Cathy Engelbert

Published Feb 9, 2021, 8:30 AM

On breaking down barriers and the rise of the cauliflower steak.

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That is such a key to success, because no career is linear, and I have so many stories to prove that, even though I was with one firm for thirty three years. But it's not linear, it's not perfect. And the big lesson is no one's thinking about your career as much as you are. Back in the land of douche baggery, I want to talk about where food has gone, what it has become, and how this conversation started was because Sarah, who works with me, she also has never seen like a table side caesar. She thinks that caesar is like what you get at like the olive garden or Applebee's, Like that's that like creamy white dressing. And I was talking about how back in my day when I had covered wagons, the caesar was like a special food. It wasn't something that they had at every restaurant. It was table side. It came into wooden bowl and they were like mush anchovies in the side with dijon, mustard, Worcester sheer, lemon, parmesan, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and like an amazing croutons and it just came all zesty and more clear and coated versus that like creamy garbage you get in like a packet at Wendy's. So I love Wendy's. I'd like to get a spokesperson deal from them. So sorry, Wendy's, I don't know if he's sells caesar dressing, So sorry for fuck pissing you off. But anyway, I digress as usual. So we started talking about food in the iteration and how now like the caesar is such a big deal, And then that brought me to realize that the Kale Caesar, the Kale Caesar was like Madonna in its day, and Kale itself was like Madonna. And I always say I want to meet Kale's publicists because also back in my day, Kale was like this green, curly garbage that came next to like a sweaty hot orange next to your eggs at Denny's, like just some piece of like some cousin of fucking old school curly parsley. Kale wasn't like a rock star with a starring roll. Kale wasn't something that like people massaged in kitchens in Provence to bring out a salad that was tender, leafy green's to the taste, and Kale didn't come in all iterations. Tale didn't come in like baby kale and wild kale and and like kale chips and shredded kale, and you know, braised kale, sauteid kale. Kale was not what it is. So that that brought me to think about Kale's friends and other people that like other celebrity vegetables that came up, because when I was growing up, there was no rogala, no the caesar salad, or you had iceberg like a wedge, or just like that house garden salad with red wine vinegar, like it was like shredded carrots on that iceberg, chopped up garbage and it was like a red wine vinegar and there is something good about it. Came in that little thin wood bowl also. But then Mesklin was the fucking biggest deal ever. Messalind came out, Balsamic vinagrette came out together. They came out as like a couple and it was like Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio, so everybody was doing that. I was never ultimately a big fan because that Messlin bag that then came in bags got soggy, super fessed, So I was not a big fan um and even Romayne on its own wasn't a big deal. And when we were growing up, like Romayne later came in its own, probably around the same time as as Mesklin. Later, Messland's agent brought in baby spinach. When I was growing up, we had spinach, bags of unwieldy spinach. You could wash it, it would be sandy. You would, you would, you would, you would sautee it, you would see them up. But like spinach didn't have little lovely, delightful little leaves that you could make in your own little salad. It didn't have baby spinach, didn't even have Maxi spinach. You just had spinach. And now it's baby kale whatever. So that was spinach. And then a rogola came in and they call it rocket in London. That was the first time I had it was in London, because I think it was there before, which is weird because London used to not even have vegetables. But anyway, a rugela became a really fucking big deal in the cold salad category. In the hot sides category, it always used to be broccoli and stage spinach and asparagus. Then in the modern day, in my day, Broccoli Rob was a big fucking coming up star, and Broccoli Rob still is. You know, it's a success story, but it's not what it used to be. So then I don't know it was it five years ago somebody in a boardroom threw kale up in the fucking at the ceiling and just said, let's try to make kale popular. Some some genius the Kale Society, and Kale came in with a fucking vengeance. Okay, Kale came in with shredded kale, chips, Kale, caesar massage, Kale, sauteg kale, braise, kale, kale everything kale was even in Burger's. Kale was like chopped up with a paired with its other friend butternut squash and some wild rice. And then they started throwing cranberries and walnut and almonds into salads. So that was kale then came back in the day. Broccoli Rob was when brown rice became popular. White rice used to be the way he did rice. Brown rice then became like it has to be brown rice. It has to be brown rice. You can't even white pasta. It has to be a whole wheat pasta that has to be like not a white white it can't be a white grain. And brown rice now is a fucking loser. Keen Wa came in hot the protein grain. Keene Wa came in was like, move over, Kale, We're gonna hang out with you. We're gonna hang in the same posse were like Taylor Swift