December 5, 2024 • 23 mins
Martha Stewart has been a household name for over four decades and she still isn’t done building her empire. During her rise, the world’s first female self-made billionaire ignored conventional wisdom to become an Emmy Award-winning TV host, best-selling author, and creator of a groundbreaking magazine. Beyond those accolades, her wildly successful merchandising business and multi-channel lifestyle company has established her as an innovative mind in business. Bob sat down with Martha for an intimate live recording at iHeartMedia HQ in front of 100 marketing, advertising, and branding executives. Celebrating her 100th book, Martha: The Cookbook: 100 Favorite Recipes, with Lessons and Stories from My Kitchen, this conversation between friends covers the pivotal decisions in Martha’s career and unpacks the guiding philosophy that built an icon.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And those guys they actually looked at the July issue
that I had prototyped and they said, this is fabulous,
but what would you do next July? And I said, well,
living is a limitless subject matter.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to iHeart. We're doing a live episode of my podcast,
Math and Magic, and we're here celebrating a great friend
of mine who has got her one hundredth book. Congratulations.
I think I met Martha on about book number two
or three. We were trying to remember how long it's been.
(00:48):
She is a podcaster with US, as well as being
probably the most famous and influential lifestyle brand. Indeed, she
is one of those one word people, Martha. She is
also author, TV host, product creator, and she was even
the first self made female billionaire. Martha's life reminds me
(01:12):
of that old Chinese proverb those who say it can't
be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
Martha has always been that risk taker who has completely
ignored the conventional wisdom and wins again and again and again, books, catering,
TV show or magazine. She was, by the way, even
in the Paris Olympics. Anybody see that. It's interesting if
(01:35):
I think about Martha, and I've known her a long time,
why she's so successful. One, she has this incredible vision,
but she also has a tenacity, and she has a
way of bringing new ideas, doing it a different way,
but she brings it over the finish line again and again. Martha. Welcome,
Thank you very much. Bob did before we dig in.
(01:57):
I want to do a little feature we call you
in sixty seconds and it's sort of a lightning round style.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Who makes these things up?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I make these up? Come on, Come on, okay, so
here we go. You ready? Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Cats?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Early riser or night out very early riser, West Coast
or East Coast, East Coast, Maine or New York? Mean salt?
Oh salty? We have one person from me? Salty or sweet?
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Sweet?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Coffee or team?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I like both?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Streaming video or podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Streaming video?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Sorry, oh wow, a knife to the heart. Introvert or extrovert.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
I think I'm an extrovert.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Eat out or order in eat out good? I have
actually I have never ordered in ever. No, I'm gonna
tell you how it works. First, costandric On s tequila
or CBD, oh, comedy or drama, drama, Christmas or Thanksgiving?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
New Years?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Call or text?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Call or text I hate text.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Call? Okay, pop get a little harder. Favorite luxury vacation
where I haven't been, Favorite vegetable, figetable, secret.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Talent, secret talent juggling.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
That's a good one. And the last one, the piece
of technology you can't do without.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Oh my gosh, my iPad.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
All right, let's get started. You and your book first.
Did you ever think you were going to wind up
writing one hundred books? Yeah? You did.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, it's just a minor goal.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
So tell us what makes this book different? What's the
theme and the idea and the vision of Martha the
cook This is the book.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
It's called Martha the Cookbook.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's a hundred of my favorite recipes, not all I
have a lot more favorite recipes, but a hundred of
my favorite recipes.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
And it's nice because it it incorporates.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Not only a really good, authentic and well tested recipe,
but also a lot of archival photographs that people hadn't
seen before, as well as sort of backstories for each
of the recipes. And it's sort of hitting a chord
this year I think it's with a documentary that came
out and that it came out big time. It's a
(04:39):
very very nice and I do have a can I
can I brag one I was just called before I
came here tonight and it has reached number one on
the New York Times Bestseller this before.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Before it even before it even got into the bookstores.
Isn't that great?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Fantastic number? Radulate broadcast book. I want to ask you
just a little bit about the cooking part. You've cooked
meals for me over the years. You were at my
fortieth birthday and then you cooked for me my forty
first birthday. But it seems so effortless, and it just
you always do this at the East. I've been at
(05:16):
your house and it's just like things happen. How does
that happen? What is the secret to that?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And just being relaxed, I think, and being able to
do such a thing and to be interested in doing
such a thing. I love to cook, I love to entertain.
I have made a company on those subjects and it's
just part of my lifestyle. And it's always fun to
have friends over. It's always friends. It's fun to see
what they respond to and what they do. Now.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Were you that kind of cook before you started your
catering company?
