[Music] today on the podcast we have Michael Linton one of America's leading CEOs Michael LED Sony Entertainment as CEO overseeing Sony's Global entertainment businesses it was a period of remarkable success but also had some serious challenges notably when North Korean hackers released private emails and unreleased films Michael had previously LED time War International as president
and was CEO of penguin where he extended the publisher into music and the internet but our Focus today is on Michael's role as a mentor he has been arguably one of the most successful startup mentors of all time discovering and nurturing a young Evan Spiegel the founder of Snapchat Michael spotted Evan after Michael's wife contacted Snapchat Customs support in a moment of
serendipity from that chance encounter Michael went on to become chairman of snap now one of the world's largest social media platforms we're going to find out from Michael what TR great mentorship looks like what you should look for in a mentor and how the relationship changes as the company scales we're also going to hear from Michael on his own experience on what
great leadership looks like and particularly how decision- making works at the very top Michael you've had an extraordinary career as a CEO you Rose to become CEO of penguin and then Sony Entertainment what role did mentors play in your ascent and once you made it to the top jobs what did you learn about mentorship from them I think the thing that people don't NE necessarily
understand until you actually become a CEO is that it is a remarkably solitary and lonely job um and it's one where you are required on many occasions to make the decision because that's why the actual Choice comes to you it's somehow been laded up to you and in those moments you really do need to be able to reach out to somebody and ask them their opinion or certainly you do need to do
that on occasion and I had the the the benefit of that in in both instances both at penguin and then later at Sony um at penguin it was my predecessor uh Peter mayor who I was um very very close to had run penguin incredibly successfully for 20 years and he was somebody I relied on to sort of tell me in those moments what I should be thinking about and then later on
um when I was at sonyy my boss Howard Stringer so Howard Stringer was also very much a mentor for me you discovered Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel in La it's a fantastic story it's it's sort of famous in St startup folklore at this point um but we'd love to hear in your words how that all started how that relationship began yeah sure so um we were gosh it was about 11 12 years ago
and we were living on the west side of La at the at the time I today live in New York City although we still have the house there and um Snapchat started on the west side of La that's where Evan was living and actually had gone to high school um as a result uh my three kids were all using SnapChat at the time the service wasn't nearly the size it is at
the moment and I started to use it so that I could communicate with them and my wife noticed it and she admired the fact that um the messages and the images disappeared her concern at the time and still remains that is this idea of permanence on the internet and how that you know came top harm people who had inadvertently put stuff up but it had to live with the results of it for the rest
of their lives um and so she saw this and uh she actually wrote over customer service we still have the print out of it um a note um to Evan uh saying how much she adire ad ired the service and particularly I remember this she also was a great admirer of the way that the terms of service for the for uh snap had been written she thought it was written
and she was right in an incredibly straightforward and simple manner so that anybody could understand it in anyway she she wrote over customer service and she almost got an immediate response um primarily because Evan himself was handling customer service at the time and she invited him over and he came over over to the house that night uh and I was over in the corner reading
the newspaper and the two of them basically spent the next two hours talking about what Evan wanted to do with Snapchat what his Ambitions were and at one point uh I think it was J Jamie asked him how could I be helpful and she he said well we're looking to raise a little bit more money and to my surprise quite candidly Jamie said oh I would love to be able to to be able to
invest with you so that's how it all started to get rolling as it turned out snap's offices were uh about a mile and a half down the road from the movie studio where I worked in in Culver City they were in Venice and Evan would at that point come and see me sort of once a month maybe a little bit more often and we would at the end of the day walk around the studio lot and Evan would
talk to me or ask me questions about various issues he was confronting um and that sort of was the start of the relationship frankly and Evan became Evan and I became very close but in truth Evan was very close with not just me my wife my three daughters you know he was virtually became a member of our family and still remains that way wow that's an incredible story and I think
your wife um could make an amazing adventure capitalist if she if she wanted to as well others have said that others have said that and and was there something um you know in the early days you obviously had a a very busy schedule was there something something about Evan that made you want to Mentor him or was it just you know the product in Snapchat's traction or was the fact that
your wife was um you know enamored with the product what was it about the situation that that kind of LED you to that mentorship role in Ence right so first of all I should say I'm I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of a mentor or a mentorship I never talked about the two people I mentioned earlier Peter mayor and Howard I never talked to them or thought of them as mentors I
thought of them as good friends and people who I would look to for guidance um and I think that's sort of the friendship that Evan and I put together or or found ourselves in um what I saw in Evan is what you would want to see in a friend um I saw somebody who is very smart very curious able to talk about a lot of subjects um and engage in them and um somebody with whom I could have a
real back and forth he was very impressive in terms of not just his vision for where he thought the internet or Communications on the internet would go but his his ideas around how to be protecting people on the internet which is um snap to this day continues to do that was also impressive and his integrity was impressive so for all of those reasons you know when when he would call up and
say can I come over for an hour and take a walk with you I really looked forward to those walks and I still look forward to getting together with Evan all the time thank you how did that relationship work and was it very structured you mentioned him coming over for for a walk and so on were you very intentional together and saying look let's get together once a week or once a month how
did that work no I I don't think it was like that I think it was much more and sort of it you know 11 12 years on it it's not that different although now we have board meetings and other things which have a certain structured Rhythm to them but in truth yeah I mean it it took on a Cadence of its own you know I mean I would my memory and I'm not sure my
memory is entirely accurate but my memory was it would be a couple of times a month and typically Evan would just call over to the office and uh make some time and we would do that but equally I remember very distinctly and that still happens too I would look down at my phone and there would be a a text or a snap to say do you have a minute to talk and that would just happen in the middle
of the day or occasionally in the evening or on the weekends so I no it was it was sort of structure it fell into a certain Rhythm but there was no formal structure to it for for for other younger entrepreneurs who are listening to this and watching it trying to understand how do you get the most out of mentors was Evan someone who was incredibly again intentional
about saying look I really want help I understand where my strengths are where my weaknesses are and I really need help from you on X Y and Z no that was never that was never a conversation Evan and I had nor was there a conversation around which is I've sometimes been approached but not not with any conclusion nor did Evan ever formally say to me I'd like you to
Mentor me any more than you would say to somebody I'd like for you to be my friend it was just that the two of us found our found that we really enjoyed each other's company and as I mentioned earlier we talked about a broad array of of of topics typically at least two-thirds of the topics revolved around snap and and and it sort of played out from there um but no there was never sort of like a it
it wasn't set up in that in that way where one person is the mentor and the other person is the mentee if that's a word and you know we had a scheduled Rhythm and anything of the kind how did the relationship evolve when you became chairman of snap and did you need to adjust the way you work together at that later stage well the the the the the relationship
already changed when we formed a board so we we we Benchmark came into the company I would say sort of one or two years after Evan and I were originally introduced and at that point they insist assisted and were right to form a board of course those board meetings at the beginning lasted all of 40 minutes because there wasn't much to discuss it was just like the chart of where you
know the growth in users was going but already then the relationship at that point there was a certain degree of formality you know there was a certain you had to cover certain topics you had to make sure that we did things appropriately you know there was a company secretary albe it somebody from the outside taking notes everything else so yeah it shifted slightly when we
eventually went off and I and formed a real board with me as chairman and took the company public there's a whole other constituency which is the board itself so up until that point I had my relationship was with Evan and with certain people inside the company who were direct reports to Evan who he asked me to meet with on occasion but once you have a board now all of a sudden and
you're the chair of the board part of the part of the job job is to actually manage the board is to make sure that the board feels that it's getting enough information that its relationship back into the into the chief executive is working well and so there's there it it it it's a little less casual at that point between me and Evan yeah because it's unusual that that mentorship or
that sort of relationship would last all the way from from startup to public company but you do you feel that your previous relationship with Evan um allows you to contribute more effectively as a chairman I think what it allows me to do is I should back up for a minute every company that I've ever been involved with or every CEO of every company that I've been involved with finds themselves
on a pretty regular basis but you know not necessarily in a crisis not like the Sony hack by way of example but certainly with a gnarly business issue and if if the if and I've if you've H if you have a really strong relationship with the chief executive the role of chairman mostly exists outside of the boardroom and you can have a level of intimacy in your
conversations that can be really helpful there so most of the you know most of the the conversation that you would have around those business issues don't happen in the boardroom partially because you know you only meet as a four or five times a year these business issues come up all the time and at that point you just pick up the phone and ask advice and I think partially because we
