David Novak 0:03 

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 you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Carol Loomis, the former senior editor at large at Fortune Magazine. There's so much that I admire about how Carol has navigated her career. She blazed your own trail and has done things that no woman has ever done before in the journalism field, which has paved the way for women in other industries too. Not only did she create what is known today as the fortune 500 list, she's an advisor, editor and friend of Warren Buffett, who she talks to almost daily and has for decades, she even wrote a book about him called tap dancing to work. What stands out to me the most about how Carol leads is that she's taken one step at a time. She's pushed through barriers and made a name for herself by doing excellent work until she retired from Fortune. After working there for 60 years. Every job she had, she made the most of it and climbed her way up the ladder in a man's world. She's an amazing person. There's a lot to learn about her tenacity and drive and her one step at a time approach. I can't wait for you to listen in. Here's my conversation with my friend, and soon to be yours. Carol Loomis.

Carol, I always like to go back to the beginning. And tell us about your upbringing. Where'd you grow up? Well, I

Carol Loomis 1:42 

grew up in a town very, very small, a farm town in central Missouri, named Cole camp, not like you're thinking coal, but ce o l e. And that supposedly is because a man named Cole camped there and froze to death. So it's 1000 people, my high school class had 36 in it. And it was a great place to grow up. I loved it. And I've maintained close contact with it. Since I've been in New York all these years.

David Novak 2:12 

Tell me about your mom and dad. What do you learn from your mom and dad? Well,

Carol Loomis 2:15 

my mother was a homeroom teacher at the high school who came right after college there and met my dad who had grown up there. My mother went to college in Springfield, Missouri, along with her five brothers at a place called DeRay. College. My dad and I've always wondered whether it's just simply because of economics, never went to college, he was a very smart man. And the two of them are smart. And they brought me up, I was an only child, I was brought up in a very conventional way. Learn to do the right things, I think and have always thought that I was very lucky in my upbringing.

David Novak 2:51 

And now did you have any jobs as a as a kid that maybe taught you some things that helped you to be? Go go on and have such a successful career?

Carol Loomis 3:00 

Well, I think that my first job was picking cherries at a neighbor's tree. And I'm not sure that neighbor made out well, that because I love cherries, and I ate so many, I think it might not have been economically Good. Then when I was in high school, I was hired by the local bank, there was only one to work part time. And I learned a little bit about bank accounting, which I think probably was useful to me later. Those are my two main jobs. So when I was in high school,

David Novak 3:30 

when you were doing the bank accounting in high school, was that something that you really liked and took to Well, I

Carol Loomis 3:35 

did really like it. And I knew the people who ran the bank, were also a people I'd known because everybody knew everybody else in this little town. And I discovered them that I did like working. It was better than cherry picking.

David Novak 3:47 

You mentioned that your father didn't go to college. You did go to college. Did he really want you to go to college? And was that a big priority to your mom and,

Carol Loomis 3:55 

and well, it was just taken for granted that I was going to go to college, I had good grades. And everybody just assumed I was going to go to college. And I assumed I was going to go where my mother had gone because that's where all of her family had gone. So you went to jury and watching jury for two years. But I always had in mind that I wanted to be in journalism, and here was the best journalism school in the country at the University of Missouri in Columbia. So I transferred there for my junior and senior years.

David Novak 4:23 

Well, that's how you and I got to know each other because we both went the University of Missouri. Well thank God for you. You're you're doing it doing the school proud. That's great. You know, Missouri does have a very acclaimed reputation for a school of journalism. Did that help you get your first job out of college and what was it

Carol Loomis 4:37 

it absolutely did. A man who had graduated from the University of Missouri came back to look for an assistant he was running house Oregon for the Maytag company and magazine for Maytag dealers around the country. And he came down and took three of us back in a private plane. Believe me, none of us had ever been on a product line to Newton. I Were Maytag was then located and we were interviewed up there, I did get the job. But I've always thought I was helped by coming from such a small town because Newton Iowa was not big either. It was 14,000. I'm sure they sat in that room and said, she'll be happier here than those other two. Moved from bigger towns, almost everything was a bear town. When

David Novak 5:23 

you look back at that, I'm sure you learned something. What advice would you give young people today on what you should do to take a job? Why you should take a particular job?

