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00:00personal direction how about you Ty I mean I think the thing that I did that I'm glad I did
00:07I took a lot of chances early in my career and I made a lot of bold moves so you know I jumped
00:12without parachutes before kids before mortgages and all the responsibilities and I think two
00:18things right you pick up a lot of lessons along the way but it also teaches you that you can fly
00:23it teaches you that you can fall and fly again and I think once you have the muscle of failure
00:29or the muscle of trouble you have to figure out how to navigate around that then it gives you the
00:34courage and the confidence to know that you're able to handle whatever comes up if there was one
00:40thing I wouldn't have done as much of early on in my career I would say I would not have tried to
00:45contort myself to the spaces that I was in right I you know you observe a lot and it's like oh that's
00:52the blueprint for leadership or that's the model for success and ultimately anything that I've
00:59achieved in life has been when I'm operating out of my core my center of excellence which looks a lot
01:04different than how someone else might show up and I was pretty far along in my career before I got that
01:09lesson so I've not had the experience that you two have of being able to work for an entertainment
01:18company that's founded primarily and operated by black executives it's a hard experience to come by
01:26and we I think we could probably spend two days talking about the differences is how we have to
01:33show up in different boardrooms or conference rooms what would you talk you know as what would you say
01:41as a black woman being I mean I could talk about this to being in more traditional companies who are
01:47looking into moving to high level positions and also how is it even navigating in your roles in your
01:54companies because sometimes it's hard with us you know I mean like yeah I know yeah I know it could
02:00be hard as a black boss how I treat people in making sure that they show up and making sure that we show
02:06up and not embarrass ourselves if you know what I mean so y'all know what I mean by that right so
02:11for both of you Ty you want to start sure you know like I said I took some chances and my career was
02:19my or has been to date much more of a river than a ladder so you know it's been some meandering and
02:25wandering but purpose driven and ultimately goal driven so you know I've worked for marketing agencies
02:31where we marketed a UK based marketing firm where we marketed everything from missiles to aerospace and
02:36defense clients I've been with the big for holding companies and advertising WPP and publicist I worked
02:44at Sony I worked at Facebook Lionsgate and that's how I ended up in business with Kevin and some of
02:51those until I got to a point where not only was I working with Kevin but when we took the company
02:56independent and bought out the majority of our initial investor in Lionsgate did I have an experience of
03:02being in a space where I was completely reflected and surrounded by folks who look like me and because
03:08the business was moving so fast I don't know if I absorbed that fully the comfort and the lack of an
03:15external gaze and because there are other hard things that came with that job or with this job
03:20so I don't know if I understood the switch until we were out raising capital and I became conscious of it
03:26because not only was I you know a bit insulated by you know working for this black owned black lead
03:32company but it's also helmed by you know one of the most commercially successful entertainers of our
03:37time so you get a lot a good bit of air cover and we went out to the market to raise capital we took on a
03:43hundred million from a private equity for minority investment as in growth capital we merged his two
03:50entertainment companies this is last year and we i never saw ourselves reflected on the other side
03:56and i was leading the capital raise and you know all of a sudden even the entertainment value only got
04:01you so far and i forgot what it felt like to be questioned i would have people telling me things like
04:07you're so articulate about the business i'm like i run in i run it how would i not be um or you know the
04:15passive aggressive moments and in diligence and so um it gave me a different appreciation but on the
04:22same time being in these roles and interested to hear your experience you can sometimes feel like
04:27everything you do is representative right everything carries more weight you don't get to fail the same
04:31way you don't get to have the same kind of slip ups and as a black woman it's doubly so right because
04:37these archetypes of strong black women all capable all-encompassing leaders um it puts a weight on your back
04:43sometimes that if you if you buy into that it can be suffocating no absolutely and you know before uh
04:51bt i ran hype williams's big dog film so another black owned company but different it wasn't as corporate
04:58as uh bt and i've had those same experiences where you know outside of your your circle your corporate
05:05circle you get questioned differently and you get held like little things uh you get pressed upon a little
05:12differently and i think you know going in early it was it kind of just drove that passion that you
05:18know what i want to do it as much as i can i want to sit across from people who look like us i want to
05:24sit across i want to bring our companies up i want to bring our directors up i want to bring you know
05:29people that that get it you know and i think as black women i think you always you know we we deal with so
05:36much anyway whether it's imposter syndrome and that pressure that's put on you know your back because
05:42you have to succeed you feel you have to succeed because if you don't you're the representative for
05:48everyone yes i mean in every in all things right we always feel that way and and i um have encouraged
05:56my team and myself to take that word imposter syndrome that phrase out of our you know uh our dialogue
06:03our our vocabulary because i think that's what other people try to put on us to make us feel like
06:08you know that we don't belong there we're not supposed to be there so we're there it's impossible
06:13like it's it's the thing that has been assigned to us and you know growing up in an industry um and
06:20you know look i've had a great career of working starting my career at abc sports my senior year of
06:24college i kind of felt like i had to change to be in the rooms that i was in all the time you know whether it
06:32was in the room with the people from sports you know talking about you know like you know locker
06:37you know locker room mentality or whether it was working for abc entertainment or any of the other
06:43companies it was to do that and then what i learned quickly is is that my value add is me being my most
06:49authentic self coming into those rooms having a challenging point of view and not being the same so
06:57like even if you i would say to anyone not growing up in a company that is solely black owned or black
07:03run by black executives still recognize that you are a cultural ad and stop being a cultural fit
07:10because that is the value of us what we do here so so connie the job market today for nearly every
07:18industry is really unpredictable we were just talking about that um people have become more accustomed to
07:24switching companies every few few years but you've been at bet for 15 years and you've held several
07:30positions and killed at each and every one of them may i add um do you think that remaining at a company
07:39for so a long period of time is crucial when the goal is to become a leadership executive so i think
07:45there's two ways right so i if i were to be honest i did not when i started at bett i wasn't like oh i'm
07:51just gonna be here i was like i'm gonna be here for two years and i'm gonna go on to the next thing
07:55but i think you know being at a company that's just so passionate about empowerment engaging and
08:00entertaining it just became an ideal and i i think for my journey and there were times in that 15 years
08:07i was like okay i think it's time to go i've done this but an elevation would come and you know i'm
08:13endlessly curious and i always want to be challenged and push forward so for me i think the benefits of
08:20staying at a company is you know bt is a smaller company it's big but it's small but i was able to
08:27learn the business in a way that i couldn't um i was able to to create lanes for myself and i think
08:35as we look at this stuff it's not only what the business can do for you i mean you can do for the
08:39business but you have to look at these places like what can the business do for you yes it's very
08:44important and um my elevation ahead of programming happened because i had done every genre of
08:52programming i had been there i knew the business of it and you know where you know god blesses you
08:58i had everything and i thought that that you know so that's a benefit of really getting to know a
09:03company but if you don't feel you're being challenged if you don't feel that it's adding
09:08to your journey or where you want to go i would never suggest someone just stay you have to really
09:13look at the culture at your company is there growth or is there you know are you going to be
09:17in your position not even because you're not good you can be great but if there's no head count and
09:23no movement you can't move so you kind of come up with a plan like okay i'm gonna get this for three
09:28years and i'm gonna do that but if you see those little opportunities like okay i may have to stay in
09:33this position for for a little while but while i'm here i'm going to create this initiative while i'm
09:37here i'm going to do things you got to be strategic about what you can get from your company too i love
09:44that and and know your worth right because if you don't know your worth no one else is going to know
09:48it right so that is for sure ty talk about your heartbeat journey from working with the lol network
09:54under lionsgate to becoming the ceo of kevin hart's startup company specifically what are some of the
10:00differences in running a startup as a ceo versus what it took to be an executive at a major company
10:05yeah um so so it's interesting i i always fashioned myself an intrapreneur before i was in a truly
10:15entrepreneurial um function i always wanted to be um i always took a sort of p l mindset to whatever i
10:23was doing even from a marketing perspective so i always said how am i tying myself to revenue how am
10:27i tying myself to business outcomes how does what do i do connect to what the company does and and that's
10:33a part of establishing value and ultimately it's a part of um you know sort of accruing kind of
10:39leadership capital right in whatever organization and i don't mean but if you are that has nothing to
10:44do with title right that has to do with like the impact and the acknowledgement for the impact because
10:50there's this whole element of merchandising what you're doing someplace um you know when i came to to
10:56lions gate was what was interesting was um you know it was it was one of those it was a personally driven
11:03decision because i had come off the heels of a really difficult fertility journey and i had conceded
11:08that and i was at i was at facebook at the time and i was just unhappy like you know facebook was a great
11:13company and um but my life i felt like i had kind of like hit a wall right um yeah i was i checked all the
11:22boxes i thought i needed to check it was you know i went to you know school got married got me a morehouse
11:26man like we moved to new york together we had a cool um you know apartment in the city we both had
11:32big jobs and then i got to this part i went to go freeze my eggs and i found out this is going to be
11:37much more difficult two failed rounds of ivf later and having turned down another job that was a bigger
11:42job at lions gate i found myself just wanting to get out of la and i say that because this was the river
11:48right so it wasn't like this i'm stepping into a big job to run kevin hart's company it was i need
11:53a change of scenery i came to lions gate to take a job with their partnership with kevin and um to
12:00launch laugh out loud at the time and i immediately got pregnant without assistance won't he do it won't
12:07he do it honestly um and it was one of those everything everywhere kind of all at once moments and so
12:15here i was you know having a baby building a business um and it felt and i felt supercharged
12:22not by the fact that i was trying to check boxes but i was reignited about what was possible right
12:27and i think what was really great is and what is very accelerating and this is when you talk about
12:31sponsorship is what sponsorship looks like you know mentorship is someone telling you how to do
12:35the thing right and wrapping their arms around you and giving you some guidance and sponsorship looks
12:39like saying you know if you've ever seen goodfellas and they say oh he's a good fella he's one of us
12:45it's like saying oh no she's got the spot this is her moment take the job you don't you don't necessarily
12:51i believe you can do it you don't have to over qualify yourself like she's with us come on and i was
12:55really fortunate to you know be partnered with kevin and i think jeff clannigan's on the program later
13:01and i used to report to jeff right and at the time i had a vision about what laugh out loud
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