Brief sidebar on the history of Lex Friedman.

There was a time when I was a co-founder at a company called Midroll.

We eventually got acquired by EW Scripps.

At Scripps, we acquired a company called Stitcher.

We renamed the business Stitcher.

I was there a total of seven years as co-founder, chief revenue officer, chief business development officer, and eventually left.

And after I left, Stitcher was sold by EW Scripps to Sirius XM, where it is now.

So that’s my story, rushed.

And here’s why I mentioned it after this.

Your Daily Lex.

Past couple of weeks, there were massive layoffs at Sirius XM, largely affecting the podcast teams.

They laid off between 100 and 150 people on the Stitcher podcasting teams of Sirius XM.

And I knew a bunch of them.

I hired some of them.

And it was, I don’t know, I wore guilt.

I felt guilt from people losing their jobs from a company I haven’t worked at in a bajillion years.

And people who had made nice careers for many years of those jobs.

And some of them were people who I didn’t hire, but I just worked alongside.

And some of them were people, many of them were people who were hired after I had nothing to do with Stitcher at all.

But I still felt, I felt for those people.

Guilt’s not exactly the right word, but in some cases, I did feel it anyway.

I definitely felt guilt for some folks.

Like, man, I’m sorry I couldn’t have, I don’t know, kept them employed forever, which makes no sense.

I didn’t work there.

I had no control.

And then I just felt for people in general.

Because, you know, I’m a human being with empathy.

There are some of us, believe it or not.

So I posted on LinkedIn, being like, hey, if you were affected by the Sirius XM layoffs, I would like to offer you a free consulting call to see if I can be of any assistance.

Maybe introduce you, tell you about jobs, introduce you to people, tell you about job openings I’m aware of, or companies that are hiring, whatever.

And I thought I’d get a handful of calls.

And I got so many calls.

People who knew me were sharing it with people who didn’t know me.

You know, the post was public on LinkedIn.

And so it kept getting shared and liked.

And listen, I’m no hero.

The point of this isn’t, wow, what a great guy I am.

The point of it is, wow, that was crazy.

Because I ended up with about 25 or so of those calls scheduled.

And I was at least kind to myself and made most of them be 15 minute calls.

Because, you know, I’m only getting paid for the calls where people pay me.

And I was nervous going into some of these.

Because I’m like, how am I actually going to be able to help these people?

And in some cases, they honestly just wanted to vent, which was fine.

But a lot of times they would say, you know, yeah, I was doing this thing.

Or I really want to do this thing.

And it would occur to me, hey, I know a person.

Let me introduce you to this person.

Or let me connect you with this company.

And in other cases, I could just give advice.

Like one was saying, another team in SiriusXM was offering to hire me back to do this other thing.

And I was like, if you don’t hold a grudge, then do it, right?

Like, if it’s a team you already know, and you already know the culture, and you were happy at SiriusXM, and you’re intrigued by doing the other thing, then yeah, do it.

Because their worry was like, does it mean I’m first in line for layoffs?

And I’m like, no.

They let off a team.

They let off a whole bunch of people in podcasting.

If this is a different thing where you feel there’s more time there, then whatever.

Like, why not?

In other cases, people were like, this company wants me to present my own compensation plan.

And how should I do it?

And people very often have this instinct that they should negotiate against themselves.

They obviously don’t frame it that way or think of it that way.

But it’s like, I know that on paper, this could look really expensive.

So I was thinking of making it lower.

Like, no.

Why don’t you make what you think is fair?

And then some people will tell you, why don’t you make what you think is fair and then market up some?

And I’m like, I wouldn’t.

I like to say, hey, this is what I need.

There are other negotiating tactics, obviously.

But I was talking to somebody through how to build a compensation plan.

And he was like, yeah, they asked me to build it.

And they said that they would love to see something like this.

I’m like, would you like to see something like that?

Or do you want a different kind of compensation plan?

And this is for a salesperson, right?

So it’s like, do you want commission?

Or do you want kickers at different levels or other boring nuances?

And my point in sharing all this was, I was nervous about, would I actually be helpful to people?

And then people were almost universally ecstatic about my helping them.

Like, hey, this is super helpful.

Great.

And I have made some intros to people.

Great.

And I guess my point in all this is, you should do that.

Not that you have to post on LinkedIn, which is mostly awful, let’s be honest, and offer to help people for no money.

But rather that, I don’t know, this was, frankly, this was too much, right?

It ended up being more time than I expected it to be.

Like, I don’t know, I’ll have done many hours of those calls with folks that was no direct benefit to me.

But it’s good to put good things in the world.

It’s good to do good things.

It certainly made me feel good.

It gave me five minutes of content for this podcast.

But it’s also, it’s a way to just, I don’t know, karma, whether you believe it or not, it’s good to do good things, right?

So hopefully, if some of them have success, and then they can help you, I don’t know, they can hire me as a consultant one day, that’d be nice too, right?

But I don’t know, it felt good.

Do good things, be nice.

My point is be nice.

Can you guys handle that?

I mean, some of you can.

Some of you decidedly cannot.

But please, let’s go be nice.

It’s, it’s fun.

Being nice is fun.

Thank you so much for coming to my Lex talk.

Goodbye.

Lex.