On with Kara Swisher - Sheila Johnson Talks BET, Entrepreneurship and Why She Doesn’t Love Being Called “America’s First Black Female Billionaire”

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Sheila Johnson is best known for co-founding BET, a network she launched with her ex-husband, Bob Johnson, and which they eventually sold to Viacom for billions. She’s since built a hospitality brand, been an active philanthropist and is an owner or partner in three professional sports teams. But many of those achievements came at great cost, as Sheila writes in her new memoir, “Walk Through Fire: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Triumph.” We discuss how she navigated her success and independence in a time where “women were defined by their husbands.” We also talk about the future of BET and the role of identity-driven programming in American media.  Questions or comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on social media. We’re on Instagram/Threads as @karaswisher and @nayeemaraza. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on social a breeze. So now, it's easier than ever to be a marketer. Get started at HubSpot.com slash marketers. Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naeem Araza. Today, our guest is Sheila Johnson, a mega entrepreneur who is big in hospitality. She's the CEO of Salmander Hotels and Resorts, where you've stayed. Yes, I love it. It's a fantastic chain.

She is also the only Black woman to have ownership in three professional sports teams, which include the WNBA's Washington Mystics, the NBA's Washington Wizards, and the Washington Capitals. I had to look that up, but it's a hockey team. It is, indeed. It's a very good one. But she's most famous for starting BET in 1980 with her now ex-husband. Yes, Bob Johnson. Yeah, they had a very acrimonious divorce. But one of the things that's important is she's also known as America's first woman, black woman billionaire, which is, you know, a very small group of people.

And she's, you know, she's done a lot with her money and she has a very different attitude towards wealth than other people of her level, I guess, in that financial level. And so I really wanted to talk to her to talk about this. She's written a memoir that's pretty eviscerating of her husband and talking about herself too, the vulnerabilities that she has. She doesn't love that title. No. It is always everywhere you see her, like a Wall Street Journal article, it'll say Sheila Johnson, America's first woman black billionaire. It's also on the book cover, so it's awesome.

Okay. It's a useful mechanism, but maybe she doesn't want to be defined just like that. No, she doesn't. She is often sidelined in the telling of the BET story. And so timely for her to be telling her story herself. She was ultimately ousted by her husband after an acrimonious marriage. But she was an integral part of making that network and making a mint of it. BET IPO in 1991 and then sold 10 years later to Viacom for $2 or $3 billion. Yeah, it depends on the debt.

There was debt in stock. But she got a big chunk of change because she owned half of it. And she got half of it. And so she went off and showed that she can be an entrepreneur. And starting a new hotel chain in this environment, especially as she ran right into the pandemic, very difficult. But she's been expanding rather nicely. Hard thing to do and has a real

style. There's a real boom in these boutique hotels and Sheila's at the forefront, one of the many people at the forefront of this. And she's, I think, honed her entrepreneurship even more since then. And she's been critical of BET over the years. BET has struggled. Johnson will talk about that. But there was a moment earlier this year when Paramount was thinking of selling. Well, they are thinking of, they're still thinking of selling it. Just nobody wants to buy it. Well, they opted not to sell because they said that it wouldn't, the offers they were getting in, which I think were around $2 or $3 billion, were not enough to deleverage their balance sheet, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, I opted not to play basketball on the cap, you know, on the Golden

State Warriors. That's the kind of thing. Shocking because you're 6'4 and so good at sports. Yeah, I opted. I think it's a really difficult time because it's not just BET, which is down the chain from a lot of others, but ABC is for sale and a bunch of others. So a lot of these linear networks or cable networks

are in real trouble and the prices are going down rather precipitously. And also their ability to make money. They used to be money makers and they're not. They're losing money or their income is down rather considerably. And so, you know, everyone from Bob Iger to the people, the Paramount is struggling with what to do with these properties. 100%. And they tend to therefore go to a person who wants the power of owning a media entity. And in the case of BET, Black Entertainment Television, there was a bidding war between the likes of Tyler Perry. Shaquille O'Neal, I think, was involved. Byron Allen.

Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy, a.k.a. P. Diddy, Puff Daddy, I don't even know what to call him these days, and Byron Allen, who you just mentioned, who these days is now trying to buy ABC for $10 billion. Yeah, there is a value to these things if you manage them for the cash flow. I'm not going to go into why doing that, but they can really be like, they can, you know, a very similar thing. AOL has been managed really well for cash flow, for dial-up, et cetera. And so you can do a lot with these things if you bring them together, and that's the current thinking. A very similar thing, AOL has been managed really well for cash flow, for dial-up, et cetera. And so you can do a lot with these things if you bring them together, and that's the current thinking. So it will get sold. There's a lot on the market.

