Morning Brew Daily - How WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is Seizing Soaring Momentum

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Episode 359: WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert joins Morning Brew Daily and explains how the league is ready to capitalize on their major momentum. Commissioner Engelbert discusses player pay and how they are working to increase league paychecks through sponsorship deals and media rights contracts. Plus she gets into how this year's rookie class including Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have brought a massive amount of media attention and how front offices and investors are trying to parlay that into popularity for years to come. Finally Cathy discusses her previous role at Deloitte as CEO and even what corporate lingo she things is the cringiest. Expand your world with Meta AI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. Get your Morning Brew Daily Mug HERE: https://shop.morningbrew.com/products/morning-brew-daily-mug?utm_medium=youtube&utm_source=mbd&utm_campaign=mug Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today, emerge from your hot dog coma with a special interview episode from MBD. You'll hear from the head of one of the fastest growing businesses in the world, WMBA Commissioner Kathy Engelbert. It's Friday, July 5th. Let's ride. The WMBA is on a roll. Now in its 28 season, the league reported its highest attended opening month since the 90s and had its most watched start of the season across TV networks. It's clear that Caitlin Clark and the rest of a star-studded rookie class is drawing a lot more eyeballs to the WMBA. So how do you capitalize on that momentum?

There's no better person to ask than the commissioner self, Kathy Engelbert. She joined Morning Brew Daily to talk the Caitlin Clark effect, how she plans on fixing low pay for players, and career advice from her 33 years at Deloitte, where she rose to the ranks to become CEO. It was a fascinating conversation about a business that finds itself at the center of so many emerging trends and how a leader thinks about navigating them, you're going to enjoy the heck out of it. But first, a word from our sponsor, meta AI. No one likes a know-it-all, but sometimes a know-it-all can be helpful. Yeah, we go to trivia every Wednesday, and it would be very helpful to have a know-it-all around, actually. You kind of are my know-it-all, Neil, but when you're not around, I use

meta-a-i. Even though we spend a lot of time together, I spend more time with my phone and accessing meta-a-i is as easy as opening Instagram or WhatsApp and just asking it a question. But it's not just an internet search. MetaAI can also generate images from text if you want to come up with a logo for your trivia team. But don't use MetaI to answer anything during trivia. That's in poor form. Find a Neal instead. It's a better artist than me anyways. Expand your world with Meta AI now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on a... April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th,

and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Kathy, thank you so much for jumping on Morning Brew Daily. It's great to have you. Great to be here. So the league has had this incredible amount of momentum right now,

setting viewership, attendance records left and right. We liken you to Zoom in 2020. And I'm sure the number one thing on your mind right now is how do we capitalize this? How do we keep it going? So strategically, how do you approach seizing this momentum and turning it into sustainable growth for the league for years and then decades to come? Yeah, actually, you just hit one of my talking points around. We're trying to set this league up for decades, not just for this moment. And quite frankly, we've been preparing for this since I came into the league and we raised capital in February of 22, first women's sports property to do that. And I just felt this big responsibility as the longest tenured women's professional sports league

in the U.S. by double any other now in our 28th season to really capitalize on this. We're really hitting the confluence of all these positive elements, generational players coming into the league with big brands. And that's been the positive of the NIL in college. is a lot of followership coming from college into the WMBA. And we're so blessed it's not just this year's amazing rookie class, but the next three to four years that we can see are amazing. And they're going to have amazing brands coming in. So to continue to look at a decade out is exactly how we're looking at it.

But women's sports has been underinvested in for too long. I think we're going to capitalize on that. We're seeing that in expansion. We're seeing that in all the calls we're getting for private equity and individuals who want to either own a WMBA team or part of the WMBA. So it's kind of an interesting time to capitalize on all this momentum. But I will tell you, you know, having a long career in business before I got here, 33 years, before I got here, sports is literally not that different. It's a big business and we have to invest in it.

