August 13, 2025 • 48 mins
Bonnie Hammer spent decades running the most high-pressure, male-dominated rooms in entertainment as the former Vice Chair of NBCUniversal — launching hits like Suits, Mr. Robot, and The Sinner along the way. Now, she’s telling the truth about the “empowering” career advice that’s actually holding women back.
In this conversation, we dive into her new book 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work…and the Truth We Need to Succeed, breaking down why “just work hard,” “your work speaks for itself,” and “know your worth” can keep women small, silent, and stuck. Bonnie shares how to lead without hardening, the underestimated traits that make women incredible leaders, and what success looks like when you finally choose yourself.
It’s an honest, career-meets-self-worth conversation about ambition, boundaries, and redefining power on your own terms.
All Things Bonnie: bonnie-hammer.com
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Email us: theedge@velvetsedge.com
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HOSTS:
Kelly Henderson // @velvetsedge // velvetsedge.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Conversations on life, style, beauty, and relationships. It's The Velvet's
Edge Podcast with Kelly Henderson.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Fannie Hammer is the former vice chair of NBC Universal,
where she spent decades running the most high pressure, male
dominated rooms and entertainment. Now she's stepping forward with a
new book, Fifteen Lives Women Are Told at Work and
the Truth We Need to Succeed, where she calls out
the advice that sounds empowering, like just work hard, know
(00:32):
your worth, your work speaks for itself. That can actually
keep women small, silent and stuck. Hi, Vannie, I'm so
happy to meet you. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
That's my pleasure, and I'm looking forward to chatting me too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I feel like you are a wealth of knowledge for
the women out there. I mean we just mentioned the
male dominated rooms that you've worked in in the entertainment industry,
and I know you've just had this unbelievable career, starting
from the assistance position up into what was called the
Queen of cable at one point. But when you look back,
(01:06):
I want to know what do you think actually set
you apart to have such success in such a male
dominated world.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I think there were a couple of things.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
If I really go back, I think it starts with
my dad. And my dad as I was growing up,
because he was a Russian immigrant, his only thing to
me and to my brother were there's no such word
as camp. If you can't do something, you're simply not
trying hard enough. So I started with that, and then
(01:35):
as a young kid, I went to summer camp, and
I when I was really really young, so my mom
had a heart attack and my father didn't know what
to do with me, so he was friends with some
owners of the camp up in the Catskills was known
as zaborsche Belt at the time, and I wasn't six yet,
and I was sleep away camp with a bunch of
(01:56):
kids and luckily a family that least knew me, and
I learned at a very very early age how to
work with other people or kids, how to be a
team player, you know, how to collaborate, how to kind
of in a sense that wasn't a room. It was
an ugly bunk with no air conditioner a fan kind
(02:18):
of read the room of the kids. Because being the youngest,
I had to figure out how to fit in, and
I think that really helped me navigate much much later
in life, and I don't think I realized any of
it till hindsight set and I started looking back on
why I made certain decisions, how I got where I did,
(02:40):
and why. So a lot of this is in hindsight
in terms of how or why I think I succeeded
in a very crazy at the time. I was growing
up in a male dominated world, and I owe a
lot to my dad and to early experiences knowing how
to get a and knowing how to see what was
(03:02):
going on in front of me and not having to
I didn't have to own the success of winning in
a game. I gave it away to others because it
was better, nicer, It showed a bit of humility, which
I see now that I probably did it out of insecurity.
But there are all tools that I turned into strengths
(03:22):
later on in life.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I mean, you're referencing when you were six, So
this starts really early for us, which is always something
we talk about on this podcast, kind of the programming
that we start to, you know, put into our own
lives and in our own processes that we don't even
realize that we're doing. So if you started at six
learning how to work with the group or turning over
(03:45):
the winning How did that play into your early days
of starting in the TV business.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
For me, I was very insecure when I was young,
and because I was in my early early days at
camp younger than everybody else in the room, and then
I skipped a grade at one point, so again I
was a year younger. I think I always felt a
little insecure, and that insecurity drove some oddly positive things.
(04:13):
I would be watchful of other people because I didn't
want to try to compete. I've learned to be humble
and have a little humility, so people would want me
in their group rather than me being the young one
trying to prove myself and you know, be arrogant about something,
so they would even you know, tease me more. I
(04:34):
think a lot of stuff started by being a little
insecure and not having the confidence, and as I grew up,
I realized that was a you know, like a phenomenal
tool that when you really define it later in life,
it's true humility.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It's being humble, it's.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Being willing to give the wins to somebody else, and
it shows you what that happens if you can work
with others play with others, give other people the kudos
for doing something good. It creates a loyalty, creates a
sense of team, a sense of collaboration, and people want
to be around you, and in my case wanted to
(05:16):
work for me and that really helped a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So it was an incredible tool.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Well, so when I first was listening to you say
these things and then also just thinking about that, I
might have thought, oh, well, these are lies that she
probably believed that she needs to play a part of.
But one of the main things that kept coming up
when I was researching for this podcast was your mentality
about women actually taking things that we should look at
as skill sets that we have, which is what I'm
(05:44):
hearing in this talk of being humble. We look at
them as weakness, right because of the way our society
has developed. I don't typically love to like hate on
men for being one way and women for being another.
I think it's the way we have looked at success
of the last couple of years has been in a
male dominated field that has been defined by some of
(06:06):
those energies, and maybe that's shifting a little bit. Can
you speak to that though, of what you see women
play like really dismissing within ourselves and our skill sets
we can bring to the workplace.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Two things about what you just said, okay, is in
order to support women or ourselves, we don't have to
necessarily put down the guys.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yea.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
You know they play the game one way, women play
it the other. Yes, what women do which is problematic,
they don't own what is really part of the DNA
or the chemistry of women.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We are natural caregivers.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Our chromosomes, our body types basically, you know, create hormones
that are very very positive. They we as caregivers, as
people who have children, we learn how to play again,
aim very differently than the guys. But we look too
often we look at that as weaknesses. Warm caregiving, collaboration,
(07:10):
taking care of things, being a detailed person, juggling stuff.
We don't necessarily say believe these things are strengths, when
in fact are incredible strengths. You know, when you think
about how men and women differ in terms of disagreements,
you know, men want to win the war. Women kind
(07:31):
of want to bury the hatchet. They just want it
over with and want to move ahead. And again, unfortunately,
both society and some workplaces look at that as weakness
when it's a phenomenal strength, and how to negotiate a
win win as opposed to have to be the winner.
There are so many things in our world that we
view as weaknesses for women, especially warmth, collaborations, sympathy, empathy,
(07:56):
things that create loyalty, which are phenomenal strengths in the workplace,
but we don't own the credit for it.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. Well, I think even the talking about being humble,
and you said so many people wanted to work for you,
and I was thinking about, you know, I'm in a
freelance position, so I have various bosses and it's so
interesting because the ones that I want to do my
best work, that I'm really dedicated to that are the
ones that make it a team effort when we win.
(08:26):
And I wondered if there was one particular lesson that
you could speak to about that kind of thing about
being the boss or being in a position of power,
and how we've kind of miss miss I don't know,
have set ourselves up for failure in these ways of
the team winning and the whole company winning by maybe
that person not taking all of the credit.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Not many leaders understand that ultimately, if your team, if
your show. If your product, whatever it is, makes it
regardless who has a credit or you give credit to
or the world does, it's ultimately your win. You can
sit back just kind of ass quietly in the success.
(09:11):
So for me, I never had to take the credit
for anything. I try to hire really good people around
me and when I hired. If I were to hire Kelly,
it would be okay, she grated her skill set.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Does she know what she's doing?
Speaker 4 (09:27):
But in an interview, I would want to see how
often you gave credit.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
To someone else. I would want to.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
See or hear, you know, is she talking just about
herself or she asking questions? You know, I want to
look at how you deal or navigate in your former
world the present world, and how you deal with me
to understand if you're a team player. And that would
be as important, sometimes more important in terms of my
(09:56):
hiring you for our team, because I wanted people who
were team players, because if we win, we all win.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And anybody who thinks producing a.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Show, creating a show, you know, creating a channel, if
you will, is a single person's job.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
They're nuts.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
It really really takes a huge team to get it done,
and you have to be in sync. I never wanted
one person in a room, and I had everybody read scripts,
even if they were finance people. You read the script,
I want your opinion. We're going to take notes, put
it up on our little chalkboard and talk about why
(10:36):
you liked it, why you didn't like it.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It doesn't matter that you're not a creative. Can you
relate to it?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
So it got people invested in the product, so then
they become the person. Instead of saying, you know, you're
of a budget, their approach will be, let's figure out
how we can manipulate this budget to make the show work.
