Dave Goetsch Discusses Media and Money

be an absolutely fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado, here is my interview with Dave Gesh. My extra special guest this week is David Getch. He is the executive producer and writer of television's highest ranks sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. He has been with the show pretty much from the very beginning right through the season finale which is taking place in May. He was also a writer at Third Rock from the Sun. Dave Getch, Welcome to Bloomberg.

Thank you, very welcome, So great to be here. So you have a really fascinating history. How did you start out writing for Third Rock from the Sun. How did that come about? And for some of you who may be a little younger, Uh, that was a show with John lift Gowen and um Joseph Gordon Levitt was a pretty popular sitcom and it stay how did you find your way there? Well, I first had to learn that you could be a sitcom writer, that that was a job.

You didn't know that. Up in Connecticut, I loved watching television, but I never thought about who wrote that stuff, who

was filming that stuff, what was that business like? And so when I was a senior in high school, there's a guy who just had graduated from college and he came back and he taught for a year my school, and we ended up doing We had a little radio station, nothing like this recording studio, and we did a little show there with another teacher and it was these guys are hilarious, and it was sitting around like this and

just making each other laugh. And he then left that year to go to film school, and within a year and a half he was a writer on Cheers. So I stayed in touch with him. His name is Rob Long, and a couple of years later he was executive producer

of Cheers. So as I thought about going to college and being a lawyer or doing whatever, in the back of my mind, I always remembered what he described being a sitcom writer was like, which is sitting around in a room with ten people who are funnier than any of your friends and trying to make them laugh and write a little play and put it on TV and your grandparents can watch it and that ideally along with

a few million other people. And so um. There were a bunch of other things that I thought about doing, but ultimately, after an inner you at Goldman Sacks for the fix with the fixed Income division, um where I said, you know what, I'm gonna go be a sitcom water So I moved to Los Angeles. By the way, you should know the fixed income desk at Goldman Sacks. Those guys are hilarious. That meeting was unbelievable because I put

on my uncle's I didn't have a suit. I put on my uncle's tweets suit in the middle of August, and I went down there to Wall Street and I sat and talked to this VP and I literally didn't know what fixed income was. You know, you just like you go to Yale, you get interview, you know you gotta fix it, you gotta fix it perfect. And I remember her saying, um uh, you know, when was the last time you read the Wall Street Journal? And I said, well, honestly, this has been a pretty crazy time for me, like

twenty two. I don't have a job, there's nothing going on. She's like, I can't believe you're going to Goldman Sax and having a meeting and you haven't read the Wall Street Journals. Like well, like, like I said, things with me, my girlfriend are crazy. So so that didn't work so that they offered me a job. In fact they did. Yeah, and then but I also really liked you because they don't sound like it was a bad start in strategy. Yes, and I apologize, are crazy? Do you have any other questions?

Any other things? Um? And so? Um? So you So, the way you get into the old way of getting into Hollywood and being a TV writer as you write, you wrote sample scripts and then you try to get an agent and that agent gets you a job on during staffing season. Now that spec process has changed, it has changed a lot. The first thing that's changed is that people don't write old shows like you would write

a friend. You know, if you wanted to get on a show when Friends is on, you'd write a sample of Friends and then that would show even if you weren't applying to friends. Ideally, the people of friends would never read it. It would just be Okay, I know this guy can write in the voice of other characters, and you can be a team player on staff. And now what everybody wants is an original um and so

uh there. So that process has changed, and in fact, now I teach this webisode's class at USC and I recommend that people just shoot stuff and make it and have a trailer, make a video, make make a It's hard to get anybody to read anything. But if I said to you, will you read my screenplay or will you watch my two minute video? You might watch my two video. But from that two minute video you'd get a sense of hey, this guy he knows that right, knows that to direct, even if he's in it. He's

pretty funny. I'll take a meeting, then I'll read the script. So there's the technologies allowed people to break in a new way, but for me, it was the old fashioned way. It was get a get An agent had a writing partner at the time, and he and I um went and met Bonnie and Terry Turner, who are the creators of the show they're married, they're wonderful and uh, we had one of those just great meetings where we left and left and in the sun and then um, and then we got hired at the end of the first

season and how that ran a good couple of seasons. Yeah, so that ran for six years and um, we started as staff writers and on the last year we were the executive producers and show owners with Christine Sander. So let's break these titles down because they are interesting. Executive producers, show runner. Everybody kinda knows what a writer is, what's the showrunner due, so they're The way to think about it is that there are people who make suggestions and

there are people who decide. So the show runner decides, and all the other writers were pitching how about this, how about this, how about that? And you might start as a staff writer and then become a story editor,

executive story edor co producers, supervising producer, executive producer. But those are just different steps of virtually the same thing, which is you're still in the room, you're still pitching, and hopefully you're getting paid a little bit more as you go up the way, and eventually the showrunners, the person who ultimately as responsible for saying they're the managing

partner of the show exactly. And um, you know, the way I think about TV development is really in that VC model, which is where you you write a pilot and that's a business plan. You say, we think we're gonna be able to make two hundred of these widgets, these funny shows, but we need some money to we

need some angel investing to make a pilot. And then you make that first pilot, the network says, okay, go ahead and do that, and then you maybe get your series A. That's your first season, right, and then you have to get the second season in thurd season and in the old days, by the fourth season you could syndicate and that would be your I p O. By the old days you can syndicate after four or five seasons anyway. Well, so big bank theory certainly is the

exception to that, and it did very well in syndication. Um, in if you're selling to the new streamers like Hulu and Netflix, they don't have syndication. They own their own your content forever, so they have some different models where they'll say, we'll give you a bonus in the fourth season, and what you're seeing a lot is that shows get canceled in the third season makes a lot of sense.

So could a show like Third Rock from the Sun or even Big Bang get off the ground today with the political correctness with the environment today make that more challenging. It's such an interesting question, and I ultimately have to say probably, there's so many places where you could put it out there, and there's just so much chance. There's so much The role of a hit show is there's

so much luck involved. And you think about the stories of how Seinfeld was just six episodes and then was almost canceled, Cheers was oppd Cheers was almost canceled at the end of the first season, and then it won an Emmy. We got lucky in the first season where there was a writer strike, so we did I don't know, seven or eight episodes and then we went down and that meant that they repeated all of those eight episodes.

