Andre Agassi, OPEN: An Autobiography

[1:18]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings. But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. Okay. This interview with Andre Agassi was my second interview of all time. I was literally sweating at my desk doing it. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to host a podcast. I had barely interviewed anybody. And I just sort of asked questions from the heart, we had a great time, and he was very accommodating. And I just thought I would re release it. Hope I've gotten better at being an interviewer. And even if not, I just hope you enjoy hearing from Andre Agassi whose book Open is one of my favorites, and you should definitely read that. Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and this is Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. As a mom of four kids in New York City and a writer myself, I know all too well how short everyone is on time, so I'm here to help. I'm going to interview authors and writers of all types about their work, especially as it relates to parenting and family issues. Hopefully, you can listen while doing 8,000,000 other things and fall in love with these talented scribes and their fantastic books, essays, and songs like I have, plus get some tips on surviving parenthood. For more about me, you can check out my essays at zippyowens.com. Also, this as episode has been sponsored by Chloe's Fruit, the cool way to eat fruit. Just fruit, water, and a touch of organic cane sugar. I don't know about you, but my kids are obsessed with Chloe's pops. I secretly sneak the dark chocolate pops when they're not looking for a guilt free delicious treat. Check them out on chloe'sfruit.com. I am beyond excited to be talking to Andre Agassi today. Andre Agassi really needs no introduction, but just as a refresher, Andre used to be ranked number one in the world in tennis and won eight grand slam singles championships. Now married to Stephie Graff, Andre has two children and is involved in launching charter schools with the Turner Agassi Foundation and is on the board and one of the initial investors of SquarePanda, a product innovator in AI education. Plus, Andre Agassi wrote one of my favorite books of all time. It's called Open, which I'll talk about tonight. Hi, Zibby. How are you, Andre? Hi. Thanks so much for doing this. This is such a treat for me.

[4:19]Andre Agassi: Oh, sweet. You, appreciate all your kind words. Are you, is this something, tell me a little bit about your podcast, if you don't mind. Well, I actually just started my podcast. I'm I'm a writer, so I do a lot of writing for magazines.

[4:33]Zibby Owens: And, I've been doing a lot of online writing, especially about parenting lately. I have four little kids, so, that's my main focus. I was going to write a book called moms don't have time to read books. My agent said Or write books? Yeah. Exactly. But my agent said, you know what? That might be better as a podcast, and you should just write another book. And so I said, well, actually, I really wanna write a book called 40 Love about tennis and falling in love and everything. So that's how this came about. And the podcast is going to feature, authors and books that I've loved or articles I read that I think are amazing. And I'm hoping to sort of distill those things for the moms who might not have time to read the full thing but want a taste of it or even just as a preview so they can go buy it themselves.

[5:17]Andre Agassi: Oh, nice. Very nice. Okay. That's my That's very very ambitious.

[5:22]Zibby Owens: I know. So so we'll see. But this will certainly certainly help. So what made you write Open this amazing book? Oh,

[5:33]Andre Agassi: it's a good good question because I never really saw myself as ever eventually writing a book. I kinda always looked at it like a like a glorified press conference or or or something when I would read other autobiographies. And then and then I really got I really got to the point where I just kinda wanted to understand my own life through through a literary lens. I wanted to to sort of make sense of my life, if you will, for my own for my own desire to understand it in this context. It's the life I've lived was sort of never gave me a chance to take much in. And and and I and I went about the process, I think, in a way that really was organic. I I I've finally read a book that I fell in love with called The Tender Bar, written by J. R. Moringer, and and it and it hit me that a person's story can really be really be a powerful tool to impact lives. And and I knew I wanted to do it with him and probably wouldn't have done it without his, you know, dedication and collaboration. And when I finally talked him into it, he moved to Vegas for two and a half years, and and we decided to do it and then decide later if it's something we're really gonna turn over or not. And it wasn't really designed in the beginning to be something I was gonna hand the world unless unless I truly believe people would be better off in their own lives for sharing a bit of my experiences as it ties to to their journey.

[7:05]Zibby Owens: Have you been pleased with the reception? You must get just raves about it. I mean, I know it's one of my favorites of all time.

