I'm here at Jenny Johnson's absolutely beautiful ranch. You know, Jenny spent her whole career at Franklin Templeton, she learned every single aspect of the business, and when she took over as CEO, she did an absolutely incredible job making the right acquisitions, putting the right leaders in place and creating an environment where Franklin Templeton could really thrive, and I'm really excited to sort of learn about how she did it and who she is in our discussion today.
The only time I see fescue like that is on the golf course.
Yeah, I ride horses like I play golf all over the place.
Good boy.
How are you? It's so nice to see you.
Let me just get Louie tied up here.
Come here, buddy. Good boy.
Isn't it pretty? It's actually not that big of a ranch, but we're surrounded by big cattle ranches, so you don't really see other houses, but you don't have all the responsibility.
How did you come up with the name B-Lazy Ranch?
Well, the river nearby starts with a B, so we were thinking, "Okay, Lazy B," or whatever, and then, we're like, "Wait a second. Why don't we call this the B-Lazy?" And that's what we try to do here, is we... You're never lazy when you're here, but you try to relax and enjoy.
So I was gonna ask you about that because I know you had an offsite here the last couple of days. While you're here, how much time are you actually working versus relaxing and being lazy, so to speak?
Yeah, well, so this is the second year we've done it, and we mix, you know, kinda half the time of working, and it's good because we actually cover the things that sometimes are... maybe have a little tension in 'em, you know, that you just couldn't kinda hash out together with fun, so we went fly-fishing for half a day, and then, spent the rest of the day and dinner kind of working, and then, we did UTV riding in the mountains, which was a blast, yeah, so...
Really? I'll bet you get whatever that tension is kind of starts to dissipate if you spend a few days here.
You know, they say... Yeah, and it's... It's not... Listen, this team gets along great, so that's... It's more, I always say, like, there's a famous line in a movie, "Winners want the ball," right? And so, if you have the right team, like, people want the ball to be able to help, you know, to accomplish something, but you... Not everybody can have the ball at the same time, so you have to have accountability and clearly who's in kind of the leadership role, who has the ball, who's supporting them, and so, you know, some of what we do here is we'll sit down and say, "Okay, let's get into the details on whatever this topic is and let's go through that and figure out who's gonna own what part of it." Yeah, and it's... I think when you can do that in a more relaxing environment, it actually allows just better conversations.
Tinker Bell! Come sit here.
Okay. All right, Tinker Bell, you comfy?
By the way, these boots are fantastic.
So first of all, long as you're a men's size 12 or smaller, I got boots for you because my son wears a size 12, and so, the kids were always getting boots as they went out of their boots, and so, then, when I was trying to figure out what to decorate, at one point, I was just, like, throwing boots up there, and then, I started buying cool used boots at different places just to make it, like, a cool little decoration.
And so, sometimes people show up without boots, and so, I've got all those, I say, "Pick anything up there," or, "I got a closet with a bunch of boots, go find whatever you want and see what fits."
Well, Jenny, thank you so much for welcoming us and I appreciate you spending the time with us, and I really appreciate Tinker Bell also participating, hello, Tinker Bell.
She loves being on camera, so she's all about having a new opportunity, another opportunity.
It's great to be here. So maybe tell us about your early years and did you have any early mentors growing up?
For sure, my dad was probably the most influential. Both my brothers, my one brother Chuck who passed away was always kinda the crazy innovative guy pushing for something new, Greg's, like, the stable... And Greg and I worked together for a lot of years, and he was really good 'cause he would, you know, kind of include me and we really were a team working together, and I always say... You know, credit him for us starting to get into the alts business, you know, which a lot of it ended up happening under my watch, but really started under his watch there, and I think that any firm who doesn't have... Any traditional firm who doesn't have exposure to alts today, it's gonna be hard for them to compete in the future, and we did our first acquisition in private credit with Benefit Street Partners in 2018, that was very early for traditional managers, Greg was the CEO at the time and I'm very thankful that we sort of got on that path then.
Yeah, so staying a little bit with the family, you are not only part of an amazing family legacy, you were also one of six siblings.
Seven kids, actually, total.
