Ep #101: Television, Growth, and Business with Bonnie Hammer

My friends, welcome back. I am very excited about today's guest for a whole host of
reasons. And when I introduce her, you will understand why. My guest today is Bonnie
Hammer. Bonnie is the vice chair of NBC Universal, where she has spent decades
transforming every facet of the television business. Under her leadership,
the company's cable group and studios achieved record -setting profits, garnered 167
Emmy nominations, and launched hit series, including Suits, Psych, The Center,
Battle Star Galactica, Mr. Robot, and Hundreds More. As many as 129 million Americans
a week tuned into NBCU's Cable Networks, which included Sci -Fi,
USA, Bravo, and Bonnie led the NBCU's Cable Division. Lauded by the New York Times
as the Queen of Cable, and hailed as the most powerful woman in entertainment by
the Hollywood Reporter. She is also the author of the bestselling book, "15 Lies
Women Are Told at Work." This book has been defined as a master class in success
from the mailroom to the boardroom from one of the most powerful women in corporate
America. discovering the uncommon sense women need to succeed and the lies to ignore
along the way. So with that, I wanna welcome Bonnie. - Jackie,
thank you. And I would say a very high percentage of those Emmy knots came because
of the shows that you brought in, you developed and you launched, my dear.
So you have to take a lot of credit for a lot of stuff that our team did.
I appreciate the inclusion and the compliment. And as you know, and as you said in
your book, it takes not just a village, it takes more than a village. And that is
true of raising a family. And that is absolutely true of making hit TV shows. Yep.
And we were lucky. We had an amazing team for a long time that you were a very
special part of and none of the acclaim that you just read could have happened
without a great team who's capable of working together. 100 % and again your
leadership so I thank you for that and I'd like to kind of kick off this
conversation although we're gonna talk about a bunch of things with the book because
I read it as soon as you sent it to me. I loved it. You did such a fantastic
job deconstructing and debunking the "recipe for success" cliches about women in the
workplace. But moreover, you did it with powerful anecdotes about your own journey.
So I would love to start this conversation and I know you've had it many times as
you've done your book tour, but I'd love you to start the conversation with your
first job, your big break in the industry, and Winston. Oh good,
all Winston. All right, so I finally realized that I had to take a detour from
photography because trying to break into the photography world wasn't getting anywhere.
So I was taking still photographs for a kid show called Infinity factory,
where one day, for reasons I still don't know, they fired or let go of three
production assistants in one day. And I just happened to be there taking photos,
and they asked if I wanted a job. And my job taking photos was really a practicum,
it was an internship for no pay for a graduate school program. So I needed a job.
So I took the job thinking I would get one of the kids on the kids show to
basically support, read scripts, do whatever one does, the production assistant with
the human. But no, I got the dog who was a Nepo hire of the producer who was
part of the cast on the show. And of course, we were a union set, which meant no
union person would pick up dog crap. So not only did I have to help Winston
navigate the set of where he had to be, when he had to be there for a shot, I
had to clear up the dog crap as well. So that was my first job, entering
television as the youngest production assistant and the greenest production assistant
on a set. And I must admit as much as weird and terrible and smelly and crappy as
it was, kind of doing it and doing it with a smile was the beginning of a
journey. - Well, not only is it great metaphor for the entertainment business. - Kind
of crap. - Yes, but it's a story that I have now since told all three of my
daughters, who One is going to be in a junior year at college and has her first
paid corporate internship, and the other two are well ensconced in corporate America.
But just reminding them that we all start at the bottom. It doesn't matter if you
have a high school diploma, a college degree, a master's degree, you have to start
at the bottom somewhere. And you have to do it, as you said, with a smile on your
face. You need to earn your worth. It's not given to you. And I think,
unfortunately, our generation helped mess up many of the kids growing up today.
