Lance Glinn:
From Lake Las Vegas here in Nevada, welcome in to another episode of the Inside the ICE House podcast. Now, today's guest, we've had him on before and we're happy to have him on once again. He's Jeffrey Hayzlett. He is the chairman of the C-Suite Network, our great partner with the NYSE. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us here inside the ICE House.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Good to be here. It's good to be doing another podcast, another show.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah, absolutely, and this time, we're not doing it at the NYSE. We're doing it here in beautiful Lake Las Vegas.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Both of them are great. I love to be able to brag. I guess it's not bragging when it's true, but to be able to tell people that we shoot live from the New York Stock Exchange. But I mean, being in Vegas is good too.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah, no, it definitely is. They both have their pros. They both have their [inaudible 00:00:53] for sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
At least we don't have a snowmageddon going on here.
Lance Glinn:
That's true. Yeah, that is true, thankfully. And I know obviously the last couple times you've been in the city recording with us, we've dealt with quite the changing weather.
Jeff Hayzlett:
We did.
Lance Glinn:
But that's a story for another day. So here in Lake Las Vegas, Nevada, you're moderating a panel titled Why Everybody Needs to be a Media Company, and I want to start right on that point. In a world where attention is currency, what does it practically mean to you for a business, whether it's a startup or a Fortune 500 company, to truly function as a media company?
Jeff Hayzlett:
When I was CMO of a company that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, I used to spend millions of dollars to go out and get people into a funnel, huge funnel. I spent millions, and then only to get them into that pipeline. Now, what you can do today is only talk to the people that want to talk to you. I don't need to talk to all those other people out there. That's a waste of time, waste of money, waste of energy. And so, now with this digital medium and by telling stories, by talking to people and winning over not eyeballs and ears, but hearts and minds, I build a community of people. I'm talking to my community and they're telling me things, and it's back and forth, so it's real. And so now with a convergence of all the media that's out there, you can actually be your own show.
Now, whether you're a listed company in the New York Stock Exchange and you have a show and go out to your audience, or whether you're a dry cleaner in St. Louis who has 110 other competitors, and now he can create or she can create a show that teaches people how to get spots out of your jeans or blood spots out of shirts or food stains, whatever. And that person can become the doctor of spots. And now you're teaching people, you're entertaining people, you're educating people, and that's a much better way of doing it.
Lance Glinn:
And are there certain mindset shifts that companies, again, of all sizes, need to have to really embrace being a media company? Because it's one thing to pick up your phone, record a 10-second video, put it on any social media platform and hope it goes viral. More oftentimes than not, it's not going to go viral and it's going to fade into the abyss that is everyone else posting videos. But do there need to be certain mindset shifts that companies need to have to take on that social media, take on that media personality, and really succeed in it?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah, I'd say there's two or three. And one, it's not about you.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Okay? It's about them, so talk with them about the things that you do and why it benefits them. The second is you don't have to shout it out, and that's usually what we do in media. We tell the message in the way we think people ought to hear it rather than what they want to hear. And we're just outwardly bound and we're not listening. You need to do a lot more listening, and I think those are two key pieces of it. Yeah. The other, third piece is just be authentic about it, and spend less time advertising and selling, and more time talking.
Lance Glinn:
And how hard is that authenticity? And I asked that question because nowadays you can create a social media, you can create digital media, insert whatever media you want, you can create it through AI. You can create it within a matter of seconds. You can get the message across that you want to get across, but there isn't that authenticity. There isn't necessarily a you or me going and doing it. It's AI-generated or another technology that's creating it.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah, some of it is, but you'll be found out. And by the way, it should be. At the C-Suite Network, we're talking about the standards that we have to put on podcasts and shows to say, is it AI-enhanced? Is it really a person? It's not some test or somebody that's out singing songs. I think that's the name of the one that's out there right now. But again, I'm not following that one, because I like to follow real people. And I think people love real people, and so the best way to be authentic is to be authentic.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. No, absolutely. So, let's discuss what we're doing right here, right now. We're obviously on podcasters row here at the Wall Street Conference Sun Valley experience. We've seen things like these become real centerpieces, I think, at different conferences. Whether it's a podcast row, a radio row, a just general media row, they're propping up, they're becoming what really is a spotlight at insert whatever conference you want to insert. What does the rise of a podcaster's row like this one, though, tell you about the evolution of the podcast industry as a whole, and where it's been from where it was to where it is now in 2026, and where it could continue to go?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Well, I mean, we're just in the infancy of podcasting. I mean, if you were to say, "Podcast is a human being. What age is it?" Still a teenager. I mean, so we've still got a long ways to go. And at the same time, the quality of the podcasts and shows have to get better because, and they are, because a business podcast, 38% of them never make it past the 10th episode. For those left, 48% never make it past the first year, so you have to be good at what you're doing. You have to make a commitment to doing it.
