B (10:24)
Yeah, well, you know, I. First I went to a law firm, and then I went. And while I was at the law firm, which was a great firm, I really actually enjoyed practicing law, but I really detested billing hours, which is the way the legal profession is built. That's going to change, by the way. AI is going to change the economics of law firms. And it's sooner than people realize. I had worked for a law firm in Asia during the summer of one of my law school years, and very exciting things were happening in China, where I had spent a little bit of time. China was looking to accede to the wto, and I was asked to go into the government to work on a presidential initiative to help bring China into what we would consider global standards around rule of law to prepare them for WTO accession. That Initiative was really successful on a number of fronts. But most importantly, beyond the initiative, China was successful in acceding to the wto. And a lot of multinationals were looking to go to China at the time to start, you know, to launch businesses there. But notably, they were not interested in hiring local Chinese because they were nervous about acquiring talent that may or may not have the cultural alignment or the practices and the disciplines of Western business. And so even though I came from Arkansas, I was being very heavily recruited to go to China because I spoke some Chinese and I have a face that looks Chinese. Anyway, I ended up going and with the blessing of my law firm, intending to go back to my law firm. My law firm said, this is an incredible opportunity, you know, coming out of government, you should go take this. So I ended up going and helping AOL Time Warner to start a China office. At the time, they had a lot of divisional representatives representing, you know, Turner Broadcasting, Warner Music, a number of business as AOL after the merger of AOL Time Warner. But they didn't have any corporate presence and they were running up against each other and contradicting each other in front of the Chinese government. So I ended up being the person who was trying to bring some of those issues and perspectives and viewpoints and positions together. It was a policy role, but it was a business and strategy. Um, you had to have a business and strategy perspective to do that role effectively. And, but I really wanted an idea was I would come back to the United States and go into one of the business units because I really wanted to, to understand how businesses operated. While some very well publicized things happened at aol, which was the business unit I had intended to going into, it was, was. It was, you know, the advent of the Internet. We're probably of the same vintage, right, Ed? It was the advent of the Internet and I was so interested in what was happening. But some very well publicized things, including an SEC investigation was happening in that business unit. And I just decided at that point, I never wanted to be at a company and not see that coming. But in order to see that coming, coming, I had to understand finance and operations better than I did. And so ultimately I left, took a pause, decided that, did a little research on my family history on the side, and then decided I was going to join Discovery, which owned the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, all the real world television networks. This was the heyday of the 300 channel universe of television. And I joined the corporate development team. And I was the only member of the corporate development team who had not gone to wharton, worked at McKinsey, you know, gone and, and, and been sort of a certain track. They were all men. They were all lovely men. But I, you know, I, I just, I looked and, and seemed quite different, but I had this international experience and I was willing to roll up my sleeves and, and I still have, just as a memento, I still have my Excel for Dummies book on my bookshelf to remind me that I learned how to run, you know, discounted cash flow analyses. I'm looking right now at my McKinsey valuation book. I learned how to value companies. And I remember my boss one day coming by my office and it was late. He, he left every day at 5. It was 7, and I would stay till 11. He said, why are you still here? And I said, because I'm learning this stuff. And he said, you don't have to do this. I said, yeah, but that's why I took this job, is to learn it. But in that process, I really learned at least the financial labors of successful and unsuccessful businesses. But I wanted to operate too. And so while I was there, I ended up being asked to help turn around a business. Before we became public, it was Discovery Health, which is, at the time, Dr. Oz. At the same time, things were starting to disrupt the media industry. The media industry was the first to really be disrupted and impacted by digital forces. And we had a fledgling business unit called the New Media business unit. And I raised my hand and I went to go be the operator in that business unit. And I was a VP so I could sign for the company. But I wasn't senior enough to win in any internal jockeying that was happening around which deals you got to do. And so everybody was jockeying for the big deals with Comcast and DirecTV. And I got stuck in air quotes doing the little deals that nobody else wanted to do that would never make any money, like with Amazon and with Microsoft and, you know, with Nokia and Google and. And it was a. Interesting time to be there because you had this sort of emerging new industry that was forming and the technology players didn't understand our business, and our business didn't understand what they had to do to be successful in the technology space. But I rolled up my sleeves and, you know, got my hands dirty in the space, and it really kind of changed my trajectory.