In Search Of Excellence - Gabby Reece: Resilience, Risk, and Redefining Success | E143

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Gabby Reece is a former professional volleyball player who has carved out an extraordinary career as a sports announcer, fitness advocate, entrepreneur, public speaker, and author. She became the first woman to design a shoe for Nike and has been a spokesperson for major brands like Nike and Coppertone. In addition to excelling on the volleyball court, Gabby has graced magazine covers, hosted shows on MTV and CBS, and co-founded successful ventures like XPT, a fitness training program, and Laird Superfood, a popular line of coffee supplements. As the host of The Gabby Reece Show, she dives into topics like health, relationships, and business. Gabby's diverse experiences offer a wealth of insights into leadership, resilience, and personal growth.Timestamps:00:00 – Introduction and the Five Keys to Fitness06:45 – Learning from Failure08:18 – Launching XPT and Laird Superfood: From Passion to Business Success16:07 – Skiiing on a 60-Foot Wave: Trust and Overcoming Fear24:13 – The Five Keys to Fitness30:00 – Fill in the Blank to Excellence44:20 – The Best Piece of Advice Gabby HasResources:Gabby's InstagramGabby's WebsiteGabby's PodcastSponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

You've talked about the five keys to fitness. What are they? Well, so there's buckets, right? It's like you need to get to bed, you need to move your body, you need to eat real food. You know, we, most of us are overeating. You need to have community. And I do believe that there's some great power in participating in your recovery. So instead of having a day off and being like, I have a day off, it's like, oh, if you could get your body into a sauna or have a breathing practice or take a yoga class or something that you enjoy doing. And all of these things support kind of your fitness

and practice and health and wellbeing. You're listening to part two of my incredible interview with Gabby Reese. She's a former professional volleyball player, sports commentator, athlete, actor, model, television host, best-selling author and podcast host. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Now without further ado, here's part two of my incredible interview with Gabby. You did an interview with Joe Rogan in April 2019 where you talked about you play it safe too much and you wish you had taken more risks or were going to

take more risks. Have you taken more risks since then and what's your advice to everyone listening? Because everyone listening today is thinking about maybe doing something else, taking a risk, get out of their comfort zone, starting a new job. What's your advice to all of them? I think is take as many risks as you can. But take, but you don't have to crash and burn with every risk. You can take really good calculated risks. But I don't think we're ever going to regret saying what we really think, feel and believe. If an opportunity comes in your business that you can kind of and I don't want to say afford it, but like I always joke I have stuff to sell. That's how I look at it.

Like if stuff really goes bad, we could sell a house. Like who can you know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, like could we all shove in an apartment? Sure. That's cool. we could sell a house. You know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, could we all shove in an apartment? Sure, that's cool. So I think a risk because it's not only such a short time, but all the good stuff happens because you stuck your neck out. Whether it was like telling someone you loved them or you went for this business idea in

a strategic and well thought out way because you had to. And I think for me, the risks I want to take still have to do with just saying it how I really think it and feel it. And also now as a person who has children that are bigger, just moving out of the roles that I've been playing for the last 20 something years. Like claiming more of my own real estate as a person, not as Laird's wife or my kid's mom. And so I think that's where I will continue to move in.

It's always getting out of our comfort zone when we start a company. So at some point you became an entrepreneur, you started a bunch of companies, I think ten companies, two of them have sort of made it. So what was... I've been down that road. Yeah. It's exhilarating, scary, terrifying, frustrating, horrifying. The first time you went out and you started your own company, what was that company and what was the mentality when you said, oh my God, I'm going to do this. You know, I had this idea, I think, gosh, in the early 2000s where I wanted to create a training, a platform on the internet where if you were in the middle of Idaho, but you're

a really talented baseball pitcher, I could get you best in class training information from the best in class coach. And I wanted to have that for every sport that made sense. And great idea, by the way. Thank you. It was way too early. And I'm not it's been done. Well, and this was like 2002 or something. But back then it was like you did video. It. And I wasn't even a techie person. I was just like, Oh, this would be amazing. Because I related to like, hey, I grew up in the Caribbean, I didn't have access. How would you give access? You know, and so, you know, democratize information and in for sport training and for people who are interested. We did another one, we had a Truition, which was a nutritional company.

There was nothing, there was no moat around it. There was nothing unique about it. So that didn't work. I sort of had the thought like a wolf laird and I are doing it and we know the ingredients are clean and best in class. Well, that's enough. Yeah, okay, that's not enough. And so, we had ideas either too early or not interesting enough, or like I said, no moat, nothing unique about it. And so, you know, you have a graveyard full of companies and ideas that you think were so great. I was on the board of invested a lot of money.

I'll just share with everyone $3 million in a company called xDrive. And xDrive, there was a dial-up connection at the time and we were just getting kind of faster speeds on the way to get online and this was storage online. So, you create an account on xDrive and you can put all your storage there and I think we raised something, 60 million dollars, a ton of money with an investment bank, raised money for us and ultimately the company went under and that was one of the biggest investment losses I've ever had. And obviously it's not fun when you lose $3 million.

