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. We are not yet out
Speaker 1: of the global pandemic, and yet parts of our world
Speaker 1: continue to find their way back, reopening on, covering and
Speaker 1: tackling problems, finding solutions, looking forward, in sometimes even looking
Speaker 1: back for some guidance, as one of our guests this
Speaker 1: week did specifically to four. We'll have more on the
Speaker 1: glory days later on Coming up though this hour, we
Speaker 1: are going to blow your mind truly with a device
Speaker 1: that's looking to read your mind. Also, the Bitcoin Slayer
Speaker 1: is back about a planned stock sale of up to
Speaker 1: one billion dollars. We're talking about Michael Sailor. He's founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of micro Strategy. Will hear from him shortly.
Speaker 1: And we're also going to talk to the individual who
Speaker 1: brought up the club scene back in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: He changed the hotel industry. He is now rebooting his
Speaker 1: own creation, Ian Schrager, he will be with us to
Speaker 1: talk about hospitality coming back. All of that to come.
Speaker 1: We begin with this week's cover story, Airbnb spends millions
Speaker 1: of dollars to make nightmares go away. This story revealing
Speaker 1: little known details on a company that's become revered for
Speaker 1: disrupting the established hospitality industry and is now a more
Speaker 1: than ninety billion dollar market cap company. Bloomberg Quick Takes,
Speaker 1: Tim Stanovic and I got the story on Airbnb Safety
Speaker 1: Team from Bloomberg News technology reporter Olivia Carvil, who is
Speaker 1: joined by Business Week editor Jill Weber. The real bedrock
Speaker 1: of Airbnb's business model is trust. You check into someone
Speaker 1: else's apartment sometimes or house, sometimes that person maybe occupying
Speaker 1: that same space or in a different room. Um and
Speaker 1: the whole thing that makes the business work is is
Speaker 1: that you have trusted in this system. And what Olivia's
Speaker 1: reporting revealed was that oftentimes stays don't go well, and
Speaker 1: that could be uh more run of the mill things
Speaker 1: of like just a trash department, or it could go
Speaker 1: very very very bad. And there have been cases a
Speaker 1: rape that was previously unreported that Olivia found out about
Speaker 1: UM murders, violent crimes and when that happens. There is
Speaker 1: a safety team that ARABIANBU has assembled around the world,
Speaker 1: UM one agents that basically the worst of the worst
Speaker 1: situations end up going to that group of people. And
Speaker 1: Olivia UM basically was the one that has revealed that
Speaker 1: this team exists, that they're under mental dress for all
Speaker 1: the different types of cases that they have to deal with,
Speaker 1: and that you know, this is the thing that for
Speaker 1: investors this company is now publicly traded, people haven't known
Speaker 1: that this is a dark side of this company in
Speaker 1: quite this way. UM. So, so Olivia, how about you
Speaker 1: bring us up to speed on on you know, how
Speaker 1: how you went about reporting such a remarkable story. The
Speaker 1: story really the crux of it was to understand, you know,
Speaker 1: to get inside the safety team and to really get
Speaker 1: to the bottom of what happens inside air BMB when
Speaker 1: things go wrong. So initially when I started reporting this
Speaker 1: piece is about trying to find insiders at the company
Speaker 1: who would be willing to talk to me about the
Speaker 1: stress of the job and just the process of when
Speaker 1: something happens inside a listing like a violent crime and
Speaker 1: a call comes through to the Airbnb Customer service rep.
Speaker 1: What actually happens, how does the company handle it, who
Speaker 1: does it get transferred through to, and what do they
Speaker 1: do about handling you know, public image, reputational risk, brand risk.
Speaker 1: Given that Airbnb's entire business model really risks on that
Speaker 1: idea of trust between strangers to them, public image is
Speaker 1: just so crucially important to you know, gross and revenue.
Speaker 1: So Olivia, how does it work when things go wrong
Speaker 1: and often, as Joel mentioned, horribly wrong? Right, Well, it's
Speaker 1: the call is to come through to ear B and
Speaker 1: B related to anything concerning safety. So when I say that,
Speaker 1: I mean anything involving a child, cases of human trafficking,
Speaker 1: drug trafficking, kidnappings, hostage scenarios, sexual assaults, rape cases, murder,
Speaker 1: anything that enters that kind of like significance of a
Speaker 1: real safety crisis, it will immediately be transferred through to
Speaker 1: an internal safety team of agents. And as Joel mentioned,
Speaker 1: the BnB has about a hundred of these agents based
Speaker 1: all around the world who are trained in trauma. You know,
Speaker 1: they specify and specialize in how to handle cases of trauma.
Speaker 1: Bere taught how to deal with recital ideation being taught
Speaker 1: to you know how to how to help talk with
Speaker 1: a sexual assault survivor and the best way to support
Speaker 1: her in that moment. And UM, for these safety agents,
Speaker 1: it's all about doing what they can to protect the
Speaker 1: individual in crisis. And also they do have a dual
Speaker 1: role to protect the company's public image. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Joel referred to the darrest that these safety agents experience.
Speaker 1: What is the toll that takes on them and how
Speaker 1: do they deal with it? A lot of the safety
Speaker 1: agents I talked to UM expressed vicarious trauma. They say
Speaker 1: that they suffer from PTSD from the job. I mean
Speaker 1: they willingly walk into it. They want to do this
Speaker 1: kind of trauma work, and I think it takes a
Speaker 1: certain person who's attracted to this particular role. A lot
Speaker 1: of them comes from that grounds of emergency services work
Speaker 1: or even from the military. They've you know, as I see,
Speaker 1: had gone through a lot of trauma based care training.
Speaker 1: They have count bills on site to help this team.
Speaker 1: They have specialized call down rooms with dimmed lighting to
Speaker 1: help them answer those really tough calls. And for these agents,
Speaker 1: you know, when you handle a case of an individual
Speaker 1: who has been assaulted, raped, who has lost a loved one,
Speaker 1: maybe lost a child in a listing. You form a
Speaker 1: bond with the individual over the phone, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these safety agents talked about cases where they're still
Speaker 1: in touch with those families years after the crime has happened.
Speaker 1: You know, it stays with them. One safety agent I
Speaker 1: talked to handled a case of a missing person who
Speaker 1: just disappeared from a listing, and three years after that occurred,
Speaker 1: he was still googling that individual's name to see if
Speaker 1: there was you know, if they were either found. That
Speaker 1: was this week's cover story with Bloomberg News technology reporter
Speaker 1: Olivia Carvil, who was joined by Business Week editor Joel Weber.
Speaker 1: Coming up the bitcoin slayer who is selling shares to
Speaker 1: maybe just maybe by more bitcoin. You're sting to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovik from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. So this week, US regulators have once again
Speaker 1: punted their decision on whether to approve a bitcoin et F,
Speaker 1: the SEC saying that it will seek more public comment.
Speaker 1: It's not the first time this year that the SEC
Speaker 1: has delayed giving an answer to the legions of crypto
Speaker 1: advocates who are pushing for a way to trade the
Speaker 1: largest cryptocurrency in an exchange traded fund format and possibly
Speaker 1: catapult the world's most valuable digital token into the mainstream
Speaker 1: among institutional investors. Well, micro Strategy is definitely keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on this. It's the software developer that's turning into
Speaker 1: a corporate shell for bitcoin purchases. That said just this
Speaker 1: week that it plans to sell up to one billion
Speaker 1: dollars of new equity, proceeds of which can be used
Speaker 1: to buy bitcoin. Michael Sailor's chairman, CEO, and founder of
Speaker 1: micro Strategy. He's sometimes referred to as the Bitcoin slayer
Speaker 1: and his company as the face of institutional crypto adoption.
Speaker 1: And we were joined by Mike mcleouan Commodity Alice for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence. I think this is like the year when
Speaker 1: they invented electricity, and every company and every government on
Speaker 1: Earth needs to figure out what does electricity mean to
Speaker 1: my country? And I figured it'll take a decade of education.
