The Sporting Class: Welcome to the Spinoff Era

Who's to blame for the conscious uncoupling of Warner Bros. Discovery? How would Disney survive without ESPN? And when did so many 20-something grifters come to stand in for spineless management? David Samson and John Skipper are back to discuss this month's biggest sports-business stories — and their credit scores. • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://www.youtube.com/@npds Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:23Speaker 01

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• 0:56Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,

• 1:40Pablo Torre?

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• 2:05Speaker 03

  When you're getting high with your friends, you talk about credit scores?

• 2:08Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 2:16Pablo Torre?

  Are we rolling? Oh, sweet. Okay. David got a haircut.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  David got a haircut?

• 2:23Speaker 04

  This just came up on Dan's show. And they put a picture of Cameron Diaz from There's Something About Mary. And I was annoyed because days one through six post haircut, I'm able to do this with my hair. Days seven through 21, it combs to the side.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  It's a fine part. I think that's why people are noticing, the part.

• 2:40Pablo Torre?

  Do we call it a widow's peak?

• 2:41Speaker 03

  Very strong, very strong. No, it's not a widow's peak. I'm talking about the line.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Something totally different.

• 2:46Pablo Torre?

  Are you sure?

• 2:46Speaker 03

  I think the line that goes back here.

• 2:48Speaker 04

  The widow's peak is this, is my receding hairline. Thank you, Pablo. Believe me, you'll be there one day.

• 2:52Pablo Torre?

  This is the peak. I will not be there one day genetically speaking.

• 2:56Speaker 04

  It is a guarantee. You're gonna have a full head of hair exactly as you are when you're 57?

• 3:01Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  Okay. We'll know each other, still be together.

• 3:06Pablo Torre?

  At the next boarding class. In what year will that be? I'm 39 right now.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  It's just 18 years from now.

• 3:12Pablo Torre?

  18 years.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  It's really not that long. If you think about it, 2043 is the same as 2007.

• 3:18Pablo Torre?

  This hairline's not going anywhere.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:20Pablo Torre?

  You got the Carolina, I was gonna say Carolina coastline. You have the California coastline and I got the Carolinas.

• 3:25Speaker 04

  Go look at yourself in 2007 and see if you have the same everything from '07.

• 3:31Pablo Torre?

  I don't wanna do that.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  I'd like a side by side if you have enough staff.

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  John?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I don't actually think it will do you any good. So I wouldn't do it.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I agree. Time beats everyone.

• 3:44Pablo Torre?

  Uh, John's haircut strategy, I feel like is different from David's and mine.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would like the least to do when I take a shower. I put a towel on it and rub it, rub it down and I'm done.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  You look healthy and tan and happy because everyone's doing what you wish, according to your schedule.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Just like the old days.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:05Pablo Torre?

  David is literally twiddling his thumbs, which is...

• 4:08Speaker 04

  It's been a stressful moment to make sure. Now, to get to a place exactly at the moment you said in New York City, not as easy as people may think.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  No, I know. New York City.

• 4:19Pablo Torre?

  Greatest city in the world.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  You take the subway?

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Not here because my deal with you thankfully is that I get to Uber one way so I don't schwitz before a show, but subway home. Cause it doesn't matter if I look terrible when I get home, I'd like to not look like I just got off the subway to do a show with you.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Schwitz?

• 4:38Speaker 04

  That was your last gift or negotiation?

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Already before you got here, I used the word hondled.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Ooh, that's, that's got pejorative connotations.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Well, it was meant to.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Oh, it was. Nice. I don't think you meant it in the way that I'm saying it's pejorative. People who say hondle, it can be viewed as anti-Semitic, which I know you don't mean to be.

• 4:58Pablo Torre?

  This is another, it's rooted in, uh, another name for han shu, which is the largest of the islands forming Japan.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  That's not what hondle is.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  No, no, no. At least as, as it used to be defined in Lee Roy, Leo Rosten's joys of Yiddish, it was to be manipulated, right? It was.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  It's to be scammed.

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:28Pablo Torre?

  Okay, here it is. There's a whole Esquire article about the word hondle.

• 5:33Speaker 04

  Why were you talking about being hondled? Were you referring to me specifically?

• 5:36Pablo Torre?

  Because we're talking about sports business, David.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Ah, I internalized that.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  It would need a little more context and we have time or would be helpful to the audience, but we can probably move on.

• 5:48Pablo Torre?

  Well, now that we've been scared off by David's claims, which I believe, I believe we have full, uh, now context to establish the innocence of us citing a word, um, that was cited in the OED in 1965, earliest known usage in the sixties, um, Esquire magazine. Um, I think we're all right. I think we're all right.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  It's not a great word.

• 6:13Pablo Torre?

  It's a, okay. Well, urban dictionary.com has it as a conjunction of fondle and handle, which maybe is a modern etymology.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  I don't think so. It's Yiddish, it's Yiddish.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  There is nothing to do with fondling.

• 6:27Pablo Torre?

  Agree to disagree.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:48Pablo Torre?

  So I want to get, though, to, I suppose, conscious uncoupling to a separation of bodies, of entities, because we are in the season of spincoats. And WBD, which I guess has another meaning before my time, but currently it's Warner Brothers Discovery. Isn't there another thing? WD-40? WD-40?

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  That's the thing that makes things stop squeaking. No, WD-40 is what you use to stop the squeak of a hinge.

• 7:19Pablo Torre?

  Very good.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  That has nothing to do with WBD.

• 7:21Pablo Torre?

  While that may be possibly another metaphor I could see as the final, I will just keep it moving. Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company to cable channels such as CNN, TBS, TNT, they announced Monday that it's splitting into Twain, two publicly traded companies. Funny enough, we have spent a lot of time talking about David Zaslove, the head of this entity, the larger entity, showing up at Knicks games, wearing his very, very new Knicks cap, courtside. But now, the two companies are WBD Streaming and Studios, which he will run, that's HBO, Warner Brothers Pictures, DC Studios.

• 8:03Pablo Torre?

  WBD Global Networks will be CNN, TNT Sports, US, and Discovery. And Zaslove will be the former Gunner Weidenfels, I believe, will be the latter.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Former CFO of the larger company. CFOs can do business.

• 8:19Pablo Torre?

  It seems. So what is, John, I want to start with you, what is the big picture thing that is happening here? Was this surprising to learn?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't surprising to learn, because what they're doing is taking the...

• 8:36Speaker 03

  I don't know what you'd call them declining assets, but you would call them not high-growth assets and put them in one company. And they've taken the new streaming services and what people would regard as a future and put into another company.

• 8:53Speaker 04

  The library.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yes. They loaded the debt primarily into the old company, almost ensuring that it will not grow as fast. So I assume, David, you probably understand this better than I do. I assume that that's the general reason they did this.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  So you have to go back a little bit. Let's go back to the merger of how Warner Brothers Discovery came to be. It was not, there's people in the audience who may not realize Warner Brothers Discovery was already a merged entity. And there was a huge amount of debt that happened in that merger. And the thought was, much like with CBS and Viacom, which hasn't happened. And now CBS is trying it again with Skydance. The thought is that if you put two companies together, that together they will be a greater company. You'll get better earnings. You will be able to have positive cash flow and you will be able to have economies of scale. So instead of two different news departments or sports departments, sales departments, combine them, fire people.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  So that is the form of layoffs, not pleasant, but always part of post-merger life.

• 10:03Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  And then you have a healthier company. Well, Warner Brothers Discovery never got to that point, never got to the panacea of health. Their debt actually kept increasing after the merger and it's become choking. Let's explain why. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back. And it comes with interest.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Wow, there's an insight.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Well, listen, there are people who believe, like with the national debt, hey, that never has to be paid back. Why do we care if it's a trillion dollars debt? Why do we care about refinancing costs for national debt? These are major economic issues that people just don't want to think about because what you're doing, Pablo, it's, you don't, you're not interested.

• 10:45Pablo Torre?

  Well, but I want to distinguish between the kicking the can down the road on the national debt versus the pressures that force a decision like this, which is, to my view, as the layman, relatively speaking, on the panel here, is embarrassing.

• 11:02Pablo Torre?

  Is it embarrassing to you that WBD had this grand vision? And of course, this was, we're gonna make HBO Max, we're gonna undo that. And this merger, which you just characterized, is now being split in a way that feels like, okay, the strategy clearly has adjusted yet again.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it happens in business all the time. So I'm not as gobsmacked as you are, where companies get together or people get together with an idea and they put money behind it and resources and it just doesn't work. It's sort of like research and development and science. You're not gonna get a cure for everything, but you're gonna spend a lot of money trying. So what happens is the debt increases. And then what happens when you have too much debt is that you're using too much of your open cash flow to actually pay interest on all the debt you have. So instead of that cash flow as earnings or dividends or for growth of the company, you're just paying someone back. So you're earning money to do nothing with because you're using it to pay back money. So that's not very helpful.

• 12:01Pablo Torre?

  But why didn't it work, though, fundamentally? Why could they not figure this equation out?

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Well, John, I'd like to hear you, but I'll tell you, my view is that when that merger happened, there was not a thought that the decline in cable revenue and in what we call, just for fun, cord cutting, no one had in their pro forma projections during that merger that it was gonna be so quick and so significant and cause such a dilapidation in their earnings.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  When was that merger?

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I think you're going on, is it 15 years? It's in the 2000s? What year was, there's several of them, but you can go back to the AT&T merger if you want and get a date on that, Coco. You can go back.

• 12:44Pablo Torre?

  WBD was formed from Warner Media's spinoff by AT&T and merger with Discovery, Inc. on April 8th, 2022.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  Three years only?

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  What's, when was the AT&T merger?

• 12:59Pablo Torre?

  Discovery and AT&T acquired Scripps Networks Interactive and Time Warner renamed it to Discovery Inc. and Warner Media respectively in 2018.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  And there was a merger earlier than that, I thought, back in 2016 or so.

• 13:12Pablo Torre?

  Time Warner, then known as Time Warner Entertainment, acquired Turner Broadcasting System in 1996, AOL, that merger was '01, Time Warner, because that previous one, the AOL one was disastrous, they went back to Time Warner in '03, they spun off its cable division in AOL in '09, Time Inc., where I used to work, they owned Sports Illustrated, was 2013, that was that spinoff, they got sold to Meredith. There's a [bleep] lot.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Lost track.

• 13:37Pablo Torre?

  There's a lot here.

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Look, I would suggest that it is often the case that high-powered executives think that they need to accumulate more scale, they really want to accumulate more power also, they want to be in other businesses, they have a certain kind of business hubris that they've figured out things so far, so they'll figure out things later, and they then end up with a bunch of MBAs and Mackenzie.

• 14:10Pablo Torre?

  Lot of Mackenzie.

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Folks who come in and say, here's how we'll make it work, and they make a bunch of assumptions, the person who has hired them wants them to figure out how to do it, and they made some bad assumptions, they believed that things would happen that didn't happen, they did probably run into the cable TV, but they should have, '22, they should have known what was going on by that point, so I don't think that's it, I think they just thought, all those other mergers you've talked about, they didn't work either, it was the hubris of AT&T thinking, we can figure out how to be in the entertainment business, remember that?

