Ted Leonsis, owner of five professional sports teams – including the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals, and Washington Mystics – joined me on Episode 211 of Thirty Minute Mentors.

A serial entrepreneur who played a key role in building AOL as a member of their senior leadership team, Ted is the founder and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment and the co-founder and partner of the venture capital firm Revolution.

In his mid-20s, Ted thought he made it in life. Growing up, he was expected to be a grocery store manager. Instead, he became an entrepreneur - a very successful one very quickly - and cashed out for $60 million.

"And then I got on the wrong airplane," Ted told me on the most recent episode of Thirty Minute Mentors.

"I was on a plane - Eastern Airlines leaving Atlanta - that developed all sorts of technical issues and lost our flaps. We thought we had lost our landing gear and the plane had to make an emergency landing.

As the plane was circling, burning off gas... you have your reckoning. I had my reckoning. It's like a bad joke. It's like really now... I just got here. And people are weeping and crying and they're moving people around.

I started to pray, even though I wasn't that religious. And during my reflection, I started laughing. Because all I could think of was if God was listening, God saying, 'Oh, I got it. Now you need me, right? Everything's cool. Now you're sending up the bat signal and you need something from me.'

And so I tried to come up with my sales pitch. It's like, let me live. Let me get through this. How am I going to fill in those dots?

And I said, 'I'll leave more than I take.'"

Listen to the full conversation here or on your favorite podcasting app.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.