Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. As it happened, Sloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, Welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. This past week saw the
Speaker 1: tech sector get rocked as the Federal Reserve signaled interest
Speaker 1: rate hikes sooner than many of us expect it. The
Speaker 1: minutes from the f o MC's latest policy meeting added
Speaker 1: fuel to one of the most intense selloffs since the
Speaker 1: financial crisis, as the Central Brank tries to get a
Speaker 1: grip on inflation. Coming up, we'll explore what policymakers can
Speaker 1: do to help more people effectively compete in a fast
Speaker 1: changing economy. Will do that with Glenn Hubbard. He's dit
Speaker 1: emeritus of the Columbia Business School, and for some insight
Speaker 1: into how to better manage your personal finances with more
Speaker 1: investing options than ever before, we speak to Boston University
Speaker 1: Professor of economics Larry Kotlikoff. He unveils his secrets to
Speaker 1: creating quote money magic, turning up side down conventions when
Speaker 1: it comes to finances and how to manage them. Hey,
Speaker 1: and also a self made executive who was looking to
Speaker 1: capitalize on the cutting edge of the metaverse technology for
Speaker 1: her clients. We're gonna check in with Elite World Group
Speaker 1: CEO Julia hartbreaking down the next wave of monetization in
Speaker 1: the digital world. All that and more to come. We begin, though,
Speaker 1: with a look at this week's issue of the magazine.
Speaker 1: Let's welcome in the editor of Bloomberg Business Week magazine.
Speaker 1: It's Joel Weber. Hey, Joe. We're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: story in depth just a little bit later on. We
Speaker 1: got to talk about the cover here. Jessica Simpson. How
Speaker 1: did she end up being on this week's cover of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week. Well, this is a story that we've
Speaker 1: been interested in for a while because we found out that, uh,
Speaker 1: she had this huge, massive fashion empire, billion dollar fashion empire,
Speaker 1: and had basically given her name over um and then
Speaker 1: everything kind of went awry and she found herself in
Speaker 1: December actually going to bankruptcy court to like basically buy
Speaker 1: back her name. As this is ended up being a
Speaker 1: little bit of a comeback story. UM. Everybody remembers her
Speaker 1: from the Newlyweds and from her pop star days. UM,
Speaker 1: but the business side of that UM is just a
Speaker 1: fascinating story. And now she's basically taken back the taking
Speaker 1: back the reins of her name and the company and
Speaker 1: actually trying to to basically like start over again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's interesting. I feel like it really was
Speaker 1: almost a business school case study and really learning about
Speaker 1: you know, a brand, licensing the different players and how
Speaker 1: it can go right, but then how it can also
Speaker 1: go wrong. And that's really what this gets into, and
Speaker 1: really just the specific players in it. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: and and you know it's like everything was with the
Speaker 1: best intentions, and then you know, reality steps in and
Speaker 1: you know, the partners that UM you had and had
Speaker 1: a great relationship with, you know, basically dies and you're
Speaker 1: you're left with the aftermath of that, UM and so
Speaker 1: what do you do? UM? And the story opens us
Speaker 1: with this incredible scene of her basically giving giving birth
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how to manage our business
Speaker 1: affairs at the same time. UM. So it's a really
Speaker 1: powerful one. And when that UM, we were we were
Speaker 1: thrilled to do on the cover. So the cover story
Speaker 1: Joel is it's all about a very famous woman, but
Speaker 1: another one of the great features this week, it's about
Speaker 1: a much larger group of women that make up a
Speaker 1: key demographic in developing countries that were especially hard hit
Speaker 1: by COVID's impact. It's it's called the Lost Girls of COVID.
Speaker 1: What do we need to know? This is just a
Speaker 1: remarkable story by by Joe Philip avic Um that that
Speaker 1: again we were we're just totally blown away by where
Speaker 1: the story took us. And look, the thesis here is
Speaker 1: that for the last twenty five years or so, we
Speaker 1: have seen extraordinary progress for girls around the world UM
Speaker 1: and and that has been just a major success story.
Speaker 1: As as girls have become educated and of access to healthcare, UM,
Speaker 1: we've seen them basically become economic engine throughout the developing world.
Speaker 1: What COVID does, UM has done, UM and is continuing
Speaker 1: to do, is actually undo a lot of those games.
Speaker 1: And the story takes us um Jill story takes us
Speaker 1: specifically to Kenya, but it also speaks to again what's
Speaker 1: happening throughout the developing world. UM where and in Jill
Speaker 1: Jill story we have UM, young women, UM, teenagers who
Speaker 1: basically no longer could go to go to to be educated,
Speaker 1: UM end up having to UM be young mothers, UM,
Speaker 1: which takes them out of the economic progress that they
Speaker 1: would have previously been able to experience. UM. That's a
Speaker 1: wrenching story, and it's just a little microcosm of of
Speaker 1: something that is being wrought around the world sort of
Speaker 1: invisibly right now, but we'll have massive implications in the
Speaker 1: coming decades. Got to say, what jumped out at me
Speaker 1: a reminder that you know, the whole idea of to
Speaker 1: laying pregnancy, it's a leading killer of young women in
Speaker 1: the developing world. I mean, there was one stat in
Speaker 1: their jol about team pregnancy rates in some Kenyan countries
Speaker 1: tripling in the first few months of the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: and some early numbers indicating the adolescent maternal deaths and
Speaker 1: still births increasing during that same period. Like things that
Speaker 1: maybe we take for granted in the developed world typically, UM,
Speaker 1: you know about not getting pregnant when you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: or you know, if you do give birth, you're not
Speaker 1: going to die typically from it. But you know, the
Speaker 1: developing world and the pandemic just exacerbating these problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that just speaks to a fascinating um
Speaker 1: part of the story to me, which is, look like,
Speaker 1: there's clearly the health story that we can talk about
Speaker 1: all day long and have been for for going on
Speaker 1: two years now, but there's going to be the knock
Speaker 1: on effects, some of which we are beginning to understand
Speaker 1: now as the story shows, and then other ones that
Speaker 1: we're just not going to understand the legacy of something
Speaker 1: like the pandemic could and being completely different than anything
Speaker 1: that I have to do with with health help, like
Speaker 1: the specific health effects of COVID, as the story shows,
Speaker 1: And so it's just a fascinating one that we should
Speaker 1: be aware of and just recognize that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of nuances that are going to become a parent
Speaker 1: and this one just should be like I had no idea,
Speaker 1: but it's just heartbreaking, heartbreaking when you think about the
Speaker 1: progress that has been made in is that Jeopardy? No,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Bloomberg Business Week editor Joe weber
Speaker 1: Well coming up an economist guide to personal finance, Boston
Speaker 1: University professor and New York Times bestselling author Larry Katlakoff
Speaker 1: reveals his money Secrets. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Spinovit from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: It's a new year. It's a time when we all
Speaker 1: make resolutions about a lot of stuff, right, Tim, I
Speaker 1: mean some we keep, some not so much. And if
Speaker 1: you've made a resolution involving a personal finance make over,
Speaker 1: our next guest is someone you'll want to hear from.
Speaker 1: Larry Kotlikoff is a Harvard trained economist, New York Times
Speaker 1: bestselling author, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of
Speaker 1: Economic Research, also a professor of economics at Boston University.
Speaker 1: And his new book, He's Got One Out. It came
Speaker 1: out this past week. It's called Money Magic and Economists
Speaker 1: Secrets to more money, less risk, and a better life.
Speaker 1: Some of what he says will definitely surprise you. So,
Speaker 1: what is the biggest thing that we're getting wrong when
Speaker 1: it comes to conventional wisdom when thinking about retirement. Well,
Speaker 1: there's so many things we're gotting wrong. We're not sending
Speaker 1: it up, We're not we're retiring to early. We're taking
Speaker 1: some street to early. We're we think we should get
Speaker 1: out of the stock market in old age, when economics
Speaker 1: actually says you should. As you're going through retirement, you
Speaker 1: should be putting a larger and larger share of your
Speaker 1: dwindling retirement assets fungible assets into stock. Tim and I
Speaker 1: were just talking about this. Remember when it used to
Speaker 1: be like your age minus and that would you know,
Speaker 1: figure out how much would be in fixed income versus
Speaker 1: the equity markets? Um, anyway, please continue? That's yeah, that's
Speaker 1: another one of the rules of dumb of the financial
Speaker 1: conventional financial planning, the the But we also need to
Speaker 1: understand that we should be timing the market for risk
Speaker 1: when things are riskier like they are right now. We
Speaker 1: don't know what, uh where the economy is going to
Speaker 1: be able to absorb all the illness from Macron, even
Speaker 1: though you know any one person may not be as
Speaker 1: likely to die. You know, that's more risk. So we
Speaker 1: should be cutting back on our stock holdings in times
Speaker 1: of risk. So that's actually what we see happening. When
Speaker 1: you sat down to write this book. Why did you
Speaker 1: want to do it specifically? Because you you really talk
Speaker 1: about when it comes to living standards and that these
Speaker 1: financial decisions that we can make can really impact our
Speaker 1: our living standards going forward. Yeah, well, street is focused
Speaker 1: on our wealth, and economists are focused on our welfare
Speaker 1: or welfare connects to what we get to spend in
Speaker 1: our living standard. And economists have been working on personal
Speaker 1: finance for a hundred years, starting with a work of
Speaker 1: Brving Fisher in the es the Yale professor um So,
Speaker 1: I got into grad school and economics because I wanted
Speaker 1: to help. I thought it could be a field that
Speaker 1: could help society, and I realized working a lot on
Speaker 1: personal financial financial issues, that what was being conveyed to
Speaker 1: the public as advice was complete right angles, completely at
Speaker 1: odds with what economics was recommending on every every in
Speaker 1: every area, whether how much to save, when to retire,
Speaker 1: when to take so security, how to think about your
Speaker 1: longevity risk, just completely across the board. It was all
Speaker 1: oriented towards product sales when it came from conventional planning economics.
Speaker 1: And then you had economists basically never talking to the
Speaker 1: public because uh, they didn't have what you know, a
Speaker 1: clear idea of what precisely to say, and they didn't
Speaker 1: think was their job to actually prescribe solutions. But I've
Speaker 1: been working in developing personal financial software. We have a
Speaker 1: tool called maxifi dot com m a x i fi
Speaker 1: dot com that I've been working on for thirty years,
Speaker 1: developing the software which does deliver the economics to the solution.
Speaker 1: I but you know, most people don't want to run software.
Speaker 1: So I said, let me take everything I've learned over
Speaker 1: the years from economists, from the software, from my own research,
Speaker 1: put it into this book. And that's where I'm coming
Speaker 1: from to help people. So I'm just at max I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the planner right now. It's it's it's really interesting, Larry.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm wondering, you know, how how people can put
Speaker 1: your lessons into practice. I mean, what's what's a practical
Speaker 1: way to think about the advice that you've learned over
Speaker 1: your career. Well, I mean the book. You know, if
Speaker 1: they bought the book, Uh, if they don't want to
Speaker 1: actually you know, run the software, they buy the book,
Speaker 1: the lessons from the software are you know, mostly in
Speaker 1: the book. Uh. So you know, if we're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out in economic because how to have a smooth
Speaker 1: living standard, how to raise your living standard safely, like
Speaker 1: doing smart things with respect to sousecurity and retirement accounts
Speaker 1: to lower your lifetime taxes. How the price decisions. If
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about buying a a new boat, how much
Speaker 1: is that going to cost me a big boat? Not
Speaker 1: a new boat, but a big, big boat. How much
Speaker 1: do you really going to cost me in terms of
Speaker 1: my ongoing living standards? So I need to understand that
Speaker 1: tradeoff in order to decide whether it's worth it to me.
Speaker 1: Uh So pricing risk, but also when it comes to investment,
Speaker 1: understanding the range of my living standard outcomes. Wall Street
Speaker 1: is focused on, Uh, you're saving what you're currently saving,
Speaker 1: You're spending some targeted amount that has no connection to
Speaker 1: what you're actually afford and and then accumulating this stuff
Speaker 1: up on the Monte Carlo simulation simulating whether or not
Speaker 1: you run out of money. But economics set is you're
Speaker 1: going to adjust. You're spending all the time, and so
Speaker 1: therefore we have to look at the trajectory of your
Speaker 1: living standard path. So tell us about some of the
Speaker 1: others and kings um that you get into your book
Speaker 1: and you talk about specifically, you know, you get into
Speaker 1: social Security, you talk about you know something that Tim
Speaker 1: and I have talked a lot about I just sent
Speaker 1: a daughter off to college. Um, and you know, higher education,
Speaker 1: especially from private institutions, it's really expensive. You're talking seventy
Speaker 1: eight dollars a year. Yeah, yeah, And I say, you know,
Speaker 1: I have a chapter entitled don't borrow for college. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a chapter on you know, married for money. There's
Speaker 1: a chapter title about divorce like and I basically you
Speaker 1: know how a divorce without going to divorce war. So
Speaker 1: the book really covers the entire gamut of personal financial decisions.
Speaker 1: As for college, you know, there's evidence that going to
Speaker 1: Harvard relative to some other university is uh not gonna
Speaker 1: matter much to your career earnings because it's how hard,
Speaker 1: how well you you work, and how diligently and how
Speaker 1: creative you are. I mean, Harvard collects really uh you know,
Speaker 1: special people who are very good at working very hard
Speaker 1: and also our you know, talented in other ways. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily add any value to them. So why
Speaker 1: should you pay for you know, seventy tho dollars a
Speaker 1: year when you can you know, have the same career
Speaker 1: if you go to Wake Forest that will make much
Speaker 1: lower price. I'm not sure to Wake Forest is cheaper actually,
Speaker 1: so I'm just starting that. But that's the idea. Let's
Speaker 1: chop around for a school that's affordable. The kids that
Speaker 1: go to college never end, never finished. So if you
Speaker 1: borrow for the luxury of dropping out of college, this
Speaker 1: is crazy. Who invests? Who bars money to invest in
Speaker 1: something where they know right as the tiko chance of
Speaker 1: getting nothing. That's why there's a chapter called don't borrow
Speaker 1: for college. It's very strong, uh strong language worrying people
Speaker 1: off from this. That would be you. Professor of economics
Speaker 1: Larry Kotlikoff his new book Money Magic and Economist Secrets
Speaker 1: to More Money, less risk, and a better life. It's
Speaker 1: out now the way later on something perhaps to help
Speaker 1: you with your new year's weight loss and fitness resolutions,
Speaker 1: we're gonna check in on the app Strava and in
Speaker 1: keeping with that, still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, Prescription
Speaker 1: weight loss drugs are working, so why is it so
Speaker 1: hard to get your hands on them? The story behind
Speaker 1: effective medicines that most doctors well they're not prescribing and
Speaker 1: insurers aren't covering. This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial
Speaker 1: capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one, O
Speaker 1: six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six to the
Speaker 1: country Sirius XM Chamber one and around the globe the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business at and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes
Speaker 1: Tim Stenovan on bloom Bird Radio. Obesity. It's a disease,
Speaker 1: and there are definitely ways to fight it, including prescription
Speaker 1: drugs that work. The problem is most doctors are not
Speaker 1: prescribing them, and insurers they're not footing the bills. We're
Speaker 1: talking about g LP ones and and to help us
Speaker 1: understand what exactly they do, what they are, and why
Speaker 1: they're important, we're joined by Bloomberg News healthcare reporter Emma Court.
Speaker 1: She wrote the piece. She joined us along with the
Speaker 1: editor of Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber. Doctors have the
Speaker 1: stigma around it. It's like it's still in their mind.
Speaker 1: Can be a behavioral problem that science can't necessarily solve.
Speaker 1: Insurance on top of that, looks at this new class
Speaker 1: of drug and they're not necessarily throwing money at it.
Speaker 1: All of which, you know, kind of leaves this solution
Speaker 1: to a big problem someone on the shelf. But but
Speaker 1: now I'm talking on the turn, and I want to
Speaker 1: hear more from ms Emma, Uh what what what out
Speaker 1: of this story coming to being and and how what
Speaker 1: kind of potential does this class of drugs really have.
Speaker 1: The piece started, there were a couple of early threads,
Speaker 1: but I started hearing about some startups that we're trying
Speaker 1: to treat obesity and and help people with weight loss
Speaker 1: using medication and telemedicine, so these like virtual doctors visits,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was sort of an interesting approach,
Speaker 1: and at the same time with hearing about pharmaceutical companies
Speaker 1: trying to develop better obesity drugs and um, you know,
Speaker 1: as I learned more about the space, I just kept
Speaker 1: coming back to this point of like, you know, even
Speaker 1: previous to these GLP one drugs that are starting to
Speaker 1: be developed for weight loss and obesity specifically, they would
Speaker 1: previously been used in diabetes, there have been prescription drugs
Speaker 1: that can help people lose weight that are rarely used. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, and this is going back several years, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different complicated reasons for that, But
Speaker 1: I kept kind of just being struck by the discrepancy
Speaker 1: between the fact that you know, many people are are
Speaker 1: obese or overweight UM in the US, you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of people, UM. And yet people are consistently
Speaker 1: being told to diet, to exercise, and they're not being
Speaker 1: told about the other option that's available for them. All right, Emma.
