[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_139":-5,"_140":-5,"_141":142,"_143":144,"_145":146},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/2808/with-multiple-brands-balance-independence-with-shared-learning","id",2808,"title","With multiple brands, balance independence with shared learning","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.410\nissue. You know, one of the things that I tried to make a priority when I was\n\n2\n00:00:04.410 --> 00:00:04.800\nrunning\n\n3\n00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:09.280\nyoung brands was making sure that we shared best practices across the brands\n\n4\n00:00:09.280 --> 00:00:10.640\nwith KFC\n\n5\n00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:15.160\nTaco Bell and Pizza. Is that something that you think about too? Or are you\n\n6\n00:00:15.160 --> 00:00:16.640\ntotally decentralized?\n\n7\n00:00:16.640 --> 00:00:20.800\nNo, all the time trying to make it more and more. So we first started off. So\n\n8\n00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:21.440\nfor example,\n\n9\n00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:25.980\nwhen we bought that company, I mentioned Active O'Tells and Bookman.com merged\n\n10\n00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:26.960\nthem together and\n\n11\n00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:31.040\nput it through and also our Priceline European thing that I've been using. I\n\n12\n00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:32.480\nmean, I eat people,\n\n13\n00:00:32.480 --> 00:00:38.000\nnine people. Put that all as one thing. The critical thing was I did not want\n\n14\n00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:38.960\nto do any\n\n15\n00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:43.670\nintegration at all. And I stressed out important that was to Jeff Bo Ehlers\n\n16\n00:00:43.670 --> 00:00:44.320\nwere there at the time.\n\n17\n00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:48.320\nWe were older and we all agreed that was right. And here's the thing. One of\n\n18\n00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:49.600\nthe easiest ways\n\n19\n00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:56.100\nto really wreck a non-US company that's operating outside the US. One of the\n\n20\n00:00:56.100 --> 00:00:57.840\nbest ways to wreck it\n\n21\n00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:03.170\nis parachute in a bunch of Americans who don't know anything about it. Okay.\n\n22\n00:01:03.170 --> 00:01:04.080\nThe reason we bought\n\n23\n00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:08.780\nthese companies is because they had already showed they displayed to us an\n\n24\n00:01:08.780 --> 00:01:10.960\nability to be very successful.\n\n25\n00:01:10.960 --> 00:01:15.440\nSo the key thing was creating an incentive plan that yes, we were buying the\n\n26\n00:01:15.440 --> 00:01:16.320\ncompany's aid,\n\n27\n00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:20.360\nfound it, but we wanted them to stay and we wanted them to continue to work.\n\n28\n00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:21.520\nAnd we will reward them\n\n29\n00:01:21.520 --> 00:01:25.870\ntremendously if they are able to create the success that we believe they would\n\n30\n00:01:25.870 --> 00:01:27.200\nbe able to create.\n\n31\n00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:31.990\nAnd that's who we did. So we are very separated. We are very, there was\n\n32\n00:01:31.990 --> 00:01:33.920\nabsolutely no centralization.\n\n33\n00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:37.280\nWe're about as far apart as it could be. And that can cause all sorts of issues\n\n34\n00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:38.240\nand turns up,\n\n35\n00:01:38.240 --> 00:01:43.230\nturf and turns up, who's doing what? But we started like that. But over time,\n\n36\n00:01:43.230 --> 00:01:44.160\nas each company got\n\n37\n00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:49.470\nbigger and bigger and as the new booking.com that was the combination came into\n\n38\n00:01:49.470 --> 00:01:50.240\nAmerica,\n\n39\n00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:55.470\nwent into Asia and it goes, and everybody starts mixing up. Then you have to\n\n40\n00:01:55.470 --> 00:01:56.240\nstart putting together\n\n41\n00:01:56.240 --> 00:01:59.540\nsome ground rules and you have to start saying, gee, we'll probably better. We\n\n42\n00:01:59.540 --> 00:02:00.480\ncan learn from each\n\n43\n00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:01.940\nso we're doing more.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",1881059,"end_time",2000859,"keywords","Acquisitions, mergers, M&A, centralization, decentralization, international","slug","with-multiple-brands-balance-independence-with-shared-learning","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","eqdl01UBixUDkYi8o374o8sgnyV100YMku95j9gMgV2WA","mux_asset_id","37XnMu52x5lnGPGUTPReY89EWXkTMcCdSoHCbGTgw6Q","leader_id",217,"episode_id",369,"updated_at","2025-03-07T02:46:11.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/2808/with-multiple-brands-balance-independence-with-shared-learning","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_107":108,"_25":109,"_110":111,"_62":112,"_59":112,"_113":114,"_69":115,"_39":116,"_117":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_118":119,"_91":120,"_44":121,"_122":123,"_124":125,"_46":-5,"_126":127,"_128":129,"_95":130,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":58,"_59":60,"_61":-5,"_62":60,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":-5,"_69":-5,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":75,"_35":36,"_39":76,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_77":78,"_79":80,"_81":82,"_83":84,"_85":-5,"_86":-5,"_87":88,"_89":90,"_91":-5,"_46":-5,"_92":93,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","Know what you don’t know","know-what-you-dont-know","Learn how to lean on the expertise of others so the best idea wins, not the loudest voice in the room. Plus, advice for staying innovative and using the data the right way.","summary","

Great companies aren’t built by ego. They’re built by leaders who ask questions, listen, and rely on the smart people around them.

And this episode’s guest is one of those leaders! Glenn Fogel is the CEO of Booking Holdings, the company behind big travel brands like Booking dot com, Kayak, Priceline, and OpenTable.

Having been at the company for 25 years, Glenn’s got a lot of experience to draw on. Yet he’s the first to admit when something isn’t his area of expertise. And instead of guessing, he trusts the experts on his team to guide the way.

If you want to know the secret to staying humble and building an engaged team, hit play and discover the power of knowing what you don’t know!

You’ll also learn:

The importance of data (with one big caveat)
How to push for innovation in a successful, established company
The #1 mistake companies make after an international acquisition
The mindset you need for painful decisions

