280: Cindy Eckert on Making Women Really Rich

Cindy Eckert is an entrepreneur who built and sold two pharmaceutical companies, including Sprout Pharmaceuticals which created the “female Viagra." In this conversation, Cindy and Anthony discuss selling the female viagra for $1 billion in cash, why it is so important to make women rich, how healthcare will change after COVID-19, and how Cindy is helping to put women on top. =============================== BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. www.blockfi.com/pomp =============================== Pomp writes a daily letter to over 45,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pomp.substack.com

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Cindy Eckert is an entrepreneur who built and sold two pharmaceutical companies, including Sprout Pharmaceuticals, which created the female Viagra. In this conversation, Cindy and I discuss selling the female Viagra for $1 billion in cash, why it is so important to make women rich, how healthcare will change after COVID-19, and how Cindy is helping to put women on top. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you learned a lot from it. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. The first is BlockFi. BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a US dollar loan funded directly to your bank account.

• 0:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You can also earn up to 8.6% APY on their interest-bearing accounts. I'm an investor, a user, and generally a big fan. You can go to blockfi.com/pomp to learn more. Again, their interest-bearing accounts earn up to 8.6% APY, so it's definitely worth checking out. Blockfi.com/pomp. Also, I write a daily letter to over 45,000 investors about business technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while also sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pomp.substack.com.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, pomp.substack.com. Both links to BlockFi and to the Daily Letter are in the description of this episode, so feel free to go click them there as well. Alright, let's get into this episode with Cindy. I hope you guys enjoy it.

• 1:46Speaker 00

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Alright guys, bang.

• 2:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Bang, bang. I have my friend Cindy here. Uh, are you ready to do this?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yes, I'm ready.

• 2:23Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, you, uh, you've got a whole bunch of stuff that you've done in your life. Let's just start from the beginning. Let's get through your background and then we'll get to the fun stuff.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30Anthony Pompliano?

  What, uh, where'd you start out?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  Uh, we, how far back do I go?

• 2:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Where were you born? Sure.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'm from upstate New York, like, blue collar town. You were either Irish or Italian if you were on my street. And, um, you know, Kodak factory type workers. And, um, and I had an exceptionally adventurous dad, um, who moved us from Rochester to the Fiji Islands because naturally, that's a natural move. Um, and that started really what I would say is my conditioning for where I ended up in life. Because he, every few years, we would move. I moved every year from the fourth grade through my senior year of high school. Um, it conditioned me to be really comfortable being uncomfortable. Um, and that's, that's the journey to entrepreneurship. Not that I went there right away. I actually, um,

• 3:19Speaker 02

  I've always loved businesses. I was a student of business. And I had one really instrumental professor, business professor, who made me do special assignments and report to her every week on a business, a company I had studied. And out of that, I made a decision when I got out of college. I went to school, uh, in DC, small Catholic school, Marymount. And, um, I said, I'm gonna go work for Fortune's most admired company. That was it. Like, I'm just gonna go learn from the best. I will take that wherever. It could have been in aerospace. It could have been in whatever. It happened at the time to be Merck, uh, which is a pharmaceutical company. So I applied, I got the job.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Um, and then I realized, the hell if I fit in a big environment. And they're probably Fortune's most admired because they had a great PR department. And I'm, no one's listening to me and I'm not making a contribution. At that time, my big brother went to work for startup. And you know, what were these startups? This is like the beginning of the dot com boom. And went to work for a startup and I'm watching him and I'm thinking, holy crap, like he's getting to do all these cool things. They're like testing that, you know, he's doing all these things he's never done before. They listened to him and he has skin in the game. And actually I got a chance, we were going to IPO. So I got a chance to participate in friends and family. I had no money, no money.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  So for a year, I would every day for lunch, I would eat a bowl of white rice that I could get for a buck. And I would save money and I didn't have much, but when I, at the end of that year, I put all this money in on this IPO and overnight I made money. And I was like, that is what I'm going to go do. And I quit work and I went to work for a small company. And then I just kept going smaller till I started it for myself.

• 5:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. What, what was the original idea? So when you went out to actually start the first company?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:17Anthony Pompliano?

  What, what were you doing? What was kind of the thought process behind it? You knew you always wanted to do it, but like, what was the actual genesis of it?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  You know what? I was sick of creating value for others that I wasn't participating in myself. That's the like Cliff Notes version. But I had gotten to a place in my career where I was, you know, going in and helping organizing companies, either for IPO or, you know, we were sort of packaging it for sale. So I really kind of had gotten a lesson in what does it take to put together a company the right way? And then I thought, why the hell am I not doing this for myself? And I had enough years that there was enough of a track record of credibility that, you know, it was still ballsy as hell. I mean, look at me, I don't fit the part to invest in for a pharmaceutical CEO. But I thought, how with that?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  I can go find some science and I can take the people like me who exist in these environments. They're, you know, high achievers, but they're totally uninspired. Like this is an industry that I love for what it does. I don't love how they get it done. And so I'm thinking, all right, that's my hypothesis. Like, can I get these people? People put them together. Well, you know what? I called it Slate, Clean Slate, doing it on my own terms. Like, I really called it that for that reason. Put these people together. We got an asset that was the only long-acting testosterone, FDA-approved, only long-acting testosterone for men. And in four years, we built it to the second most prescribed among urologists. And it was really that DNA.

• 6:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How does that work? So I think a lot of people don't understand the pharmaceutical industry and kind of the connection between there's science that goes on actually developing the drugs, getting them approved. And then there's a whole other part of the business of you gotta get the word out. You actually have to explain to doctors and those prescribing why this has value, why it's different, all that. Maybe talk a little bit about those two parts of the business.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it is like the great mystery, isn't it? Like, healthcare in general. And I will say, like, I'm in an industry that I used to say we were one rung up the ladder from tobacco companies. Not, like, same level. I mean, let's be honest, for people who are watching, like, they hate pharma. That's their perception from the media. But, you know, what we hate in the light of day, we depend on in the dark of night if our children are sick. We depend on in this moment. I actually think this moment is an extraordinary moment for appreciation of innovation. So, you know, from a pharma company perspective, there is one, this extraordinarily long process of research and development to get a product to approval.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  We will lose billions of dollars on a bet that something will work. That is a rigorous process, all regulated, blah, blah, blah. Once you've got that approval, you now have to educate the market. We all know, like, you can't turn on the TV and not see a drug ad. But, you know, most of that behind the scenes is really going in and educating a clinician base. And my first company, Slate, actually had an asset that was FDA-approved already. It hadn't been really marketed. And so my mission was in that, in actually to educate the market and get the word out. So I built an organization that was dominantly, you know, in-field, folks that called on doctors around the country, urologists specifically.

• 8:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so I can say this because I know you well enough. You're one of the best marketers I know. Absolutely world-class at it. And so it's funny to me that you started out with the testosterone drug because you were actually better known for not helping men, but for helping women.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:00Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you go from Slate to Sprout?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  So can I tell you the craziest thing? Is I've kind of been at this for a long time. So when I bought that product, what was so interesting, it was made by this brilliant formulator. He owns a patent in our industry for extended release products. He never marketed it. He's like a, he's like a bad scientist who invents these great concoctions, but it wasn't his dream to, to commercialize it. And what it was being used for was women. That wasn't what it was approved for. It was approved for men with low testosterone. But because we had never come with a solution for women, people were using it what's called off-label, like off of what it's indicated for. And I thought, this is crazy. But I, it started my like awareness, if you will,

• 9:48Speaker 02

  around how prevalent this issue was for women and the lengths to which they would go to address it. So here I am, building my company Slate. You know, we're, not that it wasn't really hard at the beginning, like really hard, but we finally hit our stride. You know, the curve started to look like this. And I'm going to all of these scientific meetings. And the biggest conversation is about, finally, there's going to be one for women. Like, we have a beat on the science for what it is that truly unlocks desire for women. The answer is not to masculine women by giving them testosterone. The answer is to address what's going wrong, which is, for women, a neurochemical imbalance. And so that was my radical moment.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  When I'm watching the science, I'm watching every big company with way better resources than me, look at an extraordinary market opportunity and walk away.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And that's when I decided to walk in. And I pulled off the profitable business in men.

• 10:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Why did they want to walk away? Well, actually, before we go into that, let's talk about just the sciences of, because I think a lot of people don't understand. So first of all, we're talking about sexual desire.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  There's men's sexual desire and women. And the science shows that those are two very different things. Maybe describe just the difference between the two and then we can talk about kind of what you did to navigate this.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, when we look at sex, desire gets the party started. Right? We have desire, we hopefully become aroused, we orgasm, I hope, and there's no pain present. That's how you really study sex. But for women, you know, what we had been doing is saying like, hey, it works in men. Let's see if it works in women, which is honestly pervasive across medicine, not just in this category. But for women, what we had learned from brain scan imaging, and if you look at the world of medicine, in the last two decades, probably our greatest discoveries have come from the ability to do PET scans, functional MRIs. So we knew from brain scan imaging that if you put a woman in an MRI who,

• 11:54Speaker 02

  something like the switch went off, she used to want it, she doesn't want anymore, like she knows it has changed. Versus a woman who's totally happy with the ebb and flow of desire, exposed to erotic cues, their brains light up totally differently. Totally differently. And so what we knew is there's a neurochemical basis. We're very animalistic when we have sex. We basically, I call it, we close all the tabs in the brain. We shut everything off to enjoy the experience. For a huge percentage of women, they can't shut it off. There's been a disruption in the balance of these chemicals that allow that to happen. And that's where their desire basically leaves the room. And for me, that was so compelling.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  So compelling, because if you sit and you talk to somebody who's going through this, it's not just affecting them in the bedroom. It's affecting them in all aspects of their life. Did I answer your question?

• 12:49Anthony Pompliano?

  No, absolutely. And so as you saw this, and there was a big difference there between men and women.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You sold Slate off and started Sprout. Let me talk a little bit about the transition between the two companies.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, for Slate, Slate was a testosterone product that is often used for male libido, or, you know, a variety of symptoms if their testosterone goes off. And for me, like, the calling was finally getting the first woman. At the time I did that, the time I sold Slate, there were 25 FDA-approved drugs for men, and not a single one for women. 25, there were 26 by the time I finally crossed the finish line. And we can talk about how different that path was for the little pink pill versus the little blue pill. But from a transaction perspective, you know, when I sold, it's funny, Slate, very few people even talk about my first business, Slate. And yet, I really think that's where I earned the stripes, right?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  That was the real first lesson of putting it together myself. And when I got a beat on this, this science out of Germany, I spent a year exploring it. It was inside of Slate. I actually sprouted out of Slate one day before I sold Slate. And I sold Slate because, you know, I'd gotten it to a place where it was a natural, you know, acquisition target. They could take it to the next level. And I needed, frankly, the money from my shareholder base to take this on for women. It was pretty, pretty incredible.

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you allowed to say how much you sold the first one for?

• 14:22Speaker 02

  I'm not, but we'll call it hundreds of millions.

• 14:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So, my point is, it wasn't a small sale. This was not a, oh, I just happened to find someone down the street. This was a pretty big deal. And then, obviously, you then take a lot of those investors on another journey with Sprout. Talk a little bit about kind of that original idea of just like, let's go solve this problem for women.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Ends up becoming worth many more hundreds of millions of dollars, ends up being in the, in the billions. But go ahead.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  You know, I really, I think I was called to it a little bit. Like, for me, as a woman in this space, first of all, I'm such an unusual bird that I'm a female CEO in pharma. Then put me as a female CEO in sexual health. And I'm running a company for men. And when I sold it off, I really turned around to my shareholder group and I said, I made you a lot of money. Now give me some of it back and we're gonna go again. And, um, and they did. And I think they did because, uh, you know, they had seen the inaction and what I had built with Slate. But also I think they knew just how deeply like I felt this, that we had to do it. It, it was a radical bet. It's completely binary, right?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  I was either, I, my fate is controlled by the FDA. I had to get this through the FDA. I was gonna win big or lose big. And, um, and it was such a process to go through that. You know, Slate was, um,

• 15:50Speaker 02

  there was a, a, a group that we made forty X their money. Like, uh, Slate is the story of I maxed out all my credit cards. I hid when the phone rang because they were calling me. Like, you know, it was the real kind of first version, uh, of startup. And then Slate became, or in Sprout, excuse me, became this like phase two that felt very straightforward to me. Like, I knew I had to go out and do a very specific double line of placebo control. You know, there's a very straight path for science. What was crazy about that is when I went on that path and I did everything that I was supposed to do, the FDA rejected me.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  It was a bad day. I was really bad.

