The volume.
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from your cell phone. Pretty easy. That's for the people dot com slash Colin or pound law pound five to nine from your cell Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting for you to get a full and fair compensation if there's an unexpected accident in your life. This is a paid advertisement. Well, I have leaned on my next guest from time to time, I DM, but it was totally appropriate. Formerly Eric and Ardini now Erica airs but On is the first CEO of Barstool Sports,
now the CEO of Food fifty two. She has written a book, Nobody Cares About Your Career, which I laughed at because I watched a stand up comedian on TikTok a couple of days ago and he said, you know that thing about your anxiety, nobody cares because we all have it. You care your therapy, Your therapist cares. Talk to that person. So when you say nobody cares about your career, what do you mean by that?
Yeah? I think so. It's always great to see you. I'm so happy to be here. One of my favorites. I think, Nobody Cares about your career is exactly that, which is it's a good reminder that really nobody cares what you do all day. And I think a lot of times people get tripped up in their careers, especially when they're young, of what's everybody else going to think?
And what will people say if I take this job, or I don't succeed at this job, or I'm an absolute mess, all of which will be true and I really thought it was important, just coming out of my barstool experience, coming out of you know, twenty plus years in media and marketing and sports of you know, hey, like nobody really cares what you do all day, So do something that makes you happy. You know.
When you first took the barstool job, Dave's a very driven, very polarizing, but hard working guy, and I viewed barstool as a viable brand, a bit of a tornado that kind of needed guidance. It was just kind of flying all over the place. When you got to barstool, What was the first thing as you kind of take a couple of weeks to kind of get your arms around the girth of it, the size of the company, what was the first thing you said, Okay, this is good, but this we have to course correct.
So the first there was a lot of smiling like that. I'm like, where to begin, I would say the biggest things were there was two things that were very distinct at the beginning. One was that Dave wasn't exactly sure who was on the payroll or not. It was a lot of like there were a lot of guys in Boston with Barstool, JJ Barstool's insert first name here, and they seemed like they worked for barstool. They didn't work
for barstool. Dave wasn't clear they paid them or not, So that that there was a lot of like who is this person and do they actually work here? That was I would say, the first chapter of like, Okay, we've got to solve for this. And then the second was, you know, those first couple of years, we had a lot of people who had Barstool in their handle that had nothing to do with Barstool. They just liked Barstool. They were fans, and they just looked like they worked
for us. And then the second was the P and L. So no one at barstool had ever seen a P and L, managed a p and L, thought about a P and L. The Barstool p and L had horses on it. It was you know, it was just this cockamami assortment of costs. And Dave had run from the beginning of you know, really profitable business, like once he got this thing up and running, it was profitable and it was private, so nobody ever looked at what the
costs were. And one of the things when I got there was like, okay, we actually need to get a handle on what the costs are. So those are the two things.
Yeah, and you know, sometimes your greatest asset can be your greatest liability. Dave is very strong willed, obviously, and it's a controversial. Maybe that's too strong. It's a polarizing brand to some. I don't think it's audience sees it as that. But you were put in the position multiple times in the first couple of years to defend it. Were you always comfortable with it? I mean, did you have to kind of shift who you were from a Microsoft and a Yahoo that are more corporate to barstool.
Did you find yourself in the first couple of years thinking, man, this is this is a little bit of a tsunami. I haven't fink it.
Yeah, yeah, it's like the tiger by the tail. I remember the day I got hired. I was watching the Rundown, which was live from Dave's apartment in Manhattan, and they had a guest done and the guest it was live, which they rarely did. But I was really pushing them.
I had worked for Barstool probably for three months by the time I actually started, Like from the minute I got into the process, I was working for Barshol, but the guest made a bunch of racial slurs, and I remember watching it and watching it live and just being like, oh my God, Like what am I walking into here? And Barstool was very, you know, much smaller at the time, so the only people that picked it up were local
Boston you know, kind of Boston sports media folks. But it was a very It made me realize how fast it was and how what a tightrope Barstool was on. And you know, one of the things that I think is really the Barstool talent, Dave Dan, Kevin Clancy. They're very disarming. They they seem very affable. They're very charming you know to some maybe not others, but they're wickedly smart. And so to keep up and to tread the line comedy, it was very difficult. So, you know, there was a
lot of that. I was never public. I was you know, I had worked in startups and at big companies. Barstool was just very a lot it still is very alive, and that it was real time. It was building a company, real time in the in the public eye.
So I had worked in Oregon for several years and befriended Phil Knight, and I'm a broadcaster, but I've always liked business. My dad got me into the stock market when I was young. My kids, my kids have been in it since they were like eight nine years old. And so he had a manifesto and opening manifesto when he started Nike, like number one was we are in the business of change, that you know. But number nine is something that I've experienced at the volume my little podcast,
digital company number nine. And I talked to my staff recently about this, was it won't be pretty. Yeah, And that's something I think as younger people tend to be a tad more fragile, yeah, and easily offended. I try to I've talked to some people and said, I'm not sure you're a good fit for my company. I view fragile as a weakness and relentless as the ultimate strength that we all step and shit and you've got to get over it fast and not let one interception become
two and one bad day become a week. So it barstool. It's anti fragile, but there are lines across that, and so was there ever a line for you that you even with Dave a strong willed person that you had to say, you know, because he's a bright guy obviously. But but but let's talk about that that it's not pretty. Starting a business is not it's not pretty all the time.
It's rarely pretty, you know. And I think I love that line, and that's really the sense of this book, which is your career is built over a lot of mundane, ugly days with a thousand mess ups, and if you cannot you know, if you can't fail, you're screwed. And what was brilliant about Barstool was that it was always
trying to understand the line. And that's what made it so interesting and also so alive and so captivating to fans, but also so difficult on the business where I always had to have multiple lines of revenue because I didn't know Tuesday afternoon we could be offending an advertiser. We could have said something that's flaring up in the New York Post. I never knew what was going to happen. So safety and calm could come from having multiple levers
to keep payroll going in the business happening. But I agree, I think the bigger you know, it's funny, there's it's cool, not to like work now. I think there's thing leisure seems more fun than work and building a company and a brand and a business like the volume or building barstool is it's a it's it's a mission. You're it's going to be ugly. Everyone's going to screw up, You're going to yell at people, You're going to get yelled at,
you know. So it's and it's it's a it's becoming a smaller and smaller number of people who want to sign up for that, which I think is really unfortunate.
Yeah, well it's fortunate for us boomers who like to work and get greatly. I love working. I think, you know, it's interesting how people view success. For me, in my little world, I viewed success is the ability, without meddling, to create the best creative content I can with a team. Yeah, it could be a podcast, television, radio. If I have a team, we're being creative doing the best we can. I thought yesterday I had my best show in six months and there was nothing going on. Our staff had
a really good meeting. That to me is success.
Yep.
When how and in a company with multiple units and platforms, there's varying degrees of success. Did you have an overarching theme or belief system on what success was for now, Food fifty two or Barstool.
Yeah, it's it's similar. I'm I'm like you were. Success is success is hard earned and hard fought, and it also can feel it can be quite small. It's a good show, it's a great meeting. It's accomplishing something, getting something done. You know, Look when I got to Barstool, I just didn't want to get fired. Like my I was like what I've stepped into. Everyone was like, this is going to be your last job, because there's no
way this is going to work. But success was for us, it was really always about learning, like can we do something we don't think we can do? Can we go someplace where we've never been before? Could we invent a way of doing things that hadn't been done? And Food fifty two will be will be the same. It's a startup. It's you know, how do we create content? How do we showcase stories and products and bring joy to people's homes? And Barsool's different. It's making people laugh and talking to
guys and mostly covering sports and entertainment. But it's really not that different.
At the core, yeah, it's You've got multiple things here in terms of advice, and I wrote some of them down. I'm always a little reticent to give advice. I'll give an opinion, okay, but my life. But my life, child of divorce, growing up really kind of a lonely kid. I always feel like, well, nobody had my childhood. So yeah, what am I giving advice?
Yeah?
Yeah, but I do have strong opinions on on advice. Have you ever I'll give you the best piece of advice I got, and then I'll and then I'll ask you for the best and worst piece. So I was in college and I was broadcasting, and I called, uh, the Seattle Mariner announcer, and I said, I want to be a baseball announcer. What should I do? And he said, go to the Baseball Winter meetings. Peter Eubroth was commissioner, and pass your card out. And sometime over the course
of a year, I went to a Mariner's game. Daveney House was a legendary broadcaster of the late Daveney House. My oh, my big, you know, resonant, rich voice, And when I got into the upstairs, I don't know how the hell I talked my way into it. But I got into the Mariner's booth and he grabbed my program and he was just about to do the pregame show. And he was a classic smoker, had his rich fos,
kind of intimidating like the Marlborough Man. And he wrote this, He wrote this down in my program, and I think this was the best advice. And it was so simple. He said. He had one of those sharpie pens. He goes, if you want to sit here, really want to sit here, you will, And so he put it all on me, right. It wasn't about his advice, it was about my will attention. Yeah, And I always thought, God, that's great advice. What's what's the best advice, Erica, you've ever you've ever received, the.
Best piece of advice I've ever received. I received two pieces of advice, one for my dad, which was, you know, my dad was a philosophy professor, and.
