WSO Podcast | E82: Sports Finance from a VP at Goldman Sachs

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In this episode, Joshua Glessing shares the unique path that has landed him the role of VP of Strategy of the Haslam Group which is the parent company for the Cleveland Browns, Columbus Crew, and other sport affiliated businesses. We learn how a late pivot during his college days was a life-altering decision, how he transitioned from a public finance role to an advisory role at Goldman Sachs as well as the one piece of advice he has for younger folks trying to find their way.

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WSO Podcast (Episode 82) Transcript:

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Joshua Glessing shares the unique path that has landed him the role of VP of strategy at the Haslam Group, which is the parent company for the Cleveland Browns, Columbus crew and other sport affiliated businesses. We learn how a late pivot during his college days was a life altering decision, how he transitioned from a public finance role to an advisory role at Goldman Sachs, as well as the one piece of advice he has for younger folks trying to find their way. Enjoy. Josh, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.

Joshua Glessing: [00:01:02] Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:04] It'd be great if you could just give the listeners a quick summary of your bio.

Joshua Glessing:  [00:01:08] Sure, so, you know, really high level, originally from Wisconsin, went to Indiana University at the onset of my time in Bloomington, I thought I was going to ultimately go to law school, pivoted my junior year, didn't totally know what I wanted to do, but knew that I didn't want to be a lawyer. So I had degrees in public affairs and sociology and ultimately leveraged the public affairs with the folks on public finance to a job at a company called PFM Group, which is the largest advisor to states and local governments for large scale capital projects. Did that for a few years in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then they moved me to L.A.. And by chance, worked out a couple of stadium and arena projects for local and state government and sort of learned how municipalities contributed dollars to private sports stadiums. Then Goldman Sachs ultimately asked me if I wanted to send. The other side of the table represents sports teams on a number of different things, but a big focus was. New stadium and arena projects the financing of them, the public private partnerships of them, and then in some instances, other parts of sports and entertainment.So went to to Goldman in the summer of 2013, and I did that in the sports practice within the investment bank for six years. And then about a year ago began representing the Haslam family, Jimmy and Dee Haslam. Jimmy is the CEO of Pilot Flying J Travel Stations on their acquisition of the Columbus crew that already owned the Cleveland Browns up the street from Columbus. And this past April, May made a passive comment to the CEO of the Cleveland Browns about at some point wanting to move back to the Midwest, where I'm originally from, where my wife is originally from, and that that quickly turned into an Are you serious? And I said yes. So moved here to Columbus, Ohio, this past summer, where and now the vice president of strategy for the Hassam Sports Group, has a sports group, is the parent company of the Cleveland Browns, Columbus crew and then are to be rolled out Ventura's platform that will invest in sports, entertainment, health, wellness, other things that we feel touch our business of sports operators in some way, shape or form.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:58] Great. Really interesting background.

Joshua Glessing: [00:04:00] Definitely a big part of what I'm doing right now and why I came over when I came over with the Columbus crew is you can see him at the background right now. I'm in what was once the crown jewel of Major League Soccer as the first MLS specific stadium in the country. It is now the oldest MLS specific stadium in the country, so we broke ground in October on a brand new $300 million stadium in downtown Columbus, and we also developed the real estate around the new stadium. So that was a big part of the reason why we even know that the Columbus Browns organization is a much larger scale than the Columbus crew, and a lot of the executives and ownership are spending more time in in Cleveland for relatively obvious reasons. We've got a very substantial project here taking place for the clubs in downtown Columbus.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:54] Curious how many people? What's the capacity of the stadium?

Joshua Glessing: [00:04:58] The new stadium, twenty thousand people, which is similar to to the current stadium, which I'm sitting in right now. The difference is the overall footprint and size of the building is going to be much, much larger. There really isn't a great premium offering in this building. It's located on the fairgrounds, which if you look at it on a map, doesn't necessarily look like a terrible location adjacent to Ohio State's campus. However, the ingress egress onto the stadium site is difficult. There's nothing really to do around the stadium before or after a match and during a match. There just isn't a premium experience which people are becoming accustomed to in the business of sports. So, so we'll be talking about a building that's got a footprint in terms of square footage. That's  almost double, if not more than this current building, even though capacity, this is actually the same.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:49] Yeah, very cool. So, all right, let's start all the way back for your story. So you like the bat and then we can get a little bit of sports once we get through your career, maybe we can get a little sports talk going. All right. No. In terms of just being it when you said you were you, you're a political science or a public affairs major. Yeah. So tell me that when did you think, Hey, I'm going to be working on these projects? Like what? How did you end up at FM specifically? Was it somebody you knew? Was it a friend of a friend networking? And you know, you were graduating in 08, which was a horrible time. So tell me a little bit about that job search, the struggle, if there was any or was it just you got lucky?

