In this episode Rich and Paul discuss how Succession has shows up in real life, in people that they've met and how it portrays our world in the media. They offer advice of how you could chase success and avoid Succession. This podcast is sponsored by Aboard - it's live, it's free and it's a healthy corner on the web, Sign Up at aboard.com.

You ready to get topical, Richard?

Let's get topical.

Ooh, topical.

Oof.

So we usually try to keep it kind of evergreen on the show, but

there is one television program.

I'm Paul Ford,

I'm Rich Citi.

There's one TV program we both watched.

I don't watch much tv.

You watch a little more than me.

You're not a big TV guy

Not big, but I watch a little more and I like my Yankee

Yeah, exactly.

But succession had, its, uh, so it, it, it had its finale

series, finale.

This, this program talked to me in a lot of different ways as like

a New York media guy, and so I think I want to talk about that with you.

you struggled with it.

I could tell

hated everybody.

I wanted them all to die real bad.

Many

people did.

So, um, you know, I, I wish we could play the theme right

now, but I don't think we can afford that, cuz we're keeping it on a

shoestring here at Zdi Ford Advisors.

Uh, but now we're gonna play our theme and, uh, let's talk

about succession spoilers.

By the way, spoilers are coming, so, you know, now's the time

to stop if you haven't seen it.

Spoilers.

Spoilers.

All right, let's get into it.

So, Richard.

What was that show about?

We, okay, so let, let's just for anyone who's listening to this who

doesn't care about spoilers, um, it's about a very wealthy family.

Mm-hmm.

There's a horrible dad who's kind of a Rupert Murdoch type and

Yeah.

Uh, I mean,

and his confession

really borrows from a lot of like parallels from real life then

Viacom, yeah.

And then,

Fox News,

of it.

so it's ru um, Logan Roy and his three crappy spoiled children

in their thirties and forties.

And one of them wants to run the company.

And that's the whole show.

That's

kind of the whole show.

And it's, they

they all want run the company, but one of them

is always jockeying and then

they all wanna run the company.

That's right.

And

in the end, none of them get to run the company.

In the end, none of them get to run the company.

And, and it's a, you know, as a, as someone who ran companies, it is, it is

fascinating to see how companies at a certain scale actually have their own.

Designs that have very little control is dispersed.

Right?

You have investors and board members and whatnot.

So it's fascinating to see, you know, the people who feel they

should just be descendants of a thing

Mm-hmm.

Just

inheriting it.

Um, lose control because I.

That's what big companies, what happens with big companies is you often lose

control, um, just because of the dynamics.

Uh, founders get fired by boards.

That happens, uh, and it's a wild thing.

Um, so that's a sort of a side observation.

So, um, I

did you enjoy it, Paul?

No, I hated every minute of the show.

Why'd you watch All four

cause it was like going to work.

Um, the.

The, uh, I thought it was interesting.

Here's what I, I always think is interesting, you know, how many movies

are made where it's like, uh, a dad is really distracted and doesn't come

home and has to learn the value of family because, you know, like Elf,

the movie Elf, like an elf shows up.

Yeah.

And it's like, you need to spend more time with your kids.

And at the end they're like, it's Christmas, I love you, daddy.

You know, and it's, um, I love that because there is no industry

that neglects its children more than the filmmaking industry.

It's like everyone making that movie about family and togetherness was

completely ignoring their children for months while they made elf.

Right?

Like just, and so I, I, it's always important when you see stories made, like

narrative.

People write and create things in order to kind of get a little

control in the world, get a little revenge, get a little sense of

resolution of some kind.

Right.

and you definitely see like this is the filmmakers and the actors

and the screenwriters are analyzing and observing their bosses, essentially

like this is a media creation company.

An entertainment company.

Mm-hmm.

And it, so that part is very appealing.

Cuz it was revenge.

It was revenge for them to point up the chain and go, your lives are pointless.

You're stupid and annoying.

horrible people.

and I hate working for you.

I hate it.

Okay.

And that's

so did you get satisfaction out of seeing that?

Uh, I did actually.

I enjoy seeing the ality of it up close because I think

they captured some of that.

They filmed everything in Hudson Yards, which is our, our like sort of.

Neo futurist, New York City playground for, you know, Taiwanese billionaires.

Come and get enormous apartments there and never visit them.

Yeah.

it's sort of like our piece of Dubai right here in New York City.

Yep, yep.

exactly.

So you have this kind of like a built-in bleakness that's fun to watch.

Um, because I, I recognize it.

Yeah.

Um, but no, for the most part, I looked at all those people and all I

could see were clients in, in every aspect I, I'd be like, okay, have I ever met

a Roman, have I ever worked for a ship?

I've worked for plenty of ships.

Um, Logan's, I never got close to those.

It's like they just hired McKenzie.

worked for a Logan.

You did, you worked, you worked for an actual Logan Roy.

Like same amount of money.

I actually worked for a media mogul for a couple of years and I

Who was a lunatic?

Like not just

was a lunatic.

I don't have a problem sharing who it was.

His name was Bob Silverman and he was this incredibly smart.

Um, alpha male, just sledgehammer that terrified everyone.

And, uh, his company, uh, acquired my little agency and I pretty much became

the cto, cpo, chief product officer.

And, and de facto reported to him.

He would call me in and, and, and I would watch everyone

around him prepare for the me.

They'd have meetings.

To prep for the meeting with him,

I was advising you and I would be in some of those

and it's wild and I didn't understand it.

And they're like, we can't tell him that.

I'm like, but we have to tell him that otherwise we're gonna look bad in a month.

So why don't we tell him that now?

And.

I think he sniffed that out about, see, the thing for me was, I, I was done.

I, I didn't want, there was nowhere to get promoted.

This was a bizarre, surreal kind of clown show.

I got my money, I sold my business.

So he was like, oh, you actually don't care and you don't have an agenda.

Tell me what you think.

And I actually built a rapport with him, but I was definitely the exception.

He melted everybody.

This guy would just grind you to a fine

let's be clear.

It was exhausting for you.

Most people were like immobilized.

mean,

yeah, I didn't win here.

I bailed.

I I, I was like, I went to him and I was like, you don't need me anymore.

I shipped the thing.

Can I go home now?

And he's like, yeah, see you later.

And that was the end of that.

I met this guy once or twice and I mean, it was, it was, it

was like sandblasting to your face

He was a mean person actually.

He was actually, and, and so was Logan Roy.

I mean, Logan Roy was a cruel, mean person and I think he was,

he did have a killer move though.

Rest in peace, Bob.

But like, he, he was real ill.

I had, I sat with him once and he goes like, do you mind if I have my lunch?

Of course.

He goes, do you mind if I have my lunch?

Cuz he had a sort of throat issue and he, he, um, I said, no, of course not.

And he went to a closet, pulled out a gurney and, and shoved a like, yeah,

like a catheter into his stomach, into a hole in his stomach and it, and

maintaining eye contact with you.

No discussion.

Eye contact.

Yeah, go on.

You know,

Yeah.

It was something And

and it's, you know what it is.

Uh, the one thing they capture about the CEO dynamic at the big company

where everybody lives in fear and they filmed it this way, it's like a

horror movie throughout succession, wherever Logan is, Logan gonna pop up.

And eat you.

Well, he was this overwhelming presence and, and,

which is why actually, and I want to hear when he dies, you can't

kill the monster in the third act or, or the beginning of the third act.

Yeah.

You kill the monster at the very, very end.

And so like, after they killed the monster, you're just like, oh,

well, you know, Darth Vader's dead.

Yeah.

You know,

and, and, and I think, and I want to come back to that, um, I look, I

think, I think when he d they refused to, they wanted distance from the end because

they didn't want it to be resolution.

Like the whole point of succession is there is no resolution.

the theme song doesn't resolve,

nothing resolves.

Right.

And, and, and I think to me, that is the overarching message of succession, which I

don't think anyone, I've seen all sorts of theories online about what it was about.

Why did it go play out this way?

And no one talks about this, which is we today live in.

An adversarial environment on social media, on television, um,

in politics, everything's a fight and you're waiting for the ref to

raise one arm and say, this guy won.

Right?

And what succession is effectively doing and saying is, um, we as humans are

really terrible with perspective and that we fight and we claw, and then.

The most powerful among us drop dead in a bathroom, right?

Mm-hmm.

And that message and that signal all the way through the show,

right, is very anti narrative, anti like resolution, antip plot.

You

There There is no real narrative here.

There's the sort of the story of different people rising and falling and the endless

fight between the kids, and I mean, the only true moment in the show where

you're like, oh, okay, is Logan dying?

Then you're like, okay, now everything has to change.

But even that was just more pieces

Oh, the corporate, the corporation doesn't change.

the corporation doesn't change.

That's right.

Corporations dial as well for other reasons, but they're usually slow, ugly

deaths and, and very like unceremonious.

We're very conditioned to resolution.

Sometimes a resolution is like a throw down tweet that just like, you

know, puts someone in their place.

Sometimes a resolution is after five seasons of a show, but resolution is

how stories work and how justice is served, or how justice is not served.

But at least there's resolution, right?

And it turns out, uh, with life, uh, there really isn't

any, even for people who have.

Absolutely incredible success.

You No.

You know what, no one ever asks, okay, these people are billionaires.

They're doing great.

Why?

Why is everybody so unhappy?

And

I I ask that every minute of watching that show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and, but you can, you know what else you can ask?

Hey, there's a school played an elementary school, and this is

such a joyous, fun moment in time.

Why is everybody at each other's throats and creating cliques and

kind of like sniping at each other?

And it turns out humans.

Do this.

And the only thing that knocks them on their asses is when someone

is gravely ill or dies suddenly.

Right.

That sort of resets you.

But guess what happens?

You, you're reset for like about a week and then you're back in the game, baby.

And what succession is is a commentary to me on just human

folly and our inability to have

No,

that's, that's exactly what it, that's the whole

show.

It's

the whole show.

a comedy sort of masquerading as a serious entertainment,

yeah, yeah, exactly.

There's only one other show that I can think of, uh, that did this, that

wouldn't give you that satisfaction.

Of like justice is served, this is like the opposite of Charles Bronson.

Both of these shows, like, you know, you know we're gonna get,

for, for anyone under the age of 700 years old, Charles Bronson

was in a series of kind of racist, really bad movies called Death Wish,

Terrible

they, like they kill his wife.

And You mean they were huge in the seventies?

They got remade with Bruce

Yeah.

And, and, and so they're anti resolution antier.

And, and the wire, the wire is about grizzly city

Okay, sure.

But there's a fundamental difference.

The wire is like, Hey, we're here doing good police work.

We're, we're a family.

We're doing our best.

Oh, well, life is difficult and we, we make.

Bad choices sometimes as Officer McNulty and, and then, oh, let's go look

inside of the press and the government.

And it's all really corrupt and it's all really bad and it's really sad and

it's really too bad and there's nothing, nothing that's gonna change here.

And what a shame.

But you know what if, if only we could really look it in the eye,

we could have a good just world.

And I believe in that as the person who watches the wire now go to succession.

Everything is an infinite void of nothing.

All meaning is absolutely fabricated, including politics,

and there is no center to anything.

It's just more void.

So I think the Wire actually had this kind of moral perspective.

It did, but it wouldn't give you that resolution either.

It wouldn't, it wouldn't let you resolve because it was like, because

the wire kind of turned to you at the end.

It was like, and now it's your turn.

Whereas succession was like, I'm sorry, we couldn't show the plane crashing

into the ocean with all of the minute because that was too expensive.

So we had to do it this way instead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, And I think, I think for a lot of people who like, you know, they,

they spin up theories and, and, and spin up all kinds of store.

It's funny hearing everyone comment on it because it doesn't, it's

indistinguishable to me with then someone commenting on like a politician.

It's all exactly the same.

It's just people in power or people who are more visible than others.

Frankly.

It could be a celebrity, it could be a politician, and then everyone

else throws their 2 cents in.

You know, this brings to mind something I wrote a piece years and years

ago for New York Magazine, which by the way, has excessive succession coverage.

If you wanna read like seven articles

Is that right?

Well, it's, it's for them, it was made for them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, uh, I wrote an article years and years ago, it's

called, um, it was something like Facebook and the Epiphanator.

And so I, I described the entire media industry as something called

the Epiphanator, a machine for generating epiphanies and meaning.

Right.

You pick up the newspaper and every article has a conclusion.

Yeah.

Right.

No matter what.

It doesn't matter.

It's like, well, and you know, but you know, we talked to the government

and they said they're gonna do something, you know, just, and so,

And social media didn't have endings.

It was infinite.

Yeah.

But what I noticed in the last like 10 years is that social media

became

this incredibly loud yearning for consistent narrative.

That's all anybody begged for and asked for.

Well, you joined a camp.

Yeah.

You followed a set of principles or beliefs that that camp endorses,

and then you, you would say, okay, let's go conquer that hill.

Well, the crime, the crime on social media is

consensus, narrative violation.

Yes.

Right.

You said something that I, the currently, and this is what's wild with social

media, is the belief systems change very quickly and people are like, no, no.

We've always believed that you don't believe it, so you have to go home.

And as a, as a person, it's not even a person who's not aligned.

I'm often kind of aligned, but as an older person, I'm like,

I've seen this cycle before.

You'll believe something different two months from now.

And if I tell you that, you'll say that I'm a monster.

Yeah, so I'm not going to participate in any way.

I'm just gonna go about my life and so on and so forth.

And then they just go at each other's throats.

And so, but like I, what's wild to me is no matter what you do, they

created a mechanism where you could have a transparent cultural exchange

using tweets and Facebook wall posts.

Humans will generate a situation where unless you fill it with meaning

and narrative, they lose their.

Freaking minds.

Yes.

And so succession, I give it points for this.

I give it points for saying, actually none of it mattered all along.

Tom, the most craven garbage human being who you could find is gonna be in

charge cuz he is a convenient puppet.

He'll get fired in two years after firing everybody else.

There's no loyalty, not even, not even in marriages.

And everyone will die.

Yeah.

Good times.

Good times.

you know, there, there, look, when I think, when you think about a, a,

Wait a minute.

Our lives aren't that bleak.

We work in media.

We like careers.

You know, we used to work in media.

I, we don't anymore.

Yeah.

You know, we, um, we, we like doing stuff.

We've met people like that.

We've been in those offices.

Here's, I think the single biggest message that, you

know, let's turn this to advice.

This has all been sort

yeah.

How do you avoid a, you want to be successful?

How do you avoid a life-like succession?

Here's, here's, here's the advice I would Um, I, I think.

When you are in a position where you can potentially better or harm the lives

of others, whether you're an employer or a manager, or a business owner, or a

politician, even a local council member and whatnot, I think that the, the problem

with idealism that you weaponize it.

Humans weaponize idealism.

The best politicians, the best managers are the ones that are like, you know what?

I'm going to thread the needle here and just get the best possible outcome here,

and that's gonna require me to like, sort of shake hands with some people.

I don't really like very much, but I'm gonna get the best I, I'm gonna,

I'm gonna do this, at least, I'm gonna just make sure that the streets are

swept before the weekend festival.

Like, and that's not the most ambitious, audacious, idealistic

thing to get done, but it's better.

Than not doing it.

And that dialing back and that pragmatism feels like you're selling out.

People come at you.

Look, if you're going to seek approval in from any one camp, it'll paralyze you.

And the best people just sort of get stuff done, right?

They get stuff done to ho say, look, I'm not gonna win at everyone's love.

But you know what?

The schools all have pencils now.

No one's gonna write an article about it, right?

And that is grizzly and not huge success.

Look, the Martin Luther Kings of the world come once every 300 years.

That's different, but for most that seem to grind through and get things done, and

somehow the courthouse has better internet because of them, that is unceremonious.

That that is the advice I would give, which is when you dig in and you

hold on to those ideals, you end up in a horrible place no matter what.

It's just impossible because humans, That is you picking a fight to them.

It's not you standing up for those ideals.

And I don't mean this to be political or anything like that cuz it can

come from any direction, right?

But humans love camps.

They love to put on a jersey and get into the ring.

They just love it.

They love the conflict of it.

And the ones that are like, you guys go ahead and fight.

I'm gonna get us better internet at the courthouse.

That is, that person's probably a little healthier.

Because they're not jumping into the ring every

time.

Well, not necessarily if it's the Brooklyn courthouse, cuz the food around there is

the food around a Brooklyn New York courthouse will kill you.

That's different danger zone.

Yeah.

Um, and you know,

average, average life expectancy of a lawyer

in Brooklyn is about 22 years

because

of that chicken parm, the three layers of fried chicken

I don't know.

I just, like you were talking about doing jury duty the other

day, there's something about that particular zone in Brooklyn that'll

it's rough.

So just be careful around the Brooklyn

Look, the middle man, the middle manager who's utterly

optimized to self-promotion in politics and alignment with like power

centers doesn't put out good work.

There's some people who aren't good at that or they're just, they're

not wired to it, but actually care about the work they're putting out.

Those people a aren't necessarily gonna do better.

That's the hard reality of it.

But, but

on a sociopaths are the most successful, right?

Like, it's just, it's that's,

that's just the, that's just hu That's the

human game that we happen to be

Well, everybody likes to point and be like, see, I told you.

And it's like, no, that's just like, I don't know, don't buy Apple products.

Like, I like, what, what do you want to do?

That's right.

And, and if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, you find yourself

taking two steps back anyway.

So how do you do it?

Like what do you do?

Well, what do you do is like, can you.

And I'm not, I'm not a a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tie this to Biden.

I

want to hear

I'm not a Biden fanboy, just to be very clear.

He's very old.

He makes me nervous when he talks.

But I will say this, Paul, I will say this.

He has been doing this for a long time, and when the door closes and he's got

opposition in the room, he's like, We gotta work this out because people are

struggling and I I'm not really gonna win any fans, and frankly, neither are you.

So how do we grind through it?

And that is ve that is antithetical to a lot of how we perceive as the heroes

of, uh, leaders that we seek out.

But that is just someone that just has seen how ugly and gross it all is.

And when you have to compromise to push the bill through.

That is what good leadership

I gotta tell you, you and I are unusual.

We give each other a lot of hell, but like we don't attack each other.

If you go into an exec level room where there is like a CEO involved

and everybody's around them, yeah, it is absolute like caveman warfare.

It's, it's like you ever see like videos of like

the, the social dynamics of

Yeah.

It's, It's really, it's really

silverback kind of strolls through and everybody's

kind of trying to be near them.

And it's just like, it's the same thing.

when you see sea level people blatantly attack each other and

then realize that this is the optimal outcome cuz they're not backstabbing.

I don't wanna, I don't wanna mislead people to thinking, oh, this

is how you can become a better citizen.

That's not what I'm saying.

It's, it's, I think, the better way to be happy.

I think that's the thing.

Nobody's

how are you doing it following this advice?

You know, it's something I'm very aware of.

Like, I'm very self-aware of, like, I, I am I, am I an idealist?

No.

Am I satisfied often?

No.

Do I?

No, no, no, no.

It's real.

No, I know, I know.

Everybody, every, everybody knows pause.

Oh, let's see.

I will say this Paul.

And I can, I can, I can, I can say this with a lot of pride and um, and

I think it's absolutely 100% true.

Um, I, we, we built a company together that was apolitical.

People tried to inject politics and politics would fester below,

but you weren't gonna win us over with Schmooze and us.

Like it wasn't the game.

We didn't let, when people sort of enclosed doors threw someone else under

the bus, we wanted to understand why it was not this hyper political place.

I

I love the meetings.

We would have the meetings where people be like, I'll tell

you how to fix this company.

And it always involved them not doing anything.

It was

Well, it was always like, hire more people or fire that person.

Right.

And for us it was like, well that sounds extreme.

And so, you know, and I, I think that's, look, we had the benefit of

being at the top and so we were able to sort of deflect and, you know,

we would watch clicks of power sort of take hold in a big, you know, the

company got pretty big, but for us, It wasn't how you were gonna get promoted.

You couldn't, you couldn't say, oh wow, look at him like, sort of kiss

an ass and now getting, getting the director job, it didn't work.

It never worked.

We saw other people try to do it.

They would take others out to lunch and whatnot, but it was a very, it was a place

that sort of repulsed that kind of game.

And so that I had, you know, that was positive.

have too much churn.

People come and go too quickly.

So your power base is always very unstable.

a different animal.

That's

You're in a, in a larger corporation where there's

long-term stability and people are doing longer careers, politics

are actually an advantage.

Right.

You need, you need some because you need there to be a little bit of

insularity and you need to be able to trust people and get stuff done, and

politics are a side effect of that.

In an agency, everybody's turning through in about two years.

Yeah.

So you just can't bu the people who would come in and try to build a power

base would be like, what are you doing?

You're gonna quit in in a year?

they're gonna quit the people you're recruiting into, your little little

click are gonna quit, so nothing is real.

Right.

Um, look, in the end, I, I think there's two, two things that are worth asking.

Like, let's bring it back to advice and succession.

That pretty much tells this story.

Are you doing something you're.

Like you have a little bit of pride in and that you're sad, you know, you feel good

about, and B, are you going home happy or is it all just this dark cloud that

This is, this is the message,

It's all, it is.

The message

of the show.

My, my brother and I, about a year ago, left a corporate a little more two years

ago, left a corporate job, um, and went into service oriented, um, works, helping

homeless shelters at scale at a big scale.

Yeah.

And, um, is very much a family man.

His kids are older.

They're all over at the house once a week.

He's a granddad

Mm-hmm.

older than me.

And, uh, those two things, service and family seem to have

created a lot of happiness.

Like a lot.

Yeah.

And, and, and if you think you're the one, the, the people that chase

power, money, position, title, status.

I, I can tell you cuz I've, I've experienced it.

I've seen others go through it.

They're never satisfied.

It never, you never

No.

You'll never, you'll never like get to the end game there.

I mean, and if you look at succession, it's about people who can't form families,

can't make the family work, and who don't do anything except in their own interests.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and to me, when, you know, succession, we love watching powerful,

wealthy people, blah, blah, blah.

To me, uh, you could see this at all levels.

The advice isn't for like the uber successful,

Oh, it's happening at the bodega on the

It's happening

at

the bodega on the corner.

Um, so, uh, this turned out to be one very long fortune cookie to a large extent.

Um, but this is like probably the most fundamental advice, which I

wish I could take more of myself.

I'll be, I'll be frank.

Um,

yeah, me too.

Me too.

I, I, I

perspective, you know.

Um,

I think you and I we're doing good on family.

We're like middling on service.

I give money away.

You give money away, but we don't, we're not like hands on as much.

Yeah.

So something to think about and it's hard for us to let go.

That's it.

We just launched a product and it's not exactly, you can turn

away at this moment and relax.

No can, can you have a healthy environment where you're trying

to build a business or build anything?

Yeah, you

Right.

That's the thing you have to work

You can.

Although at a moment like this, you just have to focus on the product.

So what's the name of the product, rich?

It's called aboard.com.

Built by some of the kindest, most well-meaning people, in

the family-oriented business.

check it out.

We're, we're letting beta users in.

Um, it's a really, really cool tool that's evolving quickly and we're

gonna share more about it over time.

But essentially it's a place where you can sort of deal with the web on

your people get things done by using the web all the time, but the web is

kind of angry and hostile these days.

Um, check it out.

It's free and we're waving people in aboard.com.

All right,

And check us out

at z ford and send hello@zford.com and email.

We like to get your email.

We like mail bags.

All right, let's get this one uploaded.

It's topical.

Upload it.