Peter Kozodoy is an Inc. 5000 serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and business coach who works with organizations and their leaders to help them overcome self-limiting bullsh*t and use honesty to achieve greatness. His articles on leadership and entrepreneurship have appeared in Forbes, Inc., HuffPost, PR Daily, and more. He holds a BA in economics from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia Business School, and he's the author of Honest to Greatness: How today's greatest leaders use brutal honesty to achieve massive success.

• CEO Hack: Reflect and ask about what you just heard – ‘Is it true and how do I know?'
• CEO Nugget: Stop worrying
• CEO Defined: Personal accountability for your lifestyle and business

Website: https://peterkozodoy.com/

For bulk buys and bonuses: https://peterkozodoy.com/bonus
For the honesty quiz (you can take ahead of time if you want to discuss): https://peterkozodoy.com/honesty

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription

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[00:00:02.20] – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

[00:00:29.69] – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Peter Casadoy of Honest to Greatness. Peter, it's awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:38.70] – Peter Kozodoy

It's a pleasure to be here, Gresh.

[00:00:40.29] – Gresham Harkless

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Peter so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Peter is an Inc five thousand serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and business coach who works with organizations and their leaders to help them overcome self-limiting bullshit, and use honest to honesty to achieve greatness. His articles on leadership and entrepreneurship have been featured in Forbes, Inc. HuffPost, PR Daily, and many more. He holds a BA in economics from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He's the author of Honest to Greatness, How Today's Greatest Leaders Use brutal honesty to achieve massive success. Peter, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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[00:01:17.00] – Peter Kozodoy

Born ready, Gretch. Let's do it.

[00:01:18.29] – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story, and we'll let you get started with the business.

[00:01:25.59] – Peter Kozodoy

Oh, boy. Well, Gresh, I'm gonna you know, the thing about writing a book about honesty is I have to be honest. So my story starts way back as a seventeen-year-old Peter with two dreams. The first was to go to the Olympics as a figure skater. I was a very serious competitive figure skater, knew I was gonna go to the Olympics, trained for, you know, skater for almost eighteen years. So that was dream number one. And dream number two at seventeen was I was going to Harvard. I was convinced I was going to Harvard. I grew up outside of Boston. There was only one school. Well, by eighteen, I was clear I was not going to make the Olympics. I just couldn't keep my nerves together enough to compete well. And, I applied to Harvard.

Harvard sent me a letter back saying thank you, but no thank you. You know, don't call us. We'll call you. And so that was pretty devastating, Gresham. Not gonna lie. And so I ended up, going to Brandeis and, in every single elective I could, I was taking business courses because I was just fascinated by business and I don't know about you, but I love money. Do you love money? A little bit. Money is fantastic. Yes. I just like this whole idea of business. I was like, this is great. So, I got out of college and I started what was then a video production company with my business partner. And we had pretty much no idea what we were doing as a video production company. We were shooting, like, eight hundred dollar television commercials for local car dealers, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds.

And I just remember thinking, like, wow. If we can only do more of these, we'd be rich. Like, that's the sequence of millions of dollars. Well, I didn't take enough math classes in college because if I had paused and done the math, I would have realized that those are really stupid business plans, for a lot of different reasons. So what ended up happening is we began to pivot. We were getting hired by other marketing agencies for video production, and we realized that those agencies were frankly, terrible. They mistreated their clients. Their strategies weren't that good. They would overcharge. They would miss deadlines. We were like, we can do that better. Right? Classic entrepreneur. We can do that better.

Alright. The thing about thinking you can do it better is it's great for being an entrepreneur and having that drive, and on the flip side, you have to go out and do it better. So, you know, we we slapped a new name on ourselves and we're like, yep, we're full service marketing agency now. Of course, we didn't have any full-service clients until one day, the VP of marketing of a local college called, and we had been doing video work for them filming their students for, web videos. And she said, hey, guys. So we're gonna go with a full-service agency now. We finally decided to bring in a few to do a pitch. And I wanna know if you'd like to come in. You know, do you even have the resources for this? And so we sort of put the phone on hold and we're like, okay. Well, can we handle an account like that? It was like a million-dollar account.

Like, do we have, like, media buyers? No. Like, a graphic designer who cannot. Don't have that. Web developers? No. Don't have that either. So, pretty much there was no way we could handle this count. So we got back on the phone and we said. We'd love to pitch. you give us the time and we'll be there. And so, so we assembled a team of folks we've met over the years and we go into the pitch. And, at the end of the pitch, we show a video of the students that we had been filming because Mhmm. We had been listening to them in the editing room for, you know, a year. And so we played this video and then we revealed this tagline that we're gonna build the whole campaign on.

And, the room goes quiet and the president looks down and doesn't say anything. And we're, like, biting our fingernails and, like, hey, this isn't good. Right? And she looked back up and she said, where did you get this? I've been looking for this for years. And we were tempted, Gresh, to be like, well, we're the biggest bunch of geniuses you've ever met. You know, that's how we figured it out. But, of course, that would have been a lie. And as you know, my thing is brutal honesty. So instead, we said, we didn't come up with this at all. Your own students gave it to me. your people, the people who matter most, your customers.

This is from them. This is what they're saying about you. That's why it's true. That's why it's honest and authentic to who you are. And so that really was a springboard for us to, we picked up that client and then picked up several more, ended up on the Inc five thousand list of fastest growing companies in America for a couple of years in a row and just took, you know, a pretty much wild ride until, tragedy struck for me, Gresh. I don't know if you've experienced this. It was a terrible thing that happened to me. I turned thirty. Oh my god. Oh my god. Have you is this happened to you? I have. Oh, my I don't know how people how do people survive this.

[00:05:33.80] – Gresham Harkless

I know.

[00:05:34.50] – Peter Kozodoy

I was doing a keynote once to a big business group and I made that joke although it wasn't a joke, we'll get into that in a moment. And this energetic older woman bolts up in the front row and she goes, that's happened to me twice. And I said, well, how did you survive it? Because I didn't even survive it once. Like, it's a pretty good lady. I don't know how you did it. So, thirty was pretty devastating to me. And, Gresh, I mean, I should have been happy. I built a million-dollar company by that point. Mhmm. I had great working relationships. I just married my wife. We were flipping a house. I mean, life was fine. But as you likely know happiness is not linear. And so for the first time in a long time, it struck me that I had so much more to accomplish and do.

And that somewhere along the line, because of those two big failures I had when I was seventeen, I had stopped being honest with myself about what the greatest Peter looked like and how I define success and greatness and I had stopped going for those massive goals but thinking that well I was already a failure. So I guess I have to settle for second best. And after that, Gresh, I mean, a bunch of things happened. I mean, I achieved more in a year or two after turning thirty than I have in ten years prior. And that's where all the accolades that you listed off, you know, TEDx talk being picked up in Forbes and Inc. and television radio interviews and writing a book that's been endorsed by Barbara Corcoran, all these amazing things.

