Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former TD Ameritrade CEO Joe Moglia

I recently interviewed Joe Moglia on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the CEO of a multibillion dollar business and was a highly successful college football coach. Joe Moglia was the CEO of TD Ameritrade, which grew from $24 billion to over $300 billion in assets, and from $700 million to more than $12 billion in market cap during his seven years as CEO. Before and after his career in finance, Joe coached college football and won the Eddie Robinson award given to college football's top head coach in the NCAA division one football championship subdivision. Joe, thank you for joining us.

Joe: Happy to be here Adam.

Adam: Happy to have you here. You grew up in New York and went to high school at Fordham Prep in the Bronx. You went to Fordham, you got your Master's degree in secondary education at the University of Delaware. And then you started your career as an assistant high school football coach at your alma mater, Fordham Prep. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Joe: I think, Adam, you begin with my family and my dad was an Italian immigrant. He came over here when he was 11. My dad never finished eighth grade. He sold bananas and apples in the Bronx his entire life. I worked for him from the time I was 10 to the time I was 22. My mom met him during the war and came over here to marry him when she was 24. She never finished 10th grade. She was born and raised in Ireland. I was the oldest of five kids, seven of us lived in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment, in a mystery section of New York City. And that was it. It still has its spots where you may not want to be there at night, today. But back then it was definitely a gang area. And that was part of the game. From the time I was about 10 to my very best friends in grammar school. And as with everyday gang men who were killed in high school, one died of a drug overdose, the other was killed by the police robbing a liquor store. If I had not been playing high school football, I would have been with the guy robbing the liquor store. Now my goal is to play football and baseball in college, but my girlfriend got pregnant. And that kind of ended my thought of being able to play in college and my dad thought the best path for me would be not to go to college or work from the food store. But I really thought I needed to be able to go to school. And he's told me to think about it. He reminded me that there was no money. I sit down, I'll figure it out. Right? I decided I had to go to college. He told me I was making a big mistake. I think about this. I was 18 years old at the time. I have a lot of tough things going on in my life. And my father is telling me I'm making a mistake by going to college and not working in the fruit store. So I began at Fordham University in the Bronx and was paying every dime into my education. I was supporting my wife and my daughter. I was driving a New York City taxi cab truck for the post office. I worked in my father's food store. And probably this won't surprise you Adam, but that wasn't the most fun. In the history of college freshmen, it was the first year I didn't have sports. So Fordham Prep is on the same campus at Fordham University. And they gave me a coaching job. So my sophomore, junior, and senior year, I coached high school ball during the season, working my father's store in the offseason, majored in economics, and thought I wanted to go to Wall Street. But I really, truly, genuinely loved the coaching and decided that if I could get a high school job upon graduation with three years of experience and want to pursue a career in coaching, if not, I was going to try to go to Washington. So at 22 I became the youngest head coach in the history of Delaware at a place called Document Academy, which at the time was an all boys Catholic High School. It's still there today. That's where Joe Biden was at. That's just a coincidence, sort of a fun fact. But that's how I began my coaching career.

Adam: I love it so much to unpack there. And you foreshadowed the dual passions, passion for football and passion for finance that you were able to ultimately tackle and were such incredible success. Throughout your career, you spoke about the adversity that you had to deal with at such a young age, friends dying, dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. What lessons did you learn as a kid growing up, dealing with those experiences that ultimately shaped you as a human being, shaped you as a leader that you could share with listeners?

Joe: I have a little bit of a unique leadership philosophy that I'm sure we're going to talk about, but I think the founding issue for that happened with those events that happened when my friends died or were killed. I mean, I could have done with them. And I recognize that you know how critical it is for me to take responsibility for myself, I can't blame what happens to anybody else for any other reason. If I chose not to go to college and work my father's fruits, well, I would have made that decision. Now my father, and I think too often, we don't take responsibility for ourselves. So becoming a father, I'd take responsibility, not just for myself, but for my daughter, and my wife. And if I'm gonna go to school, I have to figure that out. So it was back then with a foundation upon which to build a philosophy where an individual stands on his own two feet, or her own two feet, takes responsibility for themselves, and recognize you gotta live with the consequences of your actions, which truly, later on, became my absolute leadership philosophy to this day.

Adam: Joe, we're going to talk about leadership, I'm gonna ask about leadership momentarily. But before I do, I just want to hone in on the word that you use multiple times: responsibility. Which is imperative to success, taking responsibility for your own life, taking responsibility for your actions, big and small, the end of the day, it's your life. No one lives, your life, but you, no one has ownership of the decisions you make. But at the end of the day, if you don't take responsibility for your own life, no one else will. It's on you. It's on your shoulders.

Joe: While we're on the same page or that one, Adam, I mean, you say that very, very well. And I think one of the problems we have in our country today is people say, they take responsibility for themselves, but they don't. I think in the last six, seven years, I've never found a country more divided than where we are today. And you've got liberals blaming conservatives, conservatives blaming liberals, you've got one ethnic group complaining about other ethnic groups, but nobody is stepping up and taking responsibility for that. So part of the leadership philosophy is standing on your own two feet, taking responsibility for yourself. Everybody says they do that, but in practice, I don't see that being the case. And with that comes the consequences of your actions. So if you're taking responsibility for yourself, there are always going to be consequences, your actions, good and bad. And too often, I think, even when we raise our children, a parent will say, oh, yeah, I want what I want, to raise my son or daughter and take responsibility for themselves. But if there are no consequences to the actions, forget about that part. It doesn't necessarily fly. So I think it is the single thing that is my leadership philosophy. And I think it is one of the most significant single premises to lay a foundation upon which to build in one's lifetime.

Adam: And the key word there is accountability. When you talk about leadership, and you talk about the most important elements of effective leadership, which we're going to talk about, it's imperative for leaders to hold the people around them accountable. As a leader, you want to be kind, you want to be generous, you want to be warm, but you also want to ensure that the people around you are accountable, and they go hand in hand.

Joe: 100%. I couldn't agree more with that.

Adam: What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Joe: Well, I think why don't we begin with the philosophy because that first high school job ahead in Delaware, when I was 22 years old, I had never been more than 10 miles or so about 20 miles outside of New York City. And I thought Delaware was the deep south at the time. And I thought for me to leave home, the only home that I knew, and to go someplace else, it was more than just the football. Well, what really drove me was that I didn't lose the impact I was having on the kids that I was coaching at the time. And I thought about it for weeks, thought about it for months. And the first time that I met with my team, I had this written up and we talked about having a winning football program to get to be able to A, B, and C I said, but we want to do much more than that. And it's about growing up. It's about becoming a man, but not some tough macho guy. A real man or a real woman is a real leader, as somebody that stands on their own two feet, takes responsibility for themselves, treats each other with dignity, and respects lives with the consequences or actions. That was written in 1971. And my very, very first head high school football program, that is the exact same philosophy I raised my family on. I want to hold myself to be the foundation upon which we build Coastal Carolina football foundation upon which it was the standard that I held my executives accountable to in the business world whether again, all my coaches, whether football or Wall Street, and that has been with me, Adam for five decades. Five decades in my personal life and across two entirely different career paths. And I believe that it is the single greatest competitive advantage I've had. And it's what differentiated me from others.

Adam: And you make a really interesting point, which is that we often associate leadership with leading in the workplace, leading your company, leading your football team, but It's extremely important to understand that leadership can be applied to leading in your personal life, leading your family, leading your own life.

Joe: Without question, I think that there are qualities that make up this leadership principle. I think one of them is what I call spiritual soundness. That can be religious, but it doesn't have to be. But I think most of us really don't know who we are. And I think in order to be happy in life and feel fulfilled, it's that you've got to be able to make the right decisions under stress when it really matters, you have to make the right decision. And too often we're a composite of how we are viewed versus our parents versus our periods per said girlfriend versus spouse, versus our teachers versus our coaches versus our players. And we really don't know who we are. So I think really thinking about that, there's an exercise that we can go through, where you wind up having a much better, better feeling for exactly who you are, why your strengths, weakness, what makes you tick, etc. So when you are under stress, and you need to make a critical decision to increase the probability you're going to make the right one, if you make the right ones under stress, that increases the probability you're gonna be happy, feel fulfilled, etc. And then there's two other pieces to this. The second one is courage. We're just the guts to do what you really believe is right. You know, it's easy to cheat in our world, we all play a lot of different roles in our personal life, as parents, as friends, as brothers or sisters. And do we always do what we know deep down is the right thing to do. You know, we live in a litigious society. Everybody's suing everybody else. I think the IRS playbook, so to speak, is like 75,000 pages, the NCAA manual, I think there's over 2,000 pages, I think the NFL manuals over 200 pages, you know, the reality is you can't legislate ethics, whether they be professional, or personal. And at the end of the day, we really know the difference between right and wrong. And a real leader tries to do what they believe is right and not do what they wish. And then the final thing, which is critical, and I appreciate the fact that you will definitely get this, Adam and that's what we call love. And too many leaders, they think it's about them. And it's not about them, it's about the people that they're responsible for. And it's the people that you are responsible for, whether they're players, whether it's your family, the people that you're responsible for, really know that you have their best interests at heart. Frankly, they're going to follow you anywhere. So it's a combination of all those things that wind up coming together, that I think ultimately really does make a great leader.

Adam: Yes, yes, and yes. On my list of the key characteristics of a great leader, are the three that you named right there: self-awareness, morality, and love of people. And an important point is that you can be successful in life. If you're not self-aware, if you're not moral, if you don't love people, you're not going to be successful. As a leader, there are other things that you can do. You might be a successful criminal, but you're not going to be a successful leader. If you don't know yourself, before you can effectively lead others you need to be able to lead your own life, having a moral compass, essential to being able to build trust, being able to have others follow you, and love of people. A key theme and so many of these interviews that listeners know. Joe, I absolutely love that.

Joe: I couldn't agree more, you want to bring up a key point here. There's a woman by the name of Katherine Hulk, I've gotten involved with prisons over the span of the last decade or so. And I've had the privilege to be able to speak to Pelican Bay, which is a supermax Federal Penitentiary in Northern California, and about an hour below the Oregon coast. And that's where we have other than the mafia leaders, that's where literally, we have the gang leaders for the different organized crime units in our country. And there's about 3,000 inmates and over 3,000 inmates, there's about 24 of them that are the respective gang leaders. And I've had the opportunity to go and sit down with those 24 leaders and talk a little bit about what's going on, by the way, and every one of them. Nobody was there for less than life. But every one of them was a real leader in their own world. Being a leader doesn't have anything to do with your career path, per se, if you're an organized crime, you still need leadership to have an effective crime team, you've got to be able to do that. And again, you say that beautifully, like self-awareness. I like that term. Talking about morality, I kind of call it courage. But the idea again, it's about others. It's about commitment to the well-being of others. And I can be the Godfather, and be responsible for the entire mafia world in the United States. But if I'm going to be affected by that, I have to have those three qualities.

Adam: And without making this episode too much about the mafia, we want to talk about the movie The Godfather. So much of that was about the leadership qualities of The Godfather, Don Corleone. And those qualities were so evident: love, having a code of ethics, and having a deep sense of self-awareness. When you look at who made it and who didn't. Those three qualities were right there.

Joe: I agree. I couldn't agree more. That's how Marlon Brown would make a decision who would succeed him. Then you had Al Pacino, right? He was Alpha? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Tom Corleone.

Adam: So you need to have all these qualities of an effective leader no matter what organization you're leading. You have led such different organizations, led one of the most successful financial institutions, and led a major college football program. What were some of the distinctions between leading those two organizations, and what are the best lessons you learn from leading those two organizations?

Joe: So the principles of leadership, I know we're repeating ourselves, but frankly, it bears repeating. Because it's the number one philosophy I've had over the last five decades of my life, you stand on your own two feet and take responsibility for yourself and your peers, with the respect of the customers, your actions. That's been the underlying principle in each of those careers for me. So as a leader, it will not change too much for me if I were in Wall Street or if I were an engineer, if I were a college coach or I were ahead of an organized crime unit, it would have been similar leadership paths. You stick with those principles, you're going to get it right now. You need to have a well-thought-out strategy, you need to have some good leadership type qualities to be able to have an effective football program or effective financial business, or whatever that business might be, or whatever the sport might be. So you have to have a well-thought-out strategy. And you have to be smart enough to know how to simplify that. So it can be executed. Because too often, while it looks good in a boardroom, or winds up looking good in an interview, it's not effective in terms of the execution. Because once you wind up getting too complex, I think you have to have really good communication skills doesn't mean you have to be a great orator, you have to make sure your people understand what you're saying. Give me an example, in football, we had an All-American linebacker, a pretty good player. And he was having trouble on a very, very, very simple concept. So the tight end goes inside and it goes outside, he picks up the outside. That's it. That's it. And he had trouble getting this out. And his coach, I was so how you teach him this and he goes out for like five minutes. I said, “I know what the answer is here. And you're confusing me”. And this kid has about a second or two before the ball snaps to get his head clear, then within a fraction of a second, he's got to make a decision. And clearly, his head's not clear on this topic. And I went over with him 10 times. Okay for 101 and 500 times, he doesn't get it, he doesn't get it. And this, you're responsible, again, take responsibility for yourself and your responsibility to make sure it does get. So the ability to be able to communicate, motivate the discipline when you need to inspire as part of that. So all those things are qualities to be successful. But the leadership principles are the same.

Adam: And Joe, that is a key theme of this podcast, because every week there's a different leader who leads a different type of organization. In your case, you've led two completely different types of organizations. But one week, it could be a retired general, the next week, it could be a fortune 500, CEO the next week, it could be someone who's lead on the basketball floor. But the core principles of effective leadership are universal. And you just laid out from your own experience, what they are and the universality of them.

Joe: We're on the same page. When I say page, the product changes from area to area. So if I am a general, okay, what I'm doing and well, how I'm doing, et cetera, in terms of what I need to be able to get done is different than what I need to be able to get done. But TD Ameritrade or Merrill Lynch or Coastal Carolina or the University of Nebraska. So the product changes. But the leadership principles are really exactly the same thing.

Adam: One of the things you mentioned as a key part of your job as a leader, whether it was leading on Wall Street or leading as a college football coach, was the importance of motivation. How did you successfully motivate the people who you lead? And what are your best tips on the topic of motivation?

Joe: I think you're number one, you begin with your leadership philosophy. So everybody, no matter where you are recruiting from, as a college athlete, we're making it very, very clear that this is the standard you're going to need to reach out to. I think you have to differentiate as well. So for example, we took things we did at Coastal Carolina, that no one in the country does. No one in the country did. And the first was we didn't have any rules. We literally didn't have any rules. Guess what, though, you have one standard, guess what that standard was set. Do you want to feed the Senator now, we call that ban the man. Now this every time I say that says, oh, that sucks. I had 120 football players who were men, a male at least that had another 20-25 coaches who were all male. So 150 guys, be a man. And we have a logo, by the way, it's in our locker room, it's in the stadium if the back of five jerseys is bad, that's what that means. So a real man, a real woman, by the way, the same principles that my daughters were raised on and same principles that my female executives would have been held to and the business what we just did a callback. So instead, again, a real man, a real woman, a real leader, standing on their own two feet takes responsibility for themselves. Literally, the consequence of the act is treated with dignity and respect. So everybody else has a gazillion rules. We didn't have it. We literally began with that, number one, number two. The other thing we did that was different, that we gave up 30 minutes of practice a week. I'm going to repeat that because nobody in the country gives up 30 minutes of practice a week. And we spent time on stuff that didn't have anything to do with football, probably had a lot to do with bam, where we talked about stuff that I think is important that it was important for our guys to understand. I'll give you an example. Adam, if you don't mind, I think the biggest single threat in the globe today is terrorism. So I wanted my guys to really understand that. I want you to understand how the terrorists market themselves, how they recruit, how they fund themselves, what their philosophy is, the fact that is based on religious principles, and all those things. We live in the greatest country in the world, but the hundreds and hundreds of best people in the world will not hesitate to give up their lives to take our lives away because they really believe we're evil, by the way that the whole family will be rewarded in the afterlife. That's pretty powerful motivation. So if my guys know what ISIS stands for, I bet you 99% of college students in this country don't know what it stands for, but my players did. And then if that's the case, then there are the principles here, right? So how do we protect ourselves through the military? So I want my guys to appreciate that there's somebody your age, and some godforsaken desert in the Middle East putting his life on the line, but so we can play college football, yeah, part of it. But so we can limit freedom. But with those freedoms come responsibility, but right back to Bamako. Well, that's the case. We only pray that our political and military leaders have the guts to do what they really believe is right, what role do we have to play there? Well, we live in a democracy, we have the right to vote in 2016, after 145 years of college football, the only program whose entire football team voted for the president of the United States in 145 years, California was Coastal Carolina, the 2016 presidential election. Now, since then, since then, because of what we did. This past year, the NCAA said they wanted the athletes to have the day off, so they could vote and about 25 football programs around the country. A lot of guys are voting, but nobody did it before we did it. Again, that doesn't have anything to do with football, but it's got everything to do with responsibility, doing the right thing, life after football, etc, etc. So they were the types of things at least that we did that differentiated ourselves and emphasized, well, football matters. There's more to it than that.

Adam: Yeah, really focus on building well-rounded human beings, developing people, not just developing football players, not just developing financial machines, but developing people who can thrive in what they're doing professionally. But more importantly, thrive in the real world.

Joe: I agree, if you get the band principle down, look at it as a leadership back there, that's going to help you frankly, wherever you wind up, going, go back to the first concept behind that you talk about self-awareness. If I really know who I am, I'm going to make a better decision with regard to what career path I'm going to go down. Well, to many people, I think, you know, as they get older, they're unhappy with themselves. And a lot of times they weren't happy in the career path that they've chosen for themselves. So when in fact they have a job, a job can be a drag, where a real career path can be exciting and challenging, etc. So again, each of those principles carry over. I think that feeling good about who you are, feeling self-fulfilled, doing what you believe is the right thing, and having a positive impact on others. Those things go a long, long way. And people feeling good about who they are themselves.

Adam: And I think a really important point, which you brought up, is when you feel good about yourself when you're thriving, outside of what you're specifically focused on doing professionally. And using the word professionally, whether you're talking about working a nine to five or whether you're talking about being a college football player, which is a profession when you feel good about yourself when you are a healthy, well-rounded individual, you're going to thrive at what you do, you're going to be much better at what you do vocationally. It all comes together.

Joe: I agree. You go back to again, your concept of self-awareness where spiritual soundness too often we do things because yes, that's kind of what our parents did, or that's what our somebody we suspect that that's what our wife or girlfriend wanted us to do. But we're not doing it for the right reasons. So I think and get as part of the base upon which you built.

Adam: I want to throw a name at you, a person who you have a close relationship with and it's a name that listeners should probably be familiar with. And that's Warren Buffett. What's the single best lesson you've learned from Warren Buffett?

Joe: Well, I think number one, you know, the guy, he's gotten a little older and used to have dinner every four or five months and, and he's really truly got a great sense of humor. I really do think he cares about other people. I think he's really a good man. But I think in his world, he knows his product inside out, you've been doing it for like 60 years, and he knows what he's doing. So he has a tremendous grasp of the knowledge around him. And because it's the investment world and that includes politics, it would include the economy and what's going on globally. As far as that goes, he will know the individual products or the businesses that he's invested in, inside out. But he cares about the people within those businesses along those lines. He's really a very good leader. He knows who he is, you have self-awareness. I believe within his world, he gets the guts to do what he believes is the right thing. He definitely cares about other people around them, whether they are part of his acquisition, and he probably feels 75-80 portfolio companies. But he knows the leaders of every one of those portfolio companies. And he cares about those people. So I think, again, it reinforces the BAM philosophy, even though he didn't use that. But he was doing something he loved doing. And that's why in his early ‘90s, he can still do that better than 99% of the investment managers that are out there. Because he's doing what he loves. He's doing what he's good at. And he just built on that over the years. So all that compounds and each other, I played cards until I learned how maybe I shouldn't be betting on a particular hand from him.

Adam: Is there a particular lesson that you've learned from him that you can recall from your many times spent together?

Joe: Yeah, there was a time in 2006, or 2007, where we were having a one-year wreck farmer going out of business, we still have one record year after another and we were being attacked by activists. So activists for your listeners that don't know what they are, they’re investors in the business world, that you need to be able to run your company differently than you are because you have a lot of value. And if you run it differently, you can open up a lot of value, the stock goes up. And those investors want to make more money. They tried to get seats on the board, they tried to pressure the board to do things, etc. Now, most of the time, when you do that you're going after a company and not doing particularly well. Well, they chose to come after us. But we were doing well. And I was under tremendous heat to do a deal with the trade. And we had looked at the trade we had led to the industry consolidation. And we had looked at the trade and we knew there were reasons why we didn't want to do that deal. It wasn't our investment trust or our clients’ best interest or our shareholders’ best interest to do that, but they were really pushing us on this. And they make individual calls to the board, then your board starts to worry about getting sued, and then they start to crack. So I called an emergency meeting in New York. We went through why we're doing what we're doing. And then if we believe that, you know, we should be doing this or not, but we think we should do it. Let's go do it. But we're here the reason why we're not. And we agree we weren't going to do it. And we actually went public the next day and shocked the world. Nobody had ever done that. So we said, hey, we're getting letters from these guys telling us we should be doing this. We're not going to do that. This is the way we do it. We became the biggest news story that day. Now, to get back to your question. With regard to one, I was under a lot of heat during this trip during this time period. And I couldn't let the board in effect get away from me. I couldn't lose the control that I would have had control poles with regard to the board if they started getting nervous about maybe these guys are right on the outside of our firm. And Warren said, “If Berkshire Hathaway had already bought you, and you have any freedom to do what you want, and you know, our standard behind, what would you do here?”. And I told him, “Well, no. I would stand up for what we lose because that's what you're supposed to do”. So you just go ahead and do whatever you need to do as far as that goes. So you go back to standing on two feet, take responsibility for yourself, do what you believe is the right thing. So Warren at a time when I was getting a little nervous, a little shaky, just him saying that to me. Okay, I know what to do. We've got this.

Adam: Great advice, Joe. What can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful, personally and professionally?

Joe: I think they have to recognize this whole concept, Adam, if you can't make it useful, everybody makes excuses. I'm not doing that. Well, because my teacher doesn't love it. I'm not playing as well. Like the coach doesn't really like me. My parents are having problems at home and my girlfriend and I get along. There's one excuse after another in the investment world. Well, interest rates, the Federal Reserve's not doing what they're supposed to do. We have too much going on with litigation or with compliance, etc, etc. I'm gonna give you one example if I made it from football, that was back in 2014, and we were in the playoffs. We were doing well. We were something like 11 on one of the firemen. And we were playing Montana at Montana and the National playoffs. We were ranked seventh in the country and they were ranked fourth in the country. This turned out to be the coldest day in the history of college football. It was -26 windchill and -7 for real. Now we're getting ready that Sunday to kind of get ready for the following game, we just won the last game of the playoff which should be exciting. And I noticed this a little bit of a sense of like, I don't feel that same sense of enthusiasm in the room. I asked the culture, well, what's going on and they said, coach, you know what I mean, these guys, they live in the mountains, they live in Montana, you know, this is what they use all time. We just practiced. The average temperature last week was 72 degrees in our practice, and we got 15 guys that actually physically saw stuff, we got the thing guys don't even call coach. So you know, it's not going to be an easy thing to go there and be able to handle those elements below hell. Now, once they say that, what did they say? They let themselves subconsciously off the hook. So we didn't go, we can lose, we could blame it on the weather and feel good about Mexico. That's not bad. Let's not take responsibility for yourself. So I reminded them of that. So what's the problem, the problem is the weather. So let's learn how to handle the weather. And we reached out to people that actually were researching the Arctic. And we learned a handful of things. So game day, for example, besides being addressable, it really looked crazy. The first day played does when it comes out the field takes his helmet off. Well, don't take your helmet off. We practice this all week, by the way, and you go to the site, you go on your bench, you take him off after you get to the bench you put in between your feet, we had radiant heaters over everybody's head, and only on one bench. And then we had torpedo heaters at the end of each bench which are like little jet engines. So by the time the guys were back on the field, their heads were warm, the helmet was warm, the feet were warm, your hands were warm, and they only got to last another three or four or five minutes. Now, a lot of times football coaches, they're wonderful people who are charismatic, etc, etc. are smart. But the black hat you know, this is where we do it. And I have no doubt they probably should have been favored. Maybe by a touchdown at that place. They're favored by footsteps, all because of the weather. And I have no doubt that coaches sometimes say don't worry about the cold. First of all these guys are coming from the beach. They have no idea about men like us. We're tough guys, we know how to handle this myoma man, it's not that cold, etc. We're warming up. And I see guys coming out in the field in short sleeves. Now, I did my homework. The average temperature in Montana in December is like 25 degrees. They've never had -26 degrees. They've never come close to playing anything like that. Now we got off after three minutes, we were down 14-9. But we scored the next 42 points on the answer. We're up 35-14 at halftime, we win the game and we go on to play. It was the greatest game I've ever been part of because of that, where people think there's no way this isn't going to happen. So just be like we had a great season. Let's go. No, that's an excuse. So when you make the choices you subconsciously let yourself off the hook. And almost always, they don't understand exactly what the problem is. There's usually blame somewhere else. That's a major red flag.

Adam: Joe, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors. 

Joe: It was fun being on, Adam. Thank you very, very much. I appreciate it.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.