Kenneth I. Chenault

Uh, the third is about, um...

It's funny, I would call it inspiration, but I worked for a great leader once, Ken Chenault at American Express, and he called it, uh, defining reality and giving people hope.

And I think if you can inspire a team and get them excited about the work you're doing, the change you're asking them to make, uh, the difficult decisions in the face of, you know, tough times-

Mm-hmm

this is like a bit of a sentimental point, but I really enjoyed... there's just some great leaders and great people on stage.

The Ken Chenault one was just amazing.

He was talking about his heritage and what it means to be a leader and be an American.

And even Dara, I mean, he didn't talk about this on stage, but he grew up in Iran in the revolution.

Yeah.

Ken Chenault, who ran the team.

He did this before.

The last Clippers scandal.

Also having a good college footprint, I get to engage, get a chance to see youthful talent, um, and how you assess youthful talent.

I also think, you know, honestly for the last, you know, nineteen, twenty years of my life, one of the reasons why I very much appreciate a guy like Sue and his relationship with Warren Buffett and how he utilized the platform in Nebraska, I've done the same thing with Duke, whether that's Tim Cook and Eddie Cue over at, at, uh, Apple, uh, whether that's John Wren, who was the chairman of Omnicom, um, Ken Chenault, who was the CEO and chairman of Amex.

There are a lot of people that you invite to games, and you build a pretty extensive network.

And I've always used my perch to look at different businesses, toss them to the outside.

And I said, "Wow, that's what I've gotta try to do." And it took years to get there.

One of the things that I took away from working on your business was the close working relationship that you had with your CEO, Ken Chenault.

Ken seemed very marketing aware.

True? W- was he very marketing aware?

So there's seven distinct thinking styles we're gonna talk about today.

And number one, number one is often used by Ken Chenault, he was the CEO of American Express, and he led that company through 9/11.

He led it through the 2008 financial crisis, anchored his leadership in one line, and that was defining reality, giving hope.

He felt the tension, but he was courageous through it.

Well, because, again, let's go back to the media, because we have glamorized sports and entertainment so much that a lot of our young people feel like those industries are their only options for living the type of lives that they want to live, because that's what they're bombarded with.

fun television you know some of my friends uh their parents weren't home when they got home from school and so their babysitter was BET MTV VH1 ESPN and so the the message that that seems to send is that you either need to rap act sing dance or do something with a ball in order to live this fabulous life that you want to live the problem with that is that you don't see on tv um Ken Chenault, who's the CEO of American Express.

You don't see Don Thompson, who's the CEO of McDonald's.

If