How I Manipulated The World's Richest Men: “They Lost $100 Million In One Night!” - Molly Bloom (Molly's Game)

In this new episode Steven sits down with the author, entrepreneur and ‘Poker Princess’ Molly Bloom. Molly is a former Olympic skier, and at 21 years old was ranked No. 3 in North America in moguls. After an accident, she left skiing and took a years sabbatical from the University of Colorado - Boulder to move to LA in 2004. Initially bartending, she began to run poker games in The Viper Room. These games attracted A-list celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Ben Affleck, playing for millions of dollars. In 2013, she was arrested for taking part in underground poker games and faced 10 years in prison, but was eventually sentenced to 1 year of probation. In 2014, she released her memoir ‘Molly’s Game’ which was made into an award winning film of the same name in 2017. In this conversation Molly and Steven discuss topics, such as: How her upbringing was based around competition and achievement Why she was obsessed with achieving glory from a young age Moving to LA and finding her way into running poker games How she started running illegal poker games and made them different from others The psychological lessons she learned from watching poker games How she made herself indispensable to the game and its players What it took to run the world's most exclusive poker nights Having her poker game and income taken from her Learning to pivot quickly from failure to success Seeing someone lose $100 million in one night Kicking Dan Bilzerian out of her poker game How she was making $4-6 million a year from tips The mafia showing up at her door What she was able to learn from listening to the elite players of her game How she had access to the world’s most powerful people Becoming addicted to drinking and drugs Her legal troubles with the FBI and facing 10 years in prison Why she refused to snitch to the authorities for millions of dollars The lessons she has learned coming out of the world of poker Being comfortable with risk and the necessity of taking risks in life How she was able to sell her story into a Hollywood movie You can purchase Molly’s memoir, ‘Molly’s Game’, here: https://bit.ly/3OvOLxq Follow Molly: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rOB3yk Twitter: https://bit.ly/45tjBOe Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  He put a gun in my mouth, beat the hell out of me. And he said, "If you tell anyone about this, I know where your family lives." For the first time in my life, I knew finally it was game over. I'm Molly Bloom.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Dove the Poker Princess. The former waitress who took a small poker game run out of a dingy nightclub.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  For the biggest underground poker game. In the world.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  From Hollywood celebrities to millionaires.

• 0:22Speaker 00

  They literally made a Hollywood movie about it.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  The game turned from legal to illegal.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  I had become the biggest game runner in New York City. Leo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Tobey Maguire. Politicians, I was making four to six million dollars a year. It was unbelievable. $250,000 buy-in.

• 0:39Steven Bartlett?

  So I couldn't sit down unless I brought $250,000 to lose.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 0:42Steven Bartlett?

  And you saw someone lose $100 million in a night?

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Yes. This is where the science of how you make people feel became a really big tool. And I would memorize people's lives, the names of their kids, what they cared about, favorite food order, drink order. These things can absolutely be used for good, but I just became obsessed. What had been about trying to be an entrepreneur and be gutsy started to be exclusively about the money and the power. But I paid a huge price for it. I started to partner with people that were not the right people to partner with. In the middle of the night, I get arrested by 17 FBI agents, machine guns. They put me in handcuffs and they put this piece of paper in front of me that says, "The United States of America versus Molly Bloom."

• 1:20Steven Bartlett?

  The FBI gives you an ultimatum. They were going to give you millions if you snatched one of the players in the game.

• 1:24Speaker 00

  I had 48 hours.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  What happens then?

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Molly, what do I need to understand about your earliest context to understand you?

• 1:42Speaker 00

  Going right in.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  I think it almost always starts with the family. Uh, in childhood and I am from a, a family of, you know, my two little brothers are incredible humans, but like the craziest overachievers you could ever imagine. And then I have these two incredible parents who were very powerful influences in our lives. My dad stood on this platform of you cultivate discipline and if you have a fear, you walk through it and you learn how to suffer constructively for your dreams, for your goals. And then my mom, you

• 2:28Speaker 00

  know, she was this, she insisted on kindness and integrity. So there's this whole ecosystem of extraordinary and I didn't know how I fit into that at all. And I desperately wanted a seat at that table. And probably during the times that we were raised, there are these ideas of what success looked like and how you get there. And it was genius and talent and specific skillset, you know, but I knew that I had to be successful or, and this is not hyperbolic, I literally did not want to live. I mean, I remember when I was applying

• 3:10Speaker 00

  to law school, I said to my dad, if I don't get into an Ivy League law school, I don't know, like how, I don't want to live, you know, and

• 3:19Steven Bartlett?

  Did you mean that?

• 3:21Speaker 00

  It's hard to know what you mean at 18 years old, but in my mind, you need clear proof and evidence that you are extraordinary by these accomplishments. And my brothers had already started to make that happen. And

• 3:38Steven Bartlett?

  Why law?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Hmm?

• 3:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why law?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  Because one day at the dinner table, my dad said to me, "Do you like to argue and read a lot? Maybe you should go to law school." And then I, and then I started to kind of read books about the law and fiction a lot. I mean, I was, I loved stories.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  And, and then started to think about getting paid to argue for a living and all the glory that could come from that. If you're fighting for justice or you're, you know, fighting to save somebody who's innocent, you know, the, the sort of high points, the aspirational points of what it would be like to be a lawyer in a movie or a book.

• 4:25Steven Bartlett?

  You're thinking about the glory?

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

• 4:31Steven Bartlett?

  Why do you think you cared so much about glory?

• 4:34Speaker 00

  I don't think I cultivated much self-esteem. I don't think I knew who I was. And I don't think that I believed I was inherently worthy. I believed that I had to achieve something big, huge, extraordinary, worldly in order to

• 4:52Speaker 00

  to then feel relief from that existential ache of that I, that, that followed me around my whole life, you know?

• 5:03Steven Bartlett?

  So you, you go off and try and pursue a career in law, at least that's what you think you're gonna do?

• 5:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:10Steven Bartlett?

  You were gonna go to Harvard, right?

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Well, I wanted to go to Harvard. I didn't even end up going at all, or even finishing my last semester and a half at school because I just couldn't,

• 5:24Speaker 00

  I couldn't muster the, the energy and ambition it took to go do all these things. I, I just had, I had hit a wall and I think I was really questioning the conventionality of it all. So I ended up like not applying to law schools and then just saying, "I just need a year." And the closest place that was warm on the ocean from Colorado in a straight line was California.

• 5:52Steven Bartlett?

  When you moved here, um, your father, again, bringing him back into the picture, he's a very ambitious person. How did he receive this news that you were coming to LA?

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Not happy about it, not gonna financially support it. Really disappointed.

• 6:08Steven Bartlett?

  So you get here and he's he's no longer supporting you financially at all.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 6:12Steven Bartlett?

  So what did you do to make money?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  I mean, I got a job. I had to get a job the day I got here. And I went to this restaurant in Beverly Hills. Went to, you know, got a job for a couple of days. It was terrible. And then I went to this other restaurant. I went to this other restaurant and kind of lied and said, because no one else was hiring in this Beverly Hills area. And it was a fine dining establishment and I lied and said that I had fine dining experience. I got fired a couple of weeks later. My boss said, you're the worst waitress we've ever seen and you've ruined like thousands of dollars of bottles of wine trying to open them.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  He said, but, you know, people seem to to take to you and you're a hard worker. So why don't you come work for our real estate development company?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  As my executive assistant.

• 7:09Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, so it was the boss of the restaurant that

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 7:11Steven Bartlett?

  Offered you the job as the exec.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  Yes, they they had a bunch of holdings. They had some real estate. They had some restaurants. They had a fund.

• 7:18Steven Bartlett?

  So you became his EA, his PA?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:21Steven Bartlett?

  And this led you to poker?

• 7:23Speaker 00

  Yes, he came in the office one day and he said, and they're always zany things to it sort of like thrown at me. And he said, um, I need you to serve drinks at my poker game tomorrow night.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  And I, you know, I tell this story because it's just so indicative of of the naivete and where I was. I I remember Googling what kind of music do poker players like to listen to and what do they eat? And then I proceeded to make this incredibly embarrassing playlist with songs like The Gambler on it, you know? And got this cheese plate and showed up for this very fancy

• 8:04Speaker 00

  poker game in in Hollywood with A-list.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Celebrities and you know, there's some names that of people that have already talked about being in the games and those are the names that I don't mind naming, just to give context, it was Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire and Leo DiCaprio. And then, you know, but apart from the actors, it was also the head of some of the biggest investment banks in the world and the head of some of the biggest movie studios and politicians who were household names and people in the tech world that were about to take their companies public. I mean, it was, it was unbelievable.

• 8:46Steven Bartlett?

  Quite a few people have come out, as you say, and said that they were, they played in those games.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:51Steven Bartlett?

  I was watching a video earlier of even Dan Bilzerian, I think, says.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Yes, Dan played.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  He played in those games. Was, was, were those games legal or illegal?

• 9:02Steven Bartlett?