• 14:52Speaker 04

  I do, but they were using their cable money, they were using subscriber money to power all of these thoughts, you need money to do everything they were doing, and when the mergers happen, it turns out that the person in charge, so I want to think about David and this merger, we're saying he's now part of the company, which is keeping the debt, which is a major thing, it's getting rid of sports, it's keeping the old guard.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  Wait, I thought it was the opposite, I thought that... The other companies took on most of the debt.

• 15:21Speaker 04

  No, the, no, I believe, I am 99.9, John. That the company with the debt is the company that David's got.

• 15:30Pablo Torre?

  John is breaking out the glasses, Coca is fact checking for me. And while we do that, I have a question that was sparked by John's reference of McKinsey. Cause in college for me, you know, consulting gigs. Out of school, you get my friends showing up at Bain and McKinsey and BCG. Um, and they would walk into these corporations. That would hire these very high powered, very historic consulting firms to change things. And my question always, and my question for you guys is. How much of that is them actually asking the consulting firm, please tell us what to do? And how much of it is them telling these 20 something year olds and more, but like often young people.

• 16:15Pablo Torre?

  We need you to be the reason and the cover for the thing we've already decided.

• 16:21Speaker 04

  The justification.

• 16:22Pablo Torre?

  The, the excuse for us doing a million things and then undoing them and then doing them back again. And it being embarrassing, except for the fact that whoa, whoa, whoa, this was the consulting firm. We keep on hiring.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  You know, you say, we say embarrassing and I would say that the people who are running these companies. When their comp is, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. There was a great story that happened this week where the shareholders of WBD got together. And it was reported and, and commented on mistakenly. That the shareholders got together and said that they did not approve of David Zasloff's salary. I don't know if you saw that, John.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Wait, who did not approve of it?

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Shareholders got together and they were asked as part of compensation committee process. Where do you stand on compensation for David?

• 17:12Pablo Torre?

  Which was 51.9 million in 2024.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  And they came out with a, hey, we don't like that. That seems too high. And it was reported that that had some sort of impact on David's compensation. Here's a shocker for you, zero impact. It does not matter what the shareholders thought, felt, said, whatever the PR was. David Zasloff's compensation is set and agreed to by the compensation committee of the board. And the shareholders have zero say over it. And I found it interesting that shareholders were spreading the rumors like, hey, we've got the power here.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Well, I have a different reaction, which is it's a shockingly high salary for what cannot be viewed as a successful performance to date, can it?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Their shares, WBD shares are not outperforming the market. As a matter of fact, they're underperforming the market. So if that is the correlation, he is quite overpaid.

• 18:09Pablo Torre?

  So John, speaking about David Samson, slid a piece of paper across the desk and tinted his hands because bullet point H in the doc, David Samson, is a correction. Because, do you want to read the quote?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  "It's safe to assume the majority of WBD's roughly $37 billion in debt will exist with the spun-off global networks, the new company's new president said. The not insignificant portion will remain with streaming and studios." But DBD, so David Zasloff is with streaming and studios?

• 18:44Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 18:45Speaker 04

  So not insignificant portion, are we assigning that to be a dollar?

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Well, no, no, I'm assuming it's $37 billion. The gunner, and I do not know if that's the way his name is pronounced, I'm sorry.

• 18:59Pablo Torre?

  I believe it.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  But he is taking the substantial majority. Now, a substantial majority would be 25?

• 19:06Speaker 04

  So majority to me is just 50 plus one.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Well, it could be, but why would you call that a substantial majority? That's not a substantial majority.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  So it says it's safe to assume the majority, it didn't say substantial, fact check, and it says a not insignificant portion will stay, will remain with David.

• 19:25Pablo Torre?

  All of this is kind of the point, by the way.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Do you know why we're fighting about this?

• 19:28Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's because nobody can say a clear sentence, either you guys or the people writing this stupid press release.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  The debt is a major thing. If you are splitting into two public companies, and David Zaslove is running one of them, and it is saddled with a disproportionate amount of debt, you are consigning that company to failure.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  But he's not saddled with a disproportionate, he's saddled with a minority portion of the debt.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  But he's also, it could be argued, getting a minority portion of the assets.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Well, he's getting the assets that the future's based on.

• 19:59Pablo Torre?

  I love it when a negotiation breaks out about a negotiation on this show.

• 20:03Speaker 04

  You're saying you'd rather be Zaslove in this, or Gunner?

• 20:06Pablo Torre?

  Great question. Who'd you rather be? Who you got?

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Zaslove.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  I'd rather be Gunner.

• 20:15Speaker 03

  Because?

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Because Gunner has an opportunity, it's a new company, you get a benefit of the doubt, it's SpinCo. And the reason why you do SpinCo's is that there's a story that you tell that may not end up being true, but you've got the support of the board, you've got the support of the shareholders, saying, "Hey, we're gonna get a percentage of something that has an opportunity not to be burdened by the existing debt, and we can be free and fly."

• 20:41Speaker 03

  It is burdened by the existing debt. They take the majority. I don't know why you would think 50.1 and 49.9. If Gunner is saying, "We're taking the majority, but a not insubstantial portion," that's even a negative. He doesn't say, "They're taking a substantial portion," they're taking a not insubstantial portion. Right? Would you say-

• 21:07Speaker 04

  A not insignificant portion is two negatives, that makes it significant.

• 21:10Pablo Torre?