do have such a strong relationship um the ease with which either one of us would pick up the phone to the other one was was there and and reflecting back some earlier parts of the conversation it seems like the relationship really grew out of a a friendship liking each other and and a mutual curiosity around around discussing various intellectual topics is there anything else that's
been core to the relationship that has allowed you to really have this almost decade or decade more than a decade now um long long-term relationship any other qualities yeah well first of all I should stop by saying I don't think our conversations were always just around intellectual subjects I think it ranged you know cars Sports you name it I mean it was you know it was pretty much
across the board honestly not like we were walking around the studio a lot talking about Kirk guard and the future of Western democracy that was that was not on the list maybe maybe very very only on Fridays yeah only on the Fridays um but sorry I missed the the the second part I'm just wondering if there's any other qualities to your guys relationship that's allowed it to endure
and flourish over a decade plus you know sometimes the the founded chairman relationship can can become quite strained you know I think it I think it's really down to I don't mean de sound trite I I really think it's down to a couple of things I think it's down to whether you genuinely like each other and whether you genuinely trust each other and the latter is probably the
most important because there are moments where you have to be and and those not are not always very easy you have to be really honest with one another as to how you see the world or how you see what's going on in the business um and obviously people have different perspectives um I think the part part of the key there is um to be flexible and to be um to be supportive
certainly toward the CEO as I mentioned earlier in this talk that's a lonely job and oftentimes particularly in a startup let alone in a big company you need reassurance that this stuff is going the way it should be going but by the same token and that's what I was sort of indicating earlier about the honesty part there's plenty of times where Evan and I saw the world differently where I
said g whiz I've seen this before and maybe we should try something differently but it never got to the point and I think we were both very conscious of not letting it get to that place where we sort of got dug in and said this is how it has to be I and so that I think is partially what prevented any kind of major blow up or um you know know a a fracture in our relationship
and that's probably why it's lasted as long as it has brilliant Michael if you zoom out a bit and think about mentorship more broadly what do you think mentors get out of mentorship and you know in your case it was obviously incredibly rewarding on so many levels but at the beginning there was no clear Financial incentive it was so not obvious that snap was going to go on and
become this huge success but yeah what do you think mentors get out of mentorship I can only speak for myself obviously one thing is when you get to a certain age you like to be with people who are younger than you makes you feel young that's you know that that's a certain piece of it um and and and and I enjoy that part of it is um it's fun to be fair to to sort of teach for me at
least I I suspect for other people who try and do this kind of thing it's fun to see um sort of pattern recognition of things I had seen happen during my uh professional career and be able to say to somebody G whiz you may want to think of it this way or that way that's a part of it too um it does feel a little bit like you're giving back or being helpful
I will say as somebody who has three daughters in their 20s um all of whom have their own careers it is it is way let me put it to you differently as a parent you're rarely a good guide in people's professional life for one thing your child doesn't typically listen to you nor should they necessarily um for another the nature of that relationship is way different than the nature of the
relationship you would have with somebody who's that's either just purely professional or just purely friendship um and so with three kids who weren't always listening to what I might want to say to them it's also nice to have somebody else who might want to listen I'm going to be honest and I suspect that's true of some other folks as well for sure that definitely
resonates um well you know I think I think uh You' you've now led a few organizations uh Michael and obviously you've seen Evan leading his organization do you have any um you know stepping back do you have any principles or lessons around leadership you could share with the audience today um I mean the typical ones are the typical ones which is to say and I and this took me a long time
in my own life to understand the organization looks to the chief executive to understand what True North is for the company in terms of behavior models in terms of how decisions should be made in terms of management style all the rest so I think the the person at the top the chief executive one of the things you have to be aware of all the time or you know if you're not aware of it it just
comes naturally to you is that you serve that role and what however you're behaving gets Amplified through the organization um but that I think is pretty well known I think the the the the bigger issue which is the one that I sort of talked about earlier is that when you get to be in that job it is absolutely critical that you make decisions and I know that sounds
like a ridiculous remark but um be before that role you're not necessarily responsible for all your decisions nor do you have the ability to make the decisions that move the organization um and the reason why those decisions come onto the chief executive's desk is because that person is that now the last the buck stops here as was famously said at least here in America and um the
the thing you cannot do is get stuck dear in the headlights um as the chief executive because that doesn't help anybody and you have to recognize that when you're making those decisions half the time you're going to be wrong and you just have to be certain that those the half the time you get wrong you're not sinking the company the more you do make those decisions and and are decisive in
that way it sort of builds up a muscle and you you you start to be more and more comfortable with taking on accountability for for things like that and I think that when you see a seasoned chief executive that's what you see oftentimes and and people underrate that and I the the the thing that I encourage people to do in their professional careers is to get into positions and
companies as early as you can where you're making decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions so that you can can sort of build up that muscle memory over time no no decision is is a decision as well I think is one thing I yeah but it typically doesn't get you very no no but it's it's a decision hidden but you you've spoken about how Steve Burke um who brought you
over to Disney taught you sort of about the importance of decision- making which we've just discussed maybe you could tell us a little bit about that story of how he uh conveyed that information to you I met Steve right out of business school he hired me right out of business school into the Walt Disney Company and Steve Burke is in my mind one of the if
not the best Executives not just in the entertainment business but in any business I've ever encountered he he embodies all the qualities that I've described earlier a person of high integrity a person who really puts you know always pretty much does the right thing and he's not a person who diers on decisions and he never actually said anything to me with respect to that I just observed
I mean when you came to Steve with a choice um he actually I virtually every time that I can think of made it made it made a choice around that you know he said I I think we should do this or I don't think we should do that was he right all the time of course not nobody's right all the time but he was never impulsive he's never impulsive he looks at the facts um he's objective in
the way that he looks at things and in that respect I've always had Steve in my mind ey because he embodies that for me Michael if you step back and think about Evan as a leader what do you think it is and was about him that has made him such an extraordinary founder and then an extraordinary CEO as well I mean I think what Evan combines first of all from a very he's a young
guy still but when I met him he was 20 21 years old and even then and certainly now he's way more mature than anybody I at that age he had extraordinary gravitas um and obviously highly intelligent but Evan mixes two things um which seem at the contradictory on the one hand he is very decisive you know he's a person who understands where he wants to take the
company um and on the other hand he's a person who's highly curious he's always asking questions trying to um understand not just the company better but the world better and I think those two qualities really play out with in in him as as the as as the leader of snap the other thing and it's very much part of the ethos of the company is he's kind he's he's a really kind person and that
plays out as well importantly inside the company and you know as a result one of the other reasons I've been there as long as I have is and I can I mean I I'm not sure yeah I can probably say it about other places but there is never been a day or a moment where I've not been proud to be part of snap and in large part that's because of Evans leadership amazing we're gonna finish
Cameron's gonna ask you our question which we ask every guest Michael which will make you blush a bit but Cameron over to you sure so what what is it about you Michael that has made you be so successful in life well I don't know that I've been that successful in life um I don't know I mean I think in my day not the case so much any longer I was very driven that certainly helps um and
I wanted to build things and I enjoyed running organizations and having and working with people um I think people could rely on me always to not necessarily make the right decision but certainly make the the the decision that I felt was fair and appropriate in the moment and I think there are two things I guess I think people trust me what what what
they hear me saying is what I believe and what I live up to um um that's a certain part of it and I think people secondly have fun working with me quite candidly um so those two things in combination I think has been very helpful toward you know toward my career well I can add my own slight lens on it as we share a board now um with with Sesame one of our giant portfolio
companies and I think you you've always been a very um incisive and I would say trusted voice in the board discussion so I've seen it up close and could confirm that I I I try on doing it in a board is a little bit different than doing it as the chief executive but I try as best I can on the one hand to be respectful of the of the management and the chief executive on the other hand when things
are really need to be said I'm oftentimes the person who say it says it in As Nice a way as I can because sometimes it's not such it's not the best news but I and try and do that so we Al we also try and always summarize a little bit at the end what we've what we've what we've learned on this giant ideas podcast so I'll give give it a crack so the importance of friendship
and I would say uh trust in mentorship the the role Serendipity plays I think in in life and bringing mentors together and then I think as a leader whether as a CEO or or otherwise the importance of decisive and clear decision- making so Michael thank you so much for sharing your giant idea with us today the power of mentorship thank you Michael pleasure thank you thanks very much [Music]