Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
Speaker 2: And who says? So?
Speaker 1: Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's time
Speaker 1: to question everything.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hello, I hope you're having a beautiful week. I hope
Speaker 1: you're riding the high of our glorious dynem conversation.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: It meant so much to me, and after hearing all
Speaker 1: of your DMS, it is clear how much it meant
Speaker 1: to you. So thanks for reaching out and sharing. It
Speaker 1: was just so cool to interview somebody who's shaped the
Speaker 1: world we're living in right well, I wanted to continue
Speaker 1: our Women's Month celebration with someone who absolutely deserves to
Speaker 1: be celebrated.
Speaker 3: And honestly, she's been overdue for it.
Speaker 1: She's spent the majority of her career behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling that that's about to change.
Speaker 1: Once in a while, I get to interview somebody that
Speaker 1: just stops me in my tracks, and Danny Garcia, our
Speaker 1: guest today, stopped me in my tracks. She's wildly accomplished, yes,
Speaker 1: but that's almost the least interesting thing about her.
Speaker 3: What got me was how real she is.
Speaker 1: She is so clear about her why, and she also
Speaker 1: shares her how, which is rare. I keep catching myself
Speaker 1: going back to things she said during our conversation, and
Speaker 1: when that happens, I've learned to pay attention. So I
Speaker 1: want to jump into the episode because I want you
Speaker 1: to have as much time as possible with Danny. There's
Speaker 1: this philosophy in boxing, because get hit is inevitable.
Speaker 3: The real test is not the punch.
Speaker 1: It's whether you beat the count, meaning can you get
Speaker 1: back up before the referee counts you out. Today's guest
Speaker 1: has turned that mindset into an entire ecosystem. Danny Garcia
Speaker 1: has been an athlete, a financial executive, a global business strategist,
Speaker 1: a film producer, and the architect behind some of the
Speaker 1: most powerful brands in entertainment. She is the co founder
Speaker 1: of Seven Bucks Productions with her ex husband Dwayne the
Speaker 1: Rock Johnson. She's the first woman to own an interest
Speaker 1: in a major American professional football league, the XFL, now
Speaker 1: known as the UFL, and she's the founder of Donnie Moss.
Speaker 1: She is a producer, a strategist, the force behind billion
Speaker 1: dollar films like Jamanji and Black Adam. She's helped shape
Speaker 1: the trajectory of stars like Henry cavill and The Rock
Speaker 1: the most followed man on social media.
Speaker 3: Long before the world saw what she saw.
Speaker 1: And then at forty two, so she became a professional bodybuilder,
Speaker 1: just on the side, because apparently that's what she does
Speaker 1: when she's not busy reshaping entire industries. But here's what
Speaker 1: the credits don't tell you. Danny doesn't just build companies.
Speaker 1: She builds people. She builds momentum, and she builds belief.
Speaker 1: And none of it came easily. Danny got knocked down
Speaker 1: a lot, a first marriage that ended, while the business continued,
Speaker 1: big swings that didn't land, deals that failed, projects and
Speaker 1: movies that didn't work. And at some point she stopped
Speaker 1: fearing the fall. She even started counting on it because
Speaker 1: she understood something that most people I don't think ever do.
Speaker 1: The size of the loss is proportional to the size
Speaker 1: of the swing. And if you want the biggest wins
Speaker 1: of your life. You have to be willing to absorb
Speaker 1: the biggest hits, for.
Speaker 2: The big swings, for the big moments. You have to
Speaker 2: know that a big moment is going to have a
Speaker 2: big loss if it doesn't work out. I have one
Speaker 2: so much because I have lost a lot today.
Speaker 1: Danny shares the mindset that carried her through those losses,
Speaker 1: the discipline that drives her every single day, and why
Speaker 1: she believes resilience is the most powerful skill anyone can build. So,
Speaker 1: if you're in a season right now where things maybe
Speaker 1: aren't going your way, or you've taken a hit or
Speaker 1: two and you're questioning everything, maybe this isn't the end
Speaker 1: of the round. Maybe this is the moment you learn
Speaker 1: to beat the count. It's time to question everything with
Speaker 1: Danny Garcia. Danny, you have been thoughtfully questioning almost every
Speaker 1: rule and assumption around career and money and ownership, marriage
Speaker 1: and divorce, even physicality like bodybuilding.
Speaker 3: What is one rule that you're really happy you broke.
Speaker 2: I would say the rule that I really that I
Speaker 2: broke that impact and change my life was when someone
Speaker 2: said to me, you know, the red carpet is just
Speaker 2: for actors, so why don't we let them have it?
Speaker 2: And I said, oh no, I'm going to take my
Speaker 2: red carpet with me everywhere. And my red carpet is mine.
Speaker 2: You built it and I built it, and it'll take
Speaker 2: it and I will always roll it out in front
Speaker 2: of me wherever I go, and I will invite others
Speaker 2: on it as well.
Speaker 3: How did it serve you well?
Speaker 2: Because what I was being told was there was an
Speaker 2: experience that I was passionately excited about, but I couldn't
Speaker 2: have it. And I was thinking to myself, why couldn't
Speaker 2: I have it? And who is this individual to decide
Speaker 2: that I can or I can't have it? And that
Speaker 2: allowed me to have sort of the autonomy if you
Speaker 2: see I'm questioning right, I'm like, I'm here, I actually
Speaker 2: deserve to be here. And then I realized that the
Speaker 2: moments that I see that look like someone is giving
Speaker 2: you those moments, I could actually create them for myself.
Speaker 2: And that became a really important aspect of my life,
Speaker 2: is creating the moments that are sort of given to individuals,
Speaker 2: not waiting for a moment to be handed to you,
Speaker 2: but making a moment, making it your own.
Speaker 1: And you're asking yourself this question, why not mer You've been.
Speaker 2: Asking my whole life, and I've been asking it in
Speaker 2: great ways like why not me? And also like why
Speaker 2: not me? Why don't they let me? So it's led
Speaker 2: to a lot of self reflection and sort of some
Speaker 2: a little bit of sadness, especially as a young person.
Speaker 2: But then eventually it leads to answering and finding and
Speaker 2: researching and figuring out and then the excitement of saying, oh, yes, me.
Speaker 2: Which there is a wonderful thing about getting accomplished where
Speaker 2: someone's like, here you go, you did great, and I
Speaker 2: give you a trophy, and they give you a thing.
Speaker 2: But then there is this incredible power when you are
Speaker 2: the one giving yourself the trophy, when you are the
Speaker 2: one writing the check for the thing that you've always wanted,
Speaker 2: and that's addictive.
Speaker 1: I was trying to put the pieces of your life
Speaker 1: together over the last few weeks, and I kept thinking
Speaker 1: about this one story.
Speaker 3: Years ago.
Speaker 1: I would do Red Carpets and I was at the
Speaker 1: Emmys interviewing Billy Porter, and Billy probably had one of
Speaker 1: the best voices in New York City, was so talented,
Speaker 1: and because the world was not ready for him yet,
Speaker 1: he didn't really have a major role on Broadway. In
Speaker 1: Kinky Boothsteel, he was forty two years old. He was
Speaker 1: eating ramen in his really shitty apartment. He talked about
Speaker 1: it all the time, and he was the first black
Speaker 1: and gay man to be nominated for his category at
Speaker 1: the time. And I asked him the most obvious, simple
Speaker 1: question a red carpet reporter could ask, And I said,
Speaker 1: what does this nomination mean to you? And he looked
Speaker 1: at me and his eyes well up, and so my
Speaker 1: eyes welled up, and he hit my chest and he said,
Speaker 1: when the world tells you no, you tell yourself yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, And we were bawling, and everyone's makeup had to
Speaker 2: be fixed.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but what a connection.
Speaker 2: At that moment.
Speaker 1: Well, I've never forgotten his words. Yeah, I thought about
Speaker 1: them so much.
Speaker 3: With you.
Speaker 1: Oh, interesting because at a young age, it seemed like
Speaker 1: everyone could have said no, not you.
Speaker 3: You had always told yourself yes.
Speaker 1: It seems what did the world not know that you
Speaker 1: already had stirring inside of you.
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting things on this because you're
Speaker 2: creating a narrative, and I want to actually give you
Speaker 2: the complexity of the narrative. So my yes was because
Speaker 2: at a very young age, I think must have been
Speaker 2: twelve or thirteen, I looked at the mirror and I
Speaker 2: was like, this is what I got. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so this is what we're working with. My sister is
Speaker 2: like very traditionally cute from the beginning, and I had
Speaker 2: a unique look in my mind. You know, you can
Speaker 2: look back, not in my mind because you're gorgeous. Well,
Speaker 2: when I look back when I was young, I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, so which style. But in a very
Speaker 2: conservative Cuban family in Suckastan in New Jersey, I was
Speaker 2: a species that was non familiar. So at that moment,
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, well you know what my mind
Speaker 2: and my personality, you know, my heart all these other things.
Speaker 2: And in my family, looks were actually thinking. My grandmother
Speaker 2: was stunning. We're just tall, blonde Cuban woman. My mom
Speaker 2: very attracting myself, So I was born into a family
Speaker 2: where appearances were important, and also my family treated me
Speaker 2: like you're so different. So you know, in that environment,
Speaker 2: I gave myself this second plan, and the second plan
Speaker 2: ended up being my greatest strength. And then later in
Speaker 2: life I gave myself the rest of it I gave
Speaker 2: myself that first plan whereas like you can be in front,
Speaker 2: you can be forward facing. So it was from that
Speaker 2: experience where right in the beginning, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: here we go, we're gonna do a thing. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: try this. I'm thinking this way and this culture of
Speaker 2: cre eating a life for myself, that was the thing.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, my life is not just going
Speaker 2: to be handed to me. I'm going to have to
Speaker 2: create a life for myself. And then also a little
Speaker 2: bit later, looking at my father and seeing how hard
Speaker 2: he was working and seeing, you know, he come over
Speaker 2: as a young immigrant at sixteen, I also was like, okay,
Speaker 2: and you know what, I can create a life that
Speaker 2: can take care of my family. So I sort of
Speaker 2: went into this mode of creation. That's how this narrative
Speaker 2: that you were looking at started then and was a
Speaker 2: way of life for me. And that doesn't mean it
Speaker 2: was smooth. I had a lot of failure, but I
Speaker 2: kept saying that's all right, Okay, here we go, and
Speaker 2: then I would try again.
