Pushkin. There's this tension a lot of us struggle with as we're coming of age and even sometimes into adulthood, and that's what do I owe myself versus what do I owe my family? I've learned it can be especially tough for children of immigrants, people who grew up having to translate for the parents helping them figure out life in a new country, which was the case for Nelli Galan. She was born in Cuba and her parents fled to
America when she was just five years old. But when she was still a teenager, she got the job opportunity of a lifetime. Her parents begged her not to take the job, to stay close to home to take care of them. It was a tough decision, but Nelly took the job and it set her on a career course that included building one of the biggest Spanish language TV networks in America and eventually becoming that company president. This is started from the bottom, hard earned success stories from
people like us. A conversation with Nelly starts way back when her family first came to the US.
When we landed here the United States, in order to allow an immigrant to come to this country, you had to be sponsored by another family, and in our case, the Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church took on the mission because of the Cold War of taking in Cubans, and so we got taken in by a Presbyterian family in southern New Jersey. The wife was redheaded like I love Lucy. And so the trauma my parents experienced from
one day to the next. They came to this country late thirties, early forties, right, and to have to you know, college degrees, and your college degree is worth nothing, to have no money, to have lost everything, like literally not a dollar in their pocket, and they come here and the shame that you feel having to live in an American family's house and they have to pay for everything for you, and then you ask them to give you a running tab of what you're spending so you can
pay them back. So, yes, that is what my experience.
Is as a child. So you came here with nothing, nothing, And how did you feel being with this American family?
Well, I felt like from the time I got here and I was five, I felt like I became a grown up. I felt like I was the parent and my parents were the children. Because they didn't speak English. I picked up English in two minutes. I was the one that had to communicate with the family. My parents were afraid of if somebody knocked on the door. It was like a major thing. And I think their personality changes,
and I think they're depressed. And I think that you also hear them and like, when you're with them by themselves, they sound smart because these are college educated people, but then when they're around Americans, they sound really stupid. They
can't speak English, right. You know your mother when your mother says, oh, I need to change the shits, and I go, mom, sheets, sheets, sheets, it's seats, and she sounds like an idiot, And all your friends look at her like she's an idiot, you know, So you do feel a lot of shame about your family. And I think you immediately feel like I got to like grow
up quick and listen. I've had the most unbelievable ride, because you know, one of the things that I talk about is life is a lot about being at the right place at the right time. And I was at the right place at the right time, being Latina at the dawn of Latino television. So if you know, I tell a lot of young people, if you're first to market in anything. You could be the stupidest person in the world. You're going to hit. You're gonna hit it,
hit because timing is everything in life. So I hit it, you know, and I've hit it a couple of times in my life, and that's all the people remember. But the fact of the matter is I gave a lot for that hitting it because some of the things that you realize later in life is that life is relational
and that it isn't about transactional things. It is And especially if you're ethnic, where your life is all about family and your cousins and you're this, and you're that, it's hard to break out of that and go be very goal oriented type a all the time without having repercussions to that.
Well, how did you break out of that? How did you break I mean a lot of immigrant communities are very close knit Latino communities. If you've been fortunate enough to grow up around large Latino communities that I have here in Los Angeles, you realize Latino families are very tight knit oftentimes too A lot of times, and especially kind of an area you grew up, there's a lot of traditional thoughts about the roles of women versus men. Oh yeah, you've seen to have really broken that mold.
You broke out of just sort of this type you sort of this family, tight knit family mentality to succeed in business. How did you so? How did you do that?
I think, listen, I think that some people are born with a self motivation. Not everybody has that. But I also think self motivation comes often from trauma, right. I think that I've had marker moments where I had to make a decision, and sometimes I made great decisions, and sometimes I made bad decisions. And I am the sum of all those decisions.
So go back to some Marc moment. Let's start at the beginning, Okay.