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.100\nYou know, for many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking.\n\n2\n00:00:05.100 --> 00:00:05.760\ncom company.\n\n3\n00:00:05.760 --> 00:00:09.490\nI just recently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the\n\n4\n00:00:09.490 --> 00:00:11.280\nupcoming game and all that.\n\n5\n00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:14.850\nAnd they say, \"What do you think?\" And I always say, \"It doesn't matter what I\n\n6\n00:00:14.850 --> 00:00:15.200\nthink.\n\n7\n00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:20.640\nIt's irrelevant. It's what have you come up with? And is this worth the money\n\n8\n00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:21.520\nto spend on it?\n\n9\n00:00:21.520 --> 00:00:26.900\nOr should we sell the spot or not?\" It's nice for you to ask me, \"But what the\n\n10\n00:00:26.900 --> 00:00:27.360\nheck do I know?\"\n\n11\n00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:40.710\nWhat if the key to strong leadership isn't having all the answers? But rather,\n\n12\n00:00:40.710 --> 00:00:40.960\nhaving the\n\n13\n00:00:40.960 --> 00:00:45.530\nwisdom encouraged to say, \"I don't know.\" Welcome to Howl Leaders Lead. I'm\n\n14\n00:00:45.530 --> 00:00:46.320\nDavid Dovak.\n\n15\n00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:50.520\nAnd every week, I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to\n\n16\n00:00:50.520 --> 00:00:51.360\nhelp you become\n\n17\n00:00:51.360 --> 00:00:55.460\nthe best leader that you can be. My guest today is Glenn Fogel, the CEO of Book\n\n18\n00:00:55.460 --> 00:00:56.400\ning Holdings.\n\n19\n00:00:56.400 --> 00:01:01.280\nThat's the company behind big travel brands like Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline,\n\n20\n00:01:01.280 --> 00:01:02.560\nand OpenTable.\n\n21\n00:01:02.560 --> 00:01:06.610\nNow, having been at the company for 25 years, Glenn's got a heck of a lot of\n\n22\n00:01:06.610 --> 00:01:08.000\nexperience to draw.\n\n23\n00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:13.360\nAnd yet, he's the first to admit when something isn't in his area of expertise.\n\n24\n00:01:13.360 --> 00:01:17.680\nAnd instead of guessing, he trusts the experts on his team to guide the way.\n\n25\n00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:23.680\nYou see, great companies aren't built by ego. They're built by leaders who ask\n\n26\n00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:24.640\nquestions,\n\n27\n00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:29.280\nlisten, and rely on the smart people around them. And in this conversation,\n\n28\n00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:33.280\nyou'll hear exactly how Glenn does it. Plus, the lessons he's learned\n\n29\n00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:38.170\nwriting elephants in Thailand, we both have a story to share there, and\n\n30\n00:01:38.170 --> 00:01:39.600\nsurviving a Wall Street\n\n31\n00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:43.870\nfiring. And I'm glad I don't have a story to share there. So here's my\n\n32\n00:01:43.870 --> 00:01:44.960\nconversation with my\n\n33\n00:01:44.960 --> 00:01:47.840\ngood friend, and soon to be yours, Glenn Fogel.\n\n34\n00:01:53.680 --> 00:02:01.280\nI was once traveling in Thailand. I was at this franchise meeting, and they had\n\n35\n00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:02.480\nthis big event,\n\n36\n00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:10.000\nand they put me on this elephant. And my legs were stretched out so wide. And I\n\n37\n00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:10.720\nwas on this thing,\n\n38\n00:02:10.720 --> 00:02:16.560\nwhat seemed to have had to be an hour. And I finally got off. And I think I was\n\n39\n00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:17.200\nout of commission\n\n40\n00:02:17.200 --> 00:02:21.630\nfor about three days. And that's one of my travel stories that I have. And I\n\n41\n00:02:21.630 --> 00:02:22.640\nknow you travel the\n\n42\n00:02:22.640 --> 00:02:27.120\nworld. Do you have any stories that really stand out for you as you think about\n\n43\n00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:27.840\nwhat you've been\n\n44\n00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:32.800\nable to see as the CEO? Well, so let's go to Thailand. And so it's Northern\n\n45\n00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:34.240\nThailand. And it's the\n\n46\n00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:40.160\nsummer after my first year of law school. And instead of working, I decided I'm\n\n47\n00:02:40.160 --> 00:02:40.640\ngoing to just go\n\n48\n00:02:40.640 --> 00:02:44.250\noff to Asia for three months and just travel around by myself and have a lot of\n\n49\n00:02:44.250 --> 00:02:45.760\nmoney. But,\n\n50\n00:02:45.760 --> 00:02:50.560\nyou know, go cheap. The old hippie trails, they called it back in the days. So\n\n51\n00:02:50.560 --> 00:02:51.440\nI'm out of Chiang\n\n52\n00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:55.200\nright. And I'm going to get together with a bunch of people like that. We're\n\n53\n00:02:55.200 --> 00:02:56.000\ngoing to get somebody\n\n54\n00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:00.030\ntake us out to see some hill tribes, do some hiking out to get there. And we're\n\n55\n00:03:00.030 --> 00:03:01.680\ngoing to get an elephant\n\n56\n00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:06.510\ntransportation from one village to another one point. So you absolutely were\n\n57\n00:03:06.510 --> 00:03:07.680\nnot told the right\n\n58\n00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:13.130\nway to ride on an elephant is the head of the elephant. And first of all, they\n\n59\n00:03:13.130 --> 00:03:14.080\nhad those seats,\n\n60\n00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:17.870\nthose chairs type things. But those after like two or three hours, that's\n\n61\n00:03:17.870 --> 00:03:18.640\nreally uncomfortable,\n\n62\n00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:22.190\ntoo. It doesn't work no matter what position you are. It's not good. So but\n\n63\n00:03:22.190 --> 00:03:24.000\nwhat is comfortable is\n\n64\n00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:28.130\nsitting right on the neck and the head of the elephant. That's fine. The\n\n65\n00:03:28.130 --> 00:03:29.360\nproblem is though,\n\n66\n00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:32.760\nis the elephant every so often wants to put his head down and maybe get, you\n\n67\n00:03:32.760 --> 00:03:34.240\nknow, some water or\n\n68\n00:03:34.240 --> 00:03:37.510\nlook at something or he wants to put his head up and he wants to go get a leaf\n\n69\n00:03:37.510 --> 00:03:38.320\nor something with\n\n70\n00:03:38.320 --> 00:03:42.820\nhis trunk. And so you have to be very conscious of when the elephant is going\n\n71\n00:03:42.820 --> 00:03:43.840\nto move its head.\n\n72\n00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:50.410\nBecause you want to pull off. I love it. I should have had that coaching before\n\n73\n00:03:50.410 --> 00:03:51.440\nI went to Thailand\n\n74\n00:03:51.440 --> 00:03:55.930\ngot that from you. I need it. You know, traveling the world. That's on\n\n75\n00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:57.440\neverybody's bucket list,\n\n76\n00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:01.150\nGlenn. I mean, everybody wants to travel the world. How do you tap into that\n\n77\n00:04:01.150 --> 00:04:02.240\nhuman desire\n\n78\n00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:06.940\nin your company? The thing that you just said is so true. There's maybe it's\n\n79\n00:04:06.940 --> 00:04:08.560\nsomething in our DNA.\n\n80\n00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:13.200\nAnd maybe, you know, a million years ago, the Homo sapien, whatever our species\n\n81\n00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:13.920\nwas a million\n\n82\n00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:19.330\nyears ago, for whatever reason in the somewhere in the Serengeti, there's just\n\n83\n00:04:19.330 --> 00:04:20.240\nthis desire to see\n\n84\n00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:24.230\nwhat's over the next hill. And they did. And that's how obviously the human\n\n85\n00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:25.440\nspecies spread around\n\n86\n00:04:25.440 --> 00:04:28.500\nand the Homo sapiens are old in the world. And everything, there's just this\n\n87\n00:04:28.500 --> 00:04:29.040\ndesire to see\n\n88\n00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:33.970\nsomething else. I don't know why, but I think it's just in our DNA. So we don't\n\n89\n00:04:33.970 --> 00:04:35.440\nneed to create demand.\n\n90\n00:04:36.080 --> 00:04:41.360\nWhat we need to do to be successful is to help make it easier. And that's why\n\n91\n00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:42.480\nour mission is\n\n92\n00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:47.000\nmaking it easier for everybody to experience the world. And that's what we're\n\n93\n00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:47.920\ntrying to accomplish\n\n94\n00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:51.060\nat booking holdings and all the companies that are part of it. Yeah, that's a\n\n95\n00:04:51.060 --> 00:04:52.000\nhuge noble cause,\n\n96\n00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:55.790\nreally. You know, when you think about it, because you tap into this innate\n\n97\n00:04:55.790 --> 00:04:57.600\ndesire and every company,\n\n98\n00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:00.710\nyou kind of want to have something to get you up every day and knows that you\n\n99\n00:05:00.710 --> 00:05:01.760\n're doing good.\n\n100\n00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:05.230\nI bet that has to generate a lot of pride with your people. It does. It doesn't\n\n101\n00:05:05.230 --> 00:05:06.000\n. I talked about\n\n102\n00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.540\nit a lot. And it's interesting, obviously, during COVID, horrible time. And in\n\n103\n00:05:11.540 --> 00:05:12.320\ncomparison,\n\n104\n00:05:12.320 --> 00:05:16.160\nand you think about it, the scientists who are trying to come up with solutions\n\n105\n00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:16.880\nto a terrible\n\n106\n00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:21.980\ndisease, those are the real heroes. And it's easier to motivate. We're trying\n\n107\n00:05:21.980 --> 00:05:22.640\nto save the world\n\n108\n00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:27.520\nfrom terrible disease. That's easy motivation. I once upon a time I worked on\n\n109\n00:05:27.520 --> 00:05:28.320\nWall Street.\n\n110\n00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:33.510\nAnd I kind of think the mission really was to make money. Well, you know, we\n\n111\n00:05:33.510 --> 00:05:34.640\ntalked about how well\n\n112\n00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:39.080\nwe're providing a way to get capital to companies to help them grow. No, that\n\n113\n00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:40.000\nwas nice. It's true.\n\n114\n00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.440\nThere's nothing not true about it. But I got the feeling that most people there\n\n115\n00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:44.000\nweren't really\n\n116\n00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.810\nfor that mission. They're really for a batting the bank account of their own.\n\n117\n00:05:47.810 --> 00:05:49.440\nSo it's better when I\n\n118\n00:05:49.440 --> 00:05:54.330\nleft Wall Street and I started working at a company, they thought, you know,\n\n119\n00:05:54.330 --> 00:05:55.360\nthis is a really good\n\n120\n00:05:55.360 --> 00:06:00.710\nmission. It maybe we're not as noble as the scientists solving cancer. But we\n\n121\n00:06:00.710 --> 00:06:01.840\nare doing something that\n\n122\n00:06:01.840 --> 00:06:06.960\nis making the world a better place. I truly believe that. I truly really\n\n123\n00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:07.840\nbelieve that.\n\n124\n00:06:07.840 --> 00:06:12.590\nAnd every day when we see successful trips and we know that we've done a good\n\n125\n00:06:12.590 --> 00:06:13.680\njob, that gives me\n\n126\n00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:18.540\npleasure. That's fantastic. And you know, I was wondering when you were a kid\n\n127\n00:06:18.540 --> 00:06:19.360\nthat was travel a\n\n128\n00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:23.620\nbig part of your upbringing. And if so, what did that teach you? It absolutely\n\n129\n00:06:23.620 --> 00:06:24.960\nwas not as a kid.\n\n130\n00:06:24.960 --> 00:06:32.000\nAnd it's funny. I know every vacation I took with my family between, you know,\n\n131\n00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:32.800\nuntil I went off to\n\n132\n00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:39.740\ncollege and made a single digit number and a couple were by car. But it was\n\n133\n00:06:39.740 --> 00:06:41.360\nexciting. But then\n\n134\n00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:48.000\nI got to college and I wanted to see the world. My folks, first generation\n\n135\n00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:49.600\ncollege, my brother\n\n136\n00:06:49.600 --> 00:06:55.180\nand I first in our college, my parents had only been in the US for the most\n\n137\n00:06:55.180 --> 00:06:56.000\npart. But\n\n138\n00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:01.790\nthey did when I was a senior in high school, maybe or junior, I don't mind that\n\n139\n00:07:01.790 --> 00:07:02.160\nthey went\n\n140\n00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:06.080\noff to Europe. And they came back and they're talking, wow, this is incredible.\n\n141\n00:07:06.080 --> 00:07:06.800\nAnd all these\n\n142\n00:07:06.800 --> 00:07:12.460\nkids are going around on their when they're in NAPSACS. And this is the maybe\n\n143\n00:07:12.460 --> 00:07:12.560\nlate 70s.\n\n144\n00:07:13.200 --> 00:07:17.940\nAnd so when I go off to college, I'm going to do this too. And after my\n\n145\n00:07:17.940 --> 00:07:19.120\nsophomore year,\n\n146\n00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:23.760\nI signed up and there was a program in northern Spain, San Tundell. And it was\n\n147\n00:07:23.760 --> 00:07:24.800\nto do Spanish,\n\n148\n00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:30.610\nto learn Spanish at the Universidad Mendez Palais. And I went there and it was\n\n149\n00:07:30.610 --> 00:07:31.600\nwonderful. And\n\n150\n00:07:31.600 --> 00:07:34.670\nit's international, these people are like, I'm doing this again. And the next\n\n151\n00:07:34.670 --> 00:07:35.440\nsummer, instead of\n\n152\n00:07:35.440 --> 00:07:39.400\ngetting a job, I went off with a friend and we, you know, using our Europass,\n\n153\n00:07:39.400 --> 00:07:40.560\nwe're all over Europe\n\n154\n00:07:40.560 --> 00:07:46.310\nand everything. It costs back very low, very low cost. And I just got the buck.\n\n155\n00:07:46.310 --> 00:07:47.920\nAnd then as I mentioned,\n\n156\n00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:51.330\nafter I went to a first year of law school, I went, I went out to Asian and did\n\n157\n00:07:51.330 --> 00:07:52.640\nthat. So I really\n\n158\n00:07:52.640 --> 00:07:56.480\nliked traveling. I mean, I've just had the pleasure of seeing parts of the\n\n159\n00:07:56.480 --> 00:07:57.520\nworld and seeing how it\n\n160\n00:07:57.520 --> 00:08:00.550\ncan really bring people together, learning new and different things. Well, I\n\n161\n00:08:00.550 --> 00:08:01.120\nforgot to mention,\n\n162\n00:08:01.120 --> 00:08:04.720\nI also studied in the Soviet Union, when I was at the University, I forgot that\n\n163\n00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:06.000\npart of about six\n\n164\n00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:10.960\nweeks in between semesters in the winter, that was fascinating at the time. You\n\n165\n00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:10.960\nknow,\n\n166\n00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:14.770\nRonald Reagan was president of the United States. It was the evil empire to go\n\n167\n00:08:14.770 --> 00:08:15.680\nand speak and deal\n\n168\n00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:20.210\nwith people. My college, each people have talked to them and see their point of\n\n169\n00:08:20.210 --> 00:08:21.040\nview of what the\n\n170\n00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:25.200\nworld looked to them. Very interesting. You got a global perspective before you\n\n171\n00:08:25.200 --> 00:08:26.320\n're out of college.\n\n172\n00:08:26.320 --> 00:08:30.950\nAnd it's a first generation college student, which is the same thing. That's\n\n173\n00:08:30.950 --> 00:08:31.840\nwhat I was, too.\n\n174\n00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:35.680\nI never really had that kind of travel. I did live in like 23 states by the\n\n175\n00:08:35.680 --> 00:08:37.040\ntime I was seventh grade,\n\n176\n00:08:37.040 --> 00:08:40.420\nbecause my dad was a governor's surveyor. But it was always exciting going to\n\n177\n00:08:40.420 --> 00:08:41.600\nthat next spot,\n\n178\n00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:45.200\nyou know, figuring out, you know, what the place is going to be like and the\n\n179\n00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:45.840\npeople you're going to\n\n180\n00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:50.510\nmeet. But that must have been hard that many different places before you're\n\n181\n00:08:50.510 --> 00:08:51.920\ngrowing. I mean,\n\n182\n00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:56.480\ngoing to each school, how to make, you know, new friends. Yeah, I thought\n\n183\n00:08:56.480 --> 00:08:57.920\neverybody did it, Glenn.\n\n184\n00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:01.280\nYou know, when you're a kid, that's what you do. I just thought that's what\n\n185\n00:09:01.280 --> 00:09:01.520\neverybody,\n\n186\n00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:04.370\nand my mom would say, hey, you better make friends because we're moving, you\n\n187\n00:09:04.370 --> 00:09:04.880\nknow.\n\n188\n00:09:04.880 --> 00:09:08.400\nAnd it was a good thing for me. I think it helped me learn a lot of things\n\n189\n00:09:08.400 --> 00:09:09.760\nabout leadership, you know.\n\n190\n00:09:09.760 --> 00:09:12.800\nSo I understand you had a stroke when you're only 17 years old, you know,\n\n191\n00:09:12.800 --> 00:09:18.250\nwhat kind of perspective that did that give you at such a young age? And what\n\n192\n00:09:18.250 --> 00:09:19.440\nkind of impact has\n\n193\n00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:25.410\nthat had on the way you lead if you think about it? Yeah, so I was 17. It was a\n\n194\n00:09:25.410 --> 00:09:27.280\nspring of my junior\n\n195\n00:09:27.280 --> 00:09:32.800\nyear in high school. And I woke up in the morning and I just realized something\n\n196\n00:09:32.800 --> 00:09:33.680\n's not right, not\n\n197\n00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:37.560\nreally thin. Well, I don't really understand what's going on. And then going to\n\n198\n00:09:37.560 --> 00:09:38.720\nget myself ready to\n\n199\n00:09:38.720 --> 00:09:42.560\ngo to school, brush my teeth out, I'm bumping into the walls so much so I wake\n\n200\n00:09:42.560 --> 00:09:43.360\nup my parents.\n\n201\n00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:46.000\nAnd they come and they see me and they say, oh, this is good. All they call\n\n202\n00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:46.960\nover doctor off the\n\n203\n00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:54.670\nhospital back. My what has happened is I have a left temporal stroke. And my\n\n204\n00:09:54.670 --> 00:09:55.920\nentire right side\n\n205\n00:09:55.920 --> 00:10:02.540\nvery quickly becomes paralyzed. And I lose all my ability to communicate, can't\n\n206\n00:10:02.540 --> 00:10:03.680\nspeak. It's not\n\n207\n00:10:03.680 --> 00:10:06.910\nbecause the mouth isn't where the actual language parts of the brain are now\n\n208\n00:10:06.910 --> 00:10:09.920\ngone. And that was a\n\n209\n00:10:09.920 --> 00:10:15.140\nchange because I was a pretty smart kid in high school and everything was\n\n210\n00:10:15.140 --> 00:10:16.240\nlooking pretty good.\n\n211\n00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:20.080\nAnd I had to put in all my application. I was getting ready. I did all my stuff\n\n212\n00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:21.120\nfor the SAT.\n\n213\n00:10:21.120 --> 00:10:24.560\nSo I was already in the fall and applied to colleges and everything's all good.\n\n214\n00:10:24.560 --> 00:10:25.040\nNow,\n\n215\n00:10:25.040 --> 00:10:31.360\nnow, since I've gone from something to what I feel is nothing. And it took time\n\n216\n00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:32.160\nto get back\n\n217\n00:10:32.160 --> 00:10:37.040\nto be better, so to speak. What's interesting though is somebody that age, you\n\n218\n00:10:37.040 --> 00:10:38.080\ndon't think about\n\n219\n00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:41.900\nthat, oh, I'm not going to get better maybe. It never occurred to me that wasn\n\n220\n00:10:41.900 --> 00:10:43.280\n't going to happen.\n\n221\n00:10:43.280 --> 00:10:49.070\nI would get frustrated when I couldn't do things. I would get angry when I\n\n222\n00:10:49.070 --> 00:10:50.160\ncouldn't do certain things,\n\n223\n00:10:50.160 --> 00:10:55.490\nbut it never occurred to me that I wouldn't eventually be able to get back so\n\n224\n00:10:55.490 --> 00:10:57.040\nto speak as I was before.\n\n225\n00:10:57.040 --> 00:11:03.880\nWhat's interesting though is my mother, she's long gone now, but she would and\n\n226\n00:11:03.880 --> 00:11:05.120\ntold my wife,\n\n227\n00:11:05.120 --> 00:11:08.840\nmany times my wife would tell me, she says, you know, she keeps my, your mom\n\n228\n00:11:08.840 --> 00:11:10.080\nkeeps telling me how\n\n229\n00:11:10.080 --> 00:11:14.000\nbefore you had a stroke, you were a smart kid. I'm like, thank you mom.\n\n230\n00:11:17.120 --> 00:11:22.350\nWhat it definitely did do is I'm not sure if that did it or just as you get\n\n231\n00:11:22.350 --> 00:11:23.200\nolder and you\n\n232\n00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:29.650\nrecognize it's not as easy for everybody. And bad things happen that there wasn\n\n233\n00:11:29.650 --> 00:11:30.720\n't their fault,\n\n234\n00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:36.430\njust bad things can happen. And you try and be empathetic. And when you have to\n\n235\n00:11:36.430 --> 00:11:37.040\ntake actions\n\n236\n00:11:37.040 --> 00:11:41.740\nthat are going to hurt people and as a leader to be successful and to do what\n\n237\n00:11:41.740 --> 00:11:42.720\nis necessary,\n\n238\n00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:45.860\nsometimes you're going to take actions that are hurt people. We need to let\n\n239\n00:11:45.860 --> 00:11:46.320\npeople go,\n\n240\n00:11:46.320 --> 00:11:51.220\neven though they were good workers. I mean, during the pandemic, we let go 25%\n\n241\n00:11:51.220 --> 00:11:51.920\nof our employees.\n\n242\n00:11:51.920 --> 00:11:57.450\nWasn't 25% of the people weren't bad workers. They didn't not not show up. We\n\n243\n00:11:57.450 --> 00:11:58.160\nhad no business.\n\n244\n00:11:58.160 --> 00:12:04.800\nPandemic, it shut down, traveled entirely. I mean, and at that time, we hadn't\n\n245\n00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:05.920\ndo certain things that\n\n246\n00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:10.730\nwere definitely hurtful. And you recognize, okay, we're going to try and do\n\n247\n00:12:10.730 --> 00:12:11.440\nthis the best way\n\n248\n00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:16.920\npossible. So we don't do well, what is the minimum required by law, by contract\n\n249\n00:12:16.920 --> 00:12:19.120\n? We do it to try and\n\n250\n00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:25.110\nmake it as best we can, given the resources we have at the time. And while\n\n251\n00:12:25.110 --> 00:12:26.400\nobviously one can\n\n252\n00:12:26.400 --> 00:12:31.450\nnever be happy about that, I am pleased that we all of us at the leadership\n\n253\n00:12:31.450 --> 00:12:32.480\nlevel did get\n\n254\n00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:37.710\ncommunications, notes, emails, people said, I said, like, look, I really said I\n\n255\n00:12:37.710 --> 00:12:38.880\nhave to leave, but\n\n256\n00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:43.220\nyou guys have done this the right way, which is very different than what\n\n257\n00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:45.280\nhappened when I was fired\n\n258\n00:12:45.280 --> 00:12:51.100\nfrom a job on Wall Street. That was a very different situation where person\n\n259\n00:12:51.100 --> 00:12:52.080\ncomes in says,\n\n260\n00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:56.160\nyou know, thank you. Actually comes in, so you have to go to this meeting. So\n\n261\n00:12:56.160 --> 00:12:57.280\nyou go to the meeting,\n\n262\n00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:02.210\nshow up the meeting, they tell you, listen, your job has been eliminated. You\n\n263\n00:13:02.210 --> 00:13:03.440\n'll get two weeks\n\n264\n00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:08.890\naverage or whatever it was, some nominal amount. And thank you for playing. Bye\n\n265\n00:13:08.890 --> 00:13:10.000\nbye. And oh,\n\n266\n00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:13.670\ntell me you'll take up your stuff from the desk and we'll deliver it to your\n\n267\n00:13:13.670 --> 00:13:14.720\nhome. Like,\n\n268\n00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:19.410\ndon't even like go back to your desk. Just doors that way. Nice big man will\n\n269\n00:13:19.410 --> 00:13:20.640\nhelp show you the way\n\n270\n00:13:20.640 --> 00:13:23.660\nin case you are getting lost. Yeah, you've been working place, you're not going\n\n271\n00:13:23.660 --> 00:13:24.000\nto get\n\n272\n00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:26.960\nwhat you got to get out. But you know, that's the way it's played.\n\n273\n00:13:26.960 --> 00:13:32.880\nWhen you talk about just the agony that you had, you know, letting that 25% of\n\n274\n00:13:32.880 --> 00:13:33.200\nyour work\n\n275\n00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:37.150\nfor the course goes during during COVID, you know, I can see it, you know, it\n\n276\n00:13:37.150 --> 00:13:38.320\nreally moved you.\n\n277\n00:13:38.320 --> 00:13:43.440\nWhat do you do? Attitudinally as a leader, when you get backed up against a\n\n278\n00:13:43.440 --> 00:13:44.320\nwall like that,\n\n279\n00:13:44.320 --> 00:13:48.560\nand you know, you have to do something you don't want to do, how do you how do\n\n280\n00:13:48.560 --> 00:13:49.680\nyou deal with that\n\n281\n00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:54.540\nmoment as a leader? Again, it's what you're trying to do for the people who are\n\n282\n00:13:54.540 --> 00:13:55.280\ngoing to remain\n\n283\n00:13:56.000 --> 00:13:59.520\nis very important. So it's not just how are you going to deal with the people\n\n284\n00:13:59.520 --> 00:14:00.240\nwho are going to\n\n285\n00:14:00.240 --> 00:14:03.070\nhave to leave, it's how are you going to do it in a way and what do you then do\n\n286\n00:14:03.070 --> 00:14:03.920\nfor the people\n\n287\n00:14:03.920 --> 00:14:09.220\nafterwards to maintain their ability to continue to do what is necessary to\n\n288\n00:14:09.220 --> 00:14:10.960\nmove this organization\n\n289\n00:14:10.960 --> 00:14:14.520\nforward. And how are you going to motivate your leaders? Because you can't do\n\n290\n00:14:14.520 --> 00:14:15.520\neverything at once.\n\n291\n00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:21.080\nWe had 26,000 people, maybe 27,000 people at the time. I can't I can't talk to\n\n292\n00:14:21.080 --> 00:14:22.800\n27,000 people.\n\n293\n00:14:22.800 --> 00:14:26.480\nSo I need to make sure that I am talking, yes, I'll talk to the entire company\n\n294\n00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:27.360\nthrough broadcast\n\n295\n00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:32.010\nmechanisms, of course, but person to person with our extended leadership people\n\n296\n00:14:32.010 --> 00:14:32.960\n, a few hundred of\n\n297\n00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:36.940\nthem, where I'm talking that much more to get them to make sure everybody\n\n298\n00:14:36.940 --> 00:14:38.000\nunderstands what's\n\n299\n00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:42.540\nhappening, communicate, communicate, communicate, tell them the truth, tell\n\n300\n00:14:42.540 --> 00:14:43.760\nthem what has happened,\n\n301\n00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:49.920\nwhy it's happening, and how in the end, in the end, we will be able to overcome\n\n302\n00:14:49.920 --> 00:14:50.560\nthis. Now,\n\n303\n00:14:51.200 --> 00:14:55.100\nthis is what I said, you know, I said, look, most of the people who are going\n\n304\n00:14:55.100 --> 00:14:55.760\nto let go,\n\n305\n00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:01.120\nmost of the people are going to end up okay. And having been let go myself, how\n\n306\n00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:02.000\nyou've been fired\n\n307\n00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:07.500\nmyself, I am somewhat familiar with it can it can work out fine, it can be okay\n\n308\n00:15:07.500 --> 00:15:09.440\n. But the thing is,\n\n309\n00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:12.690\nit's also knowing the back of your mind though, some people are never going to\n\n310\n00:15:12.690 --> 00:15:13.840\nrecover from this.\n\n311\n00:15:13.840 --> 00:15:17.530\nSome people, it's just not going to work for them. In a very large group, they\n\n312\n00:15:17.530 --> 00:15:17.840\n're going to\n\n313\n00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:20.570\ncut, they are going to react, and it's just not going to be good. But you can't\n\n314\n00:15:20.570 --> 00:15:21.200\ndo anything about\n\n315\n00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:25.960\nthat. I can't, you can't save everybody. So you do what you can for the most\n\n316\n00:15:25.960 --> 00:15:27.280\npeople you can.