David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen. And 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 will have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Bob Greenfield, the former CEO of NASDAQ. Now these days NASDAQ is a powerhouse Stock Exchange. But boy, that wasn't the case with Bob took over. It was small and struggling. But during his time in charge, he grew the business. If you can believe this number by 2,000%, attracting companies like Apple, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Amazon to list on NASDAQ. And this conversation, we go behind the scenes of that amazing turnaround. And you can see for yourself how Bob's relentless focus and drive help make it happen. If you've ever looked at a big project, or even just your day's to do list, and you've felt overwhelmed, this conversation is going to help you tap into the power of focus. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Bob Greenfield.

Bob, thanks so much for taking time to be on the show. My pleasure

Bob Greifeld 1:24 

to be here today. David, you know,

David Novak 1:25 

well, how's your week going? Bob?

Bob Greifeld 1:27 

How's the week going? Yeah, well, just starting with I think, Well, I'm here with you. Nothing unique going on. And you're working on in the world of finance? A couple of things, but I can't really say it right now. Public Company rules. You know, I don't want to violate those.

David Novak 1:42 

You know, when you think about what you're working on, what does have you the most excited these days without giving away a deal?

Bob Greifeld 1:48 

Well, you know, I've always been a person who gets excited about building things. So I believe in in the process, right? So when I see teams coming together, and identifying mission and focusing on that mission, I know good results will happen. So in all my business endeavors, I try not to pay attention to the here and now. But what is the trend line? What are we doing? Right? What is the process? What we're building is doing right? And where we're gonna go? Yeah, that's

David Novak 2:14 

really obvious in your book. And, you know, this is all about your your leadership story. And I want to get to that. And you know, I always like to start out at the beginning, Bob, tell, tell us about your upbringing.

Bob Greifeld 2:25 

So I was raised with a family of five children, and my dad worked for the post office and always had two and three jobs. So it was a humble upbringing, but certainly you learn the value of hard work in that environment. He learned the value of family, when you have five children, and we're all in it together. Where

David Novak 2:44 

were you in the order there,

Bob Greifeld 2:45 

I was number two, I have an older sister and then two brothers, two other brothers and one of the sister will tell

David Novak 2:53 

us a story about your your childhood days, that might give us a real indication of what kind of person you've become.

Bob Greifeld 2:59 

Well, I would say this. So right now with my properties, I have somebody mow the lawn for me. And I have no guilt associated with it. Because one of the side jobs my father had was running a landscaping business. So I would mow when I was a kid, eight, 910 1112 years old, I was behind the mower every afternoon ever, every Saturday. So in my time, Mo had plenty of lawns. But you know, that was a certain way to learn hard work. And I remember my father always saying to me, son, you're not going to make it by physical labor. You know, you've got to find a way to use your head. And those kinds of simple thoughts. When you get that as a kid stays with you and drives you're going forward. So I was always looking for the smart or clever way. Right in terms of how to proceed with work. Well, how

David Novak 3:42 

did you find your way into the world of business?

Bob Greifeld 3:45 

So it was interesting. I was an English undergraduate major English, English, yes, English. And one of the people I read when I was an English major was this poet from St. Louis called William Burroughs. And so I was looking for a job. And I saw Brown was at Burroughs Corporation, which was early in the computer game. So I approached them and kind of my sales ability started to reveal itself and I, you know, kind of somehow got a job there and the computer age in 1979, you didn't have that many people computer science degrees. So we're looking for just kind of talented people. So then I got sucked into the computer world in 1979. And I remember kind of falling in love with computers in high school. So it was just a marriage. And it was not you didn't have to be great and insightful to see the computers were going to be more and more important in society, not less so so it was a good training. Yeah,

David Novak 4:40 

kind of downplaying that because you know, most people were very afraid of computers back then. Yeah, so you were really a trailblazer, sort of a technology geek, even in those days, maybe a little

Bob Greifeld 4:49 

nose days. I always a great affinity for it. And when I I went to grad school at night at NYU, and 95% of the class or finance majors and I was one of the few that were you know, computer a science major from my MBA. So I just found it fascinating. So I was lucky to find my calling, you know, fairly early, you know, always being around computers. So when people identify me as a Wall Street guys that how I self identify self identify, you know, as a somebody associated with technology business,

David Novak 5:18 

did you have an aha moment that said, Hey, this is where I have to be.

Bob Greifeld 5:22 

I would say no, but probably over a six month period of time, I realized that but if anything in high school we had, you can remember, we'd have to dial in to the local state university to get access to the computer with the modem with a noisy to put it in that little hole was called an acoustic coupler. So that was, you know, junior high school. I was like one of the five kids or, you know, fooling around to computers. So I early on said, you know, I just had great affinity for it. You know,

David Novak 5:51 

there's so much we can talk about in your career. So I had to kind of move along, you're, you know, you were quite happy working at sunguard data systems. You were an executive vice president there before you joined NASDAQ. And prior to that, you'd been a software entrepreneur and a co owner of ASC. As you were coming up, and you were working your way up and companies like this, did you have a defining moment that sort of changed your career trajectory?

