Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic, a production at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: We have to innovate, we have to keep pushing the
Speaker 2: envelope to build our audience and really be relevant. And
Speaker 2: the only way that you'll be able to innovate and
Speaker 2: provide those services and build value is to know who
Speaker 2: they are what they do in a real way.
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, and welcome to this episode of
Speaker 3: Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Today,
Speaker 3: we have an honest to god magician. He began his
Speaker 3: career at what was a revolutionary tech company in its day.
Speaker 3: Wang Labs had a few startups that hit, was a
Speaker 3: hugely important player in the incredible success of AOL in
Speaker 3: the nineties. Continued his tech investing while building a Washington,
Speaker 3: DC based sports powerhouse centered on the Washington Capitals and
Speaker 3: the Wizards. He's the former vice chair of AOL. He's
Speaker 3: the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, and
Speaker 3: he's a co founder of the investment group Revolution Growth.
Speaker 3: Ted Leonsis ted is Brooklyn, born, raised there and in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: He's a Georgetown grad and tech pioneer. He's known for
Speaker 3: seeing things early and in a way others can't. He
Speaker 3: cares deeply about people and communities and always finds a
Speaker 3: way to put them first and all he does. He's
Speaker 3: the former mayor of a small Florida town. He has
Speaker 3: a wicked sense of humor, big heart, and a perpetual smile.
Speaker 3: He's been a friend for almost thirty years, and I
Speaker 3: have to say he is also the person who talked
Speaker 3: me into going to AOL just as our big ride began,
Speaker 3: So I owe him a big one for that.
Speaker 4: Ted, welcome, Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 2: It's very sweet of you, and I missed everything about
Speaker 2: your voice and leadership, and you shouldn't be shy to
Speaker 2: say that. I reported to you and I learned a
Speaker 2: lot from you back in the day, so it's wonderful
Speaker 2: to be on your podcast.
Speaker 3: Well, you're very nice, Ted. I always thought of us
Speaker 3: as partners, and boy, did you contribute a lot. Before
Speaker 3: we jump into that meat though, I want to do
Speaker 3: you in sixty seconds. You ready to go yep? Do
Speaker 3: you prefer cats or dogs? Dogs, VITYL or CDs, Vinyl
Speaker 3: FaceTime or.
Speaker 4: Call oh face to face, hugging.
Speaker 3: DC or Brooklyn DC, Slow and steady or pedal to
Speaker 3: the metal, both early riser or night out.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm early rise.
Speaker 2: I get all my best work done between five and
Speaker 2: seven am.
Speaker 3: Movies at the theater are a streaming movie, streaming crypto
Speaker 3: or dollars dollars Elvis or David Bowie Elvis.
Speaker 4: Me and Elvis had the same birthday.
Speaker 3: Guilty pleasure.
Speaker 4: I am spoiling the shit out.
Speaker 2: Of my grandchildren.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's jump into the meat. You have an uncanny
Speaker 3: ability to see around corners, computers, new media, online, e sports,
Speaker 3: and on and on. Let's start with the topic of
Speaker 3: the minute AI friend or foe and how's it going
Speaker 3: to change our lives in business?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's totally faux right now, and I'm horrified with
Speaker 2: the answers that I'm hearing from. You would think socially
Speaker 2: responsible CEOs. So you know, we used to talk about
Speaker 2: early in the computer industry, you know, garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 2: And so you know, these machines in the cloud that
Speaker 2: are doing machine learning, the input that they're getting, it's
Speaker 2: bad info.
Speaker 4: You can't tell the sentiment if you will.
Speaker 2: That's on social media and Reddit and all of the
Speaker 2: rivers of data that's at scale, and so we will
Speaker 2: get very, very bad answers, because it's holding a mirror
Speaker 2: up to ourselves, but it's not our real self. We're
Speaker 2: holding a mirror up to this faux personality, this faux
Speaker 2: knowledge base. When you're seeing and you hear a CEO
Speaker 2: say the machines lined, they call it hallucinations. But the
Speaker 2: machines line and we don't know why. It's like, hey,
Speaker 2: full stop till you can figure out why.
Speaker 3: So with this view of AI, in our day in
Speaker 3: taking the Internet to the mass market, it was really
Speaker 3: AOL versus Microsoft today in the AI battleground, and it
Speaker 3: is a battle. Who do you think are the big competitors?
Speaker 3: If you're sort of watching saying, wow, we need to
Speaker 3: watch this, who are the two companies? Are there more
Speaker 3: that are really in the middle of this that we
Speaker 3: have to look to provide that kind of guidance.
Speaker 2: Well, like every industry, you'll have the big incumbents. Certainly
Speaker 2: here Microsoft, which has a multi trillion dollar market cap
Speaker 2: and more cash than the United States does right now,
Speaker 2: they will be formidable. Apple certainly will be late to
Speaker 2: the game, but they'll be formidable. Obviously, Alphabet and Google
Speaker 2: they'll be big and important, and then you'll have startups
Speaker 2: But where I see a positive difference is that we
Speaker 2: always thought in our generation that there would be some
Speaker 2: fantastic verticalization and where you could go deeper in a
Speaker 2: vertical with a solution. You know, we thought vertical search
Speaker 2: one day would be important. I'm an investor in a
Speaker 2: company called tempest Temus, and it is a AI company.
Speaker 2: It uses a power plant now mostly from Google and
Speaker 2: alphabet but you wouldn't know it as a doctor, a
Speaker 2: healthcare provider, or a consumer, and it is noble. It
Speaker 2: is using the power of machine learning all of the
Speaker 2: data that's out there to help families answer a question.
Speaker 4: Your wife gets diagnosed.
Speaker 2: With stage three cancer and she would go to the
Speaker 2: doctor and they would take a sell and say you've
Speaker 2: got cancer, and then they would tell you, hey, there
Speaker 2: was a study in the New England Journal of Medicine
Speaker 2: of fifteen people and based on that and my experience
Speaker 2: as the doctor, it's her genetics, family history.
Speaker 4: Here's what you should be doing.
Speaker 2: So AI in that kind of setting where you can
Speaker 2: provide at scale data with deep genomic information, to me
Speaker 2: is a positive on AI. If we can take that
Speaker 2: high road, use a higher calling around the tools. I
Speaker 2: think we're going to be in good shape, and I
Speaker 2: think that will only come from deep verticalization where companies
Speaker 2: are saying this isn't a business. We're using this technology
Speaker 2: for research and to help doctors to find better ways.
Speaker 2: And yes it'll help save money, Yes it'll help activate
Speaker 2: more efficiency. But we should be using the technology to
Speaker 2: answer big questions, not fill the algorithms up with junk.
Speaker 3: So let's take AI sports. You got into team ownership
Speaker 3: in the late nineties, and I'm sure technologies have affected
Speaker 3: your business. What are the new opportunities with the tech
Speaker 3: today and especially with AI. Is this going to select
Speaker 3: your players now?
Speaker 2: Well, that's really interesting because when you know, I came
Speaker 2: into sports in nineteen ninety nine, everyone lived on Fax
Speaker 2: machines and we were the first team. At least we
Speaker 2: gave everyone personal computers. I gave everyone email addresses. It
Speaker 2: was basic connectivity. But then we started to say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a platform to launch a lot of new technology,
Speaker 2: and then if it takes hold here, it can be
Speaker 2: nested if you will, within sports and arenas because we
Speaker 2: touched so many people, and then move into general media.
Speaker 2: And so the first big investments that were being made
Speaker 2: were selecting of teams for coaching the players, and the
Speaker 2: amount of work that was done in high speed cameras
Speaker 2: and being able to create these heat maps on where
Speaker 2: was the optimal place for the player to take the shot.
Speaker 2: When you were playing defense, we would pixelate the floor.
Speaker 2: And I remember once Kobe Bryant were playing the Lakers
Speaker 2: and he was going to get the end of game
Speaker 2: shot and was, well, if you can move Kobe two
Speaker 2: pixels to the left, he shoots thirty eight percent. If
Speaker 2: he's those two pixels to the right, he's forty four percent.
Speaker 4: All you can do.
Speaker 2: Is get him to the suboptimized place and where the
Speaker 2: most transparent of providing that data to fans, to coaches,
Speaker 2: to competitors, and now to sports betters.
Speaker 4: Right, they have access to.
Speaker 2: More data, certainly than a Wall Street trader has in
Speaker 2: trying to.
Speaker 4: Pick whether you should short a stock.
Speaker 2: Right, So I looked at sports as being the most
Speaker 2: data rich side on the product.
Speaker 4: And now it's moved into marketing.
Speaker 2: We have a database and monumental sports and entertainment that's
Speaker 2: closing in on four million active records where we really
Speaker 2: know who's coming into the building, how long have they
Speaker 2: been a customer, what have they spent, how do they
Speaker 2: renew who do they give their tickets to, how far
Speaker 2: do they travel? What are they're viewing habits? Are they
Speaker 2: streaming now? Are they still watching games on cable? How
Speaker 2: important is radio? One thing I'll say, radio and digital
Speaker 2: radio and podcasting has become incredibly powerful and on trend again.
Speaker 4: We have to innovate.
Speaker 2: We have to keep pushing the envelope to build our
Speaker 2: audience and really be relevant. And the only way that
Speaker 2: you'll be able to innovate and provide those services and
Speaker 2: build value is to know who they are, what they
Speaker 2: do in a real way, not a superficial way, which
Speaker 2: is what's happened on the internet. But I think it's
Speaker 2: lost its efficacy and deep verticalization. Really understanding your customer,
Speaker 2: really understanding how to connect all the way through all
Speaker 2: of the ways that they live their life on the
Speaker 2: net is what the challenge for the next set of
Speaker 2: marketers will.
Speaker 4: Be in our industry.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, we've covered the business. I mean it's fascinating
Speaker 3: how you've applied all you knew from technology to sports.
Speaker 3: I want to jump for a minute to you with
Speaker 3: a personal matter. One of the most interesting things we
Speaker 3: talked about when we first met, was this list you
Speaker 3: had one hundred and one things you wanted to do
Speaker 3: before you die. Tell us about the genesis of that list.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I also want to know how
Speaker 3: many of those one hundred and one have you achieved?
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's you know, deeply personal and everyone will have their reckonings.
Speaker 2: Everyone will have something very disruptive happen in their life
Speaker 2: and times, and it's how you react to that. And
Speaker 2: a lot of times the disruption ends up being a
Speaker 2: grade advantage if you take it in and process it
Speaker 2: in a positive way. So for me, you know, I
Speaker 2: was a poor kid growing up. My father was a waiter.
Speaker 2: It was an immigrant family. We grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: working in mills. And then my dad went into the
Speaker 2: service and married later in life and was a waiter
Speaker 2: and we lived in a.
Speaker 4: Rental apartment in Brooklyn, and.
Speaker 2: I'm an only child. They taught me to work hard,
Speaker 2: get good grades. If you get good grades, you'll get
Speaker 2: into a good school. If you get in good school
Speaker 2: and you get good grades, you'll get a good job
Speaker 2: and you'll make a lot of money. And so I
Speaker 2: followed that Mantra. I went to Georgetown University and had
Speaker 2: some academic success and got out of college and worked
Speaker 2: at a tech company as you mentioned, Wang Laboratories, and
Speaker 2: then I had the entrepreneurial bug and I started my
Speaker 2: first company. I was lucky and maybe clever, and I
Speaker 2: sold that company two years after I started for sixty
Speaker 2: million dollars, and Bob I declared victory.
Speaker 4: And how society tells you to the clear victory.
Speaker 2: Ends up being false social responsibility. In false victory, you
Speaker 2: buy stuff. You're very popular with people who were using
Speaker 2: you as their platform for success. And so I kind
Speaker 2: of lost my way. And then I got on the
Speaker 2: wrong airplane. I had a reckoning. The plane was going down.
Speaker 2: I was alone on the plane, and I started praying.
Speaker 2: Seemed like the right thing to do. And I started
Speaker 2: laughing because I was praying to God, saying, you know,
Speaker 2: please let me get through this.
Speaker 4: I don't want to die.
Speaker 2: And my first thought was if there was a God listening,
Speaker 2: they say, oh, now you need me. You're in deep
Speaker 2: angst and you think I'm here to help you. So
Speaker 2: I reverted back to type. I said, all right, let's
Speaker 2: cut a deal. If I live.
Speaker 4: Through this, I promise I will leave more than I take.
Speaker 4: How's that?
Speaker 2: Obviously we made it through, but I've always been well,
Speaker 2: a deal's a deal. How will I now pay that
Speaker 2: debt back? I made this list of one hundred and
Speaker 2: one things to do before I die, so that I
Speaker 2: could say an end of my life. Could I look
Speaker 2: back and metric and score? How did I do it?
Speaker 2: As I matured and I look at the list, I
Speaker 2: go some of the things that I thought was a
Speaker 2: good way of keeping score ended up not being as
Speaker 2: important as I thought.
Speaker 4: But Bob, and you'll remember, you were kind of there.
Speaker 2: I had put on my list on a sports team
Speaker 2: win a championship, and if I hadn't have written that down.
Speaker 2: When I was approach to buy the teams, I initially
Speaker 2: said no. I said, I'm working at AOL, I have
Speaker 2: two young children. There's no way I could own a team.
Speaker 2: And I came home and Lynn said to me, what's new?
Speaker 2: What happened today? And I said, oh, this guy approached
Speaker 2: me wanted to buy teams. And she said what did
Speaker 2: you say?
Speaker 4: And I said, I can't engaged at the company. We
Speaker 4: have young kids.
Speaker 2: And Lynn said to me, hey, we've been together for
Speaker 2: a long time. We'd be together forever. What if you
Speaker 2: get ninety nine of the one hundred and one thing's
Speaker 2: done and you don't buy a team and you don't
Speaker 2: win a championship, and so well, this is why I
Speaker 2: love you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm going to go and.
Speaker 2: I bought the team and we've won championships. But it's
Speaker 2: also been like the best financial decision as a family
Speaker 2: we could have made.
Speaker 4: So I'm now at like ninety four.
Speaker 2: I wrote this list in nineteen eighty six, and back
Speaker 2: then I said I want to go into outer space.
Speaker 2: That seemed crazy. Right now I go, oh, I'm definitely
Speaker 2: gonna get that one checked off, right, I mean, Richard
Speaker 2: Branson's called me, Bezos has called me, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: I will get into outer space, and I'm clicking them off.
Speaker 2: But it also was will I be happy and self
Speaker 2: actualized at the end of the journey, And some of
Speaker 2: the things on the list weren't going to make me happy,
Speaker 2: And so I've matured, if you will, And I don't
Speaker 2: think I have to get all one hundred and one done,
Speaker 2: But you know, big important things like falling in love,
Speaker 2: getting married, and having children, having grandchildren, living a healthy life,
Speaker 2: giving back.
Speaker 4: Those are the things that I think will be most important.
Speaker 4: At the end of the day.
Speaker 3: You touched on your childhood and growing up and what
Speaker 3: it meant to you. If I remember my story right,
Speaker 3: I think your high school guidance counselor told you you
Speaker 3: weren't college material and tried to steer you to a
Speaker 3: vocational school. Obviously that didn't sit well with you. You
Speaker 3: went onto Georgetown, and I think that really set you
Speaker 3: on the track of technology and got you into tech.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us a little bit more about that story,
Speaker 3: because I do think that probably was a seminal moment
Speaker 3: for ted Leonsis and where you wound up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I probably created the first algorithmic based liberal arts
Speaker 2: program ever and it was powered by a Jesuit priest
Speaker 2: who was my mentor.
Speaker 4: I had to write a thesis.
Speaker 2: And I was a little bit lazy and said what
Speaker 2: are you going to write about? And I said, I'll
Speaker 2: come up with the idea over the weekend. So I
Speaker 2: went to the library and I was with some buddies
Speaker 2: and I said, all right, I'm going to find the shortest,
Speaker 2: easiest book to read in the library. I found Old
Speaker 2: Man in the Seat and it's a novella. If you
Speaker 2: will and I read in like an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: And on Monday I went to see my mentor, father,
Speaker 2: Joseph Dirkin, Society of Jesus, and he said, okay, great,
Speaker 2: tell me what you thought of the book. And I
Speaker 2: gave him like an annotated book report, and he said,
Speaker 2: I'm so disappointed in you. There's so much going on
Speaker 2: in this book with this author at the time it
Speaker 2: was published. You're better than this. And he challenged me
Speaker 2: to be more of a critical thinker.
Speaker 4: So I didn't know anything about Hemingway.
Speaker 2: There was no Internet back then, so I literally and
Speaker 2: got a bunch.
Speaker 4: Of his books.
Speaker 2: And the second book I read, Across the River and
Speaker 2: Into the Trees, was nothing like Old Man in the Sea,
Speaker 2: And as I started to do research, Hemingway was a
Speaker 2: journalist Esquire Magazine, New Yorker Magazine, and then he became
Speaker 2: a writer and Old Man in the Sea was published
Speaker 2: in the fifties. He won a Pulit surprise, he ended
Speaker 2: up taking his life. And I just had this idea
Speaker 2: that I think Ernest Hemingway wrote this book earlier in
Speaker 2: his career and he needed the money, and you know,
Speaker 2: jazz was becoming popular and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg,
Speaker 2: and he went back to his journalistic style. And Father
Speaker 2: Dirk and said, well, great, how are you going to
Speaker 2: prove it? And I said, I'll call his wife. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'll try and talk to the publisher. And Father Dirkin,
Speaker 2: to his credit, said why don't we use a computer?
Speaker 2: And I said, a computer like in the movies. Like.
Speaker 2: We had one computer on campus in the registrar's office.
Speaker 2: It was IBM three stixy and it spit out for
Speaker 2: students what classes you would take. So he introduced me
Speaker 2: to a linguistics major. He introduced me to someone who
Speaker 2: worked in the computer mis department, and we went to
Speaker 2: dinner and we came up with the idea of I
Speaker 2: would have to type in the first five thousand lines
Speaker 2: of a book and articles from the fifties, from the forties.
Speaker 4: From the thirties.
Speaker 2: And then the linguistics major she came up with these
Speaker 2: metrics words, person sentences, sentences per paragraph, pronoun references. There
Speaker 2: were seventeen measures, and then the programmer wrote this code
Speaker 2: to basically answer the question. Based on this algorithm, when
Speaker 2: was Old Man in the Sea as a control written?
Speaker 4: And it said the book was written in.
Speaker 2: The thirties, not in nineteen fifty two, and it was
Speaker 2: mind blowing to us. And you know, I wrote a
Speaker 2: college thesis. But it showed how a computer and software
Speaker 2: and algorithms could find essence of truth in the data
Speaker 2: and show you something that you never knew happened.
Speaker 4: And it was truly for me.
Speaker 2: Ah moment, and it powered pretty much everything for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life and career.
Speaker 4: Made a movie in a similar fashion in that.
Speaker 2: I didn't have anything to read Bob and I started
Speaker 2: reading the Last thirty Days of the New York Times
Speaker 2: from a bookstore in Saint Bart's and I read an
Speaker 2: obituary about an author named Iris Chang and she wrote
Speaker 2: a book called.
Speaker 4: The Rape of Name King.
Speaker 2: And when I got home, I went on Amazon and
Speaker 2: I said, I'm going to buy the book, and their
Speaker 2: simple little algorithm said, oh.
Speaker 4: If you like this book, then you like these books.
Speaker 2: And there was a starburst that said the Forgotten Holocaust
Speaker 2: and it was basically behind the Chinese Communist Wall. This
Speaker 2: was in nineteen thirty four. I was at AOL, I
Speaker 2: had some contacts. I worked with the people at CIA,
Speaker 2: and I made a film called Nang King and it
Speaker 2: won Best at Open Sundayands, it.
Speaker 4: Went on HBO.
Speaker 2: It won the Emmy Award for Best Documentary. And it
Speaker 2: all came from reading an obituary and an algorithm telling
Speaker 2: me there's more to this story than this just this
Speaker 2: one book, and that turned me into making films.
Speaker 3: More mathem magic. Right after this quick break, welcome back
Speaker 3: to Mathemagic. Let's hear more from my conversation with Ted
Speaker 3: leonsis so Ted, you make mundane things sound exciting about
Speaker 3: adding a twist, and I want to tell a story
Speaker 3: on you. When I got to AOL and we were
Speaker 3: in this whole process of how can we make this
Speaker 3: company profitable? I was laying out to our group of
Speaker 3: senior leaders, tying it to what the stock price could
Speaker 3: be because they all were equity holders if we achieved
Speaker 3: those earnings levels, and I start think it's mathematical, it's
Speaker 3: this and this and this, and you could see people
Speaker 3: sort of glazing over some skepticism. You suddenly amped up
Speaker 3: the discussion by declaring to the room that Bob, I'm
Speaker 3: going to give you my house if we hit that
Speaker 3: stock price. Suddenly the room was on fire. And by
Speaker 3: the way, when we walked out of the room, you
Speaker 3: sort of gave me that ted le Ounce's smile and goes,
Speaker 3: I'll be delighted to give you by house hip. The
Speaker 3: stock hits that price, and you knew exactly what you
Speaker 3: were doing. I've seen you use that technique other times,
Speaker 3: and I know you're using it in your business. How
Speaker 3: do you think about that and what's the benefit of it?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that people want to have romance in
Speaker 2: their life. People want to have hopes and dreams. And
Speaker 2: my beef if you will after we acquire Time Warner
Speaker 2: was we put out a company goal of ten billion
Speaker 2: dollars of EBITA and with a billion dollars of synergy
Speaker 2: EBAA savings.
Speaker 4: And I remember.
Speaker 2: Saying, do you think a mom or a dad is
Speaker 2: going to work late, work over the weekend and come
Speaker 2: home and have spouse or partners say what you do today?
Speaker 4: And it's I contributed to our synergies and EBITDA.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, people want best, they want higher calling, right,
Speaker 2: but AOL was at its best. We said, we're out
Speaker 2: to create a medium that is more valuable than the
Speaker 2: media before it radio, television, and we kind of meant
Speaker 2: that because the higher calling of the Internet of interactivity
Speaker 2: and scale and faster and cheaper till it's free.
Speaker 4: Was very enabling, very empowering, very.
Speaker 2: Connected to people's DNA of we want to be social,
Speaker 2: we want to belong to something.
Speaker 4: And you know why you and I made.
Speaker 2: A great team was you were the best business person
Speaker 2: I had ever been exposed to. But my gift was
Speaker 2: to be able to say, how do we motivate people
Speaker 2: and what will become their story and narrative when they
Speaker 2: go home. You've got to be able to have both
Speaker 2: in balance to build great businesses.
Speaker 3: As an observer, one of your superpowers has been people.
Speaker 3: You spot people. But I want to ask you a
Speaker 3: question about that. When you spot these special people and
Speaker 3: you've got a long list of those folks you've found,
Speaker 3: do you treat them differently? Do you manage them differently
Speaker 3: than you do everybody else?
Speaker 4: For me on the people's skills, a lot of it
Speaker 4: comes from my family. The ethnic family around your dinner
Speaker 4: table will rip each other and needle each other and
Speaker 4: fight and have real diversity. But then when you leave
Speaker 4: the dinner table, you know.
Speaker 2: I'd have friends over from college who'd come and think,
Speaker 2: you guys hate each other. My family, we don't even
Speaker 2: talk at dinner, right, or we don't even have dinner together,
Speaker 2: But they wouldn't realize. No, this is how we share
Speaker 2: our emotions, our thoughts, and then when we leave the
Speaker 2: dinner table whereas tight as can be. So that's always
Speaker 2: driven me. I want companies. I want executives that aren't
Speaker 2: afraid to speak truth, to give you a different point
Speaker 2: of view. And once we get into that cadence, then
Speaker 2: we can have a great relationship. And the relationships are
Speaker 2: going to be filled with ups and downs. One of
Speaker 2: my business partners, Peter Gouber, the Great Peter Gouber's and
Speaker 2: is it's the youngest eighty year old on the planet
Speaker 2: and the greatest guy ever. We once did a deal.
Speaker 2: We didn't realize we were competing with each other for
Speaker 2: the deal, and then we I found out at the
Speaker 2: last minute he won the deal, and I went to
Speaker 2: him and said, wow, I had no idea you were
Speaker 2: bidding on this and I wanted to do it, and
Speaker 2: he said, hey, I love you.
Speaker 4: Let's split it fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to make any big on it, any profit,
Speaker 2: and Ted will laugh together, will cry together, but we'll
Speaker 2: be in it together.
Speaker 4: And it'll probably be more successful because I'm not that smart.
Speaker 2: You're not that smart anymore, but together we probably do well.
Speaker 4: And that was such genius.
Speaker 2: The company we bought Team Liquid, which is one of
Speaker 2: the most valuable esports teams. We made investments in Epic
Speaker 2: Games and the Antic and the companies called Axiomatic, and
Speaker 2: it's a big hit.
Speaker 4: And his instinct was really right.
Speaker 2: This notion of we'll laugh together, we'll cry together, and
Speaker 2: together we're going to do a better job really proved true.
Speaker 2: That was like the ultimate people person and it worked.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I've always believed that be a
Speaker 2: people person, do the right thing in the right way,
Speaker 2: and make a ton of money.
Speaker 3: Right, let's go to some advice before we wrap up.
Speaker 3: I want to do one piece of advice. If you
Speaker 3: could go back in time and give your twenty one
Speaker 3: year old self some advice, what would that advice be?
Speaker 4: Slow down a little bit.
Speaker 2: I mean, I really got driven by accomplishment, and this
Speaker 2: relentlessness and pace sometimes let you lose a great experience
Speaker 2: because you're just so busy, right. I mean you used
Speaker 2: to say you want something done, give it to the
Speaker 2: busiest person. There's a lot of truth to that. But
Speaker 2: the price you pay is you'll miss a moment with
Speaker 2: your grandchild, you'll miss a moment with your boyfriend or girlfriend,
Speaker 2: you'll miss a sunset. As you grow older, you realize
Speaker 2: that was a big price to pay, and so my
Speaker 2: advice would be stay on that fast track, but it's
Speaker 2: okay to take the step off.
Speaker 3: We wrap up each episode of Math and Magic with
Speaker 3: a shout out to the greats on the math side
Speaker 3: of the business analytical view and the magic side. This year, Creativity,
Speaker 3: you've seen so many people. I got to ask you
Speaker 3: for the shout outs. Who would you give the shout
Speaker 3: out to? For the math person and for the magic person?
Speaker 4: You know, for the math person, I am going to.
Speaker 2: Go out of the box because his reputation somehow got besmirched.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, job out of college, I was
Speaker 2: asked to find a speaker for our group. And I
Speaker 2: had read an article and then went and met a
Speaker 2: man da named doctor Minski, who worked at the MIT
Speaker 2: Lab and was considered a father of AI.
Speaker 4: And he came and gave a speech as.
Speaker 2: A prop He wanted a piano, and he started his
Speaker 2: speech by sitting at the piano and he was a
Speaker 2: trained like concert pianist.
Speaker 4: He played piano beautifully and it was shocking. It was
Speaker 4: like out of context.
Speaker 2: And then he went into his speech and said, we'll
Speaker 2: know when the machines are important and have arrived when
Speaker 2: they can do that, because every time I play, I'm
Speaker 2: feeling the music, I'm sentient. And then he talked about
Speaker 2: the formula and the algorithms, and boy, that really had
Speaker 2: an effect on me.
Speaker 4: I would say, you know.
Speaker 2: An obvious person with Steve Jobs, and you know we
Speaker 2: knew Steve. I grew up with Steve. His gift was saying,
Speaker 2: you know why is Apple the most valuable company in
Speaker 2: the world. Apple is where liberal arts and engineering come together.
Speaker 4: And he was able to take.
Speaker 5: Art and science and be able to express it and
Speaker 5: obviously what's ended up being the most important piece of
Speaker 5: technology of our lifetime.
Speaker 4: Time on the.
Speaker 3: Iphoneed You are a magnificent human being, a great friend.
Speaker 3: I think you are, by the way, destined to be
Speaker 3: this creative, genius and successful business person. You shared a
Speaker 3: birthday with Elvis, David Bowie and even Stephen Hawking, so
Speaker 3: must have been something in the stars. Thanks for sharing
Speaker 3: your stories today and thanks for decades of friendship. Here
Speaker 3: are a few things I picked up from my conversation
Speaker 3: with Ted. One build value with data. Today businesses have
Speaker 3: access to more data than ever before, but don't rely
Speaker 3: on just that. Connect the dots to get a deeper
Speaker 3: picture of your audience and provide them with services they value. Two.
Speaker 3: Make a list of your priorities. After a close brush
Speaker 3: with death, Ted made a list of one hundred and
Speaker 3: one things he wants to do before he dies. Had
Speaker 3: he not narrowed down these priorities, he wouldn't have achieved
Speaker 3: some of his biggest dreams and opportunities. Take time to
Speaker 3: reflect on your own goals, so when opportunity knocks, you
Speaker 3: know what you want.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 3: Remember what motivates people. Ted is the ultimate team builder.
Speaker 3: He knows people are excited when they get to work
Speaker 3: together to build something visionary and purposeful. Create opportunities for
Speaker 3: your team to work on something that inspires them. I'm
Speaker 3: Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 1: to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio. The show
Speaker 1: is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney Rosenbloom
Speaker 1: for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no
Speaker 1: small feat our editor Emily Meronoff, our engineers Jessica Crincicch
Speaker 1: and Bahid Fraser, our executive producers nickki Etoor and Ali Perry,
Speaker 1: and of course Gail Raoul, Eric Angel Noel and everyone
Speaker 1: who helped bring this show to your ears. Until next time,