and gidd We're gonna hang out together. Kale and keen Wa became best friends major Instagram following huge deal and as of more recently, Brussels sprouts Brussel fucking spreads. When I was growing up, Brussels sprouts was child abuse. Brussel sprouts and cauliflower, which is another popular one, it was abuse. It was like Lima beans, which are waiting to make their debut, but Brussels sprouts. Now pair them with bacon, shred them in a salad, add them with with with blue cheese and and and pecans and walnuts, and like make fry them Asian restaurants make them fucking so cool. Brussel spouts are rock stars. And then my final vetched but that I'd like to talk about, which really has a very confused identity, cauliflower was literally, I mean raw cauliflower was actually emotional and psychological and physical abuse. When I was growing up, it was cauliflower. It's like if fart was a vegetable, that was what cauliflower was. So all of a sudden, cauliflower is parade as mashed potatoes. It is food processed and now we're pretending that it's rice. It comes in tats, it comes in in yoki, it comes in um hash browns, like they make cauliflower to hash browns and they try to make it into steak. I've been to a restaurant. They say, cauliflower steak. Fuck off. Okay, it's not even steaks, long distant cousin that lives in another universe, like steak and cauliflower have nothing in common. If you rub steak all over cauliflower, it still has nothing to do with steak. It is a big piece of rilled cauliflower. It's fucking cauliflower. Okay. It is because you could cut it with a fork and a knife. I could probably cut dogship with a fork and knife too. It's not sake, okay, And cauliflower rice is not rice. Zucchini noodles are not Zucchi is not noodle. It's not pasta it's long shreds of yellow or green vegetables drowned in sauce that that doesn't even look like pasta. Taking long wavy ribbon noodles and mushing ricotta cheese in between them does not make that lasagna. So the fucking vegetable crisis is real. Okay, that is a relief effort in and of itself. If lima beans come in next, or succotash or okra or some other bullshit vegetable that is shit, then you'll know that Kale has had its day. But I literally think every time I talk about these vegetables that their publicists are gonna call me and then I'm gonna be finished, that my career is over because I fucked with Kale, and I just don't think you can now. I think Kao's got too much power. It's too much. But it's like the kalo dash i aans. I can't. You can't funk with it because it's just got an army and it's it's here. It's just here to stay, alright. My guest today is Kathy Angelbert, the Commissioner of the w n b A and formerly the first female CEO of Deloitte well, she's very interesting. We talked about being a woman in a corporate atmosphere, something many of you would be interested in. H We talked about how she made it to the top of her field and why sports are so important to young women and girls. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Hi, Kathy, how are you? I'm doing greed. How about yourself? I'm good? Where are you right now? I'm in Bradenton, Florida at IMG Academy and the w n B A what we call the players have affectionately called the Bubble, the w n B A bubble. Oh that's so funny. So do you travel an incredible amount before the pandemic? Gess, incredible, both in my prior job and with the w because obviously we have twelve different cities, twelve teams. So yeah, but I guess that's been the only good thing about the pandemic is less less travel we all feel, I know, but do you miss that Some people like the travel, like it just gives them a structure, It's a program. They leave their house for a minute and like they just get to collect themselves even though they're working, they're on their own And how does it affect your family. I don't miss it at all because I did so much of it at Deloitte. I mean I was on the road four or five days a week for essentially decades, So like really enjoying not having to be on the road and being with my kids. And my daughter just moved back home. She's a one year out college. So yeah, so I know, I I don't miss the travel at all. Well, this podcast, just to let you know, is about visionaries, game changers, billionaires, people who started from the bottom now they're here, people who took circutest routes to get to where they are, non traditional business because I'm finding through speaking to these amazing, interesting people that are giving me an hour of their day and they do not have an hour to give, but during that hour, you know, it's all meat, and the people listening are getting just different tenants and ways of thinking and ways of that you live and the decisions that you make so they can take it away into their different lives and jobs. And so you know, do you feel like that's you know, in the beginning, that's just paying your dues, just wherever they need you to go, whatever you need to do. That that's paying your dues, and then there's a point where you really just don't have to do that anymore because that's part of paying your dues. Yeah, I mean, I think it's all about what business and what industry you're in, and whether you believe in relationship building face to face and therefore you've got to get on the road or not. And I think it's varied over my career as I you know, client the so called ladder, but you know as to how much travel I had to do or how I wanted to adjust it because of having two children. So there's a lot to unpack even in that, Yeah, exactly. But the whole that's a that's a whole topic that will probably end up getting into somehow later. You were the first female CEO at a big four firm. What was it like getting that job? Did you think you weren't going to get it? Did you think a man was going to get it? Were you? Did you see it? Did you look at the prize and look at the chess chess board and say I'm going for that job? Like? What did that mean? Yeah? Well, at that time I had been with the firm for twenty seven years, never aspired to be the CEO. Never thought I would be a CEO, uh, And I don't think I was. I think I was a bit of you know, underdog, i'll call it because we have an election every four years, and um, I kind of had just risen into leadership right before that election where I ultimately did get elected. You have to get it's a private partnership, so you have to get elected by the partners. And I got a call and never forget, I was actually at the fort the most powerful women's conference in California, and I got a call from someone on our board of directors who said, you know, we want you to interview for the CEO position. And I was like me, like really, because I had been kind of a new entrant into the leadership, like the top leadership ranks. And I said two things. I said, Well, I don't want to just do it because you know, a female and I don't you know, do I have support? And second, do I have support more broadly in the firm, because I had risen up in our in our audit practice, but we had, you know, a huge firm of audit tax and consulting them, and they said, you have support and we want you to do it so like literally within a month, I had to prepare a vision and I had to prepare a whole platform that I would then present to the partners ultimately if I got nominated to be elected. And but no, did I see it coming. No, did I ever aspired to it? No? I always say, um, you know, I aspired to lead, not to to a boxer typele like CEO. But you know it worked out, and um I was. I was really proud to take on that role at a time where you know, culture change which was needed, and providing a role model for not just women but men and women to aspire just something higher. What did you mean by didn't want the job because I was a woman? Well, I didn't want to interview for it if they just wanted to say, oh, we interviewed a woman, right, Like so you were thinking like that, Yeah, there were these other male candidates who were well known in leadership positions much longer than I had been, and I wanted to make sure you know, I was a viable candidate. That that's you was I really viable candidate? Right? Yeah? That's interesting. So you didn't want it to be like they're just checking the box and I wonder how much that's actually happening versus people really you know, feeling that that the person is right for the job. And in your case, it obviously sounds like you were right. And the reason I mentioned all this is because in my career I never thought about men and women. Now you were you were in a seriously intensely corporate environment for years, so you understand how to play that game, how to be you know, be corporate, but also you have to be a maverick because you have to navigate the hundreds of thousands of people that you're working around and such a serious, intense important company. But um, I never thought about who's a man who's a woman. I always just acted like, just be the best, Like just go be the best. But then you end up being better than the men, and and the cream rises to the top. And so not until after I was successful, people have tried to sort of create this narrative to me about you know, being a woman versus being a man, And I had to retroactively think about the fact that I broke into the liquor business in a major way, which is a all boys club marketed to men, you know, sold by men, run by men. But with our advantages to being a woman. Well, I take you back to when I was about seven years into my career. We had a CEO at the time, male who had two daughters, and not that his daughters were going to work for the firm, but they were graduating from college. And he was kind of looking at this data of women who had risen to leadership roles and and pretty pathetic data, I might add, and said, um, you know, there's something wrong here. We've got to look at something. So he was kind of well before his time back at ninety three and launched this thing called the Initiative for the Advancement and Retention of Women, because we actually weren't doing bad advancing, it was retaining women when they get to critical junctures and there you know, the life cycle of them as our employees that they were leaving at much higher rates than men were their male counterparts. First, did you mean like women are get having babies or they're getting married and they wanted this powerful job, but then they decided to switch out and get married and do that you know, traditional life. Yeah, exactly. And then he wanted the data like are they leaving for other jobs? Are they leaving to take care of their families. Isn't the family thing when you're in your young thirties, because that's when you start to rise in any organization. You know, we're a we were affirmed at deloitt of of what we called lifers. So you know, you rise and then you get into your thirties and there's I'll be a point. Certainly I did actually resigned from the firm when I was pregnant with my first child because I didn't know whether I could do it all and and and do the role that that I was in at the time. Um and then you know, quickly realized that, you know, with some good mentoring and sponsorship, that that wasn't the right move for me at the time. But you know, so everybody goes through those in the their there so you know what was happening when women get to their mid thirties when they would be admitted to the partnership and then rise into the leadership ranks, that that was different at that time. So that's ninety three right now, there's actually no retention gap between men and women at the firm, and but back then there was a huge retention gap. So you know, that was kind of and I happened to have transferred from I actually grew up in Philadelphia or Philadelphia Office up to our what we called our national office where the CEO resided during that time. So I went in mid nine. So when it came around in ninety three and the CEO was going to launch this, I got tacked helped think through it. But I think my advantage was timing of being in that national office position at the time, being kind of in where leadership was being built, and I was only what they call a manager at the time. I wasn't a partner yet. I came then back out to the New York area and became a partner a few years later. Well, you know what, I think, I'm a very much. I'm a realist. Like we have all these fantasies about how everything should be, but in order to get there, I like to think about the real and the truth. So I I have a serious business. I have many many hats that I wear. I'm a mom. I'm a single mom. And you know, when I used to go to a photo shoot, I would bring her with me on my lap. And you know, because I'm me and I have people around me and it's non traditional and I can do that. I can bring my daughter and then like you know, ask them to give me food to go, so I can rush home to be with her, and I always want to be with her. That's not really totally possible in the corporate world. It's not appropriate to bring your kid to work. And having daycare there is great, but it's just it's not you know, we were trying to make it that everybody's the same. If we understand the differences between men and women, it's easier to get those things accomplished because women and men are different in many ways, not only biologically. There's science backs up the fact that, you know, women operate from a more emotional space in many in many cases, I mean, men think differently in some cases. And if that's sort of embraced and thought about, then you can approach it. And now if that's sexist, it may be. But I I feel that women and men are not exactly the same and the things they experience in their bodies, in you know, the ways they maybe operate in their lives, and so I think that's the thing. It's that granular in between that's good to talk about. So then everything can be equal at work because everybody brings something to the table. When women bring just as much, if not more, to the table as men. But if you put everybody in the same box, seeming like everybody's going to be the same way and contribute the same things, that's when I think we get jammed up. And so I think it's more like understanding who pee well are I'm able to run a major business and not have a nanny and still be like a very present mother, But I do it in my own way. The way it is traditionally is a man is paying a check, a man is opening a door, and a man goes to work and is not as involved as in a kid's life. And I think that's just shifting culturally everywhere, even with men being with their kids more divorced. Men used to be not get fifty fifty in custody and now it's really unless there's some problem. So I think it's shifting for both sexes. I think one of the other things maybe I can add from my experience, So maybe you go back to the formative years, and um, I grew up in a really big family. I was one of eight kids, and I had five brothers. My dad worked three jobs to put all eight of us through college. My mom worked also while raising us at a pediatrician office that literally was right next door, which is why she could do both. And she did not go to college. But she's the smartest person I know. And and you know, if you think of growing up alongside brothers, my mom used to say, you can do anything the boys can do because you're growing up alongside five of them. And I actually I think I had the an advantage there because I carried that into my professional life. Like think about the valuable lessons in a big family, like collaboration read sibling rivalry and how to get along or competitiveness read My sister and I used to hide food in our rooms because if we didn't, our brothers would eat at all. And we also competed for our parents time or even like inclusion. I had three older brothers, they always included me as a fourth in all kinds of sports, basketball, with football, soccer, street hockey. Um, although they put me in gold and I actually really hurt to play street hockey as a young girl. I think I had a huge advantage just from where I started. And and you know, my dad working three jobs and like seeing that hard work and dedication and and so Yeah, having two kids trying to balance a big job like CEO delete, Yeah that was easy compared to what I all my parents trying to do with eight kids. Yeah, you had your own little corporation at your house. You knew about different dynamics and how to navigate and bob and weave, and that is a great point. So you said that your confidence started in sports. Um so is it the structure and the discipline? Is that the teamwork? Because and now you work in sports, which which which we're obviously gonna get into. But do you suggest all parents have their kids in sports in some way because some kids feel intimidated and what if they're not good enough and then they're gonna be made fun of? Like how do you advise people about what's how sports should play in their lives? Yeah? I think you know. Obviously sports has had a major impact on my life. Never thought I'd end up as the commissioner of Major Sports League, but having played three sports in high school to sports in college, actually played across in addition to basketball. Um I was a huge benef fishery of Title nine back in the seventies. UM to allow women's sports and women's sports broadly to compete. Like when I grew up, there was no girls soccer. I came a little bit after me, but we had some of the other traditional sports like basketball and volleyball, and actually played tennis in high school. So and I was like, I was a point guard in basketball, and a point guard runs the offense but doesn't always get the glory. So kind of playing helped me enormously think through Like now that I look back, I go, Okay, a point guard runs the offense. That's essentially a CEO of running the company. Um. Now they do sometimes get the glory or the fall, but um, but you know, I just think for parents, obviously, sports was enormously helpful to shape my leadership skills, you know, because I think especially at a firm like the LID a hundred thousand people, very complex businesses and in different industries. Um, you know, it really helped me. And and there's no doubt for and that the data is very clear here. Young girls who play sports have more confidence and do better in you know, in school and and ultimately after school. But that doesn't mean everyone has to play sports. Everyone needs to find something they're passionate about that they think they're good at but have condence drive confidence from it. So I think it just happens to be. Sports gives you a lot of confidence, uh, and it also gives you It gives you a lot of resilience because you lose in sports. You don't always win, and you you learn to lose. And you know, although I know there's this theory now that everyone gets a trophy just for playing, I still think, you know, again, you know, it's all about coaching and and things like that. But yeah, and the teamwork and teaming and you know, again, I go back to that work collaboration. I mean the value of teamwork that I got because I was a point guard running the offense. You know, it was enormously helpful. Um, you know, and I'm not sure that I would have been a successful if I didn't have this kind of grounding in sport, The development young girls, in the advancement of women as leaders in science society, because when I look at the w NBA players and how diverse they are, diverse women, you know, I actually that's the next generation of leaders right there, this diverse group of women dragging confidence leading in their craft and one of the reasons I took the job as the commissioner the w n b A was, you know, to help see what they would do post their basketball career, because they don't play forever. You know. It's great that there are shows like Shark Tank that I've been on, and it's great that everybody wants to be a CEO and you know, be in their garage and be a billionaire at the time of eighteen. But I just think it's important for younger people to explore many different areas because you'll find your way in I never knew that I'd be doing what I'm doing, but it was only because I was open to so many things and took every interesting opportunity and pieced it together. I was a nanny for Paris and Nicki Hilton. Now I had Paris on this podcast. I used to work for Lauren Michaels, and you know, just so many other interesting people that have come now around in my life. Now, that's why I say, like, you have to keep your eyes open. You have just be on the road and you may hit a roadblock, but you got to just be driving forward and see where the opportunities lie. So that's another thread that you're talking about something totally different in a completely corporate environment and within your family, which sounded like it was a full scale operation. But we both have this similarity and that you just decided to use your environment to learn whatever you could in different departments. And I've done the same thing but in a much more freestyle way. Absolutely, I think that's a really important way to say it. You have to do what's right for you, but I will stress you need mentors along the way. So quick story about you know, when I was pregnant with my second child, um in two thousand of the firm approached me and asked me to move to a Midwestern city nice for a great client at the time, And but they didn't know I was pregnant yet. And I'm sitting here saying, well, I live in New Jersey and I kind of have this special station with life sciences and pharma companies, and here's he's a great place for that. And and so you know, they came to me and said, you know, we want you to move. And so I actually saw the advice of a mentor who said to me, you can actually say no to this big client relocation, but you have to have a yes behind it to something else that can solve a problem for this person, because you're just gonna you're creating a problem for them because you're saying no, So find something to help them. So I had my eye on another client literally like two miles from my house, and I could envision juggling two kids with the shortcommitte mute and running back and forth feeding the baby. And and it was a client in my industry expertise which I had built. And when I went to this leader and I said, you know, I don't want to do the Midwestern move, but I had an idea of the leader paused and said, never forget this. We never would have thought of you for that client. And in my mind, I was thinking, that's the only client I'm thinking about for me. So the lesson here is like, and I tell us all its time, like, no one's thinking about your career as much as you are, right and so you have to you have to speak up, you have to raise your hand, and especially when you work with a firm like to, like that's so multidimensional. There's so many things you can do or like you where you just follow your passion and and you find you know, a freestyle way to to get into business. You have to That is such a key to success because no career is linear and I have so many stories to prove that, even though I was with one term for thirty three years. But it's not linear, it not perfect. And the big lesson is no one's thinking about your career as much as you are, not even close and you both but you and I are both saying the same thing. My mantra is finally, yes, like you just figured it out. You just were you figured it out. You came through the back door, you open the window, you just like navigated it in your mind. So it was saying the same thing. And we've could not have more different careers. Um, which is interesting. Um do you what do you do? You? So? What percentage business are you? And what percentage fun? And I mean really fun, like do you get a little wild and have too many cocktails and laugh and feel stupid? And you know what percentage business and fun are you? Because you're serious, serious broad Yeah, So um, I definitely was more fun in my younger life. But you know, I, you know, I am definitely a small moment of recovery person. I actually, um, you know acronymed Di Smores when I was at Deloit, so and I find time to still, you know, play sports. I find time to play golf, on golfer, tennis, and really like family first again, being one of eight kids, were still all really close. My sister and I are thirteen months apart, and she and I um talk every day. She's a nurse, by the way, she's does COVID testing in state of Pennsylvania, and she's my hero throughout this whole pandemic. You know, it's a really hard time for everybody mentally, uh and obviously many physically and and you know, so it's just something where it's hard to have a ton of fun. Right now, my daughter and I are planning a trip out out to California hopefully and do some some fun things. But yeah, this year, you think about, has not that much fun, has not been fun, and and has tipped a lot towards business. But that's what you do in a crisis. And I think the companies and the people and the leaders and the personalities who lead companies through crises. You know, at the time, those decisions you make and the risks you take during a crisis like we've all had this year are going to either serve you really well or if you were paralyzed by fear of taking those risks. Um, it's really going to hurt your business when we come out on the other side, it is. And I'm homebody, temper cent lunatic, so I hear what you're saying about like just sort of family and work and taken it seriously and it's what you love to do. I also though, based on what you were just talking about about the pandemic and business is being hurt, I think, and I don't know if I just think it's small businesses and small entrepreneurs, like I speak to those people a lot. I think there's been it's been the most horrible time with job loss and with obviously death and just uncertainty. But I think in stillness there's like not literal meditation, but in stillness there's meditation and time to like to plant seeds and to plot and to figure out how you're gonna grow. And some people have chosen to take this time to really not get hysterical and really you know, do their game plan or for you it's like, you know, what are the plays for your players? And I think in the next couple of years, we're going to have an incredible, flourishing, thriving business. So I think it's gonna be an interesting time for re rebirth and regrowth in business. I do. Yeah, No, I agree with that, Bethany. It's a really good point. And m A crisis tends to accelerate or deepen issues that existed before the crisis, But it's also a huge opportunity to fix problems and you can use that. You can blame it all on the crisis that but now you get to go fix them. You know, the blames something that happened before. So you know what a perfect example of what we're working really hard on during this crisis, even though you know we're trying to keep everyone healthy and safe. Number one is you know, as you think about women's sports, um, you know, I came into this world just a year ago, and UM didn't know a lot about what was going on in women's sports. Was so busy, you know, balancing motherhood and being you know, of being a CEO and having a career. I came in and the first thing I learned was that less than five of all media coverage of sports covers women. And then I learned less than one percent of all corporate sponsorship dollars that go to sports go to women's sports. So, um, I think, I think about that like huge hill. We have to climb our mountain, quite frankly, and so as I thought about that as I came in, UM, number one thing, you know, let me go try to do some small things of symbolic value to build trust with the players. Let's get a collective bargaining meant done. But let's also at the same time work and building relationships and using you know, quite frankly, some of my relationships from my prior life to you know, get companies to join women's sports, to really put their money where their mouth is around supporting diversity and inclusion. And we launched something you know called w NBA change Makers coming off the collective Bargaining agreement. Because women's sports it's really hard. It's hard, it's hard to break them. It's hard to move that, you know, I mean, being a numbers person, you know, I said, how big is that denominator? Because if we want to move the one percent or the five percent to ten percent, how hard will this be? Well, the denominators enormous because men's sports is enormous. So but we still, um, you know, really are are proud that we've been able to sign our first three w NBA change makers, and but we need more companies to step up and and support these these diverse women, these elite women, all college graduates, really smart, really good at their craft and um and but it's an interesting model in the difference between how men and women are valued. And ESPN doubled the amount of games they covered for the w n b A this year and they're a great partner. And CBS Sports Network and CBS put are the first ever w n b A game on the CBS network. And I think we have the opportunity in the w n b A because we will be going into our twenty fifth season next year, the only women's professional league to kind of, you know, survive and hopefully thrive. Well, it's incredible where you've come from. It's incredible the mark you've made if you're an incredible role model from your family and your kids, and it sounds like you've only just begun. So just the final thing is what is your what mantra do you live by or do you if you have more than one? I often say come from a place of yes, just figure it out and get it done. Yeah, I mean, I you know, business wise, I coined you know kind of three CS that you have to have. Courage, curiosity, and confidence. You've got to have all three, you know, from a business perspective than personalized. It's always family first. I mentioned my sister and I thirteen months apart and talking every day, and you know it's it's always family first, and that's what keeps me going. Well, that's all amazing, and it sounds like you have the balance down the best you can. And I just wanted to say thank you because I know a woman like you is so incredibly busy and to take this time to really just reveal the way you think and the way that you feel about business is really valuable to me. But really mostly other people are just trying to figure out how we've all navigated this. So I could not be more appreciative of your time. Now, this was fun, Dethany, And you know what I've learned is life and career aren't linear. It sounds like you have many stories to prove that as well, and happy to share anything, So thanks so much. My takeaway from that conversation was, I'm really enjoying talking to different types of people. You know, to talk to someone who's so intensely corporate and serious and who has broken through the glass ceiling and worked in a very very intense, male centric corporate big four firm for decades is serious. Like, that's a serious accomplishment to to to break through there with all men around and you know, thinking, oh, well, she's got a kid, or she's gonna get married, gonna have a baby, and you know, is really interesting and just just to learn from someone like that, I mean, that's the thing I want you all to to explore and exercise different parts of what you think businesses, because business for her is very different than it is for me. But in many ways there are so many similarities. We are could not be on more different paths, but we have a lot of the same ways of approaching things that it might not be drinking margarite is in every single party, or I'm just gonna be a little intense and people are gonna being a little intimidated by me despite the fact that I'm a woman. But I'm getting shipped done and I'm going for it. I'm going all the way and this is my path and my journey, and I'm gonna figure it out and I'm gonna make lefts and rights and talk to people. But I'm going. So she went all the way. I you know, I'm on my way to go on all the way, and I want you to go all the way. So just giving you different different vehicles through which to figure out how to go all the way. So even if there's someone on here that you're not particularly interested in, whoever it is, you're gonna be interested in sports or the UFC, or corporate or entertainment or tech. Listen anyway, because there's gonna be there's gonna be something here that's going to pique your interests and that applies to you in your life. Just Be is hosted by me Bethany Frankel. Our managing producer is Fiona Smith, and our producer is Stephanie Stender. Sarah Katnak is our assistant producer, and our development executive is naintre Or. Just Be as a production of the Real Productions and Endeavor Content. This episode was mixed by Sam Bear. To catch more moments from the show, follow us on Instagram and Just Be with Bethett

Just B with Bethenny Frankel

If you can’t handle the truth you can’t handle this podcast. Just B with Bethenny Frankel is the bes 
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