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On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders and accelerate your career.

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Here's Ben.

Hey there.

Welcome back to Lead the Team y'all.

A real treat today for a very special repeat guest, Dave Cody, the legendary former chairman CEO of Honeywell for more than 16 years, y'all.

He grew the company's capitalization back in the day from 20 billion to 120 billion.

I was there in Honeywell for that amazing ride.

He's currently the Executive Chairman over at Vertiv Holdings.

He was elected also to the Federal Reserve bank of New York as a Class B Director to represent the interest of the public and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group.

And so many awards including the Horatio Alger Award, CEO of the Year from Chief Executive Magazine and Barron's top 30 CEOs for five consecutive years.

He's authored Winning Now, Winning later from Operas Collins, which Fortune by the way, called his book one of the best guides ever on how to lead a company.

And now he's recently released how to be a leader 15 minutes a day to establish communication, resilience, creativity and humility.

It may be his best accolade.

Well, at least in my mind.

He was actually interview number four only the team back in 2020 and we've just released 332.

So he's been a real Inspiration here to our show.

Help us keep going.

Dave, welcome back to lead the team.

Oh, you're very kind, Ben.

I'd have to say the only thing I would modify.

Yes, that Vertiv.

I'm not sure whether you'd say it's 900% or 1000%, but we launched at 10 in February of 2020 and today we're hovering over a hundred.

Oh my gosh.

Well, thanks for the call to join Vertive, Dave.

Wow.

Yeah, so it's not so bad.

So I want to spend some time talking about the Honeywell days because I love talking about that.

But you since, well you were there.

For part of it, so yeah, I love it.

But we're gonna some listeners, we're gonna get into that but found it very interesting what you're doing right now.

So let's talk about that.

Well, my family just bought a majority interest in a NASDAQ listed company called Composecure that makes metal credit cards.

And first thought from anybody and that was including me, was metal credit cards.

How hard is that?

Well, what you end up finding is it actually is pretty complicated and there's a lot of technology required for it.

It's an eight layer card that has to, you have to include a chip and antenna and it's got to have the right fit and finish.

So it actually is a lot more complicated in the technology than people realize.

And metal credit cards are booming and they're going to continue to do so because if you're a credit card holder, you like being able to have a metal card.

There's a marker distinction that goes with it and we were quite pleased because we bought it at 8 and when it was 8 and now it's up to around 14 and that's in the space of about 30 days, which has been kind of nice.

Yeah, it's like a typical plastic credit card except it's metal.

So it's just a little, a little heavier and it kind of, it's a brand distinction.

Okay.

And so what are you, are these sold through like true.

Like people think about Visa, they think about American Express, things like typical banks.

So.

Or credit card companies.

So in this case American Express and JP Morgan Chase are big customers.

Other banks are starting to realize that when you take a metal, when you, when you go to a metal credit card for your more affluent customers, spending goes up and it's largely taken from the plastic credit card guys because people start using their metal credit card usually because there's.

They also put a program around it that's enhanced but between that and the brand distinction of a metal card, if you ever held one, you'd say, oh, wow, this really is different.

There's a brand distinction to it.

It's like having a Gucci bag.

It does the same thing.

Louis Vuitton.

Well, when you.

First of all, you say Louis Vuitton way better than I can well actually.

Recall I spoke French before I spoke English as a kid.

The.

I grew up in this little French Canadian enclave in New Hampshire.

And I mean, there were there.

I spoke French before I spoke English, and I.

I've lost most of it.

Whatever I have now is vestigial, but it was.

You do retain some of the pronunciation.

Well, when you flew to France to negotiate Honeywell Aerospace deals, were you speaking French?

I am nowhere near good enough to be able to do that either to negotiate an aerospace deal or to do it in French.

Either one.

Okay.

Either one.

Oh, God.

This is.

This is going to be a fellow.

All right.

And so again, we're kind of going reverse.

Okay.

So you're like, okay, hey, there's this interesting credit card opportunity.

I'm doing that.

And then.

And then you're.

You really jumped all in with a Vertive after leaving Honeywell.

What have y'all been up to?

An avertive.

And what's.

What's been driving the growth over there for you?

Well, in both cases, so.

Well, actually, all three cases, if you take a look at our acquisition strategy in Honeywell, the approach that I took to Vertiv and the approach I took to Compost Secure, they're all the same.

And that's that I always look for what I call my Honeywell hot buttons.

And it's six items.

Is it a great position?

Is it a good industry?

Can you differentiate with technology, can you grow sales more aggressively, organically?

Is there an opportunity to grow inorganically?

That is acquisitions.

And six, can I expand margins?

And we did over 100 acquisitions, as you know, in Honeywell, and that was the criteria we looked at for every single one of them.

Then in doing the Vertiv deal, that hit all six of those hot buttons.

And I was convinced data centers were going to be fundamental to the digital age.

And it was an underappreciated asset and obviously proves we were right.

And I look at Compose Secure and say, it is the same thing.

This is an underappreciated asset, and the cash it generates is going to enable significant acquisitions that nobody's even really contemplating yet.

So it's the same thing.

It's the same kind of Mentality or strategy that was in the book.

And it's just we continue to apply it pretty, pretty aggressively.

Yeah.

So cool.

So you got introverted though, before AI was popping on the radar.

Is this something that was in your, like your crystal ball that you were thinking, or.

I don't.

Well, I wish my crystal ball was that good.

So, no, not AI specifically, but I can remember asking a question that no one else had, and that was including through two previous owners.

And everybody kept talking about how data grows at 20% a year.

And I was the first one to say, well, if Data is growing 20% a year, why did data centers only grow 4% a year?

And they started analyzing it and they'd never done it before, and they came up with four or five mitigating factors that said, this is why it's not growing as fast.

And I can remember looking at it and saying, well, wait a minute, these things look like they come to an end at some point.

And they said, oh yeah, it should end in the next two or three years, that this is all going to be handled or flowed through.

Said, okay, well what new mitigating factors are either in this?

Well, we don't see any.

So at some point, data center growth has to approximate data growth.

Yes.

Okay.

I said, well, that sounds like basis for a pretty darn good industry to me.

And oddly enough, no one had ever asked that question.

No consultant, no one else.

So I'm bragging now, but we looked at it and said, geez, well, this sounds like a pretty good tailwind to have for yourself.

And the growth in the business started way before, a couple of years before AI became a phenomenon.

And it's just fundamental to the digital age.

The data centers, there's no.

We're, we're, you know, we had the agricultural age, the industrial age, now we're in the digital age.

I don't think there's as much of a recognition of that as there should be sometimes, especially when you hear stuff like, you know, we got to bring all the manufacturing jobs back.

Like, there's something unique to that.

The reality is we're 30, 40 years into a new era, the digital age.

And fundamental to that is the data center.

And that, that's what, that's what I liked about it.

And you probably saw, I mean, I was writing about this in Honeywell about two major 21st century trends.

And one was going to be the digital age, the second is bioengineering.

And those two are going to meld together more in the future.

Those are, that's still true.

And that was for me was fundamental to investing in vertiv.

I remember when the message we were hearing was, okay, we used to be an industrial, now we're like, we were like, we were a cyber industrial or so it was a cyber like that started kicking off.

Yeah, well it was if you recall, I mean at Honeywell it used to be like 25% of our engineers were developing software and by the time I left, 50% of our engineers were developing software.

Yeah.

So there was a substantial turning point with the vision and the people like really kicking off a new age for Honeywell.

Correct.

Because I felt that the digital age was going to have a big impact on us.

And we had an advantage because we had domain knowledge which is going to be significant in industrial applications.

And by combining that domain knowledge with software expertise, we would have something nobody else did.

And that's proven to be true.

So one of the things that I noticed in you, and you're talking and you're reading your books is you have a knack for sort of simplifying the language around complexity.

