Cocktails, Cannabis, and Change: A Conversation with Martha Stewart

Stay out there. Don't stay back here. Stay out there all the time. Look to the future. And I think that that's kept me in very good shape and very good stead because it can get very boring doing the same thing over and over and over again.

How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table because this is Business Lunch with Roland Fraser and Ryan Deiss. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch. And today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.

Thank you so much for coming.

You're so far away.

I know. They put us way apart.

Wow. Thank you.

That is awesome. Welcome to Traffic and Conversion Summit. Thank you for coming out to see us.

Thank you. T and C stands for town and country for me.

I know, I know.

I promise I won't say any more jokes.

No, we like jokes here. We like it a lot. So what now? I gotta tell you, she beat me to one of the coolest new restaurants in town. This is how on top of things you are. You went to a really cool place today and she was Instagramming it when we met upstairs. She's like, how do you spell that place? It's like really, really cool.

And it's so good. Vaga. I met the chef last week in Aspen. I was at the food and Wine festival and it's a wonderful festival that was cut down by 2/3 because of COVID Similar, but we introduced all the great new chefs and the established chefs and she's one of the established chefs who's opened a a very unique restaurant with unique food and I think you'll all enjoy if you have time to go up to Encinitas and visit this beautiful Baga V A g A so you'll like It.

That's awesome.

And we ate way too much.

Did you?

We didn't drink because I had to come here. I know.

I asked her, I said, did you have a cocktail? And she said, no, I had to go to work.

That's right. This is work.

Speaking of cocktails, you are a big fan of cocktails. I know. And you kind of turned Snoop onto it. In the show that you guys do together. What are some of the best things that we should have to make a good cocktail?

Well, I think you shouldn't skimp on the quality of the booze that you buy. That's important for your bar. Should really be an elegant bar because, you know, most of us don't drink that much, I hope. But if you're going to drink, you might as well drink the real good stuff.

Amen.

And so I like really good tequila. Something called Casa Dragones.

Casa Dragones?

Yeah. If I'm thinking about George Clooney, I might buy Casamigos. But I traveled with him once to Australia. That was fun. Yeah, he was really great.

He's quite the humorous person.

I understand.

But his tequila is not as good as Casa Dragones.

All right.

And then I don't drink gin, but if I did drink gin, I'd probably drink Ryan Reynolds because he's a next door neighbor and he would be mad at me if I didn't drink his gin. But. What? Yes, Aviator. Yeah, I shouldn't mention that, right? Then. Vodka. I found a new vodka recently called Zubrovka.

Okay.

Now, I have no affiliation with any of these companies yet, but maybe if I mention them enough, maybe they'll give me a speaking engagement or something.

I like that. Now, you've done your own wines, right?

I have, but I have a new one coming.

Yeah, let's hear about it.

Now, Snoop introduced his Cali Red last year. It was a huge runaway success. And it was, I think, the largest launch of any wine ever. It's a supermarket wine, you know, it's for the kids. Who is it? 18 years old? How is it? Or 21. I don't. I don't even know what the drinking age is. So anyway, it's for the kids. But he sold more than any wine ever sold in England.

Did he really?

Yes, it's very. So now I'm going to be doing my wine to match up with his. I cannot tell you anything about it other than mine is a Chardonnay. It has the greatest name, and I can't tell you what we're doing with it, but watch out for It. It's coming.

Any thoughts of a liquor sponsorship or owner?

I'm big on sake and I'm looking for a sake now manufacturer. I think nobody's done a. Nobody's really branded a sake except for Nobu.

I can't remember the names of them. It's horrible.

I know. So Martha would be so much easier, right, Martha? Easy. Masasan.

Where would I be able to buy it?

I want Massasan vodka. I mean sake. It's so good.

So I love it also.

It's the end of the day. He needs a cocktail.

I would love one. Yes. Yeah. What cocktail should I have? What do you recommend?

I would look for a caipirinha.

Yeah, tell us about that.

Who likes caipirinhas? Yes. And it's a great drink. It's cachaca, which is a Brazilian. It's like the Brazilian vodka, you know, it's made out of cane sugar.

My wife just.

Very good.

She just read your stuff and bought.

All of that and this lime and sugar, raw sugar and cachaca over ice. And it is delicious.

All right.

I like it in a sugar rimmed glass.

In a sugar rimmed glass.

Not salt, sugar.

Okay, fair enough. So what are you. You've got so many things going on. Tell us about some of the things you're doing now. Some of the new.

Well, right now we're launching a. We launch, but a soft launch. And the big launch comes rather soon. Martha.com, which is our own online store, awes and I can't wait. It has all our own products on it, plus other curated products that I think all of you will like and need for your homes. I have two words that I really sort of that helped me choose the products and the kinds of products that I want to design. It's need and want. Do you need it and do you want it? Those are the two words that I think are essential in choosing products, product lines.

Tell us about that.

Well, it's just important. I mean, there's lots of things that sort of look great, but do I need it and do I want it? And I think that those two words, if you apply it, you will save money, you will not waste money, you will not clutter your home and you will have good things.

I think I remember reading you said need, want, and then was it also void? Is void a part of that void?