I think my marker moment happened sophomore year of high school. My parents had sent me to all girl Catholic school because at the time we lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, and it was kind of a treacherous time in Teaneck. There were issues in the public schools, and so they sent me to this Catholic school, but they really couldn't afford it. I was writing. I decided I thought I really wanted to be a writer, and I was writing stories for English class and this nun who is my
favorite teacher. I walk into school one day and the nun says to me, I don't I'm sorry, but I don't believe you wrote the story. I think this is an Ernest Hemingway short story. And I have to suspend you for three days. And she sends me home and I am crying because I'm such a goodie two shoes. I mean, kids of immigrants don't cheat because we get told you better not screw this up again. Remember, let's
remember the mentality. They just came from a revolution. If you speak up, you go to jai at political prison, or you disappear and you're called this up. I see you, though, right, and nobody sees you ever again. So you come to this country and the first thing your parents tell you is don't speak up, be under the radar, don't make waves, shut the hell up, and just be good. Everybody in power. You just do whatever they tell you to do. So I come home and I tell my parent, I'm so distraught.
There's not things I didn't write this. And my mother and father take the side of the nun and they said, it doesn't matter. You go apologize to the nun. She's right, you are wrong. I go, I didn't do anything wrong, and they're like, well, maybe you by mistake you read Ernest Hemingway, you know, like they kept finding me wrong. And I was so angry at my parents. I locked myself in my room and I didn't know how to
deal with my anger. So I did what I knew how to do, which is right, and I wrote an article about why you should never send your daughter to all girl Catholic school, and I sent it into the only publication I read at the time, which was seventeen magazine, and I just mailed it and at least it got off my chest. And a few days later I went back to school and the first thing the nun says to me, she goes, I'm so sorry. In fact, you should be complimented because your story was so good that
I was convinced it was an Ernest Hemingway story. But in fact no, and I almost like yours better and you got an A plus. Wow, So the whole thing blew over.
Why did you think Ernest Hemingway because you're Cuban. No?
No, because a story took place in a fishing village in Quba, it did have some Ernest Hemingway elements, but very few, and it was about an old lady, not an old man, so like, but she thought I had just taken the idea, gotcha, and tweaked it. So anyway, it passed. Three months pass and I get a letter in the mail from seventeen magazine with one hundred dollars check and it says, we loved your article and it's coming out in the next issue.
Wow.
And I'm shitting a brick pardon the French. I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, what did I write? Oh my god? And I'm like, how can I buy every single issue? So no one sees it? Like it was insanity what I was thinking. And every girl in America read seventeen, I mean, think about today's you know, the internet, social media there was I mean, it was like, so I went to school and every girl in the school was like talking about like, oh my god, it's going to be in big trouble because I like because
by the way, the article was very funny. It was actually very good. It was very It was more like tongue in cheek, like like these are the horrible things about being in all girls. It was very funny, but it was brutal, right. I get called to the principal's office and the head nun says to me, and this nun was kind of like treacherous, right, and she's like, we don't like your kind here. And I get expelled.
What wait, we don't like your kind here?
She says that to me, like almost like I can't believe we took you in and this is how you repay us kind of thing.
Wow.
And I go home and I tell my parents that I've been expelled, and it's like World War three. My mother starts calling me, why did you why do you who do you think you are? Shage Ada? Why do you have to be revolutionary? Why do you have to craz problems for us? Blah blah blah blah. This is a shame on the family. I mean, it was like horrible.
And then I got really I got really mad because I thought to myself, wait a minute, you guys told me that one of the reasons that you turned on the regime of Cuba is that there was no freedom of speech. And I said, so, now you're not giving me freedom of speech and you're not backing me that. I mean, how could they even expel me? For writing whatever the hell I want. And my parents like, you are wrong, and you are going to go on your hands and knees and you are going to beg because
you're not bringing shame on this family. And I was so upset and hurt at my parents more than the none. Yeah, And I did something really insane. I went to the library, which was half a block from my house. I looked up the board of Education. That's another thing. Back then, we didn't have the internet. You guys are all spoiled. I had to look up who was the head of the board of education. I called the Board of ed of the State of New Jersey. He did not answer,
but an African American man answered. And I say, I bless that man the rest of my life, because he picked up the phone. And I was hysterical and I go, this nuts.
Eh, that expelled me.
