174 | Intrapreneurship with Art Bell
Our guest today on the pod is Art Bell. In 1988, Art Bell pitched HBO Chairman Michael Fuchs the idea for an all-comedy channel. This led to the television channel Comedy Central. In his new book Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor; Art outlines what is was like to grow his own company from within HBO and why intrapreneurship is a powerful career path to success.
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Art Bell Awarepreneurs Interview
SPEAKERS
Art Bell, Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive in with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce today's topic, and our guest, I have one request. If you could go over to iTunes or whatever app you're listening to this show on and hit the subscribe button and do a rating and review. It helps tremendously. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce our guest art Belle. And our topic is intrapreneurship. I was just saying to her before we hit record 163 episodes published this morning, and we've never talked about intrapreneurship and artists here to help us remedy that serious wrong. In 1988. Art Bell pitch HBO Chairman Michael Fuchs the idea for an all comedy channel, this led to the television channel, Comedy Central, in his new book, Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor: he talks about what it was like to grow his own company from within HBO, and why intrapreneurship is a powerful career path.
Art welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. We got a problem here art, and you're gonna help us fix it. How can we not talk about intrapreneurship ever?
Art Bell 01:28
Well, I'm here for you.
Paul Zelizer 01:30
You are here for us. Thanks for being here for us. So before we get started are, we are called Awarepreneurs. And we'd like to get to know somebody by asking you about a wellness or an awareness practice that you personally use to bring your best self your most resilient self to your work day after day week. me.
Art Bell 01:49
Well, I do meditate. I use headspace for that. And I've been doing that for a few years.
Paul Zelizer 01:54
And how long do you meditate every day?
Art Bell 01:56
15 minutes.
Paul Zelizer 01:58
Longer than me. I only do seven. Anyway. You should be the on this end of the mic. I don't know art. Yeah, no.
Art Bell 02:04
Yeah. So I like it. I like it. It's, it's nice.
Paul Zelizer 02:08
What does it do for you?
Art Bell 02:11
Well, it basically calms me down, you know, these are stressful times. And on top of that, I'm a little more anxious than your average guy. So meditation has really kind of come in handy for me, too, to keep that in check. My wife is very attuned to whether I've meditated that day or skipped it. I try and meditate all the time. But every once in a while at four o'clock, and I'm feeling a little edgy. She'll say, Did you meditate? Maybe not. He says I can tell. Yeah.
Paul Zelizer 02:44
That's, that's what a great story. So you know, the people around you can tell that it's having an impact. Right?
Art Bell 02:50
Right. So
Paul Zelizer 02:52
Talk to us are about comedy like it's been your journey for many, many years. Did you always want to be in comedy for work? Is that like something you stumbled upon? How did Art Bell get into comedy?
Art Bell 03:04
Well, as a, as a kid, I was kind of a comedy geek. I mean, starting with maybe 789 years old. I was fascinated by comedy. I watched comedians on television whenever I could. It was a show called The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday night at eight o'clock. And they they often had comedians on I swear I saw Richard Pryor for the first time when he was 19 years old in probably his first television appearance. And those comments really affected me. And I thought that that looks like you know, I wish I could be that funny. Now, who was I guess, slightly funny, but it wasn't that funny. And I really never aspired to be a comedian. I did some satirical writing in high school. I did some performing and sketch comedy in high school in college. But it never occurred to me to go into it as a field, mostly because I thought the entertainment business was forbidding, you know, and difficult. So, when I got out of college, I took a job as an economist in Washington DC and spent three years there. The end of the three years I decided I was going to go back to school because I was really not that happy. Nine actually that's not true. It wasn't I was unhappy. Being an economist. I just felt like it was time to change the channel. So I did that by going to business school. One of those a business school I reconnected with comedy because there was a comedy musical review done every year by the students called the warden Follies. And I was in it the first year and the second year I wrote the the show and I realized that I really enjoyed the craft of comedy and I thought well maybe I can get maybe I can get into this. It was it was around that time that I started looking for a job in the in the television and cable and And that's what I noticed there was no comedy network, because that would have been the first place I applied. I thought, Why could that be that there's no comedy network? in the world, there's a Sports Network, there's a news network, there's a music network, I mean, you know, 24 hours, everything you can think of no comedy network. So I started thinking about what a comedy network would look like if it were my comedy network. And I developed a vision for it. And that's how I ended up looking to the entertainment industry with an eye towards pitching my channel.
Paul Zelizer 05:35
And when you did pitch your channel in 1988, were you working in the HBO brand?
Art Bell 05:43
Yes, I've been in I've been an HBO for, I guess, three or four years. Three years, I guess. And I had been working mostly as a as a marketing analyst. And then I was spent some time in new business development, working on pay TV channel called Festival, which was a, like HBO, but no sex violence had bad language. For those people who didn't want that in their home, it was a test of the service. And the test failed miserably. So we didn't do festival and I was, at that point, when they when they killed festival, I was kind of out of a job. So that's when I really started getting serious about writing up my proposal, assuming I was going to have to look for a job and talk to somebody else and some other company about it.
Paul Zelizer 06:38
So your three or four years and you get to know the industry, the players how things work inside of HBO, and for anybody's, you know, not familiar, HBO is a pretty significant player in the entertainment industry, wouldn't you say ours?
Art Bell 06:54
I would say so. You know, at that time, HBO was hugely successful. I mean, everybody was high fiving. In the halls, they had set out to change television, that was the mantra, we're gonna change television. And I think by the late 80s, they had decided that they had changed television, and also that they were making, making a real splash with with the public. So they were making lots of money, and they were very pleased with himself. It was also around this time that HBO started to do some original comedy specials, stand up specials with the outstanding comedians of the time, like Whoopi Goldberg, Goldberg and Robin Williams and George Carlin, I believe, you know, really the top notch guys, and they were high end, very well produced comedy specials, uncut and uncensored. Now, before that, you couldn't see their acts uncut and Uncensored, unless you went to a club. So this was pretty much the first time on television it had showed up, showed up like this.
Paul Zelizer 08:01
When those those years of getting … Well, actually, let's wind back. Describe intrapreneurship, like we're talking about the foundation, but like, maybe somebody's never heard that word for and I'm gonna make an argument that getting to know your industry, those three or four years, and HBO, perfectly prepared you to be an intrapreneur. But like, if somebody's never heard that before, widen back a little business, what is intrapreneurship? And what is an intrapreneur?
Art Bell 08:29
Well, everyone knows the definition of entrepreneurship, that's when you start a company from scratch, using money that you either raise or invest yourself and have at the beginning, presumably full ownership of the company, until he has to have to start selling shares. And that's been the popularized model in Silicon Valley. So everybody knows about that. intrapreneurship is a matter of doing the same thing. However, you're doing it inside an existing company. And you have the advantage of not having to raise money. And you have the further advantage of having a an infrastructure in place. Hopefully, one that could be very helpful. I mean, not only a financial team and a legal team and other things that you need, but in the case of television or any of the other. Well, basically television. You have uplink facilities, meaning we had the wherewithal to put a new channel on the air that was a satellite uplink. And that would at that time was a very expensive undertaking to either build it, buy it or rent it. So all of these things were very helpful to me. What was it like?
Paul Zelizer 09:46
or How did it factor in to saying yes, that you got 1980? I mean, we wouldn't be here. If you didn't get that yes. Or maybe it would have been a very different path at least. So you pitched HBO. chairperson? And he said yes to this idea of Comedy Central the world's first comedy channel. What were those three or four years? Before you pitch to him? How did that factor into getting a yes? Like? How did it prepare you? What did you learn in that time? And how did it make you a more effective intrapreneur?
Art Bell 10:20
Well, I spent a lot of time talking about my idea. You know, with that three or four years, I really used it to talk to friends, family, my co workers, the extent that they were interested about the idea, and that really helped me develop my concept develop a vision for the channel, before I even pitched it, formally to anyone. I also learned a bunch about television, obviously. And I also spent some time when we were doing when we were launching festival, we did a lot of research, audience research, I was on the road quite a bit, talking to television audiences about how they use television. Sometimes these were one on one interviews. And that experience of understanding how people watch television and what they were looking for in television, I think was tremendously helpful to me. Every once in a while I cheat and stick in a question about, hey, there's no comedy network with that. Is that something you'd watch? I usually get a yes. And yeah, that's right. There is no comedy network. But I figured I just put that in my back pocket. If anybody ever asked if I had any research, I could say yes, with a straight face. I think all of that was helpful. Listen, you know, under the circumstances, everything was helpful. my years as an economist consulting, my, my years are at graduate school, I spent a year at CBS, which wasn't very much fun, but it you know, certainly, I got a little older and wiser. So it's really, when you, when you're in a position where you're an entrepreneur, you're really calling on a lot of your skills and talents, to effectively sell your idea.
