Hi, everyone, you listening to Superwoman. Today's guest. I'm really excited. I kind of fangirled out on her is Maria Sharapova. The amazing world renowned athlete and tennis player. We talked about her going from winning all these glorious titles and Tennis to being an entrepreneur. She still runs the day-to-day of the company, which is really impressive to me being that she's traveling most of the time so take Take a listen. So today everyone. I am beyond excited. I am with Maria Sharapova. If you haven't heard of her she won Wimbledon and age 17 five grand slam titles the seventh female player in the open era to compete in the Grand Slam. So wow. She reached out to me, which makes me so excited that she want to do this podcast. So please you can't give an Applause, but I'm here are the Applause. So thank you for doing this with me. Thank you for having me. I am a Fan and I love listening to podcast. It's such an amazing way to reach out to people and connect on a much more personal level totally. So I would love to Psych start at the very beginning of your like transition. You moved to the us when you were six. Yes. I was a very little girl so I have a five-year-old. So I'm trying to imagine the transition. You must have gone through going from Russia, right? And what was that? You know, did you say you wanted to move? Like how did that whole thing happen? So just a little background around so my parents were living in Belarus. My mother was pregnant with me and just around the time when Chernobyl head and because of Chernobyl and because of how close we were to the radiation my parents fled to Russia and Siberia and that's where I was born. We quickly got out of there. I was around two years old and we moved to Sochi which is a town where we just had the hosted the Winter Olympics four years ago, but it was it was a completely different change in my life. So at six years old After I began playing tennis my my father wanted to develop a tennis dream of Mine by moving to the United States which everyone recommended because there's just no infrastructure. There were no coaches. There's no way really to develop a sport that's for that particular sport at that time. So we wanted to they wanted to move and my mom didn't move with us for the first two years. Whoa. Yes. I was just a six-year-old girl and we didn't come back for those two years because of you couldn't on the Visa that We had so I didn't have that relationship with my mother for those two years, which is probably the most difficult part of that. But in that journey, I felt like moving to a new culture and doing something. I love to play tennis. I loved I was just surrounded by so many kids that had the same passion that I did. Yeah, and I was learning a new language. I moved here without knowing a word of English only how to say my name and that developed into this. We're so I have so many questions on the heels of that one of them being did your dad like how did they know you had this innate talent? Because I feel like something like ballet or tennis like they're these things are you know, you can see it in that person, you know? Yes, so my mom had no interest in sport at all, which is so funny because no one in my family really had any Talent OR knowledge or experience and in sport and particularly antennas. My dad was a fan he played my mother was a dancer occasionally, but there was no there's nothing that we could like go back on experience and say okay. This is how they did it. Right and when my father was playing for fun, I joined him and I was always around my parents and my mother didn't want to take me to kindergarten or preschool. She was very young when she had me so I would follow her around everywhere. I would go to university with her. I would go to the library with her. She'd be doing her exams and I was right by her side. The Tran you know that personal story was very important. But then Martina Navratilova held a tennis clinic at the age of 5, and we went there in Moscow. We use the little amount of money that we had we got there and she kind of like pointed me out. She came over to my father and said that I had a real big Talent which I still to this day don't quite understand how she did that because when I see children that are that young it's so hard to recognize talent and because children we have so many we want to do so many things at the same time. We lose interest so quickly, but I just seem to have a type of focus that others didn't have and I enjoyed the repetition of hitting this tennis ball over and over that I think she saw that and she it was so different to what may be the other kids are focusing on wow. So I hear in a lot of moms like talk like this like we feel guilty for missing, you know, two nights of the week. We have to work late. We're like, um, and the guilt is so hard, but I'm trying to Stand like how you and your mom kept that relationship alive. And like how did she deal with not being around you and you not being around her for those two years. So they're The Limited communication that we had was through letters. So we wrote physical letters calling her was very expensive. So I did occasionally speak to her but very rarely maybe once a month. I remember writing letters to her and