Founder of ERG Media & Editor-in-Chief of Type 7: Ted Gushue – Craft, Community, & Making Things for the Obsessed

0:00Whereas an Instagram post only gets me a bit of dopamine for the hour. This is for life.

0:04The Gstaad Guy:Ted Gushue, you are one of those names that never stopped coming up in the worlds of cars, culture, travel. I had some great rankings on Chartbeat. You know, I had some articles go viral. I had tons of clicks on Instagram. What the hell does it mean? I mean, what I love about what you do is you make the complex simple. You want to get to a place where you're able to say, I'm right where I need to be. And that's only possible through... How I even define like coolness in a person. It's like someone who's authentic to the things they love. And they actually dive into those things at a deep level.

0:30You know when you walk around New York or you walk around any European city and you kind of have to like roll your sleeve up like this? And you're looking around like analyzing threats. There's no threat in Japan.

0:38The Gstaad Guy:Does that trickle into other ways you see the world and you see opportunities? The beauty of being an American is that no door is closed. You and I could go to dinner on Friday night, come up with an amazing business idea, incorporate it on Monday, be funded by Friday, and within six months we're worth half a billion dollars. around the world with your host the stard guy we welcome you back to the stard guy podcast sharing stories of excellence with those in the know for those who just know you know i've known you like five years i don't know your last name part of the game i've actually i think i've known you more than five years it could be you're one of my first industry friends it might be i met you i think at the grand prix historique with tag hoyer the first time, but we were following each other prior.

1:23Yes, we were messaging for a long time.

1:25The Gstaad Guy:Because you were one of my first three or four blue tick followers. And I was so honored. But at a time I was living in the mountains. So I was managing the social media account for St. Moritz. Exactly. For a long time. And we were always trying to look out for interesting people to invite to the town. And you immediately came on our radar. You were somebody that had like this unique way to skewer everything that was about the town that i was representing i loved it i appreciate that well for those who don't know you are one of those names that never stopped coming up through the past six years with people that i admire in many ways in the worlds of cars, culture, travel, and media.

2:12The Gstaad Guy:And I think you are a modern polyhyphenate who exists in those areas, but still very much respecting the tradition that exists within each of those categories, which I find rare, but very Milanese at the same time. It kind of makes sense that this is your home. It's very sweet of you to say. I don't know if it's very Milanese. I've worked hard to try to blend in here. my wife's from here so but it's a place i've been calling home now for four years let's see i don't know there's a lot of things that i've done in my life um it's been it's been a weird and windy road uh but each thing that i've done i've done because i really wanted to do it uh so whether it's working in the car world working in uh media these are all things you know that came from the heart it came from the soul uh i don't really do things things become commercial over time but much like you you do them to do them um you know i think poobel started as a very clever idea for example that then you're like actually people like this okay let's develop it let's see where this goes you know you're constantly pulling threads and seeing what what what works what doesn't work testing look at you you have an amazing podcast now like it's it's it's that's how life works is you open doors and the doors open into rooms and they have more doors.

3:31And I really love it. I love my journey. I love that I live in Milan. I love being an American in Milan. I think being an American in Europe is probably the biggest cheat code in life because you get the best of all worlds. You get the ruthless optimism that comes with being an American. But then you get to learn the soft nature of being a European. so it's you know you're you're one of these as well um i started learning italian much later in life uh started when i was 30 so i'm 37 now i can kind of pass for a quasi local not not quite native um it gives you such a huge perspective to be able to empathize to other people and to understand and to humble yourself uh in that way i've loved it i've loved that experience

4:22The Gstaad Guy:I mean, what I love about what you do as a storyteller, as a big chunk of what you do, we have these beautiful books in between us, these stories that you tell with your incredible team, is you make the complex, simple, and very pleasant to digest. And I find that quite Milanese. We spoke about that with Giulio, our mutual friend on this podcast, actually. And it's, I think, a term he brings up called sprezzatura. which is the idea of making the complex simple. And I think you've embodied that beautifully, contrary to a lot of media from around the world, particularly media that exists digitally, trying to get clicks and trying to get a lot of attention, where they make the simple very complex and blow a story out of proportion.

