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Bob Pittman: Take Fast Action, How Bob Wins in Entrepreneurship Over and Over Again | E41 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:04
  Randall Kaplan: You're listening to part two of my awesome Conversation with Bob Pittman, one of the most influential people in media television radio during the last 30 years. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check out that one first. Without further ado, here's part two with the amazing Bob Pittman. When he left MTV started a company called Quantum media with a record company called MCA. They quickly sold that company to Warner Communications right as Warner was merging with Time, Inc. He became president and CEO of Time Warner enterprises, and the next year he became chairman and CEO of Six Flags Theme Parks, which Time Warner own and which wasn't doing well at that time, which is still true today. Disney was the theme park leader and was the big brand with 100% name recognition. Six Flags didn't have anywhere near as much name recognition, but it did have a lot of other things going for it. Six of its seven parks were larger than the 80 acre Disney World. 84% of the country was within 300 miles of a six five Park, it had an average roller coaster speed of 65 miles per hour. To help turn six flags around Time Warner invested Twitter billion dollars in new rides with Warner themed characters like Batman. It also spent $30 million dollars on advertising campaigns with slogans like bigger, faster and closer than Disneyland. And it worked over the next three and a half years you were running the company attendance increased from 70 million to 25 million.
• 1:19
  Randall Kaplan: When its performance improved.
• 1:22
  Randall Kaplan: Time Warner sold 51% of the company to Boston ventures for$1,000,000,000.03 years later sold the remaining 49% to a company called Premier Parks for another billion dollars. 99.99% of the people in the world aren't working for companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, or whatever company is the leader in their industry. And although I don't have any data to back this up, I'm guessing that most founders and CEOs and senior executives want to be the number one company in their industry. We've never invested in a company that wanted to be anything else. You had a $30 million marketing budget of Six Flags to get the word out. But 99.9999% of companies don't.
• 1:58
  Randall Kaplan: Most companies don't have any money to spend on marketing. You have a podcast called Mathmagic stories from the frontiers of marketing. It's a b2b podcast, where you talked to marketing visionaries to hear how they've used data and creativity to bring incredible ideas to life.
• 2:09
  Randall Kaplan: Can you tell us what a second play strategy is? The book incognito by David angleman. And what companies should do to get noticed and create a brand if they don't have million dollars to spend on marketing, and a Search of Excellence on a scale of one to 10,000 How important is marketing to the success of not only a company, but to us as individuals and how we market ourselves in both our personal and our professional
• 2:33
  Bob Pittman: lives? Well, look, let me start with the last part, I think marketing is the exercise of connecting a product or service to people who would like it, I don't think you ultimately sell anybody anything. I think you're in search of finding the person who would be interested in this product and then telling them why they would be interested in making the marriage. And it's that simple. And I think in the case of a company like Six Flags, we found a way to position these parks, that was interesting to people like you don't have to go on a big vacation to go to Disneyland to get that same experience come out for the day. Convenience always wins. Easier is better.
• 3:12
  Bob Pittman: And we were able to play with that. But what we really did is we got in the Disney category.
• 3:21
  Bob Pittman: When people said Disney so much better than Six Flags. That was a good thing. When they said Six Flags is better than Dorney Park. That was a bad thing.
• 3:27
  Bob Pittman: Because when they said we were worse than Disney, they had us in their mind and the Disney category. We have plenty of business to get from that. When they had us in here in the Dorney Park, they had us in the crummy theme park or amusement park category, which was bad for us. And so I think when you think about marketing is not about how much money you've got to spend. It's what's your challenge, and then figure out how you can do it with concentric bonus tequila, which has turned out to be 1213 years later, the connoisseur is tequila, which is what we set out to do. We didn't spend a lot of money on advertising. In fact, I don't think we ever bought any traditional advertising. But our marketing plan was we have a unique product, what we need for people to do is to taste it. So I would carry around a bottle of Casa bonus and a bottle of that that time patrol. And I would say taste them both you tell me said we're just going to take a long time, we're gonna let people discover this. And we went in through the art world and restaurants and sort of went through those doors to really help connect this product and then word of mouth built and built and built and built. And that's how we built the brand.
• 4:37
  Bob Pittman: In the case of MTV, we couldn't get cable companies to carry MTV they wanted us to pay them to be carried. We wanted them to pay us. So we decided to in a nice way crema down their throat. We were going to do some pull.
• 4:50
  Bob Pittman: Let's get the consumer to demand it. So we had Mick Jagger say call your cable company and say I want my MTV and told the consumer exists actly what to do. In the case of Six Flags, we told people we're bigger than Disneyland closer to home.