writing in the end. I love you. I love you. I love you in Russian and I would have liked little young kids next to me making fun of me that I was almost the writing like a love letter to my mother but they had their parents right next to them. So I think it was it was hard for them to really recognize and understand what I was going through it. Definitely it was extremely hard for her. I think it was much harder for her than it was for me because I was in this atmosphere of doing what I loved every single day and doing it repetitively and then competing and it was is so much fun. And I was like this it was like school with a lot of people that were doing the same thing and I wanted to excel at it but being being away from her for her that was incredibly difficult yet. So what do you think about your approach to tennis and playing the sport set you apart aside from your innate skill like what did you sort of mentally have to do to bring yourself to become so successful. So I used to look at photographs of the photographs that you usually see our of a champion holding a trophy. And then you see the runner up next to them and whenever you would see that photograph, you would see the winner with the biggest smile on their faces and then the runner up just like bawling-crying usually as a child. You're so upset. You got all the way to the end and you end up losing and I always saw the difference in the two and that photograph and from a young age for some reason it hit me that no matter what stage I was of winning or losing that an event. I didn't ever really wanted to show my emotion. I was always going to have a poise. And a smile on my face and not like a your I was too young to think that I was grateful for that opportunity, but it was that I didn't want anyone to know how I did and that I was going to act the same way as if I was winning or losing a match and I think that kind of carried over to competing and I think that's one of the best like mental skills that I have is that no one really knows if I'm winning or losing in a match. I think I carry the same demeanor. On the cord as I do like if things are not going well or things are going extremely well because I think I know how easy it is to lose it when things do go well, so I try to remain focused and more on the next Point rather than feeling like I'm in a position of Victory and is your family still in Vault like is your dad still involved with you and this port one only child, right? So I'm very I have an amazing relationship with both of my parents, which I'm very fortunate to have. I'm very close to my mother. There and she's like my best friend and they're very different characters in both. Each individual has brought very different things to my life. She's very cultural never really been involved in sport supports me like so much off the court as well. Like she doesn't even go to my matches because she's like at the end of the day you come home whether you win or you lose you're my daughter and that's like the biggest victory for me. Whereas my father was very sport influenced. You know, he loved bringing me to all these different. Has around the world to try to help me become a better player and very unselfishly realizing that he wasn't the person that was in control. He wanted other people's opinions. So that was an incredibly admire below. He remained my coach traveling coach till I was 21 years old. I went three grand slams with him and he still very much involved in my career. He sometimes he doesn't go to tournaments anymore. And that was a big step for me because I really wanted to that Journey with my father and I actually An autobiography A few years ago and that path that I had with my father was such a special one. It was like I was under his wing fall like he paved this road for me and I was just living it. I was riding through it. And when I won my third Grand Slam I had this like independent feeling where I loved him. I loved the way that he contributed to my career, but I wanted to attempt to do it on my own right and you know sitting here many years later and having one another two grand slams without him, even though those moments were Bittersweet but it was like I had to work extra hard to achieve them. So they meant a lot to me as well and but he's still very much involved in in the decision-making of my career. So after tennis after what gave you the entrepreneurial bug or did you always have it and you were just like it's just a matter of time before I launch something new. Yeah, when I was younger, I think the first like initial entrepreneurial bug that Had was in fashion. Like I loved I worked with Nike I worked with Tag Heuer like doing campaigns for Tag Heuer with a Patrick demarchelier was in my first step into like the Fashion World. So where I got the likes of Louis Vuitton and Chanel to lend me dresses. I remember DKNY allowed me to travel with clothes while I was doing appearances around I'll let you travel with close if you want a little girl. That was a big big deal. So and then I was working on a collection with Cole Haan. For a few years because Nike had own Cole Haan. So creatively that was like a passion of mine and that's when I started understanding business. I mean, I always tennis I realized from a very young age is not just a sport a lot of it is business which which is also very difficult and you wouldn't sort of integrity and which part of it is the business. Um, I think everything that away from the cord a lot of the like from earnings to Brand building, too. Everything else as incorporates business, right? Okay. So but through fashion is my first I guess pathway into the knowledge of business and then and I think that I just realized and recognized from an early point. Maybe I was in my early 20s that I thought. Okay. Well, I'm not going to be playing tennis for for the rest of my life at even though I've done this since I was a young girl, I'm a woman I want to have a family have a close relationship to my mother. I don't know when I'm gonna end this Sport and my career, but I want to have other avenues and I want to start building this so that when I do finish my career, it can be today can be tomorrow can be in 10 years that I've already began. Right? What was the first thing you approach is kind of your own like I sat outside of the licensing with or you know, the collaborations you do with Nike and Cole Haan. So that was the real difference was when I when I started making most of my money through earnings, but then I also was becoming the face of certain campaigns and working with Brands and water brands and at the end of the day. I was a very even though they were lucrative deals with really big companies. I felt like a very small part of the company and I think my competitiveness kicked in was like, you know what I want to be a little bit more than that. Yeah and at 21 22, I wanted to start my own business. So I started a candy brand called sugar Prova which has evolved into many many other types of sweets throughout these last seven years. Years to me about the difference or the the fun it like it's like you here you are, you know world famous tennis player and then you started to Sugar, you know, sugar and candy like how did that juxtaposition happen? I think because I understand the the amount of work and the rigor and and the everyday stress of being an athlete and being so diligent and consistent with what you do and the importance of that is huge. But I also have this Like side of me that's very telling naughty but it's like rebellious in a way that I want to treat myself and whether that's like being next to my grandmother and cooking a cake where she Scoops like 3 scoops of sugar in there. Yo, I want to be a part of that and and you and I felt like, you know, I work we work so I work are you work hard? Everyone works so hard no matter what we do from and to consistently say no to those like indulgences in our Our life is actually spending more energy than just giving each other a break and saying you know what today I'm going to have something. You know, that might not be the best for me but it's better than you know saying no hundred percent of the time right? Because then you're like me and then you cheat and then you cheat bag I do and that's sometimes okay now that I like with hold myself all the time then I'm like how fuck it I'm gonna eat all the croissants. I can remember like I went to Paris and I think I had 10 in a day just because I always liked but to be fair croissants in Paris, Don't seem as fattening as they do here. Like I think the produce is so much better. Don't get me started. I know I'm like so excited America and its food. Hi everybody. I want to tell you a little bit about the platform. I used to distribute this podcast. It's called anchor it is the easiest way to make a podcast and it gives you everything you need in one place for free, which is what you can use right now from your phone or your computer and it allows you to record edit your podcast. So it sounds great. They're also distribute your podcast for you. So you can be heard anywhere on Spotify Apple podcast Google podcasts and so many more And I guess what you can make money with no minimum listenership, which I can tell you is a game changer. So download the anchor app or go to Anchor dot f m-- to get started. So you didn't approach sugar covid something like oh, I'm going to put my name on this you really it's your company and you may notice a lot of the day-to-day decisions the creative all that so I know it's grown because I see it everywhere and my kids I had to put it on like I got a bunch at an event and I had to put on like other top shelf because they were addicted to it was like for special occasions. So I do I own a hundred percent of it. I still do a financially own it I remember Initially invested half a million dollars and in it and I it was such as a transition in the in my thought process of business because I realized that I was fortunate to have made really good money and the in the few year in the first few years that I came in the door and started doing well and I won my first Grand Slam being 17 years old and I think my thinking process and also the way that I worked with my manager, he's been my manager since I was 11 years old and he is still today. Wow. We just kind of gained A New Perspective of isn't it so much better. You don't need the money right now. You don't need the money tomorrow, but isn't it so much better. If you invest your