David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Steve Burke, Chairman of NBC Universal. You know, since taking over NBC Universal in 2011, he almost tripled the profits, I believe something from like $3 billion to over $8 billion, and is leading the fastest growing media company in the world. Before that, Steve was the number two guide Comcast working alongside the CEO Brian Roberts, as they acquired NBC Universal. And before that, he led hugely successful efforts at Disney, and ABC, he has accomplished so much. But you know, in every role, Steve just knows how to get the most out of the people around him. It's how he was able to lead the turnaround at Disney World, Paris, and how the whole idea of Disney Stores even came to exist. When you sit and talk with Steve, you realize a lot of times the truly breakthrough ideas are already there within your team. And it's your job as a leader to draw them out. Steve is a master at doing just that. And I know you're going to learn a ton from him. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Steve Burke.

Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to have this conversation. Well, thank you, David, we're gonna get to your your business career. But what's the most fun you have? Right now what's going on outside of your work that you have the most fun with?

Steve Burke 1:47 

Well, I'm planning what happens next. And I announced that I was leaving in mid December, I have a great successor, a guy named Jeff shell, who I've worked with for 15 years, and he's moved around our company. So he's managed a lot of the different aspects of what he is now. In charge of, and I'm planning my third act. And if if you're lucky enough to live 90 years, you can imagine separating your life into three acts. And the first act your it's just like a well told story, the first act, you're, you're defining the character, you're defining who you are, you're meeting your spouse, you're getting educated, and maybe that zero to 30, and then 30 to 60. In my case, I'm 61. You're going through your life and the challenges and building a career. And what I want to do between 60 and 90, is have a third act, which is sort of the resolution and the celebration and the end of the story. And I have five kids and a wife I love and I have a lot of other things I want to do with with my career. And so I'm, I'm starting the process of planning for that, as well.

David Novak 2:54 

We'll see. Not surprisingly, I always start out at Act One. Okay, so, so why don't you tell us about your upbringing?

Steve Burke 3:02 

Well, I was very fortunate that my business heroes were were close to me were part of my family. My dad, Dan Burke, ran a company called capital cities that ended up buying ABC, which was subsequently sold after he retired to the Walt Disney Company. Interestingly, I was working at Disney when Michael Eisner did that deal with my dad and Tom Murphy. But my dad was my business hero. And I think a lot of the way I think about business and also a well lived life, came from my dad, he was my best man in my wedding. And really, to this day, my hero and then my uncle. This is gonna sound like I'm bragging. But I got to tell the story, the way it's, it has occurred to me, my uncle, I was very fortunate. My Uncle Jim Burke, was the head of Johnson and Johnson during the Tylenol crisis. And his response to the Tylenol crisis has become a great case study in how you've managed an ethical enterprise. And I was very close to my uncle. I have four siblings, but I was the only one of the four of us that got invited to go on ski trips with my uncle, and I would kind of hang out with him. And I, I really felt looking at my dad's life and my uncle's life, that that what could be a greater thing than to have a great business career where you're a leader of people, and you get all the intellectual challenges, but also a great family and hopefully somebody who stands for something. And so very early on, I was interested in business. I went to college in the late 70s, at a time when I felt like the smartest kids wanted to be doctors. And then the next tier wanted to be lawyers, and very few people were saying, I want to be a business person. That was just a different time. And I always knew and so right out of college, I went to Harvard Business School and I just couldn't wait to get myself in a position where I could lead people.

David Novak 4:53 

First of all, I want to ask you about a story. Can you tell us a story about your childhood days it would tell us a lot about the kind of person you become,

Steve Burke 5:03 

well, I, I would, for whatever reason would would challenge my dad. And we would always talk about business at the dinner table. And my, my dad was a tough guy, and I would sort of stick my chin out and challenge him. And we would, he would discipline me when I needed to be disciplined. And I think the process of arguing with my dad, I always knew at a young age or thought I knew and still think I know the difference between right and wrong. And I don't know how that gets imprinted in a person. But my dad did it with me. And when I've had tough decisions in my career, I don't I don't go through the process as saying, What would my dad do as I make those decisions, but he's always there, and the roadmap of how to live a successful life and the way you impart your values on people. And an organization really came from my dad at the dinner table.

David Novak 6:00 

Yeah, I never met your dad. But I've heard so many wonderful things about him. You know, you you mentioned you went to Harvard to get your master's in business, you also went to Colgate? I mean, those are two very competitive schools in the sense that you got really a driven student body, or at least on the surface, it would seem like that, you know, what did you learn early on about, you know, just being competitive being around such driven people? And how much did that that education that you had influenced you?

Steve Burke 6:28 

Well, I was a late bloomer, I was lucky to get into Colgate. I applied early and got in but I had good test scores, but not great grades. And at Colgate, I really turned on, I really got very motivated, and it was important to me to do well,

David Novak 6:43 

what was it that turned you on? You know, I

Steve Burke 6:46 

think going back to my dad and my uncle Jim, I think I realized, you know, you got to build a track record. And they both went to Harvard Business School, if you want to go to Harvard Business School, you better get some A's. And so I realized I'm playing with live ammunition. When I was in high school, I was interested in other things than then doing well academically. And then I also I started to enjoy my classes, I was a history major and love to read. And I started both enjoying the classes and enjoying getting good grades. And so I applied to Harvard business school thinking I would get a deferred. At the time, you would get a two year deferment, and you would go work someplace. And I ended up getting right in and was one of the youngest people in my class. And in business school, I really met special people and really felt I wouldn't sad blossom, but I enjoyed the experience in the camaraderie. And maybe the second or third week in business school, we were doing a case on a cranberry cooperative. And the the point of the case was, at what point? Is it time to harvest the cranberries and there's all these different calculations you'd make. And so toward the end of the case, a guy in the back of the room raised his hand and said to the teacher, I think you did that wrong. I think there's a faster way to do that. And the teacher said, Oh, really? You do? And the guy said, Yeah, I do. And the teacher said, Well, Mr. Dimon, why don't you come up to the front of the class and, and show me the better way to do it on the blackboard. And it was Jamie Dimon. And Jamie went up everybody in class, there were 90 people in the class, they all thought, This guy's committing suicide in front of us. And at the end, he put the chalk down and went back to his chair and sat down, the teacher said, Well, I'm not sure that's a better way to do it. But it's certainly a good way to do it. And after the class, I went up to Jamie and said, Look, I am new here. And I might be an admissions mistake. You're the smartest guy in the class, and I want to be your friend. And that's how I met Jamie. And that was 1980. And here we are 40 years later, and we're still friends. And to me business school was a great way to meet people who were turned on and excited about business and excited about the next stage of their life. And I made a lot of very good friends there.

David Novak 9:05 

Yeah, that's great. I understand your first job out of Harvard was General Foods. How'd you land that job? And what did it teach you?

Steve Burke 9:14 

Well, I went to gentleman foods because I felt that I was very young and had not managed people. And I thought that product management would give me a chance to really get inside a business and manage people and and it did, I was assigned to the breakfast foods division and my favorite part of my job after a year or so my job was to come up with alternative uses for Grape Nuts. We came up with 45 different things. You could make hot Grape Nuts, oatmeal, you could take red nuts and put them under your tires if it was ice out, and then you get some traction under the tires. And I would come in every day with new ideas and test them and I thought it was a great job. And then one day my wife came in and said I just got into business school. And so we decided for the sake of the two of us, it was a better opportunity to go to Boston. So I left General Foods and followed my wife to Boston. And my deal was I will go to Boston, but when you graduate, I get to pick the city. So I worked for a company called Boston safe deposit and trusts for a year or so. And then when, when my wife Gretchen was in, in her second year, in January, I went out west and got a job with Disney. So my career really started Grape Nuts, and then the the, what was the financial safe deposit and trust? Okay, now,

David Novak 10:35 

those are two, that's two dramatically different. I just needed a job, basically. So you just gotta fill or sometimes you do that. But what did you learn from that job?

Steve Burke 10:44 

Well, that was a time when banks were starting to get into different areas of business and ATMs were just coming out. And it was a very creative, interesting, medium sized bank, I would say. And I, I worked a lot on new product development and enjoyed that. But it wasn't, it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. And I kind of knew that I wanted to get involved in a business that was more creative. And so I picked up and went out to LA and interviewed with four or five media companies, slept on a friend's couch, and I had interviews on Thursday and Fridays, and then on Saturday, and Sunday, was at my friend's house. And on that Sunday on the cover, the New York Times Magazine, were Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. And it was about how they had just arrived at the Walt Disney Company, and they were going to take it into a different direction. And I read the article and said, This is the place for me and I had an interview previously scheduled. I think it was the Tuesday after the Sunday article ran and interviewed with Disney and got a job there.

David Novak 11:52 

I know that one of your claims to fame it at Disney was that you developed the Disney Stores. You know, what sparked that idea?

Steve Burke 12:00 

Well, when I got to Disney, very interesting situation. And everybody talked about this openly, including Michael and Frank. Disney went through a period after Walt Disney died, where people would literally come up with an idea and someone would say, well, Walt never did that. And so there was this sort of lingering question, what would Walt do? And so the easiest way to kill any new idea would say, well, well never did that. So my job when I came in, I was put in the Consumer Products Division, which was the sleepiest part of the company, it wasn't as sexy as television or movies or Theme Parks was licensing. But my job was to look at new business ideas, new business development. And so I decided that probably a lot of the best ideas were running around in the heads of people who work for the company, they just had didn't have the forum to get their ideas out. So I came up with this, I, you know, I was young, I was in my 20s. And I came up with this idea that we would have a contest for the best ideas, and anybody who won the contest would get a dinner for two anywhere in the world, but they had to provide their own transportation. And we got about 100 different business ideas, and I narrowed it down to 10. And for each of the 10, we had some artwork, and maybe a one page summary. And whoever came up with the idea, I organized it all. But whoever came up with the idea got to present the idea to Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, I called up Michael and said, I've got 10 ideas on what I need three hours of your time. And he said, terrific. And embedded in those 10 ideas. We're getting into the children's publishing business computer software. Daycare was one of the ideas, there were some ideas we didn't do. But one of those ideas was the Disney Stores. So we present these 10 ideas, I'm 27, or something. And I'm sort of the emcee that people would the ideas would come in, and I would let them talk at the end of the meeting, everybody left the room. And Michael and Frank said, That was amazing. And I said, Well, what do you want me to do? And they said, we want to do all 10. And I said, Well, those people all have other jobs, and they don't work for me. And I don't have any experience in any of these things. And they said, well just pick the best ones and start doing them. So I went back and the the idea that I thought was the easiest to get done. And maybe also the biggest potential was the Disney Stores. And the idea was very simple. We Disney was selling all this licensed merchandise, and of course, a lot of merchandise in the theme parks, but to take the Disney experience to shopping malls so that a mother or father could bring their kids into a little piece of Disneyland and then the ability to sell the product into to sort of pay for that experience seemed like a good idea to me. And so that's the one I chose. And the guy who came up with the idea and I went to Disneyland and got merchandise and we went and bought some stuff and I didn't really know what I was doing and I'm still not sure how I got the capital allocation form. Signed but we opened a store about nine months later in a in a mall closed. To the Burbank headquarters. And the night before we opened, I didn't sleep very well, I thought I was gonna get fired if didn't work. And if you read the press release, I say it's a test and we're just trying something out. It was obvious I was nervous. And so the night before, if we were opening the store at nine o'clock when the mall opened, I got my wife and we drove to the store at about 730 in the morning. And never forget this, and I get out of the parking lot. I walk into the mall, we get about, I don't know, 800 yards away from the opening of the store. And there's a line of 200 people waiting to get it. And we like I get to get my job. Frank Wells came, we cut the ribbon and people just stormed in. And then Michael pulled me aside into a coffee shop afterwards and said, How fast can we have 100 stores? Wow, we're off and running. And it was it was great. And I stayed with that for I think I stayed with that for three or four, three years, maybe until we for years until we had about 150 stores. And then I got promoted.

