Speaker 1: Welcome back to a brand new episode of Big Money Energy,
Speaker 1: where we talk to super successful and self made people
Speaker 1: to find out exactly how they did, how they went
Speaker 1: from nothing to something. I'm Ryan Sarhand and today I
Speaker 1: am pumped because I'm talking to Tim Armstrong. You might
Speaker 1: not know who Tim Armstrong is, but he has affected
Speaker 1: your life in ways you probably don't know. He's a
Speaker 1: pioneer in the business realm of the Internet. He was
Speaker 1: in the room at M I T when people showed
Speaker 1: him up on the screen the Internet and he jumped
Speaker 1: all over it. He's a serial entrepreneur, angel investor. He's
Speaker 1: the former CEO of a O L and former president
Speaker 1: of Google's America operations. He was part of the initial
Speaker 1: Google team. It's totally totally crazy. We talked about a
Speaker 1: lot of things, including how to not only welcome change,
Speaker 1: but wield it as a weapon. We talked about how
Speaker 1: expanding your network actually expands your network, and how to
Speaker 1: stay open minded in business to create a culture of
Speaker 1: free flowing ideas. This is awesome, Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode. Today is a very very special
Speaker 1: one because I'm sitting down with one of my favorite people.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know that yet, but I'm going to tell him.
Speaker 1: He is a mega, mega businessman and serial entrepreneur. Literally
Speaker 1: the definition of an entrepreneur. Tim Armstrong, this man has
Speaker 1: done it all. He is a leading entrepreneur, angel investor,
Speaker 1: and former CEO of a o L, one of the
Speaker 1: largest companies in the world. And not to mention, he
Speaker 1: was the president of Google's America operations, he helped establish
Speaker 1: Google's AdSense, and now he's the founder and CEO of
Speaker 1: d t X, technology company focused on the direct to
Speaker 1: consumer economy. I mean, talk about an entrepe preneur, and
Speaker 1: he's easily one of the most knowledgeable and influential people
Speaker 1: in the world. I am so excited to be sitting
Speaker 1: down with him today. So without further ado, Tim Armstrong, Right,
Speaker 1: good to see you, and uh, I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of yours and UH always get a lot of energy
Speaker 1: around you, so I'm really happy to be here. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I I am pumped. Well That's why I have energy
Speaker 1: when I'm around you, because I'm just super excited. You know,
Speaker 1: you've lapped so many people over the years. I mean
Speaker 1: just looking at your you know, your timeline from when
Speaker 1: you graduated college in Connecticut to where you are today.
Speaker 1: Did you know when you graduated college that you were
Speaker 1: going to be an entrepreneur. Did you think, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: just go get a regular job and get a white
Speaker 1: picket fence for the rest of my life. Like, what
Speaker 1: was that thought process like for you? Yeah, I'll tell you, Ryan,
Speaker 1: And I think you and I have similar backgrounds to
Speaker 1: some degree, which is uh. I started very early in
Speaker 1: my um actually when I was about ten years old,
Speaker 1: doing businesses, even before I got to high school, and
Speaker 1: so I did a couple things that kind of got
Speaker 1: me on that in that direction, and then kind of
Speaker 1: naturally by doing some small, like little neighborhood entrepreneurial things
Speaker 1: in high school, I started to read business biographies just
Speaker 1: because I just enjoyed business so much, which I thought
Speaker 1: I was going to go into investment banking, and that's
Speaker 1: like kind of the path I went on. And I
Speaker 1: was there for about three months, and the guy I
Speaker 1: was sitting next to it the place I was was
Speaker 1: so much better at the job than I was that
Speaker 1: I went to my boss and I said, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be leaving because I'm gonna go off and
Speaker 1: do something entrepreneurial. But and the guy said, why are
Speaker 1: you leaving? I said, well, the guy next to me
Speaker 1: is a monster at what we do. He's amazing, So
Speaker 1: I said, you should promote him or do whatever. But
Speaker 1: I realized that if I had compete against this guy
Speaker 1: the rest of my life, he should be the CEO
Speaker 1: of this place. Sometime I'm gonna go off and do
Speaker 1: something I'm good at. So I left and started a
Speaker 1: newspaper and from there I've pretty much been doing that
Speaker 1: type of stuff ever since. Were you always in tune
Speaker 1: with your own strengths and weaknesses that way? Because that
Speaker 1: takes complete balls. Most people wouldn't do that. They would say, ah,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna beat that guy, or they'd be angry
Speaker 1: or they jealous. You you are humble enough at such
Speaker 1: a young age to be to go and ask for
Speaker 1: for his promotion and had quit to go start a
Speaker 1: newspaper from an invested banking job. Are you crazy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's probably one of the things that has,
Speaker 1: if anything that I've been successful at I think in
Speaker 1: life has been because I don't know if my parents
Speaker 1: brought me up with this kind of ethos, And then
Speaker 1: I played a lot of sports and I had a
Speaker 1: couple of teachers that have been impact on me, and
Speaker 1: they constantly used to say to me, celebrate other people's
Speaker 1: success and and don't. It's not a reflection on you,
Speaker 1: it's a reflection on them. And the world's a big place.
