# Axios CEO: How to Get Ahead of Everyone Who's Using AI NEW ECONOMIES · 2026-09-19 Jim VandeHei, Co-Founder and CEO of Axios and Co-Founder of Politico, argues the open web will largely die within 2 to 5 years as LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google become the main way people get information. Once everyone has Einstein-level AI, he says, unique human-created content will soar in value, benefiting creators with direct audience relationships or niche domain expertise. He predicts courts will settle LLM compensation within 1 to 4 years and reveals Axios's 'local super system,' which uses AI to automate non-journalism work and expand local news across America's roughly 10,000 cities. He credits co-founders Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz, and promotes his book Simplify, which argues we waste at least 25% of every week—2.5 years per decade—on work that never needed doing. ## Questions this episode answers ### Why does Jim VandeHei believe the open web will die in the next 2 to 5 years? Jim VandeHei says that within the next 2 to 5 years people will stop going to www.whatever for information and will instead get most of it from an LLM built by companies like Anthropic, OpenAI or Google that knows more about your tastes and rhythms than any person on Earth, maybe including you. [8:32](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/9b85ebb8-e620-485b-849a-304801f11fbe?t=512000) ### How will creators and publishers be compensated when LLMs use their content? Jim VandeHei says courts will litigate this over the next 1 to 4 years. Right now LLM companies pay nothing, 'it rhymes with bureau,' citing fair use, but he believes new information and human expression are needed, so compensation could come via licensing deals or subscriptions inside your personal LLM. [11:30](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/9b85ebb8-e620-485b-849a-304801f11fbe?t=690000) ### How much of the workweek do we waste, according to Jim's Simplify framework? Jim VandeHei cites studies, including one from The Economist, showing we waste at least 25% of every week on things that never should have been done. He calls that 2 and a half months a year, or 2.5 years every decade, and says Simplify forces you to confront what you do and why. [51:15](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/9b85ebb8-e620-485b-849a-304801f11fbe?t=3075000) ### How does Axios plan to revitalize local news with AI? Jim VandeHei says Axios has spent over a year building a 'local super system' to automate costly, non-journalism tasks so it can scale into news-starved communities. Axios is currently in 43 cities, and he wants boots on the ground in roughly 10,000 cities with 5,000 or more people, unveiling details at the end of the year. [25:27](https://neweconomies.podhood.com/9b85ebb8-e620-485b-849a-304801f11fbe?t=1527000) ## Key moments - **[0:00] Intro** - [0:00] Jim VandeHei: "In the next 2 to 5 years, the open web will largely die" as LLMs replace websites - **[2:11] State of media** - [2:17] Jim VandeHei: "We waste at least 25% of every week doing things that never should have been done" — 2.5 years per decade - [2:37] The state of media today: information nirvana and information dystopia happening simultaneously, says Jim VandeHei - [4:10] Will media get trust scores? Jim VandeHei says no — "there is no hero in this story other than you" - **[6:48] Platform shift** - [7:27] Jim VandeHei predicts the open web dies in 2–5 years as LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google become how we get information - [10:30] How creators get paid by LLMs: Jim VandeHei says courts will decide in 1–4 years — right now AI companies pay "zero" - **[11:30] Creator compensation** - **[13:33] Timely vs timeless** - [14:05] Jim VandeHei: once everyone has Einstein-level AI, unique human-created content "will soar in value" - [17:00] Substack writers who made $100,000 two years ago are now making $400,000 a year, says Jim VandeHei - **[17:51] Creator opportunity** - [18:13] Jim VandeHei: hyper-niche creators with direct audience relationships will thrive even in an LLM world - [19:12] Are AI summaries killing newsletters? Jim VandeHei: "pure AI summary, it's just stupid. It's just not that useful" - [21:28] Jim VandeHei: the New York Times, WSJ and FT are all bigger and better than 10 years ago — media doom is overblown - **[23:32] Making money** - [24:06] How media companies make money in the AI era: advertising, subscriptions, licensing and events, per Jim VandeHei - **[25:14] Local news** - [25:27] Axios is building a "local super system" to revitalize local news in every US community using AI, says Jim VandeHei - [29:01] Jim VandeHei's big dream: boots on the ground in 10,000 US cities — Axios is already in 43 with AI-powered distribution - **[31:25] Inside Axios** - [31:47] Inside Axios culture: Jim VandeHei on being hands-on, hiring good people, and why "being told you're a good person is better than being told you're a smart person" - **[35:25] Tough days** - [35:26] Jim VandeHei on navigating dark days: "you should feel a little anxious. It's a weird time to be alive" - [38:34] Jim VandeHei: "I do not understand how anybody is a solo founder" — why co-founders Mike and Roy make it work - **[39:09] Co-founders** - [39:39] Jim VandeHei on co-founder Mike Allen: he interviews presidents and "treats the waitress exactly like he would treat the president" - [44:40] Axios fired talented people who weren't good people: Jim VandeHei's "killers with humility" culture rule - [46:30] Jim VandeHei: work at a startup and "you'll learn more in a year than you would learn in eight years of college" - [47:48] Dyslexia as a superpower: Jim VandeHei and Ollie on how learning differently builds persistence and problem-solving - **[49:14] Simplify book** - [49:16] Jim VandeHei's new book Simplify: delete busy work, because 25% of every week is wasted on things that never needed doing - [52:05] Jim VandeHei's deathbed exercise: write down the three things you want to be true about your life and work backwards from them - [55:00] Jim VandeHei called a leadership meeting titled "let's kill shit" to ruthlessly cut dumb meetings, products and processes - [56:40] A day in the life of Axios CEO Jim VandeHei: 18-hour days, no predictable schedule — and he still vacations constantly ## Speakers - **Ollie Forsyth** (host) - **Jim VandeHei** (guest) ## Topics AI ## Mentioned Axios (company), Politico (company), Substack (company), Simplify (product), Smart Brevity (product) ## Transcript ### Intro **Jim VandeHei** [0:00] In the next 2 to 5 years, the open web will largely die, meaning you're probably not going to go to www.whatever to get your information. Every single one of us will have access to Einstein-level genius across every single topic known to man. Once everybody has access to Einstein-level intelligence, if anything, the need for unique content—human-created content—that is truly unique, that is differentiated, will soar in value. People are going to yearn for that. They're going to want something that sits above and beyond AI that everyone has access to. So I think people that can offer that will probably. **Ollie Forsyth** [0:37] This is Jim VandeHei, Co-Founder and CEO of Axios. He's built not one, but two massive media platforms exceeding $1 billion in value, and now he's sharing why your unique human perspective is key to creating real value and his proven framework to delete the busy work and focus on what matters. **Jim VandeHei** [0:53] If you have a direct relationship with your audience, or you have, like, domain expertise even on a super niche, I think there's going to be a big space for you. In this chaotic era, how do you help people at work and outside of work stop doing the things they don't need to be doing, so that you can then spend your time amplifying the things that you want to do? We waste at least 25% of every week doing things that never should have been done. That's 2 and a half months a year. That's 2.5 years every decade. We naturally, as a species, have this genetic flaw where we make things way more complex than they need to be, and we just fritter away time. And unless you have a system that forces you to confront what you do and why you do it, you're just going to keep falling into that trap. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:37] How would you come up with a really simple framework on, "These are the 2 things I should be doing really, really well, everything else delete"? **Jim VandeHei** [1:44] It depends a little bit where you're at in life and where you're at in an organization, but it will give you, like, a north star of what you actually care about, what you actually want to see happen. I would start both with life and work. You need to figure out. **Ollie Forsyth** [1:58] Welcome to New Economies. ### State of media **Ollie Forsyth** [2:12] Hey, Jim. Welcome to New Economies. Thank you so much for joining us. **Jim VandeHei** [2:15] It's a thrill. Let's, uh, this will be fun. **Ollie Forsyth** [2:18] Hopefully. Well, you are the Co-Founder of Axios, one of the biggest news outlets out there, and you're probably the best person, to be honest, to ask this question. So much has been happening in media. I'm confused. So many people are confused on what's happening. What is the state of media today, and should we still be excited? **Jim VandeHei** [2:37] I mean, it's a mess, but I think the state of everything is kind of a mess. And I'm of two minds about the media. Like, on the one hand, it's never been a better time to be a news consumer. There's more good, high-quality content available to any of us on any topic as long as we have internet connectivity, which is literally 5 billion-plus people on Earth. And so if you have the time to kind of pick what you care about and make sure that you're getting it from good sources, you can get smarter quicker than at any point in humanity. The flip of that is, is there's just a lot of crap out there. You know, when just, like, it's easy to get good stuff, it's even easier to get bad stuff. The algorithms push things that are aimed at your passion. They often push bad stuff, dark stuff, gossipy stuff, trivial stuff. There's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of confusion even from, like, not misinformation, just about who to trust, what to trust, what to pay attention to. So those 2 things are happening simultaneously. And so I'm very sympathetic to the news consumer who just feels anxious and feels uncertain what to trust. I think one of the most alarming things is just the number of people I talk to every day that will send me something, including very smart people, and be like, "Wow, this is interesting." If it's true, if it's real, like, the idea that we're questioning is something real, is something true, is that actually a video? Is that actually a person? Was that actually said? That's kind of scary,right? And so we're in this weird phase where you have both information nirvana and information dystopia happening simultaneously. **Ollie Forsyth** [4:10] Where does this end up going? You know, are we going to start having trust scores across media? You know, if we don't know how accurate the information is, who the information is from, how much of it is AI-generated, you know, how do we actually determine what to read in the end? **Jim VandeHei** [4:27] I don't think there'll ever be trust scores that anyone cares about. People have tried that. People aren't looking for that. It's just not how people consume information. And by the way, someone would have to score it. Like, who would you trust to score whether something's accurate or partisan? You're not going to trust a government. You're probably not going to trust the companies. You might trust the individual, but it really depends who the individual is. And so what I like to say to folks is, like, there is no hero in this story other than you. And I would take a tremendous amount of personal responsibility for what you ingest into your brain, just like you do what you would ingest into your body for your diet,right? In terms of, you need to make those decisions. You need to make sure you know who you're following on social media. You need to figure out, like, the podcasts that, like, you actually trust. You need to find at least one source of truth. Hopefully it's Axios, but it could be the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, something. You need some rooting in general news that you feel like, "Hey, they're trying to get to the closest approximation of the truth in a non-ideological way on a regular basis." I think you need that. You need that grounding. You need that visibility. And I think if you do take that control, it doesn't have to be a month-long project. This is something you could do over time or, you know, spend a couple hours in one day and probably clean up your media diet. But I think you can't wait for someone else to be your hero. Like, you have to be your hero. I will say, if you make that decision, I firmly believe, and I'm a beneficiary of this, I think you can develop almost a bionic brain now, because you have access to the smartest people on the most interesting topics that none of us, even reporters who are deeply sourced, didn't have this kind of access 10, 15 years ago. Like, if you want to know what Elon Musk thinks or says, go on X or go listen to any podcast that he does where he spends hours talking about it. I'd say the same thing about any topic that you care about. It could be about music. It could be about health. It could be about literature. You have access to the smartest people in the world, most of whom do videos or post their videos or do podcasts, and you can listen to them with a Spotify account, an Apple Music account, often just online for free, going to YouTube and getting it if you have a YouTube subscription or even the free version of it. And so it's all out there. It just really requires you to be a very discerning news consumer. ### Platform shift **Ollie Forsyth** [6:50] So much of this feels like it has just changed so much in the last 12, 18 months. Do you think where we are today, are we in a good place with media, or do you think there's just, like, so much more that's going to be changing in the next 6 months? **Jim VandeHei** [7:07] Those are 2 different questions to me. Are we in a better place today than we were a year ago? I think yes. Okay, here's why. I think more people are more aware today than they were a year ago about the dangers of algorithms and the bias that the algorithms contain. I think more people today than a year ago are taking a break from their phone and they're thinking a little bit more deeply about the type of content that they read and that they share. I think today, even versus a year ago, there's just a lot of good sources of news,right? There's a lot of individual people on Substack, a lot of people at podcasts, a lot of bigger companies like Axios or The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal that continue to do a lot of really good work. And so I think today is better than a couple of years ago, for sure. I feel pretty strongly about that, mainly because it took us a while to figure out, like, what happens to our brains on phone and what happens to our brains on algorithm. And only in the last couple of years have I think we really started to grapple with that. And by the way, I think you're starting to see this seep in a healthy way into schools where they're saying, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't look at a damn phone while you're going to school," or, "Maybe you should limit the amount of time you're spending on social media," or, "Maybe the reason that my young girl is depressed and sitting in her room is because she's staring at an algorithm for far too long." Those things are all better. That's separate from the question of, like, will it be better 6 months from now, a year from now? I don't know the answer to that. And the reason is, is I think we're about to go through a platform shift. I think sometime in the next, you know, 2 to 5 years, the open web will largely die, meaning you're probably not going to go to www.whatever to get your information. I think you're going to probably get most of your information in the not-too-distant future from an LLM, so from a large language model, probably some product produced by a company like Anthropic or OpenAI or Google that knows more about you, knows more about your style, more about your taste, more about your rhythms, more about your passions than probably any person on Earth, maybe including you. And it is going to be a very personalized experience, and it is going to be, in some ways, a very private experience. I think you'll still have public expression on social platforms, but most of the ingestion will probably come through an LLM. Is that a better space than we are inright now? I don't know. I think it really depends on how isolated the people become. How do people use that technology? Do they use it to make themselves smarter and to maybe give themselves more time to connect with humans face to face? If that happens, and I'm saying it's a positive outcome, if people retreat even deeper into the digital dark world, that's always a bad outcome. I don't think there's any good outcome where people staring at a screen is good for humanity, good for the individual. So we have to find balance. I tend to be an optimist on this. I tend to think that over time, we're going to figure this out. We're going to live in a different information ecosystem. It's going to require a lot of personal responsibility. It's going to have a lot of personalization. But I think there's potentially a lot of good upside if we get artificial intelligenceright that could help people learn more about more topics and also become more efficient so that they can spend maybe more time away from work and more time in nature, more time with other people. My personal view is I think there'll be a direct inverse correlation. I think the more that the better AI gets, the better technology gets, the more people are going to yearn for and seek human connection. I think you're already starting to see that in a lot of local communities. I think we're just at the very, very early stages of that. I think there could almost be a renaissance of community. That's what I hope, that people realize that, you know what, that isolation of COVID, the isolation of the phone, it was like when we all drank a lot in college and then you realize maybe I shouldn't drink that much,right? I think that we might have the same relationship with phones. Like, "Okay, man, I, you know, I went on the bender, but that bender's over now, folks, and I'm sobering up, and I'm going to live a different life." And I think that that could be true in the information ecosystem world. **Ollie Forsyth** [11:10] You know, if we go down this new information ecosystem world where a lot of these AI models are using the content which, you know, the likes of you guys and creators like us use on their platforms, where does that actually leave us? How do you see us being compensated via these LLM models if we go down that route? **Jim VandeHei** [11:30] I don't know. I think that the courts are going to litigate that over the next probably 1 to 4 years. I think you'll start to see court rulings on how much power do these companies have to both in real time and retroactively take the work of others, take the work of publications like Axios or an individual podcaster, and turn that into the corpus of knowledge that was used to create these LLMs. ### Creator compensation **Jim VandeHei** [11:52] So I think that that answer will be answered by the courts. Like,right now the companies are telling you exactly how much money you're going to get for your information. It rhymes with bureau. You're going to get nothing, zero, because they feel like fair use laws allow them to take whatever they want off the internet. They might beright, by the way, legally. We can debate whether that's morally correct, but legally they might beright on that. I do think that for LLMs to work and for humanity to function, you do need new information. You do need new ideas. You do need human expression. And I think that there will, and I think that companies are realizing you're going to have to compensate for that. Now, whether that's just paying people to produce content because it's going into the machine, or whether that's like licensing deals, or whether maybe your personal LLM allows for you to have a variety of subscriptions, just like your apps on your phone allow you to, I think that is a possibility. And so I think that we will figure that out. I don't see a world where AI eats all knowledge, eats all creativity, and we're just sitting around in the forest waiting for AI to tell us what to do. That just seems so inconceivable to me. And I just don't think that that's the future. I think that just like the phone was a messy, messy thing, the internet was a messy, messy thing, AI will be a messier thing. It'll be a faster thing. It'll be a more pervasive thing, but it'll be a thing. And like, I assume we're going to figure out a way to get through it in a way that still works and works well for humanity. And again, if we get it, if we nail it, it could work beautifully for humanity. If we screw it up, it could end catastrophically for humanity. **Ollie Forsyth** [13:33] You know, when I speak to some of these creators similar size to us who are building either premium content or more ongoing news content, the conversations seem to be, are we going to go down a route where content is either going to be timely or timeless? ### Timely vs timeless **Ollie Forsyth** [13:50] The premium content, the timeless, that's going to be gated, and more the timely live news, like what you guys are doing, is going to be a bit more open-ended. Do you think we're going to go down this route where we're going to have 2 different types of content available to the consumer? **Jim VandeHei** [14:05] I don't know. I've not really thought about that specific outcome. Listen, I think, here's what I think. I think 3 years from now, if I extrapolate the progress that I see being made by the AI labs, I work under the assumption 3 years from now, every single one of us will have access to Einstein-level genius across every single topic known to man. I think that will be true. We can debate whether I'm wrong or not, but I think that I'm just telling you, like disclosing, that's what I think to be true. Much like all of us have equal access to winning a trivia contest if we have Google sitting in front of us, but less efficient than an LLM, but we would all have access to the exact same repository of information. I think once everybody has access to Einstein-level intelligence, I think if anything, the need for unique content, human-created content, human-curated content, human content that we can connect around that is truly unique, that is differentiated, will soar in value. And I think people are going to yearn for that. They're going to want something that sits above and beyond just AI that everyone has access to. All of us, from the beginning of time, were programmed as hunters and gatherers to want survival, but also to want something that other people don't have. And I don't think that that human desire goes away. And so I think that media will adapt. I think media will still matter profoundly. You could argue media information matters more than politicsright now, more than technology, that almost every debate culturally, every debate politically, every technological advancement flows downhill from information, from the sharing of information, from the creation of information, from the manipulation, both in good and bad ways, of information. And so I don't think that that fundamentally changes. I do think if I were producing commodity content or content that's not vital or useful to somebody, it'll have no value. Why would I need that or want that? I don't think it has value today. Like, it might be, it might be you can find value because you can just get people to click on something they shouldn't have clicked on. But I think over time, if you can produce something that's truly unique, and that's what we try to do at Axios,right, is try to have people have subject matter expertise, tell you things that you do not otherwise know that you want to know, and that you have a human delivering it. And the thing a machine's not going to be able to do is to have a conversation with you, get you to tell me something you didn't want me to know, or for me to watch your eyes and realize you said something, you meant something different. And then what the machine also can't do is understand kind of all of the complexities of kind of human relationships with the historical context on a topic and give an analytical input that is unique. Like, it'll be able to give an analytical input, but I don't think it'll miss that human dimension. So I think people that can offer that, and it could be about your personality, it could be about your brain, it could be about your ideas, it could be about your sourcing. I think anybody who has those attributes will probably do very well in whatever the new world order is. And by the way, they're doing pretty wellright now. If you just look at the last couple of years, you've seen the explosion of individual people on YouTube, on Substack, smaller startups, Punchbowl here in DC, you know, Puck Out on the West Coast. You're seeing these individual companies do quite well. You're seeing these individuals who might have made $100,000 a couple of years ago might be on Substack making $400,000 a year. So people who are idea generators, who are content creators, who are good at what they do, who have and offer something unique, if anything, the marketplace is valuing them higher today than it did 5 years ago. And I think in an LLM world, we'll value them even higher. That is the bet certainly that we're making. ### Creator opportunity **Ollie Forsyth** [17:52] I agree with the new media with the content creators. It's been fascinating to see the explosion of individual creators go from nothing to a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue, hopefully millions of followers, fans at some point,right, in the future. Where do you think this new world leads them? You know, we have the likes of Axios, massive media company, individual creators, maybe they're hyper-niche, they're focusing on one industry, they've obviously got very small teams. Is there still a massive market for them, do you think? **Jim VandeHei** [18:22] I do. I don't think that that changes. I think if anything, the market gets better for those people. Like, if you have a direct relationship with your audience or you have like domain expertise even on a super niche, I think there's going to be a big space for you. Now, does it play out in a newsletter? Does it play out on YouTube? Does it play out in some kind of weird device that's connected to our wrist or our chest or whatever? I don't know. But I think that it's still going to have like tremendous value. I think creativity, I think individual expertise, I think vital information that you can provide, like that's all going to have a ton of value. And I don't know that it'll even look that different. It might be the device you're getting it