Name: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Podcast_Erica_Badan_0827025_5063360
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T06:25:06.653Z
Duration: 30 min 24 s
Description: jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Podcast_Erica_Badan_0827025_5063360

Transcript for "jeff kuzmich - Migrate_Podcast_Erica_Badan_0827025_5063360": Hey, everybody. It's Gene Markson. Welcome to this week's episode of the Paychex Thrive podcast. I interviewed Erica Eirsbadan for this podcast. She was formerly the CEO of Barstool Sports. I know my kids, particularly my sons, are gonna love this. She ran Barstool for eight years from 2016 to 2024. Now she's the CEO of a foodie platform called Food52. Erica has learned a bunch of things about building brands and managing people. She shared with me a bunch of advice, those different cultures, how to motivate employees, performance reviews as well, how often to get feedback, and other things and dynamics working from home too. She has some thoughts on that I think will be of real interest to you. In addition, we talked about building a brand. How when she started at Barstool did she manage to build this brand into, like, a global juggernaut, and what lessons did she learn that she's gonna take with her to Food fifty two? Great conversation. You'll enjoy, Erica, a lot. Let's get to it right now. Welcome to Thrive, a paycheck's business podcast, your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks. So, you know, I'm glad you're here. It's Erica Ayerspede. Now, Erica, you know, you know, I've I've given an introduction for you previously so people know who you are and what you do, but just to reiterate it as well, you were the CEO of Barstool from 2016 to 2024, and now you're the CEO of Food52. So, let's first of all start with a little bit of bio of you. Give us a little bit of a history. How did you wind up at Barstool? And then how did you ultimately transition over to Food52? And then we want to talk a little bit about what Food52 does. Great. Yeah, I didn't know what I wanted to do coming out of college. The economy was great. I graduated in the late 90s. I got a job at Fidelity Investments and thought I wanted to be a lawyer and realized I did not want to be a lawyer. And I was super bored, and I hated it. And I took a big jump early in my career to work in marketing. And I really never looked back. And that was a good, big jump for me, because it was a jump that most people at Fidelity and otherwise were like, what are you doing? Why would you do that? You're on a great track. But I knew for me that it was a better career path, and it would create more opportunity for me. And I've always been, my parents were teachers, I've always been a big student of work. I think work is tuition you get paid for. I just wrote a book about work called Nobody Cares About Your Career, and it's really everything that I've learned, not just at Barstool, but the lead up to Barstool and coming out of Barstool. But I've really spent most of my career in the internet, which has been great. I love the internet. And I think AI is going to be the new internet, the future internet. But what the majority of my time has been spent doing is leading teams, creating products, monetizing opportunities, connecting technology, content, and monetization in a way that can create a sustainable and growing business. And that's really, I did that at Yahoo, I've done that at Microsoft, I worked at AOL, I've launched and been part of failed startups and great startups and disaster startups. And all those things led me about ten years ago to Barstool Sports. I fell in love with it. I loved Barstool before I joined. I was a fan of it. I read it on the train when I was in Boston. And we built it into a really big juggernaut and a cultural force and a global brand and a really differentiated platform. And I did that for almost a decade. And it was amazing. In 2023, I sold it twice. And at that point, I was like, I think I've done everything here I can do. And I wanted to work with women and I wanted to go back and try to grow a startup. And that's how I came to Food52. So actually, let me, before we even get into Food52, I mean, you said you wanted to work with women. Explain to me what you mean by that. Yeah, I mean, Parcel Sports was amazing. I describe it as I spent a decade obsessing over eighteen to thirty four year old men. Like, I can sell anyone a drink on the beach. And I am not an 18 34 year old man, and I really wanted to have a chance to connect with women my age or around interests that I had, which, know, I'm kind of a homebody, I like design, I like the home space, I think women are interesting creators, I think, they're the super consumer, they drive most consumer spending around the world. And I wanted to make a pivot to a type of company that I didn't totally understand, but I knew a lot of and to bring what I had learned at Barstool and also to learn a great deal. Food52. Tell me about the site. Yeah, Food52 is awesome. So Food52 is really a holding company brand for a really incredible design company called Schoolhouse, which makes lighting and textiles and furniture, kind of mid century modern design, really a strong belief in modern heirlooms and modern utility, very known for color and print and pattern. And Food52 was started on the internet around the same time as Glossier and a lot of really interesting brands. And it started as a blog, it was started by two food writers, and it became a blog that became a shop that became a bigger shop that became a bigger shop than that. And really has a really wonderful eye to solutions in the kitchen, solutions for entertaining in the home. And what my vision is, is to create both a content company, which is really what I did at Barstool Sports, and a leading design and commerce company, which is what we have here with Food52, Dance and Schoolhouse. So when you left Barstool, I mean, obviously, you were there for a while. You said, I mean, you clearly enjoyed it. You know, you did what Yeah. You felt you could you, you know, it was time for you to move on and do something differently. I am assuming that when you made that decision and you were moving on, you were like, all right, for this new company, I'm gonna, I have learned a lot from my days at Barstool. I'm gonna take a lot of that knowledge with me to Food52 and apply it here, like really, you know, run it the way that I wanna run it. So what did you learn when you were at Barstool? Let's start with people. Tell me a little bit about the demographics of the people at Barstool that you were managing. Tell me about, you know, what you learned about working with them, hiring them, motivating them, and then what you're taking with you along with you to Food52. Sure. So one is I had a great honor and luxury at Barstool Sports of working with really young people. Like, it was You know, most of our employee base was under the age of 28, I would say. You do realize I could name you a countless number of my clients that have the exact opposite point of view. Tell us. It's its own thing. It's its own thing. I think what made Barstool so cool is it was very tough to get a job there. Less tough as we got more successful. But certainly by the time I left, I remember probably in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four, we were looking for a camera person for Dave Portnoy, and we had 16,000 applicants. So we really got the best of the best. So one is just to, you know, I think a lot of times people complain about managing Gen Z and for like, totally good reasons. But what we I think need to remember, especially if you're in your late 30s, or in your 40s, or in your 50s, is they just don't know. They're coming into the workforce, nobody's told them, you were an idiot when you were 20, and they're idiots. And they also have a lot of skills. They're faster than you are. They're more adept at using the internet. They can be extremely resourceful if directed to go be resourceful. And at Barstool, we really had a very strong work ethic. It's a very blue collar company in terms of mindset and work ethic. And it also was a place where the social norm was to be very busy and to be extremely entrepreneurial. And that was really one of my big things, which is you should trust people to try things, you should enable people to accelerate and to fail. And when they fail, it's not a problem unless they don't learn from it. And that's really how we ran our teams. You you talked about work ethic. You know, I mean, I know millennials right now, they complain about Gen Zers that they don't work hard enough. You know, it is what, how did you get these kids, these people, their younger twenties, how did you motivate them? I mean, I have to imagine, you know, Erica, that, you know, working for Barstool is super cool and exciting, but, you know, in the end, it's like any other job, right? Mean, and that, you know, has to sort of wear off after a little bit, and then it's just actual work. Did you figure out any ways to get these younger people coming to work on time, putting in the hours, you know, and also the environment itself and I don't know how the environment is. But, you know, I mean judging from the brand itself is pretty rough and tumble, you know, pretty honest Yeah, it's locker room. Yeah, like, you know, work in a locker room. And that's another issue altogether, you know, like, you know, because people are so, you know, afraid of what to say. And, know, they don't want to get sued and they want to be careful around the environment. So specifically, you know, what did you do to motivate these people? And how did you balance this sort of locker room mentality with making sure you weren't constantly being investigated by the EE? Yeah, I think, you know, so one is you have to have a vision, I think. We had a vision at Barstool Sports, we wanted to grow, we wanted to be the best, we wanted to be the biggest, we wanted to, you know, we were underdogs, and we created a culture of underdogs. And when a company is motivated to fight for something and to rally around something and to be bigger than any one part, it becomes really exciting, and it becomes really motivating. And then you get the right kind of people because you want the people who are bought into a vision and make the vision their own. And we did a very good job of that. And I'm trying to do that here at Food52. I think the second piece is you have to have people's backs, right? People make mistakes all the time. Like it's, I make mistakes all day at work, you make mistakes all day at work, 20 make mistakes all day at work, and you have to have people's backs and you have to work through mistakes. And then the third piece is, we were a very high functioning, high integrity company that just looked like total chaos on the outside. And we let that layer of chaos permeate because it's good for business. But we kept things pretty tight. The work ethic was very high. The pressure was very strong. And the standard, it was hard. And I think that's one thing. If you don't have people coming to work on time, you know, my thing is then fire them. Like, if you can't come to work, if you don't have enough respect to show up at work on time, then then you're out of here, and we're gonna find somebody who can come to work on time. I think a lot of times, we as managers, or people who are older complain about people coming to work, not on time, but then they don't create any consequence for it. So then I'm like, then people are just gonna do it. You know, so I'll push back on it a little bit only because you worked, mean, Barstool is super cool. You said you got 16,000 applicants for, you know, a camera operator, you know, and I think Food52 is super cool as well. And I can see that you probably do not have, you know, super, you know, big challenges in attracting people to work for a platform like Food52, because you're probably getting people that are super into, you know, food and everything about it. What would you say to like, I don't know the person running like the company that manufactures, you know, tubes or, you know, distributes corrugated containers. It's really tough to excite your workforce and give them a vision. Then when you do bring somebody on board, it's pretty tough to fire them when unemployment is 4%. And, you know, it's tough to What would you say to that person? One is like every company offers something. And I feel very fortunate that I work in a consumer facing company that people find interesting. And I'm interested in that. And I feel like that's a great luxury. I also just really like to work. So if I'm working at the tube company, like, I want to find people that are like, I want to be the best tube packing people on the planet. And a lot of it has everything has to do with people, right? You've got to find the people who have passion for what they do every day. And that passion, your environment is very relentless, it's contagious, so that environment will carry. I also think that even when you don't work at a sexy company, or it's not a brand that's cool, or that anybody recognizes or knows, if you are in the business of solving hard problems, and accomplishing milestones, it will feel great. And I think that's a big piece of it, which is creating a winning team, creating a winning culture, creating a culture of perseverance and resilience. I think that comes from great leadership and that whether you run a flower shop or packing plant or food and lifestyle company that can translate. So I love what you just said. Think you're right. And I even want to add to it as well. I mean, the client that I know actually that is a manufacturer of, they're like rubber tubes that are using in machinery and equipment. Those tubes go into machinery and equipment that are then used to create products and those products And are then those companies that buy their tubes for their machines employ people and give them livelihoods so those people can have good lives and, you know, coach little league and go on vacations, you know? Mean, my company sells CRM software like Salesforce and Zoho, you know? And, you know, it's not that very sexy, but, you know, I tell my employees, have 10 people, and I'm like, listen, we're offering software to help our clients grow and do better and make more sales. They can employ more people, you know, people, real, you know, so we are helping the universe in just everybody's little small way. You don't necessarily have to be like a cool and sexy Totally. Platform. You know what I mean? Totally agree. Yeah. I totally Yeah. Agree with You you mentioned earlier also about you you made reference to to Barstool being like a bro culture and, you know, and and it's mostly 18 to 34 males that are your audience, as well as I'm sure, a big swath of your employees. And then you moved to Food52, which is more, you know, female, I'm assuming, oriented. Talk to me a little bit about the differences there. Know, like how Absolutely. Do you Yeah. How do you give us some advice on, you know, and I hate when people say like you shouldn't distinguish between the two and everybody's the same. I don't know if you agree No, with that I because I get it. Talk to me about it. All the bathrooms are much nicer here. So I will say that. My clothes I'm sure you smell better. The bathrooms are amazing. In some ways, a mostly male workforce makes things easy. And a younger workforce, I found to be easier. I think Food fifty, what was cool about Barstool was we really built it from not much infrastructure, and there was no legacy. It was all about chasing whatever was new, which is very easy. At Food fifty two, it's a lot of change. It was we tried this, it didn't work. And there's all this scaffolding that we have to take down and replace. That can be really challenging. That's challenging, and it's painful. And it's also really personal because you built the scaffolding and the scaffolding is coming out. So that's been a hard, not a hard challenge, but it's been a new, a new and different challenge for me, which I'm very grateful for. You know, I think my advice is always and what I try to follow is, the more and more clearly you can communicate, the more open and just forthright you are about like, this is working and this isn't working, the more you can clear out bad static and inertia, I think there's a lot of times where for whatever reason, things just start swirling the drain at work. And really staying out of that, I think is super important. And really staying focused on the very limited, but very clear number of results can make a big difference. Does this apply, I mean, both to females and males? Or are you talking like this is more for a female demographic in a workforce? No, I think it applies to both. I think working with more