Someone will roll these all up and buy them. And then there's a question if there's a need for these identity cables channels, and not just BET, but lots of them. There's lots of them. BET, but lots of them. There's lots of them. Well, I think that's the really important conversation here, because while there's been a desire to pull in minority voices in American media through programming, so whether it's news anchors or shows that are more reflective of the culture, there's actually very little ownership of media outlets by minorities. And I mean, I can think in our history, we've talked to Patrick Swensheen from the LA Times. Carlos Slim, of course, was a big investor in the New York Times. But there has been just, you know, BET was this big identity play. And there's a question of whether or not there needs to be more ownership rather than just more programming.

Yeah. These niche things, whether it's gay or black or whatever, tend to—the one that's really succeeded, Telemundo, obviously, which is quite popular for Latino audiences. But a lot of this stuff has gotten integrated into other media, higher up the sort of more general chain. And so it's a really difficult situation. But yes, you're right. But there are owners, certainly, by Renal and Oprah, certainly. There's all kinds of owners, but it'sron Allen or, you know, Oprah, certainly. Yeah. There's all kinds of owners, but it's just, we'll see where it goes.

But those are not identity-driven channels that they are owning. Some of them, but they might want to buy this. And I don't know if these things can survive. Honestly, I don't know if they can. I mean, with social media streaming, you're actually able to find your audiences in a real way. And so all of a sudden, you know, you don't need to have a channel. You can have a channel on YouTube that's accessing so many people. And so there's a lot on that. So we wanted to talk to her about that idea of identity programming and whether it feels

as urgent now as it did in the 1980s when she started this thing. And also speak to her about her memoir, which is out this month, Walk Through Fire. It's a memoir of love, loss, and triumph. That is the first subtitle before it says the first black woman billionaire of America. Carrie, you were really excited about this memoir. Yeah, I am. I am. I like Sheila. I think she's really interesting. And I do tend to focus in on the spouses of people that get more attention. And in the tech, it's very, it's sort of, you know, Mackenzie Scott is really interesting to me. I was around,

she was around in the early days of Amazon, and I think quite important. Melinda Gates was an executive at Microsoft, you know. Lorraine Powell jobs to a lesser extent. But, you know, and they all have become very wealthy and using their money to do different things. And so Sheila, to me, is the clearest case of someone who didn't get credit for the things she did and is now using, and she's now proving herself to be, and much less so, Bob Johnson, a really interesting entrepreneur. And full disclosure, the person who worked on this book with her is someone who worked on my first book, actually, on AOL, Lisa Dickey, and super familiar with tech and other areas in business. And she worked on this as a book collaborator with Sheila.

And she's also, we should note, a friend of the pod and a good friend of yours, Kara. Yes, she's a very good friend of mine and also a very good author on her own. But this is Sheila's voice. It really is. You can really hear it if you know her a little bit. And this memoir is out this month, but earlier this year, there was another book released by former BET CEO, Deborah Lee, who you're talking about marriages. She had an affair with Sheila Johnson's husband. And Lee, in this memoir that she had released, suggested that the affair, you know, there are a lot of murky power dynamics where her job and her career were held over her head effectively by Bob. And so it'll be interesting to ask Sheila about that as well. Yeah, it will be.

It was a point of contention, I would say. It is contentious indeed. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with our guest, Sheila Johnson. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away in the middle of the night. And honestly, that's not what it is anymore.

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Walt Fauntroy. I don't know if you remember me. That was a long time ago. So you do not remember it. We came with Ernie Rubin, who was very... I know. I remember Ernie. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's where I met you. And you were well-known for your music. But right now, you're best known for co-founding BET with your, as I said, your ex-husband, Bob Johnson. Eventually it's sold to Viacom, which is now part of Paramount Global. You're referred to as the first black woman billionaire, which you have on the book cover, but you said you don't like that title. Why not?

I really don't. There's so many very wealthy people out there in this world. And it's more about what you do with your money and how you live your life. And I just think that it's such a stigma that it sticks with people. And it's different from, you know, it has a different meaning for a lot of people. It's either they're going to come and they want money from me, It's either they're going to come and they want money from me or I then get a status in society that I'm not particularly interested in. It really hampers you in many ways. It's wonderful to have the money, but yet there's a negative and a positive to it.

Do you think the word billionaire has been sort of made negative by a lot of certain billionaires, right? Exactly. Exactly. And I think it's overused and they're using it as a status symbol. And I don't see myself that way. How do you see yourself when you think about that? in various ways. I can think of myself as an entrepreneur, but I also see myself as a teacher, a mentor, a leader, a person that's really reaching out. I call it the double bottom line into the community to really lift up other people. And that's how I use my money. Okay. So one of the things, as you said, it's nice to have money. And I've heard you said it's not about money, but it is kind of money. money is power. So let's talk about power though, because you start your book by dedicating it to quote all the women who walk through fire and live to tell about it. And your book starts with a scene of utter powerlessness, depicting your

