Episode 367: Erika Ayers Badan: Leveraging Generosity, Balance, and Leadership for Success from Former CEO of Barstool Sports.

Habits and Hustle

Jen Cohen

Entrepreneurship, Business, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Education

4.5 • 818 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Imagine the dedication and initiative it takes to turn a small blog into a multimillion-dollar media brand. We know it’s not easy, but the habits and hustle required may surprise you. This is what I dive into in this episode with former CEO of Barstool Sports, Erika Ayers Badan. We discuss how Erika transitioned from leading roles at Barstool to her current position at Food52, the importance of authenticity, learning from failures, and how to cut through information overload. We also discuss the traits that foster success, like persistence, generosity, likability, and hard work compared to “coddle culture” which leaves detrimental effects. Ranked one of the most influential executives in digital innovation, sports, entertainment, and lifestyle media, Erika Ayers Badan is the CEO of Food52 and the former CEO of Barstool Sports. During her tenure at Barstool from 2016 to 2024, Erika transformed the organization from a regional blog to a national powerhouse operation leading to a 5,000% increase in overall revenue, making it one of the most innovative and successful internet media brands. What We Discuss: Work Life Realness Building Intuition and Grit in Work Navigating the Evolving Digital Landscape Building a Home Lifestyle Brand Key Traits for Success and Generosity Establishing Successful Business Habits …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: Therasage: Head over to therasage.com and use code Be Bold for 15% off Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Erika Ayers Badan: Website: https://www.erikaayersbadan.com/ Instagram: @erika Book: Nobody Cares About Your Career

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Wow. So you did the deal for that dollar to get that company back for a dollar. Yes. Wow. So what was there, how did you do? Okay, let's just start the podcast with this. Like, how did you even, like, how did that even come about? How did you even get that
0:22.4	deal? What were the reasons for it? Yeah, there was like so much that went into it. And it's like
0:28.0	kind of a long convoluted, you know, history, I guess. You know, the, the funny thing about
0:34.3	Barstool Sports is it's, if you pay attention to Barstall Sports,
0:38.0	it's a wild, weird, strange, you know, it's like what a long strange trip it's been.
0:44.4	Like, that is Barstall Sports.
0:46.3	But essentially what happened in 2023 was that we sold the company to Penn National or Penn
0:52.5	Entertainment.
0:53.4	We completed the acquisition for $550 million. And during
0:57.6	this time, what was becoming really apparent in sports betting was that, you know, the regulatory
1:03.1	concerns were really significant. Sports betting's highly regulated. It's regulated on a state-by-state
1:09.0	basis. Barstool's edgy. It's not made for the regulators.
1:13.6	They don't love it. And it was creating, I think, a lot of headaches for Penn, which was very, you know,
1:18.1	it put Penn in a tough situation, which I have a lot of empathy for. And then on the barstool side
1:24.2	of things, we were taking this wild, free, very creative, very exploratory
1:30.4	content, commerce, you know, comedy platform and trying to put it into a publicly traded
1:37.3	company and a casino operator that wanted to know how much revenue we were going to book tomorrow
1:43.3	and did we book the amount of
1:44.7	revenue we said we would book tomorrow, which for a company like Barstool and you know in a media
1:49.4	company just doesn't work that way. So it wasn't a good fit. It worked out where we were able to
1:55.3	buy the company back. It put Barstool where Barstool began, which is with Dave. And for me, you know, I came into
2:02.8	Barstall in 2016 to grow and build the company, to legitimize it, to, you know, see if it could make
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