Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's interesting because, you know, I was sort of talking to my wife about that when I started the job, and I was like, you know, before I could always say, like, well, I didn't agree with that decision and look what happened.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Or like, oh, if that if we'd only done that, or that analyst had only done that, I can't hide behind any of that stuff anymore. And one of my big realizations as a first time CEO is exactly that, like, I must be accountable for everything. I must be accountable for every mistake, for every moment of indecision, for every flinch, for every stall. You're absolutely right. It falls on me.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: That was a clip from today's guest, Jonathan Anastas. This is a fun conversation. Jonathan and I already did one episode, like, back in the early days of the podcast that was super cool because it's know, you get to meet someone who you grew up listening to their band and also has had this incredible career, but then you meet them and they're actually like a cool person. So that was like an awesome conversation. But so much has happened between then and now. We thought it'd be a great time to bring him back on and have another conversation about all the things that have happened during the pandemic and since that have led to changes in his career and his personal life.
I always love speaking to people who are accomplished business people and also from the punk scene, because for me it's always this like, you've applied so much what you learn in punk and hardcore to building a career. And he's just a great example of that. But before we get to the episode, please rate review and subscribe. Really appreciate if you do. My name is Aramar Slanyan. And this is one Step beyond.
Jonathan, welcome back.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: For the uninitiated for people who don't know, who are you and what do you do?
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Jonathan Anastas I'm the chief executive officer of Clash TV, a streaming platform for high passion sports. And I used to play in a number of hardcore bands, and I've been in the marketing space for a little bit before that.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: I'll go to the hardcore thing first because obviously it's like a huge passion of mine. You didn't play in some hardcore bands. You played in some of the most historically, some of the most relevant bands. So DYS and slapshot around your career, though, you've done some stuff, man. You've really played in major, major companies for a long time. I like how you said it because you got to just package it nice and small, but you've done some serious stuff. Tell us about Clash TV and how you got there.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Clash TV is a live streaming platform for high passion sports. We're starting with street basketball, where we've rolled up the top 15 leagues in New York and some really high profile leagues around the country, including the Drew League in Los Angeles, which is their 50th anniversary as a basketball league. And it's really been an honor to share in that 50th with them. But based around the concept that in this time of great media disruption, right, we're talking about a world where the guilds are on strike and the streamers are losing billions, and cable cutting has never been in a bigger place that people have left cable television. Cable television was the home for most sports regional sports networks. And so the postulate really is as people leave cable, if you're the NFL, the NBA, MLB, you're going to end up on Amazon, you're going to end up on Apple. My last employer, where I was global chief marketing officer, won championship, went from linear TV to Amazon Prime over my tenure with the company could see where the world is going today. If you're one level below that, you don't have a home on cable television, your younger fan base isn't there. The cable carriers can't afford to pay you Bally's sports networks in chapter eleven owing like 20 teams money. And so these companies are going to have to find a direct to consumer platform, and we'd like to be a solution for that to help connect these younger audiences with the sports that they love.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Okay, what's a passion sport?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: A passion sport would be, to me, something like MMA Street basketball could be pickleball, it could be anything where, I mean, not unlike the kind of music that we grew up with, right? Where it's like when we started playing music, there was the kind of music you heard on the radio and there was the kind of music you had to seek out. You and I ended up playing the kind of music you had to seek out. I'm now in the world of finding homes for the sort of sports that people seek out.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: So around just the well, first of all, how long has this been around?
[00:04:38] Speaker A: The platform has been around for a couple of years. And two years into it, they decided that the founders wanted to find somebody with some experience in digital media, some experience in sort of like global sports to help them scale. And that's how we were introduced.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: All right, so this is your first time in the big seat though, right?
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yes. I'm not sure I'd characterize it as the big seat. It's my first time as a CEO for sure.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: That's the big seat.
What is not the big seat about it?
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's interesting. What I've learned in time is scale, and we can talk about that about my journey for the last couple of years, but we are a company of 15 people trying to make an impact in the world. And I'm certainly CEO, I've spent time as like a VP or an SVP in companies of tens of thousands. Right. So there's a lot of ways to define the big seat. I spent six years at Activision, and they sold this year for $90 billion. That was a big seat, right? It wasn't the CEO job, but it was a big seat with a lot of pressure and a lot of revenue pressure.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: The reason I call it the big seat, and it's not like, from an ego perspective, it's not how many people you're leading. It's the like, there's no one to blame but you at the end. It's like it is the space where it's like, all accountability, all things land on you. You're the person. There's no one to look up and be like, well, maybe go upstairs and do that. It lands on you, and success, failure, all of it, you're accountable for.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: You are 100% right about it. It's interesting because I was sort of talking to my wife about that when I started the job, and I was like, before, I could always say, like, well, I didn't agree with that decision, and look what happened.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Or like, oh, if we'd only done that, or that analyst had only done that. I can't hide behind any of that stuff anymore. And one of my big realizations as a first time CEO is exactly that, like, I must be accountable for everything. I must be accountable for every mistake, for every moment of indecision, for every flinch, for every stall. You're absolutely right. It falls on me. Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: And it's like, it's awesome, and it sucks. I don't want to speak to you, but speak for me. So our company has 30 people, and I didn't take on the CEO title until I didn't want to be like, I am the only person who works here, and I'm the CEO. I didn't want to do that. I was technically the CEO. I waited until we had, I don't know, like, let's say ten people working in the company, and now we have, with contractors, 30 ish maybe 35 people in that space. Why I love it is I love just creating and making things and following my gut or following my business sense or the combination of the two of them. I love all of that. What I don't like is, whatever the mistake is, I have to see my accountability in it no matter what. And even if it's something that's somehow removed from me, like, it's within the business, but I wasn't directly involved. I have to understand, well, what is the thing that I did or didn't do that created the dynamic that that thing happened? And it is the most blameless job, because you can't go around blaming people because you have to come back and be like, okay, what did I do that created this? Or what didn't I do that created.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: You know, we're sitting here. I had very little sleep last night, right? Sort of coming back from a visit trip to New York, because I kept waking up thinking about, this didn't get done that, didn't get done.
You're 100% true.
[00:07:58] Speaker B: So now that you've been in this role and how long have you been in the role?
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Since March.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Okay, so I sure there's some stuff that you can't talk about, but what can you talk about? Like, what's the game plan in, let's say, the next year?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: So the game plan in the next year is a complete this year's street basketball season with meaningful growth in terms of audience time spent, engagement versus the prior year. Right. We're out raising around while P L has become increasingly important in raising money, where before you could get away with a bunch of growth charts, growth is still important. Growth is still at our stage of a company, going to be a more meaningful metric than PNL. So I've got to deliver a five X or a ten X in terms of audience growth for street ball. We're going to test the postulate in the fall that we can replicate this kind of audience around elite high school basketball.
And if you can build that sort of high passion audience. But we live in a world now where know LeBron James kids end up with a Netflix deal, right. Post new Nil rules, which for people that don't know are name, image, and know stardom and monetization for an athlete can happen a lot earlier. So we're going to test that theory. We're calling it a pilot. We're going to try to do with street ball what we're doing with the top ten or 15 high schools in the country.
And we're returning to a place where I've spent some time, MMA, because I believe that's another high passion sport. The change I'm kind of bringing to MMA is the cultural face of street basketball. And MMA can look very, very different. I'm trying to find MMA leagues that share more of a cultural vibe and more diversity and that will hold together on an app setting with the street know, we're looking at a couple of black owned MMA leagues with a higher percentage of fighters of color fights from different locales.
Not your typical sort of UFC big cage sort of setup.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Very cool because you'd mentioned this a little bit earlier. And for people who are listening who don't understand rounds, when you're talking about rounds and raising rounds, what can you share with? From a startup perspective? Raising funds from around companies can be.
