Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - March 13th, 2026

15:22Carol Massar:Gary Evans, he's chairman and CEO of United States Antimony Corporation right here in studio.

15:29Carol Massar:They told us to expect change. They warned us about the transition. But honestly, they forgot the best part. This is the chapter where we finally focus on us. LifeMD delivers expert menopause and midlife care right from your home. From hormone health to holistic wellness, LifeMD helps you feel your best for the best years of your life. LifeMD, it's just getting good. Visit LifeMD.com slash goodlife. Hello, hello.

16:01Tim Stenovec:I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. And I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example?

16:24Carol Massar:If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind.

16:37Tim Stenovec:If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

16:47Carol Massar:Yeah.

16:48Tim Stenovec:So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it.

16:53Carol Massar:We say you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things.

17:07Tim Stenovec:To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

17:17Carol Massar:Support for the show comes from Public. Public is an investing platform that offers access to stocks, options, bonds, and crypto. And they've also integrated AI with tools that can assist investors in building customized portfolios.

17:30Tim Stenovec:One of these tools is called Generated Assets. It allows you to turn your ideas into investable indexes.

17:36Carol Massar:So let's say you're interested in something specific like biotech companies with high R &D spend, small cap stocks with improving operating margins, or the S &P 500 minus high debt companies. chances are there isn't an ETF that fits your exact criteria. But on public, you just type in a prompt and their AI screens thousands of stocks and build a one-of-a-kind index. You can even backtest it against the S &P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus

18:07Tim Stenovec:when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market. Add paid for by Public Holdings. Brokered services by Public Investing, member FINRA SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, SEC Registered Advisor, crypto services by ZeroHash. Sample prompts are for illustrative purposes only, not investment advice. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.

18:41Tim Stenovec:Or watch us live on YouTube.

18:44Carol Massar:We continue to try to track this economy amid a war and some mixed signals. Remember, it was just one week ago, U.S. jobs data showed a labor market that shed 92 ,000 jobs just as U.S. household debt hit a record$18.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven by rising mortgage and credit card balances. Now, rates briefly dropped, mortgage rates that is, briefly dropped below 6 % in late February after cheaper rates and flattening home prices raised expectations for a slightly improved spring sales season. But a drawn-out war would push oil prices even higher, stoking inflation and further fueling upward pressure on the Treasury yields that guide home loans.

19:27Tim Stenovec:Combine that with delinquencies at their highest level since 2017, with 4.8 % of debt in some stage of delinquency, as high interest rates strain borrowers. Also, another thing putting pressure on consumers, and Carol, you just mentioned this, higher costs associated with energy as a result of the U.S. war in Iran. U.S. residential heating prices surged above$5 a gallon. That's the highest going back to November of 2022, as the war strains global diesel and crude flows critical for home heating. For a gut check on consumers, we spoke with Michael Lindford, the COO of the Buy Now, Pay Later company, Affirm.

20:04Tim Stenovec:Good to have you on the program. How are you? Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great.

20:08Carol Massar:We had a great conversation before we even went on air. We really did. I'm just telling you. I'll be honest. You were a fly on the wall. I was upstairs getting snacks.

20:15Tim Stenovec:So I wasn't here for it. This will be great too. Hopefully we can continue that conversation. A firm's in a unique position because of the way that you extend credit to consumers, the so-called buy now, pay later. Relatively new. Not everybody's familiar with how it works, but it does give you and it gives us a snapshot at a moment in time of exactly how the consumer is doing based on what they're spending money on, what they're defaulting on, what they aren't. What are you seeing now? Yeah, we get a really good signal. And because of our business model where we're doing transaction-level underwriting, we say yes and no to every transaction the consumer is trying to get through the system.

20:52Tim Stenovec:Because of that, we have to monitor credit daily. It's not a thing we look at with our quarterly reports every day we wake up and look and get a very good signal as to how the consumer is doing. And we look at really two things. Look at how they're spending, where are they out engaged with merchants, where are they spending their money, what's top of mind in purchasing, and then how they're doing on the credit repayment, how they're doing with delinquencies. And both really are quite robust right now. We see a really engaged consumer. They're out engaged with our merchant base very actively. Engaged means they're buying.

21:24Tim Stenovec:They're buying stuff. A euphemism for spending money. They're not retreating. They're not afraid right now.

21:29Carol Massar:That's what I tell my husband, honey, I'm disengaged. Disengagement.

21:33Tim Stenovec:They're not hiding is the point. The consumer isn't, these fears and these headlines that are going on really aren't affecting our consumer down the middle yet. And that's true really across all categories, including categories like ticketing and travel. Consumers are still as engaged there as before. And on the credit side, things continue to go really, really well with consistent repayment with what we expect.

21:57Carol Massar:Michael, how many yeses and noes do you do? I'm just curious as things come across and how has that changed?

22:02Tim Stenovec:It's a great question. Our approval rates overall really haven't changed. And when we talk about it, we do a bit of a disservice because for us, it's actually not just yes or no. We have a wide set of products and we have a wide set of ways we can configure the yes or no to engineer better credit outcomes. So that can be something as simple as, hey, we need a little bit of down payment on this transaction because we don't think you can afford the whole amount. Or we can change the term length or adjust the implied monthly payment amount. We have a lot of leverage at our disposal to try to find a way to say yes to the consumer as much as possible.

22:35Carol Massar:All right. So how much more are you saying not yes right away until you kind of figure out what they do?

22:43Tim Stenovec:I think that our overall posture right now is one where we're as concerned with the headlines as everybody else is. We're obsessed with monitoring credit, but we don't feel the need to make massive corrections in the credit box of the business right now. because what we do is we wake up every day again, like I said, and we look at 34 days ago, the origination mix, and we look at the expected credit outcomes against what we actually have. And if those lines are on top of each other, we can keep the credit posture the same. If they begin to deviate, that's when we have to act. So if somebody uses a firm, they have an account already, you have a familiar profile of them, at what point do you say to them, you have bought enough stuff to pay for later that we're not going to continue extending credit for you?

23:28Tim Stenovec:Yeah, it varies by consumer. We have both this concept of exposure. It's essentially maxing out a credit card. Yeah, we have a concept of some exposure that we'd like to have for consumers, and it varies by consumer. We also have other controls around what we call velocity controls, which is how quickly a consumer is taking up. Again, if you think about the contrast with the credit card business model, credit cards give you a line, and then they just hope it goes well, and then they wait and see what happens. if they try to affect that line, they have to take pretty big steps. Because we're underwriting every transaction, we can be really thoughtful around what makes sense for you in that moment in that transaction.

24:07Tim Stenovec:And it creates dramatically different credit outcomes and allows us to navigate these really volatile times very differently. You know, I always caution any listeners to not extrapolate too much our credit results to the wider consumer base writ large, because I don't know how much, you know, short-term installment loans actually translates to some of the more traditional credit signals that we look at for consumer credit. I think it's a superior way. I do think that we will engineer better credit outcomes through the cycle because of it. But it does mean that there's maybe a little bit of concern around trying to extrapolate too much the positive signal we have today.

24:42Tim Stenovec:So in other words, you're dealing with a sliver of the economy, and you don't necessarily think you can draw signals about the greater economy based on what's happening with that group? I think the group is really wide. So a thing about our consumer is that it's a really wide set of consumers. There's certainly some super low-income and low-credit-quality folks and high-income and high-credit-quality folks we don't serve. But those are on the extremes. The vast majority of consumers are served really well. Think of it as very meaty and American. So I think from a segment standpoint, it is a really good signal.

25:14Tim Stenovec:But the financial product that we deliver yields different outcomes than what you might see with traditional unsecured consumer credit.

25:21Carol Massar:I kind of get it. But I think the level of activity. I mean, we were talking before we got going, and you're just saying your business just kind of the market continues to grow. So there's more and more people tapping into it.

25:34Tim Stenovec:Yeah. The network is growing with really strong user growth. Yeah. So we're adding a lot of users to the network.

25:39Carol Massar:Are new users or existing users just using it more and more?

25:42Tim Stenovec:It's really both. And it's because we're earning big distribution. We just announced a partnership with Lowe's, for example, or a partnership with Intuit QuickBooks. These big distribution opportunities allow us to expose our product to more consumers. We still think we're super early in the distribution of the category. It seems crazy because we've been talking about this for several years now. But we are still so early. We're a meaningful portion of U.S. e-commerce. We're not so much a meaningful portion of offline commerce. and we always like to reframe the conversation. There's$1.3 trillion of revolving credit debt in the United States.

26:16Tim Stenovec:We are rounding around that and we're really excited to go make that number smaller. So if we think about it from the perspective of companies and the companies you partner with, Lowe's partners with you and then they're paying, like if I buy something with a firm from Lowe's, Lowe's then pays you and that's how you get money? Yeah, there's two revenue sources for us. we have both the consumer and the merchant side. Merchants pay us a discount rate depending upon the product being offered. If it's a 0 % offer, there's more discount. And if it's an interest-bearing offer, it's lower. And then consumers on the interest-bearing loans will pay us interest.

26:50Tim Stenovec:But in all cases, never any late fees, never any deferred interest or those products. What's a typical interest rate for an Affirm loan? It ranges between 0 % and 36%. And it really is segmented by both the credit quality and, again, the merchant program. You know, merchants who are concerned with or focused on affordability may pay higher MDRs to allow us to average that down. Why did the credit – why did they have to be so high?

27:16Carol Massar:I mean, you're –

27:16Tim Stenovec:36 percent?

27:17Carol Massar:Well, I'm just – I'm hearing you've got a smaller portion of people that are maybe at the lower income –

27:22Tim Stenovec:The president wants to see lower rates.

27:23Carol Massar:I know he does. Elizabeth Warren probably does too. I'm just understanding why does it have to be so high? It sounds like you don't have a lot of problems or delinquencies. So why do you have to have that overhead?

27:38Tim Stenovec:Well, there is always a cost of credit in any lender.

27:41Carol Massar:I get it, but it seems extreme.

27:43Tim Stenovec:Yeah, and I think that the—

27:45Carol Massar:And I'm not just you. It's just in general, but I'm curious your take.

27:48Tim Stenovec:My take is that the price of credit, whether that's the APR or the interest rate that's charged, is only part of the picture. The other part of the picture is the product itself. Credit cards, they charge a high rate, and then they compound interest on interest. Their idea is to keep balances high and let those numbers multiply. You know, credit card companies don't like to see balances go down. They don't make money. Our product, while some of the APRs can be higher, because these are all short-term, closed-end installment loans that are all amortized very quickly, the dollar cost of credit, the actual dollars and cents of your purchase cost, the cost of credit for that transaction, ends up being very low.

28:29Tim Stenovec:and consumers can check out and they know, okay, this$500 purchase has$17 of interest cost. And that's$17. It can never be a penny more than that. That certainty gives consumers the ability to put the cost of credit in context of what they're buying. And oftentimes those numbers make a lot more sense to the consumer than an APR, which is really abstract and very hard for consumers to understand.

28:52Carol Massar:I am curious that credit card companies have to be watching you guys too. As I think before we got going, So they are a massive industry, and you guys see that as potential for yourselves. But what's to stop them from also saying, we've got to be doing this too? So more competition.

29:08Tim Stenovec:I get stuff from my – like I'll look at my credit card like a purchase, and it'll say pay over time. Yeah. It'll offer that, and I feel like they're just trying to do buy now, pay later type thing.

29:17Carol Massar:You can even do that kind of with American Express. You can kind of table some things and pay it over time.

29:20Tim Stenovec:Which is a charge card typically or the product that you're talking about. Yeah, or you typically pay at the end of the month, but they let you do stuff.

29:26Carol Massar:But I'm just being more leaning in.

29:28Tim Stenovec:I think the banks really are going to pay attention more and more to this category as we continue to take real share payment tender in the United States. The thing is, oftentimes large industries that have 30 years of business models cemented into how they operate have a really hard time adjusting to consumer preferences as they change. We really believe this is a situation where old technologies like a blockbuster has a hard time cannibalizing itself in the face of a brand new business model. Every CFO I talk to or hear from at a credit card bank is not willing to cannibalize a revolving credit product for an installment product.

30:07Tim Stenovec:They don't know how to do transaction level underwriting and create the same pool of profit that they do on revolving accounts. And that's our opportunity.

30:15Carol Massar:I have to ask you, is there anything you guys would say, no, you can't do that with buy now, pay later? Is there something like you would say, no, doesn't make sense?

30:22Tim Stenovec:But we're concerned with categories that have a high degree of fraud. We're concerned with whether or not the merchant is honest in their presentation to the consumer. We try really hard not to be paternalistic about what it is that you use your product for. One person's necessity can be another person's luxury. Maybe sunglasses feel like a luxury to you, but if you just had eye surgery, it's a really important thing to protect your eyes. Maybe a TV and you had a two-year-old at home and you work from home. You need a way to entertain your two-year-old. A TV becomes a necessity for you, not a luxury.

30:56Tim Stenovec:And so we try really hard not to be deciding for the consumer what's important. Our view is if you are going to use a credit card, you should use Affirm instead.

31:03Carol Massar:All right. Great chat. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed it. Michael Linford, he is the Chief Operating Officer, of course, Affirm, joining us right here in Urbanburg Interactive Broker Studio.

31:19Hello, hello.

31:20Tim Stenovec:I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's Chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today, with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

32:06Carol Massar:Yeah.

32:07Tim Stenovec:So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings,

32:16Carol Massar:including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology.

32:21Tim Stenovec:It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

32:36Tim Stenovec:Support for the show comes from Public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently. It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth. On Public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts, yep. High yield cash, yes again. They even have direct indexing.

33:07Carol Massar:Public has modern design, powerful tools, and customer support that actually helps. Go to public.com slash market and earn an uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash market.

33:31Tim Stenovec:involves risk of loss. See complete disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

33:35Carol Massar:Small businesses are the pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities, and drive growth. With a widespread presence in communities across the country, Chase for Business supports small business owners at a local level. That makes it possible for you to connect, learn from each other, and grow together. There's a real commitment to seeing small businesses succeed. The Chase for Business team has knowledge and expertise that span a wide range of financial areas. They can help you make more informed decisions as you navigate the complexities of running your business.

34:07Carol Massar:They'll help your business grow with individual guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026, JPMorgan Chase and Company.

34:37Tim Stenovec:This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130.

34:55Carol Massar:All right, something we like to talk about a lot here at Bloomberg, especially with our pursuits team, is the global wellness market.

35:02Tim Stenovec:It's no longer a niche market. In fact, global wellness is now a$6.8 trillion powerhouse that's projected to hit close to$10 trillion by the end of this decade. That's according to the latest note from the Global Wellness Institute.

35:15Carol Massar:How come we're spending so much and I still feel not so well?

35:19Tim Stenovec:How much time do we have, Carol?

35:20Carol Massar:All right, we'll table that for another broadcast. At the intersection of the global wellness surge and women's sports is our next guest. For over a decade, Ashley Flair, known to, I would say, a global audience as Charlotte Flair, has been a top-tier superstar for WWE, winning numerous championships, including the WWE Women's Championship a record 14 times. Now she's leveraging her brand equity as an angel investor, specifically in the mental health and apparel space with the brand Self-Care is for Everyone. She joined me alongside Bloomberg's Nora Melinda, who is in for Tim.

35:58Tim Stenovec:You know, I still have hopes and dreams within the WWE, and Charlotte Flair and my passion for wrestling means the world to me, and I still, you know, have many years left on my career. But when I was injured last year, you know, there is a shelf life for women in sports, and I really didn't know or what do I want to do next. And I have really gravitated towards the self-care mental health space and that's really helped me, I feel, get through the last couple of years in my career and feeling like I couldn't talk about anxiety and the pressure of being perfect on screen because the character that I play, Charlotte Flair, is so perfect.

36:43Tim Stenovec:and this past year I feel as I since I've gravitated towards the mental health care and talking about it it's helped grow my brand I've been able to connect with fans and realizing it's okay not to be okay so when this opportunity from self-care the two um the two owners AJ and Sasha came with me with this opportunity and asked me to be an angel investor I was like wow I you know I feel like this is a perfect fit and where to put my my investment and my time into them to help make this a safe space for athletes for public figures for parents for anyone because it has been taboo for so long and whether it be the affirming apparel or the easily accessible mental health tools that self-care is for everyone that we're trying to grow in 2026.

37:38Tim Stenovec:I'm just honored to be a part of it. So how many of your physical injuries were a mental health journey? And did it all change your perspective on what strength really is? I definitely think when I hurt my knee, that's I tore my ACL. I don't think I was in the right, I was in the right state of mind, meaning whether it was imposter syndrome, that dialogue, that how we talk to ourselves, that inner self talk, I feel like it was in a very negative space and not opening up about it and the anxiety of, you know, being a woman that's approaching 40, what that looks like, the demands. And it's, you know, I want to be able to say I'm a woman and what I want more of is time and all that pressure adding up.

38:24Tim Stenovec:I feel like the reason I hurt my knee is because I wasn't all there performing. And for someone who has, I always looked at myself as the iron woman. And when my knee took me out, I was like, all I viewed myself as a professional wrestler. Like that's all I am and that's not all I am. And I do have a voice and maybe this is the start of something bigger for me. Like I love being Charlotte, but taking Charlotte to the next level and making these conversations more accessible or not taboo for people in any kind of industry, I think is so important.

38:56Carol Massar:Yeah, I think there's something too in the timing, Ashley. Like I feel like increasingly athletes are coming out, men and women, and just talking about, you know, the stresses, the difficulties, you know, being, you know, at a high point and then having an injury and then it's just so tough to come back. We see it over and over. But I think the mental wellness component, the stress on athletes of all kinds to perform increasingly, it's really tough.

39:21Tim Stenovec:Whether it be athletes, whether it be a stay, you know, a single mom work. I mean, there's it crosses over to everyone. And with the apparel that we've created, walking down the street and you see a sweatshirt that says you are enough. It's that simple. And it opens a dialogue. And I hope investing in self-care is for everyone with that mission to just make those topics easy every day.

39:47Carol Massar:I want to ask you too, though, we love talking about the wellness market and all its different shapes and sizes, if you will. The wellness market nearing a$7 trillion valuation, talk to us about the due diligence that you guys did that led to the creation of Self-Care is for everyone, you know, and tell us about how you were thinking about it. It's a competitive space. It's definitely competitive.

40:08Tim Stenovec:But so for me, self care is for everyone was founded in 2018. I had already been following this site before I even know who the owners were. It was just like little messaging, you know, you are enough. You have a voice. My own messaging that I put on my social media, whether it be Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, I always say, P.S., I hope you feel beautiful today. Cause like, you know, on those days as women, when you don't feel so beautiful, but you have to show up, you have to put on that smiling face. And for me being on TV, it's like, PS, I hope you feel beautiful today as a 39 year old woman competing in an industry where like they do age, you know, like that's just television is hard for women.

40:50Tim Stenovec:So this company was founded in 2019 when AJ and Sasha came to me this year, my financial person did their due diligence seeing, how they have grown, what this space looks like, what the investment into them looks like. And for me, wanting to have a diversified portfolio, where is the best place to put my money to help them grow? And that's how much I believe in what they've already done and what they brought to me. Plus, they have a six-month campaign with Target already with Kleenex, which is an everyday product like what you see our messaging on. So from a business standpoint, I am just the investor, exactly what they have raised.

41:35Tim Stenovec:I could not tell you the numbers, but I do know for suicide prevention and apparel, I was blown away what they've just been able to do with just the online presence.

41:45Carol Massar:So Ashley, your branding goes on different products, right? Is that how it works or?

41:49Tim Stenovec:No, I'm sorry. So for this company, for Self Care Is Everyone, They've already started to put their messaging on on everyday products such as Kleenex. We just did this. They did a six month deal in Target. So then bringing what they've already been able to do with the help of my branding and push and being their first angel investor. Got it. Hoping to grow there. So I believe in what they've already done and they believe in me and what I have aligned with my with my branding. that's why they brought me on board but I've been able to see their numbers and what they're capable of from a business standpoint but for me I believe this was the right investment due to wanting just to help so like how can you go wrong yeah I mean the ultimate goal is to make money and it is a business but like to me when you don't know what to do with not like I don't know what my next step is after WWE but what I do know is I want to help people that's why I invested in them because I know you can't go wrong in helping create a safe space for people.

42:57Tim Stenovec:I want to become the person that I needed growing up. And I felt like investing in self-care for everyone was like the perfect step in that. Well, I want to go back to that. If you could go back to Ashley at the beginning of your career before the global fame, what is one self-care mantra that you would whisper to her? Just believe in yourself, be your own hero. like wrestling wasn't always it was never in my to-do list or dreams or you know I played volleyball in college and I graduated I was lost I became a personal trainer I always was drawn to public relations I did like PR but then my little brother who had a really bad drug addiction always wanted to follow in my father's footsteps so I thought you know maybe if I tried wrestling because I was given the opportunity by Triple H, our head of creative now in 2012, that I could get him on the right path.

43:55Tim Stenovec:So when I started, I really didn't know what I was getting into because I, you know, I liked wrestling, but back then, you know, women were secondary storylines. They were eye candy. I never viewed myself as a professional wrestler, supermodel, anything like that. So when I started, it was just more me needing to save myself from a prior situation. So it's funny. I spent my whole life trying to save my little brother who ended up dying a couple months after I started when ultimately he saved me and gave me this dream. And I feel I have helped change the landscape for women in a male dominated industry and wrestling.

44:29Tim Stenovec:So if I can take something from nothing and turn what I did, the character Charlotte into today is the most decorated woman of all time. What can I do in the mental health, the mental health space with the work ethic and the passion that I had for wrestling and bring that same passion to helping people, you know, create that space with the determination I had in wrestling. yeah and I wish like for my brother who passed away yes he he had a drug addiction but I really feel in 2000 like from you know the early 2000s to 2012 I don't think I think it was taboo for men to say they had anxiety or what they were dealing with or pressures and not saying my brother would have been you know still with us but at least like it's okay for men to be like hey, I'm burnt out.

45:22Carol Massar:Yeah, I feel like, you know, it's, and first of all, and most, mostly, Ashley, so sorry for your loss. And, and, and, you know, things that life throws at us and how we figure out a way forward. And then, you know, it's really heartening to hear you talk about, you know, wanting to help others. And I get it. I think COVID, though, was something that opened up where everybody was feeling stressed, right? It was something that everybody was talking about mental health and mental wellness. And it was just a really, really big change in terms of the conversation more broadly. So I can totally get why you're also drawn to it.

46:02Carol Massar:I'm also, you said about men versus women, what was the most difficult aspect of that difference for you in WWE? Or did you not feel it?

46:12Tim Stenovec:I feel the women who came before me that helped change the landscape that have been grinding for the, you know, 20, 30 years before me, they probably felt it more. But when I started and the group of women that I, I came in with who I champion every day, you know, we're not all as close as, you know, success and competitiveness and competition take over and always wanting to be at the top of your business. But we were part of this change. And when Stephanie McMahon debuted us, and then there was one other girl who debuted a year later, the Four Horsewomen, that's what we were coined as. In 2015, when Give Divas a Chance trended for three days, we were part of that rise where we were given the same amount of opportunities and time and segments as the men.

47:03Tim Stenovec:And then ultimately, myself, Becky Lynch, Ronda Rousey ended up main eventing WrestleMania 35 and MetLife. And if you had asked someone even maybe a year prior to that, would the women ever main event a show, they would have like laughed. But what we were able to create is that women are capable of selling merchandise, putting people in seats, being top of the card, getting equal equal opportunities in the ring. so I just from the day I started I had one goal to where I am now so do I feel things go like this a hundred percent but do I think I'm as big a star as any male absolutely absolutely I almost

47:47Carol Massar:cussed but I did we're glad you didn't but it's a great way to end and you're absolutely right because we're seeing this massive surge in valuations for women's sports whether it's WNBA NWSL I mean there's just so much

47:59Tim Stenovec:and women's wrestling you have to give them the opportunity and the backing and the advertising

48:03Carol Massar:that's it perception is reality

48:06Tim Stenovec:and if you do that then

48:08Carol Massar:the audience follows well listen this was a joy spending some time with you and good luck and stay in touch and let us know how things are going Ashley you you bet thank you Ashley Flair of course also known as Charlotte Flair the WWE superstar joining us on this Monday and of course talking about her brand. Self-care is for everyone. So great stuff there.

48:33Tim Stenovec:This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watches live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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