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Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: The industry had a long history of resistance to change

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Speaker 1: as they went from the album format and vinyl t

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Speaker 1: c D s. Their view of technology was something to

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Speaker 1: be rebuffed, not embraced. And technology is you know, it's

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Speaker 1: like an avalanche. If you're standing on a mountain and

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Speaker 1: you see the avalanche coming at you, you either get

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Speaker 1: out in front of it and you get on the

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Speaker 1: leading edge, or it's just gonna bury you. Hi. I'm

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Speaker 1: Bob Pittman. Welcome to Math and Magic Stories from the

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Speaker 1: Frontiers and Marketing, where we explore that unique combination of

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Speaker 1: data and analytics and the creative ideas that are behind

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Speaker 1: the biggest business successes today. We're exploring this world through

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Speaker 1: the experience, answers and insights of someone who has an

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Speaker 1: amazing career. Was running MGM, O I M, Telcom, Crispy

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Speaker 1: Kreme Donuts, and even the CEO of in Ron as

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Speaker 1: they went through their restructuring. But today he's here as

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Speaker 1: the CEO of Warner Music Group. He's Steve Cooper, a

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Speaker 1: Wharton n B. A who started as an accountant and

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Speaker 1: wanted to become what some have described as the king

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Speaker 1: of the turnaround world. He's the guy you call when

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Speaker 1: you need to get out of the woods. He's had

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Speaker 1: over three hundred engagements restructuring over one hundred billion dollars

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Speaker 1: in debts. But for the last eleven years he's been

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Speaker 1: the CEO of Warner Music, and in that time the

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Speaker 1: company has doubled revenue, increased its total market value of

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Speaker 1: the company five x, and increased the equity by about

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Speaker 1: fifteen acts. Steve recently announced he'll be retiring next year,

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Speaker 1: so we've got even more to talk about today. Steve. Welcome,

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Bob, nice to be here. Well, we're glad

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Speaker 1: to have you here. And before we jump into the

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Speaker 1: meat of everything, I want to do you in sixty seconds,

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Speaker 1: so you're ready. Yep. Do you prefer New York City

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Speaker 1: or l a New York City? Cats or dogs? Cats,

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Speaker 1: track or football? Football? Boats or planes? Planes in Ron

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Speaker 1: or Warner Music, Warner Music, Abbey Road or pet Sounds,

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Speaker 1: Abbey Road, Ed Sharon or Justin Bieber, Ed Sharon, Palm

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Speaker 1: Springs or Palm Beach, Palm Springs. It's about to get

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Speaker 1: a little harder. Childhood hero Albert Einstein. First job, Well,

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Speaker 1: my first job when I was post sixteen was in

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Speaker 1: Marbon Chemical and Gary, Indiana. Favorite city London, last vacation,

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Speaker 1: can't remember. Favorite cocktail Tequila on the Rocks. Favorite TV

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Speaker 1: show was probably Star Trek, Who would play you in

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Speaker 1: a movie? Somebody's Short with not a lot of hair.

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Speaker 1: I have to ask you this. One favorite radio station

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Speaker 1: one those six point seven FM. And the biggest surprise

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Speaker 1: about the music business. My biggest surprise was that in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven the business was organized the same

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Speaker 1: way as it was in Okay, Steve. Before we get

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Speaker 1: to the present, let's go back to the beginning. Your

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Speaker 1: doctor's son, Gary, Indiana. You're a high school athlete who

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Speaker 1: got sidelined with back surgery. What are the lessons from Gary,

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Speaker 1: from your parents and from being a high school athlete

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Speaker 1: and then being knocked out of the action. My parents

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Speaker 1: really gave me, you know, my values, respect for other people,

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Speaker 1: the concept of fair play with respect to sports injuries,

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Speaker 1: except from me a pretty good example that you know,

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Speaker 1: if you're playing something and it's absolutely not working, whether

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Speaker 1: it's because of talent or an injury, you've got to

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Speaker 1: find a different game to play, hopefully one that you

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Speaker 1: really love and one that you can excel at. You

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Speaker 1: left Gary go to college in California. It was that

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Speaker 1: part of this why California. Well, if you've ever spent

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Speaker 1: a winter or a summer in Gary, you would find

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Speaker 1: California unbelievably appealing. It was really such a seismic change

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Speaker 1: for me. What did your parents think of you being

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Speaker 1: in California? Did they come visit? No? Actually during the

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Speaker 1: four years I was in college. They came for my

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Speaker 1: college graduation. When my mom saw the apartment I was

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Speaker 1: living in as a senior, she not only refused to

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Speaker 1: come in, she told me she was complete shocked at

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Speaker 1: what my apartment looks like versus what my room at

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Speaker 1: home looks like. After you graduated, you went onto business

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Speaker 1: school at Wharton University of Pennsylvania. The other coasts. So

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Speaker 1: now you've been the Midwest, you've been the West coast,

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Speaker 1: now you're in the East coast. It's that deliberate or

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Speaker 1: by accident, and why business school. When I graduated, I

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Speaker 1: was just a few months past one years old. The

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Speaker 1: thought of full time employment, having had really a fun

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Speaker 1: filled four years in California was just not something then. Frankly,

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Speaker 1: at the time, I could wrap my head around. So

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Speaker 1: I decided my best course of action was to apply

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Speaker 1: to graduate school. I was literally the youngest guy in

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Speaker 1: my business school class the day it started. Everybody was

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Speaker 1: in sports coach or suits and ties. I was twenty

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Speaker 1: one from Cali, Fornia. I had a pair of jeans on,

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Speaker 1: some sneakers and a T shirt. And a professor said,

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Speaker 1: you pointing at me, this is the graduate division, not

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Speaker 1: the undergraduate division. And I said, well, sir um, I'm

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Speaker 1: here for the graduate division. And he shaped his head

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Speaker 1: and muttered, what was the world coming to? So that

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Speaker 1: was my first day of graduate school. This is business

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Speaker 1: school in the nineteen seventies, and as you say, it

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Speaker 1: looked quite a bit different than it does today. What

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Speaker 1: were they teaching you about business in the nineteen seventies. Well,

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Speaker 1: they took a fairly thoughtful, actually analytical approach to most

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Speaker 1: aspects of business, finance, marketing, labor, organizational theory. Computers had

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Speaker 1: rolled around by that time. We learned programming with a

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Speaker 1: card deck and punch cards. What I did was to

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Speaker 1: ask a lot of questions, go beyond just corporate speak,

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Speaker 1: to look at real data, real information, real analytics that

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Speaker 1: really served is kind of the cornerstone for what I

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Speaker 1: did for most of my professional career up to and

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Speaker 1: through today. So you first worked as an accountant in

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Speaker 1: the predecessor company, did deloit you gotta taste for company

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Speaker 1: reorganizations in by you left to start your own company.

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Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about what the catalyst was to

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Speaker 1: leave that obviously a prestigious place and take the chance

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Speaker 1: on betting on yourself. Well, I started in seventy and

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Speaker 1: left them literally to the day, fifteen years later. And

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Speaker 1: during that time, while it was your point a large

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Speaker 1: prestigious organization, it had morphed from a small, tight partnership

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Speaker 1: where I knew every partner and they knew me. And

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Speaker 1: then in the late seventies early eighties, all of these

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Speaker 1: large professional firms just had explosive growth through acquisitions and mergers,

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Speaker 1: and it really changed the nature of the environment. It

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Speaker 1: went from something that resembled really a partnership to you know,

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Speaker 1: just big business. For me. You know, I established three

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Speaker 1: rules for my life, and part was life short, you

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Speaker 1: gotta have fun. The second was no assholes, because life short,

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Speaker 1: you've gotta have fun. And the third was I treat

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Speaker 1: people fairly and I expect to be treated the same way.

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Speaker 1: It just became a large, anonymous business. If the world

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Speaker 1: there wasn't something I enjoyed, I had to go create

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Speaker 1: my own world in my own future. And so it

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Speaker 1: became a pretty simple decision, and you did. You had

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Speaker 1: great success. As I mentioned at the top, all these

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Speaker 1: successes you had and really transforming restructuring companies in essence

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Speaker 1: saving companies. Let's get a couple of lessons that you

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Speaker 1: learned during that period of time. Why do companies get

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Speaker 1: in trouble financially Well, oftentimes it's because they didn't see

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Speaker 1: the megatrends that were developing that, either because of government regulations, competition,

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Speaker 1: or technology, had not only the possibility but the probability

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Speaker 1: of dramatically changing the world in which they operated. A

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Speaker 1: lot of companies just moved away drastically from their core competencies.

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Speaker 1: You know, they figured that if they could play basketball well,

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Speaker 1: they'd be able to play baseball well, or they'd be

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Speaker 1: able to play soccer well. But companies, like many many athletes,

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Speaker 1: don't really have the capacity to go from one sport

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Speaker 1: to another sport without incurring a lot of pain. Many

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Speaker 1: of the companies that I dealt with underestimated the risks

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Speaker 1: associated with dramatic, unplanned growth and the risks that came

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Speaker 1: not only financially but operationally, organizationally, culturally. You know, the

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Speaker 1: stress that publicly held companies the board and management field

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Speaker 1: to constantly be on a steady northward path for revenue growth,

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Speaker 1: bottom line growth, cash flow growth. In order to do that,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people would make short term decisions that

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Speaker 1: could impact the company's long term health. You know. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of like an athlete. They can juice their performance

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Speaker 1: by using steroids or other enhancing drugs. One may accelerate

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Speaker 1: their muscle mass and their strength, but at the end

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Speaker 1: of the day, the harm it causes makes it not

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Speaker 1: worth it. You know. They're really two kinds of management

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Speaker 1: teams and leaders, those that manage from hindsight and react,

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Speaker 1: and those that manage from foresight and are proactive. The

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Speaker 1: foresight and the proactivity creates more often than not, insight.

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Speaker 1: Many of the management teams I worked with would blame

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Speaker 1: everybody and their brother or sister for the failure of

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Speaker 1: the companies, but they would never look at themselves at

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Speaker 1: being at the heart of the matter. And so one

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Speaker 1: of the lessons that I've always carried forward is that

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Speaker 1: whenever there's the funk up, the first place you ought

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Speaker 1: to look is in the mirror and not allow the

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Speaker 1: proverbial crap to roll downhill. More a Mathew Magic right

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Speaker 1: after this quick break, welcome back to Mathew Magic. Let's

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Speaker 1: do more from my conversation with Steve Cooper. How do

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Speaker 1: you think about corporate culture? What is it doing for you?

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Speaker 1: How do you build it? How do you use it?

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Speaker 1: Here's what we try and do inside of Warner there

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Speaker 1: are four words communication, cooperation, coordination and collaboration. When a

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Speaker 1: company does those four things, well, there's almost all we's

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Speaker 1: a spike in creativity. Those four words are the glue

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Speaker 1: that create a culture a team, and when you play

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Speaker 1: as a team, you will always outplay a bunch of

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Speaker 1: people that don't play that way and don't relate to

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Speaker 1: each other that way. But getting people to communicate, collaborate,

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Speaker 1: cooperate and coordinate is a full time, never ending undertaking

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Speaker 1: in any business that's got any level of scale. Let's

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Speaker 1: take that and let's jump to Warner Music now one

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Speaker 1: of the three big music companies. Lindvatnik buys Warner Music

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Speaker 1: back in two thousand eleven. He saw something that others

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Speaker 1: did not, and at the time most thought it was

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Speaker 1: a bad acquisition, and he paid way too much, according

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Speaker 1: to the gossip of the moment, and then, to make

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Speaker 1: matters worse, gasp, he brings in someone from outside the

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Speaker 1: music business entertainment industry to run it. You. Let's unpack

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Speaker 1: that a little bit. At what stage in the acquisition

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Speaker 1: did you get involved? I got involved a couple of

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Speaker 1: months before we close the acquisition. The plan once the

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Speaker 1: company was acquired, I was going to be the chairman

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Speaker 1: of the board and kind of keep an eye on

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Speaker 1: Len's investment. But Edgar Brownman Jr. A very bright guy,

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Speaker 1: great guy. He was the CEO. He decided to move

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Speaker 1: on to other things, and the three of us were

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Speaker 1: at lunch one day. Edgar announced that we didn't want

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Speaker 1: to run a day to day anymore. And Lynn looked

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Speaker 1: at me at lunch and says, you don't mind doing this?

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Speaker 1: Do you? How hard can it be? What did you

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Speaker 1: think you were getting into, Steve? Well, you know, first

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Speaker 1: of all, it was pretty obvious that the industry was contracting.

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Speaker 1: Major players had all shifted through mergers and acquisitions. The

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Speaker 1: industry was in survival mode. The industry had a long

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Speaker 1: history of fighting against each other as opposed to looking

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Speaker 1: at what was happening in the broader world around them.

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Speaker 1: You know, if the industry had played their cards differently,

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Speaker 1: they would have been the iTunes store. But they had

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Speaker 1: a resistance to change. As they went from the album

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Speaker 1: format and vinyl to c d s, they were just

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Speaker 1: raining money. Their view of technology was something to be rebuffed,

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Speaker 1: not embraced, and technology is you know, it's like an avalanche.

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Speaker 1: If you're standing on a mountain and you see the

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Speaker 1: avalanche coming at you, you either get out in front

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Speaker 1: of it and you get on the leading edge, or

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Speaker 1: it's just gonna bury you. The industry at one point

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Speaker 1: had an opportunity to do that if they had interpreted

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Speaker 1: Napster differently, but they didn't, and as a result the contraction,

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Speaker 1: the shrink, the disaggregation, and the album into singles. It

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Speaker 1: was going to be a brave new world that the

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Speaker 1: industry was reluctant to embrace. You know, it's interesting, probably,

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Speaker 1: I guess twenty years earlier. I was in those meetings

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Speaker 1: at Warner Communications back when I was running MTV, and

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Speaker 1: there were people talking about the C D and what

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Speaker 1: it might be. And there was this real fight over

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Speaker 1: the c D. There were these folks, very smart people,

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Speaker 1: who said, the CD will be the worst thing that

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Speaker 1: ever happens to the music business because it's a master

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Speaker 1: quality recording and the pirates will use it to kill us.

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Speaker 1: In that situation, unlike what you were just talking about,

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Speaker 1: the forces for let's use the technology one and they

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Speaker 1: embraced the CD, and as you know, that was probably

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Speaker 1: one of the greatest decades of growth the record industry

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Speaker 1: has ever seen, when people got rid of their LPs

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Speaker 1: and transferred it all over to c d s. And

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Speaker 1: you're exactly right. I also was there when Napster came along,

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Speaker 1: the same sort of folks that we can't embrace this

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Speaker 1: because digital will kill the music business. And this time

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Speaker 1: the conservative forces won and they decided to fight it

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Speaker 1: rather than embrace it. When you came along, you know,

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Speaker 1: the business was at that point where he had already

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Speaker 1: suffered that terrible damage from really being out of the

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Speaker 1: action for ten years and being diminished. How did you

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Speaker 1: get comfortable that that was not the future, that there

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Speaker 1: was really something else going on. Look, you should never

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Speaker 1: get comfortable the minute you get too comfortable about your

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Speaker 1: business is when you get slammed. You know, Historically you

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Speaker 1: see big technology shifts come every decade. We did see

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Speaker 1: this emerging technology streaming and this you know, little Swedish

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Speaker 1: company who had an approach that was based on access,

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Speaker 1: not ownership. The theory was that they could offer up

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Speaker 1: virtually all of the world's music in a convenient, easy

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Speaker 1: way to use, and people for a relatively nominal price

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Speaker 1: could have access to all of the world's music. Seven.

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Speaker 1: It was a relationship that changed the fundamental nature of

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Speaker 1: how people looked at music. It was very clear, at

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Speaker 1: least to me, that if we clung to the download model,

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Speaker 1: that we were never ever as an industry or a business,

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Speaker 1: going to see a turnaround of any reasonable degree. Whereas

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Speaker 1: if we embrace and promoted this kind of seismic shift

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Speaker 1: in both the way people thought about music and interfaced

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Speaker 1: with music. The team warnered the board members, we made

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Speaker 1: a collective decision that we were going to double down

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Speaker 1: and go all in on streaming as one of the

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Speaker 1: key components of Warner's future. Streaming ended up being more

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Speaker 1: than fifty percent of our business. You not only bet

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Speaker 1: on Daniel with Spotify, but somehow you got Apple to

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Speaker 1: do something they said they would never do, which is

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Speaker 1: going to a subscription service business. Amazon went into the

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Speaker 1: business that you managed to find others that would build

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Speaker 1: out platforms to give you more ways to reach the

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Speaker 1: consumers and more ways to use your music. How did

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Speaker 1: you think about that, Well, it was pretty clear to

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Speaker 1: Apple that this technology had legs, the iTunes store having

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Speaker 1: peaked in that beginning to contract because you know, it

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Speaker 1: was just a digital analog to a physical sale, and

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Speaker 1: Amazon will give anything a try. YouTube, at the same time,

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Speaker 1: was developing as the streaming business. Relative to video audio streaming,

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Speaker 1: while it was a leap for the industry, was already

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Speaker 1: on relatively sound technological footing. You know, it's interesting we

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Speaker 1: sort of we're on the parallel journey with you, because

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Speaker 1: for radio, we expose people to new music. We come

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Speaker 1: about new ideas, we explain who the artists are, we

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Speaker 1: put them in context. I think the numbers something like

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Speaker 1: Spotify users say the main way they discover new music

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Speaker 1: is still FM. Radio. Well, look, I think radio is

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Speaker 1: still a very very important component across all of the

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Speaker 1: aspects of music, whether it be discovery, what's trending, the

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Speaker 1: preservation of musical history in catalog. It's like as many

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Speaker 1: things transition to the digital world. You know, the demise

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Speaker 1: of X, Y and Z has been predicted, but I

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Speaker 1: think radio is going to be around forever. It's certainly

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Speaker 1: reaches tens upon tens of millions of people every day.

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Speaker 1: It's a medium where they utilized for figuring out what

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Speaker 1: the weather is, where the traffic is, what the news is,

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Speaker 1: where the music is. The difference between the digital vehicles

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Speaker 1: and radio is primarily the linear of radio versus the

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Speaker 1: demand nature of stream. We've got our host which are

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Speaker 1: really make us so different. They bond with the audience.

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Speaker 1: People trust them, and when they start telling you about

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Speaker 1: a new artist or a new song, or by the way,

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Speaker 1: a new song from an established artist, it creates the

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Speaker 1: conversation really and embeds that in the culture. You know,

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Speaker 1: we and our company are probably doing the same thing

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Speaker 1: you're doing, which is looking ahead. One of the areas

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Speaker 1: we're looking at is web three, blockchain, tokens, metaverse. You

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Speaker 1: you've been really active in this, Steve and sort of

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Speaker 1: a hallmark of viewers talk a little bit about next

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Speaker 1: step because we're not there yet, but you're already working

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Speaker 1: on what that's gonna be. If you think about the

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Speaker 1: Internet that went from just you know, Web one was

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Speaker 1: just simply kind of information and search. Web two was

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Speaker 1: really social platforms and interacting with one another. Web three

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Speaker 1: is kind of building these immersive communities online through gaining

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Speaker 1: live streaming, like literally building worlds where common communities grow up. Now,

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Speaker 1: I think Web two isn't going to go away. It'll

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Speaker 1: be with us for a long long time. Web three

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Speaker 1: it's gonna take I don't know, three or four or five,

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Speaker 1: ten years for to begin to really illuminate all the

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Speaker 1: possibilities that it holds. But they'll be able to coexist

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Speaker 1: as Web three grows and as Web two continues to mature.

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Speaker 1: What I do see is that there will be more

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Speaker 1: and more people spending more and more time in a

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Speaker 1: world where they have a hand in its creation. What

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Speaker 1: Web three will do, Bob, is allow people that are

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Speaker 1: now fans to become players. It will allow people to

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Speaker 1: be the person that they hope they would be or

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Speaker 1: want to be in a community that they have helped create,

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Speaker 1: in a world where they feel as if they are

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Speaker 1: part of it, and where that world makes them feel

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Speaker 1: that way. Is well, you can see in our world today,

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Speaker 1: people are gonna want to create and find better worlds.

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Speaker 1: Don't look at virtual worlds where they can live the

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Speaker 1: way they want to live. I think it holds an

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Speaker 1: enormous world of possibilities. People ought to regularly watch several movies.

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Speaker 1: One is The Terminator, where we're fighting the machines we created.

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Speaker 1: One is The Matrix, where we're just the batteries for

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Speaker 1: the stuff we've created, you know. And one is Wally,

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Speaker 1: where we just live in a virtual world. I think

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Speaker 1: of the three possibilities, I'm betting on Wally so little

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Speaker 1: more mundane. You bought Parlophone, you and lend it increased

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Speaker 1: your market share, but it really turbocharged your earnings as well.

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Speaker 1: At that moment, of course, the conventional wisdom while you overpaid,

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a stupid price. Today it seems

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Speaker 1: like a bargain. As an industry, are we going to

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Speaker 1: see more consolidation. Are the Indian is going to be

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Speaker 1: pulled into the major companies or is most of the

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Speaker 1: effort going to be on new technology like Web three.

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Speaker 1: I think that it'll be both. You know, what the

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Speaker 1: Internet has done is democratized access. But what you can't

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Speaker 1: democratize is talent. When you look at something approximating a

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand new tracks being uploaded to iHeart Digital or soundclouds, Spotify, Amazon,

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Speaker 1: Apple every day, it is almost impossible for an individual

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Speaker 1: artist to break through in the world of music. I

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Speaker 1: see music curators like my Heart, and I look at

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Speaker 1: companies like us that have a global footprint, skills that

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Speaker 1: go from Alpha to Omega, and the financial resources to

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Speaker 1: be able to help those with truly great talent maneuver

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Speaker 1: their way through those hundred thousand tracks a day, whether

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Speaker 1: it be Web two, traditional streaming, Web three, immersive Web four,

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Speaker 1: God knows what that's going to be. I see the

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Speaker 1: role of companies like Warner becoming more critical to the

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Speaker 1: success of songwriters and artists, and more critical to you know,

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Speaker 1: working with people like yourselves, Spotify, Apple and others in

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Speaker 1: the curation of really, really great music and wonderful artists.

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Speaker 1: So let's jump coming towards the end here. If you

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Speaker 1: could give your twenty one year old self some advice,

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Speaker 1: what would that advice be? I would have been more

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Speaker 1: open minded, and I would have told myself notwithstanding I

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Speaker 1: was convinced I knew everything and was right about everything

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Speaker 1: that I really didn't know much at all. More often

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Speaker 1: than not, I had no idea what I was talking about.

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Speaker 1: You sounded persuasive, though, Steve. Let's jump to your latest

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Speaker 1: news here. You announced you're going to step down next year.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if I should call a retirement or

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Speaker 1: you're gonna go do something else. You've been on an

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Speaker 1: incredible tear. I mean, this has been one of the

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Speaker 1: great success stories and media and entertainment. What made you

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Speaker 1: decide it was time to step down? You know? I

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Speaker 1: believe that after a certain amount of time in the

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Speaker 1: fish bowl, your view used to be more objective when

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Speaker 1: you're just first starting, can become more subjective over time.

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Speaker 1: What I believe is the right thing for Warner is

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Speaker 1: a fresh set of eyes, a not only understanding, but

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Speaker 1: an appreciation for Web two, for Web three, where the

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Speaker 1: company's got to go. Somebody that has the time and

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Speaker 1: the energy to chart the course over the next five

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Speaker 1: to ten years. I don't want to start something that

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Speaker 1: I know, in my heart of hearts, I'm never going

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Speaker 1: to be able to finish. I remember two thousand and

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Speaker 1: two I was agonizing about deciding I wanted to retire

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Speaker 1: but actually, the minute I did it and announced it,

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Speaker 1: I felt like the way of the world had come

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Speaker 1: off my shoulders. Have you felt once you announced this?

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Speaker 1: Did you feel anything different? Did it have an impact

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Speaker 1: for you? It kind of creates as sense of freedom.

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Speaker 1: I've got a fairly long glide path here, so it'll

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Speaker 1: give the board time to noodle through the right successor.

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Speaker 1: And the fact that it's out, it's public. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's not something rolling around in my head that I

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Speaker 1: haven't articulated. It feels great. So we're gonna wrap up,

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Speaker 1: and we always wrap up these episodes the same way.

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Speaker 1: It's a tribute to those folks that are great at

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Speaker 1: the analytics and see the world as math, and to

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Speaker 1: those people who just have those genius ideas that pop

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Speaker 1: in their heads math and magic. We'd like you to

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Speaker 1: add to the honor society some of the people you

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Speaker 1: think deserve it. So if you think about it, who

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Speaker 1: is the best math person you know in business? And

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Speaker 1: then who is the best magician? Well, I think the

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Speaker 1: best magician is George Lucas. He created worlds that people

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Speaker 1: never even dreamed of, and he spawned generations of people that,

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Speaker 1: through imagination and creativity created art that I just find

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Speaker 1: mind boggling. The greatest mathematician, his impact I think has

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Speaker 1: been beyond belief is Einstein. He, in much of the

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Speaker 1: way that Lucas did for other worlds, did the same

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Speaker 1: thing for math. I would like to believe that time

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Speaker 1: is a river, that one of these days you and

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Speaker 1: I will figure out how to backstroke in. Yes, we will.

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Speaker 1: David Eagleman, who was at him, who said that time

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Speaker 1: is probably a circle and it just stays in a loop.

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Speaker 1: I hope that's true, because we'll be coming around to

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Speaker 1: it again. Steve Cooper, great friend, king of transformations, extraordinary

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Speaker 1: visionary and leader. Thanks for being here today and enjoy

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Speaker 1: that retirement thing. Thank you, Bob. I appreciate it. There

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Speaker 1: are a few lessons I picked up in my conversation

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Speaker 1: with Steve. One, don't abandon your core competencies like an athlete,

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Speaker 1: just because you're good at one sport doesn't mean you'll

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Speaker 1: succeed at another. Two, Communication and collaboration, cooperation, coordination, as

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Speaker 1: Steve said, those portraits build a strong culture and encourage

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Speaker 1: creativity and teamwork. And three embraced technology like an avalanche.

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Speaker 1: You're not gonna win by fighting it. You must get

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Speaker 1: in front of it. I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.

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Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening

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Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of High Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to

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Speaker 1: Susan Warden for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which

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Speaker 1: is no small fees, Marissa Brown for pulling research, our

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Speaker 1: editors Derek Clements, Mary Dow and Ryan Murdoch, our producer

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Speaker 1: Morgan Levoy, our executive producer, Nikki Tour and of course

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Speaker 1: Gayle Rahul, Eric Angel, Noel and everyone who helped bring

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Speaker 1: this show to your ears. Until next time, m