Titans Of Industry with Nelson Peltz and Steve Wynn | FII Priority | Miami | #FIIPriority

Okay, listen. Today I was reading that program because I was trying to find out the whole story. I was a late pick here, but I was looking at the program and we've covered everything. The remarkable advent of the digital world to artificial intelligence. It's going to make us smarter than ever before. The developments in genetic research, where we can now edit our genes and change our personalities with the CRISPR method, with CRISPR science. I finished that book by Walter Isaacson, The Code Breakers. You ought to read it. Now we find out we're the first species in the history of mankind that can change our own nature. What took millions of billions of years, we can change now on our own. We can live for 50 more years. I'm 81. I was thinking about being 131. Good news and bad news. The good news first: I could finally learn how to use the iPhone 12. The bad news: I never make it. I go insane listening to the pillow man one more time. Would be too much for me. My Pillow 16.0, I can't handle it. But just think about it, you guys. We can live forever. Think how many years we could argue, Steve, if Trump lives to 130 years old. And we're still going to face the same problems in terms of leadership and navigating a changing, more rapidly changing world than ever before. Nelson, you do it with a string of companies, investments. You're constantly evaluating other companies and seeing where the opportunity exists, if only they'll wake up to their own potential. And I spent 51 years doing a single thing, very specialized, as opposed to your vastly wide activities. I learned to do one thing: build a building that would make people go 'Wow,' staff it, and motivate the employees. And I loved it. You know, we did 13 of them, one every four years for 51 years. But when it came down to it, I asked myself, what is it that really matters in all these businesses that you guys are up to, you gals and guys? It's about leadership. The ability to get ordinary people to do extraordinary things, to accept and take advantage of change on the fly, which is coming so rapidly it's machine-confessed. How do we do that? All of you that are here for information and for enlightenment from these wonderful speakers that Yasser put together with his staff, what is the thing that can make you allow people to achieve things that they didn't think they could? And you'll come to this single question: what is the most powerful motivator of human behavior? Because in the end, if you have an insight, you're going to get people to achieve your idea. How do you make your idea their idea? How do you get large groups of people, even countries, on the same page that's constructive and positive? I spent 50 years trying to figure that out, and to my own satisfaction, I came to some what appeared to me to be good conclusions. And I'll go on a minute more now, Nelly, and then I'll be done with it. The most powerful motivator of people is not money. The greatest motivator of people is enhanced self-esteem. If you, as a leader or a businessman or a government official, if you can make your program, your ideas, if you can get the people that you lead to identify their own self-esteem with that behavior, they will repeat it incessantly, and they will be angry if anybody interferes. Because enhanced self-esteem is the most narcotic of all human emotions. And if you can link what you want the country, the company, the employees to do to enhanced self-esteem, you crack the atom in human behavior. It's the thing that we're having so much trouble with in America with our political leadership. We criticize ourselves, we have perfect understanding of the problem, but we don't know how to get to a solution. And the point you've got to learn is you've got to reward people with enhanced self-esteem because they've accomplished something that you think is the right thing for them to do. In my business, we figured that out. But what is important today, I think, in the context of this conversation, is for all of us that are charged with responsibility of government or companies in a fast-changing world to figure out how to make the people that we work with feel good about what they're doing, feel good about being an American, feel good about getting a good education. That's what I learned in 51 years, and it's the one thing I took away with me when I stopped working. Nelly, you're trying to get designated too. Thank you.

Sure. If you're a CEO and you're a chairman, the only interviews you get are people that are being interviewed for senior positions. And one of the truths is that everybody gives a good interview. So here's what I figured: that if someone who's obviously talented, who has a good track record or CV, if they've come to see to join our gang, then my job is... the only mistake someone could make is that they make the wrong decision. I'm talking about the applicant. See, if somebody joins my company and I picked the wrong person, it's not devastating. We'll change and move on to the next person. But to the applicant, to one of you that wants to come and join us, this is a big move in your life. You can't afford to have 18 jobs in 20 years. I mean, this is a big thing if you're willing to join this crew. And if you know the job, if you know the environment you're stepping in, and you think it's the place for you, then you're right. The danger is if you don't know what you're getting into. So when people came to see me and I was interviewing them or talking to them, first thing I said, I said, 'Look, you got some idea of this company and my arrangement with it and my relationship to it. Listen, I want you to interview me. See if you've got this place figured, and since I play an important part in it, see if you get a sense of me. And if you're comfortable with that, I want you to be successful, but I want you to understand what you're getting into. I don't want you to find out six months from now that you made a terrible mistake.' So the first thing I'm interested in is how does someone react to that? Did their eyes click open and they get a smile on their face and say, 'I'm glad you allowed that opening, Steve or Mr. Wynn,' and they start to ask me questions and they're not intimidated and their thoughts are well-organized? Then I know I start to get excited during the interview and I start to get enthusiasm for that person. Mainly, I'm interested in them and I find out about them because they're asking about us. In other words, be a listener. Be a listener. It's a secret of good acting, I'm told by people who act. They asked Spencer Tracy why he was such a great actor. He's a good listener. And I did my interviews and developed my enthusiasm and my sense of the potential success of people by that characteristic and the way they responded to that. Is that a satisfactory answer?

I want to take another question. God, can you hear him now? I can't hear you. Got a mic? There's one. He's talking to you. Turn me on. Ah, great.

Oh, well, I never bought one. I built them with a gang of helpers, you know, and colleagues. I don't think I understand... why are we investing in operating businesses? Was that... is investing, or why we were attracted?

Yeah, well, no surprise to me. I hear you talking about it all the time. Uh, I don't think I have anything to add to that. I was immersed in an operational business. You all know, because most of half of you came there. And it was absorbing. It was wonderful. I spent 80 percent of my time, when I wasn't in the design mode with my colleagues, I spent 80 percent of my time on HR. That's what I cared about. Customers, talk to the staff, the line employees, whatever we were trying to do to accomplish the positive guest experience was through them. It was about them. Do you ever notice that your success as a CEO or an executive, like all of you in this room, that your success is defined by the people that you work with? It's always about them. Your success is about them. My supervisors' successes were about their people. And our frontline employees' successes were about their relationship to the customers. It's always about them. It was never about us in the sense of what really mattered in an operating business. That is very much like what I said a few minutes ago. We have time for another question? Fortunately not. We got to wrap. Sorry. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give them a huge round of applause. Thank you.