How Inside Edition's Lisa Guerrero Reinvented Herself With Bravery, Passion and The Desire To Make A Difference

Once in a while you meet somebody and they've got such a dynamic personality backstory and career that like peeling back the layers of an onion, it just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. And every single layer is just more fascinating than the next. Well, today I'm interviewing Lisa Guerrero. She is the chief investigative correspondent for Inside Edition and one of the hardest working women in all of television. She is an award winning investigative journalist. She's one of the first national sports broadcasters. She's been an actress, a model, a cheerleader for the Rams, a Playboy cover girl and a philanthropist artist. And really an amazing woman who is out to bring justice to the underdogs, to bring bad people down and to bring hope to millions of people worldwide. I was very fortunate to get her to sit down with today's interview where she can really tell her story about what got her to where she's at. It's a story of reinvention, of bravery, of following her passion and once more, helping out the underdog. I'm very fortunate to welcome Lisa Guerrero to the show. Lisa, are you with me?

Thank you, Brad. I'm so excited to be here.

I am too. So as we are recording this, we are, you know, neck deep in the pandemic of the COVID and coronavirus. And a lot of us, myself included, are stuck at home on social media and on Netflix and on the Internet trying to get some work done. You are out and about. You are doing investigative journalism around Covid every single day. Is that correct?

Yes. So I guess I've been blessed because I work for a show, Inside Edition, that didn't go down when the coronavirus started. A lot of the shows in syndication either went into a hiatus or went into repeats. And what we did is we completely shifted the way we do news. And the show that's based in New York had a huge issue because there were two people that tested positive for COVID 19 that worked at both the production offices and the studio. So they had to evacuate both those buildings at CBS in New York. So that shifted the majority of the work to the LA bureau, which is a small satellite bureau for Inside Edition. I live in la, and although I'm the investigative journalist for the show, my unit is based in New York. But we completely stopped doing what I typically do, which is, you know, long form investigative journalism. And they asked me to be a daily breaking news reporter doing general assignment stories on co.

So a month ago, I started going out in the community covering the coronavirus pandemic and what it means for families and for people, for small businesses, for people that are vulnerable. So we really shifted the way that we told stories with a skeleton crew as a production. Everything changed. The way we collect news changed because, you know, you have to wear masks. You have to. You have to clean all your equipment. We have to use boom mics instead of handheld mics. We have to keep social distance. But at the same time, I need to go out into the world to gather the news and to talk to people and to shoot standups. And so it's scary in a way, as a human being, you know, I don't want to get sick, but I'm trying to take all the precautions I can while still maintaining the focus, which is I need to tell our 5 million viewers a night, much as I can, about a story that's not just changing every day. It's changing hour to hour, minute by minute. And so I feel blessed to be able to be a journalist right now covering the biggest story of our lifetime, really. And the ramifications of this story on real people and how it's hurting and affecting them. And so I take that really seriously. And at the same time, I'm trying to not get sucked into the negativity of the ramifications of the story.

That's gotta be really challenging to do as well. And I know right now, especially with.

The political environment, especially as it relates to news, and there's a lot of animosity there between both of them. So you're trying to do your job as an investigative journalist, but then you're getting. Not you, but the industry is also then getting a lot of negativity with the fake news, et cetera. And I know for somebody like yourself, who's a real investigative journalist who likes to get down to the heart of things, that that's probably very frustrating.

Yeah, I'm so glad you mentioned that, Brad. And that was really astute of you to kind of put that together, because it is something that bothers my friends that are in the business. Like, we journalists are not the media. Fake news, press is the enemy. All these things we've been hearing from this administration is hurtful, not just to me as a person, but to the foundation of our country that brings you information every day and holds the rich and powerful accountable. Accountability journalism is a huge part of what I do as an investigative reporter. But. But just doing this breaking news day to day on the COVID 19 issue, there is important information that you need to believe the media is telling you so that you can go and get the proper face Masks or get the information about our schools closing or not. Are these businesses open? How am I going to get my check that's supposed to be coming from this administration that I haven't received yet? You know, these pieces of information are brought to you by the media. And by the media, I mean your friends, your neighbors. These are people that write for your local paper, that write important blogs, that deliver podcasts, that are on MSNBC and CNN and Inside Edition. You know, these are people that are working for you to bring you the best information possible. So I think it's really important that people trust the media. And. And of course, everybody understands that part of what we do is entertainment too. Not every single story I do is serious. I do Consumer Reports and fun stories, and of course we cover entertainment news as well. But during this time of crisis, it's really important that people trust the media. We're not the enemy.

Right? Yeah.

And putting yourself in harm's way as well, to go out and talk to people on the front lines. And you mentioned you go to the hospitals and you go to other places where you're facing that. And it's a lot. It's very easy for people in the comfort of their homes to make judgments, calls and et cetera. So it takes a lot of bravery. And it just so happens, from what we've talked about offline, bravery has been a very big theme in your life. It's a very important concept to you. I know you do a lot of public speaking on bravery.

Let's come back to the journalism and the career part there because I'm really fascinated, really by some of the stories that have led people to where they're at, that have led you to where you're at as a, you know, as a very multi talented, multifaceted human being, from investigative journalism to sports broadcasting to modeling and acting and songwriting. And I want to dive into some of that. But let's go back and let's talk about some of the stories and some of the bravery that you had to face growing up and throughout your career. So I know for a fact that you had.

That you lost your mother when you were really young and that helped set in motion chain reaction of events that have led to where you are today. Take us back there to your childhood and what that was like in growing up and some of the things that you experienced that led you to where you are today.

Yeah, I was really blessed to have been born to two people that were very progressive and cared about people. They were social justice warriors. My dad was A social worker for the Salvation Army. And my mom was a volunteer for the Salvation Army. They met in Chicago when my dad was getting his master's in social services and wanted to dedicate his life to helping people. And my mom was an immigrant from South America, from Chile, and she moved to the United States as a teenager, didn't know English, learned English here in America, and my dad didn't know a lick of Spanish, but they communicated through the language of love. And they got married, and there I was. So my dad got this job for the Salvation Army. They brought him to San Diego, which is where I grew up. When we were in San Diego, my mom contracted, was diagnosed with lymphoma, which is a form of cancer. And very quickly we found out that she had lymphoma at around Christmas time. And she died right before Valentine's Day.

You had a very short window there between diagnosis and saying goodbye.

Right. And I was 8 and she was 29, and my little brother was 6. So we didn't really understand the concept of death, really. So that was a confusing time, as you can imagine. Thankfully, I have a great dad that when my mom passed away and we were dealing with grief and anger and shock and sadness, he put me in theater therapy for children, and he put my brother in music therapy. And my brother ended up being a professional musician. And now he's a pilot, but he's still a musician. He's traveled all over the world playing his music. And I became an actress. And so my dad really took this huge challenge that we were all facing.

And decided that the best way for me to work out my grief was to take acting classes and to learn how to deal with it as a young artist, as an actor. And I'm so thankful that he did that because it allowed me to be angry and to be sad, but to be able to put that in a safe place.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's terrific because you hear so many stories of. Especially you think of, like, now a newly single dad, and it sounds like he was relatively young, where they're just the best they can, they're learning. And then if they don't give their children an outlet to deal with traumas like that, it gets bottled up and it shows up in different ways. Luckily, you had the outlet, and it became a very productive outlet because it, as you said, you became an actress and you started. Didn't you start at a pretty young age doing some commercial acting and other things like that?

Yeah. So I was discovered in high school by a modeling agent. And a talent agent. And so I started modeling at 15, 16.

I got my first SAG AFTRA job doing a Ford Ranger commercial and just started working in commercials and acting. I was in Matlock in the Heat of the Night, Batman Returns. I had small roles in films and.

TV shows, and that kind of just grew and grew, and I was modeling during this time as well. And the other component that my dad gifted me with is the love of sports, because my dad was a sports fan. So all these years that I was growing up without a mom, my dad and I really bonded by going to Chargers games and Padres games, and he's teaching me how to score baseball games up in the stands. And, you know, I was a huge, you know, Air Coryell, Dan Fouts. I was a big Chargers fan, big Padres fan. So as I grew up, I learned this secret language that the other girls didn't know, which is called sports. And my dad put me in sports. I was playing bobby socks and was running track and field. And that really helped give me confidence in my physical body. Right. Because if you're an athlete, rather than just being a pretty girl, you learn to look at your body as something that can help you achieve.

Sports challenge. You look at yourself differently, not just by what you look like, but what you can achieve.

That had to be really interesting because. Yeah, and you were modeling at the time, too, Right. So, you know, obviously, very pretty girl and doing all this, and you, at that point, you're somewhat of a sex object. Right. You're like an object of beauty, et cetera. But then to also have the athletic side to where it's not. It's not an object of beauty, it's an object of functionality, and it's an object of performance. And that had to be. I would imagine that was a really interesting thing to deal with mentally, but also a really healthy thing, because you didn't just view your body as something that men looked at and objectified, but you looked at it as something that you could use to perform in all different areas of your life.

Right. Yeah, exactly. So I kind of had this really interesting foundation thanks to my dad and thanks to facing these challenges. And. And so here I am at 19. I had been a model. I was acting. I tried out on a dare to be a Rams cheerleader. I was a cheerleader at my junior college in Orange county in Huntington beach called Golden West College. So I was cheerleading at junior college, and all the girls were gonna go try out for the Rams, and I was rolling my eyes. I could never be a Professional cheerleader at the time. You know, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders are big. And the Rams cheerleaders were like. They were like these glamorous, supermodel showgirl Rockettes. I mean, they just seemed like superstars to me. I could not imagine being one of them. But I went down on the whim with the girls, and I made it so they had close to 2,000 women tried out that year, and they took seven new girls, seven rookies. So I made. Was amazing. It was a dream come true. It was like having 30 older sisters, and it was a performance team. So we rehearsed and we learned routines and we worked out together. And it was just a great sorority of women who I'm still close with today, decades later. These women are like, one is a big executive at Nordstrom. This other one is, you know, runs the entire.

What is it that. She's one of the principals at this huge school system down in Orange County. They've all gone on to do these amazing things, and so it really set a foundation for me in performance.

And you did that for how many years?

Four years.

Four years. I find that interesting that that didn't. That it happened from a dare. Right. That even wasn't like some major goal that you had, but it was a dare. And out of 2,000 women, you were one of seven. That's fantastic. And then didn't you go on to work with the Pats and the Falcons and. Different way.

Yeah. So I loved being a cheerleader. And at the time, I was dating a guy who was. His name was Hugh Millen, and he was the backup quarterback for the Rams. He got traded to the Falcons via Plan B, free agency. And we had been dating, and we weren't supposed to date the players, by the way. That was very much.

I was going to ask. I thought I'd heard that.

No, no, no.

So I had to make a choice. You know, he wanted to marry me, so I had to make a choice. Do I go with my boy, the serious guy that I've been dating, Do I go with him to Atlanta, or do I stay in LA and pursue acting and modeling? Well, the Falcons at the time didn't have a professional cheerleading squad. They had disbanded it years before. And so I thought, wait a minute. I've been a Rams cheerleader for four years. I became a captain my last year. I. I bet I could go with him and start a new squad in Atlanta. So I took a meeting with Tommy Nobis, who was the GM at the time, and I said, look, I can start Your squad. I can be the director. I can choreograph the routines. And they hired me, and I was there for several years. We grew the squad. It was an amazing experience. And then that boyfriend got traded to New England, to the Patriots. And I'm like, oh, are you kidding me? And again, they didn't have a real squad. They had disbanded their squad. And I thought, I think I could do this again. So I literally started their squad, too. So for years, I had kind of been this NFL person, starting these squads, directing cheerleaders, doing choreography. But I still had my foot in acting. I had a role in Love Potion Number Nine with Sandra Bullock. I had been doing in the Heat of the Night, different shows that were based out of Atlanta or Boston, still modeling. But now I'm starting to think I love sports. There are very few female sports reporters in the country. I think I can be a sportscaster. And when I was in Boston, somebody gave me a shot at doing a cable show about sports. And so I'm on this cable show on Tuesday nights in Boston. An LA agent sees my tape. He contacts me, and he says, lisa, I think you could be a huge star in sports. You need to come back home to la, and I want to represent you. And so at that point that the boyfriend and I had broken up, I'm like, okay, I'm single. I don't have kids. I'm not married. I've been doing this job. I don't need to continue to be a director of cheerleaders anymore. I want to do my own career. So I moved back home, and my first job was the weekend sportscaster for cbs, too, in Los Angeles. So I became the first female sportscaster there. And that grew from being a local sportscaster to a regional sportscaster to national sportscaster in just a couple years.

So, yeah, that's fascinating. You don't hear that career trajectory very often. And then you were. Were you ever in the locker rooms? Were you down with the players?

Every day, yeah. So I was a beat reporter for the Dodgers, the Lakers, ucla hoops, USC football, the Chargers, when they were in San Diego. So I was driving down to San Diego from LA to cover the Chargers at the time. And of course, the.

I remember those days. We missed the Chargers, huh? We missed those Chargers down here. Although it's not like we could go to a game right now and for who knows how long.

I feel so bad for Chargers fans in San Diego. They used to be my team, and now they're up here not doing that.

Well, that's Right, Let me ask you a question about this. So, you know, we're a couple years ago with the whole MeToo movement started and obviously started in Hollywood and people talking about sexual harassment. And then women started coming out from all over the place, whether it's in business, in corporate, etc. You worked in sports, an absolute male dominated industry with tons of egos and very, very big personalities. And I think I've heard you say that you've talked about this before, but did you experience a lot of the. Me too sexual. Whether it's sexual harassment or just sexual.

Misbehavior, et cetera, quite a bit in that space. Or did you. What was your.

Yeah, so, you know, I was actually one of the women that came forward in the Hollywood MeToo movement because Steven Seagal.

Harassed me during an audition process on a film. And so I came forward to talk about him. And then after I did, several other women told their stories about him as well. But then I started to think back on my sports casting days and there wasn't a week that went by where I wasn't harassed. Of course, I was usually the only woman in the locker room of the teams I covered. I was on a lot of testosterone driven shows. Tough man, sports geniuses, best damn sports show, period. I was the original woman on that show with all the men and of course Monday Night Football. So I experienced it hundreds of times, some form of harassment. And obviously you walk into a locker room and it is a male driven, testosterone filled room full of people that are either really angry that they just lost that game or really cocky that they just won that game. And so I found myself the target of, of a lot of that energy. And what I chose to do at the time was not to sue and not to.

You know, to go to, you know, their owners or, you know, hr. I chose to battle through it and a lot. I tried to use a sense of humor with it, to deflect it, but I knew that if I would have complained about it, I wouldn't be doing that job anymore. And so I had to make a deal with the devil. And I look back at that a lot and I go, did I make the right decisions back then? But I think I did what I felt was best to do to keep my job at the time. And what I did end up doing was earning the respect of all those players and managers and coaches through the years. And then I became one of their favorite reporters because they knew I would go in and seriously go into the locker room, not to hang out with them, not to get to know them, they. But to ask them three or four questions for my post game show and get out as soon as possible and deliver my live shot from the field. And so they just saw me constantly, night in, night out, every day doing my job, and I earned the respect of those players. I like to tell young women that want to get into that business, somebody doesn't hand you a microphone and your respect, they hand you a microphone. You have to earn their respect and that takes time.

Right.

I was in that business for 10 years, but I look back on it with a lot of fondness, but boy, I put up with a lot of shit.

Well, and that is also, I fortunately cannot relate to the, you know, for the, for that exact same thing. But my empathy goes out to all women who've been in your position where it really is a big choice because it's very easy for somebody who's not affected the public, the armchair quarterbacks, right, to say, well, they should have spoke up back then. But like you said, you had a very real choice to make. Like, granted, if it was, if it was a very big physical experience, et cetera, you know, like some women have had, that can be a different story. But you know, you are really balancing something like a career that you've worked really hard to get and that, you know that. All right, do I just have to put up with some of this even though it's wrong and like that, like you mentioned, a deal with the devil, like, that has to be a very big balancing act that you have to decide at what point is enough is enough and how much do I put up with this in order to advance my career knowing very well, like, yeah, if you did speak up, if you sued, if you did, if you became the squeaky wheel, you get replaced.

Right, right, exactly. And that's why, you know, when I look back on that, that's why I decided to write a book. I'm writing a book about it called Between a Jock and a Hard Place.

I love the title, by the way. Between a Jock and a Hard Place.

Thank you. So, you know, I wanted to write about that. And that's also the basis of what I talk about now when I talk about being brave. You know, I do keynote speaking about this. And a lot of that started from my challenges as the only woman in the locker room in a lot of those teams that I covered. So, of course I faced challenges growing up without a moment, you know, and having to learn how to navigate the things that a girl needs her mom for and learning that myself. And then, you know, being a woman in locker room. And now I, you know, chase bad guys for a living. As an investigative reporter, I've learned all these lessons about how to tap into my inner courage, and it's really something you can teach yourself to do. People aren't born brave. People are born, but they can learn to be brave. And so I've got, like, a whole set of things that I practice myself that helps me literally face down people pulling guns on me, which has happened. I've been hit by a car. I get death threats and rape threats from covering these scumbags. So, of course, I've had to learn to tap into that or I wouldn't be able to go to work the next day.

But I do know you just mentioned something fascinating. You said that you've got some ways, a few ways that you deal with this. Are there any practices that you do, any things that you do to help yourself get over that and that you give advice to others that summon bravery?

So, you know when you. When somebody says, okay, if you got to lose weight, you got to get into the gym, and there are, you know, exercises that you're going to do to increase your strength or flexibility. So I really believe that bravery is something that you can practice and that you can get stronger at and better at. So. So I do this thing where I encourage everybody to commit a random act of bravery every day. Meaning you wake up one day and you're gonna find some point in that day to do something out of your comfort zone, something you normally wouldn't do, whether it's the first one to raise your hand in class, or whether you're the person that's gonna sit next to somebody at lunch that nobody else wants to sit next to. Or finally going into your boss's office and asking for the raise, or standing up for somebody who's being marginalized in line at the grocery store because they're speaking Spanish and somebody's bullying them. And normally you would not want to engage. I encourage people to find one small thing doesn't have to be a big thing, but one moment every day to be this much braver than you think you would ever be and do that every day. I promise you, Brad, this is. It's crazy. People that I've talked. I've talked about this a while. People that have practiced this have gotten back to me saying, oh, my God, I saw something then happen three months later at a gas station, and I rushed in to help. That's not who I Used to be. I used to be the person that would, like, have blinders on and mind my own business. Now I'm the person that cares for other people. And I believe that that's the way that we as a society. If we all did that, can you imagine how much better everybody's life would be if we were all looking out for each other and taking care of each other and ourselves? Most of us don't even stick up for ourselves, much less somebody else.

I love this concept that, yeah, the bravery, it's like a muscle, right? The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. You know, a good friend of mine has a. He has a task that he has, some of his mentees and students do. I won't go into all the background of him, but he says, take a $20 bill and go give it away and come up with a reason for why you're giving it to somebody. And that doesn't even sound brave, right? Just like, take $20 and go up and walk up and hand it to a stranger and then tell them the reason you're giving it to them. And he said, that doesn't. I mean, that sounds like, oh, that doesn't take bravery. But when you really think about doing it and you think about, I'm going to walk up to this person, I'm going to give them $20, what are they going to say? How am I going to justify this? And our internal dialogue just starts.

And it's an amazing thing to watch. You almost get into this meta position, watching yourself react a different way. Like, all I'm doing is giving this guy 20 bucks. Why am I so trepidatious about this? So little? Things like that. It doesn't even have to be something extremely uncomfortable, but things like that can be uncomfortable. And I remember when I did that, I. I just had this really funny feeling, like, why was I so nervous to go up and give somebody $20? And after I did it, I felt this sense of liberation and. But I love this. I'm kind of the, like, I've always kind of pushed myself to do that stuff. Like, I don't. I don't embarrass that easily, but I like to push myself out of my comfort zone as well, because it's where I found the biggest limitations is when I try to stay there and stay super comfortable. Luckily, right now, none of us are comfortable. We're facing, you know, unprecedented circumstances, and we're all having to be brave. I mean, just staying at home when we want to go do other stuff is Actually, somewhat of an act of bravery.

Were there any other kind of cool little tips or tricks that you give people or practices that you do to help instill that?

Yeah, you know, I always, you know, because I'm a journalist, I. You know, the main thing that I do is people are like, oh, you're on tv. It's so cool. It's so glamorous. The majority of my job is not glamorous. It's literally doing research. It's reading and doing background and, you know, I just sound so boring. But it's true. The best way to be really good at your job and to be able to get in front of people and to, you know, pitch something at a sales meeting or, you know, do something in front of your boss, your colleagues that you're scared to do, the best way to do that is to be as prepared and have as much information in your grasp as you possibly can. So, I mean, the foundation of being brave and being good at what you do, believe it or not, is just being prepared and reading and researching and it just sounds so boring. But when you are armed with the knowledge of every single thing that you can possibly glean on a particular subject that you're about ready to launch into, it makes you this courageous superhero, this fountain of information. So I tell kids this all the time because they're like, oh, you get to do this and you get to do that. And I'm like, no. I spend hours and hours every day in sweats in front of a computer, writing notes, writing questions and reading my research.

All the glamour, the glamour, being a celebrity journalist. I want to go back, staying on this topic of bravery and going back to where we were talking about in your career. So you worked in broadcasting from local to regional, national, and you were with Monday Night Football, and.

You got offered a proposition that took a lot of bravery. Yeah, and I want to talk about that. I'm setting you up because I know this story. But tell us what happened when you were 39 years old that you. You had a decision to make.

So through my career as a model, I had been offered many opportunities with Playboy to be a Playmate through the year, through all the years starting when I was like, 19 through my 20s, and I kept saying, no, no, I don't want to be a Playmate, I don't want to do that. I want to be a broadcaster, I want to be a sportscaster, I want to be an actress. This would be terrible for my career. So I kept turning them down. Well, after I had spent 10 years as a sportscaster, and I started to think about what's my next chapter. I'm now 39, soon to be 40. I wanted to do something like maybe a news magazine show, maybe being an entertainment reporter. I wanted to launch back into acting again. What was I going to do? And, you know, here comes my yearly offer from Playboy. But this time, you know, last few years, it hadn't been as a playmate. They wanted me to do a celebrity cover for Playboy. And I kept turning him down. And my ex husband. So my husband at the time in the trash, saw this proposal from Playboy in the Playboy folder. And he goes, what is this? And I said, playboy asked me to be a celebrity, you know, cover. And he's like, wait, what? And you said, no? And I said, yeah, why would I? I don't want to, you know, do Playboy. And he goes, are you. It's iconic Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe, Halle Berry, Charlize Theron. All of these women have done, you know, Playboy and have done celebrity covers. Cindy Crawford, Farrah Fawcett. And I started to think about it. I'm like, wait a minute. They're gonna let me go to whatever city I want to. They're gonna let me use whatever photographer I want to. They're gonna let me pick the pictures. I don't have to be nude, so why wouldn't I do a celebrity cover? And I started thinking about it. I'm like, I'm going to do it. And at 39, soon to be 40. So my issue came out when I was 40. I thought, this is empowering, and this is going to take bravery because I don't look like I used to look when I was 20. And I'm going to get in front of, you know, granted, I'm not completely nude, but it's still a lot of skin showing. And there is a thing called airbrushing. Nevertheless, I've got to be kind of naked, almost naked, in front of a crew of people and in this magazine. But then I thought, you know, it's empowering. Why? Why can't I still be sexy at 40? Why can't I still be feminine, strong, smart, and be making, you know, a strategic career decision? Because I knew that was going to give me the platform at 40 to get interviewed, to hopefully then say, I want to use this to get into another field now. I want to do entertainment news now.

Did you ever worry at all that it might negatively impact 100%?

Yeah. And everybody, you know, my agent at the time, don't do it. My brother. Oh, My gosh, don't do it. People were really nervous that if I did it, I would never work again in journalism. And it was a huge risk, and I would not recommend this to a future journalist out there. But because I had finished sports and I didn't know if I'd ever get another job again in journalism, I thought, well, I'm going to risk this, and it could backfire. But I did it. And it ended up being a beautiful cover. Very conservative, very glamorous, but probably less skin than you would see on the COVID of Vogue. And Inside Edition did a story about it. So a show called Inside Edition that I had watched and loved all my life, they did a story about me being on the COVID of playboy at 40 and a former sportscaster. So they did this story about me, and that story ended up earning me a contract. They offered me a contract as a reporter for Inside Edition based on their viewers liking me.

That's so great.

So I became, you know, that started my relationship with the Inside Edition. They hired me as a general assignment reporter in 2006, and here we are, 2020, and now I'm their chief investigative correspondent. And for last 10 years, I've been chasing bad guys for them.

Yeah, you have. And you've. You've won a lot of awards for your investigative journalism. Like something like 25 awards or something like this.

Five national investigative awards. Yeah, it's just been. I mean, I could not have imagined me landing here, you know, as a. When I was a kid or in my 20s or even my 30s, I never would have imagined doing investigative journalism. And let me tell you, it is the best job that I've ever had. Feel like it's so empowering as a woman to be in front of a female audience because a lot of our audience are women. And to be able to chase bad guys and to let them kind of live vicariously through me. And I get letters from young girls saying, now they want to be a journalist because they see me, they see my story, because once they air on Inside Edition, they put them on their YouTube channel. And so now all these kids watch me on YouTube chasing bad guys, and they just binge them. They binge all my confrontations. And so now I've got all these kids, a huge new fan base. Millions of kids are watching my videos, and now they want to be a.

Journalist because they think they want to chase bad guys.

They think I'm a superhero.

Yeah, absolutely. I remember my favorite one, and I didn't even. I had seen this before we ever Met was the one where you chased down Kenneth Copeland, the sleazy televangelist, and confronted him over his use of private jets. And you got a lot of visibility from that, didn't you?

Yes. So immediately. So it went viral worldwide. So Inside Edition, we did a story about televangelists using private donations for their luxurious lifestyle. So I had confronted Kenneth Copeland and a couple of other people for the story, but the entire 13 minute, 12 or 13 minute full clip we ended up posting a couple of weeks later on Inside edition's website and YouTube channel. And that went viral. It went crazy. People worldwide were sharing it and it's been seen on CNN and MSNBC and Good Morning America and all over BBC, all over Europe. So quickly, over half a billion people worldwide saw it immediately. And it is one of the most viral videos that exists right now in news anywhere.

Yeah, I love that. And you know, back to bravery, you walk up to people. I mean, you. There's the video on there. I'll put the link in the show. Notes of the, of the YouTube video of you confronting Kenneth. But yeah, you confront people now and you're investigating, you're confronting them. That takes bravery because, you know, it's, it's not a friendly sit down interview like we're doing here. It is like you, you once more putting yourself at risk because you never quite know how somebody's going to react when they're being confronted.

Right. Well, accountability journalism, which is what investigative journalism is, requires you to go out and to interview people that have done, you know, bad things or that have scammed people or hurt people or committed crimes. You know, I've confronted people that have killed people. And, you know, that that means that you have to go out there in person and fly to some, you know, town somewhere and track that person down, sit on surveillance, wait for them to come into a public venue so that you can have an unscheduled interview with them. And, you know, they used to call it ambush journalism and Mike Wallace used to do this back in the day and nobody really does that now. It's expensive to do this kind of journalism, but I think it's important that people see that there is accountability and that people are out there fighting for justice for people that are vulnerable and that have been taken advantage of or ripped off. So I'm really proud of the work we do. But yeah, it's a little. Can be dicey and dangerous.

I imagine it can. So we've talked a lot about the dicey and dangerous parts of your life. Let's Lighten it up a little bit with some of the more passionate projects that you have. I'm fascinated by.

Your work as both an artist, both a visual and an artist, audio artist, as well as some of the work you do for some big philanthropic causes. But you mentioned how your dad encouraged you in sports and theater and all of that other stuff. Did he encourage your artistic abilities as well?

Yes. So my dad is a poet, he sings, he's an artist, and he's a photographer. Along with being, you know, this philanthropic Salvation army fundraiser.

Looks like it runs in the genes, this whole multifaceted.

