You know, for many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking. com company. I just recently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the upcoming game and all that. And they say, "What do you think?" And I always say, "It doesn't matter what I think. It's irrelevant. It's what have you come up with? And is this worth the money to spend on it? Or should we sell the spot or not?" It's nice for you to ask me, "But what the heck do I know?" What if the key to strong leadership isn't having all the answers? But rather, having the wisdom encouraged to say, "I don't know." Welcome to Howl Leaders Lead. I'm David Dovak. And every week, I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Book ing Holdings. That's the company behind big travel brands like Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline, and OpenTable. Now, having been at the company for 25 years, Glenn's got a heck of a lot of experience to draw. And yet, he's the first to admit when something isn't in his area of expertise. And instead of guessing, he trusts the experts on his team to guide the way. You see, great companies aren't built by ego. They're built by leaders who ask questions, listen, and rely on the smart people around them. And in this conversation, you'll hear exactly how Glenn does it. Plus, the lessons he's learned writing elephants in Thailand, we both have a story to share there, and surviving a Wall Street firing. And I'm glad I don't have a story to share there. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Glenn Fogel. I was once traveling in Thailand. I was at this franchise meeting, and they had this big event, and they put me on this elephant. And my legs were stretched out so wide. And I was on this thing, what seemed to have had to be an hour. And I finally got off. And I think I was out of commission for about three days. And that's one of my travel stories that I have. And I know you travel the world. Do you have any stories that really stand out for you as you think about what you've been able to see as the CEO? Well, so let's go to Thailand. And so it's Northern Thailand. And it's the summer after my first year of law school. And instead of working, I decided I'm going to just go off to Asia for three months and just travel around by myself and have a lot of money. But, you know, go cheap. The old hippie trails, they called it back in the days. So I'm out of Chiang right. And I'm going to get together with a bunch of people like that. We're going to get somebody take us out to see some hill tribes, do some hiking out to get there. And we're going to get an elephant transportation from one village to another one point. So you absolutely were not told the right way to ride on an elephant is the head of the elephant. And first of all, they had those seats, those chairs type things. But those after like two or three hours, that's really uncomfortable, too. It doesn't work no matter what position you are. It's not good. So but what is comfortable is sitting right on the neck and the head of the elephant. That's fine. The problem is though, is the elephant every so often wants to put his head down and maybe get, you know, some water or look at something or he wants to put his head up and he wants to go get a leaf or something with his trunk. And so you have to be very conscious of when the elephant is going to move its head. Because you want to pull off. I love it. I should have had that coaching before I went to Thailand got that from you. I need it. You know, traveling the world. That's on everybody's bucket list, Glenn. I mean, everybody wants to travel the world. How do you tap into that human desire in your company? The thing that you just said is so true. There's maybe it's something in our DNA. And maybe, you know, a million years ago, the Homo sapien, whatever our species was a million years ago, for whatever reason in the somewhere in the Serengeti, there's just this desire to see what's over the next hill. And they did. And that's how obviously the human species spread around and the Homo sapiens are old in the world. And everything, there's just this desire to see something else. I don't know why, but I think it's just in our DNA. So we don't need to create demand. What we need to do to be successful is to help make it easier. And that's why our mission is making it easier for everybody to experience the world. And that's what we're trying to accomplish at booking holdings and all the companies that are part of it. Yeah, that's a huge noble cause, really. You know, when you think about it, because you tap into this innate desire and every company, you kind of want to have something to get you up every day and knows that you 're doing good. I bet that has to generate a lot of pride with your people. It does. It doesn't . I talked about it a lot. And it's interesting, obviously, during COVID, horrible time. And in comparison, and you think about it, the scientists who are trying to come up with solutions to a terrible disease, those are the real heroes. And it's easier to motivate. We're trying to save the world from terrible disease. That's easy motivation. I once upon a time I worked on Wall Street. And I kind of think the mission really was to make money. Well, you know, we talked about how well we're providing a way to get capital to companies to help them grow. No, that was nice. It's true. There's nothing not true about it. But I got the feeling that most people there weren't really for that mission. They're really for a batting the bank account of their own. So it's better when I left Wall Street and I started working at a company, they thought, you know, this is a really good mission. It maybe we're not as noble as the scientists solving cancer. But we are doing something that is making the world a better place. I truly believe that. I truly really believe that. And every day when we see successful trips and we know that we've done a good job, that gives me pleasure. That's fantastic. And you know, I was wondering when you were a kid that was travel a big part of your upbringing. And if so, what did that teach you? It absolutely was not as a kid. And it's funny. I know every vacation I took with my family between, you know, until I went off to college and made a single digit number and a couple were by car. But it was exciting. But then I got to college and I wanted to see the world. My folks, first generation college, my brother and I first in our college, my parents had only been in the US for the most part. But they did when I was a senior in high school, maybe or junior, I don't mind that they went off to Europe. And they came back and they're talking, wow, this is incredible. And all these kids are going around on their when they're in NAPSACS. And this is the maybe late 70s. And so when I go off to college, I'm going to do this too. And after my sophomore year, I signed up and there was a program in northern Spain, San Tundell. And it was to do Spanish, to learn Spanish at the Universidad Mendez Palais. And I went there and it was wonderful. And it's international, these people are like, I'm doing this again. And the next summer, instead of getting a job, I went off with a friend and we, you know, using our Europass, we're all over Europe and everything. It costs back very low, very low cost. And I just got the buck. And then as I mentioned, after I went to a first year of law school, I went, I went out to Asian and did that. So I really liked traveling. I mean, I've just had the pleasure of seeing parts of the world and seeing how it can really bring people together, learning new and different things. Well, I forgot to mention, I also studied in the Soviet Union, when I was at the University, I forgot that part of about six weeks in between semesters in the winter, that was fascinating at the time. You know, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. It