• 5:04
  Bob Pittman: Anybody wanted to go to Disney was going to Disney. But most people only went to Disney once or twice a lifetime. And so what we're really selling them as you can get a Disney like experience close to home, come on out for the day, a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the hassle. And it worked. I mean, as you pointed out, we had a big attendance job. I had spotted Six Flags when I had quantum media, a joint venture with MCA. I wanted to buy six flags, and they didn't want to do it because they already had universal theme parks. And they said it's a conflict. So I bought my way out of that sold my company to Warner Communications, just as we're merging with time. And Steve Ross, who is one of my great mentors, the deal I cut with him is buy come back, can I buy six flags? And he said, Yeah, I'll buy six flags for you. So I bought six flags for Time Warner, and I owned a little piece of it myself. And then five or six years later, Jerry Liban, who was then the CEO needed to pay off some debt, he needed to sell something. His board was pushing him to sell off cable systems, which Jerry did not want to do. And I said, Jerry, I think we could get a billion dollars by selling half of Six Flags and we can keep the other half. And he said if you can do that deal, Bob go do it, which is what we did. So he sells
• 6:21
  Randall Kaplan: Six Flags that he's teamed up with a New Jersey hotel franchisor called hospitality franchise systems by Century 21 real estate brokerage firm that has 6000 offices around the world to pay $200 million in cash, which included 10 to 15% of your own money similar to what you did at MTV, you grew century 21 through a strategy that included brand building and national marketing.
• 6:38
  Randall Kaplan: And also by creating a new franchise sales organization in the early adoption of the internet as a lead generating tool. You're there for a year.
• 6:47
  Randall Kaplan: And then you're recruiting by AOL to manage AOL networks, the fast growing consumer services wing of America Online. under your watch, AOL grew from 6 million to 30 million subscribers, and had at one point had 50% of all of the internet users in the United States using it and the company became profitable. While you were there, you helped pioneer the development of digital advertising. And once again, you went to your playbook and came up with another great tagline.
• 7:09
  Randall Kaplan: America Online, so easy to use.
• 7:09
  Randall Kaplan: No wonder it's number one.
• 7:13
  Randall Kaplan: You're there a few years in 2001, AOL announced that it was buying Time Warner for $164 billion in stock, taking the combined value of the company$350 billion. And what the press called the deal of a century, in which two years later became known as the biggest train wreck in the history of corporate America. You're not in a train wreck. So you leave to start your own investment firm called the pilot group where you made some great investments, including furless, daily candy, Huffington Post, Zynga and Facebook. At this point, you're 57 years old and you're semi retired and you're not really looking for another full time job in your career. Instead, you're searching for an undervalued company where you can help out a little bit. After a year, you found one, a company called Clear Channel Communications that had 850 radio stations around the country, as well as a global outdoor advertising division that digital properties. You invested $5 million of your own money when you joined, it became an official part time consultant. But you put in a lot of hours, so much so that your wife said to you, you know, you're not really working part time to which you said, I know, but I'm having a really good time and on November 13 2010, went full time and became chairman and CEO of clear channels, media and entertainment platforms. When you join the company had $20 billion in debt which resulted from a 2008 leveraged buyout by the private equity firms Thomas H. Lee, partners of Bain Capital, and ultimately on March 15 2018, four years after Clear Channel changes named iHeartMedia. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection when they reached an agreement to restructure $10 billion of it's more than $20 billion in debt. It may 2019. I heard exited bankruptcy which reduce your debt from 16 point 1 billion to 5.7 5 billion. Before I move on, I want to go back to where you were when you were at the pilot group looking for the right opportunity before you joined Clear Channel. You said that many businesses have a better reputation than the facts was suggest. And that Clear Channel had better facts and its reputation that you love a business like this is I think about the job market today. I don't know of a single applicant who would be super excited about joining a company that could go bankrupt or is about to go bankrupt or has some other highly publicized problems.
• 9:08
  Randall Kaplan: Instead, most people I know want to work at three different kinds of companies stable companies that have been around a long time namebrand companies like Google metal, Apple or Netflix, or 60 startups founded by famous angel investors and venture capital firms that have raised 10s of millions of dollars and in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. In the case of meta Google apple and Netflix, they've lost more than$3 trillion in market value have laid off more than 100,000 people in the last two weeks.
• 9:35
  Randall Kaplan: Meaning what used to be 60 isn't so sexy anymore. When people are looking for jobs and today's job market which is very unstable, where should accompanies financial stability or sexiness, Franklin our search, but what are some of the other factors that people should be considering? And does the answer depend on our age?
• 9:54
  Bob Pittman: I do think that the great opportunities are companies that no one else is fighting over. And there's been my history, MTV was that nobody wanted cable networks. AOL was that when I went there, century 21 Was this thing owned by Metropolitan Life. AOL when I went, people said, that's the internet with training wheels.
• 10:14
  Bob Pittman: Those are the great opportunities. And I think if you're going where everybody else wants to go, good luck.
• 10:22
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about risk and complacency and how they factor into our success.
• 10:24
  Randall Kaplan: We've talked about your willingness to take risks as one of the main themes of your career, not only from moving one company to another, but also to work in new industries. But you've also taken risks when you're running companies with the important caveat and everything you do is grounded in research and reality. You've mentioned one of your great mentors was Steve Ross, who was the former CEO of Time Warner, who taught you there was value in risk, and he told you that you would never be fired for going out on a limb, although stagnation would be fatal.
• 10:53
  Randall Kaplan: You've made that part of your own dnn have said that our biggest risk is complacency. Why is that? Can you tell us what Steve said you when you made a profit at MTV, instead of giving you a hey, congratulations, slap on the back. And a Search of Excellence why our failure and success the same thing?
• 11:09
  Bob Pittman: Well, I think what Steve said, which really opened my eyes, I was had the mission of trying to get this thing profitable. realize we're going to be profitable, call Steve, say gotta come see you go to his office, I'm expecting an attaboy, and I tell him, we're going to be profitable. He says, Good. Here's what we can do now.
• 11:24
  Bob Pittman: And what that told me was success and failure, the same thing. They're stepping stones, we never stop failures when we turn right or left when we step on that stone. But they're all the same thing. We're just moving. And it's this idea of keep moving. And everything you do. It has some inherent risk in it. Don't be afraid of the risk.
• 11:46
  Bob Pittman: The worst that happens is it's failed. I've heard somebody tell me recently, I love the way they said it said we either win, or we learned something. And I think that's really the way I think about this progression of how we get to where we need to go.
• 12:01
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about another ingredient of our success, which is one of my favorite topics, the importance of preparation. One of the main ingredients in my own career that got me to where I am today is that I'm always the most prepared person in the room. How important has preparation bencher accessing going a step further, how important is extreme preparation going weighing beyond way above and beyond what others consider great preparation? I'm talking about the kind of preparation that you can spend 30 or 40 hours on for a single event or meeting? Can you give us a few examples of how extreme preparation has contributed to your success?
• 13:26
  Bob Pittman: I think there are two kinds of extreme preparation. I'm a believer in one and not a believer in the other. I'm not a believer in preparing for any possible questions someone may have, or how they might ask about it. I'm a great believer in preparation, we know your business know the issues. And then you can talk about anything people want to talk about. I see a lot of people squandering their time anticipating what people may ask them and trying to find a specific answer that question that sounds to me like kids who are trying to study for a test.
• 13:54
  Bob Pittman: And then there's the other group of people just make sure they know their topic inside and out.
• 14:01
  Bob Pittman: I think that's the winner for people that allows you to have that flexibility, that you need to really go left and right and constantly pivoting and moving.
• 14:10
  Randall Kaplan: Can you give us some examples of how extreme preparation has led to your success?
• 14:15
  Bob Pittman: Well, it's interesting, almost everything I do I just try and become a student of the issues. When we have a crisis, a problem, an opportunity, this sort of answer pops in my mind, oh, here's what we should do. Because I know my topic. Well, I'm always worried about people want to say, Well, what should we do? And they go, I don't know, let me go out, some people are wondering what's going on with that. And they go out and I'll ask somebody, well, wow, you're sitting at the top of the company or top of the group you have, and you have to go ask somebody that's not information at your fingertips.
• 14:45
  Bob Pittman: To me, that's what's important is I expect people to really know their business inside out and to have a conversation at any moment about anything there.
• 14:53
  Bob Pittman: If you don't, you're missing all the opportunities that are sort of drive by opportunities.
• 15:00
  Randall Kaplan: When you're a kid, your family is to say that you had a hobby a day you find something to be excessive about, then you'd move on to something else. It's been that way in your career, you've moved around a lot. And as soon as you're successful, you'd rather go back and be unsuccessful again, and try and build a success. For you. That's the fun of it. I can see how that would be fun. And has it been fun for you because you've killed it everywhere you've been. But I think the concept of giving out what we have, especially when we've had success is terrifying for most of us, what percent of work, if any, should be fun. And once we've reached a certain level of success, how do we stay motivated to keep going and keep striving for success?