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Bootstrapped like your company. Right. A lot of companies, especially in the last decade, have taken on outside money very early. Right. And they've somehow, long before me, got ascribed. Like, your first round is like a seed round. Then it's like an A round, b round, c round, d round. When I was at one championship, I was there for our D round and our E round. And at that point, the numbers start looking like you're raising $100 million, you're raising $150,000,000. I mean, it's crazy. During my time at one championship, our CEO, when I was very much in the support role. He raised the money. He's one of the best fundraisers I've ever met in my life. Raised $250,000,000 during the pandemic. Right.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Wild.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: That world has had quite a bit of a reset since the back half of 2022. We're raising a much more modest early round.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And that idea of raising funds, it's like making people believers in what you're going to do.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Yes. Because at this point, you're not buying a balance sheet. Right. Especially at the stage of the company that Clash TV is at.
As it's been explained to me, people are buying an idea and a management team and potentially a sector. Those are the three biggest points and I hear varying balances of those from varying VC. For some, the idea is first, the team is second. For others, the team is first. The idea is second. There's been an old Silicon Valley thing. You don't want to invest in the fourth thing in a space. Right. You want to invest in one of the first three things in a space. Though AI seems to be proving that differently, where we're now investing 100 things deep in the space or 200 things deep in the space. But they need to believe in our team, they need to believe in our idea and they need to believe in our sector. And those are the dividing rods. And there's somewhat soft factors versus, like, a data room full of PNL and cash flow.
[00:12:08] Speaker B: So when you're out and you're going through these rounds, how much are you leaning into the showmanship of growing up in the punk scene?
[00:12:15] Speaker A: I'm not sure I'm leaning into the showmanship of growing up in the punk scene when I'm leaning into and we talked about this when I was on before. I think part of the thread for me is disruption.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: And I think I was a musical disruptor and I've tried to be a business disruptor, and I'm leaning into the belief of disruption. And I'm leaning into this is another sort of typical thing people want to hear about exits, because investors want their money back and they want their money back. So, to be honest, what I'm leaning in most is part of the team that sold Motor Trend on Demand to Discovery for $275,000,000 in 2017, part of the team that took Live by Live public on Nasdaq in 2018 with a $40 million injection. I'm the board chair of taking Alpha Metaverse public on the CSE.
And part of the team, though chachu, is very much the lead on raising $250,000,000 while I was at one. But this idea of a proven track record of exits, that's actually really the most powerful narrative you can give when you're raising money. Because ultimately, if the investor doesn't believe they can get their money back at a ten x multiple, they're not that excited about it.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: So going to the idea of a disruption, I'd agree.
When we talked about it last time. I was super captivated with what you're saying. But I'd also agree. It's like, yeah, you were part of a real musical disruption. Not just how music was played and written, but how the business of music was done. What's disruptive about what you're doing now?
[00:13:43] Speaker A: What's disruptive about what we're doing now? While streaming is certainly not new sports, live sports especially was kind of the last bastion of the old media economy, right? So if you think about cord cutting has gone on forever, right? Like, streaming has gone on forever. But the first thing that people left linear television for was drama, then comedy, then comedy specials, then reality. And sports was like the last thing keeping people in, right? And then sports started leaving, right? Like the NFL is now on Amazon and Google, right? Like MLB is on Apple, and it's like the last thing to leave linear television. And it's been increasingly disruptive, especially as you move down market to these high passion sports. Because again, OK, cable had already lost the NFL, but they were hanging on to the AA Baseball League and the college athletics and all that stuff. And now those places are looking for direct to consumer homes. And so it's the last bit of disruption. I mean, I think about I've been in the sports space since 2019, when I started at one championship. Our television deal in the US was with Turner, and most of our television ratings around the world were linear. And when I left the company, our US deal was with Amazon Prime. It's a very different model.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I know it sounds weird to say, but it's still relatively early days for streaming, but we've already seen streaming starting to lose tons of money and lose some ground. Is there a horizon where the next thing is going to pop up?
[00:15:24] Speaker A: I can't speak to the broad world of premium streaming. Right? I mean, I think streaming, like lots of other categories, leaned into a zero interest rate. Growth is everything.
I don't think those executives are as stupid as people are calling them out for now, to a large degree, the markets are to blame. The markets rewarded them for growth over everything, right? The markets gave Netflix their valuation, shedding billions of dollars in cash because growth was everything. The markets told them growth was everything. Like, they didn't wake up in the morning and say growth is everything they were rewarded for growth is everything they were rewarded for. Making too many shows.
Right? And so I think we're just going to see a retrenchment back to we're going to make less content, we're going to be more reasonable about what we spend on content. We're potentially going to rebundle some things. Right? And so you think about a lot of these companies have like two and three streaming services. That's two and three backends. You're already seeing it come together, right? You're already seeing like, paramount plus and Showtime come together, right? You're already seeing the Disney bundle of Disney Plus. Plus max plus, ESPN plus all coming together. And so it's retrenching, but it's not going away.
What we all learned from the music business, the genie does not go back in the bottle.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: The genie never goes back in the bottle. We may get a new genie, but the genie never goes back in the bottle.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Well, I mean, case in point. Like, major labels didn't go away just the way that people have interacted with major labels and the artists interact with major labels. One of the things that I've loved we might have talked about this last time, is I love the idea that the singles, like a single, has become a thing again. And artists just put out a lot of singles, and there's kind of a move away from putting out full length records. They take too much time. They're not cost effective. You don't make enough money. But you can put out a ton of singles here and there. So major labels didn't go away. They got a sharp wake up call. They reorganized. They figured some stuff out, and they're just doing things in a different way. Some ways really, really good, some ways.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Not as good, and making more money than ever before.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I did not know that. Really?
[00:17:37] Speaker A: Major labels have never had higher valuation.
Major labels have never had more income. You know, it's interesting because given the generation I'm from, I hear a lot of griping from musicians about the stream rate, and I think that's, like, the false data point to fall on, right? Because you can look at a cost per stream and you can be like, I got to get a million streams to make $1,000 or $400 or whatever it is.
And it's created ripples and inequality in the market. But my argument would be at the very top of the market.
Drake is making more money from streaming than anybody ever made from selling physical product. And for all the people, attack Spotify. So Universal Music is a publicly traded company. Warner Music is a publicly traded company. Spotify is a publicly traded company. You can go in and anybody can go read their annual reports. Spotify's business challenge is they turn 68 or 69% of gross revenue back to rights holders. Now, that may all not stream back to the artist, and there may be some problems there, but basically, $0.70 on the dollar goes back to rights holders. Go take Warner's earnings apart or Universal's earnings apart. They're not shedding 70% of top line revenue back to artists. I think from my era, if you had an amazing deal, if you had an amazing deal, you made a dollar 50 on a CD that was, like, wholesaled for 675 $7, that's not 70% of the money flowing back to an artist. And that's like, before recoups.
It's interesting.
And by the way, back to your point about disruption. I think this is a really interesting thing about music.
So rock music used to be the great disruptor. What I saw happen during the streaming revolution. And you talked about singles. Hip hop leaned into disruption, right? Hip hop's, like, it's all singles, it's all guesting.
I'm going to release something every week, every day. It's kind of like the digital version of mixtapes, right? I'm not going to care about how much money I make on this. I'm just going to think about it all holistically.
Rock music was stuck in the ten album cycle. I remember when there were bands like AC DC and the Red Chili Peppers, they're like, you can't break my record apart. That was sequenced perfectly. I want it consumed exactly the way it was sequenced. Right? And they were still in the two year record release tour cycle. And they were disrupted, right?
[00:20:11] Speaker B: They were disrupted. This is a really cool point, because hip hop, that idea around singles and hip hop, and I guess the culture that came out of and surrounds hip hop and then kind of morphed into other things, heavily single centered. And I do remember thinking, like, however many years ago, I was like, that's weird.
Why is it so focused on singles versus albums? And that's a really good reflection.
Even if we're just thinking about our own bands, our own endeavors, it's like, I put out a record in 2020 and people are like, hey, when are you putting out your next record? I'm like, Dude, I got like a family, I got a business, I got all this stuff. It's like, yeah, we're going to put out an EP. I've got it most of the way done, but I don't know when I'm going to write an LP. But it's like, why don't I just put out a single? Why don't I just put out a couple of songs here and there? But it's just not the way that I've done things. And so I'm not disruptive enough. So I can see how that plays out, not just in rock music, but also kind of like guitar driven music has kind of typically been like that.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: But I'll tell you something else, that it's interesting that hip hop did take from our world, which was never the mainstream rock world. It feels to me disproportionately the idea of independent release and owning your own masters and owning your own publishing and not waiting for somebody to pay for your ride. Hip hop also leaned into which is the world we came from, right? Major labels wouldn't put out our record, so we put out our own, right? Major labels wouldn't distribute our record, so we distributed our own. That ethos feels embedded in hip hop much more than it ever felt embedded in corporate rock. Like you sort of feel about these artist entrepreneurs, they are disproportionately hip hop artists. They're not disproportionately rock artists.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Let's take a step back, though, I want to talk about cable for 1 second. So major labels though, they didn't get disrupted or sorry, they got disrupted, but they didn't go away.
Is cable gone? Is cable just going to die and become completely obsolete? Or does cable kind of take its slaps and then come back?
[00:22:21] Speaker A: I don't think it's ever coming back like it came back before.
I think there are places that cable remains. I mean, it's like a lot of things. I think until the last of the boomers and pre boomers die, there will be some cable, right? The debate has always been, say the 28 year olds that work for me or work for you. Television is an iPad rested on their chest through a WiFi signal 100%. There's been some debate that when you have kids, you will move back to a lean back experience.
We're both parents. I can't speak to your daughter.
My son has no interest in screen size is still irrelevant to him. He is as happy holding my phone when he's in the chair at the barbershop as holding his iPad while he's having some lunch, as sitting in the living room with a 75 inch screen. Literally, screen size is irrelevant to him. So I'm not sure that ever happens. But things happen slower than you think, and then they happen faster. But the absolute death of something takes longer. I mean, AOL still exists.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yahoo still exists. Not at the scale they ever did before. So cable is not going to be gone gone for a long, long time until potentially the next technical disruption. But cable's ability to mint money that was a 40% margin business doesn't exist anymore.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: What about corporate media?
Where do you think that's going?
[00:23:51] Speaker A: What's your definition of corporate media?
[00:23:54] Speaker B: That's a good question. So we're going to say like the CNN's or the Fox News's or any of the major networks that are whatever people listen to. I don't have a stake in whatever they subscribe to of those channels. But I also mean like kind of legacy media, legacy papers, all of those things. Like seeing things. Like, let's say one of my favorite news sources is Breaking Points. I love Breaking Points and I think it's like really good reporting, really balanced, really smart.
I like the format of the longer conversations. It's all on YouTube or on all the different streaming platforms. That seems to be I don't want to say surplanting, but they have the ability to outmaneuver a lot of the old models of delivering news.
Can legacy media kind of hold its own? Can it maneuver?
Can it find a way to survive and thrive again?
[00:24:46] Speaker A: On the macroeconomic entertainment side, for example, I actually think we're seeing a return to legacy media and you sort of say, why?
Disney has a couple of things that say Netflix doesn't. Disney disproportionately owns incredibly powerful IP, right? And Disney has a multi touch point flywheel, right? So somehow the bundle to Disney could not just know ESPN Plus for me, Disney Plus for my son, they're going to clearly complete the rest of the Hulu transaction for our whole family. That flywheel can include the parks, right? And you think about all the powerful IP that drives that. One of the dings on Netflix has been is for outspending every legacy media company on production in the last half decade or decade. How much AA IP did they create? I mean, they created House of Cards, which is over, and Stranger Things, and how many other IP we could keep ratling on our fingers for how much powerful IP Disney owns. And the value of that IP cannot be discounted. What we've learned a little bit is maybe Silicon Valley knew how to distribute things better than Disney, but Disney still doesn't know us how to make things better. Right? There was a classic analysis. I think the Ankler did it, which is a new media source to your point, about how Netflix got fewer rotten tomato scores for every dollar spent than any other studio in the game. They were the least effective creator of quality.
All that money got them very little quality. And no surprise, HBO had, like, the greatest return on rotten tomato scores.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Where my bifurcated view of legacy media comes in is it seems in the last few years, at least on the news side, all the venture capital and all the investment has gone towards what I would call alternative news sources. However, those alternative news sources, the bias seems to have been no bias. Like there's been a disproportionate push to create the unbiased centrist, whatever you want to call it, right, that the world feels a bit fed up with. I have to choose between MSNBC and Fox, right? And so if you think about Semaphore Axios, the free press, right, where Barry Weiss and her wife resigned from The New York Times, where they felt like they couldn't tell the stories they wanted to tell.
And at least for the people writing checks for news today, they were disproportionately interested in writing checks towards what they believed were a centrist view of the world and less of a polarizing view of the world.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: It's totally fascinating to me because growing up, the news is the news, right? And it's like, whatever.
Even when I was a kid, people say, you can't trust the news. Now it's like people were saying that 40 years ago. I remember hearing that when I was like a little kid.
But as I've gotten older, I just feel that there's sensationalism has, really, because it's like you're constantly bombarded with media in every way that you interact with the world. And people are going to have all sorts of opinions, and I'm largely okay with interacting with a lot of different kinds of opinions. There are some things I don't want to interact with, but I'm largely okay with that. But what I'm really drawn to is being able to hear larger pieces of news or deeper conversations that can get more into nuances and give you more information or if I have the time to dedicating myself to reading something that's a little bit longer or a little bit deeper, a little bit more researched. And this isn't a hack on legacy media necessarily, or legacy news necessarily, because I think it's like if you've got, let's say, like a five minute segment on something, you're only going to be able to hit the most salacious, the most biggest things. Right?
More long form conversations are the ones that I find the most interesting, the most educational, the ones where I can draw an opinion from. I can build my own opinion instead of feeling like, here's a prepackaged opinion that we're giving you when you can take it or turn it down.
I don't have a good or a bad opinion about it. All I can say is where my attention is drawn now is more to longer format discussion based conversations or longer format, deeper dive writing. And that seems to be more present now than before. It does seem more centrist with different perspectives put in there. And I tell you, I can't even imagine the last time I put on or pick I picked up something that came from kind of like a traditional news source, like kind of like the big names or turned on, like kind of a cable news show. I can't even think the last time, not because I dislike it or I'm against it. It's just not where I'm if I'm going to spend five minutes on something or ten minutes on something, that's not where I'm spending my time, not in a negative way.
Are they going to, from your perspective, take this trend and be able to kind of reestablish themselves or are they going to go away eventually?
[00:30:12] Speaker A: I think it's very hard to answer. I think for whatever reason, our society is still powered by outrage.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I think it's too much man.
I came barely been engaged with social media. It's just people have a total right to be upset and should be upset about lots of things. But it's just like I feel like I turn on social media and it's like constantly and I can't life is there's so much challenging stuff going on, for sure, and there is so much beautiful stuff going on.
I just want to have a balanced approach to life. Sorry to interrupt when you said the rage, you're right.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: I mean, the world is still powered by outrage.
Everybody's tribal and nobody has any room for you use the word nuance. Nobody has the word for nuance. And even more dangerously, nobody has the room for multiple things can be true at once.
We live in a very complicated world where multiple things can be true at once every day. I'm a great CEO and I'm a terrible CEO every great day. I'm a great husband and a terrible husband every day. I'm a great father and a terrible father. But we live in a world where we don't want to sit in the nuance of anything.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: I'm going to push on something there though.
I feel like it's changing.
I feel that there's like a fatigue that has set in a bit about this because there's so much shit going on right now that people should be upset and because we have so much access to information that previously wouldn't have been as accessible. It's like, yeah, people can be upset. And also there's just shit where you're like, fuck, we've had 100 years of this or 50 years of this or 20 years of this or five years of this, of whatever thing that we're talking about long standing problems that don't seem to be changing or improving or maybe getting worse. I understand and totally I celebrate the idea of people taking the streets, pushing for change and all of that. Where I have the concern here is like engaging with stuff that like, let's say the phone here. It's just like a portal of intensity that you're also kind of addicted to, right? And it's like there's a life has got a lot of space for anger, outrage, all of these those things and then interacting with something that's like too much. It's almost like you're mainlining that constantly. It feels like to me that people increasingly are becoming a bit fatigued and they still care about the things they care about from whatever political perspective they come from. But maybe I'm starting to feel a little bit more of a sense of that idea of nuance where people are like, well actually nuance is a good thing and nuance isn't. Maybe a good thing is not an easy thing when you're making a post. So maybe you don't make the post or maybe you make the post and you take the time to do it. Or maybe you just say, hey, maybe no one's going to actually read this nuanced post and maybe I just don't engage at all. Maybe I talk to my friend or my neighbor or I sit on it. I think about it more. It just feels more so. And I could be totally wrong. It almost feels like society has put on the brakes a little bit and been like, okay, we're all very angry all the time. Let's bring it back. And that's what I would like to believe and that's what I'd like to hope to give it from like a business model perspective. I can understand why things that create outrage have become a model for media because it's like that's how you get the clicks and you're getting your clicks. That's how you get your advertising. I don't think anyone here is evil or has done the wrong thing or anything like that. It's like this whole thing is built to not serve discourse and it's not because people are trying to create like tribalism or anger or everyone hate each other. It's just like from a business model perspective. But can that business model survive and thrive? Like, can it continue or can it realign?
[00:34:02] Speaker A: It's hard to say. I'm a little less optimistic than you are because I think that that business was created to fuel clicks and engagement which drive ad dollars or direct to consumer conversions or all that stuff. But it also feeds self affirmation to the other side of the equation, right to the listener, to the viewer. And I still don't feel that most people want their views challenged. Regardless of where you sit in the political spectrum, I don't think people want to be questioned that this thing that they this party that they believe in, whichever party that is, or this person that they believe in, or this decision that was made could be questioned. So I'm a little less optimistic. I still see a much more tribal world out there.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Oh, man, you grew up in you're an east coast guy, I'm a west coast guy. So we're playing out our hardcore our hardcore archetypes here.
[00:34:56] Speaker A: We are.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: I totally get it because you are way more in that world. I'm just in a guy with an opinion here. You've got much more expertise in it all. Media is so interesting to me because I'm a kid of the grew up watching TV, and I grew up for a large part just kind of like believing what I saw on TV and reading what I saw in the news. Now I'm grown up have to make my own opinions on things.
I will say I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believe that while people can have challenges with how they discuss things, and right and wrong can be debatable. But there's something in there that I think from a societal point of view, we can't agree just generally what's right or wrong. I feel like we're going to get there. The stuff about how media works with us or works against us, I don't think any of that stuff's intentional. And I do feel it's like, I'll give you an example. I think of it like email. Email is still like a relatively new technology for us. And I know that sounds strange because we all email all the time, but email has been with us for a blink of an eye historically, and people still write fucking stupid emails. It doesn't mean they're bad people. They just write stupid, stupid emails. Where are we going to be with email in five years, ten years? 20 years? Our reaction and use of that technology is still catching up to how quickly it's been adopted and what a cornerstone it's going to become. But at some point there's going to be just to go even deeper on it. Have you ever been trained on how to write email? Did you ever go to a class? It wouldn't have been part of college for you, but did anyone ever teach you how to write an email?
[00:36:38] Speaker A: Yes. And it's funny because I think even that's generational, right? And we could have a whole deep dive into what I think the pre COVID workplace and the post COVID workplace look like, and dealing with young professionals who have never actually worked in the pre COVID workplace. Even email has become generational. Like, apparently I'm generation X.
I actually believe we're the first natively digital generation. Meaning I didn't have email when I was growing up, I didn't have email in high school. Right.
I never have had a professional position without a computer and an email address and a mobile phone.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:37:18] Speaker A: To a certain degree that's digitally native.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Gen Y and Gen Z eye roll at the formality of Gen X email. It's too formal, it's too long. Why is there salutation? Why is there a sign off?
So even that stuff is like generational, and there's not like a single view of that. So in fact, I believe I was to some degree trained how to write an email. Right? I mean, it's funny, but did you.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Go to a class on it ever?
[00:37:49] Speaker A: No, I never went to a class on how to read, but I was for sure schooled on how to write an email.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: Totally.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: And I don't think anyone's schooled on how to write an email today.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Okay. There's a reason because I'm going to type back to media.
Email is totally interesting to me because email think how many emails you send in a day or how many you get. It's like a ton. It's like a cornerstone of how we deal with things, right? How we communicate with people. But most people, when they go into the workplace, there's not like, okay, as a company, we're going to provide you a training for how to write an email.
And when you're in high school, there's not like there might be now, I don't have the going ons in high school or in college. There's not like, this is how you write an email. There's how you write, but how you write an email, how do you write it in a way that works with your audience, that thinks what you want to do? I see email as being one of the biggest strike points for conflict in the workplace. And in fact, I deal with people all the time where it's like there's challenges in the workplace. You can almost always draw it back to emails, emails, emails. At some point, society gets it with email just like it's gotten it with most things. It doesn't mean there's still not going to be incidents of people acting like jackasses or sending a bad email or this or that, but you kind of figure it out over time. When I think of media and news and all that kind of stuff, and you think of real news, news, like network news, and newspapers and all these things.
These are things. And then we bring in all of the streaming and stuff like that. I just feel like we're all still kind of figuring it out and people consuming news and really being invested in news and how it forms opinions and all that. We're all still figuring it out.
What I would like to believe is that I think that the more that we're in this stuff and the more that we're dealing with these different mediums of how we communicate, we kind of get it more and we get it more in a way where it's like, it could still operate as a business, it can still make money, but we don't necessarily have to write headlines for clickbait to draw people in to fuel rage, or we don't have to only go to news sources where it's like, I'm just going to agree with you. And it's like just like when we write email at work, it's like we're going to get it over time. And I am a believer that people get it over time, but all of this technology is still a blink of the eye in terms of the human experience and I just think we'll get it over time. That's my belief. That's what I hope.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: I think you're right. I mean, it's interesting when you talk about going to school to do this. I mean, the interesting thing is if you do business like you and I do business, I don't think they teach you how to do that anywhere. And I was having this conversation some where like, okay, why do the best companies in the world hire two year associates from Bain, two year associates from McKinsey?
Because nobody comes out of school knowing how to do business.
And what you know, if you get somebody that spent two years at Bain or two years at McKinsey, somebody taught them the most basics, how to run a meeting, how to do follow up, how to write an email.
And I think one of the post pandemic struggles we're having, I'm trying to lead a post pandemic company, in essence, is one of my challenges every day is trying to find time to mentor people who literally don't know how to do business. And I'm not saying that to be hypercritical of my team, but they didn't spend two years at Bain and they spent their two years since university not interacting in an office and not being challenged and literally not knowing how to run a meeting or follow up on a meeting.
It's so interesting. I try to explain to people who have only worked post pandemic about what I used to call my office Spider Sense, where I could walk into the building in the morning and as I go through my day, in my peripheral vision, there's a meeting of eight people in that glass room. I probably should have been in that meeting. I'm out of that meeting. Should that be concerning to me about my career? I'm going to buttonhole somebody in that meeting. I'm going to find them in the parking lot. I'm going to find them by the coffee machine. I'm going to find them in the restroom. I'm going to do a swing by of their office and find out what happened in that meeting. Why wasn't I there? What are the next steps? Where's the next meeting? I can hijack. Like, there's a spider sense to it.
You don't know what zoom you weren't invited to, right?
[00:42:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: You don't know what side conversation took place because you can't look out your window and you can't see whose car is there at eight in the morning. You can't see whose car is there at eight at night. Those skills have to be retaught.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. The post Pandemic business world and how we run everything is like, I think, a super cool challenge for leadership to unlock, for me, some of the most fun I've had and some of the most fun conversations is a term I think we've all gotten a little sick of. It's like the new normal. It's like, yeah, this is the new normal. We are going to have flex work. We are going to have remote work. There's going to be the zoom things. People are going to be left out intentionally or unintentionally. The way the game is done now is going to be way different. And I just think that's, like, part of the, like, hey, let's figure it out. Human beings are complex.
We are wonderful and cool and amazing. We're capable of doing the coolest things, and we're, like, messy and terrible and all of that other stuff.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Greedy and selfish.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah, like, all of it. And I just feel like it's like everything that we get, every new challenge that we get, like, the pandemic and the resulting things that come from it, from just a work perspective, it's like, oh, this is cool. Like, man, there's all these new things to figure out. That, I think, is the opportunity to make things cooler, more inclusive, more direct, faster, smoother. I just want people to be happy, have good work experiences. I want barriers to be taken away as much as possible. I think the changes that have come from the Pandemic can create some of that. So in terms of access for different kinds of people who have different needs, who maybe coming to a traditional workplace was challenging, people who are neurodivergent, people who have all sorts of different experiences, it's like, what we can do now is fucking cool. Like, talk about getting the best and the brightest. If you're going from this teeny little pool who can kind of fit traditional business structure, that's not the best of the brightest. It's the best and the brightest from a small little segment of society. Now we've got a way bigger segment we can draw from. It's just about how do we do it in a way that the good stuff from how business used to be done can be brought in and kind of capitalized on while we're adapting to this newer way.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: I agree. I'm going to bring it full circle. Be hip hop, don't be rock and roll.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Good. I love it. Let's go into you more specifically because we covered a lot of cool stuff there. So from the first time we talked to now, career has changed, but life has changed a lot. A lot too. So just what's the general update on you as a person?
[00:44:38] Speaker A: The general update could take more time than you could ever want to talk to me. I mean, I sort of feel like we say this all the time. I sort of feel like three years feels like ten years. I don't think there's been a time in our lifetime where three years has felt like ten years any more than now.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: I know, man.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: When you and I sat down last time, I couldn't announce it, but I had just accepted a global CMO position for a venture backed company that's competing with the UFC around the entire globe, called One Championship. And my family and I were going to move to Singapore in the fall of 2019. I began commuting to Singapore on a regular basis. I began really leaning back into my global remit. When you and I sat down, I was just wrapping up a job in the music business, which is a place that you and I are really passionate about.
The limitation for me is it felt local, not global. We were streaming global things, but it wasn't necessarily a global company.
One of the things I loved about being at Activision was the global nature of the business and doing things like bringing Call of Duty to China. And I was really intent on getting back onto a global stage. And I got the most global role of my life, where not only was it a global business, but the great bulk of the business was non us. Right. And I was going to live in another part of the world.
And so I found myself the back end of 2019, commuting back and forth between the United States and Singapore and trying to navigate when to move a family that included a small child and a wife and what life was going to look like halfway along the world and this little island nation and ramping up in a new job.
And that would have been a challenge enough in itself.
And then two big things happened, a personal one. I lost my dad and then the global one of the pandemic. And they sort of happened in that order.
And then trying to find some sort of balance or normality after that, which was potentially one of the biggest challenges of my life.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: So when we first met and done our podcast, one of the kind of the fun parts was talking about growing up as a punk and you had these kind of liberal hippie parents and how they were reacting to you, this punk kid, and you talked a lot about your relationship with your parents and kind of like finding yourself through that. And then it was just really mere weeks later that your dad passed away. And I remember you give me a text, and we're chatting about a little bit, and I was like, fuck, man. What an intense thing to experience. Then almost instantly followed by this pandemic. So I know, of course, you lost people in your life, as all of us have, but losing a parent is like a whole different thing. What's different in your life and in your world and in you as a result of having lost your dad?
[00:47:38] Speaker A: To be honest, to answer that question, I'm not even sure I've completely processed it or I'll ever completely process it. I've always been a career first person, and one of my greatest strengths and one of my greatest weaknesses has been the ability to turn it all off, right? To be like, the warrior.
That sense of samurai, mercenary, it's tattooed on my body. It's been a life ethos that I've lived at. It's made me very successful at what I've done. It's probably made me less successful as a son, less successful as a know, et cetera. So, to be honest, as my dad first got ill, I was probably too good at blocking it out, right? And I could avoid dealing with it, and I could avoid leaning into it by just being like, oh, I have to be in singapore. Oh, I have to be in china. I have to be in japan. I'm sending best wishes, but I'm in japan.
I was in Singapore in December of 19. I can't remember if I got a text or a phone call, but your father only has maybe a couple of weeks left.
And I remember I had booked a ticket from Singapore to los Angeles. Singapore is hot all the time. 95 degrees, 95% humidity. I think I only had jeans and t shirts in singapore and boston's, the snow. And so I had a second suitcase in my car at lax. And I was going to fly to la. And I was going to get that second suitcase and fly to boston.
And the night before I left, I had dinner at this teeny little sushi bar at the st. Regis hotel in singapore with my boss, who I had a very complex relationship with over the three years. And some ways it was a really strong relationship, and in some ways, it was a very troubled relationship. There were some places we never really got synchronicity on, which is very tough between a CEO and a CMO.
And to his credit, over that dinner and for his privacy, I won't give you the details, but he shared his experience in losing his father very meaningful three hour dinner. And I took that learning and took that knowledge to my flight the next day.
The other thing that I did was as strong as I can be and as I want to be and I think I am, I can get into conflict avoidance. And I just knew in the back of my head I had this feeling if I flew to La. And got off a plane, I was going to come up with every excuse possible not to get on the next plane to Boston. It was just never going to happen. And so I go from Singapore to Hong Kong. I'm sitting in the Hong Kong airport and I was like, I'm not going to go. I'm not going to go to Boston. If I go to La. If I don't change my plane right now from Hong Kong to Boston, I'm just not going to go.
And I found a flight while I'm sitting in the Hong Kong airport from Hong Kong to Boston. So I have no out. That was like what I needed to do for myself. So I couldn't back out of it, couldn't just get off and go home and hug my son and kiss my wife. And I remember buying a winter know because there's just t shirts. I buy a winter coat in the Hong Kong airport. God knows why they sell winter boats. I buy a scarf in the Hong Kong airport. I buy a couple sweaters in the Hong Kong airport and I fly to Boston. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I have no idea what to know. I'm trying to think about how to handle this situation. I just remember walking into his hospital room and he just looks at me and he goes, what am I going to do?
He's scared.
And I just decide that what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend time sharing with him all the ways that he parented me that I've tried to pass on as a parent.
My dad's the Greek side of my family. Greeks are very physical in their love.
My dad always kissed me, like kissed on the lips. It was embarrassing when you were a kid in Boston, like, my dad kisses me on the lips and I kissed my son a lot. And my son is this thing with me. My son Cameron is always like, no wet kisses, daddy, no wet kisses. Just dry kisses, Daddy. And I remember my dad is wet kisses. And so I sort of tell him that story and that I kiss my son like he used to kiss me.
And that's just what I try to share for the next few days.
Those things that went from him to me to Cameron, and that's how I choose to spend the time with him.
And then also I'm not good if I'm not doing something right. And my dad's not really eating. He's losing weight. And my dad loves ice cream, always loved ice cream, and I should decide that what I'm going to do is I'm just going to find whatever the best bougie great ice cream is, and if that's all he wants to eat, that's going to eat. And I spent and I find it. And every day I bring some crazy, ridiculous $10 Court ice cream or whatever to my dad, and I just sit there and talk about what his parenting meant and what have passed on and feed him ice cream.
And it's probably the most he ate that whole time in the hospital.
And then after the fifth night, he must have had some pain in the night. We're not really clear.
He gets morphine and he's not really there anymore.
And because he's not really there anymore, then I sort of feel like I have a family. I don't need to be there anymore. And I fly back to Los Angeles and I'm in Ohio with my family, and we wake up on like, the morning of the 27th to voicemail for my stepmom, sort of saying that they had fallen asleep holding hands together, and she woke up at two and he was gone.
It's sad. It's tragic. And he was only 82 or 83, and it's just crazy that a couple of months later, with how the world changes, all of a sudden, that seems to be like he left at the perfect moment.
Three months later, he wouldn't have been holding his wife of 35 years hand. He would have been alone looking at people in, like, hazmat suits. You can imagine how scary that would have been. Like, how what a way to go out.
And it's just that craziness of what seems sort of like the lowest point you can have is weirdly, like its own kind of blessing.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: Thanks for sharing that. And for anyone wondering why it took us down this, it's like you and I have developed a relationship over the years, and largely a lot of our relationship is through text and phone.
The closeness to your father passing, to our initial conversation, and then kind of communicating with you after that. And then also because we'll talk about this next chapter, it's like kind of like the isolation you were facing shortly after that.
I kind of felt it was important just so that you could talk about it, because you are clearly you really know what you're talking about when we talk about the business world. You're super successful. You've done cool stuff, both from punk scene but also is in work. And so much of your story is that kind of like button down, like push it down, keep going forward.
This past, for the short amount of time that I've known you, this period seems like the most vulnerable one of the most vulnerable periods of your life, for sure.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: I mean, what you talk about is, I realized your greatest strength is always your greatest. Weakness, right?
They come from the same place.
We live in a funny world where I'm not sure we know that many healthy, super successful people like what it takes to be super successful, I'm not sure is what truly balanced, healthy people want to do.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: I can also say that about musicians. Some of the most creative, amazing musicians that I've ever met are people who have very serious demons. Very serious. Not everyone. Now, you might have like, Walter Schweifls, who's just like a wonderful, well balanced person.
He's doing well. But most musicians that I know are super. Not all, but many. Same with business people. I mean, a large part of why my job exists and my company exists is because I help people with all that.
Anything else you want to say about your dad and his passing before we go into the next space?
[00:57:08] Speaker A: As we were talking about earlier, everybody brings their biases to how they view the world.
And then I also think humans are in this constant sort of like against and not necessarily against each other, but against whatever their wound was, right? So both of my grandfathers were very successful immigrants, and I think that my dad sort of felt like he didn't want that same distance where work was first.
And so my dad tried to elevate parenting and relationships over work more so than his dad did. And there were times in my life as I leaned into work that I would judge it, dismiss it, wish that he had been a more successful person so my path could have been easier.
I do all this work with my son, so he's got this incredible network whenever he wants it, and it's like, why didn't my dad do that for me?
And what I realized, and it's ironic, given the musical path that I took, that I didn't recognize it in my dad, is that he had really leaned into his creativity and his community in a way that I deeply underestimated and sort of saw in the process, especially as I was in the hospital and I'm watching the people who came in and talked to him and the impact he had on their lives and their community.
And there was a whole bunch of guilt in it for me about how I underestimated his impact on the world and his place in the world because it didn't fit the model of what I was chasing at that time.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: I relate a lot. My dad is still with us, but as we've talked about, my dad lives with dementia, and he lives separate from us now in a care home. And my dad was the homemaker in our family. And my mom was a breadwinner. And I always kind of laugh about like it's like 7 seconds, not just girls fun. It's almost bizarre to me that someone would have to write that because I grew up with my mom was the leader and she was like, the person who made things happen. So I always grew up with a strong female figure in my life, and there were times where I would have but also at the same time, our dad was, like, the hero of the house, right? We all loved our dad, and he was kind of closed off emotionally guy, but also totally, clearly loved us. But I definitely grew up kind of wishing my dad had a high powered job or this or that, and kind of wishing my dad was like the other dad because my dad had this pointy little goatee, like a devil's goatee had a thick accent, and I just wanted to be like every other kid, and especially when I kind of started going down my path of music and all this stuff and my dad couldn't relate to it. He wanted me to go to school, and he was always very critical of me not going to school.
I did eventually go, but we had a lot of conflict. And then as I got older, I was like, oh, shit. My dad was way more punk than I was. My dad didn't have a formal education, became an engineer just by figuring it out. Lived all over the world, like on his own before the Internet or any of that stuff. He had a culturally mixed marriage, which was very frowned upon in their generation, did everything he could to make sure his kids had the best life. And we were talking about that kind of regret of like, fuck, I didn't realize how cool my dad was until it was far too late to be in that space.
And I just want to really acknowledge that how hard that was for you to talk about, and I hope anyone listening, I hope you get whatever you get out of it, is something that's positive about the importance of recognizing how finite time is or life is and really respecting and acknowledging what you have while you can.
[01:01:23] Speaker A: And, like, perspective, right?
I had such a skewed perspective of the whole thing.
[01:01:30] Speaker B: Me too.
But let's talk about what happened next.
So pandemic hits and you've got a job in Singapore. So what happened?
[01:01:41] Speaker A: Pandemic Hits I lost my dad.
Holidays are over. I have to get back on a plane and go to Singapore. Right?
And the plan had been, at that point, as often happens in these relocations or international postings, I'm going to go back and forth as needed. Family is going to relocate at the start of the next school year.
There's always been a fair amount of work in my life, so if I'm doing like so I'm say I'm doing two weeks. Two weeks, right. It's not that different from the pattern my wife and I had built over the years. It's harder being a, you know, it's going okay.
It's March.
I'm working away at my office in Know. I'm hearing things that are happening in the Know there's international news, but I'm just buried and trying to get up speed on this new job, right?
And my boss, the CEO, comes in the office. He's like, Bro, you got to take the next plane home. And I was kind of like, what do you mean? He's like, they're shutting down California. I hadn't even really thought all that thing through. This is when the worst case things were like, oh, it'll blow over in a few weeks, right? Like, the things that happened before.
And I book a flight back to Los Angeles.
I want to say it's, like, March 17. Don't quote me, whatever. The last day. That la. Is open, right?
And it's when JFK looks like that chaos scene of, like, a war with all these people flying in. And I land in La. Like, the last plane that lands right before the city goes dark. It's like a science fiction movie. It's so crazy that I'm not even sure I can get an Uber. So I call, like, some old school car service that I haven't called in, like, a decade, that I have an account where somebody can show up with your name on a sign just so I can get know.
And I think a week, two weeks, I'll be back to Singapore, whatever.
And then it turns into what it turns into, and a couple of dynamics take place. A, we're all about, like, our we've been talking about our greatest strengths or our greatest weakness. I am a warrior. I turn into a warrior in these situations. Like, if we need remember when you can't find toilet paper? Can't find toilet paper. I'll find toilet paper. You can't find this. I'll find that.
And I turn on warrior survival mode, and I think I'm doing the family of service in this, not realizing how closed off I am, right, that everybody needs different things.
And I'm in, like, war, you know, I'm working Singapore hours, so I'm, like, on Zooms from, like, five in the afternoon until two in the morning, and then sleeping and getting up and then getting whatever needs to get. And, like, I'm going to go out in the world and get these things and find these things, and that's creating distance at home, because I think everybody gives the kind of love they think they want to get. Everybody gives the kind of mentoring they want to get, right, without necessarily thinking through. That may not be the kind of love the other person wants. That may not be the kind of mentoring the other person wants. And I'm so in survival mode that I'm giving my family what I think they want and what I think they need, but it turns out that's not actually what they want or need, right?
And then also in all of our relationships, we have cadences, right? Like, the time that we've been married and the time that I've been a parent, it's been three weeks home one week away, three weeks home, ten days away, two weeks home, two days away, whatever. We've got a cadence. We're comfortable with it. Now we have to sit in this discomfort of first, too much time together. Like, we haven't been together 24/7 no break forever.
And that's got its own stresses and challenges, and with just the general pressure of nobody really knows what's going on.
And then as things lift and I have to go away now, I can't go to Singapore for two weeks because I have to go sit in quarantine for two weeks. So to get the ROI out of the trip, I got to go for two months or three months. And so then everything's challenged by too much time together and too much time apart. Right? So all the compromises and agreements that get made in any kind of relationship in life and in work and all that stuff are all blown up when we're trying to create new ones. And it was a very difficult situation for work, for my marriage, for my parenting, for all that stuff. And then layered on top of that is I dropped out of high school because I couldn't stay in one building for, like, 9 hours, and now I got to stay in one building for, like, 24 hours. And I remember at some point and I'm finding illegal gyms to work out at.
My meds is working out. Right? That's what keeps my head on. And so I'm seeking medication, right? So I'm finding, like, there's a gym over here where they don't want to lose their life savings, so you can go in the side door, and there's a gym over there where they don't care about the rules. And my wife is sure that I'm going to come home with COVID every day, and I have to have the conversation, these are my meds.
I don't think I can survive in this. We got to work out that this is okay, or I don't think I'm going to make it.
And so everything has to get redefined. Right? I mean, you think about I can't think about a time in our life where everything had to get redefined at.
[01:07:32] Speaker B: Once like that all at once, everything.
[01:07:34] Speaker A: And I am such a horrible creature of habit and such a warrior that that makes me particularly bad at it.
[01:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
So how'd you work it out?
[01:07:47] Speaker A: Trying to change to the degree that any person can change.
Trying to find empathy in each other's situations and unmet need, and a fuck ton of therapy, like, individually and couples.
[01:08:03] Speaker B: Therapy coming out on the other end of these challenges, father passes away, challenges in the family, pandemic. And then a work relationship that you got a lot out of out of that job, but you had a challenging relationship with your boss. It was a very difficult time. And watching you deal with that from a distance and the times where we would talk hearing that strain in your voice while also just like, bullshitting and catching up or whatever.
There was a moment where I was like, what's going to happen with this guy? But you get through, and now you're on the other end. What's different about you?
[01:08:47] Speaker A: I think that's for those around me to sort of figure out if I'm.
[01:08:50] Speaker B: Different, call your wife right now.
[01:08:53] Speaker A: I think it's up to those around me to figure out what's different or it's different enough.
It was interesting because I think diamonds are made under pressure, right?
Tough situations force you to grow or fold.
I'm a big believer, and this caused problems during lockdowns, but quitting isn't an option, so you have to figure out how to grow and figure out how to rethink.
I learned a ton in my time there, and it was also very difficult, and part of the difficulty came from the dynamics of that culture. And I also realized that part of the difficulty came from me being, like, what I thought were, like, tactical marketing decisions that were being questioned or challenged, like, hey, I really know how to do this. How do you micromanage my business? Part of that was actually I would have made different strategic decisions about the business, not the marketing. And I am trying to relitigate that in the marketing. And I didn't realize that that's on me, right. That to some degree I was not know, you're a soldier. And what did Jeff Bezos talk about? You know, it's the loud dinner table conversation, but then once an agreement is made, you got to lean into it 120%. And the part that was on me is I was trying to relitigate some of those things as the CMO, and that's not right, and I have to own that. And I had to learn that. The inspiration in that is it made me start to think, maybe it's time to make the big decisions.
And so as part of my transition plan, I decided to go to Wharton and complete their advanced management training program to try to fill in some operational gaps as somebody who came up through marketing so I could take a shot.
And it was interesting because it happened at a time that my son was starting kindergarten, and so I could also be a role model of, look, daddy's going to school too.
At the same time, he's transitioning from preschool to kindergarten and, like, look, hey, learning is a lifetime path, and it's something that we lean into as a family, and it's something that's valuable as a family. And to my family's credit, that was also disruptive because I was in a hybrid program where I'm commuting to Philadelphia now. I'm doing, like, a module online, and then I'm going to the Wharton campus in Philadelphia and doing a module in. You know, we worked out a way that that could work for the family.
[01:11:37] Speaker B: Pandemic wraps.
Well, wraps is a ted subject let's just say things with the Pandemic start to shift, things start to open up a little bit, and you make a return to Slapshot.
[01:11:53] Speaker A: Full circle music. I mean, it's interesting.
Obviously, music has always been a shared passion for both of us. We kind of can't stay away from it despite what we do for business.
I got the opportunity to return to music in arguably the easiest gig I've ever had in my life. And what I mean by that is we talked about this the last time I was on the podcast, like, when DYS reformed and all those tours happened, I was really the QB.
I was literally the business.
A lot of it fell on me. Booking tours fell on me. Making records fell on me. I mean, those guys are incredible musicians, much better than I could ever be. But, like, the business of the music business fell on me.
Last time we did that was 2017. We were going tour in 2020, and obviously that was canceled by COVID. I still have the Ephemera around the tour posters, whatever.
The winter of 2021 rolls around and Slapshot had some anniversary shows scheduled. They also had to put off due to the Pandemic.
And I get a text from Choke and a singer and he says, hey, I'm really thinking about, like, a surprise ending to our anniversary shows in Boston where we came up, where the original band comes out and plays the last song.
And I'm intrigued, I'm super interested.
I kind of negotiate with him and I kind of say, one song, that's.
[01:13:26] Speaker B: A long way to go for one song, man.
[01:13:28] Speaker A: But I don't frame it that way. And I would go all that way for one song, but I was like, how about like three songs or four songs? Let's try to make like, a thing out of it. Let's try to make it a little bit more interesting than one song. I'll do one and I convince them to do four and so know, relearn and rehearse the songs in.
You know, I've got the gear, know DYS, I ship some stuff to Boston. We go and we do two rehearsals because it's only four songs and it's three nights at the Middle East and The Clothes every night as I come out with guys that I haven't played with in a super long time. We know each other really well, and it's the perfect gig in terms of, like, the crowd has already been amped up for, like, 50 minutes. They're already on fire. And then Choke gets to do is like, we got a special surprise for you tonight, right? And people go crazier and crazier, and it's very little like learning a full set is stressful. Learning four songs is not that stressful.
And it was a great celebration over something that I sort of, like, never got to celebrate the end of.
[01:14:47] Speaker B: Totally, man. When that was happening, I kind of was thinking like, that was a little bit of a capstone to this guy having a pretty difficult period. I'm not saying, like, that was the movie ending. You put down the base and everything was great, but from a distance, it looked like, hey, man, it's like, kind of a good way to give yourself a nice little gift and go have some fun.
[01:15:07] Speaker A: And it was, again, my family, like, my wife's like, go do it. Go have fun with your friends. It was no, like, really? It's November and you want to fly to Boston and play some stupid punk rock?
Yeah. I mean, it felt like it would be overestimating to call it closure and everything that went before, but it was certainly closure on my time in that know, in a way that was really rewarding without the same kind of pressure and lift that I put on myself for DYS. Because it's interesting. We started this conversation talking about the unrelenting pressure, being a CEO.
Dave Smalley and I are the co CEOs of DYS.
Choke is the CEO of Slapshot.
There was something amazing about showing up and not being the CEO.
I showed up with a couple of bases. I made sure I knew my parts.
I gave it my best, but it was like somebody else's business. Somebody else's.
[01:16:09] Speaker B: Totally. Totally. Do you think you'll ever do it again, or is that it?
[01:16:14] Speaker A: I would do it again if I'm asked. I mean, I think Choke got what he wanted out of that. You know, I believe they're in Europe now doing something else.
[01:16:21] Speaker B: Yeah, they're off doing their Slapshot. All right, so what's next for DYS?
[01:16:26] Speaker A: So it's an interesting question, right? I've learned to approach every show at this point. Like, it could be the last show, right? Like, 2017 could have been the last show. 2020 could have been the last show, and it was canceled.
We've got sort of an important anniversary of our first record coming up, and I'd like to do something around that. I'm not necessarily ready to talk about what that is or exactly when it's going to happen or if it's going to happen, but my hope is that there can be a similar celebration around brotherhood.
[01:17:05] Speaker B: Very cool. All right, so as we're closing off, I traditionally like to ask what we call the crucial three very difficult questions that are going to get harder as we go along. Are you ready?
[01:17:18] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: Okay, so now that you will go back to kind of the beginning of the conversation, the big seat, when I say the big seat, you could be leading 20,000 people, or you could be leading four people, like, whatever it is, the CEO role. Any advice that you would give to someone stepping into that space for the first time that you have now learned as a result of being in it for this period of time?
[01:17:45] Speaker A: Relentless discipline about use of time and prioritization.
[01:17:50] Speaker B: Tell me more.
[01:17:52] Speaker A: What I mean by that is every day there's things where I'm looking up and outward that only I can do, and that there is management and corrective and oversight, things that I have to do. And you can spend your whole day getting pulled down, problem solving advice. It's important to your point. Like, everything that goes not the way it's supposed to is on you. So you can't live in a corner office and you can't only look up, but you can spend days where you never looked up and you're the one steering the ship, and you can go through the whole day and go like, I didn't point to the horizon. I didn't tell everybody to look at the map. I didn't turn the steering wheel. I was just helping them trim the jib. And that's not necessarily additive or helps anything accelerate.
[01:18:47] Speaker B: You're also, like, a hyper competitive, hardworking person. You've referred yourself as being, like, a warrior. Many times in here, people often say to me, it's like, I don't know how you do it, because I'm off constantly traveling for work. Monica and I are traveling a ton for work. We also travel for pleasure. But between us, we have, like, three kids. We have a blended family. I also like playing bands. I do this, I do that. I have a very full pace life, and I'm a very busy person, and I love being busy. I've always liked being busy.
So when people say to me, I don't know how you do it, I say to you, I don't know how you do it because you're like that. But we're very similar. But you're like that, like, times 100?
[01:19:31] Speaker A: No, dude, it's not times 100, but it's a lot. I have one kid. I don't have three kids.
[01:19:38] Speaker B: Let me give you a compliment. You do a lot. And one of the things that I've really admire about you amongst many things I admire about you, one of the things I admire about you is that you take such pride in being a parent. Like, such pride. So any advice that you would give to the people who are listening, who actually are hyper motivated, constantly on the move, what advice would you give around being a parent that is still in the mix, that's still there, but is also managing a ton of other things in life?
[01:20:17] Speaker A: That's a hard one because I am pretty sure I don't have that balance right.
I do a lot of justification about doing things that don't involve my son because they're for the benefit of my son.
But he doesn't see those things.
And so if he doesn't see those things, are they of value? I mean, to some degree they are.
They open doors for him. They make things possible, but he doesn't see them.
I'm very poor. People say, like, undivided attention. I'm poor at undivided attention. I spend way too much time looking at my phone when I'm with him. That I shouldn't. I spend way too time, way too much time going, I just have to make this one call.
Could be way better at that stuff. What I think I'm good at is just sort of like empathy. I have a lot of empathy for where he sits in life and where his situations are. I'm hard to ruffle with him, and I just try to do as much stuff with him as I can when I can do it. But I would not say this is part of my life, that I have the balance right yet.
[01:21:29] Speaker B: Dude, you just gave so much great advice, but you did it from more from, like, a self critique point of view. I think that's useful. All right. The third question is usually, especially if I'm dealing with someone from punk and hardcore about, like, favorite records or this or that, but I'm not going to do that this time.
I'm going to give you maybe a harder question. Well, I believe it's harder. It might be easy for you.
So of the people that I know in punk and hardcore, you are significantly different than most of them.
Not kind of you wear quite as, like, a badge in your sleeve, just like how different you are of the punks. You're quite different than the punks. And even if I look at your generation of people, I don't want to say what they're like, but you really stand out as being quite different. You're the guy who kind of like, boom, went off into corporate America. You kind of disappeared from that world. You went off and did your thing. You're like a marauder out in the world doing business. You came back, you were just a different cat. But you've also really sometimes just like a little tailwind and sometimes a foot firmly planted. You've also kind of stayed in the punk orbit or kind of connected to it. You were unabashedly yourself in what I think is like, a really cool way to be just unabashedly yourself while also remaining a part of the culture.
Is that an easy balance for you to maintain?
[01:22:56] Speaker A: I would first answer that question by saying I am not unabashedly myself. I'm trying to be unabashedly myself, and I am not fully unabashedly myself yet. And what that means is I still filter in the business world and I still filter in the music world. And I think when I'm fully formed, I will be unabashedly myself.
[01:23:19] Speaker B: Okay, good.
[01:23:20] Speaker A: And the difficulty in that is in embriding these worlds is I do struggle with sort of like otherism. Right. Sometimes in the business world, I'm outside the door of a conference and I'm going to walk in, there's going to be 300 people I don't know. And I was like, they know I'm different, right? Or like, I walk into a punk show and I was like, they don't think I'm part of this anymore.
I even thought about, like, we were touring, just even that thinking different.
I remember touring the last time, and I've got too many electronic devices, and everyone else is sleeping, and I can't sleep.
The hard part about keeping your toe in all this is like there's a voice in your head all the time until you're a fully formed person that like, I don't belong here. I'm not part of this. They can tell. And I still struggle with that, too. And I think that's hard when you keep your feet in multiple worlds.
[01:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
And good. Thank you for pushing on that.
It's something that I struggle with a lot because I walk in some different worlds, and sometimes I'll be somewhere, I'll be like, I do not belong here anymore. This is just not from whence I came, is not where I am now. And I'm just a different cat than all of these people. And the other times, I'm like, maybe I'm the only person here who thinks this.
Maybe I do belong here, and I'm the one who's creating this pressure about it. And I just think it's really important to hear someone, people from different points of their lives, to be like, hey, man, I still struggle with being who I am. And I do want to eventually become fully formed, and I can feel insecure, and I'm afraid, but it's not going to keep me from walking into that conference of 300 people, nor is it going to keep me from walking into a punk show.
I think kind of the beauty of what you just said there is it's like, it's okay to still feel like a total fucking alien and just be like, I am a weirdo here amongst weirdos, but it's not going to keep you from doing the thing.
[01:25:34] Speaker A: Well, that's the thing, really. The advice that I would give anybody, and it sort of goes back to the warrior thing, is like, you just got to show up. No matter how tired you are, no matter how insecure you are, no matter how ill prepared you feel, how sad you are, how happy you are.
I left that one piece of the whole COVID story, and I'm not telling this to sound tough or anything, but also during this period, I got pneumonia, and I'm new to a job, and my wife is like, why are you getting out of bed? Why are you doing this stuff? I was the sickest I've ever been in my life. I didn't miss a zoom. And at some point, I had to take a weight belt, right? I'd put this weight belt around my ribs. They hurt so much. And I'd take this weight belt and I'd put it on as tight as I can. I'd sort of struggle through my zooms like this. And then after the zoom would end, I'd like and I think almost anything I've achieved in life, business wise, music wise, leaning into the discomfort of when my personal relationships aren't in. A good space is, like, just not quitting.
I could have quit playing music forever. I could have quit my job. I could have quit my marriage. I could have quit life after losing my dad.
Just not quitting is a pretty good bet that you're going to come out okay on the other side.
[01:27:16] Speaker B: All right. As we're closing off, anything you want to end with?
[01:27:22] Speaker A: I think it's a good ending, right?
[01:27:24] Speaker B: It's a perfect ending, man. All right, everyone. Well, this has been it's a conversation that we talked about doing this a long time ago, and here we are in San Francisco together in this bizarre house that we're doing this in. Very cool, man. Thank you so much for your time.
[01:27:41] Speaker A: Thank you for doing this and always being such an empathetic active like, being an empathetic active listener helps tell stories. Yeah.
[01:27:52] Speaker B: Awesome, man. All right, everyone, we will see you in the next one. My name is Aram Arslanian, and this is one step beyond.
[01:27:58] Speaker A: One Step.
One step.
One step beyond.
