Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Jessica Berman: A New Playbook for Women in Sports | E99

Transcript

Jessica Berman: A New Playbook for Women in Sports | E99 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Jessica Berman: You can relentlessly pursue the thing that you think you want to do.
• 0:02
  Jessica Berman: And continuously ask yourself what that opportunity is offering to you and be open to the things that you get to learn along the way. Because something may take you on a different path. And maybe that's the right path. Also, I had to really confront some of the sort of darkest pieces of what drives us, which is really ego what mattered most to me. When I made that choice is becoming the best business person I could be. And I wanted to learn areas that I would not have the opportunity to learn if I had stayed at the NHL. And I had to understand that that came with some sacrifices, and I was okay with that.
• 0:49
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to In Search of Excellence where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our life. My guest today is Jessica Berman. Jessica is one of the most influential executives and professional sports. She's the commissioner of the National Women's Soccer League, where she completely reformed the leadership of women's soccer, and has presided over its explosive growth in the last 18 months. Prior to this role, she served as the Deputy Commissioner, Executive Vice President of Business Affairs for the National Lacrosse League. When she took that job, she was the highest ranking woman in a man's professional sports league. And prior to that she spent 13 years with the NHL, ultimately serving as its vice president and Deputy General Counsel. Jessica, it's a true pleasure to have you on my show.
• 1:49
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to In Search of Excellence.
• 1:52
  Jessica Berman: Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.
• 1:54
  Randall Kaplan: I always start with our family, you grew up in a racially diverse part of Brooklyn to an Orthodox Jewish family. Your mom, Phyllis went back to school after taking care of you when you're younger, I got her PhD. She was and remains a psychologist, your dad, Ted, who passed away a few years ago was an entrepreneur who owned a bunch of golf gas stations in New York. Can you tell us about the influence your parents had on you, and your future? And what it was like coming from a Jewish background where you were the minority?
• 2:25
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, well, my parents really stood for and embodied all the values that are focused on work ethic, and really focused on people, all of their work centered around building relationships and connectivity in their different spheres of influence. So my dad actually grew up in a family that was an immigrant family.
• 2:51
  Jessica Berman: And he got his first job working for his dad in his dad's gas station pumping gas. And he did that really more out of necessity than because he was looking to make money. Like, you know, my children want to get a job because they want to have financial independence, he was really forced to work because their family was very poor. And they needed money to actually buy food. And that really is what stuck with him his whole life. And he constantly reminded that of was a reminder of that to our family always, which is that your hard work is ultimately the thing that you have control over. And that it is the thing that people remember most about you and really leaves people with the impression that you deserve to have what you have. And so that's really what what stuck with me and my my dad ran a very sophisticated business, but in a not very sophisticated way. He really always kept it to the basics with a Mead composition notebook and a pencil and a ruler. And he did all of his inventory phone calls to his gas station to determine how much gas they had and really put all of his feelers out into his network. And it was a very sort of like, grassroots operation.
• 4:25
  Jessica Berman: And I always appreciated that about him. Even though we all tried to introduce technology to help make his business more effective and efficient. He genuinely believed that he didn't need that in order to run his business in a sophisticated way. And he actually was able to prove that he was able to do it, at least for his lifetime. I don't think it would have passed the test of intergenerational support and being able to have his children or my children be able to work in the business and the way that he ran it, but it kept him very fulfilled throughout his life and And he ultimately became a provider for our entire both immediate and extended family. And my mom, you know, she, she actually was a teacher before I was born. And that really drives her actually even still. But she decided when she got married to my dad, which was later in life, it was the second marriage that she wanted to become a psychologist. And she approached my dad and said, I could either become a psychologist and get my PhD, or we could have a child and my dad said, I don't want you to have to choose, you can do both. And she was 30 years old at the time, restarting her career in 1977. At a time when certainly the gender equity movement was was far from cool or accepted.
