- You cannot be political and have a vehicle
like Martha Stewart Living, because
you make one terrible mistake and make
any bad comment about anybody and off you go.
You lose your followers.
- Welcome to you, Martha, good to see you.
- Thank you, so nice to meet you here.
- You met a lot of the startup mavens,
the people who went on to just build these
massive empires like Bezos and Bill Gates.
- Oh, I wish were one of those.
- Early on in their career, how was it
that you met them early on in their career?
- Well, when I started Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia,
it was kind of a new idea.
It was taking lifestyle and making a business
out of "lifestyle," and Kleiner, it attracted
the attention of an investor, Kleiner Perkins.
Well they're a big VC firm out in California,
in Silicon Valley, and they invested in my company,
and I was very pleased because through them
I learned about Google, early early.
I learned about Amazon early.
I met those guys, I met Sergey and I met Jeff,
and we're still friends.
We all are friends.
Then I had a boyfriend who wrote Word and Excel
for Bill Gates.
So he's Charles Simonyi.
So he taught me a lot about software,
and he's famous for those early giant programs.
Word is probably the most used program in the universe.
- So you were really on the cusp
of change as you went through.
- Yeah, and I was interested in it.
I mean, you can be on the cusp and not be
interested it or not pay attention to it,
but I try to pay attention, and I try to learn.
I probably couldn't program anything yet,
but I'm trying to build a program right now,
which I'm really excited about.
- Why?
- Because I want to.
It's something that we all need and want,
and when I build it, you'll know about it.
Hopefully it'll happen.
I won't tell you what it is, but it's very interesting.
- Well, hopefully you'll tell me first when you make it.
It's fascinating to me because you have to be
visionary to do that.
How did all of that early experience with technology,
how did that factor in and help you in your business?
- Well, it helped a lot because our magazine
Martha Stewart Living, which was founded in,
the first issue was 1990, the end of 1990, early '91,
was done digitally.
And so we created it on an Apple computer
using design technology in the Apple.
We used Adobe early on before other magazines.
Other magazines were pasting, and cutting and pasting.
I don't remember if you ever saw those rooms,
where you would lay out and cut and paste.
Well, we did it all on the computer.
We started designing products on the computer.
We were probably one of the first design teams
making home goods to have a 3D printer,
so we could mold our forks and knives
and our plates and our pitchers on a 3D printer,
according to our design.
So all of those things, that's important to do.
It's that adapting and adopting technology
to your business.
- When the Internet came, you started to see
so many of your competitors go away.
- Yeah, and I thought, oh my gosh, what a fantastic thing.
We have search engine optimization.
I can find out anything I want with my fingertips.
I don't have to go to the library,
and I thought I would save so much time.
What's happened, unfortunately, and I bemoan
the fact all the time, is that I think
so many of us waste a lot of time online.
- So how do you prevent that?
- Well I limit my time, because I still have
books to read, I still have books to write,
I still have a business to create, I still
have products to build.
So you have to really limit yourself.
- I noticed that you are very prudent with technology.
On Twitter you do Tweet and Instagram and everything,
but you are not political.
I've noticed that you put a lot of thought into--
- You know why?
You want to know why?
- Yeah.
- Okay, well it's very simple and very straightforward.
I run a magazine called Martha Stewart Living.
50% of our readers are most likely Republicans
and 50% are most likely Democrats.
And many, many supporters of our president,
and many non-supporters of our president.
You cannot be political and have a vehicle
like Martha Stewart Living, because you make
one terrible mistake and make any bad comment
about anybody and off you go.
You lose your followers.
So you have to--
Sometimes it's painful not to be able to
express myself. (laughs)
But I've learned to take pictures of pretty orchids instead,
and tell them about an orchid.
You can tell them about something else.
- How many businesses are you involved in now?
- Well, we have a lot of different businesses
ranging from, of course, the magazine
and the publications, to our home goods
that we sell through thousands of different outlets.
We also have some very interesting businesses.
We have the Martha Stewart Wine Company.
It's a subscription wine service
where you choose from a list of wines
that we tell you all about, with recipe selections
and pairing selection, and that's doing
very well because the wines are delicious,
and they are also affordable.
We have Martha's Flowers.
In a beautiful box, you can order roses,
and again, by subscription, and that's
another very interesting business.
We have Martha & Marley Spoon, which is
a meal kit delivery service.
