Carla Harris: A whole new vision for Access and Opportunity is coming your way soon. Thank you for your patience and grace. It’s incredibly exciting to reimagine a show six years in the making.
Today, we’re continuing to bring you the “Best of” Access & Opportunity by revisiting one of my favorite conversations with my dear friend, Nely Galán.
Now, Nely embodies the ethos of Access & Opportunity. She’s a savvy woman of color in business who’s written her own story by betting on herself time and again — starting as an Avon saleswoman at just 13 years old, and culminating with becoming the first-ever Latina President of Entertainment for a U.S. television network.
As a titan in media, Nely’s own journey is made for TV. It’s a story full of grit, twists and turns, and lessons learned. And by no means is it done.
Today, Nely’s life continues to be too full to fit into a single title. She’s an Emmy award-winning producer, a mother, an entrepreneur, a media mogul and a real estate powerhouse and, my personal favorite — a mentor.
Since we last spoke, Nely has continued to be a mentor by way of her special superpower: storytelling. This time through her speaker series, Self Made Stories, which showcases the incredible success stories of self made women from all walks of life.
Join me for the incredible ride that is the story of Nely Galán.
Carla Harris: Welcome to season two of Access Opportunity. In this episode, we will explore becoming self made and who better to discuss the topic of entrepreneurship than with the media mogul, Nelly Galan. Nelly is the true definition of self made. She started her career at the age of 13, selling Avon products to her friends, and since then, has become the first Latina president of entertainment for the U.
S. television network, Telemundo. She's also an Emmy Award winning producer of over 70 films. 700 episodes of television in Spanish and English, including the Fox hit reality series, The Swan. On top of her major TV successes, she's a real estate powerhouse in California, a doctor of clinical psychology, a serial entrepreneur, And a New York Times bestselling author.
Thank you for being here with me today, Ms. Nelly. Love being with you. I can't wait for this conversation. So tell us a little bit about Nelly's journey.
Nely Galán: Well, I think we have to start with me being an immigrant. Uh, you know, my parents left Cuba and came here when I was five years old. And one day to the next, the economic system in Cuba collapsed.
The banks kept all the money. We had to leave. Okay. And come to this country. And we were blessed that we were sponsored by an American family that were religious, Presbyterian, and their church was taking one family per church. Wow. And we got chosen. Otherwise we wouldn't have come in. And we lived with this American family for a year.
My parents were so grateful. My dad went from being a well off guy to working in the Ford Motors, painting cars. My mother worked in a factory and I became the grownup translator, like, like a lot of people. I think that I had no idea. Uh, except taking care of my family, what I was going to do. Except you already said that I started selling Avon.
I didn't just start telling Avon like kids today that want to be, you know, makers or entrepreneurs. No, my parents were broke. My parents had put me in an all girl Catholic school and I'm in the seventh grade. And an old lady down the street said to me, honey, I sell Avon. Why don't you sell some Avon in your school and I'll give you some free lipstick.
And I thought, I don't need some free lipstick. I need to change that deal. Again, like a lot of kids that are kids of immigrants, you're empathetic to your parents. All you care about is that your parents don't suffer. And I went back to her and I said, I'll sell Avon in school, but it's got to be 50 50.
And I'd seen that on a TV show. So I started selling Avon. And to me, this is the key point in my life, because in the first week out of my locker, I made 200 bucks. Wow. And after four weeks, I made 800 bucks, and I was able to pay down my tuition for my all girl Catholic school that my parents couldn't afford.
Wow. But, I felt like I had to save my dad. Because his ego would not allow that. And so I said to the nun, send me a letter home, um, and make something up. I gotta, you know, something. I want an award, something. I bring it home and my mother goes, what does the letter say? And my father says, oh my God, this country is great.
Your daughter is a genius and Jesus helped us after all. And really that is the beginning of everything because I think Immigrant kids internalize very early that they have to be the problem solver, that they have to be the helper of the family. You know, it's very difficult for me to have a son now who just started college.
My own son has had so much more than I had. I don't see him being as empathetic to me as I have always been to my parents. And I think that that really serves you. Because you really know how to read a room. You know how to look and feel someone's pain and feel that somehow something you said hurts them or whatever. I think empathy is a big deal in entrepreneurship. And I think that's when I began and I realized I lost my childhood at that moment, but I gained my power. And so from there I moved on. You're asking me about when I became president of Telemundo. I mean, if I can do it, anybody can do it. Because. I really have no special skills, like I love that you can sing, I'm just so jealous.
