Jimmy Pitaro: Taking Action and Moving Forward During Times of Uncertainty | E30
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You have to outwork the next person. If you really want something, you can't miss any opportunity to impress. Be good at the stuff that you control. When those opportunities do present themselves, you'll be there and ready to go.

Welcome to In Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be. To learn, educate, and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential. It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication, and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there.

Achieving excellence is our goal, and it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings. We all have different routes on how we hope and want to get there. My guest today is Jimmy Pitaro. Jimmy is the chair of ESPN, where he is responsible for its live programming.

sports news, non-scripted sports-related content, as well as Disney's cable channels, including ESPN Plus and ABC. Prior to becoming its chair, Jimmy was the president of ESPN, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, and chair of Disney Consumer Products, where he was responsible for licensing the Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel brands, and was also responsible for the hundreds of Disney store locations around the world.

Prior to joining Disney, Jimmy was the head of media at Yahoo, where he was in charge of Yahoo's media properties, including Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Music. He has received many accolades in his career, including being named the Sports Business Journal Sports Executive of the Year in 2000. In addition to all of this, Jimmy is a dedicated philanthropist and serves on many boards, including the National Football Foundation, the College Football Hall of Fame, and the V Foundation. Jimmy, it's a true pleasure to have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence.

Thanks, Randy. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. I always start my podcast with our family because from the moment we're born, our family helps shape our personality, our values, and the preparation for the future. You grew up in an Italian-American family in the city of Edgemont in Westchester County. Your dad, Anthony, was in construction battalion during the Vietnam War and then started his own paving company. Your mom, Lucille, was a homemaker and later in life, a computer operator. Your

Your parents had a great relationship. You said that they have doctorates in love. They worked all the time to provide for your family. Growing up, you took maybe one or two vacations ever. You didn't go out to dinner that often either. I want to start our podcast by talking about two dinners. When you were younger, when you were with your parents and sister, and somebody at the table next to you was rude to a waitress and didn't leave a tip, and it

and a dinner later in your life when you were at a restaurant in Connecticut and there was a group of military men in uniform next to the table. You were a waiter in law school, as was I, and I think we can both relate to these situations. Can you tell us more about these dinners, what your dad did on his way out of both restaurants, as well as what you learned that night and some of the other important lessons your parents taught you growing up? And in search of excellence, how important is compassion for others and respect for others?

You've done your homework. Wow. That's incredible that you have that level of detail right out of the gate. Yeah. So the first dinner, I guess I was maybe 12 or 13 years old. And yes, we did not take a ton of vacations. We did not go out to dinner very often. When we did go out to dinner, it was a big event in our house. My dad was working six or sometimes seven days a week. My mom was always working as well.

And so it was kind of a celebratory event when we would go out to dinner. Anyway, we were at a, I think it was an Italian restaurant and the folks at the next table were being quite rude to the waitress and we couldn't help but overhear it right next to them. And my dad was getting very frustrated by the whole experience.

Long story short, when the couple got up to leave, it was clear that they had stiffed the waitress and left no tip and just walked out. And on the way out, my father went up to the waitress and gave her a tip and just thanked her. And she wasn't even our waitress, but...

My father was very, very much focused on people who serve. He served, as you mentioned, in the Navy during Vietnam for around two years. He was just very aware of the situation at that moment in time. And

I remember it and it definitely resonated with me. And then I experienced it as I'm sure you did, Randy, firsthand as a waiter during law school. I was waiting tables at a very fancy kind of white tablecloth Italian restaurant in the Hamptons trying to help get through law school, help my parents who were putting me through law school. And I definitely experienced the challenges of

being a waiter. It's a very, very tough job. And I'm a lot of respect for people who are serving others, not just in that capacity, but in any capacity. Anyway, fast forward to a couple of years ago, we had moved to Connecticut, which was really a great move from my parents' perspective. My wife and I, we lived for about 20 years in Los Angeles. And

My parents just thought we were on vacation for 20 years. So when we moved back to Connecticut, they were very, very happy because they're in Connecticut. Anyway, we went to dinner. One of the first nights we were back, another Italian restaurant. We go to other restaurants, but this was another Italian restaurant in Fairfield. And there was a bunch of military members at a nearby table in uniform. I believe they were army. And

I decided that I was just going to thank them for their service in my own way. And I went up to their waiter and said, just do me a favor and put their meals on our tab. And about five minutes later, I saw my dad get up and walk over to the waiter. And he tried to do the same exact thing, but I had beat him to it. So he had no idea that I had done it. And we obviously didn't communicate about it. But I learned that, I guess, from him.

watching my father. And then many, many years later, my dad was still trying to do the same thing, which is repay people who are serving others. So anyway, I've been very fortunate to come from a family, very tight-knit family. We're still close to this day. Yeah, that doctorate in love thing, I can't take credit for that. That's actually Dick Vitale, who works for us. He says all the time that his parents weren't doctors, but they had doctorates in love.

And that really resonated with me the first time I heard him say it. And I feel the same way about my folks. I'm so incredibly blessed. They're both here. They're healthy. I'm actually having dinner with them tonight. Can you tell us more about these dinners? And what did your dad say on his way out of both restaurants and the important lessons you learned that night, as well as some of the other important lessons your parents taught you growing up? And in search of excellence, how important is compassion and respect for others?

It's incredibly important. I have a poster in my office and it says, work hard and be nice to people. And I actually don't think it's any more complicated than that. Anyone who walks into my office sees it and we usually have a conversation about it, but

These are things that I learned from watching my parents, their work ethic and how they treated others, not just friends and family, but how they treated folks in a restaurant that were serving them. Wherever we were, they're always so focused on being thoughtful, being considerate, being compassionate. And I try to take those learnings with me.

into the workplace. And we try to create a culture at ESPN and at Disney where folks feel like they belong. Folks want to be a part of something. Folks feel like they can show up as they want to show up. They feel like they're going to be respected when they bring their true selves to work. That doesn't start with me, by the way. This is fantastic culture that I actually inherited and

It's been a pleasure to continue to develop it, cultivate it, and be a part of it.

You grew up in a huge sports family where ESPN SportsCenter was the mainstay of your living room. The New York Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Rangers games were always on. You were a huge Yankees fan growing up, so much so that your mood was completely dependent on how the Yankees were doing. Your cousin, Rick Dempsey, was actually a catcher for the Yankees for four years. He played in the majors for 24 years in a total of 1,765 games and was the most valuable player of the 1983 World Series.

when the Baltimore Orioles beat the Philadelphia Phillies four games to one. And as a fun fact, he was most famous for running around the bases during rain delays and then sliding into home plate headfirst on that huge plastic blue tarp that they put on the infield when it rains, which would cause the crowd to go berserk. In addition to Rick, one of your favorite players was a third baseman named Mike Pagliarulo, who had 105 runs over six seasons in New York from 1984 to 1989. When

When you got married to your wife, Jeannie, in 1997, you immediately went out and got a dog and named him Pags. We're going to talk about your days playing college football and the progression of your career a little later in the show today. But before we do, how did your love of sports shape your future? And what important lessons did you learn as a kid watching your favorite teams and sports heroes, including lessons you learned from watching athletes make mistakes,

and do stupid things like Pete Rose, who holds major league records for games played at bats and hits, being permanently banned from baseball for gambling and being precluded from being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Sports were a huge part of my upbringing. The Yankees were on, in my house, 162 games a year, even during dinner. It wasn't just me. It was my mom, my sister, who, by the way, is the general counsel for Major League Baseball, and my dad. Yes, our moods were in large part dependent on how the Yankees did. It wasn't just the Yankees. We were Knicks fans. We were Giants fans.

