No BS: Advice for In and Out of the Office With Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Questions Question.
Hi everyone, this is a special episode of Next Question.
I'm coming to you from my hometown of Arlington, Virginia.
My guests are the founders of Axios, Jim Vanda High
and Mike Allen. The occasion is Jim's new book, Just

(00:27):
the Good Stuff, No Bs, Secrets to Success no matter
what life throws at you. It is filled with hard
earned advice about life in and out of the workplace.
Jim and micro journalists and people of enormous character. It's
part of what's driven their success. First in founding Politico
and then Axios, I often turned to Jim and Mike

(00:49):
to understand some of the big, thorny issues we're grappling
with these days. This conversation ran the gamut the future
of media, the twenty twenty four election, AI, and the
try else and tribulations of starting a company. I thought
it was so interesting and important, and I had such
a good time talking to these two. I hope you

(01:09):
enjoyed as well. So here's my conversation with Jim and Mike.
First of all, I'm here in Axios headquarters in Clarendon, Virginia,
in my hometown of Northern Virginia. So I'm happy to
be talking to Jim Vanda Hi and Mike Allen, two
people I admire greatly. We're talking about Jim's book, but

(01:31):
I thought we first start by talking about you two,
oh boy, and your bromance.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Are bromance?

Speaker 1 (01:37):
How did it begin? Fellas? I mean, you guys have
known each other for a long time. Did he have
you at hello? Jim?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
He had me at first speed. So we were on
the Lido deck, So you're a call. So back in
the back, in the or in the two thousands, there
was all those trade protests whenever we would travel with
the president, right and there was one in Genoa, Italy,
and they had to lock down the city and they
had no where to put reporters, and so they brought
in this creaky, clunky old cruise ship that they put

(02:07):
us in on. And it was about four o'clock in
the morning, and I had to write. I was working
for the journal, so I had to write for the
Asian Wall Street Journal europe Wall Street Journal. And Mike
was down there, had already filed and I walked by
him and he had a bunch of beers laid out,
and he looked at me and he said, for speed,
to see who could slam a beer faster like any
good Wisconsin boy. I said yes, and then lost, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
And do you remember it that way too, Mike?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
I remember winning absolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
How did this great partnership begin? I mean, you both
are superb journalists. I've seen your bylines for years and
always admired your work. How did you two get together
and say let's put on a show?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know it? Like you We were journalists, right, We
didn't think we're going to become entrepreneurs. And we had
this idea to start political when I was at the
Washington Post. He had been at the Post, but one
to Time magazine. Once we had this idea like, hey,
we could take on the Post if we had the
best and brightest reporters like Mike's at the top of
that list, and so he was very much part of

(03:07):
those conversations. The more we thought about starting Politico back
in six o seven, the more magical it felt, and
it kind of took on a life of its own.
And Mike was the first hire, and it was kind
of off to the races from there, and we weren't
we were friendly. I don't know that we were like
obviously we're like talk a thousand times a day now,
but back then, like it was sort of a building

(03:29):
a friendship. And then once you go through starting a company.
Particularly what people don't remember back when we started political
everyone wanted us to fail. Part of it was that
there's probably too much too wanted us to yes and like,
and so you really bonded over like everyone's rooting for
your failure. You're trying to take on the post. I
was probably popping off too much publicly, making other people

(03:49):
even root louder for our demise, and you just you
bond in a way that it's hard to explain to
someone who hasn't started up a company, because it's almost like,
you know, it's like you're in this fox hole together
and like you just you see things about people's character
that you went otherwise see and you really get to
know who's the real deal.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Did you realize at the time that the media landscape
was ripe for disruption? I mean this, you actually were
very prescient because it was before iPhones became ubiquitous and
people were they were replacing people's TV screens and in
many ways newspapers and people were getting information digitally. Magazines

(04:28):
were folding, YadA, YadA, YadA. I mean did you think
about that as you started Politico.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, and that's something that has totally changed. So now
everybody realizes the world is changing. Then this has changed, right, right,
And this was two thousand and six, two thousand and
seven that the world was changing, and the big media
companies had no idea. They were being warned and told,
and you were inside them, like you're almost famous, grated

(04:57):
people ever to be on TV. You were at the
big three networks, the very definition of legacy media. Jim,
I've been at the Wall Street Journal, than Washington Post.
I've been at the Washington Post and then Time Magazine,
so the most traditional of paths. But we could see
that the world was about to change, how people consume,

(05:20):
how people deliver news. And here's the learning for your listeners.
And I love that you've become a fellow builder, a
fellow entrepreneur, a very successful one, by the way. Was
the tools were there, the Internet had been invented, and
yet at the networks where you worked at the Washington
Post and Time Magazine, everybody covered the news as if

(05:41):
it were coming on at seven am or six point
thirty pm or the paper was gonna be in your driveway.
And so there was a huge opening for Politico to
come in with more expertise, more speed, more voice, more passion.
There was an underserved audience and we barreled it.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
You know, Gosh, there's so many things I want to
talk to you all about. But one thing that comes
up when you make those comments, Mike, is legacy media
took so long to wake up and smell the coffee
and to see that we were undergoing a major transformation
in media. And I'm curious. I have a lot of
theories about why. I'm curious what your theories are. Why

(06:23):
were they so slow?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
I don't think it's just media. I think big institutions
become complacent. You delude yourself into thinking you need to
protect the place where you're currently getting the most money,
right you used to have.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
They didn't want to cannibalize what they were doing.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Circuit City, Blockbuster, right, There's like a lot of stories
of companies that could have had made the Kodak, could
have made the Pivot, saw the pivot coming, didn't make it.
And it's just hard to take a big institution with
thousands of people.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
It's like turning around a cruise ship, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Jim, Yes, And it's like in people are just it
wasn't built that way. It was built for size and durability.
It wasn't built for agility. And that's the identity and predictability.
And so we had such an advantage jumping in and saying,
you know what, we're just going to listen to what
the consumer is saying. Now, we're going to adapt to it.
We'll keep changing as long as if the consumer is changing,

(07:14):
and we'll stop. We didn't have a legacies, we didn't
have to like stop doing bad things. We could just
do good things and do things that we know drive value.
And I think that's that transcends media. I think it's
all you always. I think it's hard for people to realize.
One of the reasons that people have so much anxiety
is that starting in seven, once you have the phone
and once the internet has connectivity to enough people, basically

(07:37):
the world started changing at a pace that our brains
can't keep up with, and I think that causes a
natural anxiety. It also changes business cycles and budgeting, meaning
like every business changes in a month what it might
have changed in years, and so it just requires this
a level of adaptability and agility that if you don't have,
you're ultimately going to get left behind. And that's why

(07:59):
you're probably having more fun with a startup company doing
what you want to do as you're watching it explode
as you would have at the heyday of like being
the most powerful anchor in the history of television. It's
just they're two different things, built for different eras.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Even in twenty eleven, you guys, when I did a
syndicated talk show, I felt like I was riding on
the back of a dinosaur. I mean, you could sense
that the world was changing, and yet you were clinging
to this old way of doing things. And for somebody
who wants to be an early adapter and wants to
be where the puck is going, it was very frustrating

(08:34):
for me.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Well, the key thing is what Jim said about knowing
what the consumer is going and what the consumer wants.
So the first two words of the Axios Manifesto are
mission statement, audience first. And when we started we were
reader first, and then we got video and podcast and events.
So now we're audience first. But a media company had

(08:56):
never been designed that way. Media companies had always been
designed for the ego of journalists like you and me
who want airtime, or who want calm feet thousands of
words on the page, or it was designed for the
needs of the business side, the publisher. Oh, we're going
to make you spend time on site even though you

(09:19):
have no time, right like, I'm going to clutter up
your page with a bunch of videos that you're not
going to watch.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Can you click bait? And we're going to piss you off,
so you read what we're talking about, right.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Right, like all serving either the journals to the publisher.
We flipped that the bottom line, Yeah right, we flipped
but no, this is key for axious actuals. Flip that
actuallys by the way, it means worthy and Greek always
worthy of your time. We never waste your time, We
never insult your intelligence. We took that and we flipped
it and we said, okay, if we were a consumer,

