The Pomp Podcast - 362: Pattie Sellers on the World’s Most Powerful & Successful People

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Pattie Sellers is an an award-winning writer, producer, and multimedia journalist. She currently serves as the Co-CEO of SellersEaston Media and the Chair of the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, where she previously worked for 32 years. In this conversation, we discuss the world's most successful and powerful people, including Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, Melinda Gates, John Mack, Martha Stewart, Rupert Murdoch, Oprah, and Alex Rodriguez. This was a masterclass in what makes these individuals tick, while also touching on the changing media landscape of today. =============================== Athletic Greens is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Even with a balanced diet, it’s difficult to cover all of your nutritional bases. That’s where Athletic Greens will help. Their daily drink is like nutritional insurance for your body that’s delivered straight to your door. You can get yours at https://athleticgreens.com/pomp =============================== Our second sponsor is Choice, a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Patti Sellers is an award-winning writer, producer, and multimedia journalist. She currently serves as the co-CEO of Sellers Easton Media and the chair of the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, where she previously worked for 32 years. In this conversation, we discussed the world's most successful and powerful people, including Warren Buffett, Ted Turner, Melinda Gates, John Mack, Martha Stewart, Rupert Murdoch, Oprah, and Alex Rodriguez. This was a masterclass in what makes these individuals tick, while also touching on

the changing media landscape of today. I really enjoyed this conversation with Patty, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is Athletic Greens. I absolutely love this company and their product. They've got an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. Even if you have a balanced diet, which everyone knows I don't, I love McDonald's and Domino's on Saturday, but even if you have a balanced diet, it's difficult to cover all of your nutritional bases. That's where Athletic Greens will help. Their daily drink is like nutritional insurance for your body that's delivered straight to your door. They've developed a complex blend of 75 vitamins, minerals, and

whole food sourced ingredients. I didn't even know there was 75 vitamins and minerals that you could have. But the whole point of this is that they're addressing the four pillars of health, energy, recovery, gut health, and immune support. So regardless of your diet, Athletic Greens makes sure that you get all the nutrition that you need. You simply open the packet, you dump in the powder, you stir it up real nice and you drink it it's so simple so easy and i know every day i'm getting the nutrition that i need so whether you're looking to boost your energy levels support your immune system or address your gut health now's the perfect time to try athletic greens for yourself you can simply visit athleticgreens.com slash pump to claim my special offer today and get

a free D3K2 dropper with your first purchase. That's more than a year supply of vitamin D as added value. So again, athleticgreens.com slash pump. I literally eat healthy all week and I smash Domino's and McDonald's on Saturday, but I still make sure that every day I drink my Athletic Greens. So go to athleticgreens.com slash pump and try it today. I promise you'll like it. Our next sponsor is Choice. They're a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you've been listening to this, you're likely part of the 7.1 million Bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not Bitcoin. I used to be in that situation too, but not anymore thanks to Choice.

You can now actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. So a self-directed IRA product that lets you buy Bitcoin, hold the private keys, and use tax advantage dollars too. Absolute game changer. No longer do people have to ask, how can I buy Bitcoin in my retirement account? The answer is choice. So go to retirewithchoice.com slash POM. Again, retirewithchoice.com slash POM. Get a self-directed IRA, buy Bitcoin, hold the private keys, and use your tax advantage dollars the entire time. RetireWithChoice.com slash Pomp. Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 50,000 investors about business technology and

finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at PompLetter.com. Again, PompLetter.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Patty. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational

purposes only. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I have a very special treat today. Miss Patty Sellers is here. Thank you so much for doing this, Patty. Thanks, Anthony. For the one or two people who are watching this who have no clue who you are, let's start off with just a quick summary of your background and then what you are doing today. Sure, sure. I joined Fortune a couple of years out of college, over 30 years ago, and was a writer for many years and rose through the ranks to senior writer specializing in profiling masters of the universe. I mean, I did a lot of Fortune 500 companies, but I wrote about, you know, like world changers and entrepreneurs and a lot of the tech entrepreneurs. And I rose to assistant managing editor at Fortune, which is one of

the top positions and in the process built something called Fortune Most Powerful Women with an increasingly big and fantastic team. And then almost five years ago, went off and started my own company with a woman named Nina Easton from Fortune. It's called Sellers Easton Media. and that's my story in a minute. Very efficient. Let's start off with the Sellers Easton Media today, because I think what you guys are doing is a very kind of unique twist on storytelling. So just give us kind of an overview. What do you guys actually do today? And then we'll go backwards and kind of how you got there. But what exactly is Easton Media? So Sellers Easton Media is a very sort of high-end content creation company that we say we tell

Stories of Leadership and Impact. And we work with the kind of people and companies that I spent my whole career writing about at Fortune. And think about what you do as a journalist. You write stories, you appear on stage, you interview people, you interview people on video. It quickly became a multimedia job, we decided five years ago, hey, everybody wants to be a storyteller today. You don't need traditional media to get your story out there. You can pick your audience. And for all the stuff that people are putting on social media, the quality is fine for the purpose, But for people who want to produce content and put it on a platform to reach five people or five million people, there really wasn't anybody out there who had the sort of interviewing storytelling skills that Nina Easton and I have. And so basically, we sort of hung our shingle.

