562: The Billion Dollar Woman Behind The Rock & Henry Cavill | Dany Garcia (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. You absolutely have to have an obsession. The amount of will, the amount of inertia that you need to create to make fantastic things happen. There's a reason why I've been fortunate enough to have great success. And And there's a reason that other people don't have that. You have to be able to run through a wall for this vision. The business powerhouse. Behind some of the world's biggest brands. Terramonti Tequila. Zoa Energy. Seven Box Productions. Just built a billion dollar business empire.

1:15And built the careers of The Rock and Henry Cavill. Danny Garcia. Dwayne and myself, we didn't enter Hollywood with any type of film connections or theatrical background. We had to earn every step, every comment, every note that went into a script. We had to earn by having incredible success, but also by giving a perspective and a point of view that no one had ever heard before. You've done this with an extreme successful track record. What are the things that you look for in your next opportunity? You need to deliver at a level that's undeniable. We have always gone into entertainment with two tenants.

1:51All creative has to live in a return on investment box. It makes us great partners for the studio. But the second and most important tenant is... hear the stories learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship welcome to the founder podcast with nathan chan the first question we ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today that's a good question to start with everyone nathan You know, I'd like to say I created my job, really the position that I'm in today. I mean, it was a journey that started in finance a little more traditionally with Merrill Lynch and then moved into a wealth management position and then moved into independent production.

2:45And then in 2008, moved into sort of architecting Dwayne Johnson's career and having an official move into Hollywood. it. And then all along that period, my approach had always been building enterprise. My decision actually to go into finance was because, you know what, the time I spend there is going to give me a fantastic understanding of what I need for companies to be built fundamentally. And even when I was working with, you know, when DJ asked me to take over, Dwayne asked me to take over, My approach was looking at his career and he in particular as a brand at IP property and building a corporation around him.

3:27So all along, I have been building companies until this position where I'm in, where now I have this beautiful portfolio. I'm the chairwoman. I'm the chairwoman of a few of my other positions within the portfolio. And that sort of created the picture today. But I was building it year after year after year. And do you think entrepreneurs are built, made, hardwired? I do think it's a skill that can be acquired, but I think the majority of entrepreneurs are hardwired. I think we tend to look at the world in a different way. The rules that sort of apply feel uncomfortable. And I think the idea of creating something new and being the leader of that creation, that usually comes from inside.

4:11side. Luckily, there are mechanisms that can be built so you can take that position, but I find most of my entrepreneur friends and peers were born. You have many different companies, right? And you've got a whole portfolio. You've achieved incredible success. I'd just love to know, how do you find balance? What does a typical day for Danny Yossi look like? You know, the days, they do have a few anchor structures, which is really wonderful. So training is actually a very big anchor for my day. So all my days start getting up early, spending time with my friend, cheese and my husband and a cup of coffee and having a quiet moment.

4:51I do a lot of centering because since I do have such a broad portfolio, being very centered in what my philosophy is and understanding how I want to interact the world and how I want my companies to interact in the world is very important. And then I spend my mornings, I actually get my training block out in the morning. If I'm on the East Coast, I get to cheat for all my West Coast. I get three extra hours. And then after that, it's really spending time on what are the most important decisions across the portfolio. You know, depending upon the city, I'm sort of a different activity. The training is always the same.

5:28And that morning is always the same. And the evening is the same. You know, the evening after the long hours has a wind down period, has time with my family, quiet moments before, you know, going off. But if I'm in New York, then I'm usually very active with individuals, but always purpose. and my company is up there and I'm on the West Coast, so a little bit more production oriented. I do spend a lot of time not actually having appointments or having scheduled calls. About half of my week is unscheduled intentionally so that I can stay at a very high perspective and I can look at what these companies are doing and understand where they need to be.

6:09So I try not to get too much into the soup of anything because then I lose my perspective. And all of my companies, while they are very varied, they have one thing in common. They're all consumer facing. They all have relationships with the audience or consumer. So that means that part of my responsibility is actually staying in tune to the consumer and the audience. And if I'm too deep into these companies, I lose that perspective. Have you ever experienced like burnout or anything? Because you have so much going on. 2016 was, you know, it was an incredible growth year. And we ended the year my husband took, and I went to Hawaii in January.

6:50And I think I slept on a sofa outside every day for about two weeks straight. You know, I would wake up, he would get up, he would go work out, I fall asleep on that sofa. And that's where I had recognized that everything had accelerated so quickly, my process had not adjusted for it. So I became really good at that point after 2016 of continuously firing myself from positions so that I could move higher in my perspective. But always, it's not a moment, you know, managing or keeping balance of this is not a set sort of process. It changes as the portfolio changes and grows every year. So again, I have to put that investment into looking at how I'm working to make sure I can continue to work.

7:38You sit around firing yourself. Can you tell us more about that? If I'm going to do more, I can't do the same thing, right? Because whatever I'm doing, the more doesn't live in those activities. So if I want to move up, I began to realize I need to kick myself out. So I literally would fire myself. I remember when we hired our chief marketing officer, Maya Lassery, who's amazing for seven bucks marketing. That was a fired position. I had taken a lot of the responsibilities of marketing as I was working with our production companies and DJ. And finally, I was like, okay, there is someone who's going to live in this world 24 seven, and she's going to do it so much better than I can.

8:17Because I need to do all these other things because she's greatly skilled. The last firing of myself was probably from the official role as Dwayne Johnson's manager. I fired myself. He was very gracious as I fired myself because I needed to move into a strategic advisory position over his enterprise in particular, which is ginormous. So yeah, I've become really comfortable. Once I start to have so much friction in the positions or I'm feeling a lot of frustration or even, you know, I'm spending a lot of time on minutiae and details, that I've begun to realize is the signal that it's time to fire myself and see if I can move up and advance my skills.

9:03Love to start diving into some of these companies. First, we'll start with GSTQ. Sure. GSTQ, I'm so glad you asked about that one first. It is my oldest brand IP property. It was conceived when I was a young teenager and I was, you know, we talked about entrepreneurs being born. Well, I think many of them were probably like me, very angsty in their young age and sort of looking at the world differently and not understanding why things happen the way they happen. And as a teenager, I had pretty strong aspirations for what I wanted to accomplish, but I had nothing that reflected that back to me.

9:42So one day in orchestra, I was a French horn player. We played the Royal National Anthem, God Save the Queen. I did not know that God Save the Queen was the title of the British National Anthem. I was so touched. I was so blown away by the idea that an entire nation is praying to God for the Queen that I was like, this is an amazing title. And so I would say to myself, I would just start writing GSTQ, GSTQ. And I would consider myself the queen. And I would say there's something bigger. And you know what? God saved the queen. And that's me. And I'm going to get there. And it became a mindset mantra, which actually carried with me all the way through to the initiation to the birth of GSTQ.

10:31So GSTQ was my idea of a fashion relationship that was built upon mindset and philosophy, that was built upon the idea that you will be polished to perform, that was built upon the idea that fashion could not only beautify you, but could be a support mechanism to get you to where you want it to be. Another aspect of GSTQ was for myself personally, as a bodybuilder and a woman who had to do so many different things, I had a passionate relationship with fashion. Things didn't fit. They were constricting. They were tight. I'm trying to move from one thing into a production meeting to, you know, meeting with my fellow CEOs.

11:10And I didn't have clothes that could move with me and also celebrate my athleticism. So that went into a lot of the fundamentals that are behind GSDQ and how we service our clients. Yeah, I love it. And can you tell us about kind of the early stages of bringing that to life? We started it, as I'm thinking now, in 21, probably three years ago was the process where we began with the ideation. Very similar to building out a franchise where a Marvel Universe. We spent a lot of time on what I call the GSTQ Bible. The birth of what this brand is, the relationship, the fundamental principles, how does it make people feel?

11:53So we had a very long philosophical period of time. And then we moved into the ideation of clothing and creativity. And then we ran smack into COVID. So COVID allowed us to continue. We had to pause, but we continued to refine. And then we were able to release the product just recently. But it was something that was overriding and sort of just quietly moving along as I was working on these other companies until we could finally bring it to fruition. Why did you spend so much time there on that piece? Well, when founders are going, going, which they're going because they internally know the idea, right?

12:34But in many cases, they haven't articulated it clearly. And GSTQ was going to be a, first of all, it's a lifelong project for me, but was also going to be something that needed a tremendous amount of expertise and support from other individuals. So that time, that time articulating and really pulling the philosophy and creating examples of what the philosophy looked like was vital so that all the team members could be very, very clear. The mindset approach to fashion is extremely rare. It's very, very unique. And to blend that in with the art and have them be rooted together or even have that philosophy be the platform that the art has to live on.

13:19You know, that's it. That feels different. And I wanted to make sure that all my team members were extremely comfortable and understood what that commitment meant. So that is really, I think that is extreme. That is absolutely the payoff when you do spend so much time before you actually start running. Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered. With proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs, and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success.

13:52Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Yeah, I see. And talk us through the challenges so far. I think the challenges have been challenges that individuals know. Factories shutting down, deliveries, getting the design for us and not being able to meet in person, not being able to meet our incredible manufacturing partners overseas in person and slowing down a bit. But luckily, the pacing, I actually am pleased to have a startup occur during a very constricted time, forces us to be conservative and cautious and really measure, measure.

14:41So it's almost like we have a quiet period to launch before everything is up and running. And we've utilized that. So we try to take advantage of all the moments. Yeah. And around the business model, direct-to-consumer, what's the vision? Is that the vision to stay a direct-to-consumer brand? What does 10 years look like? Talk us through it. Totally. So the, you know, the direct to consumer, I think that's for us, it's very important. I like the mediums. My mediums are comfortable, are very much rooted in storytelling. And this company in particular has a very strong film theatrical element to how we're communicating what this brand is.

15:22And that experience happens best on a media platform. So it's actually very aligned to direct to consumer. I see us naturally evolving to an experience where it's brick and mortar, but it won't occur until I can easily translate the theatrical moments of experiencing this brand and put it into a brick and mortar position. I want to bridge that. I don't want the experience to go in to our stores to be just like going into any store or an even marker. So it needs to be something that flows through. So that's going to take a little bit of time. But I'm not in a rush. I mean, we know how to communicate.

16:02We know how to, we do create experiences that are very grassroots, whether it's trunk shows or, you know, intimate sort of invitation only so people can experience and we can get that groundswell. But it's not something that I'm immediately rushing to. I do see the expansion of our line. I'd love to tackle men next, which actually has come back to me often from my peers, is, you know, when do we bring our philosophy into men's clothing? And I think very importantly, you have to strongly win in women's and men's before you would then extend into, for example, children's. I see a GSTQ as being a brand that will meet the needs of the consumers where they want to go.

16:48We want to build the credibility, have that design element, have sustainability in our process. But I'm very excited about continued expansion. Awesome. Well, look, we have a few more companies to go through. I'd love to talk about the XFL. First of all, I've been an athlete all my life and the XFL acquisition is one of my most exciting acquisitions to date. So the XFL, the second version of the XFL that happened in 2020, I was saddened because I wasn't a part of it. I have a great relationship with Vince McMahon. And when he actually launched it, I was like, darn, I really had wanted to be. And I was very, very pleased with the product they attempted to put on this field because they had a five week run.

17:31And then unfortunately, COVID really came and shut them down. And as a live event startup, they didn't have the financial metrics to support it. But those five weeks and the ethos and what they were able to capture and the innovation, the technology they were able to put on the field was very, very exciting to me. So when I found out that the company had been going through bankruptcy, I pulled together the team. We started to do some analysis. I called Dwayne Johnson up my partner and I said, I have a crazy idea. And he says, he actually tells the story as well. And he's like, I love crazy. Tell me, you know, I've called them numerous times with that.

18:13I have a crazy idea and it's taken us on great journeys. And then I shared with him the XFL and the, the full scope of what we could do with that incredible property in our hands. For Dwayne personally, not only is the XFL something he could see himself in because he did attempt to go to the NFL, wasn't successful, went up to the CFL, wasn't successful. If the XFL had been there, that would have been his next step. We always say this career was his plan B, but he did really well with plan B. But for us, we were looking at an opportunity to be the stewards of football in a 360 sort of viewpoint, multidimensionally, looking at everything that surrounds the football and taking responsibility for that.

19:06So how are the athletes experiencing it? How are the fans? How are our partners? How are our sponsors? How are our production partners? And we have a very specific point of view on how the storytelling and the interaction and how the XFL should be experienced and not watched. So we have just came back last this Monday from a full intensive in New York City as far as our XFL and our XFL rollout. So we're very, very excited. I would say historically, if you look at everything I've done, everything I've done in my last 28 some years has led to this moment when it comes to the XFL. It demands all of my expertise in all of the different areas to be able to do what I want to do with this property.

19:54It's quite a complex play. So like, yeah, I'd love to. Can we delve a little bit more on that? First of all, you have the complexity of the game of football in the United States, which you need to deliver at a level that's undeniable. So right there, those expectations and executions are its own sort of company in itself. And then what we're doing is we're wrapping around it. We're taking control of the entire universe that lives within football. And we're wrapping around it various elements of entertainment and media and expression and live events so that not only do you have the game and dynamic play, but you have football being a catalyst to other experiences.

20:42And in that, you start to garner great complexity. And that's all about execution. So I think one of the great things that I recognize, especially in partnership with Dwayne and in partnership with Redbird Capital, who are other partners in ownership of the XFL, is that we clearly bring a skill set that doesn't exist in major league sports. And that is where I see incredible opportunity. And that's where we have been building out the business plan to really take advantage of that expertise. So you've got to have an ace team right for the game, for the players, for how they're experiencing life.

21:23And then you have to overlay that with an additional set of skills to take care of every other aspect that touches the fans and touches your partners and touches how the game is being experienced. How is it being experienced with gaming? How is it being experienced on your phone? So, you know, the challenge is great, but it's been an incredible experience. I love the relationships. I love the people we have on board, the quality. To take on like a, you know, an acquisition like that and an industry like that, what kind of obsession is required to really understand it? Because it's like a totally different world.

22:02You need to immerse yourself, right? for the scope and size and the enormity of what the XFL is. It's a very loud project, right? It's very public facing and we're not even launched, but there's football in itself. You absolutely have to have an obsession. You have to have the fundamental tenants of entrepreneurism, of drive, drive, drive, create something new. There's not a model, but I'm going to go ahead and create a model. So though you have to have comfort in that skill set so that you can then look at the property fearlessly and be comfortable saying, okay, these are the directions and these are the elements we're going to add to football, which will not affect the institutionalization of the game, because that's the other thing.

22:52This is not a property that you can just change dramatically how the game is played. You have to honor that, But you still need to bring the elements of today, right? And today and tomorrow. So the amount of brain burn, I like to say, is great. And it doesn't have to be all my brain. But where I, that 40 % that only I can deliver or Dwayne can deliver, we have to be 100 % focused on that. So the rest of the, you know, the rest of the tenants of the game and a fantastic game and football operations and player personnel situations, you've got to have the best of the best in those positions so that there's nothing there but excellence.

23:37And then that allows you to focus in the areas and you have to be able to bridge it over. I have fantastic partners and I have an incredible group of individuals who believe in how I see the game and how Dwayne sees the game. And it's open to a point of view of female leadership. So I'm the chairwoman of the XFL. So my philosophies and my leadership fall over the entire sport of football. Male dominated sport. so you know that that that position is a major position but it also allows me to bring incredible value to the game so yes when you said you have to be obsessed you absolutely have to be obsessed and that's okay i think you know to to build anything of true worth and significance it has to be an obsession absolutely it can be a balanced obsession but it still has to be obsession I used to say early in the sort of Dwayne Johnson build out as I would bring team members in, I would have to say, you have to be able to run through a wall for this vision.

24:44Vision, you've got to be that person who can love even more passionately than maybe the individual you're focusing. The amount of will and the amount of inertia that you need to create to make fantastic things happen. There's a reason why I've been fortunate enough to have great success. And there's a reason that other people don't have that. They literally, this space that you just talked about, very few people want to enter into that space. And then if they enter, they don't recognize, they don't want to stay there. But that's the difference maker. I have to move to seven bugs. Can you talk us, like, first off, like, how does it feel to kind of produce some of the most successful films in the world?

25:33It is so satisfying. It's been a long, you know, it's been a long journey. I think we're 42 films in. I mean, we have quite a slate, but it is, you know, we are a unique production company. We have always gone into entertainment with two tenants. The tenant that I brought into sort of our seven bucks world is that all creative has to live in a return on investment box. Like we never move away from that. It makes us great partners for the studio. Very few producers come in with that point of view saying, we're going to speak to the bottom line before we even begin shooting. But the second and most important tenet is that we are audience first.

26:16So anything creative, we never just do it for ourselves. We make the decision as if the audience member is sitting right there next to us. That has allowed us to make decisions that have led to global success, that have led to this sort of four quadrant appeal. that we love. We love reach and extension. And I'm so proud of what the company has done. I'm proud of our team members and I love our projects. Can you talk us through kind of, I guess, the challenges that like an industry like that presents that others don't? The greatest challenge, I was actually, I was speaking with an independent producer or a journalist who covers a lot of independent and they said, isn't it much more difficult to do an independent film than to do a major blockbuster film.

27:06And I shared with them that it's actually so much more complex. When I do a$230 million budget film, I sign my name on that budget, as does Dwayne, as does my president of production, Hiram Garcia. We literally sign our names, authenticating that budget and the enormity of those dollars. You know, when you're doing a little bunt to first base or a single to first base as compared to you need a grand slam, a walk off grand slam, you know, those are two different things. So I think the major challenge has been getting, because the numbers are so great, because the risks are so high, you know, getting studios comfortable with your point of view as to filmmaking.

27:56And Dwayne and myself, we didn't enter Hollywood with any type of film connections or theatrical background or, you know, I came from finance, his entrance into entertainment was the WWE and we were not the norm. So we had to earn every step, every comment, every note that went into a script. We had to earn by having incredible success, but also by giving a perspective and a point of view that no one had ever heard before. So, you know, this audience first mentality, sort of articulating it and letting it be a why when we were talking about the marketing. So, even though we weren't producers, we were in marketing meetings, you know, we hadn't earned that spot yet.

28:41We always continuously over-delivered so people could understand that our philosophical filmmaking approach had true merit. So yeah, that was a slog. When you're coming in as such an outsider and such a different individual to finally get the industry to embrace that, yes, you have tastes, you know how to speak to the audience and you have reach and you know how to come in at budget, close to. It took some time. So why did you decide to kind of stop producing films? The decision was control, creative control. First of all, there was also a decision of, I want to, as far as enterprise build out, how are we going to professionalize around our creative skills and our audience first approach?