Joshua Glessing: [00:06:34] You know, a number of very, very fortunate turns, it was never part of a master plan and it was one of the things I struggled with while I was at Goldman and I talked to a lot of young people who it was always a part of their master plan. And you meet someone who's like, I'm a step behind. I didn't know when I was 14 years old that I wanted to work on Wall Street and I was never prepared. I didn't go to a target school. I didn't. I didn't have the liberal arts degree or the right undergraduate business degree. I'll never make it. So for me, like I said at first, I thought I was going to go to law school and public affairs and sociology was the right mix to Ultimate take the SATs and go to law school. But what I learned more and more about what lawyers did, I decided I had no real desire to be a lawyer. I went to my council at IU and said, Hey, what's the what's the right move for me? And she asked what I ultimately wanted to do. I said, You know, I'm not totally sure. I think I want to work in business or finance it. At that point, I still didn't totally know what that meant, right? And her guidance was, Well, if you want to switch to the Kelly of school business, it's going to cost you real time. It's going to cost you at least an additional year at school, and that just wasn't on the cards for me. So what I ultimately want is why

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:58] It's just money.

Joshua Glessing: [00:07:59] Yeah, money. It was all driven by money. You know, I was taking out loans to get through school, and it just wasn't practical to take another year's worth of debt out over time. And at that point, I think I was ready to work, even though I didn't necessarily know what that meant. Right? So. The guidance from the from the counselor and, you know, I look back on it and it was such a simple thing, but it really transformed my life in a lot of ways was to change my focus within the school of public and environmental affairs to a public finance focus. And I find out years later that Indiana is one of only a couple schools in the country that has a program focused on public finance, and it just so happens that it was in the school I was already in. Yeah, and I said, that's not necessarily because I wanted to work in public finance, but because I wanted to put the word finance on my resume. That was the sole purpose and focus of it at the time was to put the word finance on my resume.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:05] What year was this discussion where this this kind of pivotal discussion?

Joshua Glessing: [00:09:10] This is second semester 07,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:13] So junior year almost end of junior year. So did you have time to get an internship that Junior

Joshua Glessing: [00:09:18] Seau had plenty, and it was one of it is. You know, I there aren't many things I can complain about my time at Indiana University. I had an unbelievable experience. Looking back on it, I would have changed anything. However, not being in the Kelley School of Business, I didn't have access to all of the resources that come with the Kelley School of Business and for the people in the school of business. It's very great because they keep other people out who could be competing for jobs, and it really helps credential, you know, that undergraduate program. But for me, I couldn't use it. So I just started hustling and I was, you know, winning my resume into the black hole.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:10:00] When you say resources, was this like a mock interview? Like what was this like investment banking club stuff like that?

Joshua Glessing: [00:10:08] But I also couldn't apply to jobs because you had to have certain undergraduate degrees just to apply through on campaign finance business related rules. That's annoying. That's annoying. And I literally couldn't do it. I could see the jobs and I could see who was going to be on campus, but I couldn't click apply. So I couldn't even be considered for those on campus interviews because I didn't have an accounting degree or a finance degree.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:31] Did you ever think to actually go to the information sessions and then just like, work your work your way in through back channels? So I've heard kids doing that who aren't in the business school.

Joshua Glessing: [00:10:40] In hindsight, I should have. Well, in hindsight, I should have done everything the way that I did it right. I struggled in a very, very meaningful way. But I was just black hole, black hole, black hole.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:10:54] Yeah, and this is all mine anywhere you could find. This is a

Joshua Glessing: [00:10:58] So I ultimately did an internship at what at the point was countrywide. It later became Bank of America. I had a verbal job offer afterwards, but then all of the job offers to the group that was going to. At that point in time, the countrywide headquarters in Calabasas, Los Angeles, they were verbal offers, never a formal offer. Those were all reneged. So I found myself scrambling my senior year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:30] Yeah, this is now senior year. When you see, when was it clear that it was reneged, that they were not going to be able to extend it in December? Oh, great. So you only have about five months before you graduate.

