Speaker 1:

From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ICE's exchanges around the world. Now let's go Inside the ICE House, here's your host, Lance Glinn.

Lance Glinn:

Building strong media partnerships is key to expanding a brand's reach and amplifying its message. Collaborating with established media platforms allows organizations to connect with new, diverse audiences, build trust with listeners and viewers, and leverage valuable resources and expertise. On May 12th, the Inside the ICE House podcast launched a partnership with the C-Suite Network, a platform dedicated to professional success through an online community, executive-focused content, conferences, insights and services designed to help members achieve operational excellence. Founded in 2013 by our guest today, Jeffrey Hayzlett and Karl Post, the C-Suite Network has grown significantly supported by C-suite Radio, its powerful media arm. The Inside the ICE House podcast is proud to now be a part of this thriving network.

Jeff, thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE House.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

It's a pleasure to be here.

Lance Glinn:

So starting on May 12th, the partnership between the Inside the ICE House Podcast and the C-Suite Network began. So from your perspective, just what made this collaboration the right fit, and how does it support the broader mission and the goals of the C-Suite Network?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

I almost want to say, what are you kidding me asking a question like that? It's a New York Stock Exchange. This is ICE. I mean, this is it. This is where all things have happened. I've been down on that floor. I've rang the bell four times, twice with companies that I was actually an executive officer of. And when you look at where business is at, we're in ground zero, this is it. This is the OG. And so to have that as a feather in the cap in our network is just unbelievable to be able to have the New York Stock Exchange.

And by the way, we were talking before the show about the access to the facilities, the building, the people, that puts anyone that's involved with our C-Suite Network farther along and above anybody else. And that's what the C-Suite Network's always been about. It's been a trusted relationship, trusted community. Because I know that when I was the CMO of a Fortune 100 company and a New York Stock Exchange back in a company that was formed in 1890s, the power of having connections at that level. And so that's what this is about. And to be able to bring the content that you have onto C-Suite Radio, C-Suite TV and the access is just, it's phenomenal. And that's what we want to do at the C-Suite Network.

Lance Glinn:

Yeah, I mean, we're sitting right now in a 233-year-old institution that was formed right outside underneath the buttonwood tree, and you talk about the C-Suite Network, and that's sort of our genre that we aim to attract. We have C-Suite leaders from a variety of industries come on the podcast. We just named a few of the ones, or we before we started recording talked about a few of the ones that are upcoming in episodes over the next couple of weeks.

But as you just look at your broader media strategy, not just sustaining the success of the C-Suite Network, but obviously continuing to grow it, how does this partnership fit into what you're building and what you have built over the last 12 or so years in the long term?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Yeah, really, I want to use a phrase called riches in the niches, and that's where we're at. There's over 650,000 business podcasts in North America, 38% of them never made it to the 10th episode, 48% never made it to the first year. So that means over half of those podcasts have failed or not been able to sustain themselves.

And then when you look at the broad reach of business itself and let's say luxury and maybe even lifestyle for the people that serve in the seat what I would call the C-Suite, and what I mean by C-Suite, that's a VP or above at any size company, whether you're on Wall Street or whether you're on Main Street in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I'm at, you're still in the C-Suite. And you need a variety of information, you need a great amount of content and you need when you need it. And so that's what we're building is we're building out a network of thousands of podcasts that you can trust, hundreds of TV shows, maybe someday thousands of TV shoes I would hope because as you know, the podcast means what?

Lance Glinn:

Yeah, exactly.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Audio or is it video?

Lance Glinn:

What was once just audio is now both audio and video-

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

And video.

Lance Glinn:

Who knows what it's going to be in the future.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Exactly. So there's some definitions you have to deal... But you got what I'm talking about, and that is riches in the niches. To be able to find deep information and find the kind of stuff that you need to make the kinds of decisions that you need to make in your business because one wrong move could put you on the floor and we don't want that to happen. We want business to thrive, especially here in the United States, we're a system of free enterprise and this is a great place to be able to park your money, have your money, have it available, and grow your business. And of course open markets.

And so people need all kinds of information and we're there to help that. And we haven't been getting that from what I would say the traditional broadcast. Now I was there. I was on Bloomberg. I had my own show. I've been a judge on Celebrity Apprentice at NBC and done numerous other shows. And I just found that what was missing was this trusted information and real core information from people that you're interviewing every single day. And that's what people want to hear. That's what they want to listen to.

