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John J. Legere

John J. Legere Biography

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“Strangely, from a life-change standpoint, I sold the company I was running and got divorced in the same month. And so there I was, at home, and I'm not the CEO. I took a few months thinking about what I wanted to do. When the first call came in about running a company owned by Deutsche Telekom, I thought it was laughable and really not something I'd do. I took the meeting mainly because the headhunter I knew. At first I thought I was just helping her fill out the roster, but then I dug into it.”

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“Deutsche Telekom was a brand that people still loved, the nerds loved it, and it was still there, it was still visible. The advertiser was OK. But it was a mess. It was in my mind, though, intuitively obvious what to do. I had some advisers and friends, and we looked at it and said all you have to do is get the iPhone, buy some spectrum, consolidate the industry, reinvigorate the brand, and take this company public.”

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“On my very first day at T-Mobile, I demanded that every time I spoke publicly to the company, all employees across the country would be invited to watch. I faced legal and all that crap, but ultimately we were able to figure it out. We record it, too, so if somebody can't leave the sales floor, they can watch it later. Another thing I did very early on is give every employee stock, which we continue to do. So every time I speak to them I speak way over some of their heads.”

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“I visit T-Mobile call centers. We've got about 18 major call centers in the US, and before I was CEO, I heard that no CEO had gone to physically visit them. I go in, they meet me outside, we take selfies as I stand like a piece of furniture, I tell them about how things are going - but most importantly, I say thank you and help them see that their behavior and their work has driven the culture of the company that's changed the industry and the whole world. It's a bit of a love affair.”

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“T-Mobile is a young, consumer-driven business, and the average age of my customer outside of Bellevue is 27 or 28. They like outspoken, frank discussion. There was an event where it started to come together, I thought the audience would only care about the MLB guys, but they wanted to know what was on my mind. And I literally snapped about the state of the wireless industry. Over the next 24 hours, there was a lot of stuff that was coming out of my mouth that was meant to stay in Vegas, but it hit a chord. It was an action statement for me that I was going to fix this industry.”

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