Carol Loomis 5:30 

Well, I certainly think it needs to sound interesting to you. I don't think that taking a job because one page a little bit more than the other. But you didn't think you'd like that as much. I think that you want to get someplace that you think you will like, and as a matter of fact, I think if you don't like it, you should start looking for some other place. And then I certainly think you should be totally honest. In your job interviews, put on no errors, just tell it like it is. If they don't take you they don't take you but you hope they will. Yeah. Now

David Novak 6:02 

what did you learn your first job at Maytag? What was the big learning that you got out of that?

Carol Loomis 6:06 

Well, the first thing I learned I worked for, for a man who ran the house orden called the Maytag news. And he was a good teacher. And so I learned how he did the work. And then six months after I went there, he quit. So here, here, the company was without an editor. And there I was his assistants, I became editor of the Maytag news, six months after I had been there. And mainly the role that involves two things. Once a month, I would travel someplace in the United States to interview a successful Maytag dealer. And I took a camera along with the SP graphic, and took all the pictures. So I came back to Newton, completely prepared to do an article about this person, they were all men, I don't think there was a single woman among successful Maytag dealers. And then I had to, it was a 24 page magazine, and I had to put it together. And believe me six months out of college, even with a good education, like I had the journalism school, that was a challenge. And I'm sure I made some mistakes. I've never gone back to make a total Look, all I did. But anyway, it was a great experience for someone to be suddenly thrown into that, you have to do it. So you interviewed

David Novak 7:26 

all these successful Maytag dealers, right? If you could give one big trait that you learned from these entrepreneurs, because they put their own money in the building, taking that franchise and taking the word, what would be the single biggest trait you saw the most successful entrepreneurs,

Carol Loomis 7:40 

I think it would be the good service, the service they provided, people who had bought a Maytag from them, then had a repair problem needed to get it fixed, the dealer was going to be the man who fixed it. And the good service they supplied to those dealers, the word of mouth got around. First of all, Maytag was a high quality appliance. And then if you had a dealer who provided great service, you were really set and washing machines are so important. To the normal family and dryers, they became dryer manufacturer also,

David Novak 8:14 

Maytag thought you're gonna be there forever. Since you were moving into the big city for that small town. You grew up. Yeah. So but you moved on what made you move on to your next job? And what was that job?

Carol Loomis 8:25 

Well, I had always wanted to work for a BIG TIME magazine. Almost all the big time magazines are located in New York. So I thought I wanted to be there. The one exception, and that later came back to be very important right now. The one exception to that Big Time magazine company was Meredith, located in Des Moines, Iowa, 30 miles away from Newton. But I wasn't interested in working for a woman's magazine, I wanted to work for time ache for time, or a life or fortune, which I learned a little about when I was working in Maytag because I had a boyfriend who read fortune. I thought it was very important for me to read fortune so I could learn why he was so interested in it. And I added it to my list of time and life as a place I'd like to work. And I also read a very good speech by a 14th editor that had been printed in trade publication. So I never gave up the thought that I wanted to go to New York. And finally I had a fish or cut bait, and I came up to New York, on vacation for a wedding of a friend of mine in Massachusetts. And I set up three interviews with time and life and fortune. And time in life. Were very polite, but they didn't want to hire me. The fortune woman who was filling in for her boss didn't want to hire me, but she said I don't have an opening. I really don't have an opening. If you go back to Maytag, I will be in touch with you and I thought, Oh, this this is really going to happen. But about six weeks Slater's, she wrote me and said, I have an opening now, next time you're in New York, and that was really funny next time and I'm in New York, I've only been in New York once in my life. And I got that letter on a Thursday, Friday morning, I called her and said, Can I be a can I be at your office on Monday morning? And she said, fine. So I got there on Monday morning, and I was hired. And she later told me that if I hadn't jumped on that opportunity, and said, I'll be there right away, and I might not have been hired.

David Novak 10:34 

So what advice, Carol, can you give people on why you should change jobs? Why should you move from where you're at, in your opinion? Well,

Carol Loomis 10:43 

I realized that the Maytag job, even though it was a very good learning experience was not something that maybe years out that I was still going to be wanting to do. And also may tag, like so many other companies and not have that time recognized women, as managers. So though I was in a position where the editor of this publication would normally have been invited to be a member of the management club, I was one of several women who were never invited to do that. So that was a real roadblock, know that I didn't recognize it fully. When I look back, I think that must have been a little back in the back of my mind. And I had always wanted to be in New York and work for a BIG TIME magazine. So you just have to pick up and go when you think it's the right thing to do. So you

David Novak 11:35 

really wanted to make sure you're going to pursue your future something that you could believe on where you could grow, you wanted to be an environment where there was a level playing field, and then you wanted to pursue your passion to get to a place you've never been before and see the world basically, you

Carol Loomis 11:47 

know, exactly right. Yeah, that's, that's

David Novak 11:48 

good advice for anybody to take. Now, when you join fortune. Tell me about what that was like. And did you have an episode in your career that kind of catapulted you forward?