• 16:32Anthony Pompliano?

  What was their logic for rejecting the first time?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, honestly, the, the answer was, well, you know, we think the benefits are modest, um, and therefore no to any risk. And like, if you think about it, so in medicine and I, I would say in life, like, everything comes down to benefit risk. Right? Benefit risk, which feels very objective. But it's totally subjective. Because if we don't assign any value to something, then we'll never take the risk. And what was happening is, let's be honest, we do not value women's pleasure. For twenty years, we have turned on the radio or television and we have been told subconsciously that men's sexual pleasure matters.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, I can keep going and going and going. You still hear these ads today. There's huge businesses built on this premise. We value sort of sexual performance for men. And for women, we're like, eh. Because they can have sex whether or not they want it. But really, is that, I mean, is that right? When we know scientifically that we can help women who have a neurochemical issue, that we would actually just say like, does it matter if they have sex like a few more times a month? The answer is, if it matters to her, it's her call. And I think that's where it really ignited me. You know, from the standpoint, I'm very proud of our scientific package with 13,000 women that we studied.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  I'll give you context. The average new drug approval in the U.S. is 760 patients. With 13,000. Let's talk about a huge data set. Viagra, that's a good comparator. Viagra had about 4,000. Viagra was perceived to meet such an important unmet medical need that it got fast-tracked through the FDA and approved within six months. The prevalence of women who deal with low, frustrating low libido is the same as ED. It took me six years in the same queue.

• 18:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So you go the first time, they reject you.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:41Anthony Pompliano?

  When you hear that news, did they send it in a letter or a phone call?

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Fax.

• 18:45Anthony Pompliano?

  A fax, okay. What is your reaction when you get that fax?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so I got a call. I had just landed, I'm based in Raleigh, and I just landed back at RDU. And I sat down and like didn't move for two hours. I was paralyzed. I'm like, I did all the work. I met all the endpoints. This is statistical significance in a double-blind placebo-controlled trial. And I, I sat down and I thought, and honestly, this was going through my head. What the hell am I going to tell my team? And they were, you know, we were small, but they were so committed. We had worked so hard. And I went into the office, it was on a Friday, and I like got everybody around the glass table,

• 19:35Speaker 02

  pounced into my office, and I said, I said, "Listen, here's what we just learned, and I'll have any answers."

• 19:44Speaker 02

  I, you know, everybody needs to go home this weekend and work on their resumes. Like, it's completely within their control. So that weekend, um, I, I like went home, I cried it out. I'm honest. Um, I woke up the next day, went back, got on email. And I went back and read the letters of all the women who had written me. Who knew I was doing this, saying, "Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone. Thank you for doing this. I'm losing my marriage over this. This matters to me." And one woman wrote me, who had been watching this. She'd been in our clinical trials. And she said, "I need to meet you." And she was close by. So I went to meet her. I went to get a, a coffee with her. And I gotta tell you, like, when I walked in the coffee shop, we didn't know each other.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  I'd never seen her before. Um, I knew it was her. Like, she was coming across the room, walking. And I was like, "Okay, type A, like, in charge." And that's prototypical, actually, for women who have this. Like, they're so, like, highly information processing. Their brain never quiets. Um, so she comes walking over. You know, it's like a first meeting. She's telling me about herself. She's built this, this, she runs her own business. So she's built a company. She has two beautiful boys. She's showing me pictures. She has a husband she adores. But this shit is going on. And what she said to me, she said, "I have succeeded in every aspect of my life other than this."

• 21:10Speaker 02

  And I thought, if that is not the portrait of a woman. She has raised her hand a thousand times. She said, "Hey, something's different. Something's changed. Can you help me?" And she'd been patted on the shoulder. And she'd been told, "Oh, take a bubble bath. It's okay, just relax." And yet, we know this scientifically. So I said, "Can I show you something?" It popped up in my MacBook. I'm showing her the brain scan studies. I look at her, she is crying, pouring tears. And that was my moment. And I was like, "This is why I'm doing it." Right? I had to like, "Hmm, get myself up together." I went in to the work on Monday. I got everybody back again around the glass table. And I said, "We are going to dispute the FDA."

• 21:52Speaker 02

  There was a moment of silence, which is, "We're gonna fight the government?" And I'm like, "Yep." And the reason I did it is because we had the data. And what we were doing is we were not listening to women.

• 22:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What does it mean to dispute the FDA? Like, I don't even know that that's possible.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  That was probably one of the first ones that, "Can we do that?" There actually is a mechanism. So you get a decision, you know, FDA is a huge bureaucracy like every other government agency. And you get reviewed by divisions. We happen to be reviewed by the urology division because they had reviewed all the sex drugs. Not that that's how we work, we work on the brain. But in all the sex drugs before had been for men, so it didn't really make sense. But there who reviewed us, there's a mechanism by which you can basically take it. I tease, I call it the Supreme Court of the FDA. It's not literally what it is, but it's really sort of like that process that you dispute. What happened after that is they had public meetings. And I give them credit.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  To their credit, they opened their doors and they invited women in. And like, women, you know, took time off work, flew across the country, talked about what was going on in their bedroom at a federal agency. They were remarkable. And, uh, and they came in and after three public meetings, or at the third public meeting, the FDA basically assembles an expert panel, um, you know, of scientists from across the country. And then they put you on trial. Like, you present. It's the craziest thing. It's like being in a courtroom. Nobody can believe this is really how it happens. We literally get up, we present. The FDA talks. The public gets a chance at the microphone. You would not have believed how many people were packed in this room.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And, uh, and ultimately, this panel of scientific experts, having heard all of the data, make a decision and they vote, like, by like, audience response at that moment. And I gotta tell you, I can remember, I was looking at a big screen. I'm sitting in the audience. I have security around me, by the way, because this, I got death threats. This was so controversial. And I'm holding my phone and I'm going like this. And my hand is just shaking because that was it. Like, that's the moment. And they voted overwhelmingly to approve the drug.

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Because it was a third day in court.

• 24:18Anthony Pompliano?

  What were you thinking when you see that the vote goes your way? Like, do you jump up and start screaming and just like throw your middle fingers up at everybody?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  You know what's crazy is I can, I can remember a few things from that day and then I think I blacked out for moments. What's so funny is to read the text from back from that day because there were moments where people were like, oh my God, we're gonna win, we're gonna win. Oh my God, we're going down, we're going down. And it was such a roller coaster ride. But in that moment, I was just so like calm in that moment. And what was so incredible to me is the cheers that went across the whole crowd. And I get emotional thinking about it. I gotta tell you, this does not happen often at a, at a federal agency and at the FDA. And Nightline came out that night and the clip they showed was the cheers.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And like the cheers were like, that doesn't happen when a drug gets approved. But it was such a win, science won. Make no mistake, science won, but women won that day too. And that really mattered to me. During the course of it, when people would get up and look, people at the public mic were supportive and hateful detractors. And I, my big brother was there with me and I have two big brothers, both were there, but one was sitting right next to me and he kept having to like tell me, you know, he would spin everything for me. He's like, what they're really saying is that you're very committed.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  He would spin it. My dad came, my whole family came. My dad was there and I insisted, I'm like, Dad, you can't sit near me. Like, you can't. Cause he was so emotional, like I couldn't take it. So he sat in the back, it's crazy.

• 26:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you get it approved, it's this like crazy moment. And then what, within 48 hours, there's an even bigger announcement. What happened there?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I sold it for a billion dollars upfront and a whole lot on the back end.

• 26:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And that was the day after it got approved?

• 26:21Speaker 02

  We announced it two days after. That was one hell of a week. So it got approved. I got on a plane. I went up to New York. We did incredible press. It was so fun for the approval because it's like we were the biggest news story in the world the day that it was approved. It was massive global news, so much fun. And then literally the next morning was on Squawk Box announcing that I had sold it. And I'll tell you how that materialized. When we had that public meeting where they voted overwhelmingly to approve, the FDA, that's not the FDA's final decision. That's the decision the panel has given them. But the whole world knew they're getting approved. So it takes a few more,

• 27:03Speaker 02

  you know, it was like a couple of months before they gave the final. The day that happened, that vote, the big companies came knocking on my door. And there were three.

• 27:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like, do they call you? Do they text you? Do they email you?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  They, they, I don't know. I think they all emailed me. I gotta think about that. It was the email started coming in like, hey, we'd love to come to Raleigh and visit with you. And those stories were crazy. You know, I can think about getting into the room. There was, there was one suitor that came in. We went, we were at a hotel. My team was sitting with me. I had printed out like binders of all of this data and press and everything else. And the woman I work with, who's a rock star attorney, came with me that day. And she's sitting next to me. She's like got all the binders, but they're so big. She's like, put them down on the floor. And they make us an offer. And they totally low ball us. 200 million was the offer.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  And, and so they say, you know, it's very dramatic. They give this big speech on how they're gonna take some good care. And it's, you know, 200 million dollars. And they're like, we're gonna let you think about it. And they walk out of the room. So I'm sitting there looking at all of my team and they're sort of looking at me. And I'm like, all right. When they walk back in, five minutes, get up, walk out the door. And I'm like, I miss get up, out the door. So they come back in and I'm like, we are really so flattered. Um, but we're gonna go it alone. Thank you so much. And literally, the whole team gets up, walks out the door, and the lawyer who's sitting next to me, Josephine, is like, she's like pointing like, the binders, the binders. And I'm like, leave them, leave

• 28:47Speaker 02

  them. And she's pointing, and we're like, I'm like, get out, get out. So we get out of the room. And what I said to her, she said, why do we leave all those binders? I'm like, because that will make them call us back. They now have a reason, right? And so sure enough, like, literally, we weren't, the hotel is across the street from our offices. We were literally walking into our office, and I got a phone call, and they're like, we have your binders. I'm like, oh, that's fine. You keep them. They're for you. And that, like, allowed the door to still be open, and that, that conversation to keep going.

• 29:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. And so obviously, you end up selling it for a billion dollars in cash, which I think a lot of people, when they hear a number like, hey, I sold my company for a billion dollars. Most deals are, uh, stock and equity and earnouts. Like, that was just cash. Uh, and so I ask every single person, what do you do when you see a billion dollars wired? Right? Like, you know, I, I, I just imagine you look in the bank account, and there is one billion dollars. What is the reaction?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  You know, I, I have a weird relationship with money. If I'm being totally honest, I don't know. I got up the next morning, I went to work. Like, and I'm not saying that I wasn't, you know, so proud of it. And, um, but it's really like, it didn't change anything about what I still wanted to do. Um, and I just got up and I went to work. I have a guy that is my financial advisor, and, and I have, I laugh, I have told this story, but it was not that long ago. And he came into the office, and he basically said, well, you live in the same house, you drive the same car. And then he looks at

• 30:28Speaker 02

  me, and he goes, I'm pretty sure you were wearing that the last time I saw you. So we're good. It, it was unbelievable, but the work wasn't done.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  You know, the work was just like getting started for getting it to market. So it was, it was, there were, there were little moments of reflection. I will share, Gayle King had me on CBS this morning to announce the approval. And you know, that was the pressure, sitting in the green room at CBS this morning and, and, and getting on set. And then the next day, we were on Squawk Box and announced the sale. And she wrote me a little email and she's like, oh, sure. You couldn't have said that on my program. And she's like, you are a badass. And I still have it on my desk. Like that is, that was so flattering. So moments like that really, you know, made a huge impression on me.

• 31:20Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And so since then, you've gone on to do investing, incubator, a bunch of things to kind of help other women or women focused businesses. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the other stuff you did. And then we'll get to the really fun part where, where you may or may not get the drug back.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  So you know, what's crazy is I sold the business. I thought I was going to stay. Maybe it's a classic story of, you know, founder, mama bear, not getting along with new acquirer. I was invited to leave, as I like to say. And I had to like sit on the sidelines and, you know, check myself. They paid a billion dollars for it. Know that I still would be there and cheering it on, but also figure out like, what's next? And it's extraordinary, right? Like if you can have any possibility or you have no possibility, what do you choose?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  And for me, I think that what was so clear is I had literally lived a front row lesson in what it means to advocate for yourself and for other women. And look, I'm, I'm not actually somebody who talks a lot about, you know, was, was, was I in a male dominated industry? Were there crazy moments in, you know, in a room where you were marginalized or whatever? Sure, but I was going to get through it. Like, I understand it. It's very different for me to like experience that. At a mass scale. And so I thought, well, the hell, like, I need to invest in disruption. Like, I don't only want to disrupt in the market for technologies that we need in women's health.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  I want to disrupt a mindset of who has the next billion dollar idea. And that matters to me, and Pomp knows some of the profile of uh, women that I invest in, and you know, I've got this great engineer, but she's gorgeous, like, she's five ten, she's blonde, she's Texan. And let's be honest, like, when she shows up on Sand Hill Road, they're sort of like, oh, okay. You know, like, it's very hard to actually get beyond that. But she's gonna sell her company for hundreds of millions of dollars. And like, the next time somebody looks like her walks in the room, we all reach for our wallet. That, that is like, part of the design. Um, uh, and so it's been

• 33:45Speaker 02

  wonderful for me to get to invest in things that not only, I think, are groundbreaking first. I'm, I love the big challenges. Take the big crazy ass swing, right? That has little probability of going through. I think we're pretty good at that. And they're often like catalysts in social change um, as well, that, that just matter to me. Plushable pregnancy test.

• 34:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So, I can say this because, uh, I, I know you well enough. And I asked you one time, um, behind closed doors, you could have lied, you know, all through your teeth to the public. But behind closed doors, I said to you, uh, why are you doing this? And this is when you were investing and, and kind of really, you know, pressing the gas on, on the incubator. And you said to me, to make women fucking rich?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Yes. That's right.

• 34:30Anthony Pompliano?

  And I remember just walking out of there being like, Cindy is a fucking badass.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  That actually was so controversial when I, they, somebody was, you know, when you first start, people like, well, what's the mission? Well, what are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you tried to explain them, I'm like, to make women really fucking rich. And you know, we should, all of us should want that. May the best man or woman win. Just, let's be, let's be, give it a fair shake. Let's not overlook an idea because we think it's niche, because it affects half of the population. I'll take that idea. And I mean, that really does happen. Just, I'll get, and by the numbers is how you bear it out, right? Four percent, four percent of investment dollars go to women's health research.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Four. That's crazy. And so those are the things that really ignite me. And it is about picking people who are going to get to a finish line. Like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a early CEO. I think you're a founder CEO, or you're a forever CEO. I'm a founder CEO. I like to build it. I like to build it from scratch and create enough value that somebody else comes in and acquires it. And that's really the profile of companies I'm taking on too.

• 35:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You've got a team that was with you, Slate, Sprout, Investing, what you're doing now. And they all stick with you. And you've got everything from embarrassing, funny nicknames for them, to the quirky culture. You wear pink every day, kind of all these different elements that you've built. Like, talk a little bit about just building that culture, and how you've kept a team together for so long through multiple iterations of the work you guys are doing.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You know, culture was the, the agenda for Slate. I mean, honest to God, that was the most important piece of it for me, is how do you build a culture of ownership? Let me be specific about it. So for me, right, why would you leap and do it for yourself? You want skin in the game. You want a piece of what you create. And I've got the recipe for everybody to be wildly successful in building your business. Treat everybody like the owner of the company. Give them a piece of what they get out of bed every day and go to work and do for you. And I think we have, you know, an outrage. It, it, it actually creates an environment of what I'd call constructive irreverence, right? If everyone's the owner,

• 36:53Speaker 02

  like, they're challenging. They're challenging. And I'm not the only person trying to hold people accountable. It's really that everyone holds each other accountable, because we're gonna cross the finish line. And when I look to my left, you better deserve to be there. And, and I really think that has been a piece. I also pick, we are total misfits. Lots of, you know, entrepreneurs will say this, but I have always seen myself as a misfit. And I am definitely attracted to other people who are misfits. And I think that kind of culture creates this extraordinary quirkiness and individuality that has you achieve incredible things. When I got into big companies early in my career, what was so counterintuitive

• 37:38Speaker 02

  to me is that they were trying to beat you into sameness. One way, this is our way. Here's how we do it. You have to have processes in companies, but you're, you are missing the boat if you're taking that away from people. So my culture is really simple. I say you make six choices to come work for me. And we really, and I hire against it. I fire against it. I incentivize against it. And they sound like, you know, um, I don't know, one of my choices is quirky. What the hell does that mean? How do you interview for that? I don't say to people like, are you quirky? Yes. Okay. Check that box. Like you're really finding that individuality, but I think it's ownership mindedness. It's boldness. It's quirkiness. It's that they're all learners.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Like we are never so arrogant to think that we know it best. We constantly go and learn from others, especially outside of our industry. Um, we're, we truly are family. Uh, we're very loyal to one another. I think, you know, we can do this behind doors, but when we walk out, we're locked arms against the world and we're appreciative. And I think even in the darkest moments of, and there were, look, there were moments when we're hanging on by a thread. Like we were gonna be shut down the next day. There was still like an underpinning of like a pre marveling at what we were trying to do. And I think that has gotten us through all of these years. Yeah. Uh, Pom knows Nurse Ratchet. She's been with me.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Do I need, I don't even need to describe why this is her nickname. Um, but you know, Rach has been with me for 17 years. Like she's, she can tell all the crazy ass stories, um, you know, that we've had, but like there's something about that. And I will say, you know, when I sold this company and I cheered them on from the sidelines, the most important thing was that my people stayed. When they were gone and they moved on in their life and I got it back, I picked up the phone and I'm like, hey, and like their husbands, their wives, their kids are like, oh no, oh wait, Cindy's calling. What's gonna happen? Mom, dad, you know, whoever. And, um, and I was like, hey, we're gonna do this again. And they dropped what they were doing. They came back to do it.

• 39:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so you sold the business for a billion dollars in cash. You make your investors yourself, everyone's walking away very happy.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:02Anthony Pompliano?

  They take the drug and maybe don't do what everyone thought was possible with it. And now you are sitting here and somehow you have the drug and they gave you cash. And now you are running a business with that drug again. How does that happen, right? There's only one other person that I know. So I'm going to pick on a little bit. Doug Lebda sold LendingTree. They then grew it. And if I remember correctly, they, he basically sold it. It fell like 75, 80% in value. He went, bought it back, or he actually paid for it and then went and grew it again. And so that is a story that's happened before. I've never seen somebody sell the business and then basically the acquirer says, keep the cash,

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  get your drug back and like leave.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And here we'll give you a loan so you don't have to be distracted with fundraising. You know, that was, it's an extraordinary story and you get smarter as you go along. So I'll tell you how that happened. Well, first of all, they, I could not have written this movie. Like the way that it played out, and maybe it's the first drug for female pleasure, was going to have the most crazy, most insane story. Not only our story and fighting the government, but then, you know, you win. And, and it's really like the entrepreneur's dream come true. We were 35 people when we created a billion dollars worth of value. 35 of us. And, you know, they were going to march it across the globe and make it affordable in ways that we really couldn't at that moment in time. They take it, they're going to keep me and all the team.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  They invite me to leave. Three months later, they dismantle my entire team. They put it on the shelf. So what happens is we announce a sale. You know, it takes a while before this closed. On October 1, it closed. That was in 2015. 11 days later, they got a letter from the Department of Justice.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  And there was an investigation because they hadn't disclosed this pharmacy relationship that they had. No one knew, none of their sophisticated investors or anybody else knew. And, um, and the world went boom. And the truth is, we were the last thing in the door. Um, I was not happy, not having, I'm in the middle of about to go into a launch. And, um, and so I become a liability, I'm gone. Um, then the whole team is gone because they're trying to save their core business, which is burning to the ground. This, the, the day that we sold to them, like they were the darling, they were two sixty a share. They traded down into the teens. So the truth is it just got deprioritized.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  It was put on the shelf and we had fought so hard to finally, women got one on the board. And the women who needed it couldn't get it. And I used to mystery shop it, like I'd go to Target, can I get it? No, it's not available, crazy. So, um, they got a new CEO, they fired their CEO, total turmoil. And he was on the job about two weeks, he's a lovely man. And I sat down and I said, can I get it back?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  And he was like, we just paid you a billion dollars for it, like this has a ton of value. I'm like, well, good, I'm glad you remember that because my shareholders do as well. And not in a threatening way, but like for real, there's a lot of value here. And our transaction was structured. So here's where I got smarter. When I sold Slate, um, I got money upfront and then I got money on the back end. I participated in royalties, Melbox money for years, uh, which was great. Uh, but it was governed by boilerplate language, best efforts clause. Classic legal language, best efforts clause. Well, actually, when you do that, what you realize is, well, your best efforts and my best efforts are different. So like, you know, as a founder, you sit there like, oh, they should be doing this, they're not doing that.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  And you like have angst about it. So when I sold Sprout, I wrote the same deal. We had all of this money coming on the back end, but it was governed by very specific performance obligations. And they weren't outrageous. They were like, how much money will you spend on marketing? How much money will you spend on field education? Da, da, da, da, da, da. They weren't meeting any of them. So when they blew me off, I sued them in the court of Delaware. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, I got the company back and I kept the billion dollars and got a loan to get started. I win, they win. They get a participation in royalties, but not a bad deal.

• 44:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So what have you done so far? Because now you're sitting, now you're sitting here with the drug back. You've got the company to kind of get a second shot at it. I think you would say that you are not only a billion dollars richer, but also a plethora of knowledge and experience in terms of what you can go do now. So what's kind of the plan and where are you guys at?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  I gotta tell you, the best part, like, you know, in my world, it's a pink lining, not a silver lining. But the pink lining is I had to sit on the sidelines for a few years and I had to go, all right, what would I be doing? Well, what's changed? Well, how would I be smarter about it? And so I was sitting there, kind of doing that class, if you will, in my head for a couple of years. And when I got the product back, um, look, it is hard. It wasn't like I got it back and it was here. I got it back and it was here. Because really, to do nothing with something that was the biggest news story in the world damages it. Because people don't know the inside story. So like their perception is, well, that didn't go anywhere. The reality was, how could it have? No one was marketing it. It wasn't stocked in any pharmacies

• 45:38Speaker 02

  across the United States. It was insane. Um, so we have fixed all the supply chain. We've gotten it, you know, ready. And we've imagined, this is a thing I'm probably most proud of. We've imagined a path in which women can have this conversation from the comfort of their couch. Privacy of their house, doctor license, they're safe. It doesn't require a physical exam. So telemedicine. So think about that. We were ahead now in COVID world. All of us are talking about telemedicine as a future of medicine. Thankfully, we got a jumpstart on it and and it ships to your doorstep, you know, like an Amazon like experience. And so it's been fascinating. I'll tell you, it took me a while, like I had to go back and work with the FDA on

• 46:23Speaker 02

  some of the labeling things that were, you know, should have been modified based on some data. I had to get all the supply chain set, but this year, really, it's just this year. We turned on real advertising and like the first ad ran on Howard Stern and like I sat in my car and cried like a baby. Because it was, it's been 10 years to get to that moment. And so I think everybody will start to hear a lot more about it. I mean, then COVID hits, right? And here I am again, like it's the, my story is like, right when you think it's, you know, it goes sideways. And for me, like a lot of that brand awareness, everything that I don't have metrics yet on and conversion and everything else, like you go,

• 47:06Speaker 02

  all right, I'm holding. Like I gotta hold and hang on to my, hang on to my people who are the most important component of the business and then we'll figure it out from here.

• 47:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk a little bit about the telemedicine stuff because I think people are starting to see, you know, before this happened, it was kind of a little bit more popular. Now, obviously with COVID, it's like the talk of the town. Just how do you see that whole part of the industry?

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Well, look, I'll, I'll sound like such a VC type person, which I'm not. I'm totally an operator, but let's be honest, let's think about like investments that have done phenomenally well of, of, of late. Like we think about that intersection of digital and consumer. What were people chasing? They were chasing the Dollar Shave Clubs, the Warby Parkers, like all of those. I think that the next frontier and everyone is chasing the intersection of digital and healthcare. And telemedicine was really born out of helping people in remote areas who couldn't get to doctors. But let's be real about stats. It takes 29 days on average to see your primary care doctor. Forget your specialist, 29 days to get into.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  To a primary care doctor's office. We all know what that experience is like, sitting with the clipboard and like, you know, somebody sneezing next to you and everything else. For so many conditions, we don't actually need a physical exam. We can have this exchange via video, we can have a phone exchange, we could even have a digital exchange. When you have my medical history, it is telemedicine is the future of medicine. One hundred percent, it is more cost effective. It means our schedules and how we all consume today. We're not going to tolerate taking the time for that. And it actually, I think, in many ways, I I've been through so many of these experiences now as I tested telemedicine. It's so comprehensive.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  You know, you can go online and do your vision test to get your glasses. It's brilliant. Um, so I'm really such a huge fan of that. And I think that's, you know, that's here to stay in an epic way. And probably while it has been here, we are all slow as humans to change habits. Um, COVID has sort of forced that change.

• 49:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And and how much of this is dependent on the doctors and and the regulations kind of complying with it versus uh, those things are already allowed for this and it was just a technology barrier.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I so there's a, they have been a little lessened right now in this moment in time. You know, everything from a, everything is governed by regulation, obviously, in this industry. Um, and while you can get Addy through a telemedicine experience, I have no, like, it's a wall between me and them. They they literally see on my site, you are leaving us to go to another company. I went to a bunch of telemedicine companies and said, look, here's my hypothesis. Women would prefer to not necessarily bring this up in person, but to have a, you know, private conversation. If you will educate all of your, uh, you know, clinicians in your network, like I will shoot, send them your way. And we have a variety of them that we work with.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Um, but there's really, you know, FaceTime was built with HIPAA compliance. So really the technology is there to protect our information. Um, it's really been more of like a habit change in my mind of consumers or or even an understanding. You would think when you say telemedicine. It's intuitively obvious what it is, but so many people say to me, what is that? Like, what the hell are you talking about? So I think it's really still a very new concept for people. But once you do it, it's hard to go back. I'm not saying don't do your regular visits with your physicians, but I have been saying to a lot of my friends right now, I mean, look, physicals, everything else, you need to show up, annuals for women.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  But a lot of my friends are like, oh, well, I have an appointment with my doctor, but I guess I'll just schedule it for, you know, September. I'm like, no way. Call their office, get on their website, see if they're doing telemedicine. Like, doctors are, is my heart. They're often small business owners. Think about it, they're one, two people in a practice often, not necessarily owned by the hospital system. And they're struggling right now because nobody's walking through their doors. Like, this is a great way, I think, to even be supportive of healthcare professionals right now.

• 51:25Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. Speaking of supportive, you have taken Hollywood by storm in a way. And you have a campaign, along with a number of other women, called Women on Top. Maybe tell us a little bit about that.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, first I have to tell you, we all wear sweaters that say Women on Top, like in solid.

• 51:45Anthony Pompliano?

  I've seen them, I've seen them all over the internet.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  And, and I have to tell you, I was leaving LAX the last time, and I was going through security. And the, the guard on the other side is looking at me and she was like, Women on Top, she goes, Girl, you know that can mean two things, right? I was like, I know. It just, I love that reaction. Yeah, I, when, when Eva Longoria was, you know, coming out of the Ivy and like the, I loved that the paparazzi are photographing her and everything else. And then they're like, Women on Top? I like your sweater. But here's what it is. So to me, It's really been remarkable to get to know all of these women on top, women that we look to, who are truly dedicated to putting other women on top.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  That's what it is. And it was born out of this conversation around Addie and Sprout and a little bit of my story. We had a very funny video release through the Funny or Die crowd. A bunch of female comedians took this on. They were like, you know, we can use humor to poke at the absurdity that we don't talk about this for women, despite the fact that, you know, we've talked about it for men for so long. And by the way, it's good for everybody to talk about something. This is not male, female. This is like universal. And they did a premiere in New York and LA and it caught fire. And I think it just resonated with people

• 53:11Speaker 02

  a couple of things. And that is, you know, the story of you can take on, you can take on an injustice and win. And there were two, right? Not only the FDA fight, but I think also the, what happened with the company. And, and it's really about like everything that I do at the Pink Celline and in the Pink incubator is just putting power in women's hands. And, you know, the women who have surrounded me, that's the coolest part, right? If you think about it, I would say in so many ways, including fighting the government, I took the road less traveled. The remarkable part of that is you will be awed by who comes

• 53:55Speaker 02

  and walks alongside of you. And a lot of that has been, you know, Hollywood actresses. And we go into, you know, they're, they'll say, come over and meet all my friends and talk about what you do. And inevitably then we all start talking sex and it becomes a confessional. And that's very, that's very fun. But they're ready to like own it in a different way. And, and for me,

• 54:18Speaker 02

  Obviously, I am passionate about women's health and but also sexuality. And and I think I'm unafraid to talk about this in a conversation we're having about wellness. And God bless, we finally are. We're talking about mental wellness and physical wellness. Right? You can't turn on and not cease to be a wellness. Well, the third aspect of that is sexual wellness. And it's going to be a, you know, almost $30 billion industry by 2025. And I'm glad that we we we broke the ceiling and we opened that door. And I think that there are so many things that have come through on that in a conversation ready to be had because it's part of your overall, if you will, moxie and power of how you show up in this world.

• 55:02Anthony Pompliano?

  So when the movie gets made, who plays Cindy?

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Oh, no, you have to pick this. I can't pick it. Who you tell me?

• 55:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Who who would you want to play you?

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so hard. Oh, my God. Um, uh, well, you know, there's a I adore Sandra Bullock. I always have adored Sandra Bullock. So like, I mean, come on. And and I do laugh always at the Reese Witherspoon because I did a whole like tweet series on everything I need to know about business I learned from Legally Blonde. And you know, the the pink pumps that I wear pink all the time. Um, you know, that was born out of well, first of all, I love pink. It's hard to find a childhood photo of me where I'm not in pink. Um, and it was born out of the fact that when I did this, people would say, oh, the little pink pill. That's so cute. That's so cute. And and I thought, what?

• 55:54Speaker 02

  So, you know, pink is a little bit of the transition from underestimated to unapologetic. They didn't see me coming, but I wasn't going to give up who I was. Um, and I would show up at the FDA in blazing hot pink. And at that same wire, I told you stories about would be like, please, can you just wear a sensible black pantsuit? And I would show up and the pinks would just keep getting brighter because we were going to talk about it. And so, you know, I think about the Legally Blonde. There is a little bit of that in all of us, male or female. Right? We all have been underestimated in the room, overlooked, um, you know, in some way. And I think that that mind shift from underestimated to unapologetic is a really defining moment for all of us.

• 56:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Love it. What's the one thing you would go back and tell yourself at the start of your career that you know now? What's the best piece of advice you could have given yourself?

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Um, damn, I wanted to say like my personal self, I would say have more sex, but let me do my professional self. What would I tell myself?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  I think it's probably comes down to the only thing you will ever regret is that you didn't do it sooner.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  That's it. That's like my regrets are I should have done that a long time ago. And so, you know, when your instinct, your gut instinct is there when everything inside is like telling you to do it, do it. Cause you're only going to be sad you didn't at that time. You're going to live through way more pain in the interim. You're still going to get it done eventually.

• 57:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I love that piece of advice. Two last questions to wrap up, then you get to ask me one. What is your favorite book you've ever read?

• 57:38Speaker 02

  I'm such a broken wrecker, but I am like the mega fan of Purple Cow. Seth Godin fan, and I gotta tell you, if you haven't read it's like I'm dating myself. It's really a book about marketing, you know? And why remarkable wins, why remarkable attracts remarkable. But it really for me before I started Slate was eye opening in that same concept of how do you stand out in a sea of sameness? And really like, how do you recruit against a purple cow philosophy for me when somebody's reached my desk? On paper, like they're totally qualified for the job. All I'm listening for are those cues

• 58:20Speaker 02

  of what makes them different in terms of how they stand out for them to be part of our group. The resume means nothing. The that it factor is everything.

• 58:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Aliens believer or non believer?

• 58:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  I'm a believer by like association and let me tell you what I mean by that. So I am, I count Mark Kelly as a dear friend, astronaut, like talk about an incredible human being who's out there on the risk curve. And I heard somebody once ask him, right? Like Mark, is there, you know, is there life, you know, outside of here? And he was like, why would we think there wasn't?

• 59:10Speaker 02

  Which is the right answer on so, for so many things in our life, you know, when we're questioning, the right answer is like, why wouldn't we imagine that possibility? So I'm, I'm a believer.

• 59:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Big scary world out there.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  It is.

• 59:24Anthony Pompliano?

  All right.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  But not, but signing up for like to travel to space, that's not on my, not on my bucket list.

• 59:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So here's a question that I love getting people's answers. Would you rather go to the depths of the ocean or the space? But you had to choose one, which one are you less fearful of?

• 59:40Speaker 02

  The depths of the ocean.

• 59:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 59:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 59:45Speaker 02

  I, cause it's like, the view would be great.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. I would be among other like fascinating creatures. I, I don't know. I think, I don't know, I don't know the creatures above, but I do know maybe what I'm dealing with below. Maybe that's where it comes from. Which one would you do?

• 1:00:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I probably would go to space. Not, not because for any other reason than the ocean, like there's definitely stuff down there we got no clue about. Like I saw.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  For sure. That is true. That is.

• 1:00:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw a video of it was like an octopus going through the water and it's changing colors based on what was around it. And I'm just like, I'm out, man. I like, I'll just go to space. Hope I don't run into anybody. I'm good.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Oh, but you're gonna, there is life there.

• 1:00:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Probably. What, what one question you have for me to, to finish up?

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  I have two. One is, will you tell everybody the story about when you tried on high heels at the pink ceiling?

• 1:00:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I did. Yeah, I did do that. Uh, what was the story? We, you had a party.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Me, Jason, a bunch of people went and, uh, Thesis Couture, which is a company that, uh, we had invested in. Uh, they have made the world's most comfortable heel.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Dolly, uh, came from SpaceX and, um, created this thing. And then what she sent, I think, a pair for you to try on.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Anthony Pompliano?

  You refused. And I think some, some people that work with you tried them on.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  I just want to say that Pom had them on and was parading around.

• 1:01:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I did. Well, I don't know if I was parading around.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  I just need you to know, there's some secrets here that I got.

• 1:01:25Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't, I don't know if I, if I have paraded around. I think I put them on and stood on one of them, but I don't know if I paraded around.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  By the way, I'll be shift late. Um, what's, you know, my story, my question for you is, um,

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  what's the one thing your family gave you that, that, um, wired you for this?

• 1:01:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, thick skin, like without a doubt, cause, cause thick skin is one of these things. Um, I'm a big believer in the idea that you can only develop thick skin.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Born with it.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And the way you get thick skin can be through experiences, the way people treat you. You know, all of a sudden, you can't read about it in a book, right? And also like, oh, I have thick, thick skin.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And I grew up in a family, four boys, or five boys total, four brothers. Uh, my dad was, you know, classic, just buster balls all the time. And, uh, now you kind of look around the world, you're like, actually, if you've got thick skin, like you're better set for the world than most other people. And so it's, uh, it's funny because if you ask me also, like, who the toughest person in my family is, is probably my mom.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Which like physically, maybe not, but like she will send our shit packing if we don't, you know, stay in line.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  She, she's outnumbered. She has to. I do attribute that. I have two big brothers. You know, you've met them. Like they are, everybody thinks, oh, you're young, you're the youngest and a girl, like, oh. And I think they did not get that memo. Like they did not. They decided they were like here to toughen, toughen me up. I have to tell one story. When Pom and I first met. Wait for it. He showed up in a pink convertible. Which I knew we would be friends from the moment you pulled up, but that was, I can't, I don't even know what make it was. It was one of these like spectacular, like old school, your mom.

• 1:03:25Anthony Pompliano?

  No, so, uh, I had a black avalanche, like a truck couldn't be more of like a male, you know, oriented truck. And, uh, it was getting work on and my mother had a pink Thunderbird convertible. That my dad had gotten for and like gotten fixed up and he likes working on old cars, long story. But, uh, I remember I was, um, coming to meet you and I was like, oh shit, like I don't have a car to drive. So I was like, hey mom, can I grab a car? And she needed her car. She's like, well, just take that one. And I remember looking at it being like, really? And so you have like one or two options, right? If that's the situation you're in, and I didn't know anything about you wearing pink or any of this stuff.

• 1:04:09Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, either own it or you hide from it. And so I, I've rolled down the windows, you know, blasted music and drove down the street in this pink car that came to meet you. And it was like, I gotta show you what's outside because you're gonna love this.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  That's amazing. I love it. Well, thank you so much. So much fun.

• 1:04:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Where, where do you want to send people? Where, where do you want them to go?

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, please follow me on Instagram at Cindy Pink CEO. Uh, you can see all of our Women on Top campaign initiatives. And if you want to pitch or, you know, need some help with your business, it's the pinkceiling.com.

• 1:04:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. I appreciate you doing this. I think people will enjoy it and, uh, we'll do it again soon.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Thanks, Tom.