September 27, 2023 • 31 mins
The founder of MTV tells us how a young Mississippi DJ found his way to running some of the most culturally-important companies in the world, and what it has taught him about marketing, deal making, career moves, and...tequila!
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📚 Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain https://g.co/kgs/YWoagL
🎧 Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman | iHeart https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-math-magic-stories-from-t-31150153/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Office Hours, where we sit down with the
chief executives shaping the world and answer your most important
questions about leadership, career, and life. I'm Mike Steib and today,
my friends, we are sitting down with someone I have
admired my entire career. A pioneer in media and technology
who has created brands and companies that have defined my generation,
(00:25):
A teammate and a friend I really value. Bob Pittman,
CEO of iHeartMedia, legendary media exec. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thanks Miyan, I'm thrilled you here.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So, Bob, one thing I want to start with something
you might not know about me. When I was twenty five,
I had my first media job, and I was learning
the gig by reading a huge stack of broadcasting and
cable magazines, and in like the eighth copy, there's this
whole article on you and on the team pulling off
the biggest merger in the world, which we'll get to
in a minute. And I've read your bio at the time,
(00:59):
and you would MTV, which was the center of my universe.
You had run Great Adventure, which was like the mecca
for me as a kid. You ran Centry twenty one.
So you ran the real estate game, I mean you,
and then you were pulling off the biggest media merger
anyone had ever done. And I was like, someday I'm
going to meet the sky Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Pittman, and you were so disappointed when you did it
was it lived, It lived up to the hike.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So as you know, we take questions from the audience
here and we're going to get right into it. We
had a bunch of listeners who wanted to get your
advice on a wide range of stuff. The team's going
to let it rip.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
My name is Nicole from La Bob. MTV was a
revolution elevating music videos to the top of our culture.
What was the origin of the idea and how did
you make it a reality.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
We had this idea of and I had done a
TV show on NBC. I came from NBC. I was
at WNBC Radio program Again. I'd done a show in
the nineteen seventies called album Tracks, which ran after Saturday
Night Live. And we've begun playing around with these video clips,
these video versions of songs, and we were doing music
(02:07):
news and information, and so I pitched the idea of
let's do a video radio station, a place where people
can hang out where they want to. It's not so
much as you're coming for the program, they're coming for
the network. They want to hang out at this place.
And so that was the idea. The board of directors
(02:30):
of Warner MX, which was the joint venture that controlled
Warner MX Satellite Entertainment Corporation Healthful, said no to the idea.
There was two risky. But we got a meeting with
Steve Ross, who is the CEO of Warner and Jim Robinson,
who is the CEO of American Express, and I pitched
hard and at the end of the meeting, Jim Robinson
(02:53):
from American Express looked over at Steve Ross and said,
I'm in for my half. Steve, how about you? And
that was the way we got started.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And Bob, how old were you at the time. I
was twenty seven and this was I mean, this is
a career defining pitch. You must be able to close
your eyes and remember it.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But when you're twenty seven you don't think about it
that way. Twenty seven years think this is a cool
new thing. Let's go do it. We're on a mission
from God. And by the way, it was very difficult.
It didn't turn out at all as planned. It turns
out that the advertisers were not ready to give money
to these new networks, almost starved to death. I'd been
(03:32):
given an assignment, and I was originally the creative head.
I built the product, but I wasn't responsible for the
advertising or running the network, and the advertising sales were
so bad. About a year later, they said, hey, kid,
you think he run this thing? And I go, sure,
I know nothing about selling advertising. And we figured it
(03:52):
out and we launched in August one, nineteen eighty one.
In early nineteen eighty three, I was given the mandate, Bob,
get this thing profitable by the end of the year,
we're going to shut it down. So I was like,
I learned cost cutting, I learned efficiency. I thought of
every game in the world to get revenue. And actually,
by the end of the year we were profitable. So
(04:13):
it was a you know, you got to get it done,
and when you got to get it done, you usually
figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The next question starts to bring us some of the
next phases of your career and some really interesting lessons
I think for our audience.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Hi, this is Jen from trying New Jersey. You each
had a big win early in your career. How did
that cause you to think about your next move?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
So, Bob, after MTV, you must have been on top
of the world.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Right, you know what? That was a really good question,
and I and I often think about that because I
think having a win early in my career gave you know,
it gave me a little bit of money, It gave
me some cachet, gave me standing. I think I didn't
have to prove anything after that. I think the rest
of my life could be about doing stuff I found
that was fun and stimulating, but not with that idea
(04:57):
that I need to do something. And I think that
probably took up the rock around my neck off my neck.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Bob, you started as a DJ. You mentioned that earlier.
Today you run the audio industry. Was there a moment
early in your career where you thought, what's out ahead
of me? Is this this huge mountain I'm going to
climb and now you're at the top of it? Or
has this been just a series of happy coincidences and
one move after the next.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You know, It's that's really interesting. I think you know
what I'm looking for. I think like most people is
a stimulating, interesting life. And I've never thought about things
as being planned. I mean, you think about the career
I've had, There's no way I could have planned it
because nobody knew the internet was coming. No one knew
what an internet was. They don't know a cable networks.
(05:47):
Where you sort of at that moment you either say
yes or no, and you know, you look, you hit
a fork in the road, you say, which way am
I going? The interesting thing is people agonize over that
so much, But I actually, looking back now, I say,
I think, actually, can you have a success in either wine.
It's not like your success because you picked going right
or left. You're just having to pick right and you're
(06:09):
successful there. There's probably a success now going left too,
So I think you have to have confidence that that's
the case. I think you also have to have confidence
that there is no plan, that life can't be planned,
that this is really about a random walk. I talk
about my career is more like a media or flying
out of the sky and hitting me on the head.
(06:30):
This is just there's a randomness to it. You just
got to go with it. And if you go with it,
sort of everything you do is interesting. And even small
stuff that seems small at the time turns out to
be maybe major, big, or life changing or life fulfilling.
And I think the most important thing is do you
wake up in the morning and have a burning desire
(06:50):
to start work and at the end of the day,
are you sort of sad you have to stop working
and go to sleep. And if you can find something
like that, what you really want to make sure is
you get enough money so you have shelter, food, and
some degree of comfort. But beyond that, what's great about
it is just you're stimulated and you're making your life
fulfilled and interesting. And that's always my advice to people
(07:14):
as they build their career.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It's great advice, and mikere's not the same category as yours.
But after we sold my last company, I had this
sensation like I could do whatever I wanted, and it's
a passing feeling unless you actually do it. And I
decided I was only going to take a job that
could have an impact on the world I'd be excited
about and that I would have a lot of fun.
And in hindsight, my regret is that I didn't come
(07:37):
to the conclusion sooner. It turns out You don't need
to have had a big win, you don't need to
have had to put something in the bank. You can
just follow your passion and you're gonna do really well.
Vanessa in Madison, Wisconsin is up next.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Hey, Bob, I am a huge fan of your podcast
Math and Magic, and I aspire to be the kind
of marketer you highlight in your show. So what do
you look for when you hire a marketer and what's
your advice to an up and coming marketer like myself.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, I think the most important thing as a marketer
is study the consumer. It's all about the consumer. The
trap is don't follow the conventional wisdom. All these rules
people come up with or invented for a lot of
reasons other than making you a success. So fine, figure
out exactly what is that you're trying to do, and
look very carefully at what you can find that others
(08:29):
haven't found, and then relentlessly pursue it. And I think
at that, and you're trying to do something others haven't discovered.
I think about some of the great successes that really
want against the grain. One of my favorite examples is
is T Mobile. You know they didn't have a lot
of money. They were up against AT and T and Hoverizon,
and what do they do? So they sort of made
(08:51):
themselves the uncarrier instead of spending all their money on TV.
They knew they couldn't compete with them on TV. They'd
be a minor share voice compared to those two look
around and said, look at and T and Bryce aren't
using radio much. We'll go on radio. And they outspent
them two three to one on radio, and they became
the dominant share voice on radio. And with that approach
(09:12):
and with this unique positioning, they added more subscribers quarter
after quarter after quarter. But they broke all the rules
because nobody else was using that game plan. And I
think it's you know, when you find stuff that you
can do that's crafted for you, not what everybody else
is doing, you'll have a much better, better way to go.
And rather than reading the marketing textbooks, you're almost better
(09:35):
reading the consumer. My favorite marketing book is Incognito, The
Secret Lives of the Brain by David Egelman, who, as
you know, is a neuroscientist, and he doesn't think he
wrote a marketing book. I think he wrote a marketing
book because it just explains a lot of how the
brain works and how we come to decisions and conclusions.
(09:56):
And I thought, there's I get more out of that
book than I have any marketing book. I keep about
a dozen copies in my office and when I'm having
a great marketing conversation with someone, I go, wait a minute,
I want to give you a book and to go
out and read the book and say, Okay, read this,
You'll love this book.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You may remember we planned weddings in my list company
is called the Nott and we got asked if we
wanted to ring the bell at the Stock Exchange. And
there's two options. One is, you know, you ring the
bell and they like put you on a little window
in the window for thirty seconds and people see. Or
you can really make a scene. And we showed up
with half the team and wedding dresses and tuxedos, and
we brought a giant cake and port champagne for the
(10:31):
guys on the floor and we were on one hundred
million TVs because they're looking for content, and we brought
the content. But you had we had to do something
a little bit different than usual, or who would care
that we were there to ring the bell?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well, you know, I think it's also interesting to me
to think about MTV. What was our problem in MTV?
Cable operators did want to put us on their system.
Then we had to get the distribution they wanted us
to pay them. We didn't have enough money to pay.
So we said, you know what, we're going to do
what's called poll marketing. I didn't know what that was,
but at Harvard and be a work for me and
said Bob, we should get consumer pull, and I go, great,
(11:03):
sounds good to me. I got a mail stunts and
so we started this I Want my MTV. And the
commercial actually was call your cable company and say I
want my MTV. And it was big stars, big music
stars saying that. And the idea was we would flood
the cable operators and they would be so compelled to
(11:25):
put it on because they had consumer pressure. And it worked,
worked like a charm, and we spent a fraction of
what we would have had to spend the buyer distribution
to do that TV advertising with I want my MTV.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Up next, somebody's got to pay the bills. We've got
a couple of quick ads. We've got a Rajish in
London has a eminent question.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Next, the media industry and the tech history have been
shaped dramatically by mergers and acquisitions. You've both done a
lot of deals, and Bob, you specifically have helped orchestrate
the largest M and A deal in media history. What
kinds of transactions work and what kinds don't.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, look, I think if you go through the AOL
Time Warner example, it was, you know, it's an interesting play.
I thought it was a in hindsight, you know, going
into it, everybody looked at what we could put together
and what would work. What we failed, I think to
take into account is we didn't have a common goal,
we didn't have a common game plan, and we didn't
have a common culture. That there was a huge culture
(12:37):
clash which keeps people from working together. And you know,
it's interesting if you look back at that merger. Actually,
in the first year after that merger, wheneverybody say, my god,
it's a failing merger. I AOL Time Warner had the
highest earnings growth of any of the media companies. It
actually financially was working, but the perception was it was
(13:00):
a failure. And what you were hearing was the cultures
don't mesh and it was AOL was a company where
we used all our free cash flow to continue to
build the company, build new things, buy new things, and
keep growing. And at time Warner they used all their
cash flow to give it to the cable operator to
build more cable systems. AOL was about forty percent of
(13:23):
the cash flow to combined company when we combined. Instead
of AOL taking that money and continuing to grow, they
gave that money to the cable operator to build more
cable systems, and that sort of stopped the growth of AOL.
And if you think about it, AOL going into that
merger had had fifty percent of the traffic of the
Internet and the United States came through AOL. They were Google,
(13:46):
they were Facebook, we had everything. As a matter of fact,
the last deal I did was to give our search
traffic to Google in exchange for a piece of Google,
which unfortunately somebody sold when it was worth a couple
of billion instead of waiting it to its worth a
couple of hundred billion. And we were in the center
of everything, and so much of what's been built since then.
(14:07):
I think at AOL state and independent company, and AOL
used that cash flow to continue to grow, would have
built a lot of that themselves. So I think with
a merger, you've got to really make sure that you
have the common vision, are really going in the same place,
And I think in that case we weren't. I think
the successful mergers, the most successful, are probably tuck ends.
(14:28):
When you do a tuck in, you've got a winning culture,
you've got an existing vision, and somebody's joining your parade.
And a merger of equals, which an aol time Warner was,
is I think where you have problems because you no
longer have the north Star, you no longer have the vision.
Now you have to go develop a new vision, which,
by the way, like a startup, you may or may
(14:49):
not get right. You've got to build a new culture,
which you may or may not get right, and takes
a long time to do. So I'm a great fan
of the tuck ends. I think the merger of equals
are very how very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I have any lessons from what brought iHeartMedia to where
it is today. The radio at one point was a
hugely fragmented industry. It wasn't digital at all. You can
you paint a picture from there to where we are today.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Sure you know it's interesting. I think radio is a
perfect example of how sometimes we as coastal elites, and
I will confess to being one miss what's really going
on in America. I had a meeting with about eighty
of our digital people a couple of months ago, and
I went around the room and I said, how many
(15:37):
people in this room like country music? I he was
about eighty people. One person raised their hand. I go,
you know, that's actually one of the biggest music genres
in the United States today. How many people in the
room drive a car to work every day? No hands
went up, No one drives. I go, okay, well, about
ninety nine percent of people drive their car to work
(15:59):
every day. And then how many people in this room
are in sixty seven thousand dollars a year or less?
No hands went out. I go, that's actually half of America.
Every other house in America is occupied by someone who
are in sixty seven thousand dollars a year or less.
That's the median household income. And so my point was
that you can't trust your instincts when you're in that situation.
(16:21):
You have to look at the data. You really have
to study the consumer to make the right decision, and
I think radio is one of those that if I
look at Manhattan and Brooklyn, radio is not very big.
If I look at a couple of areas of San
Francisco or Silicon Valley is probably not very big. Everywhere
else is huge. Radio reaches ninety percent of America, which
(16:41):
you did, by the way, in nineteen seventy. In those days,
TV reached, you know, ninety five percent of America. Today,
iHeartRadio reaches about ninety percent of America. NBC reaches thirty
five percent of America, and yet people didn't see that happening.
I got involved with the company because it was initially
a radio company, and I saw this huge reach and said,
(17:04):
we can do a lot with this reach. One we
ought to be able to monetize it a whole lot
better than we're doing. And second is we should be
able to use it to build other businesses. So we
built the iHeart Radio app. It's like we've got a
five x lead over the next largest digital radio app.
We used it to build big concert and festival businesses,
(17:27):
the iHeart Radio Music Festival, the iHeart Radio Music Awards,
the iHeart jingle Ball, and we used it to build podcasting.
I mean, why are we the number one podcaster. We're
bigger than number two and three combined because we promoted
on the radio, because we reached ninety percent of America,
we can tell them about this new thing called podcast
(17:49):
and we can talk about our podcast. And so it's
this when you talk about syner Jesus, this way we
work together. And then, of course the biggest issue we
had to do was find a tech stack that would
add it all because we were still selling when I
got here, is still selling radio. You will buy some
you want to buy some spots. No one wants to
buy spots anymore. They want to invest their money to
(18:10):
get a return. So you got to talk about targetability.
You got to be able to monitor it, you got
to show attribution. I got to be able to buy
it electronically. And so we set about over a ten
year period of building out those capabilities. What is started
with the base of having something that everybody in America
uses every day. By the way people use audio, it's
about a third of their media use every day is audio.
(18:34):
It gets about nine percent of the advertisers advertising columns.
So there's a huge opportunity and I think as algorithms
begin to pick where people spend their money, and it's
based on performance. I think radio stands a great chance
of being a beneficiar.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
All Right, we have the king of podcasts here, So
the next question, inevitably somebody wants to know how to
make a great podcast. We've got Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Thanks for taking my question.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I'm starting my first podcast and would love both of
your advice on making it successful, booking guests, producing a
good show, et cetera. I'm also curious what's the ideal
length and are there any special tricks for getting promoted
on the big platforms like I Heart and Spotify.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, it is, by the way, congratulations on being in podcasting.
That you know. I think one of the problems with
podcasting it's a lot like a website. You know, today
almost anybody can do a website, but the challenge still
is how do you get traffick to it. Podcasting the
tools and the techniques are easy to get going, so
(19:40):
first you've got to produce one that's easier today. But
then the most important thing is figure out how you
get people to listen to it. And in terms of
the content, I think you find podcasts are very host driven.
It's not like TV or it's all sort of production driven.
And the most successful podcast people that you want to
(20:01):
bond with, that you want to hang out with. Remember
most of the podcast listening is probably going to be
done at home. They've got time to sort of kick back.
They want they want you to be their friend. And
in terms of who you book, what you book, again,
think of the consumer, what will interest them, what will
be fascinating to them, And if they're your friend, who
(20:23):
would you bring into your friend circle to talk with them?
And then I think on the promotion side, it's go
anywhere you can. Social is really great for it. By
the way, be a guest on other people's podcast. Push,
push every button for every opportunity you can find to
get a little bit of traffic. Because one person will
(20:44):
tell two and two will tell four. And it's just
the math of it. And don't be discouraged if it
starts out slow, give yourself time to build and build
it in a very authentic way.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I can only add that in starting this podcast, the
team and I had a feeling like earlier in your
career especially, there's this gap between what you know and
what you aspire to know, where you are and where
you aspire to go, And there are all these people
who have these insights that you don't have access to,
and if we could bring them together here, it could
solve a real human problem. And we've gotten a positive
(21:18):
reaction to the show for that reason. And Chelsea asked
about how long a podcast should be. I listened to
some that are three hours. We try really hard to
keep this one at thirty minutes because the average American
commute is thirty minutes. Because people are busy. We're trying
to help you be successful. You got other things to do,
so that's that's our angle.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But you know, I think even ten or fifteen minute
podcasts can be successful. You don't have as many ad units.
But if you're really just trying to build the best
podcast for the consumer, go for that. And if you've
got great ten minutes, do a great ten minutes, don't
stretch it to twenty.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
He says in our thirtieth minute here on the podcast,
thank you. We will be back after this message. We
got Carly and Brooklyn up next.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Hey, Mike, I've just been laid off and this is
the first real setback I have my career.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
How did you handle setbacks in your career, where did
you look for support and what got you through?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
What do you think both?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Well, I think it's funny how bad things turn into
good things. Early in my career, I used to be
on a track and I was going one direction. Then
something would happen and I go, oh, this is so
bad for me, this is so terrible. And something else
happened as a result of that, and years later we
looked back and say, thank god that happened. Otherwise I
(22:44):
would never be here today. And I think when things
happened which appear to be a setback, the other way
to look at it is you weren't meant to go
in that direction. There's a better opportunity awaiting you, and
so it's go with the flow. Keep your mind open,
don't don't be bummed out, you know, I know, look,
I know there are problems with it. I note it's
(23:04):
inevitable that you don't feel good about it, but understand
that it's opening up a world of possibilities to you
that wouldn't be there if you were still working in
that job.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And I'd also just say, Carly, there's a sense, especially
earlier in your career, that there are people at the
top of the mountain who've just had nothing but success
after success, and that if you miss one, you're off track.
You're no longer going up the same mountain they did.
And just so you know, everybody at the top of
the mountain has been laid off or fired, or missed
a budget or bankrupted the company or something or something,
(23:35):
Steve Jobs got fired. If Steve Jobs can be fired,
we can all have a bad day at work and
still expect to end up someplace that we can be
really excited about in our careers. This is a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Hi, this is a hector from Long Island.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I got a question for Bob.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I just want to know more about tequila. I love question,
Bob our Quay.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Our listeners may not have all the context on why
you would be the right guy to answer that question.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, I years ago spent a lot of time in
Mexico and there was this bootleg tequila in this town
that everybody loved because it was so smooth you could
sip it. It was none of that wins factor of tequila
where you have to use salter lyme to get rid
of that kick. And my son was working in Las Vegas.
(24:28):
He brought his buddy down ran a night club in Vegas.
We drank this stuff one night and the next morning
he told me. You know, said mister Pitt, when I
get a thousand dollars a bottle of cristeala my club,
I could get ten thousand dollars a jog for this.
I thought, Wow, there's a business idea, no idea what
I would do with it. Go back to New York.
Six seven months later, I'm at a party in Brooklyn.
I meet this lady. We're chatting and some on the conversation,
(24:50):
I says, so, what do you do for a living?
She goes, I run Jose Cuervo in North America. I go,
this is fate. Quit your job. I have a great idea.
Come be my partner. It's Birtwoings and we we started
through that process casedric Is Tequila, which is the smoothest
aequila you'll ever have. We started with a super smooth
sipping tequila Joven, and since then have built the Bloco
(25:14):
and Yeho and last year of Episodo. And so for me,
it was it was a journey to find something different,
and by the way, we did make it. We made
it Tequila a different way. Still legally tequila, but we
made it with a express purpose to make it super smooth.
So we get a lot of people to say, oh,
I can't drink tequila, and they taste casadriganis go ooh,
(25:36):
I love this, And so it's been really sort of
a journey of love and Bart and I very early
on said, you know what, let's decide that we're going
to have the greatest tequila in the world. If we
can't make it as smooth as this bootleg stuff we
were using sort of as our as our example, then
let's just shut the company down. And when we did that,
(25:58):
we said, okay, and if the connoisseur don't think this
is the greatest tequila in the world, let's just shut
the company down if we can. Then each step we
had a if, if if, But it was always about
quality and always about doing something great. And Verite has
been just this inspired leader. She's the CEO of the company,
and every time she hits a hurdle, she doesn't say
(26:19):
oh I hit a hurdle, She goes, oh, this happened,
Now we should do this. That always talks about solutions
to hurdles, never hurdles as blockers and uh and it's
just been an incredible growth trajectory for the company. And
uh and by the way, I feel love tequila to drain.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I strongly Uh, I strongly recommend the tequila for sure.
We've got let's do one the last one. And this
is this is one on advice.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Hi, this is Jessica. I'm just worrying. What's the best
advice you've ever gotten in your career? The best advice
I've ever gotten in my career. I you know, I
think probably the best advice is is don't listen to
anybody else. Find your own path. And I think that
is probably done the most for me of anything else.
(27:08):
Have the security to go if you got an idea
of believe in it and go and don't be dissuaded
because others don't like the idea or don't believe in it.
And I would say for everybody you know, you'll have
a regret if you don't do your idea and things
don't work out, you'll be regretful you didn't try your idea.
If you try your idea it didn't work, at least
(27:29):
you tried your idea. You don't have any regrets and
life is about this series of trial and error, and
I think it worked for me, and I think it
probably works for most people.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This has been an inspiration and a pleasure, and it
has been wonderful to have you on the show. I
want to thank you very very much.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Team. Was that amazing. We sat down today with Bob Pittman,
who's run company after company that has impacted the lives
of millions of people in a number of ways, to
find our generation. His energy is amazing, his vice is
off the chart. You know one thing I want to
reflect on from our conversation today. Some of you know
I wrote a book. It's called The Career Manifesto. It's
(28:15):
about writing a plan for your career, finding the things
that make you passionate, identifying the gaps between where you
are and the kinds of roles that you would get
the most out of, working every angle to make sure
that you are building your career and you're getting to
that realization. Well, somebody who's career I've admired my whole
life came in today and said, you can't make a plan.
(28:36):
It's all random, and you might go down three different
paths and as I reflected on that, I found an
area of overlap between the way I look at it
and I've looked at it historically and what Bob said,
And I would tell you I agree with Bob. I
think it's really important to identify your goals in life,
the place where you want to be, to be constantly
(28:58):
investing in your own learning and moving to move closer
and closer to the capabilities you need. But you can't
know what industries, what technologies, what trends are going to
exist five or ten or twenty years from now. You
can put yourself in a position to be a capable
leader or marketer or accountant or programmer or whatever the
(29:20):
thing is that's right for you. You can find the
lane that's a great fit for you and continue to
make yourself more valuable, more impactful, more capable within that lane.
But just as Bob noted, you've got to stay flexible
John Lennon who said life is what happens when you're
making other plans, And certainly I'm where I am at
(29:40):
this moment, loving the job I have right now because
somebody I didn't ask to come along and buy my
last company came along and bought my last company, and
I was at that company because the things that happened
at the one previous that I hadn't planned for either.
So I don't know if we were to tight Bob's
(30:02):
wisdom into my suggestion, I'd still lay out where you'd
like to go generally in your career, but understand you're
not going to know exactly what doors are going to
open for you on the way. Be opportunistic, look for
good luck, take those breaks, make your moves, and stay
on your grind. My friends, we will. We'll see you
here next week. If you want to submit a question
(30:22):
for me and our future guests, please use the link
in the description or hit me up on Twitter and
Instagram at Mike Steib. You can also call us at
two P one three four one nine five nine six and
just leave your question as a voice message. Your question
maybe driving the next interview we have here on office hours.
I want to thank Bob for that incredible interview, and
(30:43):
of course, Jen, Meg, Jada, Matt, the whole team at
Blue Duck Media for pulling this all together. I want
to thank Dylan and Christopher at iHeart, and Ben and
the team at William Morris Endeavor for all their sport
office hours. It's a production of Blue Duck Media and
distributed by iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
There a
Welcome to Office Hours, where we sit down with the
chief executives shaping the world and answer your most important
questions about leadership, career, and life. I'm Mike Steib and today,
my friends, we are sitting down with someone I have
admired my entire career. A pioneer in media and technology
who has created brands and companies that have defined my generation,
(00:25):
A teammate and a friend I really value. Bob Pittman,
CEO of iHeartMedia, legendary media exec. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thanks Miyan, I'm thrilled you here.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
So, Bob, one thing I want to start with something
you might not know about me. When I was twenty five,
I had my first media job, and I was learning
the gig by reading a huge stack of broadcasting and
cable magazines, and in like the eighth copy, there's this
whole article on you and on the team pulling off
the biggest merger in the world, which we'll get to
in a minute. And I've read your bio at the time,
(00:59):
and you would MTV, which was the center of my universe.
You had run Great Adventure, which was like the mecca
for me as a kid. You ran Centry twenty one.
So you ran the real estate game, I mean you,
and then you were pulling off the biggest media merger
anyone had ever done. And I was like, someday I'm
going to meet the sky Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Pittman, and you were so disappointed when you did it
was it lived, It lived up to the hike.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
So as you know, we take questions from the audience
here and we're going to get right into it. We
had a bunch of listeners who wanted to get your
advice on a wide range of stuff. The team's going
to let it rip.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
My name is Nicole from La Bob. MTV was a
revolution elevating music videos to the top of our culture.
What was the origin of the idea and how did
you make it a reality.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
We had this idea of and I had done a
TV show on NBC. I came from NBC. I was
at WNBC Radio program Again. I'd done a show in
the nineteen seventies called album Tracks, which ran after Saturday
Night Live. And we've begun playing around with these video clips,
these video versions of songs, and we were doing music
(02:07):
news and information, and so I pitched the idea of
let's do a video radio station, a place where people
can hang out where they want to. It's not so
much as you're coming for the program, they're coming for
the network. They want to hang out at this place.
And so that was the idea. The board of directors
(02:30):
of Warner MX, which was the joint venture that controlled
Warner MX Satellite Entertainment Corporation Healthful, said no to the idea.
There was two risky. But we got a meeting with
Steve Ross, who is the CEO of Warner and Jim Robinson,
who is the CEO of American Express, and I pitched
hard and at the end of the meeting, Jim Robinson
(02:53):
from American Express looked over at Steve Ross and said,
I'm in for my half. Steve, how about you? And
that was the way we got started.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And Bob, how old were you at the time. I
was twenty seven and this was I mean, this is
a career defining pitch. You must be able to close
your eyes and remember it.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
But when you're twenty seven you don't think about it
that way. Twenty seven years think this is a cool
new thing. Let's go do it. We're on a mission
from God. And by the way, it was very difficult.
It didn't turn out at all as planned. It turns
out that the advertisers were not ready to give money
to these new networks, almost starved to death. I'd been
(03:32):
given an assignment, and I was originally the creative head.
I built the product, but I wasn't responsible for the
advertising or running the network, and the advertising sales were
so bad. About a year later, they said, hey, kid,
you think he run this thing? And I go, sure,
I know nothing about selling advertising. And we figured it
(03:52):
out and we launched in August one, nineteen eighty one.
In early nineteen eighty three, I was given the mandate, Bob,
get this thing profitable by the end of the year,
we're going to shut it down. So I was like,
I learned cost cutting, I learned efficiency. I thought of
every game in the world to get revenue. And actually,
by the end of the year we were profitable. So
(04:13):
it was a you know, you got to get it done,
and when you got to get it done, you usually
figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The next question starts to bring us some of the
next phases of your career and some really interesting lessons
I think for our audience.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Hi, this is Jen from trying New Jersey. You each
had a big win early in your career. How did
that cause you to think about your next move?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
So, Bob, after MTV, you must have been on top
of the world.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Right, you know what? That was a really good question,
and I and I often think about that because I
think having a win early in my career gave you know,
it gave me a little bit of money, It gave
me some cachet, gave me standing. I think I didn't
have to prove anything after that. I think the rest
of my life could be about doing stuff I found
that was fun and stimulating, but not with that idea
(04:57):
that I need to do something. And I think that
probably took up the rock around my neck off my neck.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Bob, you started as a DJ. You mentioned that earlier.
Today you run the audio industry. Was there a moment
early in your career where you thought, what's out ahead
of me? Is this this huge mountain I'm going to
climb and now you're at the top of it? Or
has this been just a series of happy coincidences and
one move after the next.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
You know, It's that's really interesting. I think you know
what I'm looking for. I think like most people is
a stimulating, interesting life. And I've never thought about things
as being planned. I mean, you think about the career
I've had, There's no way I could have planned it
because nobody knew the internet was coming. No one knew
what an internet was. They don't know a cable networks.
(05:47):
Where you sort of at that moment you either say
yes or no, and you know, you look, you hit
a fork in the road, you say, which way am
I going? The interesting thing is people agonize over that
so much, But I actually, looking back now, I say,
I think, actually, can you have a success in either wine.
It's not like your success because you picked going right
or left. You're just having to pick right and you're
(06:09):
successful there. There's probably a success now going left too,
So I think you have to have confidence that that's
the case. I think you also have to have confidence
that there is no plan, that life can't be planned,
that this is really about a random walk. I talk
about my career is more like a media or flying
out of the sky and hitting me on the head.
(06:30):
This is just there's a randomness to it. You just
got to go with it. And if you go with it,
sort of everything you do is interesting. And even small
stuff that seems small at the time turns out to
be maybe major, big, or life changing or life fulfilling.
And I think the most important thing is do you
wake up in the morning and have a burning desire
(06:50):
to start work and at the end of the day,
are you sort of sad you have to stop working
and go to sleep. And if you can find something
like that, what you really want to make sure is
you get enough money so you have shelter, food, and
some degree of comfort. But beyond that, what's great about
it is just you're stimulated and you're making your life
fulfilled and interesting. And that's always my advice to people
(07:14):
as they build their career.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
It's great advice, and mikere's not the same category as yours.
But after we sold my last company, I had this
sensation like I could do whatever I wanted, and it's
a passing feeling unless you actually do it. And I
decided I was only going to take a job that
could have an impact on the world I'd be excited
about and that I would have a lot of fun.
And in hindsight, my regret is that I didn't come
(07:37):
to the conclusion sooner. It turns out You don't need
to have had a big win, you don't need to
have had to put something in the bank. You can
just follow your passion and you're gonna do really well.
Vanessa in Madison, Wisconsin is up next.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Hey, Bob, I am a huge fan of your podcast
Math and Magic, and I aspire to be the kind
of marketer you highlight in your show. So what do
you look for when you hire a marketer and what's
your advice to an up and coming marketer like myself.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Well, I think the most important thing as a marketer
is study the consumer. It's all about the consumer. The
trap is don't follow the conventional wisdom. All these rules
people come up with or invented for a lot of
reasons other than making you a success. So fine, figure
out exactly what is that you're trying to do, and
look very carefully at what you can find that others
(08:29):
haven't found, and then relentlessly pursue it. And I think
at that, and you're trying to do something others haven't discovered.
I think about some of the great successes that really
want against the grain. One of my favorite examples is
is T Mobile. You know they didn't have a lot
of money. They were up against AT and T and Hoverizon,
and what do they do? So they sort of made
(08:51):
themselves the uncarrier instead of spending all their money on TV.
They knew they couldn't compete with them on TV. They'd
be a minor share voice compared to those two look
around and said, look at and T and Bryce aren't
using radio much. We'll go on radio. And they outspent
them two three to one on radio, and they became
the dominant share voice on radio. And with that approach
(09:12):
and with this unique positioning, they added more subscribers quarter
after quarter after quarter. But they broke all the rules
because nobody else was using that game plan. And I
think it's you know, when you find stuff that you
can do that's crafted for you, not what everybody else
is doing, you'll have a much better, better way to go.
And rather than reading the marketing textbooks, you're almost better
(09:35):
reading the consumer. My favorite marketing book is Incognito, The
Secret Lives of the Brain by David Egelman, who, as
you know, is a neuroscientist, and he doesn't think he
wrote a marketing book. I think he wrote a marketing
book because it just explains a lot of how the
brain works and how we come to decisions and conclusions.
(09:56):
And I thought, there's I get more out of that
book than I have any marketing book. I keep about
a dozen copies in my office and when I'm having
a great marketing conversation with someone, I go, wait a minute,
I want to give you a book and to go
out and read the book and say, Okay, read this,
You'll love this book.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You may remember we planned weddings in my list company
is called the Nott and we got asked if we
wanted to ring the bell at the Stock Exchange. And
there's two options. One is, you know, you ring the
bell and they like put you on a little window
in the window for thirty seconds and people see. Or
you can really make a scene. And we showed up
with half the team and wedding dresses and tuxedos, and
we brought a giant cake and port champagne for the
(10:31):
guys on the floor and we were on one hundred
million TVs because they're looking for content, and we brought
the content. But you had we had to do something
a little bit different than usual, or who would care
that we were there to ring the bell?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Well, you know, I think it's also interesting to me
to think about MTV. What was our problem in MTV?
Cable operators did want to put us on their system.
Then we had to get the distribution they wanted us
to pay them. We didn't have enough money to pay.
So we said, you know what, we're going to do
what's called poll marketing. I didn't know what that was,
but at Harvard and be a work for me and
said Bob, we should get consumer pull, and I go, great,
(11:03):
sounds good to me. I got a mail stunts and
so we started this I Want my MTV. And the
commercial actually was call your cable company and say I
want my MTV. And it was big stars, big music
stars saying that. And the idea was we would flood
the cable operators and they would be so compelled to
(11:25):
put it on because they had consumer pressure. And it worked,
worked like a charm, and we spent a fraction of
what we would have had to spend the buyer distribution
to do that TV advertising with I want my MTV.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Up next, somebody's got to pay the bills. We've got
a couple of quick ads. We've got a Rajish in
London has a eminent question.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
Next, the media industry and the tech history have been
shaped dramatically by mergers and acquisitions. You've both done a
lot of deals, and Bob, you specifically have helped orchestrate
the largest M and A deal in media history. What
kinds of transactions work and what kinds don't.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, look, I think if you go through the AOL
Time Warner example, it was, you know, it's an interesting play.
I thought it was a in hindsight, you know, going
into it, everybody looked at what we could put together
and what would work. What we failed, I think to
take into account is we didn't have a common goal,
we didn't have a common game plan, and we didn't
have a common culture. That there was a huge culture
(12:37):
clash which keeps people from working together. And you know,
it's interesting if you look back at that merger. Actually,
in the first year after that merger, wheneverybody say, my god,
it's a failing merger. I AOL Time Warner had the
highest earnings growth of any of the media companies. It
actually financially was working, but the perception was it was
(13:00):
a failure. And what you were hearing was the cultures
don't mesh and it was AOL was a company where
we used all our free cash flow to continue to
build the company, build new things, buy new things, and
keep growing. And at time Warner they used all their
cash flow to give it to the cable operator to
build more cable systems. AOL was about forty percent of
(13:23):
the cash flow to combined company when we combined. Instead
of AOL taking that money and continuing to grow, they
gave that money to the cable operator to build more
cable systems, and that sort of stopped the growth of AOL.
And if you think about it, AOL going into that
merger had had fifty percent of the traffic of the
Internet and the United States came through AOL. They were Google,
(13:46):
they were Facebook, we had everything. As a matter of fact,
the last deal I did was to give our search
traffic to Google in exchange for a piece of Google,
which unfortunately somebody sold when it was worth a couple
of billion instead of waiting it to its worth a
couple of hundred billion. And we were in the center
of everything, and so much of what's been built since then.
(14:07):
I think at AOL state and independent company, and AOL
used that cash flow to continue to grow, would have
built a lot of that themselves. So I think with
a merger, you've got to really make sure that you
have the common vision, are really going in the same place,
And I think in that case we weren't. I think
the successful mergers, the most successful, are probably tuck ends.
(14:28):
When you do a tuck in, you've got a winning culture,
you've got an existing vision, and somebody's joining your parade.
And a merger of equals, which an aol time Warner was,
is I think where you have problems because you no
longer have the north Star, you no longer have the vision.
Now you have to go develop a new vision, which,
by the way, like a startup, you may or may
(14:49):
not get right. You've got to build a new culture,
which you may or may not get right, and takes
a long time to do. So I'm a great fan
of the tuck ends. I think the merger of equals
are very how very dangerous.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I have any lessons from what brought iHeartMedia to where
it is today. The radio at one point was a
hugely fragmented industry. It wasn't digital at all. You can
you paint a picture from there to where we are today.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Sure you know it's interesting. I think radio is a
perfect example of how sometimes we as coastal elites, and
I will confess to being one miss what's really going
on in America. I had a meeting with about eighty
of our digital people a couple of months ago, and
I went around the room and I said, how many
(15:37):
people in this room like country music? I he was
about eighty people. One person raised their hand. I go,
you know, that's actually one of the biggest music genres
in the United States today. How many people in the
room drive a car to work every day? No hands
went up, No one drives. I go, okay, well, about
ninety nine percent of people drive their car to work
(15:59):
every day. And then how many people in this room
are in sixty seven thousand dollars a year or less?
No hands went out. I go, that's actually half of America.
Every other house in America is occupied by someone who
are in sixty seven thousand dollars a year or less.
That's the median household income. And so my point was
that you can't trust your instincts when you're in that situation.
(16:21):
You have to look at the data. You really have
to study the consumer to make the right decision, and
I think radio is one of those that if I
look at Manhattan and Brooklyn, radio is not very big.
If I look at a couple of areas of San
Francisco or Silicon Valley is probably not very big. Everywhere
else is huge. Radio reaches ninety percent of America, which
(16:41):
you did, by the way, in nineteen seventy. In those days,
TV reached, you know, ninety five percent of America. Today,
iHeartRadio reaches about ninety percent of America. NBC reaches thirty
five percent of America, and yet people didn't see that happening.
I got involved with the company because it was initially
a radio company, and I saw this huge reach and said,
(17:04):
we can do a lot with this reach. One we
ought to be able to monetize it a whole lot
better than we're doing. And second is we should be
able to use it to build other businesses. So we
built the iHeart Radio app. It's like we've got a
five x lead over the next largest digital radio app.
We used it to build big concert and festival businesses,
(17:27):
the iHeart Radio Music Festival, the iHeart Radio Music Awards,
the iHeart jingle Ball, and we used it to build podcasting.
I mean, why are we the number one podcaster. We're
bigger than number two and three combined because we promoted
on the radio, because we reached ninety percent of America,
we can tell them about this new thing called podcast
(17:49):
and we can talk about our podcast. And so it's
this when you talk about syner Jesus, this way we
work together. And then, of course the biggest issue we
had to do was find a tech stack that would
add it all because we were still selling when I
got here, is still selling radio. You will buy some
you want to buy some spots. No one wants to
buy spots anymore. They want to invest their money to
(18:10):
get a return. So you got to talk about targetability.
You got to be able to monitor it, you got
to show attribution. I got to be able to buy
it electronically. And so we set about over a ten
year period of building out those capabilities. What is started
with the base of having something that everybody in America
uses every day. By the way people use audio, it's
about a third of their media use every day is audio.
(18:34):
It gets about nine percent of the advertisers advertising columns.
So there's a huge opportunity and I think as algorithms
begin to pick where people spend their money, and it's
based on performance. I think radio stands a great chance
of being a beneficiar.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
All Right, we have the king of podcasts here, So
the next question, inevitably somebody wants to know how to
make a great podcast. We've got Chelsea.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Thanks for taking my question.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
I'm starting my first podcast and would love both of
your advice on making it successful, booking guests, producing a
good show, et cetera. I'm also curious what's the ideal
length and are there any special tricks for getting promoted
on the big platforms like I Heart and Spotify.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Well, it is, by the way, congratulations on being in podcasting.
That you know. I think one of the problems with
podcasting it's a lot like a website. You know, today
almost anybody can do a website, but the challenge still
is how do you get traffick to it. Podcasting the
tools and the techniques are easy to get going, so
(19:40):
first you've got to produce one that's easier today. But
then the most important thing is figure out how you
get people to listen to it. And in terms of
the content, I think you find podcasts are very host driven.
It's not like TV or it's all sort of production driven.
And the most successful podcast people that you want to
(20:01):
bond with, that you want to hang out with. Remember
most of the podcast listening is probably going to be
done at home. They've got time to sort of kick back.
They want they want you to be their friend. And
in terms of who you book, what you book, again,
think of the consumer, what will interest them, what will
be fascinating to them, And if they're your friend, who
(20:23):
would you bring into your friend circle to talk with them?
And then I think on the promotion side, it's go
anywhere you can. Social is really great for it. By
the way, be a guest on other people's podcast. Push,
push every button for every opportunity you can find to
get a little bit of traffic. Because one person will
(20:44):
tell two and two will tell four. And it's just
the math of it. And don't be discouraged if it
starts out slow, give yourself time to build and build
it in a very authentic way.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
I can only add that in starting this podcast, the
team and I had a feeling like earlier in your
career especially, there's this gap between what you know and
what you aspire to know, where you are and where
you aspire to go, And there are all these people
who have these insights that you don't have access to,
and if we could bring them together here, it could
solve a real human problem. And we've gotten a positive
(21:18):
reaction to the show for that reason. And Chelsea asked
about how long a podcast should be. I listened to
some that are three hours. We try really hard to
keep this one at thirty minutes because the average American
commute is thirty minutes. Because people are busy. We're trying
to help you be successful. You got other things to do,
so that's that's our angle.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
But you know, I think even ten or fifteen minute
podcasts can be successful. You don't have as many ad units.
But if you're really just trying to build the best
podcast for the consumer, go for that. And if you've
got great ten minutes, do a great ten minutes, don't
stretch it to twenty.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
He says in our thirtieth minute here on the podcast,
thank you. We will be back after this message. We
got Carly and Brooklyn up next.
Speaker 6 (22:09):
Hey, Mike, I've just been laid off and this is
the first real setback I have my career.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
How did you handle setbacks in your career, where did
you look for support and what got you through?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
What do you think both?
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Well, I think it's funny how bad things turn into
good things. Early in my career, I used to be
on a track and I was going one direction. Then
something would happen and I go, oh, this is so
bad for me, this is so terrible. And something else
happened as a result of that, and years later we
looked back and say, thank god that happened. Otherwise I
(22:44):
would never be here today. And I think when things
happened which appear to be a setback, the other way
to look at it is you weren't meant to go
in that direction. There's a better opportunity awaiting you, and
so it's go with the flow. Keep your mind open,
don't don't be bummed out, you know, I know, look,
I know there are problems with it. I note it's
(23:04):
inevitable that you don't feel good about it, but understand
that it's opening up a world of possibilities to you
that wouldn't be there if you were still working in
that job.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And I'd also just say, Carly, there's a sense, especially
earlier in your career, that there are people at the
top of the mountain who've just had nothing but success
after success, and that if you miss one, you're off track.
You're no longer going up the same mountain they did.
And just so you know, everybody at the top of
the mountain has been laid off or fired, or missed
a budget or bankrupted the company or something or something,
(23:35):
Steve Jobs got fired. If Steve Jobs can be fired,
we can all have a bad day at work and
still expect to end up someplace that we can be
really excited about in our careers. This is a good one.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Hi, this is a hector from Long Island.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I got a question for Bob.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I just want to know more about tequila. I love question,
Bob our Quay.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Our listeners may not have all the context on why
you would be the right guy to answer that question.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Well, I years ago spent a lot of time in
Mexico and there was this bootleg tequila in this town
that everybody loved because it was so smooth you could
sip it. It was none of that wins factor of tequila
where you have to use salter lyme to get rid
of that kick. And my son was working in Las Vegas.
(24:28):
He brought his buddy down ran a night club in Vegas.
We drank this stuff one night and the next morning
he told me. You know, said mister Pitt, when I
get a thousand dollars a bottle of cristeala my club,
I could get ten thousand dollars a jog for this.
I thought, Wow, there's a business idea, no idea what
I would do with it. Go back to New York.
Six seven months later, I'm at a party in Brooklyn.
I meet this lady. We're chatting and some on the conversation,
(24:50):
I says, so, what do you do for a living?
She goes, I run Jose Cuervo in North America. I go,
this is fate. Quit your job. I have a great idea.
Come be my partner. It's Birtwoings and we we started
through that process casedric Is Tequila, which is the smoothest
aequila you'll ever have. We started with a super smooth
sipping tequila Joven, and since then have built the Bloco
(25:14):
and Yeho and last year of Episodo. And so for me,
it was it was a journey to find something different,
and by the way, we did make it. We made
it Tequila a different way. Still legally tequila, but we
made it with a express purpose to make it super smooth.
So we get a lot of people to say, oh,
I can't drink tequila, and they taste casadriganis go ooh,
(25:36):
I love this, And so it's been really sort of
a journey of love and Bart and I very early
on said, you know what, let's decide that we're going
to have the greatest tequila in the world. If we
can't make it as smooth as this bootleg stuff we
were using sort of as our as our example, then
let's just shut the company down. And when we did that,
(25:58):
we said, okay, and if the connoisseur don't think this
is the greatest tequila in the world, let's just shut
the company down if we can. Then each step we
had a if, if if, But it was always about
quality and always about doing something great. And Verite has
been just this inspired leader. She's the CEO of the company,
and every time she hits a hurdle, she doesn't say
(26:19):
oh I hit a hurdle, She goes, oh, this happened,
Now we should do this. That always talks about solutions
to hurdles, never hurdles as blockers and uh and it's
just been an incredible growth trajectory for the company. And
uh and by the way, I feel love tequila to drain.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I strongly Uh, I strongly recommend the tequila for sure.
We've got let's do one the last one. And this
is this is one on advice.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Hi, this is Jessica. I'm just worrying. What's the best
advice you've ever gotten in your career? The best advice
I've ever gotten in my career. I you know, I
think probably the best advice is is don't listen to
anybody else. Find your own path. And I think that
is probably done the most for me of anything else.
(27:08):
Have the security to go if you got an idea
of believe in it and go and don't be dissuaded
because others don't like the idea or don't believe in it.
And I would say for everybody you know, you'll have
a regret if you don't do your idea and things
don't work out, you'll be regretful you didn't try your idea.
If you try your idea it didn't work, at least
(27:29):
you tried your idea. You don't have any regrets and
life is about this series of trial and error, and
I think it worked for me, and I think it
probably works for most people.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
This has been an inspiration and a pleasure, and it
has been wonderful to have you on the show. I
want to thank you very very much.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Team. Was that amazing. We sat down today with Bob Pittman,
who's run company after company that has impacted the lives
of millions of people in a number of ways, to
find our generation. His energy is amazing, his vice is
off the chart. You know one thing I want to
reflect on from our conversation today. Some of you know
I wrote a book. It's called The Career Manifesto. It's
(28:15):
about writing a plan for your career, finding the things
that make you passionate, identifying the gaps between where you
are and the kinds of roles that you would get
the most out of, working every angle to make sure
that you are building your career and you're getting to
that realization. Well, somebody who's career I've admired my whole
life came in today and said, you can't make a plan.
(28:36):
It's all random, and you might go down three different
paths and as I reflected on that, I found an
area of overlap between the way I look at it
and I've looked at it historically and what Bob said,
And I would tell you I agree with Bob. I
think it's really important to identify your goals in life,
the place where you want to be, to be constantly
(28:58):
investing in your own learning and moving to move closer
and closer to the capabilities you need. But you can't
know what industries, what technologies, what trends are going to
exist five or ten or twenty years from now. You
can put yourself in a position to be a capable
leader or marketer or accountant or programmer or whatever the
(29:20):
thing is that's right for you. You can find the
lane that's a great fit for you and continue to
make yourself more valuable, more impactful, more capable within that lane.
But just as Bob noted, you've got to stay flexible
John Lennon who said life is what happens when you're
making other plans, And certainly I'm where I am at
(29:40):
this moment, loving the job I have right now because
somebody I didn't ask to come along and buy my
last company came along and bought my last company, and
I was at that company because the things that happened
at the one previous that I hadn't planned for either.
So I don't know if we were to tight Bob's
(30:02):
wisdom into my suggestion, I'd still lay out where you'd
like to go generally in your career, but understand you're
not going to know exactly what doors are going to
open for you on the way. Be opportunistic, look for
good luck, take those breaks, make your moves, and stay
on your grind. My friends, we will. We'll see you
here next week. If you want to submit a question
(30:22):
for me and our future guests, please use the link
in the description or hit me up on Twitter and
Instagram at Mike Steib. You can also call us at
two P one three four one nine five nine six and
just leave your question as a voice message. Your question
maybe driving the next interview we have here on office hours.
I want to thank Bob for that incredible interview, and
(30:43):
of course, Jen, Meg, Jada, Matt, the whole team at
Blue Duck Media for pulling this all together. I want
to thank Dylan and Christopher at iHeart, and Ben and
the team at William Morris Endeavor for all their sport
office hours. It's a production of Blue Duck Media and
distributed by iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
There a
Host
Mike Steib
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