time and your effort and your skills and your knowledge and not get paid right now, but maybe it would be rewarded down the line and something that you believe in right? So that's kind of the shift that I had and one of the reasons I started sugar Prova. So what was surprising to learn about suddenly, you know being thrown into a business you own a hundred. And I've you're making all these decisions that maybe we're different from your previous life. Well, the first thing that surprised me is when I started it I was I was much more like I was very involved in the creative. Like that's what I loved about it. I don't think I never thought that it was a even a possibility to sell the to sell the business. They honestly I never I mean I knew would venture capital was but not really I knew like business details, but certainly not as I do right now. So it was never even in question now everyone's like do You know, everyone asks me, you know, when when would you look into selling this? Would you consider selling this and it's never it's never the way that I thought of the business. It was like such a personal experience and journey for me and I'm a big learning curve as well. I mean to learn about a consumer good that goes through retail and distribution and Brokers and all these things. So before we started recording you told me that you spent six days in the last six months at home. So, how do you run? Such a huge company being gone all the time. Great people that work with you and for you. I'm also very disciplined and my work. I'm organized. I set priorities like my sport is is my top priority when I wake up. It makes me feel the best like I I love waking up and know I love putting on my leg my sports clothes or my tongue is closed. It doesn't make me feel like Wonder Woman but it feels like this is what I'm meant to be doing and I still love that feeling very much and in the time when I you know in between when I'm doing physical therapy, I'm on the table and I'm getting work done. I'll have a business podcast on or I'll be doing emails and I'll be working on Creative or I'll be confirming I'll be taste testing. They'll be shipping it, you know, sending FedEx and UPS all over the world and you know, I make it work I have so far but I do have a really really great team that that helps me build it that's amazing. How many team members do you have? I always look for full-time. Please and then a lot of others awesome and so what has been a failure that occurred that you in the business. I mean, I think we have failures every week later every day. I just got one today right before I got here some good some good. Terrible news. I hope but what's something that occurred in then how what did you do to I don't know keep going or how did you face that failure and get stronger from it? So in Sugar prob'ly I've had to face a lot of decisions. Ins that include like certain stores that we want to be and so when I first started sugar Popa, like for me being in Colette and Paris was like it was incredible that Sarah took our product and it was front and center in the store. But with time you realize like you're not going to make a lot of money by being in a Collette like it's an amazing marketing tool. So you have to I think like the understanding where your products it's like creating the vision for it, but also making it Business I never wanted to create an expensive hobby. I'm a competitive girl and I want this to succeed but have a certain vision of where it should sit but then I also want to be making money. So that's always like it's a consistent conversation that I have with my team because you want to make sure that your product is placed where you envisioned it to be but at the end of the day when you're sitting there with your financial team, you want to see numbers that are expected to be in the account. Totally that's very different than a lot of the people I interview who You are a fine with negative numbers because they like Oh They'll be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but it's I'm like do I want that pot of gold now or consistently? Not not that your I think you have to be you have to be going in the right direction at least totally if you're consistently in the red and there's no you know, whether it's the people whether like you can have Vision all you want, but you can have a reserve and you can have whatever it is, but unless you just want to be working and not seeing isn't it? Nice to like see? The company in the green at times totally like mini, like woo. Yeah, we are great. Exactly. And you know, I can never compare it to people always ask me like, what is how do you compare with business and in your sport and always say in sport you have this feeling of a match point. So you have everything that you've worked towards is in this one single moment and it's like so many things that have ups and downs are all on the line. You don't really they get that again you win that match point and you fall down to the to the ground and I mean, I've only had five of them through since I was 4 years old, you know, and I say only like relatively speaking like if you think of all the years but it's incredible to have five but you work 365 days a year to get to those moments and there's nothing really like it that I felt in business. There's not that one point like you might get a great phone call. You might get a great email that says you're at you got this account you worked hard for a long time. But there's no you might go and have a drink with your team. But there's none of that like you're in front of 20,000 people and people see that that incredible moment. Yeah. I was just with a bunch of female entrepreneurs and I was saying if you think that feeling that match point feeling is going to happen, I think as an entrepreneur we have like a called a sickness. It's not a bad thing but like you get to where you think is going to be that feeling and they're like no I want they're disappointed. Yeah, you're like, oh that's that's never let me feel it's never what and even in my My sport it's never you visualize. I'm a big believer in visualization, but it doesn't it's not like it comes just because you do it, right it comes out and it happens the way that you might father used to tell me like you can make all the plans you want and then God laughs at them, right? So we keep that in the back of my mind. Even when I visualize one thing I would love to know is whether it's sport-related or even at work. Like how do you deal with setbacks? Because I've feel like women Take it harder than men when there's like a failure like I'm personal maybe you maybe you very personal. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it definitely does because my work is so exposed my failures and I fail more than I succeed to the public eye, right because you're only a winner and the public eye if you're holding the Winner's Trophy and the winners Chuck, right? So I'm vulnerable a lot of the time because Has your as a tennis pro as an athlete, you have a game and a match and you no matter how it goes you face the Press after you face the Press before tournament and they can ask you anything. Like there are no rules. There's no rulebook, right anyone pretty much can get a pass to your press conference. And without those guidelines. There are a lot of things that come up that occasionally aren't expected occasionally your are On the same wavelength as you are like I'll finish a match and I'm feeling pretty good about things like win or lose like least. I feel like I'm in the right direction, but maybe I've had a losing streak or maybe in their eyes because it's so result-oriented you can write on paper like lose lose lose lose. I've learned and very hard way to understand that. Everyone was always have an opinion about things that you do and the way that you the choices that you make Your performances even though sometimes you don't have a full grip on them. You want the best outcome, but sometimes it doesn't happen and you end up with a really bad day and they're there to pursue that they're there to make a headline and they're there to create clickbait. So I face that a lot and I've learned to I feel like so neutral about it. Now, I in the last few years, it's really like no matter what people ask me. I've had to learn the hard way like to give professional and Our to give them an honest answer to be the person that that I am deep down inside like this is me. This is what you're going to get and I know I recognize that you might not love all of it and you might have an opinion but at least I gave you myself. So how do you being that? You're on the road all the time? How do you carve out time for you? Because I struggle with that one. I'm on the road. Right? I'm I'm quite simple in my routines. So recovery is just a big. Out of being in sport and that feeling of doing nothing is incredibly important because sleeping like I feel like in the last few years A lot of people are speaking about sleep. I mean Ariana wrote a whole book about it. She did but sleep has been a huge part of my life ever since I was young. There's just no way around it. You can't be a professional athlete without getting the the eight or nine hours at night and then maybe a nap in the afternoon like to get through an eight. Our day of training. It's really the only recipe to keep doing it week in week out. So that's like an incredible big part like being diligent with those routines and setting time for yourself. Like sometimes I do feel like I hit a wall and I feel like I have so much on my plate and I have family that I want to see and I have a boyfriend that I want to travel to know the challenges of being like in a long distance relationship while having a business and a career as an athlete. But then having maintaining a really strong bond with your parents growing a business. It's a lot of things so I do I do have this feeling of I'm crashing down crashing I need but you know what then I have 24 hours to myself and I'll go to the spa and maybe get a facial and I'll walk on read for the afternoon and I won't be around my phone and I wake up the next day and I just I'm ready. Yes. I have the passion. I'm focused. I'm motivated and as long as you Have that I feel like as long as you have the tools around you the right people around you and people are so important in life the way that they make you feel the way they encourage you and I bounced off of lot of people like I'm very I don't know about you but I'm influenced easily when I'm around people and sometimes it's nice to be on your own. Sometimes. It's nice to take those trips and time for yourself to really when I'm sitting at a dinner even though I have an opinion when I'm speaking to my And or business partners their opinion really influences the way that I start thinking right and sometimes it's so good to take a step back and think for yourself and recognize that your thoughts are just as important and just as valid totally that's really a good point. I think that my time alone is sometimes on an airplane, but I'm like no one can bother me. It's I'm not I'm not going to do the wife. I love this. I love those fights. So what's coming up next to you? So I'm I'm working with a the reason I haven't been home is because I'm I'm training in Europe. Now. I have a new team that's based in north northern Italy. And so I've spent a lot of time there in the last few months and I'm going to be spending a lot of time going into the new season there as well. So it's just like a boot camp. Wow. It's like one big boot camp, but I am going to Africa amazing, which I've tasted at that time aside for myself and for my boyfriend and we're going on an amazing trip and a couple Of the week so that will be great and and after those trips I usually come back and I'm ready for a six six-week training block totally and then yeah the Australian Open will be in January. Wow. So that's what you're trading with the Italian team for. Yes. And what's the name of the Italian team? It's a Piatti Tennis Center. Shout out to them. So I like to ask my guests to things something. We'd be surprised to know about you. I my family is from Belarus. Oh, that's my surprising thing to you. So, who knows? Maybe we were like Our distant cousins. Oh my goodness. What is surprising about me? I am so stubborn and I know maybe that's not a surprise but I am incredibly stubborn. I'm like if you read what an Aries is in the horoscope. I am exactly that like word for word like stubborn that like, I have trouble apologizing when I'm wrong and I'm really stubborn about that. But are you stubborn and in other ways like, how are you stubborn or just like this is my goal. And I'm not retreating from it both. Okay, I'm stubborn in the positive way and I'm stubborn in the negative way. So you get a little bit of both in that but I read horoscopes all the time because I'm such a big believer in mine right that I actually take people like I take advice on other people based on it, right? And so I shouldn't it has even like relationships and things. Wow. Yes. Awesome. Okay, so and then the other question I like to ask is either advice that from learnings you've Our failings you've had or someone who gave you amazing advice that you feel like you want to pass on. So my mother used to do. Well, she still tells me we can be going through so many things in life whether it is one of the best moments in Life or one of the toughest challenges in life and our life path is like a zebras coat. So we have those white lines where everything is smooth and it's according to plan and it's butterflies. And rainbows, but realistically speaking it's not going to last forever. So you have to know that an advanced you have to recognize that in advance. You can't live, you know above the clouds and you can enjoy it and appreciate it. But you have to be real and I think that's that advice like that. They're always be the ups and downs like you have a tough time and you have this black line in your life. It's inevitable that things are going to get better time passes things will get better and you'll get back on the white line. So seeing a little bit ahead and not just being like this is I'm just going to ride this forever and ever liked being smart about the way that you see the future that awesome. Thank you. That was Maria Sharapova. You can find her on Instagram or you can go by her amazing and be candies sugar Prova pretty much everywhere in the world.
Maria Sharapova was born in Siberia, raised in Sochi and then, at age 6, moved to the U.S., and she hasn’t really stopped moving since. The tennis sensation who won Wimbledon at 17 and 5 Grand Slam titles in the years since has honed a level of focus so intense that at times she seems more like a Buddhist monk than a star athlete. This stoic concentration has been cultivated intentionally; Maria saw in other tennis players that letting fear or, conversely, pride, lead them on the court more often ended in disappointment rather than a win. She resolved to always look towards the next point, and act as graciously in victory as in losses. It’s a state of being that has bled into other areas of her life, including her work as an entrepreneur. Maria launched Sugarpova, the candy company of which is still 100% owner, in her early 20’s. Though it may seem incongruous for an athlete to peddle treats, as Maria puts it, it’s important to balance hard work something sweet once in a while. Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Follow Superwomen on Instagram. Big Ideas   The importance of rewarding hard work. [12:45]  Balancing vision and branding in a way that leads to revenue. [18:17]   ---   Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/superwomen/support 