\n\n317\n00:15:27.280 --> 00:15:32.050\nIt's one of the tough things about leadership, but you always have to think\n\n318\n00:15:32.050 --> 00:15:33.680\nabout the team that's\n\n319\n00:15:33.680 --> 00:15:36.960\ngoing to go forward. Totally. And look, we've all been there. You've been there\n\n320\n00:15:36.960 --> 00:15:37.760\n, I'm sure many,\n\n321\n00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:43.860\nmany times. And it's, it's one of the unfun parts of leadership. It's fun when\n\n322\n00:15:43.860 --> 00:15:44.640\nyou're winning.\n\n323\n00:15:45.280 --> 00:15:49.910\nIt's not as much fun when you have to make very hard choices that you know are\n\n324\n00:15:49.910 --> 00:15:50.960\ngoing to hurt people.\n\n325\n00:15:50.960 --> 00:15:55.600\nHey, everyone, it's Kula. And if you are looking for a resource to help you\n\n326\n00:15:55.600 --> 00:15:57.120\nlevel up as a leader,\n\n327\n00:15:57.120 --> 00:16:01.120\ngo and get our weekly leadership digest. It's our roundup of leadership\n\n328\n00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:02.000\nresources that we\n\n329\n00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:06.800\ndeliver straight to your inbox every Friday morning. It's totally free. And\n\n330\n00:16:06.800 --> 00:16:07.760\nthere are thousands of\n\n331\n00:16:07.760 --> 00:16:12.290\nleaders who are using this resource to stay sharp in their role as a leader. So\n\n332\n00:16:12.290 --> 00:16:15.040\ngo to howleaderslead.com/digest.\n\n333\n00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:20.070\nGrab this free weekly newsletter. Go to howleaderslead.com/digest and get it\n\n334\n00:16:20.070 --> 00:16:20.720\ntoday.\n\n335\n00:16:20.720 --> 00:16:24.920\nYou mentioned earlier, Glenn, that you started your career out on Wall Street.\n\n336\n00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:25.680\nAnd you know,\n\n337\n00:16:25.680 --> 00:16:28.670\nyou talked about how there's, you know, a lot of people there are in it for\n\n338\n00:16:28.670 --> 00:16:29.520\nthemselves. And\n\n339\n00:16:29.520 --> 00:16:33.560\nthey didn't necessarily show as much compassion as they, you might want to have\n\n340\n00:16:33.560 --> 00:16:33.840\n.\n\n341\n00:16:33.840 --> 00:16:38.880\nBut when you think about it, you know, how did that prepare you to lead?\n\n342\n00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:44.070\nI mean, there's so many things. And by the way, my first job after I went to\n\n343\n00:16:44.070 --> 00:16:44.800\ncollege,\n\n344\n00:16:44.800 --> 00:16:49.120\nit wasn't, it was on Wall Street, but it wasn't, if you would think, I was an\n\n345\n00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:49.680\nIT person.\n\n346\n00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:56.160\nI was actually coding on Wall Street. And then I said, well, I got to get over\n\n347\n00:16:56.160 --> 00:16:56.880\nthe other side,\n\n348\n00:16:56.880 --> 00:17:01.130\nnot the back office. I want to be in the front office, but you can't go from\n\n349\n00:17:01.130 --> 00:17:02.880\nbeing an IT guy\n\n350\n00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:06.090\nto being invested in a banker right away, which is why I then went to law\n\n351\n00:17:06.090 --> 00:17:07.280\nschool. So I could get\n\n352\n00:17:07.280 --> 00:17:11.430\na job on Wall Street in the front office. But that part about being on Wall\n\n353\n00:17:11.430 --> 00:17:12.320\nStreet and stuff,\n\n354\n00:17:12.320 --> 00:17:16.480\nand there's so many things you do learn, skills that you do learn. One thing\n\n355\n00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:17.520\nthat's really important\n\n356\n00:17:17.520 --> 00:17:23.330\nas a very young analyst type person where you're basically a grunt is\n\n357\n00:17:23.330 --> 00:17:24.240\nunderstanding the need\n\n358\n00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:29.200\nfor making things perfect. And that's something now, which, you know, we talk\n\n359\n00:17:29.200 --> 00:17:30.240\nabout a lot sometimes,\n\n360\n00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:36.160\nis people have to have the knowledge that what you do, the work product you do\n\n361\n00:17:36.160 --> 00:17:37.200\nmatters.\n\n362\n00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:40.830\nAnd that can be even something as simple as if you're putting together a\n\n363\n00:17:40.830 --> 00:17:41.680\npresentation,\n\n364\n00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:48.250\nmake sure it's right, spend the time to make it right. And when I get stuff\n\n365\n00:17:48.250 --> 00:17:49.600\nthat I see that\n\n366\n00:17:49.600 --> 00:17:53.480\nsloppy isn't right, or, you know, there's a footnote, but I don't know what the\n\n367\n00:17:53.480 --> 00:17:54.560\nfootnote goes to.\n\n368\n00:17:54.560 --> 00:17:58.990\nI think did anybody read this before it got to me? And that's one thing. And I\n\n369\n00:17:58.990 --> 00:17:59.920\nthink that,\n\n370\n00:17:59.920 --> 00:18:04.130\nlook, we know perfection is a goal we will never get to. But there's nothing\n\n371\n00:18:04.130 --> 00:18:05.280\nwrong with trying to\n\n372\n00:18:05.280 --> 00:18:05.980\nget there. And in the year 2000, you joined the team at Priceline. What\n\n373\n00:18:05.980 --> 00:18:11.200\ninspired you to\n\n374\n00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:16.750\nleap from the world of finance to travel? Well, so here's the thing. So I am a\n\n375\n00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:17.440\nhead trader,\n\n376\n00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:21.960\nMorgan Stanley has the magic for a very well known guy, Barton Biggs, really\n\n377\n00:18:21.960 --> 00:18:22.720\npretty much a Wall\n\n378\n00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:28.140\nStreet legend. And as a buy side trader, it's really not that interesting, or\n\n379\n00:18:28.140 --> 00:18:29.120\nat least it wasn't\n\n380\n00:18:29.120 --> 00:18:34.560\nto me, because really what I'm trying to do is execute the trades in the most\n\n381\n00:18:34.560 --> 00:18:36.160\nprice efficient way.\n\n382\n00:18:37.120 --> 00:18:45.030\nAnd then Zam, like who cares? And at the same time, the internet is booming,\n\n383\n00:18:45.030 --> 00:18:46.880\nbooming, booming. Now,\n\n384\n00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:53.360\nbefore I'd been in this trading role, which I got after I'd been fired from the\n\n385\n00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:54.160\ninvestment banker\n\n386\n00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:59.820\nseveral years earlier, I had been investment banker that we did a lot of work\n\n387\n00:18:59.820 --> 00:19:00.800\nfor the airline\n\n388\n00:19:00.800 --> 00:19:05.370\nindustry. So I know a lot about the airline industry. So I'm thinking, okay, I\n\n389\n00:19:05.370 --> 00:19:06.320\nknow technology\n\n390\n00:19:06.320 --> 00:19:10.430\ncould I better code or I know the air transportation business banker, I know a\n\n391\n00:19:10.430 --> 00:19:11.280\nlittle about capital\n\n392\n00:19:11.280 --> 00:19:17.090\nmarkets, the trader. And there's this company, Priceline.com, that was this\n\n393\n00:19:17.090 --> 00:19:19.280\ngolden child coming out in\n\n394\n00:19:19.280 --> 00:19:26.280\n1999, did their IPO in the spring. And the thing is just rocketing up. And they\n\n395\n00:19:26.280 --> 00:19:27.280\nneed somebody\n\n396\n00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:33.040\nto be a corporate development person. I think I'll law degree, I know about M&A\n\n397\n00:19:33.040 --> 00:19:33.040\n.\n\n398\n00:19:34.080 --> 00:19:39.040\nThis is perfect for me. And it's not far from home, because most of the big,\n\n399\n00:19:39.040 --> 00:19:43.520\nyou know, the big dot coms in the turn of the century were all over in\n\n400\n00:19:43.520 --> 00:19:44.640\nCalifornia, you know,\n\n401\n00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:49.270\nSilicon Valley. There's like the only big star on a really on the East coast.\n\n402\n00:19:49.270 --> 00:19:50.800\nAnd so I applied\n\n403\n00:19:50.800 --> 00:19:58.040\nfor the job the end of 1999, going to 2000. They offered me the job is I'd like\n\n404\n00:19:58.040 --> 00:19:58.640\nto wait.\n\n405\n00:19:58.640 --> 00:20:02.610\nSo I get my bonus because the bonuses are paid end of February. And so I'll\n\n406\n00:20:02.610 --> 00:20:02.960\ncome the end of\n\n407\n00:20:02.960 --> 00:20:08.170\nFebruary and the say, great. So I leave Morgan Stanley, I go to an internet\n\n408\n00:20:08.170 --> 00:20:10.080\ncompany. At the last\n\n409\n00:20:10.080 --> 00:20:16.210\nweek of February, thereby top ticking the term is the trade. I've gone long\n\n410\n00:20:16.210 --> 00:20:17.920\ninternet right as the\n\n411\n00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:23.710\nNASDAQ peaks, first week of March, 2000. And the thing is, it proved that it\n\n412\n00:20:23.710 --> 00:20:24.960\nwas smart for me to\n\n413\n00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:29.210\nleave being head trade or Morgan Stanley has the man's for Barton, because I\n\n414\n00:20:29.210 --> 00:20:30.480\nclearly know nothing\n\n415\n00:20:30.480 --> 00:20:34.880\nabout trading, having top ticked the trade going long internet in 2000.\n\n416\n00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:42.460\nIn the time I've gone, week after I've joined the company, the stock at the\n\n417\n00:20:42.460 --> 00:20:44.000\ntime is worth,\n\n418\n00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:50.240\nsay 15 billion or so of market cap goes up very quickly, almost double it\n\n419\n00:20:50.240 --> 00:20:51.200\nreally goes\n\n420\n00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:59.870\nquickly. And I'm like, wow, I'm a genius. And a few months later, end of 2000,\n\n421\n00:20:59.870 --> 00:21:01.360\nwe're almost flat\n\n422\n00:21:01.360 --> 00:21:05.620\nout of money and flat broken going bankrupt real fast. People thought I, you\n\n423\n00:21:05.620 --> 00:21:06.080\nknow, the job\n\n424\n00:21:06.080 --> 00:21:09.170\nand thought the company disappeared. So my job is even my mom probably was\n\n425\n00:21:09.170 --> 00:21:10.320\nthinking like, you know,\n\n426\n00:21:10.320 --> 00:21:15.910\nwhat did you do to yourself? That was crazy. But I stayed, I stayed all the\n\n427\n00:21:15.910 --> 00:21:16.720\ntime. So I've now been\n\n428\n00:21:16.720 --> 00:21:25.670\nthere 25 years now, 25 years. And over those 25 years, at the bottom part of\n\n429\n00:21:25.670 --> 00:21:26.640\nour worst thing,\n\n430\n00:21:26.640 --> 00:21:31.580\nwe were what was then a dollar a share, we did a reverse split just so we could\n\n431\n00:21:31.580 --> 00:21:32.480\nstay listed.\n\n432\n00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:43.270\nSo it was six for one. So the stock price on a reverse split basis is $6,\n\n433\n00:21:43.270 --> 00:21:44.560\napproximately $4,800\n\n434\n00:21:44.560 --> 00:21:52.250\nlet's round off right now. Okay. So that's from $6 to $4,800 over 25 years. So\n\n435\n00:21:52.250 --> 00:21:52.480\nthat,\n\n436\n00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:59.690\nthink about that 800 times, 800 times. And if you do that on a compound annual\n\n437\n00:21:59.690 --> 00:22:00.720\ngrowth rate,\n\n438\n00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:06.470\nso over quarter of a century, quarter of a century, we have provided our\n\n439\n00:22:06.470 --> 00:22:09.040\ninvestors with a Kager\n\n440\n00:22:09.040 --> 00:22:15.400\nthat is over 30%. There are very few companies that have ever been able to\n\n441\n00:22:15.400 --> 00:22:16.080\nachieve that.\n\n442\n00:22:16.080 --> 00:22:20.320\nYou can say that again, but and I will also tell you this, if we ever have the\n\n443\n00:22:20.320 --> 00:22:21.120\ngreat opportunity\n\n444\n00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:26.940\nto have dinner with you, you're buying. No problem. Be happy to do it. And by\n\n445\n00:22:26.940 --> 00:22:27.520\nthe way,\n\n446\n00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:30.080\nwhen you're going to, you're going to appreciate this, because I know you were\n\n447\n00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:31.120\na Pepsi cup.\n\n448\n00:22:31.120 --> 00:22:34.800\nI know you're going to like, I think if you go to the hilltop. Okay.\n\n449\n00:22:35.760 --> 00:22:43.060\nYeah, or maybe cobblestone. That sounds good to me. All right. Now, so you\n\n450\n00:22:43.060 --> 00:22:43.760\njoined\n\n451\n00:22:43.760 --> 00:22:48.800\nPriceline and you acquired several companies over the years to get that kind of\n\n452\n00:22:48.800 --> 00:22:49.840\ngrowth that you have.\n\n453\n00:22:49.840 --> 00:22:54.720\nGet, give me a peek into that strategy and the part that you played in. Oh boy.\n\n454\n00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:54.960\nIt's like,\n\n455\n00:22:54.960 --> 00:22:58.360\nhow much time do we have? How do you make this into a succinct story? Because\n\n456\n00:22:58.360 --> 00:22:58.880\nthere's so many\n\n457\n00:22:58.880 --> 00:23:02.630\nthings we're talking about. So the issue is, from the very beginning, the idea\n\n458\n00:23:02.630 --> 00:23:03.520\nwas to be global.\n\n459\n00:23:03.520 --> 00:23:09.670\nWhen I first got to Priceline, there already was this idea. We're going to be\n\n460\n00:23:09.670 --> 00:23:10.240\nglobal.\n\n461\n00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:15.910\nNow, at the time the accounting was such that you could basically do a joint\n\n462\n00:23:15.910 --> 00:23:17.760\nventure, essentially,\n\n463\n00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:24.640\nand don't have a lot of equity in it, but have warrants, options, basically a\n\n464\n00:23:24.640 --> 00:23:26.000\nright to buy\n\n465\n00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:30.840\nthis company down the road and it won't be on your balance sheet. So, because\n\n466\n00:23:30.840 --> 00:23:32.000\nthese new startups\n\n467\n00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:36.640\nabroad are going to have losses at the beginning and we're now already public.\n\n468\n00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:37.200\nSo you don't have\n\n469\n00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:42.270\nthose losses on your own, you know, on your own P and L. These are all balance\n\n470\n00:23:42.270 --> 00:23:43.600\nsheet entities.\n\n471\n00:23:43.600 --> 00:23:47.090\nNow, everything is legal. There's nothing wrong. This isn't and why I want to\n\n472\n00:23:47.090 --> 00:23:47.840\nmake everybody\n\n473\n00:23:47.840 --> 00:23:51.920\nunderstand and the rules certainly have changed no doubt. But so what we did is\n\n474\n00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:53.360\nwe put together\n\n475\n00:23:53.360 --> 00:23:56.930\ndifferent areas. So in Australia, we did a deal with Telstra, the big telecom\n\n476\n00:23:56.930 --> 00:23:57.280\nthing.\n\n477\n00:23:57.280 --> 00:24:02.400\nFor Asia, we did this thing with Haji Zouanwah and now in Europe, we set up a\n\n478\n00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:03.600\nthing where most\n\n479\n00:24:03.600 --> 00:24:10.160\nof the equity came from general Atlantic. And the idea is we'll take our IP and\n\n480\n00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:11.520\nwe'll allow\n\n481\n00:24:11.520 --> 00:24:16.060\nother people to set up their businesses there. And when they become profitable,\n\n482\n00:24:16.060 --> 00:24:17.280\nthat we will then\n\n483\n00:24:17.280 --> 00:24:20.930\nbring them on balance sheet by exercising our warrants. And that was the way it\n\n484\n00:24:20.930 --> 00:24:21.920\nwas all going to work.\n\n485\n00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:26.170\nHere's the problem though. The concept makes sense unless you've ever been a\n\n486\n00:24:26.170 --> 00:24:27.040\ndeveloper\n\n487\n00:24:27.040 --> 00:24:33.020\nand you realize this is not like you just have, you know, a price line in a box\n\n488\n00:24:33.020 --> 00:24:33.600\n. It's not like\n\n489\n00:24:33.600 --> 00:24:37.920\nyou just take some disks back in the day, like CD-ROM disk and put it in, you\n\n490\n00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:38.560\n're going to have a\n\n491\n00:24:38.560 --> 00:24:43.080\nsystem. It actually takes a lot of work to actually create these things. And we\n\n492\n00:24:43.080 --> 00:24:44.480\ndo it at the same time,\n\n493\n00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:50.920\nthe whole dot-comping is blown up. So most of my role at the beginning is\n\n494\n00:24:50.920 --> 00:24:52.080\nshutting down these\n\n495\n00:24:52.080 --> 00:24:55.410\nthings that were set up because they're losing a fortune. We don't have the\n\n496\n00:24:55.410 --> 00:24:56.240\ncash anymore.\n\n497\n00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:59.600\nSo that was my real job. The one thing we kept going though was the European\n\n498\n00:24:59.600 --> 00:25:00.560\none. We put the\n\n499\n00:25:00.560 --> 00:25:05.380\nAsian one we put on the side and the Australian one we totally shut down. But\n\n500\n00:25:05.380 --> 00:25:05.920\nwe really want to\n\n501\n00:25:05.920 --> 00:25:09.160\nskinny down while I lose money. So, okay, we're going to fire most of the\n\n502\n00:25:09.160 --> 00:25:10.480\npeople there and Glen,\n\n503\n00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:17.840\nyou are now in charge of Europe. So now I'm commuting from the New York to\n\n504\n00:25:17.840 --> 00:25:19.760\nLondon to run what is now\n\n505\n00:25:19.760 --> 00:25:24.260\nlike an eight or nine person operation to keep this in go. And we only had\n\n506\n00:25:24.260 --> 00:25:25.680\nreally one product at\n\n507\n00:25:25.680 --> 00:25:29.510\nthe time, which if people were a member, was called your name, your own price.\n\n508\n00:25:29.510 --> 00:25:30.880\nThere's an auction type\n\n509\n00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:38.050\nthing where you could get an airline ticket at a very low price, you bid. And\n\n510\n00:25:38.050 --> 00:25:39.040\nif you bid,\n\n511\n00:25:39.040 --> 00:25:42.400\nyou're going to get it, but you don't know what time you're going to take off.\n\n512\n00:25:42.400 --> 00:25:44.000\nYou don't know\n\n513\n00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:48.720\nwhich way you're going to go. You may have to make a stop or two. And you don't\n\n514\n00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:49.680\nknow which airline.\n\n515\n00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:53.590\nNow, for people who have time and don't have a lot of money, it's not a bad\n\n516\n00:25:53.590 --> 00:25:54.480\nthing. In the US,\n\n517\n00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:57.890\nit can be very good because of the US. It's going to take all day anyway,\n\n518\n00:25:57.890 --> 00:25:59.120\nunless you're in a major,\n\n519\n00:25:59.120 --> 00:26:02.800\nmajor airport, you're going to make a connection at one of the hubs. But in\n\n520\n00:26:02.800 --> 00:26:03.120\nEurope,\n\n521\n00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:07.040\nit's not quite like that. And couldn't be sure looked into that before we did\n\n522\n00:26:07.040 --> 00:26:07.600\nthat deal,\n\n523\n00:26:07.600 --> 00:26:13.590\nbecause you can go from, let's say, London to Paris on Ryanair for five pounds.\n\n524\n00:26:13.590 --> 00:26:15.840\nSo to save 50%\n\n525\n00:26:15.840 --> 00:26:21.260\ntwo and a half pounds, really, that's not a lot. Especially if to do that, you\n\n526\n00:26:21.260 --> 00:26:21.840\n're going to have to\n\n527\n00:26:21.840 --> 00:26:27.300\nfly London. So I don't know, maybe Frankfurt and then go to Paris. It's a\n\n528\n00:26:27.300 --> 00:26:28.880\nstupid product. It's a\n\n529\n00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:33.700\ntravel product. So I'm in the, I'm like, what about the hotel business? Also\n\n530\n00:26:33.700 --> 00:26:34.880\nname your own price.\n\n531\n00:26:34.880 --> 00:26:38.880\nThat also is a better product because people say, I just want a four star in\n\n532\n00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:40.000\nthis region. I don't\n\n533\n00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:43.060\ncare if it's a help, a Marriott or whatever it's like. So that was an okay\n\n534\n00:26:43.060 --> 00:26:44.240\nproduct. But I'm working\n\n535\n00:26:44.240 --> 00:26:49.070\naround saying, we got to sell this the way everybody buys travel, disclose the\n\n536\n00:26:49.070 --> 00:26:49.520\nprice,\n\n537\n00:26:50.080 --> 00:26:53.440\nand tell people what they're buying. And does anybody around here know how to\n\n538\n00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:54.240\ndo this?\n\n539\n00:26:54.240 --> 00:26:57.040\nSo I'm spending some time going around trying to find somebody who knows how to\n\n540\n00:26:57.040 --> 00:26:57.760\ndo this. I find\n\n541\n00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:05.080\nthis little company in a bunch of people graduated from Cambridge, really smart\n\n542\n00:27:05.080 --> 00:27:06.480\nguys. And they built\n\n543\n00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:11.560\na nice little business doing selling just hotels, only hotels. But the way we\n\n544\n00:27:11.560 --> 00:27:12.400\nlike it, and they're\n\n545\n00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:16.510\nusing something called the agency, a mall, which means you're acting as an\n\n546\n00:27:16.510 --> 00:27:18.320\nagent. You set it all\n\n547\n00:27:18.320 --> 00:27:23.520\nup and you get your money from the hotel later after the person checks in a\n\n548\n00:27:23.520 --> 00:27:24.640\ncommission that the\n\n549\n00:27:24.640 --> 00:27:27.970\nhotel sends to you, which is a little different than I always thought in terms\n\n550\n00:27:27.970 --> 00:27:28.560\nof emerging,\n\n551\n00:27:28.560 --> 00:27:33.660\nwhere the consumer pays up front. Anyway, so we do this, we buy the company,\n\n552\n00:27:33.660 --> 00:27:34.560\nthe great guys and\n\n553\n00:27:34.560 --> 00:27:38.000\nall that. It's good. And then I'm looking around, where's another company? And\n\n554\n00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:38.960\nthere's another company\n\n555\n00:27:38.960 --> 00:27:42.310\nlooks just like this company that we just bought. So the first company was\n\n556\n00:27:42.310 --> 00:27:43.520\ncalled Active Hotels in\n\n557\n00:27:43.520 --> 00:27:49.280\nCambridge. And what happened is, is a guy who was the CEO of Active Hotels.\n\n558\n00:27:49.280 --> 00:27:50.640\nBecause we did the deal,\n\n559\n00:27:50.640 --> 00:27:53.380\nobviously, I was only buying it. They were going to stay and help build the\n\n560\n00:27:53.380 --> 00:27:55.120\nthing. And we buy that.\n\n561\n00:27:55.120 --> 00:27:59.990\nAnd he says, do you guys, do you know the company booking.com on Amsterdam? But\n\n562\n00:27:59.990 --> 00:28:01.040\nI said, well, I kind\n\n563\n00:28:01.040 --> 00:28:06.570\nof know, I really have no space time with them. Why? And this is a Wednesday.\n\n564\n00:28:06.570 --> 00:28:07.600\nAnd I'm supposed to go\n\n565\n00:28:07.600 --> 00:28:12.730\nhome Thursday. And there's a big travel conference there. And so the person\n\n566\n00:28:12.730 --> 00:28:14.160\nsays to me, Andy says,\n\n567\n00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:17.220\nwell, they're here for the travel conference thing. We want to meet with them\n\n568\n00:28:17.220 --> 00:28:17.680\ntomorrow.\n\n569\n00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:24.930\nI'll just go home on Thursday. And I don't know. Oh, I go meet. So I call my\n\n570\n00:28:24.930 --> 00:28:25.920\nwife, I say, honey,\n\n571\n00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:28.810\nI'm not coming home. I'm not going to be home tomorrow. I got to see this\n\n572\n00:28:28.810 --> 00:28:30.000\ncompany. I'll be home\n\n573\n00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.830\nFriday. She's okay. I meet with these guys, just three of them. They're gen\n\n574\n00:28:34.830 --> 00:28:36.160\niuses. It's great. I'm\n\n575\n00:28:36.160 --> 00:28:39.280\nlooking at their numbers. I'm looking what they're doing. They're doing what\n\n576\n00:28:39.280 --> 00:28:39.680\nActive\n\n577\n00:28:39.680 --> 00:28:46.160\nO tells us doing pretty much except they are using Google buying ads on Google,\n\n578\n00:28:46.160 --> 00:28:46.640\nwhich not\n\n579\n00:28:46.640 --> 00:28:50.240\na lot of people are doing well. And they're showing how they do it. I'm saying,\n\n580\n00:28:50.240 --> 00:28:51.280\nhmm, this is very\n\n581\n00:28:51.280 --> 00:28:56.470\ninteresting. I'd like to learn a little more. Like, can I maybe I can come see\n\n582\n00:28:56.470 --> 00:28:57.360\nyou and then say,\n\n583\n00:28:57.360 --> 00:29:02.680\nwhy don't you come tomorrow? I say, that's a great idea. So I call my wife. I\n\n584\n00:29:02.680 --> 00:29:03.760\nsay, hi, honey,\n\n585\n00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:08.080\nI'm not coming home. I'm not coming. I'm coming after me. I'm Saturday. I got\n\n586\n00:29:08.080 --> 00:29:08.960\nto go to Amsterdam.\n\n587\n00:29:08.960 --> 00:29:13.210\nLong story short, we eventually closed the deal with those guys to put them\n\n588\n00:29:13.210 --> 00:29:13.600\ntogether.\n\n589\n00:29:13.600 --> 00:29:18.480\nThat's now like 90% of the business. It all becomes out of so many\n\n590\n00:29:18.480 --> 00:29:24.750\nsurreptitious things. If Andy hadn't said, why don't you meet these guys? If I\n\n591\n00:29:24.750 --> 00:29:25.520\nhad said,\n\n592\n00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:30.200\nI got to go home is a who knows what would have happened. So many things on\n\n593\n00:29:30.200 --> 00:29:30.880\nthings that\n\n594\n00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:36.000\nit's not because you're so brilliant. It's so many other things also that\n\n595\n00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:36.880\nhappened,\n\n596\n00:29:36.880 --> 00:29:40.800\nmade this happen. So when people say, well, I do this one by myself, no, you\n\n597\n00:29:40.800 --> 00:29:41.120\ndidn't.\n\n598\n00:29:41.120 --> 00:29:47.680\nA lot of other things happen, but made of this success. Well, as they say in\n\n599\n00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:48.400\nAustralia, good\n\n600\n00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:52.850\non you, because that was a good couple of days that you spent, you know, and it\n\n601\n00:29:52.850 --> 00:29:53.280\n's a good thing\n\n602\n00:29:53.280 --> 00:29:56.970\nyou had an understanding wife and it's certainly paid off for everybody. You\n\n603\n00:29:56.970 --> 00:29:58.880\nknow, my grandchildren\n\n604\n00:29:58.880 --> 00:30:04.480\nbe very pleased to have some. So you get the nod to become CEO of booking\n\n605\n00:30:04.480 --> 00:30:06.080\nholdings in January of\n\n606\n00:30:06.080 --> 00:30:11.260\n2017. Help us understand that just the structure of your company and how it's\n\n607\n00:30:11.260 --> 00:30:12.160\norganized.\n\n608\n00:30:12.160 --> 00:30:15.760\nSo we have the holding company. We'll call that booking holdings Inc.\n\n609\n00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:21.140\nUnderneath that, we have the operating companies, the biggest by far booking.\n\n610\n00:30:21.140 --> 00:30:22.400\ncom global based in\n\n611\n00:30:22.400 --> 00:30:27.780\nAmsterdam. Then for your American listeners, they are more familiar, probably\n\n612\n00:30:27.780 --> 00:30:29.440\nwith things like Kayak,\n\n613\n00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:35.200\nwhich is another company, Priceline. We also have OpenTable, another one. Then\n\n614\n00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:35.920\nthere's another\n\n615\n00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:41.600\nvery big company that I'm sure many people in America don't know called\n\n616\n00:30:41.600 --> 00:30:45.760\nAgoda, which is based in Bangkok. So I get to go to Bangkok a lot, by the way.\n\n617\n00:30:47.840 --> 00:30:52.210\nThat's why you're a professional elevator. Exactly. So there are a lot. So\n\n618\n00:30:52.210 --> 00:30:53.520\nthose are the major\n\n619\n00:30:53.520 --> 00:30:56.960\nnames. We have other ones too. We have other companies too. Those are the\n\n620\n00:30:56.960 --> 00:30:57.920\nbiggest ones to\n\n621\n00:30:57.920 --> 00:31:02.230\nmention. Really, rentalcars.com was a company acquired that you won't be\n\n622\n00:31:02.230 --> 00:31:03.360\nsurprised. They do\n\n623\n00:31:03.360 --> 00:31:09.990\nrental cars based on Manchester, UK. We've merged that into booking.com. So it\n\n624\n00:31:09.990 --> 00:31:10.880\nstill exists as a\n\n625\n00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:16.160\nbrand, but it is wholly part of booking.com. And booking.com rental car is\n\n626\n00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:17.280\nactually now bigger than\n\n627\n00:31:17.280 --> 00:31:22.850\nthe rental car brand, but that's a separate issue. One of the things that I\n\n628\n00:31:22.850 --> 00:31:23.680\ntried to make a priority\n\n629\n00:31:23.680 --> 00:31:28.030\nwhen I was running young brands was making sure that we shared best practices\n\n630\n00:31:28.030 --> 00:31:29.040\nacross the brands,\n\n631\n00:31:29.040 --> 00:31:34.720\nwith KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza. Is that something that you think about too, or\n\n632\n00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:35.360\nare you totally\n\n633\n00:31:35.360 --> 00:31:39.580\ndecentralized? No, all the time trying to make it more and more. So we first\n\n634\n00:31:39.580 --> 00:31:40.800\nstarted off. So for\n\n635\n00:31:40.800 --> 00:31:45.150\nexample, when we bought that company, I mentioned Activotels and then booking.\n\n636\n00:31:45.150 --> 00:31:45.920\ncom, merged them\n\n637\n00:31:45.920 --> 00:31:51.120\ntogether and put in through it also our price line, your opinion that I mean,\n\n638\n00:31:51.120 --> 00:31:52.400\nmy eight people,\n\n639\n00:31:52.400 --> 00:31:57.120\nnine people, put that all those one thing. The critical thing was I did not\n\n640\n00:31:57.120 --> 00:31:58.800\nwant to do any\n\n641\n00:31:58.800 --> 00:32:03.580\nintegration at all. And I stressed out important that was to Jeff, boy, others\n\n642\n00:32:03.580 --> 00:32:04.000\nwere there at the\n\n643\n00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:08.100\ntime, we were older, we all agreed that was right. And here's the thing. One of\n\n644\n00:32:08.100 --> 00:32:09.520\nthe easiest ways\n\n645\n00:32:09.520 --> 00:32:15.970\nto really wreck a non US company that is operating outside the US, one of the\n\n646\n00:32:15.970 --> 00:32:17.680\nbest ways to wreck it\n\n647\n00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:22.400\nis parachute in a bunch of Americans who don't know anything about it. Okay.