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I grew up around all athletes around my house all the time, just giants, and I mean they would be around the house or come see my dad, or comfort thanksgiving her, you know, whatever it was. But I grew up on the business side, so I always understood how devastating losing can be on that level. I guess in a way it's given me a really global perspective on sports, which honestly, the average probably commentator doesn't really have.
All Right, Alex, this episode of the deal a little bit different because we got out of the studio and into a live audience. So Hannah Storm, she's a thirty year sports media veteran. She has a singular perspective on sports, business and culture. I had watched her on TV forever, I had met her once, you know her a little bit. What did you think?
First of all, I was a huge fan, like you. I remember even graduating from high school and watching her on TV. I just thought that she was a superstar because back in those days, Sports Center was everything.
Yeah, I mean, it's also fascinating because you really can track the explosion of sports as just a key part of the culture. Through her career. And this is one of the things I found so interesting, especially given your relatively new role as an owner of a basketball team, that she was at the white hot center of the
NBA's nineteen nineties explosion into the zeitgeist. She was NBA on NBC when those were the games that people were really discovering at this critical moment for the league where Jordan gives way to Kobe and Shaq and Ron and she has sort of ridden that all the way through. But she also had this really interesting moment where she left sports all together. She goes to morning television and now she's back in our lives in sports. And the
other thing that I will say, she's hilarious. I mean, she is so funny.
Yes, she is funny. And I loved the live audience and they were great. Yeah, they enjoyed it. She talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly in her career that's been over three decades. And some of the highs, of course, was Michael Jordan and some of the great stories and how much she admired Michael. You hear some
great stories there that I've never heard before. And then some low moments in baseball in the dugout with Albert Bell, which I thought was also very interesting and I learned a lot from there as well.
And also, you know, as you mentioned, a pioneer in media and someone who you know, had the wherewithal as she went on with her career to sort of take control of that. You know, she's been at the core of something that obviously is very interesting to both of
us and me. Talk about where your world and mind collide in terms of athletes, you know, telling their own story, worries and how do you do that successfully, and her ability to navigate those waters and navigate a media world that is changing so dramatically practically on a daily basis. I just I really really loved it.
On this episode of The Deal, Hannah Storm.
Without further ado, Hannah, come on out, Hannah Storm us you die. Yay, Oh my gosh, thank you for doing this.
I can't believe that Alex is interviewing me.
So great. So we have so much to talk to you about, but let's talk about the current if we can. We all care a lot about basketball. Yes, we're gonna talk about how you grew up with it, but can we take a moment to talk about basketball?
Okay, can we talk about your team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, Like that's super exciting. I think it's great for the game too, right because we tend to focus on sort of the the glamour teams. But you know, Minnesota's always been in it right there. But I'm super excited for you that they're.
Thank you, Hannah, any new level you remember the early days with the Mariners.
Yes.
I always find it great when a city or a team hasn't had a lot of wins in their past and the fan base is just starving for a winner. And I'm going to tell you Minnesota, is that only a basketball town?
They're giddy. It's an exciting time. So thank you.
See, as an owner, you like those sellouts. It's like, yeah, now when it comes to writing checks for players, we'll talk yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's a different conversation. But what is it that you feel like, I mean, you study this game, you talk to everybody in it, You've seen the whole evolution. Does it feel like something special is happening right now or has been? I don't know what I mean. I love parity.
So to our point, talking about the Wolves are talking about teams who haven't been in it in the past. I think it's great to have the Celtics, great to have the Warriors, and they, you know, maybe on the downslide now, like we don't know what's going to happen with them at this point. We always have the Lakers, right. The New York teams have struggled for relevance, which has been disappointing. I mean at times like the Knicks have shown sparks lately. But I think basketball is great when
the big markets are doing well. But I think what's really exciting for me was seeing Denver win the title last year. On Denver was an old ABA team. They're one of the four teams that came over in the merger. That is a great basketball town. To your point, there are fan bases that are absolutely rabid hoops fan bases. Those fans have always been there, So yes, I do
think I love the parody that we're seeing. Even though I would say the teams on both coasts, you know, I'll throw Philly in there, they get a lot of the attention, a lot of the media attention, and we didn't really pay attention to Denver on a national level until like into the playoffs, right, and they end up winning the titles. So I think it was a good lesson for everybody, like, you know, let's talk about these
other teams, let's develop these stars. Unfortunately, we just kind of sometimes fall into the same old patterns with the same people.
Staying along the same lines of the NBA and parody. Over the last two three decades, you've seen a lot of front offices, teams culture. Obviously, we talk a lot about the Miami Heat, maybe mentioned two or three. They do a really good job with their continuity, their leadership, their messaging.
Oh, pat Riley unbelievable championship coach has kept that Miami team relevant for so long. You know, you're right there. I mean it's unbelievable, not just bringing the Big three in, but what Miami has been in recent days and impressive leaders like getting Jimmy Butler there was like a game changer, right, he could have stayed in Philly. But I think that pat Riley has been able to sustain and build a champion in a market where there's a lot of other stuff to do, you know, so he comes to mind.
I do think the Warriors have been a very well run franchise through the years. You know, they've sustained what we could consider a modern day dynasty.
In a smaller Marcus san Antonio obviously.
Oh well, Greg Popovich, yeah, thank you, thank you. I mean I covered san Antonio back. I mean I was there in like the Dennis Rodman days of san Antonio sustained excellence. That's a great example.
All right, let's go all the way back. I mean, this is and we're going to talk about a new podcast you have later on. But your DNA is nba aba they even so like all the way back, yeah, all the way back. I mean you you were effectively born into this game. Tell us about it.
No, my dad was a sports executive. He was in the Marine Corps, but he always loved sports. He played football in the Marine Corps, and he played football at Notre Dame for a brief time one year. But so he was in the Marine Corps. He had helped to start a toys for Tots. I'm sure you guys have heard of that. We were in Chicago. He really wanted to get into sports and the local team at the time, the Chicago Zephyrs. They he was reading in the paper
that they couldn't sell tickets. They just couldn't sell tickets to get people in the stand. So he literally went in to the office and said, if I can sell X number of tickets, and he was like six hundred or something like that. He was like, well, y'all hire me, you know, you like, put me on staff. And they were like, sure, what do we have to And so that's how he got his start in basketball. And then we were in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis, Atlanta, Houston,
all different basketball teams. He was in baseball with the Astros. I mean, he did all sorts of crazy stuff, but mostly basketball. And he ended up being commissioner of the old ABA and setting the ABA and the NBA up for merger in the mid seventies. So as long as I can remember, when it was in a school night, we were at games. Yeah, And what I really remembers the referees names because my mom had played basketball and she used to yell at the referees all the time, like, yell,
we were in the front road. She is yelling, he want to get you, you know, She's like yelling at the ress. So I remember the rest all their names distinctly.
Yeah, So tell us about that, I mean, what was it? What was it like? Because we have this picture, I mean, you certainly have a very modern and intimate picture of the of the NBA. Like, what was it like?
I mean picture the NBA slam dunks came from the ABA. So slam dunks were not allowed in the NCAA or the NBA, not even in a warm up line. So you're thinking about players who came out of like Doctor j like out of Rutger Park, right and out of places where they had these great showy moves which they were not allowed to do anywhere other than the ABA. Three pointers those came from the ABA. Now a lot of old ABA guys are really upset right now the
way that three pointers are used. A lot of people in the game are kind of upset that the three pointer is a de facto shot, right, it's not like a secondary option teams that sort of run down the court and just launch three pointers. I know there's a lot of basketball peers that don't like that. But the three pointer came from their cheerleaders, crazy halftimes, fun halftimes.
They didn't have a TV contract, so they had to make it super entertaining, right, So think about all those elements that the players were allowed to come out of high school or college. That was not an option in the NBA. So when you think about like personal empowerment, like player empowerment, like those things. For the first time players had salary leverage. So they were like, well, I have a choice. Now I can go to the ABA or the NBA. So hey, I can negotiate a little, right.
I do have to say one little story back when I was with the Mariners. I played with the Mariners from ninety four. I was up and down to two thousand, was my last year there. So I remember back in those days, Hannah showed up to one of the stadiums and we're stretching as a team, and you know, when you're a smaller market team, you never have the big
national media. And Hannah showed up early one day and we were all Strett's storm in Griffy Saying and Edgar Martinez and she was a star amongst players.
I mean that.
And by the way, back in those days, when we came up, it's not like now where we have Hulu and Disney Plus. Yes, it was just one channel. I could just imagine the numbers. You guys got back.
Yeah.
Massive.
So every night at eleven thirty or what or in the money, what do you call it?
The morning?
Yeah, the rotation either it was like CNN every nine and eleven thirty CNN Sports and I did the Baseball Show on CNN NBC. I mean, you watched that CBA, you watched one gang. Now you're going to watch a triple header one network. Yeah, so you think about it. The numbers were insane.
So when she showed up as a player, you knew it was a big deal. When Bob Costas was up, yeah, you knew it was a big deal. When I hear Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, you knew it was playoffs, All Star or World Series.
That's right.
And I always got excited when the big shots came because that was your time to shine. And that's what hand I'm into us. Even back then in the nineties and two thousands.
By the way, Seattle had the Sonics back yeah day too, so they hadn't. We spent a lot of time there with that team, which was incredible to glove Gary Payton and that's a really special place. Really. I'm glad you had the opportunity to play there.
Too. It was awesome, you know, great fan base soon.
Yeah, great fan base and great and you had some really cool teammates too there as well.
As you're experiencing these different cities as a professional now, it feels like it's just an extension of how you grew it. You end up at Notre Dame. There are a couple of domers in the audience. I know, good shout out Irish. But is sports always in your mind?
Well, I think that when you grow up and you move around a lot, and I do think that it forces you to very quickly meet pepeople and it forces you to quickly find common ground. Yeah, so I am able to pretty much meet anybody and just strike up a conversation, which I think is a blessing. It also forces you to really assess your surroundings and be interested in other people, and I think that's one of your
great qualities. Sometimes athletes can be like really myopic and care about themselves, and I think one of the cool things about Alex is he's always been like curious about other people and probably why you're in business, and probably why you're doing this in retrospect, everything that happens in your life that is like a huge challenge. I do
think those things all turn out for good. Maybe not all the time, but I think they can turn out to be a blessing in some strange way later that you might not even realize.
Over the last thirty years, you have this male dominated industry. How and what can you share with all of us that allows you to keep that integrity because it's so easy to take the easy chief or you know, go for a headline, but it seemed like you always stayed above it all and again maintain that reverence and respect from everyone.
It's really interesting your observation because I do think in the era of social media and now it's all about hot takes and look at me and how many followers do I have? What kind of arguments can I get into on X? I do think there's a lot of self promotion. It's not bad, like do whatever you want, you know what I mean. But back I guess in
the day that didn't exist. But also being the only woman usually always or one of the only women, I mean, you just had to have like a really tough skin and you had to like really really just put your head down and work and let that speak for itself. Because I would not only have issues like I had with Albert Bell, you know, pretty well publicized I had.
You know, baseball was at times, certain teams were very, very difficult to cover back in the day because either the athlete was a very traditional or a lot of times it was the manager wasn't necessarily the athletes, it was like some of the older people in the sport. Same thing. It was the first ever NFL sideline reporter for a year. It was horrible, you know, because of just you know, nobody wanted you there much less wanted a woman there. So I had a lot of really
tough things. But I guess in some ways like that that really did make me more determined because I was like, oh, okay, well you know what I'm gonna it's good time, I mean, yeah, And it made me understand that my only recourse was not to make it about me, but to always take the higher road and just do my job. Because if I just did my job, that's really just the last word, you know. And also that's what it's getting paid to do.
You're not getting paid to make yourself the story right and to get into fights with people or to even promote yourself like and I guess I'm old fashioned in that way, but at the end of the day, someone is me to do a job, and it is incumbent upon me to do it to the best of my ability. And that's why when I had the issue in the dugout with Albert Bell, I had a live shot for CNN.
They were going to come to me, and he was, you know, ran through the dugout wielding a bat, and everybody fled the dugout except for me because I had a live shot and my camera was set up and a little bat boy who was terrified and he was, you know, wheeling his bat and screaming at us, and literally the entire baseball media was out there just watching to see what would happen, and I'm like, I'm not
leaving this dugout. It became a huge deal, and because it was a World Series stage and all the media and everybody was like wanted to interview me and blah blah blah blah blah, and I was like, absolutely not, like I'm just here to report on what is happening on the field. It took a long long time, and later he was fined the largest fine in baseball history, but it took a really long time for that to happen.
But I guess that's just an example back in the day of just you know, being a little stubborn and figuring out how to do my job. I mean, there were players. I remember Bob Knepper is an old picture for the Astros. If I was in the Astros locker room, he said, I will not talk to any of the media because you don't belong in here. And I was like, listen, I really don't like it in here either, Like it's sweaty, gross, I mean, big misconception, like no one wants to go
in a locker room. They're disgusting. So I was like, awesome, do you mind coming out in the hallway. Absolutely the same thing with Warren Moon. I didn't want to go in the football locker room, and he was like, you know what, I'll come outside and do the interview. So I would just wait, you know what I mean, just out of respect to my colleagues and everybody. You know, I just tried to find a solution. You know, that's crazy. There's so many stories but.
You're alluding to, I mean, so many interesting sort of threads and themes that I know that we want to talk about, and one of them that I know we want to discuss is sort of that period in the nineties especially, I mean, you're living it in baseball. Basketball really comes to the four in the culture. What was it that happened and what did it feel like? As Jordan comes into it and then the NBA is just established as this like cultural nexus.
