Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Michael Lewis. I'm very proud and
honored to present you this bonus episode, which is part
of Dell Technologies Small Business Podfrints. So we know how
many small businesses are now grappling with the impact of
these uncertain times and looking for resources. But a lot
(00:38):
of the conferences where people trade ideas, those are canceled
right now. So Dell Technologies has organized something they're calling
a pod Frints for small business owners, like a virtual
conference to share advice in some inspiration. Dell Technologies is
here to help you through these times, from keeping you
connected and productive while working remotely with Windows ten in
(00:59):
Microsoft teams, to providing relevant content to help your business.
To find more participating podcasts search Dell Technology, Small Business
pot ferns on Radio, dot Com, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
At the end of this episode, I was asked to
moderate a panel with two of my oldest friends, Malcolm
(01:21):
Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. We've known each other since the
nineteen eighties when we were all young writers in the
magazine business. Malcolm and Jacob are now the co founders
of Pushkin Industries, the company that produces Against the Rules,
which is now underway. By the way, Pushkin also makes
a bunch of other great shows, like Malcolm's own Revisionist
History and The Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos. I've
(01:46):
been watching on the sidelines over the past year as
Malcolm and Jacob started the company, so I was really
happy to have an excuse to ask them all kinds
of nosy questions about what they've learned about running a
business together and the challenges they face, and the challenges
right now in our quarantine world. Well, those are unique.
You'll get to hear a little bit about that. Here's
(02:08):
our conversation, all right. So, because I don't actually know
the story, so I would love to know how you
decided to start Pushkin, Jacob, right, it was Jacob's doing.
How do you start? Well, I'd started one podcast company already,
which was Panoply, which came out of Slate, but as
things evolved, Panoply turned into a technology company. I thought
(02:32):
I was starting mainly a content company, and one of
the shows we'd started was Revisionist History with Malcolm. That
show was doing really well, and there were some other
shows I was really interested in doing, so it was
sort of when the earlier company under a CEO i'd
hired who I thought was making a good decision, wanted
(02:52):
to make a pivot that I said, Hey, maybe it's
time that Malcolm and I started our own company and
only do what we want to do. I was on
holiday with my family in I can't remember where. I
was somewhere in Europe, Italy, in Italy, and Jacob was
in some I think, if I can tell the truth,
(03:13):
A truly horrible house in a village, he said, and
he said, uh. He said that. He summoned me and
said there's something crucial we need to talk about. So
I was like, I, you know, drove halfway across Italy,
show up in this horrible house by the road, and
(03:34):
then he like sat outside of little chairs and had
coffee and he said, I want to start a company.
That's how it began. What did you say, yes right away? Yeah?
It struck me as well. The backstory about this is
that Jacob has been I've known Jacob for thirty five years,
and through for some significant portion of this, I would
(03:54):
always say that Jacob, I don't know why you wanted
to be a journalist. You would be a really great businessman.
If you just became a businessman, you would you could
make a huge amount of money and you could all
get rich. Jacob may have forgotten this, but I would.
I would always worried that if I when I said that,
I was insulting him because what he really wanted to
be was a writer, which I was saying it was
a bad writer, saying I thought it'd be an even
(04:15):
better businessman. So I remember you saying this thirty years ago.
And so Jake is a wonderful journalist, but I agreed
that he's sort of a natural for this sort of thing.
He's got the temperament for it, unlike you or I.
But you know what, it would surprised me the thing
that to take you back even a little further. It
surprised me that you two went off on this podcast
(04:37):
Jag in the first place. You both had very happy,
successful careers in the print world. Why did you decide
that you wanted to do something different? You know, Michael,
I'd gotten the bug really In the early days of
podcasting at Slate were sort of because of a random
connection with an NPR show Slate had been working on.
(04:58):
We started making some of the first podcasts anybody listened to,
and everybody at Slate, all the journalists loved doing them.
And there was this little audience, small at first but
growing that just love them. And the giveaway was that
everybody at Slade who didn't have a podcast wanted a
podcast and they were just a joy to do. So,
(05:18):
you know, I'm a little evangelical about things I get
excited about. And I tried to talk Malcolm into doing one,
and I tried to talk you into doing one, and
I ultimately talked both of you into doing it. I
talked Malcolm into it first, and then I think the
fact that he was doing it may have helped to
persuade you. It was worse than that. You got Malcolm
to a lie to me and say it was easy.
(05:42):
You lied, But that's all right. Well I forgive you.
So you two old friends go into business together. How's
it working out? Like? How do you find working with
each other? Are you surprised by anything? You finding things
out about each other that you didn't know that you
wish you didn't know. Well, I am reminded of a
years ago I wrote a piece that was really about
(06:03):
my friendship with Jacob, and it was about the idea
that what's called elected memory, which is that we outsource
a lot of the things we know to our friends
and family. And I was writing about this in The
Because of Jacob to say that Jacob is someone who
I respect and trust so much that significant parts of
my knowledge and cognition are simply outsourced to Jacob. I
(06:27):
was saying that I no longer read anything about politics
or try and figure anything about politics. I simply asked
Jacob what he thinks and adopt those ideas as my own.
That was my position, and I was sort of a joke,
but it's actually true. It's just a way better way
to live your life to make to appoint sort of
experts in your friendship circle and outsource everything to them.
(06:50):
I do the same thing with my brother and wine,
and you know, you make a long list. So this
is in business. I've just applied this principle, which is
I just let him do all the things that I
know he's better at than me. And since that's a rat,
a long list means my life is very easy. So
there is that true, Jacob, is there? No? Are you
(07:12):
basically running the business in Malcolm's decoration? Um? No, I
wouldn't say that, I mean I I handle more of
the day to day, as they say, but honestly, at
this point more of the ideas come from Malcolm. And
that's that's a bit of an adjustment because I've always
thought of myself as the idea person. But I'm like
a you know, a good idea weak person. Malcolm's like
a five good idea day person. And so a big
(07:35):
part of my job now is just like being Malcolm's
filter to try to talk him out of some of
the ideas and then try to figure out how some
of the others can can happen. But these are ideas
for shows, These are ideas for shows, these are ideas
for new businesses. Malcolm has a lot of ideas. And
the typical day is, you know, at about eleven am,
(07:57):
he'll call me and say, this is so much fun.
We really don't want to get too big too fast.
Let's keep it just like it is. And I say, yeah, Malcolm,
I totally agree with that. This is the good part.
Let's let's not grow too fast. And then after lunch
he'll call me and he say, all right, I've got
three ideas, and each of them would involve like adding
like ten new staff members, and so if we did,
(08:18):
if we pursued all of our ideas, we'd have six
hundred people right now instead of twenty five. And you know,
that's kind of a tension, and it's not a tension
in that Malcolm and I disagree about it. I think
we're both pulled in both directions. Liking having a small
business where we know everybody and it's sort of close
like a family, and we control everything. But then all
this opportunity and all these good ideas we want to pursue.
(08:42):
I'm in these conversations. Are you able to see the
possibility of a really big business or you think it's
naturally better as a small business. You've hit on the
hard part, you know. I think we see that, we
do see the opportunity to be big. I mean, I'm
gonna you know, when you say really big, I mean
it's not. I don't think it's I don't think it's
Google big. I don't think it's Facebook big. But in
the world of podcasting, I think it has the potential
(09:05):
to be really pace setting and dominant. But we also
want to be really, really choosy and have everything we
make really represent what we're interested in. And the quality
level we've set so far. So you know, I think
it's just the kind of working out of those two
things will result in the right size. I honestly don't
(09:25):
know what the right size is. We're going to get bigger.
It's just a question of how fast we're going to
get bigger. Malcolm, Yeah, I think what occurred to I
think all of us very quickly in this project experiment
is that we're not really in the podcast business. We're
you know, it's a cliche. We're in the storytelling business,
(09:47):
and we happen to want to tell stories to audio.
But that means you can compete against all kinds of
like we we there's no reason why we can't behave
like a book publisher in many respects. It's just that
our books are on our audio, not on the page.
But once you realize that, well, look at book publishers.
They're really big. I mean they have thousands of employees
(10:10):
they have, so, you know, concede that way. If you've
only think of yourself as being in the podcast world,
you might think of yourself as being pretty small. But
if you think of yourself as just as using a
different medium to tell stories, then there's no reason why
you can't be really big. So to all appearances, this
thing has been an incredible success, and it's been really
fun to make a podcast for you. I'm curious with
(10:34):
troubles you've had, especially like given the pandemic, how you've
had to adjust and respond and how much difficulty it's
introduced into your business. Well, we've all been improvising in
various ways. I think we feel very lucky and that
what we make is makeable under these circumstances. People set
(10:56):
up recording studios at home and we have meetings virtually.
I don't know that we could have done this with
the digital tools that existed ten or fifteen years ago.
I mean, things like Zoom and Slack and Google hangouts
and share drives um seem so essential to long distance collaboration.
(11:18):
I mean, in a way, they've arrived just in time,
and it's sort of the moment for those tools. But
we can make our shows, and luckily we work with
writers of a caliber, starting with you and Malcolm, who
can use their writing to adapt what they're doing. If
there's an interview that you were going to do for
your season this year, Michael and you can't do it,
you can write your way out of it. Um, that's
(11:40):
not a position a TV producer as usually in. I mean,
if you have physical production that requires people to be
in a group in a place, it's just got to
be suspended. Podcast. We can we can still make it.
It's not all been easy, but people have been incredibly
flexible and nimble about how we're still going to get
these shows done with this new challenge. So it's funny.
(12:01):
I'm about to I've got five of my seven episodes
for this the second season done, but I've got I've
got one really did require me, I thought, require me
to go out onto the road, and I'm not able
to do it. And you said to me, you know
you can write your way around this. And this weekend
I'm about to find out whether I had and and
(12:22):
I'm kind of wondering if you think that's really true.
I mean, what do you think. What I'm thinking is
just generally, when you're throwing this kind of this kind
of curveball, you look curveball and you hit it that
you that you try to just turn it into a
strength and you see what you can do given that
given the constraint. But but there's a part of me thinks,
(12:44):
you know, I hear in my voice the podcast producer saying,
we need scenes, we need scenes, and now you can't
really get those scenes. Does it? Does it trouble Does
that trouble you at all? You think, oh, maybe these
could be better this way. Well, I tend to share
your view that the constraint provokes creativity and that you
often end up with something that's better and more interesting
(13:06):
than what you would have had otherwise, but not always.
You know. Luckily, I think for a number of our shows,
we had a lot of the field reporting the interviews
under our belt, and so we're more at risk of
losing like twenty percent of what we wanted. If we
hadn't done any then it would be harder to make
those shows. You'd have to conceive them in a different
way if they're dependent on vivid scenes. Where were you
(13:29):
as the journalist is physically present. Do you think it's
going to change the way when this is over and
you can go back to doing it the old way.
You think you'll go back to doing it the old way?
You think you actually learned things that you're going to
you're gonna work into your into your routine. Well, my my,
my big goal. And at one of our earliest meetings,
(13:51):
we had a retreat very early on at Pushkin, we
sort of sat down and tried to figure out what
are the principles that we believe in as a company.
Sounds very pretentious, it actually wasn't. And the one I
was encouraging how people to accept was we did was
that we should always remember that this ship be above
all else fun. If we're not having fun, we shouldn't
(14:14):
do it. It shouldn't be drudgery. And so I always
think about my big worry when all the lockdown happened
was will it still be fun if we're all working
from home and we can't hang out with this sort
of wonderful collection of and I think this is in
the best way misfits and weirdos that we have gathered
to many podcasts, and I number myself among them. So
(14:38):
I was like, well, I can't hang out with these
delight for weirdos anymore? Is this not going to be fun?
And so I think what's happened is that we've just
discovered new ways to hang out. My senses, we're building
a new muscle, and that or that we're kind of
a resilience so that you kind of know you can
(14:58):
do it. Knowing you can do it in another way
is enormously freeing. We'll be right back. As I mentioned earlier,
this episode is just one of many po podcasts included
in the Small Business Podfrints presented by Dell Technologies, a
podcast conference to get inspiration on topics like fundraising, building teams,
(15:20):
or managing a business in our current environment from top
podcasts like Against the Rules with Me Michael Lewis, Rise
with Rachel Hollis and Rhet and Link from ear Biscuits.
For the complete lineup of episodes, visit Dell Technologies Podfrints
dot com. Welcome back. Here's more of my conversation with
(15:42):
Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell from Pushkin Industries. Michael, I
think there are two big impacts I've been thinking about
on the company. One's cultural and one is more sort
of substantive around what we make. But the cultural point
is that a company like ours, people are really close
and they get very close making creative work together. And
(16:04):
we had just moved into this new office in New York,
like literally a week before or it was closed, and
we all had to work from home and be socially
isolated or physically isolated. And that was a bummer. I mean,
we were this office is really great and like everybody
was really excited to be there. It's clean, it's new,
there was really good coffee. Like we couldn't wait to
(16:25):
get to work and see each other in the morning.
Those of us through in New York, which is most
of the staff, and suddenly that's denied to us. Everybody's
worried about everybody. Everybody's got a whole new set of problems.
People have to figure out how to take care of
their kids, homeschool their kids, worry about their parents. Some
people are feeling physical symptoms, are people getting sick. So
(16:45):
you have suddenly, instead of this kind of convening, you're
separated and worried. And the observed, the cultural observation is
that people then become really habituated to and really enjoy
in a way, the forms of digital connection. Having a
zoom meeting once a week where everybody's on it. You
(17:09):
see where everybody is and you see the backdrops. And
one of our employees, Sophie mckibbon, is up up in
New Hampshire and she, you know, she calls in from
her car because that's where she gets the best phone connection.
You see her in her car, and you see people
in their apartments, some of them have kids running in
and out of the frame, and it's just I'd look
forward to that so much, just seeing everybody, and I
(17:30):
think other people are having the same feeling. And as
you know, Ceo, I just feel so grateful to these
people who've got all this stuff they're having to deal
with in their lives that they weren't expecting. But they're
you know, but they're doing their best work at the
same time, and I think that's partly because work is
a refuge in a situation like this. So, Jacob, I
(17:52):
have a question for you. You spent most of your
life sympathetic to and surrounded by and being one of
them kind of journalists who never have to take any
responsibility for anything, and you've managed to become pretty naturally
like an executive, like a person who runs a thing,
(18:12):
and sounds like you just sounded uh and like like
you could be secretary of the Treasury um. And I'm
wondering where you pick this up, Like are you reading
on the sly like in the middle of the night
reading these horrible corporate management books or are you do
you have some little secret source of wisdom you go to?
(18:33):
How did you figure out how to do this? How
to run a business? Uh? You know, I think I
was watching people uh do it, And I think i've
you know, learned a lot from people who weren't so
good at it, as well as from people who are
who are really good at it. But you know, Michael,
I was always just really interested in this problem of
how you could pay for high quality journalism or media.
(18:55):
We both came out of the magazine world, and it
was just this fundamental issue, even before the Internet and
things got challenging. You know, it was how do you
how do you make money on magazine journalism where someone
spends months doing a story. And I sort of went
from being interested in that problem to kind of taking
on the problem when I was at Slate, and as
(19:16):
part of that, we ended up selling Slate and I
ended up being responsible for it. And it was an evolution,
but I did go kind of in stages from being
a full time writer editor to being the head of
the business. And I don't know, I think, you know,
I think you've both reflected in this conversation that it's
fun to try new stuff when you're in your fifties.
(19:37):
A lot of people in their fifties don't get to
do that. People just want them to keep doing the
same thing they've been doing. So if you get an
opportunity to try something new at this stage of life,
you can jump at it, and you should jump at it.
And for me, that's the business stuff, Malcolm, I hope
you feel this way. It's weirdly still fun. I feel
a little guilty about it being fun now because I
(20:00):
know how not fun the world is and businesses for
a lot of people. But it's just seeing how we've
hired incredible people and seeing their resilience and how they've
adapted to it. Um, you know, it's um, it's it's
kind of a joy and um it's uh. It would
(20:20):
be a very different story if it wasn't working. But
it feels like we're going to get through it, and
it's I feel pretty good about it at the moment.
All right. So, uh, you guys, to my eyes, you
guys have never had a spat or a disagreement, but
maybe you have and you've got it since you've gone
into business together. Uh have you have there been any
sources of a disagreement. Well, if anybody's thinking about doing this,
(20:44):
it is it is riskier in a slightly different way
starting a business with your best friend. There's there's a
lot more upside because that's it's a delight to do it, um.
But you know, it's who gets to decide. I mean,
you're you have a dynamic that's not always a friend dynamic.
I think it's been pretty seamless and easy for me
(21:05):
and Malcolm. He can tell you what he thinks, and
I don't think we've had any any meaningful or significant conflicts.
But you know, the one dynamic that I'd point to,
which is not my favorite, but it's a reality, is
that I've got to say no more than Malcolm does.
He's he can come up with all these ideas, and
I've got a little more of the responsibility for figuring
(21:27):
out how we can get him done or which ones
we can get done, and sometimes I've just got to say, Malcolm,
that's you know, just like one idea too many, we
can't do it. Do you think of an example, Well,
you know, Malcolm will like meet someone on a plane
and land and send me an email about why they
should have a podcast, and I've got it, then say, okay,
(21:49):
well let's you know, I'd love to talk to them
and let's hear what their voice sounds like. And you know,
have they ever done any audio before? And uh, you know,
he's uh, he's got very good instincts. And it's I
guarantee you those people are interesting. But whether they're going
to be the right person to do a show for
a whole bunch of reasons is you know, something we
(22:11):
can kind of have to figure out. But that's what
I mean. Malcolm's the president of Pushkin. That's the role
of the president of Pushkin is to be constantly pushing
us to do more, come up with ideas, to be
kind of the creative lead. And you know, then there's
(22:32):
I've I've got to be the filter. Um, But I
think that's working out. Okay, so far we do. You know,
I don't know what percentage of Malcolm's ideas bear fruit,
but it's it's it's more than zero and less than
all of them. I tried to get us to buy
as opposed to rent an office. That was one of
my ideas. We went so far as to actually look
(22:52):
at some officers with to buy with real estate agents,
and then at the end Jacob said, you know, I'm
not sure we really want to be spending our time
and attention managing real estate at this point, which is
absolutely correct, but again, left to my own I would
have been, you know, careening around New York looks with
(23:15):
real estate agents because I got it in my head
to why why wouldn't we own our own play, you know,
and I get why that would be fun, right, It's
like we have a clubhouse, you know, we can like
we can, we can own it. It can be you know, podcasts,
pushkin Central and we can you know, but it was
one it was already starting to be. You know, we'd
spent a couple of afternoons looking at real estate, which
(23:36):
wasn't which were afternoons we weren't spending on making podcasts
or other parts of the business. And also it sort
of occurred to me, well, if you buy a place,
it really is kind of limit your growth potential. I mean,
what if we do want to double in size next
year and the office only holds twenty percent more people
than Suddenly we have the problem of subletting a space
(23:57):
and we're in the real estate business. So yeah, I
think that was one of the cases where I maybe
had to gently talk Malcolm down from a fun idea.
If you if you had to go back and redo
the first year of your existence, what would you do differently?
I've been one of the things I've been pushing from
the beginning is to think of ourselves as more than
(24:18):
a podcast company. And I still I don't know whether
it's a legit concern, but I still worry. I don't
want to have us to have too many eggs in
the podcast basket because I think of that world as
it's too unstable from my taste, and I've actually gotten
Jacob's been been an even stronger proponent of this idea
(24:39):
than me, I think at this point. But I wondered,
I don't know if we were doing over the first year,
was there would there have been a way to start
more aggressively on that track from the beginning? Maybe maybe not.
When you say diversify out of podcasts, I mean pet food.
What we're gonna do, no no other like book books, books, events,
(25:05):
you know, producing things for people where you're not depending
on advertising, all those kinds of things. Just diversifying where
the money comes from, right, so you're not you're not
a slave to the ad market. Right. Um, that was
that's really But I actually think I take it back.
I actually think we've done a really good job of
doing it. Yeah, I mean I think we I think
(25:25):
we bid off about as much as we could have chewed.
And in the first year and a bit. One thing
I would have done is I would have got the
nice office sooner. I mean, the nice office will be
for me, the fourth office and if you count my
home office where I'm coming from right now, this is
my fifth office. And about a year and a half,
and you know, I thought I could save money. Someone
(25:47):
gave us free space for a couple of months. At
the beginning. We didn't have that many people. But it
does take a little bit of a toll, and your
you know, your mail never quite all gets forward to
the right place. So I think I would have said,
you know what we're gonna we're thinking big, we're gonna
need the nice office. Let's just get it now, even
if it's a little empty for a while. Are you
in the nice office now, Well, theoretically we are. We
(26:10):
moved into it a week a week before COVID hit,
But yes, we're looking forward to getting back into it.
You don't think there's any risk if you started in
the nice office, you wouldn't think of it as the
nice office. You think this is the starting office. I
now need a better office. I'd always been haunted by
the phenomenon in the media world where the company goes
(26:31):
to hell as soon as they get the nice office.
And I think it's a real reason for it, too,
which is that everyone gets distracted by the like the
decorating and the who's going to sit where, and suddenly
nobody's doing what they're supposed to be doing. Instead they're
all thinking about the office. So I always thought, don't
you know, make the office like the last thing you
worry about. But you know what it's part of, like
(26:52):
providing great place for people to work, and it affects
the work. If you've got a place people want to
come to and you know, the coffee can't be too good.
I mean, you think about how good that coffee is.
It affects how much you want to be in the space,
and that's you know, how much you want to be
in kind of creative conversation with your colleagues. You know.
Another example of this is I never thought about the
(27:16):
important you know, until you are actually part of it.
This is old half to anyone who's part of a business.
And so you're part of a business or starting a business,
you don't understand the importance of hiring in quite the
same way as you You know, you don't understand, like one,
how crucial, how one really really good person it can
(27:37):
transform an entire aspect of your business, or one bad
person can be disastrous. You know, you're I was always
sort of been different to those questions. I thought, oh,
you know, because I had these kind of arms length
dealings with editors or copy editors or whatever, who you
can ask them, who you could always get rid of
if you didn't want. Our team has been so so
(27:58):
strong that it's almost made us afraid to hire people
because we haven't we haven't got a dud yet, and
the team works so well together. And I do have
this kind of phobia that we're eventually, eventually we are
going to get a bad apple, or not even a
bad apple, just someone who's not great. And I just
worry when that happens, it's going to change the dynamic.
(28:19):
And you know, it kind of raises the stakes on
every person. You hire because that you have to think
they are going to be as good as all the
people you've already hired, and you're right that you are.
You see, maybe this is what you see when you're
when you're starting out and you're a small business that
you might start to lose sight of when you're a
giant business and you've got tens of thousands of employees.
(28:41):
Is just the effect of a single person. I finally
understand after observing for years with some mystification, the obsession
entrepreneurs had with hiring, I now understand it. I'm like, oh,
I get it now. I don't know why this was
a mystery mystery to men. You never had to hire anybody. Yeah, right, right, Hey, Michael,
let me ask you a question. Yeah, this season is
(29:05):
about coaching, and you've been talking to some of the
best coaches in the world. You've been thinking a lot
about what how good coaches think. What do you think
a really good coach would tell us about having a
company like ours and what we should be doing or
thinking about. I mean, if there was, like, if there
was like an entrepreneur coach who could who roll, they're
probably all I think there is. I don't know if
you've talked to that person yet. But I'm sure there
(29:25):
are coaches for startups and entrepreneurs, but I haven't talked
to any of them. I challenge you now to name
any activity for which there isn't someone who calls themselves
a coach roaming around selling their services. That's the thing
that's been amazing to me, is it we actually could
start with what's the activity when we want to write
about or talk about, and go find the coach because
(29:47):
you know they're there. Now, what would what would a
really good so the I'm not persuaded that so it
is true. I think that the best place to insert
coaches is your kind of situation where transitional states. And
(30:08):
I bet I bet with the with the coach. What
a coach would do with you is just ask you
lots of really difficult questions that even I don't want
to ask you, and and take you, um try to
figure out where you might go wrong, Like I bet
(30:29):
if I was guessing what the what the risks you
guys run are? Are we run as I am? Part
of your business is that the depth of your friendship
is so deep that it's hard to me for me
to imagine um you choosing the success of the business
(30:50):
over the success of your friendship. And if there is
ever a moment where those two things conflicted, the friendship
would survive, but the business would take a hit, which
I love. But I think that's true. So yeah, that's
how it should be. I think we I think we
both feel that way. Hopefully we won't face that conflict,
you know, I don't think you will. But I think
when I think about I think a coach would come
(31:12):
in and say, you guys are doing great, right, this
is an awesome it's an awesome startup and all everything's
going well. I think the coach would come in and say,
what's the risks. Let's see if we can analyze what
what what we should be thinking about might come down
the pike and and sort of prepare you for them.
M do you have anybody like that in your life?
(31:34):
Who's who's kind of coaching you on the side. Is
Michael Linton doing it? I don't know. It's a mutual
friend of all of ours. Michael Michael Lynton, who was
CEO of Sony and has a lot of experience working
in a lot of different kinds of businesses, and he's
both very much available for advice for me, but also
(31:55):
offers it unsolicited at really good times, including when this
crisis hit. You know, he he sort of called me
up and said, you know, he wanted to make sure
that we were kind of thinking about these questions about
our cash position and our rest billiancy, and also about you.
Just wanted to ask me about how I was communicating
with the staff and making sure people knew what was
(32:16):
going on and there weren't rumors going around. And it's
great to have someone like that. I rely on him
a lot, both of both the advice he gives me
and that I know he's thinking about the business and
has experience I don't have with small businesses. So Michael's
kind of your coach. Yes, if he is for me,
he's definitely my CEO coach. I'm curious. I've meant to
(32:37):
ask you when you went off on this retreat, the
retreat at which Malcolm introduced the idea of fun as
a founding principle, which I totally agree with. If we're
not having fun, that the audience is unlikely to have
fun either. Is What were the other principles that were
sort of your core that you regarded your core principles
and do you remember fun which tells you a lot.
(33:03):
Mia LaBelle, who's our executive producer and has been the
executive producer of Malcolm Show since the beginning. She's someone
who came with us from from the old company, is
very important person in establishing our culture. But she talks
a lot about kindness as a as a principle of
the company, and it's really it's really true, and I
(33:23):
think she's been the kind of guardian of it. But
it's the way people think about working together and how
they help each other and support each other. And then
that ties into I think a bunch of other ethical principles,
not just about integrity, journalistic integrity, business integrity, but you know, diversity,
(33:46):
the kind of workplace we want to create, the kind
of society we want to see modeled in the company.
So people have a lot of feelings about it, and
when you have a young workforce, those getting that stuff
right and having that all be relevant meaningful people to
people is crucial in recruitment and retention because you've got
(34:08):
to not just be a place where people can do
interesting work. I think you've got to be a place
where people want to work. How do you get across
your values to someone who's coming in and thinking of
working for you, I think they have to. I think
that they don't hear it from this see hopefully they
do hear it from the CEO. But I think people
only believe it when they hear it from peers and
(34:30):
see that peers are having that kind of experience in
the place they work, and you kind of I can't hide,
you can't hide who you are, especially as a company.
Right is a person, so maybe a little bit, but
as a company, you know, word just will spread what
it's like there. The values come they do come through.
And I think it's especially true with startup companies because
(34:51):
they grow up so quickly that they end up being
kind of projections of the values and beliefs of the
of the founders. And you know, I think that's true
at Facebook and one way, at Uber in another way,
but it's it's easy even more true at a smaller business.
Everything that you you believe gets reflected in some way
(35:12):
in the in the company. Thanks again to Jacob Weisberg
and Malcolm Gladwell of Pushkin Industries, you can hear more
of Dell's small business pot fronts by searching, Dell Technologies,
small business pot fronts on Radio, dot Com, Spotify or
(35:33):
Apple Podcasts. Special thanks to Emily Rosteck, Carly Miliori, Julia Barton,
Heather Faine, and Jason gambrel. I'm Michael Lewis.