Paul Zelizer 12:12
We're gonna unpack that more when we get to your book. And all the lessons you learned, listeners of this show are they know that I like to joke about my spiritual highlighter. And I want to pull out my spiritual highlighter and circle what you just said, you know, Silicon Valley makes it really kind of sexy to like, get outside investors and venture capitals, and different rounds of funding. But the thing that most people don't realize and don't talk about is that most entrepreneurs, their startup money comes from a job. The startup money comes from the infrastructure of employment. Now, that doesn't mean everybody should do it this way. But like the idea that we're going to sell something to strangers and get a lot of money and grow really quick, that is what makes good TV shows. And it's what, you know, Fast Company magazine likes to write about, but the majority of successful entrepreneurs use their job as their startup funding and infrastructure. And that's one of the reasons I'm so grateful that you're here that we can, you know, sort of unpack that there's more than on one way to do it. And that what we see most visible tends to be more for tech companies where people are shooting to make a gazillion dollars, the next Google and people give them a lot of money, and they grow really quick, or they flame out really quick. But that's not actually the most common path, the path that you took is a much more common path. doesn't make it right or wrong, but let's just at least acknowledge how to most people get going. It's much more along the lines of what you did art than what we see in these magazines. So I really appreciate you unpacking that. So in 1988, they said yes. All right, let's do this where the world is ready for a comedy channel, like what was that? Like to get the Yes, thumbs up? We're gonna do this.
Art Bell 14:02
Well, it was energizing and exciting and at the same time, a little scary. I, when I got the Yes, it was, it was at an impromptu meeting with the chairman was 1988. And I didn't have a presentation. I hadn't prepared for any kind of meeting like this. I was just sort of dragged into his office by my boss's boss. And I pitched the channel. And he said, sounds good. Let's let's give it a try. So as I said, it was totally unexpected at that point. And and I was very surprised and pleased that he said, Let's take it to the next nap. Now. What happened is, that wasn't a go ahead on the channel that was going to come three months later, after I had done some more research. I was teamed up with a comedy professional meaning one of the One of the HBO comedy programmers a guy named Stu smiley, and you know if you have to be in comedy,
Paul Zelizer 15:07
what a knave, exactly.
Art Bell 15:08
Smiling is a very effective name. And he and I, you know, went about what we had to do. We put together a presentation, we presented our findings to the chairman Michael Fuchs, and he invited the top part of the 25, top executives at HBO, to listen to me as well. And at the end of that meeting, he said, I really want to do this. But before I do, I want to go around the room and I want to get everybody's opinion. And he asked each person individually by name, do you think we should do this? And everybody said, Yes. And we were given the Go ahead, that's when the go ahead was was, was given. And he said, I wanted up by November, which was about six or seven months from where I was pitching it. So you can imagine, again, a lot of excitement and the thrill, it goes through you realizing that something you've been thinking about for years and years, actually is going to have a chance. And my perspective was if if we got the chance, it would work. I mean, I was I was not at that point, anything, but sure this thing was going to happen, if I could get it up and running. So, um, but you know, again, the responsibility involved in getting it up in six months also hit me, like, hit me like a 50 mile an hour wind, you know, like, okay, you better get to work. And there's a lot of work to be done hiring people, sourcing programming, you know, really getting everything ready. But the chairman was not to be disappointed. So we, we did our best.
Paul Zelizer 16:56
Having gone through, you know, getting a yes for your idea. And now having been thinking about intrapreneurship for a long time are what would you suggest to if there's a listener who has an idea, and it's like, oh, wow, I never thought about I thought I would have had to leave this organization, or I never even thought about approaching an existing organization that's already in the space and seeing about this kind of an intrapreneur approach. What would you say to somebody who's either, you know, thinking about it now? Or is, as a result of this episode, considering this possibility? What are some of the top factors? And what makes getting a yes for your intrapreneurial venture more likely?