They were invested, so for me, it was really important
have team players in every aspect of a job, creating
(11:04):
a culture that was supportive of one another, rather than
people raising the hands and said I did that, I
should get there.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I want that. And it's funny.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Later in my career, I heard once or twice that
Bonnie's teams she has a cult, and I would always say,
it's not a culture off by three letters, it's a
culture people they wanted to continue working with one another.
I had people on my teams for multiple decades because
(11:37):
they were happy they got the credit for stuff they
were well paid, but they felt good about what they did.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I also broke rules that created some loyalty.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
And this is funny that I can admit now, but
I couldn't really talk about it at the time. When
any of the women on my team's had a kid,
I made a quiet deal with them that they had
a four day work they're getting paid for five, that
whenever I needed them, I needed them. Other than that,
I wanted them home early. I want them to do
(12:08):
what they needed to do to take care of their family,
et cetera. But I never told up a management. To me,
it was really important because I did not have that,
and I remembered how polled I was, and the loyalty
that something as simple as that created for the women
who work with inf me was incredible. All they want
(12:28):
them to do is get back because I had such freedom,
and I never cared where they were, and I never
wanted them to lie to me. If they were going
to a kid's softball game, just tell me where you're going.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Don't pretend you're going to a meeting.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
My thing would be great, fine, or it's today's not
a good day to do that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We're under a lot of pressure and it worked.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Do you find those to be qualities that a female
leader might be able to exhibit more than a male leader.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
I do, because I think many women in any industry
are juggling, and even though guys have families, they usually
have someone at home taking care of everything. We as
a caregivers. Even if we have a nanny or we
have help at home, we still primarily the mother. It
(13:20):
is innate in us that we feel we have to
juggle and are responsible for everything. So I think the
empathy level, the degree of commitment to it is harder,
and we are juggling more. Even if we refuse to
admit it publicly or you know, when we're in the
room in a meeting with everybody, it's still something that's
(13:43):
on our minds. I remember once going to a elementary
school meeting with whoever we had to meet with at
the time, and my kid was probably in second grade,
and I got recommended back then, and we're talking about
many years ago. He's thirty two, know, but I got
reprimanded because I asked for a seven point fifteen one
(14:04):
of the guys meeting times, because I had to make
a train to get to the city, to get to work,
and the principal actually gave me a little bit of
a lecture about being a working mom in those days,
to the point that I got on the train and
I started crying and told my husband from the train saying,
I don't know if I can do this. And it
(14:26):
was a lecture about being a.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Working mom, which a man would never get.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I think that a lot of women are kind of
brought up in this scarcity mindset of if I want,
she can't have, and there's only so many spaces for
each of us. And I really respect the fact that
you talk about being a leader from this place of no,
we're all in the same team. So is that something
you really felt like you had to buck against even
more as a woman.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You hit something very very important that unfortunately still exists.
I'm not sure why it didn't envelop me in the
same way, but I always told it was very important
for me to have women on my team, very strong women,
and my teams were always at least half women, and
(15:26):
it was interesting it was probably half women of the guys.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Half the guys were gay, and it.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Made for a really fun, collaborative, great team. The one
thing I've realized, which is very, very hard, because it's
not going away. Too many women who are succeeding right
now do not support other women to the degree that
they have to, simply because their belief is if there's
(15:51):
only one seat at the table, I want to get it,
and if I bring up others or if I support
other women to two greater degree, they may get it
and I won't. And what they don't understand is until
we have more women in the C suites, nothing's going
to change. And it doesn't mean that guys shouldn't be
(16:13):
there and there shouldn't be equal representation for everyone. I
really believe in that. But women need to support other
women rather than be competitive with them, negatively competitive with them,
because it's just going to hurt everybody. And I do
think it's because of the scarcity of those positions as
(16:35):
opposed to just human nature of women just wanting to compete.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think it's just fear get.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
If they bring someone else up, it means they have
less of a chance of getting there, and it's a
little it's bullshit, And I think other women need to
support other women because the more women in the C suites,
the better off are all going to be in terms
of building teams, in terms of empathy, in terms of loyalty,
in terms of the traits that we possess.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
How do we get over that threat feeling? Though you know,
I actually really resonate with the way that you operate,
because to me, it's always been a mentality of the
more of us there is, the more impact we have.
But I've just really faced in my life the opposite,
where the higher I got, the more people, specifically women,
(17:25):
I felt, would want to tear me down. And that
was always shocking to me. So how do we let
go of that threat?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Part of it is negatively confronting. It is not going
to work, but it's almost like a reverse humiliation. It's
basically saying, you know, confronting in a kind way, saying
you know, I'm trying to work together with you.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
What can I do to help you.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Part of it is figuring out what their agenda is
and figuring out how to get a yes from them
that helps you and helps them at the same time.
So for me, it's a piece of reading the room.
Why is she reacting that way to me? Is she
threatened by me? Is she threatened by something I've done.
Is she threatened only because she doesn't think that she
(18:12):
wants competition for that role that she envisions up there.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And figuring out a.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Way to kind of read her and get her to
support your agenda while you support hers almost kind of
be threatening her by figuring out what you can do
to help her out, rather than building up more of
a wall and a resentment to her.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That just feeds into her cause.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And my thing is trying to break other people down
so they see I'm not a threat and I really
want to work with them. And if I try a
couple of times it doesn't work, then I just chalk
it off the board and say, you know, something not
going to happen, Bye bye. But I usually give people
the benefit of the doubt, wants or twice to figure
(19:00):
out what their agenda is. Try to see if we
can figure out how to get our agendas together and
work together or help one another.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
If it doesn't work, at least I know I've.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Tried, right, You've given it the effort. Well, let's talk
a little bit about the book. It's called Fifteen Lives
Women Are Told at Work. Obviously, you have tons of
experience from all of the years in the entertainment industry
and even the positions of leadership that we've just been discussing.
I need to know that what made you want to
write all of these down and put into a book.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
First of all, it was a pandemic.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I was, for the.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
First time in my life not commuting to New York,
you know, back and forth, so I had like four
extra hours in a day, so I had the time,
so that was available.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
The other thing was I mean, I was at a point.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
In my career where I really felt I wanted to
figure out a way to pay things forward. You know,
how do I help You know, the women who worked
with and for me or in the company that even
if they didn't work for me, they knew they can
come to me for advice is one thing, But how
do I reach out to others and in a sense
(20:10):
create a mentor in a pocket so I could pay
it forward to other women who are younger trying to negotiate,
you know, and navigate the path to growing in a business,
in any business, not just media. I also thought it
would be good for guys too, but unfortunately Simon and Schuster.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Said, no, we wonder for women. So we need to
market it air for it's going to be women, right, guys.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
But a lot of men have read the book and
they've been really appreciative of it as well. So it
was wanting to figure out a way to help others
in a broader way than just basically mentoring those that
I see every day at work. And then also realizing
if I had listened to so many of these cliches
(20:59):
when I was young, I think I would have fallen
flat on my face and no way in hell succeeded.
So I started thinking through all the cliches that we
have been brought up to believe from you know, the
basic ones, follow your dreams so you can have it
all to find friends in high places, and each one
(21:19):
that I went through was no.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
That's wrong, that's wrong.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
And to me it was like, how do I create
a manual for success? Because if people believe these cliches,
it is self sabotage. So to simplify it, I got okay,
so what is the uncommon common sense that women need
to succeed as opposed to a manual of bullshit? And
(21:48):
the other thing I realized was there's so many advice
books out there, but so few books about bad advice.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh, I've never thought of that. That's so true.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, it's you know, everyone's giving advice, but no one's
knocking the bad advice that we're getting.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right right, Well, and the way the book is set
up is so brilliant because you say, you say the myth,
which like follow your dreams, and then you say the truth,
and that's obviously coming from all of these years of experience.
Can we use the follow your dreams for an example
to tell the listeners just kind of how this book
is set up, So you say, follow your dreams is
(22:26):
the myth, and then the truth was remind me of
follow the opportunities, follow the opportunities. Yes, explain that a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Well, we've all been brought up with since we're little kids,
whether it's a parent or a school teacher, you know,
or a grandparent whispering in our ears. You know, if
you follow your passion, you're never going to work a
day in your life. But the reality is you can't
be what you can't see, you can't dream.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
What you don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
So following your dreams can actually be nightmare advice because
you're learning something the age of six and seven that
gets ingrained in your brain cells. You have no clue
what that really means in real life, you know, And
even if it comes to you on your own when
you're six years old, you know, playing baseball, Oh I
want to be a baseball star, or of course you
(23:21):
took in high school, you still have no idea what
that really means in real life. And until you get
to a point where you can experience a variety of things,
you really have no clue what that adult dream will
turn out to be that's actually doable. You know, are
you an introvert or an extrovert. It's going to determine
(23:43):
whether you going to wear and work at home or
are you going to need a big environment. You don't
know that as a child or even as a young adult,
especially these days when so many people are saying, oh, yes,
you can work remotely. Is that how you want to
live your life? Or do you want to be in
the room where things are happening. So you have to
(24:03):
experience a whole lot of different things in order for
you to find out what you're good at, what makes
you happy, what fits your personality, what you can succeed at.
