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Managing Business Model Changes · Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
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Speaker 2: What happens when the best business decision you can make
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Speaker 2: is to change businesses. What's the best way to redeploy
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Speaker 2: your skill sets in the modern age of artificial intelligence
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Speaker 2: and changing business models. I'm Barry Dhelts and on today's
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Speaker 2: edition of At the Money, we're going to discuss how
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Speaker 2: to manage your way through the challenges of technology driven change.
0:45
Speaker 2: To help us unpack all of this and what it
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Speaker 2: means for your career, let's bring in veteran markets journalists
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Speaker 2: and CFA Sam Row. Sam is known for his clear,
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Speaker 2: data driven insights into markets and the economy. He spent
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Speaker 2: two decades working in the trenches for shops such as Forbes, Yahoo, Finance,
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Speaker 2: Business Insider, and Axios. He launched his own substack three
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Speaker 2: years ago ticker Tker, which earned him the Society of
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Speaker 2: Business and Editor and Writers Award for Best in Business
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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. So let's start with your background.
1:24
Speaker 2: You earn a certified financial analyst, but you became a
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Speaker 2: financial journalist. Explain that initial career choice.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, the initial plan actually was to figure out
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Speaker 3: a way to get into Wall Street. You know, if
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Speaker 3: we go even further back, I was working as a
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Speaker 3: contractor for a law firm that for whatever reason, got
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Speaker 3: me exposure to equity research for the first time. And
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Speaker 3: this is the first time I started to realize that
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Speaker 3: how asset valuation worked. And it's not just math than
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Speaker 3: spreadsheets and you know, a hard science, you know, theoretical exercise.
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Speaker 3: There's a lot of soft sciences involved in here because
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Speaker 3: you're dealing with human behavior. So I was interested in
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Speaker 3: getting into equity research. And my first job being able
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Speaker 3: to write about stocks or markets was at Forbes in
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Speaker 3: their investment Newsletters division.
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Speaker 2: So a traditional media outlet, but a sort of non
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Speaker 2: traditional position. That's kind of been your career history. So
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Speaker 2: you go from Forbes Newsletters, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider axios.
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Speaker 2: These are all post twenty twentieth century sort of technology
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Speaker 2: based news organization.
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Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, I mean even even Forbes when I
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Speaker 3: was there, I was there from two thousand and six
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Speaker 3: to twenty ten, was by far number one in terms
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Speaker 3: of news websites. They had tons and tons and tons
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Speaker 3: of traffic going to their website because they were one
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Speaker 3: of the first new outlets to really establish themselves in
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Speaker 3: the late nineties and early two thousands, and then of
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Speaker 3: course the financial crisis comes, and you know, business media
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Speaker 3: did not do very well during that time. I eventually
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Speaker 3: get laid off in twenty ten, and I'm in between
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Speaker 3: jobs a little bit, and then I end up at
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Speaker 3: Business Insider, where the business model is just completely different.
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Speaker 3: You know what. My last day at Forbes, actually had
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Speaker 3: a talk with my boss's boss in my office. That's
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Speaker 3: what the state of things were back then. Right, that
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Speaker 3: I could actually have an office at a print magazine
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Speaker 3: in a building in Greenwich.
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Speaker 2: Village seems super inefficient.
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Speaker 3: Well, I didn't realize how inefficient that was until I
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Speaker 3: ended up that Business Insider, where on my first day
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Speaker 3: on a desk that's probably about three feet wide in
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Speaker 3: a newsroom where we're basically just sitting their shoulder to
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Speaker 3: shoulder with every other editor and journalist, including you know,
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Speaker 3: the editor chief and the CEO of the company, and
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Speaker 3: the productivity there was insane. So yeah, like in the
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Speaker 3: snap of a finger, I realize, you know, there's a
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Speaker 3: reason why we had layoffs at my previous employer.
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Speaker 2: So that took place in twenty ten. But really we've
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Speaker 2: seen technology really hurting traditional media's business model since the
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Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, So Craigslist really did a job on the
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Speaker 2: classified advertising business, which is a big driver. eBay was
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Speaker 2: another thing that took sales away from the traditional ad model.
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Speaker 2: Now it's things like Facebook, Marketplace, Zillow for real estate,
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Speaker 2: bring a trailer for automobiles. Technology has been taking big
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Speaker 2: chunks of the revenue streams from traditional media. It's now
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Speaker 2: three plus decades of this. When did you first start
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Speaker 2: to realize, hey, this entire underlying business model is under assault.
