I grew up in a small town in the middle of the United States in Kentucky, where I didn't grow up with very much money. So my parents were divorced when I was very young, and I grew up to about the same size I am now really young. So I was pretty tall when I was young, and I had two older brothers, and I was a pretty good athlete. People kind of naturally looked up to me as an athlete which made me feel like a leader. And then as I got older, I played a lot of basketball. When I was in high school, everybody had grown up and caught up with me, especially the best basketball players, and I was no longer one of the best basketball players. But I still liked leadership, so I started focusing on leadership and student government leadership inside school outside school. At some point in those high school years, I decided I wanted to make a living and career being in leadership situations and I wanted to choose businesses as the best place to do that. And, from there I went to college in a small school. I majored in English literature. Even though I was better at math. That's why I did it, then I went on to become an accountant for a couple of years. Four years, actually went back to business school at Harvard. And then I got out and went into General Manager jobs. A series of them till I became CEO which I am today.

I tend to be involved in a very wide range of decisions because when you're the CEO of a public company, especially a medium-sized public company, you end up involved in everything. So I'm involved in decisions on which jobs to give people. What people to hire, What products and businesses were going to be in and what strategies or choices we're gonna make to try and succeed in those businesses. I'm very involved in the creation of products themselves. And I love design. So I'm involved in some design things. In terms of weekly hours. I work. I tend to work. I don't see much difference between work and not work. I love work, and I love a lot of things, though, so I play a lot of basketball. I love my family. I love my friends. I'd like to go out to dinner, and I love my job, and so I don't distinguish much, so I tend to work it all kinds of different hours. But I also tend to play in all kinds of different hours, and today I feel like I'm playing in the office here, so if you look officially it when I'm technically probably in the office, I get in about somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30 and I usually leave by about 6 30 but I still sometimes I'm working before that, sometimes working after that and I work on some of the weekends, too.

I tend to work with the people who run the organization. For example, the Chief Financial Officer, the person responsible for the reports to me, who's responsible for making sure we know where we are financially and what we're gonna do to deliver our goals. So I'm, also working with the Chief People Officer, the person who's responsible for understanding our culture and how we keep moving it in the right direction, making it better and better. I work with the Head of Design, I work of lots of general managers who are creating new products with their teams, and also some are bringing products to market or getting things made. So I work with a very wide range of things, everything you could think of to create a business. What I found to be effective in working with them is that the most important thing is to hire great people and give them as little oversight as possible and let them work. I always say, If I do this right, the company runs itself. I don't run the company. So people who work for me are usually very good because if they weren't, I wouldn't be able to perform because I have a lot of people reporting to me. I have 22 people reporting to me, so I need to have really good people. And I do have really good people. So one thing I do is to try to leave people alone as much as I can, but have a very close understanding of what their view of their goals are and how they aligned with company goals. The second is I'm very candid, so I never hold back. When I think about something, I know I'm not always right and I make that clear. But at least that needs to be challenged. We all need to be challenged, including me on a regular basis. And I asked them to challenge me too, which makes it a two-way street. And they're quite good at that. Most of them. Those are the two things I do and then I care about people. I ask about their families and I don't go out to dinner with them and take up their free time. But I really do care about them. I care about their lives. And so those are the three things I do to make me effective with them.