An interview with Erika Nardini about being the CEO of Barstool Sports, how to stay relevant, handling pressure, her biggest challenges and best career advice.

Welcome to the 79th episode of 5 Questions with Dan Schawbel. As your host, my goal is to curate the best advice from the world’s smartest and most interesting people by asking them just 5 questions.

This episodes guest:

My guest today is the CEO of Barstool Sports, Erika Nardini. Born in New Hampshire, Erika studied sociology and philosophy at Colby College. While at first, she aspired to be a lawyer, she eventually decided to go into advertising and marketing. Early in her career, she was a Media Manager at Fidelity, where she learned first-hand the potential of the Internet for media purposes. Erika went on to hold executive positions at Arnold Worldwide, Modelina, Yahoo!, Demand Media and eventually became the Chief Marketing Officer at AOL. In 2016, she stepped into her role as the CEO of Barstool Sports, a satirical sports and lifestyle culture brand, which has grown to become the tenth largest distributed media company in America with 66 million unique visitors each month. Under Erika’s leadership, the company has grown from 15 to 201 employees, with revenues approaching $100 million and with a valuation of $450 million after an investment by Penn National Gaming this past January. As one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People, I was excited to speak to Erika about how she stays relevant, handles the rapid business growth and what it’s really like being a CEO.

The 5 questions I ask in this episode:

1. What does your daily schedule look like that enables you to manage a well-known brand like Barstool?
2. I believe the biggest challenge for a company, product and human today is staying relevant in a world, industry, category and profession that’s constantly changing. How do you keep yourself and your company relevant?
3. How have you been able to handle the pressure to exceed expectations with all of your stakeholders and continue to be a leader in the market?
4. Can you talk about your biggest challenges and how you’ve navigated through them?
5. What is your best piece of career advice?

Follow Erika’s journey:

• Company
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram