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Speaker 2: This is a paid advertisement. Well, I have leaned on
Speaker 2: my next guest from time to time, I DM, but
Speaker 2: it was totally appropriate. Formerly Eric and Ardini now Erica
Speaker 2: airs but On is the first CEO of Barstool Sports,
Speaker 2: now the CEO of Food fifty two. She has written
Speaker 2: a book, Nobody Cares About Your Career, which I laughed
Speaker 2: at because I watched a stand up comedian on TikTok
Speaker 2: a couple of days ago and he said, you know
Speaker 2: that thing about your anxiety, nobody cares because we all
Speaker 2: have it. You care your therapy, Your therapist cares. Talk
Speaker 2: to that person. So when you say nobody cares about
Speaker 2: your career, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so. It's always great to see you.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to be here. One of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I think, Nobody Cares about your career is exactly that,
Speaker 1: which is it's a good reminder that really nobody cares
Speaker 1: what you do all day. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of times people get tripped up in their careers, especially
Speaker 1: when they're young, of what's everybody else going to think?
Speaker 1: And what will people say if I take this job,
Speaker 1: or I don't succeed at this job, or I'm an
Speaker 1: absolute mess, all of which will be true and I
Speaker 1: really thought it was important, just coming out of my
Speaker 1: barstool experience, coming out of you know, twenty plus years
Speaker 1: in media and marketing and sports of you know, hey,
Speaker 1: like nobody really cares what you do all day, So
Speaker 1: do something that makes you happy. You know.
Speaker 2: When you first took the barstool job, Dave's a very driven,
Speaker 2: very polarizing, but hard working guy, and I viewed barstool
Speaker 2: as a viable brand, a bit of a tornado that
Speaker 2: kind of needed guidance. It was just kind of flying
Speaker 2: all over the place. When you got to barstool, What
Speaker 2: was the first thing as you kind of take a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks to kind of get your arms around
Speaker 2: the girth of it, the size of the company, what
Speaker 2: was the first thing you said, Okay, this is good,
Speaker 2: but this we have to course correct.
Speaker 1: So the first there was a lot of smiling like that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, where to begin, I would say the biggest
Speaker 1: things were there was two things that were very distinct
Speaker 1: at the beginning. One was that Dave wasn't exactly sure
Speaker 1: who was on the payroll or not. It was a
Speaker 1: lot of like there were a lot of guys in
Speaker 1: Boston with Barstool, JJ Barstool's insert first name here, and
Speaker 1: they seemed like they worked for barstool. They didn't work
Speaker 1: for barstool. Dave wasn't clear they paid them or not,
Speaker 1: So that that there was a lot of like who
Speaker 1: is this person and do they actually work here? That
Speaker 1: was I would say, the first chapter of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got to solve for this. And then the second was,
Speaker 1: you know, those first couple of years, we had a
Speaker 1: lot of people who had Barstool in their handle that
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with Barstool. They just liked Barstool.
Speaker 1: They were fans, and they just looked like they worked
Speaker 1: for us. And then the second was the P and L.
Speaker 1: So no one at barstool had ever seen a P
Speaker 1: and L, managed a p and L, thought about a
Speaker 1: P and L. The Barstool p and L had horses
Speaker 1: on it. It was you know, it was just this
Speaker 1: cockamami assortment of costs. And Dave had run from the
Speaker 1: beginning of you know, really profitable business, like once he
Speaker 1: got this thing up and running, it was profitable and
Speaker 1: it was private, so nobody ever looked at what the
Speaker 1: costs were. And one of the things when I got
Speaker 1: there was like, okay, we actually need to get a
Speaker 1: handle on what the costs are. So those are the
Speaker 1: two things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, sometimes your greatest asset can be
Speaker 2: your greatest liability. Dave is very strong willed, obviously, and
Speaker 2: it's a controversial. Maybe that's too strong. It's a polarizing
Speaker 2: brand to some. I don't think it's audience sees it
Speaker 2: as that. But you were put in the position multiple
Speaker 2: times in the first couple of years to defend it.
Speaker 2: Were you always comfortable with it? I mean, did you
Speaker 2: have to kind of shift who you were from a
Speaker 2: Microsoft and a Yahoo that are more corporate to barstool.
Speaker 2: Did you find yourself in the first couple of years thinking, man,
Speaker 2: this is this is a little bit of a tsunami.
Speaker 2: I haven't fink it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like the tiger by the tail. I
Speaker 1: remember the day I got hired. I was watching the Rundown,
Speaker 1: which was live from Dave's apartment in Manhattan, and they
Speaker 1: had a guest done and the guest it was live,
Speaker 1: which they rarely did. But I was really pushing them.
Speaker 1: I had worked for Barstool probably for three months by
Speaker 1: the time I actually started, Like from the minute I
Speaker 1: got into the process, I was working for Barshol, but
Speaker 1: the guest made a bunch of racial slurs, and I
Speaker 1: remember watching it and watching it live and just being like,
Speaker 1: oh my God, Like what am I walking into here?
Speaker 1: And Barstool was very, you know, much smaller at the time,
Speaker 1: so the only people that picked it up were local
Speaker 1: Boston you know, kind of Boston sports media folks. But
Speaker 1: it was a very It made me realize how fast
Speaker 1: it was and how what a tightrope Barstool was on.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: is really the Barstool talent, Dave Dan, Kevin Clancy. They're
Speaker 1: very disarming. They they seem very affable. They're very charming
Speaker 1: you know to some maybe not others, but they're wickedly smart.
Speaker 1: And so to keep up and to tread the line comedy,
Speaker 1: it was very difficult. So, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of that. I was never public. I was you know,
Speaker 1: I had worked in startups and at big companies. Barstool
Speaker 1: was just very a lot it still is very alive,
Speaker 1: and that it was real time. It was building a company,
Speaker 1: real time in the in the public eye.
Speaker 2: So I had worked in Oregon for several years and
Speaker 2: befriended Phil Knight, and I'm a broadcaster, but I've always
Speaker 2: liked business. My dad got me into the stock market
Speaker 2: when I was young. My kids, my kids have been
Speaker 2: in it since they were like eight nine years old.
Speaker 2: And so he had a manifesto and opening manifesto when
Speaker 2: he started Nike, like number one was we are in
Speaker 2: the business of change, that you know. But number nine
Speaker 2: is something that I've experienced at the volume my little podcast,
Speaker 2: digital company number nine. And I talked to my staff
Speaker 2: recently about this, was it won't be pretty. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: that's something I think as younger people tend to be
Speaker 2: a tad more fragile, yeah, and easily offended. I try
Speaker 2: to I've talked to some people and said, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure you're a good fit for my company. I view
Speaker 2: fragile as a weakness and relentless as the ultimate strength
Speaker 2: that we all step and shit and you've got to
Speaker 2: get over it fast and not let one interception become
Speaker 2: two and one bad day become a week. So it barstool.
Speaker 2: It's anti fragile, but there are lines across that, and
Speaker 2: so was there ever a line for you that you
Speaker 2: even with Dave a strong willed person that you had
Speaker 2: to say, you know, because he's a bright guy obviously.
Speaker 2: But but but let's talk about that that it's not pretty.
Speaker 2: Starting a business is not it's not pretty all the time.
Speaker 1: It's rarely pretty, you know. And I think I love
Speaker 1: that line, and that's really the sense of this book,
Speaker 1: which is your career is built over a lot of mundane,
Speaker 1: ugly days with a thousand mess ups, and if you
Speaker 1: cannot you know, if you can't fail, you're screwed. And
Speaker 1: what was brilliant about Barstool was that it was always
Speaker 1: trying to understand the line. And that's what made it
Speaker 1: so interesting and also so alive and so captivating to fans,
Speaker 1: but also so difficult on the business where I always
Speaker 1: had to have multiple lines of revenue because I didn't
Speaker 1: know Tuesday afternoon we could be offending an advertiser. We
Speaker 1: could have said something that's flaring up in the New
Speaker 1: York Post. I never knew what was going to happen.
Speaker 1: So safety and calm could come from having multiple levers
Speaker 1: to keep payroll going in the business happening. But I agree,
Speaker 1: I think the bigger you know, it's funny, there's it's cool,
Speaker 1: not to like work now. I think there's thing leisure
Speaker 1: seems more fun than work and building a company and
Speaker 1: a brand and a business like the volume or building
Speaker 1: barstool is it's a it's it's a mission. You're it's
Speaker 1: going to be ugly. Everyone's going to screw up, You're
Speaker 1: going to yell at people, You're going to get yelled at,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's and it's it's a it's becoming
Speaker 1: a smaller and smaller number of people who want to
Speaker 1: sign up for that, which I think is really unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's fortunate for us boomers who like to
Speaker 2: work and get greatly. I love working. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: it's interesting how people view success. For me, in my
Speaker 2: little world, I viewed success is the ability, without meddling,
Speaker 2: to create the best creative content I can with a team. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it could be a podcast, television, radio. If I have
Speaker 2: a team, we're being creative doing the best we can.
Speaker 2: I thought yesterday I had my best show in six
Speaker 2: months and there was nothing going on. Our staff had
Speaker 2: a really good meeting. That to me is success.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: When how and in a company with multiple units and platforms,
Speaker 2: there's varying degrees of success. Did you have an overarching
Speaker 2: theme or belief system on what success was for now,
Speaker 2: Food fifty two or Barstool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's similar. I'm I'm like you were. Success
Speaker 1: is success is hard earned and hard fought, and it
Speaker 1: also can feel it can be quite small. It's a
Speaker 1: good show, it's a great meeting. It's accomplishing something, getting
Speaker 1: something done. You know, Look when I got to Barstool,
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to get fired. Like my I
Speaker 1: was like what I've stepped into. Everyone was like, this
Speaker 1: is going to be your last job, because there's no
Speaker 1: way this is going to work. But success was for us,
Speaker 1: it was really always about learning, like can we do
Speaker 1: something we don't think we can do? Can we go
Speaker 1: someplace where we've never been before? Could we invent a
Speaker 1: way of doing things that hadn't been done? And Food
Speaker 1: fifty two will be will be the same. It's a startup.
Speaker 1: It's you know, how do we create content? How do
Speaker 1: we showcase stories and products and bring joy to people's homes?
Speaker 1: And Barsool's different. It's making people laugh and talking to
Speaker 1: guys and mostly covering sports and entertainment. But it's really
Speaker 1: not that different.
Speaker 2: At the core, yeah, it's You've got multiple things here
Speaker 2: in terms of advice, and I wrote some of them down.
Speaker 2: I'm always a little reticent to give advice. I'll give
Speaker 2: an opinion, okay, but my life. But my life, child
Speaker 2: of divorce, growing up really kind of a lonely kid.
Speaker 2: I always feel like, well, nobody had my childhood. So yeah,
Speaker 2: what am I giving advice?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I do have strong opinions on on advice.
Speaker 2: Have you ever I'll give you the best piece of
Speaker 2: advice I got, and then I'll and then I'll ask
Speaker 2: you for the best and worst piece. So I was
Speaker 2: in college and I was broadcasting, and I called, uh,
Speaker 2: the Seattle Mariner announcer, and I said, I want to
Speaker 2: be a baseball announcer. What should I do? And he said,
Speaker 2: go to the Baseball Winter meetings. Peter Eubroth was commissioner,
Speaker 2: and pass your card out. And sometime over the course
Speaker 2: of a year, I went to a Mariner's game. Daveney
Speaker 2: House was a legendary broadcaster of the late Daveney House.
Speaker 2: My oh, my big, you know, resonant, rich voice, And
Speaker 2: when I got into the upstairs, I don't know how
Speaker 2: the hell I talked my way into it. But I
Speaker 2: got into the Mariner's booth and he grabbed my program
Speaker 2: and he was just about to do the pregame show.
Speaker 2: And he was a classic smoker, had his rich fos,
Speaker 2: kind of intimidating like the Marlborough Man. And he wrote this,
Speaker 2: He wrote this down in my program, and I think
Speaker 2: this was the best advice. And it was so simple.
Speaker 2: He said. He had one of those sharpie pens. He goes,
Speaker 2: if you want to sit here, really want to sit here,
Speaker 2: you will, And so he put it all on me, right.
Speaker 2: It wasn't about his advice, it was about my will attention. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I always thought, God, that's great advice. What's what's
Speaker 2: the best advice, Erica, you've ever you've ever received, the.
Speaker 1: Best piece of advice I've ever received. I received two
Speaker 1: pieces of advice, one for my dad, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: my dad was a philosophy professor, and.
Speaker 2: His advice, I wonder you're so smart.
Speaker 1: I don't know. His advice was always the best control
Speaker 1: is no control, which paid out handsomely in my barstool time.
Speaker 1: I will say but that you shouldn't try to hold
Speaker 1: anything so tight, like you've got to let things you
Speaker 1: have to move with things, and you have to watch
Speaker 1: how things. And then the other piece of advice was
Speaker 1: just to work your ass off in your twenties that
Speaker 1: you will never regret just doing any job humanly possible
Speaker 1: in your twenties, learning as much as you can, doing
Speaker 1: as much as you can, working as much as you can.
Speaker 2: God, that's great advice.
Speaker 1: It's just good advice.
Speaker 2: Nothing to lose, well, you generally don't have kids, You
Speaker 2: don't have a lot to lose. You have tons of energy.
Speaker 2: I mean in my twenties, I could drink back to
Speaker 2: back to back nights, show up Thursday, ready to go,
Speaker 2: ready to go.
Speaker 1: Again, like start it up again Friday night. Now you're
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 2: But on joining us. So when so any in my business,
Speaker 2: this is almost me asking for your opinion. I kind
Speaker 2: of feel like we're in the fifth inning of sports betting.
Speaker 2: Is that the easy money, the handout money, is gone.
Speaker 2: You have to earn it now you have to have
Speaker 2: a following. People have made their big bets on personalities
Speaker 2: and companies, but there's it's still We have many states,
Speaker 2: California eventually that will have legalized sports gambling, and I
Speaker 2: think podcasting similarly isn't about in the fifth or sixth inning.
Speaker 2: I still think there's tremendous growth, but people have made
Speaker 2: their bets and will continue to. Am I wrong? Do
Speaker 2: you think? I'm I think we're middle innings to middle
Speaker 2: to sixth inning on both sports betting and podcasting. What
Speaker 2: say you?
Speaker 1: I agree? I think sports betting there was such hype
Speaker 1: at the beginning, right the past but repealed, and the
Speaker 1: frenzy and the energy and the delusion that the TAM
Speaker 1: which would be the total addressable market was infinite, right
Speaker 1: like every state is going to legalize, there's going to
Speaker 1: be millions and millions and millions of sports betters. They're
Speaker 1: going to spend all of their disposable income betting. A
Speaker 1: lot of that proved to be false. And you know
Speaker 1: what I think you're also seeing in sports betting. It
Speaker 1: became very quickly an arms race between really two big players,
Speaker 1: maybe three on the outside, but two, and it became
Speaker 1: increasingly prohibitive to play. And the business itself isn't that
Speaker 1: great like that. I think the big sober you know
Speaker 1: there's sports betting has has sobered because it's it's quite
Speaker 1: an ugly business. If you cannot take that customer and
Speaker 1: convert them into something else. So I'm with you. I
Speaker 1: think that you'll see in sports betting, you know, Texas, California,
Speaker 1: you see bigger states roll out, There'll be a mini,
Speaker 1: a mini hype. I think affecting both sports betting and podcasting, though,
Speaker 1: is a bigger trend, which is it's impossible to break
Speaker 1: out talent now. You you know, if you look at music,
Speaker 1: when's the last time that you that an unknown star
Speaker 1: out of nowhere became huge on the pop charts? Like,
Speaker 1: it's not happening anymore. Same out of TikTok and YouTube
Speaker 1: and Instagram, Like you're not seeing the come ups of
Speaker 1: stars the way the way you did two years ago,
Speaker 1: four years ago, five years ago. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things that made barstool so powerful
Speaker 1: was we had built enough scale so that we could
Speaker 1: launch our own stars inside of barstool, and you will
Speaker 1: do the same. But unless you have that platform, unless
Speaker 1: you have that lily pad to launch from, it's becoming
Speaker 1: very hard to get talent. And so I think that
Speaker 1: will affect both the sports betting business obviously, but certainly
Speaker 1: the podcasting business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it was a double edged sword when
Speaker 2: FS one lost Shannon Sharp. It definitely really punctured my
Speaker 2: network or our network.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: But I remember telling my staff, We're going to do
Speaker 2: whatever it takes to find the money to pay Shannon Sharp.
Speaker 2: And we created a show Nightcap with O Joe, Gilbert
Speaker 2: Arenas and Shannon and it's it's been good for everybody.
Speaker 2: He wins, we win. But I remember I remember telling
Speaker 2: people like Logan Swain that this, this just doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: This is basically Matt Stafford on the market and the
Speaker 2: Rams get him, Like you just do whatever it take.
Speaker 2: Jim Harbaugh's on the market him to be your coach. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: and we did. I was literally I was I was
Speaker 2: literally like do I have to buy him a Range
Speaker 2: Rover to it? What do I gotta do? I'm like,
Speaker 2: he's a Hall of Famer, what do I do? How
Speaker 2: do I get him? And then I didn't want to
Speaker 2: intrude on his life, so I had to wait like
Speaker 2: three weeks before I, you know, I made an offer
Speaker 2: to but yeah, I don't want to be weird guy
Speaker 2: jumping in. He worked for my company, our company in
Speaker 2: chapter six of your book and the book again, nobody
Speaker 2: cares about your career, and I strongly just so many
Speaker 2: little lessons in here in chapter six. All start the
Speaker 2: sentence and you can finish it. But it's an interesting
Speaker 2: chapter if you're not willing to grow. Tell people what
Speaker 2: that's about.
Speaker 1: Oh so, I think you're wasting everybody's time and mostly
Speaker 1: your own. And what I really have come to believe
Speaker 1: about work, and I'm more like you, Colin, which is
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone should really follow my advice. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily follow my advice, but I do have a
Speaker 1: lot of opinion and I've spent a lot of hours
Speaker 1: doing this, But I think work is tuition you get
Speaker 1: paid for. So you know, when you sat in the
Speaker 1: mariner's box and you know, an luminary said it's up
Speaker 1: to you to fill the seat. Work is tuition. It's
Speaker 1: you are getting paid to learn, You're getting paid to
Speaker 1: be smarter, you're getting paid to do the reps, you're
Speaker 1: getting paid to work out. And I think that kind
Speaker 1: of mindset is very important to being fulfilled at work
Speaker 1: and happy at work. Like I'm very fulfilled at work
Speaker 1: if I'm busy and I'm learning and I'm doing things,
Speaker 1: fixing things, and I'm jumping in things. If everything is
Speaker 1: great and easy sailing and you're coasting and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's predictable, that's when I get nervous. And I think
Speaker 1: that mindset of being willing to put yourself out there,
Speaker 1: to fail and try things as much as you can
Speaker 1: is ultimately what gets people the opportunity for that dream
Speaker 1: job or that dream moment or that dream experience, because
Speaker 1: you have built yourself into a new person who is
Speaker 1: ready for that and capable of it. You know.
Speaker 2: It's funny my sister and I talk about this that
Speaker 2: we had a British mother and a successful optometrist, small
Speaker 2: town optometrist dad, who later in life was an alcoholic,
Speaker 2: but never he was like a happy drinker. Yeah, he
Speaker 2: went to work, he was sober. He was never cruel,
Speaker 2: mean spirited. So I didn't have any of that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. But I've said to my sister, we lived
Speaker 2: in the same house. I said, you know, I like
Speaker 2: to sort of you know, it's it's probably some psychological
Speaker 2: term I'll project when I talk to people about my
Speaker 2: child and how rough it was, and oh boy, small town,
Speaker 2: and and then and and then I think to myself,
Speaker 2: my stepdad was my little League coach. My mom was
Speaker 2: British and really funny and had a British accent and
Speaker 2: just saw the world differently. My dad was really a
Speaker 2: bright guy, like had these little nuggets of wisdom. And
Speaker 2: but the one thing my parents gave me is they
Speaker 2: didn't helicopter they maybe they were.
Speaker 1: My mom was.
Speaker 2: Huggy, kissy. Dad wasn't most dads weren't. And that I
Speaker 2: was allowed to fuck up a lot and my mom
Speaker 2: My mom grounded me one summer. You know, I started
Speaker 2: a small fire that was not great near the house.
Speaker 2: So but one of the things I see is that
Speaker 2: I think parents think they're doing a great job. They're
Speaker 2: calling on their kids behalf, they're getting them internships, they
Speaker 2: go to prep schools, and I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: it creates this sort of personality where you just things
Speaker 2: are easy. It's like and there's just something about being
Speaker 2: allowed to mess up and your And I've told my
Speaker 2: kids before, you know, my kids are really good students,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, don't ask questions and I'm like, you
Speaker 2: figure it out, it's not it's not my paper, and
Speaker 2: I don't I'm not harsh on my kids if they
Speaker 2: get a you know, they struggled in a class. But
Speaker 2: when you were hiring a lot of people at the bar,
Speaker 2: at Barstool, and it's something at the volume we've really
Speaker 2: we really vet who we hire, like we really vet
Speaker 2: and still you know, sometimes you miss. But the average
Speaker 2: person you were hiring, were you impressed, were you disappointed?
Speaker 2: Was it what you expected? Talk about and now that
Speaker 2: at food fifty two, talk about the process of what
Speaker 2: you're seeing. Bill Maher complains that all of his young
Speaker 2: writers see the world the exact same way, and he
Speaker 2: doesn't want that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I think one thing
Speaker 1: we did well at Barstool was we just hired. It
Speaker 1: was misfits, you know. It was we hired young, and
Speaker 1: we hired out of college. And we mostly our best
Speaker 1: hires had worked for Barstool for four years being interns
Speaker 1: for us on you know, doing the Viceroy program, which
Speaker 1: is the college program. But I would see the kids
Speaker 1: roll in from the prep school or the big you know,
Speaker 1: the nice college, and they were A were boring, and
Speaker 1: B they were vanilla and kind of uninteresting. And it
Speaker 1: was all we always hired the kids and the people
Speaker 1: who I like now and always frankly have liked are.
Speaker 1: You know, it's the it's the guy who's editing basketball
Speaker 1: trick shots in his bedroom instead of going out and like,
Speaker 1: you know, drinking four thousand high noons. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the popular kids. It's not the kids
Speaker 1: who did everything right. It's the kid who had something
Speaker 1: they were interested in and worked really hard at it.
Speaker 1: And I think resilience. You know, I think there's two things.
Speaker 1: I think kids right now are very very rarely bored
Speaker 1: because they mostly have phones, which just placate them. And
Speaker 1: two they are they are helicoptered. You know. It's funny.
Speaker 1: I remember interviewing a guy once and he was like, hey, look,
Speaker 1: if I'm to take to take this job, I really
Speaker 1: need you to talk to my mom. And I was like, bro, like,
Speaker 1: but you know, like sure, I'll talk to your mom,
Speaker 1: But like, if you need your mom's approval to do
Speaker 1: this job or you're somehow I'm beholden to your mother
Speaker 1: because you work, oh, I was like, forget it. I've
Speaker 1: had people be like I need you to talk to
Speaker 1: my wife, and I also like, I don't love that either.
Speaker 1: So I think people are co dependent in weird ways,
Speaker 1: and people aren't able to think independently. And you know
Speaker 1: this if you're in a startup or you're in the
Speaker 1: heat of the moment, or whether you work in something
Speaker 1: glamorous like content or radio or sports or you know whatnot,
Speaker 1: or you work at like a computer company. You got
Speaker 1: to be able to make decisions. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to work under pressure. You have to be able
Speaker 1: to mess up and be like, oh shit, I fucked up.
Speaker 1: I got to fix this. And if you can't do
Speaker 1: that when you're young, you're kind of screwed by the
Speaker 1: time you're fifty, because then you what do you know?
Speaker 1: What have you learned? What have you done?
Speaker 2: Can I cannot imagine? First of all, I wouldn't hire
Speaker 2: somebody who said you got to talk to my mom.
Speaker 2: And the reason I wouldn't is because your judgment so
Speaker 2: poor When that came out of your mouth, you thought
Speaker 2: that was a sales pitch. It's like, for fuck's sake,
Speaker 2: what are you saying like that? You should literally say
Speaker 2: you you have to talk to my mom about her
Speaker 2: castle role. It's the best castle role. You God, you
Speaker 2: got to stop that sentence right there. You know, it's
Speaker 2: interesting I saw something, uh, you know, browsing the Internet
Speaker 2: and I and I do think there's really a lot
Speaker 2: of smart people. I've hired people off you know, Xah.
Speaker 2: I called you one time for advice and I said,
Speaker 2: should the volume? Should I be on TikTok? I said,
Speaker 2: I don't know how to monetize it? And do you
Speaker 2: remember the advice you gave me.
Speaker 1: I probably said, like, get on TikTok? Who cares about
Speaker 1: the monetization.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what you said. You said, get on it,
Speaker 2: build an audience. You'll figure out the monitorization later. And
Speaker 2: that's an interesting part because when you're at barstool or
Speaker 2: now the CEO of food fifty two, how long are
Speaker 2: you willing to commit to something before you see profits
Speaker 2: or at least reasonable monetization.
Speaker 1: Oh, if I see audience growth forever. I am a
Speaker 1: highly impatient person. But if you put talent on a
Speaker 1: platform or create content for a platform and it gets traction,
Speaker 1: you've got to let The longer you do that, the
Speaker 1: more you let that marinate, the further you explore with it.
Speaker 1: I will wait weeks, months, I would wait years, because
Speaker 1: the reality is if you the more audience you grow,
Speaker 1: and if you find you've got to first, you know, first,
Speaker 1: you have to have something to say, right, And then
Speaker 1: you've got to find people who actually want to listen
Speaker 1: to you and care what you have to say. And
Speaker 1: then you want them to play with you, right, You
Speaker 1: want to engage with them, and then you want them
Speaker 1: to advocate for you. And maybe then you start not
Speaker 1: just saying one thing, you're saying three things or doing
Speaker 1: three things. The longer you wait to monetize that and
Speaker 1: ask them to do something for you in return, which
Speaker 1: is to buy a product or support a sponsor, it
Speaker 1: creates this pent up demand that is really really palpable.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at Dave's the best at this,
Speaker 1: if you look at Miss Peaches, Miss Peaches is arguably
Speaker 1: the biggest personality of barshol sports right now. Do you
Speaker 1: know miss Peaches?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure the dog, yeah, the dog yeah, so
Speaker 2: remote and stuff, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of companies I imagine who
Speaker 1: are like, oh, Dave like pimp our dog food, and
Speaker 1: Dave like, you know, support this, support that, and he
Speaker 1: held and the hold is of that pause. That hold
Speaker 1: before you monetize is not lost time. It's actually a
Speaker 1: huge advantage. And that's how I think about platforms. If
Speaker 1: you can grow, it's like having a baby, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, You're just like really pregnant and then
Speaker 1: you have the baby. Like growing audience and waiting to
Speaker 1: monetize it is a very powerful tool that most people
Speaker 1: don't have the stamina to wait for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't at the Volume take any you know,
Speaker 2: VC money. It's it's we just I just said I
Speaker 2: won't a salary. Yeah, we bootstrapped it. And I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily know. I'm not. I'm not a control freak. I
Speaker 2: like to pass the ball. I've got really smart people.
Speaker 2: What is the value? You don't get the big payoff?
Speaker 2: What is the value? Because whether I sell it or not,
Speaker 2: I think I want the control to make make sure
Speaker 2: I don't feel responsible necessarily for Fox Sports employees or
Speaker 2: iHeart employees. I feel incredibly responsible for Volume employees. I
Speaker 2: lose sleep. Yeah that's you know, they're my people, They're
Speaker 2: my army, and so you know, it's it's and I'm
Speaker 2: being selfishly. I'm asking this and I've thought about this
Speaker 2: before because people say, oh, you're just you built it
Speaker 2: to sell it, and I'm like, no, I didn't, really
Speaker 2: I would I would consider a really cool partnership. But
Speaker 2: you know, obviously Dave at some point could have didn't.
Speaker 2: Now Dave was different. Dave bootstrapped it for a decade
Speaker 2: before he made the money. Long people don't know Dave
Speaker 2: was out there making nothing forever, twelve years of nothing,
Speaker 2: just hustling. I get that. What is the downside? I
Speaker 2: yes to the bag, to selling it big.
Speaker 1: The bag has huge downside, and I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think you're building something. Look, if you, Colin wanted
Speaker 1: to be like I want the highest ROI on my
Speaker 1: dollar invested, you would not probably create a media company.
Speaker 1: You would put it in the stock market, or buy
Speaker 1: a piece of r or do something. So this is
Speaker 1: a labor of love, I think, and that's partly what
Speaker 1: makes it important. I think the bag is tough because
Speaker 1: the bag, when you sell out for the bag, unless
Speaker 1: you have a huge motor to keep going, and you
Speaker 1: have a big reason now that you're richer and you know,
Speaker 1: more comfortable than ever before, if you you have to
Speaker 1: find that's an obstacle to overcome with fans, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times when people get the bag,
Speaker 1: they become a little lazy, Like you get better taste,
Speaker 1: you want to travel, you buy your second house, like
Speaker 1: you're not hungry to go build the mission, continue on
Speaker 1: the journey, Like there's something to being hungry, you know.
Speaker 1: The best years at Barstool, I think people would say
Speaker 1: were probably the earliest years, and then they were the
Speaker 1: beginning of my years because it was such a grind,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't know if we would make it.
Speaker 1: We still had so much road to climb. The best
Speaker 1: years were not after the pen acquisition, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think getting the bag also comes with responsibilities and
Speaker 1: changes things, and that's hard for a mission driven, passion
Speaker 1: driven brand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my favorite part of the Barstool story is my
Speaker 2: least favorite part of traveling, which is turbulence. So I
Speaker 2: love I hate it on planes, and I love it
Speaker 2: when I read the PHILM Night book. By the way,
Speaker 2: people have no idea how close they were out of
Speaker 2: money multiple times all the time. Yeah, all the time.
Speaker 2: So when you entered Microsoft, what years were those?
Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh, that was like early two thousands, like
Speaker 1: two thousands, Okay, so.
Speaker 2: They were established, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Baer. That
Speaker 2: was good time. But what were the challenges of being now?
Speaker 2: Apple was a rival, but what were the challenges of
Speaker 2: a company where everybody was at least stockwealthy.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean that. What you find, I think is
Speaker 1: you become more bureaucratic, you become more inwardly focused. The
Speaker 1: problem has become turf wars inside of a company or
Speaker 1: which group is going to get I mean I worked
Speaker 1: for a group that lost I think five hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars a quarter, and we traveled first class all around
Speaker 1: the world like nobody cared. But it was a lot
Speaker 1: of politics, and I think those those are I think
Speaker 1: that's what you trade. You trade politics and posturing and
Speaker 1: bureaucracy that comes with cash. When you're hungry and you're
Speaker 1: on the jump and you're on the come up, it's
Speaker 1: so satisfying because it's all new and it's all fulfilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the old axiom. It's a truism. Actually, is
Speaker 2: that in wartime comfort food sales skyrocket in America and
Speaker 2: in peacetime bungee jumping, sky diving adventure sales go up. People, Right,
Speaker 2: your problems are different, your fun is different, based on
Speaker 2: your economic set. For the record, there is some argument
Speaker 2: in America, I don't think the economy is great, but
Speaker 2: I also don't think it's in a free fall. I mean,
Speaker 2: if it was, then volume wouldn't be growing at the
Speaker 2: rate it's growing. Your CEO of food fifty two, I
Speaker 2: often mentioned that I get on planes, there's no empty seats,
Speaker 2: and these are not rich people. I don't fly a
Speaker 2: lot of private if at all. Hotels try to book them.
Speaker 2: They're busy. You tell me, as a CEO of food
Speaker 2: fifty two, how is your economy? What do you see?
Speaker 1: I see that people are spending. You know, I think
Speaker 1: there's angst. I think there's like low level angst. You
Speaker 1: look at the housing market and the interest rates like that.
Speaker 1: You know, the houses aren't moving, which is actually kind
Speaker 1: of interesting for the food fifty two business because if
Speaker 1: you don't have a new house, you don't need so
Speaker 1: much stuff. You're not redecorating, you're not not setting new tables,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. So in my economy, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting factor that I'm watching. But by and large,
Speaker 1: people are spending. Americans are great consumers, and that you know.
Speaker 1: Americans like things. They want new things, they want to entertain,
Speaker 1: they want a T shirt, they want better cookwar like
Speaker 1: the consumption. Americans like to buy things and to consume
Speaker 1: and I think we'll always like that, you know.
Speaker 2: One of the lessons we learned early, and it was
Speaker 2: hard because we looked at Barstool and we watched The
Speaker 2: Ringer and a lot of different companies. And one of
Speaker 2: the things very early I said is there are things
Speaker 2: Barstool does well, but we never will. I said, I'm
Speaker 2: not into selling merch. If we could sell some hoodies,
Speaker 2: but that's a merch company, I said, we're not, and
Speaker 2: we fooled around with it and I said, guys, it's
Speaker 2: just not what we do. There's things that I think
Speaker 2: the writing arm of the Ringer, I'm like, I don't
Speaker 2: have the passion for writing my bag. It's not my bag.
Speaker 2: So but I love doing live stuff and YouTube stuff
Speaker 2: and gambling stuff and that's what we did well. But
Speaker 2: it's are there things somebody once gave me advice, double
Speaker 2: down on stuff that works and bail immediately if something doesn't.
Speaker 2: Don't fall in love with your ideas, fall in love
Speaker 2: with people. Is there anything you did at Barstool that
Speaker 2: just didn't work in you're life? Okay about instincts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a thousand things. I think you're right, So you know,
Speaker 1: barstool thinks in T shirts. That's how people signal they're
Speaker 1: part of whatever brand. And what we did well was
Speaker 1: we grew you know, grew ninety brands in my time there,
Speaker 1: and you know, twenty of them were pretty successful. But
Speaker 1: because we thought in T shirts, everybody thought in T shirts,
Speaker 1: and we hilled T shirts the same way we you know,
Speaker 1: pimped out podcasts. But there was a lot that we
Speaker 1: failed on. One thing that we failed on was we
Speaker 1: built this really stupid subscription product called Gold because at
Speaker 1: the time, and this is also like I think a
Speaker 1: cautionary of having an investor is you know, the Charning guys,
Speaker 1: and I love the Charning guys, but they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: at some point, somebody is going to need to buy you,
Speaker 1: so you need to hustle up and figure out, like
Speaker 1: who's that going to be. And until passovers repealed, it
Speaker 1: always looked like it would be a media company. Now
Speaker 1: it was very obviously not going to be a media company.
Speaker 1: But media companies wanted subscribers, right Everyone's moving to the
Speaker 1: race to subscribers and the race to streaming.
Speaker 2: So wild the New York Times exactly.
Speaker 1: So we built a subscription product, but the barstool guys
Speaker 1: and girls are such you know, their whores for attention.
Speaker 1: And I say that in the best way possible. The
Speaker 1: idea of putting something only behind a paywall was it
Speaker 1: was it was against the religion, and it was so stupid.
Speaker 1: And we built great tech. We built, you know, a
Speaker 1: seamless way to do it. Stooley's, to their credit, bought it.
Speaker 1: But it was a really it was forced you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you know when you feel like you're doing
Speaker 1: something wrong and like your heart's not in and you know,
Speaker 1: isn't working. That was one of those things. We launched
Speaker 1: a grooming product called wood, which you know, I still
Speaker 1: think was, you know, kind of an interesting concept. We
Speaker 1: partnered with a company. We made a line of grooming products,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't a talent or personality behind it, and
Speaker 1: no one felt like it was their own, so it
Speaker 1: became nobody's and it was a failure. So we had
Speaker 1: things like that littered all over the barstool road.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. The paywall. I've been again kind
Speaker 2: of reluctant to go there, but I have serious and
Speaker 2: Netflix and Apple TV and Amazon Prime and I buy UFC.
Speaker 2: Is it inevitable? I mean, is it just I say
Speaker 2: to myself, I don't want to go behind a paywall,
Speaker 2: but frankly, I'm behind eight of them. I pay for
Speaker 2: eight of them, nine of them. Where are you on
Speaker 2: the paywall?
Speaker 1: I don't. I I don't love a paywall either. Why
Speaker 1: I get the paywall? I get it. My friend Barry
Speaker 1: Weise created an amazing cted the Free Press created an
Speaker 1: amazing paywall business, which is news, but it's not I
Speaker 1: don't love it. I'm more interested in how many people
Speaker 1: can you entertain or how many people could you talk to?
Speaker 1: And the idea of only talking to a certain group
Speaker 1: I think one I think is kind of problematic for
Speaker 1: society where everybody's just in their own little echo chamber.
Speaker 1: And two I think it's I think it's for me,
Speaker 1: it's less interesting, and that probably is wrong from a
Speaker 1: business perspective, but I I think broadcast is interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't like when the MLS went to
Speaker 2: Apple because my takeaway is they lost casuals. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that what what happens is you only get a tribal following,
Speaker 2: and I don't want just a tribal following. I like pushback,
Speaker 2: I like I like I want to hear from my haters.
Speaker 2: I want to I don't want to go and just
Speaker 2: be comforted with all my opinions.
Speaker 1: I like to know.
Speaker 2: I say, my audience drives the bus. They tell me
Speaker 2: where to go. I don't form my opinion on them,
Speaker 2: but I picked my topics based on my audience what
Speaker 2: they're interested in. And it's so I'm I am a
Speaker 2: believer that if if when when MLS went to Apple TV,
Speaker 2: now I still watch it because I have Apple TV
Speaker 2: for a lot of things, the Patriots Dynasty, but that
Speaker 2: that's an example where I think you lose casuals and
Speaker 2: I like I like casuals. I want to there's there
Speaker 2: was a chapter in this book you talked about know
Speaker 2: what your company's paying you to do?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: And I think it's the downfall of Belichick in New
Speaker 2: England is that bill Ois said do your job, and
Speaker 2: then he got successful and the rings and he started
Speaker 2: doing the general manager's job and the coaching job. And
Speaker 2: he's a lousy He's a lousy GM. And I want
Speaker 2: to talk to talk about that know what your company
Speaker 2: is paying.
Speaker 1: You to do? Yeah? I think, Look, I say it
Speaker 1: in the book, which is the stupidest person at your
Speaker 1: company is the is the person who doesn't understand how
Speaker 1: your company makes money. And that may sound harsh, but
Speaker 1: I think it's true. Like, if you do not understand
Speaker 1: how your company makes money, who your company's customer is,
Speaker 1: if your company is making money, then you really have
Speaker 1: to be wondering, like what are you doing all day?
Speaker 1: And the reason I think this is important is there's
Speaker 1: people get really whiplashed with layoffs and reorbs and job
Speaker 1: changes and retitling. And the reality is, if you don't
Speaker 1: understand what your company is paying you to do in
Speaker 1: the context of what your company does at large, you're
Speaker 1: probably not on a great path. And it's, you know,
Speaker 1: to the Belichick check example. You know, when people aren't
Speaker 1: clear on what their job is or their ambition is
Speaker 1: for two jobs, when they're really getting paid for one
Speaker 1: and the second is more interesting, you put you make
Speaker 1: yourself vulnerable. You know. Jeff Zucker always had this like
Speaker 1: really great quote which is like, don't give your company
Speaker 1: the gun that shoots you. And I always liked that.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great quote, which is, don't give
Speaker 1: your company a gun to shoot you. And the you know,
Speaker 1: beyond like a sex scandal or whatever, like, cause the
Speaker 1: way your company is going to shoot you is if
Speaker 1: you're not doing your job. And I think that's sometimes work.
Speaker 1: You know, you get lost in the Mondays and the
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and this and that and this project and that
Speaker 1: deadline and whatever, and you lose of like why did
Speaker 1: they hire you in the first place. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just good to keep a firm hold on that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I started the volume, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: Jerry Seinfeld used to joke about his show. He goes,
Speaker 2: I'm the world's worst actor. That was my show Number one.
Speaker 2: So I like business, but I didn't go to Pan
Speaker 2: or Wharton, and I don't know business. But I only
Speaker 2: had a couple of things that I was already strident on.
Speaker 2: One of the things I would say to my people,
Speaker 2: and I would say, let's not worry about being right.
Speaker 2: Let's get it right. So I don't give a shit
Speaker 2: about your ideas. If they work, great, If they don't,
Speaker 2: they're done. Yeah, Just I don't keep score. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I said, let's find what works. Do that. Yeah, be loyal.
Speaker 2: Don't be loyal to your idea. Now it sounds smart,
Speaker 2: but give me an example. What is the line on bailing.
Speaker 2: Have you ever had an idea that you're absolutely sure
Speaker 2: works and you stay with it too long?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean so much. I had a startup
Speaker 1: before Barstool that was a brilliant idea. It was a
Speaker 1: social network for Justin Bieber and forty other music artists.
Speaker 1: It was it was going to compete with Facebook and
Speaker 1: you know, Instagram and Google, and it was. It was
Speaker 1: a good idea. It did not work. And you can
Speaker 1: only put your head in the sands so long, where
Speaker 1: you're like, this isn't working. I worked for another startup
Speaker 1: in the fashion space, really interesting concept which was Hey
Speaker 1: Vogue and the idea of one editor in chief and
Speaker 1: one way of saying fashion is it's dead. It's going
Speaker 1: to be very democratized. The company was pre social, so
Speaker 1: it like never had any distribution. It didn't work, So
Speaker 1: I stayed in a lot of things. I think too long.
Speaker 1: I think what's hard? Is?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 1: Kind of manifests in two ways. You either put your
Speaker 1: head in the sand and you're like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to know, I don't want to see, I don't want
Speaker 1: to know. I love you know, I love my idea,
Speaker 1: I love this, I love the image of this thing
Speaker 1: or the second is like everybody plays like sixth grade
Speaker 1: soccer or fourth grade soccer, where like everybody's glomed onto
Speaker 1: the ball and it's such a pack that like you
Speaker 1: don't know who's kicking it, you don't know who's receiving it.
Speaker 1: You can't tell who's good or not. And I think
Speaker 1: that happens a lot, which masks both success and failure.
Speaker 2: All Right, the book is nobody cares about your career Erica.
Speaker 2: You know how highly I think of you, and you
Speaker 2: did not have to spend thirty minutes of your day.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to.
Speaker 2: Uh for the record, and I'm not flirting because I'm
Speaker 2: happily married. But you have the best hair of anybody
Speaker 2: I've ever interviewed in my entire life.
Speaker 1: It's so dirty. I'm like, this should have like judged
Speaker 1: up for you.
Speaker 2: Now you're a rock star. Hey, thanks for doing this
Speaker 2: a thousand times over. Well, I have to talk about Trump.
Speaker 2: I've said this for a long time. I've always considered
Speaker 2: myself sort of a left leaning independent. I'm kind of
Speaker 2: a conservative on fiscal issues, more of a probably liberal.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think pro gay marriage is liberal.
Speaker 2: I don't think pro pot is liberal. I think those
Speaker 2: are moderate stances today. But I was in, you know,
Speaker 2: supportive of those twenty five years ago. So I kind
Speaker 2: of consider myself a moderate that if I am up
Speaker 2: in the air on something fiscally, i'd go conservative. Socially
Speaker 2: i'd go left. But you know, I've said this about
Speaker 2: Trump before. He's trying to sell me in America that
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. Like I'm sixty, I don't remember anything before
Speaker 2: like six or seven years old. But for the last
Speaker 2: fifty three years of my life, outside of the pandemic year,
Speaker 2: I've loved America. I've lived everywhere Tampa, Vegas. I've been
Speaker 2: kind of poor, middle class. Now I'm better off than most.
Speaker 2: But he's trying to sell me this America stinks, and
Speaker 2: I just don't see it. I live in a nice
Speaker 2: neighborhood in LA. It's not a Top six or seven
Speaker 2: neighborhood in LA. It's not a Beverly Hills of Malibu,
Speaker 2: of Brentwood, of bel Air Hancock Park. It's not like
Speaker 2: one of those swanky neighborhoods. But I don't see crime.
Speaker 2: I'm not stumbling over homeless people. I see happy people.
Speaker 2: Dodger Stadium's full leads Major League Baseball and attendance. Laker
Speaker 2: games are full, NFL games are full. People they have
Speaker 2: money in their pocket. Lax is packed. I just saw
Speaker 2: a record airline revenue over the weekend. I'm constantly being
Speaker 2: sold in America by Donald Trump crime rates or skyrocketing. No,
Speaker 2: they're actually not. Starting In twenty twenty three, they have
Speaker 2: plummeted coast to coast over two hundred cities. Violent crime
Speaker 2: rates are down. I mean Los Angeles and some cities
Speaker 2: may tick up in certain areas, but it's in America
Speaker 2: he's selling me. It would be like watching your football
Speaker 2: team and they play well and win, and your neighbor
Speaker 2: says they're playing terribly and keep losing. No, they're winning
Speaker 2: and they're not playing terribly. Like, you can't keep selling
Speaker 2: me on how bad the country I live in is,
Speaker 2: because it's not bad for me or my friends. I
Speaker 2: have a friend that's a stay at home dad. He's
Speaker 2: not rich. I have friends who work part time, starting
Speaker 2: up businesses, who have worked at the same place forever.
Speaker 2: I have middle class friends. They're not complaining about their
Speaker 2: life constantly, and there I don't know what they are politically.
Speaker 2: I really don't don't. I don't talk about politics with
Speaker 2: my friends. I talk about my wife, I talk about sports,
Speaker 2: I talk about you know, we talk about guy stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not somebody that is. If you don't have policies
Speaker 2: that I connect with, and you're always grouching and bitching
Speaker 2: about the other side, I'm not really interested in you.
Speaker 2: You know. Trump once tried to sell a vodka and
Speaker 2: acknowledges he never drank. Ever, he's never really drank alcohol,
Speaker 2: but he tried to sell a vodka. So I've thought
Speaker 2: for a long time he's just kind of a con artist.
Speaker 2: But I was sitting there thinking this morning that if
Speaker 2: let's say I got busted for some really bad crime
Speaker 2: in court, a drug crime, and my wife did too
Speaker 2: in a separate case, and then so did one of
Speaker 2: my kids, my manager, my agent, and my attorney, it
Speaker 2: would be reasonable to conclude that I'm shady and involved
Speaker 2: in a business that's not terribly legal. Well, Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is now a felon. His campaign chairman was a felon.
Speaker 2: So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyers, chief strategist,
Speaker 2: his national security advisor, his trade advisor, his foreign policy advisor,
Speaker 2: his campaign fix and his company CFO. They're all felons,
Speaker 2: judged by the company you keep. It's a cabal of convicts.
Speaker 2: It's not that I'm not willing to vote for conservatives.
Speaker 2: I said I would have voted for Mitt Romney. Seemed
Speaker 2: like a decent family man. Now he looks like he's
Speaker 2: the publisher of Yachting Weekly, so he's not terribly relatable.
Speaker 2: Is a big money guy. But I'm not somebody that
Speaker 2: I liked the second bush Bush senior son. I liked him.
Speaker 2: I thought he was a decent American, a decent human.
Speaker 2: I guess he's got some artistic qualities. Now he paints
Speaker 2: a lot. I liked his wife, Laura Bush. I thought
Speaker 2: they were decent people. I liked the Obamas. I didn't
Speaker 2: understand the outrage. Good family. Seemed like nice people. But
Speaker 2: if everybody in your social circle is a felon, I
Speaker 2: don't think it's rigged. I don't think the world's against you.
Speaker 2: And to get people who agree on anything, thirty four counts.
Speaker 2: Oh for thirty four, I mean that's a that's a
Speaker 2: batting slump. Even the New York Mets could be impressed
Speaker 2: with oh for thirty four, so when you're constantly trying
Speaker 2: to sell me on an America that I don't see.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying inflation is not an issue. But I
Speaker 2: get on airplanes all the time, and it's not a
Speaker 2: bunch of rich people. I don't fly private. I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell you the last time I fly private. Maybe every
Speaker 2: couple of years. It'll be a family thing. We're trying
Speaker 2: to get everybody in the same flight, but not very often.
Speaker 2: I don't live in a fancy neighborhood. I get on planes.
Speaker 2: There's people in normal clothes, don't look rich to me,
Speaker 2: and the planes are all full, and the hotels are
Speaker 2: all full, and the freeways were all full. That means
Speaker 2: people are going to work. You're trying to sell me
Speaker 2: on this story, in this narrative that's just not true. Well, Colin,
Speaker 2: you're out of touch, out of touch to what I have.
Speaker 2: Single people that live next to me, young families that
Speaker 2: live next to me. People aren't grousing, they're not miserable
Speaker 2: all day now, they're not talking politics. But you know,
Speaker 2: Trump's entire game plan is the country isn't a free fall.
Speaker 2: Maybe in the Trump centric neighborhoods it is. It's not anywhere.
Speaker 2: For my sister, who lives rurally, doesn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of crime in her neighborhood. I don't my friends don't.
Speaker 2: We live all over Los Angeles, in one of those
Speaker 2: big scary cities that voted for liberals. Oh scary. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Everybody was saying, hung jury.
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: But when everybody in your team, everybody in your group,
Speaker 2: your cabal is a felon, maybe maybe the world's not
Speaker 2: against you. I mean, it is New York City. It
Speaker 2: is New York City. I get it. They're gonna have peel.
Speaker 2: Maybe it'll drive up his fundraising. But stop trying to
Speaker 2: sell me on. Everything's rigged. The country's falling into the sea.
Speaker 2: The economy's terrible. The economy's okay, it's not like on fire.
Speaker 2: But get on a plane. Find all the empty seats.
Speaker 2: I don't see them. Those aren't cheap either. A hotel
Speaker 2: rooms over Memorial Weekend. I like living in Portland. I
Speaker 2: like growing up on the coast of Washington. I like
Speaker 2: living in la I have a place in Chicago. I
Speaker 2: love it. I have really good friends and go regularly
Speaker 2: to Rhode Island. I love that. Maybe maybe some of
Speaker 2: you are just unhappy. Maybe you're only happy when you're unhappy.
Speaker 2: But the America that I live in is imperfect. But
Speaker 2: compared to the rest of the world, I think we're
Speaker 2: doing okay. And if you're not, is it possible, just possible.
Speaker 2: I'm not even saying probable. Is it possible if your
Speaker 2: life has just been miserable for the last four years,
Speaker 2: it's not exclusively the fault of somebody in sixteen hundred
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe it's not all their fault the volume.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast,
Speaker 2: take a moment rate and review.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Jason Tipp, host of Hoops Tonight.
Speaker 2: Make sure you check us out live after games on
Speaker 2: the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel as we provide instant reaction
Speaker 2: and analysis of all the big NBA playoff games.
Speaker 1: Again, that's the Hoops Tonight YouTube channel and wherever you
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