Motley Fool Money - Behind the Scenes at CNBC with Becky Quick

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Having her family move around to different states wasn't fun for Becky Quick when she was a kid, but it made transitions later in life less frightening. She shares how she started working at her colle...ge newspaper before she even started classes, helped launch The Wall Street Journal's first website, and was initially reluctant to move to CNBC. Becky also discusses: - Early (and humorous) struggles in the transition from print journalism to TV - The importance of having fun on the set - Her unexpected introduction to Warren Buffett - Why she loves the business world You can (and should) follow her on Twitter @BeckyQuick. Host: Chris Hill Guest: Becky Quick Engineer: Dan Boyd Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by KolaGard. Do you know what's really scary? Not screening for colon cancer when you turn 45. The Koloard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off work, and ships right to your door. In just three simple steps, KolaGar takes the scare out of colon cancer screening. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your health care provider about the KolaGard test. KoloGuard is available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription today at KolaGar.com slash screen. I never had any practice reading a teleprompter before they put me on live. Never. The first time I ever read a teleprompter was live on television.
Starting point is 00:00:38 And I was terrible. I'm Chris Hill, and that was CNBC host Becky Quick. Having interviewed her a bunch of times on this show over the past decade, I had a theory about her career. But I wanted to find out more about Becky's path to the anchor desk. So before the pandemic, I went to New York City to talk with her in person. She had just completed three hours of co-hosting Squawk Box and met me in a conference room just off the set.
Starting point is 00:01:09 We talked about her start at the Wall Street Journal, her move to CNBC, and how she got to know Warren Buffett by talking with him on a 12-hour flight to China. Becky was born in Indiana, the oldest of four kids. Her dad was a geologist and geophysicist, and his work took the family from Indiana to Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma and eventually New Jersey. She was the editor of her high school newspaper and her interest in media stayed with her when she went to college. So when you get to Rutgers, do you jump right into the school newspaper?
Starting point is 00:01:48 Yes. I actually started the newspaper before I even started classes and that was not my choice. That was my mother kind of pushing me again as the oldest. Like, hey, you need to do more of this. How does that work? We went upstairs to the student union at Rutgers and there was a credit union on the top floor and she said, oh, you need a bank, you need someplace that you can put things together, because of course, this was before, like, Apple Pay and all these things that you have on your
Starting point is 00:02:11 phones. So I said, okay, sure, we went upstairs, and around the corner was the newspaper office, and my mom said, you should really go in there. And I was shy, and I didn't want to. And I said, no, I don't want to go. She said, just go in and give them your name. You don't have to do anything. So I said, okay, went, gave them my name. There were a few people in the newsroom, even though it was the end of the summer. And there was a really smart assignment editor, or news editor at the time. His name was Joe Wofel. And he didn't let me out without assigning me a story, which I had no interest in taking. But he said, go write the story about the Raritan River Festival.
Starting point is 00:02:41 We need a preview of it. So I went home, back to my parents' house, and I just agonized over how to put together a story and a lead. I didn't know what I was doing. Ended up going in, writing the story, which was terrible, I'm sure. But I went into the newspaper office and typed it up on the computer and was sneaking out the door and had no intention of ever coming back because I was terrified by the place. And he caught me on my way out the door and said, hey, now you have to write the review. You have to go to the festival and write the review of it.
Starting point is 00:03:07 So, oh, gosh. So I had to go get over to the stupid Raritan River Festival, and I was such a novice. I didn't know how to get around town. My mom actually came and picked me up and drove me over, because, again, it's my mother, like, pushing me as the oldest to go do all these things. I went back into the office to write my review story, which I had written at home. All I was literally doing was typing it and getting out of Dodge. And, again, it was a Thursday. It was the first Thursday at classes.
Starting point is 00:03:32 and somebody looked around and said, you know what, we forgot to assign a Friday focus, which was a big one-page article on Fridays. They said, who here's a freshman? And I raised my hand, and they said, you write a full-page story about the first days on the banks what it's like to be here. I thought, what?