No, no. Fill a void.

Fill a void.

Yeah. Filling a void is another thing that I like to do. I look around me. This is when you're building a brand, if you're looking to build your own brand about something, of something. Fill a void. When I started my magazine, I was filling a giant void in the media world. There was no magazine quite like mine. And it really made a huge difference in the success of a magazine when a lot of other magazines were closing their doors at that time, and ours was a runaway success, and it still is. We still have 2.1 million subscribers of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

That is awesome.

A very high rate base and very exciting.

That's really cool. You had said once, I think, that it's a good idea to repot yourself every 10 years or so. Would you talk a little bit about what that means?

Well, that's another little motto of mine. When you're through changing, you're through. And I take it very seriously. I think change is good. I remember reading Kafka's Metamorphosis when I was a college student, and it really stuck with me that change is good. You can change not too often, but and often enough so that you surprise people and you keep them on their toes. It's good with your husband, it's good with your wife. It's not bad to be a little surprising in what you do. So I think it's. Repotting is the same thing Snoop would say. Repotting is something different than what I would say. I've learned a lot from Snoop over the years, by the way, but it's just making sure that you stay out there. Don't stay back here, stay out there all the time. Look to the future. And I think that that's kept me in very good shape and very good stead because it can get very boring doing the same thing over and over and over again. It's really great to branch out, look ahead, try new things, adapt and adopt. I like those words.

Speaking of Snoop, do you have a favorite Snoop story?

Oh, favorite. I have lots and lots of stories. But he came to visit me one day. I must have just landed at the local airport in Westchester. And he called and he said, hey, can I come over? And I said, okay. I didn't expect him. I had a bunch of my daughter's friends and their kids all running around the farm, and everybody was swimming and I was cooking a big lunch for them. And I said, how many people? He said, oh, maybe three. And so up comes this, you know, Mercedes bus and full of smoke and perfect for the children. And these giant guys are all like six, six and taller. And one was called Teeny and one was called Tiny, and they all Showed up. There were about eight of them. And they all came and sat plunked right down at the lunch table where it was for my daughter's friends. And the kids came running up. All these little kids came running. They were about 7 and 8. Didn't pay any attention to these guys. I mean, they were odd looking guys for the farm. I don't have people like that hanging around. Usually the bodyguards. But we had so much fun. And then Snoop invited everyone. He said, what's that building? He thought I was. We were sitting on the terrace of my house where I live, which is kind of a modest farmhouse. And he said, what's that building down there? And it's my stable, which is a big stone. It looks like a stone mansion. My horses live way better than I live. And he said, well, I'm going to go take a look down there and look for some grass. And every adult followed him like little. I didn't go, but they all went and they had a great time.

You mentioned a little bit about branding and what you did with the magazine back in the time and you created this category called entertaining. That didn't exist when you were looking at that or when this audience is looking. We have a lot of people that work on brands here in the audience. What did you think about or knowing everything you know now, what would you think about in kind of creating a brand is like putting something like that together now?

Well, like I said, looking for the void. For me at that time I wanted a book, a magazine that taught me how to really run a home, go to work, take care of the kids, be a well rounded woman, homemaker, housewife and businesswoman. And this was the magazine, this was the magazine that really sort of founded my company. And then when you make all this fabulous content, you do Christmas decorations by hand, painstakingly, you're doing them yourself. And I said to myself, you know what? Many, many people, many women don't have time to do this, so let's make it for them. That's the product lines that started to develop.

That was really cool.

Yeah. And that's really, that's how it all started. And I think that was the basis for a very good, strong company.

So some of the things that you're working on now, I think you're involved with one called Canopy, is that right?

Canopy up in Canada. It's now listed on the New York Stock Exchange also, it's one of the largest cannabis companies in America. The founder invited me at the behest of Snoop. He said, Martha, you Should be getting into this stuff. And he was right. Cbd. He's in the THC world, I'm in the CBD world. And CBD now is. We're finding other compounds that are even more effective than cbd and not hallucinogenic, but very useful medically. Autoimmune qualities, all kinds of anti inflammatory qualities. So I'm working on pet cbd. I'm working on human cbd. My gummies are the number one gummies in America right now.

Really? Yes. I did not know that. Congratulations.

Haven't tried them. Go to canopy.com and order yourself a beautiful little candy box full of my gummies. They're like pat a fouille. They're really copy. I really sort of tried to emulate the great French confection. Those lovely little gummies that you get at the end of a French dinner.

Okay.

And they're all wonderful flavors. And we have a Christmas and autumnal package coming soon. And we also have a beautiful Christmas package in the shape of a Christmas tree.

Are we going to have CBD macarons?

You're going to have. No, we're going to have chocolates and a few other very nice things. I won't tell you what they are, but they're good.

I like that. I like that. And then there was something else I think I saw called Appharvest. Is that correct?

Well, I'm on the board of Appharvest. I also am very, very concerned about feeding the world. I want good food for everybody. I visited in Russia a few years ago when my boyfriend at the time was going out to outer space. Not the 50 miles up like the guys now. Jeff Bezos, 50 miles. I think he went 58 miles up. That's like going to the next town. But my boyfriend went 200 miles up to the Russian space station.

Really?

Yeah. And I got to go to Baikonur in Kazakhstan where they take off. Oh, wow. And it was very exciting actually to see this. And the reason he went to Russia is because they had never announced a problem. In all the years that they've been sending astronauts up to the space station, they had never had any explosions or any problems.

A lot of the people that were gonna report that accidentally fell out of the rockets as they were going.

Yeah, maybe. You never know. But anyway, he made it. He did it twice. And it was very exciting. I got to go up to the nose cone of the rocket in the elevator to see say goodbye through the icy window that they had. It was a fascinating thing. And again, learning A lot. I would have liked to have gotten in there and gone up too.

Yeah.

But I haven't done it yet. It cost 20. At that time it was 26 million to go up for 13 days.

A couple million a day. That's not too bad. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of boards, so you're on the plus.

It cost Jeff Bezos a lot more than that to go up. It did is 58 miles because he built the rockets himself. His looks really nice though. And I thought Richard Branson's was even better.

It was a good looking rocket.

Yeah, it really was, don't you think? But he only went 50 miles up.

Yeah. So Appharvest is helping feed.

Okay. So Appharvest is a new company. It went public as a SPAC last year.

Okay.

But it is basically when I was in Russia visiting the space stations, I actually visited all these greenhouses, acres and acres and acres of greenhouses under the glass of which everything is grown because the climate is just not conducive to growing year round outside. And they have to feed all their people. So Appharvest is doing the same thing in Appalachia. They've have centered on Appalachia because it is where they are in Kentucky is within a day's drive of all metropolitan areas on the eastern seaboard in Central America. So it's center of America. I don't look at Central America. And so you don't have to eat tomatoes that have been on the truck from Mexico for three weeks. You just eat tomatoes that were picked yesterday. And beautiful, beautiful produce is coming out of these greenhouses. And by the end of 2025, I think we're going to have about seven giant greenhouses, millions of square feet of growing under glass. It is sustainable agriculture using a fraction of the water.

That is awesome. You can clap for that. That's a good thing. Yeah, that's awesome.

Really great.

That's really cool.

And I like serving on the boards of some of these companies. Of course, a lot of companies have been. They've been told to hire women on their boards more so than ever before because of the Me Too movement and other movements and also Black Lives Matter movement. There's more blacks on the boards now. And that's all good. I really think it's important to have a diverse board, to have interesting people that can contribute to the workings of a company, especially a new company.

That's great. And, and, and you've been on some really interesting boards. You were on the board of the, the New York Stock Exchange for I.

Was on the board right. At the bad time.

Yeah.

When Mr. Grasso was AED by Mr. Langone. Do you remember that?

I do.

Oh, my gosh. Bad things. Bad things. But. And he wasn't. He wasn't a bad guy.

Yeah.

That'll be in my autobiography. I'll tell. Waiting for. I'll tell when that happens.

That's supposed to be your hundredth book. Book, Right. Your autobiography.

No, it won't be, though, because it's going to be my favorite recipes. Because first I'm working on a documentary with RJ Cutler. We're working on that now.

Great.

Going through my archives, which is extremely painful. If any of you are planning a documentary on your life, be prepared. It's like going to the psychiatrist's couch every time your producer shows up, because, boy, do they think you have bad questions. Oh.

So one of the things that you've done a great job of that I think would.

But I'm taking your questions back to him, though, because I think your questions were really good. I got something like 10 pages of questions from this guy, and I read all through them. I said, gosh, we're never going to cover all those questions, I hope, but they were very good questions.

No, I mean, this is. We'll be done here tonight. 10, 10, 30, no problems. But one of the things that you've done such a great job of that I think would be really helpful to this audience is that you've taken a lot of traditional things and kind of presented them in a new light. And we have in advertising and offers and products that we've got, we have to do that a lot because you get ad fatigue and things like that. What do you think about when you're thinking about how to do that?

Well, I call it tradition with a twist.

Okay.

It's like, why use cranberries just in cranberry sauce? Why not make the most glistening cranberry tart? Which, of course, I did for my Pies and tarts book. And then that's become a very favorite tart of many people. Somebody just wrote to me, said, I can't live without a cranberry tart at Thanksgiving. And so that was kind of fun to try to do stuff like that, you know, pumpkin soup instead of pumpkin. Pumpkin soup in a pumpkin. I laughed. I went to Mr. Agnelli's house, the man who owned Fiat, he was his beautiful Italian villa. And his wife invited me for lunch, and we sat down and she brings out this beautiful pumpkin full of pumpkin soup. And she thought it was new. I had already published that in my magazine and in America. It was not in Italy, but that's, that's the influence. She had seen it probably. I give her credit. I mean, I think she was an amazing, amazing, beautiful woman. She got Mr. Agnelli. He was the most attractive man I ever met. So she was doing something right.

One of the things that you talked about was in kind of repurposing or maybe it's taking advantage of all the different forms of media that you've got you tracked. I think it was a pansy across everything that you did and you talked about all the different places that it appeared. And I think there was maybe an infographic. I tried to find it, but I couldn't find it.

Oh, it's in the magazine?

Yeah. Would you share a little bit about that?

Well, we are famous for our glossaries and famous for really good research. I don't think in the 30 years our magazine is 30 years old this year, I don't think that we have had more than two or three corrections really in the recipes or in the text. So that's pretty fantastic.

It is.

And I pride myself on having really good editors working with really good smart people in the same kind of areas that I'm interested in. And that's how we've built that Part of the business is really hiring like minded people who are as interested and as nuts as I am about subject matter.

Do you meet with them and talk about or have you about how do we leverage what we're talking about in this media across the other types?

Oh, definitely. Definitely. Today I had to choose the best pumpkin images from the last 30 years. This is in my room at the hotel. The best pumpkin images. So that we can do our NFTs now if you all know what NFTs are. So we're gonna do NFTs. And at the same time is it.

Gonna be Martha punks?

We don't know yet. Again, I'm not gonna tell you, but that's a good idea.

I like it.

We are going to be selling the image and the photographer will benefit and boy, he's gonna be. He or she is gonna be so happy. And it'll be sort of you can buy one or you can buy a, buy a collection of them. But again, I don't know if anybody else has done that yet from editorial. I don't think so. But you know, Tom Brady's selling his signature and other people are selling other images of themselves and whatever but, or artwork. But this might be very nice. And it'd be a very nice collaborative venture with photography.

That's awesome.

And we've been known for our photography for a long time.

That's really great. And you've also done a really great job of bridging audiences and really at kind of a risk. I know that when Halston tried to go, he was great designer, super sought after, high end. Then he tried to go. I think it may have been J.C. penney's that he went into.

He did. He did.

You managed to pull that off, though. You went from kind of a higher end into Kmart.

No, no, I started at the low end.

Okay.

And sometimes I regret that because look at Ralph Lauren. He never went low end except to. To the outlets, but he owns the outlets, so that was good. But no, I really started at Kmart, but my idea was, why not? I like good things. I like beautifully made things. I like practical things. I like things that really work. So I said to Kmart, which was at the time, you know, it's bankrupt now, but at the time, it was the largest retailer in America. And it was larger than Walmart and it was way larger than Target. Target was a tiny little company, came out at the time, was $44 billion. Walmart was about 26 billion. And Target was about, I don't know, 6 billion or something at the time. So it was the right place to go. Who knew that? They didn't know anything about inventory controls and computers. They didn't know anything. They had grown so. Well, if anybody worked for Kmart, you would know what I'm talking about. And they got into trouble ultimately because of that. But what a fabulous, fabulous manufacturing. They really knew how to make the best towels. I still. This was like in 19, like late 80s, it seems like eons ago, but it was only the 80s. But the towels that we made then, I still have in my bathrooms in my beautiful, beautiful home up in Maine that are still perfectly, perfectly good towels.

That's great.

And the sheets on the beds are still the same sheets, all made for Kmart at the very best price. And I remember having to buck a lot of trends. I said, you know, I would like to make some really beautiful pastel colored sheets, things that you might find at Bloomingdale's at the time or Lord and Taylor. And they said, oh, the people that shop at Kmart, they want navy blue, dark maroon or black because they don't wash their sheets a lot. And I said, oh, come off it. You have to be kidding. And they said, no, it's true. They Just. They will not buy light colored sheets. Guess what our first collection. Guess what the best color was in our first collection. White. Second was mint green. The third was pink.

Interesting.

Yeah, because I was right.

Of course.

They wanted good sheets. They wanted nice color. They weren't being offered it at the right price.

Right.

So. So we made a big, big difference at mass market. And. And that. And within three years, our business was like $1.6 billion. It was a great business.

All right. You did okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's awesome. And then you were actually one of the first people to realize the value of owning your own Media. You, in 97, I think, basically put together a deal to acquire all of your media from. Was it Rupert Murdoch? That was the.

No, it was Time Warner. Time Warner.

Okay.

Yeah, Time. Time. That was the beginning of the end of time, I thought, because they shouldn't have let a property like Martha Stewart Living go.

Right.

And originally, when I had negotiated the. The business with them, they said, well, what do you. What do you think? If you want to buy it back? What do you think it's going to be? And they had written down on a piece of paper, 45 million.

Okay.

And I kept a piece of paper, and that's what we paid.

That's great.

So it's really an excellent, excellent thing. And then owning the magazine, learning how to publish it yourself without time. We cooperated with them a lot, but it was a very interesting. A very interesting time. That's when they were buying ao. They were trying to.

Brilliant merger.

Yeah. Crazy. Because nothing went well for them after that. No, it was too bad.

Were you nervous at all about putting. That was kind of a giant deal at the time. Right.

Well, I tried to go and raise money. Venture money at that time was not so accessible to women. It just wasn't. And I remember going to one man who has passed away, so I won't talk badly about him, or maybe I should, but now it's okay. It's safe. I went and talked to him. He said, oh, we love the deal. Okay. Okay. This is great. 60, 40. And they said, okay, 60 for me and 40 for you. And they said, no, 60 for us. And I just got up and said, thank you so much, gentlemen. And I walked out and I just signed for it myself. I didn't borrow any money.

That's great. That's very great. And I think you met one of the people that helped you put that deal together while you were climbing Kilimanjaro, which is.

Well, I knew her before. She was a Harvard business grad. She had worked for the Dolan's who owned Madison Square Garden and a lot of sports teams. Sharon Patrick. And we sort of challenged ourselves and developed a business plan while climbing Kilimanjaro. And if you haven't climbed Kilimanjaro, you really should go. It's really fun. It's a long hike. I called it an extended hike at a high altitude. And you get up to about 20,000ft. And it's hard. It's hard and it is challenging, but it's something everybody should do before you are 60. 60 years old.

Nice. And then after you're 60, well, then.

You have to take oxygen and other stuff. It's better to do it before.

I love it. So you've also used, you were really early in the crowdsourcing kind of idea and you used a lot of that in building some of the things that you did and like recipes and all that. How are you using that now? Or are you?

Well, no, we still are. We started a wonderful program called, called American Made, looking for young entrepreneurs all over the United States and sending out our scouts to find all these people and celebrate them. And there's lots of good things happen from helping other people build their businesses by promoting them just even surreptitiously by a few pictures in a magazine changes the life of a lot of different businesses. So we are, we're very proud of the fact that we do that. I'm starting a podcast with iHeartRadio. It'll be, we're starting it this autumn pretty soon, and it will be focusing on all those people that we have really worked with in the past and present who are doing great things.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun for people to listen to.

Do you have any tips? Like things that you've learned, like, gosh, I now know that I would do this or I now know that I wouldn't do that. When you're looking at crowdsourcing.

Yeah. Lot, lots. But take all day to talk about all of that stuff.

Fair enough.

Yeah, it's really.

I read a story about you doing a shoot on Hogs island off San Francisco where you stepped on a cord, an electrical cord, and got shocked and threw back five feet.

Oh, yeah. That was not a pleasant experience. I had a hole in my waders. We were at an oyster farm and we were showing how oysters can be raised in a controlled environment off of Hog's Island. And that's the name of the oysters. They were so Delicious. Until I was holding a metal stand. It was in the water. And I didn't realize that my foot was full of. My boot was full of water. And some electrician whose name. He's not working for us anymore, he hadn't grounded the wires for the lights in the water. And I got electrocuted and I was able to finish the segment. But that night I collapsed and I. And I just. I didn't even put it together really. But I had a big hole in my ankle and where the. Where the electricity had come out, it burned out through my. And it had gotten up to about here before it got to my heart when I let go of the middle. So it was. But that's. You know, I've been hit by lightning three times too. Yeah.

I'm just like, don't sit too near.

I attract currents. I don't know why.

Well, so what I read was you had that experience, went to the hospital, and then you had a cinnamon roll shoot after that, and you went there and you had crutches and you stood on one leg the entire interview to do. That's pretty cool.

You do stuff like that. What do you do to. Right now I have a ruptured Achilles tendon, and I had operated on 12 weeks ago, and I'm out here in San Diego. My doctor does not. Do not tell my doctor, please.

Is there anything that kind of. You think about in when stuff like that happen, like when things go really wrong like that and you still have to keep going, that helps you to get through it?

I believe in tenacity, and I believe in physical strength, and I believe in, you know, grit your teeth and bear it. For God's sake.

Just get. Do it.

Yes. Nice. I don't know. Sometimes you can control it.

I like it. And then opportunities. Now that you see in the world of homemaking and entertaining.

Oh, there's so many. There's so many opportunities still. Oh, yes. There's so many. We are. Well, like, we're working on the. On this affordable wine. We have a fabulous curated wine collection called Martha Stewart Wine Co. Where I curate the wines with my director of food, Thomas Joseph, this young guy. And we have never disagreed on the choice of a wine, which is so odd to find somebody whose taste buds are similar and you don't have to argue with them too much. And we do it independently and we've been 100% the same. It's so great. So that's. And. But that's affordable wine that. That you can. We pair the wines with the Kinds of foods that you should pair them with. So we, we take a lot of questions out of the. And, and we deliver it, which is, you know, it's, it's. You don't have to go and lug it home from the wine store.

What's the name of that one?

Martha Stewart Wine Company.

Wine company.

Yeah. You can get it online. You can get it on qvc. Those are fun things. Things. We're opening a restaurant in Las Vegas.

Really?

Yes.

In a hotel or Freestyle?

Yeah, in a hotel. And that's, that's in the spring. That's. I think it's in March. I don't know the final date yet. But we're, we've worked really hard on that and I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

What kind of restaurant?

It's Martha's restaurant.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's my kind of food.

I love it.

And, and it's. The restaurant itself is charming. A little different for Las Vegas and I think it's going to do very well.

Can you share what hotel it's going to be in?

Caesars.

Caesars. Okay, great.

Yes. And then that beautiful long lost arcade.

And there's a guy, Savoie and a Nobu in there as I recall.

Yeah, we're right across the hall from Nobu.

Nice.

Yeah. My friend.

So that's a. And who's that? I know Robert De Niro is an investor in that.

Yeah, Robert's one of several. But Nobu's. To me, Nobu is like the ultimate.

Is it restaurateur?

No, the restaurateur. He's restaurateur.

Okay.

Yeah, he's amazing.

I love it. Do you have a favorite varietal or, or winery that you break out for special occasions or happen to just. Absolutely.

I bought, I bought this gorgeous house up in Maine. It was Edsel Ford's house.

Oh.

And built by Edsel in 1925.

Did he do better there than the car?

The car. I have a car. I have an Edsel.

You have an Edsel.

Oh, and you want to.

I think they're so cool.

They're so cool. The cars are so cool. And my daughter, when I bought the house, my daughter bought me the car to go with the house. It's a pinkish reddish and white two door station wagon. And I don't know if you know about Edsel cars, but they have push button transmissions. Do you know that?

I did not know that.

So you just push D for drive.

It's like a.

You push it, it's right above Aston Martin, right? Yeah, I have one of those, too. They're horrible. But you had to climb down into a car. Who wants to climb down into a car?

Yes.

I just took it out to, you know, zhuzh it up the other day. Oh, I couldn't stand going climbing. You're sitting on the ground, basically, in an Aston Martin. It's pretty. Pretty. Men, look at you.

I get that a lot.

You think they're looking at you, they're looking at the car.

So when you're up at that house and enjoying the Edsel, is there a particular wine that.

Well, oh, I was going to say the. The wine cellar that's built into the rock ledge in this house was filled with 82 Bordeaux.

Ah, nice.

So. And it's still good?

Yeah. 82 has fantastic year.

Withstood the test of time. And that. That's like my favorite red.

Do you have. Are you like, the.

But you can't to open it. You know, you're opening, like, $13,000 every time you open one. Yeah, it's like. Like, should you or shouldn't you? So.

So do you.

My guests walk around with, like. It's a baby arms. They carry the bottles around.

So are you familiar with. With a wine opener called the Durand?

Yes.

That's such a great thing, isn't it? It's. Oh, my God. It's the. I just. I use it for every wine bottle now, old or new, because it just never messes up.

That's right.

That's awesome.

Doesn't break the cork and.

Doesn't break the cork. One of the things that you are known for, and I'm sure it has a lot to do with your success, is that you insist on not dumbing things down. And a lot of. From investment bankers to directors on shows, they'll say, make this simpler. You don't have to.

Like.

I think one of the examples was on your show, you were cooking things, and the directors are like, you don't have to cook it all. You don't have to just cook this much. We only need five minutes. But you were like, no, I'm going to make the whole thing and make it go. How do you stick with that when the world is telling you to dumb it down and do it quicker?

Well, I'm a teacher, and if my teachers did that to me, I would be really upset. And I want to like my teachers, and I want to learn from my teachers, so I want to do the same thing. I want to teach the whole thing. You can simplify you could always try to find a simpler way to do something, but that's not dumbing it down, it's just finding a better way. And so I always say that our content is evergreen that we have created and we will continue to use that method or that recipe or that technique until we find a better one to replace it. So that's been my philosophy forever and it will continue to be.

That's great. When you had your cater to fair company long, long ago, all the way up to today, you've done a great job of differentiating. And I was reading about how you were saying, I won't compromise, I'm looking out to find different things. It has to be special, it has to be unique, it has to be different. Differentiation is a huge thing for us as marketers. And how do you approach that when you're thinking about doing things like that?

Well, that's just the way we are. And we want to look for the products, the way the products are made that makes them better. We have a grill and just even color. I mean, I wanted to get one of those green egg things, you know, and I hate that color green so much. So I called the company up and I said, could we make this grill a different color for me for my yard because I don't want to have that color in my yard. And they said, absolutely not. It's called the green egg, you know, lady. And so I found a company that made even a better one and we'll make it custom color, any color you want. So you have to do stuff like that.

Speaking of colors, did I read somewhere that they thought that for a long time you hated the color purple?

Oh, they say I don't like purple. I don't like red flowers. It's true. It's true.

Then they're accurate. I like that.

Not always. Not always. I might wear something purple sometime.

You've done such a great job from. So you were a model back in the day and worked with Chanel and some of those big houses and then became a stockbroker back in the 60s, the late 60s, when it was really almost unheard of, earning six figure salaries and, and on and on and on, doing other things. So you've helped kind of disrupt the normal stereotypical gender roles things and yet at the same time you've elevated that through entertaining and things like that. How do you think is best for us to approach trying to break through the challenges of gender roles and such?

Well, I think we're doing a better job of it nowadays than before. It's been extremely disruptive. The methods that some of us have taken to do that. Not me. I'm not as disruptive, really, as what's been going on in the last couple years. But you have to sort of believe in your goal and try to get there in whichever way you can. I don't like violence. I don't like torture. I do not like death and dismemberment and any of those things that have been occurring in the last four years. I just can't stand it. But I think there's other ways to go about it. But it's hard, and revolution is very difficult. Look what's going on in this world. Not only do we have a pandemic, we have revolution. We have chaos. We have such terrible things going on. And every day I thought when we finally got. I can't talk. Sorry. I'm not allowed to talk about anything political. I can't do that.

Okay.

