[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today grew up on his family's tobacco farm in a small town just east of Raleigh.

In high school, he sold vacuums.

Decades later, he became the chairman of one of the biggest banks in America, and he helped orchestrate the biggest bank merger since the Great Recession.

Today, we will meet Kelly King.

- [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - [Announcer 2] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand, but none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley.

This is home.

- [Announcer 3] for 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people, smart service.

- [Announcer 4] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[uplifting music] - Kelly, welcome to "Side by Side."

I have watched your life over a long period of time.

You are a great American.

You have achieved so much in your life's journey, and yet you grew up in a very humble place.

You came from a humble place, and you went all the way up to be the chairman, CEO, of the sixth largest financial institution in the nation.

55,000 employees, $550 billion in assets.

What is it that brought you along this journey of life in such a successful way?

Give us one or two tips that someone watching us might say, "You know, if I do that in my life, "I too might achieve something of great value."

- Well, thanks Nido, for having me.

It's great to be with you.

And you know, I've been very blessed in my life, as you said.

I did grow up on a very small, very poor tobacco and cotton farm.

But I was fortunate, because that taught you the value of hard work.

It taught you honesty.

It taught you commitment.

And so as I left the farm, I had a deep desire to achieve.

And I had an uncle who fortunately told me and my siblings that get an education, get an education, because we were the first college kids from our family.

And so I did go to East Carolina to get my undergraduate and MBA degree and worked hard, and, but along the way, what I really discovered was that there's an enormous difference between success and happiness.

So I spent the first 10 years just working really, really hard, trying to be successful.

And my definition of success was what the world said it was, get toys, get things.

And in all honesty, Nido, I found that just did not work.

I was successful, I was blessed.

I appreciate that.

I don't take it for granted, but it does not bring happiness.

And so what I would say to people today is that it's really most important to be clear about your purpose in life, and understand that that purpose is what brings a sense of happiness, a sense of peace.

It is not the amount of toys you have.

- How does one determine what his or her purpose in life is?

Is there methodology?

Is there questions one asks?

I know books have been written on the subject, but for you, how does one do that?

- Well, for me, and what I've found in talking with others, and it's a great question, because most people don't really think about their purpose.

Rather, they think that their purpose is just kind of given to 'em.

So, you know, I grew up on a tobacco farm, so I'm gonna be a farmer.

Or my dad was a lawyer, so I'm gonna be a lawyer.

That's just not good.

So it does take some personal time of reflection.

It takes some discernment.

In my case, it takes some prayer.

And so, but what I have found is that very often people's purpose comes out of their childhood.

- Out of their childhood?

- Out of their child, experiences in their childhood.

We have a young man who worked at the bank when I was still there, and when he and his mom were living alone, and he was five years old, and the house burned down to ashes, and he tells the story about how sad that was, and a nice lady in the neighborhood gave them her house to stay in until they could get back on their feet.

- [Nido] Wow.

- And so he had this great sense of how important housing is.

So, you know what?

He works in our mortgage loan department, helping people get in housing.

His purpose is to help people have a good house, coming from his experiences.

So that's my advice to people.

Think back about your childhood, think about the experiences you had, good or bad, and you may find that's where your purpose originates from.

- It fascinates me that you are of course chairman, CEO of BB&T, and then you were primary player in bringing SunTrust and BB&T together, forming what we know today to be Truist Financial Corporation.

And yet, you focus so much on having your employees, your associates in the corporation, to care deeply about their communities.

And you, I read somewhere where you start a program called The Lighthouse Project to reach out in the community.

What is the Lighthouse Project?

What caused you to do it, and what impact has it had in North Carolina?

- So in 2009, right about the time I became CEO, you know, we were in the Great Recession, and people were really struggling.

It was difficult economically, socially, emotionally.

And I was literally flying back from DC one day at some meeting, and I took out a sheet of paper and I said, I wanna really think about what can we do at BB&T then, now Truist.

What can we do to help?

More than what we're already doing.

- To help our communities and our footprint?

- What can we do to help people be more successful and happy?

And we had this idea about Lighthouse Projects, which is- - [Nido] Why did you call it Lighthouse?

