Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Hello, I'm
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. Welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Over the next couple of hours,
Speaker 1: we're going to bring you some of the most important
Speaker 1: conversations we had throughout the week on our daily radio show.
Speaker 1: And Jason, it was week thirteen, and I do feel
Speaker 1: like you know you and I talked about this a
Speaker 1: lot throughout the week. We kind of took a moment
Speaker 1: to take in what's happened over the past thirteen weeks
Speaker 1: and really the past three weeks. We had that big
Speaker 1: market rally off the March bottom, we had a pause
Speaker 1: in stocks. This week, we continue to talk about reopenings.
Speaker 1: Of course, the virus and then racism continue to dominate
Speaker 1: so many of our conversations. All of this we know
Speaker 1: have business, economic, financial, and of course societal impacts. That's
Speaker 1: our week. I think to say in a nutshell, a
Speaker 1: big and complicated and uneasy nutshell. Well, and I think
Speaker 1: that we are living in historic times. I know that
Speaker 1: that's glib to say at many moments, but I think
Speaker 1: if you look back to the beginning of this year,
Speaker 1: where we expected to be in what we expected to
Speaker 1: have done by this point in We figured we'd be
Speaker 1: pretty focused on an upcoming presidential election, which we are,
Speaker 1: but this was also a week where we saw an
Speaker 1: absolute mess down in Georgia, my home state, around their primary.
Speaker 1: We see all this evidence, as you've alluded to too,
Speaker 1: structural inequalities that came up even in the discussions around
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve meeting. Remember we had one of those
Speaker 1: two with coming out, and he certainly had an effect
Speaker 1: on the market. So we put all of those issues
Speaker 1: and it is complicated to so many of our guests,
Speaker 1: and you're going to hear from a lot of them
Speaker 1: over the course of this show. That's right. Our featured
Speaker 1: interviews and stories in the magazine this week got to
Speaker 1: all of this. So that included a big interview that
Speaker 1: we had about reopening right New York began. New York
Speaker 1: City began phase one of a reopening, of course, home
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg head quarters, in home to so many companies,
Speaker 1: especially within the financial and real estate community. We caught
Speaker 1: up with Kent Swigg of Swig Equities UM about how
Speaker 1: the real estate market can bounce back. He of course
Speaker 1: has properties in the city, residential commercial also on the
Speaker 1: West coast, really throughout the country. So a good voice
Speaker 1: to check in on. Absolutely, Cathy would of our investment.
Speaker 1: She's one of the best performing investors over the last
Speaker 1: few years. A bull on disruption and innovation. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say. And we also can't lose sight
Speaker 1: of something you mentioned, which is we are still in
Speaker 1: the midst of a global pandemic. We were reminded of
Speaker 1: that this week Dr Seth Letterman. He talked to us
Speaker 1: about finding a vaccine that's going to be key to
Speaker 1: all of this as we continue to grapple with COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen plus. Jason, how America can begin to heal after
Speaker 1: weeks of civil unrest. Someone who knows so much about
Speaker 1: it has been really fighting um for those who are
Speaker 1: lost in our society. Jason Flam was back with us
Speaker 1: talking about the vulnerable populations again and how they are
Speaker 1: being disproportionately impacted. So an important voice. First up, let's
Speaker 1: take you inside the magazine. It's a takeover of the
Speaker 1: finance section. It's reflected in the cover art. It's looking
Speaker 1: at the run up in the stock market against the
Speaker 1: backdrop of the virus. The economics shutdown, the civil unrest,
Speaker 1: and still many unknowns about our outlook. And it really
Speaker 1: is still quite a run up off those March low's Jason,
Speaker 1: because even though we saw a little bit of a
Speaker 1: pullback this week, we still have had a significant bounce back.
Speaker 1: Oh it's unbelievable just to watch it. And we wanted
Speaker 1: to understand exactly all the mechanics behind that, so we
Speaker 1: turned to the man himself, Joel Webber, the editor of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week. So Joel, walk us through what we've
Speaker 1: been seeing over these months, especially over these past few weeks,
Speaker 1: as main street and wall streets seem to diverge a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's really the heart of the idea.
Speaker 1: And as we were talking about what was happening, it
Speaker 1: was sort of like the you know, and I've said
Speaker 1: this before in the fro him is like the I
Speaker 1: think the stock market as just really desperately wanted, uh,
Speaker 1: the coronavirus stuff to just be over and end and
Speaker 1: and move on, and it's really behaved that way since
Speaker 1: the low on March twenty three, and you just kind
Speaker 1: of like our the cover, we just kind of put
Speaker 1: all the bad news that we could find on the
Speaker 1: cover from the six point new million job the six
Speaker 1: point nine new million, six point nine million new jobless
Speaker 1: claims that were followed immediately by six point six million more,
Speaker 1: the oil plunging into negative stuff, the g g DP
Speaker 1: being negative five, unemployment rate fourteen point seven. It was
Speaker 1: just like headline after a headline after a headline of
Speaker 1: bad news, and yet the stock market just a sn'b
Speaker 1: just kept climbing higher like it was none of it mattered. Um,
Speaker 1: And we just said, you know, that is like this massive,
Speaker 1: This is the great disconnected, And that was our cover
Speaker 1: line for listen aked a lot about you know, big
Speaker 1: time investors, well known investors, John Paul Paul, Tutor, Jones
Speaker 1: and so many others who you know, we're fighting the
Speaker 1: bounce back and talking about you know, safe ascets like
Speaker 1: gold and safe havens and so on, and then finally said, okay,
Speaker 1: I can't fight it anymore, basically, So it's really been
Speaker 1: a remarkable bounce back to watch. Yeah, and actually you
Speaker 1: know you you brought up professional investors in there, and
Speaker 1: and the it really has been reach out investors. And
Speaker 1: we spend a bit of time in the package talking
Speaker 1: about you know, what's been happening with Robin Hood traders
Speaker 1: and our hurts phenomenon, where we've got bankrupt companies and
Speaker 1: their stocks are trading for pennies, and there's just all
Speaker 1: kinds of enthusiasm. I think, you know, people stuck at
Speaker 1: home with UH with without much to do, and you know,
Speaker 1: gambling on stock um has become such an InVogue phenomenon
Speaker 1: again UM. And you know, that's like one of the
Speaker 1: little weird things about this market right now is how
Speaker 1: much enthusiasm um retail it seems the really driving things
Speaker 1: all right. Joel Weber, We really appreciated Joel Weber, the
Speaker 1: editor of Bloomberg Business Week, joining us on the phone
Speaker 1: and listen. I think we saw it play out, this
Speaker 1: disconnect in so many ways, and I feel like it
Speaker 1: got even more complicated to some extent with the civil
Speaker 1: unrest that we've seen, Carol, and people really wondering what
Speaker 1: the way forward is well, and I think about how
Speaker 1: many conversations we had with various investment professionals and even
Speaker 1: you have CEO s about how do you reconcile you know,
Speaker 1: what's been going on because of the virus, the shut down,
Speaker 1: the economic impact and still so many questions about what
Speaker 1: the revival looks like on the other side, and then
Speaker 1: add that on top of it, how do you reconcile
Speaker 1: that with you know, what seemed to be NonStop gains
Speaker 1: in equities, So a really timely takeover of the finance
Speaker 1: section in the magazine. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: coming up reopening New York City real estate with Ken
Speaker 1: Swig of Swig Equities. This is Bloomberg Face is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Today we're bringing you some of the most important, we
Speaker 1: hope informative conversations we had on our daily Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week radio show, all about where we are at this
Speaker 1: moment thirteen and three. Carol, we've been talking about thirteen
Speaker 1: weeks at home away from the office, three weeks since
Speaker 1: we as a nation have really been wrestling in what
Speaker 1: feels like a meaningful and maybe permanent way with inequality
Speaker 1: and race relations on a level we certainly haven't seen
Speaker 1: in our lifetimes. And an important voice Jason, that we've
Speaker 1: turned to several times just before or just as the
Speaker 1: virus was kicking in uh and actually throughout it is
Speaker 1: Kent Swigg. He's president of Swig Equities, a real estate
Speaker 1: development an investment from They're based in New York City.
Speaker 1: They've got commercial and residential properties around the US, New York,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and more So great to check in with
Speaker 1: him about reopenings and really just the world at large.
Speaker 1: Think one of the biggest things that we have to
Speaker 1: do is to be able to see things and call
Speaker 1: them like they are. And we have to accept reality
Speaker 1: and not we're not looking at a at a warp
Speaker 1: reality or a fake reality. We're looking at a reality
Speaker 1: that that's occurred, and it touches all of us as
Speaker 1: humans um and I think it is touched and awakened
Speaker 1: the inner souls of all of us in America. And
Speaker 1: people have gone on the streets, they're they're they're peacefully
Speaker 1: demonstrating there, they're making themselves known. And then we have
Speaker 1: to continue to feel that inner, inner, inner twitch in ourselves,
Speaker 1: so we act on what we've seen. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: in your estimation, Kent, how all of this and this
Speaker 1: is a big question that will probably start and then
Speaker 1: come back to it in a few minutes, but how
Speaker 1: does that change in New York City. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a city that you know, has so many elements
Speaker 1: to it, so many great elements to it, but also
Speaker 1: is a reflection of many of the inequalities that we
Speaker 1: face as a country. Well. Look, New York City is
Speaker 1: an amazing place. It is one of the only places
Speaker 1: on Earth that has a collection of every single country,
Speaker 1: every single almost country in the world because of the
Speaker 1: United Nations, so all of us are here. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the unique thing about New York is this
Speaker 1: at two in the morning, when there's not a car
Speaker 1: on the road and there's a red light, guess what
Speaker 1: people do. They stop and wait for the green light.
Speaker 1: Right in their own countries. They may do a lot
Speaker 1: of bad things, but they sit and stop at a
Speaker 1: red light waiting for the green to occur. In other words,
Speaker 1: we have a certain value system and I think it
Speaker 1: is ultimately expressed in in New York um as much
Speaker 1: as the United States. And that is what we need
Speaker 1: to harbor. We need to harbor the concept of doing right.
Speaker 1: And if you look at the highest ranking police officer
Speaker 1: in New York City who got down and prayed with
Speaker 1: the protesters, that is the ultimate reflection of who we
Speaker 1: are in New York, so we're we do it every day.
Speaker 1: What we need to be able to do is to
Speaker 1: be able to be back outside and working and being
Speaker 1: with each other and and supporting each other so we
Speaker 1: can make a change in the world. We talked about
Speaker 1: for our New York audience about JP Morgan and they're
Speaker 1: building this huge new headquarters. Is it a mistake, like,
Speaker 1: is everybody going to leave the city or will some
Speaker 1: workers leave the city? Will companies rethink, you know, spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money on price New York City real
Speaker 1: estate and move out to the burbs. Well, I think,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's a perfect question, and and the
Speaker 1: JP Morgan building is the epitome of that question. So
Speaker 1: this is in my opinion, UM, all of those questions
Speaker 1: are valid, and all of them will be rethought many,
Speaker 1: many times by many all the corporations around. Will New
Speaker 1: York City prosper absolutely, because one thing we've got fundamentally
Speaker 1: is that we've got an energy level and a pace
Speaker 1: that is very attractive to everyone. So if you look
Speaker 1: at two seventy, will it be repopulated by time it's
Speaker 1: built and up the pandemic? Unfortunately, UM, with all its
Speaker 1: tragedy and everything will be an afterthought of in terms
Speaker 1: of what the business community is doing going forward, not
Speaker 1: that it's not going to be a big impact in
Speaker 1: our lives, but when we have a therapy, a medical therapy,
Speaker 1: so if we have the virus, who won't die and
Speaker 1: ultimately a vaccine, people will be back to work. It
Speaker 1: will be led by young people, and it will be
Speaker 1: energetic to New York will prosper and thrive like it
Speaker 1: has in the past. And the thing that we can
Speaker 1: find working at home can be very efficient and very effective.
Speaker 1: But what we don't have is creativity and opportunity when
Speaker 1: we work at home, because we don't have the ability
Speaker 1: to go meet with people every day. If I'm working,
Speaker 1: as as one of my son's friends is working in
Speaker 1: fixed income and he wants to go meet a boss
Speaker 1: that is not in fixed income, he has no way
Speaker 1: to do that. When he's working at home, he speaks
Speaker 1: to his boss, he works very effectively, but the opportunistic
Speaker 1: time of meeting somebody in walking into the office or
Speaker 1: at the office or at a coffee place doesn't doesn't function.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen, and we lose creativity and opportunity. Yes,
Speaker 1: it could be efficient that it's going. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: very straightforward and stagnating for for an opportunistic country like ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I am optimistic. Um, I'm very realistic of the
Speaker 1: challenges we have right now and the pain and suffering
Speaker 1: we're going through, but we will overcome it, and we
Speaker 1: will be back in center. Sin cities will will take
Speaker 1: their hold back as leader leader leaders of the world again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess I wonder tent about sort of a
Speaker 1: a middle road to some extent where and I think
Speaker 1: you've probably read and heard a lot of the same
Speaker 1: things and probably many more things than than I have
Speaker 1: about you know, maybe some second tier quote unquote cities,
Speaker 1: some smaller cities being able to take advantage of this
Speaker 1: to some extent, and not in a way that hollows
Speaker 1: out a New York City, but that does give some
Speaker 1: opportunity to places where the cost of living maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit lower. We were already seeing that in some
Speaker 1: of the Nashville's and other sort of places in the world.
Speaker 1: So I wonder how you see that evolving. I think
Speaker 1: that absolutely is gonna happen, and certainly it's gonna happen
Speaker 1: over the next twenty four months or thirty six months,
Speaker 1: because until this really gets past us, we're all gonna
Speaker 1: be work and looking at New York alternatives. And we
Speaker 1: have a friend Jonathan who came up with the other
Speaker 1: idea to me the other when we're speaking to him,
Speaker 1: um or just that that companies may end up taking
Speaker 1: some space as swing space in another part outside of
Speaker 1: New York City. You could have an office in Long
Speaker 1: Island with a lot of your staff are commuting from
Speaker 1: Long Island. You can have an office in Long Island
Speaker 1: and one in Manhattan, and those people that can work
Speaker 1: two or three days a week in the office in
Speaker 1: in Um, in Jericho or wherever it is on Long
Speaker 1: Island or and then come into New York City for
Speaker 1: the balance of the time. UM. So there are many
Speaker 1: different ways of doing it. That's Ken Swig, president of
Speaker 1: Swig Equities, and Jason, Yeah, you know, he is someone
Speaker 1: I do remember that Friday the third teenth, back in March.
Speaker 1: It was our last in studio broadcast and Kent was
Speaker 1: there when the virus. We we talked about that the
Speaker 1: you know how we thought it might impact our world,
Speaker 1: and then we talked to him again. I think about
Speaker 1: a month or so later in April, and here we
Speaker 1: are again now, you know, as we are reopening our world.
Speaker 1: So great to kind of, you know, go with him
Speaker 1: through all those different perspectives. Yeah. The last time you
Speaker 1: and I saw each other we saw Kenswick, uh, fair
Speaker 1: to say, which is interesting. Yeah, And also you know,
Speaker 1: this is a guy who has seen New York City
Speaker 1: go through so many things. And I think New York City,
Speaker 1: we know, not just susceptible when it comes to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but also has been susceptible to a lot of the
Speaker 1: inequalities that we have seen laid bare, the protests that
Speaker 1: we saw, some of the violence that we saw even
Speaker 1: in our neighborhood there around Bloomberg headquarters. So it was
Speaker 1: interesting to catch up with him in a very holistic way.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business We coming up the chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO of Tonics Pharmaceuticals on the race for a
Speaker 1: coronavirus facts see one of many companies in that race.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you some of the most important and informative conversations throughout
Speaker 1: the week that we had on our daily radio show,
Speaker 1: dealing about so many different issues. Of course what's going
Speaker 1: on in the markets, uh, the civil unrest that we
Speaker 1: continued to see, the virus, and of course reopening society.
Speaker 1: But I have to say, Jason, we couldn't forget because
Speaker 1: the tallly's on the virus. They continue and parts of
Speaker 1: the United States, we saw those numbers going up absolutely
Speaker 1: and we're all looking towards a vaccine, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to get a gut check on that. Candidly, we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to someone who's actually in the midst of
Speaker 1: doing that work. So we caught up with Dr Seth Letterman.
Speaker 1: He's the chairman, CEO, and founder of Tomics Pharmaceuticals. He
Speaker 1: talked about how they're working one of many companies to
Speaker 1: manufacture a vaccine. I would say generally that people should
Speaker 1: air on the side of caution. It's it's hard to know,
Speaker 1: um what's safe and what's not safe, but people making
Speaker 1: individual decisions should be cautious. I think that I find
Speaker 1: some of the information compelling that being outside is better
Speaker 1: than inside with people. I think that, uh, stay six
Speaker 1: ft apart wearing a mask and hands are all very important.
Speaker 1: So this new thought about asymptomatic transmission is something that
Speaker 1: people can put into an equation, but I wouldn't use
Speaker 1: that to engage in any behaviors that don't follow the
Speaker 1: basic tenants help us understand what's realistic, what you are seeing,
Speaker 1: and how this development, which feels different to those of
Speaker 1: us who don't normally pay so much attention to how
Speaker 1: vaccines are created, how it is or isn't different from
Speaker 1: what you normally seek well for So, I think that
Speaker 1: there's a remarkable effort going on all over the world,
Speaker 1: many companies, and it's really exciting to see how governments, nonprofits,
Speaker 1: companies have come together with the common goal of doing
Speaker 1: something about this. I agree with the general belief that
Speaker 1: we really can't get back to work and back to
Speaker 1: school and in the same way that we now look
Speaker 1: back on it's called normal until there's a vaccine. So
Speaker 1: a vaccine is very important and one of the exciting
Speaker 1: aspects of this that so many different technologies are being tested.
Speaker 1: I think it's realistic that there will be a vaccine
Speaker 1: either late this year or early next year, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that that would be the vaccine that will
Speaker 1: ultimately win market acceptance and the confidence of doctors and patients.
Speaker 1: So there's an element of the tortoise and the hair
Speaker 1: where there are some companies that are very fast out
Speaker 1: of the gate, they have exciting technology, but there are
Speaker 1: other companies like ours that are going more slowly and
Speaker 1: have different technologies. And I think that COVID nine team
Speaker 1: will be with us for a long time, so it
Speaker 1: will be possible to figure out which vaccines are best
Speaker 1: in the public health sense. Explain the science. As you say,
Speaker 1: there's different technologies for the virus, So explain that, because
Speaker 1: you're right, there is this huge race going on the
Speaker 1: government is involved to what are the different technologies we're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, and how that affects the efficacy
Speaker 1: of an ultimate vaccine. I think the simplest way to
Speaker 1: do to divide the different vaccine technologies that are out
Speaker 1: there um is to think about the two main components
Speaker 1: of the immune system, and that is either antibodies or
Speaker 1: T cells. And I think that vaccines are designed to
Speaker 1: stimulate either antibody responses or T cell responses. Antibody responses
Speaker 1: are shorter lived and tend to stop an infection from happening,
Speaker 1: and T cell responses are longer lived but tend to
Speaker 1: eliminate an infection after it's happened and also clear the
Speaker 1: bloodstream and the body of the virus. Now, those are
Speaker 1: the extremes. Just about every vaccine will have elements of both.
Speaker 1: But I think that dividing them up into whether something
Speaker 1: is more antibody or more T cell focused is a
Speaker 1: good way to do to divide the many technologies being
Speaker 1: thrown at this. Do we need both or do we
Speaker 1: need the T cells, which to me sounds like a
Speaker 1: bigger deal. Both and um but but there there are
Speaker 1: flavors within both. But for example, it's probably true that
Speaker 1: an antibody test is a good sign that someone has
Speaker 1: recovered from the illness and as level of immunity. But
Speaker 1: antibodies without key cells is probably not a solution. And
Speaker 1: that's Dr Seth Letterman, the chairman CEO of Tonics Pharmaceuticals,
Speaker 1: and Carol. I think you and I both walked away
Speaker 1: from this conversation thinking, all right, I understand a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the science here, the possibilities, but also
Speaker 1: the complexities of this. So much of our world we
Speaker 1: know it's easy to distill things down to what we
Speaker 1: just get a vaccine and everything gets back to normal.
Speaker 1: More complicated than that, and certainly the road to get
Speaker 1: there is long and winding. Well, I loved how we
Speaker 1: got into the different technologies for the virus antibodies versus
Speaker 1: T cells, and you know, you really need to understand
Speaker 1: this to figure out what will be the most effective
Speaker 1: vaccine and maybe multiple vaccines that will need to really
Speaker 1: get ahead of the coronavirus. So I'm so glad we
Speaker 1: got some time with him. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week coming up next. I call him a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, Jason flam He's a founding board member of
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project on Racial injustice, and we caught up
Speaker 1: with him once again to talk about the impact of
Speaker 1: the past three weeks reminding us about how those most
Speaker 1: vulnerable populations are targeted really unfairly. He's a job. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Well, today we're
Speaker 1: bringing you some of the most important and we hope
Speaker 1: informative conversations we had on our daily Bloomberg Business week
Speaker 1: radio show across the week, and it feels like every
Speaker 1: conversation we have Carol is complicated in many ways. You know,
Speaker 1: we spent so many weeks saying, all right, how are
Speaker 1: you dealing with this pandemic? How are you dealing with
Speaker 1: it personally? And now there's a whole other layer, and
Speaker 1: it's a complex one. And so going back to some
Speaker 1: of our tried and true voices and voices who are
Speaker 1: right in the midst of this feels that much more important. Well,
Speaker 1: one of those voices, Jason, is Jason flam He's the
Speaker 1: CEO and founder of Lava Records, founding board member of
Speaker 1: the Innocence Project. He's also host of the powerful podcast
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction. He spoke with us about the death of
Speaker 1: George Floyd and the resulting civic unrest as once again
Speaker 1: the vulnerable population is disproportionately being impacted. This is this
Speaker 1: is about so much more than the killings that we see,
Speaker 1: the police killings that we've been seeing recently on videotape
Speaker 1: that have been reported so widely that beyond the Taylor,
Speaker 1: of course, we we all know about that. A lot
Speaker 1: of Aubrey, etcetera. What we're seeing I believe is a
Speaker 1: reaction to the systemic persecution of people of color in
Speaker 1: our criminal legal system at every phase, right, And most
Speaker 1: of it is behind the scenes, and but it's very,
Speaker 1: very real. We have almost eleven million people cycling in
Speaker 1: and out of jail in prison every year in America.
Speaker 1: Eleven million. It's insane. And so the jail churn of
Speaker 1: just these black bodies being taken and you know, and
Speaker 1: just brutalized at every step of the game is is
Speaker 1: something that had to burst. And you know, now there's
Speaker 1: this visible, you know, lynching, the slow motion lynching, and
Speaker 1: finally it's crystallized everyone to come together in a way
Speaker 1: that's never happened before. So how do we collectively keep
Speaker 1: the momentum to a point, Jason, where there's real structural change, because,
Speaker 1: as you say, it's well beyond police brutality. Are we
Speaker 1: thinking as broadly and and at the same time as
Speaker 1: specifically about some of those things that need to change
Speaker 1: more structurally? Yeah, I mean, I hope so. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because there's no one particular thing that everyone is demanding, right, right.
Speaker 1: The fact is that we want people want, and it's
Speaker 1: so interesting that this is I think the first, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's the biggest movement I think probably ever.
Speaker 1: You have all fifty states and at least eighteen other
Speaker 1: countries with these massive protests and which are almost exclusively
Speaker 1: peaceful by the one that's just got that out of
Speaker 1: the way. So I think we're starting to see changes, right.
Speaker 1: You just mentioned on the news break the Confederate flag
Speaker 1: and being taken from NASCAR events. Right, these things are symbolic,
Speaker 1: but they're meaningful in my opinion. Interesting that that happened
Speaker 1: on the same day that the President said that he's
Speaker 1: not going to um allowed the Confederate names to be
Speaker 1: taken off of military basis UM. So it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: that NASCAR and the White House are on different ends
Speaker 1: of the You know that that argument, and NASCAR is
Speaker 1: obviously right. So Jason and I think this is very
Speaker 1: relevant to the event that you're talking about, the Zoom
Speaker 1: event you're having tomorrow that you were describing with us before,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about it again before we wrap up.
Speaker 1: But you know, I've really been wrestling with this, and
Speaker 1: I daresay Carol has as well. We have teenagers, were
Speaker 1: trying to have these conversations with our kids about this,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of parents are trying to
Speaker 1: have conversations with their teenagers twenty years old, twenty year old,
Speaker 1: and and and up. You know, this is a generation
Speaker 1: that's very socially engaged. They want to do something. They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have the life experience that that maybe we have,
Speaker 1: and don't understand some of the complexities of this. And
Speaker 1: yet we want them to be engaged and we want
Speaker 1: them to be informed. How do you recommend having those
Speaker 1: types of conversations. Well, there's so many great resources that
Speaker 1: you can go to. Right, there's a wonderful new book
Speaker 1: out called Usual Cruelty by Alek Car Katzanis that really
Speaker 1: ripped the lid off of how we have you know,
Speaker 1: created and and perpetuated the system that is designed to
Speaker 1: crush human beings, to cage them and crush them for
Speaker 1: economic gain. Of course, people in our criminal institutions, right,
Speaker 1: and we have almost ten thousand jails in prisons in
Speaker 1: this country, which is insane, right, But are black, It's
Speaker 1: like it's crazy, right, we have more people in prison,
Speaker 1: more black people in prison right now than we ever
Speaker 1: had enslaved at any particular time in the history of slavery. So,
Speaker 1: you know, but but again, I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: great things. Watched thirteen the movie right, watch the Innostance Files, sorry,
Speaker 1: the Innocence Files on Netflix. Um, you know, there's there
Speaker 1: are so many great things to follow on my Instagram,
Speaker 1: which is it's Jason Flam. I t s Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: I'm always highlighting things that I think are important too
Speaker 1: for people to focus on. But yeah, the minute you
Speaker 1: get into this, it becomes like a rabbit hole, right.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping your kids and other kids of their
Speaker 1: generation will take this and and and make it their
Speaker 1: their cause because this is the worst failed social policy
Speaker 1: disaster of our lifetimes, you know. So and I and
Speaker 1: I guess it's interesting too, and I and I appreciate
Speaker 1: what you said there because I do think, especially in
Speaker 1: light of you know, so many people saying so many
Speaker 1: different things, being able to focus the conversation on incarceration specifically,
Speaker 1: I do think it's helpful because I think, as you
Speaker 1: said before, we did some news, you know, this idea
Speaker 1: of like everybody is sort of casting about and and
Speaker 1: this is a very you know, just stark reality, and
Speaker 1: you just described it really well and to sort of
Speaker 1: point people toward that specific part of the system, which
Speaker 1: is I think empirically broken. I think I think no
Speaker 1: one would be like, no, it's going great. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's very pointed. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I guess I think something little shut sorry, go ahead, No, no, please, Jason,
Speaker 1: go go ahead. I was gonna say. I think something
Speaker 1: that will really surprise a lot of your listeners is
Speaker 1: that the number one arrest, the number one reason for
Speaker 1: arrest in America and jailing is driving on a suspended license.
Speaker 1: As you can guess, the overwhelming majority of those people
Speaker 1: that are arrested for this and and jailed, and of
Speaker 1: course they are over the over index in every aspect
Speaker 1: of the system. They're the most arrested, are the most prosecuted,
Speaker 1: they get the highest sentences, they get the longest sentence.
Speaker 1: Is they have, you know, the longest probation periods are
Speaker 1: people of color. So the fact is that these are
Speaker 1: not dangerous people. And then there's fines and fees, and
Speaker 1: they get charged with these fines and fees. They get
Speaker 1: put back into the system because they can't pay these
Speaker 1: fines and fees. So it just becomes a NonStop churn
Speaker 1: that disrupts families and communities and creates this hostile, terrible,
Speaker 1: you know, feeling amongst people who are being again put
Speaker 1: down and persecuted. And and that's why I hope people
Speaker 1: will follow um Civil Rights Core is a great thing
Speaker 1: to follow on Instagram or and the same thing the
Speaker 1: book Usual Cruelty by that same guy who's really upending
Speaker 1: that system but working on So Jason, what else needs
Speaker 1: to change? Because this is not you know something again
Speaker 1: that like just happened overnight, right, it's you know, we
Speaker 1: had um one guest on who from Horred and she
Speaker 1: just talked about you know, we've been fighting racism for
Speaker 1: four hundred years and then some you know, so what
Speaker 1: is it? Is it? Education? Is it? Neighborhoods? Is it?
Speaker 1: You know, I've been having conversations. We were talking about
Speaker 1: you know, who we socialize with, and you know what,
Speaker 1: what what's wrong? What's broken down in our system? What
Speaker 1: needs to be the first one two steps to change?
Speaker 1: You know the racism that is obviously still rampant in America. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that when people talk about defunding the police,
Speaker 1: what they're really saying is and there's not a better
Speaker 1: word for us to us that they use. But they're saying,
Speaker 1: take some of this money. Right. Where you have cities,
Speaker 1: major cities who have over their budgets that are devoted
Speaker 1: to police and corrections, right, take some of that money
Speaker 1: away and put it into community you know, um enrichment. Right,
Speaker 1: put it into programs that actually help people. And let's
Speaker 1: bear in mind that only less than four of nine
Speaker 1: one one calls are for anything violent, right, So, and
Speaker 1: we can't expect police officers to be trained to deal
Speaker 1: with the mental health crisis or someone in the drug
Speaker 1: situation who's having a reaction, or someone who is uh
Speaker 1: stuck on the side of the road, no matter what
Speaker 1: it is, they show up in this highly militarized way,
Speaker 1: and bad things happen. Now, the racism, the systemic racism,
Speaker 1: is a whole another issue, and that's something we have
Speaker 1: to deal with it. There's a soft racism, right, and
Speaker 1: I think we all have to do a couple of things.
Speaker 1: We have to look at our company. So many people
Speaker 1: that are listening are people who run our our big
Speaker 1: wigs and important businesses. Look at your hiring practices, look
Speaker 1: at your portfolio as well. I encourage your listeners to
Speaker 1: look at your portfolio, call your your investment person or
Speaker 1: maybe your your own and look and see if you
Speaker 1: have any investments in companies that benefit from the from
Speaker 1: the caging of human beings, and if you do divest.
Speaker 1: That's Jason Flam founding board member of The Innocence Project.
Speaker 1: He's host of Wrongful Conviction, the podcast, founder and CEO
Speaker 1: of Lava Records. Someone well known to the recording industry.
Speaker 1: Made certainly his mark there, but he's also now making
Speaker 1: a mark Jason on giving voices to those that are
Speaker 1: often unheard in our society, including those who are wrongfully incarcerated.
Speaker 1: And what I liked about him is he's very prescriptive
Speaker 1: in some ways, and I think we look to people
Speaker 1: like him who know the issues so well. He's also focused,
Speaker 1: I think, at a time where we're all looking for
Speaker 1: something tangible, and I think being able to distill what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in the broader world down to this issue
Speaker 1: of incarceration, mass incarceration. Obviously the wrongfully Convicted is his
Speaker 1: very specific passion. But what he's able to bring in
Speaker 1: terms of understanding this system that we have built that,
Speaker 1: as you say, disproportionately affects a very vulnerable part of
Speaker 1: the conversation. It's a really important thing to understand right
Speaker 1: now well, and he said, it's about so much more
Speaker 1: than the killings we've seen on videotape. It's a reaction
Speaker 1: to the systemic prosecution to people of color. And he
Speaker 1: just talked about basically, you know, putting money into programs
Speaker 1: that make a difference. And he said, for investors, you
Speaker 1: gotta look at your portfolio and see how you can
Speaker 1: make a difference. You know, money talks. We've said this
Speaker 1: many times over the past few weeks. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up the first hour the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 1: Plenty coming up in our next hour, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: inside the magazine for a look at how one company, Shopify,
Speaker 1: is enjoying a big moment and hoping it lasts. It's
Speaker 1: all because of the virus. Letus. We'll catch up with
Speaker 1: John Rogers of Aerial Investments, one of the best known
Speaker 1: names in investing. He'll talk about this moment where we
Speaker 1: find ourselves. It's a critical one, especially as a leading
Speaker 1: African American voice. He knows what it's going to take
Speaker 1: to really make some fundamental changes. Yeah, we're at a
Speaker 1: critical moment, and this is a critical voice on the subject.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you some of the most important and informative conversations that
Speaker 1: we had on our daily radio show throughout the week. This,
Speaker 1: of course, as news continued to evolve around us, one
Speaker 1: of the voices we were looking forward to catching with
Speaker 1: is John Rogers. He's the co CEO and founder of
Speaker 1: Aerial Investments. Jason a well known firm in the investment
Speaker 1: in financial community, ten billion dollar fund manager, uh and
Speaker 1: he really was one of those voices we needed to
Speaker 1: hear from. Well, I think that, you know, our huge
Speaker 1: problem in this country is the wealth gap has just
Speaker 1: gotten larger and larger over the last forty years. I
Speaker 1: could have never imagined when I started Arial in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three that that would be the case. I just
Speaker 1: continue to think we would benefit from the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement of the sixties, but it just hasn't happened. As
Speaker 1: you know, the data shows from Ray Basar's data at
Speaker 1: the Fellow Reserve St. Louis. Between n and twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: African American college educated folks saw their wealth decline, while
Speaker 1: college educated white saw their wealth increased nine. That's dramatic,
Speaker 1: and we're going backwards. What we have to do to
Speaker 1: improve things is we have to get corporations to not
Speaker 1: only hire more executive more African Americans and executive ranks
Speaker 1: and leadership roles, but we have to do business with
Speaker 1: African American companies and everything we do outside the just
Speaker 1: construction and catering and the supplier diversity things, we need
Speaker 1: to move to doing business with African Americans and the
Speaker 1: part of the economy that's grolling today financial services, professional services,
Speaker 1: and technology. And I think we actually have to do
Speaker 1: away with that term supplier diversity and use with the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago uses and calls business diversity. So we
Speaker 1: can have a strong African American entrepreneurial community that will
Speaker 1: provide jobs and philanthropy for urban communities, and that would
Speaker 1: be something that would be critical to move our country forward.
Speaker 1: What about the investment industry, particularly John and how they
Speaker 1: can make a difference. You know, we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about E S g funds. They've been around for a while,
Speaker 1: and yet I think many would argue they haven't necessarily
Speaker 1: helped move the needle when it comes to erasing racism
Speaker 1: in our country. Well, as you know, private equity has
Speaker 1: gotten to be so so powerful, venture capital become more
Speaker 1: and more important, both in Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: So we need to have you know, most most places
Speaker 1: have never had a black executive. Most major private equity
Speaker 1: firms and venture capital firms have never had a black
Speaker 1: managing director or a black partner. So we need to
Speaker 1: be included in those lucrative parts of our economy that
Speaker 1: not only make a lot of wealth for people to
Speaker 1: work in them, but they have so much impact on
Speaker 1: the companies that they bring public. Uh often when they
Speaker 1: bring these companies public, a lot of them, when the
Speaker 1: a lot of companies have come through the private equity
Speaker 1: or venture capital network, have never had an African American
Speaker 1: on their boards. And so that's so important because there's
Speaker 1: so much influence that the giant private equity firms have
Speaker 1: in our society and our venture capital firms have in
Speaker 1: our society. We've got to be included in that part
Speaker 1: of the economy. If we really want to move the
Speaker 1: ball down the field. And so John, on that point,
Speaker 1: I'm so interested in what you just said, because it
Speaker 1: feels like the folks who might be able to make
Speaker 1: a difference in the behavior or of the venture capitalists
Speaker 1: and the private equity firms are the ultimate investors there.
Speaker 1: Those are big pension funds and endowments and folks you
Speaker 1: know very well. Is there the will on the part
Speaker 1: of some of those big institutional investors to force this
Speaker 1: issue a little bit? You know, it's interesting I think
Speaker 1: with the it's fallen through the cracks. Basically, the major
Speaker 1: public pension funds have done a terrific job of pushing
Speaker 1: public companies to have diversity on their boards, but they
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to that next level of all these privately
Speaker 1: held businesses where they actually had. You can argue, you
Speaker 1: have more influence because they're writing these big checks to
Speaker 1: these private equity firms. So if they say they've got
Speaker 1: to embrace diversity, it would happen, it would change. And
Speaker 1: then secondly, you're right, the nonprofits have been actually the worst.
Speaker 1: They've also fallen through the cracks. They get a lot
Speaker 1: of government money. Um, they have so much powered influence
Speaker 1: if the Ivy League schools and the and the big
Speaker 1: company and the big schools like Notre Dame and Michigan
Speaker 1: and throughout the country push this agenda, those companies, those
Speaker 1: private equity companies and venture capital companies would have to
Speaker 1: uh change their ways because the most most important customers
Speaker 1: are pushing them to do the right thing. We're speaking
Speaker 1: with John Rodgers, the CEO of Airline Investments, and John,
Speaker 1: I want to just continue on this if we can
Speaker 1: for a moment, I had a big private equity manager
Speaker 1: say to me earlier today, in fact, that we were
Speaker 1: at a very interesting moment here in twenty where if
Speaker 1: you look at E s G. Environmental, Environmental, Social, and governance,
Speaker 1: you know, the E was sort of like capital E
Speaker 1: for the It feels like the last six months to
Speaker 1: a year, you know a lot of folks were getting
Speaker 1: behind that, and now here in mid twenty twenty, maybe
Speaker 1: the S is getting a little bit more attention. What
Speaker 1: do we need to keep that attention there? Well? I
Speaker 1: think that, uh, not only do we need to get
Speaker 1: the nonprofits and the big tension funds to ask these
Speaker 1: questions around diversity and inclusion, but also our political leaders
Speaker 1: continue can can make a real difference. You know what's
Speaker 1: happening in Congress right now, where we have progressive leaders
Speaker 1: like Maxine Waters and Joyce Bady, the congresswoman, who are
Speaker 1: very engaged in leadership of the Financial Services Committee of
Speaker 1: the House. They've been able to impact and force financial
Speaker 1: institutions to do more around diversity and inclusion. We need
Speaker 1: to get more progressive elected officials like that interested in
Speaker 1: bringing economic parity into our society. Because you're right, people
Speaker 1: gotten enthralled with important issues around the environment and all
Speaker 1: those types of issues that are critical, but they stopped
Speaker 1: asking about economic justice the way the old days. Generald
Speaker 1: Washington is the mayor of Chicago and Maynard Jackson when
Speaker 1: he was the mayor of Atlanta, they asked these tough
Speaker 1: questions and we've gotten away from it. So we kinda
Speaker 1: sort of almost go back to the future and get
Speaker 1: our political leaders to push this agenda and also our
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders to remind people that economic justice is
Speaker 1: so import Where does it all start, though, John, You know,
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of conversations about kind of where
Speaker 1: you're born determines what kind of education you get, which
Speaker 1: determines what kind of job you get. Which determines what
Speaker 1: kind of benefits healthcare you name it, that you get,
Speaker 1: and kind of you know, determines your place in society.
Speaker 1: So where do where do we start? We throw a
Speaker 1: lot of money at healthcare, we throw a lot of
Speaker 1: money at education, and yet here are the gap still right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you know, it's clear that
Speaker 1: when you have successful the wealth is the key. You know,
Speaker 1: wealth is at the heart of it. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have equal wealth, you're going to have equal education,
Speaker 1: You're going to have equal health care, You're going to
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to have a successful retirement, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: This is a capitalist democracy we're part of, and if
Speaker 1: African Americans are left out of the economic equation, we're
Speaker 1: going to suffer all the ills of our society. And
Speaker 1: that's John Rogers of Aerial Investments one of the most
Speaker 1: important voices I feel like we talked to this week
Speaker 1: because he sits at the nexus of so many things
Speaker 1: that we are interested in and need to be interested
Speaker 1: in right now. It's about access to capital, it's about
Speaker 1: access to opportunity. It's about how investors look at this
Speaker 1: moment and what may fundamentally change going forward, not just
Speaker 1: related to the civil unrest that we're seeing and the
Speaker 1: opportunities that we need to be thinking about for more
Speaker 1: vulnerable parts of our society, but also how the world
Speaker 1: of money may change in the wake of the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: Really enjoyed it. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we hear from Cathy Wood, CEO at Our Investment. With
Speaker 1: so many changes going on in our world and the
Speaker 1: world being disrupted, Kathy is one of the more thoughtful
Speaker 1: voices when it comes to how that impacts our corporate world,
Speaker 1: our financial world, our investment world. This is Bloomberg. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. Well, today we're being some of
Speaker 1: the most important, we hope, thoughtful conversations we have on
Speaker 1: our Bloomberg Business Week daily radio show about where we
Speaker 1: are this state of the world. Carol, it is uncertain
Speaker 1: and it is, to say the least disrupted. And one
Speaker 1: of the voices we got to Jason was Cathy would
Speaker 1: CEO at our Investment. Our audience knows her well. She's
Speaker 1: a top performing fund manager and really a thoughtful observer
Speaker 1: of our investment world, in our world at large, and
Speaker 1: so we caught up with her about some of the
Speaker 1: trends that we're seeing and some of those that might
Speaker 1: stay in the companies that stand to benefit. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about running the firm at this point
Speaker 1: and sort of what that's like, and any even like
Speaker 1: subtle or or maybe more than subtle changes that you
Speaker 1: made in terms of managing because you have a very
Speaker 1: cohesive team, you know, we've talked to you a lot
Speaker 1: about that over the years, and a very engaged team
Speaker 1: with each other. H Yeah, it's been very interesting. I
Speaker 1: was I was concerned. We didn't want to lose any
Speaker 1: of that. And so to this day, every morning meeting,
Speaker 1: everyone in the firm is on and UH we talked.
Speaker 1: I just we check one of our our client PM
Speaker 1: and his wife just had a baby, so you know,
Speaker 1: we start the conversation that we just keep in touch
Speaker 1: and keep you know, showing concern for one another. UH,
Speaker 1: and then we get into our research meetings. So I
Speaker 1: actually think we've bonded even more closely throughout this ordeal,
Speaker 1: and our productivity has been incredible. Marketing UH Marketing launched
Speaker 1: a completely new website in the middle of all of this, Um,
Speaker 1: you should take a look. It's really phenomenal and uh
Speaker 1: and and our communication and marketing is key to this.
Speaker 1: We've been over communicating. I don't know if people feel
Speaker 1: that way, but uh, their mantras over communicate, over communicate,
Speaker 1: So we are we are. We've become pretty prolific in
Speaker 1: this time period. I feel like you can't over communicate
Speaker 1: at a time like this, Kathy, I have to ask
Speaker 1: you about you know, everything that's gone on the last
Speaker 1: three months and really the last two weeks. You know
Speaker 1: how you see it in the discussions you're having with
Speaker 1: your investment team and your employers just generally, you know,
Speaker 1: your employees generally about how it impacts our world. And
Speaker 1: I guess ultimately you know, I get you know our
Speaker 1: investment world at all. You know as well, it's all connected.
Speaker 1: I think you know, we have a very young team,
Speaker 1: and so for those who are in New York and
Speaker 1: have had to be in New York the whole time,
Speaker 1: for some of them, it's been lonely. That's why I
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that we kept engaged and we
Speaker 1: we get together many times during the week, different kinds
Speaker 1: of meetings, but that first one in the morning, I
Speaker 1: think is really important just to gage how everybody's feeling. Um.
Speaker 1: So I think that many of our employees though, have
Speaker 1: gone to their homes and uh, we have Morocco, we
Speaker 1: have Germany, we have Canada, uh and and really, I
Speaker 1: think we've all worked really hard to to you know,
Speaker 1: keep the communication lines completely open so we have no trouble.
Speaker 1: We have less trouble getting hold of one another than
Speaker 1: we did before when we were all in an open
Speaker 1: space office where there were a few conference rooms. So, um,
Speaker 1: I think our you know, our video and uh, we
Speaker 1: we use teams off just because for for security reasons,
Speaker 1: but we've been using Zoom as well depending on the call.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think these tools have improved our
Speaker 1: productivity enormously. Kathy, you're someone who invested in a lot
Speaker 1: of the big tech names. Right. We've talked about Amazon,
Speaker 1: We've talked about Tesla, We've talked about so many of them.
Speaker 1: A lot of them have also been very vocal about
Speaker 1: especially we just talked about Jeff Bezos and what he
Speaker 1: has talked about Black Lives Matter and kind of an
Speaker 1: exchange he's had with some folks on social media, and
Speaker 1: I do wonder, you know, as you look at big
Speaker 1: tech and their response, and maybe there are responsibilities to society,
Speaker 1: you know as a whole. I just wonder how you
Speaker 1: see it. Obviously, I think compassion is the order of
Speaker 1: the day, and I think showing compassion for you know,
Speaker 1: the communities and the people, and I think it's all
Speaker 1: of us actually have been her and distraught over all
Speaker 1: of this. UM that's been important. We um. If you
Speaker 1: if you were to take a look at our team
Speaker 1: page at our dash invest dot com, you will see
Speaker 1: how diverse a team we have and how we all
Speaker 1: had to rally around each other. And uh, you'll also
Speaker 1: see the statement we put up and uh you will see,
Speaker 1: uh you won't see some things that you might expect
Speaker 1: to see because we don't want to get caught in
Speaker 1: a crossfire, a political cross fire, so to speak. Uh,
Speaker 1: we just want to lay it out there. We're doing.
Speaker 1: We're certainly talking to talk at our invest uh in
Speaker 1: terms of the kind of team. And I have never
Speaker 1: had a better team never. I think the diversity has
Speaker 1: been phenomenal for us. So you know, we like to
Speaker 1: lead by example. That's certainly what I think we're doing now.
Speaker 1: We weren't afraid to make a statement. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: know many asset managers I think stay away from all
Speaker 1: of this completely. That's Kathy Wood, CEO at ARC Investment,
Speaker 1: And we check out our funds, whether it's the Innovation
Speaker 1: e t F, that Next Generation Internet e t F,
Speaker 1: her fintech innovation, her genomic Revolution e t F. I mean, Jason,
Speaker 1: these are top performers consistently, and so she really is
Speaker 1: at the crossroads of the changes, the disruptions that are
Speaker 1: going on in our society and the companies that are
Speaker 1: smack in the middle of it and that stand to benefit.
Speaker 1: I agree. You're listening to Bloomberg Business weekend speaking of
Speaker 1: companies that stand to benefit. Coming up, we're gonna hear
Speaker 1: from Red Antler, chief brand officer and co founder Emily Heyward.
Speaker 1: She's got a new book. It's called Obsessed, Building a
Speaker 1: brand people love from day one. This was a conversation
Speaker 1: that both of us did not want to end. This
Speaker 1: is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Masser and Jason Kelly from Bloomberg Radio. So we're bringing
Speaker 1: you some of the most important and informative conversations we
Speaker 1: had and what was another really busy week here at Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: These are our conversations on our daily radio show, dealing
Speaker 1: about so many different things, Jason, the market's reopenings, disruption
Speaker 1: in our world, civil unrest, uh, and really the responsibility
Speaker 1: of companies and brands against the backdrop of all of this. Well,
Speaker 1: and that's becoming more and more important to us as consumers.
Speaker 1: You and I talked about it all the time. We
Speaker 1: talked about it with our kids as well, and all
Speaker 1: of that came up with Emily Hayward. She's the co
Speaker 1: founder chief brand officer over at red Antler. They've worked
Speaker 1: with tons of companies that you know. This week she
Speaker 1: put out her new book, it's called Obsessed, Building a
Speaker 1: brand people love from day one. We've really seen a
Speaker 1: movement unfold over the past decade where category after category
Speaker 1: is being disrupted by startups and people are really rethinking
Speaker 1: the brands that they're loyal to, the everyday items that
Speaker 1: they buy, and who they really want to give their
Speaker 1: money to. And you know, over the years, I've seen
Speaker 1: what it takes to build a modern brand and how
Speaker 1: you can capture hearts in whole new ways, and really
Speaker 1: how you need to. Um. So the book is all
Speaker 1: about the new rules of branding and new ways to
Speaker 1: form connections with consumers or frankly get left behind. And
Speaker 1: you have to do it, Emily, from day one, right,
Speaker 1: you have to know your brand from the get go. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it certainly helps to do it from day one.
Speaker 1: You know, I would never want to tell an established
Speaker 1: a company that it's too late for them. I also
Speaker 1: think it's never that's not good for business either, Emily,
Speaker 1: is it. Well, that's true. But I'm also an internal optimist,
Speaker 1: and I think everybody you know has the chance to
Speaker 1: be relevant again. Um, but I do think it certainly
Speaker 1: helps that so many of these companies are really able
Speaker 1: to build their meaning and their purpose into who they
Speaker 1: are from the very beginning. But you but you do
Speaker 1: talk about like you say that you know, founders think
Speaker 1: that branding is something you think about once you figured
Speaker 1: out all the important stuff. I'm kind of reading from
Speaker 1: your book here, you know. But you say, you know
Speaker 1: you've got to really be thinking about this early on. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: When we started Ranntler in two thousand seven, the ethos
Speaker 1: of the day was like the lean startup, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like get out there, make sure you have
Speaker 1: product markets fit, put your way to success, and then
Speaker 1: worry about your brand. But our hypothesis was actually that
Speaker 1: the sooner you start thinking about brand, the more set
Speaker 1: up for success you'll be. And I think we see
Speaker 1: examples of businesses that really took an incredibly thoughtful approach
Speaker 1: to brand from the beginning, and we're able to just
Speaker 1: come out of the gates, you know, at full fourth
Speaker 1: and gained momentum and press and word of mouth, and
Speaker 1: ultimately we're able to sort of unseat the competition in
Speaker 1: a way that I don't think they ever would have
Speaker 1: been able to achieve if they had taken a halfway up.
Speaker 1: All right, so give us a one minute case study. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I think Casper, which you brought up, is an excellent
Speaker 1: example of that because before Castper launched, nobody thought you
Speaker 1: could sell a mattress through e commerce. You know, it
Speaker 1: was impossible, right, people had to try it out. And
Speaker 1: if they had put up a sort of dinky website
Speaker 1: being like, hey, let's see if people are willing to
Speaker 1: make this eight hundred fifty dollar purchase online without ever
Speaker 1: sleeping on the bed, they would have gotten what I
Speaker 1: would call a false negative. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: people would have fallen for that brand in the way
Speaker 1: they did. Now. Of course, they've faced out challenges since then,
Speaker 1: certainly because there's been hundreds of copycats because of what
Speaker 1: the fantastic and phenomenal job they did. But I do
Speaker 1: think it was brand that enabled them to build that trust,
Speaker 1: change consumer behavior and gets people to make a very
Speaker 1: high ticket, high stakes purchase site unseen from a brand
Speaker 1: that they had never heard of. One of the things
Speaker 1: Jason and I have been wondering Emily is, you know,
Speaker 1: with everything that's gone on over the past twelve weeks,
Speaker 1: with everything that's gone over the past two and a
Speaker 1: half weeks following what happened in Minneapolis, you know, I
Speaker 1: do wonder what impact that has on companies, on leaders,
Speaker 1: and you know, what it means to be a brand
Speaker 1: in our society today and and will it matter to
Speaker 1: consumers ultimately going forward? I absolutely think it's going to
Speaker 1: matter to consumers more and more and more. And I
Speaker 1: think that this movement towards brands taking accountability happened before
Speaker 1: the moment that we currently find ourselves in. You know,
Speaker 1: consumers have more choice, more information, and more power than
Speaker 1: ever before, and that's only getting greater and grand greater,
Speaker 1: and they're using that power to demand change and accountability
Speaker 1: and action, and I think it's phenomenal. And I think
Speaker 1: that brands to think they can just sort of like
Speaker 1: stay behind the curtain and not get engaged are going
Speaker 1: to find that their loyalty quickly. A wrote, So, Emily,
Speaker 1: help us understand through your work, you know, and some
Speaker 1: of the brands that you've worked with, what does the
Speaker 1: right consumer engagement look like? And I know authenticity and
Speaker 1: transparency are all key aspects of this, but you know,
Speaker 1: there are also a lot of brands going after the
Speaker 1: consumer right now, and the Internet is a great equalizer
Speaker 1: in many ways, and there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are clever, and even a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are well funded. But I wonder, as you've tried to
Speaker 1: distill down that secret sauce, what do you find. I
Speaker 1: think it's recognizing that brand is not a layer that
Speaker 1: sits on top. It's not just having a cool logo
Speaker 1: or a great ad campaign or a socially conscious ad campaign.