David Novak 16:01 

Wow. Now you, you also are known for being the president of Euro Disney and you went into that situation. The business was a total mess. I remember talking about this, we used to work together at the bank. And you turn that around. How do you do that?

Steve Burke 16:16 

When I was doing the Disney Stores, I really enjoyed the customer guest interaction with providing Disney service. And I think that was obvious when I would have would talk about the Disney Stores. And Frank Wells, who was president at the time, called me up and said I'd like you to go into the theme park business and I assumed he meant Disneyland happiest place on earth. And when the time came, he meant you're a Disney which was open about six months. And we knew the company wasn't talking about a lot. And by narrative not talking about it, you kind of had a sense that was something wrong. But I went home and said to my wife, how would you like to move to Paris so I could go run the theme park if you're a Disney and my wife said we'd be expatriates living in this city of Paris, you have to say yes, that's the greatest thing in the world. We had three small kids there at the time, we had a fourth child at the American Hospital in Paris when we were there. But I was sent over and the luckiest thing that happened to me. And it was just pure luck. I was an arranged marriage, there was an opening team. And they were replacing the opening team with it with a chairman a guy named Felipe Borg and Yarrow. And then I became the president. And we were we were put together I had never met Felipe I met him at the press conference when they were announcing us. And Felipe is fantastic and became a very good friend of mine. And so we were charged with turning the place around. And when we started. It was it was a real challenge. The public perception inside France was not good that perception. People love to see giant stumble. And the perception was Disney is the archetypical strong American company coming to France and very proud country, very proud of its culture. And it was a huge story, the failure, we were called a cultural Chernobyl real and just the press was terrible. And the attendance started to decline. And it was really scary. And the company almost went bankrupt. We borrowed a lot of data, and we ultimately had to restructure the debt just to stay in business. But for me, it was fantastic. It was challenging. You know, we were working six, seven days a week. For the first two years didn't take vacations. I mean, we really thought there was a chance we're gonna go under. And we had maybe 400 Americans when I got there 400 Americans who were essentially running everything, and each American would have a European counterpart. And I decided pretty early on, we should send all the Americans but five home. And when we've came up with the idea of some of the American Civil these Europeans don't know how to do this. They've never done this before. And I said, Well, that doesn't appear to be going very well as it is. And I would rather have people who understand the people who are coming into the park every day than people who understand how we run theme parks in Orlando or California. So we set all the Americans home. And then we reduced the headcount. we restructured the debt. We changed the marketing. So the marketing was appealing to Europeans. What had happened was the marketing was essentially a lift from the marketing in Orlando. So you think of a typical Walt Disney World commercial 30 seconds of a family of four blond kids running around beautiful sunny sky and they're going from ride to ride ride and everybody's smiling and they're eating, you know, Big Macs or something. And then when a European would look at that, they would say, well, it's cloudy almost every day in France in the wintertime. and you're running an ad that doesn't look like my country. And those kids, obviously are not French kids, and they're eating while they're walking, and no French person eats anywhere other than a cafe. And my idea of Hell is to go on 10 rides in a day, I want a slower paced day. So when we had a French person in charge of marketing, he instinctively knew what kind of commercials would work for the French market. And so so that that kind of change, it took time, it took two or three years before it really started to get stabilized. And of course, it helped that we were able to restructure the debt and put everything else together. But for me, it was a hell of a learning experience. You know, it was it was a real battle. And I think the problems were so acute, and we were so far away, that Felipe and I had almost complete autonomy. We changed the name from Euro Disney to Disneyland Paris, we changed out the marketing we changed. And along the way, I learned to speak passable French to the point where I could give a speech and in French, not perfect French, but in French by the end, and it was just a fantastic learning experience. And I was there for four years. In this second year there. My mentor, Frank Wells tragically died in a helicopter crash on Easter Sunday of 1992. And I came home two years after. And Frank was the one sort of engineering my move over and then coming home. So after Frank passed away, I started talking to Michael Eisner, I've got to do something else I, you know, my deal with Frank was I'd be here for three to five years, I need to I'm raising these kids, I want them to be American kids, not French kids. And so along the way, when I was there, the fourth year, I was there, Disney bought capital cities ABC. And then it was time for me to come home. My job was at ABC, the company that my dad had, wow. And I ended up with the office next to my dad's old office, never planning it, in some ways running away from it. I didn't didn't you know, my dad was my dad. And but anyway, so I ended up at ABC. And that's how I came back. And then I was at ABC for two years and then left to join computers. Now,

David Novak 22:07 

what was the biggest challenge you had as the head of your president of ABC?