And then when the strike ended. Because we're multi camp sitcom, we could get up faster and shoot more and so people were looking for new stuff and and we had it. And so to what degree we think that helped. But you know, there's so many variables in all this, it's hard to know. So Um, later this month, I'm gonna go see John Lithgow on Broadway. He's got a new play out. You got to work with him, and there was what what was the experience like on Third Rock

from the Sun some really huge subsequent names out of that. Yeah, it was a it was a magical experience from top to bottom. I got to just see the play this past weekend, which is wonderful to Clinton play, and it was. It was so cool because there's an episode of Third Rock from the Sun that my partner and I wrote where Laurie Metcalf, who plays Hillary in this play, Um falls in love with John Lethgo's character and they speak

to each other only an I ambig pentameter. So and she got nominated for Emmy for that, you know, twenties something years ago, and then later she has in her many many roles. She's also played Sheldon's mom on Big Nank Theory. So seeing them up on stage, I just had I had flashbacks to working with them two decades ago.

Working with John, Yeah, it's he He is so remarkable and I could spend the whole time talking about out what what a mens she is but probably the best example of that is you know your star, you don't need to know everybody's name. Right. He not only knew everybody, all the writer's names, all the cruise names. There's a Christmas gift that I have framed and it's an illustration, a cast and crew photo, but he drew it. So

he drew every person's face. Really, so imagine so you not only know your name and who they are, but what they look like, how to draw them. And then for each person he colored in that person and said to Berry, happy holidays. Loved. Really, that's amazing, you know, I almost met him. Just a quick digression. I'm at

an event in Vancouver. This has to be like ten years ago, eight years ago, and I love ethnic cuisine and there is like a crazy top ranked Indian restaurant in Vancouver called I want to say ve something like that v I J no reservations, But when you get there, they just start feeding appetizes and drinks while you're waiting. And we sit down at the two top and right next to us is John Lithgow and the food was so good. Nobody paid attention to him like he was

a big star. Then, like in New York or in a place like this, there's like the vibe is, hey don't right, you don't. It's always bad for him to, you know, scream it at celebrities. Um, and that's a very New York attitude. But I was surprised to see that in Vancouver. I didn't know if it was the town or because the food. Yeah, crazy delicious. Let's talk a little bit about your really terrible relationship with money as you have described it when you were growing up.

Explain that. So I, Um, my parents were teachers, and so we always had enough money, but there wasn't money that was being saved. And uh so when I started to work in Hollywood, I had some money and I didn't know what to do with it. And I think from the very early days, I would always read the business section to try and get worked up, to look think about what's bad stuff could happen, and and there's lots of bad stuff, and there's screens and screens of it.

And so I would I describe myself on the writing staff as like the chief Warrior, because I would because I knew enough to get scared about the Asian currency markets or what's going to happen and I how is the Asian currency market? I don't know. The good news is it doesn't matter my new philosophy. I'm a long term investor, so I don't care right what happened. So in other words, what happened last Tuesday is not relevant to your retirement. And so for me, it's a it's

about if I have what's your time? You must talk about your clients all the time, What's what's your what are your goals? What's your time horizon? If you are thinking about twenty years from now, then what happens in today's markets. I'm so fond of telling people look at a long term chart of the market, the single worst day, the nineteen seven crash, one day crash on a bit long term chart, it's like a little wiggle. You barely even see it, although while you're in it, in it, well,

the world is coming to an end. But that's just a function of perspective exactly. And I think that there's this um problem that I had, which is even after I knew that, I didn't internalize it. There's kind of that aha moment when you start to see how all this stuff fits together, and that's when you have the ability to start feeling better now, not just that not feeling like, Okay, I have enough money or I've I'm

going to be okay. It's more like I have confidence in this approach that I've taken and also being comfortable with the uncertainty. So let's talk about that, because there's a line that you wrote, quote the markets haven't changed. They still go up and down the differences. I don't anymore. So how did you get from that process of worrying about where the end was to Hey, markets are volatile, they'll fluctuate, but I can't be bothered. So I was

a mess. So I had my I had my retirement in cash, and the O eight oh nine happens and it starts. Everything starts to tank, and I think to myself, I've been waiting since I'm thirteen for this. This is the end of the world. I knew it was going to happen, but it wasn't the end of the world. And it was around that time that I read this article about Gordon Murray who was writing a book called

The Investment Answer in his race against cancer. He was trying to finish the book before um I think it was brain cancer, and so it was extremely moving article. I ordered the book on Amazon before it came out. I read it and things clicked for me in a different way. This I understanding how the market works being a long term investor, and no one ever talked about

having a fiduciary investment advisor. And once you realize that there's somebody who's on your side, who's not trying to make extra money in every single trade, and they're beating a part for the long term. I sought out an advisor and it's funny. I once I met with him, I said, Okay, I'll give you a year to see how it is. So it proves I didn't really know.

I wasn't really allowed months. Months is enough? I heard something, um amusing you had you had your agent and his brother was an advisor, and you said, I've given enough that family enough money. Exactly right. So c A is one of the leaders of c A is Brian Lord and his brother Blaine Lord, his name is also an advisors. Like, I'm already given ten cent to the to the Lords, I don't need to give a leven that. That's really uh, that's really funny. So so you're you're looking at, um,

what is at least by traditional standards, a fairly substantial salary. However, there's always the risk, hey, we could get canceled any time. Who knows if this show is going to get picked up. How do you deal with that sort of uncertainty? You have to be fairly risk embrace sing if that's the career choice. So this is what I realized, which is when I became a secum writer, because I saw my friend get a job on Cheers after a year and

a half. I totally misspriced risk. I thought going into Hollywood was going to be a lot easier and a lot more stable than it was, And once I got there, I was like, oh my god, this place is a mess. I went to meeting accountant once and he said, okay, well what's your what what kind of income can you expect over the next five years? And I said, well, well, I might never work again, so zero, or I might syndicate a show, so two million dollars, So can we

budget for somewhere in between that? And that is paralyzing for it was paralyzing for a long time. And the difference for me is getting on their side of it and saying hold on a second risk, we no risk and reward or related. We can to be afraid of that or we can try to make a little peace with that. And so much of my life, so much of everyone's life, is how do you reduce risk, mitigate how do you try to make everything seem to make

more sense? And as a storyteller, um, I was always telling myself stories either to get racked up and nervous or try to calm down. And it's hard, but I think trying to get comfortable with that unknown is is it really powerful? I can imagine. So before we leave the investing space, I have to ask, you have a patent? How on earth did that happen? So I have a couple of friends from college and this was we graduated in the early nineties, and uh, we had this idea.