That's a fair and he goes, young lady, you're right, it's not fair, he said. Unfortunately, they can do that because it's a private school, and they can fire you. Basically, it's like being an outwill employee. They can get rid of you for any reason. However, you don't have to take it, and you do have rights and you do have a voice, and I defend that voice. And I'm going to call a local reporter and a local newspaper
and you're going to tell your story. And I didn't even give it a second thought, which I probably should have, and I was scared, but I did it anyway, and I gave my interview and the very next day, driving like ridiculous. But it comes out in the paper Cuban girl, Cuban immigrant gets expelled for first Amendment. And it was a scandal, full blown scandal. Everyone in the town read
the newspaper. My parents got a million calls. My parents are like literally thank god my parents weren't into hitting me or I would have been dead. They were literally like hitting the furniture, freaking out. I mean, it was full blown chaos. The nun from the school calls and says, come into the school immediately with your parents. My parents are screaming at me the entire way of my mother, why are you making me do this? I now I have to speak Kinglish.
It's bad. I don't speak Kinglish.
And my father's like this is a shame on the family.
In it.
We get there and the nun is like nice because we forget bad press is a beautiful thing. And the nun's like I never said that. I never said that I didn't like your kind. I said, well you she goes, and she goes. I said that I didn't like what you did. But you know, the truth is I looked up all your records and you're the number three student in the school, and you have done all ap classes
and you've gotten straight a's. In fact, you have so many credits that we can graduate you a year and a half for early And my mother and father called, oh, this is an honor. I go, yes, it's a big honor. And it went right over my parents' head that she was getting rid of me, but in a nice way. I get home and there is a voice message from the editor in chief of seventeen magazine, who happens to be a former nun, Midge Richardson, and she calls me and says, please call us back, and she says, we
are so proud of you. We are just beside ourself that you did that article and that you went and spoke up for yourself, and that you got expelled on our behalf. We have decided to make you the youngest guest editor in the history of the seventeen magazine.
What yes, what?
And so I think when something like that happens to you, I mean, I can't just tell you that my life changed dramatically, completely immediately in the most magical way.
Nelly Golan really knows how to get people's attention. You'll hear more from her after the break, we're back with Nelly Galan, who's fresh out of Catholic school and now the youngest ever editor at seventeen magazine.
They loved me at seventeen Magazine when the editor in chief used to be a nun and she left the nunhood and now she's got a protege that was like rebelled against the nuns and made them look good. How good does that?
There's also this thing of like when you're fifteen and if you're able to go in the city, like you're in the suburbs and you go into the city. You're an editor at a magazine, you're graduated high school early, and now the most fashionable people on the planet are telling you and they're making you us. In a way, it's kind of like but in another way, it's like, Wow, I got the key, I got the key. To life.
Here. This is it, I really did. I mean, it's like winning the Teenager.
Like sweet Steaks forget about it.
Yeah, okay, here's what happens. I go there, I work with the model editor and it's the whitest girl from Connecticut and she's casting all blonde blue Remember that was the era of Cheryl Tigus. Sure, and girls are coming in to be the models for the cover and this and that. It was all blonde, blue eyed girls. And one day walks in Phoebe Kate's.
Wow from Fast Times.
Well, she wasn't an actress, and she was just like like a little school girl that was like half Asian and half Jewish. And then walks in like Bill Cosby's dog her and in walks in these people that are different girls of color, and she was never picking them. And one day and again they loved me so much that I felt like I could do anything. I felt like I was the ship there. And I said to her, you know, you really need to put some ethnic people
in this magazine. And she goes, well, nobody's ever said that, nobody's ever done that. And I said, yeah, well I think we should do that. And I put Phoebe Kates on the cover.
Wow.
To this day, Phoebe Kates tells everybody she got me on the cover wow, because I fought for her and then I fought.
For her career. Just something made her to a certain degree. Help it did. Yeah, my son.