Speaker 1: The thing I find like crazy, like blows my mind
Speaker 1: a little bit is, and you write this, the biggest
Speaker 1: constraint and weight loss drugs remains buy in from the
Speaker 1: broader medical industry. How can doctors who potentially see this
Speaker 1: as something that could really like prescribing one of these
Speaker 1: drugs help one of their obese patients. How how are
Speaker 1: they allowed, you know, as a doctor, not to prescribe it.
Speaker 1: That's a really good question, Carol. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: quote a doctor, an obesity doctor and the story who
Speaker 1: says sort of, you know, if you treated diabetes or
Speaker 1: hypertension in this way, like you know, a doctor would
Speaker 1: lose their their medical license. I mean, it's kind of
Speaker 1: remarkable that, you know, we're very comfortable prescribing and by way,
Speaker 1: I mean, doctor is prescribing medications for so many different
Speaker 1: kinds of medical conditions, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: this helps to do with the way obesity has previously
Speaker 1: been seen. Right, people think of obesity or or being
Speaker 1: overweight as really being a something that you kind of
Speaker 1: did to yourself, right, And we kind of get into
Speaker 1: this more in the piece. But you didn't work hard
Speaker 1: enough to lose weight, right, this is your fault, um
Speaker 1: and um. As a result, this is treated as as
Speaker 1: a lifestyle condition. If you're eating too much, you're not
Speaker 1: active enough, um. And there's some more complicated science that's
Speaker 1: come out in the last several decades that shows that
Speaker 1: our bodies really do have a big influence over how
Speaker 1: we you know, when we stop eating, you know when
Speaker 1: we're hungry, when we feel satisfied after we eat, and
Speaker 1: and that there's more biologically going on than merely sort
Speaker 1: of you know, refraining from getting on the treadmill every day,
Speaker 1: which is what I think a lot of people unfortunately
Speaker 1: still think, and even even doctors and certainly people who
Speaker 1: struggle with their weight themselves. Well, I'm just gonna make
Speaker 1: one comment because I know Tim has question, but I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna I wrote a note being obese is big business.
Speaker 1: And it supports a lot that's out there anyway. That's
Speaker 1: my that's my opinion piece. It doesn't. It's a good
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a good thing for us to be
Speaker 1: thinking about on in the new year, when a lot
Speaker 1: of people have different fitness goals and weight loss goals
Speaker 1: that are associated with the new year. I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that m and and
Speaker 1: obesity because I was I was I'm always shocked to
Speaker 1: see these statistics about you know, how many Americans are
Speaker 1: are obese or overweight three and four and estimated two
Speaker 1: million people. Can you talk a little bit though about
Speaker 1: comorbidities here and the dangers of being overweight. They've come
Speaker 1: to the to the to the surface a lot when
Speaker 1: in discussions of COVID. But but beyond that, the big
Speaker 1: kind of concern about having excess weight is obviously that's
Speaker 1: defined by the body mass index UH standard. Right, So
Speaker 1: people who are um obese are at higher risk of
Speaker 1: developing various um medical conditions, including um diabetes. Another respects
Speaker 1: tied to obesity is actually all cause mortality, so literally
Speaker 1: death by any call. That was Bloomberg News healthcare reporter
Speaker 1: Emma Cord find more stories from the current issue of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week magazine. It's online at business week dot Com,
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal, and also on newsstands. She, by
Speaker 1: the way, wrote the piece. Bloomberg Business Week editor Joe
Speaker 1: Webber joined us for that conversation as well. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg business Week coming up next. At an uncertain
Speaker 1: moment for the global economy, our next guest says that policymakers, well,
Speaker 1: they need to be bold. He has some specific ideas
Speaker 1: later on to pop star Jessica Simpson's bold move to
Speaker 1: reclaim her company and her own name. It's a great story.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week, we got the minutes from the Federal Reserve's
Speaker 1: last meeting of one. Those minutes indicating the Central Bank
Speaker 1: is ready to speed up the timeline for raising entry straits.
Speaker 1: Our next guest thinks the f O m C has
Speaker 1: been a little bit slow with its policy decisions of
Speaker 1: late Glenn Hubbard is dean emeritus and professor of Finance
Speaker 1: and Economics at Columbia Business School. He's also the former
Speaker 1: chairman of the U S Council of Economic Advisors. He
Speaker 1: was that under President George W. Bush. He was Dean
Speaker 1: when you were at the Columbia Business School, he was.
Speaker 1: That's why I still have to call him Dean Hubbard.
Speaker 1: I just you know, it's it's what I called him then,
Speaker 1: and we'll call him forever. Probably it makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. By the way, to be fair, we caught
Speaker 1: up with him earlier in the week that was before
Speaker 1: those f O m C meeting minutes came out and
Speaker 1: really rocked the financial markets. We had him on the
Speaker 1: to talk about his new book. That book is out
Speaker 1: later this month. It is called The Wall and the Bridge,
Speaker 1: Fear and Opportunity and Disruptions Wake in a Dean Hubbard
Speaker 1: lays at a path to a brighter economic future. It
Speaker 1: all begins with the need for sound decisions in the
Speaker 1: near term. The inflation concerns I think are real. I
Speaker 1: think monetary policy has been behind the curve, and we've
Speaker 1: spent probably too much time on demand and not enough
Speaker 1: time on getting supply chains right and supply right. So
Speaker 1: I think that can still sort itself out. But it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely a worry. I worry. You know, the sort
Speaker 1: of the theme in the book as well, that there's
Speaker 1: some slower moving things that are even more dangerous for
Speaker 1: our economy. Big positive changes in technology and globalization that
Speaker 1: leave many of us quite much better off, that makes
Speaker 1: some of us worse off in our politics and our
Speaker 1: economics are effected. So the question is, Dean Hubbard, what
Speaker 1: are the solutions that you propose to tackle some of
Speaker 1: these big picture challenges that, by the way, are are
Speaker 1: much bigger than what we think about with the omicron
Speaker 1: variant or even getting beyond this pandemic. I mean, the
Speaker 1: genesis of this goes back to before President Trump was elected.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, we're thinking about decades of change that again
Speaker 1: have been largely positive for the American economy. We all
Speaker 1: celebrate technological advance and globalization, but for many individuals in
Speaker 1: many communities, the news has not been so positive. You know,
Speaker 1: Chances are what anyone listening to this took coon one
Speaker 1: oh one. I hope they liked the course, and their
Speaker 1: professor probably said something like, you know, technological advance, trade
Speaker 1: makes us better off, and then probably mumbled something. Because
Speaker 1: the gainers can compensate the losers. The problem is we
Speaker 1: haven't been doing that. And you asked about solutions, and
Speaker 1: I think they're big, bold things we can do to
Speaker 1: to build bridges to help people compete in the world,
Speaker 1: which would be everything from bold support for community colleges
Speaker 1: and training, uh, support for low wage work in the country,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, an attitude shift in Washington and in
Speaker 1: the economics profession that notices these things. It goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to what Adam Smith would have taught us,
Speaker 1: founder of economics. We really really need to help people compete. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, first of all, music to our ears. I
Speaker 1: have a degree in economics. I went to Barnard College,
Speaker 1: worked actually at the business school. Tim has an NBA
Speaker 1: from Columbia Business School and was there when you were Dean.
Speaker 1: That's why I have to call you dean. I can't
Speaker 1: even call you. So we're we're all in on this,
Speaker 1: you know. I do think about some of the gaps
Speaker 1: and divisions that we have in our society, certainly um
Speaker 1: exacerbated by the pandemic, but you know, innovation embracing it
Speaker 1: like not everybody has been able to benefit by all
Speaker 1: the disruption and innovation out there, your ideas and your
Speaker 1: what you write about in this book about bridges versus walls.
Speaker 1: How can that help more people benefit in our society
Speaker 1: and our economy? Another great question. Here's the problem. Walls
Speaker 1: are very seductive. They're very seductive for politicians to tell
Speaker 1: people I'm going to protect you. I'm going to protect
Speaker 1: you from trade, or from immigration, or from technological advance.