Speaker 1: I mean, the facts are right now. If you buy
Speaker 1: the modern bitcoin minor, uh, you can generate about thirty
Speaker 1: five to forty cents to kill a law our off
Speaker 1: of any intermittent energy source or stranded energy source, I mean,
Speaker 1: no matter where it is on Earth. And that's four
Speaker 1: times better than than uh, you know, the developed world
Speaker 1: high in commercial energy rate. So as people figure that out,
Speaker 1: I think anybody that's got a volcano or a waterfall
Speaker 1: or a wind farm away from a big city is thinking,
Speaker 1: this is the solution to my energy problem. It's in
Speaker 1: The key fact I find very positive forward looking is
Speaker 1: the ability to kind of solve the problem of gas flaring.
Speaker 1: I the quote I heard up in Canada might be
Speaker 1: ten thousand wells that are just leaking methane gas or
Speaker 1: methane as they say in London, and this is a
Speaker 1: way to help solve that. And it seems to me
Speaker 1: that's a lot of stranded resources that can be put
Speaker 1: to use. Yeah. I mean, I think people to understand bitcoin.
Speaker 1: They realize that bitcoin is recycling wasted energy, it's rescuing
Speaker 1: stranded energy, and it's avoiding capital destruction. I actually have
Speaker 1: a friend that owns a bunch of natural gas fields,
Speaker 1: and if you've got a situation where you can't immediately
Speaker 1: monetize the natural gas, it's an awful, awful choice you
Speaker 1: have to make a Hobson's choice. You're either flaring it,
Speaker 1: which is awful for the environment, or you shut the
Speaker 1: well in and its destruction of the capital. It's it's
Speaker 1: horrifically bad. And bitcoin, what do you need to solve it?
Speaker 1: You need to be able to monetize the energy wherever
Speaker 1: it is, and you need to do it with like
Speaker 1: low bandwidth at any scale. And bitcoin mining is Bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining is probably twenty times more energy efficient than a
Speaker 1: Google data center or a Netflix data center for monetizing energy.
Speaker 1: So it's a gift just sitting out there for people
Speaker 1: that have a problem with regard to stranded energy or
Speaker 1: intimate and energy where they they just waste it and
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do about. Why is the
Speaker 1: narrative so different though? Then? And maybe I'm just a
Speaker 1: little naive and a little stupid when it comes to this,
Speaker 1: But why is the narrative so differently when it comes
Speaker 1: to the impact of UH mining crypto on the environment?
Speaker 1: You're saying, why is there sometimes a negative environmental narrative around? Correct? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's the first year in the
Speaker 1: decade when bitcoin is emerging as an issue. It's the
Speaker 1: most disruptive technology in the world for money, and it's
Speaker 1: the most disruptive technology in the world for energy. And
Speaker 1: if you imagine the first year we invented electricity. And
Speaker 1: if you went and put a microphone in front of
Speaker 1: every mayor, every governor, every politician, every senator, every CEO,
Speaker 1: and every journalist and said what do you think about this?
Speaker 1: And you gave them like five minutes to respond, and
Speaker 1: they could do an hour of research, you would get
Speaker 1: a wide variety of answers. You know what I say
Speaker 1: about bitcoin is it takes you ten hours to scratch
Speaker 1: the surface, a hundred hours to have an informed opinion,
Speaker 1: a thousand hours to have an intelligent opinion, and ten
Speaker 1: thousand hours to understand it. And everybody when you asked
Speaker 1: the CEO of General Motors, okay, what do you think
Speaker 1: about bitcoin? And they've studied it for an hour? Or
Speaker 1: you asked the governor, the mayor or whomember it is,
Speaker 1: or a journalist, everybody has to have an opinion because
Speaker 1: they're being forced. It's in their face, right, Like I
Speaker 1: watched these four ceo is going television and they asked them,
Speaker 1: all are you what do you do we think about bitcoin?
Speaker 1: What do you think about bitcoin? Bitcoin? Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin,
Speaker 1: And they have to answer, but the truth is they
Speaker 1: don't have a thousand hours to figure out what the
Speaker 1: answer is. So the knee jerk reaction is either hey,
Speaker 1: it seems so good it's too good to be true,
Speaker 1: or the other answer is all I know is that
Speaker 1: uses a lot of energy. Michael, talk to me about
Speaker 1: the plan to sell as much as a billion dollars
Speaker 1: in shares. You also did uh close the sale of
Speaker 1: junk bond? Is it all about buying bitcoin? Is that
Speaker 1: what the proceeds are for? You know, it's a standing
Speaker 1: program that's good over the course of several years, and
Speaker 1: it gives us the option, if the market conditions are correct,
Speaker 1: to sell equity from time to time. We have a
Speaker 1: standing share buy back program too, that gives us the
Speaker 1: option to buy the shares back. So generally our policy
Speaker 1: is do a creative financings. If we see an opportunity
Speaker 1: to sell dead or equity, it's a created to the
Speaker 1: rest of the security holders, we would do that. So
Speaker 1: that's a yes. Yeah, you know, I can't really say
Speaker 1: when it gets to that specific the question. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna make a general assumption. All right, Mike McGlenn,
Speaker 1: you take it well. Michael, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a key thing about how do you think history is
Speaker 1: going to look at you? Because I view you as
Speaker 1: a good example of the of a bastion of free
Speaker 1: market capitalism adopting this new digitalized internet money or digital
Speaker 1: currency versus China. It's cracking down in China. Is that
Speaker 1: repressive um society that doesn't even allow we need a pool?
Speaker 1: I mean, where do you think this is going to end?
Speaker 1: Because I have a sense you you're making a place
Speaker 1: in history here. I think that bigcoin is uh, it's America.
Speaker 1: It's American dream in cyberspace. People came to America for
Speaker 1: property and for freedom hundreds of years ago because they
Speaker 1: couldn't get those in Europe. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: general sentiment around the world of frustration and that people
Speaker 1: are frustrated with regard to their property rights and their freedoms.
Speaker 1: And and bitcoin is the highest form of property right.
Speaker 1: And if you don't have property in the third world
Speaker 1: of developing nation, the bitcoin's your only hope. And if
Speaker 1: you have property in the first world, and then US
Speaker 1: and Europe and you're watching it get debased as the
Speaker 1: currency weekends, then bitcoin, you know, is your way to
Speaker 1: get some control over your property rights. And so I
Speaker 1: think we're the first public company that took a serious position. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a paradigm shift, and I think everybody else is
Speaker 1: gradually coming to realize that it's a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: It'll take a decade, I think before the entire world
Speaker 1: comes to accommodation to understand what this really means for civilization.
Speaker 1: That's Michael Sailor, CEO and founder micro Strategy, along with
Speaker 1: our own Michael Clane of Bloomberg Intelligence. Still ahead on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week. Get ready to blow your mind thanks
Speaker 1: to the Colonel Helmet. This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the
Speaker 1: financial capital of the world, Bloomberg eleven Frio in New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one
Speaker 1: O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to
Speaker 1: the country Sirius xm Chado one nine team and around
Speaker 1: the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot com.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Trending on social media this week,
Speaker 1: you might have noticed a Bloomberg tweet about a Business
Speaker 1: Week story on a company called Colonel that will begin
Speaker 1: sending dozens of customers across the United States a fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollar helmet that can kind of crudely speaking, read
Speaker 1: their mind. That helmet weighs a couple of pounds. It
Speaker 1: contains nests of sensors and other electronics that measure and
Speaker 1: analyze the brain's electrical impulses and blood flow at the
Speaker 1: speed of thought, providing a window into have the organ
Speaker 1: responds to the world. Bloomberg Business Week feature writer in
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author Ashley Vance. He's been tracking
Speaker 1: this company for a few years. Actually is also a
Speaker 1: host of Hello World. He's also author of Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX,
Speaker 1: and The Quest for a Fantastic Future. We caught up
Speaker 1: with Ashley along with Bloomberg Business We getutor Joel Weber
Speaker 1: to talk about this story in this week's magazine. So, Ashley,
Speaker 1: who are we talking about and what does this brain
Speaker 1: scanning helmet that he's developed too. There's a guy named
Speaker 1: Brian Johnson who's who's kind of the main character of
Speaker 1: the story. He's not super well known, but he is
Speaker 1: very rich. He sold a company called Braintree to PayPal
Speaker 1: for several hundred million dollars a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: then he took all that money and started this new
Speaker 1: company called Colonel, which is, like you said, they've built
Speaker 1: these helmets that compear through your skulls, see all the
Speaker 1: electric electrical activities, see all the blood flow, and basically
Speaker 1: watch your neurons fire in real time. And and you know,
Speaker 1: the big breakthrough really is, um we have machines that
Speaker 1: do some of the stuff like F M R I
Speaker 1: machines and M E g s and things that you
Speaker 1: would find at a hospital or a research center. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's found a way to boil all this
Speaker 1: down into a helmet that anybody could wear. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put this on, and what's it gonna do for me? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a few things going on. His basic
Speaker 1: his kind of driving thesis is this idea that for
Speaker 1: mental health, if you went to the doctor and you
Speaker 1: had you were worried about your heart, they would run
Speaker 1: all these tests on you, you know, obviously do some
Speaker 1: blood work, and we just don't have anything like that
Speaker 1: for the brain. And so he wants, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: partly because these things have been expensive and hard to use.