Speaker 3: You would just pick yourself up and pick it.
Speaker 2: Up, and I was like, let's try again. And it
Speaker 2: was a funny thing because I would wake up. Let's
Speaker 2: say something that didn't work out, and I wake up
Speaker 2: the next day and I'd be like, but you know,
Speaker 2: if I think if I did it differently, what if
Speaker 2: I did it this way, It's such a small little
Speaker 2: step every day that can change your life that point.
Speaker 1: Of view, Did you ever worry that mindset would isolate you,
Speaker 1: that that self belief, because sometimes at a young age,
Speaker 1: other girls don't take to that totally.
Speaker 2: I was a little bit isolated already. You know. I
Speaker 2: had one really close best friend and she was wonderful,
Speaker 2: incredibly creative, So I wasn't used to a lot. I
Speaker 2: was on the track team. I was a drum major,
Speaker 2: you know, I should say on the track team that
Speaker 2: had my peers there. So we were that huddle, that
Speaker 2: athlete of life. But I was used to already being
Speaker 2: so different that it wasn't unexpected for me to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of walking a path that maybe it's just
Speaker 2: me and someone else, or sometimes it's just me.
Speaker 1: And did your Cuban immigrant parents sort of display that
Speaker 1: work ethic, that relentlessness.
Speaker 3: I know you mentioned your dad, I'm curious about your mom.
Speaker 2: My mom too, she had a practicality of like Okay,
Speaker 2: we're gonna get this done. We get the things done.
Speaker 2: It was a traditional household. My mom didn't work until
Speaker 2: after my younger brother was born. My dad had to
Speaker 2: leave Cuba before he finished his high school degree. They
Speaker 2: both got their degrees later. When they came here. They
Speaker 2: were very much about doing the right thing, expecting that
Speaker 2: we would go to college, expecting that we would take
Speaker 2: advantage of always what's in front of us. That was
Speaker 2: extremely important to them. And then for my dad, because
Speaker 2: I was such a unique mentality, we bonded in my
Speaker 2: capacity to work and work hard, and in that space
Speaker 2: he had great respect. It was rare to have a
Speaker 2: twelve year old riding her bike three miles away to
Speaker 2: a barn to clean an eight stall barn, to take
Speaker 2: out of that face. So right, he saw that and
Speaker 2: he could relate to that, and that was actually probably
Speaker 2: the undercurrents of a lot of our relationship where he
Speaker 2: knew he could count on me.
Speaker 1: And is he the one who told you to get
Speaker 1: that job at the barn or did you seek it out?
Speaker 2: So what happened is I really wanted a horse, and
Speaker 2: so my grandfather was so wonderful had purchased this horse
Speaker 2: for me. But it wasn't like, hey, okay, you're good.
Speaker 2: It was like, how are you going to keep this horse?
Speaker 2: So where we were able to keep this horse, this
Speaker 2: gentleman who ran the barn, and he was like, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll come in and work. You can clean the barn,
Speaker 2: clean the stalls the night, come in the weekends and
Speaker 2: yet free grain and hay and bored for your horse.
Speaker 2: So it was not questioned. It was just like, okay,
Speaker 2: absolutely I want this. I'm working for it for what
Speaker 2: I want. That, I would say underlies a lot of
Speaker 2: what my family culture was. You worked for what you received.
Speaker 2: There was never any expectation that you were going to
Speaker 2: receive something and if you didn't work for it.
Speaker 1: And in hindsight, do you feel like that was positive
Speaker 1: or was there also a piece of feeling like you
Speaker 1: received love from your dad from working hard? I think
Speaker 1: I receive a little love from my dad by taking
Speaker 1: care of myself, not needing things.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It definitely helped me in life. I
Speaker 3: will look back and be like trauma.
Speaker 2: So it was two things. It definitely set me up
Speaker 2: to believe that my value was in hard work, and
Speaker 2: hard work in excess is just a vanity. It's not strategic.
Speaker 2: But then on the flip side, it taught me I
Speaker 2: could do big things. I was driving this massive John
Speaker 2: Dear tractor with a mower in the front, and in
Speaker 2: the back of trailer there was a horse that got
Speaker 2: cut and blood is shooting out and I had to
Speaker 2: bring him down Tater Todd and wrap him up. And
Speaker 2: you know, I came home like I came from war,
Speaker 2: and my mom and dad were like, oh, what happened?
Speaker 2: I was on FaZe. So there was an aspect where
Speaker 2: even I knew it was big things. I knew when
Speaker 2: the barn looked spotless, I knew I was doing things
Speaker 2: that other people didn't do. And I realized I had
Speaker 2: a lot of capacity. That was an incredible gift to
Speaker 2: understand early on how much capacity I had.
Speaker 1: So at thirteen, you decided you were going to create wealth? Yes,
Speaker 1: how did you think you were going to do it?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I had no idea. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: just got to me rich can take care of my family.
Speaker 2: It was like a million dollars that was it gonna
Speaker 2: be a millionaire to take care of my family. But
Speaker 2: I had little inklings of business. But not understanding. I
Speaker 2: had no exposure to you know, traditional corporate America. My
Speaker 2: dad worked at an autobody shop sweeping the floors and
Speaker 2: then became the manager. But I had enough exposure, and
Speaker 2: I knew was going to college. That's all I had. Business.
Speaker 2: I'm going into business. And then by fifteen I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: international business, domestic and international. The world's very global. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, okay, marketing and finance together, and
Speaker 2: I was like, let me look at all the informational tools.
Speaker 2: At fifteen, I was like, okay, I'm going to gather
Speaker 2: that and let's see. Now there was a big gap
Speaker 2: between that and actually being successful. But I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is all I got in front of me. We're
Speaker 2: going in this direction, and my hope is that I
Speaker 2: would pick up more and pick up more.
Speaker 1: Well, you kept just putting one foot in front of
Speaker 1: the other. You started selling pants suits or skirt suits
Speaker 1: or pantsuit.
Speaker 2: I sold men's suits, so just for men, just for men. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that must.
Speaker 1: Have been an interesting experience. And what's your sales pitch
Speaker 1: to them?
Speaker 2: First of all, can you see like this sixteen year
Speaker 2: old girl? So I had gone from the barn, now
Speaker 2: I'm in high school and I'm the track and I'm
Speaker 2: a band, and you know, the Horsey phases moved out,
Speaker 2: but I was still working and I was very pleased
Speaker 2: with myself as very professional. Yeah, with a gentleman who
Speaker 2: owned it, showed me how to measure, how to tuck
Speaker 2: the pants, and like driving the tractor. I didn't think
Speaker 2: anything else of it other than just do the thing.
Speaker 2: And so I just did the thing, and that's what
Speaker 2: I would do. I did it all through high school.
Speaker 1: So you've had this ambitious, business minded streak from a
Speaker 1: very young age. But another through line of your life
Speaker 1: you've mentioned was athletics, and your parents thought that you
Speaker 1: would have natural talent as a swimmer. Will you tell
Speaker 1: us what happened in that very first swim race. It's
Speaker 1: a really good story.
Speaker 2: You know that swim race. I've had quite a few
Speaker 2: moments where I'm like, wait, what's going on. But to
Speaker 2: be like, oh, your daughter is tall and lean, thus
Speaker 2: she's gonna be a great swimmer. Okay, there goes a
Speaker 2: little bit more into that. So they were like, you're
Speaker 2: gonna be a great swimmer. I'm like, okay, I like
Speaker 2: the water. So they put me in the Horseshoe Lake
Speaker 2: Swim Team Roxbury, New Jersey, and they came out to
Speaker 2: see my first meet. You know, they shot the gun.
Speaker 2: I'm dad in the waterhouse swim. It's so hard. I
Speaker 2: turned the corner, came back and I came in last, right,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, okay. But then I stepped
Speaker 2: out and my dad came up to me and he
Speaker 2: was like, Nanita, you came in last. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I remember the dread. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's bad. He's like, Nanita, how came you call them last? Yeah? Sorry,
Speaker 2: Dad don't know. And so I'm not a kid going oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't know the stakes were high, but I was like,
Speaker 2: I didn't know that coming and last was like such
Speaker 2: a thing. And so my dad was embarrassed. And that's
Speaker 2: what I felt like. If my daughter came in last
Speaker 2: or didn't have success. We were always like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: all right, let's do this, let's work on that. But
Speaker 2: my dad's upbringing my parents upgreaming. It wasn't about oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, let's get you some extra practice. It
Speaker 2: was results. There wasn't a lot of education that would
Speaker 2: be like, you know, how we take care of kids.
Speaker 2: Now you want to be on the swim team, bread,
Speaker 2: We'll get you some practice, We'll get your coach. Don't
Speaker 2: worry about your time now. It was very black and white,
Speaker 2: and it did. It colored me. First of all. It
Speaker 2: was awful tombarrass him. That was awful and it still
Speaker 2: sets me. Isn't that funny? I understand that, yeah, especially
Speaker 2: with a father, But it did make me lock in
Speaker 2: and go, okay, I will prepare you know, so now
Speaker 2: you have the work hard ethics and then you have
Speaker 2: the preparation. And those two together they became weapons for me,
Speaker 2: like they became like maybe it didn't have balance until
Speaker 2: much later, but they sure did give me quite a bit.
Speaker 2: It was quite a lesson.
Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend one time say to me, it
Speaker 1: seems like you had a really good mix of trauma
Speaker 1: and love and yea child.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a good thing. It's so interesting. That's what
Speaker 2: our adult lives are for you look back at my
Speaker 2: mom had me when she was twenty one, so my
Speaker 2: dad is definitely under thirty at this point, maybe twenty seven,
Speaker 2: twenty eight. His kids coming from Cuba, his grandmother raised
Speaker 2: him like you can see all the gaps of understanding.
Speaker 2: You have two people who are kind of just victims
Speaker 2: of the information they have. I have kindness for all
Speaker 2: that I understand. My did an interview. He was talking
Speaker 2: in Spanish. She's like, I didn't know she was so
Speaker 2: fit to the day because ESPN had done a documentary
Speaker 2: and this story was in there. Yeah, I didn't know,
Speaker 2: but come on, she gave me last. He still owned it.
Speaker 2: He didn't own it. He was still like, she came
Speaker 2: in last.
Speaker 3: Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: But what I got from him was like, you don't
Speaker 1: have to come in first, but you can't come in last.
Speaker 2: That was that was that's kind of but see that's
Speaker 2: harm Garcia senior in his eighties. That's not harm Garcia's dad.
Speaker 3: Fair.
Speaker 2: There was never that part of the conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you recently posted that one of the most
Speaker 1: formative roles you've ever played is a loser.
Speaker 3: Yes, the way I was shocked.
Speaker 1: You wrote that, I'm personally working on this even before
Speaker 1: our conversation here, and I was telling you I took
Speaker 1: an l and it was licking my wounds and it
Speaker 1: hurts talk to me about the losses that shaped you
Speaker 1: besides the swimming, because that obviously shaped you do you
Speaker 1: use any of those as a daily reminder for yourself.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's no big life without losses. So it's the
Speaker 2: agreement you make right for the big swings, for the
Speaker 2: big moments, you have to know that a big moment
Speaker 2: is going to have a big loss if it doesn't
Speaker 2: work out. There is that juxtaposition, but I mean from
Speaker 2: being in high school and being asked to the prom
Speaker 2: and then being unasked so they could ask someone else,
Speaker 2: and then arguing like, you can't actually do that, that's
Speaker 2: not very ethical. They did still go to the other president.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's not right to whether it's being picked last,
Speaker 2: or is my first marriage, or big asks or even films.
Speaker 2: I mean, there is so much much loss. I'm really
Speaker 2: quite masterful. I have won so much because I have
Speaker 2: lost a lot. It wasn't like, oh yeah, I can
Speaker 2: see her. She's a winner. She's got great muscle, coordination
Speaker 2: of mind, she's got all those things. She's going for
Speaker 2: big things. Wooh that was ugly, and she's picking it up.
Speaker 2: And then she's like, okay, all right, that didn't work.
Speaker 2: That didn't work. Fixing it and going and fixing it
Speaker 2: and going the gift of having no entitlement means I
Speaker 2: had no easy wins, but that has given me so
Speaker 2: much strength. And then that means that regardless of what
Speaker 2: I'm choosing to do, there really is no difference. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's hard and this is simple. They're both going to
Speaker 2: have the same pieces, which is I'm going to figure
Speaker 2: it out. I'm going to prepare myself as much as possible.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go for it, and if it doesn't
Speaker 2: work out, I'm going to go for it again until
Speaker 2: I get to the workout, till I get to where
Speaker 2: it is. So I think having that and having that
Speaker 2: be emotionally as frictionless as possible. So I've gotten better
Speaker 2: at that. Still, like the loss sucks someone, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: let myself twenty four to forty eight hours a little
Speaker 2: wallowing some laughter in it, but my mind can't help
Speaker 2: it saying, but you know what, that was really good.
Speaker 2: But that party and I start putting the pieces together.
Speaker 1: Yes, I really am moved by what you just said.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you realize you said it,
Speaker 1: but you said I have won.
Speaker 3: So much because I have lost so much. Yes, that
Speaker 3: is a really cool statement.
Speaker 2: And you know what people who win they like to
Speaker 2: maybe not share that aspect of their life because I
Speaker 2: think it's supposed to be hidden, and also media wants
Speaker 2: you to be that winner. But if you ask someone
Speaker 2: to unpack their story, if they unpack their losses, you
Speaker 2: will get so much richness out of compare it to
Speaker 2: if they unpack their with.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that some of those were big asks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was your first big ass?
Speaker 2: And I would say one of my first big asks
Speaker 2: in the industry in Hollywood. One of my first big
Speaker 2: ass happened to be a show that I was working
Speaker 2: on and I had developed it and I had been
Speaker 2: deeply in it, and it was sort of a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty partnership. And when it came time for like
Speaker 2: all right, you know we're setting up this person's role
Speaker 2: in your role, I was left out, I'm in the show?
Speaker 2: Aren't I in the show? And the other people were like, no,
Speaker 2: you're not in the show. The other individual who could
Speaker 2: have been like, oh, you're in the show would have
Speaker 2: been like boom, pull you up and given me in
Speaker 2: the show, was like, no, you're not in the show.
Speaker 2: I remember went front of one of the major studios.
Speaker 2: We were outside we hadn't walked in. I started crying
Speaker 2: because I had like put so much into the show,
Speaker 2: and I was like, how am I not? And the
Speaker 2: in fact, I was sideswiped that I wouldn't be in
Speaker 2: the show. And that was like my big ask, I'm
Speaker 2: going the show that I listened in the show and
Speaker 2: I didn't get put in the show. I still did
Speaker 2: the show. I produced it. I produced a shit out
Speaker 2: of that show. I did all the work. Boom.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's like a childhood wound that it hit too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had the energy. Remember I told you there
Speaker 2: were a couple of moments where I'm shocked. It was
Speaker 2: like that where I was like, wait, what, oh that matters?
Speaker 2: What were the rules? I wasn't aware? And so yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a big swing. I got that.
Speaker 1: You took a big swing in college too. Yes, you
Speaker 1: went up and introduced to yourself to a guy at
Speaker 1: a bar. First of all, you said that you met
Speaker 1: him in the weight room, right, and you happened to
Speaker 1: have met your current husband in the gym. It seems
Speaker 1: to be going to the gym, daddy, where is he?
Speaker 2: So funny? Yeah, that is so funny. My husband and
Speaker 2: I talk about that all the time. Is your question
Speaker 2: where is he? No?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I wish you could answer that one, but no,
Speaker 1: My question for you is how did you have the
Speaker 1: kahones to go up? Did you give yourself a pep
Speaker 1: talk or did it seem totally natural to you to
Speaker 1: just go up and introduce yourself to a man.
Speaker 2: I didn't give myself a pep talk because I was
Speaker 2: on the Barsia team. He was on the Barsia team,
Speaker 2: another team. We were in the weight room all the time.
Speaker 2: I'm a senior, I know where I'm going, and I
Speaker 2: had been an athlete now at a university level, competing
Speaker 2: on as a varsita level, and University of Miami is
Speaker 2: incredible education and in addition, when you're an athlete, is
Speaker 2: an incredible culture.
Speaker 3: As an athlete.
Speaker 2: So for me at that point, I was super comfortable,
Speaker 2: and I was training strong as well as you know ooh,
Speaker 2: we trained so hard as crew teams, so I was
Speaker 2: able to do that. And I had been doing this
Speaker 2: executive business classes. I was supporting the executive education at
Speaker 2: the Dean's office at the school Business. So by my
Speaker 2: junior and senior year, I had all these exposure to CEOs.
Speaker 2: I was introducing myself. So I felt really like I
Speaker 2: had all these tools. Yeah, and so going up to
Speaker 2: talk to a football player, I was like, hey, by
Speaker 2: the way, so geeky. I was like, Hi, I'm Danny Garcia.
Speaker 2: I see it all time. And he's like, oh, Hi,
Speaker 2: nice to meet you. I see it all time too.
Speaker 2: He's like, what's your major? How's it going? International finance
Speaker 2: and marketing. He's like, what are you going to do
Speaker 2: when your graduate? I was going to work for American
Speaker 2: Express Latin America. I was just like so comfortable. And
Speaker 2: then he's like, oh great, and we were talking and
Speaker 2: he was like, do you have a phone? I was like, telephone.
Speaker 2: I do. It's like can I call you? I was
Speaker 2: like you can, And that's funny the beginning of thirty
Speaker 2: eight year friendship. But I was there with my team.
Speaker 2: The whole crew team was there. We were having a
Speaker 2: great time.
Speaker 3: I didn't feel like a big a was right in
Speaker 3: the room.
Speaker 2: And if it didn't work out, I was going back
Speaker 2: and I had other friends there from the football team.
Speaker 2: So God, is that athlete environment, that athlete community, you
Speaker 2: can do a lot of great things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So that man ended up being Dayne the
Speaker 1: Rock Johnson.
Speaker 2: That's right now.
Speaker 1: I can imagine you tell him at that bar, you
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're going to do when you graduate,
Speaker 1: and you're so confident.
Speaker 3: That has to be so infectious for him.
Speaker 2: I think it was. He speaks about it that it
Speaker 2: was a defining moment. I think he had plans afterwards
Speaker 2: to do other things, and he canceled his plans actually
Speaker 2: after that moment. And he had not met someone like
Speaker 2: me before. He was like, so straight and this is
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do. Well, he's young, so let's
Speaker 2: see what everyone's responding to. But he always speaks to
Speaker 2: my agency, my little college agency that I had.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like at that time he had big
Speaker 1: dreams or do you feel like your agency your big
Speaker 1: dreams sort of inspired that in him.
Speaker 2: Oh. DJ has always been a full, complete human, like
Speaker 2: you know, a very special individual. Even in the weight room.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing him and at that time we had
Speaker 2: incredible athletes on the University of Miami. Yeah, that was high.
Speaker 2: It was an incredible time. But he had so much
Speaker 2: of an it so he had high expectations for what
Speaker 2: he was going to do in football and he was
Speaker 2: just starting that process. He was a young individual. I
Speaker 2: was young. I think he was nineteen eighteen when I
Speaker 2: met him, So I was a matter of an eighteen
Speaker 2: year old who saw his sort of University of Miami
Speaker 2: career ahead of him and then his potentially NFL career
Speaker 2: ahead of him. So he had a great personality. So
Speaker 2: he had out a lot going firm. I don't know
Speaker 2: that he at that moment was thinking massive global enterprise
Speaker 2: would be built. I was thinking I'm going to build
Speaker 2: a massible lunch right in my head. But I think
Speaker 2: he could see what was just in front of him,
Speaker 2: which was pretty big.
Speaker 1: And you did exactly what you said you were going
Speaker 1: to do. You started working at Merrill Lynch, and while
Speaker 1: you're there, you do the very danny thing of doing
Speaker 1: the most right and you develop your own management firm.