And you're not going to find that in a dream
does mean that.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
For me.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
For example, my dream was photography, and I you know,
went to school for it.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
I was in Vota journalism.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And then in between undergraduate and graduate, I had three
different or four different photo jobs and each one I hated.
One was in the dark room and my lovely manicured
nails at the time would turn yellow from the hyphone the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Chemicals, andody wants that.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
And then I graduated to be with a commercial photographer
in his studio, but everything was artificial. It was artificial light,
artificial flowers, artificial water on the flowers, and I realized, no,
I like Cardia abras On, I want the decisive moment,
and that I was a photo editor taking photographs that
I would connect to other people's photographs, to other people's words.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
That was boring.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So I ended up realizing that photography was a passion,
but it wasn't something that was going to make me
a living and make it a happy living. So the
reality is, you know, you can have a passion, but
it doesn't have to be your boss. Find out what
you can do, what you like doing in a work
(25:30):
world that fits your personality, and keep that other thing.
It doesn't mean you're throwing it away, but it doesn't
have to be your paycheck.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I always get so upset when i'd talk to, you know,
high schoolers and they're thinking, oh, at eighteen, I've got
to decide what i want to do with the rest
of my life, because in my experience that has evolved
so much. And in fact, I used to feel a
little bit of shame about that because I wasn't one
of those people that knew what they wanted to do
for the rest of their life at ten years old
(26:00):
or something like that. I used to think that meant
I wasn't as talented. But the truth is is like
this job that I'm doing right now, this didn't even
exist when I was in college, So how would I
have known. But another thing you talk about being so
important in your adult life in the work world is
knowing how to adapt and change and really like letting
(26:20):
go of some of these things that we just have
deemed as the way that it needs to go, and
then that shifting and the feeling like that's a failure,
but instead looking at that as like a new opportunity.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Exactly what you're saying is one hundred percent true. There
are a couple of pieces of that. As we said,
you can't be what you can see. How do you
know about podcasts before it existed? It Until you get
exposed to it later online and open to it, it
would have passed just it would have just been a
(26:55):
by gone There's no way I wanted to try that
because it wasn't my passion. But the thing that I
think affects everybody, male and female, but I think female
a little bit more is change and the ability to
embrace change and not run from it. It is more
often threatening than positive and optimistic. But the truth is
(27:19):
the only thing that is constant life is change. Regardless
of your age, your stage, your wage, It's going to
come at you, so you might as well embrace it
and use that as a stepping stone to your next step.
When I talk about opportunities, when you think about what
the world is like right now. If you have an
(27:41):
idea of what you want to do, and you climb
a ladder, get to a certain place and then there's
a ceiling, there's nowhere else you can go because you
get to the top of that space and it's gone.
I look at opportunities as the way to create a
spider web where you keep trying different things and then
eventually you're going to find something you love.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
But you have such a great skill.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Set that, for example, when AI comes and your job
goes away, you have other things to fall back on.
Because you just go on a singular path. It gives
you such breath as opposed to a ladder which you
hit a ceiling, that you can almost do anything in
everything because you're willing to try things, You're willing to experiment,
(28:30):
you're willing to test yourself out, and it gives you
such great opportunities that you'll always be able to find
something to fit into because you're not narrow, You're not
to find by one skill set.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I feel like we are living out right now one
of the beautiful qualities that a female leader would have,
and that is giving yourself grace and walking with yourself
through life versus saying it is this path. It's like
we're letting go of the structure a little bit, and like,
that's what I hear you saying. A lot is kind
of learning how to flow with the way that life
goes exactly. Isn't that the way that life works?
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yes, Whether you know, people think that if they are
rigid and can stay in the lane, they're going to
automatically get or eventually get where they want to go.
The reality is it makes you so rigid that you
aren't open to other people, other opportunities.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
You're going to miss out.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
On meeting people who can take you in a whole
other direction, you know, enjoying life that you would have
never expected because you were too fearful of trying it.
It opens up so many different doors if you just
are willing to experiment, to try things, realize you're going
to trip, You're going to fail, and that's okay, get up,
(29:51):
that's yourself off and try something else. But don't look
at it again. Don't look at it as a failure.
Look at it as all right. I love that, Let's
move on.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, I think that's such a big lesson. Well, we
talk about burnout a lot on this podcast, and I
went through a really big season of it, and my
listeners walked through me with that. I'm curious if you
being in such I mean, that job to me sounds
so demanding, and I know you have a family as well,
and so did you ever feel like there was a
(30:22):
point where you were losing yourself to the grind and
not being able to balance in the way that you
said you would give even your female employees kind of
that grace.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You never feel balanced, I don't, okay.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Anybody says when they're living in the moment or looking
back at it, if you are truthful, especially if you're
a woman with a family, you are never in balance.
You are always feeling you're cheating on something. When I
would be at work, I always felt I was cheating
(30:55):
on my kids. When I was on vacation, I always
thought I was cheating on my colleagues that I left
in the workplace taking over what I wasn't doing for
that week or two weeks. It is, by nature something
that you have to come to terms with that you're
always going to feel out of balance, and only in
(31:16):
hindsight where you believe you succeeded in having it all
that when you're living through it, you're always going to
feel somehow that you're giving up or not hurting somebody,
but letting somebody down, either in the workplace or outside.
But when people realize that that's normal and that's okay,
(31:38):
is when it's healthy. When it gets into your system
to a degree where you can't lose it. That's when
I worry. But that's usually when people don't realize that
every other woman with a family who is in a
position is feeling the same way, and it's okay, right,
okay to feel that way, because that's how it is.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, if you got to your final position and you
were I would say at the top, what did confidence
feel like? What did that look like for you in
a manner of confidence? Did it feel any different from
any other time in your life or is there always
kind of the same energy of I want to do
the best that I can. I'm kind of striving to
(32:18):
chase these things. I'm working on the balance of my
balancing my family and my work life.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
What did it feel like?
Speaker 4 (32:26):
It's a complicated question because I don't think anyone ever
feels that they they are at a point where they
can't learn more, or can't do better, or can even
succeed further. I think that's always somehow out in the ether.
But for me, the difference was once I got to
(32:50):
a certain place and when I was of a certain age,
I became a gender free.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
I no longer was.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Navigating my work way or anything else I was doing
with a specific agenda in mind. I got to a
point where all I wanted to do was the right thing,
whether it was for my team, for a project, for
the boss, whatever. I wasn't looking for more money, I
wasn't looking for the next position. I wasn't looking to
(33:22):
take over the world. You become comfortable in your own
skin that you literally are doing things for all the
right reasons, not for any other reason of growth, money,
anything else other than because you believed it was the
way to go. And that to me was incredible freedom.
(33:43):
That it was when I looked at a situation, I
wasn't trying to figure out whether the decision I was
making for any other reason than the purity of the decision,
Was it the right decision for the team, for the project,
for whatever, as opposed to, well if we do this,
we'll get another show, if we work with that company, Well,
(34:06):
there was no agenda other than for this thing that
I'm making decision about, or for this person or for
the team, is this the right thing to do?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
To me, that was very free.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I can't remember where I read this about you, but
I remember reading something that said you have said now
that you really just want to be in service to
others at the stage of your life. And I wondered
what success looks like for you now, because it sounds
like it probably looks very different.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Well, I don't even think I would use the word
success anymore. I think that so much more with navigating
a work world.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
I think contentment.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
I think a different kind of happiness, freedom in a
lot of ways. But for me, it's about paying it forward,
it's giving back. I have been very lucky. I have
had an amazing career, working with and for some amazing people,
having some incredible mentors, and I've.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Been very lucky.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
It's not to say it didn't work my butt off,
but it takes more than just work. It takes a
lot of luck, and it takes a lot of people
to kind of help you get where you're ultimately where
I ultimately got to, and I'd want to help others
kind of get to that place. I want to be
a mentor to, you know, those who've worked with me before.
(35:36):
Even though I'm not technically with NBC anymore, I'm still
getting calls every single week, people wanting to know how
to navigate a certain situation. Being that companies are being
restructured now and it just gives me great happiness to
be able to help them again because I have mistaken it.
So what ever advice I'm giving them is pure. There's
(36:01):
no reason I'd be telling them to go in one
direction over another other than I believe it to be
the right thing for them at that moment, where years
ago you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
It was never completely clean.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
There was always another agenda or is it good for
this team? Am I losing them? Or are they going
to somewhere else? It wasn't as this is freeing and
it's part of being agenda free, but also it's pure,
and you can't it takes a long time in your
life to get back to that purity. It's almost as
(36:38):
if when we were very young, you know, and even
starting out in the work business, we didn't know anything
else other than the purity of trying to be or
get where we wanted to go. There was no other motivations.
We didn't know they're needed to be right. Almost feel
(36:59):
I'm back at that stage of a young kid that
has no other motivation other than to try to do
the right thing right.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
So it's a purity. It's a purity freedom.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I know you mentioned the word mentor, and another thing
you talk about is the importance of the truth teller
as the mentor, not just someone who's going to kind
of tell you what you want to hear, or the
nice thing of how good of a job you're doing,
that's going to shoot you straight. Can you speak to that,
because I think that is the opposite of which what
most of us seek when we're looking for a mentor.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
I think we've been brought up to believe that mentors
are cheerleaders. They're the people who are going to pat
you on the back or the people who are going
to say, oh, you're so good, keep going, just get
in there, and it's those are lovely to have. And
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have some cheerleaders around them,
but I'm a huge believer in what I call the
(37:54):
challenging mentor. They're the tough love person. They put the
word tough in tough love. They're truth tellers, their sparring partners,
their foils. They're the people who are they teach you
that you can do things that you don't believe you
can do yourself. They are the ones who really get
(38:17):
you into the game in a very different way. The
way I look at it is supportive cheerleader mentor types.
They kind of a cheering you on at the game.
But the challenging mentor doesn't just prepare you for the game.
They help you win the war because they basically are
going to push you to your limits. They're going to
(38:38):
tell you the truth about how you react to a
situation or if a job is good enough. And I
had one of the I think challenging of challenging mentors
at a very good stage in my life because I
think I was ripe for it. I was just about ready,
but also not up there to such a degree that
(39:01):
I would fight it. But I also wasn't so soft
that it would kill me. And that was bary or
is to this day. Barry Diller and Barry taught me
how to think. Barry challenged everything I did, everything I said,
and it took me about eighteen months per working for
this guy to crawl out from under the table and
(39:22):
being willing to go toe to toe with him.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
But that's the only thing he respected.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
And I followed a guy who was working for him
who I kind of enjoyed the way they sparred to say, well,
Steve can do it, I should be able to do
this too.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So I remember the first time.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
When Barry we were in a like a board meeting
sized room and all the people who reported to him,
and I threw out an idea and Barry literally said, Hammer,
that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I mean, he
would be that gruff these days, you know, ah'll never
get a li that, which I.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Think is bad.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
And I think a lot of a lot of the
younger generation getting hurt by the overwokeness of a yeah.
And I was able to say to him, Barry, shut up,
sit down, and if you don't listen to me, you're
going to be stupid.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And he won't. Oh okay, that was the turning point
of our relationship. Wow.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
And whether it was a show idea I was thinking about,
he would make me think out every detail of why
it would be. For one example, I was trying to
do a show about a psychic on the Sci Fi Channel.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I would have loved this show.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
And so this is John Edward, John Edwards. Yeah, that
was John. And it was before John was John.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
This was in the nineties, so I remember, And this
was before iPhones or anything else. So if you're at
a computer doing email, you were sitting at your computer
Monday afternoon, Barry texts me, emails me, and says, talk
to me about doing this show with a psychic.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Okay, what do you want to know? All right?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
His question to me was, if psychic surreal, why is
he on the Sci Fi Channel? If psychics are not real,
why the fuck are we in business with this guy?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Long?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
We go back and forth till it was like eleven
o'clock on a Sunday night, and when Barry's emailing you,
you do not leave the computer. You don't say I'll
talk to you on Monday, all weekend long. So finally
I said, all right, I'm going to give this one
more shot and then I'm over it. Sorry, John, you're
not getting a show. The email on something like, Okay, Barry,
(41:49):
whether you believe psychic surreal or I believe psychic surreal.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
It's completely irrelevant. It's in the mind and the eyes
of the beholder. Therefore, either fact nor fiction, it's something
I'm going to call friction.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
What better for the sci Fi Channel? He writes back, Okay,
your arguments win, go and.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
The show was made.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah, but that's how much. He pushed you and challenged
That would never happen these days. If somebody don't want
to show, they would just say no. But it really
taught me how to think and analyze, and it went
through every single thing I did under Berry Taken the
show about Aliens with Steven Spielberg went through the same
(42:34):
kind of challenge and that became the number.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
One show for sci fi. So I'm a huge believer.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
In people being willing to hear stuff that might not
feel good at the moment. Sit back and listen and
take in what you can. Why are they saying it?
And you know, what are they saying and why are
they saying it? In ninety percent of the time because
somebody wants to hurt you or make you feel bad.
(43:04):
Ninety percent of the time, if you're willing to listen,
is because they want you to be better.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Well, the interesting thing about that story that you just
told as well, is that by him challenging you, you
actually had to own your truth about John Edwards and
the show even more, which then makes you more passionate
about the project. You want that to succeed, and we
really kind of can put our energy behind the things
that we believe in. I think once we're forced to
(43:30):
actually say it, but so often in our world we're
just moving and taking actions and not thinking about it
or being conscious of the whys, you know, And so
you've forced you into really defining your whys, which is
only going to help you and the entire project.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, and it did that with everything.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Yeah, and would also listen to he would support you
if you thought it through. We had another issue with
scheduling this limited series called Taken, and it was the
beginning of Dakota Fanning's career.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
She was nine years old at the time, and.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
It was a complicated but lovely only as Spielberg can do,
a twenty hour limited series about alien abduction, and it
was very heartwarming and right before the show was going
to air in December, and it was going to be
literally like the nineteen eighties limited series, and it was
(44:29):
before streaming, so it was you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
two hours a night and then repeat the next week
and then we would take over the whole schedule. We
would repeat the Monday show on Tuesday, the Tuesday show
would have Monday and Tuesday Wednesday would have Monday, Tuesday
Wednesday and we just took over the channel. So late
(44:51):
September the ad sales group came down on me and said,
we want you to air this as a regular series.
We can't sell it as a limited so do it
in January and have it be a weekly. And the
whole idea, the way the whole show is built, was
to be a nightly show that built over two weeks.
(45:13):
So I had to go back to Barry and I said, listen,
I'm getting a lot of pressure. You're going to hear it.
I don't want to just go ahead without your support.
This is what's going on. He goes, send me the
first episode. I said, okay, So I sent him the
first episode of the series that was going to start
in December. Boy, now January, and he wrote back, I
(45:37):
saved the eemail in like twenty four point type in
blue and orange, and it was I just remember this
to such a degree.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
It's always stuck with me. Honey.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
If all of your episodes are as gluly compelling, I
think you have a hit on your hand.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Fuck them.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But he would he.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
Would support what he believed if you believed in it,
but he would push you if your logic wasn't straight,
So to me get anybody, find someone who is going
to challenge you and just go with it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
They're not trying to hurt you. They're just trying to
make you better than you even think you can be.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Right, Well, if you're speaking as a mentor with your
book to all of these women in the world, what
do you want them to leave after they've read the book,
just knowing deep in their bones? What's your one truth?
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Oh? My one truth would be.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Pretty much that you know, starting like with my dad,
there's no such word ascount and you can do anything
you want to do, be anything you want to be.
But it's just figuring out a way to navigate your
way there and not letting anything get in the way.
(47:08):
And it's believing in the uncommon common sense as opposed
to the bs that you're going to hear from any others.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
I love that the book is called fifteen lies women
are told at work and the truth we need to succeed, Bonnie.
Where else can people find you?
Speaker 4 (47:23):
We do have DANU can my assistant can get you now?
My assistant my manager.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
These days we.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Have a site that has all the information and landing
page that we will get to you and it's basically
you know, Bonnie at bonniehammer dot com. But it has
all the information, podcasts, Arctic goals, all this stuff, and
I will make sure Dana gets that information to you
(47:51):
and you can post or do whatever you want with it.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Absolutely. Yeah, the website, okay, and I will put the
link of the description of the book. I'm sorry, the
link for the book in the description of this podcast
as well. For you guys. We'll get you all Bonnie's information.
Thank you so much. I learned so much. I'm going
to go back and listen to this and take notes
for myself. So it was very, very helpful, and I
really appreciate you sharing your experiences with us today and
(48:16):
it's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
You are a delight to chat with and I look
forward to more conversations. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Thanks for listening to the Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson,
where we believe everyone has a little velvet in a
little edge. Subscribe for more conversations on life, style, beauty,
and relationships. Search Velvet's Edge wherever you get your podcasts.
Conversations on life, style, beauty, and relationships. It's The Velvet's
Edge Podcast with Kelly Henderson.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Fannie Hammer is the former vice chair of NBC Universal,
where she spent decades running the most high pressure, male
dominated rooms and entertainment. Now she's stepping forward with a
new book, Fifteen Lives Women Are Told at Work and
the Truth We Need to Succeed, where she calls out
the advice that sounds empowering, like just work hard, know
(00:32):
your worth, your work speaks for itself. That can actually
keep women small, silent and stuck. Hi, Vannie, I'm so
happy to meet you. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
That's my pleasure, and I'm looking forward to chatting me too.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
I feel like you are a wealth of knowledge for
the women out there. I mean we just mentioned the
male dominated rooms that you've worked in in the entertainment industry,
and I know you've just had this unbelievable career, starting
from the assistance position up into what was called the
Queen of cable at one point. But when you look back,
(01:06):
I want to know what do you think actually set
you apart to have such success in such a male
dominated world.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
I think there were a couple of things.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
If I really go back, I think it starts with
my dad. And my dad as I was growing up,
because he was a Russian immigrant, his only thing to
me and to my brother were there's no such word
as camp. If you can't do something, you're simply not
trying hard enough. So I started with that, and then
(01:35):
as a young kid, I went to summer camp, and
I when I was really really young, so my mom
had a heart attack and my father didn't know what
to do with me, so he was friends with some
owners of the camp up in the Catskills was known
as zaborsche Belt at the time, and I wasn't six yet,
and I was sleep away camp with a bunch of
(01:56):
kids and luckily a family that least knew me, and
I learned at a very very early age how to
work with other people or kids, how to be a
team player, you know, how to collaborate, how to kind
of in a sense that wasn't a room. It was
an ugly bunk with no air conditioner a fan kind
(02:18):
of read the room of the kids. Because being the youngest,
I had to figure out how to fit in, and
I think that really helped me navigate much much later
in life, and I don't think I realized any of
it till hindsight set and I started looking back on
why I made certain decisions, how I got where I did,
(02:40):
and why. So a lot of this is in hindsight
in terms of how or why I think I succeeded
in a very crazy at the time. I was growing
up in a male dominated world, and I owe a
lot to my dad and to early experiences knowing how
to get a and knowing how to see what was
(03:02):
going on in front of me and not having to
I didn't have to own the success of winning in
a game. I gave it away to others because it
was better, nicer, It showed a bit of humility, which
I see now that I probably did it out of insecurity.
But there are all tools that I turned into strengths
(03:22):
later on in life.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, I mean, you're referencing when you were six, So
this starts really early for us, which is always something
we talk about on this podcast, kind of the programming
that we start to, you know, put into our own
lives and in our own processes that we don't even
realize that we're doing. So if you started at six
learning how to work with the group or turning over
(03:45):
the winning How did that play into your early days
of starting in the TV business.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
For me, I was very insecure when I was young,
and because I was in my early early days at
camp younger than everybody else in the room, and then
I skipped a grade at one point, so again I
was a year younger. I think I always felt a
little insecure, and that insecurity drove some oddly positive things.
(04:13):
I would be watchful of other people because I didn't
want to try to compete. I've learned to be humble
and have a little humility, so people would want me
in their group rather than me being the young one
trying to prove myself and you know, be arrogant about something,
so they would even you know, tease me more. I
(04:34):
think a lot of stuff started by being a little
insecure and not having the confidence, and as I grew up,
I realized that was a you know, like a phenomenal
tool that when you really define it later in life,
it's true humility.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
It's being humble, it's.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Being willing to give the wins to somebody else, and
it shows you what that happens if you can work
with others play with others, give other people the kudos
for doing something good. It creates a loyalty, creates a
sense of team, a sense of collaboration, and people want
to be around you, and in my case wanted to
(05:16):
work for me and that really helped a lot.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
So it was an incredible tool.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Well, so when I first was listening to you say
these things and then also just thinking about that, I
might have thought, oh, well, these are lies that she
probably believed that she needs to play a part of.
But one of the main things that kept coming up
when I was researching for this podcast was your mentality
about women actually taking things that we should look at
as skill sets that we have, which is what I'm
(05:44):
hearing in this talk of being humble. We look at
them as weakness, right because of the way our society
has developed. I don't typically love to like hate on
men for being one way and women for being another.
I think it's the way we have looked at success
of the last couple of years has been in a
male dominated field that has been defined by some of
(06:06):
those energies, and maybe that's shifting a little bit. Can
you speak to that though, of what you see women
play like really dismissing within ourselves and our skill sets
we can bring to the workplace.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Two things about what you just said, okay, is in
order to support women or ourselves, we don't have to
necessarily put down the guys.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yea.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
You know they play the game one way, women play
it the other. Yes, what women do which is problematic,
they don't own what is really part of the DNA
or the chemistry of women.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
We are natural caregivers.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Our chromosomes, our body types basically, you know, create hormones
that are very very positive. They we as caregivers, as
people who have children, we learn how to play again,
aim very differently than the guys. But we look too
often we look at that as weaknesses. Warm caregiving, collaboration,
(07:10):
taking care of things, being a detailed person, juggling stuff.
We don't necessarily say believe these things are strengths, when
in fact are incredible strengths. You know, when you think
about how men and women differ in terms of disagreements,
you know, men want to win the war. Women kind
(07:31):
of want to bury the hatchet. They just want it
over with and want to move ahead. And again, unfortunately,
both society and some workplaces look at that as weakness
when it's a phenomenal strength, and how to negotiate a
win win as opposed to have to be the winner.
There are so many things in our world that we
view as weaknesses for women, especially warmth, collaborations, sympathy, empathy,
(07:56):
things that create loyalty, which are phenomenal strengths in the workplace,
but we don't own the credit for it.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah. Well, I think even the talking about being humble,
and you said so many people wanted to work for you,
and I was thinking about, you know, I'm in a
freelance position, so I have various bosses and it's so
interesting because the ones that I want to do my
best work, that I'm really dedicated to that are the
ones that make it a team effort when we win.
(08:26):
And I wondered if there was one particular lesson that
you could speak to about that kind of thing about
being the boss or being in a position of power,
and how we've kind of miss miss I don't know,
have set ourselves up for failure in these ways of
the team winning and the whole company winning by maybe
that person not taking all of the credit.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Not many leaders understand that ultimately, if your team, if
your show. If your product, whatever it is, makes it
regardless who has a credit or you give credit to
or the world does, it's ultimately your win. You can
sit back just kind of ass quietly in the success.
(09:11):
So for me, I never had to take the credit
for anything. I try to hire really good people around
me and when I hired. If I were to hire Kelly,
it would be okay, she grated her skill set.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Does she know what she's doing?
Speaker 4 (09:27):
But in an interview, I would want to see how
often you gave credit.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
To someone else. I would want to.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
See or hear, you know, is she talking just about
herself or she asking questions? You know, I want to
look at how you deal or navigate in your former
world the present world, and how you deal with me
to understand if you're a team player. And that would
be as important, sometimes more important in terms of my
(09:56):
hiring you for our team, because I wanted people who
were team players, because if we win, we all win.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And anybody who thinks producing a.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
Show, creating a show, you know, creating a channel, if
you will, is a single person's job.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
They're nuts.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
It really really takes a huge team to get it done,
and you have to be in sync. I never wanted
one person in a room, and I had everybody read scripts,
even if they were finance people. You read the script,
I want your opinion. We're going to take notes, put
it up on our little chalkboard and talk about why
(10:36):
you liked it, why you didn't like it.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It doesn't matter that you're not a creative. Can you
relate to it?
Speaker 4 (10:42):
So it got people invested in the product, so then
they become the person. Instead of saying, you know, you're
of a budget, their approach will be, let's figure out
how we can manipulate this budget to make the show work.
They were invested, so for me, it was really important
have team players in every aspect of a job, creating
(11:04):
a culture that was supportive of one another, rather than
people raising the hands and said I did that, I
should get there.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I want that. And it's funny.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Later in my career, I heard once or twice that
Bonnie's teams she has a cult, and I would always say,
it's not a culture off by three letters, it's a
culture people they wanted to continue working with one another.