Bob Greifeld 6:17 

Well, I would say this, that the I went to Burroughs Corporation was there for 10 years or so. And basically got the promotions that were available, where I got to be a district manager running the New York region. But we realized that computers at that time the world was changing, we moved from mainframes to minis micros were coming and Burroughs, which was Unisys was really not on top of the game. And a defining moment, I said, What's remarkable about the software business, is the marginal cost back then was the cost of the tape, you know, to produce the and now you just can download it. And as I need to be in the software business, the hardware business was going to be commoditized. Right as compared to 1979. So I had a defining moment said software Where's where I want to go? And then you know, I was slotted in certain career path. And that blows up when you, you know, become an entrepreneur and, you know, become successful with that. And so we sold our company, to Sony guard in 1999. It was probably a couple years too early, but it's always be better to be a couple years too early than selling in a couple years too late, that kind of thing.

David Novak 7:25 

You know, so then you get the opportunity to go be CEO for the first time and be the CEO of NASDAQ. What was the business situation like when when you went to NASDAQ and and but when did you really realize when you were evaluating that you were the right person for the job? Yeah,

Bob Greifeld 7:43 

so when I was an entrepreneur, we built trading systems for NASDAQ market makers. That's a key part of the background. So I knew exactly how the NASDAQ market operated. And believe it or not, and this seems made up but my master's thesis at NYU was on the NASDAQ stock market. So there was some business to Destiny, a little bit of a destiny there. So I had firm views on NASDAQ in the context when I came there is NASDAQ had been part of the NASD which was a regulator. So people working there had self selected to work basically for regulatory kind of culture. Then as that was in the process of separating from the NASD, wanted to go public and obviously listed on their own market. But what happened was competition was forming and NASDAQ was in dire straits. And they had a venture capital firm called Hellman and Friedman out of San Francisco had invested in NASDAQ to help them along with the mission to go public. And so Hellman, Freeman and Warren Hellman in particular, replace the prior CEO and they were really the driving force to hire me. And I was an unusual hire. Because typically, if you go to an exchange, it was a sinecure, a job, you know, it was a person of gravitas who came from a long line of investment banking, and I was none. None of that, but worn out there in the valley. Recognize that NASDAQ when you peel it away, the primary door of the exchange license was a technology processing business and saw that I had been a successful entrepreneur was able to then take that entrepreneurial spirit to NASDAQ as we tried to go public. And obviously you had domain expertise in terms of what the markets were about.

David Novak 9:23 

Well, you were you know, you weren't a Wall Street guy. No, your technology guy right, coming in from the outside not being a Wall Street or did you find any pushback on you coming into that job? So

Bob Greifeld 9:34 

you're certainly the expert in leadership, but I was, I took a leadership position which was short term but necessary. So we did not have time to get involved with a consensus driven approach, which is my preferred way to go on market share was declining every day. Our technology could not compete with what was known as East CNES and I had to shock the organization. So we ran a command and control or replace two of the direct reports by eight o'clock on my first day. And what that sort of the purpose of is that stopped all the internal discussions people wanted to have, where we have to go. And I said, Okay, this is where we're going. Right. And there was no really discussion in those early days. And in the book, I talked about the fact the early days, I always felt I got there six months, too late. So our survival was somewhat in doubt, our financial position was precarious, and I just didn't have the time.

David Novak 10:34 

You know, I went red, where you had this bold step in the interview process, even were you laid out at the interview process, this five steps that you're going to take to turn this business around? And I was thinking, How in the world can this guy possibly, you know, know what those five things are without digging in a little bit deeper? What gave you the courage to come out and say, this is what needs to be done without necessarily having all the facts? Well, here,

Bob Greifeld 10:57 

here's some of the backstory. So I came to know who the other candidate for the job was. And I had actually interviewed that person while I was on the board of a knight securities. And I knew how articulate that person was. So if I thought it was a standard back and forth to the interview, I might not come on come out ahead. And so I said, Let me approach it a different way. So that was the genesis of the approach. But I did then know very clearly, I had very clear set what I wanted to do. And so in that final interview, I spoke for 15 and 20 minutes about what these five steps are. And I think like four of the five of them were were essentially right, they're not to brag. But you know, I had been involved with NASDAQ. So when I was an entrepreneur building trading systems in the NASDAQ ecosystem, you saw exactly how that company operated set a pretty good handle on it,

David Novak 11:48 

we'll get into some of those things that you did. But you know, it's it was striking to me that you had this 100 day plan, right? You know, when you when you talk to other leaders, they move into a new job, how important do you think it is to make those first 90 days, 100 days really count?

