I had to figure how we make money and how we spend money. And for most NBA teams it’s ticket sales, it’s suite sales, it’s your TV contract, it’s your merchandise, and then you look at the expense category and that’s a different story. And that’s something that you try to manage every day, but again it’s the same in every business. It’s not rocket science, but it takes a lot of attention to detail and a lot of people working together towards a common goal.
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Photo by: MARC BRYAN-BROWN
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[Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov] hires people … and has them do their jobs. There’s no daily phone calls, no weekly reporting.
If I need his advice or input on something, I know where to reach him and he always calls back and makes time for a meeting. And … if he has an opinion on something, he definitely lets me know.
I think the U.S. business culture is a lot more structured [than Russia’s]. Some of it probably has to do with having over a hundred people in the same office every day trying to do their jobs. But I find that I’m sometimes the translator between Brooklyn and Moscow in terms of how things are done, how the league works.
I think in every organization you come in and you think you see all these problems that you can fix overnight and you’re the genius that just came up with that idea. I’ve seen that happen in my previous jobs, I see that happening when I’m interviewing people, and I’ve seen that in the NBA. And usually there are reasons for why things cannot be done the way you think they should be done.
There could be league rules, there are legal rules, there are different considerations. Obviously, the NBA is highly internally regulated and they have to watch out for the interests of all the 30 teams. It’s complicated.
I personally definitely think that we’re missing out on a huge revenue stream on jersey patch advertising.
I think of myself as the biggest fan. So I try to pay attention to what other fans are doing and how they perceive our game-day experience.
One thing I’m always focused on is the music and if people are dancing in the stands or if they’re just sitting there texting, then I know we’re not doing something right ’cause I want everyone up there having a good time.
What I see often now from young people, the millennials, coming in looking for jobs, there’s a huge sense of entitlement.
They’ll come in and tell me, ‘here’s what I don’t want to do,’ and this is someone graduating from college.
‘I don’t want to sit in the office all day. I don’t want to answer the phone. I don’t want to look at the computer all day.’
They say, ‘I want to work with your VIP clients. I want to work with Jay Z.’ And I say, well, do you know how to make coffee for Jay Z? I just find it disconcerting that people without any real life experience or skills come in very demanding. Back in my day, you had to prove yourself.
They tell me they want to do my job. It’s not that easy, and somehow people forget that it took me 20 years to get to where I am. And it’s not like I just sit at games and high-five Jay Z. There’s a lot of work that actually goes behind the scene.
Sales training is the best career training you’ll get for any job you do. I did sales for a year, and it was the most humbling experience.
It’s definitely a very fine line and a very delicate balance for women in the workplace. I found that personally that if I’m nice, it’s often mistaken for weakness and people try to walk all over me and take advantage of me being nice. And then when you become a little more firm you’re branded — I can say bitch, right? — you’re branded bossy.
I am probably branded bossy more than I am branded nice, but that’s the price of getting things done sometimes. And I think that it would be nice if we could all just get along and be nice, but unfortunately that’s not the way it always works in the real world.
A lot of times ruling by consensus, I think, takes a really long time. That’s the accepted way of doing business. Sometimes somebody just has to say, “You know what? This is how we’re going to do this, and if I’m wrong I’m going to be wrong and I’m going to take responsibility for it.”
My nephew grew up in the States, and I remember watching him go through school and for every little task you do, no matter how menial and no matter if you do a great job or not, you get a little gold star or you get this or that and you get rewarded. And I think kids in the States grow up thinking that they’re an exception in every way because that’s what they’re brought up to think.
It’s not like you can encourage more women owners of professional sports teams by giving them a discount. They have to want to buy those teams. If Oprah or Sheryl Sandberg wanted to step up, I think it would be great to have them at the table.
