In Search Of Excellence - Jimmy Pitaro: How to Prepare for Anything and Crush Your Next Big Opportunity | E31

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to part two of my incredible conversation with Jimmy Pataro, the chair of ESPN. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Without further ado, here's part two with the amazing Jimmy Pataro. When you joined Launch, it was very well funded prior to going public. It's investors, including Intel, GE, and NBC. And when it went public on April 23rd, 1999, it raised $75 million, an IPO led by Hamburg and Quist, a boutique investment bank that JPMorgan acquired four months later. But well funded does not mean job security.

Starting point is 00:00:41 We can look at the sexy companies today that have raised billions of dollars in the past few years and now are going through massive layoffs. Coinbase just laid off 18% of its workforce and Robinhood just laid off 23% of its workforce. One of the most frequently asked questions that I get from people, which I know you probably do too, is, should I go work at a startup or a more established company? Or should I leave a big company to work at a startup? What are your thoughts on this? And does your advice differ whether you're graduating college or graduate school or have been in the workforce for a few years or are mid-career and want to try something new? And as part of this, where do passion,

Starting point is 00:01:19 money, and learning fit into the equation? And what are some of the other factors we should be thinking about? I'll start with the money. I've never taken a job for money in my life. And when I took the job working for Launch, I think I cut my pay by 60% or 70%. Yeah, I had upside because they were offering me stock, and I didn't have any stock, obviously, when I was working for Wilson Elser, but my guaranteed pay went down significantly. But my advice to folks is subject matter. Again, I'm a broken record here.

Starting point is 00:01:57 Follow your passion. Do what you're most passionate about. Just bringing this back to ESPN, our head of PR and I always talk about how the folks who are most successful at ESPN are the folks that are most passionate about sports. It's really hard to fake it. And if you get a job at ESPN and you're not a real sports fan, I guess you can get by, but it's hard. It's hard to advance.

Starting point is 00:02:23 It's hard to truly excel. And so that's a long way of saying that I think folks have the best chance of being successful by following their heart and doing what they're most passionate about. And if you can find a job that pays well and is connected to your passion area, fantastic. If you can't, and to my point earlier, and you end up taking a job to get started, that's okay too, but don't lose sight of the subject matter that you're most passionate about

Starting point is 00:02:57 and constantly focus on figuring out a way to get there. Again, that is what I did. My career has been meandering. That's an understatement. But the common denominator, the consistent thread there has been my focus on ultimately ending up in the sports industry. And I've been fortunate in that I've been able to get there. After Launchment Public, you briefly had a market value of more than $400 million, but things didn't go so great after that. On June 28, 2001, only 26 months after its IPO and 18 months after you started, Yahoo acquired Launch for only $12 million in cash. At the time, Yahoo had 192 million customers and Terry Semel, who had run Warner Brothers for 20 years, had taken

Starting point is 00:03:43 over as CEO only two months before. After the acquisition, you joined the business affairs group in Yahoo's media division. And a short time after that, the head of Yahoo Sports left and your boss asked you to run that group. At that point, you had never managed a profit and loss statement. And you went from managing around a dozen people to managing over a thousand people. You were at the right place at the right time. That was your big break and the reason why you initially stayed. You ran Yahoo Sports website for six years, which rose to fame largely from NBA insider Adrian Warnierowski. After six years, you were promoted to Yahoo Media, which encompassed this new sports and entertainment divisions. And were, among many other things, you led the $100 million acquisition of the college

Starting point is 00:04:26 sports site Rivals.com. In search of excellence, how important is it to be at the right place at the right time and get a big break? And what's your advice on how to get one? Is there luck involved in this? Or do we create our own luck? Obviously, it's both. I know it's cliche, but it's both.