And it seems like I'm trying to give an example here, but like what you're just talking about, like, hey, the consultants were coming in, they were telling us about, you know, how much data centers we're going to need, why it's not keeping up.

And I'm just questioning it.

And it just seems like you got to cut through a lot of the over complicated aspects of stuff to get down to the core principle of it.

Is this something that is natural to you or always alive, or have you just sought to develop it as you've got along as a leader?

Yeah, it's kind of very fascinating that you bring it up actually because no, it's not something that I worked to develop and I guess I'm kind of bragging talking about it, but others have been saying that about how I operate for decades really that I had an ability to make things simple.

And I think it's just, it was just kind of natural in me because as I try to understand something, if there's too many moving parts, it just, it just doesn't quite make sense.

Okay.

You know a lot, but you don't really know how the whole thing works, the process or the industry.

And you find out that a lot of this stuff you really can boil down to something that's pretty straightforward and easy to understand.

And I'd say just various things I've read over time have kind of reinforced how important that is.

So it's a Skill, I guess I've got.

And it's just been reinforced over time.

And I remember being struck by book cat's cradle.

And that was a big.

I think it was Kurt Vonnegut and being struck by how simplicity mattered in terms of being able to explain anything.

And others who had written that if you can't explain it simply, it means you don't understand it.

And I've often thought that made a lot of sense.

So I'd say it was something that was natural in me.

But I've gotten enough reinforcement out of other stuff I've read that said.

Yeah, I'm going to keep doing that because it helps me to understand something.

You know, like I hear it and I read like your origin story of the days where like you were starting a fishing boat, charter.

Charter boat with your buddy, you're like in your apartment with your first child and you're like freezing and you try to get a job.

And I, I mean it's really incredible story there.

I didn't know if your family was just very.

Just blunt and to the point, like, Dave, don't over complicated or, or what.

But it sounds like you just.

You got inspired for simplicity as you went along.

Yeah, I, I can't say that it was, it was not.

I mean, there were certain things in my family that were.

Talked about a lot.

You know, like I've.

I've said be a leader, not a follower, that sort of thing.

But the ability to explain things simply.

I mean, I've got a couple of examples where I can remember in high school we had to write a paper on something and I wrote mine pretty simply in the teacher telling me, you're going to go far in life, Mr.

Cody, if you can keep doing this.

And same thing in college.

I can remember having a finance course and participation was 25% of the grade.

And I can remember the teacher, the professor calling on me and saying, and what seems to be the issue here?

And I still remember I just said very bluntly, they're paying their bills too fast and they're not collecting their receivables fast enough.

And he was used to these like long paragraphs that would go on.

And he just hesitated a moment and he said, if you can keep doing that, you'll do very well in your career.

And I was kind of shocked by it at the time, like, oh, wow.

Not sure what just happened here, but I was just saying what it is.

I said, I feel like I'm bragging, but it was kind of resident in me.

And it's been very handy.

Yeah.

And it's, it is cool to think from a teacher standpoint how early teachers highlighting what you were doing.

Well, stuck with you alive.

They're like, hey, I want to keep doing that.

Seeking.

It probably was a reinforcement.

I didn't even think about it at the time.

It was just kind of who I was.

But it probably was a reinforcement because they still remember it just 50 years ago.

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So what, what other early experience or mentors shaped your leadership philosophy and perhaps the way that you approach challenges?

Because you've had some doozies that I've read about.

Pick any of those or any other ones that you.

Yeah, there, there's been a number of them.

They, they pop up time to time.

And my wife always says she finds it interesting that somebody will walk in and say, you know, the markets are crashing 40%.

And I just kind of sit there and go, okay, well, this is probably what we need to do.

So I very calmly work my way through it.

But if the ring doorbell doesn't work, I'm ready to rip it off the wall and smash it because I just, I can't stand the petty irritations.

The big stuff doesn't bother me, but the petty irritations drive me nuts.