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
In nineteen sixty one, I went to I got married,
and I think it was nineteen sixty one, and I
went to Paris and I bought Julia child Mestering The
Art of French Cooking, Volume one, and I'm the original Julie.
Remember there was that movie Julia and Julie. Well, I'm
I'm Julie. I should have done the movie then. But
I cooked every single recipe and I entertained our friends
(06:09):
on Riverside Drive. I lived in two ninety Riverside Drive
on one hundred and first Street, in a beautiful apartment
looking over the Hudson River where we looked out the
window when people were going to Woodstock. Remember Woodstock?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Did you go to Woodstock?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I was, Yes, I was, and I was been a
long way to drive.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I watched all the cars go up up the west
Side Drive. I kept thinking, why aren't I going up there?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You know, I should have. I should have, would have,
could have.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But but it was so much fun, and that's that's
what I did. I really did love to cook and
love to entertain.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And how did that turn into the catering business. I know,
you were on Wall Street for a while and then
you suddenly wound up in the CATERI I.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Quit Wall Street after about seven or eight years. I
was an institutional stockbroker, dealing with people like the Manufacturers
Hanover Bank three to be a bank called Manufacturers hent
Over and Man Yeah and uh and my clients were
like Fidelity up in Boston and a lot of other
impressive investors. And when I quit, I went to I
(07:13):
went to Westport, Connecticut to raise my daughter and to
start a business. And it was catering. It was just
something that interested me. I don't know why, because nothing
is harder than running a catering business. You set up
a restaurant every single night somewhere, and you take all
the food to it somewhere, and then you break it
down at the end of the night and you drag
(07:33):
yourself home and it's a it's a really difficult job.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
But when you started, catering was much more of one
that cheese on ritz crackers and uh, oh not mine,
I know. And suddenly you came in with this whole
new approach, the catering. Yeah, where did that come from?
I mean, you must have looked and said, oh, this
is why you do catering, and or did you.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Just I loved good food.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I had traveled a little bit by that time, and
I had eaten in the very finest restaurants. My husband
lived in a building when he was growing up. He
lived in the Ritz Tower, and they used to have
a restaurant downstairs which was room service for their apartment
at the Ritz Tower, and they had it was the
Pavillon here at the Pavion restaurant.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
So I started.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I got to eat a lot of that good Pavillon food.
And plus I grew up with great food. My mother
was a great cook, a country cook, you know, Polish
peasant dishes, but delicious, and no one would turn down
anything in our house.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And so then you turned that in two books.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, then I realized that if I didn't do something
with all this great stuff I was doing these parties,
I was creating for people, not myself, so much that
if I ever did have grandchildren, they would say what
did Grandma do with her life? And I thought, well,
you know, maybe I should write a book about it.
So we started to photograph all the parties, and I
turned into entertaining my first book in nineteen eighty two,
(08:59):
and that book really did strike a very, very very
strong cord with the Housewives of America because they realized
that they could also enterchain, they could cook, they could
set a pretty table, they could collect, they could have
a nicer legs than they were having, and so it
really made a difference.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
So let's jump a little bit. Time and Warner Merge
create Time. Warner. You and I've known each other before then,
and so I was on the inside there, and I
remember there were two things you wanted to do. One
was a magazine and one was a TV show that
was sort of a big jump. Where did you get
the idea? And I want to paint a picture that
(09:39):
time Inche couldn't have been more straight legs, more sort
of male dominated. How on earth did you get that
magazine through? Well?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I wanted you.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I was writing a book a year at that time,
after entertaining my publisher Clerks and.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Potter, who is still my publisher. This is a Clerkson
Potter book. Isn't that funny?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
That's loyal Yeah, that's loyalty on their part on my
part actually, And so I thought, what else could I do?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I can't I'd like writing the books, but.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
What else could I do to actually maximize the subject
matters that I liked so much? So I took an
idea of a beautiful how to book series to Clarkson Potter.
They passed on it. They said, eh, you know, we're
going to do some garden books and we'll do stuff,
but you can't do more than a book a year anyway.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And now I'm doing it four books a year.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So I thought, well, the other format that I could
do is a magazine.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So I went first.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
To Condy Nast to sign a new house who was
very receptive. He gave me enough money to do a prototype,
and he liked me, and I liked him.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
He was really smart, and when.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I came up with the prototype, he said, well, what
do you want it to be called? And I said,
Martha Stewart Living. And he said, well, it can be Living,
but it has to be Condy Nest Living because that's
my company. And I said, but I don't want it
to be Condie Nest.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I wanted to be Martha Stewart.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Somehow I knew that branding was important. So he said
he here's their type goes somewhere else and I took
it to Rupert Murdoch and I met with Rupert.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I loved Rupert so much.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
He was I meaning, now he's Fox News and all
that horrible stuff. I thought he was the I mean
he walked into the room and everybody and all the
men in the room just like melted in comparison. And
he said, oh, I'm closing magazine, so it's not a
good time for me to I'm selling seventeen. I'm getting
rid of everything. So he said, take it to Time.
