You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Welcome to Math and Magic. I'm Bob Pittman. Over the years, We've talked with dozens of leaders in industries from biotech to banking, entertainment, advertising. I'm always trying to figure out what makes them tick and how they got to where they are today. Their twenties may be behind them, but it's a time I'm always curious about, in part because I myself, I'm a college dropout. Whether you go to college or not, this time in our lives is often
filled with possibilities and the potential for self discovery. That's what this bonus episode is all about. We'll hear how the pathways our guests took in their twenties affected their futures in unanticipated ways, and we'll get their thoughts on the landscape of education and work experience today and how to weigh what's most valuable. Let's start with David sot Them. He's the perfect example of somebody who took advantage of the wide range of opportunities college had to offer. Today.
He's the CEO of Goldman Sacks, but he didn't get the training you might expect to rise to the top of the leading firm and global investment banking. Here you are CEO of Goldman Sachs. But you were a political science major, correct, Yes, at a small liberal arts college, Hamilton in rural New York. Not exactly what you would think is the training ground for Goldman Sachs CEO. You studied Shakespeare and even spent a month in London studying Shakespeare.
You've got no MBA, that is correct. You've got no fancy business school.
That is correct.
So what is it about that kind of college education that prepared you for this job and this career.
I've thought about it a lot recently, Bob, is that how did I wind up here? Finance and Wall Street has changed a lot over the course of the thirty five plus years since I got out of college. I got out of college in nineteen eighty four and Wall Street was really just evolving, developing. The markets were very localized, and I really stumbled into finance because I was coming to New York while my college buddies were coming to New York and I was looking for a job. There
wasn't a preset plan. And one of the things I observed that is different today young people while they're studying in college. They're so programmed to think they have to have an answer, they have to have a plan. I worked at a summer camp all through my college years. Finance, like any other business, is about how people interact with people. To be successful in finance, you can do it by being a mathematician and being very quantitative and being very analytical.
But you can also do it by being very good in connecting with people and giving advice and consulting and counseling. I fell more into the latter category than the former.
David's story has stayed with me ever since we recorded it. It reminds me that there's so many different training grounds for success. Tim Castri's training started at a grocery store in Melbourne, where he was working in lieu of going to college. He went from stocking shelves at Safeway to being offered an opportunity to train in their advertising department. He worked hard, rose up the ranks, and eventually became
CEO of Australia's top advertising agency. Today, he's the VP of Global Content and Media at Amazon, all without ever getting a college degree. So I asked him what he thinks about young people making career jumps like ours today. So when you look at someone today and they didn't go to college, do you go while I need to give them a chance, they're gonna work harder, or do you say you should go to college.
I have a very strong ethic around education, and I'm quite adamant that my kids are going to go to college. Statistically, you see where the outcomes are. I think the real challenge we're dealing with at the moment is the amount of debt that kids are coming out of school with, and it's really questionable how valuable it is. So when I think about my own kids, I want them to
go to college. But when I think about Group M and what we're doing, we are increasingly looking at alternative ways to get kids into jobs that don't require four year degrees. There's a lot that happens in the world of advertising and media that shouldn't require a four year degree, and certainly no point in forcing kids and sattling kids with all of that debt in order to get there.
So as we think about increasing the diversity at Group M, how we think about those kind of entry level roles is a big part of we think how we're going to solve the longer term diversity challenges we're having in the industry.
I agree with Tim, there should be more opportunities for people without college degrees. Not having one is a bit of a trend here at Mathemamagic. My great boss and mentor at Warner Communications later time Warner, Steve Ross won only for a couple of weeks when I was working with him. I can remember the job posting came down and it's said college degrees required for some low level jobs. I called the HR department and asked, are you seeing our CEO isn't qualified for the job. It was changed
to college degree preferred. Jeremy Zimmer is another Math and Magic guest who reminds me that a college education and a strong work ethic don't always go hand in hand. Being a student was never Jeremy's strong suit, but when he got a job in a talent agency mailroom, something finally clicked. Today he's the CEO of United Talent Agency UTA.
I mean, I was a straight F student in my senior year at Santa Monica High School. I never thought I could do hard work because I couldn't do school work so early out in my career. I was afraid of the hard work back then. It was really frightening for me. When you dropped out of college. You were running, as I understand, a valet parking station in Boston and you actually got stabbed during an accunted robbery. Must be incredibly traumatic. How did that change your outlook and or
your trajectory on life. I'm nineteen years old, I flunked out of college. I've been stabbed. I have no vision, notion, or anything of a future. I don't know what it's going to be, and I don't know what can become of me. And I was pretty you know, this is not the script for a nice Jewish boy from a good family. But what happened is my grandfather called me and he said, well, you've really done a fine job of screwing up your life. I'd like to help you. Are you ready to get serious? And I said, I
don't know, I think I am. I want to try, and he arranged for me to have an interview with the William Morris Agency and something happened there. It was an immediate feeling. I can still feel it today, this feeling of comfort, and I understand how this works. I'm going to be good at this, So tell us a
little bit about this. The way that the inner office communication was done was through memos that were sent down to the mailroom and copied, so you'd make one hundred copies of a memo and then you distributed it around the office by hand in these mail cards. So you were literally at the center point of all the information. And it was this very rich environment with a very rich tradition. And the agents there knew that they were supposed to try to provide you with some mentoring and
some guidance and some opperportunity. If I could just pay attention and focus on a couple of things that I liked, something good could happen.
How'd you get out of the mail room.
There was a young agent basically he was the movie department. They were giving him his first assistant. And I went to interview and I could see his chair was broken, the ball bearings were loose, and the chare was sort of awkwardly swiveling around. And I had my interview with him, and then at lunch, I went into the storage thing and I took a part a chair, took the ball bearings out of that chair, went to his chair, fixed his chair and left him a little note saying, hey,
I noticed your chair. I think I fixed it that Thanks for the interview, and I got that job so that Bearings began your career exactly.
More on Mathem Magic right after this quick break. Welcome back to math and Magic. Remy Kent is the CMO of Progressive Insurance Now. Over her career, she's been recognized for accolades like advertising Weeks forty under forty, Reuters list of Trailblazing Women, and been named to the one hundred most Influential Black Leaders. When it came time for her to go to college, she was sure of one thing she wanted to be at an HBCU.
I really grew up and I felt like I had a lot of experiences where I was the minority. I mostly went to predominantly white schools, and I moved into a neighborhood that was predominantly black right into high school, and I realized that, you know, I felt like I could use more of the black experience to be totally honest.
And so I think my parents thought I was going to go to school at Duke or Emory, and I really decided for myself that I wanted to HBCU, and the way I chose Florida A and M University was that my counselor at the time spoke very highly of the business school, and I said, Okay, I'll go, and it was close to home. It was four hours away, and it felt like it was the right choice for me to really immerse myself with people that looked like
me on a daily basis as I am matriculated. And it's one of the best choices I've ever made.
It's a testament through his younger self that she knew what would allow her to thrive. It could be hard to know what's best for yourself, but figuring that out is a crucial part of anyone's journey as a young person. At least Charlemagne the God feels that way. He is one of the most powerful figures in media, reaching millions of years each week as the co host of the
nationally syndicated The Breakfast Club morning Show. He's a New York Times bestselling author and an outspoken advocate for mental health. And he didn't go to college naturally. Many young people look up to him, but that doesn't mean he thinks they should follow in his footsteps. So what advice do you have for those people who want to be the next to you?
That's where you fail. You fail by trying to be the next anything. You should truly just be yourself.
Now.
It's great to be inspired, like I was inspired by a lot of radio personalities, but I would have failed tremendously trying to be any of them. The beauty of life is that we are all blessed to be our own individual, unique personalities. That's why our DNA is different than everybody else. If you really tap into who you are and your experiences and what you've been through, you can deliver a story that people may can relate to,
but nobody else has been through. So I would never tell you to want to be like me, because you can't be like me because you haven't gone through what I've gone through. You're not from where I'm from, You're not me. Be yourself genuinely, be yourself, your true authentic self, and I think that you will be AOKA and you'll be a personality that people want to listen to.
You like a lot of guests on the show or not a college graduate. By the way, I'm not either. Any regrets that you didn't go to college.
No, it's difficult having that conversation with kids telling them you didn't go to college, because once again, you're not me. Lebron James didn't go to college, but you're not Lebron James, like you gotta find I was lucky enough and blessed enough to find my gifts in life early. And you know, being that we live in a society, we living in America where you can capitalize off your gifts, I was able to do that. Everybody's not gonna be that lucky,
so are that blessed. I don't like the word of luck, be that blessed. So I would tell you go to school until you figure it out. It can't hurt, right until you figure out what it is that you want to do. It doesn't hurt to go to college. I'm the exception, not the rule.
I appreciate that Charlemane encourages everybody to chart their own course, and for many that might start with college. Whatever, and you can acquire, you'll find ways to adapt it and carry it with you in your career. Howard Mockler is the CEO and co founder of Innovation Refunds. He didn't go to college, but by building his experience as a serial entrepreneur, it led him to a teaching position at Wharton.
Ultimately, at thirteen, I started my first computer business. I was doing about one hundred thousand dollars a month in sales by the time I was fifteen, and I ended up moving to California. I actually got out of high school early. I think, like I don't know, maybe like a lot of entrepreneurs, got out, took some college classes that interested me, and started my second or third company by then.
So were you a good student?
I was a good student when I enjoyed learning, and then I got bored of learning in school and I was no longer a good student. I wanted to learn in business.
So let's talk about college. Did you go to college? Nope? And ever have a desire to go to college.
I spent fifteen years teaching a day class at Wharton. I think college is really about teaching you how to learn. And if you're an entrepreneur, you probably figured that out.
Why did you want to teach and what did you get out of teaching?
Well? I love giving back and that program was part of a program that was designed by Wharton and the Trade association that represents shopping centers called the International Council of Shopping Centers, and it gave me an opportunity to teach to folks that were in the retail shopping center industry to really perform better. My second business that lasted for fifteen years was the largest company that disposed of
surplus real estate for retailers. So whenever Walgreens or CBS or Kroger or a would close the store, we would represent them and find a solution for that real estate. And I found that I was able to mentor a lot of young people that were coming into the retail real estate industry, and for literally a decade plus, I would bump into these people and they would share how much they received out of this class. And I always
tried to have tangible takeaways from the class. So I really didn't want the class to just be where you attend and then you don't find anything usable. And when I received feedback over the years of how helpful that was to people, it really inspired me.
To do more.
Howard reminds me that whatever your path looked like as a young person, once you figured out a formula for success, there's always something you can offer to young people trying to find their own way Today, I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening to Math and Magic.
That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic. A production of iHeart Podcasts. The show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Sidney Rosenblut for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat. The Math and Magic team is Jessica Crimechich and Baheed Fraser. Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor. Until next time,