Because if you think about in trying to be good parents and good with the community
and good with the sports groups and teams they were on during their early years, we
created, you know, trophies for participation is for effort,
things that soften the world for these kids, that they believe that just by showing
up, they were going to get an award. And I think that hurt a lot of the kids
growing up. Their expectations of what it meant to start at the bottom,
to work at your worth, to do grunt work 'til you earned your worth is a lot
harder than it was for us who had no expectations whatsoever. Getting a job was
such a thrill. I was gonna do anything to succeed because who even expected to get
a job? - And in an era where women were really just starting to
be seen as something potentially other than secretaries, which is what we call them
or now assistants, right? And just to get your foot in the door was, well, first
of all, to go to college was a big deal, but also to get your foot in the door
in a male dominated industry. And then to do anything other than picking up dog
poop or answering a phone was really huge. And then could you hold on to it is
the question? You know, Again, part of it has to do with attitude, part of it has
to do with, as you navigate, being a bit of an optimist or a positive thinker and
believing in, you know, even if something gets screwed up or something doesn't go
your way, rather than seeing it as a huge obstacle, having a bit of a positive,
okay, I blew that, but how do I now move forward rather than have that obstacle
stop you and trip you for good. So it's having a little positivity or what we
develop together for USA Network, a bit of a blue skies attitude.
It's just the glass is half full, it's not empty. So how do I fill it more rather
than, oh my God, it's gonna drain out. So part of it is attitude that, again, I
was lucky that it was instilled in me by my parents that,
you know, my father's attitude was if you can't do something, it simply means you're
not trying hard enough. And he was a Russian immigrant and that got ingrained in
me. Yeah, there's no such thing as can't if you can't do it, you're not working
hard enough. So It was somehow in my system, I had no master plan.
I didn't think I was ever gonna do or get to what I've done and gotten to ever.
It just sort of kind of with time happened because I knew I never wanted to be
dependent on anybody else or anybody else's money. I wanted freedom and I knew I
could do something. I wasn't sure what it would be, but like my father said, I
just had to try. - Yeah. - And that's how I basically lived my whole life. - Yeah,
I think often, for a lot of us, I've told this story many times, my master plan
was to go to medical school. And when that got thwarted in my, late into my junior
year at UCLA, I was like, oh, shit, what am I gonna do now? And everybody in my
family is lawyers. So I was like, oh, I'll go to law school, you know, safe face
and that's how my mother expected of me to go to law school. No one expected me
to go to medical school or law school. It was just my own ego and sense of right
and wrong. And I've got to be a professional and I've got to do this. And I
really fell into television very much by accident and then kept thinking it was a
temporary stop. How did you fall into it? I don't know this piece of you. Tell me
this. I literally answered an ad at the UCLA job board in the days where there
were three by five index cards on a bulletin board with a pushpin. And there was
one card that said secretary to a producer and nothing else on a phone number.
And I went to work for that producer who was a kind of classic Hollywood feature
producer a true I hate to say it a true asshole and I lasted six weeks because he
didn't like where I put his tea on the coffee table like in yeah he was that guy
and I thought to myself oh my god like I was on my way to medical school and I'm
getting like barked at by a guy because he's unlike where I put the tea on his
coffee table in a meeting and I thought well that's the end of my That's the end
of my career because, you know, you'll never eat lunch in this town again kind of
thing. And my brother was a young, very young entertainment attorney at the time and
was just starting to, you know, put together a roster of clients and he had these
brand new very, very, very, very young clients. I mean, I think they were a
boyfriend and girlfriend at the time. And they were writers and they had just signed
this deal at New World television. And he's like, come to lunch with me, and I'll
introduce you because they need a secretary. And I was like, okay, so we went to
Nate Nows and Beverly Hills and over a corned beef sandwich boyfriend of the writing
team says to me, can you type? And I was like, yes, I can. And he's like,
great, you're hired. And I was like, okay, that worked. They went on to create a
year later, "The Wonder Years," which was a, I don't need to tell you,
a monster hit out of the gate, Emmy Awards and covers of magazines and,
you know, just a real trailblazer because it was really one of the few single
camera comedies on the air at the time. And they left the show and I went to work
for the studio for six months. And then I overheard or I heard a call, I was
rolling calls with my boss at the time and I heard there was an opening for an
executive at ABC and current and I called a friend and I said do you know anybody
there? And he's like yeah, my brother works there and I went and interviewed with
Ted Harvard and I got the job. I Did not even put Ted and you together.