Speaker 1: But they the flip side of a wall is I'm
Speaker 1: also protecting you from all the good things that come
Speaker 1: from all of that. The right answer to the wall
Speaker 1: isn't what economists often talk about, which is just let
Speaker 1: the market rip the kind of loss affair if you will,
Speaker 1: the right answers building bridges, and I think if we
Speaker 1: focus on a preparing people to compete in the world
Speaker 1: that is and will be, and reconnect them when they
Speaker 1: fall out of the economic boat, that's important. You know.
Speaker 1: Classical economists like Smith always felt that the goal of
Speaker 1: an economy is mass flourish. It's everyone participating. That should
Speaker 1: be our moral and our economic imperative. We've got to
Speaker 1: push back on the wall, Dean Hubbard. We just haven't
Speaker 1: been a minute and a half, and then we'll do
Speaker 1: some more news and come back some more. But you
Speaker 1: know we're talking about you know you do in your
Speaker 1: book about building bridges. Who best builds those bridges that
Speaker 1: we need today? Is it politicians? Is a corporate leaders?
Speaker 1: Who is it? I think it's all of the above.
Speaker 1: Business leaders have to understand that social support for the system,
Speaker 1: meaning mark hit capitalism isn't a given, and business leaders
Speaker 1: need to acknowledge that and pitch in. In the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about examples, uh why George Eastman of business
Speaker 1: leaders who built entire communities largely for their own business,
Speaker 1: but also to help others. Government needs to begin by
Speaker 1: just noticing the problem and looking at what worked in
Speaker 1: the past, like the land grant colleges or the g
Speaker 1: I Bill. So it's really all of the above. Is
Speaker 1: there the political will to get that done in Washington? Now? Well,
Speaker 1: the cheap answer would be to say no, But I
Speaker 1: say yes. And the reason I say yes is we're
Speaker 1: having a sterile debate over capitalism versus socialism as opposed
Speaker 1: to solving people's problems. There is a huge opportunity for
Speaker 1: a leader, be he or she a Democrat or Republican,
Speaker 1: to come in and say, you know what, I can
Speaker 1: make people in communities better off. That's a winner. How
Speaker 1: has the pandemic You're already writing this book and you
Speaker 1: note that UM and then the pandemic hit. How has
Speaker 1: that impacted your thinking? And you're writing, Well, the pandemic,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, makes it clear that there's not
Speaker 1: one single labor market. There's some individuals who use technology
Speaker 1: to work at home. There are many Americans for whom
Speaker 1: that's not a real possibility. And not just the pandemic today,
Speaker 1: but the future, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to
Speaker 1: the adaptation of the economy to fight climate change. These
Speaker 1: are all things that suggest really big structural shifts about
Speaker 1: to happen, and we really need to get ahead of
Speaker 1: them in a way we didn't get ahead of earlier
Speaker 1: technological changes or globalization. You know, we talk a lot
Speaker 1: about incentives, and we talked about market incentives. We learn
Speaker 1: a lot about incentives in business school. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what the incentives are for policymakers to actually make these
Speaker 1: types of changes, because I think many people could argue
Speaker 1: that a lot of them look short term, right to
Speaker 1: years an election cycle, six years perhaps or four years
Speaker 1: for presidents. What are the incentives here for for policymakers, well,
Speaker 1: I think many policymakers think this is all just too
Speaker 1: hard to do. It's easier just to throw out words
Speaker 1: like let's build a wall. The problem with that is
Speaker 1: it's not too hard to do. In the middle of
Speaker 1: the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln launched the Land Grant, Colleges,
Speaker 1: Homestead Act, Transcontinental Railroad. I think that was a pretty
Speaker 1: tough time for decision making. Is World War Two was
Speaker 1: coming to close. We certainly did the g I Bill
Speaker 1: for welcoming service people coming home, so we can do this.
Speaker 1: I think a politician who figures out that these sort
Speaker 1: of structural fixes actually help a lot of people probably
Speaker 1: finds political goal, not just economical. You have a great
Speaker 1: line in your book. An overarching lesson for economic policy
Speaker 1: is the greater the benefits of disruption from openness, the
Speaker 1: more gainers should compensate losers. Because disruption innovation, right, we
Speaker 1: certainly don't want to stop it. It has created some
Speaker 1: incredible things, but people, industry things are impacted people individuals, right,
Speaker 1: and we need to not just ignore that well, and
Speaker 1: and to not ignore it means to notice it, you know.
Speaker 1: Comment in the book, my wife has always said this
Speaker 1: great categorization of the world into two groups, economists and
Speaker 1: real people. She always reminds me that, you know, economists
Speaker 1: to think about all these benefits of things, but we
Speaker 1: never really process what's happening to a lot of individuals
Speaker 1: and communities. Politicians are real people, but they need our
Speaker 1: help in noticing this. That's Glen Hubbard, dean emeritus Professor
Speaker 1: of Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. I have
Speaker 1: to say to him. What I loved is there's stuff
Speaker 1: in the book where you were there, you know, at
Speaker 1: the Business School, you know, hearing those presentations and those meetings.
Speaker 1: So that was pretty cool. Yeah, it was kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: There was this and then this is partly what the
Speaker 1: book is based on. This one. This this this big
Speaker 1: talk that Dean Hubbard gave along with the Professor Ray
Speaker 1: who who was my professor at the time as well,
Speaker 1: about populism and and it was ahead of the election,
Speaker 1: just five days before election. I think it's fair to
Speaker 1: say the results of that surprised a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and definitely ahead of the curve on that one. Hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, he was previously the chairman of the
Speaker 1: U S Council of Economic Advisors that was under President
Speaker 1: George W. Bush. He also serves on the boards of
Speaker 1: a DP black Rock Fixed Income Funds and also I
Speaker 1: Met Life and One More Time. His new book, The
Speaker 1: Wall in the Bridge Fear an Opportunity in Disruptions Wake
Speaker 1: that comes out later this month. That wraps up the
Speaker 1: first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanivac.
Speaker 1: Coming up in our next hour, Nascent Media powerhouse looking
Speaker 1: to carve out virtual space for her clients in the metaverse.
Speaker 1: All about the metaverse, apparently, Tim, we're still figuring. I'm
Speaker 1: still I'm still living in real life. I'm trying to,
Speaker 1: at least I'm trying to. Amid Covid also a fitness app,
Speaker 1: looks to expand beyond high level athletes by breaking an
Speaker 1: important barrier. But this is all about you. Sign up
Speaker 1: in January, make a resolution. You just got a hold
Speaker 1: until January. But I gotta tell you I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't work out this morning, and that was on my
Speaker 1: list of things to But you're loyal user of the app.
Speaker 1: I'm a loyal user of the app. Yeah, maybe after
Speaker 1: work today. All right, Well, you're a loyal user of
Speaker 1: the app. Have you done any traveling lately? I'm planning
Speaker 1: to you next week. Well, Pursuits actually addresses that. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go around the world with our Bloomberg Pursuits team,
Speaker 1: like all the places you want to check out, maybe
Speaker 1: in two when it comes to travel up next though,
Speaker 1: First we're gonna get to our cover story, how pop
Speaker 1: star wants reality Star. Then business smuggl Jessica Simpson built
Speaker 1: a billion dollar business, lost it, and then bought it back.
Speaker 1: Chicken of the Sea anyone. If you don't know that reference,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to stick around for that story. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the
Speaker 1: reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business
Speaker 1: magazine plus global business, finance and tech news as it
Speaker 1: happened Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer in Bloomberg Quick
Speaker 1: Takes Tim Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, am Carol Masser,
Speaker 1: and plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the next big Thing
Speaker 1: in Fashion. A believer of Metaverse Technology, laying out her
Speaker 1: vision of success. We're going to catch up with Elite
Speaker 1: World Group CEO Julia Hart, plus the next big challenge
Speaker 1: for the popular fitness apps Strava, and an optimistic peak
Speaker 1: at trips to plan in the coming year. You know,
Speaker 1: once this whole pandemic blows over as we enter a
Speaker 1: year three of it, we're gonna have a travel takeover
Speaker 1: from our team at Bloomberg Pursuits. I gotta say, there's
Speaker 1: so many places on that list that where would you go? Uh?
