You're listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Welcome to Math and Magic.

I'm Bob Pittman.

On this podcast, we've talked with dozens of guests, ranging from record executives and CEOs to data strategists, musicians, and more.

Much of the success we've heard about stems from innovation, those times when someone sees a gap in the market or a problem with a business model and comes up the fresh perspective.

In today's bonus episode of Math and Magic, we'll hear from those innovators, and they're incredible business breakthroughs.

Blake Schol is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, a company building the next generation supersonic passenger plane.

If you're unfamiliar with supersonic flight, it's a marvel.

I was fortunate enough to fly on the famous Concord, which flew at roughly twice the speed of sound and upwards of sixty thousand feet, making it possible to travel from London to New in under three hours.

At the time, it was too expensive to sustain the Concord flu its last route in two thousand and three, and commercial supersonic flight was largely put on the back burner.

That's where Blake comes in.

A fellow aviation nerd.

He honed his chops at Amazon and Groupon before leaving to pursue his passion making commercial supersonic flight viable.

I think there has always been tremendous consumer excitement and supersonic The problem was that it wasn't offered at a price or an experience that made it make sense.

There has always been consumer interest in more speed, and when more speed is offered at a price point and in locations that people can really afford, it changes where we do business, It changes where we vacation, It even changes who we can fall in love with.

I want to dig into some questions about the how what were the big hurdles to get this thing started?

The tail end of my time at Groupon, my VP asked me to come and run a big piece of the core business, and so I was running relevance and email and a lot of what was the core of Groupon, and it was so uninspiring.

I was paid very well.

In my mind, I said, Okay, the money I'm saving from this gets socked away in what I called the fun fund, and in my head that was the buy an airplane fund.

I actually never bought the airplane, but the savings for the airplane became the seed capital for BOOM.

I had had a Google alert on supersonic jets since my mid twenties, and so I thought, Okay, take a deep breath.

I'm sure there's a really good reason why no one's building supersonic jets, but I want to discover for myself what that is.

I kept finding a whole bunch of stale, conventional wisdom that didn't stand up to a fresh, quantitative look at what was really possible.

Everyone tends to assume everyone else has it and the right people are already on the problem.

And the bizarre consequence of this is that really large of as things can go unaddressed for long periods of time because everybody assumes it's either impossible or the right people who are already on it.

I think supersonic flight was one of those who wouldn't want a faster airplane.

Literally everybody would benefit from flights that are faster and more convenient.

So there was this implicit assumption that there had to be something wrong with that idea, or else somebody would be doing it.

And then you could go on YouTube and there were plausible sounding but not actually correct explanations.

Like you know, one thing that was said was you have to solve the sonic boom problem in order to find a market.

Another was that when supersonic came back, you would have to be a private jet for the ultra wealthy, not an airliner.

Another was that it would inherently cost more.

And it turns out none of that is true.

And you know, one of the lessons I learned from that experience is never accept a qualitative answer to a quantitative question.

So let's go to the big question, why will you succeed when the others fay.

Well, it's certainly not guaranteed that we'll succeed.

There's a lot of challenge ahead of us.

Fortunately, there's also some challenge in the rearview mirror.

I can talk about why I think the time is right and why if Boom doesn't succeed, it'll be our failure of execution, not a failure of opportunity.

You know, fifty years after Concord was designed, we've had both significant progress and basic airplane technology and huge growth in the market.

So imagine Concord twenty thousand dollars ticket if airlines were charging a quarter of that, say like five grand on our plan on overture, it'd be incredibly profitable.

And it has the legs not just to do a couple of headline routes, but it's economically viable one hundreds so not just New York London, but Seattle to Tokyo and La to Sydney and Miami to Madrid, just to give a few examples.

And we're able to go build that airplane using only technologies that have been proven safe, reliable and efficient.

So from a technological perspective, this is at the same level as a gaboe in seven eight seven, meaning it's a carbon fiber composite fuselage.

It's got advanced turbofan engines, fly by wireflight controls.

We could keep nerding out about it.

Every single thing on the airplane has a precedent of flying on other commercial airplanes and being accepted as safe by regulators around the planet.

If Blake's business gamble pays off, he'll shape how people travel for generations.

I met my next guest during my MTV days.

It was the nineteen eighties, and we set out to do something that hadn't been done before.

Mix television and music.

My friend Jerry Laborn had a similar idea Taylor television to kids with Nickelodeon.

As the head of MTV Networks, which owned Nickelodeon, I gave Jerry the shot to bring her idea to life.

And Jerry's approach would prove revolutionary.

And it all started with a love and understanding of kids.

I wanted to know where her vision came from.

Well, it came from being a teacher and a researcher with kids.

I love kids.

I'm a natural kid advocate, and I thought that television routinely looked down at kids and condescended to them and gave them subpar creators.

And I felt like if you listened to kids and you treated them as if they were really smart, you could do some pretty interesting stuff.

If you remember, we had no money.

I remember that we couldn't do what anybody else did.

I would research everything that people said about kids TV, like program only to boys, girls who will watch anything, kids will only watch animation.

I'm such a contrarian.

It's like, Okay, if everybody else is going that direction, we're going to go this direction.

We had just introduced the idea of a network identity as opposed to a network delivering programs with the viewer's affinity attached to just the program, and we decided that Nickelodeon could do the same thing.

How did you define that and how did you make the big move from a somewhat corny silver bouncing ball for preschool or Nickelodeon to the cool new Nick you created.

Well, first of all, I just have to say we never turned our back on preschoolers.

We had the best preschool programming ever, but we had to be very careful to put it in its own bucket, so we called it Nick Junior.

Our target was ten and tween, so that was a key thing because we were known for being a baby channel.

I think you know the story of my son throwing his Nickelodeon hat in the closet when he was five, sobbing, and I said, what's the matter and he said, they say, Nickelodeon's a baby channel.

Honestly, my inspiration for Nickelodeon was Sam.

He was the coolest little five year old you ever saw, and we just grew up with them.

But I'd also say that I was a student of what you were doing.

I saw how right it was that if you focus on the audience and delight them and let the creative community do their best work without man handling or woman handling them, that you're going to get a really interesting result.

That's what we did.

We created, just like you did, a list of promises that we were the first network for kids.

We were completely on their side.

We were going to bring them the best creative we possibly could.

One of the things we did when we started taking advertising, we would get buckets of mail.

They would be decorated on the outside with kids' own shapes.

Because the idea behind Nickelodeon is it's like a kid's mind constantly transforming.

We knew that if we took an envelope that was decorated on the outside, we could take it into a sales meeting and just let them open the letters.

And it worked.

It worked, But that was a lesson from MTV get identification that kids can make their own.

Jerry's vision changed children's television forever and for better.

What I love most about our interview was the simplicity of her mission, listen to kids and create a brand that's unafraid.

To grow with them.

We'll be right back after a quick break Welcome back to today's bonus episode of Math and Magic.

Like Jerry Paris, Hilton knows a thing or two about compelling television.

When her show The Simple Life debuted in two thousand and three, it did so to record ratings, and the years since, her media ventures have included reality shows, documentaries, books, podcasts, and a successful career as a DJ, business person and CEO.

And she's just getting started.

I just saw the value in having a personal brand.

I think it maybe just came from being brought up in the Hilton family and in the hotel business and seeing that as a brand, and then realizing that I could actually turn myself into personal brand.

How did you start on that path?

What was the first step that you began?

Well, when I moved to New York City.

Before that, I'd lived a very sheltered life.

But then all of a sudden, I started getting invited to all these premieres and events, and people started sending me products, And then all of a sudden, they were paying me to wear these products and the products were selling out.

So I just realized there was a power in that.

You know, this was way back before there was a name for being an influencer.

There was no social media.

This was more the traditional media.

And then all of a sudden, I started getting paid to go to parties, and then I parlaid that into a huge business and then from there the Simple Life, and then the rest is history.

Let's look at the brands, Paris brand, how do you decide what fits the brand and what doesn't fit the brand.

What's fun with my brand is that I get to do everything that I love, and that was one of the reasons that we created eleven eleven Media because I have just so many different business verticals of what I do, everything from podcasting to music to film, television, building products, the metaverse.

I feel that my brand has so many sides to it, whether it be the music side or more of the business side.

But my brand has definitely evolved, you know.

It all started with the character that I built for The Simple Life, which kind of playing on that blonde stereotype persona.

Now ever since my documentary and especially now with my memoir, people now see me as a businesswoman and an advocate and everything else that I've built.

Growing up.

Much of Paris's story was told for her in tabloids and through the context of her family, Her breakthrough came after she took control of the narrative and turned her famous brand into a new business genre.

Ted Lee Ansis is a in a very different business genre.

He's a tech investor, a former executive and colleague of Mind at AOL, and the CEO and founder of Monumental Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, and Washington Mystics.

Ted is nothing short of a magician.

He's an expert motivator who understands the importance of building purpose driven businesses.

Ted also sees things early and in a way others can't.

He's always innovating.

Case in point, as the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports, he's invested in exciting technology that will transform both the player and fan experience.

Think listen, you know.

I came into sports in nineteen ninety nine.

Everyone lived on Fax machines and we were the first team.

At least we gave everyone personal computers.

I gave everyone email addresses.

It was basic connectivity.

But then we started to say, hey, this is a platform to launch a lot of new technology, and then if it takes hold here, it can be nested if you will within sports and arenas because we touch so many people, and then move into general media, and so the first big investments that were being made were selecting of teams for coaching the players, and the amount of work that was done in high speed cameras and being able to create these heat maps on where was the optimal place for the player to take the shot.

When you were playing defense, we would pixelate the floor.

And I remember once Kobe Bryant were playing the Lakers and he was going to get the end of game shot and was, well, if you can move Kobe two pixels to the left, he shoots thirty eight percent.

If he's those two pixels to the right, he's forty four percent.

All you can do is get him to the suboptimized place.

And we're the most transparent of providing that data to fans, to coaches, and now to sports betters.

Right they have access to more data, certainly than a Wall Street trader has in trying to pick whether you should short a stock.

So I looked at sports as being the most data rich side on the product.

And now it's moved into marketing.

We have a database and monumental sports and entertainment that's closing in on four million active records, where we really know who's coming into the building, how long have they been a customer, what have they spent, how do they renew who do they give their tickets to, how far do they travel?

What are they're viewing habits?

Are they streaming now?

Are they still watching games on cable?

How important is radio?

One thing I'll say, radio and digital radio and podcasting has become incredibly powerful and on trend again.

We have to innovate.

We have to keep pushing the envelope to build our audience and really be relevant.

And the only way that you'll be able to innovate and provide those services and build value is to know who they are, what they do in a real way.

Build value using data, then connect the dots for your consumers.

It's excellent advice for anyone looking to break through in business and a through line for all the innovators we've heard from today.

I'm Bob.

Thanks for listening to this season of Math and Magic.

We'll be back with the new season soon.

That's it for today's episode.

Thanks so much for listening to Math and Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

The show is created and hosted by Bob Pittman Special Thanks to Sidney Rosenbloom for booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feat.

The math and magic team is Jessica Crimechitch and Baheed Fraser.

Our executive producers are Ali Perry and Nikki Etoor.

Until next time,