• 15:38
  Bob Pittman: Wow, that's a really good question. I think it varies person to person to depends on the stage of career to I've had enough success, and I've been lucky enough with money etc. that I can take more risk than many people can take.
• 15:51
  Bob Pittman: And I think People and I tell him like when do you move on a job, move on the job, when you've got nowhere to go up, either things have changed at the top, which are bad for you, or you've sort of reached the pinnacle, and you're just sort of coasting. And those are the times to make the move, to go find something else interesting that really, someone in some opportunity that values what you have uniquely to bring to it.
• 16:14
  Randall Kaplan: Can you give us a percentage of what percent of work should be fun?
• 16:19
  Bob Pittman: I think 100% of work should be fun. I think even crises should be fun. Whenever we have a horrible crisis, and everybody's feeling terrible and panicking, I go, guys, just enjoy this. Because when we have the next crisis, you'll look back at this one. And wish we had this one again, it's just a journey. And that means we should be able to enjoy everything we're doing, no matter how tough it is.
• 16:40
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, coming out of college today, I have a lot of mentees, I have a summer intern program with 36 kids every summer, they're all smart, they're all super motivated. I have this conversation with a lot of my friends, CEOs of companies, very successful people, kids coming out of college today, they're very different. They complain a lot more than they did when we were coming out of school. It's just a different mindset, there's more things for them to do the technology field has really opened things up dramatically more opportunities than there have been in the history of the world. And I think that a lot of young adults today, don't find work fun. And when they have a little bit of bump in the road, they want to switch firms, and I tell everyone, they got to stay on the job for two years.
• 17:23
  Randall Kaplan: Because you need to experience difficulty and work to make yourself successful. In your career. Do you agree with that?
• 17:31
  Bob Pittman: 100% I think it's life. And it's work. That the worst thing you can do is when you hit some adversity, to stop and move, go somewhere else, as opposed to just figure out how to get through it. And the challenge of getting through something is where you learn the most. And by the way, at the end of the day is the most rewarding at the end of each go, wow, look at what we did. That was hard work. But I'm proud of what I did. And I think that becomes very important for kids. And by the way, even people my age,
• 18:00
  Randall Kaplan: what percent of our success is comprised of hard work versus other categories that go into the success categories. And what are the other elements of success besides hard work?
• 18:10
  Bob Pittman: I don't think it's a pie shape. I think it's probably parallel bars. I think your hard work has to be near 100 I think your curiosity needs to be 7080 90% I think your ability to listen and collaborate needs to be at our teams when people don't, no matter who gets the credit. It's the team that's winning. And I think those are really the key elements to success.
• 18:34
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about radio. And to do that. Let's go back to 1895 when a guy in Italy named Guglielmo Marconi invented what he called the wireless telegraph while experimenting in his parents attic. He uses radio waves to transplant Morse code, and the instrument of use became known as the radio and in 1906, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention. In December 1906, a Canadian man named Reginald Fessenden was living in print rock, Massachusetts, when he produced an hour of talk and use it for technical observers for any radio amateurs, which was the first radio broadcast in history. The first news radio program was broadcast on August 31 1920, by station eight Mk. In the great city of Detroit, which still exists today under the all new station, WW J, which is today owned by CBS. Since then radio has come a long way.
• 19:22
  Randall Kaplan: Today, 92% of Americans listen to broadcast radio at least once a week. In the United States, adults spend an average of 102 minutes a day, listening to radio. Spotify today has 433 million users. And there's a perception out there by many people that streaming is more popular than radio, but that perception is dead wrong. Can you tell us why that is dead wrong and about the importance of companionship. And what is so special about radio. And looking to the future is the metaverse really going to be the next big thing. Where is the $800 billion and value that Facebook has lost since this changed his name to Mehta a year ago, which is more than the market cap of Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway, just a blip along the
• 20:03
  Bob Pittman: road. Well, look, I think Spotify and radio are not competitors. They're really two completely different products.
• 20:11
  Bob Pittman: The ancestor of Spotify, we're CDs and vinyl, and downloads on iTunes. And people listen to the music collection when they want to escape the world. Go into their own little zone, get in a mood. Most people we're humans are social animals. What radio does is it keeps your company 25% of our stations play no music, their news talk or sports talk or other things opinion.
• 20:37
  Bob Pittman: But what's common about them all is we're keeping people company podcasting is a natural extension of radio. It's reason we're number one in podcasting, because it's very host driven.
