Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Michael Lewis. I'm very proud and
Speaker 1: honored to present you this bonus episode, which is part
Speaker 1: of Dell Technologies Small Business Podfrints. So we know how
Speaker 1: many small businesses are now grappling with the impact of
Speaker 1: these uncertain times and looking for resources. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the conferences where people trade ideas, those are canceled
Speaker 1: right now. So Dell Technologies has organized something they're calling
Speaker 1: a pod Frints for small business owners, like a virtual
Speaker 1: conference to share advice in some inspiration. Dell Technologies is
Speaker 1: here to help you through these times, from keeping you
Speaker 1: connected and productive while working remotely with Windows ten in
Speaker 1: Microsoft teams, to providing relevant content to help your business.
Speaker 1: To find more participating podcasts search Dell Technology, Small Business
Speaker 1: pot ferns on Radio, dot Com, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 1: At the end of this episode, I was asked to
Speaker 1: moderate a panel with two of my oldest friends, Malcolm
Speaker 1: Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. We've known each other since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties when we were all young writers in the
Speaker 1: magazine business. Malcolm and Jacob are now the co founders
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries, the company that produces Against the Rules,
Speaker 1: which is now underway. By the way, Pushkin also makes
Speaker 1: a bunch of other great shows, like Malcolm's own Revisionist
Speaker 1: History and The Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. I've
Speaker 1: been watching on the sidelines over the past year as
Speaker 1: Malcolm and Jacob started the company, so I was really
Speaker 1: happy to have an excuse to ask them all kinds
Speaker 1: of nosy questions about what they've learned about running a
Speaker 1: business together and the challenges they face, and the challenges
Speaker 1: right now in our quarantine world. Well, those are unique.
Speaker 1: You'll get to hear a little bit about that. Here's
Speaker 1: our conversation, all right. So, because I don't actually know
Speaker 1: the story, so I would love to know how you
Speaker 1: decided to start Pushkin, Jacob, right, it was Jacob's doing.
Speaker 1: How do you start? Well, I'd started one podcast company already,
Speaker 1: which was Panoply, which came out of Slate, but as
Speaker 1: things evolved, Panoply turned into a technology company. I thought
Speaker 1: I was starting mainly a content company, and one of
Speaker 1: the shows we'd started was Revisionist History with Malcolm. That
Speaker 1: show was doing really well, and there were some other
Speaker 1: shows I was really interested in doing, so it was
Speaker 1: sort of when the earlier company under a CEO i'd
Speaker 1: hired who I thought was making a good decision, wanted
Speaker 1: to make a pivot that I said, Hey, maybe it's
Speaker 1: time that Malcolm and I started our own company and
Speaker 1: only do what we want to do. I was on
Speaker 1: holiday with my family in I can't remember where. I
Speaker 1: was somewhere in Europe, Italy, in Italy, and Jacob was
Speaker 1: in some I think, if I can tell the truth,
Speaker 1: A truly horrible house in a village, he said, and
Speaker 1: he said, uh. He said that. He summoned me and
Speaker 1: said there's something crucial we need to talk about. So
Speaker 1: I was like, I, you know, drove halfway across Italy,
Speaker 1: show up in this horrible house by the road, and
Speaker 1: then he like sat outside of little chairs and had
Speaker 1: coffee and he said, I want to start a company.
Speaker 1: That's how it began. What did you say, yes right away? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It struck me as well. The backstory about this is
Speaker 1: that Jacob has been I've known Jacob for thirty five years,
Speaker 1: and through for some significant portion of this, I would
Speaker 1: always say that Jacob, I don't know why you wanted
Speaker 1: to be a journalist. You would be a really great businessman.
Speaker 1: If you just became a businessman, you would you could
Speaker 1: make a huge amount of money and you could all
Speaker 1: get rich. Jacob may have forgotten this, but I would.
Speaker 1: I would always worried that if I when I said that,
Speaker 1: I was insulting him because what he really wanted to
Speaker 1: be was a writer, which I was saying it was
Speaker 1: a bad writer, saying I thought it'd be an even
Speaker 1: better businessman. So I remember you saying this thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: And so Jake is a wonderful journalist, but I agreed
Speaker 1: that he's sort of a natural for this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: He's got the temperament for it, unlike you or I.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it would surprised me the thing
Speaker 1: that to take you back even a little further. It
Speaker 1: surprised me that you two went off on this podcast
Speaker 1: Jag in the first place. You both had very happy,
Speaker 1: successful careers in the print world. Why did you decide
Speaker 1: that you wanted to do something different? You know, Michael,
Speaker 1: I'd gotten the bug really In the early days of
Speaker 1: podcasting at Slate were sort of because of a random
Speaker 1: connection with an NPR show Slate had been working on.
Speaker 1: We started making some of the first podcasts anybody listened to,
Speaker 1: and everybody at Slate, all the journalists loved doing them.
Speaker 1: And there was this little audience, small at first but
Speaker 1: growing that just love them. And the giveaway was that
Speaker 1: everybody at Slade who didn't have a podcast wanted a
Speaker 1: podcast and they were just a joy to do. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a little evangelical about things I get
Speaker 1: excited about. And I tried to talk Malcolm into doing one,
Speaker 1: and I tried to talk you into doing one, and
Speaker 1: I ultimately talked both of you into doing it. I
Speaker 1: talked Malcolm into it first, and then I think the
Speaker 1: fact that he was doing it may have helped to
Speaker 1: persuade you. It was worse than that. You got Malcolm
Speaker 1: to a lie to me and say it was easy.
Speaker 1: You lied, But that's all right. Well I forgive you.
Speaker 1: So you two old friends go into business together. How's
Speaker 1: it working out? Like? How do you find working with
Speaker 1: each other? Are you surprised by anything? You finding things
Speaker 1: out about each other that you didn't know that you
Speaker 1: wish you didn't know. Well, I am reminded of a
Speaker 1: years ago I wrote a piece that was really about
Speaker 1: my friendship with Jacob, and it was about the idea
Speaker 1: that what's called elected memory, which is that we outsource
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we know to our friends
Speaker 1: and family. And I was writing about this in The
Speaker 1: Because of Jacob to say that Jacob is someone who
Speaker 1: I respect and trust so much that significant parts of
Speaker 1: my knowledge and cognition are simply outsourced to Jacob. I
Speaker 1: was saying that I no longer read anything about politics
Speaker 1: or try and figure anything about politics. I simply asked
Speaker 1: Jacob what he thinks and adopt those ideas as my own.
Speaker 1: That was my position, and I was sort of a joke,
Speaker 1: but it's actually true. It's just a way better way
Speaker 1: to live your life to make to appoint sort of
Speaker 1: experts in your friendship circle and outsource everything to them.
Speaker 1: I do the same thing with my brother and wine,
Speaker 1: and you know, you make a long list. So this
Speaker 1: is in business. I've just applied this principle, which is
Speaker 1: I just let him do all the things that I
Speaker 1: know he's better at than me. And since that's a rat,
Speaker 1: a long list means my life is very easy. So
Speaker 1: there is that true, Jacob, is there? No? Are you
Speaker 1: basically running the business in Malcolm's decoration? Um? No, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that, I mean I I handle more of
Speaker 1: the day to day, as they say, but honestly, at
Speaker 1: this point more of the ideas come from Malcolm. And
Speaker 1: that's that's a bit of an adjustment because I've always
Speaker 1: thought of myself as the idea person. But I'm like
Speaker 1: a you know, a good idea weak person. Malcolm's like
Speaker 1: a five good idea day person. And so a big
Speaker 1: part of my job now is just like being Malcolm's
Speaker 1: filter to try to talk him out of some of
Speaker 1: the ideas and then try to figure out how some
Speaker 1: of the others can can happen. But these are ideas
Speaker 1: for shows, These are ideas for shows, these are ideas
Speaker 1: for new businesses. Malcolm has a lot of ideas. And
Speaker 1: the typical day is, you know, at about eleven am,
Speaker 1: he'll call me and say, this is so much fun.
Speaker 1: We really don't want to get too big too fast.
Speaker 1: Let's keep it just like it is. And I say, yeah, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: I totally agree with that. This is the good part.
Speaker 1: Let's let's not grow too fast. And then after lunch
Speaker 1: he'll call me and he say, all right, I've got
Speaker 1: three ideas, and each of them would involve like adding
Speaker 1: like ten new staff members, and so if we did,
Speaker 1: if we pursued all of our ideas, we'd have six
Speaker 1: hundred people right now instead of twenty five. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a tension, and it's not a tension
Speaker 1: in that Malcolm and I disagree about it. I think
Speaker 1: we're both pulled in both directions. Liking having a small
Speaker 1: business where we know everybody and it's sort of close
Speaker 1: like a family, and we control everything. But then all
Speaker 1: this opportunity and all these good ideas we want to pursue.
Speaker 1: I'm in these conversations. Are you able to see the
Speaker 1: possibility of a really big business or you think it's
Speaker 1: naturally better as a small business. You've hit on the
Speaker 1: hard part, you know. I think we see that, we
Speaker 1: do see the opportunity to be big. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna you know, when you say really big, I mean
Speaker 1: it's not. I don't think it's I don't think it's
Speaker 1: Google big. I don't think it's Facebook big. But in
Speaker 1: the world of podcasting, I think it has the potential
Speaker 1: to be really pace setting and dominant. But we also
Speaker 1: want to be really, really choosy and have everything we
Speaker 1: make really represent what we're interested in. And the quality
Speaker 1: level we've set so far. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's just the kind of working out of those two
Speaker 1: things will result in the right size. I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know what the right size is. We're going to get bigger.
Speaker 1: It's just a question of how fast we're going to
Speaker 1: get bigger. Malcolm, Yeah, I think what occurred to I
Speaker 1: think all of us very quickly in this project experiment
Speaker 1: is that we're not really in the podcast business. We're
Speaker 1: you know, it's a cliche. We're in the storytelling business,
Speaker 1: and we happen to want to tell stories to audio.
Speaker 1: But that means you can compete against all kinds of
Speaker 1: like we we there's no reason why we can't behave
Speaker 1: like a book publisher in many respects. It's just that
Speaker 1: our books are on our audio, not on the page.
Speaker 1: But once you realize that, well, look at book publishers.
Speaker 1: They're really big. I mean they have thousands of employees
Speaker 1: they have, so, you know, concede that way. If you've
Speaker 1: only think of yourself as being in the podcast world,
Speaker 1: you might think of yourself as being pretty small. But
Speaker 1: if you think of yourself as just as using a
Speaker 1: different medium to tell stories, then there's no reason why
Speaker 1: you can't be really big. So to all appearances, this
Speaker 1: thing has been an incredible success, and it's been really
Speaker 1: fun to make a podcast for you. I'm curious with
Speaker 1: troubles you've had, especially like given the pandemic, how you've
Speaker 1: had to adjust and respond and how much difficulty it's
Speaker 1: introduced into your business. Well, we've all been improvising in
Speaker 1: various ways. I think we feel very lucky and that
Speaker 1: what we make is makeable under these circumstances. People set
Speaker 1: up recording studios at home and we have meetings virtually.
Speaker 1: I don't know that we could have done this with
Speaker 1: the digital tools that existed ten or fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, things like Zoom and Slack and Google hangouts
Speaker 1: and share drives um seem so essential to long distance collaboration.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, they've arrived just in time,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of the moment for those tools. But
Speaker 1: we can make our shows, and luckily we work with
Speaker 1: writers of a caliber, starting with you and Malcolm, who
Speaker 1: can use their writing to adapt what they're doing. If
Speaker 1: there's an interview that you were going to do for
Speaker 1: your season this year, Michael and you can't do it,
Speaker 1: you can write your way out of it. Um, that's
Speaker 1: not a position a TV producer as usually in. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have physical production that requires people to be
Speaker 1: in a group in a place, it's just got to
Speaker 1: be suspended. Podcast. We can we can still make it.
Speaker 1: It's not all been easy, but people have been incredibly
Speaker 1: flexible and nimble about how we're still going to get
Speaker 1: these shows done with this new challenge. So it's funny.
Speaker 1: I'm about to I've got five of my seven episodes
Speaker 1: for this the second season done, but I've got I've
Speaker 1: got one really did require me, I thought, require me
Speaker 1: to go out onto the road, and I'm not able
Speaker 1: to do it. And you said to me, you know
Speaker 1: you can write your way around this. And this weekend
Speaker 1: I'm about to find out whether I had and and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of wondering if you think that's really true.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think. What I'm thinking is
Speaker 1: just generally, when you're throwing this kind of this kind
Speaker 1: of curveball, you look curveball and you hit it that
Speaker 1: you that you try to just turn it into a
Speaker 1: strength and you see what you can do given that
Speaker 1: given the constraint. But but there's a part of me thinks,
Speaker 1: you know, I hear in my voice the podcast producer saying,
Speaker 1: we need scenes, we need scenes, and now you can't
Speaker 1: really get those scenes. Does it? Does it trouble Does
Speaker 1: that trouble you at all? You think, oh, maybe these
Speaker 1: could be better this way. Well, I tend to share
Speaker 1: your view that the constraint provokes creativity and that you
Speaker 1: often end up with something that's better and more interesting
Speaker 1: than what you would have had otherwise, but not always.
Speaker 1: You know. Luckily, I think for a number of our shows,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of the field reporting the interviews
Speaker 1: under our belt, and so we're more at risk of
Speaker 1: losing like twenty percent of what we wanted. If we
Speaker 1: hadn't done any then it would be harder to make
Speaker 1: those shows. You'd have to conceive them in a different
Speaker 1: way if they're dependent on vivid scenes. Where were you
Speaker 1: as the journalist is physically present. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: going to change the way when this is over and
Speaker 1: you can go back to doing it the old way.
Speaker 1: You think you'll go back to doing it the old way?
Speaker 1: You think you actually learned things that you're going to
Speaker 1: you're gonna work into your into your routine. Well, my my,
Speaker 1: my big goal. And at one of our earliest meetings,
Speaker 1: we had a retreat very early on at Pushkin, we
Speaker 1: sort of sat down and tried to figure out what
Speaker 1: are the principles that we believe in as a company.
Speaker 1: Sounds very pretentious, it actually wasn't. And the one I
Speaker 1: was encouraging how people to accept was we did was
Speaker 1: that we should always remember that this ship be above
Speaker 1: all else fun. If we're not having fun, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. It shouldn't be drudgery. And so I always
Speaker 1: think about my big worry when all the lockdown happened
Speaker 1: was will it still be fun if we're all working
Speaker 1: from home and we can't hang out with this sort
Speaker 1: of wonderful collection of and I think this is in
Speaker 1: the best way misfits and weirdos that we have gathered
Speaker 1: to many podcasts, and I number myself among them. So
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I can't hang out with these
Speaker 1: delight for weirdos anymore? Is this not going to be fun?
Speaker 1: And so I think what's happened is that we've just
Speaker 1: discovered new ways to hang out. My senses, we're building
Speaker 1: a new muscle, and that or that we're kind of
Speaker 1: a resilience so that you kind of know you can
Speaker 1: do it. Knowing you can do it in another way
Speaker 1: is enormously freeing. We'll be right back. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: this episode is just one of many po podcasts included
Speaker 1: in the Small Business Podfrints presented by Dell Technologies, a
Speaker 1: podcast conference to get inspiration on topics like fundraising, building teams,
Speaker 1: or managing a business in our current environment from top
Speaker 1: podcasts like Against the Rules with Me Michael Lewis, Rise
Speaker 1: with Rachel Hollis and Rhet and Link from ear Biscuits.
Speaker 1: For the complete lineup of episodes, visit Dell Technologies Podfrints
Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome back. Here's more of my conversation with
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell from Pushkin Industries. Michael, I
Speaker 1: think there are two big impacts I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: on the company. One's cultural and one is more sort
Speaker 1: of substantive around what we make. But the cultural point
Speaker 1: is that a company like ours, people are really close
Speaker 1: and they get very close making creative work together. And
Speaker 1: we had just moved into this new office in New York,
Speaker 1: like literally a week before or it was closed, and
Speaker 1: we all had to work from home and be socially
Speaker 1: isolated or physically isolated. And that was a bummer. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were this office is really great and like everybody
Speaker 1: was really excited to be there. It's clean, it's new,
Speaker 1: there was really good coffee. Like we couldn't wait to
Speaker 1: get to work and see each other in the morning.
Speaker 1: Those of us through in New York, which is most
Speaker 1: of the staff, and suddenly that's denied to us. Everybody's
Speaker 1: worried about everybody. Everybody's got a whole new set of problems.
Speaker 1: People have to figure out how to take care of
Speaker 1: their kids, homeschool their kids, worry about their parents. Some
Speaker 1: people are feeling physical symptoms, are people getting sick. So
Speaker 1: you have suddenly, instead of this kind of convening, you're
Speaker 1: separated and worried. And the observed, the cultural observation is
Speaker 1: that people then become really habituated to and really enjoy
Speaker 1: in a way, the forms of digital connection. Having a
Speaker 1: zoom meeting once a week where everybody's on it. You
Speaker 1: see where everybody is and you see the backdrops. And
Speaker 1: one of our employees, Sophie mckibbon, is up up in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire and she, you know, she calls in from
Speaker 1: her car because that's where she gets the best phone connection.
Speaker 1: You see her in her car, and you see people
Speaker 1: in their apartments, some of them have kids running in
Speaker 1: and out of the frame, and it's just I'd look
Speaker 1: forward to that so much, just seeing everybody, and I
Speaker 1: think other people are having the same feeling. And as
Speaker 1: you know, Ceo, I just feel so grateful to these
Speaker 1: people who've got all this stuff they're having to deal
Speaker 1: with in their lives that they weren't expecting. But they're
Speaker 1: you know, but they're doing their best work at the
Speaker 1: same time, and I think that's partly because work is
Speaker 1: a refuge in a situation like this. So, Jacob, I
Speaker 1: have a question for you. You spent most of your
Speaker 1: life sympathetic to and surrounded by and being one of
Speaker 1: them kind of journalists who never have to take any
Speaker 1: responsibility for anything, and you've managed to become pretty naturally
Speaker 1: like an executive, like a person who runs a thing,
Speaker 1: and sounds like you just sounded uh and like like
Speaker 1: you could be secretary of the Treasury um. And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering where you pick this up, Like are you reading
Speaker 1: on the sly like in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: reading these horrible corporate management books or are you do
Speaker 1: you have some little secret source of wisdom you go to?
Speaker 1: How did you figure out how to do this? How
Speaker 1: to run a business? Uh? You know, I think I
Speaker 1: was watching people uh do it, And I think i've
Speaker 1: you know, learned a lot from people who weren't so
Speaker 1: good at it, as well as from people who are
Speaker 1: who are really good at it. But you know, Michael,
Speaker 1: I was always just really interested in this problem of
Speaker 1: how you could pay for high quality journalism or media.
Speaker 1: We both came out of the magazine world, and it
Speaker 1: was just this fundamental issue, even before the Internet and
Speaker 1: things got challenging. You know, it was how do you
Speaker 1: how do you make money on magazine journalism where someone
Speaker 1: spends months doing a story. And I sort of went
Speaker 1: from being interested in that problem to kind of taking
Speaker 1: on the problem when I was at Slate, and as
Speaker 1: part of that, we ended up selling Slate and I
Speaker 1: ended up being responsible for it. And it was an evolution,
Speaker 1: but I did go kind of in stages from being
Speaker 1: a full time writer editor to being the head of
Speaker 1: the business. And I don't know, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you've both reflected in this conversation that it's
Speaker 1: fun to try new stuff when you're in your fifties.
Speaker 1: A lot of people in their fifties don't get to
Speaker 1: do that. People just want them to keep doing the
Speaker 1: same thing they've been doing. So if you get an
Speaker 1: opportunity to try something new at this stage of life,
Speaker 1: you can jump at it, and you should jump at it.
Speaker 1: And for me, that's the business stuff, Malcolm, I hope
Speaker 1: you feel this way. It's weirdly still fun. I feel
Speaker 1: a little guilty about it being fun now because I
Speaker 1: know how not fun the world is and businesses for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But it's just seeing how we've
Speaker 1: hired incredible people and seeing their resilience and how they've
Speaker 1: adapted to it. Um, you know, it's um, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a joy and um it's uh. It would
Speaker 1: be a very different story if it wasn't working. But
Speaker 1: it feels like we're going to get through it, and
Speaker 1: it's I feel pretty good about it at the moment.
Speaker 1: All right. So, uh, you guys, to my eyes, you
Speaker 1: guys have never had a spat or a disagreement, but
Speaker 1: maybe you have and you've got it since you've gone
Speaker 1: into business together. Uh have you have there been any
Speaker 1: sources of a disagreement. Well, if anybody's thinking about doing this,
Speaker 1: it is it is riskier in a slightly different way
Speaker 1: starting a business with your best friend. There's there's a
Speaker 1: lot more upside because that's it's a delight to do it, um.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's who gets to decide. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you have a dynamic that's not always a friend dynamic.
Speaker 1: I think it's been pretty seamless and easy for me
Speaker 1: and Malcolm. He can tell you what he thinks, and
Speaker 1: I don't think we've had any any meaningful or significant conflicts.
Speaker 1: But you know, the one dynamic that I'd point to,
Speaker 1: which is not my favorite, but it's a reality, is
Speaker 1: that I've got to say no more than Malcolm does.
Speaker 1: He's he can come up with all these ideas, and
Speaker 1: I've got a little more of the responsibility for figuring
Speaker 1: out how we can get him done or which ones
Speaker 1: we can get done, and sometimes I've just got to say, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: that's you know, just like one idea too many, we
Speaker 1: can't do it. Do you think of an example, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Malcolm will like meet someone on a plane
Speaker 1: and land and send me an email about why they
Speaker 1: should have a podcast, and I've got it, then say, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's you know, I'd love to talk to them
Speaker 1: and let's hear what their voice sounds like. And you know,
Speaker 1: have they ever done any audio before? And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's uh, he's got very good instincts. And it's I
Speaker 1: guarantee you those people are interesting. But whether they're going
Speaker 1: to be the right person to do a show for
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of reasons is you know, something we
Speaker 1: can kind of have to figure out. But that's what
Speaker 1: I mean. Malcolm's the president of Pushkin. That's the role
Speaker 1: of the president of Pushkin is to be constantly pushing
Speaker 1: us to do more, come up with ideas, to be
Speaker 1: kind of the creative lead. And you know, then there's
Speaker 1: I've I've got to be the filter. Um, But I
Speaker 1: think that's working out. Okay, so far we do. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what percentage of Malcolm's ideas bear fruit,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's more than zero and less than
Speaker 1: all of them. I tried to get us to buy
Speaker 1: as opposed to rent an office. That was one of
Speaker 1: my ideas. We went so far as to actually look
Speaker 1: at some officers with to buy with real estate agents,
Speaker 1: and then at the end Jacob said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure we really want to be spending our time
Speaker 1: and attention managing real estate at this point, which is
Speaker 1: absolutely correct, but again, left to my own I would
Speaker 1: have been, you know, careening around New York looks with
Speaker 1: real estate agents because I got it in my head
Speaker 1: to why why wouldn't we own our own play, you know,
Speaker 1: and I get why that would be fun, right, It's
Speaker 1: like we have a clubhouse, you know, we can like
Speaker 1: we can, we can own it. It can be you know, podcasts,
Speaker 1: pushkin Central and we can you know, but it was
Speaker 1: one it was already starting to be. You know, we'd
Speaker 1: spent a couple of afternoons looking at real estate, which
Speaker 1: wasn't which were afternoons we weren't spending on making podcasts
Speaker 1: or other parts of the business. And also it sort
Speaker 1: of occurred to me, well, if you buy a place,
Speaker 1: it really is kind of limit your growth potential. I mean,
Speaker 1: what if we do want to double in size next
Speaker 1: year and the office only holds twenty percent more people
Speaker 1: than Suddenly we have the problem of subletting a space
Speaker 1: and we're in the real estate business. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that was one of the cases where I maybe
Speaker 1: had to gently talk Malcolm down from a fun idea.
Speaker 1: If you if you had to go back and redo
Speaker 1: the first year of your existence, what would you do differently?
Speaker 1: I've been one of the things I've been pushing from
Speaker 1: the beginning is to think of ourselves as more than
Speaker 1: a podcast company. And I still I don't know whether
Speaker 1: it's a legit concern, but I still worry. I don't
Speaker 1: want to have us to have too many eggs in
Speaker 1: the podcast basket because I think of that world as
Speaker 1: it's too unstable from my taste, and I've actually gotten
Speaker 1: Jacob's been been an even stronger proponent of this idea
Speaker 1: than me, I think at this point. But I wondered,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we were doing over the first year,
Speaker 1: was there would there have been a way to start
Speaker 1: more aggressively on that track from the beginning? Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 1: When you say diversify out of podcasts, I mean pet food.
Speaker 1: What we're gonna do, no no other like book books, books, events,
Speaker 1: you know, producing things for people where you're not depending
Speaker 1: on advertising, all those kinds of things. Just diversifying where
Speaker 1: the money comes from, right, so you're not you're not
Speaker 1: a slave to the ad market. Right. Um, that was
Speaker 1: that's really But I actually think I take it back.
Speaker 1: I actually think we've done a really good job of
Speaker 1: doing it. Yeah, I mean I think we I think
Speaker 1: we bid off about as much as we could have chewed.
Speaker 1: And in the first year and a bit. One thing
Speaker 1: I would have done is I would have got the
Speaker 1: nice office sooner. I mean, the nice office will be
Speaker 1: for me, the fourth office and if you count my
Speaker 1: home office where I'm coming from right now, this is
Speaker 1: my fifth office. And about a year and a half,
Speaker 1: and you know, I thought I could save money. Someone
Speaker 1: gave us free space for a couple of months. At
Speaker 1: the beginning. We didn't have that many people. But it
Speaker 1: does take a little bit of a toll, and your
Speaker 1: you know, your mail never quite all gets forward to
Speaker 1: the right place. So I think I would have said,
Speaker 1: you know what we're gonna we're thinking big, we're gonna
Speaker 1: need the nice office. Let's just get it now, even
Speaker 1: if it's a little empty for a while. Are you
Speaker 1: in the nice office now, Well, theoretically we are. We
Speaker 1: moved into it a week a week before COVID hit,
Speaker 1: But yes, we're looking forward to getting back into it.
Speaker 1: You don't think there's any risk if you started in
Speaker 1: the nice office, you wouldn't think of it as the
Speaker 1: nice office. You think this is the starting office. I
Speaker 1: now need a better office. I'd always been haunted by
Speaker 1: the phenomenon in the media world where the company goes
Speaker 1: to hell as soon as they get the nice office.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a real reason for it, too,
Speaker 1: which is that everyone gets distracted by the like the
Speaker 1: decorating and the who's going to sit where, and suddenly
Speaker 1: nobody's doing what they're supposed to be doing. Instead they're
Speaker 1: all thinking about the office. So I always thought, don't
Speaker 1: you know, make the office like the last thing you
Speaker 1: worry about. But you know what it's part of, like
Speaker 1: providing great place for people to work, and it affects
Speaker 1: the work. If you've got a place people want to
Speaker 1: come to and you know, the coffee can't be too good.
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about how good that coffee is.
Speaker 1: It affects how much you want to be in the space,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, how much you want to be
Speaker 1: in kind of creative conversation with your colleagues. You know.
Speaker 1: Another example of this is I never thought about the
Speaker 1: important you know, until you are actually part of it.
Speaker 1: This is old half to anyone who's part of a business.
Speaker 1: And so you're part of a business or starting a business,
Speaker 1: you don't understand the importance of hiring in quite the
Speaker 1: same way as you You know, you don't understand, like one,
Speaker 1: how crucial, how one really really good person it can
Speaker 1: transform an entire aspect of your business, or one bad
Speaker 1: person can be disastrous. You know, you're I was always
Speaker 1: sort of been different to those questions. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, because I had these kind of arms length
Speaker 1: dealings with editors or copy editors or whatever, who you
Speaker 1: can ask them, who you could always get rid of
Speaker 1: if you didn't want. Our team has been so so
Speaker 1: strong that it's almost made us afraid to hire people
Speaker 1: because we haven't we haven't got a dud yet, and
Speaker 1: the team works so well together. And I do have
Speaker 1: this kind of phobia that we're eventually, eventually we are
Speaker 1: going to get a bad apple, or not even a
Speaker 1: bad apple, just someone who's not great. And I just
Speaker 1: worry when that happens, it's going to change the dynamic.
Speaker 1: And you know, it kind of raises the stakes on
Speaker 1: every person. You hire because that you have to think
Speaker 1: they are going to be as good as all the
Speaker 1: people you've already hired, and you're right that you are.
Speaker 1: You see, maybe this is what you see when you're
Speaker 1: when you're starting out and you're a small business that
Speaker 1: you might start to lose sight of when you're a
Speaker 1: giant business and you've got tens of thousands of employees.
Speaker 1: Is just the effect of a single person. I finally
Speaker 1: understand after observing for years with some mystification, the obsession
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs had with hiring, I now understand it. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get it now. I don't know why this was
Speaker 1: a mystery mystery to men. You never had to hire anybody. Yeah, right, right, Hey, Michael,
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question. Yeah, this season is
Speaker 1: about coaching, and you've been talking to some of the
Speaker 1: best coaches in the world. You've been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about what how good coaches think. What do you think
Speaker 1: a really good coach would tell us about having a
Speaker 1: company like ours and what we should be doing or
Speaker 1: thinking about. I mean, if there was, like, if there
Speaker 1: was like an entrepreneur coach who could who roll, they're
Speaker 1: probably all I think there is. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've talked to that person yet. But I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are coaches for startups and entrepreneurs, but I haven't talked
Speaker 1: to any of them. I challenge you now to name
Speaker 1: any activity for which there isn't someone who calls themselves
Speaker 1: a coach roaming around selling their services. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that's been amazing to me, is it we actually could
Speaker 1: start with what's the activity when we want to write
Speaker 1: about or talk about, and go find the coach because
Speaker 1: you know they're there. Now, what would what would a
Speaker 1: really good so the I'm not persuaded that so it
Speaker 1: is true. I think that the best place to insert
Speaker 1: coaches is your kind of situation where transitional states. And
Speaker 1: I bet I bet with the with the coach. What
Speaker 1: a coach would do with you is just ask you
Speaker 1: lots of really difficult questions that even I don't want
Speaker 1: to ask you, and and take you, um try to
Speaker 1: figure out where you might go wrong, Like I bet
Speaker 1: if I was guessing what the what the risks you
Speaker 1: guys run are? Are we run as I am? Part
Speaker 1: of your business is that the depth of your friendship
Speaker 1: is so deep that it's hard to me for me
Speaker 1: to imagine um you choosing the success of the business
Speaker 1: over the success of your friendship. And if there is
Speaker 1: ever a moment where those two things conflicted, the friendship
Speaker 1: would survive, but the business would take a hit, which
Speaker 1: I love. But I think that's true. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how it should be. I think we I think we
Speaker 1: both feel that way. Hopefully we won't face that conflict,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think you will. But I think
Speaker 1: when I think about I think a coach would come
Speaker 1: in and say, you guys are doing great, right, this
Speaker 1: is an awesome it's an awesome startup and all everything's
Speaker 1: going well. I think the coach would come in and say,
Speaker 1: what's the risks. Let's see if we can analyze what
Speaker 1: what what we should be thinking about might come down
Speaker 1: the pike and and sort of prepare you for them.
Speaker 1: M do you have anybody like that in your life?
Speaker 1: Who's who's kind of coaching you on the side. Is
Speaker 1: Michael Linton doing it? I don't know. It's a mutual
Speaker 1: friend of all of ours. Michael Michael Lynton, who was
Speaker 1: CEO of Sony and has a lot of experience working
Speaker 1: in a lot of different kinds of businesses, and he's
Speaker 1: both very much available for advice for me, but also
Speaker 1: offers it unsolicited at really good times, including when this
Speaker 1: crisis hit. You know, he he sort of called me
Speaker 1: up and said, you know, he wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that we were kind of thinking about these questions about
Speaker 1: our cash position and our rest billiancy, and also about you.
Speaker 1: Just wanted to ask me about how I was communicating
Speaker 1: with the staff and making sure people knew what was
Speaker 1: going on and there weren't rumors going around. And it's
Speaker 1: great to have someone like that. I rely on him
Speaker 1: a lot, both of both the advice he gives me
Speaker 1: and that I know he's thinking about the business and
Speaker 1: has experience I don't have with small businesses. So Michael's
Speaker 1: kind of your coach. Yes, if he is for me,
Speaker 1: he's definitely my CEO coach. I'm curious. I've meant to
Speaker 1: ask you when you went off on this retreat, the
Speaker 1: retreat at which Malcolm introduced the idea of fun as
Speaker 1: a founding principle, which I totally agree with. If we're
Speaker 1: not having fun, that the audience is unlikely to have
Speaker 1: fun either. Is What were the other principles that were
Speaker 1: sort of your core that you regarded your core principles
Speaker 1: and do you remember fun which tells you a lot.
Speaker 1: Mia LaBelle, who's our executive producer and has been the
Speaker 1: executive producer of Malcolm Show since the beginning. She's someone
Speaker 1: who came with us from from the old company, is
Speaker 1: very important person in establishing our culture. But she talks
Speaker 1: a lot about kindness as a as a principle of
Speaker 1: the company, and it's really it's really true, and I
Speaker 1: think she's been the kind of guardian of it. But
Speaker 1: it's the way people think about working together and how
Speaker 1: they help each other and support each other. And then
Speaker 1: that ties into I think a bunch of other ethical principles,
Speaker 1: not just about integrity, journalistic integrity, business integrity, but you know, diversity,
Speaker 1: the kind of workplace we want to create, the kind
Speaker 1: of society we want to see modeled in the company.
Speaker 1: So people have a lot of feelings about it, and
Speaker 1: when you have a young workforce, those getting that stuff
Speaker 1: right and having that all be relevant meaningful people to
Speaker 1: people is crucial in recruitment and retention because you've got
Speaker 1: to not just be a place where people can do
Speaker 1: interesting work. I think you've got to be a place
Speaker 1: where people want to work. How do you get across
Speaker 1: your values to someone who's coming in and thinking of
Speaker 1: working for you, I think they have to. I think
Speaker 1: that they don't hear it from this see hopefully they
Speaker 1: do hear it from the CEO. But I think people
Speaker 1: only believe it when they hear it from peers and
Speaker 1: see that peers are having that kind of experience in
Speaker 1: the place they work, and you kind of I can't hide,
Speaker 1: you can't hide who you are, especially as a company.
Speaker 1: Right is a person, so maybe a little bit, but
Speaker 1: as a company, you know, word just will spread what
Speaker 1: it's like there. The values come they do come through.
Speaker 1: And I think it's especially true with startup companies because
Speaker 1: they grow up so quickly that they end up being
Speaker 1: kind of projections of the values and beliefs of the
Speaker 1: of the founders. And you know, I think that's true
Speaker 1: at Facebook and one way, at Uber in another way,
Speaker 1: but it's it's easy even more true at a smaller business.
Speaker 1: Everything that you you believe gets reflected in some way
Speaker 1: in the in the company. Thanks again to Jacob Weisberg
Speaker 1: and Malcolm Gladwell of Pushkin Industries, you can hear more
Speaker 1: of Dell's small business pot fronts by searching, Dell Technologies,
Speaker 1: small business pot fronts on Radio, dot Com, Spotify or
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. Special thanks to Emily Rosteck, Carly Miliori, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, and Jason gambrel. I'm Michael Lewis.