Carol Loomis 11:59 

Well, fortune, like the rest of the timing magazines had been set up in the way that Henry Luce thought the world should be run. Henry Luce, being the founder of all of these publications, and that was that men wrote, and women helped them. So fortune was like that. So I went into the entry level job, which was what we then call the researcher, though the title is more like being a reporter. And I was assigned to work with writers on stories. The big stories were called middle of the book stories, and they usually took about six weeks to do, which is a long time in journalism. And so I would be assigned to this senior writer. And he and I would go, every place that the story demanded that he go, like we I went out to California, I remember that we interviewed Desi Arnaz, I would take notes, reporter always took notes. And the writer would ask all the questions, and they would turn politely at some point in the interview to the reporter and say, Would you like to add anything? Carol? Any question you have, and and sometimes you would have one, and sometimes it'd be a really good one. The funny thing about all of this is that it was not something that bothered me at all, that it was women doing these jobs. And man, I was learning so much from sitting with the senior writers and seeing how they ask questions that I thought, and I still believe I had a great job. I was traveling everywhere, Chicago, Detroit, wherever the company was based, I was going there. And I was learning so much. I had no false opinions about how much I knew. So everything was a little bit of a revelation to me. And then I was promoted, and very quickly, actually, to be Assistant Chief of research. So the woman who had hired me, picked me as her assistant, and that was an administrative job. And then one day in a meeting, when they said, well, we don't have a writer to do business men are in the news. I picked up my hand and I said, I think I could do that. And so they let me do that business been in the news one time. And then not too long. After that, we started an investment column. And I had demonstrated sort of that I was interested in investments. So I was called into my managing editor's office. And he said, we're starting an investment column. We're going to need two people working on it. And I would like you to be the second writing it. And I said, what women are not supposed to say I said, but women don't write. How crazy can you be? And he said, Well, maybe we made a mistake about that. We're gonna We're in trouble. So here I was. I'd gone there in 1954. And it was 1962. So eight years after I'd been there, although I'd had a very nice administrative job and I had have not been impatient all that time. Whereas today, I think that people my age and their 20s are much more impatient about not moving up. I felt all that time that I was learning, I don't know what I would have done. If I'd said been five years more. And I was still being assistant chief for research, maybe I would have said, this isn't enough,

David Novak 15:22 

I don't know. Tell me about your mom with Fortune 500.

Carol Loomis 15:26 

When I was assistant chief of research, we actually started at one year after I got there. But then I was promoted into this administrative job, and there was nobody to sort of watch over it. And my boss, a woman who was very great in hiring, she didn't much like numbers. Well, the fortune 500 is all numbers. And people had to make decisions as to well, is this the right number? Or is this slightly different one that we should be using, so I became the overseer of the Fortune 500. And that was a wonderful thing for me, because I immediately knew I liked accounting. And everything about fortune 500 has to do with accounting and that kind of minor way. And so it was just great. So that added to my knowledge, and I'm sure it was very helpful, and later getting me the writing job.

David Novak 16:21 

Now, what do you think really distinguished you as a business journalist,

Carol Loomis 16:25 

I'm not even sure I should be given that accolade, to the extent that I brought something different to the table. It was that I was never satisfied at ceiling, like I had not learned the complete picture. I really just wanted to do one more interview so that I could fill in this gap and what I had, so I was trying very, very hard. Like, if I had been lucky enough to be interviewing you about yum brands, you know, I would have sought to do 10 interviews, I always asked the CEO for the first interview and for permission to talk to the people who worked with him afterward. And then I would ask him, let me come back, because I would have learned so much about the company, I would have realized I should have asked questions that I hadn't. And I liked explaining complicated things to the reader, because the reader often doesn't get his hand held well enough, that was an expression used at Fortune, the editor of managing editor reads, I think we need to hold the hand of the reader here just a little bit, and do some explaining that would bring the reader to the right understanding of what the problem was that was being talked about. So I think my like for numbers and my interest in explaining complicated things, those are the only two things that I would think would be different.

