Never in Doubt: A Strategy Playbook From Former WWE President George Barrios

Speaker A: Sometimes wrong. Never in doubt was actually a phrase an old boss used in one of my performance reviews when I was early in my career. And I remember thinking when I read it, because he had given me the review before we had the review, and it was a great review. It got promoted that day. But I was like, shit. He's pointing out that I can be a little bit of an arrogant prick. You know, that's his way of saying that, which is true. Turns out he wasn't. It turns out that that phrase was used by a Harvard surgeon. And he said that the greatest surgeons in the world to succeed are sometimes wrong because they're doing difficult things, but they are never in doubt. Because if you're in doubt, you cannot do anything difficult. M

Speaker B: welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, to the strategy and leadership podcast that is an inside joke to some people. Uh, and today I'm very excited, very, very excited. Uh, welcome. Introduced in my best announcer voice, hailing from Queens, New York, George Barrios. George, what's happening today? Thanks for joining us.

Speaker A: If this doesn't work out for you, you could be an announcer on Monday night Raw. Anthony, that's awesome.

Speaker B: Hey, anytime you want me, I will be there. Uh, I got a face for radio, so it's perfect for it. Although Jillian Garcia is doing a great job. I know she's anymore, but I know somebody different now show. So for those of you that understand the reference of Jillian Garcia, you may know who my next guest is. George Barrios. He's the former co president of WWE Entertainment. He's, uh, working with Ipsos Global Sports Group. George, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Thank you for being here on the strategy and leadership podcast.

Speaker A: Great, thanks, Anthony. Uh, you know, I'm a fan of what you do, perspective. Uh, you have, uh, um, so, um, looking forward to sharing the journey.

Speaker B: Excellent. Likewise. So for those of you that don't know, WWE Inc. World Wrestling Entertainment, uh, publicly traded $2.6 billion global media company, really, uh, is co. His partner, uh, and him, you know, changed the landscape of what, uh, wrestling entertainment was, has evolved into be as a global brand. Obviously you're doing lots of good stuff. But George, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, your journey, and we'll get in some questions.

Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. So on the personal side, son, uh, of Cuban immigrants who came here, uh, in 1959, I was born in Flushing, Queens. Uh, and as I say in the book, I've come to realize you are always Your first zip code. Uh, and so I am, it doesn't take me long to sound like I'm um, what I am. A, uh, kid from the streets of Queens. Ended up going to the University of Connecticut, which is a story in of itself. Met my wife there and 20 lifelong friends. I'm uh, very involved. I'm now incredibly, because they almost threw me out of the school while I was there. I'm now on the board of trustees. So uh, which is that has come full circle and then, yeah, my career has been, you know, interesting. Today I'm an investor, as you mentioned, I'm on the board and investor in Global Sport Group, which is the largest sports holding company in the world. I've got my own investment firm with my business partner and CO President of WWE, Michelle Wilson, called ISOs, ISOs Capital. Before that WWE, uh, for 12 years. And then before that you're now going back 17, 18 years. Not sure it matters all that much, but a career in strategy and general management. So functionally the strategy function, what should we be doing? How do we do what we're doing better? And then in general management, obviously applying ah, that work. So, uh, yeah, super excited uh, to be here.

Speaker B: Excellent. And also add a national board member,

Speaker A: soon to be, uh, sorry about that. Soon to be a first time author. And the reason, a published author. You know, as Cuban kid, I heard a lot about Jose Marti. Uh, when I was growing up my dad would talk about him. He was one of the Cuban patriots, uh, who lost his life in the war of independence with Spain. But in any event, Jose Marti, one of his maybe apocryphal, but uh, it's attributed to him saying so it's that every man should have a child, plant a tree and write a book. So even though my wife would argue that I've never planted a tree, I've said I've been around, I've at least assisted. I definitely have. Uh, I got three children, so I have that checkbox. So any event, uh, uh, something I'm excited about too, coming up.