from might look different, but who cares? Like, I used to read on a piece of paper, then I looked at a big screen, now I look at a small screen. If that changes to something else as long as it's super useful, okay, allright, like we evolve all the time. **Ollie Forsyth** [19:12] Something I've been observing, obviously the types of content we're all consuming is also changing a little bit. Our preferences, our tastes, and so on,right? The likes of newsletters, online written content, how do we battle that out? You know, AI summaries are coming in. We no longer read massive essays. Is that type of content still going to be relevant in the coming years? **Jim VandeHei** [19:35] I think it is. I still think we're in this. I think we tend to be victims of short-termism. I think we're still sorting through all of this,right? Like one of the reasons that I think Axios worked and Smart Brevity worked is that there's just a lot of content that should be delivered a lot more efficiently. It's like a utility. It just happened today. It's not a book. It's not great literature. It's like, I need to understand this thing as quickly as humanly possible because I'm busy as shit. And if you could do that, there's like super value in that. And the more that information that doesn't need to be long is delivered more efficiently, the more time you would actually have to read that book or read that article or listen to that song or listen to that podcast or whatever it is that you want to do that you find personally edifying. And I think we're still in the middle of that shakeout. So I don't think any of that really goes away. And my guess is we're still looking at newsletters 5 or 10 years from now. Now, not everyone will, but like this stuff, a lot of this stuff will still exist. And even the data on books, like are people reading less, reading more? I don't know. Like sometimes it looks like people are buying more books, but maybe they're reading fewer books. But like there's still a demand for books. There's still a demand for ideas. There's still, people are not going to lose human connection. Even summary, just simple AI summary, it's just stupid. It's just not that useful. And like very few people are actually relying on pure AI summaries. And if every AI summary reads the same, it's going to have such a sameness that people will move on to something that's distinct. Well, what's distinct would be a person, not a machine, who's bringing personality to it, who's bringing perspective to it, who's bringing insight to it, who's bringing sourcing to it, who's bringing energy to it. And that's why I'm just, I don't have the doom and gloom view about the future of media that other people have. I think that there's going to be some bumpy things. I think there'll be changes. But I mean, come on. Like, is the New York Times weaker today than it was 10 years ago? No, it's much bigger. Look at the number of subscribers it has. Wall Street Journal, bigger, better. FT, bigger, better. Axios, didn't exist 10 years ago, bigger, better. Politico, created 20 years ago, bigger, better. Go down the road, like most high-quality sources of information are doing better than ever. And then, okay, well, I don't want mainstream media. I want myright-wing media. Well, go, man. There's all kinds of podcasts. Go listen to Tucker. Go listen to Ben Shapiro. They have massive followings. They have massive businesses. I want it on the left. Well, there's an explosion. Go listen to Piker. Go listen to the Positive America guys. There's a lot of content out there to reach every community. And I think what will have value is that unique content and that ability to have some kind of connectivity. That connectivity between me and you have a conversation. It could be a group of people meeting up to talk about a topic or to have a book club. Again, I just think there's many more outcomes that are positive. Again, all this is dependent that we figure out AI, and that's a whole different conversation about getting thatright. But I just assume that as a species, we've been pretty damn good at evolving and licking problems bigger than this, that we'll figure it out. I don't know exactly how we will, when we will, but I assume that we will. And it feels like we ultimately end up on the better side of things. Like I'm just, I'm not a, I don't go through life as pessimistically as other people do. And in fact, I think a lot of people are living in a dark parallel universe that doesn't exist. I think by most standards, it's really never been a better time to be alive. If you're living in America, undoubtedly never been a better time to be alive. I'll argue, this still, I'm blue in the face with anybody. Like sure, you can show me edge cases where it's harder to be alive today than it would have been 100 years ago. That's very few people. Most people are making more money. They're more mobile. They're more educated. They're healthier. They're living longer. They have more energy. They have more access to more wealth, to more opportunity than at any point in the history of humanity, in any country, at any time. That is just true. And almost everything I just said is almost not debatable. ### Making money **Ollie Forsyth** [23:33] You know, I totally agree. One of the biggest opportunities, I think, especially for independent creators like us, there are so many new opportunities for us to grow,right? The talent is, you know, bigger and better anywhere. The types of revenue streams you can tap into is bigger, better than ever. The types of support you can get is bigger, better than ever. As media companies, as we start thinking about, you know, growing and building our mini empires, I guess, in the future, you know, how do you think we end up actually making money to sustain? **Jim VandeHei** [24:06] I don't know that it'll be that much different than today. I think it'll be a combination of, I think advertising's not going away. So we'll figure out advertising, whether it's on your podcast, whether it's in your newsletter, whether it's sitting inside your LLM. There's billions and billions of dollars that want to be spent on advertising. They will be spent in media. Yes, we get a much smaller share than we used to, pre-Google, pre-the internet, but we still get a big chunk of it. So I think that will exist. I think subscriptions, like people will pay for some types of content. And so subscriptions will be one. I think licensing, I think that whether maybe it's individuals, maybe it's companies, maybe it's the big LLMs, they're going to want distinctive content of all flavors. Some of it will be entertainment. Some of it will be edifying. Some will be very newsy. I think that there'll be a pipeline for revenue to be made there. I think that there's a big desire by the consumer, big desire by business to be part of events. I think there's a reason that most media companies are expanding into the event area. That's a good thing. Like people like coalescing around a topic with a shared interest, being in person. It's a beautiful thing. I like it. And I like that it's a good business for us, a good business for other people. So I don't know that it will materially change that much. ### Local news **Ollie Forsyth** [25:16] What do you miss exactly about now? We have so much happening. AI is obviously taking over everything. If we go inside like the Axios company, you know, what are you most excited aboutright now? **Jim VandeHei** [25:27] I mean, it's a weird time to be a media operator. You know, we're 10 years in. We've had a decent amount of success, which is nice. We were early to AI. To be honest, the thing I'm most excited about by far is, and we'll have more to say on this in a month or two, I think we're going to revitalize local news in every single community in the country. I think that artificial intelligence is going to make that possible. We're going to unveil some stuff at the end of the year that I think people will find fascinating, that's going to allow us to scale into communities that pre-AI would not have been possible to go into as a business. And I think we're going to be able to automate away so many of the things that add cost, but don't necessarily add value to journalism. At the end of the day, journalism is one product. It's journalism,right? And so I want to put all of my investment into people doing the journalism. If I can automate everything else around it, other than probably salespeople for the big deals, that's a good outcome. And we're building what we call the local super system. We've spent a year plus building it. I think we'll have something very cool to unveil in the next couple of months. And then it's going to be off to the races. Can we really prove that we can go into local communities that have been hit hard, that are news thirsty, news starved, and be able to serve them? And if we can do that, it would be a bigger deal than, you know, we created Politico, we created Axios. I think if we could save local news, that will be harder than creating Politico and Axios combined. And I now think there's more than a reasonable chance that we're going to achieve that. And so that, to me, is very, very invigorating. **Ollie Forsyth** [26:57] If you're enjoying today's episode, hit subscribe at the bottom of your screen. The guests on the show are getting bigger and bigger, and we need your help to grow this channel. So if you're enjoying today's guests or any previous episodes, hit subscribe, and I promise you, it'll be worth it. Now, back to today's episode. This is so interesting. So local news, how are you thinking about this? And, you know, frankly, you know, why do you actually want to go down this route? **Jim VandeHei** [27:26] I mean, I think it's important. Again, like I'm a journalist and I try not to let any like romantic feelings get in the way of making like really smart business decisions. So we don't do anything as like romantic gestures. But I started The Brilliant News in Wisconsin, a weekly newspaper in a farming community between Green Bay and Oshkosh in Wisconsin. I love local communities. I love local news. I've always, in the back of my mind, wanted to be part of a group of people that could save local news. It wasn't possible until, really, until the technology got to the point where you could get rid of buildings, get rid of printing presses, get rid of paper, and create a mechanism to be able to get good content in the hands of a lot of people at a much lower cost. Economics are just tough. The economics are what collapsed the local business model. I now think that we can do that. And I find that to be super invigorating. And I think it's really important. It's almost like I feel like a maniac in terms of the need to get there quick because I really worry that people are going to need a lot more high-quality news and help through this transition into an AI world. And if we can have trust at the local community, which is where I think it's easiestright now to establish trust, that could be a great thing for the company and it could be a great thing for the country. When you can align something that really has like purpose to it with real business, that's when you get kind of hyper-invigorated in business. And I think we were able to do that with Politico. We were able to do that with Axios. If we could do it local, I would say that I would get that feeling on steroids and therefore we're full speed ahead. **Ollie Forsyth** [29:01] I love the energy. How would you see this working? Do you want to do this by states in the U.S.? Do you want to do it by vertical? What would be the big vision, the big dream? **Jim VandeHei** [29:11] The big vision would be, you know, like there's whatever, 10,000 cities with, I think, you know, roughly 5,000 or more people in the country. I would love to have boots on the ground in every one of them. And that sounds absurdright now, but I think it's actually possible. I thinkright now we're in 43 cities. You know, basically what we do is we go into a city with a couple of people, create a daily habit through a newsletter. That content is also distributed through a website and through social. The idea then it takes a couple of years to get local buyers to understand that you have this new product and then to start to be ad buyers of it. And that as you start to grow more revenue, you can add more people, more staff, more reporters. So our hope is that we can get into as many communities as quickly as possible. Truth is, if you get into a relatively small city, even a decent-sized city, one or two reporters who are super wired, who are backed by a massive newsroom, can actually do a lot,right? Think about all you do with your podcast and all the derivative products that you create from it. People are really creative. People are really energetic. And one of the things that AI is great at is distribution. Taking one piece of content, turning it into many forms, still having that human layer of it was written by a person and it was vetted by a person, but then distributed at scale. Well, hell man, that would have taken a team of people and taken a lot of time a year ago, and now it can be done instantaneously for virtually for free. And so, like I said, we're going to have a ton to say about this at the end of the year, but I'm really excited about that. I'm also excited about the work we're doing at national. Like we spent a lot of time covering artificial intelligence. Probably the most wired publicationright now in Washington in terms of understanding what President Trump's doing and why he's doing it. And that we're at war. This stuff is of epic consequence. And so I find that very invigorating. And like I keep using the word invigorated, but like literally I work 18 hours a day, every day. Like I love work. I would never recommend my lifestyle for anybody in terms of how much I think about work, but I love this stuff. I love thinking. I love writing. I love talking. I love having smart conversations like this. I think we're alive at a really interesting time. I liveright outside of DC. I get to talk to the most fascinating people. I work with the smartest people I've ever met. They're all good people. We've got a great culture. Like in terms of work, like I won the lottery. ### Inside Axios **Ollie Forsyth** [31:27] To me inside Axios, you know, I've had a few friends over the years who work there. They've all said amazing things. And it, you know, comes across that you are actually a very tight-knit culture type of company. What goes on inside and how do you actually run the company on a daily basis? **Jim VandeHei** [31:43] Yeah, I mean, we're very, very, very hands-on. Mike, Roy, Kayla, who was there at the beginning, like we've got this great leadership team. We have a really cool culture. It took 10 years to get there. Took, you know, took us a while to figure out like how do you really find people who are super energetic, who are really smart, really ambitious, but are just fundamentally good people. And it sounds cheesy and every company says it. We actually live it. Like people here like each other. They love the work that they do. They actually trust us. They don't love me and they don't think I always make theright decision. But I think for the most part, they think, ah, Jim's a smart guy and like he's made more good decisions than bad decisions. And I like working here and my job feels safe and I'm paid very competitively and I've got nice benefits and just a good place to work. And like, I, you know, I'm very proud of that, of all the things I'm proud of that we've accomplished. I think really understanding how to like create an environment where people can do great work and feel really good about themselves. Because I don't think, I don't think that there's any tension between being super ambitious and being a good person. I think I'm probably one of the most ambitious people I know. But I also think I don't raise my voice. I don't talk shit about people. I'm a nice guy. I'm understanding when people are going through a jam. I would hope anybody who's ever worked for us would say, hey, like Jim, Mike, Roy, these guys are good people. And like I like that. Like being told you're a good person is better than being told you're a smart person. I think that that's what we should all aspire to. Like I want people to like us. I want not like us because we just stupidly did things that made them feel good, but they like us because they trust us and that they can tell we care about this higher ambition. And there is this real ambition that animates this company. Like we really do want to be a source of truth for millions of people, particularly people in power, so that they can make better decisions. And I think that comes through in our content. It's nice of you to say that you've talked to people who worked here. I think most people would say that that worked for us. And that's not easy. It's not easy. There's a lot of companies that will pay you a lot, but you feel like you don't feel great about yourself. Like, man, like I was thinking about that the other day when you think about like the DEI debate, which I always hated in terms of like the backlash against it, because I never really understood it. I'm like, why wouldn't you want a diverse team? And like why, if you think about like the equity part, like why wouldn't you want to treat people fair? And then I think about the inclusion part. My God, I would feel like shit if somebody worked here and they felt like a stranger at Axios. Like, of course you want them to feel included. And so the DEI became like a dirty word when it should be like it's a great aspiration. It should be your only aspiration. Every great company in capitalism needs to be a meritocracy, but you can be a meritocracy and you can care about being a great place for a diverse group of people to feel like they're treated equally and that they're part of something bigger than themselves. And that is a, that's a beautiful thing when you can pull those things together. And it took us a long time. You know, I'm old, I'm 55 and been in political for a decade and now Axios for a decade. So I've been 20 years in the trenches and I've got the wounds to show it. And I wasn't always great at these things. It took me a while. It took me looking to other people. It's the reason I love to do podcasts like this and I love to talk about culture because I'm not a genius. I'm not like an idiot from Oshkosh who got shitty grades and delivered pizzas and like, but I was a beneficiary of the system and I worked my butt off. I definitely work hard and I've tried to learn. But everything I know is just me copying other people. I'm not Thomas Edison. I'm just like a guy who like watched other people who behavedright and made smart decisions. I'm like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do this. And I think that's available to all of us. And I think we sometimes don't fully appreciate that. ### Tough days **Ollie Forsyth** [35:26] How do you navigate these difficult days? You know, we're in the media landscape. We get to see the world changing in front of us every day. But for sure, and boy, it's very hard. How do you navigate these, you know, murky waters on a daily basis? **Jim VandeHei** [35:42] You know, it's hard. There's some dark stuff,right? Our politics could be very darkright now. Artificial intelligence on days, I could be pretty dark about. I think I'm fundamentally an optimist. I think most entrepreneurs are. I have a really good family. I have a really good wife and kids and siblings. And my God bless, my parents are still alive. And so I'm very rooted in that. I believe in God. So I think there's like more to life than this. And so I've been blessed with like some perspective. And I find this stuff just endlessly fascinating. And I try to stay, part of being at running a company, it's funny. I look back 20 years ago and if you had met me, like, oh my God, Jim's a spaz. He's just a hothead. He's just like, go, go, go, go, go. He's like Vince Lombardi on crack. And what you learn over time is like that works for like a year and then it doesn't work. And like you teach yourself to live within the 40s. Like I'm never too excited or too optimistic, but I'm never like too down or too pessimistic. You just learn that, you know what, like weird stuff happens and we figure it out. And that's why I tend to be a long-term optimist, even if in moments I'm a short-term realist or pessimist. And like, and that's all you can do. Like people are like, well, I feel anxious. You should feel anxious. It's weird. It's a weird time to be alive. Like you should feel a little anxious. You're looking at your phone, you're getting a hundred texts a day, a hundred emails, your Tinder alerts, your bells are going off, whistles are going off, your algorithm saying this, your kids are saying that. It's a weird time to be alive. It just is. It's an exciting time to be alive. And you just, you try to make the best of it. And that's why I just, I steer clear of like the deep pessimism when people are like, oh my God, it's never been this bad. Like, why don't you go spend some time looking at the Great Depression? Why don't you spend just an hour studying the Civil War? Why don't you look at the founding of the country? Why don't you look at the expansion out west? We've gone through some really wicked, hard, tough stuff. People have endured a hell of a lot more than most of us have to endureright now. We're pretty precious, let's be honest. And if you have that perspective and you have some grounding, I think you navigate this stuff. And I'm no different than you. You probably have some similar mixture of friends, relationships, faith, belief, like whatever it is that kind of like that satiates you, that then like fuels you and that keeps you through the stuff. **Ollie Forsyth** [38:10] Exactlyright. And it's also just finding yourself around great people, I think. I mean, there are so many distractions around us on a daily basis. You know, you're saying all these like Tinder alerts or, you know, hundreds of text messages. It's so freaking distracting. People telling you, you should do this, you should do that. But I think at the end of the day, surrounding yourself with great people and great co-founders as well, I think, you know, makes things so much better. **Jim VandeHei** [38:34] That is a huge point. Like I, now both companies, we had multiple founders. I do not understand how anybody is like a solo founder. It would be so lonely. Like you don't have people to celebrate the success with, but you don't really have anyone you could be honest with about the really, really hard stuff. And I've had Mike and Roy now, Mike for 20 years, Roy for like 17, 18, that like we all have different skills. We all have similar values. We have very different personalities. I can't think of a single time in 18 years that we've yelled at each other, but I can't really think of many times that we've really even gotten, I probably get on their nerves because I could be a lot, but like they don't get on my nerves. ### Co-founders **Jim VandeHei** [39:13] And we're all very understanding of the gifts that the others have, like what Mike could do, I just can't do. Roy has a business mind I just don't have. And so it's so easy just to, you do this, I'll do that, and to share in that. So I will say, if you're ever thinking about starting a company, try to find somebody you really, really trust you can do it with. It's just, it makes life so much easier. It just makes life more fun. **Ollie Forsyth** [39:34] I agree. You know, you mentioned that Roy and Mike. How would you describe them? **Jim VandeHei** [39:39] I would describe Mike as probably the smartest, most wired, most humble, gracious person I'm ever going to meet. He is truly the most, most humble, generous person you could ever encounter. Like he is like a gift. My father, who's gotten to know him quite well, jokes, but he's not even joking. He's like, everybody needs a Mikey because he always makes you feel good about yourself. And the thing about him is he's interviewed presidents, Elon Musk, talked to Sam Altman last week. Like he knows everybody. And he treats the waitress exactly like he would treat the president. And what's such remarkable about him is he cares authentically about what the waitress has to say as much as he cares about what the president has to say. It's just like there's something almost superhuman about him. And Roy is just like, he was later, like Mike and I knew each other. We used to cover politics together at the post. We've known each other now almost 30 years. Roy was newer to the company and like we've become, we became instant friends and real, like, like even though we came at it, he was, he grew up in Israel a little bit in Britain, very business-minded, worked at Gallup, a different brain than I had, but I've almost everything I've learned from business, I've learned from him. But he's just, he's like, he's dyslexic, which makes him like really persistent. He's a really interesting learner and he's just so like every problem can be solved. There's nothing that gets tossed in front of him. And he has this remarkable ability to do, he could just like carry more freight than any person I've met. Like he could do 15 meetings back to back in a day and it doesn't drain him. He's just as energized at the end of the day. I do two meetings and I'm like, oh my God, because I'm like an introvert despite the fact that I have to play extrovert on TV. I'm an introvert. Like I just, I want to be alone most of the time and just think and, and which can make people think I'm more aloof than I am, though I am probably pretty aloof. And Madeline's over here, my assistant, laughing as I say this. So I probably am even more aloof than I realize. But they're great. And like we just, we get along and like it's just such a gift. And you know, one of the things you were talking about the culture, I credit Mike with that more than anyone because how could you come to Axios, watch Mike, who will come to an event, he'll bring cupcakes or something, then when people leave, he stays behind and cleans. This is somebody who's like rich and famous, could do anything. He's the person cleaning because he doesn't want the cleaning crew to have to do it. And how could you come here and be an ass? How could you come here and have an ego if the most famous, powerful person at the company doesn't have one at all? And that's so contagious. And that's such a good lesson for life. Whether you are a leader of one or a leader of many, what you do is instantly and pervasively contagious. If you treat people well, other people will treat people well. If you don't raise your voice, they won't raise their voice. If you don't talk smack about other people, they won't talk smack. The opposite is true too. If you have those bad attributes or you allow those bad attributes, they will just move like cancer, like the most insidious, fast-moving form of cancer that you could think about. And that's why I get a little bit pissy when I see people in positions of power who don't have the humility to understand what an obligation, what a blessing it is that you are in a position where people listen to you and people rely on you. I think that once we get to that level, we have a massive moral obligation to really be good people, to do theright thing, to do the hard thing, and to carry ourselves in a way that's inspiring and that makes people feel better about themselves. And that's like the blessing and I would say the burden of being in a position of power. And so when I look at CEOs who just seem like they're mean or they create this environment where people are just nasty towards each other or people are in the public spectrum and they're using nasty language or saying mean things about women or minorities, like I just think, come on, man. Like life is too short. You don't need to do that. You can win without being an ass. And I wish more people realize that. **Ollie Forsyth** [43:52] And it's very quickly, you know, it can very quickly spread in companies,right? I always feel maybe the first 5 or 10 employees inside companies are really the ones beside the culture. As soon as you get to 50 or 100 and there are two or three bad actors, it can very quickly spread across the whole company and can actually kill the company as well. **Jim VandeHei** [44:11] For sure. Like one of the things that we said early on is like, so we did Politico and we didn't make a, we didn't like, whoa, we get to make retirement type money from Politico. We made decent money, made good money, more than most people will make in their life. So we did very, very well. But we had enough where we said, okay, like I've had success. Like what do we want? And what we wanted more than anything is we wanted to build something that made a difference. But we wanted to work with people, like you said, that make us feel better about ourselves. And so we committed to each other that we are not going to allow people who don't have certain attributes. Like if they're mean, if they talk about others behind their back, if they make other people feel like shit about themselves, we will fire you no matter how talented you are. And we have fired a lot of really talented people who just weren't good people or weren't good people within our culture. And you have to do that. The example I use all the time is everyone says, oh, I have a no asshole rule. And then I look around and I'm like, well, why are so many people that work for you assholes? So like you might have the rule, but you're not actually, you're not imposing that rule. It really requires that you're intolerant of certain behaviors. And so I talk all the time about the type of behaviors that are intolerant. Well, I cannot exhibit those traits and then expect other people to follow. So I have to be that way,right? I have to, it has to flow authentically from us. And so you'reright. Like a couple of bad people can make a culture really weak and really bad. And by the way, in capitalism, you can make a lot of profit. You can have a great business and really be a shitty employer. That's totally, it's possible. It's legal. It's often commonplace. It just doesn't have to be that way. Like what we wanted to prove is you could be super duper ambitious. We call it, we used to call it killers with humility and then people thought it had too much edge to it. But like killers with humility was like, I want people with killer ambition, but like the humility to put the cause above themselves. And like lo and behold, like we have that. We have like a whole gang of like maniac killers with humility doing really great work at scale. And it's a beautiful thing to watch. And that's why I would, I would advise anybody, particularly if you're young, to go to a startup or try to start a company if you can. And here's why. You'll learn more in a year than you would learn in eight years of college. You'll learn more in a month than you'll learn in five years of a regular workplace. You'll learn more about yourself. You'll learn more about fear. You'll learn more about humanity. You'll learn more about what you want and what you don't want in people. Because it's like this living, breathing experiment built on the assumption that you're going to fail. Most startups fail,right? We can debate what that number is, but it's like 90% plus ultimately go under. So it just, it's like this beautiful communal human experience. And like I feel like everything I've learned, I kind of learned from being in that fire. And the fire burns sometimes. And that's okay. Like we can take a little bit more pain than we actually think we can. But in that pain, and that's one of the great mysteries of life, it's in that pain is where you actually are formed. In that pain is where you actually start to see, you start to understand people, you start to understand dimensions of yourself, you start to develop emotional intelligence beyond the intellectual intelligence. And suddenly you have this more panoramic view of people and of humanity and of the workplace. And maybe that sounds too gooey, but like it is like my experience. **Ollie Forsyth** [47:48] I love this so much. You know, you mentioned one of your co-founders is dyslexic. I'm also dyslexic,right? So we probably have some things in common. And it's almost like, you know, it's almost like a squirrel is going off inside your head,right? You've got a hundred things going off. But I do think what dyslexic people are very good at is just navigating challenges like in a really easy way. No stress, nothing's a problem. You can handle multitasking, I think, very well. And I think it makes you a really good person as well. I mean, we're not, it's because you guys and you've got five, six people now in the space of 18 months. And it's good fun. You just got to put yourself out there and you just got to figure things out. And bad days will happen, but that's okay. You know, we get through the bad days. **Jim VandeHei** [48:27] How many people have dyslexia that describe it the way you do, that you would obviously, maybe you wouldn't wish it upon yourself, maybe you would, but that they now see it as such a superpower because you had to learn different. It makes you more persistent. It makes you more creative. And it makes you more of sort of innately a problem solver. And so that's a great example of like maybe there's probably a point in your life when I want to speak for you, you speak for yourself, where that was painful, where maybe you felt different or maybe you felt like, oh my God, am I not like other people? And it felt, I don't want this. This is awful. And yet because you went through the awfulness or you went through that pain, you probably are doing a podcast and have five or six employees and are doing new things that you otherwise wouldn't have done. And that is what I'm talking about, that conundrum of life,right? It's like that it takes that stuff to get to the good stuff. ### Simplify book **Ollie Forsyth** [49:16] And what's incredible now is with everything going on, like we've been mentioning, the theme of the show is, you know, you can do 50% more with 50% less. And this is good timing because you have an incredible new book coming out, your first book, I think,right? And, you know, why another book? What's this all about? And what's the theme? **Jim VandeHei** [49:35] Yeah, the book's out in September, mid-September, Simplify. And the idea is it's something we did at Axios. And so like I'm not like a lot of authors, like I have no desire to write books. This is not like a piece of great literature. Like it literally is like a power tool, much like Smart Brevity, which is our book that taught people to communicate much more effectively. It's being a journalist running a company and seeing like what a difference this Simplify mentality made. I was like, holy shit, I want to share this with other people. It's made such a difference for our company. And the whole idea is that in this chaotic era, how do you help people at work and outside of work stop doing the things they don't need to be doing? How do you delete the things that you do out of inertia, do out of habit, or do just because you think you have to do it so that you can then spend your time amplifying the things that you want to do, both outside of work, the people you want to be with at work, the things you're authentically good at, the things that bring you joy. What the book does is it walks you through whether you're a leader, whether you're a manager or a rank-and-file worker, how to do this, how to simplify, especially your work. We do a lot with life, but at work, it's just like thinking about and creating this sort of operating system for you to figure out what are the two or three things I need to do in order to crush my job? What are the two or three things I do that I think are stupid or that I don't want to do or I think someone could do better than me? And what are the two or three things that I think could be automated? And it gives you a template for having that conversation with yourself, with your manager, with your company, so that you can put all of your energy into things that actually grow value, that make a difference. So many things that we do at work, you don't need to do. They're just done out of habit. They're done out of inertia. We have the study in here from The Economist, but there's many other studies where it looks like we waste at least 25% of every week doing things that never should have