mother on the floor after your father leaves her and you too, he leaves you too. And it's a kind of arc of the book, being prone in a way as a woman, letting a man have control over you, make decisions over you. It came out of the blue in your writing. Talk about your mother's fate and how it shaped your own. Well, this is really interesting because people don't really, especially the younger generation, does not understand back in the late 50s, early 60s, women still did not have financial power in the sense they were defined by their husbands. And their status symbol was by their husbands. And this is the part I think,

if I look back on it, it's the area that really hurts me more than anything. Because when I found my mother on the floor, I suddenly realized my father just walked out of our lives. He didn't pay any alimony. He did not even give us our own checking account, bank account. She literally had no rights. And I remember that clearly of how at 16 years old, I had to immediately grow up and take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and say, look, we're going to get through this. I was already working a job at JCPenney mopping floors, And I had to find other sources of income just to get our bills paid. But also in the meantime of teaching her how to go to a bank to get her own bank account.

And here I am 16 years old. I shouldn't know that, but I had to be her voice. I had to be her strength and I had to be her power. And I learned a lot of things by that. And I said, you've got to get an attorney. There were just all sorts of things that I realized she was powerless. Right. And your father was a doctor. He was a doctor and he left us cold. He wouldn't pay for anything. And even when I found her on the floor and I called him and I told him what happened, he says, I don't care. Right. I'm not your, you're not my problem. I think it was, you're not my problem. That's right. He says,

you're not, that's not my problem. What, what did you tell him when he said that? I said, but she's still your wife and you've got two children. And he says, you're not my problem anymore. Tell me what that felt like. Cause that, that line was chilling. I thought. Yeah, it was like a stab through the heart. And at that point, I figured, you know, after other things he had put me through, I lost trust. And I felt abandoned. I felt unloved. And I just went into what I would call a survival mode. Right. Incredible story. So you picked yourself up, you helped your mom, you got her off the floor, correct, and moved her forward. But then you did

just what she did when you met Bob in college. Talk about that. Or maybe you don't think you did, but you fell prey to what turned out to be quite an abusive relationship. Yes. So what it is, and I think people don't understand how layering and complicated, if your younger life is not set and in order, and with good parents and loving people around you, you tend to repeat the history in your life unknowingly. And this is an issue which I see play out many, many, many times. And I was looking for a strong man because at that point, my father, in my eyes, looked very weak. And the idea of him leaving, it even went as far. And I'll tell you, I did not want to marry

an African-American man of light skin color because my father was light skin color. And that was just kind of my way of trying to figure out what I did want. But I will tell you, the whole problem is I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't even know who I was. I again wanted to attach myself to someone who I thought could take care of me. And so I went after someone that, and rightly so, I mean, this was a man who had goals in his life. And you didn't see that a lot, that he wanted to make something of himself. And that's what attracted me to him. And I said, well, this is wonderful. And then I was flattered because I thought unknowingly that he was really in love with me. That he was, and I think it was more of that, oh, I'm going to get the doctor's daughter.

And it was more of that kind of thing. And again, you have another sort of chilling story on your wedding night. You go to a motel afterwards and he leaves. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Just leaves. And there was no explanation behind why he abandoned me. But my mother showed up and she said, Sheila, now you can get out of this.

Says, it's not a problem. I said, but mom, I really want to try and make this work. To me, I felt as though that if I had left, I would have been a failure. This is a common thing that happened throughout my life, that I felt as though that I was a failure in a lot of ways. Even as much as I worked hard and I accomplished things, it was almost like an imposter syndrome. Right. And I just said, no, I didn't want to fail. And I was almost thinking about her because she had always said that I looked at her as a failure.

Yeah. And that was wrong for me to do. So you were going to power through it. And you did that. And you were an accomplished music teacher, your husband. And you sort of worked together on your way up as a young couple in Washington. Yeah. And you cobbled together $30,000 to start BET, Black Entertainment Network, in 1979.

Included selling your instruments, correct? Yes. Yeah. And you were a very accomplished violinist. Right. Talk a little bit about that, because you didn't think of yourself as an entrepreneur. You thought of him as one. Again, this is the trap that women fall into.

As an African-American man, they have a hard time in the business world because, again, this fell back when my father was a surgeon. I mean, he was always a surgeon, and he couldn't practice in white hospitals. And I could see the defeat that was happening with him, you know, where he was turned down. He says, no, you can't work here. You can't work there. That played a big role also in me because I've had this husband who I thought was wonderful and I wanted to really push him forward. I wanted him to excel, but I was hoping it would be in partnership. You know, I saw his ability, the man's smart. He was hardworking at the time, you know, attractive and so forth and so on. And I wanted to be there for him. And so many women fall into that,

where the point where I lost my own identity. Right, you let him be the face of the company. You were a cheerleader. I really did, yes. And you faded into the background, even though, talk about what you, because you were involved in the company. I was very involved. I was vice president of the company. I helped him start the company. I was very involved. I was vice president of the company. I helped him

start the company. I helped with programming. I helped on that, again, that double bottom line of also getting BET into the community because you're supposed to do that. You did accounting, correct? You did. Accounting. I did all sorts of things, not accounting in the company. I did our own family accounting. But it was also a case where the employees felt as though I was the conscience of the company. So I just didn't sit up on the sixth floor. I can't remember how many floors it was. But I actually got down onto the other floors to meet with the other employees, which I thought was important as to be a leader. I worked very hard, but I also had to keep teaching because we weren't

pulling in any income. And this went on for a few years. Yeah. You were also very involved in the company itself, as you said. I want you to, I think a lot about Melinda Gates, Lorraine Jobs, Mackenzie Scott, all of whom were integral and yet sort of sidelined in different ways, are now quite a force, which I want to get into. When you think about that role of a wife at a company, even though they're critical, and some more critical than others, no question, how do you escape that idea of here's the wife? Because there was a lot of that happening. How do you assess your idea of here's the wife? Because, you know, there was a lot of that happening. And how do you assess your role at that company and what you contributed to it?

I really think I was part of his backbone. I mean, I really kept tabs on everything. I alerted him to issues that were going on in the company and they were bad. issues that were going on in the company, and they were bad. Whether he listened or not and finally had to listen because things really got out of control. How did he manage then to sideline your role? You didn't go to the IPO and then he fired you? Oh, yeah.

The more that I would bring to his attention and really try to tell him the truth about things that were going on, the more I found out that he wasn't listening. I don't know, and a psychiatrist can get into this, but he was having affairs with employees in the company. Yeah, I'm going to ask you about that. Yeah. And I think more than anything, the more I started finding out about things, that's when the abuse really got bad.

Because you alerted him to that. I alerted him to everything. And there were computers going out the back door. And I will tell you, the employees themselves were the ones that came to me to tell me what was happening. They felt safe enough to talk to me because no one else would listen. Right. So one of them was an affair with a top executive, Deborah Lee, who wrote about it recently and accused him of sexual, I guess, workplace harassment over a long period of time. Did you read that book? And what did you think? You didn't know about it at the time. I didn't want to read it. I didn't want to read it. I heard excerpts

from it, but I will tell you, she was fully aware of what she was doing. I have no excuses for her because she's supposed to be a Harvard Law graduate. She's supposed to be smart enough and she cannot pin it on trying to make a living. If you're coming out of an Ivy League school as a law and you were also at a law firm, you can make it anywhere. So I think that was a total excuse and it can't be, you know, say it's about the Me Too movement. I was there. I watched everything that was going on. It could have been stopped immediately

if she had a conscience and a value system. Okay. And you knew about this when it was happening or not? I heard, I knew something was going on because I had known about all the other affairs. Then someone told me that they saw the two of them out in Arizona at the Phoenician and she came down in his shirt to have breakfast. So then the rumors started piling up. And that's when I started confronting him about this affair. And I didn't

realize that parallel to all of that, the executives, the top executives were also questioning him. And this is when he decided he was going to take BET private. Again, here's this affair that's happening. He doesn't let you go to the IPO and then fires you. Talk about that. Well, that's when I confronted him about the affair with Debra Lee. And I said, Bob, this woman has got you by the balls. I'm telling you this right now.

You've really dug yourself into a hole. And when I confronted him on that, he said, Sheila, I want you to pack up your office. You're out. I want you out of here. And that's when I just, that was it. That was when the light bulb went off and I said, you know, I'm out of here too. But I'm going to make sure that I get out with what I've earned. With what you've earned.

And what you got out with was half the company. Now talk about that in this divorce. He could have made it difficult, and you were surprised that he didn't, correct, getting half the shares? Well, I had very smartly kept tabs on everything, almost had a diary of what was going on, and I was going to take it to court if I had to. I had a lot of information on him. And then later, I even found out more information on what the two of them had been doing. And I was going to use it if I had to.

But I was angry. I had been betrayed. I have never, I would have never thought I would have to go through something like this. And so you got half this stock, which was then later sold for $2.3 billion in stock. Right, right. Were you, this sudden windfall changing your life allowed you some leeway and out of the shadow? What did you think? Because in a lot of ways, as much as you put up with, this was something important for you. This was important because it gave me the freedom to build a new life. I wasn't just going

to sit back and eat bonbons. I knew even though I was getting up in age, I was not going to quit on life. I wasn't going to quit on myself. And my mother would not quit on me. And she just kept saying, Sheila, you're going to get your power back. I knew what I was capable of doing. I had really never given up on myself, except I was severely depressed. And I needed to get a lot of help. And I will tell your listeners out there, there's nothing wrong with therapy. listeners out there, there's nothing wrong with therapy. It's important that you get help when you know you needed help. And I needed help. And I had some good therapists. And also, you know, at my divorce, I met my future husband who also helped me through therapy. Right. Was he the judge in the case?

