Adam Sandow - The Power of Print Media - [Invest Like the Best, EP.376]

[00:00] I know firsthand how complex the tech stack is for asset managers, and seemingly every new tool and data source makes the problem even worse, adding more complexity, more headcount, and more risk. [00:09] Ridgeline offers a better way forward, one unified platform that automates away all that complexity across portfolio accounting, reconciliation, reporting, trading, compliance, and more. [00:18] all at scale. [00:20] Ridgeline is revolutionizing investment management, helping ambitious firms scale faster, operate smarter, and stay ahead of the curve. [00:26] See what Ridgeline can unlock for your firm. Schedule a demo at ridgelineapps.com. [00:56] dot com. Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUM.VC. [01:26] My guest today is Adam Sandow.

[01:30] Adam is the chairman and CEO of Sandow Companies and the executive chairman and founder of Material Bank. [01:36] He has built an entire ecosystem of businesses and brands that has brought him into the game of media, materials, and beyond. From creating the beauty product subscription model to getting magazines in the hands of billionaires to transforming the design industry with overnight access to samples, when Adam starts a business, he writes his own rulebook. [01:54] We discuss the founding stories of his most interesting companies, his obsession with targeting pain points, and his philosophies for when to go all in and betting on himself. Please enjoy this great discussion with Adam Sandow. [02:07] So Adam, I'm really excited to introduce the audience to one of the more interesting things [02:12] business ecosystems, yours, that I've encountered in a number of years. And I thought a fun way to introduce what you do is to say at the start that you have found a way to kick ass [02:23] in a business, partially in a business that I think most people would say is not a good business, which is magazines. So maybe you could describe... [02:31] a little bit about what you've built and how you've done it. [02:34] especially given that you've done it in such a unique way in a place that I don't think a lot of, you know, VCs or return seeking capital controlling investors are seeking out, you know, buying up all these magazines, but you've done an incredible job. And I know there's a lot more to your ecosystem than just that, which we'll get into. But I thought it would be an interesting wedge to start the conversation because I haven't encountered anything like it before. [02:58] Yeah, Patrick, thanks. [02:59] I definitely have a bit of a unique path

[03:02] Look, I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. In high school, I was an entrepreneur. As a freshman in college, [03:07] I think I had 12 employees and I was an entrepreneur. [03:11] It's in my blood. About 22 years ago when I started this company, [03:15] I had a love of media and I started in the magazine business. Prior, I had built custom publishing companies. I had built media companies. [03:24] And when I started this company, I said, I've got this love of media. I'm going to build a foundation in magazines. I loved magazines. Personally, as a kid, I would always buy magazines. I would buy things off the newsstands and just dream of all kinds of great things. And that's how you discovered things, whether it was popular science or the architecture of magazines or Rob Report in the early days. I remember as a kid, I'm seventh grade on the bus reading Rob Report like a crazy person. And I was fascinated by magazines. So I always loved them. And I started the company. [03:54] the knot.com, which was this incredible media platform, very much online. And I said, I'm going to go back and I'm going to build a company from scratch and I'm going to start a magazine. So I started in the beauty category, having no particular affinity personally for it, but I thought this is an amazing category. And very quickly, as I started to build the media business, we started to inject a lot of innovation in our thinking. [04:19] So it looked like a magazine, and it was. In every magazine that I started or acquired, I started to inject a lot of creativity because I saw it. [04:30] this convergence. I saw media still very strong. I mean, this was early 2000s. Media was very strong. Magazines were very, very strong. But you had this coming threat of digital advertising.

[04:40] And I never gave in [04:43] I say it like that. I never gave in to a print company saying, my God, digital is here. Let's [04:50] kill the magazines and sell banners on websites. And that's going to be our salvation. I always thought that we could build very innovative business models into everything we did. So we started Beauty Magazine in 2005. [05:03] Very successfully, profitable on its first issue. Very proud of that. But a year into that business, as I'm scaling it, [05:10] I'm sitting with advertisers and they're saying, Adam, you know, we love what you're doing in the magazine business. We love this magazine. It's very unique. $10 on the new, we still publish it. 20 years later, I still own new beauty. It's this amazing, amazing business. [05:23] The industry loved the magazine. They loved the thinking. It was very different from everything about this magazine visually, our circulation strategy, our newsstand strategy, everything was different. [05:32] But I would sit with manufacturers of product and I would say, tell me your problems. Tell me your pain points. And this is what I do. This is a theme, Patrick, in every single thing that I do in any business I build. I love to start with pain points. And I always say, [05:47] "Don't tell me the pain points as you think they relate to me, a magazine publisher. Tell me pain points." And I'm sitting in a meeting in '06, [05:55] And this beauty company, big, big company, they said, Adam, look, we love the magazine. We buy ads in it. But if people will just try our product. [06:03] They're going to love it. We have got this incredible product. Our struggle is how do we get it into qualified hands, not hands? How do we get our sample into qualified hands? And I went back with the team. I remember it like it was yesterday. We sat in a room and I said, guys, I've got this idea. I love recurring revenue.

[06:20] businesses. My best friend is the CEO of one of the largest alarm companies. He's been his whole life in the alarm industry. And in college, he would talk about the recurring revenue business of alarms. And I learned I'm a subject matter expert in the alarm industry just through osmosis. My best friend building all of these incredibly successful companies. But I love this idea of they're not selling alarms. They're providing a recurring revenue service at incredibly high margins by monitoring. So I said, how do I bring that into media? How does recurring revenue come [06:50] to really innovate. And I invented it very proudly. We were the first ones by many years to invent this beauty subscription program. We have these $10 magazine products [07:01] I think back in 2002, a woman buying a beauty magazine at $10 when the competitors are $3, we had this very incredible... [07:11] incredible audience. [07:12] And I said, what would they pay if they could try the newest, coolest products that we send subscription wise to their house four times a year? [07:20] So we went to the beauty companies and what I learned was [07:23] The credibility of the magazine, you'll hear this as a common thread in my career, the credibility of [07:29] that the magazine gave me [07:31] allowed me to go to a giant beauty company and say, [07:34] I know this is going to sound crazy, but I want you to take an 18-wheeler full of full-size products and bring it to my warehouse. [07:41] I'm not going to pay for the products, but I'm going to guarantee that I get it into the hands of women who are willing to spend a few hundred dollars a year to try. [07:49] the product. Well, that was at the time revolutionary. We were the first ones. I remember we were in Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal and we invented this beauty subscription business, which today there's now so many of them. The birch boxes of the world that I think got a lot of early credit are done and gone. And you've got Ipsy now doing incredibly well scaling, but that model was invented.

[08:11] And it was a great... [08:13] example. And we still, to this day, have that business. And it's a very profitable business for us. But we were suddenly seen not as a magazine, we were suddenly seen as an innovator in the beauty space. And that helped us sell more ads. [08:27] So that theme I've carried out that as I build the media platforms, [08:32] It allows us to get into other kinds of businesses, businesses that are [08:37] in many cases, sexier, more interesting than magazines. But the magazines gave us the authority [08:44] to create these kinds of new businesses and [08:47] I've always tried to run with that thought. And that's been our strategy. And it still is to this day. [08:54] I'd love to divide the conversation into first how you build that distribution through a media property built or bought. And then the second part of our conversation, get deeper into the details, material bank and other businesses that you've built on top of that distribution, just like the example that you just gave. But first I want to get to the, what seems like a very hard part, which is launching a new media property and being innovative. You said in how you get the customers, the circulation strategy, the advertising strategy. So how did you approach, [09:24] pick any other property that you want to. When you're approaching an opportunity, how do you know what is an opportunity? What does that mean to be innovative in your circulation strategy and your pricing strategy or whatever else? Walk us through maybe one or two of these specific property examples just on the media side. [09:40] So I'll get a little specific to magazines for a minute. It'll help you, I think, understand, or at least it'll give you light into how I thought. So

[09:48] Back in 2000, even to this day, [09:50] If you think about magazine subscriptions, think of any generic magazine that you might subscribe or maybe you use to subscribe to. You can see 12 issues for $12. And by the way, you get a tote bag. [10:01] Why was it so cheap? [10:03] Why was Publishers Clearinghouse a thing? Why could you redeem frequent flyer models back in the day, an incredible company Michael Loeb built? [10:10] synapse. Why could you do that? Because publishers got hooked on a drug [10:16] called circulation. So what does that mean? It means that a magazine says, we have 500,000 people that love us so much, they'll pay to get a subscription. We have 600, a million people that are paying. So there was an arms race created, [10:31] by getting mass eyeballs to subscribe. Well, the secret of the magazine business, again, it's old news if you know the industry, was in many cases, publishers use third parties that will keep all the money and they give the publisher a penny. The publisher goes, thank you for the penny. It's paid. We've got paid readers. [10:50] And when you look at the demographics of these magazines, you go, you have a million readers reading a high-end home magazine with an average household income of $80,000. That doesn't make sense. Well, they're in an arms race to get a million readers. And what I saw in the magazine business was... [11:06] My God, that's a pretty flawed strategy. What I want are the best readers. [11:11] In 2005, where do you get the best readers? [11:15] the newsstand paying full rate for a magazine. So,

[11:19] We went and we launched [11:21] This is a lot of my magazines, but when I launched New Beauty, I said, [11:24] I don't want all the readers. [11:26] And I don't want bulk eyeballs. It's a very expensive losing proposition, in my opinion. What I want is I want a woman that walks into a newsstand that says, I'm going to buy that really thick, gorgeous beauty magazine that's $10. [11:40] And we literally, Patrick, it was, what's the value of a $10 magazine buyer? Almost the cost of a year subscription. [11:47] And what I did is I spent all of our money buying up every slot on every newsstand that I could. We would spend more money with Barnes & Noble than any other publisher because I said, this is real estate for me. I'll never make money selling magazines. In fact, I'll lose money. But that's where I'm going to get the best readers. What happens? The magazine gets the best readers, smaller. We never were the biggest. [12:11] But someone who buys $10 magazine, [12:13] will now engage in a different way. So the circulation strategy was very different. And what I said was, if I put the quality into the paper, [12:21] the design, the content. If I put it into making sure it's in the best train stations, the best airports everywhere, I will get the best readers. And we did. And to this day, that strategy has never changed with almost everything we do. I want the best readers. I don't want the most readers. [12:38] I own a company called Media Jet. It's 16, maybe 17 years old. [12:43] About 17 years ago, I bought up all the rights in private airports to put newsstands. [12:49] Originally, it was just for my magazines. Why? Because, you know, rest assured, anyone flying on a regular basis privately, and you know this,

[12:58] It's just a different demographic. I don't even need to charge them for my magazines. It's funny. We were buying a really big magazine in 2010. And I was talking to the president of the company we were buying it from. And I told him about Media Jet. I go, candidly, it's my secret weapon. Because you can't imagine how many magazines. I never forgot this. He said, Adam, that's stupid. I said, what do you mean that's stupid? He said, that's public place distribution on your audit. Agencies discount that to zero. You're wasting money. And I said, that is why. [13:28] I'm buying your magazine at 10 cents on the dollar because I don't care about the audit. [13:33] I want [13:35] 25,000 copies a month going into the people getting onto an airplane, burning 10,000 an hour to fly. [13:42] And [13:43] That was the whole thing. So we were this contrarian from day one. So it looked like a magazine. [13:48] But all of a sudden, we've got a recurring revenue business here. We've got a data business there. We're circulating our magazines, getting in the hands of the best people. So I was this outsider that came from the outside of the business. [14:00] And I just said, [14:01] We're going to do nothing the way that magazines do. And a lot of times when these big magazines close, it's because they've trained the advertisers to buy eyeballs by the pound, not the quality. And look, I think you'll see now. [14:14] There are some magazines that have been very successful. Monocle is a great example. Todd Brulé is, I think, a genius at this stuff. He makes an expensive, beautiful, cerebral magazine that goes to a really good-sized audience, but it's highly engaged, highly educated.

[14:30] That's the right demographic. But when you've got a generic magazine going to 2 million eyeballs... [14:36] It's the same thing as now buying programmatic ads online, like blinking banners that are 26 cents a thousand on a generic site showing you generic ads. They just don't work. I relate the old circulation models to that. And a lot of the magazines I think today have gotten better at that and trying to go after those better audiences. But that's been amazing. [14:57] our foundation from day one. And that allowed us to come out of nowhere and become [15:02] successful in a very tough competitive market. [15:06] Can you tell the origin story of MediaJet and what it was like in the early days to go buy up that distribution? What was the actual process of building what you have today, which I think anyone listening is going to agree like, wow, that sure does seem incredibly valuable to own the rack in all these places where the highest end customer is frequenting and picking up your thing. That's really valuable. And I know a lot of copies go through there. Who cares how it's measured? Everyone would agree it's valuable now, but I'm really curious to hear the story of how [15:36] what lessons you learned doing it. [15:38] We had to buy our way in. [15:39] And it's still very expensive. We've locked into really long-term contracts who've been doing it so long. But it was this amazing thing that happened. We started in 07, and it was tough. They were resistant to... [15:51] They didn't know if they wanted them. It was hand-to-hand combat to get an FBO to even agree. And then the crash happens. And private aviation, I think if you remember, the president was maligning people flying privately.

[16:03] Well, all of a sudden, FBOs started to really hurt. And we got a call from an FBO group and they're like, we want more newsstands. And we're like, well, that's great, but we can't afford to pay you. It's a crappy economy and you're expensive. He's like, oh, don't worry about the money. [16:19] our passengers love your magazines because it was all my magazines. [16:23] - The great story was we had FBO saying, when no one was flying, they would have their big customers who had jets there going, "Hey, box up those magazines and send them to me. I mean, they're cheap." [16:33] They wanted the free magazines. So the FBOs started to see that it was an amenity. [16:39] It was something that the passengers really loved. And that helped us expand and lock into these very long-term exclusive agreements that we've had now in place for decades. [16:50] many many many years because we made a big investment into the physical newsstands the infrastructure the distribution and it was never designed to be a profit center for us it was designed to be another secret weapon it was designed for me to say [17:05] What's the value of those readers? Okay, a $10 magazine buyer at LaGuardia, that's great. But someone about to spend $80,000 of jet fuel [17:15] to go round trip Miami LA, that's a different reader. And by the way, those people are not cracking laptops and working on spreadsheets each way. They're on their airplane and they take our magazines and it's allowed us to cement our ownership of those spots. And it's a win-win for everybody. [17:33] What are the variables that make a print publication more attractive? I would suspect that if you had a magazine that was just all words, no images or certain categories, you couldn't care less about today and you think are much more viable as purely digital. But when you talk about the future of print and digital as a spectrum working together sometimes, what are the variables that matter to you along that spectrum that make something more or less attractive at different points?

[17:58] First, you've got to talk about the content itself. [18:01] you're not going to get news from a magazine anymore. [18:04] There's a lot of things that I think magazines don't make any more sense for. [18:07] I also think that [18:09] if you're not going to put unbelievable quality [18:12] into not just the content and the photography, but the paper and the printing. If it doesn't feel luxurious, why make it in print? [18:20] In 10 years from now, there will be print. It's going to be a lot less. It's going to be a lot higher end. It's going to be beautiful objects. The same way that coffee table books. Coffee table books have never been more popular. We just acquired an incredible architecture coffee table book publisher. [18:36] Sales have never been bigger for these gorgeous, beautiful art pieces that go on your coffee table. I think print has a place for that. But I think print is part of an important ecosystem that you [18:48] Believe me, I'm not print magazines of the future and everything else is dead. It is an important part of an ecosystem to build a company in certain areas where visuals matter. [18:58] So Lux Magazine is something I started in 2005. Today, it's [19:02] an unbelievably massive [19:04] business. [19:06] There's more advertising in Lux than probably the top two or three art home magazines combined. But we've focused on quality. You want to open a two-page spread and look at a gorgeous house and read about the designer. That's something that transports you like a book. [19:20] news, investment information. No, you want to listen. You want to interact with video, with podcasts. You want to be able to, I think, get closer to the end user there. So there's a place for it.

[19:32] I think my... [19:33] Skill has been, what can you build on top? [19:36] When I bought an interior design magazine, which was now almost 100 years old, and I bought that magazine coming out of the recession, [19:43] against the advice of everyone I knew in the industry saying, Adam, you're literally the words were, you're catching a falling knife. Yes, it's still tough because of the economy, but I believe we can fix it. And we did. And it's an amazing centerpiece of our business today. But [19:58] this is when it really hit me i acquired interior design again the bible [20:04] Vogue for fashion, interior design is vogue for commercial interiors. [20:09] So interior design has this... [20:12] Hall of Fame. It's 35 years old. And I didn't even understand it when I was acquiring the whole business. We're all sitting watching these screens. It was a Waldorf Astoria ballroom during December, like the most beautiful place in the world. And we're watching these documentaries of their life's work. It's a big deal to be in the Hall of Fame for interior design. [20:30] But, [20:31] I stood back and I said, this is, [20:34] an incredible amount of power we have. That and many other instances, as I was building my media company, led me to think, I think, very differently. [20:44] than I think most other media leaders were doing at the time. [20:49] I remember I was asked to speak on a panel at a really big media conference, and I don't do a lot of this stuff. I'm always under the radar. [20:56] And I said to the gentleman, he was CEO of Time Inc. at the time, I said, look, I'm pretty contrarian to the digital stuff. Not to say digital advertising is not right, but as a magazine, I don't know if you're going to kill it. Facebook, Google, yeah, but as a producer of Time Magazine, I don't know that you're going to dominate digital. He says, no, no, no, I love it. You'll be the contrarian on the stage. I remember my message to the people in the audience and to every employee I had, and I would always say this, was...

[21:22] I don't believe that a magazine producer, [21:27] Again, there are certain outliers, but I don't believe that a magazine producer that has got a big magazine business is going to be able to replace the lost dollars in print. And by the way, print is very high margin. [21:40] I don't believe you're going to replace lost dollars with [21:43] blinking banners and fake content and all the other fun and games that everyone does. [21:48] I said, and this was my thesis for the business, and still is to this day, is [21:54] What can you build on top? [21:56] of your media business. [21:58] that is not media, that gives you license. [22:01] to do something much, much bigger. I always gave this example, it's a juvenile example, but [22:08] If as Vogue magazine and a Wintour, [22:11] who owns fashion and Vogue owns fashion. But if Anna Wintour would have sat down with a team of engineers and she said, we're going to figure out how to completely re-engineer the workflow of the fashion industry. [22:23] And we're going to create software to completely transform the fashion industry. [22:28] I think I can go and get it adopted. [22:31] Now, could you imagine someone like Anna Wintour walking into Ralph Lauren personally going, Ralph, I think I have completely reimagined fashion. I might be crazy. [22:39] But I want you to try it. [22:41] that's a 10 minute conversation with someone like Ralph Lauren that's going to go down to his people and going, oh guys, Anna's coming with some software, get ready because we're going to give her every bit of testing versus two guys in a dorm room startup

[22:54] They're not getting into the building, let alone going to see Ralph Lauren. So a great example that everyone can understand of [23:01] Could a magazine build something that has credibility in its industry well beyond and way more valuable than the magazine? And that's where I started to. And going back to the test tube, which is the beauty sampling business, I was going to [23:14] That was our first experience a year in. [23:17] And I'll be making more money even than the magazine was super high margins. That thesis carried me through where I kept saying to my internal teams, guys, what are the tools and services we can build for our industries? Don't just think about what ads we can sell. [23:32] Sure, we've got to sell ads and we still sell a heck of a lot of ads across all my media, digital, video, print. It's a foundation for us. [23:40] When I started to think [23:42] bigger. [23:43] I started to say, I've got this [23:46] incredibly fortunate position of being a trusted partner in the design industry. [23:53] And that gave me liberty to go talk to [23:56] manufacturers and designers [23:58] Back to the same thing I love to ask, what are your pain points? But I had that license and I also had capital. I didn't have to go and raise money. I was able to fund all of the R&D and all of the proof of concepts myself. And Material Bank is a great example of that. Material Bank really came as a byproduct of, let me really think, what could I do that's... [24:20] game-changing. And I couldn't have done it. I really, really could not have done it without the media and the people that worked in those media companies and the relationships that they built with the biggest brands in the world that had a love and a trust for my media brands that would at least listen to me. And there were many, many meetings where I'd say, look,