been done. Well, think about that. That's two and a half months a year. That's 2.5 years every decade that you're wasting on things that didn't need to be done that you could be used doing things that should be done. And unless you have a system that forces you to confront what you do and why you do it and forces your manager and your company to do the same, you're just going to keep falling into that trap. We naturally, as a species, have this genetic flaw where we make things way more complex than they need to be, and we just fritter away time. And the truth is we don't have that much time on earth,right? So you want to maximize it. And I think this book lands at the perfect time because it teaches you how to do this at home, teaches you how to do it at work. It teaches you how to make sure that AI doesn't become a massive complexifier, a big complexity generation machine, but that you can maybe use it to simplify your calendar, simplify the work that you do so that you can just live a better life, have a happier life. **Ollie Forsyth** [52:25] I totally agree. We spend so much time faffing and just doing those unnecessary things,right, that frankly could be done by somebody else. When you were writing this and when you were thinking about, actually, what should I really be focusing on? How do you come up with a really simple framework on these are the two things I should be doing really, really well? Everything else, delete. **Jim VandeHei** [52:45] Yeah, I think it depends a little bit like where you're at in life and where you're at in an organization. But the one thing I would, I would start both with life and work is just take 10 minutes. You can do this even if you don't buy the book, though. I'd love for you to buy the book. One for life, one for work. When you die, it'll be grim, but like you're sitting at your deathbed, what are the three things you want to say to have been true about your life? Just write those down. It will give you like a north star of what you actually care about, what you actually want to see happen. And then when you start to make decisions, you can cite that. Is this going to help me do or achieve one of those three things? Same thing at work. Like what are the three things I want out of work? What are the three things I want out of my career? So that you can then work backwards from that of like, are the decisions that I'm making? Taking this job, not taking this job, learning this skill, not learning this skill. Are they going to help me do the things that I ultimately want to do? Now, if you're a rank-and-file or you're new to the workplace, I think just a simple exercise of figuring out, okay, I'm new to this. If I want to really thrive, I want to one day get a promotion or I want to get a raise. What are the three things I need to do in order to crush this job? And then talk to your boss to make sure you're on the same page. So often people aren't on the same page. You don't even take the time to figure out what are the things I should be obsessing about. You just obsess about the thing that's sitting in front of you. And when you just obsess about the thing in front of you, that's when you get distracted or you get pulled into stuff that doesn't need to be done at all. I think you will shock yourself when you do this exercise and you're going to figure out how much time you waste and how grateful your manager is that you've flagged things that you're doing that maybe you shouldn't be doing so that you can do the things that you want to do and that they want you to do. **Ollie Forsyth** [54:31] Is it harder to apply these types of strategies, methods, however you want to call it, because everyone's got their own way of working, to somebody who's running a large company like yourself at Axios where your day-to-day varies every day and there will be always things that you probably just don't want to do anyway? **Jim VandeHei** [54:49] No, I mean, even for me, it's like somebody who's obsessive about this. The reason we wrote the book is because I do this all the time. I do this inventory all the time. Do I need to take these meetings? If I need to take these meetings, do I really need this many people involved? If we decide to do something, do we really need all of these processes, all of these steps? Is there a quicker way to do it? Hell should we be doing it at all? I called a meeting of my leadership team a couple of months ago and my title on the email was, we're just going to meet and it's like, let's kill shit. That was the meeting title. I said, I want to go around the room. What are the dumb things that you think we do as a company, either meetings or products or process that shouldn't be done? And let's just go through and ruthlessly try to get rid of as many things as we possibly can. And even at a company who obsesses about this, who's already adopted the Simplify operating system, we still identify tons of stuff. Like I'm telling you, we are genetically predisposed to make things way more complex than they need to be. We are genetically predisposed to just let these little barnacles build up without cleaning up the ship. And if you don't have a system to do that, you're just going to like little by little, you're going to keep falling back into this trap. And I think that really is the beauty of the work. We show you the science, we show you the data, but every chapter gives you two or three things you could do today that take five or 10 minutes that I really think will change your life. Like just try a chapter, try one or two. And my guess is you'll become quite addicted to it because you're seeing the advantage that it has. Like none of it's rocket science, but if you don't have a guide for doing it, you won't do it. **Ollie Forsyth** [56:25] You know, one of the questions I love to ask on the show, because we speak to amazing leaders every day, is actually just getting inside the running of the company. If I was to join as your Chief of Staff for a week, what would we be doing together and what does a day in the life of Jim actually look like? **Jim VandeHei** [56:40] Yeah, I mean, I have a crazy life,right? Because I run a company, I'm the chair of our sister company, which is a communications company. I'm writing a book, I do speeches, I do TV, I write a column, and then I also try to run the strategy. So I have no day, I have no predictable day. But like my Chief of Staff spends a ton of time making sure that, okay, what are the things that Jim needs to do? Jim needs to be setting the strategy. Jim needs to be meeting with his leadership team to make sure they understand where we need to go and to answer any problems in real time that they might have. Jim needs to be cleared up if he needs to go do a speech or needs to go do a TV experience or appearance. And also she would help filter out whether or not that rises to the level of something that I should do. And so my life's a little bit more complex. I'm running a company. I obviously have more staff than the average person would have, but I still need to be thinking about that all the time. And I do all of that. And I'll say this to break. I'm saying, because I think this is where Simplify comes in. I do all of that and I still vacation all the time. I just got back from Kilimanjaro. I spent a bunch of time in Maine. Like I still, because I'm able to simplify the things that I focus on, I still have plenty of time for my wife, for my kids, for my siblings, for the couple of friends that I really want to invest in, for my fly fishing and trying to learn how to bow hunt, like the different things that I need to do to keep myself sane,right? And that's why, and I don't know that my life is that much different than anyone else's, other than the things that add complexity or burden are just different,right? If I were younger, maybe when my kids were younger, I would be saying, oh, I got to spend most of my time trying to get them to and fro a soccer practice or, you know, whatever it is. Like everyone has different stressors. That's why you need some kind of system to make sure that, okay, am I optimizing my time so that I can do the things that I want to do that are bringing the most value to me and my family? **Ollie Forsyth** [58:36] Well, now is never been a better time to be in this crazy world. Like you said, I think the opportunity is amazing for all of us. You know, simplify our time. We're going to put a book on the screen now for people to go and buy it. And this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much. And we're super excited that everything Simplify, just go and simplify your day and your life and hopefully things will be much better. **Jim VandeHei** [58:58] Well, you're very good at this. This is a really interesting conversation that went in a ton of different directions and congrats on your own success. Like it's really hard. In some ways, it's harder to run a much smaller company because so much more falls directly on you. So congrats and hopefully I'll see you in person. **Ollie Forsyth** [59:15] Thank you so much. --- This library is powered by PodHood (https://podhood.com), the podcast website platform.