• 5:50
  Jessica Berman: And my dad who was very old school and traditional, didn't think twice about saying, well, I'll just lean in at home so that you can live your dreams.
• 6:03
  Jessica Berman: And they really embodied a wonderful relationship where they shared responsibilities in our home, and allowed my mom to go back to school and ultimately have the career that she wanted to have becoming a psychologist.
• 6:15
  Jessica Berman: Because
• 6:18
  Randall Kaplan: you came from a mixed family, right? Your dad had kids from previous marriage and your mom.
• 6:24
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, we were the Brady Bunch, except that my my parents ended up having me they called me the love child.
• 6:31
  Jessica Berman: For better or worse. It has its it has its pros, it has its cons to be the love child and in a mixed family like that. But yeah, we all grew up in the same home actually, the five kids.
• 6:44
  Randall Kaplan: I grew up my mom's was married a few times, three times. And I had three stepbrothers at one point. So I grew up for 10 years with a family of five and I now actually have five kids three from a previous marriage.
• 6:57
  Randall Kaplan: They're all in college right now. And then I have a seven year old and a three year old.
• 6:59
  Randall Kaplan: And it is a little bit of a balancing act, right? How, how you fit in with a bunch of other people. So I've lived in and now my kids are living up to it can be very challenging at times.
• 7:13
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, yes. Yeah.
• 7:13
  Jessica Berman: When
• 7:16
  Randall Kaplan: you were younger, you were focused on dance, you took dance lessons from age six through college, we're going to talk about the hockey experience when you're 16, a couple of minutes. But before we do we have tell us about Title Nine, cheerleading and your high school baseball team and In Search of Excellence. What's your advice to those of us on how to deal with our own frustration, at least temporarily, to do something that we're passionate about?
• 7:42
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, I mean, I never really saw an opportunity for, for playing sports to be a participant on the field in any way or on the court or on the ice, it just wasn't really presented as an option to me, and I didn't really see any girls in Brooklyn, playing sports, I also think it wasn't really culturally relevant in in my communities. And so the girls that I knew who were interested in being sporty or athletic, they took dance lessons. And that's really what I what I the the path I took. And it allowed me to be around sports because of cheerleading, and allowed me to feel the energy around team sports in particular, which I loved. And I also through that got to know a lot of the coaches and the administrators around athletics. And once I started to sort of unlock my interest in working in sports. In the management or administrative side, I volunteered my time to work as a manager as a student manager for the teams, which of course now is like a path that exists as a formal internship.
• 8:57
  Jessica Berman: But when I propose that to the various coaches, and in particular, the high school baseball team, he was like, Sure, you can sit on the bench and keep stats instead of my assistant coach, why not. And so I just tried to find odds and ends jobs to make the coaches lives easier so that they would invite me to hang around and learn more about the business of what it meant to play sports in high school. And it gave me a great learning experience. So I just I just found ways to make make myself useful and offer a value proposition when I knew time was limited for these coaches, and they were all teachers and needed an extra set of hands.
• 9:41
  Randall Kaplan: So you wanted to play sports and there were no school basketball team growing up. I know you went to a Jewish Day School and then I think in high school, you went to public school, but the public school didn't have a girls basketball team or anywhere.
• 9:54
  Jessica Berman: They you know, they did I just I didn't really see myself there. If I had no idea what it what it would possibly what would be the path to me being on a team, it was never, it was never something that seemed natural to me or accessible to me. That could be the, you know, Billie Jean King seems to want to be it that could be that my parents never really knew about having me play and like a little league or anything like that. It just wasn't really available to me.
• 11:27
  Randall Kaplan: So let's talk about you're 16 years old, you're at a hockey game. You had a boyfriend, tell us about what he told you what your goal was why you knew it was your goal, professional goal at that point in time. And tell us about the Nelson Mandela quote that you're so fond
• 11:42
  Jessica Berman: of? Yeah, well, so I was at an island or game when I was 16. And I guess some of the backdrop is that I did attend Jewish Day School until I was in eighth grade. And then actually went to my parents and said that I had observed that I was enmeshed in this very diverse community around me. But I felt like I was sort of in a bubble and shielded from all the people from different backgrounds that were around me in Brooklyn. And so I created an opportunity for myself to go to public school, which my parents were confused about why I would want to leave private school, I my stated goal was really to understand the community where I came from. And I just wanted to be around what I described as like different people, real people, people who came from different backgrounds. I didn't want to just drive past them in my car as we went to. And from school, I wanted to actually meet people who, who had different life experiences. And so I went to James Madison High School, in 1991, as a freshman, and it was my junior year. So this was after really two years of me, having had the history before high school of wanting to learn being very interested in people who are different from me, but not feeling like they were accessible. And then being in a school where I was very much the minority, it was the opposite of being in private school. And I was always interested in understanding ways to combat social challenges and racism in particular. I was always very interested in trying to understand the experience of the black community. My neighborhood was very much that embedded within the black community. And a lot of my friends in high school were part of the black community. And I spent a lot of time in their homes and trying to understand what their life experience was like, and really trying to understand, although I don't know that anybody called it then privilege but really trying to understand what privilege meant.
• 14:09
  Jessica Berman: And as a result when I was at this Islander game when I was 16, and I was just happened to be sitting next to these two people, and was just engrossed with this vision of the way that sport had the power to unite everybody in this arena. 20,000 people were cheering and screaming for the same thing, everyone wearing their blue and orange jerseys, but also coming from very different backgrounds.
• 14:33
  Jessica Berman: But in that moment, when the islanders scored and I saw these two people embrace I had an epiphany moment that really changed the course of my life and decided that I wanted to work in this industry that I felt really truly had the power to change the world. And my my accuracy check my fact check is that yeah, I did have a have a boyfriend in high school and he has since validated that my memory serves me right that I told him when I was in high school that I wanted to one day have I had the aspiration of being a commissioner professional sports league, which of course seems like a crazy goal and fortunate that made a lot of the right choices but also got very lucky along the way to end up in, in the situation that actually manifested my my life dream
• 15:28
  Randall Kaplan: of Kishore can you share with us that Nelson Mandela quote,
• 15:33
  Jessica Berman: sport has the power to change the world. It actually goes on to say it has the power to unite communities.
• 15:40
  Jessica Berman: i There's a whole a whole series, a whole sort of phrase, phrase and mantra that follows that really speaks to this idea that in particular for children.
• 15:49
  Jessica Berman: that sport is the ultimate equalizer and meritocracy. And when they have the opportunity to either experience it or observe it, they can change their hopes and dreams in ways that few other things in our social fabric can Are
• 16:05
  Randall Kaplan: you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend colleague or loved one plus speeches makes the perfect gift is best selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by Randall Kaplan features stunning drone photography from exotic beach locations around the world. It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office.
• 16:22
  Randall Kaplan: And a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner bliss speeches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five star rating get your next amazing gift and order a copy of bliss beaches by clicking the link in our show notes. I think it's amazing that you were born it sounds like with the desire to participate in a diverse community and you were interested in social change in high school, I don't know many people who are I went to private school, and it was very racially and religiously diverse. My younger kids go to public school, my kids in college went to private school, I can tell you the demographic makeup is completely different.
• 17:00
  Randall Kaplan: And I love the fact they go to public school. But what's your advice to people? Who are parents listening? Because there are a lot of 16 year olds listening my podcast to get their kids more aware and more involved with this social change? Because I think right now we're seeing an all time divergence or a hardening of social views and canceling culture. And I don't think it's good for anybody.
• 17:30
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, you know, I've thought a lot about it, and actually recently have have thought a lot about it. I think a lot of what opened my eyes to this, yes, it was definitely that I grew up embedded within this very diverse community. But it was also my Jewish education, which might seem counterintuitive because it was a private school. But in my, in my Jewish Day School, we were taught that every human has basic human rights and deserves an opportunity to be successful in life should be treated with respect and dignity, that no matter the person's background, no matter the color of their skin, no matter their socioeconomic status, no matter their religion, no matter their sexual orientation, no matter their gender, that it's our responsibility. And this was actually this was taught to me as, as someone who as part of our Jewish identity, that it was my responsibility to look out for other marginalized communities. This is part of what is embedded within our traditions and culture. And as a result, yeah, I've been I've just been on this life pursuit.
• 18:46
  Jessica Berman: And it was reinforced in my home with with my parents, where we, it's part of our culture to retell stories of the past and understand historical oppression. And recognize that history repeats itself, and that it's our responsibility to change the future if we don't like the result, and to make sure people understand what has happened in the past and why so that we don't make the same mistakes again, one of
• 19:15
  Randall Kaplan: the main goals of my cup when a man goes on my podcast is to inspire motivated people to achieve their dreams, no matter how small the odds of success are, you're 16 years old, you want to be a commissioner for sports league.
• 19:29
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, it's hard to make a professional sports team. But I don't know how many commissioners there are. But if I do the math in my head, I think is less than 10. So what's your advice to everybody out there? I know so many people want to be a head coach of a professional football team, soccer team hockey team. They're dying to get a job and internship at these professional teams. What's your advice to all the people out there who say, gosh, am I ever going to be able to get one of 10 jobs or even 100 jobs or a job at Goldman Sachs or Citadel, for example, where they had the you can get this 29,000 applications for summer internships?
• 20:08
  Jessica Berman: Wow. Yeah, I think it's twofold. I think it's to be focused on the things that you really care about and want to do, and be unrelenting in your pursuit of those things.
• 20:21
  Jessica Berman: But also be open along the way to other things that might interest you and recognize that there's probably a lot of ways to quench your thirst for whatever you thought you would achieve. And yeah, like this was like, square peg square hole. I identified this as my goal and I achieved this goal. But I think I could also say with certainty that If I would have been happy in my life and felt fulfilled, with the variety of other things that I've accomplished and experienced, and would have experienced to have this opportunity not happened. So I think both can be true. You can relentlessly pursue the thing that you think you want to do.
• 21:09
  Jessica Berman: And continuously ask yourself what that opportunity is offering to you and be open to the things that you get to learn along the way and the people you meet, because something may take you on a different path. And maybe that's the right path.
• 21:26
  Jessica Berman: Also,
• 21:28
  Randall Kaplan: let's talk about college. We'll switch gears.
• 21:31
  Randall Kaplan: After high school. You went to Brandeis for a year then you transferred to the greatest school on Earth, University of Michigan, were you majoring?
• 21:36
  Randall Kaplan: Pardon me? Go Blue. National Champions this year greatest. So great. I was on campus 1997. won won the national championship that year. But this is just an amazing, amazing year. Sorry, we lost the coach. But we'll go out on a high note this is going to live for for quite a long time.
• 21:56
  Randall Kaplan: So go blue. Yeah. So you transfer to Michigan, majored in sports management? I believe most of the reason was because your cousin Eve Roski was there and shout out to Eve for introducing us and making this happen. So I appreciate you so much. You tell us what you do with our hockey, football and baseball teams? And what's your advice to us where there isn't a clear path to get the kind of experiences we want, and need to pursue that we're passionate about in our future?
• 22:24
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, so with each of those teams, it was not all that different from what I did when I was in high school, in that I found a way to make myself useful to the sports department and the and the coaches and the administrative staff knowing that they had lots of responsibilities. And in particular, at Michigan, I was actually there in the late 90s, as well. And it was really on the precipice of becoming a real business. And they actually didn't have formal internships, there was no stated path to go and be the manager of the Michigan hockey team or the manager of the baseball team or the football team. And I found jobs to do that would help the coach and the administrative staff. So I wrote press releases, and I prepared athletes for interviews. And I kept stats during the game and prepared the media notes that would be distributed after the game so that the press would write articles about the players I worked in. It was a form of PR for the for the teams and used it as a way to really learn more about the business and to get work experience in the industry.
• 23:47
  Jessica Berman: So
• 23:48
  Randall Kaplan: you walked into the athletic department office, which today there's a statute of the Beauchesne, like right outside, you just walk in and you say, Hey, I'm Jessica, I want to intern for one of the teams I think today that probably laugh at you. And it sort of doesn't work that way.
• 24:03
  Randall Kaplan: So how important is it to basically be able to cold call walk into a could be major university sports team and just say, Hey, can I have a job and just showing up at someone's door? And then how do you add value once you do that right out of the gate to get that opportunity when there's 500 or 10,000 people who want that job?
• 24:29
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, well, I often think about whether my life would be different if I was growing up in today's environment, because part of how I distinguished myself is actually by showing up and by making my interest be known and going the extra mile in terms of my work ethic, so that people wanted to have me around. I worry actually in today's world about the screening mechanism that wouldn't let someone like me probably even get through initial screening. I did well enough in school, but I certainly wasn't a plus student and the person who would stand out on paper necessarily, I was the person who was always willing to outwork everyone. And I was super diligent and left my colleagues knowing that they could count on me to get the job done, which is hard to communicate on paper. So I I've actually said to, for example, my former law firm when I've screened candidates who are all from Harvard Law School, or Yale Law School, or Penn, which are great schools, and I'm sure very deserving, but like I've actually said to them, like where is the me this is the person who went To like a really good school, but not the best best school, and did well enough in school, but maybe wasn't a straight A plus student because I don't know that whether those people are able to break through today, it's so much more competitive, and everything is so much more formalized. I think it's really hard to be a teenager or in your 20s These days, I'm I am lucky that I grew up in a time where the things that I'm good at allowed me to stand out. And I often wonder if life would be different if I were growing up today. But that's, that's sort of a side note more of a just referendum on the state of the world being so, so difficult and so challenging for kids, the pressure is just so high.
• 26:43
  Randall Kaplan: I think that's a great place. And I want to ask a couple of other questions about that. It is definitely a different time when you and I grew up, there was no Google no email, you couldn't just jot off a note to someone, you could mail it or like you did, you could walk in and you could drop it off, but it is different. So what's your advice to people today? How to break through? And how would someone go about working with you as an intern?
• 27:07
  Randall Kaplan: Are they just going to show up in your lobby, and I hate to use that word, because it's stalking, but I've had people just show up at my door, we get a lot of emails, I probably get 50 on LinkedIn every week, which is, Hey, Randy, I'd love to meet with you, I'd love to have a cup of coffee with you. I do give meetings to people who are in the meetings, that would be a single space letter, talks about my background and career, the details show me they've done a ton of work, to want to get 50 minutes of my time, and that 15 minutes usually turns into one hour. And in some cases, it turns into a job with me or one of our portfolio companies. But what what's your advice? What would work with you? And what's your advice to those who need to break through today?
• 27:51
  Jessica Berman: Yeah, you know, this is the other sort of epiphany that that I've had, in recent years as I've gotten more seasoned or more of a veteran in my industry is that actually don't think it's that hard to stand out once you're given an opportunity. I don't know if that's your experience. But I am. Similarly because I was given so many opportunities by people in the industry to have informational interviews or networking meetings, like I still do that, actually.
• 28:25
  Jessica Berman: Probably more often than, then I should, because it's, it tends to be on weekends, or late at night or early in the morning.
• 28:33
  Jessica Berman: And I do it mostly on my personal time, because I want to, I want to give back, I want to give young people an opportunity to learn and grow.
• 28:42
  Jessica Berman: And I'm always amazed at how few of them actually follow up and stay connected. I'm so amazed. I tell my kids this all the time.
• 28:53
  Jessica Berman: What was the point of them taking that 1530 4560 minutes with me did it maybe it made them feel good and gave them confidence to do whatever it is they're doing next. But I find it so strange that if you spend that amount of time with someone who's in a position of authority in an industry that you're interested in, that you wouldn't then take the next step to at least stay in touch. And I would say if I had to like, do the ballpark, less than 10% of the people that I do informational interviews or conversations with actually turn it into something that is not transactional, less than 10%. And to me, that's a travesty. So I I actually don't think it's that hard to stand out. Because if you do, the sort of basic things that we were taught when we were growing up, which is to make a lasting impression, to be authentic and genuine, to stay connected to reach out when you don't have something to ask for, to build trust in your relationship. It could go a long way. And the people who actually do that and it pays back in spades for them in terms of the value for their career, I would think certainly has for me,
• 30:19
  Randall Kaplan: this episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by sandy.com s a n d e.com. We're a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by catalog the more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000 beaches and 212 countries.
• 30:37
  Randall Kaplan: sandy.com provides beach goers around the world with detailed comprehensive and easy to use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at home and abroad. And to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trips. today by visiting sandy.com That's www.sand.com. The link is in our show notes. Stay Sandy my friends. We have a summer internship program here, it's a 12 week program eight to six. Do not show up one minute later, we're going to have a gnarly meeting don't pack up at 559. We got 17 150 job applications this summer. And we hire 36 every summer. And it's amazing. Some of the kids at the lesser rank schools, run laps around the kids from Harvard. And I hate to even say Michigan because I do favor Michigan students. So if you're going to Michigan send us, you know, contact us. But this year, we hired a guy named Matt Hickerson and went to Biola. And I'm gonna guess you've never heard of bio I have not either. It's a small religious school about 90 minutes from Los Angeles. And he shows up to tie in a suit and tie his first day, we sent a very detailed memo about what to do when you show up your first day we give them reading. And by the way, I call on people, I tell them 10 hours of work before they show up. And there's a demo I'm going to call on you.
• 32:04
  Randall Kaplan: And first impression you better know the answer to some of these simple questions. 90% don't, they're embarrassed? And I say why not? And the room goes silent, like, where am I? What did I do this summer. But NAT continued to distinguish themselves showed up at 630 in the morning and left at nine o'clock. And he was gunning, I think, as most people were for my mentorship for life. And we have so many interns. It's sort of like a bell curve, Jessica, we've got a third who are there who just go through the motion, we've got another third and they want to put my firm on the resume, we got another third, who you know, they do okay, and then we got a top third, who just kill it and of a top third.
• 32:47
  Randall Kaplan: This is where the margin gets so thin, right? And this is what you're saying it's the it's the 2% or 1% that just go off on a different path. In the end, they set them self up for tremendous success in their future. I'm writing a book on this right now. Extreme preparation, it's called and we'll talk about this a little later in the show. But people say it's, it's hard to do that. No, it's simple to do that. It takes a few hours. And it just it like you it just boggles my mind. Why people don't follow up. Don't do things differently. Listen to people say nobody does that. I mean, I get that all the time from my own kids, you know, follow up?
• 33:30
  Randall Kaplan: How about FedExing a thank you note to someone after a zoom call, you'll be the only one who's ever done that your entire career, that person will remember you forever. And if there's 1000 people applying for that job, you're now top five if not number one, because nobody does it. But this stuff is so easy to do.
• 33:50
  Jessica Berman: That's very true. It's it's really not that hard to distinguish yourself. So yeah, I agree.
• 33:58
  Randall Kaplan: After college, you went to Fordham Law School where you interned for National Football League. When you graduated, you got a job at Proskauer Rose, one of the best firms in New York City specializing in labor and employment law where you work with the National Hockey League, which is one of its clients. Why did you go to law school was a lot of GRI or graduate degree necessary to where you get to where you wanted to go. And what does labor relations have to do with marriage and divorce?