But I got little goosebumps as you were asking that question. I know that excites me, because it's just changing the narrative, right? And then it's giving people a lot more access to being able to get the story out, which I think is important, and to have a dialogue which more people can hear. Not everybody gets the honor to walk into the New York Stock Exchange. Not everybody gets the honor to walk into the Wall Street Conference or any other conference, for that matter.
At C-Suite Network, we do 600 meetings a year. I wish everybody had the opportunity to come to all of our meetings.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
So this is a way to tell the story. This is a way to get information out, and you can be there without being there, because ... And you're going to interview probably the governor and there's the First Lady of Florida's here and then there's the person's talking on depression and drugs and things that you can get for these kinds of things, and there's all kinds of breakthroughs on business. You wouldn't get that unless you had somebody interviewing, or unless you bought a ticket to come. Sometimes you can't always do that.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
And by the way, sometimes, some of them, sorry to interrupt, but sometimes the best conversations are out here in the hallway.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. Yeah. The ones that are unscripted.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah, totally.
Lance Glinn:
The ones that sort of come up on a whim, right? Just meeting someone new potentially, someone you may not even know, sparking up a conversation, you never know where it's going to go, but that person knows-
Jeff Hayzlett:
Or someone you haven't seen in a long time.
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely.
Jeff Hayzlett:
And, "Hey, where have you been?"
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely.
Jeff Hayzlett:
"My gosh, we need to be doing business together."
Lance Glinn:
So I want to dig into the partnership that we have together between the NYSE and the C-Suite Network. It's an alignment that I think has really helped our podcast distribution since we started collaborating, now over a year ago, which is crazy to say.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah, a year. I know. It's hard to believe.
Lance Glinn:
A year has flown by. I remember when we first started, I was on paternity leave when our collaboration [inaudible 00:07:12]
Jeff Hayzlett:
And now she's graduating from high school now.
Lance Glinn:
There you go. Let's slow down a little bit, but yeah, for sure. It feels like it's flown by. It's flown by. Now, I know what it provides to us at the New York Stock Exchange, obviously, and we've talked about that before. And we went over this a little bit when we first had you on the podcast, I think almost a year ago at this point now. What was the initial spark for you, or the vision that made you say, "This partnership is something that we want to build with the NYSE"?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Well, I first started hearing about Joe and the team that were starting to make some things about, we're going to do some partnerships, we're going to talk about media, we're going to do that. So I thought, "Okay, finally, that's awesome for a big institution to say that they were doing it." So I literally just picked up the phone or an email and reached out and said, "Hey, I think we could do some things together." Most podcast shows, most TV shows, think they have to operate like an old media company, and there's a whole new realm of things where you, I mean, literally in a corner of a balcony, you can create an entire primetime show, and then create many primetime shows, and then get the information out.
And the other piece of it is that most shows go into what I call podcast purgatory, okay? And that is, they don't go anywhere. You just put it up on your website. And you have to have the distribution, and we've been working very hard for years to create distribution. I once said when we started our digital TV, to make a small fortune in digital TV, well, you start with a large one.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
So we learned through hard knocks of how to make things work, the way to make things work, and we've been really building on that. And then what comes with that is getting great content and getting good partners, and that's what you guys have been with the New York Stock Exchange with us and vice versa, that we're introducing and we're opening doors for each other all the time. That's positive.