Speaker 1: Where wound? I go? First? I want to do some diving,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest, that makes sense. Love to go
Speaker 1: on a safari to first up, though, let's get to
Speaker 1: this week's cover story about the entertainer turned businesswoman that
Speaker 1: licensed out her name from a rave retail products. She
Speaker 1: did really well. It became a one billion dollar business
Speaker 1: until it wasn't doing well. We're talking about the Chicken
Speaker 1: of the Sea pop star Jessica Simpson. Carol, I know
Speaker 1: you're a fan of The Newly Weds, that reality show
Speaker 1: A long time ago. Yeah, long time ago. Uh, a
Speaker 1: very long time ago, right, but it's still I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think still a lot of people remember Jessica Simpson
Speaker 1: from From That Uh and from her music as well.
Speaker 1: But let's let's get into how things went arrived for
Speaker 1: for Simpson. We're gonna do that with Bloomberg business Week
Speaker 1: editor Joel Webber, also with Bloomberg News High Yield and
Speaker 1: Distressed Credit reporter Eliza ronalds Hannon. Yeah, well, she fell
Speaker 1: into the brand management industry, where, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: so difficult for celebrities to finance their own endeavors. Um
Speaker 1: they often are the clients or part of the portfolio
Speaker 1: of a company that specializes in owning brands. But as
Speaker 1: part of that model, which many say is not sustainable,
Speaker 1: those companies really buy the brands to to run them
Speaker 1: out and they don't reinvest. So it's really a demonstration
Speaker 1: of how unsustainable that model is and how it may
Speaker 1: be in fact, more valuable for the face behind the
Speaker 1: brand to have more of an active steak in what's
Speaker 1: happening in order for it to kind of reflect all
Speaker 1: the potential I have. Eliza, I'm curious, you know, I
Speaker 1: always love talking to people after reading these stories because
Speaker 1: I can learn how the sausage was made. But I'm
Speaker 1: wondering how you know, your you cover high yield and
Speaker 1: distressed credit and how how did you come to find
Speaker 1: yourself writing about Jessica Simpson, Well, it fell into my
Speaker 1: pur view because the only way that she was able
Speaker 1: to get her brand back was because the you know,
Speaker 1: the parent company which is part of this unsustainable model,
Speaker 1: had to file for bankruptcy. And you know, in the
Speaker 1: bankruptcy auction phase, the assets you know were available for purchase.
Speaker 1: So she already owned half of you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit less than half of the equity stake in her
Speaker 1: own business, but this gave her the opportunity to buy
Speaker 1: the rest of it, and and on the cheap as well,
Speaker 1: because assets in bankruptcy are always you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit um discounted. How does this go down? You lose
Speaker 1: your name? Where do you go from there? Because all
Speaker 1: roads lead to Delaware when that happens, right, well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it was a very conscious and um you know,
Speaker 1: potentially arguably savvy decision that she made back in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, when her business partner at the time, Vince Kimudo,
Speaker 1: who helped finance the operation and also licensed and manufactured
Speaker 1: some of the goods, he died. She needed, um you know,
Speaker 1: a capital injection in order to take her business to
Speaker 1: the next step. And you know, it's hard to get
Speaker 1: financing in the public markets, as we know, and it's
Speaker 1: um you know, she's not quite big enough of an
Speaker 1: operation to necessarily be able to conduct the fundraising process
Speaker 1: herself or or within her business. So you tap one
Speaker 1: of these brand management companies in order to you know,
Speaker 1: when they buy you, you get a lot of that cash,
Speaker 1: and you also get arguably a parent company who's going
Speaker 1: to be invested in your success. Now, those companies are
Speaker 1: publicly traded and they are under all the same pressures
Speaker 1: as any company is to deliver on margin projections, and
Speaker 1: you know they often end up cutting corners and really
Speaker 1: just ringing dry their assets and then kind of casting
Speaker 1: them aside. You do get into the players, like I
Speaker 1: had no idea that Camudo had such a big role
Speaker 1: in building up this company, and he really was kind
Speaker 1: of a godfather to all of them, and her mother too,
Speaker 1: where we know parents when it comes to you younger
Speaker 1: folks can either be a detriment or helpful. Well, look
Speaker 1: at her dad and and and the impact that their
Speaker 1: dad had on the career, on her career, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, even in the case of Camudo, it was
Speaker 1: actually his son who first told him to look look
Speaker 1: into working with Jessica Simpsons. So it really is a
Speaker 1: multigenerational affair, this whole story. I think when people allies
Speaker 1: to see that a celebrities associated with the brand or
Speaker 1: has their own brand, people often ask the question about,
Speaker 1: you know, how much is this individual who we know
Speaker 1: from you know, stage and screen, uh, and what newly
Speaker 1: weds right Carol involved in day to day operations of
Speaker 1: the business, and how much is sort of other people
Speaker 1: do How would you describe Jessica Simpsons and involved in
Speaker 1: right now? Well, like Joel said, her mother is really
Speaker 1: the biggest brands behind the operation. She's been extremely involved
Speaker 1: since day one, and she's certainly got a head for business,
Speaker 1: and she and Jessica work really closely um with a
Speaker 1: team that's not really that big. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: at one point there were only eight of them or
Speaker 1: so when they were owned by sequential brands. But you know,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of help because one of the
Speaker 1: things that's important to know is that the business itself,
Speaker 1: for the operations that are required are pretty limited because
Speaker 1: you're not actually manufacturing the goods and you are. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the supply chains outsourced through the
Speaker 1: licensing process. That was Bloomberg News High Yield and Distressed
Speaker 1: Credit reporter Eliza Ronald's hand, and she co wrote this
Speaker 1: week's cover story with Stephanie Clifford. Are big thanks, of
Speaker 1: course to Business Week editor Joel Webber as well. It's
Speaker 1: a great read, and I highly recommend. We just touched
Speaker 1: on it, But there's so much detail in this to
Speaker 1: where there are things I didn't know. I knew the brand,
Speaker 1: I'd seen it in various retailers, um, but how it
Speaker 1: was built up, and just all of the kind of
Speaker 1: business comings and goings behind it, and all the individuals
Speaker 1: in that I had no idea. Her mom was so involved.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about any of it. Really. It
Speaker 1: was one of those stories where, of course I knew
Speaker 1: Jessica Simpson because look, we're and we're kind of of
Speaker 1: the same, you know, generation, So I grew up knowing
Speaker 1: her music and of course knowing her her celebrity, but
Speaker 1: I had no idea about the business side. You weren't
Speaker 1: buying the Daisy Duke shorts. It wasn't bode It's popular
Speaker 1: after the movie. Another thing I learned in this story Carol,
Speaker 1: all right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up?
Speaker 1: How a talent agency plans to morph into a media
Speaker 1: powerhouse in the metaverse. Yeah, it's happening. I guess this
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. The
Speaker 1: next guest is looking to turn models into brands through
Speaker 1: digital platforms and in doing so, increase their career longevity.
Speaker 1: She's also working with brands, really well known ones in
Speaker 1: developing their own digital strategies. Julia Hart is co owner
Speaker 1: and CEO of the talent representation company Elite World Group.
Speaker 1: It represents about fifty four hundred clients globally. Her all
Speaker 1: star roster includes Tiffany Chanelle, Product Burberry, Kendall Jenner, Adriana
Speaker 1: Lima More. A group that's said to reach nearly two
Speaker 1: billion social media users worldwide. That's a pretty big socialfe
Speaker 1: pray almost as many followers as you have, right, my dreams.
Speaker 1: It's too much work, too much work. Julia is also
Speaker 1: the subject of the Netflix series You might have seen
Speaker 1: it it's called My Unorthodox Life. It premiered this past summer.
Speaker 1: She joined Tim and Me to break down her company's
Speaker 1: path from modeling agency to metaverse media giant. The only
Speaker 1: reason I took over the company is because I realized,
Speaker 1: with the advent of social media, we are at the
Speaker 1: forefront of changing the way that people communicate and how
Speaker 1: people advertise, because if you think about its social media
Speaker 1: advertising by definition has to be more honest. Right, Julia Hart,
Speaker 1: who's by the tall and can barely lift her handbag,
Speaker 1: is not going to be doing an ad for a
Speaker 1: workout session with weights. You might in the metaverse though,
Speaker 1: but we can talk about that later. So what I
Speaker 1: understood is that you think of the talent instead of
Speaker 1: thinking of them as athletes or actors or models. To me,
Speaker 1: those are all platforms. Whether it's a runway, a tennis court,
Speaker 1: a football stadium, a movie, a movie side, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Reutilize that and put the power in their hands. It's
Speaker 1: this massive shift in the power dynamic and this vast
Speaker 1: and opporutization of fashion because for the first time, it's
Speaker 1: not the talent having to run and the hope that
Speaker 1: someone chooses them. That a creative director extent that a
Speaker 1: photographer videographer takes them under their wings, that some editor
Speaker 1: of a fancy magazine wants to have a photogo of them,
Speaker 1: their careers in their hands. And so what we're doing
Speaker 1: is we're helping them create themselves into brands and businesses.
Speaker 1: We utilize the time that they're in the public eye
Speaker 1: to build them into brands, so that far past the
Speaker 1: time they're on whatever platform they started through, whether it's
Speaker 1: a tennis court or a runway or a football stadium,
Speaker 1: their audience has become so accustomed to coming to that
Speaker 1: they will continue. They are the media, they have, the
Speaker 1: audience are aggregated. Viewership has now reached two points to
Speaker 1: help help us understand the connection to technology here because
Speaker 1: you use terms like platform and audience and I think
Speaker 1: you know influencer, right, I think Instagram, I think YouTube?
Speaker 1: How is that married into this? The way that I
Speaker 1: looked at it when I took over, because to me,
Speaker 1: the modeling industry was interesting at all. It felt like
Speaker 1: the flip side of the world that I came from.
Speaker 1: The only reason I took it over is because I
Speaker 1: realized that I have the possibility to make an army
Speaker 1: of financially independent women by utilizing their social media channels
Speaker 1: as actual networks. What I'm wondering too, And I look
Speaker 1: at how my daughter eighteen, You know how she's she shops,
Speaker 1: You know what she looks at. It's all through a
Speaker 1: lot of Instagram. It's all social media. It's very different
Speaker 1: from how I shop. But I do wonder not everybody
Speaker 1: is going to be We did a story earlier about
Speaker 1: Jessica Simpson, you know um and kind of built an
Speaker 1: incredible brand, got away from her and she's trying to
Speaker 1: She just got it back and she's trying to rebuild it.
Speaker 1: But not everybody we'll have success. Are you saying that
Speaker 1: everybody will have success on social media? Great question? Of
Speaker 1: course everyone will not have success. So what there's two
Speaker 1: what I would say to ingredients, what we provide and
Speaker 1: what the talents provides. So when I thought of talents
Speaker 1: as media, and I've realized that if I literally treat
Speaker 1: them as media, they have the power. They're not waiting
Speaker 1: for the casting agents and the creative directors. They are
Speaker 1: now being chased by the casting agents and creative directors
Speaker 1: because they bring the audience right. I always tell every
Speaker 1: talent find your angel product, and it doesn't actually mean
Speaker 1: it has to be a physical thing. It means something
Speaker 1: that you are truthfully passionate about. The people know when
Speaker 1: they come on your website, on your Instagram page or
Speaker 1: your TikTok or whatever, they're going to learn more about X.
Speaker 1: If you love the environment, talk about the environment, Show
Speaker 1: all of the different environmental you know, places that you
Speaker 1: belong with and what you're doing. Let people understand who
Speaker 1: you are. And that's the first time in history that
Speaker 1: tendis players and models and you know, athletes can say
Speaker 1: who they are and it's not just about what they do.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about though. We want to
Speaker 1: talk about the metaverse. What do you see because I
Speaker 1: think Julia is safe to say, you know, we've all
Speaker 1: been obsessed with what Facebook are formerly known as Facebook.
Speaker 1: You know it meta is up to uh and how
Speaker 1: this will fit into our world more broadly, how do
Speaker 1: you see it in terms of talent and branding? Because
Speaker 1: Tim and I recently caught up with our Pursuits team
Speaker 1: and Chris Rouser and we talked about the high end
Speaker 1: fashion houses that you work with that are selling fashion
Speaker 1: and f t s for thousands of dollars. So our
Speaker 1: world is evolving. Indeed it is, and honestly, to me,
Speaker 1: metaverse and avatars way before you know, Facebook called itself
Speaker 1: meta right in two thousand nineteen, I started building my
Speaker 1: team of avatar creators and metaverse experts. I started literally
Speaker 1: building the whole concept of metaverse and avatars a month
Speaker 1: and a half after I took over a CEO, because
Speaker 1: to me, it was an evolution of what going on
Speaker 1: in the digital space. And by that, I mean think
Speaker 1: about what is the most watch show on net and DC. Right,
Speaker 1: the most watch show on NBC gets Frown three four
Speaker 1: million viewers. My talent gets fifty million viewers. While they're
Speaker 1: moaning their law. They have the audience. So the first
Speaker 1: thing was to give them longevity. And by getting them longevity,
Speaker 1: I mean turning them into brands. And we did that
Speaker 1: by bringing in house what networks have. That's Julia Hart,
Speaker 1: the co owner and CEO of the talent representation company
Speaker 1: Elite World Group. When it comes to meta us, what
Speaker 1: do you think about it? You just feel like we're
Speaker 1: just so early in, you know, I I look, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, I think about Facebook and I think
Speaker 1: about Facebook's rebrand to meta think about the work that
Speaker 1: it's doing on Oculus. But I had an interesting conversation
Speaker 1: this week with with Katie Greidfeld, my co anchor at
Speaker 1: Quick take Stock. She was talking about how wasn't this
Speaker 1: what we were doing when we were playing Nintendo we uh,
Speaker 1: you know, years ago, and we're playing we tennis, having
Speaker 1: these avatars of us that we're doing what we were
Speaker 1: doing in the real world they were doing on the screen.
Speaker 1: We're wondering about branding here. Yeah, I'm a little confused.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And does it just become that much
Speaker 1: more like I think about Palm games early on that
Speaker 1: we're pretty basic, So it does it become something that's
Speaker 1: much more detailed than an experience of some sort? I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a good point. You have a funny
Speaker 1: look on your face because I'm not quite in it,
Speaker 1: you know, come on, come to the meta side. I'm skeptical,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm just gonna stick to my meta meditation.
Speaker 1: So to come on. Bloomberg BusinessWeek him a story. You're
Speaker 1: pretty excited about fitness app Strava in the spotlight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a startup that's been around for for years. Um,
Speaker 1: it's big in the cycling and long distance running communities,
Speaker 1: and I learned a little bit about the future of
Speaker 1: the company. And Max Chafkin got some numbers for once
Speaker 1: from the company about how much revenue they're doing and
Speaker 1: you know, a little profitability hence as well. What's interesting
Speaker 1: is they seem to be holding on to users. It's
Speaker 1: not just a pandemic play, right right exactly, so kind
Speaker 1: of the opposite of Peloton company. All right, that's coming
Speaker 1: up next. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the funny nancial
Speaker 1: capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Rio in New York
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh
Speaker 1: six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the
Speaker 1: country Serious XM Channel one nine and around the globe
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes.
Speaker 1: Tim Stenovan on Bloomberg Radio. Tim, you're a definitely stoved
Speaker 1: for this story. I am. I'm a Strata user, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Strava is it's it's been around for years, um,
Speaker 1: and it's a fitness platform that's mainly used by cyclists
Speaker 1: and distance runners, serious people. Yeah, serious, serious athletes. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know it's still a private company, and it
Speaker 1: still has an I pod, And I've been wondering, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's going on with Strava. So I was really happy
Speaker 1: to read this story from Max Chafkin. He is a
Speaker 1: features editor for Bloomberg Business Week. By the way, Max
Speaker 1: is also the I gotta every time I talked about Max,
Speaker 1: we got to talk about his pats O book because
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic book, So be sure to check that out.