  But hold on, but this is, but this is, but this is the stupidity of this entire conversation. So it is safe to assume that the majority of the 37 billion in debt load will exist with global networks, which are the Zaslove, sports rights and news stuff, CNN and others. A not insignificant portion feels like a very clear attempt to be unclear because it's going to be something that is, you know, uncomfortable, but also not nearly as much as the majority that the news and sports side of it is going to be, that Zaslav's side is going to be.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  No, no, that's it's the other way.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't, I had it the other way, but I could totally.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  No, no, and it's counterintuitive because you would think you would not attach the most debt to the company unlikely to grow.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  And I think that's what they did.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  Well, and it's because David is, I believe Gunner reported to David. So there's no way that Gunner is going to get a better deal than David.

• 22:19Pablo Torre?

  Well, yes, so the whole idea is that Gunner is taking on more debt. David Zaslav is getting less debt. That is the very simple takeaway amid all of the mealy mouthedness of the statements, mine now included.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Well, it's not that it's mealy mouthed, it's that these are complicated transactions. And by the way, these aren't done. It should be pointed out that what was announced was not a completed approved transaction. Much like when the merger was announced with CBS and Skydance. There's so many things that have happened, including an announcement this week that there are going to be further layoffs at CBS Paramount because they're not exactly sure when the deal is going to close, it was supposed to close by the end of June, and what it's all going to look like after. So these were complicated issues dealing with billions of dollars and millions of people.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Uh, no disagreement, but I'll read you a little bit of gobble goo. By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we're empowering those iconic brands with a sharper focus and strategic flexibility they need to compete most effectively in today's evolving media landscape.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  Inspiring, that's a great quote.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  That, that's right up there with fourscore in seven years.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Except that one really meant eighty seven years ago.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  But.

• 23:38Pablo Torre?

  Also reminds you a bit of call me Ishmael.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  They just put two companies together, but in order to optimize them in the future, they must break them back apart. So why do they put them together to start with?

• 23:59Pablo Torre?

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• 24:32Speaker 05

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• 24:46Speaker 06

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• 24:57Speaker 05

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• 25:28Speaker 00

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• 25:59Pablo Torre?

  So this is, this brings me back to the consulting question, guys. Can I just return to that for a second? Because like how and why are very interesting questions to me. And I just want to know, when it comes to, John, I presume at some point you had to deal with like a consulting firm in some regard?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Almost, almost never.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  Well, you personally?

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Me personally, I-

• 26:19Speaker 04

  Disney does-

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Disney does. I, I probably will be, um, forgetful. I did hire a few consulting companies. By the way, I hired somebody to help diversify the company.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Great.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  I'd probably go to jail now for doing that, but I did.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  You were doing DEI before DEI.

• 26:40Pablo Torre?

  You need a consulting firm to tell you, Dan Levitard. All right, fine.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  But what I, I never get it. I don't, well, I do know why. I never understood why people hire consultants.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  To me, it's like hiring somebody to do your media rights. Who knows your company better than you? Why is it, I realize you, and by the way, I read the book on McKinsey. I don't know, you read the book on McKinsey?

• 27:05Speaker 04

  No, but I-

• 27:06Speaker 03

  It is really, really awful.

• 27:09Pablo Torre?

  The book or McKinsey?

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Both. I mean, well, the book is about how awful they are, right? They tell everybody the same damn thing, which is, yeah, we're going to come in and help you, and we're going to help you cut costs. And by the way, that's why they're hired. They're hired because the current management doesn't have the backbone to actually make these decisions themselves, face their own employees and say, sorry, uh, but we have to, we have to get leaner. So they bring McKin-

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Are you surprised by that? Most executives don't want to be delivering bad news. They don't, I mean, we're a little different in that way. I'm totally fine with being straightforward and honest with people.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  I understand that layoffs are hard. But the thing about McKinsey- And all consultants, you're talking to a person who's been blackballed because I built the stadium and bought and sold the team without consultants.

• 28:04Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  And that doesn't happen. Everyone hires Allen and Company.

• 28:08Pablo Torre?

  Right, another one. Who blackballed you?

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Uh, the groups of people who are consultants were very angry lobbyists. I did all public financing without lobbyists. We had one group called Poole and McKinley, but they didn't do much.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  So wait, what does blackball mean in this?

• 28:25Speaker 04

  It means they do not speak nicely of me and they tell other owners, hey, if you're selling your team, don't do it the way Sampson did it because you'll only get 1.2 billion. You have to do it the way we'll do it. And by the way, those deals fall apart, they don't happen. And you've got the Nationals, the Twins, the Angels, who can't sell at any price because these consultants have no way of putting a deal together that is reasonable or rational. So, the amount of money that's spent, it gets budgeted in a big company's budget. Disney has a huge budget line item for consulting and you bring them in and what they do, as John specifically stated, it's staggering what a grift it actually is.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  They come in and have a PowerPoint presentation of what they will do for you.

• 29:11Pablo Torre?

  Oh, love a deck.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  It's the same deck.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Full of gobbledygook.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  All they do is change the name. It's the most amazing thing.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  The, the other things in the book is that they work for competing companies, which strikes me and strikes the authors of the book as a bit of a conflict. Now, I want to go back. I thought you were suggesting that because you didn't use the consulting companies, they blackballed you from using them.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  No.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Which would be interesting.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  No, they would, of course, like CAA has a whole department where they want to help with media rights deals.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:45Speaker 04

  And we negotiated our media rights deals without them. We didn't want to pay them a percentage. We wanted the money. We didn't want to, the whole thing about consulting.

• 29:51Pablo Torre?