I always told my son that I put Phebe Kates on the cover. He didn't believe me. And then one day we're literally walking to New York and she's married to Kevin Klein and she goes, no, hey, in the middle of the street. She goes, Kevin, this is the girl that made my career. And my son goes, mom, you weren't lying. I go you think I lie? You think so? Anyway, and then I started putting black girls on the cover and like Latina on the cover, and like then the lady goes, okay, we need another white
girl again. But here's what happened that the Girls of Colors issues started selling, and then I get a call from Elite Models and they said to me, we want to we want to get all those girls and bring them to Elite and it's Elite like it was John Casablanca's.
Okay, so one of the top biggest agencies.
And then they're like we want to hire you as our consultant. Like if you see people that you think are going to be cool that come to because they all would come into seventeen, not to them that you tell us about them, because we'd love to be their booking agents. So I become a On top of that, I become a consultant to Elite and John Casablanca's who is, by the way, a dog to models, And John cas blanc is like, I want to invest in your career
because you're going to go places. And I said, well, you can help me pay for car and so he's like, okay, well if you do, if you consult for us on like these, you know, because I think you have a real eye, we're going to pay for it. So I got into Barnard Early Admissions with a complete between the scholarship and John casablancaz any lead paying for me, I
didn't have to pay for shit. And I was working at seventeen and they, after the my internship was over there like we want we're going to hire you, so in between school or whatever, you work here. Because I was a real teenager, they realized what people now realize, which is like we need somebody in here who's a real teenager. So anyway, all that was going on and then the most unbelievable thing happened.
No, no, this is unbelievable.
No, it gets better, It gets better. This lady who is the first Latina executive producer in news, this lady gets this job producing the teenage version of sixty minutes. Remember Lisa Ling when she started out, she was a teen order for this thing called I forget what it was called, but it was a news show that was in schools, yes, many moons ago. Yes, Well before that, there was this teenage version of sixty minutes licensed sixty
minutes to PBS for a Saturday morning show. Wow, And it was going to be people that were older than teenagers, like twenty somethings, but they kind of could pass for teenagers that were telling stories that were important to young people in America. And the lady calls me at seventeen magazine and she goes, I love all the articles you've written. She says, I want to meet you. And so she comes to New York. She's living in Texas. She's in Austin, Texas. So I meet her and she goes, Okay, I want
to hire you. I want you to be one of our three correspondents of the show. She goes, but you have to move to Austin, Texas in two weeks.
Wow.
I tell my parents. I'm now sixteen and a half. At this point, I met Barnard in my first semester and I'm working at seventeen. I'm working for Elite and all this shit. And I say to my parents, I am leaving and I'm going to Austin, Texas. Oh Ostano say you do not leave here till you are married Latino culture and I said, you guys don't get this because you don't understand what sixty minutes is. But that's
like a big deal. And I'm doing this and my parents are like, oh no, you're not You're not going right. I go back and tell seventeen. I go back and tell Elee. I even go tell the school. I go I need to put this Barnard thing on freeze. I'll come back. And everybody was like congratulating me, throwing me parties. Oh my god, you're going to be on TV. You're
going to be a correspondent sixty minutes. Amazing. And two weeks later, I wake up at three in the morning, I had a Chevy Chavette, which I don't even know what that is, but it's like the smallest, shittiest car on the planet. And I pack up my car and my parents wake up and I go, what are you doing? I go, I'm leaving.
You were trying to leave them the middle.
Of the Yeah, I'm leaving. And they first they like, go, well, you're not going anywhere. I go, I'm sorry, but I'm going to go. And you guys, unfortunately, you don't know what's best for me because you're not American. You don't really get it, Like you didn't get the whole thing with the school, and I can't go by your judgment.
This is a tough thing. I think a lot of immigrant kids do.
This is a story that when I tell it to minority girls, they all cry hysterically. How many girls in America have given up a Harvard scholarship to stay home with their parents a lot? How many girls get expelled from school and it breaks them for the rest of their life. How many girls get an opportunity and the parents guilt trip them or they have to support their parents,
and they stay. And I knew that I had to choose myself first, because my parents had let me down, and my mother called me every name in the book. And now that she's ninety years old and she has dementia once again, she has thrown it in my face. She goes, you left me when you were sixteen, and I will go to my grave and never forgive you because I was her therapist. I was her I was her everything.