Speaker 1: I think that brand needs to start from within. And
Speaker 1: the brands that are succeeding today have an incredibly clear
Speaker 1: idea of their purpose and of the problem and solving
Speaker 1: for people. They have a baked in relevance that's about
Speaker 1: adding more value to people's lives, and then they can
Speaker 1: bring that to life through all the ways they tell
Speaker 1: their story. But if you don't start with that meaning,
Speaker 1: it's just gonna be shallow and people are going to
Speaker 1: see through it. So one thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you and Jason I talked about this a lot too.
Speaker 1: We both have teenagers, and you know both of our
Speaker 1: all of our teenagers. You know, look at a company
Speaker 1: what it stands for or we're looking at you know,
Speaker 1: where things are made, if it's a food product, you know,
Speaker 1: ingredients and all that kind of stuff. But I wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of brands, how much the consumer
Speaker 1: is responsible from moving the needle and in an environment
Speaker 1: where the virus has exposed it emily as well as
Speaker 1: you know what happened in Minneapolis. You know there are
Speaker 1: people who are just struggling to put food on their
Speaker 1: table and a roof over their heads, you know, who
Speaker 1: do a lot of purchasing as well. Though, you know,
Speaker 1: is it are we overstating the importance of kind of
Speaker 1: what a brand stands for how they do things. So
Speaker 1: I guess, to me, I don't think that there's any
Speaker 1: way to oversee the importance of doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that this moment is less about what
Speaker 1: you're posting on Instagram and more about sort of how
Speaker 1: you're looking at your own internal culture and you're hiring
Speaker 1: practices and how you're promoting black voices within and without
Speaker 1: of your company, you know. So to me, like it
Speaker 1: does don't necessarily need to be about brands investing, you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars in ad campaigns about social justice. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I'd rather than put that money towards programs that help
Speaker 1: people then worry so much about their external reputation. And
Speaker 1: I think that if brands have that internal commitment and
Speaker 1: are doing the right thing, consumers are going to recognize
Speaker 1: that and support that more than that. Are just the
Speaker 1: loudest about talking to talk. So tell us something about
Speaker 1: putting this book together. I mean, we do wanna, you know,
Speaker 1: give some nice love to it because it's out today,
Speaker 1: obsessed building a brand people love from day one. I
Speaker 1: mean I wonder about I mean, it's a little different
Speaker 1: from what you do in your day job, like, what
Speaker 1: was fun about it, what was challenging about it? And
Speaker 1: maybe surprising. So the most challenging thing for me was
Speaker 1: that my day job is all about taking the most
Speaker 1: complicated thing you can imagine, you know, an entire business
Speaker 1: and every feature and fund, the piece of functionality and
Speaker 1: just throwing it into you know, four words, right, Whereas
Speaker 1: when you're writing a book, it's almost the opposite skills
Speaker 1: that you know, you really need to take an idea
Speaker 1: and expand on it and bringing examples and make sure
Speaker 1: that people are understanding it from all angles. So just
Speaker 1: dealing with the blank page was incredibly daunting after spending
Speaker 1: a career of trying to be as absolutely sustinct as possible. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was also, you know, so much fun to
Speaker 1: really think back on all the amazing examples I have
Speaker 1: from companies that I've gotten to partner with and entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: I admire, as well as just brands I admire as
Speaker 1: a consumer. You know, I bring up a lot of
Speaker 1: examples in the book that I didn't work on and
Speaker 1: got to sort of put on my consumer lens and
Speaker 1: think about what are the brands I love just being
Speaker 1: out there in the world and observing them and buying them.
Speaker 1: What brands do you love? Good question. Well, I'm very
Speaker 1: excited about a recent launch of hours Um. That's a
Speaker 1: brand called jot. It's a new at home coffee product
Speaker 1: and it came just in time. You know, everybody was
Speaker 1: already in lockdown. We actually pushed the launch off a
Speaker 1: few weeks because it was the post to launch, like
Speaker 1: the week of pandemic hits um. But it really has
Speaker 1: been an incredible addition to my routine and I'm proud
Speaker 1: of the brand that we put together there. And it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where the products great, the brand
Speaker 1: is great, the site is great. It all comes together,
Speaker 1: which again I think it's table safe. These days, Jason
Speaker 1: and I are both j o K. Jason and I
Speaker 1: are both googling it is there a brand? What about? What?
Speaker 1: Like the older? Is an older brand out there that
Speaker 1: you just are like, man, they have just consistently continued
Speaker 1: to evolve and get it right. Yeah, I'll give it
Speaker 1: a hattet to Levi's for that. They're a brand that
Speaker 1: continues to stay relevant. I think they've stayed true to
Speaker 1: who they are while also adapting to the changing times,
Speaker 1: and they've really leaned into the fact that heritage can
Speaker 1: be a badge of authenticity, which you know is a buzzword,
Speaker 1: but it's really important to people. Yeah. Interesting and ever
Speaker 1: Lane is that is that a company you've worked with, No,
Speaker 1: ever Lyne is not a client um, but you know
Speaker 1: they're obviously one of I think the very and the
Speaker 1: director consumer movement, and it really sort of led the
Speaker 1: way and a lot of discussion around transparency, you making
Speaker 1: your labor practice is known, and sustainability and pricing. So
Speaker 1: I write about them in the book and I desire
Speaker 1: a lot of things done and that's right. Antler's Chief
Speaker 1: brand Officer Emily Heyward, author of the new book Obsessed,
Speaker 1: Building a brand people love from day one, didn't want
Speaker 1: this conversation to end, as you said, Carol, in part
Speaker 1: because she's so smart. She is talking to these entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: all the time understanding and this is an overused word,
Speaker 1: their passion. But how that translates into really connecting with
Speaker 1: people and man, if there is something we are all
Speaker 1: looking for right now, it's a connection. And if you
Speaker 1: think about the brands that have connected us more recently,
Speaker 1: that includes brands like All Birds, Casper and Birch Box.
Speaker 1: She has worked with all of them in terms of
Speaker 1: developing their strategies, so this was definitely a voice we
Speaker 1: wanted to hear from. That wraps up the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for running us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly.
Speaker 1: Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live
Speaker 1: Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time.
Speaker 1: You can also watch the show live on YouTube. Just
Speaker 1: search for Bloomberg Global News. We'll be back right here
Speaker 1: next week at the same time. This is Bloomberg