I Took a Hike

Michael Crotty - A Paramount Career Exploration

• Darren Mass • Season 3 • Episode 7

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Ever wondered how the wilderness of business and the intricacies of life weave together to form a tapestry of experience worth sharing? Join me, Darren Mass, as I walk the path less traveled with Michael Crotty, the former COO and CFO of Paramount Global Premium Group, and unravel the stories that shaped his illustrious career in the media industry. Our conversation is a treasure map of insights, leading through his involvement with iconic brands like Showtime and BET, and uncovering the profound impact of mentorship, personal growth, and the often-overlooked humanity that breathes life into professional endeavors.

Our journey doesn't shy away from the rugged terrain of business strategy and leadership. We tackle the delicate balance of financial acumen with maintaining an organization's soul, diving into the essence of customer experience and the pivotal role of purpose-driven business. Our dialogue is a candid look at the dynamics of marketing mindfulness and the often tumultuous affair of marrying passion with profession. Michael and I share personal anecdotes and lessons from our respective MBA journeys at NYU, dissecting the strategies that have defined our paths in finance and beyond.

But it's not all business; our expedition ventures into the personal realms of fear, learning, parenting, and the quest for self-discovery. We discuss the confrontations with unexpected moments, the value of embracing risk, and the lifelines of support that guide us through the challenging landscapes of life and business. As we close on our hike, our conversation becomes a campfire story of transformation, a poignant reflection on finding one's way after corporate life, and the rediscovery of what it means to be truly human. So lace up your boots and let's step into the wild together for an enriching excursion that might just inspire your next great adventure.

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Speaker 1:

Okay, Michael Crotty, are you okay with being recorded on a podcast? Yes, there goes that liability. This is I Took a Hike. I'm your host, Darren Mass, founder of business therapy group and Parktime Wilderness Philosopher. Here we step out of the boardrooms and home offices and into the great outdoors, where the hustle of entrepreneurship meets the rustle of nature. In this episode, we go off the beaten path only to find our way back with former COO and CFO of Paramount Global Premium Group, Michael Crotty. Our topics include using your early career to learn from mentors, investing in yourself, creating a personal board and the values of being kind, empathetic and clear. We are blazing new trails and creating inspiring new beginnings. When I Took a Hike with Michael Crotty. This episode is sponsored by DeFi Supplements. Are you feeling stuck in a rut? Do you need more energy for the trail? Well, you need to recalibrate, my friend, and get your energy back for the summit. Calibrate is a premium brain health supplement doctor formulated to help with energy, focus, mood and longevity. Visit defiyourmindcom and use code HIK for 20% off and you will defy your expectations. So let's begin with who are you.

Speaker 2:

So my last role was Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Ford divisions that are within Paramount Global. Paramount Global is a huge media conglomerate. A merger that occurred between CBS and Biocomp Spans about 25 billion in revenue, so it's a big, big media entity.

Speaker 1:

And it has a that big 25 billion.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and it has a lot of operating divisions that have consolidated into it over many, many years. So some of the assets brands that we're most familiar with would be Paramount Plus, paramount Pictures, mtv, bet, and so the organizations that I oversaw was Showtime Networks, which was a premium television service that got distributed on cable and in streaming. The other one was BET Networks, black Entertainment Television, older Cable Asset, who has now been morphing into additional revenue streams in digital and in new media, so they have a streaming platform. And then Paramount Television Studios, which makes Jack Ryan Reacher effectively television properties that we sell both to streamers and use for our internal streaming services.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let me ask you a poor rising question and if you're not comfortable answering it, please don't. But did you find when you were in charge of BET that you weren't the right fit for the role?

Speaker 2:

Oh no, so the opposite. Oh, I love, I love BET and I thought it was a gem of an asset. I mean, I love Showtime and Paramount Television Studios as well. I got very, very intimately involved with the brands, but BET was one that I was particularly inspired by, and the reason is I grew up in New York urban environment. I'm Ecuadorian descent but I was let's put it this way I was much more urban than I was South American and in the process of doing that, I watched BET religiously, really. Yeah, a lot of rap. I grew up in 90s hip hop and it was amazing to live in New York while that was happening, you know. And now, at the time I didn't realize the significance of it, but it was just fun, but I was in there and I was seeing. You know, my family came from Ecuador, lived in the projects right next to where NAS was coming out, nas Sardamas and you know it was just insane that all of these artists were coming out of the housing projects that we all used to hang out in and it was just fun. And so, fast forward, 20 years later, that still stuck with me. That experience stuck with me.

Speaker 1:

Was that part of your interviewing process? No, no, that never came up.

Speaker 2:

Never came up. No, bet was more about. That actually was just serendipitous in that, as they were consolidating divisions that had like approaches to their business models, bet and Showtime had similarities because BET was launching a streaming service and Showtime had been about five years in that, and so, yeah, we were able to kind of riff through ideas and really, really support each other and there was even sharing of content between the two brands because it was important and it was something that television consumers, streaming consumers still want, right, they want this rich representation of content and not necessarily stereotypical in nature, and so Showtime BET were able to kind of bring that home. We had a show called the Shy, which was a representation of basically the South Side of Chicago, but in this beautiful family-centric way that also talked about its challenges but also its uplifting community nature.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that won several awards.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it was such a strong performer for Showtime, and so what I loved about that experience is that it's a brand that has stood the test of time and it has enormous market power because it still has this aggregated television audience and it's generating a significant amount of revenue, and so it can really be a big cultural influence as all this disruption is occurring, because with disruption comes opportunity, and I do fundamentally believe there's a great opportunity in increasing the amount of black content, or black inspired content, across multiple streaming platforms, and we're seeing success in stars. We saw success at Showtime, obviously at BET+, so it was really really great. But back to purpose, what I loved about that experience was knowing that I had a very small part in helping a larger community and that I was using what I had been trained to do to propel that brand and to propel that purpose.

Speaker 1:

And all of that was under your own umbrella, that you managed essentially and oversaw it.

Speaker 2:

Don't know how many divisions they have, but they break up the divisions, optimizing revenue opportunities, cost cutting opportunities, and so the reason why those groupings made sense at the time, showtime was a subscription service that was mobilizing towards streaming, bt, traditional cable that was also mobilizing towards streaming. Both had studios also where they made original content, and then Paramount Television Studios is a studio. So it made sense to bring that over some common leadership to figure out how we could synthesize and merge for efficiency.

Speaker 1:

So before I ask you my next question, I'll ask you this one. It's pretty challenging hiking and talking at the same time, huh, oh yeah, the premise of the show. We are on the. What is this? The Otter Hole Trail. It is up in Harriman State Park. It is a beautiful background, beautiful scenery, especially with the foliage this year. So what is it like because you've confused me a little bit, because this is a very confusing title to have Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer? Those two usually don't go hand in hand, so answer that while you cross these rocks.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know I think both roles are. You know, have had these broad spectrums of how you can be influential and add value.

Speaker 1:

But totally different skill sets, though. One is really responsible for execution of the board's plan and the CEO's plan the mission leading, managing and holding people accountable, and the other is responsible for the financial well-being and oversight of an organization.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you know you can't necessarily take both on at the same time early in your career, because you want to develop a good base and grounding of either of those two skill sets more operationally centric or more financially centric and so I've graduated over time to that. But I was showing interest in those kinds of things early on. So what I mean by that is the first couple of years was really about solid financial training, and what I did there is I worked for Arthur Anderson, which is still around, by the way. Well, I changed names. So Anderson Consulting has some of the same people that we're involved with.

Speaker 1:

It's your traditional. You know. Let's have a scandal and change the name, but change it back because we're proud of the name and then confuse everyone. Here we are again.

Speaker 2:

A wild adventure. That was, and I was three years into my career at Arthur Anderson when the crisis occurred. Did you have any?

Speaker 1:

involvement? No, thankfully not. And that crisis being referenced as Enron for those who aren't in the know which happened to be, you know, in the financial classes I took one of the case studies was on Enron and it happened to be one of the most complex orchestrated fraud schemes that has ever existed in finance. It took almost 10 years to unravel it and figure it out by the world's leading financial and economic scholars.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was crazy and it was, I think, the first of its kind because of how it permeated across multiple industries. You know, it affected, obviously, the industry I was in, which was in the assurance industry, but the tentacles that it had on energy, the tentacle that it had on these huge pension assets, and so and it was complicated because at the time I was very, very junior and it was the actions of, effectively, one office I believe it was out in Texas, yeah which was local to Enron, which was, yeah, and it was effectively the actions of a small office not maybe not a small office, but a specific office which then affected a global organization that ultimately lost its license to practice assurance and therefore went bankrupt.

Speaker 1:

And it's the lack of oversight I think that was part of. I don't I might be misunderstanding, but I don't think Arthur Anderson created this scheme. I think they just ignored and looked beyond certain of the black and white requirements of a maker checker in that industry.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's what gave birth to Sarbanes Oxley, it's what gave birth to so many regulations that basically said how could you be objective in providing security for an organization if, at the same time, you're you're a public company that needs to grow revenue and is selling additional services and so?

Speaker 1:

the. The oversight that's provided by an assurance company needs to actually be held to a responsible, regulated body, which is where socks came from. But you know, based on opinion, do you think socks is catching them all?

Speaker 2:

No, I don't think so. I mean learning so many of the regulations at the time, especially when they all came down, is what it did do? Is it put a tremendous amount of concentration on ethical approaches to financial management meetings that forced conversations about? You know, looking at people eye to eye and just hearing them say do you feel comfortable with how things are being represented? And there was a psychological value that we put in for an example at showtime of quarterly, asking those questions and making that eye contact, hearing those voices, because most people want to do the right thing. They just get caught in a system that maybe they don't think they can speak up in.

Speaker 1:

Well, we, especially in big corporate America. I experienced this myself. I was a president in a Fortune 500 company and, even though I knew the right thing to do, I would raise my hand and I was told put your hand down. Yeah, and that's when I took my leave, right, coming from a small business operating world where I can affect change right, my words do have weight into a big world where, all of a sudden, my weight means nothing, despite title yeah, that's a wake up call.

Speaker 2:

It is, it is, and so you do create these oversight procedures, which are helpful. So, for example me, I was a CFO of a few different entities and I knew that on a quarterly basis, the people that directly reported to me were going to be asked in a private room or in a private Zoom later on, post COVID, around how I make them feel in their, in the performance of their job, and whether there's anything that they need they feel they need to kind of bring up. And you have objective lawyers who then will filter that information and if they feel like it's necessary to go a little further in questioning, then they can't. And just knowing that has value, because it really makes it to the point where there is absolutely no point in playing any games, because it will all come back at some point in time and it all has. We've seen from these crises, you know. We've seen from the housing situation.

Speaker 1:

Hey listener, thanks for hiking along with us. Discover more episodes at hightokahikecom, or to recommend an adventurous guest, apply to be a sponsor or to simply drop us a line. Let's see, there's a trail mark. All right, so yeah, we can go around this way.

Speaker 2:

This is miss marked or that's the adventure part of this.