Lance Glinn:
And the great thing about the New York Stock Exchange is obviously this rise of what we like to call the NYSE Media Network, but also the long-storied history that the Stock Exchange has. I mean, we're going on 233-plus years of the New York Stock Exchange, originally founded in 1792 under the buttonwood tree, which obviously is ingrained to all of our memories that work at the stock exchange.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Do you get that in the first class?
Lance Glinn:
Yeah, there you go. No, we're good, the stock exchange with 24 brokers underneath the buttonwood tree.
Jeff Hayzlett:
By the way, as I headed out the other day from filming, there was a tour group going on, and somebody was telling the exact same story, right there on the corner.
Lance Glinn:
The 24 brokers underneath the buttonwood tree in 1792. Hopefully the weather then was a little bit better than the weather that we had over the last couple of weeks.
Jeff Hayzlett:
It was nice. It was much nicer, yeah.
Lance Glinn:
But with a company with a long history, and I know you've obviously, you were the CMO of Kodak, another company with a really long history, right, how do you work with companies like those to help tell their stories in a more modern way? Because you don't want to be stuck in the past. You don't want to also forget about the past, so how do you kind of balance it?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Well, the story's the story, so the story is good, and you can tell it in different manners or by different tools. Podcast is just another tool. For most companies, I'm not asking to make podcast a destination. I'm just asking them to use the tool. And when you explain that, that this is just another tool, yeah, you might not always listen to it, you might not watch it, you might not do Facebook, you might not do TikTok, but there's lots of mediums out there, and the key is to go where your customers are. And without question, just recently, the last week or so, podcasts have exceeded radio for listenership and for revenue. And podcasts are starting to move up on TV as well, very, very quickly on both of those, in terms of viewership, listenership. And of course, it's now into the billions of dollars, so it's there, so it's the right kind of medium.
And what I like about podcasts more than really anything is that you're typically on a device, the most personal device in the history of the world, and you're in someone's head. So, one of the best things is you have to have great sound technicians and really good sound.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
That's important thing, so it's a very intimate media.
Lance Glinn:
Yeah. And you mentioned obviously podcasts exceeding radio. Obviously everyone has podcasts for the audio versions of them, right? And audio was always where podcasts started, but then you obviously have a company like Spotify, NYSE listed, got to give them a shout-out. They were one of the first to now venture also into video with their podcasts too, so you're really seeing these become less podcasts, in my opinion, and more vodcasts than anything else.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I don't know what the term's going to be.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I really don't, but I do like vodcasts. That's pretty cool. I haven't thought about what the term's going to be, but there's going to be something. I mean, Apple just announced they're going to take video as well. So you're seeing all of these go and then just there's so many places to go do it. We put that content out to 1,900 engines plus X, Y, Z number of engines in terms of video as well, and we're ... hope to do the streaming and everything else, so it's a big way of doing it.
Lance Glinn:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So now C-Suite Network has really scaled into just one of the fastest-growing, and in my opinion, most influential executive communities that there is. When you step back and look at the growth trajectory over the last X amount of years, however you can choose the years, what's really been driving this expansion and has allowed you guys to become as successful and as influential as you have?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Trust. I think what we do is we try to provide an environment for trust. I mean, if I'm a CEO, CMO, C-level executive, a VP or higher, and I'm looking for things, I can't tell if someone's LinkedIn profile is real.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I can't tell if their website ... The website looks like a billion-dollar company. Are they really a billion-dollar company? Even when you have conversations sometimes with people, they'll say ... Somebody told me this morning, as he was talking to me, he's working on a treadmill, which was the most bizarre conversation, and he's telling me he's got 42 employees. I go pull his numbers, look at his stuff, and no, he doesn't. So, you need a trusted organization.
And I found that when I was a CMO of a Fortune 100 company that when I needed something, I reached out to another CMO of a Fortune 100 company or a large company, and we would have those kinds of conversation, trusted relationship, so that's really been at the core of it. And as we get more and more distracted with digital and the things that we have to do in our phone, and now I'm getting more texts than I am emails and so forth and so on, it's really getting tough out there, so you got to learn to know who to trust. So, we just try to create an environment for that and make sure that the media that's on there is good as well. I mean, there are times when we've had to say to somebody, "Hey, you're not for us."
