Credit Where it's Due

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Speaker 1: This podcast is supported by b and P Pari Bar as part of their global commitment to tennis.

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Speaker 2: At all levels.

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Speaker 1: BNP Parry Bar is the world's leading tennis sponsor and the title sponsor of the BNP Party Bar Open.

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Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Renee Stubbs Tennis Podcast. We are in tennis paradise of course, India Wales one of the great tennis tournaments on the calendar, There's no question about it. I was walking around today actually, before we get to our guests, I just want to tell this story. I was walking around today and I was thinking, how lucky am I to actually do a job that entails being here on this site, at this incredible place. So I just I played in nineteen ninety two and earlier when I was playing at the Grand Hiatt, and it wasn't quite as big as this. The atmosphere has improved. Anyway, We've got a great guest for you today, and of course I welcome my podcast partner Caitlin Thompson.

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Speaker 1: Might subsy seventy three degrees in sunny We watched your charge, Ellen Perez, along with Yolena Ostapaca win a very exciting doubles match today, and yes, it's hard to imagine a more idyllic, amazing day of tennis. And now we get to follow it with a fantastic conversation.

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Speaker 2: We do, we do.

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Speaker 1: I will introduce our guest. Megan Robson is the head of US credit strategy for B and P Parribach. She's based in New York, like us on the other side of the so.

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Speaker 2: She's smart coming over here right now.

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Speaker 1: I still called me She's exactly right before coming to be and P Prybouh. She was a black rock, Morgan Stanley. But what we want to start with is you are both a tennis fan and a lifelong athlete. We talk a lot about the role of sports, especially today on International Women's Day, talking about the role of sports in women's lives and careers. Tell us about your sports connection so well.

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Speaker 3: First of all, thank you for having me.

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Speaker 4: It's an honor to be a guest on the pod. So sports played a huge part of my life growing up. I was a big ice hockey player. I grew up in Michigan, so definitely not from Florida. My dad would flood, would flood our backyard. I played mostly on at this point, like there wasn't really girls teams, so I was always the only girl on boys teams. It wasn't really until high school that they started to have enough.

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Speaker 3: Girls to have a women's team.

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Speaker 4: But you know, it taught me so much. I think besides just being being fun, there's so many lessons that I learned competition, winning, losing, you know, pushing yourself beyond boundaries that really I think shaped who I am and what I've done in my career.

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Speaker 1: Tell me just culturally a little bit, what's hockey culture like, maybe compared to tennis culture, which we obviously like know a lot about, but what sort of like, what are some of the kind of hallmarks of hockey culture.

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Speaker 4: Hockey culture, so I think it's it's travel, It's think think about crummy motel rooms.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like challenges on the tennis tour.

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Speaker 3: It's a lot.

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Speaker 4: I spent a lot of time in Canada, so a lot of our tournaments we would go to Toronto, mississ Mississauga, Windsor.

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Speaker 3: Ontario's finest towns.

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Speaker 4: Yes, Ontario's finest So Tim Horton's was a favorite.

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Speaker 3: Timmy Hose, Tim Hose.

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Speaker 2: So crappy motels, bad rinks and manage terrible look around.

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Speaker 4: I think the fans are and I grew up going to Red Wings games and the fans are just so committed into the sport and not as civilized. I think as a tennis match you're allowed to, you know, you're allowed.

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Speaker 2: To a hockey game.

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Speaker 1: So I know.

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Speaker 4: It's it's very raucous. And in in Detroit there's that. There used to be a tradition when I went. You know, if they the Red Wings score during the playoffs would thrown out too.

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Speaker 3: Pus on the ice.

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Speaker 4: Yes, just because the original eat the original eight. The remember of the original eight teams in the chow. So just agree a great culture of you know, you forget about everything and just enjoy enjoy watching the game.

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Speaker 2: So we know that studies about female athletes over index in leadership positions. I mean, hello, I mean it's funny. I did a video for a friend of mine who is doing a talk today just while we're on this subject, to a young bunch of women. She said, can you just send me a video on how important it is for young women to play sports? And you know, just reading this now, there are so many few women in the c suites. We know this, We know that it's getting better. That's a lot of it has to do with title nine. I want to know, you know, if you if you didn't play sports, what do you feel like having played sports? Organized sports? How much does that help you? You know, sort of go up the ladder, deal with people, deal with boundaries, deal with time, crunches, deal with stresses. How much did that help you, you know, having played sports going into a C suite situation.