Speaker 1:

All right, we'll just go up and around. Yeah, use your job as on the job, training for the career that you want. So you were able to get in front of these high profile executives at such a young age, ask the questions that you wanted, knowing that they can't just kick you out or fire you yes, and that gave you the experience you needed to really rise above.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then you get to you know, and then you get to use your own internal mentors. In this case it was the managers on the job to discuss what you learned. So you got it from both sides. You got it from somebody who has primary access to the information, but then you get almost like a counselor with you who works with you to help diffuse the information, filter it, try to better understand it, and that practice it can be really fun because if you look back and you take inventory on all the things you didn't know a month ago and now you do, it adds up.

Speaker 1:

See the next marker.

Speaker 2:

Don't oh marker here, here, that's straight so that one told us to go this way.

Speaker 1:

This is a pretty poorly marked trail, guys, and this is telling us to go left, right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm guessing it's through there.

Speaker 1:

Yep All right until we find it little, a Little path here.

Speaker 2:

I think the leaves are making it a little. The leaves are killing, but that's the joy of hiking much like your career.

Speaker 1:

We are going to navigate a Windy path at times. So the on-the-job training, what was almost a valuable thing that you took with you, because eventually you had to leave Anderson, yep, all right, we could talk about that in a second. What was the most valuable lesson that you gained from one of your clients where you would consider them a mentor?

Speaker 2:

Well, what I wow, let's see there's so much there. I mean the risk of sounding a little corny If you're in the business of businesses, understanding revenue and expense, really understanding it is so critical, but it's more than understanding it from from the perspective. I remember this one partner at Arthur innocent who was really, really Obsessed over the concept and this was when it wasn't so popular at the time concept of unit economics, which was and this is pre private equity, right pre VC Blowing up in the way that it did. Now this is kind of par for the course, but it's understanding. How do you really generate that dollar of revenue? Is it sustainable? How much does it cost you to really generate that dollar of revenue? And it's not a perfect science because obviously you need to be thinking about brand and you need to be thinking about Clients and partners in a big way. It's not all about individual transactions. That's sometimes where we get lost. Maybe we can go go to that later. We see that we forget the value of an organization because we reduce it to these like well, little bits and pieces.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, we will definitely bookmark this, because that is a challenge that many business owners startup business owners Especially chase is the single dollar, the transactive dollar, and not that recurring revenue. And Sometimes I hear, well, we don't have a business that generates recurring revenue, but you do.

Speaker 2:

You can turn a client into a recurring client exactly you can start to think of annuities, you can start thinking about additional services that you didn't realize you weren't performing. And it's very difficult when you speak to a lot of and we'll go into why I went into operations but when you speak to people who are literally solely trained to do that ie Marketers, as an example, even research professionals, their whole thing is I don't really necessarily Understand the unit economics. All I understand is that this client has complained about these three things. Wouldn't it be cool if we could solve that problem for them? Yeah, and Now if you're like, oh, I generate a hundred dollars out of that client, well, someone on a spreadsheet might say I got a great way, let's generate 110 and, and, and, and, and, you know, charge them ten dollars for this service. So you can do it in unit economics, but it loses its soul. It loses its, its its Real purpose, which is no, let's solve what the problem is for them. Then we can figure out how to create a rate card or how to assess how much value that is on a per unit basis.

Speaker 1:

Well, you hit a very strong word and one of the you know, one of the few words that define this show is Is purpose. Purpose, success, balance. Those are the three words that summarize this show. Right, when you are focusing only on, as you are saying, unit economics, there is no soul to a unit, there is no purpose behind a unit. Right, it's. It's very myopic and often businesses fail to understand what is that balance, that purpose and that, that, that success metrics behind those units. Right, and I think this is really important concept for all businesses, especially big ones, to learn is you're not making a sale, you're making a relationship. And if we're only looking at unit economics, it's too myopic to black and white. So you definitely have experience on the finance unit side, but then pivoting to operations, this is why even I was confused how are you in operations and in finance at the same time? Because operations requires you to have more soul it does, it does and and.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it helps you think of the customer at least it let. It lends itself to more lucid thinking, but you still bring your spreadsheets with you right in your brain, still bring all the financial acumen, but you think about things that becomes secondary. The first part of it is you start to think about the customer. The customers experience your brand, what it stands for, why people will pick yours over another. And Is that true? You can almost feel the soul of an organization in its employees so you can Check in with what customers experiences are. But what I have found is people that have positive customer experiences. They're using the same language that your intern organization is using.

Speaker 1:

They better be. Yeah, well, that's a balanced organization. Yeah, otherwise.

Speaker 2:

Maybe you got lucky, maybe people are like oh my god, I loved, I loved our experience, but you create your own luck yeah.

Speaker 1:

Put ourselves in lucky situations yeah.

Speaker 2:

Or you're an initial or you take the over, I go the under, you know, or you're in an industry that's just like you know. You found a quick solve that nobody, you know, maybe you're a new entrance or a monopoly in an industry where you have solved something very quickly for someone, but as soon as new entrants come in, the purpose is what has to drive the growth of the company. So why did I go into operations? Well, like I went and got my MBA at NYU and I deliberately took and this was a pivot here. So at NYU there were kind of these three big roads. Road number one go heavy into the corporate finance game. They try to pare down who can cut it there very quickly based on the difficulty of the classes. And if you survive there, the idea is you try to break into private equity at the time, investment banking, hedge funds et cetera.

Speaker 1:

Yep, that requires you to have a really cool vest.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, patagonia properly.

Speaker 1:

Like weight Patagonia vest over your sweater. Yes, now sneakers and you know a lot of Not a stereotype, when it's true.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God, it's so interesting, I'll tell you about that the players should be. When we were raising money, one of our existing investors said you might want to buy a vest.

Speaker 1:

You're good, but you're wearing a suit and we bros-.

Speaker 2:

We're a vest. Yes, our VC bros, we're a vest.

Speaker 1:

We're so much more chill it says business, but casual and ready to play.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, can play golf, or I can like raise capital, whatever you want me to do today, and these sleeves will not hold me back. So went for my MBA and I deliberately took a bunch of courses in well, met my wonderful wife, probably the most successful thing I've ever done in my life. Here it is.

Speaker 1:

So please don't say she's your muse. I've heard that three times on the show.

Speaker 2:

No, muse is muse is a little mystical for me.

Speaker 1:

You know what it is.

Speaker 2:

We'll go back on muse when we want to get to the spiritual part of our journey, cause muse feels ephemeral and organic and flighty Right in the sense that, whereas I don't know, just sustained love, she's your person. Yeah, it's awesome, right. And so we got to meet her and we actually took a few courses together, but we took a bunch, a bunch of marketing courses in conjunction with leadership courses, and the idea there was learn more about the customer, learn what it is that customers want, how to speak to them in an authentic way. And then how do you influence change in organizations? Because they're so political in nature.

Speaker 1:

That's right and I knew what I was saying. My organization isn't political, Absolutely not.

Speaker 2:

Every organization has politics, yeah it's just a different version of it. When I've been at corporate and I've been at startups, politics are there. They just present differently yeah, at the startup level, the politics presented as passion. Who's the?

Speaker 1:

most passionate, and passion is a politics.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, who's the most willing to make this more important than anything else in their life Trail?

Speaker 1:

reset hold on Somewhere over there. Let's go back backtrack a little. So this is very synonymous for business. We went off the trail a little. We have to backtrack.

Speaker 2:

Little backtrack.

Speaker 1:

yeah, Sometimes, as Paula Abdul says, two steps forward, one step back.

Speaker 2:

Well, if you take inventory of what you did right On the way back I do this with my son I said, well, hold on, let's. Why did we lose our way? Oh, we stopped paying attention.

Speaker 1:

I think it's less us stop paying attention more that this trail is very not marked clearly I was bringing us to mindfulness, mindfulness is good. I think it's back over here to work. Let's go back this way.

Speaker 2:

Oh, there's the right there, the marker right in front of us there.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's going towards the back.

Speaker 2:

And that's a green here, so I guess it's back up here. There it is.

Speaker 1:

See that faint little slot.

Speaker 2:

They're picking markers that camouflage well with the environment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that is a very well camouflaged marker. All right, here we go. All right, yeah, All right back on the trail, All right back to what we were talking about.

Speaker 2:

So I went and it took a bunch of marketing courses and not to belabor the point. The idea was all right, I have a really good understanding and there was a lot still that I had to learn, but I had a really good understanding of how economics worked. So that was kind of the way I saw it is. That was a piece of the puzzle that I've gotten far enough on. What's the next piece of the puzzle Now? At some point in here I told myself I think I aspire to be a leader of an organization, maybe a CEO, and I kind of reversed engineered what am I gonna need? to make that, make that, to take that new path. And what kept yelling at me was voice of the customer, the voice of the customer, and then being able to translate that effectively to the people that are doing the work. And so I went and for the past I don't know 15 years obsessing over the idea of marketing speaking the same language as finance and then coming to a vocabulary that the organization knows backwards and forward, so you're bridging marketing and finance together and thus you have in your trail, in your path, a much better and more understood product. Yes, because you have magicians who are making programs but they're not understanding why their programs in our world of media are not getting renewed. So you have to be able to articulate to them return on investment thought patterns. Why do people keep coming back for a show as an example? And it's no surprise. Most creatives, most engineers, most product specialists are not thinking in those terms because they've built up their career being brilliant and being a magician at creating a product experience. So there was always this gray area, this white space that I always saw available, which was there was a professor, a professor car over at NYU, who used to say this we don't need more marketers, we need finance people who understand marketing Well was he in marketing or finance. He was in marketing, international marketing. We took him to white.

Speaker 1:

Do you think for a second he was making a play to get financing for marketing, since that seems to be a universal shortage.

Speaker 2:

Okay, but here's the reason. There's nothing wrong with marketing wanting financing. Because well?

Speaker 1:

no, it's in its best.

Speaker 2:

You can't spend on marketing devils.

Speaker 1:

So this is also a recurring theme too that marketers, people in marketing, need to fight to get funding for what they need to do. And the reality is is marketing is a function of revenue. There's a reason why Coca-Cola spends billions on marketing. Everyone on the planet knows Coca-Cola. They do, but do they know Coca-Cola or remember Coca-Cola in that moment of time when they are thirsty? No, and that's why marketing is a function of revenue, absolutely absolutely, and we are influenced by it.

Speaker 2:

We are influenced by the images and the people that are selling it. We are now influenced by how much of it is environmentally safe, how much of it stands for something in addition to the product that we think we're buying. Oh for sure. So there's a whole, I wouldn't say, influence.

Speaker 1:

I think at this point we are brainwashed into it. Yeah, all right, it is the truest form of brainwashing. The products that you like and you buy have been delivered to you by fantastic marketing, coding and programs. They deliver to you what you didn't know that you needed until you saw that targeted ad. Yeah, how many things have you bought from Amazon? And we're all falling into this bucket. You bought something on Amazon. You never even thought you needed a egg slicer. Yeah, that egg slicer just happened to show up as recommended for you and you said, huh, $7 for an egg slicer. I love slicing eggs. And then you bought it. Wouldn't it make my life so?

Speaker 2:

much easier for you to get this in my life, yep.

Speaker 1:

I'm laughing because I'm guilty of this all the time. I have an obsession with tools, actual tools. I have a tool drawer. You would have thought that I was a car mechanic. Yes, I do work on my Jeep, but I don't need every tool. I bought them because Amazon told me I needed the Vera tool set with the 38 attachment pieces.

