YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Portnoy

lines on the record: 61
first: 2020-10-02
most recent: 2020-10-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And it's like, okay, this person may have something. We'll let you run wild. So, you know, Caller Daddy is an example that is probably a pretty good one. And not everyone's cup of tea, but the largest female probably podcast in the world. I mean, it's gigantic. And it's a girl Alex Cooper, who we saw a very rough sketch of a podcast she did. It's like, ooh, this is interesting. This is something we haven't seen before. And there was a promo video with it that was very slick. It looked like it was professionally done. So we reached out to her and had a meeting with her. And I sat down. And she's a beautiful blonde girl. And I was like, who made this video, this promo video? And she's like, I did. I edited it. I cut it. I did everything. I learned how to do it all myself. And that was when it's like, okay, we're going to give her a chance.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so a lot of times I say we are one of the oldest digital media companies on the planet. So when I started Barstool, it was a newspaper as we discussed and then it morphed to a blog. And when we started blogging, if you told somebody what a blog was, they would have been like, what is that? We're very early to the game. And I also say that Barcelona Sports was born from the internet. All of the people we have, the only way people know who they are is because they were able to essentially stand out by working harder, smarter, being funny. It's not because they put on ESPN or something like that. So we were born from a different generation and we have a good eye for talent in podcasting. We were very early too. And we let our talent basically do whatever they want. As long as we think you're funny.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Career is I didn't really take any profit or money off the table even when money started coming in. I just kept reinvesting it, reinvesting it, hiring more people, trying new events, trying new things to try to grow the brand.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Prove yourself and will pay you. You want to work for me? If you can sell ads, I'll give you huge commission 30% commission, 50% commission. There's no risk on my end. If you're willing to do it, you can do it. So we had a very prove it. Like if somebody said they wanted to work for us or could do something, it really was, we'll give you the opportunity, but you're not going to get like you're going to have to earn everything you get. Once you earn it, then you got a spot at the table, so to speak. But it was, you know, we really did it bootstrap and watch cost and all that stuff once we switched. So basically, I did everything in the beginning. We were able to get some advertisers. Remnant advertising and banner advertising, you didn't need a huge staff or force to really run the thing. You needed more people to try to grow it more than anything. And that was something I did consistently throughout Barstool.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, probably so start around 2004, probably around 2010, we were more hiring other writers. But I really did a bunch of it. The model I went with in the first employee I ever had who's still with me, who I call sales guy, you know, the model was...”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every single week. And it was. It was hard to put it into words. And I've also said this is the only business I've ever started. And obviously most businesses fail, especially in the print industry. I don't know if I just got somewhat lucky and I'm one for one and who knows. But I always have that gut feeling, hey, this is picking up. If I just stick with it, it's growing. It's growing. It's growing. So I always got a good reception.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People loved it. You know, it was very different. And in the early newspapers, I said I was looking for writers. And I got very lucky in that we assembled a terrific group of writers who stuck with me and worked for free for the early days just because they want to write. They enjoyed it. And so the content was very different and always evolving. It was always humorous. It was a different take. And slowly we morphed away from just strictly gambling and sports to more men's lifestyle. It was always a good reception. And when I judge it, it would be if 10 people took the paper and said they enjoyed it the first time I did it. The next issue would be 20 people. And the next issue would be 40. And the next 80. So it always was slowly growing. And there was something in my gut that's like, I'm on to something here. I don't know what it is. But it felt like it was growing.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Off Craigslist for about $1,800 is what I paid for it. And I would load up the newspapers all the way to the roof, and I would go on about $24 to 48 hour paper route all around Boston, the suburbs outside of Boston, every single subway station loading up my news racks with the newspapers. So I come back looking, you know. Dishevel, to say the least. So that was my life. No vacation days, no nothing for probably about a decade. It was a grind. It was delivering the newspaper, writing the newspaper, selling the ads, pretty much a one-man show.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'd be yelling at people like, grab this newspaper, take the newspaper, and then after I did that, so I'd go from wake up four, get to the subway around 5, 5.15, hand out newspapers probably till the morning rush was done, I don't know, 9 o'clock. Then I would go home and I would write. I would do or call for sales ads or do everything else day to day. Then around 3.34, I'd head back into the city and I would hand out newspapers again to catch people on the afternoon commute on people's way home from work. And then after that was done, I would go back home, write some more, and try to get to do everything else. And the other huge part of what I did, the newspaper started off weekly in the beginning, but that was not the right way to do it. It turned to bi-weekly quickly. And I was also the newspaper delivery boy. So I bought this AstroVan.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's 100% true. So the typical day or week, however you want to look at it, when I started it, it was myself. And, you know, there'd be all these fake names in the newspaper because I didn't want people to know it was a one-man job, you know. So I had just made up aliases for my sales guy, my marketing guy, all this stuff. But I would generally wake up about four in the morning, go to a subway stop outside, you know, Boston in the financial district or wherever it may be, I rotate and I would hand out the newspapers as they were people heading into work.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen, the journey that was going to go on. And really, it didn't look any, well, I was going to say it didn't look anything like it did now, but it did start as a gambling fantasy newspaper, you know, as a four-page black and white gambling rag they used to hand out around T-Stations and subway spots in Boston. We've come full circle since we're now, you know, have a gambling app and got purchased by Penn National. So it did come full circle. But no, I had no idea. The truth of the matter is I always wanted to try to start my own business with the goal being I would rather work for myself than somebody else. I'd rather work a billion hours a week than the normal typical workday where it was a nine to five, but I wasn't in control of my own destiny. But I had no idea what was about to come with Barstolton. No clue.”
2020-10-02 · Masters in Business · Dave Portnoy on the Business of Sports Media (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source