Wow, a milestone just passed by this week: the Masters in Business podcast is now three years old.
We are at about 150 shows recorded (and nearly all broadcast)! We have a truly incredible run of guests queued up for the coming year. Household names, people you don’t know (but should), investors, Nobel laureates, quants, technologists and other fascinating people (including a billionaire or two when we have room for them) some folks from outside finance who will make you laugh. Plus, I sill am working persistently on my 3 white whales I have been chasing since day one: Jim Simons, Ray Dalio, and Mike Bloomberg.
These are still utterly fascinating to do, and as I often say, they are the most fun I have all week.
If you were an early listener, you have hopefully noticed some improvements over the three years. Perhaps the biggest change is the “Intros” and “Outros” — the set up at the end of each of the 4 radio broadcast segments: “Coming up, we continue our conversation with . . .” — that are now gone. Madena, my audio engineer, decided to make the podcast one clean 60-90 minute discussion, so that minor annoyance from the broadcast has been removed. It definitely makes for a better podcast listening experience.
You may have also noticed that the questions that get asked — both the standard ones at the end of every podcast each week and the individual questions specific to each guest — have also gotten better. Mike Batnick from RWM is my secret weapon for these.
In the more recent MiBs, I can — and you perhaps you might be able to — hear the improvements in me.
Over time, I have become a more polished, improved interviewer: I listen more, talk less, interrupt less, say Umm, less. I rely far less on the written questions; I have learned to respond more fluidly and naturally to something a guest says. I was surprised to discover that these are skills that must be learned. It has only taken me three years to not totally suck as much as I used to. My upside target is to be pretty decent by year 5.
Now I have to work on my radio voice; which, given my lack of professional training and god-awful Nu Yawk accent, all thing considered, could really be much worse.
A giant thank you goes out to everybody for your support, kind words, and kind reviews. They are all greatly appreciated! Special thanks goes to my great team at Bloomberg — a lot of people have contributed to the success of this: Charlie, Taylor, Madena, Atika, James, Mike and Michael, Ty, Anthony, Al, Tim, and David. Even more people contribute to the success of the show than are listed — you all have been awesome!
I am playing around with ideas as to how else I can organize these and make them available to listeners. Your suggestions are appreciated — send your feedback to MIBPodcast-AT-Bloomberg-DOT-net.
Here’s to the next 3 years . . .