Starting point is 00:03:47 And they said, we need 30 inches. And so I wrote everything I could think of, and it was about 24 or 25 inches. And they're like, that's okay. We'll just put your name really big to fill up the rest of the space. Nice. So on Friday, the next day,
Starting point is 00:04:01 My article came out. It was a full page in the Daily Targum, the newspaper at Rutgers. And it had my name in, you know, like 36 point size just to fill up all the space that I couldn't fill with my words. And then I was hooked. And, you know, like, wow, everybody on campus saw my name. And that was like so cool. And I spent the rest of my four years at the Targum offices and never left. I was going to say, despite the baptism by fire, clearly you were interested in it.
Starting point is 00:04:27 Yeah. I loved it, but I was, I don't know if it's something all kids have or if it's something that is more prone to women or if it was just, I don't know. I didn't have a lot of confidence and I was nervous. And I, you know, you see that with a lot of youngsters. And I, you know, I see to my kids at times too. And it's that push, you know, and I really credit my mom for that, kind of pushing me and forcing me to do some of those things that I didn't want to do. And again, Joe Woffel, who didn't let me out the door. And then when I was a assignment editor later that year, I took.
Starting point is 00:04:57 is trick. And you never let somebody walk in that you don't assign them a story. Never let somebody sit in and sneak back out because they're probably never come back. And, you know, when you're just looking for free writers, you're looking for anything, that's a really great employment technique. And it's, you know, I watched him do that and it kind of tried to take it in my other things. Never let somebody walk out the door empty hand. It always have a transaction where you have to get back together. And that was the great thing about the target. It wasn't just the writing and the reporting. It was also learning about being an employee, being a manager, and working together with people. It was really great team building. What did you study? What I study? Poly Sci and Communications
Starting point is 00:05:36 as a double major with English as a minor. And what was the plan from there? You get a polyside degree and then it's like moved down to D.C. Well, actually, I did my internships in Washington, D.C. in the summers. After my freshman year, I went back to Indiana. I worked for the prosecutor's office. Then after in my sophomore in my junior years, I went down and I worked for Pete Vasklowski, who was the congressman from Indiana, and for the first congressional district there, I loved it. It was so exciting because it was all these young people running around, and they would give them massive amounts of responsibility and authority and pretty big amounts of money that they were working with for the legislation they were working on. The first summer I was there, I was really just writing responses
Starting point is 00:06:17 to constituents, answering phones, giving tours of the Capitol. But the second summer that I went back, they actually let me work on some of the syndicated exclusivity laws. It was called Syndex laws, but it was for cable rights. And it was important to people like Pete Vasklowski, who, you know, had Northwest Indiana as his district, but all the television stations were Chicago. So the only news that would ever make it on would be Chicago News, and the stuff that he was trying to do with the Indiana National Lakeshore, which just became the latest National Park.
Starting point is 00:06:45 But back then, he was trying to promote the Indiana National Lakeshore and the dunes and really build that up and give it protections. and every time he did anything, he couldn't get it on the airwaves. So he said, go out and help me find other co-sponsors for a bill that will force the cable company to carry the South Bend stations, some of the local stations so people in my district know what's really happening in their local homes. It's not just for promoting what he was doing, but it was just to make sure that you actually know what was happening in your hometown,
Starting point is 00:07:11 so you didn't get sucked up into the big city in the next state. And I sat there, and I thought, how can you actually find that? And I just looked at a map and said, okay, it's going to happen anywhere where you have a district that's in another state right outside of a big city and went and found all of those districts and went and found those Congress people. And we got on board and we actually got to go
Starting point is 00:07:29 work with the lawyers there and help write some of the legislation. I was totally hooked. They give you a massive budget and all that stuff. And you can be, at the time, I think I was, I wasn't even old enough to drink because I remember trying to sneak into some of the bars. But, you know, 20, 19 years old, and then if you come back as a legislative assistant,
Starting point is 00:07:45 you could be 22. And they're giving you a budget for $50 million and saying, go and run with this. And I thought that's the only, place on the planet that that can happen. So I graduated with the polyside degree, figured I'd go back down to Washington. I spent that first summer after graduation. I didn't really have a plan. I worked for my dad who had his own business, and I remember just hating it. I love my father, but... The geology bug didn't catch old. No, I was not the geologist, and he needed somebody to help
Starting point is 00:08:11 organize the papers, and I remember falling asleep on my desk one day, and he came back in. I was so mad at me, like, what are you doing, sleeping on the job? I was... I just lost because I didn't really have a plan for what to do next. And I went to a wedding, met a woman who I had done, for my senior thesis, I wrote, the only journalism class I took was this like 400-level journalism class, why I wrote a thesis on sexism in the newsroom. And I talked to all kinds of reporters and editors from New York media. And I had met a woman from the Wall Street Journal, and she just said,
Starting point is 00:08:45 after when I ran into her, again at this wedding, she said, yeah, you know, I've got a news associate position opening up at the journal. Do you want to come? I said, what's that? She's like, you know, you basically staple papers, make copies, do what we say. I said, sure, I'll go and I'll do that for a year, and then I'll even go back down to Washington. And again, you got into the journal, and there were so many brilliant people there. You could throw a paperwater in any direction and hit a Pulitzer Prize winner. And it was a great place with a sense of family where people were very generous with their time and their knowledge and learned a lot and kept getting different jobs there and never left.
Starting point is 00:09:21 until I came to CNBC. How long are you stapling papers together before someone figures out that you've been working at this school newspaper for four years and actually have the ability to write and report? Actually, my boss who hired me at the time, Karen Miller-Princereau, fantastic boss, she let me start doing other things, even as I was doing that. I was on the overseas copy desk at that point, and we worked Sunday through Thursday week, but the journal works Monday through Friday. So she would let me do other things.
Starting point is 00:09:53 And if I wanted to come in on Fridays, she actually pushed me to some of these other places where they'd let me fill in on some of the beats, like if the commodities reporter was out or the advertising reporter was out, they'd let me fill in for them while they were out. She'd let me do that on Fridays. And then eventually she'd say,
Starting point is 00:10:06 okay, you can take her for a week and go to Spot News and do some things like that. And so it was really, you know, she was a fantastic mentor, and she was the one who pushed me. And, you know, if you're willing to work six days a week and jump around and do some of these other things, Journal was a great place to be. I didn't think I'd ever actually be a reporter. I remember having more than 100 bylines at one point, but not being a reporter and getting really discouraged and thinking it was never going to happen. And what I did find with every job along the way is if you stick with that job for maybe six months or a year longer, then you think you can possibly take it. You know, that's when the next thing would open up. And it's probably just that I've never had a plan. I've never been real organized. So I was never, I never knew what to quit for. But that's totally what paid off for me was sticking around longer than you thought you could possibly take it.
Starting point is 00:10:48 So you're at the journal in the mid-90s when the internet basically is born and starts to become an actual thing. Is it safe to assume that in part because of your age at the time? And by that, it just mean that you were someone under the age of 30, that people looked at you and said, oh, well, she probably understands this. Because I remember talking with older people at the time, and they really struggled to understand what the Internet was. and why it was anything other than like just a computer toy? I didn't know that much about the internet. In fact, I got my first email address when I went to the journal, not in college.
Starting point is 00:11:31 But, yeah, being young and being low on the totem pole definitely helped. In fact, I helped launch WSJ.com because nobody else wanted to do it. It was like they were the junk jobs that, like, the serious journalist there weren't going to tackle. This internet thing is a fad. Give it to her. Right. Give it to these. young kids who are coming in here just because we want nothing to do with it. And they were
Starting point is 00:11:53 probably right because at the time, like what we were doing was kind of monkey work. I came over from the overseas copy desk. So they said, okay, you can be the international news editor for WSJ.com, which sounds great. But literally, we were like monkeys. We would take the, we would take the stories that the overseas editions were running and we would recode it. I learned HTML, which is basically like the dumbest language of all time. You can code. Anybody can learn it in about an hour and a half. You learn HTML and your basically like recoding the stories that have already been edited and written and are finished products. And we were code monkeys turning it into an HTML story and trying to figure out how to
Starting point is 00:12:27 make the hyperlinks work so that when they actually launched it that day with the reporters coming in, I remember telling the managing editor of Wall Street Journal Europe or something at that time, like don't click on this button because the link doesn't work and you've got a hundred reporters sitting in front of you. Like don't click on these because we haven't figured out how to make this stuff work. But yeah, it wasn't that I knew anything about the internet. It was just I was so not senior. What brings you to CNBC? Well, CNBC and the journal had a partnership.
Starting point is 00:12:56 And I'd done a bunch of different jobs. After WSJ.com, I actually was a print reporter covering the internet because of my experience that I got as a monkey coder. And then I covered retail for the journal, for the print journal. And then we had this partnership with CNBC, and they were just throwing reporters on air because they didn't really know who would be any good at it, who wanted to do it and they would just say okay uh cnbc called they want you to go stand in the corner
Starting point is 00:13:22 over there by the by the camera that they hooked up by the logo do a live hit yeah just go do a live hit and we all stunk like imagine a bunch of print reporters and you just take and throw them in front of the camera we all stunk um none of us looked like tv reporters i mean at that point i wore jeans in the office every day i had never worn liquid eyeliner um i didn't wash my hair every day you know like you're there with your hair up in a clip and there they say go do it and it's like okay maybe i can find some lipstick and try and do this but i covered retail at that point and it was it was the fall and so retail was a big story for cnbc because you were in the heavy shopping season going through uh the fall into the winter they put me on a whole bunch and i guess somebody thought it was a good
Starting point is 00:14:02 idea to put me on a little more um and i think it was just because i was in the beat that again was getting so much play at that point retail so you get hired as a reporter first you know i i wasn't sure that I'd want to go. So I said we can try it out. They were going to send me over for six weeks. And I remember asking at the time, like, don't clean my desk out, save my job. Let's go see if this works because I might really stink at it. That turned into about three months. And finally, they're like, okay, you've got to make a decision because we can't keep your job open any longer. And I ended up staying. And that was 2001. What's, I'm sure there are a lot of adjustments going from print to TV.
Starting point is 00:14:41 Is there one that stands out above others? I literally had one suit when I started working at CNBC, and they did not have a wardrobe with department in those days. So it was like, holy cow. I went to Ann Taylor and bought a bunch of shirts that I could hopefully get away with and a few skirts to match it up with. I didn't make a lot of money at that point, so I was like, oh my gosh, how can I do this on my budget?
Starting point is 00:15:02 And I remember in the early days, Judy Chung, Carl Kintanee's wife, was my producer for a while, was trying to teach me the ropes of television. And I would go and work on my script and I'd call everybody. You know, that was general assignment, so they had assigned me a story in the morning. I'd be working very diligently, typing up my script and calling sources until like five minutes before the hit. And I remember Judy yanking me out of my chair being like, you have to go into makeup. You cannot just roll out.
Starting point is 00:15:29 And I was so worried about my script and so not worried about that aspect of it. You have to remember, it's a visual medium. And it's not selling out as much as it's, you don't want to be a distraction. You don't want people to be focusing on you instead of what you're saying and what the story is. And that took a little adjustment. And that was different. When do you go from your reporting on CNBC to your anchoring? Oh, that's a good question.
Starting point is 00:16:00 I think I did general assignment for a while. Then they made me the Wall Street beat reporter. And that was in time for Dick Grosso with the New York Stock Exx. And I remember I spent one summer kind of hanging out outside the New York Stock Exchange, standing on an Apple Box, you know, with a hit every hour about what was the latest in the New York Stock Exchange with that. And then after that, sometime not too long after that, I'm messing up the years. There was a show called Bullseye that launched. And that was a primetime show with Dylan Radigan.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And they would put me on the set with Dylan Radigan. And that started to be like an every night thing so that we could just go back and forth. He was the anchor, but I was sitting on the set with him through the whole show. And that's when they relaunched Squawk Box. Then they decided I would be a reporter on the set of Squawk Box. That's what it was. And that was just before Squawk Box's 10th anniversary, because I remember celebrating that on the set with Mark Haynes. So I did that for about a year.
Starting point is 00:17:00 And then they relaunch Squawk Box. And that's when it was Joe Kernan and Carl Kintinia and I. We talked about adjustments print to television. And what's the adjustment like to hosting a live television show that starts at six in the morning? I guess the emphasis on six in the morning there. Yeah, that was the other thing because they squawk box had been at 7 o'clock. So I'd been doing the 7-A-N shift for a while, but switching to 6 a.m. when you have to be up and in makeup and Red In is a really different scenario.
Starting point is 00:17:34 at that point we were still in Inglewood cliff, so I didn't have to get up quite as early as I do now, because now I'm commuting into the Times Square in Manhattan every day. And that was still pretty early. I think I was still getting up at about 4.15 then. And that was a huge adjustment for me, because as a print reporter, I was coming into work, I was supposed to be there by 10, and there were a lot of days I wasn't there on time. And you weren't worried about your wardrobe, and some days you weren't washing your hair. Right, right.
Starting point is 00:17:58 So, you know, it was a little bit of a mess. It was a, I had been a night owl in college. where I'd be up all night because, you know, you put in the paper to bed then. It was a huge adjustment, but now I'm a complete morning person. At this point, I don't think well at night. I go to sleep early. My whole body's clock has changed as a result of doing this. But, yeah, like going on and being a host at that point was funny, too.
Starting point is 00:18:23 I remember Joe Kernan and I would sit and look and laugh because, you know, instead of just being the kids on the side who are kind of like, hey, just chiming in from time to time with things. Now we're supposed to be reading all of these things, like the intros and things. And there's definitely an anchor voice that you have to use. And when you're trying to develop that anchor voice, you feel like a complete moron. Like you just sound like an idiot. Joe and I would sit and laugh. And we would, we still do this sometimes like, okay, really try and sell this one coming up. And today on Squawk Box. You cannot oversell it. You sound like you're shouting. You sound like you're singing and it still sounds better than when you're just reading normally on things.
Starting point is 00:18:59 So just imagine, like, pick up a newspaper today and read it out loud. You sound like an idiot when you try and sell it. So we definitely would giggle through like, okay, now you try and sell this one. Let's see who sounds like a bigger jerk. And inevitably, the person who went overboard the most would sound the best. So there was that. And then, you know, the good thing is, is we just have fun on set. And that makes it a lot easier. You know, I never had any practice reading a teleprompter before they put me on live. Never. The first time I ever read a teleprompter was live on television.
Starting point is 00:19:32 And I was terrible. And thankfully, CNBC was like experimenting at that point and nobody was paying much attention. But I literally tripped over the words to the point where I went, blah, and I stuck out my tongue on air and said, start over and made them rewind the prompter. And I did all of that on live television. And so it was good to be in a place where they were definitely, look, I think CNBC, emphasized on wanting smart people and wanting people who knew the stories, and they didn't care as much about the polish. And I was definitely a beneficiary of not needing to know what the heck I was doing. And you can definitely watch that all play out. And I really give CNBC management, Mark
Starting point is 00:20:08 Hoffman, credit for that. He wants people who can talk through the stories and get it. And the content is way more important than any of the flash. And I think that's important for our viewers, too, because they can find somebody who doesn't know the story or who doesn't know what they're talking about, mile away. What they want is intelligent conversation. And CNBC's always been true to that. For anyone who's ever seen the movie broadcast news, among the great things in that movie, I think for anyone interested in media, that's the first exposure we all got to reading off a teleprompter. The scene where William was sitting down with Albert Brooks and is basically coaching him through and the whole punch one thought in every story, punch.
Starting point is 00:20:54 you know, that sort of thing, and the whole thing with your eyes shifting. I still remember sitting in the theater and thinking, oh, that's how that works? Like, oh, that's how they're reading off of that? Oh. And sit on your coat. Make your sit up and sit on your coat so it doesn't make you look hunched. How did you meet Warren Buffett? The first time I actually met him was, I see, Judy Dobrinsky, who had come from the New York Times, was the managing editor at CNBC. and we were running around, I think she's the one who sent me, if I'm remembering this correctly, it was the opening of the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, and my producer Lacey and I were going out for that.
Starting point is 00:21:34 And they said, oh, on your way back, stop in Omaha for the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. And honestly, I didn't know really what Berkshire Hathaway was that much at that point. I knew of it, but I didn't know really what I was getting myself in for with a shareholder meeting. So we stop, and I, you know, I haven't slept because we stayed at it. up all night for the opening of the wind. We literally haven't slept my flight from there. I remember it was a Southwest flight and we didn't get on until the end. So I got the last row where the seat doesn't recline. And I fell asleep on the guy next to me. It was like drooling on his shoulder when we woke up and landed in Omaha. So we were working on no sleep and not nearly enough preparation.
Starting point is 00:22:14 And at that point, he would give all the television reporters who showed up five minutes of time on that Saturday to ask whatever questions you could. So I was really excited. Like my five minutes with Moore and Buffett, I'm never going to see him again. And went great, said hello, took a picture for my dad, and I didn't see him again for several years. So it was not a huge surprise. But then at one point, I reached out to him and we were talking and I'd heard he was going to China and I'd just gone to China with Boone Pickens the year before. And, you know, when he mentioned in the conversation, we kind of got around. to China. I said, oh, yeah, can I come with you? He's so nice and was so caught off guard that I don't
Starting point is 00:22:57 think he thought of a polite way to say no fast enough. So he said, okay. And then I thought, oh, my gosh, what do I talk to Warren Buffett about for 12 hours on this plane ride? Because he was going over with a bunch of guys from the Nebraska Furniture Mart. So it was all of them on the plane. We were hanging out. So wait, it's you, Warren Buffett, and furniture executives. Mm-hmm. The Nebraska Furniture Mart. Yeah, you better come up with stuff to talk about because then it's going to be 12 hours of furniture. Well, you know, they, they were, actually really great, but Warren reads all of these newspapers, and so he's got a thought on every single story in the news. And the good thing was we were able to just kind of chat through, and he
Starting point is 00:23:32 makes you so comfortable, and he's a normal person and doesn't make you feel stupid. So it was a great conversation, and that's kind of where everything started. And then we started having them on pretty frequently. And look, he wants to be remembered as a teacher. And I think the reason he comes on CNBC so frequently is that he sees it as the platform that he can reach the most students. When he comes on, the very first show he did, the Ask Warren show,
Starting point is 00:24:00 was this idea where after he wrote his annual shareholders letter, he wanted people to be able to get a chance to ask him a question. So we did a three-hour show of Warren Buffett, nothing but, and viewers could write in their questions.
Starting point is 00:24:11 At that point, email was still the primary way that people were reaching out. So a lot of people emailed in. And we got a huge turnout for that show. It was something like three or four hundred, in the demo, or in the household is showing up for that. It was a big deal. And we got a massive amount, thousands and thousands of people who wrote in wanting to get a chance to ask their
Starting point is 00:24:32 question. And it kind of evolved from that. I know there's going to come a day when he's no longer around. And I dread that day because for a while now, he's been the unofficial reassurer in chief when it comes to the U.S. economy. And I don't know who's going to be next in that role. Because it's a role that I don't even know if we had that before Buffett came along. And now that we have it, now that we have this person out there who's just sort of like, okay, whether it's 2008, 2009 and the Great Recession, and, you know, he was this calming force.
