Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from “Sometimes Wrong but Never in Doubt” (Skyhorse Publishing, June 2026), by George Barrios, former co-president of WWE.

Growth is always related to revenue, profits, and cash flow. By 2018, WWE was reaping mammoth rewards from the changes Michelle [Wilson, my co-president at WWE] and I had implemented. The organization was no longer just a traveling road show obsessed with event logistics. We had entered a totally different game, the one I referenced when I quoted Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix. He said that his number one competitor was sleep.

What he meant was every minute every person spent watching Netflix was valuable. Because if people spent a lot of their time enjoying his service, then they would be willing to keep paying for it. Ideally, each eyeball........

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