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0:01:35 Hey, Young and Profiters! Welcome to episode five of the Yap Creator series presented by OpusClip.
0:01:39 In this series, we’re diving deep into the art and science of content creation,
0:01:43 how to create, connect, and thrive as a modern-day content creator.
0:01:47 Today we’re going deep into something that every content creator should master,
0:01:52 understanding, and adapting to audience preferences. This is the heartbeat of effective content
0:01:58 creation, the foundation of building a loyal, engaged community that feels connected to you
0:02:03 and your brand. In this episode, I’ll break down why analyzing audience behavior is so critical,
0:02:08 and I’ll give you actionable strategies to help you understand your audience and their preferences
0:02:14 better. We’ll feature podcast guests like Ken Okazaki, Neil Patel, Julie Solomon,
0:02:19 O.S. Perlman, and I’ll even share with you how we use audience insights at Yap to create content
0:02:28 that’s relevant and impactful. Let’s get started! First things first, before you can forge a
0:02:33 meaningful connection with an audience, you need to figure out who they are. As a content creator,
0:02:38 understanding the balance between a broad and niche audience is crucial for growing your engagement
0:02:43 and your business. Broad content allows you to reach a wider audience and potentially increase
0:02:49 views and revenue, while niche content creates deeper and more meaningful connections with a
0:02:54 dedicated community. The key is finding the balance that works for you, and whether you’re
0:02:59 marketing a product, a service, or just yourself, it’s useful to start by thinking in terms of
0:03:04 your TAM, or your total addressable market, but just how big or small should you start?
0:03:09 This is what Neil Patel, an expert on digital marketing, told me about how he approaches
0:03:18 a potential audience. What makes a good audience market to me is a big TAM. So, assuming you find
0:03:21 something you’re passionate about by just through trial and error, you’ve got to make sure you’re
0:03:27 focusing on a big TAM. Everyone says the riches are in the niches. That’s far from true. If you
0:03:31 look at the majority of the large corporations out there, like Tesla’s, Automotive, right?
0:03:36 People need cars in this world. If you look at Microsoft, everyone needs software to run these
0:03:41 computers and digital devices that we’re on. If you look at Google, we’re relying on search for
0:03:48 anything and someone organizing data and feeding it to us in a very organized fashion. If you look
0:03:54 at Apple, we need all these hardware pieces that they’re selling from, headphones to cell phones
0:03:58 to laptops, right? These are large markets. If you look again, look at the biggest companies
0:04:04 in the world, they’re going after large markets and not niches. So, the key is to go after a big
0:04:09 TAM. Now, you can start in a niche if you want and there’s nothing wrong with that, but you need
0:04:15 to make sure that you can expand that niche into a large market because the amount of effort it takes
0:04:22 to market a business, whether it’s on LinkedIn or any social platform or even SEO, for a niche
0:04:27 compared to a large market is almost the same amount of effort. Sure, it’s harder in a large
0:04:32 market. It takes longer to see results, but it’s the same process in the same time and energy that
0:04:37 you’re putting into it. So, might as well go after something big because it’s very unrealistic to be
0:04:42 in a niche and being like, you know what? I’m going to dominate this niche and gobble up 100% of the
0:04:50 market share or even 20, 30%. That’s very hard to do. But on the flip side, it’s easier to say,
0:04:56 hey, I’m going to go after this multi-billion-dollar market and I’m going to gobble up 0.1% of it,
0:05:00 right? You gobble up even something small. That’s enough money where you’re generating
0:05:04 millions of dollars where it’s meaningful, right? For example, if it’s a $10 billion market that
0:05:11 you’re going after, you gobble up 0.1%, that’s big enough to create amazing life and a business.
0:05:15 So, you’re saying you need a big, sort of more broad market. You don’t want to get
0:05:20 two in the niches because they’re really hard to find. That’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
0:05:25 When you’re a marketer, you want to find your audience in mass. You want to target them in
0:05:29 mass. That’s how you’re going to target them in the cheapest way, the most effective way.
0:05:33 If you have to find 10 people here, 10 people there, it’s like you are just going to exhaust
0:05:40 yourself and it’s going to be very expensive. Exactly right. You need to go after a big market
0:05:46 so that way you don’t have to have frequency issues of like, oh, I’ve shown my ad to 500 people.
0:05:50 All right. How many more people can you show? Well, that’s my only audience or even 10,000
0:05:56 people. It’s not enough. You need to go after the masses. Yeah. So, I know that you have a formula
0:06:01 for marketing that you talk about. Could you break that down for us? Sure. So, number one,
0:06:07 go after a really big tam. Once you have a big tam, then if you want to do well, you need to take
0:06:15 an omnichannel approach from LinkedIn to Facebook to Instagram to WhatsApp marketing through text,
0:06:22 through email marketing to SEO, to paid advertising. It doesn’t matter if you like paid ads on Facebook
0:06:27 or not. If it’s profitable, it’s profitable. You got to keep leveraging it. And then from there,
0:06:31 you got to figure out how to add in the upsells and downsells, because if you look at marketing
0:06:36 over time, it continually costs more and more. So, you got to add in the upsells and downsells.
0:06:40 In other words, build that funnel, figure out how to generate more revenue from that same customer.
0:06:45 And if they’re buying more right at purchase, it allows you to spend more money on marketing,
0:06:49 as well as figure out a way to generate reoccurring revenues.
0:06:56 However broad or narrow you go with your potential audience and whatever channel
0:07:01 you reach them through, remember that you are ultimately the one picking your audience. That’s
0:07:08 right. Your audience is your choice. And building an audience is really its own kind of a business.
0:07:13 In fact, none other than Mr. Side Hustle himself, Nick Loper, shared with me how he now considers
0:07:19 building an audience on channels like YouTube to be one of the most promising side hustles around.
0:07:26 Something that I read of yours that I thought was really interesting is that you actually consider
0:07:32 a side hustle being growing an audience, right? You call it an audience business. So talk to us
0:07:37 about why having an audience in itself can be a side hustle with multiple avenues.
0:07:44 Yeah, this is probably tier three. Tier one services, tier two products. Tier three is this
0:07:50 really flexible hybrid content-based business, audience-based business, where it could be a
0:07:55 social following, it could be a blog following, a podcast following, a YouTube following.
0:08:02 And once you have people paying attention, the entire playbook opens up. Sure, you could sell
0:08:06 services, you could sell products, you could sell attention in the form of advertising or affiliate
0:08:11 partnerships. But it really is a powerful place to play. And that’s really where I spent the bulk
0:08:16 of my side hustle and entrepreneurial time over the last 10 years to try and figure out how to get
0:08:21 more traffic, how to get more listeners, how to get more email subscribers and play in that space.
0:08:29 Because the scale is almost infinite, right? It takes, as you know, the same effort and energy
0:08:35 and investment to create an episode, a podcast episode that 10 people listen to or 10,000 people
0:08:41 listen to or 100,000 people. And so it’s a really unique platform in that way and the same thing
0:08:49 with social content or video content. Whatever content arena you decide to play in, it’s not
0:08:54 just enough to turn up and churn out content. Julie Solomon, who’s the queen of influencer
0:09:00 marketing and an expert on how to break through on platforms like Instagram, explains the critical
0:09:05 distinction between simply creating content and producing content that genuinely drives results
0:09:13 with your audience. When it comes to Instagram, because that’s really been my platform of choice
0:09:18 since 2013. So I have been there through the ups and downs and the in-betweens. And I think that
0:09:25 where most people get it wrong is that they get so lost in having to have to do it a certain way
0:09:33 or trying to beat some kind of system or some kind of algorithm. And what I have noticed throughout
0:09:38 a decade plus of supporting people on Instagram and coaching them in order to build a brand
0:09:45 invisibility there is that, yes, it’s important to understand things like hashtags and SEO and
0:09:51 viral hooks and all of those kinds of things. But really at the end of the day, it just comes down
0:09:59 to do you have value-based content that is specifically talking to the person whose problem
0:10:06 that you solve and are you showing up as an authority and as someone that can educate them
0:10:13 as being that solution provider as consistently as possible. And most of the time, people aren’t
0:10:17 doing that because they’re so focused on these things that really just don’t matter at the
0:10:26 end of the day. And that’s why I have a lot of people that will come to me and it’s wild
0:10:31 that they’ve got tens, if not hundreds of thousands of followers and they make no money.
0:10:37 And I’m thinking, how do you have all this and you don’t make money? And it’s because
0:10:42 maybe they figured out a way to go viral or maybe they figured out some kind of
0:10:48 giveaway process to gain a following or maybe they did some collabs. But because they weren’t
0:10:53 creating that value from the get-go, because they weren’t thinking about, what do I specialize in?
0:10:57 What is my offer? Why do I want to pick up this phone and post something every day?
0:11:01 It’s like they completely missed the boat. And before they know it, they’re three months in or
0:11:05 three years in or 10 years in and then they come to me and they’re like, Julie, I don’t understand
0:11:12 how I’ve kind of been trying to grow and piecemilling it together and maybe I’ve gotten to a thousand
0:11:15 followers and nothing’s happening or maybe I’ve gotten to a hundred thousand followers, but still
0:11:20 nothing’s happening because I’m not making any money. And so what’s happening here? And so I think
0:11:25 that for growth on Instagram, you really have to think about that through line. Are you just
0:11:31 creating content just to create content? Because that is just a hobby or are you actually creating
0:11:36 content to solve a problem for somebody, to be of service to someone, to be a solution provider
0:11:40 for someone? Because that’s how you actually end up monetizing it. And those are two completely
0:11:45 different focuses. Totally agree with that. And also from a sponsorship perspective, it’s also
0:11:50 important to think of this because if you’re just creating mindless content that’s going viral,
0:11:56 maybe you’re reposting viral videos and you’ve got this huge broad audience, but nobody knows
0:12:01 what you stand for. You’re not the actual influencer. Your content went viral. You didn’t
0:12:06 necessarily go viral. Your ideas and your products and services didn’t necessarily go viral. It’s
0:12:13 just content. And so it’s hard to get brand sponsorships when you actually are not an influencer
0:12:18 and your content just went viral because there’s no way to really describe your audience. It’s hard
0:12:23 for brands to understand who they’re targeting exactly. So that’s something else to think about.
0:12:29 Yeah, I call those people cold creators that they are showing up to create content, but there is no
0:12:34 warmth behind them focusing on building the know, like and trust. And we even see this with a lot
0:12:40 of massive influencers out there. You think about, you know, Charlie, I can’t remember her last name,
0:12:44 but she was on Dancing with the Stars. Her family had a reality show. Her and her sisters went viral
0:12:50 on TikTok. And now it’s like, not only is there, all they talk about is how their mental health is
0:12:54 just like all over the place. They can’t show up. They can’t be consistent. They’re not happy. They’re
0:12:58 not fulfilled. But a lot of the brand deals that they’ve started to do, whether that’s product
0:13:01 lines that they’ve launched or what have you, have now been pulled off the shelves because
0:13:06 they’re not converting. And the reason why is because they didn’t take the time to build that
0:13:10 know, like and trust with their audience. They didn’t take the time to really build a brand
0:13:15 around the reputation that they wanted to have. They were just creating content for the sake of
0:13:20 creating content and, you know, doing it on TikTok and blowing up, but now they don’t have anything
0:13:25 to show for it. And there’s a lot of creators that that has happened to over time that have gone on
0:13:31 to maybe get a Sephora, you know, makeup deal. But then a year later, they don’t have any makeup
0:13:39 in the stores and it’s because it can’t sell. So how do we figure out exactly what will resonate
0:13:45 best with our target audience? To truly connect with that audience and create content that genuinely
0:13:50 serves their needs, you need to understand what interests them, what drives them, what thrills
0:13:55 them. Understanding what your audience wants is the foundation of creating content that stands out,
0:14:00 even since the dawn of time when early humans were telling their first stories around the
0:14:06 communal fire. Of course, nowadays, most of our audiences are online, but we can still learn a
0:14:11 lot about how to shape and respond to an audience from those who are gifted performers and make
0:14:17 their living by delighting live audiences. The magician and mentalist, Oz Perlman, is one such
0:14:22 performer. And he shared with me some fascinating insights into how he uses deep knowledge of
0:14:31 human behavior to read an audience. Every show is different, which is great because every audience
0:14:35 is different, right? Think about it. If you’re watching a movie, the movie is always the same,
0:14:40 versus what I do is not like watching a singer or a band where, you know, they can change the song
0:14:45 a little bit, but it’s still the same song. For me, everything I do involves audience interaction.
0:14:52 My show is the audience because like if I’m doing a show for a thousand people, 50, 60, 100 of them
0:14:55 will be a part of it. At some point, I throw frisbees around the audience, we hand envelopes,
0:15:02 we pick people out of the whole crowd. I’ve done arenas before with 10,000 people. And what my
0:15:07 show is all about is audience reactions, watching someone’s face and that shock and that amazement,
0:15:12 and sometimes that just absolute silence. When you’ve done something that seems impossible or you’ve
0:15:17 told them something, there’s no way you could have known or anticipated. And that’s really the
0:15:23 product I’m selling is very memorable moments, usually with a lot of emotional impact. And so
0:15:28 it’s helpful in certain parts of everyday life. But it’s funny because not as if I can just walk
0:15:33 into a real estate negotiation and be like, I know their bottom line. I know how much money
0:15:38 I’m saving like it works in certain ways. It’s helpful. It’s an edge, but it’s not the same. It’s
0:15:45 a facade. You know, it’s an entertainment pursuit because in my shows, I’m the director.
0:15:48 I get to call the shots in a certain way. So I wish I could tell you, I’d go to the poker table
0:15:54 and just make millions. Funny enough, a lot of casinos, they have people trained in what I do
0:15:58 going against me. They’re the ones who are making sure that I can’t cheat.
0:16:03 Got it. Got it. And that reminds me of something that I’ve also heard you said,
0:16:07 where you say that your profession is more like a comedian than it is a magician because you’re
0:16:12 actually feeding off the audience and not just like doing the same thing over and over again.
0:16:18 Totally. And it’s hard to practice what I do. So a magician, think about it, can practice,
0:16:22 like I use an example of a card trick. You can practice a card trick at home in front of the
0:16:28 mirror for days, weeks, years, and perfect the moves that are required. Same thing with a juggler,
0:16:34 let’s call it. But a comedian has to tell their joke. He or she tells their joke. And the only way
0:16:40 you know if it’s funny is if an audience reacts. The audience is your canvas. So the exact same
0:16:44 thing applies. And that’s the reason right there, why there’s so much fewer mentalists than magicians.
0:16:51 Because the learning curve is so steep, you can’t get better without first bombing. So you need to
0:16:56 be bad and start doing it and getting better and better with audiences. And a lot of people don’t
0:17:01 have that stomach. They can’t deal with that level of rejection over and over and not be good for years
0:17:11 at times. The audience is your canvas. I just love that. And it’s just as true for an online
0:17:17 audience. The best online content isn’t just a one way broadcast. It’s a conversation. It’s about
0:17:22 give and take where we’re tuning into what our audience really wants, what resonates with them,
0:17:27 and what keeps them coming back. In other words, you’re not creating content for yourself. Just
0:17:32 like Oz Perlman, you’re responding to what your audience is telling you, even when it’s through
0:17:39 nonverbal cues like likes, shares, and comments. Every interaction is a signal and your audience
0:17:44 is showing what they relate to, what they’re curious about, and sometimes what just isn’t clicking.
0:17:50 At times you may bomb just like a stand up comedian or a live performer might. The magic happens when
0:17:55 you take the time to interpret these signals and respond to them. That’s when your content goes from
0:18:01 good to great. But figuring out an audience, of course, takes time. Perhaps nobody I’ve spoken
0:18:05 to knows this better than my good friend, the entrepreneur and the host of the Social Proof
0:18:11 podcast, David Chance. David is one of the hardest working people I know. And as you’ll hear,
0:18:15 he knows his audience down to their daily routine and their habits.
0:18:23 So I have to ask you, for anybody who’s starting their YouTube journey now,
0:18:28 like you said, you started in 13 years ago or something like that. But 2023, it’s a whole
0:18:32 different game. You’re still crushing it. You still know how to get views and all of that.
0:18:35 So how can we get more engagement on YouTube, more views and subscribers?
0:18:43 One, you have to be good at it. It’s not like, I don’t have a one to three step
0:18:51 for someone that’s not good. That doesn’t ask good questions or put up amazing content or
0:18:53 come out with shareable stuff. There’s nothing I can do for you.
0:19:02 You have to practice the craft. It’s really cool because for two years of actually doing the podcast
0:19:08 and putting it on YouTube, I wasn’t thinking money for 10 years. I mean, while I was doing,
0:19:16 so I started 2010, I didn’t start monetizing until 2020. For those 10 years, I’m not even
0:19:21 thinking that YouTube makes money. I never even thought about it. My only thing was,
0:19:28 are people liking this content? Are they sharing it? Are they commenting? And I was focused on
0:19:35 having a good show and being a good interviewer and being engaging. So that’s where I’m blessed
0:19:40 because I came before the era of jump on YouTube to make a million dollars.
0:19:48 I had time to perfect my craft. One, you just have to be good at it. I don’t care if you’re
0:19:55 super consistent. You have the best camera, best lighting, best, if the content isn’t amazing,
0:20:03 it’s not going to work. Practice your craft. You really need to find a niche that you’re passionate
0:20:10 about and that other people are passionate about. You have to brand yourself around this conversation.
0:20:16 So I brand, my whole world is branded around podcasting and entrepreneurship. One, I’ve been
0:20:22 doing it for 10 years or longer than that, my whole life really, but this whole podcasting thing,
0:20:27 in entrepreneurship, my whole world is that. My bio says it. If you talk to me long enough,
0:20:33 we’re going to talk about podcasting or entrepreneurship. That’s my brand. So I have
0:20:38 a niche. I have an audience. I know all the things that my audience is struggling with.
0:20:44 That’s how I can tell you, all right, so you got to stop stopping. You got to stop.
0:20:48 One of the worst things that can happen to an entrepreneur is a little bit of success because
0:20:53 other people see that little bit of success and they start inviting you to their thing that they’re
0:20:58 doing and it’s going to take you off path. The reason I know that is because I’ve been through it
0:21:03 and I’ve been coaching entrepreneurs for the last decade on this space. So I know my audience,
0:21:07 I know exactly what they’re going through. So you need to know your audience know exactly what
0:21:12 they’re going through. You for sure need to be consistent. So the best way to do that is
0:21:18 have a consistent day that you record, whether it’s every Wednesday, every Thursday,
0:21:24 we record our podcasts every Wednesday for sure. Now somebody can’t do Wednesday and
0:21:28 they’re a big enough guess. We’ll do it on Thursday or do it on Tuesday because I’m on
0:21:33 studio. So it’s cool, but I have a specific day that we record. We have a specific day that we
0:21:40 release and it’s consistent. If you think of your favorite shows growing up, it wasn’t sporadic when
0:21:47 they delivered the content. It was the same time, same day every single week because people put their,
0:21:53 they put your show or your content into their life. So I’ve released my podcast at seven in the
0:21:58 morning because I know there are people going to work and I want them to listen to my podcast on
0:22:04 their way to work because I want them to be inspired. I want them to be motivated and this is
0:22:09 their thing. It’s in the routine. If anything ever happens, like there’s a misfire on the
0:22:15 scheduling or something like that, I get messages. Hey, you ain’t released this episode? What happened?
0:22:20 What happened? What happened? I’m like, whoa, let me find out what’s going on because they
0:22:31 I show into the framework of their lives and you can’t disappoint or you’ll break trust. So if you
0:22:36 say every Monday at seven o’clock, it’s going to release and sometimes it’s at seven, sometimes at
0:22:42 two PM, sometimes it releases on Tuesday. Sometimes it just doesn’t release that week.
0:22:47 You’re breaking the trust because now I can’t trust you to put this in my schedule anymore.
0:22:56 So yeah, and also looking at the trends, studying your craft, studying what’s working in your
0:23:02 industry. And yeah, I think if you put all of those together and you’re good at it, it will grow,
0:23:09 period. If you want to have a detailed understanding of your audience like David,
0:23:14 you need information. And today, the best tools for understanding audience preferences
0:23:20 is our data and analytics. It might not sound super glamorous, but trust me, these numbers are
0:23:26 gold. Engagement metrics like views, likes, comments and shares reveal what topics and
0:23:31 formats your audience is drawn to. By analyzing these patterns, you get insights that might
0:23:36 otherwise go unnoticed. Data doesn’t lie. If you’re not looking at your analytics,
0:23:41 you’re missing out on a treasure trove of information that can help guide your content strategy.
0:23:46 At YAP, we regularly review our analytics to spot trends and highlight what’s working.
0:23:52 It’s about more than just knowing which episodes are posted well. It’s about understanding why.
0:23:57 If a specific topic or guest sees a surge in engagement, that tells us that our audience is
0:24:01 interested in that subject and we might explore it further in future episodes.
0:24:06 And we’re not just looking at the numbers. We’re looking at the why behind the numbers.
0:24:10 What was it about this particular guest or topic that hit the mark?
0:24:13 Was there something in the style or the format that people responded to?
0:24:19 By digging into these insights, we can adapt and evolve our content to meet our audience’s
0:24:24 preferences. On the other hand, if certain themes or styles consistently underperform,
0:24:29 it’s a sign that we may need to rethink our approach or pivot. Analytics is not just about
0:24:34 measuring success. It’s about learning, adapting and evolving based on the hard evidence. It’s
0:24:39 like having a compass that guides the direction of your content. But you have to be willing to
0:24:44 act on that feedback you get from your audience. And next, we’ll learn how you can harness feedback
0:24:52 to create even better content. Flexibility is crucial in content creation.
0:24:57 You don’t need to change who you are, but you can refine how you present yourself to meet your
0:25:02 audience where they are. One of my favorite examples of using data and feedback to know your
0:25:07 audience better was shared with me by video marketing expert Ken Okazaki. Sometimes meeting
0:25:13 your audience where they are means literally knowing where they are, even if that happens to be on
0:25:24 the toilet. So fun fact, and I’ve heard you talk about this a few times. 80% of men and 69% of women
0:25:28 use their phone while on the toilet. And you’ve taken this data and created something called the
0:25:32 toilet strategy. So what is the toilet strategy and what does this data tell us about how we should
0:25:37 be conducting video marketing? Yeah, I should probably look that up. I don’t know if the numbers
0:25:43 have gone up or down. A couple of years ago, I wrote that book. But I don’t know about you, but I
0:25:53 happened to use my phone in the toilet. And when I realized that there’s that huge percentage,
0:25:56 because that’s kind of like literally your downtime, right? So that’s when you’re like,
0:26:00 you know, you’re checking messages, linking to social media. And there’s a couple of things
0:26:04 going on here. And right now, it may seem obvious. But when I first presented this at a conference,
0:26:07 everybody was like, oh, my, you know, smack my head, like, that’s, that’s so obvious. Why didn’t
0:26:14 I think of it? But when your audience is in the toilet, you have to, well, put it this way, tune
0:26:17 your videos as if you’re speaking to someone on the toilet. So there’s a couple things going on.
0:26:22 Number one, you, you want to make sure there’s captions on every single word, because when you’re
0:26:26 in a public bathroom, it’s very rare that you’re going to want the speakers blaring while you’re
0:26:31 in there, right? So immediately someone’s going to mute, if they can’t hear you, or read you,
0:26:34 then they’re going to skip off, right? So that’s rule number one. Rule number two about the toilet
0:26:41 strategy is the length. There are so many times on where I’ve seen a video, I thought this is great.
0:26:45 And then what we’ve done is eye tracking tests. The first thing we look at is the title to see
0:26:50 if we want to stop the second one is the person’s eyes. The third place we look, believe it or not,
0:26:56 is the play bar to see how long it is. And that’s through eye tracking data. And if the video is
0:27:01 too long, like you probably want to spend five minutes in the bathroom max, if it’s a 20 minute
0:27:05 video, what happens is this is a great video, but I don’t have 20 minutes to see Safer Later,
0:27:10 which by the way, nobody ever goes to the Safer Later video and actually watches them. It’s,
0:27:16 it is a black hole where things go in and never come back out. So you never want to get Safer
0:27:20 Later. So there’s the length, you want to keep it, you know, two minutes max. Nowadays, it’s under
0:27:25 a minute. It keeps getting shorter. Oh, the third thing is really the big title on top. Now,
0:27:31 that’s kind of changed because nowadays, with the way TikTok format videos have really taken over,
0:27:36 the algorithm chooses what shows up. It’s not what you subscribe to. So it doesn’t matter
0:27:42 quite as much, but I think it’s quite effective on some platforms where the thumbnail is going to
0:27:46 be much more prominent than the actual video itself. For example, YouTube.
0:27:55 The toilet strategy might be an extreme example, but it shows how responding to data and feedback
0:27:59 you’re given about your audience can allow you to transform your content in a way that will
0:28:05 connect even better with them. At Yap, we’re always actively listening to feedback. We read
0:28:09 comments, look at engagement metrics, and keep an eye out on the formats that are doing well.
0:28:14 For instance, that we’ve seen that our audience really responds to a conversational style and
0:28:20 interviews. So we integrate that into more episodes purposefully. And if a certain topic, style, or
0:28:26 format isn’t resonating, we’re not afraid to just switch it up. Think of adaptation as a cycle.
0:28:31 You put out content, gauge your response, and then adjust. And if you do this over and over again,
0:28:37 and turn up for your audience on a regular basis, you will acquire some powerful insights from them.
0:28:41 And their feedback will not only help you improve existing content,
0:28:47 but it will also help you generate bold new ideas. Now here’s Ken Okazaki again with more.
0:28:55 If you don’t show up, things don’t happen. And that’s when success builds on success.
0:29:00 And that’s when people start realizing, hey, this person is a pillar in this vertical,
0:29:06 in this niche, in this industry. And the more they hear you, the more they want to hear about you.
0:29:10 I’m not going to go into too much detail here for the sake of time, but the rock stars are the people
0:29:19 who, in a nutshell, you’re no longer pushing your content. Your audience is pulling the content
0:29:24 from you. The demand for it is greater than your effort to push it out there. You’re getting
0:29:28 more people to share it. You’re getting people requesting to be on your show. You’re getting
0:29:32 so much engagement that you’ll never run out of ideas because you could just look at the comments
0:29:40 and use that for your content ideas. And that’s that feeling of getting pulled. And once you reach
0:29:46 that, there’s a lot of people who just realize that there is this, I guess it’s like the flywheel
0:29:52 type of feeling. And that’s flow. And that’s where that’s where I want all my clients to get.
0:30:00 This willingness to evolve shows your audience that you’re paying attention and that you respect
0:30:05 their preferences. It’s a win-win. You’re creating content that’s meaningful and relevant. And your
0:30:10 audience feels more connected to you because they know their feedback genuinely matters.
0:30:15 When you understand your audience, it transforms your entire approach. You’re not guessing, you’re
0:30:20 responding. And that makes all the difference. When you approach content as a partnership with
0:30:26 your audience, you’re building something powerful, a loyal, engaged community that trusts you and
0:30:34 wants to come back again and again. Now, adapting to your audience doesn’t mean starting from scratch
0:30:41 every time. At YAP, we’ve streamlined this process with OpusClip, a tool that analyzes your raw footage,
0:30:47 pulls in the best moments, and assigns a virality score to give you an idea of how viral each clip
0:30:53 might be. Here’s how it helped us with one of our biggest viral videos yet. When we released my podcast
0:31:00 interview with communication expert Matt Abraham, we used OpusClip’s AI to analyze the hour-long
0:31:06 conversation. It identified emotional peaks, keyword hooks, and moments where viewer curiosity spiked.
0:31:11 Instead of guessing which clips would work, OpusClip highlighted 12 high potential moments
0:31:17 ranked by their ability to peak curiosity. We chose the top five clips, like Matt’s descriptive
0:31:24 moment. My team turned them into a 30-second intro, and the result? 50% more viewers stayed past the
0:31:30 30-second mark, leading to a better watch time and a much greater reach. The video now sets at over
0:31:37 123,000 views and counting, making it one of the best-performing videos on my channel. If you’re
0:31:43 not using tools like OpusClip to test and refine your content, you’re missing on a great opportunity
0:31:48 to stay connected with your audience. OpusClip helps you get the most out of your content by
0:31:53 highlighting the moments that resonate most. Instead of guessing, you’re making informed
0:32:01 decisions that keep your strategy aligned with your audience preferences. Well, yeah, fam,
0:32:07 that’s it for episode five of the Yap Creator series. By paying attention to engagement, using
0:32:12 data to guide your strategy and creating a feedback loop, you can build a stronger connection with
0:32:17 your audience and keep your content fresh and relevant. And if you’re ready to do this and
0:32:22 to take your content to the next level, try OpusClip today. You can let OpusClip help you create
0:32:31 awesome videos that will drive engagement at opus.pro/clipanything. That’s opus.pro/clipanything.
0:32:35 Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you in episode six, where we unlock the secrets of
0:32:40 content creation with the focus on how AI is changing the game.
0:32:50 [Music]
0:32:53 (upbeat music)
0:33:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:04 [MUSIC]
0:00:08 Hey there, it’s Stephen Dubner, and I thought you might need a bonus episode of
0:00:10 Freakonomics Radio for the upcoming Super Bowl.
0:00:14 We recently put out a new episode about the economics of the running back
0:00:15 position in the NFL.
0:00:19 This episode, which we first published in 2023,
0:00:23 looked at NFL teams as employers.
0:00:27 We’ve updated facts and figures as necessary, although the team rankings we
0:00:30 discussed are from the 2023 report card.
0:00:34 So stick around to the end to hear what changed in 2024.
0:00:36 As always, thanks for listening.
0:00:43 [MUSIC]
0:00:47 When I say the words workplace environment, where does your mind go?
0:00:51 If you’re like most people, you might think about an environment like this.
0:00:54 Or like this.
0:00:58 Maybe even something like this.
0:01:01 Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
0:01:08 What you probably don’t think about when I say workplace environment is this.
0:01:12 [MUSIC]
0:01:18 But if you are one of the roughly 2000 men who play in the National Football League,
0:01:20 that’s your office.
0:01:23 I mean, it’s business, let’s not get it wrong, it’s business.
0:01:29 The NFL Players Association, or NFLPA, is the union that represents the players.
0:01:35 And in 2023, they conducted their first ever employee survey about workplace
0:01:36 conditions.
0:01:39 I would never have thought to ask, are there rats in your locker room?
0:01:43 And they gave letter grades to each of the league’s 32 teams.
0:01:47 This is really about, are we giving you the inputs you need to be as productive
0:01:49 as possible?
0:01:53 The NFL is the richest and most successful sports league in history.
0:01:57 Each team is worth at least $4 billion.
0:01:59 Nobody wants to be known as the cheapskate.
0:02:03 Before, when it was rumored you were the cheapskate, it was harder to prove.
0:02:05 Now there’s data.
0:02:09 And what does the data have to say?
0:02:13 Among US employees in general, job satisfaction is higher than it’s been
0:02:14 in decades.
0:02:18 How satisfied are NFL players?
0:02:22 Now, you may be saying to yourself, who cares about the workplace environment
0:02:23 of NFL players?
0:02:26 They make so much money, the environment shouldn’t matter.
0:02:31 Or you may say, pro football is so different from what I do for a living,
0:02:35 there’s no way I’m going to learn anything worthwhile from this.
0:02:40 Well, if we have done our job in making this episode, you will.
0:02:45 At the very least, with another NFL season in the books, you will learn which teams
0:02:48 got the best grades and the worst.
0:02:50 Never really heard of an F minus before.
0:03:08 This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side
0:03:11 of everything with your host, Steven Dubner.
0:03:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:03:24 Imagine that you have just graduated from college with a degree in, say,
0:03:25 mechanical engineering.
0:03:29 And you know exactly what kind of company you want to work for.
0:03:34 And let’s say there are 32 such companies within a 100-mile radius
0:03:35 of where you want to live.
0:03:39 So which company will you end up at?
0:03:41 To a large degree, that is up to you.
0:03:43 You can apply wherever you’d like.
0:03:47 And if that company thinks you are qualified and they make you an offer,
0:03:51 you can decide whether to accept or reject the job.
0:03:55 This is not how it works in professional sports.
0:03:59 Imagine now that instead of studying mechanical engineering,
0:04:01 you went to college to play football.
0:04:04 If you are good enough to play in the National Football League,
0:04:08 or if you’re an athlete good enough to play in any of the other major American
0:04:12 sports leagues, you don’t get to choose which team you play for.
0:04:16 It’s the teams that choose the players in an annual draft.
0:04:20 Teams with the worst records the previous season typically get to pick earlier
0:04:23 in the draft and the best teams pick later.
0:04:28 In the NFL, most rookie contracts will bind you to that team for four years.
0:04:34 The top ranked players may sign huge rookie contracts with millions of dollars guaranteed.
0:04:36 But that’s just the top of the pyramid.
0:04:40 Around 50 percent of NFL players make the league minimum.
0:04:44 This year, that was a base salary of $840,000 for a rookie
0:04:47 with gradual increases for each year of service.
0:04:51 So yes, that’s a big paycheck compared to most first jobs.
0:04:56 But the average NFL career is barely three years long.
0:05:00 So a lot of players are out of the league before their rookie contract expires.
0:05:04 They are replaced by someone even younger and cheaper.
0:05:07 If you are good enough to stick around, pass that rookie contract.
0:05:11 And if you’re lucky enough to have remained healthy, those are two big ifs.
0:05:14 Then you become what is called an unrestricted free agent.
0:05:18 And you can sell your services to whichever team wants you.
0:05:23 Finally, after four years in the NFL, you have achieved the workforce freedom
0:05:26 of a newly graduated mechanical engineer.
0:05:33 At this point, you may be in for big money, five or 10, even $50 million a year.
0:05:37 And how does a free agent decide which team to play for?
0:05:43 Your agent will speak to all the interested teams, try to drive up your price
0:05:45 and help you sort through the offers.
0:05:48 There’s a lot to consider how the payout will be structured,
0:05:52 what kind of incentives and bonus clauses you can get in the contract,
0:05:56 even the occasional restrictive clause like in the recent contract,
0:06:01 the Arizona Cardinals offered to resign their star quarterback, Kyler Murray.
0:06:04 They wanted Murray to, here, I’ll read from the contract.
0:06:10 They wanted him to complete at least four hours of independent study each week.
0:06:13 In other words, they wanted to make sure he’s doing his homework,
0:06:17 studying the playbook, watching film at night, things like that.
0:06:22 Arizona was criticized for adding this clause and they ultimately removed it.
0:06:26 And Murray did sign the contract, a five-year deal that could pay out more
0:06:29 than $230 million.
0:06:34 When players get to choose their team, they usually go with the highest dollar offer.
0:06:37 But there are other factors to consider.
0:06:39 How good is the team?
0:06:41 Most players want to play for winners.
0:06:46 How good is the coaching staff and how secure if they’re in danger of getting fired?
0:06:48 You may be too.
0:06:50 You might consider the weather.
0:06:53 Are you a Miami guy or a Minnesota guy?
0:06:59 And maybe you will also consider the workplace conditions at your new club.
0:07:02 How good is the locker room and the weight room?
0:07:04 What about the food?
0:07:08 How does the team treat your family members on game day?
0:07:11 Those are the kind of questions most of us wouldn’t think to ask.
0:07:16 But Joseph Carl Treader, Jr. isn’t most people.
0:07:21 When we interviewed Treader for this episode, he was president of the NFL Players Association.
0:07:28 His tenure ended in 2024, and he was succeeded by Detroit Lions linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maven.
0:07:31 You’ll hear from him a little later in this episode.
0:07:34 I asked Treader to start with his college background.
0:07:40 I went to Cornell University and studied industrial labor relations.
0:07:44 That’s a pretty typical college and major for an NFL prospect, yes?
0:07:45 Yeah.
0:07:49 It’s not the normal pipeline to the pros and I think leading into my election, it probably
0:07:57 helped substantially because there’s not many Cornell ILR grads walking around the NFL.
0:08:01 The election, Treader mentioned, was for the union presidency.
0:08:07 He had a long successful career in the NFL, nine seasons as an offensive lineman for the
0:08:13 Green Bay Packers and the Cleveland Browns with around $45 million in career earnings.
0:08:20 He retired in 2022 at age 31 and he had two years left on his term as union president.
0:08:25 I was looking for some new projects to do, so I had a ton of time on my hands and it
0:08:27 was like, I’m going to take a stab at this.
0:08:33 This being the workplace survey of all current NFL players, which the union had been talking
0:08:34 about for years.
0:08:39 As we saw the responses start pouring in, this is a proof of concept.
0:08:40 Yeah.
0:08:41 I was shocked at the response rate.
0:08:44 I don’t know how many players got the survey and how many responded.
0:08:49 We have 2,200 active players and we had 1,300 fill out the survey, which is about 60%.
0:08:53 As we saw the numbers start pouring in, it was like, oh man, we have to do something
0:08:54 here.
0:08:58 It’s going to be like report cards, you had to ask somewhat qualitative but also quantitative
0:09:02 questions to try to figure out how to compare these franchises.
0:09:04 Give an example or two.
0:09:08 Rate your locker room one to five, but then also what would you change about your locker
0:09:09 room?
0:09:10 What’s missing in your locker room?
0:09:15 What would be in a five rated locker room and what would be in or maybe missing from
0:09:16 a one rated locker room?
0:09:19 I would never have thought to ask, are there rats in your locker room?
0:09:21 Are there physical rats in your locker room?
0:09:24 And yet that comes out in the survey because there were.
0:09:26 In Jacksonville, we should say.
0:09:27 Not everywhere.
0:09:28 Right.
0:09:32 You have to allow the players to fill you in with what’s bothering them.
0:09:36 There’s one team that doesn’t have outlets in their lockers where they can’t charge their
0:09:37 devices.
0:09:38 Who is that?
0:09:39 Cincinnati.
0:09:47 The survey was conducted online with guaranteed anonymity.
0:09:52 In our business, you’re so on razor’s edge of being cut and losing your job.
0:09:57 The idea that these owners actually think players can walk into their office and tell
0:10:00 them like, Hey, I think you’re being cheap and you’re not spending enough money on us
0:10:04 and there wouldn’t be any retribution is a little crazy to me.
0:10:08 There are some players that do and a lot of it’s the star quarterbacks who are untouchable
0:10:12 or players that have guaranteed money and feel like they’re safe and they can go in there
0:10:16 and they can try to drive change for their teammates because they’re a little more protective
0:10:17 than the average player.
0:10:20 But that was one of the reasons about making it anonymous.
0:10:27 It was allowing everybody to voice what they’ve seen without fear of retribution.
0:10:32 The survey covered eight categories, three were about the physical facilities, the locker
0:10:35 room, weight room and training room.
0:10:39 That’s where a player goes for a massage or the hot tub or to get an injury treated.
0:10:42 There was one question about nutrition.
0:10:46 How well does each team feed and hydrate the players also travel?
0:10:49 How comfortable are the airplane seats?
0:10:52 How about the hotel rooms and do you have to have a roommate?
0:10:58 The survey also asked how well the team takes care of the players families during the games.
0:11:03 Is there, for instance, a place for your mom or maybe your wife and young kids to watch
0:11:06 where they won’t get pelted by beers?
0:11:12 And finally, the survey asked about the training staff and the strength staff, but interestingly,
0:11:14 not the coaching staff.
0:11:20 I didn’t want a category that I felt could be too tracked to wins and losses.
0:11:23 I really wanted to stick to standard of care like, “Hey, where do you spend most of your
0:11:24 time?
0:11:27 The locker room, the training room, the weight room, the cafeteria, like what staff is around
0:11:28 you most of the time?
0:11:31 The training staff, the strength staff, how do you travel?
0:11:32 How do they treat your families?
0:11:36 Those are the core issues that impact their daily life.
0:11:38 And I didn’t want it to become like, “Hey, this is a good coach because we win a bunch
0:11:39 of games.”
0:11:40 That’s not telling us anything.
0:11:44 There are some coaches that have a leadership council of older players that meet once a
0:11:47 week and then acts on those recommendations.
0:11:50 And I think that’s what a good workplace looks like.
0:11:53 That was something probably 15 years ago in the NFL.
0:11:54 There wasn’t any of that.
0:11:58 It was very much, “We’re doing this because I’m the coach and I’m the boss and I say we’re
0:11:59 doing it.”
0:12:05 And now I think more and more of the younger coaches are coming in, being much more receptive
0:12:08 to hearing feedback and acting on that feedback.
0:12:12 Trader says the players union had two primary goals in running the survey and giving each
0:12:14 team letter grades.
0:12:18 The first was to give players information that could help them decide where to work if they
0:12:20 ever got that choice.
0:12:25 The second goal was to help raise the standards across each club by bringing problems out
0:12:26 into the open.
0:12:29 That’s why the union published the results.
0:12:33 We will put the link in our show notes if you want to take a look and why they graded
0:12:40 each club in all eight categories because in the NFL, turnabout is fair play.
0:12:41 We’re always measured.
0:12:43 We’re always graded.
0:12:45 They can use letter grades, number grades.
0:12:51 You play 60 plays and they’re like, “All right, you did your job on 80% of plays.”
0:12:53 That is Jalen Reeves-Maban.
0:12:58 He is a linebacker with the Detroit Lions and president of the NFL Players Association.
0:13:03 We’re judged at every step and I don’t think there’s ever really been a time where accountability
0:13:10 has gone to the teams or the ownership of like, “Hey, are you being excellent here?
0:13:12 Like, where’s your grade in this area?”
0:13:15 Reeves-Maban has been in the league since 2017.
0:13:20 He started his career with Detroit, then went to Houston for one season and when we spoke
0:13:27 with him, he was back with Detroit on a one-year contract with a base salary of $1.25 million.
0:13:34 He played well and last year he signed a two-year extension with the Lions for $7.5 million.
0:13:36 What does Detroit get in return for that salary?
0:13:42 It’s the combination of the mental aspect where every week I have to learn a new opponent,
0:13:46 I have to learn what they’re trying to do to attack me, but I also have this physical
0:13:49 aspect of I’m playing a violent game.
0:13:53 If I’m not violent, I’m probably going to get hurt, but I can’t be scared.
0:13:56 I can’t be scared to get hurt because then that’s going to show in your performance.
0:14:02 So you kind of got to have a recklessness in the sense or just a willingness to take
0:14:03 that pain.
0:14:08 That combined with the physical, the conditioning, the stamina, the energy, the persistence you
0:14:10 have to have, it’s a lot.
0:14:14 So I think it’s extremely hard, but I know that in all walks of life, people are working
0:14:15 extremely hard.
0:14:20 I have to add, too, just the media scrutiny and the fact that you’re basically on public
0:14:22 display all the time.
0:14:28 I don’t think the average person knows how heavy that feels on your shoulders.
0:14:33 You can basically determine a mood for a whole city or a whole state based off what you did
0:14:35 on Sunday in a three-hour period.
0:14:38 So there’s a lot that comes with it.
0:14:41 The NFL is a commercial juggernaut.
0:14:46 If you look at Variety’s list of the top 25 primetime TV broadcasts from last year,
0:14:50 you’ll see that 18 of those 25 were NFL games.
0:14:55 The exceptions were the Oscars, the Summer Olympics, the Grammys, the Presidential Debate,
0:14:58 the World Series, and a college football semifinal.
0:15:01 I mean, there’s so much money involved.
0:15:06 And with so much money, the league has TV deals worth more than $100 billion over roughly
0:15:07 a decade.
0:15:11 Reeves Maven says the survey findings were pretty surprising.
0:15:17 Well, there was reports of teams having a rat infestation in the locker room.
0:15:21 There’s guys who don’t get fed after practices.
0:15:23 The team was charging them for food.
0:15:28 I know sometimes these things might seem like, oh, you got enough money to pay for it, but
0:15:31 we are operating at the highest level possible.
0:15:36 They demand excellence from us, and I think that we should be demanding excellence from
0:15:37 the teams.
0:15:42 Jaycee Tredder was also surprised to learn that some players were being charged for food
0:15:44 at team facilities.
0:15:48 That was one where I had to reach out to several people to make sure I was hearing it correctly
0:15:52 of, wait, I just want to make sure for the fourth time, is this true?
0:15:58 Because that is so preposterous, and a job where what you fuel your body with is so important
0:16:02 to almost push them out of the building, to push them to fast food, to push them to poor
0:16:06 nutrition is such like a backwards way of looking at our industry.
0:16:07 It was crazy.
0:16:09 And why do you think those teams do it?
0:16:11 Is it just, it’s the way it was always done?
0:16:13 Are they really trying to save money?
0:16:14 I don’t know.
0:16:15 It was one team.
0:16:18 It was the Arizona Cardinals who made people pay.
0:16:22 There are three other teams that didn’t provide it, and I don’t think the cost they were charging
0:16:27 would pay for the meals anyways is almost like the control factor of it of, hey, just
0:16:28 know your place.
0:16:32 Can you talk about what you mean with that know your place sentiment?
0:16:38 Because I think the public sees football players as superstars, not as employees coming into
0:16:42 a workplace with bosses and needing to know their place.
0:16:43 Yeah.
0:16:46 From a union perspective, we’re negotiating for the same things that any union is, better
0:16:53 wages, better benefits, better working conditions, but there is a level of control that’s always
0:16:59 being fought after and the league, there’s a piece of them that just wants to make sure
0:17:03 that we know that they have control of us.
0:17:09 From individual teams, like you said, we are just workers and some coaches and some bosses
0:17:15 are better at working with their employees about different changes that need to be made,
0:17:20 whether it’s scheduling, whether it’s technique, whether it’s how they operate.
0:17:25 And some aren’t good, I sometimes get frustrated when we’re defined too much as just players
0:17:29 because I think it takes us away out of the real world and puts us into football world
0:17:31 and we are workers and we’re fighting for the same things.
0:17:36 And I think that’s one of our struggles as a union because of our short lifespan where
0:17:44 somebody comes into a union job and they can make sacrifices and bargain a certain way because
0:17:47 they have the opportunity to be in that job for 30, 40 years.
0:17:50 So sacrificing for today, they’re going to see the fruits of that labor and that’s not
0:17:51 always true for us.
0:17:56 So the sacrifices one group makes, they’re probably never seeing the benefits of those
0:17:57 sacrifices.
0:18:01 But when it comes to the negotiating, there is a pie out there and I think your job as
0:18:05 an individual or as a union is to get the biggest share if possible.
0:18:09 I have to say, you can really sound like an old fashioned union agitator when you need
0:18:12 to.
0:18:16 When you look at the overall results of your survey, especially the team rankings, the teams
0:18:24 that come in ranked high and the teams that come in ranked low, among the top ranked teams,
0:18:25 what do they have in common?
0:18:28 Whether it’s ownership, whether it’s an attitude.
0:18:31 The top three teams all have brand new facilities.
0:18:37 When we talk about facilities, I think sometimes the fans don’t understand how different franchises
0:18:38 work.
0:18:39 So everybody thinks of their stadiums.
0:18:43 So like the Rams and the Chargers were poorly ranked and you heard a lot of questions of
0:18:46 like, whoa, SoFi stadiums brand new, they put billions of dollars into it.
0:18:47 How is it poorly ranked?
0:18:49 That’s not where players spend their days.
0:18:51 That’s where they play for one day a week.
0:18:54 But their facilities are usually located elsewhere.
0:18:56 So some of that is just random when the survey is done.
0:18:59 So in 10 years, those facilities will be getting a little radion.
0:19:02 Whoever else has new facilities, they’ll probably rank a little bit higher because of that.
0:19:03 Yeah.
0:19:04 If teams do get new facilities, right?
0:19:10 Like some of these teams have had old facilities forever.
0:19:14 So who are the top three teams in the players union survey?
0:19:15 Not their teams.
0:19:19 Our Minnesota was number one, Miami was number two and Las Vegas was number three.
0:19:24 The owners of the Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins both made their money in real
0:19:25 estate development.
0:19:29 So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that they brought their real estate shops to their
0:19:31 football investments.
0:19:37 The big surprise, to me at least, is that some of the best teams in football rank toward
0:19:38 the bottom.
0:19:42 If you look at the winners of the past six Super Bowls, the New England Patriots, the
0:19:47 LA Rams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Kansas City Chiefs who won it three times,
0:19:52 none of them ranked higher than 24th out of 32 teams in 2023.
0:19:58 I asked JC Tredder if he was surprised to see so many top performing teams at the bottom
0:19:59 of his list.
0:20:00 No.
0:20:01 And that’s the thing.
0:20:05 Like having a star quarterback like Patrick Mahomes is the ultimate deodorant.
0:20:10 Whether it’s telling around them or facilities or coaching, he’s going to make everybody
0:20:13 look good because he is that freaking good as a quarterback.
0:20:17 But that doesn’t mean the offerings shouldn’t be up to snuff.
0:20:22 It shouldn’t be, hey, come here to play with Patrick Mahomes and potentially win a Super
0:20:26 Bowl, but also the facilities are going to be old and dilapidated and you have to deal
0:20:27 with that.
0:20:28 That shouldn’t be the trade-off.
0:20:29 Just pay for better facilities.
0:20:34 If you’re making so much money, the idea of making it a choice of one or the other when
0:20:37 you could just provide both doesn’t make much sense to me.
0:20:40 What do the teams at the bottom have in common?
0:20:44 Is it something as simple as they typically have older practice facilities?
0:20:49 We asked the players, do they think their owner is willing to invest money to make the
0:20:50 facilities better?
0:20:55 And I think the teams at the bottom, that number tracked being down there.
0:21:00 You don’t have to knock down walls, but are you willing to invest the money necessary
0:21:04 to make the changes necessary to fix the issues you have?
0:21:09 Like for Cincinnati, to rewire the locker room to make sure there’s outlets there is
0:21:11 not that costly.
0:21:17 For Washington, there was complaints that there’s poor drainage in the showers.
0:21:24 So the guys are literally standing in the water that’s been run off from the guy next
0:21:28 to him who’s showering the dirt and the blood and the sweat.
0:21:31 These aren’t knock the walls down and build a new facility.
0:21:35 Let’s get a plumber in there and fix it.
0:21:40 The Washington commanders with their backed up showers ranked dead last in the NFL report
0:21:41 card.
0:21:43 But that wasn’t their biggest problem.
0:21:48 The team was plagued with a variety of scandals concerning workplace harassment and financial
0:21:49 impropriety.
0:21:56 Finally, the wildly unpopular owner, Dan Snyder, gave in to pressure from the league and agreed
0:21:57 to sell the team.
0:22:02 This season, with new owners and a new head coach and general manager, the commanders
0:22:06 had a remarkable turnaround, making the NFC championship game for the first time since
0:22:08 1991.
0:22:14 Washington’s problems during the Snyder era got a lot of press, but at most clubs, routine
0:22:17 problems don’t get much coverage.
0:22:18 And J.C.
0:22:22 Tredder says that when players change teams, they often don’t have much information until
0:22:25 they show up at their new workplace.
0:22:29 And when they’re making these decisions about where they’re going to spend potentially the
0:22:32 rest of their career, they should know what they’re getting into.
0:22:38 I talked to a lot of guys as we did the survey and I said, “Hey, your team’s one of the worst
0:22:39 graded teams.
0:22:41 Did you know that before you signed?”
0:22:42 And they’re like, “No.”
0:22:44 And I got here and now I feel trapped.
0:22:49 The quality of care is poor and the facilities are poor and I’m stuck here.
0:22:53 So even if I’m making $8, $10, $15 million a year and the facilities are poor, it’s enough
0:22:55 to have buyers remorse, you’re saying?
0:22:56 Yeah.
0:22:58 And again, most of our guys aren’t making that.
0:23:00 So you start looking for differentiators.
0:23:04 And those guys, the minimum seller guys are the lunch pail hard hat guys of your team,
0:23:10 the special teams guys, the offensive linemen, the backups that make the team work.
0:23:14 Those guys are looking at and saying, “Hold on, I’m going to get the same dollar amount
0:23:15 from every team.”
0:23:17 What are the other variables I can look at?
0:23:21 And before it was, what do I think of the area, like the city, like how close it is to
0:23:22 my family.
0:23:26 And now it’s like, “Hold on, I’m not going to go to a team that has weight room floors
0:23:28 peeling up and charges me for dinner.
0:23:32 I’m going to go someplace else.”
0:23:36 So is this NFL team report card working?
0:23:42 Coming up, we’ll hear from an agent, an economist, and later the people who run the teams.
0:23:43 I’m Stephen Dubner.
0:23:47 I love making Freakonomics Radio and I love that you’re listening to him.
0:23:48 We will be right back.
0:24:04 Jim Eibler has worked for more than 25 years as an agent for NFL players, although he isn’t
0:24:06 an agent technically.
0:24:09 Technically we are called certified contract advisors.
0:24:15 Eibler’s job, as the name implies, is to advise players on their contracts.
0:24:20 For players coming into the NFL from college via the draft, remember they don’t choose
0:24:26 where they’ll play and their salary is predetermined by how high they were picked in the draft.
0:24:30 We’re also accustomed to the draft and that’s how talent is dispersed throughout the league.
0:24:34 But when you think about it in more of a macro level, it’s a pretty incredible process.
0:24:40 I mean, you’re told as a recent person coming out of college where you’re going to work.
0:24:44 I know when I graduated law school, if someone had called me up and said, “You’ve just been
0:24:48 drafted by a law firm in Green Bay, Wisconsin,” and that’s where you’re going to go, I would
0:24:50 have said, “You want a bet?”
0:24:55 But obviously these guys go, most of them very happily, to whatever team drafts them.
0:25:00 The process though really is we’re trying to achieve generational wealth for our clients
0:25:04 and I know it’s a buzzword and a cliche, but it’s really true.
0:25:08 The goal needs to be that when the player is done playing in the NFL, whether they play
0:25:12 four years or 14 years, that they can retire with enough money in the bank so they can
0:25:16 do whatever it is they want to do with the rest of their life because it’s a passion,
0:25:18 not because they need the paycheck.
0:25:23 And so unless you’re a, I’m going to call it a top 20 or 25 pick, you’re really not getting
0:25:26 that generational wealth from your first contract.
0:25:30 So we’re really all in this game to help our clients achieve a second contract and if they’re
0:25:33 really blessed, maybe a third and a fourth contract.
0:25:36 If you can get that bite at the apple where you’ve performed well enough, where there’s
0:25:40 multiple teams interested in you, that’s where the leverage maybe flips and it’s on
0:25:42 the player’s side.
0:25:46 It doesn’t happen to a lot of guys and I’m sure you’ve heard the average career span
0:25:49 of an NFL player is 3.3 years.
0:25:53 And it’s probably not a total coincidence that that’s just before the unrestricted free
0:25:54 agency kicks in.
0:25:55 Do the math.
0:25:59 If you can’t become unrestricted until four years and the average player is 3.3 years,
0:26:01 that means the average player is never getting that bite at the apple.
0:26:06 Okay, let’s say you represent a player who has just become a free agent and you do your
0:26:10 thing and you get offers from three teams.
0:26:15 What are the primary factors that will go into the decision of where your client will
0:26:22 want to go and I especially want to know if workplace conditions are at all a major factor.
0:26:26 Certainly compensation, anybody that says that’s not number one is probably lying.
0:26:31 Even if the player has made that sort of money over the course of his career to achieve that
0:26:36 generational wealth, the compensation is still going to be the primary factor.
0:26:41 And then the team itself, the talent that the player is surrounded with, teammate-wise,
0:26:45 the coaching staff, whether or not the team has anticipated to be a playoff, Super Bowl
0:26:49 team, these are all things that I would say are a little bit more important to players
0:26:51 than the workplace conditions.
0:26:54 But something that players are talking about, but I wouldn’t put it in the top few factors
0:26:57 of making free agent decisions.
0:27:02 Another thing you need to realize about unrestricted free agency, this happens really fast.
0:27:06 In terms of player has to make a life-altering decision in five minutes because if the player
0:27:10 is not ready to commit, that team is going to go on to the next guy on their list at
0:27:11 that position.
0:27:15 And when you have to make those quick decisions, the size of the locker room is really not
0:27:16 coming up.
0:27:20 One of the factors that a player and agent will absolutely consider is whether or not
0:27:24 there’s a state tax that’s levied against the player with the team that he is signing
0:27:29 with and eight of the 32 NFL teams play in states where there is no state tax and that
0:27:34 could be a pretty big difference monetarily if you’re talking about 0% taken out as opposed
0:27:38 to 8, 9, 10, 11% in some of the higher states.
0:27:43 List for me the no-tax places, I guess it’s all the teams in Texas and Florida.
0:27:47 The two teams in Texas, it’s the three teams in Florida, it’s Vegas, it’s Seattle and
0:27:49 it’s Tennessee.
0:27:55 So it sounds like you put a lot less stock into the impact of the survey than someone
0:27:56 like J.C.
0:28:01 So I’m trying to get a read on how much this survey really matters in the end.
0:28:02 What do you think?
0:28:08 I think it was a great idea for him to commission this survey and get responses from players.
0:28:11 He should be holding teams feet to the fire because I can guarantee you there are some
0:28:16 owners that are upset from what I’ve read Arthur Blank down in Atlanta was disappointed
0:28:21 that his team ranked where it did and these guys are competitive regardless of whether
0:28:23 or not it’s really having an impact in free agent decisions.
0:28:28 It doesn’t mean that the survey is not going to affect change in a lot of these facilities
0:28:32 with these team owners because if they perceive that it could be a problem in free agency,
0:28:34 that’s really the most important thing.
0:28:40 So the Washington commanders got an F or lower, they actually got an F minus in a few categories
0:28:47 in 1, 2, 3, 4 of the categories and then a couple of D’s, C and an A plus in strength
0:28:52 coaches so the players loved the strength coaches but in terms of the things the team
0:29:00 does otherwise, locker room, F minus, team travel, F minus, treatment of families, F.
0:29:05 Can you talk about why those things matter so much to a player that they’re going to
0:29:07 give their own team an F minus?
0:29:12 For sure and I’ve never really heard of an F minus before.
0:29:16 But it is important and certainly I think as a player ages throughout his career it
0:29:21 becomes more important because presumably they have a wife, they have children and how
0:29:24 the family is treated on game day for instance is a big deal.
0:29:29 I remember about 15 years ago speaking to the front office of the Jets and they were
0:29:33 asking well what could we do better and we brought up the concept of a family room on
0:29:37 game day and they didn’t even understand what we were saying and we said hey listen you
0:29:42 have players whose wives are coming with little kids and they’re sitting in the stands and
0:29:45 the beer is flowing and there’s things that are said.
0:29:51 The concept of having a daycare in an NFL stadium not too long ago was unheard of.
0:29:54 Now I think it’s close to half maybe half them.
0:30:00 Same thing with a family room where the players, families can go and shelter from bad weather,
0:30:02 shelter from crazed fans.
0:30:09 Are you surprised that so many, I mean these are billion dollar franchises and they could
0:30:14 pretty easily fix some of these problems if they cared with a little bit of money.
0:30:18 Like the family room is going to cost some money plainly but not a ton.
0:30:22 Are you surprised that there’s this sort of penny-wise, pound foolish approach?
0:30:24 Yes, I’m surprised.
0:30:27 These are multi-billion dollar organizations.
0:30:32 Their most important asset of course is the talent that they’re putting out on the field.
0:30:38 So to read some of the things in the survey, uneven floors in the weight room where players
0:30:43 feel afraid walking around, slippery floors in the pool area where players are falling
0:30:48 when you invest so much in your assets to have a workplace injury potentially happen,
0:30:51 it would not be a good look and it is very surprising.
0:30:57 But on the other hand, some of these teams are run by old school owners.
0:31:01 You look at some of the teams that are low on the list, I don’t think it’s an accident
0:31:05 that the owners made their money from the team.
0:31:07 They didn’t come from a different industry.
0:31:11 They came from where their grandfathers paid $500 and a bottle of whiskey for the team
0:31:19 back in 1942 and they are kind of mired in old school ways or maybe a little bit slow
0:31:24 to come around and no matter how much the front office wants to be progressive and implore
0:31:33 them to change certain things, it still starts at the top and the owner has final say.
0:31:39 One problem for family-run firms is it can be hard to innovate.
0:31:42 How do you think outside the box when you’ve never left the box?
0:31:44 That is Betsy Stevenson.
0:31:52 I am an economist and professor at the University of Michigan and I study labor markets.
0:31:53 Are you a football fan, Betsy?
0:31:57 I teach at the University of Michigan so I have to just plead the fifth and refuse to
0:31:59 answer this question.
0:32:01 So that’s a big fat no plainly.
0:32:03 Yeah, it’s really awkward.
0:32:07 Stevenson may not know football, but she does know labor economics.
0:32:14 I served as the chief economist at the Department of Labor and I served as a member of the Council
0:32:19 of Economic Advisers giving advice to President Obama.
0:32:24 Can I have an example of some labor economics advice you may have given?
0:32:29 One big thing we talked a lot about was whether we should require forms of compensation outside
0:32:30 of wages.
0:32:34 Like should people be required to get paid sick days?
0:32:40 Should we require that people get paid maternity or paternity leave?
0:32:45 What makes a good job and what’s the role of government in shaping the conditions?
0:32:47 So what makes a good job?
0:32:48 That’s an easy answer, yeah?
0:32:56 Yeah, it’s hard because we all have different preferences and I think the hope of economists
0:33:01 who believe in market forces is everybody wants different things and they’ll just be
0:33:09 able to sort around the labor market till they find the thing that works for them.
0:33:14 So when a company does provide what economists like Stevenson call compensation outside of
0:33:18 wages, why do they provide that?
0:33:21 Economists have come up with two buckets of reasons.
0:33:25 So the first bucket is the benefits might be a compliment to hard work.
0:33:30 We actually see higher productivity because it induces more effort from workers.
0:33:36 The second bucket is that employees might value the benefits more than it costs the
0:33:39 employer to provide those benefits.
0:33:43 So let’s start with the first bucket, compliment to hard work.
0:33:49 That’s why every company going back to the 50s that has office workers has coffee in
0:33:51 the break room, right?
0:33:54 You got to caffeinate your workers to get them to work hard.
0:34:00 The tech sector went a little crazy with this like, “Hey, let’s have ping-pong tables.”
0:34:04 But it really was the same idea, “Well, if you’re socializing at work, you’ll have less
0:34:06 of a reason to leave.”
0:34:10 One of the more extreme examples was some of the tech companies started providing a benefit
0:34:13 which is, “We will pay for you to freeze your eggs.”
0:34:19 Oh no, we have these hard-working female employees wringing their hands in their early 30s thinking
0:34:20 they better have a baby.
0:34:23 I know what we’ll do, we’ll pay to freeze their eggs and then they’ll be able to keep
0:34:25 working hard for a few more years.
0:34:29 Betsy, I know you took a look at the NFL Players Survey.
0:34:34 How do you think about their non-wage compensation in terms of this first bucket?
0:34:38 Yeah, it’s great because you can actually see the categories here which are clearly
0:34:40 a compliment to high productivity.
0:34:41 Nutrition.
0:34:46 They’re like, “What you eat is going to affect how you play, so we’re going to feed you.”
0:34:50 The weight room, how you train up is going to affect how you play.
0:34:52 We’re going to give you a weight room.
0:34:57 This is really about, “Are we giving you the inputs you need to be as productive as possible?”
0:35:01 When we think about things like the treatment of families.
0:35:03 That’s bucket two, I assume.
0:35:07 Yeah, this is something that’s going to have a cost to them, but the question is what’s
0:35:17 the value to the person receiving it, and that value might be quite high.
0:35:24 My wife, my mom, my sister, my dad, they didn’t come to games to tailgate and booze it up and
0:35:26 cheer for the Cleveland Browns.
0:35:30 They came to the game to make sure I walked off the field at the end.
0:35:35 That again is JC Tredder, former president of the NFL Players Union.
0:35:37 I understand the guys on the field are making a lot of money.
0:35:40 Even the guys making minimum salary are making a lot of money.
0:35:45 The risk they are taking, though, is substantial, and the damage they are receiving is substantial,
0:35:53 and parents and kids and wives and siblings are there worried about their well-being.
0:35:59 The idea that the guys out there making the owner hundreds of millions to billions of
0:36:04 dollars for what they’re doing on the field, well taking all of the risk physically, the
0:36:09 idea that their wife and newborn baby are sitting on the grimy floor of a public restroom
0:36:12 breastfeeding is just preposterous to me.
0:36:16 18 of the teams offer family rooms, 14 don’t, and the teams that don’t, like, where is
0:36:18 that wife supposed to go?
0:36:20 What’s your prediction for, let’s say, two years from now?
0:36:22 How many of those 14 will offer it?
0:36:25 We’ve heard from some teams being like, “Hey, you know, we have an older stadium.
0:36:26 There’s no room for it.”
0:36:30 But everybody has suites, you know, like, in the end, it comes down to a choice.
0:36:34 So how many games did your family attend when you were playing for Cleveland?
0:36:40 Yeah, they would be at almost every home game, and in the end, once I got my third contract,
0:36:44 me and two other teammates went in on a suite, like, we bought our own suite.
0:36:49 We all had young kids from two and under, and we didn’t want them out in the cold.
0:36:52 So we said, like, “We’ll pay the money and buy a suite.”
0:36:54 How much did you have to pay?
0:36:55 $150,000.
0:36:56 Okay.
0:37:00 Split by three players with, let’s call it, eight home games a season.
0:37:04 So a little over $6,000 a game, you’re paying out of pocket.
0:37:06 I’ll trust your math.
0:37:10 Looks like a lot of teams are doing a really bad job.
0:37:13 I mean, I saw a lot of Fs.
0:37:16 That, again, is the economist Betsy Stevenson.
0:37:21 Like, maybe they’re not getting the great inflation that our university students get
0:37:24 these days, but a lot of Fs.
0:37:30 And I think what that says is this is a job where there’s a lot of cash thrown at these
0:37:33 players and they don’t think about anything else.
0:37:38 Betsy, are you surprised that firms that are paying their key employees a relatively
0:37:44 very high salary, that at least some of them on some dimensions are apparently so cheap
0:37:47 when it comes to perks and benefits?
0:37:55 I am surprised that any team is messing up when it comes to perks and benefits that would
0:37:58 actually increase the productivity of the players.
0:38:06 I think that’s a clear mistake because those perks and benefits are probably quite cheap
0:38:12 compared to not just pay, but compared to the benefits they yield on the playing field.
0:38:15 Like one more victory would be worth quite a bit of money.
0:38:16 One more victory is worth a lot of money, right?
0:38:21 You could probably do a full renovation of your weight room.
0:38:25 Do you think the issue here is that they’re not connecting it necessarily or not believing
0:38:29 the connection to productivity because otherwise it’s hard for me to understand why they would
0:38:31 cheap out?
0:38:38 I’m pausing only because sometimes people do stupid things, Stephen.
0:38:44 So I think that’s one answer is they’re just being dumb.
0:38:51 Now another answer is what’s necessary in the weight room or the training room or nutrition
0:38:57 in order to get the best out of your players on the field is being given, but players are
0:39:04 looking for little aspects of that that don’t actually have any impact on their productivity.
0:39:08 Maybe they want a brighter, sunnier room.
0:39:10 It can be hard to measure these things.
0:39:14 Maybe if you had the brighter, sunnier room, they’d work harder in training and if they
0:39:16 worked harder in training, they’d do better on the playing field.
0:39:21 So you should figure out how to make it brighter or sunnier.
0:39:26 I painted little poppies on the wall in my gym and I swear I pellet on faster because
0:39:28 I love my field of poppies.
0:39:32 Can I just say if this economist thing doesn’t work out for you, maybe NFL training room
0:39:35 decorator would be a lovely second career.
0:39:41 That would be fun, yeah.
0:39:46 Are NFL team owners and bosses really just doing stupid things?
0:39:48 We’ll find out after the break.
0:39:53 If you like this episode of Freakonomics Radio, there are three things you can do.
0:39:56 Number one, listen every week.
0:39:57 We’re here.
0:39:58 You should be too.
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0:40:10 app.
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0:40:12 We’ll be right back.
0:40:29 So according to a recent survey conducted by the NFL Players Union, many pro football
0:40:32 teams are not such great places to work.
0:40:38 We reached out to all 32 teams asking for an interview with their owner or president.
0:40:44 The line never responded, 21 declined with one communications director asking why we
0:40:49 thought he would ever let us speak with his boss about this topic.
0:40:52 In the end, two teams did agree to speak.
0:40:57 Not surprisingly, they were the top two teams in the player survey.
0:41:01 This is Mark Wilf, owner, president of the Minnesota Vikings.
0:41:06 So Mark, congratulations on acing the NFL PA’s reporter card.
0:41:09 I’m just curious how much did that matter to you?
0:41:11 Well, it matters a lot.
0:41:17 I mean, from day one of our ownership, 2005, it’s our highest goal to make our organization
0:41:20 a world-class organization.
0:41:24 And of course, that’s winning Super Bowls, which is paramount, but facilities, staff
0:41:26 and community involvement as well.
0:41:29 So here’s a choice for you, Mark.
0:41:35 You can keep an A grade, the number one ranking on this report card for, let’s say, 10 years,
0:41:37 not win a Super Bowl.
0:41:38 Would that be worth it?
0:41:40 I mean, maybe winning isn’t everything.
0:41:44 Maybe treating people well is, in the long run, more important.
0:41:49 Well, I strongly believe that culture in a building is critical, and I think it’s critical
0:41:51 to building championships.
0:41:55 So I want to be greedy and say we want both.
0:41:56 Okay.
0:42:00 And let’s hear from the team that came in second.
0:42:06 Tom Garfinkel, vice chairman, CEO and president, Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium.
0:42:11 Garfinkel is the top lieutenant to Stephen Ross, the real estate developer who is majority
0:42:13 owner of the Dolphins.
0:42:17 Steve is very focused on being best in class and being willing to invest in being best
0:42:18 in class.
0:42:22 So congratulations on doing so well on this NFL team report card.
0:42:26 What was your first response when you saw your grades?
0:42:29 Well, my first reaction was, I don’t like being second.
0:42:30 So we’re going to fix the family area.
0:42:36 I could promise you that we will have the best family area in football next year.
0:42:42 The Dolphins got an A or A plus in every one of the eight categories except for the treatment
0:42:43 of families.
0:42:47 That grade was a C plus with some players saying they didn’t get enough passes to the
0:42:49 post game area.
0:42:52 But otherwise, great reviews.
0:42:59 Not coincidentally, the Dolphins recently opened a new $135 million practice facility.
0:43:05 Long before they broke ground, Garfinkel says he and Ross toured a bunch of other football
0:43:11 facilities, including college facilities, which tend to be extra deluxe since colleges
0:43:14 can’t use actual money to recruit players.
0:43:19 One of the things that really struck us was at Clemson University, the locker room was
0:43:22 really at the center of the facility.
0:43:26 From a layout standpoint, we really thought that’s the right idea.
0:43:28 We want this to be player-centric.
0:43:31 We want the players to be at the heart of everything we do here.
0:43:35 So to put the locker room at the center of the activity was really paramount.
0:43:40 Then designing around that literally sat down with the architect with a pen and pencil and
0:43:45 drew out where the different functions would be adjacent to the locker room for players
0:43:50 so that they could easily and quickly get to all the different areas that they needed
0:43:51 to.
0:43:54 So during the course of the day, players are going from where to where to where.
0:43:56 So it could be the meal room, the cafeteria.
0:43:59 It could be the team meeting rooms, which are where they spend a lot of time.
0:44:04 There’s everything from the sauna and steam room to the cold and the hot plunge and the
0:44:05 underwater treadmill.
0:44:08 And then the training rooms next to that where the doctors and the therapists are.
0:44:11 And then next to that is the weight room.
0:44:12 Is the locker room kind of where you come in?
0:44:14 You drop your stuff.
0:44:18 You get ready to do your day and then are you cycling back through the locker room during
0:44:21 the day because in part that’s where your stuff is?
0:44:22 Yes.
0:44:24 I think the locker room is really home base for them.
0:44:26 There’s an area for them to charge their phone.
0:44:28 There’s a comfortable seat.
0:44:31 It’s not a locker, you know, talking to Dan Marino and those guys.
0:44:32 They literally had a nail.
0:44:34 They used to hang their helmet on.
0:44:37 These are very bespoke custom environments.
0:44:43 We try to design the environment to be almost more four seasons like without the mahogany.
0:44:46 I think you’ll find that the dolphin’s logos are subtle.
0:44:50 The only aqua you see in the locker room is the name plate above the locker.
0:44:53 Is that a test admission that people get sick of aqua?
0:44:54 Because I would make that argument.
0:44:59 I think you might get sick of whatever the color is if it’s all you see everywhere, right?
0:45:07 So we did a rough analysis with the NFLPA report card, the grades versus win/loss records,
0:45:08 basically.
0:45:10 And it turns out there’s very little correlation.
0:45:12 In fact, it might be a little bit negative.
0:45:18 A lot of teams that do really well on the report card have not had great seasons lately.
0:45:20 I haven’t won a Super Bowl in a long time.
0:45:25 Dolphins haven’t won a Super Bowl in a long time, whereas a lot of the teams who’ve won
0:45:28 Super Bowls lately rank really low.
0:45:29 That surprised me.
0:45:32 I’m curious what you make of that back of the envelope correlation.
0:45:36 Well, I would say is that causation or correlation?
0:45:38 This is the first year that survey has been conducted.
0:45:42 To my knowledge, if you’re winning over a long period of time, maybe you don’t feel
0:45:46 the need to put the resources in, and if you’re not winning, you feel the need to create some
0:45:47 competitive advantage.
0:45:51 So I’m not sure maybe over 10 years or something that’ll play itself out.
0:45:54 I’m not sure it’s relevant in the short term.
0:45:58 For a lot of reasons, including especially the pandemic, there’s been a realignment of
0:46:02 the relationship between firms and their employees.
0:46:04 The pendulum kind of swings.
0:46:07 It’ll go really strong one side, then it’ll come back.
0:46:13 I’m just curious what the last several years, including the pandemic, has taught you about
0:46:17 what it means to be an employer in the modern era.
0:46:20 Well, I certainly think employees are more empowered than in the past.
0:46:23 Their voice matters more.
0:46:24 It’s really about listening.
0:46:30 There’s a tradition in football where a lot of things in the NFL are done the same way
0:46:35 across teams in terms of how schedules are set, how coaching is applied, how scouting
0:46:36 processes work.
0:46:40 And one of the things I love about Mike, even in the interview process, was he really has
0:46:41 an innovative mind.
0:46:44 He really wants to do things differently.
0:46:47 Garfinkel is talking about Mike McDaniel, the Dolphins’ head coach.
0:46:52 And one of those things is that players are really different today than they were even
0:46:54 five years ago.
0:46:56 They want to understand the why of things.
0:47:00 And instead of just saying, shut up and get in line and do what I tell you to do, Mike
0:47:04 will sit down with a player and say, well, listen, wide receiver, here’s why I need you
0:47:06 to block corners and safeties in the run game.
0:47:08 Well, I get paid to catch touchdowns.
0:47:09 Okay.
0:47:12 So then I’ll show them the film and say, okay, here’s a three yard run and where the wide
0:47:14 receiver didn’t block the corner of safety.
0:47:19 Here’s the wide receiver blocking the corner of safety and here’s a 35 yard explosive run.
0:47:21 But watch what happens in the next play.
0:47:23 Now the defense moves up into the box.
0:47:25 Now you can run past them and score a touchdown.
0:47:27 So you see how it’s good for you.
0:47:30 So he explains it to them and they’re like, oh, okay, coach, you know, I was down in the
0:47:36 weight room today and the energy, the positive energy, the camaraderie, the excitement is
0:47:38 palpable.
0:47:43 I was at the Miami Dolphins training facilities last year and it’s pretty state of the art.
0:47:44 That is Jason Kelsey.
0:47:49 When we spoke with him in 2023, Kelsey was a longtime member of the Philadelphia Eagles.
0:47:53 He played center, the anchor of the offensive line, and he was considered one of the best
0:47:56 players that position in years.
0:48:00 In March of last year, Kelsey announced his retirement.
0:48:04 He’s also the brother of Travis Kelsey, who plays tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs
0:48:09 and who may wind up being the best player at his position in history.
0:48:14 The brothers played against each other in the 2023 Super Bowl, the Kelsey Bowl, some people
0:48:15 called it.
0:48:17 Travis’s Chiefs won.
0:48:21 Since we spoke with Jason Kelsey for this episode, the brother’s public profile has
0:48:22 only increased.
0:48:28 They signed a huge podcast deal, they appear in what seems to be pretty much every commercial
0:48:35 you see on TV, and Travis continued his very public romance with Taylor Swift.
0:48:41 And the Chiefs won another Super Bowl and are going for their third in a row this week.
0:48:44 Once again, they’re playing the Eagles.
0:48:48 Back then, I asked Jason about his Super Bowl experiences.
0:48:53 He was a key part of the Eagles team that won Super Bowl 52 in 2018, and then there
0:48:57 was his second one against the Chiefs a few years later.
0:49:02 The intensity and emotions of it are very, very high, but obviously, this being my second
0:49:04 one, I had some familiarity with it.
0:49:06 The game is the exact same.
0:49:12 The emotion and intensity and all of that is going to enhance what’s happening in your
0:49:13 head.
0:49:16 For better or worse, or it could be either.
0:49:18 It can be both.
0:49:25 I think it’s worse when you try to do things outside of either your job or the things that
0:49:27 you’ve done to get there.
0:49:32 Chris Long, who had won a Super Bowl in New England right before we played in Super Bowl
0:49:38 52 with the Eagles, his biggest advice was don’t let the moment dictate things to you.
0:49:42 Do everything that got us here, and when the play is there, you’ll be ready to make the
0:49:43 play.
0:49:46 Did you feel you were able to do that in this past year, Super Bowl?
0:49:48 For the most part, I mean, you always have plays you want back.
0:49:51 You’re never going to go out there and play a perfect game.
0:49:56 And unfortunately, I’ve found when you lose, you definitely remember the plays that you
0:49:57 could have had back.
0:50:01 Did losing a Super Bowl add to your wanting to come back or subtract to wanting to come
0:50:02 back?
0:50:05 Unequivocally added to it, and I don’t think it should have.
0:50:09 It’s so hard to get there, and there’s so many things that need to happen right after
0:50:15 the game I wanted to play another season, and I had to really step away and figure out,
0:50:16 is this the right thing?
0:50:17 Is this the right thing for your body?
0:50:19 Is this the right thing for the family?
0:50:20 And can you do it?
0:50:26 My biggest thing is, I want to do it the way it needs to be done, being who you are in
0:50:31 the meeting room on the field around your teammates, investing in that, as well as practicing
0:50:36 hard, as well as lifting weights.
0:50:42 On the 2023 team report card, Jason Kelsey’s Eagles came out middle of the pack, 14th out
0:50:48 of 32 teams, with A’s for food and the weight room, but a C minus for the training room and
0:50:50 a D for travel.
0:50:54 I asked Kelsey if those grades reflected his own views.
0:50:55 I thought it was spot on.
0:51:03 I’d be curious to see what the standard deviation on each one of these was, because when I saw
0:51:05 the results, it was almost to the T.
0:51:07 You felt like you were looking at your answers.
0:51:11 Yeah, but I know that a lot of guys filled it out.
0:51:14 So for the Eagles, I’m looking at your report card.
0:51:24 Both coaches A plus, training staff A plus, but training room C minus, locker room C plus.
0:51:26 Explain why there’s such a split there.
0:51:32 I think that both of those rooms are led really well.
0:51:34 They do forward innovative things.
0:51:37 They’re open to discussing things with the players.
0:51:40 Give me an example if you don’t mind of the forward innovative things.
0:51:46 So there’s a whole discrepancy right now in the NFL of do you practice on Wednesdays or
0:51:49 how many hard days in a row?
0:51:55 The strength staff is very involved with the training staff at one, trying to help players
0:51:59 get better, but also to mitigate injuries.
0:52:06 Training camp used to be two days, hard every single day, three hour practices.
0:52:07 Pads and helmets.
0:52:08 That’s right.
0:52:16 And now it is much more of a tiered system where one day is a yellow day and that goes
0:52:20 into one, the intensity practice, but also the length at which you’re out there.
0:52:22 Green is a, we’re getting geared up.
0:52:28 This is going to be a barn burner, but it’s done in a calculated way that the coaches understand,
0:52:34 that the players understand, and that is done in scientifically the optimal way for
0:52:39 a player to one, stay healthy, but also improve.
0:52:47 Those changes were the result, I assume, almost entirely of NFLPA, the player’s union requests
0:52:50 and negotiations over the years, not from the teams, but tell me if I’m wrong there.
0:52:52 I would say you’re wrong.
0:52:57 The two days for sure was a big negotiating factor by the PA before I got into the league,
0:53:01 but there is a very large gray area in terms of how long practices are.
0:53:06 They can’t be over a certain amount of time on the field, but we are, quite frankly, way
0:53:09 underneath that threshold.
0:53:16 But I think I would be very much remiss if I didn’t give credit to the Eagles organization,
0:53:24 our strength staff and our training staff at going beyond what the collective NFL mindset
0:53:25 is on that.
0:53:30 Your team got an A in food service and nutrition.
0:53:34 Let me tell you, it’s so good, Steven.
0:53:35 Why have you not invited me for lunch yet?
0:53:36 Come on over.
0:53:37 All right.
0:53:43 The Eagles, to their credit, have taken that feedback from players since I’ve been there.
0:53:48 It is remarkable how much the cafeteria has changed for the better, and one, the quality
0:53:53 of food that’s there, and two, the wide range of what you can get.
0:53:58 During the season, are there days where you eat three meals a day at the facility or no?
0:53:59 Yes.
0:54:02 On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner there.
0:54:03 Okay.
0:54:04 So, walk me through those meals.
0:54:07 I’m not asking you to name everything you eat, but give me a typical breakfast, typical
0:54:09 lunch, typical dinner.
0:54:17 My breakfast is usually the, if not the exact same, one item different off, and it used
0:54:18 to be Chef Tim.
0:54:19 Shout out to Chef Tim.
0:54:25 He’s no longer with the Eagles, but I usually go in, I get three eggs over easy with three
0:54:30 sausage links and breakfast potatoes, and then I go get a bagel with cream cheese on
0:54:34 it and honey, and then a cup of blueberries.
0:54:35 Lunch, so we have a few stations.
0:54:40 We have a station right when you come in, which is really for your clean eating, right?
0:54:49 It’s going to be some type of rice or grain, maybe a noodle, and some veggies that have
0:54:50 been cooked.
0:54:57 And then to the left of that, there’s going to be a pretty clean, low-fat added type of
0:54:58 meat, right?
0:55:04 And then the more you go left, you’ll get a little bit of fried stuff, right?
0:55:09 So if you’re in the mood for some french fries or like a sausage, sandwich, hoagie, and then
0:55:15 if you go even left of that, this is probably my favorite station, they’ve gone to a like
0:55:17 regional dish.
0:55:21 A lot of times in season, it’s based on a player’s favorite food or where they’re from.
0:55:23 Give me a for instance.
0:55:30 Well for me, I went to Thailand one year, so I had them do Penang Curry with non-bread,
0:55:33 just absolutely one of my favorite dishes.
0:55:38 Another day, it might be, I think it was either Fletcher Cox or Brandon Graham was smothered
0:55:39 pork chops.
0:55:40 Okay.
0:55:44 So I can see why that gets an A. The D grade that Eagles got for team travel, would you
0:55:47 agree with that assessment?
0:55:51 That might have been lower than what I ranked it, but I did not rank it high.
0:55:52 If I was any higher, it was a C.
0:55:56 I’m reading here, it says only half of the players feel they have enough room to spread
0:55:57 out.
0:55:58 I guess that’s on the plane.
0:56:03 You don’t have roommates in a hotel at least, which some teams do, but you’re one of only
0:56:06 seven teams that don’t offer first class seats to their players.
0:56:09 And I did not know that before this study.
0:56:12 When Chip Kelly was the head coach, he did allow, obviously everybody can sit in first
0:56:18 class, but he did allow starters and players who are extremely large to sit in the first
0:56:20 class seats instead of the coaches.
0:56:21 It’s a nice perk.
0:56:24 Anybody who sat first class knows that those seats are pretty nice.
0:56:31 We have a player, Jordan Malata, who’s north of six, six and 400 pounds almost.
0:56:36 He’s going to struggle to fit any situation in the back of the plane.
0:56:42 I will say there was one point we were coming back on a short flight and they didn’t turn
0:56:45 the TVs on on the back of the seats.
0:56:48 And I remember just flipping out, we’re a billion dollar organization and we can’t
0:56:50 even get free movies on these flights.
0:56:52 Like, what’s going on here, guys?
0:56:53 Who’d you say that to?
0:56:59 I said that to one of the stewardesses and then one of the guys that runs everything for
0:57:03 logistics with the team kind of came back and he’s a guy we’re going to turn the TVs
0:57:04 on Jason.
0:57:10 So now what about being charged for food in Arizona, let’s say, did that surprise you?
0:57:11 It didn’t.
0:57:15 I was in Philly my first few years in the off season, at least, you know, we went to
0:57:21 Arizona and we used the Arizona Cardinals facilities and I can say first hand, they are not investing
0:57:22 in this place.
0:57:27 The weight room had, I’m not kidding you, the mats of the weight room were like, I don’t
0:57:31 know if they had water moisture that was getting in there, but the rubber mat that was on top
0:57:36 of the concrete floor was like peeling up on the corners of it.
0:57:38 You’re like walking on an uneven surface the whole time.
0:57:40 I was like, how are people not just getting hurt in here?
0:57:43 It was eye-openingly bad, in my opinion.
0:57:46 What about the rats in Jacksonville, did that surprise you?
0:57:47 Not one bit.
0:57:48 I mean, come on, man.
0:57:54 I’ve gotten trouble for talking trash on Jacksonville one time so I got to calm it down, but yeah,
0:57:55 that’s stadium.
0:57:58 I have not been too much and I’m very thankful of that.
0:58:01 Do you think this report card will lead to any change?
0:58:02 I do.
0:58:04 It’s already led to change.
0:58:09 They installed a much larger cold pool in the actual training room.
0:58:14 We used to have two above ground pools out back, which I always, you know, we’re a billion-dollar
0:58:16 organization with above ground pools.
0:58:19 I think we can maybe do better than this.
0:58:21 Above ground outdoors, like in the winter?
0:58:25 So they would have to shut them down in the winter and that was a big issue with it.
0:58:26 So they’ve already made corrections on that.
0:58:30 I believe they’re addressing some of the family issues at games.
0:58:37 The weight room is adding another tier that’s going to add more footprint for more bikes
0:58:40 and other workout equipment.
0:58:43 I do think teams are going to respond to it just like players are competitive.
0:58:48 I think owners are competitive and I think that owners are certainly a good portion of
0:58:53 owners are not going to like seeing their organization viewed in a negative light and
0:58:57 I think that they’re going to try and correct these things.
0:59:05 What can the rest of us learn from this process of a union representing the workers goes in,
0:59:12 asks everybody a lot of questions, and then produces a report and it lands and now we’re
0:59:14 going to see what happens.
0:59:15 What should we be learning from this?
0:59:19 What would you say to a CEO who might be listening to this and saying, “Holy cow, yeah, like
0:59:21 this is low hanging fruit.
0:59:26 I fixed the mats in the weight room and I don’t have Jason Kelsey trashing me.”
0:59:27 That’s right.
0:59:32 I think unequivocally that more unions should be doing this.
0:59:37 It’s different when one person comes to you with an anecdote or a one-off as opposed to
0:59:43 a literal survey of your entire workforce saying, “This is what we think of the place
0:59:45 that you have us operate in.”
0:59:53 For CEOs and owners, I think that seeing it this way gives you a much more realistic idea
0:59:56 of what your workplace environment is.
1:00:03 I would want this information and as a worker, I would want my boss to know this, but to
1:00:07 also not be punished if I tell him to his face.
1:00:09 I’m a big fan of this survey.
1:00:14 I think that it will lead to a lot of change in some of these NFL organizations, especially
1:00:17 if it’s done on an annual basis.
1:00:24 I see no reason why other fields or places of business would not follow suit and try
1:00:26 to make changes as well.
1:00:32 What he wants to be known as the cheapskate, I think that as before, when it was rumored
1:00:43 you were the cheapskate, it was harder to prove now there’s data.
1:00:49 We want to live in a world where we’re giving out 32A pluses for all the teams.
1:00:51 That again is JC Treader.
1:00:56 When we went into this year one, I told the staff when we started it, “If all
1:01:01 that comes from this is four teams start giving dinner to those players, it’s a win.”
1:01:06 Now, I’m curious to know what you’ve heard from teams about the survey.
1:01:08 Have you heard anything directly from the teams?
1:01:13 Yeah, we’ve heard from about 12 to 15 teams who have reached out to us just to say, “What
1:01:14 can we do better?
1:01:15 Can you give us more information?
1:01:17 What changes would make us better?”
1:01:21 I give credit to Arthur Blank who’s the owner for the Atlanta Falcons.
1:01:25 There was an article written where he said he pulled his president and GM and head coach
1:01:31 aside and told them, “One, if this comes out again, they absolutely cannot be graded as
1:01:33 low as they were before.
1:01:37 Also that they need to start being more proactive and it shouldn’t take this type of thing to
1:01:38 create the change.
1:01:42 They should be, as leaders of the organization, be looking around corners and realizing where
1:01:44 they’re weak and where they need to improve.”
1:01:47 I don’t know Arthur well from people who do.
1:01:52 It seems like it’s not just lip service and that he’s going to act on those words.
1:01:57 After the report cards were released, the Falcons announced a $30 million upgrade to
1:01:59 their locker room, weight room, and cafeteria.
1:02:03 Although they also said the renovations had already been planned and they were not done
1:02:09 in response to the report card where they came in 23rd out of 32 teams.
1:02:10 Those are the things you want to see.
1:02:12 Don’t get defensive about this.
1:02:13 That’s not what we’re hoping for.
1:02:18 We’re hoping that people see like, “Okay, this team is providing this, this, and this.
1:02:19 Maybe we should provide that too.”
1:02:23 Because in the end, as adversarial, sometimes we are, the teams need the players and the
1:02:25 players need the franchises.
1:02:27 Do you plan to do the survey every year?
1:02:28 Yes.
1:02:32 And year two is going to be more important than year one because year one, owners could
1:02:33 claim ignorance.
1:02:36 I think more will claim ignorance than should claim ignorance.
1:02:38 For some of it, I’m sure they didn’t know.
1:02:41 I don’t think many owners are hanging out in the hot tubs with the guys.
1:02:44 And if they do, that’s a story of itself that we should be diving into of why are they
1:02:47 hanging out in the hot tubs with the guys.
1:02:53 But year two, now that this is out there, if some things aren’t changed, you can’t claim
1:02:54 ignorance anymore.
1:03:01 Considering that an NFL workplace is substantially different in many ways from a typical workplace,
1:03:07 what’s there to be learned from this survey for workers and employers who have nothing
1:03:10 to do with pro sports, et cetera?
1:03:14 The teams are called franchises, and I think that’s a connector outside of our industry.
1:03:18 I think there is an expectation that everything is equal in the NFL, and I think everybody
1:03:22 would think it’s equal at Starbucks and equal at Chick-fil-A and equal at McDonald’s.
1:03:27 And if you go to a franchise, the rules and the treatment of the workers are the same.
1:03:28 And I think we know that’s not true.
1:03:33 And if you’re a worker, I think it would be valuable to know the treatment you will receive
1:03:36 if you decide to work at one franchise versus another.
1:03:42 And I also think if you’re the overall company, it would be interesting to see how your franchises
1:03:48 who are carrying your name and dictating your brand image, how they treat their workers
1:03:58 and how they treat their customers and how that varies across different franchise operators.
1:04:05 I went back to Tom Garfinkel, the Miami Dolphins CEO and president, with a similar question.
1:04:09 What kind of lessons are there to be drawn from this report card for the companies that
1:04:11 aren’t NFL teams?
1:04:15 Are there things that are applicable, or is the NFL work environment just too different
1:04:17 to be useful for comparison?
1:04:19 I think it’s definitely useful for comparison.
1:04:25 I think it comes down to culture, values and standards, investment into your people.
1:04:31 I’m a believer that people need to work together physically, certain jobs, if you’re coding,
1:04:34 sitting at your computer all day, and that’s all you do.
1:04:38 You could probably do that as easily from home as from an office, but most environments
1:04:39 are still very human.
1:04:44 They rely on human interaction and investing in those environments and investing in that
1:04:49 organic interaction enhances creativity, it enhances productivity.
1:04:53 It enhances people want meaning, right?
1:04:56 It goes back to Victor Frankel and everything.
1:04:57 Meaning matters.
1:05:01 And I think what we do, it’s more than sports, it’s more than football.
1:05:02 It’s about meaning.
1:05:03 It’s about social interaction.
1:05:07 We bring people together to experience life together.
1:05:13 It’s still better to be in a stadium when someone catches that pass in the fourth quarter
1:05:16 to win a football game than to watch it on television by yourself at home because you’re
1:05:19 experiencing it with other people.
1:05:24 And whether it’s that as a fan or whether it’s employees interacting together in the
1:05:29 workplace, particularly in environments like this one and many are like this where people
1:05:30 work very hard.
1:05:36 They work long hours and you’re with your coworkers a lot and you want it to be inspiring.
1:05:41 You want it to inspire creativity, productivity, happiness, positivity.
1:05:45 And I think that’s the bigger lesson in all this than anything football related.
1:05:52 I have to say, when we started working on this episode about workplace conditions in
1:05:58 the NFL, I never thought we’d end up at Victor Frankel, but I’m glad we did.
1:06:05 Frankel was an Austrian psychologist, a Holocaust survivor, best known for writing man’s search
1:06:06 for meaning.
1:06:08 If you haven’t read it, I’d suggest you do.
1:06:12 It will make you think as it made Tom Garfinkel think.
1:06:16 Thanks to him as well as all the other guests on today’s show.
1:06:22 Also, let me share an update on the 2024 NFL Players Association report card.
1:06:28 The Philadelphia Eagles jumped from 14th out of 32 teams all the way up to fourth.
1:06:32 Too bad Jason Kelsey had retired and wasn’t around to enjoy that.
1:06:37 The Eagles opponent in the upcoming Super Bowl, the Kansas City Chiefs, still get lousy
1:06:44 marks on their report card, ranking 31st due to poor facilities and low grades for team
1:06:46 owner Clark Hunt.
1:06:51 The biggest jump on the ratings list was the Jacksonville Jaguars, who went from 28th
1:06:57 to fifth thanks to upgrades in their facilities, which are now rat free.
1:07:04 And the very best team to work for, according to the 2024 report card, was the Miami Dolphins,
1:07:10 in part because Tom Garfinkel kept the promise he told us about to fix the family room.
1:07:14 Second and third this year were the Minnesota Vikings and the Green Bay Packers.
1:07:16 That’s it for this update.
1:07:18 We will be back soon with another new episode.
1:07:20 Until then, take care of yourself.
1:07:23 And if you can, someone else too.
1:07:26 Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.
1:07:32 This episode was produced by Ryan Kelly and updated by Dalvin Abouaji and Theo Jacobs.
1:07:36 The Freakonomics Radio network staff also includes Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman, Eleanor
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1:08:15 Oh, come on, come on, come on.
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0:00:03 What I do, I have a photograph in my mind.
0:00:08 I go into a shop, it paints a picture or it doesn’t.
0:00:11 One bad color in a great painting.
0:00:15 That changes, throws off the whole painting.
0:00:19 It’s like the wheels, the ugly wheels on a Mustang.
0:00:21 And I mean that every car now has ugly wheels,
0:00:22 I can’t get over it.
0:00:24 You know, you see the wheels,
0:00:28 it’s like having a bad button on a sweater like this.
0:00:30 This is one of the best sellers.
0:00:33 And if you put an ugly button on this,
0:00:35 that’s what you notice.
0:00:41 And I say never give a customer a reason not to buy something.
0:00:59 Welcome to The Knowledge Project.
0:01:01 I’m your host, Shane Parrish.
0:01:03 In a world where knowledge is power,
0:01:06 this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best
0:01:08 what other people have already figured out.
0:01:12 Most people think retail is about selling things.
0:01:17 Mickey Drexler proved it’s about selling dreams.
0:01:20 As the CEO of Gap and J Crew,
0:01:24 he understood something profound about the American aspiration.
0:01:26 People don’t just want clothes.
0:01:30 They want to become someone through what they wear.
0:01:34 A boy from the Bronx who transformed into retail’s merchant prince,
0:01:38 Drexler could walk into a room with a hundred samples
0:01:41 and instantly spot the three winners
0:01:43 because he saw what Americans wanted to become
0:01:45 before they knew it themselves.
0:01:49 From advising Steve Jobs on Apple’s retail strategy
0:01:51 to building Old Navy from scratch,
0:01:54 Drexler’s career traces a remarkable journey
0:01:57 of seeing opportunities that others missed.
0:02:00 In this conversation, he shares the insights and instincts
0:02:04 that let him repeatedly predict and shape American taste.
0:02:06 Whether you’re building a brand,
0:02:07 leading a team,
0:02:10 or trying to see around corners in your own industry,
0:02:13 you’ll learn how one of the retail’s greatest minds
0:02:16 thinks about the psychology of consumer desire,
0:02:18 the principles of brand building,
0:02:23 and the art of knowing what people want often before they do.
0:02:27 It’s time to listen and learn.
0:02:29 Let’s start at the beginning.
0:02:33 You said your father was a model of what you didn’t want.
0:02:37 He didn’t fit up my job description
0:02:41 of what I thought a good father should be.
0:02:44 Yeah, I didn’t know what I wanted then.
0:02:47 I didn’t know, you know, when you’re a kid,
0:02:49 like you moving all over the place,
0:02:52 you don’t know what’s right and what’s not right.
0:02:54 You learn over time.
0:02:56 What was that relationship like?
0:02:59 He was, it wasn’t good.
0:03:01 He wasn’t a sensitive guy.
0:03:03 He had no emotion.
0:03:05 He didn’t treat my mom well who died.
0:03:09 You know, she had cancer the year I was born.
0:03:11 And what was it like?
0:03:15 I didn’t know any better at all.
0:03:18 And I thought this is what a father is like.
0:03:22 And over the years, I learned that this is not
0:03:25 what a good father is like.
0:03:28 And he never, he was an angry, bitter guy.
0:03:30 He was not successful.
0:03:35 And, you know, he always talked, he wanted to be a big shot.
0:03:39 So in my family, he acted like a big shot
0:03:43 with my mom’s three sisters and my seven cousins.
0:03:46 And by the way, the irony is none of them liked him
0:03:49 because he wasn’t a warm, fuzzy, nice person.
0:03:52 But I didn’t know that when I was growing up.
0:03:54 How did that affect you?
0:04:00 I think my ambition comes from being the opposite of him, I think.
0:04:06 I always lived in my fantasies escaping where I am.
0:04:09 And Peggy, my wife said, you know,
0:04:12 maybe that’s where your creativity comes from.
0:04:16 I don’t believe it came from that because I think creativity
0:04:21 is part of your DNA and I don’t think it can be taught.
0:04:24 So, but, you know, it affected me.
0:04:29 He never took any pleasure in my success.
0:04:32 And I, he just never did.
0:04:35 Was there a moment when you realized he wasn’t a big shot?
0:04:38 Well, I’ll tell you, it’s an interesting story.
0:04:43 I used to work, he worked in the garment code company.
0:04:45 He worked buttons.
0:04:47 He had kind of a low level-ish job.
0:04:49 Well, I didn’t want to face that.
0:04:55 And he, they asked me to take the payroll.
0:04:56 I was 16.
0:04:59 He said, take the payroll to the bank.
0:05:01 What do I do?
0:05:05 I duck out the freight entrance on West 37th Street
0:05:08 Avenue, go into the neighboring freight entrance.
0:05:12 I looked through all the pay stubs or whatever it is.
0:05:18 He was one of the lowest paid people there relative to his peer group,
0:05:21 who he would always put down and whatever.
0:05:23 That was a reality for me.
0:05:26 So that was a cold reality.
0:05:31 So my thoughts of him being whatever disappeared then.
0:05:37 And as I grew, he, he wasn’t a good dad.
0:05:40 So when I lived there, I was going to City College.
0:05:41 I was miserable.
0:05:45 And I was, you know, I just got subways, Long Island Railroad.
0:05:47 And I had to escape from the house.
0:05:51 So I luckily got into, I didn’t know where to apply,
0:05:54 State University of Buffalo.
0:05:57 Some guy I knew went, he wasn’t even a close friend.
0:05:58 I got in.
0:06:00 So I escaped to Buffalo.
0:06:02 And for two years.
0:06:07 And, but it was, you know, never took any.
0:06:12 He was competitive with me in an ironic way.
0:06:15 And, you know, I was getting a lot of press when I,
0:06:18 you know, I worked 12 years in the department stores.
0:06:21 And then I was very lucky, fortunate.
0:06:26 I was called to run Ann Taylor then in 1980.
0:06:27 I was a young guy.
0:06:30 I, you know, I don’t know.
0:06:33 I said, okay, I didn’t know what I would do next.
0:06:35 After 12 years in the department stores,
0:06:42 I couldn’t find the stimulation and the excitement
0:06:45 or whatever you call it, of the organizations.
0:06:47 And I don’t think they’re much different.
0:06:50 Political suck up.
0:06:53 I didn’t know how to articulate this.
0:06:55 But I think in most big companies,
0:06:59 people are always sucking up to their bosses.
0:07:02 That’s my own experience.
0:07:05 And these develop over time, you know,
0:07:08 because the boss reviews you, the boss promotes you.
0:07:11 I’ve learned over the last number of years,
0:07:18 the best judge of a boss is the person who works for the boss.
0:07:20 Tell me more about that.
0:07:24 Well, it’s my own thing, I think, in corporations.
0:07:27 And, well, look at all the CEOs out there.
0:07:31 I don’t know all of them, but I think safe.
0:07:34 They went to the right schools.
0:07:37 I couldn’t care less where anyone goes to school.
0:07:39 I like to see a college degree,
0:07:42 but I also like to see a work history.
0:07:46 But if you’re a safe choice and, you know, it’s, again,
0:07:50 it’s an editorial in what I think people would argue
0:07:54 if they went to a fancy school here and a fancy school there.
0:07:57 And now it starts, and I was guilty when my son
0:08:01 was five years old going to a nursery school.
0:08:03 I didn’t have any connections.
0:08:05 I thought it was a fancy one.
0:08:07 It wasn’t a good choice.
0:08:10 But I think if you look at people, you know,
0:08:13 like everyone, all these earnings reports,
0:08:16 I know the public relations people write that.
0:08:18 They script them.
0:08:20 And safe.
0:08:22 You have a good education.
0:08:26 You don’t want to take a risk on picking the wrong boss
0:08:29 or senior executives.
0:08:32 And I think there’s a lot of self-interested people
0:08:34 in this world, plenty of them.
0:08:36 Why do you think we’re so risk averse?
0:08:39 Well, I can’t answer for others.
0:08:43 I think, you know, why?
0:08:47 I think you have to be creative to move any business forward,
0:08:49 any institution.
0:08:51 And that’s what I think.
0:08:55 And it’s really based on my own personal experience.
0:09:01 And also in the sector I’m in, fashion and all that,
0:09:04 creative drives the engines.
0:09:09 And so why are they risk– it’s a good question.
0:09:13 Well, salary, they don’t want to risk that.
0:09:15 They don’t want to risk that.
0:09:20 I mean, they get very wealthy these days becoming a CEO.
0:09:22 When you transformed the gap,
0:09:26 you renovated all 430 stores at the same time
0:09:29 with no focus group, nothing.
0:09:30 Oh, my God.
0:09:33 If you take over something,
0:09:36 you’ve got to get rid of the old merchandise
0:09:39 because it ties up a lot of cash.
0:09:43 And Don Bless’s heart was nervous about the earnings.
0:09:45 I get emotional.
0:09:48 You know, my stomach speaks for me a lot.
0:09:51 But, you know, business got tough for the first year.
0:09:55 The stock dropped probably 50%.
0:09:59 And, you know, I never– I worked hard
0:10:02 and I was scared after a year.
0:10:03 I’ll never forget.
0:10:06 We were talking about– it was a year and a half
0:10:08 we were in Carmel and we’re sitting there.
0:10:11 We come up with kind of a bankruptcy plan.
0:10:14 That’s when I started to get nervous.
0:10:17 And I’ve been there a year and a half.
0:10:21 Don redid the 400 plus stores.
0:10:23 I redid all the merchandise.
0:10:26 I threw it all out and that’s where he was concerned.
0:10:28 But you got to take–
0:10:30 and you got to get the cash out of bad goods.
0:10:33 It’s like rotten fish or whatever.
0:10:38 So we redid the stores.
0:10:40 Hey, what you doing?
0:10:42 Programming our thermostat to 17 degrees
0:10:44 when we’re out at work or asleep.
0:10:46 We’re taking control of our energy use this winter
0:10:49 with some easy energy saving tips I got from Fortis, B.C.
0:10:52 Ooh, conserve energy and save money?
0:10:54 Maybe to buy those matching winter jackets?
0:10:56 Uh, no.
0:10:59 We’re also getting that whole matching outfit thing under control.
0:11:02 Discover low and no cost energy saving tips
0:11:05 at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips.
0:11:06 Matching tracksuits?
0:11:07 Please no.
0:11:11 What gave you the confidence to do that?
0:11:13 I mean, this was like a–
0:11:15 we’re basically going to go extinct.
0:11:17 So that’s the base case.
0:11:20 Those two or three years.
0:11:25 Even when it turned around, it was like, uh-oh.
0:11:28 But I worked my ass off.
0:11:32 I kept– no one taught me how to run Ant Taylor.
0:11:35 I just did it without any supervision
0:11:38 because the headquarters– it was $25 million business.
0:11:41 But I just went in there day one.
0:11:44 And, you know, corporate– a lot of people,
0:11:46 they leave you alone.
0:11:48 Or they don’t leave you alone.
0:11:49 That’s what I was.
0:11:52 And the threat was if I don’t turn this–
0:11:53 I was under pressure.
0:11:54 I didn’t make money there.
0:11:55 They didn’t pay me.
0:11:56 I didn’t negotiate, whatever.
0:11:58 But it is what it is.
0:12:06 So I always depended upon my gut, my instinct.
0:12:09 And in hindsight, I did.
0:12:14 I knew who was a good person, not a good person.
0:12:18 I knew who was full of it and down to earth.
0:12:22 And in the department store, it was 12 years.
0:12:26 I kept looking for the right place to go.
0:12:29 You mentioned– you could tell the difference
0:12:32 between who was a good person and who was a bad person.
0:12:34 Who knew what they were talking about and who didn’t.
0:12:35 What are the tells?
0:12:36 How would you teach somebody to do that?
0:12:38 You can’t teach anyone.
0:12:42 I am a huge proponent.
0:12:46 And I never could say, like, Jesus, they’re the president.
0:12:47 They’re the CEO.
0:12:49 They’re the this.
0:12:55 And I’m thinking, I’m not impressed privately.
0:13:00 And I can name drop some of the big shots of the time
0:13:02 in the retail business.
0:13:08 And I would say something like not a merchant.
0:13:11 They look at me that I could tell.
0:13:14 And because I was a merchant, I guess,
0:13:18 my first, second day at Bloomingdale’s,
0:13:21 they put me in charge of a department
0:13:25 because the buyer, Barbara, was on maternity leave.
0:13:27 Stan Stern, who I love dearly.
0:13:29 He was a great boss.
0:13:31 I was on my own.
0:13:32 And I just did it.
0:13:34 What does it mean to be a merchant?
0:13:40 What it means to me is– and it’s not a lot, I think.
0:13:47 It means to know from what’s going to sell well,
0:13:51 from what’s not going to maybe sell well.
0:13:53 Focus, make sure it’s on brand.
0:13:55 Now, this is what I do.
0:13:57 No rear view mirror.
0:13:59 Most people do rear view mirror.
0:14:02 And they say, well, we sold last year this.
0:14:05 Sometimes it’s going to go this way a lot.
0:14:09 So you chase what’s over in post peak.
0:14:14 It means to me to be a merchant is having a sense
0:14:17 of what’s going to sell knowing that–
0:14:24 like I always had an instinct, I guess, on what I loved.
0:14:30 And I learned later on if I think it is non-negotiable.
0:14:33 The word that comes to mind, though, is like taste.
0:14:35 Well, that’s a good question.
0:14:36 What’s the difference between?
0:14:40 Well, you know, for me, I use that word a lot.
0:14:43 But it’s in the eyes of the beholder.
0:14:45 I have a friend who’s very successful.
0:14:47 I was talking about the ugly merchandise
0:14:49 in one of the companies he’s involved with.
0:14:53 He said, well, to the customer, it’s not ugly.
0:14:55 To me, it’s ugly.
0:14:57 Now, I know what I know.
0:15:01 And I don’t know where my eye came from.
0:15:06 But it came from somewhere, but taste and style
0:15:11 and fair value and moving forward and having a vision,
0:15:14 those are the key ingredients that I think.
0:15:17 Now, when people say, well, look how good that company is doing,
0:15:20 I said that’s not what I like to do.
0:15:24 I like to be proud of the merchandise.
0:15:29 I like it to be fit my standards.
0:15:33 I don’t say it that way of what it is vision.
0:15:39 And I like, I can always tell when something’s not on brand.
0:15:43 I remember in some of my jobs, I remember looking at something.
0:15:45 It was a big tell.
0:15:49 And I said, oh, and I didn’t follow my instinct
0:15:51 and really hurt one of the companies.
0:15:53 You know, there’s people involved.
0:15:59 But it means to be a good merchant is you can’t define it,
0:16:01 but you know when you know.
0:16:02 You know it when you see it.
0:16:05 So if we were to walk outside and walk in a store
0:16:08 and you had five minutes to walk me through
0:16:10 how you evaluate the merchandising.
0:16:12 So it takes five minutes, three minutes.
0:16:14 What would you look at?
0:16:16 The picture painted.
0:16:23 Because when I, I just always, it’s a really interesting question
0:16:27 because I don’t know how to explain what I look at.
0:16:30 But I look at colors very important.
0:16:33 When I did gap, I had a list of styles.
0:16:35 I was trying to start something.
0:16:38 I was looking for my vision.
0:16:40 I always admired Ralph Lauren,
0:16:42 but I couldn’t afford his clothes.
0:16:44 He was a Bronx guy ahead of me.
0:16:48 And, you know, I always, he was always had a point of view.
0:16:52 And I admired him.
0:16:54 I used to buy his clothes wholesale.
0:16:55 Why?
0:17:00 Because a friend of mine’s cousin was his secretary.
0:17:02 So I got it half off, whatever.
0:17:04 But I always liked his taste.
0:17:06 And it’s still the same today.
0:17:09 And there’s not a lot of people who do that.
0:17:11 So it’s interesting coming back to your friend’s comment
0:17:14 about, well, the customer is deciding what we sell.
0:17:20 If you’re selling, if your game, I guess, is to sell the most product
0:17:22 at the lowest prices, you’re going to be selling the same thing
0:17:24 that everybody else was selling.
0:17:26 But you’re telling me you wanted to create a different vision,
0:17:29 one that’s like escaped the competition in a way.
0:17:33 Well, what I do, I say this is my plan.
0:17:35 I look for white space.
0:17:37 This is in hindsight.
0:17:41 So Ann Taylor was usually successful.
0:17:46 I left after four years because my bosses were bureaucrats.
0:17:48 And I didn’t like it there.
0:17:52 And I also was at the stage in my life where I had to have something
0:17:56 I wanted to do where I could feel not compensated the right.
0:17:58 I was very happy with what I earned.
0:18:01 But I faced the realities of living in Manhattan.
0:18:07 Anyway, I always had, Ann Taylor was purely instinctive,
0:18:16 but I did learn there that I didn’t want to sell brand ABCD.
0:18:21 And today you can get every brand at a discount.
0:18:24 And TJ Max, my friend there, she’s the best.
0:18:28 You can go to TJ Max and trust.
0:18:31 But they’re the biggest customers of most brands.
0:18:36 So I didn’t want to carry, because Alexander’s taught me the lesson.
0:18:39 I was maybe 25 years old.
0:18:43 And I said, Jesus, something’s wrong here.
0:18:46 And I’m self-taught.
0:18:48 And then I’m also very curious.
0:18:51 When I joined Ann Taylor, Brooks Brothers,
0:18:54 and I saw it decline dramatically then,
0:18:59 because no merchants running at the quality.
0:19:02 They would take quality out to maintain price.
0:19:08 But they had a protective device about competitors.
0:19:10 They owned their name.
0:19:12 They didn’t sell wholesale.
0:19:14 No one could take a mark down.
0:19:19 So what I did at Ann Taylor is we did–
0:19:24 I found some manufacturers today you get your own,
0:19:28 but who can make goods, we designed them with them.
0:19:32 And we had Ann Taylor’s studio label.
0:19:34 Now, no one told me to do that.
0:19:37 But you know, it’s the white space.
0:19:38 Well, yeah.
0:19:42 And then I don’t have to worry about meeting the competition.
0:19:45 What’s going on in the business today, by the way,
0:19:48 is if you look at pricing.
0:19:50 First of all, everything’s on sale.
0:19:53 I always give advice when I’m on a whatever.
0:19:56 I say, before you give them the credit card,
0:19:59 Google the item you want to buy.
0:20:02 You’ll find it somewhere most of the time.
0:20:06 Let’s go back to the gap before we get to the end of the gap.
0:20:08 So you were the CEO from ’95 to 2002.
0:20:12 How did you prevent the bureaucracy from building up
0:20:14 over those seven years?
0:20:19 You know, well, the bureaucracy is I’m all over everything.
0:20:23 I took every call from a customer.
0:20:27 And they’d be surprised about–
0:20:33 and I say, if I can do it, you have to do it.
0:20:36 But today, it doesn’t always work.
0:20:39 I tell every story, customer stories,
0:20:43 I would call customers.
0:20:47 Anyone who called me, I got back to them.
0:20:49 And now I do that.
0:20:52 It’s a little bit of a payback because I never had anyone like that.
0:20:55 What were the key learnings from the gap?
0:20:58 Oh, every day, the key learnings.
0:21:00 You must have a vision.
0:21:03 You must be whatever’s defined as a good merchant.
0:21:08 You must be spot on and be a pain in the ass
0:21:11 because the best bosses.
0:21:16 And I always say, hire your boss because that’s the one.
0:21:20 And I never had bosses who I thought were the best,
0:21:23 especially in– yeah, but I became the boss
0:21:25 other than Don was my boss there.
0:21:28 And I had to, you know, play that game with him
0:21:33 because if you do what I do, and I wish you Steve does
0:21:36 and you do what maybe all these other people do,
0:21:39 you are always competing.
0:21:41 You have to be competing.
0:21:42 It’s relentless.
0:21:44 And it goes with it.
0:21:47 And if you’re not, a lot of people don’t compete.
0:21:50 I know friends who run companies.
0:21:52 They’re bureaucrats.
0:21:55 I know because I know them.
0:22:00 So Old Navy, you know how I started that?
0:22:04 It’s my favorite, one of my favorite stories.
0:22:06 So in the New York Times, I used to read it
0:22:08 when it was a decent paper.
0:22:12 Business section, I always like to read about business
0:22:15 because I wanted to be who they all were.
0:22:17 And then I realized, well, I didn’t realize
0:22:21 for a long time who they were, but not what I wanted to be.
0:22:27 So there was a little article buried on page four or five
0:22:31 about Target, and that was then called Dayton Hudson.
0:22:34 It was a very bureaucratic company
0:22:37 that I knew that they did a lot of research
0:22:40 and a lot of this and a lot of that.
0:22:43 So, and then someone was quoted as saying
0:22:48 it’s pretty much going to be a cheaper version of GAP.
0:22:52 Weak the store opened, I flew out to Mall of America that week.
0:22:54 I didn’t even tell anyone.
0:22:57 But I said, well, fuck them.
0:23:02 And I went out, Mall of America, I walked in the store.
0:23:06 I was there no more than five minutes,
0:23:12 and I said to myself, you know, you gotta, you know,
0:23:14 only the paranoid survive.
0:23:15 Well, that’s interesting, right?
0:23:18 Because it’s a story of only the paranoid survive.
0:23:21 And Andy Grove is the one who wrote that book.
0:23:23 But it’s also a story of making sure
0:23:24 that you’re touching the medium.
0:23:26 So when you’re talking to customers,
0:23:28 there’s no filter between you and the fee.
0:23:30 When you’re flying to the store, there’s no filter.
0:23:32 But you’re looking at the train.
0:23:34 Somebody’s not telling you what it is.
0:23:38 In corporations, most of the brass,
0:23:40 they’re in their ivory tout.
0:23:42 I remember in the department stores.
0:23:44 They’re so far disconnected.
0:23:48 Go on the selling floor, speak to someone.
0:23:50 Plus, it’s decent.
0:23:55 You know, people, for me, I identify with those people
0:23:57 who aren’t the fancy people.
0:24:01 You know, a funny story about this modern Xbox for my kids.
0:24:06 It must have been, I don’t know, seven years ago for Christmas.
0:24:09 And we’re opening it and we’re setting it up on Christmas.
0:24:13 And I was like, the person who designed this Xbox experience
0:24:15 doesn’t have kids.
0:24:19 It took an hour and a half to play a game.
0:24:21 From the time we plugged it in and turned it,
0:24:23 it’s like, first, you got to do updates.
0:24:25 Second, you got to sign up for all these accounts.
0:24:26 Keep it simple.
0:24:28 Stupid is the greatest lesson.
0:24:33 My first week at the Gap, I put up signs.
0:24:34 Keep it simple.
0:24:35 I took out the stupid.
0:24:40 Every desk in the corporation, people would talk a language to me.
0:24:42 I didn’t know the language.
0:24:44 I’ll never forget this.
0:24:45 She was one woman.
0:24:49 She’s in charge of whatever, planning and something.
0:24:52 I didn’t know what she was talking about.
0:24:56 And I just said, keep it simple to the point.
0:25:02 You have to bring everything to its simplest common denominator.
0:25:05 The best way to do that is to actually use your own product.
0:25:06 Yeah.
0:25:10 We did the P Jimmy’s pajama thing, which is a really fun thing.
0:25:14 It’s going to be very good for him and us long term.
0:25:20 And they call a boxer short.
0:25:26 Well, their name for it was a short pajama pan.
0:25:29 And they show me their new version.
0:25:42 Now, it’s the third after the pant and the pajama set, they’re calling it the short pajama pan.
0:25:43 Number three seller.
0:25:47 And they show me this thing that they’re changing it.
0:25:50 Now this is typical of what goes on.
0:25:53 And I said, it’s the third best seller.
0:25:55 You want to change it?
0:25:58 I said, and it’s called a boxer short.
0:26:00 It’s not called.
0:26:04 I get a little impatient a lot.
0:26:06 And then I do a little survey.
0:26:09 I go around just to, I say, what do you call this?
0:26:10 It’s a boxer short.
0:26:11 Yeah.
0:26:15 When you say the word boxer short, you don’t have to describe it.
0:26:17 It is what everybody has an idea of what it is.
0:26:20 Of course, everyone knows the elastic waist.
0:26:26 And I said, continue that and you’re not doing this, whatever it was.
0:26:30 And that’s what I do.
0:26:32 And it’s funny.
0:26:37 And they call things, I like to name things that say what it is.
0:26:39 And I go through this all the time.
0:26:41 They confuse people.
0:26:46 I said, there’s certain names that you know what it is.
0:26:48 Everybody wants to come up with something new.
0:26:51 They don’t know, but they’re not logical.
0:26:55 So what happened at the end of the gap in your tenure there?
0:26:59 Oh, well, Steve Jobs, just to frame the conversation here.
0:27:01 So Steve Jobs is on the board.
0:27:02 He calls you.
0:27:03 Yeah.
0:27:04 Take me through this.
0:27:07 Well, Steve Jobs joined the board.
0:27:11 He was recruiting me to join his board about a year.
0:27:12 Steve is very seductive.
0:27:16 He doesn’t give up like a lot of people do what he does.
0:27:26 And he called me one day and he said, I’ll join the gap board if you join my board deal.
0:27:32 Because I knew Steve, you know, there’s no such thing as an independent director.
0:27:36 You know, there’s a litmus test, not a relative.
0:27:38 They don’t do business with you.
0:27:47 But they ought to have on the test, not a close friend, not a college roommate, not a cousin, not whatever.
0:27:52 Unless it’s, you know, if it’s a controlled company, you can do what you want.
0:27:54 But independent directors.
0:27:57 So I said, didn’t even think deal.
0:28:01 I knew he would be Steve Jobs.
0:28:03 He’s irreverent.
0:28:05 He challenges things.
0:28:08 He might be late, but I love the guy.
0:28:10 What was he like as a board member?
0:28:13 He was a troublemaker because he brought up things.
0:28:15 I’d sit there, thank God.
0:28:21 But he alienated people because, you know, it’s okay to alienate people.
0:28:28 He had, but he didn’t, he really wasn’t a very paid attention board member.
0:28:30 But I didn’t care.
0:28:34 So he was on the board only about a year in the Yale.
0:28:39 He wasn’t very popular, but I just, you know, guy was ill.
0:28:40 He was dying.
0:28:42 I just so admired him.
0:28:45 And I really admired him a lot.
0:28:52 Johnny Ive was his lunchmate, and I had, you know, Johnny and I became good friends.
0:28:54 And Steve was whatever.
0:28:57 So there’s a board meeting.
0:29:00 I knew there was something going on.
0:29:05 People, all of a sudden, you know, and you have a corporate.
0:29:12 And they don’t, first of all, I never had a director who really understood the goods.
0:29:17 You know, and, you know, if they came in, they didn’t like the name Old Navy.
0:29:19 I got it off a bar in Paris.
0:29:21 I was driving to the airport.
0:29:24 I was fortunately in the back seat on the left.
0:29:28 And looking out, I said to Maggie, she was in marketing.
0:29:32 I go to Paris, you know, you go to shop, you get ideas creative.
0:29:39 So I see Marquis with a lot of neon lights, and it says Old Navy.
0:29:42 I said, Maggie, that’s the name.
0:29:47 We needed a name for Old Navy, which, by the way, is about $11 billion business today.
0:29:49 That’s the name.
0:29:51 They didn’t like the name.
0:29:53 Long story short.
0:29:54 Two naming.
0:29:59 I don’t like agencies, and I don’t like consultants.
0:30:04 And Old Navy, by the way, that was started the whole other story.
0:30:05 So let’s go back to the firing.
0:30:07 So Jobs is calling you.
0:30:08 Okay.
0:30:11 So this is, we had a bad year.
0:30:14 So Jobs was not at that board meeting.
0:30:19 I presented at that board meeting the turnaround assortment.
0:30:24 I looked at Banana Republic, Gap, and Old Navy.
0:30:27 It was a tough year, I think, in the marketplace.
0:30:30 They weren’t looking at me.
0:30:32 I get home about nine.
0:30:35 He says, Don just told me you’re getting fired.
0:30:37 They had to tell him.
0:30:42 He said, they didn’t tell me until now because they were worried I would tell you.
0:30:45 And of course I would tell you.
0:30:50 But nine was the deadline they had for whatever.
0:30:52 And I called Don.
0:30:54 He brushed me off very quickly.
0:30:57 Come in at eight o’clock, dot, dot, dot.
0:30:59 So board meeting the next day.
0:31:03 He hands me a one note, whatever.
0:31:05 That was my last day.
0:31:07 So you end up going on the Apple board.
0:31:09 Steve recruited you.
0:31:12 He seduced you for over a year to join the Apple board.
0:31:13 Yeah.
0:31:16 And I say that would all fund this for him.
0:31:19 What was the Apple board meetings like?
0:31:22 And what contributions did you make to retail there?
0:31:29 Well, you know, I designed the first store with him because he designed an ugly store.
0:31:33 And we went in and I told him, get a warehouse.
0:31:37 Build a store so we can design it together.
0:31:38 We did a gap.
0:31:41 You have a store before you open it up.
0:31:43 So I went in.
0:31:45 It’s very simple.
0:31:48 I said it was too charge key.
0:31:54 He said simple, a screen to show the movie or whatever it is.
0:31:58 So we designed the store and that’s the store.
0:32:00 It’s still the same store.
0:32:01 And the stores became iconic.
0:32:04 What’s the difference between the first version and the one that we sort of…
0:32:06 Oh, no, the first version never opened up.
0:32:09 No, but I mean the first version you saw, like what…
0:32:12 It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
0:32:16 But I always like to talk about this because we always see sort of the end product.
0:32:19 You know, we never see the messiness of the…
0:32:22 What I do, I try to explain this.
0:32:25 I have a photograph in my mind.
0:32:29 It’s, I go into a shop.
0:32:32 It paints a picture or it doesn’t.
0:32:34 One bad color in a great painting.
0:32:36 I’m not a big art collector.
0:32:42 I love nice pictures, but that changes, throws off the whole painting.
0:32:47 It’s like the wheels, the ugly wheels on a Mustang.
0:32:50 And I mean that every car now has ugly wheels.
0:32:52 I can’t get over it.
0:32:57 You know, you see the wheels, it’s like having a bad button on a sweater like this.
0:32:59 This is one of the best sellers.
0:33:04 And if you put an ugly button on this, that’s what you notice.
0:33:11 And I say never give a customer a reason not to buy something.
0:33:13 It’s one of my rules, you know.
0:33:17 So why do people buy, or is it they just don’t have a reason not to buy?
0:33:21 Most people, they don’t get it.
0:33:23 You know, the logo business.
0:33:27 And by the way, I learned this last week, they call it dupes.
0:33:28 You know that?
0:33:33 All the designer copies are called dupes like in duplicates.
0:33:35 Hot business today.
0:33:41 Because people say, well, they don’t, you know, the LVs, who the hell knows if it’s real or fake.
0:33:43 You look at all, you know.
0:33:49 Well, it’s interesting because you sort of had, I don’t want to say envied because that’s the wrong word.
0:33:53 But you liked Ralph Lauren, who had logos.
0:33:56 And at J Crew, you did away with logo.
0:33:58 Yeah, well, Ralph had the horse.
0:34:01 And that was, I remember, I was a buyer at Bloomingdale’s.
0:34:05 Ralph had the horse when he was just started.
0:34:07 And it was prestigious.
0:34:09 The horse was prestigious.
0:34:16 With J Crew, one of the most fascinating things to me is you took, you did something that’s incredibly rare in retail,
0:34:19 which was you took a brand that was known for discounting.
0:34:20 Same with Gap.
0:34:23 And you made it high end.
0:34:25 Well, Gap was, Gap was.
0:34:26 Was it?
0:34:27 I don’t know the early part of the gap.
0:34:28 Gap.
0:34:29 Well, you probably.
0:34:32 I started there in 1984.
0:34:33 Yeah, yeah.
0:34:34 I don’t know that.
0:34:36 It was a shithole with the flesh.
0:34:39 A disaster, culturally in every other way.
0:34:41 It was all on sale.
0:34:46 What’s the playbook then to take, I mean, they did it with Restoration Hardware too.
0:34:47 There’s a couple of other brands.
0:34:48 Gary, I know Gary.
0:34:52 But the base rate of success is pretty close to zero in doing this.
0:34:56 Well, it’s vision, imagination.
0:34:59 I don’t have any doctor nose.
0:35:02 I call them doctor nose telling you it’s not going to work.
0:35:07 If I look old Navy, I went out and I did it.
0:35:08 It’s interesting.
0:35:11 You make decisions mostly on your gut.
0:35:14 And research backing it up.
0:35:17 Well, I was just going to say it, but you’re always gathering information.
0:35:20 Are you pattern matching when you make decisions?
0:35:22 Well, it’s funny you use that word.
0:35:26 The whole business is recognizing patterns.
0:35:30 It’s, you know, there’s patterns that go on.
0:35:34 And for me, I have to preempt the pattern.
0:35:36 And then I push the team.
0:35:39 Like right now, personalization.
0:35:46 Two years ago, we had painted dogs on a tote bag.
0:35:51 18 of them that day, gone.
0:35:56 Two years ago, I have still in the last two years.
0:36:04 I want to be, I want personalization to be who, what we do with personalizes the goods.
0:36:11 You know, so we have, I don’t have my bag here, but painted initials, cool.
0:36:18 The dogs, painted dogs, but I’m trying to get people to move.
0:36:21 And it’s hard.
0:36:26 Is the reason that focus groups are so difficult in retail?
0:36:31 Because people are telling you what they want, but they actually have to be led.
0:36:33 They’re difficult for me.
0:36:35 Everyone else does them.
0:36:37 But they don’t seem to work.
0:36:38 I don’t.
0:36:39 Or do they?
0:36:40 I don’t know.
0:36:41 Look, I don’t know.
0:36:43 It’s not what I do for a living.
0:36:47 I do, I say to see around corners, you have to have a vision.
0:36:54 It’s interesting because the outliers on both ends, positive and negative, don’t use focus groups.
0:36:56 But everybody’s sort of in them.
0:36:59 So it’s almost like a guaranteed average in a way.
0:37:06 The world, this is funny, a friend sends me 20 plus page article two weeks ago.
0:37:10 Talking about how average the world is today.
0:37:12 I totally, I called him.
0:37:14 I said, wow, you are on.
0:37:16 He talked about cars.
0:37:18 He talked about designs.
0:37:19 He talked this article.
0:37:23 He didn’t write it, but the world’s average.
0:37:30 And you have to be not average if you want to do what you do.
0:37:33 For me, you break the rules.
0:37:40 But the rules are, common knowledge isn’t that common as it is.
0:37:43 And I’m an anti-Athari guy.
0:37:44 I don’t like that.
0:37:49 I don’t like to, I’ll never forget when I used to work in the shipping room.
0:37:51 I had an idea.
0:37:56 You know, I used to ticket, you know how you see those hang tags on buttons.
0:38:03 So I used to walk around bending down with the racks of coats like this.
0:38:05 I took a rolling chair.
0:38:07 I’m going down the aisle.
0:38:11 It was like, my father got so angry at me.
0:38:14 He wasn’t my, who knows who my boss was.
0:38:17 But that’s what happens in corporations.
0:38:20 I, no one wants to change the rules in a way.
0:38:22 Not that he was a corporate guy.
0:38:23 Well, this is interesting.
0:38:26 This is a fascinating sort of like nuance here because in a corporation,
0:38:28 you can’t get fired for following the rules.
0:38:31 You know, I just follow what you told me to do.
0:38:34 So I’m absolved of all responsibility or judgment, right?
0:38:37 Like nobody’s going to get fired for following the rules.
0:38:40 I mean, you do at the CEO level, but aside from that, you’re basically…
0:38:44 Well, you have to, you can follow the rules.
0:38:49 On the other hand, you have to have a drive in you that’s creative and can make changes.
0:38:53 When I worked at the department stores, you know, I’ll never forget,
0:38:57 I had some simple ideas for the financial person.
0:39:01 You know, none of them, they didn’t ask people.
0:39:06 I asked people, you know, they know young people don’t have any baggage.
0:39:09 Well, this is fascinating because you say you’re anti-authority,
0:39:12 but when you say that, what I hear is you’re not anti-authority.
0:39:15 You’re really a rule breaker who’s constantly questioning things,
0:39:17 which comes across as anti-authority.
0:39:18 A hundred percent.
0:39:21 But you’re vacuuming up information from every available source.
0:39:27 And I, when I hear something two or three times, I bring it to work immediately.
0:39:30 Every weekend, I have a Monday morning weekend update.
0:39:31 What is it?
0:39:37 It’s a combination of me seeing things that are an idea.
0:39:41 I look through, not that I like the fashion magazines,
0:39:46 but I look through every picture on monthly.
0:39:50 And if there’s a picture I like, I cut it out.
0:39:53 Last weekend, it was a great picture.
0:39:58 It was a designer, I think it was Fendi.
0:40:01 And they just showed the woman’s heads.
0:40:10 And they had a sweatshirt on, each of them, in four in bright colors.
0:40:12 So I cut that out.
0:40:21 And I said, this is something we will do while we are doing hooded sweatshirts in bright colors.
0:40:24 And then I always do detective work.
0:40:26 I’m addicted to detective shows.
0:40:31 Great, great detectives solve cold cases.
0:40:32 There’s such a difference.
0:40:37 Anyway, I then, I asked someone who I know, I said,
0:40:40 are there any companies we can do a collaboration with?
0:40:43 We do collaborations, we get together.
0:40:46 And we did it at Jake, we kind of invented it.
0:40:51 Now everyone’s, they’re all collaborating with all the famous brands.
0:40:53 So it doesn’t make it unique.
0:40:58 But anyway, so she mentioned this company in England.
0:41:06 I went online, looked at it, and they had a hoodie hat, a bakalava, whatever it’s called.
0:41:08 So I said, we’re going to do that hat.
0:41:13 We sell a million cash, we are hats, we’re famous for that.
0:41:19 And by the way, being famous for something drives businesses because you’re dominant.
0:41:22 Hermes uses this with the Birkin bag.
0:41:24 I mean, that drives almost all their other business.
0:41:27 Well, it’s funny with Hermes.
0:41:32 I used to get Peggy when I could afford it.
0:41:41 And I was a young guy who had money and I may start to afford things in my 40s, which is young now to me.
0:41:53 But I collected for Peggy twice a year, anniversary, and birthday I got Birkin bags, or the Kelly bag, or whatever.
0:42:01 But people, you know, I think designers, so anyway, she has a beautiful collection now.
0:42:05 She doesn’t wear them because she thinks they’re old ladies, although she’s an old lady.
0:42:08 And she doesn’t want to wear them on the streets today.
0:42:13 You know, like watches, they see your watch and they come up to you.
0:42:19 But anyway, Birkin bags now, they’re dupes of that.
0:42:30 And I said, now growing up in the Bronx, I didn’t know from fancy, but growing up in the Bronx, I liked things.
0:42:36 When I bought my first pair of Gucci buckle loafers, I was probably early 30s.
0:42:38 I used to go to the factories.
0:42:41 So I went to the Gucci store in Florence.
0:42:44 I got those shoes, boom, Bada Bing.
0:42:51 Now, you don’t know the difference between the dupe and the real, and you get ripped off.
0:42:52 Who cares?
0:42:54 You know, Hermes bags.
0:42:56 I mean, Peggy’s tired of them.
0:42:58 I mean, don’t leave that on.
0:42:59 No, no, I get that.
0:43:01 How much of retail do you think is theater?
0:43:05 Theater.
0:43:12 Well, you know, Stanley Marcus at Neiman Marcus was known for that.
0:43:17 I don’t think it’s, you know, the hottest supermarket in America now.
0:43:19 You had an year one.
0:43:20 Yeah.
0:43:24 I was in one in LA about three or four weeks ago.
0:43:26 I don’t call anything theater.
0:43:33 Theater is great product, looking like a painting and going in for me.
0:43:36 I never had Old Navy, by the way.
0:43:40 It was an amazing business in its day.
0:43:45 I had Schwinn bikes around the escalator.
0:43:48 We sold out of them very quickly.
0:43:53 And then the guy I knew who owned, you know, he’s an investor, not a close friend,
0:44:01 but Schwinn decided not to sell us because we weren’t buying them from dealer.
0:44:08 But the business first apparel business to hit a, what’s the number?
0:44:10 I think they hit a billion dollars.
0:44:11 That’s it.
0:44:13 The first one in apparel.
0:44:15 But now I’m sure there’s many others.
0:44:25 But I just follow the guidance of, but I also absorb detectives.
0:44:26 I always come in every day.
0:44:28 I see these fends.
0:44:30 I’m addicted to true crimes.
0:44:31 You’re always gathering information.
0:44:32 You’re always looking.
0:44:36 You’re always questioning and probing, which helps you develop the patterns.
0:44:37 Yeah.
0:44:39 And I see a picture.
0:44:40 Yeah.
0:44:43 Who do you think are the great retailers today?
0:44:47 I don’t like to name competitors, but I’ll tell you something.
0:44:48 Well, TJ Maxx.
0:44:49 Okay.
0:44:56 I always named Carol because Carol Myrowitz, TJ Maxx is the honest discount.
0:44:59 And she’s a great merchant.
0:45:08 The only thing is you have to keep changing acts the wrong word, but you got to keep changing
0:45:11 and seeing down the road.
0:45:13 And I have these ideas.
0:45:16 But you can only do that if you touch the territory.
0:45:20 Like when you hopped on the plane and you went to the store, when you’re constantly talking
0:45:24 to everybody, when you’re getting all the information sources, that’s how you rapidly
0:45:26 adjust because you’re not looking at a…
0:45:37 You are not curious in any field, whether it’s nonprofit, profit, selling cars and all
0:45:38 that.
0:45:45 Any field, product is always driving and product is about emotion, in my opinion.
0:45:50 Someone said this the other day and I kind of took it on myself to say it.
0:45:58 I have a love affair with the companies that I’ve been involved with, made well.
0:46:01 You know what happened, how I got that name.
0:46:07 So David Mullen, who’s a great wash guy, unfortunately, he’s an old friend.
0:46:15 10 or 15 years ago when I was a J crew, well, you know how old Navy and the whole concept
0:46:16 I told you.
0:46:26 So David has a logo, made well since 1937, he shows it to me, it was actually the logo.
0:46:27 He said, “What do you think?”
0:46:29 I said, “It’s fantastic.”
0:46:32 He said, “Well, do you want to buy it?”
0:46:34 I said, “Yeah, but what about you?”
0:46:36 We can’t afford it, whatever.
0:46:37 I bought the name.
0:46:46 I owned the name and when we went public at J crew, then we did made well.
0:46:52 And I had a vision, I loved work clothes then, like Carhartt and all that.
0:46:59 But I had a vision for it, but you can’t do anything well unless you have the right team.
0:47:04 So we struggled for the first three or four years, we were going to do men’s and women’s
0:47:07 and I decided let’s get rid of men’s.
0:47:12 Now I didn’t have anyone to talk to about this other than myself, but I never thought
0:47:14 about it that way.
0:47:23 So we got rid of men’s and then some sack who works with me and us, creative guy, was
0:47:30 at a J crew for 15 years and he left for a year, hired him back and became the creative
0:47:35 director of made well, boom, boom, boom.
0:47:41 And made well was a great company until it wasn’t, you know, when we had a two billion
0:47:47 dollar, well, don’t even get me started with selling companies because the mercenaries.
0:47:51 And by the way, gap, you know, when I left there, I didn’t say that no one called me
0:47:58 on the board 18 years, hello, can you believe that except for Steve who didn’t think you
0:48:00 should be fired in the first place.
0:48:01 Exactly.
0:48:02 Exactly.
0:48:03 Yeah.
0:48:07 What makes something a classic look, you know, it’s a good question.
0:48:15 We say, if you know, you know, I wear clothes that have no expiration date.
0:48:19 This shoe, I found it in Paris.
0:48:22 It’s all in an American company.
0:48:32 And I must have been 40, probably 40 years ago, it was my favorite store, Fastenab, until
0:48:38 they were bought out by a big American department store, then it’s over.
0:48:40 So this shoe is from Alden.
0:48:46 I’ve been wearing not this one shoe, we used to buy from Alden at J Crew and my good friend
0:48:51 Todd Snyder, who’s a men’s designer, he buys from Alden.
0:48:56 And I asked him that a year ago, I said, can you ask them to do a special this shoe again
0:48:57 for me?
0:48:59 I ordered 10 of them.
0:49:00 That’s awesome.
0:49:03 And this, and I wear another one.
0:49:06 This jeans never go out of style.
0:49:11 But as long as you don’t wear the big ones, the skinny ones, these are cashmere socks
0:49:16 that we started doing at J Crew, they, whatever.
0:49:18 And now we do them.
0:49:26 This is clothes, this scarf, it’s 40 years old, Michael Drake was a good friend, nice
0:49:29 to buy from him in London.
0:49:30 His collection.
0:49:33 There’s a Michael Drake now, but it’s not the same.
0:49:38 I have about 20 versions of this, I bought them wholesale because, you know, and this
0:49:48 sweater, this is our third year at Alex Mill, but forever.
0:49:55 And it’s cashmere and our price is on cashmere, a good, oh, I only do vintage watches because
0:50:00 I like vintage and old is new today.
0:50:03 The vintage business is this way, and it’s unique.
0:50:09 You’re not like buying, you’re not going to see, well, a hooded sweatshirt never goes
0:50:10 out of style now.
0:50:11 That’s a novelty.
0:50:13 So you know.
0:50:16 I love this idea clothes that have no expiration date.
0:50:17 No expiration date.
0:50:18 Right.
0:50:19 No expiration date.
0:50:23 Farnham Street, the website that I run is about knowledge that has no expiration date.
0:50:24 Really?
0:50:26 The timeless wisdom.
0:50:36 Timeless, and it’s whatever I wear, and it’s things, and I didn’t warn this.
0:50:41 Everything I buy, and it’s internal to me.
0:50:48 You know, it’s like if someone wears something, oh, that’s the guy with the purple shirt or
0:50:52 that’s the car with the ugly hubcaps.
0:50:58 I like the screed, I like style, and I like a uniform.
0:51:04 That’s what I do, and I wear the same Alex Mill, this, you know, slub t-shirt, blue every
0:51:05 day.
0:51:06 Perfect.
0:51:09 You know, I’ve always had a uniform.
0:51:13 We always end the interview with the same question, which is, what does success look
0:51:14 like to you?
0:51:18 I think what it looks like is a couple of things.
0:51:32 If you can impact people’s lives in a positive way, that to me is the best sign of success.
0:51:40 Of course, and if I could also be very pleased with myself, that’s another sign.
0:51:48 But I think the biggest compliments I get are from people—you know, we had that, I think
0:51:52 you knew about the Gap reunion, did you mention that to me?
0:51:53 No.
0:52:05 150 or 60 people were there, Ken Pilot, who used to work with me, and I don’t—success,
0:52:09 it’s not being rich only.
0:52:16 It’s not even being rich, because I know successful scientists or successful whatever.
0:52:18 But I think it’s impacting people’s lives.
0:52:27 My biggest compliment, I say this, I’ve said it on CMBC, is when I’m called a mensch, you
0:52:28 know what that word is.
0:52:31 Why don’t you explain it for everybody so everybody knows it?
0:52:35 Manch is in Yiddish.
0:52:47 Manch is like a nice person, normal, hamisher, down to earth, and I like talking to people
0:52:55 in a parallel way, and I don’t talk down to people because I appreciate who I am and
0:52:56 what I do.
0:53:02 Now, no one escapes, you know, I go through certain mood issues, of course, I’m always
0:53:10 trying to better myself, but I think success is—it’s just not about money, most people
0:53:16 might say that, but you have to be—I’m very pleased with what I’ve done, more so
0:53:22 over the last few years, because I have changed people’s lives, because I had a reunion two
0:53:34 weeks ago last week with the field team at Gap, 15 to 20 of us, and they all thanked me
0:53:42 and they said they made their lives much better, and that’s success.
0:53:48 Thanks for listening and learning with us.
0:53:56 For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go to fs.blog/podcast
0:53:59 or just Google “The Knowledge Project”.
0:54:03 Recently I’ve started to record my reflections and thoughts about the interview after the
0:54:04 interview.
0:54:09 I sit down, highlight the key moments that stood out for me, and I also talk about other
0:54:14 connections to episodes and sort of what’s got me pondering that I maybe haven’t quite
0:54:15 figured out.
0:54:18 This is available to supporting members of the Knowledge Project.
0:54:24 You can go to fs.blog/membership, check out the show notes for a link, and you can sign
0:54:28 up today, and my reflections will just be available in your private podcast feed.
0:54:32 You’ll also skip all the ads at the front of the episode.
0:54:36 The Furnham Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking,
0:54:40 turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results.
0:54:44 It’s a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate, sharpen your
0:54:49 decision making, and set yourself up for unparalleled success.
0:54:52 Learn more at fs.blog/clear.
0:54:53 Until next time.
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0:54:59 you
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