I don't do anything. I mean, I am just the hardest working person in the world and I pay attention and I'm empathetic. So you know, I started out as an intern. I was working in TV as a little, like a teen reporter, like I was, I was, um, Lisa Ling.
Nely Galán: I was a TV reporter and I was working at CBS and they sent me out. I was a stringer. They sent me out to interview a lot of people. I interviewed this guy named Norman Lear. And he's like, what are you? Are you Jewish or what? And I was like, no, I live in Teaneck, New Jersey, and it's all Jews. So I sound Jewish, but I'm, I'm Latina. And he's like, my partner and I just bought the first Spanish TV station in the United States.
We got the, you know, they had gotten the license. And I get a call from this guy, Jerry Parenchio, who then became a billionaire. At that time, he was a multimillionaire. And he's like, I want to meet you. And I went to meet him and he's like, you need to come and work for us. And I go, no offense, sir, but I work at CBS.
I'm going to go be a network correspondent. And he goes, that's a factory worker. He's like, do you understand you're Latina? You speak Spanish and you don't know that the Latino market is going to be a multi billion dollar business. You're going to be employee number one. Do you know what that means? And I said, no. And he goes, are you rich? I go, no, sir. I'm not. He goes, well, I'm rich. I suggest you come to work for us. And I always say that that was the greatest decision of my life. And I think had I not been an immigrant, my ego would have surpassed this feeling that I had that I felt like, nope, go with the people that know what they're talking about and they're rich.
And if not, I would have been like, no, I want to be on TV. He goes, forget that. You're just going to be a factory worker. He totally diminished what I thought was like, was the big deal. The big deal. Yeah. Yeah. I went to work for Norman and Jerry and I was employee number one in Newark, New Jersey, and I was the station manager of a rinky.
I mean, it was no bigger than the whole station was this size of this room. Wow. And I feel like I got my MBA on the job. I mean, I ran the station. I literally would open up the mail and it would say, uh, we have an infomercial in the middle of the night. If you put it on for one hour, we'll pay you a million dollars a year.
And I'd say to my three little engineers that worked in there, I'd say, What does it cost for us to stay? You know, we, we would end the night at 11. If we stay up till three and they go, Oh, nothing like 1, 000 a week or something. I go, well, I guess I think we're going to do this deal. And I learned how to run a business and I worked for them for four years.
And by the way, they were off doing Hollywood things. I barely saw them. And the only reason I learned so much is because it's. Jerry Perencio was a boxing promoter and he had a private plane in Teterboro and he'd say to me, listen, I have a celebrity that needs to go to my, one of my boxing matches. Can you go take them on the plane and this and that?
And I go, Oh, if I volunteer to work every weekend, I'm going to meet everyone in Hollywood. I ended up being on the weekends, the production assistant that would fly people to Atlantic city or to, or, or to Las Vegas and take them to boxing matches. So I met. Everyone in Hollywood being the schlepper.
Carla Harris: Yeah.
Nely Galán: Three years later, when they sold the company to Saul Steinberg in New York, and Saul Steinberg was gonna turn it into the first TV network they sold, they had bought it for $3 million. They sold it for $75 million For entrepreneurs to hear that means that I had to have revenue of $7 million a year from zero.
Yes. I had brought that up to $7 million and we sold on a multiple.
Carla Harris: That's true. That's right. Of $7 million. Mm-Hmm. .
Nely Galán: One day I come into work and the lawyer for Jerry Pochos there, and he's like, uh, we have great news for you. We just sold the company. And I go, what? And he goes, we sold the company and you can either go work for the new people or we're gonna give you whatever.
And I, and I was just heartbroken because I thought, this is my baby. Mm-Hmm. , how could they have sold it and not even told me they were gonna sell it? What if I wanted to buy it? You know? Mm-Hmm. . I didn't even know what the price was at that moment. So I, I, I was in Newark. I go over and I go see. Jerry Parenteau in New York, and I do everything you're not supposed to do in business.
I go up to him and I go, and I'm bawling. How could you do this to me? This is my baby. You don't even care. This is my market. And he goes, young lady, those are my chips. You want to play? Go get your own chips. And I thought, what a jerk. And I was so angry at him. And I went into my victim mode. Right? And I was like, you know, this horrible man just screwed me and this, and then I went home like I, like I do now.