His advice, I wonder you're so smart.
I don't know. His advice was always the best control is no control, which paid out handsomely in my barstool time. I will say but that you shouldn't try to hold anything so tight, like you've got to let things you have to move with things, and you have to watch
how things. And then the other piece of advice was just to work your ass off in your twenties that you will never regret just doing any job humanly possible in your twenties, learning as much as you can, doing as much as you can, working as much as you can.
God, that's great advice.
It's just good advice.
Nothing to lose, well, you generally don't have kids, You don't have a lot to lose. You have tons of energy. I mean in my twenties, I could drink back to back to back nights, show up Thursday, ready to go, ready to go.
Again, like start it up again Friday night. Now you're like a.
But on joining us. So when so any in my business, this is almost me asking for your opinion. I kind of feel like we're in the fifth inning of sports betting. Is that the easy money, the handout money, is gone. You have to earn it now you have to have
a following. People have made their big bets on personalities and companies, but there's it's still We have many states, California eventually that will have legalized sports gambling, and I think podcasting similarly isn't about in the fifth or sixth inning. I still think there's tremendous growth, but people have made their bets and will continue to. Am I wrong? Do you think? I'm I think we're middle innings to middle to sixth inning on both sports betting and podcasting. What say you?
I agree? I think sports betting there was such hype at the beginning, right the past but repealed, and the frenzy and the energy and the delusion that the TAM which would be the total addressable market was infinite, right like every state is going to legalize, there's going to be millions and millions and millions of sports betters. They're going to spend all of their disposable income betting. A lot of that proved to be false. And you know
what I think you're also seeing in sports betting. It became very quickly an arms race between really two big players, maybe three on the outside, but two, and it became increasingly prohibitive to play. And the business itself isn't that great like that. I think the big sober you know there's sports betting has has sobered because it's it's quite an ugly business. If you cannot take that customer and
convert them into something else. So I'm with you. I think that you'll see in sports betting, you know, Texas, California, you see bigger states roll out, There'll be a mini, a mini hype. I think affecting both sports betting and podcasting, though, is a bigger trend, which is it's impossible to break out talent now. You you know, if you look at music, when's the last time that you that an unknown star out of nowhere became huge on the pop charts? Like,
it's not happening anymore. Same out of TikTok and YouTube and Instagram, Like you're not seeing the come ups of stars the way the way you did two years ago, four years ago, five years ago. You know, one of the one of the things that made barstool so powerful was we had built enough scale so that we could launch our own stars inside of barstool, and you will do the same. But unless you have that platform, unless you have that lily pad to launch from, it's becoming
very hard to get talent. And so I think that will affect both the sports betting business obviously, but certainly the podcasting business.
Yeah, it's it's it was a double edged sword when FS one lost Shannon Sharp. It definitely really punctured my network or our network.
Yep.
But I remember telling my staff, We're going to do whatever it takes to find the money to pay Shannon Sharp. And we created a show Nightcap with O Joe, Gilbert Arenas and Shannon and it's it's been good for everybody. He wins, we win. But I remember I remember telling people like Logan Swain that this, this just doesn't happen. This is basically Matt Stafford on the market and the Rams get him, Like you just do whatever it take. Jim Harbaugh's on the market him to be your coach. Yeah, right,
and we did. I was literally I was I was literally like do I have to buy him a Range Rover to it? What do I gotta do? I'm like, he's a Hall of Famer, what do I do? How do I get him? And then I didn't want to intrude on his life, so I had to wait like three weeks before I, you know, I made an offer to but yeah, I don't want to be weird guy jumping in. He worked for my company, our company in chapter six of your book and the book again, nobody cares about your career, and I strongly just so many
little lessons in here in chapter six. All start the sentence and you can finish it. But it's an interesting chapter if you're not willing to grow. Tell people what that's about.
Oh so, I think you're wasting everybody's time and mostly your own. And what I really have come to believe about work, and I'm more like you, Colin, which is I don't think anyone should really follow my advice. I wouldn't necessarily follow my advice, but I do have a lot of opinion and I've spent a lot of hours doing this, But I think work is tuition you get paid for. So you know, when you sat in the mariner's box and you know, an luminary said it's up
to you to fill the seat. Work is tuition. It's you are getting paid to learn, You're getting paid to be smarter, you're getting paid to do the reps, you're getting paid to work out. And I think that kind of mindset is very important to being fulfilled at work and happy at work. Like I'm very fulfilled at work if I'm busy and I'm learning and I'm doing things, fixing things, and I'm jumping in things. If everything is great and easy sailing and you're coasting and it's you know,
it's predictable, that's when I get nervous. And I think that mindset of being willing to put yourself out there, to fail and try things as much as you can is ultimately what gets people the opportunity for that dream job or that dream moment or that dream experience, because you have built yourself into a new person who is ready for that and capable of it. You know.
It's funny my sister and I talk about this that we had a British mother and a successful optometrist, small town optometrist dad, who later in life was an alcoholic, but never he was like a happy drinker. Yeah, he went to work, he was sober. He was never cruel, mean spirited. So I didn't have any of that kind of stuff. But I've said to my sister, we lived
in the same house. I said, you know, I like to sort of you know, it's it's probably some psychological term I'll project when I talk to people about my child and how rough it was, and oh boy, small town, and and then and and then I think to myself, my stepdad was my little League coach. My mom was British and really funny and had a British accent and just saw the world differently. My dad was really a
bright guy, like had these little nuggets of wisdom. And but the one thing my parents gave me is they didn't helicopter they maybe they were.
My mom was.
Huggy, kissy. Dad wasn't most dads weren't. And that I was allowed to fuck up a lot and my mom My mom grounded me one summer. You know, I started a small fire that was not great near the house. So but one of the things I see is that I think parents think they're doing a great job. They're calling on their kids behalf, they're getting them internships, they go to prep schools, and I got to tell you, it creates this sort of personality where you just things
are easy. It's like and there's just something about being allowed to mess up and your And I've told my kids before, you know, my kids are really good students, and I'm like, don't ask questions and I'm like, you figure it out, it's not it's not my paper, and I don't I'm not harsh on my kids if they
get a you know, they struggled in a class. But when you were hiring a lot of people at the bar, at Barstool, and it's something at the volume we've really we really vet who we hire, like we really vet and still you know, sometimes you miss. But the average person you were hiring, were you impressed, were you disappointed? Was it what you expected? Talk about and now that at food fifty two, talk about the process of what
you're seeing. Bill Maher complains that all of his young writers see the world the exact same way, and he doesn't want that.
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I think one thing we did well at Barstool was we just hired. It was misfits, you know. It was we hired young, and we hired out of college. And we mostly our best hires had worked for Barstool for four years being interns for us on you know, doing the Viceroy program, which is the college program. But I would see the kids roll in from the prep school or the big you know, the nice college, and they were A were boring, and
B they were vanilla and kind of uninteresting. And it was all we always hired the kids and the people who I like now and always frankly have liked are. You know, it's the it's the guy who's editing basketball trick shots in his bedroom instead of going out and like, you know, drinking four thousand high noons. You know, it's not it's not the popular kids. It's not the kids who did everything right. It's the kid who had something they were interested in and worked really hard at it.
And I think resilience. You know, I think there's two things. I think kids right now are very very rarely bored because they mostly have phones, which just placate them. And two they are they are helicoptered. You know. It's funny. I remember interviewing a guy once and he was like, hey, look, if I'm to take to take this job, I really
need you to talk to my mom. And I was like, bro, like, but you know, like sure, I'll talk to your mom, But like, if you need your mom's approval to do this job or you're somehow I'm beholden to your mother because you work, oh, I was like, forget it. I've had people be like I need you to talk to my wife, and I also like, I don't love that either. So I think people are co dependent in weird ways,
and people aren't able to think independently. And you know this if you're in a startup or you're in the heat of the moment, or whether you work in something glamorous like content or radio or sports or you know whatnot, or you work at like a computer company. You got to be able to make decisions. You have to be able to work under pressure. You have to be able to mess up and be like, oh shit, I fucked up.
I got to fix this. And if you can't do that when you're young, you're kind of screwed by the time you're fifty, because then you what do you know? What have you learned? What have you done?
Can I cannot imagine? First of all, I wouldn't hire somebody who said you got to talk to my mom. And the reason I wouldn't is because your judgment so poor When that came out of your mouth, you thought that was a sales pitch. It's like, for fuck's sake, what are you saying like that? You should literally say you you have to talk to my mom about her castle role. It's the best castle role. You God, you
got to stop that sentence right there. You know, it's interesting I saw something, uh, you know, browsing the Internet and I and I do think there's really a lot of smart people. I've hired people off you know, Xah. I called you one time for advice and I said, should the volume? Should I be on TikTok? I said, I don't know how to monetize it? And do you remember the advice you gave me.
I probably said, like, get on TikTok? Who cares about the monetization.
That's exactly what you said. You said, get on it, build an audience. You'll figure out the monitorization later. And that's an interesting part because when you're at barstool or now the CEO of food fifty two, how long are you willing to commit to something before you see profits or at least reasonable monetization.
Oh, if I see audience growth forever. I am a highly impatient person. But if you put talent on a platform or create content for a platform and it gets traction, you've got to let The longer you do that, the more you let that marinate, the further you explore with it.
I will wait weeks, months, I would wait years, because the reality is if you the more audience you grow, and if you find you've got to first, you know, first, you have to have something to say, right, And then you've got to find people who actually want to listen to you and care what you have to say. And then you want them to play with you, right, You want to engage with them, and then you want them
to advocate for you. And maybe then you start not just saying one thing, you're saying three things or doing three things. The longer you wait to monetize that and ask them to do something for you in return, which is to buy a product or support a sponsor, it creates this pent up demand that is really really palpable. You know, if you look at Dave's the best at this, if you look at Miss Peaches, Miss Peaches is arguably
the biggest personality of barshol sports right now. Do you know miss Peaches?
Yeah, I'm sure the dog, yeah, the dog yeah, so remote and stuff, yes, exactly.
But there are a lot of companies I imagine who are like, oh, Dave like pimp our dog food, and Dave like, you know, support this, support that, and he held and the hold is of that pause. That hold before you monetize is not lost time. It's actually a huge advantage. And that's how I think about platforms. If you can grow, it's like having a baby, you know what I mean, You're just like really pregnant and then
you have the baby. Like growing audience and waiting to monetize it is a very powerful tool that most people don't have the stamina to wait for.
Yeah, we didn't at the Volume take any you know, VC money. It's it's we just I just said I won't a salary. Yeah, we bootstrapped it. And I don't necessarily know. I'm not. I'm not a control freak. I like to pass the ball. I've got really smart people. What is the value? You don't get the big payoff? What is the value? Because whether I sell it or not, I think I want the control to make make sure I don't feel responsible necessarily for Fox Sports employees or
iHeart employees. I feel incredibly responsible for Volume employees. I lose sleep. Yeah that's you know, they're my people, They're my army, and so you know, it's it's and I'm being selfishly. I'm asking this and I've thought about this before because people say, oh, you're just you built it to sell it, and I'm like, no, I didn't, really I would I would consider a really cool partnership. But you know, obviously Dave at some point could have didn't.
Now Dave was different. Dave bootstrapped it for a decade before he made the money. Long people don't know Dave was out there making nothing forever, twelve years of nothing, just hustling. I get that. What is the downside? I yes to the bag, to selling it big.
The bag has huge downside, and I think you're right. I think you're building something. Look, if you, Colin wanted to be like I want the highest ROI on my dollar invested, you would not probably create a media company. You would put it in the stock market, or buy a piece of r or do something. So this is a labor of love, I think, and that's partly what
makes it important. I think the bag is tough because the bag, when you sell out for the bag, unless you have a huge motor to keep going, and you have a big reason now that you're richer and you know, more comfortable than ever before, if you you have to find that's an obstacle to overcome with fans, and I think a lot of times when people get the bag, they become a little lazy, Like you get better taste, you want to travel, you buy your second house, like
you're not hungry to go build the mission, continue on the journey, Like there's something to being hungry, you know. The best years at Barstool, I think people would say were probably the earliest years, and then they were the beginning of my years because it was such a grind, you know, we didn't know if we would make it. We still had so much road to climb. The best
years were not after the pen acquisition, you know. So I think getting the bag also comes with responsibilities and changes things, and that's hard for a mission driven, passion driven brand.
Yeah, my favorite part of the Barstool story is my least favorite part of traveling, which is turbulence. So I love I hate it on planes, and I love it when I read the PHILM Night book. By the way, people have no idea how close they were out of money multiple times all the time. Yeah, all the time. So when you entered Microsoft, what years were those?
Oh, my gosh, that was like early two thousands, like two thousands, Okay, so.
They were established, Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Baer. That was good time. But what were the challenges of being now? Apple was a rival, but what were the challenges of a company where everybody was at least stockwealthy.
Yes, I mean that. What you find, I think is you become more bureaucratic, you become more inwardly focused. The problem has become turf wars inside of a company or which group is going to get I mean I worked for a group that lost I think five hundred million dollars a quarter, and we traveled first class all around the world like nobody cared. But it was a lot of politics, and I think those those are I think that's what you trade. You trade politics and posturing and
bureaucracy that comes with cash. When you're hungry and you're on the jump and you're on the come up, it's so satisfying because it's all new and it's all fulfilling.
Yeah, there's the old axiom. It's a truism. Actually, is that in wartime comfort food sales skyrocket in America and in peacetime bungee jumping, sky diving adventure sales go up. People, Right, your problems are different, your fun is different, based on your economic set. For the record, there is some argument in America, I don't think the economy is great, but I also don't think it's in a free fall. I mean, if it was, then volume wouldn't be growing at the
rate it's growing. Your CEO of food fifty two, I often mentioned that I get on planes, there's no empty seats, and these are not rich people. I don't fly a lot of private if at all. Hotels try to book them. They're busy. You tell me, as a CEO of food fifty two, how is your economy? What do you see?