(09:51):
what would we want? What do we want as readers?
And that was the white bulb moment for smart brevity.
We realized that what you want is the big idea
said clearly on a very elegant, clear iPhone screen, well,
tell you what's new, why it matters, give you the
power to go deeper, and the audience loved it and

(10:14):
thanks to our co founder Ry Schwartz. It's also a
beautiful business.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Although it's not profitable.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Right, Well, it depends how I mean.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
That's why I know that you have said that because
you're investing, so you are diversifying your portfolio and as
a result of that, you are putting money into exploring
other for sure avenues. So talk about that because I
think that's another thing that is really sometimes puts a
strain on a business, Like it's profitable when you're going

(10:45):
to give back to your investors and all that.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I mean, One, it depends on what your investment structure
is and kind of what you're trying to do. Right,
you could run a very nice boutique media company have
profitability and not do the things that come with scale.
Like for us, there's an ambition to it, right Like
we were animated by this idea that if you get
more good information in the hands of more people, they're
going to make better decisions in the country benefits, Like

(11:08):
it really is what animates.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Us, and I feel like it. Journalism is a public service.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
Public service, professional service. I got to understand how people
can operate in this world when everything's changing so fast
if they're not better educated on what's real and what's
not real in AI and Information China, all of that,
and so that very much is what animates us. So
then when we think about that, one, you want to
invest in things that it's fine to be in deficit,

(11:36):
if you're investing in things that you're highly confident are
going to be very profitable over time and give you
different revenue streams. And then for us, a big part
of our investment is local, which is a real experiment,
maybe probably the hardest thing we've ever taken on, so
critically critical.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
That people are engaged in local news, they're more likely
to vote, they're more likely be interested in national elections.
And I think twenty four or one hundred newspapers have
folded since two thousand and four. I mean it's a
crisis really in a democracy.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, I mean we tell our staff all the time,
if we can earn thirty cities, is if we can
get local right, where we could get to one hundred
or plus cities where it's profitable in every city, that
will be a bigger achievement than doing Axios and Politico combined,
because it's that hard. Nobody in the digital era has
shown any success rate in doing local at scale. You

(12:29):
have a couple of one off projects in a couple
of cities, and so like, that's a fun thing. But
we're not just doing it as a public service, even
though there's a public service dimension to it. We're doing
it because we actually think it'd be a really good
business that over time if we can get smart professionals
at local, high end niches and then national news to
be reading us. We know how to monetize that through events,

(12:50):
paid subscriptions, advertising, sort of the things you can do
to make money off of media. And so we feel
blessed like we're one of the companies that can continue
to invest in them at and as you know, like media,
it is hard. I get one of the hardest businesses
to do at any kind of size profitably. The flip
of that is we get to have more fun, you

(13:12):
get to get paid to be intellectually curious, and if
we nail it, we get to make people smarter so
they make better decisions and.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
To make a ship ton of money.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Jim, well, if you see it right, if you're if
you're you're selling a.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Company, good for you, guys. But I mean it's worked
out very very well and for sure to delight.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
The audience, which is a great twist that that in
all the years we've been.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
I think your card should say Mike Gallon delighter of audiences.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
I'm mean, as long as I'm delighting casey, uh, I'm good.
But we've had people since day one, people think us
for Axios and you know, uh, working in legacy media,
people rarely thank you for NBC.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Well, legacy media has I mean, it is such a
tough landscape now as we've seen this digital shift, and
I'm curious what you all think will happen to these
legacy media companies, say even five years from now, because
we've seen them now playing catch up, trying to really

(14:20):
basically put the analog product on a digital platform. But
that doesn't really work, does it. I mean, how do
you see things shaking out in the next five years?
Because I have young people saying to me, I want
to get into media, and I try to encourage them
because I feel like our jobs are critically important, and

(14:41):
yet I sometimes struggle in terms of giving them advice.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
It's certainly getting harder to encourage someone to go into
media just because economics are hard. But what I tell
those people is like, listen, if you are smart, you're curious,
you want to help people get smarter on topics that matter.
There are jobs there, really are. It might be different.
You might not be working for a big TV company.
You might be working on TikTok or Instagram. You might
be working for a smaller, niche brand. You might be

(15:07):
working for an axios. Like we're not the size of
the New York Times, We're not the size of NBC,
and so I think there are opportunities. I think the
big institutions listen. I think there's some newspapers that are
household names that are going to be fine. The New
York Times has a wonderful business model.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
Washing and Post is struggling.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Washing Post is struggling. But the journal I think is
doing okay and good. Bloomberg is fine, FT is good.
There's a decent number of papers that think will be fine.
TV is you know, it's a lot harder, Like the
consumer is just consuming content differently. The young people are
very they're basically habituated to getting it in smaller chunks
on social media, in a feed, in a voice that

(15:46):
matches their passions, their locations, their demographics. That's not going
to change. And so somehow these TV companies are going
to have to figure out how the hell do we
integrate into that, or is even an opportunity for us
to integrate into that. So I think big TV is
in probably a lot more trouble than big newspapers just
because that's a harder shift to make, and they're just

(16:06):
they operate at a cost scale that's really really high,
Whereas you could see AI being very helpful to your company,
into our company in terms of it just it cuts
down on the cost of distribution. There's a lot of
back not journalism stuff that gets done that you could
see AI being very helpful in That might allow companies
like yours, companies like ours to be able to put

(16:29):
more effort and more money and more mind share into
the journalism itself. And so there's going to be a
real benefit to not being big and lumbering. I think
over the next.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Couple of years, right being nimble, I think is going
to be the key before we talk about AI, because
I'm fascinated with that. I want to talk about mass
media because I've said for years now in graduation speeches
and whenever I can, just because I think it makes
me sound smart, that mass media is now an oxymoron. Right,
there is no such thing as mass I'm curious about

(17:00):
your approach with Axios and initially Politico. I mean, you
had a very I won't say narrow target market, but
you were not trying to serve the world. Talk to
me about that, because sometimes I'm still I'm a generalist, right,
I care about all kinds of news and information. I'm
interested in so many things, And for our readers and

(17:23):
people who follow me on social media, who I hope
to serve and educate and enlighten, I kind of am
all over the place. Is that a bad business model
in this day and age? You guys, I'm actually using
this to get business advice from you, guys.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
I don't again like, based on what you've told me,
it sounds like it's a good business model. But it's
about you knowing your reader. It sounds like you do
you know your reader, you know your listener, you know
your watcher. You're constantly in conversation with them, and as
long as you're serving them, and then you're able to
make more money than you're spending. Like it's by definition
a really good business. What is true is when we

(18:00):
looked at it differently, right, we were Our specialty, if
you really boil it down, is understanding how the most influential,
hard to reach people consume information. People in the White House,
running companies, running tech companies, running media companies. And so
when we start we were never went mass. We went
the opposite. We called it radiate out. Go for the bullseye,
get the Speaker of the House, get the president, get

(18:21):
Jamie Diamond, get those.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
People reading sure Nancy your target.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Market, and then little by little you would echo out
because people would want to know what they're thinking, what
they're doing. And by the way, if a reporter can
what they're reading, and if the reporter can tell them
something they don't know, that means they're a really really
good reporter. And so that has worked. Now I would
say we are more of a mask company and that
there's a much bigger audience. But where you're super right

(18:47):
on the there's no more mass media. You know. We
did a column not long ago called Shards of Glass.
The idea there was like think about you and your
heyday and us in our heyday. So pre digital, we
all looked at the world through the same window, right,
it was what was happening with the big networks, what
was happening with a few newspapers, relatively shared reality on

(19:08):
who we're dealing with and who we're listening to. Digital
shatters that into you could argue thirty forty fifty pieces.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Where millions actually And it's.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Crazy because you could be sitting next to you, could
be sitting at a table, and every person could be
consuming information in a different shard of glass, listening to people,
following people getting worked up about topics that you wouldn't
even know who that person is. You wouldn't even know
what that type of what you're worried about that topic.
You're getting your information how, and that's that's really hard.

