Transcript for:
Insights on Business Resilience and Leadership

slooh international business now conversations that matter is a podcast developed by the Boeing Institute of international business in St Louis University's chaitz School of Business special thanks to founder Dr Sun Kim for his Grant to support the launch of this podcast a warm welcome to our listeners from the St Louis University Boeing Institute of international business Todd hmail here bringing you conversations that m for this episode we revisit a conversation from the Bayer international business Conference held at St Louis University in December of 2023 Jean Cunningham sat down with Arnold Donald retired Vice chair and CEO of Carnival Corporation and PLC the focus of the discussion was the resilience of Carnival's business model which was put to the test during the global covid-19 pandemic Arnold also shared his experiences growing up in Louisiana and how those lessons he learned guided him on his career Journey here is Gan and Arnold's full conversation from the conference enjoy Arnold Donald is the former retired Vice chair and CEO of Carnival Cruise Line which I think we're going to hear a lot about today he was a president CEO of Carnival from 2013 to 2022 clearly during the global pandemic and served on their board for many years beforehand Arnold spent over 20 years at monsano as a senior vice president president of consumer and nutrition and president of the agriculture business and then went on to be chairman of mirant which was a spinoff of Monsanto including eal sweetener who's also CEO of the executive Leadership Council a professional Network and Leadership forum for African American Executives is a proud graduate of Carlton College as well as Washington University and got his MBA University of Chicago Arnold serves on numerous public company boards like Salesforce and numerous nonprofits as well we're honored to have him here today to share his message Arnold thank you thank you we heard from John very eloquently about your esteemed background and your current sharing of your knowledge with several boards that you're on but before we start to get into the technical side of things can we talk a little bit about you as a person and before the sea Suite who are some of the people or what are some of the events that help shape you as a person okay so first of all GL glad to be with youan good afternoon everybody and uh John Madu my friend so thank you very much for the introduction um so it was a cold and rainy day in 1954 no so the things that influenced me are the things influence most people you know they say that the person doesn't make the times the times make the person so I was born in 19 54 so I grew up doing civil rights in a segregated South in New Orleans and um civil rights and affirmative action I had a huge contextual impact on me but it also provided while many challenges lots of inspiration starting with my parents my parents only were able to complete eighth grade but they had a passion for Education my sister I have um four siblings um a sister that I love to abuse is 3 years old to me and she at a very early age decided she wanted to be a teacher so I was her only student in her class where she was principal teacher and so on and so forth but what happened was before I even went to kindergarten I could read and write and do a rithmetic and stuff because you know she taught me everything she knew so when I got into the school they thought I was smart and so then they invested in me more and so I became a vifer reader I read everything and um read about you know um all types of people and somebody decided to hand me a book about uh African-Americans and um who chrispus addicts the first you know person killed in the Revolutionary War and so I started reading about all these figures um but also was the time of John F Kennedy and the Space Race so all of those and Martin Luther King and cashes play Muhammad Ali and and so all these things were going on at once so I grew up very poor segregated Community lots of um messages that you can't be you can't do separate water fountains separate bathrooms you know that kind of thing you can't come here you can't go there but I also grew up in a time of great possibility because the world was changing rapidly and dramatically and um not the Jesuit father I'm sorry but it was the josephites so I went to St Augustine High School in New Orleans a different order and um and they told three times a day it was all boys all black it's the only place we could go um it's to a private school we couldn't go to the the white Catholic schools uh all boys all black three times a day gentlemen prepare yourselves you're going to run the world they told us when we walked in they told us at lunchtime and they told us at the end of the day and we competed in everything sports music everything um nationally debate math and we were crazily successful because they invested in US heavily so when I finished high school I got in everywhere you know yo Princeton Stanford had a nomination appointment at West Point three nominations one from vice president Spar agnu at the time who discovered along the way he actually didn't have a nomination to West Point and so I still have the letter but he said would you like to go to the Naval Academy I said no I'm interested in West Point and um and all that but it was Vietnam and the world was going through a lot of changes not just the US with Vietnam so all of those things all those context influence but what it left me with was three things one had an insatiable appetite for understanding why how things work why they work etc two junior in high school I decided I was going to be a general manager Fortune 50 science-based global company I had no idea what that was but I guy was he got brainwashed by my high school and so I set out a Target to do that and I mapped out the whole plan you know where I was going to go to university how many degrees I was going to was get three degrees liberal arts degree a science degree and an MBA and I did all that junior in high school and mapped it out I had ridiculous test scores because they started training us to take the um SATs when we're in eth grade we would taking sat every week from eighth grade all the way up to our junior year so by the time we took at our junior year everybody smoked the SATs and stuff so so that was the context and that in inspired me to achieve and then along the way I just met incredible people and incredible supporters and stuff and um uh and I eventually got to the point um at Monsanto um Bob Shapiro um was running a company at the time we had and this is and I'll stop with this one but um it was a um a really super significant learning moment so Bob had just come in Bob had run a business up uh subsidiary of ours and he had been brought in to run the agricultural company which at the time was mon sel's most profitable and fastest growing sector and um he decided we were going to have a strategic planning meeting so all of us all the executives were called into this room and when we walked into the room there were two chairs and two music stands and Bob said I'm going introduce the people that are going to facilitate the strategy session and their names were Renee and um oh my gosh the guy's first name Bob I think Renee and Bob love l o v e love okay and um Bob had like a pirate shirt balloon silk pirate shirt and they sat down in these high chairs in front of these music stands and um they looked at us in our three-piece suits with wing tips and whatnot and they said okay except for Bob Bob had not come from the inner circle of mon he come from outside he had sweat with cats on it okay and so they said we are now going to conduct you through a strategy session we like conduct us through a okay and so um somebody raised their and said how long is this going to take they said two years and everybody you can hear the groans in the room and the first question was this what what's the purpose of the firm University of Chicago Graduate School of Business hand goes up purpose of the firm is maximiz turn Sher is the life of the firm you ear you know increase earnings e year year after year you do that blah blah blah end the story we're done let's go okay and um they said and Bob said anybody else has any ideas okay and make a long story short we landed on a vision that said a healthy food and abundant environment for everybody on the planet and our role was to transform the way food is produced that whole process which actually took about a year taught me a lot because what it taught me was at that young age relatively young age was people have to own their purpose so yeah companies are about making money and it's about the freedom to operate and all that but in the end if you really want people to be Allin they have to see what's in it and what's in it is not the money okay it's a part of it but it's not the it what's really in it is and I always ask these people these three qu people these three questions what does success look like for you and your family five years from now you're five years in the future and you're looking back and you're saying we just had the most unbelievable five years as a family we could ever have had what happened what does success look like for you you and your department or profession whatever he is 5 years from now what happened and what does the success look like for the company or the entity or the organization with five years from now what happened and when you do that you find out what's really motivating people what the real purpose is and when you can organize around that you can make unbelievable things happen appreciate that so you had a challenged beginning yeah but from that challenge beginning some of the key folks around you helped you see there's that Vision out in front of where you wanted to go and what you wanted to do excellent so so with that conference here is talking about business resilience under Global disruption yep what's your perspective of what business resilience is and is that something that you can measure at a firm and and if so how do you do that so for me business resiliency is um thriving overtime and and I mean overtime so a good example for me is a company called Meer in Germany it build ships they started building ships in the 1700s same family so think about all the things in Germany in the world they've gone through since the 1700s and that business has not only survived but thrived that's business resiliency when you can withstand pandemics Wars massive social change major disruption and you can operate in those unbelievably chaotic fast changing environments and continue to thrive that's resiliency and the res iy in business comes from a very basic place which all of you guys already know it's the people in the business so it goes back to where I started you know if people are properly motivated they have to be talented they have to have process to be able to organize and work together they have to be diverse they do um because Innovation comes from diversity of thinking and you're going to have a much greater probability of successful Innovation if you have people who think very differently with processes in place so they can work together because they think differently um so diversity is a business imperative and and I truly mean that diversity of thinking uh but if you have that it all comes from the people and uh that company survived not just because they had family descendants but learn how to bring into their company diversity of thinking and people that in all these different environments they were able to weather the storm take the pauses all the things that happen in business and come out on the other side thriv me yeah so the resilience comes from that diversity being able to see and react to different environments that are it maybe you don't even know we're out there you have to innovate y to survive everything changes and you have to innovate man has adapted look at societies we started out as gatherers then hunters and gatherers and then agricultural then industrial then you know became service based now knowledge based I you know AI is going to dramatically change our lives beyond what we can possibly imagine right now and um that's the nature of things so you have to be able to innovate that Innovation comes from people people adapt create and if you have people are coming at things from very different perspectives and you team them up they will develop amazing Solutions and that's been my personal experience in business and um and you know you can just read and look at history and see that's what's happened we've all talked about the global disruption that the pandemic has been a resilient company like the ones you've mentioned have the exper experience of what to do in a global pandemic but what do you think what do you see as potentially the next Global disruptions that are out there is there do you have a a view of is AI driving us toward a different set of global disruptions how how do you view that yeah I would say um I gave a talk many years ago at a university for a commencement and I wanted to make it special um for those students so you know I studied for undergrads and grads the 10 years that they went you know High School through college all that and what was unique about that 10e P that make it really special with them so I started I looked at their 10 years I went back 10 years I went back 10 years I went back 10 years went and I just stopped like in the mid 1800s it's all the same there's always Wars Health scares we had a global pandemic in Co but in our our business we've had to deal with SARS Ms zika Ebola I mean there's always Wars there's always economic disruption there's always borders changing and massive cultural shifts you know World War I World War II Vietnam War you know genocides Rwanda you know stuff's going on all the time okay every decade every decade so the reality is what's the core of how deal with the mess that you have at the time you have it and if you take covid and just using our company as an example um we stopped sailing before the government told us to because if you don't know the epidemiology and you don't know the transmission characteristics and you have a fast moving virus you can't mess with that resiliency for our business is we can't have people dying on our ships we we can't you know there's no resiliency in that I mean nobody's going to want to sell unsafe so we're human beings also so that's the first reason but the second reason if I was just a pure business person it'd be like there's no way I'm going to have people dying on my ships so you can't take that risk it's a risk you can't live with so we stopped selling before that but now it gets way more complicated now you're not sailing even when you cut a bunch of cost cuz you can't ships are not airplanes you can't put them in a hanger okay they have to operate if they don't operate they will lock up and you have to make them razor blades I mean they're not you know they're not you you'll never rescue that ship so you got you know we had 106 ships billions of dollars of assets so we got to keep them running whether people on them or not $600 million a month burn rate zero Revenue Plus we had taken deposits we have a beautiful business model how many you Cruise how many you pay for the cruise in advance all of you trust me okay we have no accounts receivables we have a lot of deposits but if you're not going to get your cruise you got to get your money back so we got billions of dollars we have to return $600 million a month burn rate don't know how long that's going to last zero Revenue that's not even the problem you also have we sell 133 million people a year hundreds of thousands of people at se we got to get them home safe when airplanes aren't flying borders are closed you got to keep them safe with an unknown virus and how it's working okay while you're doing that and I've got 150,000 employees 90,000 crew members I got to get them home safe and keep them safe well so resiliency is when the people that you have in the business pull together in complete uncertainty how long will it take how in the world are we going to get people home when we can't fly them anywhere you know some places won't let people come in the port to get their radiation treatment I mean what we going to do here right and so so it's when people come together and face those challenges because they have a greater purpose than just making a nickel okay uh um and and when you get all those diverse people we have crew from 145 different countries and you I've got um you know in the Shor side you know great diversity through the ranks uh and and people coming from different backgrounds different experience you put them together and they just come up with solutions for things when they're properly motivated so you give them a little bit of Landing room to say look for the next 90 days a lot of stuff's going on in the world we have enough cash don't worry you're paid for the next 90 days don't even think about that okay now I know you can't just think for 90 days but for the next 90 days if you could focus on this we'll be working on what's going to happen after that but we got to focus on these 90 days to get people home safe and and so on so we make sure we have a business second thing is then you got to raise money so 14 transactions in 9 months 23 6 billion with nobody in an office the bankers weren't in the office the lawyers weren't in the office we weren't in an office the investors were not in an office okay so if somebody had told me before Co that you could do that I would have laughed them out the room you know but the reality is we you had no choice you had to do it so we didn't know how long it was going to be but we had to do it and we had to borrow the money in advance because the last thing you want is a questionable ongoing business concern from the Auditors and they're not going to say well you got a plan to get money no no they need to see the money otherwise they're going to give you an ongoing you know business concern and um so you got to you know it's a a big juggling act but when you have the right people properly motivated you can deal with all that and then you keep the business going plus we were in the middle of an environmental issue uh um that we had had some guy and why he did a chief engineer I have no idea why he did what he did but um it's oily water it's not oil but it's oily water and he jury rigged around all of our systems and pumped it into the ocean and we found out about it selfreported and we found ourselves for Department of Justice as a criminal environmental criminal so that's going on at the same time and they want to see all these changes you're making on the ships cuz the ships are still out there right so now you got to punch you know you know you're dealing with regulatory stuff which often isn't practical you know it's like somebody sitting up making a you're trying to explain look this why that won't accomplish what you think but they don't want to hear that so now you got to put money into that and people into it when Supply chains are shut down so you're going to do biod digestives which we have planned we already going to do but they wanted accelerate to put the biodigesters in well the companies aren't even producing them because they can't get people in their plants to produce them and if you don't do it they're going to hit you with another fine or possibly worse you know um hit you with a much broader you know criminal act thing so all this is going on and and that's the world and so resiliency is having people properly motivated and skill to be able to to deal with all that and make it work got it so so that was near the um end of your time in corporation let me take you back a couple of years okay 2013 yeah you've retired yeah I've been retired for a while you you you you I retired at age 50 I got lucky so I decided I was going to goof off at age 50 and I was on a bunch of boards and so you're you're you're goofing off yeah all right admittedly and you get asked to be CEO of Carnival Corporation yeah and you're asked not because Carnival Corporation is doing great but because in 2013 there's two highly publicized events that are not positive the financial performance of that segment is not doing as well as it could be doing and you say okay I'll go do that yeah what what were the first things that you did when you walked into that scenario because this is not a a all of a sudden the problem happened you knew there was a problem there so you walked in what what were you thinking at that point in time so we had two events uh we lost the ship um happens once every hundred years in the industry but we lost the ship Concordia went down and um off the coast of Italy and um uh and we lost lives um so that was a very legitimate crisis then we had what we call CNN crisis you know the so-called poop Cruise um which was the Triumph um which you know had an engine failure or whatever um it was never a drift at se although CNN showed it every day as if it was drifting um people were not starving or anything they showed some somebody dropping off um spam or something but I mean there was plenty of food yeah and there was one deck where some SE it backed up because the engines you know generate a lot of stuff and so they kept showing that one thing where like there was poop cruise but it was just one part tiny portion of the ship um nonetheless it's a PR disaster okay and it was on TV for like a week um so those two events that happened I'm I'm on the board of Bank of America going ready to go I'm in New York about to go into the meeting my phone rings and it's stachnik who was the lead independent director for Carnival he says arold are you sitting down I oh no man what's going on what happened now you know he said no no it's nothing bad I said okay great tell me what does this do he said are you sitting down I said no just talk to me what's going on he said well Mickey and the board would like you to run the company I said what let me sit down right because like I had never once thought about running the company I had retired I was cruising through life I was on a bunch of boards and just you know um had run juvenile diabetes started the close loop artificial Pancras project and then which is now commercial I'm happy about that and um and I was doing the executive console stuff so I was you know just trying to get back and having fun um and he and I thought about it I said it was too I know man I'm I think I'm done I don't really want to you know and he said well Mickey and board I said and by the way the board I'm on the board when you guys have these meetings so now I'm upset cuz they're having secret meetings you know like I'm out of the loop right and um and I I you know I've known Mickey at this point for 13 years and um and I've be the first person outside the family to run the business so I owed him I felt I owed the respect to listen to him so so we had a chat a long chat and um one thing that so I decided to do and I should have been begging for the job it's the best job in the world world I mean it's you go to the most beautiful places in the world you know you meet all kinds of great people that the queen multiple time I mean of England I mean it's a ridiculous job so it's ton of fun and um and so on and so signed up doing it but I um the first day on the job two things happen so I had an event we had a fundraiser I built this house here and we used it for fundraising and stuff and um had a big fundraiser and I had went marcelis playing the piano at my house and all other and I had to leave because I had to get to Miami undercover to take the shop so I get on the plane at a G650 it's one good thing about large corporations but anyway had a G650 get on the plane as soon as I sit down the power goes out I'm like oh wow that's not a good start and then they rebooted took them about 45 minutes but we got off so I land in Miami and get there all day do the earnings call what introduce me all this stuff I jump on the plane fly back and on the plane they contact me say they would like to do an interview with you on I don't know which one it was CNN or NBC or somebody um and there's a studio in St Louis I said okay what time you got 5:00 A.M you know for a 6: a.m. broadcast or something I don't know something like that so um Carl cessac who works for me was my chief of staff so he I said what do you think he said I don't know you I don't know you know because a lot of controversy and they uh and the pr guy said look it's a puff piece it's a puff piece I said okay fine they land I get in like 2:00 in the morning I'm up at 5: to go to the studio we go it's dark we get to the studio and they say oh you're here for that oh that that studio is around the corner downtown St Louis blah blah blah like okay so we get back in the car torrential downpour it's raining so hard you can't even see in front right it's just a few blocks away we get there but it's raining like crazy and there's no cover and no garage so I'm like all right so I walk out I'm drenched I go on air wet not a good look when you're for a cruise not for a cruise right it's not a good look what joke could I tell what could I do to make this look right so I'm waiting and waiting and the clock is ticking and um I'm thinking okay there's a little bit of a break so I Dart you know I get a little wet I go and they say okay we got time you know you take your time you can dry off a bit we're g to do a little makeup all this stuff blah blah blah and I'm oh good you know so oh sorry I'm gonna be on in five minutes right boom so now I'm on I'm not quite dry I'm not and I'm ready for this puff piece so this is the first question first they show the the tape they show the Concordia they show the Triumph and the guy says so Carnival has had a really terrible time blah blah blah so what's wrong with it and how you going to fix it that's the first question and I go oh boy all right here we go so I luckily had good media training at Monsanto so I said look first of all there's a lot right with Carnival okay and oh and the thing was micking arrison under the gun booted out as CEO all that this was all the rolling headlines and stuff which wasn't true at all and so so I just saw there's a lot right with Carnival first of all let me start with that and then by the end of it I had them laughing and they warmed up and so that that was the start so the first thing we had to do was Public Image it was the very first thing because we the business was still going strong people who Cruise know and we have a lot of repeat Cruisers so they're never an issue never but we need about 25 30% new Cruisers every year and and there's reasons why people hav Cruise some is inertia some is other things but there are reasons and so you you don't want that negative Public Image because it gives them another reason not to try cruising Okay so was number one number two was the people inside the company they were beaten up they were just beaten up they you know the kids go to school kids are making jokes oh you my your parents were you know all that so you know it's a downer so I had to motivate them and then I had to pull them together they had we had nine people say Carnival Cruise Lines it's Carnival Corporation we have nine Brands so the Queen Mary is ours card Seaborn is ours Carnival of course H in America princess Pio IA Germany Costa so we have nine Brands and those Brands were acting very independently of each other and so we're