Giants fans. We were Rangers fans. And that was pretty much my neighborhood in Edgemont, New York. But

It was a huge part of my upbringing. Sports were the soundtrack, including ESPN to this day. ESPN and sports in general are the soundtrack in my homes growing up and now. But there was so much bonding. When the Yankees won, there was a celebratory environment. When the Yankees lost, we would commiserate. I grew up with a tight-knit group of guys. In fact,

There's seven of us and we are still best friends to this day. We talk almost every day, whether it's text or actually talking. We're in communication seven days a week. And they are the guys that I grew up with going to the bleachers in the Bronx. We would leave school and drive to the Bronx, which was only about a 20-minute drive from Edgemont. But we would sit there in the bleachers

cheer for the Yankees. And to this day, we watch games together. We're texting during Yankee games. We're all fascinated with Aaron Judge right now. And there's a text thread dedicated to just Aaron Judge and his quest for Roger Marris. But

Of course, I learned a ton from sports in general, not just watching sports, but playing sports. My whole life has been consumed by playing sports. And I say this all the time, and people who know me are tired of hearing me say this, so I apologize if you've heard me say it before, but I've learned as much from being a part of team sports as I did from all of my formal education. This idea of just being part of a team, this idea of

Checking your ego at the door and focusing on what's best for a group of people as opposed to what's best for yourself. Dealing with defeat, it's agonizing. And just focusing on the positive. I had a coach in junior high school who said, you either win or you learn. And it seems pretty basic, but there's a lot of truth to that. And...

There was a lot of losing for me growing up. Some of the sports that I played, we weren't, our teams weren't very good, but that builds character. And I feel like in part made me the person I am today. And so that team environment, Randy, I tried to bring

to the leadership table at ESPN. I have a team of about, I don't know, 13 direct reports, and we meet every week for an hour, an hour and a half. And it's the highlight of my week because, again, I just love being a part of a team. And I love when we accomplish something, celebrating it together. And then likewise, obviously, things don't always go according to plan. It's a roller coaster. And

When we have challenges getting together as a group and trying to figure it out, that's in large part the joy of this job, just being a part of something special at ESPN.

There are millions of young kids out there who idolize athletes. When someone asks them what they want to do when they're older, they say they want to play in the NFL or the NBA or some other sport. These are amazing dreams. And I want to go over some of the numbers here and start with the NBA. There are 30 teams and each can have 15 players on their active roster, which equates to 450 players. There are roughly 500,000 high school boys basketball players in the United States at any one given time.

Of these, roughly 16,000 will go on to play at the college level, a number that includes Division I, II, or III. Of these 16,000, only 110 will ever play in at least one NBA game. That's a 1 in 3,333% chance or 0.03% of getting there. Now let's talk about football. There are 32 teams in the NFL, and each team has 53 players on its rosters for a total of 1,696 players.

There are 1,093,234 high school players in the United States, and 6.5% of these are 71,060 will play in college. Of these, only 1.2% or 853 people are drafted into the National Football League or 0.07%. If you want to become an Olympic athlete, the odds are 1 in 500,000. If you want to make the US women's soccer team, there are only 23 spots.

The sum of all this is that tens of millions of people want and try to become professional athletes, but only thousands actually make it. So looking at these numbers, what are the odds of some sports-obsessed kid who sits at home every night watching Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter sitting in your seat one day and running ESPN? And what's your advice to others who look at the odds of trying something?

Opening a restaurant, starting a new company, getting a job at Google or Goldman Sachs or entries in Horowitz or dreaming about winning a Golden Globe. People are telling themselves that the chances of success are very low or one in a million or one in 100 million and say to themselves, why should I even try?

We were just talking about this yesterday in a staff meeting. Oftentimes, I'm asked to give advice to younger people, especially younger people at ESPN or younger people in the sports industry that are looking to make a change, younger people that are just looking to get into the sports industry. And the first thing I'd say is just take the job. And what I mean by that is

I didn't have a plan. I'm sure you're going to want to talk about my background at some point, but I didn't start out in sports. I knew one day I wanted to work in sports. I knew one day I wanted to get to a position like the one that I'm in right now, but there wasn't a clear plan here. I was watching an Eagles documentary a little while ago, and

Joe Walsh, a member of the Eagles, was talking about how his whole life, it just felt like a chaotic mess. And it was like this cacophony of sounds. And fast forward to today, and he looks back and it looks like a beautiful, or it sounds like a beautiful symphony. And his point is that it's a roller coaster, but

It all works out. And it all worked out for him. It's all worked out for me. That's not to say it all works out for everyone, of course. But my advice, just to bring this back to your question, is take the job, get your foot in the door, get started. There's a lot of inertia out there, at least from what I've seen with younger people. You know, it's okay to hold out for the perfect job, but how long?

I'd rather see, I have two teenagers, I'd rather see them get their foot in the door, get started, and then outwork everyone, treat people with respect, and then expect that things are going to ultimately work out. Some patience, a lot of patience, in fact, is involved. I'm happy to dig in on that topic. We could spend the whole podcast, I think, just talking about patience and what that really means.

But yeah, I think that you just got to get going and then you just got to try to outwork folks, deliver what is expected of you, be clear in terms of where you ultimately want to end up. Don't be the squeaky wheel, but also don't be afraid to convey to your manager what you would like to see next for you. Engage in those conversations, but just get going and then work hard and be nice to people.

Let's talk about education, which I think is one of the most important ingredients of success and what I think is the single best investment we can make on ourselves. Your dad highly valued education and was very strict growing up. He told you that if you ever got a C in any subject in any quarter, you weren't allowed to play sports for the following quarter until you improved that grade. You thought it was a little hardcore.

but your dad was dead set on you having a better life than he did, something many of us can relate to. And it worked. You never got a C. You worked incredibly hard and got mostly A's at Edgemont High School in Scarsdale. In addition to being a good student, you were also an incredible athlete. Your sister, Laura, said you were one of the best natural athletes you'll see anywhere. And although you weren't good enough to ever think about going pro, you were recruited as a running back to play football at Cornell. My daughter, Bianca, goes there. Go Big Red.

But your playing days at Cornell weren't what you wanted them to be. You played as a freshman. But at that time, there was a rule that freshmen could not play varsity. So you played on the freshman team, then had some injuries, then played as a junior. But because of your injuries, you ended up losing a lot of weight. You're 5'10". You went down to 165 pounds. And the coaches moved you from running back to wide receiver, which wasn't your natural position. Your recruiting coach was not the wide receiver coach. It just didn't work out for you.

You had a bunch of injuries and you told yourself that maybe you weren't good enough. I think we've all had that moment where we've told ourselves the same thing. Without a doubt, there are people listening and watching who are telling themselves right now that they're not good enough. What's your advice to them? What's the best way to pick ourselves up after a huge disappointment and tell ourselves that we are good enough? And how do you know when we should stay the course or move on to something else?

Well, first off, you got it exactly right in terms of my college football experience. It was a huge disappointment. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It was a huge disappointment for me personally and for pretty much everyone who knew me because my identity growing up was football. Football was, I guess, what I was best at, the sport or the thing in life that I was best at.

And I'll be honest with you, I actually thought I was going to... There was a moment in time... I went to the Penn State football camp. There was a moment in time where I thought that I would play Division I football. And then reality set in during recruiting, and I really just wasn't getting any interest. I remember showing up on a recruiting trip at Boston College, and I

My dad and I left that recruiting trip and we both agreed that this was probably not in the cards. And so I then shifted gears and started to look at Division I AA schools, even some Division III schools that were recruiting me. And I ultimately decided to go to Cornell because I fell in love with the recruiting coach and he sold the school really well to me. He was visiting me and my parents often. It was a guy named Pete Noyes.

And he's still around and he's a fantastic human being. I just, my family and I fell in love with him and we formed this personal bond and I decided to, to go play for him and be a part of his program. I also love the campus. I love the people, the visits that I made. Anyway, I got there. I literally showed up on crutches because I had a torn medial meniscus summer before freshman year, had surgery.

Then I had some other complications coming out of the surgery, which were unexpected. And so, yeah, I played freshman year as a running back, but it was hard recovering from these injuries. Going into my sophomore year, junior year, they moved me to receiver. You nailed it. Not my natural position, but I loved it. Anyway.

I just did not do well. I stuck it out for as long as I could, but it just was not what I wanted that experience to be. But they say that which does not break you makes you stronger. And yeah, all of that disappointment from college football, I think, made me a stronger, better person. And I realized that I wasn't going to be great at football and I needed to

shift gears and think about what the rest of my life was going to be. And right around that time, Randy, the entire experience for me was actually a positive because I learned to deal with failure. And like I said before, there's a ton of failure in my job today. There are ups and downs and you can't get too caught up in your failure. You try to learn from it. We have

We have a culture at ESPN of experimentation where we try new things. And when you try new things, by definition, you are going to fail. And you have to be okay with that. You have to have thick skin. You have to grow. And you get better because of it. And because I had so much failure in my football career, I feel like I'm better able to deal with a lot of the failures in corporate America today.

I want to talk about the life-changing experience you had during your junior year when you were at the Cornell in Washington program. You were interning during the day and attending classes at night, including one title, The Holocaust and Jurisprudence.

Can you tell us what happened after class one night and how right then and there it changed the trajectory of your life? And in search of excellence, what's your advice to the many millions of students and the many millions of people who are in the workforce already who don't know what they want to do with their life and have tremendous anxiety about it? And does your advice differ whether they're in school or just starting their career or have been in the workforce for 10 or 15 years?

All through high school and my first three years in college, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I really didn't. Again, I thought football would somehow be a part of it. I guess maybe I thought I could coach if playing didn't work out. But I really didn't put a ton of thought into it. There's never a ton of stress about what I was going to do after college. I always just kind of

Took it one day at a time. But then I made the decision to go to Washington, D.C. for a semester while many of my friends were going to France and Italy. I decided to go to Washington, D.C. And yes, I studied at night. I worked for the Small Business Administration during the day and then took classes there.

at night and they were really small intimate classes about six or seven people in each class and so you got to bond with your teacher with your professor and one of the classes as you said that I took was called the Holocaust and jurisprudence it was taught by a gentleman named Neil Scher who was one of the prosecuting attorneys for the United States government going after Nazi war criminals

And he was incredibly smart, articulate, charismatic. And again, I'm one of six people in this classroom that has this direct connection with this man that I really idolized.

I remember looking at him and thinking, I would love to be exactly like this person doing what he's doing and, you know, advancing humanity in the right direction here. And we went out one night after class and we were all just sitting there. I think we were having like pizza and beer and

I don't even remember what the topic was, but I had said something and he looked at me and he said, you know, you'd make a good lawyer. And Randy, that was the first time in my life anyone had told me I'd be good at anything other than sports. And that was good enough for me. I said, all right, I now have a path. This guy is fantastic. He's brilliant. He's a lawyer. He's doing good. He thinks I can do this. Okay.

I'm going to give it a shot. And so I talked to my parents about it. I'm incredibly fortunate in that my parents, they didn't just pay for my undergrad. Again, remember, this is a family that never took vacations, that rarely went out to dinner. And yet I graduated from undergrad without a penny in debt. Amazing. When I talked to my parents about going to law school,

They said, we support that and we will do everything we can to get you through law school. And they did. And I graduated from law school without a penny in debt. And so I'm incredibly indebted to my folks. But that one sentence, that one line from Professor Neil Schur changed my life. And off to law school I went. What's your advice?

to the many millions of students and millions of people who are in the workforce already who don't know what they want to do with their life and have tremendous anxiety about it. They didn't have your professor. And does your advice differ whether they're in school or just starting their career or have been in the workforce for 10 or 15 years?

Subject matter. What is the subject matter that you are most passionate about? And for me, I always knew that sports was what I was most passionate about, and I wanted to end up with a career in sports. But I was also aware of the fact that just at 24 years old, right out of law school, going to work for a team or a sports agency or a league,

That was going to be very challenging. And those jobs were few and far between. I thought about it. And I think I even had some interviews. Didn't get any of the jobs. I thought about holding out for that perfect job, but I didn't. I just decided to get going, but not losing sight of the fact that I ultimately wanted to end up in sports. So throughout my career, I've tried to network.

I've tried to make as many connections as I possibly could in sports, even when I was not working in sports. When I ultimately was fortunate enough to join a company that had a sports division or a sports segment, I made it clear very consistently that I wanted to end up there, again, without being the squeaky wheel. Every opportunity that I had, whether it was a part of an annual review or

or just an informal discussion with my manager or my boss, I made it clear that sports was my passion and that's where I wanted to end up. So just to bring this back to your question, my advice would be network as much as possible. Even if you're not working in a field that is what you're most passionate about, figure out how to network and make contacts with folks who are in that field

on your time on weekends or after work, and then figure out how to get attached to an organization that is addressing the subject matter that you're most passionate about. You don't necessarily have to be working for that group or that team, but just figure out how you can gradually get closer to landing a job connected to your passion area.

Just two little personal things here. I spent a summer in D.C. after my junior year at Michigan in a program called the Public Service Internship Program. One of my best friends, Joe Hart, and I would go to TJI Flips. I don't know if you remember that place. $2 beer pitchers on Tuesday night. And I didn't have any money. And we'd go to the Safeway, the Watergate Safeway. And a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese was $0.99. We could get four meals out of that thing for $0.25.

25 cents each. I had a great time in Washington that summer. As far as Cornell goes, probably most famous for its hospitality program, but maybe it should start a sports program. You went there, Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League went there, as did Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, as did your sister, Laura, as you said, the general counsel of Major League Baseball, as did Joanne Neal, the president of Major League Soccer. What's up with Cornell and all these sports people?

You're right. I don't know. I actually didn't take a single sports business class at Cornell. Obviously, Cornell is very focused on athletics and they have some fantastic teams, lacrosse, hockey, some powerhouse programs. But I actually think that's just a coincidence, Randy.

So you graduated from Cornell's College of Human Ecology with a Bachelor of Science degree in Consumer Economics and Housing. Then you went to St. John's University for law school. Then you practiced law at several firms in New York City, including Wilson, Alistair Moskowitz, Edelman, and Dicker. You were a litigator and spent most of your time defending insurance companies who had been sued, which as a former lawyer sounds really awful to me. But your preferred mergers and acquisitions have wanted to do deals. During that time, you got married. Your wife, Jeannie, was an actress.

Her first major role was in the movie Uncle Buck, where she starred alongside John Candy. And two years after that, she starred in Mr. Holland's Opus with Richard Dreyfuss. Two amazing movies. Up until that point, Jeannie had only done theater and film. And the two of you started talking about having a family and how getting a job on a TV show would be a good gig for her because it's steady and it's only one job. So she goes out for pilot season, immediately gets an NBC show that was shooting in Vancouver.

And you say, let's go. So you sell your beautiful apartment in the West Village, quit your job as a litigator, and move to Vancouver with your dogs. At the time, the head of the network, who I think was Warren Littlefield, told you that the show was going to run for 10 years. Nine episodes later, the show gets canceled. When that happens, the cast actually made fun of you because you were more upset than anyone in the cast. It's that man you had to go back to work. So at that point, you

You and Jeannie packed up your minivan, drove to the coast, moved to LA. Once you got here, Jeannie signed what's called a talent holding deal with CBS that put her on a show called Yes, Dear. That was a big hit right out of the gate. At that point, you knew you're going to be in LA for a while. I love the story. It goes against the traditional and antiquated norm of the man playing the role of the breadwinner and the woman supporting the man and following his career wherever it takes them.

We're going to talk about launch in a few minutes. But before we do, can you tell us what was going through your mind when you quit your job, packed up your apartment and moved to Canada for a risky pilot TV show where your wife was shooting? Were you scared?

What's your advice to others who are thinking about doing something similar, whether they are single or with a partner or are married? Should they take a massive risk to move to a new city and hope they land something when they get there? Or should they wait until they have a job, which can be extremely hard to do when you can't go on 10 in-person job interviews?

I was not loving being a lawyer working for a law firm. I was surrounded by people who did love it. And I just felt like, okay, something's wrong here. Everyone around me seems to be thriving in this environment, and I am not. And so in the back of my mind, I felt like the next step for me would be to go in-house and have one client and exposure to

a bunch of different lines of business. That's where my mind was at that time. This is 1999. We had been married, living in the West Village of Manhattan, been married for a couple years. And my wife grew up acting. She was, as you mentioned, she had done a lot of professional work by that point. But

was not really focused on television because television was mostly on the West Coast. Other than some law and orders, almost everything was shooting on the West Coast. And my wife grew up doing some Broadway and doing some feature films and really loved being an East Coast, New York-based actress. But yes, we were starting to entertain this idea of

some more stability. Up until that point, Randy, we were two ships passing in the night. She was gone half the time on location shooting movies. We actually got engaged in Wichita, Kansas. She was shooting a Western. I flew out there and we went to the Wichita Botanical Gardens. I

I proposed, we're engaged, and then I turned around and went home and went back to work. And we didn't see each other, I think, for another several weeks after getting engaged. But that was our life at the time. And so we said, okay, maybe television would be the right next step because of the stability. And so long story short, yeah, she started auditioning. She immediately booked a job on an NBC series called Cold Feet. It was shooting in Vancouver. So

I decided to quit my job. We made a huge mistake and sold our apartment in the West Village. More on that later. But we moved to Vancouver. We were rookies. We were beginners in the television business. We thought that the show was going to run five years because that's what we were told. And they literally shot nine episodes. And then Halloween day, my wife got a call saying, show's over.

And so we packed up a minivan. We threw Pags, our dog, into the minivan and drove down the West Coast. And yeah, she immediately signed a talent holding deal with CBS, got on a show called Yes Dear. And so I then decided that I was going to pursue what I thought was the next step for me, which is go in-house. And that's when I started to interview and

Found a job for a music internet company. My advice to folks would be, if you're going to do it, great. Just do the homework in advance. Don't just walk in, quit your job, move to another city. Do some work before you make those radical changes. Do the research.

Make connections, make phone calls so that when you're there, you have some opportunities, not necessarily some jobs, but some opportunities lined up. You're ready to go with interviews. You have your resume ready. Don't just pull the cord and then just go.

I did something a little similar to you in 1993. I moved to LA after graduating law school. But five and a half weeks after I got here, I lost my job due to layoffs. I had $3,000 in the bank and managed to get a job in the Costa Mesa office of an LA-based law firm where I commuted three hours a day from my apartment in Westwood and then had to look for my third job in eight months when the managing partner told me that I had to move to Costa Mesa, which I politely declined to do.

Three jobs in eight months, other than a summer associate colleague getting arrested for robbing a bank in Chicago, I probably held the record for the worst start to a legal career. When I finally got settled in my third job in McDermott, Will, and Emory in 1995, I had dinner one night in Bob Roback's apartment in Santa Monica. At the time, Bob was married to my childhood friend, Julie Jacobson, who, like me, grew up in the Detroit suburbs and had graduated from

from the great University of Michigan. For my listeners who don't know, in February 1994, Bob and a guy named Dave Goldberg had started a company called Launch.com. It was the first music site where users could find information on music, musicians, watch music videos, and listen to music. It was an early version of Pandora and Spotify that was way ahead of its time. I remember sitting there at dinner hearing how Bob had been a lawyer and how

and how he and Dave had taken the chance to bet on themselves and were doing something that was cutting edge and that they loved. And I remember the fire in my belly burning, envious of what Bob and Dave were doing and thinking to myself that I really needed to get off of my ass and get out of the practice of law, which I hated, and start a company which I'd always wanted to do ever since I started reading profiles of successful entrepreneurs in business week during my sophomore year of high school.

It's a small world, especially in the social media craze world we live in today. In search of excellence, how important is it to surround yourself with like-minded people, people who can motivate and inspire you? And how important is it to build long-term relationships and find mentors to guide you through life?

I did not know that. I did not know about your connection to Bob. I was actually just with Bob two weekends ago. Look, I did have a connection with Bob in that Bob was also, I think, frustrated working for a law firm and then went out and started his own company with Dave. When I got out to LA, Bob and Dave were some of the first people that I met. And yeah, after meeting them, I felt like we are like-minded.

I love what these guys are doing. The mission of Launch was discover new music. I felt like that was a problem at the time. It's still a problem, but enabling passionate music fans to discover more music that they like, it really resonated with me. Again, I knew I wanted to go in-house. And Dave, by the way, Dave Goldberg, oh,

almost went to law school. He actually took the LSAT and was, I think he was even accepted to some top-notch law schools because his dad wanted him to go to law school. At the last minute, he decided to not do it. And then yeah, his childhood friend, Bob Roback, and he started Launch.com. And so I got in early and they hired me as one of their lawyers. But I think, look, again, I

I knew at that time I wanted to go in-house and I knew I was passionate about the subject matter, not as passionate about sports, but music was a very close second and it still is a close second for me. I'm a crazy music fan, as are so many people. But to your point, Randy, I'm a huge believer in mentorship. We talk about it all the time at ESPN. In fact, just yesterday, I was sitting down with our HR team

and looking at our mentorship program at ESPN. And pretty much every time I do a town hall, every time I speak to a large group of employees, I will weave mentorship into the discussion. And so we ask each of our leaders at ESPN to make it a priority to mentor. I think I'm mentoring five different people right now, either formally or informally at Disney and ESPN. And I'm

I get as much out of it as they do, believe it or not. In fact, sometimes I get more out of it. But yes, mentorship. One of the things I've learned from Dave Goldberg, and unfortunately, this was very apparent at his funeral where everyone was talking about how Dave mentored them. And I remember thinking to myself, how in the world did Dave find all of this time to do all of this? It's just incredible. But Dave's

His focus was pay it forward. We hit the lottery in life, and it's our job to make sure that we're helping folks out who are underprivileged. And I was separated by a half an inch cube wall from Dave Goldberg for many years. And I would watch how if a 22-year-old kid called him or a CEO of a major music label called him, he would respond and be available and accessible to

in the same capacity.

He made it a priority to give back and to mentor and help younger people or just people in general. And so, yeah, I try to carry that forward to Disney and to ESPN. And I try to make sure that our employees are proactively reaching out to folks and offering up their mentorship, their guidance, their advice, et cetera. And then, yes, in the other direction, I would say as an employee of

of a company or in whatever capacity you're in, whether you're a student or you're working, try to find a mentor or mentors, people who will, who will look out for you and help guide you. And when you face troubles or hit walls, you have someone to turn to. I think it's, it's incredibly important.

When I was a lawyer, I got out of the practice of law. I wrote 300 letters to CEOs asking for meetings, and I got 80 meetings. One of the meetings was a guy named Strauss Zelnick, who you've probably met in your career, who was at that time the 40-year-old CEO of BMG. And I remember him coming out to the lobby. He was actually on the telephone call with Clive Davis. And instead of sending someone out, he was three minutes late. He came out and he said, I'm sorry, three minutes. And

When I got to know him well, and we've become good friends today, he's not only a mentor, but a friend. He told me that he spends 15% to 20% of his time mentoring people. And that was a huge lesson for me. I never forgot where I came from. I have a summer intern program each summer. We have 35 kids from schools around the country. And I love mentoring. Like you said, giving back is one of the most enjoyable things that I've done in my career.

And it's super fun for me now, 20 years later, 15 years later, that some of my former students are my peers today. And that's just one of the most rewarding things in my life that I've had. So I share the mentorship gene there. Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with Jimmy Pitaro, the incredible chair of ESPN. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my awesome conversation with Jimmy.