Welcome to Howl 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 learning 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 Mowgley is the former head coach of Coastal Carolina University and the former chairman and CEO of TD Ameritrade. I mean, there are just 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 the 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 Mowgley . I really want to dive deep into how you lead, 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 combination of being confident, the confidence it takes to succeed with the humility to stay grounded? Well the question's a good question. But one of the key qualities a leader has to have is the recognition that I call love. And in this case, I call the commitment to well-being of others. 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 need to do, but they were the ones that executed that. And you recognize they're the ones that you're trying to take care of, they're the ones you're trying to serve. So just by definition, that whole principle of commitment and love keeps you grounded. You mentioned love. And not many business leaders would bring up love as one of the things that they believe in. I know you're really hard driving, charging, executive yet. You use this idea of love. Why is that? Well, I had my first head high school job when I was 22 years old. And I grew up as a gank 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 Arch of 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 of the impact they knew it had on the kids. It wasn't just football. So why was I doing this? And I came up with months, I thought about this. It came up with my leadership philosophy, which was standing your own two feet, take responsibility for yourself, treat us with dignity, respect, and live with the consequences of your actions. So as you move forward in your career plan, whether that's full, again, regardless of what that might be, that was my posture. 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. 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 when it hits you that being a coach would be a key to your business success. 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 . Now my father never finished the eighth grade. He was an Italian immigrant. He sold bananas and apples and the Bronx. I worked for him at the time I was 10, the time I was 22. So he thought this was okay because now I should work full time in the food store. I really thought I needed to go to college. He said, "Well, remember, there's no money." I said, "Okay, I'll figure that out." He said, "Well, you think about this. You really should think about this." He says, "You got responsibilities. You're a father, you're a husband, etc." I said, "I will." A couple of days later, I said, "Dad, I really think I got to go to college. I'm going to go to college." He says, "I'm excited you're making a big mistake." Now, just put that in perspective with your own child. 18 years old, get ready to go to college and he's being told by his father. The tough situation being told by his dad that this is not what he's supposed to do. Okay. So my freshman year, I'm responsible for my wife and my daughter and 100% of my education. I'm driving a New York City taxi cab. I'm driving a truck for the post office out of Old Chelsea Station on 18th Street and working with my father's food store. Now, David, this is going to surprise you. But that's probably not the most fun typical college freshman ever had. It was also the first year I didn't have sports. So I went to Fortniprep on the same campus as Fortnipi University in the Bronx. And I had a good career there. They offered me a coaching job to be an assistant of the football team. So I did that. So my sophomore, junior, senior year, I coached high school ball, worked with my father's food store the rest of the year, major in economics. Really wanted 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 a head high school job, I would pursue that. I got a head high school job. Our school academy, Claymont Delaware, that's where I began at 22 years old. So when it was time to go to the business world, I had already been coaches 16 years. I'd gone through a divorce. I had four kids. And so Merrill Lynch puts me in the institutional MBA training program 16 years as a coach. I transferred to the business world. And Merrill is giving me the opportunity there, 26 people in the class, 25 MBAs and one football coach. And everybody said this football guy is never going to 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, 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 in 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 didn't know anything else. So I recognized they had had a far more sophisticated academic pedigree than I did. I recognized that a far more understanding and they knew all the buzz words 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 I 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 be something I'd really love and be passionate about. So they hadn't done that. Most of them had kind of privileged 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 happened. And that wasn't necessarily easy for me to be able to do. But I did that. And the things I was good at were the things that really made a difference. You immediately, within two years, you were the top producer in that group. What was it that separated you? What made you so good at getting it done? Well, it was four years and I was no more producer in the world. Okay. So that's even better. I'm proud of that. I'm proud of that. 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, et cetera. So my maturity and my ability to handle myself under stress was far beyond what theirs were. I also was a great listener. So I didn't need to raise my hand. I 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, the people I was covering, I was at Fix the Come Bons. And I learned their job as well as almost as if they had to go on vacation for a week, I could take over for them. I knew how they get paid and how they got their bonuses, et cetera. Well, I took all that information to try to develop portfolio strategies that would help them do a better job than what they had to do in a way where we could do the business, but Maryland should take no risk. Well, those were home runs. Somebody else was doing a $10 million trade. I'm doing a billion dollar trade. So I had a maturity level the other state and I listened really well. But I did a wonderful job handling stuff under stress. Can you give me an example of when