missing a lot of synergies not just from a CA standpoint there was a lot of that but there was also from a creativity standpoint diversity of thinking and sharing the best practices so I had to you know kind of reshape the whole culture to say you know we're a Federation of Brands but we're stronger together than we are individually so let's work together and so that that was um kind of the basic template and then I started with the 5 years so now what the success look like and I pull juvenile diabetes is easy everybody involved with juvenile diabetes they're there for a cure okay so if somebody's Pro stem cell or anti- stem cell you can get them to talk to each other because they have one thing in common they both want a cure for their loved one okay and so you got to find that thing to to pull people together and so you ask 5 years out and I I did all that with the senior leadership team in a retreat made them do silly things together like you know one guy's blindfolded the other ones have to tell them how to drive and hopefully they make it you know that kind of thing and so then I did it with the and they were ready to go oh this great we're ready we no because if I had told you guys this you wouldn't have bought it you came up with it yourself and you own it your people are going to feel the same way so let's go the next level down and do the same thing so brought a much bigger group together three days luckily not surprisingly but luckily what that bigger group came up with matched exactly what the senior leadership had come up with as the purpose of the company and stuff and so once I got that level done the rest was easy and then we had great financial success yes so so I mean you you walked into that interview oh man yeah which which could have been a a different environment I I'll I'll avoid the Shameless plug of you should had a BBJ rather than a G50 but we won't say that um but as you as you pulled together the plan going forward it was about first and foremost let's be honest where we are right we've got to build the team yeah and then you're going to communicate that across the organization both intern and exper internally and and press forward appreciate that so let's let's take a little bit of a turn okay understand you um are a a fan of the quote education oh is the is a portal to is a portal to Prosperity right appreciate that yeah so we have a few folks interested in education here either as practicing or as learning or improving their business skills what what advice do you have for folks about how to develop the skills to to create resilience yeah and and to deal with adversity because we're all as you pointed out we're going to see adversity it's a repeated performance yeah so um first of all the originality is concealing your source so um I built this home and I wanted this I I was at a parade in New York and I'm sorry in Chicago and I was the whatever they call it the captain or whatever it was and um and they interviewed me it was on education and so I I said well education is Portal Prosperity meaning fullness of Life prosperity mean fullness of life and um I say you know that sounds pretty cool you know so I was going to put it in ancient Greek the language of Education over my mantle in my fireplace in my house and my daughter had majored in Psychology in ancient Greek so I called her and say hey this what I want to say in ancient Greek you know give it to me and she's like oh Dad I'll get to it and you know she kept stalling I don't know she was busy with her own life or something and so I finally called over to Greece and they say oh that's a famous Socrates quote and I was like no it's not I said that you right they said no so Socrates well Socrates not going on my mantle okay so it's going to say education for prosperity and I'm not putting Socrates name up there but um so it turns out it is I don't think they even have portals in Socrates days I'm suspicious but anyway whatever so um so anyway so um so it's a Socrates maybe I had read it and heard it somewhere myself and and so I think um when you talk about what how do you educate and instill or or what's the role of education and everything and all of that resiliency is in each and every one of us we see it repeated through everything we see whether is you know people with daily challenges whether they have health challenges whether it's groups of people you know fighting Wars and you know like what going on now and you you see it's in our DNA okay what you have to do is unleash it nurture it Empower it and education is certainly a way for you to become have the self-awareness to realize first your own but even more importantly what it takes to inspire and nurture and give other people the freedom you know to express it their own resiliency and um and that's what education does through you know teaching us how to think critically and informing us of you know lessons from the past even though we continue to repeat the same mistakes but you know hopefully in our time um that we're here you know we do learn enough from the past that we allow more progress to be made so thank you appreciate that perspective so let's ask if we can open up this conversation to the audience anybody have a question for Arnold arene it'll be good you right yeah you won't get a good answer from this side thank you good afternoon my name is Mike Higgins with Epic Systems thank you for your time and and sharing your perspectives with us I thought those were awesome my question to you is how big of an influence do you believe it was in your life that you were told from a very young age to prepare yourself you're you're going to run the world how how important was that I think it was extremely important in my case um keep in mind what they were doing you know we we would go to St all we went to boot camp almost right they they break you down and build you back up because they W to undo everything Society was telling you Society was saying you can't drink out this clean pristine water fountain you have to drink out because you're not good enough you have to drink out this Rusty stained you know water fountain you can't use this bathroom when I was a little kid I snuck into the white people's bathroom Okay so it was after my dad weeks earli in the supermarket had busted me and my sister who's three years older than me sweeping our feet under the candy thing with the Brock candy because it would drop some on the floor and I take my foot and sweeping and get one he busted us do hey that's stealing you can't do that okay so I didn't have anything to do while he was in the checkout line so I was said I'm going to go check out the bathrooms so I went into um uh the white people's bathroom and it was spotless I mean it was white porcelain they had Soft toilet paper you know and it was called gentleman's bathroom and ours was colored okay so it went in and it was you know basically should have been I guess thanless steel but it was rusted water dripping water on the floor Brown toilet paper craft you know like really harsh paper and stuff and the contrast was dramatic for me so I remember running out and I wasn't even in kindergart I ran out to tell my dad dad dad you ought to see the white people's bathroom you know it's like unbelievable man you know and he was like what and and I could see the fear in his eyes that I had gone into that bathroom and for a little kid that was a big deal I had never seen my dad afraid and it made made me feel less about him at that young age now later as I matured I learned a lot and you know all that but at that time okay and so it's a huge impact and it also scared me right I was afraid so now you're walking through life afraid that's that's not a good thing I grew up in a tough neighbor had a lot of other things to be afraid of but but I was you know my dad very young my dad was clearly a afraid and that had a huge impact so somebody trying to reverse all that and then luckily what was going on around me supported that too right because civil rights you know things were changing and and you could see it and witness it and it's happening to me as a teenager you know teenage years or you know so so the combination of them reinforcing and then we were excelling you know we did National math competition and we won you know we did na debay competition and we won and it wasn't just black it was National it was you know football team we integrated we went to court to Supreme Court in Louisiana the school did to integrate um High School athletics in Louisiana uh there's actually something up in the National African American Museum at the Smithsonian in DC about it but um but our football team won our basketball team has been a movie made about it won you know and so so we were winning so it's reinforcing we could do anything we wanted to do and um and having that allowed me to set really big goals you know I mean like a general manager and a Fortune 50 sign I mean nobody in my family was even in business okay so without that there's no way I would even thought to set goals like that you know what I mean and um and then when I got to college uh I decided I was going to do econ mechanical engineering and um business but I did econ because I wanted two undergraduate degrees to give me a leg up on getting the most prestigious business school this is all a plan but I'm I'm going to be different than other three two engineering students because I'm going to do real liberal arts not math physics or chemistry you know I'm going to do a different liberal arts which I got to take a lot of extra credits and hours so I basically would have graduated Carlton in three years and when I first went in everybody was telling man what are you talking about you'll be lucky to graduate you you can't take all these courses and I had props who were telling me you know why are you such an overachiever relax I mean don't you know but they didn't understand you know but I believed I could even everybody kept telling me I couldn't do it and I ended up doing a um a uh uh summer I squeezed it in I needed to do part of my plan international study from being a global business so I did independent study in Brazil you know something like I you till so so I did this independent study in Brazil and and I squeezed all this stuff in you know to because I was on a mission and and so it gave me a naive sense of incredible self-confidence and um and it and it in my case it worked out you I hope I answer your question yeah questions hi Arnold Pierce Powers hey Pierce world affairs Council of St Louis yeah international Man that you are my claim to fame is my mother was French and I really care about St Louis yeah just think about it you don't have to give an answer that's final but how do we put our city back on the map so when you're traveling with Carnival or you're in Europe you meet meet the king yeah uh he says oh you're from St Louis I mean we need to do something just give that some thought I don't expect a an allaround answer but uh I love this community we need to keep it on the map yeah thanks for everything Arnold hey thank you pierce thank you you real quickly I think um first of all there is a need so you can go a lot of places and you know they St Louis um Spirit of St Louis Lindberg I mean you know that's I mean they don't get it right so so there is a need um but I think all the basic ingredients are here and um I don't know if Don Rubin and BJ are still around but um you know we've got the the whole bio um in center and we got we have Washington University we have St Louis University we have a lot of things and so there are a lot of people around the world that do know and have a huge amount of respect for St Louis but we're not the common name in the mass populations you know that are Paris or London or New York would be I don't know if we ever need to be that but we certainly need to work to continue to make people aware of what a treasure this region is and and how much talent and is capable here so so Arnold with that yes let me ask before we wrap up any last bit of advice for the audience going forward other than yeah don't let things get in your way right I think um look the the thing I learned really early in life somehow and I was very lucky to do so listen listen listen I've been up here talking the whole time but if you spend any time with me you'll find I do a lot less talking than a lot of asking um if you listen and you listen with intention the world will reveal itself to you okay if you listen to your customers our in the Cruz business businesses was our guests but if you listen to your customers they will tell you how to exceed their expectations if you listen to your employees they will tell you how once you've identified what it takes to exceed to get your customers expectations how to do that in a way that's sustainable okay if you listen to the communities you're in they will tell you what you have to do to have the freedom to operate because a lot of people think you know there's a short-term focus on business most large corporations most of them get it they know that you have to think long term you have to be a good corporate citizen if you're not you will be regulated out of business okay so listen to the communities and they will tell you you know what you have to do to have to earn the right to to conduct business so listen listen listen and um and and listen with intent and when you think you know ask again and ask five different ways um the last bit of advice for the young people here is there will be people who you will feel are against you who you feel are not supporting you do not run away from those people if you can get to them in a truly open way and say look somehow I'm not working for you whatever something about me or some things I'm doing just doesn't work for you could you please help me understand that because my goal is to be able to work productively with everybody and if you can help me identify I promise you I will consider working on it and if you can get them to tell you what it is you have the power you can then decide you know what I ain't changing and that's your prerogative or you can say wow I didn't realize when I did that that created that reaction to you I can change that but the power is all yours but you have to know so don't run away from those people who aren't supporting you okay try to find out what is it that's causing them not to support you and then you have the power to decide so one last story and I'll leave it alone I had a guy once asked me why are you people in the chemical industry it's one of my boss's boss I said you people he said you College people why are you in the chemical industry I said oh wow um why are you in the chemical industry he said wow I like it um I make money for my family blah blah said well you know that's kind of like me too he said I don't get it okay and and so there's nothing to do with that except you know I do now have with this guy an understanding on my end okay and similarly I've had people who would say I just don't like the way you do XYZ okay and sometimes I would change the way I did it and sometimes I would take somebody I say thank you very much I never you know AR arue debate none of that stuff thank you and I reflect on it I say Well they're going to have to live with that because I'm not going to change that and so you'll figure it out for yourself but but find out don't don't play logic leap in your head where you're figuring it all out let them tell you you know work at it hard so they actually speak the word so you really know where they're coming from thank you Arnold thank you very much thanks thank you je pleasure thank you go to to to um everyone here thank you for your attention we hope that you enjoyed lunch and a little food for thought some powerful messages from Arnold Donald thank you my friend thanks thank you we hope you enjoyed our conversation with Arnold Donald as we dove into international business resilience and his personal story if you learn something from this podcast please support our show by leaving a review with your podcast provider we hope you will join us next time as we continue to explore international business I'm Todd hmail bringing you conversations that matter thank you for tuning in to the slooh international business now conversations that matter podcast we invite you to subscribe to this podcast Series so you don't miss any future episodes to learn more about the executive master of international business program please visit biib B.S slu.edu again that's biib B.S slu.edu