- We called it Lighthouse, because you know, a lighthouse on the coast is a structure, but it has a light emanating from it.

That light helps guide people to safety, guide them out of the troubles they're in.

We wanted to have a symbol of what this was about.

So we were trying to do, and what we do today, is we do projects.

So we allocate a certain amount of money every year for teammates, it's totally voluntary, but we encourage them to get together in groups of 15 or 20 people, take the money we give them, but we say, "You can't just go write a check.

"You take that money and you buy materials, "and you go out on company time."

- [Nido] I see.

- And you do projects.

- Yeah.

Like what?

- [Nido] Give us an idea of a project.

- Oh, I worked on many of 'em, like I worked one hour.

- You worked on many?

- Oh yeah.

I worked on all of 'em, every year.

I loved it.

It was, I worked on the Ronald McDonald House one time, and I like to do the outside work, so I was out, you know, helping doing landscape work, planting bushes, and fertilizing, and putting in mulch, and, but lots of times people would be inside painting.

And a lot of these agencies don't have the money to do the things to make their places look nicer.

- [Nido] Yeah.

- And so we go in and do just lots and lots, thousands of projects every year, and have helped, I can't tell you the number of letters I've gotten from these organizations saying this dramatically helped us because we didn't have the money to do the things that make the place a little brighter, a little cheerier, and it changed people's lives.

It's a really good, and it's an expression of what Truist is all about.

And our purpose at Truist is to inspire and build better lives and communities.

And that's one way we do it.

- And of equal importance, it's not just what you do for others.

It's what happens to you when you're doing something good for others.

- Well, that was a revelation to me.

When I penciled out the project, I was all focused on what we would do for the community.

What I did not expect was how much it would do for our own people, for myself.

And so, while I've gotten lots of letters from the agencies, the organizations in the community, I've gotten more from teammates who would say, "This changed my life.

"This gave me an opportunity."

First time in my life, I was surprised.

First time in my life, I've had a chance to go out and work for an organization that's helping little kids or helping handicapped people.

And it changed their lives.

- And there's nothing in it for me, except the feeling of doing good.

- Which is all that really matters.

- Right.

That's all that matters.

And then later, I read, well, I read so much about you, Kelly, but one of the things I remember reading is that there's some nonprofit organization that helps young people or children, and you build some kind of a cabin for them somewhere on the water where they could go and have retreats?

Tell me about that.

- Yeah.

This was a personal project.

I got involved in Eastern North Carolina with a little small organization.

It's actually called the John 3:16 Center.

It's in a very poor area.

It's right between two counties, the two poorest counties in the state.

And so I spend a lot of time there, and I kept seeing all the people out on the lake as having a big time, and then I saw those little kids over at the center in downtown Littleton, not having any fun.

And I just had this deep, I said, "I want them to have a place on the lake too."

So we were blessed and we found a place and we got it.

And, but it was really rundown, and we didn't have the money to pay somebody to come fix it.

So I spent a lot of Saturdays out there, tearing out the old stuff, old dock, building a new dock.

Some of my friends came and helped.

It was a labor of love, but now I'm proud to say the poor kids have a place on the lake as well.

- Yeah.

You know, Viktor Frankl told us about, you have to have the why in your life that defines part of your purpose.

It fascinates me that the chairman, CEO of a large corporation like BB&T would take his weekends to use your own money to buy a house, and then to go out there and with hammer and nail and fix it so they can use it.

That speaks so highly of you, Kelly.

And later, you had an initiative in the bank, I don't know what you called it, but it was focused on happiness.

- Yes.

- I mean, I don't think of financial corporate leaders thinking about happiness.

And all of a sudden you're telling all your people, you know, I want you to be happy.

And did you form programs for them, or give them something to read?

But how did you do that?

- So, one of our core values at BB&T and now Truist is happiness.

- What does happiness mean?

Is it- - Okay, so- I mean, I can be happy going to an ice cream store and buying a, you know, some kind of an ice cream cone.

I'm happy for the moment, right?

- [Kelly] Right.

- But you mean it in a much deeper- - Much deeper.

- Vertical way.

Right.