Speaker 1: He's the author of that new book came out just
Speaker 1: a few can Training and Silicon Valley's pursued a power Yeah,
Speaker 1: it came out just a few months ago. Max joins
Speaker 1: us now he's features editor for Bloomberg Business Week. Max January,
Speaker 1: that's the day I have to make it. I have
Speaker 1: to make it too, write Yeah, Quitter's day. Thanks for
Speaker 1: that introduction. Yeah. So Strava, as you said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a app that has, you know, really well known
Speaker 1: in the kind of serious athlete world. Um, although it
Speaker 1: is and and partly because of the pandemic, I think
Speaker 1: has sort of taken off in kind of more casual
Speaker 1: fitness circles. They've seen you know, huge user growth over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, as as we report in
Speaker 1: this story. And and of course, um, besides the pandemic,
Speaker 1: there is there is a sort of a cyclical nature
Speaker 1: to the fitness business where in early January, right about
Speaker 1: this time, you know, everyone makes these New Year's resolutions
Speaker 1: and and as I think a lot of people know,
Speaker 1: new Year's resolutions do not stick very well. Uh, Strava,
Speaker 1: being a tech company, can really you know, dig into
Speaker 1: the data and slice and dice it. And and they
Speaker 1: the CEO told me that basically January seventeen, that's the
Speaker 1: day that where you kind of separate the New Year's
Speaker 1: resolution quitters from the ones who stick it out for
Speaker 1: a long period of time. That's when most of the
Speaker 1: sort of traffic is going to fall off. Um. But
Speaker 1: he said, kind of on the bright side, those who
Speaker 1: do make it past that January seventeenth day, Um, at
Speaker 1: least on Drava, seemed to stick around, um for you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot longer, seemed to kind of for more
Speaker 1: permanent fitness habits. Well, and I guess they've had a
Speaker 1: test to like, you know, we talked about pelotons so much, Right,
Speaker 1: everybody who was leaning in big time and buying up
Speaker 1: Pelotons during the pandemic when they couldn't go to gym's
Speaker 1: and we're buying stuff for their home. But we saw,
Speaker 1: you know, as the world reopened of Chris, we're in
Speaker 1: a little bit of a uh falling back again because
Speaker 1: of a macron. But nonetheless, you know, we saw Peloton
Speaker 1: then under a lot of pressure for a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons, but also people kind of going back out
Speaker 1: into the world and being able to work outside, you know,
Speaker 1: work out outside their homes. Does has Drava seen the
Speaker 1: same thing like what happened to it during the endemic
Speaker 1: and hasn't been able to hold onto users? Absolutely? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Strava is another one of these pandemic boom businesses
Speaker 1: where you know, stay at home orders happened, and there
Speaker 1: are all these things that people were on it wanted
Speaker 1: to do but they were unable to do, so they
Speaker 1: they looked for digital alternatives. Um, you saw a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, they couldn't go to the gym,
Speaker 1: so they bought Peloton bikes. Uh, some of those people,
Speaker 1: you know, downloaded Strava or signed up for a subscription
Speaker 1: there's a sort of paid version of it where you
Speaker 1: get UM training plans and these competitive leaderboards that are
Speaker 1: very popular, especially with runners and cyclists and UM. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so they saw this kind of bump in traffic during
Speaker 1: the stay at home period, just like Peloton, just like
Speaker 1: many businesses UM. But as as I talked about this piece,
Speaker 1: that traffic actually didn't really go away, and and and
Speaker 1: you know, I talked to UM, you know, Strava CEO
Speaker 1: about that and his views basically that you know, Strava,
Speaker 1: you know, unlike some of these other services that really
Speaker 1: were you know, primarily useful as kind of indoor, stay
Speaker 1: at home type things. You know. Of course, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Peloton now it's it's called outside height and everything. I'm
Speaker 1: sure people are kind of maybe rediscovering their their bikes.
Speaker 1: But but Strava, you know, works just as well outdoors
Speaker 1: and indoors. So kind of an interesting thing that happened.
Speaker 1: You know, we saw all these big time races, you know,
Speaker 1: New York City Marathon went virtual in and they encouraged people,
Speaker 1: they had a partnership with Strava, encouraged people to record
Speaker 1: a virtual marathon, a virtual twenty six mile run in
Speaker 1: the app. Um. That's of course great for Strava as
Speaker 1: a business. When things reopened this past summer, in one
Speaker 1: you still saw a ton of Strava usage, just people
Speaker 1: using the the app outdoors to track their you know,
Speaker 1: outdoor runs, outdoor bike rides. You know, something like half
Speaker 1: the field um at the New York Marathon recorded there,
Speaker 1: recorded their race on Strava, and similar similar data from
Speaker 1: you know, the London Marathon, I believe the Boston Marathon
Speaker 1: as well. So you've kind of seen instead of this
Speaker 1: kind of boom and bust thing, just a continued growth
Speaker 1: and it's not clear, you know, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: know how long that's gonna last. But what's Strava's CEO,
Speaker 1: Michael Horvat is basically saying, you know, you know, we're
Speaker 1: not seeing these same head winds as these other players.
Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg business Week features editor Max Chafkin. Look for
Speaker 1: his story in the latest issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine.
Speaker 1: It's on newsstands now, online at business week dot com
Speaker 1: and of course on the Bloomberg you're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: business Week coming up. Oh the places you'll go, that is,
Speaker 1: once you can go again. I really dream about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do too, getting ready to do some traveling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if I get a negative PCR test
Speaker 1: seventy two hours before leaving, that's the question. It's tricky,
Speaker 1: right Well, the trickiest part, Carol, is getting the results
Speaker 1: back within that amount of time because the testing centers
Speaker 1: are so overwhelmed right now. That's what I've heard from
Speaker 1: a lot of people that that's what's holding them back.
Speaker 1: So it might be here next week. I hope you
Speaker 1: get to go any I know you need a break,
Speaker 1: all right, everybody. We're going to check in with our
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Pursuits team on the host of adventures that really
Speaker 1: await you, from Alaska to Zambia. It's all coming up.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Every new Watch is like a new piece of box.
Speaker 1: It has in different stories to tell the time. Wines
Speaker 1: as a whole really speak to that. Quintessential Need is
Speaker 1: the most powerful car Nate in the US period. You
Speaker 1: get the beautiful interior, the iconic design that's very cheek
Speaker 1: and pos even if you be for it's it's something
Speaker 1: that get if your travel plans are on whole because
Speaker 1: of the Amicron Berry well fear not our Bloomberg Pursuits team.
Speaker 1: They are still going around the globe and covering the
Speaker 1: perfect destinations for you to plan your next trip. I
Speaker 1: love this section. I do too, I travel takeover. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't love it? That's what's happening in this week's Pursuits section,
Speaker 1: produced by our travel editor Nicki Eckstein and company. So
Speaker 1: Nikki was actually traveling at the time that we put
Speaker 1: this broadcast together. She's right now on a plane back
Speaker 1: from Anguilla. So we went right to her boss. We
Speaker 1: went to the top Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser, to
Speaker 1: tell us what we need to know. Chris, your team
Speaker 1: really all over the world for this series of stories.
Speaker 1: A big theme of the section is family. I want
Speaker 1: to get into that in just a moment. But when
Speaker 1: you're doing this, and you guys do this a lot,
Speaker 1: you look around the world, how do you kind of
Speaker 1: put it all together? He said, I was going to
Speaker 1: tell you what you need to know. And the first
Speaker 1: thing is that you need to know is that I
Speaker 1: am not mad at Nikki jealous. For five days she
Speaker 1: has been in Anguela trying restaurants and hotels. So's there work, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's there. So when we put together these lists, you know,
Speaker 1: Nikki has a running that database of every new hotel opening,
Speaker 1: major restaurants, major tours that are opening up, cruise line,
Speaker 1: so we know everything that's going on, especially in the
Speaker 1: luxury field. And what makes our list a little different
Speaker 1: from other lists is that we really do focus on
Speaker 1: luxury access and luxury places to stay and things to
Speaker 1: do when you're traveling. So are you know, so take
Speaker 1: the a Multi Coast for example, we feature at the year. Now, uh,
Speaker 1: the Multi Coast hasn't changed a ton in the past
Speaker 1: a few decades. Has always been a wonderful place to go.
Speaker 1: But this year in particular, there's been a couple of
Speaker 1: new luxury hotels opening, So that's like, that's the reason
Speaker 1: why that would end up on our list this year.
Speaker 1: The other thing that we focus on this year was
Speaker 1: places that you can go to be together. And you know,
Speaker 1: you maybe don't want to go to october Fest like
Speaker 1: be with thousands of other people, but you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you want to take a family trip, and you want
Speaker 1: to rent out a few tents on a safari and
Speaker 1: you can go with a big group. Or maybe you
Speaker 1: want to go to a hotel that specializes in villas,
Speaker 1: so you can rent a little house for your family,
Speaker 1: or you go on a sort of a drinking trip
Speaker 1: with your friends to Wales. So to these little places
Speaker 1: has a little bit of a suggestion on how to
Speaker 1: spend some time with people or just meet local. Well,
Speaker 1: one thing that caught my I mean to see, look,
Speaker 1: you you have places all over the world on this list,
Speaker 1: but I want to start with somewhere that's a little
Speaker 1: closer to home. For a lot of people, book a
Speaker 1: Raton is a cool place to hang out. Anybody ever
Speaker 1: seen Seinfeld? Come on, you don't go to Boca with
Speaker 1: your grandparents. This is hard for people to believe. But
Speaker 1: Boca Ratone and the area so for Lauderdale, Palm Beach,
Speaker 1: UM have a bunch of new hotels that are kind
Speaker 1: of they kind of compete with luxury, big luxury resorts
Speaker 1: elsewhere like Bahamar and the Caribbean. UM. There's a Mandarin
Speaker 1: Oriental that's going to open up there in the Boca area. UM,
Speaker 1: and there's some really serious restaurants like Major Food Group,
Speaker 1: which does Carbone in New York and Miami. Uh, they're
Speaker 1: doing a takeover of an old golf clubhouse there that's
Speaker 1: currently called Slimmingo Grille. So there's actually like a lot
Speaker 1: of cool stuff to do there and it's obviously still
Speaker 1: as beautiful, uh and sunny as it was when your
Speaker 1: grandparents were there. What was the place in Seinfeld, Chris Dela,
Speaker 1: You can eat early. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. What I do like to so much
Speaker 1: of what's in there Because I've been thinking I've never
Speaker 1: done a Safari. I would love to do it. There's
Speaker 1: so much great outside stuff. Yeah, and you know the
Speaker 1: big thing in Safari's now is walking Safari's so you
Speaker 1: think of you know, you think of a Safari. You
Speaker 1: get in it jeeps maybe with no top. You go out,
Speaker 1: you try to see the big five lion, elephants, hippos
Speaker 1: now in a couple of the places that we feature,
Speaker 1: one is in Zambia and the other is Quizzla Natal
Speaker 1: in South Africa. You walk around and you're on the foot,
Speaker 1: so you really, you know, it may not seem like
Speaker 1: it's for everybody, um, and it may not be for me,
Speaker 1: but it's a very incredible way to get up close
Speaker 1: with some of these animals, and particularly um. Some of
Speaker 1: the walking safaris really focused on birds, so it's not,
Speaker 1: as you know, carnivore focused. But also these these um
Speaker 1: all these safari outlets are really conservation focused, actually the
Speaker 1: ones that we feature, and so you can go oftentimes
Speaker 1: you can rent small a small group of tents together
Speaker 1: for your family or a group of friends, UM, and
Speaker 1: then you learn about conservation and you can actually help
Speaker 1: with conservation and leave the funds that you're trip supply
Speaker 1: actually go towards protecting the animals that you want to
Speaker 1: go and see. I love that kind of eco tourism.
Speaker 1: I've done some trips yoga trips where it's you plant
Speaker 1: trees while you're there. And I was gonna say that
Speaker 1: the walking towards him, I was thinking about you in
Speaker 1: the story we just talked about with Max Chafkin and
Speaker 1: Strava that if you are on Strava and your serious
Speaker 1: athlete a run or an you know, cyclist, you could
Speaker 1: probably do that walking toward because you could run really
Speaker 1: fast away from the animal exact Yeah running, Hey, UM,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the next place. Uh, Romania. Um,
Speaker 1: why did you guys choose this part of the world
Speaker 1: to call the next place? Wait? What? So Romania actually
Speaker 1: was before the pandemic and before I had a child,
Speaker 1: Romania was on our list of where my husband and
Speaker 1: I wanted to go. Um. And you know, most people
Speaker 1: when they if they think about Romania, they think about Transylvania.
Speaker 1: And so actually one of the big the biggest tour
Speaker 1: groups in Romania is called Beyond Dracula because there is
Speaker 1: there's more nationwide investment in getting you to know more
Speaker 1: about the country other than that. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: an incredibly beautiful place. There's mountains, there's hand painted monasteries
Speaker 1: all throughout the hills. Bucharest is being really revived and
Speaker 1: becoming kind of a culinary destination. Uh. And there's a
Speaker 1: couple of new hotels in Bucharest, which is sort of
Speaker 1: why we decided to do U Romania this year. But
Speaker 1: really there's just tons in Romania that's new to probably
Speaker 1: a lot of people talked us to about, you know,
Speaker 1: the places that you thought were maybe unusual when somebody
Speaker 1: kind of came to you and said, hey, Chris, what
Speaker 1: about this or that, like you thought, oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about that book O. Her tone was definitely so
Speaker 1: I had to be sold on not going on my list.
Speaker 1: Chris Newport in Rhode Island. Yeah, it was also uh
Speaker 1: one that I you know, it's sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: everybody knows about Newport and what you get when you
Speaker 1: go there, which is the big, beautiful old mansions, maybe
Speaker 1: sometime on the water sailing, but there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: new hotels there, with some really fabulous restaurants opening up.
Speaker 1: There's a sailing museum there, and also the HBO show
Speaker 1: guilded Age, the new Julian Fellows show is going to
Speaker 1: start essentially gonna start later this month, so it's going
Speaker 1: to really draw a lot of attention to the area,
Speaker 1: and we expect a lot of people to want to go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say when I read that too, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've done the mansion tours and everything, and I prefer
Speaker 1: things like Watching and Westerly, which are a lot more
Speaker 1: kind of mellower and just gorgeous beaches. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting to see how some of these areas are kind
Speaker 1: of going through some transformations. Yeah, yeah, we have, you know,
Speaker 1: we have the cat Skills on our list too, which
Speaker 1: is if you live in New York, you probably know
Speaker 1: some people who fled for the Hills during the pandemic
Speaker 1: and have been living there. And as a result, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of restaurants and hotels opening up there, so uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the Catskills also doesn't feel like necessarily a
Speaker 1: fresh place to go, but there's actually a lot of
Speaker 1: fresh things to do once you're there. Another thing that
Speaker 1: I was sort of like, huh was Singapore. And you know,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of people, a lot of our
Speaker 1: audience lives and works in Singapore, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's not a lot of Asia is open to Western
Speaker 1: tourists right now because of COVID, but Singapore is has
Speaker 1: been all right to go to and there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of um wilderness in Singapore. You know, you go
Speaker 1: to the airport, that Jewel Changi Airport and they have, um,
Speaker 1: they have like an incredible inside terrarium with waterfalls. And
Speaker 1: then actually in the city there are a couple of
Speaker 1: hotels that are really sort of nature focused. So even
Speaker 1: though you're in this big city, Ham has these big
Speaker 1: terraces and alloon the terraces are full of plants, same
Speaker 1: with the roof. Or you can say at the Raffles Santosa,
Speaker 1: which is a new resort related to the famous Raffles Singapore,
Speaker 1: which is an all villa hotel, and you know, all
Speaker 1: these little villas are neftoled into the trees, so you
Speaker 1: can actually kind of feel like you're maybe in a
Speaker 1: more like island vacation, uh than a city vacation. Hey, hey, Chris,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about cruising, because
Speaker 1: it's up there with Boca, isn't it. Well you couldn't
Speaker 1: I mean that. And even now, even now we we
Speaker 1: hear about cruise ships that are you know, being asked
Speaker 1: to be put on hold right now. But something they
Speaker 1: caught my eye in this week's Pursuit section is the
Speaker 1: ability to charter your own cruise in Alaska and you
Speaker 1: just get you know, eleven of your closest friends or
Speaker 1: family together and you've got your own ship. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know a lot. You know, when people have sort of
Speaker 1: maybe what I would describe as a prejudice view of cruising,
Speaker 1: they often think of did you say my name there?
Speaker 1: And they think of Alaska as an exception to that
Speaker 1: because it sort of doesn't feel like you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll call pills included. You stop at three beaches and
Speaker 1: then you just go to the all you can eat
Speaker 1: but fay all night. It's like you're really boring. You're
Speaker 1: seeing glaciers, you're going up close to wildlife. Um. And
Speaker 1: now some of the new purpose built ships up there
Speaker 1: are pretty small. Um, so you can rent out a
Speaker 1: whole ship. Uh. And they're really designed for an intimate experience,
Speaker 1: you know, just uh, sort of connecting the cities and dilligence.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser for joining us
Speaker 1: with a look at the latest and greatest from the
Speaker 1: section this week's issue, Where do you want to go?
Speaker 1: You know, I like the idea of this Alaska cruise.
Speaker 1: I do hear that it's just stunning. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: the same thing. Catch it before. You know, my parents
Speaker 1: went and they didn't take us. They didn't. Did they
Speaker 1: love it? They loved it? Okay, all right. That wraps
Speaker 1: up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Chris Rouser, Joel Weber and everybody at the
Speaker 1: Business Week team. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser, and be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street
Speaker 1: Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily
Speaker 1: broadcast on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News and check
Speaker 1: out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find it
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Bloomber Business Week is available on newsstands now, at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com and on the Bloomberg Terminal. You can also
Speaker 1: see me on Bloomberg quick Take available at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV,
Speaker 1: and mark Have a great weekend, everyone, stay safe. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg