Aryeh Bourkoff — Media's Hottest Dealmaker on How to Negotiate, Rejecting Constraints, Mastering the Calendar to Create More Time, and How to Play the Long Game

Aryeh Bourkoff — Media’s Hottest Dealmaker on How to Negotiate, Rejecting Constraints, Mastering the Calendar to Create More Time, and How to Play the Long Game

Illustration via 99designs

“What is your edge?”

— Aryeh Bourkoff

Aryeh B. Bourkoff (@aryehbourkoff) is the chairman and CEO of LionTree, an independent investment and merchant bank advising and investing in transformational CEOs and the companies they lead. Aryeh founded LionTree in 2012 during a time of unprecedented disruption, and since then, LionTree has supported an expanding number of industries as they capture opportunity in an evolving digital economy.

Aryeh is also the founder of Kindred Media, a digital media and podcasting company powered by LionTree, and serves on the boards of Yahoo and Carnegie Hall. Before founding LionTree, Aryeh spent 13 years at UBS, closing his tenure as vice chairman and Head of Americas Investment Banking. Before UBS, Aryeh was a high-yield research analyst and ranked as the #1 cable and satellite analyst by Institutional Investor for seven consecutive years.

Aryeh is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego and resides in New York City with his family.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Musicor on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.

Brought to you by HEY premium email service, Theragun percussive muscle therapy devices, and LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 800M+ users.

The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

#629: Aryeh Bourkoff — Media’s Hottest Dealmaker on How to Negotiate, Rejecting Constraints, Mastering the Calendar to Create More Time, and How to Play the Long Game


This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.

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This episode is brought to you by Theragun! Theragun is my go-to solution for recovery and restoration. It’s a famous, handheld percussive therapy device that releases your deepest muscle tension. I own two Theraguns, and my girlfriend and I use them every day after workouts and before bed. The all-new Gen 4 Theragun is easy to use and has a proprietary brushless motor that’s surprisingly quiet—about as quiet as an electric toothbrush.

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This episode is brought to you by HEY! I was introduced to HEY by my friend Kevin Rose, who calls it “a beautiful rethinking of everything wrong with email.” HEY is a premium email service for people who are tired of having an inbox overflowing with things they don’t care about, and who value their privacy and online security.

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Want to hear another podcast episode featuring a titan of the media industry? Listen to my interview with Daniel Ek, in which we discuss the meaning of eldsjäl, European versus American parenting, books that stand out among the 60–70 Daniel reads annually, dealing with tough-to-hear feedback, Spotify’s internal two-year missions, speed vs. quality of iteration, and much more.

#484: Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify — Habits, Systems and Mental Models for Top Performance

What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

  • Connect with Aryeh Bourkoff:

Instagram

SHOW NOTES

  • [05:35] What makes a good research analyst?
  • [12:39] Lessons learned from Alan Ginsberg.
  • [16:02] Why did Aryeh choose to move across the country for a career in finance?
  • [19:49] Professional job-seeking, doorknob negotiation, and toe-stepping.
  • [24:30] Tying together the disparate and thinking outside convention.
  • [35:38] Coping with overflow when time is short.
  • [51:56] “What is your edge?”
  • [58:27] A deck of cards and Joe Ianniello.
  • [1:05:08] Resources for sharpening negotiation skills.
  • [1:13:56] Recommended reading.
  • [1:22:04] Thoughts on the future of audio/streaming/podcasting.
  • [1:29:41] Building and maintaining community trust.
  • [1:32:39] Goalkeeping.
  • [1:35:59] Mach2.
  • [1:38:01] The write time.
  • [1:39:12] Parting thoughts.

MORE ARYEH BOURKOFF QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“If you’re going to go into an industry, go to the heart of it. Don’t plan around the edges.”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“Conventional thinking is typically right, but seldom profitable.”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“What is your edge?”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“If we eliminate all the extremism, then everyone can redefine their view of what their centers look like, and that’s where the richness lies. And whether you find it in the magic hours in the wee hours of the night or the middle of the day, I think we can form these circles and then really bond together, and I think the best is yet to come.”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“People have hopes and dreams that sometimes take the shape and form of businesses. And those businesses need money, capital, to see the light of day, to realize their dreams. And that’s finance. And if I can play a role in helping those individuals get capital and have their dreams realized, that is a worthwhile life to live.”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“You have to ask yourself, are you comfortable going into a controversial scenario, or do you want to just live in the non-controversial?”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“Whenever anyone says, ‘Life is too short,’ I’m like, ‘Well, life is the longest thing you know. You don’t know anything longer than life.’ So I’m like, ‘Let’s just live it to the fullest as much as you can.’”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

“It goes back to adaptability. If something has a rigid purpose and you break the purpose, it will die.”
— Aryeh Bourkoff

PEOPLE MENTIONED

The Tim Ferriss Show is one of the most popular podcasts in the world with more than 900 million downloads. It has been selected for “Best of Apple Podcasts” three times, it is often the #1 interview podcast across all of Apple Podcasts, and it’s been ranked #1 out of 400,000+ podcasts on many occasions. To listen to any of the past episodes for free, check out this page.

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