And I like to explain that, you know, happiness is, to some people, is more like joy.

Like, I ride a Ferris wheel, I'm really happy.

I'm joyful.

That's not what I'm talking about.

It's okay.

It's fun, but it's momentary.

I'm talking about a deeper sense of peace, a sense of security, a sense of enrichment, a sense of my life matters.

My life matters.

And so years ago, as I thought about that, I wanted to help our teammates find that, because I was deeply concerned with my own experience, that just being successful would not bring that sense of happiness.

And so how do you get it?

And so we actually hired a young lady who had a PhD in positive thinking.

It turns out now, as you know, most of the major universities have courses in positive thinking.

- Yeah.

I read about one that has a major in happiness, or happiness discovery - Oh, yeah.

or something.

- Right, right, right.

- Yeah.

And so we created a happiness council, and we asked her to lead it, and we got other teammates on it, and we just gave them a free reign to say, "What things can we do in the bank to help people be happy?"

And a lot of that was not academic, but good discussion of, well, what is, your point, What is happiness?

And what is meaning?

What is enrichment?

But also it turns out that there's some things you can do to actually improve the odds of being happy.

- Like what?

Give us one or two examples.

- So I gotta tell you real quick.

So about three years ago, in the beginning of the pandemic, when things were just so distraught, and I kept being on all these video Zoom calls, and I would hear hundreds of our teammates who were just really distressed.

And invariably one or more would say, "I can't wait for the pandemic to be over "so I can be happy again."

And I started thinking about- - Is that loneliness, being- - It was loneliness.

It was- - Away from other people?

It was fear.

- Yeah.

Remember back.

- Sense of belonging.

Yeah.

- Or lack thereof.

They lack and, exactly.

And so I sat down and I said, what can I do to help?

Can I scratch out some kind of...

I like models, I like steps to things to, so you can walk away and this is what I do.

So I came up with four steps of how to be happy, even in difficult times.

And I don't have the time now to go through it all.

- Well, give 'em to us in brief.

- A brief.

So the number one is to choose to be happy.

- [Nido] It's a choice.

- It's a choice.

- Yeah.

And most people don't see that, because they believe that their life is a function of what goes on around them.

So this bad thing happened, there's a pandemic, there's a recession.

I lost my job, so I'm unhappy.

- So it's what you focus on, therefore.

- What you focus on.

- Yeah.

So the second step is to be clear about your purpose in life.

- Know your why, et cetera.

- Know your why coming.

And I used a book, one of my five great books, this Viktor Frankl book, - Yes.

"Man's Search for Meaning."

And the third is also one of my five great books, great books for people to read.

It's called "Mindset" by Dr. Carol Dweck.

- Yes.

- D-W-E-C-K.

Yes.

Fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

Yeah.

- Growth mindset.

- So you choose to be happy, you're clear about your purpose, you have this growth mindset that says, I believe the truth, which is I am capable of learning and growing and changing all the way through life.

And then the fourth is very interesting, which is to help others.

It turns out one of the most powerful and important things you can do to make yourself happy is to help others.

And a lot of times, Nido, when I say that to people, they say, "Well, I don't have the time "and I don't have the money."

And I quickly say, it doesn't take any money.

It takes very little time.

You know what people need?

They need to know that their life is important, that their life matters.

So it's a little pat on the back, it's a little smile.

It's a little, "Hey, how are you?"

And wait for the answer.

- Encouragement.

- So I encourage people to get up in the morning and imagine someone hands you a handful of imaginary seeds.

These are seeds of hope.

And you go out every day and you pat someone on the back, you give 'em a big smile.

In your mind, take one of those little seeds, throw it down on the ground.

You planted a seed of hope.

And if you'll plant those seeds of hope throughout your life, you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

- So in mathematics, there's something called a vector, which means a direction with force, and some people are auto-vectorial.

They're all about I, me, my, what's in it for me?

Others are allo-vectorial, which means I'm outward direction, and I think that's what you're talking about.

I don't know where I heard you say this.

Maybe you give a speech one time where I heard you say you told the story about somebody in San Francisco.

- [Kelly] Yes.

- It had to do with happiness, I think.