Yes, he was my judge at the divorce, yes. At the divorce. Yeah. So you got the money, the husband, and the... I got the whole ball of wax. You got the whole ball of wax. So one of the things, though, is this is something you built, BET. And you were very reflective. You wrote in your memoir you had hoped more for BET.

You wanted it to become the black CNN. Why did that fail, and was that the right goal? Because it became more, you talked about the music videos getting worse, this sort of prurient part that brings in money and maybe viewership. Well, you know, Cara, this is an interesting issue. The reason why I wanted to get BET started, because it was the birth of all of cable, and nobody was addressing the African-American voice and the issues that were going on. This, I thought, was the greatest way to really take over media. Because it's always been in print with Ebony and Jet.

And I said, for television, this was going to be a home run. And I thought it was just really, really important that we could make this work. And it's not that I wanted to become the CNN, but I wanted programming that was going to address the African-American population, their issues. Yes, you can throw entertainment in there, but I wanted balanced programming. That was Bob's line. It's black entertainment television. Right. And I wanted balanced programming because I realized later, and this is the tragedy in all of this, when you have serious programming, the African-American public was not really tuning in to us. But when the video market came in, that's when there was a certain age group then tuned in, and that's when the eyeballs came on to BET. Right. then tuned in and that's when the eyeballs came on to BET. Where we missed the boat,

we should have done a feasibility study to figure out who was our audience. And if once we could have figured that out, we could have addressed the programming issue where we could have had more balanced programming. I mean, the regular networks go through this all the time. Where are the eyeballs? And I think this is where we really messed up in the very, very beginning of the infancy of growing the network. And I look back on it now, even as I built a hospitality company, I did a feasibility study and it was one of the greatest lessons I could have learned from the BET side. But you've got to figure out who your audience is going to be because they're the ones that are going to bring the money to you through the advertisers. We know advertising pays the bills.

We couldn't get the advertisers because we didn't have the eyeballs. Right. So since you sold it, you had been critical of the network. And BET paved the way for media outlets to cater to specific audiences. There were a lot of them based on race or identity. Is that pertinent anymore when you look at it? And if so, how? And if not, why? This is a great, great question.

I think right now BET's up for sale. I guess the sale didn't go through. Yeah. And I think whoever takes it over needs to look very closely of how to reinvent this network. Because media is going through an entire transition. It's not just BET. You're seeing it with all of the networks. you're seeing it with all of the networks. We're at a critical stage now where we've got to figure out how relevant is BET now. If it's not as relevant as it was back then, I think the model

has to be changed. I really believe that we have to reach a broader culture of people of color. have to reach a broader culture of people of color. And I think that way we can get a broader audience. It just can't be geared just to the African-American public. But I think there's a blending of talking about the issues that are affecting all people of color. And I think we've got to look at this and whoever does buy it cannot just jump in there and keep it going the way it is. It's going to not work. To the broader question, not just this identity, but the idea of programming to identity. Is that effective anymore? From your perspective?

It depends on the, I would call it the art of storytelling of all the programming. There's ways of doing it. So I will just it the art of storytelling of all the programming. There's ways of doing it. So I will just speak on this. Now that I'm in the hospitality business, the ideas that I had at BET, I have brought into my hospitality company. And what I'm finding through the film festival, through our family reunion,

we have the blending of cultures. We're celebrating women. We're celebrating African-Americans. We're celebrating Hispanic. We have films from all over the place. We are reaching such a broad audience that we have now become one of the most powerful film festivals in the country. The same way with our family reunion of how we are reaching out and really looking at the entire African diaspora of people and how we're bringing people together. We are so successful at doing it. That's why I'm looking back at BET. Whoever takes it over. Did you think about taking it over again? No.

Why? I have no desire. Why? I wouldn't mind being a consultant if it's the right buyer. If it's the wrong buyer, I don't want to have anything to do with it. Who would you like to buy? Because what I'm worried. Who would you like to buy?

Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry. Because? He didn't want to pay for $3 billion asking price, right? Correct? No, because he's smart and he knows that right now the price has got to be lowered because he's going to have to start from the ground up to rebuild that company. I can tell you right now, I wouldn't mind helping him as a consultant and doing it that way,

but ego's got to be removed from this. I mean, they've got to really look at where the value system of this company needs to start. And that's what's important. But the idea of not just doing this identity programming is not what people think it is, correct? It's not just... I don't think it is anymore. Because this younger generation is much more open to this diversified culture that's out there.

And if we just keep thinking about just the niche of what we had built so far, I think that's where we're losing our audience. Yeah, they like the award shows and everything and they're fun. The ratings on it are not high. No. You got to look at all of that and they've got to start addressing as to why this is happening. And I think you should bring maybe some younger consultants in there and listen to them. I just don't think that they're being addressed.

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and now is the status as the richest black woman in America. You moved to Middleburg, which was not a place I would see you going to. You bought the giant Harriman property. You got a lot of backlash, racist backlash, I think, correct? It was amazing. It was just one of those naive moves that I just didn't see happening.

It's almost like marrying Bob. But I didn't see it coming. I forgot I was south of the Mason-Dixon line. But one thing I did realize in moving out there, but I didn't see it coming. I forgot I was south of the Mason-Dixon line. But one thing I did realize in moving out there, and the only reason why I moved out there was because of my daughter. She was a show jumper. I was taking her out there almost every week for competitions. We're in Florida, so forth and so on. And I just fell in love with the area. And I think it was more of the calm and the bucolic nature of the area. I didn't realize the amount of racism that I was going to run head on.

So the thing that happened is once I bought the property, I guess they thought I was going to leave it alone. is once I bought the property, I guess they thought I was going to leave it alone. And I knew that if I could develop a resort up there, I started out as an inn, but then put this wonderful resort up there that it would become the economic engine of that town. Fast forward, they get $1.2 to $1.6 million for me a year. The place is thriving like you wouldn't believe. It is. No, I've been there. It's a wonderful place. But explain to me, what was the backlash? Was this Black Lady Buys Harriman property

and bothers white people? Right? I think it was. There were people coming up to me, beating on their chest, you're destroying our way of life. Oh, what did you say? Yes. I said, well,'re destroying our way of life. Oh, what did you say? Yes.

I said, well, what is your way of life? They said, we want to be in solitude. We want to be able to be in the middle of country. We just want to be left alone. But what they didn't understand is a town can't live on that. They just can't. a town can't live on that. They just can't.

And so, you know, I won by one vote. You know, this is a long, long fight that went on. What did you do to get that? What did you do? This is to be able to build the property. It's a large property. It's not that large, but it's large. What took it over the ledge with people saying, you know, we like our way of life,

which is a code word, obviously. I just never suit to their level. I just continued my vision. I continued to communicate my vision to the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and also to the town council itself. I was very clear on where I was starting from and where I wanted to take this. And I made sure that within my communication, I did not anger them. I wanted to put myself in their shoes. And I told them, I really feel what you're going through, but I am not going to destroy your way of life. I want to enhance it. Right, right.

It's easy. You could have gotten angry. I mean to enhance it. Right, right. Which is, it's easy to, you could have gotten angry. I mean, talk about your concept. It's interesting of being drawn to places that black people don't normally go or try to go to because of these, because of these obstacles. You know, I never think about it that way. It's just that opportunities come up. Right. And you either run from them or you walk through the door and make it work. And that's the way I've always lived my life. And it probably all started back when I was 16 years old with my mother on the floor. It gave me the courage, the resiliency after moving 13 times. I think,

and I didn't know it then, but I was strong enough, and it has carried through my life, that I'm able to walk through a lot of doors instinctively knowing it's the right move to make. So instead of, you know, identity politics is a very strong thing in this country, the idea of it. And it does separate people in a way that's especially reasonable people, which is interesting. But then you took over the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Everywhere you go, I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Aspen Institute. When you told me that, I was like, what? Boy, you must really like white people.

But it was interesting. Talk about that, your business strategy here. We now have top-ranked luxury hotels in, I think, Charleston, New Orleans, Jamaica. Tampa. Tampa. What's the goal here? Because there's a lot of, I mean, I know Pierre Omidyar, who was an internet billionaire, is in the montage area. What is your theory here of what you're trying to do?

I love your hotels. I think they are quite diverse without trying to make. Thank you. I want to keep the quality there. It's not so much quantity, but I feel as though, and I think 10 may be the right number, 10 hotels. I want to make sure that I keep my value system intact with my company. And it's more of, I've got to find the right word, it's the intimacy. That is my guests enter any one of my hotels, they can feel the salamander quality.

I don't want it to get out of hand to the point where they don't feel that anymore. I want everyone in my guests to feel like they're vested in what I'm trying to give my thumbprint. So you don't think about selling it? I mean, it's been a very successful, interesting chain that you've created from nothing. I haven't even thought about that because I haven't gotten to my end goal yet. You know, maybe when I'm 80 or 85, I'll sell it, but right now I'm having too much fun. Okay. So another place you moved into is sports. You were offered a stake in the Mystics, which is a women's basketball team by Abe Pollan, who'd been the longtime owner of several of the sports teams in Washington. But you didn't want to do that because it didn't make money, but you wanted a piece of the men's sports teams

in order to go there. You understand why a little bit. They wanted a woman. They wanted a woman of color to be one of the stakeholders, presumably, in Washington. Talk about that because you made yourself a really sweet deal because now sports teams are quite valuable. They certainly are. I tell you, it was one of the best moves I could have ever made. Explain why you thought about doing it that way. You didn't want to just be, I'm the lady who's in the mystics. Well, loss is filtered through all the teams. We're able to keep the bills paid

because our caps are our most successful team. You know, that's what it is. They draw the crowds in there. This is the Washington Capitals, yeah. Yes, right. They won the Stanley Cup. The Wizards are still there. This is the Washington Capitals, yeah. Yes, right. They won the Stanley Cup. The Wizards are still there. They're struggling.

Yeah. But they have a pretty good audience. Yeah, yeah. The women's team, we've had to move to a smaller facility. Hopefully, we can continue to grow our fan base. But I really think women's sports are on the rise. I really... Talk about why you wanted to get into the sports business. And you did, you did a very sharp deal there

in terms of getting a piece of all of them versus just one. Okay, the reason why is because women do not get that kind of an offer. I was, I think one of the first. Right, yes, you were. So talk about that idea of where sports is going. Are you investing in women's soccer? I know that Sheryl Sandberg invested in one. There's all kinds of soccer things, not just women's, but in sports in general. Is this an important part of your empire, I guess? It is important. And, you know, the soccer teams are doing so well.

I had offered to invest into our spirit team, but I never got a call back on that. I really do admire what is being built there out at Aldi Field. I've gone to the games. I just really believe in women in sports. And I will tell you why. It prepares them for the corporate world. See, men have always been in this place where they play team sports. They've learned how to deal with each other. They've learned how to fight. They've learned how to negotiate.

They have learned how to compete. Women have never had that. And once Title IX came into fruition, have never had that. And once Title IX came into fruition, it's been a slow build. Thank you, Billie Jean King, and you were able to work with the tennis. But I think that team sports are probably one of the most important things that women can get into because it does give them all the skills to be able to take them through life and into a corporate boardroom. What about as an investor when you think about it? The prices are as high as they can be in all the sports areas. I know still the women's soccer teams, they're high, but they're still affordable. Affordable, right.

What about the rest of sports? That's hard. That's why I'm glad I got into it when I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy cow. What a stroke of luck there. No, I'm thrilled about that. But we will see. Is it a stroke of luck? It's interesting. I mean, it's interesting because when your book was like, I can't believe I did this, but you sort of keep doing it, which is interesting. I'm like, I always say, is it smarter to be lucky or is it lucky to be smart? I think there's a little bit of both. Yeah, probably. Yeah. One of the things you've done is donate to your wealth of

philanthropies, New York universities, global poverty charities. Talk about your theories of giving and how they're different from say the tech bros? I've always believed in education. I have always believed in working with the younger generation and pushing them forward. I've invested in 50 students, put them through the Kennedy School at Harvard, the New School, Parsons School of Design. These are areas within arts and education that I wanted to invest my money in. So when you talk about women entrepreneurs, for example, especially women of color, the data is depressing and continues to be. Why is that? And is there a trick from your perspective or is it is it does it remain racism?

It remains racism in the sense that it's very hard for banks to want to lend money i had the same problem in the beginning all the money that i had if i were a man and could go to the bank and i was i'm gonna say this and i don't mean it in a harsh way a white man male, it's much easier for them to get a bank loan without having the runway of proof. Here, I'm sitting on a ton of money. I could not get one bank to say, look, you have assets here. Let's move forward and I will help you start your company. I had to use my own money to build that resort that people love. And then when the recession hit, it took some more of my money away from me. So I had to really rebuild in a sense, I wasn't destitute or anything, but I had to rebuild financially and continue to build my company to get it back to where it is now.

So even you couldn't get the loans? Now, if I can't do it, what can any other woman do? Yeah, that's a good question. So I have a last question. Your mother is throughout the book, and she wanted to live until you opened that hotel. When you think back on it now, that impact on you at the beginning, when you were 16 and she was on the floor, sort of sent you in a direction. What, when you think about it now, these years later, her impact on you, how would you describe it? Powerful. Because what I learned through her, even in her weakest moment, is how I had to become stronger. And I also learned that through adversity,

you can become stronger. If I hadn't gone through what I have gone through in life, Kara, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. It is what has made me strong. It has made me resilient. And I will tell you, there's no one, male or female, that could take this away from me right now. I am the salamander. I think we'll end on that. Sheila, thank you so much. You're so welcome. I really love you.

And your hotels are gorgeous, I have to say. They have such a nice, I don't know what you're doing. I'm a hotel aficionado, and so I go to a lot of them. Are you really a hotel aficionado? That's what you want to be built as? I am. I love hotels. Yeah, I do.

I love hotels. I do. I use Airbnb and other things like that, but I've always been interested in the business, the hospitality business and seeing the differences and how they rise and fall. I love Sheila's hotels. And I also love, I recently, I was, I took my mom for tea at the Crosby Hotel in New York.