I cried it out. I was catatonic for a couple days. And then I woke up and I said, Why don't I think I could do it myself? Why don't I? And, and I thought maybe this guy, I mean, he didn't, he didn't talk to me like I'm a minority that he was condescending to. He was real. And, you know, I didn't even want to go work for Saul Steinberg because I felt like, no, I'm going to now do, I'm never going to work for anyone again.
I'm going to do this for myself. And they had given me 250, 000. And they had given me this Mercedes Benz as a gift. And what year is this? This is in, let's see, I'm, at this point I'm 25,
Carla Harris: So it's 88, 89, right? And the reason I'm asking, because 250, 000 then was a lot.
Nely Galán: So I had 300, 000 between the car and the money.
Carla Harris: Yeah.
Nely Galán: I moved from my fancy apartment in the Upper West Side, that was 3, 000 a month, and I moved to a 300 4th floor walk up in the East Village. Why? Because when I got all my mentorship time, you know, I always say, I don't have one mentor that thinks they were my mentor. I just hung out enough.
Carla Harris: Yeah.
Nely Galán: When I was on the plane, With Jerry I'd overhear all his conversations.
Carla Harris: Yeah,
Nely Galán: and he'd say when I was your age, you know I lowered my overhead people that were losing life have high overhead. I mean again, I didn't learn it from a book I didn't go to business school. I didn't learn it from my parents. And so I said I have to reduce my overhead
Carla Harris: Mm hmm.
Nely Galán: So I moved to my 300 apartment and then I said to myself I'm going to start a business.
And at the time, what I thought was the business was, I need production. I need to do production because I was buying programming from Latin America. And I thought, that's not relatable to U. S. Latinos. And I'm like, I'm going to make TV shows. So what did I do? I called up everyone I had ever met on the plane.
Everyone that we now know of in Hollywood. And I said, you know that I worked for Jerry and Norman and I've made them a lot of money and they're in the Latino market and they all took a meeting with me. And they all go, they sold out. You know, we don't think this Latino thing is going to hit, but you want to come and work for me?
So I got a lot of job offers, but no one really cared about what I wanted to do. And so, Carla, the sad part of my story is that for four years, I did not make one penny. I did not get one deal.
Carla Harris: Okay. So let me interrupt you because I'm not sure that's a sad point. I think it's a playbook point for entrepreneurs to understand.
So first playbook point I've heard so far is that you were very intentional about learning from those who were around you who were already doing. And I love that because I always say, learn on somebody else's dime, go get a job first. In and preferably in the area that you want to start your business so that you can see how they got started, how they attract investors, how they speak to shareholders, how they talk to stakeholders.
You're just learning. They're paying you to learn. To
Nely Galán: me, my job, any job I have, I don't care how bad it is. Yeah. It's school.
Carla Harris: Yeah. And that's what you did. You learned. But the second point is, and here's where I think entrepreneurs get caught up, is that you think you have to have a certain appearance or an, an appearance.
It's not just how you're showing up at meetings, but how you're living. So you need certain accoutrement, if you will. But you said, uh, he said, lower the, uh, So I'm going from 3, 000 and 3, 000 apartment in 1980s was fabulous. I know I was living in New York at that time and my rent was easily a third of the amount.
So, and my apartment wasn't terrible, but it wasn't 3, 000 a month. All right. So I know what kind of apartment that was, but you said, no, I'm going to do 300. No doorman. No elevator, fourth floor walk up, all because you were trying to get your own chits. So, I think to, to go to the point, again, playbook point, is downsize as much as you can so that you can preserve the capital so you can play.
Nely Galán: But I'll tell you what I did wrong in those four years, which I don't want people to do, You don't just go from one day to the next, either quit your job or you get laid off or whatever, and start a business. Yeah. I, I bootstrapped it, but I was missing a key point, I think, that in the fourth year I figured out.
I, I was getting all these job offers, I was not getting, nobody was really liking my business plan. And I didn't realize something's wrong with my business plan, right? And you
Carla Harris: didn't hear the market speaking?
Nely Galán: No.
Carla Harris: Okay.
Nely Galán: And what I should have done, and what I tell people to do now is, in the fourth year, I get a mailer, because we didn't have email back then, I get a mailer where, they invite me to a local chamber of commerce in New York City.