Speaker B: Well, I love it. I mean maybe not a physical tree. But also mention that you're a national board member for about 10 years on make a Wish America. And that's a different, you know, proverbial planting a tree. But let's talk about, you know, what you have built, which is the whole part of that, you know, building a brand like wwe. You know, sometimes you were wrong, but it was never in doubt what you were building on. Uh, by the way, that's the book out in June. Uh, but tell us about that journey. Like, how did you get into that coming out at UConn? You know, what was the experience like running an organization like that? Good, bad, or ugly? Take us back.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I'll hit on a couple of things and then kind of go a little bit deeper on wwe. But the first thing I'll touch on is I get a call at this point in time, and it's a story in of itself. I'm, um, the treasurer of the New York Times Company. I get a call from a guy at Spencer Stewart who I knew, and he knew that I was looking for a C suite job and had decided the my path there would be through the CFO role, given my background, calls me, says, hey, I've got this great role cfo. It's headquartered in Stanford. Like, that's terrific. I live in Connecticut. It's about, you know, 300 million in revenue or so. Profitable. Great. What is it? And he kind of hems and haws a little bit. I'm like, you know, that's great, Adam, but what's the company? He's like, wwe? And I go, well, what's that? He goes, the wrestling. And then my exact quote to Adam, I hope it doesn't offend your listeners, was, are you fucking kidding me? Like, that's what you're calling me with, with that shit? And so he goes, and you know, it's the worst thing in life is when somebody uses your own words against you. He goes, hey, George, you're always saying that you don't give a shit about people's opinions. All you care is give me the facts. I'll form my own opinions. He goes, do you know anything about wwi? Uh, used to watch it. He goes, do you know anything about the business? Then I hem and haw and go, yeah, no. He goes, well, maybe you learn. So I did. I went, did the work learn? I said, wow, this is interesting. I'd be lying if I said I saw what it became, what it would become. But I said, this is interesting. So I ended up taking the role. Second thing I tell you, because it gets to the work. The title of the book, sometimes Wrong, Never in Doubt, was actually a phrase an old boss used in one of my performance reviews when I was early in my career. And I remember thinking when I read it, because he had given me the review before we had the review, and it was a great review. It got promoted that day. But I was like, shit. He's pointing out that I can be a little bit of an arrogant prick. You know, that's his way of saying that, which is true. Turns out he wasn't. It turns out that that phrase was used by a Harvard surgeon. And he said that the greatest surgeons in the world to succeed are sometimes wrong because they're doing difficult things, but they are never in doubt because if you're in doubt, you cannot do anything difficult. And this guy gave me the review, said to me, george, the reason you have so much confidence is because you do the work beforehand. You dig so deep that when you come up with the idea that you think needs to be done, you've got real conviction. Uh, and that's what you need to be able to do hard things. So I would say that approach, which is probably somewhat temperamental, but you know, because of that review also became something I honed over time, the going deeper. And so it was no different at wwe. And I was also lucky because I found a partner who's my business partner today. So 18 years, who thought about things the same way. Right. That you need to go really, really deep and understand before you know where you want to go. In the case of that, it's. And it's a template I've used over and over in multiple businesses. It's a deep dive of the internals and over a long period of time to look for patterns. I never know what I'm looking for, but it's understanding the products and the services. How have they evolved over time? Where did the revenue come from? How has it grown? Has it been the volume? Have you rate? Has it been price raising in the volume? Is it frequency or is it the size of the, you know, large, casual, or is it a smaller, engaged, whatever, deep internal. And then on the other side, two things, and they are business school element, things you learn in business school. But the funny thing is, at least in my experience, very few people do them and certainly didn't do them to the level of detail M. Michelle and I did. Again, this is where the partnership was so powerful is one we want to understand our, our customers, our fans, deeply. Right. So every business we get involved in, we do deep consumer research. We don't. And look, I don't want to tear anybody through the mud, but in my world, you hear a lot of people talking about YouGov data. You know, our point of view on that. Yeah, it's nice bullshit. I'm not making a real. I'm not going to have the sometimes wrong but never endowed conviction off of you to. Of YouGov data. So we go deep and we have trusted partners we use to understand the, the consumer, the fan, how do they behave, how do they engage, how deep, what is the levels of affinity? You know, we have a model where we go the hardest core fan, the aspirational, uh, core, a light casual, a heavy casual, a non. You know, we, we've built it over time. How we think about it, that's one, that's a super, uh, big part of it. Second lens, external is geography. So applying that, what I just talked around, not just in your home core market, but outside the market. So because of that deep, deep, deep work we did. Oh, uh, and the third one, I left it out is the value chain. Right. So one of the things, it's funny when I joined WWE is I want a real, again, deep understanding of all the money coming in into the entertainment sector, which is primarily subscriptions and advertising. You can add commerce if you want. And how is it flowing through the system all the way then to where we sat as an IP provider? If you think about it, at least the model we created was there are three types of IP creators, scripted entertainment, unscripted entertainment and live. And that the work to deconstruct where the money sat, how it was flowing through there, who had the leverage. You know, the typical shit they teach you in business school. We did it. I couldn't find it. I went to every bank that covered us, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stan. Nobody had done that. We did it, built it up ourselves. Why would you do it? It seems like a, you know, fanciful, um, piece of work. It gets back to getting the conviction we didn't know what the strategy was going to be. What we knew is we wanted a deep understanding so that when, then we picked it because we knew it was going to be hard. Right? Every great journey is you go through a swamp of despair. Another thing archetype that Michelle and I talk about. But we did that and I'm now going to compress 18 months of work. The absolute insight that said this is what allowed us to take WWE from a North American event based business primarily that was worth around a billion to something that was worth 10 billion. Right. We just, when we engineered the merger with ufc, that was roughly the valuation. The insight that got that was that wrestling and you're going to say, well come on, who didn't know that? And the answer is no one. Wrestling is live content. The value sports is invaluable because it's sports. That's what everybody says. When you really dig in, what you realize is it's valuable because it's live, it's valuable because it's tribal, it's multi generational keeps, uh, it's self perpetuating. Now you would say that's obvious. Well it's not. If you step way back and you say well let's look at all different types of content. That insight.

Speaker B: Yeah, just uh, because there's a lot there. So I want to pause it for a second. So for those of you that don't know, because not everybody's a wrestling fan.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: So many wrestling companies started off as like backyard wrestling. Small groups, you know, many southern states and people, you know did this and it's been around for a very long time. Globally, uh, you know, in the states and they grow up. And then there's like small farm companies, some folks who travel around, they wrestle around, they grow. WWE used to be called wwf, the World Wrestling Federation. And it's grown from this, you know, relatively small brand to something that's that you move beyond wrestling towards entertainment. One of the things that WWE does very well is they, the storylines, the wrestler development, their Persona, uh, the like, everything. So you talk about value stream, it's the whole thing. And then the fan experience, recognizing it, bringing them in. You know, for those of you, again the line between real and unreal or scripted or unscripted was very fine until about the 90s and 2000s and even then it's very, very hard work. So that global experience, building it into a great company, bringing something that's so dramatic and visceral into the lives of people every Monday night or Thursday night if Smackdown was still around. And the other thing to note, and George, please feel free to fill in the blanks here, is that WWE was not the only one at the top tier, uh wcw they had live and non live clashes, tnt, uh, ECW for a time and everybody else. And then you're compet with boxing, basketball, hockey at that level. So it's just good to hear you George, about all of the decisions that you had to make not just to grow your business, to grow it competitively, but market share and mind share. And then you're talking Anthony.

Speaker A: It's changing the mind share and changing the perception. So a great business was built, right? Because W is a great business. When Michelle and I joined, it became one that was ten times more valuable. But it was great. And a great business was built by taking that what you just described, this amazing content that, that merges athleticism and storytelling with a spectacular presentation event. Amazing. But the business model had been, hey, we're going to give that away. And we're going to make our money selling T shirts, tickets and toys. And it's a great business. However, an even better business is positioning the brand on a B2B basis as live content and explaining to someone has. And you know, the first thing we heard when we said that was no, no, no, no, uh, you don't understand. WWE is not a sport because the ending is scripted. And we said, doesn't fucking matter if it's a sport. And we said it more elegantly than that. What matters is it's bringing millions and millions of people at the same time, right? Not asynchronously, like scripted and unscripted at the same time. That's where the value is. And the entire world literally said we were wrong. Right? And I will tell you, in life, being right is great, but if you're right when everybody else is right, it's like, man, you're right when everybody else is wrong, that shit is magical. And everybody was wrong. They argued. We spent years showing, showing the data of the accumulation alive why it was so valuable. And then ultimately that was the great unlock. And look, the way we did it, that mindshare, we built the largest social digital platform in sports. We built the largest direct to consumer service in sports. So a lot of tactics around getting there, but you hit it. It was winning the mindshare.

Speaker B: Well, you said it, I just, you know, shared it back. But let me ask you about this. So obviously, you know, the evolution of the business from, I don't know if it was founded in like the 70s or 80s, you know, but the wrestling at least around 80s, and then moving into 90s and 2000s, where tickets, toys, et cetera, like made sense. And then you have, let's add another T into there is trends. So how did you as a leader and how did you and Michelle, you know, like, the timing was good. What was the conversations that you needed to have internally? Just have people like kind of get on board with seeing this Future. Because in 2026 there's a whackload of new futures. And to do it kind of against the wind, there's going to be a lot of back tailwinds and a lot of headwinds. You know, what are the conversations that you and Michelle had with your senior leadership, with people outside of the organizations, let's call it cable partners, et cetera, for them to see your vision?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, one of the greatest compliments I ever got because, uh, you know, there are very few people I can't think of any, frankly, who have achieved what Vince achieved as an entrepreneur, an executive and an entertainer. Because as you know, he was also popular as an entertainer. People don't, didn't see the, the executive. I think we did. That's right. They, they saw the, the, the, the entertainer and, and kind of applied it. But one of the, uh, the greatest comments I've gotten, it's the best one I've gotten from Vince is he said to me, he goes, George, for 30 years. And this was now at the end, this is after been there for 12 years, he goes, for the first 30 years he goes, I had to drag every single person with me. And he goes, for the last 12, you and Michelle have dragged me. You've brought me along. And it really meant a lot. But it gets to what you were saying. The hardest part of the journey was bring. Because, uh, we were going to change that perspective that I just mentioned. No one internally believed it, right. When we said we are as valuable as sports. It has nothing to do whether the outcome is scripted or not. It's the live nature, that essential element. Nobody really believed it. Partners certainly didn't believe it and they didn't want to because it would have a negative economic impact on them. Right. It meant that we were a lot more valuable than what they had been paying us and other business partners. It was the same investors they were. It was you like silly. What you're saying is almost silly. Back to the never endow because of the work we had done and had thought through this issue and really said, look, we can see the value being ascribed to life. By the way, a lot of people don't know this on a per eyeball basis. The Oscars would make as much as the NFL. The NFL has more eyeball, but about the same. And so it was back to the live element. And so we kept pushing. Then how did we do it? The way you bring everyone else along in anything, you got to win their hearts, their minds and their wallets. And Michelle and I told the story that I just told you a thousand times, uh, literally over three or four years internally to investors, to business partners, through a deluge of, uh, B2B press releases, we in essence pushed it out continually, in person and through every channel possible. And none of those events, micro events, did anything. All of them changed the perception and brought people along. But I mean, it was hard days. Look, there were times where there were failures along the way. Right. Uh, I remember our first renewal in the U.S. it was. We had doubled the Economics, but not tripled them. People were devastated. Cause they had started to believe. And that to them was the point, the proof. Oh, it's not as big as George and Michelle think. Stock got hammered, all right. Lost 10, 15% overnight. Vince called me the next day. I still remember. He's not a morning person, as you probably heard. Calls me, goes, you know, in his gravelly voice, george, George, yeah, it's going to be okay. We're going to be okay. And I go, vincey, I look, I, thanks, I don't need, I, I but I appreciate the call. And it was like literally 6:30 in the morning. So it was difficult. But I remember right after that, one of our high potential executives, I could see that he was, you know, it had hurt him. And I said to him, um, look, one day, one day WWE will be the thing that gets you. If you don't stay with us, that gets you the role that you want because it will be the, the model of what everyone else is trying to do. And I could see it in his eyes, he wanted to believe. He's a great guy. But you know, there was doubt, right, because we had just had this public failure, but it was that. So when you say how did we do it? Did a lot of work. And then we deliver every, I mean over and over, I mean her and I counted it one time, it was over a thousand meetings. We did over a three and a half year period between investors, employees, business partners, everyone. Yeah, and then I think, you know, but, and that message is heart. Like hey, heart. There's an element here of the storytelling, the stars, our relationship with Make a wish minds. The data, look at all this data that we have. Because hey, by the way, people don't know, WWE built a pretty, you know, pretty, uh, top caliber data team. So that data we would use, look, look at our, our, our social reach. Look at our traditional uh, media reach. Look at them across so you can see the totality of all that you over. Uh, that was the minds and then wallets. This is what we can do for you, right? If you're an employee, your stock's going to be worth a lot. Trust me. If you're a business partner, our ability to amplify your business is going to be worth a lot to you. So you got to win people's hearts, minds and wallet. So we had the, you know, we built the infrastructure to do all three of those and then you know, then we took it on ourselves to deliver the message face to face.

Speaker B: Well, uh, I wanted to highlight for you Know, leaders, whether you're a CEO, whether you're an entrepreneur, kind of two things. One is, you know, or 1100 meetings, three years or so, that's one significant meeting a day. Like, that's a lot of work. But if you've got a big vision. The other piece is like anybody in entrepreneurship and even if you're an intrapreneur, right? In this case, intrapreneur that, you know, you have to have that conviction backed in data. Not just self confidence, but you, you also need it. Like you need to see what somebody else can't see. And internally, when you're driving forward change, you need to be the person that shares that vision, that communicates that vision, that gets people bought into that vision. Otherwise, if they can't see it, they can't achieve it. It sounds like George, you and Michelle, you know, did a not, I'm not going to say phenomenal job. I don't think that's it. I think you beat the shit out of it until it happened because you were so convinced that it was possible. And that's the grit that it takes to be able to move something like this forward. You've built a phenomenal company. Okay, uh, as we finish up here, tell us about your Global Sports Group. Uh, tell us about what, uh, you, you wr. Your book. Phenomenal. What is challenging now? What are you excited on? What are you, you know, going after and then we'll finish up.

Speaker A: Yeah, look, I mean over that time at wwe doing what we did, Michelle and I wrote a playbook, right? And, and, and we've got the typical 20 or 30 slide PowerPoint presentation of our playbook, but we've also got 400 pages of text, right, Boring text of the playbook. How do you build a business that can do what WWE did? Right? So we have that, that is a value to people, uh, obviously, and then creates an opportunity for us to add value. So our current, both of us are investors and board members of Global Sport Group. Global Sport Group just got created. We just closed, um, a couple of weeks ago. It is the home of cbc, one of the largest private equity companies in the world. Their sports assets. So without boring people, they took it out of their fund structure, put it in a holding company, put a CEO in place. Michelle and I are on the board and investors there. And we then take that playbook and help our, our investments implement them. So the, uh, portfolio has minority investments in La Liga, Ligum, WTA, Global Volleyball, Prem, Rugby United, uh, Rugby Championship and six nations. We just bought an equine Business in the United States Equine network that Michelle and I love so much. We're going. We're co chairs of that business. So we sit on. Of the holding company, but, uh, our co chairs. But to ask you, you know, what are we doing? Basically, boring. We're taking our playbook, finding places where we can invest our own money, and then helping great management teams take the parts of the playbook that makes sense for them, because it doesn't all make sense for everybody but the parts and then help them do it. And we're having a blast doing it. You know, we've been both very lucky, and so now we get to pick and choose how we want to spend our time. We both love what we do. I mean, this is a hobby as much as it is work. Um, never been. I've been lucky. It's never been much different for me. My hobby was what I did professionally. And so, yeah, we're doing that and having a lot of fun doing it.

Speaker B: Excellent. And book, uh, is coming out soon, by the time the episode is out.

Speaker A: June 2nd. Yeah, June 2nd. I think, uh, if you're a young starting out, uh, want to see how to build a business, I think you'll get some out of it. If you're further along and looking to take that next step. Step. I think there's things in there, uh, for you, if you're a fan of wrestling. There's some good stuff about the behind the scenes of WWE and our tenure that are interesting. And by the way, you know, I, you know, Cuban kid from Queens, um, who tried to, you know, self sabotage himself, meant more times. Those stories are in there too, and how I overcame that. So, yeah, I like sharing that and hopefully people get something out of that.

Speaker B: Excellent. George, thank you so much for being on today. I had a blast. I'll put a disclaimer on the front end, uh, for some, but, uh, no, I appreciate your authenticity. I appreciate everything that you're bringing to the sport, to the culture, to people, and I just wish you nothing but the best, uh, in this next stage of what you're doing. Global Sports Group sounds very, very exciting and, uh, I'm excited for what you're working on. So thank you for being on the show today.

Speaker A: Thank you, Anthony. I really appreciate you having me. Had a lot of fun.

Speaker B: Thank you. Likewise, folks. My guest today, George Berrios. You know, one of the things that I take from this, you know, as an entrepreneur myself, so if somebody comes to tell you, you know, you got no chance, no chance in hell Then you can come back and say, hey, you know what? I have my own convictions. I am, um, clear on what I'm moving on. Uh, backed by data. You know, just keep moving it forward. I think there's lots to learn from here, both in terms of leadership in strategy, in decision making, but also recognizing that there's a time and place for things, building a great business model, value stream. I'm big on this and just, you know, fire just so. Thank you, George. I appreciate you being here. Thank you, folks, for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, please, uh, you know, be sure to follow along, drop comments if you're watching this on YouTube and share with somebody else who's either a wrestling fan, a business fan, uh, cause our goal is to support more people in the world, just have the life that they want, the business that they want. Uh, and it's an honor and a privilege to be able to support them and you in being able to make that happen. So, once again, thank you to my guest, George Berrios. My name is Anthony Taylor. This has been the strategy and leadership podcast. And, uh, we will see you very soon. Bye for now.