Speaker 1: We just don't have much data on the brain, and
Speaker 1: so he wants to make these affordable enough that thousands,
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people would be
Speaker 1: using these machines to see their brain activity as they
Speaker 1: go through their day, as they try to recover from
Speaker 1: an illness like a stroke or Parkinson's disease, and that
Speaker 1: we would just learn a lot more about how the
Speaker 1: mind works. Well. And that's the point, actually, right, I
Speaker 1: mean we oh, so we do know a lot about
Speaker 1: the body, we do know a fair amount about the brain,
Speaker 1: but there's so much that is unknown. And he thinks
Speaker 1: about it kind of juxtaposed against artificial intelligence to you know,
Speaker 1: he started this company. I've been following him for a
Speaker 1: few years. He really started when he thought that AI
Speaker 1: was getting so powerful that that humans would not stand
Speaker 1: a chance against it, and that our only hope was
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, merge with machines and create
Speaker 1: this brain machine interface. It's a way that that really
Speaker 1: you could add computing horsepower to your own brain and
Speaker 1: vice versa, so that that's kind of the root of
Speaker 1: all this over time. Brian, he's an interesting character. He's
Speaker 1: really into kind of the quantified self movement. He has
Speaker 1: all these tests done on his body, and he's very
Speaker 1: particular about how much he sleeps and what he eats
Speaker 1: and how he exercises and all this stuff and so um.
Speaker 1: You know. The other part of this is like for
Speaker 1: him on this personal journey, is that he wants to
Speaker 1: know everything about himself in the brain was like this
Speaker 1: last bit that he couldn't measure or understand. Can we
Speaker 1: talk about his apps? When I when I started this story,
Speaker 1: I mean, so Brian and I are almost exactly at
Speaker 1: the same age. We're both with the calendars as we're
Speaker 1: both forty three, about to turn forty four, and and
Speaker 1: you know, we probably looked like somewhat similar three years
Speaker 1: ago when I first started talking to him. And I've gone,
Speaker 1: you know, one way, or I'm stayed sort of the same,
Speaker 1: And this guy has gotten totally repped. I mean, he
Speaker 1: he eats one meal a day at very early in
Speaker 1: the morning. He eats like twenty three hundred calories and
Speaker 1: this one go and picks out all the food and
Speaker 1: he does his work out in the morning. And you know,
Speaker 1: to the extent you believe in all this stuff. He
Speaker 1: he there's different ways you can kind of measure your
Speaker 1: your biological age. And you know, so he's gone from
Speaker 1: forty three to the doctors saying he's got like body
Speaker 1: basically like a twenty five year old. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: go for that. Forget the helmet, I want that right. So,
Speaker 1: how he he has snorted stem cells? Does that help?
Speaker 1: I've seen him snorts snorts stem cells before. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean he goes to this wellness clinic in Colorado, this
Speaker 1: Grossman Wellness Center, and they like, take out some of
Speaker 1: your blood and they spin it in a centrifuge and
Speaker 1: get the plasma and then some kind of magic happens
Speaker 1: to the plasma that turns it into these stem cells.
Speaker 1: And the doctor I saw him do it, he snorted
Speaker 1: them right up his nose. It's supposed to improve your memory,
Speaker 1: your kind of attitude, your your general disposition and towards life.
Speaker 1: And uh, he said it worked. He did it quite
Speaker 1: a few times, although he stopped doing it. Now. That
Speaker 1: was feature writer Ashley Vance, along with the editor of
Speaker 1: the magazine, Joel Webber. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: Up next, he brought us Studio fifty four and the
Speaker 1: boutique Hotel. What does Ian Schrager have to say about
Speaker 1: the hospitality industry? Now, this is Bloomberg. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes
Speaker 1: Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. We'll check it out everyone.
Speaker 1: If you walk around New York City, you can tell
Speaker 1: it has reopened. We see it more and more each day.
Speaker 1: The broader us is increasingly moving toward a post pandemic life.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world also moving forward, but at
Speaker 1: an uneven pace, with COVID still taking a heavy toll.
Speaker 1: One area that took an incredibly hard hit during the
Speaker 1: health crisis hotels and hospitality. And we've leaned on the
Speaker 1: next guest to tell us how things were going and
Speaker 1: what happens next. He's been involved in the hospitality industry
Speaker 1: for five decades, from Studio fifty four and Palladium nightclubs
Speaker 1: back in the nineties seventies to challenging and upending the
Speaker 1: hotel industry with the introduction and creation of the boutique
Speaker 1: hotel in the nineteen eighties. He created the Public brand,
Speaker 1: and he did a reboot before reopening from the coronavirus
Speaker 1: just recently. Let's get more from Ian Schrager, hotelier and
Speaker 1: founder and chairman of the Ian Schrager Company. I think
Speaker 1: people who live live in New York City, uh, around
Speaker 1: the world are ready to go mad, and they're looking
Speaker 1: for a place, a platform going to do that. I think,
Speaker 1: uh in New York in particular, or a very funny situation.
Speaker 1: But I think that all the signs arrived, the demands
Speaker 1: are definitely there. Will take a little while to ramp up.
Speaker 1: I can't kill exactly how fast, but I am confidence
Speaker 1: it will ramp up. Labor has been an issue. I
Speaker 1: think that, uh, there's a scaphony of the lay too.
Speaker 1: And I think until the benefits stop, until the support
Speaker 1: that the government has really been giving everybody, uh, people
Speaker 1: will have to go back to work and they will
Speaker 1: so well. It's interesting that you say that because when
Speaker 1: we look at the labor statistics, you know, at those
Speaker 1: monthly jobs reports and job numbers, it is to be
Speaker 1: the hospitality industry where you are seeing the big moves
Speaker 1: up in terms of hiring. So you know, I do
Speaker 1: wonder whether or not it really is benefits that are
Speaker 1: holding people back. It does look like a lot of
Speaker 1: people who work in that industry are coming back. But
Speaker 1: you're saying that's not the case. Well, they're not coming
Speaker 1: back yet. We can't keep pace with the command. Okay,
Speaker 1: the demand is out there, but the labor of supply
Speaker 1: is uh is uh, very very restricted. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, you have to remember the hotel in the
Speaker 1: shut down a year ago, and so everybody was kind
Speaker 1: of laid off on that working so they were building
Speaker 1: on a base of zero. So that's why they may
Speaker 1: be having a bigger employment games. But you know, we
Speaker 1: the label pool, there's a real shortage and uh, I
Speaker 1: don't look at as a paradigm shift. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think, but there is a labor shortage and I
Speaker 1: think everybody restaurants can't even open it with the camp
Speaker 1: on the labor. So are you having to pay to
Speaker 1: pay more in to get workers to come back? Is
Speaker 1: that is that something that's actually helping you get workers
Speaker 1: the needed workers that are necessary. We are offering high
Speaker 1: at pay, but it's not always very convincing. You know,
Speaker 1: people are able to insist on the benefits that they
Speaker 1: have received. H And I'll continue toward see and when
Speaker 1: a minute that that that the completely diminishes. Uh, people
Speaker 1: will be obliged to come back to work periods. Kind
Speaker 1: of very simple as far as I'm concerned, Well, is
Speaker 1: that inability to get the workers maybe you need? Is
Speaker 1: that slowing your ability to come back as strongly as
Speaker 1: you would like? Is that holding you back in terms
Speaker 1: of meeting the demand at your properties? Yes? It is.
Speaker 1: I we have to we have to restrict. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of rest a new restaurant, and like I
Speaker 1: couldn't do the normal opening that I usually do, which
Speaker 1: is like the day of the locusts. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I had to be restricted because we didn't have the
Speaker 1: staff to be able to execute. H I said, we
Speaker 1: want to execute, and we had to cut back, and
Speaker 1: we had to come up with a new playbook. And
Speaker 1: I think restaurants to out New York, I know, I
Speaker 1: happen to be restrictive on how much, how how bad
Speaker 1: you can open. I what do you want our audience?
Speaker 1: What do you want the world at large to kind
Speaker 1: of understand? When it comes to the hotel and hospitality industry.
Speaker 1: Right now, after that's you know, twelve fourteen, fifteen months
Speaker 1: that we've just endured, I think the industry is alive
Speaker 1: and well. It took a real shot. It's shut down
Speaker 1: for almost a year. There were was tough. We ad
Speaker 1: to survive a lot of shot. Uh. They were taking
Speaker 1: care of your employees and fulfilling your financial responsibilities and obligations.
Speaker 1: But I think it is alive and well, and it
Speaker 1: is coming back, uh, and you will come back a
Speaker 1: strongments that ever wasn't enter by. What I think is
Speaker 1: that every time we go to a recession, we always
Speaker 1: recover and we always exceed the previous times that and
Speaker 1: I expect the same to happen now. And sometimes we
Speaker 1: learn a few things along the way. And I do
Speaker 1: wonder the past year, we've all done a lot of
Speaker 1: soul searching and maybe rethinking, and you've done a little
Speaker 1: bit of a reboot on public. Tell us what's changed.
Speaker 1: It's so funny that, uh, you know, people always have
Speaker 1: a resistance and progress and trying something new. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I think that one of the funny results of the
Speaker 1: pandemic is is that because of your health concerns, people
Speaker 1: who became more open to technology uh and using it
Speaker 1: and en effort to stay healthy and avoid contact and
Speaker 1: so on and so for But I just wonder it
Speaker 1: takes people a while to get used to new things.
Speaker 1: But you don't mind getting your direction over your iPhone
Speaker 1: rather than asking somebody personally. You don't mind ordering things
Speaker 1: over Amazon rather than dealing with a personal sales person.
Speaker 1: You don't mind getting in the self driving cause uh
Speaker 1: ex etcetera, etcetera. You know we order take out right?
Speaker 1: We do? Menuse for takeout constantly exactly. I think that progress.
Speaker 1: And I think everything that technology can do to make
Speaker 1: it either cheaper or make it even quicker and easier
Speaker 1: to you is uh. And I think the hotels are
Speaker 1: gonna be h taking advantage of that, and that it's
Speaker 1: a very heart of what public is about in luxury
Speaker 1: for all, it's kind of combining the select service um uh,
Speaker 1: ferocious exercise and execution and providing value with the magical
Speaker 1: lunx we experience to create a new John which well
Speaker 1: and listen, you got you have constantly rethought about what
Speaker 1: somebody who stays at a hotel, what, what's the experience
Speaker 1: they want? What do they want? What? You know, amenities
Speaker 1: are pointless? What doesn't matter anymore? What's the rethink? In
Speaker 1: addition to is it all about technology? Just kind of
Speaker 1: having a bigger role, whether it's opening your room or
Speaker 1: ordering food or what have you. Is it is that
Speaker 1: the real big difference and takeaway from the past year. Well,
Speaker 1: except what should we need an update? Needs a revision. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more access to wealth than have been
Speaker 1: in prior years. We've been dealing with the same quite
Speaker 1: joyous for luxury to the last few wanted years. And
Speaker 1: it needs to be updated the way everything else needs
Speaker 1: to be updated. People just don't care about the same
Speaker 1: things they care about today. It's the same. The ultimate
Speaker 1: luxury to me is freedom up time being created with
Speaker 1: dignity and humanity. Uh. And what's important and not having
Speaker 1: you call off deserved and fine bone china by a
Speaker 1: guy in white gloves and cold buttons, and waiting forty
Speaker 1: five minutes for a breakfast delivery and paying thirty five
Speaker 1: dollars for a pot of coffee. That's not luxury to me,
Speaker 1: that's potential. Uh. And so I think we'd stripped down
Speaker 1: and got rid of all old things that people don't
Speaker 1: care about and just focused on making them feel good.
Speaker 1: Because lunchery is a state of mind. It's not a
Speaker 1: price point or or back in the past. It's good
Speaker 1: to hear you say that, you know, because I do
Speaker 1: think from some of the conversations that we've had over
Speaker 1: the last year, especially people in the restaurant space, who
Speaker 1: saw their workers a lot of them don't make a
Speaker 1: lot of money, who were just struggling to get by, um,
Speaker 1: really rethink about their model, especially some of the higher
Speaker 1: end you know, restaurants and places. And I do wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, the inequalities, the inequities that have been shown
Speaker 1: again not new, but we saw them again big time
Speaker 1: over the past year. How that has kind of invaded
Speaker 1: your psyche once again. Well it has. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't have half the people in this country being upset
Speaker 1: and activated, well the other half is not to something
Speaker 1: wrong about that. So we have to rethink the way
Speaker 1: we're doing things, and we have to provide access to
Speaker 1: the system and access to the benefits of the system.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody has to be more egalitarian, you know,
Speaker 1: it has to be more democratized. And I think not
Speaker 1: the problem with business, and that's also a problem with society.
Speaker 1: And I think we're just responding. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: make the rules. We just respond to what we think
Speaker 1: is going on. And there's no reason you can provide
Speaker 1: value to people without dumbing down the product and providing
Speaker 1: less as no reason, you can have just as good
Speaker 1: a product, justisticated the less well very well well said,
Speaker 1: well said. And if I may just to end on
Speaker 1: kind of a lighter note, my understanding is, um, you
Speaker 1: public actually hosted a party for Elon Musk and his guests.
Speaker 1: I think you opened up public for the first time
Speaker 1: in fourteen months for his after party when he was
Speaker 1: on Saturday Night Live. It sounds like it was a
Speaker 1: pretty wild party cryptocurrency theme. I think I heard doge coin,
Speaker 1: cookies and cupcakes. Um, yeah, yeah. We love we love
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. We love everything he stands for. We love
Speaker 1: the conventiveness and innovativeness. We think he's having a positive
Speaker 1: effect on society as a whole. So we were closed.
Speaker 1: We opened up just to him because there was a
Speaker 1: thrill for us to have him and all his guests
Speaker 1: uh there that night didn't so it was it was
Speaker 1: a favorite of odds. It was a thrill for us.
Speaker 1: Who We're happy to do it. That's Ian Schrager Hotel.
Speaker 1: You're and founder and chairman of the Ian Schrager Company.
Speaker 1: A great go to voice on all things hospitality. Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 1: Head in our next hour, Sports trading Cards, the ninety
Speaker 1: days in four that changed sports and culture forever. Also
Speaker 1: June tenth becoming an official federal holiday in the United
Speaker 1: States by way of the U. S. Congress, and many
Speaker 1: others like singer, songwriter and producer Pharrell Williams who joined
Speaker 1: us on his efforts to get it done. Plus how
Speaker 1: to cool down big data centers, farm fish on land
Speaker 1: and pump up p production. It's all in our solution section.