Do you how do you process that?
When she said something, I will tell you because I left, I left. I got in the car and drove cross country by myself at sixteen and a half to Texas. I stopped the car a blot from the house, and I cried for two hours because I felt so guilty that I was leaving my children. But I knew that I had my parents. Oh boy, But I knew I had to go because I knew that that was going
to change my life. And when I got to Texas, that lady took me under her wing and she goes, and you know, she figured out when I got there that I was really underage. She didn't really know that. And then she said, if I had known you were leaving college, I would have never even asked you to come, because I believe so much at college, and she said, so, I'm not going to let you get behind. And she's the one that brought me. And so imagine that I am less than eighteen. I am in a bus with
a crew. Every couple of weeks, I switched crews, and I'm doing stories with Heraldo Rivera. I mean, I'm doing like the same kind of story sixteen Minutes is doing, but told from the point of view of a young person. And I learned everything you could possibly learn from like the most brilliant people that were thinkers and like people
analyzing the greatest problems in America. Back then we were having you know, all the farm worker problems and you know, problems with immigration and the same shit that's going on now, but you know, the gangs and the racism and this and that. And I was going so deep with all these people that were deep. And by the time I was nineteen, I was recruited at CBS in Boston to
be in the Network Correspondent Training program WOW. And I was what they call a stringer, So I was the one doing all the stories for like Diane Sawyer at the time, I would do seven stories a day, send them in and Diane Sawyer would be the anchor, and I was just and sometimes I wasn't even on camera.
It was like.
Sometimes I just shot footage that they put in and she'd do a voiceover. So I like, I'm running around the country. I now look at these people sometimes and I go into I have PTSD too, because I know what it's like to get on the plane in the morning and you put your makeup on and you do a story and then you get on another.
It is a grind.
It's a grind. It is it's for young people. And I look at these older correspondents like, I don't know how the hell they do it. And one day they're in London and the next day there and so I get asked to do this John F. Kennedy special, in other words, to go do all the interviews for this John F. Kennedy specials. I'm off the grind of the daily thing for a minute, and I'm working on this
big two hour special for Diane Sawyer. And they sent me to Hollywood and I have to do like twenty interviews of twenty people, right, and one of the people I have to interview is Norman Lear. Oh wow, And Norman Lear had been very good friends with John F.
Kennedy, who knew I did not know that, So I have to introduce, should you say, for the people that might not know. Norman Lear one of the absolute geniuses of scripted television. All in the family. He's an incredible talent.
Super lovely guy. And he basically said to me, what are you? Are you Jewish? What are you? And I go because I kind of, you know, I grew up Tina in New York accent right, little Joan Rivers thrown it right. I said, no, I'm Latina, you know, I'm Cuban. And he goes my partner and I just brought the first license for the first Spanish Tivy station. I go, oh,
that's nice. I'm like, not, you know, And he says, I think you should meet with him because he would like you, and you know, you might want to come and work for us. And I'm like, all right, whatever. I go back to Boston. I'm still doing my thing, and like a couple of weeks later, I get a call from this guy, Jerry Perencio, billionaire passed away. Just so everybody knows, he used to be an agent many many,
many moons ago. Then he went and ran Norman Lear's company, and he eventually, many many many years later brought Univision. And he is one of the in Hollywood, the behind the scenes, like you know, big deals and honestly the person I've learned the most from him my whole life. Tough, tough, tough, tough, tough. But you'll see how big he becomes in my life. I go to meet with him. He calls me and he's like, Norman thinks I should meet with you. I
fly to New York to meet with him. By this point, I'm twenty one and I've been working at CBS for two years, okay, And he says to me, so we're going to launch the Spanish TV network station in New York. He goes, you should come and work for us. And I go, well, what am I going to do? And he goes, you're just going to learn how to do everything you got to like start it up. And I go, no offense, sir, But like Spanish TV is not for
somebody like me. That's like for my parents. It's kind of like, eugh, everything about it is not for me. I mean, I don't think you understand. I work at CBS and I'm going to be a network correspondent. And he's like, that sounds like a factory worker to me. And I go what And he goes, how many segments do you do a day? I go seven? How many times a week do you fly every day? And he goes, Okay,
I'm going to tell you something a little harsh. And I, you know, I think to myself, would somebody like him have the balls to tell me something like that today when everything's so politically correct. He goes, you're Latina, right, you're bilingual, right, he goes, you know your culture right. He's like, do you not know that the Latino market is going to be a multi billion dollar market that
you're people are growing at these rates? You're going to be the biggest minority by the year such and such. And he's like, let me get this right. Norman's a multi millionaire. I'm a billionaire. You're gonna go work for a network where you're a factory worker or you're gonna be employee one, no offense. But even if you're an idiot, you're going to be rich. And I thought to myself, oh my god, he's right. And I ask you the question, and I ask you the question, and I ask everyone
listening the question. In today's world, if you had the choice of your ego and being on TV or being employee one of a startup that you think is pretty boring and stupid and kind of taggy, what would you choose? And the only reason I made the greatest and best decision of my life is because, deep in my soul, even though I was really I felt like I was I felt like I was chosen because I had had this beautiful trajet.