Lance Glinn:

So when it just comes to partnerships more broadly, not just the one that we've created, but just partnerships as a whole, obviously we all have the usual metrics of success, but for the C-Suite Network and what you and your team have built, how do you define success? Is it purely numbers driven or are there intangibles that come along with it?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

A lot of people come to me and say, what's a good podcast? I said, those that pay. But really true, it's about mutual conditions and satisfaction. I mean, when you enter into a partnership, that's what you have to have. I have to sit down with Joe and your team and go, what is it you want? And can we fulfill that? At the same time I'm saying to you, we need this. We need access. We need to be able to talk about you, show you off to the world. Being able to make other people accessible to maybe even get on the podcast, be interviewed if they have the right stuff to do it.

So really truly, it's about mutual conditions of satisfaction. So find the things that are good for us and good for you. Well, for me it's about credible content. Credible content. Where someone they speak and everybody gets quiet and wants to listen. So trusted content is real critical. It can still be, quite frankly, some [inaudible 00:07:04] a commercial, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. It could be Henry Kissinger showing up for a press conference back in 1972 saying what questions you got for my answers. It can be that, but it has to be good. It just has to be good.

And there's a lot of people who are saying, Lance, that all the content has to be short and brief because everybody's attention span. That's just a bunch of BS. It just needs to be good, compelling content. Because you'll go home and binge-watch eight seasons of Yellowstone or maybe Landman or pick a show. Now you know what I'm listening to or watching. But you get what I mean. If you like it, you will consume it.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

You will drink it, eat it, and take it in any way fashion that you can. And I think that's the critical piece. So we're looking for good, compelling, trusted content from real people. And let's be clear, the New York Stock Exchange, I mean it can't get better than that. I mean, if you just look at the building you can see it's substantial. When we say we just signed the New York Stock Exchange and they're coming on our platform, they're going to be on part of the C-suite Radio, C-suite TV, C-Suite Network, people stand up and pay attention. And we've got others like that that we're announcing as well. And we continue to add 10 new shows a day. And so we must be doing something right.

Lance Glinn:

So I want to go back to the early days of the C-Suite Network. You and Karl Post founded it in 2013. Just what inspired its creation and what gap were you aiming to fill for executive leaders across industries?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

The biggest gap was here I am a Fortune 100 officer and I'm trying to do business with other companies, and I found that CMO to CMO, billion-dollar company to billion-dollar company, it was easy to have conversations. Once we were behind closed doors in a room of CMOs or in a room of billion-dollar companies or in here at the boardroom in New York Stock Exchange with others at a reception, you could take the armor off and you could have conversations and you would understand me in ways that other people don't understand.

I would have a sales guy call me and say, I can help you save hundreds of dollars. Dude, you just cost me hundreds. Then he'll come back and email you, I'll save you thousands of dollars and help your sales organization. I said, dude, you've cost me more money. And then he would say, hundreds of thousands. Finally, I said, when you get to millions, let me know. And then he would say, I can do that. And then I would say, okay, now tell me what industries similar to mine that you've been in that give me that confidence that you can do it. And then crickets, right?

Lance Glinn:

Yeah.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Well, when you're in those rooms, those conversations, as you know, doing these podcasts, it's a whole different realm of information, a whole different level of trust, a whole different level of just doing business. And so that's what we wanted her create. And I wanted to show that it was also, Lance, no different than being, as I said on Wall Street or Main Street, there's no difference. It's just zeros.

When I went to Kodak as a Fortune 100 officer and sat in those rooms, and I'm managing now budgets of billions of dollars, a marketing and sales budget of 17 billion just in spend, at that time we were in major trouble at Eastman Kodak and I would look around and say, someone should do something around here. And then I realized, that's me. Now, who do you go to? Who do you talk to? What information is... There's no game plan, there's no sheet, there was no ChatGPT. So the best thing that I ever did was start to get together with other people like me and trade information. And that's really truly what we're doing here today.

Lance Glinn:

And media consumption over these last 12 years since 2013, you mentioned it, everyone's saying short form, short form, short form, because the attention span is a lot shorter than what it once was. But media consumption and leadership expectations too have shifted dramatically-

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Fast.

Lance Glinn:

... over the last decade. Over the last year, much less the last decade, the last year.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Well, COVID caused a lot of it, right? We have to say COVID did, but digital. At the same time we're doing this digital thing. But days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years and that's what we're in. We're in this fast-paced node. So if you miss a 10-minute news cycle, you might miss something that could materially change your company. So that's where you're at in this time, and it's not over yet. I mean, we're going to have millions of podcasts, millions and millions, and then we're going to see millions of TV shows. And then quite frankly, millions of channels. People don't even know what it's going to be like. And it's going to get from the days of, let's go way back to Happy Days, all right, you probably don't even know that Lance.

Lance Glinn:

That's before my time. Before my time.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

I got it. So it don't even get me mad right now. I'm going to get upset. But years ago, Happy Days for 10 years on ABC was the number one show, The number one show. And when they had their finale on ABC on Happy Days, 80 million people turned in to watch that show. Then you go back two years ago to the biggest show on television, Big Bang, now you've got to heard of Big Bang.

Lance Glinn:

Yep.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Okay, so 10 years, that show was number one when it had its finale, and we're talking about a population that is double what it was in the United States, only 18 million people watch that show that night. That tells you the choices have changed, the game has changed, and you've better get ready for it. And now most information's being consumed on a telephone, on a phone, which is now the most personal device that is in the history of the world. In fact, you know where your children are more than where that phone is, quite frankly. If you lose your kids and your phone in the mall at the same time, which one will you go looking for first? So I'm not saying you personally because I know how connected you are to your child. But it's changed.

And so now we're seeing information being listened to more on a watch than on a screen. Holy moly. Game has changed. You better get with this and you better understand it and you better understand how to get into that game, how to get into that mix.

Lance Glinn:

And how has the C-Suite Network evolved? Because again, the desires of C-suite executives, the desires of those who consume media in 2013 are a lot different or were a lot different than they are now in 2025. So how has the network had to change over the course of the last 10 years? I'm sure the list is incredible. But if you can narrow it down, how have these changes come over the last 12 years to adapt to everything that you just mentioned?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

You just said the key word, adapt. I thought it would be this, and it turned out to be something totally different. So we started with television, we really, truly thought that was where we wanted to be, and we were on the cutting edge, which means we were on the bleeding edge and we lost millions of dollars putting together.

Then 2015, boom, I had an opportunity with podcast and I did the podcast thing and I was actually doing it for competing network with CBS, was doing of a CBS Radio and took over the business side of that. And then we brought that over to us, that created C-suite Radio. And podcast, you got to think about, this was the only first all digital media. All right? So the infrastructure was built for it as opposed to TV where you had this video thing going on and you're trying to shove it into a digital receptacle with an ad system and then an ecosystem that didn't support it because it was done this way for decades.

All right? Podcast helped that and really changed the way that we looked at it. We pivoted and stopped pushing on the TV side, let's get over here to the audio side, let's go play that game and let's make that happen. And of course our success now, well over 500 shows and adding shows every day. And so that became the critical piece. So, adapt. Adapt. And so we started to adapt very quickly.

And my advice to anyone that's building content, anyone that's marketing, is go where the people are. Go where the people are and don't build things where people live in a desert, go to where the people are. And so that's what you have to do. So whether it's mostly let's take podcasts, it's 1900 engines out there that you can go and listen on. Most people think, oh, just one or two. No, no, no, no, no. Now video, where video game was YouTube. Well, no, there's another couple of companies that are really starting to do it. And now you're going to have digital TV at a local level with digital rabbit ears that most people don't even know what I'm talking about that's coming. And we're getting prepared for that because it's going to change, again, thousands to tens of thousands to other kinds of places to go put that content and you have to be ready for it.

Lance Glinn:

And we talked about how podcasts, we've said this before, podcast you think only audio, but now podcasts, even getting into video, you get a NYC listed company like Spotify for example.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Exactly.

Lance Glinn:

They're a podcast company. You think of Spotify, you think of podcasts. But they are diving full-steam into video.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

And we're one of their beta partners. We're one of their biggest partners. And so we're doing that. And so we're doing that, and Spotify is going to go head-to-head with YouTube. But we're going to be the business arm of that. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to bring business content. So where people want to demand and aggregate content, we're there, we're pulling that together and pulling the best of that content so that we can feed it up through these engines. And you know when you turn it on and you listen or you watch, it's there.

But at the same time you have to go out and educate all of these people who are creating this content because let's take for instance, television. Television runs in a 24 minute or 48 minute cycle, two minutes commercials, eight minutes content, two minutes commercials, eight repeats. And most people say, well, you do a half-hour show. If you do a half-hour show, you'll never make television. You'll never make broadcast. And then think of all the digital engines that are out there. There's a lot of digital engines out there for streaming, FAST, SVOD or whatever, and then you have to feed those streaming engines and they run on the same time frames.

So if you've got a podcast that you want to step and repeat now, podcasts being audio, now video, because if you're doing audio we would tell you to go do the video And then you have to be able to hit those formats. So then it becomes some education or some extra cost if you want to spend that extra cost. But you can make great television shows.