[7:11]Andre Agassi: Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm I'm proud of it. It feels like I get more proud of it as time goes on. I mean, it feels like I lived a lifetime since the book, but but as it relates to words living long past us, I assure you that's the case. And that warning was given to me by my partner, a collaborator, JR. And he just said to me, you know, listen, every word will live past us. And as a result, let's choose carefully. And and anybody that has read it has only sort of you know, they they find themselves drawn in different, you know, parts of the journey that I think really reflects something that makes me very proud because my goal was to sort of say, you know, tennis was maybe the platform that I had, but but we all deal with fears. We all deal with, you know, identity. We all deal with, you know, taking ownership of our lives. We all deal with so many same themes, and and I mine was lived so extremely and publicly that that pulling the curtains back was something that, you know, I was really anxious about in one respect, but then very proud about, you know, in another.

[8:30]Zibby Owens: And you you mentioned at the at the very end of your book that part of the reason for doing it was to help your kids out and have them learn more about your journey. Is that true? Or Yeah.

[8:41]Andre Agassi: Well, I definitely wrote it through their eyes, meaning meaning, you know, they were the first filter I used in anything that eventually, you know, made the made the cut because it needed to be me. You know? I mean, one of my great fears before my children were, you know, old enough is that somehow something may happen to me where they wouldn't know who me or who or who I was or or, you know, how I felt or what I believed or or or what I went through and achieved, overcame, you know, failed at. You know, I just this is just my story. I I wanted it to be able to read well through through their eyes. I wanted it to really be true to me for them first and foremost. You know, that was there's there's no question. But then as you as you get into it, you you realize that this is this is broader and has bigger, you know, implications to to people's lives, you know, even even across, you know, cultures. And that's one thing I've seen to to stay pretty true.

[9:48]Zibby Owens: That's great. In in the book, you describe the physical agony of getting up to play many times. One quote that I loved was when you said, hate brings me to my knees. Love gets me on my feet. Can you describe these opposing forces and how you spent so much of your career sort of pushing through pain, to achieve such greatness?

[10:08]Andre Agassi: Yeah. You you you dedicate your whole life, you know, to be a, an athlete, especially in the sport of tennis and and and, you know, well accomplished. You know, you're doing you're giving your whole life to it starting from a child. So you you really kind of spend a third of your life not preparing for two thirds of your life, and much of that wear and tear, you know, goes goes on your body. And between the twisting and the turning and the sprinting and the stopping and the jumping and the starting, I mean, all of it is just a just an ongoing abuse that you try to recover from sometimes on a daily basis. And then when you add years upon years and you add some physical limitations as well with the with the anatomy of my particular back and hips. Know, it was just I got to a point where I played long past when my body told me to to stop and it was getting, you know, all too obvious, you know, towards the end. And, you know, I found myself sleeping multiple times on the on the on the on the floor, just for the sake of what I couldn't abide by in in a in a in a hotel room, you know, mattress. Found myself, you know, just having a much harder time standing up straight after some long matches. And, you know, I start the book with with the end, which was my last, basically my last match and and and and, you know, started with me trying to get up off the floor. It's like my eyes open. I hear the kids in the other room and and, you know, it's my body sort of the pain brings me to my knees. It takes me to the floor, and it was the it's the love and and and also craving for caffeine that gets me to my that gets me to my feet because, it was, you know, it's hard. It was like a it was literally a five minute process to to to get up, so I don't do anything too startling to you know, to my to my body and with with the day's objectives.

[12:08]Zibby Owens: Another quote that I love that you said was one thing I've learned in twenty nine years of playing tennis, life will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your path, and then it will throw the kitchen sink. Can you can you speak to what you meant by this and how you've you've worked your way through that as well?