(11:27):
They'll probably take it. So I met with all the
hun shows at Timed and I showed them the prototype,
and those guys they actually looked at the July issue
that I had prototyped and they said, this is fabulous,
but what would you do next July? And I said, well,
living is a limitless subject matter.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
They didn't get that. They thought one July was enough.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
And yet they gave me the money and they gave
me like a fifty to fifty partnership on the magazine,
and I made them write it on a piece of
paper and we had an actual agreement and we started
pup the magazine. It was a success from day one.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
That was a huge It was It was a.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Huge success, and it was the first really multi subject
lifestyle magazine and beautifully photographed and like with a clear vision, yes, right,
with a person's vision.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yes, yeah, tell us about the TV show.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Well then I came.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Then a year and a half later, I said, you know,
there's this thing called Synergy which time.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Remember they didn't like synergshow.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Oh I remember, I remember, boy, they did not.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Like the word synergy. It was a filthy dirty words.
But I love the word synergy.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I thought.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
They said, well, you know, you're gonna you're going to
accountabalize your magazine if you go on television.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Nobody's going to buy the magazine. I said that you're wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
There are people who read magazines and there are people
who watch television, and some people do both, but they're
not going to turn one off to to jeopardize the other.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
And I was right, and it worked.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So we had a daily television show after a couple
of years, and it was it was. It was great,
But in retrospect, I should have concentrated more on other
things that not just a daily television.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Daily television show eats you alive.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
As it does eat it eats you alive, you know,
you did the books, she did, the magazine you did,
the TV show you went on to do. Your company
(13:26):
made a lot of money. Public company made a big splash,
But at what point along the way did you realize
that you had something special and you had something no
one else did.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I concentrated really on getting everything done well, and we
had the best team. I was the CEO, I had
the best president, I had the best lawyer and the
best legal officer. I had the best CFO. Everybody was
really young and vital, and I was in my forties
(13:59):
by the time I did this, so close to fifty
when I started my big business.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
But it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And really choosing like minded people to work with you
really made a huge difference in the success of the company,
and they all went off to do amazing things.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Everybody well, by the way, it was such a creative factory.
I remember when we started.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And we paid the creatives the same as we paid
the business people. That was one of my absolute rules
of the company was the creatives have to be paid.
I mean, in Hollywood, the creatives get paid more than
most of the executives, so why not in a magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
World Tonight, we've got a lot of advertising industry people here.
What advice would you have for them about building, maintaining
and evolving a brand. There can't be a brand any
clearer than yours, but it has evolved so much over
the years that it somehow has managed to keep pace well.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I think what you have to make sure is that
you stay authentic to the basic tenets.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Of the brand.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We have a whole list of things that our brand
stands for, which is beauty, practicality, authenticity, usefulness, all those
very simple words, but they really fit all together nicely,
and if you do stick to that and make fabulous products.
I started here on the retail pyramid. You can start
(15:20):
up here like Armani or Balenciaga, but I started down
here with Kmart because I thought I thought the masses
in America especially needed highest quality at the best possible pricing,
and I gave them the information in the magazine. Those
people down here are reading what everybody up here is
reading too.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Everybody wants to learn, and.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I always always love students, and I think that if you,
if you understand that your your audience is intelligent and
wants to learn and wants to enjoy, then you then
you can make a brand.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I think you've also proved that their taste is not
limited to people with a lot of money. That taste
is not bounded or limited by money either. You you
are in talking about the brand. You've done a masterful
job of the evolution you know, pre internet agents.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Did you call it evolution and not reinvention? People are
calling it reinvention.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
No, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I don't reinvent myself. I'm the same person you. I
cleaned out the chicken coops.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
By the way, I had a chickens once in Connecticut.
You came over and you sat, and I had concrete floors.
You set the chickens feed are cold. You have to
change this. So I don't know if you remember that,
but that was the mont the Stewart advice about.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
My chicken might have wooden floor.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Of course you have wood. I went out and got
some wood. I gotta I gotta do the right thing.
But you have, you've done a masterful job of this
evolution that somehow you've managed to sort of stay synced
up to where the world is going, where it is.