That's great. The kit camp stuff. I like that. I just like to see new ideas in hospitality. I do. Best windows in the city. If I spend my money on anything, it's hotels. My favorite hotel in the world is the Sofitel

Metropole in Hanoi because it's like beautiful. Go there. I think several hotels in India are my favorite. I'm blanking on the chain, but they're beautiful. Well, you've got to say there's a moment in this interview where I was confused because

it was kind of relevant to hotels, where you said you were staying on the floor of her home when you were a kid. Yeah. Please, that was a confusing picture. So please explain the scenario. I was, my friend's mother worked with her on the, was doing music and she was very pioneering in music. Again, entrepreneurial at the time, but she was doing all kinds of creative things and it was starting to get really known for how she taught and her music teaching. And we went down there because this parent of my friend, Carla, who I just saw this weekend actually, was involved with a lot of that. This makes a lot more sense than the image of you just as a child,

standing on the floor, showing up at some right about. No, she didn't remember me whatsoever. That's okay. I remember Bob Johnson too. He was quite, you know. How old were you? I must've been 10 or 11, 12, maybe. The most interesting part for me in that interview was her journey and, you know, her, it was, we started that conversation with her pushing back against the first

black woman billionaire title because it enabled a certain entitlement and bad behavior, but ending on her kind of accepting her own power. I mean, she literally says, I am the salamander. Yeah, I am the salamander. I am the salamander. No, but that's difficult, I think, especially for women. And part of her, I think, doesn't think she deserves it in some way still, and I think a lot of women can relate to that.

You know, you don't have to, even though she's a billionaire and very lucky and has done a lot of stuff, she still has an imposter syndrome, but has a lot of accomplishments. And they're so varied and it shows you, and like whether it's the violin stuff, which was very entrepreneurial, whether it's the hotels, BET.

Or the way she bought the sports teams. The sports teams. It's just like really interesting. And I think we don't tell stories of these people as much as someone, you know, who sleeps all night at a factory and then yells at people. I don't know who that would be. But you know what I mean? Like, why is that any less worthy than in terms of creating value? And I think these stories don't get told.

And she at least admits vulnerability. Yeah. And she was so savvy. I mean, you know, clearly she had been trapped in that marriage that was not a good or healthy marriage. I thought it was very poignant when she said she didn't want to marry a light-skinned black man because of who her father was. But her speaking about that generation of female experience where women are defined by the men that they are married, defined by the men in their life, was really kind of haunting. Yeah, it is. It's everybody. Everybody didn't

have choices that they do today. And I think she articulated that rather well. Her mother, less so than her, you know what I mean? Yeah. But a lot of people think with mobility comes all this freedom, but actually with mobility, you can have even more traps. In the book, she discusses this as well, where she says so many people told her in those days that she and Bob Johnson were the king and queen of black media, that she felt this enormous pressure to keep this marriage going. So it becomes a cage in its own right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. What did you think about this whole

conversation of identity-driven media? Because she was- I think she's right. Which is? I think it's very difficult to figure out how you can reach people when so much of it has been absorbed into the mainstream media. I think about gay media all the time. There used to be tons of it, and now it's much less than it was because there's places to go and people have absorbed it into the mainstream media. So I think it's hard and you can reach audiences in different ways. That's for sure. I think there's also, she was talking about this idea of intersectionality, I think in younger generations, there's a desire. It's like, it's not that you are, you're not necessarily identifying just by your race or by your skin

color or your gender or your orientation, but the fact that you are different from what you see. Yeah, that's a really smart and we should pursue that topic because I do think the idea of, of all people, Walter Eisen asked me to ask about that. How do we integrate going forward? And I think young people do it effortlessly in a lot of ways. Yeah. Not every young person, but I think of my kids and the music they like, they don't even think about it. And, you know, and it's really, it's interesting of how people identify. And at the same time, you do need to identify there are obviously systemic issues around racism and

sexism and everything else. But it's an interesting question is how we can reach those levels so everybody has dignity. I'd love to see it because I think a lot of it right now is a bit of checking the box and you hear about shows that aren't getting greenlit because there's no ex-character,

you know, there's no trans character in the show. They feel the need to check a box but it's not, I think the conversation will feel more authentic actually as younger generations are making these decisions because we're not seeing the world through the same prism, maybe.

No, and her hotels are like that. When you go in there, you should go sometime, because I remember thinking, how did she do this? It's so comfortable for everyone. And it was, I remember looking around and going, wow, it's been Virginia, of Middleburg, Virginia. And trust me, that's not what I was expecting. And it was a really interesting, diverse place. It felt, had a vibe of like nobody caring. I don't know what to say. And because I was in Virginia, I was very cognizant. You're very cognizant in certain parts of the South about that.

And so it was interesting. Well, it's definitely an idea we should continue to pursue on this show. And in the meantime, Carol, will you read us out? Yes. Today's show is produced by Naima Raza, Christian Castro-Rossell, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Cody Nelson, Andrea Lopez-Gruzado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get the whole ball of wax. If not, your reservation at Salamander is canceled. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine,

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