We always wanted to start a company, and so all of us were at the beginning of our career and um, John Zitrain, who's now this Internet law of professor at Harvard, he's a big, big deal. He had this idea, which was what he was a colleague our friends. If he's

a friend from college. So so it turns out it's like, uh, this guy Sherman Min who he just so this company to target um and uh uh, Zack Meanen who runs a neuroscience institute in Portugal, and me and Zach and Mary Lambert who another college friend who worked at Google, and the thing that was incredible a couple of things that were fun. It was a great chance for us to all be together. And this idea for the patent was, could there be a way to communicate without having to

talk and without having to type? Could there be a touch based way of communication? So if you and I had a bracelet, you know, and we give it a squeeze, you say, you know what when this interview, rather rather than me giving you a sign when we want to break to go get a snack, just give me a squeeze. And so you give me a squeeze. Or you'd be able to tell your your kid would say when I get to school, I'm gonna give you a squeeze. And

so it was a haptic way of communication. And we were gonna use page networks to do it, and we ended up getting a patent, but all of our lives got busy, and it turns out this is actually a pretty hard thing to build, especially in the nineties. Well, Apple didn't have a hard I'm building it exactly and technically it is part of the Apple Watch. So we kept waiting for Apple to call us, and they still haven't called. So if Tim Cook is listening to this podcast,

send checks to absolutely. So you guys never tried to enforce the patents or never tried to do something we um we were like open to it, but um see, Apple should come by the patent so you don't sell it to Samsung. I agree, I agree, I think that's a really good idea. Okay, thank you very much. I also recall hearing that you set up your own defined benefits plan. You didn't even know that was an option

for someone who was technically self employed. Right. The structure is all the writers and producers work for either themselves or a separate LLC, so it's like a pass through when they're all partners. Yeah. So what happens is after you become a certain level of a writer, your accountant will say time to make a loan out. And so for a writer that says, what am I going to call my name? As a writer, you think, okay, what

do I call my corporation? And some people have really goofy dumb names for corporations on the I r S calls that you regret that you have this really dumb name. But the funny thing is, when you go to file an LLC through the corporate paperwork, most of the names have been taken. You have to really work to find a name that any common one or two word combination. Somebody's filed it already. Yeah, exactly. So what happened is now that I had a financial advisor, he said, hey,

you don't know what your future is. These are good earning years. Can you put a chunk of it away to create your own pension? And that sounded great to me. I love that idea, and I end up mentioning this to lots of people too, because I feel like it's surprising how many of my colleagues don't have financial advisors, how much they would benefit from it, and they you know that what you guys do, you get a bad rap from all the other guys who aren't doing what

you do. Well, it's not clear who's a transactional commission broker who are allowed to call themselves advisors versus a fiduciary registered investment advisor who basically are like your accountant or your lawyer are obligated to do what's in your best interest. And that's been an ongoing debate in Congress for a while. The President Obama, his Department of labor Um past that, hey, for retirement accounts they must be fiduciary. That rule was just overturned by the new administration, and

so it's very ambiguous. It's very and even worse, there are now hybrid broker dealer r I A So what had am I wearing? Am I wearing a a fiduciary hatam or I'm wearing a commit So it's really it's so complex and so unclear, when really we could just clean this up and say either everybody needs to be a fiduciary or if you're not a full blown fiduciary, you can't call yourself a plan or an advisor. You have to be either a CFP or an r I A blah blah blah with all the acronyms. But this

could be cleaned up. There's too much money at stake from people who don't want it to be cleaned up. I think the estimate was just for retirement accounts was seventeen billion a year in fees, So of course there's a lot of opposition to that. Yeah, And the upside of having a fiduciary advisor is that your things keep changing in your life. You have kids, you lose spouses, you inherit money, I think you have health challenges. Things change all the time. And there I mean you spend

all your time. I spent all my time with all these writers in all these rooms, and we don't talk about money because it's too scary and stressf I eyone talked about different things. But you want to be able to call up somebody and say, hey, I need some help. What is this? And so I'm super grateful for my advice are and um, hey I need a trust in the state's lawyer. I need somebody who can help me with this. They have that network. Yeah, exactly. And I

know markets are going to go down. I know there's gonna be sometime in my lifetime. Things are probably Historically things go down some giant thing again like eight seven or whatever, or or oh eight or nine it was. And it's going to be really good to have somebody that I can talk to you to say, I know we said this is gonna happen. I'm freaking out, are you? Uh, Let's let's talk this out before I do something reckless. It sounds like a smart approach. Let's let's talk a

little bit about the show. It's been the top rated sitcom for how long? Now? For a really long time, I'm not exactly sure. For years. Yeah, we've We've had a great run. And there are a ten writers that all work together in this really unique way. And you say unique because I always think of um, my framework is shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is also its own thing, or or Seinfeld, where one or maybe two people would write a script and then we'd go to

the writers and the jokes would be added. You guys do a very different approach. It's not a single writer and then it's punched up. It's a whole group discussion, right right. The standard model is to have you break the story around a big table and then and come up with an outline and send one or two writers off to write it and then come back and get notes. But with Chuck LORI noticed in his long storied career was that when those scripts came back, you spent a

lot of time rewriting them. So what if we just had this borg and had everybody's eyes on the script, and we went through it. And one of the things that happened when you go off to write a script is, of course it sounded great when you were talking about it sounded awesome in that little outline, but now it

doesn't make sense. Or even better, you came up with a twist that is better for the story, but you've got it approved, and you've got to kind of stick to the outline and you don't want to bug the show runner. And what we've been what we've been able to do is uh, sit around the room, come up with it together, write the script together, and then have that freedom to pivot and turn and follow the story. So sometimes people will say, oh my gosh, I didn't see how that was gonna happen at the end, and

we said, we neither did we. We discovered it along the way. There'll be more fun to go this way or to go that way. Now, now we're in the Chuck Laurie era of television where the laws were passed and no sitcom to beyond unless it's either created or produced by Truck Laurie. Is that is that more or

less true? He? Uh? He if you think about all of his shows, right, it's um, It's Two and a Half Men, was so It's Sybil, Grace, under Fire, Dharma and Greg, Two and a Half Men, Big Bank Theory, Mom, Mike and Molly, and you just want a golden globe for Kaminsky, which I love Netflix, And and now his new show just got picked up, Bob Hart's Abashola, which is going to be on CBS, and I saw the pilot. It's really really funny. And so it's no, he's he's

incredibly talented. But he also in addition to that, he has this process for making a show which is different from the way other people make shows, and that and that ends up having a big impact on how successful the show, or at least that's the correlation that seems

to exist. He touches something and it I mean, has he had many shows that haven't worked out, especially well you have to think about it to know, yeah, yeah, there is a there's there's a story that a long long time ago some network bought a show with him and Tyler Perry. Right, those are like the two most popular, those guys that that that show didn't get on the air. But those two guys but he I don't think anyone has the track record like it's astonished so one of them.

