Why the Trump Administration is Now Taking Equity Stakes in American Companies | Odd Lots
Summary
Investment Strategy: Jerry Jones emphasizes the importance of passion and risk-taking in business, highlighting how his passion for sports led him to buy the Dallas Cowboys despite financial challenges.
Business Model: Jones discusses transforming sports franchises from publicity-driven entities into profitable businesses by developing a sustainable business model that monetizes fan engagement.
Risk Management: He shares insights on handling financial risks and failures, emphasizing the need for a tolerance for ambiguity and the ability to adapt and find solutions.
Deal-Making: The podcast highlights Jones's innovative deal-making strategies, such as his groundbreaking partnership with Nike, which challenged existing NFL agreements and demonstrated the power of strategic partnerships.
Leadership and Ownership: Jones stresses the importance of being actively involved in the management and marketing of a sports team, suggesting that owners should be the chief marketing and revenue officers to maximize success.
Private Equity in Sports: The discussion touches on the increasing role of private equity in sports, with Jones advocating for treating investors as integral partners in the team's success.
Succession Planning: Jones reveals that his succession plan involves his family, who have been deeply involved in the Cowboys' operations, ensuring continuity and preserving the family business legacy.
Market Insights: The conversation underscores the evolving landscape of sports business, where social media and fan engagement present new opportunities for monetization and growth.
Transcript
- All right. So we've taken this show many places, but this is our first time in Dallas at The Star. This is the brainchild of the Jones family, and we're talking to the man himself, Jerry Jones. Good to see you. - Jerry's my North Star as an owner. And what he is done with this franchise, taking it where he bought it from to where it is today. Pretty incredible. - No one's done it better. Literally no one has built a more valuable sports franchise on the planet. $13 billion is the estimated value of the Dallas Cowboys. Lots of lessons that we're gonna learn from Jerry Jones. I can't wait. Let's do it. Jerry Jones, thank you so much for having us here in Texas. - Well, first of all, I'm proud you are here. We're overlooking the field, and I'm kind of proud of what's around the field as well with our Star. So thanks for coming to the Star. Great to be with both of you. And Alex, I'm so proud to see my neighbor, my old neighbor back here in Dallas. - That's right. - So Alex, I'm gonna let you kick it off. - Yeah. So, you know, Jason, when I first decided that I wanted to own a team, this is something I've been dreaming about for forever and ever since I was a teenager, but of course I come from very humble beginnings. But I said, there's one owner I must talk to, and that's Mr. Jerry Jones. And I made a call to Charlotte. This was around COVID time. We were taking a run at, at the Mets - Jerry's daughter, Charlotte Jones. Yeah, - Charlotte Jones. I said, boy, but tell you, maybe in a couple weeks she'll get Mr. Jones on. 'cause he is very busy. And Charlotte hits me up right back. Hey, Jerry would love to talk to you. How's Wednesday at two o'clock? I said, done. And I thought it was gonna be 15 minutes. And boy, I tell you what, ninety minutes later I have like pages and pages of notes, and he gave me, you gave me the most incredible advice that I'll never forget. And for that, I'm very grateful. So that, that call really meant a lot to me. And a lot of what you told me along with what I learned from George Steinbrenner and others that I respect and admire, I think about that as an owner today of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx. So thank you for that. - Well, congratulations. And you know, the minute that you told me you were gonna get involved at the ownership level, it just made all the sense in the world. The fact that you had always wanted to be in ownership says it all as well. Because in my mind, there is a connection. It's a passion. It, you can call it competitiveness, but it's accomplishing things that are hard to do. But, you know, you mentioned George Steinbrenner and my early days with the Cowboys, I'd get a nice note and I always look forward to it, and it would be from him. And he would give me, I call 'em my sweet nothings. I put 'em in a file that I had that for. But it were daily encouragements. And because there was a lot of criticism because of, of the way that we bought the Cowboys, changed the coaches out, and frankly did a lot of changes. Well, of all the people in the world to be getting those nice encouraging notes that boy stick in there. Keep it going. I've got a legacy there. And we, George Steinbrenner, the family and my family set up a company called Legends. - Yeah. - And that was of course, many years later. And I got to meet with him several times as we were talking about legends And Legends serves many, many sports, and it serves facilities and the process of really fan engagement. I'll never forget though. George Steinbrenner told the group when we met, he said, I don't need anything written down. You, you don't spend any money or time on that contract over there. He and I will shake hands and we'll have all we need to make this business work. - So Jerry, you know, you, you mentioned you getting into ownership and, and a lot that led to that. You know, when Alex calls you and says he's going to, you know, buy into the NBA and the WNBA, no one would doubt that that was a good deal when you bought the Dallas Cowboys, People thought you were insane. People thought it was a bad business and that you are overpaying. What gave you the certitude that this was a good deal? - Well, it, it truly was passion. And just as passion can help you in many aspects of life, I really didn't see those obvious obstacles. I just didn't see them. Now you say, well, can't you see losing a million dollars a month? Are you blind? What, what? How much were you drinking when you bought the, when you bought the Cowboys? Well, the point is, I looked for ways, and this is common. I looked for ways that were maybe a little ambitious, but I looked for ways to solve every one of those problems. And while there may have been long odds, there may have been a little imagination in those ways. I took those problems and I thought I had a solution as to how to address them. That's what you will do when you wanna do it real bad. And yes, the Cowboys, it was daunting. But the point is that it was always there. The interest in becoming involved and becoming involved in a way that, let's say, unlike A-Rod becoming in a way that didn't swing the bat or didn't make the block, which I certainly appreciated as a great fan, but becoming involved in a way that would make it better. I found no sports franchise anywhere in the world that was making any money. You see, sports had been a great, great portrayer of what sports is about. It's called publicity. Well the difference in publicity in my point of view than marketing, is that publicity has great audiences. It has great, if you will, interest and can create interest. Marketing is when you take that publicity and you bring it home and set up a plan to monetize some of it and go out and get that and have enough coming back in to go again. That's called a business model. - Yeah. - Well, sports had not only the great passion and the natural instincts of competing in everybody and the appreciation of people that do, but sports had this massive, massive publicity and massive understanding. But yet it had no business model to make it call marketing where you could bring back a little and go again. - Right. - That was totally necessary for me because I couldn't go again. Now what happened with me was, candidly, is that the amount of money I had wasn't what was needed. But because the NFL and the Cowboys were, were really slow, we were really down and out financially, frankly, because of that, then the NFL knew they had a problem. The bankers didn't worry about me because they didn't loan anything on the Cowboys. The bankers loaned it on a receivable that I had. And so the approval of me getting through the door and still not having any money left to go buy the general partners that I had agreed under contract to go buy out, but I didn't have the money to go do that. - So Jerry, along those lines, so go back to 1989, you're losing a million dollars per month now. I heard you also say that you may have wanted to buy a business that was cash flowing to offset some of those losses. As you think about filling those holes, was that stressful? And what was your strategy? Walk us through that - On a personal basis. I had such pride and such an experience in sport when I was in college and my senior year at Arkansas, we won the national championship. While I had been schooled in selling insurance, I could gnaw that leg off the chair selling. But what I hadn't done was been really schooled in financial. And so I thought because I could tell a good story and could borrow all that money, that that was the way to go. And so my first year or two outta college, I borrowed more money than you could even count. And my first year outta school, I think my commissions were $30,000. My interest was $150,000. To give you an idea how over my skis I had gotten, it took me years. It took my Gene, my wife, getting her purse taken out of her hands and cards, credit cards cut in two, it took the bill players coming. So I had really gotten a lesson in how not to do it as far as buying something. Well, I managed to come through that and it was the greatest education that I'd ever had. Well, then I was very fortunate and got some real finances with the oil and gas business after all that butt kicking that I got for getting out over my skis. After all of that, to show you how passionate or crazy I was after going through that of thinking that the old financial death had been at ray, I turned around and bought the Dallas Cowboys. That shows you how much passion was involved. But I remember when we talked Alex, I said, listen, I said, nothing, nothing can stand in the way of passion. - So I think Alex would probably validate this, that when he goes to buy a team, part of the advice that he gets is sit, don't make any big moves, no sudden moves. Don't get rid of a bunch of people Right away, you didn't follow that advice. Basically, the minute you come in, you get rid of this legendary coach. You fired everybody from the guy in the announcing the public announcements to the head of publicity and the general manager. Why, what did you see that was so wrong with them that you felt like you immediately had to act? - You have to assume when you buy something that who you buy it from knows what it's worth, like it is. Give them credit or certainly their creditors might know. They know what the business is. So a big mistake is not to automatically build in, know that you've gotta change the scenery. If you pay what you're going to pay, assume they're getting top dollar and have taken it when they got your money. So you have to really go in thinking change. When it was as dramatically outta kelter as the Cowboys were, I had to have radical change and I had to do it yesterday. So there was an urgency. You didn't have time to have a good time, so to speak. That plus, again, the fact that I can't emphasize enough, I felt like Herschel Walker running through the line, it was just bouncing off of me. There were all kinds of hurdles that were popping. And of course, where was the bad day? Well, I couldn't have a bad day because I was getting to do something that I'd wanted to do all my life. And that ruled the day. - So one of the other most seminal deals that that you make is, you mentioned Herschel Walker got rid of him, you traded him. - Yeah. - It turns out to be arguably one of the most brilliant trades in, in the history of football. Did not seem that way at the time. Talk us through that decision. - If you look at making change, and certainly Herschel Walker was a change, He was the best player we had, and it was well known. In this particular case, you were kind of new on the block, so you automatically didn't know what you were doing. Always. When it's an accomplished name of, whether it's sport or otherwise, always, when you get a divorce there, it's gonna look bad for the one that made the decision. Always. There's no question, if you can't handle that, then don't make the trade. Or if you can't anticipate that, don't make the trade. That's alive and well. But what it caused you to do is not just the tangible consideration you got, which at that time were draft picks. You didn't have a cap at that time. But you had those draft picks and that was the tangible, what those trades did. What those picks did was allow us to use them, not only for using them in the draft, but we used them to trade. Trade. And we did it with, I'm not gonna say randomness, but we did it with reckless abandon, if you want to. It caused you to be more of a player because it was like going to Las Vegas with money in your pocket. And I don't think there's any question that I'm willing to take risk in those early days after having acquired the Cowboys that we built, players built our roster. I think the, the ability to cut and shoot was a big deal. - I've heard you talk about ambiguity. I think about it from the lens of sports. Jerry, There's some guys that I've played with that are free agents and they don't know when that next check's coming from or where it's coming from. And you create a 300 hitter becomes a 215 hitter. A guy that hits thirty home runs, hits eighteen home runs because of the nerves. The same is true in business, but you have this ability to not knowing what's gonna happen next to perform at a high level. Do you believe that's true? And and where does that come from if it is true? - Well, I know it's true in my situation, but I think it's very true. And some of the greatest people that have ever been involved in the professions or business, they don't function as well if they don't know what's gonna happen at the end of the week, especially financially, they need to know that so that they can get on with the, their business of being as excellent as they are. On the other hand, there are some people that the ambiguity that's out there of not knowing what your check is, they're better than if they knew what the check was gonna be. They're more clever, they're more cunning, they're more, they've just got more skill and are willing to exert it. I call that tolerance for ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity. And the classic, at least known story was the famous riverboat gambler, charming mustache sitting there. The next card up is gonna get him thrown off the boat, or he is gonna own the boat. Now that's when he's the best that he is in his life. And of course he's gotten thrown off that boat before and he's won the boat a few times. The difference is though, I'll bet you not a one of those charming son of a guns didn't know how to swim. - Now you can play that hand, but you better know how to swim because you're gonna get thrown off the boat a little bit. - You've gotten thrown off the boat - A little bit. - I have too - I was gonna say you too - Me too. - You guys have been thrown off some boats together. So I, I do want to, you know, move ahead a little bit chronologically because one of the ways that you step out is with your deal making. You know, you're, you come in, you're part of this club, a club that a lot of people especially now want to be a part of. And NFL has its way of doing business and you at some point decide that you might be able to do this a little bit better. And I'm thinking specifically the Nike deal. - You know, this is a Nike athlete right here. Everybody remembers you and Phil Knight walking out on that field. How does that deal come about? How do you decide to do that knowing that the NFL, they've got Reebok, they're good, you decide you can do something better. - I had known a great coach named Eddie Sutton, and he had told me about Phil Knight as a young man, bringing his things to where he was coaching in college and selling it out of the trunk that Phil Knight had had that path to where he was. But the thing that was obvious to me was that he took a shoe or he took performance or perspective performance mentally in a shoe. And he did such a good job of telling the story with it that he made me think if I could put the shoe on, I could run faster. - Right. Right. - And that so hit home with me relative to what sports is about, but really can be accentuated. It truly is the story when you see a rare player, a rare athlete, there's so much more that's going on there with that rare athlete. And just the story of what's making him rare, comparing him to the other players or other competition, I call it one in one is three. And I apply that to everything. Whether it's a business decision, one in one is three in sports, not two, but three. And it's because that three is imagination. That three is putting yourself in in a way, having yourself hit the home run or having yourself there when you're watching or thinking about it. That area right there is an intangible because it is an intangible. That's where the biggest margins are in business. Not down here where everybody's doing it and the engineers are working on it. They've got it whittled down to right there. This area right here that imagineering, that imagination part. That makes one in one three. Is where the margins are and frankly, where the glory is. - I spent my 25 year career with Nike and Phil Knight was just the most amazing partner. And it delighted me when you made that move. But my question is, when you come up with that idea at home, you're thinking in the couch or wherever from the time you call Phil Knight, how long did it take and how do those conversations go? Are you pitching your idea of why this is a great marriage? How does that go? If you can give us a little color? - I visited with him, my wife Gene and son Jerry went to their headquarters. I'll never forget, I was visiting with a couple of his folks about what this might look like. And he came in and we had gotten pretty far along and he looked over at me, I'll never forget it. And he said, I have never paid so much for nothing in my life. But he said, he said, this thing is something about it. I like, when we initially made our deal, he couldn't use Cowboys or he couldn't use the star. - Wow. - We just did the deal with the stadium. Now, as Charlotte said, she Niked the stadium. We made that stadium look like it was Nike headquarters out there, but we didn't do it with the team. We basically brought the team out in no colors and no sponsor at all. But when we got to New York, we were playing the Giants. And that's when we made this announcement. And at that time, when we walked out on the field, I had a suit on, but I had the Nike tennis shoes on and Phil walked out with me and I had the Nike hat on. And we had met earlier with Al Michaels, and we had met with Dan Dierdorf and we had met in the dressing room. And I explained to them what this was about and where the edge was regarding the NFL and where it was regarding Nike and the Cowboys that made it a contentious thing. I'll never forget Al Michael said, now we may have, if we have a close game here, we might not get much to this in the second half. Well, we had quite a lead the Cowboys did going into half time, so they spent that entire half talking about this relationship and the NFL and what might might occur. That next morning Phil called me and he said, I have never had such a bang for my buck in you're life when he called. And I'll tell you from that time on, I could walk down the streets in New York, I could be in Chicago, and you'd have drivers in cars and what have you, just point to Nike and say, go get 'em. So the controversy, the controversy, if you will, - Interesting. - The controversy created also a huge of interest when otherwise it might just been some commercial issue, but created a huge interest. And of course the potential result relative to my relationship with the NFL and that type thing, that got a little touchy there for a little while. But in general, I can't say enough about Phil and his buying into the idea of taking a team. Now he obviously to this day, wants to be a part of Nike and the NFL and it's as it should be. But when it's the thing to do, you can do both. Team, League. - That's right. - Take everything you say. And, and I believe it. And yet Paul Tagliabue, the commissioner at the time was like, what's Jones doing down there? We, we've got this deal. What, what makes him think that he can, he can go and do this? Did you have that in your mind? - Well, I had, and have all the respect in the world for Paul Tagliabue, but I was operating on different gasoline. I had the ultimate, they had to come through me. It was my fanny that was gonna get put out on the street if the Cowboys didn't make more sense financially. And if something happened to the Cowboys, frankly it had a good chance of happening to others in the NFL other teams in the NFL. And so I didn't see a solution to get in line, get in sync, get right in with the other, at that time, 29 teams, 30 teams. I didn't see that answer either because I hadn't found that answer to do that. And so candidly, it wasn't comfortable. I'm not gonna say it's comfortable, but it was inspirational to think that I was doing something about the problem. And the way that I was doing something about it. Maybe for everybody, maybe not. First, I was interested in what it did for the Cowboys. And I knew good and well, some of the things I was suggesting that I was getting criticized for were in the best interest of the Cowboys. And I really thought they were in the best interest of the NFL. I think the clubs and the great markets they're in around this country, they have all of the ability in the world to promote their brands and to be imaginative in terms of, of involving fans in products or services. And I think they have the ability to get involved more than you do at one central place. But on the other hand, I thought the NFL as a whole had a fabulous inventory of things to engage companies and services. And they do very much, it's called Super Bowl. It's called the game itself. And so picture, if you will, a circle that's got all of the clubs in it and then you have the NFL. Well, I could see each club in their areas of marketing and making their deal with Nike. And then I could see the NFL having a deal if Nike Yes. But maybe with an a competing, competing entity that fundamentally was what it was all about. - Right. Because I mean, essentially what happens, you know, for those who aren't as familiar with it, is they sue you. You counter sue. I mean it contentious. It, it goes, it, it gets real contentious. It gets litigious. Did you know that that was how this was ultimately gonna get settled? You knew there would be a fight? - Well, first of all, frankly, and I had no other way to think about it, the amount the league sued me for immediately they owned the Cowboys - 300 million, right. - $300 million at the time. And I told you that I'd spent it all and didn't have, the ultimate figure was to buy the Cowboys. And so it was dramatic for me and traumatic for me, but caused me to certainly grow, if you will, buck up, sleep less, but sharpen up. And it was an experience that I think we used as a platform again for in years, as years have gone by and really have benefited from that more ways than just a shot of juice for the sponsorship area. I didn't know that buying the Cowboys by the way. - I didn't see that at all. I did see and say, look, I'm gonna have to find something, or I'm gonna have a loss leader of millions of dollars for the rest of my life. So I'm gonna need to go get something to associate the Cowboys with that can help me tow the bill tow the freight for owning the Cowboys. - Jerry, we were sitting at a game at a Cowboy game maybe three, four years ago. And you said to me, Alex, I'm around seventy nine, maybe eighty, and I work harder today than I when I was thirty nine or forty nine. Where do you get that work ethic from? 'Cause it's remarkable you haven't slowed down one bit. - Well, first of all, we were talking earlier and when you bought the team, - Yeah - You were fifty. If you could possibly from fifty to my age today, if you could have 10% of the fun that I've had over the last thirty years, - I'll take five - Ten... - Okay, take five of it. I promise you there's no way to measure what life has been since touching sport and touching the Dallas Cowboys. But it's given me such an inspirational base that it's caused me to do things and, and really things that aren't necessarily directly associated at all with the Cowboys. And the moral of the story, the lesson is if you've got a dream or if you've got something that you're passionate about, boy give your passion a whole lot of value in terms of putting your assets together to go do it. - And so Jerry, to that point, you know, for those of us who, who've watched you more closely over the past, call it ten, fifteen, twenty years, certainly the last five or ten, we see someone who is very comfortable with risk, very comfortable with controversy. What becomes clear in watching your whole history is this is a feature, not a bug. This, this is, this is who you are. What gives you such comfort with risk because you seek it out, you, you run toward it, it feels like. - Yeah. Well I, I think that the experience, if you've taken risks, then certainly you have failed. I think as much as anything, it's the ability to deal with the failure and ask the question, okay, when you get up a month from now and it's gone totally the other way for you, look around at your relationships, look around at what you're about in life now, can you live with how that's going to feel when it didn't work? It's that test, it's that next day test, that next week test, Can you go? If you can do that, then you go back over there and say, okay, now what do I have to do? And financially what the work you have to do to put it together. The one thing I've always been able to do is borrow more money than I should have. And I'm real good at it. And it crippled me when I was much younger just getting outta college. So I've really never seen something that I didn't think that I could figure out a way to financially make it, make it happen. Ever. Now what I also though have in these cobwebs back there, and if you're ever cut me open, that's what you've got in there is all of those times when I couldn't pay. When I first got involved with the Cowboys, it was pretty frankly very negative in this area. And I had a reporter come up and we won one football game our first year and the reporter asked me, he said, these have gotta be the lowest days of your life. - I said, about 15 years before I bought the Cowboys, I came in Love Field at that time, the airport here in Dallas. And I went up to a little stand, it was a Rent a car stand, small by today's standards, put my card out there and said I need to rent a car for my work down here. They looked down a list, took my card right in front of me and just cut it in two, they said, young man, you need to know how to learn how to pay your bills. You don't have any credit. That's a hard day in Dallas, Texas. Not just winning one football game all year long. Those are the hard days right there. And so again, not to overemphasize the point, the thing we're talking about, the interest in extending the interest in sport and certainly the years I've been involved when it didn't quite work financially, now we're doing some good lately about how to make it work financially. And that we're seeing that is more there than we might have thought were there. I didn't necessarily see that. I really didn't. I found it out pretty quick that it was, it was there. So looking back seems like, well, you know, that ought to have work that should have, if you're sitting out here now, social media and all of the eyeballs there, you ought to be able to figure out a way to attach that affinity to a product or a service. You should be able to do that. Well we hadn't done that and to me that's there today and it's there more so than it's ever been. - Well, and one of the things that, to your exact point Jerry, a around the, the value of sports and the value of teams that has become very apparent. Private equity coming into sports and specifically the National Football League has been a, a seminal moment for the league. What do you make of private equity so far in the league? - I think that, first of all, let me clear this up. I'm a Main street guy, not a Wall Street guy. I was raised with a family. That was the, the, the heart of the customer. The customer is right that approach to things. The thing that is so important is to take your critical associations. And that can be products, service, companies. It can possibly be those very investors. I'm gonna call them minority investors. Although I don't accept a minority investor, I don't want to say that about an investor. Anybody that wants to put hundreds of thousands or a million dollars in the team, boy I want 'em to be just as entitled frankly as I feel about it to get that done. And I want to treat 'em that way. And I want 'em to think that when they walk out here, if they come out here, I want 'em to think they're a part of this team because they are, they're critical. Name me any business that when they have great capital sources, don't really have a lot of energy and a lot of success. And so sports today is getting real capital sources as other investments would. And that capital resources, a part of that is not some dividend check, are not some plaque on the wall. A part of that is being involved and getting to be a part of the team. I think that's critical. I've had people involved in our team, the Cowboys, not a direct ownership, but as a valued sponsor And let's say a beer sponsor, well that's Jerry Jones out at the floor of that warehouse at six in the morning. - And you'd think, I was talking to the football team at halftime. Instead I'm talking to the drivers and I'm talking to the drivers about how when they go in at 7-Eleven, talk to the manager about product placement and putting it to where more people will buy the beer. I'm explaining that to them. So consequently, I'm as interested in the Cowboys helping them be what they want to be as they are and being interested in the Cowboys. So that's not exactly the relationship that somebody might think if they were sitting there as an investment in a fund or something like that. There's more to being an owner in sports. And it can be, and it can be very rewarding. - You told me that in that phone call and you said, Alex, it has to be you. You gotta be the chief marketing officer, the chief revenue officer. It's gotta be you, not anyone you hire. They wanna see you and you're gonna open doors for that team and it's gotta be you. You said it like three times. You said, don't forget that. - So Jerry, would you, you know, you have held onto this as your family business for all I, I have to think you've got people knocking on your door, especially with these newly approved private equity firms. They'd love to buy a stake in the Cowboys. Would you consider that? - Well, I know that I asked one person, his name was Don Tyson of Tyson's Chicken. He's a great friend of mine. He sat with me at two Super Bowls. But when I bought the Cowboys and I lived in Arkansas, I asked Don if he'd like to join me in buying the Cowboys. And Don said I'm gonna buy Holly Farms here in a few months. And so, and I'm not quite into the sport thing like you are. So he said, I'm not gonna to do it. But he said, Jerry, is it possible for you to do it by yourself? And I said, well, yeah, but I'm talking to you because it'd be a lot more comfortable and a lot easier to have with you as a partner. He said, if you can do this without a partner, okay, you should do it because partners are expensive. That would be from the eyes of let's say the majority owner. Well of course they're expensive, they're your partners. They own the team like you own it. And they should be involved and be included and be made to not, not some kind of fictitious thing, but be made to be involved. And candidly, I feel that way about our key sponsors as well. To me that's wearing it. Now you and I both know all owners don't get involved like George Steinbrenner did. All of 'em don't get involved like I get involved. But candidly, if you want this thing to be what it can be for you, A-Rod, that is the way to engage. And what you've ended up with is a almost a a, a family of your own involved with the Cowboys. In my particular case, I've gotten to spend this journey directly with my family and as it's turned out, they have become not the ones we started the journey with. And they have, we have evolved, we've all evolved together. And I get credit for, most of the credit I get are their ideas and their execution. But my whole point is it is the journey and it is the being involved. And the good news is, is that we can step up there and win a championship, Have all of this, all of this reminds me of the Godfather now I'm gonna provide the protection, the money, and everything else. Tell me why I deserve this. - Good deal. - And so when you talk about your family, Jerry, what I hear you saying, and I want you to keep us honest here, is that this will be the family business. You're not looking for partners at this point. Is that a fair statement? - Yeah, and I think the best way to make my point is that I alluded to it earlier. I didn't make an investment. I did not make an investment. I invested in a job and that's why from the very get go, I said I was gonna be involved in every way. My children buying through me back in those years were not a part of an investment. We bought the team, but what we got were jobs and we got a career and guess what? We got a life. And I can't tell you what the most rewarding thing of course has been really working with them and having them involved as well. So under those circumstances, because, they've spent a lifetime working with the Cowboys, I don't see that changing. And of course there's no succession plan here because they've been doing it anyway. - And so what I would imagine, just to put a fine point on it, people must knock on your door wanting to invest in the Cowboys. And you just say, no thank you. - Well, I've had wonderful opportunities, frankly yes. To have partners almost, almost from the time I bought the club. As a matter of fact, the next morning I got up after we had had a, our announcement that we were gonna buy the team and make the changes. I get a call from Bum Bright who had sold me the team and he said, I just got a call from probably the most qualified people you could ever imagine. And said they were there, they've seen where I was, had a handshake or whatever we got. And they said to tell you that you can, whatever's on the piece of paper we sign, which wasn't much, they'll take it, give you $10 million to go home to Arkansas that morning. I said, Mr. Bright, I said, tell 'em that's thanks for their offer, but no, I'm on this thing now. And we we're going with it. But the bottom line is that the time spent, the commitment, the being involved, it, it really hadn't been work. - Right. - Been some worry now, been some serious, serious what ifs. Principally early financial, very early financial, I could really have envisioned disaster. - And frankly I had gotten to a point to where I shouldn't have risked that regarding my family, especially after what I'd been through and knew better. But I did it because I wanted to be involved. But I was very aware, it's like being operated on a little bit while you're still awake. I was very aware the whole time of how an embarrassing thing it would be to have to leave Dallas and leave the Cowboys here or the whatever's left of it. - Right. And so your succession plan is essentially, you said there's no succession plan, but the succession plan is your kids. - Yes. And it's in place. And the truth is, they could operate today if we decided we wanted to go someplace. - So Jerry, I have two daughters and their North star is Jeannie Buss. Great. The great Dr. Buss's daughter and Charlotte. And you know, they want to be involved with sports one day. So they, they watch, they admire, just like I have studied you over the years, they're studying Charlotte and Jeannie Buss. - Yeah. - So I hope to have that one day. - I can't tell you how much I think that women are such a part of, of the future of sport. We know it in the NFL, we're so proud of our percentage of women that are involved in sport. - We're gonna get to our, our lightning round in a second. But, but there's one thing that just sort of strikes me, you know, sitting here with, with both of who are larger than life characters, if I can say this at about my partner and and characters who have had to deal with a lot of stuff coming at you over the course of your careers from when you were a player to now from all, all through your ownership. What's your advice for blocking out the noise? You get a lot of criticism every day in the paper, every day on social media. Stephen A. Smith, whoever it is fussing at you or fuss, fussing about you, what's your secret? - Well first of all, sports gives you such a, a space entering at, you know, that you're gonna have criticism. You strike out and you strike out at critical times sometimes. And the very thing that we encourage is fans' interest in that. And fans sitting there with opinions and their opinions about whether or not we did it the way they would've done it or what their expectation was. That's what it's based on. And it's so authentic. And so you live in that. And certainly I, I don't guess I should be proud of it, but I don't, I don't know of many that have had more criticism than I've had over the last thirty five, forty years to be involved. But I've never ever resented that in any way. As a matter of fact, I, I wanna address it and wanna be a part of it. Sometimes I think that there may be something wrong here. I seem to do better when they're criticizing me than than when I'm not. But sports allows you to do that now it really does allow you to show 'em and it allows you to have a certain place within yourself. You're part of a team always, but within yourself it allows you to imagine coming back and showing them. We just made a trade on Michah Parsons. - Really? I missed that. No I'm just kidding. But we just made a trade with Michah Parsons. Well of course I want to show that we can be successful with the result of what that brings to the Dallas Cowboys that's going to bat. Can you imagine, I'm still sitting here going to bat, I remember last year after, or we had a, a loss that really had me down. And so I know that you're supposed to make that list. It's the old Ben Franklin list where on the left side you list all of the things that you've got that are great and on the right side you list all of the negatives that are going on, which would certainly be the order of the day in that circumstances. Well I want you to know that sometimes I have to list my things that I do right. I have to list it about five times in five different ways to make my list longer. But I always come out of there with a positive list glad to be playing ball today. - That's right. That's right. - Alright, we're gonna do our rapid fire. So it's ten questions, we'll bounce it back and forth. And first thing that comes to your mind, what's one word to describe your deal making style? - Optimistic. - What's more important to you? - Your gut or data? - Gut. - Who's your dream deal making partner? - Oh I would. I would put George Steinbrenner right there. Not 'cause it's convenient. - What's your the best piece of advice you received on deal making or running a business? - It's not right or wrong, it's handle and cut your wrongs short and let your rights run long. - What's the worst advice you've been given? - I'd say it's from bankers. Either on one side, anxious to loan the money or on another side being a little reluctant to buy into my idea. - What's a deal you wish you had done? - You know, I thought the Minnesota Vikings, when Red McCombs bought 'em, I thought that was the equivalent of not far back, but that was like buying a $50,000 house on a $500,000 block full of houses. I thought if there's any way to involve that with a family or a friend. And of course they've ended up with some great ownership. But that was for me at that time, the best deal I'd seen on the street, so to speak, in sport. - What's more stressful the fourth quarter of a playoff game or the final round of a negotiation? - Oh, I think that playoff game is what it's all about. I know a lot of people say Jerry's interested in the interested in the values and he is interested in the financial. It was always about getting a chance to come in here and do those things that let you get to maybe have a chance for a world championship. And that's primary. - What's your hype song before you go into a big meeting or a big negotiation? - I wanna be sweet here. Hard times. - There you go. There you go. You can only watch one sport other than football for the rest of your life. What is it? - Oh, baseball is my favorite. - There you go. - And that's not because he's sitting there at all. Yeah, just cause they have it. - Alright, so we usually ask what's one team you want to win a Super Bowl or championship? So I'm gonna avoid that. My question is, what's the first thing you're gonna do when you win your next championship? And I'm gonna add this, and can I come along? - I'm gonna make a victory tour and this day and time with social media and everything, it'll be quite a victory tour. And let me say this, every time I make a decision with the Cowboys, a little image pops up about what you're going to do when you're holding a trophy. - That's right. And you will. - We look forward to seeing you holding that someday soon.
Why the Trump Administration is Now Taking Equity Stakes in American Companies | Odd Lots
Summary
Transcript
- All right. So we've taken this show many places, but this is our first time in Dallas at The Star. This is the brainchild of the Jones family, and we're talking to the man himself, Jerry Jones. Good to see you. - Jerry's my North Star as an owner. And what he is done with this franchise, taking it where he bought it from to where it is today. Pretty incredible. - No one's done it better. Literally no one has built a more valuable sports franchise on the planet. $13 billion is the estimated value of the Dallas Cowboys. Lots of lessons that we're gonna learn from Jerry Jones. I can't wait. Let's do it. Jerry Jones, thank you so much for having us here in Texas. - Well, first of all, I'm proud you are here. We're overlooking the field, and I'm kind of proud of what's around the field as well with our Star. So thanks for coming to the Star. Great to be with both of you. And Alex, I'm so proud to see my neighbor, my old neighbor back here in Dallas. - That's right. - So Alex, I'm gonna let you kick it off. - Yeah. So, you know, Jason, when I first decided that I wanted to own a team, this is something I've been dreaming about for forever and ever since I was a teenager, but of course I come from very humble beginnings. But I said, there's one owner I must talk to, and that's Mr. Jerry Jones. And I made a call to Charlotte. This was around COVID time. We were taking a run at, at the Mets - Jerry's daughter, Charlotte Jones. Yeah, - Charlotte Jones. I said, boy, but tell you, maybe in a couple weeks she'll get Mr. Jones on. 'cause he is very busy. And Charlotte hits me up right back. Hey, Jerry would love to talk to you. How's Wednesday at two o'clock? I said, done. And I thought it was gonna be 15 minutes. And boy, I tell you what, ninety minutes later I have like pages and pages of notes, and he gave me, you gave me the most incredible advice that I'll never forget. And for that, I'm very grateful. So that, that call really meant a lot to me. And a lot of what you told me along with what I learned from George Steinbrenner and others that I respect and admire, I think about that as an owner today of the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx. So thank you for that. - Well, congratulations. And you know, the minute that you told me you were gonna get involved at the ownership level, it just made all the sense in the world. The fact that you had always wanted to be in ownership says it all as well. Because in my mind, there is a connection. It's a passion. It, you can call it competitiveness, but it's accomplishing things that are hard to do. But, you know, you mentioned George Steinbrenner and my early days with the Cowboys, I'd get a nice note and I always look forward to it, and it would be from him. And he would give me, I call 'em my sweet nothings. I put 'em in a file that I had that for. But it were daily encouragements. And because there was a lot of criticism because of, of the way that we bought the Cowboys, changed the coaches out, and frankly did a lot of changes. Well, of all the people in the world to be getting those nice encouraging notes that boy stick in there. Keep it going. I've got a legacy there. And we, George Steinbrenner, the family and my family set up a company called Legends. - Yeah. - And that was of course, many years later. And I got to meet with him several times as we were talking about legends And Legends serves many, many sports, and it serves facilities and the process of really fan engagement. I'll never forget though. George Steinbrenner told the group when we met, he said, I don't need anything written down. You, you don't spend any money or time on that contract over there. He and I will shake hands and we'll have all we need to make this business work. - So Jerry, you know, you, you mentioned you getting into ownership and, and a lot that led to that. You know, when Alex calls you and says he's going to, you know, buy into the NBA and the WNBA, no one would doubt that that was a good deal when you bought the Dallas Cowboys, People thought you were insane. People thought it was a bad business and that you are overpaying. What gave you the certitude that this was a good deal? - Well, it, it truly was passion. And just as passion can help you in many aspects of life, I really didn't see those obvious obstacles. I just didn't see them. Now you say, well, can't you see losing a million dollars a month? Are you blind? What, what? How much were you drinking when you bought the, when you bought the Cowboys? Well, the point is, I looked for ways, and this is common. I looked for ways that were maybe a little ambitious, but I looked for ways to solve every one of those problems. And while there may have been long odds, there may have been a little imagination in those ways. I took those problems and I thought I had a solution as to how to address them. That's what you will do when you wanna do it real bad. And yes, the Cowboys, it was daunting. But the point is that it was always there. The interest in becoming involved and becoming involved in a way that, let's say, unlike A-Rod becoming in a way that didn't swing the bat or didn't make the block, which I certainly appreciated as a great fan, but becoming involved in a way that would make it better. I found no sports franchise anywhere in the world that was making any money. You see, sports had been a great, great portrayer of what sports is about. It's called publicity. Well the difference in publicity in my point of view than marketing, is that publicity has great audiences. It has great, if you will, interest and can create interest. Marketing is when you take that publicity and you bring it home and set up a plan to monetize some of it and go out and get that and have enough coming back in to go again. That's called a business model. - Yeah. - Well, sports had not only the great passion and the natural instincts of competing in everybody and the appreciation of people that do, but sports had this massive, massive publicity and massive understanding. But yet it had no business model to make it call marketing where you could bring back a little and go again. - Right. - That was totally necessary for me because I couldn't go again. Now what happened with me was, candidly, is that the amount of money I had wasn't what was needed. But because the NFL and the Cowboys were, were really slow, we were really down and out financially, frankly, because of that, then the NFL knew they had a problem. The bankers didn't worry about me because they didn't loan anything on the Cowboys. The bankers loaned it on a receivable that I had. And so the approval of me getting through the door and still not having any money left to go buy the general partners that I had agreed under contract to go buy out, but I didn't have the money to go do that. - So Jerry, along those lines, so go back to 1989, you're losing a million dollars per month now. I heard you also say that you may have wanted to buy a business that was cash flowing to offset some of those losses. As you think about filling those holes, was that stressful? And what was your strategy? Walk us through that - On a personal basis. I had such pride and such an experience in sport when I was in college and my senior year at Arkansas, we won the national championship. While I had been schooled in selling insurance, I could gnaw that leg off the chair selling. But what I hadn't done was been really schooled in financial. And so I thought because I could tell a good story and could borrow all that money, that that was the way to go. And so my first year or two outta college, I borrowed more money than you could even count. And my first year outta school, I think my commissions were $30,000. My interest was $150,000. To give you an idea how over my skis I had gotten, it took me years. It took my Gene, my wife, getting her purse taken out of her hands and cards, credit cards cut in two, it took the bill players coming. So I had really gotten a lesson in how not to do it as far as buying something. Well, I managed to come through that and it was the greatest education that I'd ever had. Well, then I was very fortunate and got some real finances with the oil and gas business after all that butt kicking that I got for getting out over my skis. After all of that, to show you how passionate or crazy I was after going through that of thinking that the old financial death had been at ray, I turned around and bought the Dallas Cowboys. That shows you how much passion was involved. But I remember when we talked Alex, I said, listen, I said, nothing, nothing can stand in the way of passion. - So I think Alex would probably validate this, that when he goes to buy a team, part of the advice that he gets is sit, don't make any big moves, no sudden moves. Don't get rid of a bunch of people Right away, you didn't follow that advice. Basically, the minute you come in, you get rid of this legendary coach. You fired everybody from the guy in the announcing the public announcements to the head of publicity and the general manager. Why, what did you see that was so wrong with them that you felt like you immediately had to act? - You have to assume when you buy something that who you buy it from knows what it's worth, like it is. Give them credit or certainly their creditors might know. They know what the business is. So a big mistake is not to automatically build in, know that you've gotta change the scenery. If you pay what you're going to pay, assume they're getting top dollar and have taken it when they got your money. So you have to really go in thinking change. When it was as dramatically outta kelter as the Cowboys were, I had to have radical change and I had to do it yesterday. So there was an urgency. You didn't have time to have a good time, so to speak. That plus, again, the fact that I can't emphasize enough, I felt like Herschel Walker running through the line, it was just bouncing off of me. There were all kinds of hurdles that were popping. And of course, where was the bad day? Well, I couldn't have a bad day because I was getting to do something that I'd wanted to do all my life. And that ruled the day. - So one of the other most seminal deals that that you make is, you mentioned Herschel Walker got rid of him, you traded him. - Yeah. - It turns out to be arguably one of the most brilliant trades in, in the history of football. Did not seem that way at the time. Talk us through that decision. - If you look at making change, and certainly Herschel Walker was a change, He was the best player we had, and it was well known. In this particular case, you were kind of new on the block, so you automatically didn't know what you were doing. Always. When it's an accomplished name of, whether it's sport or otherwise, always, when you get a divorce there, it's gonna look bad for the one that made the decision. Always. There's no question, if you can't handle that, then don't make the trade. Or if you can't anticipate that, don't make the trade. That's alive and well. But what it caused you to do is not just the tangible consideration you got, which at that time were draft picks. You didn't have a cap at that time. But you had those draft picks and that was the tangible, what those trades did. What those picks did was allow us to use them, not only for using them in the draft, but we used them to trade. Trade. And we did it with, I'm not gonna say randomness, but we did it with reckless abandon, if you want to. It caused you to be more of a player because it was like going to Las Vegas with money in your pocket. And I don't think there's any question that I'm willing to take risk in those early days after having acquired the Cowboys that we built, players built our roster. I think the, the ability to cut and shoot was a big deal. - I've heard you talk about ambiguity. I think about it from the lens of sports. Jerry, There's some guys that I've played with that are free agents and they don't know when that next check's coming from or where it's coming from. And you create a 300 hitter becomes a 215 hitter. A guy that hits thirty home runs, hits eighteen home runs because of the nerves. The same is true in business, but you have this ability to not knowing what's gonna happen next to perform at a high level. Do you believe that's true? And and where does that come from if it is true? - Well, I know it's true in my situation, but I think it's very true. And some of the greatest people that have ever been involved in the professions or business, they don't function as well if they don't know what's gonna happen at the end of the week, especially financially, they need to know that so that they can get on with the, their business of being as excellent as they are. On the other hand, there are some people that the ambiguity that's out there of not knowing what your check is, they're better than if they knew what the check was gonna be. They're more clever, they're more cunning, they're more, they've just got more skill and are willing to exert it. I call that tolerance for ambiguity. Tolerance for ambiguity. And the classic, at least known story was the famous riverboat gambler, charming mustache sitting there. The next card up is gonna get him thrown off the boat, or he is gonna own the boat. Now that's when he's the best that he is in his life. And of course he's gotten thrown off that boat before and he's won the boat a few times. The difference is though, I'll bet you not a one of those charming son of a guns didn't know how to swim. - Now you can play that hand, but you better know how to swim because you're gonna get thrown off the boat a little bit. - You've gotten thrown off the boat - A little bit. - I have too - I was gonna say you too - Me too. - You guys have been thrown off some boats together. So I, I do want to, you know, move ahead a little bit chronologically because one of the ways that you step out is with your deal making. You know, you're, you come in, you're part of this club, a club that a lot of people especially now want to be a part of. And NFL has its way of doing business and you at some point decide that you might be able to do this a little bit better. And I'm thinking specifically the Nike deal. - You know, this is a Nike athlete right here. Everybody remembers you and Phil Knight walking out on that field. How does that deal come about? How do you decide to do that knowing that the NFL, they've got Reebok, they're good, you decide you can do something better. - I had known a great coach named Eddie Sutton, and he had told me about Phil Knight as a young man, bringing his things to where he was coaching in college and selling it out of the trunk that Phil Knight had had that path to where he was. But the thing that was obvious to me was that he took a shoe or he took performance or perspective performance mentally in a shoe. And he did such a good job of telling the story with it that he made me think if I could put the shoe on, I could run faster. - Right. Right. - And that so hit home with me relative to what sports is about, but really can be accentuated. It truly is the story when you see a rare player, a rare athlete, there's so much more that's going on there with that rare athlete. And just the story of what's making him rare, comparing him to the other players or other competition, I call it one in one is three. And I apply that to everything. Whether it's a business decision, one in one is three in sports, not two, but three. And it's because that three is imagination. That three is putting yourself in in a way, having yourself hit the home run or having yourself there when you're watching or thinking about it. That area right there is an intangible because it is an intangible. That's where the biggest margins are in business. Not down here where everybody's doing it and the engineers are working on it. They've got it whittled down to right there. This area right here that imagineering, that imagination part. That makes one in one three. Is where the margins are and frankly, where the glory is. - I spent my 25 year career with Nike and Phil Knight was just the most amazing partner. And it delighted me when you made that move. But my question is, when you come up with that idea at home, you're thinking in the couch or wherever from the time you call Phil Knight, how long did it take and how do those conversations go? Are you pitching your idea of why this is a great marriage? How does that go? If you can give us a little color? - I visited with him, my wife Gene and son Jerry went to their headquarters. I'll never forget, I was visiting with a couple of his folks about what this might look like. And he came in and we had gotten pretty far along and he looked over at me, I'll never forget it. And he said, I have never paid so much for nothing in my life. But he said, he said, this thing is something about it. I like, when we initially made our deal, he couldn't use Cowboys or he couldn't use the star. - Wow. - We just did the deal with the stadium. Now, as Charlotte said, she Niked the stadium. We made that stadium look like it was Nike headquarters out there, but we didn't do it with the team. We basically brought the team out in no colors and no sponsor at all. But when we got to New York, we were playing the Giants. And that's when we made this announcement. And at that time, when we walked out on the field, I had a suit on, but I had the Nike tennis shoes on and Phil walked out with me and I had the Nike hat on. And we had met earlier with Al Michaels, and we had met with Dan Dierdorf and we had met in the dressing room. And I explained to them what this was about and where the edge was regarding the NFL and where it was regarding Nike and the Cowboys that made it a contentious thing. I'll never forget Al Michael said, now we may have, if we have a close game here, we might not get much to this in the second half. Well, we had quite a lead the Cowboys did going into half time, so they spent that entire half talking about this relationship and the NFL and what might might occur. That next morning Phil called me and he said, I have never had such a bang for my buck in you're life when he called. And I'll tell you from that time on, I could walk down the streets in New York, I could be in Chicago, and you'd have drivers in cars and what have you, just point to Nike and say, go get 'em. So the controversy, the controversy, if you will, - Interesting. - The controversy created also a huge of interest when otherwise it might just been some commercial issue, but created a huge interest. And of course the potential result relative to my relationship with the NFL and that type thing, that got a little touchy there for a little while. But in general, I can't say enough about Phil and his buying into the idea of taking a team. Now he obviously to this day, wants to be a part of Nike and the NFL and it's as it should be. But when it's the thing to do, you can do both. Team, League. - That's right. - Take everything you say. And, and I believe it. And yet Paul Tagliabue, the commissioner at the time was like, what's Jones doing down there? We, we've got this deal. What, what makes him think that he can, he can go and do this? Did you have that in your mind? - Well, I had, and have all the respect in the world for Paul Tagliabue, but I was operating on different gasoline. I had the ultimate, they had to come through me. It was my fanny that was gonna get put out on the street if the Cowboys didn't make more sense financially. And if something happened to the Cowboys, frankly it had a good chance of happening to others in the NFL other teams in the NFL. And so I didn't see a solution to get in line, get in sync, get right in with the other, at that time, 29 teams, 30 teams. I didn't see that answer either because I hadn't found that answer to do that. And so candidly, it wasn't comfortable. I'm not gonna say it's comfortable, but it was inspirational to think that I was doing something about the problem. And the way that I was doing something about it. Maybe for everybody, maybe not. First, I was interested in what it did for the Cowboys. And I knew good and well, some of the things I was suggesting that I was getting criticized for were in the best interest of the Cowboys. And I really thought they were in the best interest of the NFL. I think the clubs and the great markets they're in around this country, they have all of the ability in the world to promote their brands and to be imaginative in terms of, of involving fans in products or services. And I think they have the ability to get involved more than you do at one central place. But on the other hand, I thought the NFL as a whole had a fabulous inventory of things to engage companies and services. And they do very much, it's called Super Bowl. It's called the game itself. And so picture, if you will, a circle that's got all of the clubs in it and then you have the NFL. Well, I could see each club in their areas of marketing and making their deal with Nike. And then I could see the NFL having a deal if Nike Yes. But maybe with an a competing, competing entity that fundamentally was what it was all about. - Right. Because I mean, essentially what happens, you know, for those who aren't as familiar with it, is they sue you. You counter sue. I mean it contentious. It, it goes, it, it gets real contentious. It gets litigious. Did you know that that was how this was ultimately gonna get settled? You knew there would be a fight? - Well, first of all, frankly, and I had no other way to think about it, the amount the league sued me for immediately they owned the Cowboys - 300 million, right. - $300 million at the time. And I told you that I'd spent it all and didn't have, the ultimate figure was to buy the Cowboys. And so it was dramatic for me and traumatic for me, but caused me to certainly grow, if you will, buck up, sleep less, but sharpen up. And it was an experience that I think we used as a platform again for in years, as years have gone by and really have benefited from that more ways than just a shot of juice for the sponsorship area. I didn't know that buying the Cowboys by the way. - I didn't see that at all. I did see and say, look, I'm gonna have to find something, or I'm gonna have a loss leader of millions of dollars for the rest of my life. So I'm gonna need to go get something to associate the Cowboys with that can help me tow the bill tow the freight for owning the Cowboys. - Jerry, we were sitting at a game at a Cowboy game maybe three, four years ago. And you said to me, Alex, I'm around seventy nine, maybe eighty, and I work harder today than I when I was thirty nine or forty nine. Where do you get that work ethic from? 'Cause it's remarkable you haven't slowed down one bit. - Well, first of all, we were talking earlier and when you bought the team, - Yeah - You were fifty. If you could possibly from fifty to my age today, if you could have 10% of the fun that I've had over the last thirty years, - I'll take five - Ten... - Okay, take five of it. I promise you there's no way to measure what life has been since touching sport and touching the Dallas Cowboys. But it's given me such an inspirational base that it's caused me to do things and, and really things that aren't necessarily directly associated at all with the Cowboys. And the moral of the story, the lesson is if you've got a dream or if you've got something that you're passionate about, boy give your passion a whole lot of value in terms of putting your assets together to go do it. - And so Jerry, to that point, you know, for those of us who, who've watched you more closely over the past, call it ten, fifteen, twenty years, certainly the last five or ten, we see someone who is very comfortable with risk, very comfortable with controversy. What becomes clear in watching your whole history is this is a feature, not a bug. This, this is, this is who you are. What gives you such comfort with risk because you seek it out, you, you run toward it, it feels like. - Yeah. Well I, I think that the experience, if you've taken risks, then certainly you have failed. I think as much as anything, it's the ability to deal with the failure and ask the question, okay, when you get up a month from now and it's gone totally the other way for you, look around at your relationships, look around at what you're about in life now, can you live with how that's going to feel when it didn't work? It's that test, it's that next day test, that next week test, Can you go? If you can do that, then you go back over there and say, okay, now what do I have to do? And financially what the work you have to do to put it together. The one thing I've always been able to do is borrow more money than I should have. And I'm real good at it. And it crippled me when I was much younger just getting outta college. So I've really never seen something that I didn't think that I could figure out a way to financially make it, make it happen. Ever. Now what I also though have in these cobwebs back there, and if you're ever cut me open, that's what you've got in there is all of those times when I couldn't pay. When I first got involved with the Cowboys, it was pretty frankly very negative in this area. And I had a reporter come up and we won one football game our first year and the reporter asked me, he said, these have gotta be the lowest days of your life. - I said, about 15 years before I bought the Cowboys, I came in Love Field at that time, the airport here in Dallas. And I went up to a little stand, it was a Rent a car stand, small by today's standards, put my card out there and said I need to rent a car for my work down here. They looked down a list, took my card right in front of me and just cut it in two, they said, young man, you need to know how to learn how to pay your bills. You don't have any credit. That's a hard day in Dallas, Texas. Not just winning one football game all year long. Those are the hard days right there. And so again, not to overemphasize the point, the thing we're talking about, the interest in extending the interest in sport and certainly the years I've been involved when it didn't quite work financially, now we're doing some good lately about how to make it work financially. And that we're seeing that is more there than we might have thought were there. I didn't necessarily see that. I really didn't. I found it out pretty quick that it was, it was there. So looking back seems like, well, you know, that ought to have work that should have, if you're sitting out here now, social media and all of the eyeballs there, you ought to be able to figure out a way to attach that affinity to a product or a service. You should be able to do that. Well we hadn't done that and to me that's there today and it's there more so than it's ever been. - Well, and one of the things that, to your exact point Jerry, a around the, the value of sports and the value of teams that has become very apparent. Private equity coming into sports and specifically the National Football League has been a, a seminal moment for the league. What do you make of private equity so far in the league? - I think that, first of all, let me clear this up. I'm a Main street guy, not a Wall Street guy. I was raised with a family. That was the, the, the heart of the customer. The customer is right that approach to things. The thing that is so important is to take your critical associations. And that can be products, service, companies. It can possibly be those very investors. I'm gonna call them minority investors. Although I don't accept a minority investor, I don't want to say that about an investor. Anybody that wants to put hundreds of thousands or a million dollars in the team, boy I want 'em to be just as entitled frankly as I feel about it to get that done. And I want to treat 'em that way. And I want 'em to think that when they walk out here, if they come out here, I want 'em to think they're a part of this team because they are, they're critical. Name me any business that when they have great capital sources, don't really have a lot of energy and a lot of success. And so sports today is getting real capital sources as other investments would. And that capital resources, a part of that is not some dividend check, are not some plaque on the wall. A part of that is being involved and getting to be a part of the team. I think that's critical. I've had people involved in our team, the Cowboys, not a direct ownership, but as a valued sponsor And let's say a beer sponsor, well that's Jerry Jones out at the floor of that warehouse at six in the morning. - And you'd think, I was talking to the football team at halftime. Instead I'm talking to the drivers and I'm talking to the drivers about how when they go in at 7-Eleven, talk to the manager about product placement and putting it to where more people will buy the beer. I'm explaining that to them. So consequently, I'm as interested in the Cowboys helping them be what they want to be as they are and being interested in the Cowboys. So that's not exactly the relationship that somebody might think if they were sitting there as an investment in a fund or something like that. There's more to being an owner in sports. And it can be, and it can be very rewarding. - You told me that in that phone call and you said, Alex, it has to be you. You gotta be the chief marketing officer, the chief revenue officer. It's gotta be you, not anyone you hire. They wanna see you and you're gonna open doors for that team and it's gotta be you. You said it like three times. You said, don't forget that. - So Jerry, would you, you know, you have held onto this as your family business for all I, I have to think you've got people knocking on your door, especially with these newly approved private equity firms. They'd love to buy a stake in the Cowboys. Would you consider that? - Well, I know that I asked one person, his name was Don Tyson of Tyson's Chicken. He's a great friend of mine. He sat with me at two Super Bowls. But when I bought the Cowboys and I lived in Arkansas, I asked Don if he'd like to join me in buying the Cowboys. And Don said I'm gonna buy Holly Farms here in a few months. And so, and I'm not quite into the sport thing like you are. So he said, I'm not gonna to do it. But he said, Jerry, is it possible for you to do it by yourself? And I said, well, yeah, but I'm talking to you because it'd be a lot more comfortable and a lot easier to have with you as a partner. He said, if you can do this without a partner, okay, you should do it because partners are expensive. That would be from the eyes of let's say the majority owner. Well of course they're expensive, they're your partners. They own the team like you own it. And they should be involved and be included and be made to not, not some kind of fictitious thing, but be made to be involved. And candidly, I feel that way about our key sponsors as well. To me that's wearing it. Now you and I both know all owners don't get involved like George Steinbrenner did. All of 'em don't get involved like I get involved. But candidly, if you want this thing to be what it can be for you, A-Rod, that is the way to engage. And what you've ended up with is a almost a a, a family of your own involved with the Cowboys. In my particular case, I've gotten to spend this journey directly with my family and as it's turned out, they have become not the ones we started the journey with. And they have, we have evolved, we've all evolved together. And I get credit for, most of the credit I get are their ideas and their execution. But my whole point is it is the journey and it is the being involved. And the good news is, is that we can step up there and win a championship, Have all of this, all of this reminds me of the Godfather now I'm gonna provide the protection, the money, and everything else. Tell me why I deserve this. - Good deal. - And so when you talk about your family, Jerry, what I hear you saying, and I want you to keep us honest here, is that this will be the family business. You're not looking for partners at this point. Is that a fair statement? - Yeah, and I think the best way to make my point is that I alluded to it earlier. I didn't make an investment. I did not make an investment. I invested in a job and that's why from the very get go, I said I was gonna be involved in every way. My children buying through me back in those years were not a part of an investment. We bought the team, but what we got were jobs and we got a career and guess what? We got a life. And I can't tell you what the most rewarding thing of course has been really working with them and having them involved as well. So under those circumstances, because, they've spent a lifetime working with the Cowboys, I don't see that changing. And of course there's no succession plan here because they've been doing it anyway. - And so what I would imagine, just to put a fine point on it, people must knock on your door wanting to invest in the Cowboys. And you just say, no thank you. - Well, I've had wonderful opportunities, frankly yes. To have partners almost, almost from the time I bought the club. As a matter of fact, the next morning I got up after we had had a, our announcement that we were gonna buy the team and make the changes. I get a call from Bum Bright who had sold me the team and he said, I just got a call from probably the most qualified people you could ever imagine. And said they were there, they've seen where I was, had a handshake or whatever we got. And they said to tell you that you can, whatever's on the piece of paper we sign, which wasn't much, they'll take it, give you $10 million to go home to Arkansas that morning. I said, Mr. Bright, I said, tell 'em that's thanks for their offer, but no, I'm on this thing now. And we we're going with it. But the bottom line is that the time spent, the commitment, the being involved, it, it really hadn't been work. - Right. - Been some worry now, been some serious, serious what ifs. Principally early financial, very early financial, I could really have envisioned disaster. - And frankly I had gotten to a point to where I shouldn't have risked that regarding my family, especially after what I'd been through and knew better. But I did it because I wanted to be involved. But I was very aware, it's like being operated on a little bit while you're still awake. I was very aware the whole time of how an embarrassing thing it would be to have to leave Dallas and leave the Cowboys here or the whatever's left of it. - Right. And so your succession plan is essentially, you said there's no succession plan, but the succession plan is your kids. - Yes. And it's in place. And the truth is, they could operate today if we decided we wanted to go someplace. - So Jerry, I have two daughters and their North star is Jeannie Buss. Great. The great Dr. Buss's daughter and Charlotte. And you know, they want to be involved with sports one day. So they, they watch, they admire, just like I have studied you over the years, they're studying Charlotte and Jeannie Buss. - Yeah. - So I hope to have that one day. - I can't tell you how much I think that women are such a part of, of the future of sport. We know it in the NFL, we're so proud of our percentage of women that are involved in sport. - We're gonna get to our, our lightning round in a second. But, but there's one thing that just sort of strikes me, you know, sitting here with, with both of who are larger than life characters, if I can say this at about my partner and and characters who have had to deal with a lot of stuff coming at you over the course of your careers from when you were a player to now from all, all through your ownership. What's your advice for blocking out the noise? You get a lot of criticism every day in the paper, every day on social media. Stephen A. Smith, whoever it is fussing at you or fuss, fussing about you, what's your secret? - Well first of all, sports gives you such a, a space entering at, you know, that you're gonna have criticism. You strike out and you strike out at critical times sometimes. And the very thing that we encourage is fans' interest in that. And fans sitting there with opinions and their opinions about whether or not we did it the way they would've done it or what their expectation was. That's what it's based on. And it's so authentic. And so you live in that. And certainly I, I don't guess I should be proud of it, but I don't, I don't know of many that have had more criticism than I've had over the last thirty five, forty years to be involved. But I've never ever resented that in any way. As a matter of fact, I, I wanna address it and wanna be a part of it. Sometimes I think that there may be something wrong here. I seem to do better when they're criticizing me than than when I'm not. But sports allows you to do that now it really does allow you to show 'em and it allows you to have a certain place within yourself. You're part of a team always, but within yourself it allows you to imagine coming back and showing them. We just made a trade on Michah Parsons. - Really? I missed that. No I'm just kidding. But we just made a trade with Michah Parsons. Well of course I want to show that we can be successful with the result of what that brings to the Dallas Cowboys that's going to bat. Can you imagine, I'm still sitting here going to bat, I remember last year after, or we had a, a loss that really had me down. And so I know that you're supposed to make that list. It's the old Ben Franklin list where on the left side you list all of the things that you've got that are great and on the right side you list all of the negatives that are going on, which would certainly be the order of the day in that circumstances. Well I want you to know that sometimes I have to list my things that I do right. I have to list it about five times in five different ways to make my list longer. But I always come out of there with a positive list glad to be playing ball today. - That's right. That's right. - Alright, we're gonna do our rapid fire. So it's ten questions, we'll bounce it back and forth. And first thing that comes to your mind, what's one word to describe your deal making style? - Optimistic. - What's more important to you? - Your gut or data? - Gut. - Who's your dream deal making partner? - Oh I would. I would put George Steinbrenner right there. Not 'cause it's convenient. - What's your the best piece of advice you received on deal making or running a business? - It's not right or wrong, it's handle and cut your wrongs short and let your rights run long. - What's the worst advice you've been given? - I'd say it's from bankers. Either on one side, anxious to loan the money or on another side being a little reluctant to buy into my idea. - What's a deal you wish you had done? - You know, I thought the Minnesota Vikings, when Red McCombs bought 'em, I thought that was the equivalent of not far back, but that was like buying a $50,000 house on a $500,000 block full of houses. I thought if there's any way to involve that with a family or a friend. And of course they've ended up with some great ownership. But that was for me at that time, the best deal I'd seen on the street, so to speak, in sport. - What's more stressful the fourth quarter of a playoff game or the final round of a negotiation? - Oh, I think that playoff game is what it's all about. I know a lot of people say Jerry's interested in the interested in the values and he is interested in the financial. It was always about getting a chance to come in here and do those things that let you get to maybe have a chance for a world championship. And that's primary. - What's your hype song before you go into a big meeting or a big negotiation? - I wanna be sweet here. Hard times. - There you go. There you go. You can only watch one sport other than football for the rest of your life. What is it? - Oh, baseball is my favorite. - There you go. - And that's not because he's sitting there at all. Yeah, just cause they have it. - Alright, so we usually ask what's one team you want to win a Super Bowl or championship? So I'm gonna avoid that. My question is, what's the first thing you're gonna do when you win your next championship? And I'm gonna add this, and can I come along? - I'm gonna make a victory tour and this day and time with social media and everything, it'll be quite a victory tour. And let me say this, every time I make a decision with the Cowboys, a little image pops up about what you're going to do when you're holding a trophy. - That's right. And you will. - We look forward to seeing you holding that someday soon.