(19:39):
So then it makes it really hard to have a
common truth. It's really easy for manipulated, fake, or just
kind of spun content to take off. And then I
find it, and I'm sure you find it. So you
do with your newsletter, A lot of it, you said,
you see the world. Part of it is news, part
of its aggregation, Right, I don't know about you. But

(19:59):
like many days, I wake up and I'm like, wait,
is that real? Is that not real? And the number
of time we're having is this real? That you really
say that like that? And we're paid to be able
to filter that geez. A poor reader on the other
side trying to figure out like someone's hyperventilating on Fox
News or on Twitter or on.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Item the same with me, And it's actually very time
consuming because now I have to take additional steps to
verify what I'm reading. I have to look it up,
I have to Google it, I have to compare it
to other publications. It's it's it's really hard to be
a news consumer today.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
All true, But the flip of that is that being
Katie Kirkt Media or being Axios, being a brand that
people know and trust then becomes even more valuable because
if I know that I'm on Axios, I know that
this is going to be both literally accurate and broadly true.
We talk about our journalism. Trustworthy is the number one word,

(20:58):
absolutely the most important thing, and it gets more important
as the web gets more polluted that there's more fake content,
more synthetic content, more misinfo, more disinfo. Then you want
to go to people you know and trust.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yes, but it's really hard because to Jim's point, people
are creating their own ecosystems and echo chambers.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
And with very little overlap is a huge.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Change and creating for and disinformation, misinformation, malinformation. They're creating
their own bubbles, and you know, it is really hard
to have a conversation. And it's I'm curious how you
all have straddled this desire to be old school and
objective and search for truth when you have a political

(21:42):
movement in this country that seems to not necessarily appreciate
the truth right and people seeing things through uniquely different prisms.
How do you do that and still remain trusted if
in fact you are sharing factual information. That is a
real challenge.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Epic challenge and almost, to be honest, almost an impossible challenge.
And mean, the way we do it is we try
to say, listen, like we're going to cover everything clinically,
meaning we don't have an opinion page. We're not here
to put our thumb on the scale. But we're also
not here to deceive people into thinking that everything is
equal on both sides. We do that by hiring people
who are authentically wired into these campaigns and can at

(22:23):
least help explain these people, explain their ideas.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
So you're not judging, you're explaining.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Trying and clinically like a doctor would. Like a doctor,
you might have cancer, and the doctor might be telling
you his cancer, but not doing it emotionally. He's trying
to walk you through what are the things that we know?
What are the things that can be done? And I
think at our best we do that. It's hard because
anything that you say, anything that you write, a snippet
of it gets taken out of context and thrown on

(22:49):
social media and suddenly you're bipack.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Or Honestly, that happened to me recently. I was doing
Bill Maher and I was trying to explain income inequality
and classrooms and feeding into anger grievance and you know,
and I said, as an aside to Bill, you know,
feeling jealous and envious is a horrible feeling. And I said,
that's created a lot of anti elitism and anti intellectualism,

(23:15):
you know, a doubt in science and academic deemia, et cetera.
PS not an original thought. Right Fox News and all
these right wing radio stations twisted it, cherry picked it
and said, I said, all Trump voters are jealous and
anti intellectual.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Right, yeah, and there's nothing you can really do. You
could try to correct the record, but by then like it.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
You know, if somebody took the time to actually listen
to the whole statement, they plucked two words. It's engagement
through enragement, as my friend Kera Swisher describes it, clickbait,
and suddenly I am demonized in the minds of all
Trump voters. Having said that, You know, I do wonder
how people can support a candidate who has perpetuated this

(24:00):
notion of a rigged election when how many sixty two
lawsuits or something that's been thrown out. So I have
a hard time trying to navigate this, and I do
look to you all and notice how you cover things.
But as a person, it's really hard.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
I think part of the journalists, it is really hard.
Like I don't again, like no one has sympathy for
folks in the press. It's really really hard. There's not
this idea from like the media critics on Twitter who
think there's just a simple solution just call a lie
a lie, like great, like you're an academic that you're
not you can.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Fix immigration with the stroke of a pen. It's not true.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
It's not true. But you can do is try to
explain what's actually happening.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Requires an act of Congress, you know, just to allocate
more funds, right, I mean, or.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Put the emphasis. Like. One thing we've tried to do,
and I think The Times has done a nice job
of is is explaining in detail that Trump is always
going to be Trump. You're not going to change him.
He's going to say outland things every day. The thing
you should be paying attention to is what's happening around Trump,
which is you have a lot more smart people who
are very organized, who are helping him prepare if he

(25:10):
does come into government, to be able to operate government
a lot more effectively than it did last time. So
if you'd like him, that's good. If you don't like him,
he's going to be able to stretch the boundaries in
a much more elastic way.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
When we come back. Trump and his allies have a plan.
It's called Project twenty twenty five and pardon my French,
but it is really fucking scary. We'll talk about that
right after this. If you want to get smarter, every
morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes

(25:45):
on health and wellness and pop culture. Sign up for
our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric
dot com. Well, what about this Project twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
It's a real thing.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
It's really scary. Will you explain to people listening what
that is.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
So this is the most advanced effort to prepare for
an administration that there's been in history. And it started
even before Trump had clinched the Republican nomination. So for
years now, this project's been underway. So the project you mentioned,
Project twenty twenty five part of the Heritage Foundation, like

(26:31):
a very well funded project, and they are pre vetting
thousands of people that could come in to a Trump
administration who could go in as top appointee's top nominees.
And so they're building this massive resume database on this side,

(26:51):
and then on the other side, they and others are
developing extremely detailed policy for what he did. Because this
is what Jim said, the chaos of last time. They
recognize that that last time.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
They need more discipline, right, and.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
They knew that they couldn't get a Republican's to agree.
They couldn't get the administration to agree this time it's
going to be much more organized, and it's going to
be moved fast. They recognize how fast they're going to
have to move. And one of the biggest things that
they've said, and the Axios has led on this, and

(27:28):
The New York Times has done great reporting on this,
is the effort to turn over the bureaucracy, to push
out so many people who in the past administrations have
just accepted that's what's going to be there. They're going
to turn that over. They're going to move fast on
the border and at the Justice Department. The way it's

(27:49):
been said to me is whatever you think is the
most aggressive possible approach you can take on immigration, his
appointee is going to be even more aggressive and purposeful.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
But is there cause for concern with this whole plan?
I mean, it's not just an ideology. Isn't it sort
of fealty at all costs? And how are they looking
for people who will fill these important results?

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Total fealty it's all. I mean, they're very clear it's
a loyalty test. It is about like, what do you
think about Donald Trump? And if you can't pass that,
you're not going to get into the government. And it's
a big deal because we're not talking a couple hundred people.
We're talking it could be tens of thousands of people.
And the way government operates is you have these obscure
agencies that are by design boring and should be boring,

(28:37):
and they're staffed by career civil servants, people who have
domain expertise.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
And a rich knowledge base.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Rich knowledge base, So if you replace that with people
who are just purely ideological, then you could start to
stretch the boundaries of what can you do. Through administrative action,
which doesn't require Congress, you can also stretch. And they're
going to do it. They're going to try to figure out,
let's do things that might not be ultimately legal, but
let's have the courts render a verdict while we do it.

(29:04):
So even the firing of forty thousand people, to like
there's a real legal case like can it be done?
Can it not be done? They'll do it and then
they'll just go to the courts and hope that they
win it. And what it'll do is it'll just step
way back. The thing that I worry most about about
the country is we basically are now on this twenty
year path where we've basically lost faith in every institution, media, government, church,

(29:28):
boy scouts, politicians, you name it. And so whenever you
have people in a public setting who are continuing to
be exceptionally derogatory about government, making everyone think that everyone's
on the take, making everyone think that everyone's incompetent, then
you don't get the really smart people who might want
to come to work to government to make government work,

(29:50):
and so you end up with not anarchy, but you
basically end up with a bunch of people who just
feel like they can't trust anything, and you end up
with nothing that unifies all of us. And we've gone
through periods like this in history, but they're dangerous periods
because at the end of the day, there are things
where we have to be united to be able to
do it, and where you do need a functioning government.

(30:11):
With Ai Man, it's going to be a big deal.
I wish I had smart people in government who are
working on that and thinking about that and making sure
that we win this AI war in China doesn't and
that we do it responsibly and it doesn't lead to
mass unemployment for a big sector of people who just
finally are rebounding from the manufacturing crisis that really hit
them hardest.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Right, Well, how do you report on this without saying,
holy shit, this is scary stuff? You know? In other words,
you guys say that you tell people what's happening clinically,
But do you feel any obligation as an American citizen
to say this is potentially really damaging for our country,

(30:54):
you know, because you don't have opinion. So I'm just curious,
like how you draw that line, because it's hard sometimes
for me not to sound the alarms.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Well, and you can say to people, pay attention to this,
and we're going to give you the very best information
about this. And like we spend a lifetime like building
connections to all the communities that are involved so that
we can connect them and bring it to you. And
people appreciate that because there's so much noise that people

(31:24):
tend to tune out everything. And so if we can
say to you, this is what matters, pay attention to this,
watch this, then that becomes incredibly valuable.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Because you feel as if you come at it from
too much bias or even colored with too much editorial focus,
that people will dismiss it.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
They will listen. I believe there's still a big group
of people out there who are persuadable to the truth.
They're not persuadable if you come at it with a
condescending tone. They're not persuadable if you come at it
hyperventilating an They're not waitable if you're not coming at
it looking at like the operations of everybody. Yes, Joe
Biden is not Donald Trump, but Joe Biden's not a saint,

(32:08):
and Donald Trump's not, in every single action, a sinner.
And you have to be able to explain to people
with fact, just like what's happening. I just got back
from I did a bunch of speaking with you, broy
Do right, So I did a bunch of different groups,
but it was in like normal America, So like Wichita, Fargo.
The audiences were overwhelmingly Trump supporters, you know, going in

(32:29):
there like, here's this guy from the media man communists,
is about to lecture us. And what I find is
is like if you could just diffuse and say listen,
I'm not here to lecture you or tell you what's
right wrong. I know Donald Trump, I know Joe Biden.
I know a lot of people in Washington. We've covered
this stuff for twenty years. I'm here to explain to
you how they think and the actions that they're going
to take, and then you decide what you're going to

(32:49):
do with that. And you could see the blood just
start to come down and you could have like a conversation.
And in the Q and A, it wasn't people throwing
shoes at me. It was people asking very thoughtful questions.
And you can't just assume because Trump is so damn
outrageous and often so dishonest, that everybody who's voting for
him like likes likes his dishonesty. They don't. To them,

(33:13):
They're like, I got two choices, and man, I don't
like that guy. I don't like that guy. I'm gonna
go with that one.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm curious covering the campaign, have journalists learned anything? I
still see them referring to pull after poll after poll,
despite the fact in twenty twenty the polls were wrong.
When are they going to stop doing that? And how
can we convince them? If you had a magic wand
how would you have journalists cover this election?

Speaker 3 (33:37):
You're never going to convince them. Are they right to
do it? Right? Like? Like you can do a great
job at your media company, Like we can do a
great job at our media company telling people what to
pay attention to. And for your listeners, what do you
pay attention to? Like there's six states they're going to matter.
Start in Arizona, Nevada up to Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia,

(33:59):
Like those are the states that are going to determine
the presidency. Any poll that looks at the whole country
is of course just popularity and is not going to
determine the outcome. Like what's going to matter is like
Jim was talking about, people are persuadable, like the small
segment of people in each of those states who are

(34:19):
going to matter. And I can tell you that Democrats
look at the polls at the moment, like they're very
concerned about those six states in a lot of them,
like Trump has been winning here and there, Biden will
win Michigan or Wisconsin does seem to be his best states.
But they're very concerned about what's going to happen in

(34:40):
those six states. And so that's what matters. Look at
that look at where the candidates are spending money. You
talk about like like what have we learned, Like one
of the biggest things with Trump, like he's Trump, Like
you're not going to be able to anticipate it. He's
going to say what's on his mind. But you can
look at what he's going to do, who's surrounding himself with,

(35:03):
like what they've promised to do, Like what they've been
doing in the four years while they've been out. Those
are all real things that put together can help listeners, viewers,
readers like understand what's coming out.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Let's talk about AI. It's interesting because you said something
fairly positive about AI just a few minutes ago, Jim
and I, and yet at the same time, I know
that you have pledged to your readers that everything you
write is going to be written by an actual human being.
Katieus touching mic right now, So you know, So tell

(35:38):
me how you view AI and how it is going
to even further transform the media landscape.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, I mean it's hard to do that succinctly. So basically,
you have a technology that's probably going to be as
profound as the invention of the Internet or us having
phones at scale and connectivity, and so we know what's
going to be big. So what we do is we're
trying to figure out well, what does that mean for media?
What does that mean for information consumption? And our belief
is that it's going to be profound. It's just going

(36:04):
to radically change the relationship between you, the reader or
the consumer and the content that you're getting. And we
want to make sure we're at least one step ahead
of it. And where what we believe are the known
knowns that affect your company and affect our companies that
people are going to increasingly value expertise, Oh, that person
knows something that no machine could ever know. They have

(36:26):
sourcing that no machine could ever have. They have history
with a topic that it gives them analytical insight that
no machine's ever going to have. That's one. Two. You're
going to want trust. There's going to be so much
garbage out there. You're going to want a relationship between you,
the consumer and the media company that is built totally
on trust. Three is a place where we're doing a

(36:46):
lot of investment and there's by stuff we could do
together on that is in person connectivity. The more you
live in an artificial world, in a virtual world, the
more you consciously and subconsciously crave human interaction around share passions,
particularly professionally, and so we do a lot of events,
one hundred plus every year. But we're also doing membership

(37:07):
programs where we bring people who might have a passion around,
say the communications industry, to be able to get smarter
on their topics, maybe gather together to share best practices.
And we think there's a really rich business there. So
I think if you can do those things, you'll be fine.
Now there's a flip of that, which is there's probably
technologies that it could be AI power that are going

(37:29):
to make our lives easier, building technology, distributing content, copy editing,
creation of data visualization. You could see very clearly how
all of those are going to be done quite well
by machines, and so you just want to anticipate that
those things are going to happen and be clear eyed,
like all these people are like, you know, like not

(37:50):
paying attention to AI. Like I don't get it. It's
like someone told you, imagine going back in time and
someone told you two years ahead of time, Hey, the
Internet's coming, and you knew that and it was certain
eyes coming yep, store right, Like you know what's coming.
These big companies are spending trillions of dollars they will,
will it into existence? Will it be smarter than us?
Will we be working for it? I hope not. I

(38:12):
could definitely give you dark scenarios in almost every use
case of AI. I could also give you very positive
use cases. And either way, I think it requires us
to be clear eyed. And this is where I think
journalism really really matters. We have to educate people on
these technologies, on the companies that benefit, on what will
happen between nation state rivalries, what happens when warfare moves

(38:34):
to drones and moves to satellites and moves to space,
and the oceans that we have on our shoulders no
longer protect us the way they did in the past.
We have an obligation to tell that story, and, like
you said, kind of grab people by the collar, say
this is really really really.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Important and it's coming and you can't stop that.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
And you could go light and dark on it. Right.
So take medical research. It seems highly likely in my
mind that in our lifetime that a large language model
trained with proprietary health data will cure cancer. I believe
that that will happen or most cancers. I also believe
that that exact same technology used by some jackass sitting

(39:11):
in a campus in Colorado might be able to create
a pathogen as powerful as a coronavirus for a country
that's not ready to be able to combat that. I
don't mean to be dark, but talk to anybody who's
building it, they would say those two outcomes are both
very very plausible, if not likely. And the purpose of

(39:31):
a documentary or the purpose of journalism is just to say,
you got to pay attention to this because it's probably
going to require personal responsibility. It's certainly going to require
governmental responsibility and regulation. And you have a government, going
back to the beginning of this podcast, that's not recruiting
the best in the brightest because everyone's dogging it. And
now you suddenly need smart people to engineer regulations from

(39:55):
a machine that might be smarter than us. I mean,
I'm looking from lash gosh. But man, that sounds hard, right.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
It does sound hard.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
And Katie, here's another grabbing by the Lapels. Moment you
talk to the heads of these companies, is Jim and
I do we spend a lot of time with the
biggest companies. This is all coming faster than people think.
That what people think is an eighteen month time horizon
is really a six month time horizon. And what's in
the garage, what's under the sheet, is even more powerful

(40:28):
than people realize. There's a lot that's been developed that
has not been deployed.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
It is urgent, to say the least. And I think
you're so right, are you worried that though you know,
we talked about media and journalists. First of all, I
have two things. Two concerns of AI for me, job
loss and jobs are going to be lost, and b
disinformation right and using it for nefarious purposes, deep fakes
and all that stuff. I mean, how concerned are you

(40:56):
about both of those things?

Speaker 2 (40:58):
I'd say the latter much more. I think that listen
to the introduction for your average consumer to AI is
going to be a bunch of really high end manufactured bs, right,
that's going to be a little bit by domestic actors,
a lot by the Iranians, of Koreans, the Russians and
the Chinese who want to manipulate our system and want
to pump this sludge into your Facebook feed, Instagram feed

(41:18):
and into TikTok. And the stuff's really good. It can
make Katie Kirk look and sound like Katie.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Kirk and see closely looked intoxicated, you know, and that
was very rude of entry technology.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
And the stuff that you've not seen yet is blow
your mind good and so like it's like it's going
to be used, and it's going to be used for
nefarious purposes, and that's going to require like a population
that trusts the media to say that that's not true.
Like that's one I don't I might be naive. I
don't worry as much about the job part of it.
I worry about it certainly for certain groups of people.

(41:52):
But I think the history of technology is is that
it causes a tremendous amount of anxiety, It causes a
fair amount of disruption, but all timately does lead to
higher productivity and more jobs. It's painful getting there, but
I think that for at least for the let's say,
the next five years. Like right now, I think the
technology is actually jankier than I would have thought at
this point, but it will get better. And when it

(42:14):
gets better, I would just look at it as how
do I use it to do my job more effective?

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Right?

Speaker 2 (42:19):
At some point it could displace things. It's something that's mechanical,
something that's wrote, something that's researched.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Talk about graphics. You know, if you can just get
AI graphics, do you need a graphic designer?

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Yeah, there's definitely there's throughout that. I don't mean to
be cold about it, but I think throughout history like
there were jobs that were abundant and then they don't exist.
And the question is, and this goes back to functioning government,
like if we were smarter in some ways, we have
a baby problem. We don't have enough people to do
the jobs that we need to have done. They're just
mismatched geographically and skill wise. So if you could somehow

(42:48):
figure out and get ahead of this to realize what
are the sectors most likely to be hit? They know this,
They know exactly which ones are going to be hit.
How do you equip your vocational schools, your two year colleges,
your four year colleges training program to be able to
get If I'm a trucker, like, I'm sorry, at some point,
you're not going to be trucking. There's going to be
it's going to be the easiest thing. I canna keep
on trucking. But it's the largest I think it's the

(43:11):
largest job, at least for men in the United States, Yeah,
and spread everything.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
And what do you find that businesses, since you all
have done extensive reporting on this, do you find that
business or and or government is taking the steps to
prepare for this revolution?

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Oh? Hell no, hell no. Government No, they can't, like
they're just it's not.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Well, they can't even.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
We don't know exactly what we're dealing yet with AI.
So it's a little bit hard, but a little sympathetic,
and it's a little hard to regulate the government. What
they would tell if they were on true seerum, they'd
say they don't really want to regulate it because they
don't want the Chinese to raise ahead of us and
the most important technology we have a year, we have
a year head start, and so they're not going to
say it publicly, But that is what it like. If

(43:52):
I'm if I'm Sam Oltman and I'm Mark Zuckerberg and
I'm trying to lobby for as much freedom to get
this stuff to be able to grow. You just warned
that China going to eat our lunch. That's going to
get lawmakers to back off. There's definitely truth some truth
to that. So I don't think government has created a
framework to think about this, and I think this and
businesses are looking at it as a way to increase
productivity and reduce costs. They're not necessarily looking at the

(44:15):
societal consequences of it. And I don't think anyone other
than the big companies just realize, like how much bigger
the big companies are going to get your Microsoft's, your Amazon's,
your Googles, your apples because it requires so much compute power,
so many chips, so much energy to build these things
that only these nation state companies that are literally the

(44:37):
size of countries are going to have enough capital to
be able to do it. So all fixable and probably solvable,
but it's complicated stuff and.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
It makes you want to kind of put the sheets
over the shit. I can't deal with this right well,
speaking of a boy from Ashkosh b Gosh, and we
have to talk about your book. It's called Just the
Good Stuff, And I have to say, I really appreciate
this book. It's no bs secrets to success no matter

(45:08):
what life throws at you. But I mean, this was
a long time coming for you personally. I love how
you basically write what a dipshit you were and you
were growing up. I think those are your words, how
remarkably unremarkable you were. I mean, you struggled in school,
you had a shitty GPA, you didn't know what you

(45:29):
were going to do with your life, and yet somehow
you got it together. Talk about that because I think
that this is such an important and valuable lesson for
all people. I mean, you found your passion and I
as tried in graduation speechy as it sounds, you did
find something that you could really channel your energies into.
So talk about that.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Yeah, I think it does sound tripe, but it is
like I always tell a college graduates, just try your
hardest until you can no longer. Try to find something
you would do for free. You just enjoy doing that.
You are naturally gifted that.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
So it doesn't feel like work, That's what.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
It doesn't feel like work. And like I'm curious to
begin with, I'm mischievous to begin with, I'm experimental to
begin with. So like the once I found something that
I liked, it like it suddenly made me feel like
I was like capable and I was smart. And the
book the reason I opened with this, like look at Jim,
the dipshit who's smoking camels and drinking and my mom

(46:25):
hates the part where I say I'm stoned all the time,
But Mom's gonna have to deal with that. But like
the reason I do that is I hope that the
book works for people who are already in power. But
I hope there's a lot of people out there who
are sitting in situations like I was. It didn't come
from privilege, sitting in a small town, didn't go to
some glorious campus. Who just realizes that, like, despite what
you see around you, it's an amazing country that like

(46:47):
if you find a passion and you can easily move
and you go, like throw yourself into it, and you
do the right thing, work hard, like try to be
the first person in the office, do anything you can
possibly do, Like do like don't cut owners, don't dog
other people. Rise on the power of your own achievement
and your own effort that really good things can happen.

(47:07):
And we all know like thousands of stories like this
from friends and family and people we've met over the years.
And so I hope that part resonates. And then the
reason we wrote the book or and I say we,
because like so much this is me distilling Mike and
Roy and other people that we know is that I
am in the rare position where we've started two companies
and I've had to learn to be a CEO in

(47:29):
the digital era and deal with sixty five percent of
my staff being under the age of forty or thirty five.
So I've learned a lot about what does it take
to lead when you're trying to merge our generation with
a younger generation, often by screwing it up. I make
fun of myself a ton in there to set up
these chapters, but it's more, hopefully like the reason each

(47:50):
chapter ends with these action oriented items is hopefully five, ten, fifteen,
twenty of the chapters you find so interesting that you're
going back to it when you're dealing with how do
I deal with a bad boss? Or how do I.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Think a fire someone?

Speaker 2 (48:03):
You know, how do I fire someone? Which is like,
no one taught me how to fire someone.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
We did a terrible job early on, and you've learned
that you can fire somebody with grace and as you said,
keep it classy.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yes, but you're not You're not born with that, certainly.
I wasn't born with that of so now was like
a we'd start a company, I'm running things, and I
have to fire this guy. And the poor guy comes
in and all I do is list the ten reasons
that he's not good at his job. I had never
given him pre warning. I had never given him a
chance to correct. I did everything wrong, but I didn't
know what right was. And so hopefully in the book

(48:39):
people will see, oh, here's here's how you can pop.
Here's how you can do that in a difficult situation.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
And Katie, what Here's what's magical about the book is
that it's not aspirational, that it is actually Jim's journey. Yes,
so he kept a literal iPhone diary in his notes
app while he was living all of this, and this
is the book, and like I've lived it now for
twenty plus years with him, and he's made a real

(49:08):
difference to me that I'm twenty pounds less because of
the fitness ideas that we have in here there too,
like he started as having a big macbelly and since then,
every year since then has been better than the year before.
A very simple metric that anyone.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Can reason to buy this damn book.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
But I don't say it's hard. I say in the opening,
I said, like in some ways to write a book
that's about giving people life advice. I hated the idea
because it just feels like you're a jackass, Like, look
at it, I've figured it out, and it's I'm trying
to set up No, Like, if I could figure it out,
you could surely figure it out. And one of the
big themes is, and it took me a long time

(49:58):
to really realize, it's just how much we can control.
We have this natural default to blame our bosses, blame
our parents, blame our upbringing, blame our college, blame our teachers,
as opposed to Nope. Every day I get up and
I get to decide, like what am I going to
put in my body? Am I going to work out?
Am I going to be kind to my wife? Am
I going to find special time alone away from a
phone with my children? Am I going to deal with

(50:18):
a complex work situation where I'm proud of the way
that I handle it versus not like you control a lot?
And I'm probably a little nutty in the area in
terms of putting more thought into each and every one
of those dimensions. But I think most people make the
mistake of not putting nearly enough. They just kind of
Bob along.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
With that happen, and Annie Dillard says, how we spend
our days is how we spend our lives, and I
think people don't realize that to your point, every day
you make decisions and that it all is compiled to
make up your life for better for worse. When we

(50:56):
come back, how a founder's values can make or break
their company's morale, productivity, and more. One of the things

(51:19):
I also love about the book, I think because I
love Mike and I like the way you talk about
Mike being this eternal optimist, how his glass isn't just
half full, it's like overflowing. And you're more of a
realist and a little more of a cynic. But what
I think aligns you all and makes this partnership so powerful,

(51:41):
and I think it emanates into your whole company is
the values you espouse in your professional lives but also
in your personal lives. Can you talk about that, because
you know, I think that's really missing from the world
in many ways.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
I think you nailed it. Like I'm so worried about
the people in positions of power these days on whether
they've thought about that values and all of us can
sit there and think like what do you believe in? What?
How do you want to be seen? And how do
you want your children to see.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
It's like when David Brooks talks about eulogy values.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Yes, but it's that like you want like like what
and anyone can sit down and say it, like what
are your non negotiables? Like I'm going to be honest
even when it hurts. I am going to be transparent,
even when even when it might not be in my
best self interest. I Am always going to like push
myself and others to be high achieving, but never at
the expense of being a bad person. And here's the thing.

(52:37):
And you've you've lived it in TV for sure, and
now you're seeing it as an entrepreneur. It is insane
how contagious we are. Insane. If you are sitting in
a position of power, whether you're a CEO, or whether
you're a manager, or whether you're a little league coach,
the way you carry yourself is instantly contagious. If you

(52:59):
are a good person who works hard, who gives people grace,
who show some empathy, it almost within weeks you'll see
it everywhere around you. That opposite is true if you're
a jackass. If you're a truth dodger, if you are
a mischief maker, you're a cancer.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
You're a mischief maker. You can put it in a
bad way, but I don't see creating drama.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
Creating drama like if you're that your whole company, your
whole team, your whole litle league team, it's going to
be full of drama. It's going to be full of dishonorable.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Distraction from the job of the mission.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
And it's crazy. And I think that I hate it
when I see church leaders, or when I see political leaders,
or I see business leaders not carrying like this. It's
like a blessing that we have right now, not just
to be able to that people will listen to what
we write or to what we say, but that people
work for us and count on us, and that people

(53:54):
don't carry that and say, you have like this obligation
to humanity inside. Not to be cheesy, but you have
an oblation to humanity to do the best you can
with that and to make people feel better and to
make them do better things. And sometimes when I talk
about are you soft man, you're woke or whatever, bullshit, like,
there's nothing soft about me, and there's nothing woke about me,

(54:16):
but there is a I think you can be really
high achieving and you can have really awesome results and
still be a good person, surround yourself with good people
and then watch the echo effect of that. I think
those are very doable, and I think a lot of
what's in the book is helping managers figure out how
do you put those pieces together?

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Because you're right, I think people don't aren't really taught
how to be leaders. You know, they find themselves in
these positions, and I think there are some you know,
milestones and some kind of blueprint. Everybody has a different personality,
but I think this is incredibly helpful, not only to

(54:55):
people in positions of power, people who are working for them,
who you know you want them to do well. You
want them to rise to the occasion and then sometimes
even rise out of your company.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Well, think about a twenty two year old right now,
So think about you when you're twenty two versus a
twenty two year old. Now. I don't know about your upbringing,
but like I went to church, I was in the
Boy Scouts. I went to schools where I had small
enough class sizes, where I had teachers who were intimately
involved I played little league sports where coaches knew where
I was, and I had parents and grandparents. So look

(55:30):
at all of that moral structure that was around me.
Now look at your kid, who's twenty sights.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
All thought you were still getting high on.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yeah, look at I was a screwpers by having everything
built for me. But look at some of these kids
coming through. They didn't have boy Scouts or girls Scouts.
They didn't they're not going to church. They might be
in classes that are too big for a teacher to
pay attention to them, and they're staring at their phone
all day looking at people who they think have a
more entertaining life and are acuter or more handsome than.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Them, or richer whatever.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
They're dying for leadership, dying they need it like we
fundamentally thirst for like morality in leadership. I really do
believe that, and I think the only place that's going
to provide it are the people like us who are
in positions to make it affected very little ways. I
have five hundred people here, we want one hundred and
fifty people maybe at HQ, but like, but you know
you've got you said fifty people, right, forty some people? Yeah,

(56:23):
that's a big difference. Those forty are then going to
make a difference on a bunch of people in their
own lives.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
What have you learned from from Jim and what do
you think you've taught him.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
One of the great things about this book is it
also is aimed at rising stars. So you mentioned the
bad boss, and in here Jim talks about like what
to do about a bad boss and taking feedback, giving feedback,
taking feedback. Something that I discovered is that a lot

(56:55):
of times, the way that you react to this could
be in a relationship or in a working place. The
way that you react to what someone tells you often
vindicates what they said. Mike, you're a little defensive. What
do you mean? But just yesterday I was like, we
often do that, and if we can catch ourselves, we're
gonna have a better relationship, We're gonna be better in

(57:16):
the workplace. The biggest thing I've learned from Jim was that,
you know me, I've always been a story hound, a newshound,
like always thinking about sleeping.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
I used to worry about Mike.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
Now you don't have to worry because now I have
my aura ring, which gives me a gummy crown when
I get my good night's sleep. But I'm glad you
said that because it's very late to the biggest thing
that I've learned from Jim is opening the aperture of life,
working more muscles in life, thinking beyond just like what
is the next story, and making sure that he has

(57:53):
a great way that he expresses it. He talk talks
about his happiness matrix and having a bucket for family,
for fitness, for faith, for community, service, for hobbies, for travel,
and the magic is and the great insight is that
those buckets don't automatically fill themselves. That if we're not

(58:17):
intentional about investing in those buckets, it becomes work and
then whatever's left. And that's the mistake that so many
young people make and that I made, is that the
default was everything being work and fitness, hobby, sleep, health,
like all that that just squeezed in at the end.

(58:40):
And so you mentioned sleep. We do a great newsletter
every evening finish line. It's We've got more response to
it than any newsletter we have ever gotten. And it's
all life leadership, health, wellness, fitness. One of the great
learnings is sweep longer, live longer. I think that's not

(59:02):
intuitive to people like our people.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
I used to brag about how little sleep they needed.
It was kind of a badge of honor. I remember
Brian Gumblestein and I'd get by on four hours to sleep. Meanwhile,
I'm like, how can you do that? It would run
me for the rest month.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
I hate to do that twice every night, and then some.

Speaker 3 (59:21):
And so and so, including sleep, like both watching Jim
talking with Jim, like his correction, like I've seen that
looking beyond like what we're typing, like what's literally on
your screen. In the end, that's more of a service
to your audience and to your colleagues and to your company.

(59:42):
Like if you're able to come like strong, rested, wise
not rattled, what you're going to do a better job.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
This is one of the reasons in terms of your question,
like what did I learn from him? Is like I
hate these like entrepreneur CEOs, these stories of like oh,
these like superhuman people who on their own or changing
the world, and all we are is a collection of
the totality of our experiences and other people like take
away my parents, my wife, my kids, and Mike and
like I'm nothing, Like there's no way that I would

(01:00:11):
have had success. And with Mike the thing that you
put your finger on, which is like just like his people.
People don't realize he might be the most famous person
you know who's also the most humble person you know, right,
and like in so much graciousness and so much humility,
and those things don't come as naturally to me as
they do to Mike, and like, but it's rubbed off
a come.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
But you know what I love, Jim, is that you
admit in this book I was a schmuck or I
was a jerk about this, or you know, I'm more
cynical than Mike. I think it's very transparent. And by
the way, I think that may be one of the
most important words in this book is radical transparency and
that you've learned that and that that is an intuitive

(01:00:51):
either because I think that was not the business mindset
for us growing up when we looked at corporations, this
kind of honest being an honest broker for all your employees.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Yeah, and like, if you think about it, if you're
truly transparent, which is another one of those like buzzy words,
but if you're truly transpl it means you're but it
means you're totally you've gotten to the point in life
where you're comfortable in your skin. Like I know there's
gonna be some people who like me, don't like me.
Some people like the book, somebody hate the book. Like
I'm comfortable with that, right, I'm comfortable knowing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Help make it to that point.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
It's hard. I mean it's listen, it's a daily struggle, right,
but it is like the more you can just be
yourself and express yourself, like I would like to think
if you talk to the people here, the reason we
don't have a ton of drama and we do have
pretty high productivity is I don't think they ever think
we're full of shit, Like we'll answer everything. If we
screw something up, I'll say, man, I screwed that one up.

(01:01:43):
Or if we get something right, I'll say we're killing
it here. And they're not going like, I don't know,
is he real? Is he not real? Like that doesn't
mean they all like me. I'm sure there's a ton
of things people dislike about me, but but I don't
think there's there's never a wonderment about like are we
being straight?

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Nobody thinks you're a bullshitter, which is great, right, you know,
people respect you for that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
And wait, sorry, Casey. One quick thing on humility, and
that is that as you have success personally professionally, is
the people around this table have. Like I feel like
one of the things that helps with humility is you
realize a certain percentage of it was luck, for sure,
and all the people who made it possible, the people

(01:02:24):
who gave you a break of the person for me,
Gail shay Nardi at the Richmond Times Dispatch and Shenandoah
County Bureau in Stanton, Virginia, who like spend hours with
me on the phone when I was a Washington Lee student,
like talking through my stories, helping me write a story
for the big boy paper, and the lessons like from Gail.

(01:02:45):
I use this today when I write axios am. And
there's so many people like that. And we all are
beneficiaries of right place, right time, and definitely we had
the wisdom and the great to use our gifts. But
paying attention to that makes it much easier to pay

(01:03:07):
attention to. Okay, here's what I have. How can I
serve the audience, the colleagues, the people coming along to
take our jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
And you know, I thought it was interesting. You have
a recommendation from mister Rogers, Fred Rogers, the kindest person
I think in the history of the world, where you
take a minute and you think about the people who
helped you along the way. I love a lot of
the sort of inherent wisdom in so much of this book, Jim,

(01:03:35):
and I'm excited to try to live my life with
more humanity and more thought.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
And I'm not giving you a show what people think.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Well that I you know, I think women in particular
are people pleasers. And you know, I find it crushing
when people not so much when they criticize me if
it's a legitimate thing that I believe in, but when
they misrepresent me and misunderstand something I'm saying, that's when
it really bugs me. But the book is divided up

(01:04:02):
into three sections, life, work, work stuff, and boss stuff,
And as I said, it offers a lot of nuggets
of wisdom. Your life is a story, a long, winding,
wildly unpredictable narrative, so write it literally. I think that's
what you mean, right, Jim, For like thinking about what
you're going to do every day? Or is that something different?

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Sure, no, it is. Again it goes to like understanding
how much you control. Like on the one end, you say, God,
it sounds self indulgent. You're worried about your own narrative.
I want to gut check myself constantly, Like I want
to be a great husband. I'm married twenty three years.
I'm not always great husband. I've gotten much better at
I want to be a great father who has like
a really unique relationship with each one of my kids.

(01:04:44):
The most touching thing that I can say is, like,
in last month, I've gotten a text from each one
of my three kids calling me their best friend. Like
I love that, like that, but I think about that.
I think about that all the time, about like how
do I want people that work? I want people to
say high character, high energy, whatever, but that that character
is at the base of it, and I think everyone
should do that, Like just how do you want what

(01:05:06):
do you want to be? Like I don't understand how
you don't do that now that I've kind of started
doing it, because like it pasts for around seventy eighty years, right,
and we have like sixty five that are seventy that
are like awesome, and then it gets harder, like why
not maximize that? Maximize like your own performance, your own happiness,

(01:05:26):
the effect that you have on other people, and kind
of not the legacy you leave, but just like the
contagiousness of your own behavior. And I think if you
do those things, like good things will happen. And going
back to your mister, like I became obsessed with Fred
Rodgers and it's the reason I wrote a column on
Fred and Mike it because there is so many parallels
between the two of them in terms of but it

(01:05:46):
is just like crazy success but crazy humility. And like
I've started in the last year, like writing down I
have my own list of like who are the people
that have made a difference in my life? And now
it's like one hundred long, and every week or two
we'll try to just read it just to ground you
to remember, like we're all like I can be as
arrogant as the next person. I could have hubris like

(01:06:08):
anyone else, Like just like grounding yourself in that and
not everyone should do everything in there. The idea is
like just come up with your own little matrix of
like what are the things that you do that are
much more purposeful so that you're bringing in like more
health and more success and more just like feeling satisfied
and feeling like you're living the kind of life you

(01:06:28):
would want, you know, to live.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
One of their dimensions of the book, Katie that comes
naturally to Jim and doesn't come naturally to me at
all is hard stuff. And I've gotten much better at
that watching learning from Jim. But you gravitate toward hard stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
I mean you probably experience with a startup, like at
some point, like you just, I used to be so emotional, right,
so I would like at political something good's happening and
I'm waw, and something bad's happening and I'm like ah,
And I had to learn that like, oh shit, I'm
gonna die if I live this way. And so I
had to learn to like, Okay, I'm just gonna like
bad things are going to happen. That things are gonna happen.

(01:07:07):
My job is to keep a clear mind. And over time,
I've kind of learned to like the hard stuff. Like
I'm really good at having the most uncomfortable, difficult conversations
with people because I've learned to do it, like I'll
write it down. I'll be very fair with them, I'll
be very transparent and honest with them. I'll give them
kind of a remedy to the problem. But I don't

(01:07:27):
have a hard time having those conversations or dealing with
the hard stuff of business. And it's a lot of it.
It's like mindset a lot of It's just like we've
had two startups and crazy media, and we deal with
so much bad stuff that maybe it beat the carrying
out of me, so I'm able to look at it
more clinically. But yeah, I think people. That's why I

(01:07:48):
write a lot about firing, Like I hate how companies
treat people. I think it is so bad when someone
loses their job and they didn't see it coming. Whereas
it's not that I like firing people, but I think
you'd be hard press to find more than one or
two people who dislike me, even if I personally fired them,
because by what I would like them to say is like, Oh,
Jim wrote me this very thoughtful note on what's wrong.

(01:08:10):
He did not sugarcoat it. It was hard to read.
He then followed up with a conversation. He showed me
how to correct it. When he decided it wasn't corrected,
he brought me in and he thanked me for everything
he did but said, you're not going to work here, Like,
if you can do that, at least you've given that,
you've thrown as much humanity into a difficult situation as

(01:08:32):
you possibly could. And most people don't why because they
hate hard conversations. I hate it. It makes him feel
so uncomfortable. Well, that's self indulgore.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
And so many leaders are so awful.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Awful, awful at it, awful almost everybody the other's all.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
I'm just going to do a couple of little nuggets
and then I'm going to let you guys get back
to running your company. Almost every great thing in life
starts with serendipity. Mike, you kind of suggested it that
usually someone or something new entering your life by chance.
Basically as you were saying, not only recognizing that, but
something you mentioned about luck, you have to sort of

(01:09:09):
recognize and capitalize on those lucky encounters and situations.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
So it's part luck, but also part knowing what the
luck can lead to, right, one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
And a specific dimension of that is having the self
awareness or having people in your life to help you
see what your gift is. Like when I talk to
students house, some of the kind of a three four
step process, like the first one to have a gift
that's not up to you, But the second one is
like recognize it and hone it. And think of how

(01:09:42):
many of your social friends, classmates, very far along in
life realized what their gift was, sometimes even after they're
working life right, like so many people don't writ it.
And then third of what Jim talked about is nirvana
is having somebody who will pay you to exploit your
gift right, pay you to do what you're going to do.

(01:10:04):
And then the secret where I'm at is passed along
and who can you help awaken that gift.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
In be a quitter? That threw me? Be a quitter.
We're We're taught don't don't give up, don't quit never
never never give in? Does wasn't that Winston Churchill?

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Yeah, but sometimes you have to quit. Like the example
I use is I was on the Pulitzer board for prizes.
It's like the one of the most esteemed things you
could do in journalism. It was supposed to be a
nine year commitment. I was three years in and I
realized I'm trying to run a company and read fifteen
books and judge all these categories like it's not healthy
for my relationship with my kids or my time, and

(01:10:43):
I quit and like usually, no, I don't think anyone
had ever quit the board, like you just didn't do it.
And I think they looked at me like I was
an alien, but I was like, I'm just like someone
else can give more time to this. And I think
quitting bad relationships that's a big one, Like how many
times did we think we could change somebody or do
we think somebody would or I don't know, it's not
that bad, like you can quit it, like that is

(01:11:04):
a If there's one thing we've really nailed at Axios
is like we have gotten rid of people who are
just not good people, even when they're super talented. And
we made a corporate choice to do that, but you
make an individual choice, right. We always justify it. And
it's like the minute you get rid of it, you
can just feel it lift. Like these people who suck

(01:11:24):
your soul and your energy, these leeches, like duh, you
gotta get them out of.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Your life, and you have to do.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
It fast, right, rip it off.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
It's always higher, slow, fire fast right, the.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Power of now, and that that is one of our
true learnings in business is the second, and this is
true in your personal life and your professional life. The
second you realize you should do something, move on it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
And you also say, trust your gut, you know, which
I think is really important too, because I think people
hear a little voice in their head and they're like, ah, no, no, no,
that's not right. But more often than you say, it's
important because what your gut is telling you is actually right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
I would say, particularly the older you get right. Like
I think we underestimate the power of our intuition. We
almost always know the right thing to do, we don't
always act on it. If you just act on it,
you can clean up the ten percent you get wrong.
Otherwise you think yourself into a pretzel.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
I think we've covered a couple of the other ones.
Persistently pursue work so personally satisfying that you would do
it for free. I think we covered that. The importance
of candor, I think we covered that. But the final
piece of wisdom, when shit happens shine I.

Speaker 2 (01:12:34):
Think, which is like that's an original. That is our phraseology.
The idea is like, and you can do this like
that bad things are going to happen. It is so
easy for me to be good or nice or kind
or gracious when everything is awesome. It's really hard when
shit hits the fan and like someone does something wrong
or there's an awful situation, and that is the moment

(01:12:56):
where you have to really think, Okay, how do I
handle that this complicated situation in a way that like
my kids would be proud if they were watching it,
and that my employees, even if they don't like what
we're going through, will say, man, that was handled well.
And I so when we have these really bad situations,
I almost think of myself as having this out of
body experience and watching me, like how are you handling yourself?

(01:13:20):
Because everyone's going to feed off of it. It goes
to the contagious nature of leadership. Like people, if I'm
fidgety and I'm angry, They're going to be fidgety and angry.
Whereas like say, listen, this is bad, here's what's happening,
here's how we're thinking about it. Once you have a decision,
here is exactly what we're going to do and why
we're doing it. And here's why. I know you're not
going to like it, but this is why. But why

(01:13:40):
I'm doing it and why I'm addressing the thing you
don't like about it, and then you know you again.
I think if you do these things, you get a
lot better at it. It's like it's like riding a bike.
You just have to do these things over and over.
And then they go from, oh, I'm thinking about it too,
it's just part of your fabric.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
There's another thing about shit and nibbling.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
What was that I stole that? That was it's not original,
and I credited him was Ben Horowitz and the Hard
Things about hard things. And he had this line that
I stuck with me, which was like, when you got
to eat shit, don't nibble, which his point was.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
That is a very gross It is a very gross.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
But when you think about the context, it's perfect because
the whole idea is that you know that you have
to fire someone, or you know you got to shut
down a business, or you know you've got to get
out that we have this tendency to just delay, delayed, delay,
and his thing is like, just eat it. I can
get out because you're going to do it eventually. And
the quicker you get to fixing and the better.

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
It is, well, I mean, again, I could stay here
for hours. I love talking to both of you. The
book is just the good stuff, no BS Secrets to
success no matter what life throws at you. You know,
We're having a retreat with our company later this week
and I am going to support the author and I
am going to buy forty copies of this yeahs you

(01:14:58):
employees and and I think I'm going to also make
them listen to this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
There will anyways, Yeah, we love it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
But anyway, thank you guys so much. It was really fun. Love.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Thank you for being a very very very early encourager supporter.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Yes, by the way, I do deserve a little credit.
I wasn't going to bring this up in Mike's origin
story with I mean, do you want to share that Mike? Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:15:25):
Katie Kirk has always had great ideas, and one of
her great ideas the origin of axios am the newsletter
that I appreciate your reading every morning. That it started
as an email that I wrote to my two bosses
at Politico and it said in the subject line, how

(01:15:46):
we can rock today?

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
And then yes, and I started. So I was anchoring
the CBS Evening News and Mike started sending me this
email and I was like, oh, my god, this is
so helpful. You remember how they used to have the
ap playbook when you know, back in the dark ages,
I was like, this is so great, so helpful. It
sets the scene for the day, and you should make

(01:16:10):
this available to so many people. They would pay for.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
This now look at us.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
So I feel a little bit pride of ownership with
Mike's not really, but I do think you know, I
was right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
When Katie Kirk has an idea, listen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
To and when she has a bad idea, tell her.

Speaker 3 (01:16:37):
And I will bring candor but grace and and at
the same time we will be always be respectful.

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Yeah, well and she won't care what we think. No, well, yes,
I will working on that. Thanks guys, appreciate it. Thanks
for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me,
a subject you want us to cover, or you want

(01:17:06):
to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out. You can leave a short message at six
h nine five point two five to five five, or
you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,

(01:17:27):
Katie Kuric and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit

(01:17:48):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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