We have to market it and marketing. I'm a big studier of history. You know, is this, you know, Angel, Caitlin moment, Arbor magic moment. and I watched the NBA draft the other night. And it's just like as you see these next generation of talent coming into the league, it's great to see all the new fans we're bringing in to the league. And they're realizing like the level of play is really good. And they're staying.

So that's a good part of it. Yeah, right now, I mean, it seems like college basketball is maybe bigger than the WMBA in terms of viewership and attendance and interest around it. So what are you looking at college basketball doing? something right that you would love to port over to the WMBA? Well, you need three things in sports, in my view, to get people to watch, especially women's sports. You need household names.

You need rivalries and you need games of consequence. And what you see during that three-week March madness and why those numbers are so big, one great level of play, rivalries, household names. In the women's game, they're not one and done. They're staying for four years. So, therefore, people get to know them. And also, I mean, huge games of consequence. survive in advance, right, in the March Madness tournament.

So every game is a game of consequence. And we play a 40-game season. Obviously, we're not going to pull that number, but we've been pulling incredible numbers. I mean, to be $3 million over peeped last Sunday for a fever, Chicago game shows the beauty of a rivalry that spawned out of college into the WMBA and we're able to sustain that, you know, larger than any regular season, NHL or MLS game, by the way,

for a regular season game. So although that was just a regular season game, we're proving that rivalries and marketing around those rivalries will get people to watch and the human interest stories. And what these players represent on and off the court is all playing well. And kind of the WMBA, it's been interesting, sits at this intersection of sports, culture, society. There are women in the workforce, just like I am. But people don't view professional athletes that way. And so we're just a microcosm of broader society from that perspective. Yeah, that is a great segue into my next question because for the first time this season, the WMBA is a part of the national conversation.

I mean, you turn on ESPN. Stephen A. Smith is talking about the league. You open the newspaper. It's on the front page. But often, like you said, the chatter's not really been about basketball and it's more focused on topics like race and gender with the WMBA being used as this like political weapon. Do you worry about these controversies overshadowing the product on the court? Yeah, I don't because we know, you know, when I came in the league, we set a strategy to be player first, stakeholder success. That includes our owners, the media, everybody around us, and then fan engagement, make it easier to be a fan.

So I don't worry because that sits on the foundation called the game, and the game has never been better. I mean, we only play 40 minutes, not 48 with a 24-second shot clock. That's 17% less. And our player are putting double-doubles and sometimes triple doubles up every night and putting 90 points up. sometimes 100. So, I mean, in 40 minutes, that's pretty Herculean. So I'm not worried about the quality of the game. It speaks for itself. I think these players do our role models in the communities in which they live and work. I mean, we just got off our Commissioner Cup championship where we made donations to civic engagement, especially in an election year. That was important to our players. And I think they understand that they represent these role models in their communities. And they do a ton of work with youth basketball. Because the one thing we know, and I certainly know, because I was a Title IX kid growing up, when Title IX was first passed is that, you know, if you play, organize youth sports at least, you know, through middle school and to high school, you're going to be a better leader in the future.

And we need more women leaders. So I think our players are happy to take on that off-the-court stances that they take, sometimes edgy. But, you know, women's sports has arrived. And as one of my owner calls us a growth stock. And I love that from my prior life. I love being called a growth stock. And, you know, we're no longer looked at.

I think when I came in the league, some people were like, are you guys a charity? No, no, no, we're at gross stock now. We're a legitimate sports media and entertainment property. So you've already mentioned Magic and Bird a little bit. To what extent do you look at the NBA as a role model for growth and how close would your ideal relationship be with the NBA? In other words, are you trying to be the women's version of the NBA

or are you trying to build this more distinct version of yourself as a distinct league? Yeah, we're definitely, we benefit hugely from having that big brother. it was the NBA and David Stern and Adam Silver who launched the WMBA off the 96 Olympic Gold Medal for their women, which, by the way, this year in Paris, that streak has continued. They're going for their eighth consecutive gold medal, the USA Women's Senior National Team. So we're hugely benefit by being associated. And there's a reason why we're the longest tenured women's professional sports league in the country and is because of our big brother NBA.