was the evil empire to go and speak and deal with people. My college, each people have talked to them and see their point of view of what the world looked to them. Very interesting. You got a global perspective before you 're out of college. And it's a first generation college student, which is the same thing. That's what I was, too. I never really had that kind of travel. I did live in like 23 states by the time I was seventh grade, because my dad was a governor's surveyor. But it was always exciting going to that next spot, you know, figuring out, you know, what the place is going to be like and the people you're going to meet. But that must have been hard that many different places before you're growing. I mean, going to each school, how to make, you know, new friends. Yeah, I thought everybody did it, Glenn. You know, when you're a kid, that's what you do. I just thought that's what everybody, and my mom would say, hey, you better make friends because we're moving, you know. And it was a good thing for me. I think it helped me learn a lot of things about leadership, you know. So I understand you had a stroke when you're only 17 years old, you know, what kind of perspective that did that give you at such a young age? And what kind of impact has that had on the way you lead if you think about it? Yeah, so I was 17. It was a spring of my junior year in high school. And I woke up in the morning and I just realized something 's not right, not really thin. Well, I don't really understand what's going on. And then going to get myself ready to go to school, brush my teeth out, I'm bumping into the walls so much so I wake up my parents. And they come and they see me and they say, oh, this is good. All they call over doctor off the hospital back. My what has happened is I have a left temporal stroke. And my entire right side very quickly becomes paralyzed. And I lose all my ability to communicate, can't speak. It's not because the mouth isn't where the actual language parts of the brain are now gone. And that was a change because I was a pretty smart kid in high school and everything was looking pretty good. And I had to put in all my application. I was getting ready. I did all my stuff for the SAT. So I was already in the fall and applied to colleges and everything's all good. Now, now, since I've gone from something to what I feel is nothing. And it took time to get back to be better, so to speak. What's interesting though is somebody that age, you don't think about that, oh, I'm not going to get better maybe. It never occurred to me that wasn 't going to happen. I would get frustrated when I couldn't do things. I would get angry when I couldn't do certain things, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn't eventually be able to get back so to speak as I was before. What's interesting though is my mother, she's long gone now, but she would and told my wife, many times my wife would tell me, she says, you know, she keeps my, your mom keeps telling me how before you had a stroke, you were a smart kid. I'm like, thank you mom. What it definitely did do is I'm not sure if that did it or just as you get older and you recognize it's not as easy for everybody. And bad things happen that there wasn 't their fault, just bad things can happen. And you try and be empathetic. And when you have to take actions that are going to hurt people and as a leader to be successful and to do what is necessary, sometimes you're going to take actions that are hurt people. We need to let people go, even though they were good workers. I mean, during the pandemic, we let go 25% of our employees. Wasn't 25% of the people weren't bad workers. They didn't not not show up. We had no business. Pandemic, it shut down, traveled entirely. I mean, and at that time, we hadn't do certain things that were definitely hurtful. And you recognize, okay, we're going to try and do this the best way possible. So we don't do well, what is the minimum required by law, by contract ? We do it to try and make it as best we can, given the resources we have at the time. And while obviously one can never be happy about that, I am pleased that we all of us at the leadership level did get communications, notes, emails, people said, I said, like, look, I really said I have to leave, but you guys have done this the right way, which is very different than what happened when I was fired from a job on Wall Street. That was a very different situation where person comes in says, you know, thank you. Actually comes in, so you have to go to this meeting. So you go to the meeting, show up the meeting, they tell you, listen, your job has been eliminated. You 'll get two weeks average or whatever it was, some nominal amount. And thank you for playing. Bye bye. And oh, tell me you'll take up your stuff from the desk and we'll deliver it to your home. Like, don't even like go back to your desk. Just doors that way. Nice big man will help show you the way in case you are getting lost. Yeah, you've been working place, you're not going to get what you got to get out. But you know, that's the way it's played. When you talk about just the agony that you had, you know, letting that 25% of your work for the course goes during during COVID, you know, I can see it, you know, it really moved you. What do you do? Attitudinally as a leader, when you get backed up against a wall like that, and you know, you have to do something you don't want to do, how do you how do you deal with that moment as a leader? Again, it's what you're trying to do for the people who are going to remain is very important. So it's not just how are you going to deal with the people who are going to have to leave, it's how are you going to do it in a way and what do you then do for the people afterwards to maintain their ability to continue to do what is necessary to move this organization forward. And how are you going to motivate your leaders? Because you can't do everything at once. We had 26,000 people, maybe 27,000 people at the time. I can't I can't talk to 27,000 people. So I need to make sure that I am talking, yes, I'll talk to the entire company through broadcast mechanisms, of course, but person to person with our extended leadership people , a few hundred of them, where I'm talking that much more to get them to make sure everybody understands what's happening, communicate, communicate, communicate, tell them the truth, tell them what has happened, why it's happening, and how in the end, in the end, we will be able to overcome this. Now, this is what I said, you know, I said, look, most of the people who are going to let go, most of the people are going to end up okay. And having been let go myself, how you've been fired myself, I am somewhat familiar with it can it can work out fine, it can be okay . But the thing is, it's also knowing the back of your mind though, some people are never going to recover from this. Some people, it's just not going to work for them. In a very large group, they 're going to cut, they are going to react, and it's just not going to be good. But you can't do anything about that. I can't, you can't save everybody. So you do what you can for the most people you can. It's one of the tough things about leadership, but you always have to think about the team that's going to go forward. Totally. And look, we've all been there. You've been there , I'm sure many, many times. And it's, it's one of the unfun parts of leadership. It's fun when you're winning. It's not as much fun when you have to make very hard choices that you know are going to hurt people. Hey, everyone, it's Kula. And if you are looking for a resource to help you level up as a leader, go and get our weekly leadership digest. It's our roundup of leadership resources that we deliver straight to your inbox every Friday morning. It's totally free. And there are thousands of leaders who are using this resource