Yes, it does, it does. So he really encouraged me young to pursue art and acting and music. And when I got older, I became obsessed with mosaics. And I had traveled to Europe and had seen these ancient mosaics in these cathedrals. And so when I got back to Los Angeles, I wanted to take a workshop to teach me how to make mosaics and how to cut, you know, you have to cut ceramic or cut glass and grout and plan out your. Your design and seal the pieces. I mean, it's a several step project and a lot of them can take weeks or months to create. So I was really fascinated with this. I came back and took out a weekend workshop and started to do my own mosaics. And I created a line of mosaics called Kitchen Bitches, which are backsplashes with women of different ethnicities wearing real jewelry, holding, you know, kitchen utensils. And the, you know, I would have, like, funny sayings on them. She's always cooking up trouble, or if you can't take the heat, go eat next door. And so there were women that. And they would be wearing rock and roll T shirts and jewelry and they'd have tongue piercings. And so I created these out of mosaic glass and they started to be shown at art galleries. And so I have some celebrity buyers. So Tommy Thayer from KISS bought a piece. Johnny Damon, World series champion, bought a piece. And so they became popular, these Kitchen Bitches. And so I do everything from traditional mosaics, like fireplace surrounds and beautiful kind of classic Spanish looking mosaics to pop culture, you know, kind of feminist pop art. So I do both.

Right. And you've even got a book with some of your mosaic artwork, Jewelry for your table, right?

Yeah. So Jewelry for your table is an arts and crafts book. And I teach people how to take vintage brooches and to make them into, believe it or not, napkin ring holders. And this little arts and crafts project just got really popular online. I would do these little Crafts. And I would post them on Instagram and Facebook and people went crazy. How can I buy those? Would you make them for me? And so Schiffer Publishing published a book called Jewelry for your table that teaches you how to do this. And it also has some of my mosaic work in there and my kind of, you know, my background. And so that's available everywhere on Amazon. And so if you're into arts and crafts, this is a really cool craft to make.

It sounds like it. And as I mentioned, your. It doesn't stop at the visual arts. So you were telling me a story about how you stumbled, literally stumbled into songwriting. And I love this story. Can you. Can you fill in some blank? Take me back there. What. What happened? Because I think this is fascinating.

Oh, Brad, this is such a crazy story. So 10 years ago, I was hosting a charity event in Bowling Green, Kentucky, with a bunch of country music artists. And it was for charity. It was a two day golf event. And I was there the first night. We're all in the bar, and I'm with all these country music folks, these artists and producers. And my favorite band is the Clash. I love punk rock, classic rock, alt rock. I know nothing about country music.

Gabba gabba. Hey, you said you like the Ramones too?

The Ramones. Oh, my God. Sex Pistols. So this was not my jam, all this country stuff. So I was teasing them at the bar. How hard can it be to write a country music song? My dog died, my wife left me, blah, blah, blah. And they got offended, obviously. And somebody said, you could never do it. And I said I could write a country music song in 24 hours while we're here at this event. So some producer bet me 20 bucks that I couldn't do it. So I took the bet. They went off to play golf the next day. And that next night at the wrap up banquet, I brought this sheet of lyrics that I had written in my hotel on the Hilton stationery. And the song was called Everybody loves a Comeback. And it was about people overcoming challenges in their life and making a comeback. And the hook was, if everybody loves a comeback, why can't I come back home? And somebody. I gave that to the guy who made me the bet. He gave me $20. He got all choked up when he read the lyrics. He couldn't believe I wrote it. He gave me 20 bucks. So I thought I won the bet. That's it.

Especially wrote it overnight, right?

Overnight. So he brings over this guy named Keith Burns who was in a band called Trick Pony. They had been Nominated for a Grammy, really popular country band. He brings over Keith, and he gave Keith my lyrics, and Keith reads them, and he goes, baby, you wrote this? I was like, yep, cowboy. I just wrote that. And he goes, can I work on this? And I'm like, whatever. Okay, sure. He takes my lyrics, and I never think I'll hear from him again. A week later, I get an email from him with a link to a work tape. He had gone in his home studio and changed the words around. Kept my hook, kept the theme of the song, but he put it to music, and I clicked the link and I heard my song for the first time, and I hit the ground crying. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. I couldn't believe that I helped write this. And so that was 10 years ago. Again, never thought I would do anything with that. Last year, I started my own YouTube channel, and I was looking for content. And again, my thing going back to being brave, stepping out of your comfort zone. So I thought I would try to be brave, track down this guy to see if he still remembered me and if he remembered our song, which that song was on my phone for 10 years. And he did remember me, and he remembered my song. And he said, I'm in the studio right now with James Stroud, who is a huge producer who produced Ike and Tina Turner and Faith hill and Tim McGraw. And he's in the studio with them and Presley and Taylor, a girl group, a sister duo. And they listened to my song. He still had it on his computer. And James Stroud said, I want to produce this song. Lisa, can you come out to Nashville next week? I want to produce your song, and I want you to sing backup in it. So a week later, I'm in Nashville in this amazing studio, Loud Studios, this legendary place, and they're producing my song, and I'm singing backup on Everybody Loves a Comeback. So we released.

And that was 10 years ago that you had written it.

I wrote it 10 years ago. Last year I recorded it. And Keith Burns sings the lead. It's beautiful. And we rewrote it, so now it's a military themed love song. And Keith is amazing. So Keith is giving his 10% of the song to folds of honor, and I give 10% of my part of the song to a journalism scholarship fund for Latina journalists.

Oh, that's fantastic. I love that.

Download it, you guys. It's such a great song. I'm really proud of it.

I'm gonna listen to it the minute we get off. And I love that.

I love the kind of the double entendre, like, everybody loves a comeback. It's like that song, like a boomerang. It came back 10 years later. Came right, right back around. And are you doing more? Are you trying to do more songwriting? Are you?

So. Because that went so well, Keith goes, we need to write more songs. So we wrote another song called $20 bet, and of course, about a girl that makes a bet, a $20 bet. And so this is more of a bachelorette honky tonk dance song. So we wrote that, and then that led to me writing songs for an animated film that they are producing right now, which is based on Treasure Island. So I'm writing four or five songs for Hawkins and Silver, and that's going to be coming out probably depending on this coronavirus Pandemic has set everything back, but hopefully in about 18 months. So I'm still writing songs and I'm still really involved in the Nashville scene now that I found that. I love to write lyrics.

Country lyrics at that.

Country lyrics. Yeah, I love it.

Maybe it's a.

Like, is there a such thing as country punk? Punk country. Maybe you could.

It's my jam.

Maybe you could create an entire new genre. I don't know. I don't know if I've heard of that. But I also love the fact that you're donating a portion to causes that are important. Like, for this one, it's a journalism. Was it a scholarship or is it a journalism.

Yeah, scholarship fund. Through IRE is the Investigative Reporters and Editors Foundation. And so we do, you know, seminars every year, and we learn investigative journalism tips and tools. And so they give scholarship funds to young journalists. So I want mine to go to young Latina journalists.

That's fantastic. You know, I think supporting causes are so important and understanding that, you know, it's just as important to give back. And you've got quite a history in this.

Tell us about some of some of the causes that you've that are really close to your heart.

Because my dad was a Salvation army social worker, I was raised around the good work that the Salvation army does internationally. And my mom's family came from Chile. My dad's family came from England. And both of their parents were involved in the Salvation army in both those countries. And so I've been really involved with helping the Salvation army raise money for decades. And I've hosted events for them.

I've sponsored events for them. I was even in a salsa dancing contest that I won to raise money for them. So I have been through the years for the Salvation army, but lately I've been focusing on the Lymphoma Research Foundation. So lymphoma is something important to me because my mom died of lymphoma, but my dad got remarried years later, and my stepmom was also diagnosed with lymphoma, but she survived because of all of the changes and the upgrades in medicine and technology and research. So somebody that was diagnosed with lymphoma when my mom was in 1972 could now be diagnosed with lymphoma, but be able to survive with it and be a survivor of it. So I really decided lately that that was something I wanted to help put a spotlight on, help raise money for, because that money can really save lives. So I'm going to be hosting their event in September and starting a relationship with Lymphoma Research Foundation.

Absolutely. Well, that's also like a disease that is almost like it's affected me. Luckily, I've got like, my grandmother survived lymphoma, but then my cousin had lymphoma. Luckily she survived. But, you know, we've had some major lymphoma scares. Even one of my best friends had lymphoma, and luckily he was young enough he survived. So it hasn't taken anybody from me yet. But it's come very close and it's caused many moments of. Of fear and whatnot. So I think that's fantastic that you're doing that and that you're utilizing your celebrity, your ability to generate massive amounts of media and your message of bravery, especially with some of the groups that can use this bravery the most. I mean, cancer patients.

Are some of the most people who have to face bravery. And it's like, hopefully we never hear that diagnosis, but there's a good chance that, you know, a lot of us will in our life. I think that's fantastic that you're giving back to them and using your celebrity to bring awareness to really important causes.

The.

Work you're doing there, are you seeing with charities right now. Have you noticed any.

Bigger challenges that some of them are having? Especially like, I'm also curious about how the economic environment is going to affect the way that charities can raise money, because everybody is so either money conscious now or.

In scarcity mindset. Have you seen anything on the ground with that?

Yeah. So it's been devastating. Nonprofits.

Have been decimated in this last month, people and understandably so they're not giving as much as they normally would because they don't know where their next paycheck is going. To come from when you've got 16 million plus people out of work, they don't know how they're going to feed their families. And so they're more reluctant to give to charities because they don't know if they're going to be able to do that moving forward. So we're seeing everything from food pantries being hit to your typical nonprofits not being able to do their fundraisers through the summer, and everything's been canceled. But this is when we need those nonprofits the most. We need the safety net of that community, whether it's the United Way, the Red Cross, the Salvation army, your local food pantries. All of them are suffering right now. This is going to be a devastating time. And I hate to be like Debbie Downer on this one, but this next 18 months is going to be really difficult for a lot of individuals, families, businesses, and nonprofits. But we need our nonprofits up and running so. So that they can fill in the gaps right now. So I really worry about that. And so I really encourage you, if you do have something to give, even if it's not money, if it's time, if it's canned goods to your local food pantry, this is the time we need to really step up to help each other. Because this is devastating. This is devastating for so many people. So I worry about the long term ramifications on the nonprofit community.

Absolutely. Same here. And it is one of those things where, you know, I don't think back to the bravery concept that it's ever more important to be brave than in the fear of uncertainty. It can be easier to be brave in the fear of impending death. Like, you know, we just mentioned a cancer diagnosis. Diagnosis. If you get told you have cancer, if you get told something else is happening, you're actually, you either have to be brave, you're forced into bravery. When we're dealing with uncertainty, we're not forced to be brave. We can either cower and just hide under the covers and watch Netflix and drown ourselves in memes and Tiger Kings and all of that other stuff, or we can try to do something productive and step up and try to make a difference. And I think it's being proactive and getting out there in the face of uncertainty is one of the bravest things that people can do because, yeah, we're all in this together. We don't know where it's going to go, but. But trying to make those little positive steps, whether it's helping out a nonprofit or just helping out a neighbor and helping out somebody who needs that help? Or a friend across the country, maybe it's giving somebody to talk to or a shoulder to cry on, or buying them a. You know, buying them some toilet paper online and sending it to their house. Yeah, I think that's tremendously important. Speaking of that, I'll give a. One of the causes that I love is my close friend Ron lynch started a group called Intellihelp recently, and it's a grassroots movement to let people help other people get food and medicine around the world. And he started as a Facebook group, and within just the past three weeks, it's got 50,000 people in there and everybody, like, people are saying, listen, I'm a single mother, I've got immunocompromised or whatever, and I need things I can't go to the store. And people are jumping into, like, hey, create an Amazon wish list. We'll take care of that. And they're buying things for other folks. And he calls it love delivered. Right. It's like we're gonna create a big, massive movement that, you know, a grassroots movement to kind of really change the way that people get help when they need it. In fact, if you ever want to do an investigative story on how somebody's making a big difference, I can. I'm happy to make an introduction.

Amazing.

Yeah, I think that. That. And he actually put his entire business on hold in order to do this, which is an act of bravery as well, right?

It is.

And throughout your story, bravery, reinvention, the pursuit of passion and the fight for the underdog, and that social causes and the justice of getting people is so important. And I think that there's a lot of people who can learn a lot from you. What would you tell younger, you know, the younger folks, girls, obviously, but even some of the fellows out there, like, I'm sure you've got a lot of male fans and a lot of female fans as well. What would you tell them right now? They've never faced anything like this. They've never faced massive uncertainty. Maybe they were too young to really go through the Great Recession, which seems like child's play compared to this. What would you tell them at a time like this? In.

Yeah, I really encourage young people to write down how they're feeling, to use their devices, to record the things that are changing around them. We are witnessing history and we are the people that will someday be sharing these stories to the next generation and how we coped with it, what we see around us. These are all important things to document before the coronavirus thing I was telling people, all of us, that we're all journalists, we're citizen journalists. And we have this thing in our pocket, this cell phone that we can use to record things around us, whether it's wrongdoing, something that you see that's amazing, something that's disturbing, we can change.

The world around us, our neighborhood. If you're a kid at school and if they're serving you horrible food or you see that stuff is itch, expired, you can shoot that on your phone and use it for a school project or something for your school newspaper. We all have the ability now to be citizen journalists. And because of social media, we now have a platform to post these news items on. So we are living in these scary, unprecedented times. However, we also have tools at our, you know, right in our hands that we can use to document and to make you feel better and to help you understand that you're not alone, even though you're at home alone. There are other people experiencing what we're experiencing right now. And I really encourage folks to write about it, to post about it, to blog about it, to take pictures about it. This is history we're living through, and it's important to document it. And it also makes you feel better when you get it out of your body and and onto, you know, whatever that platform is that you're delivering your life on, it will make you feel better, and it will kind of, you know, I used to be told, journal every night, write in your diary every night, because that takes you out of yourself. It gets all of those angst, all the emotion. You put it down on paper and you feel better. And it did. It worked. And I could look back and see, you know, the progression of the challenges that I faced. We can do the same thing now with social media. So I encourage everybody to look at your own platform like a diary, and let's all document what's happening, because this is important.

I love that. And this is such a perfect time. And when we think about the last time that the country faced anything remotely like this, which was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, and we didn't have the ability to document it, there's a handful of books and stories and news clippings back then, but had we known what the people were going through back then, if we could tie into that, the thought process, I mean, that the individuals are going through, it wouldn't be lost. And it would be so valuable for people like us to see it now. And we have that ability. I love memes just as Much as the next guy. I've laughed at all of the coronavirus memes that get passed around, but they don't actually add value. I mean, I think that one of these days we're going to look back, like 50 years from now, we're going to look back and like, yeah, all people talked about were tiger king and funny memes. But the people out there who are showing up, who are using their cell phones to not only document how they're feeling, but maybe even going out responsibly in the world and documenting what they're seeing and how they're feeling and some of the good stuff that they're seeing out there is so important. I think they can all use your advice, your history and story as a really great.

As a really great guidepost to.

Take risks, to be brave. Like, not too big a risk, guys don't lick any doorknobs and strangers, but to take risks, to reinvent themselves. I mean, we're all businesses. I work with a lot of businesses all day long. And everybody from businesses to people who've gotten laid off are in the process of reinventing themselves. How we do business, how we go through life, and, and documenting that reinvention is important, but you're living proof to say, look, you can reinvent yourself. Just throw your heart into it.

Yes.

I've really enjoyed this interview with Lisa. I think you got a tremendous story. It's very empowering and inspirational and I look forward to a lot of people hearing it and saying, man, if she can do that, maybe I can too.

Thank you. I hope so. I mean, if that. I don't have kids of my own. I kind of have lived my life thinking I want to give back to the world around me. And I want kids to know that they can grow up to be whatever they want to be. I changed my mom, my last name to my mom's last name, Guerrero, so that young Latinas would be able to see Guerrero on tv, Chiron on tv, with an English speaking person, so that they would know that that's possible because I didn't have that. So I really do live my life with the.

You know, the deep seated knowledge that what I do is being recorded and can matter. And I think like, if you live your life thinking you're being recorded and your life can matter to somebody else, then that helps you look at yourself differently and experience what you're doing differently. So I would just encourage everybody to kind of find their inner badass and find their inner superheroes committed. You know, a random act of courage every single day. And if you do that, your life changes and everybody around you changes for the better.

I could not agree more. Now, let me ask you if people who are listening this or watching this want to find out more about you, get in contact, whether it's for I know you do a lot of keynote speaking. And granted, at this exact moment, stages are a little hard to come by. But if, and you do work for charitable causes as an ambassador, et cetera. But if people want to get a hold of you, obviously they can tune into Inside Edition. But if they want to visit you, is your website the best place to go or.

Yeah. So LisaGarrera.com and that gives you a lot of, you know, information and how to book me and how to, you know, get to know me better through my website. And then I'm also on all forms of social media. I'm at the number four Lisa Guerrero everywhere. So Instagram, Facebook, of course, Twitter, Twitter. I'm on way too often. I live on Twitter and of course, LinkedIn and everything. So I'm everywhere at for Lisa Guerrero.

I love that. Well, Lisa, thank you once more for being a guest on the show. It has been very enlightening for me and I love every aspect of the story. And if you're listening to this, please tune in to future episodes and go follow Lisa at forlisaguerrero on all the social medias or lisagarrero.com Lisa, thank you very much for being a guest on today's show.

Thanks, Brad. It was really a pleasure. Thank you so much.