I see that people are spending. You know, I think there's angst. I think there's like low level angst. You look at the housing market and the interest rates like that. You know, the houses aren't moving, which is actually kind of interesting for the food fifty two business because if you don't have a new house, you don't need so much stuff. You're not redecorating, you're not not setting new tables, all that kind of stuff. So in my economy, that's
an interesting factor that I'm watching. But by and large, people are spending. Americans are great consumers, and that you know. Americans like things. They want new things, they want to entertain, they want a T shirt, they want better cookwar like the consumption. Americans like to buy things and to consume and I think we'll always like that, you know.
One of the lessons we learned early, and it was hard because we looked at Barstool and we watched The Ringer and a lot of different companies. And one of the things very early I said is there are things Barstool does well, but we never will. I said, I'm not into selling merch. If we could sell some hoodies, but that's a merch company, I said, we're not, and we fooled around with it and I said, guys, it's
just not what we do. There's things that I think the writing arm of the Ringer, I'm like, I don't have the passion for writing my bag. It's not my bag. So but I love doing live stuff and YouTube stuff and gambling stuff and that's what we did well. But it's are there things somebody once gave me advice, double down on stuff that works and bail immediately if something doesn't. Don't fall in love with your ideas, fall in love with people. Is there anything you did at Barstool that
just didn't work in you're life? Okay about instincts?
Yeah, a thousand things. I think you're right, So you know, barstool thinks in T shirts. That's how people signal they're part of whatever brand. And what we did well was we grew you know, grew ninety brands in my time there, and you know, twenty of them were pretty successful. But because we thought in T shirts, everybody thought in T shirts, and we hilled T shirts the same way we you know, pimped out podcasts. But there was a lot that we
failed on. One thing that we failed on was we built this really stupid subscription product called Gold because at the time, and this is also like I think a cautionary of having an investor is you know, the Charning guys, and I love the Charning guys, but they were like, hey, at some point, somebody is going to need to buy you, so you need to hustle up and figure out, like who's that going to be. And until passovers repealed, it
always looked like it would be a media company. Now it was very obviously not going to be a media company. But media companies wanted subscribers, right Everyone's moving to the race to subscribers and the race to streaming.
So wild the New York Times exactly.
So we built a subscription product, but the barstool guys and girls are such you know, their whores for attention. And I say that in the best way possible. The idea of putting something only behind a paywall was it was it was against the religion, and it was so stupid. And we built great tech. We built, you know, a seamless way to do it. Stooley's, to their credit, bought it.
But it was a really it was forced you know, you know, you know when you feel like you're doing something wrong and like your heart's not in and you know, isn't working. That was one of those things. We launched a grooming product called wood, which you know, I still think was, you know, kind of an interesting concept. We partnered with a company. We made a line of grooming products, but there wasn't a talent or personality behind it, and no one felt like it was their own, so it
became nobody's and it was a failure. So we had things like that littered all over the barstool road.
You know, it's interesting. The paywall. I've been again kind of reluctant to go there, but I have serious and Netflix and Apple TV and Amazon Prime and I buy UFC. Is it inevitable? I mean, is it just I say to myself, I don't want to go behind a paywall, but frankly, I'm behind eight of them. I pay for eight of them, nine of them. Where are you on the paywall?
I don't. I I don't love a paywall either. Why I get the paywall? I get it. My friend Barry Weise created an amazing cted the Free Press created an amazing paywall business, which is news, but it's not I don't love it. I'm more interested in how many people can you entertain or how many people could you talk to? And the idea of only talking to a certain group I think one I think is kind of problematic for society where everybody's just in their own little echo chamber.
And two I think it's I think it's for me, it's less interesting, and that probably is wrong from a business perspective, but I I think broadcast is interesting.
You know, I didn't like when the MLS went to Apple because my takeaway is they lost casuals. Yeah, and that what what happens is you only get a tribal following, and I don't want just a tribal following. I like pushback, I like I like I want to hear from my haters. I want to I don't want to go and just be comforted with all my opinions.
I like to know.
I say, my audience drives the bus. They tell me where to go. I don't form my opinion on them, but I picked my topics based on my audience what they're interested in. And it's so I'm I am a believer that if if when when MLS went to Apple TV, now I still watch it because I have Apple TV for a lot of things, the Patriots Dynasty, but that that's an example where I think you lose casuals and
I like I like casuals. I want to there's there was a chapter in this book you talked about know what your company's paying you to do?
Yes?
And I think it's the downfall of Belichick in New England is that bill Ois said do your job, and then he got successful and the rings and he started doing the general manager's job and the coaching job. And he's a lousy He's a lousy GM. And I want to talk to talk about that know what your company is paying.
You to do? Yeah? I think, Look, I say it in the book, which is the stupidest person at your company is the is the person who doesn't understand how your company makes money. And that may sound harsh, but I think it's true. Like, if you do not understand how your company makes money, who your company's customer is, if your company is making money, then you really have to be wondering, like what are you doing all day?
And the reason I think this is important is there's people get really whiplashed with layoffs and reorbs and job changes and retitling. And the reality is, if you don't understand what your company is paying you to do in the context of what your company does at large, you're probably not on a great path. And it's, you know,
to the Belichick check example. You know, when people aren't clear on what their job is or their ambition is for two jobs, when they're really getting paid for one and the second is more interesting, you put you make yourself vulnerable. You know. Jeff Zucker always had this like really great quote which is like, don't give your company the gun that shoots you. And I always liked that. I think that's a great quote, which is, don't give
your company a gun to shoot you. And the you know, beyond like a sex scandal or whatever, like, cause the way your company is going to shoot you is if you're not doing your job. And I think that's sometimes work. You know, you get lost in the Mondays and the Tuesdays and this and that and this project and that deadline and whatever, and you lose of like why did they hire you in the first place. And I think it's just good to keep a firm hold on that. Yeah.
So when I started the volume, you know, it's like Jerry Seinfeld used to joke about his show. He goes, I'm the world's worst actor. That was my show Number one. So I like business, but I didn't go to Pan or Wharton, and I don't know business. But I only had a couple of things that I was already strident on. One of the things I would say to my people, and I would say, let's not worry about being right. Let's get it right. So I don't give a shit
about your ideas. If they work, great, If they don't, they're done. Yeah, Just I don't keep score. Yeah, And I said, let's find what works. Do that. Yeah, be loyal. Don't be loyal to your idea. Now it sounds smart, but give me an example. What is the line on bailing. Have you ever had an idea that you're absolutely sure works and you stay with it too long?
Oh yeah, I mean so much. I had a startup before Barstool that was a brilliant idea. It was a social network for Justin Bieber and forty other music artists. It was it was going to compete with Facebook and you know, Instagram and Google, and it was. It was a good idea. It did not work. And you can only put your head in the sands so long, where
you're like, this isn't working. I worked for another startup in the fashion space, really interesting concept which was Hey Vogue and the idea of one editor in chief and one way of saying fashion is it's dead. It's going to be very democratized. The company was pre social, so it like never had any distribution. It didn't work, So I stayed in a lot of things. I think too long. I think what's hard? Is?
It?
Kind of manifests in two ways. You either put your head in the sand and you're like, I don't want to know, I don't want to see, I don't want to know. I love you know, I love my idea, I love this, I love the image of this thing or the second is like everybody plays like sixth grade soccer or fourth grade soccer, where like everybody's glomed onto the ball and it's such a pack that like you don't know who's kicking it, you don't know who's receiving it.
You can't tell who's good or not. And I think that happens a lot, which masks both success and failure.
All Right, the book is nobody cares about your career Erica. You know how highly I think of you, and you did not have to spend thirty minutes of your day.
I'm so happy to.
Uh for the record, and I'm not flirting because I'm happily married. But you have the best hair of anybody I've ever interviewed in my entire life.
It's so dirty. I'm like, this should have like judged up for you.
Now you're a rock star. Hey, thanks for doing this a thousand times over. Well, I have to talk about Trump. I've said this for a long time. I've always considered myself sort of a left leaning independent. I'm kind of a conservative on fiscal issues, more of a probably liberal. I don't know. I don't think pro gay marriage is liberal. I don't think pro pot is liberal. I think those are moderate stances today. But I was in, you know,
supportive of those twenty five years ago. So I kind of consider myself a moderate that if I am up in the air on something fiscally, i'd go conservative. Socially i'd go left. But you know, I've said this about Trump before. He's trying to sell me in America that doesn't exist. Like I'm sixty, I don't remember anything before like six or seven years old. But for the last fifty three years of my life, outside of the pandemic year, I've loved America. I've lived everywhere Tampa, Vegas. I've been
kind of poor, middle class. Now I'm better off than most. But he's trying to sell me this America stinks, and I just don't see it. I live in a nice neighborhood in LA. It's not a Top six or seven neighborhood in LA. It's not a Beverly Hills of Malibu, of Brentwood, of bel Air Hancock Park. It's not like one of those swanky neighborhoods. But I don't see crime. I'm not stumbling over homeless people. I see happy people. Dodger Stadium's full leads Major League Baseball and attendance. Laker
games are full, NFL games are full. People they have money in their pocket. Lax is packed. I just saw a record airline revenue over the weekend. I'm constantly being sold in America by Donald Trump crime rates or skyrocketing. No, they're actually not. Starting In twenty twenty three, they have plummeted coast to coast over two hundred cities. Violent crime rates are down. I mean Los Angeles and some cities may tick up in certain areas, but it's in America
he's selling me. It would be like watching your football team and they play well and win, and your neighbor says they're playing terribly and keep losing. No, they're winning and they're not playing terribly. Like, you can't keep selling me on how bad the country I live in is, because it's not bad for me or my friends. I have a friend that's a stay at home dad. He's not rich. I have friends who work part time, starting up businesses, who have worked at the same place forever.
I have middle class friends. They're not complaining about their life constantly, and there I don't know what they are politically. I really don't don't. I don't talk about politics with my friends. I talk about my wife, I talk about sports, I talk about you know, we talk about guy stuff. I'm not somebody that is. If you don't have policies that I connect with, and you're always grouching and bitching about the other side, I'm not really interested in you.
You know. Trump once tried to sell a vodka and acknowledges he never drank. Ever, he's never really drank alcohol, but he tried to sell a vodka. So I've thought for a long time he's just kind of a con artist.
But I was sitting there thinking this morning that if let's say I got busted for some really bad crime in court, a drug crime, and my wife did too in a separate case, and then so did one of my kids, my manager, my agent, and my attorney, it would be reasonable to conclude that I'm shady and involved in a business that's not terribly legal. Well, Donald Trump is now a felon. His campaign chairman was a felon.
So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyers, chief strategist, his national security advisor, his trade advisor, his foreign policy advisor, his campaign fix and his company CFO. They're all felons, judged by the company you keep. It's a cabal of convicts. It's not that I'm not willing to vote for conservatives. I said I would have voted for Mitt Romney. Seemed like a decent family man. Now he looks like he's the publisher of Yachting Weekly, so he's not terribly relatable.
Is a big money guy. But I'm not somebody that I liked the second bush Bush senior son. I liked him. I thought he was a decent American, a decent human. I guess he's got some artistic qualities. Now he paints a lot. I liked his wife, Laura Bush. I thought they were decent people. I liked the Obamas. I didn't understand the outrage. Good family. Seemed like nice people. But if everybody in your social circle is a felon, I don't think it's rigged. I don't think the world's against you.
And to get people who agree on anything, thirty four counts. Oh for thirty four, I mean that's a that's a batting slump. Even the New York Mets could be impressed with oh for thirty four, so when you're constantly trying to sell me on an America that I don't see. I'm not saying inflation is not an issue. But I get on airplanes all the time, and it's not a bunch of rich people. I don't fly private. I couldn't tell you the last time I fly private. Maybe every
couple of years. It'll be a family thing. We're trying to get everybody in the same flight, but not very often. I don't live in a fancy neighborhood. I get on planes. There's people in normal clothes, don't look rich to me, and the planes are all full, and the hotels are all full, and the freeways were all full. That means people are going to work. You're trying to sell me on this story, in this narrative that's just not true. Well, Colin, you're out of touch, out of touch to what I have.
Single people that live next to me, young families that live next to me. People aren't grousing, they're not miserable all day now, they're not talking politics. But you know, Trump's entire game plan is the country isn't a free fall. Maybe in the Trump centric neighborhoods it is. It's not anywhere. For my sister, who lives rurally, doesn't have a lot of crime in her neighborhood. I don't my friends don't. We live all over Los Angeles, in one of those
big scary cities that voted for liberals. Oh scary. I don't know. Everybody was saying, hung jury.
I didn't know.
But when everybody in your team, everybody in your group, your cabal is a felon, maybe maybe the world's not against you. I mean, it is New York City. It is New York City. I get it. They're gonna have peel. Maybe it'll drive up his fundraising. But stop trying to sell me on. Everything's rigged. The country's falling into the sea. The economy's terrible. The economy's okay, it's not like on fire. But get on a plane. Find all the empty seats. I don't see them. Those aren't cheap either. A hotel
rooms over Memorial Weekend. I like living in Portland. I like growing up on the coast of Washington. I like living in la I have a place in Chicago. I love it. I have really good friends and go regularly to Rhode Island. I love that. Maybe maybe some of you are just unhappy. Maybe you're only happy when you're unhappy. But the America that I live in is imperfect. But compared to the rest of the world, I think we're doing okay. And if you're not, is it possible, just possible.
I'm not even saying probable. Is it possible if your life has just been miserable for the last four years, it's not exclusively the fault of somebody in sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe it's not all their fault the volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment rate and review.
Hey everyone, it's Jason Tipp, host of Hoops Tonight.
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