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Or even in the organization, when they exceed the parameters of what the group really is.
Lance Glinn:
Sure. And then how do you think about, because obviously C-Suite Network provides so much when it comes to media, not just podcasts, obviously we're on a podcast right now. We've been talking about it, but so much outside of that, but obviously media is changing, media is evolving. Obviously podcasts, like I said, those weren't really a thing as of five, seven, 10 years ago. Media's changing, media's evolving. How are you thinking about that evolution and thinking about, okay, well, these are the platforms right now, but these might not be the platforms five years from now?
Jeff Hayzlett:
No, they won't be.
Lance Glinn:
There might be even new platforms.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I think you've got to look at ... I said if it has a screen on it or an amplifier of some kind, we're going to be on it, and that's what we try to do. And who am I to say? And then I try to make as wide a net as possible to bring more people in.
Lance Glinn:
True. So I want to just talk about content creation overall. And you've worked with, and obviously led brands, we've talked about Kodak earlier, and have seen organizations that excel at content creation and others that just can't seem to really gain that traction. We talked about it earlier, right? It is a tough thing to really get right. What separates companies, though, that can create truly successful content versus those that are trying, might be putting in the effort, that's not a question, but just can't seem to find that audience that really gravitates towards it?
Jeff Hayzlett:
I think you got to really ... My son said it best. He's our CMO and he's actually one of the best CMOs I've ever met in my life, and I happen to have something to do with that. But he always says, "What problem are we solving?" I mean, he starts off every meeting, every conversation, "What problem are we solving?" And I think when you're looking at your content, what am I trying to solve? What am I trying to convey? What am I trying to tell? And the more that you spend time about that and spend in on taking care of the person that's listening and not just talking. And the other thing is to have, I think, great conversations. My best shows, and you've been in those studios with me when I'm having fun, and-
Lance Glinn:
Sure, and let me just say, I can, and I've said this to you before, as we've left, I can tell.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah.
Lance Glinn:
I can tell.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah. And to me, those are rich. They're fun. The energy's up. You could feel the energy through the phone, or through the headphones, and so I think those things are real good. And ask tough questions. I mean, I've had some people in my shows, my own shows, where I know people are listening at home or watching are going, "Did he just say that? Did he just ask that?" And I think that's the things you want to do. You want to take the armor off, the shield, leave that at the door and really sit down and have good intimate conversations.
Lance Glinn:
And so I think when you were at Kodak, you really excelled at sort of building a personal brand too, and I think that's so important for leaders now, right? They can't just be the brand of the company. Leaders of those said companies also have to have their own personal brands. It could be just social media brands, it could be on podcasts, on camera, on TV, whatever. They have to have their own sort of brand and they have to be more personable, so to speak, and really relay their messages to the audience, not just the message of the company. Why is that so important in today's media landscape?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Well, brand is nothing but a promise delivered, and you're part of the delivery of that promise. And I tell people, and I learned this when I was at Kodak, I didn't know I was actually doing it at the time, and then as I started doing it, then I got the understanding of how powerful it was. And I was kind of one of the first ones that did it, where I just used my persona and myself, my position, to sell the company. Now I tell people, "Sell you, you sell the company. Sell the company, you sell you." Because when you see Lynn Martin, your CEO, I see the New York Stock Exchange. I see ICE. I see that. And so, why not go ahead and use that as an asset? Because it is an asset, and no one's going to ...
And when you see her at a cocktail party, you see her walking at a conference, you see that institution. And so when at Kodak, when people saw me, they saw Kodak, and I was wearing yellow, I was wearing red. I was drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak, and I think that's important for people to do. And now, it's becoming more and more important, because you're an entity. You can be a brand amongst yourselves.
And I was lucky back then that when I was called the celebrity CMO on the front cover of Forbes Magazine, because I was doing so much TV, I was doing Celebrity Apprentice, and I was doing Fox Business every couple of weeks. I was doing CNBC and doing those, really trying to bring nothing but to sell the brand, sell Kodak. I mean, that's what I was doing. Now, did it help me? Heck, yeah. And at the same time, I'm not eye candy, and I was able to do a lot of TV, but I was also entertaining. I did my homework. I spent my time. And then of course, when I left, I was able to go to create my own show on Bloomberg and be a commentator and do the things. And then that led me to CBS Radio, which then led me to CBS, C-Suite TV and C-Suite Radio.
Lance Glinn:
And how important is that to ... When you're with a company and you are representing said company, make sure that even if you have a personal brand, you still are representing the company?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Oh, that's a great question, because at one time, the CEO of MSNBC called me and said, "Jeff, we want you on to talk about another company," and I said, "No." And he goes "Come on-
Lance Glinn:
Competitor company? You don't think the [inaudible 00:18:49]
Jeff Hayzlett:
No, it wasn't a competitor. I will tell you. It was Toyota.
Lance Glinn:
Okay.
Jeff Hayzlett:
It was Toyota. Had nothing to do with cameras whatsoever.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
But Toyota was going through some issues with some breaks and so forth, and they said they wanted to know, what was the conversation going on in the boardroom? Of course, I wouldn't understand, having problems like we had at Kodak and other big companies.
Lance Glinn:
Sure.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I've sat in those boardrooms where 99% of the people that work at the company never get to walk in. So there are conversations that are going on, so he would want to know, "Hey, what's going on with them? What are they doing? What are they thinking? What's the progress of what are they going to roll out next, and so forth?" I said, "No way am I going to do that." "Well, why not, Jeff? You know that. You know how to do it. You're articulate," and so forth. Listen, that opens me up to have you come talk about Kodak, or have somebody else come talk about it.
Lance Glinn:
Of course.
Jeff Hayzlett:
So, you have to be very clear that you're a steward for the brand, and that means you have to live its brand attributes as well. And that was, quite frankly, it was good for me, but also tough for me, because at the time for Kodak, the chief memory officer, who was our key client, was a woman, typically 40, 45, but that wasn't me. But I had to make sure that as a CMO, I would surround myself with other people that looked more like our customer.
Lance Glinn:
So Jeff, as we start to wrap up our conversation, obviously we're living in an era where anyone can generate massive amounts of content, not always good content, but anyone can generate massive amounts of content in a really efficient and almost instantaneous type of way. But with that ease, as we talked about earlier, comes sort of the challenge of authenticity, and making sure that the content resonates, and making sure that the content you're going to put out actually is content that people want to see and that people obviously have an interest in. Because you could put out all the content in the world, if no one's interested in it, no one's going to watch it. And it's just, like I said, go into that content abyss. How do you think leaders and companies can really hone in on this mass wave of being able to create content and really take advantage of it, when the barrier to creating this content really has never been lower than it is right now?
Jeff Hayzlett:
Yeah. Well, you could do a show for less than about $700, I mean, if you really wanted to start a podcast. And I could tell you, I remember the days when I was running a 4K camera for $10,000 $20,000, $30,000 a day, and now you can get one for $179 on Amazon. But what I would say to your question is, you can go on vacation in New York City, if you're in New York City, and buy a really cheap T-shirt, but it's not going to last. So, what you want to do is build something that's going to last, and I think that's what you want to start. You want to think of, if my brand is of this quality, then my content should be of this quality. And you should match that or probably actually do a little bit better job than even the quality of the company, because it's the message that you tell that's what sells everything.
Lance Glinn:
Well, Jeff, I appreciate you having us out here, here at the Wall Street Conference in Lake Las Vegas Nevada.
Jeff Hayzlett:
Thanks for being here. We're packed. Look at that. We got show after show.
Lance Glinn:
Oh, yeah, show after show. We're going to have plenty of, as I said, massive amounts of content. We're going to have plenty of content to put out from this. Thank you very much for everything, our partnership too over the last year. I appreciate you joining us inside the ICE House.
Jeff Hayzlett:
I'm looking for it being bigger.
Speaker 3:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen, and follow us on X, @ICEHousePodcast. 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 representations 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 herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and 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.