Starting point is 00:04:43 A couple of things. You mentioned it before when you were describing launch.com. Yes, launch.com was Spotify, Pandora, we were just early. We were personalized radio, customized radio, music on demand, whether it's audio or video. The royalties that were required by the record labels at that time were so significant that it was impossible, literally impossible to make a profit. And so we were burning through a ton of cash and we had to make a very, very tough call. Do we go out and try to raise more money, which was tough at the time, or do we sell the company to Yahoo? And Yahoo did

Starting point is 00:05:46 make, forget about the financial side of it, the opportunity for Launch to take over the Yahoo Music vertical was incredibly exciting to many folks at Launch. So that is really why ultimately, I think, we did the deal. So if Launch had survived through that tough period, and if it still existed today, I can't imagine what the valuation of that company would be. I really can't. But again, timing is everything, and the timing was just so awful. We were way ahead of our time in the music industry. And as a result, we had to make a decision that we otherwise would not have made, or we weren't planning to make, I should say. So that's an example, Randy, of timing not working out well for me or for many of us. But the opposite end of that is what you described before in terms of my opportunity to run a business. So yes, when Launch was acquired by Yahoo, Dave and Bob decided to

Starting point is 00:06:56 leave Yahoo, but I stayed. And I stayed because I saw a path to Yahoo Sports. So again, this is a recurring theme here. I was aware of the fact that Yahoo Sports was an up-and-comer and investing heavily in their fantasy business, in their news reporting, breaking news, not just aggregating content from across the internet, but really trying to build out a unique voice. And so I saw an opportunity to maybe figure out a way to end up over there and follow my passion. And long story short, I was doing some deals on the music side and the guy who was running Yahoo Media took a liking to me. He thought I was doing a good job on these deals. And yes, right spot at the right time, when the person who was running Yahoo Sports left the company, at that moment, the folks above me

Starting point is 00:07:53 knew that I was really passionate about sports because I had been clear. That is where I wanted to end up. I didn't necessarily think that there was a chance they were going to ask me to run it, but they did. And they asked me to run it because I think they wanted a deal guy, a relationship guy in charge. But yes, it was a stretch assignment for me. And that's an understatement. I went from managing, I don't know, maybe five to 12 people. I can't remember how many lawyers I was managing or business affairs people I was managing. But I went from that to managing hundreds and hundreds of people, engineers, marketing, sales, business development. And so it was baptism by fire for me.

Starting point is 00:08:38 My advice is, first off, just be clear. So then when opportunities present themselves, you are top of mind. For example, with your managers, which is what I've done, I've been very clear with my managers on where I wanted to land, where I wanted to go next. And then, yes, as a part of that, there's a little bit of luck and timing. The opportunity, the jobs have to open up, have to present themselves. But if you've been clear in terms of where you want to go, and you've done a good job, you've worked hard, you've delivered for the company, for your managers, when those opportunities do present themselves, you'll be there and ready to go. Just as a little aside here, on a personal side,

Starting point is 00:09:20 being at the right place at the right time has not only been an important part of my career, it's been a huge part of my personal life. When nearly 10 years ago, I happened to check in with my friend Madison, who was lucky to have it had broken up with her boyfriend the day before. And I was the first person to know well before she told her friends and word had gotten out and knew that timing was everything. So I flew to New York the week after that to take her to dinner. We got engaged three months after that.

Starting point is 00:09:44 Now we have two beautiful kids almost 10 years later. So I think it also applies to your personal life as well. Randy, I think all the time about what my life would be like if I didn't go out to the West Hampton Bar and Grill the night that I met my wife. Thank goodness I went that night. Well, fast forward to 2010. You knew Sheryl Sandberg because she had been married to Dave Goldberg. Sheryl had joined Facebook as COO in March 2008 and had joined Disney's board of directors

Starting point is 00:10:12 the following year. And Sheryl suggested that you meet with Disney CEO Bob Iger about an opening to lead what was then called the Disney Interactive Media Group, which at the time was one of five major segments of the company. Bob knew who you were. Yahoo Sports competed against ESPN. He woke up every day trying to beat Disney. You were very happy at Yahoo, but when you met Bob, you immediately realized that he was someone you wanted to work for. He hired you, and over the next eight years, you were promoted many times. You started as co-president of Disney Interactive,

Starting point is 00:10:43 which included Disney.com. You later took over Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media. During these eight years, while you kept getting promoted, you often told Bob that you were interested in a role at ESPN. Then on December 18th, 2017, John Skipper, who was then the president

Starting point is 00:10:59 who had spent 27 years at Disney, resigned to seek treatment for substance addiction. At that point, you had the pleasure of working for Bob for eight years and he knew you very well. You and Bob had a high level conversation about ESPN when John left and then had many conversations over a three-month period to actually talk about it. You knew the company very well. You'd had the benefit of sitting in senior staff meetings for eight years with John and his predecessor, George Bodenheimer. You weren't at ESPN on a day-to-day basis. Instead, you had a good foundation and the luxury of understanding the successes and challenges for the company

Starting point is 00:11:33 from your time at Disney and previously at Yahoo Sports. So you're here, a lifelong sports fanatic and in a position to possibly become the CEO of ESPN, which leads us to one of my favorite topics, the importance of preparation. One of the main ingredients to where I got today is that I'm always the most prepared person in the room. If someone spends one hour preparing for a meeting, I'll spend at least five. To get my job at Sun America, I spent more than 40 hours for my first interview there. This isn't regular preparation. It's what I call extreme preparation. How important has extreme preparation been to your success? And as part of this, can you tell us about the three-hour hike with Jeannie and your dogs every Sunday,

Starting point is 00:12:16 rehearsing the interviews with her that you were going to have with Bob and different people at the company, the six interviews that you did have with Bob, the materials you presented to him, and whether you were of the mindset that you wanted to be or had to be better or more prepared than anybody else who was interviewing for the position. You and I have a lot in common, Randy. I know that there are many people better than me, many people smarter than me, but I don't want anyone to outwork me. And I feel like that's my advantage. I had been working for Bob Iger directly. He was my boss starting in 2010. I was very fortunate in that when I left Yahoo and joined Disney, I was immediately reporting to Bob. And so people spend years, decades working up the corporate ladder. Now, I had spent many years working up the ladder at Yahoo, but at Disney, I was fortunate

Starting point is 00:13:26 in that when I joined the company, I had a seat at the table, the leadership table. So I had an opportunity to get to know the rest of the leadership team, including the current CEO, Bob Chapek. I got to work very closely with him over the years and just really got to know and understand the company. And when John Skipper resigned end of 2017, I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't think I was the leading candidate. And that's because, again, every single year when Bob and I sat down for my annual review, 90% of the conversation would be ESPN. Oftentimes throughout the year, when we would get together, Bob and I would talk about ESPN and me somehow ending up at ESPN. And so when the opportunity presented itself, I said to myself, okay, here's another time

Starting point is 00:14:22 where because I've been clear about what I want to do, it's going to pay off. And it ultimately did, but it was a three or maybe even four months, actually three month process where I had, I don't know, five, six interviews specifically with Bob. I met with several members of the Disney board of directors. I met with several members of the Disney Board of Directors. I met with several people at corporate. It was a tough process. And I spent a lot of the time preparing with my wife. My wife is fantastic in terms of helping me present myself. Again, that's what she does for a living.

Starting point is 00:15:02 Although it's not presenting herself, it's presenting publicly, speaking publicly, crispness, making sure that you know what the message is when you walk in. And so my wife and I went on hikes every single weekend, yes, with our two dogs in Runyon Canyon on the Hollywood Hills. And we would go on several hour hikes and she would interview me. We would do mock interviews and she would drill me on various aspects of the sports industry, various aspects of ESPN. And I would use it as a rehearsal for my interviews with Bob and with others. And it was incredibly valuable to me. And as a part of that,

Starting point is 00:15:42 I put together my vision. I put together what I thought should be the core strategic business priorities for ESPN. And I presented them pretty thoroughly to Bob and others during the process. And then when I ultimately did get the job, my first town hall at ESPN, thousands of people. I didn't grow up at ESPN, as you know, and as we've talked about. Many people were like, are you nervous? This is a big moment, one chance to make a first impression. And I'll be honest with you, Randy, I was not nervous. And I was not nervous because I had spent so many months putting together my thoughts. And I was actually excited to speak to this large group of people and convey to them what I thought the vision and the

Starting point is 00:16:34 priorities were. And that was because of my over-preparation, just like you. Sometimes people will come into my office for a meeting and they'll just look at my website. And the first question is, what's my dog's name? If they don't know my dog's name is Karma, the meeting's pretty much over because it just means that they didn't even read my website. But what's your advice to people who really will think, why should I spend 10 hours or 20 preparing for a job interview when I may not even get the job, that there's 100 other people who are competing for that same job?

Starting point is 00:17:04 Or if you want to work at Goldman Sachs, there's 1,000 other people who want that job. That's why. It's fiercely competitive. And you have to outwork the next person. If you really want something, you can't miss any opportunity to impress. And there's no topic or no item that's too small, nothing that's too large. You can't, if you're going to err, err on the side of over-preparation, not under-preparation. Again, this goes back to our bar classes where we just studied for months, our bar prep courses where we studied for months. And it's kind of, you walk out of that bar exam frustrated because you're tested on 5% of what you learned. Well, it's no different with a job interview. You'd rather walk out of that job interview having gotten everything right and feeling like, okay,

Starting point is 00:17:56 maybe you could have cut out 50% of that prep time than walking out saying, damn, I wish I had prepped more. I missed a couple of things. That would be a shame. And so just to use the sports analogy, you got to sprint to first base. You got to be good at the easy things, right? If you can hit a 99 mile an hour fastball, you got to sprint to first base. That's the easy part. And so my advice to anyone who asks would be, just be good at the stuff that you control. And you control how much prep you put in to an interview. And if you over-prepare, what's the worst that's going to come out of that? Maybe you lost a few hours of watching the Game of Thrones prequel. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:18:44 But my advice is always to over prepare. You mentioned the bar exam. I'm a terrible test taker. I do well academically because of my work ethic. And I'm never the smartest person in the room, nor do I want to be the smartest person in the room. I think if you're the smartest person in the room, you're probably in the wrong room. But I was very nervous about the bar exam, just because I didn't do well on my boards for college or law school. But I did get into great schools because of my grades and some of the other things that I had done. But I studied like a maniac. In fact, I used to hide in the Northwestern Law Library in the stacks, where the guards

Starting point is 00:19:20 wouldn't find me. Eventually, I'd get kicked out every day and I had to find a new place. But when I went into the bar exam, I took it at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. And I remember looking at the woman next to me and she was a complete mess. She hadn't gone to a good law school, which who cares? It didn't mean she wasn't going to pass, but it was clear she hadn't prepared. She told me that. It even made me more nervous. But once I got going 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I think I nailed every question. I don't remember how many questions I got wrong, but I was never for a second nervous that I didn't pass. And again, another example of preparation, especially there I was petrified I wasn't going to pass and not be able to practice

Starting point is 00:20:01 law. By the way, I wanted to chime in there real quickly on the experience that I had. I felt really good when I was taking the exam also, but I remember walking out and hearing some folks talk about one of the essay questions. And I literally almost passed out because I completely got it wrong. They were talking about the direction that they went in and what they wrote. And I went in a completely opposite direction. And that was a brutal experience for me because I then spent, at the time, you probably remember, Randy, we had to wait months before we got the results.

Starting point is 00:20:44 Yeah. And I remember being certain. I did a 180. you probably remember, Randy, we had to wait months before we got the results. And I remember being certain, I did a 180. I walked out of the exam feeling great, felt great during the exam. When I pens down, pencils down, I felt great. Then one of, I don't even remember how many essays, but I felt like after I heard those folks talking, I got one of the essays completely wrong. I would get whatever, I would get zero out of however many on that. And I'm like, okay, I failed. So those next two or three months waiting for the results were agonizing. I went to Europe after the bar exam with five other guys, all who went to Harvard,

Starting point is 00:21:23 all Michigan friends. And this was the most annoying, anxiety-provoking thing. They went over every single multiple choice question. I mean, the memory was ridiculous, but I was sitting there thinking, why are we talking about this? And it was, no, that was A, that was C, that was D. Just was not a good thing to talk about. As we were going around on a URL pass, because we had no money, sleeping in couches on very loud trains and staying in youth hostels with 90 people in your room, we'd go to the beach and we're talking about the boards. It was kind of crazy. So the preparation worked on May 5th, 2018, three months after John Skipper left. You were named the

Starting point is 00:22:01 eighth president of ESPN and the co-chair of Disney Media Networks. And two and a half years later, on October 12, 2020, you were named chair of ESPN. On February 7th of this year, you signed a new three and a half year contract. So it looks like you're going to be there for a while. You have what you call four North Stars at ESPN. Four main priorities, direct-to-consumer, audience expansion, quality storytelling and programming, and innovation. And everything you do is connected back to these. You identify these during your job interviews with Bob. You're constantly discussing them with new CEO of Disney, Bob Chapek. You talk about them

Starting point is 00:22:36 in your weekly meetings, and you're personally evaluated on them. In the four and a half years since you took charge, you've done an excellent job on all of them. But the one I want to focus on, which I think relates to all of my listeners and viewers, is innovation. When I think about innovation in the sports world, the big ones that I think about are two developments that have changed the way how fans watch sports and are designed to give more access to players and coaches, which is something your viewers, especially your young viewers, want. Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli and putting microphones on baseball, football,

Starting point is 00:23:08 and basketball players. When I look forward to the future of what's coming to our everyday lives in the next 10 years, I think about two big ones, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which is one aspect of Web 3.0, which really has the potential of giving your viewers an incredible experience next to players and coaches. As you map out the next 10 years, do these figure into your future? And if not, can you share with us what does the next 10, 15, and 20 years look like in a search of excellence to either be successful or stay successful? How important is innovation? Thank you for calling out the Manning cast. We take a lot of pride in that. And we're just about to kick off season two here. So

Starting point is 00:23:52 should be pretty exciting. I have two teenagers. And one thing I can tell you, Randy, is they are very interested. They are much more interested in watching a game when they feel like we're giving them access to the players in real time, live. And so, yeah, on Sunday Night Baseball this year, we're having two-way live conversations with players in the field, which has been groundbreaking. And baseball loves it. The Players Association loves it. And most importantly, our fans love it.

Starting point is 00:24:23 And so you can expect to see more and more of that. In terms of what's next, the next-gen sports experience, that's how I spend half of my time right now, thinking about how ESPN can continue to lead in this new world. And obviously, we have ESPN Plus that's doing incredibly well for us. That's our direct to consumer platform. What's next for ESPN Plus beyond just live streaming? And so if you think about the holistic kind of Uber sports experience, obviously, sports betting will be more of a component of the live stream. The social aspect will be a bigger component of ESPN Plus and the ESPN app. Going back to my friends and to me growing up, we would celebrate, we would commiserate, well, should ESPN be providing the platform for that celebration?

Starting point is 00:25:24 My friends and I want to watch a Monday night football game together. We should be able to, within the ESPN environment, merchandise, looking at ways where we can incorporate the buy component into the ESPN sports streaming environment. And then, yeah, you mentioned virtual reality, augmented reality. We have a team at ESPN sports streaming environment. And then, yeah, you mentioned virtual reality, augmented reality. We have a team at ESPN dedicated to in that vein, in that capacity, what we're thinking about is, is there potentially an ESPN environment where you're, as a fan, navigating through it, and there's a component or there's a room where you can live stream, watch your live events, watch SportsCenter, watch First Take. There's another room where you can interact with like-minded fans. There's another room where you can potentially place a bet through

Starting point is 00:26:33 a third party. There's another room where you could potentially make a purchase. So it's a lot of the topics that you're hearing about when folks are talking about Metaverse. We're starting to think about that from an ESPN perspective and how we can create that next-gen sports experience. But last thing I'd say here is we don't want to be a solution looking for a problem. Whatever we deliver, we want to make sure is meeting a customer or fan need. And so as a result, we're not quite there yet in terms of what we're going to be investing in in that metaverse capacity. In general, in search of excellence to either be successful or stay successful, how important is innovation? It's one of our four priorities at ESPN, and I would say it's as important, if not more

Starting point is 00:27:28 important than any of them, because it's the common denominator. We talk about direct-to-consumer. We talk about audience expansion. Talk about quality storytelling and programming. Innovation cuts across all of them. And I don't think you can be successful in this new environment, not just sports environment, but new media environment without constantly innovating, investing in new platforms, not being, as I said earlier, not being afraid to fail. I had a colleague when I was

Starting point is 00:27:59 working at Disney Interactive, we were responsible for the games group as well at Disney. And he was responsible for what we called vertical games. We actually had engineers that were creating our own games. And when he would have a game that had a successful launch, he would have a party with beer. When we had a game that was a failure and we shut it down, he would have a celebration with champagne. And that was his way of saying to his folks, it's okay. We tried this, didn't work. We're going to learn from it. We're going to get better. And we're going to take all those learnings into our next initiative, our next game. And that next game is going to have a better chance of success because of this failure.

Starting point is 00:28:46 So again, incredibly important. You got to be fearless. You have to create a culture of innovation. And as a part of that, you have to have some appetite for failure. Let's talk about the elements of success. Derek Jeter has this saying, there's always going to be somebody better me, but no one should outwork me. I subscribe to that and think that work ethic is the single greatest determinant of our success. And along with extreme preparation, it's been one of the hallmarks of my career, as I know it has been to yours as well. As you mentioned, you have a sign outside your office with words you've received from one of your mentors, work hard and be nice to people.

Starting point is 00:29:23 When my son Charlie was seven years old, he wrote be nice on a little post-it note and taped it to my phone where it's been in my office for the last 12 years. Before I did my research on you, I'd never heard anybody specifically say or identify that being nice to people is an element of success or that people should focus on this as one of their goals. What are the other elements of success and where does being nice to people rank among them? I think being nice is really be respectful. It's hard in these jobs, as you know, Randy, it's hard to be nice all the time because usually when things hit my desk, it's because decisions

Starting point is 00:30:03 have to be made. And if a decision has to be made, it usually means that some people are going to be happy and some people are going to be unhappy with the call that you make. But it's not just what you do, it's how you do it. And so I try to do the toughest thing of my day first thing in the morning. And I've been pretty consistent with that. I actually got that from my father-in-law many, many years ago. But again, sitting down with someone, being direct with them, being authentic, even when you're giving them information that they don't want. And you know that going into these meetings. Again, it's a huge part of my job.

Starting point is 00:30:43 It's in part how you deliver the message. First off, being accessible, giving people an audience with you. We've talked about this. This has been a recurring theme. You've mentioned it a couple of times. I saw it with Dave and Bob over and over again. Being accessible, not having someone else deliver the bad news. When someone was late for a meeting with you, they came out and handled it themselves and apologized to you. That, in my perspective, is part of being nice or treating people with respect. And so I try as hard as I can to treat our employees, to treat our partners, even to treat our competitors with respect.

Starting point is 00:31:26 And I feel like ultimately this is a marathon, not a sprint. And what comes around goes around. And there are times where we have really hard days at ESPN and I'm looking for a friend. And I feel like because we're consistently focused on this culture of positivity, of belonging, of treating people with respect, when we do face hardship and have these challenging times, we can expect to be treated fairly and respectfully in return. My ex-wife used to work for Ron Meyer, who's one of the founders of CAA and who ran NBCUniversal forever. And she worked for Ron for almost five years. And she said, number one, I've never heard anyone ever say anything negative about Ron Meyer. And he's just one of the nicest guys. I've met him only a few times, but I know hundreds of people that know him and she knows him

Starting point is 00:32:17 obviously very, very well. And she said that when he had such a skill of being nice to people that when he fired people, that people almost thanked him, which is crazy to even think about. But it's something that I think should be more important in the workforce. Be nice and treat people nice. Because like you said, it is hard sometimes when you're in a position of responsibility or not. You do have to make calls. And like you said, some people are going to be happy and many people won't be. You just can't make 100% of the people happy all the time. So let's talk about courage, which is something we don't often hear about when we talk about the elements of success. I want to talk about fear, which is

Starting point is 00:33:06 sort of like the first cousin of courage and something we all experience many thousands of times in our lives. Can you tell us about the relationship between fear and courage and the night you were watching the live action version of Cinderella with your family and the conversation you had with your daughter Josie about the scene where the mother is dying. Yeah, have courage and be kind. She and I still talk about that all of the time and just goes back to work hard and be nice to people. Have courage and be kind. It's pretty simple. It's pretty straightforward and it resonated with me. These jobs are really challenging. They're demanding. Oftentimes, they're around the clock. I wake up in the morning and sometimes I look at my calendar and I say to myself,

Starting point is 00:33:53 okay, I got this. And then the day is never what I thought it would be. But I do wake up every single morning and I say to myself, I have to earn this. I'm pretty fortunate. I get to work in sports every day. I get to work with some really, really talented people. And so I have to earn this. And part of earning it is making courageous decisions and dealing with the ramifications. We've just bringing this all together here, Randy, in the spirit of innovation, we've tried many things that have not worked. And we're ESPN. And people don't have a lot of tolerance for ESPN getting things wrong. We're the place of record.

Starting point is 00:34:34 When something happens in the sports industry, people turn to us. And we need to get it right. And when we try new things and present new ways of broadcasting a game, for example, if folks don't like it, we're going to hear about it. So making these decisions, trying new things, innovating, it takes courage. But again, if you're constantly treating people without fail, if you're treating people with respect, if you're being kind, I ultimately believe that you're going to have allies when things do not go well. When you make these decisions, when you take chances and they don't go your way, you're

Starting point is 00:35:17 going to survive and be able to move on, learn from it, and move on because you've built up all of that equity by treating people well. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not naive. If you fail, fail, fail, fail, they're going to replace you and they're going to find someone else to do the job. So you got to get things right a lot of the time. But if you make courageous decisions, informed but courageous decisions, and you have the right North Star, which is treating people respectfully, ultimately things are going to work out. Let's talk about pickleball, which is the fastest growing sport in the United States. There are 4.8

Starting point is 00:35:55 million pickleball players in the United States, a number that has grown 39.3% over the last two years, which compares very favorably to the 21.64 million tennis players in the US. Where is pickleball going to be five years from now? And will we see pickleball tournaments on ESPN? I think I've read that it's the fastest growing sport in America. I'm getting a lot of calls on pickleball from folks outside of ESPN, our programming team, when I say programming team, the team that's responsible for both acquiring rights to live events and then programming them on our networks and on our platforms, including digital, that team is engaged on Pickleball. They're looking at it real time right now. I'd be surprised if ESPN was not in the pickleball business at some point in the near future.

Starting point is 00:36:50 Again, growing sport, great momentum. ESPN has the place of record. People are going to expect ESPN. We serve sports fans anytime, anywhere. And that includes a pickleball fan is a sports fan. So we have a responsibility here to pay attention to what our fans are craving and deliver it for them. I highly recommend you get involved now because the sport's blowing up. I know there's two rival leagues and they're fighting against each other, but the rights would be very, very

Starting point is 00:37:24 cheap. I'm sure they'd be happy to have a long-term deal. I think the most successful pickleball players today are making $100,000 and that's with sponsorships. So every single person I talk to who's played the sport, it becomes our new favorite sport. And the interesting thing about pickleball is you don't have to be a great athlete to play. The game is played at the net. It's strategic. And sure, if you play really, really well, you're hitting the ball very fast. But I don't know anyone that's played who doesn't love it. In fact, Jimmy Dolan was dating one of my wife's best friends. And during the All-Star game, basketball game a few years ago, he happened

Starting point is 00:38:05 to come over and he had never played before. He has bad knees, but he loved it. And I hear he's playing a little bit, even though he's not the best athlete, not quite sure. That was really fun for me, by the way, because as a sports craze fan as well, it was very interesting for me to see, talk to him about the teams he owned and the state of the league. But I'm inviting you over to our house. We built specifically a pickleball court. We're not very good and we don't play as much as we should. But if you want to play, you have an open invitation. We can follow up on that after. But I promise you, you'll be a convert after you play for the first time. Let's talk about work-life balance. You're running a massive company that has 4,000 employees. It's earned a billion dollars of revenue. It's valued somewhere between

Starting point is 00:38:48 $25 and $50 billion. You have two kids, Josie and Sean, and your wife, Jeannie, is a very successful actress whose latest movie was playing Val Kilmer's wife in Top Gun Maverick, which has grossed more than $1.3 billion and is the ninth most successful movie in history. You get hundreds of emails a day, unlike me. You live by the unread email icon and respond to everything. And you also read media and tech newsletters every night. In search of excellence, what is the right work-life balance? I really do prioritize my time with my family. I have two teenagers, and yes, I have a wife who works.

Starting point is 00:39:23 And so it's really important to me that when I'm available, I'm available and I'm there. I was playing golf twice a week before my oldest was born. He's now 19 years old. I have not hit a golf ball in 19 years because I made the decision that I'm working so hard. When I'm not working, I need to be present, available. I can't be on a golf course for five or six hours. And I made the decision 19 years ago that when my youngest was in college, I would pick the game up again. I miss it, but I'm so happy I did that because it was a big part of my life. And I've spent all of that time that I otherwise would have on a golf course with my family. That's just one example. But what I focus on, Randy, is working really hard, being completely invested and present when I'm at work. And then when I'm home and not working with my family, I try to minimize the distractions. You can't eliminate

Starting point is 00:40:27 the distractions. You just can't in my job. But I try to really minimize them and not look like when we sit down at the dinner table, I'll turn my iPhone for a half hour on do not disturb. So I don't even feel the vibration. That's just one little example. do realize I realized years ago that sometimes when I was present with my wife and children and I would glance down at my phone I would see them see me do that like they noticed and those were those are wake-up calls for me that, oh, yeah, I don't want my children in 10 years to think back on this time and the image in their heads to be me looking at my phone. I just don't want that. And so that doesn't mean that I'm working less. I'm busting my butt at work, but when I'm there with my family, it's family time. And so we convey this message to our employees regularly at ESPN. Again, at town halls, team meetings, over on our company website, our intranet, we're very clear that we expect folks to take their time, to take their vacations, and do the best they can to disconnect because it's important. I mean,

Starting point is 00:41:46 mental health is incredibly important. And I'm so pleased with the fact that athletes are now speaking very publicly. Coaches are speaking very publicly about mental health and their own personal challenges with mental health. I think that's incredibly healthy and it enables and helps children, younger people feel like they're not alone. So we try to get behind that and amplify those messages coming from athletes as much as we possibly can. But yes, as an enterprise and as an individual, as a human being, we try to communicate back

Starting point is 00:42:21 to our employees the importance of striking that balance. Do you have any last advice for those listening today? Do what you can to give back. Try to take time to pay it forward, to contribute back to society. If you don't have time to sit on boards or you don't have the resources to contribute financially, try to make time to contribute however you possibly can, whether that's your time in connection with a charity that you're passionate about, whether that's, as we discussed before, mentoring, helping others, taking your learnings and sharing them with others. That's my hope for my children, that they dedicate a significant... And Randy,

Starting point is 00:43:03 I know that I'm preaching to the choir here. I know your background and I know how active you are in terms of philanthropy and giving back and paying it forward. And that's what I could hope for from my children, that they dedicate a significant percentage of their time to giving back to society. J.B., you've been somebody I've admired for a very long time. You brought incredibly joy to hundreds of millions of people through your work at ESPN, and you set a tremendous example to others with your humility and dedication to your community. I'm very grateful for your time today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Starting point is 00:43:38 Randy, let me just say I am blown away by how prepared you were for this interview. I've done many of these. I've never been interviewed by someone who shows up so prepared. And it's wonderful. As we've discussed, it's something that I pride myself in over preparation. And the level of detail, the level of preparation is just incredible. And I definitely appreciate it. I think it really helped our conversation. So thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you.

In Search Of Excellence - Jimmy Pitaro: How to Prepare for Anything and Crush Your Next Big Opportunity | E31

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