Brought into the prestige of CBS.
To be correct, even though I felt that I was chosen, and it's almost like you feel anointed in that way, I felt like, let's be real, let's be grounded. And that's when my parents, in my heart and in my soul ground me. It's like, no, these guys are a better choice. Normanly Or and Jerry Parentia are a better way to go.
And you must have believed in them too, because I did.
But I felt like he was right. You know what it is, And I think this is important to hear because nobody says this to young people, especially a lot. No job is more important than the people that you work for. You can choose a career, or you can choose people.
Interesting.
You choose people because people are going to take you to the promised Land, not a job. So I chose well, and I went and became employee number one of what is today Telemundo.
When we come back, you'll more about Nelly's rise at Channel forty seven, a small Spanish language station that went on to become Telemundo. Before it became the giant that it is now, Telemundo was just Channel forty seven, a local New Jersey TV station that promised to deliver Latino content, and Nellie Glan was employee one.
I had this little rinky dinky station. It was an independent station. Literally, I had no business, no money, no nothing, no content, no nothing. Okay, I had nothing. I had to get on a plane and go to Latin America and going to meet all of these Latin American networks and saying, can I buy a show from you for fifty dollars an episode? I don't know whatever. I got a fill in.
Wait wait wait wait, you said, so hold on, this is interesting. How did you know what your charge was? How did you like? You have to get some savvy, you have to know the business to some degree to know that. Let me go get some programs on the cheap that we could just fill time with, or did you?
I mean no, I figured it out. I'm like, okay, what does another network look like? Okay, they have programming. Okay, I don't have money to produce programming. What do I do? Okay? Where can I find Spanish language programming? I gotta go to Spanish language country, right, Okay? How do I do that? I mean I figured it yeah out? Wow, And every day I made a hundred mistakes on oh PM, which is the best thing to do in life, you know,
work for somebody else, that's right now. I literally would open the mail, and I would open the mail and it would say somebody would send me out and go, we have infomercials we want to air from midnight to three in the morning. We'll pay you a million dollars a year. And I'd call up an engineer that we you know, I find out, where does it cost me to stay open from midnight to three in the morning. We were only on eight hours a day in the beginning.
It's like, oh it, it'll cost you about fifty thousand dollars a year. I go, that sounds perfect to me. We're doing that and I would make a million dollars. I answered the mail. I mean you also forget that. When you have something, build it and they will come. Okay, let me tell you what else came. I'm sitting there literally, you know, like a startup with like four employees, and I get a call from this guy, Puerto Rican guy who's managing Manudo, Manudo the boy Man, and he goes, listen,
I need to see you. I need we just got booked to do Radio City Music Hall. I need airtime. I need to promote this. I go, okay. All I have is airtime. I go, okay, can we make a little commercial whatever, let's do whatever. It's some crappy little commercial. He goes, I have no money for you until the show's on and I sell the tickets. I have no money.
I go, okay, I'll take a shot at you. I go, I'll give you a commercial every fifteen minutes, but you're going to give me half your box fifty to fifty box office.
