The Best One Yet
👠“Dude of Wall Street” — Steve Madden’s podcast pop. Costco’s gas biz. Ukraine’s Spider Web attack.
Tue, 03 Jun 2025
Steve Madden’s controversial founder boosted the stock 25% last week… because of a podcast interview.Costco’s biggest selling product? Gasoline (by far)... We think gas is like diapers, but for adults.Ukraine’s crazy self-thinking drone attack on Russia changes warfare forever… It’s tech Pearl Harbor.Plus, the untold origin story of the Tommy Bahama Beach Chair… which sells 3 outta 4 chairs.$SHOO $COST $META $PLTRWant more business storytelling from us? Check out the latest episode of our new weekly deepdive show: The untold origin story of… Tommy Bahama’s Beach Chair 🏖️Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.TBOY Live Show Tickets to Chicago on sale NOW: https://www.axs.com/events/949346/the-best-one-yet-podcast-ticketsAbout Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts NEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Our 2nd show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What record did Costco set with gasoline sales?
With one push of a button in Ukraine, Ukraine launched 117 drones that steered themselves to hit Russian bombers with perfect accuracy. We're talking non-human weapons, low cost, that were basically both the front lines and the generals in this attack. And guess who is the leader of equipping the US military with artificial intelligence? Well, Jack, that would be Palantir.
At the start of 2023, stock in Palantir was $6 per share. You want to know where it is today? $131 per share. In fact, last week, Meta also announced that they're pivoting the metaverse to military. They're going to be building headsets for American soldiers. Big Tech and Artificial Intelligence is the next grad at West Point.
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For our third and final story, Steve Madden, the high-heeled shoe entrepreneur, just saw his company stock jump 25% because of a podcast interview. This story shows the difference between podcasts and TV. But in order to explain podcasts and TV, Jack, let's talk about a movie, The Wolf of Wall Street. The Wolf of Wall Street is the tale of Leonardo DiCaprio.
I mean, Jordan Belfort, who defrauded investors out of $100 million with like a pump and dump, the worst of Wall Street. Oh, well, one particular crime of the Wolf of Wall Street was manipulating the stock of a shoe brand that went public back in 1993. You saw it in the movie. That shoe brand was Steve Madden. Jonah Hill's character was actually the childhood friend of Steve's.
And in real life, Steve Madden the man went to prison for three years because of the IPO fraud we saw in the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Well, 30 years later, Steve Madden is still a publicly traded shoe company with maybe the best ticker symbol we've ever seen, Jack. S-H-O-O, which obviously spells shoe.
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Chapter 5: What surprising fact did Steve Madden's podcast reveal?
And like many podcast interviews do, it was the short clips of this podcast that went viral on social media to a degree Steve never imagined. Clips of this interview got 25 million views on TikTok. People loved it. There were 600 news articles written about those clips about the podcast. And did it translate to better business for Steve Madden? Oh, yes, it did, Jack.
Google searches for Steve Madden, the brand, were up 60% in the last week, and the stock jumped 20%. Now, Nick, why did this one podcast interview drive more positive attention to Steve Madden than a Super Bowl commercial could? Well, Jack, I guess if you look at it in like a shoe form, it was like the heels, the sole, and the laces.
There were kind of three parts to this thing, if you think about it, right? Yeah, yeah. The first was the charm, right? Steve Madden didn't call his buyers customers in this interview. He referred to them as his girls, which we found endearing, not creepy. My girls buy this, my girls buy that. It's kind of a cool way to talk about your customers. Second was humor.
Steve talked about parenting with regards to like an entrepreneur. Yeah, he actually said, you know, you can't fire your kids. And that's unfortunate. He lamented that you can't fire your kids. Yeah, we got to chuckle out of that. But the third key that laced up this wild story about Steve Madden was the authenticity. She asked him about his white collar crime. And he admitted to it.
He said I was too greedy. In fact, Steve Madden went so far as to admit that his entire business model is based on dupes. He's not hiding the fact that he copies Price Your Shoe brands and simply lowers the price. In fact, Jack, Steve Madden went so far as to defend that dupe practice of his. He asked on the podcast, are the Beatles cheats because they're influenced by Elvis Motown?
In fact, on the same day as that podcast dropped, Steve Madden sued Adidas for not letting him use their stripes on his shoes. I mean, copy their stripes on his shoes. People loved everything about Steve Madden. You kind of wanted to hug him by the end of it. Now, the reason people like this convicted white-collar criminal shoe executive is that he was authentic.
Which actually sounds kind of familiar. And reminds us... of a takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy Steve over at Steve Madden? Showing your personality is both the risk and the reward of a podcast interview. Yet he's forever. Companies have communicated to the public by putting their CEOs on TV. But the problem with the TV interview is that you've only got three minutes.
So you stick to the talking points. Jack and I have done a bunch of live TV interviews and you're kind of, you just say what you got to say. That's it. You can tell the things a CEO says on TV are the things the PR team told them to say. But upon Thank you. Thank you. and the reward, you could say something delightful. And that risk-reward Jack's talking about, that's where the good stuff is.
That's the stuff that's off-script, and that's what's most relatable. That's what goes viral and reaches people in the way a Super Bowl commercial could. Unlike the coach talking points that rarely go viral. Nobody cares about the coach talking points. So besties, add it all up, and Steve Madden's shoe business gained $400 million in stock market value because of this podcast episode.
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