The Universal Truths of Business Success with Rich Antoniello

Not too long ago, Complex CEO Rich Antoniello tweeted this—what he considers the formula for success in publishing. Seems pretty straightforward, but...

It got the Business Casual team thinking: Does such a formula really exist? And if Rich is right in saying that it does, how can lessons he espouses from the publishing world apply to every other sector?

This week on Business Casual, we get an answer straight from the media CEO’s mouth. Rich answers every burning question about his formula for success, from what matters most to how differently things would’ve gone if he’d just invented YouTube.

There’s a reason we’re talking about this right now. It’s because now more than ever, success in publishing is hard to come by. In an industry known for its thin margins and stubborn resistance to change, a pandemic and recession have accelerated hardships already being played out. 

We recorded this episode on March 31 as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take a stranglehold on the economy. The lessons have aged better than we could’ve ever expected: One look at this list of newsroom layoffs paints the picture better than any episode description could—layoffs have come for everyone, from old media to new. 

Understanding how to insulate your business (whether it’s in publishing or not) from having to make those hard decisions to let your people go? That’s important today and will be important tomorrow.

And FWIW, Rich’s wisdom spans far more than just the youth culture his Complex team is so devoutly dedicated to. Here’s a small sample of his pep-talk-but-realistic vibe:

“There is no excuse not to evaluate yourself, every word, every story, every video, every social post, every campaign that you’ve created. There's always ways to get better. And you have to be pushing yourself and you have to go not to do more of it. Like this is not a more thing. It's a how do we do it better?”

Listen now.