So my wife literally started watching The Big Bang Theory from the first show, and I watched more or less what she watches other than a handful of Project Runway or Flip This House. And I will specifically notice how the show has iterated over what is it twelve season, two seventy nine episodes, which is slightly more than your episodes. You're like two fifties something. I'm coming up on two fifties soon. Soon, you'll pass. But it's only taking me

five years to get that. That's the beauty of once a week and and that's the beauty of two it's sitting and talking in a room as opposed to a whole television productive. So I've noticed in the beginning the thing that was so appealing to me. I don't watch a lot of television, um, but I got pulled into the show because everybody was pretty dysfunctional. This was a group where most of the main characters, certainly the four

male characters, were at various points on the spectrum. Certainly, it's implied that Sheldon is either autistic or Asperger's or somewhere on the spectrum, and over the years that's kind of moderated a little bit. We've mainstreamed them. Tell us about how this has evolved and how do you stay

true to those original characters. Well, I think it's a testament to Bill Pretty and Chuck creating this show, which was those characters were inspired by Bill Pretty's experiences here in New York working at a computer company and really brilliant people, not exactly the most socially exactly so depth so brilliant people who are not socially not the geniuses

socially that they are in other ways. And so the amazing thing about television is how you can tell such a long story and how people can change at at a rate that is a little bit more consistent with

how things happen. It's hard in a movie to have how do these these movies where it's like you tell the story of somebody's life in ninety minutes, he's a jerk and now he's enlightened, and what a great guy exactly, And so for us, the way it's always been is to follow the characters and not necessarily know where we're going. Like when mine Bi Alex showed up to be to go on a date with Sheldon. I think she had two lines in her. It was a season finale of

maybe season three or something. This is because Howard had set them exactly without without Sheldon knowing, set him up on a web dating website exactly and basically just made Sheldon a complete and total accurate depiction of somebody again pretty much on the spectrum, and lo and behold, here she comes, Here she comes, and she was um. She was great to work with, and then we brought her back for another episode and then another episode. And I don't think the plan was ever Sheldon's in the ten

years from now, Sheldon's going to marry her? Was it the second season? Was it that early? I remember? I think it was the It's all blurs together, but I think it was season three because what ended up happening with her introduction was it went from a story about four dysfunctional guys too pretty much for dysfunctional couples and how they manage their lives in spite of the fact

that they're all a little wacky. Melissa Row, who plays Bernadette and my biolic could play Amy, deserved enormous credit for what they brought to the show, and what they the stories they allowed us to tell, so it didn't just be still be about four nerds who were trying to, um, you know, go to the comic bookstore as much as they can use Google maps to find um I forgot, what was the Bachelorette or one of those shows where where all of the America's top martin us top a

bunch of beautiful women with low self esteem because they've been rejected and they figure out how to go set up their WiFi. Yeah, and that is a part of the show and it's that's so fun. And what became even more fun was just to just to be able to tell more stories. Did you ever get any did the writers or the producers ever getting me pushed back from any advocacy groups that had um autism or aspergers or anything like that because of the way, uh they

were being uh depicted. So we never um what it is, said what it is and but anyone with Google and

Wikipedia can figure it out. Well. We we had some really uh meaningful, wonderful connections where people have come to us and said, you know, um, my son identifies with Sheldon and we every day we sit down and we watch an episode and then and we talk about it, and we talked about what Sheldon is going through when we talk about my son's going through, and that we didn't intend to do that, but it's something that we're

so proud of as a group. And I think that we certainly the you know, among the ten writers, everybody is protective of the characters, and I think that Shower Steve malaro Um in a ways is the most protective in a in a really wonderful way. And what's going to make sure that Sheldon never did anything that would uh, you know, cross the line or be objectionable, and so, uh, we we really care about these characters and they they are alive to us. I can I can totally see

see why that would be Um. I mentioned the show has iterated over the years. Because it's on syndication, I frequently will see like a first or second or third season show. It was really edgy in the beginning. I mean, he had had some really sharp elbows like where you gasp, like wow, that's hilarious, but oh my god, nobody else on TV says anything like this, Yeah, and what happened is around So when the show syndicated around season four.

It's normal that when the show syndicates, the audience grows, more people find it and they say, hey, I want to check out the name. It's a commercial for the current show exactly. But what we found is that families love to watch the show together and they would people. We have an audience that of two or fifty people that comes on Tuesday night to watch live studio audience

and it's not laugh track. We have microphones in the audience, and so those people would stand up and and and thank us or tell us that this is the only show I get to watch with my family. And that was really stuck with Chuck. And you know, he had created two and a half Men, and that's not necessarily a show that you can watch with your children, with your kids, and that wasn't intended to be that way.

And so we we heard how the audience was growing and moving and and then and as I as I recall, even a lot of us have kids, and we started watching the show with our kids. And so it was more of just a gut check, which is do I want to that joke is funny? But do I want my honestly next to my daughter? And and hear that, and so it became I think a little broader and broader appeal in that way. Right, So in the early days there would be the wood jokes with Sheldon and everybody.

He has to be doing this on purpose, all the double on andres yes that he was oblivious to, you know, leading up to the series finale. That had to be a bitter sweet experience. This has been twelve years of your life. Yeah, I have a picture I'll show you of twelve years of all the scripts because we have. The way a multicam works is we do a table read on Wednesday and we rewrite all the jokes that

don't work. On Thursday, we do a rehearsal, we see the actors perform it just like a a We fix all the things that don't work on Friday, same thing. We appreciate some stuff on Monday, and then on Tuesday, in front an audience, we film the whole thing. So so that's the third So when you see what's what's broadcast, that's really the third time everybody's going through it. Yeah, and that is a difference from Modern Family or Arrest

of Development, which is like a movie. Maybe, And because they'll do a table read if they're lucky, and then they are. They board it, and then they're shooting it in pieces all over town, some in sound stage and stuff, and that is It's incredible how they make that look like a movie. What I love about the multi camp is that you have these chances to watch it and watch it like a play and tweak the jokes and

listen to the audience and have that interplay. And so that became as we went through season twelve and getting to the final episode, these filmings became so emotional because our audience was going through it too, and in the last episode that we shot, people started waiting out the night before to try to get tickets, and um, it was. It was festive and joyous, but but also really emotional. And the only thing I could compare to is I

got to go. One of the great things about the show is how scientists like it and people from JPL come. And so I got invited to go to JPL for when Cassini Show into the Cassini Mission, and that was like at four o'clock in the morning and everybody, hundreds

of people were there. But I got to sit in the room with all these scientists who had worked on it over the last twenty five years, and these guys, who are quite reticent, we're just watching the satellite and their tears were coming down their face, not not because they were sad, it was just this is the conclusion of a big part of your life. Years. That's a that's a really long time. So last question about The

Big Bang. Are people watching this live as a broadcast, or they're d V ring it, or they streaming it as an on demand You have to have seen how that has evolved over the because you guys launched right into the start of really a totally new era in television.

The iPhone hadn't come out when Sish when The Big Bang Theory started, YouTube was about two years old, and so it is fascinating to think about how much the world has changed, and also how this show has been so popular despite being made the same way I Love Lucy's made. So we talked about how there's so much innovation, but at the same time, this way of making things still worked. So it's been fascinating to watch how it changes.

We we used to look at the ratings and then we then they started to do plus threes for three days and plus seven and see how it continues to be because after because those ratings, you would say, wow, the ratings are going down compared to two years ago, but within three days their way up and within seven days their way up. And so it's not just that there's one way of consuming any of this stuff and you have to be prepared to to get it out

to everybody. One thing that is different, though, is this idea of watching something every week versus if you made twenty episodes on Netflix and just dumped it, people will burn through it. It's it's a different kind of an experience, and so as it's fascinating as storytellers to think about how to tweak those episodes, because I remember somebody being on the plane and watching an episode of House and saying like, oh my god, I've never seen the show.

Was amazing, and then they I'm watching another one, and they watched another episode like that was really good. It was quite like the first episode. The episode they were like that was remarkably like the third episode. But the point was because it wasn't intended to be watched. It was every week, we give you something that you like, which is different, but within the confines of it being weekly. It's fine, but you're not gonna watch twenty six episodes

of House in the Road. So a couple of shows is that. Um I started binging when MS. Maisel came out and when Jack Ryan came out Day one. I started watching both of them, and I found that if you you only have a finite supply of it, you have to pat yourself otherwise you're gonna watch it in a in three weeks and now you get to wait

forty nine weeks until the next one comes. And it does you know, just banging through a bunch of them, it does lose a little something when you watch it and you get to think about it and digest it and wait a week and then next so we The Expanse is another one that I like to I don't want to over binge, although I'll watch one or two of them in a row, and but you want to

give it a little time to settle in. It's it's not great to to just I know people who will kill the whole season in a in a weekend, and I think it loses a little bit of something or am I You know, it just depends on what that show is. I remember watching the first season of twenty four in less than twenty four hours. It was back going with the blockbuster and was just like get them and watch them and burn through them all. So it's

more like is it a giant movie? Is that the novel you want to just can't put down, or is it something that you want to like incorporate into your life. So it's as I think, as writers, how you want this to be consumed is relevant, and the Sopranos is maybe the extreme version of that, which is or Game of Thrones. Waiting two years between those shows didn't help you forget, like, wait, what's that connection? Could we make control like the Big Bang going forward? Or is that

era now over? Well I'm such an idiot because I remember telling Bill Prady at season one this, you know, we live in a new era of television. Syndication is over. There's no way I love this show. I hope it, I hope it's successful, but there's no way you're ever going to make any money in syndication. And I was very wrong. It was very very wrong. So it seems like it's never too late. There's there's always audiences like

these shows. I love multi camps because their characters that people want to invite into your house and and have a relationship with them. Uh. Let's talk a little bit about the entertainment industry. There are so many interesting things, uh that are going on. But first I have to ask you about the Emmy's. The show and its actors and writers have been nominated. I don't know ninety seven times for Emmy's. Do you go to the Emmy's. What is that experience? Like? If you get nominated, you go

to the Emmys. You just go, You just go. And there's our editor, Peter Chacos was started getting Emmy's on Cheers and nominations on Cheers and on Will and Gray's. And by the time he started getting them on a Big Bang, it was his twentieth nomination and no win. So you know it's so he went, well, he just thought, he's Susan Lucci. He's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. See, I believe in me and reversion. Eventually he has to win, and he did. Was he reverted to the means. So

he won I think three or four in a row. Uh, the and then that's it again. No, No, I hope he will keep winning and winning he the the Emmys are really fun. And what's interesting is when you go on different years and see, like whose show it is. So one year we got to sit in the row right with Homeland and that was the year the I think it was the first season, and they won, and they won big, and it's you know, first of all, it's like really looked down here, like, hey, there's Manny Patankan.