I was told recently that that's a term that like young people don't know, but I still use it. We hung our shingle and we started a company that basically kind of transfers what we were doing for the public at Fortune and carries it to a private market. So we have clients who are companies, Fortune 500 companies, a lot of small investment firms. We've done work for hedge funds and companies that have a sort of high-end audience and want to reach them in a sophisticated way, whether it's through writing video, filmed interviews, podcasts. And we work for wealthy families, too, and some nonprofit work. But, you know, it's basically people who want to put their message out there in a sophisticated way and, you know, really care about, I mean, we say, and we've lived up to this, we tell stories of leadership and impact, and we believe that a life well lived is one where you make a positive impact on the world. So not to be too Pollyannish about that or self-important, but we do tend to have those kind of companies as clients and people. So you are incredibly humble and won't say this,

but I will. The Rolodex that you have built over the years literally encapsulates the world's most powerful and successful people. You've spent an entire career writing about them for the public, as you described. And now you tell a lot of those stories in a more private setting. Can you give us maybe one or two examples in terms of, you don't have to name names, but the types of products that you guys build, right? So I'm cheating because I know about kind of the books that you put together or the documentary style content, but maybe just give us a couple of examples of some of the work that you guys have done? Sure, sure. Well, I've done several projects for John Mack, the former CEO of Morgan Stanley. He has three children, and he wanted to tell his father. So he was CEO of

Morgan Stanley until 2010, and he spent most of his career there. He carried the firm through the 2008 financial crisis. And he sort of picked, and the board picked, James Gorman, who is doing such a good job there now as his successor. But he is the son of incredibly poor Lebanese immigrants who came to this country with his father, started selling pots and pans door to door out of a pack on his back. And John grew up with a father who had a wholesale grocery business, you know build it from scratch in north carolina and so i we do these filmed life story interviews we call them so i interviewed john and uh you know like less fewer than probably five people have seen this um although he allows me to talk about it and he was and then i did his wife

christy i did did her story filmed interview and then i've i've worked with him on a couple of other projects, including a book project. We, you know, I did a similar film life story interview for Susie Buffett, Warren's daughter. And I've come to know Warren Buffett really well over the last couple of decades and know the whole family. And Susie, who has talked a lot about her father, if you Google her, you'll see videos of her talking about her father. And she has a foundation and she's an amazing wonderful person but she had never told her story and her kids who I know found out that I like oh Patty Sellers is doing that so they said mom you got to do that so I did that for her and again like probably five people have seen that and um and then I've done several

other, you know, kind of like, you know, like billionaires. I mean, this is our most popular product in that it takes, you know, as I said to John, I said, let me come over to your house with a small TV quality camera crew and we'll be done by noon. And we were, and he had lunch that day. And a few weeks later, we, you know, we clean it up, we put pictures in. We also do, I can't tell you who the client is. It's a very big name in Silicon Valley, former CEO of a Fortune 500 company who's very well known. We do this service called Modern Family Portrait, where every year we do a family film. So we go every year to their home. They have little kids and we capture the family over a couple of days, you know, playing, eating, I interview them. And we're doing this

over, you know, like, probably more than a decade for this particular family in Silicon Valley. And then we do a lot of, we do a lot of corporate work too. And we do work for some, for some nonprofits, we're doing a huge project for the University of Texas right now. And so It's great because it's, you know, it's truly multimedia. I mean, we're living in a world where if you can tell your story one way and you kind of get it down on video, I mean, Anthony, you know, your podcast is also a, it's filmed interviews. She put these on YouTube. So the more you can repurpose this content, the better. And you just need sort of good interviewers like you to start, and then you can splice and dice it. I'm learning everything from you. Don't worry. You're really good.

Let's back up a second and talk about where did your fascination come from in terms of wanting to better understand what I'll call kind of the most successful people and companies and also wanting to tell their stories. Where did that interest or intrigue come from? I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a dentist and a housewife and an only child who was very shy when I was growing up. But my parents had me when they were 39 years old, which back then was old. And I grew up around adults. And I was very comfortable around adults and shy around kids. And I knew no business people. Like my father's friends were doctors, mostly doctors and, you know, independent business people in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

And I think I grew up observing a lot and watching people. And then I went to University of Virginia and I wanted to, I just like, my parents thought I should be a lawyer because I asked so many questions, but I just, and I thought about that, but I really loved, I loved writing. I loved asking questions. So I, I got a job with a startup business newspaper in Northern Virginia. I wanted to write about people in the arts. I had no interest in business. And, um, but I kind of fell into, this was like the only job I could get. And I liked, I found I liked business. I liked writing about people in business because these people are smart and they can get things done. So two years later, I was two years out of college. I applied to Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, and

Inc. Magazine, which was just starting up. And I worked at this Washington Business Journal with a woman who was on the founding team of Inc. Magazine. And I just thought she was so cool. her name was Susan Currier oh no I don't know if she's still around but anyway she was so cool and so nice to me and I just you know I thought wow I want to work for a business magazine and fortune hired me they were the only ones or the first the only ones to to hire me and I started as a reporter in 1984 and um so but you know it was a company that was like famous for the fortune it was a magazine famous for the fortune 500 and I was like not that interested in writing about companies or things I wanted to write about people and over the decades I just kind of found my niche and I

was the person who more than anyone there I spent years chasing some people like wanting to get the first exclusive story about them. And I did. I mean, I'll just throw out three names. Melinda Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Martha Stewart when she was in prison. So I want to play a game with you. And I think as we play this game, we'll unpack kind of a lot of the techniques that you use to do this and really become the best in the world at it. let's start with Melinda Gates. So my understanding of the situation is Melinda Gates had done press before, but never kind of exclusively by herself in a profile format, right? No one had ever written the Melinda Gates approved profile of her. You were able to successfully do that. How do you

meet her? How do you convince her to do it? And then what was the process like actually writing that kind of first exclusive profile of her? I, gosh, I spent a couple of years talking to and writing letters to the Gates Foundation and her people. And she had done quite a lot of press with Bill as they were building the Gates Foundation, but she had never, she had never agreed to do an interview for a profile about her. So I wanted to do the first major profile. And I don't know, finally I got in. It was the,

I remember I went to Seattle the Monday after, or the Tuesday, I guess it was, after Labor Day in 2007. And I remember the new head of PR for the Gates Foundation was a woman named Heidi Sinclair. She's one of my closest friends today. I stayed friends with her. And she was like her first week on the job. And Melinda was so nervous. And I ended up interviewing Melinda like three times for that story, once in New York. And I interviewed Bill in Seattle separately for that. and I interviewed you know a bunch of that and I Melinda was great though like she um she let me talk to her best friend you know I went over to her best friend's house on the lake and you know to her house and like had coffee and we're sitting in the kitchen and I'm talking about

Melinda and like Melinda had never told her story Melinda had never talked about how when she was young right out of Duke and Duke University and working at Microsoft you know kind of low level and she was walking across the parking lot someday and she saw the CEO the founder Bill Gates and she said hello to him and he asked her out and and and anyway they fell in like like she she really dished. And oh my God, it was fantastic. They lined up Bono for me. And I remember I talked to Bono and so it was great. I mean, they really went all out. And then the story came out right at Christmas time. And I got the nicest email over Christmas from Melinda telling me she was with her parents and her parents actually loved it, loved the story. And that was a cover story.

And that was, you know, like the ultimate, like quintessential, like brand stamp of approval. And then my mother died three weeks later. And my mother loved, loved, loved that story. That was like her favorite story of all that I had done. And that was, I had been at Fortune for 24 years at that point. So, no, 84. Yeah, I had been at Fortune for 24 years at that point. So in a quarter of a century, that was the favorite story that she, so it holds a lot of meaning to me for various reasons. Yeah. And what was like the biggest surprise to that whole process, right? When she agrees, you go and you talk to everyone, you talk to Bill, you kind of hear all the stories. Was there one thing that kind of stood out to you that was either a surprise or you didn't really understand until you had done all the work? And so I forgot too, I actually went, I already knew Warren Buffett well at that point, but I had never been out to Omaha. So I went out to Omaha for that story. I mean, I could have interviewed Warren on the phone, but I, you know, I said, I think I said to him, I said, this would be a good chance for me to finally come out and, you know, see you in your office.

So I went out, and they had announced the giving pledge together where Warren, who did not expect to give any of his money away until he died, and he thought his wife Susie would die. He thought he would, he never imagined that he would outlive his wife Susie. So here he is, he lost his wife, he has all this money, doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know how to be a philanthropist. He says it's harder than making money. So he announces, this was a few years before the story came out, he announces that he's giving all his money to the Gateses to distribute, because they're experts. so anyway that's why and obviously as most people know bill and melinda and warren are really close so i went out to omaha and here's the answer to your question warren tells me how in to an extraordinary degree Melinda kind of first of all convinced Bill to give his money away during his lifetime and you know I can't remember the details but convinced Warren also of the value of that because there are all these diseases around the world and children are dying

People are dying every day. And, you know, let's not save it. Let's put it to good use. And Warren just, I mean, there's that, that sort of aha moment. Wow, that's what we should do with our money. But Warren loves Melinda because Melinda has done for Bill what Susie did for Warren, which is basically take a nerdy guy who is like all business and all numbers and finds the kind of humanity. in him and so it's one of the reasons that warren and bill are so close and it's one of the reasons that warren and melinda are so close because he sees a lot of suzy and melinda i love that story yeah um you and martha stewart while she's in jail tell us that story that is absolutely epic oh geez I had met Martha in 1998 when I did a story called it was a cover story for fortune called women sex and power and it was an idea that I had to do a story about I literally walked into the office of the top editor of fortune at the time John Huey and said I think we should do

a story about women who are doing better than men and he goes what do you mean I said well women who are like doing amazing things that no man has ever done or no man so anyway long story short through that story I met Martha I actually had a sort of an evening with her and and two of her friends um Charlotte Beers who was the head of Ogilvy and made her the big ad agency at the time and a woman named Darla Moore who I ended up doing a cover story about the following year Do you know who Darla Moore is, Anthony? She would be of interest to a lot of your listeners because she was the wife of the late Richard Rainwater. Do you know who Richard Rainwater is? Yeah, big self-made billionaire. But anyway, so I met Martha in 1998, one night at the apartment of Charlotte Beers with Darla Moore in New York. Two years later, Fortune started

Fortune Most Powerful Women, which started as a list of the 50 most powerful women in business. we put Martha on the list for several years. She was building her empire. Then she lied about a stock trade and she got convicted. I went to the trial. I was in touch with her during the trial. I knew her. I had written about her. She got convicted. She got sent down to a prison in West Virginia for five months and then served five months house arrest. And during the time that she was in prison, and by the way, I mean, I think that it was sort of a travesty. I mean, she lied to investigators and she paid really, really big. And I'm just going to fast forward to for a second like the way she handled that gives us all provides lessons for us all in

dealing with adversity because she handled it in the most amazing and and quite frankly classy way but anyway when she was in prison I uh I wanted to do the first story about her after she got out of prison. And I ended up sending her magazines every week through her assistant who sent a bag, I think every Friday down to West Virginia. And so I would send over to Julia at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a packet of the magazines at Time Inc. We used to get them. they'd all be displayed we could all grab them people time sports illustrated and I would put together a packet every week and send them down and Martha really appreciated it you know this was before I mean this was like 2004 I mean the internet people were reading on

the internet but not as much people were really still like reading physical magazines so anyway She got out of prison. They wouldn't let me see her. There was a whole army of PR people around her. No, no, no, no, no. She's not doing interviews. And she called me one day and she said, come on Monday morning. I think she called me like on a Saturday. And she called me, she said, I'll talk to you. Let's talk about this story you want to do. Come Monday morning. And I got a dial car, one of those like 777 cars. This was long before Uber. Got a car, went up to Bedford, New York, where she lived. And I remember right as we were pulling up, I got a call from her PR person, like her head head PR person. oh my god what are you doing Martha just told me she called you and invited you oh my god so Martha did this like totally behind the back of her advisors and it was great she was

wearing her ankle ankle bracelet and we talked and she said let's go down to the stable she said I only have like 20 minutes before I before I violate my leaving this house or whatever and we jumped in the car and we went down to her stables and she showed me around and I ended up I ended up getting the exclusive like you know she we did a cover story where the cover line was it was a quote from her and the cover line was I cannot be destroyed that was the line great picture of her and that line and really big print oh my gosh she just hated the cover line she loved the cover picture but she hated the cover it was true and she you know she could not be destroyed and uh so anyway i mean i i really like martha and i see her you know every

once in a while i mean not like one-on-one i see her at events she continued to come to our most powerful women events when we were doing them live now we're doing them virtually but you know I just admire her one of the things that always helped me as a journalist was I found I liked more people than other journalists liked why do you think that is I think I'm I think I'm more open and trusting and accepting and optimistic than most journalists are. And that's both a blessing and a curse because early in my career, I, I really all I'm, and I'm still, I'm no longer a journalist. So I, it's a bit, little bit less of a concern for me, but I was always afraid about kind of being taken and being gullible. Anthony, you don't know me quite well enough,

but if you want to pull a practical joke on me, pretty easy. That's fine. Listen, you got to have fun in life. Every once in a while you get got, but you did a pretty good job of avoiding that professionally. Ted Turner is a fascinating character. I've read the book. I think that he wrote his autobiography and he's one of these Yeah, he's one of these guys who obviously most people know him for CNN and kind of the media side, but everything from the American Bisons all the way down. Just a really fascinating guy. Biggest bison owner in the world. Yeah. How did you meet him and kind of what were the interesting parts there? How did I meet Ted? I think the first time I met Ted was when I did a story about, I did a cover story in the, like maybe around 2000 or so, like 20 years ago,

about how big time business people like sort of even bigger than fortune 500 ceos sort of masters of the universe kind of relax detox relax get away from it all and john huey who was the top editor of fortune at the time knew ted they were both from atlanta and he called ted and he said would you let patty sellers you know come to montana so i i think that was my first time meeting ted i went to montana and he was married to jane fonda at the time and i remember we had lunch at and jane was serving these bison burgers and it was just so bizarre it was just and then we went out and I'm in this like you know vehicle with Ted I mean his his ranch is like practically the size of Rhode Island I mean you know this is a ranch anyway I

mean I basically did it was like you know kind of buff journalism but we took we had a like a top top, a fantastic photographer with us. And we ended up taking that day. I remember Jane Fonda's favorite picture of Ted, like of all time. And then I did a story. So he ended up, so Time Warner. So Warner Brothers bought Time. Warner Brothers taught Time. Warner Brothers ended up owning Time and Turner. Okay, Turner, which is CNN, TNT, TBS, you know, the whole media empire. Ted Turner was to television what, you know, a name a tech entrepreneur is to, you know. So, so Time Warner ends up owning us and Turner Enterprises. Time Warner does a merger with, this is like 20 years ago, with AOL. Okay. Worst merger in history. The stock went from like 100 to 10.

ted was such a loyal soldier he had he never diversified his portfolio he never bought bought i don't think in his whole career he's you know ted is like in his late 70s now or maybe he just turned 80 um but i don't think in his whole career he ever owned a stock outside of time warner okay so he loses eight billion dollars ted lost eight billion dollars on one stock he was the second biggest land owner in the united states so he still had assets still had money so i did a story then ted knew me he trusted me and i did a cover story that we ended up calling gone with the wind and the cover line was gone with the wind ted turner sounds off on losing eight billion dollars his job and the love of his life who was jane

and he lost he got he got pushed out as vice chairman of of time warner and so anyway i ended up spending a lot of time with ted at one ranch and on his um he has a huge it was called a plantation at the time it probably is not called that anymore for kind of so obvious reasons yeah but he had a plantation in northern florida and um i went down there and spent time with them and uh the house looks like tara from gone with the wind um you know he's he's obsessed with he had bought he had bought mgm so he could own gone with the wind but anyway uh he was just oh my god he i mean he talked about how he had been suicidal and um it was just i mean it was great i mean he's really one of the hardest interviews that I've ever done. And I've interviewed him many, many

times. But he, you know, he's, he's not a normal kind of guy. But sometimes the world's greatest entrepreneurs are people who are certainly not normal. And at the time, he was just so he was so obsessed with Rupert Murdoch. And he kept saying to me, like, probably 10 times in the course of my interview, interviewing him, Rupert Murdoch is the most dangerous man in the universe. I mean, Ted is very liberal. And, you know, Fox News was beating CNN in the ratings. And it was just killing Ted. So this is interesting, because one, you knew Ted pretty well. Getting somebody to do a cover story about losing $8 billion to love with their life and their job is probably no easy task. And I can only imagine the complexities with

interviewing them during a time like that. But you also knew Rupert Murdoch and had written about him as well. And so maybe tell us that story and then compare, how do you kind of balance, right? You know multiple people in these stories and know that pretty well. People who don't like each other. Yeah. And so just like, you know, how did you meet Rupert Murdoch? And then, you know, was Rupert Murdoch when you're talking to him, you know, yelling and screaming about Ted Turner or does he not even really care? How does that work? Now, Rupert, you know, Rupert is, it's so interesting. I mean, Ted, Ted obviously like thinks big and, but Ted gets, you know, kind of gets obsessed with things. Rupert is, Rupert is more, Rupert is just completely different from Ted. So I had not met Rupert at the time. I can't remember what kind of incentivized me or got me wanting to do a big Rupert Murdoch interview, but I got to the point in my career, and this is maybe 10 years ago, where I had been at Fortune for, you know, 25 years. I had chased a lot of people I had done two cover stories about Oprah who had never done a business story she was another one that was like on my list I was frankly running out of

people who I was dying to write about and so I don't know Rupert Murdoch was fascinating to me and I ended up doing in 2000 and I don't know 14 maybe 13 the first sit-down interview public sit-down interview he's done some private stuff for sort of like private conferences and stuff but public sit-down interview with with Rupert and I think it had been like six years or something and I'm not sure that he's done another one in the last several years. It's kind of, anyway, I did it with him in his office in New York and he was fantastic. And he talked about, you know, he talked about everything. He talked about his children, his difficulty with his, you know, his children, the sort of rocky relationships

over the years. His marriage, he talked about. I was kind of stunned. But one of the things that I like about interviewing people at this level who are not Fortune 500 CEOs. Now, he is a Fortune 500 CEO. He's a fortune global 500 CEO, but he controls, you know, nobody's telling him what to do. He's an entrepreneur. I love interviewing these people because they just, they don't, they're just, they talk more freely. They talk more freely and they're more courageous in their views and I just never wanted to be strapped down by doing like just I did plenty of like you know I grew up writing about coke and pepsi and and craft and kellogg and all those companies and they were fine but like I always wanted to to capture people really authentically