you had that kind of stress and you rose to the occasion? Every day you have stress with regard to being a bond salesman, you want to trade your floor, you got to be able to get business done. There's a lot of stuff going on. A typical retail sales person probably covers 500 counts. A typical institutional sales person probably covers 15 or 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 covered 35, 40 accounts. Now all of a sudden 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 get grade you on your production credit. So if you have JP Morgan as a client, you could have great production credits, but if you're sick 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, we expect to be number one and number two. If you're not, if you're number three, you got one more year to get the number one at number two. That would determine your bonus. So I don't get how big your number is. If you're a sixth, 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 I did that, our team's reluctantly bought in, frankly because of what I had already done that it had national responsibility. And then they gave me global responsibility. I did the same thing in Europe, I did the same thing in Asia, I 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. You know, you talk about the importance of finding your competitive advantage. How'd you go through the process of doing that? And what would you recommend to others? The reality is David, in my opinion, I think most of us really don't know who we 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've got to go, 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 if my mother follows that, I don't care what's in it, don't go down that path. You'll never be really happy in that. But if you do have those skill sets, you've 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, you 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 going to wind up having a job. Jobs are 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 it's your personal life, whether it's business, whether it's Wall Street, whether it's young, wherever it is. Knowing who you are, translating that to the business world and making decisions based on that is absolute competitive advantage. Yeah, very few people really get to that core essence. And when you have it, it's very powerful. You know, in business and sports, you have to develop a winning game plan. And you've certainly done that throughout your entire career on both sides of the fence. Tell us the story on how you got your players ready to play in an absolute, you know, freezing environment. I'm on, Hannah. All right. So this time, I think it was our third year at the 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 to make excuses. 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. You know, my legal department is too much on me. Compliance doesn't get it. One excuse after another after another. Well, my leadership philosophy, there are no excuses. So we're getting ready. We're like 11 and one or something. And we're like seven to the country. We're playing Montana's ranked fourth of 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 in a minus 26 degree weather. So we're getting ready. And we're having great season. We're making some noise here. And I just sensed a different attitude in the room kind of getting ready. And I stopped the meeting at the bottom. I said, guys, what's going on? And one of my coaches said, coach, you know what? I mean, we're playing in Montana. Now we know we could play with Montana, but not minus 26 degrees. Said, we just played last week. And we practiced in 72 degree weather. We got 15 guys in the team that don't own coach. We got 15 guys in the team that had never physically seen snow. So I said, OK, so the problem is the weather. I said, let's stop. I said, recognize what we're doing is make it a mis-- we're making use of an excuse. So we're going to lose the game and we're going to blame it on the weather. So therefore it's OK, subconsciously whenever you make any shoes, you're letting you show stuff off the hook. We're not doing that. So if 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, a new somebody , a new somebody that had experienced doing research like in the Arctic. And like, how are we going to handle this? All right? Now we spent every-- we spent 30 minute meeting every day about how we're going to handle the cold. And we practiced that way, even though it was only 75 degrees in our place. We made believe it was like-- like minus 25. We went there a day early. We were getting off the plane. I remember turning around the guy and saying, "I'm preparing you for this. Once you get off the plane, you're going to get a shock or cold like you never felt in your life before." So bottom line, game day comes and we're dressed all over the place. I may have a picture here somewhere that I can show you with. Like just-- you can only see this in my face because I'm so covered up. We have special salve on, et cetera. But what we did, we had one bench. The place 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 they get to the bench. They sit on the bench. Then they take it all put it between their feet. On each side, we have these little torpedo heaters which are like little jet engines. They're shooting heat underneath. We have radiant heaters above our head. So we act like we're going to be on the field for an hour. But we're only going to be on three or four or five minutes at a time. So by the time we go back on the field, our feet are warm, our shoes are warm, our hands are warm, our head is warm, and we're going back on the field. Okay. Coaches can be very charismatic, can be very smart. I made a living coach at football for 25 years. Tremendous respect for the profession. But we can all be blockheads. So part of that block had been talented is, hey, don't worry about the cold. It's not that cold. It's not really raining. It's not that hot. It's 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 the mountain men, with the grizzlies , with the cowboys. Okay. They come and act tough. Then I can have a chance here. Why did my homework on this? And I saw that in December in Montana, average is 22 degrees. They've ever had minus 26 degrees. So that's where the attitude is. When you see people come out in the field and you're going to feel like short sleeves because they're tougher than you are, all right, we're warming up. They come out in the field and we're in short sleeves. They go, you know, we got a shot here. We got a shot here. And we're doing real well. At the end of three minutes we're down 14 nothing. But we score the next 35 points unanswered. At halftime, it's 35-14. We win the game. And the biggest reason why we won the game wasn't because we did an incredible job of executing our field. We did a pretty good job of that. But because we were prepared for the biggest obstacle we had, which was the goal. There are no excuses. Doesn't matter what the environment might be like or what profession you're in or whether it's your family. No, there are no excuses. You've got to figure out how to get it done. 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 guests? Well, I do. And I know a lot of you do too. My name is Koolah Callahan 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 young brands. And all of his answers are super practical and inspiring. With this great insight, David shared in one of our most recent three more questions episodes. I think you've got to 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? 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. 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. Get the three more questions podcasts in 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. You talk 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? So first of all the person is yes man. You figure that 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. But that's sort of on me. If they're doing a good job in their job and they're yes and me to death. Okay, I'm happy. They're back in 350. I'm okay. You yes and me all you want is one you keep back in 350. You're doing a great job running technology, doing a great job back in Maryland . We're running out of Japanese institutional sales force. Great. I mean, you'd be as much of a yes man 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 people that are going to be more valuable players. But remember it's twofold thing. It's not the fact 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, I don't care if you're a yes man. You know along these lines I got a segue for a second and have you tell the story of how you had your stepson try out for one of your teams and why. This is, this is, this is, I enjoyed this one. When I decided to go back to full place for two years in Nebraska and then the UFL was around then and it was their third year and the owners of the UFL were people like Bill Hambrecht, Paul Pelosi, Nancy's husband, the guy that received your first Boston. So they had plenty of money to pour into the league and they spent tremendous amount of money the first couple of years or frankly they were struggling because of that . They spent too much money. They ran at Paul years of business. But the high Jim Fossil was the head for one of the head coaches, won a Super Bowl with the Giants. Denny Green played in Super Bowl with the Minnesota Vikings. Marty Schott and Heinrich, fifth one of his coaches history, the NFL. Jerry Glanville who wasn't quite as big as the other guys but a big person out. But all that NFL guys. And you know, period. So we had a franchise in Omoc with the Omaha night hearts and Jeff Jagdzinski who was a previous head coach at Boston College and offensive 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 were Wall Street people that owned the league. And they throw in my background. They thought actually it would be a pretty good choice to be the head coach in Omaha and I was what I was excited about. So I've got that. Now, so we have drafts. We have triads. We have all those things kind of a little bit similar to the NFL. But Triad's going to matter. So we had three or four triads all around. And one of those was in Dallas. Now my stepson went to SMU. And he was either in SMU at the time or he just graduated from SMU but he was 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. He could throw a ball. Okay. But he was slow. He was all those things. So just as a goof. And he said, you know, why don't you just show up? Because it was an open tryout. Why don't you show up? And the most of the guys were college athletes. Why don't you show up and just kind of go off of quarterback and just kind of play around with that. So he does that. So he's with the quarterbacks. All right. So by the way, at the end he brings everybody, he's breaking the team down and he showed a little possess. But nobody knows they sent me in one other guy. So later on the staff's getting together and so, okay, which of the kids we want to keep? And then we get around to quarterback. And the quarterback coach and officer says, okay, well this kid, you know, well , 16. But that's Jeff. That's my stepson. Okay. Forget about him. What do you mean forget about him? Yeah, well, he can't throw. He can't run. He can't do this. Can't do that. I said, yeah, but do you see his leadership? He's enthusiastic the entire time. Both the kids died at the end. He goes coach. He said, he can't play for us. I said, well, we don't know what a leadership is. And we don't know a guy like that could become really good at it. You got a coach 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 and rasp. Well, let's debate it. I let they go around for seven, eight minutes. They said, oh, and one of the things was, you know, and he's really slow. How do you know he's really slow? He's not his 40th time. And he goes, then they take out his notes and they go, his 40th time is 5'4". Now that's really, really, really bad for those of you who listen to this and don't necessarily know that. But then they ask another question. I said, well, what's his experience? And he goes, Jeff is funny. He wrote on the full form that he filled. And the 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 wasn't back up JV player in high school, but I threw the ball around with my buddies. So the guys that look at me and said, Coach, you really kid me here. And then I stopped and I started like I said, guys, that's my steps on. This was just a goof. And everybody just cracked up and it was just a fun thing. He cracked up, but they were relieved I wasn't in that job. But that was a great story. I don't get a chance to tell that much. That was a great story. What do you think is the leadership lesson from that? Number one, you 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 those reasons. But again, you don't know what you have until you had a chance to really work with somebody under stress. Now, technically everybody in a tryouts under stress, but the leadership principle, what the skill set 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 have those, that's somebody you can look at. Now, if 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, if you don't have the right athlete in these situations to do what they need to do to get the job done, you can't recruit the kid. You can't hire the kid. You can't play the guy. You know, I thought you were going to say it was just it created the fun and camaraderie you needed to have with your group of coaches. Okay. So I think you can have fun and camaraderie, but you got to get the job done first. All right. So in this case, I made them all this was funny, really funny. And I thought, I want our guys to laugh, but far more importantly than that, I want us really prepared to put together a good game plan. I want to make sure the game plan we're putting together is 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 in a simplest form. By the way, David, whether it's young, whether it's a meritrade, whether it's a Merrill Lynch, or whether it's a coast of Carolina football, that it's got to be simple enough for your people to execute. So it sounds good in a boardroom. It sounds good when you're talking to the press, but if it's not simple enough, your people can't execute it. So the wisdom is you have all the contingencies here and the plus of mine is here, but then you take it and break it down so your group can execute. And that's what I have to have first, my staff, or my executives. And then on the way, we'll make it as much fun as possible. Despite people's senses of humor, somebody kind of, that's where it happens most. You don't try to create the environment. It's just part of the environment of the people you handle. You had back to business, you had incredible success at a meritrade and really turned the business around, grew the business exponentially, amazing results. And then you end up selling it to a swab. Take us through how you thought about that, because at that point in time, I'm sure this had to be your baby. Well, my baby from the beginning. So the 2006, so I began there in 2001. In 2006, we were having private discussions in Chicago at some private room, someplace about 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 all. We went our separate ways. Then around 2017, I get a call from Wolbettinger, who's the CEO of Schwab. And we always thought this made sense. We should be looking at this. Now, I already stepped out of CEO, so I'm not going to run the place. He's going 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, whether it's Young, 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 in client assets to $1.7 trillion. We went from $700 million market cap to $24, $25 billion market cap. But we were really good on the transaction and the trading. Schwab had begun to gathering assets from back in 1975. And they had a great brand and they were great at what they did in terms of gathering assets. They had like six trillion in assets, something along those lines. And they were great in 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've got to have a lot of assets. That will offset that. So if you have $7 trillion, $8 trillion in assets, you make a 25 basis point tweak some place. That's billions of dollars. So that will easily offset not charging $5.95 or $6 or $7 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. But there's a lot of, again, we got $8 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 a merit trade. And I recognize that one day we were going to do that trade, that meant probably we're going to have to give up our name and probably going to 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 based on that. You're thinking about yourself then. Again, it's not about you. It's about the people you're responsible for. You're going to do the Schwab deal. Make Schwab far, far more better than they were. It takes a merit trade to a level that we would not have been able to get to without that. Now the sacrifice, it was a sad part. You know, we gave up our name, we gave up our control. But we did that because we thought long term was the right thing for our shareholders and our clients. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Joe Mowgli in just a moment . What 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. 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 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 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. 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 have 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. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think that was a good thing for me to do. And by the way, over the span of last five decades of my life, any serious decision I had to make, I went back to that spiritual sound as exercise. 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 in the United States. It never happened before. It was happening then. And we were number one in the world in what we had done and a shareholder return versus any public trade company in the financial world in the globe. This is a merit trade do. This is not Goldman Sachs or Merrill Lynch doing this. This is like Wake Forest winning the national championship. 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. I said I'd be proud to be Chairman. So it's Chairman. And I'd never been more into demand in my life. Now, remember David, this is coming off the financial crisis. So there were major, major financial firms really, really struggling. I had a couple of incredible, crazy, crazy, athletic, super star type of opportunities to take over a couple of real, real, real major names. But I didn't step down from merit trade to do that. One of the reasons why I stepped down is because I thought there might be something else I wanted to do with my life. And if there were, then I can't have the responsibility of always having for merit trade because that will always dictate what I'm going to do in my responsibility to merit trade. So I stepped down. I was offered the possibility of a television show, all sorts of different things. Then I get a call from a group of alumni asking me that football job might be open when I be interested in a job. Now this was a regular phone. But looking at my phone like this and thinking, guys, I've not coached for 24 years. And they said, we know that, but we spent a lot of time looking at the skill sets head coach supposed to have. We really believe you have those. In fact, you 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 it's going to take a special president that thinks outside the box to be able to do that. But why do you think about it? I did. For six months, spiritual status, at a time of a life, I could do anything I wanted to. Going back to football, remember I said I want to be a coach when I was 20, to continue a coaching when I was 22 years old, because the impact I had on others, I felt that in the business world. That's what I felt, that's what giving me the most satisfaction. The business world coaching impact I've had in others. And so now it was an opportunity to potentially go back to coaching. And I thought I still know I could have an impact on others. And I could really help boys kind of really grow up and become men. At the time of my life, I could do anything I wanted. I didn't think I'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 was to be the head coach at a major major school. You know, Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, wherever it might be. And that never happened. So maybe there was a little piece of me that kind of unfinished business where I wanted 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 in the United Football League, then I got a call to coach at Coach Carolina. And you know, when you did that, I understand there were a lot of naysayers, even though you had been in coaching for a long time, a lot of people said, Oh, they're hiring you kids. 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? Well, number one, one of the things, and 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 about 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'm not listening to blogs. No matter how good it is, most of the time it's good, but there's always something in it that's not the way I meant it. I think that's going to hurt somebody else that'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 got to have positive energy in my life. So if I'm reading all those things, I'm going to allow, no matter how good it is, that one negative piece is the one that's going to 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 Coastal, you pointed out, frankly, they hated me in the beginning. They really hated me in the beginning. And all I asked for people, "Why don't you just give me a shot?" But people that said, "Oh, this is a business guy who came down and bought the job." They didn't do the homework on me. I coached for 16 years. I had been two years into brass communion. I was already back three years. They had not done their homework. So I'm not going to pay too much attention to them. But at 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 the naysayers, they're not the ones in the middle of the arena. They're not the ones making decisions. They're not the ones on the field. They're not the ones calling the shots. They're not the ones that got to worry about what your stock price is. Then that's not their job. But football especially, everybody's got an opinion. And even we win, whatever it is, we win by 30 points. Well, you know, he should have done a little better job attacking the perimeter or they gave him two touchdowns. There's always somebody, somebody's going to be critical about. But I was not welcome initially at Coastal Carolina. An example of that, my first year there, I got four tickets, four driving tickets, speeding tickets, two were about 40 something into 35. They were right by campus. So even the policemen are coming after me. So now we won right away, again, I was the conference coach of the year, we're going to play us, we win the conference, we win, we win in the playoffs. Everything's great. And by the way, our kids weren't graduating and our kids are getting in trouble . Now our kids are graduating, they're doing well. So I go from, we don't want this guy. You know what? This is kind of a good guy. And then I said, you know, this is my home now. Then I became part of the family. So my empirical evidence on that, my first eight months on the job, I got four 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 than that. That says it all, Joe. You know, this has been so much fun. And I want to have some more with the lightning round of questions that I do. Now you're ready for this? I'm ready. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I want to warm up a little. Okay. I'm ready to go. Okay, coach. Here we go. What's the one word others would use to best describe you? Impact on others. That's three words, but that's the best I can do. What's the one word you would use to best describe you? Impact on others. Who would play you in a movie? Well, there are three people being discussed. Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner and Dennis Quaid. We will see what happens with that one day down the road. Have you, have you seen the script? I've not seen the script, but there, a studio has bought the life rights, my life rights and the book rights for the book that was written about me. And that has slowed down the last five, six months because of the Hollywood writer strike. Hey, Joe, I think you should play it. I think that's the answer. If you could be one football coach, pastor, present, who would it be, beside yourself? You know, I always growing up, I learned a lot by studying Lombardi, but there was another guy that I learned a lot from. There was John Wood, totally opposite personality from Lombardi. And I think if I could be the type of coach that I'd really want to be, although I kind of had the passion of Lombardi, but the wisdom of John Wood. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, anybody other than a football coach, who would it be? Harry Truman. 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, whether or not you're going to make the team try out and he's decided whether or not he's going to drop the atom bomb on Japan. So I'd go with him, but there'd probably be, for one day, for one day, I could probably give you 20 names. Do you have a hidden talent? 