Joshua Glessing: [00:11:42] And I was coasted along where everyone else is panicking, trying to find a job. I'm like, I'm good. That stinks for you guys. And you know your interviews. Also then I panicked, I didn't really know what I was going to do, I had student loans coming that we're going to start to need to be paid back. And I scrambled. So I basically and I honestly don't remember who told me to do this, but someone gave me the guidance that how have you looked at jobs in public finance at this point? I've got to focus in public finance, and I still don't totally know what that means. So I basically go to the internet, go to the Google machine and start looking for jobs in public finance. And that's when I realize that as people are seeing my my resume, there's like, Oh, this guy has a focus in public finance. He must actually love municipal finance because who goes out of their way to go to the school that has a focus in public finance. So this guy must be serious about, you know, municipal bonds, and

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:48] There's actually something to be said about that. Like you had like it was so niche. It was so niche that people were like, well, we've got to give this guy a shot. We've got to bring him in just because he has the public finance on his resume. Like what undergrad is like? Well, I guess if if Kelly has that focus, there's got to be other kids that you were competing with that had a

Joshua Glessing:  [00:13:06] Public family doesn't have the focus. I wasn't in Kelly.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:08] I mean, not Kelly. Sorry, the Indiana, Indiana, that has a look fine.

Joshua Glessing: [00:13:12] Other people have it. But those people want to work in public affairs, local government, not actual finances. They want to. They want to work in the Department of Finance and Infrastructure for the City of Bloomington or the City of Indianapolis. Ok, which listen, if things had gone differently, there is a scenario in which that was the easier path for me. So I applied for a job at PFM in Charlotte to sit on their pricing desk, and I went there for an interview and it was sort of like, Oh, you love municipal finance? I'll hire you.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:52] And you just said yes and nodded.

Joshua Glessing: [00:13:54] I don't think, you know, municipal finance, revenue, bonds, general obligation bonds and really in the back of my mind is like, OK, this is a job in finance. It is progressive to what I ultimately want to do. But I think I went down that path and I was learning on the fly in on what that job would entail. And then I'm loving it, and I got such great exposure to

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:18] You before you continue. Do you feel like you got lucky? You still getting it? It was. It was a competitive or because you had such that niche background. Do you feel like the job was yours to lose? Like, it didn't even matter if you

Joshua Glessing: [00:14:28] It was competitive? I mean, there is. There are a lot of very specialized people who work at PFM still today. I mean, it's incredibly smart people.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:39] Can you explain to the listeners, can you explain to them what the pricing did? You end up working at the pricing desk?

Joshua Glessing: [00:14:44] Yeah, so Pfm advises states and local governments on capital projects, and that's where I started and sitting across the table from an investment bank, they hire a firm to advise them on that process, on selecting an underwriter for a financing on. And in some instances, advisers for really, really complicated investment banking type transactions. Some of them have played out publicly in recent years.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:12] So are you? Are you on the side that you're on the side of the government? So you're like the advisor for the governments and then your other side is the banks?

Joshua Glessing:  [00:15:18] Exactly. So we basically we knew the municipal bond market and we would advise those cities leading up to the pricing or underwriting of a major debt offering and advise him on the pricing. And when you're talking about basis points on a $3 billion state of California go deal, you know those basis points matter. So we were the ones that were in tune with that market. We did that for a couple of years was starting to, you know, it was a fun job. I learned a lot about a lot because I saw SPFM is by far the largest player in that space and I saw a lot of. Deals across the board, and then they move me off the desk to more an advisory role in Los Angeles. So I did that for about a year.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:16:10] Tell me how that changed, how that changed the day to day from pricing.

Joshua Glessing: [00:16:13] It went from being in tuned with the market to really working with investment banks. On the life cycle of a deal and working with municipalities on coming up with transactions, so like I alluded to a couple of sports related projects where you're a municipality trying to figure out, OK, this sports team needs X amount of dollars to build a new building or they're going to leave. How do we come up with that? How do we come up with $300 million for Hennepin County to contribute to Minnesota Twins Target Field? All of the options that are available to different financing tools and mechanisms and negotiating a partnership with the team. But at this point, I'm advising state and local government not yet advising teams. Now we're all table together trying to get something done. But in this process, and working with other general capital projects, Toll Roads General Obligation deals for general state purposes, I learned how cities, counties, states, other public entities finance these types of projects. The other thing I spent a lot of time was, you know, early in the 2010s, there was really the onset of the public, the real public private partnerships where you're bringing in a third party concessionaire, a large infrastructure funds the Centro's and Transurban's and scans because of the world who are entering into long term concessions with states, local governments on various different things. So if you drive through the state of Texas, you're paying a toll, you're probably not paying that to the state of Texas. You're paying it to Cintra Spanish Infrastructure Fund. So that was big in the early 2010s. I spent a lot of time advising states on those concession deals with infrastructure partners. And then ultimately, I got a call from Goldman saying, Hey, you've been doing this stuff on these projects for governments. Do you have any interest in leveraging that knowledge to? Advise sports teams on getting those dollars for those projects and a number of other things. That was really the institutional knowledge that brought me to gold.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:45] Can you tell me a little bit about so you mentioned you were at the table with the sports teams in the state, municipalities and then the banks? Also, I'm trying to understand like the interplay there, how complex those negotiations must have been because you have like multiple competing interests and different. It's got to be really almost incredibly challenging to get some of these deals done. Were you did you learn a lot about like how that whole process? I assume you did.

Joshua Glessing: [00:19:13] But yeah, I mean, you're spot on. There is the the technical complexity. Which is important, but you know, fortunately, there are a lot of really smart people in the room usually, and you can you can work through those and how it looks. But even more than that, there is a political complexity. You know, these sports projects and what are viewed as subsidies for. A wealthy sports team owners, right? The public does not always have aligned perspectives on what that should look like. Right. That is the more complicated part is telling that message to your community. And we did that a lot. And you know, I was part of it a lot more while at Goldman. But that is the really, really complicated things, because as much as you, you know, in real finance, I think if you kind of know, if I do this, this will happen and you can you can draw correlations relatively easy. More often than not, they're wrong. But within orders of magnitude,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:21] Like number of jobs, say number of jobs kept in the community, number of all that stuff.

Joshua Glessing: [00:20:26] And you start to try to  explain something really, really complicated to a broad base of taxpayers. Yeah. It's very, very difficult, and that's why these things play out so publicly and they always do, and they, quite frankly, always will is because there are some people who just fundamentally don't agree with the approach. You know, I go back and forth and, you know, I truly, truly believe that in most of these instances, it is the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do for taxpayers. It's the right thing to do for communities and politicians. But telling that message is hard.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:07] Fair. Ok, so was Goldman on your radar before you got this call and or were you looking at other investment banks or other because you were you were at PFM for a good number of years? I know you had moved out to L.A. and it sounds like you're doing interesting work and you kind of changed your position there. So I kept it a little bit fresh. But was there at any point had you kind of started thinking, Hey, it'd be great to be on the other side?

Joshua Glessing: [00:21:30] Or, yeah, I probably started thinking about that six months to a year before I actually did it. Okay. And you know, when I went to L.A. at that point, it sort of reset me in terms of wanting to leave. And on some level, I felt at that time that I had some type of obligation to them. I think my views are a little different now than they were at that time. So I went there. I say, I have to be here for a bit. They moved me out here and

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:22:01] Have your views changed. What do you mean by that? Like now you would just jump.

Joshua Glessing: [00:22:04] Yeah. Now I wouldn't put that into context whatsoever unless I was legally bound to stay there.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:22:13] Is that because you're more cynical now? Or I'll tell you, tell me

Joshua Glessing: [00:22:15] Why I think you used the perfect word. I would say that I am more cynical now than I was at that point in time. You know, I still never want to burn a bridge, ruin a relationship. You know, the world that I live in, the world of sports and entertainment is very ancestral. I can't bridge in this industry because I think it will come back to haunt me. There are some people who can and there they've got the personality to do it and still be OK. But you know, that's just a simple Wisconsin man in my heart, my core. But yeah, I realize now more than I realized then that it's a business. You know, every day I show up, it's a business, it's a business to me, it's a business to my boss. It's a business. The people below me and. I have to keep that in context as much as sometimes I don't want to. But you have to weigh that with at the end of the day, even though it's a business, these are all people. So people like people fair.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:23:21] Ok, so you had a great run at FM almost four and a half year or four and a half years. And then Goldman just calls you up one day. Tell me how that I mean, you worked across the across the table from them.