• 20:47
  Bob Pittman: And you know, you're gonna ride to work with Ryan Seacrest every day or Steve Harvey or Alan Kay or whoever they are Elvis Duran.
• 20:55
  Bob Pittman: These are people who you know and trust and become your friends. And that's the reason 2030 years ago TV reached more people than radio. Today I heart. In our broadcast radio reaches over 90% of Americans every month, the biggest TV network reaches about 35%. And Spotify reaches less than 20%.
• 21:17
  Bob Pittman: And why is that? Because there's nothing more paramount to people than hanging out having somebody to ride to work with somebody who's talking to me while I'm brushing my teeth while I'm cooking while I'm working in the yard, and that's what radio has done and done so well over the years and continues to do. And now we say Metaverse Where does Metaverse fit in? I look I think the metaverse is very interesting. It's an extension of real life. I've always thought things are a hit when they do something you already liked to do, but make it easier.
• 21:50
  Bob Pittman: The Metaverse makes some things easier. And they're fun to do.
• 21:54
  Bob Pittman: Primarily today it's around games. I'm not seeing any breakout of any big success beyond sort of gaming or something closely allied with that. We're in the metaverse with I heard land on Roblox and fortnight. Meta I think is built some huge AI. They've got a big social graph. I think jury's still out as to whether they can turn that into the metaverse and can they find a use for the metaverse beyond sort of the limited gameplay?
• 22:23
  Randall Kaplan: You mentioned the podcast business and let's give a little a history lesson on this one. Podcasting was invented in 2004 when Adam curry, a former MTV Video jockey and a software developer and Dave Winer coded a program known as AI Potter that enabled them to download internet radio broadcasts on their iPods. It's exploded since then it's been a huge focus of yours and I hurt media. September 9 2018, you acquired a company called stuff media for $55 million, was a huge price back then. It is launched in 2008 and was the original trailblazer in the podcasting industry. And knowing the How Stuff Works podcasting businesses, as well as 25. Other shows. The podcast business is booming, and it's catching up to radio. More than 244 million people of American adults listen to radio each month. There are currently 140 million monthly podcast listeners in the US a number that's expected to increase to 164 million people by the end of next year. 41% of people in the US listen to at least one podcast a month, and 28% Listen to one every week.
• 23:21
  Randall Kaplan: The Riley just came out with a report predicting there's going to be $2 billion of ad revenue and podcasting this year, and it's forecasting that number will increase to $6 billion dollars by 2026. What's the future of podcasting? And when are you going to buy my show for$50 million?
• 23:40
  Bob Pittman: Can we buy my show first for 50 million?
• 23:44
  Randall Kaplan: Conflict of Interest?
• 23:45
  Bob Pittman: Exactly. You know, it's interesting, I think that podcasting is basically radio on demand. Just like I would argue Netflix is sort of TV On Demand.
• 23:53
  Bob Pittman: And it's doing the same sort of thing radio does, except I get to select exactly what I want.
• 24:00
  Bob Pittman: And I get to listen to it when I want to as opposed to being in linear form. And I think that's one of the reasons I heart has done so well. We early on said wait a minute. This is very adjacent to radio, we can promote stuff on the radio. It's a common experience. We can talk about it, we can build hits. And today we are bigger than the next two podcast publishers combined. And to me that is not a testament to we're geniuses.
• 24:24
  Bob Pittman: It's a testament to we have the right assets and we're doing the right things with them. And I think this business shows no signs of abating. It's interesting talk radio has a real older audience skew.
• 24:33
  Bob Pittman: Podcasting has a younger audience skew. So people are interested in talk. It's just different topics and in different forms. And fortunately for us, I think we saw it early enough to get in and build a leadership position before the world began to consolidate.
• 24:50
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the value of relationships and as a related topic mentors. As an entrepreneur, I think it's important for all of us whether you're starting out or not to seek out people who can mentor you or help you and create value for you by introducing you to new people, investors or relationships. On the business side. You and I have a mutual friend who since passed away named Gil freezin when we were starting our technology company, there were four of us and it professors little office we have six computers and we an idea to change the way that content was served on the internet. I had a relationship with Gil freeze and Gil had been the third employee while the first record company, which they then sold for a lot of money and Gil knew a lot of people in the media business and I met him I was dating my ex wife we went to Sun Valley and Gil had us over for dinner and drinks one night. The very interesting person as you know very cultured, we became close.
• 25:49
  Randall Kaplan: And Gil when I was thinking about Lee Livingston America was the assistant to the chairman I had a great job. But I wanted to do something more, start my own company or even run a company at a young age. I was 27 years old at the time, Gil took me under his wing, and we got very close.
• 26:03
  Randall Kaplan: And when I told him I was going to do this tech thing, we were having dinner, one day at Pacific dining car, he knew I had a variety of different things that I could have done at the time, when I was trying to choose, I said, I'm going to do the Occupy thing. And not only am I going to do that, I'm gonna invest $100,000 On my own money at that point, I came from a tough background, Bob, I'm self made. I had, my mom was a single mom worked two jobs when I was younger. And I had saved$400,000. My goal was I was going to be a millionaire. By the time I was 30. I told you, I'm going to do the Occupy thing. I'm investing $100,000 On my own money. And he said, I'm in for $500,000. And Gil was our first investor. And he was able to not only have other value added angels make introductions for us. And at some point when we got going, and we needed relationships with all kinds of companies like MTV, gold paved the way for us at some point, we wanted to go to AOL, for a variety of different reasons.
• 27:04
  Randall Kaplan: And we call Gil and said, Hey, Gil, what's up? We need a relationship. There is that all call my good friend, Bob Pittman. I believe you were the CEO at the time. And two of my partners were on the way to Reston, Virginia the next day.
• 27:18
  Randall Kaplan: Can you tell us about your relationship with Gil, I don't know how you two met? I know you are very, very close friends.
• 27:23
  Randall Kaplan: But can you tell us when you got the call? What you were thinking? And is it a given you're going to help your friends and then for other aspiring entrepreneurs? How important are these relationships to our success?
• 27:36
  Bob Pittman: Relationships are great. You just never know which relationships is going to be the key one. But I think it's a matter of just building relationships of trust. What was great about Gil was I met Gil in Chicago when I was young radio programmer, Gil came to town, I'd never met someone as cultured and fancy, as charming as Gil. But what was interesting was he wasn't a snob. He was interested in me. He wanted to help me. He wanted to share with me whatever he had. And he was ran a record company, I was a radio programmer. And when I started MTV, I called guild said I want your music videos. And he goes, Bob, I have no idea if that's a good idea. But you know, you've been a good friend to me, you've always helped me sure you have my music videos, not because it was a good idea, not because I sold them. But because we had a relationship.
• 28:25
  Bob Pittman: And I think that is sort of that perfect relationship that if you have a relationship with someone, it's got to be built on trust. And I think now if you say why did Gil call me and I don't remember exactly the conversation. But I do know a girl called me and said something's important. I go, I believe you. I'll take it at your word. And I'll do it for you. Because I believe in that.
• 28:43
  Bob Pittman: And I think that as I think as you build a business, the hardest thing in the world is to understand every relationship has to really be a quality relationship. I think I see a lot of people network. I know somebody, I met them at a party, let's means nothing. The relationship is one of trust.
• 29:01
  Bob Pittman: What did you do to capture someone's trust and believability. And Gil was at sort of the top of the list of people who knew how to do that and did it. And by the way, he was had boundless curiosity. I took gilt and Tom Preston to Burning Man. And Gil was fascinated with everything out there. And that was necessarily his world. But in a funny way, everything was his world.
• 29:28
  Bob Pittman: Because he had his eyes open and his here's hoping
• 29:32
  Randall Kaplan: you're known to be an extremely clear communicator, which I think is a skill most of us should learn or want to learn how important are communication skills in our success? In a Search of Excellence? How should we go about improving our communication skills?
• 29:45
  Bob Pittman: I don't know how you improve them. Because I think being a storyteller is sort of an innate skill. But I think what people can do is figure out what do they do well, and do more of it. Some people write better than they speak, some people speak better than they write. And so find out what it is. But the important thing is, what's the essence of what you're trying to communicate?
• 30:04
  Bob Pittman: Start with that? Don't start with giving me a data dump or giving anybody a data dump? That makes a really bad story. Start with the headlines, the questions will take us into the data, or the supporting information, but make it compelling. And I think it's always question no one wants to hear how you arrived at the decision. They want to know what what is the thing. And if you can boil it down to that you wind up with a much better story.
• 30:29
  Randall Kaplan: When you were young adults, somebody told you that most people never live because they're in the past with their regrets, or in the future with their worries, and they never get right here right now.
• 30:36
  Randall Kaplan: But as people we all have a natural tendency to want to plan our journeys, because we're all anxious about our futures. And having a plan helps us reduce our anxiety in theoretically keeps us on a path to achieving our goals. You said That life is more of a random walk than a plant experience, both in life and in business. And that your own career has been a series of meteors flying out of the sky and hitting you on the head. Why is the secret to our happiness about the journey, and the appreciation of that journey, and not in making a plan and then trying to keep it?