Speaker 2:

And you're guilty, because it's probably, at least in my case it's preying on this oh, if I have a full set of tools, my image is better or I'm manlier, or maybe it's relieving some bizarre underlying anxiety that what if my house flows over to Hurricane? I'm going to fix it myself. Well, wouldn't my tool set be buried under the house?

Speaker 1:

Are you saying that I'm one of those anxious people? Oh my god.

Speaker 2:

I have purchased so many 2 o'clock in the morning fitness programs.

Speaker 1:

Do they work?

Speaker 2:

No, because you have to do the fitness program.

Speaker 1:

You don't have the body biometric.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so the most effective thing I've ever done was P9E. I actually did it for 90 days, but is that still around? Still is I mean? Yeah, I don't know that it's actually marketed. It took over 15 years ago.

Speaker 1:

So back to the tools. Here's the reason why and this is very apropos for business too when we have more space than we can fill, we want to fill it up. Human beings do not like white space. We don't like empty. The reason why being in an empty room feels weird.

Speaker 2:

We need furniture, yes.

Speaker 1:

Right, and when you're looking for office space or that next office space, if you're going from 5,000 square feet to 15,000, you're going to want to fill it Furniture and then people, and sometimes having too much space is not a good thing.

Speaker 2:

No, because you want to right size. I think a lot of times when you look at blank space. For me personally, it's this what we're all seeking is some form of safety, I think some form of security. And then, when you have a moment to pause and you see an empty room, you're like how do I make this more secure? Oh, you know what? I don't have locks. Oh you know what? I don't have an extra water filter.

Speaker 1:

You know you start for 15 jars of peanut butter If you're a rapper?

Speaker 2:

Yeah you start thinking about. Or, oh, you know, if I had a pool, it would bring more people to me and then that would give me social safety. So having a pool.

Speaker 1:

I can tell you it is very expensive to have a pool.

Speaker 2:

It's a lot easier to go to a public pool a town pool, but it's better to go to a public pool and run into people.

Speaker 1:

If you build it they will come, but then you're the life of the party always. And it's like so let's take another reset to find the trail again. We're in the general vicinity, so right there, right there, this is a tough drill guys. Huh, it's a shirt. Yeah, a sweater was a bad choice. Ha, ha, ha ha.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, so back on operations. What happened there? So you hit the nail on the head. It was a labor-intensive attempt to distill the mystery of three components Marketing language how to how to invest to grow revenues. Economic language which is well, you can't invest more than you make, right? There's always a relationship between revenue and expense, even though a lot of people think expense is the boogeyman.

Speaker 1:

And well no, they think debt is the boogeyman, falsely labeling debt as an ugly word.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is if you look at debt as just an interest expense that is fueling something that is more short, then you should have no problem with that.

Speaker 1:

Debt can absolutely be applied to your advantage, and it is not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all.

Speaker 2:

And then the third was using a vernacular that could influence people, inspire people and have them feel passionate about the work that they do, because we spend so much time in it, in the work and with the people that we do it with. And I do believe that it cannot fulfill all things, but it can fulfill a lot.

Speaker 1:

So what is your most inspirational thought?

Speaker 2:

There's two that come back over time. One of them is more of a cliche Still don't know. I have it in my room, my son has taken it for a little while and it says fear will kill more dreams than failure ever will. I fully support that. There are often, every day, these intuitions, these inspirations, these ah moments that we all feel, usually when we're not even expecting it, and then, at least in the case of me, there's an automatic turn that switch off and go do the thing you need to go do, go send those emails, go back to the administrative aspect of things and for me, if you kind of take a pause, pivot into that for a second and say, wait, is this a good idea or not, you might find that it's actually a great idea, and I've had a few in my experience where I put to the side what I thought I was supposed to do and did this instead, and then it worked out.

Speaker 1:

But the fear is what crippled you to not take the risk and the fear can be very, very slight.

Speaker 2:

It can be as simple as I don't have time for that. It's because it's disguised in these little mini. Well, why don't you have time? Oh, because if I show up late, my wife's going to be upset with me. Oh wait, ok. Well, can we? So that's what's stopping your brilliant inspiration at the moment. So that's one that kind of sticks with me a lot, because I see it as something that everybody, or most people, are challenged by.

Speaker 1:

I think we're all challenged by fear. Yeah, the reason why one of our guests the other day refuses to ride a bike. Yeah, she fell off a few too many times. Yep, fear, fear, which means she's going to miss out on a whole world of bike riding.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Well, so funny that you bring it to the bike riding. So the other thought that comes to mind all the time, especially when I'm feeling disoriented as to where I'm putting my efforts am I learning? If I can truly feel the answer to that is yes, then it was worthwhile. Because for me, that's the fun aspect of life is to go back and take inventory of all the things you've learned. And if you could say, yeah, I invested a bunch of time on that, but I didn't know that before and now I do, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

That gets me through the day. So that, to me, is extremely important and I can give you an exact scenario where I have repeated that mentality and it was the first time I said it out loud. We were selling our business and if you've ever been through an acquisition or any M&A, it is a lot of work, it is not easy and no matter how prepared you are, unless you've done it multiple times, it gets very daunting. We were probably a good 100 plus hours deep into this way, up this way. Let the record show that this trail is like hunting for a golf ball, so not well marked. Who picked this trail anyway?

Speaker 2:

It's beautiful, it is, but the leaves have destroyed any sense of damped trail markings.

Speaker 1:

All right, so back to what I was saying, what I turned to my partners, because there was that last minute it might not go through. That happens with every deal and that is strictly caused by the buyer. For unless you have experience, there's purpose, it's strategy. Create last minute panic Yep, that's how you can negotiate a better buy rate. Yep, we could have a whole episode on buyer strategies. That would be aha moment for small business sellers. But when I turned to my partners I said listen, if this doesn't go through, we spent a lot of time. But here's the thing we got a crash course education in M&A from both sides. We are closer together. We worked so well together for these past few months and we now know all about our business, more detail than we have ever cared to know. But if we don't go through with this, we will now be able to support a very healthy business, knowing every aspect of margins, multiples, unit economics, and we know where we can cut the fat or grow the revenue based on an opportunity. It's that time spent.

Speaker 2:

That was our educator 1,000%, and you probably feel this in your bones. If the sale had not gone through, you would have been able to successfully pivot to whatever you needed to do next.

Speaker 1:

I would have had no choice, neither with my partners.

Speaker 2:

But I will tell you that would have been a you would have had no choice, but you actually would have had now the learning, the teachings, yes, the teaching to do it, but it would have been a very hard emotional gut punch to overcome, because when you are running a small business, especially for multiple years, that business becomes you.

Speaker 1:

You have to train your brain into thinking that you're going to let it go. You're going to change right, you disassociate your person and personality from your business in order to break up with this relationship. So to come back to that, because all of a sudden you were dumped or denied, it's a very hard challenge. So while I was saying the words out loud that this will be to our benefit, I don't know if I believed them at the time, because it would have hurt.

Speaker 2:

And it's hard to believe it, the only way that you kind of can. I had a coach who's fantastic, peter Bregman, if anybody needs one, but he's. What he told me was know your purpose, but now detach from the outcome.

Speaker 1:

Can I improve that? Value your purpose. Yeah, value your purpose Because everyone has a purpose, and I know there are plenty of people that sit behind a desk right. They work for guys like me or you inspirational figures but they don't understand their own purpose, their own place in the machine, and that's where a strong leader has to help them along. Charismatic, great leaders will remind their people that they are valuable and they have purpose. Because every job gets mundane. I'm sure you, in the operations world or the finance world, you had plenty of mundane moments, oh yeah. So what did you do to stave off the I'll make up a word here the mundanati Sounds like you got a case of the mundanatis, mundanis.

Speaker 2:

What would be the plural the mundane, mundanis. That's probably something that needs to be coined there, you go.

Speaker 1:

That's a tongue twister, but what did you do to stave off the monotony?

Speaker 2:

of the job. So I kept going back to how I felt after learning something, and it's the only thing you can kind of like control. A lot of times the workload comes at you, you have pressures and you don't understand how you're gonna like dedicate more time and still get it all done. So you get very, very disoriented and then you end the day and you feel like you just had empty calories because you just spent 10 hours of high stress, mundanati and let's trademark that Get on this bandwagon and then you think of the, then you start projecting that oh my God, I mean, this is only Monday. And then you start getting into this tailspin of oh my God, I have five days of this at least. And then you start hoping for the weekend, and it's a very common practice. So you live for your weekends, Can.

Speaker 1:

I venture to say, if you are doing anything in life, especially work related, where you're saying, oh my God, it's only Monday, then maybe we should readjust our life. Yes, right, look at the perspective of life, because we're wasting time.

Speaker 2:

We are wasting time, and what we're wasting also is the opportunity. For me, it was always the opportunity to learn. Now I think my learning is not innocent. It's not entirely innocent. What I mean by that is I, like most human beings, are always, always trying to find security, or it's trying to find safety, and my version of that got translated into do. I know stuff that can be helpful to others, and so my obsession with learning is not entirely Zen either. It's probably also heavily fueled by the more I know, the more valuable I can be, and that's gonna provide safety, that's right.

Speaker 1:

And so what about? Safety brings you the most caution, especially now, today, in today's environment.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's the problem is that safety is many ways like an illusion, right, it's not. You don't, you're not guaranteed safety and you can try your best to to prepare for as much as you can, but there's a healthy amount of awareness that you can't protect yourself from anything and everything. So then you go back to like a kind of a more balanced approach, which is what makes me feel good. Okay, and safety is sure it makes us feel good, but it's not always assured. You know, you don't know if you're gonna get sick. You don't know if you're. You know, I've had some health scares, you don't know. But what you do know is what makes me feel good, and for me it felt, and I used to tell this to my staff all the time. Take half an hour, 45 minutes today, and read something or learn something that makes you feel like you actually changed your mind, changed your brain. Maybe it's something tactical, like playing a piano, or maybe it's a research report that you find interesting. Okay, and then the day is not just mundane, then you haven't wasted the day away.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, fill it with at least purpose again, in fact a universal purpose.

Speaker 2:

Yes and only you know why that thing is valuable to you, to your point, the value value, your purpose. It could be a research report about what's going on in the world. It could be entirely about current conflict.

Speaker 1:

Is this something that you you coach in your kids, or are you like me, where your kids just don't want to listen to?

Speaker 2:

Well with my kids. I don't coach it yet because they have such an abundance of varied experience right now. How old is it? 13, 11 and 8. Yeah, and you're in the thick of it. If anything, they're probably in the over scheduled camp of like. There's so many varied things that are going on Daughter's in lacrosse and volleyball, but she seems to really like music. My other son is in wrestling, but really like Spanish and math, you know. So there, when you're in school, actually a lot of times you don't have to think about learning, because that is the point. But when you become an adult it can be easy to forget.

Speaker 1:

So this is a first, for I took a hike. I took a hike and we get lost multiple times in the episode. This is telling us straight, like symbolic there, it is Okay yeah. See, it's right in front of you.

Speaker 2:

And it is on a big tree.

Speaker 1:

This is much like the career path of many. Okay, so let's go back, talk to me about something that has scared you the most.

Speaker 2:

Man. I mean, there's a few things I'm scared of, man. I think one of the ones that seems to be big is have I or am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing here, you know, kind of that existential question. And not that it's irrational to ask that Obviously we're not the first and won't be the last to ask it but it is a little irrational for it to create such a big generalized anxiety. Yeah, because you're putting so much pressure when, to your point, maybe the point is to just have all these experiences Of success and failure. Right, you have to experience failure in order to appreciate success.

Speaker 1:

And I think you know I do not have kids in the millennial world, right, and I just remember being a Gen Xer and thinking the same stereotypes of millennials at the time that everybody had a participation trophy and everyone's a winner, and then those stereotypes of, well, if you didn't know how to win and you didn't know how to lose, then you wouldn't appreciate it, right. So those came to mind. Obviously we don't really have that separation anymore because life advances. But you know, I'm certainly not raising my kids that way. I want my kids to know what it's like to lose or fail in order to push harder. And I'm hopeful that other parents raise their children in that same way, in that same respect.

Speaker 2:

I think so, yeah, because I think the side effect is possibly, if you haven't failed, chances are you didn't really do the thing you needed to do Right. You played potentially a very safe route but only you can personally know that Right. There could be a million people that challenge that and say absolutely not. I've only succeeded and I love my life and I love every decision I've made. And you know what I call you a liar. When I was in the VC world at the startup, I remember our investors would come in and part of trying to instill organizational morale, strong morale, camaraderie. One of the things that they kept showing us which was interesting coming from investors, but I really appreciate it was none of these successful startups did it in a hockey stick. If you actually look at what we're doing, what do you mean they didn't do?

Speaker 1:

Because that's your best growth model.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but if you actually, then if you scan in, they would look at what actually happened in specific points in time. So if you look at this from a thousand feet away, it looks like the company only went this way. Okay. When you actually look at it on a monthly or quarterly basis, it looks like this right the hockey stick is a 10,000 foot view of growth.

Speaker 1:

And for those that don't know, picture a hockey stick right, the butt end official term of the end of a hockey stick on the ground slanted up right. You want to go a steep incline and then you want a plateau a little bit. Why? Because the plateau helps you reset, retool, create new processes, really evaluate if your current process is working. It allows you to catch up. If you have nothing but straight, diagonal growth, you're not going to get a chance to retool and then you can suffocate by success. But to your point, when you look granularly, you do have the peak, the valleys, the peak, the valley along that diagonal incline, and many of those are the moments where organizations come together, talk through what they've learned, what you know.

Speaker 2:

There's always a risk element to where do we go after this? That's right. And so it's a muscle that, unless you're in it, you don't understand it and it gets overlooked. That's something that's necessary, that's right. So for a lot of first time entrepreneurs, what might feel like a bad month might feel to them like oh my God, my company's falling apart.

Speaker 1:

That's right, and that panic, that fear is so detrimental, and that's why you need to have a solid support staff of people that are aligned with you in a non-me me me culture.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it could just mean no, you lost the customer. It's not when you're going to lose customers Catastrophizing that you're losing your business. That's not real. Saying that you lost the last three pitches Okay, what can we?

Speaker 1:

change. It's okay, I'll make a Paul Abdul reference again, because that was a. I used to listen to that lyric over and over again in my head. Every time we would win, you know, a few customers, we would lose an opportunity. It's two steps, one step back. It's just. I just kept repeating it because that's how business grows You're going to take a leap forward and a micro leap back until you finally hit momentum. By the way, rate this trail that one's pretty good. Yeah, this actually might have been the most challenging hike that we've done yet All right, well, I feel, not for any grade or incline, but just simply because we are zigzagging back and forth to find trail markers.

Speaker 2:

I feel like a thumb badge of honor now tied to that.

Speaker 1:

There is definitely a badge, I will give you that, but not the best. Now we have some other rail experience. All right, so we're going straight up. All right, this is a what? 800 foot incline right now. So the top yeah, we're going to sweat a little, not 800. 400, 500.

Speaker 2:

And the sun is coming.

Speaker 1:

Good day to forget. My water Power through Should have a nice scenic view, so why did you take an exit from Paramount?

Speaker 2:

Not a, you know, not entirely my choice One of those things where I'd say it's 50, 50. So it's one of the situations where the media industry for those that know her is in a really, really tough transition right now. It is being has been massively disrupted, much like the music industry was 20 years ago, yep, and these big organizations are taking on big losses. And mature organizations like Disney and Paramount had operating models that were sustaining 20, 25%, 30% margins, significant cash flow, and all of that is now. What do you think is the number one contributor Streaming, the effects and growth of Amazon Prime and Netflix and, to some extent, apple. What has happened is, in gearing up for the future, everybody emptied up, emptied out their coffers and competed in an arms race style way for content, got it and it created this massive what I believe is an imbalance in supply demand economics To the point where the average customer can't even find the shows that everybody else is watching because it's gotten so fragmented. And in that there historically have been some, some rules in the way that financial markets looks at these organizations. So when companies like Amazon or Netflix are growing not necessarily profits now they're profitable, but at the time they weren't growing profits, but they still have market caps entirely based on their revenue projected growth.

Speaker 1:

Well, they also had other diversified product lines to pad the revenue.

Speaker 2:

In fact, with Amazon, aws was a loss leader for a long time, yeah, but there's still is not a lot of great detail on that, you know, because Amazon just is doing a very successful job of just getting to your home. In all ways, jeff, that's right.

Speaker 1:

By the way, nice job on the incline and speaking Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, we'll get back to you. So then, now, when you look at traditional organizations like Paramount, well, these companies are being ranked, by cash flow and profitability, more fundamentals. So now that bottom line profits matter for this sub subcategory is also the same time that people are cutting their cords, no longer subscribing to $100 and $200 cable. I am almost there, by the way.

Speaker 1:

So close. Yeah, I'm the last Tivo user. I mean sports is really the last holdout.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, amazon now has rights and there is people are streaming MLB games and you know it's so streaming everything from politics to games, and then the content that has come out on Apple, amazon, hulu, even Paramount.

Speaker 1:

The original content is phenomenal. Yeah, without commercial, which is another industry, that marketing side of the industry definitely took a hit. So so do you think we were looking at a blockbuster moment for the media industry?

Speaker 2:

I do. I do think that they're right now are probably too many players, and so I think for the consolidation is probably inevitable. And the reason for consolidation is obviously because there are many of these companies are competing in some of the same ways, so there is, of course, redundancy and costs, and so unfortunately, that is a fact, and all these companies, as they aggregate, are restructuring and eliminating redundancies.

Speaker 1:

You happen to be one of those individuals and I happen to be one of the.

Speaker 2:

I happen to be within the yeah, the operating divisions that were engulfed by other kind of larger operating divisions and they're going through the process of synergizing and the organization was great. It was a great place to work, left on the best of terms. Really still love the people there, but it's just a. It's the reality of the industry.

Speaker 1:

This episode is proudly brought to you by Brand Built, a dynamic social media networking community designed to elevate your success. Feeling stuck in a brand loop. Your brand matters more than ever before and falling behind is not an option. Join our dynamic community for expert social media guidance, valuable lessons, education, weekly spotlights, monthly speakers and a robust brand building network. Explore more at mybrandbuiltcom and join me in the chat for a thriving journey to success. All right, are we ready? Down the mountain, let's do it. Talk to me about next moves. What's your inspiration and where?

Speaker 2:

do you want to be so? I'd be lying if I said I knew entirely. That's.

Speaker 1:

OK.

Speaker 2:

And I'm trying to create a paradigm to or maybe you could call it a value system, a purpose system that can orient me towards where I'm investing my time. So I'll give you an example the places that seem to inspire me with a lot of energy is my Latin upbringing, coaching and leading people. And then the third place is in storytelling, which you are doing now, which I'm doing now and which I really lived in an ecosystem that was economically driven to tell stories and it's really really cool, and some of those stories I'm so glad we told Now it's showtime the story of Dexter. It blew my mind 15 years ago, the idea that you could understand a serial killer or empathize with a serial killer, or even kind of fall in love with a serial killer, and it's like well, obviously I don't condone serial killing, but I understand the impulse to want to do good but also have anger, and so those are the three things that seem to be interesting to me. Did you have a hand in the creation of Dexter? I did not, unfortunately not. Maybe that's part of the next journey which is in the process of my work. I was able to work with a colleague and read probably 30 scripts over the past two years. It's not something that again a CFO or CO does, but it's an opportunity that was afforded to me because of my position and I had this wonderful colleague and she and I spent a lot of time comparing notes and trying to understand what makes for a good story and a good character. And you're hitting exactly the major point, which is living in the gray, is the part that's so interesting, because most people aren't so parochial that it's just so black and white and some people are good, being told this is good, this is bad, just follow this path. But I think most people are always. They find themselves deviating somewhere into the gray at some point on some decision. We all do not most all of us.

Speaker 1:

That's what makes us human, and unfortunately we do rationalize bad things and we rationalize good things, and then the gray can fall on either side of the fulcrum.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we see that today. But the gray for me is I've been experimenting with the gray. Sometimes you don't know you're in the gray unless you feel into your body, because rationalization can be really cerebral. So you may say, oh, this is totally what I should be doing, but your body's not saying that, and that intuition is interesting to pay attention to, and that's why I like storytelling, that's why I like media and entertainment, because what it's attempting to do, what the actor and writer and everyone else involved are attempting to do is get you to feel that gray area. Maybe they're trying to persuade you, maybe not, maybe they're just leaving an open-ended question. And I like playing in that space, because sometimes we kind of know what we should be doing, but it's not what we're doing.

Speaker 1:

So are you enjoying the learning process after corporate America?

Speaker 2:

You asked my wife no way. So she's seeing too much of you. No, she's the opposite. So I am labeled as a type A overachiever, overworker-styled individual. That's OK, definitely have used fear, scarcity as the fuel to get things done, ok. And when, overnight, you are no longer responsible for hundreds of people or hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars or whatever it is, you lose your way. No, you lose your way. You start to become human, become human. Your brand starts to diminish, whatever that word might be, your image starts to diminish and you become a human. Yeah, then you decide to take hikes. Well, that's just it.

Speaker 1:

So, on that note, michael Crotty, this was definitely a first for the show. We got lost. We were off that trail. Well, it was fun for me because you were the one really looking for the marker.

Speaker 2:

So thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

I tried my best not to stare at my phone, but occasionally I did need to look at the map Because you know what, sometimes we all need a guide. But this was fun, I really enjoyed our conversation. It was very high level. This is a deep conversation, very existential at times, but the takeaways from this are all about taking time for self-care for purpose, for the purpose of self-care for purpose, for balance, learning from the gift that others want to teach you, especially at a young age Don't be afraid to ask questions, don't be afraid to go off the beaten path and discover or make your own trail, as we did, and eventually you'll wind up where you want to go, which is where we are, michael Crotty, thank you so much for your time and this fantastic episode, aaron thank you, appreciate it, do it anytime Next time on. I Took a Hike. We crush an epic mountain with the CEO of Treble Health and YouTube sensation, ben Thompson.

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