You're going back to business school at Columbia University. I got my ass in gear, you know, and realized that there was a lot more stuff I had to accomplish. And what was interesting, Gresh, is along the road to building an Inc five thousand marketing agency, we worked with folks from startups to Fortune Five and even Warren Buffett himself. In fact, maybe I'll tell you the story of the time I accidentally served as his bodyguard. That's another story. But the point is, I was fascinated by the fact that we were engineering these marketing strategies for our clients, and some of them just crushed it. I mean, they'd get, like, a five hundred percent return, stay with us for years. Awesome. Others give the same care and attention and strategy, and they would just, like, blow up in the launchpad. Could not get out of their own way. The executives descended into infighting and politics and bullshit. And it was, like, mind-boggling to me. And I used to think, wow, what a bunch of morons. But, you know, that's I'm the moron in that scenario because you have to be an intelligent human being to get to any sort of executive level. What I ended up figuring out, Gresh, was I think a little more serious is that executives who thrive versus executives who don't, it's a matter of honesty. And it didn't hit you know, I kinda knew this in the back of my mind that there were were executives who were simply willing to be honest with themselves, and we can get into what that means, and those those who weren't. But it wasn't until I turned thirty and had my own crisis of honesty that it sort of crystallized. And I realized, hey, this isn't just brutal honesty isn't just a method for marketing, you know, authenticity, what your customers are really saying. It's a framework to achieve anything in life. We have to be honest with ourselves first. Otherwise, we're going to row for miles in the wrong direction or in a direction we never even wanted in the first place. And that's sort of been now my platform for a while. And this is, by the way, very surprising to me. One that I would, you know, have to talk about something we all learned in preschool. But the other, quite honestly, I mean, I was, like, voted most likely to continue being a total jerk in high school. Like, for me to be talking about, like, honesty and empathy, and trust me, this is a very surprising thing. And yet I found time after time, Gresh, that it is the secret to achieving anything in life.

[00:09:00.00] – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that, and I appreciate you for, being honest, being brutally honest, to stay on brand as well too because I think it's just so important to be able to do that, to kinda see that as you say when you're talking with your client's customers, or you're engaging with your friends, whatever that might be, that brutal honesty, take things to another level. So I want to hear a little bit more about your book and everything that you're doing there. Could you take us through exactly what that is, if that touches on that, and how that serves the client you have?

[00:09:22.20] – Peter Kozodoy

Absolutely. So let's let's talk about what I mean by brutal honesty for a moment. Let's talk about what it isn't. So my book is full of wonderful case studies and interviews with CEOs from, you know, Warren Buffett to Ray Dalio, the largest hedge fund in the world to Quicken Loans, Ruth's Carlton, Domino's Pizza, Bethenny Frankel, and her hundred million dollar alcohol brand. Wonderful, wonderful stories. And they all have one thing in common, which is that they use brutal honesty. Not as a touchy-feely core value like everyone should be honest and nice like that's cool too, but I'm talking about using brutal honesty as a strategy to achieve business outcomes, to make ridiculous amounts of money to dominate your industry. This is a business book. It's not an ethics book. I've just happened to find honesty works.

[00:10:06.20] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense. No. I definitely appreciate you sharing that. Do you feel like that would be what makes what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kinda set you apart is that brutal honesty and being able to kinda distinguish that and know about that on a deeper level.

[00:10:17.50] – Peter Kozodoy

I mean, the reason I wrote the book I actually set out to write a marketing book. Okay. Never set out for it to be an honesty book. As I told you earlier, this had to crystalize me over many years. And when I submitted this marketing book to my agent, who was the one who signed me, as soon as he signed me, he was like, oh, this is really cool. But by the way, this is not a marketing book. This is a book about honesty. And I was like, well, clearly, you didn't read the title page because it says right on. It's a marketing book. My own blinders. Right? And when I was flipping through it, I realized like, wow, he's right. Like, I keep coming back to just be honest and authentic. People can smell the BS. They don't want it anymore.

There's too much transparency in the world and I step back and realize this was much bigger and so part of why I wrote the book was, it's just in me to be an author that was part of my, you know, thirty-quarter life crisis. I knew I had a book in me. The other is I'm just sort of generally pissed off that people are full of crap. You know, people and leaders in organizations, turn on the TV. What do you see? And it doesn't have to be that way. It's not effective. It erodes trust. It makes it so people don't act in unison. So, you know, just it boggles my mind. And so, Gresh, what we noticed working as a marketing partner is oftentimes we were too late in the process. You know, the CEO had handed this edict down to, a VP of marketing or a CMO, and it's like, well, that's what the CEO wants. And we'd be left over and over saying, well, that's stupid.