It's that conscious or intuitive.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
I think it's both. I think it's both.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I want to make sure that I am where people
need and want me my information and my teaching and
my things that we create. It's all about need and
want and if you keep that in mind, and everybody
needs stuff and everybody wants stuff, and just how do
they get it? Who provides it is the important thing.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well, you know, it's interesting even you as the brand
have evolved. I mean I think about that, and I'm
not much of a roast watcher, but the Bieber roast
was pretty amazing. There you were, Martha Stewart's going to
get up and talk, and you know, everybody has something
in their head and then you start trying to go what,
(17:42):
But you just got it. You got sort of what
you needed to be at that moment.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
That's about the fearlessness.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I mean, you have to be pretty fearless to get
up with background and say those horrible things.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
And take the horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Things that they're saying about you, by the way, they
said they worst, They said horrible things about me, and
you just have to.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You know, what about my period? Remember that one? Oh
my god, it was in the place the scene era
or something.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
There is a lot of talk about work life balance,
especially among gen ZS. You seem to be more on
the work life integration any insights.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, forget the balance. There's no such thing as balance.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
There is.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I mean, you cannot balance. It just doesn't work out.
I mean it's a lie. Whatever people say, oh, I
have the most balanced life, they do not. And you
just you can ask pretty much anybody and truthfully, they
will tell you that it's very, very, almost impossible to
be balanced.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Don't you agree?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I agree one hundred percent. Maybe I've rationalized the life
work balance is over your lifetime. So those years in
which I didn't work, you know, zero to fifteen or whatever,
and I took about seven or eight years off. I'm
counting that to somehow never works that way? What role?
We talked a little bit about your adventures, and we
mentioned a couple. I know you've done a lot and
(19:11):
that aren't what you would think Martha's do. What will
be doing? How does that those adventures off the beaten
path inform your life and your business?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I've been lucky that I've been able to travel
to distant places, to unusual places. I love to take
other people on trips too, And for a few years,
like seven years, I took all my nieces and nephews
to exotic, wonderful places for their christmasifications.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
No parents allowed, and it changed their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
They've all turned out to be really, really fabulous young people.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
They were from ten to maybe sixteen when I was
dragging them around the world.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
But these were fun trips.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Like Egypt with the leading Egyptologists from Yale University for
ten days.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
That's a pretty fabulous trip.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
We're going to Rome and I bought the keys to
the Sistine Chapel. I bought the keys to the Colisseum,
and I bought the keys to that. This is a
good way to spend money. And I bought the keys
to the Basilica. And we're going and spending four days
going to these places at off hours.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It's going to be so.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Much fun for them. And they've been to all seven continents.
They want to go to Namibia for Christmas. I mean
it's going to be one hundred degrees there that they
don't care. They want to go see the rhinos, you know,
before there's no rhinos. So that's that's what I'd like
to spend my time doing again, educating and enjoying at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
How does it seep into the way you see the world,
your taste, your product.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Well, it makes me, it makes me kind of sad
when you go around the world and see nature, see
the environment, see all of that stuff, and try to
stay optimistic. When you go to Antarctica and the and
the icebergs are calving while you're looking at them, and
great big tidal ways are coming at your boat because
the global warming is occurring at a rapid rate, all
(21:06):
of that gets pretty scary. But if you don't do
it now, when are you going to do it? And
are you going to be able to do it? So
my theory is do it now, do it as fast
as you can, see as much as you can, and
try to learn from it and try to help.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So let's end with some advice. I got a lot
of marketing people here. What are they missing? I mean,
you've been marketing your whole life, whether you call yourself
a marketer or not, you've been one of the most
spectacular marketers. Now what are they missing? What don't they know?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think they forget that everybody really wants to learn stuff,
and it's not so easy. It's not so easy to
learn and to have access to information that's pertin into
it everyday life. And I've worked with so so many
people for so long that I really believe everybody's a
student and everybody is encouraged with the dissemination of really
(22:00):
interesting information. I mean, how to clean your shower. You
think that's so mundane. People listen to me when I
tell them how to clean your shower, and they want
to know. They really want to know some simple things
like that, you know how to get the seeds out
of a pomegranate. And now with Instagram, things have changed
because now you can know.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Everything on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
It's so great, and I try to make use of
those tools, to the social media tools to teach.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Second piece of advice, if you could go back in time,
what advice would you give to your twenty one year
old self?