I was so desperate. Yeah. Like, dear God, I'm such a good girl, throw me a bone. So I thought it was a sign. I go to this chamber of commerce mixer. My whole life changed because I was around other people that were entrepreneurial and I finally asked for help. And I said, what is wrong with my business plan?
And they're like, well, I don't know that there's a real market for what you're doing. What I didn't realize that I then figured out is there was not enough distribution for my content. So that's why no one was paying attention. It's like when Black people had shows and there was not enough distribution for the shows.
There was no afterlife for the show. Until we figured out the distribution, the other part doesn't work. Distribution comes before content. So, I get a call one day from HBO and they're like, I'm in the middle of figuring this all out that something's wrong. And HBO calls me and says, listen, you know, I met you.
You're really a lovely girl, but we don't want to do your content thing, but we want to launch HBO in Latin America. And we've hired three MBAs and we've sent them down there and they can't figure it out. I go, well, do they speak Spanish? And they go, no. And I go, Okay, so can we hire you as a consultant?
And I go, yeah, I'll go. Well, to me, that was like the easiest job anybody could give me to do. Because remember, running that little TV station, there were only five families in Latin America that controlled all the TV, and I knew them all. Yeah. So I went down there, and in three months, I had the thing up and running.
My second person to call me was number three employee of ESPN was an African American guy who was in charge of international. He calls me, still my dearest friend, Bernard Stewart, calls me up and he says, Listen, I heard you just launched HBO. Come and see me. So I went to see him and he says, Listen, I have a big deal for you.
I need to launch three channels in Latin America, sports channels. I'm not going to hire you as a consultant. I'm going to outsource the whole thing to you. It's a huge deal. It's five million dollars. And I said, Bernard, I would love to do it, but I have a problem. I am sports illiterate. I know nothing about sports.
It doesn't interest me. And he said, he goes like this. He goes, I am closing my ears. I'm not hearing you. You speak multiple languages, don't you? I go, yes. He goes, sports is a language. I'm hiring you a tutor. You're going to go become an expert in sports. You don't have to like it. You're going to come back
Carla Harris: in a
Nely Galán: month
Carla Harris: and you're going to do us both a favor.
Nelly, in my community, they say you have a calling on your life, honey. I cannot believe this story.
Nely Galán: I come back. I still don't like sports, but I know everything about it. I launched three channels in Latin America, and that's when I started putting the dots together. Okay, we need distribution. The channels have to exist before the content exists.
Okay. Note to self. I get a third call. The third call is from a gentleman who's working for somebody that's from Australia. I don't know who he is. He's like, uh, HBO. And ESPN told us that you did a great job. Uh, we have a buyer that's buying a major studio. He would like to meet with you. They fly me to Los Angeles.
And I meet Rupert Murdoch. And he hadn't even started Fox yet. And he says to me, I want to launch seven channels in Latin America and then around the world. And I heard you can do this. Again, timing, emerging business, emerging market, which now I try to drill that into. You don't just go into any field.
You have to go into a field where you're employee one or what you're doing. Like they're so desperate that they'll even give you the deal if you don't even have that much experience. And he says to me, I want you to launch seven channels. And I said, I want to make programming. And he said, you're wrong.
And I said, what do you mean I'm wrong? And he goes, okay. If you want to be the queen of programming, you need to be the queen of distribution. What you know how to do is launch channels. Go do it. I thought, this guy's smarter than I am. I just have to listen. And I did, I think this is my first big career mistake that I'm about to tell you.
He said to me, okay, let's do this together. First, you can come and work for me. I go, I don't want to work for you. And he goes, then why don't you. Why don't we partner on this? And I said, and again, in my, in those airplane rides with Jerry Printer, I had heard him say, don't give away a piece of your company, borrow money.
Right. I didn't hear that if it's Rupert Murdoch, you don't borrow the money. You become partners with Rupert Murdoch. So the rest of his life, he'll give you business. So I said, I need you to loan me money. And he goes, how much money do you think you need to scale? And in my mind, because remember, I had the revenue from ESPN and the revenue from HBO because I was working on both things.
I thought, I need a million dollars. But I, again, if I was, wait a minute, if I was the Latina immigrant that could never ask for five cents, let alone millions of dollars, I got into the body. Of Jerry Parenchio.
Carla Harris: Okay.
Nely Galán: And I thought, what would Jerry Parenchio do? This is why I tell women, go take acting lessons.
My entire life, if I was really speaking in my own voice, I couldn't ask anybody for money. I got into the body of Jerry Parenchio, and I said, what would Jerry say? And he goes, When you're going to ask for money, ask for five times the money you're going to run out. And ask him like it's stock, like you're stock and he's going to miss out if he doesn't do it.
And I said, I need five million dollars. And he said, okay, I'll give you a five million dollar line of credit. The easiest thing I've ever done in my life and it's never been easy again, let me just say. But again, timing, he was desperate for someone to do it. I got the five million dollars. I had carved out HBO he said, you cannot take on any competitors until you pay me back.
The next two years of my life are a blur, and I don't remember them. I started a channel factory in LA. I moved my butt to Latin America. I had to live a year in Mexico. I had to go to Argentina. I had to go because I had to create marketing offices regionally. But, uh, The deal part was easy because I knew all the players.
Carla Harris: Yeah.
Nely Galán: And what we did in LA is we did all the dubbing and all the, you know, it was like a meat and potatoes business. I paid him back in two years. Wow. And when I really made the money was when I was able to take on MGM, Sony, because I could charge them whatever, because now I had a track record.
Carla Harris: Yes.
Nely Galán: And what happened, and this is a long way to get to Telemundo, what happened is Sol Steinberg, remember, let's go back, had bought Telemundo, an insurance American company, knew nothing about Spanish TV, had bought, At a very high price, 15 stations in America.
Turned it into Telemundo. The man got brain cancer. The rest of the company didn't care about this asset. It went into bankruptcy court. And Rupert Murdoch's people said, we're going to try to take a play and buy Telemundo. And I worked with them very carefully into how we were going to turn Telemundo into like a bilingual network, all this and all that.
And they were in a blind auction in bankruptcy court with Sony. And Sony won. Wow. And I was again distraught because at that time in my life, I was like, I was, you know, doing all these channels, but again, entrepreneurship, when I got to the 10th channel that I had launched, I go, this business is going to have diminishing returns because the more you have competitive people, then your clients are never happy with you.
Carla Harris: And
Nely Galán: also, You know, I felt like once I launch all these channels, I've got to go back. I got to now go do the programming, right? So when Sony got it, I was distraught, but Sony called me. Uh huh. Because I was the only Latina, even though I didn't have an MBA, even though I was, you know, I was the only Latina that had fiscal responsibility for 10 channels.
When I speak to my multicultural women and my multicultural entrepreneurs, I always say, a lot of us, especially in the entertainment industry, it's all very creative. I'm blessed that I'm actually really good at math, and that along the way I hired math tutors. I never went to business school, so I knew that I had gaps in my education.
And so I hired tutors. If Kobe can have coaches, I can have coaches. And along the way, I became very good at math and very good at running a budget and very good at being profitable. And I knew that that was the name of the game, that people were judging you based on
Carla Harris: performance. The only reason you knew that, Nelly, I would argue is because you were listening, okay?
And you knew. And in that business, performance matters. But again, let's say Let's, let's pivot a little bit and talk about the, the difficulty. And that's why I said you had a calling on your life because you were around people at the right time. I was. And, and you were the only one, uh, brave enough to be playing in a space that no one else was playing.
So, you were the only person for them to call. You came into a space where, you know, There was clearly a dearth of expertise, clearly a dearth of experiential capital. And you were passionate about doing it. And you said, okay, I'll do the thing you want me to do. But at the same time, I'm going to try to figure out how to get, how to get this thing done as well.
Nely Galán: Well, Carla, I'm going to tell you also the sad part of this, of that story, which is sometimes we think we want something. And when you get it, you realize what was the big deal? Like, you know, again, going back to math, right? I was running this business launching channels. It was so profitable because you would have one staff for every three channels.
I mean, it was like printing cash, right? Then Telemundo, Sony shows up. And because I had fiscal responsibility, not because of my creative brilliance, because I was fiscal, they said, we're going to buy that business from you and we're going to. Make you the president of entertainment. And I went to work for Sony, which was the most difficult, hard four years of my life because it was a company, and let's put it in finance terms, right?
So, as you know, there are companies that build companies, and there are companies that get torn apart and get sold for whatever, and they're there to be flipped, like a piece of real estate, right? So Rupert Murdoch and Fox were builders of brands, and Sony were. Sellers of, you know, of pieces of brands.
How's that? They really emotionally did not care about the Latino market. I was all in. I felt like, Oh my God, I've known how to do it in Latin America. I've done it in a local, I know the local station. I know how they think. And now I get to do the programming. So I was in it, all in it. And, and I, you know, they, they sold the company in four years for an ungodly amount of money to NBC.
And I was a disruptor. I was not meant to be in a corporation, even though I think. Everyone should be in a corporation because there are things you have to learn. It's a good training ground. And the way they scale and, you know, and then you also know what not to do. Like, they don't always connect the dots.
It's under their nose. They have the playbook, but they don't even use it sometimes. And my boss said to me when we sold Telemundo, which was very painful for me, he said, What are you complaining about? I'm going to make you a very rich woman. And I thought, but yeah, but that's not everything in life.
That's the other thing. That's where your culture comes back. You love the game. You love doing it. You love your, you want to be someone who's changing, you know, the status quo. Anyway, we sold it to NBC. NBC takes it over. And they're like, we don't know how to do this. And what year was that? That was, we sold it in 97, but they didn't take it over till almost
Carla Harris: 2000.
So here's the reason why I'm asking the time, because you said that Sony didn't care about it as much. So going back to being an entrepreneur and doing the thing that you're good at, and you, you characterize the Fox organization as a builder of brands. You characterize the Sony organization as a harvester, let me call it.
That's right. But back in the 90s, what they were really good at is that they had a powerful brand. That's right. So once they slapped their brand on anything that they bought, it created an immediate premium. Mm hmm. Simply because they owned it. That's right. No matter what they did with it. That's right.
Right? So, for them, they were playing to their level of expertise. There was an asset that was going to be valuable to somebody. Might not be valuable to them, but if they could put that wrapper on it, they were going to get their return. I
Nely Galán: also think I didn't know then. I mean, I really did go to like business school on the job.
I didn't also know then that companies also need to lose money in certain companies. Because for tax reasons, they want something to go bad, so they have a tax write off. And how they start, you know, when you work for a big conglomerate, you realize they have so many different companies that their, that their tax year starts, you in different months and how they play.
It's like a, it's like a chess game. And for you, it's your whole life. It's your mission. And this is why I wrote in my book, mission and money are parallel tracks.
Carla Harris: You can't,
Nely Galán: you can't be all into your mission and not keep track
Carla Harris: of that. They are parallel tracks. Now that's a playbook point for sure. So, okay, you go to NBC, you build this thing.
I basically
Nely Galán: become Tyler Perry. I don't work for them. I say to them, I will do it out of my own company, and I become Tyler Perry. Basically, I'm Latina Tyler Perry.
Carla Harris: Okay, so you created all the content.
Nely Galán: And when you see that some of my shows that I developed in the Latino market, I own, now the deal that I made with them, I own the shows, which nobody gets to own the shows.
A Tyler would get to own the shows and a Nelly, because we're experts in that niche. Yes. That's the other playbook thing. A niche. Yes. And that's why when I hear young people that are multicultural, and they go, Oh, I don't want to be, I'm too Black in this corporation, or I'm too Latino, and they think I'm too No, no, no, no.
Niche is the way, if you are an expert in your pain, if you are an expert at what you know, you better milk that thing. I mean, Jerry Perencio was right when he told me that. You're Latina, and you want to go be at CBS? No, go be the expert, the number one expert at this. And that's what I turned myself into.
So where have I really made money in programming? The one or two shows, you know, television shows, I think people need to hear this, is like building buildings. I mean, that's why I'm so good in real estate. You're a contractor, you build a show and you, and you, you better be good with the overhead because most, a lot of producers, they do the show and then when they get off Audited by the network.
The network goes, we're not paying for that. We're not paying for that. And you go over.
Carla Harris: And
Nely Galán: when you go over in the, and in the actual show that you make, you have to wait till the show goes into syndication to make money. That is a bad business model. Yeah, you better make money every single day. Yeah, and if you're not making at least 20%, you're really bad at your job.
Yeah, okay. So you make money on shows, whether they really hit it out of the park, and hitting it out of the park in our world is that they air all over the world. Mm hmm. But you still make money, right? You're, you're, you're in a service business, so to speak. But what happened? Because I own those shows, a couple of them were sold to the networks.
And when I sold them to the networks, I was able to keep a bigger ownership piece. Yeah. And nowadays there's no ownership piece with Netflix and all this. People don't realize it's not an emerging business. It sounds glamorous. Yeah, but it's ego. It's not emerging anymore.
Carla Harris: Yes.
Nely Galán: So in those two or three shows that I was able to cross over Into the mainstream because of my ownership position those shows made money.
The rest was just meat and potatoes
Carla Harris: And
Nely Galán: again, once I got into the meat and potatoes, I realized What was the big deal with me wanting to do shows? It also reminds me, and that's why I say to everyone that I work with and everyone, my favorite word in the English language is
Carla Harris: groundedness.
Nely Galán: Our ego is our enemy.
Whenever you think you want to do something because it's okay, it's okay to say that sometimes we just want to do something because it makes us happy and that's okay, but don't mix money with ego. Mm-Hmm. That's a mistake. Mm-Hmm. . .
Carla Harris: That's a
Nely Galán: playbook. Boy, . That is a big mistake. As I tell people, I said, you know, you want to make a movie, go become rich and make your own movie.
You don't want to make a movie that a studio owns and they're telling you what to do and the actors are giving you a hard time. Make it with your, pardon the French, F you money.
Carla Harris: Yep, understood. So now let's pivot as we go down that track. So, now, you mentioned earlier, you said, that's why I'm a good real estate investor.
Yes. Okay. Why real estate? What made you decide to do real estate? Again, the
Nely Galán: airplane with Jerry Parenchia. Yeah. No one in my family ever told me this. My parents were afraid to put money down, to do anything, because they had just gone through a trauma. Jerry Perinchia said, when you make money, don't do what minorities do.
He goes, they buy bling. He goes, don't buy bling. He goes, you don't care what other people think. He goes, in the end, you'll laugh. He said, go buy commercial buildings. Now, why would I have even heard that? I mean, he's like, if you can afford it, buy your house last or don't even buy it. You know, you can buy a house if you want to, but commercial real estate.
And I said, in one of those trips, I go, well, why? And he said, because this business is up and down. This entertainment thing comes and goes, in life you have to make money while you sleep. And when he said that to me, I swear to God, I felt like somebody was speaking Russian, I had never heard that. And what I realized, you know, being around him is, my family does not understand the financial system of this country.
at all. I don't understand the financial system of this country. It's almost like putting the dots together, like going, Oh my God, like all these people live in a certain way and think a certain way. And we think in another way. And, and so we're out. And I was like, what does that mean? Make money while you sleep.
And he said, the money you make and the money you save is not going to take you to the end of your life. It's the money you invest that makes money while you sleep. And during that time, So I had Jerry Perencio. I didn't have money to invest at that moment. Okay, so like, note to self, and then I never thought about it again.
When I went to work at Fox, Rupert Murdoch was like, I'm gonna give you a bungalow on the Fox lot. You know, for my office, I got a bungalow. It was really no big deal, but whatever. My staff was like, Oh my god, we're on the Fox lot and we get to eat in the commerce area where we see celebrities! And the first month I'm there, I get a bill for 45, 000 for the bungalow.
I go, hell to the no. And I go, what do you mean? And that's the first time that the Jerry Perenchio dot, I go, I need to go find a building. And my staff is like, no, we don't want to leave the Fox lot. And I go, the Fox lot is Rupert Murdoch's brand. It's not my brand. And I said to everybody, I was new to LA.
I didn't know LA. And I said, what is the worst place to live in LA? And they said, Venice. It's full of gangs. I go, I'm Latina. I don't have issues with gangs. I'm fine with gangs. And coming from New York, where we saw, I lived in the East village. And by the time I left the East village, it was, you know, re gentrifying.
I come down to Venice. I bought my first building for 700, 000. And My mortgage on the building was 14, 000, so I was already saving money. You know, my staff almost had mutiny. We're leaving, and I said, well, leave! We're going to be in Venice. If you want to go have lunch at the Fox Lot, you have a pass, you can get in.
I started buying there, and then I noticed, I said, Venice is going to be big! It was like a New Yorker thing. And again, I lived beneath my means. So I was making a lot of money. Those were the years I made the most money. I lived like a pauper. All my friends were buying Jaguars. They were going on trips to Europe.
I had like a crappy car. I lived in, I rented a crappy place. Every penny I made, I bought all the buildings around me. And I did notice that Rupert Murdoch was way more interested in buying real estate for his company than he was really that interested in running the company. To this day, this woman that is this older Jewish lady, who is 75 now, who I met when I was looking for real estate.
She's a real estate agent looking for real estate in Venice. And she was like, You know, I saw this property. She goes, you're buying this property. And I go, no, because I was, I was like my immigrant fear. No, and she's like, honey, you're going to buy this property, blah, blah, blah. And she really helped me. And I started just taking her to lunch every week.
Yeah. I tell my son all the time, I said, son, Every kid that nobody pays attention to in school, you become friends with them. You take them out. You pay attention to them because those kids are going to grow up to be, you know, the stars of the world. I pay attention to people that other people don't pay attention to.
And I have to tell you, I have a cabal of women mentors. My banker's been my banker for 25 years. I tell every entrepreneur, if you don't have a personal banker, that's your best friend, your bankers, your shrink, when you, you will get into trouble, you will have at times when you run out of money, if you don't have a relationship with a banker, you're not going to make it.
I've
Carla Harris: given the same advice. And I said, you know, wherever you put your money, start a personal relationship with that person. Because at the end of the day, that first loan is more personal than it is anything else. That's right. Yeah. They need to look you in the eye and know that you're going to pay that money back and that you're not going to embarrass them for extending their personal currency on you.
Nely Galán: I mean, I have to have entrepreneurs hear this, that I've done very well in television. However, what's, what is shocking even to me, which tells you a lot about math versus mission.
Carla Harris: I've made
Nely Galán: five times the money in real estate. Wow. Than in my television life. Mm hmm. Mm
Carla Harris: hmm.
Nely Galán: Because television has made me, yes, it made me the money to put the equity into some of these properties, right?
But my TV career sometimes has gone up, sometimes it's gone down. There have been years where it's been, but we all know at the end of the year, you pay taxes, right? So equity in something that is making money while you sleep and using the tax laws, which to me, to me, the biggest secret sauce in this country that kills me because women don't know it.
Minority women and men don't know it. We don't really, we don't love learning the tax laws. I love learning the tax laws. Because I realize, when you see Donald Trump go on TV and say, I barely pay tax, and we all go, Ah! Well, you can barely pay tax too. If you put your money in the right things and you use the tax laws to your favor.
We live in a country that does have laws, assets. You know, there's so many assets in the federal government that you could tap into, but we don't know. But I also understand that. Immigrants, that people of color have obstacles. We are, our life is an obstacle course. And I think these are important conversations because I want people to think if I, with parents that knew nobody, with no money, with nothing, no education, I've gotten my education over time myself with my own money.
My parents could not afford to send me to school and I have had to support my family. If I could do it, anybody could do it. That is the key to the whole story. Agreed.
Carla Harris: So, we have a tradition, uh, at Access an Opportunity where we do a lightning round and we try to get our listeners an opportunity to, to learn more about you as the woman, the personal. But I would argue, with the conversation we've had, if, if they miss the personal now, I don't, I'm not sure what to say there.
Because we've had, I feel, a very personal conversation and I thank you for that. So lightning round. Are you ready? Favorite TV show? Well right now, it would be This Is Us. East coast or west coast?
Nely Galán: Mmm, well I have to say west coast because I'm living on the west coast, but tough, because I love east coast.
Carla Harris: The next business venture you're most excited about?
Nely Galán: I have a really big idea for women and entrepreneurship, but I can't say it because I'm superstitious.
Carla Harris: Okay. Okay, okay. Coffee or tea? Coffee. Texting or talking? Talking. Last thing you downloaded? A contract. Favorite vacation destination?
Nely Galán: Miami.
Carla Harris: If you had a talk show, who would you want to be your first guest?
You! Oh, I'll take that. I'll accept that invitation right now. Okay. What's one word that you'd like to use to describe your legacy?
Nely Galán: Oh, wow. That is such a great question. Darn it! Um, immigrant, grateful, and giving back. Okay.
Carla Harris: All
Nely Galán: righty.
Carla Harris: Nelly Golan, thank you very much for being with us today. Carla.
Thank you all for listening. I'm Carla Harris, and we'll be back soon with another conversation about access and opportunity.