Speaker 2: Right. I don't Merrill Lynch to start my own wealth
Speaker 2: management firm.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought it was simultaneously.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: So once I okay, yeah, TELL married and I had
Speaker 2: my daughter, I was like, I need more flexibility, and
Speaker 2: so in the Merrill Lynch you know, which is pretty
Speaker 2: specific and structured, then I left to begin my own
Speaker 2: wealth management firm. But I do want to point out
Speaker 2: something Merrill Lynch was very similar to me thirteen, being
Speaker 2: like okay business international finance. Mary Lynch was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to learn so much here. Let's go and
Speaker 2: gather all this information and see what I can learn
Speaker 2: about the financial market. Merrill Lynch, Oh, what an education.
Speaker 2: How to speak to people, how to do financial planning,
Speaker 2: how to organize your thoughts. They groomed and raised me.
Speaker 2: They did a lot for me.
Speaker 1: And that's when you decided, after you started your own
Speaker 1: firm that you were going.
Speaker 3: To part time start managing.
Speaker 2: So his career once I left Merlin to start JDM,
Speaker 2: I was always involved in his career. So I was
Speaker 2: handling the finances of the household. I was handling all
Speaker 2: the professional aspects of the household.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of responsibility.
Speaker 2: It was a lot of responsible and there is that
Speaker 2: work thing again, no boundaries, and so I was involved
Speaker 2: just naturally. He always invited me into it and I
Speaker 2: had an opinion. I mean when he was playing football,
Speaker 2: I was watching film and talking to him about performance
Speaker 2: and how the plays were developing. So that sort of
Speaker 2: input in that collaboration aspect was always a part of
Speaker 2: what we were doing. It wasn't later on as our
Speaker 2: relationship transition from being married to not being married. In
Speaker 2: that year while we were going through our divorce that
Speaker 2: DJ asked me that takeover his career fully, architect his career.
Speaker 3: That is very interesting.
Speaker 1: So while you were getting divorced, yes, he said, uh uh.
Speaker 2: He said, what do you mind continue to manage and
Speaker 2: build out my career an architect of my career. And
Speaker 2: I was like, absolutely, I had already been so invested.
Speaker 2: There was a lot. I was a partner with him
Speaker 2: with all these aspects, and I enjoyed it so much.
Speaker 2: Friendship underneath that. So yeah, So he asked.
Speaker 3: Me too, and I said, okay, was there a learning
Speaker 3: curve at all?
Speaker 2: Oh? There was two things. Being in that position of
Speaker 2: leadership natural for me, learning and becoming accustomed to the
Speaker 2: intricacies of Hollywood learning curve, Yes, that was, and then
Speaker 2: also getting Hollywood used to Danny Garcia, that was a
Speaker 2: big learning curve for Hollywood.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of what I want to jump into.
Speaker 1: But most people are told, don't work with your family, right,
Speaker 1: don't mix finances and family, don't mix friends and finances.
Speaker 1: You actually have love all around you. You built an
Speaker 1: empire with your brother, your ex husband, your current.
Speaker 3: Husband is in the mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: What do people get wrong about blending family and ambition?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. Maybe I can say what I
Speaker 2: think I got right. I think what we got right
Speaker 2: is the culture that everyone works very hard in the organization.
Speaker 2: So there is an aspect of that, and there's an
Speaker 2: aspect of family, especially as you know, in the entertainment industry,
Speaker 2: it's so so challenging, and we came so much from
Speaker 2: the outside into this industry, right, there's nothing traditional from Dwayne,
Speaker 2: coming from wrestling myself on the business side, there was
Speaker 2: an aspect that I believe the intangible of who we
Speaker 2: were together would be more important than having an outsider
Speaker 2: come in and try and understand us. No one looked
Speaker 2: like us, no one had the background like us, but
Speaker 2: what was formulaic was how Hollywood works. So the hard
Speaker 2: part is the culture of who we are. So if
Speaker 2: I have the right family members around me, and I
Speaker 2: don't have all my family members, but I have the
Speaker 2: family members whore really excit I did to be around me.
Speaker 2: Working together, we could do special things, we could create
Speaker 2: a special things. And so that's what I think we've
Speaker 2: done really well and we also invest in our minds
Speaker 2: and our professionalism and how we're growing. But that history,
Speaker 2: I mean, there was a time at the University of Miami.
Speaker 2: I was there, Dwayne was there. Him was there. Him
Speaker 2: was on the field as the drum major. Dwayne was
Speaker 2: playing football. I was just graduating or have graduated. I
Speaker 2: mean that shared history, and then we all have that
Speaker 2: same ambition together. It's an anchor. The Hollywood aspect of
Speaker 2: our industry will spiral you off right, will have you
Speaker 2: lose your footing, and our footing I think really sacred.
Speaker 1: There's another element of this, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: to perfectly word it. I was in a long term
Speaker 1: relationship with somebody and our work overlapped a lot, and
Speaker 1: I understand so deeply being able to put us oute
Speaker 1: the relationship for the sake of a goal. Because there's
Speaker 1: almost this vocabulary you have right like you guys speak
Speaker 1: the same language. You have all these stories that you
Speaker 1: can bring up in meetings that nobody else knows true.
Speaker 1: But there's this other aspect that you have to be
Speaker 1: able to compartmentalize right and do what needs to be
Speaker 1: done over feeling any of your feelings or dealing.
Speaker 2: With anything absolutely, especially when you work with your ex.
Speaker 3: Also, I think it's different for men and women.
Speaker 1: Yes, as a woman, and even though I know you're
Speaker 1: so tough, you have a soft side. Oh yes, how
Speaker 1: did you work that out? How did you do what needs.
Speaker 2: To be done? We both committed to be different people
Speaker 2: than who we were in the marriage. We had the
Speaker 2: aspiration and this appetite to build and do great things,
Speaker 2: but there was the honesty of like, we can't do
Speaker 2: that if we are the same people. So if you
Speaker 2: were to look back now this Danny versus Danny of
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, this is a completely different human
Speaker 2: being and Duyanne is a completely different human being. So
Speaker 2: that commitment, it has to go hand in hand. If
Speaker 2: you're casual and like, oh no, but we care for
Speaker 2: each other, we love each other, we're friends, that is
Speaker 2: just frosting. That is not going to cover it. You
Speaker 2: really do have to say, okay, am I going to
Speaker 2: dig the truth? Our marriage failed together there was room
Speaker 2: for both of us inside to be like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: want to be a different person. He wants to be
Speaker 2: a different person. So that was a benefit all of
Speaker 2: a sudden. Then you have history. So history is great,
Speaker 2: but history without trust of the human being is just history.
Speaker 2: But when you have trust of the human being and history,
Speaker 2: then you have a very powerful combination. But that becomes
Speaker 2: an agreement, right, that becomes work. And for me, as
Speaker 2: I talked about every other aspect, there was no way
Speaker 2: to be successful in a new relationship unless I had
Speaker 2: unpacked and changed everything historically that I had done in
Speaker 2: my previous relationship. So I was benefiting myself all the
Speaker 2: way around. It was like, Okay, I'm going to do this,
Speaker 2: but actually it's going to color my entire life and
Speaker 2: just put me in a better position. And Doane felt
Speaker 2: the same way. And then our spouses support that, know
Speaker 2: that and support that, and know that they're in their lanes.
Speaker 2: They can see us together and be like, look at
Speaker 2: those two friends, but there's nothing in our interactions that
Speaker 2: speak to who we were eighteen years ago.
Speaker 1: And you trusted, because you trusted yourself that you would
Speaker 1: make the effort to change, and you trusted that he
Speaker 1: would make the effort.
Speaker 2: Yes, I didn't have to trust because he was like,
Speaker 2: I'm making this effort. He was doing it. But it
Speaker 2: was where I was like, and if it doesn't, I
Speaker 2: think I can handle this all like I made the
Speaker 2: big bet on me. That's why I laughed when we
Speaker 2: were at our meeting with divorce attorneys where they were like,
Speaker 2: what you did it by yourself because I took nothing.
Speaker 2: I just took my last name. And then DJ and
Speaker 2: I agreed that we would cover our daughter's expenses equally.
Speaker 2: That was it. Wow, that was it. So the bet
Speaker 2: was huge. Freedom was everything. And I have bet on
Speaker 2: myself many times like that, but the payoff has been
Speaker 2: I sit here today is that woman. I would never
Speaker 2: have changed it.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you something without getting to in your business?
Speaker 2: You in my business? I invite you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead, thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you trust that there's this evolution, why not
Speaker 1: try and.
Speaker 3: Make the marriage work.
Speaker 2: It's actually an excellent okay.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to press.
Speaker 2: It, so it's really important. By the time DJ and
Speaker 2: I had gotten divorced, it was clear we weren't meant
Speaker 2: to be that way. But the love and the friendship,
Speaker 2: so I think if it had been like I'm not talking,
Speaker 2: then you'd be like ooh. But the love in the
Speaker 2: friendship made the transition feel more melancholy and like oh appropriate,
Speaker 2: like it's okay. I'm going to make sure you're okay,
Speaker 2: and he's like, I'm going to make sure you're okay.
Speaker 2: We're going to make sure our daughter's okay. So it
Speaker 2: gave permission for that trans position to happen smoothly, which
Speaker 2: was a great thing. I think that's the gift of
Speaker 2: how we transitioned out of our relationship. It was clear
Speaker 2: we were like.
Speaker 1: I see he's starting to talk about it a little
Speaker 1: bit more, and he recently said he was really going
Speaker 1: through it during your divorce.
Speaker 3: Yes, what were you going through?
Speaker 2: Same thing a little bit different though, actually I believe
Speaker 2: he spoke about being depressed. I went right into my
Speaker 2: tri mode, took the big l what am I unpacking?
Speaker 2: What am I learning? And if you also remember or
Speaker 2: you may not remember, but I was still in that
Speaker 2: architecture space, so like guided the divorce, guided how the
Speaker 2: documents were looking over smowe, how is the household running,
Speaker 2: what is happening with the finances. So there was a
Speaker 2: lot to keep my plate busy. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: I was working with an individual who has become my
Speaker 2: soul sister and my best friend, moving myself forward through
Speaker 2: my belief system. So I had started doing that. So
Speaker 2: it was a little easier for me because I was
Speaker 2: like okay, and every week I'd be like, oh wait,
Speaker 2: all right, yeah, I cleared that I understand that belief system.
Speaker 2: All right. I took care of that what's next, and
Speaker 2: that helped me to just move forward.
Speaker 1: Do you look back on that time and think like, man,
Speaker 1: Danny really had a lot on her shoulders or do
Speaker 1: you look back with pride?
Speaker 2: First of all, I love the narratives that come out,
Speaker 2: because you know it was still a mess, right, you
Speaker 2: know there were nights that you were like cry, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: But I look back at that time and it reminds
Speaker 2: me that I can still trust myself because I still
Speaker 2: wake up every day and be like, okay, what are
Speaker 2: we gonna do.
Speaker 1: Part of me felt like when I was putting the
Speaker 1: pieces back in hindsight, that struggle was preparing you for
Speaker 1: what was next.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I love that observation. That struggle,
Speaker 2: which was an emotional struggle, it also shaped standards inside
Speaker 2: of me, like expectations. You know, what I want in
Speaker 2: my life, how I want things to feel. It was
Speaker 2: some of my greatest work was during that period. I
Speaker 2: would say, really it started in two thousand and six
Speaker 2: up into twenty ten, when I met my husband, who
Speaker 2: would be my boyfriend at that time, it was who
Speaker 2: my DNA was transformed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you start taking meetings to level up his career. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I read that in those meetings, Dwayne would pitch
Speaker 1: an idea and then he'd leave the room and quite
Speaker 1: literally pass the ball to you. If we're talking athletic terms.
Speaker 1: What were those early boardroom conversations like.
Speaker 3: And what went well? What went wrong? Like can you
Speaker 3: paint a picture for me?
Speaker 2: I think would later on he'd be like, you got this,
Speaker 2: But actually we took so many meetings together, you know,
Speaker 2: and at that time sort of his profile was who
Speaker 2: is this incredibly massive man, popular wrestler, and you know
Speaker 2: what's going on here? So he would start the meeting
Speaker 2: and then I would start talking and then people are like, okay, who'shit?
Speaker 2: Oh wait, she said, next wife. You couldn't hold anyone's attention,
Speaker 2: And in fact, I started telling my agents please prepare
Speaker 2: everyone that I am his ex wife and I'm managing him.
Speaker 2: We're working together, you know, make sure just talk to
Speaker 2: them a few times, because it would become this thing
Speaker 2: where we would lose them for the first five to
Speaker 2: ten minutes until I was speaking enough, and then I
Speaker 2: started talking about, Okay, well let's look at this film.
Speaker 2: What's the return on investment? You know, what's the scope?
Speaker 2: Well here so sou well, this is what we're thinking.
Speaker 2: And as you began to get deeply into the conversations,
Speaker 2: then the executives on the other side were hearing a
Speaker 2: conversation that was one hundred percent beneficial to them and
Speaker 2: they had not heard before. So I think it took
Speaker 2: like years literally for people to understand.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you weren't being taken seriously? Were
Speaker 1: you frustrated?
Speaker 2: I wasn't frustrated, because when you speak value, it eventually clicks.
Speaker 2: It was just a matter of like, keep talking, they're
Speaker 2: almost done. This guy's almost don He's right now thinking
Speaker 2: about how much he hates his ex wife? How was
Speaker 2: this woman here? And then soon I'd be like coick,
Speaker 2: and then I'd see the click and they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: so wait, what you're saying is this is this? I'm
Speaker 2: like that, and then we would get there. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I learned patients, but at the same time, I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, look at these rooms. I was in
Speaker 2: new spaces, and it was really fun. And it's not
Speaker 2: like I expected to be treated in one way or
Speaker 2: the other. I had never been in those rooms before,
Speaker 2: but I could understand human nature and as Duyne and I,
Speaker 2: especially in these first number of years, I would sort
Speaker 2: of begin to drop some philosophical concepts as far as
Speaker 2: whether it's social media and how it's Dane showing up.
Speaker 2: The room would get quiet, it would stop, and I
Speaker 2: would just to bet and then Duane would be like, yes,
Speaker 2: so isn't that incredible And they'd be like yes, She's
Speaker 2: like you would have to come and do this second
Speaker 2: be to get people to be like, move your brain forward,
Speaker 2: catch it, think.
Speaker 3: Think, think.
Speaker 2: So he missed such a great partner, but it did
Speaker 2: to hate Hollywood a little bit of time. It's so funny.
Speaker 2: We've always had this narrative of Hollywood making room for Duayne.
Speaker 2: It's later on in life that we've all began to
Speaker 2: understand that Hollywood had to make a lot of room
Speaker 2: for me as well. And I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Well, you made it undeniable and that's exhausting on your end,
Speaker 1: and I know you're so gracious and humble that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't say it, but I deal with stuff on such
Speaker 1: a small scale compared to you, and the amount of
Speaker 1: tears and frustration, and can you believe behind the scenes
Speaker 1: to my girlfriends, I can't imagine how you were feeling,
Speaker 1: like all these men not getting what you saw so
Speaker 1: clearly because you guys architected this. I mean you did
Speaker 1: it with Henry Cavell right after Dwayne, so like you
Speaker 1: proved that this sort of new era, new age your
Speaker 1: idea worked. Yeah, and you proved it once again. It
Speaker 1: seems like you must have dealt with a lot.
Speaker 2: I dealt with a number of things, right, I dealt
Speaker 2: with a lot of my ideas being taken and spoken
Speaker 2: by other people. That was probably most frustrating that I
Speaker 2: would see my strategies and I used to say, my
Speaker 2: thoughts are goal right, my words are my currency, and
Speaker 2: people were stealing my currency, which is a sign of like,
Speaker 2: what is it? The imitation is the highest form of flattery,
Speaker 2: I guess, so it was plagiarism. But I had people
Speaker 2: who were speaking all the knowledge I would drop, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but the thing that they weren't doing is they were
Speaker 2: never bringing it back to me. So I would then
Speaker 2: end up. Let's say going into an agency and people like, oh, wait,
Speaker 2: what do you do? And I was like, I know that.
Speaker 2: You guys just had a meeting and you literally heard
Speaker 2: all my strategy, So that I found to be really frustrating.
Speaker 2: At the same time, we were experiencing a success that
Speaker 2: I had never seen before. So there was and me
Speaker 2: this idea and hope that maybe my time is coming.
Speaker 2: It's such a different thing to be developing, for example,
Speaker 2: the idea of human IP and building an entire corporate
Speaker 2: ecosystem around them. We got to be the first. We
Speaker 2: changed the entire industry, and the Kardashians came after us.
Speaker 2: Everyone came after us, and any major entertainment actor is
Speaker 2: looking at this model. And I get the satisfaction of
Speaker 2: knowing I was that first case study the personal I
Speaker 2: don't know if everyone knows that, but I get my satisfaction.
Speaker 2: So I think if the success wasn't as big, then
Speaker 2: maybe trying to handle the pain would have been a lot.
Speaker 2: But it was this incredible success and this belief that
Speaker 2: my time will come. And then a number of years
Speaker 2: ago I realized my time is never going to come.
Speaker 3: WHA tell me about that?
Speaker 2: So I had a moment where I realized the individuals
Speaker 2: or the people who I thought were like, Okay, now
Speaker 2: it's your turn. The systems weren't ever built for that
Speaker 2: moment to happen. If that happened, it would literally detract
Speaker 2: from team members. And so I had this incredible heartbreaking
Speaker 2: moment where I was like, oh my god, I had
Speaker 2: built all this and this under lying hope that my architecture,
Speaker 2: my strategy, my philosophy the world would know, was never
Speaker 2: going to happen. I called that my third death, and
Speaker 2: in that came the ideas of, Okay, are you ready
Speaker 2: now to be in front of the camera. You have
Speaker 2: to be your own voice, and in your own voice,
Speaker 2: you will not take from anything that you've built. Hollywood
Speaker 2: is about if I get power, I'm taking it from you.
Speaker 2: I needed to create a system where influence and power
Speaker 2: could be created, but it didn't detract from anything that
Speaker 2: I had built. And that was a whole new mindset
Speaker 2: that came out.
Speaker 3: How'd you do that?
Speaker 2: Slowly? First of all, there was a lot of tears
Speaker 2: pretty much. I think about almost a week of depression
Speaker 2: of just like being so sad and trying to understand.
Speaker 2: I do so much writing and journaling and I took
Speaker 2: the time to look at what I had written in
Speaker 2: the past, who I was in the past, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I realized all of that philosophy wasn't wasted.
Speaker 2: I just had to become the client. I had to
Speaker 2: be one. I had to take it and do it myself,
Speaker 2: by the way, much harder than it sounds, but I
Speaker 2: had to be that person. So you know the ideas
Speaker 2: that came out of donimas, the way the organization was changing,
Speaker 2: the way I started showing up, what I was doing
Speaker 2: with the XFL, which became the UFL, All these things
Speaker 2: started to build. Moment it was I was probably one
Speaker 2: of the purest examples of a Danny Garcia move, purely
Speaker 2: for Danny Garcia and the love that Danny Garcia has
Speaker 2: for something. Man, isn't that been a payoff? So yeah,
Speaker 2: that changed everything. An investment in a system that said
Speaker 2: someone's going to pull me up, I realized was never
Speaker 2: going to happen.
Speaker 1: You created this mini doc and there's this moment in
Speaker 1: it that I loved where one of the players was
Speaker 1: like who is that?
Speaker 3: Who is that? And You're like, I'm the owner. Oh.
Speaker 2: It was that little key skill are you the movie star.
Speaker 2: You were saying it and I was like.
Speaker 1: No, I own the league, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was like such a good Mike Jot moment.
Speaker 3: It was so fun, but it felt like a culmination.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I feel like everything you had ever done,
Speaker 1: all your skills really could all be used so well
Speaker 1: for the XFL.
Speaker 3: And then you're like, no, I'm the owner, right.