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Be more careful. Don't be so blase. I was blase.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I trusted a couple people I should never have trusted.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It all worked out well, Ah could have been better. Martha,
congrat some book one hundred, your podcast and all you're
doing for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney
Rosenbloom for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
no small feat. The math and magic team is Jessica Crimechitch,
Bahid Fraser and Julia Weaver. Our executive producers are Ali
Perry and Nikky Etour. Until next time,
You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And those guys they actually looked at the July issue
that I had prototyped and they said, this is fabulous,
but what would you do next July? And I said, well,
living is a limitless subject matter.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to iHeart. We're doing a live episode of my podcast,
Math and Magic, and we're here celebrating a great friend
of mine who has got her one hundredth book. Congratulations.
I think I met Martha on about book number two
or three. We were trying to remember how long it's been.
(00:48):
She is a podcaster with US, as well as being
probably the most famous and influential lifestyle brand. Indeed, she
is one of those one word people, Martha. She is
also author, TV host, product creator, and she was even
the first self made female billionaire. Martha's life reminds me
(01:12):
of that old Chinese proverb those who say it can't
be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
Martha has always been that risk taker who has completely
ignored the conventional wisdom and wins again and again and again, books, catering,
TV show or magazine. She was, by the way, even
in the Paris Olympics. Anybody see that. It's interesting if
(01:35):
I think about Martha, and I've known her a long time,
why she's so successful. One, she has this incredible vision,
but she also has a tenacity, and she has a
way of bringing new ideas, doing it a different way,
but she brings it over the finish line again and again. Martha. Welcome,
Thank you very much. Bob did before we dig in.
(01:57):
I want to do a little feature we call you
in sixty seconds and it's sort of a lightning round style.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Who makes these things up?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I make these up? Come on, Come on, okay, so
here we go. You ready? Do you prefer cats or dogs?
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Cats?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Early riser or night out very early riser, West Coast
or East Coast, East Coast, Maine or New York? Mean salt?
Oh salty? We have one person from me? Salty or sweet?
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Sweet?
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Coffee or team?
Speaker 1 (02:33):
I like both?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Streaming video or podcast.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Streaming video?
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Sorry, oh wow, a knife to the heart. Introvert or extrovert.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
I think I'm an extrovert.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Eat out or order in eat out good? I have
actually I have never ordered in ever. No, I'm gonna
tell you how it works. First, costandric On s tequila
or CBD, oh, comedy or drama, drama, Christmas or Thanksgiving?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
New Years?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Call or text?
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Call or text I hate text.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Call? Okay, pop get a little harder. Favorite luxury vacation
where I haven't been, Favorite vegetable, figetable, secret.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Talent, secret talent juggling.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
That's a good one. And the last one, the piece
of technology you can't do without.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Oh my gosh, my iPad.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
All right, let's get started. You and your book first.
Did you ever think you were going to wind up
writing one hundred books? Yeah? You did.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, it's just a minor goal.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
So tell us what makes this book different? What's the
theme and the idea and the vision of Martha the
cook This is the book.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
It's called Martha the Cookbook.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
It's a hundred of my favorite recipes, not all I
have a lot more favorite recipes, but a hundred of
my favorite recipes.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
And it's nice because it it incorporates.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Not only a really good, authentic and well tested recipe,
but also a lot of archival photographs that people hadn't
seen before, as well as sort of backstories for each
of the recipes. And it's sort of hitting a chord
this year I think it's with a documentary that came
out and that it came out big time. It's a
(04:39):
very very nice and I do have a can I
can I brag one I was just called before I
came here tonight and it has reached number one on
the New York Times Bestseller this before.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Before it even before it even got into the bookstores.
Isn't that great?
Speaker 3 (04:56):
Fantastic number? Radulate broadcast book. I want to ask you
just a little bit about the cooking part. You've cooked
meals for me over the years. You were at my
fortieth birthday and then you cooked for me my forty
first birthday. But it seems so effortless, and it just
you always do this at the East. I've been at
(05:16):
your house and it's just like things happen. How does
that happen? What is the secret to that?
Speaker 2 (05:22):
And just being relaxed, I think, and being able to
do such a thing and to be interested in doing
such a thing. I love to cook, I love to entertain.
I have made a company on those subjects and it's
just part of my lifestyle. And it's always fun to
have friends over. It's always friends. It's fun to see
what they respond to and what they do. Now.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Were you that kind of cook before you started your
catering company?
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
In nineteen sixty one, I went to I got married,
and I think it was nineteen sixty one, and I
went to Paris and I bought Julia child Mestering The
Art of French Cooking, Volume one, and I'm the original Julie.
Remember there was that movie Julia and Julie. Well, I'm
I'm Julie. I should have done the movie then. But
I cooked every single recipe and I entertained our friends
(06:09):
on Riverside Drive. I lived in two ninety Riverside Drive
on one hundred and first Street, in a beautiful apartment
looking over the Hudson River where we looked out the
window when people were going to Woodstock. Remember Woodstock?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Did you go to Woodstock?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
I was, Yes, I was, and I was been a
long way to drive.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I watched all the cars go up up the west
Side Drive. I kept thinking, why aren't I going up there?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You know, I should have. I should have, would have,
could have.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
But but it was so much fun, and that's that's
what I did. I really did love to cook and
love to entertain.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
And how did that turn into the catering business. I know,
you were on Wall Street for a while and then
you suddenly wound up in the CATERI I.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Quit Wall Street after about seven or eight years. I
was an institutional stockbroker, dealing with people like the Manufacturers
Hanover Bank three to be a bank called Manufacturers hent
Over and Man Yeah and uh and my clients were
like Fidelity up in Boston and a lot of other
impressive investors. And when I quit, I went to I
(07:13):
went to Westport, Connecticut to raise my daughter and to
start a business. And it was catering. It was just
something that interested me. I don't know why, because nothing
is harder than running a catering business. You set up
a restaurant every single night somewhere, and you take all
the food to it somewhere, and then you break it
down at the end of the night and you drag
(07:33):
yourself home and it's a it's a really difficult job.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
But when you started, catering was much more of one
that cheese on ritz crackers and uh, oh not mine,
I know. And suddenly you came in with this whole
new approach, the catering. Yeah, where did that come from?
I mean, you must have looked and said, oh, this
is why you do catering, and or did you.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
Just I loved good food.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I had traveled a little bit by that time, and
I had eaten in the very finest restaurants. My husband
lived in a building when he was growing up. He
lived in the Ritz Tower, and they used to have
a restaurant downstairs which was room service for their apartment
at the Ritz Tower, and they had it was the
Pavillon here at the Pavion restaurant.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
So I started.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I got to eat a lot of that good Pavillon food.
And plus I grew up with great food. My mother
was a great cook, a country cook, you know, Polish
peasant dishes, but delicious, and no one would turn down
anything in our house.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
And so then you turned that in two books.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, then I realized that if I didn't do something
with all this great stuff I was doing these parties,
I was creating for people, not myself, so much that
if I ever did have grandchildren, they would say what
did Grandma do with her life? And I thought, well,
you know, maybe I should write a book about it.
So we started to photograph all the parties, and I
turned into entertaining my first book in nineteen eighty two,
(08:59):
and that book really did strike a very, very very
strong cord with the Housewives of America because they realized
that they could also enterchain, they could cook, they could
set a pretty table, they could collect, they could have
a nicer legs than they were having, and so it
really made a difference.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
So let's jump a little bit. Time and Warner Merge
create Time. Warner. You and I've known each other before then,
and so I was on the inside there, and I
remember there were two things you wanted to do. One
was a magazine and one was a TV show that
was sort of a big jump. Where did you get
the idea? And I want to paint a picture that
(09:39):
time Inche couldn't have been more straight legs, more sort
of male dominated. How on earth did you get that
magazine through? Well?
Speaker 4 (09:46):
I wanted you.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
I was writing a book a year at that time,
after entertaining my publisher Clerks and.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Potter, who is still my publisher. This is a Clerkson
Potter book. Isn't that funny?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
That's loyal Yeah, that's loyalty on their part on my
part actually, And so I thought, what else could I do?
Speaker 4 (10:04):
I can't I'd like writing the books, but.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
What else could I do to actually maximize the subject
matters that I liked so much? So I took an
idea of a beautiful how to book series to Clarkson Potter.
They passed on it. They said, eh, you know, we're
going to do some garden books and we'll do stuff,
but you can't do more than a book a year anyway.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
And now I'm doing it four books a year.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
So I thought, well, the other format that I could
do is a magazine.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
So I went first.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
To Condy Nast to sign a new house who was
very receptive. He gave me enough money to do a prototype,
and he liked me, and I liked him.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
He was really smart, and when.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I came up with the prototype, he said, well, what
do you want it to be called? And I said,
Martha Stewart Living. And he said, well, it can be Living,
but it has to be Condy Nest Living because that's
my company. And I said, but I don't want it
to be Condie Nest.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I wanted to be Martha Stewart.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Somehow I knew that branding was important. So he said
he here's their type goes somewhere else and I took
it to Rupert Murdoch and I met with Rupert.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
I loved Rupert so much.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
He was I meaning, now he's Fox News and all
that horrible stuff. I thought he was the I mean
he walked into the room and everybody and all the
men in the room just like melted in comparison. And
he said, oh, I'm closing magazine, so it's not a
good time for me to I'm selling seventeen. I'm getting
rid of everything. So he said, take it to Time.
(11:27):
They'll probably take it. So I met with all the
hun shows at Timed and I showed them the prototype,
and those guys they actually looked at the July issue
that I had prototyped and they said, this is fabulous,
but what would you do next July? And I said, well,
living is a limitless subject matter.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
They didn't get that. They thought one July was enough.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
And yet they gave me the money and they gave
me like a fifty to fifty partnership on the magazine,
and I made them write it on a piece of
paper and we had an actual agreement and we started
pup the magazine. It was a success from day one.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
That was a huge It was It was a.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Huge success, and it was the first really multi subject
lifestyle magazine and beautifully photographed and like with a clear vision, yes, right,
with a person's vision.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yes, yeah, tell us about the TV show.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
Well then I came.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Then a year and a half later, I said, you know,
there's this thing called Synergy which time.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Remember they didn't like synergshow.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Oh I remember, I remember, boy, they did not.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Like the word synergy. It was a filthy dirty words.
But I love the word synergy.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
I thought.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
They said, well, you know, you're gonna you're going to
accountabalize your magazine if you go on television.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
Nobody's going to buy the magazine. I said that you're wrong.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
There are people who read magazines and there are people
who watch television, and some people do both, but they're
not going to turn one off to to jeopardize the other.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
And I was right, and it worked.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So we had a daily television show after a couple
of years, and it was it was. It was great,
But in retrospect, I should have concentrated more on other
things that not just a daily television.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Daily television show eats you alive.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
As it does eat it eats you alive, you know,
you did the books, she did, the magazine you did,
the TV show you went on to do. Your company
(13:26):
made a lot of money. Public company made a big splash,
But at what point along the way did you realize
that you had something special and you had something no
one else did.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
I concentrated really on getting everything done well, and we
had the best team. I was the CEO, I had
the best president, I had the best lawyer and the
best legal officer. I had the best CFO. Everybody was
really young and vital, and I was in my forties
(13:59):
by the time I did this, so close to fifty
when I started my big business.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
But it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And really choosing like minded people to work with you
really made a huge difference in the success of the company,
and they all went off to do amazing things.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Everybody well, by the way, it was such a creative factory.
I remember when we started.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
And we paid the creatives the same as we paid
the business people. That was one of my absolute rules
of the company was the creatives have to be paid.
I mean, in Hollywood, the creatives get paid more than
most of the executives, so why not in a magazine.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
World Tonight, we've got a lot of advertising industry people here.
What advice would you have for them about building, maintaining
and evolving a brand. There can't be a brand any
clearer than yours, but it has evolved so much over
the years that it somehow has managed to keep pace well.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I think what you have to make sure is that
you stay authentic to the basic tenets.
Speaker 4 (14:59):
Of the brand.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We have a whole list of things that our brand
stands for, which is beauty, practicality, authenticity, usefulness, all those
very simple words, but they really fit all together nicely,
and if you do stick to that and make fabulous products.
I started here on the retail pyramid. You can start
(15:20):
up here like Armani or Balenciaga, but I started down
here with Kmart because I thought I thought the masses
in America especially needed highest quality at the best possible pricing,
and I gave them the information in the magazine. Those
people down here are reading what everybody up here is
reading too.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Everybody wants to learn, and.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I always always love students, and I think that if you,
if you understand that your your audience is intelligent and
wants to learn and wants to enjoy, then you then
you can make a brand.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I think you've also proved that their taste is not
limited to people with a lot of money. That taste
is not bounded or limited by money either. You you
are in talking about the brand. You've done a masterful
job of the evolution you know, pre internet agents.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Did you call it evolution and not reinvention? People are
calling it reinvention.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
No, no, no, no no no.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
I don't reinvent myself. I'm the same person you. I
cleaned out the chicken coops.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
By the way, I had a chickens once in Connecticut.
You came over and you sat, and I had concrete floors.
You set the chickens feed are cold. You have to
change this. So I don't know if you remember that,
but that was the mont the Stewart advice about.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
My chicken might have wooden floor.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Of course you have wood. I went out and got
some wood. I gotta I gotta do the right thing.
But you have, you've done a masterful job of this
evolution that somehow you've managed to sort of stay synced
up to where the world is going, where it is.
