Episode 64: WiseTech, How to Get Great Service, Universities and the Guys Speak to Ben from Acquired
The guys chat to Ben Gilbert from Acquired about his podcast journey, the rise and fall of WiseTech's Richard White, and Adir's secrets to getting amazing customer service.
The Contrarians catchup
Adir takes a lot of pride in being able to talk his way into airline lounges all over the world, and tells a story of how one airline banned him after too many business-class upgrades.
Adir’s trick to the art of persuasion is to make the other person want to give you what you want, which he does by showing genuine interest in their business and role.
The guys revisited Crimson Education, which Adam thinks should be banned - “You could say, have you used one of these businesses and they tick a box. If you check a box, you get lower priority and it would kill the business overnight.”
Adam on Nando’s: “How not to run a business. We have lots of business owners and founders who listen to the show - understand the lifetime value of a customer. You’re never going to get it perfect but Nando’s does everything to avoid making the customer happy.”
Adir quoted a recent study that said exercise has the biggest positive impact on mental health, and playing video games has one of the biggest impacts on cognitive development.
Adam on Dan Andrews: “There is no word that expresses how much I despise this man.”
WiseTech CEO Steps Down
One of Australia’s richest people, Richard White, has resigned as CEO of WiseTech, the company he founded and led since its inception in the early ‘90s. Only two weeks ago, the guys dubbed WiseTech the most overvalued business in Australia.
Adir: “I think he has retained control of strategy and product. So that's basically the role of the CEO. And so the question is when the CEO fronts investors, are they saying ‘you guys are hopeless for not getting rid of Richard White’, or are they going to be saying, ‘thank God you found a way to keep Richard White around and running the business and placating the marke’t. And the answer to that question will be scuppered by whether the share price will now go up from here or down more.”
Adir: “What should the board be doing with this information, and what should a chair be doing with this information? And the answer is definitely more than nothing. They shouldn't just be saying, well, this is an issue that's totally external to the running of the company. Number one, because he's so intrinsically linked to the company. And number two, because at least one of the people where there’s smoke around was connected to the company.”
Chatting with Ben Gilbert from Acquired
Ben and his co-host, David Rosenthal, are podcast royalty, hosting Adam’s “very favourite podcast show on earth”.
Acquired started in October 2015 with its very first episode on Disney's acquisition of Pixar, getting a few hundred downloads in its first six months. Last month, David and Ben filled the Staples Center with 6000 adoring fans and interviewed Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify founder Daniel Ek. They've increased their audience by 100% year on year, regularly achieving 500K listeners for every episode, making it quite likely the most popular business podcast in the world.
Honestly, there are too many good insights from this discussion to put into words. Listen to the episode and check out the latest episode of Acquired below.
Five other stories worth following:
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple are on deck to drop Q3 earnings. The Magnificent 7 (which includes Nvidia and Tesla) are expected to report average earnings growth of 18% compared to less than 1% growth for the rest of the S&P 500.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, asked the board to reduce his $10.7M cash incentive, citing failings managing multiple cybersecurity breaches. Still, Nadella’s compensation package grew 63%, to a grand total of $79.1M.
Delta is suing CrowdStrike for breach of contract and negligence over the security software company’s summer outage. Per Delta, the event led to 7K flight cancellations, $380M in reduced revenue, and $170M in additional costs.
The FTC blocked an $8.5B merger between Tapestry (Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman) and Capri (Versace, Michael Kors, and Jimmy Choo), claiming it would have given the former a “dominant share of the ‘accessible luxury’ handbag market.”
Washington Post says Elon Musk worked illegally in the US. The outlet said the serial entrepreneur stayed in the US on a student visa even after he decided not to enroll at Stanford. Instead, he co-founded the software startup Zip2.