David Novak 17:48 

You know, even though men wrote the women did the research and all that it seems like fortune at the time was a fairly progressive company with females, you had a female interview and hire you and you said other people developed, you get it. So we've come a long way. But it sounds like fortune was leading the way at least in the journalist field in terms of how to how to develop women.

Carol Loomis 18:07 

That is right, to a certain extent, also true of time in life, that the women, that was women who interviewed me, all three of my interviews were with women. And it's kind of a human resources job. And to this day, Human Resources is a kind of women's job sometime.

David Novak 18:24 

Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, you've talked a little bit about what it's like being a woman as you were coming up. And I understand that you sued the Economic Club, because they wouldn't let you come into the club for some awards banquet, or where talk a little bit about that. That's kind of hard to imagine these days. Well,

Carol Loomis 18:38 

I know what I think we're talking about 1970. And that was a big year for women, by the way. But what happened was that the Economic Club of New York, which had monthly black tie dinners at which some famous person, let's say Henry Kissinger, spoke and he was questioned by a member of Economic Club, they called fortune and asked if we would like to send someone as a press person to cover the meeting. And an assistant got this call and came around and said to me, would you be the person? And I said, Yes, I think it would and went back and called and said, it'll be Carol Loomis, who was coming. And the man on the other end of the phone said, No, it won't. Women are not allowed. Well, that got me on the phone to the man and said, Well, I'm the logical person. The president of the New York Stock Exchange was the speaker that time I was working on a story on the New York Stock Exchange, it would have been totally illogical for any other foreign person to go to this dinner. And this man said, well, our difficulty is we don't want to have any frivolous little Smith girls who are looking for a free dinner with 1200 Man and black tie. Well, I said I think His name was Edgar Berry, if I remember I said, Mr. area, I didn't go to Smith. That was my job. So he let me come, but he wouldn't let me sit, I had to sit on the sidelines, he wouldn't let me sit at a table. So I sued. I sued in the New York City courts. And I lost the suit, because it was a private club. And they were entitled to have any rules that they wanted to. But shortly after that, they did begin to allow women and I've been asked to join, but I turned them down.

David Novak 20:33 

You have a real strong courage of conviction inside of you, you're tough as nails like it's a sweet smile, years, you know, what gave you the courage really to, you know, in this kind of environment where women are just starting to come of age, so to speak, in terms of like getting the do that they should do and the opportunities they should have. What made you have the courage to make the waves of actually suing the establishment like that? That's a big move?

Carol Loomis 20:58 

Well, I guess it is, but it just seemed to me so totally irrational of the club, what they were doing was an impediment to my career. Because if I couldn't go to this dinner, were as a man could obviously I was a little bit secondary to this 14 man who could go to the dinner. And it just struck me as totally unfair. It didn't even cross my mind that I wasn't on the right side of this. I didn't know whether the suit was going to work. But I felt better. And I believe that it made them move because they realized that there was no logic to what they were doing.

David Novak 21:42 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Carol Loomis in just a moment. When I hear Carol talk about tackling the most difficult assignments and simplifying the message for the reader. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Marvin Ellison, the CEO of Lowe's, because he too is one of those that always takes on the most difficult assignment,

Marvin Ellison 22:02 

the best way to move forward is sometime to take assignments, and no one else wants that no one else is attracted to that people looking frowned upon, because they don't think that there's a pathway to success. But when you don't have sponsors, when you don't have an Ivy League education, when you don't have mentors with influence results matter. And so I'm taking a lot of those tough assignments because I want to demonstrate that I can lead.

David Novak 22:26 

If you want to be a leader who takes on tough challenges, you're going to learn so much about how to do that. Well, after listening to this conversation. Go back and listen to my interview with Marvin Ellison, Episode 28. Here on how leaders lead. What advice would you give to aspiring female leaders,

Carol Loomis 22:48 

I would say that they should try to run their divisions or their companies or whatever they are with the same rules that men run them. Many of them have had mentors or people they looked up to in their careers. And I would think that all women, just like all men coming up to be trying to learn what works and running a company what routes and running a division. And since I've never done either one of them. I think my advice about this is limited, but learning can never be dismissed as not important and taking on something that's bigger than you've got right now.

David Novak 23:24 

The other thing I know that is a great trait of yours, you were able to really identify new things that were going on in the market. And you actually coined the phrase hedge fund with one of the articles that I know you wrote, I forget what the headline was on that.

Carol Loomis 23:39 

It was about aw Jones. And I really want to say in here that I have never been clear. And I really did coin that I'm often given credit for it. And certainly I would take credit for the fact that we wrote a story about this man, Alfred W. Jones, because he was running one of the first hedge funds, not the first one, but one of the first ones. He was making more waves than anybody else has ever made in this. He actually had worked for Fortune once as a writer. He was not widely known. But his fun that did hedging was growing and attracting new investors all of the time. And he'd never been written up. And a friend on Wall Street told me you ought to do a story about Alfred W. Jones aw Jones. And I looked into it and found out he was really right. And that story attracted a great deal of attention in the investment world.

David Novak 24:35 

The headline for the article was the Jones that nobody keeps up with. Did you write that headline or somebody else did I did suggest that's a great one. It's really good. You want to read that and you know whether you coined the phrase hedge fund or not you talk about hedging. And after that article, that whole category really took off and people like George Soros got into that type of investing. So you might have had something to do with uncovering a dip One way to think about investments through that Oh, and

Carol Loomis 25:02 

people have told me that they took a copy of the article and use it as a model for their own funds, because it really sort of spelled it all out, in a way, again, that I like to do.

David Novak 25:13 

Now, the other thing that I have learned as you've been critical about leaders setting these big, audacious performance targets, and you know, and then not necessarily delivering, you know, what advice would you give leaders in terms of setting performance targets for their team or their company,

Carol Loomis 25:29 

the businessman that I admire the most, Warren Buffett never has quarterly meetings, he just makes no claims as to out what he's going to do. He just does, it reports it, but if I were running a company, I would not have quarterly investor meetings, it would be a real step away from what most companies do. But what happens is so often that management set a target, and then they get close to that time when they have to report and they haven't made that target. And they do things that are really things that aren't good for running the business, but they think they have to satisfy investors at just a bad system.

David Novak 26:09 

Yeah. And then you took a stand on that. And in your article, and you laid that out and talked about how you know, people use accounting to not maybe potentially cook the books or to make it look a little bit better than it really is. Well, that gave you as I'm sure a pretty strong reputation as being a tough reporter. So what do you think the big you know? So let's say the CEO gets a phone call from fortunately, Carol Loomis wants to interview what what do you think went through bad CEOs mind when they got that phone call?

Carol Loomis 26:35 

First of all, I took me a long time to build up a reputation where anybody would even know who I was. But I think that in some cases, they would say, well, we're just not ready to do a story right now, if the subject is important enough, you cannot say okay, you have to go out and do the story. I did that with KKR. First time I wrote about KKR. They said no. Henry Kravis and George Roberts agreed to have their picture taken. And we put it on a cover, but they would not give me any interviews. And I said, Well, I don't care. I'm going to do a story. And I did a big story. And many years later, they came back to me and said, we thank you. We've got another story about KKR would you be interested in doing? That was a surprise. A friend of somebody said, You mean, you went to Carol Loomis and asked her to do a story because you know that that was pretty unusual doesn't usually

David Novak 27:32 

work that way doesn't care. Now, like your objectivity, which is great. You know, I also know in 1980, you were one of the panelists for the debate with Ronald Reagan and John Anderson. You know, what was the favorite question you asked? And why?

Carol Loomis 27:45 

I don't think I can remember the exact wording but I asked Ronald Reagan, I was the first question or, and I asked him about what he was going to do about inflation. And he gave a sort of non answer, because inflation was the hot subject at that time. I thought that was the right thing to be asking about. And it was, but I didn't really get a full answer.

David Novak 28:07 

He kind of moved to another subject. Well, that was a big issue back then. That was double digit inflation. You know, I remember. That was right. I remember those days. That was tough. It was very tough. Now, you've also developed a famous friendship and partnership with the person you said you admire most, which is Warren Buffett. Yeah. How did that come about?

Carol Loomis 28:24 

It's a simple story involving my husband, my husband and always had had before he retired jobs on Wall Street. And way back in 1967, I think we're talking about he was working for a company called Faulkner darkens and Sullivan, which was later one of the companies bought by Sandy Weill, he bought many companies. And John had my husband, John Loomis had a big territory that covered the Midwest, including Nebraska. And he read something about Warren Buffett a very little thing in business week, is that I think I received this guy. And he wrote Warren a letter saying, I'm going to be in Omaha on Monday. Could I please come in and see you. Warren has never gotten his ideas from the securities salesman. So the idea that he would say yes, was amazing, but he did say yes. And they got along. They had lunch. And about a month after that. And I'm sure that John told Warren that I worked for fortune. And I think that Warren was interested in that. And so about 30 days after that, let's say, Warren and his wife, Susie, first wife came to New York and invited us to have lunch. And that was the beginning of a friendship. We were invited to a conference held every two years of Warren Buffett's friends, that's the only way you can describe it. And that was just great. So we became friends. And then in 1977, Warren had decided to improve his annual letter, and he sent me a first draft and he said, Do you see anything that you might suggest? it'd be better. And my joke is that I said, Well, I think you should change this a to the. That was all I could. I wasn't bold enough. But I became his editor and have been his editor. Now, for all that time still in his editor, my winter becomes very busy. Because they do help some on the annual letter though the letter the content of the letter is entirely his. And when people refer to me, and I hear them and say, You're the writer of the annual letter, just last week, a friend did you and I would both know, said, Oh, good job. And I knew he meant writing. I said, you know, I don't write that letter I edit. There's a huge difference. The content is all Warren.

David Novak 30:42 

Well, everybody looks forward to that annual report every year because he puts the world and context his businesses in context. And it's absolutely fantastic. And it's very, as you'd say, it holds the hand of the reader.

Carol Loomis 30:54 

He does. And you know, sometimes I do help with that. Sometimes I'll say, I think you just need to explain this just a little bit more. Because he takes it for granted that certain expressions I wish I could think of a good one, are understood by people, whereas his sister whom he claims that he writes to, probably wouldn't understand that at all.

David Novak 31:14 

I heard somewhere that Warren Buffett said that he called you 90% of his working days, and that you were that close to him. And he got so much good advice from you. Can I ask what you guys would talk about what would be some of the things you talk about our typical conversation,

Carol Loomis 31:28 

I think it would be ordinarily be the business news of the day, which we were both very interested in. And if there had been something that had occurred that day, that was in the papers. That was surprising. Or maybe it was about AIG, which were both interested in AIG. If I had a question about work, that I thought he could be informative and helpful on I would ask him, and sometimes he would not. And he would sometimes tell me about something he was going to do that was very unusual. And if I thought I would if I was surprised or anything, I would say, Oh, why are you doing that?

David Novak 32:03 

You just are good sounding board for each other. It sounds like it went it went both ways, which is great. I also saw that where or heard where he said, you had a very nice way of telling people that they were full of baloney. So how do you do that? I'd like to, can you tell me how to tell somebody, they're full of it? You know, in a nice way, what's your trade that you do? They're

Carol Loomis 32:27 

not sure that I really have that skill. But I would say that Warren is very good at that himself. And he learned something from Tom Murphy, who both you and I know, a Tom has said, You can always tell that guy off tomorrow. So you don't have to tell him off today. And you can think about it. And maybe you'll never have to tell him. Wow,

David Novak 32:50 

that's a great lighting some great wisdom there. Now, you also wrote a book about Warren Buffett called tap dancing to work. Yeah. And I remember meeting with Warren, myself, I had opportunity. And he said, I you know, I love my job. I tap dance to work. You know, it's a fantastic title. I just love that. What would you say the top three things you learned from Warren Buffett that, you know, everybody ought to think about as a leader.

Carol Loomis 33:11 

If I would jump to some conclusion that maybe I didn't have the facts to back it up. He would say but you know, have you thought about this? So I think he gave me a little bit of an education and how to arrive at my conclusions slowly. Just read a friend of mine, a contractor who died. He said, you measure twice, and then you cut. So we're talking about a piece of wood or whatever it is, that's an awfully good expression for everybody to have to do the thing that really matters to you. Well, before you move on to something else. I can't think that Warren is always I would say he would have said Be conservative about things because he is conservative in the way he approaches business, particularly on price is famous for not overpaying. He just walks away if he is if he's being asked to overpay that's a very good discipline to have.

David Novak 34:13 

Now what do you think the state of journalism is today?