Starting point is 00:25:15 And I really don't know who comes next. You know, I think there are always going to be larger than life business leaders who can stand up and try and reassure people and speak just beyond their own company. You think of somebody like Jamie Diamond, who to some extent has delved in on those things. You think of people who are able to look beyond the nitty-gritty of what it means directly for their company and look beyond what it means for this quarter's earnings, what the broader implications are. And I have to say I've seen a lot of business leaders who have stepped up recently and who have done a pretty good job of laying out. You go to the business roundtable. And every time I'm there, you can talk to a handful of CEOs, many of them from Dow component companies, who will say, here's what's important. Here's what matters for the longer term.
Starting point is 00:26:07 It's issues that they are trying to remind Washington about, too. That just as a great CEO shouldn't be looking just at this quarter's results, a great politician should not be looking. just as what this means until the next time I run. You have to have longer term conversations about policy. You have to have goals that transcend just your term. And I think there are always going to be people who stand up and do just that. I don't know who that person is going to be. I agree that he has been that person.
Starting point is 00:26:38 But I do have confidence that there will be people who continue up to stand up and say, this is what is really happening. this is what's right, whether it helps me or doesn't help me. And this is what we need America's politicians to be thinking about, too. Here's my working theory about Becky Quick's employment life. It's better to be lucky than good. I mean, isn't that true for everyone that's better to be lucky than good? So you love working for the student newspaper, but you don't think you're going to go into journalism.
Starting point is 00:27:15 You fall in love with what you're able to do. down in Washington, D.C., but you don't go into politics. You don't think of yourself as being on TV, and that's where you end up. And the through line for your post-college life has been business. And my theory is whether you realize it or not, you love the world of business. Because I can't imagine you've had the career that you've had, particularly over the past 10 years, where other people haven't come to you and said, hey, would you like to go do this?
Starting point is 00:27:49 Would you like to leave Squawk Box and come do this other thing? You're too good at what you do for that not to be the case. And I have to believe that one of the things that keeps you hosting Squatbox is you love this world. Chris, you're absolutely right. I do love this world. I have had opportunities that have come and I've passed on it. And it's been two issues.
Starting point is 00:28:10 For a long time, it was that I've got four kids at home too. and I can do this job and still be a mom, which is really important to me. But the older I've gotten, the more I realize that I really do love business. And the idea of just talking about casual headlines and not really delving into stuff is not all that appealing because it's not all that stimulating just from the things I like and intellectually what I'm into. And I think that's probably the case with everybody. The further you go down a road, you never imagine yourself being a specialist in anything,
Starting point is 00:28:49 or at least a lot of people don't. I never did. Kind of wind up in these things by accident. But you don't stay in them if you don't have a lot of interest in it. And the more you do it, the longer you do it, the more it becomes a part of who you are. So that's probably true. I mean, I wouldn't say never to anything, but I do love following the story. And I do think that business really gives you a license to get into just about anything in life because you're following the money and you're following what drives people.
Starting point is 00:29:18 And that takes you so many different directions. And I'm not really interested in reporting on the latest fire or, you know, some smaller issue. But I love politics and I love business. But business has been the place that I feel like I know so much about now. And it's hard to walk away from something that you feel that you've built up an expertise in. But is it safe to assume that if National Geographic comes to you and says, we want you to host a series touring national parks in America? No, that is not safe because I love the national parks, too. That's another obsession of my husband and I.
Starting point is 00:29:50 That's what I'm saying. They're like, we know you love the parks. We want you to host the series. You get to go to all the park. No? I might do that, yeah. If National Geographic is listening, yes, please come call me. You can catch Becky quick every weekday morning on CNBC starting at 6 a.m. Eastern.
Starting point is 00:30:12 And if you follow her on Twitter, you get a lot of tweets about business and occasionally some gorgeous photos of national parks. That's all for today, but coming up later this week, we'll have more on personal finance, portfolio allocation, real estate investing, and a lot more. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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