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 tell you, I can't play in piano. I hear, but when I think I'm good at, I like bourbon and I enjoy, enjoy blues, the blues music, and I enjoy slow dancing. So I think one day I'd like to become the blues singing, bourbon sipping, slow dancing man. That sounds like a good country song. I'm going to steal that from you. What's something about being a CEO, you'd only know if you've been one. I think 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 1,000 or 500 people that you're responsible for, there's a lot of responsibility associated with that. And you don't know that if you're not in that seat. What would your answer be for a football coach? That'd be the same thing. You don't know, being in the seat, right? The decisions you've got to make under stress, whether or not you're going to go for two, whether or not you're going to go for them for it down. If you don't make those decisions, you're going to be totally hallowed and be 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 that might be on a CEO. The first thing that comes to your mind when I say Dion Sanders. I got to say, unbelievable. When he began at Jackson State, I thought, you know, is he really going to do this? But he did. He did. He really did this. Then he went to Colorado and all the changes you're 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 him because of the couple wins that he's had. And he's added to people criticizing him in front of the media because of the ways he's handling interviews. That's the way he's always handling 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. I know how hard it is. So I would say I'm believable. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? You'd hear an eclectic group of music. You would hear country, you would hear classical rock, you would hear international stuff, you would hear classical, you would hear Italian stuff, you would hear blues. I do like different types. I love music. I really do love music. So you would hear all different types of music. I like hearing different things. Last question. What's something about you that very few people would know? I think the people that are really, really close to me understand I think how really truly sensitive I am and how emotional people on the Senate, but how the emotional impacts me. And when something really positive happens or it's something with my loved ones or kind of what we've done with the team, it's very, very easy for me to get emotional, very easy for me to tear up. It's very easy for me to cry. I think only people that really, really know me would know that. That's happened in front of that. You know, that's the end of the light, Ian, I really appreciate your honesty and transparency and everything about you in this interview. It's been so much fun. We've really kind of covered the waterfront, but I'd like you just to summarize those leadership principles you mentioned just one more time. When I got to Coastal Carolina, because I have 120 players that are all male, I got 30 assistant coaches, analyst interns, GAs, all male, we call them BAM, BAM Man . But that's because I had all guys. It's not sexist 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 daily respect and lives with consequences or actions. That has been part of my belief process, my foundation upon what's been built, my personal life, the way I raised my children, and the foundation upon which I lived in my careers, whether they were business or whether they were football. You seem like you're just going a thousand miles an hour, even in this. You have so much energy. What do you see as your unfinished business? You know what? I thought about this a while ago. One of the things that unfinished business, maybe as a coach, was to become a head college coach. I'd done that. I'd done that so well, my name would pop up for big major college jobs, which I would have liked to have had, but nobody would give me an interview. I was the only person like me that's ever been around and too high a risk. So there's a piece of me that's still thinking, "Well, what I want to do that?" The answer is no. What happened was I turned 74 years ago. I was dreading, just to say in the word 70, because we're getting older. I understand that. I remember having, I didn't want to celebrate my birthday, which was in the spring. So that year we had a family vacation. It was 25 of us. We went through. We were in Michigan someplace. My daughter did a wonderful job having a birthday celebration for me. When I got up and 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 a gang, to having a family and friends that I love and love me, to having had a football career that I'm incredibly proud of, a business career that I'm incredibly proud of, and two careers together that nobody in the planet has ever had, I could not be more grateful for 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 in 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 and 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 remember where I came from, and the gratitude aspect will never leave me. Last question here for you. What's the single best advice you can give an aspiring leader? I would go back to the whole band thing, David. I would say, "You've got to have a philosophy that you believe in, that you can stand by that holds up in every situation." And for me, it was this band standing on two feet, take responsibility of yourself, treat as we didn't respect with the consequences of your actions. If every leader did that, assuming they have the skillset, you got to have that too. Remember, you got to have both. As soon as your skillset, they're going to be successful. I wish our politicians had that attitude. 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 leaders would step up and do the right thing with support as opposed to spending all the time trying to get reelected and attacking everybody else. Joe, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to share your leadership perspective. There's a lot of wisdom in this last hour that I know everybody's going to get a heck of a lot out of. Well, David, first of all, again, it was an 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 was clear how much you prepared for this. 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 cross. Yeah, that would be great. That would be great. Continued success in whatever you pursue. I know there's a lot more coming. Thanks very much, David. All the best to you and your family. 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, building them accountable, and most importantly, seeing their potential and helping them reach it. That's been Joe's mentality in 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 coaching 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 going to own it. They're going to 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 coaching mentality. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Mignon Francois, founder and CEO of the Cupcake Collection, a destination bakery in Nashville. I 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 stayed connected to them, it was collaboration that was always key. 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. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]