And here's why. And so my hope with the book is that I get to the level where it matters to the executive team. And already I'm beginning to work with executive teams to help them use brutal honesty to get out of their own minds and realize that the person who has the least in common with the CEO is probably the customer they're trying to reach. I mean, you think about, like, the CEO of Domino's Pizza versus the twenty-year-old pilot kid that orders Domino's Pizza three times a week. They could not be more different. Right? And yet, we have leaders who allow their own biases to influence the way they communicate and the way they structure their business. I can't tell you how many times we were ordered to do marketing activities so the CEO could see those activities.

Having nothing to do with the target market, by the way. And we'd say, like, we can put a billboard there, but your target market's not looking at billboards. Well, I know, but it's between my house and the office, so I like to see it. It's like, okay, we'll spend five grand a month on that if you want, but that's not gonna help you. It's actually counter to your goals. And so my hope for this book is I get into the rooms and conversations before they start making operational decisions and marketing decisions and all that. Because without honesty, we're plowing ahead in a direction that doesn't make sense and doesn't work. And we see it in companies, you know, the Wells Fargo fake account scandal, the Volkswagen diesel emission scandal. Everything comes out. Right? So Right. You may as well be honest about those things and fix them where they count.

[00:12:58.79] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So I wanted to I switched gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you personally more effective and efficient?

[00:13:08.79] – Peter Kozodoy

Ask two questions. First, is that true? And how do I know? Man, if people could just stop, whatever they're doing, doesn't matter if it's in business or forming an opinion or looking at news headlines or whatever. Is what I just saw heard true and how do I know before you react to it? We've gotten into such a reactive state in this country, and it kills me because we just took a deep breath, reflected, and asked more questions. As I said earlier, things would be so much better.

[00:13:39.00] – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or it might be something you would tell a client, or if you happen to be a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

[00:13:49.29] – Peter Kozodoy

Well, if I had to build a time machine and give my younger self a word of advice, it would be to stop worrying. Mhmm. Stop worrying. There's not as my business partner says, worry doesn't solve anything.

[00:13:59.70] – Gresham Harkless

And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're gonna have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Peter, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:14:04.10] – Peter Kozodoy

To me, it means having complete accountability and personal responsibility for your life. And notice I say for your life because I find that too seldom people understand, like, especially entrepreneurs when we're talking about business. Right? If I'm a CEO and or I'm an entrepreneur, like, I have complete control over the lifestyle I build. And yet, I have met and have worked with so many leaders who have built a life for themselves through their business that they actually don't even want. You know? They're like, I thought and I went through this myself. Like, I thought success was multiple offices and clients around the world and, yeah, we had thirty people. Like, we were up to a big organization. I looked around and I was like, this is not happiness.

[00:14:53.50] – Gresham Harkless

Alright.

[00:14:53.70] – Peter Kozodoy

Like, happiness for me is working at home and having, you know, systems that I deploy and being able to take off seven hours a day and work one. Like, these are things that CEOs have control of, but I think because they have set assumptions about themselves, about happiness, about success that aren't true, they drift. And so to me, a real CEO is someone who takes full control over the way they structure the lifestyle and by extension, the way they structure their business.

[00:15:19.10] – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. No. I love that perspective. A lot of times we're like the artist, we get to paint the picture of what we hope to see in our life and our business as well. So, Peter, truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know. And, of course how best they can get a hold of you, get a copy of the book, and find out about all about some things you're working on.

[00:15:37.70] – Peter Kozodoy

For sure. So come, have an honest conversation with me. I'm at honest to greatness.com. Honest, too, greatness.com. You can take the twenty-one-question honesty quiz which will tell you what honesty profile you fit into and how honest you are if you're brave enough to know. That's on the website and I have a bonus page particularly geared towards business owners and founders. That's at peterkosler.com/ bonus. And, when you buy multiple copies, you get all kinds of stuff. Time with me, bonus classes I've taught in the past, tickets to my annual summit, I mean, all kinds of good stuff. So, by all means, check that out. peterkosler.com/ bonus.

[00:16:15.10] – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Peter. We will have the links and information in the show notes. And I appreciate your time. Appreciate you being brutally honest. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:22.79] – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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