Really you've said that I did fifty to fifty.
That was my start. I mean I could negotiate right.
That's where she starts it.
I love it and he goes, he goes okay. By the way, it doesn't work anymore. He goes okay, and I go okay. So we sold out five nights five nights because I put so many commercials on this. And by the way, we started mating, like we started making a Latino revolution, because every artist would call me and go, go, can you give me as many commercials as I go? Yeah, all I got is commercial time, and I started doing
fifty to fifty deals. Now, by the way, that didn't last very long because then people were like, come on, you know, and also I started getting other commercials. I didn't have as much commercial time. So I mean, it was like a year where I hit the jobs.
The wild West for a bit of wild West.
So but all I'm saying is like I didn't even think I could figure this out, And in like a year, I made eight million dollars profit. So I went to work for them. At almost twenty to twenty five, I ran the station. We were making eight to ten million dollars a year. So one day I walk into work and his lawyer comes in and says, I have great news for you. We sold the company. I go what we sold the company to? Saul Steinberg, who is an insurance company in New York, and he speaks Spanish and
he wants to build a network. I go to see Jerry and I do the one thing you're never supposed to do in business. I start to cry and I go, Jerry, this is my baby your I'm your burger king manager. This doesn't mean anything to you. How could you solve this as my baby? And he goes, young lady, stop the tears. He goes, young lady, these are my chips. If you think you have what it takes, and I think you have what it takes, he goes, stop crying and go get your own chips.
Wow, he goes.
When I it was your age. I started a business. I made no money for ten years, and then I became a millionaire. Go do it. I'm giving you three hundred thousand dollars in a Mercedes Benz and I was like. I went home and I cried, and I like, really I was so I thought he was the devil.
And he gave you a pens.
By the way, I cashed in because I didn't even know how to drive, and so I had but I did. I had like three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars at that point, and I lived in the East Village and a fourth floor walk up, and I decided to start a business, and I started a business. And so when he sold the company, I went and saw everyone in Hollywood with this idea that I had for a business, and every single person, and I could tell you very famous, famous,
famous execs turned me down. So what I wanted to do is I realized there was a whole the market that I was going to visit all these networks in Latin America and buying shows from them, and they had no American shows, none. And I was like, why isn't there HBO in Latin America? Why are these channels not going abroad? I could sell this in a minute. So
I was pitching people about my business. But for four years nothing happened, and I was really feeling very distraught, and I was embarrassed to go back to Jerry with my tail between my legs because he would have given me a job or you know. And I thought I have to prove myself. And in the fourth year the whole thing changed. The president of HBO at the time says to me, Nellie, remember you came to me like three years ago, and I said, no, we're ready to
do that. We've sent three MBAs to Latin America and they can't figure it out. I go, well, do they speak Spanish and he goes no. I go, well duh, So he goes, but we can only do it with you as a consultant. See. I wanted to like own a piece of the channel right because I was thinking like Jerry Parentio. So I said, okay, I'll do it because if I got to do one, just to show I can do it. And I had the channel up
and running in Venezuela in three months. And then I get a call and another great call from this African American guy name is Bernard Stewart. He was the one in charge of globalizing ESPN. And he calls me and he goes, Nelly, come and see me. I heard from Michael Fuchs at HBO that you helped launch HBO. And I go over there to see him and he says, listen, we're going to do We're going to launch three channels in Latin America. We're going to do one in Portuguese,
two in Spanish, one in Argentina, one in Mexico. We have to hire like forty on camera people, but we want to outsource it to you because if it doesn't work out, then we don't have all the bodies, you know how you can't hire people. And then he goes and then if it works, you sell it back to
us in five years. And then, in a weird way, I was the best person to do this channel because there were all these different languages for different things in sports, Argentinians using mix and I had to just pick one and make a new language that would be the same in the entire continent. And they could yell at me because I'm another Latina. I go listen. I picked the word that I thought was the best free and that's what we're going with. And now it's become the language
of sports in Latin America. So anyway, I launched those channels, and I went from nothing and nothing was working to exactly what Jerry Purna said, if you hang in there. But I went from zero to I launched ten channels in four years.