The exact same company today is Dropbox and Box. The exact same company. And sometimes you're just five or 10 years too early. And that's just what it is being an entrepreneur. It is, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I wouldn't have the failures any other way. I wouldn't listen, we took Laird Superfood public and 20 CPG products on the public market kind of insanity.

So I wouldn't have it any other way. I just, the idea of not pursuing the ideas and not taking the risks and not having the limitation. That's what I like. The idea maybe is you don't know how big it could be. It may be a total disaster, but I love the idea of you don't know you're not handcuffed like, okay, you're going to earn this much every year, you're going to work this many hours, you're going to be nine to five. Okay, some people like that. It's safe, you know what you're dealing with. I like the idea of we don't know. I love that. Failure in the VC world is not like failure in a real estate deal. You're not getting

your cash flow or you still sometimes have to land in the building. These are goose eggs, right? So it's like taking your money and it goes in the trash basket. Dumpster fire. And you have nothing. But I do a lot of coaching. I do coaching students. I do professional coaching.

One of the things that I really talk about a lot, people want to talk about, oh, how'd you do this investment? Or how about this one, the ones that made money? I want to talk about as a teaching moment that we learn more from our failures than our successes. Right, I mean, everyone wants to go out and I think I see a lot of younger people do this.

They go out, it's bar talk, they brag about all their successes, no one's talking about their failures. But I really think we learn more from our failures than our wins. Do you agree? Beyond agree. I think about sports. I from our failures than our wins. Do you agree? Beyond agree. I think about sports.

I've said this so many times. We don't go to practice and go, you know, your three pointers are perfect. So we're just gonna do that. No, your free throws aren't looking weird. Let's get on the line over here and we're gonna practice this. So getting a relationship with,

you know, I don't need to make it a poster. You know, those are the other things. Like I don't need to sit in like, oh, I'm so grateful for this learning moment. Like I get it. But there's no way around it. All the best stuff comes from the squeeze. And when you fell on your face, and it's just, I'm not looking for it. I'm not hoping for it. But when it comes, I go, all right. I dust myself off and go, this is only gonna make me better for whatever is ahead. And also people don't realize it's the thing you needed

to prepare you for a much bigger thing usually. So tell us about two other companies that have had some success, XBT and Laird Superfoods. Talk to us about briefly what they are. I wanna promote them and so. Well, XBT and Laird Superfoods. Talk to us about briefly what they are. I want to promote them and so. Well, XBT is a training. It's kind of the training arm of our business. They're going to be doing physical locations. It was really, again, I will say on these last two businesses, we did not start them on purpose. I have a very close friend, Jen, she's like, you need to share

what you and Laird are doing in your training, nobody wants to see this. She was, I'm gonna put together an event and we started XPT and now we've got apps and physical spaces and certified trainers and all of that. And if I could say, it's a great business and it's also kind of the storytelling part. It's the place, the human part to really connect with people, also forced learning, going back to learning.

If we're not learning and doing and trying and keeping new things, we can't actually feed those ideas into this business. And then Laird's Superfood was created out of a practice from the coffees that Laird was making in our house, giving to his friends. Why? Because he wanted to figure out if I'm doing this every day, how do I use this for performance so I can go out and serve longer? And he would give it to all his friends and they go, oh, I feel so good. What's in this? And one of the people was a good friend who was an entrepreneur, a startup guy, and said, you know, I really think you could do this. Can you say who it is? Yeah, Paul Hodge. Paul Hodge was the co-founder and person who took the company public. We now have a different CEO who runs publicly traded companies because that's a whole other beast. Whole other beast. Whole other animal.

publicly traded companies because that's a whole other whole other whole other animal. I just had the board meetings at my house this last two days. And anyway, and slowly but surely it was one of those ones where we made samples. It was kind of the first skew was really almost like our original creamer. We now have, you know, we have coffees and creamers of all kinds. We have greens and reds and proteins and bars. We have very, very strict guardrails. So not only of course, no artificial flavors, but no natural flavors. And if you know anything about food, creating things that give you a lot of great taste

and have shelf stability and all these things without these kinds of ingredients is really to me when you talk about success, this has been the success of this company. This is our largest company that we work with, but it is successful to me because people love it and I feel really good about what's in it. You met Laird in 1995, you were doing a TV show, The Extremists and as I understand it, he thought you were just this and I'm going to quote, I'm not saying this. I don't know. Get upset at me. Big, big, dumb blonde bimbo. Yeah, sure. A gun for hire. A gun for hire. So how did that relationship develop? You got married two years later, you have three kids. So how did that blossom and what was

it like dating the most famous surfer in the world? I mean, he's an icon. Yeah, I mean, Laird is very good at what he does, obviously. But when I met Laird, he was very well known in surfing. He wasn't well known in the mainstream world. I was attracted to Laird. I have a good friend who says it's like the mania you haven't met a person more like passionate and intense and transparent and you know present than Laird and in a very different way than people are used to Laird is highly intelligent and so I remember thinking oh this is this is a very intense guy I remember thinking, oh, this is a very intense guy. And it wasn't after we said goodbye after the interview, I thought, oh, what a unique person.

And I had done many interviews of many athletes, very good at what they do. But Laird, I think maybe being in mother nature and just willingness, he leads with his heart everywhere. I'm very analytical. And Laird's bravery just to put it all out there all the time about everything is it's really refreshing and impressive and exhausting, if I could say that. And then I re-met up with him and his friends a couple days later

to play volleyball. Big wave surfers were playing the toe, the strap crew was playing volleyball when the surf was flat. And so I went back and, and that the only person I knew there was Laird and he wasn't the one who invited me. And so I needed a ride back to my hotel. One thing led to another. And the rest is, yeah, is history. And, and, you know, we, we had to learn to dance. We were both didn't come from maybe homes that there was that language so we stepped on each other's toes and we figured some things out and I'd say we have a really I have a I'm very we have a very good peaceful strong kind of thriving relationship. It's yeah, but it's like with Laird it's intense every day. You don't get to show up halfway. Like with him, you gotta show up and so you have to choose as his partner. Like is that what you're in for or do you want to like

chill out on the couch and watch shows at seven o'clock? And if you want to kind of get into it and he's your guy. Marriage, as you know, can require a lot of work sometimes, even if you're madly in love and have the best spouse in the world, have the best wife in the world. But marriage takes work. And also, you'll be married, I think, 27 years next week. And for all of us, we make sacrifices when we get married. My wife was working in New York as a model. She had a good career going. She worked on Wall Street at the same time. So she was doing, she actually had four jobs when I met her.

And I said, after three months, we got engaged. I said, I'm not doing the long distancing. So if you're going to get married, you got to come here. As you know, I had months, we got engaged. I said, I'm not doing the long distancing. So pretty good, Mary, you got to come here. As you know, I have three kids at that point. And I just wasn't going to date someone long distance. So she gave up her career to move here. And it's, she hasn't restarted the career really. I mean, she's still a model a few times a year.

You were training to become a professional golfer at some point. And you were working with Butch Harmon, who was Tiger Woods coach for 11 years. But you gave that up to be a mom. Yeah. Well, you can imagine you've talked about my past, right? Yeah. One of the things I wasn't first of all, I wasn't good enough in golf to not be practicing all the time. And the short game, right? It was not instinctive in any way like volleyball was more so. So, once I had my middle daughter, my first biological daughter, Viola,

I thought, oh yeah, there's no way. I'm not going to be good at anything. And so, that's not even a question. You know, if I do one thing in my life, it will, as imperfectly as I do it, it will be here for my children and for them to know, to be able to rely on me. And you know, it's like this idea sometimes, you know my youngest daughter, Brody, I'll be in the kitchen most times when this kid comes home.

And I think to myself, I've had a whole life in between when you left and when you got here and I'm a whole different other person than you know. And to her, I'm this kind of person that a lot of times is just right there. And that luxury, right? That was a real luxury to be able to do that. Felt so important. In our relationships, we have to trust our partner. And as we're getting to know them, we sometimes will do things getting us out of our comfort zone. So tell us about Mike Murphy and the air chair. Oh, yeah, Mike Murphy. So I did a show with Mike Murphy, who actually Mike Murphy's air chair was why Laird was able to foil.

So Mike Murphy, I had a very hard time on the air chair, I tried all these different things. And this is this hydrofoil that flies kind of above the water, it rides the energy below. Well, Laird and them got the air chair and cut the chair off and put snowboard boots on there. And literally, I think for maybe the last 12 years, the only surfboard that Laird rides is has a foil connected to it.

So for him, it's really interesting. Mike Murphy created this whole other thing. Laird wrote a wave many years ago, maybe 15 years, maybe more actually, 18 years ago, that was close to 100 foot. And he said that the water coming up the wave on a wave that big moving that fast, you're actually physically not able to go down the wave because the water traveling up the wave is too quick. And that's when he abandoned tow surfing altogether and dedicated all his energy and time to foiling.

So it was really beginning thanks to Mike Murphy. But at some point he took you on a 60 foot wave. Yeah. Oh, Laird did. I'm not going on a 60 foot wave with Mike Murphy. No, no, no. But he took you on a in terms of just you're trusting your partner. You going on a 60 foot wave with Mike Murphy. No, no, no. But he took you on a in terms of just trusting your partner. Oh, you went on a 60 foot wave with that. That's a six story office. Oh, yeah. So Laird took me. What do you say? Hey, we're gonna do this. You said, All right, let's do it. Or? Oh, I don't know if I said, Hey, let's do it. I was like, I probably didn't say anything in my mind. I was probably I don't

know. Is that a good idea? Because I used to ask Laird like, What about this? It's so gorgeous. But what about this draws you towards it? It's an energy that you think, where do I go to land or to the channel? And there took me on a jet ski to Piyahi, which is known as jaws, a wave on Maui. And he said, I'm gonna it was a beautiful day. Meaning the conditions were very good, the wind, the sun, the whole the shape of the wave, the swell direction, everything, like a special day. And he said, okay, I'm going to get you in front. I just want you to look back at it. And the great thing about Laird when you're in the water with Laird, you think he's not cavalier. He's not being, you know, wild. He has a measured seriousness about him that I thought I'm really scared and I also know it's okay, I'm okay.

I trust him more than my own fear in this moment. But it wasn't like I was gawking at him, it's amazing. I kind of looked back a few times and I was like, okay, that's good, thank you. Were you with him on a board or you were riding? No, we were on a jet ski. Because it's the only, we have to move at a, you have to move at a pace to stay in front of it. But I mean, I just want people out there to picture this you're on a jet ski on a six story building and the waves coming down. It's very, very loud for people who don't know, right? It's you got all the power, you're hearing the wave crash in front of you and are you just, you know,

holding on for dear life? It's primal, you know, like the idea of like, if you if anything goes wrong, you it's too much it's massive. Yeah, you're gonna die. Yeah. Yeah. So and drowning and all of that you're talking about a really primal thing. Yeah. But again, the idea of seizing those moments when somebody's really good

at what they do and they invite you to get just a peek into their world, you gotta say yes. Garrett McNamara was on my show. And so for those people who haven't watched the Garrett McNamara show, I hope you watch it. It's phenomenal, 100 foot wave. At one point, he rode the biggest wave in the world. People have died doing it.

I wouldn't go on a ski with Garrett McNamara. I would go with Laird. Kai Lenny? Maybe. Dave Kalama, I would go. Different types, all different types, you know. We joke. Yeah, very different.

Tell us about the Wigglefoot story and how that, Laird's Wigglefoot story. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Tell how that Laird's Wiggle foot story so Laird went down a rapid I don't know class five or something and he got pinned on a rock underneath and he said he Tried in every which way literally to get out and he said he had this kind of vision of like a skeleton there with his surf shorts because it was where the rapid was breaking and he was not able to get off. It was like a hydraulic but it just doesn't end. And so somehow he sort of wiggled his foot and that motion kind of offset his body that

he got spit out. But that for him was one of the heaviest things that he's ever experienced in water. So you'd think it would be the ocean, but rivers, again, that kind of unrelenting power is pretty serious. Let's talk about the book that you wrote. And in the book, there was a central premise

that a woman being submissive in a relationship with a man is actually a good thing. And I think that a lot of people hearing this today who haven't read your book would say, Gabby, that's outrageous. Sure. The Me Too movement. That's exactly what we shouldn't be doing. Well, first of all, I want to say this. One thing that is true is half the best people I know in the world are men. So this whole thing of like I have to win and you have to lose in order for it to be fair to me, I don't actually agree with that. And the whole premise of the book, and by the time I wrote the book, I was already in my 40s, was about being a strong person and I happened to be a female. So I thought I had established that story

for a solid like 25 years about being strong, strong mentally, physically, you know, taking up space, whatever it was. And it was a very nuanced part of a conversation that I said in my home in particular, I take on the female energy, Laird takes on the male. I take on the female energy, Laird takes on the male, and that to be submissive, to be of service to your family really was a very good dynamic in my house. Now, one thing I will say that I've learned, I was born in 1970, so Title IX, I went to school on an athletic scholarship.

So I never had to deal with what the idea of submissive meant to a generation before me. So I had a different understanding after because people were really pissed off about this book. And all I was saying was, is that we are going to be of service to our families, to our friends, to our community. And it feels really good. And it's really good. And it's really empowering. I didn't say be a doormat, get taken advantage of, and be an idiot. And so I think that people

just needed an opportunity to be frustrated and take one word and, you know, go nuts. But I think there's something really powerful. And by the way, if you talk to Laird, I'm sure he feels like he's submissive to the family too. I think people are of service to their family. But I'm not afraid to say it. This is my choice. I'm not going to go out in the world and try to be a professional and I do want to win and kick ass and be all these things and be strong.

I don't want to be that same person in my house. I want to be there my kid's mom and I'm not going to lean into my marriage with Laird. I'm here to love Laird and support Laird and elevate Laird and make his life better and easier. And hopefully he's doing the same thing. And obviously I would evaluate that if he was doing something different. But I think we've taken the idea of being soft and kind and giving as a weakness the same as what they say, oh, feminine, feminine is not weak. And so for me, I never looked at it that way. And it's just a nice balance. You've been a fitness advocate and guru, you talk about on your podcast for a long time. You've been a fitness advocate and guru. You talk about it on your podcast for a long time. You've been training your whole life.

You've talked about the five keys to fitness. Yes. What are they? Well, so there's buckets, right? It's like you need to get to bed. You need to move your body. I'm not going to tell you how. You just need to do it consistently. You need to eat real food, you know, probably less than you want. You know, we most of us are

overeating, you need to have community. And I do believe that there's some great power in kind of participating in your recovery. So instead of having a day off and being a guy of a day off, it's like, oh, you if you could, you know, get your body into a sauna or have a little breathing practice or take a yoga class or something that you enjoy doing. And all of these things support kind of your fitness and practice and health and wellbeing. Everything else is hacks. Now what I will say that needs to get added to that list is to go outside and be in the sunlight.

I think the deeper I go into learning and the impact of LED lights and blue light from our computers, sunlight. And so there are a lot of people of the thinking that that might be the number one. And then it's sort of everything else. But you can eat perfect and move great. But if you don't have meaningful relationships, that's terrible for your health. The Harvard study shows that right connection is so important. And, and so, you know, it's great people measure it with their rings and their all these other things, but you cannot hack your way to health you have to these buckets to health. You have to.

These buckets are primary and then everything else. I love it. I love like, OK, let's do ozone. Let's do red light. Let's do all that. That's great. But those are hacks. So let's talk about the sauna hack. There was a piece in The Wall Street Journal this week or last week that saunas are the new place in Silicon Valley to meet, network, socialize and raise money.

Yeah. Oh God. You had a podcast years ago where you would host a podcast in a sauna. So how on earth do you host a podcast in a sauna? How do you get people to show up and how do you get people to breathe? Well now you know why I have the Gabby Reeves show because you know after a while guests are like, what? I was with an author named Neil Strauss, a good friend of mine who wrote a very well-known book called The Game. Neil's a funny guy. I thought we have such different

perspectives, it'd be cool. But we always called the sauna our time as a group in the sauna, we called it the truth barrel. It's like, hey, it's hot, you're barely dressed, you're sweating, get to the point, everybody say what they need and want. And that's what it became, hey, it's hot, you're barely dressed, you're sweating, get to the point, everybody say what they need and want and that's what it became. Really this beautiful, truthful connecting, I need this, what do you think about that? This is going on in my relationship. So we thought, oh, why not? Let's have conversations in there in the truth barrel. So we'd obviously have to leave the door open because we keep our sauna pretty hot, like

220. 220. Yeah, so you're having like a 12 to 15 minute conversation, so we would open the door open because we keep our sauna pretty hot, like 220. And so... 220. Yeah. So, you're having like a 12 to 15 minute conversation. So, we would open the door up, but it was great. It was really good fun. 220 is insane.

I did a sauna this summer, it was 180. Yeah, it's great. That's perfect. 180, 190 is great. Yeah, but if you're not used to 180, you're dying in there after seven or eight minutes. I mean, it's hot. Sauna is really there and there's a lot of data. Dr. Rhonda Patrick does a lot of beautiful work around this about all the really seriously great

health benefits of being in the sauna. All-cause mortality goes down, cognitive function, Alzheimer's, just an amazing amount of things. But like you said, actually that time together, if you can be in there. I mean, listen, the Scandinavian countries have been sounding, they work out, they do business deals there. They've been doing that forever. They work out all their, you know, kind of familiar problems in the sauna. So I think it's, it's pretty, it's pretty great practice. My son, Charlie, yeah, is all over the sauna thing. Dad, you gotta get a sauna. And we're actually looking into it now. I mean, we build an outside structure because our house is already built.

Yeah. Oh, I can help you with that. It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. If you want to get crazy, you could go to like 150, 160 and put a stationary bike in there and do that for 15 minutes on days that you don't have a lot of time to train or do anything. Do that and you kill like two birds with one stone.

By the way, that I would totally do. There you go. I got ideas. Instead of 45 on my peloton. I got ideas. Tell us about Alfred Adler's book and the advice in that book, which I think is brilliant and a lesson that everybody listening to this podcast, any podcast who wants to improve themselves should learn.

So the Courage to be Disliked, we got the, I think I read it during COVID. And really, it's this whole deep dive philosophical into, you know, is it your parents? Is it, you know, were you born with it? Is it your destiny? Is it your fate? And what he, two things that he arrives at is, no, it's your lifestyle. And if you really want to be, and I'm going to use the word happy in that representative way, right?

A sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, peace, all those things. You have to be of service. And it's as simple as that. And I think there are times in our lives that we should be striving and thinking about ourselves and kind of really figuring out like who am I and defining that and then there are times that we can be doing both. And there's another kind of great addition to that which is strength to strength. Arthur C. Brooks talks about kind of these arcs in our lives, these curves where in our younger lives it's like, you know, kind of being the hero

and being the rock star and doing all this and then jumping off this curve and going to this curve and being someone who synthesizes information and teaches others and helps others and supports others and how good that makes us feel. We're at the end of our show, but I always end the show with a game I call film to blank to excellence.

Are you ready to play? Sure. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is it's all the story that I put on it. It all is going to be whatever story I put on it. It's going to mean that. So pick a good story. My number one professional goal is to maximize every talent that I have been given to maximize every talent that I have been given to its greatest degree. My number one personal goal is that my children at the end of this whole story say you did a pretty good job and I respect the way that you tried to show up and that Laird and I still look at each other with a little bit of a twinkle in our eye. My biggest regret in life is? I mean I don't play that game

because there's a lot and they all have led to this place and it's definitely to do with parenting but there's a few. My biggest fear in life is? That somehow the push and drive that I have in any way would have negatively impacted my kids own sort of expression in their own life. The craziest thing that has happened to me in my career is? I think meeting my husband on a shoot is pretty crazy. The funniest thing that's happened to me in my career is? I mean, I had to interview Charles Barkley in a hot tub once with my clothes fully on. I guess that was funny. I was trying to save

time for him. Where did that happen? He was, I think they were playing the Heat and he was going from practice. I was at practice with them and and he was going from I was at practice with them and then he was going to interview with me and then go to like get ready for the game and because I understood the scheduling like I understood that day I was in my full clothes and he was going to he goes they go well he has to go in the sauna first or the hot tub first before after practice and then he'll you know do your and I thought let's just get in there because I thought he'd be more generous. I knew CB, but I thought he'd be more generous because we were saving time.

So you're interviewing him and he says, hey, I can only do it in the hot tub. No. Did you have a bathing suit with you? No, I didn't. That was the whole thing is again, this is my sensitivity about like, oh man, I understand this guy has a game day today. He's just come from a shoot-around practice he's gonna take this 45 minutes hour to be with me and but before that he has to sit in the hot tub and

Then he's gonna go and get ready to play. So I thought let's Condense it and make his time a little better for him before a game time And so I just got I had shorts and a t-shirt and I just got in the hot tub with him. That's interesting. I have I want to digress for a second on the hot tub. Oh, okay. It's amazing who you meet in the hot tub. You know, especially when you're going to nice places in hotels on vacation. Who'd you meet in the hot tub? I met the CEO of restoration hardware when it was Gary. Wait, are you going to tell me that you invested in Restoration Hardware? No, I didn't. I just met him at the time.

I mean, it was a small company. It was failing. It had a 200 million dollar Gary Friedman. It was a 200 million dollar market cap. They were selling games like Monopoly spin-off games. Have you been to the restaurant in New York? Have you been to the restaurant? No. The rooftop restaurant in New York? No, but I hear it's amazing. There's one here, isn't there?

I don't know, but I was at the one in New York and it's fantastic. What do you have with the company? It's just incredible. It's very sexy. We were staying at the Four Seasons in Lanai and if people haven't been there, it's just an incredible property. And we went to one of the hot tubs, no kids, adult only one. There's this guy in there. I'm sorry, I'm going to call you nerdy, but you are nerdy. There's a guy in

there, Daniel Adder. And he had created an AI company. This was seven years ago before it became a thing. And the guy's brilliant and went to Harvard, AI degree, PhD. He was working for the Fed as well as an advisor and he just sold the company for $500 million. Coleman Sachs was an investor. I said, if you ever have another company, you raise another round for a company, give me a call. And he did.

So we invested in that company. Later in the trip, I was with my kids and there was this young college woman in there and I said, what do you, you know, are you from LA or whatever? Her dad was the VP of technology at Snap and we both went to Michigan. So Michigan was really asking us both for money. And I said, oh, I know I don't know your dad, Steve Horowitz, but I would love to meet him. So I met Steve on that trip and we become friends for a long time as well. So you never...

And she became a summer intern the following summer, by the way. So it's weird to say that I met a summer intern in the hot tub. Well, yeah, but you had your kids around. It sounds like you meet way more interesting people than I meet in the hot tub. It's just one of these random things. But you never know who you're going to meet in the hot tub. You never know. Or the sauna. Or the sauna. I haven't met anyone in the sauna.

Yeah. So there's a guy named Strauselnik who has done so many amazing things. He, at 30 years old, was the COO of Fox. He ran BMG at age 40. And I wrote him a letter and we got a meeting and I got a meeting and we became friends and he'd been a mentor to me He was I think the fifth guest on my show. He's an incredible person JDM a from Harvard extraordinarily humble now he runs take two interactive, which is a 20 billion dollar video game company I think they bought it something for like 20 million dollars years ago, but he just isn't he's as humble as as could be so

He's a workout fanatic by the way. he's been on cover of Men's Fitness for I don't know. I think he's and Strauss don't get pissed at me for this, but I think 63 or something like that. And he's he looks like a 40 year old. Yeah. And so when I when we'll get together, he wants to work out. So I'll go to a gym or whatever. So Sports Club Los Angeles was a gym back in the day, big gym. And he says, okay, let's meet there and we'll do workouts. So we show up. I said, and he's sitting there and I said, are you a member? He said, no. Are you a member? He said,

no. So we're just sitting in a lobby. Of course he's going to make a call. And we're in. So we do this workout. We go into the locker room and we're in this hot tub. And the hot tub is a big one. It's like eight feet by eight feet. It's weird. I mean, you know. It's like indoor basketball courts there at that place, right? Yeah, they had indoor basketball.

Yeah. We didn't play basketball. Okay. But it's weird. As a man, you're getting naked in a hot tub and you're sitting there. And there's this guy in there. And there's bubbles too. What's that?

There were, by the way, I remember it correct. I remember it exactly by the way. There's lots of jets. So whatever the jet setting was, you could like, there weren't huge bubbles. I mean, no one's looking at anything, but it's not like the one I have at my house, I get the bubbles cranking, right?

I just like that feeling, but there were very little bubbles. And Strauss is talking to this black man in there. And he's in the music business. Strauss runs BM Jim and Clive Davis, essentially one of the greatest music producers of all time, basically reported to Strauss, which is crazy. But we're in there and they're having this conversation

about music and doing this and doing that. And I'm just sitting there. Like, you feel weird because you don't know what they're talking about. You don't know who the guy is. You're not participating in the conversation. And yeah, you're naked. But then and by the way, then we all get out at the same time. We towel up at the same time. We're getting dressed at the same time. And there's lockers right next to the trousers, a mind or whatever. And when we walk out, we're sure we walk out and he says, you know who that is, right? And I said, no.

He said, well, that's Sean Combs. Oh. By the way- Thank God you didn't get invited to any parties. Yeah, well, I mean, back in the day, yeah. I mean, it's crazy. I'm just kidding, sorry. No, no, no, I mean, it's, I mean, what,

I don't know what I want to say about Sean Combs, but if anything we're hearing is even close to be true, I hope he gets what he deserves. You know, that's that's what I'll say. Well, you know, that's what I'll say about it. You know, the universal thing of life, we get away with nothing. Whatever that looks like. My dog's name is Karma and Karma is a bitch. That's yeah, I have a question for you really quick. As somebody who is successful very young, because that's young, very I came in that's pretty young a fair amount of money Do your kids listen to you that they take your sage wisdom or are you just like dad like everyone else? you know, I was gonna ask you the same question funny enough as we were talking about your kids, but

It's a complicated question. There's different tears to that question. So the first part of it is for me, how do you raise humble kids growing up in wealth? Right? And so they see their dad going to work. I work 70 hours a week, but I'm always home for dinner. And when I got divorced, I made sure my kids were six, six and four. And they went to school down the street. I'd pick them up every day at 2.30 and I'd drive them home and they'd do homework. I'd work either at the kitchen table with them or go into my home office.

I wanted to make sure they felt safe. So one, I wanted to be a good dad and two, they know I worked my ass off even though we lived in this incredible house. And so that's number one. Number two, do the kids listen to you at various ages? No. And it's like you could have a friend or a coach on a baseball team tell your kid Charlie and I would tell him something and he wouldn't listen. But when another coach told him the exact same thing, he listened.

He said, oh, now, at some thing, he listened, he said, oh, now at some point, my son who said when I started a real estate company, why are you doing that? You know nothing about real estate. I knew something about it. I'd been an investor in deals for 20 years. And I said, I don't want to be an investor. I want to be a general partner. And we'll get investors in the company. I want to create something. So at that point, we started, we have a small company. We've done well on some small buildings, a long leach, 10 unit building, 11 unit building. Investors have done well. We have 15 town homes in Nashville. We had 17. We sold two of those. But at some point, my son recognized that number one, I do know something about real

estate. Number two, as he gets interested in business, and I think I told you this, he's an entrepreneur. At some point, as we talked about, he didn't want to go to college. And I wanted him to go to college. His mom, Laura wanted him to go to college for the social aspect. Oh, yeah.

For the maturity of living away from home and making friends. I mean, to this day, college influenced who I am. I recommend people go to college, and I know you know you said your daughter if you don't want to go I'll pay you to not go to college. Well use the time and give me an alternative idea. Right. But different kind of kid. Right so as my kids got older and as my son got into business now, he does listen to me. He's circling around. And it changed like three years ago, really, because he's very into business. He wanted to

know about income statements, financial statements, how it works raising money, what a cap chart is. And it's really been fun for me. I never wanted to press what I did upon my kids. what I did upon my kids. My daughters are less interested in business, but I've sent them all a book about Wall Street and what Wall Street is and what a stock is. And I've talked to them a little bit about our investments that we have, and they listen, they're interested.

Because at some point too, I think it's important for you to have real life conversations with your kids about your situation in life. And obviously, they they see where we live. We have they have well-to-do friends. You know, our kids are friends. Yeah. You know, I've never been your house. I hear it's beautiful. We have a beautiful house as well.

And so I think for me, the most important part of me teaching my kids is the work ethic and the value I bring and how hard I work to create this life for ourselves. And I want to impart on them and I want them to listen to me, which they do. I mean, they're spoiled kids, but they're very humble kids, appreciative kids. But I want them to have the same kind of work ethic that I have. And so they listen, they see it, and they do all have good work ethics. They work hard. So it's a longer answer. No, it's an important answer, though. But back in the day, no, dad had no idea what he was doing.

And it's fun. I remember driving to the airport with my assistant and Charlie was in the car and you know, he's making fun of me, right? He's self-deprecating and you go home, you're successful, but when you're home, you're nobody. And we were in the car and this assistant graduated college, interviewed a lot of people. She moved from North Carolina right out of school. And you know, Charlie is bagging on me big time and making fun of me.

And he said, and she said, hey, you know, Charlie, your dad's sort of a big deal. And by the way, I don't consider myself that, by the way, at all. When, you know, similar to you, I pride myself on being a humble person. And when I heard that, I just wanted to cringe, right? Because I'm in my own mind, I'm not, right? I've done well, I'm successful. But he looked at her in a funny way. And I could see like something shifted in the mindset there. Right? He knows me as dad. He sees everything we have and how we live. But that was a moment where he just started to listen to me.

Great. You know, it was one of those cool moments. Maybe she could come to my house. Huh? I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Okay, so continuing with our fill in the blank to excellence questions. Yes, the best piece of advice

I've ever learned in my life is... When you're evaluating making a decision and doing something, do it to the best of your ability for the greatness of the situation and don't try to make everybody happy because you can't. And that was a very hard lesson, especially as a female, because, you know, is that okay? Is this okay? You know, you can't do things on consensus. So being okay with someone being unhappy about a decision that had to get made.

And then, of course, you know, it's not personal. Let me flip the question on you, by the way, before we come to the last few, what about your kids? At what point did they start listening to you and say, okay, you know, my mom and dad are giving me advice that I'm going to listen to? We joke that an expert, somebody who lives a mile away, to your point earlier. I think it's just a circling up once

they become once they feel free. So closer to 1718, the sense of freedom, then they start to circle around to you. I I'm also glad like I know sounds strange having three daughters. I don't as much as it would make my life easier. I don't want them to be compliant. I want them to question everybody and everything. And if I don't care what uniform you have on, I want them to question things. And so it is tough to parents. And I'm so grateful that they bump up against us.

One of the things that I should have mentioned and I wanna mention is now that my son appreciates the fact that I have experience, I have wisdom, I have good advice and I mentor a lot of people, he's actually added a lot of value to my life and business career. He suggests podcast guests for me. I'll ask him, what about this guest?

What about that guest? They'll say, yes, no, that person definitely not right for the show. And it's been very beneficial to me. They have a reciprocal relationship with my son who can add value to that. And he's also introduced me to some of his parents' friends who are very successful in business.

And I could care if they're successful or not, but he knows that we have the same DNA. Yeah. We'll have a lot to talk about. I've made two or three really good friends with his parents' friends, which has been very rewarding to me. Yeah. Our children keep us into the world that we live in now. That's one of their jobs. They pull us into, hey, you guys did it this way. What about this way? It's like, oh, okay All right. So a few more questions in ten years from now. I'm going to be doing I'm going to have taken a little bit more space in the in the

when I call it self-care because I hate the idea of wellness but from a female point of view but still kind of Because it's dominated and it's totally fine, I understand why by men. But they all either have a partner or somebody who handles that side of it. I would like to be a person who also there'll be others kind of have taken a little more real estate that communicate to men and women but from just the female lens. Not saying you only speak about female issues because I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in very good information but it's like yeah and how do you do it if like you had a kid and you're the you know from the female side or trying to juggle work and family and all that stuff. If you could pick one trait that would lead to somebody's

success it would be I guess resilience. The one trait that's contributed to my success more than any other trait is? Self-awareness. The one thing I've dreamt about doing for a long time but haven't is? I just haven't merged all of my skills into one spot yet. It's very difficult to be sort of pretty good at a lot of things.

And the one thing I'm trying to figure out is how to bring it all together into one spot. Before I get too old or die. The greatest athlete in history is? It's like socially, is it, you know, is it Muhammad Ali for certain social things? Is it Willie Mays? Is it the social aspect if it's physical? Is it, you know, Hawaii, they'd say the Duke of Hanumoko for bringing surfing around the whole world. Babe Dietrich and Zaharias,

female athlete opening the door. That's a hard one. If you could go back in time and give your 21 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Be bigger. Don't apologize. The one question you wish I'd ask you but didn't is? This conversation around success and accomplishment and pursuit, and pursuit, is it in us? Is it just in us and who we are as people or is it something you can learn?

I'm always intrigued by that idea. When I have serial entrepreneurs on the show, I always ask them, can you truly be a great entrepreneur if you were not born with the DNA of having that gene. Yeah. No. I don't think... Well, yes, of course you can.

You can be somebody who learns and reads the landscape of things, but you may not enjoy it as much. How would you answer your own question? I think you're born with it. I think it's like you have to. You can't be confined to someone else's way. This has been awesome. I appreciate you coming today. I appreciate you taking the time. I've been a fan for a long time. Thank you.

And I think you're fantastic. I know everyone's going to enjoy listening to the show, watching the show. So really appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.