It's that conscious or intuitive.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
I think it's both. I think it's both.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
I want to make sure that I am where people
need and want me my information and my teaching and
my things that we create. It's all about need and
want and if you keep that in mind, and everybody
needs stuff and everybody wants stuff, and just how do
they get it? Who provides it is the important thing.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well, you know, it's interesting even you as the brand
have evolved. I mean I think about that, and I'm
not much of a roast watcher, but the Bieber roast
was pretty amazing. There you were, Martha Stewart's going to
get up and talk, and you know, everybody has something
in their head and then you start trying to go what,
(17:42):
But you just got it. You got sort of what
you needed to be at that moment.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
That's about the fearlessness.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I mean, you have to be pretty fearless to get
up with background and say those horrible things.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
And take the horrible.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Things that they're saying about you, by the way, they
said they worst, They said horrible things about me, and
you just have to.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You know, what about my period? Remember that one? Oh
my god, it was in the place the scene era
or something.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
There is a lot of talk about work life balance,
especially among gen ZS. You seem to be more on
the work life integration any insights.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, forget the balance. There's no such thing as balance.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
There is.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I mean, you cannot balance. It just doesn't work out.
I mean it's a lie. Whatever people say, oh, I
have the most balanced life, they do not. And you
just you can ask pretty much anybody and truthfully, they
will tell you that it's very, very, almost impossible to
be balanced.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Don't you agree?
Speaker 3 (18:49):
I agree one hundred percent. Maybe I've rationalized the life
work balance is over your lifetime. So those years in
which I didn't work, you know, zero to fifteen or whatever,
and I took about seven or eight years off. I'm
counting that to somehow never works that way? What role?
We talked a little bit about your adventures, and we
mentioned a couple. I know you've done a lot and
(19:11):
that aren't what you would think Martha's do. What will
be doing? How does that those adventures off the beaten
path inform your life and your business?
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, I've been lucky that I've been able to travel
to distant places, to unusual places. I love to take
other people on trips too, And for a few years,
like seven years, I took all my nieces and nephews
to exotic, wonderful places for their christmasifications.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
No parents allowed, and it changed their lives.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
They've all turned out to be really, really fabulous young people.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Now.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
They were from ten to maybe sixteen when I was
dragging them around the world.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
But these were fun trips.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Like Egypt with the leading Egyptologists from Yale University for
ten days.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
That's a pretty fabulous trip.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
We're going to Rome and I bought the keys to
the Sistine Chapel. I bought the keys to the Colisseum,
and I bought the keys to that. This is a
good way to spend money. And I bought the keys
to the Basilica. And we're going and spending four days
going to these places at off hours.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
It's going to be so.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Much fun for them. And they've been to all seven continents.
They want to go to Namibia for Christmas. I mean
it's going to be one hundred degrees there that they
don't care. They want to go see the rhinos, you know,
before there's no rhinos. So that's that's what I'd like
to spend my time doing again, educating and enjoying at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
How does it seep into the way you see the world,
your taste, your product.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
Well, it makes me, it makes me kind of sad
when you go around the world and see nature, see
the environment, see all of that stuff, and try to
stay optimistic. When you go to Antarctica and the and
the icebergs are calving while you're looking at them, and
great big tidal ways are coming at your boat because
the global warming is occurring at a rapid rate, all
(21:06):
of that gets pretty scary. But if you don't do
it now, when are you going to do it? And
are you going to be able to do it? So
my theory is do it now, do it as fast
as you can, see as much as you can, and
try to learn from it and try to help.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
So let's end with some advice. I got a lot
of marketing people here. What are they missing? I mean,
you've been marketing your whole life, whether you call yourself
a marketer or not, you've been one of the most
spectacular marketers. Now what are they missing? What don't they know?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think they forget that everybody really wants to learn stuff,
and it's not so easy. It's not so easy to
learn and to have access to information that's pertin into
it everyday life. And I've worked with so so many
people for so long that I really believe everybody's a
student and everybody is encouraged with the dissemination of really
(22:00):
interesting information. I mean, how to clean your shower. You
think that's so mundane. People listen to me when I
tell them how to clean your shower, and they want
to know. They really want to know some simple things
like that, you know how to get the seeds out
of a pomegranate. And now with Instagram, things have changed
because now you can know.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Everything on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
It's so great, and I try to make use of
those tools, to the social media tools to teach.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Second piece of advice, if you could go back in time,
what advice would you give to your twenty one year
old self?
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Be more careful. Don't be so blase. I was blase.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I trusted a couple people I should never have trusted.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It all worked out well, Ah could have been better. Martha,
congrat some book one hundred, your podcast and all you're
doing for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening
to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts. The
show is hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sydney
Rosenbloom for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is
no small feat. The math and magic team is Jessica Crimechitch,
Bahid Fraser and Julia Weaver. Our executive producers are Ali
Perry and Nikky Etour. Until next time,
Host
Bob Pittman
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