- [Kelly] Yes.

- What was that?

Can you remember the story?

- Yeah, I do.

I do.

And I like to share it with people, because it's sad, but it's also important.

So there was a young man who was very unhappy, left his apartment, walked several miles to the Golden Gate Bridge, climbed to the top, and jumped off to his immediate death.

They found a note in his apartment that afternoon, and the note said, "I'm gonna walk to the bridge.

"If one person smiles at me, I won't jump."

Now think about that.

- Wow.

One person, one life, because of one smile.

But here's another story.

Same bridge, young man named Kevin Hines, whom you can read about on the internet.

Kevin Hines also walked to the bridge, also climbed to the top, also jumped, and survived.

Now, when you jump off the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, it's the same as the jumping off the top of a 28 story building.

- Wow.

When you hit the water, it basically splatters your whole body.

Kevin Hine survived because a sea lion came up and kept him afloat until the Coast Guard got there.

- [Nido] Wow.

- Now, I believe, Kevin- - Is this a real story?

- Real story.

- Read it.

Kevin, and he's written books.

He goes around traveling, talking about it, but he says the same thing.

He says, "When I was walking to the bridge, "I was so distraught, I was so inward, "I couldn't express what I was feeling to anyone.

"All I needed was someone to say to me "that my life mattered."

That little pat on the back, that little smile.

And so I tell people, and it's really true, Nido, you get up every day, you have an enormous opportunity to change the world.

You never know that next person you smile at, a little pat on the back, do something special to help them know that their life matters.

You may change their life, you may save their life, and thereby you will likely change the world.

- Mm.

That's so powerful.

Kelly, you're not just a financial expert and leader of a major corporation.

For almost 50 years, you worked with BB&T.

You never get another job, right?

You start with BB&T at the very lowest level?

- Yeah.

- You moved all the way up for 50 years?

- 50 years.

- 50 years.

I mean, that's the way- - After a while, you get to the top, you know, if you're still around long enough.

[Nido laughs] - You had loyalty and commitment both.

But you're a philosopher too.

- Yeah.

You dissect issues and you treat them with a depth of analytics about life and living.

I hope you write a book about all this, 'cause I think it's fascinating to hear all of that.

I got in the limited time we have, I've gotta ask two questions.

One, I wanna know what you believe makes a really effective, impactful leader.

Clearly, you've been one.

And I also want you to tell me something about this merger.

I mean, you know, a year ago or so, or maybe two years ago, the fruition of the merger of SunTrust, large corporation based in Atlanta, BB&T, large corporation based in Winston-Salem, you and Bill Rogers, both CEOs, came together, agreed on it, went through the complexities of details.

I can't even fathom what it takes to bring two large organizations.

Most of us, customers of a bank, don't think about the intense complexity, for example, of technology.

We take it for granted that we're gonna deposit our check, and we're gonna get reports and all that.

But it must be in hundreds of millions of transactions.

Just give us a glimpse of how does that work?

How does that happen?

Give us a lesson you learn from it, and then tell me what makes a good leader.

Because those two are really very connected.

- Well, let's start with what makes a good leader, because it ties into why the merger has been so successful.

And you know, like you, I've read lots of books about leadership, but it's really, in my mind, three simple characteristics of outstanding leaders.

Number one, they're very clear about the reality they face.

They don't sugarcoat it.

They don't say, "Oh, everything's great."

- [Nido] What is, is.

- What is, is.

Clear about reality.

Then they have a clear vision about how to make it better.

- How do you get that vision to make it better?

- That vision is what is nature, second nature, for really good leaders.

They think about things deeply.

They look at the reality.

They look at the problem.

They conceptualize what- - They seek advice.

- They seek advice.

- They read, they figure, they figure it out.

But then the third is really important.

They have the courage to execute.

A lot of times people will, you know, just not even be aware of what's, how bad it is.

- Or sit back and hope it'll go away.

- Hope it'll go away, or hope somebody else will do something about it.

That's most of what's going on today with so many challenges we have.

But real leaders see the problem, see the opportunity, and they seize it and have the courage to go execute.

In the case of BB&T and SunTrust, it's a classic example.