The primary mentors I had really were my mom and dad.

And I've said this a lot in terms of leadership lessons, just my mom and dad, they both had 8th grade educations, but they had a certain wisdom that comes from just living life and having to get by, whether it was through the Great Depression or the war.

And yeah, there was a lot to learn from that in terms of don't blame others.

Figure out what the problem is and address it yourself.

Don't blame other people for your problems.

Don't be.

I didn't say it this way, but it was don't be a victim.

You've got to figure out stuff for yourself.

You've got to be able to take care of yourself.

Be a leader, not a follower.

Don't be dependent on others.

Remember one of the biggest insults that in my family that, you know, when they were sitting around the kitchen table talking about somebody was.

They'd say, he can't pay his bills.

And that was, like, just a terrible shot that they were living beyond their means and just weren't smart enough to be able to manage that.

Working your way out of a crisis.

I mean, my parents were encouraged at one point to declare bankruptcy because they'd gone into chicken farming for eggs.

And it was a disaster, as my dad said, that his chickens laid one egg and flooded the market.

And they refused to do it.

They wouldn't do it.

My mom ended up getting a job, even with five kids got a job.

And they worked hard to pay off everything because for them, it was a mark of pride that you didn't go bankrupt.

You found a way to pay all your bills.

That creates, I think, a certain way of looking at the world and the problems that the world throws at you that says you don't just give up.

You figure it out.

You work hard to figure it out.

And they were.

You could tell.

I mean, the two of them were quite influential in, I think, my outlook on life.

And then as you go along, you see that other business leaders do things and you either take away something you will do or something that you'll make sure you won't do as you go along, and you just kind of accumulate experiences.

So cool.

And I was just thinking about Honeywell and how much cash we have, you.

Know, not when I started.

Well, no, you built it like you.

You prioritize cash in the bank, and then you have, you know, identified opportunities.

Yeah, I still do, no matter where I am.

I have this line that I use a lot that just says cash is flexibility.

And you.

You can't.

You can't run your life or your business so tight that you don't have flexibility.

Plus, I.

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

That's just not how I want to live my life.

I find myself very aligned to that.

I don't know if it was my parents or if it was my time at Honeywell, but really, to focus on building that reserve and it.

And I thought about his flexibility, but it makes sense.

Oh, yeah.

And it creates opportunity because you may see the market, you may see changes in the environment, and that creates opportunity.

If you had cash available, you can act.

And Honeywell did that time.

Yeah, time and time again.

I'm curious, with your, like, family, with your children, right?

You.

You.

You grew up in a much different situation than your kids.

How do you think about or how did you think about infusing this minds or talking to them about, you know, this.

This mentality.

No, that's.

You're exactly right.

And it's one of the worries that I have less for my kids than for the grandkids and great grandkids, because I've obviously done very well.

My sons have actually done well.

So that's adding to it.

And we spent time as a family about six years ago, we got all the adults together to say, what are the Cody family values that we want to espouse and have every generation raised with?

Because they're going to inherit money.

And inheriting money without values is just the road to perdition.

And everybody talks about how money ruins kids.

And I'd say yes and no.

If they're predisposed to being ruined, whether they have money or not is probably not going to matter.

But.

And there's some that are going to just, you know, be intense and want to work anyway.

You're trying to get those folks in the middle, the kids in the middle, who could probably go either way, but if they raised with the right values from the beginning, and I'm actually looking at it, it's here in my office.

The first one's family responsibility.

Another is integrity, the ability to think independently, focusing on your personal growth, taking the time to enjoy your life.

We've got a number of these things laid out that everybody in the family bought into.

It took us almost two years to kind of work the wording and get to the point where we said, okay, this is.

This is how we want every generation to be able to act.

And I think it's going to make a difference.

Certainly it has with.

Without having it written down, did with my two sons.

And I think it's going to continue to work because I see how they're raising their kids.

Interesting to hear that.

I think a lot of leaders spend a lot of time thinking of their company values.