I knew about ABC, but I didn't realize it was Ted Yeah, he He hired me after
yelling at me for wasting his time in the interview because it was a director level
position And I thought it was a manager level position. It was my miscommunication
with the person I was overhearing the phone call with and he's like you're not
qualified And then he quizzed me on every ABC show and I had an answer for every
single question. He goes, okay You're hired and that's how I became an executive and
I ended up covering the wonder years So I'm literally picking up no joke, the dog
poop of the executive producers who created it who are not much older than I was
to then being the executive in charge for the network of the show. And if I
remember correctly, we plucked you from ABC with Tony in hand,
with Monk in hand. Correct. Yes and no. Yes and no. There was a second round, And
I don't want this to be too much about me, but I left ABC, went to two studios,
went back to ABC. And then at the end of that tour of duty, I left.
Monk had been in development and was put in cast contingent turnaround for what was
going to be the second time. I took my copy of the script with me just because I
thought it was interesting and I knew it would end up in cast contingency hell for
another, I knew that they would never cast it at ABC. And then Steven Chow, when
we went to work for USA, he said, "What do you like?" I handed him the script and
he said, "Oh, we've got to get this." So we bought it, Tony was not attached. And
then there was another actor who was attached and then we hired and then we decided
not to. And then Tony came in later and that's how Monk came to be. But it was
all circuitous and weird and like, why did I take that one copy of that one
script. That was the only thing I took with me out of my office. I don't know.
It's like this. And it's serendipity, but it was also some kind of gut intuition
that you've always had at. You knew something, you felt something, and it happened.
But I think to your point, and again, in the book, which I want to get back to,
is like, you have to sort of trust your gut, but then you also just have to keep
standing. You just have to keep fighting for belief in yourself,
belief in your job, belief in your opportunities. And my favorite quote from the
book is, "When you challenge the cliche, there's nowhere to go but up." And then
you say, "Success has multiple directions." Well, you know what it is. We've been
brought up on a vocabulary of up. It's success ladder.
It raises, it's promotions, it's upward mobility.
Everything that has been in our culture speaks to the only way to go is up.
But it's limiting because at the end of the ladder is a ceiling and it's an
artificial stop. And the way I've always looked at my career and life in a lot of
ways is more like a spider web. It's more of an intricate weaving up,
down, back, forth, sideways that gives you so much more breath,
so many more places to go and grow. And when you think of our world right now,
you know, and we've been through it many times, our company has been sold. We've
had new management, we have new culture, things have been merged, things have become
obsolete. And when you think about AI now coming into our world,
how many jobs are gonna vanish? And if that is your only skill set, 'cause all
you've done is grown in one direction and got promotion after promotion in one tiny
little area, you may not be able to go anywhere because you have no experience in
anything else. When you create a web, when you kind of zigzag and go diagonally,
you have breadth of experience. You have your fingers and toes in so many different
places, like you're more nimble. And I'm a huge believer in that kind of zigzagging.
Sometimes it's even taking a step backward that enables you to take two giant steps
forward in a year or two after that. - Absolutely. And as somebody who studied
photography whose original intention I assume was to be a professional photographer,
right? That's, yeah. I imagine you see the world very differently because you see
detail and you're notorious. I mean, your reputation precedes you. you have such a
great sense of style and taste and attention to detail. And I do believe it's what
was so fundamental in the success of launching all the brands and rebranding that
you did of USA, sci -fi, Bravo, et cetera, was you see the detail and you also see
the big picture. Details, to me, were really important. And I think part of that
was thanks to photography, but with thanks to my first challenging mentor, who was
my professor at BU in photojournalism, who literally,
if you came in with a shot that he didn't think was really thought out that he
just thought you had a lazy weekend, didn't do your assignment, he would kick you
out of class. He taught you how to see, he wouldn't let you edit a shot, And
these were in the days of dark rooms and chemicals. And so we would spend hours in
the photo lab. And you had to hand in your negative with every photo you handed in
so he could make sure that you saw the photograph. You didn't edit it in the dark
room. When you think about all of us now, we take our shots with our iPhones and
we have all of these filters and we can blow it up, change the color, we can do
anything, we weren't allowed to do that. First of all, we couldn't in the dark
room, but we weren't allowed to do that. So we were taught, and it was a great
class, how to see. And I think that ability to see a story in a frame has helped
me my entire career to be able to tell a story,
obviously in a bigger, larger, wider format, but also notice the tiniest things that
can throw things off that detract from the story or the photograph of the image. So
it's been wonderfully helpful, and I do believe in that in so many areas.
One is, yes, telling a story, seeing a picture, being able to make sure it all
fits and having an attention to detail. But it's also when people just focus on the
big picture and not the details, they lose so much in life,
but also in connection. The details of somebody's life who's a friend,
it just, you know, it alienates as opposed to how special it is when somebody
remembers the tiny little detail about you that all of a sudden makes that
connection deeper, more real, and kind of lifelong. I'm a big believer in all kinds
of details and it's not the big picture that creates anything. It's the tiny things
that add up that really create connection bonding or the story. - Yeah,
well, you and I share that. And I think that that's very much how I approached
television, which is, yes, we were telling a big story ultimately, but it was the
little details that made me fall in love with a script or advocate for a show to
be picked up. - Or the talent you chose to, you know, basically put in for the
character, yeah. - Yeah, and I like that part of it. You know, it's what I like
about life. I'm much more interested in the details of someone's life than I am
sort of the big broad strokes. It's why I chose this as a second career because I
like listening for the details and the clues in people's lives to help find what
the limiting beliefs are or what's holding them back from achieving their dreams. So
it's assessment. It helps in assessment, which I think is amazing. Yeah,
so I love that. The other section, I mean, there's so many in this book because
it's just one golden nugget after another. But on page 58, you do a list,
which is so powerful about toxic traits versus tough love with mentors or losses.
And it's just so spot on. And I don't know why it resonated with me so profoundly,
except that I wish I had that list early in my career. I wish I could have seen
the difference between those two things. Well, it's hard to see it. So much goes
back to what you said in the beginning. It's the uncommon sense that we just don't
always think about. And when it comes to challenging mentors versus toxic humans,
there are some very specific things that make the difference. Somebody's saying
something to you 'cause they wanna grow you or help you or are they trying to put
you down? And I think it's very, very, very hard to differentiate between the two
and unfortunately corporations, society, the overly wokeness of what's going on in our
world today makes it too easy for the young women growing up right now to hear
something that someone is saying to them that might feel negative rather than
pausing, taking a moment and saying, "Are they trying to help me or are they being
an And more times than not, they'll just run to HR and just say,
"Oh, this person just said this horrible thing to me. They're just abusive and
nasty." I think we're hurting some of the younger people growing up, too,
rather than thickening their skin and really assessing. If someone's saying something
to me, I just don't want to hear that I should hear as opposed to somebody's just
a nasty jerk and there is a difference and I kind of want women in particular to
realize that great mentors, truth tellers, sparring partners,
foils in our life are going to help us and get us the furthest and there is a
way to tell the difference between someone genuinely being tough on you to grow you
as opposed to it's just an a -hole. Yeah, but you tapped into something that I
would love to just talk about and it's such a big topic that we could spend hours
on it and I won't do that but I'd love to just hit on a little bit. You talked
about the maybe over you didn't use these words but over course correction of
wokeness and the oversensitivity of people running to HR like they hurt my feelings
and like missing the mentorship and really good sage advice but a lot of other
things have happened in the last I left the television business in 2018 so it's six
years for me but obviously I'm in it every day because I coach so many people in
the television business so every day I get people from NBC, ABC, CBS, all the
things, all the studios in my ear saying, "And this happened, and this happened, and
this happened." So I feel like I'm in it without being in it. But a lot occurred
in the last four years. And it started with obviously the disruption of the
streamers, which was just a disruptor. And then the pandemic, which obviously affected
the entire planet. And then very specifically, the WGA and sag strike,
which we really haven't completely recovered from. And now we're looking at downsizing
and layoffs. And again, wokeness and, you know, comedy has taken a big hit because
you have to be super careful about what you say. What's your feeling about what
will happen from this massive shrinkage of the last five years? There are two pieces
of it that I always tend to look at. I am hoping that we have overcorrected in
the work world. And my hope and assumption is it will come back into a form of
reality, into what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong,
what's, you know, too much adversity just for diversity just for diversity's sake
versus what is the appropriate healthy mix of everything.
I'm a believer that we overcorrected for some really important reasons,
but we'll come back to something that is healthier all around. The other side of it
is everybody is looking at the world right now, the media world right now is,
oh my goodness, between all of the strikes and companies merging and venture
capitalists basically taking over creative companies where before they were owned by
passionate creators that this is the worst change ever. When I look back on my
career where years ago, a massive change happened in a decade.
It's now happening in sometimes months, sometimes a year or a couple of years where
we experienced massive change. But change is a constant. And every time I've gone
through changes where everybody said, "Cable is a joke.
Nothing's going to ever happen with cable. It is such a stepchild of broadcast. It's
for people who can't catch ups and then excuse me, a decade later, it was,
you know, the networks who are making a quarter of the money that the cablers were.
The cable companies, whether it be Prime, like HBO content, as well as the USA's,
which you've created the amazing content for, all of a sudden, we were beating out
broadcast. And everybody said, oh, cable was going to last forever. Nothing was going
to challenge that. Now what's happening? Streamers have come along, and cable is
disappearing broadcast, because the news and sports will still exist. But now
streaming is taking over for cable. But now what they're trying to do is figure out
an equation to bundle streamers. Like they bundled the cable Yeah.
So change is a constant. And every time it happens, everybody thinks it's the end
of the world. Yes. This is not going to be the end of the world. The world needs
content. It's never going to go away. It's just how we access it, how many entities
are producing it, where and how, and who can compete with Netflix and Amazon. Yes.
Yes. So it changes, that was going to happen and whoever this will be in hindsight
small potatoes compared to what is the next massive change. I think that's incredibly
astute and an amazing summation of a very very complicated problem on a multi
-billion dollar level. What advice would you give to somebody today either starting in
the business or, and you can take this either way, or somebody who has suffered
from one of these massive downsizing and are kind of at middle age, not quite at
the end of their career, but I see a lot of them. So 45 to 60 people losing
their jobs and not ready to retire either don't have the financial means or just
creatively aren't ready to retire. What would your advice be? Well, the first thing
is get out of thinking that there's only one path,
one route, one way to go. And also not to define themselves whether they have to
take a step backwards to go eventually go forward. It's just basically look for
opportunities wherever they are. They may and perfect. They may seem like a giant
step backwards, but it's getting the experience, getting into a space,
a place where you're back in motion, you're listening, you're learning,
and you're being exposed to newer different people. And that to me is a secret of
being able to bob and weave back to a place where you can then kind of recraft
where you want to go, what you want to do. But I think too many of us get stuck
and, you know, I'm an executive, I need to remain an executive in original
programming. Why would I ever go into development or why would I ever go into
marketing?
The question should be, why not? What can I learn there? Who will I meet? Will I
find a whole slew of new people who can help me navigate my next chapter?
And people should look at it as a journey that takes them into different chapters
rather than a linear story. I think again, we look at that linear,
whether it's a ladder or a straight path that limits our growth and limits our
possibilities. If we could just take a look to the right and the left and just
say, okay, even if it's imperfect, I'm gonna learn something. - I think your metaphor
was so perfect, which was of the spider web instead of the ladder.
I think that's just such a smart visual to grab on to because,
again, the industries are changing, everything changes, and we have new hurdles for
people in all kinds of ways, financial hurdles and all, woke hurdles and all these
other things, ageism and sexism and what have you. When I think about the two
things that I needed the most that I did. And partly because there were no other
opportunities at the time, it was the only thing available to me. I did not wanna
do them, but it was at a time, years ago in public broadcasting, once you finished
a show, you had to wait for a pickup and they would not employ you in between
'cause they didn't have the money in public broadcasting. So the first thing I took
was overseeing new technology as a director of new technology for WGBH,
and we're talking about CDs and DVDs and three quarter inch cassettes.
I know nobody probably understands those terms anymore, but it gave me a language
about technology and new ways of distributing content,
et cetera, that the only reason I thought Steve Burke was even willing to give me
a streamer 30 years later was I had experienced something in technology in my past
beyond just content that I understood and was willing to deal with new technology.
Similarly, I think the only reason I became a solid executive was also during my
GBH years was I became a unit manager for a documentary series,
which meant I was responsible for their budget. Was that this old house?
This old house I was actually an associate producer for, but this was a world. It
was a documentary series on PBS that was produced at WGBH.
And all I did was handle the budget. I hated numbers. I was never great at math,
but I basically had to keep everybody on budget and figure it all out. And I
learned accounting on the job 'cause I had to. But in reality,
years later, when people would come to me and say, "We have the show. We can do
it for this budget." I would literally be able to look at the budget and say, "No
fucking way you can do that for that budget. I'm sorry. You don't know what you're
talking about." And nine out of 10 times, I was right. But because I spent a year
and a half to two years dealing with finance, that it was kind of the secret sauce
to making me a solid in the no executive rather than only letting my CFO do that,
that I understood what it was to manage the finances of a small team and then a
big team. So people shouldn't be afraid of those weird left and right turns,
even if it's kind of against your grain. Ultimately, you will look back,
and you will see how they helped you achieve what you then achieve a decade later.
Yeah, such good advice, such good advice. So as I mentioned, you have always had
impeccable taste both personally and professionally and you've also been somebody who
really takes very good care of your health and has always looked amazing.
So very sweet. Very true. But given the fact that you've spent almost five decades
in an incredibly high profile, extremely demanding career, while being married,
while raising a family, while maintaining close friends and colleagues, and since this
is so fundamental to the work I do as a coach, I have to ask you about the
component of self -care. And I don't mean beautification, I mean truly self -care. How
did you do it all while working, commuting, raising a family, traveling for business,
and constantly needing to manage up, down, and sideways? What were your tricks for
maintaining health? And when I say health, I'm talking about mentally, physically, and
emotionally. To me, my mind clarity comes when I take a little bit of time and do
something for myself. Years ago, it was running. So I didn't need anywhere other
than to get up earlier than I wanted to get up because everybody was still asleep
and go out for 45 minutes, half hour, never quite got an hour,
but I would run. And I didn't run with headsets on. I don't even know when I
started running. If you ran, you didn't have the opportunity. I don't even think the
iPod existed then. existed then. So you would kind of, it would be a zone where
you almost could meditate while you got physical exercise because you weren't
listening to music, you would just go on. So my physical being has always been a
part of my mental being. They're connected and when one is out of sync, so is the
other. So it's always been really important for me to take some time,
you know, a couple of days a week, where I would run or do something.
Later on, I remember at lunch, actually an affinity factory in my 20s,
the first job or a second care of the dog, literally right next door to the studio
was an old -fashioned, like whatever preceded whenever preceded Gold's Gym,
because he'd dive, it was a hole. But I remember going there with the guys at the
production company and using the gym. Now, back then,
using the gym were like stretches, you know, it was like the weirdest thing in the
world. I didn't know what I was doing, but again, it was taking time rather than
eating lunch. that's what I would do. I am a big believer that taking care of
yourself physically kind of contributes to taking care of yourself mentally and also
how you create your presence, how you come across other people.
It becomes a quiet strength. I can't lie and say that as I got older,
vanity wasn't a part of it. - Sure. - Truth is vanity was a part of it. I knew my
thing wasn't going to be facelifts and fillers and stuff like that.
It just, I'm a control freak and I am completely convinced, just like as a Jewish
woman, I never had my nose done because I was so afraid I would hate what they
did and couldn't replace it, I might as well leave it and figure out how to live
with it. That's kind of been my philosophy too about I don't want somebody to do
something to me that I can't undo. So I have control freak, which I am.
So the only way again to try to fight back was to take care of myself,
which is take care of my skin, meaning it's not that I don't sit in the sun but
I use moisturize. I have a routine that's built into my life to help do whatever I
can to keep the longevity of my body so that I don't look back and say,
"Coulda shoulda woulda." So this day, I either try to walk with girlfriends and have
good conversations. I can't qualify it as running anymore. I will jog or walk fast.
Luckily at this stage in my life, I do have a Peloton in the house 'cause I can
afford that. So I'm on a spinning bike in between things. And I try to stay
active. Yeah, it's it. And then that feeds into image -wise,
I do believe that you have to somehow have the inside and the outside.
The outside speaks for the inside and the inside speaks for the outside and they
have to be aligned. So being that I have attention to detail in my brain cells,
how I look, how I put myself together is second nature at this point and there's
attention to detail. I'm a monochromatic person. So I dress in a monochromatic way,
basically. I don't like to scream. I don't want to necessarily stand out,
but I also don't want to fade away. So there are just pieces of me where I think
if when people get to know me inside, they also understand that my outside reflects
the inside. - Yeah, 100%. And I share many of those values And they're very much in
concert with what I coach on. You asked me before we started recording this, why do
I not consider myself an executive coach if I coach executives? You kind of answered
it, because in traditional executive coaching where somebody is hired by the
corporation, they're there to make sure that you're leading the team to the best of
its profitability and that the team likes you and that you're a good person. But
they're not talking about wellness. They're not talking about self -care. They're not
talking about what you do in the off hours. And I do. That's how I start, which
is like, how are you taking care of yourself before you show up in your workplace?
'Cause that's what you can control. - That's more important, Jackie. That's so
important. And I'm so glad you're doing that because so few people really do it.
- And it's a lesson I learned very late in life when my body started burning out
from the stress of my job, because I thought, just work harder, work harder, work
harder, work harder, and eventually your body will start to break down from the
stress if you don't take care of it. It's your body, it's your mind, it's how you
treat other people and your family at that point when you have no room or time for
them anymore. It is such a domino effect when you stop taking care of yourself,
You can't take care of anybody else. - Right. - Everything starts kind of falling
apart. So I'm so thrilled that you look at coaching that way as holistic as opposed
to just seeing the little problem and fixing the supposed problem. - Yeah, exactly.
And look, you had a natural divining rod that guided you to that without having a
coach. I mean, you just knew that that was important from the time you were taking
your lunch hour and going to the gym with the guys, whether you were stretching or
lifting weights, you're like, I need to do this. This feels good and it feels good
on my body. And then it pays dividends to my brain. And I think that was very
intelligent. I don't know if it was intelligence or it was ingrained in me by my
dad. I just think I absorbed a lot of stuff that I don't even realized that I
have to give my parents and my father in particular credit for and that's probably
one of them is just the only way you can take care of other people's take care of
yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been so much fun for me.
I mean, not only just to see you, which I always love, but to celebrate your book
launch and to reconnect. And I just want to wish you you'd success with the book.
And I just want to remind my listeners, again, what it's called, it's 15 Lies Women
Are Told At Work. And you can buy it wherever you get your books. It is a must
read for women in the workplace. Jack, I adore talking to you. And I miss you so
much in my life on a regular basis. Hawaii is just too far away from the East
Coast. It is too far, but we'll meet in the middle and then we'll meet next time
you're here. I'll fly over to the other island to see you. And we will be back,
so we'll definitely plan that. Thank you.