And you know why? Because I have a Wonderful magazine and 50% of my readers are Republicans and 50% of my readers are Democrats. And you cannot. You cannot start to take sides when you are the editor in chief of such a property.

Yeah, that. That's.

I can tell you in private, but I'm not going to tell you in public.

It's just us.

Yeah, right.

It's just us here. One of the things that you've said is that it's really important to hire the smartest, brightest and the best people and surround yourself with those. And that has a lot to do with success. A lot of people, I think, are afraid to do that because they'll be outshone or they'll be intimidated to have somebody that knows more about things than they do. How do you approach that?

Well, I don't think Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates would have ever gotten anywhere where they are without hiring the best, best people around them. Look at Zuckerberg. And if you didn't like them, then he just discarded them. You can. Do you have to get good people around you because all big ideas take a lot of people to make happen.

Absolutely. And a lot of the folks that work with you or have worked with you say that they've really gotten a lot out of it because you push them, that you were always asking questions. Is there an approach to doing that other than just being generally curious?

Well, businesslike, too. I mean, it's a business, and you have to know the answers and you have to be able to get people to go in the right direction and to find the solutions. For a problem. So we work really, really hard on trying to get people to come to the same conclusion.

So you said that curiosity, speaking of curiosity, is probably your biggest strength, but also probably your biggest weakness. What did you mean by that?

Well, it's wonderful to be curious and wonderful to pay attention to so many different things and ask the questions, but it can also get you into a lot of trouble, and it can also take up time.

Yeah.

Any particular trouble that you've gotten into with curiosity?

Nothing. I've never gotten any trouble in my life.

You also said that it's really important to learn something new every day, read something, watch something, and. And don't go to bed not having learned something.

Now I'm the. I'm the veritable insomniac.

Four hours a night, you say, right?

Oh, I mean, who knows? It's a very. It's not good. My doctor says you have to sleep more. But the iPad, which was the iPad, is the worst thing. Do not take your iPad to bed. But I do. I take two because I sometimes run. The power runs out of one. And now I got to get the long, long charging cord that goes under the bed to the outlet. That's under the. And so I have two iPads. That's really bad. And no, I binge watch things.

What are you binging right now?

No, I just. I just. I just finished. I finished one series and. And now I'm Started this new one, something with Jessica Chastain and I. And what's his name? Isaac.

Oh, the marriage.

Something about the marriage. It's so, so depressing.

I'm not going to watch anything, really. Okay.

No, it's not new. It's old. It's. It's a redo of Ingmar Bergman. And when I was in college, Ingmar Bergman was the thing. And I remember going to Radio City to see Ingmar Bergman, Wild Strawberries with a boyfriend. And I fell asleep. But these are so depressing. So don't watch that one. All right.

There is one. I want to say it's the Queen's Gambit that I think she was in. That was fantastic.

That.

About a chess player. That would be. That you would probably.

Oh, she wasn't Jessica Chastain.

Yeah.

Was that. No, no. That other queer, beautiful girl that. I don't know her name. Okay. But. Oh, that's a great. That's a great series.

It was great.

Yeah.

What's a typical day like for you these days?

Get up early. I have lots of animals who live in my house and outside My house.

You have like hundreds of pets, right?

Yeah, I have lots of lots, Lots and lots of birds. I have canaries and parakeets and cats and dogs in the house. And then outside, all kinds of other fowl. I've had peacocks and chickens. We counted the hens the other day. 147 hens.

Wow.

And 37 roosters. And we have 20 peacocks. And we have, I think about 22 geese. All different nationalities and they coexist very nicely. By the way, the Africans are getting along well with the Germans and the Germans are getting along with the French. Did you know there's so many different types, nationalities of geese? Yes, I did not. They're really something. And guinea fowl and pigeons. Oh, I have homing pigeons from all over the world. Yeah, they're, they're very nice.

Have you home, have you sent messages?

No, not yet. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. We have too many hawks and the hawks will eat the bushes. Oh, no kidding, right? So we have to watch out. Anyway, that's.

So to get everything done that you get done with hundreds of pets and all of these media and we moved.

We moved during the last two years, we moved lots of the operations of my company up to my farm.

Oh, did you really?

Yeah, because we had to do tv, we had to do, do our Martha Knows Best for discovery. We had to do our lots and lots of zoom conferences like this. We did on zooms there. We did CBS this Morning, we did the Today show all from the farm because it was very difficult. You couldn't go to New York. And they were so happy that we figured it out. My gardener is the best lighting guy and he's just the best gaffer and he, he can do everything. And one of my assistants is really good at producing and so we've done a tremendous amount. We never stopped working at all. So how do you.

Because you had a home based business all the way back to the Turkey Hill days, right?

Yes.

How do you. For those of us who work out of our house, you are ridiculously productive. Do you have any tips for how to do that? How to kind of balance all of that?

Well, it helps to have 150 acre farm.

Okay, step one, step one.

And many different buildings. And every project that we do is the subject of a blog or a magazine article. The gardens are all photographed constantly. In the October issue. There's a beautiful, beautiful story about my maple woodland that I planted about 400 Japanese maple trees. And I was so proud of this beautiful story that's in the magazine. And then I started to read the comments on Instagram because we posted a couple of the pictures and. Oh, the comments. Yeah, Martha, it's great to plant invasive species, foreign species, instead of natives. I mean, went on and on about these natives. And I said, what country do you come from? Where's your relative? Where's your ancestors from? You know, it was just annoying. So we try very hard to do the right thing. And it's all organic. My farm's organic. And it's. And it's beautiful, and we have great harvests of great things. But. But it's annoying when people don't understand what you're trying to do, Right? Yes.

Why don't they just get it?

So do not answer. Do never comment on your comments. And I made a mistake yesterday.

Never read your comments. It's just depressing. You said success seldom takes the form that you think it will. What are some scenarios where you had success taking a different form than you expected?

Well, like my grandchildren, I don't like to talk too much about my grandchildren because my daughter gets mad at me. I'm not allowed to post their pictures and all of that stuff. But my grandson, who's very bright for his age, he said, you know, I looked up Martha and I said, yeah, would you find. And he said, you're the most famous Martha. More famous than Martha Washington. And he got so mad at me.

Really?

Yeah. Because I. Because Martha Washington should be the most famous Martha.

Wow.

You know, anyway, it was interesting.

Any other surprise successes, like things that just kind of took you by surprise, that happened in a different way than you thought?

Probably, but I don't know. Fair enough.

There's been a lot of parodies done about you that I think John Hanson was saying that there have been Saturday Night Live parodies. There's. I like Martha Stewart's Better than you are at entertaining Is Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart's Excruciatingly Perfect Weddings.

I have all of those. You. Yeah.

And I was saying, you like.

I cherish all of them.

Yeah. So those are kind of done. Not really nastily. A lot of us deal with. Like you said, don't read the comments. A lot of us deal with things that aren't necessarily nice. And you've experienced that. How do you deal with that to kind of make it not so bad?

Well, it hurts sometimes to read some things that are not true about you. During my trial, I had to read a lot of bad stuff. And like the New York Post. They had some columnists there that, you know, should. Should have not been there and are now dead, thank goodness. Horrible people. Didn't understand anything they were writing about. And then there's. But they always find the same. They find that same kind of person. There's still those people in the New York Post. But. But it's. It's, you know, just. You just have to, again, be stronger than the opposition.

You said, I think of that time I learned that I cannot be destroyed.

Yes.

What does that mean?

Well, I didn't let it get to me really down deep, because I lived through it and I came out of it. My company survived, I survived. I didn't get sick. I wasn't sick. I wasn't dying. And you can survive stuff like that. And remember, it was a federal prison. That was not so bad.

Yeah, Yeah. I have also been to a federal camp.

Cupcake.

Camp. Cupcake.

That's what they called it. I called it going to. Well, whatever.

You said that authenticity is really, really important and there's a lot of inauthentic content out there. How do you best negotiate that to stay authentic with all of the.

Well, authentic is not only just real, it's also accurate. It's well researched. It's all the things that we really pride ourselves on doing, creating again, products that work, that don't fall apart, that have longevity, recipes that don't leave out an ingredient. Oh, by the way, I want to show you my new book. We just did Martha Stewart's Fruit desserts. It's our 99th book.

All right.

And it's coming out. It's coming out in a couple weeks. And the Aspen Food and wine. I cooked three of these recipes, and it's so nice to revisit the. The recipes that you've worked so hard when you're creating a book and that they still taste so good and they look so pretty.

Is there a favorite in there for you?

Yeah, the upside down lemon meringue pie.

All right.

The crust is meringue instead of being on top, and then you fill it with the lemon curd.

I love that.

That's good.

So as we kind of close out today, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you think would be really cool to share with the audience here?

Well, you didn't talk much about gardening. Gardening. Gardening's my hobby. It's my favorite thing to do.

You have a favorite flower, the one.

That'S blooming now in the garden.

My wife has dinner plate dahlias. She loves them.

Oh, I bet they're beautiful.

And she's very upset that you can't, or at least she can't, but I wanted her to come down here and talk to you because she can't grow peonies here.

No, you can't. It's not cold enough. Yeah, yeah. Because peonies, you have like a cold.

House instead of a hot house to grow this in.

No, no, no. Peonies, we get down below zero. We don't get below zero here. So you have to have cold winters to stimulate the root growth and they die down. They're perennials. And I think you have less perennials here.

We do.

Than we can grow. No, I love gardening. I love cutting the hay fields. Last Sunday, before I got on the, before I got on the plane, I. I cut a whole hay field with my new tractor.

Did you really? You're riding around on the tractor?

Yeah, it's very relaxing.

That is great.

It was getting dark. I had to, I had to pull over and get. Go back home. But it was fun.

That is awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming out here and being here with us and sharing. Let's give Martha a big hand.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the right deals, and the right guidance. And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal Fast track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing, or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The EPIC Deal Fast track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program. And it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the deal flow engine. So you always have high quality off market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three are closing and integration systems so that you don't just buy a business you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus you'll have direct one on one support from an epic Deal advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through the system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an epic Deal advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334-458-9034 will get you in. No fluff, no wasted time, just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now. I'll see you there.