Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today.

New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.

As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.

So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.

Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.

So when I got the idea for BET, I went out and talked to John, and we're sitting in his office, and he asked me, Bob, how much does it take you to launch BET?

And I said, John, about a half a million dollars.

And so Malone says to me, he said, Bob, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to buy 20% of your company for 180, and I'm going to loan you $320.

$183.20, there's your $500,000.

Now under that business plan, Bob, you will be 80, and I'll be 20.

Is that a deal?

I said, John, that's a deal.

What Malone didn't know at the time, if he'd reversed the numbers, is that I'll be 80 and Bob, you be 20.

I said, John, that's a deal.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Ross, and on this special live episode, how Bob Johnson turned a small cable channel called BET into a media empire and from it,

became the first African American billionaire in US history.

So when Bob Johnson came to Washington, DC as a young man in the early 1970s,

he planned to focus on public policy, which is what he did for most of his early years.

In the mid 1970s, Bob stumbled into a job with an obscure trade association called the National Cable Television Association.

...