[upbeat music] We just wanna get people started on their journey, and doing something is a lot better than doing nothing. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey.
Before we get to this week's episode, I wanted to remind you about another podcast I host. It's called People vs. Algorithms. People vs. Algorithms is a discussion show. Imagine a text thread among friends, but in audio.
I do it with Troy Young, former president of Hearst Magazines, and Alex Schleifer, former head of design at Airbnb. All three of us come at things from slightly different angles.
Troy, uh, he's a great writer in his own right, but he also has a really great business and operational mind from his decades in, in running businesses in this industry.
He just thinks deeply about the media business and sometimes gets annoyed when I make little jokes at his expense.
Alex, on the other hand, is steeped in product and design and all things Silicon Valley, and it makes for a good dynamic, at least I think so.
This week we discussed what else but the fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and the various narratives that have sprung up around it. Give it a listen. It's called People vs. Algorithms.
It is available at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
On this podcast, this week, I am speaking to Dave Finocchio, who is the co-founder and CEO of The Cooldown, a content company that is focused on climate change.
Dave and I last spoke on a podcast when he was the CEO of Bleacher Report.
And we talked on this episode about what he took away from the growth of BR and the playbook that they applied there, and how he's going to apply it in this very, very different area and with a very different challenge, and that is getting regular people involved and active in mitigating their impact on the planet by making smarter decisions.
Dave's also a very thoughtful guy about the media business, and I really enjoyed this conversation about how to break through with people and affect change without adopting a hectoring tone that we often see in this field.
We also talk about the still in development business model, which will likely be far different than the one pursued at Bleacher. Let me know what you think about this episode. My email is brian@therebooting.com.
And also, if you like this podcast, please do leave it a rating and review at Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. [upbeat music] All right, Dave, thank you so much for, for joining me for this podcast.
We, we used to talk when you were in a different, different life at Bleacher. Yeah, we did. Thanks for having me. And yeah, it's, it's wonderful to sometimes talk about things that are not sports these days, so.
Yeah, yeah. But I wanna actually start with the sports, unfortunately. Oh, we get to talk about sports? Okay, let's do it.
No, no, no, not the sports, but I wanna talk about the business because, like, you know, I have this, like, theory that basically, like, most people have, like, have a playbook that they run, like, you know, on, uh, [laughs] you know, uh, in different iterations and stuff like this.
I mean, I think, I think of, like, one of your partners at, at, uh, at Bleacher and, like, what Brian is doing, has been doing at Bustle in some ways. Like, I just...
I'm like, "Okay, this is a playbook that is, like, tweaked, you know, but changed a little bit." But I wanna get to, like, what you took away from the Bleacher experience 'cause it was, uh, very successful for that era.
If you look at that era, like, that was... Yeah, Bleacher was a big success there. Explain, like, what made Bleacher successful at that time.
A-and then I wanna sort of spin it forward with, with how you end up thinking, 'cause this is a different time, of applying some of that to what you're doing at The Cooldown. Yes.
Bleacher Report was, I think, was successful,
I think, first and foremost because we, we were sort of data-driven at our core at a time when most of our competitors were essentially fueled by more sort of editorial gut decisions.
And we, we had this hypothesis, or I had this hy-hypothesis that, that there were a lot of inefficiencies, specifically in the, the digital sports content market, around topics that were over-covered by sports editors and writers, and then more importantly, topics that were under-covered.
And it turned out that it was rel- like, you could build a business around, like, scaling an audience around those under-covered topics. And, uh, and we got very...
You can go as deep into that as you want, but we g- we got...
We became highly competent at figuring out exactly how to spend the smallest amount of dollars possible and, and get the biggest audience we could, sort of in our early years, around topics like the NFL Draft and the NBA trade deadline and the Major League Baseball trade deadline.
And cert-certain, a lot of them oftentimes were transactional sports events that just, like, there was so much demand for coverage of those events- Yeah... and so little supply of content.
And this is a different era too. Totally different era. Like, so, like, I mean, the NFL, what is it, the tampering? I don't know.
Like, the free agency is starting right now in the NFL and like- Yeah, it started yesterday. You know? I-Ian Rapoport is, like, tweeting, like, you know, 23 hours a day. But, like, whatever.
If we go back, like, 10 plus years ago, like, it was a little, that was a little unusual in that, like, I feel like the, a lot of the, the, the narrative was, like, driven by games and, like, you know, recaps and stuff like this that is totally commoditized.
And I can remember, like, you know, as, like, a, as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, like, you know, I'm obsessed with Marcus Epps, like, you know, leaving and, and all this [laughs] very obscure stuff that, like, it's not a large market for necessarily, but there's a very deep market in Philadelphia for where Marcus Epps is going to, like, be taking his safety skills next year.
Yeah. Well, the 49ers took, uh, Hargraves yesterday. Um- Yeah, he just overpaid him. He's a good, he's a good player. Yeah. I'm excited about that. I'm a San, San Francisco native. We...
Look, we, we also happened to get into the, the digital media game, and, like, I had no idea that we were getting into the digital media game when we did it.
I just want, like, I wanted to make an imprint on sports, and I thought there were...
I, I, I thought that, that younger sports fans sort of deserved to have their, their ownTheir sort of own generation of sports properties versus sort of being stuck with, like, their dads' and grandpas', their, you know, grandmas, what- whatever sort of legacy brands that were, that were out there.
So that was the premise, but it, it ended up sort of being this, this really interesting time to, to sort of get into it because we, we had all this disruption that happened a little bit around content creation, but initially around content distribution, where the first big thing that happened was that Google launched Google News, and instead of whitelisting sources, like picking which sources got into it with a heavy hand, the way, the way like Apple News has and, in retrospect, maybe that was a better way to go.
We could debate that, but that's not what Google did.
They allowed, they allowed startups to go compete with the incumbents, and it allowed sites like Bleacher Report to get traffic early on where we wouldn't have been able to otherwise. We used that Google traffic to...
We became highly skilled at converting our Google readers into newsletter subscribers.
We built up, and we were sort of ahead of our time on this, but I think we had a three to four million person newsletter program by two thousand eleven-ish.
And then, uh, iOS apps came along, and we realized, like, "Hey, instead of sending somebody a static newsletter,
you know, a couple times a week about a bunch of different teams, what, what if we allowed people to just personalize everything they wanted to follow, their favorite teams, players?"
Later, we did sneaker brands, anything in an app. Yeah. And that-- we nailed that experience. It was a huge hit.
Our time in app was, uh, competitive with Instagram from a-- Our audience wasn't as big, but, like, the usage of our app was much, much higher than ESPN's, for example, even though they had live game footage, and we, we did not.
So we built a rabid audience there. But the real magic happened because we, we got very good at, at sending push notifications in our app.
It really ended up being the secret sauce where we committed to this idea of having a voice that was more peer-to-peer.
Like, we, we wanted to talk to a twenty-five-year-old the same way the twenty-five-year-old's cool friends would talk to the twenty-five-year-old.
We wanted to be the, we wanted to be the jumping-off point for that person to, to like, to find some-something cool, whether it was news or a video or whatever, and then, and then be, be psyched to go share it with friends and, and talk about it.
So we built up this skill set, and we were really good at sort of the back-end data side of understanding exactly what worked and what didn't, down, down to specific words. And then the social era came along.
Facebook first. Facebook started pushing third-party content in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen.
They figured out that their, their own time on site numbers skyrocketed once they were able to keep people in the app by essentially becoming a news feed. Again, we can debate the merits- Mm-hmm...
of whether or not that was good for society. I would say it probably was not. But that's what they did. And, and then Twitter, later Instagram.
The TikTok explosion sort of happened a little bit past my time at, at Bleacher Report. I left in twenty nineteen.
But the point is, we were so-- I think we were so far ahead of, of others in the space because of our, our, our sort of knowledge around push notifications in our app, that we basically- Yeah...
just applied that strategy to social.
And even though we, we weren't first movers on any of those platforms, there were other competitors that got bigger than us first, we ended up pretty much blowing everybody else out of the water, at least in my era, because our voice was distinctive and our content was shared at a much higher rate than, you know, other properties that might have had way more followers than we did.
Like, we, Bleacher Report for years, I don't know if they still, still do, but as an, as an example, like when I left for the previous maybe two years, we had either had the-- every single month, we'd either had the highest or second highest reach of any Twitter account in the world behind Donald Trump.
Even though we only had, we had, I don't know, eight or ten million followers, which was way less than a lot of brands, so many people would share our content that our reach would be through the, the roof. Yeah.
And like, BR was very early on a lot of...
I always feel like, and, and me, and I, I wanna get then into the cooldown because I think it's, it's instructive in that, in that, you know, digital media's always been, or publishing has really been around finding these distribution seams of the time, right?
Like, and y-you guys were really good at finding those seams. You know, SEO was-- It's funny because SEO, I remember like covering this thing for years, like SEO was always like, "Eh, whatever."
Like, "Yeah, there's the SEO thing." It turns out to be the most durable companies in digital publishing most people have never heard of, right? Like that, like regular people have never heard of.
And the ones that like, m-m, people like me and others have written about too many times have turned out to be not that very valuable. And a lot of these, these businesses that focus on SEO were, were merging.
If you think about like Ziff Davis and stuff like that- Totally... they're gonna like emerge as the most powerful companies out of this era.
But I think finding those distribution seams of going from SEO to going to like, you know, social, going to like app and push notifications, it was always just leaping from one thing to the next.
So how do you end up taking that playbook, being data-centric, finding niches, finding distribution seams? And first of all, you got out, right?
[gentle music] I mean, you sold Bleacher to Turner, and then you left, then you came back, okay, which is crazy.
That's true, yeah. And then you, you left, and you're coming back in. Like, so first of all, that's crazy. Like, [chuckles] you had already gotten out, so why are you coming back in to publish it?
I don't mean to talk you out of it, Dave. No, no, it's cool. You can at this point. I'm in too deep.Then we're off to a great start. So that's, that's all helpful. But what did you see? Like why?
I mean, obviously, you know- Yeah, yeah. No, no, totally. So I... Yeah, I l- I left Bleacher Report for good in the middle of twenty nineteen. The business was doing great at the time.
AT&T was acquiring Time Warner, and I, I, I wasn't having as much fun as... Like the, the problems we needed to solve were not as interesting- Yeah... as the problems we solved in the past.
I, I'm not-- I wasn't that into like, "Hey, now, you know, now my job is to get people to sign up to s- bet on sports." Like, that was not what I wanted to spend the next five years of my life on. Fine for people who do.
It was just that was not f- that wasn't what I wanted to, to sort of work on in the prime of my career. I, I went away. I, I did a bunch of investing. I, I advised some companies.
I worked really closely with The Athletic to keep sort of one, one foot in the sports, sports water. And, and I went really deep on climate, and I'd had, I'd had a strong interest in climate going back
like the twenty fourteen, twenty sixteen era. As a... I was a long time San Francisco resident. We started having regular smoke and wildfire seasons in twenty fourteen. I grew up there.
I was, I was always, I've always been interested in the weather, and I-- the way, the way I sort of dealt with like, oh my God, this climate change stuff seems to be happening now, and it's not, it's not like this...
The sea levels aren't rising like these documentaries I watched about that, that part of it. Like, we're not, we're not getting flooded here right now, but, but I can't breathe, so this isn't good. Yeah.
And I, I dealt with it by s- by consum- by essentially learning. I decided I wanted to learn about the, the problem side levers in climate. Like what was it... What's actually causing climate change?
And, and how does this all wor- all work? 'Cause I, I fundamentally didn't know that much about it at the time. And then what are the, what are the solution side levers?
Like, what are the solutions that are sort of like by sector overall that have the most potential, that are the most achievable? How much are they gonna cost? Like, I just wanted to learn about it.
And I started consuming a bunch of climate content. Initially, I thought it would be pretty boring.
As I got into it, it was actually way more fascin- It was like a way deeper and more fascinating world than I ever imagined. Like, just like constantly sort of like mind-blowing shit where I was like, "That's...
Like if, if we pull that off, like that totally changes the future. That is amazing." And I kept coming across that over and over again. But after a while, I could not...
Like I couldn't help but look at the space with a bit of a Bleacher Report hat, you know, through a Bleacher Report lens, and thought like- Mm-hmm...
this is, there's great information here, just like there was in sports. It's a highly tribal space, just like sports.
Like you're not gonna put the, a Red Sox fan and a Yankees fan in the same room and expect them to get along. In the climate space, like it's highly tribal.
Like you're not gonna put a right-leaning conservationist in the same room with like a vegan person and expect them to get along.
It d- it does not happen, and it's one of the big holdbacks in climate where it's like if you could r- if you could rationalize with those people and say, "Hey, like you agree on eight of these ten points.
It's just these two that you're, you know, that you're in sort of viol- violent disagreement about." But this...
Like people, people have a lot of different ideas about solutions, and they're, they're not always gonna get a, are gonna get along. So anyway, it's, it's highly tribal.
So I just, I noticed these characteristics of like, I think just like sports, like I think this space needs to be curated.
Like there's a lot of great information, but it's not, it's not very digestible or relatable to mainstream people 'cause it's too science-y. It can be too doom and gloom. It's too nerdy.
Like nobody with, with a strong sort of digital content background has come into the space and, and like built a, a sort of data-driven, taken a data-driven approach to say like, "We're gonna make you wanna follow climate every single day."
Mm-hmm. Because it... Like we're gonna make it interesting to you, we're gonna make it actionable to you.
And then like, yeah, I had not necessarily been thinking about like doing media, especially doing advertising again. Bleacher Report was an almost two hundred million dollar a year revenue business when I left.
Some of it was commerce, most of it was advertising. I did get a little bit tired of like, like I got into the business to, to cover- We gonna talk about the day trip to Detroit now?
[laughs] Yeah, day trips to Detroit were not my favorite thing by the, by the end. I appreciated all the money that came out of, out of Detroit. But, but it wasn't, that wasn't why I got into the business.
And that's sort of what it, what it becomes once you get big enough. So with climate though, I noticed that there...
Like I think it's a unique space because, and we can get to the Bustle question or l- or B-B-D-BDG and sort of the comparisons between, you know, the like the Vices and the Buzzfeeds and the Voxes and the, the businesses that are, are mostly sort of like in the news and entertainment space versus other categories- Yeah...
or like Ziff Davis SEO plays where there's certain categories where consumers start out their sort of like their journey fundamentally like open-minded or specifically searching for something to buy or a service to, to purchase.
Mm-hmm. And then there are other, there are those other companies I just mentioned, I think most of their users come, you know, to consume a piece of content and then leave.
That's sort of the consumer expectation going in versus like somebody who's clicking on a link about an electric lawnmower, like they're probably interested in buying an electric lawnmower, right?
So those are fundamentally two different types of, if you wanna call them media companies, or I refer to them as they're both content companies. One is more of a media company, one is more of sort of a commerce business.
I sort of had this premise with climate.
It's this interesting sort of middle ground where you can get distribution through SEO, but you can also get distribution through news platforms, but you can drive a very healthy percentage of people essentially down a funnel, not just like to come in through the top to read an article, not just to sign up for a newsletter, which is how a lot of us in this business retain people.But with The Cooldown, there's this wonderful third layer that we call action, which just means we- Mm-hmm...
can actually get people to do something.
And I think when, when you're able to, like, cross the bridge from just getting people to consume content to actually getting them to sign up for a service or to buy something, then I think you have a chance to be more than, more than a media company.
And anyway, that's, that's what intrigued me about this space, where I thought, like, "I can build something here that's not just people come in the door and they pop back out, and you try to monetize them via advertising."
So obviously, the decarbonization of the economy is, like, a massive story. Like, you can take different lanes to it, right? Like, you have a business lane or it's... You know, The Cooldown's more of a consumer lane.
So when you say take action, you mean buy something? Right now, we, we would categorize action, I'd sort of say, in three ways.
One is, yeah, they buy, they buy something, and buying something could be as simple as, like, somebody saying, "Gosh, like, I have a lot of plastic lying around my house, and I read this article-" Yeah "...
about how 95% of plastic in the United States doesn't actually get recycled, and was actually an invention of one of the fossil fuel companies, and, like, maybe I shouldn't have so much plastic around.
I-- Microplastics aren't a good thing." Like, whatever, whatever they've sort of heard and just say, like, "I wanna switch to a dishwashing detergent or, like, a laundry detergent that, that is 100% zero waste."
And, like, we, we can help them with that. We'll do recommendations and say, like, "Here, here are the three options you have. Here are the costs and benefits of each one."
And so, yeah, some of it is, is sort of relatively simple swaps. In, in that sense, yes, they buy something through us. We've had a lot of success, like another category is, is services.
I think circular economies, meaning people who are fundamentally, like, selling their old stuff or recycling their old stuff or, or on the other side are, are buyers of secondhand. Like, amongst Gen Z,
you know, buying vintage clothes is way more popular than it was in, in my generation. But there, there are- Mm-hmm...
circular economies emerging for everything, and some of them are, are through brands directly, where it's like we buy from this brand, and now this brand has a program where, you know, if...
Like Nikon Cameras, like, send back your camera and- Yeah... you get some money back towards the next one, or send your iPhone in, or... Like, every brand's gonna have a program like that.
Those services have been-- have crushed for us. Like, like, across the board, people are really into circular economies. So, so that's action.
And then the third one is just, like, we do a lot of, of hack, what we describe as, as sort of like green hack content, like food waste is, is a good category as an example of help.
Like, there is so much food waste in our country especially, but all over the world, and there are a lot of tips and tricks people can use to better manage their food. And so that content has been very, very popular.
So that, that's also action, even if it doesn't result in, like, a higher aver-average revenue per user for, for us.
But we, we fundamentally are at the stage of the business right now where we just wanna get people started on their journey, and doing something is a lot better than doing nothing.
But I think when starting a publishing content company now versus when, when you started Bleacher, like, at Bleacher, I mean, you guys were, like, I guess coming out of college, so you pro- [chuckles] But, like, the default was it's gonna be an advertising business, right?
There wasn't, like... I doubt you had many, like, you know, big, like, debates about that, right?
Like, at the time, there was no-- There-- The Athletic didn't exist for a reason, like, because, like, people would be like, "What?" Yeah. "Nobody's gonna pay for-" Yeah.
The, the market- "Nobody's gonna pay for sports content." The market was not, like, the, The Athletic could not have been built in that era- No... for quite a, quite a few reasons. The newspapers hadn't- Yeah...
fallen into demise, total demise yet. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt it was an advertising business.
And, and also, like, affiliate was, you know, this strange little corner of, like, dusty corner of, like, the internet that was in, like, you know, it was, it was adjacent to, you know, the search engine optimizers.
You know, it was always thought, I, I-- Early in my career, I, I worked for, like, DM News. I came, I came, like, very close into, like, the direct, the direct marketing world before it got rebranded as performance.
And there was all sorts of, like, scurrilous characters in there from the offline DM world who, you know, a, a new, a new crop of scurrilous characters moved over to [chuckles] the internet.
But, like, it was always looked at as this dusty corner, and so, like, I don't think many people thought about building businesses based off of affiliate.
You know, Amazon was just getting started with its affiliate program. A-and now when starting a publishing, a content company, like, nobody's starting with advertising. It's, it's not, like, the default.
So how did you end up thinking about the business model now versus, you know, having, you know, done it before in a totally different era? I, I think- Nothing against advertising, by the way.
I love advertising I think, I like advertising. How about that? I- Get in touch.
[gentle music] I think a fair amount about the business model, and depending on how you categorize them, there-- we probably have five different relatively obvious
revenue channels that we can pursue with this business. At the end of the day, though, like, I'm still a little bit old school, where I think the first few years you focus on building trust and a brand with an audience.
And if you're in the right category and you hire the right, you bring in the right people, then you're gonna have great opportunities.
And the reality is, if you don't do a good job building the brand and scaling the audience early on, uh, but you nail the business model part, like, who, who cares? It doesn't matter. Uh, it d- it doesn't matter.
So-Yeah, I mean, I know- This is like a-- By the way, this is like a twist of what the VCs had always said, like in the, the previous thing with the ad models, right?
They were like, "Just focus on building, building the audience, because if you don't have the audience, you don't have a shot anyway. So, like, get to scale, and then, like, you know, it'll, it'll work." Yeah.
What goes around comes around.
I'm a lit-- Like right now it's, you know, things are a little bit down, and I wouldn't wanna be a, you know, growth stage company right now that it had a big valuation off, you know, relatively low ARR and is trying to...
Like, the-there, there are plenty of people that are in, in, you know, they've gotta work really hard to dig themselves out of a hole.
But we're a s- we're a seed s-stage company with a manageable valuation, and we have plenty of cash. And, you know, I, I think if we become
the clear leader in sort of the climate information space, and we're able to, to get people to do stuff, I'm confident we're gonna be able to go to the next level with the business.
And y-you know, will there be advertising revenue over time? Probably. There's affiliate revenue now. Some things are working well there. Some things we, we still have to figure out. Maybe we get into commerce over time.
I, I don't know. I wouldn't do that until we had a lot more data. And, and, uh- When you say commerce, you mean making your own products or co-branding or- Poten- like potentially or partnering sort of more directly.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't rule that out. They're like we, we are just gonna have a lot of data about what people want and are less interested in. And if we decide to leverage that ourselves, you know, we'll sort of see.
There's a data business here for sure. That, that part of the business is happening faster than I imagined. We've already had both brands and agencies reach out to us about our, our data.
We've had other organizations reach out. We put out our first public data report three weeks ago now. And it was... I th- I think the findings are, are really, really interesting.
And, and hopefully over time we can help to influence the market to just get to a state of efficiency in terms of actually spending its time getting...
like incentivizing people to take good behaviors faster than they are now. 'Cause right now the space is very ideological, and sometimes there are just a lot of missed opportunities.
And then there-- whether we have a subscription offering that is consumer only or, or is more of a B2B offering over time, I think, I think we'll see. But all... Like if we're able to build audience scale here- Mm.
-I think we have all of those opportunities, and it's just a question of what we prioritize first.
And that's-- I think the sequencing really matters, um, but yeah, gotta, gotta build the audience and have people really give a damn about what you're doing before any of that other stuff I think matters that much.
So how do you think about that? Because like, I mean, you mentioned like, oh, look, there's a lot of...
To me, like the climate story has, has moved from like an activism kinda story of, of where, where it was, you know, activism by definition is divisive, right?
Like I mean, yeah, to get people's attention, you gotta be kinda, you know, in their face. Like, you know, and, and that, that's, you know, I think of Greta Thunberg and, and, and that it's, it's a very needed role.
I think, you know, in general, like the action then moves to like, it's about policy making, and it's about like things like, uh, you know, the climate and the massive [clears throat] climate bill that was passed here that's gonna have like a, a pretty big i-impact on not just this economy, but the global economy.
I mean, because, you know, when the United States does stuff, like because of the scale of the United States, it affects a lot of stuff. And so I think it's like moving into a different, like direction.
I mean, do you see that a lot of climate-focused like hosting brands are maybe a little too ideological?
'Cause it is a, it is a little bit, it's a little bit difficult to have like, as you said, this sort of like big tent approach in that like there, there's sti- it's still, to me, it's like becoming less of like a divisive issue or something like this, but you've got a lot of different types of people.
There are a lot of-- Again, like I think it's, it's a very tribal issue, and I think it will always be a very tribal issue based on belief systems, location, political leanings, w-whatever.
Like it's not an issue where everybody's ever gonna agree on like, "These are the best solutions." Not-- It's not gonna happen. Yeah. But I'll say this. I think, you know, there've been in...
people who've been branded as environmentalists, and w-we internally just sort of call them like e-eco people that have been in this space for, for a long time.
You know, Earth Day has been around for a, a long, a long, long time. There was Earth... I remember Earth Day when I was in kindergarten, you know, thirty- Oh, I'm even older. I remember it... thirty-five years ago.
But I think- I remember acid rain, okay? [chuckles] Yeah, acid, acid rain- Acid rain was a big, big thing when I was a kid. [chuckles]...
the, the ozone layer and, and, uh, als- also- all sorts of concepts that, that came, came before. But obviously we solved acid rain. We can solve a lot of problems. We never hear about acid rain.
Trust me, I heard about acid rain all through the- We have solved... I mean, the ozone layer is, uh- Yeah, another one...
is, is pretty, pretty much I th- I, I forget how many years until it's gonna be completely healed, but like the ozone layer is gonna be healed 'cause we got rid of a lot of chemicals that were causing the issues.
These problems, like we have the technologies to solve all these problems is the, is the good news. The, the reality is that like we're moving into a next phase of sort of this movement that...
And I agree that, you know, I think Greta played a really important role, and there are like activists and people who, who've sort of, you know, driven high level awareness, whether their efforts have always been productive or sometimes have been productive, we can debate, whatever.
But the reality is that like there's more of what we call an early majority of people that are, are moving in this direction. And they're people who are concerned about climate, are conscious of wanting to waste less.
Maybe the, some of them are, are, especially one, people that are wealthier, are thinking about their own carbon footprints in a more active way.
I think for wealthier people, it's much easier to say like, "Hey, like I have the means to electrify my home, and so I'm gonna look at replacing my gas furnace with a heat pump and replacing my..."...
gas stove with an induction stove and my gas water heater with a, an electric water heater.
I'm gonna get off of fossil fuels and I'm gonna get onto renewable, renewable energy, which is something that way more people should do and is much easier to do than, than people think, depending on where you live in the country.
But, you know, thirty-five percent of emissions in the United States come from households. That's a huge chunk of emissions.
You, you hear a lot about like, "Oh, individual action doesn't matter very much 'cause it really just comes down to the top hundred corporations," and this and that. And like, I, I get it. There's, there's truth to it.
But at the same point, like, those thirty-five percent of emissions and a lot of other emissions and just pollution in general, if we talk about plastics or food waste, like, they fundamentally don't improve unless we have shifts about how we sort of take care of our households and take care of our families and take care of our communities.
And that's where I'm a firm believer that if you, if you start to change somebody's consciousness where you're, you're thinking about, about your waste on a daily basis, and that maybe is your gateway of...
Like, we found that a sort of a gateway that's easy for a lot of consumers is plastic. Like, pe-people are getting mass, like, "There is too much plastic. I... Like, this is, this is gross."
I mean, if you can get people to start thinking about, like, just in general, "I, I wanna, I wanna be less wasteful," you can start them down a consumer journey where they may end up sort of saying, "I wanna use less plastic," or, "I wanna, I wanna give away my old clothes instead of throwing them in the garbage," or, or, "My, my-- I wanna get some money back for my old sneakers and tap into a circular economy."
You can start them there, and you can get them to the point where they say, "You know what?
Like, I want to start electrifying my home," or, "I want to-- I wanna get involved in other programs to help, help my community start to make this transition." So- Mm-hmm...
I, I'm just a big believer in it's a lot better if people are actively involved and saying like, "I, I wanna, I wanna be a part of a movement that's about creating a cleaner and healthier future, and I wanna be a part of that every single day," versus the person who watches a doom and gloom climate documentary once a year or reads, reads an article on, you know, pick whatever news site and just says like, "Oh, we're totally screwed."
Like, "I'm gonna be really depressed about this." Well, there's a... Yeah, there's an interesting generational dynamic here, right?
Like, I mean, it, it seems like, you know, the, the youngest generation are the most brisk, if that's a word [chuckles] I think that's- That's what I think- I think that's probably fair.
[upbeat music] It's like w-we're not having-- we're not gonna s-have a family 'cause what's the point? Like, and it's like, whoa, hold on a second. [chuckles] Like, what are you talking about here?
We can't stop the species. I don't-- Let's not do that. A-and I think they, they might change their mind. It's just kinda like people don't like red wine when they're like teenagers. Red wine industry ends up continuing.
But like, it-- there is like an interesting consumer angle to this because I, I feel like when it moves into this, like, policy level, it becomes very abstract and, like, it's kind of like recycling, right?
Like, you know, maybe it's just living in New York City, there's this sort of, like, doubt that the recycling ever really happens. Like... [chuckles] But like-- And it's like, well, we can't really do anything ourselves.
And, and younger people are, like all of us, very hypocritical about, about things in that, you know, it's the top list of the concerns.
At the same time, you know, people are buying their clothing off of Shein and like, I'm sorry, you can't make a three dollar bikini sustainably. [chuckles] Ugh, fu-- I-- Yeah. I could be wrong.
I think Shein- Maybe it's, like, biodegradable. I don't know. It's awful. Yeah. But I don't know, like, how do you end up, like, thinking about, like, breaking through that on a cultural level?
'Cause I think about, like, with, with Bleacher and, and... You know, I think where it, it, it landed really was, like, being able to intersect with popular culture and sports. Yeah. I,
I think that the climate movement has n-has needed a twenty-four seven through line that, that helps people.
There are a lot of people out there that, you know, they're moms all over the country that wanna waste less, but they have no idea what to do. And a lot of people know that- Yeah... yeah, rec-recycling is like, uh...
Somehow this whole movement got tied to recycling, and it was, it was the wrong solution, and we have to reprogram a bunch of people and, like,
you know, rec-doing recycling's probably better than not doing recycling, I, I guess. It's a little bit better. But recyc-recycling ain't the answer. And so it's like you, you've gotta retrain people's brains. But the...
If, if there isn't, like, a central hub for content and information that is positive and productive and paints a more hopeful view of the future, like, why are people gonna be motivated to, to do anything? Yeah.
And, you know, there-- Like, I hope that...
Like, my dream would be in, you know, fifteen years, you know, I, I read about a kid that was on the cool down early and was inspired to go start a company that d- you know, that does, does something really important and solves a big problem.
And, like, you, you're gonna have people in the spectrum that do everything from, you know, create amazing technology that, that makes huge impact on down to people that just say, like, "I-- Like, I care about this issue.
I'm now confident enough about it, where, like, I'm gonna talk to my family at the dinner table." And it's like- Yeah... I feel like we, we have a lot of respect for a clime-a climate scientist named Katharine Hayhoe.
She's, she's one of the, she, she's one of the few climate scientists who is just, like, super relatable and down, down to earth and can talk to, to normal people.
And she says that the, the single best thing that people can do is just, like, talk to their friends and family about climate. So a lot of it's just about consciousness.
And so we, we wanna play our role inIn making it easier for people to be conscious and to feel good about the things that they're doing, and to get more involved, you know, on a daily basis, again, versus just like seeing that documentary once a year and saying, "Shit, we're screwed."
Yeah, and I think getting the tone right is, is important, right?
Because like, I don't know, from a-- like, generally, if you're gonna like have something that cuts through on a, like large scale, like the, the hectoring approach doesn't work. Like, people just tune it out.
Like nobody-- Like, there's a small group of people who are, you know, nihilists.
Like they, they love to like, you know, have someone go and like, uh, you know, get beaten up about like, you know, how they're, they're ruining the world, and it's gonna end. But most of us [chuckles] don't need that.
So it's like, it's hard because it's like, it's a very... There, there's an urgency obviously to, to, to this issue, right?
But, uh, I think that there's a balance of like, of that sometimes is not there in, in some, you know, climate content in that it, it goes into this area where it's a- it's about like not just doom, but like, just like sort of lecturing in some ways.
So there's, um... And I get you-- I think you just like hit the, the nail on the head that you have, you have hardcore climate people that are screaming from the rooftops like, "We don't have time." And- Yeah...
they, they are probably right, and they, they want, you know, they, they want collective action that sort of mirrors what the United States pulled off in World War II, where it's like we're gonna mobilize, and we're gonna do this and we're gonna go.
I agree that we need to get to some, some state that looks like that, and it would be better to get there sooner than, than later. If you understand the science, it's hard to not reach that conclusion.
However, people are, are not there right now. The population is-- they-- is not there. There is not a collectivist attitude about climate- Mm... in the United States. There is in small pockets, but
what our data has shown is that where people are right now is, is more of a, you know, "What's in it for me?" And there- Yeah...
there's more of an individualistic attitude around like, "Okay, I'll be open-minded about this. I'm, I'm concerned about climate." You know, I... Like
what's attractive to me is like how, you know, health benefits, saving money, wasting less, and it's like we're, we're... Like in this data report
we, we put out, so, so far we've seen that content that's marketed through the lens of individual benefit outperforms content that's marketed through the lens of planetary benefit by 6X. Yeah. Which is stupid.
Like I'm used to dealing with a world where like a twenty to thirty percent gap is a really big gap, and we're talking about, you know, a six to seven hundred percent gap or a five to six hundred percent gap.
You, you just, you can't tell people to spend more money because it's good for the planet.
You get people to spend more money or, or to, to do a swap, or to make, make effort if there's some sort of other benefit to them, but you can get people to do the exact same stuff.
So a lot of this is, is a messaging marketing challenge, but is really rooted in data to understand like how, like how do you get people moving on this journey and what, like how do you actually get them to, to go from being just a content consumer to, to an actor?
But yeah, like a lot of these- Yeah... a lot of people in, are in the space I do think have been very ideological, and they're still sorta selling planet benefit, planet benefit, planet benefit. Yeah.
I mean, it's kinda like I think about the climate bill, like which is a totally... I, I think any sort of like economist that would look at this approach and it would say, "This is backwards."
Like, well, why, why, why all these subsidies and stuff like this? Why don't you just tax carbon? Why don't you just like, you know, shut down like, you know, dirty coal? Like on all these...
You can take all these steps that are way more efficient and targeted. But the reality is, you know, people see a tax credit for an EV, and they're gonna, they're gonna go, they're gonna go for an EV.
And, and if there are, are credits to, to build battery pack, like th- they're gonna happen.
And, you know, incentives play a big role, and we might not like it like, but we have an individualistic society, not a collectivist society.
So I would love to see the data if it was run in a more collectivist, you know, like somewhere like Japan or something like this. I'm feeling the results would be totally different. Yeah. I agree.
Japan is, is- We're Americans. That's how we are. Japan is a great example of a, of a capitalist society that is more collective sort of by, by nature, and I personally lean more in that direction as a human.
But that's not, that's not where the majority of Americans are, and it's why data matters. Like you've gotta understand. Like you've gotta meet, meet people where they are.
And yeah, on the, on the IRA, the inde- the Inflation Reduction Act that is mostly a climate bill- Which is hilarious that it's called the Inflation Reduction It is. You know, it's...
I'll, I think I'll get, I'll get this close to right, but heat pumps are becoming a big deal if you're following this- Yeah... because gas, gas furnaces
put off a ton of waste that goes up into the atmosphere and stays there for a really long time and, uh, and heats the, heats the planet.
Believe the statistic is that every single day on the planet, we, we emit essentially as, as much like heat-warming carbon as, as blowing up...
We basically blow up the equivalent of six hundred thousand Hiroshima bombs every single day. Mm. Like it's pretty messed up.
This has, this has spun pretty badly outta control, and so it's like one of the things we need to do is we need to get rid of gas furnaces, and we need to replace them with, with heat pumps.
And this Inflation Reduction Act, I think there's enough money in there for maybe like a million people to do that. So it's like this really, really...
Like it's not solving the problem, neither is the, the money for EVs. The, the theory is that essentially it will accelerate the development of those markets and, uh-And, you know, they'll figure out the rest later.
But we'll, we'll, we'll sorta, we'll sorta s- Yeah, sometimes markets needs, needs pu-- need a push, and, like, that's where the government can, like...
You know, the government has a lot of money 'cause they have a printing press, and so, like [chuckles] they can-- and they have the power of taxation. It's an amazing thing. I wish I had it.
Yeah, I think, you know, whether the government or private markets end up playing a bigger part in this, I, I'll probably bet over the long term that it's the private markets, but- Oh, yeah, yeah.
Uh, you know, the g- But, but the, the, the, the private mar-- like, you know, the, the push ends up being, you know, government. Like, you know, I think, like, who knows how long it would take?
Like, where there's money to be made, I always bet on American, like, capitalism, like, of, like, flooding the zone on it.
And like, it's very clear right now, whether it's just because of the climate bill, but I think there's just a bunch of things going on in the economy. It's like there's a lot of money to be made.
And so, like, you know, if capitalism will do its thing. Yeah.
I mean, I'm very interested, for example, in, like in-- I live in Bend, Oregon these days, and we just passed something called the Home Energy Score that, like, it exists in Portland, in Austin, Texas, and a few other places in the country.
But es-essentially, it's like, it's sort of the equivalent of, of understanding what, when you buy a car, what the mile, miles per gallon are. So it's like if, if your home has a really shitty home energy score, uh,
that, that means that your- Like to post it outside? It's, it... Well, it, it does-- No. But it just, it means that your, your energy costs are gonna be higher every month. Oh, okay.
And I think over-- And, and it's something you'd wanna know before you buy a house of like, "Oh, like I kinda wanna know what my energy bills are gonna be."
And I think over time, like, where this starts to move quickly is like if, if the price of your home is going up or down based on essentially how energy efficient it is, um, which will factor in renewables and at a certain point, like, if you have to, if you spend twenty thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars upgrading certain things in your home to make it more energy efficient, and then, you know, the market's gonna give you forty or fifty or sixty thousand dollars back for that when you sell the home, that's where, that's where this starts to happen quickly.
But I-- That's-- Those are the dynamics that need to be in place versus just relying on people to do, do things out of the goodness of their heart for the planet. Yeah. Incentives matter.
All right, Dave, we're gonna leave it there. I really appreciate you taking the time, and definitely come back, like, give, give me an update on how things are going. Yeah, I'd love to. Great to, great to catch up.
Thank you. [upbeat music] Thank you so much for listening. Again, please do send me your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Thanks a lot to Chase Sparks, who is producing this podcast.
If you're thinking about doing your own podcast, and again, they're hard to grow, but the depth of engagement is amazing, so don't let that scare you off. Get in touch. Chase can help you out. He is @podhelpus.
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