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Speaker 3: I think it was probably late in my business inside
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Speaker 3: our days and early in my Yahoo Finance days, where
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Speaker 3: we started to really begin to understand how much digital
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Speaker 3: news sites were beholden to the traffic coming from places
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Speaker 3: like Google Search and social media platforms like Facebook. But
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Speaker 3: then in terms of like the revenue perspective with advertising
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Speaker 3: and all of this stuff, the you quickly saw that
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Speaker 3: the economics of this was falling apart. And I think
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Speaker 3: that the advertisers were largely realizing that the roi of
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Speaker 3: having ads on some of these sites, you know, weren't
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Speaker 3: as competitive as what they're doing now, which is having
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Speaker 3: an influencer on TikTok, you know, hockeing products.
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Speaker 2: So we're going to work a way up to social media.
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Speaker 2: I want to track your career. So you start Business
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Speaker 2: Insider in the twenty twenty eleven Yahoo finances when twenty sixteen,
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Speaker 2: so five years later, and then Axios.
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Speaker 3: Twenty twenty one for a very brief period.
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Speaker 2: And then you launch your substack back in twenty twenty
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Speaker 2: two when substack was still kind of young. We hadn't
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Speaker 2: quite hit you know, peak substack yet. Sure what was
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Speaker 2: the motivation to say, you know what, I have to
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Speaker 2: take control of this and do it on my own.
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Speaker 3: I think, you know, being in management at Yahoo Finance
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Speaker 3: and getting a little bit of exposure to it at
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Speaker 3: Business Insider. For me, I think it was as simple
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Speaker 3: at it was. Two. There's two parts to this one.
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Speaker 3: If you can keep your costs low, then I think
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Speaker 3: you can have a media operation. And related to costs,
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Speaker 3: if you can be if you have an audience, and
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Speaker 3: if you are sort of very deliberate about how who
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Speaker 3: your audience is and how big that audience and get,
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Speaker 3: then you can have the revenue to cover that cost
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Speaker 3: and you can have a nice small business like like
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Speaker 3: what I'm doing now.
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Speaker 2: So Substack really inverted the traditional media model back in
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Speaker 2: when you have an office and a salary. They're the
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Speaker 2: ones who are who are building subscriptions, running ads, doing
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Speaker 2: the business side of it. Your job in a traditional
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Speaker 2: media business is to just create content. The inversion is
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Speaker 2: writers now earn money based on their subscriptions, which are
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Speaker 2: driven in part by their content, but also their marketing, savage,
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Speaker 2: their branding, their reputations. Is this new content model a
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Speaker 2: modern meritocracy?
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Speaker 3: I think increasingly. I'm not sure if I would characterize
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Speaker 3: it that way. You know, I think about you know,
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Speaker 3: I spend a lot of time on TikTok and Twitch
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Speaker 3: and watch you know, all the various streamers that have
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Speaker 3: found career success. And there are some people who get massive,
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Speaker 3: and there are some people who have very medium sized,
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Speaker 3: you know, moderate sized audiences. The analogy that I've been
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Speaker 3: using lately when it comes to how people or how
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Speaker 3: media has been working is the difference between publicly traded
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Speaker 3: fast food companies and your favorite restaurant that's run by
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Speaker 3: mom and pop around the corner. Right. It's possible to
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Speaker 3: have a really great restaurant with just one outlet, Right.
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Speaker 3: I think if you ask most people, if you ask
8:32
Speaker 3: them what their favorite restaurant is, it's a privately owned
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Speaker 3: family business somewhere. Because the red sauce will never be
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Speaker 3: replicated by Olive Garden or whatever. That doesn't mean, you know,
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Speaker 3: Olive Garden and McDonald's and any of this stuff is bad,
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Speaker 3: But it's just the business strategy. The reach, the audience
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Speaker 3: that they're going for is going to be very different.
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Speaker 3: And so I think that there's probably a world where,
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Speaker 3: you know, these big mainstream media outlets and the independent
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Speaker 3: journalists can coexist. I think it only works because the
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Speaker 3: frictions and the costs and the barriers to entry to
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Speaker 3: becoming an independent writer has come down significantly.
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Speaker 2: Let me ask you a sort of abstract question about
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Speaker 2: about Google Search as a source for new readers or
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Speaker 2: new blog followers or whatever. Cory Doctor uses the phrase
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Speaker 2: platform crapification, and we've certainly seen that with Google. I
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Speaker 2: find myself using Google far much less. The whole genius
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Speaker 2: of page ranks seems to have gone away. I don't
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Speaker 2: want their AI answer. I have perplexity on my phone.
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Speaker 2: I don't need them. If I want an AI answer,
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Speaker 2: I know exactly how to get it. What I want
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Speaker 2: is show me the top thirty fifty one hundred sites
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Speaker 2: that have this phrase or this topic, and I just
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Speaker 2: don't get that anymore, just fiston with so much garbage.
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Speaker 2: So the question I want to ask you is has
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Speaker 2: the slow I guess it's too early to call the
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Speaker 2: death of Google, but has the crapification of Google harmed
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Speaker 2: writers who are looking for an audience or are people
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Speaker 2: no longer relying on it? And word of mouth is
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Speaker 2: helping people looking from it? Yeah?
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Speaker 3: I would actually say it's probably helped. Really, I think
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Speaker 3: it's made it's it's hurt the large media companies significantly.
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Speaker 3: I think Wall Street Journal had an article, fabulous article
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Speaker 3: about this in terms of how much search traffic digital
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Speaker 3: media sites we're getting from from Google, and it's all shrink.
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Speaker 3: It has been shrinking.
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Speaker 2: It's collapsed, collapsed.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a nightmare. But that also means if people
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Speaker 3: are spending less time being drawn to these mega properties,
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Speaker 3: well where are they going for their news and their information?
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Speaker 3: And maybe they're you know, gravitating toward you know, something
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Speaker 3: like a newsletter that they signed up because you know,
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Speaker 3: one of their friends shared something and they saw something
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Speaker 3: good here.
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Speaker 2: So so Google SEO is not a job anyone should
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Speaker 2: be thinking about that. That was a real job, certainly
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Speaker 2: since the nineties and two thousands. Yeah, hey, if you
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Speaker 2: can optimize for Google Search, here's a fire hose of traffic.
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Speaker 2: Just hope they never changed their algorithm.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think passively. I try
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Speaker 3: to be conscious of things that help improve the SEO
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Speaker 3: of anything I publish. But I'm not going to lose
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Speaker 3: sleep over it because you know, I might get a
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Speaker 3: couple more clicks.
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Speaker 2: It's so diminished today from from what it once was.
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Speaker 2: So what's been the most surprising part of this transition
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Speaker 2: to you know, hanging out your own newsletter? What's been
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Speaker 2: the most difficult part?
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Speaker 3: The most difficult part, you know, I you know, it
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Speaker 3: is very easy. All of the other resources you get
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Speaker 3: from working at a large company. You realize you took
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Speaker 3: all that stuff for granted, having access to really great
12:00
Speaker 3: healthcare for a very cheap price. That's number one too.
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Speaker 3: When you have tech issues, you're not on the phone,
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Speaker 3: you know, when you're when you're employed by someone, you're
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Speaker 3: not the one on the phone with Verizon. Someone else
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Speaker 3: is taking care of that and.
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Speaker 2: You're here today coast your Verizon modem.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that that's the whole other, uh nightmare but but yeah,
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Speaker 3: all that stuff like you know, the ac doesn't work
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Speaker 3: in my apartment, you know who's paying for the snacks
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Speaker 3: and all this kind of stuff, and then you know
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Speaker 3: there are there are other things that are you know,
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Speaker 3: intangible value that that I really do miss about working
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Speaker 3: at at larger media companies, which is being surrounded by
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Speaker 3: people who are passionate about what they're doing. They're curious.
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Speaker 3: You can bounce ideas off and have something you know,
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Speaker 3: crushed or really developed, you know, in a room with
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Speaker 3: with with with people. So I think, you know, it's
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Speaker 3: a trade off though. The other thing being that as
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Speaker 3: an independent writer, I'm not in nearly as many meetings
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Speaker 3: as I used to.
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Speaker 2: You're not wasting as much time. So so final question,
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Speaker 2: someone thinking about a career change, thinking about hanging their
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Speaker 2: own jingle, what's the most important lesson you can impart
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Speaker 2: to those people?
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Speaker 3: You just have to go out and give it a shot.
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Speaker 3: It doesn't cost anything to start a website or a
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Speaker 3: blog on any of these newsletters, especially if you start
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Speaker 3: off free, and you know, if you might actually find
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Speaker 3: you have a passion for writing. Some people think that
13:24
Speaker 3: they want to be a writer, they give it a shot.
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Speaker 3: They find out that they don't want to be a writer.
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Speaker 2: It's a lonely grind, it can be.
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Speaker 3: It can be very lonely. And then some people find
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Speaker 3: that it's therapeutic or it's a way to keep themselves organized.
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Speaker 3: You know. I've actually talked to a couple of financial
13:36
Speaker 3: advisors who have started newsletters for no other reason than
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Speaker 3: to help them keep themselves organized, and have found an
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Speaker 3: audience for this because what they're doing for themselves is
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Speaker 3: actually benefiting someone else. Huhh. I think it's just worth
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Speaker 3: giving it a shot.
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Speaker 2: So to wrap up, if you're thinking about changing careers,
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Speaker 2: you should be paying attention to technology, what it's doing
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Speaker 2: to your field's revenue and profit models. Understand how technology
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Speaker 2: is changing the way business is being done. It's usually
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Speaker 2: better to jump than to be pushed. I'm Barry Redults.
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Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg's at the Money