• 34:28
  Jessica Berman: Well, I Well, first of all, you we now know that I wanted to be a commissioner. And most of the commissioners are lawyers. And so that part exists as a sort of foundational reference. I also learned throughout college as I was reading the sports business trades, that the underpinning of the professional sports industry, at least in America, North America is labor relations and the relationship that exists between the professional sports leagues, and the unions that represent the players. And I realized early in my college days, that understanding that foundational relationship and respecting and recognizing that being able to impact the stability of that relationship could unlock the growth of our industry of professional sports.
• 35:28
  Jessica Berman: And that was the real reason that I wanted to go to law school and become a labor lawyer. I knew I knew I wanted to work in collective bargaining, and wanting to really understand that relationship and be able to negotiate the terms and conditions that really drive the players experience and the There's a piece about labor relations that I was very interested in, is really this idea that it's a relationship, that you have to learn how to work together, you have to learn how to compromise, you have to learn how to listen, you have to learn how to communicate, you have to learn how to prioritize.
• 36:11
  Jessica Berman: And that is the reference that that you're making, which I've said, some times when I've talked about labor relations, where it's a marriage where you can't get a divorce, because you have to learn how to be together. And you can take different positions, you can fight for the things that you care about. But you do it in a way that allows the other to know that they you respect them, and that you need to work together. And it is different in that way, then doing mergers, acquisitions, transactions are other sorts of deals, more business deals like venture capital deals where you might initiate or engage in a transaction, and then you may or may not have to actually work together on in the future. The way that collective bargaining works is that you negotiate agreement, and the real work actually begins when you're administering that agreement.
• 37:08
  Jessica Berman: And there's numerous opportunities to have to solve problems together. And that's really what I enjoyed most about my time at Proskauer and my ears to the NHL, and even still today, working with our with our union, it continues to be the underpinning of the professional sports industry.
• 37:31
  Randall Kaplan: So you need a graduate degree, to succeed in life or get a commissioner job somewhere, is it even necessary today to be successful, I hear so much talk these days, some people say you don't even need to go to college. So it's what level of education is necessary, do believe to achieve certain milestones in your life, especially in fields like sports, or something related sports.
• 37:57
  Jessica Berman: You know, I'd like to believe there are many paths to take that to whatever the intended result is. It's hard for me to imagine being in my role without having my training. But that's because we all look at things through our own lens. I think being a labor lawyer helps me tremendously, not just in working with our union, but in the way I process information, the way I communicate the way I think, the way I present. I think all of that is in large part driven by my legal background. But there are plenty of people who are leaders who do an incredible job, who are not lawyers, and not all of the commissioners are lawyers, and they, most of them are but not all of them. And so I'm sure there's lots of different paths that could make someone successful, I think you just have to lean into the things that make you uniquely you make you uniquely successful, that gives you confidence that you can perform the tasks asked of you in a particular role. And for me having a legal background really built my experience, my skills, my confidence. I went
• 39:23
  Randall Kaplan: to law school at Northwestern, I hated every minute of it. Although I love the school. I'm on the board of school. I'm happy I went there, but I hated what I was learning.
• 39:35
  Randall Kaplan: I didn't want to go to law school. It was tough for me to read it but it was a means to a future for me. And it also paid at the time $70,000 a year. I was rich. And when I graduated I bounced around i three jobs the first eight months of school, it's kind of a long story, but I was fired from my job five and a half weeks after moving to Los Angeles there were layoffs as$3,000 in the bank. I thought this isn't going well. But ultimately I ended up working for a firm McDermott, which you probably know, a large Chicago firm. Then I went to work at Sun America, I got an amazing job.
• 40:08
  Randall Kaplan: Eli Broad was my boss. He was a one of only three people at the time to start to Fortune 500 companies. And I would have never gotten that job without a graduate degree. And in my situation. Even though I learned really almost nothing practicing law. I felt like I'm still feel like today. The intellectual training and the way I look at things has been immensely helpful to me. So when people say to me, Oh, should I go to law school? I say Well, number one, do you like it? You want to be a lawyer? And even if you don't, you should really map out pen and paper if it really makes sense. I know so many people who don't go to good law schools.
• 40:51
  Randall Kaplan: They spend 150 to $200,000 to graduate, and they don't get a big firm job, which today pays$250,000. To start, which is just asinine to me. That word the starting salaries to 15 and get this they bill out at 495 an hour, some 595 per hour, these New York firms. And this the only profession by the way, where the clients pay for the professionals to learn on their dime. I've never I've never heard of another profession like that. But for me, I think it has been very valuable. But for most people who go to law school, they're not working across power or Scadden or white in case you're making 40 or 50,000 a year to start. And I don't know whether the benefit really pays for itself in the long run. What do you think about that? Yeah,
• 41:41
  Jessica Berman: yeah, um, I the the idea of living with the debt that comes with law school is definitely something to balance in way. So for me, law school itself, was very humbling. I, it was good for me in that way. It was really one of the first times in my academic life where I was really challenged. And I had to actually really study and I couldn't do all my extracurricular activities and the million things that I normally do. And I had to really focus on studying and getting good grades, knowing that my one L year in law school was going to dictate where I was able to ultimately work after law school. And I really wanted to work at Proskauer, so I had to get good grades. And so it was very humbling for me, it forced me to focus and become a good reader, which I really wasn't a particularly good reader before law school, which I think has has helped me a lot in my career.
• 42:52
  Randall Kaplan: But what was the thought process there? Were you nervous and anxious and saying yourself? What if it doesn't work out? And didn't have the courage to actually do this?
• 43:02
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah,
• 43:02
  Jessica Berman: of course. And I had to really confront some of the sort of darkest pieces of what drives us, which is really ego. And why does it feel good for me to work at the NHL, it's, it's a cocktail conversation, it, it very much gives you that external validation that what you're doing matters and what you're doing is cool. And you'd like to see it on Sports Center, and you like that it's on the front page of The New York Times, and it makes you feel important. And I had to, first of all acknowledge that. And I think that's a very important thing to acknowledge when you work for a high profile company, a high profile brand, it's okay to say that you enjoy that there it has an outsized influence on society, separate and apart from the substance of what you're doing, or the size of the business. It's, it matters to people and matters in people's lives. And I had to really ask myself, Is that enough for me?
• 44:14
  Jessica Berman: Like, is that going to be the driving force? Will I do, will I be satisfied with my career, staying at the place that opens doors and provides fodder and a cocktail conversation, if I if the if the sacrifices that I don't actually get to achieve the ambitions that I have in my, in my future in my career, and I made the choice, understanding the risk, that I may be going to a place that no one will ever care what I do, or where I am, that it was more important for me to learn and develop as a leader. And even if it meant I made a right turn and that I was going to be hard for me to come back into the sort of sexy pyramid of professional sports, that that was okay. And and, you know, it's it sort of goes back to what I said earlier about being relentless in your pursuit of what matters most to you, and sometimes what matters most changes, right? Like I, what mattered most to me, when I made that choice is becoming the best business person I could be. And I wanted to learn areas that I would not have the opportunity to learn if I had stayed at the NHL. And I had to understand that that came with some sacrifices. And I was okay with that. I also think I had to sort of dispel this notion that because I left the NHL, it meant that I no longer had it As part of who I was, I really embraced this idea that no one can take away from me what I learned and experience during my 13 years there, and if that's something that feels like it has value to me, it's still part of who I am even today. And that leaving doesn't mean you've left it behind. You can take it with you. And you can take the things with you that continue to provide value and maintain those relationships, which I've which I've done, and realize that that will keep opening doors for you throughout your career in ways that you can't even imagine.
• 46:34
  Randall Kaplan: Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with Jessica Berman, the Commissioner of women's Major League Soccer.
• 46:39
  Randall Kaplan: Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my awesome conversation with Jessica