Bob Greifeld 12:03 

Absolutely critical. So you know, you have the listening tour approach to leadership when you first come in, and if you have the luxury of time, that could be a better approach. But I in no way shape, or form, thought I had the luxury of time. So put it in perspective where the whole organization can kind of implode upon itself. So our market share in stocks it listed on NASDAQ was down to like 16%. And it wasn't too soon before. At that time, the New York Stock Exchange was led by Dick Ross, who was very capable competitor was gonna say, why are you listening with this exchange and not even trading your stock? So we losing the transaction volume, the revenue associated with the possible market data? And then once you start losing the listing franchise, you know, you're it's kind of game over?

David Novak 12:46 

You know, you're describing such a turnaround opportunity? Is that what really challenged you would you rather go in and turn around the business or run one that was already ticking, it

Bob Greifeld 12:54 

was always rather turn around about operation, right. It's always you know, that's certainly the ways my brains wired. And it's just a lot of fun, to see what's possible and able to do it. Obviously, if you come into a smoothly running ship, there's always opportunities to expand and grow, but it's a lot more fun to be there. And, you know, one of the reasons I stepped down from NASDAQ is in the early days, I felt like it was jumping off of a cliff in a lot of times you didn't know where you're gonna land, you know, 14 years later than you had, you know, you had a set way of doing things. And I called it the grinding of the gears, right? You had to run the bureaucracy, you know it better than anybody, it's an important necessity, once you get a certain size, you have to have have certain formality to the organization.

David Novak 13:42 

You know, you had, it had to be really heavy stuff, you know, coming in to to be a CEO of this venerable, iconic institution. Yeah, the market share is 16%. But the whole world doesn't really know. All right, you know, did you ever feel with all the stuff that was going on and the challenges that you had and being a CEO for the first time did you ever feel like you're in over your head?

Bob Greifeld 14:06 

Well, I wouldn't say in over my head. But you know, the first six months, I was worried about our whether we're going to be successful or not. So it took probably two years before I knew that we were going to get there. So we did 47 acquisitions in my time. There was one that was fundamental to our success. When I got there. We didn't have any technology in house in the States. We had one piece of technology in Europe, which is unproven, so he's gonna have to bet the whole market on this unproven technology was based on Windows and Windows was itself unproven at that scale. So we're able to acquire inet and that gave us the core technology and also increased our market share, we had to then integrate it all in which his own set of challenges but once I saw that the integration we had completed the net deal, the integration was happening. I said, now I can get into normal business mode and think okay, what are we going to be in three or five years? But before that period of time, it just felt like survival.

David Novak 15:03 

Yeah, you know, but you had an intense belief and your ability, it's obvious, you know, did that just come from the fact that you knew what had to be done? Well, I

Bob Greifeld 15:13 

think that happened from it comes also from fear of failure. So when I say is the difference between success and failure are two sides of a very thin dime, and you're not preordained to succeed are predestined to fail. So I would wake up every morning with confidence, but knowing that nothing's guaranteed, you can fail with this thing. And that, you know, that's a powerful motivator.

David Novak 15:35 

You know, one of the five things that you laid out to the board that you wanted to do was to make sure that the team stopped being satisfied with being number two to the New York Stock Exchange, what was the biggest thing you did that to define reality for your team? And, you know, how did you really like the competitive fire where this became sort of like an unacceptable mindset?

Bob Greifeld 15:56 

Well, you know, you've really had to put a new team in, right. So in terms of the management team, the only person who came from old desert was Adina Friedman, who is my very capable successor there, or so we hired a couple people got a lot of people through acquisitions, and then we grew people internally, more and more over time there. And you know, one of the first things I said is we followed the book Good to Great, so and everybody read that, and it's the most important thing is getting the right people on the bus. As much as you have to have a one three and five year strategic plan, they're always going to be wrong, right? So you have to have the athletes on the bus who will direct it as this the world changes. So I was all about let's get the proper team in place, right, the right team, and then we'll really decide where to go. So you use

David Novak 16:47 

the book good dude, great as a shared experience to really take people from me to a way where you can all get on the same page.

Bob Greifeld 16:54 

Yes, definitely. And again, the culture when I first got there, nobody thought in those terms, right. NASDAQ had been a monopoly as part of the regulator. So, you know, we had a lot of people choose to leave because they wanted to be in a regulated environment. I said, we're going to weigh, measure and count everything. It's going to be meritocracy. It's going to be based on performance, you'll have incentives, and not everybody wants that, so that they left there, but then you had to get the message. Okay, now we're going to try to get best practices in terms of the culture. Now we grow. And that was, you know, a good way for me to communicate through,

David Novak 17:24 

you know, you say your motto is people first, right? That sounds like pablum, when a lot of CEOs say that, you know, why? And how did you really make that real? So we'll just wasn't the typical BS?

