What’s it like starting a women’s soccer club with Natalie Portman? How do you teach your children about winning? What can one of the best soccer players in the world share about teamwork?
This week, we’re excited to share an incredible episode featuring the one-and-only, Julie Foudy — a true force to be reckoned with in the world of women’s sports.
Julie’s list of achievements is nothing short of awe-inspiring. As a two-time FIFA World Cup Champion, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and a member of the National Soccer Hall of Fame, she has left an indelible mark on her field. However, her impact extends far beyond her accolades – Julie is also a dominant and energizing voice in the world of women’s sports. On camera, she lends her talents as an ESPN analyst and commentator; and off, she’s a former President of the Women’s Sports Foundation and a tireless advocate for young female athletes.
Her voice extends to the page, screen and airwaves as well – Julie has her own podcast, Laughter Permitted with Julie Foudy, she’s authored two incredible books, and has produced several documentaries. These days, she can also be seen in the newly-released HBO docuseries, Angel City, about the Los Angeles-based women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club, of which she’s a proud owner and investor. If you don’t know, this organization has an incredible story that you’ll hear about in this conversation.
Julie and I dive into her insights on the cultural shift happening in women’s sports, the invaluable lessons learned through sports that translate into leadership and parenting, the significance of infusing joy into every aspect of our lives, and the power of collaboration with her mantra “we is always greater than me”.
Julie is a winner and a champion of other women winning, too – it’s clear that her commitment to women in sport will reverberate for generations to come.
“Success comes when you are a great teammate and work your ass off. People want to be around you and they know that you got their back. You’re in the foxhole with them. That’s the greatest place they could be, because you’re going to take care of them and vice versa.”
In This Episode:
The beginnings of Angel City FC
The origin story is that Natalie [Portman] was listening to Abby Wambach, a former stud women’s soccer player, give a speech about her retirement. And Abby was talking at a Time’s Up meeting that Natalie was a part of, about how when she retired and she’s accepting this award from at the ESPYs from E.S.P.N., and she’s alongside Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant, and she’s like, “The three of us are getting honored for our careers and it just hit me…” Abby’s telling the story, “It’s just hit me that, oh my gosh, the three of us are being honored in the same way, but we have very different realities. I’m worried about what my next job is so I can have health insurance, and they’re thinking about the millions of dollars they have invested and where they’re going to spend it.” And so, Natalie was struck by that and that reality and was like, “Why is that, one? And two, why don’t we have a professional women’s soccer team here in L.A. and why can’t we start one?”
Find the fun
The ACFC organization is just so much fun, of course, which is my principle to living in life in my fifties now, just find the fun. And two, it’s really changing the way people think about women’s sports. It really is. It’s been a roadmap for a lot of people and they’re so willing to share that roadmap. And that’s the thing that I love as well, is it’s not just, “Hey, this is a really good thing. We have to have women’s sports here.” It’s like, “This is a profitable business.” That’s profit and purpose and passion and all these P’s we care about.
The possibility in women’s sport
Our dream has always been to be something that gives and shows the world what’s possible in women’s sports. I mean, I think we thought we did that in 1999 with winning the World Cup and then, we quickly realized like, “Wait. Oh, God, changing culture takes longer than just one big event to convince people…” and as part of our negotiations with U.S. Soccer Federation is, “I don’t care if you love or hate women’s sports and women’s soccer. The point is,” I would say to the president, “The point is, you are missing out on all this potential and untapped potential. There’s money on the table. There is so much growth that could happen if you just water that garden just a little bit. Give us some water, just fertilize it a little bit and you’re going to bloom, I’m telling you.” And they’d be like, “Yeah, no. It’s not going to happen.” And it wasn’t until we got some fellow visionaries that were running U.S. Soccer, Sunil Gulati, Alan Rothenberg, who were great businessmen and visionaries. If I could tap into that, I knew, okay, maybe they don’t wake up thinking about women’s soccer, but they get that they’re missing out on what the future could look like. And then, I mean, that’s when we actually started to swing that pendulum a little bit, in terms of support and funding. And they started watering the garden a little bit more.
The freedom of being YOU
There was a period in my television career where I cared about what people thought, probably in my thirties. And then, I got to my forties and I was like, “Yeah, I don’t really care anymore.” Obviously you want people to respect you, of course. But there is a freedom to being you, authentically you, and doing you that I’ve really been fortunate to find, and… I mean, I hope, it doesn’t bring complacency, that’s the only thing. I think sometimes you can get complacent with that and overconfident, there’s almost a hubris to that. And so, I’m really conscious of that too, of curiosity and learning and growth mindset and all those things we talk about often. But there’s also a soulfulness to that, that is soothing and healthy.
The beauty of team sports
There’s such a freedom to it and a joy to it. I mean, I’ve always been a part of a team, so regardless of the sport, you have this built in community, you have this built in sisterhood. You have a bond, a family. I mean, that in its itself and all my different teams, and not just national teams of course, but my college team, I’m super tight with still. I mean, my Soccerettes that I played Go Green Machine from when I was a child, I still have some of those as friends, those teammates. So, I think that’s the web that kind of weaves everything together, which is why I think I’ve been such an advocate for girls playing whatever it is or moving or sweating, because there is freedom to that. And it shapes, as we know, and Michael, you’ve lived, it shapes everything we do. That’s the beauty that doesn’t get talked about enough. I mean, we get really entrenched in the Xs and Os and the wins and losses, and yet the real gift is that you are learning something much more deeper and much deeper and more meaningful than just how to kick a ball or shoot a basket or all those things that matter, of course. But that’s the gift.
Her hope for a 12-year-old girl in sport
My hope is that she still finds that joy. I honestly am super worried about youth sports having a 14 and 16 year old in the heart of it because we have really managed to suck the joy out of it. And so, my hope is that she finds that freedom, she finds that joy, she finds that confidence. I would say that’s probably the biggest driver of my confidence, is that I was super competitive and I could let it out on the field and there was no one telling me that it’s not okay to be competitive and speak up and speak out and stand up and standout. And nowadays, I feel there’s just so much pressure in youth sports and playing in college. And so, I do think, as parents, as coaches, as teachers, as much as we can, to really put that joy back in it, is vital.
A powerful insight from Sue Bird
She’s won every level. She’s won national titles at Uconn, she’s won the W.N.B.A. title, she’s got four Olympic gold medals in basketball. And I can’t remember my question, but the gist of it was, how have you been so personally successful? And her answer was so great, was that, “I don’t think about it in terms of like, ‘Oh, I’m going to strive for this scoring award or this assist award.'” She goes, “All I think about is I want to win and make my team better. I just want to win. I’m competitive. I want to win. I want to make my team better.” And I think today’s youth, because of what world we’re living in with social media and everything is identified as how many followers? How many likes your brand? What are you doing? And there’s some value to that, of course, but also is that everything becomes so internalized. What am I getting out of it? How am I doing? What schools are looking at me? How many goals am I scoring that?
Be a good teammate
Success comes when you just are a great teammate and work your ass off. And people want to be around you and they know that you got their back. You’re in the foxhole with them. That’s the greatest place they could be because you’re going to take care of them. And so, I was having that conversation because I do think, lost in this world of you’ve got to stand out and really make a brand for yourself, is the idea that you also just need to be a great teammate and then, good things happen to you in life. And so, that was my thought this last week. And that’s the thing I want young people to think about as well, because of all those other pressures that really are performative and internalize the performative side of things instead of the real side of things.
Mia Hamm’s leadership
The only thing Mia cared about was that she was a great teammate. Meaning that she was liked, that she honored you as a fellow player. She brought you along. She never wanted the spotlight, and yet she had to carry this burden of being the star and the player, even though she was uncomfortable in that spotlight. And yet, she did such a great job in her own kind of cerebral, quieter way, because she was shy, of being a fabulous leader. She taught me a ton about leadership because I always thought you had to be the one on the top of the mountain shouting down, the one wearing the armband, the C.E.O., the president, the person in a position of power. No, you can lead in so many great different ways, and her leadership style was very personal and private and quieter than mine. Of course, I was loudy-Foudy, so it was such a great reflection on, “Wow.” And so, I had that as an example.
We > me
At the highest level, which is always so interesting, right? Because it’s this battle of attrition to stay on the team and be individually competitive. But when you can find that balance of also then understanding the “we” is greater than the “me”, it’s this beautiful mix that I think has probably been the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in being a good teammate. I mean, it matters. It matters at E.S.P.N., it matters with who you work with, it matters in relationships. So, I think it’s paramount to everything I do in life, is you surround yourself with people you want to be teammates with. And, “How are you making sure you’re a good teammate?”
Showing care
You are interested in someone, you ask questions, you’re curious, you celebrate them. And again, it goes back to the Sue Bird response of, “It was never about me,” and it’s nothing to take away, I was incredibly competitive, so in a sense, it was about me because I wanted to win, I wanted to perform, I wanted to play. So, we’re not losing that side of things. But I also was the first one when a player did well or a teammate did well, like, “Hell yes, let’s go celebrate that.” And so, I think that’s care, is just showing that you value them in a way that sometimes people forget to say it and do it, and it doesn’t take long. And it’s little things, we talk about it all the time, of taking five seconds to tell someone thanks for making me better today.
Be of service to the mission
I quickly realized is the more I worried about belonging, the worse I did. So if I continued to just worry and think, “Oh, sheck, what am I doing here? I don’t belong here.” And have those downward spiral conversations of, “You stink, you’re terrible, you can’t kick a ball, you don’t have the tactical awareness.” All those things. When I started focusing on my deficiencies that I perceived, then I knew my stay with the national team would not be very long. And what I realized is that I could still be competitive and fight my tail off, but when I was focused on helping others, I actually took some of the pressure off me. And so, that kind of released that burden of me feeling like this imposter syndrome, if I focused on just being a good teammate. And maybe that helps someone in a situation that’s similar, but I do think that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s not, “I’m really competitive and intense, but I’m not a great teammate.” You can be both, and I think that’s actually the secret sauce to a really successful group.
Team wins, you win
I just wanted to win. And so, if I could help the team win again, it gave me a focus outside of myself. And so, I just focused on, “I just want to freaking win. And when we’re winning, good things are happening.” And I don’t know if that’s me, good things are happening to me or what, but I just want to be part of the equation that’s winning. And I do think it kind of puts blinders on in a good way from the destructive thoughts of, “I just want to do whatever I can to help this team be successful.” And that’s, I think, a large part of my success and a common denominator you hear always on that national team, when I look at those teams that won, one, so competitive, but also that they care deeply about the collective success. And that is not something we got every year because we didn’t win every year, but I do think when we got that right, we won.
The “car ride home” with her kids
I’ve really tried to limit my urge to give feedback, especially in the soccer space, because my kid is like, “Look, I know soccer, so do we have to talk about this all the time?” So, I really try and just elicit their thoughts rather than give this… I’ve tried to really fight the urge to just throw up my thoughts on them and be like, “Let me hear from you. How was it? What did you learn? What new things are you trying?” Those kind of things. That’s what that’s going for. Or just, “What was the vibe of the team? What do the players say? How’s the team doing?” Those kind of conversations, like what’s the feeling, the mood amongst the group and do you have a sense of that? Because again, I feel like that is such a part of success of a team.