[12:23]Andre Agassi: Yeah. You know, it's you know, one of the sport of tennis is a is a is a eat, you know, eat what you kill, kind of kind of sport. You know, you don't, you know, if you if you wanna survive, it's gonna come at somebody else's, you know, demise and and and and and with that sort of intensity, you know, you you you you have to suffer through so many so many personal limitations because you just don't know what the other person's doing. Know, when we're out there competing, it's it's a result of so much preparation and and the scoreboard just tells kind of one part of it. And and and it's kind of the it's kind of the judge and jury for that moment. But but what you do before, what you do, you know, after in recoveries, what you do in all your preparation. I mean, you're chasing this ghost because you're thinking yourself, well, somebody else is working harder or somebody else is doing doing more. And so these little setbacks that you get along the way, whether they be physical or or or discouragements, you know, and failures, you know, you just you live it alone, and you live it very intensely because because you're you you literally believe you're the only one really going through this. You don't have the object ivity to recognize that this is the reality of, you know, the life chosen, you know. And so so you you constantly feel like you're getting hit with with obstacles and and pressures and challenges, and your whole day becomes about what you need to do to to be at your best and to make sure you get one day one day better and and and never try to get two days better because that's when you risk taking steps backwards. And so it's this ongoing twenty four hour sort of negotiation with yourself that it's almost like a post traumatic syndrome where you you suffer so much internally that nobody knows that you you kind of, you know, it it exposes itself in some in some odd ways. And, you know, and and me it did in a lot of my personal choices, the things that I chose to escape some of the pains, the pressures, some of the decisions I made with my, you know, with my judgments on decision making, friends I chose to be friends with, know, bad decision or, you know, not to criticize, you know, the mistake of a failed marriage. But when you fail yourself, you know, it's impossible not to fail somebody else. So, you know, there's just so many things that when you thought it couldn't get harder, couldn't get worse, it did.

[15:09]Zibby Owens: Wow. I'm sorry. You worked through it so beautifully. I love how you weave the day to day of parenting throughout the book in scenes that anyone can relate to, like kids begging for a dog and having play dates, not being able to sleep past 07:30, which, by the way, I thought was really late, which is great.

[15:28]Andre Agassi: And then, like, they don't seem But I did mention I did mention in the book that I got to sleep until 07:30 because of my wonderful wife. So Yes. That's true. And that's nice. Made it possible. That's always good to give credit where credit is due. Yeah. No doubt.

[15:43]Zibby Owens: But so funny that there you were, right, preparing for the finals of the US Open, but they're just kids. Right? It's like they're you're just their dads. What was it like for you to be so revered and so in the public eye and yet at home, you know, just be the guy who runs the bathtub? I mean, I feel like Roger Federer must be going through some of this today with his four kids. Like, how do you manage that difference?

[16:04]Andre Agassi: Yeah. It's it's I think everybody's wired differently. You know? I I mean, I I know Roger to a to a a certain degree. He seems like as down to earth as a person as you you can be. I mean, certainly, he has a respect for for for all cultures and people and he's a deep knowledge of of history in both life and tennis. So I would I would imagine there's some real context that he has off the court. Are there other you know other people in the public eye you know they might choose they might believe what they read. I I don't know. For me, I I relished getting away from the hat I felt like I had to wear when I was in the public eye. You know, I I never felt really authentic, when I was out there. I mean, I I did come to terms with this being a talent of mine, but loving tennis was not who I was. I actually hated it for most of my life for a lot of reasons. And and I would get out there and and struggle with my purpose and reason. I found my reason finally and and and giving choice to other children through education, and and that became my my distraction from myself when I was out there. And when I had children, it actually it actually in some kind of odd way made it a lot easier for me because I was able to really escape the the it was so real and it was so who I was that it was a relief to me to have the responsibility of being a dad and and and to quite honestly feel normal and to feel like tennis just went away, a good day or a bad day, just like disappeared when when your kids come running down the the hallway because they hear the elevator open up at the hotel, you know, and they think it might be you. It's like it's, you know, so it was a it was a real asset of mine. I was really blessed to have five years where I could have them, you know, with me, during some of those, times when I think I would have felt felt pretty lonely not not not having them.

[18:18]Zibby Owens: In the book, you describe not liking school and not doing well in school, something that I'm sure many kids and parents can relate to. You you said, I don't seem to learn or process facts the way other kids do. I have a steel trap memory, but trouble concentrating. I need things explained twice, three times. How did that experience make you feel, and how do you think that experience of your own has tied into your passion for providing education now to students around the world?

[18:46]Andre Agassi: Yeah. I think my lack of education has been a big inspiration to that. The biggest reason being, you know, I I mean, I I described very very particularly in the book, you know, the life I was living as a child. It was it was the life of a professional. It wasn't the life of a of a of a of a kid. You know? And so I was always getting pulled out of school on Fridays for tournaments in Southern California at the age of seven years old to drive down, play all weekend, drive back late Sunday, get up, go to school, and and, you know, I I always felt I always felt behind. I never felt rested. I never felt ready for it. In our house, it was wake up, play tennis, brush your teeth, go to school, and in that order, you know, it was really it was really the way it was. So school wasn't a priority to my father, whatsoever. And and and so I was always kind of behind, and I was always tired, and and I might even had some learning, you know, deficits, you know, and and and as a result, I I never quite knew why I felt the way I felt, but I I shunned away from it. I I resented it. I felt like resenting school was loyalty to my dad, you know, and I believe tennis was what I had to do. I never had a choice. So as a result, that lack of choice eventually as my own as I grew up and I got started to sort of grow into my own voice. I was pretty clear with how much I resented not having that choice. And, you know, I never really liked how tennis made me feel as a child. I never liked that it affected family dinners, depending how good you played that day. I never I never liked, you know, how it made me feel every morning when I when I was having to go to school. And, you know, so there's so many things early on I didn't like. I didn't like the relationship it established. Tennis seemed to put a wedge in between my siblings and and my father. And and so there's so many moments growing up where I just I just resented not having that choice and and the pressure being on me to be the one to do it. And so I think when I really hit my lowest point, 27 years old, I'd fallen from the most convinced that getting the number one in world was going to be my answer, you know, and that somehow there's going to be some fulfillment in that in that in that goal and objective. And I I just remember getting to number one and literally feeling nothing, feeling like just empty. It was weird. It was like I'm I'm number one. It was almost worse being number one because it I was I was I was let in on this dirty little secret that it's doesn't change it. It doesn't change a darn thing, you know. And and so I had to I had to go through a real tailspin in my life, and I did. And I I and I self inflicted with choices of drugs and choices of lifestyle and and found myself in a marriage that I that was quickly failing and fell to a 140 in the world. And and then that's when I saw on TV after I had one of my worst losses. My coach basically told me we're going to quit or start over. And I just remember that moment. It was such a such an epiphany of a moment. I mean epiphanies don't change our lives. What we do with them is really what changes our life. But my epiphany was seeing so many people out in the streets and wondering what they did, if they loved what they did, if they even chose what they did. You know what mean? Do they have they choose their life? Do they have a choice in where they were born and what was nurtured and what their strengths and weaknesses are? So I kinda started to go, you know what? Just because I didn't choose my life doesn't mean that I can't take ownership of it and I can't find my reasons. So that was my epiphany, and and and I I searched for my reason from that day forward, which led to me seeing a sixty minutes piece on KIP knowledge's power program, which is a, one of the most renowned charter school operators in the country. And and I saw I saw these people changing these children's lives by rolling up their sleeves and and giving them choice. I saw what it meant for a child not to really have choice. Here I was bitching about being number one in the world when when other kids who don't have a choice can't escape the downward spiral of their of their of their of their own neighborhood and and gangs and prisons and drugs. And and so I said, you know what? That's what I wanna do. It was like overnight, I took out a $40,000,000 mortgage, and and I set about the herculean task of building my own charter school and trying to figure it out and trying to pay for it and trying to do so many things. But but what it did do, it it gave me my reason. And and I think lack of education, seeing children who really don't have choice in their life, my own disconnect with the lack of choice in my life, I think those are probably the working components to what has made me so passionate about education.

[26:38]Zibby Owens: And now you have, what, 65,000 school seats and eighty eighty charter schools? It's amazing how you've expanded like that. How did that happen? Well,

[26:48]Andre Agassi: that was that was spun off of of fifteen years of building my philanthropic school in Las Vegas. You know, I started to realize not being an educator and operator. I I kinda said to myself, you know, well, what am I if I'm not an educator or an operator? I realized I'm I'm basically I've been a facilitator for for these children. And, you know, I I don't I'm not in the classroom teaching. I'm not in the back of house organizing and and operating, and, you know, I'm I'm I'm putting people in right places and trying to make the best decisions. And and so one of the things that was hardest about that whole philanthropic experience was 1,200 kids in my school and 3,000 on the waiting list, you know, and the need was so much greater. I looked at it like I was twice the failure. I was a success, and I needed to figure out a way to to expand this this mission. And then I guess sometimes when you, I don't know, when you dream when you're awake or when you pray hard enough or when life just sometimes puts the right people in your life at the right time. And I and and after my book was written, this my now partner had read it, he called me and said, you know, I share your same passion and frustration for education. And and I think I think together we can do some really interesting things. I went down and met with him, and and we ended up through his his background of of inner city, you know, development and building. We we put together an out of the box model that sort of said, let's not wait for government to be efficient anymore. Let's not rely on philanthropy because we both have realized that it's not scalable. I mean, here you are with a waiting list and let's go to the private sector and sell a model that doesn't write the backs of our teachers, of our students or anything that we facilitate for these great operators, an ability for them to scale. So that's what we did. We put together this really interesting business model that allows us to bring capital to the table on day one, go with an operator to where they want to expand. There's obviously a need. It's not a software issue. There are plenty of great teachers inspired for friendly learning environment, and it's it's a hardware issue. A charter school can't access public dollars to build their facility. But once you have your chartered license, then every child that goes to that school, the money from the state follows a child to that school. So there's a revenue model on day one in these communities where a charter is now expanding to. And so if we could bring the capital to build a facility and then we can not play landlord in their life and allow them to fully incubate stabilize. Then through the taxes and bond market, you know, be able to get them a purchase power to buy back the school for a price that satisfies a like minded investor, you know, which is an investor that says, I'm not looking to to to make huge returns. I'm not looking to give away my money or I'm tired of giving away my money. But but I do wanna see I do wanna be responsible in my and, you know, I do wanna see social impact. I do wanna I wanna be responsible in in in what I do. So if we walk the tension between return on investment versus social, you know, scalability and sustainability, and and with that model, you know, have deployed close to a billion dollars over the last five years and built over 80 schools. This week I go to Florida actually to to open up a, you know, another one. So it's, you know, it's really been exciting and it's been a journey that I'm incredibly proud of and and continue to find ways to to to impact the lives of so many kids that don't have, you know, the the the luxury that that that other kids do. Your education should not be determined by your by your zip code. It's just it's not the way it should work. No. You're absolutely right.

[30:52]Zibby Owens: And I and I read that you're developing you're trying to develop a new, a new measure for dyslexia that could be a universal, sort of symptom check to make sure that kids get the help that they need. Is that can you tell me about the readability

[31:07]Andre Agassi: initiative you're involved in? Yeah. So I'm involved in I started this company with a few with I mean, I was I'm a very, very early, early investor with, called SquarePanda, and it's a platform that allows us to give real time intervention to kids as it relates to early childhood reading. So let me just back up a step from there and say that as I've seen all these schools get built, as I've spent time with all these leaders and operators and teachers and and and people that are, you know, in the weeds as it as it relates to day to day educational life, the same the same thing keeps coming up, which is the early childhood reading literacy. Like, the earlier child reads, the earlier they can process and gain comprehend content as opposed to just phonetically figuring out what the heck the word is saying. We're not we don't we haven't evolved to read. You know, reading is about seeing something, associating a sound with it, tying it with another letter, pronouncing those two together, making a word, then going to the auditor where you have to say the word, and then you say the word, and then you associate it with this meaning. There's like six or eight things going on in a brain just to read. And the great news is is that we have so much science and neuroscience behind this to understand these batons and how they're getting passed back and forth and where a child struggles. Because when a baton isn't lit up as much as other areas with these saltwater, like I'm I'm I almost call them shower caps. They're very noninvasive. You just wear it. They they get a child to interact with a game or to do something. And then you can actually predict this high percentile where the struggling points are gonna come with with a child, and then you can help meet them where they are and develop those muscles. I put this in my school to test it, and I was amazed at how fast some of these kids that really struggled got caught up to speed and even went past their peers in in in these case studies that I was able to do at my school. So that merited my complete commitment to this expansion because when you wanna talk about scalability, if you can if you can create a platform that is in the tech world, that really allows for children to be personalized in self directed reading and learning from pages of two to seven, Now you're talking about real implications, but this doesn't just have implications when it comes to reading. It has implications when it comes to red flagging dyslexia, as an example, because the earlier you detect dyslexia, I mean, you can you can people a lot of people don't realize it. They don't know they have it till sixth grade. You know, by then, it's costing $14,000 a year remediation. But if you can if you can recognize these sorts of things and, you know, by age of four, I mean, now you're now you're talking about getting rid of managing it, remediating it, and then not ever having to worry about it ever again in in a an incredibly short period of time. So the success that we're having on that end that has language, second language, teaching, you know, possibilities when the plane when the brain is most, you know, you know, you know, when you can mold the brain, it's like it's elastic when you're really young. I mean, the the second language learning acquisition, huge implications there. So anyhow, this has been about a couple years and we have a big business in in China and United States, and it's growing and scaling. And and I believe it's it's it's kinda makes what I'm doing with the schools seem pretty, one dimensional of sorts, you know, because they're stand alone schools that aren't affecting 1,500 kids in perpetuity, say, in each school. But this is about reaching, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not if not millions.

[35:13]Zibby Owens: That's amazing that you're doing that. I know for sure I'm going and getting these the SquarePanda starter kits for my little kids now after this, for sure. Just going back to tennis for a minute, You know, I I I am married to a former tennis pro who watches the Tennis Channel religiously, and the tournaments are just back to back to back to back. And I'm wondering how you feel about sort of the insanity of the of the tour schedule and what it does to players' bodies these days?

[35:44]Andre Agassi: Yeah. It's pretty it's it it does appear that way. I mean, I I I can honestly say that that, you know, I would I think the sport benefit a lot more from a more sustained off off season, for a couple of reasons. There's a lot to be said for the quality of a sport when you know you can properly, you know, recover from the season and prepare for the season. So I think the quality will raise. I also think the fans will look forward to it more and and and I think you can make it work. We're we're pretty fragmented in the ownerships of of these tournaments and and and and you know, some and some guys, you know, they wanna be out there grinding away because the more they play, the better chance they have for their for their ranking. So you're you're almost taking away opportunities in some respects. In other words, if you if you talk to the top, I don't want to speak for any player, but if you speak, if if you were to generally speaking, you talk to the top 15 guys in the world. They're going to want an entirely different schedule than than the guys 75 to 100 in the world you know. So it's kind of hard to to make everybody happy but you would love to see the sport move forward in in the best interest of its own future. But these these guys have short careers and some they're getting longer of course as we're seeing with with Roger and Rafa. And and I know guys are playing into the 30s now but even if you play into your mid 30s it's you get a window of time and then your time's over with. And guys want want their opportunity to be out there to play.

[37:14]Zibby Owens: Didn't think of it like that. And how, how did you find coaching versus playing?

[37:21]Andre Agassi: It was interesting. You know? It's when I played, I never felt pressure at all. I wasn't it was never about pressure. It was I felt stress, like stress to, you know, take every box and make sure everything, you know, organization. I just, you know, you just you don't want curves. You have your rhythms. You have your, you know, your your your style of going about getting ready for practices for matches. You know where to spend energy, you know where not to, you know, and and so you manage your day and all the details that go into making your day the best it can possibly be. That that was stressful because you're constantly thinking about it. But then once you get out there, everything's in order. It's like, you know, you just hit the gas pedal and just go and hope for the best, you know, but coaching is the exact opposite. You know, I never felt any stress, but I didn't really have to do anything. You know, it wasn't me executing wasn't me executing any game plan. It was, you know, or anything like that. But but you feel a huge amount of pressure because you see some of these hopes and dreams. You see somebody who is is doing, you know, everything possible to make themselves the best they can be for that moment and the expectation on the line. You don't you don't and, you know, if you say one thing, you know, and it's wrong or it's it's not it's not taking a step in the right direction, it's like you feel like, you know, you have this little lever with this giant crane, you know, and you touch it wrong and boom, that crane can do it can it can destroy something or it can build something, you know, and so you really choose wisely. You really listen more than you talk, and you try to learn more than you teach, you know? And I think that part was that part was different. And and and I gotta say challenging, and any anything problem solving, is something I find, you know, enjoyable.

[39:16]Zibby Owens: Well, thank you so so much for being on moms don't have time to read books. This has been so interesting to chat with you. I really can't thank you enough.

[39:25]Andre Agassi: Oh, I could chat with you forever. This is this is fun. Well, good luck with with this moving forward, and Thank you. I know our roads will cross one way or another, and

[39:35]Zibby Owens: thanks for your time. Oh, thank you for your time. Thanks so much. Take care. Awesome. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks so much for listening to tonight's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm Zibby Owens. You can read more about me at zibbyowens.com. But please subscribe to my podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books on iTunes, Stitcher, or Podbean. Thanks so much. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.