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

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Bob Pittman desperately needed $10 for his first flying lesson but was turned down for a job at a retail store and another at Piggly Wiggly. Refusing to take no for an answer, he walked into his local radio station and managed to snag a position that paid $1.65 an hour – never imagining that this perseverance would set him up to become not only a pilot, but the co-founder and former CEO of MTV Networks, COO of AOL Time Warner, CEO of Six Flags, CEO of Century 21, and a co-founder and CEO of iHeartMedia – the leading audio company in the United States whose broadcast reaches over 250 million Americans every month. In this episode, Randall and Bob discuss:- Bob’s experience growing up in the segregated South- Leaving your comfort zone to identify problems and find solutions- How Bob’s passion for aviation led him to the radio industry- The necessity (or not) of a college degree- Moving a company from a $20 million operating loss to turning a profit within 18 months- How companies can create a brand without spending millions on marketing- Why success and failure are the same thing- The critical importance of marketing- The great opportunities in working for a company nobody’s ever heard of- 3 key elements to success- And other topics…Bob Pittman is a rockstar radio and TV programmer, marketer, investor, and media entrepreneur. He is currently co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of iHeartMedia, the leading audio company in the United States. iHeartMedia owns 863 radio stations, reaches over 250 million people every month, and had $3.85 billion in revenues over the last 12 months.Bob is also the former COO of AOL Time Warner after its $180 billion merger, the former CEO of Six Flags Theme Parks, the former CEO of Century 21 Real Estate, and the former CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor, one of the world's largest outdoor advertising companies. He is a founding member of the Pilot Group, a New York-based private investment firm whose investments include Huffington Post, Zynga, and Facebook. Bob is also a co-founder of Casa Dragones Tequila, a host of a podcast called Math and Magic Stories from the Frontiers of Market, and is also a dedicated philanthropist among many other organizations.Resources Mentioned:Incognito, by David EaglemanNew York’s Public TheaterRock and Roll Hall of FameTime Magazine’s Man of the YearSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

you're listening to part two of my awesome conversation with bob pitman one of the most influential people in media television and 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 pitman when you left mtv started a company called Quantum Media with a record company called MCA. You quickly sold that company to Warner Communications right as Warner was merging with Time Inc. You became president and CEO of Time Warner Enterprises, and the next year you became chairman and CEO of Six Flags Theme Parks, which Time Warner owned and which wasn't doing well. At that time, and 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 Flags park. It had an average roller coaster speed of 65 miles per hour. To help turn Six Flags around, Time Warner invested $200 million in new rides with Warner-themed characters like Batman. It also spent $30 million 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 17 million to 25 million. When its performance improved, Time Warner sold 51% of the company to Boston Ventures for $1 billion. And three years later, it 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. Most companies don't have any money to spend on marketing. You have a podcast called Math & Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. It's a B2B podcast where you talk to marketing visionaries to hear how they've used data and creativity to bring incredible ideas to life. Can you tell us what a second place strategy is, the book Incognito by David Engelman, and what companies should do to get noticed and create a brand if they don't have a million dollars to spend on marketing? And in search of excellence on a scale of 1 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 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. 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. And we were able to play with that. But what we really did is we got in the Disney category. When people said Disney's so much better than Six Flags, that was a good thing. When they said Six Flags is better than Six Flags, that was a good thing. When they said Six Flags is better than Dorney Park, that was a bad thing. Because when they said we were worse than Disney, they had us in their mind in the Disney category. We had plenty of business to get from that. When they had us in you're 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, it's 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 Casa Dragones Tequila, which has turned out to be 12, 13 years later, the Connoisseur's Tequila, which is what we set out to do, we didn't spend a lot of money on advertising. As a matter of 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 Dragones and a bottle of, at that time, Patron. And I would say, taste them both. You tell me. So we're just going to take a long time. We're going to 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. 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, cram it down their throat. We were going to do some pull. 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 exactly what to do. In the case of Six Flags, we told people we're bigger than Disneyland, closer to home. Anybody who 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 is you can get a Disney-like experience close to home, just 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 jump. 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. to Warner Communications just as we're merging with Time. Steve Ross, who was one of my great mentors, the deal I cut with him is if I come back, can I buy Six Flags? He said, yeah, I'll buy Six Flags for you. I bought Six Flags for Time Warner and owned a little piece of it myself. Then five or six years later, Jerry Levin, 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 could keep the other half. And he said, if you can do that deal, Bob, go do it, which is what we did.