Bob Greifeld 17:39 

Well, let me tell you why I think is important. So I would say if you had a better widget than anybody else, and nobody else could produce that widget, you can violate a lot of management principles, right? Because people will come to that unique widget you have. But the fact is, that the world we live in, even if you have a competitive advantage, it's temporary, and people catch up. So if you're in the similar widget business, that is going to be about how you execute your plans, right? And you're going to execute your plans by having engaged employees, right hard stop, there's a fundamental difference of coming to work to work nine to five, with coming to work with passion, right? So we would take 10% of our incentive play, pay, and based upon how engaged the surveys we run, how engaged our employees were. So you really have an employee can be at a level one. But if he's engaged, he's level 2.5. So the productivity yield of having engaged employees is massive, right?

David Novak 18:41 

People talk about engagement all the time. Now, you were really ahead of the time we were majoring that and bonusing people, yeah,

Bob Greifeld 18:46 

you just walk the halls and you see people who are happy campers are coming to work there. I think they're 10 times more productive, then somebody just putting in their time. And you know, this, you know, obviously, very well. Now, like I said, if I had a better mousetrap that nobody else can replicate, then you can do a lot, you know, you can do a lot of bad management thing.

David Novak 19:13 

You also say, promote before you recruit, yeah. Can you tell us a story of how you sought out a high potential person sort of a diamond in the rough and you elevated?

Bob Greifeld 19:23 

Well, Adina Friedman would be the one person my successors, I would say this in terms of why I say that, right? When you interview somebody, it's an imperfect process, right? And you try to get better at it, and you do get better at it. But I look at somebody who's been in the shop, you've been interviewing that person for five years, right? Your hit rate of putting that person in new position is so much higher than just taking somebody from outside. So we tried to promote 80% from within, and we felt very good about that. Now, if you overdo it, you do 100% Then you get too insular. So you need to get that 20% Fresh blood coming in. But our bias was always to try to hire people we knew we knew the pluses, we knew their minuses, and we knew, you know, what we can do there. So that that was successful. So Edina being the lead example, but you look at the team that I left there, you know, I think at least 80% were homegrown. Well, how

David Novak 20:19 

did you identify Edina? You know, she's sort of a diamond in the rough, maybe, you know, what was it? And then what do you do to elevator?

Bob Greifeld 20:26 

Yeah, it's not that hard. Yeah. I mean, you've been there. So I mean, when you see talented people, right, who are engaged, they really do stand out. But when I say in the book, it's important to recognize that in a corporate setting, you know, articulation is over rewarded. So you have to make sure these people who look and talk good are actually producing. And when I recruited Edina, back to NASDAQ from Carla, we said, here's the two year plan, you have to produce every step of the way, right? This is nothing is preordained. And so we did from a management style is and it's opposite of Wall Street, we take the first month, month and a half of the year and list everybody's objectives for the year, down to the most minut detail for every single person in the employee in the employee base. So this took a lot of time, we're really had to know exactly what we were trying to do for the next 10 and a half months, the way it worked in a year, at the end of the year, if you did those, those those things, you didn't have to be nice to me, right? You had to smile at me, you would get paid. It was a function, right? These are pure objectives, a Wall Street, typically, they have a hunk of money at the end of the year, they say, Okay, who is this and they kind of chop it up, we were the opposite. We put down 1000s and 1000s of objectives. And then you see who actually performs with those objectives. And what's great about that, beyond the Complan, it forces you to know what you're trying to do what you're trying to accomplish. And that sounds silly, right. But many companies or most companies, they go into the year having a broad sense, right, but not at the really detailed level. So we you know, it would be agonizing to go through, okay, and you know, at the single contributor level, what they have to contribute, and it all rolls up and that kind of thing, and it just made it for a functioning machine.

David Novak 22:15 

You know, I understand that you you really had a robust debate process for your executive team, you know, explain a time where you went through that process, and it really paid off for you where you might have gone down a different path. Yeah, well,

Bob Greifeld 22:31 

I'll give this one that everybody can relate to. So we have the market site is in Times Square, right? And it's where we do our market opens and market closes. When I got there, we're losing, you know, half a million dollars a day. And so I'm trying to cut costs and this thing sticking out there like a sore thumb. It's costing us 25 $30 million a year, no visible return. And so I was hell bent. And let's get out of this lease. And we had the debates on this. And I came to realize that would have been a mistake. So when I talk to listed companies, right, when they talk about coming to NASDAQ, they're talking about coming to that market site in Times Square. They bring their mom, their dad, their kids for the opening bell ceremony, some they're seeing okay, this is kind of silly. It's costing me so much money. Why do I need that? Right? And then everybody had been there at NASDAQ for a long time saying no, Bob, you got to really pay attention. And they were completely right. Now we did run it more efficiently than they had been running it before. And I think in certain ways better. But that's, you know, we think about NASDAQ why it's a big public image. And as a big brand is certainly that market open ceremony.

David Novak 23:43 

It was the emotional connection people Brandley you were kind of be an unemotional looking at, then you said, oh, yeah, I was guys would have been wrong. It's great. When people save yourself, you know, you seem to be an instinctual leader. I mean, you look at things and you say, Hey, let's go do this. You know, this is an example of where the instinct wasn't necessarily correct. But can you give an example where you balance your instincts with data, and you really get to the right decision?

Bob Greifeld 24:10 

So I would say this, I would never make a decision. In a given day, I have a belief that sleeping on something allows the brain to sort through the different factors there. But I when I made a decision, I always wanted to have the pros and the cons, right. So we had the Socratic Socratic debate I want it's okay, why is this not a good decision to have people arguing quite passionately. And I think at the end of the day, you have to be instinctual or you have to be your gut. But where's the gut come from? The gut comes from the big data you build up in your head, right through the years of knowledge that you have. It's the facts you accumulate with this particular thing. And then it will come together and a lot of times it comes together after a good exercise session, a good night's sleeping okay, this is where We're gonna go. So it's feels like it's a gut instinct, but really isn't, it's still a lot, a lot different driven by data. You know, you've,

David Novak 25:07 

you've seen a lot of CEOs come and come and go, What would be the key factor in your mind that it really helps a CEO Thrive versus struggle?

Bob Greifeld 25:16 

Yeah, I have very strong opinions on this, I had the unique opportunity to meet probably more CEOs than anybody, and I meet all these bright, engaging, hardworking, folks. And then three years later, you hear they're not in the job anymore. So if you get to be a CEO, right, you get there, because you're very bright and you're driven. You're hardworking. So why do you fail? So me, you fail, because you don't do things that lever your time, right? So you always have to pick the items and have the biggest lever effect on the organization. CEOs have to be comfortable with not being great at everything? Do you have 100 things to do on your To Do lists, you got to pick the 10 that matter? And do them great, and you can't get hung up on the bottom 10 That you're not doing? Well. Right. And so I think a lot of CEOs don't have the ability to not try to excel at everything. So I would always try to say myself, what do I have to excel at what I have to do? And what has the most profound impact on the organization?

David Novak 26:17 

What did you have a process? Or what would be a trick of the trade that you might have used to really get to that? What was your process?

Bob Greifeld 26:23 

That's a great question. So you know, it depended. But obviously, you can, when you join leverage, you can see what has the biggest financial return over time, right? Is this a really big decision that I have to be involved with uniquely, that kind of thing? Is this going to make a an extra half a million dollars worth of revenue of $500 million worth of revenue? So you have that kind of guy? And or is this something internally is going to have a dramatic impact in how the company operates? If it's just a detail, then you know, somebody else should be handling it. But if it's going to affect the 1000 employees, and they might be less engaged and more engaged based on that decision, then you know, that's what

David Novak 27:04 

you really thought about leverage in the truest sense out about that, you know, I also love it when you say that leaders has to face reality and use the word relentlessly. You know, why?

Bob Greifeld 27:17 

It's just amazing the capability capacity of the human brain to obscure what is reality, you want to see and perceive the way you want. This

David Novak 27:27 

is an example of where, you know, maybe at NASDAQ where I was

Bob Greifeld 27:31 

going to come up with something it was your golf game or something like that. Well, that's not very good. Now your game is very good there. So we'd say so like, in the early days, we would say we want to attract noisy companies to come list with NASDAQ, and we have a better trading mechanism, we have a better product. And I'm saying to our guys, well, we really don't in the eyes of the customer. They have they're defining the product this way, we're defining it that way. You have that kind of mismatch associated with it. So I always, you know, what is the customer really thinking about what we offer versus what we think we're being, you know, perceived by the customer as a constant thing you can always find you're mistaken on? Yeah.

David Novak 28:16 

You know, NASDAQ was a leader in technology, and it's early days, but it really fell behind you come in as a technology leader, you know, you're that's you're really you're acing the cap there. You know, how did you bring technology back to the forefront because NASDAQ really lost its way? What do you How did you change the culture back to where it needed to

Bob Greifeld 28:35 

be? Yeah, so what's interesting in the book is I kind of have to go full circle. So when I got there, NASDAQ had strong technology, they make a rule one release every year, I call it a battleship. And it was like perfect technology, it would work could be failsafe, but we had competitors who are now putting new software releases out every week, sometimes every day, and there was so much rickety and the system failed, they would just restarted up right. If NASDAQ failed, it would be in the Wall Street Journal there. So we had to take our battleship and make it more like a PT boat. And you know, to defend the old NASDAQ folks, it's not black and white right there. We're engineering for a a different market, but I got there in a time where the market was going through rapid change. So one of my recurring themes is, you know, your approach to situations your management philosophy kind of depends on where you are. So I had a situation where the market was dramatically changing. They didn't care about reliability as much as they did and you had to respond to that customer need then customers change in time and more back the old ways where the market was more stable and reliability became you know, more paramount Paramount there. So you've got to, you know, always understand what the deck of cards you're playing are today, because they will be different in the same market tomorrow.

David Novak 29:57 

Well, you really build your capability on the techniques As the front and back to where it became world class, how important was the human element and really making NASDAQ go with your customers.

Bob Greifeld 30:09 

I incredibly important, you know, I use the word I used as relentless. So we had to be relentlessly focused on on on the customers. And we were fortunate in that year, we had a competitor go through a bit of turmoil there. And anytime, you nothing better than seeing your competitors somewhat implode, as you go along, that makes life so much easier. But at the end of the day, it's people. So we had to make NASDAQ, a place where the top technologists on the planet wanted to work. And that was made easier by the fact that we were a bleeding edge, right, and we push ourselves to be bleeding edge. So I got there, we were trying to get down to the millisecond response time in our what's known as the Automatch, the fundamental exchange, and now you know, they're down, you know, towards nanoseconds. So you had, the people could really engineer a system that outside of the DoD didn't exist. So that was, gave us the ability to attract great talent, and we made it a fun place to work.

David Novak 31:08 

You know, an old adage, new obviously believe in this is to listen and respond to the voice of the customer. Can you tell us a story where you really got a great idea from a customer just by listening?

Bob Greifeld 31:18 

Well, I'll tell you a couple of thoughts that we got from customers, which are great, but that didn't pan out as businesses. So you know, when you think I always debate, you know, the Steve Jobs approach, you know, you'll take the customers where they want to go. But one of the things and this is the customers are telling us, we need to get better research coverage on the smaller companies. So because when you had research coverage that would attract investors attract volume, and hopefully help their stock price. So we spent a fair bit of money on building up a research network important and conjunction with Reuters. And there's only one thing worse than having one cut, no customers, and that's having one. So we have one, you got to activate all the support networks and get that so we like a half a dozen customers are part of this research network. As a problem the market still has today. Right? Yum, brands, Apple doesn't have a issues with research coverage, but you go down, if you're a $500 million market cap company a lower than you, you have an issue with that. So you know, I take customers is valuable for the small incremental stuffs you want to do in your product. But my feeling is again, for the bigger moves, you have to kind of come up with it yourself. But when you say come up with yourself, that's a misnomer in that it's still you synthesizing everything, you know, all the customer impact, customer feedback impact to you. And then putting it together this what we need to do. So my general advice is small stuff from customers. Biggest stuff you got to kind of take customer input is one of the inputs, most certainly not the only one, how big idea was dual listing for you. It was big at the time, it was a lot of fun. And that came we were went to see Charles Schwab. And he said, What about dual listing? And I immediately rejected it thinking he was just trying to get the meeting over and have a pleasant meeting because you know, we weren't there. But then we got in the elevator afterwards with Bruce office who's running that part of the business. So so that has some merit, because the economics of the listing business weren't that important. It was the branding element. So do have companies say yes, I want to also list on NASDAQ, we got great brand awareness out of it. And that helped us get on the march of having actual company switch. So right now, I think NASDAQ is up over a trillion dollars in market cap has switched from lazy to NASDAQ. And it started with the dual listing as the first step I gotta give, you know, Chuck credit for that

David Novak 33:48 

you've met so many great CEOs, you name the top three that impressed you the most?

Bob Greifeld 33:54 

Well, I think if you sit and listen to Bill Gates's talk on any topic, which we used to get at the micro CEO Summit, it's just amazing the man's breadth of knowledge. And I happen to be watching a MIT podcast last night about battery technologies is one of my passions. And sure enough, Bill Gates was the funding source. And Bill Gates approached this professor early saying I'm there. So you talk about anything good in the world that can happen? You know, I think you'd have to put bill at the head of the list. And I remember meeting Steve Jobs. And we were both going to a session with Hank Paulson. We'd sponsor it for some of the leading CEOs in the valley. I happen to get there early. He was there early. And it was interesting. He had a different aura. You know, within 10 seconds, you knew you're in with a different type of human being and that was, you know, something you'll just remember your whole life there. And then the other one it was covered in the book is me meeting Jeff Bezos for the first time so I'm telling that story. That's a great you Yeah, well, we were both, you know, just regular people. So I was a software entrepreneur and I was the ugliest demo doll on the planet. But I'd bring around this big 20 inch monitor cathode ray tube, and set up in the office and booted up. And hopefully the software would work and go through a demonstration, which is primarily screen and mouse based. So go into this office is maybe nine by 12, but 911. And I said, I don't know where I'm gonna fit this thing in. So the guy behind the desk says to me, you know, don't set up just tell me what it does. And I said, Well, it's kind of hard, because this is not like a piece of middleware. It's a screen based system. He said, No, no, you can just tell me so All right, I said, I don't have to set the boxes up. The software's guaranteed to work if I'm just talking about it, if I can have any bugs in this, I started talking. And then I look up, the gentleman's got his eyes closed. So okay, this is now getting very weird as far as demonstrations go, because I don't have a computer and the guy's eyes aren't open, then like 15 seconds later, he asked a very intelligent question and puts his eyes, you know, shuts his eyes. Again, this goes on for 45 minutes, and then we finished the demo. So I like to say, and that was Jeff when he was just an employee at De Shaw. And I like to say he was the pure epitome of a visionary who is visualizing the software, you know, back back, back in the day and the McKenzie was in the next office. So, you know, they're, you know, they're before Jeff was Jeff. And he got it. Yeah, he got

David Novak 36:29 

over saying, I want to ask you, you know, you have so much success, obviously, you know, when everyone has an epic fail, you know, what would be yours? And what did you learn from it? Well,

Bob Greifeld 36:39 

it is very clearly Facebook. So we bungled the Facebook IPO. And that was, you know, that was the one of the few times where, you know, we're known in the business world where I became known in the general world, which I didn't really want to be. And what's interesting here, you know, the normal thing for SEO to do when something like that happens is you fire people, right? And you feel good doing it. But what happened there, it ties back to I was talking about before, I had to examine the root cause of what happened there. And really what happened was tied back to the fact that I had led to technology people, which I always venerated, taken plea control the shop, they had engineered the software without the users, our business users wanting it right. And they had the control to do that. And we were still running NASDAQ, like I had to run it in Oh, three, but I had to change NASDAQ back to a more institutionalized culture. And so again, it's situational. If I came in Oh, three, and kept the institutionalized culture, we would have been out of business, right? So we put in really a startup culture, guys releasing software, technology, guys, I worshipped. Everybody knew it, right. I had my core team, they were the inner circle, but the world had changed. And now you're doing the Facebook IPO. Nobody cares, that you've got this innovative software thing that does things, they just want the stupid thing to work. So I had to then move the culture back more to where it was where I got there, you know, more intelligently, obviously, it was interesting is I didn't fire people. But everybody who B was from that older culture, they in innovative culture, they left, right, they didn't want to come. And I knew they would, right. So you have these bright, talented people that you'd want if you starting up a business, you know, seven days a week. But now we're saying, Okay, we're going to go with structured releases, you're not going to control when the product goes into release, it's going to be the user. The user is going to give you the specs, you listen to the user specs and then you program to it. And then they don't want that. So I didn't have to fire up people but in really but within a year or two everybody associated with the culture had built in oh three for the core team said, you know, I'm gonna go find some take care of itself. Yeah. Yeah, but that was a great learning experience. And that's why I keep saying you got to understand that was right. Yesterday, is by definition not right tomorrow, right? So I did exactly the right thing. And oh, three, we wouldn't have survived. But then we had to evolve back more to where we weren't as the business became more institutionalized. So that was a great learning experience. Now I want to

David Novak 39:25 

have a little fun with it man haven't done but we have a little more fun with you and ask you a lightning round of questions with quick response. Okay, so what would be the three words that best describe you

Bob Greifeld 39:36 

intends hopefully have things in context and a decent guy.

David Novak 39:46 

What's your biggest pet peeve of all?

Bob Greifeld 39:49 

Why I don't like it. I like things planned out. Right. I know the world will never be the way you want it to be. Like I said, you have to have a one and three year five five year plan, but it'll never work. worked out that way. So I don't expect that, but to people just to come and work kind of blindly with not knowing when the mission or where the direction is kind of drives me crazy because it's just you're wasting cycles. If you could

David Novak 40:12 

trade places with one person for a day, who would it be? And why?

Bob Greifeld 40:16 

Bob Dylan? Why? Well, I was an English major. So that's still part of my roots. There. So you haven't met many presidents. But if I had to meet one person on the planet, I'd want to meet Bob Dylan. But you know, he was a shy reclusive guy he wouldn't actually say anything to me. Client lunch, it'd be a quiet

David Novak 40:35 

you know, what would be a random fact that about yourself that few people would know?

Bob Greifeld 40:41 

Well as gotten some publicity by have turtles as pets, live turtles as pets. there and they're down here in Florida. They're loving the weather the tortoises.

David Novak 40:52 

Okay, and lastly, how much can you benchpress it's your it's your height,

Bob Greifeld 40:56 

my height? 380.

David Novak 40:59 

This guy only weighs about 160 pounds. That's pretty impressive. You know? So the turtle your favorite animal? Why?

Bob Greifeld 41:07 

Well, I think obviously, I really relate to them in some way. But you know, it's a message, right? A turtle is persistent. They're living Walking Dinosaurs, right? They're dinosaurs on the earth. They're not like going for them. But they survive. Right? So I see that. And you know, in terms of business books I read, I remember what as a young man, I read a book on Bill Gates. And he said he never succeeded at something the first time he tried. And that just stuck with me. So I'm definitely a perseverance kind of fellow. Don't expect it to be easy. Don't expect to succeed. The first time you keep at it, you get where you need to go,

David Novak 41:43 

you know, you're also doing a lot of good in the world. And you founded the USA TF Foundation, which supports athletes from disadvantaged backgrounds for the next generation of Olympics. How did you get into that?

Bob Greifeld 41:56 

Well, my daughter ran track. And she was a sprinter. So and a long jumper. And so we were primarily with the kids who came from the inner city, you know, not the distance runners. And you saw how hard they work to be good. And some of the stereotype is a lot of natural ability, but its natural ability levered by hard work. And the theory of the case was, if you spend 10 years, right, running track, right, you're learning delayed gratification, right? I would love playing pickup basketball, I played a lot of basketball my day, right? That's fun in the moment. But if you're any track, the coach says, Okay, I want you to go out on this track, run around the track as hard as you can, you're gonna get two minutes the rest, then you get to do it again. Right, it gets to do that 10 times. So that's not the most fun, right? So you're learning you got to work hard today to be successful tomorrow. So I think track and field has a good way of doing it. And it's an easy sport in the, you know, less advantaged areas, because it doesn't take a lot of equipment, and you know, people can run without a lot of training. That's great. Yeah,

David Novak 43:01 

you know, you're a hard worker, obviously, I mean, you're driven, you know, you you put in a lot of time, How'd you learn how to manage your your work life balance, or digital? And did that have any impact on on your decision to retire?

Bob Greifeld 43:17 

That's a great question. So I say, I said to people, many times, if you're looking for balance, you're going to fail, right? It will not exist. If you want to be successful, there's a price you have to pay, and involves a lot of hard work. I'd also say it's a marathon, not a sprint, at times you have to sprint, right. But you have to be able to pace yourself. I've lost more managers trying to sprint for too long a period of time by trying to work too hard. But I think you can get an integrated life, you need a good life partner with that, right. But if you think there's balance, I think that's too high of a goal, but have a great integrated life. I've been fortunate, fortunate to be married for the same woman for I think, 38 to 39 years, something like that. You can't do it without the family support. It's just impossible. Do you think you're going to come to work at 100%? Productivity? If you have a lot of commotion in your private life? I don't see it happening that way. So I think it's certainly a team effort on the personal side. You can't do it. And certainly one of the reasons I and I mentioned in the book wanted to retire is when as you know, when the kids are little, they're there. Right? As they get older, you have to meet their schedules. Right. And so I wanted to be in a position to meet their schedules. This

David Novak 44:36 

evolving to the times again, yeah, this is great. You know, so let me wrap this up with one last question here. Bob, what what what's your unfinished business? What's what how are you going to focus the rest of your life?

Bob Greifeld 44:47 

Well, that's a big question. That's a big question. So I would say this, you know, one is I'm working 30 to 40% of what I was doing before, and I think that's a good number, right? You should never go from 100 to 02 is obviously spending more time on my charitable activities, which is a good thing. And you get a different kind of reward out of that. I'm waiting for grandchildren. I have three kids and no grandchildren yet. But obviously I'm there, you know, for the family and the family being extended family. I'm fortunate to have my both parents alive, which not gonna let, yes, I wanted to be there for them as they get, you know, the last trips around the track.

David Novak 45:30 

That's great, you know? Well, Bob, I want to thank you so much for being on this podcast. And again, I recommend to everybody to read market mover. I mean, it's a fantastic book, I learned a lot from it. And you're a heck of a leader. I don't know a lot about your industry. I was I haven't really read some of the stuff twice. But it was really, really insightful, and anybody can learn from it. And I think hopefully, I will, I know people are gonna learn from this podcast. And that's what it's all about.

Bob Greifeld 45:55 

Thank you for having me, thank you.

David Novak 46:06 

Don't you just love how Bob can just cut right to the heart of an issue with such clarity and focus, it's pretty darn easy to see why he was able to come in and so quickly dissect the issues NASDAQ was facing and turn the whole thing around. That ability to get laser focused on what matters is a key skill for any leader. In fact, Bob says it's the one skill that can be the difference between a SEO success or failure. It's darn near impossible to succeed at the highest level if you don't know how to leverage your time. And if it's that important, I think it's the perfect thing for you to work on this week to up your leadership game. So this week is part of your weekly personal development plan. take a good hard look at your to do list. Find at least three tasks to not do because they just aren't a high leverage use of your time. Like Bob said, you may have 100 task on there that feels super important. But you've got to stay relentlessly focused on the ones that truly move the needle for your organization. Bring that kind of focus to work every day. And I know it will be a game changer for you. So do you want to know our leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders focus relentlessly on high leverage tasks. 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 that you can be