But it's interesting when you begin to translate what makes sense for family.

How do we.

And also it's interesting for think about not just your immediate family, but future generations.

And if you document so you can get the buy in, if you can find a way to communicate the message that resonates across generations, that's really something special.

Yeah.

And it's kind of interesting that, you know, the two boys and us, when we got to Christmas, we all had the same idea and that was to get that made into a nice plaque that you could then, you know, hang on your wall.

And we all had the same idea.

So it's like, we all got three versions of it, so it meant something to.

To everybody.

So everyone got three versions of it.

Well done.

All right, so.

So I guess something worked there.

Yeah.

Resonated.

Yeah, that's good.

No, that's cool.

That.

That is really cool.

Now thinking about or kind of all the communication idea and mind the podcasting.

You know, we're really focused on this with companies, and I find that a lot of leaders have.

Have this challenge, and I want to get your.

One is they've got a lot of employees.

They're remote.

They need to get a message across.

They don't understand maybe the value, the message, the company or things that need to change.

They got to get their message across.

Employees are a lot of different places.

You had 130,000, 130, 1000.

And also there's this element of.

I think leaders have a hard time humanizing themselves to every.

To the rest of the employees because they're put up on a pedestal.

They think, hey, my.

My CEOs on squawk box.

Like, how can that CEO relate to my life?

Yeah.

And, you know, he's on tv, so those are two big challenges.

Right.

How did you think about communicating with 130, getting your message across to 130,000?

What might have you done differently?

I don't know, because there's many tools available.

And how do you think about this idea?

Is it important for leaders to humanize themselves?

Does it matter?

If so, you know, where do we take it?

Yeah.

With all my communication, there were two words that I always used when talking to my communications folks, HR people, and anybody else, and that's to be consistent and transparent.

So on consistency, if you recall, we had our five initiatives, and our 12 behaviors didn't really change over the course of 16 years.

It was the same in the 15th year as it was in the first year.

We might modify the enablers a little bit as we grew, but by and large, same five initiatives, same 12 behaviors all the way through the transparency.

I worked very hard, and this is maybe where the simplicity helps also at just being very transparent about things, because organizations get used to corporate speak, and they kind of look at it and go, okay, well, they're saying this, but, you know, they really mean this.

Right.

They're trying to translate that into something.

Yeah, yeah.

Or they try to make it sound good or better or not as bad.

And I always felt like, you know, the people can handle the truth.

The.

The ones who can't handle the truth are usually the leaders in the company.

And you need to be able to just be truthful with people.

And if you recall, like during the great recession, when people would say, well, when is this going to end?

Because, you know, they couldn't stand it.

And I would say, I don't know and no one else does either.

I'd be lying to you if I did.

I only know this is what we need to be doing because it will end.

And when it does, we're going to be the best prepared company out there.

So I know this sucks right now.

It sucks for me, too.

Yes, okay, I get paid more, but it still sucks.

I'm working harder than I ever did and it's not very rewarding, but this is what we have to do.

And same thing, when I would visit a plant and you know, somebody would ask the question, well, what do you see as the future for this plant?

And normally any business leader says something like, well, you know, it's going to be great because of this and this.

And I would tell them, look, I don't really know.

And quite honestly, it depends a lot more on you than it depends on me.

Because if you provide the greatest quality, great delivery, new products, low cost, this plant will do very well.

If you don't do that, then I'll probably have to find a way to shut it down and move it someplace else.

And that's the facts.

And people would sit out there nodding like, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, exactly.

So I worked very hard to just being very transparent about things and just tell them the truth.

It's really surprising that it sounds very simple, but it works very well.

The other one was, too many leaders, I think, go out and talk about their stock price to hourly people and others.

And I always made the point that, yeah, okay, you know, they all got 401ks and that's good, but really they don't care about the stock price all that much.

What they really care about is, am I going to have a job here five years from now?

Is this plant going to continue to exist?