So you sell Six Flags, then you teamed up with the New Jersey hotel franchisor called Hospitality Franchise Systems by Century 21, a real estate brokerage firm that has 6,000 offices around the world. You paid $200 million in cash, which included 10% to 15% of your own money. Similar to what you did at MTV, you grew with Century 21 through a strategy that included brand building and national marketing, and also by creating a new franchise sales organization and the early adoption of the internet as a lead generating tool. You're there for a year 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 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, America Online, so easy to use, no wonder it's number one. You're there a few years, and in 2001, AOL announced that it was buying Time Warner for $164 billion in stock, making the combined value of the company $350 billion in what the press called the deal of the century, and 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 Thrillist, 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 are searching for an undervalued company where you can help out a little bit. And 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 and digital properties. You invested $5 million of your own money when you joined and 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 Channel's media and entertainment platforms. When you joined, the company had $20 billion in debt, which resulted from a 2008 leveraged buyout by the private equity firms, Tom and ZH Lee Partners and Bain Capital. And ultimately, on March 15, 2018, four years after Clear Channel changed its name to iHeartMedia, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection when it reached an agreement to restructure $10 billion of its more than $20 billion in debt. In May 2019, iHeart exited bankruptcy, which reduced your debt from $16.1 billion to $5.75 billion. Before we 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 would suggest, and that Clear Channel had better facts than its reputation, that you love a business like this. As 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. Instead, most people I know want to work at three different kinds of companies, stable companies that have been around a long time, name brand companies like Google, Metal,

Apple, or Netflix, or sexy startups founded by famous angel investors and venture capital firms that have raised tens of millions of dollars, or 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 and have laid off more than 100,000 people in the last two weeks, meaning what used to be sexy isn't so sexy anymore. When people are looking for jobs in today's job market, which is very unstable, where should a company's financial stability or sexiness rank in our search? And what are some of the other factors that people should be considering? And does the answer depend on our age?

I do think that the great opportunities are companies that no one else is fighting over. And it'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, it's the internet with training wheels. Those are the great opportunities. And I think if you're going where everybody else wants to go, good luck. Let's talk about risk and complacency

and how they factor into our success. We've talked about your willingness to take risks as one of the main themes of your career, not only for 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 that everything you do is grounded in research and reality. You've mentioned one of your great mentors was Steve Ross, who was a former CEO of Time Warner, who taught you there was value in risk and who told you that you would never be fired for going out on a limb, although stagnation would be fatal. You've made that part of your own DNA and have said that our biggest risk is complacency.

Why is that? Can you tell us what Steve said to you when you made a profit at MTV instead of giving you a, hey, congratulations, slap on the back. And in search of excellence, why are failure and success the same thing? Well, I think what Steve said, which really opened my eyes, I always had the mission of try and get this thing profitable, realize we're going to be profitable, call Steve, say, I got to 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. And what that told me was success and failure are 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. The worst that happens is it's failed. I heard somebody tell me recently, I love the way they said it, said we either win or we learn something. And I think that's really the way I think about this progression of how we get to where we need to go. 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 been to your success? And going a step further, how important is extreme preparation going way 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? 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. I mean, 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 for that question. That sounds to me like kids who are trying to study for a test. And then there's the other group of people just make sure they know their topic inside and out. I think that's the winner for people. That allows you to have the flexibility that you need to really go left and right and constantly pivoting and moving. Can you give us some examples of how extreme preparation has led to your success? 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 ask some people.

Or what's going on with that? And they go, I don't know. I'll ask somebody. Well, wow 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 to me that's what's important is i expect people to really know their business inside and out and to have a conversation at any moment about anything there if you don't you're missing all the opportunities that are sort of drive-by opportunities. When you were a kid, your family used to say that you had a hobby a day, you'd 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 hasn't been fun for you because you've killed it everywhere you've been. But I think the concept of giving up 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? Wow, that's a really good question. I think it varies person to person. It depends on

stage of career too. I've had enough success and I've been lucky enough with money, et cetera, that I can take more risk than many people can take. And I think people, and I tell them 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 and some opportunity that values what you have uniquely to bring to it. Can you give us a percentage of what percent of work should be fun? 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. I mean, coming out of college today, I have a lot of mentees. I have a summer intern program of 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 their job for two years because you need to experience difficulty and work to make yourself successful in your career. Do you agree with that? 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 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, it's the most rewarding.

At the end of it, you 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. 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? 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 70, 80, 90%. I think your ability to listen and collaborate needs to be there.

Teams win, 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. 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 used radio waves to transmit Morse code, and the instrument he used 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 Brant Rock, Massachusetts, when he produced an hour of talk and music 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 8MK in the great city of Detroit, which still exists today under the all-new station WWJ, which is today owned by CBS. Since then, radio has come a long way. Today, 92% of Americans listen to broadcast radio at least once a week, and 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? Or is the $800 billion in value that Facebook has lost since it's changed its name to Meta a year ago, which is more than the market cap of Tesla and Berkshire Hathaway, just a blip along the road? Well, look, I think Spotify and radio are not competitors. They're really two completely different products. The ancestor of Spotify were 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 were humans or social animals. What radio does is it keeps you company. 25% of our stations play no music. They're news talk or sports talk or other things, opinion. But what's common about them all is we're keeping people company. Podcasting is a natural extension of radio. It's the reason we're number one in podcasting because it's very host-driven. And you're going to ride to work with Ryan Seacrest every day or Steve Harvey or Ellen Kay or whoever, or Elvis Duran. These are people who you know and trust and become your friends. And that's the reason 20, 30 years ago, TV reached more people than radio. Today,

iHeart in our broadcast radio reaches over 90% of Americans every month. The biggest TV network reaches about 35%. And Spotify reaches less than 20%. 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? 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 like to do, but make it easier. The metaverse makes some things easier, and they're fun to do. Primarily today, it's around games. I've not seen any breakout of any big success beyond sort of gaming or something closely allied with that. We're in the metaverse with iHeartLand on Roblox and Fortnite. Meta, I think, has 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? You mentioned the podcast business. And let's give a little history lesson on this one. Podcasting was invented in 2004 when Adam Curry, a former MTV video jockey and a software developer named Dave Weiner, coded a program known as iPodder that enabled them to download internet radio broadcasts on their iPods. It's exploded since then. It's been a huge focus of years at iHeartMedia. On September 9th, 2018, you acquired a company called Stuff Media for $55

million. It was a huge price back then. It was launched in 2008 and was the original trailblazer in the podcasting industry and owned the HowStuffWorks 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 U.S., a number that's expected to increase to 164 million people by the end of next year. 41% of people in the U.S. listen to at least one podcast a month, and 28% listen to one every week.

B. Reilly just came out with a report predicting there's going to be $2 billion of ad revenue in podcasting this year, and it's forecasting that number will increase to $6 billion by 2026. What's the future of podcasting, and when are you going to buy my show for $50 million? Could we buy my show first for $50 million? Conflict of interest. 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. And it's doing the same sort of thing radio does, except I get to select exactly what I want, 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 iHeart 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. 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. 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. 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's since passed away named Gil Friesen. When we were starting our technology company, there were four of us in a professor's little office. We had six computers, and we had an idea to change the way that content was served on the internet. I had a relationship with Gil Friesen.

Gil had been the third employee, well, the first at a 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. A very interesting person, as you know, very cultured. We became close. And Gil, when I was thinking about leaving Sun America, I 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. 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. And I was trying to choose. I said, I'm going to do the Akamai thing. And not only am I going to do that, I'm going to invest $100,000 of my own money. At that point, I came from a tough background. Bob, I'm self-made. 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 Gil, I'm going to do the Akamai thing. I'm investing $100,000 of 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, Gil paved the way for us. At some point, we wanted to go to AOL for a variety of different reasons.

And we called Gil and said, Hey, Gil, what's up? We need a relationship there. He said, Oh, I'll 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. Can you tell us about your relationship with Gill? I don't know how you two met. I know you were very, very close friends, 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? 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 a 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 ran a record company. I was a radio programmer. And when I started MTV, I called Gil and said, I want your music videos. And he goes, Bob, I have no idea if that's a good idea. But you've been a good friend to me. You've always helped me. Sure. You can have my music videos, not because it was a good idea, not because I sold them, but because we had a relationship. 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, you know, if you say, why did Gil call me? And I don't remember exactly the conversation, but do know if gil 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 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 you'll see a lot of people network. I know somebody, I met them at a party. Well, that means nothing.

The relationship is one of trust. 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 had boundless curiosity. I took Gil and Tom Preston to Burning Man. And Gil was fascinated with everything out there. And that wasn't necessarily his world, but in a funny way, everything was his world because he had his eyes open and his ears open. 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 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? 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 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? 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 the question. No one wants to hear how you arrived at the decision. They want to know what is the thing. And if you can boil it down to that, you wind up with a much better story. When you were a young adult, 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 here right now. 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 and theoretically keeps us on a path to achieving our goals. You've said that life is more of a random walk than a planned 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? I think if you set a plan for yourself, you'll be disappointed because the chances of that plan coming true 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. And, you know, we talked earlier about when you have this adversity in life, it's also a learning experience. It's 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 adversity. At the moment, adversity is terrible. In 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, that plans don't plan too hard.

Yeah, you're going to say some plan, but don't expect it to come true. But expect to have an interesting life and expect to do interesting things. 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. In your first week on the job, you worked as a street cleaner cleaner wearing little shorts, sweeping sidewalks, and putting trash into garbage bins. Can you tell us about your employee handbook and the valuable lesson you learned there and why it applies or should apply to every other company on the planet? Yeah. It actually was a couple of

years into Six Flags, and we couldn't get the quality up that we were looking for. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to go in the park. This was for the Days of the Undercover Boss. I'm going in as 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. They just think I'm a new guy doing it. And I realized these people love Six Flags. I would have never guessed that. And then as I listened to them more, I realized the problem was that we had trained them to keep the park clean. 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 own monster here. And then I looked at other jobs and realized, wait a minute, we've been telling people safety's our number one concern. It's not. Our number one concern is our guests, and we want them to have the greatest day of their life and your job, and it could ruin it if the bathroom's dirty. So you got to keep 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 as 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. People go, well, we could do that, but that's hard to do. Well, great. Well, then we need to do what's hard because what we need to do is serve the consumer,

not serve ourselves. You said one of the worst things in business you can do is not make a decision. And on 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 at 50%? I think almost every decision we make is the wrong decision. The great people just keep trying and changing until they get it right. 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. Sometimes all that thinking makes it worse. And so for me, it's just like, make a quick decision. Everything's better done sooner. Hurry up, make the decision. What are you going to know tomorrow? You don't know right now. If the answer is nothing, then a quick decision. Everything's better done sooner. Hurry up and make the decision. What are you going to know tomorrow you don't know right now?

If the answer is nothing, then 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. 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. 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? I think I'd never get that right. I think about it more as life, work, integration, not balance.

A balance seems to me I'm going to 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 I want to make sure I'm not squandering it. I love work. I love my family. I love my friends. And I have to figure out a way to make it all work for me. And you're right. I didn't take long vacations. I 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 life balance isn't over a day or a week or a 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 in work, when people say, can you do that? The answer is always no, because I never have time. When I wasn't working, people say, let's go do something. I go, okay, let's go. If I don't like it, the worst that'll happen is I'll never do it again. And I may find some interesting new stuff. When you were young, you told 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 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? Yeah, well, look, I was a kid when I said that. And it sounded really good when I was a poor kid in Mississippi. And look, 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 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 excess. 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. Sharon Stone 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 lay people, we don't really think about what that's like, not being able to go to 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 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, it's 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. I mean, that's always the interesting thing to me is the people say, I'm building a legacy, et cetera.

I ask people, do you know who Steve Ross is? They never heard of him. You know who Lou Wasserman is? Never heard of him. Bill Paley, never heard of him. And I go, it's fleeting. When you're out of the limelight, you're gone. So enjoy it right now.

Don't try and project yourself past the grave. Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blanks to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Let's go. When I started my career, I wish I had known

that I would be a success. 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. My number one professional goal is? Right now, to make sure we continue to grow iHeart. 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? My dad, mom, two people. The one question you wish I had asked you is, 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. Thank you, Bob. 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 and appreciative for what you did for us at Akamai when we were just starting. You've been a phenomenal role model. You inspired many millions of people with your success, humility, and your philanthropy. Very grateful for your time today, and thank you very much for sharing your story with us. Well, thank you, and this has been great fun. Thanks. you