I was thinking about some old stories I wanted to share, and then I couldn’t remember if I had already shared some of them on this very podcast.

Luckily, a listener had sent me a bunch of transcripts for a bunch of the older episodes of the show, and so a story I wanted to tell about my burglar alarm going off when I was a kid home alone, I now know I covered back in episode 512, not that long ago.

But instead, today, I’m going to tell a story about Michael Eisner.

From what I can tell, I have not told this story on the podcast before.

So roughly 1,000 years ago, we were in the process of selling Midroll, and Midroll was an early podcast company, became the first major podcast acquisition, and we had retained the services of a banker whose job it was to help you sell the company, and that banker did a great job, and had arranged a variety of meetings with a variety of potential acquirers, and so we were taking meetings in various places, some in New York City, some in Los Angeles, and the mix of companies was interesting.

Some were internet companies that had already been working in media, and some were kind of roll-ups, and some were major players.

We ended up getting acquired, as you may recall, by EW Scripps, who later sold the business, which had been renamed Stitcher by that point, to SiriusXM, who owns it now.

But one of the entities we met with was a VC firm called Tornante.

I want to say a VC firm or a VC company.

Basically it’s an investment company that invested in other companies, and what made this one interesting, in part, was that it was owned by Michael Eisner, Michael Eisner who had previously been the CEO of Disney from 1984 to 2005.

So we go to their conference room, and there are two people who are going to be attending the meeting from their side, and five or six of us, five people on the executive team of mid-role and our banker, and so Michael’s lead guy for the company was there, and then Michael walks in.

He’s like, well, first things first, you guys are going to have to explain to me what a podcast is, which was a good start.

That was a while ago.

So we’re explaining to Michael how podcasting works, and eventually Michael’s like, well, let’s go get, I can’t remember if it was lunch or dinner.

I think it was lunch because I have a recollection that we went back into the conference room afterwards for more meeting, but I could be wrong.

But either way, it was a lunch, I’m remembering in real time.

But Michael’s like, let’s go to Spago.

Hopefully you know Spago, if you don’t know Spago, it is a comically trendy restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck, and yeah.

So going to Spago was a very, I don’t even know if you would say hipster-y thing to do, but it was a very Beverly Hills thing to do, let’s say.

So we’re there at Spago, and there are various famous people around eating at other tables, and at one point, Wolfgang Puck comes out from the kitchen to greet us and thank us for eating there, which was hilarious.

I only later learned that Eisner had put a bunch of Wolfgang Puck restaurants in Disney owned properties, and that had done really well for Wolfgang.

But so of course, Wolfgang loves Eisner, great.

So we’re finishing the meal, and we’re at a circular table, and I happen to have the seat right next to Michael.

And at some point, Michael signals to our waiter that he would like the check.

And the waiter says, actually, sir, Wolfgang has taken care of the check.

And okay, what a nice gesture.

I immediately go into, you know, I’m immediately, I’m me, right?

So I’m sitting next to Eisner at this circular table, he asks for the check, waiter says, Wolfgang already took care of the check.

And so I turned to Eisner, and as the words start to leave my mouth, I’m like, nope, don’t do this, this is not the necessary time for a hilarious Lex joke.

But I go, well, Michael, it appears to me you still owe us a lunch.

And you know, as halfway through the sentence, I can no longer abandon it.

Like I’m just, I’m committed, I am pod committed to this sentence, it’s going to happen.

And I say, well, you still owe us a lunch.

And luckily, he laughed heartily.

He clapped my shoulder, even he thought it was a good joke, which, by the way, it was.

Anyway, then the fun part was like, their offer was significantly less than the offer we went with.

And they said, hey, we’re gonna give you your, you know, a pretty low offer was about 33% of what we ended up selling for.

And he’s like, listen, we’ll be your safe school.

If nobody else buys, you can come to us and we’ll give you, you know, this, you know, much smaller amount.

And then my first step will be to fire all of you.

You’re great, but you’re the most expensive things at the company.

We did not end up doing that deal with Eisner, for obvious reasons.

And but it was a fun lunch.

It was a good meal.

And Wolfgang was nice.

And Eisner was a character.

I wouldn’t expect anything less, but he was truly a character.

Leading the meeting with I don’t know what a podcast is was funny, but boy, there was Disney stuff everywhere.

I thought maybe he would have been upset with Disney since they had at some point ousted him.

But no, he was still very much in love with Disney and there was Disney stuff everywhere.

So yeah, that’s my story about Michael Eisner, which I don’t think I’ve ever told in this podcast if the transcripts are to be believed.