to stay sharp in their role as a leader. So go to howleaderslead.com/digest. Grab this free weekly newsletter. Go to howleaderslead.com/digest and get it today. You mentioned earlier, Glenn, that you started your career out on Wall Street. And you know, you talked about how there's, you know, a lot of people there are in it for themselves. And they didn't necessarily show as much compassion as they, you might want to have . But when you think about it, you know, how did that prepare you to lead? I mean, there's so many things. And by the way, my first job after I went to college, it wasn't, it was on Wall Street, but it wasn't, if you would think, I was an IT person. I was actually coding on Wall Street. And then I said, well, I got to get over the other side, not the back office. I want to be in the front office, but you can't go from being an IT guy to being invested in a banker right away, which is why I then went to law school. So I could get a job on Wall Street in the front office. But that part about being on Wall Street and stuff, and there's so many things you do learn, skills that you do learn. One thing that's really important as a very young analyst type person where you're basically a grunt is understanding the need for making things perfect. And that's something now, which, you know, we talk about a lot sometimes, is people have to have the knowledge that what you do, the work product you do matters. And that can be even something as simple as if you're putting together a presentation, make sure it's right, spend the time to make it right. And when I get stuff that I see that sloppy isn't right, or, you know, there's a footnote, but I don't know what the footnote goes to. I think did anybody read this before it got to me? And that's one thing. And I think that, look, we know perfection is a goal we will never get to. But there's nothing wrong with trying to get there. And in the year 2000, you joined the team at Priceline. What inspired you to leap from the world of finance to travel? Well, so here's the thing. So I am a head trader, Morgan Stanley has the magic for a very well known guy, Barton Biggs, really pretty much a Wall Street legend. And as a buy side trader, it's really not that interesting, or at least it wasn't to me, because really what I'm trying to do is execute the trades in the most price efficient way. And then Zam, like who cares? And at the same time, the internet is booming, booming, booming. Now, before I'd been in this trading role, which I got after I'd been fired from the investment banker several years earlier, I had been investment banker that we did a lot of work for the airline industry. So I know a lot about the airline industry. So I'm thinking, okay, I know technology could I better code or I know the air transportation business banker, I know a little about capital markets, the trader. And there's this company, Priceline.com, that was this golden child coming out in 1999, did their IPO in the spring. And the thing is just rocketing up. And they need somebody to be a corporate development person. I think I'll law degree, I know about M&A . This is perfect for me. And it's not far from home, because most of the big, you know, the big dot coms in the turn of the century were all over in California, you know, Silicon Valley. There's like the only big star on a really on the East coast. And so I applied for the job the end of 1999, going to 2000. They offered me the job is I'd like to wait. So I get my bonus because the bonuses are paid end of February. And so I'll come the end of February and the say, great. So I leave Morgan Stanley, I go to an internet company. At the last week of February, thereby top ticking the term is the trade. I've gone long internet right as the NASDAQ peaks, first week of March, 2000. And the thing is, it proved that it was smart for me to leave being head trade or Morgan Stanley has the man's for Barton, because I clearly know nothing about trading, having top ticked the trade going long internet in 2000. In the time I've gone, week after I've joined the company, the stock at the time is worth, say 15 billion or so of market cap goes up very quickly, almost double it really goes quickly. And I'm like, wow, I'm a genius. And a few months later, end of 2000, we're almost flat out of money and flat broken going bankrupt real fast. People thought I, you know, the job and thought the company disappeared. So my job is even my mom probably was thinking like, you know, what did you do to yourself? That was crazy. But I stayed, I stayed all the time. So I've now been there 25 years now, 25 years. And over those 25 years, at the bottom part of our worst thing, we were what was then a dollar a share, we did a reverse split just so we could stay listed. So it was six for one. So the stock price on a reverse split basis is $6, approximately $4,800 let's round off right now. Okay. So that's from $6 to $4,800 over 25 years. So that, think about that 800 times, 800 times. And if you do that on a compound annual growth rate, so over quarter of a century, quarter of a century, we have provided our investors with a Kager that is over 30%. There are very few companies that have ever been able to achieve that. You can say that again, but and I will also tell you this, if we ever have the great opportunity to have dinner with you, you're buying. No problem. Be happy to do it. And by the way, when you're going to, you're going to appreciate this, because I know you were a Pepsi cup. I know you're going to like, I think if you go to the hilltop. Okay. Yeah, or maybe cobblestone. That sounds good to me. All right. Now, so you joined Priceline and you acquired several companies over the years to get that kind of growth that you have. Get, give me a peek into that strategy and the part that you played in. Oh boy. It's like, how much time do we have? How do you make this into a succinct story? Because there's so many things we're talking about. So the issue is, from the very beginning, the idea was to be global. When I first got to Priceline, there already was this idea. We're going to be global. Now, at the time the accounting was such that you could basically do a joint venture, essentially, and don't have a lot of equity in it, but have warrants, options, basically a right to buy this company down the road and it won't be on your balance sheet. So, because these new startups abroad are going to have losses at the beginning and we're now already public. So you don't have those losses on your own, you know, on your own P and L. These are all balance sheet entities. Now, everything is legal. There's nothing wrong. This isn't and why I want to make everybody understand and the rules certainly have changed no doubt. But so what we did is we put together different areas. So in Australia, we did a deal with Telstra, the big telecom thing. For Asia, we did this thing with Haji Zouanwah and now in Europe, we set up a thing where most of the equity came from general Atlantic. And the idea is we'll take our IP and we'll allow other people to set up their businesses there. And when they become profitable, that we will then bring them on balance sheet by exercising our warrants. And that was the way it was all going to work. Here's the problem though. The concept makes sense unless you've ever been a developer and you realize this is not like you just have, you know, a price line in a box . It's not like you just take some disks back in the day, like CD-ROM disk and put it in, you 're going to have a system. It actually takes a lot of work to actually create these things. And we do it at the same time, the whole dot-comping is blown up. So most of my role at the beginning is shutting down these things that were set up because they're losing a fortune. We don't have the cash anymore. So that was my real job. The one thing we kept going though was the European one. We put the