I love that because it not only introduces you
to new kinds of foods, but you get everything
you need for that meal in a, we call it
a dish bag, it's a brown paper bag.
Perfect ingredients, and you cook a meal
in 30 minutes or less, and you feed your family
good, nutritious, delicious food.
So those are just a few of the things,
and then I'm on QVC doing fashion now.
I love doing fashion.
I do a lot of gardening products for QVC.
And QVC, to me, is the third way to sell things.
You sell at a store, you sell on Amazon
or online, Alibaba, and you sell on television,
and those are the three biggest ways
to sell things nowadays.
- But that's how you sell, because not everybody
can do that.
QVC is like, high pressure, right?
- Oh, it's high pressure.
And it's so much, you have to sell so many
thousands of dollars a minute on QVC,
but we've had some huge successes.
We had a very, very wonderful launch last year,
and I think we were one of the biggest launches
they ever had in fashion.
So my clothing really struck a cord
with the viewers, and people wanna look nice.
I try to encourage to look nice from the minute
they leave their house in the morning
'til they get home from work at night.
So I call it practical, classic clothing,
and it's really fun, and we're doing handbags.
We're doing shoes with Aerosoles now.
High style shoes with Aerosole.
And they're comfortable and well-made
and long-lasting, and affordable.
Everything's affordable because I want you
to save money to send your kids to college.
I want you to take vacations.
I want you to see the world.
I want you to plant trees.
- See, you just sold a million pairs.
- I want you to have a garden. (laughs)
- Right there, I mean that's why you're great at this.
- I hope so, but that's why.
- Do you look at the metrics, then?
After these sales are made, you probably
get inside those numbers and say,
hey, I could have done better here, or...
- Oh, and don't think QVC doesn't tell us
where we can do better, too.
They have their metrics down pat,
and they are constantly trying to improve the metrics.
We have to follow algorithms, we have to do
all kinds of stuff.
It's way harder than you think.
When you put a product on Amazon, it has to sell,
otherwise it gets taken off.
So it's very scientific, and very, very,
very thought out.
- Take me back to The Apprentice.
How did that happen?
How did you end up on that?
- Oh, The Apprentice Martha Stewart,
instead of The Apprentice Donald Trump.
Well, Mark Burnett, who was the producer,
the great Mark Burnett, he came to me
and he said, "We'd like you to do is
"to start a season of The Apprentice."
And I said, "Well why?
"Donald's doing it."
And he said, "Well, you know, we might even end
"with you firing the Donald."
He was the Donald at that time.
He wasn't the President of the United States.
And I thought, well, that would be so much fun.
So I agreed to do it.
They took over half of my office on 26th Street,
and they built this gigantic set,
and then Donald didn't wanna be fired.
He loved his job, so I never got to fire Donald.
But I was very proud of what we did
and proud of Mark Burnett created with
The Apprentice Martha Stewart.
It showed in England, it showed in various countries,
and the English people loved my version.
So it was, again, an education.
- So you're very good at judging people.
- I try very hard.
- How did you figure out that Snoop
would be a good person to work with?
- Well, I met him on my show, and he was
so much fun to work with on my own show.
He made mashed potatoes and then he poured stuff in,
and he made brownies and he poured a little bit of this in,
and he was fun.
But what was really great was the audiences
responded extremely favorably.
This one needs to be peeled.
- [Snoop] Like this?
- Just take the peels off, peel.
- Like making french fries.
- [Martha] The skin, the skin.
- We make french fries, that's getting good.
- No, no.
No, just the skin.
Just the skin.
Look, this, just peel the skin off, see?
- Oh, you want me to take the skizzin off of it, my bad.
- The skizzin, whatever.
- The potato chip wrapping.
- And then we did the Justin Bieber roast together.
Somebody saw us together on that show,
and thought, that's an odd couple.
That would be an interesting show,
and it's been successful, and we're going
into our third season.
- What is the best dish Snoop has made for you?
- Lobster thermidor.
(laughs)
Snoop's potluck dinner party.
- (singing) Yeah, yeah, yeah!
- I'm gonna start throwing dishes
unless we get going.
- [Man] Yeah.
(audience laughs)
- He makes lobster thermidor.
I wouldn't even think he would eat lobster,
'cause he's very fussy.
He doesn't eat a lot of things,
and I tried to shock with the kinds of
ingredients that I would bring on.
He won't touch caviar and he won't touch oyster,
he's, oh god, slimy things.
But he'll eat lobster thermidor.
- What do you think he's learned from you
and what have you learned from him?
- I think we've learned that very, very,
very different cultures can coexist very nicely.
You can teach each other things that you
never thought you'd learn.
You can learn about a totally different way of life,
and all of that actually is pretty encouraging
in this day and age with so much divisiveness.
I feel very strongly that there's too much
of that divisiveness, and us melding cultures
is a good thing.
- Tell me about the Martha Manual.
How has it differentiated from some of your
more recent books?
- Well the Martha Manual is a how-to book,
covering a wide variety of subjects relating to
running a home.
So it may tell you how to take care of your pet.
It will also tell you how to iron,
how to do your laundry, how to organize
your personal papers.
It tells you a lot.
So a manual, it's really, you wanna look up something quick?
You can find it in the book.
- You probably don't have a typical demographic, right?
- Well, we have a very atypical demographic,
especially now that I'm doing a program with a rapper.
Yeah, it's kinda funny.
That has broadened my demographic tremendously,
at the right time, too, I must say.
I don't think good information and inspiration
goes out of date, but if you...
I always said, I can plant a tree this way.
If I find a better way to plant a tree,
I'm gonna find it first, and I'm gonna write about it,
and I'll illuminate the old and bring in the new,
and I do that with everything.
It's the same way with cooking.
Recipes change, methods change, pots change.
We didn't have an Instapot when I started writing books.
Now there's Instapots, and they're very popular,
and more people wanna cook in an Instapot
or a pressure pot, a complicated pressure pot,
than they wanna cook in a plain old tri-ply steel pot.
So we wrote a book about how to cook
in a pressure pot, and it's very popular.
The recipes are utterly delicious,
and we adapt our methods of teaching to technology.
We have to.
We have to keep up, as you say.
But all the other things, just like my cars.
I'm driving a Tesla now, because, not that
it's the best car in the whole wide world,
but I don't have to go to the gas station.
I am trying to be clean environmentally,
so I'm driving a Tesla.
It's a little bit of a hard ride on the highways.
I come in from Bedford, New York every day, but I am
proud that I am doing something for the environment.
- Can you drive yourself?
- No, I have a driver.
- Okay, but...
- Well I know how to drive it.
I've driven it driverless, have you?
- No, not yet, so you're ahead of me.
- I did it.
I did it on the Merritt Parkway.
- Wow.
- And it's a little frightening, but it works.
- Yeah, mentally is just must be really difficult.
- Well, you have to learn, and I've now invested
in Convoy.
Do you know what Convoy is?
- No.
- Convoy is the driverless long-distance trucks.
Transport trucks.
And it's already growing in valuation,
but Convoy is these giant trucks without drivers
that are going to always be full, going
back and forth across the United States,
and they are electric.
So guess what, how great would that be?
- In studying you I really see how a lot of
the things you did early on were perfect
for what you accomplished later.
- Yes.
- In the position you were in.
Modeling.
We actually have a shot of you when you were
modeling, and just for the sake of full disclosure,
you're holding a Wall Street Journal.
- I know, isn't that a funny picture?
That was fun.
I started modeling when I was about,
I think it was around 15 or 16 years old.
One of my neighbors was a model in New York City.
She was also a ballerina, and she and her parents
said to me one day, "You know, you're good enough
"to be a model, so why don't you go and meet
"so-and-so's agent?"
So I went to New York and met the agent,
and I was signed up right away,
and that's how I made enough money to pay
for my college education.
And it was a lot of fun.
I actually did a lot of TV commercials.
I did one for Tareyton cigarettes.
I had to practice smoking.
Forbidden, forbidden, you know.
And nobody--
- Well, it was cool back then, right?
- Well, to smoke a cigarette?
Oh my god.
And I remember coughing, and then in the commercial,
of course, all I had to do was sit there.
I didn't have to smoke.
And it really did pay very well,
and it paid for my entire college education.
And that on-camera experience.
Look, here I am, in front of a camera again.
It really taught me a lot about self composure
and self-confidence and all those things.
So here's my book.
I would like you to have a copy.
- Thank you.
- Okay.
And this is it.
How to Do (Almost) Everything.
- This is something that I need.
I'm not like Snoop, I don't make lobster dishes.
- Okay.
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you, a pleasure.
- It's good to have you.
- Thank you.