Speaker 2: It was so fun. The UFL is a masterclass for
Speaker 2: me of everything of a sport that is breathing every
Speaker 2: day of the normany of having five hundred athletes, you know,
Speaker 2: four hundred plus in season, waiting to hear that all
Speaker 2: the planes have landed in. Everyone's back in Arlington because
Speaker 2: they're hub there the budgets, looking at ticketing. It has
Speaker 2: been in credible last year. We had a new partner
Speaker 2: come in Micropole who owns Noble and Body Armor, et cetera,
Speaker 2: and he has taking a big position and even working
Speaker 2: with a new partner, this sport it just keeps giving
Speaker 2: like it is fantastic and it was a great place
Speaker 2: for me to recognize that my value I could put
Speaker 2: it anywhere, like it walks whether I'm talking to my coaches,
Speaker 2: whether I'm helping one of my players who just hurt
Speaker 2: his ankle into the locker room to get taped, whether
Speaker 2: I'm in the conditioning room and the strength room looking
Speaker 2: at the equipment, trying it out, feeling it. It is
Speaker 2: so much fun. It is so big talk about advancing
Speaker 2: the human experience. It is and it is a purest
Speaker 2: inspection of advancing the human experience, because it's my athletes,
Speaker 2: it's my coaches, it's the team, it's my co owners,
Speaker 2: it's you know, the fans. You're trying to impact everyone.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's been phenomenal. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: I can tell when you talk about it, you get
Speaker 1: and so I'm so yeah, it's cool to hear you
Speaker 1: talk about it as an experience too. Yes, Like one
Speaker 1: of the things I learned from learning from you from
Speaker 1: researching was you think of everything as this three sixty experience,
Speaker 1: and now the UFL is an embodiment of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would always say, you know, there's a convergence
Speaker 2: between the film or the sport or the consumer product
Speaker 2: and the consumer And what I love to focus and
Speaker 2: manage is what I call the confluence, what happens when
Speaker 2: they come together, which is actually quite challenging. It's very nuanced.
Speaker 2: Because you have this, you have that, it's like, what
Speaker 2: are you influencing? So when they come together, because when
Speaker 2: it comes together, that's where the magic is created, and
Speaker 2: that's where history is.
Speaker 3: It's hard to get it right.
Speaker 2: It's incredibly hard to get it. And if you have
Speaker 2: a number of athletes throwing a ball around, they're just
Speaker 2: bodies throwing a ball around on a field. You know
Speaker 2: you need these fans. So when this comes, the experience
Speaker 2: that they have together, what people go home about is
Speaker 2: what they remember. It's what makes the difference. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: the UFL is absolutely a place for that. I mean,
Speaker 2: it happens with film, it happens with tere mauna zoa,
Speaker 2: but really happens in sports.
Speaker 1: I mean, speaking of sports, it's a piece of your identity,
Speaker 1: which is athleticism. I was really excited to learn that
Speaker 1: you didn't become a bodybuilder who you were forty two
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 2: That's correct.
Speaker 1: So what did becoming a bodybuilder in your forties give
Speaker 1: you that it wouldn't have given you in your twenties.
Speaker 2: I think it would have given it to me in
Speaker 2: the twenties. Is I wanted to be a bodybuilder. Since
Speaker 2: I was like, thirteen, might have been fourteen. We have
Speaker 2: to look at the notes. It could be fifteen. Let's
Speaker 2: see since you were a young girl. Yeah, I opened
Speaker 2: up a magazine and I saw Miss Olympia, and I
Speaker 2: was like, the strength and the physique. I had no
Speaker 2: idea a woman could look and be that strong. I
Speaker 2: have a lot of bodybuilding friends who say that they
Speaker 2: remember that that moment where when kou where it just
Speaker 2: turned on the bodybuilding light. And so really I was
Speaker 2: an athlete who was just always trying to get in
Speaker 2: the weave room a running track. But I was out
Speaker 2: there to like exten gins in the gym, and I
Speaker 2: didn't need to do that running track. I just didn't
Speaker 2: have access to it. And also I was taking care
Speaker 2: of my family right, so it didn't seem to be there.
Speaker 2: But then all of a sudden, you know, my husband,
Speaker 2: who was my boyfriend at the time, opened up a
Speaker 2: door and I was like yes, and my daughter was older,
Speaker 2: and I was like, now is the time, like to
Speaker 2: finally live the dream, to shape my muscles, to step
Speaker 2: on stage, to be a bodybuilder, to look at that
Speaker 2: magazine and be like, wow, Danny Garcia is going to
Speaker 2: be that image and bring it into my life.
Speaker 1: Which that part of you being front and center.
Speaker 2: For me, it was less about that and more about
Speaker 2: a dream, like the dream that I had since I
Speaker 2: was such a young person, because being like, all right,
Speaker 2: I need to be a millionaire to take care of
Speaker 2: my family. Those were responsibilities that I knew could packed lives.
Speaker 2: Looking to become a bodybuilder. Nobody understood that. That was
Speaker 2: just me going and wanting that, and then everything else
Speaker 2: was like, okay, make sure it's important. I love my family.
Speaker 2: And that was the dream, the Danny Garcia dream that
Speaker 2: just kept fully until it was the time. And then
Speaker 2: it was time and it was great. It was so hard.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, my god, it was hard.
Speaker 3: It was the amount of protein you had to eat.
Speaker 2: It's just it was the space of you could not
Speaker 2: use food for anything else other than fuel, because you
Speaker 2: can't have a glass of wine, you can't have a
Speaker 2: slice of chocolate cake. It all comes down to your
Speaker 2: diet and your training, and diet is eighty five percent
Speaker 2: of it. So you know, the nine months of prep.
Speaker 2: After I did that, I knew I could do anything.
Speaker 2: I literally knew I could do anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the feeling yeah.
Speaker 1: I trained for a triathlon after a breakup, and the
Speaker 1: thing I got out of it was that yes. It
Speaker 1: was that actually my mind would give up before my
Speaker 1: body would if I could get over that.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, I'm the only one stopping me, right.
Speaker 2: You know what? You just identified the biggest gait that
Speaker 2: many women have kno gone through the experience that says
Speaker 2: if I do that, I can do anything. I can
Speaker 2: tell you there is a handful of people who've not
Speaker 2: been given that gift, but once an individual has that gift,
Speaker 2: their lives are completely different than anyone else because you
Speaker 2: carry it inside you. It's that calmness of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I can do anything. I remember when my husband was
Speaker 2: training me, there were a few times where I was like,
Speaker 2: am I going to die? He's like, I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think you are going to recover. Fine. I was like,
Speaker 2: because it was like such a workout, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I think I'm.
Speaker 3: Gonna do it.
Speaker 2: He's like, you're not gonna do it. You may feel
Speaker 2: really terrible right now. And it had a number of
Speaker 2: that where I.
Speaker 3: Was so hard you want to cry. Sometimes it was.
Speaker 2: So hard I didn't want to cry from the hard
Speaker 2: because God, I loved it so much, but I was like,
Speaker 2: this isn't so incredibly hard, And that same time, I
Speaker 2: was still running a massive portfolio, so the juggling of both.
Speaker 2: But now it was so great though.
Speaker 3: It's the gift of athletics.
Speaker 2: It's a gift of athletics. Yeah, I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: you came across this, but I'm excited to share it
Speaker 2: with you. One of the great things about being an
Speaker 2: athlete is this idea that you learn without any emotion,
Speaker 2: that no one's going to give you the win. It
Speaker 2: is so fundamental. That's why we train, that's what we compete.
Speaker 2: Other team's not gonna be like here you go, love
Speaker 2: you, you get the win, right, And it is this gift
Speaker 2: where you don't even think about So of course you
Speaker 2: prepare and you have no emotional drag that, oh you
Speaker 2: have to do this, you need recovery, you gotta rest
Speaker 2: because you know you have to take all these steps
Speaker 2: so that you could win. You may also go around
Speaker 2: being like, dude, we're totally going to win, but you
Speaker 2: don't say it without knowing you're going to do all
Speaker 2: these things to get the win. And that transition.
Speaker 1: You were just named on the Hollywood Reporters list of
Speaker 1: one hundred most Powerful Women in Entertainment last year. If
Speaker 1: you can answer this without any humility, what's one thing
Speaker 1: that you do better than the other ninety nine?
Speaker 2: Oh, my goodness?
Speaker 3: Or different or different?
Speaker 2: I will say, I think I do this better than
Speaker 2: the other ninety nine. I don't even know who the
Speaker 2: other are, so bless you. I'm going to assume in
Speaker 2: my mind I can go into any room and talk
Speaker 2: to any leader, any executive, anyone male or female, and
Speaker 2: not think about, Oh, who are they? Do I have
Speaker 2: to do this, Do I need to prove this, etc.
Speaker 2: Especially after our glorious dynam of it. But when it
Speaker 2: comes to executives, business leaders, world leaders, I can go
Speaker 2: into any room and get the job done, and I
Speaker 2: can do it in a way that actually gets the
Speaker 2: job done. You have the difficult conversations. I can just
Speaker 2: look at another person and treat them like a human
Speaker 2: being and move things along. I do that really well.
Speaker 1: It seems like that's always been your superpower, Like the
Speaker 1: way you went up to Dwayne at the bar.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe it was, and I didn't even realize
Speaker 2: it because I do it comfortably. People ask meld them,
Speaker 2: how do you do that? You know, when the XFL
Speaker 2: was starting, they called me Mariano River. I was the closer,
Speaker 2: the sandman, because if we were getting a coach who
Speaker 2: were getting in said they would send me in to
Speaker 2: close the deal. But I was so confident because in
Speaker 2: the end, I never closes you. I just shared with
Speaker 2: them what I hope to accomplish, and there is a
Speaker 2: thing about who is saying the words and the authenticity
Speaker 2: of it makes the safe space for things to happen.
Speaker 2: And I've done so much that I have a really
Speaker 2: big safe space and that allows me to be the closer.
Speaker 3: You wear the closing. That's such a good title.
Speaker 1: I read someone refer to the way you've sculpted your
Speaker 1: business with seven Buck Productions and the Garcia companies and
Speaker 1: all of it's attracted brands, that you approach it as
Speaker 1: if you're tending to a muscle in your body.
Speaker 3: I thought that it's very.
Speaker 2: Cool said that that is fascinating. I think that's really correct.
Speaker 1: What's a business muscle that people forget to strengthen?
Speaker 2: You think, if you really are going to training and
Speaker 2: you're looking at that, you're looking at quality of repetition.
Speaker 2: But you're also looking a quality of life. Right, So
Speaker 2: a great physique requires great food, great rest, knowing how
Speaker 2: you're training, great environment. Greatness and shape come from a
Speaker 2: great environment. So as I look at our brains and
Speaker 2: our portfolio, it's extremely important to me how is the
Speaker 2: culture our team members growing. I've invested in so much
Speaker 2: so that they are different people. Right. My responsibility, and
Speaker 2: this is very much bodybuilding. My responsibility is not just
Speaker 2: the work they do for me, but the life they
Speaker 2: are living while they're doing this work for me. It's
Speaker 2: at three sixty. You can't beat the crap out of
Speaker 2: your muscles. You can't be like Grill great if you're
Speaker 2: not giving it the respect and taking a fiduciary responsibility.
Speaker 3: Do you have any rituals before meetings?
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you do either to open or
Speaker 1: close that you found has really worked. I had a
Speaker 1: mentor one time so that you always have to take
Speaker 1: a breath before you walk in, because your breath is
Speaker 1: what regulates you.
Speaker 2: So good. Let me think I don't have rituals before,
Speaker 2: not right before, but I do really enjoy like diving
Speaker 2: into the universe of the person I'm going to meet.
Speaker 2: Before I go in, not so much from a strategic
Speaker 2: but just like the joy of the person. I'm so
Speaker 2: excited my PR team knows is I'm like, what did
Speaker 2: they write? Send me their articles. I want to see
Speaker 2: the things. Usually there's not time for me to bring
Speaker 2: it up because we have like twenty minutes. But I'm
Speaker 2: always fascinated by the world. What is the context if
Speaker 2: it's a studio exec, what's their slate, what is going on.
Speaker 2: I'm never looking to sell or close. I'm looking to
Speaker 2: see if we can create together. And that makes it
Speaker 2: very rich when I have context about the people and
Speaker 2: what's going on. But I love the breath thing. It's
Speaker 2: actually very good, very smart.
Speaker 1: I love etymology, like the root of words and conspire
Speaker 1: has sort of a negative connotation, but in Latin it
Speaker 1: actually means to breathe together, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: think like breathe and let's breathe.
Speaker 3: I always think.
Speaker 1: About that before I walk into a room, like, let's
Speaker 1: do this together, right, get on the same page.
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good that you like it because you're a journalist,
Speaker 2: do smart.
Speaker 3: I'm a word nerd.
Speaker 1: I love that when you walk into a room. Do
Speaker 1: you clock the exit people, snacks?
Speaker 3: Energy? What are you clocking first?
Speaker 2: When I walk into your room, If I know there's
Speaker 2: people there that I know, I'm looking for them because
Speaker 2: usually I have to hug and kiss everyone, and you're
Speaker 2: very warm. You're a good hunter, I usually, but I
Speaker 2: will tell you once I walked into your room, I
Speaker 2: will clock exits. So funny that you said I will
Speaker 2: clock exits for myself and for everyone. So I do
Speaker 2: continue to say that's the mama Baron. Yeah, I have.
Speaker 2: When my daughter was born later on in life, I
Speaker 2: took hand to hand combat fighting WHOA because I did
Speaker 2: not want to put the responsibility of just protecting my
Speaker 2: daughter on my nanny or security. So I was like,
Speaker 2: let me get this down so they can run with
Speaker 2: Simon if anything happens. And so it usually it's part
Speaker 2: of my fiduciary Like it's a little the darker side
Speaker 2: of sort of this fiduciary role that I take.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you do have to think of everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how has your definition of success changed as you've
Speaker 1: gotten more responsibility.
Speaker 2: Definitely, when I was young, it would have been monetary success.
Speaker 2: Now it doesn't have a completion, so it's more tied
Speaker 2: to what is the holistic health of what I'm doing,
Speaker 2: the sustainability, the frictionlessness, like did we get from point
Speaker 2: A to point B in two steps? Or did we
Speaker 2: smash against the side of the bumper rails? And if
Speaker 2: I can get the teams or the executions down the
Speaker 2: road as easy as possible and everyone's feeling great and
Speaker 2: the morale is great and the culture is great, then
Speaker 2: I find that as success because what happens after that
Speaker 2: has really become symptomatic. Whether it's sales, whether it's revenue,
Speaker 2: whether it's success at the box office, it is symptomatic
Speaker 2: to what's happening right at the current. So trying to
Speaker 2: manage that.
Speaker 1: I love that you said you fire and promote yourself
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 3: And I know that you do that.
Speaker 1: The part of that you said was because you were
Speaker 1: trying to create more time, yes, which I understand that.
Speaker 1: What would it take for you to fire yourself from
Speaker 1: everything and just sit in Hawaii or sit somewhere?
Speaker 2: I don't know, because if I sat in Hawaii, I'd
Speaker 2: be like, what does Hawaii need? So much of my
Speaker 2: career and the portfolio are actual natural expressions of the
Speaker 2: fun I have they're really like, oh, what are we
Speaker 2: gonna do today?
Speaker 3: God Save the Queen is such an expression of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good one. First of all, the hilarity
Speaker 2: of being like, I had no idea. The United Kingdom
Speaker 2: national anthem was called God Save the Queen. This is
Speaker 2: amazing to talk about small town girl andsch But.
Speaker 3: I get it. What a great title it is. It
Speaker 3: should be the title of your book.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, and I just loved the idea
Speaker 2: that the Lord and everyone was like, please God save
Speaker 2: this queen. I was like, oh, I'm taking that with me.
Speaker 1: We're all here for this. So you're remarried. Now we've
Speaker 1: talked about your husband, Dave a little bit. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that he trained you, which is very cool. How
Speaker 1: do you feel different in this marriage versus your last marriage?
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, this is the marriage that I didn't know.
Speaker 2: This was what marriage was. Like I always say with
Speaker 2: my husband, if I knew I could dream as big,
Speaker 2: I would have dreamt him Like. I didn't know that
Speaker 2: I could dream that Like, I didn't know. I had
Speaker 2: no idea.
Speaker 3: That makes me want to cry.
Speaker 2: It makes me But he's just an incredible human end.
Speaker 2: He has so much solid strength.
Speaker 3: Let's say you have that. So it's so nice that
Speaker 3: you met.
Speaker 2: Someone who I'm so lucky. But let's just say I'm
Speaker 2: not a glass of water. I'm more of a spicy
Speaker 2: murder reader. You don't walk into a relationship like, I'm
Speaker 2: not that easy. The life is loud. Who's your ex husband?
Speaker 2: And my husband was unbothered through it all? So sweet,
Speaker 2: so strong. Yeah, he's my soulmate.
Speaker 3: Did you know? Right away?
Speaker 2: I was just overcome with how different we were friends,
Speaker 2: really good friends, and then we started to get serious.
Speaker 2: Once we started to get serious, I think I loved
Speaker 2: him within four to five weeks.
Speaker 1: You have to really love him for him to train
Speaker 1: you and for you guys not.
Speaker 2: To get in Oh yeah, you know. Later on he
Speaker 2: did stop training me, which was good. We were getting
Speaker 2: Once I got really knowledgeable, I'd be like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take it from here. But it was ful.
Speaker 1: Training is like a really unique relationship for a husband
Speaker 1: or wife to do it.
Speaker 3: It's really hard.
Speaker 2: We don't train at the same time, No, we trained
Speaker 2: at different times. But you know, at that point he
Speaker 2: was training me as a mentor. I mean, he really
Speaker 2: was so incredibly knowledge about body and the physique and
Speaker 2: his discipline and execution is insane, and so yeah, he
Speaker 2: was a great conduit. He presented me with the opportunity
Speaker 2: to need to fulfill my dream and then he took
Speaker 2: me through. There was a gift.
Speaker 1: It is very cool too, because you had been fulfilling
Speaker 1: so many other people's dreams that you met this man
Speaker 1: and he said do this for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was your dream.
Speaker 1: It wasn't for anybody else like he really saw you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, thank you for saying that. It's so nice.
Speaker 2: I feel so validating. That's very much Sue. That's what
Speaker 2: he did. Cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for someone who exudes so much strength, when do
Speaker 1: you feel most vulnerable?
Speaker 2: Again, big swings come with great vulnerability. It's hand in hand.
Speaker 2: They don't tell you that on the sheet. So I
Speaker 2: would say commonly now, as I'm negotiating this physique as
Speaker 2: what I call a civilian, a non competitor, and woman
Speaker 2: who's in her second half of her fifties, going through
Speaker 2: these hormonal changes and seeing things in my body and
Speaker 2: trying to manage them and not getting the same results.
Speaker 2: My physique and my strength have been so much of me.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to understand that I have to rewrite an
Speaker 2: entire book and it's taking time. So it's almost like
Speaker 2: I leaned on my strength as like the easy like
Speaker 2: I'm strong, I'm physically strong. Now that strength has to
Speaker 2: be more so internally strong so that I can rebuild
Speaker 2: my physique with all of the variables that change when
Speaker 2: you're in menopause or heading postmenopause. So yeah, that was
Speaker 2: something I never thought about. I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you see that. Now it's like, oh, okay, I need
Speaker 2: a more isla. And so that does give me a
Speaker 2: little bit of a chink and that's daily. But the
Speaker 2: gift of it is I'm writing, I'm cracking new codes.
Speaker 2: At some point, I'm going to be able to tell
Speaker 2: other women this is I did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need a book.
Speaker 2: We need a book from you.
Speaker 3: I need to read it. Other women need to read.
Speaker 2: As soon as I get this physique thing down, I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm a year away, maybe twelve months really,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it really is a transitional thing.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about your daughter because when you
Speaker 1: write about her on Instagram, you gush. I do like
Speaker 1: it's the only time that I relea see you write
Speaker 1: with just exuberance you guys seem like you have such
Speaker 1: a special bond.
Speaker 2: She's taught me so much and she's just joining the
Speaker 2: Garcia Company. So yes, next.
Speaker 1: Week because she stopped wrestling, she did. How did you
Speaker 1: feel about that decision?