5:13The Gstaad Guy:You actually dive very deep into stories and make it digestible, fun and pleasant, both in digital form and on paper, paperback, physical? The book thing is funny. I've been in media for 15 years and I started as a journalist. I was a party reporter in New York City. I went to every party for the New York Observer newspaper. Then I was a magazine editor for a hotel chain for the Soho Grand Hotel. Then I started a magazine for the Thrillist Media Group. And then I moved to LA to run a classic car magazine called Petrolicious. Then we got, I started dabbling with print there. But throughout that entire period, if you had ever told me that I'd be working in books, I would have been like, you're insane.

6:01Books are dead. It's over. Like they're gone. Like we've, they're the dinosaur of the media world. There's no one, you know, outside of JK Rowling who's making good money at it. It's not a thing anymore. And so my whole world was digital. And, you know, 2012, when Instagram kind of really came on the scene, this was, you know, I was one of the first people in my cohort that was just trying to get platform native, you know, trying to get our stories off of the website onto the platform, you know, put it onto there. and i i just couldn't imagine a world and then as as my as i got older and as i get more i don't know not softer but just like more concerned with with what i'm leaving behind you start looking around and saying okay all these articles that we've published all these all these clicks that we got and what does it mean you know like uh as i turned 30 seven years ago i was looking i'm like what what the hell does all this mean i had some great rankings on chart beat you know i had some articles go viral i had uh i had tons of clicks on instagram or tons of likes like the hell does it mean it's it's a very obscure thing and you know it's a wave that we've all surfed and it's it's given birth to so many wonderful things but at the end of the day it's abstract it's it's it's it's infinite in its in its in its scale and also in its meaninglessness.

7:31It has incredible meaning, but then also no meaning. I've built a brand for Porsche on Instagram called Type 7, and it's one of my life's greatest projects. But until we started pivoting into the three-dimensional, it didn't have as much meaning to me. And so during COVID, because part of being an editor and part of starting brands and magazines and all this, is you're commissioning a ton of content. you know like we were hiring all of our favorite photographers all the best writers you name it for every project we were doing we were trying to get the best of the best much like a chef searches for the best quality possible ingredients and during COVID we were all super lonely uh and super stuck at home in my whole team we had Thomas in uh in uh in Sydney in Australia Nat was uh about two hour drive away from me in London um and and a few other team members who were were contributing around the world.

8:26Our client at Porsche, Franzi, was stuck in Germany. And we were like, why don't we just start printing all this out? And so we started designing. We had all this great design capability in-house. And we started taking all this content and making it into a book for Porsche, which was the Type 7 series. And during that process, we were publishing it with a different publisher. We didn't have the capability yet. And we really fell in love with the design process. and then we we completely fell out of love with the publishing process because we were using somebody else and you know if anyone's ever made anything it's like you're to make it yourself is one thing but then to have someone else make it for you as a layer it's like a game of telephone you know um and so we were so hubristic that we said you know it we'll do it ourselves um and we brought the capacity in-house so we we built a whole publishing team we work with printers and three different continents now uh we're a team of 20 people we publish a book a month and we get to work with some of the world's greatest brands um and all that is to say these books will be here long after i'm gone i have a four-month-old daughter at home like this is going to be part of her legacy and then maybe her children's legacy and so on and so on and so on i have a friend who collects books he collects a thousand year old books two thousand year old books um how many instagram posts are going to be around in a thousand years i don't know uh you know maybe there will be some digital um archive of who we were but for me a book is is something beyond uh it's divine it's if you love storytelling there's nothing better i love that i agree and for those

10:12The Gstaad Guy:who are listening and not watching today these books are are beautiful as well they're actually decorative as well as informative they're uh great books to have on a on a beautiful table as well and display and share while you read like you can read them with a friend they're big enough to sit with someone and enjoy together we're inspired by the titans of our industry you know we look at tashan we look at the work of benedict and his 40-year legacy we look at prosper aceline and his 40-year legacy uh and his family you know these are these are publishing houses that have published thousands of books.

10:46I think Asseline has published over 2 ,500 books or something like this, some gargantuan number. So we're standing on the shoulders of giants. We look at all of the greatest people in our industry. We love so many things. Our house is filled with the books of others. And we get to pick and choose what we love about them and what we don't love. Obviously, not every book is meant to please everyone. But because we started as a content-first group of creatives we we really value the entire book it's not just a flashy cover that looks great on your house on your coffee table in your beach house um they're designed to you know connect to a community so like just let me grab this one for a second jazz kisa for example this is a book about all of the best vinyl record bars uh in japan they're called jazz kisa so the kisa means cafe and i licensed the photographic library of a guy named katsumasa kutsunose and he spent the last 15 years documenting this dying world of uh very special it's beautiful uh bars in japan cafes and bars in japan that purely are there to share the power of music um japan after the war was extremely poor and so people couldn't afford vinyl in their own home and so these cafes sprung up like all over the entire country as a communal place for people to go experience jazz music it's beautiful and many of them are still alive today and my friend Devin Turnbull is kind of holding the torch and bringing it forward but this book for me was something of a personal obsession where I wanted to talk about a community um and and so now we you know we've sold well over 2 000 copies of this book to the to the global audio hi-fi japanese record community like it's it's an amazing community and a book allows me to go into that world and explore it uh that's awesome whereas you know a web article is limited you know whereas an instagram post only gets me a bit of dopamine for the hour this is for life it's true uh and it's wonderful and you get to design an object and that object lives in somebody's home and i can gift it to you you know what i mean and you and you can take it home with you and you can you can live with it and for me this is something

13:17The Gstaad Guy:totally divine are you always a big fan of the categories you you dive into and and explore you have to be um i'm a lifelong tennis fan we did a great book called paradise courts this has sold i think almost 4 000 copies uh it's it's shocking to me and and you know i don't want to speak negatively of social media because we're very symbiotic uh we couldn't do what we're we couldn't start a new publishing house today as quickly as we did had we not you know been able to benefit from the world that mark zuckerberg has created for us you know i'm able to these are niche audiences yeah but because of instagram ads and because of the the beauty of instagram and the beauty of of targeting and and and talking to a community and guys like devon who have huge followings in their community we're able to reach you know 2 000 people that are purchase intent immediately yeah whereas in 2005 like i would have to hopefully get a distribution maybe it gets taken into a bookstore maybe it gets if we're lucky it gets into barnes and noble and then the buyer there has to like us and it's like this whole kind of mafioso thing and now i have my own warehouses uh and i get to ship books directly all over the world maybe a bit like bubel i don't know i don't know about that but thank you i'll take it as a big compliment you do a lot of things the absolute very modern way and working with people who have recently gotten started and collaborators who are new to the space as well as people that have been around for a very long time one in particular is porsche i'd love to know more about that relationship and how that all came about with type 7 porsche is wonderful porsche has been my brand since i was born my dad brought me home from from the hospital with my mom in a 1982 911 sc so it was just kind of wasn't an option uh to not be into porsche as a kid and so i had this like this vernacular for cars and for for porsche that was quite nerdy um you know when you're a 10 year old boy because people are focused on baseball football it's america i was growing up in Connecticut in like the countryside.

15:35So people like cars, but it wasn't so much of a thing. And I was like geeking out with my dad and my brother and his dad, sorry, my dad and my grandfather and my brother. We were all car guys and my uncle as well. And it was a strange superpower I didn't understand. And until I went to work for Petrolicious in Los Angeles and I found my people and I was like, oh, we're all mad together. So I spent two years living in LA, working with the car community there and telling stories. Were your people just car people or specifically Porsche people? No, but all car people have to share the same sickness.

16:10We're all out of our minds. There's a correlation to autism for sure in terms of like the geekiness and like the, oh, well, mine's actually in 1967. You get very nerdy very quickly, but which also means that it's an amazing community. The worst communities are ones that are passive. you know people that consume luxury passively i find to be you know it's very boring uh but people that that actually will scrimp and save to to buy uh every little piece of literature about the thing that they love those are those are my people and it's not just porsche people it's jazz kisa people it's tennis people it's travel there's so many categories you can go into with the same mindset but for me porsche and and the car world in general felt like my coming home because of my family and their legacy with cars and so i learned a lot about uh how these communities work when i was there and porsche was our biggest advertiser and so i left uh petrolicious in 2017 and started consulting um for a few other magazines and then porsche came knocking and saying hey look we're working on a new concept um because porsche thinks generationally uh they just celebrate i think they're at their 78th anniversary they just celebrated a few years ago their 75th anniversary and the theme of that anniversary was really you know how do you look at the next 75 years and the the the conversation was you know the downward trend for all car brands is the shocking reality is that less and less people especially young people especially are getting their license so you know if you look at it on a minor you know a short-term time scale it affects sales maybe one percent you know 0.5 you don't notice it but when you're thinking generationally you extend the current downward trend of young people living in urban areas getting licenses to 75 years from now like big problem for an industry that employs millions of people and so porsche doesn't think of itself like a transportation company uh they don't think of themselves in the way that maybe chevrolet does it's a different product um even though maybe they have competing models in some segments they operate differently and so their attitude uh historically has been you know even if you don't like cars which is the trend uh to be anti-car in major cities even if you don't like cars you might like Porsches why is that because it's it's different than even if you don't like watches you know you might like Audemars Piguet you know even if you don't like watches you might like Rolex.

18:50It's a very similar discussion because it's a cultural icon. It's got to be one of the top three or five most valuable brand names on earth. It's up there with Apple. It's up there with Rolex. It's up there with Coca-Cola. Find me any corner of the earth where you can say the word Porsche and people don't know what you're talking about. It doesn't exist. So in terms of brand equity they have to be one of the most valuable and the most loved uh in terms of a product that affects people's lives they it's a loved brand so back to the original thesis is like hey let's start sounding the alarm like we got to start talking to the next generation who's a completely adverse to advertising we've grown we've grown up completely saturated our generation i think you and i are in the same generation uh we we've grown up saturated by ads they don't reach us they don't they don't get to us and sometimes they do but like it's not like in 2005 when we all were watching super bowl ads and like we were glued like yeah times have changed like it's completely gone so you know what i specialized in in my career has always been community building and so what that was really the art i learned in los angeles through petrolicious it's like how do we build a community because a community is a lot like you know when you walk by a nightclub or something and you see there's no one dancing in it you're not going to go in but if you walk by and there's like some really cool looking people having a really good time you're like you know what i got an hour to kill i'll jump in even if you didn't plan to go it's it's the same that's how communities work and so my philosophy uh and our thesis with with type 7 the brand that we developed is that one you know we can't say porsche so we can't call it porsche light or porsche you know it has it has to be kind of removed it has to be a separate brand so we found a an internal prototype code that was used for a development car that was between the 911 and the 356.

20:43And this was called the Type 7. So the name was available on Instagram. The name was available on web, on everything. And we registered everything. And we started the process of building a community. And the community wasn't car people necessarily. It was non-car people that we wanted to expose to the car world. so we started talking about great architecture great design great travel great you know how to live life beautifully the way in which a porsche owner lives their life and so it became a way of you know let's not we don't have to prove it i mean we don't we don't have to show it we can just prove it you know great more times than not a great piece of architecture has a porsche parked

21:22The Gstaad Guy:in front of it i love that you're saying that i love that you're saying that this is the things that a Porsche owner likes and thinks about and appreciates? Because I see that in the real world. I can actually assume, based on the way someone carries themselves or lives their life or their passion for aesthetic, in the way they live and the way they move, even in the way they speak, I can assume they like or are even big fans or even own a Porsche. Why is that? What is that vibe? Why do I assume that you are a Porsche guy? when I meet you before finding out you're actually a Porsche guy? It's, it's interesting for you to, for you to, to hear your perspective on it.

22:06Porsche, for example, was always historically the architect's car and architects are people that shape the world through the, through taste and discernment and, and through restraint and decisions. And like, these are very important. It's a very important connection. My father's an architect and there's a reason he always drove Porsche and why he still drives Porsche. because it's the amount of care and thought that went into the object is deeply sympathetic to people that care about these things so when you get into a Porsche you're not getting into a mode of transportation you're getting into a fully designed environmental product you know every detail it's one thing for people to say I like sculpture or hey I love furniture design or I love engineering.

22:55You know, Porsche for me is one of the best expressions how car design is actually all disciplines rolled into one. It's architecture, it's engineering, it's interior design, it's exterior design. It's everything. And so if you're somebody that cares about the things that you put on your wrist, the things that you put, you know, the places that you spend time, the buildings that you want to live in, it's very natural. And that's not to say that I wouldn't also enjoy the beauty of owning a Ferrari. I think it's maybe a different strain of that same world. But Porsche was always, and still is to me, in some way also very democratic.

23:38And the way that architecture is very democratic, it's for everybody. Everyone can appreciate a Porsche. A Ferrari has a statement about who you are and where you are in life. And a Porsche also is, but it's a bit more restrained and it's a bit private. it's it's it's for you um and obviously recent market trends make this uh you know a different discussion cars selling for millions of dollars on auction um waitlist for years to get these things so obviously the the discourse is changing but for me uh a porsche historically has always just been the car that was driven by people that care um and and it's for me it still is and so anyways we to go back to why we we had this thesis i interrupted you it's it's because to get to people that don't like cars we can talk to them through architecture we can talk to them through design because they love these things they love these categories they love these disciplines and when they discover our page much like they would discover any of our competitors like archi planet or you know any anyone that talks about architecture and these types of things you get onto our page and you discover a whole universe that happens to also have porsche in it and so we we have a very soft touch and we we try to you know invite everyone to join the community because you don't need to own the car to join the community um and as a result type 7 is in their seventh year um and we're we're loving it we we created the travel guide series um for Porsche, I mean, for Type 7 with Porsche.

25:09And this is our way of inspiring that generation to get out there and enjoy the places that they live in urban environments. We love travel guides. They're super fun.

25:20The Gstaad Guy:In terms of the travel guides you've made, there's one in particular or a reoccurring country in particular that keeps coming up and that's Japan. Why is that? We just opened an office in Japan. Oh, nice. Took me two years. Wow. and we still don't have a bank account this japan's fascinating there's a great saying that in japan it has been the year 2000 since 1980 oh does this make sense why is that it's fax machines and flying cars it's so fascinating you know it is to me it is the most it's a 2000 year old culture that has so much beauty wrapped into every little stitch of it uh i i adore my time in japan i find it to be a very challenging place to work a deeply rewarding place to work a uh and it's it's where i go to reset uh my my mind and to there's like a cultural arbitrage that happens with my time in japan and it's really one of those places that you know when you walk around new york you walk around any european city and you kind of have to like roll your sleeve up like this that is obviously a threat response uh because we're worried about getting our watches stolen but that threat response is run by a little engine in your brain i don't know if this is true but this is how i feel uh and that little i think it is true that little engine is is just like working overtime and you're looking around like analyzing threats there's no threat in japan so that engine gets to enjoy life again and and that ram gets reallocated and now you have this extra cpu power to just like soak up how beautiful life is and the japanese just make an art out of living very similar to the italians uh i think they have a lot in common but for me japan is is just a tremendous place so the first guide that we did for the type 7 travel guide series was tokyo uh then we did milan and then we just did paris london's next and then we have a lot of other fun collaborations that we're doing with type 7 and in japan but we're publishing our next book which i have here i can show you um with a great japanese brand that i'm a collector of which which is called grand seiko and so this is the result of a of a three-year-long project which is a behemoth you know we recreated their their boutique how do i say it their the ci of their boutiques is this hinoki wood the signature and they they use this pattern across their entire brand so we were able to actually replicate it so it's you know you can you can see through it uh which i love and the design of the thing is just fantastic but it's so beautifully made it retells the entire history of the brand um but this is this is what i mean this is why books are special because i can hold it with you and we can talk about it and you can understand the brand without intellectualizing it absolutely you know it's it's very special anyway so working with them for all this time was an extremely rewarding challenge.

28:23Because if you think Swiss brands or French luxury houses are meticulous, you have no idea. In Japan, it's not that. You have no idea. It's like when you play tennis against somebody that's much better than you, you also then play better tennis. Even though you're getting beaten, you're inspired to raise up your game. This is what it's like to work with uh with our japanese colleagues um it's it's wonderful even just email etiquette you know the meticulous way in which i uh they've inspired me to write my emails over the last few years it's it's wonderful um you know they they want to do everything correctly i really see that

29:00The Gstaad Guy:i see that on the on the business side japan i've had the the pleasure of spending some time there but i also see it on the consumer side i see that people are so professional and right in the way they create product and create goods and services but also people are so good and right in the ways they consume they actually respect the goods a thousand percent and there's this level of i think it's called the um otaku culture like uh for like collecting and obsession otakus yeah jaz key says an otaku book so otaku just for as a definition is that anyone who's obsessed with a particular thing that is a collectible is that otaku culture otaku you know the most direct translation would be nerd culture um but that's a pejorative uh i think otaku culture actually carries a lot of respect you know in japan if somebody is otaku they are respected for their passion and commitment to the thing even if it's something very strange you know it could be uh some sort of bizarre anime he's otaku in that or she's otaku in that it's not a pejorative necessarily so otaku car culture in japan it's it's it's very deep and very rich and the other the other main differentiation of otaku culture there versus the equivalent of otaku culture here is that it's very private it's done for them you know so i i make this reference all the time like you could have two japanese like mega porsche utaku living next to each other driving the same hyper rare bizarre car from 1995 in the same color parking next to each other for 10 years and they might never disturb each other or or think to walk over and say hello because it's about them and it's about them studying the art of that of that thing um which is you know beautiful and tragic in many ways because the the opposite is true in california you have uh thousands and thousands of people that are into the same thing and they're all desperate to meet each other and they all want to hang out and drive cars at 6 a.m on a sunday morning and have a coffee so it's it's very different um but i it's very beautiful though uh when you think of it like this watch culture in in japan is is meticulous one of the best cultures on earth to buy used watches because the watches are pristine it's beautiful i went to this place where you can see otaku in the real world called nakano broadway of course this is this is literally nakano broadway is the ground zero of otaku culture i think that's where takashi murakami grew up so the studio is next door it could be i've heard that i think actually because he has a cafe within the mall and then but it's mostly watches and anime figurines and comic books i think that takes up like over 50 percent of the it's huge oh yeah yeah it's it's massive but i love it i love i love passion i i think passion is is the future you know i'd much rather find you know 2 000 people i can i can make a dream book for that are passionate than to try to sell 50 000 to people that are passive i think it's just it's so much more rewarding to work uh on behalf of those people um um i just love japan i don't know it's also just like in terms of just overall value value for time value for money value for everything um it's it's just one of the most wonderful places on earth to go um and it's it's an extremely difficult language to study i speak like just a tiny bit of restaurant japanese and even that feels like an everest to climb um but the the the friendships and the bonds that i have there uh are extremely deep there's no they don't bother with surface level hey how are you it's like either you're in or you're out they're binary you're either all in and you're friend for life and they'll protect you and they'll do whatever you need uh or you're just not part of the conversation um so this i really respect this podcast is brought to you by Poubelle, bringing you interchangeable charm jewelry hand painted with enamel on styling silver, allowing you to celebrate all the things you love and all the things you might question through interchangeable styling silver bracelets, bangles, whoop, charms, mini charm, bracelets, rings, cufflings, and much more, and all customizable through our 3D builder on poubelle.com that is poubelle p-o-u-b-e-l dot com thank you so much for watching and now back to the podcast i love that you're talking about this love you have for people who are obsessed about a thing and have a deep passion for that thing it's a big part of what this podcast is all about and it's something i really respect in people i think that's actually the coolest thing to me and how I even define like coolness in a person.

34:01The Gstaad Guy:It's like someone who's authentic to the things they love and they actually dive into those things at a deep level. And there's deep passion, love and respect for those things that make them who they are. I see a lot of it in Japan. I see a lot of it in Milan and I see a lot of it around you. I, as we mentioned, had the pleasure of meeting you over five or six years ago now. And you've always been surrounded by people that may not share the same passions or interests, but they do share that same respect for a passion of some kind. And you've had an incredible generosity with your network. Every time I see you, if something comes up in conversation that is new to our conversation, you'll say, oh, by the way, you should meet this person that also likes that thing.