Asian one we put on the side and the Australian one we totally shut down. But we really want to skinny down while I lose money. So, okay, we're going to fire most of the people there and Glen, you are now in charge of Europe. So now I'm commuting from the New York to London to run what is now like an eight or nine person operation to keep this in go. And we only had really one product at the time, which if people were a member, was called your name, your own price. There's an auction type thing where you could get an airline ticket at a very low price, you bid. And if you bid, you're going to get it, but you don't know what time you're going to take off. You don't know which way you're going to go. You may have to make a stop or two. And you don't know which airline. Now, for people who have time and don't have a lot of money, it's not a bad thing. In the US, it can be very good because of the US. It's going to take all day anyway, unless you're in a major, major airport, you're going to make a connection at one of the hubs. But in Europe, it's not quite like that. And couldn't be sure looked into that before we did that deal, because you can go from, let's say, London to Paris on Ryanair for five pounds. So to save 50% two and a half pounds, really, that's not a lot. Especially if to do that, you 're going to have to fly London. So I don't know, maybe Frankfurt and then go to Paris. It's a stupid product. It's a travel product. So I'm in the, I'm like, what about the hotel business? Also name your own price. That also is a better product because people say, I just want a four star in this region. I don't care if it's a help, a Marriott or whatever it's like. So that was an okay product. But I'm working around saying, we got to sell this the way everybody buys travel, disclose the price, and tell people what they're buying. And does anybody around here know how to do this? So I'm spending some time going around trying to find somebody who knows how to do this. I find this little company in a bunch of people graduated from Cambridge, really smart guys. And they built a nice little business doing selling just hotels, only hotels. But the way we like it, and they're using something called the agency, a mall, which means you're acting as an agent. You set it all up and you get your money from the hotel later after the person checks in a commission that the hotel sends to you, which is a little different than I always thought in terms of emerging, where the consumer pays up front. Anyway, so we do this, we buy the company, the great guys and all that. It's good. And then I'm looking around, where's another company? And there's another company looks just like this company that we just bought. So the first company was called Active Hotels in Cambridge. And what happened is, is a guy who was the CEO of Active Hotels. Because we did the deal, obviously, I was only buying it. They were going to stay and help build the thing. And we buy that. And he says, do you guys, do you know the company booking.com on Amsterdam? But I said, well, I kind of know, I really have no space time with them. Why? And this is a Wednesday. And I'm supposed to go home Thursday. And there's a big travel conference there. And so the person says to me, Andy says, well, they're here for the travel conference thing. We want to meet with them tomorrow. I'll just go home on Thursday. And I don't know. Oh, I go meet. So I call my wife, I say, honey, I'm not coming home. I'm not going to be home tomorrow. I got to see this company. I'll be home Friday. She's okay. I meet with these guys, just three of them. They're gen iuses. It's great. I'm looking at their numbers. I'm looking what they're doing. They're doing what Active O tells us doing pretty much except they are using Google buying ads on Google, which not a lot of people are doing well. And they're showing how they do it. I'm saying, hmm, this is very interesting. I'd like to learn a little more. Like, can I maybe I can come see you and then say, why don't you come tomorrow? I say, that's a great idea. So I call my wife. I say, hi, honey, I'm not coming home. I'm not coming. I'm coming after me. I'm Saturday. I got to go to Amsterdam. Long story short, we eventually closed the deal with those guys to put them together. That's now like 90% of the business. It all becomes out of so many surreptitious things. If Andy hadn't said, why don't you meet these guys? If I had said, I got to go home is a who knows what would have happened. So many things on things that it's not because you're so brilliant. It's so many other things also that happened, made this happen. So when people say, well, I do this one by myself, no, you didn't. A lot of other things happen, but made of this success. Well, as they say in Australia, good on you, because that was a good couple of days that you spent, you know, and it 's a good thing you had an understanding wife and it's certainly paid off for everybody. You know, my grandchildren be very pleased to have some. So you get the nod to become CEO of booking holdings in January of 2017. Help us understand that just the structure of your company and how it's organized. So we have the holding company. We'll call that booking holdings Inc. Underneath that, we have the operating companies, the biggest by far booking. com global based in Amsterdam. Then for your American listeners, they are more familiar, probably with things like Kayak, which is another company, Priceline. We also have OpenTable, another one. Then there's another very big company that I'm sure many people in America don't know called Agoda, which is based in Bangkok. So I get to go to Bangkok a lot, by the way. That's why you're a professional elevator. Exactly. So there are a lot. So those are the major names. We have other ones too. We have other companies too. Those are the biggest ones to mention. Really, rentalcars.com was a company acquired that you won't be surprised. They do rental cars based on Manchester, UK. We've merged that into booking.com. So it still exists as a brand, but it is wholly part of booking.com. And booking.com rental car is actually now bigger than the rental car brand, but that's a separate issue. One of the things that I tried to make a priority when I was running young brands was making sure that we shared best practices across the brands, with KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza. Is that something that you think about too, or are you totally decentralized? No, all the time trying to make it more and more. So we first started off. So for example, when we bought that company, I mentioned Activotels and then booking. com, merged them together and put in through it also our price line, your opinion that I mean, my eight people, nine people, put that all those one thing. The critical thing was I did not want to do any integration at all. And I stressed out important that was to Jeff, boy, others were there at the time, we were older, we all agreed that was right. And here's the thing. One of the easiest ways to really wreck a non US company that is operating outside the US, one of the best ways to wreck it is parachute in a bunch of Americans who don't know anything about it. Okay. The reason we bought these companies is because they had already showed, they displayed to us an ability to be very successful. So the key thing was creating an incentive plan that yes, we were buying the companies that you'd found it, but we wanted them to stay and we wanted them to continue to work. And we will reward them tremendously if they are able to create the success that we believe they would be able to create. And that's who we did. So we are very separated. We are very, there was absolutely no centralization. We're about as far apart as could be, and that can cause all sorts of issues and turns of turf and turns of who's doing what. But we started like that. But over time, as each company got bigger and bigger, and as the new booking.com that was the combination came into America, went into Asia and it got us going. And every starts mixing up, then you have to start putting together some ground rules and you have to start saying, gee, we'll probably better we can learn from each other. So we're doing more and more of that. But that is something that we always have to think about. And I'm sure you must have found this. I'm actually interested in European and your knowledge about this is how do you create a situation where you want people to feel they're part of something. But you also want them to feel part of the whole. And to create people who say, yes, I'm really big. I am a KFC person, but I'm also a young person. And how you create that, that's something that we're still working in progress. I think it's the thing that every holding company struggles with the balance between decentralization and centralization. And it's something that worked very hard at. We really believe that the know how building was a big part of our strategy, but we were all in the restaurant business, pretty similar, just to your business. So we incentiv ize people to share. So if you offered up a best practice and the world adopted it, you got a bigger bonus. And we shouted it from the rooftop because that was a very important part of our strategy. And we gave a lot of recognition to people who did it. And we also gave people recognition for adopting the ideas and paid people more. Because as you know, wiping out that pride of authorship is important if you want to get people to really embrace the best practices. You know, it's so hard. How do you go after that wiping out not invented here? It's extremely difficult. It's extremely difficult. And particularly in place that are very successful. And it is one of the things you have to constantly push people. Are you sure it 's not easier to buy this off the shelf? Do we really need to invent this? Do we really need to build this ourselves? And that is some really game peels to analysis and understand that the mission is to accomplish making it easier for everyone to experience the world not to create the best email system. There are lots of email systems we don't need to make our own guys. It's something that is really tough to get the right balance. But you know, I think if you take away ownership of any division or any company and they feel like they don't have in their power the ability to get something done, you know, you pay for it. You know, so I was more into decentralization than centralization. No, I totally agree. And it also it's that interesting mix because you believe you'll achieve certain types of efficiencies. You believe that there are synergies. On the other hand, there is a very hard to measure cause things go slower. There's more bureaucracy. And it doesn't show up in the P and L easily because you don't know that the reason you're not hitting your numbers is because you know, you're getting a lot of blockage along the way. And that's why projects aren't happening when they should happen by. So it's definitely a balance you have to work on. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Ben Fogel in just a moment. Well, International Women's Day is this week and it's the perfect occasion to highlight Lisa Lutov- Perlo, the former CEO of Celebrity Cruise Lines. She's broken a lot of barriers in her career. But for her, it wasn't just a feather in her cap. It was her chance to pave the way for others to succeed too. You know, a lot of people asked me, how does it feel to have achieved what you achieved in accomplishing, you know, being the CEO of one of the brands. And I'd be lying if I didn't say that it was great. It was a major accomplishment. And it was something I never dreamed that would happen for me. But I think the real thing for me isn't so much about me because sure, I made it. It's wonderful. It's great. I worked really hard. I've earned everything I got. But the biggest thing for me was bringing others along with me in an industry that was woefully short of women. And there was, you know, the gender imbalance was staggering. At that time, 3% of the women on our bridges were women. And by the time I stepped down from celebrity in April of 2023, 33% of the crew members on our bridges were women. And I did that with the help of men that I worked with, who were equally passionate about more gender equality on our bridges. And I give them a tremendous amount of credit for helping get us there. Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Lisa. Episode 172 here on How Leaders Lead. So Glenn, I got a question for you. You come up in finance, you have a legal background, and then you run this company as millions and millions of customers, okay? Millions and millions of transactions. Did you have to work hard to develop your marketing skills, your customer skills, or was that something that came natural to you? Or how do you think about the customer side of the equation in your job? So I know very little about marketing, and I am very, very, very comfortable not feeling that I have any sort of expertise at all. And that's why we have Chief Marketing Officers. And that's what they're supposed to do. And so, you know, for many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking.com company. And we always, you know, should we spend this kind of money for this? Is it really a return or not? And they do all the testing that one to do on the actual content, you know, on the creatives is good. And so I just recently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the upcoming game and all that. And they say, what do you think? And they always said that. And I always say, it doesn't matter what I think. It's irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. It's what have you come up with? And is this worth the money to spend on it? Or should we sell the spot or not? Well, it's nice for you to ask me, but what back do I know? And you know, you have your numbers, you have your opinion. So you're supposed to tell. You tell me, you know, how many CEOs have that kind of comfort from your perspective? Not many. Not many are very good at saying I don't know. Maybe no more. I'm working to make it. Maybe. But I like, I like the fact that you know what you know, and you know what you don't know. Now, in my research, I've learned that you live by the maximum in God we trust everybody else bring data. Say more. You know, I didn't invent that. It's been around for a very long time, but I do believe in it. And how do you drive that in your company? It's in the DNA from long before I got to any level of having any authority of any kind. So that is something that's been there forever. You know, you can go too far that way though. And here's, and I've talked about, we had a meeting last year with a very large number of our data scientists, our mathematicians, our PhD statisticians. And we know these people are brilliant, brilliant people. And they believe data is everything, everything. And they asked me to speak in the opening of this thing. I say to them, I say, listen, we all agree how important data is. And that has gotten us where we are because of our devotion to the facts and not opinions and all that. But everybody, what we have to understand is it's real easy to be certain that your numbers are telling you something. It's also real easy to make mistakes. Your mind's wrong, the way you set up your experiment was wrong. And you're absolutely confident and you, and you, and I said, everybody, let's look back on our history. We in the past have believed certain things absolutely is the truth. And then we said, oh, wait, this isn't right. And we shouldn't be doing that because the data actually says this, because we made a mistake or somebody made it or the world changed. And what was true in the previous is no longer true. And I gave a whole bunch of examples. I gave look at the number of things that are published in very respected, professional , peer-reviewed journals. And there's no, you can't replicate the experiment. And then they had to pull what they had already peer reviewed approved. And there, you see that over and over, you see that coming up over and over again. So what I say is like, look, we do believe that dad is one of those four things. But be very careful that it may not be right always and always think, does it make sense, common sense? And if something is telling you that doesn't fit your common sense, well, the data could be F.C. right is telling you that and your perceptions, your emotional biases, your human mistakes is a mistake. Okay, go with that. And then you want to check that again. Because maybe there was a mistake made in that. And that's something really important. We are fortunate. And I think absolutely the reason for us part of our one of the main reason for our success, but one was really understand the concept of A.B. testing. Oh, 20 something years ago. You mentioned that the world does change. And you know, travel is this magical thing that gives people hope and gives them something to look forward to. What do you see changing in the world of travel that gets you excited about the future? Oh my God, it's so exciting in terms of how much easier it will be in the future. It's already so much easier. Think about 25 years ago, I didn't go today. Okay, 25 years ago, you would get a ticket that had this red carbon thing on the back, you know, would go on your hand if you had to carry a paper ticket around. Do you remember that? Yeah. And if you wanted to contact somebody, well, yeah, there was email 25 years ago , but a last up was still done by a thing called facts, which is sure for facsimile, which I bet half of your listeners have no idea what we're talking about here. I agree with you. Think of it now. Now we have at booking.com. We have our AI trip planner, where you can just type in, I want to take a trip to Florida and have a communication going back and forth to help create the itinerary or price line has their AI product called penny. Or if you have an issue with your reservation at a restaurant, and we've hooked up because we don't all them set up yet with this, and you're talking to somebody to fix the reservation for that restaurant. It's actually being done by AI is fixing it. AI is doing that. And there's so many things that are so much better . So great. We've seen all this progress. But we also know that travel is still incredibly frustrating. Things go wrong. Weather, mechanical issues over bookings. I picked the wrong thing. I didn't want that. And with all the developments that we're getting in technology, all the new, genert AI, all the machine learning things that we've been doing that for we didn't machine learning stuff for more than a dozen years. So really is helping our business. But so many things coming forward and will enable travelers to have a much easier, better time. Essentially, you are going to be going around with the most sophisticated, the most knowledgeable, incredibly great travel advisor living in your pocket, because in your phone, and you'll be giving you advice, it'll give you a simple example. You're going Amsterdam, nice thing. And we're suggesting that you take a boat ride, nice canal trip. It 's great. And we also, there's a great museum, the rice museum to go there too. And we got all set up for you. It's all easy to be done. You're there. We know the weather on Thursday, when you're supposed to take this boat ride, it's going to probably rain. And we know you're currently scheduled for a Wednesday with the museum when it's sunny. And this is Tuesday. And we tell you , and I think it's a good idea, we'd like to change this for you, put you on the boat on the sunny day, Wednesday, go to the museum on the rainy Thursday. And we're doing that automatically through AI. And we're telling you this service coming to you on the phones, we put it, and it's going back and forth. And the rest, everything, everything. Just imagine you're walking around with the most expensive travel agent in the world who knows everything, everything, because all the database and knows you better than anything, because you have been buying across, and we know you, and we know what you like. And you don't have to say, I really want the IELC all the time. We know that we don't try and put you into the seat with the window on the plane. So many things. So we will say so much of the friction. And it goes all the way from you first start thinking about travel to all the way through it to the time you're back home safe, happy about the great, great vacation you took. You know, Glenn, you guys have been doing machine learning for well over a decade. You're all over AI. You know, as a leader, you know, how did you how did you identify the importance of that? And what have you done with yourself and your team to get this capability in AI where, you know, everybody else seems to be struggling with it. Everybody is struggling too. By the way, we're doing all these things where I continue to tell the team, we've got to go faster. You don't know what's going to come out tomorrow. Who knows what somebody's inventing in some garage somewhere that's going to come back and prove the new thing. I mean, just look at the, you know, you remember and again, many of your people may not go or listening. We'll remember Al Gore talking about the information highway. Remember that? The information highway where the information highway is filled with a wreckage of companies that did not see in the future how much things were going to change. And those are my God. Remember Blackberry? Where are we today? We're today. Yeah. We're Xerox. Xerox invented so much of what we do today. The mouse. I mean, so many like the list is endless of people who weren't think what is the next disruptive thing? How can we get ahead of that and try and do that? And it's hard. And you know, we both I'm sure we I did. I'm sure you read the innovators dilemma. Christians, this book, very famous book. And that is a problem because when you have a successful business and trying to disrupt it, it's very difficult because you're making money, your investors like this and you have to have a balance. So it's not easy to motivate people to go. We've got to go for the next new thing. But that's going to be risky and that's going to cost money. So you have to create the right balance. And we we've been fortunate that we have people who really do get it. And that's really good. Yeah, absolutely. And the brands and companies you mentioned, it's a graveyard. Those people that try to protect what they had versus seeing where the world was really going. One of my favorites is Blockbuster because if you 're a call, they had Netflix. They knew it. They knew where it was going. And they still couldn't do it because the pressure, I don't know how much you know the story. I know the whole story. Yeah. Absolutely. They had it, but they couldn't make that change. They couldn't do it. Hang it on. Hang it on. I'll take it. Glenn, this has been so much fun. And I want to have some more with what I call my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Okay, I hope you don't mind if I go slowly. The free words that best describe you smaller than average and stature. Younger looks younger than he is. And is willing to listen. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? There's nobody I like being me. Your biggest pet peeve. Okay, so this is, and I don't understand why my wife is, and I have a disagreement about this, but I grew up. You took anything you plate, glass, whatever, you put it in the dishwasher or you washed it the same and you put it in the drying rack. That's how I grew up. My wife grew up where you put the plates and everything into the sink and you wait until it gets so filled and then you rinse them and put them into the dishwasher and do it there. I don't understand why. I mean, who likes looking at a sink full of plates and dishes? I don't get it. I have to tell you, I'm kind of just blown away by this because with your stock going up 800 times, I'm surprised you even know what a dish washer is. I assure you, my friend, I assure you, I know. And by the way, here's the other one, the same area as my wife leaves that you have to rinse the plates and before you put it in the dishwasher. And I'm like, sweetheart, it's not a dish warmer or just drier. It's a dishwasher. Why do we have to wash it before we put it in? Whatever. Okay, this agreement. I love it. Who would play you in a movie? Who would make a movie that I'd be in, please? What's the biggest lesson you've learned from traveling? What a wonderful world it really is. It really is. And sometimes people don't recognize we only have one of them. There's only one place, earth. And you go around the world, it's so wonderful. I just I just hope that is, you know, for many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many generations beyond it's so wonderful. You have two tickets to any destination in the world. Where are you going and who are you taking with you? I'm going home because I'm somewhere else and I'm bringing my wife because she's with me too. I traveled last year. I could have to keep records. I do not sleep in my home bed more than half of last year. So everybody says, where do you want to go? I say, most likely I want to go home. What's something you wish more people knew about lawyers? They are trying to make the world better. They are doing their job in the way they believe is the right way to do things to help improve our society. What's the one thing you do just for you, Glenn? I worked out every day. Your most prized possession. I don't put a lot of stock into things. I could lose every physical thing. Yeah, maybe a little bum, but it wouldn't be a big deal. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? A podcast, possibly yours. What's something about you a few people would know? Well, then I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, not once, but twice. That does not surprise me. I'm just getting to know you, but I believe you and I'm surprised it's only twice. That's the end of the lightning round, Glenn. I just got a few more questions. I'll let you go here. I'm looking at you here on video and the people are watching us on YouTube. They're seeing as well. You're in great shape. You mentioned you work out every day. Walk me through that part of your life and how you prioritize health with all the demands that you have. I'll wake up in the morning. First thing I do is go down to my basement and do some exercise. In fact, even before I get downstairs, I was just talking with our CEO of a Goda. He's asking about it here. I say, "Okay, so I get coffee. I have a curry. I go downstairs from my bedroom, kitchen. One sit down. I get there. I go to the curry. I put the pot in. I'll do my push-ups right there." And if you put it for about the 12 ounce or the 10 ounce on the curag, that's about the right time to do your push-ups. Then I get another one because I have that 18 ounce or 20 ounce mug that we all walk around with nowadays. You put the second thing in and then do some sort of app thing. In the time to get your coffee ready, instead of just sitting there, standing there, looking at the machine, you can get something done. One, two, you're brushing your teeth. If you brush your teeth the way you're supposed to, you're supposed to do it two minutes each time. If you're like you bought one of the fancy electric ones that cut the timer on, it's going to be two minutes. What are you doing? You're just looking at yourself while you're brushing your teeth. That's a waste of time. You could do leg lifts. Just keep doing like this. Just keep doing like this. You can do this two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening. It's four minutes a day, seven days a week . Let's round up. Let's call it half an hour a week. Half an hour a week doing exercise that would have been wasted. That's ways you can get yourself going. Then there are other ways to motivate yourself. But it is really, I believe this absolutely that life is, all of life is probability. There is no guarantee working out. You can still get hit by the bus and you can be just as dead. It hit by the bus. Whether you worked out or you didn't work out, you're still going to be dead. People, unfortunately, terrible disease, we all know. But you increase the possibility, the possibility that you will live longer and have a healthier life by exercising. Why not? It's fun . It's enjoyable. And you have the possibility of living longer, hopefully. Why not do it? It sounds to me like you read that book, Tiny Habits. If you read that book, read that book. It's all about just doing a few little things. When you're doing the pushups when the kirk machines, you could have written a book. I thought you'd read it. Now you can write the damn thing. I guess I won't have to read it now. Hey, Glenn, when you look forward, what do you see as your unfinished business? My unfinished business is doing more nice things for my wife. We met when I was unemployed after I even fired, which is, actually, I would find that one interesting too. She was a lawyer at the time. And we were set up by friends, mutual friends, and I saw it. And it's interesting that she went out with me. And I kept saying brunch dates because I saw blood in all of our money. And the interesting thing is that she kind of liked the fact that because I played, I'd pick up her dry cleaning, I'd do lots of good things. And she didn't see me as somebody who would have the year, I'd be away from home and stuff. So I kind of owe her. Well, you guys, you guys are big great partners for sure. And it's a great attitude to have. And last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a leader? You only want one, but there's more than one. I mean, the first thing is, do you really want to be a leader and understand why do you want to be a leader ? So make sure you understand that, really understand why do you want to be a leader? What is driving this and understand that well? Because it's very easy to think you want to be a leader for the wrong reasons. That's why. Let me ask you before you go to two. Why did you want to be a leader? I never want I never made a big role to be a leader. We had our CEO was forced to be let go. Our chairman took over the temporary role as CEO while they did a search. I did not put my hat in the ring initially. Heads of our brands kept saying, Glenn, why don't you apply and stuff? Why don't you try and do it and stuff? Oh my God, no. And I said, I said, our chairman, I said, why sure, hope we can find somebody better than me. And well, well, why do you want to be a leader now then? Do you want to be a leader now? Here's that. Here's it. So I took so then I said, okay, I'll do it. Okay. Now the reason why and the reason I want to do is because I believed that I could help make our organization better than it was. Now, no doubt, maybe somebody could do it even better than I could do it. I'm sure there probably a lot, but nobody else is applying for it. So I believe at the time that I would help out by making our organization better, by making our organization better, we would make it better for our customers. And then we would do something good. And I believe we have done that. We have done that. We have grown significantly. It'll be, let's see now, actually, we just passed it actually. So I've been CEO now, I've entered my ninth year as CEO of this company. And I've been here, you know , 25. So I finished eight out of 25. You know, let's call it, you know, but the heck a third round off here, right? I've been CEO. We have gone through over my time as CEO, a lot of changes, a lot of difficulties, but a lot of great things. COVID was horrific, horrific thing we went through. But we've changed the business a lot too. When I first became CEO, our biggest company, Booking. com, all we did was I mentioned this agency model distributing hotels. Now we do many different travel verticals, flights. We merged in our car rental business. We do attractions, insurance. We are doing many different things that we never did before. And that is able to provide people with a better experience. And we have made great progress in creating the thing we call the connected trip, which is around top bringing it all together. And this is because we used to be just this agency, this we never took the money. We didn't do it. Now we have a whole payments program that's very big and very important. So we have made it much easier for our customers, to customers as I mentioned, our travelers and our partner suppliers. And we've made it better for both of them. So I feel that we got a lot more to do, of course, to make things better. But we're on our path. And now with Gen AI, I tell the organization as exciting as been, and what we all together be able to create over the last quarter of a century, we're just beginning. We are just beginning with this technology. It's going to be so much better. And it's kind of fun to help do this. Yeah. So the first thing was know why you want to be a leader, and then you are going to give me a second. Yeah. Well, the second thing is, okay, now, there. So one thing is, look at other people or leaders, learn, read, listen, see what parts you want to take from them to, I want to be like that kind of a leader. I want to do so. I want to be the way that person is. How do we learn? We learn from others. We learn reading. And that's the thing you've got to learn. And I'll tell you, it's unfortunate that, well, you have your, you've been doing what you've been doing to help people prepare to be a leader. But you know, so I went to the Wh arton School, undergrad, and Penn, and I went to Harvard Law School. There never was a course in how to be a leader, not at all. Yeah, Wharton, we had things called management courses, right? But they never really talked about what it means, what is leadership, what does that have to be? And I think that we could all benefit a lot if we all had some actual practical lessons in leadership. As part of our leadership group at our company, we are developing those now. And it's a shame though, you don't get that until you're already sort of like giving the job of being a leader. You know, that's true. We should go earlier. You know, one of the things that I've been very impressed by you is you're very self-effacing. You don't seem to take yourself too seriously. You don't claim to be the smartest person in the room. You know, is that sort of a superpower of yours as a leader ? You think you think that gets people to get behind you more? Or, you know, how do you think about that? I mean, do you do it, it comes naturally to you? Or is it something that you try to make happen? Or, you know, do you hear it coming out of your mouth when it pops out? Or tell me about it? One of the things that I've heard a lot about in this idea, this Buddhist shushin, beginner's mind. And not going with your pre-thought-up reason that you had started. So, for me, it's pretty easy because I don't have them. Like, it's about marketing. I don't know. It's recognizing it's so easy if you look at it that by depending on other people's expertise, we will achieve better things than just because you have a status level that therefore you would know. Just because you have a title does not give you instant knowledge and information at all. You just got to be willing to admit you don't know anything and ask and then try and do it and ask smart questions and then try, " Does this, why are we doing this? Explain again to me. How is this going to help? Why is this? But what about that?" And bringing people who have different opinions to debate it together. And that helps us form as a collective, better decision-making. So, I don't think it's actually that hard, actually. I think it's actually the way, you know, obviously sometimes you have to make the decision even though you don't have enough information and you're not as expertise as people who gave you that, but they gave you different information. And then you have to make a decision and that's a judgment and hopefully you've learned a little bit over time. Look at Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how he made decisions there. He was not an expert in nuclear missile stop and he wasn't a, you know, he had run a PT boat in World War II, you know, wasn't like a Admiral. And he had to make this incredible decision and he depended listening to other people. A lot of people gave a lot of different opinions. There are some of you that we should do Cuba today. And there are all four things. And he had to make that decision even though he had imperfect information and he had different experts, a lot of different stuff. And that ends up being the leaders, you know, part of the responsibility though, is making that ultimate decision when there is different opinions and such. And you know, I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of the leaders. I do it, you know, every week, you know. And one of the things that always impresses me is when I'm around someone who has so much incredible energy and passion for what they do. And I don't know how anybody could work at booking holdings and have you as a CEO and not say, hey, you know what, I may not agree with that guy all the time, but there's nobody that's putting his heart into it more than him. And there's nobody that's given us all more than he is. And, you know, he believes in me. And I think those are great characteristics you've displayed in this conversation. And I want to thank you for taking the time to have it. Well, I want to thank you. And I want to say though, there are 25,000 of us now. I think they all have pretty much the same type of enthusiasm and want to achieve too. So not just me. Glenn has led one of the biggest travel companies in the world through massive growth and major challenges. But you know what, this is a guy who never pretends to have all the answers. As he puts it, just because you have a title does not give you instant knowledge. Too many leaders feel pressure to have an opinion on everything. But the truth is the most effective leaders surround themselves with smart people, ask smart questions, and then listen. And that kind of humility is powerful. It's how you create a culture where people feel empowered and the best ideas win. Not just the loudest voices in the room. Not just the people who have the most power. Not just the people who have the big title. This week, when you're faced with a decision outside your expertise, I want you to pause. Instead of offering your own opinion or pretending like you have the answer when you really don't know it for sure. I want you to ask a question. Lean on the experts around you. You might be surprised at what you learn and how much stronger your team becomes because of it. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders know what they don't know. Coming up next on how leaders lead, I'm sitting down with Hayes Barnard, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Goodleap, a finance company that provides loans for sustainable home upgrades. I want to connect the brightest, most driven, most talented people, people that are on a mission to do good at meaningful scale. And to do that, boy, you better have a big enough mission for them to wrap their hearts around. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast so you don 't miss it. 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.