Art Bell 17:41
Well, I, I spoke about the fact that I talked to everyone about the idea for research one time, yeah, it was research. But more than that, I'd often get a response like, Well, wait a second, that's not going to work, because XYZ. So it gives me a chance to explore objections, or difficulties on might have, that I hadn't considered. And I think that's really important. Because you want to, by the time you get in there to pitch your idea, you want this thing to be fully vetted by everyone who could have a look at it and offer an opinion. Because you don't want to, you know, you want to have the best chance of being bought as possible. So if someone says, Hey, you know, what about costs, this thing's going to cost a fortune. You could say, well, I understand that, but I know how we can start inexpensively. So if you'd like me to go over that I can. And that's, that's what I'm talking about. The second is, you want to keep your eyes out for one or two people who are interested enough and maybe located the organization to the point where they can champion the idea. In my case, it was a it was my boss's boss, who learned about it thought it was great, and got me into the chairman's office quick. But, you know, in the course of talking to people in the organization, you might get somebody who says, Yeah, I like that idea. I think that's good. Have you who have you talked to maybe we should, you know, get into see somebody else. And then you can take all of those opportunities. The third thing is you don't have to downsize your vision. But you have to be ready to compromise up front. Because your organization may say yes, with an asterisk, and the asterisk asterisk will be, you're not going to get as much result, as much resources as you need or want. And we're going to give this a limited amount of time to see if it's going to work. And you know, and they may go on and on with that asterisk, what that what the limitations are. And you might say, well, that's not the best way for me to launch this thing or start this company, but Maybe the only way and you're looking at it right there. So you know, jump at it. Don't downsize your vision, though. And vision is an overused term. But I like it. And the way I think of vision is not how you're going to start something. But how you're going to what it's going to look like in 10 years, when it's up and running and successful. And the question is, how is it going to change the world, that's what you want to talk about. And I, in my case, I told people that I thought we should have a channel that would be the center of the comedy universe that would attract innovative programming from comedians and comedy writers, and would be a place to hang out for comedians. I pretty it those things, kept me going through the darkest times, because I knew what my goal was. The final thing is be ready to put yourself on the line that doesn't take much explanation. You come up with an idea like this inside a company, and they say yes, and they start pumping a lot of resources into it, you're working as hard as you can. If it fails, it's going to be on you, not maybe 100%. And maybe you can find some reasons that failed, that didn't have anything for you, to do with you. But nevertheless, if your idea fails, which it might after, after getting started, it's it's it's gonna be a tough moment. For me, I think. I took I took comedy central comedy channel and Comedy Central, very personally, throughout, because it was my idea. And people knew that. And it kept me going.
Paul Zelizer 21:49
Nice. I love those suggestions. When you you mentioned costs, aren't you, you know, this is likely to come up. But I'm not here to talk about my story. But I'll just share. When I was back in the day, one of my last roles when I was in community mental health, actually was an intrapreneur, I was a contract social worker for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And we partnered with a very large national organization who was doing kind of circle based processes, the technical name for this family group decision making, think about a little bit like restorative justice. And we partnered with this national nonprofit that was doing very forward thinking, training in this and wanted to bring some of it to tribal communities and didn't know how to get in. And I was the social worker for some tribal communities who wanted to do some innovative work. And we formed a partnership. And I got flown to a big conference and presented on all this, we got free training resources, and all kinds of support to bring this into a community from within the federal government. So if you know, if you are thinking that maybe your job doesn't count, you know, consider the possibility that there might be ways to do this in even in organizations that this might not be the typical day to day thing you see in that organization.
Art Bell 23:17
I think that's a really good point. And I would add to that, that since writing my book, and since since I started this a few months ago, I've been contacted by a lot of people who are interested in intrapreneurship, not not to start ideas in their companies, but just to create a climate or an environment for innovation within the company. Because that is as important as it can get. I just think you gotta, you gotta have good ideas bubble up, and you have to have a way to trap those good ideas, and sort through them. And and if you if you encourage people to do that, you're in better shape.