I had people on my teams for multiple decades because
(11:37):
they were happy they got the credit for stuff they
were well paid, but they felt good about what they did.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
I also broke rules that created some loyalty.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
And this is funny that I can admit now, but
I couldn't really talk about it at the time. When
any of the women on my team's had a kid,
I made a quiet deal with them that they had
a four day work they're getting paid for five, that
whenever I needed them, I needed them. Other than that,
I wanted them home early. I want them to do
(12:08):
what they needed to do to take care of their family,
et cetera. But I never told up a management. To me,
it was really important because I did not have that,
and I remembered how polled I was, and the loyalty
that something as simple as that created for the women
who work with inf me was incredible. All they want
(12:28):
them to do is get back because I had such freedom,
and I never cared where they were, and I never
wanted them to lie to me. If they were going
to a kid's softball game, just tell me where you're going.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Don't pretend you're going to a meeting.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
My thing would be great, fine, or it's today's not
a good day to do that.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We're under a lot of pressure and it worked.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Do you find those to be qualities that a female
leader might be able to exhibit more than a male leader.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
I do, because I think many women in any industry
are juggling, and even though guys have families, they usually
have someone at home taking care of everything. We as
a caregivers. Even if we have a nanny or we
have help at home, we still primarily the mother. It
(13:20):
is innate in us that we feel we have to
juggle and are responsible for everything. So I think the
empathy level, the degree of commitment to it is harder,
and we are juggling more. Even if we refuse to
admit it publicly or you know, when we're in the
room in a meeting with everybody, it's still something that's
(13:43):
on our minds. I remember once going to a elementary
school meeting with whoever we had to meet with at
the time, and my kid was probably in second grade,
and I got recommended back then, and we're talking about
many years ago. He's thirty two, know, but I got
reprimanded because I asked for a seven point fifteen one
(14:04):
of the guys meeting times, because I had to make
a train to get to the city, to get to work,
and the principal actually gave me a little bit of
a lecture about being a working mom in those days,
to the point that I got on the train and
I started crying and told my husband from the train saying,
I don't know if I can do this. And it
(14:26):
was a lecture about being a.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Working mom, which a man would never get.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
I think that a lot of women are kind of
brought up in this scarcity mindset of if I want,
she can't have, and there's only so many spaces for
each of us. And I really respect the fact that
you talk about being a leader from this place of no,
we're all in the same team. So is that something
you really felt like you had to buck against even
more as a woman.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
You hit something very very important that unfortunately still exists.
I'm not sure why it didn't envelop me in the
same way, but I always told it was very important
for me to have women on my team, very strong women,
and my teams were always at least half women, and
(15:26):
it was interesting it was probably half women of the guys.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Half the guys were gay, and it.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Made for a really fun, collaborative, great team. The one
thing I've realized, which is very, very hard, because it's
not going away. Too many women who are succeeding right
now do not support other women to the degree that
they have to, simply because their belief is if there's
(15:51):
only one seat at the table, I want to get it,
and if I bring up others or if I support
other women to two greater degree, they may get it
and I won't. And what they don't understand is until
we have more women in the C suites, nothing's going
to change. And it doesn't mean that guys shouldn't be
(16:13):
there and there shouldn't be equal representation for everyone. I
really believe in that. But women need to support other
women rather than be competitive with them, negatively competitive with them,
because it's just going to hurt everybody. And I do
think it's because of the scarcity of those positions as
(16:35):
opposed to just human nature of women just wanting to compete.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
I think it's just fear get.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
If they bring someone else up, it means they have
less of a chance of getting there, and it's a
little it's bullshit, And I think other women need to
support other women because the more women in the C suites,
the better off are all going to be in terms
of building teams, in terms of empathy, in terms of loyalty,
in terms of the traits that we possess.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
How do we get over that threat feeling? Though you know,
I actually really resonate with the way that you operate,
because to me, it's always been a mentality of the
more of us there is, the more impact we have.
But I've just really faced in my life the opposite,
where the higher I got, the more people, specifically women,
(17:25):
I felt, would want to tear me down. And that
was always shocking to me. So how do we let
go of that threat?
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Part of it is negatively confronting. It is not going
to work, but it's almost like a reverse humiliation. It's
basically saying, you know, confronting in a kind way, saying
you know, I'm trying to work together with you.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
What can I do to help you.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Part of it is figuring out what their agenda is
and figuring out how to get a yes from them
that helps you and helps them at the same time.
So for me, it's a piece of reading the room.
Why is she reacting that way to me? Is she
threatened by me? Is she threatened by something I've done.
Is she threatened only because she doesn't think that she
(18:12):
wants competition for that role that she envisions up there.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And figuring out a.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Way to kind of read her and get her to
support your agenda while you support hers almost kind of
be threatening her by figuring out what you can do
to help her out, rather than building up more of
a wall and a resentment to her.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
That just feeds into her cause.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
And my thing is trying to break other people down
so they see I'm not a threat and I really
want to work with them. And if I try a
couple of times it doesn't work, then I just chalk
it off the board and say, you know, something not
going to happen, Bye bye. But I usually give people
the benefit of the doubt, wants or twice to figure
(19:00):
out what their agenda is. Try to see if we
can figure out how to get our agendas together and
work together or help one another.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
If it doesn't work, at least I know I've.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Tried, right, You've given it the effort. Well, let's talk
a little bit about the book. It's called Fifteen Lives
Women Are Told at Work. Obviously, you have tons of
experience from all of the years in the entertainment industry
and even the positions of leadership that we've just been discussing.
I need to know that what made you want to
write all of these down and put into a book.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
First of all, it was a pandemic.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I was, for the.
Speaker 4 (19:34):
First time in my life not commuting to New York,
you know, back and forth, so I had like four
extra hours in a day, so I had the time,
so that was available.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
The other thing was I mean, I was at a point.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
In my career where I really felt I wanted to
figure out a way to pay things forward. You know,
how do I help You know, the women who worked
with and for me or in the company that even
if they didn't work for me, they knew they can
come to me for advice is one thing, But how
do I reach out to others and in a sense
(20:10):
create a mentor in a pocket so I could pay
it forward to other women who are younger trying to negotiate,
you know, and navigate the path to growing in a business,
in any business, not just media. I also thought it
would be good for guys too, but unfortunately Simon and Schuster.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Said, no, we wonder for women. So we need to
market it air for it's going to be women, right, guys.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
But a lot of men have read the book and
they've been really appreciative of it as well. So it
was wanting to figure out a way to help others
in a broader way than just basically mentoring those that
I see every day at work. And then also realizing
if I had listened to so many of these cliches
(20:59):
when I was young, I think I would have fallen
flat on my face and no way in hell succeeded.
So I started thinking through all the cliches that we
have been brought up to believe from you know, the
basic ones, follow your dreams so you can have it
all to find friends in high places, and each one
(21:19):
that I went through was no.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
That's wrong, that's wrong.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
And to me it was like, how do I create
a manual for success? Because if people believe these cliches,
it is self sabotage. So to simplify it, I got okay,
so what is the uncommon common sense that women need
to succeed as opposed to a manual of bullshit? And
(21:48):
the other thing I realized was there's so many advice
books out there, but so few books about bad advice.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh, I've never thought of that. That's so true.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, it's you know, everyone's giving advice, but no one's
knocking the bad advice that we're getting.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right right, Well, and the way the book is set
up is so brilliant because you say, you say the myth,
which like follow your dreams, and then you say the truth,
and that's obviously coming from all of these years of experience.
Can we use the follow your dreams for an example
to tell the listeners just kind of how this book
is set up, So you say, follow your dreams is
(22:26):
the myth, and then the truth was remind me of
follow the opportunities, follow the opportunities. Yes, explain that a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
Well, we've all been brought up with since we're little kids,
whether it's a parent or a school teacher, you know,
or a grandparent whispering in our ears. You know, if
you follow your passion, you're never going to work a
day in your life. But the reality is you can't
be what you can't see, you can't dream.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
What you don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
So following your dreams can actually be nightmare advice because
you're learning something the age of six and seven that
gets ingrained in your brain cells. You have no clue
what that really means in real life, you know, And
even if it comes to you on your own when
you're six years old, you know, playing baseball, Oh I
want to be a baseball star, or of course you
(23:21):
took in high school, you still have no idea what
that really means in real life. And until you get
to a point where you can experience a variety of things,
you really have no clue what that adult dream will
turn out to be that's actually doable. You know, are
you an introvert or an extrovert. It's going to determine
(23:43):
whether you going to wear and work at home or
are you going to need a big environment. You don't
know that as a child or even as a young adult,
especially these days when so many people are saying, oh, yes,
you can work remotely. Is that how you want to
live your life? Or do you want to be in
the room where things are happening. So you have to
(24:03):
experience a whole lot of different things in order for
you to find out what you're good at, what makes
you happy, what fits your personality, what you can succeed at.
And you're not going to find that in a dream
does mean that.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
For me.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
For example, my dream was photography, and I you know,
went to school for it.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
I was in Vota journalism.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
And then in between undergraduate and graduate, I had three
different or four different photo jobs and each one I hated.
One was in the dark room and my lovely manicured
nails at the time would turn yellow from the hyphone the.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Chemicals, andody wants that.
Speaker 4 (24:44):
And then I graduated to be with a commercial photographer
in his studio, but everything was artificial. It was artificial light,
artificial flowers, artificial water on the flowers, and I realized, no,
I like Cardia abras On, I want the decisive moment,
and that I was a photo editor taking photographs that
I would connect to other people's photographs, to other people's words.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
That was boring.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
So I ended up realizing that photography was a passion,
but it wasn't something that was going to make me
a living and make it a happy living. So the
reality is, you know, you can have a passion, but
it doesn't have to be your boss. Find out what
you can do, what you like doing in a work
(25:30):
world that fits your personality, and keep that other thing.
It doesn't mean you're throwing it away, but it doesn't
have to be your paycheck.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I always get so upset when i'd talk to, you know,
high schoolers and they're thinking, oh, at eighteen, I've got
to decide what i want to do with the rest
of my life, because in my experience that has evolved
so much. And in fact, I used to feel a
little bit of shame about that because I wasn't one
of those people that knew what they wanted to do
for the rest of their life at ten years old
(26:00):
or something like that. I used to think that meant
I wasn't as talented. But the truth is is like
this job that I'm doing right now, this didn't even
exist when I was in college, So how would I
have known. But another thing you talk about being so
important in your adult life in the work world is
knowing how to adapt and change and really like letting
(26:20):
go of some of these things that we just have
deemed as the way that it needs to go, and
then that shifting and the feeling like that's a failure,
but instead looking at that as like a new opportunity.
Can you speak to that a little bit?
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Exactly what you're saying is one hundred percent true. There
are a couple of pieces of that. As we said,
you can't be what you can see. How do you
know about podcasts before it existed? It Until you get
exposed to it later online and open to it, it
would have passed just it would have just been a
(26:55):
by gone There's no way I wanted to try that
because it wasn't my passion. But the thing that I
think affects everybody, male and female, but I think female
a little bit more is change and the ability to
embrace change and not run from it. It is more
often threatening than positive and optimistic. But the truth is
(27:19):
the only thing that is constant life is change. Regardless
of your age, your stage, your wage, It's going to
come at you, so you might as well embrace it
and use that as a stepping stone to your next step.
When I talk about opportunities, when you think about what
the world is like right now. If you have an
(27:41):
idea of what you want to do, and you climb
a ladder, get to a certain place and then there's
a ceiling, there's nowhere else you can go because you
get to the top of that space and it's gone.
I look at opportunities as the way to create a
spider web where you keep trying different things and then
eventually you're going to find something you love.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
But you have such a great skill.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Set that, for example, when AI comes and your job
goes away, you have other things to fall back on.
Because you just go on a singular path. It gives
you such breath as opposed to a ladder which you
hit a ceiling, that you can almost do anything in
everything because you're willing to try things, You're willing to experiment,
(28:30):
you're willing to test yourself out, and it gives you
such great opportunities that you'll always be able to find
something to fit into because you're not narrow, You're not
to find by one skill set.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
I feel like we are living out right now one
of the beautiful qualities that a female leader would have,
and that is giving yourself grace and walking with yourself
through life versus saying it is this path. It's like
we're letting go of the structure a little bit, and like,
that's what I hear you saying. A lot is kind
of learning how to flow with the way that life
goes exactly. Isn't that the way that life works?
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yes, Whether you know, people think that if they are
rigid and can stay in the lane, they're going to
automatically get or eventually get where they want to go.
The reality is it makes you so rigid that you
aren't open to other people, other opportunities.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
You're going to miss out.
Speaker 4 (29:28):
On meeting people who can take you in a whole
other direction, you know, enjoying life that you would have
never expected because you were too fearful of trying it.
It opens up so many different doors if you just
are willing to experiment, to try things, realize you're going
to trip, You're going to fail, and that's okay, get up,
(29:51):
that's yourself off and try something else. But don't look
at it again. Don't look at it as a failure.
Look at it as all right. I love that, Let's
move on.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, I think that's such a big lesson. Well, we
talk about burnout a lot on this podcast, and I
went through a really big season of it, and my
listeners walked through me with that. I'm curious if you
being in such I mean, that job to me sounds
so demanding, and I know you have a family as well,
and so did you ever feel like there was a
(30:22):
point where you were losing yourself to the grind and
not being able to balance in the way that you
said you would give even your female employees kind of
that grace.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
You never feel balanced, I don't, okay.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Anybody says when they're living in the moment or looking
back at it, if you are truthful, especially if you're
a woman with a family, you are never in balance.
You are always feeling you're cheating on something. When I
would be at work, I always felt I was cheating
(30:55):
on my kids. When I was on vacation, I always
thought I was cheating on my colleagues that I left
in the workplace taking over what I wasn't doing for
that week or two weeks. It is, by nature something
that you have to come to terms with that you're
always going to feel out of balance, and only in
(31:16):
hindsight where you believe you succeeded in having it all
that when you're living through it, you're always going to
feel somehow that you're giving up or not hurting somebody,
but letting somebody down, either in the workplace or outside.
But when people realize that that's normal and that's okay,
(31:38):
is when it's healthy. When it gets into your system
to a degree where you can't lose it. That's when
I worry. But that's usually when people don't realize that
every other woman with a family who is in a
position is feeling the same way, and it's okay, right,
okay to feel that way, because that's how it is.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, if you got to your final position and you
were I would say at the top, what did confidence
feel like? What did that look like for you in
a manner of confidence? Did it feel any different from
any other time in your life or is there always
kind of the same energy of I want to do
the best that I can. I'm kind of striving to
(32:18):
chase these things. I'm working on the balance of my
balancing my family and my work life.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
What did it feel like?
Speaker 4 (32:26):
It's a complicated question because I don't think anyone ever
feels that they they are at a point where they
can't learn more, or can't do better, or can even
succeed further. I think that's always somehow out in the ether.
But for me, the difference was once I got to
(32:50):
a certain place and when I was of a certain age,
I became a gender free.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
I no longer was.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Navigating my work way or anything else I was doing
with a specific agenda in mind. I got to a
point where all I wanted to do was the right thing,
whether it was for my team, for a project, for
the boss, whatever. I wasn't looking for more money, I
wasn't looking for the next position. I wasn't looking to
(33:22):
take over the world. You become comfortable in your own
skin that you literally are doing things for all the
right reasons, not for any other reason of growth, money,
anything else other than because you believed it was the
way to go. And that to me was incredible freedom.
(33:43):
That it was when I looked at a situation, I
wasn't trying to figure out whether the decision I was
making for any other reason than the purity of the decision,
Was it the right decision for the team, for the project,
for whatever, as opposed to, well if we do this,
we'll get another show, if we work with that company, Well,
(34:06):
there was no agenda other than for this thing that
I'm making decision about, or for this person or for
the team, is this the right thing to do?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
To me, that was very free.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
I can't remember where I read this about you, but
I remember reading something that said you have said now
that you really just want to be in service to
others at the stage of your life. And I wondered
what success looks like for you now, because it sounds
like it probably looks very different.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Well, I don't even think I would use the word
success anymore. I think that so much more with navigating
a work world.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
I think contentment.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
I think a different kind of happiness, freedom in a
lot of ways. But for me, it's about paying it forward,
it's giving back. I have been very lucky. I have
had an amazing career, working with and for some amazing people,
having some incredible mentors, and I've.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Been very lucky.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
It's not to say it didn't work my butt off,
but it takes more than just work. It takes a
lot of luck, and it takes a lot of people
to kind of help you get where you're ultimately where
I ultimately got to, and I'd want to help others
kind of get to that place. I want to be
a mentor to, you know, those who've worked with me before.
(35:36):
Even though I'm not technically with NBC anymore, I'm still
getting calls every single week, people wanting to know how
to navigate a certain situation. Being that companies are being
restructured now and it just gives me great happiness to
be able to help them again because I have mistaken it.
So what ever advice I'm giving them is pure. There's
(36:01):
no reason I'd be telling them to go in one
direction over another other than I believe it to be
the right thing for them at that moment, where years
ago you couldn't.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
It was never completely clean.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
There was always another agenda or is it good for
this team? Am I losing them? Or are they going
to somewhere else? It wasn't as this is freeing and
it's part of being agenda free, but also it's pure,
and you can't it takes a long time in your
life to get back to that purity. It's almost as
(36:38):
if when we were very young, you know, and even
starting out in the work business, we didn't know anything
else other than the purity of trying to be or
get where we wanted to go. There was no other motivations.
We didn't know they're needed to be right. Almost feel
(36:59):
I'm back at that stage of a young kid that
has no other motivation other than to try to do
the right thing right.
Speaker 3 (37:08):
So it's a purity. It's a purity freedom.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I know you mentioned the word mentor, and another thing
you talk about is the importance of the truth teller
as the mentor, not just someone who's going to kind
of tell you what you want to hear, or the
nice thing of how good of a job you're doing,
that's going to shoot you straight. Can you speak to that,
because I think that is the opposite of which what
most of us seek when we're looking for a mentor.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
I think we've been brought up to believe that mentors
are cheerleaders. They're the people who are going to pat
you on the back or the people who are going
to say, oh, you're so good, keep going, just get
in there, and it's those are lovely to have. And
I'm not saying that people shouldn't have some cheerleaders around them,
but I'm a huge believer in what I call the
(37:54):
challenging mentor. They're the tough love person. They put the
word tough in tough love. They're truth tellers, their sparring partners,
their foils. They're the people who are they teach you
that you can do things that you don't believe you
can do yourself. They are the ones who really get
(38:17):
you into the game in a very different way. The
way I look at it is supportive cheerleader mentor types.
They kind of a cheering you on at the game.
But the challenging mentor doesn't just prepare you for the game.
They help you win the war because they basically are
going to push you to your limits. They're going to
(38:38):
tell you the truth about how you react to a
situation or if a job is good enough. And I
had one of the I think challenging of challenging mentors
at a very good stage in my life because I
think I was ripe for it. I was just about ready,
but also not up there to such a degree that
(39:01):
I would fight it. But I also wasn't so soft
that it would kill me. And that was bary or
is to this day. Barry Diller and Barry taught me
how to think. Barry challenged everything I did, everything I said,
and it took me about eighteen months per working for
this guy to crawl out from under the table and
(39:22):
being willing to go toe to toe with him.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
But that's the only thing he respected.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
And I followed a guy who was working for him
who I kind of enjoyed the way they sparred to say, well,
Steve can do it, I should be able to do
this too.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So I remember the first time.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
When Barry we were in a like a board meeting
sized room and all the people who reported to him,
and I threw out an idea and Barry literally said, Hammer,
that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I mean, he
would be that gruff these days, you know, ah'll never
get a li that, which I.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Think is bad.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
And I think a lot of a lot of the
younger generation getting hurt by the overwokeness of a yeah.
And I was able to say to him, Barry, shut up,
sit down, and if you don't listen to me, you're
going to be stupid.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
And he won't. Oh okay, that was the turning point
of our relationship. Wow.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
And whether it was a show idea I was thinking about,
he would make me think out every detail of why
it would be. For one example, I was trying to
do a show about a psychic on the Sci Fi Channel.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
I would have loved this show.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
And so this is John Edward, John Edwards. Yeah, that
was John. And it was before John was John.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
This was in the nineties, so I remember, And this
was before iPhones or anything else. So if you're at
a computer doing email, you were sitting at your computer
Monday afternoon, Barry texts me, emails me, and says, talk
to me about doing this show with a psychic.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Okay, what do you want to know? All right?
Speaker 4 (41:08):
His question to me was, if psychic surreal, why is
he on the Sci Fi Channel? If psychics are not real,
why the fuck are we in business with this guy?
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Long?
Speaker 4 (41:24):
We go back and forth till it was like eleven
o'clock on a Sunday night, and when Barry's emailing you,
you do not leave the computer. You don't say I'll
talk to you on Monday, all weekend long. So finally
I said, all right, I'm going to give this one
more shot and then I'm over it. Sorry, John, you're
not getting a show. The email on something like, Okay, Barry,
(41:49):
whether you believe psychic surreal or I believe psychic surreal.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
It's completely irrelevant. It's in the mind and the eyes
of the beholder. Therefore, either fact nor fiction, it's something
I'm going to call friction.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
What better for the sci Fi Channel? He writes back, Okay,
your arguments win, go and.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
The show was made.
Speaker 4 (42:13):
Yeah, but that's how much. He pushed you and challenged
That would never happen these days. If somebody don't want
to show, they would just say no. But it really
taught me how to think and analyze, and it went
through every single thing I did under Berry Taken the
show about Aliens with Steven Spielberg went through the same
(42:34):
kind of challenge and that became the number.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
One show for sci fi. So I'm a huge believer.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
In people being willing to hear stuff that might not
feel good at the moment. Sit back and listen and
take in what you can. Why are they saying it?
And you know, what are they saying and why are
they saying it? In ninety percent of the time because
somebody wants to hurt you or make you feel bad.
(43:04):
Ninety percent of the time, if you're willing to listen,
is because they want you to be better.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Well, the interesting thing about that story that you just
told as well, is that by him challenging you, you
actually had to own your truth about John Edwards and
the show even more, which then makes you more passionate
about the project. You want that to succeed, and we
really kind of can put our energy behind the things
that we believe in. I think once we're forced to
(43:30):
actually say it, but so often in our world we're
just moving and taking actions and not thinking about it
or being conscious of the whys, you know, And so
you've forced you into really defining your whys, which is
only going to help you and the entire project.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, and it did that with everything.
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Yeah, and would also listen to he would support you
if you thought it through. We had another issue with
scheduling this limited series called Taken, and it was the
beginning of Dakota Fanning's career.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
She was nine years old at the time, and.
Speaker 4 (44:09):
It was a complicated but lovely only as Spielberg can do,
a twenty hour limited series about alien abduction, and it
was very heartwarming and right before the show was going
to air in December, and it was going to be
literally like the nineteen eighties limited series, and it was
(44:29):
before streaming, so it was you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
two hours a night and then repeat the next week
and then we would take over the whole schedule. We
would repeat the Monday show on Tuesday, the Tuesday show
would have Monday and Tuesday Wednesday would have Monday, Tuesday
Wednesday and we just took over the channel. So late
(44:51):
September the ad sales group came down on me and said,
we want you to air this as a regular series.
We can't sell it as a limited so do it
in January and have it be a weekly. And the
whole idea, the way the whole show is built, was
to be a nightly show that built over two weeks.
(45:13):
So I had to go back to Barry and I said, listen,
I'm getting a lot of pressure. You're going to hear it.
I don't want to just go ahead without your support.
This is what's going on. He goes, send me the
first episode. I said, okay, So I sent him the
first episode of the series that was going to start
in December. Boy, now January, and he wrote back, I
(45:37):
saved the eemail in like twenty four point type in
blue and orange, and it was I just remember this
to such a degree.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
It's always stuck with me. Honey.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
If all of your episodes are as gluly compelling, I
think you have a hit on your hand.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Fuck them.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
There you go.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
But he would he.
Speaker 4 (46:01):
Would support what he believed if you believed in it,
but he would push you if your logic wasn't straight,
So to me get anybody, find someone who is going
to challenge you and just go with it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
They're not trying to hurt you. They're just trying to
make you better than you even think you can be.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Right, Well, if you're speaking as a mentor with your
book to all of these women in the world, what
do you want them to leave after they've read the book,
just knowing deep in their bones? What's your one truth?
Speaker 3 (46:39):
Oh? My one truth would be.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Pretty much that you know, starting like with my dad,
there's no such word ascount and you can do anything
you want to do, be anything you want to be.
But it's just figuring out a way to navigate your
way there and not letting anything get in the way.
(47:08):
And it's believing in the uncommon common sense as opposed
to the bs that you're going to hear from any others.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
I love that the book is called fifteen lies women
are told at work and the truth we need to succeed, Bonnie.
Where else can people find you?
Speaker 4 (47:23):
We do have DANU can my assistant can get you now?
My assistant my manager.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
These days we.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Have a site that has all the information and landing
page that we will get to you and it's basically
you know, Bonnie at bonniehammer dot com. But it has
all the information, podcasts, Arctic goals, all this stuff, and
I will make sure Dana gets that information to you
(47:51):
and you can post or do whatever you want with it.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
Absolutely. Yeah, the website, okay, and I will put the
link of the description of the book. I'm sorry, the
link for the book in the description of this podcast
as well. For you guys. We'll get you all Bonnie's information.
Thank you so much. I learned so much. I'm going
to go back and listen to this and take notes
for myself. So it was very, very helpful, and I
really appreciate you sharing your experiences with us today and
(48:16):
it's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
You are a delight to chat with and I look
forward to more conversations. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Thanks for listening to the Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson,
where we believe everyone has a little velvet in a
little edge. Subscribe for more conversations on life, style, beauty,
and relationships. Search Velvet's Edge wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Kelly Henderson
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