  Percentages, yes, you're paying fees.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  You're paying fees, you're paying monthly fees, then you're paying success fees. We, we would get offers all the time while negotiating with Cablevision and then negotiating with Fox, saying, hey, we think that you could get 30 million a year, but we'll only take money above 30 million that we'll deliver to you. So if we get 50 million, we want a percentage of that incremental 20. And I was like, forget it, I'll get the 50 million.

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  There is something fascinating to hearing this side of the conversation because as I say, a lot of my friends became consultants out of college. And what I admired was that they are trained in like rigorous, quantitatively oriented, data-driven, strategic thinking. And that is real. But it's also funny because it's like, those are the guys I'm getting high with. And you guys deal with them and they either tell you what to do or are the, again, face of a decision that you just don't want to have your fingerprints on. And both of those scenarios is very funny to me.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Do you remember the Blue Ribbon Panel? Was a committee put together by Bud Selig and baseball to deal with steroids.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  It had Rick Levin in it. It had Senator George Mitchell.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  It was a pretty famous committee and it gave a report soon after I got into baseball. So I want to say the report was done in 2000, 2001, 2002, somewhere in there called the Blue Ribbon Report. No one's ever heard of that.

• 31:11Pablo Torre?

  Wait, this is different from the Mitchell Report?

• 31:14Speaker 04

  This is, it was a blue ribbon.

• 31:16Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  You search it as blue ribbon and name names, but you did not get suspended.

• 31:20Pablo Torre?

  The Commissioners Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  That's what we called it, but it was really just about steroids. It was about figuring out who's doing steroids and why. It was 2000, so it was right when I got into the game, Koka. And what you do there, much like an economic benefit analysis for your ballpark, is you hire a company, you tell them exactly what you want the results to be, and then they go through their special Dr. Seuss machine and out comes a report that says what you want it to say. And I don't want to say, I don't want to be the one, I guess I'll be the face of selling these reports and these consultants, but you can bet that no report ever is released by Disney by consultant that is consultant-driven that Disney didn't approve.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  I would assume that's correct.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  Again, so you're not neutral in that.

• 32:11Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is the whole idea of you've hired someone to independently. Oh, do they even claim independence in this case?

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Big time. NFL teams do it right now. They hire these people.

• 32:20Pablo Torre?

  Law firms, they hire consulting firms.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  Please investigate my company for harassment. Dan Snyder had more people hired on the side to tell him about his front office, which is always funny to me.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Just gave you more people to harass.

• 32:35Pablo Torre?

  Allegedly, or in this case.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Corn Ferry is a great one.

• 32:38Pablo Torre?

  Corn Ferry, search firm.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  Do you know what Corn Ferry did? And I don't want to yuck on them, but okay, here we go. They were hired by baseball for Bud Selig's replacement as commissioner. And they were paid a ton of money to run quote unquote "the search", and it was Rob Manfred. Because they, it's not like, what you need to help with is if you can't identify people to do a job for you, and a search firm can find someone in the semiconductor business that works for a firm that you don't know about to help you how to split the atom. When you're doing a commissioner's search or a GM's search, Corn Ferry's hired to do GMs? Oh my god. It's so funny to me.

• 33:18Pablo Torre?

  You're saying, you're saying that they're also Googling stuff. They're also using LinkedIn. They're also watching games, maybe.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  They can't do anything that we can't do as presidents or front office people.

• 33:31Pablo Torre?

  But again, not to be maximum cynical about this, but it's hard not to be. It's also helpful when you, I presume, know who you want to hire and need to say, "We did an exhaustive search conducted by this reputable thing that is clearly reputable because you know them."

• 33:48Speaker 04

  That's what you do. That's what you're paying for.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Remember in The Big Short where they discover that the rating agencies are

• 33:57Speaker 04

  This is big.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  paid to rate the company.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  That they rate.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  And of course, those companies pay them. So they have zero incentive. Remember there's a, there's a woman.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  They would just lose business. "Hey, you're a triple B minus. You're fired."

• 34:11Speaker 03

  There was, I forget, there was a woman in the, in the film who I think Steve Carell or somebody went to see, and he says, "Tell me how this works." And she's like, "Well, if we don't give them a good rating, they'll just go across the street." And get the other company. I forget what the names of those companies were, the bond.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Standard and Poor's, Fitch. And what's funny is it gets press in all of the trade newspapers, et cetera. Hey, MLB's debt is now triple A minus, or the Mets are now a triple B plus. And everyone's looking like, oh, it means health. No, it means Stevie wants a casino.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  I'm gonna get my debt rated. See what, see if I got triple A.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  You do have it rated. You do have your debt rated. It's called your credit score.

• 34:59Pablo Torre?

  That's what that is?

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Do you know what, do you know your credit score?

• 35:02Pablo Torre?

  I, I know that sometimes I have to freeze my credit score because I've been hacked by various.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  She, like off the top of your head, you can't name your credit score?

• 35:09Pablo Torre?

  I just know that.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Am I the only one who can do that?

• 35:10Pablo Torre?

  Of course you are.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  That's so weird.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  I have not the slightest idea what my credit score is.

• 35:16Pablo Torre?

  It's excellent. I just know that it's excellent.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  By the way, I have no debt.

• 35:20Pablo Torre?

  John just spread his arms out wide for those not watching on YouTube. The proudest I've seen him doing this show. He is debtless, undebted.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  No mortgage, no car loan, no nothing.

• 35:30Pablo Torre?

  Cannot say the same.

• 35:34Pablo Torre?

  Very different position to my life.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Your credit score can still be excellent with mortgage and debt.

• 35:38Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and again, for those listening, it is excellent.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Cause people are listening.

• 35:42Pablo Torre?

