appreciate your honesty and transparency and everything about you this interview, it's been so much fun. We've really kind of covered the waterfront. But I'd like you to just to summarize those leadership principles. You mentioned just one more time when

Joe Moglia 42:06 

I got to Coastal Carolina, because I have 120 players that are all male, I got 2530 assistant coaches, analyst interns, GA, all male, we call the band Be a man. But that's because I had Well guys, it's not sexy at all, I raised my daughters on this. So that principle is a leadership principle, a great a real man, a real woman, a real leader, stands on their own two feet, takes responsibility for themselves, treats others with dignity, respect, and lives with a consequence or actions. That has been part of my belief process, my foundation upon which I build my personal life, the way I raise my children, and the foundation upon which I lived in my careers, whether they were business or whether they were football.

David Novak 42:50 

You seem like you're just going 1000 miles an hour, even at this level. You got Yeah, they have so much energy, you know, what do you see as your unfinished business?

Joe Moglia 43:00 

You know what I thought about this a while ago, one of the things that unfinished business made me as a coach was to become a head college coach, I'd done that. And then I think I was doing so well, my name would pop up for, you know, big major college jobs, which I would have liked to have had, but nobody would give me an interview. And I was still I was the only person like me that's ever been been around, and to high risk. Okay. And so there's a piece of me is still thinking, Well, what I want to do that? And the answer is no. And what happened was I turned 74 years ago. And I was dreading kind of just saying the word 70. Because we're getting older, I understand that. And I remember having, I didn't want to celebrate my birthday, which was in the spring. So that year, we had a family vacation was 25 of us, we went to we were in Michigan someplace. And my daughters did a wonderful job kind of having a birthday celebration for me. And when I got up the spoke, I said I've thought about this for a long time. I said, You know what, how arrogant would I be to say, Oh, I still need to do these handful of things in my life. From growing up in again, to having a family and friends that I love and love me to having had a football career that I'm incredibly proud of the business career that I'm credibly proud of, and two careers together nobody in the planet ever had. I could not be more grateful for way. Many, many mistakes and things I'm not proud of. But I couldn't be more grateful for the life that I've had. So for me to say there's still unfinished business, that would be totally arrogant to me, I would get mad at myself if I said that. So I couldn't be more grateful for the life that I've had. And I'll continue to do it as best I can. Going forward for as long as I can. But I have no unfinished business. I just got to continue to take care of business and and remember where I came from, and the gratitude aspect will never leave me.

David Novak 44:46 

Last question here for you. What's the single best advice you can give an aspiring leader?

Joe Moglia 44:52 

I would go back to the whole band thing David say, say you got to have a philosophy that you believe in that you can stand by the holes up and over situation. And for me it was his band, standing on two feet take responsibility for yourself treated within respect for the consequent reactions. If every leader did that, assuming they had the skill set, you got to have that to remember, you got to have both of those skill sets, they're going to be successful. I wish our politicians had that attitude. If I if our political system had that attitude, and our country had that attitude today, we wouldn't have any problems with that. We'd be united, we wouldn't be divided, everybody pulling together, as opposed to blaming everybody else for things. And our political leader would step up and do the right thing with support, as opposed to spend all the time trying to get reelected attacking everybody else.

David Novak 45:35 

Joe, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to share your your leadership perspective, there's a lot of wisdom in this last hour that I know everybody's gonna get a heck of a lot out of.

Joe Moglia 45:45 

Well, David, first of all, again, as your honor for me to be on this, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Thank you, by the way, it's clear how much you prepared for this. And I'm grateful for you taking the time to do that. I respect you for that. I respect what you've done in your career. And I hope one of these days our paths do

David Novak 46:00 

cross Yeah, that would be great. That'd be great. And continued success in whatever you pursue. I know there's a lot more coming. Thanks very much, David,

Unknown Speaker 46:07 

all the best to you and your family.

David Novak 46:19 

Well, let me tell you, there's a ton of research out there that shows coaching is a skill today's leaders really need to improve on. So many people are stuck in that old model of being a boss with a my way or the highway mentality. But great leaders like Joe approach leadership with a coaching mindset. They know it's not about you, it's about serving your team, you realize it's their ability to execute and deliver that really matters. And it's your job to help them do it by giving them a clear strategy, removing obstacles, holding them accountable, and most importantly, seeing their potential and helping them reach it. That's been Joe's mentality and every step of his phenomenal career, from the sidelines of the football field to Wall Street, and everywhere in between. So how can you bring that coaching mentality to your life this week? Well, here's an idea. At some point in the next few days, someone's going to come to you with an issue they need help with, and you're going to be tempted to tell them what to do. Instead, I want you to pause and consider what question you can ask, that will help that person come up with their own idea. Any idea that you can help people come up with themselves is much better than an idea that you tell somebody to do. That's a huge piece of the coachee mentality. And it's a tool you've got to master if you want to get big things done with your team. Because if somebody comes up with an idea based on the questions you ask, and it's a good idea, they're gonna own it. They're gonna believe in it, and they will execute the heck out of it. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders develop a Kochi mentality. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Mignon Francoise, founder and CEO of the cupcake collection, a destination bakery in Nashville. I

Mignon Francois 48:18 

have always been a good listener. It has been my customers that have been driving the needle for me the whole time. We were one of the first food trucks in the city of Nashville, we were the very first dessert truck in the city. It was because a customer of mine emailed me and said, Hey, I just got back from LA. And she said, this is the new wave of things that is coming and you should do it. And so I did it. I was not afraid to try something different. And so because I stay connected to them, it was collaboration that was always key.

David Novak 48:53 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be