So I have to imagine that taught you a little something about competition...
Well, listen, I was number six of seven, so sometimes, I'm, like, overly aggressive trying to get my voice on something and I think, "Well, that's just..." We were within 10 years, so it was... You know, to be heard, you had to kinda get in there, and I also think it makes me very food-centric because I feel like somebody's always gonna steal something off my plate.
That's great, and then, you went from being part of six siblings to actually having five children of your own.
And I'm curious, as a parent, are there things that you learn that you apply as a business executive?
Look... So first of all, I always laugh at having five kids because I was like... After three, I was like, "There's just not enough chaos around." Like, family is chaos, you gotta have chaos. Look, I think, you know, there's... As a parent, you try to be fair, you try to communicate clearly kinda what the rules are, I think it's harder to be a disciplinarian as a parent than it is as a leader in an organization, you know, that whole thing about, you know, "It hurts me more than it hurts you," I think that's always true as a parent, but I think that, you know, if you're managing a family, you have to juggle a lot of things and a lot of priorities and be able... You can't do 'em all, just like as a CEO, you can't do them all, you have to pick the important ones and you have to be able to let some things slip through, but it has to be the things that aren't as important, and I think you do that as a parent all the time.
So if you go back... We'll maybe jump back to Drexel where your professional career started...
That was a long time ago, yeah.
It was a long time ago, but I'm just curious 'cause you started at a place that was changing the rules. The junk bond market was growing, it was financing takeovers every single day it seemed, what did you take away and learn from that experience? 'Cause you're very innovative and creative, so I'm just curious if you took anything away from that experience.
Well, sadly, I sort of joined Drexel towards the very end, you know what I think was one of the mistakes that Drexel made is it's never good to be alone, alone in businesses, you need to build partnerships with other companies, and so, when... Inevitably, what happens is you have a difficult time, you go through a difficult time, which they did, and they had no friends built because they hadn't built those relationships with other firms, and so, they didn't have the advocates to really work with them, and I think that the key is none of us are successful in doing what we're doing alone, you really need to be... And my father always said it, he said, you know, "The most important thing is your reputation," you need to do things right, you need to always have that moral code about doing what's right because once you hurt your reputation, you just... It's so hard to get back, and I think that was one of the things that I learned.
Yeah, so let's take that and apply it to internal, and so, you know, as you go through your career, particularly as you've gotten more senior and you're running a company, have you always had people around you who will always tell you the truth, whether you wanna hear it or not, who will speak truth to you, and how do you build that kinda relationship?
Well, I think I have to... As I said, being number six of seven, I have a strong sort of response to things, and so, I probably at times have scared people from speaking up and I have to be... It's something I have to be conscious of, I can tell you today, having just left from my offsite with, you know, having my co-presidents and my vice chair here, they all have no fear of speaking up with me and speaking up to me, and vice versa and with each other, so I think it's a really important thing to be able to have a group of people around you who will say, "I don't agree with you, I think that..." And really debate it out, a woman I know is a professor at Berkeley and she wrote a book called "In the Defense of the Troublemaker," I think it is, and the whole... Her entire career is about the devil's advocate doesn't work, you need people who disagree, fundamentally believe their side, and as they debate it, you will actually get better outcomes. If you just say, "I'll play the devil's advocate," you're not... Your heart's not really into it, right? And so, I'd say that the dynamic of my direct report team is that it is a really open, honest debate, passionately debate sort of what people's views are.
And how do you get people on the same page? So take... "I'm not playing devil's advocate, I just don't agree to your example," how do you then get everybody on the same page once the group agrees?
Well, so look, I think that first of all, you're never gonna get consensus, if you're gonna be a CEO and you expect to get consensus, you get mediocre decisions, right? And so, I think the key is, is in the end still as a CEO, you have to make the decision and everybody has to agree that if the decision is made, they're gonna support it whether they had a different view, their job is to bring their view in, right? So that you have the benefit of hearing everybody's view, and in the end, you... If there's disagreement amongst the team, the CEO's gonna make the call, and I'll, you know, make the call, and then, it's their job to really get behind that.