women than Women are interesting. They're a lot more stereotypically empathetic. They notice so much more. They can be more sensitive. Although I'll tell you, at Barstool, people cry a lot. Guys cried a lot at work, it was frustrating. And here people cry at work too, which is maybe a reflection of me. But you know, I think people want opportunity, they want to be respected, they want to be heard, they want to be given chances, they want to be treated fairly. And they want to be recognized when they do good work. And, you know, I think the challenge with some employees now is they don't want feedback when they don't, which is difficult. And I think that's a big management challenge. But in general, I think if you treat people with respect and fairly and give opportunity and almost too much opportunity, it usually takes care of itself. You just say about feedback, and that you're saying that, unfortunately, like a lot of people don't want feedback. And then I hear like, oh, the age of the annual performance review is over and we should be getting more feedback more frequently. I mean, have you found like about that? When it comes, I'm still kind of harping on the male female dynamic, you know, I mean, is that a guy thing that they don't want more feedback? Like are women? No, I think women are the same. I think it's an age thing. You know, I have a chapter in my book called Feed Forward is for Wimps, which I really agree with. So What does that mean? What feed forward mean? Like feed forward, I guess, is the new word where people don't want feedback, because feedback is too negative. The perception is you're only looking backwards. I see. I think it's just semantics. But, you know, I think look, everyone can get better. And people have opinions on other people's performance always. Peers have opinions. Subordinates have opinions. Your boss has an opinion. Most times people keep that opinion to themselves. And that actually doesn't help you. Feedback is a chance where someone is giving you the gift of their perspective on your experience and your performance. And that actually gives you the opportunity to do something about it. And you may be like, hey, I hate those people. I don't want their feedback. But it also, you might say, oh, they're kind of right. And I now have this arrow is in my quiver, it's not in theirs. And I think that's an important thing in thinking about feedback. I think annual reviews are super important. I like annual reviews. I also, I just had this conversation this morning. I think real time feedback is super important, because you can't hold some if something goes great, you should say it went great. And if something went wrong, you should say it went wrong. You hold that for a year, and you're just like, that's not helpful. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I also think that getting people, when things went wrong, if you're honest with them, then when things go right, they they appreciate that more. Like, you know, my manager's bringing me the good and the bad. And the bad, and we have a high standard and it pushes Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right, that makes sense. One final question on employees that I do, in the few minutes that we have, I do wanna talk a little bit about branding, but you're talking about feedback, you're talking about supervision, you're talking about having that communication with your employees. I'm getting the vibe from you that you don't lean more towards remote working and working from home. Like you seem like you're more of a, you want to have a team and collaboration in the office. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, it's Friday afternoon. I'm in the office. I like in office work. Like flexible work. I think most companies will always have some type of hybrid unless you work. Some we are seeing, and who knows what the economy like, we are seeing employers want people to come back. Yeah. I think in person work is important because I think you learn more. And I think you can get your hands on more. And I think you can accomplish more. And I think when you work at home, I can only speak for me personally, I feel so much more anxious. I work five hours longer than when I work in an office. And there is no break between when I'm at work and I'm at home, it's all the same. And I also think it really creates a distance between people and it creates an apathy that is not healthy. And so I am a big proponent of if you want to move forward in your career, and you have the opportunity to do so in person, you should take advantage of it. Good. All right, that's fair enough. All right, you go, just changing gears a little bit. You mentioned earlier in our conversation about your involvement. You joined Barstool in its infancy, grew it into a global brand recognized everywhere, Very, you know, incredibly impressive. You know, finished doing that and then you're taking that to Food52, right? So what lessons, what did you learn about growing, you know, a platform that was unknown into something that's recognized around the world? What are you going to take with you now to Food52? Can I ask you, maybe I should know this, when did you start as CEO at Food52? Like how long ago now? A year ago. About a year ago. Okay. Good. So it's recent enough. So, you know, you you again, you you change jobs and you've got ideas in your head, you know, like what you're, you know, doing. I don't expect you to be accomplishing those things right away. So what is the plan that you and what have you learned from Barstool? I mean, I learned so much from Barstool and there will never be another Barstool sports. So, you know, I think it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I really feel like what I will take with me here is the knowledge that a brand can be built at any time by anyone. That is the glory of the internet age, there is so democratized, anything can happen. The second is you've got to be relentless and consistent in building that brand in how much content you post, where you post it, how you post it, how you're nurturing a community. Building brands is building community at this point in time and in this era. And I think that's really important. Three is just failing and being willing to try things and fail and correct and evolve and movement and really trying to grow through momentum. And then the last one is that your audience will tell you where to go and what to do. And you've got to follow your customer. Right. Know, Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool, a lot of Barstool's success was about his own brand and people loved him. But he was able to move on from that and involve a lot of other people to carry that brand forward. One of the many great things about the brand that you built with him is that Barstool was very opinionated. You know, I mean, took sides and people love that stuff. You know, they really, know, they're, it's very honest, straight up. Now you're at Food52. Do you, is it, Is it the same now? No, we don't have the same. There's no Dave Portnoy here, you know, so that's, and he's a one of one. But I do think look, you know, Dave is arguably the largest food critic in the world with pizza reviews. At least pizza, yeah. And he does that because he posts a three minute pizza review every day at 6PM, every day. And, you know, we will start to have more discourse and content that has a dialogue and show more opinion, and to have more perspective and also have fun like barstool, everything was fun. And, you know, I think in the food and home space, there's a lot of fun to be had. And there's a lot of great creators out there who we will bring into our mix. And that's the plan is to leverage the creators themselves. Yes, definitely. To do just that. Yeah. A lot of this takes money. Barstool took money as well. I mean, what what do you say again to, your business is trying to create a brand, but is really got a limited budget? You just gotta start somewhere, you know, like you just you have an iPhone or, you know, an Android phone, it has a camera on it, you can turn that on, you can get an editing software, you can use Canva for almost free. And, you know, it doesn't take a lot of money, we built Barstool off of very low money, And we will do the same here at Food52. So, it's not gonna look perfect and exactly the way you want it. But if you start something and the audience follows, the money will follow after that. You built Barstool during, you know, it was in the mid teens, you know, it was right from 2016 to 2024. Now you're at this new place, Food52. What's changed from a technology perspective? And you mentioned earlier about AI. What kind of influence do you think that's gonna have? And how are you thinking of incorporating that stuff into your? AI is gonna be profound. AI will change everything. It will change, in my world, how content is created, how customer service is conceived of, how you manage your day, the type of resources you employ. You know, I think, you know, distribution has changed, Substack came out of nowhere. You know, when I was at Barstool, Substack wasn't a big platform now, Substack's huge platform. And then AI, I think, will really change most everything. Do you have any specific plans for using AI at Food52? Yeah, we'll use it to think about how we scale content, we will use it to think about how we automate menial tasks, we'll use it to think about how we can be more intelligent with our customer service. I think those are probably the big three ways that we'll use it. Okay, fair enough. Final question then is just your overall advice that you have for businesses. You know, do you think in this world of digital, you know, digital brands as it is, do you think every company has to focus on online, you know, your assets to build their brand? Or is there still a way to do that with just old school? No, old school's over. You've got to, know, I think the world is becoming is very digital and is also becoming more physical, right? In real life really matters. And you don't only need to live on the internet, but the internet is the single fastest way to start, grow, and to scale something. So I think understanding that as part of a business is really, really critical. Erica Ayers Baden is now currently the CEO of Food52. She served as CEO at Barstool Sports from 2016 to 2024. And Erica, the author, can you give the name of your book and also where people could fight? It's Nobody Cares About Your Career, and you can find me on Instagram erica or on TikTok erica. That's great. Hey, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I learned a lot. I know our audience feel the same as well. I want to wish you best of luck with Food52. I am a fan and will continue to follow. Okay? Okay, great. Thank you. Take care. Thanks. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on Thrive? Please let us know. Visit payx. Maythrivetopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits, or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychecks.com/works. That's W O R X. Paychecks can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time. Take care. This podcast is property of Paychex Incorporated 2025. All rights reserved.