  And they absolutely are. And please don't hack me or downgrade my rating. But it is excellent and I am also carrying a mortgage, which was thankfully, sign pre pandemic, pretty good, pretty good rate. I digress.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  I'm still blown away that people don't know their credit score. It's one of those things, do you know your social security?

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Why would you need to know your?

• 36:04Speaker 04

  Eight oh seven.

• 36:05Pablo Torre?

  Eight oh seven.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  Is that good?

• 36:07Speaker 04

  It works for me.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  But, but there must be a scale. How, where does the scale go from and do?

• 36:13Speaker 04

  There are people who have no credit score.

• 36:15Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Does it go to nine hundred? I don't know what it goes to.

• 36:18Pablo Torre?

  Highest achievable credit score is eight fifty.

• 36:21Speaker 04

  Okay, so I'm not where I need to be.

• 36:23Pablo Torre?

  I'm in the eight hundreds. I know that. Cause I had to unfreeze my credit score.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  So now you know.

• 36:28Pablo Torre?

  To disclose on this podcast recently.

• 36:30Speaker 04

  Didn't remember, but now you remember because you have to have a higher credit score than I do.

• 36:34Pablo Torre?

  Definitely higher than eight oh six.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  What is the advantage? What is the advantage of knowing your score?

• 36:41Speaker 04

  What's the advantage of knowing your social security number? It could come up in conversation.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  I've never had it come up in conversation before this.

• 36:50Pablo Torre?

  Are you the one who's hacking me?

• 36:52Speaker 03

  And by the way.

• 36:52Pablo Torre?

  Is David Samson hacking me?

• 36:54Speaker 03

  Your social security number, you have to know because it gets cited many, many times. So if you, when you, you want to sign into your bank account.

• 37:03Pablo Torre?

  Suddenly flee the country.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  I'm not putting in my credit score to get anything.

• 37:07Speaker 04

  I, I flash my credit score around from time to time. Like it did at a bar, at a bar. When you're meeting people, that's not like a subject of conversation.

• 37:18Pablo Torre?

  I feel safe to say that that has never been a subject of any conversation, except for the conversations you have.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  When, when you're getting high with your friends, you talk about credit scores?

• 37:25Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah. All the time. All the time.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Because it's funny, right? I, I can see you guys giggling.

• 37:30Pablo Torre?

  What is?

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Giggling. I'm 807.

• 37:34Pablo Torre?

  But also like, how does?

• 37:35Speaker 04

  I love you guys.

• 37:36Pablo Torre?

  I presume it's calculated in a very rigorous way and not the thing that it makes me think of, which is that like, you know, you get statistics.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  No, it's, it has to do with.

• 37:45Pablo Torre?

  I want my statistical personal game log.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  You should, you should.

• 37:49Pablo Torre?

  That's what I want.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  By the way, who?

• 37:50Pablo Torre?

  I want to get stoned and think about my credit score.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Who is the arbiter of credit scores?

• 37:54Speaker 04

  What? There are different companies who do it.

• 37:56Pablo Torre?

  Exactly.

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Excellent. I could probably get 808. I'm going to go find me a company.

• 38:00Pablo Torre?

  808.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  That I'm not paying unless they give me 808.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  So the reason why you pay a monthly fee to these companies is that in case of a hack or in case of a theft identity, these people are on the case and you are protected. I strongly suggest the $19 a month or a year, I don't remember which, uh, to have that. Do you have that service?

• 38:21Pablo Torre?

  You're paying for premium credit score rating?

• 38:23Speaker 04

  Well, no, um, no, no. Um, although I do have it at my fingertips whenever I want it, but no. And I, I may check it like email, but no. Because that's how you know if you're getting hacked or if somebody's.

• 38:35Pablo Torre?

  This is why I had to freeze and unfreeze multiple agencies ratings.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  So this is real. You're making a joke of it, but people tend to get into your bank account or get your information.

• 38:45Pablo Torre?

  In 2017, Equifax, if we recall that, major data breach exposed the personal information of approximately, and this is a fun number, 147.9 million Americans.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  I can't be the only one then, can I?

• 38:58Speaker 03

  I think, isn't that the number of people that Kristi Noem said whose lives were saved by the president's seizure of fentanyl?

• 39:08Speaker 04

  That would be purely a coincidence, but yes.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Two, that's more than two thirds of every person in this country. It's, he's gonna get elected for a third term if he has saved the lives of 265 or 280.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  One zillion people, I believe, is the number.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  By the way, he's, he's sent the Marines to LA and they got the violent stop before they even got there.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  That is a much bigger discussion which we could have.

• 39:36Pablo Torre?

  I feel so safe now.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  It's not ideal, what's happening. And it's scary if you have people, loved ones in LA. Cause they're not making it better and my daughter is there and it's not pleasant.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  I don't wanna see tanks on the streets of American cities.

• 39:52Pablo Torre?

  We aggregate those two quotes. It's not pleasant, I don't wanna see tanks.

• 39:57Speaker 03

  No, it's, it's, there's no, anyway.

• 39:59Pablo Torre?

  Not a high bar. I mean, like, I have so much to say about this that it's probably preemptively annoying to everybody listening.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  The last time troops were sent in was when the troops were sent in by the Kennedy administration to enforce the Civil Rights Act. I mean, think about that. It's like that Obama tape when he killed Bin Laden in the tape. When Trump announced that they'd killed somebody else who died like a dog. You'd think they'd go in through the front door.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  They didn't go in through the front door. Brought in for Kent State?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  That was National Guard brought in by the state. Right? That's what Newsom is saying is this is the governor's prerogative. The president is not getting.

• 40:39Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is why my old classmate, by the way, speaking of my college years, Vivek Ramaswamy, gubernatorial candidate in the state of Ohio, has compared, uh, this week, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, to, wait for it, Alabama Governor George Wallace.