And then quite frankly, COVID opened up a great opportunity for video because now when you watch, let's say some of the major networks, CNN, Fox, CNBC, whatever, you name them, you can basically phone an interview on Zoom if you've got a good background, good quality, we got great connections, good sounds, sounds probably the most important. But even if you watch CN in the morning or the midday, there's one person on stage interviewing people on a TV screen. So that's what you can do and you can do that for literally a few thousand dollars. It doesn't cost you much. And so the barriers to entry have now come down. So if you're a company, you want to be a media company.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely. So before launching the C-Suite Network, and you mentioned a few times you spent time in the C-suite yourself as an example, you did spend time as CMO of NYC-listed Eastman Kodak. You've also contributed and hosted for Bloomberg. Spent time on boards helping companies progress and grow. Just how have these diverse experiences influenced your decision-making and shaped the growth of the C-Suite Network over the last 12 years?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Well, the biggest thing is I can speak to what the big companies are thinking or saying. I can remember when MSNBC tried to get me to come on and do a thing for them to talk about another company while I was the CMO of another company. And I go, no. I know that's not a good thing to do. And I talked to the president of the network saying, if I come on and talk about that company who's not a competitor, totally different industry, at that time it was Toyota, I said, and you want me to comment about what's happening in that C-suite? The second something happens to Eastman Kodak, guess what they're going to do? That opens up a can of worms.

Now, once you get away from that, well, I can speak to that. So that experience has been invaluable in terms of saying what that is. What are boardrooms thinking about right now? What are C-suites thinking about? What is that CEO? What is he doing to put somebody in harm's way, stop the hemorrhaging or stop this? The job of a C-suite executive is not to be the smartest person in the room because I can quite frankly tell you that's not going to be the case. I've seen a lot of dumb people there and myself included. Our job is to be the most strategic. And so it's great to be able to have that experience so that I can say, here's some of the strategy that's going on. Because a lot of people think you can come and be the CEO of the company and turn everything around. No way.

Lance Glinn:

That's not the case.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

No. Especially if you've got 185,000 employees and you're in a company that's changing in an industry that needs a change. I can't tell you the numbers of captains of know inside of a company who are way down in the food chain who can stop everything at a moment's notice. So you need to have some of that experience. So I bought and sold a couple hundred companies, 25 billion in transactions, serve on 12 boards today, four of them publicly traded companies. That helps a great deal to be able to sit in and you could say, hey, I've seen this before, or a couple of times being even set in boardrooms and saying, Hey, have you thought about this and saved the company millions or saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars or kept us out of trouble.

Lance Glinn:

So I do want to shift to just brand building as a whole because it's something that you've obviously really mastered across the C-Suite Network and across your own personal brand for today's C-suite executives, just how important is it to be visible brand ambassadors and cultivate that strong personal brand just as you've done?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

I love that. I'm out doing a whole roadshow right now Go Big, which is all around doing your own show. And I say sell you, sell the business. Sell the business, sell you. I learned that a long time ago that as an officer of the company, people see you as the company, whether you like it or not, and whether the company likes it or not. So you better make sure your values and brands are aligned. And when I say brands, a brand is nothing but a promise delivered, and your job is to help deliver on that brand promise. And usually that is the CEO and obviously in conjunction with the CMO, but it's everybody in that C-suite is responsible for delivering on the promise of the company. And that becomes your brand.

A brand started out as something that was occasionally put on a horse and always put on a cow. It was the identification on the side of a bovine. That's what cowboys used to do and still do in some cases. And then it transferred to a logo, which now transfers to, that's the brand. And a lot of people think of the brand of the colors and so forth. No, it's really the story around that brand and what it delivers. So it's very critical for an executive today to deliver their own story, not through other media, not through other methods that people report on them, because you can't always get your message out. And so that's why creating a podcast, creating a TV, writing a book, doing your own blog on a regular basis, that's why blogs became so important for executives.

I, In fact, back in 2006 or '07 I named the very first chief blogger ever in the history of corporations, I named the very first chief listening officer because we were now starting to get into the social media side. I was one of the first thousand people on Twitter in order to get our voice out there, and then we had collaboration that would get out there unfettered. And by the way, that's what I love about podcasting, I love now about digital TV is that you can do that and I don't have to play somebody else's games. And I've been doing that for years, trying to put my own shows on networks and so forth, and be torted by somebody that said, no, this is the great name. I remember when somebody wanted to call one of my shows, Your Business Sucks. I said, are you kidding me? Who's going to buy...

Lance Glinn:

Who's going to watch the Your Business Sucks show?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Yeah, brought to you by HP. Are you nuts? No one's buying that. So why don't you do a show of someone dying, you're dying of AIDS brought to you by another company? No one's doing that. So that's where it helps. So that information or background does help.

Lance Glinn:

And we talked about obviously how media consumption and the way media has put out has had to adapt over the last decade or so. Brand building has evolved too. And looking ahead, how do you see brand building transforming even further with the now AI and Web3 and real hyper personalized content being at the center?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

I think it's the scariest and the most exciting opportunity there is. And right now, I think with brands, you have to get really clear about who you are and what you are. And then how do you use those tools and what rules, or I don't know, guidelines, like on a highway so that you don't drive off into the ditch, the rails or whatever. And I think it's very important for you to be able to put those forward. And there needs to be a lot of deep thinking right now in boardrooms and in the C-suites to talk about how do we make sure we don't go off. Because somebody's going to say, hey, let's go use this tool. And then all of a sudden you open up Pandora's Box.

Now that doesn't mean you should slow it down. That just means you need to spend a lot more time on what to do and how to do it, and why should we be doing it for what reasons? And then you should be utilizing every one of those tools because your competitors are, especially a lot more nimble competitors are doing that. But they don't have the experience and that a lot of us do. And I think it's important for those that do, to use that gray hair to get your good advantage.

Lance Glinn:

So would you say it's less important to be first and more important to be knowledgeable?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Totally. 100%. Sometimes first are the ones that die in the heat of battle. So now you're brave and you're going to get the medals and everything else. Great, good for you. But I'd much rather be living for the next one.

Lance Glinn:

Makes sense. Makes sense. So having been in the C-suite yourself, as we obviously recently spoke to and engaging with executive leaders daily, what do you see just as workforces change and new workforce desires come about, what do you see as the most essential leadership traits for and how does the C-Suite Network help support the development of those traits?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Yeah. Well, content, that's the biggest thing. Having great content that people can rely on. One of the biggest traits that I see of great leaders and I interviewed a lot of them, it's about listening. They listen and they're good listeners. So they're looking for the things not everybody else is looking for. And it's amazing that I've sit in boardrooms and do a presentation and know there's a mistake on page 37 or slide 42 or whatever it is and somehow that CEO goes right to that. It's amazing. The greats, they flip to it. Someone told them, they have that. So they have that intuition that's very interesting. But it's becomes through the experience of been there, done that.

But most of the time they're very grounded on who they are and what they are and where they're going. And they're very close to their values. And so values, they play a big part in great companies. And so that's it. And the other thing I would say that I've also picked up from the literally tens of thousands, now hundreds of thousands of episodes that we do a year, is talent. There are always focused on talent. And talent is one of the biggest issues that most CEOs and most leaders face is how do I get good talent, cultivate good talent, train good talent, and keep, and then motivate good talent? And that's the, I think, biggest challenge I think in front of everyone, even with AI and everything else, is how do I do that?

Lance Glinn:

So Jeff, as we begin to wrap up our conversation beyond the events, the content, the connections that the C-Suite Network offers, just what are the key takeaways that you hope every leader, creator, and member gains from being a part of this community?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Oh, that's great. Well, you just said it, that's the middle word I'd use. So it's content, great content leads to great communities, and great communities lead to commerce. That's the game. And we've been doing it for a long time, although we've been primarily doing it through advertising. And so we used advertising as a way to be able to get greater reach, discovery and conversion. But the game now is really about creating great content because people are looking for it. They've always been looking for it. And we hid behind ads, we hid behind 800 numbers, and we hid behind all these things. Well social media turn around, digital turned around, access to this new levels of content have changed it. So content is going to lead to that community.

And you don't have to spend all this money. Literally, I've spent hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in advertising to people to get them in, to be raving fans, to get engagement around what we do, around what we're delivering, and then they buy from us. So content leads to community and communities lead to commerce. So once you have that reach, discovery, you get the conversion, then it's all about nurturing. And I would say, that's what we're doing in the C-Suite.

Lance Glinn:

So as you and your team look ahead, how are you shaping the next five, the next decade, the next 15 years to ensure continued growth and success for the C-Suite Network?

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Content, content, content. I can't tell you-

Lance Glinn:

That's the name of game.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

... every minute of my day is focused on how can I get more people into the funnel, how can I get more people converted, and how can I get more people started? Whether it's a do it yourself model, do it with you or do it for you. That's what we're looking for. And then where can I go take that content and put it to as many places as possible and not be dependent on what I think it should be or what you think it should go here or here, but where they want it. And I spend every minute of my day around that.

Lance Glinn:

Well, Jeff, I'm so glad this partnership is off and running. We look forward to its future. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

We are honored.

Lance Glinn:

Absolutely. Thank you.

Jeffrey Hayzlett:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X at ICE House Podcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week inside the ICE House.

Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representation or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content here in all of which is presented solely for informational educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.