Rapid Response: How Barstool Sports’ ex-CEO cooks up attention, with Food52’s Erika Ayers Badan

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Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. It's hard to put words and your arms around Barstool Sports because you can get caught up in the controversy of it all. When I took the job, I had a lot of people in my network be like, You just committed career suicide, and how could you go work at that disgusting terrible place?

And you know what, like I loved that disgusting terrible place. I found it to be the least sexist place I've ever worked. It was the least insidious place. I've worked at you know Microsoft, I worked at AOL, I worked at Yahoo, I've worked at a ton of ad agencies. All of those companies had way more issues. that were way more hurtful that nobody ever talked about. That's Erica Ayers Badon, the new CEO of Lifestyle Brand Food 52, and former CEO of Barstool Sports. Erica helped scale Barstool from a janky frat house media shop into a viral cultural empire.

So why make a dramatic career pivot at the height of Barstool's success? And how much might Food 52 embrace the drama that defined Barstool? Erica shares that Running Barstool was like a reality show, where every day felt like heart attack. And the constant controversy and noise was an asset. She offers compelling insights on what it takes to build a community of fans right now.

Plus lessons on why no is often a better answer than yes. It's a fun romp, so let's get into it. I'm Bob Safian. And this is rapid response.

I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Erica Iyer's Badon. CEO of Food fifty-two, former CEO of Barstool Sports. Erica, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. I have tried to think about how to ask you about your career, but this move from

Barstall to Food fifty two is so Different. Like the vibes of the two brands and businesses are so different. Can you start just by describing for me like how you define

What Barcel Sports. Is, was, was about, and then how you define that for Food 52? Yeah, it's a great question. It's weird. It's a weird you don't see people making this kind of transition very much, I don't think. I would describe Barstool sports as one of the most wild and free and creative and disruptive No holds barred, us against the world.

Anything for a laugh mentality company and What was so staggering about Barstool sports, I joined in twenty sixteen. is, you know, it had an insanely rapid period of growth from n twenty sixteen to twenty twenty three. And crazy, right? Like the revenue went from like five million to three hundred million. Yeah, it just was a really crazy run. So in a lot of ways, it's it's hard to put words and your arms around Barstool sports because you can get caught up in the controversy of it all, or or the Dave Portnoy of it all, or the business. Dave Courtner the the the founder and

Um but I really loved Barstel sports and it was a really electric wild, stressful, painful, exhilarating, terrible. you know, almost decade that I spent helping Dave grow that company. And then I made the change to Food Fifty Two, which is, you know, it's a lifestyle brand. It was founded by two women. It is about home and table and food. There's a lot more perfection The bathrooms are, you know, insanely better, cleaner, the office is beautiful. There's you know, at Barstool people were like sleeping on my couch and living in my extra bedroom and like this has grown ups. There's grown ups at Food Fifty Two. Um but it's a really neat company that is

fundamentally and like kind of foundationally not that different from Barstool, which is It's a company that is centered on community. It is a company that is both commerce driven and advertising driven or content driven. And what I was really looking for after the Barstool run. You know, we sold the company twice in twenty twenty three. We sold it to twice for some some um quite different valuations, right?

Five hundred, five hundred fifty million? Right. Yes. So we sold the second deal was a dollar? Exactly. Um which is pretty crazy and you know I kinda woke up the morning after we bought the company back for Dave for a dollar and said I'm not gonna have it. a ride where we do two exits in one year, one for five fifty and the other for a dollar ever, ever again in my life. And there's nothing that's gonna top this experience. So I should go think about

you know, what is it I could do next and where could I contribute next and w what do I wanna learn next? And which is really what drove me to food fifty two. I've been on the board f of Food Fifty Two for a while. I've been an advisor to the company since I think twenty nineteen. And I really wanted to do something that was really different. I think people expected that I would go work in gambling or I'd work at another sports company and I was like,'Cause gambling was sort of the impetus behind the big five hundred and fifty million dollar deal, right? Exactly. Barcel was become gonna become a A g a gambling sports betting company which didn't

quite pan out. Right. Exactly. But became something much bigger and I really felt like I did it. I learned a lot. I I I think I contributed good things. I It was exhilarating. It brought me to places I never thought I would go, both good and bad. And I was eager. You know, I think one of the things I wrote a book called Nobody Cares About Your Career. I was eager to try and learn something new to put myself in a place where I would have to learn a whole bunch of new skills or a new industry or a new way of doing business while still bringing what I had brought with me. And so that really is what drove me here.

You mentioned community as being like the the common thread between the two of them. Like Barstall was incredible at building community, but it did it in a very specific way. Yeah. Do you apply that to food fifty two?'Cause it's a very different Community.

Crazy different. The average age of a person at Barstool Sports was probably twenty-two, twenty-three years old. Uh, the number one place we recruit people from was a college network we created. Food fifty two. is you know, there are people who are pedigree, right? Chefs and you know, there's a lot of people who've worked in industry for a long time. A lot of grown ups. A lot of grown ups, which is both good and bad, to be honest with you. You know, I think Barstall was so on the edge. And so fearless that we tried and experimented and created things all day long. You know, I would always describe Barstall sports as

a company where every day everyone showed up and it was a blank page. Іно, старте та монетиз. TikTok was just starting, they didn't have an ad product. When our creators came to work every day, they had to make people laugh and they had to start over every single day to make people laugh. Some of that will apply to Food Fifty Two and some will not. You know, when you're developing a recipe or you're making a cooking show. You can wing some of it, but you

can't wing all of it. And you can't You know, it's not driven off of headlines. And so it's not viral in the same way, but I do You know, I really think that community is built around personality and I I'm eager to add more personalities to Food Fifty Two so that we can build, you know, who is our big cat? Who, you know, will there be a Dave Portnoy? Probably not. There's only one Dave Portnoy on the planet, but We need to find people who have opinion and perspective and charisma around

home and design and lighting and furniture and food and You know, I'm eager to bring that here. So like some more edge. Is needed to sort of Get and maintain attention in the attention economy and to and to build the

Emotional connection that you have with the community? It's not necessarily edge, but I'll give you an example. We have an intern here named Annie. And we have a lot of chefs in a test kitchen. Annie posted a video two days ago that was Uh mixing fluff and coke. Like

Coca-Cola and fluff and it makes something, and people went crazy for it. She had eight hundred and thirty comments. We put a video about how to make a Basque cheesecake and it gets six comments on it. So What I'm trying to figure out now is what is the balance of the any of it all. And the cheesecake of it all, and how do we put those two things together? At Barstool it was, you know, reacting to a sports headline or a news story or something

insanely stupid that someone did in the public sphere. This is a place where we'll do it a little bit differently, but It's not necessarily edge, it's how we're talking to people and how we're eliciting reaction. I have a lot of respect for the the food section of New York Times. I don't really care about the recipes, but I love the comments. And so one of the things that's really interesting is people have a lot of opinion on the internet. The internet is a wild, crazy, weird place. And how do we invite that in to have reaction, to be inspired by, to be contrarian to what people here think? And that's a new skill set for Food Fifty Two. I mean Barstall a a lot of it too was was around humor and the the example you give is something that

Had more humor to it, but I don't know. Food brands. Haven't historically like Define themselves by that kind of uh Personality.

Exactly. And that's why I think there's a lot of opportunity. You know, you look at the food industry and it's like fashion a little bit. It's so much about perfection. It's so much about Authority and What the top person has to say and I think that's kind of bullshit now. Like I had a chef in here yesterday. A twenty four year old guy who

started cooking over covet and is self-taught and now he's developing a recipe book. He's got a huge following. I think the internet has changed this notion of authority. And it has for good or bad, and you can argue it either way. It is ushered in this era of personality. And you know, personality existed in food. You look at Julia Child, like she Julia Child was is a legend not just because of her cooking, but mostly because of her personality. And I actually think we're in an era right now where there's so much fragmentation. Anyone can be a chef, anyone can be an influencer, anyone can be a personality, and it's so fragmented that there's actually a a very large business opportunity in the home and lifestyle space around that. And so you you you need to be a personality, although maybe not quite the personality that

That Dave Portno is? I mean Yeah you have to deal with a a lot of controversy. There's there was a lot of personality at Marstal Sports. You know, the internet has changed so much since Dave created Barstool Sports. Dave created Barstool sports in two thousand three or two thousand four And he used to be able to sit on a story or a video for

A month. And then post it. And you flash forward to twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, you can't sit on something for more than a second because somebody else has got it. So it's very hard to grow stars now. If you look at the music industry and you look at the biggest names in music. They're not new people. It's Taylor Swift who came around. It's you know, Justin Bieber. It's very hard to break out anymore because there's so much attention fragmentation and there's so much proliferation of content. And so what we'll do at Food Fifty Two is Certainly build more personality, certainly diversify the personalities we have, certainly add humor. It'll be interesting to see if it works.