Steve Burke 22:12 

Well, it was a very interesting time because Disney had taken over capital cities, ABC, and I was the first Disney person put into ABC. So it was it was an interesting time. And the cultures were quite different than it was. There were fits and starts. And I was right in the middle of defending the Disney position, but also understanding the ABC position. And there were elements of that, that I enjoyed a lot. I did not I had not been in the television business before. I'd been in the entertainment business, but not the television business. So I got a chance to learn television, was responsible for the television stations, radio stations in syndication. And one of the interesting things that happened when I was at ABC was the radio business consolidated, it used to be that you could only own a dozen or so radio stations and the government changed that law. And within two or three years, companies went from owning a dozen radio stations to owning 100 or 200. And I saw that consolidation. So when I got a call saying, Would you like to meet Brian Roberts and get to know Comcast, it was interesting to me, because it looked to me like cable was going to consolidate. In other words, some of the same reasons. And I think part of the reasons why I was interested in joining Comcast was I saw what that consolidation could could do to an industry and wanted to be part of it on the cable side.

David Novak 23:30 

I want to get to the Comcast in a second. But you mentioned your mentorship that you had with Frank Wells, you know, how did you cultivate that mentorship?

Steve Burke 23:38 

Well, he did, he deserves a credit. He did it with me, and I don't know what he saw on me. But I'm so thankful he saw it and he is a very special guy. And people didn't know until he died, how important he was to the company. People thought Michael is the CEO of his company. And Michael, obviously very talented and special executive. But Frank, he was kind of the glues that that we didn't understand what he was doing. But he was holding the company together. And he one of the stories I like to tell is my first year when I was in France on Thanksgiving day he called me and I was at the office because Thanksgivings, not a holiday in France. And he called him said, I just want to want to thank you for being over there. And I realized on Thanksgiving Day, it must be a tough day to be in France, but I really appreciate you being there. He had no agenda. Other than that we didn't talk any business. He just said thank you and hung up. And when he passed away, we had a memorial service and a bunch of us were talking afterwards. And everybody I was with a group of 10 people everybody had a story like that. He just was a very special person and you use the word mentor. I think he was a mentor or a role model. He kind of showed me the importance of keeping in touch with people and you know holding a company together

David Novak 25:00 

You mentioned that you join Comcast because you saw a potential consolidation, opportunity. But you went from ABC Entertainment, which basically glamour business, then you go this cable cord, you know, more of a nuts and bolts type business. You know, that was a big change for you. And when you look back at that, what did you learn in the process of making that job change?

Steve Burke 25:23 

Well, I'll tell you how it happened and what my motivation and thought process was. So at a certain point, Michael wanted to take ABC and move it to California. And I, I didn't agree with that idea, ABC News and ABC, ad sales and other functional areas could be in New York. And I thought what Michael really wanted to do is get closer to primetime and primetime was already in LA. So I became disenchanted. And I also didn't want to move to LA. At that point, I had four kids, and I didn't want to necessarily raise four or five kids a big family in LA. And so I got a call one day from a headhunter who very wisely, didn't say, I'm a headhunter, he called and said, Would you like to have lunch with Brian Robertson? I said, Sure. When I called him back, I said, You're a headhunter. And I came down to Philadelphia and met with Ralph Roberts, a lovely guy who was alive at the time, and Brian's dad and met with Brian and I came down two or three times, and I kept taking the MetroLiner from New York, back and forth. And each time, I kept saying, I really liked these guys. And as I analyzed the decision, I talked to my dad, I talked to my wife, I talked to my best friends, and everybody told me not to take the job. My dad said, Well, that's a that's a job. That's a seems about right, in terms of size for your younger brother, who's 10 years younger than me. It's his way of saying, Don't do it. And I had people say, Well, you're going to work for a guy whose family controls the company, and he's younger than you, you're never going to be the CEO of the business. But I really liked Ralph. And I like Brian, and I decided, and I would look to me, like, Brian was ambitious for the company, but he needed someone to help him run things, because that's not necessarily what he does. And I love the idea of trying to create our dream, and we were dreaming the way you do, I think I was 39. When I joined Comcast, our dream was to try to create the next great media company. And we said, well, let's get big in cable, because cable will consolidate at the time Comcast had 4 million subscribers. And our dream was to someday have 10. And obviously, we got over 20. And we have 30 million broadband subscribers now. But we figured the market would not penalize us. If we bought other cable companies, they would assume we knew what we're doing. And then once we got to critical mass and cable, then we would do a big content deal, because we always believe that cable and content worked well together. But I think in our mind, success would have been 10 million subscribers. And someday we buy scripts, something like that. And we had no idea where we would, you know, someday the the building that houses MDC, at 30 Rock would be called the Comcast building. We never dreamt it.

David Novak 28:07 

It's really interesting to me that you, you've partnered with Brian Roberts, who's the CEO of Comcast for 22 years. And it's a legendary partnership in the industry. You too are like seen as like the the duo, you know. And I find it interesting that your father, Dan Burke, partnered with Tom Murphy for all those years and Bill Cap City and ABC, ESPN, it's amazing. So when you were watching Tom Murphy and your father, Bill, that business, what did you observe from them that you think really helped you make the partnership work at Comcast?

Steve Burke 28:47 

Well, I, you know, I, so idolized my dad, and Tom, I put them in a completely different category. I don't think Brian and I compare, but there are some similarities. I mean, Brian is very focused on acquisitions technology, where the world's going, I'm very focused on running businesses and finding leaders and solving problems and dealing with the hard operating things. And I think that's very similar to Tom and my dad. And when I was thinking of coming to Comcast, it did not bother me that I would never be CEO of this company. As long as I had enough running room and latitude to really do my thing and was appreciated for doing my thing. It didn't matter that I was number two. And obviously, it didn't matter to my dad. He worked with Tom for 30 years. And one of the things I found as I progressed in my time at Comcast, in many ways, it was better than being CEO. You know, people sort of say, well, you want to be the CEO. A lot of the things that Brian did are things that I wouldn't necessarily want to do and a lot of the things that I did that I could share with him and talk with him. He made my job more fun. And we had plenty of disagreements I've I've said, I've a interesting way of thinking about it. We don't always see eye to eye. But we're always looking at the same thing. We don't always agree, we disagree, but we never fight. Right? And he's made my job more fun. And I got a call one day somebody said, Would you like to run one of one of the other media companies, this is years ago. And I went home and talked to my wife about it. I said, you know, I think I'd rather stay here and be number two, then go there and be number one. I mean, I've put all these people in place, I like them, I have real loyalty. And I like being around Brian and the rest of our senior management team. So I learned that from my dad, I think I would I might not have had the confidence to be number two for 22 years to Brian, if I didn't see how much my dad enjoyed working with Tom,

David Novak 30:51 

you know, you had tremendous growth when you were running Comcast cable. Was there any result though, that really frustrated you a tremendous amount, or was just all just boom,

Steve Burke 31:04 

you know, nothing, nothing ever is completely linear. It's been frustrating sometimes. For whatever reason, Wall Street, loves cable companies, and then hates cable companies. And so I would get frustrated when our performance wasn't reflected in the stock price, which I think is natural, I would get frustrated when the government would sort of threatened our business with regulation that I thought was inappropriate regulation. And then you have the normal frustrations, not every hire works out. Not every strategy works out. But

David Novak 31:38 

you know, Steve, it's amazing how life and your business has come full circle, you

Speaker 1 31:43 

know, you've talked about your story with your dad, and then you end up at Disney. And you're right next to your dad's office, you

David Novak 31:49 

know, and then in 2010, you, you and Brian, you come full circle one more time, you know, and Comcast requires NBC Universal and thinking about this, as I was thinking about talking to you about this, you just had to be I'm sure you had to just be licking your chops. I bet you just couldn't wait to get a hold of that business. And maybe I'm wrong about that. But what what was inside your head when you became CEO of NBC Universal? Well,

Steve Burke 32:15 

we bought the company. We did the deal in 2009. And it's sitting here in 2020. It's it's hard to fully comprehend or remember how tough things felt in 2009. And when one of the I think one of the reasons why we ended up with NBC Universal is GE wanted to sell to raise cash. And I'm not sure there were a lot of other bidders at the time, the company had about $3.2 billion was a cash flow. And we did we bought 51% at a $30 billion valuation slightly better than that, because we got some tax benefits, but call it a $30 billion valuation. And then the idea, it was a beautifully engineered deal by Brian and our CFO at the time, Mike angelakis, we could buy the other 49% over periods of time over a seven year period, basically, with the cash flow that came from the deal. So if all worked well, and we contributed our cable channels, so we I think we only put in five or $6 billion with the cash was a great deal. But when we presented to the board in the final board meeting to get approval to go do the deal. We basically said what we're really excited about are the cable channels. And we understand those businesses because we've watched those businesses closely. As we've grown our cable company. And we were very nervous about broadcast television, the theme parks were we talked about, but we're sort of an afterthought. You never know until you're inside a company. And we had people say, well, NBC has been number four for seven years in a row. They've been so far behind in primetime, they may never be able to catch up. Right. And we had a lot of people say what you ought to do is buy all the assets other than the broadcast network. And we had people say spin off theme parks, so you didn't really know. And the FCC and Justice Department made us wait a year between signing and closing. And so being careful to avoid gun jumping. I spent most of that year in New York getting to know the executives in NBC but also executives at CBS, ABC, anybody would have breakfast, lunch or dinner with me. And my concept which I learned from when we did the AT and T broadband deal is when you have a big complicated deal. You have to hit the ground running the day the deal closes. So we actually announced the new management team which was significantly different than the existing management team before the deal closed. And we have business plans for every single area of the business so that there would be complete and total clarity the day the deal closed because I didn't want people playing politics or I wanted people to know what the game plan was. And we were we didn't get everything right but we're we're very full Jeanette, and we got lucky a couple of times. And we got lucky. We had a show called The Voice which the previous administration had greenlit. And then we took it over and sort of made it better by having spending more money on it as essentially in launching it a certain way. But, you know, we were very, very fortunate to have great people and great assets, we had a lot of you have more anxiety than what I thought I had a lot of anxiety. I don't want exactly. A lot of anxiety, you know, you feel responsible. Yeah, you, you're responsible to your board, I felt responsible to Brian, and, you know, it

David Novak 35:35 

all looks perfect. Now, but back then, no, it

Steve Burke 35:38 

was and you don't know, you know, you have, and again, to, to, to the point of, you know, the fundamental philosophies that I've had in my career are I believe in decentralization, I think you hire the very best people you can and really let them run their businesses. At the same time you have tight budgeting you you conduct business meetings, so that people feel free to talk about the negatives, as well as the positives, you don't have allow people to gloss over. You take the business seriously. But you don't take yourself too seriously. You encourage people to laugh and challenge things. You want people to think like owners not renters. by that. I mean, if an owner, if you own a house, and the pipe bursts, you fix it. You don't paper over problems if you're an owner. And what we found when we came to NBCUniversal, was a very siloed company. And there were parts of the company where people weren't really keeping score, the way we would keep score, and there were people who were managing their careers in the press, and people weren't working as a team and kind of fundamental management things. And we were able to very quickly, you know, very quickly change that philosophy. And then we got lucky in a few places. And then it really started to work,

David Novak 36:52 

both the TV business and the cable business, they're under attack, there's no question about that on all fronts, people are cutting the cord, they're going to streaming, what's your key learning that you've really gained on on how to lead a business when it's being disrupted, potentially, and being attacked on so many fronts?

Steve Burke 37:09 

Well, particularly in the broadcast business, every once in a while somebody will say this, this business was so much easier, before cable channels came out and before Netflix. And that's true that if you go back far enough, if you owned a network or you owned network affiliates, those businesses were very stable, great businesses. And today, you've got so much more competition. That in some ways, it's it's harder in some ways, it's, it's more challenging in a fun way, because you're trying to figure out where the future is going. If you look at NBCUniversal, about half of our profitability comes from traditional linear television channels, whether it's NBC or Telemundo, the Spanish broadcaster or our cable channels, so think of, you know, half of eight and a half a billion dollars coming from traditional television. And the first thing you do when you have a job like mine is you get up in the morning and you look at the ratings and you get the you get a report card every day. And on a good day. Aggregate television ratings are down 10%. And on a bad day, they're down 15%. And they're down year after year after year after year. And like physics, a body in motion tends to stay in motion. My prediction is that 10% decline is going to continue. And there are some things that bucked that trend, you can get a hit show and the NFL does better because live sports do better than scripted content. But by and large consumers are choosing to consume differently than they ever have. Before I can remember before the VCR or DVR or you know any any of the technologies if you wanted to watch a show. If you wanted to watch Monday Night Football and see the ending and talk about it with your friends. You had to stay up till midnight if you wanted to watch cheers or a show like that and you didn't have a VCR you had to watch it. Or you'd wait until the summer and watch a rerun now that that concept is completely thrown out there many many different ways and probably 25 different ways you can watch SNL on a Sunday morning on somebody's website, or YouTube or your DVR. And consumers and increasingly are enjoying that flexibility and Netflix is the is the example that people talk about most but interestingly, the biggest cannibalistic threat to the traditional ecosystem is not Netflix. It's YouTube. People are spending more time on YouTube and getting more of their traditional television on YouTube than on Netflix. But all of it the internet writ large is causing tremendous disruption and we have people sometimes almost feeling sorry for themselves saying, you know, boy, the internet is really rough. And what I say to people is I can't think of an industry that isn't being disrupted, right Now, you know who would have you look at retailers or you look at even car companies talking about electric and autonomous vehicles, every industry is being disrupted at some level by the internet, and ours is no exception. The good news is our traditional eco system is still very healthy, still throws off a lot of cash. It's not growing. And it's at the point now where it's going to start to decline. But I, my bet is it'll decline quite gradually, if you look at the history of the media business over the last 70 or so years, there's a new technology every 10 or 20 years, and in the beginning, you had movie theaters, and then along came television. And everybody thought television was going to put radio out of business, or movie theaters out of business. And there's still radio companies, and there's still a big theatrical movie business. And so these new new waves of technology, tend not to put the previous technology out of business cable channels didn't put broadcast out of business, broadcast television is actually making more money today than it did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 50 years ago, it's amazing. And people would have guessed 20 years ago that ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox would be out of business by now. So I think my job or the job of Jeff showing my successor is you want to manage your existing businesses as well as you can while planning for the new businesses. And therein lies the art because the new business by definition, is going to compete with the legacy business. And if you get a great show, do you put that show on NBC? Do you put it on a cable channel? Or do you put it on peacock? The streaming service? And if you put it on Peacock, the streaming service, how do you manage the pricing? How do you get that show there? How do you get a company to route for peacocks so that people aren't constantly against it? How do you use the existing ad time in your television channels to support peacock? And that's that's what we're going through right now.

David Novak 41:55 

One of the great strengths you have Steve is your ability to identify talent is as this whole, you know, digital age has come upon us how has it changed your view on a really what makes a superstar talent?

Steve Burke 42:10 

Well, it as it makes it harder for my job, it makes it harder to identify people who, you know, if you think about it, a lot of the people that get to senior levels in for television channels or movies are people who succeeded in in an analog world, they were good at identifying great story ideas or programming or marketing in a traditional world. And so you're you're looking for people who are passionate and curious and interested in the digital side. I think intelligence just sheer raw intelligence is more important than ever. You need people who are curious and learning but also really smart because the world is changing so quickly. And if you stand back, I think medium media businesses are a little different than some other businesses. We don't have factories. We have intellectual property, but but we don't have we don't have like Moats. Warren Buffett talks about moats around business. Our businesses don't necessarily have Moats. You know, the movie business has no moats anybody can make a movie. And, you know, there's some, some some things you need to do to distribute the movie. But by and large, you can you can get a movie distributed. So we don't have a business most. So it's incredibly people dependent. And if you think about it, if someone has a great story, they can bring that great story to Disney Warner's paramount, they can bring in that story anywhere. And so the best thing you can do, I think, inside a broadly diversified media company is make sure that you have great people who attract other great people and talent and I so I think a lot about culture and how we're treating people and how we deal with creative talent and how we deal with each other. And then you overlay all of that all that complexity. And the people that that work in the entertainment business are tend to be very smart, sometimes sensitive, sometimes. I mean, think of what it takes to bare your soul in front of America as an actor or a news anchor. You know, they're very interesting personalities. And managing all that is is difficult. On the people you

David Novak 44:24 

have to manage. I mean, every business has people with, you know, big egos, and you need an ego to a certain extent just to have the competence to perform. But some would say that the business that you're in is loaded with the big ego. How have you dealt with the the big egos in the entertainment industry?

