Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some

the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the

episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader.

That's what this podcast is all about. And today's guest is Molly Fletcher,

who CNN hailed as the female Jerry Maguire for her work negotiating over $500 million

in contracts as a sports agent. Now, if I were to ask you what you do for a living, my guess is you likely wouldn't respond with,

I'm a negotiator. But when you think about it, you're in negotiations multiple times a day.

As you collaborate with your team about a project deadline, as your leadership team debates what the

company should focus on, Heck, you're negotiating even

when you're trying to pick out which restaurants you want to go to. The great leaders I know

understand they're constantly negotiating and have learned to navigate these situations extremely well.

And you're about to learn negotiation from someone who has done a lot of it.

Here's my conversation with my new friend and soon to be yours, Molly Fletcher.

I want to start back when you were in college. You're playing Division I tennis at Michigan State.

If someone would have told you that one day you'd become the female Jerry McWire and close a half a billion dollars in contracts as a sports agent.

What would you have thought if somebody told you that?

Man, you know, I am like David, like you, I'm grateful for the journey I've been on. I mean, it's been an unbelievable ride. I mean, I grew up in a home though where I think if I would have said that at home, my parents would have gone, great, what are you going to do next? Like, what's next? Good for you. So, you know, like you, I sort of chase this desire to get better every day. And yes, it's been a fun sort of analogy and metaphor at some level that people lean into and go, oh, okay, I get what you did. I see, I see you don't, you know, I always laugh, right? When people say, God, you know, is that movie real? I mean, is it, it's like, hey, look, I mean,

he had one client. We had 300. So get your head around that, you know? Yeah, I want to talk to you about that. Well, how did you get in the business in the first place? Well, as you said, I played tennis and then I wanted to get into the business of sports, but I didn't know, David, probably like a lot of us at 21 or 22, what that meant, what that he wouldn't

look like. And so I sort of got the courage. I saved some money. I moved from Lansing to

Atlanta to try to get a job in sports. And, you know, I tell a story often from the stage when I

speak about, I negotiated a deal to teach tennis at an apartment complex in exchange for my rent.

So that gave me a little bit more bandwidth to go out and get a job in sports where you make

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