• 40:57Pablo Torre?

  Because of this parallel of God has sent the tanks in and they're resisting. So, you know, not a, not a great economic indicator of the health of the larger enterprise that is the United States.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  It, it brings you back to the merger because when you have a part of your business that you know you have no path to profitability, and I don't want to be a doomsday person because I'm not in general, but there are those who think there's no path to improvement over the next three years. And much like with the company, if you know that you just can't see the path forward, you have to do something different or else you will be letting your shareholders down and putting your own comfort risk. And so what WBD did is it's something. And what shareholders want, what analysts want on Wall Street, they need something. They need a story to tell their institutional investors like, hey, this is no longer a sell, not even a hold, we're going to do a modest buy rating on this new split company

• 41:57Speaker 04

  in order to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing something right. That's how Wall Street works.

• 42:13Speaker 05

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• 42:38Speaker 05

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• 42:43Speaker 07

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• 44:11Pablo Torre?

  So Spin Co.'s, right, now continue into the world of media and sports media and sports business. Obviously, what Comcast, NBC Universal has done, they spun off CNBC and MSNBC and Golf Channel into their own sports and news division called Versant. That's what that thing is now. The rest of it remains in that very parallel way, right? News and sports stuff, but in this case, actually, NBC News proper is still with. Anyway, it's getting more complicated than it needs to be. But the point is, this is a thing. It's a thing, and John, I've been sort of attuned to this ever since it was mentioned to me, what ESPN, when you were in charge of it, would be if it was spun off from Disney.

• 44:55Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say, to restate what I always have to remind people, which is that you have said, when ESPN was at its peak, under you, it made more than the rest of Disney combined.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  I think what I'm saying or meant to say was it's bigger than the next two businesses combined. The parks and the studio.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  I'm not sure it was bigger than the rest of the companies. I may have misspoke.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  I think the interesting about spinning off ESPN is a story about franchises. So picture a business that has different franchise locations. And one of your franchise locations is not making money, but two of them are. Do you want to take the money you make from the two locations that are profitable? And support the one that is not profitable? Or do you just shut it down? Or do you spin it off so you don't have to support it and let it stand on its own or die on its own? And that's how franchisees think about life. And I am totally fine with, I don't want to take money. That's good money and throw it after bad money. Bad money is throwing money into a project that loses money no matter what you do. Why does that get supported? There are reasons.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  People want to be certain locations. They want to say they're in certain countries or certain cities. What Warner Brothers is saying and what the media companies are saying is. We can't really say that. Growing and the conglomerate that we've built has worked. So let's try it this way. It's the same assets, by the way. We're going to split it and we're going to have two share prices now. Because remember, two public companies. Now we have two measuring sticks. And the next step after that is if one of them is flailing. It's going to go bye bye. I think that is the reality of what all these mergers will end with. Which is a further consolidation, if not eradication of some of these businesses.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  I have no disagreement with that.

• 46:50Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's why the rumors already are that the aforementioned less. No, more. The sports and news part of WBD. There is rumor, of course, that the natural partner would be another merger with Versant.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  In what you're doing there, think about it, you're taking two sides of two big companies that have become four companies. And what you're doing is a merger where it's now, so it's a, you're splitting and then you're reforming.

• 47:23Pablo Torre?

  It's a real island of Dr. Moreau stuff.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  It's something. Because what happens is when those merge, someone has to be the one in charge, someone has to be the daddy. And you've got the, the level of ego, when you are doing mergers like this on who stays in charge, it's not as plain and simple as when it's David Zasloff and his CFO. When you've got two CEOs going at it, uh, who gets the power becomes the biggest point of negotiation, actually.

• 47:50Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  The, it does strike me that NBC buying the sports assets of this new SpinCo might be a good idea.

• 48:02Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say, Versant's assets, NBC's spun-off company, buying the global networks, WBD, SpinCo.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  The Justice Department, the government, the commissions would start to get involved because when you see consolidation at that level, the theory is it's bad for consumers. And that's the threshold they use when they decide what mergers. By the way, CBS Skydance may not be approved. Forget that it may not happen. It may not be approved by the government because of the lawsuit with Trump and CBS, et cetera.

• 48:37Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, which brings us back to the government and the standard of, I mean, do we have an episode coming up about the neo-brand dicey in school of just like, of, of, you know, antitrust? Which is a whole other McGilla, to quote David Samson, but it also-

• 48:50Speaker 04

  That's Yiddish.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  McGill?

• 48:52Speaker 04

  McGilla.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  It is.

• 48:54Pablo Torre?

  Ron McGilla. Um, all of this, though, makes me wonder if our, is the arc of justice bending towards venue sports? Are we just back, are we, is that what we're doing? Have we accidentally remade venue, the thing that we were making fun of 9,000 shows ago?

• 49:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 49:15Pablo Torre?

  Are you sure?

• 49:15Speaker 04

  Hold on. What he's, I think if I could translate, what you're saying is that Venue was a combination of enemies coming together in an effort to be friends because the sum will be greater than the parts.

• 49:29Pablo Torre?

  A skinny bundle.

• 49:30Speaker 04

  And so what really is happening is what you said, which is all of these streaming services, if you add up, we're back to this, and it matters for the consumer. If you're paying more, have you really saved anything by quote-unquote "cutting the cord"? Why wouldn't you replug in the cord? And is there a possibility that we will end back at that? And what these companies are betting with these mergers is no. That we are past cords, meaning we're past cable, and we will go knee-deep into streaming even if people are spending more money monthly.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  I believe that's what they've decided. I mean, you clearly burden the company that's not going to grow with more debt. They're going to be engaged in layoffs, cost cuts, and that's why there's some discussion about maybe TNT Sports gets sold. And remember, NBC was not in Venue.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  They were not.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  They were not in Venue.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  They didn't have an agreement.