and I felt I could do that with these people who kind of played by their own rules Yeah. The last person I want to talk about before I kind of ask you some questions just in general is Alex Rodriguez, who I know you're close with. You wrote a very big article on him in Fortune magazine at a time in his life where I think he was kind of going through multiple transitions. So he'd been banned by baseball. He was also kind of sitting out for the year because of the baseball situation. He'd gone from, you know, hero in the media and the sports world to kind of, you know, shunned a little bit. And then he was also focusing on being kind, but also had kind of aspirations from a very young age really to kind of be successful in the business and investing world. And it seems like had really kind of hit the gas pedal on, you know, he had a capital base, but he wanted to learn, he wanted to go and do this. So maybe talk a little bit about, you know, one, just your relationship with Alex, how you met him, but also to writing about somebody in a time where it was a complicated story, right? It's not kind of one single story to tell. How did you kind of navigate that? I met Alex in the lobby of the Hilton Omaha, the Omaha Hilton Hotel in 2014, which was the year he was banned from baseball. And he was very quiet that year. And he was using that year to um kind of get his head together and learn he took college classes he went to conferences he went to the milken conference in la he went to the berkshire hathaway annual meeting

he went to some other business conferences and i had the it's the weirdest weirdest story um And yes, we're actually now doing work for his company, A-Rod Corp at Sellers Easton. But just going back to that moment, which is just, it was kind of an amazing moment because I had just flown in from Los Angeles where I had done something on stage at the Milken Conference. And I had heard that morning that Alex Rodriguez was in the audience during the session that I did. and how Alex was telling people that it was his favorite session at the Milken conference. And I'm

like, what? That's kind of cool. And Alex at the time, this was pre-Jennifer Lopez, and he was the guy, he was the legendary baseball player who was banned. Okay. And there was an aura of mystery about him. So I'm literally, so I go to Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. This was like may 1st 2014 and i'm standing in the lobby talking with two friends like at the bar at the side of the bar and i'm telling them i'm like yeah i just got back from i came in from the milken conference in la and alex rodriguez was apparently at my thing as i am saying this anthony i swear i'm not embellishing this story as i'm saying this alex walked by and i go oh my god there he is there's Alex Rodriguez so I step forward and I go Alex and he turns around and

we're about probably 20 feet away from each other and I'm he stops turns around I approach him and I said Alex I'm Patty Sellers I said I he goes I know who you are I was at your session yesterday I said I heard you were at the session and I said thank you for coming and thank you he said yeah it was fantastic. And so anyway, he gives me his card. We're standing there talking like five minutes or so. He's giving me this guy said, is this really your email address? And he goes, of course it's my email address. I'm giving you my card. And I'm like, all right. And he goes, I've, he said, I've seen you on, he said, I've followed your stuff for years. I've, he, he goes, I've watched you on video. I've seen you interviewing Marissa Meyer on video.

and he pronounced Meyer correctly, which, which is always a sign, the former CEO of Yahoo. A lot of people say, I mean, I, yeah, a lot of people say Meyer, but it's Marissa Meyer. So anyway, I ended up seeing him, seeing him the next day during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting at a lunch. And we talked and he said, well, he said to me in the lobby that day, he said, you know, I don't care if I'm ever in Sports Illustrated again. My dream is to be on the cover of Fortune. And he said, that's long been my dream. And he said, you know, I started my company back in 2003. And he said, I started building, buying apartments. And he has thousands and thousands and thousands. I mean, I think over 15,000 apartment units now, as well as a huge

venture business he's invested in, over 50 companies. And he's done very, very well. And he has a team of, a big team, and it's called A-Rod Corp. And so anyway, long story short, I ended up doing the first interview that he agreed to do after he was banned. He had not talked to the press. So he gave, he said, he said, I'll give you the exclusive. I didn't know if I could trust him. He came through and, um, he did a good, we did a great interview here and here in New York. He was living on the Upper West side of Manhattan at the time.

and we did an interview at his uh at his apartment building and then um and then yeah I started we started the company and so we're doing we're actually doing some work for him now and he's a great guy he's really a great guy and I just I met Jennifer recently and she's wonderful and so um anyway you know it's it's just interesting getting behind the the curtain of these people who are, I think I'm drawn as a, as a sort of recovering journalist, I'm drawn to people who are not understood, you know, they may be controversial. And I, I just, you know, I think there are people, some people who like, I think there are, you know, a lot of good people who make bad decisions and it changes their life. Yeah. There's two themes in the times that we've

talked that I think I've been able to pull out. And you mentioned one of them at dinner the other night, which is all of these people work really, really hard. And I think that one of the public kind of expectations is, oh, that person got lucky. It doesn't matter if you're an athlete, if you're a business person, like nobody wants to believe that kind of the secret ingredient to a lot of success and ultimately creating a powerful person is hard work. So maybe talk a little bit about just, you've literally seen behind the curtain, spent hours and hours, if not days with many of the world's most powerful people. Talk a little bit about the work ethic and kind of how that might surprise people to see really what these people do on

day-to-day basis well okay i mean just taking alex he works all the time i mean all the time all the time and it's it's impressive and i mean you know some of these like former athletes have you know investment firms or companies where there isn't a lot behind the curtain and i mean And boy, Alex is, he is, he is, as hard as he worked to become the, you know, the number four home run king in MLB history, he is working just as hard to, he wants to be Warren Buffett and Warren is his role model and they're friends. And he, the thing that I, that surprised me about Alex when I first met him is he is insatiable in wanting to learn and wanting to improve himself. And, you know, as I said, that year that he was banned from baseball, he spent it literally going to school and going to these conferences and he just wants to learn.