I know this that Dave was just rescued from his boat by the co coast guard. Like that that's not your problem anymore, but I don't know, is it is it Is it hard to be away from that kind of drama?'Cause it's also Very relevant. Yeah, it it's It's hard to describe what

A decade of barstool with it was so intense. It it was twenty four seven. It was every weekend. It was every weeknight. Something went wrong. Always and ever. Um, and it's a little bit described it as a as a heart attack every day. It was a heart attack every day. And I say that in jest, I loved it, but there is something very addictive to that.

Um, certainly. And I was a little bit worried about About that for myself, quite honestly, because it it was it was a constant adrenaline rush. Dave and I used to always describe Barstool as a shortcut. Um and the reason it was a shortcut is because it was dog years. Like one year at Barstool Sports was twenty years somewhere else because we had to go through so much controversy or so much adversity, or we were trying to figure things out, or you know, XYZ happened at any moment. And I think part of it you know, Dave is the best at this, which is, you know, Dave's looking like scraggly and furry on the beach, and you know, the coast guard has to rescue him. And then Miss Peaches, his dog is going to an auction charity benefit. And then he's on stage with Zach Bryan in a Patriots jersey. And All of it's documented, and you see it all the time, and I think

The magic of Barstool is that the camera is always on. I mean you you ran Barstall in a way that Uh few CEOs have ever led a company with cameras and mics everywhere and audiences with a front row seat to your office every day seeing the decisions you were making. It was almost like a reality show. Like A model that you

That you liked? That you like Wanna learn from? Like the how did I mean that's gotta Impact the way you Lead the company. I never intended to be public, so I think

I can remember. the announcement video when I joined Barstool and I think I have like five thousand followers on Twitter. And the announcement video went out and then all of a sudden I had fifty thousand followers. Overnight. Yeah.

It was a little bit like getting like a mutant chip put in you from being at Barstall where you're getting comfortable being that exposed. is highly, highly uncomfortable. And it does change you. It makes you recognize how to talk to people. It teaches you a lot of good things and then it also I think makes you very guarded.

Mm. So you get a thicker skin, but you also get more wary about what how you how you are. You know, if I hadn't worked at Barstall Sports, I never would have written a book. I think, you know, while I do think there's some negatives about it, like I'm a harder kind of tweaked person from having been through that, I do also think it changed my life and really extraordinary in good ways. When I hear Erica talk about cameras capturing the everyday drama at Barstool. I can't decide if it's a brilliant idea for leadership or the worst idea.

On the one hand, it's the ultimate form of accountability, but there's also the risk that every decision you make becomes performative. After the break Erica shares more of her battle scars from Barstool, about leading in the face of constant controversy and online scrutiny, plus lessons she learned from a recent guest of ours, Steve Bomber. And more. Stay with us.

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Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode.

I hope to see you there. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi.

And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Before the break, CEO of Food 52 and former CEO of Barstool Sports, Erica Ayers Badon, shared her hard-earned lessons for building community around a brand.

Now she explains how she dealt with charges of toxic masculinity at Barstool, which aspects of the Barstool culture she hopes to inject into Food 52, and why media is what she calls an insufferable business. Let's dive back in. I have to ask you about Some of the the controversy, like the charges of Toxic masculinity. One report described Barstall as misogyny and racism dressed as humor like

What did you do when there were things you didn't agree with that the company was doing or saying? Or like how did how did you feel about all those kinds of conversations going on around you? Yeah, it was Very noisy. It was noisy for you know nine years, eight, nine years. When I joined Barstool, you know, I'd never been a CEO. The Chairman group and Dave took a chance on me. I walked in there. There was no PL. They didn't really have a running company. Dave texted people and they knew to blog every thirty minutes. So there was a lot to there was a lot to build. Um but one of the things when I took the job I was fired from

two boards that I sat on and I had a lot of people in my network be like, you just committed career suicide and it's over and how could you go work at that disgusting, terrible place. And you know what, like I loved that disgusting terrible place. Like I I found it to be the least sexist place I've ever worked. It was the least insidious place I've worked at you know, Microsoft, I worked at AOL, I worked at Yahoo, I've worked at a ton of ad agencies. Um I help take a company public, and all of those companies had way more issues. that were way more hurtful that nobody ever talked about. So

I really saw it differently from the inside. And I think one of the things that's happening, you know, right now we're we're kind of in a culture where it's like Condemnation by headline where You don't actually take the time to figure out what the real story is. It's just your judgment and opinion is the headline, and that's that. I really realized that I could not change people's minds. You know, I remember being on

Fox or something and I I just basically was like Barstall has offended everyone. Like it's It's actually indiscriminate. They've they have offended everyone. So I could I had the choice of like I can either go apologize and try to make it right with everyone, only knowing that they were gonna offend you the next day. Or I could try to build a professional environment, build Uh Compelling business, build a durable system.

Uh, which is ultimately what I did. Hm. And food fifty two, like the Feeling the culture on it. I don't wanna say it's more feminine'cause that's probably oversimplifying, but like Ha it was that part of the appeal to go to some place that felt Different I mean, there are a lot more women on the executive team. There are all more women in

Leading there, right? Yeah, I think You know, we had an all female executive team for the majority of the time I was at Barstool, which I think very few people recognize. I did want to go someplace more feminine. I don't know that it's feminine, though, because of the people that work here or because our customers are are women, which was the other thing I was really looking for, you know. If you were to ask me how do I market something or build a product for an eighteen to twenty five year old male. Like I could talk your ear off about that. And what I'm actually interested in Yeah.

Yeah. I wanna build products for women like me or women who are younger than me or women who are older than me. So that for me was a good next challenge and was something I was looking for. You you mentioned your book.

Nobody cares about your career. Um Are there things that women in business s especially Could take from your book? Oh, I hope so. I mean I think anyone it's it's not a book for women. I wrote the book because I was getting a lot of career questions. I get probably about five hundred DMs.

a week across all the platforms of hey, my boss is an idiot and what do I do about this? Or, you know, how do I get promoted? Or I just had a baby and I feel like I'm being discriminated at work. Like whatever. But I really do think it comes down to the same things for everybody, which is your ego and your insecurity, and how do you get over both of those things to be better at work? I think a lot of times women at work tend to second guess themselves and tend to overanalyze themselves and hold themselves back. But I also in fairness think men do that a lot too, so The book really is designed to talk to everybody. Both

Food fifty two and Barcel Sports are media businesses. I I Work in the media business. I work my whole career in the media business and It's really a hard business. Like it's a in some ways, it's like it's a it's a terrible and kind of grueling business'cause you have to recreate your product over and over again and The market can like Where do you feel like the media business is now and why

Are you drawn? S Being in this Messy relentless. Yeah, insufferable business.

I love the media business. I feel so lucky. Like we there There's not gonna be people who come after us who work in the media business the way we work in the media business. Mostly because the media business is so screwed up and it's so challenged, it's not gonna it's not sustainable the way it works now. But I find there is something infinitely challenging and kind of fulfilling about that blank page every day and you've got to make something. You gotta make something is you gotta distribute it. You gotta program it. You gotta figure out if it works, if it doesn't. And I like it's the same thing in the business model too, though, right? Like you've gotta keep coming up with what the new business model is too all the time. All the time. And I think, you know

I think the world has changed so much. The media business for so long has been I it's been disintermediated, right? You you had the newsstand and And maybe a consumer bought it or not, or in cable or broadcast television. And the internet has just made it constant and it's death by a thousand cuts, or it's a it's an opportunity with a thousand swords. Yeah, right. You can reach everybody in a perfect way, except then you gotta create everything for every platform and every person. Which is exhausting. Like you gotta have it's exhausting. Like it's so, you know, it's so funny at Barstool.

You know We were lucky at Barstow because we were early, early on podcasting. And I think that's the big thing in the media business at this point is you gotta jump on to the next thing just as it's starting and s when it doesn't look like it's gonna make you any money. And that's but that was a big part of our success at Barstall. But anyways. At Barcel, everyone was like, I want a podcast. I want a podcast. Give me a podcast. I want a podcast.

And I used to be like Be careful what you ask for because the worst thing about having a podcast is having a podcast. Because you gotta do it every week, you gotta promote it every day, you gotta do the clips. And It really separates You're holding up a mirror for me, yes. It's ours. It's a pain in the ass. Um but it's that's what it takes at this point. Some of your podcasts like

They move beyond Barstool, right? Like Call Her Daddy went on to went on to Spotify and that was Right. And and that was good. That was required. It's like You gotta keep moving. You gotta keep moving. I mean it w I think that's a huge success. I think it's a huge compliment to Barstel. I think it's a huge testament to Alex Cooper, who's a phenomenal talent, you know. She had a contract at Barstool. It's kind of like playing sports. Like you have your contract, you play.

If you're great, the GM rips it up and gives you a new one. And then she was like, Hey, I got an eighty million dollars, you know, offer from the other team. And you're like, I don't have eighty million dollars. So but I It's the natural progression of it, and I think Alex worked hard to build that brand and to evolve it. And that's also what's so exciting about media right now, is that it's personality, it's people.

The video that Food fifty two posted when you joined as CEO, you wandering through the kitchen and You know, messing up everybody's prep work. in the kitchen. Yeah. It's funny. I'm gonna create a series called Erica Learns How to Cook, which is like a disaster. It's like the super grover where like super grover somehow figures it out, but you know, messes everything up in the process. So we'll see if people like that. But you put yourself back out there again as a as a personality for the brand.

It's funny, I filmed a pilot for this episode yesterday. And To me it's like it's okay, fine. I made shrimp dumplings with a really talented person, but I came out of it and I was like, Oh my God, our video production, like the the lighting is off and the camera's off angle and the so For me it's

I think there's two reasons I'm interested in it. One is I think a lot of times at work people don't walk the walk. Like they don't try to figure something out firsthand. And so therefore they can't really ever figure it out for business. And for me, understanding first person how we were doing video shoots. Like I'll give you an example. At Barstool The camera is never off. And as a result, you never miss anything because the things that are actually interesting are the things no one intended to say. Uh here, so we shot the pilot and they shut the camera off between

You know, when there's a pause in the conversation or a a break in the cooking, they turn the camera off. And I was like, why would you ever turn the camera off? Like that's the those loose moments are sometimes the best. That's the best. Like that's the whole show is like me not being able to figure that out, or the other guy screwing up or saying something really stupid. So But I wouldn't have known. Something as small as they turn the camera off. And then the other thing is that I you know, in in really

kind of injecting some like freshness and new perspective. I am not a professional in the food and home industry. So I think It's also like hey, we can be loose, we can try new things, we can get new types of people in here. So I'm really At Microsoft we used to call it dog fooding, which I think is, you know, kind of a well known tech term, but You gotta eat your own dog food and

Uh uh One of the things I've learned from Barstool is like you have to do it yourself because if you don't, you don't understand how it's done. It w was dog fooding a a Steve Balmerism? I just I just talked to the thing. It feels like a Steve Balmerism, doesn't it? Isn't he so funny? He's so loud. And his voice cracks. Not shy. Not shy. Are there things you learn from working with him? Like to be more like him, to be less like him? What you know I'm not like Steve Ballmer, I don't think at all I mean Steve Ballmer is

you know, one of the greatest executives of all time. He used to when we were at Microsoft, he used to go sit in his car at lunch and listen to sports radio, which was like always the best thing ever. Like you'd be peering out the window at m you know, Microsoft and he's like walking out to his car to listen to the radio. Um He has so much charisma, he's so much energy. Microsoft was you know was a fascinating company. I always say that I learned how to say no at Microsoft. Because they asked too much? There's just so many people who have so many different agendas and they want so many different things done that you, if you don't know how to say no at Microsoft, like you are utterly screwed. Mm.

Well, and learning how to say no as a CEO, I mean that that's mostly your job, right? Saying no to ideas and every now and then saying yes. I think so. You know, I think people are so reticent to give the answer no or to be like I got told no, but No is really the second best answer to yes, and sometimes a better answer than yes, most times a better answer than yes. Microsoft really taught me to be decisive and quick in that because the longer things languished and hung between yes and no, the more like anxiety and angst and Inertia.

was created. So you know, I like a fast no. And yeah, and why is no a better answer than yes? Because I think no If you say yes to everything, you're really doing nothing. And it's quite easy to say yes. And I think a lot of times people say yes for the wrong reasons. They want to please other people or they don't want to offend someone. But when you say no, it

I think it indicates that you I are much more clear on who you are and what you want and what you're trying to achieve and you're far more protective of it. It's discipline, right? It it enforces discipline on you and on everyone around you. And And often no means you just have to go back and do more work. Exactly. Exactly. Like it's not ready. It's not where we need it to be. It's not what we want it to to look like. And I I think a firm no is a is a really great thing. I think if more people said no And n you know, more swiftly and clearly People would be in a much better place.

Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Awesome. Thank you for having me. What sticks with me listening to Erica is how practical she is about the changing nature of today's marketplace. There are risks she took at Barstool and risks she's prepared to take at Food 52. because not taking those risks puts the company at a disadvantage.

As much as I lament the downsides of media as a business, I also think it's a great model for our fast changing times. We can't hold on to old practices just because they used to work. We have to keep moving, keep creating. Keep changing ourselves. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.

Rapid response is a wait what original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. Our producer is Alex Morris. Assistant producer is Masha Maku Tonina. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bastanelli. Theme music by Ryan Holiday.

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