• 50:30Pablo Torre?

  Another key fact-checking clarification.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  And, and look, generally NBC runs very, it's a very well-run company.

• 50:41Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  And their sports has always been well-run. And my guess is taking those assets would give them more scale to continue to matter more. It actually might be slightly good for consumers. I know that generally when things were consolidated, but since now you have too many companies that people won't, if they want to get all the sports, they won't. If you had less companies, you probably could be good for consumers.

• 51:23Pablo Torre?

  As I remember, though, that the Olympics are staying with NBC proper, and Golf Channel is being spun off into Versant, and I have already lost track of what is where as I'm trying to fact check and correct myself. I just know that with certainty, maybe what I found out today is that there will be more consultants, and that it will not be easier to find where the hell sports are when I'm trying to watch them.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  Are we at the end?

• 51:55Pablo Torre?

  Almost.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  That's why you're saying found, that's my trigger when you say what you found out that we're at the end of the show.

• 52:00Pablo Torre?

  We got a couple of minutes.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  I want to tell you what I found out during the show. There's still time left.

• 52:05Pablo Torre?

  Okay, well.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  It was a very premature.

• 52:08Pablo Torre?

  Premature find outification?

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 52:12Pablo Torre?

  I have a passage here that has been brought to my attention, speaking of finding stuff out. I want to give you a quote.

• 52:21Pablo Torre?

  "I explored the idea of being a consultant and actually formed an LLC and spent a little time talking to people. Got several clients and resigned all of those clients in the first week because it took me about three days." There's at least a couple of people who laugh when they hear this. "It took me about three days to realize I'm not a consultant." End quote. Who said that quote?

• 52:42Speaker 03

  I said it one time.

• 52:43Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 04

  That's you?

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  God, we have good research. Way to go.

• 52:51Speaker 03

  No, no, I figured out.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Did that sound familiar to you?

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, once you actually have spent as much time as I have running something, mostly consultant free, you don't want to go tell other people but have no power to actually.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Have them do it. So I didn't want to tell other people what to do. First of all, it's not interesting to me. What's interesting to me is the holistic practice of

• 53:22Pablo Torre?

  Bidding one more dollar than the richest

• 53:24Speaker 04

  Did you do the resume trick? You know the resume trick, right?

• 53:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  So you don't have a gap in your resume? You start a consulting firm and you name it after your own initials. So it's JS Consulting. And coincidentally, it's open for business the day after you leave a place and closes for business the day you get to your next place.

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Well, it won't surprise you to know. I've never, I haven't had, I've never had a resume.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  No, I never had a resume.

• 53:51Speaker 04

  See, there's no difference. My resume is updated.

• 53:54Pablo Torre?

  The greatest trick John Skipper ever pulled.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  Why would you update your resume?

• 53:59Speaker 04

  My resume is ready to go at any second since I was in high school.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  But at this point, you're gonna be trying to get a job that you don't have a resume for. You have a reputation and a track record for.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  So the reason I have a resume

• 54:14Pablo Torre?

  You update your resume today.

• 54:16Speaker 04

  My resume has the most recent, nothing personal, it's two hours.

• 54:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 04

  It's ready to go. So here, the reason why is that

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You know, you're wasting a lot of time. Credit scores, updating your resume.

• 54:27Speaker 04

  I couldn't disagree more. I literally couldn't disagree more. Here's the wasted time when you don't do this stuff and then all of a sudden you have to start from scratch.

• 54:34Speaker 03

  Wait, let me tell you. I've never had a resume. I got

• 54:37Speaker 04

  You're gonna be sorry.

• 54:40Speaker 03

  It's kind of too late. I'm gonna be 70 years old this year. I, I, I got my first job

• 54:46Speaker 04

  I'm just getting going, baby.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  As an intern. And, um, and I stayed 11 years. And then I got the other job by calling a few people. And then I got recruited. They might have asked me to, maybe they did a resume for me and they asked me questions and filled it out, but what's the point?

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Okay. I'm not gonna argue with you because no one who's listening to this can possibly relate to what you're saying. I think more people relate to what I'm saying than what he's saying, and maybe that's just my blind spot.

• 55:21Pablo Torre?

  What I, I have an updated, uh, conclusion for today's show. What I have found out today, what I found out today is that, um, as much as I thought that "I have no debt" was going to be the tagline for Rich Guys OnlyFans, I've never had a resume. I was just taking the top spot.

• 55:40Speaker 04

  It's not relatable in any way. So, I, it, it, there, everyone should have a resume. It's a bio. Do you have a bio?

• 55:50Speaker 03

  No.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Well, the companies, some of the companies I've worked for have had bios.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  And you didn't approve it? And you don't update your bio? I have my bio ready to go too.

• 56:00Pablo Torre?

  Sounds like a genuine confusion.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  If I had, I, I would embellish mine, I think, if I had approval.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  You get, you actually lose jobs that way. We would check, so...

• 56:10Speaker 03

  I didn't say I was gonna lie. I said I might embellish it.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, but we'll check that.

• 56:14Pablo Torre?

  Now we're back to etymology.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  It's a major issue.

• 56:18Pablo Torre?

  David, John, we've officially talked too much. Thank you both for doing this.

• 56:24Speaker 03

  We specialize in that.

• 56:25Pablo Torre?

  Put that on a resume.

• 56:39Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Our sound design by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.

• 57:15Speaker 00

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