34:52The Gstaad Guy:And you're very generous with your address book to connect people together, there which is a rare thing so i do want to acknowledge that and thank you for that but also dive into it i want to learn more about how you curate these friendships but also let them grow without you which does actually take control of ego i think it has to be said well i'm not a broker i've never been a broker i've always been a terrible broker anytime i've try to help someone sell something or it doesn't it doesn't work i believe in abundance theory i i think that if i help my friend meet another friend that gets paid back to me tenfold um i don't need to broker that relationship i mean there's many business strategic reasons why some relationships should be brokered uh i don't mean that i'm adverse to being a smart business person but when i see that two people should be together to do to do something professional even personal you name it uh it's like buying myself a gift i don't know like i can't describe it i i've it's been my life's greatest pleasure to bring people together it's fundamental to why i'm here on this planet uh is to bring people together to bring communities together to to see patterns and how things should be linked up um it's it's it's a huge part of of what brings joy to my life um i think i think if you're trying to always be you know mr five percent uh to get a little skin off the back of every deal it's one way to live um you know there's people in my in my company who probably wish i was a bit more like that uh because of course that you know i put two people together and they create their opportunity and i and i get to watch from the sideline in some cases but then those things have 10 times out of 10 always repaid repaid me in some other way i open a door for somebody that door is always without almost any exception been reopened for me in a much bigger way and then you i i turn around and in two years later like you build this amazing partnership with them and you've done this super like how cool is that that's what it's all about I mean, the room I met you in is actually a room you put me in.

37:05The Gstaad Guy:Because you, I don't know if you even remember or acknowledge because of the abundance theory, but you introduced me to Tag Heuer. Yes, that's right. And that was my first step through the door with LVMH, who I love dearly and work with very closely ever since. But you introduced me to Tag Heuer. I went to the Grand Prix Historique, my first time at any Monaco automotive event. my first time exposed to the watch world that closely and the car world that closely. And I met you there, but you actually are the one who connected me to go there. Having never met me face to face before, you just thought that I should connect with Tiziana.

37:44It just seemed like a room you should have been in. You know, I've been friends with those guys for a long time. Nick, Tiziana, the whole team over there. And we don't have so many professional relationships, meaning like we don't do that many projects together, but I've been friends with them for 10 years, the brand. You know, you seem like a character that was missing from our motley crew at these events. And for people that have had the chance to be invited by these brands to these events, it's an incredibly fun time, but it's all about the mixture of the people that are there. And so for my own selfish reasons, you know i had no professional uh benefit to inviting you on their behalf or connecting you um but i was like this guy seems hilarious like you you had especially in your your early days i think you were because you were much more free to just skewer people you were just like ripping on everybody and it was great like i i was i'm still obsessed with what you do but it was it was different you know it was unfiltered it's unfiltered and you didn't give a and and you were just really raw and i was like this guy gets it because you thought a lot about how i thought about that world which is that it's amazing and wonderful but it needs the piss taken out of it once in a while and uh but look at the the butterfly effect yeah you know uh how wonderful a single dm leads to an entire life relationship uh with with a whole network of brands um you know some of which i've had the profession of working with very professionally we've done we've produced pop-ups we for louis vuitton for example i i'm still in awe uh of the the way in which these brands are constructed the way in which they're managed the way in which their teams are meticulous the way in which at every level down to the boutique down to the person cleaning the boutique all the way back up to the top it is incredible how they run their their their businesses and so and so yeah i'm i'm i'm tickled that you that you got to to enjoy those relationships but but that's what that's what i mean that's what it's all about and here we are many years later having

39:53The Gstaad Guy:a chat i actually want to dive into that a bit deeper that abundance theory i think some listeners share that i think most listeners wish for that both on a personal level but also from the people that surround them does that trickle into other ways you see the world and you see opportunities I think it's very American. Yeah? I think I wake up every day and I see nothing but opportunity. Living in Italy, a very historic place to live, there's a reason that a lot of Italians left and the reason they go to London, the reason they go to New York, because when you're in those places, you're Italian.

40:30But when you're in Italy, to say the Genova, you know, like we know your grandfather and he was a bit of an asshole. And so as a result, doors are closed to you. That's not a specific example, but that's the curse of an ancient culture is that doors are constantly closed in your face by things that you can't control. And the beauty of being an American is that no door is closed. You and I could go to dinner on Friday night in New York City, come up with an amazing business idea, incorporate it on Monday, be funded by Friday and within six months we're worth half a billion dollars like find me another culture on earth where you can do that yeah the American dream is real and so that as somebody who's grown up with that it gets pounded into your DNA that anything is possible anything and this is you know despite the weird PR world that Donald Trump has created for America right now this is still America's legacy the American idea that the American experiment is that abundance is fundamental to who we are.

41:43And opportunity is fundamental to who we are. And it's not about your father or your mother or your grandfather. It's about what can you do today to change the world? And so when you kind of grow up in that environment, especially in the shadow of New York City, which is like the ground zero for people that are creating themselves from fiction, everyone in New York is creating their own myth. and then some of them become it. And so that was my upbringing. That was who I was. My parents didn't give me a single penny after university. They said, good luck. We love you. Have fun. And I slept on couches in New York City and became a DJ until I met somebody that wanted me to be a journalist.

42:25Then I tried management consulting for a little while. And then I learned and tried and met and networked. And all I was given every single day when i was in new york city was opportunity and i think it just permeates into your into your bloodstream that everything's possible um and so that that is my version of abundance theory there's a spiritual side to it for sure but that's like fundamentally uh you know who i am

42:54The Gstaad Guy:i like that you say that you were given these opportunities in new york and and in life but you also have to have your eyes open looking for them and you do have to be ready to welcome opportunities i find and i'm sure listeners today could resonate with that that there's a uh one of those stories that circulate on whatsapp that i've seen a few times of someone is on the roof of a flooded home and the entire town is flooding and the person is praying and wishing that they could be saved. And this boat comes by and says, hey, come on the boat with us. Like, no, no, I'm waiting to be saved. I'm waiting for my time.

43:40The Gstaad Guy:Like, okay, another boat comes by. They're like, hey, this is going to be your last chance to be saved. Like, no, no, no, I'm waiting for my time to be saved. I'll be saved my way. Like, okay, last chance. The person ends up drowning. And then when they pass, they ask God and heaven, why didn't you save me? He's like, well, I sent you three people to save you. It's your fault. You didn't take those chances. And I think it's one of these simple WhatsApp funny skits, but actually has a deep meaning of the opportunity you expect may not actually be the opportunity or opportunities that keep getting extended to you.

44:24The Gstaad Guy:And I think the way you perceive opportunity also has this importance that's quite important to acknowledge and discuss. Flexibility. I've done a lot of stuff to get to where I am today. Like I said, I was a full-time professional DJ, trying to pay my own rent by playing music at people in 2010. Then I was a party journalist, wearing a black tie that I bought from a thrift store. and then trying to pretend to be a gossip columnist, like talking to celebrities at Sundance Film Festival and going to the Frick Gala in New York, trying to blend in and socialize what they thought about things. Didn't know what the hell I was doing.

45:09Then from there, I became a management consultant. I was 23 years old. I was in the room with the CTO of Dow Jones and some of the head rocket scientists at NASA at Goddard Research Center in Ohio. I did that for a year doing leadership training for a small consultancy firm they wanted me to go to business school I couldn't afford it so I moved on my friend was at the New York Observer she said come you know write a column every every night so I did that then I I get a call from Ben Learer whose father was the founder of Huffington Post and he and he needed somebody to start a new vertical for them um so i started a new magazine for them called super compressor i did that for two years and built a team of 16 people and tried that and then was burnt out and was like totally in a very unhealthy state in new york city after five years of working seven days a week uh and got a call to move to los angeles to like focus on classic cars and and try that for two years and i didn't own any of these businesses that i worked for i wasn't uh i always had an entrepreneurial mindset but it It wasn't really, they were just cool jobs.