Carol Loomis 34:16 

The world is very difficult right now for print. I see you the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly doing a good job and keeping their audience I see Time Magazine, which I still like very much working hard and putting out great stuff. But I don't know right now, whether it's helping them or not. I see the New York Times having changed a lot. And I feel it practically all of its changes are to the benefit of its readers and local newspapers, very difficult environment for them. It's a tough world out there for print journalism.

David Novak 34:56 

What do you think of the impact of social media and how do you think that Changing the game.

Carol Loomis 35:01 

First of all, I do not own a smartphone. So you can say I have not exactly. I deplore all the twittering, the social media has obviously changed the game. And every day we're reading about something that in which ways it has we read about also about Facebook, trying to face up to its impact and things that aren't going right on that front. It's not going away. So social media isn't, but I'm, I'm sorry, it exists. I mean, that's my fun,

David Novak 35:31 

because it's too superficial.

Carol Loomis 35:34 

Well, I do think it's superficial. And I think it takes people away from more substantive kind of reading, and a lot of it isn't fact base, you're picking up things that aren't true. It's very hard to say social media is good. Do you think it's good?

David Novak 35:50 

Do I think it's good? I think it gets people voice maybe they might not otherwise have you know, but I think anything, it's like when it's done to an extreme, you know, thank you, it can be a problem. Bad news that isn't true can spread very fast. I think when I think of journalism, I think objectivity is key in what you've really tried to point out, I think, and in this discussion is the importance of going deep on your subject and doing your homework and making sure you get the facts. Right. You know, I think that isn't necessarily the case today. I think there's a lot of what I would call confirmation bias. You go to the news, it's going to confirm whatever you believe that's very true view. Do you agree with that? Right?

Carol Loomis 36:28 

Absolutely true. I myself do that.

David Novak 36:31 

Now. I remember when we were growing up, and whatever Walter Cronkite came on, or David Brinkley or whatever, you kind of assumed that what they were doing was giving you the facts and nothing but the facts and whether that was right or not. Yeah, that's kind of what we thought. I think today everybody, or the consumer of media, looks at it and says, you know, I'm not sure if I'm getting the straight skinny,

Carol Loomis 36:51 

it's one sided. Yeah, absolutely.

David Novak 36:53 

We need more. Carol Loomis is in the world. And I hope we can get him. You know, Carol, you've done so many things. And I know you're humble, but what recognition Have you received in your career that meant the most to you?

Carol Loomis 37:05 

I think when people look back on my work, I actually believe that the most important thing that I have done is edit Warren Buffett's annual letter, because he has such a huge, huge audience. And I believe that what I've done there has been important in getting that presentation. I want to use an analogy about Warren, which is that he's like a star basketball player who knows everything about how to play basketball, except he never quite learned how to dribble. So I help him dribble. That's my editing is is straightening out grammar sometimes and things like that.

David Novak 37:48 

You know what you do it, you do it extremely well. And you obviously work traveled yet? I know. You're very close to your family. You got a wonderful family, and how did you manage them balance such an intense career active career into it every day and balance the family life? Well,

Carol Loomis 38:03 

that's a good question, David. It really is. I ran into what confronts all women who work first of all, I have friend at our golf club Wingfoot golf club, who tells me I didn't know this, that when I joined there in 1967, we joined her in 1967. I was the only woman who worked okay, I didn't know that till she told me that. So I was coming up in an era where in 1961 when I graduated and then went to Fortune, and veggie for people like me, who then had a family were very rare. And I ran into the problems of doing that I had a wonderful caregiver who took care of the kids. If I hadn't had that I could never have made it work. But I still had the balance. I had to go to school conferences. I want to get home at night, I had to worry that my caregiver didn't have to cook I had to worry about getting dinner. And finally I went when I had worked for a while and had a little bit of a record of producing good stories. I went into my boss and I said I can't work 12 months a year, would you let me have three months off. And if you can't do that, I will quit and I work freelance. But I really need these three months in the summer off. And I got that and that was at a time when for a woman to have asked for that would have been very, very unusual. And I got it and I had that all of my career after I did that. And that was I could get my life back kind of synced. In the summer when I didn't have to work but my my kids would tell you that I was always there when it was important. You know when I needed to be there I was I was there. And my daughter Barbara and my son Mark. Both of them are wonderful people have both grown up into television. They both have television jobs, and I think I made it work, but it was very very hard and and people to this day, I don't think give credit to women who do work and hold down an important job how hard it is to balance that. Carol, you

David Novak 40:10 

were the longest tenured employee at Fortune 60 years, 60 years. And you were great at what you did. How did you avoid all the people coming to you with new ideas for your career, and avoid the grass is greener on the other side of the street?