Paul Zelizer 24:01
I can't wait to hear about that art. Let's do this. Let's pause just for a second here, word from our sponsor. And when we come back, I want to hear about that work that you're doing now. Do you have an idea of how to make the world a better place and you want to, you know, grow it and impact people and have it become your livelihood, or to grow into more significant impact. One of the best ways if you have an idea like that, to get your message out there impact more people and make more money that I know of on planet Earth is podcasting. Right now art is in the seat of being a guest on this podcast. I'm in the sea to being host we can talk about it as being both sides of the mic. whichever side of the mic, you're thinking of being a guest and doing that really intentionally. One of the quickest ways and most fun and engaging and meaningful ways. I know how to grow a business to be a host and Create deep dialogue conversations, the average podcast episode is 43 minutes long just under, you can really have meaningful, rich, powerful conversations. And when you do that, as a host, you become known for holding a space in a particular topic, week after week, fabulous way to grow business. And it's also easy to waste a lot of time, energy and money space. If you'd like to learn an either or both sides of the mic as a host and or as a guest about how to grow your impact based business. We have something called the podcast success team with the where printers. And we'll show you we do master classes we have a month the questions and answers will help you learn how to do it with the least amount of energy and money put in and the most amount of return that you get out. If you could use some support about this, go check out the podcast success team. There'll be a link in the show notes. And thank you aware partners podcast success team for supporting this podcast. So our talk to us a little bit about you know what you're just saying there, this idea of intrapreneurship like it's catching on, and people are saying oh, this guy art, he's up to something interesting. And maybe we could do a little better, that, you know, helping folks who have innovative ideas come approach us as a organization, what, like, what are you seeing in that conversation,
Art Bell 26:39
I was approached by the intrapreneurship Academy, which I did not know existed. And they asked me to give a presentation to their graduating class. So I did. And when they explained what the what the intrapreneurship Academy was about, they said that exactly what I was saying that, that people go there because there are companies send them their middle level management, middle to upper and their companies send them in order to teach them what entre intrapreneurs do and how they do it. In the hope that either they will become intrapreneurs themselves, which may or may not happen but within that foment an environment of innovation. And I was fascinated with with that, you know, it's not just, it's not just saying go out, get a big idea and trying ramaa through your company, see, see if it'll work, it was more about if we're gonna have a company that's going to grow, we're going to need to, as I said, evaluate the ideas that are bubbling up from, from the middle managers, because that's, that's where they come from, they come from the bottom and bubble up. You don't want to have an organization that doesn't recognize those. And you do want to have an organization that encourages that kind of behavior. So that's what I found out doing that. I was subsequently invited to a meeting of venture capitalists who wanted me to talk about intrapreneurship, because they had found that companies that were started inside other companies tend to to do quite well, on average. And so they they would look for these companies and trying to invest in them. And I just thought that whole thing was interesting that that intrapreneurship was a focus of investment by venture capitalists, when you know, as you pointed out, intrapreneurs don't have to raise money. But certainly their companies are sometimes in a position where they have to raise money. So there you have it, I mean that that was my education on what intrapreneurship can do, other than lead to the next big thing.
Paul Zelizer 29:03
Nice. So after a lot of years thinking about comedy, and intrapreneurship and what works in business, you decided to write a book, tell us about the book and why'd you write it.
Art Bell 29:16
The book is called constant comedy. It's a memoir. The subtitle is how I started Comedy Central and lost my sense of humor. I didn't start out writing to write a book. I started out writing because I liked writing. And I was pursuing it by writing memoir. I took some classes at the Sarah Lawrence writing Institute, which is a good place to do that. In memoir writing, and I wrote a lot of memoir. And then one day I went to class and read something from you know, a story about something that happened in comedy. And the class looked up and said, Wow, that was Cool, we never needed to do that. And I said, Yeah, okay. And they said, well write some more. So I did. And soon I found myself in the process of just writing a lot of stories. And then I realized it could be a book. And then I realized it could be an important book. I realized that so many people who have been watching Comedy Central, probably for four years and getting so much out of it assumed that it was it just burst on the scene fully formed and successful. Because they had no understanding of what it takes what it took to get that started. I wanted to get my adventure out there. So that people would see that putting constant putting Comedy Central together was a difficult undertaking. And it was almost something that didn't happen. Not only did they not, you know, did I have to sell in the idea. But the first couple of years were very precarious, very precarious, I was afraid that we're going to shut it down at any minute. So that's, that's why that's why I ended up thinking that the book was more than just a recounting of what happened. And I worked very hard on it. And I think it I think it's a good story. And an interesting story and a story with with some lessons for everybody.
Paul Zelizer 31:23
I love the subtitle of the book are along the way, you lost your sense of humor, like tell us about losing your sense of humor, what happened there and kind of there was a recovery process for you and all that.