[24:42] This is years away, but what if? [24:45] And we start to hear designers and CEOs of these design companies, the manufacturer, carpet, tile, paint. And what I love is when they say to me, Adam, my God, you built that. That could change the industry. [24:57] Patrick, how many times do you talk about here on the podcast, like marketplaces? We need two sides to really make that flywheel work. And we had both sides at a pretty amazing level. We had that trust. [25:09] So it was amazing. I remember going into a meeting with one of the largest architecture firms in the world. [25:14] And I was walked in by one of the board members and it was a big group of people in a meeting. And he says, you might not know who Adam is, but you know what he owns. And he talked about all our magazines and things. And I never forgot this. He said... [25:27] He's a friend of the firm. [25:29] Because what have I done for 50 years? Written about them, awarded them, inducted them in the Hall of Fame. He's a friend of our firm. [25:36] And he's got this crazy idea. He wants you to help him refine it. And these were all decision makers in the firm. I'm walking in. [25:44] with this relationship and this trust where we're going to help him with this because he helps us. And it was those moments that stuck in my mind as these things that you can't do as an outsider, no matter how brilliant you are and how much cash you have. [25:59] It's very hard to do that in certain industries. And we were fortunate enough to have worked really, really hard in the media businesses and employ incredibly talented, brilliant people that helped to build those brands. And that allowed me to move to the next big thing, which was, OK, let's try and change how the whole industry runs. And that led me to invent and build and then really scale material banks.

[26:23] Let's tell that story now. And just to put some perspective for those listening that aren't familiar with the business, it'd be hard to imagine, even if you took all your design-related magazines and maybe all the ones in the world, they would not be valued collectively at $2 billion. That's the last number I saw for the valuation for material banks. So the business built on top of this trust and distribution that you just talked about is worth probably a lot more than the media properties themselves could ever be. And so it's a great excuse to tell that business [26:53] I guess, going back to the original problem to use your theme that you encountered in the industry and how Material Bank and how you solve that with the business and the founding moment of it. [27:03] Yeah. [27:04] I started to do what I always do. Everyone that works for me, this will sound very familiar. I started to ask about pain points. And I started to make sure that these weren't marketing pain points. These weren't, what do you think I can solve for you? I said, okay. [27:18] Tell me what are your problems just in general. As a designer, tell me about frustration points. [27:24] as a CEO of a company that globally makes carpet, tell me your frustration points. What I started to see [27:31] Wise. [27:32] This physicality of our industry was becoming a real pain point. So here is, in essence, the problem. [27:40] You sit with a designer and the designer would say, look, [27:43] I'm building a hotel. [27:44] I've got a spec [27:46] 80,000 square feet of marble. [27:48] for this incredible hotel. [27:50] and I've got to find just the right product. Well, when a designer does that, they spend months looking,

[27:56] They're getting samples, they're doing all kinds of things to make that decision. And by the way, as they get further and further into the design process, now the client, the owner is starting to get those samples. [28:08] These decisions are made with these physical samples. [28:11] Now you go and you switch to a manufacturer and you say, tell me about pain points. And they'll say, well, marketing is harder than ever. [28:19] Google, the rates are unimaginable how expensive it is. It's getting harder to market. [28:26] Our reps can't get in to see designers like they used to just harder in general. And oh, by the way, [28:32] 12% of my revenue [28:34] goes to sampling. [28:35] 12% of your revenue? Yeah, sampling is not going anywhere. And by the way, I don't care how good the goggles and haptic feedback gloves get. [28:44] You're not specking 80,000 feet of a marble by going, well, it looks good on the goggles. Let me go ahead and buy it. You might cull down from 20 marbles to three, but the physical review of a sample to make a buying decision is this essential thing. [29:00] messy, complex step. [29:02] And I remember someone that worked for me at the time many years ago. And I said, I've got this crazy idea. And I would talk to designers and see, I'd pose this to everyone. And I said, [29:12] What if I could change the way that whole process happens? I'm going to go tell you a little side story. [29:19] I am obsessed with collecting things. [29:22] data points and knowledge. My brain does not turn off. I feel like all I do is collect data points and I collect

[29:28] just bits of information and knowledge. [29:31] My whole life. And I've got this curiosity for... [29:35] Everything. [29:37] I'm immensely curious about everything. And I'm curious. [29:40] There was a company called Micro Warehouse. I think it was owned by Felix Dennis, who passed away. You know, Max, brilliant English businessman. And this was in the 90s. And Micro Warehouse [29:52] Company that was ahead of its time. I would get the catalogs. [29:55] And on the cover of the catalog, I remember it like it was yesterday, there was a woman with a headset on and it said, [30:00] order anything from our catalog by 3 a.m., [30:04] And you'll have it tomorrow. This is the 90s. Amazon wasn't even a thing. And I would only order from them. [30:11] Because in the 90s, I was wearing every hat and I was building my company and I would drive home at midnight from working all day and night ordering a laptop for some employees starting the next day. [30:21] One night I call and I'm talking to the operator. I'm literally driving, giving her my credit card over the phone. And I said, I have a question. How the hell are you getting me a laser printer, a CRT monitor, and a computer tomorrow? She goes, oh, sir, that's really easy. She goes, we are at the DHL headquarters. It's like I heard nothing else the rest of the night. It's the most brilliant thing I've ever heard in my life. And then why isn't every warehouse at the DHL headquarters? But by the way, I'm not price shopping at three in the morning.

[30:51] tomorrow. Obviously, Amazon took this and ran with this, let's say. But Micro Warehouse was this incredibly visionary company that would get me everything the next day. And this is the 90s. I'm driving in my car at midnight. That never left my head. It literally never left my head. So fast forward and we're building Material Bank and [31:12] I'm talking to designers and I said, tell me about sampling. [31:16] I said, wow, it's kind of a pain. We sometimes have a little closet. It's very messy and disorganized, but usually I'll go on the website, I'll fill out a form and in a week I get the sample or I'll call a rep and bring it over to me in a few days or whatever. And I said, but [31:29] How many samples do you get? And like, oh, we get thousands. This is our job. [31:33] I'm like, well, that sounds pretty unbelievably slow, inefficient, not even sustainable. Getting boxes. And they're like, oh my God, you come to our mailroom. I'd go to mailrooms. And there was hours of taped boxes and bricks and glass and these handmade boxes. It was a mess. [31:49] So then I go to manufacturer and I would say, [31:52] how do you handle samples? I'm like, well, we've got eight guys in our warehouse and we're in St. Louis. So at two o'clock, we cut off. We ship everything ground because we're not going to spend the money. And it was a mess on both sides. It was just a bloody mess. And I would start doing focus groups with designers. I'm like, hey, I got a question. If there was a website that you can go on [32:11] with every manufacturer you cared about. [32:14] and all their data was there, all of the photos were there, and you could request samples. [32:20] for free as a designer, until midnight.

[32:24] And then at 1030 in the morning, this beautiful, I spent a year designing this packaging, this beautiful package shows up at 1030 on your desk with every material from every manufacturer. [32:34] And they were like, I don't believe you. I'm like, no, no, I think I can build this. [32:38] There's no way. And designers would say that would change the hours that that would give me back. [32:44] The boxes that would save, the mess you would save. And then I said, what if I could turn that box I sent you into a return box, postage paid, whenever you don't want the samples, keep what you want sent back so I can put them back on the shelf. [32:57] So designers were already, I stopped doing focus groups because like Adam, [33:02] You'll never do it. We would never use anything else. If you could do that, game over. But [33:07] Come on, how are you going to get these materials? How are you going to aggregate it all? How are you going to do it? So I went to... [33:13] I won't say who, but one of the people used to work for me, a top guy. And I said, I've got this crazy idea. [33:18] Again, another side note, I will never build a business pure digital. [33:24] Never. They're too hard. They're too hard. You wake up one morning and your business has been taken over by Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Amazon. [33:33] startup kids. I don't like pure digital businesses. They're too hard to build. Your failure rate is just astronomical. I don't like [33:41] pure digital business. I like things that are messy and complicated because the pain [33:47] to do what I want to do with material bank is not the pain the average person or the average startup would ever do. So I like that barrier. So then I went to manufacturers and I said,

[33:58] I would walk into a meeting and say, I'm jealous of Google. What do you mean? I'm like, well, Google has the best ad model in the world. Google's ad model was. [34:06] hey, we'll run your little link as many times as you want. We won't even charge you for it. But when someone clicks, we'll charge you two bucks. [34:13] Greatest ad model ever. Amazon and Google, they each have their different models. But this Google AdWords model, as a publisher, I was bloody jealous of. [34:21] So I said, how can I build a model? Because I know the design, I know the demand side will be there if I can do it. Hard to do, but if I could. But how do I create a model that is... [34:32] compelling for a manufacturer. [34:34] And I looked at that Google AdWords model and I thought, well, this is so brilliant. And I started to talk to manufacturers like I've got an idea. [34:41] I'll take every piece of material, every piece of data. I'll do all the data work myself. Don't lift a finger. I will literally... [34:49] "Build and normalize your data structure "and put it on my website, no cost. "I'll take every sample you have, bring an 18-wheeler, "back it up to my building, I will load it into my warehouse, [34:59] No cost. [35:01] I want X dollars every time I find a designer that I've qualified that says, I love that carpet. I want the carpet. I'll FedEx it overnight. I'll put all of that data [35:11] right into your CRM. So your salesman doesn't have to do anything but wake up, have his coffee, and go, who got my samples? Who do I follow up with? And I'll charge you transactionally. I'll [35:24] So manufacturers are saying, wait a minute, no sampling, no warehouses, no nothing, no

[35:29] you're just going to put leads into my crm and i'll pay you transaction like google [35:35] done. So we were able to build a model that supply and demand sides of the marketplace were very happy with. And because of that media platform that I spent the prior 20 years building, I had access to customer acquisition, which is, again, talk about the hardest thing in any business with digital. It's your customer acquisition cost and your lifetime value. Well, I had this ability [35:58] to [35:59] enter the firms, [36:01] To this day, our media company still drives the awareness for Material Bank. We were able to build this really, really innovative model. But what I had to do... [36:11] And where that story of micro warehouse comes in is, [36:16] Even our research showed a seven o'clock cutoff would be so beyond expectations. [36:22] Forget it. Game over. They would love it. [36:24] I said to my COO, [36:26] I said, we're going to do midnight because there's one place on the entire planet [36:31] that you could do that. It's Memphis, Tennessee because of FedEx. There's no other place on planet Earth to do it. So I'd never been to Memphis. He'd never been to Memphis. I'm like, we're going to Memphis and we're going to find [36:43] a logistics provider, because we've never been in logistics. [36:46] We go to Memphis. We have two big meetings. We meet with FedEx and we say to FedEx, [36:51] We will be [36:53] the number one shipper of priority overnight packages out of memphis [36:58] Please help us get there.

[36:59] And they were amazing. FedEx has been an amazing partner. They took us serious. They actually really took us serious. [37:06] And then I went to all these fulfillment companies. [37:09] And we were laughed out of the room. These companies in Memphis were like, you want to have [37:14] 20 million pieces of material, 500,000 SKUs. You want to take a brick and a piece of glass raw, put it in one package and overnight it at three in the morning. [37:26] Literally, Patrick laughed out of the room. [37:30] We're not interested. You'll never do it. [37:33] we left Memphis going like no one wants our business. So, [37:36] we do we always do we found an 80 000 foot building that was this ramshackle building and i'm like we're going to figure out how to do this because the value of mastering midnight cutoff overnight delivery to the country [37:49] is of big value. And I didn't want seven o'clock. I wanted me. [37:54] So we... [37:55] hooked up with a robotics partner called Locust Robotics from day one. They were just starting out. We were just starting out. [38:01] The CEO loved what I was doing. And I said, I'm going to build my business on your backbone, on FedEx's backbone. You got to help me. And they did. And we spun up our first logistics operation. And in May of '18, we literally were doing midnight cutoff of everything. We invented packaging, everything that was done, [38:20] And today we're in a massive facility handling, you can't imagine the volume, we've got hundreds of robots and an amazing team of people. But you can order tonight.

[38:31] at [38:32] 11.58, 89 pieces of material from 25 companies, and you'll have it at 10.30. And our failure rate is 0.01. Our team in Memphis... [38:44] Our chief logistics officer, Steve Smith, is just incredible. That warehouse doesn't fail. And it's now become, many years later now, the utility that the industry runs on, because that's where everyone goes to find materials when they're looking to source it. And we've got today, we're probably a third of the Fortune 1000 companies that use it. So it's not just architects and designers. You've got some of the biggest corporations in the world, their teams, right? [39:09] sourcing [39:10] materials and we connect them right to the manufacturers. [39:13] It's an absolutely incredible... [39:16] business story. I love the notion that you don't like pure digital businesses. And I love the notion that it's all built on itself. You've slowly been learning these lessons. The next thing is always built on the shoulders of everything you've done before. [39:29] So much of it rests, if you go back to the beginning, on delivering a fantastic media product with great content and high quality content in it. What have you learned about that notion, about what high quality content means for a given audience and how to find people that can produce it reliably? Because in the quest for more eyeballs, like you said... [39:51] games that people would play to have a higher quote-unquote circulation i'm sure that quality suffered and your [39:58] efforts have always been about the highest quality content. So what are the variables of content itself that you still adhere to today as you think about building or buying a new media property?

[40:07] Well, it starts with having the best people. [40:10] the people that are at the foundation of our editorial products have been here a really long time. They're honestly the best in the industry. And because we don't play those games of clickbait or any of our websites... So... [40:27] When you allow the editorial teams to really do what they want without the constraints of a lot of media companies today that are just constraining them to produce a certain kind of content for mass eyeballs, that is, in my opinion, absolutely the way to lose is to do that. So I try and find the best people and give them a lot of autonomy to allow them to do what they do best. And it used [40:57] We're exalted and it's just powerful. And that doesn't happen anymore because a lot of the media, and this goes across all media, has changed to that mass eyeball. [41:08] They're not going to compete with TikTok. They're not going to compete with Instagram and TikTok for literally mind share or podcasts as a category today. So you better have extraordinary content. It's got to be special. And that was my attitude from the beginning. [41:23] When I built New Beauty, I said, how do I create a different kind of beauty magazine? There was other beauty magazines out there. They're gone now, but there were a bunch. [41:30] How do I create something [41:32] really special. I did something unique with New Beauty. I [41:36] went ahead and I built an editorial advisory team of some of the most important, best minds in beauty. Now, this is beauty from nutrition all the way to plastic surgery.

[41:47] And we got these incredible people that helped us create guardrails for the product. [41:53] And to this day, I mean, literally, the chairman of the editorial advisory board, Dr. Robert Singer, is still the chairman from the day I started that magazine. One of the most important successful plastic surgeons now retired. [42:05] But he guided us. We didn't know what the heck we were doing. Even our editors were early. So... [42:10] We were able to be guided to have as our own integrity to make sure that our content was vetted properly. Media companies don't do that. [42:18] Certainly 2005, no one was handing over a lot of power to a board from a privately held business. But it allowed us to have an incredibly high value of editorial product that to this day is never wavered. But I just never felt right to chase what everyone else was chasing. And now if you look at some of the biggest digital media companies that have blown up, companies worth $5 billion, the future of media, and they're already gone or in bankruptcy, who would have thought? So it's just a tricky, very tricky industry. It's not an easy one. [42:47] Maybe we could talk a little bit about the build versus buy decision in media properties, because you've done both. And so obviously, sometimes it's appropriate to buy a storied hundred year old brand or property. Sometimes you build something from scratch. What are the considerations that go into one versus the other, since you seem to be willing to do both? [43:06] Look, I think if you can buy a brand [43:09] that's got a story, a heritage, a reputation, it's always better. Obviously, it depends on the deal, depends on structure, depends on how well the brand is received. Sometimes in the media business, they kill the brands and then you can buy them and they're not worth a lot because they're a bit bastardized. But I think there's a lot of great media brands that could eventually be bought. And there's something to do with heritage. It's like licensing business. Brands are resurrected all the time and re-imagined. There's something to be said for that history. I like a story.

[43:39] bought interior design, we were given the archives going back almost a hundred years. And I love that. To go back in there and see what were people talking about 90 years ago about office design or home design. Worth is another one, like the archive of Worth is a brand everyone knew. So when you reintroduce it, there is a credibility. And again, if you look at what we [44:04] magazines we've ever produced. We did illustrations on the covers. It was just absolutely gorgeous. And it really resonated with the industry. If you can buy it, I'm a big believer in buying. [44:16] I think today building is hard. [44:18] Still, I love to build brands and we're constantly building new things, but we're still acquiring. We acquired a 15-year-old design website called Design Milk. I bought that a few months ago. We're about to buy two more digital platforms in the design space just because they fit in our ecosystem. So I'm a big believer in buying... [44:37] I love to build. I'm a zero to one builder. I love to invent. [44:42] But if you can do that on a brand that's got credibility, I think it's even better. [44:45] If you were teaching a class about building a brand from scratch, in media specifically, what would that syllabus look like? What, in your experience, have been the most important things to nail to... [44:57] do that zero to one, which is so hard to pull off. [44:59] The most important thing, [45:01] forget brand, forget design, forget quality, is what is your... [45:06] value proposition. [45:08] The world doesn't need another whatever. So what are you doing that's unique and special? I have never built Me Too businesses, and sometimes to our detriment. I've never followed whatever wave is coming up.

[45:20] A lot of times people come up with great ideas, whether it's a magazine or anything. I've got a great idea for this. And maybe even the TAM is there. [45:27] But what is the viable business model? Again, because I fund businesses, [45:32] everything myself, there is no down round for me. [45:36] I spent all of our money doing dumb things. We go out of business. So I try and find businesses where it makes sense to me. And I feel that there's an incredible value proposition that I'm delivering to the user, to the reader, to the customer. And there's a business model attached. And if I was teaching a media business today, that's where you have to obsess. Where is there a hole? And by the way, really hard to find holes today, but they're out there. I'm sitting on this few ideas I've had [46:03] that [46:04] I want to build. I'm so busy on other launches right now. But there are holes in the market. But you've got to have a real reason for being. If you're just being a me too, the world doesn't need it. And now you've got to basically outperform, out operate an incumbent, which maybe you can do, maybe you can't. But I never wanted to be that guy going, we're just like that one, but we're cheaper. Or we're just like that, but different [46:29] I don't know. It's not exciting for me. [46:31] I think that I would urge anyone in media, certainly, so I have a love for it. What's different? Where is there a brilliant business model attached to it? Where is there a need that's underserved? [46:41] there's a niche you can go into because there's a lot out there. I mean, today fighting for attention is everyone's fighting for attention. We literally live in a world. If you look at the old science fiction movies of the guy walking down the street and billboards talking to him and things flashing and things hovering. And that's the world we live in today. Our attention span, you go to a website and you're like, what's the average time on site? 38 seconds. That's

[47:07] No, no, it's not. That's not great. But in the world of web, [47:11] You're a minute. My God, you're killing it in a minute. Tough. So... [47:16] Where do you find those really juicy needs where there's an underserved or completely missed market? And how do you do it differently? I had a group, they ultimately didn't win, but they were trying to buy Time Magazine. And I sat and I brainstormed a half a day with them on how I would re-envision Time Magazine. [47:33] It was tough. I had some ideas, but it's like tough. How do you do that? [47:37] You can, but it's tough. But we're seeing, I mean, look, Life Magazine was just bought. [47:42] by Kushner, an amazing brand. [47:44] Great heritage. You can probably do something incredible with that. [47:48] but it's got to be something special or it's going to get lost. [47:52] So they're out there, those opportunities. And I love those heritage brands, personally. [47:56] I'd love to come back to the two-step process of problem identification in the audience that you're serving and then business model innovation and take them one at a time. How have you gotten better in all the times that you've done this at getting to the core problems? Because there must be more to it than just you show up somewhere and say, tell me what your problem is. Maybe that does work, but you have the Henry Ford thing if they'd won faster horses or something. So what have you gotten better at? [48:21] in this part of the problem identification of knowing who to talk to, how to talk to them, what sorts of questions to ask them. [48:28] I ask a lot of questions. And because, like I said, I'm constantly, as a human, collecting data points on everything. And because I'm so naturally curious, I take it as a challenge to find the problem. I don't get the answers. I never talk to people. Tell me, tell the problem. And they hand me an answer. But it's really the way I have this iterative process of...

[48:49] absorbing the information and really thinking about it. And I parallel path the thinking with the business model. And I literally will sometimes do this by hand. I'll sit with my notebook and I will fill 20 pages of handwritten math, manual math, thinking through the business model, everything at once. And the only way I can explain it is, [49:10] I do everything at one time. [49:12] I envision the solution, the business model, the economics, the look, the feel. [49:17] I do everything at one time, and that is something... [49:20] It's a gift from my parents, I guess. That's the way my brain works. But that's what I love. [49:26] It's something I've done my whole life. [49:28] Because at the end of the day, when you start your own business, [49:32] I was a salesman. I had to go sell the ads. I needed a really great pitch. And I would talk about what the ad could do for you. And how can we design the ad to deliver the solution? So this has always been ingrained in me. As a media guy, you would have built material by going, let's just charge a monthly fee for the listing and horrible model. Or, [49:49] You're limiting. The business would be a tiny peanut business today. So, [49:53] I take a lot of pride in the engineering of the solution and the refining of the solution. I'll come up with the answer. Literally, when I came up with material, I'm like, oh, we'll figure out fulfillment. I know I can figure it out. [50:04] If other people could figure it out, I know I can figure it out. I didn't let that bother me. Whereas a lot of other companies may have said, where's your logistics team and how do you build it? [50:13] If I've got a viable way to generate a lot of business, [50:17] I can feel like I can build almost anything. [50:19] Is the same set of principles the way that you have great relationships with advertisers?

[50:24] Are you training your teams to ask the question of not just send the ad you want to post, but instead, what are your problems? Help us engineer the best advertisement that's going to get the solution that you want. [50:35] What have you learned about the keys to good relationships with advertisers? [50:39] It's how we run. [50:40] Our most important relationships, I mean, sure, we still add, but our most important relationships are... [50:47] solutions to their problems. Our media teams do that. Interior Design rolled out a new program, [50:54] The CEO there is Erica Holborn. She rolled out this new program called Max, and it's an entirely new solution, turnkey, really comprehensive solution to companies' problems at many levels. Every one of our brands does that. We've always had to do that to keep ahead of our competition, but it's the same thinking. [51:12] Before I had anything else but media, I would sit in meetings going, what are your business problems? Well, we have a problem getting our reps into architecture firms. They literally will not take our call because they love our competitor and they hate us. Okay. [51:24] Let's figure out how to use the tools that we have to accomplish a solution, not just what ad would you like? And we've always had that DNA. And I've just taken that DNA further now to other industries. And a lot of our expansion into new businesses from our media platforms are all from that. [51:42] - What have you learned about buying well? So in the deals that you've done, [51:46] especially when I'll use the word distressed in some cases, some of these legacy brands, a hundred years of heritage, but a bad current business as you're looking to buy it. And obviously you're going to come in and change that. What have you learned about the bidding process, how to price these things, where they tend to price considerations in M&A in this space, that's just different than I'm sure than buying a software business works or something. Yeah. Well, because I use my own capital and certainly bank debt on things when we need it,

[52:16] have private equity in the business or we don't raise capital. I mean, we raise capital for material, but that was it. When I buy things, we're typically value buyers of distressed product. We're not a roll up buying incredibly high performing assets and trying to roll them up. I think that's a really tough thing to do in media. So we tend to buy things that we look at and say under our cost structure, with our team and our ability to, [52:40] I believe this could become accretive pretty quickly. We tend to look for those kinds of deals. Today, we're not buying as much. [52:48] It's just not a core part of my strategy. I prefer, unless it's something really special, like Interior Design Magazine was, the idea that this was even available was shocking, but it was the time. There was no buyers, no buyers for this asset. Chance of a lifetime. [53:04] It would be a little startup business buying Vogue, pretty amazing. Those opportunities don't come around a lot. And a lot of the times the media is just too beaten up. It's too hard. In really good, frothy times, I build. And in really bad times when the world's ending, I buy. [53:20] What else would you say is important or surprising about print, the physical thing itself that you've learned is important about running a good print publication or something or something that print unlocks that digital doesn't? Just like anything we haven't mentioned or said about the importance of print. [53:36] Patrick, here's the most important thing. Here's the thing that I believe in more now than I ever have. [53:42] I like boating. When I sit at my desk, I give myself time to look at one of the boating magazines I like.

[53:49] I'm not distracted. [53:50] and I'm captured. There's no blinking things with messages. I'm not flipping on TikTok. There's nothing blaring. I'm in the moment and it's getting my undivided attention. And that's a luxury. Now, I'm more... [54:04] curatorial than ever of what I will do that with. I picked up a business magazine in the day. I [54:09] I couldn't wait to get through it. The paper was horrible. The advertorials, everything about it was terrible. There was someone on the cover I wanted to read about, and that was it. And I couldn't wait to be done, drop in the trash. [54:20] Other magazines, if it has a place on my desk or at home, [54:25] I think that's where print shines. It's hard to capture the imagination. You need the right mix of content quality. It's got to be the right niche. [54:33] But if you're into these things, if you're into home and design, and you're really dreaming about your next home, you want that peace and quiet. You don't want the blinking banners. You don't want things popping up. Here's the best example. [54:48] Go on and read an article from a popular news site on your mobile phone. You want to throw your phone across the thing. There's trick banners, things, pop-ups. You don't know where the article stops. It's just so much garbage. And the reason there's so much garbage is that media company desperately, desperately needs you to misclick on a stupid banner to get the two pennies. And that is a recipe for disaster. And I can't tell you more times than not, [55:16] I will follow a link to an article and I will abandon the article because there's 12 pop-ups or there's fake this and it's unbelievably irritating. So my time is more valuable than that.

[55:27] I think that's where print comes in, but it's part of an ecosystem. It has to be, in my opinion, part of, and there's a time for that print when you can do it. It's the same thing like a podcast. Why I think I love podcasts so much, and I think why they're so popular, is that you're giving yourself that time. There are podcasts I listen to an hour, an hour and 15 minutes of my life, and I've focused on one thing. That is deep, deep, deep value. [55:52] You can't compare that to bouncing on a website or flipping a social media thing. So I think print goes back into that. And I think when you build that ecosystem where it is a component of that's where the one plus one is five. And I think it's a necessary evolution. [56:07] When you are... [56:08] designing the business model itself behind the distribution. Have you ever done it where you had the equivalent of the material bank in mind and then built or bought [56:18] the magazine or the media property to serve that end thing? Or is it always the other way around? [56:24] No, so the new... [56:26] baby that I'm incubating, which is another technology and logistics business having nothing to do with design, but very much technology and logistics, a much bigger industry, candidly, B2B and B2C, we are actually doing the reverse. We're inventing the one-of-one [56:42] business that's never been built before. And we're taking a media property and completely pivoting the media property to dovetail right into the editorial content that will help support this and help us build that ecosystem. So for the very first time, we're doing it the opposite. We're starting with our business thesis. We're building out this technology company and building the media, but we're building it on an acquired platform that's got massive user base and

[57:09] tangential users that we think will dig this particular content. I think it's important. I think it goes back to that ecosystem of having this multidisciplinary media ecosystem to help build those value creator businesses that, to your point, can be worth 100x the media or more, but they work together. I just think media guys have just not done enough of this. They're sitting on great assets, and they're still thinking media. And then you got the startup guys thinking of startup, and they're both pretty far apart. [57:39] You mentioned earlier, sometimes people build a single business and all their wealth is tied up in one thing and they work on one thing forever. You've done something very interesting, which is really, I would describe it as building an ecosystem. That's a word you've used a few times where everything's built on the last set of things. They're all sort of intertwined. There's like a cross compounding effect that happens. And this is a very cool way of building that's appropriate for some entrepreneurs. What advice would you give to people that want to do that sort of thing? And maybe another way of asking it would be like, what have you done wrong? [58:09] and learned from to nurture an ecosystem of businesses and brands versus just building the one company that so many people do. [58:17] Yeah, I've always been a builder versus a flipper. [58:22] And I don't mean flipping in a bad way. [58:24] There's a lot of founders going, I'm going to build it. I'm going to raise capital. I'm going to exit. And I'll go on to maybe the next thing. I've always taken a long-term approach to every single thing I do in my life. I have never built a business going, okay, I'm going to start it. And here's my exit plan. And we have exited some businesses and have done really well in those exits. But for the most part, I've always liked to build and hold and see what I can build on top of.

[58:54] Thank you. [58:54] Starting with building a business that is really strong and it's got a good model with good economics because one feeds the other. So if you can build something that cash flows and use that cash to build the next thing, that to me is the magic. You're not selling it. You're not flipping out of it. You're using the cash flow to build the next thing. And I've done that my whole life. [59:17] And by the way, Patrick, sometimes it's been really, really hard. You start to use bank debt. Economies change. It's easy to look at certain things we've done and go like, my God, it's billions of dollars of value created. But when you're on your own, when you don't have partners, when you don't have investors, when you don't have a board, it's unbelievably liberating and free. And that's how I'm wired. But you're also one guy. And when things turn and change, everything else, I'm the guy that's got to fix it. [59:47] businesses that allow you to build the next, the next, the next. And Material Bank was [59:53] unique, I knew that I had the potential of something very, very big. And we funded a lot of it the first few years and a lot of capital myself. But I made that decision. I said, this is a business that [1:00:07] is going to be bigger than just another piece in my ecosystem. And if I don't raise capital, I run the risk of... [1:00:16] not scaling it fast enough. Now, Material Bank today has scaled massive operations in Europe. We've got a partnership in Japan. We're looking at other big countries. It is a global business today.

[1:00:27] I raised capital and made that decision to bring in outside investors. But I was always in control and to this day to control the board and to control the company because I took all those early risks. So I wasn't raising seed capital and then raising a series A. And then by the time you're on your C, you've lost control of the board. And we were lucky enough to find and I brought in an incredible CEO and [1:00:52] Incredible background, amazing person. [1:00:54] is now the CEO and I've moved to executive chairman, which again frees me up to build the next thing. So you got to start by making sure that those foundational businesses are good. [1:01:05] that can help you grow. [1:01:07] There was a point where it was just so, you talk about mistakes. One of the mistakes I made early on was I didn't build enough leadership in the company. So I was doing everything on every brand. I've addressed my team in the times when I'm the most proud. [1:01:22] If you were to say to me, Adam, what are you the most proud? It's actually when I build something. [1:01:27] that I turn over to a leader [1:01:30] And they continue to be successful and grow without me. Because I... [1:01:36] truly believe in it. No ego at all, but I just have the mentality that I will figure it out. I don't care what the hell happens. I will figure out how to make it successful. I will work 100 hours a week if I have to. I will build it. I will make it successful. So through sheer force of nature, I feel like I can do it, but that's not sustainable. So when I can build something and hand it to someone and I can come in for a quarterly meeting and I leave impressed going,

[1:02:06] successful and I'm most proud is it's living beyond me so I can go build the next thing because I love that zero to one. [1:02:13] If you could only receive one magazine in print the rest of your life, not counting ones that you own, what would you pick? [1:02:19] I mean, it's hard to beat The Economist. Although if it was the only thing I could look at, I think the diversity of Monocle, I would have to say, would be an interesting one. It's hard to get through an issue. There's so much content in there. But Economist or Monocle, I think, are two really good ones that are hard to beat. [1:02:35] Adam, your story is one of the more interesting business stories I've come across in a long time. I really appreciate you sharing it with us today. I ask everyone that I interviewed the same traditional closing question. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you? [1:02:47] I knew you were going to ask this, and I've not gotten this question before. [1:02:50] Can I point to one thing? I got to tell you, I have incredible parents that have always given me incredible advice and support through all of my endeavors. And I think that this constant support, good times or bad times, it's something I try and do to my two girls. It's given me an underlying ability to do what I do. I used to joke back in the early days, like, what's the worst that happens? Business goes out of business. I move with my parents and

[1:03:20] supportive of success and failure. And it's something that's always stuck with me. And it's something that is hardwired into me with my two kids and my wife. It's a foundational building block that I think is essential in life. And I was lucky enough to get it. And I think I give that to those close to me. Simple and beautiful place to close. Adam, again, thanks so much for your time. Patrick, thank you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, check out joincolossus.com. [1:03:50] and resources to keep learning. You can also sign up for our newsletter, Colossus Weekly, where we condense episodes to the big ideas, quotations, and more, as well as share the best content we find on the internet every week. [1:04:20] you