Fernanda Gentil and what changes when you bet on your own work

I've been a big fan of BRASA and have attended its conferences since 2019. The quality of the conversations always stays with me. I've joined a panel and led a workshop at the Sorbonne in Paris, spoken at the 2024 BRASA Summit Americas at Columbia University in New York, and spoken about entrepreneurship to Brazilian students in Berkeley. This time, I came to Madrid as a mentor at BRASA Summit Europe.

At IE University, the title on screen introduced the conversation with Fernanda Gentil as the journey of a sports journalism icon. One part of that story particularly interests me as an entrepreneur. After 15 years at Globo, she left while still under contract, with no new project scheduled at the network. She had offers elsewhere and wanted to try running her own channel. The decision also meant considering what would happen if she stayed. Fernanda Gentil's interview with UOL

What you take with you when you leave

In 2009, as a producer at SporTV, Fernanda gathered stories from local teams, selected what might interest the channel's news programs and tracked down the material. Two months later, she moved into reporting. She covered the 2014 and 2018 World Cups and the Rio Olympics, and hosted *Globo Esporte* and *Esporte Espetacular*. By the time she left, she had spent years learning how to pick a story, work live and talk to different audiences. Memória Globo

Some of that work was highly visible. Many people first got to know Fernanda during the 2014 World Cup. The network also had a schedule, production teams and an audience that knew where to find her. On your own channel, some of those decisions become yours. Which format is worth repeating every week? How does someone find the first episode? What brings them back for the second?

Soon after she left, CazéTV announced that Fernanda would cover the Women's World Cup. I found the combination interesting. She could explore a channel with her own voice while working on a major tournament alongside a team with an established audience. Both possibilities are worth considering if you're thinking about starting a business after years at a company. A first project with a partner can get your work in front of an audience while you figure out what you want to build on your own. Fernanda Gentil's interview with UOL

Give the audience a chance to come back

A question from the audience about women's football added another dimension. Beyond money, what does the game need to grow? Fernanda talked about investment, visibility and commercial support. To explain equity, she asked us to imagine a child and an adult trying to look over a wall. If each gets a crate to stand on, the adult might see the other side while the child is still looking at the wall.

I thought about what needs to happen before someone becomes a fan. I need to know when the team plays, be able to watch and start recognizing the players. If I catch a great match and then spend weeks looking for the next broadcast, it's hard to build a habit. Part of the investment goes into making that possible. When today's audience becomes the main argument for how much to invest, that part of the story gets left out.

It's a question worth asking when you're bringing a new product to market. If few people came back, what happened between their first experience and the second? Did it solve a problem they face often? Did they know where to find it again? The answers lead to different decisions. You can spend months improving something your audience has barely had a chance to try.

The work that follows the decision

When asked how to stand out in journalism as AI takes hold, Fernanda talked about checking sources and experimenting with writing, scripting and directing. She also talked about learning from what went wrong the last time. I liked hearing that after a conversation about such a big career change. Leaving Globo made news in a day. Finding the formats worth sticking with would take many rounds of work.

If someone brought this decision to a mentoring session, I'd start with a project they can already put in front of people. For a journalist, that might be covering a few rounds of a competition, with a place to publish and readers who can give feedback. For someone leaving a company to start a business, it might mean serving a first client with the skills they already have. Once you've delivered something, you can talk more precisely about what people came looking for, why they came back and what is worth building next.