Art Bell 31:37
Well, that then that exact phrase comes from Chairman, the chairman of HP O. About six months after the launch. We weren't doing very well, we've been sort of panned by the critics. We weren't getting a lot of subscribers, the audience was lukewarm. And I think that the chairman was embarrassed, he was a very powerful man in the entertainment industry. And he'd spent a lot of time boasting about how great this channel would be. So six months into it when it wasn't great. He wasn't happy. He called us in. And we sat down the few of us that were who were there. And he said, You know, it took a comedy channel to make me lose my sense of humor. And I'm looking around,
Paul Zelizer 32:23
that's a great lie.
Art Bell 32:24
It was it was a stunning, it was really a stunning moment, because I looked around and nobody was laughing. And I realized, yeah, we sort of have lost our sense of humor, because this has just been so intense. And so serious that you know, any any passion and love I walked in with for comedy was now subservient to the realities of getting this thing. Having having comedy channel find its footing.
Paul Zelizer 32:55
So what you do, I mean, comedy channel made it and you're still here to tell about it, something happened?
Art Bell 33:05
Well, actually, the story is a little more complicated. The day after we announced that we were going to do a comedy channel called the comedy channel, at HBO. We heard from MTV Networks, they put out a press release, saying we're launching a comedy network to and we're calling it hot the comedy network. Now that's, I have to say that was a typical MTV Networks move. When Ted Turner tried to challenge them on music videos, they put out a press release saying we're going to put out another channel for music videos, we're calling it VH. One and turn our back off. So the lesson there was never underestimate the competition, they are going to show up. And they launched about six months after us because of course, we had a six month Head Start. And they were going head to head with us for the next six months. So at at this point, you know, during that year, where there were no comedy channels a year before, there were two comedy channels now and it was making everybody apoplectic the cable operators, the advertisers, they were constantly having to choose. The cable operators encouraged us to merge. I didn't want to merge. I thought we were winning the so called comedy wars. But Michael Fuchs, the chairman of HPO had a conversation with the chairman of Viacom and they decided to to merge the channels. So they merged the channels that they put me and the opposite my opposite number at ha who was the head of programming there together, and they said, Okay, you guys, you got to relaunch the channel. You can't call a comedy channel or ha Figure out a new name, figure out what the programming is going to be. You got two powers of programming, figure out what you need and what you don't. You got two piles of potential employees figure out who you need and who you don't. And good luck to you. So that was, that was a moment for me, I've got to say, because I was initially disappointed. But then I was initially then I was struck by the difficulty of merging two completely different cultures, hbos culture and MTV culture, completely different corporate environments. I guess we see that in every merger that comes along. And it's often cite is reason mergers don't work.
Art Bell 35:44
I was really hell bent on making sure that there was a comedy network in the world. And to my everlasting delight, so is my opposite. And all the people who have been working hard on their channel at that point, so we went ahead and we put it together. And despite the naysayers, there were people who said, Oh, we don't think this new channel is going to make it through the year. We didn't make it through the year. And then we were up on our feet. And comedy, we renamed to Comedy Central. And the rest is history. I my book discusses what happens during my tenure there, which is the next four or five years, five or six, actually.
Paul Zelizer 36:24
And yeah, so you're with Comedy Central, you kind of oversaw this merger helped this new entity land on its feet, and then you move down, right?
Art Bell 36:33
That's right. That's right. And, um, they decided to put new management in a Comedy Central, which is something they do in corporate environments all the time. They let you know, those of us who weren't new management, they let us go with a nice smile, and thanks for everything. At that point, you know, I didn't have HBO, which was my home company really, to fall back on because it was now a joint venture, and nobody can help. The joint venture board had decided to do this. So I went on, I did some consulting, to a bunch of television channels, a children's television, workshop, PBS. And I've got a really good broad look at the television business as it stood and what people's problems run what the opportunities were. So that was extremely helpful to my next step, which was I was offered a job at core TV, which was a failed cable channel. And I was offered a job. And then the mandate was to put the channel back together, and see if it could actually be successful.
Paul Zelizer 37:48
So talk to us about arts work life today, you've got this book, you're doing things like speaking for things like the entrepreneur Academy, are you still consulting,
Art Bell 37:58
you know, the last consulting job that that came in? I turned down. And the reason was, at that point, I was writing, I was starting to write I was really getting interested in. I was also playing drums and piano, I'm having a good time doing that. So with all that, I just said, you know, what, I, this is something I want to do anymore. And I people say, well, when do you retire? When do you know you're going to leave corporate? Or when do you know you're going to leave the workforce? And my answer is, you know, because you're ready. Now you may not be able to leave when you're ready. I guess most people find that's a real possibility. It's like, I gotta get out of here, I can't do this anymore. But when they're in their late 50s, or early 60s, but you know, to the extent that you, you have that feeling, you'll you'll know when it comes before that I did not want to stop working. And there were times when I thought I'm just gonna work, you know, work forever. It's all on me. But that passed. And I decided I wanted to be a writer.
Paul Zelizer 39:00
Having been in this space for a long time art and seeing a lot of different, let's say expressions of intrapreneurship. What what's your thinking? Now we're in this incredibly, you know, chaotic world. We've got multiple crises happening at the same time, a confluence of the largest economic crisis in our lifetime, the COVID-19 crisis, which is disruptive business in so many ways. You know, social unrest and polarization due to things like the concerns of black lives matter has like this is a really, really chaotic time. Knowing what you know about intrapreneurship if you are thinking about being an intrapreneur intrapreneur Now, how does this context this echo system that a fewer you know, somebody in your you know, much earlier phase of your career and you had a great idea and you're trying to like pay it down To Wow, that's a lot going on there, does that change anything in terms of what it means to be a successful intrapreneur? Now,
Art Bell 40:10
I would say that it's likely to change a couple of things. First, the entire landscape has changed the entire economic landscape, the entire business landscape, it's almost as if and I hate to use this metaphor, but it's apt, it's almost as if there was a fire that burned through the economy, and a lot of the economy was lost to the fire. And that's what the landscape is going to look like. Now, the same way that fires burn through forests, and people plant new trees, that's what's going to happen. I mean, just because a big company shut down. Because people, you know, for example, the theater industry is having a horrible time and, as you know, but if a lot of that shuts down, or some of that shuts down, that leaves a an opportunity when the economy gets started, again, to the extent that people want to renew their interest in going to the movies. Same with the restaurant business. Somebody was lamenting the fact that their favorite restaurant closed down. And I said, You know what, and is bad. It's really sad. And it's really sad that it's part of this environment that we're living through. But the guy who started that restaurant, and the head chef, and all the people who work there, they're around. And when we come out of this, they're going to be looking for work, and they may start the next restaurant. So the opportunity to start new things, I think in that kind of landscape is going to be really incredible. Secondly, you're going to have the wind behind you. Because as the economy comes back, and people start getting out and spending money. If you're if you're working in a company, they're going to say wow, things are getting better, pretty fast. I wonder how we can take advantage of that. Which is your entree to say, I know how we can take advantage of that you're more likely to get funded for something interesting, or a product extension or line extension or a great idea when the company is generally feeling good about its prospects. And that may be the case for a lot of companies as that that have weathered the storm and come through this intact and start looking around saying, We've got a lot of niches we can fill here. Let's get going. That's that's my take on it. I realize it's a little more optimistic. But and it's hard to be optimistic in this in this time. I know that. But I think that's, you know, that's not a completely ridiculous scenario.
Paul Zelizer 42:50
Are you having written this book? You know, the I'm Jewish. And in the Jewish tradition in the Talmud, it suggests that everybody should write a book in their lifetime, right? You've put a lot of thought, a lot of care into this book, and I highly recommend it, we'll put a link in the show notes could go get the book listeners, as somebody who's, you know, walk that journey and written a book, like, first of all, what's it like to have put so much of your care and love and wisdom and life experience into a book and now like seeing it go out there into the world and get emails and reading reviews that it's touching people's life? What's that? Like?
Art Bell 43:29
It's extremely gratifying. One of the byproducts of putting out the book was getting in touch with people I hadn't seen or heard from in 20 or 30 years. And so many people I work with in those days, and along the way, in my career are great. You know, they were great people. I loved them at the time, if they walked in the room right now, I'd be thrilled, although they'd have to wear a mask, I presume. But
Paul Zelizer 43:54
you'd want to give him a hug. But you might not right. That's exactly right.
Art Bell 43:58
So that was that was a really kind of unexpected and fun. I think that the thrill of having a book out there, and being able to talk about about it, in this case, it's a memoir. And while it concentrates on Comedy Central, I do have some, some short segments in there about my childhood and growing up that were relevant to whatever was going on in the comedy story. In order to help people get to know me, and that was a suggestion to the memoir, teachers, it's Sarah Lawrence. You have to know your memoirs, you have to have some feel for him. Or even if you know, if they're writing about a specific period in their life, and I think I accomplished that. It was so interesting to write about myself, personally and my family personally, in a way that I hadn't before. You know, I'm not I'm not really I'm not shy, but certainly I'm not Someone who talks a lot about his personal life, especially to strangers. But I realized that in order to do this book, you really have to get out there, you really have to be ready to put yourself. put yourself out there your soul a little bit at several junctures I, I say in this book a lot about how I was feeling scared or upset, how the how the setbacks were sometimes devastating. You know, so it's, it's not just a comedy romp through six years of my career, it's, no, it's a real kind of memoir, almost a meditation on what it's like to be in a corporation, in this case, a television Corporation, trying to get something started. It's hard. And it takes a lot. And that's what I wanted to convey. And I'm so I'm so pleased to be hearing back that. That's what that's what it does convey.
Paul Zelizer 45:58
A lot of our listeners know the work of Bernie Brown, and I'll put a link to her work. in the show notes. She talks a lot about how the best leaders use vulnerable vulnerability very thoughtfully, and that it's hard to trust somebody as a leader, if they're not willing to share some of the harder or more confusing aspects of their journey and the choice points they're making. Sounds like you did a fabulous job of that. Art. And I'm not surprised that people are connecting with the book. So what's next for you? Do you have another book on the horizon? Sounds like you really fell in love with writing. Yeah, I
Art Bell 46:35
found I found writing as difficult as it is. Everyone says it's hard to write it is kind of hard to write. But it's also so much fun to read what you've written in, say, wow, that's kind of cool. So I will continue to write I've been writing fiction, most recently, just because I've done a lot of memoir. As I said, I probably have a zillion pages a memoir written about my childhood that probably is never going to see the light of day. Or maybe it will maybe I'll post it somewhere sometime, or maybe some piece pieces will be published. But I'm really interested in fiction, I really want to see you know what that's like writing fiction. It's been fun so far.
Paul Zelizer 47:14
And this topic of intrapreneurship, you have a sense, there's more for you in that arena?
Art Bell 47:20
Well, I certainly hope so I I was surprised and gratified to be contacted by people who are so interested in hearing my story, and learning what it was like for me personally, so that they could make use of that or convey it to their, to their students or employees. I hope there's more of that coming. You know, again, it's, it's difficult for me to I haven't actively pursued it, let me say that. But I would like to actively pursue it. And I'm sure that that'll be something I do.
Paul Zelizer 47:55
Art, if there was something you were hoping we talk about today on this topic of intrapreneurship and your book and your career we haven't gotten to it. Or if there's something you want to leave our listeners with an idea or resource as we wind down and say goodbye. What would that be?
Art Bell 48:15
I, I would tell your listeners that an important ingredient that is often overlooked that we didn't get to talk about is passion. You cannot deliver the news about your idea in a dispassionate way. You'll be called upon to do presentations, you'll be called upon, but you have to make sure that the passion you feel for this, and the passion it took for you to nurture this and get it to whatever point it's at, has to come through you every time you talk about it. That doesn't mean you physically start jumping up and down. But people have to say at the end, Wow, you really feel strongly about this thing going. And you say yeah, it's gonna be great.
Paul Zelizer 48:58
Thanks for and I like to say, Hi, my name is Paul. And I'm podcast obsessed, right? Or I say that so often I get flack I get teased by our listeners. But it's true. I'm podcast. I'm very, very passionate. And that makes it a lot easier and actually feel grateful every day when they get up and see that, oh, I get to interview art today. And all of our other fabulous guests are thank you so much for being on the show today.
Art Bell 49:26
Oh, absolutely a pleasure. I will suggest for your listeners that my book is available on Amazon and at a bookstore near you.
Paul Zelizer 49:36
We'll put a link to how you can get a hold of it and all the other resources that we talked about in today's episode, go check out art, go find them on social media and go learn from this guy has been added a long time. So for now, that's all the time we have for today's show. Thank you so much for listening. Quick reminder, we dropped new episodes twice a week now every Tuesday. Stay in Thursday about 5am Eastern time. And we'd love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea of something that we haven't talked about or a guest who you think would be a great, you know, learning experience for our community, please go to the aware printers website and go to the contact page reader guidelines and tell us your idea. We'd love to hear them. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these point in times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for.
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