And he has a little bit of a dreamy attitude about college, which he didn't go to. He actually got a football scholarship to the University of Miami and he passed it up to go with the tech with the, you know, to be a professional baseball player. But anyway, so he works super hard. Martha Stewart never stops. Oprah never stops. Um, I, one of the things that, that helped me a lot in being a journalist who could write about these sort of billionaires and world changers and helps me as a co-CEO now doing private work for them is I have never ever like one iota wanted to be them um I have never been jealous of any I've

been in countless billionaires homes I've never been jealous for a second I've never wanted that To me, money brings, I know you have an audience, Anthony, who, you know, people who care about money, want to make a lot of money. For better or worse, I never have cared about that. I love doing the work. I love the process. and I have a co-CEO now, Nina Easton, who, who kind of chides me like, you know, this is about making money and she's, she cares about the work equally, but, um, so, you know, a lot of these people who, you know, whether you're talking about Ted Turner or Martha Stewart or Alex Rodriguez or

Oprah Winfrey or, you know, tech entrepreneurs, you know, I mean, I met Steve Jobs. Of course, they want to make money. But none of these people, none of these people are in it to make money primarily. These are all people who want to either make their mark, change the world for good or prove themselves out of some insecurity. Yeah. I think that that is a thing that when you unpack most people, you just nailed it. But in order to be able to unpack that, you've got to build trust. And you've mentioned a couple of times here, trust in the sense of either you've got to be able to actually trust the people that you're going to do a story on, or they need to be able to trust you to kind of not screw them over or

have any sort of gotcha type situation. Talk a little bit just about how do you, one, build the trust with them, and then also to learn to trust them so that you kind of understand that this is a two-way street and, you know, we're going to kind of go on this journey together really to create a profile that ends up being one, accurate, but also two, entertaining and valuable for readers yeah well it's it's so hard to it it used to be so hard i mean i'm talking about like before the internet um back in the 80s when i started writing for fortune um people would tell me like people who i remember i was at pepsico and i was interviewing the ceo of pepsico and And like the head of PR said, said, you know, you do interviews like sort of like it's like a living room conversation.

You know, it's so intimate. And so I'm like, well, how do most people do interviews? You know, I think, first of all, listening, as you know, Anthony, and from watching your show. in the past, I've thought countless times, he's a really good listener. You are. You're a really good listener. And that is like, that's job one for us, right? I think a lot of journalists have a list of questions and they're like, that does not build trust. What builds trust is listening, being able to step into the other person's shoes understanding what makes them comfortable and what doesn't and what will sort of help sort of um you know just open them up um I mean I never I never did gotcha journalism um it's interesting we're working right now with

I'm really sort of jumping right now, but we're working right now. We've gotten into the documentary business at Sellers Easton, and I've never actually said this or, but it just popped into my head. We are, we're doing a, we're working on a major civil rights documentary that we've raised a couple million dollars for. And we're, we're working with a director named Barbara Koppel, who is legendary in the world of documentary filmmaking and she has won two academy awards for best documentary and her style is cinema verite which is basically following people around and being a fly on the wall with a camera she does straight interviews but mostly it's you know kind of like lurking and capturing what's happening in the moment

among all documentary filmmakers she is way way up there in terms of like people trust barbara koppel because she is not a gotcha journalist she wants to she wants to um you know she she works super super hard to get people to trust her and i just think like i think i i wanted i've always wanted to do the same thing i've wanted to capture what people are all about without i don't have an agenda i don't have an agenda i mean you know you're sort of doing that with me here you just want i mean you're you're letting me talk and maybe I'm talking too much. You're like, okay, what are you about? And that's what I've always done. And that's the way, that's the way to build trust. And I always thought of my career in the

long term. I never wanted to, I never, I was careful not to burn bridges. I mean, I did little things back when you know back when stories weren't were were read in the magazine rather than online um i would always send the magazine as soon as as soon as i got it i would send the magazine to the subject you know let's say it was ted turner but i would send it to his assistant his secretary his da-da-da-da-da with notes special not in one pack but to them individually I mean I did a lot of things like to pay attention to the people around the main person because first of all we need to respect them just as much as the person who is the subject and And it helped in the long term. I mean, I knew I was sort of making a little investment like,

oh, this secretary will... They were called secretaries back then. This secretary will like me. Yeah. And look, it makes a ton of sense. I think part of what is so fascinating to me is you were ahead of your time in the style of interviewing that you did. Now, you were creating a written piece of content most of the time, but have since evolved to multimedia. But what I hear you talking about is the world of the media, right, or kind of content in general, because of the internet has brought positives and negatives. But one of the negatives, obviously, is attention span. And so people have much shorter attention spans, and they want, you know, quick hit pieces. So you get kind of articles written that way. You also get when people do television interviews,

you get kind of three to five minute, you know, I need you to say something salacious, so we can get the headlines and the distribution and like move on to the next thing. And what's fascinating to me, one, just because I generally like to learn in the format that I do the interviews, but there's also obviously very big audiences for other people who are doing kind of these long form interviews, is that it allows for the nuance and it allows for the details and it allows for kind of the explanations behind, you know, the headline type perspective or opinion. And to me, that's actually like 80, 90% of the value, right? It's one thing to know Patty Sellers thinks X, but to then hear you kind of explain for 10 minutes, why do you think of that? Do you fully believe that or do you see the other side of the argument? And kind of really dig into it. to me, that's actually where all the value is. And it sounds like that's how you were able to get such intricate details and really kind of tell a story about someone in a way that others weren't able to is because you just were able to let them talk and you listen to the details, right? Yeah. Well, back in the heyday when Fortune magazine was thick, I always felt that if you

were doing a big story, you could get ideally eight or 10 pages. And I always felt I had the opportunity to do the definitive story about someone. And that was an honor. And I remember when I did the Melinda Gates story, I felt like I was kind of holding something precious in my hands because she was very nervous about it and then the magazine shrunk shrunk shrunk I mean as the internet grew as as digital media disintermediated print media print media died fortune magazine and is in its physical form is still around but it's it's very thin so this is like you know five six years ago doing a good job as a journalist at fortune magazine became writing stuff for the web in the moment and how many eyeballs did you get on that story that was

posted last night and i was just like oh god this is not fun i cannot i certainly cannot do the definitive story if I have one day uh or if I don't have a lot of space I mean the internet's great you could write as but but people don't have the attention spans and so anyway that led to the idea for sellers east and media which is let us use our skills our story to interviewing and storytelling skills and for people who can afford it um we will tell your story as long as you want as detailed as you want um on your timetable and you can pick the audience if you want us to build you a public website we we we do that we build websites we can help you reach millions but if you want to give it to your kids, your three kids, you can do that too. We ended up doing a

really fantastic documentary called Port of Destiny for, um, the president of Columbia is a man, was a man named Juan Manuel Santos. Okay. He served eight terms until, um, just two years ago. And he won the Nobel peace prize for settling with the FARC rebels and ending 50 plus years of civil war in Colombia. An amazing man who talk about a roller coaster rise to winning a Nobel roller coaster path. Just a dramatic story. Blood, guts, murder, you know. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who are huge fans of his, were interviewed for it. I interviewed Clinton. We did like a 50 minute, 52 minute documentary. It was fantastic. but his people hired us this was like in 2017 I think like three years ago his people hired us

because he was leaving office he wanted a his story captured which had never been captured for like his post-presidential life you know so he's like shown it at venues around the world and events and stuff. And, but, you know, Joe Blow down the street can't necessarily afford to hire us to do that. But, you know, it's, it's for a certain clientele. And our services actually, our services actually come in as low as, we charge $38,000 for these filmed life story interviews so you know basically we we do stuff that's but you know it's it's basically for for companies and for people who have a certain level of income to capture their story in a way that they can control it and own it and um and we tell it right we bring our journalistic integrity

and our journalistic skills and we pick our clients very carefully yeah well one of the things that people will always say is like hey i know a lot of successful people uh when it comes to you and nina you guys literally probably have one of the best rolodexes in terms of the world's most successful and powerful people to the point where the washington post at one point wrote a an article that said i think the headline was something around uh the rolodex that redefined power, right? And was kind of referencing just a lot of successful people and powerful people want to be around each other, right? They're kind of, it's a magnet. And you've served as the central point for a lot of this for a long period of time. And Paulina, who has gone to the Most

Powerful Women's Conference, has told me that one of your favorite questions to ask people is what does power mean to you? So this is my chance to flip it on to you and ask you, after interviewing all these people, you know, spending literally months of your life with them, what does power mean to you? And kind of how do you define the success that a lot of these people have accomplished in their lifetimes? So power, and this, my definition of power has evolved a bit over the over the decades um power to me is what you do beyond your job description what you do beyond what you are supposed to do beyond your designated platform and your tenure what you're paid to do beyond what you're paid to do and especially in this world that we're

living in right now where everything can change tomorrow and you may not have that job tomorrow so if you can look at yourself and if you lose your job this afternoon and you can ask yourself okay i just lost my job am i still powerful if you can say yes to that, then you're powerful. I love that answer. My last question before we get into a set of rapid fire questions to finish up is you've told the story of the successful and powerful people. And you today in the business that you run, help to kind of cement the legacy of many of these people by telling these stories to kind of private audiences. uh what is the legacy for patty sellers in kind of your dream world what do you kind of

leave behind or would love for people to say you know what patty sellers she did x boy that is a really interesting question anthony i i actually have never been asked it and um when i when i interview people i tend to ask um you know you don't want to say what do you want on your tombstone, but I, I, I tend to ask, what do you want on your billboard? Okay. And I, I actually don't know what I would say, but I'm going to answer your question. So I, I want, I feel, I care about making an impact and I care about making a positive impact. And I believe that the best way I can make an impact on this world, on this world, whether it's helping to empower women, which I feel like I've done a lot in that space over the decades by building, being part of the team, co-founding and building Fortune Most Powerful Women, which is now the biggest leadership, women's leadership community on earth, the most, the

premier, or, you know, we're doing a film about civil rights leadership in the 21st century right now at a time when that topic is very timely and important. I'm a storyteller. And if I can help people who are good people and people who live lives of impact, if I can help them get their story out there and even pass it on to their next generation so that their kids and grandkids, and by watching their father or grandfather tell their story, if if that can make the world a little bit of a better place then I feel like I've done a good job and that's really all I that's really all I care about I mean I'm very happy in my life I don't want to be wealthier I live on the upper west side of Manhattan I have a good view out my

window looking out onto Broadway I don't want anything more I love working with smart people I like one of my rules of sort of career rules has always been work with people who are smarter than you are. Nina Easton, my co-CEO, is smarter than I am in many areas. I'd like to think she'd tell me that I'm smarter than she is in a couple of areas too, but I love that. I'm learning every day. I want to keep learning and I want to help keep, I want to keep helping through this talent I have. I want to help people who actually can make an impact, make a bigger impact than they ordinarily would be able to. You've done a fantastic job. You've told some of the most incredible stories. And I think with such intricate detail that people, you know, kind of the results

speak for themselves. Not only have you been able to get people to agree to do that because they trust you, but I think that it's one of these things where you can trick somebody one time, right? But if you do a bad job or you end up kind of violating that trust, then you don't get a second shot. You don't get any of their friends or anything like that. But for decades, you've been doing this. That's pretty cool. I finish up each conversation with the same two questions, and then you're going to get to ask me one at the end to finish it. The first is, what is your favorite book or what is the most important book

that you've ever read? Oh boy, my favorite book of all time. Of all time. You know, I just, I mean, I'm going to mention a book that I just finished. I just finished last week. It's called The Warmth of Other Suns

and it's by Isabel Wilkerson who just came out with this book, Caste, C-A-S-T-E, that is... um, very high on the bestseller list. Um, uh, Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer prize winning former New York times journalist who the warmth of other sons is about the migration of black people within the United States from South to North during the like thirties, forties and fifties and sixties. And it was just, it's, it was, it's a beautifully, beautifully written book. And, I mean, I have certain favorites from, you know, kind of my youth, like The Great Gatsby and, you know, just sort of like classics.

But in terms of books that I've recently read, I would say that that is important and timely and my favorite. I love that. My second question is a little bit more fun, which is aliens. Are you a believer or non-believer? A non-believer. Wait, why? I want to add, obviously you're a believer, which makes me want to say, wait, why? Well, it's just, so all right, so I'll go first.

It's just a math equation. The galaxy and other galaxies are so big, the probability that we're the only living beings anywhere in the kind of unlimited expansiveness of the universe is, in my opinion, quite small and so if you're just playing the probability game then mathematically it would suggest it's more likely than not uh and then i think that there's this like um kind of uh seductive like intellectual curiosity around uh everyone wants there to be the aliens right and they want to believe that we're not here alone uh they want to um kind of pontificate about are we going to meet them? Or are they going to come and meet us? And how does that play out? Who knows

what information and who's hiding the information? There's this whole society or culture around it that I think is fascinating to me personally, but I just fall back on the math. So why don't you? I mean, I think that's reasonable to think that way. I mean, everything that's happened this year, I mean, everything, like first and foremost, COVID has made me think more than ever about our place in this universe. Um, like there's a lot of stuff this year, like my mother would have just turned 100 years old. And I think of my grandparents who I knew who were, I realized, Like, I never realized this until just recently, that they were, they lived, they lived, you know, like 30 years after the Civil War. And it's just so weird to think in this vulnerable place that we are in right now as Americans with COVID still raging and the earth at, you know,

whether you look at climate change or or a pandemic or whatever how vulnerable we are and i mean i guess every generation thinks that they're living through historic times but what we experienced with one thing i didn't mention was you know who the first person who showed me the internet was no but i would love to know mark andreason really yeah all right you gotta tell us that story real quick yeah really quick i was doing a story in 1995 called don't call me slacker that was a that was a popular term then and it was about america's most successful 20 something so it was an idea i had let's do this was before the internet so there weren't many successful 20 something and i interviewed a few people who are still known today including

Jeff Zucker, who's now head of CNN, who was executive producer of the Today Show at the time, 29 years old. And anyway, I went out to California to a company called Mosaic, which was just changing its name at the time. But Mark was this kid who like 24 years old, it was just changing its name to Netscape. And he sat in the hallway in front of a computer and he said, I want to show you how this works. And this browser, this internet browser that we have, it was the first internet browser that was, you know, available to the public. And he said, let me show you this. And he, you know, there was like a, a line there. And he said, see that underlined word, like Mexico, if I click on that, click, and it took you to like a page about Mexico. And I was like,

oh my god so anyway i feel like we feel like we have lived through amazing amazing times okay does every generation feel like this okay so now 2020 we are living through amazing times and i don't know it's the first time i'm thinking it could all like go poof tomorrow but i hope it doesn't because i'm an optimist i think that everyone questions everything in times of uncertainty i think is a is a very fair thing what uh what one question do you have for me to uh to finish this up what's on your billboard anthony i say it's all time he was happy and he had fun that's it right it's uh i'm pretty open i think with people and I tell them like a long time ago, more than a decade ago now, I had the fortunate

and unfortunate situation of I went to war, right? And sitting in Iraq and you kind of go through certain experiences and you realize the kind of mortality that all of us have. And I think it's one of these life experiences where some people take the fork in the road that ends up with the ptsd and the depression and kind of all the things that we know can happen when people are in those environments uh and then other people actually come out in a completely different you know kind of end of the road which is they end up realizing like none of us are getting out of here alive right and so like you might as well go enjoy it and have fun and literally live kind of life to the fullest right the kind of more cliche way of saying it and when that became like something that

really, I internalized, I started to realize like, I'm going to do the things that I want to do today. I don't really care about kind of the long-term, you know, aspects of, uh, of it. Um, I'm not somebody who kind of mastered plans. Okay. Here's my 15 year plan as to how I'm going to, you know, become the CEO of the corporation where I started at the lower level and, you know, then middle manager. And, you know, it's just not my, my thing. Um, and it also means that when you're doing something like there's going to be a day I wake up and I'm going to say this podcast is no longer fun. And on the day that happens, I will stop that day. Right. And I'll literally just tweet out and say, it's over. Had a great run. See you guys. Right. But just this element

of having the ability to kind of walk away from things that aren't fun anymore, I think is really important. And it goes back to really just having your identity tied to your name, right? Your actions, not to a corporation, to a job, to any of that stuff. And I think that you were the rare case where you actually had a corporation for a very long time and then left. And when you left, you've now built a new company with your partner. And obviously, not only has it one gone well, but it seems like you've been able to take all the great aspects of the work that you'd previously done and kind of wrap it into a new bundle and now give it that to a very specific customer base, which, you know, I'm cheating again, because we recently were hanging out and

it's obvious you're happy, you're having fun, right? You're enjoying this. And so I think that's kind of like the whole goal of it. Real power is personal power. That is a fantastic statement. And I just, you know, I talked about Sellers Easton and Nina Easton and how fantastic a co-CEO she is. But I, we have a team, we have like seven or eight people and they're fantastic. And I just, what I love about this phase of my life and career is that I, you know, pivot, pivot, pivot. That's what everybody is supposed to be doing right now. and boy it is fun pivoting and learning every day and I am I'm frankly glad that I decided to pivot five years ago rather than like oh my god 2020s is here what do I do I feel like we're we're we're

it's it's it's good too but to this point of not planning Anthony it's it's so important you can't plan today. And, you know, I sort of became famous for this term about thinking, think of your career as a jungle gym, which is swing to opportunities, keep your peripheral vision. Do not think of your career as a ladder, because the next rung on the ladder, you have no idea what that is, if that's going to be secure, given the way the world is unpredictable and changing. Keep your peripheral vision, it might be wise to jump on that opportunity that is lateral or even below what you are now. Because it's all about expanding your experience base and adaptability, flexibility is more important than ever. So it's just, I love what you said about, you know, you're a fork in

the road and you made a choice. But what we are doing right now in our careers mutually, I think, is we're learning every day and we're stretching ourselves. And we do have personal power. And we might wake up tomorrow and say, I'm going to do something else. And that's fantastic. We have the power to do that. I love that. Before I let you go, where can people find you on the internet or find out more if they want to see all the great work you guys are doing? Thank you. Thank you. It's SellersEaston.com. S-E-L-L-E-R-S-E-A-S-T-O-N.com. I'm at Patty, P-A-T-T-I-E. Make sure you add the I-E. Patty at SellersEaston.com. So, yeah, I'd love to hear from your friends and fans. And this is really fun, Anthony.

Can we do this every day? I was going to say, you know that I would talk to you all day long if you would let me. No, listen, Patty, thank you so much for doing this. I think that people really love this episode, just not only all the learning from it, but also the entertaining stories. You lived a life that I think many people look at and say, hey, that was a lot of fun. So thank you so much for doing this and we'll definitely do it again in the future. Thank you, Anthony. It was fun.