What do I need to do in order to make sure this plant stays here?

And just kind of recognizing that up front and saying, okay, I'm not going to do my corporate speak.

I'm actually going to talk to them in a way about the things that are important to them.

It just makes a difference.

It really does.

And I remember, I remember the lot of those town halls and you're like, this is not good for us.

Yeah, no one's enjoying a furlough land, but we're doing.

But you said, hey, we don't want to do a bunch of layoffs because I believe in the future of this company and we're going to need everybody to do this.

Yep.

And it didn't make people like it because, you know, I still got the time.

They weren't liking you very much either because you're like, like, I just, like, I don't like doing this.

But it was, but we were ready.

Well, it worked.

And like nobody liked it because I got, I could tell by all the anonymous notes that I'd get afterwards about what an idiot I was.

And I was destroying the company and destroying people and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I know, I know, but I got the way I would often describe it as, look, I got two bad choices.

I got to pick the least bad.

Yeah.

So how did you cope with that at the time?

Or you just sort of naturally maybe thick skinned and you're like, yeah, I'm so confident in this.

Like I got, I'm.

Let this roll off my back.

Or did you go home at night, feel like, man, my investors are ticked off at me, my employees are ticked off at me.

Life.

Well, by the way, to complicate it, I was getting a divorce at the same time.

So.

And that, okay, great.

Yeah, so it was a miserable time and I couldn't tell anybody because then every decision I made, they'd be looking at it and going, oh, wait a minute, is this because, you know, he's emotionally crazy right now?

I just kind of handled it myself.

I said, oh, this is great.

I'm going through this thing, I have nobody to talk to and I got to handle this great recession.

And it was, I mean, it was just insane.

And I can remember my.

Well, I'll skip that one.

It was just quite painful.

But no, I looked at it and said, okay, I'm pretty confident I'm doing the right thing here.

And then in the long run, this is going to be the right thing, even though I'm being second guessed by a lot of people.

So I was pretty confident that I'd picked the right path and I was pretty confident the recession would end.

And everybody was, you know, there was a lot of discussion about is this an L shaped recession where it's just the way it's going to be for the next 10 years.

And I just didn't believe that.

I said no.

You know, with the exception of the Great Depression, which went on for 10 years largely because government kept shooting itself in the foot, I felt like the right things were being done and we weren't going to have a repeat of that.

So I thought it was the right decision to make and obviously turned out to be the case.

But, yeah, I had to have a certain self confidence in there because there was certainly nobody out there applauding me, going, hey, great decision, Dave.

This is absolutely the right way to do it.

Yeah, I was.

I was 50.

50.

Like, I'm like, am I going to stay at Honeywell?

Like, I don't.

Is this.

Let me, like, you know, am I buying?

I was like, partly buying into what you're saying, but I was.

Everybody around me was.

Everybody's freaking out.

Glad you're glad I stuck it out so.

Well, you're more honest with yourself than most people, if you're even willing to admit that, because, you know, in the aftermath, everybody is supportive in the while you're going through it a little less.

So, yeah, when you write the book and like, oh, it worked out great, but if it hadn't worked out, there might have been a book, you know.

But thinking about that, I'm just thinking about, you know, as a leader and some of the tools that you share in your book.

Book one, you have your blue book days, right?

You have X days or blue book sessions right in the X days.

And I'm thinking about other leaders out there who are facing tough times and tough decisions.

What were you doing as a personal leader to help you maintain your confidence and your sense of clarity when you're probably getting feedback for a lot of people?

What were you relying on at the time?

Yeah, I think some of this goes back to what you were talking about at the very beginning is the ability to just simplify the message and say, okay, given everything that's going on, what's my path here?

Which is the same thing as developing a simple message.

It's being able to pull all this together in a way that says, okay, so here's what I have to do in terms of maintaining my own equanimity.

You know, it may sound simple, but working out at night helps.

Helped me a lot, is because I'd get teed up during the course of the day and I'd do a vigorous workout at the end of the end of the day, lifting weights or the bike or the StairMaster.

Did you have a trainer at the time or how are you?

No, I just did this myself.

And as you know, we had a good gym at Honeywell, so I would just make sure that I worked out pretty hard so that it was almost impossible not to go to sleep by the time I got.

I got Home.

So I always slept very well and I felt I was doing the right stuff.

So I did.

I really didn't worry about it all that much.

I felt pretty confident that I was doing the right stuff.

Yeah, it's really good for leaders to know, too.

One of the most intense periods of your life and you're working out.

Right.

People get so busy.

I found it was essential for me.

And there were times, the fitness center, I didn't leave till 9:00 and as you know, they closed at 8:30.

But that was when I was getting my time in.

And by God, I was going to get my time in.

Radio it down.

Cody's coming down to work out.

Keep it the work.

No, I remember people saying, I saw Dave and they're working out.

Yeah, I tried to do it pretty regularly, even on the DID people.

So I don't.

I think today a lot of leaders, they don't want to work out where their employees are going to be working out.

Did you have any awkward.

I liked it because people would come up and talk to me or wave.

I mean, it was, it was.

I liked it.

It was.

It was fun.

Yeah.

Well, what.

How do you, how do you see that today with leaders?

See, in general, I liked my employees and I mean, I would even do stuff like the security guards.

And you know, when people drive into the plant and there are certain.

Sometimes security guards really kind of look at their job as they're the tough guys.

They gotta, you know, make sure that somebody's got their ticket in the window and they kind of wave them in almost imperiously.

And I didn't like that.

So in any plant that I was involved with, including at the headquarters, they had directions that I expected them to smile and wave to employees as they came in because I said, you need to be doing the, you know, checking.

But I want people to feel like we want them there and that we're happy to see them.

And I was, you know, I always felt like, you know, I work with a bunch of good people.

This is fun.

I enjoy working with them.

I don't want them to.

Their first introduction to Honeywell when they drive in in the morning is this imperious looking guard.

I want them to see a guard who's smiling and waves at them.

And it's like, I'm happy you're here.

You want to get along with your employees.

You're all in the same boat.

And I didn't get along with all of them all the time because, as you know, we had some various issues in various plants where I had to take a much tougher stance than I would normally because I always felt like I'm going to be fair to employees, but they need to be fair to me too.

And if they weren't being fair, well, I had no problem going in the other direction.

But I always felt that sense of fairness was important.

Love that.

And all right.

So man, I can talk to Dave Cody all day long.

I know you guys have to do.

We got things to move all with here.

So I'm just going to turn over a few second what do you what's your parting thought for our Lead the Team listeners?

I'm assuming that most of them are in business of some kind.

And I would just say I looked at business as if you're at all competitive.

It is the most fun game you will play in your entire life because it just keeps going on and on.

It's very complex.

And winning is just fun.

You know, being able to beat your competitors is just fun.

The other point that I'd like to leave everybody with when it comes to business is there's a lot of vilification of business in at least American society and probably in the Western world nowadays, when the reality is business has been the biggest force for good and for improving people's standard of living in the history of the world.

And it's because business is the source of productivity.

Productivity is the source of standard of living.

And one of the reasons we live so well in the US is because we're more productive than almost any other country.

And that comes from business.

Now government creates a backdrop where businesses can be productive.

And it's not that everything business does is good.

You get, if you've got hundreds of thousands of companies, you're always going to have somebody who's doing something wrong.

But by and large it is the biggest force for good that the world has ever seen.

And people should feel good about being in business.

It's a, it's a good thing.

This, this improves people.

We improve people's lives.

What a great note, optimistic note to finish on and a great just perspective to approach your workday.

Feel good about what you're doing.

The, you know, the roots of it, the productivity, the impact and to share that message with your team.

Dave, thank you for coming on Lead the team and we're going to have you on again for your third.

Well, thank you Ben.

You're very kind and thank you for having been a part of it.

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