You know, that's fun. Claire Danes is great in that. Clara Danes is wonderful in that show. And then and then they win and they go up on stage and it's amazing, and so, uh, it's fun no matter what. And but it's fun to win, isn't it. It's I've never won an Emmy, so I don't know, but it seems really fun and it's been. It's interesting to think about Chuck Glory, who, well he hasn't won an Emmy ever, how is that possible? It is not one of writing Emmy,

but almost all of his characters have. And I think it's a testament to how he creates shows that are so focused on characters that an actor can have a great script to really knock get out of the park. And it's it's an it's you know, you think he's Alison. Janny just won when Jim Parsons won forever every year. Yeah, but didn't the show wasn't the show Best Comedy Emmy for long? Doesn't It isn't that really the creators so that we got nominated I think three or four times,

but it was during the run of Modern Family. So Modern Family run won a lot, and then we went a couple of times for The Rock from the Sun, but that was when Fraser was winning and those guys, you know, Frasier one like eight years in a row. Modern Family went six years in a row. But you guys started long before Modern Family, right, We were a couple of years before Modern Family for sure. So so

that's that's the army. That's kind of interesting. Um, have you noticed any changes in Hollywood since the me too movement began? And specifically within your show? So I think that around Hollywood people are people get it now. It's what I've been hopeful that this time would happen, and so, um, I think the culture is changing and it's not that

hard to do, you know. There when you're in a writer's room, it's important to have everyone be able to speak freely, and so there was even a friend's lawsuit years ago where the California Supreme Court guaranteed the right of the writers to cross the line. Because the line is if you start self editing yourself in a creative format, you're going to really radically cut back what what can be done right. And there is a way to speak freely but also be respectful of everyone in the room.

And in fact, if you're trying to get the most out of everybody, if you're pitching jokes that might hurt people's feelings or or you don't want to do anything that silences other people in the room, you know. So I think that the I think this is all positive for making better shows, and we're going to see, i think, in the next few years, just more at what we've seen already, which is just more diversity of voices, which is terrific and it's gonna it's going to make better content. Well, well,

we'll be looking forward to that. So, as executive producer, how much responsibility do you take for the financial success of The Big Bang theory A most none so um, I certainly, Uh yeah, I'm just so grateful to be a part of this show, and you really started pretty much from the what was it the second episode? Yes, so the pilot is the first episode, and then you know, the first episode of season one is uh is episode two.

So Steve Miller and I were there from the beginning, and um, the there are so many people that deserve credit way ahead of me, and I think that it's been so cool to just watch how this has grown and evolved and nobody, really, I don't think people I knew that this show, a show about four nerds, was going to be connect with people and be so popular with them. And when did you start to think, hey, this thing is becoming a monster? How long did it take?

There was a press tour that the cast took and I think it was maybe at the end of season one, between season one and season two, or between season two and season three, so that what you guys went to Comic Con. So we went to Comic Con and that was that was definitely a moment where like, wow, people are into the show. Yours for sure, yes, but these and then you guys write it into the show, which

was hilarious. And we always had every year of Comic Con we'd have a little real so we would have all the nerdiest jokes and the superhero references and references to Comic Con, and we always wanted to shoot at Comic Con, but it's in July, and it never It was always too hard to do um And so the I think the moment for me was when the actors came back from a press tour in Mexico City and they were all the eyes were wide open and they were just like we were the Beatles, like it was,

you know, there was security and there were hundreds of people waiting at the whole tell and they didn't even know the show was. They thought they were promoting that the show was going to be in Mexico, but it had already become a huge hit. And there was a moment for me also where I met somebody, a Chinese person who said, um, I learned English watching your show. Really that's kind of interesting. And it's the number one

comedy in China too. Let me think about that. I'm wondering what cultural things wouldn't translate, but I guess it doesn't matter. It's just a quirky family and so that's kind of universal, even though the specifics are so unique to the show, right that you know, jokes about Pasadena

aren't going to play in Beijing, but you can. You know what it's like, Uh, that it's that core dynamic of friendship, about relationships, about trying to find love, trying to find career success, and that has been able to translate. So when you look at around what's going on with Hollywood. You have giant mergers, you have related to the show,

all the superhero stuff just going ballistic. When when Disney starts cranking out Marvel comics after that purchase Marvel Comics movies four times a year, what do you think the future of this is going to be in the entertainment space? I don't mean just from the Four Guys perspective, but broader. Is it becoming a nerds entertainment world? It's such an

interesting question. I feel we're in this wild moment where within three weeks of each other, Um, the Marvel arc, Game of Thrones, big bang, they're all ending, and so will we look back just the Avengers arc is ending, Marvel is going to have a million comics they haven't even touched into. You know, that's true, that's true. Um, I do you think it will? It will have to continue to innovate, right, you have to find you can't. There weren't. There'd never been an arc like Avengers in

a movie. You've never seen anything like Game of Thrones before Big Bang, you're heading out a show like that. And so that's kind of like why Reality TV was hot, where you're like, oh wait, I've never seen a show with guys stuck on an island, and but I thought that was cheap. That's why that was so well. Those ratings were great. Those ratings were really great. And so it's I will I will admit to watching the first couple of seasons of Survivor and then it kind of

got repetitive. It's interesting people on staff still love that show like they they still love it and there's something special about it. The So it's just about being able to innovate and entertain an audience. And as you have fewer giant corporations, are they to become more risk averse? Are they going to say, well, we know Avengers worked, so let's make more marvel. You know? It's they just did that with Star Wars, right, They cut back on a Star Wars movie because the one before it didn't

do as well. Well. They were cranking out, cranking out too fast and too too much. Um. Although when we look at risk aversion look at Disney, all right, So they buy Star Wars and they buy Marvel and they buy Fox and they said, oh yeah, Netflix, We're gonna put out Netflix at half the price they seem to be taking. We're embracing risk. I don't know if everybody else is, but when a giant company like Disney has figured out, if we don't throw stuff up against the wall,

we'll never know what. You know, it's a great Jeff Bezos quote. If we don't fail, we're not taking enough chances to see what might work. Yeah, exactly. And they just took a big write down on Vice so that you know, like that's the thing you take big right down for them. It was a couple hundred million dollars, which is really Ah, I thought you don't track all this stuff? Or is that Hollywood enough? That's entertainment? Yeah, exactly, yellion dollar right down for Disney's. Like I had a

fight out of Bill. I can't find where to go, where to go? It's um, you know, I I think the stuff to me that's so interesting is how people are able to build businesses outside of that model. So watch how sitcoms, you know Ray with Insecure, or the guys that made High Maintenance, they started as web series, they did proof of concept. Uh, there's a moment where these shows can live on their own or come into

the corporate structure. And so how for people breaking One of the things I say is that to this the students at USC that I teaches that part of breaking into Hollywood might not be breaking into Hollywood. That you might if you can be entrepreneurial and think about new platforms. And you know, TikTok is this huge thing that's happening right now that if you're under twenty five you'd love it. And so how can you become a great content creator for TikTok or how can you how can you monetize that?

How can you do new things people haven't done before? So last question about this, what is the entertainment industry you're gonna look like ten or twenty years from now? Is it going to be what we think of as Hollywood or as you are implying, it's going to be far more vulcanized and far more spread out, and not the old studio system remotely well this The simple answer

is nobody knows. But the stuff that's interesting to me is that there we're going to be more and more like Spotify, where everything is available all on demand, and for me, that makes me want to Actually, maybe it's just something older. I don't want to. I don't want to listen to more music. When I have access to more music, it's kind of overwhelming, Like I want to go to my record collection and I was like, oh,

I'll play that. That's the beauty of Pandora versus Spotify is that you can seed a playlist with your favorites and yet stuff that's similar. And that's the most interesting thing about Spotify is that it will have these recommended lists with is a great way to find new music. So for me, it's like the Netflix algorithm suggesting what shows you want is fascinating. But also, are we just gonna, you know, to do the economic parallel? Are we gonna

have too much faith in models? And so what is the role of humans being able to kind of create and innovate? And then the the other thing that I wonder about is how you see it in every family where it used to be one TV screen and everyone's got a tablet, and everyone complains about that, but from a content creator standpoint, it means, hold on a second. We just went from needing four shows at the same time one showed at the same time, to four shows

at the same time. And as you get to driverless cars, what are people gonna do? They're gonna watch TV. So so when you think about you twenty years from now, you're in a driverless car, that's super luxurious. You get to live far out of town because it doesn't matter. You commute in for an hour back you've planned, I'm gonna watch Game of Thrones Part nine on that ride

in and on the ride out. How you can consume this content is going to drive a lot of what it's going to be and how long it's going to be and where it's going to go. So so I agree with you, except I think they're going to spend more time listening to podcasts. I agree people. I love podcast I love driving. I drove to uh Sacramento and listen to your podcasts and it's much more engaging than music. It's it's so different because it's a whole long story.

We're gonna a little bit. Can you stick around a few minutes. I have a bunch of more questions for you. We have been speaking with Dave Gush. He is a writer and the executive producer for The Big Bang Theory, which just had its season finale. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and stick around for the podcast. Actually is where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing all things television related. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, Bloomberg,

wherever your final podcasts are sold. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg dot com. You can follow me on Twitter at Riolts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Dave, Thank you so much for doing this. I say this every week, um, and it's always true, but it's especially true this week.

I've really been looking forward to having this conversation. We've been trying to do this for a while and it just worked out great that we're recording this on a Monday, and the by the time this drops either the same day or the night before the finale um will have aired. So the one question I didn't get to that I have to ask you, what's next for Dave Gesh? What are you gonna do after this? I know you probably the assumption is, oh, he doesn't have to do anything again.

This shows when it's indication forever. But you're young guy. You don't want to not work for the rest of your life, do you. I definitely want to keep working and paranoid not to work. Yeah, I know for sure, and um and I didn't create the show, so so if I greeted the show, I'd be in a floating on a hovercraft or something. But I want to take the lessons of the last twelve years and apply them

on new shows. I think this multi cam world where you get the chance to rehearse for a couple of days and tweak the jokes and then do it in front of a live audience, is it's old It is old fashioned, But I the success of The Big Bang is testament that people like it, and even bringing back Full House on Netflix that has been a big hit for them. I would not have guessed that I was never a full House. Yeah, me neither. So I have to ask so you're a comedy writer, what comedy shows

do you like to watch? So I don't like to watch much because it all feels like work. So when I'm watching, you can't help critique and take notes or feel jealous and have low self esteem. That that's such a good joke that I wish I'd come up with it. So, I mean, I thought thirty Rock was flawless, and I was obsessed with it. What they did in there, especially

the first two seasons, it's amazing. I remember I had like the worst flu a couple of years ago, and having seen it all when it broadcast, I just binged all three seasons or the first whatever it was, and you could see when it starts to change, like at a certain point you could tell different writers. Well, but the first two seasons were so fresh and so hilarious. They're amazing. It's like there there are special seasons, right,

It's like, what is that? The Office seasons two and three, And a lot of just has to do with kind

of where those characters are and where they're going. Um, I have I have been able to watch and see how hard it is to make television that I have a lot of forgiveness for when people say like, oh, that show stinks and my don't you understand it's it's so hard that they got that on TV, Like do you know how many they got notes from the studio and the network on every outline and every rewrite and then they still had to get there and just Chuck Laurie's shows still get notes or can you guys do

what you want? He has earned this uh place where he does not get notes, and that is an extraordinary luxury for us as writers to work in that world. So the story with Seinfeld and Larry Davis, no notes were not interested. Somehow they managed to carve that out. And obviously Curb doesn't seem to get a whole lot of notes because it's so improved. Do you what what shows do you find interesting that way? Do you watch

either of those? Yeah? I think what they did on Curbed is is great and it's fascinating how they do that. It's improvised, but heavily it's really interesting. Ever read if you ever read one of those outlines where it's really dense, Um, the I have students who think, oh, well, since Curb is improvised, I'm gonna go do an improvised thing, and if you ever shoot an improvised thing, it's just a nightmare because they all spin off on all these prejudections.

You have to be really focused on and that's annailing those story beats. And that's an amazing cast. It's incredible cast. It's really stop and think. Everybody on that show is a rock star. It's it's just astonished. Any other comedy

shows that tickle your fancy. I think the Arrested Developments it was hilarious and um, I'm really excited about I'm not trying to just uh like promote the other Chuck lay world, but I think this new Bob Heart Savashola is a really cool show, which is about a Billy Gardell, who was Mike from Mike and Molly in the pilot, has a cardiac event and goes to the hospital and wakes up and there's a nurse and she's a Nigerian immigrant and he falls for her and it's such a simple,

sweet story. But you you watch this pilot and you're like, I want to see more. I want to see these characters. I want to see what's going on. So I'm really excited for that. So I only have you for a finite amount of time. Let's jump to our favorite questions that we ask our guests, sort of our our speed round.

Tell us the first car you ever own? Your making model in nine seventies six AMC White Hornet, which might P's got from the telephone company, and meaning it was a fleet car, a fleet car, and they got it for five dollars and they paid too much, They paid too much, and then that's a pos for sure. I hit a telephone pole because I uh it was Connecticut in the spring and too much sand from the snow, and and uh, I totaled the car because it would cost six to fix it, so cost more just a

simple repair, clustmas the whole car. Um, what's the most important thing? People don't know about Dave Cash, Well, they know about the patent, that's really so that's the I was that's thing. But I tried to start a chocolate company in the first season of Big Bang Theory. At the same time, while Um Quantum Candy, it was gonna be called r X Chocolates, and the idea was it was gonna be apothecary bottles and it was going to have the amount recommended of dark chocolate every day and

you pop it in your mouth. Okay, that's a good idea for Yeah, and what happened to that, Well, it turns out I'm much better at coming up with ideas i am at starting businesses. It's it's concept versus execution exactly. That's why I need a partner for that stuff. Um. Who were some of your early mentors who really gouted your career in television? Well, I mentioned Rob Long, Who's this guy who showed me that there was actually a path?

And the other guy in that radio station was a teacher named Craig Thorne, and he has since passed away, and he just couldn't have more of an impact in terms of how to live your life, how to help people. Um, the power. He is one of the funniest guys in all the years in Hollywood, one of the funniest guys I've ever met, and just how to how to live

your really how to live your life. And then working with Bonnie and Terry Turner on th Rock from the Sun, they were they created a family in their running staff and uh, I'll I remember working that first night that first year, maybe a Friday night, and they'd say, oh, I'm sorry, we have to work past dinner, and I would think to myself, great, I don't want to go home. This is so funny. So you're an investor and have been for a while. Who has influenced your approach to

either investing um or thinking about markets? Well? I mentioned that Gordon Murray book, which had a really profound impact on me. And you know, I think the work of Gene Fama this. I wish everybody knew more broadly about this efficient market theory. If only he would win a Nobel Prize for that, people would find out, then it would get out. I took I took macro econ with Nordhouse, and I took a winner. And then I took microth with Gianna Copolis. Who might win it some day? And

didn't he win? Um? What did he win? The Bates? You want something big? And they they didn't talk about personal inventor. They should. I wish they would just say, be a long term investor, keep fees low, Uh, invest in a broad basket of stocks. Yeah, and and um, what are they gonna do for the next sixteen weeks of the class? Exactly right? And so it's so simple, But I feel like, um, there's just so much noise pushing the other way for sure. Tell us about your

favorite books. What do you like to read? Comedy, non comedy, fiction, nonfiction. So John Irving had a giant impact on me growing up, and sider House Rules is still one of my favorite books of all time. And um, there's a then this guy Rob Long wrote a great book called Conversations with My Agent And so if you ever want to know, like what Hollywood's like, that's a good little little book to follow. And um, tell us about a time you failed and what did you learn from the experience. I

fail all the time. I mean, pitching is failure, right, You're pitching ideas, you're pitching things. Uh, there's so many pilots that I've written and sold that that never got made. But what I what I realized is that you really can't define failure for five or ten years because what comes from that As a result of not getting that thing? What else happens? And it's happened when I was dying to get on Spin City and I didn't get a meeting, and then I got the Third Rock from the Sun job,

which was a dream job. I was so excited to try and get a job on thirty rock and I had a meeting and then I got canceled because they hired their friend, and then that led to big bank theory. So failure, it's easy to make failure one thing. But I think if if you're a long term investor, if you have a long time horizon, you you can redefine it. You have to look at it across the continuum. I guess, what do you do for fun outside of the writer's room?

By the way, I imagine that the writer's room is just hilarious and I know it's worth but it must be just so much so entertaining. It really is so entertaining. And when you when people make fun of you on when they're professional comedy writers who do it, it's like, wow, that was so so good. Yeah yeah, you can't. You can be frustrated or embarrassed. Whevery you're just like, wow, that's so good and so uh that is a it's

a joy to hang out with those guys. It still works so stressful there, people get mad at each other, things happen. You still have to do your job. But but the way to have those funny people around you

is amazing. And really the thing that's so fun for me to do is to teach, and I teach every fall at USC and this webisode's class and it's so fun to take these things that I've learned in my career and television but then apply them to this new medium and give say to these kids, you have all the power to make your own TV show, which I never had. You know, for years and years into my career, what are you most excited about within the entertainment industry?

What you can do just with your phone is more than Martin Scorsese and Ted Turner could ever do in the nineteen seventies. That that's amazing. Um. So, if a millennial or a college student came up to you and said, we're interested in a career in television or entertainment, what sort of advice would you give them if you're a writer, if they're a writer, I'd say there are three kinds of writing. There's writing on the page, there's writing when you're working with an actor and how you change it

to fit that actor's voice. And then there's the writing you do when you edit. And you used to have to be a shot runner to do all those things,

but now you can do it. So how you write is different now, and you can post and get feedback and build an audience, make your webisode and have a discipline so that you're able to fit it into your schedule, so that you can say, one week in a month, I'm gonna shoot and I'm going to make one minute episodes, but I'll make four of them and every Monday, just like Barry rid halts On, I'm gonna drop my I'm

gonna drop my episodes. And by the time you've made fifty of them, you're gonna say I've learned so much. I'm such a better writer. And number thirty six is the best thing I've ever done, and it's the one thing I want to show somebody. And our final question, what do you know about the worlds of producing and writing and comedy today that you wish you knew twenty years ago when you were first getting started Almost twenty

years ago. Uh, not more than years ago. I would say that it is the one of the lessons from Chuck Lory is he treats writing with a group of people. Someone described it like jazz, where you sit down and you don't know where it's going to go. There's a structure, you know in a jazz thing. You do eight bars, and I do eight bars, and we go around. There's a structure to the scene and a goal to the scene, but being open to that freedom. It's kind of being

comfortable with uncertainty that we're talking about. The being being able to execute, but being able to be open to that stability of maybe not knowing where you're going to go and drawing the best out of people is absolutely magical and just have faith in that process quite quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Dave Gesh. He was the executive producer and writer for The Big Bang Theory as

well as other shows. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll be sure and look up an Intra down an Inch on Apple, iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, Bloomberg dot com wherever final podcasts are found, and you could see any of the other I don't know, let's call it two d and thirty eight episodes we've done previously. I'm just ballparking that. Um. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff

who helps put out this conversation each week. Medina Parwana is my producer slash audio engineer. Michael Boyle is our booker. Attica val Broun is our project manager. Michael Batnick is my head of research. I'm Barry Hults. You've been listening to Master's in Business from Bloomberg Radio