Carol Loomis 40:24 

Well, first of all, I didn't have any aspiration to rise to managing editor. Now I had a husband, who had a really good income on Wall Street. So I didn't need to worry economically about whether my salary was going to be important to our family. That was extremely important. But I knew that I was a better writer than I was going to be as a managing editor. But if you wanted to increase your salary, you you really had to rise to managing editor or even think about being Editor in Chief, as one of my managing editors became editor in chief at Time, Inc. and so I was in the job I was suited for. And I liked it. And I had my time off in the summer, eventually, and I didn't want to rise, I was given opportunities to edit, they came to me and they said, How would you like to edit for the next three months. And I recognized that as an attempt to make me an editor rather than a writer, I think I would have been a very bad editor, I had a very clear vision of what I needed to do. I had two kids, I needed that three months off. It was all important. And my husband was pulling in his good salary. How lucky can you be?

David Novak 41:37 

You know, you had a very long and successful career, you worked a fortune for 60 years, which is phenomenal, how do you stay fresh and current? And on top of things? What did you do? What are your tricks of the trade on that?

Carol Loomis 41:49 

First of all, you were never forced at Fortune, do a story if you didn't want it. So you were always accepting doing the stories that needed to be done derivatives was my best example, in 1994, when nobody knew anything about derivatives outside of the trading floors, one of my elders came to me and said, How about your next story being on derivatives? And I said, Oh, God, I don't want to do that. I mean, that's, that's, oh, I don't want to do that. She said, Well, it's it was a woman. And she said, Well, you know, this is a very important topic. And it's your kind of thing. So I finally said, Okay, I'll do it. And it was, it was one of the hardest stories I've ever done in my life. But when I go back and read it, I like it. And when I was close to being forced to do stories, like when I had was asked to do on white collar crime, at a time when I really didn't do it, I did it, and then cut back to things that I really wanted to do. And 14 was wonderful in that. We didn't have beats. Now, I did a lot of stories about banks. But I didn't. I went off and did stories about other strange kinds of things. So

David Novak 42:58 

you kept current basically, because you are constantly going with the flow of the news and what was going on and staying up. Today, you'd be doing a story on Bitcoin and cybercrime? No, I wouldn't. Would you be a genius, even a bigger genius?

Carol Loomis 43:14 

Right? And what are the learning experience? You were always been asked to take on something new? Ah, that was just wonderful.

David Novak 43:21 

You know, Carol, you've mentioned your impact and recognition, you just the belief that you had a lot of impact with helping Warren with his letters, I would just say in closing this out, that I think basis, my homework and getting to know you, I think you had tremendous impact as a trailblazer for women. You think about how you rose in the man's world, how you took on the establishment when you needed to take on the established because it was the right thing to do, how you did lead the way even in driving balance. I think you just had an enormous impact. And this country is blessed to have a leader like you and I thank you so much for being on this podcast. Well,

Carol Loomis 43:57 

it's been wonderful, David, thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 44:08 

Wow, talk about

David Novak 44:09 

an incredible career from an incredible leader. There's so much we could break down and discuss here. But I just want to take us back to that seminal moment when Carol got her first opportunity at Fortune. She wasn't just sitting around waiting for luck to happen. She created her own luck by taking initiative. And I want you to do the same this week to help you develop as a leader. I want you to make a bold move. Like Carol, you might have to even jump on a plane to New York to take that big meeting. Whatever that bold move is for you. I want to give you permission to make big things happen. Because sometimes it's taking that next step that will lead you to a big opportunity. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders take one step at a time and sometimes it's a very big step. So Let's make some bold moves this week. All right, so coming up next on how leaders lead is Ken Langone co founder of the Home Depot and chairman of NYU Langone health.

Ken Langone 45:11 

I can sit here and wring my hands and say woe is me how bad it is. Or I can take a step back and say, Okay, what's my share with making this thing work better than it is right now? What's my responsibility? And what can I do to help it?

David Novak 45:23 

So come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. 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 make it 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 you can be. I'll see you next week.