Speaker 2: I was really excited for her. You know, she had
Speaker 2: known she was signed when she was eighteen, and she
Speaker 2: was doing this thing where she was at the WWE
Speaker 2: NXT and going to college at the same time, and
Speaker 2: she was like, mom, I can't do both, never going
Speaker 2: to accelerate to get on television. She was I think
Speaker 2: twenty and twenty one. We should told me that. I
Speaker 2: was like, I trust you're an adult. So she had
Speaker 2: a plan, I'm going to do this about seven years.
Speaker 2: She goes and then don't want to see what's next.
Speaker 2: So she got to her period of time and she's like, okay,
Speaker 2: time for this second chapter. And I was telling her.
Speaker 2: I was like, baby, you crushed us all we were
Speaker 2: not making the money you made at eighteen, nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: she was the youngest professional athlete in our family. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to see what this next chapter is
Speaker 2: for her. And she's bringing us her insights and who
Speaker 2: she is, and yeah, it's going to be great.
Speaker 3: So is she going to be working with you day
Speaker 3: to day?
Speaker 2: She's going to be working not with me. I'm smart
Speaker 2: enough to have other executives be her boss. My president
Speaker 2: and my cheap content officer will be overseeing by me,
Speaker 2: so we know to just give her a little bit
Speaker 2: his face. But yeah, she's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: The word stewardship kept coming up for me when I
Speaker 1: looked at your portfolio. I know you said every company
Speaker 1: that you're looking to advance the human experience. It's so
Speaker 1: clear that you require greatness from yourself, from those around you,
Speaker 1: from your daughter, and you give it. It is a
Speaker 1: fair exchange. What do you think stops people from their greatness,
Speaker 1: from reaching their highest potential?
Speaker 2: First of all, I do want to acknowledge that asking
Speaker 2: for greatness and expecting greatness it's challenging. It's not a
Speaker 2: natural state of human state. So I give great respect
Speaker 2: and honor and love to my teammates, to everyone who
Speaker 2: surrounds me and says, okay, we agree that tomorrow we're
Speaker 2: going to be better than we were today. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: mean if people are like I don't agree to that,
Speaker 2: and it's totally fine. But I think first of all,
Speaker 2: if you've never had an experience where you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can do anything, greatness can be very difficult. I
Speaker 2: think also greatness the definition has been hijacked by people.
Speaker 2: I'm so lucky that people are like you chief greatness
Speaker 2: and you strive for greatness. But the simplicity is I
Speaker 2: just try every day. So there's a big narrative to
Speaker 2: something that's very quiet and simple and maybe sounds like
Speaker 2: something that comes from somebody who lost or is a
Speaker 2: loser in life. I'm just going to try and be
Speaker 2: better to mine. You know, there's a lot of influencers
Speaker 2: or public voices are like are you going to try
Speaker 2: or are you going to do? I'm like, dude, I'm
Speaker 2: going to track and that I'll get to the do.
Speaker 2: And I think asking someone maybe even framing it that way.
Speaker 2: I'm very human and I'm human person with a lot
Speaker 2: of insecurities who had to get over a lot of
Speaker 2: things and had to grow and all I did was try.
Speaker 2: So when I speak to someone and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 2: will you join us, this is what I'm going to
Speaker 2: ask is I'm going to ask you to try every day.
Speaker 2: With my Donnima's team members, I was very clear. They
Speaker 2: are wonderful executives. And I said, I want you for
Speaker 2: the twenty five percent you haven't accomplished. I honor you
Speaker 2: for the one hundred percent of what you've done, but
Speaker 2: it's the twenty five percent yet you haven't done that's
Speaker 2: going to change the world for me.
Speaker 3: You speak so beautifully to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, very rare, thank you. I've seen that.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Yeah, I take that as a high
Speaker 2: compliment coming from you.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I can't even imagine a boss being
Speaker 1: to me that way.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: So I honor like what you have done, and I
Speaker 1: want you for the twenty five percent you have.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it feels like you invested in me.
Speaker 2: Yes, the investment is cool.
Speaker 1: So at the end of your documentary, you actually talk
Speaker 1: about this trying yes, and I know it's one of
Speaker 1: your superpowers.
Speaker 3: What will you try next?
Speaker 2: What I am trying next, I'm actually in the middle
Speaker 2: of trying it right now, is to be the creative
Speaker 2: director of my fashion, to really design, to actually have
Speaker 2: this is what I want the clothes to look like,
Speaker 2: not just like, okay, let's have the style, but to
Speaker 2: actually pen and paper and say I want these designs
Speaker 2: to flow. This is what I want to see.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited about that me too.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it too because I can't draw it,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to pull it together. I'm going to
Speaker 2: find a way.
Speaker 3: You will find someone who draws, yes.
Speaker 2: And I will pull pictures and I will do it.
Speaker 2: I can see it, and it's amazing to be in
Speaker 2: a space where I have an opportunity to just be
Speaker 2: an artist, like create purely and trust that who I
Speaker 2: am as a human. I don't have to consumer test it,
Speaker 2: but just be purely raw in the creation of a
Speaker 2: piece and say, here, I made this. I hope all
Speaker 2: of you consumers love it and just go for that experience.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty excited about Well, what's.
Speaker 1: That word experience, right, You're handing them not just a
Speaker 1: piece of clothing.
Speaker 3: Experience.
Speaker 2: Oh that's very true.
Speaker 3: Okay, I have some rapid fire for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 3: The last thing you bought for under seven bucks?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm obsessed with this little game that I play
Speaker 2: on my phone, this Highway game, and I literally had
Speaker 2: to buy some coins for like four ninety nine I
Speaker 2: think it was yesterday.
Speaker 3: That's really funny. Yeah, A business you wish you had
Speaker 3: thought of.
Speaker 2: Oh, let's see, I wish i'd own the Women's Hockey
Speaker 2: League professional hockey League. I wish that was mine so bad.
Speaker 3: Maybe it cannot be.
Speaker 2: I know it's a single leader ownership it. Man, there's
Speaker 2: always a way.
Speaker 3: To a movie that makes you cry.
Speaker 2: If I know a movie is going to make me cry,
Speaker 2: I try not to watch it. I'm highly empathetic, so
Speaker 2: when someone's uncomfortable in a film, I'm like, deeply uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I have to like sort of monitor myself. This is
Speaker 2: so funny, and this is not sophisticated at all, because
Speaker 2: people can talk about Hamnet and you know, there's incredible movies.
Speaker 2: I'm still torn up about Bruce Willis dying and Armageddon
Speaker 2: and that just destroyed me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I so get that, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like, it's been a long time, but I
Speaker 2: still will past that scene. And I'm like, did we
Speaker 2: really need that payoff to lose him? Did we? I agree?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was it emotional for you to watch Dwayne in the
Speaker 1: last movie because he had emotional scenes?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Boy, that was incredible. It was a lot of unpacking,
Speaker 2: you know. When we had the screening and was talking
Speaker 2: to DJ but for the grace of God, there was
Speaker 2: so much dysfunction in that. I was like, that was
Speaker 2: us as kids. That was the twenty two year old Danny,
Speaker 2: the nineteen year old Dwayne like I could see it.
Speaker 2: And also the early wrestling when he wasn't with the
Speaker 2: w but he was like going around town and even
Speaker 2: though he wasn't involved at drugs, he didn't have a
Speaker 2: drug problem, but there was aspects to that life that
Speaker 2: reminded me so much. And then just the codependency, the unhealthiness,
Speaker 2: it was quite a bit. And then knowing his father,
Speaker 2: knowing the challenges his father had and what he was
Speaker 2: drawing from to play those roles. So it was interesting
Speaker 2: to watch it as a woman who was deeply involved
Speaker 2: in his history from eighteen years on. I couldn't watch
Speaker 2: it as a producer. I watched it as like someone
Speaker 2: who had known him since he was ang.
Speaker 3: It's different.
Speaker 2: For yeah, it was a lot.
Speaker 3: Who's the family member that wins a bench press contest?
Speaker 2: It's going to be Dave. Really, Yeah, my husband was like,
Speaker 2: go date. He was strong, like a tank.
Speaker 3: What's your go to comfort food?
Speaker 2: Cuban food, black beans? Res follow me a guffiicolata that
Speaker 2: is deep comfort food. And then ice cream. I love
Speaker 2: ice cream, yeah, deeply.
Speaker 3: What in your life humbles you the fastest?
Speaker 2: My daughter easily.
Speaker 3: What is one thing every woman should try once?
Speaker 2: They should try something where they're like, wow, now I
Speaker 2: can do anything. Or I would love women to try
Speaker 2: something that maybe historically looks like something a man does
Speaker 2: just too better try and be like, well I can
Speaker 2: do that. I can drive around the track and nscon.
Speaker 2: Maybe learn how to break someone's neck. Okay, maybe not
Speaker 2: like just these traditions. Break it down, break my training,
Speaker 2: break it down for a second, and try that role
Speaker 2: that maybe no one expected you to do.
Speaker 1: What is a book you've read that changed your life,
Speaker 1: something you think everybody should read.
Speaker 2: There's a book by doctor David Hawkins called Power Versus Force.
Speaker 2: That book changed my life. That book just broke down
Speaker 2: a tractor patterns and energy in a way that I
Speaker 2: was like, I feel this. I read it from two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven on and I was going through my
Speaker 2: divorce and DJ read it as well. It was really
Speaker 2: it's incredible.
Speaker 3: I haven't heard that one. I'm going to add it tells.
Speaker 2: It has a very specific philosophy but there's a sensibility
Speaker 2: to it, and it's really great.
Speaker 3: Will you grab the question everything card game next to you?
Speaker 1: Yes, feel free to shuffle whatever you want, which everyone
Speaker 1: falls to you.
Speaker 2: It's this one, okay, shaboom Ooh what ordinary moment throughout
Speaker 2: your day brings you great joy? Well, that's easy. It's
Speaker 2: whenever I turn the corner in my house, I see
Speaker 2: my husband like literally, I like, guse you great joy.
Speaker 1: You have so much to share with the world, and
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that you shared your time with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh you're so welcome. I receive that and what an honor.
Speaker 2: It's so great. Oh, I'm so tickle. You do such
Speaker 2: great work. Keep going more you better for the world. Thanks,
Speaker 2: I see it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day.
Speaker 1: To have a good day. I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: Is aboard It is the sho