• 31:10
  Bob Pittman: I think if you set a plan for yourself, you'll be disappointed. Because the chances of that plan coming through are probably you know, one in a million. On the other hand, if you set your goal list, I know what I like, I know what turns me on. And I want to enjoy the journey of life. In you know, we talked earlier about when you have this adversity in life, it's also a learning experience is sort of interesting. If I tell the story of my life, I really tell you about all the adversity I have, I rarely tell you, and there was a beautiful day, and the sun was shining. And I felt good. We talk about our life as how we overcame these moments of diversity. At the moment, Adversity is terrible. And hindsight, it's our legend. And it's our story. And I think if you can get yourself into that mode of understanding that that's really what it's about.
• 31:57
  Bob Pittman: That plans don't plan too hard.
• 32:00
  Bob Pittman: Yeah, you're gonna say some plan, but don't expect that to come true. But expect to have an interesting life and expect to do interesting things.
• 32:09
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about the importance of culture. When you took the job as CEO of Six Flags. You asked what the worst job at the company was. And your first week on the job, you worked as a street cleaner, wearing littlest, first sweeping sidewalks and putting trash into garbage bins. Can you tell us about your employee handbook, the valuable lesson you learned there? And why it applies or should apply to every other company on the planet?
• 32:30
  Bob Pittman: Yeah, it's actually was a couple of years in the Six Flags. And we couldn't get the quality up that we were looking for. So I said, You know what, I'm just gonna go in the park.
• 32:38
  Bob Pittman: This is for the days and the undercover boss I'm going in.
• 32:40
  Bob Pittman: It's just one of the street cleaners because they had the worst reputation being Surly and nasty. So I put on this thing, and I'm out talking to them.
• 32:46
  Bob Pittman: They just think I'm a new guy doing it. And I realized these people love Six Flags are never guessed that. And then as I listened to more, I realized the problem was that we had trained them to keep the park clean.
• 33:03
  Bob Pittman: They said your job is to keep the park clean, who makes the park dirty guest therefore who do they hate guest. I go, Oh my God, we've created our monster here. And then I looked at other jobs and realized, wait a minute, we've been telling people safety is our number one concern, it's not our number one concern is our guest. And we want them to have the greatest day of their life. If something's unsafe, that could ruin their day, if the parks dirty or dirty bathroom that could ruin their day. So we began to express it more and with a different mission of your job is to make sure everybody here has the greatest day of their life, and your job. And it could ruin it. If the bathroom sturdy, say gotta get the bathroom clean, or if something's unsafe could ruin their day. So we've got to do safety, but we put the consumer first. And I think it's I look at business often, in most companies, we start prioritizing our operational efficiency, as opposed to the consumer. And I think the lesson from that is, the consumer always comes first and listen to the consumer serve the consumer. Even if it's harder to go, Well, we could do that. But that's hard to do great. Well, then we need to do what's hard. Because what we need to do is serve the consumer not serve ourselves.
• 34:15
  Randall Kaplan: He said one of the worst things in business you can do is not make a decision.
• 34:17
  Randall Kaplan: And the flip side you said if you probably can get 50% of decisions, right? Most of the time, you're a genius. How can that be that you're a genius?
• 34:27
  Randall Kaplan: 50%
• 34:29
  Bob Pittman: I think almost every decision we make the wrong decision. The great people just keep trying and changing until they get it right. You know, most of the decisions we're trying to make it's unknowable, you got to try something. So many people get paralyzed because they think they're going to study and review and take time, and that somehow will make the decision better. It doesn't.
• 34:46
  Bob Pittman: Sometimes all that thinking makes it worse. And so for me, it's just like make a quick decision. Everything's better done sooner. Korea make the decision. What are you going to know tomorrow? You don't know right now? If the answer is nothing to make the decision right now. And when invariably you're wrong, be quick to admit it's wrong and try something else until you finally get it right.
• 35:08
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about work life balance. You've been working full time since you were 15 years old. And at some point, except after leaving Time Warner, you had never taken more than two weeks vacation. I hope that's changed by the way.
• 35:18
  Randall Kaplan: You've been married, divorced or remarried, you have three kids, you run a huge company, you're involved in philanthropy. You do a lot of outside interest as well. What's the right balance here between work and life? And how do you prioritize it?
