Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:53
Life is a historian. Is there still a copy of that on the religious channel like that original show? No and no.
Mike Soltys: 13:03
And working on working on the book and working on the documentary that we have accompanying it. We very much wanted to find that and we could not find it. We could find pictures of the production facilities at the religious channel, but nothing on the show itself. I did find a newspaper clip about it that said that that show, Total Coincidence, was also launched on September 7th. And I called Bill when I saw that, I’m like, are you some strange numerologist that like nine seven means something to you? And he had no memory that that’s when it had launched. But that sports only that is, he certainly remembers that Sportscenter and ESPN launched that day.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:47
I mean, they’re hiring. They have to launch this network. How did this get funded early on?
Mike Soltys: 13:53
Yeah, the money was a big challenge because Bill Rasmussen is fired. His son Scott’s 22 years old. And he describes himself as a college dropout surfer dude. And that’s who has this idea. They borrow money off their credit card.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:08
Idea is a 24 hour sports network. Is that the original idea?
Mike Soltys: 14:12
The original idea was to show state of Connecticut sports, primarily UConn, to the state of Connecticut. And then they stumbled into the into the RCA part of it, which led to the to the distribution that that made it. And but once they had the RCA deal and their eyes were open, that they could send things nationwide the same way they could do to the state of Connecticut. They came up with the concept of doing 24 hour sports, which a lot of people today will say, oh, that’s kind of obvious. But back then you got your sports television on the weekend afternoons in very small bites and Monday Night Football, that was all that existed for you as a sports viewer.
So it was considered a crazy idea. And it takes a lot of money to launch a sports network. And they burn through their money, their family’s money, and then ended up with a venture capital company, which happened to own the condominium that Bill lived in. And then K. S sweet JB Doherty was the gentleman’s name, and now lives within earshot of Taylor Swift’s Rhode Island home. So when we interviewed JB, he pointed that out, but he. He got it. The doors opened with. Getty went through a lot of investors and nobody wanted to put the kind of money because we were talking tens of millions of dollars to get it off the ground and an oil company was a few was one of the few that was willing to put that money in with the hopes of a big, long term payoff.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:38
Was there a path to revenue? Because it sounds like they burn through the credit cards. They burn through family money. You have to go to Thanksgiving and like, face all these people. What was their path? Or were they thinking, we just need to get enough viewership. We just need to get a sponsorship. What was their thought of a path to revenue? Or were they like, we just need to get to this to raise money? What was their plan?
Garrett Z. Sutton: 16:04
Well, they were focusing on three efforts, which was to, you know, line up the cable companies and build traveled around the country visiting with cable operators. And at the time, there wasn’t a lot of great content. So some of the people were interested in this crazy idea of all sports. Other people just didn’t have the vision. They couldn’t see it.
You know, people were not used to all that sports all the time. You know, and I talked to my son about this and he, he can’t imagine a time where you didn’t have 24 hour sports. But, you know, us growing up, there was a time, like Mike says, you only saw it in small snippets. And so Bill had this vision. So he was working with the NCAA to get the content for this cable network. He was working with cable operators to sell them on the idea of, of, of carrying the network.
And then again, like we mentioned with Budweiser, he was working with, you know, various advertisers. And Budweiser saw it clearly that if they become the lead sponsor who drinks beer more than sports lovers, right? I mean, it was the perfect market for Budweiser. It was the perfect time to get a satellite with RCA. They had the vision to get the satellite. So all these forces are coming together. And Bill is the ultimate optimist. And nothing will deter, you know, stop him from achieving his vision. And, you know, people are negative. They’re giving him all sorts of reasons why this can’t work. And he doesn’t listen. He just moves forward with this vision. And it all played out. It all worked out.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:47
He had this belief in his vision. It’s interesting. Garrett, what you say there because thinking about it more deeply, it’s like, yeah, I would never want to get into this business. So it’s like you have to figure out the content. You have to then get distribution, and then you have to figure out the revenue model for those two things. Like each of those individually, all of those individually are difficult, right?
And so I would love to hear the evolution of the sports part of ESPN. What’s interesting is you’re talking to a lot of founders, what the original idea is never really turns out to be the end idea. Like, okay, the original idea is we want to highlight Connecticut sports, right? And obviously it’s grown a lot since then. And the first venues. You said the evolution of what was covered was a slow pitch softball game. Walk me through a little bit about what was next. So slow pitch softball. What was some of the evolution of what was covered from there?
Mike Soltys: 18:45
There were some things that that have survived to this day. I mentioned Sportscenter. College sports was always central to ESPN because you had, you know, the broadcast networks just doing a few games on the weekend, but there was just a ton of college sports and lots of people that were fans. But the NCAA did not allow anybody other than their broadcast partners to do college football live.
So Bill and Scott and others came up with the idea, let’s do college football tape delay. And so we’ll show Notre Dame on Monday night and Michigan on Tuesday night and and Ohio State on Wednesday night. And so they got the rights to tape delay. But then college basketball season starts and they’re able to do Duke, North Carolina on a Tuesday. They’re able to do Georgetown, Syracuse, you know, they’re able to do those kind of games because they happen on a weekday.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:38
So the NCAA was really pivotal in ESPN.
Mike Soltys: 19:43
And March Madness was not what March Madness is today. And actually it was it was 45 years ago. Danny Ainge goes the length of the court for BYU with three seconds to go. And that was the most talked about event for ESPN in the early days. That was live on ESPN.
It was a regional sweet 16 game live on ESPN when ESPN is less than a year old. And that can that got the buzz. The NFL draft came about right away because Chet Simmons, who then came in and was president after Bill, just felt you got to attach the NFL’s name to this and went to Pete Rozelle, who seems stunned that somebody would want to televise the NFL draft. And and we know how that has turned out. And the NHL in 1979 and 80, we had the Hartford Whalers had fired Bill Rasmussen.
And then the first NHL game we have is a Hartford Whalers game. And the guy who fired him, Howard Baldwin, who then went on to some renowned in hockey and then in Hollywood, was the first person that we interviewed in that game. So there was some good programming. Australian Rules football got a lot of attention, but we got the NFL in 87, Major League Baseball in 1990. And and at live college football the Supreme Court said no NCAA, you need to allow college football to be televised by whoever wants to do what. Oklahoma and Georgia brought a lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and that opened up live college football in 84. So things happen pretty quickly. It definitely got much better over the decade, but it was pretty good early on.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:22
Gary, talk about the pivotal piece of RCA because we were talking before we hit record about it. Just started off exploring Connecticut, a cable show. Talk about what happened there.
Garrett Z. Sutton: 21:34
Well, it’s a great story, Jeremy, because they’re in a meeting with Connecticut cable operators. And these people really didn’t have the vision of, you know, let’s do a Connecticut sports network with UConn and the other colleges. They just didn’t see it. And at the time, Bill and Scott had wanted to charge a subscriber fee and they weren’t willing to pay, you know, $0.30 a month for sports. And at the end of the meeting, it’s not a great meeting for Bill and Scott. At the end of the meeting, someone suggests, well, why don’t you talk to RCA? They’re putting up these satellites and and maybe you can do cable through that.
And so they call up Al Parinello, who’s interviewed in the book and the documentary. And, you know, RCA has put up this multimillion-dollar satellite, and they don’t have any takers for the transponders. And so they’re talking to al and they’re going to pay, you know, $5,000 for five hours. But then at the end of the meeting, al says, well, there’s another option that you can consider, and you could pay $30,000 for the entire month and have it all the time. And, you know, Scott’s immediately writing down the numbers and he goes, oh my gosh, it’s cheaper to do a cable transponder for the entire country than just Connecticut. And that just opens the doors.
They decide that they are going to go national, and it’s going to be much easier to scale this operation instead of setting up Connecticut and doing sports in Connecticut and then moving to New York and Massachusetts, they can scale it up and do the entire country over the satellite. And so this RCA opportunity really opened the door for Bill and Scott, and they were smart enough to realize it because at the time, RCA was having trouble lining people up for these transponders. And then people started to realize it. And the guys at RCA liked Bill and Scott, and they kept a transponder open for them. And it led to ESPN becoming a nationwide cable channel overnight.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:53
Amazing. Mike, talk about your run in early on with Bill. You made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Mike Soltys: 24:00
Yes, yes.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:02
And I also set the tone of like, how old is he at this point? Because I think he’s mid 40s, 93 today. Well, I mean today. But I mean, at the time he was fired like in his mid 40s, right. Yes.
So people were listening like, oh my God, I lost my job. I’m 40 years old. What am I going to do? He started a multibillion-dollar. I mean, I’m not saying everyone could do that, but it doesn’t look good as a 45 year old person just getting fired.
Mike Soltys: 24:29
Right. And he, he happened to have known my father for about 15 years. And my father at the time was the sports information director at UConn. And coincidentally, the athletic director at UConn was on the top NCAA committee and was in line to become NCAA president. So there was all sorts of serendipity that went on in this thing. And the fact that the athletic director at UConn and this is pretty Big East, UConn, the athletic director at UConn, is going to become president of the NCAA. He’s able to open up for Bill all these doors for people at the NCAA, which led to the contract.
But in my circumstance, I’m with my dad. Summer of 1980. I need an internship to graduate the following year. I was aware of ESPN because it was getting a fair amount of attention in Connecticut, and we run into Bill and I give him a sales pitch about being a an intern. His eyes are glazing over. And then, as he says to this day, I said the magic words, I’ll work for free. And he said, well, I don’t have any.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:32
Why did you even think to offer that? I don’t know if most people would think to offer that.
Mike Soltys: 25:37
I because I, I the other opportunities for internships did not sound nearly as much fun. I thought from the beginning, I’m like sports all day on TV. This sounds great. And I was willing to, you know, I wasn’t. I was a college student. So it wasn’t I was giving up my job to do this. But he said, if you don’t mind driving down to Bristol, you know, which is about an hour commute from stores, we’d love to have you if you’re willing to come in and work for free. And, you know, here I am talking to you in my Bristol office 46 years later. So it certainly the working for free and I did get paid slightly more later on. But you know the working for free paid off.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:19
What I want to hear. Maybe a lesson you learned from Bill or two. And then Garrett, I’ll come to you some some lessons you learn as well. Mike, what are some lessons that you took from Bill? Working closely with him and knowing him throughout the years.
Mike Soltys: 26:37
No matter what the circumstance is, stay positive. I mean, here he is today, 93 with Parkinson’s, and he still talks about waking up intentionally thinking, I’m happy to be alive. This is going to be a good day and that helps you out in day to day living, but it certainly helps you out in a in a business context. It would have been very easy to give up on ESPN and the book gets into it. There’s a lot of times my wife was listening to it and she’s like, I just cannot imagine that I wouldn’t have given up five times already. And yet he kept that optimism and still did to this day. And I just always admired. I’ve always admired how positive he is about things and when he wants to get something done, stays focused on it and doesn’t let other things distract from it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:23
What were the one of those points where you were shocked, like, there’s no way I would have kept going in this.
Mike Soltys: 27:29
When he goes to his family and gets their money and then burns through that, it’s like, okay, you’re now several months into this. You not only have no money, you owe the credit card companies a ton of money. You’re not seeing your family, your parents, you’ve you’ve taken money from them. I mean, that, you know, I just couldn’t believe it. And then several months in when Getty just was stringing him along and stringing him along. It’s just like, how is this ever going to work? And yet he thought it was a good idea and kept pushing.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:05
I can’t wait to listen to the whole book. I’ve, I’ve listened to bits and pieces. But yeah. Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN. It really reminds me of Shoe Dog a lot like the story of Nike, and it just seemed like listening to that, I feel like it was like entrepreneurial therapy for me. Like, okay, Nike, like so many ups and downs. I don’t know if you, you listen to it and I see you nodding like felt the same way about that book too.
Mike Soltys: 28:35
Yes. And, I happen to follow the historian of Nike on LinkedIn. And, and I’ll just say this, our book is, I think, more accurate to history than that one might have been. And we did really approach it because we wanted to make sure that the history is told correctly, you know, even if that isn’t necessarily, you know, the most convenient. And we just really were getting firsthand stories from people. And if and if two people’s stories conflicted with each other, we try to dig in through press clips or press releases and try to find what was the actual story.
And, you know, history is funny that way, but we had the opportunity. The great thing with this book was Bill took careful notes in 1978 and 79. That was the starting point of this book. And that’s a pretty good history. It’s hard for somebody to dispute it when it’s like, well, Bill was in the meeting on that day, wrote down this, you know, so we definitely wanted to make sure that it was as accurate as it could be.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:39
There’s a, there’s a full documentary going with the book too, right?
Mike Soltys: 29:43
Yes. Yeah. And, and, and the great thing with the audio book was as we interviewed everybody for the documentary and everyone that we approached said yes to the interview. We took soundbites from all of those interviews and interspersed them in the book at the right time to provide perspective. So you’re listening to the audio story, but you’re also getting current day perspectives from the people that the principles that were involved, either a perspective about what they thought happened in that moment, or perspective.
Just we have the current president of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro, who’s giving the perspective of what that work ethic and thing that was established in 1979, what Bristol, Connecticut, all these things, what that meant in 1979, Sportscenter, that’s still important today. So, so from the documentary interviews, to have the actual live voice of these people scattered throughout really, really made it a great listen.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:43
Yeah. And I want to get into some of your favorite, what you thought were the interesting interviews. But Garrett, what were some of the lessons that you learned through the book and through the research and everything from Bill?
Garrett Z. Sutton: 30:56
Well, two things come to mind, Jeremy. One is Bill always said, you know, you’ve got to understand the power of sports. If you’re. And Bill was a sportsman, he played baseball and hockey. He played almost a little bit of minor league baseball. And he, he, he just loved sports and he applied sports to business. The, the effects of teamwork, camaraderie, working together. And he, he translated that into ESPN. But in working with him on the book, he always made sure that we, we recognized the power of sports and how that can help you in business. And I think a lot of parents now understand that their kids, when they play on a team, it’s going to help them in the workplace.
It’s not like the kids are going to make it to the majors. It’s that the kids are going to learn teamwork and the ability to work together as a team. The other thing that Bill mentions, and you know, I’ve, I’ve seen through Robert Kiyosaki and others is just never compromise your integrity, you know, and always do the right thing, even if no one’s watching. And, and that was how Bill operated in the founding of ESPN. It. Everything had to match his values and he. He showed integrity all along the way. And as well, he he just had this positive vision, as we’ve mentioned. You know, nothing would distract him from his goal. And it was just the power of vision and persuasion is what led to the success of ESPN.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:37
Was there a story that stuck out for you, Garrett, on that, on the values piece or integrity piece that. Oh, he went into this meeting or I don’t know, there was something specific from the book that jumps out at you.
Garrett Z. Sutton: 32:51
Well, he was in these meetings with the NCAA and it took a while, but in retrospect, he was able to get this contract fairly quickly. It only took him 18 months. But in his meetings with the NCAA. He was always upfront and honest, and one of the things that stuck out stood out. Jeremy was he’s in a meeting with the NCAA television Committee, and he commits to showing every game in March Madness leading up to the Final Four. Before that, they only showed the Final Four, and the NCAA television committee was kind of aghast that he was going to show Weber State versus liberty, right? Every game ESPN was going to televise, and he kept his word. So. And the people in the NCAA just took him a while to get.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:54
Were they surprised at that? Garrett. Because because it’s like, this is going to produce no revenue or something like what was, is that the surprising part? Like, why would you show that? We’re not going to be able to advertise on it. It’s going to cost you money.
Garrett Z. Sutton: 34:08
They were shocked. And in part, Jeremy, is because no one had thought of it before. You know, everybody just saw a positive for showing the Final Four. But they didn’t, they couldn’t conceive that people would watch a lesser game. And, you know, then they get Budweiser on board who’s willing to sponsor these lesser games. And so again, it’s the power of the vision of seeing opportunities where no one else can see them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:40
I’m, I’m really curious, how did you two come together for this project?
Garrett Z. Sutton: 34:47
Well, Mike, you want to start?
Mike Soltys: 34:49
Yeah. The Garrett has known Bill for a long time, as I have. And they started talking about doing this documentary and they got into it a little bit. Had done one interview with Bill and it became very clear that ESPN needed to be involved. And Bill went to Jimmy Pitaro and Josh Krawitz, who’s the Executive Vice President and Communications, pleading for ESPN’s involvement. And that led to hiring me to not just help these guys out on the documentary in the book, but also to do other historical projects for ESPN. ESPN is not that far away from its 50th anniversary. So in 2029, we can expect a big celebration. And, you know, there’s work to be done ahead of that. Archiving some of the early things, anything I identified in this project, I put in the ESPN archives to, to make sure that that ESPN history has kept intact.
But so then I got together with with Garrett and, you know, we talked he had already agreed with Bill to, to, to bring his original diary back to life. And, you know, we talked about the asset that we had with all these interviews we were doing and that that could make the book that much more interesting. And that Bill had spent a lot of years, you know, speaking to college campuses in the Topeka Chamber of Commerce about entrepreneurship. And we had copies of the speeches and all and said, you know, we can pull from those the tips that he learned for entrepreneurs. And each chapter in the book ends with 3 or 4 bills, tips that are things that he had talked about over the years and speaking engagements about what an entrepreneur should do and the lessons he learned from ESPN.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:35
Garrett, how did you know Bill? Yeah. Go ahead.
Garrett Z. Sutton: 36:38
Oh, I met Bill in 2014. He is a fan of Rich Dad Poor Dad. And so I was teaching an asset protection class. And so Bill came to my class and I met him there. And he’s such a great guy.
I mean, I just love talking to him. He loves sports. He tells great stories. He’s he’s just a wonderful person to know. And so I got to know him. And I had written books as part of the Rich Dad series. So we talked about doing a book involving the founding of ESPN and what he learned, and that we got started on it. And then it kind of languished a bit. But then we brought it back when Bill and I were talking about doing the documentary, because I’ve done a couple documentaries before this, and Bill knew that. And so we got to talking and it made perfect sense to do the documentary film.
And then I’ve got to give a shout out to Hachette Audio. A Hachette is a big French publishing company. They do a lot of audiobooks. They’ve done all my audiobooks. So I’ve worked with Hachette for, you know, 15 years now. And so we brought Hachette aboard to do the audio book because, as Mike said, we had all these sound clips from people who were interviewed in the documentary. So the audio book came together and it’s really terrific. We have a great narrator, Will Damron, who has won a number of awards for the best audio books of the year. And so he’s the narrator and he really brings the book to life. So that’s how it all came together.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:17
Garrett, what documentaries have you done? When I look at your background, I’m not thinking, this guy’s done a bunch of documentaries. It’s like, you know, you got your, you know, your JD, right? University of California and went to Berkeley. You’re an attorney.
You run corporate direct, right, which is asset protection. Document. Where do documentaries come into this?
Garrett Z. Sutton: 38:43
So as a kid, I always made movies, but then you got to get serious and go to law school. So, you know, I’ve always wanted to make movies. And so Greg DeHart, who’s the Director of Sports Heaven, the documentary, and I have done four documentaries. The first one was on Max Patkin, The Clown Prince of Baseball, and I don’t know if you remember him. He was prior to the Savannah Bananas. He was the clown around the minor league games. And it’s a great story. You know, the, you know, the clown with the tears in his eyes, you know, it’s a very fascinating story. And then we did another one called Symphony of the Holocaust, about a musician who was caught up in the Nazi death camps and had this symphony that he created. And so that one qualified for the Academy Awards for documentaries in 24. And so then Greg, our director, played minor league baseball. And so he loved the idea of working on Sports Heaven with Mike and I. So I’ve done four documentaries now and am really looking forward to people seeing sports heaven. About the birth of ESPN.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:58
This is great. Yeah. I want to talk about some of your favorite interviews. Right? Because I’m sure not all of them made them in the book. Some of them made it in the book. So each of you maybe share 1 or 2 of your favorites. And that reminds me, you know, Garrett, when you talked about the minor league, I had the founder of Big League Chew on the podcast, and it just came from sitting in the bullpen and the minor leagues and be like, I don’t want to chew tobacco and get mouth cancer. And like, he came up with the idea of shredded gum and he just told the story and went out and did it. So he just he’s like, we had plenty of time.
We’re sitting in the bullpen in the minor leagues, like come up with different ideas. So some of your favorite interviews, Mike, from this project, it could be in the book or not in the book.
Mike Soltys: 40:46
Yeah, we, well, we, we did 22 interviews and we did at least one soundbite from each of the 22 in the book. And I particularly like the Chris Berman one. And Chris did the forward. He voiced over the foreword that he wrote for the book, but Chris started at ESPN just after launch in September of 79. He was the weekend guy on the NBC affiliate in Hartford.
You know, again, this is he’s still on our air, still doing NFL prime time. He’s a very young Chris Berman, and he just connected with viewers and has been this, you know, face of ESPN forever. But he also made a point of becoming friends with Bill Rasmussen. They speak every September 7th. Berman’s known for his nicknames. And he calls he calls Bill our George Washington and and always takes out the dollar bill and says bills on our on the dollar bill.
And so he he just has really thoughtful, you know, he’s well informed on everything about ESPN and everything about Bill Rasmussen and everything about 1979. So he was particularly good. Al Parinello, who Garrett mentioned, who was the RCA guy? He’s central casting for a salesman. And again, it’s that many years later, he’s still the he’s still the satellite salesman. And it comes it comes through in the passion that he brings to it and outlining the fact that, yeah, he couldn’t sell him. And he hears about he loves sports and he hears about this thing and says, yeah, you should buy one of these. And Bill, bill tells the story of of calling him up and says, okay, I’ll take one of those. And al said, one of which Bill didn’t even know how to describe it. So Bob Lee, longtime ESPN anchor, was terrific in it in the March Madness perspective, because he was ESPN’s, you know, college basketball studio host for so long.
A guy we did, Greg Wyatt was an original Sportscenter anchor that many people wouldn’t remember. But the great thing with Greg was he got moved just after launch to be our West Coast person and sat a few doors down within Getty Oil to Stuart Evey, who was the guy who was driving everybody crazy in Bristol. And so Greg had not just the Sportscenter launch stories, but he had some pretty good insights on Getty Oil. And then I also particularly like George Bodenheimer, who was who started in the mailroom at ESPN. Another great story. He gets hired out of college in ESPN’s mailroom and and gets elevated all the way up to be President of the company. And he also has a close relationship with Bill and really articulated well the juggling act of.
He said that was nothing short of remarkable that this unknown guy is able to take the NCAA and play them off Anheuser Busch and play them off the cable systems and play them off Getty oil, all in a very narrow window, and then get the deal done with all of them. And really with this, he says in the movie, without two nickels to rub together. And so George was a terrific interview, but all 22 of them brought something. Everybody we wanted did the interviews. We uncovered a guy who watched the first night, and we interviewed him about the experience and what that meant. You know, kind of set the era that, you know, this stuff wasn’t on. And he lived in Connecticut and he heard about it because of the Connecticut stuff and ended up watching a guy named John Mihalic. So he’s in, he’s in the book, but everybody brings their own story and their own perspective. That just gave tremendous richness to it all.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:21
Garrett, what about you?
Garrett Z. Sutton: 44:23
Well, there are two I mean, Mike mentioned a lot of them. I think George Grand, who was one of the original ESPN anchors, he’s just a genuine great guy. He he just really has all sorts of positive thoughts about what went on. He was there the first night. His stories of how, you know, they’re they’re still painting the walls, they’re still laying cable and ESPN is going on the air. So he’s a he’s a great interview in the book and the documentary. And then I’d also like to mention Rosa Gotti, who was the PR person early on for ESPN. Very accomplished professional woman.
And she has some really great insights into the start of, of ESPN and why people wanted to talk to Bill. There were people within ESPN at the time, Chet Simmons, who came over from NBC sports. Stuart Evey wanted to receive in, you know, accolades and all of this. He was the Getty Oil person. But Rosa got explains that everybody wanted to talk to Bill. He was the everyman. He could tell the story better than anyone else. And so Rosa got his interview in the book. And the documentary is, I think, worth listening to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:47
I’d love to hear some advice. Right. So, Mike, for you up and coming people in media, in sports, and then just advice for the next generation as well. I know you have a son. I’m curious what advice you give him. And Mike, you know, just I’ll say a shout out to Hal Steinberg. He’s a high school kid right now wants to go media. He started his podcast. He’s interviewed. I’m jealous of some people. He’s interviewed Spencer Paysinger, one of my favorite shows, All American. I don’t know if you guys ever watched that, that TV show. And I was looking at his podcast and he had Spencer who like came up with All American, who was X pro athlete. And I’m like, how’d you get that guy? But what are some advice, Mike, you have for some of the up and coming people in, in media?
Mike Soltys: 46:36
Yeah. The advice off the book is if you’ve got a great idea and even if people don’t believe in it, you know, and you can push it forward, you know, push it forward. The other thing I just always tell people is if there’s an opportunity and maybe it’s not in the place you want to be at, maybe it’s not, you know, in getting the money that you think you should get. I worked for free. If you think it’s a good opportunity, you think it’s a path that you may enjoy, you know, pursue that there’s time down the line.
You know, if you got to pay the bills and things aren’t working out with your, with your dream, you know, that you got to be realistic and, and settle in to, to some other kind of job, but really just try to make things work. And if somebody offers something, you know, give it careful thought and, and, and I, I have stopped working and, you know, Josh Krulwich calls me up and says, I got this documentary project and we’d like you to produce it. And then that led to talking to Garrett about the book. It’s just like that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:38
And then your wife’s like, I thought you said you were going to relax.
Mike Soltys: 47:41
Yes, exactly. And and. No, she’s happy to have me out of the house.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:45
Yeah, exactly. Like, take as many projects as you want.
Mike Soltys: 47:47
That’s right. And and so it’s just, you know, I’ve been fortunate that through ESPN, I’ve just had an incredible amount of experiences. And part of that is I’m always open to something. If somebody says, hey, here’s a new thing, why not give it a try? The answer was always yes.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 48:03
Yep. Garrett, what about you? I’m curious about some of the advice you’ve given to your son throughout the years that he’s maybe listened to? Maybe not. Maybe he’ll realize in ten years.
Oh, yeah. Dad was smarter than I let him believe, but.
Garrett Z. Sutton: 48:18
Well, yeah, it’s hard when the old man gives the son advice. But, you know, so I, I always say that this is the advice from Robert Kiyosaki and, and he’ll listen to that. And, and it’s true because Robert Kiyosaki always impressed upon me and others that when you’re starting up, don’t worry about the money. Provide the best possible service you can take care of your clients, make sure that they are taken care of. And the money will follow. And that’s what Bill did. He went out there and provided the best possible service. A nationwide sports network. And the money will follow. And it did. And so that’s the advice through Robert Kiyosaki I give to my son.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 49:03
I want to thank both of you. This has been fantastic. Everyone should check out Sports Heaven: The Birth of ESPN, the audio book, the regular book, the documentary, wherever you can find it. So thank you to both of you for joining me.
Mike Soltys: 49:19
It’s been great, Jeremy.