Steve Burke 44:42 

Well, I think what you try to do, what we've tried to do is make sure that our executives don't have big egos and there are executives don't run around saying it's all about me, or I'm indispensable or you know, I did this and did that and we have a philosophy that we call symphony, which is I don't like the word synergy, I think synergy has become almost a, you know, an NBA, you know, catchphrase, we call our effort of working together symphony. And one of the advantages our company has for someone with a good idea is if you bring a movie to us, and we think it's a great movie, we will make sure that it gets supported on USA sci fi II entertainment in the Olympics. And when we identify the priorities, and we go to our executives, is non negotiable, everybody's going to get behind these big events. And what we found is we have 22% of all television viewing in America, when we get behind promoting a new theme park ride, or the Olympics or a new movie, it works. And one of the interesting side benefits of the symphony program, it was a message, a cultural message to everybody in the company that no individual businesses important, more important than the company as a whole. And teams do better than individual performers. And I think one of the ways that you, you get really creative people to work with you and for you and bring you great ideas is is if they feel like what you're going to be doing is going to be about their idea, not about you. So I'm very much on the watch for people inside our company who get too carried away with themselves. And forget the reason why we're here which is bringing great ideas to America and people around you. You mentioned the Olympics. I got to ask you, what was it like when you won the bid for the Olympics? Well, that story that's gotta be. It was scary as hell because NBC had been known as the company that brings you to the Olympics for many, many years and the person most identified with the Olympics, Dick Ebersol had left the company a month before we made the formal bid and found out whether we got it or not. And the thought definitely occurred to me that we would be the guys who came and Dick Ebersol left and we didn't get the Olympics. And so we flew over to Lowe's in and we decided the best way to show the International Olympic Committee how much the Olympics meant to us was to bring 20 of our people who had been associated with the Olympics during the last 20 or so years. And each person when they identified themselves and came to their part of the presentation would say their name, and then how many Olympics they'd been associated with. So Molly, Solomon would say my name is Molly Solomon. This is a I've been associated with ADA Olympics and flood Woods had been associated with 12. We brought Bob Costas face to the Olympics. And our whole goal was to try to show just how important the Olympics were. And we ended up we ended up being the high bidder. So we outbid Disney ESPN, and we outbid Fox. But we ended up getting the Olympics for eight years. And then after the first Olympics, second Olympics, on our watch associated Olympics, we announced that we were extending all the way to 2032. Which was a big bet, but a bet we were so glad we took and I was in on a plane when the when the news came out in the United States that we had gotten the Olympics, but I heard that people inside 30 Rock, you could hear people cheering from their offices, when they found out that we got the bid. But the flip side of that is, if had we lost it, we would have been the guys that lost the most important property for NBC just

David Novak 48:28 

listening to you talk, you really seem to put a real focus on the importance of finding that breakthrough, and then just putting everything you can behind it. Did anybody teach you that? Or is that just something you picked up over time?

Steve Burke 48:41 

You know, I think a lot of that's in the DNA of NBC Sports in this particular example, but you know, these are these are inherently changing, and in some ways, risky businesses, if you run the movie business, the way the movie business was run 20 or 30 years ago, and you don't have a point of view as to what types of movies are working and how to build a portfolio of movies over a course of a year, you're not going to do well. And so I think you you it's interesting, you have to, you have to be willing to embrace new things, you have to be a good risk manager. You don't want to do 10 $250 million tentpole movies in a year, you know, and have eight of them not work and then you have the worst year in the history of the company. So you have to be aware of risk, but you have to be willing to take risks, otherwise you will fail. It's interesting. I used to say this about NBC. There was a time when NBC was trying to cost cut its way into profitability. And in these businesses, it's like a Major League Baseball team if you own a major league baseball team, it may not be the greatest business in the world, but you know that you you're not going to do anything by saving money and putting a minor league team on the field. Your only chance is to have a great team and out perform everybody else. You get to the World Series and make some real money. And that's the same way television and movies are you got to play the game, you got to go forward and be willing to take those risks and try to make sure that you have the best people making those creative decisions. You have the best creative people. You have great marketing. Steve, you,

David Novak 50:18 

you've worked with two of the world's most famous leaders. You're on the board of Berkshire Hathaway. And you've seen Warren Buffett up close and personal. What would be the number one thing you've learned from Warren Buffett?

Steve Burke 50:31 

Well, Warren, everybody says what a great investor Warren is. And he is that obviously, he's Warren Buffett. But he's, he's remarkable with people. He has a very high IQ, but he probably has an EQ as high as IQ. And he's very insightful about people and about what may makes people tick and who's a great executive. And he has the ability to identify people in businesses, the likes of which I've never seen before, but

David Novak 51:05 

And how about Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, you know, you talked about it, you you go way back all the way to Harvard, you told that story earlier.

Steve Burke 51:15 

Well, Jamie is, you know, he might be the best financial services executive of all time. And I don't say that lightly. And he's the whole package. He's obviously very smart and very driven and very insightful. But he's, he's a great leader with tremendous courage. And by courage, I mean, if he sees a problem, if there's a fire, he runs in the room and tries to deal with the fire, you know, and I've watched him for decades, he hasn't lost a step. You know, he's, and you, you were on the JPMorgan board, you saw it, it's, it's inspiring, and he gets upset about stamping out bureaucracy and waste. And he's constantly worried about stuff. And I'm sure you remember, as I feel like it was yesterday when we went through the financial crisis, and the government basically came to JP Morgan and said, You need to buy Bear Stearns, which ended up happening and the reason why JP Morgan was in a position in my opinion, the reason why JP Morgan was in a position to to help out the country and stand up and buy Bear Stearns was Jamie Dimon. Because Jamie was in his job long enough before the financial crisis to get JPMorgan Chase out of some of the things that took down other firms and into things that were safer and, and more sound. And that's just Jamie, he's, he's amazing.

David Novak 52:35 

What three bits of advice would you give to aspiring leaders, you had to boil it down to three things?

Steve Burke 52:40 

Well, one is I think, the higher you go, the more important it is you surround yourself with great people. And if you think about it, when you first start your career, you might actually be the one doing the marketing campaign or writing the script, the higher you go, the more important it is that you delegate and decentralize, that would be the first thing. Second thing is, I think making sure that you have a culture where you reward the right things. And a lot of times people reward people who tell them what they want to hear, or people who, you know, manipulate financial results are something else. But organizations are remarkably sensitive. I think about what gets rewarded and what doesn't get rewarded. And then I think, you know, I said it before, my one of my favorite phrases is think like an owner, not a renter, it's very easy to say, Well, I'm only going to be in this job for a while or you know, that's a really uncomfortable thing to go do. And maybe if I sweep it under the rug, or don't deal with it, two years from now, some other poor guy is going to have to deal with it. But the people you really want to identify are the people come in and say we've got a problem here, and I'm going to fix it. And I realize it's going to be difficult and unpleasant and risky, but I'm going to be the one who's going to fix it. And, you know,

David Novak 54:01 

Steve, one of the things that I admired about you is this very high profile. But, you know, Matt Lauer incident you know, once you dug into the facts saw what was going on within 24 hours you made a very, very tough call and here's a with a guy who's literally you know, he's You could say he's the backbone of the show the key to the profitability. How do you get the backbone to make a decision like that when when so much money theoretically is on

Steve Burke 54:29 

the line? You know, that was that one was a pretty straightforward one. And it's interesting after it was over, someone said to me, the people inside the Today Show said we think we're going to fall to number two or or a week number two, and it could mean $50 million dollars a year and profits or whatever. And that that I actually never thought about that. You know, what I thought about was NBC News really stands for something and as always stood for something, you know, you go back to pre Tom Brokaw ads, you know, the, to me NBC News has always been a special brand. And what I thought about is, what, 10 years 20 years after I'm gone, if there's somebody deciding between careers, will a 25 year old want to come to NBC News? Will it will it? Will it be the kind of place where they would feel comfortable and feel feel like it stood for something? So to me, once you once you get all that it was pretty, pretty simple. And I, you know, I'm very fortunate because Brian would never second guess, obviously, I told him what we're going to do, and has never second guessed any of those tough decisions. And then, you know, I think at the end of career, at the end of the period of time and a job, people look at those big decisions and look at what you decided to do. And it's interesting, I sometimes when I've been in big decisions, I've called people like Jamie and Warren, and almost to a person they say whatever you do, decide quickly, and make it very clear why you decided what you did, and make the decision and then move on. And so I think that's good advice. I think companies get in trouble when they have a crisis, and they don't deal with it. Or they they deal with it too slowly. Or they outsource the dealing with it. You know, they get advisors to tell them what to do. And the reality is if you're the CEO, every once in a while, you're gonna have a tough situation and you're paid to deal with it. I want

David Novak 56:27 

to have a little fun here with a lightning round of questions and responses here. So you ready for this? Okay, the three words that best describe you.

Steve Burke 56:37 

Responsible? passionate,

David Novak 56:42 

loyal, your favorite movie. Jurassic World favorite TV show? This is us. Your favorite universal, right? Harry Potter, your biggest pet peeve?

Steve Burke 56:55 

People who are dishonest with the facts of their business?

David Novak 57:00 

And if you could trade places with one person for a day, who would it be and why?

Steve Burke 57:06 

Other than you? I would have to pick somebody very young, maybe Evan Spiegel at snap. He's very young and is running a great, interesting company

David Novak 57:15 

and share a random fact about you that most people wouldn't know.

Steve Burke 57:19 

When I applied to Harvard Business School. I also applied the same year to Harvard Divinity School, and I was accepted. I did not go.

David Novak 57:28 

You know, Steve, you have incredible wife Gretchen, and you've got five wonderful kids. How seeing them grow up influenced your business. Thank you. And you talked earlier about how you and Gretchen went to that first Disney Store, how have you brought your your family into your business and and balanced your life, you're known for being able to do it all

Steve Burke 57:48 

was your you're a real family, man yourself. But you know, it helps when the businesses you're in are fun. You know, my kids like to go to Saturday Night Live occasionally. And we go to our theme parks. And you know, there's a lot of fun parts about being associated with this job. But I've always been people say this, but I really believe it. I don't think your job is the most important thing in your life. I think at the end of the day, your family is much more important than your job. And I will take a call from any my five kids and I get many, many calls. When they have a problem or they're disappointed or they they need advice. I'll take that call before any call I get from anybody inside the company. And they know that and I think you know they've always been they've always been interested in what I was doing. They were very upset when I left. You're a Disney. They were young kids then because I would bring them into the park when it was closed. They were like why would anybody ever leave this job? We need our dad to keep running a theme park. But I've been blessed. You know, I love my wife and I love my kids. And you know anybody who says their job is the most important thing in their life is probably making a mistake, in my opinion.

David Novak 59:01 

Well, Steve, I started out by talking about how much I admire you after hearing this story with and I've learned a few things that I didn't know I admire you even more. You're an incredible leader. And congratulations on a fabulous career. And I know it's not over yet. You're gonna just keep plowing away every day. But the best is yet to come for you, Steve. Well, thank

Steve Burke 59:22 

you, David. It means a lot. I respect you enormously. It means a lot coming from you.

David Novak 59:26 

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Well, I think you can tell it's really obvious that Steve is a stand up guy. He loves to work with his teams to solve problems. He draws out their ideas and then he trusts them to execute. Boy, that's a great coach right there. So this week as a part of your weekly personal development plan. I want you to really embrace that same mentality. Ask yourself, where could my organization can benefit from fresh thinking, how can I draw out my team's creativity and wisdom? Who knows? You might uncover an idea as big as Disney Stores. Or you know, maybe you'll simply find a solution to a problem that's been around for years. But either way, you're going to show your team that you value their ideas, and that's going to mean a ton. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders draw out their team's wisdom. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I'm making a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader that you can be