Joshua Glessing: [00:23:32] So was it just the managing director on the Goldman Syndicate desk who had developed a relationship with through my days? At Pom-Poms pricing desk. No, he reached out and said, Hey, we're doing some, some off cycle recruiting for an associate. Is that something you'd be interested in

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:55] For the syndication desk?

Joshua Glessing: [00:23:57] No, for banking, for banking. Yeah. And the short answer at that point in time was, yes. I mean, Goldman was never on my radar, certainly through college and even when I started my career and then learned a little bit more. And it becomes what Goldman is. And it's like, Oh my goodness, there's an opportunity. And when I did leave form, it's funny. I went there for a super date. There was one opening and I think they interviewed like 20 people and there were two separate groups in conference rooms. And I walked out after mine into the conference room to grab my bag fly from New York back to L.A. and there was a counterpart of mine who sat in San Francisco at PFM, also in the room. And it was sort of awkward thing, and I told him to call me when he was heading to the airport. So he called me, and this is one of those things where I just think about relationships and how wildly important they are, the only two people who knew that I was in New York at that time were my mother and my former boss. At PFM. Go back in Charlotte. And who is a very, very well respected in his space, and they actually asked me a direct question because PFM is the largest advisor in the space, Goldman and all the other banks that participate in municipal finance really, really care about and value the relationship because they advise state governments on the bulk of large scale capital projects.And they asked me, like, how would how would you feel if you came here? And I told him, exactly. I said, You know, to people who know that I'm here are my. Mother and Mike Mace, and that that really, really resonated there at that point, I'm Mike Mace, who still advises the 10 largest public utilities in the country. He knew, and that meant a lot to them. So my counterpart calls me on the way to the airport, and they said they asked him the exact same question after I had just answered, Call my boss, call the person you care about the most right and tell you that he is supportive of this. You don't have to worry about damaging relationship. My counterpart answered the same question when they asked if they could call Mike. And he said, Absolutely not. I was just fortunate that I felt comfortable enough in my seat, and I learned a lot from Mike as a person, as a business professional. But I was fortunate that I told him and I had a conversation with him, and he was supportive of me doing this. If I had the opportunity and he worked at Goldman before he went to PFM.

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:26:48] So you were comfortable enough to have that conversation, even though you were across the country. Yes, from him, you gave him a call, a courtesy call to let him know that you were going to go in for this opportunity

Joshua Glessing: [00:26:58] To meet him before that, to ask him if I should. Got it. And he was very supportive of it, and he said, you absolutely should pursue it. But the fact that I had that come and don't get me wrong, there are other scenarios where you can't have that conversation.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:16] You still had to beat out another 19 or 18 candidates or whatever it was or there were. There are a lot of MBAs there and is this investment banking group? This global sports finance is this

Joshua Glessing: [00:27:30] It's within public sector and infrastructure.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:32] Public sector. Got it. Ok, so it's the public sector infrastructure group in banking.

Joshua Glessing:  [00:27:37] You know, that group, it's a little different than the other groups within within PSC in the sense that all of the other people that sit within PSI. Yeah, work with advise and underwrite deals for people who have access to the tax exempt municipal bond market. Mm hmm. My clients. Did not they're all private sports organizations. Got it. But on some of these projects for stadium and arenas. There was a component of public financing in a lot of them, not all of them. So that was very, very important as doing these, these public private partnerships and being able to speak the language. And that was the sole reason that that group sat within PSC.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:23] Got it. Ok, so your tell me when you I'm surprised you didn't call you right away while you're at the airport.

Joshua Glessing: [00:28:31] Well, he went because he had to go through his Super Day. Ok. I went through mine first and as I was leaving, he was coming in for the second half. He called me and he said, Hey, they asked me if what Mike would say if they knew I was here and I said. I would not be comfortable with you asking him so the exact opposite of what I said and I think that was very great is with him. There's a level of I don't know what the answer is with me. I've got a direct reference from the one individual that they probably care about more than any other department,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:05] More than an associate hire. They care about that relationship a lot more.