So I do study and admire what they're doing. They've done, I think, a beautiful job, globalizing their. game, doing their global games. We're trying to globalize our game. We have a lot of upside the U.S. We have a lot of fans outside the U.S. Our player brands need to grow. They need to be global, not just national, because even when you look at our corporate media partners, they're global companies. So they want a league with a global platform. So that's one thing where certainly I'd like to be a fast follower of the NBA and really just their fans. I mean, there's people who watch the NBA or college basketball who may.

may not yet be fans of the WMBA. And we did a whole digital transformation to try to figure out who are our fans, what's the demographic, how do we bring new fans into the funnel and keep them? Are our fans, today we have a rabid and avid fan base, but we need fans who are there for big sports moments and I think we're now in the conversation,

as you mentioned, in big sports moments like the NBA finals, like other things. And then we have a group of, of casual sports fans or lifestyle viewers, which is why we pull such big numbers on the ABCs and CBSes, because our fans are watching those networks and we need to continue to drive fandom. So really using the benefit of being associated with the NBA, but not wanting to be exactly them. Like we did the Commissioners Cup our in-season tournament. Four years ago we launched that as an opportunity to say, let's give the first half of the season a little more relevance

and let's do an in-season tournament and then the NBA did that. but there's plenty of things that we benefit from their model. And they're really obviously successful in the cultural conversation. And so are we. I want to go back to the springtime a little bit. And the number that was kind of dominating conversation around the league was $76,535, which was Caitlin Clark's starting salary in the league. And fans of the league know that a lot of players actually go overseas in the offseason

to supplement their income. how do you get to a world where that doesn't have to happen, where your best players don't have to go overseas to kind of augment their salary that they're getting within the league itself? Yeah, so I think, first of all, we want our players to do what they want in the offseason. We're not going to tell them, do this or don't do this. But we're providing more and more opportunities,

and I think all the things we've done with corporate partners, lead marketing deals, putting players in front of corporate partners who then endorse them and give them things to do, in the offseason as well as allowing them to train. Because the one thing I learned about the players, they want to continue to train and get better in the off season. And some of our players, if you think, the 10, 11, 12 player on a team, they don't get a ton of playing time during the WMBA season. Our season's only five months or so. So they need to go play somewhere in the off season to get better to make a roster the next year, especially with all this rookie talent

coming in over the next few years. So we're not going to tell them what to do and what not to do. As far as salaries, this is because this ecosystem is underinvested in women's sports for so long. We're changing that dynamic. When I came in the league, the first stat I heard was less than 1% of all corporate partnership spend on sports was women's sports. And less than 5% of all media coverage covered women's sports. And so those are pretty daunting statistics and being a finance person. I asked, what's the denominator in those? Like how much would it be to change this a couple hundred basis points?

The denominators are huge, but we're literally changing it in a much shorter time than I thought, because we raised that capital, deployed that. So we're going to be able to provide better salaries. We're already providing a half million dollar price pool for the Commissioners Cup. We're spending well over a million dollars on league marketing agreements to pay players in the offseason to stay here in the U.S. And continue to market their team in league. Teams are investing. So we're providing more opportunities rather than.

than they're just their base salary. And I think you'll see as we're negotiating our next round of media rights and we're talking to corporate partners, given all this momentum, that we'll be able to provide much higher even salaries in the next collective bargaining agreement, which will come pretty quickly here. We'll start negotiating that next year in advance of the 2026 season. So a lot to unpack there, I know, but, you know, we're going to do something historic here in the next year or two with our players and provide them more opportunities for more wage earning. But having said that, I think some of these top players coming out of college are getting huge endorsement opportunities because I say a lot of people who aren't

familiar with NIL say, well, NIL goes away after college. No, no, no. Look at Alia Boston. Look at Caitlin Clark. Angel Reese. Camilla Cardosa. They have more opportunities for what we call the pros endorsements with partners and with big brands like Nike, like gatorie, State Farm, Mercedes, all the partners that are stepping up to support women athletes and especially the diverse women athletes of the WMBA. That wasn't happening, guys, five years ago. It just wasn't. And now marketing, marketing, marketing of these players is yielding a lot of returns.

I mean, if you watch any sports over the last month or two, there wasn't a commercial break that probably didn't have a WMBA player in it in an ad spot for a brand, which which is a great sign and signal for the future that the players will have a lot more wage-earning opportunities in addition to their WMBA salaries. And they don't get that opportunity without playing professionally post-college. So I'm proud of what we're accomplishing, but we have a lot more work to do. And we're going to be sending these players up for decades. Toby, I haven't watched any sports for the past two months.

I've seen those. Just kidding. I've watched literally five hours of sports every single day. But going back to that media rights deal. So currently, you are getting paid $60 million annually and it expires next year. Obviously, these are very high-stakes negotiations. It's the league's number one revenue driver is getting on TV. Do you have a dollar target in mind for the next round of deals?

Yeah, we have a range, of course, but, you know, our media rights deal is we've been working on this not just because now our rights deal, current rights deals are up in 2025. We've been working on this for three years since coming off the pandemic and what I call our existential season called 2020, where we, you know, we're able to just survive and now we're getting into our thrive mode. But yeah, so we've got a range. Obviously, this year is really helping the future players coming into this league from college, like a juju, Watkins, a Kiki Rice, Hannah Delgo, Paige Beckers. Those are all playing into kind of a view that we're pitching around the next decade plus of generational great players in addition to the Asia Wilson's

and Brianna Stewart's and Melissa Thomas, who are in mid-career level. And then, you know, obviously we've had some great players retire with Sylvie and Sue. And then Diana, obviously, still playing at the top of her game. So I think we're very attractive to a lot of media partners. And, I mean, the one thing I did not understand when I came in is why even our old viewership, let alone our exponential new viewership, you know, we're averaging over a million viewers for regular season games on all four of our big networks, ABC, CBS, ESPN, and ESPN, too. That's pretty Herculean.

And that's well in excess of other major men sports leagues who are looking at rates fees 10 to 15 times ours. We need to fix that. We have a tremendous opportunity to change the whole dynamic here, and especially as we bring new fans, expand the league, more teams, being in more markets. I can't tell you how important it is to have announced expansion in both the Bay Area and Toronto because the more markets you're in, the more fandom you have and the more viewers you get and the more merch you sell. And so it's all this economic model.

So for, you know, obviously your listeners, I mean, this is going to be a textbook business case of taking a small business, growing it, and ultimately doing things well in advance of the big revenue drivers like media markets and corporate partnerships. And the other thing is, you guys know, the media landscape's changing so rapidly. Obviously, you know, even when we put out, like, the most viewed game ever on ESPN, well, think about 10 years ago how many people were using TVs and didn't cut the cord. And a lot of times our numbers don't include the streaming component of a game. And so we're literally on the cusp of something big here.

So, you know, and hopefully we'll change the dynamic of this undervaluation in this next media rights deal. Speaking of attention and kind of changing media dynamics, a lot of what's driving attention among younger people are these TikTok edits of Caitlin Clark, of Angel Reese, of Kate Martin. They are all over my for you page. I know that these edits are usually set to music. There's usually some sort of hype aspect to it. Have you seen these? Do you know how much that they are dominating kind of youth culture, especially on TikTok? Are you on TikTok? Yeah. So I have two kids. So in their 20s and I kind of live vicariously through the way they consume their content. And it's actually only a sample too, but it's really instructive to a couple of years ago, you know, my son might be, you know, on his laptop doing work. You know, he's in school then. And I'm watching a game on linear TV.

And he's watching just a clip of what an angel Reese or Caitlin Clark will do. And I'm watching the whole game and he's seeing a highlight and he's engaging that way. So one of the things we did three years ago is we took some of that. capital and did a digital transformation because I'm like if our dot com and our social pages aren't on you know producing great content that the younger generation is going to want to consume and showing the great play on the court in a six second sound bite or whatever it is we're going to be left behind because when I came in our digital footprint was not impressive and now we I'm so glad it was a good it was a great allocation of capital to do that digital.

transformation, because now, as you say, this younger generation, and we're seeing in our fan demographic, when we're seeing huge increase in our fans viewing, watching, attending, it's a lot of younger fans. And that's what we want, because they're the next generation of fans that our corporate partners and our media partners are interested in tapping into as a consumer, because they're going to be the next wage earners when they get into the workforce. So, yes, we're very cognizant of that. We've hired a lot of young people. The other thing, raising that capital allowed us to do. I said, it's great to have financial capital, but you have to hire human capital to grow a business. So we've been able to hire a lot of young people who are

on the pulse of exactly what you're talking about. And yes, I am on TikTok, but, you know, I'm primarily Instagram. I'm on Kate Martin TikTok. I don't know when did it happen. I must have liked the video, but I see so much Kate Martin content. So it's a great side of TikTok to be on, though. Well, what a great story. Kate Martin, not on the draft board originally, comes to the draft to support Caitlin Clark. And they gets drafted number 15 by the back-to-back champions. Aces makes the team and now is getting real playing time. So it's a great story. We'll be back with Kathy right after this. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot.

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Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. You must talk shop with other sports commissioners a lot. What topic do you find yourself discussing the most with them? Like what is the common theme that you're all dealing with across sports that has emerged recently?

Yeah, media disruption, games of consequence when you have, you know, if you talk to baseball, 162 game season. You know, obviously my counterpart, Adams, 82 game season. How do you give the front end of your season significance? Obviously, NBA launched the NBA Cup last year. We have our commissioners cup. You know, so things like that.

And but it's mostly about the media landscape and how it's changing and how, you know, live sports is actually one of the great remaining properties for linear TV as well as, obviously, streaming. You see Netflix now in the live. sports, obviously Amazon in a big way, Apple too. So as you look at, I'm so fascinated. We have this one slide that on the left side has traditional media companies, their market cap, the cash on hand,

and then kind of the new media, the fangs, you know, Facebook's, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, and their market cap and their cash on hand. And this is more the way I process it, just the transition. And then now all the traditional media companies having their own streaming platforms like Peacock and Paramount Plus and how that's a subscription model. And that's why it's great to be associated with the NBA because we with the NBA can provide almost year-round live content because we're made October. They're October to June, well, but April for the regular season.

So we can provide year-round live content to any linear TV with a streaming platform and any streamer only like an Amazon. So those are the types of things. It's really just the disruption in sports, but also the fact that live sports is really, still driving ton of viewership for brands and for media companies. Is there a commissioner group chat? We're very curious.

Are you guys texting each other? Who has the cringiest emojis in the commissioner group chat? Yeah, no, we do get together from time to time. Certainly during the pandemic, I mean, that's why it was great when I became the first commissioner of the WMBA because that role wasn't a commissioner before. So I got a seat at the table during the pandemic as we talked with through obviously very tough issues as we were facing, you know, obviously being out of the sports landscape, which wouldn't have been good for a small property like WMBA at the time. So yeah, from time to time,

we get together on, you know, social issues, on business issues. But I'm happy to have the seat at that table. Say you could buy a team in any other league right now other than the WMBA. What would you pick? Where are you seeing is potentially the best investment right now in the broader sporting landscape? Well, you know, everybody's talking about women's sports. So there was just this thing over in Khan that you may know about this little thing. I see this big thing where, you know, what was talked about, what was reported back to me, two big issues or two big topics.

AI and women's sports. Those were the two big issues around, you know, around just what's going on in the landscape. So I would definitely invest in anything where we thought generative AI was going to change either the game presentation was technology. I mean, my prior life, so I'm a little biased here, my prior life of 33 years growing businesses, technology-driven, consulting businesses and whatnot. So I'm a big believer in anything that's driven by technology and that you can scale

because you have to be able to scale the technology or it's just not going to work. You know, it's not going to be successful and it's going to fold. So I would invest in sports properties that are the underlying investments are technologically. Let's talk finally about marketing. One of your most unique branding assets, in my opinion, is the striped ball. Have you thought about leaning into the ball as more core to your visual identity? It's pretty iconic. Yeah, it's a great question.

So we just did something, you know, kind of edgy for our Commissioner Cup championship. We changed the striped ball, but we changed it to black and white instead of orange and white. You see, behind me there's a green and white, but that was Mountain Dew as part of our All-Star Game. one year. That was the money ball in our three-point competition. But, you know, we changed the ball for our Commissioner Cup series, so which was two weeks, five games each team. And then we just culminated in the Commissioner Cup championship to black and white with a rose gold lining because the Commissioner Cup trophy is rose gold, a little more part of a women's sports league. So, yeah, we probably do need to lean into that more. Wilson's been an amazing partner

since they came in with innovating around the ball. The players love the ball. And yeah, it is pretty iconic. Although when I came into the league, there were a lot of people who said, you should change it to a traditional basketball. No, I don't listen. Right, then you should change it to all white.

And we actually tested an all white ball, and it tested not well on broadcast, especially when you had fans in the arena in white or a white out. You know, then you couldn't even see the ball on broadcast. So we test some things back and forth, but I think it is iconic. and I think we call it the alternating panels is a sign that you're watching a women's basketball game at the hind level. It just looks great going through the air to turning end over end.

Let's pivot a little bit to your career. Before the WMBA, you were at Deloitte. You worked your way up over 33 years to become CEO of Deloitte. What did you learn in the consulting world that has helped you as your new job as a sports commissioner? Well, there's so many stories I could tell that we probably don't have time for today that I've I was so blessed to have that business career. Because even though I was there 33 years, I didn't do the same thing. I worked in clients in different industries.

I actually was a financial instrument valuation expert while I was at Deloitte, working with derivatives and hedging and securitization. So it was so great to have a broad learning platform. And then I worked in the pharmaceutical industry. And, you know, I had the chance to become the first female CEO in the history of a big four accounting and consulting firm. And that was, you know, another career for me for my term there. And then really just getting to learn all of our businesses, tax audit consulting and our advisory business. So I'm just so blessed because then what I learned, scenario planning. And what do we do six months into my job?

What do we hit? The pandemic. And then a racial crisis with George Floyd. So like scenario, scenario, scenario planning, how to grow a business, how to raise capital, how to deploy capital. I wasn't a marketing person. I was an audit partner, and then I did work in our consulting group for five years. But, you know, marketing and a consumer brand, so it's a B2B company coming over to a B2C company, I thought it was going to be really different. But what I learned is, again, sports is big business, big business about relationships. And if you can build relationships with corporate partners, with media partners, the drivers of your revenue, the drivers of an economic model that we're building here, you can be successful. So I just feel blessed to have had all of the opportunities I had and all the

capabilities I was able to build at Deloitte. And that's one thing I tell young people. I talk at a lot of universities, I talk to a lot of young people early in their career. I always say, raise your hand and do different things. Don't get complacent in one job. I essentially every four to five years, did something different. After, you know, five years, I went to what's called the National Office and did research and that's where I became a derivative expert which gave me a niche which actually made me a valuable asset so you have to build your capabilities and I tell a lot of young people it's really important to do that early in your career not in the first two years you got you got the learning curve and everything but after four or five years you should be raising your hand to your boss or your

manager and say I want to do something a little different I mean I literally raised my hand after five years and say I want to do something different and and people weren't doing that back then in the early 90s. And then we hit the, you know, the Enron crisis, which affected my profession. Then the financial crisis, which affected. And so you go through these real big challenges. And I always say in a crisis, your weaknesses are all amplified, but it's also a time to fix them. So that's another thing that I tell young people is crisis aren't necessarily bad.

You'll fail, but fail fast move on. And you'll be talking about the decisions you make in that crisis. for decades. Yeah, I mean, 33 years is a long time to spend with a single company. I mean, the Gen Z mind cannot comprehend that. So for everyone had a job weighing the question of, you know, should I stay here? Maybe the grass is greener somewhere else. Based on your experience, how should they evaluate that decision?

I mean, what I hear, Deloitte was such a big company that you could move from department to department and get new experiences and grow within the organization. Yeah, and again, whether you're with a small company, medium size or large. company. I've seen different models for different people. Obviously, if you're a smaller companies, it may not be as much mobility across business lines segments. Geographic. I mean, we had a lot of people who went to do overseas assignments in Hong Kong or Singapore or London or, you know, Switzerland, wherever. And those were huge opportunities. But in a global world, certainly that's something to look at. But I think every leader is looking for young people

to step up with ideas, with innovation, to feel entrepreneurial, even when you're, in a big company like Deloitte to feel entrepreneurial. It was important culture to set. And, you know, I always say a CEO's job is really three things. Strategy, culture, and allocation capital. And, you know, so if young people think about how they can feed into one of those three pillars for their leader, and, you know, I think they're going to have a lot more job satisfaction and want to stay longer. I do think the resilience we're teaching our young people to stay.

I mean, you even see it in college with the transfer portal. Okay, one year I go somewhere else. I still think in the working world, in the job world, people should stay a little longer than these Gen Zs want to stay. And I see it in my kids certainly, although my daughter's now five years into her career with a big pharma company, but she's now done three different jobs there because I'm constantly telling her, go to your boss. Say, I want to do something different if you're not, if you're kind of getting into a rut with your current. And the other thing is, never leave a company because you don't like one person in the company. You know, you're always going to run into a boss or a manager or peer that maybe you don't get along with.

But, you know, get some good mentorship, move on and don't lead just because of one person. Yeah, well, Toby left morning brew for a little bit, but he came running back. I came right back because I liked one person within the company. Final question here. Kathy, we could sit here and talk about your consulting career. You've lived so many lives, but we have to wrap it up here. So both the sports world and the consulting world are two of the more buzzer. word heavy industries, but in your opinion, which one has the worst jargon? You've seen it all,

I'm sure. Yeah, I think the consulting world definitely has more jargon. I mean, even I've been gone almost five years now in this job, and even when I talked to my delayed colleagues, they've got new acronyms and new things and new passwords. And obviously with, you know, when I was there, it was cognitive. It wasn't called AI. You know, we invested heavily in cloud, AR, VR, things that, you know, people hadn't really figured out how to make money on and now they are. And so obviously the half-life of skills changes, I think every two and a half years I read now instead of every five years from when I was in my career there. But yeah, definitely consulting has more jargon.

But sports is a very close second. There's no doubt about it. I mean, the corporate world uses sports metaphorers all the time. We're on the 10-yard line. We're on the five-yard line. Yeah. So they work in Ham. No, you've done it all.

Well, Kathy, thanks so much for joining us. Can't wait to follow the league's growth in the coming years. You can bet Neil and I in the entire Morning Bree Daily audience will be tuning in. Connecticut Sun. He's a Connecticut fan for life. But yeah, thank you so much for joining us, and I can't wait for everyone to hear this interview. Thank you, Toby and Neil. Really appreciate being here and watch, attend, and rep and bye.

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