'FOMO' Author, Pinewood Atlanta Studios CEO

along with Jason Kelly. Well Fomo, fear of missing out applies to so much, and it drives some to do things, drives others just crazy, safe to say, many maybe feeling it big time as they're sheltering in place about what they're missing while they stay at home writing about how to find the power to choose what you actually want and the courage to miss out on the rest is Patrick McGinnis, venture capitalist, author of the new book Fear of Missing Out, Practical decision Making in a World of

overwhelming Choice. By the way, he and I believe his co author will be hosting a virtual book launching party today at six pm ET if you don't want to miss out on that. Um Patrick joins us on the phone from New York. Patrick, Welcome, Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Um, great to have you here. Tell us and I'm not sure if it was a co author, forgive me, but I had seen the promotion about you guys doing this virtual book launch. Um tell us a little bit about the idea behind

this book. Sure, no, it's not a co author, but it's a good friend and somebody who writes about these topics as well, so he's a perfect person to be there. Um. So basically, this book is a reflection of where we are today as a society, how we spend our time. And I met in fomo when I was back in business school at Harvard Business School in the year two thousand and three, before there was any social media. But now we're in a place where all of us are

living with fomo. We're inundating with information and social media and all these influences, and so we have to find a way to deal with it. Alright, So can we go back to that first thing. I can't skip past that because I mentioned this to my two teenagers that I was gonna interview you today and that you're the inventor of fomo, and they're like, we want to hear more about this, So on behalf of Will and Henry.

I am asking this question, how did you how did you come up with this, what was the what was the German the idea here? Yeah, so listen, I grew up a small town in Maine and it's a very calm place, not that going on. And then I lived in New York, but I was working all the time, so I didn't have time promo. And then right before I went to business school, there were two things that happened in here in New York City that really affected me.

Number one was I was working in venture capital in two thousand and so everything blew up and we basically lost all our money and it was very traumatic. But far worse than that was I lived through nine eleven. I lived in near Manhattan, and we all remember what that was like. And so as a result, I just wanted to live life to the fullest. Was carpet a

d M for me. And when I got to HBS, you know, it's such a choice rich environment in terms of the amounts of classes and job opportunities and parties and trips and and all of these things were happening, and I just wanted to do all of them. And even though I didn't, there was no social media. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg was across the river working on the first version of Facebook at the exact same time that I

was over business school. Even though we didn't have social media, we all lived in such close prom proximity to each other and we could compare ourselves to each other that I basically felt this anxiety that I was never doing enough and I couldn't keep up. And I started calling that if you were missing out. I shortened it to fomo, and I wrote an article in our school newspaper called social Theory at HBS. Begauness is two Foes, and I talked all about fomo and its culture in our campus wow,

and they caught it went viral. Well, you know, it's funny. I have to thank you guys, because it went viral on campus. And then I graduated and forgot about it. But Bloomberg Business Week magazine wrote about it in two thousand and seven in the context of HBS. That's the first time I saw it outside of when I wrote about it. And then slowly it sort of crept into the vocabulary because you know, every year kids were graduating from business schools and bringing it to all of the

firms that they went to work for. Yeah, all right, well good, well we're happy to be a footnote in the creation and Patrick, You're welcome, but it but it's such a big thing, right we talk about this like just trying to have balance and just being present, enjoying where you are rather than thinking about what you're missing.

And so how do you get to this in a world where like everybody's having a hard time about what they're missing right now, you know, or what they're going to be missing on the other side of this, because we can't go back to life as we knew it. It's so true. And listen, it's been interesting because in the beginning of the pandemic we all felt, I think, a sense of relief that we didn't have that social pressure.

And you know, it goes beyond social pressure. It also is about how we spend our money and how we invest our money. It has all these other implications. But for that one moment, I remember thinking, oh my god, I haven't had fomo in two weeks. And then over time, as we started to sort of realize this is going to drag on, I think we all started to feel it. And the big thing to remember with fomo is it

fomo is caused by two things. Number One, it's the perception that something better is out there happening than what you're doing at the moment. So perception can be deception. You have to really dig into whether something is as good as it looks on the surface. And the second is it's about her behavior following the crowd. So when you feel fomo, ask yourself, is this something I truly want to do because it's something I want to do? Or am I feeling pressure to sort of keep up

with the jones as an external pressure on me? Can I just say, what's really interesting is and and maybe this is all of a sudden, like everybody doing zooms and you know, there's tons of now fitness zoom classes where initially there wasn't a lot of things to choose from. Right, everybody was ramping up, and I kind of loved it because the world became so simple and there weren't a ton of things I had to make decisions on. And now it's like do I want to do this zoom

business class or this one? Do I want to do this zoom family meeting or this one? Like it's it's unbelievable, how you know, again, Fomo hits even in this world. That's the thing that kind of blown my mind about this is what has happened? Is we so we you know, we all stay home. But the thing that provokes much of our FOMO, which is you know, connectivity and our cell phones and social media. We're actually on it more now than we were before. My screen time and I'm

careful about this. Look at your screen time, everybody, Like it's frightening how much spending on our devices, right, and so we're just we're getting into actually kind of a worst place than we were before. I would say, let's continue our conversation with Patrick McGinnis. He's got a new book out. It's called Fear of Missing Out, Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice. Johnny's on the

phone on launch day. As Carol mentioned, he's got a big event tonight virtual of course, because that's the world we're living in. And Patrick, first of all, thanks for sticking with us. And I have to ask you, you know, we were starting in the first part of our conversation to get into this notion of sort of how the world has changed and how FOMO still is creeping into what we're doing. What is the effect of sort of how we think about missing out or you also talk

about POBO fear of a better option. How do we think about that differently? Do you think on the other side of this as we get to what some people are calling sort of the next normal. Yeah, it's a really important question because I think we have a lot to learn in this moment, and if we pay attention and put down our phones for a minute and think about what's going on, we can come out of this

actually better people, better society. And so I would think on the FOMO side, it's really about paying attention right now to what you truly miss and what you realize you don't really miss, writing that down actually, and then when you re emerge into the real world remembering these things, like it's incredible the little things I miss. I live in New York City. I missed the subway, I miss going to a lot of the restaurants in the neighborhood.

What I don't miss is over scheduling myself or being stressed out about some of the things that don't really matter. So I think thinking about that right now and being introspective about that helpful phobo, which is a fear of a better option. This is the other thing that I wrote about back in business school, but it never got famous.

But it's just as bad, I would say, worse than Fomo because Phobo is about never sort of accepting a deal, always wanting to trade up, always wanting to wait for something better to come a long and I think that we've seen in this pandemic that the people who were waiting for something better to come along when it came to making the hard decisions about closing down and social distancing h they found out very quickly that delaying decision

making actually has terrible effects. I totally agree with that. I think that's such an interesting insight, right, the amount of time like you stew over making a decision, sometimes you just gotta just do it and move on totally. I mean this, this is a great example in public policy with whether it's COVID or it's or it's Brexit. But it's also if you think about entrepreneurs versus incoming companies. These traditional companies that they have all this money and resources,

but they can't move quickly. And the reason why you know, the outies get eaten up by the teslas is because the startups have to move. They don't have the resources just to sit around and wait for something better. Yeah. Well, and there's it also feels like many folks are gaining a sense of clarity to your earlier point about fomo, about sort of what they need and what they don't need.

But also when a lot is stripped away, maybe you stop thinking, well, I'm going to do this thing next, and I'm really just doing this until I get a chance to do X. And there's also this sense it feels like right now Patrick, that you know, we're all much more aware of our mortality in in some ways, and and maybe saying either Okay, I'm gonna make that decision to do something different, or maybe I need to sort of reassess and and really be honest about how

I'm feeling about this situation right now and not always be a grass is greener sort of person. That's for sure. The reality is that we are having this opportunity, but just with as what we lived within nine eleven, there was this period of introspection and then we sort of resume these sorts of years that we wish we hadn't done.

And so I actually suspect that there will be a wave of a massive fomo when we are able to live our lives again, And I think it's okay for a little while, because when you have means there something to miss out on. That's a good thing. But we we definitely want to be conscious of what we've learned right now, because you know, if we learn something and pay attention, we can just live much more decisive lives.

How do you apply fomo in the workplace? Oh, it's a very anybody been on LinkedIn lately and seeing all of your friends with their promotions and you start to feel like you're just not good enough. I mean, that is that is an incredibly sort of active use case. But really I think about FOMO in terms of not only in terms of not being sort of grateful or thankful for what you do have and then more fixating on what you don't have, but also in terms of

running businesses. When businesses start to do things because of fomo, when Pepsi brings Crystal Pepsi on the market because they want to keep up with sprite, when you're doing things for the wrong reasons, because you're following in the crowd,

you are apt to make mistakes. And so how do you think We've been asking sort of big thinkers that this question like, what are the underappreciated ways that you think we change as either humans or business people investors on the other side of this, So, I have a feeling, um that it's unfortunate that this whole sort of situation

has become quite political. And I think that we're going to see through the rest of the year that the political divide that is created by this is going to play out in our election, and then we're going to see effects on the election and potentially with voting and

voting rights and things like that. And so I think the big question that I asked myself as I look at this pandemic is what is the role that it will have in affecting our democracy and how can we as citizens come together to actually defend something that's so precious to us. And I think that's going to be the conversation this year. Right now, we're all dealing with the medical emergency. Next we'll be dealing with the economic impact, and we're gonna be dealing with the impact to our

democratic systems. And I do think about FOMO in terms of an election, your fear of missing out on, you know, re election, and do you make the wrong policy calls potentially because you're concerned about that and I'm trying to get political, but you do think about the urgency. That's an interesting point. Interesting went all right. Patrick McGinnis, congratulations on the book. It'ssel today, fear of missing out practical decision making in a world of overwhelming choice, that pivot

politics there at the end that he made. That's the Georgetown education talking right there. Carol Masser, Okay, Mr alum from Georgetown writing that in U, graduate of the School for in Service down at Georgetown. Patrick McGinnis, congratulations on the book. Check it out Inventora. Fellow, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. We are talking a lot about reopening and

one state that has largely reopened. We're going to go there right now and it is the state of George and my home state. Frank Patterson joining us. He's been a guest in this program before. President CEO of Pinewood Atlanta Studios, joining us on the phone from that fine city, the A T. L. Frank. Really nice to talk to you again. Hey, Jason, good to talk to you. You're going to catch up with you and Carol. Yeah, well, thanks for making some time. I know it's busy down there.

Give us a sense of what's going on on the ground, because, as I said, obviously we've been watching very closely from here, you know, living at the Epicenter. What's going on down in Georgia and Atlanta? What's the scene? Well, I mean, as you've probably seen, we have so coming out a little bit more from their homes than I know personally, My wife and I have begun to sort of venture out into the neighborhood and um uh, it's it's good to see our neighbors out again. But you know there's

still a lot of caution. You can tell that. Um, while some of the activities have been opened up, a lot of us are still being quite cautious. And so what does it mean for the business, Because you guys are stacked up, I mean just by you know, just by the numbers, and you know them obviously, uh better than I do. But I mean we're talking about eighteen sound stages. We're talking about seven hundred acres a million square feet under one roof. I mean, the second largest

purpose built studio in North America. I mean, this is you know, this is a busy place. Where are you in in terms of getting back up and running, Yeah, as you as you, as you mentioned, we were packed when the virus hit, and there's a lot of work

to be done. You know, historically we've never seen this kind of money spent on the production of entertainment content in the history of our industry, right, I mean Wall Street has been pouring more money into the pipeline then we've had the capacity to produce in recent years, obviously because of all the developments with the streaming technologies. So

we were really busy. Productions began to shut down, as you might imagine in March, and we just said about the business of uh my team on the ground at Pinewood Atlanta, you know, creating what we think are going to be the next next new best practices and protocols for getting back to work, because we believe, you know, sometimes the summer productions are gonna want to return, and of course we have to be prepared. So we've been putting a lot of work into what, as everyone says

these days, our new normal is for productions. Yeah, and figure out those best practices. I mean it's going to be really, really tricky, and I know, we've been having some conversations about it, especially when it comes to content creation, making movies. Let's ask you just one question before we get to our news guys. Uh, frank, if we can't, what does that? What are those processes at this point? What it? Just? Quickly, yeah, quickly. We focused on three

areas that I think everyone's concerned about. One is just sort of studio access and lot management, right, how do we manage the work on on the lot and manage the way people work together? And then what kind of improvements can we make to our facilities to make them

healthier and safer. So for example, full air handling systems and swanky hand washing stations and electrostatic spray technology, you know, the new kinds of technologies that we can put in place in our facilities to make the you know, the work process is safer. And then the last is just sort of what we call better practices and protocols for how we're gonna work together, how our crews are going

to work together. We've been collaborating with studios and guilds and unions and associations to try to come up with a best practices, uh, set of guidelines, you know, in the next days. So Frank, let's dig into that. We we caught up at Jane Rosenthal of the Tribeca Film Festival and talking about you know a lot of times when you're when you're filming, it's very intimate, right, and people and actors are next to one another. There's a lot of folks on the tech side, the whole team,

you know, they're all surrounding them. I mean, can you do that going forward until we get a vaccine or no? Yeah, no we can. I mean there are plenty tricks of the trade. I'm a big and of Jane and and and love her movies. And you know, we we tend

uh time with Atlanta. The shows that were involved with tend to be these bigger tent pole you know, action movies, and and there's We're we're accustomed to creating scenes by piecing elements together, and we're gonna have to continue to do that and actually deploy new kinds of ways of

piecing scenes together to keep people at safe distances. I think the key is going to be identify identifying ways, and we've already begun to do this how our crews, uh and our cast members can work in pods and a safe distances and kind of just zone off the work, uh and work in smaller teams that collaborate together, but everyone doesn't have to be on the set at once.

We're kind of used to doing it that way, where we'll have you know, a hundred fifty people just on the set because they're waiting for the shot to be finished. But we don't have to work that way. We're gonna have to work a little slower, and it's gonna cost a little bit more time and money, but we're still going to be able to make these movies. And so

how much is delayed? I mean if you can maybe not quantify, but but more the idea of you put some give us a sense of like how much of a delay this will ultimately mean for things getting done and maybe what it will look like for us as consumers, you know, re seeing like movies to late a year six months, Like, is there an average that you can sort of put on that, Frank, It's hard to quantify. It's a good question, Jason, and we're all trying to

figure it out. Look, at the end of the day, we want to make certain that the movie going experience right the viewer doesn't notice any different. Great movie, great stories, great entertainment, right, So how do we do that? And we know we're gonna have to um work, you know, in smaller groups and take more time, and it is going to delay this pipeline that's already being delayed by

this virus. Right But um so, I generally speaking, I think it's gonna be more time and money to get these projects through the pipeline until we have a vaccine and have better, uh you know, technologies in place to protect our workers super process. If you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week, Carl Masser, along with Jason Kelly, our guests at this hour Frank Patterson, president CEO of Pinewood Atlanta Studios,

joining us on the phone from Atlanta. So, Frank, what are you hearing from various studios to about what they're going through right now at this point and how they see things. On the other side, you're talking a lot about the new protocols, but I am curious about some of the conversations you're having with that entire industry. Well,

as you might imagine, we are collaborating. It's almost every day now with the various tax task forces, you know, the studios, with the studios and the guild and the unions and the associations, and you know, as far as the studios are concerned, of course, as you know, they're eager to get back to work. Uh. And it's just a question of how this is a critical part of

the business. You've been covering what's happened to you know, Disney's discussion today a uh you know, and obviously, uh, you know, the features and the streaming shows that are in their pipeline are critically important for them right now. Right we have a long history of working with Marvel Key Company in their portfolio. And are you know these studios are eager to see this content get through this pipeline up and running. And I think, well, we we

we know the demand continues to be extremely high. And obviously during this time period people have been living off these streaming platforms, and it's critically important that we get this pipeline back up and we get this content produced. Uh. And I think we're gonna be uh you know, sort of in uh, you know, ready to go or completely up again, let's say, uh, this fall, once we have that chance to figure out how uh. And I know there's a real eagerness to get into one and and

get these projects produced. Well, Frank, we know from your work and in our work and previously discussions, this is a fiercely competitive business, you know, trying to get these movies. You guys have been incredibly successful. Atlanta has become, you know,

really just an amazing hotbed for these big productions. You know, based on some of the work we've described you doing, as well as a lot of you know, great incentives that the state has rolled out, there is this an opportunity for some realignment, some continued realignment when it comes

to where movies are made and how they're made. Given the new protocols that are going to have to be put in place, and and just given some of the uh moves that that folks have had to make in light of this, you know, it's a it's a great question, Jason. What I'm noticing is that people are concerned and and fearful about making certain that we're getting back to work

safely and quickly. And what's happening is we're relying on our relationships, right and it's our big Like a lot of other industries, you know, we we know we've worked with each other for years, in my case, decades, and you everyone knows everybody and you're relying on the people you've worked with in the past. And so I think Atlanta has become in recent years a real reliable partner in the film industry. Uh. And I think it's going to be seen as a critical part to getting us back.

I think you're going to see a lot less travel to sort of exotic locations and to cool, fun places around the world. Cast is not really excited about doing that right now. They want to go where they know they can be treated safely and with people they've worked with before. So I don't think we'll see a lot of realignment. I don't think. But I think we'll see is just people being a lot more reserved about where they want to go to make movies. Yeah, it's interesting.

I mean I think about carol our conversation with Doug steiner Um last week, and he was saying sort of the same thing. It's like, you've got your crews, you've got your people that you know you're used to working with, right Carol, right exactly, And the whole idea of people not wanting to fly around so you're gonna work with your local crews. Uh, and you want that, Um, what

about the insurance angle of this? And Frank, I don't know if that's become a kind of a new aspect that the policy has now become maybe even a picker thing. They're more expensive because we know now health pandemics can shut everything down, that's right. And boys, this is just you know, I feel like I've gone back to school. I've learned so much about so many different industries I

had no interest in learning about. And of course, you know, the insurance and and exactly how we're going to solve the problems associated with coverage is really wide open right now, right because we can't simply just over insure the problem, right, It's got to be a good value prop from both sides of the table, and we just don't know what that looks like at this point. Frank I, I do wonder you know, we're asking questions we just talked to

earlier in the hour. Uh. Literally, the guy who invented the term fomo, he's got a new book out. He'd coined that when he was a student Harvard Business School. So there's that. So you're in good company here in this edition of Bloomberg Business Week. But you know, we asked him a question that that I'll ask you, what are you learning about, you know, sort of what people are doing now that may you know, sort of remain And I do wonder about, you know, how people consume content.

You know, you alluded to Disney's earnings. They've now got fifty four million people on Disney plus you know, these tent pole productions that you work on, they sort of rely on these big openings and crowds and and things like that. How do you think about that aspect of

the business going forward? It's it's so um, this is such a fun intellectual exercise because on one hand, I know, you know, we learned a long time ago from Aristotle and others that we as humans are social beings and we need to gather around story together and and and reflect with one another socially together, right, dark rooms around the fire that is the movie screen. So I don't think the theater is going anywhere at the end of

the day. It's it's it's value in the sort of value proposition of how we build value around these products has been declining since two thousand three, right, uh, continue to fall, and we know that was happening. I really do think it's going to level off. Theaters are gonna figure out a way to continue to host people more safely where you still have that need to gather in the dark around the story. Uh, but it's going to be different and and it will continue to be the

special events like these big temp pole movies. You can't watch Avengers Infinity War. I mean, you know, toront I couldn't wait to get to the theater to see that song. No, no, I'm not going to watch it on my TV. There's no way that is exactly the kind of event that theaters will continue to support. But so they're not going anywhere. They're just going to be less valuable in that value chain. Right. So I think, um, you know, I do think that

our behavior that's can tumors. We need live experiences, right, We need the theme parks, We need these things, and we're gonna have to figure it out. But we're gonna learn to behave I think, a lot smarter around each other, to be a lot more respectful about each other's help, and to do it, uh, you know, and with with with kindness and the kind of joy that comes with

consuming entertainment. In that way. That's way to end. And I do have to say that if we're we're also not so eager to get on planes, those things that we can do simply like going to a movie, provided it's safe, that will become even more important to us. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, all right, Frank Patterson, thank you so much, great much, thanks so much for the time being patient with us as well as we sort of maneuvered around this crazy

world that we live in. Frank Patterson is presidency of Punwood Atlanta Studios. Jonius on the phone from Atlanta. I have to say, Sam's l earlier quoting Santayana and uh then Frank Patterson just dropping a little Aristotle. Where else do you get that? Where else do you get that? But Bloomberg Business Week. I'm just and fomo fomo. Seriously, it all comes together words of wisdom right here at Bloomberg Business Week