• 35:32
  Bob Pittman: I think I'd never get that right. I think about it more as life, work, integration, not balance. Balance seems to mean I'm gonna shut one off and turn the other one on. And I think they all become one. And that's what's worked for me, but I think everybody's got their own game they play. We've only got one life. So Want to make sure I'm not squandering it, I love work, I love my family, I love my friends. And I'd have to figure out a way to make it all work for me. And you'd write, I didn't take long vacations I've worked might have my little kids. I'm a pilot, I had them in 50 countries by the time they were 10. So I made it a point to change that. So, you know, life balance isn't over a day or a week or month life balance is over a lifetime. And so I took seven or eight years and goofed off a lot, and did stuff that I wanted to do and said, Yes, instead of No, which can work when people say, Can you do it?
• 36:26
  Bob Pittman: The answer is always no, because I never have time. When I wasn't working, we would say, let's go do something, I go, Okay, let's go. If I don't like it, the worst will happen is I'll never do it again. And I may find some interesting new stuff,
• 36:38
  Randall Kaplan: when you were young. So as your brother Tom, that you wanted to be famous and rich, and you've worked with a lot of celebrities, I think they all want to be famous and successful and rich. And as you are famous in the business world, Bob, and you're also rich, is getting there what you thought it would be? And where should money rank in terms of our priorities in life?
• 37:01
  Bob Pittman: Yeah, lower look, I was a kid when I said that. And it sounded really good when I was a poor kid in Mississippi.
• 37:07
  Bob Pittman: And look, I having people know who you are, gives you some access, which makes life more interesting. Having money makes a lot of things easier, primarily medical care, and travel and some things like that. But I think at the end of the day, what we need is we need enough money to be able to support us without a lot of stress. Beyond that, it's all access. And I think that, you know, be careful what you wish for if you want to be well known, because it comes with a lot of peril as well.
• 37:37
  Randall Kaplan: Sharon Stone was helped launch my podcast my show. And as you know, at one point, she's probably the most famous movie star in the world for a period of 10 years. And I think late people, we don't really think about what that's like, not being able to go the grocery store without paparazzi following us. And it comes with a lot of crazy people and security and all kinds of other things. So she said, as well be careful what you wish for. We have a few more minutes, I have a question about philanthropy, and then some fill in the blank questions. How important is it In Search of Excellence to give back to others in
• 38:11
  Bob Pittman: our community? I think it's essential. We're in a civilization. We're in society, we all are in this together. And I think if we've got excess, we should figure out how we use it for the people who don't. If we've got special skills, we ought to figure out how we can do it to make the society better. And I think one is personally rewarding. But two, it's also the obligation we have for those of us that have been luckier than most How do you want to be remembered? Oh, I don't think I'll be remembered.
• 38:37
  Bob Pittman: I mean, it's always the interesting thing to me is two people said building a legacy, etc. I asked people you know, Steve Ross's they never heard of it. No, Lew Wasserman has never heard of Bill Paley. Never heard of him. And I go, it's fleeting.
• 38:49
  Bob Pittman: When you're out of the limelight, you're gone. So enjoy it right now. Don't try and project yourself past the grave.
• 38:58
  Randall Kaplan: Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask more open ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, fill in the blanks to excellence are ready to play.
• 39:05
  Bob Pittman: Let's go. When I started my career, I wish I had known that I would be a success.
• 39:08
  Bob Pittman: The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is wow, I'm not sure there's a one big lesson I learned. I guess it's to learn that there is no one big lesson.
• 39:21
  Bob Pittman: My number one professional goal is right now to make sure we continue to grow,
• 39:26
  Randall Kaplan: I hurt. My number one personal goal is happiness. The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time, but haven't done is go to Malta. What's stopping you from going there? Time? If you could fix one thing in the world, what would it be? World peace. My favorite musician of all time is Led Zeppelin. The one person in the world that I admire the most is that dad, mom, to people. The one question you wish I had asked you is
• 39:57
  Bob Pittman: I have never seen such preparation. I think you found out more about me than I remembered about me. It shows why you're doing so well.
• 40:07
  Randall Kaplan: Thank you, Bob.
• 40:07
  Randall Kaplan: I appreciate it. Bob, you've been somebody I've admired for a very long period of time. I grew up with MTV and AOL. And I was super excited appreciate for what you did for us at Occupy when we were just starting you've been a phenomenal role model inspire many millions of people with just success, humility and your philanthropy.
• 40:24
  Randall Kaplan: Very grateful for your time today. And thank you very much for sharing your story with us.
• 40:29
  Bob Pittman: Well, thank you and this has been great fun. Thanks.