Both companies were great companies.

We were doing fine, except the world was changing with blinding speed.

Technology advancements, regulatory increases, increased cost.

And so when Bill Rogers and I got together, we both had been in various industry meetings.

We had known each other a long time, and we said, "This is a really tough place.

"We, you know, we are too big to be small, "and we're too small to be big, "and we need to do something."

- Merging resources could be bountifully good for the company.

- Exactly.

- And shareholders.

- Exactly, but it would only work with like-minded, purposeful organizations.

Bill Rogers and I are both very deeply purposeful, driven individual leaders.

- And he's a North Carolina boy, is he not?

- He is.

He is.

We wouldn't have done it otherwise.

No, I'm just kidding.

[Nido laughs] No, no, no.

He's spent his whole work life in Atlanta, it's a great city.

I love it.

And all of Georgia.

But yeah, it was the affinity, the commonality of purpose as the driver of our organization that brought us together.

And then we had to do a lot a lot of work, you know?

- How long did it take, Kelly, from you and Bill discussing the possibility?

I mean, there has to be federal regulatory agreements.

There has to be immense technology enhancements.

People came, people left, people stayed.

I mean, there's a tremendous amount of complexity.

- It takes about three years, and we've done a lot of mergers.

So it takes about three years, and in this case, we anticipated what we could anticipate, regulatory issues.

We, Bill and I had to spend eight hours in front of the House Financial Services Committee, which was not fun, but productive.

But we did not anticipate a pandemic.

So we closed the deal on December of '19.

- [Nido] I see.

- We know what happened on March of '20.

- [Nido] Wow.

- And so much of our merger model was about going out and meeting with the people and talking about the purpose and the mission and the values.

And all of a sudden we got, fortunately, a number of those meetings in before the shutdown, but then we had to go to Zoom.

So we had to learn a new methodology in terms of how to bring these, you know- - Fear, uncertainty in the horizon for all of us.

- That's right.

And so it's a very difficult period for people.

They intellectually know why you're doing it, but for each individual, there's a lot of change.

And change brings the natural tendency of fear.

John Koto wrote a really good book recently called "Change."

And he talks about how naturally, when we are faced with change, we go into the survival mode.

All me, how am I gonna deal with this?

But what you wanna move to as a leader, you and your team, is to a sense of thriving.

This change can be great.

This is wonderful new technology, and new markets, new opportunity.

It's all about that mindset.

You see how it all integrates together?

And so, you know, the merger's been extremely successful in spite of the challenges.

And I will brag and say that I think Truist is one of the best financial institutions in the world.

I'm real proud of Bill and the team now.

I'm officially retired.

I'm still on the board, but it's doing really great work, trying to make the world better.

- So in a, just a short paragraph, are you optimistic about the future of America economically and otherwise?

Or do you see major concerns that we should all be worried about?

- I'm very optimistic, but there are major concerns, Nido, and I'm never gonna try to sugarcoat.

Back to that reality.

We have two major, major issues right now that we must deal with as leaders.

Number one is we have a complete failure of our public school system.

And this is not a criticism of teachers and principals.

It's a structural thing.

But here's the thing, Nido.

Two thirds of the kids in the public school system today, in the third grade, cannot read.

They cannot read.

- Yeah.

And when you think about the reality of that, of two thirds, - Tough.

how are they gonna make a living?

- It's tough.

What's this?

What's, we got 10 seconds.

What's the second point?

- The second is this heightened level of unhappiness.

60% of the people when we do surveys are unhappy.

- [Nido] Emerging from fear, uncertainty?

- Fear and uncertainty of lack of purpose.

- Yeah.

You know, Kelly, I could talk to you all day, because you have a depth of understanding about humanity and about business, about our country and its future.

I thank you very much for the investment of time that you place in society today to make it a better world for all of us in the tomorrows of our life.

Thank you, my friend.

- Thank you for letting me be with you.

Working together, we will make it better.

- Thank you, Kelly.

- [Announcer 1] Funding for "Side by Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by... - [Announcer 2] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand, but none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley.

This is home.

- [Announcer 3] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people, smart service.

- [Announcer 4] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.