Joshua Glessing: [00:29:09] But the room was I mean, it was for an associate role. It was post MBAs. It was other people within public finance. You know that that world's a little bit different in that you're not going to go to HBS and learn about the municipal bond market. Right? That's just not part of the curriculum. And for, you know, in some instances, obvious reasons, but it's just not. So a lot of times to get that level of experience you can't hire from business school, you hire from other shops, their associates from middle market shops. And that's really what all of the bulge bracket banks do that play in that space.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:47] That's helpful. So you're there for a really long run and you get promoted to BP and all that good stuff. Tell me what it was like to work there in this group. Was it exciting? A lot of I assume you're meeting with sports owners and

Joshua Glessing: [00:30:03] Wealthy as a sports fan, you know, this was never part of my master plan. So I'm in it and I'm doing exactly that is due diligence meetings and I'm traveling the world. And, you know, you start to schedule your business meetings when there's like there's a game, it's like, Oh, it's a Thursday in the spring and I've got to go to Sacramento. I'll pick, I'll pick the day or the Kings are playing the Warriors and I'll go to meetings that day. Yeah. As a sports junkie, I mean, I had access to sports that I never knew existed. And it was just really, really cool. Thing and experience, and, you know, after a year or two, I sort of realized what other people were thinking about, OK, what's next? I've got I've got the golden credential, what's next? I very much realized that I wanted to continue to work in the business of sports because it was just personally fulfilling and fun for me. That's why I stuck around a lot longer than other people would because I knew I wanted to stay in sports. And you know, that's it's harder to go from sports banking to sports, whatever that means afterwards than it is to go from TMT to right name, a name a fund, you know, that is a natural, easy progression. It's a little bit harder in sports. Just because there aren't opportunities in that ecosystem doesn't exist in the same way that a lot of other finance does.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:33] So talk to me. So you were hanging around. You got promoted after how many years from associate to three years.

Joshua Glessing: [00:31:39] And then I was VP for three,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:41] Four, three and kind of coming up on that third year as a VP. Were you starting to look around? Were you always in conversations to see what was what was going on? I know you had mentioned how this latest transition happened because you mentioned, Hey, I'm interested in moving back to the Midwest, but tell me, was that just like, completely random or was there? Were you intentionally kind of planting seeds?

Joshua Glessing: [00:32:06] I started to think about it, and my wife and I had sort of a short list of places we wanted to live and we've got a two year old, so we wanted the right place to to raise our daughter and. You know, there is that fine line, you know, as you build a build a relationship and some of my good friends will say, Hey, what do you want to do next? So I'd like to own or I'd like to work for an organization that has multiple sports interests and wants more or wants to invest into other creative things in the business of sports. And a lot of people say, Oh, that's great, you know exactly what you want to do next. So why don't you just do it here? There are 10 of those jobs and all of the people that have that job because they're my friends. And so that was sort of the tricky part is I kind of knew what I wanted to do. But then I sort of realized that I didn't want to rush it because I kind of knew what I wanted to do. And I was enjoying what I was doing at goal. And, you know, there were things I didn't enjoy about it. I was traveling three to five days a week to really, really great locations. You try to tell people, Oh, and I was in Rome and then L.A. and then San Francisco like, Oh, that's so great. You have to remind them that a conference room in Rome and a conference room in L.A. and a conference room in Columbus, in New York, they all looked eerily similar. Yeah. But I was at that point

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:33] That you were traveling a lot, and that was five plus years of just on the one.

Joshua Glessing: [00:33:38] Ok, cool, you know, you get your you get your status and your concierge key, and that's cool, but then you realize, you know, one of the hardest parts for me when this is a true story, the personal story. When I really started a conversation with the Haslam family, I missed my daughter's first steps. I saw it be a video sitting on the tarmac on a flight to Oakland. And I missed it and I was just crushed. And that's when I kind of realized that I actually need to do something else. I still didn't want to rush it so that the passive comment that I made to my now boss. Was a little more direct from my perspective, I think he received it passively, yeah, but it was given maybe 50 percent, possibly 50 percent directly. And there's a there's a colleague of mine who has become a really great friend who we used to be a client when I was at Goldman. Ted Tarong, who was an associate at Proskauer, which is by far the largest sports law firm. They represent the NBA and the NHL and Major League Soccer. Ok, Gary Bettman and David Stern are both former Proskauer attorneys.

Joshua Glessing: [00:34:54] And he went from Proskauer in New York to now be in the general counsel of the Cleveland Browns. And he and I had had a couple of conversations about that transition for him and just hearing him talk about how great it was to go from from New York City to middle market city in the Midwest and work for a sports team. And that was that was pretty cool to me. So I had some, some conversations as that process is going on, and that got me really excited. And it was what I was looking for professionally. It was, you know, they own an NFL team. You own now a Major League Soccer team building a new stadium, real estate development. They want to invest in other businesses in and around sports. That's really cool for me. They all think I'm smarter than I actually am, so they let me do cool stuff. So it's, you know, looking. I was ultra selective and I'm thankful I was. At one point in time, a client of another sports team, an NBA team reached out to me and asked me if I had any interest in joining them and

Patrick (CEO of WSO):  [00:36:00] Doing something similar, like actual strategy and acquisition type work

Joshua Glessing: [00:36:04] Or similar ish is owned by pretty finance people, and a lot of their sports strategy and interests would run out of their family office, not necessarily the team. And that was one of the big issues for me is being at the team. Am I going to get the opportunity to do this stuff that your family office is doing back in New York? I worry was that I wouldn't. Yeah. And when you when you start to get passed, after you spend enough years in investment banking, you start to get wired in a certain way. But I will admit that I wasn't always wired in, you know, a couple of years from now, we get past building a new crew stadium and the development and rebranding and marketing and all this really, really cool, fun sports stuff. When it comes to just operating a sports team, you know, it's a little less intense. And, you know, I don't get to flex and work all of those muscles, and I think I've developed so this this idea that sort of indefinitely we're going to be doing cool and new things is really exciting to me.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:10] That's awesome, so the majority of your time now is obviously on new projects, are you? Are these presented to you? Who's going out and sourcing the like? Is it just like you guys have strategic meetings and you're you have like ideas of what you want to do? Or is it mostly around the large project the stadium projects? And like, there's just so much to do around, like the infrastructure around that whole project that it keeps you busy? Or are you looking at like completely other stuff in like the state of Ohio, for example?

Joshua Glessing: [00:37:39] Well, I mean, just outside of the

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:45] Like, how big is the scope? What's on your plate? Is it like one at a time? Are you looking at like 20 projects

Joshua Glessing: [00:37:50] All over the place? And so my job is really my job is stays kind of divided into three buckets. A third of my time is on the Columbus crew and large scale crew initiatives, and that's build a new stadium and finance a new stadium, build a real estate development around the stadium, finance the real estate development around the stadium. Third of my time is on the Cleveland Browns and large scale Cleveland Browns projects do not have any intel as to who's going to be selected as the next GM of the Browns. I just got away from me. But other sort of initiatives in the long term planning for the for the Browns and then the final third of my job is spent building out what we're calling. Sg has some sports ventures, which is, you know, ventures, I think a little misleading to what we ultimately want to do. But you know, it's an investing arm of the Haslam family that wants to invest in sports, entertainment, health, wellness, things that touch those.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:45] And those have to be in the state of Ohio or they can be anywhere now.

Joshua Glessing: [00:38:49] So we, we made we've got a couple investments and we've got some things in there that may not naturally fit there. So we did. We're doing a joint venture with 24 hour fitness on Browns Fit, a Browns branded gym in Cleveland. A number of sports teams are doing that, so we put that in ventures. But a lot of people who are inventors would say that's not what that is. Yeah, OK,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:13] So you're doing I mean, you have your hands in a lot of different things that sounds a third or third to third. Tell me about your team. They're like, Do you have an analyst or an associate underneath you? Are you traveling at your job? Obviously not traveling as much, maybe just between Cleveland and Columbus,

Joshua Glessing: [00:39:29] But I know I-70 one north and south.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:31] Yeah, but just tell me a little bit about, yeah, like this your team and how much is it like financial analysis versus just meetings of strategic meetings, stuff like that.

Joshua Glessing: [00:39:41] So, you know, it's interesting. And if I was to give a piece of advice to some of your younger listeners or especially anyone who has any interest in sports, you know, one of the things that's happening in sports right now is it's really going from and it started a few years ago being a real hobby. You buy a sports team because it's cool to be big, big business, and that's why you see so many hardcore finance and corporate guys buying into sports teams because they view it as an investment and as a business. As much as it's still fun for them, it's very much an asset that you would just invest in naturally because it makes sense to invest in naturally, right? So you start to see the organizations changing across the board to look more like what a lot of us would would would think of as real businesses, real big business. So my job didn't exist. I didn't. I didn't submit a resume for a job. The job was created for me because it was something that they wanted to do, but they weren't necessarily pursuing right doing that.But it was sort of the right time, the right place, the right path up, the right path. A comment received by the right person. It's like, Oh, this is actually you might work for a thing that we kind of want to do, but we aren't actually doing so. You know, I came on this past summer. It was just me in terms of a strategy. That does all of these things. But you know, fortunately, as an organization with a lot of really, really smart people. So there are a lot of people that I'm working with every day on all of these different things, and some of them are being led by other people. The stadium is being built like truly, truly built, day in and day out by a colleague of mine, the vice president of operations for the Browns, now for some sports group. So a lot of really smart people and our vice president of Finance Administration is a CPA. He worked for Arthur Andersen. Very, very smart technical person. Like I said, our general counsel comes from big, big time.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:56] So the strategy team sounds like it's just you. You're just interfacing with a whole bunch of other people that hit the other spots and kind of just.

Joshua Glessing: [00:42:04] Exactly. And we want it. We want to grow it and scale it. I mean, that is the ultimate objective, but we're still putting pieces into place. You know, we're still learning how to get the operational sports things that we own right now to talk together, to talk to each other and take advantage of operational efficiencies. You know, M&A 101, which is obvious to me, is you take advantage of the synergies. You don't have to have legal departments for both teams. If you can run it out of one, you don't necessarily have to have some of the back office and administrative functions in both places. So we're just figuring out all of that and putting that all together right now and trying to fight the urge to move too quickly, right? And I think ultimately, the plan is to have a real team and a real staff next to you and behind me. But it's moving slowly. So I I'm a department of one. But like I said, there are a lot of people around me in Columbus and Cleveland who are very, very smart, savvy people. So we're sort of in it together. Very cool. It is definitely unique. But I mean, that's kind of one of the cool things is I'm a part of the conversation to to develop the strategy of what we want to be as an organization and what we want our ventures platform to ultimately be. And it's really, really cool. You know, sometimes it's about the relationships not meeting with the right recruiter at the right time for the right job opening. Absolutely. Maybe a little bit different in sports than it is, if you if you want to go to KKR or Carlyle, it's probably a little more rigid,

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:46] A little more structured, just a touch more structured. Yeah, just a touch. But so before we call the pod, anything else you'd like to share with the younger listeners? I know you kind of touched on the fact that it's really about the relationships and. The that you developed and making sure those were strong, but anything else kind of, as they're maybe they're in college, maybe there are a couple of years out of school and banking and they're really not sure where to go next. Any thoughts?

Joshua Glessing: [00:44:13] You know, I think there is a level of. Patience, building relationships, actually building relationships, and I know that's sometimes easier said than done, not networking for the sake of networking, but developing meaningful relationships, I mean, meaningful relationships. Got me from PFM to gold. Meaningful relationships got me from Goldman to the of sports grew more so than anything else. And then there's just a level of patience that comes with that. And if you think about my path to where I am, it is not the traditional defined path. The FM is not the traditional first step into Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is not a traditional first step into representing a family who has sports interests. And you know, those things just happen. So even though you may be two years out of college and you don't have that that full dragon investment banking job that you want, it doesn't mean it's gone forever. And it also doesn't mean that that's exactly what you need and what you want. When I started thinking about going was like, Well, that's I mean, that's it, right? I'll do that and I'll be an associate of BP and managing director and a partner, and I'll just do that. And then I sort of realized I wanted something different, and for me, I had to leave the Midwest to truly, truly appreciate the Midwest. Same with my wife. But, you know, it sort of takes time. So my advice would be be patient, build good relationships. Just connecting with someone on LinkedIn isn't building a good relationship. Just saying hi to someone. We see them as building a good relationship. You know, people and be patient and have fun.

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:01] Cool. I think we'll end it there. Josh, thanks so much for taking the time.

Joshua Glessing: [00:46:04] Absolutely. Thanks for having me and I really appreciate it. A lot of

Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:08] Fun and thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis Dot. And till next time.