\n\n648\n00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:23.920\nThe reason we bought\n\n649\n00:32:23.920 --> 00:32:28.690\nthese companies is because they had already showed, they displayed to us an\n\n650\n00:32:28.690 --> 00:32:29.920\nability to be very\n\n651\n00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:34.900\nsuccessful. So the key thing was creating an incentive plan that yes, we were\n\n652\n00:32:34.900 --> 00:32:35.520\nbuying the\n\n653\n00:32:35.520 --> 00:32:38.940\ncompanies that you'd found it, but we wanted them to stay and we wanted them to\n\n654\n00:32:38.940 --> 00:32:40.080\ncontinue to work.\n\n655\n00:32:40.080 --> 00:32:44.590\nAnd we will reward them tremendously if they are able to create the success\n\n656\n00:32:44.590 --> 00:32:45.600\nthat we believe\n\n657\n00:32:45.600 --> 00:32:50.140\nthey would be able to create. And that's who we did. So we are very separated.\n\n658\n00:32:50.140 --> 00:32:50.880\nWe are very,\n\n659\n00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:55.600\nthere was absolutely no centralization. We're about as far apart as could be,\n\n660\n00:32:55.600 --> 00:32:55.920\nand that can\n\n661\n00:32:55.920 --> 00:33:00.640\ncause all sorts of issues and turns of turf and turns of who's doing what. But\n\n662\n00:33:00.640 --> 00:33:01.120\nwe started like\n\n663\n00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:05.950\nthat. But over time, as each company got bigger and bigger, and as the new\n\n664\n00:33:05.950 --> 00:33:07.360\nbooking.com that was\n\n665\n00:33:07.360 --> 00:33:12.810\nthe combination came into America, went into Asia and it got us going. And\n\n666\n00:33:12.810 --> 00:33:14.720\nevery starts mixing up,\n\n667\n00:33:14.720 --> 00:33:17.690\nthen you have to start putting together some ground rules and you have to start\n\n668\n00:33:17.690 --> 00:33:18.560\nsaying, gee,\n\n669\n00:33:18.560 --> 00:33:21.960\nwe'll probably better we can learn from each other. So we're doing more and\n\n670\n00:33:21.960 --> 00:33:22.720\nmore of that. But\n\n671\n00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:26.270\nthat is something that we always have to think about. And I'm sure you must\n\n672\n00:33:26.270 --> 00:33:27.200\nhave found this. I'm\n\n673\n00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:32.250\nactually interested in European and your knowledge about this is how do you\n\n674\n00:33:32.250 --> 00:33:34.320\ncreate a situation where\n\n675\n00:33:34.320 --> 00:33:39.620\nyou want people to feel they're part of something. But you also want them to\n\n676\n00:33:39.620 --> 00:33:40.880\nfeel part of the whole.\n\n677\n00:33:40.880 --> 00:33:48.320\nAnd to create people who say, yes, I'm really big. I am a KFC person, but I'm\n\n678\n00:33:48.320 --> 00:33:49.520\nalso a young person.\n\n679\n00:33:50.080 --> 00:33:54.880\nAnd how you create that, that's something that we're still working in progress.\n\n680\n00:33:54.880 --> 00:34:00.500\nI think it's the thing that every holding company struggles with the balance\n\n681\n00:34:00.500 --> 00:34:00.800\nbetween\n\n682\n00:34:00.800 --> 00:34:05.760\ndecentralization and centralization. And it's something that worked very hard\n\n683\n00:34:05.760 --> 00:34:06.320\nat.\n\n684\n00:34:06.320 --> 00:34:10.490\nWe really believe that the know how building was a big part of our strategy,\n\n685\n00:34:10.490 --> 00:34:11.200\nbut we were all in\n\n686\n00:34:11.200 --> 00:34:15.710\nthe restaurant business, pretty similar, just to your business. So we incentiv\n\n687\n00:34:15.710 --> 00:34:17.120\nize people to share.\n\n688\n00:34:17.120 --> 00:34:23.120\nSo if you offered up a best practice and the world adopted it, you got a bigger\n\n689\n00:34:23.120 --> 00:34:23.760\nbonus.\n\n690\n00:34:23.760 --> 00:34:27.870\nAnd we shouted it from the rooftop because that was a very important part of\n\n691\n00:34:27.870 --> 00:34:28.640\nour strategy.\n\n692\n00:34:28.640 --> 00:34:34.680\nAnd we gave a lot of recognition to people who did it. And we also gave people\n\n693\n00:34:34.680 --> 00:34:35.520\nrecognition for\n\n694\n00:34:35.520 --> 00:34:42.260\nadopting the ideas and paid people more. Because as you know, wiping out that\n\n695\n00:34:42.260 --> 00:34:43.840\npride of authorship\n\n696\n00:34:43.840 --> 00:34:48.880\nis important if you want to get people to really embrace the best practices.\n\n697\n00:34:48.880 --> 00:34:54.240\nYou know, it's so hard. How do you go after that wiping out not invented here?\n\n698\n00:34:54.240 --> 00:34:58.400\nIt's extremely difficult. It's extremely difficult. And particularly in place\n\n699\n00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:00.080\nthat are very successful.\n\n700\n00:35:00.080 --> 00:35:06.290\nAnd it is one of the things you have to constantly push people. Are you sure it\n\n701\n00:35:06.290 --> 00:35:07.680\n's not easier to\n\n702\n00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:11.360\nbuy this off the shelf? Do we really need to invent this? Do we really need to\n\n703\n00:35:11.360 --> 00:35:12.720\nbuild this ourselves?\n\n704\n00:35:12.720 --> 00:35:17.280\nAnd that is some really game peels to analysis and understand that the mission\n\n705\n00:35:17.280 --> 00:35:19.280\nis to accomplish\n\n706\n00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:23.810\nmaking it easier for everyone to experience the world not to create the best\n\n707\n00:35:23.810 --> 00:35:25.520\nemail system.\n\n708\n00:35:25.520 --> 00:35:28.480\nThere are lots of email systems we don't need to make our own guys.\n\n709\n00:35:28.480 --> 00:35:33.280\nIt's something that is really tough to get the right balance. But you know, I\n\n710\n00:35:33.280 --> 00:35:33.840\nthink if you take\n\n711\n00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:38.600\naway ownership of any division or any company and they feel like they don't\n\n712\n00:35:38.600 --> 00:35:39.920\nhave in their power the\n\n713\n00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:44.950\nability to get something done, you know, you pay for it. You know, so I was\n\n714\n00:35:44.950 --> 00:35:46.560\nmore into decentralization\n\n715\n00:35:46.560 --> 00:35:52.350\nthan centralization. No, I totally agree. And it also it's that interesting mix\n\n716\n00:35:52.350 --> 00:35:53.040\nbecause you\n\n717\n00:35:53.040 --> 00:35:58.010\nbelieve you'll achieve certain types of efficiencies. You believe that there\n\n718\n00:35:58.010 --> 00:35:59.280\nare synergies. On the\n\n719\n00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:04.280\nother hand, there is a very hard to measure cause things go slower. There's\n\n720\n00:36:04.280 --> 00:36:05.600\nmore bureaucracy.\n\n721\n00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:10.470\nAnd it doesn't show up in the P and L easily because you don't know that the\n\n722\n00:36:10.470 --> 00:36:11.520\nreason you're not hitting\n\n723\n00:36:11.520 --> 00:36:16.400\nyour numbers is because you know, you're getting a lot of blockage along the\n\n724\n00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:17.360\nway. And that's why\n\n725\n00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:20.660\nprojects aren't happening when they should happen by. So it's definitely a\n\n726\n00:36:20.660 --> 00:36:21.920\nbalance you have to work on.\n\n727\n00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:26.540\nWe'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Ben Fogel in just a moment.\n\n728\n00:36:26.540 --> 00:36:27.520\nWell, International\n\n729\n00:36:27.520 --> 00:36:32.560\nWomen's Day is this week and it's the perfect occasion to highlight Lisa Lutov-\n\n730\n00:36:32.560 --> 00:36:33.760\nPerlo, the former\n\n731\n00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:39.290\nCEO of Celebrity Cruise Lines. She's broken a lot of barriers in her career.\n\n732\n00:36:39.290 --> 00:36:39.840\nBut for her,\n\n733\n00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:44.120\nit wasn't just a feather in her cap. It was her chance to pave the way for\n\n734\n00:36:44.120 --> 00:36:45.360\nothers to succeed too.\n\n735\n00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:50.000\nYou know, a lot of people asked me, how does it feel to have achieved what you\n\n736\n00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:51.280\nachieved in\n\n737\n00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:57.120\naccomplishing, you know, being the CEO of one of the brands. And I'd be lying\n\n738\n00:36:57.120 --> 00:36:58.080\nif I didn't say that\n\n739\n00:36:58.080 --> 00:37:01.920\nit was great. It was a major accomplishment. And it was something I never\n\n740\n00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:02.800\ndreamed that would\n\n741\n00:37:02.800 --> 00:37:08.400\nhappen for me. But I think the real thing for me isn't so much about me because\n\n742\n00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:09.280\nsure, I made it.\n\n743\n00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:13.600\nIt's wonderful. It's great. I worked really hard. I've earned everything I got.\n\n744\n00:37:13.600 --> 00:37:14.400\nBut the biggest\n\n745\n00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:18.770\nthing for me was bringing others along with me in an industry that was woefully\n\n746\n00:37:18.770 --> 00:37:20.240\nshort of women.\n\n747\n00:37:20.240 --> 00:37:25.920\nAnd there was, you know, the gender imbalance was staggering. At that time, 3%\n\n748\n00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:26.880\nof the women on\n\n749\n00:37:26.880 --> 00:37:32.040\nour bridges were women. And by the time I stepped down from celebrity in April\n\n750\n00:37:32.040 --> 00:37:36.080\nof 2023, 33% of the\n\n751\n00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:40.980\ncrew members on our bridges were women. And I did that with the help of men\n\n752\n00:37:40.980 --> 00:37:41.920\nthat I worked with,\n\n753\n00:37:41.920 --> 00:37:47.690\nwho were equally passionate about more gender equality on our bridges. And I\n\n754\n00:37:47.690 --> 00:37:48.640\ngive them a tremendous\n\n755\n00:37:48.640 --> 00:37:52.850\namount of credit for helping get us there. Go back and listen to my entire\n\n756\n00:37:52.850 --> 00:37:54.640\nconversation with Lisa.\n\n757\n00:37:54.640 --> 00:38:01.700\nEpisode 172 here on How Leaders Lead. So Glenn, I got a question for you. You\n\n758\n00:38:01.700 --> 00:38:02.640\ncome up in finance,\n\n759\n00:38:02.640 --> 00:38:10.950\nyou have a legal background, and then you run this company as millions and\n\n760\n00:38:10.950 --> 00:38:12.160\nmillions of customers,\n\n761\n00:38:12.160 --> 00:38:16.310\nokay? Millions and millions of transactions. Did you have to work hard to\n\n762\n00:38:16.310 --> 00:38:17.600\ndevelop your marketing\n\n763\n00:38:17.600 --> 00:38:21.520\nskills, your customer skills, or was that something that came natural to you?\n\n764\n00:38:21.520 --> 00:38:23.040\nOr how do you think\n\n765\n00:38:23.040 --> 00:38:26.780\nabout the customer side of the equation in your job? So I know very little\n\n766\n00:38:26.780 --> 00:38:28.240\nabout marketing, and I am\n\n767\n00:38:28.240 --> 00:38:34.250\nvery, very, very comfortable not feeling that I have any sort of expertise at\n\n768\n00:38:34.250 --> 00:38:35.440\nall. And that's why\n\n769\n00:38:35.440 --> 00:38:40.020\nwe have Chief Marketing Officers. And that's what they're supposed to do. And\n\n770\n00:38:40.020 --> 00:38:40.800\nso, you know,\n\n771\n00:38:40.800 --> 00:38:47.070\nfor many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking.com company.\n\n772\n00:38:47.070 --> 00:38:48.240\nAnd we always,\n\n773\n00:38:48.240 --> 00:38:51.960\nyou know, should we spend this kind of money for this? Is it really a return or\n\n774\n00:38:51.960 --> 00:38:54.480\nnot? And they do all\n\n775\n00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:59.240\nthe testing that one to do on the actual content, you know, on the creatives is\n\n776\n00:38:59.240 --> 00:39:01.520\ngood. And so I just\n\n777\n00:39:01.520 --> 00:39:05.770\nrecently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the upcoming game\n\n778\n00:39:05.770 --> 00:39:06.720\nand all that.\n\n779\n00:39:06.720 --> 00:39:11.680\nAnd they say, what do you think? And they always said that. And I always say,\n\n780\n00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:12.240\nit doesn't matter\n\n781\n00:39:12.240 --> 00:39:17.750\nwhat I think. It's irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. It's what have you come\n\n782\n00:39:17.750 --> 00:39:18.320\nup with?\n\n783\n00:39:18.320 --> 00:39:22.720\nAnd is this worth the money to spend on it? Or should we sell the spot or not?\n\n784\n00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:28.650\nWell, it's nice for you to ask me, but what back do I know? And you know, you\n\n785\n00:39:28.650 --> 00:39:29.520\nhave your numbers,\n\n786\n00:39:29.520 --> 00:39:33.950\nyou have your opinion. So you're supposed to tell. You tell me, you know, how\n\n787\n00:39:33.950 --> 00:39:35.440\nmany CEOs have that kind\n\n788\n00:39:35.440 --> 00:39:40.360\nof comfort from your perspective? Not many. Not many are very good at saying I\n\n789\n00:39:40.360 --> 00:39:41.360\ndon't know. Maybe\n\n790\n00:39:41.360 --> 00:39:45.920\nno more. I'm working to make it. Maybe. But I like, I like the fact that you\n\n791\n00:39:45.920 --> 00:39:46.560\nknow what you know,\n\n792\n00:39:46.560 --> 00:39:50.200\nand you know what you don't know. Now, in my research, I've learned that you\n\n793\n00:39:50.200 --> 00:39:50.800\nlive by the\n\n794\n00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:56.670\nmaximum in God we trust everybody else bring data. Say more. You know, I didn't\n\n795\n00:39:56.670 --> 00:39:57.360\ninvent that.\n\n796\n00:39:57.360 --> 00:40:01.920\nIt's been around for a very long time, but I do believe in it. And how do you\n\n797\n00:40:01.920 --> 00:40:02.640\ndrive that in your\n\n798\n00:40:02.640 --> 00:40:07.360\ncompany? It's in the DNA from long before I got to any level of having any\n\n799\n00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:08.880\nauthority of any kind.\n\n800\n00:40:08.880 --> 00:40:12.240\nSo that is something that's been there forever. You know, you can go too far\n\n801\n00:40:12.240 --> 00:40:13.040\nthat way though.\n\n802\n00:40:13.040 --> 00:40:18.660\nAnd here's, and I've talked about, we had a meeting last year with a very large\n\n803\n00:40:18.660 --> 00:40:19.680\nnumber of our data\n\n804\n00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:24.500\nscientists, our mathematicians, our PhD statisticians. And we know these people\n\n805\n00:40:24.500 --> 00:40:25.280\nare brilliant,\n\n806\n00:40:25.280 --> 00:40:30.250\nbrilliant people. And they believe data is everything, everything. And they\n\n807\n00:40:30.250 --> 00:40:31.120\nasked me to speak\n\n808\n00:40:31.120 --> 00:40:35.230\nin the opening of this thing. I say to them, I say, listen, we all agree how\n\n809\n00:40:35.230 --> 00:40:36.640\nimportant data is.\n\n810\n00:40:36.640 --> 00:40:41.840\nAnd that has gotten us where we are because of our devotion to the facts and\n\n811\n00:40:41.840 --> 00:40:42.960\nnot opinions and all\n\n812\n00:40:42.960 --> 00:40:49.080\nthat. But everybody, what we have to understand is it's real easy to be certain\n\n813\n00:40:49.080 --> 00:40:50.400\nthat your numbers\n\n814\n00:40:50.400 --> 00:40:55.040\nare telling you something. It's also real easy to make mistakes. Your mind's\n\n815\n00:40:55.040 --> 00:40:56.080\nwrong, the way you\n\n816\n00:40:56.080 --> 00:41:00.060\nset up your experiment was wrong. And you're absolutely confident and you, and\n\n817\n00:41:00.060 --> 00:41:00.880\nyou, and I said,\n\n818\n00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:05.200\neverybody, let's look back on our history. We in the past have believed certain\n\n819\n00:41:05.200 --> 00:41:06.080\nthings absolutely\n\n820\n00:41:06.080 --> 00:41:10.680\nis the truth. And then we said, oh, wait, this isn't right. And we shouldn't be\n\n821\n00:41:10.680 --> 00:41:11.760\ndoing that because\n\n822\n00:41:11.760 --> 00:41:15.310\nthe data actually says this, because we made a mistake or somebody made it or\n\n823\n00:41:15.310 --> 00:41:16.480\nthe world changed.\n\n824\n00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:20.210\nAnd what was true in the previous is no longer true. And I gave a whole bunch\n\n825\n00:41:20.210 --> 00:41:21.680\nof examples. I gave\n\n826\n00:41:21.680 --> 00:41:27.610\nlook at the number of things that are published in very respected, professional\n\n827\n00:41:27.610 --> 00:41:28.720\n, peer-reviewed journals.\n\n828\n00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:33.300\nAnd there's no, you can't replicate the experiment. And then they had to pull\n\n829\n00:41:33.300 --> 00:41:34.320\nwhat they had already\n\n830\n00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:37.910\npeer reviewed approved. And there, you see that over and over, you see that\n\n831\n00:41:37.910 --> 00:41:39.200\ncoming up over and over\n\n832\n00:41:39.200 --> 00:41:42.000\nagain. So what I say is like, look, we do believe that dad is one of those four\n\n833\n00:41:42.000 --> 00:41:44.640\nthings. But be very\n\n834\n00:41:44.640 --> 00:41:49.430\ncareful that it may not be right always and always think, does it make sense,\n\n835\n00:41:49.430 --> 00:41:50.800\ncommon sense? And if\n\n836\n00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:54.480\nsomething is telling you that doesn't fit your common sense, well, the data\n\n837\n00:41:54.480 --> 00:41:55.440\ncould be F.C. right\n\n838\n00:41:55.440 --> 00:41:59.840\nis telling you that and your perceptions, your emotional biases, your human\n\n839\n00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:01.680\nmistakes is a\n\n840\n00:42:01.680 --> 00:42:06.530\nmistake. Okay, go with that. And then you want to check that again. Because\n\n841\n00:42:06.530 --> 00:42:07.360\nmaybe there was a\n\n842\n00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:10.770\nmistake made in that. And that's something really important. We are fortunate.\n\n843\n00:42:10.770 --> 00:42:11.600\nAnd I think absolutely\n\n844\n00:42:11.600 --> 00:42:16.590\nthe reason for us part of our one of the main reason for our success, but one\n\n845\n00:42:16.590 --> 00:42:17.840\nwas really understand\n\n846\n00:42:17.840 --> 00:42:23.520\nthe concept of A.B. testing. Oh, 20 something years ago.\n\n847\n00:42:23.520 --> 00:42:28.160\nYou mentioned that the world does change. And you know, travel is this magical\n\n848\n00:42:28.160 --> 00:42:28.960\nthing that gives\n\n849\n00:42:28.960 --> 00:42:33.680\npeople hope and gives them something to look forward to. What do you see\n\n850\n00:42:33.680 --> 00:42:35.760\nchanging in the world of travel\n\n851\n00:42:35.760 --> 00:42:41.020\nthat gets you excited about the future? Oh my God, it's so exciting in terms of\n\n852\n00:42:41.020 --> 00:42:41.840\nhow much easier it\n\n853\n00:42:41.840 --> 00:42:46.670\nwill be in the future. It's already so much easier. Think about 25 years ago, I\n\n854\n00:42:46.670 --> 00:42:46.720\ndidn't go\n\n855\n00:42:46.720 --> 00:42:53.360\ntoday. Okay, 25 years ago, you would get a ticket that had this red carbon\n\n856\n00:42:53.360 --> 00:42:55.040\nthing on the back, you\n\n857\n00:42:55.040 --> 00:42:58.380\nknow, would go on your hand if you had to carry a paper ticket around. Do you\n\n858\n00:42:58.380 --> 00:42:59.680\nremember that? Yeah.\n\n859\n00:42:59.680 --> 00:43:05.050\nAnd if you wanted to contact somebody, well, yeah, there was email 25 years ago\n\n860\n00:43:05.050 --> 00:43:06.000\n, but a last\n\n861\n00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:10.630\nup was still done by a thing called facts, which is sure for facsimile, which I\n\n862\n00:43:10.630 --> 00:43:11.680\nbet half of your\n\n863\n00:43:11.680 --> 00:43:17.210\nlisteners have no idea what we're talking about here. I agree with you. Think\n\n864\n00:43:17.210 --> 00:43:17.760\nof it now.\n\n865\n00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:25.500\nNow we have at booking.com. We have our AI trip planner, where you can just\n\n866\n00:43:25.500 --> 00:43:26.240\ntype in, I want to\n\n867\n00:43:26.240 --> 00:43:31.010\ntake a trip to Florida and have a communication going back and forth to help\n\n868\n00:43:31.010 --> 00:43:32.480\ncreate the itinerary\n\n869\n00:43:32.480 --> 00:43:38.240\nor price line has their AI product called penny. Or if you have an issue with\n\n870\n00:43:38.240 --> 00:43:40.160\nyour reservation at\n\n871\n00:43:40.160 --> 00:43:43.430\na restaurant, and we've hooked up because we don't all them set up yet with\n\n872\n00:43:43.430 --> 00:43:44.720\nthis, and you're talking\n\n873\n00:43:44.720 --> 00:43:49.180\nto somebody to fix the reservation for that restaurant. It's actually being\n\n874\n00:43:49.180 --> 00:43:50.320\ndone by AI is\n\n875\n00:43:50.320 --> 00:43:54.890\nfixing it. AI is doing that. And there's so many things that are so much better\n\n876\n00:43:54.890 --> 00:43:55.840\n. So great. We've\n\n877\n00:43:55.840 --> 00:44:01.630\nseen all this progress. But we also know that travel is still incredibly\n\n878\n00:44:01.630 --> 00:44:04.240\nfrustrating. Things go wrong.\n\n879\n00:44:04.960 --> 00:44:11.680\nWeather, mechanical issues over bookings. I picked the wrong thing. I didn't\n\n880\n00:44:11.680 --> 00:44:12.160\nwant that.\n\n881\n00:44:12.160 --> 00:44:17.040\nAnd with all the developments that we're getting in technology, all the new,\n\n882\n00:44:17.040 --> 00:44:20.520\ngenert AI, all the machine learning things that we've been doing that for we\n\n883\n00:44:20.520 --> 00:44:20.960\ndidn't machine\n\n884\n00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:24.790\nlearning stuff for more than a dozen years. So really is helping our business.\n\n885\n00:44:24.790 --> 00:44:25.200\nBut so many\n\n886\n00:44:25.200 --> 00:44:31.010\nthings coming forward and will enable travelers to have a much easier, better\n\n887\n00:44:31.010 --> 00:44:32.400\ntime. Essentially,\n\n888\n00:44:32.400 --> 00:44:35.910\nyou are going to be going around with the most sophisticated, the most\n\n889\n00:44:35.910 --> 00:44:36.720\nknowledgeable,\n\n890\n00:44:36.720 --> 00:44:44.640\nincredibly great travel advisor living in your pocket, because in your phone,\n\n891\n00:44:44.640 --> 00:44:50.000\nand you'll be giving you advice, it'll give you a simple example. You're going\n\n892\n00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:50.800\nAmsterdam,\n\n893\n00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:56.200\nnice thing. And we're suggesting that you take a boat ride, nice canal trip. It\n\n894\n00:44:56.200 --> 00:44:57.280\n's great. And\n\n895\n00:44:57.280 --> 00:45:00.850\nwe also, there's a great museum, the rice museum to go there too. And we got\n\n896\n00:45:00.850 --> 00:45:01.440\nall set up for you.\n\n897\n00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:06.650\nIt's all easy to be done. You're there. We know the weather on Thursday, when\n\n898\n00:45:06.650 --> 00:45:07.040\nyou're supposed to\n\n899\n00:45:07.040 --> 00:45:12.340\ntake this boat ride, it's going to probably rain. And we know you're currently\n\n900\n00:45:12.340 --> 00:45:13.440\nscheduled for a\n\n901\n00:45:13.440 --> 00:45:18.640\nWednesday with the museum when it's sunny. And this is Tuesday. And we tell you\n\n902\n00:45:18.640 --> 00:45:19.760\n, and I think\n\n903\n00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:24.580\nit's a good idea, we'd like to change this for you, put you on the boat on the\n\n904\n00:45:24.580 --> 00:45:25.360\nsunny day,\n\n905\n00:45:25.360 --> 00:45:29.160\nWednesday, go to the museum on the rainy Thursday. And we're doing that\n\n906\n00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:30.800\nautomatically through AI.\n\n907\n00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:34.490\nAnd we're telling you this service coming to you on the phones, we put it, and\n\n908\n00:45:34.490 --> 00:45:35.360\nit's going back\n\n909\n00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:40.200\nand forth. And the rest, everything, everything. Just imagine you're walking\n\n910\n00:45:40.200 --> 00:45:41.440\naround with the most\n\n911\n00:45:41.440 --> 00:45:46.100\nexpensive travel agent in the world who knows everything, everything, because\n\n912\n00:45:46.100 --> 00:45:47.120\nall the database\n\n913\n00:45:47.120 --> 00:45:51.510\nand knows you better than anything, because you have been buying across, and we\n\n914\n00:45:51.510 --> 00:45:52.160\nknow you,\n\n915\n00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:57.540\nand we know what you like. And you don't have to say, I really want the IELC\n\n916\n00:45:57.540 --> 00:45:59.280\nall the time. We know\n\n917\n00:45:59.280 --> 00:46:05.040\nthat we don't try and put you into the seat with the window on the plane. So\n\n918\n00:46:05.040 --> 00:46:06.080\nmany things. So we will\n\n919\n00:46:06.080 --> 00:46:10.910\nsay so much of the friction. And it goes all the way from you first start\n\n920\n00:46:10.910 --> 00:46:12.800\nthinking about travel\n\n921\n00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:18.120\nto all the way through it to the time you're back home safe, happy about the\n\n922\n00:46:18.120 --> 00:46:19.440\ngreat, great vacation\n\n923\n00:46:19.440 --> 00:46:23.640\nyou took. You know, Glenn, you guys have been doing machine learning for well\n\n924\n00:46:23.640 --> 00:46:25.280\nover a decade. You're\n\n925\n00:46:25.280 --> 00:46:31.220\nall over AI. You know, as a leader, you know, how did you how did you identify\n\n926\n00:46:31.220 --> 00:46:32.240\nthe importance of that?\n\n927\n00:46:32.240 --> 00:46:38.950\nAnd what have you done with yourself and your team to get this capability in AI\n\n928\n00:46:38.950 --> 00:46:39.680\nwhere, you know,\n\n929\n00:46:39.680 --> 00:46:43.160\neverybody else seems to be struggling with it. Everybody is struggling too. By\n\n930\n00:46:43.160 --> 00:46:43.440\nthe way, we're\n\n931\n00:46:43.440 --> 00:46:46.540\ndoing all these things where I continue to tell the team, we've got to go\n\n932\n00:46:46.540 --> 00:46:47.520\nfaster. You don't know\n\n933\n00:46:47.520 --> 00:46:51.950\nwhat's going to come out tomorrow. Who knows what somebody's inventing in some\n\n934\n00:46:51.950 --> 00:46:53.040\ngarage somewhere\n\n935\n00:46:53.040 --> 00:46:57.840\nthat's going to come back and prove the new thing. I mean, just look at the,\n\n936\n00:46:57.840 --> 00:46:58.720\nyou know, you remember\n\n937\n00:46:58.720 --> 00:47:02.700\nand again, many of your people may not go or listening. We'll remember Al Gore\n\n938\n00:47:02.700 --> 00:47:03.280\ntalking about the\n\n939\n00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:08.160\ninformation highway. Remember that? The information highway where the\n\n940\n00:47:08.160 --> 00:47:10.240\ninformation highway is filled\n\n941\n00:47:10.240 --> 00:47:15.120\nwith a wreckage of companies that did not see in the future how much things\n\n942\n00:47:15.120 --> 00:47:16.560\nwere going to change.\n\n943\n00:47:17.120 --> 00:47:25.160\nAnd those are my God. Remember Blackberry? Where are we today? We're today.\n\n944\n00:47:25.160 --> 00:47:26.720\nYeah. We're Xerox. Xerox\n\n945\n00:47:26.720 --> 00:47:32.080\ninvented so much of what we do today. The mouse. I mean, so many like the list\n\n946\n00:47:32.080 --> 00:47:33.360\nis endless of people\n\n947\n00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:37.600\nwho weren't think what is the next disruptive thing? How can we get ahead of\n\n948\n00:47:37.600 --> 00:47:39.200\nthat and try and do that?\n\n949\n00:47:39.200 --> 00:47:44.210\nAnd it's hard. And you know, we both I'm sure we I did. I'm sure you read the\n\n950\n00:47:44.210 --> 00:47:45.280\ninnovators dilemma.\n\n951\n00:47:46.240 --> 00:47:49.680\nChristians, this book, very famous book. And that is a problem because when you\n\n952\n00:47:49.680 --> 00:47:50.960\nhave a successful\n\n953\n00:47:50.960 --> 00:47:56.680\nbusiness and trying to disrupt it, it's very difficult because you're making\n\n954\n00:47:56.680 --> 00:47:57.600\nmoney, your\n\n955\n00:47:57.600 --> 00:48:01.550\ninvestors like this and you have to have a balance. So it's not easy to\n\n956\n00:48:01.550 --> 00:48:02.960\nmotivate people to go. We've\n\n957\n00:48:02.960 --> 00:48:06.590\ngot to go for the next new thing. But that's going to be risky and that's going\n\n958\n00:48:06.590 --> 00:48:07.680\nto cost money.\n\n959\n00:48:07.680 --> 00:48:11.440\nSo you have to create the right balance. And we we've been fortunate that we\n\n960\n00:48:11.440 --> 00:48:12.560\nhave people who\n\n961\n00:48:12.560 --> 00:48:17.380\nreally do get it. And that's really good. Yeah, absolutely. And the brands and\n\n962\n00:48:17.380 --> 00:48:17.920\ncompanies you\n\n963\n00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:21.240\nmentioned, it's a graveyard. Those people that try to protect what they had\n\n964\n00:48:21.240 --> 00:48:22.000\nversus seeing where\n\n965\n00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:27.280\nthe world was really going. One of my favorites is Blockbuster because if you\n\n966\n00:48:27.280 --> 00:48:29.120\n're a call, they had\n\n967\n00:48:29.120 --> 00:48:35.410\nNetflix. They knew it. They knew where it was going. And they still couldn't do\n\n968\n00:48:35.410 --> 00:48:36.240\nit because the\n\n969\n00:48:36.240 --> 00:48:39.280\npressure, I don't know how much you know the story. I know the whole story.\n\n970\n00:48:39.280 --> 00:48:40.880\nYeah. Absolutely.\n\n971\n00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:45.740\nThey had it, but they couldn't make that change. They couldn't do it. Hang it\n\n972\n00:48:45.740 --> 00:48:46.960\non. Hang it on. I'll\n\n973\n00:48:46.960 --> 00:48:49.360\ntake it. Glenn, this has been so much fun. And I want to have some more with\n\n974\n00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:50.160\nwhat I call my\n\n975\n00:48:50.160 --> 00:48:53.580\nlightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Okay, I hope you don't\n\n976\n00:48:53.580 --> 00:48:54.640\nmind if I go slowly.\n\n977\n00:48:54.640 --> 00:49:00.560\nThe free words that best describe you smaller than average and stature.\n\n978\n00:49:00.560 --> 00:49:05.920\nYounger looks younger than he is.\n\n979\n00:49:08.720 --> 00:49:12.800\nAnd is willing to listen. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself,\n\n980\n00:49:12.800 --> 00:49:13.760\nwho would it be?\n\n981\n00:49:13.760 --> 00:49:18.200\nThere's nobody I like being me. Your biggest pet peeve. Okay, so this is, and I\n\n982\n00:49:18.200 --> 00:49:18.880\ndon't understand\n\n983\n00:49:18.880 --> 00:49:25.440\nwhy my wife is, and I have a disagreement about this, but I grew up. You took\n\n984\n00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:27.920\nanything you plate,\n\n985\n00:49:27.920 --> 00:49:32.400\nglass, whatever, you put it in the dishwasher or you washed it the same and you\n\n986\n00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:33.040\nput it in the\n\n987\n00:49:33.040 --> 00:49:38.720\ndrying rack. That's how I grew up. My wife grew up where you put the plates and\n\n988\n00:49:38.720 --> 00:49:39.360\neverything\n\n989\n00:49:39.360 --> 00:49:44.640\ninto the sink and you wait until it gets so filled and then you rinse them and\n\n990\n00:49:44.640 --> 00:49:45.360\nput them into the\n\n991\n00:49:45.360 --> 00:49:50.610\ndishwasher and do it there. I don't understand why. I mean, who likes looking\n\n992\n00:49:50.610 --> 00:49:51.760\nat a sink full of\n\n993\n00:49:51.760 --> 00:49:56.170\nplates and dishes? I don't get it. I have to tell you, I'm kind of just blown\n\n994\n00:49:56.170 --> 00:49:57.280\naway by this because\n\n995\n00:49:57.920 --> 00:50:02.460\nwith your stock going up 800 times, I'm surprised you even know what a dish\n\n996\n00:50:02.460 --> 00:50:03.280\nwasher is.\n\n997\n00:50:03.280 --> 00:50:09.440\nI assure you, my friend, I assure you, I know. And by the way, here's the other\n\n998\n00:50:09.440 --> 00:50:11.120\none, the same area as\n\n999\n00:50:11.120 --> 00:50:16.160\nmy wife leaves that you have to rinse the plates and before you put it in the\n\n1000\n00:50:16.160 --> 00:50:17.360\ndishwasher. And I'm\n\n1001\n00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:22.630\nlike, sweetheart, it's not a dish warmer or just drier. It's a dishwasher. Why\n\n1002\n00:50:22.630 --> 00:50:23.520\ndo we have to wash\n\n1003\n00:50:23.520 --> 00:50:30.240\nit before we put it in? Whatever. Okay, this agreement. I love it. Who would\n\n1004\n00:50:30.240 --> 00:50:31.440\nplay you in a movie? Who\n\n1005\n00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:36.320\nwould make a movie that I'd be in, please? What's the biggest lesson you've\n\n1006\n00:50:36.320 --> 00:50:38.080\nlearned from traveling?\n\n1007\n00:50:38.080 --> 00:50:44.400\nWhat a wonderful world it really is. It really is. And sometimes people don't\n\n1008\n00:50:44.400 --> 00:50:45.200\nrecognize we only\n\n1009\n00:50:45.200 --> 00:50:49.830\nhave one of them. There's only one place, earth. And you go around the world,\n\n1010\n00:50:49.830 --> 00:50:51.200\nit's so wonderful. I just\n\n1011\n00:50:52.080 --> 00:50:57.860\nI just hope that is, you know, for many, many, many, many, many, many, many,\n\n1012\n00:50:57.860 --> 00:50:58.640\nmany generations\n\n1013\n00:50:58.640 --> 00:51:02.960\nbeyond it's so wonderful. You have two tickets to any destination in the world.\n\n1014\n00:51:02.960 --> 00:51:03.760\nWhere are you going\n\n1015\n00:51:03.760 --> 00:51:07.920\nand who are you taking with you? I'm going home because I'm somewhere else and\n\n1016\n00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:09.200\nI'm bringing my wife\n\n1017\n00:51:09.200 --> 00:51:14.870\nbecause she's with me too. I traveled last year. I could have to keep records.\n\n1018\n00:51:14.870 --> 00:51:16.800\nI do not sleep in my\n\n1019\n00:51:16.800 --> 00:51:22.350\nhome bed more than half of last year. So everybody says, where do you want to\n\n1020\n00:51:22.350 --> 00:51:24.160\ngo? I say, most likely\n\n1021\n00:51:24.160 --> 00:51:28.130\nI want to go home. What's something you wish more people knew about lawyers?\n\n1022\n00:51:28.130 --> 00:51:29.040\nThey are trying\n\n1023\n00:51:29.040 --> 00:51:36.610\nto make the world better. They are doing their job in the way they believe is\n\n1024\n00:51:36.610 --> 00:51:37.840\nthe right way to do\n\n1025\n00:51:37.840 --> 00:51:42.310\nthings to help improve our society. What's the one thing you do just for you,\n\n1026\n00:51:42.310 --> 00:51:43.360\nGlenn? I worked out\n\n1027\n00:51:44.160 --> 00:51:50.870\nevery day. Your most prized possession. I don't put a lot of stock into things.\n\n1028\n00:51:50.870 --> 00:51:51.760\nI could lose\n\n1029\n00:51:51.760 --> 00:51:58.130\nevery physical thing. Yeah, maybe a little bum, but it wouldn't be a big deal.\n\n1030\n00:51:58.130 --> 00:51:58.800\nIf I turned on the\n\n1031\n00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:02.530\nradio in your car, what would I hear? A podcast, possibly yours. What's\n\n1032\n00:52:02.530 --> 00:52:03.600\nsomething about you a few\n\n1033\n00:52:03.600 --> 00:52:08.620\npeople would know? Well, then I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, not once, but\n\n1034\n00:52:08.620 --> 00:52:09.040\ntwice.\n\n1035\n00:52:10.640 --> 00:52:14.520\nThat does not surprise me. I'm just getting to know you, but I believe you and\n\n1036\n00:52:14.520 --> 00:52:15.040\nI'm surprised\n\n1037\n00:52:15.040 --> 00:52:19.210\nit's only twice. That's the end of the lightning round, Glenn. I just got a few\n\n1038\n00:52:19.210 --> 00:52:20.000\nmore questions. I'll\n\n1039\n00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:25.830\nlet you go here. I'm looking at you here on video and the people are watching\n\n1040\n00:52:25.830 --> 00:52:27.200\nus on YouTube. They're\n\n1041\n00:52:27.200 --> 00:52:32.240\nseeing as well. You're in great shape. You mentioned you work out every day.\n\n1042\n00:52:32.240 --> 00:52:34.560\nWalk me through that part\n\n1043\n00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:40.240\nof your life and how you prioritize health with all the demands that you have.\n\n1044\n00:52:40.240 --> 00:52:40.880\nI'll wake up in the\n\n1045\n00:52:40.880 --> 00:52:45.070\nmorning. First thing I do is go down to my basement and do some exercise. In\n\n1046\n00:52:45.070 --> 00:52:46.160\nfact, even before I get\n\n1047\n00:52:46.160 --> 00:52:49.830\ndownstairs, I was just talking with our CEO of a Goda. He's asking about it\n\n1048\n00:52:49.830 --> 00:52:51.200\nhere. I say, \"Okay,\n\n1049\n00:52:51.200 --> 00:52:57.120\nso I get coffee. I have a curry. I go downstairs from my bedroom, kitchen. One\n\n1050\n00:52:57.120 --> 00:52:58.080\nsit down. I get\n\n1051\n00:52:58.080 --> 00:53:01.760\nthere. I go to the curry. I put the pot in. I'll do my push-ups right there.\"\n\n1052\n00:53:01.760 --> 00:53:04.320\nAnd if you put it for\n\n1053\n00:53:04.320 --> 00:53:08.520\nabout the 12 ounce or the 10 ounce on the curag, that's about the right time to\n\n1054\n00:53:08.520 --> 00:53:09.200\ndo your push-ups.\n\n1055\n00:53:09.200 --> 00:53:14.400\nThen I get another one because I have that 18 ounce or 20 ounce mug that we all\n\n1056\n00:53:14.400 --> 00:53:14.960\nwalk around\n\n1057\n00:53:14.960 --> 00:53:19.280\nwith nowadays. You put the second thing in and then do some sort of app thing.\n\n1058\n00:53:19.280 --> 00:53:21.120\nIn the time to get\n\n1059\n00:53:21.120 --> 00:53:24.370\nyour coffee ready, instead of just sitting there, standing there, looking at\n\n1060\n00:53:24.370 --> 00:53:25.280\nthe machine, you can\n\n1061\n00:53:25.280 --> 00:53:30.460\nget something done. One, two, you're brushing your teeth. If you brush your\n\n1062\n00:53:30.460 --> 00:53:31.520\nteeth the way you're\n\n1063\n00:53:31.520 --> 00:53:35.050\nsupposed to, you're supposed to do it two minutes each time. If you're like you\n\n1064\n00:53:35.050 --> 00:53:35.600\nbought one of the\n\n1065\n00:53:35.600 --> 00:53:39.270\nfancy electric ones that cut the timer on, it's going to be two minutes. What\n\n1066\n00:53:39.270 --> 00:53:40.000\nare you doing? You're\n\n1067\n00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:42.480\njust looking at yourself while you're brushing your teeth. That's a waste of\n\n1068\n00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:44.000\ntime. You could do\n\n1069\n00:53:44.000 --> 00:53:48.960\nleg lifts. Just keep doing like this. Just keep doing like this. You can do\n\n1070\n00:53:48.960 --> 00:53:50.560\nthis two minutes in the\n\n1071\n00:53:50.560 --> 00:53:54.130\nmorning, two minutes in the evening. It's four minutes a day, seven days a week\n\n1072\n00:53:54.130 --> 00:53:54.960\n. Let's round up.\n\n1073\n00:53:54.960 --> 00:54:01.920\nLet's call it half an hour a week. Half an hour a week doing exercise that\n\n1074\n00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:02.880\nwould have been wasted.\n\n1075\n00:54:02.880 --> 00:54:07.840\nThat's ways you can get yourself going. Then there are other ways to motivate\n\n1076\n00:54:07.840 --> 00:54:08.240\nyourself.\n\n1077\n00:54:08.240 --> 00:54:12.630\nBut it is really, I believe this absolutely that life is, all of life is\n\n1078\n00:54:12.630 --> 00:54:14.720\nprobability. There is no\n\n1079\n00:54:14.720 --> 00:54:19.940\nguarantee working out. You can still get hit by the bus and you can be just as\n\n1080\n00:54:19.940 --> 00:54:20.720\ndead. It hit by the\n\n1081\n00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:23.130\nbus. Whether you worked out or you didn't work out, you're still going to be\n\n1082\n00:54:23.130 --> 00:54:24.000\ndead. People,\n\n1083\n00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:31.010\nunfortunately, terrible disease, we all know. But you increase the possibility,\n\n1084\n00:54:31.010 --> 00:54:31.760\nthe possibility that\n\n1085\n00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:38.170\nyou will live longer and have a healthier life by exercising. Why not? It's fun\n\n1086\n00:54:38.170 --> 00:54:39.840\n. It's enjoyable.\n\n1087\n00:54:39.840 --> 00:54:42.640\nAnd you have the possibility of living longer, hopefully. Why not do it?\n\n1088\n00:54:42.640 --> 00:54:47.040\nIt sounds to me like you read that book, Tiny Habits. If you read that book,\n\n1089\n00:54:47.040 --> 00:54:50.980\nread that book. It's all about just doing a few little things. When you're\n\n1090\n00:54:50.980 --> 00:54:51.520\ndoing the pushups\n\n1091\n00:54:51.520 --> 00:54:56.080\nwhen the kirk machines, you could have written a book. I thought you'd read it.\n\n1092\n00:54:56.080 --> 00:54:57.040\nNow you can write\n\n1093\n00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:02.860\nthe damn thing. I guess I won't have to read it now. Hey, Glenn, when you look\n\n1094\n00:55:02.860 --> 00:55:03.760\nforward,\n\n1095\n00:55:03.760 --> 00:55:10.080\nwhat do you see as your unfinished business? My unfinished business is doing\n\n1096\n00:55:10.080 --> 00:55:10.800\nmore nice things\n\n1097\n00:55:10.800 --> 00:55:19.610\nfor my wife. We met when I was unemployed after I even fired, which is,\n\n1098\n00:55:19.610 --> 00:55:21.280\nactually,\n\n1099\n00:55:21.280 --> 00:55:25.680\nI would find that one interesting too. She was a lawyer at the time. And we\n\n1100\n00:55:25.680 --> 00:55:26.320\nwere set up by\n\n1101\n00:55:26.320 --> 00:55:31.040\nfriends, mutual friends, and I saw it. And it's interesting that she went out\n\n1102\n00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:31.600\nwith me. And I\n\n1103\n00:55:31.600 --> 00:55:37.360\nkept saying brunch dates because I saw blood in all of our money. And the\n\n1104\n00:55:37.360 --> 00:55:40.240\ninteresting thing is that\n\n1105\n00:55:40.240 --> 00:55:44.520\nshe kind of liked the fact that because I played, I'd pick up her dry cleaning,\n\n1106\n00:55:44.520 --> 00:55:45.440\nI'd do lots of good\n\n1107\n00:55:45.440 --> 00:55:50.750\nthings. And she didn't see me as somebody who would have the year, I'd be away\n\n1108\n00:55:50.750 --> 00:55:52.800\nfrom home and stuff.\n\n1109\n00:55:52.800 --> 00:55:57.920\nSo I kind of owe her. Well, you guys, you guys are big great partners for sure.\n\n1110\n00:55:57.920 --> 00:55:59.280\nAnd it's a great\n\n1111\n00:55:59.280 --> 00:56:03.690\nattitude to have. And last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to\n\n1112\n00:56:03.690 --> 00:56:04.640\nanyone who wants to\n\n1113\n00:56:04.640 --> 00:56:07.780\nbe a leader? You only want one, but there's more than one. I mean, the first\n\n1114\n00:56:07.780 --> 00:56:08.240\nthing is,\n\n1115\n00:56:08.240 --> 00:56:12.820\ndo you really want to be a leader and understand why do you want to be a leader\n\n1116\n00:56:12.820 --> 00:56:13.760\n? So make sure you\n\n1117\n00:56:13.760 --> 00:56:19.310\nunderstand that, really understand why do you want to be a leader? What is\n\n1118\n00:56:19.310 --> 00:56:20.720\ndriving this and\n\n1119\n00:56:20.720 --> 00:56:25.050\nunderstand that well? Because it's very easy to think you want to be a leader\n\n1120\n00:56:25.050 --> 00:56:25.840\nfor the wrong\n\n1121\n00:56:25.840 --> 00:56:30.130\nreasons. That's why. Let me ask you before you go to two. Why did you want to\n\n1122\n00:56:30.130 --> 00:56:31.040\nbe a leader?\n\n1123\n00:56:31.040 --> 00:56:37.660\nI never want I never made a big role to be a leader. We had our CEO was forced\n\n1124\n00:56:37.660 --> 00:56:38.320\nto be let go.\n\n1125\n00:56:39.040 --> 00:56:45.680\nOur chairman took over the temporary role as CEO while they did a search. I did\n\n1126\n00:56:45.680 --> 00:56:46.560\nnot put my hat in\n\n1127\n00:56:46.560 --> 00:56:51.840\nthe ring initially. Heads of our brands kept saying, Glenn, why don't you apply\n\n1128\n00:56:51.840 --> 00:56:52.560\nand stuff? Why\n\n1129\n00:56:52.560 --> 00:57:01.950\ndon't you try and do it and stuff? Oh my God, no. And I said, I said, our\n\n1130\n00:57:01.950 --> 00:57:02.400\nchairman, I said,\n\n1131\n00:57:02.400 --> 00:57:06.910\nwhy sure, hope we can find somebody better than me. And well, well, why do you\n\n1132\n00:57:06.910 --> 00:57:07.680\nwant to be a leader\n\n1133\n00:57:07.680 --> 00:57:11.280\nnow then? Do you want to be a leader now? Here's that. Here's it. So I took so\n\n1134\n00:57:11.280 --> 00:57:12.480\nthen I said, okay,\n\n1135\n00:57:12.480 --> 00:57:18.880\nI'll do it. Okay. Now the reason why and the reason I want to do is because I\n\n1136\n00:57:18.880 --> 00:57:19.600\nbelieved\n\n1137\n00:57:19.600 --> 00:57:25.920\nthat I could help make our organization better than it was. Now, no doubt,\n\n1138\n00:57:25.920 --> 00:57:26.640\nmaybe somebody could\n\n1139\n00:57:26.640 --> 00:57:29.390\ndo it even better than I could do it. I'm sure there probably a lot, but nobody\n\n1140\n00:57:29.390 --> 00:57:30.160\nelse is applying\n\n1141\n00:57:30.160 --> 00:57:36.960\nfor it. So I believe at the time that I would help out by making our\n\n1142\n00:57:36.960 --> 00:57:37.840\norganization better,\n\n1143\n00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:42.160\nby making our organization better, we would make it better for our customers.\n\n1144\n00:57:42.160 --> 00:57:43.120\nAnd then we would do\n\n1145\n00:57:43.120 --> 00:57:48.150\nsomething good. And I believe we have done that. We have done that. We have\n\n1146\n00:57:48.150 --> 00:57:49.520\ngrown significantly.\n\n1147\n00:57:49.520 --> 00:57:53.430\nIt'll be, let's see now, actually, we just passed it actually. So I've been CEO\n\n1148\n00:57:53.430 --> 00:57:53.680\nnow,\n\n1149\n00:57:54.240 --> 00:57:59.390\nI've entered my ninth year as CEO of this company. And I've been here, you know\n\n1150\n00:57:59.390 --> 00:58:01.360\n, 25. So I finished\n\n1151\n00:58:01.360 --> 00:58:05.400\neight out of 25. You know, let's call it, you know, but the heck a third round\n\n1152\n00:58:05.400 --> 00:58:06.240\noff here, right?\n\n1153\n00:58:06.240 --> 00:58:11.820\nI've been CEO. We have gone through over my time as CEO, a lot of changes, a\n\n1154\n00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:12.720\nlot of difficulties,\n\n1155\n00:58:12.720 --> 00:58:17.030\nbut a lot of great things. COVID was horrific, horrific thing we went through.\n\n1156\n00:58:17.030 --> 00:58:17.600\nBut we've changed\n\n1157\n00:58:17.600 --> 00:58:21.860\nthe business a lot too. When I first became CEO, our biggest company, Booking.\n\n1158\n00:58:21.860 --> 00:58:23.440\ncom, all we did\n\n1159\n00:58:23.440 --> 00:58:29.690\nwas I mentioned this agency model distributing hotels. Now we do many different\n\n1160\n00:58:29.690 --> 00:58:30.800\ntravel verticals,\n\n1161\n00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:38.080\nflights. We merged in our car rental business. We do attractions, insurance. We\n\n1162\n00:58:38.080 --> 00:58:39.520\nare doing many\n\n1163\n00:58:39.520 --> 00:58:43.890\ndifferent things that we never did before. And that is able to provide people\n\n1164\n00:58:43.890 --> 00:58:45.600\nwith a better experience.\n\n1165\n00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:50.620\nAnd we have made great progress in creating the thing we call the connected\n\n1166\n00:58:50.620 --> 00:58:51.280\ntrip, which is\n\n1167\n00:58:51.280 --> 00:58:54.810\naround top bringing it all together. And this is because we used to be just\n\n1168\n00:58:54.810 --> 00:58:55.920\nthis agency,\n\n1169\n00:58:55.920 --> 00:58:59.600\nthis we never took the money. We didn't do it. Now we have a whole payments\n\n1170\n00:58:59.600 --> 00:59:00.080\nprogram\n\n1171\n00:59:00.080 --> 00:59:05.200\nthat's very big and very important. So we have made it much easier for our\n\n1172\n00:59:05.200 --> 00:59:05.920\ncustomers,\n\n1173\n00:59:05.920 --> 00:59:10.970\nto customers as I mentioned, our travelers and our partner suppliers. And we've\n\n1174\n00:59:10.970 --> 00:59:11.600\nmade it better\n\n1175\n00:59:11.600 --> 00:59:15.990\nfor both of them. So I feel that we got a lot more to do, of course, to make\n\n1176\n00:59:15.990 --> 00:59:16.960\nthings better.\n\n1177\n00:59:16.960 --> 00:59:22.880\nBut we're on our path. And now with Gen AI, I tell the organization as exciting\n\n1178\n00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:23.280\nas been,\n\n1179\n00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:26.950\nand what we all together be able to create over the last quarter of a century,\n\n1180\n00:59:26.950 --> 00:59:28.320\nwe're just beginning.\n\n1181\n00:59:28.320 --> 00:59:32.340\nWe are just beginning with this technology. It's going to be so much better.\n\n1182\n00:59:32.340 --> 00:59:34.560\nAnd it's kind of fun\n\n1183\n00:59:34.560 --> 00:59:39.790\nto help do this. Yeah. So the first thing was know why you want to be a leader,\n\n1184\n00:59:39.790 --> 00:59:40.080\nand then you\n\n1185\n00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:42.960\nare going to give me a second. Yeah. Well, the second thing is, okay, now,\n\n1186\n00:59:42.960 --> 00:59:44.400\nthere. So one thing is,\n\n1187\n00:59:45.280 --> 00:59:52.560\nlook at other people or leaders, learn, read, listen, see what parts you want\n\n1188\n00:59:52.560 --> 00:59:53.520\nto take from them to,\n\n1189\n00:59:53.520 --> 00:59:57.160\nI want to be like that kind of a leader. I want to do so. I want to be the way\n\n1190\n00:59:57.160 --> 00:59:58.400\nthat person is.\n\n1191\n00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:02.670\nHow do we learn? We learn from others. We learn reading. And that's the thing\n\n1192\n01:00:02.670 --> 01:00:03.520\nyou've got to learn.\n\n1193\n01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:09.600\nAnd I'll tell you, it's unfortunate that, well, you have your, you've been\n\n1194\n01:00:09.600 --> 01:00:10.240\ndoing what you've been\n\n1195\n01:00:10.240 --> 01:00:14.750\ndoing to help people prepare to be a leader. But you know, so I went to the Wh\n\n1196\n01:00:14.750 --> 01:00:15.760\narton School,\n\n1197\n01:00:15.760 --> 01:00:20.640\nundergrad, and Penn, and I went to Harvard Law School. There never was a course\n\n1198\n01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:21.680\nin how to be a leader,\n\n1199\n01:00:21.680 --> 01:00:27.830\nnot at all. Yeah, Wharton, we had things called management courses, right? But\n\n1200\n01:00:27.830 --> 01:00:28.320\nthey never really\n\n1201\n01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:32.940\ntalked about what it means, what is leadership, what does that have to be? And\n\n1202\n01:00:32.940 --> 01:00:33.680\nI think that we\n\n1203\n01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:41.100\ncould all benefit a lot if we all had some actual practical lessons in\n\n1204\n01:00:41.100 --> 01:00:43.040\nleadership. As part of our\n\n1205\n01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:48.290\nleadership group at our company, we are developing those now. And it's a shame\n\n1206\n01:00:48.290 --> 01:00:49.520\nthough, you don't get\n\n1207\n01:00:49.520 --> 01:00:54.010\nthat until you're already sort of like giving the job of being a leader. You\n\n1208\n01:00:54.010 --> 01:00:54.640\nknow, that's true.\n\n1209\n01:00:54.640 --> 01:00:59.520\nWe should go earlier. You know, one of the things that I've been very impressed\n\n1210\n01:00:59.520 --> 01:01:00.480\nby you is you're very\n\n1211\n01:01:01.600 --> 01:01:07.920\nself-effacing. You don't seem to take yourself too seriously. You don't claim\n\n1212\n01:01:07.920 --> 01:01:08.880\nto be the smartest\n\n1213\n01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:12.650\nperson in the room. You know, is that sort of a superpower of yours as a leader\n\n1214\n01:01:12.650 --> 01:01:13.440\n? You think you\n\n1215\n01:01:13.440 --> 01:01:16.870\nthink that gets people to get behind you more? Or, you know, how do you think\n\n1216\n01:01:16.870 --> 01:01:17.920\nabout that? I mean,\n\n1217\n01:01:17.920 --> 01:01:22.280\ndo you do it, it comes naturally to you? Or is it something that you try to\n\n1218\n01:01:22.280 --> 01:01:24.240\nmake happen? Or,\n\n1219\n01:01:24.240 --> 01:01:28.220\nyou know, do you hear it coming out of your mouth when it pops out? Or tell me\n\n1220\n01:01:28.220 --> 01:01:28.880\nabout it?\n\n1221\n01:01:28.880 --> 01:01:33.520\nOne of the things that I've heard a lot about in this idea, this Buddhist\n\n1222\n01:01:33.520 --> 01:01:40.880\nshushin, beginner's mind. And not going with your pre-thought-up\n\n1223\n01:01:40.880 --> 01:01:44.560\nreason that you had started. So, for me, it's pretty easy because I don't have\n\n1224\n01:01:44.560 --> 01:01:45.200\nthem. Like,\n\n1225\n01:01:45.200 --> 01:01:54.690\nit's about marketing. I don't know. It's recognizing it's so easy if you look\n\n1226\n01:01:54.690 --> 01:01:55.280\nat it that\n\n1227\n01:01:56.880 --> 01:02:01.600\nby depending on other people's expertise, we will achieve better things than\n\n1228\n01:02:01.600 --> 01:02:03.200\njust because you have a\n\n1229\n01:02:03.200 --> 01:02:08.000\nstatus level that therefore you would know. Just because you have a title does\n\n1230\n01:02:08.000 --> 01:02:08.800\nnot give you\n\n1231\n01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:13.180\ninstant knowledge and information at all. You just got to be willing to admit\n\n1232\n01:02:13.180 --> 01:02:13.920\nyou don't know\n\n1233\n01:02:13.920 --> 01:02:19.150\nanything and ask and then try and do it and ask smart questions and then try, \"\n\n1234\n01:02:19.150 --> 01:02:20.080\nDoes this, why are\n\n1235\n01:02:20.080 --> 01:02:24.130\nwe doing this? Explain again to me. How is this going to help? Why is this? But\n\n1236\n01:02:24.130 --> 01:02:25.440\nwhat about that?\"\n\n1237\n01:02:25.440 --> 01:02:29.390\nAnd bringing people who have different opinions to debate it together. And that\n\n1238\n01:02:29.390 --> 01:02:30.320\nhelps us form\n\n1239\n01:02:30.320 --> 01:02:36.960\nas a collective, better decision-making. So, I don't think it's actually that\n\n1240\n01:02:36.960 --> 01:02:37.760\nhard, actually.\n\n1241\n01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:41.520\nI think it's actually the way, you know, obviously sometimes you have to make\n\n1242\n01:02:41.520 --> 01:02:42.720\nthe decision even though\n\n1243\n01:02:42.720 --> 01:02:46.870\nyou don't have enough information and you're not as expertise as people who\n\n1244\n01:02:46.870 --> 01:02:47.680\ngave you that,\n\n1245\n01:02:47.680 --> 01:02:51.120\nbut they gave you different information. And then you have to make a decision\n\n1246\n01:02:51.120 --> 01:02:51.520\nand that's a\n\n1247\n01:02:51.520 --> 01:02:55.070\njudgment and hopefully you've learned a little bit over time. Look at Kennedy,\n\n1248\n01:02:55.070 --> 01:02:55.520\nduring the\n\n1249\n01:02:55.520 --> 01:03:03.360\nCuban Missile Crisis and how he made decisions there. He was not an expert in\n\n1250\n01:03:03.360 --> 01:03:04.800\nnuclear missile\n\n1251\n01:03:04.800 --> 01:03:09.280\nstop and he wasn't a, you know, he had run a PT boat in World War II, you know,\n\n1252\n01:03:09.280 --> 01:03:10.560\nwasn't like a\n\n1253\n01:03:10.560 --> 01:03:14.330\nAdmiral. And he had to make this incredible decision and he depended listening\n\n1254\n01:03:14.330 --> 01:03:15.200\nto other people.\n\n1255\n01:03:15.200 --> 01:03:18.480\nA lot of people gave a lot of different opinions. There are some of you that we\n\n1256\n01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:19.200\nshould do Cuba\n\n1257\n01:03:19.200 --> 01:03:23.840\ntoday. And there are all four things. And he had to make that decision even\n\n1258\n01:03:23.840 --> 01:03:24.320\nthough he had\n\n1259\n01:03:24.320 --> 01:03:28.040\nimperfect information and he had different experts, a lot of different stuff.\n\n1260\n01:03:28.040 --> 01:03:29.040\nAnd that ends up being\n\n1261\n01:03:29.040 --> 01:03:32.350\nthe leaders, you know, part of the responsibility though, is making that\n\n1262\n01:03:32.350 --> 01:03:33.440\nultimate decision when\n\n1263\n01:03:33.440 --> 01:03:39.920\nthere is different opinions and such. And you know, I have the opportunity to\n\n1264\n01:03:39.920 --> 01:03:40.720\ntalk to a lot of\n\n1265\n01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:45.170\nthe leaders. I do it, you know, every week, you know. And one of the things\n\n1266\n01:03:45.170 --> 01:03:46.640\nthat always impresses me\n\n1267\n01:03:46.640 --> 01:03:53.050\nis when I'm around someone who has so much incredible energy and passion for\n\n1268\n01:03:53.050 --> 01:03:54.320\nwhat they do. And I don't\n\n1269\n01:03:54.320 --> 01:03:59.320\nknow how anybody could work at booking holdings and have you as a CEO and not\n\n1270\n01:03:59.320 --> 01:04:01.200\nsay, hey, you know what,\n\n1271\n01:04:01.200 --> 01:04:05.050\nI may not agree with that guy all the time, but there's nobody that's putting\n\n1272\n01:04:05.050 --> 01:04:06.000\nhis heart into it\n\n1273\n01:04:06.000 --> 01:04:10.980\nmore than him. And there's nobody that's given us all more than he is. And, you\n\n1274\n01:04:10.980 --> 01:04:12.160\nknow, he believes\n\n1275\n01:04:12.160 --> 01:04:16.560\nin me. And I think those are great characteristics you've displayed in this\n\n1276\n01:04:16.560 --> 01:04:18.160\nconversation. And I want\n\n1277\n01:04:18.160 --> 01:04:21.480\nto thank you for taking the time to have it. Well, I want to thank you. And I\n\n1278\n01:04:21.480 --> 01:04:22.400\nwant to say though,\n\n1279\n01:04:22.400 --> 01:04:26.530\nthere are 25,000 of us now. I think they all have pretty much the same type of\n\n1280\n01:04:26.530 --> 01:04:27.200\nenthusiasm\n\n1281\n01:04:27.200 --> 01:04:30.640\nand want to achieve too. So not just me.\n\n1282\n01:04:30.640 --> 01:04:39.600\nGlenn has led one of the biggest travel companies in the world through massive\n\n1283\n01:04:39.600 --> 01:04:40.080\ngrowth\n\n1284\n01:04:40.080 --> 01:04:45.260\nand major challenges. But you know what, this is a guy who never pretends to\n\n1285\n01:04:45.260 --> 01:04:46.720\nhave all the answers.\n\n1286\n01:04:46.720 --> 01:04:51.120\nAs he puts it, just because you have a title does not give you instant\n\n1287\n01:04:51.120 --> 01:04:53.520\nknowledge. Too many\n\n1288\n01:04:53.520 --> 01:04:58.590\nleaders feel pressure to have an opinion on everything. But the truth is the\n\n1289\n01:04:58.590 --> 01:04:59.440\nmost effective\n\n1290\n01:04:59.440 --> 01:05:03.890\nleaders surround themselves with smart people, ask smart questions, and then\n\n1291\n01:05:03.890 --> 01:05:06.000\nlisten. And that kind\n\n1292\n01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:10.040\nof humility is powerful. It's how you create a culture where people feel\n\n1293\n01:05:10.040 --> 01:05:11.520\nempowered and the best\n\n1294\n01:05:11.520 --> 01:05:17.410\nideas win. Not just the loudest voices in the room. Not just the people who\n\n1295\n01:05:17.410 --> 01:05:19.360\nhave the most power.\n\n1296\n01:05:19.360 --> 01:05:23.340\nNot just the people who have the big title. This week, when you're faced with a\n\n1297\n01:05:23.340 --> 01:05:23.760\ndecision\n\n1298\n01:05:23.760 --> 01:05:28.510\noutside your expertise, I want you to pause. Instead of offering your own\n\n1299\n01:05:28.510 --> 01:05:29.520\nopinion or\n\n1300\n01:05:29.520 --> 01:05:34.900\npretending like you have the answer when you really don't know it for sure. I\n\n1301\n01:05:34.900 --> 01:05:35.920\nwant you to ask a\n\n1302\n01:05:35.920 --> 01:05:41.040\nquestion. Lean on the experts around you. You might be surprised at what you\n\n1303\n01:05:41.040 --> 01:05:41.760\nlearn\n\n1304\n01:05:41.760 --> 01:05:46.000\nand how much stronger your team becomes because of it. So do you want to know\n\n1305\n01:05:46.000 --> 01:05:46.880\nhow leaders lead?\n\n1306\n01:05:46.880 --> 01:05:51.350\nWhat we learned today is that great leaders know what they don't know. Coming\n\n1307\n01:05:51.350 --> 01:05:51.840\nup next on\n\n1308\n01:05:51.840 --> 01:05:55.520\nhow leaders lead, I'm sitting down with Hayes Barnard, the founder, chairman,\n\n1309\n01:05:55.520 --> 01:05:57.120\nand CEO of Goodleap,\n\n1310\n01:05:57.120 --> 01:06:01.840\na finance company that provides loans for sustainable home upgrades. I want to\n\n1311\n01:06:01.840 --> 01:06:03.600\nconnect the brightest,\n\n1312\n01:06:03.600 --> 01:06:09.100\nmost driven, most talented people, people that are on a mission to do good at\n\n1313\n01:06:09.100 --> 01:06:10.240\nmeaningful scale.\n\n1314\n01:06:10.240 --> 01:06:14.300\nAnd to do that, boy, you better have a big enough mission for them to wrap\n\n1315\n01:06:14.300 --> 01:06:15.200\ntheir hearts around.\n\n1316\n01:06:15.200 --> 01:06:19.970\nSo be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast so you don\n\n1317\n01:06:19.970 --> 01:06:20.880\n't miss it.\n\n1318\n01:06:20.880 --> 01:06:25.600\nThanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every\n\n1319\n01:06:25.600 --> 01:06:26.480\nThursday you get\n\n1320\n01:06:26.480 --> 01:06:30.480\nto listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I\n\n1321\n01:06:30.480 --> 01:06:31.120\nmake it a point to\n\n1322\n01:06:31.120 --> 01:06:35.430\ngive you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business\n\n1323\n01:06:35.430 --> 01:06:35.920\nso that you will\n\n1324\n01:06:35.920 --> 01:06:41.680\nbecome the best leader you can be.","

Glenn Fogel 0:00

You know, for many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking.com company. I just recently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the upcoming game and all that. And they say, What do you think? And I always say, it doesn't matter what I think. It's irrelevant. It's what have you come up with? And is this worth the money to spend on it, or should we sell the spot or not? It's nice to you to ask me, but what the do I know?

David Novak 0:36

What if the key to strong leadership isn't having all the answers, but rather having the wisdom and courage to say, I don't know, welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Glenn Fogel, the CEO of booking holdings. That's the company behind big travel brands like booking.com, kayak, Priceline and open table now, having been at the company for 25 years, Glenn's got a heck of a lot of experience to draw, and yet he's the first to admit when something isn't in his area of expertise, and instead of guessing, he trusts the experts on his team to guide the way. You see, great companies aren't built by ego. They're built by leaders who ask questions, listen and rely on the smart people around them, and in this conversation, you'll hear exactly how Glenn does it, plus the lessons he's learned riding elephants in Thailand, we both have a story to share there and surviving a Wall Street firing, and I'm glad I don't have a story to share there. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Glenn Fogel,

I was, you know, once traveling in in Thailand, I was at this franchise meeting. And, you know, they, they had this big event, and they, they put me on this elephant, and I was my, my legs were stretched out so wide, but, and I was on this thing, what seemed to had to be an hour, okay? And I finally got off and it, I think I was out of commission for about three days, you know, and that's, that's one of my travel stories that I have, and I know you travel the world. Do you have any stories that really stand out for you as you think about your what you've been able to see as the CEO well,

Glenn Fogel 2:29

so let's go to Thailand. And so it's northern Thailand, and it's the year after my it's the summer after my first year of law school. And instead of working, I decided I'm going to just go off to Asia for three months and just travel around by myself and have a lot of money. But, you know, go cheap. You know, the old hippie trails, they called it back in the days. So I'm out of Chiang Rai, and I'm going to get together with a bunch of people like that. We're going to get somebody to take us out see some hill tribes, do some hiking out to get there, and we're gonna get an elephant transportation from one village to another one point. So you absolutely were not told the right way to ride on an elephant is the head of the elephant. First of all, they and they had those seats, those, you know, chairs type things, but those, after like, two or three hours, that's really uncomfortable too. It doesn't work no matter what position you're in. It's not good so, but what is comfortable is sitting right on the neck and the head of the elephant. That's fine. The problem is, though, is the elephant, every so often, wants to put his head down and maybe get, you know, some water or look at something, or he wants to put his head up and he wants to go get a leaf or something with his trunk. And so you have to be very conscious of when the helmet is going to move its head, because you want to fall off.

David Novak 3:48

I love it. I should add that coaching. Before I went to Thailand, gotten that from you, I knew that, you know, traveling the world, that's on everybody's bucket list. Glenn, I mean, everybody wants to travel the world. How do you tap into that human desire in your company? The thing

Glenn Fogel 4:04

that you just said is so true. There's maybe it's something in our DNA, and maybe, you know, a million years ago, the homo sapien, whatever our species, was a million years ago, for whatever reason, in the somewhere in the Serengeti, there's just this desire to see what's over the next hill. And they did. And that's how, obviously, the human species spread around, Homo sapiens, all over the world and everything. There's just this desire to see something else. I don't know why, but I think it's just in our DNA. So we don't need to create demand. What we need to do to be successful is to help make it easier, and that's why our mission is making it easier for everybody to experience the world. And that's what we're trying to accomplish at booking holdings and all the companies that are part of it.

David Novak 4:50

Yeah, that's a huge, noble cause, really. You know, when you think about it, because you you tap into this innate desire, and every company you kind of want to have something that gets you up every day. It knows that you're doing good. I bet that has to generate a lot of pride with your people.

