Jeffrey Hayzlett on Leaving Kodak, Managing the Steve Jobs Relationship and Building a $25 Billion…

Authority Magazine: Jeffrey Hayzlett on Leaving Kodak, Managing the Steve Jobs Relationship and Building a $25 Billion Transaction Legacy -- Listen Share A famous person once said, “Remember when you get to the top to send the elevator back down for everybody else.” You have a responsibility as a leader to get as many people up to the top floor as possible. Growing up in trailer parks without money, I learned that you don’t need everything, so you need to share with others. There is a guy named Rob Ryan who sold his company, Ascend Communications, in 1996 for $24.6 million.

When he sold it, he set aside a percentage for all his employees, creating the single largest number of millionaires in one day. It wasn’t in the bylaws; he and his wife Terry just decided to make sure everybody else came up to the top with him. If more CEOs and leaders put people above profit, this would be a much better world. A famous person once said, “Remember when you get to the top to send the elevator back down for everybody else.” You have a responsibility as a leader to get as many people up to the top floor as possible.

Growing up in trailer parks without money, I learned that you don’t need everything, so you need to share with others. There is a guy named Rob Ryan who sold his company, Ascend Communications, in 1996 for $24.6 million. When he sold it, he set aside a percentage for all his employees, creating the single largest number of millionaires in one day. It wasn’t in the bylaws; he and his wife Terry just decided to make sure everybody else came up to the top with him. If more CEOs and leaders put people above profit, this would be a much better world. We had the pleasure of talking with Jeffrey Hayzlett.

If you look at his resume, you see a suit-and-tie executive who has walked the halls of the biggest corporations in America. But if you listen to him speak, you hear the dusty plains of South Dakota and the grit of a man who made his own luck. Hayzlett is a “sometime cowboy” who splits his time between New York City and Sioux Falls, and his career path is fascinating. It is a story of constant movement, hard pivots, and a philosophy built on sending the elevator back down for the next guy. Hayzlett’s origin story begins on the road.

Born in West Virginia to a military father and a bookkeeper mother, he spent his childhood bouncing from state to state. “We lived all over the United States, moving from city to city as my father was transferred from Air Force base to Air Force base,” Hayzlett recalls. While his father served tours in Vietnam, the family would gravitate back to Georgia, but it was the Midwest that eventually claimed his heart. When his parents divorced, a fourteen-year-old Hayzlett made a pivotal choice. He decided to live with his father in South Dakota. “It was always a very magical place to me,” he says.

He views Rapid City, where he graduated high school, as his true home. “I think it’s one of the most sacred places in the world. It is a spiritual place for Native Americans, and it’s always been very special to me.” It was in those early years in South Dakota that he met his wife, Tammy, though the introduction was less like a romance novel and more like a college comedy. It happened at Augustana College during a panty raid. “I pushed open the door to get into my now-wife’s room, broke her toe, and knocked her underneath the bed with the force of us big, burly guys rushing into the room,” he admits.

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The article discusses significant leadership insights from a notable figure in the industry, making it impactful and relevant, while the core message of prioritizing people over profit is increasingly common but still holds value.