Speaker 1: Coming right up in the next hour. Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from
Speaker 1: the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted
Speaker 1: business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as
Speaker 1: it happened. Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi everyone, I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser. Plenty ahead in our second hour of the
Speaker 1: weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including singer, songwriter and
Speaker 1: producer Pharrell Williams and making Juneteenth a US federal holiday.
Speaker 1: Also the market maker, evangelist, therapist who is cashing in
Speaker 1: on priceless pieces of cardboard business. We call him the
Speaker 1: King of Cards and glory Days. We take you back too,
Speaker 1: and the ninety days that changed sports and culture Forever.
Speaker 1: Sports illustrated in sixty minutes contributor John Wortheim on his
Speaker 1: new book. First Up This Hour a special solution section
Speaker 1: in Bloomberg Business Week magazine looking at hot data centers, fish, farming,
Speaker 1: on land, and popular peas. My co host and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes, Tim Stanovic and I got a round up
Speaker 1: from the editor of the solution section, Rebecca Penty. She
Speaker 1: joined us from our London bureau in offices. That's right,
Speaker 1: all the data that's flowing through your phone, whether it's
Speaker 1: bank statements, YouTube videos, you name it, that goes through
Speaker 1: a data center. And actually data centers consumed two to
Speaker 1: four of the entire world's electricity. And that's because they
Speaker 1: require air conditioning to cool all of these servers that
Speaker 1: are superheated with all this data flowing through them. Now
Speaker 1: we take a look at a new way to cool
Speaker 1: these servers that consumes far less energy and is more effective,
Speaker 1: and that's using a liquid. So we talked to a
Speaker 1: UK company called Isotope. They're based in Sheffield, a few
Speaker 1: hours north of London, and they have a technology where
Speaker 1: they put they actually put the box, their server box
Speaker 1: into this liquid that's non conductive to cool it down
Speaker 1: and this saves a vast amount of water as well
Speaker 1: as electricity, and this is They're one of many startups
Speaker 1: that are in this space, working with companies like Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Lenovo to find a better way to cool these
Speaker 1: data centers. Venture capital funding has really gone towards finding
Speaker 1: a solution to this, and I'm wondering what the promises
Speaker 1: economically from a business perspective if somebody can crack this nut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you think about the clients that these
Speaker 1: these startups are servicing, it's it's companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook,
Speaker 1: all of these major companies are focused on this problem
Speaker 1: because remember um, you know E s G investing is
Speaker 1: becoming more and more important and companies have to worry
Speaker 1: about their environmental impact and so they're answering to investors.
Speaker 1: So I think I think there's money in this space,
Speaker 1: particularly if one of these companies because one of these
Speaker 1: technologies becomes a real winner. Um, you know, investors could
Speaker 1: make quite a bit of money, alright, Rebecca from Chips.
Speaker 1: In demand of fish and demand, we are eating an
Speaker 1: awful lot of fish globally, and that's a problem. And
Speaker 1: as a result, we're talking about now doing actually fish
Speaker 1: farming on land. Yeah, that's right. You think about diets
Speaker 1: that emphasize Omega three, fatty acids, and all of the
Speaker 1: salmon that people are consuming in order to meet those
Speaker 1: dietary needs. We are eating more and more fish just
Speaker 1: as the wild populations are declining. And what that means
Speaker 1: is that aquaculture is stepping in. Seafood farming has been
Speaker 1: stepping in for years, but the problem is it's inherently dirty.
Speaker 1: The fish are kept in pens in marine environments near
Speaker 1: wild fish, near near native species, and disease and parasites
Speaker 1: spreads to those native species, even if the farmed fish
Speaker 1: don't escape because the water is flowing in and out
Speaker 1: of these pens. So for years, um, you know, what's
Speaker 1: kind of been the holy grail of aquaculture is is
Speaker 1: thinking about could we raise salmon on land? And remember,
Speaker 1: these are fish in the wild that um have epic
Speaker 1: life cycles where they spawn in rivers, they go you know,
Speaker 1: they make their way to the ocean, they come back
Speaker 1: into the river to to lay eggs again. So, um,
Speaker 1: these land based farms face extreme challenges and trying to
Speaker 1: mimic this environment, trying to make sure their power sources
Speaker 1: are sustainable, and doing it all in tanks where they're
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that the fish stay alive. But
Speaker 1: actually we're nearing a potential major turning point where two
Speaker 1: companies in this space, one in the Canadian province of
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia and another near Miami, are saying that they're
Speaker 1: in your profitability. Um, So there's a massive test next year.
Speaker 1: If these companies can scale up, we'll be able to
Speaker 1: find out whether this is a real solution to you know,
Speaker 1: green up our food supply. Well, speaking of our food
Speaker 1: supply from fish to peas, because P protein is the
Speaker 1: hot ingredient when it comes to fake meat that we've
Speaker 1: all come to well, so many of us have come
Speaker 1: to love. But that also means supply constraints. So how
Speaker 1: is the war for fake meat leaning into P protein
Speaker 1: and how are they actually improving supply constraints? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: So everyone, if you're an investor, you'll think about Beyond
Speaker 1: Meat and their I P O in which was you know,
Speaker 1: the most successful I P O since UM. But you
Speaker 1: know what that did was allowed Beyond Meat to expand
Speaker 1: at a at a rapid pace, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: copycat acts followed. So you know, the main ingredient and
Speaker 1: Beyond meat burger is a yellow P protein. Um. It's
Speaker 1: it's high in protein, it doesn't have a strong taste
Speaker 1: um and and it's malleable. It's really easy to turn
Speaker 1: it into fake fish, fake chicken, fake you know, you
Speaker 1: name it, fake cheese. So the food industry has gone
Speaker 1: gaga over yellow peas and that's created a real supply crunch,
Speaker 1: meaning that prices have swored. So we've talked to Purists,
Speaker 1: which is um the biggest supplier of yellow P protein
Speaker 1: in the US, about their expansion plans and how they're
Speaker 1: handling that crunch and UH, and how they're also trying
Speaker 1: to make yellow P protein taste better by masking the
Speaker 1: flavor with various spices and improving the processing. To love
Speaker 1: your face that you're making because there is off flavor, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's good for the soil, P production right
Speaker 1: and P farming. But you do talk about this off flavor. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The editor of the Solution section of Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Penty, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Still to
Speaker 1: come for all Williams. I'm making Juneteenth a US federal holiday.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol
Speaker 1: Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Jun Team Mark's both a long, hard night of slavery
Speaker 1: and subjugation and a promise We're Bradie morning to come.
Speaker 1: This is a day of profound in my view, of
Speaker 1: profound weight and profound power, to day which you remember
Speaker 1: the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on
Speaker 1: the country and continues to take. This week, President Biden
Speaker 1: signed into law the eleventh national annual federal holiday in
Speaker 1: the United States. We're talking about Juneteenth, also known as
Speaker 1: the Emancipation Day. It's a reference to June nineteenth, eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. That's the day when a Union general arrived
Speaker 1: in Galveston, Texas, telling African American slaves that the Civil
Speaker 1: War was over. That they were now free under the
Speaker 1: Emancipation Proclamation, which had been signed two years earlier, back
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty three by President Abraham Lincoln. Many have
Speaker 1: stepped forward in support of Juneteenth. That includes singer, songwriter, producer,
Speaker 1: entrepreneur Pharrell Williams, who joined US along with Bloomberg New
Speaker 1: York Deputy Bureau Chief Shirtier Brantley. Well. Of course, as
Speaker 1: an African American and African diaspora, all of our DNA
Speaker 1: is excited. We're very grateful to be recognized on a
Speaker 1: federal level, but there's a lot of there's there's so
Speaker 1: much more work to do. Um. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: I think our state was first. Man um, it would
Speaker 1: be the first state to do it. But man, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time coming, you know, and for so
Speaker 1: long people have debated as to whether you know, it's
Speaker 1: an either or situation with you know, Independence Day. But
Speaker 1: my ancestors, uh, most like everybody else who's African American
Speaker 1: and people of color here, our ancestors had to fight
Speaker 1: in the war, whether it was on either side, they
Speaker 1: had to do it. Um. But they were not free,
Speaker 1: and nor were white women, and nor were lgbt Q
Speaker 1: I A like essentially no one was free, accept our
Speaker 1: our white brothers at the time, you know, but this
Speaker 1: was America and America was trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: it wanted to be. And once they made that decision, Um,
Speaker 1: it took a very long time for us to be emancipated.
Speaker 1: And for so long that day of emancipation for us,
Speaker 1: which was such a joyous day, Uh, we go ignored
Speaker 1: like it was something that was seen as like some
Speaker 1: sort of like divisive thing, but it's really not. It
Speaker 1: happens to be our history. And for us to be free,
Speaker 1: everybody's free. It's like we talk about liberty and our pledge.
Speaker 1: You if we're really going to use that word, then
Speaker 1: everyone in this nation needs to be free for all.
Speaker 1: Why has our history become so controversial as of late?
Speaker 1: And what does President Biden signing this into law? Does
Speaker 1: it increase the much needed conversations we need to bring
Speaker 1: us all together, because you can't move forward if you
Speaker 1: don't know where you've been. I mean, there are those
Speaker 1: who just don't know the history, and there are people
Speaker 1: who know the history but don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 1: And then there are people who would like for other
Speaker 1: people to not know the history, and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who want people to really understand the history.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned that in terms of as you said,
Speaker 1: this was an important day, but you don't want this
Speaker 1: to be necessarily a distraction, right, There's still a lot
Speaker 1: of work to do. Chartie and I were talking before
Speaker 1: we got going with you for all, is that we
Speaker 1: look around corporate boardrooms and they're still not really diverse,
Speaker 1: or the C suite isn't still really diverse. So we've
Speaker 1: had a lot of conversations again in the past year.
Speaker 1: What do you see from some of the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing, are having an understanding of being a black
Speaker 1: American that what really needs to be done to make
Speaker 1: significant change, so that there you know, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about d n I, we're actually having it done and
Speaker 1: seeing it done well. So firstly, we have a Joe
Speaker 1: teenth pledge um, and it would be great to have
Speaker 1: all of the Fortune five hundred and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all of the bigger corporations assignment um and
Speaker 1: make sure people have a pay holiday or at least
Speaker 1: like a skeleton they go stay where they can figure
Speaker 1: out what they want to do with the day. But
Speaker 1: still um, paid for it. They're Americans, right, and doing
Speaker 1: teeth is now an American federal holiday. But what we're
Speaker 1: what I'm doing specifically as it pertains to like the
Speaker 1: disparity and the disproportion access to education, health UH and
Speaker 1: healthcare and legislation is black ambition and Black ambition. It's
Speaker 1: a prize that we put together a five or one
Speaker 1: C three that we work in partnerships with the historic
Speaker 1: black colleges and universities to find more um, Black and
Speaker 1: Latin X entrepreneurs. Now, why did we do that because
Speaker 1: if you look at the American pie chart, like, we
Speaker 1: don't own enough things out there where you find people
Speaker 1: and communities that own things their children actually have great
Speaker 1: act healthcare, education and legislation. So in order for us
Speaker 1: to have a voice, we've got to own more things. Um.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just Tulsa, Oklahoma that this that this
Speaker 1: happened too, It's happened many, many, many many times. Right.
Speaker 1: So what we want to do is create a level
Speaker 1: playing field because we think that HBCUs have the most
Speaker 1: fertile grounds to launch such a prize in such as
Speaker 1: search UM and then and then once you win, the
Speaker 1: coolest part is there is mentorship. If you ask the
Speaker 1: less than three percent of the private equity and VC
Speaker 1: founders UM, you know, of color, what was their biggest hurdle?
Speaker 1: You think it was the capital. Capital is hard, but
Speaker 1: what's even harder as mentorship. It's like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like giving a dirt, you know, a motorcycle to you know,
Speaker 1: a really excited twelve year old without training wheels or
Speaker 1: any kind of practice or any kind of um schooling
Speaker 1: or tutelage. That's so, what we want to do is
Speaker 1: make sure that like when these people who have a
Speaker 1: good idea but may not have like the business acumen,
Speaker 1: this has given them the advice to make sure that
Speaker 1: like their idea actually can take off. I know that
Speaker 1: you launched this initiative back in December and you're targeting
Speaker 1: you know, startups and black and Latin X entrepreneurs within
Speaker 1: consumer products and services, design, healthcare, UH and tech. UM.
Speaker 1: I was on your website and it said that National
Speaker 1: Demo Day is scheduled for next month. How many of
Speaker 1: these entrepreneurs will be making presentations. There's a lot. There's
Speaker 1: a whole whole whole lot. I can also tell you
Speaker 1: the numbers were crazy. What I've tried to do is
Speaker 1: get out of the way. I'm a galvanizer. This is
Speaker 1: something that I I knew needed. Um, But I'm not one
Speaker 1: of those like, you know, celebrity people who are like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm like right in the middle in the front of
Speaker 1: this because one, yes, I'm an entrepreneur, but as it
Speaker 1: pertains to like training these people and mentoring these people
Speaker 1: for what it is that they need, we wanted to
Speaker 1: make sure that like, um, this was in a true
Speaker 1: real partner with the b c U S because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talent that come out of there and
Speaker 1: they don't really get the love and the light and
Speaker 1: the shine that they deserve. So this is not like
Speaker 1: something where like I am like the Griffin on the ship. Um.
Speaker 1: If anything, it is just the black ambition that is.
Speaker 1: That's Pharrell Williams. He joined us along with Bloomberg New
Speaker 1: York Deputy Bureau Chief Shuretier Brantley. Still to come on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week will introduce you to the King of Cards,
Speaker 1: who can tell you what a Michael Jordan Rookie card
Speaker 1: is really worth. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial
Speaker 1: capital of the world. Bloomberg Eleve in Frio in New
Speaker 1: York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one
Speaker 1: O six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to
Speaker 1: the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and around the
Speaker 1: globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week, the story of the magazine.
Speaker 1: It's about the King of Cards, and by that we
Speaker 1: mean Ken Golden and his universe of sports trading cards
Speaker 1: and sports memorabilia. Bloomberg Quick Takes, Tim Stanovic and I
Speaker 1: got together with Bloomberg News Entertainment reporter Lucas Shaw and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week editor Joe Weber to hear more. N
Speaker 1: Golden is a lifelong sports collectibles enthusiast hobbyist who started
Speaker 1: collecting cards and other collectibles when he was a twelve
Speaker 1: year old kid in South New Jersey. He now runs
Speaker 1: what is the largest independent auction house for sports collectibles
Speaker 1: and trading cards, uh and the house that, so far
Speaker 1: this year has broken a new record for sales just
Speaker 1: about every month. He's been doing this for some time, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he started Golden Auctions in two thousand twelve. He saw
Speaker 1: coming out of the global recession in No. Seven or
Speaker 1: oh eight that there was an interest in investing in
Speaker 1: alternative assets and that trading cards would be one of
Speaker 1: those places that that all these people with excess cash
Speaker 1: would put their money. But the business has really taken
Speaker 1: off over the last of twelve eighteen months, so much
Speaker 1: so that they had a recent auction right and crashed
Speaker 1: the site. Is that right? Yeah, there has been. He
Speaker 1: works with this company called simple Auctions dot com. And
Speaker 1: because Golden is such kind of a shameless self promoter
Speaker 1: and has attracted so much attention, there are hackers that
Speaker 1: frequently have attacked the site during his auctions. Let's bring
Speaker 1: in Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber, who joins us
Speaker 1: now on the access line from Brooklyn. Joel, why do
Speaker 1: you think that that that this type of asset right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, Lucas said, it's it's been having a
Speaker 1: moment over the last twelve years. But why over the
Speaker 1: last year, over the last sixteen months, has it really
Speaker 1: been having a moment. I think people are craving um
Speaker 1: assets that are are slightly alternative, right, and I think
Speaker 1: like even things like memestock sort of have shown that,
Speaker 1: so as we did in that cover story, Um, just
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago about sneakers being yet another
Speaker 1: place if you if you can flip something and make
Speaker 1: a buck, have fun doing it. I think all of
Speaker 1: that stuff suddenly starts to resonate in newfound ways when
Speaker 1: you know many people have too much time on their hands. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the question I have for you, Lucas is, um,
Speaker 1: how much are all these baseball cards from my childhood
Speaker 1: worth film? You know? It depends on what kind of
Speaker 1: condition they're in? Are if are they? Have you had
Speaker 1: them graded? Are the eight or above? No? I have
Speaker 1: not had them graded? Um, and I think there's um,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like maybe don notting Ly Nighties
Speaker 1: seven tops cards. Okay, So a grade ten is in
Speaker 1: the example in your piece from Michael Jordan's Michael Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan example, a grade ten is four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars versus a grade eight that would be just
Speaker 1: eleven thousand, six hundred to twelve thousand dollars. Not to
Speaker 1: mention if you go all the way down to a
Speaker 1: grade one, which is poor condition d to three thousand dollars. Lucas, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a huge range in prices, uh, you know, all
Speaker 1: of which is determined by these third party grading companies.
Speaker 1: P s A is the number one, but there's also
Speaker 1: back at those others. They have been so overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: demand this year because of people probably like Joel, trying
Speaker 1: to get their cars graded, that they stopped grading new
Speaker 1: cards for a period. P s A has sworn to
Speaker 1: me that they're hoping by July to be back up
Speaker 1: and running fully. Hey listen, I want to understand how
Speaker 1: this story came to be, so Joel, what was the
Speaker 1: pics or how did the late how did it come
Speaker 1: especially like this with a character like this, As with
Speaker 1: so many things, it starts with Lucas and I talking
Speaker 1: about something else, and then he and then he would
Speaker 1: he emailed me a little bit later and he goes,
Speaker 1: by the way, what are you doing about trading cards?
Speaker 1: And I was like, nothing, tell me more, tell me everything.
Speaker 1: And he was like, well, there's this character that that
Speaker 1: we should profile and and and thus began his reporting.
Speaker 1: Um uh so, So Lucas, I'm curious, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the there's the cards that I grew up with, and
Speaker 1: then which are let's just be honest, worth nothing and
Speaker 1: then there are the cards that um are are truly collectibles,
Speaker 1: and they I think they might even they might even
Speaker 1: push the envelope of like what a card means. Right,
Speaker 1: So talk to us about where the market has gone
Speaker 1: on that front. Yeah, one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: a long time ago. There used to be people would
Speaker 1: manufacture tons of different cards, and now all the card
Speaker 1: manufacturers have gotten a lot smarter about it, and so
Speaker 1: there are going to be just kind of engineering a
Speaker 1: rookie cards which can be really valuable, but they also
Speaker 1: make of one off cards or limited sets of ten,
Speaker 1: Like there's this Luca don Chech card that that sold
Speaker 1: earlier this year for more than four million dollars, and
Speaker 1: it's because it's one of one, and he's this guy
Speaker 1: who everybody thinks is going to be, you know, the
Speaker 1: next Lebron the next Michael Jordan's. So there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of efforts to restrict supply and
Speaker 1: create special editions to kind of create scarcity, because that's
Speaker 1: like any market, it booms based on scarcity. There's also
Speaker 1: the added wrinkle sort of where do n f t
Speaker 1: s fit into this, because they're kind of like trading cards,
Speaker 1: but they're not like trading cards, and even Ken Golden
Speaker 1: has started to sell them in his auctions. None of
Speaker 1: them have generated as much money as the top of
Speaker 1: the top of the line trading cards, but they still
Speaker 1: go for ten thousands of dollars. Check out that full conversation. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is more with Bloomberg News Entertainment reporter Lucas Sewan
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week editor Joe Webber. That can all be
Speaker 1: found on our podcast feed at Bloomberg dot com or
Speaker 1: on Apple. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week, So where
Speaker 1: were you in. There's a new book out that writes
Speaker 1: about that summer and the ninety days in nine eight
Speaker 1: four that changed sports and culture forever. While we're on
Speaker 1: the glory days. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovy from Bloomberg Radio nine four. Well, our next guest
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old at the time. He was living
Speaker 1: in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, and something remarkable was
Speaker 1: happening unbeknownst to everyone that would contribute to really making
Speaker 1: that summer and that year one for the record books
Speaker 1: when it came to sports and culture writing about it all,
Speaker 1: John Wortheim, He's executive editor and senior writer for Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 1: contributing correspondent for CBS sixty Minutes. His new book, Just
Speaker 1: at Glory Days, The Summer of nineteen eighty four and
Speaker 1: the ninety days that changed Sports and culture Forever. John
Speaker 1: takes us back to that year. Was a young kid then,
Speaker 1: but the tryouts for the Olympics team were held in
Speaker 1: my small town in Indiana, and I wrote a piece
Speaker 1: about it and sort of developed this piece into the book,
Speaker 1: and it sort of struck me that, you know, I
Speaker 1: used Michael Jordan's as sort of the symbolic figure who
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the summer was the sort of
Speaker 1: sheepish college kid whose coach was making him go to
Speaker 1: the NBA. Michael Jordan would rather have stayed in college.
Speaker 1: And uh, by the end of the summer, Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: was a millionaire many times over, hit an Olympic medal,
Speaker 1: he had a signature shoe. And it struck me that
Speaker 1: that pretty much mirrored the ark of sports that summer,
Speaker 1: that it started in one place and a very short
Speaker 1: amount of time, it sort of had had blossomed into
Speaker 1: the big business, uh, you know, big media property that
Speaker 1: it that it is today. That a lot a lot
Speaker 1: happened in that summer, and a lot happened in a
Speaker 1: very short amount of time. Well, we've had some fun
Speaker 1: talking about it in the newsroom, go through some of
Speaker 1: the things, because there are things that we in the
Speaker 1: sports world to some extent right on take for granted today.
Speaker 1: But as you said, that summer was pivotal for something
Speaker 1: like an ESPN. Yeah, exactly. I mean some of this
Speaker 1: was just you know, the Michael Jordan's uh, one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. The NBA got a new commissioner, a guy
Speaker 1: named David Stern's lawyer who made people who worked with
Speaker 1: him miserable and had all sorts of ideas of events,
Speaker 1: media and globalization. So Michael, so, David Start is on
Speaker 1: the job for you know, a few months, and he
Speaker 1: gets his first NBA Final and it's magic in the
Speaker 1: Lakers against Larry Bird and the Celtics. We get this
Speaker 1: dream NBA Finals, it goes seven games, it's on network TV,
Speaker 1: which wasn't always a given for the NBA. And then
Speaker 1: a few days later he presides over his first draft
Speaker 1: when Michael Jordan gets selected. So that's a pretty good
Speaker 1: week for for David Stern. And then you just sort
Speaker 1: of go down the list and it's you know, Wayne
Speaker 1: Gretzky won his first Stanley Cup, and there was an
Speaker 1: Olympics that was profitable, and you know, dot Donald Trump
Speaker 1: entered the scene through sports buying a football team. But
Speaker 1: so so you had all these coincidences. But I think
Speaker 1: what what really became clear to me when I did
Speaker 1: the reporting two things. The eightis was the summer you
Speaker 1: mentioned ESPN. This was the summer of cable, and cable
Speaker 1: really turned a corner, whether it was MTV or whether
Speaker 1: it's CNN or whether ESPN was sold to ABC that summer,
Speaker 1: and smart people in ESPN realized, wait a second, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be paying the cable systems to get on their
Speaker 1: offering of channels. They should be paying us a subscriber fee.
Speaker 1: And the cable you know, it was a game of chicken,
Speaker 1: and basically the ESPN wasn't the one that blaked. And
Speaker 1: so the subscriber fee that started out with a few
Speaker 1: pennies and would then grow to about seven dollars a month.