Yeah, well, I mean what happened was Michael Jordan? Yeah, it was really interesting because obviously Burd and Magic came out of college, that natural collegiate rivalry kind of carried over, but it was really Michael and the fact that what was so interesting is people forget all the struggles he had early, right, and how they couldn't get by the
Detroit Pistons. Right, So we're talking about Isaiah and Dumars and all of that in this team that was like struggling to get by them, and then Michael just everything that he did. You guys have all watched the Last Dance, but it was just magnetism and the things that he did. And it was in the era and you guys are talking cultural Do you guys remember must See TV?
Yeah?
Do you remember that phrase? So that was like friends Seinfeld and er I want to say, Okay, so must SYTV. The NBA kind of became part of Muscy TV on NBC, so it became Musty TV. And what we would do is so again, you're not it's not Turner, there's not local, right, it's not like ESPN, like it's literally NBC. You want to see a game, We're going to give you three games. The basketball was so good because you're talking Barkley, you're talking the Mailman, Carmelo, you're talking I mean stars, but
you're talking three games in a row. There were five games on a weekend. So think about that. You get a triple header on Saturday, a double header on Sunday, and then it's followed by Jurassic Park. Maybe, so I'm saying they would invest in these. In fact, Bob Costas had a really good line one halftime. He was like, do we have a special movie coming up for you? You
bet Jurassic Yeah. Everybody's oh my god. But like that kind of epitomized that era of NBC and football had always been sort of a broadcasting tent pole, understanding how basketball could do the same. And by the way, with baseball, we had I don't know if you remember the short lived Baseball Network. Everybody kind of came together to do like the Baseball Network, right, But then you know we had and I broadcast a ton of World Series like
on network television, one network, like really really strong. And I still think the World Series has that. It really does, and probably because alex is, you know, part of broadcasting. But I mean, you know it had that cachet and basketball had to get to that level. It really did. It wasn't at the level of baseball. It wasn't America's game. You know, you used to be able to watch like America's game every week. Everybody watched baseball. The stars were established.
That's what happened in the nineties. Is that basketball because of I think Jordan, but also these other stores who were like foils, you know, and then he left the game for two years and boom InCom like the Rockets InCom like Elajahwan and drex Learn and two questions.
Maybe let the audience know here what that felt like on game day, right, because yeah, I flew three thousand miles to go see him, did you. I was thrilled, absolutely right, because you only have maybe a handful of opportunities. My question to you is, how was that like game day? And maybe a story or two of your exchange with Michael, maybe an interview.
How was he?
Yeah, well Michael, he was amazing. He's really funny, is really down to earth. Now, Ahmad did all the International Michael a mon shot exclusive. I mean they were best friends. So I did the Western Coberts, Ahmad did the Eastern Coberts, and he did every single interview with Michael. But of course we all you know, we knew Michael or whatever. So I first met him when I was in Charlotte. So Charlotte got a basketball team. I was the only
woman in the market. That was a really hard market for me, always getting male about the way, you know, like hate mail at the station, the way I dressed and stuff like that. People didn't they just didn't, you know, whatever, And nobody was used to having a woman around. But so Michael and everybody in the NBA kind of followed him, which was kind of cool. Well his behavior. Oh yes, And so we have the Charlotte Hornets. A big thing is Michael being from North Carolina. So they come in
to play. It's like this huge deal. Blah blah, blah blah blah. And there I am, you know, in the locker room at again and I you know, asked Michael like for an interview and he calls me, ma'am. I'm literally like twenty three. But it was like that southern you know, like like like he was like so polite, and he was like so incredible to me. He was so gentlemanly, and everybody else just was like whoa like followed in line. And that was even though a Mod was his bestie and he did his one on ones
with a Mod. He was just exceedingly like that way in general. And NBA locker rooms were by far the best, by far the best to cover. I mean for me as a woman, and a lot of the guys had the opportunity to maybe go to college at least back then, they went to college for a lot longer, so they had been a lot more used to media, big media being around and that really helped too. Yeah, that really helped in the NBA. But he was great.
But he does, you know, to Alex's point and to your point, like he does set this new standard and you know, it does usher in this different way that we view not just basketball players, but athletes in general, athletes as business people.
Well, Nike, Yeah, obviously the shoe deal, which is just the greatest story of all time. Yeah, it was the shoe deal. It was the shoes, it was the marketing, it was I mean that that started it all.
It's crazy to think if you say Michael Jordan to my daughters for you, yeah, we're both teenagers. He's more synonymous with sneakers than basketball.
It is, well, people call him Jordan's right, they don't know. And it's funny. I did a whole sneaker series for Hulu called Grails that's really really fun. So Josh Luber, who you guys know who he is, So he said that he had a pair of Jordan's on and he had like they had like a twenty three on the back right, and he said, like some kid was like, what what's that? Like why is that number on the background there? To your point, like you have to go
to YouTube now, right, even if you're like, who's Michael Jordan? Right, and the last dance still a lot, but I mean, is it's really the Jordan brand?
Yeah?
Right, is almost and has is very separate from Michael Jordan the athlete. Yeah, yeah, it was really a golfer now, I mean he's like the golf. He has his you know, he has grove, you know, his own golf course. I mean, he's really into that. I usually see him at the Ryder Cup. That's where we run into each other.
He just made a lot of money selling his basketball team. Well, yeah, that's a good investment.
Yeah, it made a lot of money in the basketball too. Apparently Alex is like, yeah, Mark, Mark Cuban so too. I'm really interested to see what Mark does next because I think that you know, he obviously he's obligated to do Shark Tank for a while longer, but he's going to step back from that. So I'm really fascinated to
see what like a real talk about a real trendsetter. Yeah, another guy who's who we could have named earlier with the Mavericks are always like right there in contention, and he's always trying to keep them current and in contention. But I'm fascinated to see what someone of that caliber. Yeah, and a guy is always kind of forward thinking. I'm really interested to see what he does next.
But to that point, I mean, and we're sitting here with an NBA on our I mean that's the other part of the business that has changed so dramatically to the point where we have someone like this guy coming in and being like, this is a good investment and you know something that I can get behind. What do you make of that? I mean as a business person, you know, you've started businesses, you've seen this. What do you make of it?
Well, it's really interesting, I mean to me. So, I grew up not with an athlete. I grew up around all athletes around my house all the time, just giants, and I mean they would be around the house. I would come see my dad or comfort Thanksgiving or you know whatever it was Christmas party. So I was always very comfortable around athletes. But I grew up on the business side, right, So I've always understood how devastating losing can be on that level, how the criticism that you
take on that level. And I guess in a way it's given me a really global perspective on sports, which honestly, the average probably commentator doesn't really have. And you know, there's a lot of criticism, a lot of yelling, a lot of I think a lot of people who don't see at times the three six picture of what it takes, right. It's not always as easy as oh, go out and
get this player. You need to do that, or you need to do that or all the you know, I'm speaking from a media standpoint of how we talk about owners, right, and how we talk about general managers, and something that's a really pet peeve of mine too is how we like fire people, how we say they should be fired. Like, that's just not okay, because you are talking about someone's livelihood, right, and you can't throw coaches and coordinators and gms around and owners around like punchlines.
Now.
I understand that there are times when owners deserve a lot of criticisms something horrible like happen with the Clippers. Okay, that's not what we're talking about here, but in general, because your team isn't performing. I mean, there's a lot of factors that go into that, including, by the way, the athlete's you know, responsibility as well. You're dealing with people's livelihoods. And what I understand being the other side is a family. I've had for sale signs put in
our front yard by fans. Okay, so I understand that, right. I've had my dad fired. I remember going to Atlanta, being in high school, going to a new high school, and to Turner firing my dad gm of the Hawks like months later, by the way, for making a deal that Ted didn't like, but that turned out to be amazing for the Hawks. And I understand those things happen, and I don't hold animosity, but I know what it's like to be on the other side, So I guess
for me, I always try to be fair. And again, you know, like call somebody, you know, call people a bum or call them names or whatever, like that's just not okay. It's just not like if they're not doing a good job, they might lose their job eventually. It's not to you to fire the guy. He doesn't take a genius to see if a team isn't performing.
Coming up, we discussed Hannah's career shift, as well as making the leap towards business ventures of her own. All right, let's have a conversation about you some big transitions that you make in the course of your career. One of the biggest ones is being like, I'm going to go try something that's not sports. Yeah, tell us about that, that experience and that decision.
I don't know, I mean listen. I have been doing this forty years in the business overall, and I just don't think you can survive that long without being flexible and open minded. So the NBN NBC ended and we also lost the NFL, by the way, kind of all in the same year. And I had always wanted to do morning television. And the reason that I did is because there were no women on television doing sports when
I was growing up. So literally the only women that I had ever seen cover sports were morning television news hosts. I didn't immediately go into sports because I also couldn't get a job being a woman in sports. So my first job was as a heavy metal DJ.
That's where Hannah Storm Cat, That's where my name.
Storm comes from. Yeah, and that was Corpus. Yeah. See what I won by the sea, there's the storm coming in late night? Still got it quiet, Ryan def Leppard and Sammy Hagar like back to back to back. Anyway I was. It was really relaxing, but yeah, and then I went to Houston and did a radio and I would spin records on the weekends and then did I did morning and afternoon drive sports, and then I started working for the astros for their station and the rocket stations.
That's kind of how I got started.
You know.
I majored in international studies at Notre Dame. So like, I really liked the news. I just thought I wanted to go into sports because sports is fun, you know what I mean. But when that ended, I was like, I had little kids, and I was like, I need a job. I need a morning job. I need some job. I just told my agent, I'm not going to be gone in the afternoons. I don't want to be gone all weekend they're in school. I want to be gone
the when they're gone, you know what I mean. If they're going to get up and go to school, that's when I want to be gone. And I want to work. So we looked at morning only morning jobs, and CBS was starting a new morning show, one of their many iterations morning show. God. Gail King is obviously killing it.
And how was that different for you?
It's so different. It's pretty hardcore, but you know what it was really good about it is doing sports. You can add lib right, like you know, when we go up there and talk, we don't have I mean, some stuff is scripted. If you're leading to like a piece and a director needs a world cue or something like that. But for the most part, you're thinking on your feet, right, you're reacting. I found that was like critical as a newsperson, so I didn't come up like just reading the news,
you know what I mean. Then it's really hard to react. So I found that I was like a really good interviewer. I also was really used to not tipping my hand about what I thought. I was used to complete and total objectivity. I had also hosted notre Name Football and I said, my boss was like, if I see one glimmer in your eye little irish like happiness or whatever, you're.
Done, Like all right, good.
So I was like trained. So the good thing about going into news is my personal views. And this is back in the day when we didn't have like polarizing news channels, definitely, and I was at the network and they would always give me like all the good political interviews because you could not tell if I was like on one side or the other. You know, everyone would get mad at you, of course, but it was really cool. And then also like I got to do a ton of cooking, so it became a really good cook which
is my other passion. And then we did a ton of music, which I already knew. It was kind of like my wheelhouse and I love that. Super fun and then movie stars, and I mean it was a really really cool job. I loved it.
Was there like one or two interviews that you were you can think that you were really nervous, either before or during.
I would say interviewing like President Bush. I would say forty three. Yeah, just like going to the White House, and I was like, pretty nervous.
What did you wear?
But that's a great question.
Thank you.
I can't believe you were. Because so they have a little softball game on the lawn and I was calling their softball game later that day, so it's had to be sporty. So I wore like really crisp white slacks and just a white a white sweater.
What kind of shoes?
All white flats flats? Yeah, you brewe.
I love it ya.
And you know, he's so funny. He would always build time into his day, so he ran a little early or or right on time because he's kind of a social guy, do you know how of course he did
with Rangers and all that. Right, So I have my kids with me, and so you do all the you know, you go in the line and you shake hands and blah blah blah, and he's like, hey, y'all want to like see the rose Garden And I was like, oh, okay, so just like me, him and my three kids, like we go and he's like showing them the rose Guard and then he's like takes us in the oval office and we're hanging out, like he's like showing them pictures of his family, and I'm thinking, don't you have anything
to do? Like like what like what is happening here? And he was like this so nice, like talking to them out of nowhere, like magically, He's like, oh I got a you know, I got a meeting or whatever. And I was like, well, like thank you so much. This is great. And then like out of the blue photographer appears, snapsnap, snap, and then like two days later to your house. How do they find you? I don't know, but is like autographed like pictures like for each kid.
I mean, it was like the coolest. It was one of those like weird surreal experiences. But I got to say, like before and I shouldn't have been because he's so down to earth and genuine, but you know, I was a little intimidating going to the White House right for an interview, but it was fine, It was totally it was.
Great, and you got a tour of the Rose Guard. So then you find your way back to sports.
Yeah, so I got fired.
That's what I mean by find your way back. You got like, yeah, exactly.
But I think that you know a lot of times when people are making personnel changes, and they went they made a three sixty, We're taken out everybody. So I got fired. So that's okay because all my colleagues did. We all left together, you know, one by one. And at the time, ESPN was starting a daytime sports center. They had never had sports center during the day. It was all reruns from the night before, and they were going to start a nine to noon sports center. They're
going to launch it. And I had the combination of the sports and daytime television experience. Yeah.
Yeah, And so when you get into that, you get that job. The sports world has, you know, kept going, and obviously you've you've kept an eye on what did you notice that was either different about sports or maybe more pointedly about sports and media.
That you could kind of talk a little bit more about. You know, sort of who you liked or teams. It was more personalized. What I noticed a lot about sports media was that people were personalities and that they became studio personalities. So I had always been you know, I'd always like toe the line. The event is the thing, right, the person you're interviewing is the thing. In news, it's the story is the thing. It's always the story, the story of the story.
You know.
I came to ESPN in particular people were developing themselves as legitimate stars and just the way they delivered the sports okay, which was really interesting.
Right.
So we had always had that on play by play. I mean you mentioned Buck and Tim McCarver, Right, we'd always had that kind of in the play by playworld. We had these big stars, but it was the studio genre, and so it was more like kind of what we started at back when I was at CNN, Like that had kind of exploded, right, And because ESPN was such
a national brand. I always call it like America's wallpaper, Like you walk in, it's there, like it's on every TV, it's on every bar, it's and then you know, like in the airport. So these these personalities had been able to like infuse a lot of humor and a lot of just sort of their twist on things. And I thought that was a really cool development in sports, and obviously that's huge now.
Sure, right, yeah, sure. I also want to make sure that we spend to be talking about your production company because I know this is the world you've been playing in. Yeah, obviously, you know we're all in this business to some extent. How do you make the decision to do that and how do you sort of create something that's that is uniquely you?
Right? Well, when I left CBS, so as a news anchor, there are certain things you can't do. I always felt like I wanted a lot of control, you know, over something in my life because that always worked for big, big companies. So I'm like, okay, I have a control in my house and bubba uah sometimes and I'd written a couple of books because I knew like I could do that that was like a creative outlet. But I wanted something that I could control is not a good word.
I want something I could create on my own, like kind of how I wanted to do it, right, So I started two things. I started my foundation and I started my production company. I kicked one of my daughters out of her bedroom at the time and she went into the other bedroom with her sister. So in this little tiny bedroom, I took who I'd been working with at CBS, Carmen Belmont, who's here, and we started the two of us, which were still the two of us.
We started a production company and a foundation simultaneously before I went to ESPN, so that I could grandfather it into wherever I want. So there's this thing called Upfronts, where which you guys know, but just for you guys. It's like where all the advertisers come in and all the TV stations and everybody introduces what they're doing to
all the advertisers. So they were introducing me at the upfronts, and they were also introducing a film series called thirty for thirty and I was like, ooh, that sounds interesting. So I went up. A couple of weeks later at work, I introduced myself to the gentleman who was running thirty for thirty and I said, is there anything you don't have or you just can't get? Is there anything you're like, I know you have like two slots left, like anything
you can't get? Because I was thinking, Ooh, what do they need? Maybe I can and they're like, well, we don't have a women's film and we don't have a tennis film. So I was like, oh, maybe I'll call my friend Chrissy Evert and so I did one of the original thirty for thirties, which was Chrissy and Martina. Yeah, and then from there and that was a really cool, great learning experience. Did I did branded content? I did you know some nine for nine, I did you know
Shaq and Dale. I did Danica for EPX, and last year did my first ever series on a couple of young black entrepreneurs Eastside Golf and who got the first ever Jordan contract ever for golf. So it's been really really good, but it's a very hard business. The margins are really small, and so what I did is I just took a part of my paycheck and I just put it into my company. I just self invested. So because I'm I'm like an on air person, you know what I mean, I wasn't like a TV producer at
the time. So I was like, I'm just going to take a part of what I'm earning on TV and I'm going to reinvest it. Into myself, my company, and my foundation. And that's what I did. And we're still you know, we're really small, but we you know, do some cool stuff.
I want to build on what you're saying, because part of this is about an entirely new media landscape. I mean you're sort of producing and selling into it. You are experiencing it via Amazon, you know, which obviously you did some work with give us a sense of where sports media fits in this like wild West disrupted upside down.
It's fascinating. I mean what many people have accomplished with YouTube I think is really great because you can monetize your content there, I think is super smart. There are other people who are pouring a lot of content into other areas of social media that they don't own, but that they feel like they're going to make it up in terms of being an influencer, which is also fascinating
to me. There are kind of my new thing is Okay, I may not be able to go out and get somebody to spend a half a million or a million dollars on a story that I want to do, but you know what I want to do. I want to own my IP. So how am I going to do that all right, Maybe you're going to do that. Maybe you're going to do that in a podcast, right, you can, because you're going to own You're going to own your intellectual property. I'm also writing like a graphic novel. Okay wow.
So and I have a twelve part podcast with in Conjunction. My partners are the NBA and iHeart and it's called NBA DNA with handle Storm. I do think it's important to kind of establish your intellectual property, and I think that there's so many tiered ways of doing that. So a lot of podcasts might become a documentary, it might become in your case, you know, a special something like that. There's layers and tears to everything you can do, and I think that's really cool. It's cool to think outside
of the box. And not everything is going to be like a huge money maker, but maybe it's good in another way. I always figure like broadcasting, like you're hanging your hat there, right, and then like other things that you're passionate about really because it's kind of what it's about, right, Like you're passionate about it. You want to do this, you want to sit down and interview people like this is the vehicle that that you came together to do.
Like it's fun, right, yeah, right, and maybe somebody helps. Maybe somebody's not going to sit there and go, Hi, I need an interview or I'm think I'm gonna call up Alex Rodri you know. But you're making it happen, right, and so I think that's like super cool. I guess like I always think like super optimistically, you know. And there's there's tons of projects that I have never made it to the finish line, right, but you gotta try or just find a different way, yeah, like find a different avenue.
In What advice take my nineteen year old who's a freshman at Michigan and she's studying musical theater?
Oh cool?
What advice would you give Natasha and millions of young people out there, and not just young women, but young people that want to be the next Hannah? Maybe one or two three things that you can say that can be helpful for them.
I did a lot of musical theater, okay, yeah, including a Notre Dame, which is really cool because then you're kind of a ham, right, you're like a performer. I mean, I'm sure I wasn't as talented as a Natasha, So I was like, all going to TV. I'm like an okay singer, not a great dancer. But I think, you know, this is so cliche, but it's I always telp people to work really hard, and that's I know that like
goes without saying, but it doesn't really. I think you have to just Ryan Man, You've got to work so hard, you know, do not get discouraged when people say no, because I do think a lot of younger people, because of social media, they put themselves out there. They get negative comments and this and that. They're always like so worried about what other people think. They're afraid of rejection and they're afraid to put themselves out there. And I
think you have to. You have to put yourself out there, and you have to understand that if you know, people don't want to hire you or blah blah blah, they're you know, the big thing now is like, oh, the company ghosted me. They never got back to me, you know,
for a job like that can be really hurtful. But I think separating, not taking things personally and really understanding like a global view of the marketplace, Understanding like what you're dealing with, like from big picture that it's not it's not always about you, right, So you know, working on dealing with failure, working on dealing with rejection and staying positive and really really sticking to you know, what you want. But just there is zero substitute for working hard.
And I think I just learned that being a woman in a man's industry, I had to almost work harder than anyone else. And obviously my husband is a sportscaster and he works extremely hard. And I'm not saying I work harder than him, but I'm saying that for me, that work ethic, I'm like, that will always separate me. You know, there's there's and you know I'm playing baseball, and you also know getting up and not being what percentage of of times does the ball actually meet the
bat for a hit? It's it's like it's like a quarter of the times.
If you're seventy.
You're failing seventy percent, and you're a freaking Hall of famer except me, right exactly right, I like that. See I like that. I don't know I have a piece, but I do think that, you know, think about that, right, think about and I always think about the baseball analogy like and that's okay, you know what I mean, because you're going to fail like you're whole life, and that's okay.
It's like good and it's funny you say that because I tell my children this all the time. Is that the fact that I came from a sport that you fail seventy percent of the time and you're really really good. I always say, like I have a PhD In failing. But like I eat No's for breakfast, right, Like it doesn't mean anything to me. I just keep It's almost like a blind spot.
I just keep going right.
And I have friends that one person says no to them and they're for three months.
They're like depressuralized, you know.
That's what I'm saying. And I do think that is is unfortunate, and I do think some of that is a result of of just social media in the way that we're ingrained, you know, into like everything from your physical appearance to this to that. And I do think that that's something that we, you know, I think collectively have to really work work against. And like Billy Geen always says, like if you're under pressure, like that's a privilege. You have to really really kind of think of it
that way and also be open minded. You know, what you're thinking of is the perfect job and the perfect life. You know, other opportunities are going to come along that you never thought of, and when they do, just like for me, it's always been like, just have an open mind, have an open mind, and try things you're afraid of. That's really really important.
Thank you so much. This is really fun. Thank you, Thank you every much.
The Deals of production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
The Deal is.
Hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. Our producers are Victor Eveyes and Lizzie Phillip. Our story editor is Sir Dartha Mahonta. Our assystant producer is Stacey Wong. Blake Maples is our sound engineer. Rubob Shakir is our creative director. Our direction is from Jacqueline Kessler. Original music by Blake Maples, casting by Dave Warren. Our managing editor is David Ravella.
Our executive producers are Sage Bauman, Jason Kelly, Adam Kamiski, Kelly Laferrier, Ashley Hoenig, Tray Shallohorn, Kyle Kramer, and Andrew Barden. Additional support from Rachel Scarmazino, Elena Los Angeles, Vanessa Perdomo, and Anna Maserakis. David Dominguez is our director of photography. Jesse Riddner and Josh Devo are camera operators. Alex Diacanis is our video editor. Our goffer is Rob Silcox, and our grip is Pronoy Jacob Avy. Technical support from Mitchell Sonati,
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