Speaker 1: You can be successful and other people can be successful.
Speaker 1: So I have a personal mission statement I have that
Speaker 1: I wrote seven years ago, but I think it encompasses
Speaker 1: kind of my philosophy even back then, which is like
Speaker 1: to this day, like nothing makes me happier than seeing
Speaker 1: someone else kick and butt at what they do. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons when I when I met
Speaker 1: you for the first time and I got to know
Speaker 1: your background, I love people like you because, like, I'm
Speaker 1: really energized and inspired by people who are successful and
Speaker 1: people who take the risk and do all the things
Speaker 1: you need to do. So, I don't know, I've never
Speaker 1: had a gene where I'm like competitive with other people
Speaker 1: in competitive with myself. I don't know, it's been that's
Speaker 1: been actually I don't know if it's natural. It kind
Speaker 1: of got talk to me, but it's actually been a
Speaker 1: big advantage. You've got to be open to possibilities, right,
Speaker 1: You've got to be open to the power of saying
Speaker 1: yes and to also, I mean taking risks. So sitting
Speaker 1: at a bank, like, what makes you think at that
Speaker 1: time that media and digital journalism and advertising was the
Speaker 1: future and was going to be your future and a
Speaker 1: profitable future. When I was going to leave the bank,
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to be successful, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of people that have already gone through
Speaker 1: the gauntlets to be successful. So I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call all the CEOs in Boston. And so I started, like,
Speaker 1: made a list of all the CEOs in Boston, in
Speaker 1: the big places like Fidelity. There was a bunch of
Speaker 1: big types of companies, and I started calling and of like,
Speaker 1: of course I'd either get rejected at the front desk
Speaker 1: or sometimes I get transferred to the assistant. One day
Speaker 1: I called that the CEO of a big company, and
Speaker 1: the assistant said to me, how are you? And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm twenty two. I just want to ask
Speaker 1: the CEO of some questions about like career advice and stuff.
Speaker 1: And she's like, look, the only people who get through
Speaker 1: to him directly are journalists. So I hung up the phone,
Speaker 1: picked the phone back up and I called and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm Tim Armstrong. I'm from a new publisher on publication
Speaker 1: that's coming out in Boston for young people, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna want to do an interview with the CEO, and boom.
Speaker 1: I got through and so basically I'm like and I
Speaker 1: started thinking, like everyone my age probably has the same problem.
Speaker 1: So I started a newspaper called Beginnings in Boston with
Speaker 1: my best friend from high school. And all we did
Speaker 1: was trying to interview people and give stories and road
Speaker 1: maps in your young twenties, how do you become successful?
Speaker 1: But it literally that's how I started. It was from
Speaker 1: that one phone call. That's crazy and so funny because
Speaker 1: that's now you starting that newspaper. That's people today starting vlogs.
Speaker 1: I guess you could still start a newspaper, but it
Speaker 1: probably makes more sense to do it online. Well, let
Speaker 1: me tell you crazy story. So I start the newspaper.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. What I'm doing is business boot camp.
Speaker 1: One on one. We my roommate and I. I learned
Speaker 1: how to program because we had a program the interface.
Speaker 1: We but I sold my car about a quadr six
Speaker 1: fifty computer Apple computer. We learned how to publish, put
Speaker 1: the put the newspapers out. We haven't distributed all over
Speaker 1: Cambridge and Boston. And a friend of mine calls me
Speaker 1: and says, the name is Peter Dunn. He said, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's these guys down to M I. T. Who said
Speaker 1: they can publish something like a newspaper immediately without paper
Speaker 1: on a computer. So I'm like, all right. So I
Speaker 1: went down to M I T. And the guys from
Speaker 1: University of Illinois who had the first browser with there.
Speaker 1: They turned it on, they loaded a website and I said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, did you just put information that you
Speaker 1: input a someplace else through you know, through this network
Speaker 1: and up on the computer screen and like that's all
Speaker 1: that happened. And somebody had to input electronically, and they're
Speaker 1: like yep. I literally got up, left meeting, went back
Speaker 1: to my office, told my best round phone high school,
Speaker 1: and I was selling the newspaper and we're doing this
Speaker 1: thing called the internet. I'm like, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but it's a thousand times cheaper and faster
Speaker 1: than what we're doing in the newspaper, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: put the newspaper online. That's how I got introduced to
Speaker 1: the Internet, and that's changed the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: That that one meeting in m I t that is crazy.
Speaker 1: What did you learn? You know that's stuck with you.
Speaker 1: From building the newspaper, as you said, business one oh one,
Speaker 1: to building companies, which you did later on, you have
Speaker 1: to understand your business at a core level. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something else that people don't appreciate is when
Speaker 1: you're younger in your career and you look for it,
Speaker 1: you think that all the people went up to career,
Speaker 1: they just got bigger and made bigger decisions and things
Speaker 1: like that. But many of the people that I met
Speaker 1: during that early part in Boston, some of the CEOs
Speaker 1: and some of the other people in networking with, I
Speaker 1: noticed that they were all super knowledgeable about the details
Speaker 1: of their business. And I took that when we've built
Speaker 1: the newspaper, like I knew how to do everything at
Speaker 1: the newspaper. And I think that's another powerful attribute, is
Speaker 1: like knowing being the world's expert at what you do,
Speaker 1: and you I know you are for what you do
Speaker 1: ryan and like, and you write books about it and
Speaker 1: you talk about it and you meet with people, and
Speaker 1: that if you don't have that you're gonna lose to
Speaker 1: other people in your business. If you don't want to
Speaker 1: become the world expert, guess what someone else is. So
Speaker 1: that that's one takeaway. The second takeaway is just change.
Speaker 1: Change is a there's a weapon. It's either pointed at
Speaker 1: you or you're holding it. When I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was doing, I was able to learn and change,
Speaker 1: learn change, learn change, and then that formula gave me
Speaker 1: risk taking. I learned how to take risks, and so
Speaker 1: I always think back to that, which is like, if
Speaker 1: I'm not changing and evolving, I'm probably losing. It's about
Speaker 1: being part of the running river instead of a still pond.
Speaker 1: The still pond smells, it's weird, still a body of water,
Speaker 1: but you know, you might not want to go swimming
Speaker 1: in it. The running river is clean, there's fish, there's life,
Speaker 1: there's things happening, and there's amazing, amazing opportunities around every bend,
Speaker 1: even if you don't know it. So you sold the
Speaker 1: newspaper and then you got involved and started working at
Speaker 1: a company called star Wave. What was star Wave? I
Speaker 1: got invited to go to a nast horror event with
Speaker 1: the owners in NASCAR, The France family so that I
Speaker 1: went to this big meeting and I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the back of the room. How do you meet all
Speaker 1: these p I'll ask you that later. Basically, I went
Speaker 1: to this meeting. The Francis gave this whole president on
Speaker 1: the NASCAR and at the end they said, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, we're gonna launch a website. And so in
Speaker 1: the back of the room, I was like, you know, oh, hell, yes,
Speaker 1: you know. Now you're talking my language. So after the meeting,
Speaker 1: I went up to them and said, hey, um, Tim Armstrong,
Speaker 1: you don't know me, but that last thing you talked about,
Speaker 1: I'm super excited about it and building this company in
Speaker 1: Boston that's been doing internet stuff. So anyways, uh, the
Speaker 1: Ryan Frant said to me, Hey, there's this company, star
Speaker 1: Wave in Seattle that's growing. Paul Allen started its growing quickly.
Speaker 1: They're doing internet content for how excited you are you
Speaker 1: should think about you know, star Waves. So I went
Speaker 1: back to my apartment in Boston and I had a
Speaker 1: message from the recruiter at star Wave because they had
Speaker 1: been calling around the United States trying to find people
Speaker 1: who were doing internet stuff and was so small at
Speaker 1: that point that they had called somebody that I knew,
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, this this kid and I at
Speaker 1: the same time had sent my application, and so I
Speaker 1: said the woman, I said, you know, I can believe this.
Speaker 1: I just sent an application. It was a third party
Speaker 1: recruiter to star Wave and she said, well, your name
Speaker 1: came up because we were asking around of people who
Speaker 1: are doing Internet stuff. So advance short, Bluda Seattle got
Speaker 1: a job offer the day I went there. UM told
Speaker 1: him yes on the spot, moved out like I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe two months, no, no, two weeks later or something
Speaker 1: with a bag of closed didn't know anybody, and started
Speaker 1: at Starwave. And Starwave was did launch ESPN dot com,
Speaker 1: NFL dot com, Nascar dot com, a Snews dot com.
Speaker 1: And it was like the beginning of the Internet. All
Speaker 1: these smart people from engineers and content people and media
Speaker 1: people from all over the US showed up here to
Speaker 1: work for Paul Allen and this guy Mike Slaves, Bill
Speaker 1: Gates's best friend, and Tom Phillip, the guy who started
Speaker 1: Spy magazine and was I worked with met Google also.
Speaker 1: So anyways, long seriy short. It was an amazing environment,
Speaker 1: my first environment on the West Coast. I grew up
Speaker 1: in a small blue collar town. I didn't travel much,
Speaker 1: but I learned it was like West Coast, high energy technology,
Speaker 1: smart people. And also I was really creative growing up,
Speaker 1: and where I grew up was not like a hyper
Speaker 1: creative environment. And this was the first place I got
Speaker 1: dropped where I was like, God, I'm home. This is
Speaker 1: like all creative people walk us through. How you met
Speaker 1: Sarah gay Brand and Larry Page and and landed at Google.
Speaker 1: That meeting alone is something that millions and millions to
Speaker 1: people could only dream of, and you actually got to
Speaker 1: do it and you got to work with them. How
Speaker 1: did that all happen? There's another super important lesson. As
Speaker 1: I always say, the most important decisions of your career
Speaker 1: happen when you're not in the room. At star Wave,
Speaker 1: I had the opportunity to do a couple mega deals,
Speaker 1: bigger than any other deals the company had ever done.
Speaker 1: I got a very good reputation as someone who was
Speaker 1: like highly creative, knew the space well, and could do
Speaker 1: mega deals. So Um, one of the women that I
Speaker 1: worked with, Um, who was a peer of mine, went
Speaker 1: to go be a recruiter after we all we all
Speaker 1: left Starwave, and I did a couple of things after
Speaker 1: Starwave before Google. Again, this came back around as a
Speaker 1: super helpful thing. She mentioned to the Google people, Um, hey,
Speaker 1: there's this guy. He's in New York. So Omid Cortis Donni,
Speaker 1: who's now the chairman of Twitter, came to New York.
Speaker 1: He was at Google. He was really the first business
Speaker 1: employee at Google. Another's the crazy thing. It was like
Speaker 1: a Friday afternoon, pouring rain. I was downtown that this
Speaker 1: woman called me. She said, you got to meet this guy.
Speaker 1: There's this company Google. I said, oh, I've been using
Speaker 1: Google because I was stabbing on the Space. So I
Speaker 1: love that company. And I had another job offer at
Speaker 1: the time to go be the president of one of
Speaker 1: the gaming companies. And I said to us, so, I
Speaker 1: have this other job thing I'm working on. And she said,
Speaker 1: you know, Tim, She's like, I know you just take
Speaker 1: the eating. So I said, all right, yeah. So I
Speaker 1: hustled uptown, went to the Regency Hotel met Ohmed, who
Speaker 1: I didn't know, who's now one of my one of
Speaker 1: my really close friends. I sat down with him. We
Speaker 1: had a great conversation and he said, look, I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen at Google. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we're gonna be a you know, big and advertising.
Speaker 1: I know you're like a big guy, you know, blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You know, come out and meet Larry
Speaker 1: and Sergey. So what was the Omed's role at that
Speaker 1: time at Google? He was basically the chief business officer
Speaker 1: of Google. Um So Google was like I don't even remember.
Speaker 1: It was probably like fifty people at that point or something,
Speaker 1: or maybe seventy. It was all. It was basically all engineers,
Speaker 1: and then O Mead and another woman, Joan brad Eye,
Speaker 1: and a guy named Wiskowski, and there was there was
Speaker 1: like three or four business people, all engineers, and it
Speaker 1: was the search licensing business, and they were gonna start.
Speaker 1: They just started to think about getting an ads. There's
Speaker 1: another guy, Davidkacko. So anyways, long story short is I
Speaker 1: fly out and have breakfast with Sergey and Omed. And
Speaker 1: Sergey comes to breakfast and he's like, hey Tim, He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, just you know, we had a little chit chat.
Speaker 1: Then he's like, I don't know what questions to ask you.
Speaker 1: You interview yourself, ask yourself the questions you think I
Speaker 1: should ask you. So I was like, all right, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, I asked all the tough questions. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not gonna help pull any punch. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask what I think you know chess? So I I
Speaker 1: you know, he would interject some questions, will me to
Speaker 1: ask some questions, but in general, I would say the
Speaker 1: main part of the interview was me coming up with
Speaker 1: the questions and explaining why I was asking the question.
Speaker 1: He made you have a conversation with yourself. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: by the way, this is one of the things that
Speaker 1: Larry and Sergey absolutely brilliant at is he was getting
Speaker 1: a much fuller picture of me, which is, how do
Speaker 1: you think, how do you handle that situation? What questions
Speaker 1: do you come up with? Why did you come up
Speaker 1: with the questions? And it was you know, and then
Speaker 1: I can tell you a million stories about how they
Speaker 1: did stuff like that at Google, but but they were
Speaker 1: incredibly billy and that that stuff. And I'll tell you this.
Speaker 1: I had another job offer that was I forget the number.
Speaker 1: It was probably twice the amount of money. It was
Speaker 1: a massive benefits package. I think it had a card,
Speaker 1: had like a house payments for a year. It was
Speaker 1: like an unbelievable offer. Google was way smaller, way riskier,
Speaker 1: all those other things. And I was just in the
Speaker 1: process of getting married. So I was engaged and about
Speaker 1: to get married. So I came back and I said
Speaker 1: to my wife, who was my wife, Nancy Now, I said,
Speaker 1: and there's another lesson in this, which is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest decisions you make in your life is who
Speaker 1: you partner with. They have a huge imprint on you
Speaker 1: and what you think and and those things. So I
Speaker 1: said to my now wife than than fiance, Nancy, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to make a decision between these two things. She said,
Speaker 1: what do you think. I said, Well, this is that
Speaker 1: there's all this money and all this other opportunity and
Speaker 1: like gaming is gonna be big and all this other stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, but you know, Google, I I just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm like more passionate about it, but
Speaker 1: it's like a way not as good as an offer
Speaker 1: or you know, blah blah blah. So she she said, Tim,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you one piece of advice. She said,
Speaker 1: I've been watching your eyes while you're talking about the
Speaker 1: two companies for the last month or so. Go to Google.
Speaker 1: You'd be going this other place for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: And I you're a passionate guy. Your energy level when
Speaker 1: you're talking about Google is ten x. What is the
Speaker 1: other thing? And she's like, we'll figure it out. We
Speaker 1: don't we by the way, we had no money. We
Speaker 1: were living on one bedroom apartment Eightio six and Columbus,
Speaker 1: And she said, whatever, we'll figure it out. You know,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. So anyway, so that's how it
Speaker 1: went down. What was it like being on the Google
Speaker 1: train in those nine years, because that's when it went
Speaker 1: from Google to Google. It was like the world's most
Speaker 1: intense science project. First years there, it was unmitigated mess
Speaker 1: like a messy science project where we were testing everything
Speaker 1: and and like you know, when they hired me, by
Speaker 1: the way, there's a funny story. So when they hired
Speaker 1: me that they gave me like a one page sheet
Speaker 1: that said we're hiring you this, here's just salary, here's
Speaker 1: your act. And by the way, if it doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: no harm, no foul. The reason I was able to
Speaker 1: go to a o L was I didn't have a
Speaker 1: noncompete because Google didn't know whether or not they were
Speaker 1: going to be big in the ad business. So they didn't.
Speaker 1: I had this like sheet of paper that said, you know,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work out well, just part ways, no harm,
Speaker 1: no foul. So anyway, as long astorry short as the
Speaker 1: first order I got, I said, I have an order
Speaker 1: coming in for advertising, you know, and um, Larry and Sergey,
Speaker 1: I said, I need to get a fax machine because
Speaker 1: I can't get the order. Just said that we're clear.
Speaker 1: They made you head of head of US right ahead
Speaker 1: of US sales sales. And I was in New York.
Speaker 1: I was in California. So my harmon in New York
Speaker 1: was the first office outside of Mountain Views. So I
Speaker 1: get the first order. I called them. I say, guys,
Speaker 1: I gotta I got an order. And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta buy a fax machine. And the fax machine was
Speaker 1: like I don't know how much it was. It was
Speaker 1: like a bucks. I'm like, I gotta buy this fax machine.
Speaker 1: They're like, prove that you have the order. What They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: proved that you have the order. I'm like, guys, I
Speaker 1: can't get the order. Let's have the fax machine. They're like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to spend the money on the fax
Speaker 1: machine unless you have the order. And I'm like, so
Speaker 1: we had about another lesson Larry and Sergey, we're cheap
Speaker 1: and they were. When you go to Google's profitability, while
Speaker 1: Google is so profitable, it's because they were super super
Speaker 1: good with expenses and where money was that they'd rather
Speaker 1: spend money on tech than spending on a fax machine.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I totally get that and respect that,
Speaker 1: but that story is the story. Like that's like having
Speaker 1: an order and fighting over spending a hundred twenty dollars
Speaker 1: on a fax machine. That's that's a true story. One
Speaker 1: thing Google did that other people did not do in
Speaker 1: people in media business today still don't do this, which
Speaker 1: amazes me. This is Google's secret. Every single week, we
Speaker 1: used to look at the high performing customers and low
Speaker 1: performing customers, and if you were below a two percent
Speaker 1: click through rate in our ad program, even early on,
Speaker 1: we kick you out of the program. So you let
Speaker 1: clients go and you let money go. Yes, And because
Speaker 1: we wanted the highest quality stuff for our end users.
Speaker 1: And what it did was it trained our algorithms and
Speaker 1: what good ads were. So if you think about today,
Speaker 1: Google has pretty much mopped up the entire ad business,
Speaker 1: and Facebook has and those those type of companies. And
Speaker 1: one of the secret sauces to that is they put
Speaker 1: in a quality algorithm. Forever you can see how many
Speaker 1: bad ads you get as a human everywhere you go.
Speaker 1: They put in one quality algorithm that changed the entire game.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're a customer and I
Speaker 1: call you and say, hey, Ryan, you can't run your
Speaker 1: ads unless they're high quality, I'm gonna kick you off.
Speaker 1: What do you do to your ads? You make them
Speaker 1: higher quality, make them high quality if it has a
Speaker 1: network effect, right, So, and customers used to complain about
Speaker 1: it all the time, but we ran it and did it.
Speaker 1: And you know that's a lot of the foresight that
Speaker 1: that that you know, Larryon's had and the team had,
Speaker 1: and you know, we did tons of testing. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. My world was Monday through Thursday, California, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Speaker 1: New York. So I was living in this bicoastal every week,
Speaker 1: you know, life. And I saw the difference between how
Speaker 1: New York City was doing business and how Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: was doing business every week and I could see I said, Wow,
Speaker 1: these guys are We're going to mop up the whole universe,
Speaker 1: you know, just that openness, the openness, the learning, the science,
Speaker 1: you know. And my friends in New York where you know,
Speaker 1: they were all in different industries, but a lot of
Speaker 1: New York was like, Hey, I'm gonna beat your head
Speaker 1: in and I'm the best at this and it's my
Speaker 1: way or the highway. And California was like, hey, you
Speaker 1: have a good idea, come on in this room. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what your what your hierarchy is here
Speaker 1: you have a great idea. You speak, you know, and
Speaker 1: it was like over and over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: big difference in culture. And then walk me to you
Speaker 1: know that role where you basically, you know, you were
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur. You had the newspaper and then you started
Speaker 1: working for other people as you you know, created your
Speaker 1: net worth through your network and you kept building a
Speaker 1: building building, And then Patch Media came around. I did
Speaker 1: associated content with my roommate from college under rug you
Speaker 1: end up running it as the biggest investor in it,
Speaker 1: and then we I did Patch and social content ends
Speaker 1: along story end up selling the Yahoo. It was a
Speaker 1: very good financial transaction SOLDI Yahoo and Patch. One of
Speaker 1: my theories was local news was going to get destroyed
Speaker 1: newspapers because they weren't transitioning fast enough. Local news is
Speaker 1: the most important, one of the most important things in
Speaker 1: the United States has as a as a country. So
Speaker 1: I started Patch with John broad another another another really
Speaker 1: close friend of mine and somebody I worked with before.
Speaker 1: And John and I tested in three towns and then
Speaker 1: we started scaling it up. And then our goal was
Speaker 1: to basically put digital news site in every town in America.
Speaker 1: So we eventually got up to the point we're in
Speaker 1: three thousand towns um in America. And and I had
Speaker 1: taken then a o L job time Warner had bought Patch.
Speaker 1: Patch was part of the thing I was doing at
Speaker 1: AOL at that point. I unfortunately I an activist investors
Speaker 1: actually now a friend of mine attacked us at a
Speaker 1: o L and I had to sell Patch because they
Speaker 1: thought we were spending too much money on it. But
Speaker 1: to still it's profitable and growing, and the people who
Speaker 1: own it now are Charles Tayle and Hail Company. They
Speaker 1: great people, done a great job of it. And I
Speaker 1: still think local news is one of the bigest white
Speaker 1: spaces for business in the in the US. That's so
Speaker 1: cool that it's still there. What did it mean to
Speaker 1: you to, you know, have that interview with those guys.
Speaker 1: You're interviewing yourself, and then you get to a point
Speaker 1: in your life where that one negotiating item allows you
Speaker 1: to cash out for for that amount of money, where
Speaker 1: you could take five million of it and put it
Speaker 1: into this new company that you are now completely in
Speaker 1: control of, like it's it's a huge company that everyone
Speaker 1: knows around the world. I mean, what was your mindset
Speaker 1: like at that time, because most people would say, I'm
Speaker 1: out take me to the island, and you said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go run AOL and I'm gonna rebrand it,
Speaker 1: rebuild it. I'm gonna help him out. And then and
Speaker 1: then you obviously didn't stop there. I haven't saying learn
Speaker 1: to earn. And when the A O L opportunity came up,
Speaker 1: I met with Jeff Bucaus, who was the ceof Time Warner.
Speaker 1: You called and said, hey, can we have a meeting.
Speaker 1: I thought it was about the Google Time Warner partnership
Speaker 1: is all another story could a huge deal with with
Speaker 1: those guys. But over there he said, hey, we got
Speaker 1: to spend a while out of Time Warner. Would you
Speaker 1: be interested in being CEO, and so I um left
Speaker 1: the meeting. I called my wife, called a couple of friends,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of my friends said to me, Tim,
Speaker 1: you went from a company that was almost zero at
Speaker 1: Google that went to a hundred and fifty billion market cap.
Speaker 1: And you before that were at Starway that got bought.
Speaker 1: Before that, you were with Rick Scott who was it
Speaker 1: was the governor of Florida and then senator by the
Speaker 1: time Perdeers that the CEO of Columbia h c A.
Speaker 1: We bought a company, sold the News Corps. So I've
Speaker 1: done a bunch of other things. So he said to me,
Speaker 1: you know, the only thing you don't have your resume
Speaker 1: is like, why don't you do a turnaround? And so
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what learned to earn. I'll figure
Speaker 1: this out. You know, I don't know how I'm going
Speaker 1: to figure it out, but I'll do it. So I
Speaker 1: made a fairly fast decision, actually did it. I told
Speaker 1: him Meat and Larry and Sergey, which was pretty painful,
Speaker 1: and ersh Smith and then Um and then went to
Speaker 1: do it. And then what I did is I went
Speaker 1: back to zero. They sorry, did they did? They make
Speaker 1: you give yourself an exit interview. Now they I was
Speaker 1: in a room with them for two and a half hours,
Speaker 1: and they pretty much told me how stupid the decision
Speaker 1: was and why I was going to regret it, and
Speaker 1: you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And so I sat there for two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel it very good by the time I left,
Speaker 1: but I just said, I just said, I just know myself.
Speaker 1: I've been here for almost ten years, and you know
Speaker 1: I don't have to grow. So so I I left
Speaker 1: one thing. I did a well, which I took advice.
Speaker 1: I called a bunch of other CEOs, big big ceosum
Speaker 1: just to ask for their advice, and a couple of
Speaker 1: them told me, you know, to me, got a it's
Speaker 1: a different job being in the number two chair, number
Speaker 1: three chair or whatever like, it's just different. I was.
Speaker 1: I decided myself, I just did it again. About three
Speaker 1: years ago, two years ago, want the left horizon. I
Speaker 1: went to zero. I said, I know nothing. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start from scratch. So I read every single book I
Speaker 1: could be about a CEO. I went to see Howard Schultz.
Speaker 1: Ken Channel Jack Welch has called these people and said, hey,
Speaker 1: can I come pick your brain about how you're the CEO? Yes?
Speaker 1: What's the job? What is it? What do you do?
Speaker 1: You know all these other things. I'll tell you some
Speaker 1: stories like So I went out to see Howard Schultz.
Speaker 1: Look to see Howard Schultz. I had a whole strategy
Speaker 1: plan with me. I've done all this work at a
Speaker 1: well already like boom, you know, when out there, expected
Speaker 1: to show him the strategy and give me feedback. So
Speaker 1: he's about the deck, I said, Howard, I knew him
Speaker 1: a little bit. I said, you know, I got this deck.
Speaker 1: I want to show you the strategy. He said, put
Speaker 1: the deck away. He said, where's your people plan? And
Speaker 1: I said what? He said? Where's your people plan? He said,
Speaker 1: being a CEO is about people. And he said the
Speaker 1: two things you need is a people's strategy and you
Speaker 1: need an awesome head of HR. Then we'll talk business strategy,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk to you about people first.
Speaker 1: And I would say that was the most impactful conversation,
Speaker 1: you know, and general the other ones were super impactful too,
Speaker 1: but I'll just that's just one quick story, and it
Speaker 1: really helped me. Reset really really helped me reset, and
Speaker 1: so I kind of tried to cheat as much as
Speaker 1: I could. I tried to steal everybody else's knowledge and
Speaker 1: start with that. And you know, I made a boatload
Speaker 1: of mistakes and I we we had a boatload of
Speaker 1: success also. But I I credit a lot of the
Speaker 1: help I got from those other people for why we
Speaker 1: made it through some of those situations. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of advice on that topic about mentors and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but that they were so helpful and so
Speaker 1: gracious with their time and energy. And then he became
Speaker 1: the CEO of another company. Yes, so I started a
Speaker 1: company g t X, And that's a company we're doing
Speaker 1: now tell me, tell me about it and what it
Speaker 1: is and why you started it. Yeah, So I started
Speaker 1: because I think the structure the internet's broken. I think
Speaker 1: there's too much value in the middle of the marketplace.
Speaker 1: I think the really big companies. I think there's been
Speaker 1: more more ability for brands and people to go direct
Speaker 1: to consumer. I think that like it's really important to
Speaker 1: have an ecosystem. So I'm much more into moving value
Speaker 1: to the edges of the marketplace, back to consumers and
Speaker 1: back to businesses. So the business we built is essentially
Speaker 1: a direct to consumer company that connects offline to online
Speaker 1: and gives people control over their information and data, both
Speaker 1: on the consumer side and on the brand side. I
Speaker 1: just think for someone like you, for instance, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you one thing. There's one thing people don't realize about
Speaker 1: the Internet. Most of the brands on the Internet and
Speaker 1: a lot of the influencers on the Internet rent their
Speaker 1: own customers. And what I mean by that, I've had
Speaker 1: this conversation with a lot of people is they're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true. I have a million Instagram followers or
Speaker 1: twenty million Twitter followers, and I say, yeah, but what's
Speaker 1: their address? How do you directly communicate with them? I
Speaker 1: do it over those platforms. Like yeah, but the platforms
Speaker 1: own those customers and you're renting them. I want more
Speaker 1: people to own their own customers. Do you think learning
Speaker 1: that and allowing people to to own their customers? Is
Speaker 1: that what you're bullish on right now? As you think
Speaker 1: about the next ten years, because before we know it's
Speaker 1: gonna we're going to look back, you know at ones
Speaker 1: is this wild time a decade ago? Yeah? I think,
Speaker 1: by the way, here's the deal for for your business
Speaker 1: in particular, you know, you have your film and acting background,
Speaker 1: you have the real estate background, you have the entrepreneurial background.
Speaker 1: You're someone who deserves to have a direct relationship with
Speaker 1: all of your customers. The reason is not just for
Speaker 1: your business, but because you're somebody who adds value outside
Speaker 1: of your business and you have other interests. I think
Speaker 1: it's your your and principle. A lot of people in
Speaker 1: life will benefit by having a direct relationship with you
Speaker 1: because you bring the and principle. You might help them
Speaker 1: doing your core stuff in real estate, but you might
Speaker 1: also help them in something else you know that you're
Speaker 1: interested are doing. And that's like, that's the network effect,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to have a network effect if
Speaker 1: your own relationship through everybody is instagram one way relationship.
Speaker 1: You as a great there's a great tool and a
Speaker 1: great platform, but hey, why not have relationships with everybody
Speaker 1: and know who they are and know where they live,
Speaker 1: you know what they want, you know, serve them more things.
Speaker 1: One of the last questions I have for you, and
Speaker 1: I reached out to you and asked you to do this,
Speaker 1: and I told you the title of the podcast is
Speaker 1: big Money Energy. Without knowing anything about it, what did
Speaker 1: you think, well, I'm just gonna tell you something. Honestly.
Speaker 1: One of the other skill sets I have, which I
Speaker 1: think it was kind of maybe as the quality that
Speaker 1: was born with, is when I meet people, I sometimes
Speaker 1: get like a sensation that I know that they're going
Speaker 1: to be super successful. So the minute I met you,
Speaker 1: and I can name a whole bunch of other super
Speaker 1: successful people I've met, even when they weren't successful yet,
Speaker 1: that I was like, this guy is going to be successful.
Speaker 1: And again going back to the stage point, I'm on
Speaker 1: your team. Anything you want me to do to help you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do only because I know you have the
Speaker 1: draw from talking to you for you know, a minute
Speaker 1: and a half, I was like, this guy knows the
Speaker 1: formula a lot, and he's working the formula and in
Speaker 1: a good way for for humans and sharing his knowledge.
Speaker 1: So when you asked me to do anything, I said,
Speaker 1: of course. And I and I think that the energy
Speaker 1: piece is important. You know, Jack Welch said something and
Speaker 1: I think it's in one of his books. You know,
Speaker 1: he he had a way to assess people. In the
Speaker 1: first two assessment of these things, the four ease and
Speaker 1: a p um and a couple of other things, but
Speaker 1: two of the first four ease were energy number one
Speaker 1: of yourself and two is to be able to bring
Speaker 1: out energy and other people. And you have that. So
Speaker 1: when you asked me to do this, I figured it
Speaker 1: would probably help build the stage, maybe maybe for you.
Speaker 1: I don't think you are. You already got your own stage,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe somebody else gets helped um So
Speaker 1: that that's what it is, and I think you have
Speaker 1: that the first two years. You've got all his principles,
Speaker 1: but you the first two eads are like your titles,
Speaker 1: speaks right through that. This has been great. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, seem if you're ready to take
Speaker 1: action today. Based on Tim Armstrong's entire blueprint for how
Speaker 1: he got to where he is, go to Big Money
Speaker 1: Energy dot com slash podcast to download an action plan
Speaker 1: I put together for you, as well as the show notes.
Speaker 1: That's Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast. Find more
Speaker 1: podcasts like Big Money Energy on the I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: app or wherever you get your podcast. Big Money Energy
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Ryan Sirhand. It's produced by Mike
Speaker 1: Coscarelli and Joe Loreesca and executive produced by Lindsay Hoffman.