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Speaker 4: I think it's it's such an incredible question because there's so many parallels between what you learn playing in sports and how you can carry those over to a career, and whether that's in finance or tech, or or really any any field at all. I think it's it's not just about competition. You you really learn confidence, you learn teamwork, you're learning leadership, all of that. When you're part of a team, I think you also learn how to communicate and solve problems together. All these core skills that you develop in a really fun way as a as a kid, and throughout your adolescence and sort of coming of age, you really become part of a new team in professional life. And so I think it's for me, I I don't have the counterfactual of not playing sports. So I can't say what what a miss, but it's I feel like it does. It does feel still sort of an athleticism aspect of of of work.

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Speaker 2: Is it is. It is a win loss situation in some respects as well, because when you lose, clearly as a kid, you know, you're upset and you you know mom and dad, you know, but then you also go your parents. The first thing he says, what are you going to learn from that?

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Speaker 1: You know?

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Speaker 2: Or a coach will say what are you going to learn from this? So I think in business you get to that situation as well. You're like, well, the bottom line is our shareholders or you know, the companies that we're working for, and do.

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Speaker 3: You deal with a lot of clients as you've been doing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So I mean it does become a win loss situation. So I think that's something that young girls can also learn so much from from playing sports, is that you're going to not everything's going to be a win.

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Speaker 4: One hundred percent, and it's really what do you exactly as you said, what are you taking from that to to your next opportunity? And can you how can you address the next opportunity better. I'm part of a research team. So are our jobs to forecast where markets are going to go and.

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Speaker 2: Where are they going to go?

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Speaker 3: We're not, and we're not.

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Speaker 4: We're often wrong, and as a team we get together and say what did we miss here? What what part of our models or framework could we improve to come up with a more precise forecast next time? So I think that it's really trying to take the lesson from what didn't go right.

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Speaker 1: That's a really interesting point because it's sort of I'm going to skip ahead to question I really wanted to ask you, which is your job is to forecast? As you were saying, you know, you're the head of credit Strategy, industry trends. You know you're looking at obviously financial markets, which are we're in exciting times at the moment.

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Speaker 2: What can we not I don't know if we need to call them exciting.

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Speaker 1: Talk in your thematic research you're putting on you know, obviously your your forecasting hat. You know, can you leave that hat on and talk a little bit about women's sports and you know, kind of give us a prediction of where you see that going as sort of a market or an industry.

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Speaker 4: It's it seems like the next decade could just be entirely transformative in terms of the growth of women's sports. I think this moment does feel somewhat like a turning point. I think look at like the enthusiasm around Caitlin Clark this year, for example, I think a lot of people in New York got really involved in New York Liberty Games, both men.

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Speaker 2: That's me floor ticket haled up, both.

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Speaker 3: Men and women.

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Speaker 4: There's guys on our training floor that were super into New York Liberty. I think that's that's really exciting. So I think really the sky's the limit in terms of also advertisers marketing realizing that this is actually a sound business decision too, and a place where those dollars and ads.

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Speaker 3: Can can go a long way. Yeah, and that affinity.

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Speaker 1: To me, it feels a lot like you know, we talked about it a lot on the show. You know, it feels a little bit like women's sports has been like kind of artificially depressed, and now it's getting to a place where it's going to optimize kind of quickly. Now that outside capital and enthusiasm, you know, it's like it's catching up quite fast.

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Speaker 4: It feels it seems like the curve is very, very steep in terms of how it's changing so rapidly.

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Speaker 1: Let's get like thirty thousand foot view and kind of go back to you know, B and P PIRI about has been an incredible support of tennis, the biggest supporter of the globally truly.

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Speaker 2: The question the best support of tennis for what I can remember.

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Speaker 1: From about the years, you know, and I think we can't really overstate how important it is to people like us who play the sport, who want to see.

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Speaker 3: The sports succeed. You know, there are a.

00:09:34
Speaker 1: Phenomenal amount of initiatives that that BMP supports.

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Speaker 3: Can you tell us about.

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Speaker 1: Some of the ones that that this year the bank is really excited to put their way behind this year.

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Speaker 4: What's really exciting. There's something called Points for Change Program that BNP is sponsoring. So for every point that scored during the BNP Parbo Open, BNP will donate one dollar to the Riverside County chapter of Girls on the Run. So this this organization works with girls across Coachella Valley and really to boost their confidence, inspire them to pursue their interests, whether that's scholastic, athletic or artistic. So I think that's the initiative that really stuck out to me. That is a special one.

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Speaker 1: It's also a female founded company, and you know, they're really you know again like where the river meets the road is where, you know, something that's from such a lofty place of being the premium sponsor of tennis to actually, like, Okay, Coachella Valley girls are having their lives change in a very very direct way, and I think that's, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, to me, one of the most impressive things about it.

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Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yeah, And I feel like, you know, when you come into an area and you build a big tournament like this and you do it, you want the local community and the local people to feel like, you know, the extra traffic and all this sort of stuff is like, guys, like this is so important for this part of the world, and it only gets bigger. This tournament only gets bigger, only gets more important, it only gets more people coming to it. And so I think that's fantastic. Okay, So I can tell you twenty thirty things that I love about this tournament. I love the fans here so much. I love that I love that they love doubles so much. I love that they like my friends are like I tried to come in and watch you know, your player play, it was like six deep. We couldn't get in. I just love the fact that everyone here is such a tennis nerd, and I love that about this place. What's for you the thing that you've loved so much about being here, not just not even representing BMP, just yourself as a sports fan. What have you loved about being here?

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Speaker 1: So?

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Speaker 4: I think the energy in the stadium is really incredible. Everyone is such a diehard tennis appreciator. Yeah, I think you really feel that in the stadium. I think the second thing, as a New Yorker who has basically been in a windowless, dark office or where that's going six months, it's just it's just the setting is just incredibly beautiful with the sky and it's it's it's very beautiful. And then selfishly, as a BNP employee, we got to have a tennis clinic, which you know, haven't played tennis in a couple of months, but just just amazing to to have some coaching and get to play with clients was was really special. Reminds you how fun fun it is to play.

00:12:37
Speaker 1: I bet given your slapshot, you probably have a pretty good fund.

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Speaker 3: Is that an accurate assessment?

00:12:42
Speaker 4: My back ends better? So I was I was randomly a lefty in hockey, and so is rocking.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly?

00:12:52
Speaker 1: Were you to get you out of the court next time and do this over a match?

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Speaker 2: Do you? You know, being somebody who played hockey the way you did and seeing tennis, what are the translations that you see? Like as far as is that athleticism part of tennis and hockey, because you know they're so different. Obviously you're running to a tennis ball and you're sliding and you're skating, Like, is there something that impresses you? Like, Well, when I got on watch hockey, I'm like, I'm so fascinated by first of all, how fast they skate and the control of the park and their body and they're getting smashed. We don't have to worry about getting hit in the face, you know what I mean?

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Speaker 3: With anything?

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Speaker 2: Yes, except maybe the tennis ball.

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Speaker 4: I think what really I appreciate about tennis players is just the sort of the mental what you have to have, the mental facility and sort of the keeping your head in the game in a way when you're if you're just out there by yourself or with one other person, even if I'm just playing a friendly match with a friend, it's like I am in my head like we need to crush this.

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Speaker 2: You know, Caitlyn, You're not the only one.

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Speaker 4: And it can throw so familiar theme and it can it's easy to get to really get in your head where I think if you're in a team sport, it's harder to sort of be.

00:14:03
Speaker 2: Your past the island.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, someone will snap you back in.

00:14:07
Speaker 3: Past that puck, past that puck.

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Speaker 2: I'm choking, I'm passing the puck to you. It's interesting that you said that, because that also makes me for sure know that you are somebody that has played as competitively I never had another sport because a lot of people might like, say the athletici is on the sliding or whatever, but you know you're an athlete of some type when you go. The mental side of this sport is so incredible, and I have to say, the difference between being ten in the world and being number one in the world and winning Grand Slams is often that. So it's interesting that you said that.

00:14:40
Speaker 1: Well, it's not surprising that we've gotten such amazingly fascinating answer out of you because it sounds like B and P Prori, but is likely to have you as the.

00:14:46
Speaker 3: US head of credit Strategy.

00:14:48
Speaker 1: And I can't thank you enough for making time out of your exceptionally busy day and busy time here at Indian Wells Tennis.

00:14:54
Speaker 3: Paradise at the B and P pro by open to talk with us. So thank you again, Megan. It was a true pleasure.

00:14:59
Speaker 4: Pleasure was all my thanks for having me awesome, great, Thanks so much,