  Cause.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Legal to play in.

• 9:03Steven Bartlett?

  Legal to play in.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  For sure. Legal. I, when I started running the games, I hired defense attorneys and had them analyze the federal statutes and to help me figure out a way to do it legally, because in the early days, I wouldn't have done it illegally. That was an evolution.

• 9:30Steven Bartlett?

  So you start as a, basically an assistant to the games that your boss is running. These are secret games, right?

• 9:37Speaker 00

  Right.

• 9:37Steven Bartlett?

  Very secretive.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Very.

• 9:39Steven Bartlett?

  And take me on the journey of what happens next.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Okay. So that first game, you know, I'm just shell shocked, essentially, and also really mortified about the playlist and the cheese plate from Gelson's, you know?

• 9:58Speaker 00

  But, but man, am I intrigued, you know, getting to be a, at 23 years old, getting to be a fly on the wall in this room where the, these conversations are open and candid and you are, I'm like you, I've always been fascinated in psychology. I've always been an information data junkie. I love to learn. I love to observe. And so this was as compelling as it could be. And then I remember at the end of the night, because people were tipping with chips. It wasn't straight cash. I remember making $3,000 for refilling some drinks.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  And so, two things became really apparent to me. One, this was incredible access to a network of people that I don't know if I would have ever had access to. And to learn from people at this age of 23, when I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be. And number two, that there was something that happened when there was a token or a chip, was the economic system that made people very liberal. Because I'd worked as a waitress, you know, I was waitressing everywhere. I'd hustle my butt off for a couple hundred dollars a night. You know, all of a sudden, the chip is involved, and it's not real money. So, I just became obsessed.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  And so I learned about poker. I wanted to learn the rules of the game, the vernacular. I didn't want to seem like a novice.

• 11:38Speaker 00

  And then I started to try to figure out, how do I stay in this room?

• 11:44Speaker 00

  And this is where, one of the places where effective presence became a really big tool.

• 11:54Steven Bartlett?

  What's effective presence?

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Effective presence is the science of how you make people feel. Everybody has their own emotional footprint that they leave on the world. And there are really marked things you can do to have either positive or negative effective presence, or neutral, which is also not great.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  So, I remember talking to my mom. And I remember saying, "You don't even understand how compelling this is." And I don't, I want to stay in this room more than anything, but I don't know how I could ever confer value in this room.

• 12:31Steven Bartlett?

  Did you feel like you were going to be kicked out of the room?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  I just felt like maybe I was disposable. Like maybe they would just bring in another woman at some point to serve drinks. Or, you know, I just, I didn't, I just didn't want to be disposable. I wanted to find some reason to be...

• 12:53Speaker 00

  To be valuable in that room to, you know, and, and to be able to come back. And I start, I was talking to my mom so much about everything that I hoped to gain and, and where my mind was going with this opportunity. And, you know, and I said to her, but mom, I have no idea how to bring value to this room. These people have everything. And she said something that was really profound to me. She said, um, you know, maybe instead of thinking about all the things you want to get, you could think about what you could give.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  And then she reminded me of that quote by Maya Angelou that everyone loves and loves to quote, which is, "People are going to forget what you said and what you did, but they're never going to forget the way you made them feel." And I thought about that and it's so true. And I guess I had this suspicion that these people with their power and their success

• 13:44Speaker 00

  and their access were different from the rest of us, that they believed that they were worthy. You know, that they didn't have harbor that secret fear that they weren't good enough. And what I found unequivocally is that that wasn't true. And that many times someone at that level is even more convinced or needs even more validation. And so I started to try to understand how to make people feel important, seen, heard, remembered, how to establish trust, how to establish authentic connection. Because something that I realized by observing these games is that everybody wanted something from these people.

• 14:29Speaker 00

  That was the nature of the relationship. And so if I could figure out how to establish a real connection, you know, there's, there's emotional intelligence, right, which usually has a focus on the outcome, how to win friends and influence people. Effective presence is more about being in the present with someone focused on the connection, not the outcome. And this is truly what I focused on for the first six to seven months is just creating a real connection with people, observing them and, you know, trying to

• 15:10Speaker 00

  train my mind to focus on what's unique about this person, what's truly unique about this person, and then getting to a point where you're vulnerable enough to say, God, I'm really fascinated by this thing that you do, you know, whether it's at the poker table or in business or just in life and, and focusing in on the details and, and really getting outside of yourself and becoming curious and becoming a great listener, which by the way, you are an insanely great listener.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  And I just have found probably like you have that there is such incredible value in that and that no matter how much somebody is celebrated or, you know, has, has a public following or whatever, it's so seldom that someone just sits down with them and listens, just gets in it with them.

• 16:05Steven Bartlett?

  So funny, as you were saying that, I was just thinking about how much of a competitive advantage listening is. We think that the competitive advantage is had in speaking, but I've, if I've learned anything from doing this podcast, it's that to truly understand someone and then be able to, in this context, ask them a question, but in the world of business, to deliver them a solution to their problem, which is getting a sale, to create the upper hand, you simply have to listen.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:30Steven Bartlett?

  And you have to listen for as long as you possibly can.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 16:32Steven Bartlett?

  And this is what, what the great thing, what I've learned from doing this podcast, but even from this conversation is I'm, I'm, my next question is going to be so much better for the fact that I listened to you.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Right, and actively listened.

• 16:44Steven Bartlett?

  Actively listened.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Presently listened. I think we walk around armored with our egos. And I think that

• 16:53Speaker 00

  True connection happens when somebody, when you're able to disarm somebody and they're able to disarm you and the egos slip away and it's just two people. So when you go in and you start listing off your accomplishments and painting yourself as this per, you know, all of a sudden it's like competition up, ego's up and, and then there's not true connection.

• 17:17Steven Bartlett?

  You can't penetrate that kind of wall, can you? If you've both built two walls between yourselves because you're showing off.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 17:24Steven Bartlett?

  You need the walls to come down to form the connection.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:27Steven Bartlett?

  When people hear that, they go, you know, this, this idea of effective presence and understanding how to be kind of a different jigsaw shaped piece to each individual to get the best out of them or what you want from them, people will say, oh, manipulation. Which, you know, the, the fine line between sales and persuasion and negotiation and manipulation, it's all there, you know? Is this positive manipulation?

• 17:51Speaker 00

  So effective presence, EQ, active listening, all of these things that you learn can absolutely be used for good or they can be used for bad. But I think something that is different about at least the brand of effective presence that I value is it's about your experience connecting with a human being. It's not about forming, because I used to do that, right? I used, if, the, the way I used to do things is I would do all my research on you and I'd come in here with a few, with a few talking points so that I could instantly connect on something with you and show you that you and I are, are the same.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  And I, I don't really do that anymore, although I don't hate that strategy. But I think it just depends on how you use it. I think when you use it in a manipulative way, I think it's easier.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  To see versus if you kind of take a few breaths before you go into a room and you say, this, what I want to do here is to connect with someone, to have that human to human feeling and you know, to, to be of service in some way to a, in a greater way to humanity. And by the way, that can also include yourself, you know, but I think it's about disconnecting from the outcome, disconnecting from the transaction and connecting as a human being.

• 19:31Steven Bartlett?

  So how'd you get from being the waitress in these rooms, serving drinks to running your own poker nights?

• 19:39Speaker 00

  This is a funny story. Okay, so

• 19:44Speaker 00

  a couple of months go by, right? And I'm like, I don't want to serve drinks in these rooms. I want to, I want to start my own games. I want to own these rooms. You know, this was someone who felt powerless in the world.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  If I could control these nine seats, you know, this thing that has so much control over these people that are so powerful. That was compelling. The money was compelling. I had this whole idea of how I would design the experience. That was compelling. Um, and also, you know, I'd sort of learned in those six to eight months that, that I was an entrepreneur. I was a problem solver. I could, I could think on my feet. I had metacognition. I could feel a certain way inside. Terrified, nervous, scared and still act with composure. These things that wouldn't quite present at a dinner table, growing up with Jordan and Jeremy Bloom,

• 20:44Speaker 00

  to culminate into an idea or, uh, you know, sort of like that seat. All of a sudden I just started to feel in my flow, you know? And so, but I was very loyal to my boss. And he is an interesting character. He was slightly psychopathic.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  So I, you know, I just bided my time and I tried to figure out how I was gonna do this. And, and then he made it quite simple for me because he called me and he said, "You're focused too much on the game. I need you back in the office. I'm giving the game to someone else. Her name is da, da, da, da, da. She's gonna be calling you." And by this point, I had really kind of gotten into, like, I had started to think about how I was gonna build this game. I had, I was keeping the books on everyone. I was recruiting players. You know, I, I really had, I was doing much more than just waitressing. And I thought about it and I was like, "I gotta take my shot. I can't just go.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I can't just let him take this. Like, this is, this opportunity is too important for me." So I had developed friendships and alliances. And so I planned a game and I moved it to a really luxurious location. And I hired a full staff of people and had them memorize everyone's favorite food order, drink order,

• 22:13Speaker 00

  the names of their kids, what they cared about in life, upgraded my playlist. A little Frank Sinatra, maybe. I don't remember what it was, but it was better. Moved out of this dungeon basement, had it catered by, you know, the, the best restaurants in town. Up, up, you know, like, the best liquors, Cuban cigars. I mean, I wanted people to walk into this room and feel like they were in Monaco. Or feel like they were James Bond for the night. And I, I really, as the games were on, I, I really like, got into the science of scent science and temperature and humidity and, food and all these things that elicit the feel-good chemicals.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  And so, and then I invited everyone except for my boss.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  And at the end of the night, the game went really late. And then at five in the morning, I got this text message from my boss and he said, "Get over here." To this day, I don't know why I went, I just went.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  And he made me go wait in this like bedroom. And he made me wait for a long time. And I, I, I said to myself, "He's gonna kill me." I mean, I don't even know what's gonna happen right now. Cause he was a, was a terrifying individual and very powerful. And just to give you some context, when I started working for him, I used to always say to him, "I'm really worried about your soul." Like, "You're not a nice person," you know? And, and I saw him in a business context. And then later, when I got to know him, but I saw him with his family and he was very kind. But he used to say to me all the time, "You, you're gonna, you're gonna get trampled over." Like, "You need to toughen up."

• 24:05Speaker 00

  And so, anyway, so he walks into the room and he has this terrifying look on his face and he looks at me and he goes, "I'm proud of you." And it was like graduation day, for better or worse, you know? It's hard to know how to feel about that moment now, sitting here, decades later.

• 24:23Steven Bartlett?

  So from that moment, when you host that first game, you upgrade everything. You upgrade the experience for your customers. Eventually, you set your sights on New York for a variety of different reasons. And you moved the games from being based in California and LA to being based in New York City.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  I lost the LA game.

• 24:41Steven Bartlett?

  You lost it, someone took it from you?

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 24:44Steven Bartlett?

  Karma.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Not gonna argue with that.

• 24:50Steven Bartlett?

  Who, who took it from you?

• 24:52Speaker 00

  Uh, one of the most famous movie stars in the game.

• 24:57Steven Bartlett?

  Leonardo DiCaprio?

• 25:00Steven Bartlett?

  Someone took the games from you, a movie star, said, "I'm gonna go do it at my house."

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Gave me an option first.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  "You can either start making less money."

• 25:14Speaker 00

  So this is very interesting. There is this player in the game.

• 25:18Steven Bartlett?

  Who you can't name?

• 25:19Speaker 00

  I I won't name.

• 25:21Steven Bartlett?

  Uh huh. But they're a big male movie star.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Making so much money.

• 25:25Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. How much money are we talking? Like hundreds of millions?

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:28Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  But became, I would say pathologically obsessed with this game and structuring the game so that he could win all the time. So making sure that he was the best player in the game and that there were no other, uh, there was no one better than he was.

• 25:43Steven Bartlett?

  Dan Bilzerian said that he was kicked out of the game because he was really good.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Oh, well, listen, I Dan showed up playing this kind of ruse that he was just this clueless trust fund kid. Okay. And people bought it. And I said, I sat there watching him and I'm like, this dude knows what he's doing, you know? And I, and I said, respect, right? Like you're hustling, I'm hustling, but you can't play in this game. You're going to take everyone's money. You're bad for business. I wish you the best.

• 26:18Steven Bartlett?

  So you kicked Dan Bilzerian out of the game?

• 26:21Speaker 00

  I had to.

• 26:24Steven Bartlett?

  He was too good.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:26Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. So he wasn't, he was telling the truth.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. And yeah, for sure.

• 26:31Steven Bartlett?

  So this, this Hollywood star that took you, that stole your game from you?

• 26:35Speaker 00

  So he was really obsessed with the game and he was obsessed with the money that he was making and being the biggest winner. And the truth is, at the end of the year, the money that I was making by that point was millions. And he believed that was money that should be going into his pocket, even though by this point I was traveling the world recruiting players. I had a staff of 20 people. I handled all the logistics. I handled credit extension, collections. I was on the hook if someone didn't pay. I had a full business. I was paying my taxes, you know, um, there was so much work and sweat equity and I had branded the game in this incredible way and I, uh,

• 27:14Speaker 00

  I, you know, I took notes every single game. Here are the areas that works. Here doesn't. Let me do some deeper research. Um. And, you know, just really thinking, turning down cash and cars and free rolls from the pros to get a seat to protect the integrity of the game and, you know, like taking, paying the debts from my own bank account so that, to make sure people got paid faster. I mean, there was, it wasn't, I wasn't serving drinks anymore. And so when he said to me, you're making too much money, you have the option of making less and I'll let you keep the game.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Look, by this time, I, I had become a strategic thinker. I had really been able to get out of emotional decision making, but I do believe that there's a time and a place for emotional decision making. And, and so I knew that turning down that offer, there was a large, the odds were I was going to lose the game, but I knew that accepting that offer meant no autonomy for me, no freedom and no dignity. And, you know,

• 28:21Steven Bartlett?

  What was the offer? Sorry.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  I had to, would have to cap my salary and make it, and, and have him approve how much I'm making.

• 28:31Steven Bartlett?

  Why, what was he bringing to the table where you can just kick him out? Was he bringing a lot of?

• 28:35Speaker 00

  Celebrity power, yeah.

• 28:36Steven Bartlett?

  And celebrity power?

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, this, in this town?

• 28:39Steven Bartlett?

  So he, he was, he basically said to you, listen, you're making a lot of money. I'm, I'm bringing a lot to the table because I'm bringing celebrities and contacts and legitimacy to this. So I'll put a cap on your earnings and I get the rest of what you're making, but I'll continue to do my part.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 28:53Steven Bartlett?

  So he kind of wanted to make you his employee?

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:56Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about that?

• 28:57Speaker 00

  I never want to be anyone's employee ever again.

• 28:59Steven Bartlett?

  But how do you feel about him? Because when you said it, you looked a bit pissed off, to be honest.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Uh, did I?

• 29:07Steven Bartlett?

  A little bit. You looked a bit, like there was still a little bit of maybe resentment to that moment.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  You know, I think that there's just conviction to that moment.

• 29:13Steven Bartlett?

  Right.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  Of, because I think we live in a day and age where a lot of people try to, um, not in a day and age, it's, it's reality that a lot of people, um, try to misuse power. And I think it's really important to talk about, you know, sort of dignity in the face of that and, and, and turning the offers down.

• 29:40Steven Bartlett?

  So you said no, what happens then?

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Called me about a week later and with this almost jubilant laugh and tone was like, don't, you're done.

• 29:53Steven Bartlett?

  How could he ensure that you were done?

• 29:55Speaker 00

  He had colluded with the biggest whale in the game, a whale in a gambling context, someone with a lot of money, who's not very good, who's willing to lose a lot of money. And this person had endless funds and he had colluded with him to have the game at his house and that was where the money was for everyone.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  And you asked me a question, how do I feel about this person?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Here's my answer, this was a really long time ago.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  And I've totally forgiven him.

• 30:34Steven Bartlett?

  So you lose the game?

• 30:35Speaker 00

  I lose the game. I was devastated.

• 30:41Steven Bartlett?

  What's going through your mind at that moment?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  I'm done. I'm never going to be able to make this much money again. I'm never going to be, I'm going to have to go join some, you know, I'm going to have to go work for someone else. I'm not going to be able to be my own boss. I'm not going to live in this fascinating adventurous underworld where I get to, you know, pull the strings and move the chess pieces and, and, and I have to go join the real world where I'm not extraordinary. You know, I'm just telling you what's going through my mind. Now, when I say these things, it's like, it is what it is, but.

• 31:19Steven Bartlett?

  So you eventually moved to New York?

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 31:23Steven Bartlett?

  Thirty years old at this point?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  I'm thirty one at that point.

• 31:27Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, you know, I, my parents said, this is a great time for you to go back to school. You've saved all this money. You've learned all this, you know, you've gained all this information. You have this incredible network. And I said to them, you're absolutely right, but I have something that I need to prove to myself at least, because the plan was never to run poker rooms for the rest of my life. I don't think that's something that's sustainable. The lifestyle was not conducive for raising a family. Late nights, you know, crazy adrenaline. It was not something that I could imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. I knew I needed to walk away at some point.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  I knew I needed to parlay it into something that was less underground, less gray. But, you know, I have to tell you, there was something very thrilling about it.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  Um, but then I got angry and I had something to prove and there was just nothing that was gonna stop me.

• 32:28Steven Bartlett?

  What made you angry?

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Feeling like I had been disposed of so effortlessly.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Something that I, you know, something stolen from me that I had curated and built and, you know, he said karma before and, and there is some truth to that, but I did everything justly, you know? I left money on the, my own money on the table to curate this incredible experience. Um, I, I ran the games with ultimate integrity. You know, I, I wasn't unkind to anybody.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  I just felt it was really unfair. And so also, I was embarrassed, you know?

• 33:20Speaker 00

  So I decided I was gonna build the biggest poker game in the world. Like five times, 10 times bigger than the game in LA.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  And then I would go away. I decided after doing some research that I would do it in New York City. Cause it seemed like there are a lot of gamblers on Wall Street. There were many problems with my plan. First of all, I didn't really know anyone in New York City. It's that sort of like billionaire, Wall Street world is not so easy to penetrate. Um, secondly, it was 2008.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  So the economy and Wall Street had just been brought to its knees in the most profound ways since probably the depression. And thirdly, there were some pretty scary characters running games in, in New York who'd been doing it for 20 years.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  But, you know, it's, it's testament to when.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  When you're obsessed with something, when, when the end, like you'll do anything, unfettered ambition, you'll do anything to get there. Things are possible, for better or worse. So, you know, I made moves. I did research and I interviewed poker players. And I found out who the right people were to talk to. And I found out what was wrong with the current system. What was wrong with the current games and where I could improve on that. I already knew, I already knew I could bring the branding and the experience, which was meaningful. It truly was meaningful. But what I found is in these big games, in these New York games, a lot of the game runners were kind of running a Ponzi scheme.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  If they didn't get paid, they wouldn't pay out. They're playing in their own games. Whether they're winning or losing would dictate the rake of that night. And the rake is the illegal tax that most of the game runners were taking.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  And so it was a matter of treating people fairly. It was a matter of being trustworthy and consistent and having integrity. And, and then I, and, you know, the biggest thing I could do to instill that trust and to have integrity and to eradicate the fear was to become the bank.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  I would now, M D B Inc. would now become the bank. Guarantee the games. Pay if there was, if somebody stiffed, I would pay.

• 35:54Steven Bartlett?

  What does stiff mean?

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Meaning they lost money in the game and then didn't pay the debt.

• 35:59Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 36:01Steven Bartlett?

  I don't understand that. Surely to get the chips, they have to pay for them upfront?

• 36:04Speaker 00

  No, when you run a weekly game, ultimately you establish a credit relationship with someone.

• 36:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, right.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Um, because otherwise, like, these people would have to bring five million dollars in cash every week. It's just not reasonable. It's not feasible.

• 36:18Steven Bartlett?

  So tell me about the peak of your New York games then. So when you're at the peak, what does that look like?

• 36:23Speaker 00

  So I started this big game.

• 36:25Steven Bartlett?

  Called?

• 36:27Speaker 00

  They're all just called Molly's Game.

• 36:28Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  So it was a $250,000 buy-in. And then this was the game that someone would ultimately end up losing $100 million in one night.

• 36:38Steven Bartlett?

  Say that again.

• 36:42Steven Bartlett?

  Explain all of this to me like I'm a chimpanzee from that documentary you're talking about before we start recording.

• 36:48Speaker 00

  So when you sit down to play at a poker game, there are a couple of numbers that matter. What's the buy-in? My LA game, the buy-in to sit down and get chips and get a chair was $50,000. It started out as 10, I raised it to 50. The New York game was $250,000.

• 37:06Steven Bartlett?

  So I couldn't sit down unless I brought $250,000 to lose?

• 37:10Speaker 00

  That's right. Then the other

• 37:14Speaker 00

  relevant numbers are what are the blinds? Meaning, what do you have to bet

• 37:21Speaker 00

  each round to to play the game?

• 37:27Steven Bartlett?

  At the start of the round?

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, and there's a small blind and a big blind and it just goes around the table. And so these games played so big, there was so much action, the blinds were so high, that, you know, that initial buy-in would be gone with some people in the first 20 minutes. So then they'd have to come to me and say, I need another 250. And I would have to decide in that moment, can they pay this? Are they good for the money? And so I would have to start to establish this relationship, this financial relationship with people, based on trust a lot of times. But there are a couple of things that kept me safe. Number one, to stiff this game was social reputational suicide. People would start to say, oh, they don't have money anymore.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Number two, there wasn't a game like it, where you could play with some of your biggest heroes. I mean, there was so much business that got done at these games. The things that I saw created, you know, was mind-blowing. But also-

• 38:23Steven Bartlett?

  And you couldn't just go to the police if they stiffed you, right?

• 38:26Speaker 00

  No, there's no recourse unless you're willing to go to

• 38:31Speaker 00

  muscle.

• 38:33Steven Bartlett?

  Mafia?

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Organized crime.

• 38:36Steven Bartlett?

  Why couldn't you go to the police?

• 38:38Speaker 00

  Because it's not illegal to stiff me or a game. It's illegal to stiff, you need a gambling license in order to have those types of privileges. So you can go to jail in Vegas for stiffing your gambling debt, but you can't go to jail for stiffing me.

• 39:02Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  I gave you the money. It's a loan.

• 39:07Steven Bartlett?

  So you're saying you saw someone lose a hundred million dollars in a night?

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 39:11Steven Bartlett?

  How did that happen?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  The game was playing huge. They were also playing backgammon. They were also betting sports.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Obviously, I didn't, I can't guarantee a hundred million dollars. So I'm out after a certain point. But, and that was shortly before I got in trouble, but that game that I established, the combination, the big game in LA and the big game in New York, sort of joined together and became a billionaires game and people over a year's time would lose a billion dollars.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  People were, I mean, there's rumors that a couple billionaires went broke playing in that game, fully broke. And this, here comes to a part of this story that is, I think, really important. I started to see something I could not unsee anymore, which was, in the beginning, I just believed rich people could never lose their money, knew what they were doing. And that this was just their form of entertainment. And what I started to see is that

• 40:24Speaker 00

  a vast majority of the players in these games, particularly the big games, were gambling addicts. Totally owned by the addiction of gambling. And I, at some point, had to decide whether I was okay with playing my part in that.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  And my answer by my actions was clearly yes, but I paid a huge price for it inside. And I, that sort of started to enable me to make other decisions that were not in line with my integrity. And that had a directly inverse proportional effect on how much I liked myself, how much I, my self-esteem, how much I believed in myself, the kind of person I started to be and.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  What had been up until this point

• 41:24Speaker 00

  about trying to be an entrepreneur and be gutsy and make money and and you know, sort of like source power and but do it in a way where I'm retaining who I am and integrity. Started to be exclusively about the money and the power and the status. And I started other games in the city. And I

• 41:46Speaker 00

  didn't care if somebody could afford it or not.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  And I was drinking a lot and I was taking a lot of

• 41:57Speaker 00

  pharmaceutical pills like Adderall to stay up and Xanax to come down and

• 42:05Speaker 00

  you know, just started to live this life of of very little self-analysis.

• 42:12Steven Bartlett?

  You compromised your integrity.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  I did. Big time.

• 42:17Steven Bartlett?

  How?

• 42:19Speaker 00

  I'm not, I don't have judgments.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Whether or not like you know, the sports betting just became legal. Sports betting, so many people in my indictment got indicted for sports betting. Now it's legal. Now, if you live in New York, New Jersey, you can download an app, connect it to your bank account, watch a tennis game, pretty much everything that happens in that game is a bettable moment. You can also do that with a Charles Schwab account.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  I harbor no judgment for

• 42:53Speaker 00

  drafting, whoever the companies are, the CEOs are. It matters who you are. Right? For me, once I realized that what I was doing was using all my resources, all my skills, all my intelligence to do, to to push an activity that was ruining a lot of people's lives.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  That was an insult to my integrity. That that was getting out of alignment with who I am and what I care about in the world.

• 43:28Steven Bartlett?

  What were you good at? So at that peak moment, when you do a skills audit of why you were successful, what appears on that skills audit?

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Very good at strategy. Seeing a problem, coming up with a solution, setting a goal that has, you know, most of the time, pretty slight odds figuring out how to get there. So I'd become very good at strategy. I'd become really good with people. I became so good at it that I became manipulative. And I was using those skills to manipulate people for my personal gain, period. Not a win win.

• 44:13Steven Bartlett?

  And all of these things, the the lifestyle that you'd chosen to live and the way you'd chosen to live it, you speak of the internal conflict this creates.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:22Steven Bartlett?

  Right? Were you depressed at that point in your life? How was, if I was a fly on the wall when you were going home, what would I have seen? What would, you know, if I was a fly on the wall that could

• 44:34Steven Bartlett?

  feel what you're feeling, what would I have felt? And what would I have seen?

• 44:38Speaker 00

  I was very depressed,

• 44:41Speaker 00

  very disappointed with myself.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  And completely powerless over these forces.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Money.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  At the, by this point, drugs.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  And when I say drugs, like I wasn't, I didn't like the inconsistency and the unreliability of street drugs. I liked the the consistency and formulation of of pharmaceuticals. They allowed me to be productive and not feel myself, not feel the world.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  I was drinking a lot.

• 45:17Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't you want to feel the world? What were you escaping from?

• 45:19Speaker 00

  Myself, what I was doing.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  The.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  The way that I was living.

• 45:26Steven Bartlett?

  What was it you were so ashamed of about the way that you were living outside of the games?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  I had stopped really communicating, showing up for my family. At times didn't treat people that worked for me as well as I'd like to. I started to have, you know, New York was a was a trip. I had all these beautiful, interesting, compelling women that worked for me. And although I always wanted them, I always wanted to mentor them and and provide them with opportunity. The truth is, is that I made sure they made enough money so they stayed in that darkness with me.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  And I didn't hold myself to the same accountability that I would hold myself now to in a friendship.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  I paid them so much money, I don't have to show up for their birthday, right?

• 46:21Speaker 00

  It was a, I had, even if I didn't act like it, in my mind, there was a hierarchy. So I had no authentic relationships, or very few.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Those were the reasons.

• 46:34Steven Bartlett?

  Were you in a relationship at this point?

• 46:36Speaker 00

  So I was in a relationship for most of the LA game. And that ended right around the same time that my game ended.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  And then I went to New York and had sort of a secret relationship. One of the big player's little brother, who kind of did my role in the beginning of handing out chips and everything. I found to be this deeply fascinating, brilliant, heart-centered person. And so we were in the secret relationship, but I didn't want anyone to know because he was, he didn't measure up to the the persona that I was trying to sell, which was very hurtful to him.

• 47:21Steven Bartlett?

  How did he know?

• 47:23Speaker 00

  I told him we can't tell anyone.

• 47:24Steven Bartlett?

  Did you tell him why you can't tell anybody?

• 47:26Speaker 00

  Said it's bad for business.

• 47:29Steven Bartlett?

  Is that what hurt him? You're just saying it was bad for business? Because if you said that to me and we were in a relationship, I think, okay, you don't want to complicate the dynamics, you don't want some people to know that someone you're you're involved with romantically is also kind of attached to the game, so.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think in the beginning it made sense, right? But down the road, I think it became very clear.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  And we had conversations about it.

• 47:54Steven Bartlett?

  Some point, the mafia show up.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  So here's the kind of levels and stages of the the train wreck. So the first thing that happened was I had just recruited these guys. They were Russian-American businessmen. They had the air of being Ivy League. Seemed so legitimate. I had people vetted within an inch of their life. I used to hire the same people that vet politicians, for instance. To vet people. I had bank employees on my payroll to find out people's liquidity. I mean, it was a whole process, you know? It's a lot of money. And big risk to bring some a stranger into a room with important people.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  And their stories checked out, but there was something in my gut that told me it was off. And it turns out that they were running the biggest insurance fraud scheme in New York City history. And they had alleged ties to the Russian mob. So then the feds start to pay attention to this hundred million dollar poker game where people can show up with millions of dollars in cash and get a check. Right? Pretty rife for corruption.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  And interesting for them. The next thing that happened was I had, yeah, I had a run in with Italian organized crime. And I, I guess naively, I thought that I knew that gambling was always one of the ways that organized crime earns. But, you know, I was having the games at the Plaza Hotel with billionaires and. Players for the New York Yankees and I just believed that there was enough separation. But by this time, I had become the biggest game runner in New York City and they didn't care. They didn't care who my clients were. And they were really clear with me. You know, if you want to continue to run these games, you're going to have to give us a piece.

• 49:49Speaker 00

  And we all know, we've all seen that movie, right?

• 49:54Speaker 00

  And I tried to politely, I politely declined their offer and tried to explain to them in business terms, why that wouldn't work for me and and just went on my merry way and started to avoid their calls. And they didn't just go away. And they sent this terrifying guy to my apartment. And he put a gun in my mouth, which is something that you just never forget. And he beat the hell out of me. And took everything that was in my safe, including photographs. The, you know, a couple of things I had from my grandmother.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  And, you know, he said, I think your answer will be different next time. And if you tell anyone about this, I know where your family lives in Colorado.

• 50:50Speaker 00

  And so, a couple of things here. First of all, if somebody comes into your apartment in the, you know, in the real world, in real life, and puts a gun in your mouth and steals things from you and beats you up, cracks your ribs, you have somewhere to go. You call the police, you call your family, you call your friends. It was undeniable now that what I was doing was so deeply dangerous and underground. And I was completely alone in it. I was too afraid to tell anyone. And so I'm trying to like, and also now I'm not just putting my own life in danger, right? Like I'm in way over my head. And my family's at danger, in danger now?

• 51:37Speaker 00

  And I'm just, I mean, it is so heavy and so much. And for the first time in my life,

• 51:45Speaker 00

  I don't have any strategy. I don't,

• 51:49Speaker 00

  I have no idea what I'm gonna do. And then I got so lucky. Uh, you know, my only contact with outside world was

• 51:59Speaker 00

  food delivery, um,

• 52:02Speaker 00

  and, and the, and the New York Times. And a couple of days later, I got the New York Times and it said 125 arrested in the biggest mob-related takedown in New York City history. And I never heard from them again.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  But, you know, disaster is a coming. Just,

• 52:22Speaker 00

  and the, the last thing that happened before the whole thing blows up was, um, you know, for most of my poker running career, I was, I was running these games legally according to this playbook that had been written for me by, by my attorneys. And one of the biggest ones that differentiated me from a lot of the games in the city and LA was that I didn't take a rake. I didn't take a, a percentage of each pot. At the end of the game, you, winners tip. You know, I'm extending people millions of dollars. I'm in charge of the nine seats that people are, a lot of them are pathologically addicted to. At the end of the night, I, I got paid a lot of money. I was making four to six million dollars a year.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  And, um,

• 53:08Steven Bartlett?

  Just from tips?

• 53:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:11Steven Bartlett?

  So where, where did that four to six million dollars a year come from, from?

• 53:16Speaker 00

  The winners. So the winners would play in the game and if they won, you know, they would tip a percentage, one to 5% of their wins. Games were huge.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  And I was running multiple games around the city.

• 53:34Speaker 00

  Paying my taxes. I have an event planning company.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  But, you know, I was a mess.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  And I started to get reckless about who I was letting in the games and and, and who I was letting play and my debt sheet started to get bigger and I started to take a rake. I started to partner with some people that, you know, were not necessarily.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  The right people to partner with and um

• 54:06Speaker 00

  and the the feds had thrown a confidential informant in the games by that point. And he tracked that. And so around the end of that year, I got a text message from one of my employees at one of my games and they said, the FBI is here looking for you. Don't come here. And so, um, you know, I I knew finally it was game over.

• 54:30Steven Bartlett?

  It was game over?

• 54:33Steven Bartlett?

  And you realized that when you got that call saying the FBI are here looking for you?

• 54:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:38Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel at that moment when you hear someone calls me and says the FBI are looking for me?

• 54:43Speaker 00

  Terrified. I want my mom and I want my dad. And I want to go back in time. I don't want to do any of this.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Don't even know how to process this. And then a couple hours later, it got even worse. I got, um, you know, I went back to my apartment and the whole time, I mean, it's like you're in a movie or

• 55:08Speaker 00

  looking around every corner. Are they going to be there to apprehend me? And, um,

• 55:14Speaker 00

  I packed a bag and grabbed my dog and, you know, tried to book a plane ticket to Denver from JFK. And my credit card got declined, which was strange. And then my debit card got declined, which was really strange. And I logged into my accounts and the account balance read negative nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, ninety nine dollars in all of my accounts.

• 55:38Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 55:39Speaker 00

  Because the feds had seized every single penny. And then some.

• 55:50Steven Bartlett?

  So what happens then? Did you manage to get out of New York?

• 55:52Speaker 00

  I did. I managed to get out of New York. I got home to Colorado. I'm at my mom's house. My attorneys are talking to the feds and they said, basically, in, in this country, you as a person have the presumption of innocence, but your property does not. So someone can't just come get you unless it was under some of those like after nine 11 or whatever. But you know, let's just keep it simple. Someone can't, can't just get you, throw you into jail, say that you're guilty. You have the right to a trial. With your money, with your property, it's different. There's a division of the government

• 56:34Speaker 00

  called asset forfeiture that can just take it. And then you have to go into legal proceedings to try to get it back. And so basically what that would involve is me going on record, talking about this game and telling how I made this money, which for the most part, I'd made it legally. But you know, the past several months I hadn't, and it would be an admission on record of a crime. So I couldn't, I couldn't do that. And at this point, they said, we're not interested in her as, you know, we're not pursuing anything criminally against her. And if we are, we'll let her know. So I just went, I just went home.

• 57:15Steven Bartlett?

  What do your parents think of you when you come home at this point?

• 57:17Speaker 00

  I don't even know what they think of me. I think they're extremely worried. I think that my dad had been writing me handwritten letters every year, telling me that what I was doing was going to end badly, pleading with me to do something different. So I think my dad was angry. My mom's just scared. And I think they're also relieved. Right? Like, they were, you know, they knew that what I was doing was dangerous. They knew it was, I was up late at night running around with large sums of cash. I mean, they had many sleepless nights.

• 58:00Steven Bartlett?

  At some point, the FBI gives you an ultimatum regarding becoming a snitch.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. So it took two years. For those two years, I moved in with my mom. I got sober. I-

• 58:16Steven Bartlett?

  At thirty five years old?

• 58:16Speaker 00

  No, I'm not thirty five yet. I'm thirty, thirty three. Got sober.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Trek to Machu Picchu, did some soul, deep soul searching. Um, finally got a job, moved back to Los Angeles. Seven days later, this is two years later, okay? I don't think anything's coming. I have rehabilitated myself, you know, and I've been living with my mom and my grandma in the mountains of Colorado. So I moved back to LA, seven days later, in the middle of the night, I get arrested by seventeen FBI agents, machine guns, high beam flashlights. They put me in handcuffs and they put this piece of paper in front of me that says, "The United States of America versus Molly Bloom." I'm thrown into this wild indictment. I'm looking at real time in prison.

• 59:08Steven Bartlett?

  How much?

• 59:09Speaker 00

  The press release said ninety years. I think realistically, it was more like ten. Um, but, um, you know, I have a day and a half to get to New York City to find an attorney that's gonna represent me in the fight of my life, and I don't have a dollar. My dad and I aren't speaking.

• 59:29Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Because he got mad at me, and I got mad at him. Because the, the age-old, unexplored resentments and rife, you know, came to a head. This is my biggest fear, right? Failing this spectacularly. In front of the world, the tabloids are covering it. So, I had a day and a half to get to New York City to find an attorney, and, you know, I don't have a dollar, my mom just put her house up to bail me out of jail. My dad and I aren't speaking.

• 1:00:11Speaker 00

  So, my best friend, you know, loaned me a little money, but I'm sitting down with people who are quoting three to six million dollars, and two-hundred-and-fifty to even look at it. And so I have, like, eight meetings that day before the indictment, or before the arraignment. And seven out of the eight all said, you know, "Maya, I really wish you the best, but without a retainer, I can't represent you." And then I met Jim Walden, who, uh, was at a very prestigious law firm, and kinda like, listened to my story, looked at my mom, and said, "I'm gonna help you."

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  And Jim and I started working together. And I'll never forget something he said to me. And I went in and I said, look, I don't have the money to fight this, so, but I can't do 10 years. You know, and I, I have to have a life after this. So what is our strategy and what is our angle? And he said, you know what? Integrity is going to be our strategy and our angle. And I'm just sitting across from Jim Walden, who is nothing but integrity, who is this attorney, who has spent his life fighting the good fight, who continues to fight the good fight, who spent the first part of his career in the Eastern District of New York, fearlessly going after the five crime families, who's looking at my indictment and saying, this is bullshit. Right?

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  And, um, and taking on this case and fighting for me because no one else would. And he's talking about integrity and I just had this moment of like,

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  it all hit me, you know? Who I wanted to be? How, how far I had come from that? And for what? And, uh, I made a decision in that room that day that I could never, ever abandon myself again in that way. I could never abandon the things that I knew to be true to my, to who I am. And, and one of those is, is integrity and doing what I believe to be the right thing. And, you know, a couple of weeks later, the prosecutors wanted a meeting and they really wanted me to be a confidential informant.

• 1:02:29Steven Bartlett?

  Snitched?

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, you know, Jim believes this is the whole reason that they brought the indictment.

• 1:02:37Steven Bartlett?

  So that you would snitch on the players in the game and?

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they didn't care about the mobsters or the people running the insurance fraud scheme. I think they already had what they needed on those. They cared about inside information that I could potentially provide them with on the billionaires, the bankers, the celebrities, the politicians. And I, you know, you spend enough time with people, you do get that inside information. Now, I want to be really clear about something. If there was someone in my game that was doing really bad, like if Epstein was in my game and I knew that he was trafficking children or whatever, like I would have given that information freely and before this. But what I knew?

• 1:03:19Steven Bartlett?

  Was Epstein in your games?

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:03:21Steven Bartlett?

  I thought you were saying.

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  No, no, I'm saying if there was a character like him.

• 1:03:25Steven Bartlett?

  Fine.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Right? I would have never protected someone like him. But the things that they were interested in, to me, who's booking sports? It's about to become legal in two years in New York and New Jersey. You're going to drag somebody's family through the mud and I'm going to be, you know, your, your, your accomplice with that?

• 1:03:48Steven Bartlett?

  Did they offer to restore your bank accounts if you?

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  They offered to give me all my money back.

• 1:03:52Steven Bartlett?

  Which was how much money?

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  Millions.

• 1:03:55Steven Bartlett?

  So they were going to give you millions if you snitched?

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also, they were going to give me a deferred prosecution, which would have kept, you know, sort of given me a guarantee that I would stay out of jail. And I went home and I, you know, I had a very short amount of time to, to make this choice, something like 48 hours. And here's where I got to with it. This place that I was in was a hundred percent my fault. I did all of this. I had near perfect information about the law. I had great parents. I had a college education almost completed. I had all the opportunities in the world. And I had chosen this and I had chosen this path. And I had to own that, you know, and turning around and

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  ruining the lives of people who had played in my game, who'd made me very wealthy. Many of them, I saw their kids grow up. To get out of the trouble of my own choices did not feel in alignment with my true self.

• 1:05:00Steven Bartlett?

  So you ultimately get sentenced?

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  I get sentenced. I get a judge that's very disappointed with me. And, um, but ultimately a pretty reasonable guy who said, listen, you're running poker games and it seems like you've done a lot to change your life. I'm not, I'm not going to sentence you to prison. Which, it's hard to adequately express to you how big that moment is. Because you can do all, you know, I, I used to say to Jim all the time, whatever, I'll go to federal prison, I'll learn a new language, I'll mentor some women. And he's like, that's not what it's like.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  In the prison system, you know? People are dangerous and a lot of the guards are dangerous and women get raped. It's not, it's not a country club. And in my mind, I was just like, I can handle it, I can handle it, I can handle it. But in that moment, when you get sentenced to not go to prison and you're not, you're not going to lose your freedom, um, you don't realize

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  how big it is until that happens, you know? And probably would have been even bigger if it went the other way. But, I mean, I felt like, I, I mean, I lost my feet, you know? And

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  oh, man, you know, here, here we are going to dinner after the sentencing and there's my best friend, Ally, who stuck with me through everything and my family and even my old boss came. And I'm looking around the table and everyone's living their lives, having kids. My brother's a heart surgeon, he's in residency. He just graduated Harvard. My other brother just got inducted into Colorado Sports Hall of Fame. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, here I am, a family felon, you know, I'm thirty, now I'm thirty five years old, millions of dollars in debt, a convicted felon, a social pariah to some degree.

• 1:06:57Speaker 00

  Like, I'm all in for, for a comeback, but how does that even happen? Where do you go from here? So I just remember going back and walking the mountains, you know, going back, moving in with my mom, walking the mountains, walking, meditating, trying to figure out what is the way out here?

• 1:07:20Steven Bartlett?

  You know, one of the things I always, I always talk to my friends about is as you become more and more successful, you get to see behind other curtains. I call it, you know, it's like a

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:07:29Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, like it's a cut you didn't even know was there. And you meet this other group of people and you find out that they're making money in this other set of ways and you go, what the fuck? You guys have been back here doing this stuff all the time?

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  So I, I can so, that so resonates, yes.

• 1:07:42Steven Bartlett?

  Playing all these money games that I didn't even know existed, like you do this and you trade this and you do this and you flip this. And, and you go, what the fuck? I was like, I was earning like minimum wage over here.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:51Steven Bartlett?

  And you billionaires around here just like doing billion dollar things with these little games that I didn't even know existed. And that's what I've come to learn in my life is like,

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Steven Bartlett?

  I got to see behind a lot of curtains and I was like, oh, fuck, I can do, I can earn this much money without doing any work or you can do like this.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:06Steven Bartlett?

  What are those things that you came to learn about when you got to see behind the curtain?

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  Couple of things. First of all, I thought behind that curtain, I was going to find the most contented, generous, non-petty, like extraordinary people. And that's not what I saw for the most part. There were exceptions.

• 1:08:30Speaker 00

  I just saw people who were kind of like unwilling to fail.

• 1:08:36Steven Bartlett?

  Because?

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  I don't know, because they're obsessed with money. I mean, you know, it was just drive. A lot of, a lot of times.

• 1:08:44Steven Bartlett?

  Or being dragged.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  Or being dragged. Right.

• 1:08:49Steven Bartlett?

  Was it more being dragged than drive? Or was it more drive than dragged? I could they, could they stop if they wanted, you know, could they, were they in control of their obsessions?

• 1:08:59Speaker 00

  Dragged.

• 1:09:01Speaker 00

  In that, in those settings.

• 1:09:04Steven Bartlett?

  That's what I've tend to, tend to find.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Steven Bartlett?

  I met a lot of billionaires and I, with the odd exception, I'm like, damn, unhappy.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Steven Bartlett?

  But can't stop.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Have, have you ever read that book, The Psychology of Money?

• 1:09:15Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Don't you love that story in there?

• 1:09:18Steven Bartlett?

  I love it. I don't know what story in particular you're talking about.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  Remember when Joseph Heller is at the house of the, of the billionaire? And someone walks up and says, Heller, like this guy just made in one day what your

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  gross sales were for Catch 22 or whatever. And Heller just goes, yeah, but I have something he'll never have. He goes, what could that possibly be? Enough.

• 1:09:43Speaker 00

  Boom.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  That's peace. Most of these people that I knew do not have peace and peace should not be underrated. Peace, contentment, the ability to find joy in small moments. And then have the big moments. I am all for adrenaline. I still chase it.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  I have to chase it less, not that I'm a mom.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  But I chase it in healthier ways, you know, heli skiing, whatever it is, climbing mountains.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  But to sit, lay your head down at the end of the day and be able to say, I know who I am.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  And there may be times where I lose sight of that, but I have a process for that. And, you know, I've made these living amends to these people I love so much.

• 1:10:41Steven Bartlett?

  What else did you see behind that curtain? So you saw a lot of dissatisfaction with life?

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  I saw a much bigger world than I knew existed and a much more malleable world.

• 1:10:53Steven Bartlett?

  That's super key, that's that malleable point.

• 1:10:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I thought like the walls were a lot more solid.

• 1:11:00Steven Bartlett?

  In life, generally?

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Steven Bartlett?

  But you realize success is something that we can all bend, control, manipulate?

• 1:11:10Speaker 00

  I think all is a pretty powerful word. I think if we are willing to do the work that it entails. On ourselves, yes, I think success, money, abundance is, is, is much more available than, than I originally thought.

• 1:11:32Steven Bartlett?

  Is that because you see very ordinary people achieving very extraordinary results? And you, and then once you see how they're doing it, you go, ah, okay.

• 1:11:43Speaker 00

  Yes, precisely.

• 1:11:46Steven Bartlett?

  That's also what I feel.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's cool. I've, I haven't thought about that and that's really cool. I like that. And this next, the way that my story ends really.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  Kind of speaks to that.

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  Or not ends, but you know.

• 1:12:07Steven Bartlett?

  That chapter.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  Begins again. Um, so I'm walking around the mountains. I'm thinking to myself like, what's the way out? And I just realized there's a unique story here. We've seen this version of a story. It just usually has a male star.

• 1:12:21Steven Bartlett?

  Like the Wolf of Wall Street or something.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  Right, right, right, right. And um, so I'm like, I'll write this book and it'll sell so well and my life will change, you know? And I went to New York publishing and there was a lot of publishers that wanted to give me a lot of money for a celebrity takedown book. And I wasn't willing to do that. So I got rejected a lot, but I just kept, you know, I was just persistent and I got this book deal. I hi- I got my own press and everything and I waited to for this, you know, I released the book and I I waited for my life to change. And I think like a hundred people read the book or something.

• 1:12:56Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe a little more than a hundred, but not enough to even earn back my advance, which wasn't that big.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  And then I said to myself, I still believe in this story. I still believe that the story is the way out. I just believe it. I could see it. I'm gonna have to bring in the big guns. And I said to myself, I need to get, I need to

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  go speak to one of the most powerful filmmakers in Hollywood. I had a bunch of meetings and I was like, it can't be something small. It has to be something big. And so I made this short list of people who really come, who really are successful, who are, who are the A-list here, you know? And it was like Shonda Rhimes, Steven Spielberg, um, you know, Aaron Sorkin. And there was another component that this person had to have, another feature to their personality. They had to be fearless because there were so many people, as you can imagine, in the political world, in Hollywood, in um,

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  You know, billionaires making calls saying like, don't make this Molly Bloom movie. Because they don't want to take the risk at all, even though I'm, you know, I went to bat for them. They don't want to take the risk at all that they could be portrayed in this movie. Anyway. So I, you know, I loved the West Wing and I loved Social Network and I love the characters that, and the sort of like message and humanity that comes out from his writing. So I was like, I need a meeting with him.

• 1:14:27Steven Bartlett?

  With who?

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  Aaron Sorkin. And he happens to also be the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. So he's a good bet, right? That that number doesn't come from thin air. So, most people laughed me out of their office. They're like, your book sold 10 copies. You know, like this, it was in the press a couple of years ago. Aaron Sorkin's never gonna look at this. And I just kept with it. I was just persistent because I had seen, you know?

• 1:15:01Steven Bartlett?

  As you'd seen?

• 1:15:02Speaker 00

  I'd seen how people get successful.

• 1:15:06Steven Bartlett?

  Which was?

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  Persistence. Of course you have to have a good product. Of course you had to have a good story. I believed in the story. But I got rejected so many times, you know? So finally I get this meeting with Aaron. And I remember trying to mentally prepare for it.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  Living with my mom, you know, I'm by all societal measures, the classic loser.

• 1:15:32Speaker 00

  Like I'm like, living in my mom's basement. I have no money.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  I don't have all, any of the trappings of, of the world and the success world, you know? But I said to myself,

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  you walk in there with humility of lessons learned, but you walk in there like, you are worth, like you're worthwhile, you know?

• 1:15:54Steven Bartlett?

  Isn't there some famous quote that he said about how you were the most confident down and out person he'd ever met?

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. So when I was like, when I was done telling him my story, he said, um, we'll tell you one thing, I've never met someone so down on their luck and so full of themselves.

• 1:16:08Steven Bartlett?

  So down on their luck and so full of themselves.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  I certainly was not full of myself, but.

• 1:16:15Steven Bartlett?

  That's what you were giving.

• 1:16:19Steven Bartlett?

  And yeah, I mean, the TLDR of that is he, he takes it on.

• 1:16:25Speaker 00

  He drops what he's doing. He takes it on. He decides to make it his directorial debut as well as writing it. The movie comes out, it's nominated for every award, BAFTAs, Oscars, Golden Globes. Also, I had done a lot of really good negotiating on my part, on the money part. They wanted to give me nothing upfront and promised me backend. And I had done enough research to know that that wasn't ever going to happen. The backend in Hollywood is notoriously.

• 1:16:55Steven Bartlett?

  When you say you did well, what do you mean? Give me something, how can I gauge that?

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  So I can just tell you that I got

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  15 times what someone normal, normally would have gotten in my position.

• 1:17:13Steven Bartlett?

  And your position was?

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  A book that didn't really sell.

• 1:17:16Steven Bartlett?

  You were the owner of the IP, I guess.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, life rights, a life rights deal. Like, if that book had become a bestseller and it already had a built-in audience and I had a million followers on Instagram and, you know, there was this compelling package.

• 1:17:30Steven Bartlett?

  Sure. So how well did that movie do?

• 1:17:33Speaker 00

  It did extremely well. I mean, 50 million people saw it.

• 1:17:36Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have an idea of numbers of like value? Do they, do they give you a, a value? Cause I know they say, oh, opening box office was X.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  Like lifetime value?

• 1:17:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  They don't because you have a backend. They, they, they give you a sort of convoluted backend number, but every, everyone made money on the movie. And it got nominated for awards and, um, you know, I'll never forget.

• 1:18:02Speaker 00

  Getting the the bank wire again, and it it takes a really long time. You know, you don't just get paid upfront. You get like fifty grand. And then you get the rest of it three years later, four years later, whenever the movie gets made. And it was a rocky road to make the movie because it was all set up at Sony. Everything was going smoothly. It had this big budget, like big movie studio budget. And then Kim Jong-un

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  got pissed about the interview. Remember the Seth Rogen movie?

• 1:18:30Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  And he hacked Sony Studios and the chairwoman was Amy Pascal, and she was the one that really believed in the movie. And she had to step down and then the new chairperson wasn't that passionate. And so then we had to set it up kind of like at festivals. So, you know,

• 1:18:48Speaker 00

  nothing's ever a smooth ride.

• 1:18:52Steven Bartlett?

  So you get a big check from this movie?

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  I do. Um, but I'm still, I still owe millions. Not not today, sitting here, but at that point. So I had to figure out like,

• 1:19:04Speaker 00

  what is, what's the next move? And, um,

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  I remember the first time, I didn't even think about speaking, you know, like a speaking career or anything. Um, I just remember the first time I got hired to speak, it was in front of thousands of people for Google. And I had never spoken publicly. And I think I just got on that stage and just blacked out. It was so awful and I was so bad at it. But the money was compelling. The adventure was compelling. And so, you know, it allows me now to make a really great income. And then also work on the other things I'm working on, which is a podcast and a community called The Smart Girl's Guide to Everything.

• 1:19:53Speaker 00

  It's basically using the strategy, the access, the network, the resources that I've been able to accumulate in my life and applying it to real life. And then I'm writing that a book on effective presence. And I have a one and a half year old at home.

• 1:20:11Steven Bartlett?

  Which wasn't a straight ride, right?

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:20:14Steven Bartlett?

  You, I read that you had IVF nine times.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  Nine times.

• 1:20:17Steven Bartlett?

  People don't understand the pain of having IVF even once and then it not going to plan.

• 1:20:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Steven Bartlett?

  To have it nine times.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it's the, it's the mental anguish. You know, it was interesting for me because, and I think this is important to talk about, and I'm glad you brought this up. So I froze my eggs at thirty six.

• 1:20:36Speaker 00

  And I was told, you're gonna be good. You have a lot of eggs, you're young, you know, whatever. And I, cause, and my point is here is I, I think it's a big money making industry and I think they oversell the technology. And it's not to say, don't do it, but to do your own research. In my case, what I realized is doing three rounds of an egg freezing procedure would have probably given me a much better shot. The technology is getting better, but eggs are eighty percent water. So freezing and thawing is, is kind of tricky. Anyway, so I thought I had purchased this insurance policy on my fertility. And then when I met Fiona's dad, I was forty one and I said, okay, great.

• 1:21:19Speaker 00

  Let's thaw out these magical eggs and none of them worked. And I was forty one and my fertility metrics, basically the doctor said, I'll give you a four percent chance of making this happen. And nine rounds later,

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  it worked.

• 1:21:41Speaker 00

  And I'm so happy I didn't miss it.

• 1:21:45Steven Bartlett?

  But that was a special moment.

• 1:21:47Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Also terrifying, terrifying moment. The most vulnerable you'll ever be in your entire life. Up until the point that Fiona was born, I thought to myself, I believed, I went through life believing, particularly after everything that I had just been through, there's nothing I can't handle. And then you have a baby and you realize, losing this, this little life is something that I don't think I can handle. And of course, there are people that do, and they do it with grace. But you just know in that moment that there is something that would, that has changed in you that will never be the same. Terrifying.

• 1:22:29Steven Bartlett?

  Fiona comes to you when she's 18 years old, she says, "Mom, I would like to be a success." What advice have you got for me, Mom? What do you say to Fiona?

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  Well, we're gonna be having this conversation well before she's 18.

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  I wanna,

• 1:22:50Speaker 00

  I wanna help her cultivate her passions, her talents. I wanna teach her about her mind, the ways that I've had to learn

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  how to manage that mind, how to manage fear, how to manage the internal critic.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  I wanna teach her to sit with hard emotions, not to run from them, to figure out what they can teach us. I wanna teach her to go into the shadows, the parts of ourselves that we don't wanna look at, and look at it. Don't wait until you get beat up by the mob, federally indicted, you know, like addicted to drugs and alcohol, to finally go into those shadows, to look at the demons that you haven't dealt with.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  All these things that I learned through the trials and tribulations of my life, I wanna teach her at a young age. I wanna teach her that her worth is not dictated by the things that she produced, but she is inherently worthy. At the same time, it is,

• 1:23:55Speaker 00

  she will not be happy unless she has purpose in life. I believe that to be true. I don't know who said it, but it was very succinctly said, "To love and to work", you know? I believe that people need a reason to get up in the morning, to go into the world and feel purpose. I don't care if that purpose is stay-at-home mom or president of the United States.

• 1:24:21Steven Bartlett?

  Will you teach her anything that you learned specifically from being in those rooms with the billionaires, athletes, politicians?

• 1:24:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I'll teach her about risk.

• 1:24:30Steven Bartlett?

  What will you teach her about risk?

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  You know, I've seen thousands of hands of winning and losing poker, and I've kept spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets on people for years. And I've then watched

• 1:24:42Speaker 00

  The choices they make and how they get to the numbers that I look at the end of the year.

• 1:24:46Steven Bartlett?

  Is in their business choices or?

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  The choices they're making in the game and then in their greater life.

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  A lot of times when people lose, they become

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  unwilling to take another big risk. And if you aren't willing to take risks in life, over time, you will lose the game.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  The people that took calculated risks

• 1:25:16Speaker 00

  over time, won. People that took impulsive risks

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  didn't. But people that took calculated risks over time and didn't let a past failure or an external condition stand in that way, won the game. I think a healthy relationship with risk is super important. I think

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  being able to stay composed when there's chaos inside, chaos outside, is incredibly important in those rooms. I think being able to know when to use your emotional mind to make choices and know when to use your rational mind and being able to toggle between the two in an intentional and

• 1:26:05Speaker 00

  smart way is super important. And I think ego and greed is the reason that I've seen so many lives come undone, including my own.

• 1:26:19Steven Bartlett?

  The person that sits before me today,

• 1:26:23Steven Bartlett?

  you know, been on a journey, to say the least, lived many, many lives in many different chapters.

• 1:26:31Steven Bartlett?

  What are you most proud of about yourself now? When you reflect on the person you are versus the person you were, what are some of the things you're most proud of about yourself?

• 1:26:42Speaker 00

  I'm proud that when I that I stay self-aware. And when I believe that I'm wrong, or believe that I'm behaving in a way that is not aligned with who and what I want to be in the world, that I'm willing to either say sorry, or do that work, really deeply, relentlessly do that work to change. I'm willing that, I mean, I'm proud that I just continued to, I'm proud that I stayed open.

• 1:27:14Steven Bartlett?

  Is there anything you're not proud of?

• 1:27:16Speaker 00

  From my past, or in the present?

• 1:27:18Steven Bartlett?

  In the present.

• 1:27:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there are little things that I'm working on, but I wouldn't say that I'm not proud of them. Because I think having grace for yourself and learning how to forgive yourself and treat yourself with compassion is something that I had to learn as a survival skill back in those dark days, but something that I continue to practice. The only times that I'm not proud of myself are if I'm staring straight into something that I know that I'm totally ignoring that's causing harm in the world, to myself, to other people.

• 1:28:03Steven Bartlett?

  Molly, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're going to leave the question for. And the question left for you is, what is the message you needed to hear when you were younger that you didn't hear? And who was the best person to say it that didn't say it?

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  Okay, that's a great question and a hard question. And I think, I think the answer is, stop searching for the evidence that you were worthwhile, that you're good enough, and just start to believe it. And I think the person to say it to me is me. I think I was my own worst critic.

• 1:28:53Speaker 00

  You know, we all have certain challenges in our life, but I think at some point, taking responsibility for your own shit is the most important thing a human being can do.

• 1:29:11Steven Bartlett?

  Are you there now? Like, are you at the point now where you know your self-worth is, isn't going to come from glory?

• 1:29:18Speaker 00

  Not a hundred percent, but I'm like ninety.

• 1:29:24Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think, do you think we ever overcome these desires to, to seek, you know, these things? Because they feel to be so hardwired in us, especially if they come at a formative age from people that are important to us, like our parents or the context we're raised in. It's almost like a, an oven. It's like, if you think about anything that you bake,

• 1:29:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:40Steven Bartlett?

  you can't unbake the thing. Like, you can't, you can't unbake a cake. There's lots of things you can, like, you know, separate using various chemical processes.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, I think maybe if you're willing to go live a monastic life and just meditate all day and like not live in the real world, even then, I, I know that for me, anytime I think I have something completely figured out, something fixed, something else will happen in life and it'll crop up. So that's why I think it's so important to have a process for how you deal with these things. And I think anybody that says, I did this work on myself and now I'm fine, isn't being fully truthful.

• 1:30:18Steven Bartlett?

  I agree. I completely agree. And I think that's the, the most honest answer to give. And I also think it's the true answer. It's the answer that all the psychologists and psychologists and psychiatrists that I sit here with tell me as well. It's the answer I've seen in my life, that it's more about management than it is about taking our traumas or our hardwiring to zero, which, and I think that's important to say, because people that are struggling with the same recurring patterns in their life, hear that and go, oh, thank God, it's not just me.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Steven Bartlett?

  You know, because they'll beat themselves up when the therapy doesn't work or the podcast they listen to doesn't change them.

• 1:30:48Speaker 00

  Right. Or like when staring at the sun and sitting in an ice cube bath doesn't fix their, like.

• 1:30:53Steven Bartlett?

  They're still toxic after the rice bath. And they're like, fuck, they want a refund. Molly, thank you so much.

• 1:30:59Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:31:00Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you for your wisdom, your honesty. You don't have to be so honest. And in particular, the amount of life lessons you've been able to draw from this experience, I think is of tremendous value. So it's no surprise you're a speaker. I'd bet extensively on your podcast being a huge success as well. And I'm really excited about this book because I really do think that effective presence is clearly one of your absolute, you know, Dominant skills, just from meeting you today as well. When the minute you said that and explained it to me, I was like, oh yeah, I get it. So, and that's an unbelievably powerful skill because all we face in this world is other people.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Steven Bartlett?

  And so knowing how to get the best from those people in whatever context that might be is ultimately the superpower that anyone could possess.