Glenn Fogel 5:03

It does. It does. And I talk about it a lot, and it's interesting, obviously, during COVID horrible time. And in comparison, and you think about it, the scientists who are trying to come up with solutions to a terrible disease, those are the real heroes. And it's easier to move. You know, to motivate we're trying to save the world from terrible disease. That's easy motivation. I once upon a time I worked on Wall Street, and I kind of think the mission really was to make money. Well, you know, we talked about how, well we're providing a way to get capital to companies to help them grow. It was nice. It's true. There's nothing not true about it. But I got the feeling that most people there weren't really for that mission. They're really for fattening the bank account of their own. So it's better. When I left Wall Street and I started working at a company, they thought, you know, this is a really good mission. It maybe we're not as noble as the scientists solving cancer, but we are doing something that is making the world a better place. I truly believe that. I truly, really believe that. And every day when we see successful trips, and we know that we've done a good job, that that gives me

David Novak 6:13

pleasure, that's fantastic. And you know, I was wondering when you were a kid, that was travel a big part of your upbringing, and if so, what that teaches it absolutely

Glenn Fogel 6:23

was not as a kid, and it's funny. I know every vacation I took with my family between, you know, until I went off to college, and it's a single digit number, and a couple were by car, but it was exciting. But then I got to college, and I wanted to see the world. My my folks, I'm first generation college, my brother and I first in our generation through college. My parents had only been in the US for the most part, but they did when I was a senior in high school, maybe or junior, they went off to Europe, and they came back and they're talking, wow, this is incredible. And all these kids are going around on their knapsacks. And this is the maybe late 70s. And so when I go off to college, I'm going to do this too. And after my sophomore year, I signed up, and there was a program in northern Spain, Santander, and it was to do Spanish, to learn Spanish at the Universidad Mendes Palaio. And I went there, and it was wonderful. And it's international. These people like, I'm doing this again. And the next summer, instead of getting the job, I went off with a friend, and we using our Euro pass. We're all over Europe, and everything costs very low, very low cost. And I just got the bug. And then, as I mentioned, after I went to a first year law school, I went, I went out to Asia and did that. So I really like traveling. I mean, I've just had the pleasure of seeing parts of the world and seeing how it can really bring people together, learning new and different things. Oh, I forgot to mention, I just studied in the Soviet Union when I was at universe. Forgot that part about six weeks in between semesters in the winter that was fascinating at the time. You know, Ronald Reagan was president the United States, and it was the evil empire to go and speak and deal with people my college age, people, and talk to them and see their point of view, what the world looked to them. Very interesting.

David Novak 8:23

You got a global perspective before you're out of college, and as a first generation college student, which the same thing, that's what I was, too. I never really had that kind of travel. I did live in like 23 states by the time I was seventh grade, because my dad was a government surveyor. But it was always exciting going to that next spot, and, you know, figuring out, you know what the place is going to be like and the people you're going to meet. But

Glenn Fogel 8:46

that must have been hard that many different places before you're growing. I mean, going to each school, how to make, you know, new friends. Yeah, I,

David Novak 8:55

you know, I thought everybody did it. Glenn, you know, when you're a kid, that's what you do. I just thought that's what everybody and my mom would say, Hey, you better make friends, because we're moving, you know. And that it was a good thing for me. I think it helped me learn a lot of things about leadership, you know. So I understand you had a stroke when you're only 17 years old, you know? What kind of perspective that did that give you at such a young age, and what kind of impact has that had on on the way you lead, if you think about it. Yeah,

Glenn Fogel 9:23

so I was 17. It was a spring of my junior year in high school, and I woke up in the morning and I that's really something. Something's not right, not really thin. Well, I don't really understand what's going on. And then going to get myself ready to go to school, brush my teeth, and I'm bumping into the walls so much so I wake up my parents. They come, they see me, and they say, Oh, this is good. All they call over Doctor off the hospital. All that my what has happened is I have a left temporal stroke, and my entire right side very quickly becomes paralyzed, and I lose all my ability. Be to communicate. Can't speak. It's not because the mouth isn't worried the actual language parts of the brain are now gone. And that was a that was a change, because I was, I was a pretty smart kid in high school, and everything was looking pretty good, and I I had to put in all my application. I was getting ready. I did all my stuff for the SAT so I was all ready to in the fall and apply to colleges, and everything's all good. Now, sometimes I've gone from something to what I feel is nothing, and it took time to get back to be better, so to speak. What's interesting, though, is somebody that age, you don't think about that, oh, I'm not going to get better. Maybe it never occurred to me that wasn't going to happen. I would get frustrated when I couldn't do things. I I would get angry when I couldn't do certain things. But it never occurred to me that I wouldn't eventually be able to get back, so to speak, as I was before. What's interesting, though, is my mother, she's She's long gone now, but she would and told my wife many times. My wife would tell me, she says, you know, she keeps your mom keeps telling me how, before you had a stroke, you were a smart kid like, Thank you, mom. What it definitely did do is I, and I'm not sure if that did it, or just as you get older and you recognize it's not as easy for everybody, and bad things happen that there wasn't their fault, just bad things can happen. And you try and be empathetic, and when you have to take actions that are going to hurt people and as a leader, to be successful and to do what is necessary. Sometimes you're going to take actions. They're going to hurt people. When you have to let people go, even though they were good workers during the pandemic, we let go 25% of our employees wasn't 25% of people weren't bad workers. They didn't not not show up. We had no business pandemic. It shut down travel entirely, I mean, and at that time, we had to do certain things that were definitely hurtful, and you recognize, okay, we're going to try and do this the best way possible. So we don't do well, what is the minimum required by law or by contract? We do it to try and make it as best we can given the resources we have at the time. And while obviously, one can never be happy about that, I am pleased that we, all of us at the leadership level, did get communications, notes, emails. People said something like, look, I'm really sad. I'll have to leave. But you guys have done this the right way, which is very different than what happened when I was fired from a job on Wall Street. That was a very different situation where person comes in says, you know, thank you, actually comes in. So you have to go to this meeting. So you go to the meeting, show the meeting, and they tell you, listen, your job has been eliminated, you'll get two weeks severance, or whatever it was, a nominal amount, and thank you for playing Bye, bye. And, oh, tell me you'll take up your stuff from the desk and we'll deliver it to your home. Like, don't even, like, go back to your desk, just doors that way. Nice big man. Will help show you the way, in case you are getting lost. Yeah, you've been working place. You're not gonna get how to get out. But, you know, that's, that's the way it's played when

David Novak 13:27

you talk about the, just the agony that you had, you know, letting that 25% of your work for force go during, during COVID, you know, I can see it. You know, it really moved you. What do you do attitudinally, as a leader, when you get backed up against a wall like that, and you know you have to do something you don't want to do, how do you how do you deal with that moment as a leader

Glenn Fogel 13:50

again? It's what you're trying to do for the people who are going to remain is very important. So it's not just how are you going to deal with the people who are going to have to leave. It's how are you going to do in a way, and what are you going to do for the people afterwards to maintain their ability to continue to do what is necessary to move this organization forward? And how are you going to motivate your leaders? Because you can't do everything at once. We had 26,000 people, maybe 27,000 people at the time. Man, I can't, I can't talk to 27,000 people, so I need to make sure that I am talking. Yes, I'll talk to the entire company through broadcast mechanisms, of course, but person to person, with our extended leadership, people, a few 100 of them, where I'm talking much more to get them to make sure everybody understands what's happening. Communicate, communicate, communicate, tell them the truth, tell them what has happened, why it's happening, and how in the end, in the end, we will be able to overcome this now. And this is what I said, you know? I said, Look, most of the people who are going to let go, most of the people are going to end up okay, and having been. Let go myself. Haven't even fired myself. I am somewhat familiar with it. Can it can work out fine. It can be okay. But the thing is, there's also knowing the back your mind, though, some people are never going to recover from this. Some people it's just not going to work for them. In a very large group they're going to copy, are going to react, and it's just not going to be good. But you can't do anything about that. I can't You can't save everybody. So you do what you can for the most people you can.

David Novak 15:27

It's, it's one of the tough things about leadership, but you always have to think about the team that's going to go forward totally

Glenn Fogel 15:34

and look, we've all been there. You've been there. I'm sure many, many times. It's one of the unfun parts of leadership, it's fun when you're winning. It's not as much fun when you have to make very hard choices that you know are going to hurt people. Hey, everyone, it's Kula. And if you are looking for a resource to help you level up as a leader, go and get our weekly leadership digest. It's our roundup of leadership resources that we deliver straight to your inbox every Friday morning. It's totally free, and there are 1000s of leaders who are using this resource to stay sharp in their role as a leader. So go to how leaders lead.com/digest

Speaker 1 16:15

grab this free weekly newsletter. Go to how leaders lead.com/digest and get it today.

David Novak 16:21

You mentioned earlier, Glenn, that you started your career out on Wall Street. And you know, you talked about how there's, you know, a lot of people there are in it for themselves, and they didn't necessarily show as much compassion as they you might want to have, you know, but when you think about it, you know, how did that prepare you to lead?

Glenn Fogel 16:39

I mean, there's so many things. And by the way, my first job after I went to college, it wasn't, it was, it was on Wall Street, but it wasn't as you would think. I was an IT person. I was actually coding on Wall Street. And then I said, well, the I gotta get over to the other side, not the back office. I want to be in the front office, but you can't go. You can't go from being an IT guy to be an investment banker right away, which is why I then went to law school so I could get a job on Wall Street in the front office. But that part about being on Wall Street and stuff, and there's so many things you do learn skills that you do learn one thing that's really important as a very young analyst type person, where you're basically a grunt, is understanding the need for making things perfect. And that's something now, which you know we talk about a lot sometimes, is people have to have the knowledge that what you do, the work product you do, matters, and that can be even something as simple as if you're putting together a presentation, make sure it's right, spend the time to make it right. And when I get stuff that I see that sloppy isn't right, or, you know, there's a footnote, but I don't know what the footnote goes to. I think, did anybody read this before it got to me? And that's one thing. And I'm I think that, look, we know perfection is a goal we will never get to, but there's nothing wrong with trying to get there.

David Novak 18:05

And in the year 2000 you joined the team at Priceline. What inspired you to leave from the world of finance, to travel? Well,

Glenn Fogel 18:14

so here's the thing, so I am the Head trader at Morgan Stanley as the manager, very well known guy, Barton Biggs, really pretty much a Wall Street legend. And as a buy side trader, it's really not that interesting, or at least it wasn't to me, because really what I'm trying to do is execute the trades in the most price efficient way. And at the end of the day, I'm like, who cares? And at the same time, the internet is booming, booming, boom. Now, before I'd been in this trading role, which I got after I fired from an investment banker several years earlier, I had been investment banker that we did a lot of work for the airline industry. So I know a lot about the airline industry. So I'm thinking, Okay, I know technology. Could I've been a coder. I know the air transportation business banker. I know a little about capital markets as a trader. And there's this company, priceline.com, that was this golden child coming out in 1999 did their IPO in the spring, and the thing is just rocketing up, and they need somebody to be a corporate development person. I think I got a law degree. I know about M and A, I go, this is perfect for me, and it's not far from home, because most of the big, you know, the big dot coms and the turn of the century were all over in California, you know, Silicon Valley. It was like the only big star on, really, on the east coast. And so I applied for the job. The end of 1999 going to 2000 they offered me the job as I'd like to wait so I get my bonus. Because. Bonuses are paid end of February, and so I'll come the end of February, and they say, great. So I leave Morgan Stanley and I go to an internet company at the last week of February. Thereby top ticking. The term is the trade. I've gone long internet right as the NASDAQ peaks first week of March, 2000 and the thing is, it proved that it was smart for me to leave being head trade, or Morgan Stanley asked the manager for Barton, because I clearly know nothing about trading, having top take the trade, going long internet in 2000 now, in the time I've gone a week after I've joined the company, the stock at the time is worth, let's say, 15 billion or so. Market cap goes up very quickly, almost double. It really goes up quickly. And I'm like, Wow, I'm a genius. Until a few months later, end of 2000 we're almost flat out of money and flat broke and going bankrupt real fast. People thought, I, you know, the job, thought the company disappeared. Thought my job, just even my mom probably was thinking like, you know, what did you do to yourself? You That was crazy. But I stayed. I stayed all time. So I've now been there 25 years. Now, 25 years and over those 25 years, at the bottom part of our worst thing, we were what was then $1 a share. We did a reverse split just so we could stay listed. So it was six, six for one. So the stock price on a reverse split basis is $6 approximately 4800 let's round off right now. Okay, so that's from $6 to 4800 over 25 years. So that think about that 800 times, 800 times. And if you do that on a compound annual growth rate. So over a quarter of a century, quarter of a century, we have provided our investors with a CAGR that is over 30% there are very few companies that have ever been able to achieve

David Novak 22:15

that. You could say that again. But, and I will also tell you this, if we ever have the great opportunity to have dinner with you, you're buying no

Glenn Fogel 22:24

problem. Be happy to do it, and, by the way, and you're gonna, you're gonna appreciate this, because I know you were a PepsiCo. I know you're gonna like, I think if you go to the hilltop, okay, or maybe cobblestone,

David Novak 22:39

that sounds good to be all right now. So you joined Priceline, and you acquired several companies over the years to get that kind of growth that you have. Give me a peek into that strategy and the part that you played in,

Glenn Fogel 22:54

oh boy. It's like, how much time do we have? How do you make this to us the same story, because there's so many things we're talking about. So the issue is, from the very beginning, the idea was to be global. When I first got to Priceline, there already was this idea, we're going to be global. Now, at the time, the accounting was such that you could basically do a joint venture, essentially, and don't have a lot of equity in it, but have warrants options, basically a right to buy this company down the road, and it won't be on your balance sheet. So because these new startups abroad are going to have losses at the beginning, and we're now already public, so you don't want to have those losses on your own. You know, on your own, PNL, these are off balance sheet entities now, everything is legal. There's nothing wrong. This is an end, right? I want to make everybody understand, and the rules certainly have changed, no doubt. But so what we did is we meet, we put together different areas. So in Australia, we did the deal with Telstra, the big telecom thing. For Asia, we did this thing with Hudson, wild POA. And now in Europe, we set up a thing where it was most of the equity came from general Atlantic. And the idea is, we'll take our IP and we'll, you know, allow other people to set up their businesses there, and when they become profitable all that, we will then bring them on balance sheet by exercising our awards. And that was the way it was all gonna work. Here's the problem, though. The concept makes sense unless you've ever been a developer and you realize this is not like you just have, you know, Priceline in a box. It's not like you just take some discs back in the day, like seeing your disc and put it in you're gonna have a system. It actually takes a lot of work to actually create these things, and we do it at the same time. The whole.com thing is blown up. So most of my role at the beginning is shutting down these things that were set up because they're losing a fortune. We don't have the cash anymore. So that was my real job. The one thing we kept going, though, was the European one. We put the the Asian one, we put on the side and the Australian, we totally shut down. But we really want a skinny don't want to lose money. So okay, we're gonna fire most of the people there. And Glenn, you are now in charge of Europe. So now I'm commuting from the New York to London to run what is now like an eight or nine person operation to keep this thing going. And we only had really one product at the time, which, if people remember, was called, name your own price. It was an auction type thing where you could get an airline ticket at a very low price. You bid, and if you bid, you're going to get it, but you don't know what time you're going to take off. You don't know which way you're going to go. You may have to make a stop or two, and you don't know which airline now, for people have time and don't have a lot of money, it's not a bad thing in the US. It can be very good because of the US, it can take all day anyway, unless you're in a major, major airport, you're going to make a connection at one of the hubs. But in Europe, it's not quite like that. Somebody should look into that before we did that deal, because you can go from, let's say, London to Paris on Ryanair for five pounds. So to save 50% two and a half pounds, really, that's not a lot, especially if to do that, you're gonna have to fly London to, I don't know, maybe Frankfurt, and then go to Paris. It's a stupid product. It's a terrible product. So, and then in the Okay, I'm like, What about the hotel business? Also name your own price. That also is a better product. Because people say, I just want a four star in this region. I don't care if it's a Hilton Marriott or whatever it's like. So that was an okay product, but I'm working around saying we got to sell this the way everybody buys, travel, disclose the price and tell people what they're buying. And does anybody around here know how to do this? So I'm spending some time going around trying to find somebody who knows how to do this. I find this little company in a bunch of people graduated from Cambridge, really smart guys, and they built a nice little business doing selling just hotels, only hotels, but the way we like it, and they're using something called the agency model, which means you're acting as an agent. You set it all up, and you get your money from the hotel later, after the person checks in a commission that the hotel sends to you, which is a little different than how it started in terms of the merchant, where the consumer pays up front anyway. So we do this, we buy the company, the great guys and all that. That's good. And then I'm looking, where's another company? And there's another company looks just like this company that we just bought. So the first company was called active hotels in Cambridge. And what happened is, is that guy who was the CEO of active hotels, because when we did the deal, obviously I was only buying it. They were going to stay and help build the thing, and we buy that. And he says, Do you guys, do you know the company, booking.com or Amsterdam? I did. Well, I kind of know my I've never spent time with them. Why? And this is a Wednesday, and I'm supposed to go home Thursday, and there's a big travel conference there. And so the person says to me, Andy says, well, they're here for the travel conference thing. You want to meet with them tomorrow. I'll just go home on Thursday. And I think, I don't know, oh, God, go meet. So I call my wife. I said, Honey, I'm not coming home. I'm not gonna be home tomorrow. I gotta see this company. I'll be home Friday. Says, Okay, I meet with these guys. Just three of them. They're geniuses. It's great. I'm looking at their numbers. I'm looking what they're doing. They're doing what active hotels is doing pretty much, except they are using Google, buying ads on Google, which not a lot of people are doing well, and they were showing how they do it. I'm saying this is very interesting. I'd like to learn one more. What could I maybe I could come see you and then say, why don't you come tomorrow? I said, That's a great idea. So I call my wife. I say, Hi, honey. I'm not coming home. I'm not coming I'll come after me home Saturday. I gotta go to Amsterdam. Long story short, we eventually closed the deal with those guys too, put them together. And that's not like 90% of the business. It all becomes out of so many surreptitious things. If Andy hadn't said, Why don't you meet these guys? If I had said, I gotta go home, who knows what would happen? So many things on things that it's not because you're so brilliant, it's so many other things also that happened. Made this happen. So when people say, Well, I do, Swami myself. No, you didn't, no, you didn't. A lot of other things happened that made it a success. Well, as

David Novak 29:46

I say in Australia, good on you, because that was, it was a good couple of days that you spent, you know, it's good thing you had an understanding wife, and it certainly paid off for everybody. You know,

Glenn Fogel 29:56

my grandchildren will be very pleased when. Yeah, so,

David Novak 30:00

so you you get the nod to become CEO of booking holdings in January of 2017 help us understand that just the structure of your company and how it's organized. So

Glenn Fogel 30:12

we have the holding company. We'll call that booking Holdings Inc. Underneath that, we have the operating companies, the biggest by far, booking.com global, based in Amsterdam. Then for your American listeners, they are more familiar probably with things like Kayak, which is another company. Priceline. We also have open table, another one. Then there's another very big company that sure many people in America don't know cold Agoda, which is based in Bangkok. So I get to go to Bangkok a lot, by the way. So

David Novak 30:47

that's why you're a professional elephant writer, exactly. So there are a lot.

Glenn Fogel 30:52

So those are the major names. We have other ones too. We have other companies too. But those, those are the biggest ones to mention. Really, rentalcars.com was company we acquired that you won't be surprised. They do rental cars based based up in Manchester, UK. We've merged that into booking.com so it still exists as a brand, but is wholly part of booking.com and booking.com rental car is actually now bigger than the rental car brand, but that's a separate

David Novak 31:19

issue. You know, one of the things that I tried to make a priority when I was running young brands was making sure that we shared best practices across the brands, with KFC, Taco Bell and pizza. Is that something that you you think about too? Are you totally decentralized? No,

Glenn Fogel 31:36

all the time, trying to make it more and more so we first started off. So for example, when we bought that company, I mentioned active hotels, and then booking.com merge them together and put it through. And also our price line, European thing that you might need. My eight people, nine people. But that all is one thing. The critical thing was I did not want to do any integration at all, and I stressed how important that was to Jeff boy. Others were there at time. We were older, and we all agreed that was right. And here's the thing, one of the easiest ways to really wreck a non US company that's operating outside the US, one of the best ways to wreck it is parachute in a bunch of Americans who don't know anything about it. Okay, the reason we bought these companies is because they had already showed they displayed to us an ability to be very successful. So the key thing was creating an incentive plan that, yes, we are buying the companies. They had found it, but we wanted them to stay and we wanted them to continue to work, and we will reward them tremendously if they are able to create the success that we believe they would be able to create. And that's what we did. So we are very separated. We are very there was absolutely no centralization. We're about as far apart as could be, and that can cause all sorts of issues, in terms of turf, in terms of who's doing what. But we started like that. But over time, as each company got bigger and bigger, and as the new booking.com That was the combination, came into America, went into Asia, and a goat is going and everybody starts mixing up, then you have to start putting together some ground rules, and you start saying, gee, we'll probably better. We can learn from each other. So we are doing more and more of that, but that isn't that is something that we always have to think about. And I'm sure you must have found this. I'm actually interested, in your opinion, your knowledge about this is, how do you create a situation where you want people to feel they're part of something, but you also want them feel part of a whole, and to create people who say, Yes, I'm really big. I am a KFC person, but I'm also a young person. And how you create that and that, you know, that's something that we're still work it's a work in progress that's

David Novak 33:54

called, I think it's the thing that every holding company struggles with, the balance between decentralization and centralization, and it's something that you know, worked very hard at. We really believe that the know how building was a big part of our strategy, but we were all in the restaurant business, pretty similar just to your business. So we incentivize people to share, you know. So if you if you offered up a best practice and the world adopted it, you know, you got a bigger bonus, you know, and we shouted it from the rooftop, because that was a very important part of our strategy. And and, you know, we gave, you know, lot of recognition the people who did it, and we also gave people recognition for adopting the ideas, and paid people more because, as you know, you know, you know, wiping out that, that pride of authorship, you know, is is important if you want to get people to really embrace the best practices, you know, it's a hard. How do you how do you go after that? Wiping out, not invented here. It's extremely

Glenn Fogel 34:54

difficult. It's extremely difficult, and particularly in places that are very successful. Yeah. And it is one of those things you have to constantly push at people. Are you sure it's not easier to buy this off the shelf? Do we really need to invent this? Do we really need to build this ourselves? And that is some really getting people to do analysis and and understand that the mission is to accomplish make it easier for everyone to experience the world, not to create the best email system. There are lots of email systems. We don't need to make our own guys.

David Novak 35:28

It's something that is really tough to get the right balance. But you know, I think if you take away ownership of any division or any company, and they feel like they don't have in their power the ability to get something done, you know, you pay for it, you know. So I was more into decentralization than centralization. No,

Glenn Fogel 35:48

I totally agree. And it also it's that interesting mix, because you believe you'll achieve certain types of efficiencies. You believe that there are synergies. On the other hand, there's a very hard to measure cost. Things go slower. There's more bureaucracy. It doesn't show up in the P and L easily, because you don't know that. The reason you're not hitting your numbers is because you know you're getting a lot of blockage along the way, and that's why projects aren't happening when they should happen by so it's definitely a balance you have to

David Novak 36:21

work on. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Glenn Fogel in just a moment. Well, International Women's Day is this week, and it's the perfect occasion to highlight Lisa lutop Perlow, the former CEO of celebrity cruise lines. She's broken a lot of barriers in her career, but for her, it wasn't just a feather in her cap. It was her chance to pave the way for others to succeed too. You

Lisa Lutoff-Perlo 36:46

know, a lot of people ask me, How does it feel to have achieved what you achieved in accomplishing, you know, being the CEO of one of the brands, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that, it was great. It was a major accomplishment, and it was something I never dreamed that would happen for me. But I think the real thing for me isn't so much about me, because, sure, I made it, it's wonderful, it's great. I worked really hard. I earned everything I got, but the biggest thing for me was bringing others along with me in an industry that was woefully short of women, and there was, you know, the gender imbalance was staggering. At that time, 3% of the women on our bridges were women. And by the time I stepped down from celebrity in April of 2023 33% of the crew members on our bridges were women. And I did that with the help of men that I worked with who were equally passionate about more gender equality on our bridges, and I give them a tremendous amount of credit for helping get us there. Go

David Novak 37:51

back and listen to my entire conversation with Lisa, episode 172 here on how leaders lead. So Glenn, I got a question for you, you come up in finance, you have a legal background, and then you run this, this, this company that has, you know, millions and millions of customers, okay, millions and millions of transactions. Did you have to work hard to develop your marketing skills, your customer skills, or was that something that came natural to you or or, how do you think about the customer side of the equation in your job? So I

Glenn Fogel 38:25

know very little about marketing, and I am very, very, very comfortable not feeling that I have any sort of expertise at all, and that's why we have chief marketing officers, and that's what they're supposed to do. And so, you know, for many years, we've been an ad in the Super Bowl for our booking.com company. And we always, you know, are should we spend this kind of money for this? Is there really a return or not? And they do all the testing that one to do on the actual content. You know, the creatives is good. And so I just recently got the most recent one that is being looked at for the upcoming game and all that. And they said, What do you think? And I and they always said that, and I always say, it doesn't matter what I think. It's irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. It's what have you come up with? And is this worth the money to spend on it, or should we sell the spot or not? It's nice for you to ask me, but what the do I know? And you know you have your numbers, you have your opinion, so you're supposed to do you tell me, you

David Novak 39:33

know, how many CEOs have that kind of comfort from your perspective? Not many. Now, many are very good marketing to me. Maybe, but I like, I like the fact that you know what you know and you know what you don't know. Now, in my research, I've learned you that you live by the maxim In God We Trust everybody else bring data, say more. You know,

Glenn Fogel 39:56

I didn't invent that. It's been around for a very long time, but I, I do believe. Minute.

David Novak 40:00

And how do you drive that your company? It's in

Glenn Fogel 40:03

the DNA from long before I got to any level of having any authority of any kind. So that is something that's been there forever. You know, you can go too far that way, though, and here's what I've talked about. We had a meeting. We had a meeting last year with a very large number of our data scientists, our mathematicians, our PhD statistician. These people are brilliant, brilliant people, and they believe data is everything, everything. And they asked me to speak at the opening of this thing, I say to them, I say, Listen, we all agree how important data is, and that has gotten us where we are because of our devotion to the facts and not opinions and all that, but everybody, what we have to understand is it's real easy to be certain that your numbers are telling you something. It's also real easy to make mistakes. Your model is wrong, the way you set up, your experiment was wrong, and you're absolutely confident and you do. And I said, everybody, let's look back on our history. We in the past have believed certain things absolutely is the truth. And then we said, oh, wait, this isn't right, and we shouldn't be doing that, because the data actually says this because we made a mistake, or somebody had made or the world changed, and what was true, the previous is no longer true. And I gave a whole bunch of examples I gave look at the number of things that are published in very respected professional peer reviewed journals, and there's no rep. You can't replicate the experiment, and then they have to pull what they had already peer reviewed approved. And there you see that over and over. You see that coming up over and over again. So when I say is like, look, we do believe that data is most important thing, but be very careful that it may not be right. Always and always think, does it make sense? Common sense? And if something is telling you that doesn't fit your common sense, well, the data could be absolutely right. It's telling you that and you your perceptions, your emotional biases, your human mistakes. Is mistakes are okay, go with that values, then you want to check that again, because maybe there was a mistake made in that, and that's something really important. But we are fortunate. And I think absolutely the reason for our, part of our one of the main reasons for our success, but one was really understand the concept of AB testing. Oh, 20 something years ago,

David Novak 42:23

you mentioned that the the world does change. And you know, traffic, travel is this magical thing that gives people hope. It gives them something to look forward to. What do you see changing in the world of travel that gets you excited about the future? Oh,

Glenn Fogel 42:38

my God, it's so exciting in terms of how much easier it will be in the future, it's already so much easier. Think about 25 years ago, then go today. Okay, 25 years ago, you would get a ticket that had this red carbon thing on the back. You know, would go on your hand if you had to carry a paper ticket around. Do you remember that? Yeah. And if you wanted to contact somebody, well, yeah, there was email 25 years ago, but a lot of stuff was still done by a thing called fax, which is short for facsimile, which I bet half of your listeners have no idea what we're talking about here. I agree with you how much think of it now. Now we have@booking.com we have our AI trip planner where you can just type in, I want to take a trip to Florida and have a communication going back and forth to help create the itinerary or price line has their AI product called Penny. Or if you have an issue with your reservation at a restaurant, and we've hooked up, because we don't all of them set up yet with this, and you're talking to somebody to fix the reservation for that restaurant. It's actually being done by AI is fixing it. AI is doing that. And there's so many things are so much better, so great. We've seen all this progress, but we also know that travel is still incredibly frustrating. Things go wrong, weather, mechanical issues, over bookings, I picked the wrong thing. I didn't want that. And with all the developments that we're getting in technology, all the new generative AI, all the machine learning things that we've been doing that for window machine learning stuff for more than a dozen years that really is helping our business, but so many things coming forward and will enable travelers to have a much easier, better time. Essentially, you are going to be going around with the most sophisticated, the most knowledgeable, incredibly great Travel Advisor living in your pocket, because in your phone, and it will be giving you advice. It will giving you changes. I'll give you a simple example. You're going to Amsterdam, nice thing. And we're suggested that you take a boat ride, nice canal trip. It's great. And we also, there's a great museum, the rice Museum, to go there too. Do, and we got all set up for you. So easy to be done. You're there. We know, though, the weather on Thursday, when you're supposed to take this boat ride, it's going to probably rain. And we know you're currently scheduled for Wednesday with the museum, when it's sunny, and this is Tuesday. And we tell you and listen, I think it's a good idea. We'd like to change this for you, put you on the boat on the sunny day, Wednesday, go to the museum on the rainy Thursday. And we're doing that automatically through AI and telling you this stuff is coming to you, and the phones be pushed, and it's going back and forth, and the rest, everything, everything. Just Imagine you're walking around with the most expensive travel agent in the world, who knows everything, everything because all the database and knows you better than anything because you have been buying from us. We know you, and we know what you like, and you don't have to say, I really want the aisle seat all the time. We know that. We don't try and put you into the seat with the window on the plane, so many things. So we will save so much of the friction, and it goes all the way from you first start thinking about travel to all the way through it to the time you're back home, safe, happy about the great, great vacation you took. You know,

David Novak 46:20

Glenn, you guys have been doing machine learning for well over a decade. You're all over AI, you know, as as a leader, you know, how did you, how did you identify the importance of that, and what have you done with yourself and your team to get this capability in AI where, you know, everybody else seems to be struggling with

Glenn Fogel 46:41

it. Everybody is struggling too. By the way, we're doing all these things. When I continue to tell the team, we've got to go faster, you don't know what's going to come out tomorrow. Who knows what somebody's inventing in some garage somewhere, and it's going to come back and poof, be the new thing. I mean, just look at the you know. You remember. And again, many of your people may not, oh, we're listening. We'll remember Al Gore talking about the information highway. Remember that the information highway? Well, the information highway is filled with a wreckage of companies that did not see in the future how much things were going to change. And those are, my God, remember Blackberry? We're absolutely today. Yeah, we're Xerox. Xerox invented so much of what we do today. The mouse. I mean, so many things. Mike, the list is endless of people who weren't thinking, what is the next disruptive thing? How can we can get ahead of that and try and do that, and it's hard. And, you know, we both, I'm sure we, I did. I'm sure you read the innovators dilemma, Christensen's book, very famous book, and that is a problem, because when you have a successful business and trying to disrupt it, it's very difficult, because you're making money your investors like this, and you have to have a balance. So it's not easy to motivate people to go. We got to go for the next new thing, but that's going to be risky, and it's going to cost money, so you have to create the right balance. And we, we've been fortunate that we have people who really do get it, and that's really

David Novak 48:14

good. Yeah, absolutely. And the brands and companies you mentioned, it's a graveyard those people that tried to protect what they had versus seeing where the world was really going.

Glenn Fogel 48:22

One of my favorites is blockbuster, because of your call.

David Novak 48:27

Oh yeah, they had they had Netflix. They

Glenn Fogel 48:31

knew it. They knew where it was going, and they still couldn't do it because the pressure. I know how much you know the story. I know the whole story.

David Novak 48:38

Yeah, right. Absolutely,

Glenn Fogel 48:39

they had it, but they couldn't make that change.

David Novak 48:44

They couldn't do it. Hanging on, hanging on, I'll tell you. Glenn, this has been so much fun, and I want to have some more with what I call my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this?

Glenn Fogel 48:52

Okay, I hope you don't mind if I go slowly.

David Novak 48:56

The three words that best describe you smaller

Glenn Fogel 48:59

than average in stature, younger looks, younger than he is, and willing to listen.

David Novak 49:09

If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? There's nobody I like being me your biggest pet peeve. Okay, so

Glenn Fogel 49:17

this is, and I don't understand why my wife is and I have a disagreement about this, but I grew up. You took anything, you plate glass, whatever, you put it in the dishwasher, or you washed it at the sink and you put it in the drying rack. That's how I grew up. My wife grew up where you put the plates and everything into the sink and you wait until it gets so filled, and then you rinse them and put them into the dishwasher during there, I don't understand why. I mean, who likes looking at a sink full of plates and dishes? I don't get it.

David Novak 49:53

I have to tell you, I'm kind of just blown away by this, because with your stock going up 800 Times I'm surprised. You've noticed dishwasher is,

Glenn Fogel 50:04

I assure you, my friend, I assure you, I know. By the way, here's the other one, the same areas. My wife believes that you have to rinse the plates and before you put in the dishwasher. And I'm like, sweetheart, it's not a dish warmer or just dryer is a dishwasher. Why do we have to wash it before we put it in? But whatever,

David Novak 50:27

okay disagreements. I love it. Who would play you in a movie? Who would

Glenn Fogel 50:31

make a movie that IBM please?

David Novak 50:35

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from traveling? What

Glenn Fogel 50:38

a wonderful world it really is. It really is. And sometimes people don't recognize we only have one of them. There's only one place, Earth, and you go around the world, it's so wonderful. I just, I just hope that is, you know, for many, many, many, many, many, many, many generations beyond, it's so wonderful.

David Novak 50:59

You have two tickets to any destination in the world. Where are you going? And who are you taking with you?

Glenn Fogel 51:05

I'm going home because I'm somewhere else, and I'm bringing my wife because she's with me too. I traveled last year because I have to keep records. I did not sleep in my home bed more than half of last year. So everybody says, Where do you want to go? I say, most likely

David Novak 51:23

I want to go home. What's something you wish more people knew about lawyers. They are trying

Glenn Fogel 51:28

to make the world better. They are doing their job in the way they believe is the right way to do things to help improve our society. What's

David Novak 51:40

the one thing you do? Just for you? Glenn, I worked out every day your most prized possession.

Glenn Fogel 51:46

I don't put a lot of stock into things this. I could lose every physical thing, you know, maybe a little bum, but it wouldn't be a big deal

David Novak 51:58

if I turned on the radio in your car. What would I hear? A podcast, possibly yours. What's something about you? Few people would know? Well,

Glenn Fogel 52:04

then I ran with the bulls and Pamplona, not once, but twice.

David Novak 52:10

That does not surprise me. I'm just getting to know you, but I believe you, and I'm surprised, it's only twice. You know, that's the end of the lightning round. Glenn, I just got a few more questions. I'll let you go here. You know, I'm looking at you here on video, and the people are watching us on YouTube. They're seen as well. You're you're in, you're in great shape, you know? And you mentioned you work out every day. Walk me through that part of your life, and how you prioritize health with all the demands that you have. So

Glenn Fogel 52:39

wake up in the morning, first thing I do is go down to my basement and do some exercise. In fact, even before I get downstairs, I was just talking with our CEO of Agoda. He's asking about it here, saying, okay, so I get coffee. I have a Keurig, right? I go downstairs from my bedroom kitchen. Said, you know, one sit down. I get there. Gonna do the Keurig, put the pot in. I'll do my push ups right there. And if you put it for about the 12 ounce or the 10 ounce on the Keurig, that's about the right time to your push ups. And then I get another one, because I have, like, you know, that 18 hours or 20 ounce mug that we all walk around with nowadays. So you put the second thing in and then do some sort of app thing. So in the time to get your coffee ready, instead of just sitting there, standing there, looking at the machine, you can get something done. One, two, you're brushing your teeth, right? If you brush your teeth the way you're supposed, you're supposed to two minutes each time, right? And if you're like, you bought one of the fancy electric ones that got the timer on, it's gonna be two minutes, right? So what are you doing? You're just looking at yourself while you're brushing your teeth, that's a waste of time. You can do leg lifts. You can go, just keep doing like this. Just keep on here like this. And you can do this two minutes in the morning, two minutes in the evening. That's four minutes a day, seven days a week. Let's round up. Let's go half an hour a week, right? Half an hour a week, doing exercises, it would have been wasted. So that's ways you can get yourself going. And then there are other, you know, ways to motivate yourself. But it is really, I believe this absolutely, that life is all of life is probabilities, right? There is no guarantee working out. It's actually you can still get hit by the bus and be just as dead and hit by the bus. Whether you worked out or you worked out or you didn't work out, you're still going to be dead, and people, unfortunately, terrible disease we all know, into but you increase the possibility, the possibility that you will live longer and have a healthier life by exercising. So why not? It's fun, it's enjoyable, and you have the possibility of living longer, hopefully,

David Novak 54:41

why not do it? It sounds to me like you read that book, tiny habits. If you read that book, read that book, No, it's all about just doing a few little things, like when you're doing the push ups, when the current machines, you know, you could have written a book. I thought, yeah, I thought you'd read it. Now you could write,

Glenn Fogel 54:58

well, I guess I won't have to. Read it

David Novak 55:01

now. Hey, Glenn, when you look forward, you know, what do you see as your unfinished business? My unfinished

Glenn Fogel 55:07

business is doing more nice things for my wife. You know, I, she we met when I was unemployed, after I had been fired, which is, you know, actually, it's everyone finds that one interesting, too. She was a lawyer at the time, and we were set up by friends. Mutual friends set us up. And it's interesting that, you know, she went out with me and I kept, we kept having brunch dates because, you know, that's not blood money. And the the interesting thing is that she kind of liked the fact that, because my point, I pick up her dry cleaning, I do lots of good things. And she didn't see me as somebody who would you know, half the year I'd be away from home and stuff. So I kind of owe her, Well,

David Novak 55:55

you've guys. You guys have been great partners, for sure, and it's a great attitude to have. And last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a leader? You only

Glenn Fogel 56:05

want one, but there's more than one. I mean, the first thing is, do you really want to be a leader? And understand why do you want to be a leader? So make sure you understand that. Really understand why do you want to be a leader? What is driving this? And understand that well, because it's very easy to think you want to be a leader for the wrong reasons. That's one,

David Novak 56:27

let me ask you before you go to two, why did you want to be a leader?

Glenn Fogel 56:32

I never want. I never made a big role to be a leader. We had. Our CEO was forced to be let go. Our chairman took over the temporary role as CEO. Well, they did a search. I did not put my hat in the ring initially, heads of our brands kept saying, Glenn, why don't you apply and stuff, why don't you try and do it and stuff? I'm like, I don't know.

I said, our Chairman. I said, Well, I sure hope we can find somebody better than me. And,

David Novak 57:05

well, well, why do you want to be a leader now? Then, do you want to be a leader?

Glenn Fogel 57:09

Now, here's that, here's it. So I took so then I said, Okay, I'll do it. Okay. Now, the reason why, the reason I want to do is because I believed that I could help make our organization better than it was. Now, no doubt maybe somebody could do it even better than I could do it. I'm sure they're probably a lot, but nobody else is applying for it. So I believe, at the time that I would help out by making our organization better. By making our organization better, we would make it better for our customers, and then we would do something good. And I believe we have done that. We have done that. We have grown significantly. It'll be, let's see. Now, actually, we just passed it, actually, so I've been CEO. Now. I've entered my ninth year as CEO of this company, and I've been here, you know, 25 so I finished eight out of 25 you know, let's call it, you know, what the heck a third round off here, right? I've been CEO. We have gone through over my time as CEO, a lot of changes, a lot of difficulties, but a lot of great things. COVID was horrific, horrific thing we went through. But we've changed the business a lot too. When I first became CEO, our biggest company, booking.com All we did was I mentioned this agency model, distributing hotels. Now we do many different travel verticals, flights. We merged in our car rental business. We do attractions insurance. We are doing many different things that we never did before, and that is able to provide people with a better experience. And we have made great progress in creating this thing we call the connected trip, which is on top, bring it all together in addition, because we used to be just this agency business, we never took the money. We didn't do it. Now we have a whole payments program that's very big and very important. So we have made it much easier for our customers, two customers, as I mentioned, our travelers and our partner suppliers, and we've made it better for both of them. So I feel that we got a lot more to do, of course, to make things better, but we're on our path and now with Gen AI, you know, I tell the organization, as exciting as been, and what we all together be able to create over the last quarter of a century, we're just beginning. We are just beginning with this technology. It's going to be so much better. And that's it's kind of fun to

David Novak 59:34

help do this. Yeah? So the first thing was, know why you want to be a leader, and then you were going to give me a second, yeah?

Glenn Fogel 59:41

Well, the second thing is, okay, now there. So one thing is, look at other people who are leaders, learn, read, listen, see what parts you want to take from them. Say, I want to be like that kind of a leader. I want to juice. I want to be the way that person. How do we learn? We learn from. And others we learn reading, and that's the thing you've got to learn. And I'll tell you, it's unfortunate that, well, you have your you've been doing what you've been doing to help people prepare to be a leader. But, you know, so I went to the Wharton School, undergraduate Penn, and I went to Harvard Law School. You know, there never was a course in how to be a leader. Nothing, not at all. How? Yeah, Wharton, we had a thing called management courses, right? But they never really talked about what it means. What is leadership? What does that to be? And I think that we could all benefit a lot if we all had some actual practical lessons in leadership. As part of our leadership group at our company, we are developing those now, and it's a shame, though, you don't get that until you're already sort of like given the job of being a leader. You know, that's true. Yeah, we should get those earlier.

David Novak 1:00:57

You know, one of the things that I've been very impressed by you is you're very self effacing. You You don't seem to take yourself too seriously. You don't claim to be the smartest person in the room. You know, is that sort of the superpower of yours as a leader, you think, you think that gets people to get behind you more. Or, you know, how do you think about that? I mean, do you do it? It comes naturally to you, or is it something that you try to make happen? Or, you know, do you hear it coming out of your mouth when it when it pops out? Or don't tell me about it. One of the things that

Glenn Fogel 1:01:30

I've heard a lot about in this idea of this Buddhist Shoshin beginner's mind, and not going with your pre thought up reasons I didn't start. So for me, it's pretty easy because I don't have them like it's about marketing. It's recognizing, it's so it's so easy, if you look at it, that by depending on other people's expertise, we will achieve better things than just because you have a status level that therefore you would know just because you have a title does not give you instant knowledge and information at all. Is you just got to be willing to admit you don't know anything, and ask and then try and do it and ask smart questions, and then try does this. Why are we doing this? Explain, again, to me, how, how is this going to help? Why is this but what about that? And and bring people who have different opinions to debate it together, and that helps us form as a collective, better decision making. So I don't, I don't think it's actually that hard actually. I think it's actually the way, you know, obviously, sometimes you have to make the decision, even though you don't have enough information and you're not as expertise the people who gave you that, but they gave you different information, and then you have to make a decision. That's judgment. And hopefully you've learned a little bit over time. Look at Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how he made decisions there. He was not an expert in nuclear missile stop. And he wasn't he, you know, he'd run a PT boat in World War Two, you know, wasn't, you know, wasn't like an admiral. And he had to make this incredible decision. And he depended listening to other people, a lot of people gave a lot of different opinions. There are some people say we should new Cuba today, and they're Yeah, all sort of things. And he, he had to make that decision, even though he had imperfect information, and he had different experts saying different stuff, and that ends up being the leaders. You know, part of the responsibility, though, is making that ultimate decision when there is different opinions and such. And,

David Novak 1:03:36

you know, I have the the opportunity to talk to a lot of leaders. I do it, you know, every week, you know. And one of the things that always impresses me is when I'm around someone who has so much incredible energy and passion for for what they do, and I don't know how anybody could work at booking holdings and have you as a CEO and not say, hey, you know what? I may not agree with that guy all the time, but there's nobody that's putting his heart into it more than him, and there's nobody that's given us all more than he is. And you know, he believes in me, and I think those are great characteristics you've displayed in this conversation. And I want to thank you for taking the time to have it well.

Glenn Fogel 1:04:19

I want to thank you, and I want to say, though, there are 25,000 of us now, and I think they all have pretty much the same type of enthusiasm and want to achieve too. So it's not just me.

David Novak 1:04:36

Glenn has led one of the biggest travel companies in the world through massive growth and major challenges. But you know what? This is? A guy who never pretends to have all the answers. As he puts it, just because you have a title does not give you instant knowledge. Too many leaders feel pressured to have an opinion on everything, but the truth is, the most effective leaders. Surround themselves with smart people, ask smart questions and then listen. And that kind of humility is powerful. It's how you create a culture where people feel empowered and the best ideas win, not just the loudest voices in the room, not just the people who have the most power, not just the people who have the big title this week, when you're faced with the decision outside your expertise, I want you to pause instead of offering your own opinion or pretending like you have the answer when you really don't know it for sure, I want you to ask a question. Lean on the experts around you. You might be surprised at what you learn and how much stronger your team becomes because of it. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders know what they don't know. Coming up next on how leaders lead, I'm sitting down with Hayes Barnard, the founder, chairman and CEO of goodlead, a finance company that provides loans for sustainable home upgrades. I

Hayes Barnard 1:06:01

want to connect the brightest, most driven, most talented people, people that are on a mission to do good at meaningful scale, and to do that, Boy, you better have a big enough mission for them to wrap their hearts around. So

David Novak 1:06:16

be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you'll become the best leader you can be. You.

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