Speaker 1: You know, that's really the secret sauce behind ESPN success,
Speaker 1: that they fell their thirty second commercial blocks, that they
Speaker 1: make most of their money from these subscriber fees, and
Speaker 1: the other thing that happened that summer. And again, I
Speaker 1: think Michael Jordan's examplar. Athletes recognized their platform and their value.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't really political, you know, so sort of
Speaker 1: Reagan eighties. This was not about activism him and then
Speaker 1: social and political activism. But athletes realized, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be doing that for free, or wait, wait
Speaker 1: a second. If Nike wants to give me a shoot,
Speaker 1: they should be paying me to And I think that
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan doesn't get enough credit for that. He's not
Speaker 1: a political activist. He's not you know, Muhammad Ali or
Speaker 1: Bill Russell or Colin Kaepernick. But what he did to
Speaker 1: empower athletes starting in that summer of n I think
Speaker 1: he doesn't get enough credit for that. Well, there's a
Speaker 1: line in your introduction you said most of Bloomington looked
Speaker 1: at Michael Jordan's somewhat indifferently in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: eight four. Is he ordered a smoothie at the Chocolate
Speaker 1: Moose ice cream joint I lost eighteen holes of pet
Speaker 1: pet only to shoot the winner a scalding stair and
Speaker 1: demand an immediate rematch. But it's just interesting. Let write
Speaker 1: someone incredibly unknown and then almost in the snap of
Speaker 1: the fingers was a game changer, a lasting one in
Speaker 1: terms of sports overall. Certainly you know when it comes
Speaker 1: to basketball, but even more broadly, Yeah, I mean, Michael
Speaker 1: Gordon was running around my hometown and it wasn't the
Speaker 1: big deal. You didn't have an entreage and the security,
Speaker 1: he didn't have an agent. Some of that is cute
Speaker 1: and nostalgic, and oh sports were so much more pure,
Speaker 1: But part of that is athletes were really undervalued. In
Speaker 1: the notion that Michael Jordan was sort of at the
Speaker 1: mercy of of the coaches and didn't have an entourage,
Speaker 1: I think says something in itself. You talk about David
Speaker 1: Stern kind of projecting kind of where things were going
Speaker 1: and forecasting where things were going. You also talk about
Speaker 1: and we you know today tech technology for granted and
Speaker 1: everything we do, but you go back to the l
Speaker 1: A Olympics again, family members who went there, and technology
Speaker 1: was really having its impact on Olympics as well. The Olympics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean also was the year that you had this
Speaker 1: this cube like it looked like a food processor and
Speaker 1: it was a computer and they called it the Mac,
Speaker 1: and everyone uh sort of trying to figure out and
Speaker 1: if computers finally we're here to stay. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the personal computer was something I only used at the office,
Speaker 1: so it was it was sort of the Summer of Mac.
Speaker 1: But also you're right that the eighty four Olympics they
Speaker 1: really sort of redefined what it meant to be an
Speaker 1: Olympics sponsor. And p Peter you Broth ran this very
Speaker 1: successful Olympics, and one thing he did he had these
Speaker 1: these technology firms, what was both both AT and T
Speaker 1: and IBM, and they had something called the e m S,
Speaker 1: the Electronic Messaging Servant, and they told the athletes, you
Speaker 1: don't need to pick up a phone. You could send
Speaker 1: a message to someone electronically if you put in your
Speaker 1: password and get on one of our get on one
Speaker 1: of our monitors, get on one of our computer terminals.
Speaker 1: You can send messages electronically. And very few athletes took
Speaker 1: advantage of it, but you know, you look back and
Speaker 1: it was one of the very first email networks and uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like they basically demoted in at the Olympics Motorola.
Speaker 1: Distributing pages like that takes us back right. Hey, listen, um,
Speaker 1: we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you about tennis.
Speaker 1: I know it's something you write so eloquently about. You
Speaker 1: are passionate about the US Open is coming up. What
Speaker 1: are your expectation it's going to be back? Will are
Speaker 1: willing not with it now? I think? I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think so if they're you know, we're packing Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden, I think we'll be okay for an outdoor
Speaker 1: tennis event. I mean, I think, I think we talked
Speaker 1: about this last year. I mean, the the interesting part
Speaker 1: of this is, you know, part of it as the
Speaker 1: fan experience again, I mean I think, uh, I think,
Speaker 1: especially since we're outdoors, will be okay. I think the
Speaker 1: really interesting thing is going to be our companies ready
Speaker 1: to use the US Open for hospitality, which is a
Speaker 1: huge source of revenue and it's a huge part of
Speaker 1: the U s Open experience for a lot of firms.
Speaker 1: Are we at a point where you know, the fans
Speaker 1: will be in the stands and the fans will be
Speaker 1: on the grounds, but Are we at a point where
Speaker 1: these companies that historically have rented these suites and used
Speaker 1: the tennis as entertainment, are they going to be ready
Speaker 1: to take clients back to suits? Is it appropriate both
Speaker 1: health standards and also sort of optics And you know,
Speaker 1: I I hope the answers yes. I think the answers yes.
Speaker 1: But I just got back for the French Open, right,
Speaker 1: and there was very little hospitality. Part of that was protocol,
Speaker 1: you know, part of that was Western Europe. They are
Speaker 1: not where we are in terms of getting out of
Speaker 1: this thing. But I also think some firms said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm not sure it's a great look after
Speaker 1: what we've been through the last sixteen months. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it's a great look to have everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: eating Canna pass and drinking champagne in this field suite. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think I think that's the question. I mean,
Speaker 1: the US Open, it it will happen, it won't be
Speaker 1: like last year. We'll all get to go to say
Speaker 1: as if we watch to But I think it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how many of these suits get sold.
Speaker 1: Naomi Osaka, she withdrew from the French Open, uh and
Speaker 1: she talked about reasons related to mental health. You know,
Speaker 1: you've covered the sport, You've covered a lot of athletes.
Speaker 1: She's not the first one, you know, to talk about
Speaker 1: either depression or anxiety. UM, there's a lot of stress
Speaker 1: and pressure on these athletes. And she even talked about,
Speaker 1: you know how hard it is just to speak to
Speaker 1: the media. It makes her nervous. You know, what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that? UM? I mean I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know you you you say she's not the first,
Speaker 1: and you're and you're right. I do think it was
Speaker 1: sort of significant that an athlete at the peak of
Speaker 1: her powers, highest paid female athlete, she's won the last
Speaker 1: two majors she entered. I mean, she was really sort
Speaker 1: of uh, this is peak Naomi point and for her
Speaker 1: to sort of have this sort of revelation at this stage,
Speaker 1: I thought was I thought it was courageous. I also
Speaker 1: thought it was sort of culturally fascinating. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is not the way of athletes behaved or characterize their
Speaker 1: conditions twenty years ago when I started covering sports. I
Speaker 1: do think if you're in tennis, you knew that she's
Speaker 1: had these challenges. She's talked about it, she's she's pretty
Speaker 1: upfront about it. I thought it was really at best
Speaker 1: tone death and it worth something, you know more, you know, malicious,
Speaker 1: even that the tournaments responded the way they did. This
Speaker 1: was not about an athlete that was trying to pay
Speaker 1: her way out of something that was inconvenient. This was
Speaker 1: not about an athlete who was grandstanding or being self righteous.
Speaker 1: This wasn't you know, the bian. This was. This was
Speaker 1: a broken this is a broken human being, right And
Speaker 1: I thought the you know, I mean, she probably for
Speaker 1: the handled this better. But I think really more of
Speaker 1: the blame rest on the adults who were not very
Speaker 1: um sensitive or empathetic and read the room particularly well
Speaker 1: and sort of castor as a over this rebellious troublemaker.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't when it was at all. John Wortheim
Speaker 1: he's executive editor and senior writer for Sports Illustrated, contributing
Speaker 1: correspondent for Sixty Minutes, and his new book It's called
Speaker 1: Glory Days, The Summer of nine four and the ninety
Speaker 1: Days That Change Sports and Culture Forever. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masster for
Speaker 1: Tim Stanovic and the whole team. Be sure to tune
Speaker 1: into our Bloomberg Business Week daily show Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg