0:15

Pushkin. Hi

0:20

everyone, it's Michael Lewis. I'm

0:23

very proud and honored to present you this bonus

0:25

episode, which is part of Dell Technologies

0:27

Small Business Podfrints. So

0:31

we know how many small businesses are now grappling

0:33

with the impact of these uncertain times and

0:36

looking for resources. But a lot of

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the conferences where people trade ideas, those

0:40

are canceled right now. So Dell Technologies

0:43

has organized something they're calling a pod

0:45

Frints for small business owners,

0:48

like a virtual conference to share advice in

0:50

some inspiration. Dell Technologies

0:53

is here to help you through these times, from

0:55

keeping you connected and productive while

0:57

working remotely with Windows ten in Microsoft

1:00

teams, to providing relevant content

1:02

to help your business. To find more

1:04

participating podcasts search

1:07

Dell Technology, Small Business pot

1:09

ferns on Radio, dot Com,

1:11

Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

1:14

At the end of this episode, I

1:18

was asked to moderate a panel with two of my oldest

1:20

friends, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob

1:22

Weisberg. We've known each other since

1:24

the nineteen eighties when we were all young writers

1:27

in the magazine business. Malcolm

1:29

and Jacob are now the co founders of Pushkin

1:31

Industries, the company that produces

1:33

Against the Rules, which is

1:35

now underway. By the way, Pushkin

1:38

also makes a bunch of other great shows, like Malcolm's

1:40

own Revisionist History and The Happiness

1:43

Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.

1:45

I've been watching on the sidelines over the past

1:48

year as Malcolm and Jacob started the

1:50

company, so I was really happy to have

1:52

an excuse to ask them all kinds of

1:54

nosy questions about what they've learned about running

1:56

a business together and the challenges they

1:58

face, and the challenges

2:01

right now in our quarantine

2:03

world. Well, those are unique. You'll

2:05

get to hear a little bit about that. Here's

2:08

our conversation, all right.

2:10

So, because I don't actually know the story,

2:12

so I would love to know how you decided

2:15

to start Pushkin, Jacob, right,

2:17

it was Jacob's doing. How do you

2:19

start? Well, I'd started one

2:21

podcast company already, which was Panoply,

2:24

which came out of Slate, but as

2:27

things evolved, Panoply

2:29

turned into a technology company. I

2:31

thought I was starting mainly a content company,

2:34

and one of the shows we'd started

2:36

was Revisionist History with Malcolm.

2:39

That show was doing really well, and there were

2:41

some other shows I was really interested

2:44

in doing, so it was sort of when

2:46

the earlier company under a

2:49

CEO i'd hired who I thought was making a good

2:51

decision, wanted to make a pivot that

2:53

I said, Hey, maybe it's time that Malcolm

2:56

and I started our own company and only

2:58

do what we want to do. I was on holiday

3:01

with my family in

3:05

I can't remember where. I was somewhere in

3:07

Europe, Italy, in Italy, and Jacob

3:09

was in some I think, if

3:11

I can tell the truth, A truly horrible

3:14

house in a

3:16

village, he said, and

3:19

he said, uh. He said that.

3:22

He summoned me and said there's

3:24

something crucial we need to talk about. So

3:26

I was like, I, you know, drove

3:28

halfway across Italy, show up

3:30

in this horrible house by the road, and

3:34

then he like sat

3:36

outside of little chairs and had coffee and he said,

3:38

I want to start a company. That's how it began. What

3:40

did you say, yes right away? Yeah?

3:43

It struck me as well. The backstory

3:46

about this is that Jacob has been I've

3:48

known Jacob for thirty five years, and

3:50

through for some significant

3:53

portion of this, I would always say that Jacob,

3:55

I don't know why you wanted to be a journalist.

3:58

You would be a really great businessman. If you just

4:00

became a businessman, you would you could make

4:02

a huge amount of money and you could all get rich. Jacob

4:05

may have forgotten this, but I would. I would always worried

4:07

that if I when I said that, I was insulting

4:09

him because what he really wanted to be was

4:11

a writer, which I was saying it was a bad writer,

4:14

saying I thought it'd be an even better businessman.

4:17

So I remember you saying this

4:19

thirty years ago. And

4:21

so Jake is a wonderful journalist, but

4:24

I agreed that he's sort

4:26

of a natural for this sort of thing. He's

4:28

got the temperament for it, unlike you or I. But

4:31

you know what, it would surprised me the thing that to

4:33

take you back even a little further. It surprised

4:35

me that you two went off on this podcast Jag

4:37

in the first place. You both had very

4:40

happy, successful careers in

4:42

the print world. Why did

4:44

you decide that you wanted to do something

4:46

different? You know, Michael, I'd

4:48

gotten the bug really In the early

4:50

days of podcasting at Slate were sort

4:53

of because of a random connection

4:55

with an NPR show Slate had been working

4:57

on. We started making some of

4:59

the first podcasts anybody listened to, and

5:02

everybody at Slate, all the journalists

5:04

loved doing them. And there was this little

5:06

audience, small at first but growing

5:09

that just love them. And the giveaway

5:11

was that everybody at Slade who didn't have

5:13

a podcast wanted a podcast

5:16

and they were just a joy to do. So,

5:18

you know, I'm a little evangelical about

5:20

things I get excited about. And I

5:23

tried to talk Malcolm into doing one, and

5:25

I tried to talk you into doing one, and

5:27

I ultimately talked both of you into doing it. I

5:29

talked Malcolm into it first, and

5:32

then I think the fact that he was doing

5:34

it may have helped to persuade you. It

5:36

was worse than that. You got Malcolm to a lie to me and

5:38

say it was easy.

5:42

You lied, But that's all right. Well I

5:44

forgive you. So you two old

5:46

friends go into business together. How's

5:49

it working out? Like? How do you find working with

5:51

each other? Are you surprised by anything? You

5:53

finding things out about each other that you didn't know that

5:56

you wish you didn't know. Well, I am

5:59

reminded of a years

6:01

ago I wrote a piece that was really

6:03

about my friendship with Jacob, and it

6:05

was about the idea that what's

6:08

called elected memory, which

6:10

is that we outsource a lot

6:12

of the things we know to our friends and family.

6:15

And I was writing about this in The Because of

6:18

Jacob to say that Jacob is someone who I

6:20

respect and trust so much that significant

6:22

parts of my knowledge and cognition

6:25

are simply outsourced to Jacob. I was saying

6:27

that I no longer read anything

6:29

about politics or try and figure

6:32

anything about politics. I simply asked Jacob what

6:34

he thinks and adopt those ideas

6:36

as my own. That was my position, and

6:38

I was sort of a joke, but it's actually

6:40

true. It's just a way better

6:43

way to live your life to make to

6:45

appoint sort of experts in your friendship

6:47

circle and outsource everything to them.

6:50

I do the same thing with my brother and wine,

6:52

and you know, you make a long list. So

6:55

this is in business. I've just applied

6:57

this principle,

6:59

which is I just let him do

7:02

all the things that I know he's better at than

7:04

me. And since that's a rat, a long list

7:06

means my life is very easy.

7:08

So there is that true,

7:10

Jacob, is there? No? Are you basically running

7:13

the business in Malcolm's decoration? Um?

7:15

No, I wouldn't say that, I mean I I handle

7:18

more of the day to day, as they say, but

7:20

honestly, at this point more of the ideas come

7:23

from Malcolm. And that's that's a bit of an

7:25

adjustment because I've always thought of myself as the

7:27

idea person. But I'm like a you

7:29

know, a good idea weak person. Malcolm's

7:31

like a five good idea day person.

7:34

And so a big part of my job now is

7:36

just like being Malcolm's

7:39

filter to try to talk him out

7:41

of some of the ideas and then try

7:43

to figure out how some of the others can can

7:45

happen. But these

7:47

are ideas for shows, These are ideas

7:49

for shows, these are ideas for new businesses. Malcolm

7:52

has a lot of ideas. And the typical day

7:54

is, you know, at about eleven

7:56

am, he'll call me and say,

7:59

this is so much fun. We really don't want to get

8:02

too big too fast. Let's keep it just like it

8:04

is. And I say, yeah, Malcolm, I totally agree with that.

8:06

This is the good part. Let's let's not grow too fast.

8:08

And then after lunch he'll call me and he say,

8:10

all right, I've got three ideas,

8:13

and each of them would involve like adding

8:15

like ten new staff members, and

8:18

so if we did, if we pursued all of our ideas, we'd

8:20

have six hundred people right now instead of

8:22

twenty five. And you know, that's

8:24

kind of a tension, and it's not a tension in that

8:27

Malcolm and I disagree about it. I think we're both

8:29

pulled in both directions. Liking having a small

8:32

business where we know everybody

8:34

and it's sort of close like a family, and

8:36

we control everything. But then all

8:38

this opportunity and all these good ideas we

8:40

want to pursue. I'm

8:42

in these conversations. Are you able to see the

8:44

possibility of a really big business

8:47

or you think it's naturally better as a small business.

8:50

You've hit on the hard part, you know. I

8:52

think we see that, we do see the opportunity

8:54

to be big. I mean, I'm gonna you know, when you say really big,

8:56

I mean it's not. I don't think it's I don't think

8:58

it's Google big. I don't think it's Facebook big.

9:00

But in the world of podcasting,

9:03

I think it has the potential to

9:05

be really pace setting

9:07

and dominant. But we

9:09

also want to be really, really choosy

9:11

and have everything we make really

9:14

represent what we're interested

9:16

in. And the quality level we've set

9:18

so far. So you know, I think it's

9:20

just the kind of working out of those two

9:22

things will result in the right size.

9:24

I honestly don't know what the right size is. We're

9:26

going to get bigger. It's just a question of how

9:28

fast we're going to get bigger. Malcolm, Yeah,

9:31

I think what occurred to I

9:33

think all of us very quickly in

9:35

this project experiment

9:39

is that we're

9:41

not really in the podcast business. We're

9:44

you know, it's a cliche. We're in the storytelling

9:47

business, and we happen to want to tell stories

9:49

to audio. But that means you can

9:52

compete against all kinds of like

9:54

we we there's no reason why we can't

9:57

behave like a book publisher in many respects.

10:00

It's just that our books are on our

10:02

audio, not on the page. But

10:05

once you realize that, well, look at book publishers.

10:07

They're really big. I mean they have thousands

10:10

of employees they have, so, you

10:12

know, concede that way. If you've only think of yourself

10:14

as being in the podcast world, you might think

10:16

of yourself as being pretty small. But if

10:18

you think of yourself as just as using

10:20

a different medium to tell stories, then

10:23

there's no reason why you can't be really big. So

10:26

to all appearances, this thing has been an incredible

10:29

success, and it's been really fun to make a

10:31

podcast for you. I'm

10:33

curious with troubles you've had, especially like

10:37

given the pandemic, how you've

10:39

had to adjust and respond

10:41

and how

10:43

much difficulty it's introduced into your business.

10:46

Well, we've all been improvising in various

10:48

ways. I think we feel very lucky and that

10:51

what we make is makeable

10:54

under these circumstances. People

10:56

set up recording studios at home

10:58

and we have meetings virtually.

11:00

I don't know that we could have done this with the

11:03

digital tools that existed ten or

11:05

fifteen years ago. I mean, things

11:07

like Zoom and Slack

11:11

and Google hangouts and share

11:14

drives um seem so essential

11:16

to long distance collaboration. I mean,

11:19

in a way, they've arrived just in time, and it's

11:21

sort of the moment for those tools. But

11:24

we can make our shows, and luckily we

11:26

work with writers of a caliber, starting

11:28

with you and Malcolm, who can

11:30

use their writing to adapt what they're

11:32

doing. If there's an interview that you were going to do for

11:35

your season this year, Michael and you can't

11:37

do it, you can write your way out of it.

11:39

Um, that's not a position a TV producer

11:42

as usually in. I mean, if you have physical

11:44

production that requires people to be in

11:46

a group in a place, it's just got

11:48

to be suspended. Podcast. We can we can

11:50

still make it. It's not all been easy, but

11:53

people have been incredibly

11:55

flexible and nimble about how we're still going

11:57

to get these shows done with this new

11:59

challenge. So it's funny. I'm about to

12:02

I've got five of my seven

12:04

episodes for this the

12:06

second season done, but I've got I've

12:08

got one really did require

12:10

me, I thought, require me to

12:13

go out onto the road, and I'm not able to do it.

12:15

And you said to me, you know you can write

12:17

your way around this. And this weekend I'm

12:19

about to find out whether I had and

12:22

and I'm kind of wondering if you think that's really

12:24

true. I mean, what do you think. What

12:27

I'm thinking is just generally, when you're throwing

12:29

this kind of this

12:31

kind of curveball, you look curveball

12:33

and you hit it that you that you try to just turn it

12:36

into a strength and

12:38

you see what you can do given

12:40

that given the constraint. But

12:42

but there's a part of me thinks, you know, I hear in

12:45

my voice the podcast producer

12:47

saying, we need scenes, we need scenes,

12:50

and now you can't really get those scenes. Does

12:54

it? Does it trouble Does that trouble you at all? You

12:56

think, oh, maybe these could be better this way.

12:59

Well, I tend to share your view that

13:01

the constraint provokes creativity

13:03

and that you often end up with something that's better

13:05

and more interesting than what you would have had otherwise,

13:07

but not always. You know. Luckily, I think

13:10

for a number of our shows, we had a lot of the

13:12

field reporting the interviews under

13:14

our belt, and so we're more at risk

13:17

of losing like twenty percent

13:19

of what we wanted. If we hadn't done any then

13:21

it would be harder to make those shows. You'd have to

13:23

conceive them in a different way if they're dependent

13:25

on vivid scenes. Where

13:28

were you as the journalist is physically

13:30

present. Do you think it's going to change

13:33

the way when this is over and you can go

13:35

back to doing it the old way. You think you'll go back to

13:37

doing it the old way? You think you actually learned things that you're going

13:39

to you're gonna work into your into

13:42

your routine. Well, my

13:45

my, my big goal. And at

13:48

one of our earliest meetings,

13:51

we had a retreat very early on at

13:53

Pushkin, we sort of sat down and tried to

13:55

figure out what are the principles that

13:57

we believe in as a company. Sounds

14:00

very pretentious, it actually wasn't. And

14:02

the one I was encouraging how

14:05

people to accept was we did was that

14:07

we should always remember that this ship be above

14:09

all else fun. If

14:12

we're not having fun, we

14:14

shouldn't do it. It shouldn't be drudgery. And

14:16

so I always think about my big worry when all

14:18

the lockdown happened was will it still be fun

14:21

if we're all working from home and we can't

14:24

hang out with this sort of wonderful

14:26

collection of and

14:28

I think this is in the best way misfits and weirdos

14:31

that we have gathered to many podcasts,

14:35

and I number myself among them.

14:37

So I was like, well, I can't hang out with these

14:39

delight for weirdos anymore? Is this not

14:41

going to be fun? And so I think

14:44

what's happened is that we've

14:46

just discovered new ways to hang out. My

14:49

senses, we're building a new muscle, and

14:51

that or that we're

14:54

kind of a resilience

14:57

so that you kind of know you can do it. Knowing

14:59

you can do it in another way is enormously

15:02

freeing. We'll be right

15:04

back. As

15:06

I mentioned earlier, this episode is just one

15:08

of many po podcasts included in the Small

15:10

Business Podfrints presented by

15:12

Dell Technologies, a podcast

15:14

conference to get inspiration on

15:16

topics like fundraising, building

15:19

teams, or managing a

15:21

business in our current environment from

15:23

top podcasts like Against the

15:25

Rules with Me Michael Lewis, Rise

15:27

with Rachel Hollis and Rhet

15:29

and Link from ear Biscuits. For

15:31

the complete lineup of episodes, visit

15:34

Dell Technologies Podfrints

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dot com.

15:39

Welcome back. Here's more of my

15:41

conversation with Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm

15:44

Gladwell from Pushkin Industries.

15:47

Michael, I think there are two big

15:49

impacts I've been thinking about on the company. One's cultural

15:51

and one is more sort of substantive around

15:53

what we make. But the cultural

15:56

point is that a company like

15:58

ours, people are really close and they get very

16:00

close making creative work

16:03

together. And we had just moved

16:05

into this new office in New York,

16:07

like literally a week before or it

16:09

was closed, and we all had to work from

16:12

home and be socially isolated or physically

16:14

isolated. And that

16:16

was a bummer. I mean, we were this office is really

16:18

great and like everybody was really excited

16:20

to be there. It's clean, it's new,

16:23

there was really good coffee. Like we couldn't wait

16:25

to get to work and see each other in the morning. Those

16:27

of us through in New York, which is most of the staff,

16:29

and suddenly that's denied

16:32

to us. Everybody's worried about everybody.

16:34

Everybody's got a whole new set of problems.

16:36

People have to figure out how to take

16:38

care of their kids, homeschool their kids, worry

16:40

about their parents. Some people are feeling

16:43

physical symptoms, are people getting

16:45

sick. So you have suddenly, instead of

16:47

this kind of convening, you're

16:50

separated and worried. And

16:54

the observed, the cultural observation is

16:56

that people then become

16:59

really habituated

17:01

to and really enjoy in a way, the

17:03

forms of digital connection. Having a zoom

17:06

meeting once a week where everybody's

17:08

on it. You see where everybody is and

17:10

you see the backdrops. And one of

17:13

our employees, Sophie mckibbon, is up up

17:15

in New Hampshire and she, you

17:17

know, she calls in from her car because that's where she gets

17:19

the best phone connection. You see her in her car, and

17:21

you see people in their apartments, some of

17:23

them have kids running in and out of the frame,

17:26

and it's just I'd look

17:28

forward to that so much, just seeing everybody, and

17:30

I think other people are having the same feeling.

17:33

And as you know, Ceo,

17:35

I just feel so grateful to these people

17:37

who've got all this stuff they're having

17:39

to deal with in their lives that they weren't expecting.

17:43

But they're you know, but they're doing their

17:45

best work at the same time, and I think that's partly

17:47

because work is a refuge in a situation

17:50

like this. So, Jacob, I have a

17:52

question for you. You spent most of your life

17:54

sympathetic to and surrounded by and

17:57

being one of them kind

18:00

of journalists who never have to take any responsibility

18:02

for anything, and you've

18:05

managed to become

18:08

pretty naturally like an executive,

18:11

like a person who runs a thing, and sounds

18:13

like you just sounded uh and

18:16

like like you could be secretary of the Treasury

18:19

um. And I'm

18:21

wondering where you pick

18:23

this up, Like are you reading on the

18:25

sly like in the middle of the night reading these horrible

18:28

corporate management books or are you

18:30

do you have some little secret source of wisdom

18:32

you go to? How did you figure out how to do

18:35

this? How to run a business? Uh?

18:37

You know, I think I was watching people

18:39

uh do it, And I

18:41

think i've you know, learned a lot from people who weren't

18:43

so good at it, as well as from people who are who

18:46

are really good at it. But you know, Michael, I was

18:48

always just really interested in this problem

18:50

of how you could pay for high

18:52

quality journalism or media.

18:55

We both came out of the magazine world, and

18:57

it was just this fundamental issue, even before

19:00

the Internet and things got challenging.

19:02

You know, it was how do you how do you make money on magazine

19:05

journalism where someone spends months doing

19:07

a story. And I

19:09

sort of went from being interested in

19:12

that problem to kind of taking on the problem

19:14

when I was at Slate, and as part of that, we ended

19:16

up selling Slate and I ended

19:19

up being responsible for it. And it

19:21

was an evolution, but I did go

19:24

kind of in stages from being a

19:26

full time writer editor to

19:28

being the head of the business. And I don't

19:30

know, I think, you know, I think you've both

19:33

reflected in this conversation that it's

19:35

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

19:39

just want them to keep doing the same thing they've

19:41

been doing. So if you get an opportunity to

19:43

try something new at this

19:46

stage of life, you can jump at it,

19:48

and you should jump at it. And for me, that's

19:50

the business stuff, Malcolm,

19:53

I hope you feel this way. It's

19:55

weirdly still fun. I feel a little guilty

19:57

about it being fun now because

19:59

I know how not fun the world

20:02

is and businesses for a lot of people.

20:04

But it's just seeing how we've

20:07

hired incredible people and seeing

20:10

their resilience and how they've adapted

20:13

to it. Um, you know,

20:15

it's um, it's it's kind of a joy

20:17

and um it's uh. It

20:19

would be a very different story if it wasn't working.

20:22

But it feels like we're going to get through it,

20:24

and it's I feel pretty good about

20:27

it at the moment. All right. So, uh,

20:30

you guys, to my eyes, you guys have

20:32

never had a spat or a disagreement,

20:34

but maybe you have and you've got it since you've gone into business

20:36

together. Uh have you have there

20:38

been any sources of a disagreement. Well,

20:41

if anybody's thinking about doing this, it

20:44

is it is riskier in a slightly different

20:46

way starting a business with your best friend.

20:48

There's there's a lot more upside

20:51

because that's it's a delight to do

20:53

it, um. But you know,

20:55

it's who gets to decide.

20:57

I mean, you're you have a dynamic that's not always

21:00

a friend dynamic. I think it's been

21:02

pretty seamless and easy

21:04

for me and Malcolm. He can tell you what

21:06

he thinks, and I don't think we've had any

21:09

any meaningful or significant

21:11

conflicts. But you know, the one dynamic

21:14

that I'd point to, which is not my favorite,

21:16

but it's a reality, is that I've

21:19

got to say no more than Malcolm does. He's

21:21

he can come up with all these ideas,

21:24

and I've got a little more of the responsibility

21:26

for figuring out how we can get him done

21:28

or which ones we can get done, and sometimes

21:30

I've just got to say, Malcolm, that's you know,

21:33

just like one idea too many, we can't

21:35

do it. Do you think of an example, Well,

21:37

you know, Malcolm will like meet

21:39

someone on a plane

21:42

and land and send me an email

21:44

about why they should have a podcast, and

21:47

I've got it, then say, okay,

21:49

well let's you know, I'd love to talk to

21:51

them and let's hear what their voice sounds like.

21:54

And you know, have they ever done any audio

21:56

before? And uh, you know,

21:58

he's uh, he's got

22:00

very good instincts. And it's I

22:03

guarantee you those people are interesting. But

22:05

whether they're going to be the right person

22:07

to do a show for a whole bunch of reasons

22:10

is you know, something we can kind of have to figure

22:12

out. But that's what

22:14

I mean. Malcolm's the

22:17

president of Pushkin. That's the role

22:19

of the president of Pushkin is to be constantly

22:22

pushing us to do more, come

22:24

up with ideas, to be kind

22:27

of the creative lead.

22:30

And you know, then there's I've I've

22:32

got to be the filter. Um, But I

22:34

think that's working out. Okay, so far we do.

22:37

You know, I don't know what percentage of Malcolm's

22:39

ideas bear fruit, but

22:42

it's it's it's more than zero and

22:44

less than all of them. I tried to get us to buy

22:46

as opposed to rent an office. That

22:49

was one of my ideas. We went so far

22:51

as to actually look at some officers

22:54

with to buy with real estate agents,

22:56

and then at the end Jacob

22:59

said, you know, I'm not sure we really want to

23:01

be spending our time and attention managing

23:03

real estate at this point, which is

23:05

absolutely correct, but again, left

23:08

to my own I would have been,

23:11

you know, careening around New

23:13

York looks with

23:15

real estate agents because

23:17

I got it in my head to why why wouldn't we own

23:19

our own play, you know, and I get why that would be fun, right,

23:22

It's like we have a clubhouse, you know, we can

23:24

like we can, we can own it. It can be you

23:26

know, podcasts, pushkin Central

23:28

and we can you know, but it was

23:30

one it was already starting to be. You

23:32

know, we'd spent a couple of afternoons

23:35

looking at real estate, which wasn't

23:37

which were afternoons we weren't spending on

23:40

making podcasts or other parts of the business.

23:43

And also it sort of occurred to me, well, if you buy

23:45

a place, it really is kind

23:47

of limit your growth potential.

23:49

I mean, what if we do want to double in size

23:51

next year and the office only holds twenty

23:54

percent more people than Suddenly we have the problem

23:56

of subletting a space and we're in the real

23:58

estate business. So yeah, I think that

24:00

was one of the cases where I

24:03

maybe had to gently talk Malcolm

24:05

down from a fun idea. If

24:07

you if you had to go back and redo the first

24:09

year of your existence, what would you

24:12

do differently? I've been one of the things

24:14

I've been pushing from the beginning is to

24:16

think of ourselves as more than a

24:19

podcast company. And I still

24:21

I don't know whether it's a legit concern, but

24:24

I still worry. I don't want to have us

24:26

to have too many eggs in the podcast basket

24:28

because I think of that world as it's

24:33

too unstable from my taste, and

24:35

I've actually gotten Jacob's

24:37

been been an even stronger proponent

24:39

of this idea than me, I think at this point. But

24:42

I wondered, I don't know if we were doing over the first

24:44

year, was there would there have been a

24:46

way to start more aggressively on that

24:48

track from the beginning? Maybe maybe not. When

24:51

you say diversify out of podcasts,

24:53

I mean pet food. What we're gonna do, no

24:56

no other like book

24:59

books, books,

25:02

events, you

25:05

know, producing

25:08

things for people where you're not depending on

25:10

advertising, all those kinds of things.

25:13

Just diversifying where the money comes from,

25:15

right, so you're not you're not a slave to

25:17

the ad market. Right. Um,

25:19

that was that's really But I actually think I

25:21

take it back. I actually think we've done a really good job of doing

25:23

it. Yeah, I mean I think we I think

25:25

we bid off about as much as we

25:28

could have chewed. And in the first

25:30

year and a bit. One thing I would have done

25:32

is I would have got the nice office

25:34

sooner. I mean, the nice office

25:37

will be for me, the fourth office and

25:39

if you count my home office where I'm coming

25:41

from right now, this is my fifth

25:43

office. And about a year and a half, and

25:45

you know, I thought I could save money. Someone gave us

25:48

free space for a couple of months. At the beginning. We

25:50

didn't have that many people. But it

25:52

does take a little bit of a toll, and your you

25:54

know, your mail never quite all gets forward

25:56

to the right place. So I think I

25:58

would have said, you know what we're gonna

26:00

we're thinking big, we're gonna need

26:02

the nice office. Let's just get it now, even if it's

26:05

a little empty for a while. Are you in the nice

26:07

office now, Well, theoretically

26:09

we are. We moved into it a week a

26:11

week before COVID hit,

26:14

But yes, we're

26:16

looking forward to getting back into it. You

26:18

don't think there's any risk if you started in the nice

26:20

office, you wouldn't think of it as the nice office. You

26:23

think this is the starting office. I now

26:25

need a better office. I'd always been

26:27

haunted by the phenomenon in the media world

26:29

where the company goes

26:31

to hell as soon as they get the nice

26:34

office. And I think it's a real reason for

26:36

it, too, which is that everyone gets distracted by

26:38

the like the decorating and the who's

26:40

going to sit where, and suddenly nobody's

26:42

doing what they're supposed to be doing. Instead they're all thinking

26:44

about the office. So I always thought, don't

26:47

you know, make the office like the last

26:49

thing you worry about. But you know what it's part

26:51

of, like providing great place for people

26:54

to work, and it affects the work. If you've

26:56

got a place people want to come to and

26:58

you know, the coffee can't be too good. I

27:00

mean, you think about how good that coffee is.

27:02

It affects how much you want to be in the space,

27:05

and that's you know, how much you want to be in

27:08

kind of creative conversation with

27:10

your colleagues. You know. Another example of

27:12

this is I never thought about

27:15

the important you know, until you are

27:17

actually part of it. This is old half to anyone

27:20

who's part of a business. And so you're part of a

27:22

business or starting a business, you don't

27:24

understand the importance of hiring in quite

27:26

the same way as you

27:30

You know, you don't understand, like one, how

27:33

crucial, how one really really good

27:35

person it can

27:37

transform an entire aspect

27:39

of your business, or one bad person can be disastrous.

27:43

You know, you're I was always sort of been different to those

27:45

questions. I thought, oh, you know, because I had

27:48

these kind of arms length dealings

27:50

with editors or copy editors

27:52

or whatever, who you can ask them, who you

27:54

could always get rid of if you didn't want. Our team

27:57

has been so so strong that it's

27:59

almost made us afraid to hire

28:01

people because we haven't we haven't

28:04

got a dud yet, and the team

28:06

works so well together. And I do have

28:08

this kind of phobia that we're eventually,

28:10

eventually we are going to get a bad apple, or not even

28:13

a bad apple, just someone who's not great.

28:15

And I just worry when that happens,

28:17

it's going to change the dynamic. And you

28:20

know, it kind of raises the stakes on every person.

28:22

You hire because that you have to think

28:24

they are going to be as good as all the people you've already

28:27

hired, and you're right that

28:30

you are. You see, maybe

28:32

this is what you see when you're when you're

28:34

starting out and you're a small business that you might

28:36

start to lose sight of when you're a giant business

28:38

and you've got tens of thousands of employees.

28:41

Is just the effect of a single person. I

28:44

finally understand after observing for

28:46

years with some mystification, the

28:48

obsession entrepreneurs had

28:50

with hiring, I now understand

28:53

it. I'm like, oh, I get it now. I don't

28:55

know why this was a mystery mystery to men. You

28:57

never had to hire anybody. Yeah, right,

29:00

right, Hey, Michael, let me ask you a question.

29:03

Yeah, this season is about

29:05

coaching, and you've been talking to some of

29:07

the best coaches in the world. You've been thinking

29:09

a lot about what how good coaches think.

29:12

What do you think a really good coach would tell us

29:14

about having a company like ours and what we should

29:16

be doing or thinking about. I mean, if there was, like, if

29:18

there was like an entrepreneur coach who could who

29:21

roll, they're probably all I think there is. I

29:23

don't know if you've talked to that person yet. But I'm

29:25

sure there are coaches for startups and entrepreneurs,

29:27

but I haven't talked to any of them. I challenge

29:29

you now to name any

29:32

activity for which there isn't

29:34

someone who calls themselves a coach

29:36

roaming around selling their services. That's

29:39

the thing that's been amazing to me, is it we

29:41

actually could start with what's the activity

29:43

when we want to write about or talk about,

29:45

and go find the coach because you know they're there.

29:48

Now, what would what would a really good so

29:52

the I'm not persuaded

29:55

that so it

29:58

is true. I think that the best place to insert coaches

30:00

is your kind of situation where transitional

30:03

states. And

30:08

I bet I bet with the

30:10

with the coach. What a coach would do with you

30:13

is just ask you lots of really

30:16

difficult questions that even I don't want to ask

30:18

you, and

30:21

and take you, um

30:25

try to figure out where you might go wrong,

30:27

Like I bet if I

30:29

was guessing what the what the risks

30:32

you guys run are? Are we run as

30:34

I am? Part of your business is

30:38

that the depth of your friendship is so

30:40

deep that it's

30:43

hard to me for me to

30:45

imagine um you

30:48

choosing the success of the business

30:50

over the success of your friendship. And

30:53

if there is ever a moment where

30:55

those two things conflicted, the friendship

30:57

would survive, but the business would take a hit, which

31:00

I love. But I think that's true. So

31:02

yeah, that's how it should be. I think we I think

31:04

we both feel that way. Hopefully we won't face

31:06

that conflict, you know, I don't think you will.

31:09

But I think when I think about I think

31:11

a coach would come in and say, you guys are doing

31:13

great, right, this is an awesome it's an

31:16

awesome startup and all everything's going well.

31:18

I think the coach would come in and say, what's the risks. Let's

31:20

see if we can analyze what what what we

31:23

should be thinking about might come down

31:25

the pike and and sort of prepare

31:28

you for them. M do

31:32

you have anybody like that in your life? Who's

31:34

who's kind of coaching you on

31:37

the side. Is Michael Linton doing

31:39

it? I don't know. It's a mutual friend of all

31:41

of ours. Michael Michael Lynton, who was CEO

31:44

of Sony and has a lot of experience

31:46

working in a lot of different kinds of businesses, and

31:49

he's both very much available

31:51

for advice for me, but

31:54

also offers it unsolicited

31:56

at really good times, including when this

31:58

crisis hit. You know, he he sort

32:00

of called me up and said, you

32:02

know, he wanted to make sure that we were kind of thinking

32:04

about these questions about our cash

32:07

position and our rest billiancy,

32:09

and also about you. Just wanted to ask me about

32:12

how I was communicating with the staff and

32:14

making sure people knew what was going on

32:16

and there weren't rumors going around. And it's

32:20

great to have someone like that. I rely

32:22

on him a lot, both of both the advice he gives

32:24

me and that I know he's thinking about the business and

32:26

has experience I don't have with small

32:28

businesses. So Michael's kind of your coach.

32:31

Yes, if he is for me, he's

32:34

definitely my CEO coach. I'm

32:36

curious. I've meant to ask you when you went

32:38

off on this retreat, the retreat at which Malcolm

32:41

introduced the idea of fun as a founding principle,

32:44

which I totally agree with. If we're

32:46

not having fun, that the audience is unlikely to have

32:48

fun either. Is What

32:50

were the other principles that were sort of your

32:52

core that you regarded your core principles and

32:55

do you remember fun which tells you a lot. Mia

33:03

LaBelle, who's our executive producer

33:05

and has been the executive producer of Malcolm Show

33:08

since the beginning. She's someone who came

33:10

with us from from the old company,

33:13

is very important person in establishing

33:16

our culture. But she talks a lot about

33:18

kindness as a as a principle

33:20

of the company, and it's really

33:22

it's really true, and I think she's been the

33:25

kind of guardian of it. But it's the way

33:27

people think about working together and

33:30

how they help each other and support

33:32

each other. And then that ties into I

33:34

think a bunch of other ethical principles,

33:38

not just about integrity, journalistic

33:40

integrity, business integrity, but

33:44

you know, diversity, the

33:46

kind of workplace we want to create, the

33:48

kind of society we want to see modeled

33:50

in the company. So people have

33:52

a lot of feelings about it, and when you have a

33:55

young workforce, those getting

33:57

that stuff right and having

33:59

that all be relevant meaningful people

34:02

to people is crucial

34:04

in recruitment and retention

34:07

because you've got to not just be a place where

34:09

people can do interesting work. I think

34:12

you've got to be a place where people want to work.

34:15

How do you get across your values

34:17

to someone who's coming in and thinking of working

34:19

for you, I think they have

34:21

to. I think that they don't hear it from

34:23

this see hopefully they do hear it from

34:25

the CEO. But I think people only believe

34:28

it when they hear it from peers and

34:30

see that peers are having that kind of experience

34:34

in the place they work, and you kind of

34:36

I can't hide, you can't hide who you

34:38

are, especially as a company. Right is

34:41

a person, so maybe a little bit, but as a company,

34:43

you know, word just will spread what it's like there.

34:46

The values come they do come through. And I

34:48

think it's especially true with startup companies because

34:51

they grow up so quickly that they end up being

34:53

kind of projections of the values

34:55

and beliefs of the of

34:58

the founders. And you

35:00

know, I think that's true at Facebook and one way,

35:02

at Uber in another way, but it's it's easy even

35:04

more true at a smaller business.

35:07

Everything that you you believe

35:10

gets reflected in some way in the in

35:12

the company.

35:19

Thanks again to Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm

35:21

Gladwell of Pushkin Industries, you

35:23

can hear more of Dell's small business

35:25

pot fronts by searching, Dell Technologies,

35:28

small business pot fronts on Radio,

35:30

dot Com, Spotify

35:33

or Apple Podcasts.

35:35

Special thanks to Emily Rosteck, Carly

35:37

Miliori, Julia Barton, Heather

35:40

Faine, and Jason gambrel. I'm

35:43

Michael Lewis.