That's incredible.
And then Rupert Murdoch and Sony decided, okay, so the original guy that bought my station, Channel forty seven bought fifteen stations around the country for a fortune. It was when stations were one hundred million, two hundred million each Overspent tried to start a Latino network. Wasn't working. There wasn't enough money to justify that the cost of those channels. He died of a brain and yours his family got
the company. It went into bankruptcy court and it was between Sony and Fox to buy it, and Sony won the blind doction in bankruptcy court. And when Sony bought it, they came after me because I was the only Latina that had experienced running channels and really being fiscally responsible, and I get the job to basically be the president
of Telemundo. They buy my little business. And by the way, I forgot to say that when I was doing the channel business, all of the networks that I ended up launching, everyone gave me production deals because they're like with your company, with my company, because again, not because I came into it as a creative. Because I came into it as a fiscally responsible Latina from the business side, and all the Latinos in Hollywood kind of trash me. Who is she?
We've been at this for years? How did you give the deals to her. And I was smart because I thought, don't worry you guys, I'm going to give you guys all deals, right. But they didn't realize. And this is another thing that I don't think people say to young people, is that everybody wants to have an ego and be creative,
including me, everybody. But in fact, if you learn the fiscal stuff first, if you want to be the queen of content, first be the queen of distribution and understand distribution and the finances of distribution, and you're on your way.
Wow, Wow, all your success I almost have success fatigue with you.
I mean no, no, let me just tell you so. Let me be not humble but honest. You could have failure fatigue if I talk to you about my failures. I have way more failures than successes. But that's the other thing people should know. You only need a couple of successes and that's all people care about. And remember, you remember the failures, but other people don't. So it's taken hundreds of thousands of failures to have two or three successes.
Nelly, I hope you will come back. I feel like there's so much more to talk to you about. We didn't even go there's a whole other half of your career. I want to talk to you, just more specifically about the dawn of Spanish language television here in the States. I want to talk to you about your successes in reality TV and really also what your next well I.
Think, I think what's a good thing to leave with for for your listeners is how do you find your north star? And I would say the one thing that that I think people are not looking at carefully is don't pick the sexiest thing. Don't pick the thing that everyone else is doing. Try to really do your homework. Like I'm a very mathematical person. Like I tell I tell everybody Google what's an emerging business, what's an emerging city, what's an emerge market? And here's the beauty of it.
You don't have to have millions and millions and millions of customers. You can survive on very few customers in a niche business. Niches, by the way, are better than mass things. Niches are things that you can fully own. And also niches tend to come from your pain. You know, I did a niche in Latino TV and did very well telling stories that I lived through of immigration of pain. Okay, so you make money on your pain. You come up with something from your pain, not from what everybody else
is out here doing. Don't have fomo like where you are right now, bored in your house is where you need to be to invent the greatest thing of your life, not at the party with everybody else.
Absolutely, Oh my gosh, we're having you back. You're coming back, Nellie. Thank you so much. This has been so lovely. I can't thank you enough.
Yoh.
Nellie Galan is definitely coming back on the show. We're only part way through her career and there's still a whole other reality TV and Psario chapter we didn't get to that I'm dying to talk to her about. But before we let Nellie completely go, I want to play you a part of our conversation that didn't make the episode. It's a really important point I think she makes about jealousy.
The other technique that I use to decide what do I want to do is what am I jealous of?
And I think that's a really great Okay, who were you jealous of in that moment?
Susie Orman? So what Susie Ormand did for white women, it's like she put the light bulb on, Like, where's your financial empowerment? You guys are all like really sitting around waiting for some guy to save you.
Now, when Nelly Golan tells you she's jealous of someone, you got to figure out how to talk to that person. So next week I'll bring you personal finance guru, best selling author multiple times. I'm guests on the Oprah Show Susie or Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited by keyshow Williams, engineered by Ben Holliday, booked by Laura Morgan with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all up
in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Bent Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Eggs and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to Started from the Bottom. Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want ad free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out Pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information. If you like your show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond.