BILLIONAIRE Reveals Key Habits of THE RICH! Do This NOW to Make Money & Build Wealth | Michael Rubin

So here's the question. When I was 16 years old and I ran out of money and the sheriff showed up at my house every day with a new lawsuit. And then I turned that near bankrupt experience into being the largest closeout company in the world. Was that luck or was that hard work and just unrelenting personality? Global sports company Fanatics, have you heard of it? Yeah, yeah. Founder and CEO, that's Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin. Very, very, very successful business guy. We got a special guest in the building. Michael Rubin.

One and only Michael Rubin.

Come on.

What are the three things you think about of the launching into a space and how to really take over market share.

Great question. I'm going to let you into my brain right now. This is like something like I've definitely never talked about and it's fascinating for me to even examine it myself. I got lots of companies trying to kill me. So like that's my normal day.

You're about to lose it all.

I was about to lose it all. Most importantly, this is the most important thing. Every failure leads to your next success. How do you make better luck? I think be a better human. That's true. Like be a good human. You'll create your luck, hard work and be a good human.

What would you say are the habits of the millionaires? Billionaires are successful that you know, who are actually healthy over the ones that are empty and sub.

I'll give you one example that's jumping to top of mind for me which I really, I don't think I've ever talked about before but it's super interesting is.

Welcome back everyone to the school of greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Michael Rubin in the house. Good to see you sir.

Hey, good to be here.

The legendary Fanatics parties that I've been to, super bowl parties have been an amazing experience. I was just telling you before. But everything that I feel like you do from the people I know who know you and what I've seen from the outside looking in and being at some of your events, you do it at a world class experience with world class people. So I just want to acknowledge you first and foremost for having a vision of excellence and for constantly striving to live up to that standard in everything you do. I'm sure you'll say well we've got a lot of work to do and we're not there and all these different.

So you know me well already. Exactly what I was thinking.

I already know.

We haven't done yet. We got a lot of work to do and we're just getting started. But look, we always want to put our best foot forward in everything we do and we never think we do anything well enough and we always want to keep figuring out how to do it better.

Absolutely. Well, it's inspiring to watch and congrats and everything. One of the things that I've seen you talk about is that you were really bad in school. You know, you didn't read that well, just like me. I was.

I don't read that well today.

I still don't either. I had a 740 on my SATs. I'm not sure if that was the worst than yours.

Wow. I finally met somebody who did worse.

Let's go, let's go.

I got a 780.

I don't know if that's. I feel great. I don't know if that's something to celebrate. But I couldn't get into college because my SAT was so low. So I remember feeling very insecure around my abilities, my lack of ability from school. And it affected my self worth. And I wanted to ask you this. You dropped out of college at one point, struggled in high school, probably all the way through school. Did you ever feel a lack of confidence, an insecurity or a lack of self worth because of school? Or did you always have confidence to go after what you wanted in business?

Honestly, not really. You know, for me, everything you said was right. I consider myself to be an awful student. I barely graduated high school. I went to college for one semester. I actually posted my. They somehow they went back and found my Villanova report card. I had a 1.87 in the one semester that I went to school. I couldn't then and still don't really read to. I haven't read a full book since 9th grade. I haven't really read part of a book since ninth grade. And so like we all learned different ways. And for me, the one thing I was good at was business. And I always loved it and enjoyed it. So I always, you know, kind of put everything I had into that. And so being a student, failing in school or college didn't actually bother me because I always just had this huge desire to just give it everything I had in business. And even having failures in that didn't bother me really because I just felt like whatever, you get back up and do it again. And you were an athlete. What happened when you, you know, when something goes wrong, you just work harder. And I just felt like I could always outwork out, hustle, you know, everybody else. And so like a lot of people you know, are taking like failure has never bothered me. I've dealt with it my whole life in different things. And I just like, I'm always like, I can whatever, I can overcome it, I can keep pushing through it. And that's just my personality.

But did you ever tie then your self worth to your business success or your net worth as it went up or sometimes if it went down or you had failures, did you ever tie it to that.

Again? This sounds weird. Not really. Like I've been through even in somewhat recent times. I mean I almost got margined out, which means like pushed out of my company in 2009 during the financial crisis and I was like near business death and I thought it was fun. I'm like, this is a adventure man. Like I like this, like I like the action and it just didn't go bothered me. Like I liked more playing the game. And that was what I really, you know, got me excited was figuring out, you know, how to try to get more wins than losses, how to try to put my best foot forward, you know, I don't know, I'm not like, I'm a pretty thick skinned person really. I've always been that way. And maybe it's like, you know, different people grow up with different, different ways. Like my parents always beat on me to do better. Like it was like, you know, they'd be like, and when I mean beat on me, like hey, you can do better, not physically beat on me. I had two parents that were amazing, you know, amazing parents. Both were you, you know, one was a veterinarian, one was a psychiatrist. But they'd always say like, you know, nothing was ever good enough. They were always pushing me. And so like I had that attitude of like it didn't bother me to you know, be, you know, picked on, you know, have things go wrong. I had every learning impediment, like I had a speech, you know, tutor and this tutor and that. Like because I had all these things. Like I was like I had a lot of learning disabilities, you know, like before people knew what ADD was. I had the worst ADD as a.

Dyslexia 10 year old.

And you know, I'm very dyslexic today and so but all this stuff for me it's just like, I don't know, I just had fun like playing the game.

So when you failed, did you ever like get down on yourself or did you look at it as an opportunity of what you could do better next time?

So always what you can do better next time. I think anytime I've had like a really bad moment, I just say tomorrow is a fresh day. So like I could have a, like, if I just like, if everything went wrong for me in a day or like something really happened in business or something I really didn't like, I, I'd always be like, all right, tomorrow's a new day, so it might feel bad in that night. But then I. And by the way, things always, if you get. I don't sleep that much, but even like sleeping five hours, like it's a new day, you feel like it's. Things feel like less, you know, intense. You just go deal with the issue the next day.

So what was the biggest loss you had in business, would you say?

I've had so many. Really? Yeah. I mean, it started my first big loss in business was at 16. That was my first real loss. And I grew up as a. You remember I was an entrepreneur before being an entrepreneur was cool. Before it was normal. Before technology, I mean. So I started with a, you know, ski shop, right? Yeah, people know the story. I started with a ski shop and by the time I was 16, I had the ski shop. So I started with a little ski tuning shop in my parents basement. Like, you know, first a couple thousand dollars when I was 12 in business. Then when I was 13, I did like $25,000 of business by borrowing inventory from other ski shops on consignment, paying them for it as I sold it. But I opened my first ski shop when I was 14.

That's crazy.

And I like, I killed it the first year, 14, killed it the second year at 15. Then I got cocky at 16. And the way the story goes is it didn't snow that year. And when the season was, when the season was over, I had $80,000 inventory, $200,000 in bills.

Wow.

And I literally got sued that, that off ski season that spring probably 100 times. The sheriff used to come tell the story a few times, but it's actually amazing. Like the sheriff used to come to my house every Monday through Friday. She'd be there with lawsuits every month like I would before school. Hey, Michael, here are your lawsuits for the day.

I.

Okay. From the hundreds of vendors that I owed money to. And like, I thought my world was over. And like, I was like, I've completely failed. And like, I was a disaster. And I ended up hiring a bankruptcy lawyer who actually told me you couldn't. You had to be 18 to incur debt legally. Wow. I didn't know That I ended up settling my debts for $38,000. It was the only time, you know, I ever went to my parents for money. And by the way, that was a ton of money. To my parents, borrowing $38,000 was like, you know, a huge amount of money. And they said, one condition. You go to college. Well, but you have to be a normal kid afterward. And you tried? I did try.

And so was it one semester or one year?

Well, first what happened was good fortune. So I settled my debts for $38,000. And literally weeks later, another ski shop, because everyone was going bankrupt because it didn't snow that previous season. They went bankrupt. They had $2,000 inventory at auction for $13,000. So I went. I bought that inventory at a. At a, like a government auction for $13,000. I went back to my dad, said, hey, great news. I'm going to be able to pay you back the $38,000 more quickly, but I need to borrow another $13,000. He looked at me, he's like, like, are you out of your mind? You want to borrow another? Like, no. Like, we, you know, like, you know, your mom and I lent you $38,000, which is a huge amount of money, so you would agree to go to college and, like, get out of this. This business thing. That doesn't make sense. You. I said, okay, but I'm gonna probably go to prison because, like, I made a commitment to, like, a government auction of $13,000. So I went door to door to my neighbors knocking, hey, got a great opportunity for you. I need to borrow $13,000, but I'll be able to bar, you know, pay you back with a lot of interest. Someone lent me the money at a thousand dollars a week interest, which I thought was a great deal. Okay. Now I'm like, this is amazing. So what I do, I got the yellow pages and literally went to ski shops, start calling every ski shop, said, hey, I've got these dolomite boots, these dinosaur skis, these Rossignol skis. And I was able to sell $17,000 of equipment within like, three or four weeks, pay back all the money. I had, like 80, 90% of the inventory left.

Wow.

And that literally three years later, I was the biggest buyer and seller of closeout skis and footwear, doing $100 million a year in business, making $10 million. So my point is near death experience, almost going bankrupt at 16 to a 21. Number one in the world of buying and selling athletic footwear and closeouts and skis in the world, all from that near, you know, disastrous failure. So it didn't, you know, it didn't bother me. Like, I kind of like, it was a fun ride. And when I was getting sued every time, it was just like, okay, like, great, if I go bankrupt, like, maybe I'm an idiot. I don't know, I'll figure it out. And so none of that bothered me.

It's almost like if you didn't have that failure, you wouldn't have had the, I guess the opportunity. You wouldn't have seen the opportunity of like, oh, I can go and buy these things at discount and then sell them for more in the future and build a business that way, 100%.

And that's the way life is. And that's why I really believe every failure leads to your next success. And so we have, you know, we have things that don't work out every day. And, you know, yes, I was sitting in a fanatics meeting, going through our quarterly review in our commerce business. And the guy who took over international business, who's just, you know, doing a great job, you know, went through three things he tested that all didn't work. He was talking about great, this didn't work, this didn't work, this work. And here's what I'm doing about it, because that's like part of how you grow in business. So people, a lot of people are scared to take risks and scared to fail. And then if you do that, then you never go anywhere, Right?

Wow. But, you know, someone might be listening or watching and thinking, well, that's easy to do as a, as a teenager, to take these risks because you got your parents to support you, you're living at home, you know, they're going to take care of you if you fall. But what about a big risk when you had a lot to lose? What was the biggest failure in your 30s or 40s?

So I'll give you the best story I think of off the top of my head. So in 2009, during the financial crisis, I never, you know, my company was a public company called GSI Commerce. And I was not paid, you know, I was paid a pretty small amount of money on a relative basis to run the company. What I actually did was I borrowed money against my public company stock and then I invested in a bunch of different investments. And that was great. From 99 until 2008 till the financial crisis, when the financial crisis happened. And our stock, my stock went from being worth 250 million personally to being worth 25 million over a few months. And then the banks went from lending 50% to lending 15%. So I went from being over $125 million to be able to borrow, you know, whatever $3.7 million. I basically, it's called almost getting margins out of your company. Okay, So I remember. So I, at one point, the most money I owed, it was actually, you know, one of the big banks, I don't want to name them to not embarrass anybody, but, you know, I owed $50 million a peak, and it worked great for eight years. And now they keep, you know, saying, hey, you got to pay the loan down. You got to pay the loan down because the stock's going down and the rate, though advancement is going down, you know, And I got the loan down to about $3 million. Fighting with everything. I couldn't, couldn't get it. I was done. I was calling all my, hey, can you, can, you know, can I borrow a million here? Can I borrow? Because I was running a big business. No one had in 2009. No one was lending anybody money. So it was like I was getting no's from everybody. So I sold enough investments to get the loan from 50 million down to 3 million. 3 million camp. I'm done. No one else.

You had no more cash?

No more. Not nothing. By the way, my net worth wasn't at this point, you know, maybe at a $10 million net worth. Again, this is only 15 years ago.

Wow.

And my stock that was worth 250 was now only worth $25 million. I couldn't sell it. And so the bank was basically going to sell my stock and basically throw.

My money out of your company.

Push me out of my company. There was one person who I seated in their hedge fund and I invested and I had like maybe four or five million dollars with them. I caught them 50 times to get the money back, and they wouldn't give. They said, if I give the money back to you, I have to give it to other investors.

Right.

And on the 50th try, me call and say, like, hey, man, I need this money back. Like, I'm going to get thrown out of my company on the 50th try. He said, you're so annoying. I'm going to give you the money back. Don't call me ever again.

Wow.

And I got the money back, paid the bank off. They would have started selling the stock the next day.

Come on.

I sold the company 18 months later for $2.4 billion eBay. Okay, so.

So how much was the company worth at the time? Because your stock was 250.

It was. It was down to the company was. It was 250 million. We sold it 18 months later for 2.4 billion.

Wow.

To ebay.

And you were about to lose it all.

I was about to lose it all. And I'm. You won't have me here today if that happened, by the way. Wow. Because I wouldn't have then sold my company ebay had that be a great transaction. Buyback fanatics turned into what it is today, which is just in the beginning phases. But my point is, like, you know, that was just like, I was just unreal ant. I just quit. Wow. And the funniest thing about the whole thing, it was almost a little bit, like, psychopathic. Like, I was never, during the whole period of time, I was calm as a cucumber. Like, I remember my now ex wife saying to me, like, michael, are we gonna be okay? Like, like, you know, like, had I got thrown out of my company, I don't know. I couldn't afford the house I was living, and I couldn't. Like, you know, I'm like, we'll be fine. Don't worry about it. She's like, like, how are you sleeping? I'm like, wow. You know, I sleep my five hours. I'm good. My four or five hours, I'm good. What do you think of.

I mean, most people would be stressed out, anxious, and worried, you know, if they lose a little bit, let alone losing almost all of it. What do you think were the three skills that you learned growing up? Whether it be from your parents or sports or whatever it was. What were those three skills that supported you through the growth phases, through the losses, through the high stakes, last minute, lose it all. All of that. What were those three skills?

Well, I just want to tell you one thing I'm thinking about. Then you're gonna have to ask me that again because of my ad day.

Go ahead.

You know, I have a question that I love asking people, and the answer is like, 50. 50. Okay. And I, you know, look, when you're in business, while you meet a lot of really successful people, and I always ask people who really made it big, you know, I've made tens of billions of dollars. If you could give, you could be 10 years younger, in the same health and give up everything you had, 100% of your money, would you? And the answer I get is like, 50. 50.

Really?

My answer is 100%. Yes. I would give everything up I have. Okay. Just be 10 years younger, because I feel like I could do it again tomorrow morning. Okay. Now, a lot of people look at me like, I'm like, there's a screw loose in my head. They're like, how would you possibly give up everything you have to be 10 years younger? For me, I'm like, okay, I'm 51. If I can go from 51 to 41, I'm in. Take it all. Zero hesitation.

Wow.

So that goes to my mindset of like, you know, I can always figure out how to, how to do it. And that's just like, you know, that's a. I don't know. I'm. Well, I'm humble, I'm confident from that perspective.

That's interesting. Speaking of that, that question, I'm 41. If you could go back to 41 right now or if you could give advice to your 41 year old self with all the wisdom experience you have now, what advice would you give him?

I give advice to my 41 year old self.

Where were you at 41?

Yeah, I was really just beginning and building fanatics, I would say. I think I've always known you need to get the best people in the world around you to really like, I've always known that, but I didn't always practice as hard as I do today. So it's the unrelenting skill of getting the best people in the world to work with and then making sure they work really well together because you can get, get a ton of really smart people, but then they don't work well together. And you play football, right? It's a little better in football, but like, go to a basketball court, get three superstars to work together. Not always easy.

That's tricky.

Okay. And so, you know, to me, I think it would be like, don't just say you're going to get the best people in the world. Make sure you get the best people and get them to work together. The other thing, if I can give myself advice every. In a consumer business, everything starts with the consumer, or in our case, the fan. Make everything you like. We've always thought about the fan, but I think I wasn't the same way. Like, you said certain things, but you weren't unrelenting enough to be unrelenting. Everything we need to do needs to make the experience better for the fan. And we've delivered on that sometimes and not delivered on that other times. And I think being unrelenting on delivering that, which is something now that I have so much excitement about it, like, you know, I feel like every day's a new day to Just be better at what we do. And there's so many things we can do better.

Wow. Okay, so those two things. How did you. Over the last 10 years, how did you learn to enroll, attract, convince the greatest people to come work with you? And how did you get them to separate their egos and work together?

Yeah. Well, first, I think when you're going to get great people to work together, you need to make sure you don't have, like, you need to make sure you get people that don't have egos that are too big. Because if people have, you know, Tom Brady always says to me, like, you know, there's, you know, I've heard him say this so many times, like, there's only so many people you can pass the ball to, okay? And people need to know the role, okay? So to me, you need to get people who want to do what they do, and you need to get people who want to work well together. And some people you could find are amazing athletes or amazing business people, but maybe they're not going to be a great fit to us. That, to me, is about backdoor reference checking. I'm always, you know, if I meet someone I want to hire, I've never. I've never asked somebody for a reference once in my life. Why? Because the world's small. I'm always. If I'm interested in somebody, I'm gonna find five people that know them, not one. I'm ask five people or 10 people, and I'm gonna figure out what I need to know about them and figure out, like, it's only what you. When you meet someone, it's like 50 of it is, you know, kind of, you know, what you see in that interview, the more important 50 is what you're doing. Backdoor referencing.

Interesting. How do you, I mean, how do you find the right people? First off, how do you even recruit them or know where they are and then what type of conversation you have when you first meet with them, where you want to get them to buy into your vision and be a part of your team or your company, what do you say to them? What's the vision conversation?

Yeah. So to start with, I'd say we have a.

Especially like a big executive, a big, you know, leader.

So I'd say first, the world is really small, and so we're always able. Like, whenever we've got a key role, we'll do two things. One, we'll generally run a search with a. With an outside search firmware or internal search team. But then we'll also Do a lot of work on that. Search yourself. Because to me, if you just hire a search firm, we just do it internally without working it hard. You're going to get a less good result to me if you work out of it. Okay. And then you also. And then you also have great professionals doing it. You merge those two together, you're going to get a better result.

That's smart.

Generally, for me, look, at this point, I think it's us more trying to figure out quickly whether someone's interesting to us, and then if we think they're interesting to us, then we'll go to start selling them. So generally, if you're in a. If I'm trying to get to know somebody, you generally see, I ask you a thousand questions first, then if I'm interested, I'll start selling you.

Got it?

And if anyone's listening to this and they see me, you know, in an interview, they'd say, that's what you'll see. I go from, like, asking a lot of questions of not interested. I quickly get myself out, you know, extract myself from that meeting. If I am interested, then, you know, you'll. You'll hear me, you know, getting you excited about the opportunity.

That's cool. That's really cool. The. The thing that I feel like a lot of people know about you, at least from the outside looking in, is that you are one of the most connected people in the world to other successful business leaders and billionaires. You know, the. The world's greatest athletes, artists, musicians, and cultural icons. They see this from your Instagram and videos that you have out there online. And if people have been to your parties, they see that as well. You know, I went to your party a couple times. It's just the who's who of everyone is there. I'm curious. A lot of people desire to have fame, success, and money, but not everyone knows how to be happy and have healthy relationships and have a healthy relationship with their selves while they acquire those things. You've been around all the wealthy, successful and famous people. What do you wish people knew about fame, success and money that you don't think they truly know about?

Well, I think, first of all, I'm very lucky to have all the exposure that I have to so many great, different, interesting people. For me, that's how I learn. Yes, right. Because I don't learn from reading. Because I really don't read.

Yeah.

Okay. I learned from listening, and that's what I enjoy the most doing, is getting so many people with different backgrounds together and always Picking up different things from people all day long. Okay? And so that's my. If you say different people, everyone's got their strengths and weaknesses. That's my strength, that's my superpower, is the ability to just like, be a sponge to other, you know, interesting people around me. And, you know, that happens every day of my life, that I'm just picking up data points that make me better, you know, look, last week we, I'm sure you saw, we launched with Travis Scott and Cactus Jack, our collab with Mitchell Ness and fanatics and like just flying with Trav and Travis, a good friend of mine, but flying with Trav from LSU to Texas and the Texas to usc and just the questions I'm asking, the conversation we have, we're each learning. And he's doing the same thing for me, by the way. We're each learning from each other. And I'm doing that in every interaction, no matter what someone's background. And it could be someone who just started a job at fanatics and, you know, and by the way, there's. I learned so much from my teenage daughter about how they, you know, consume information differently than how I consume information. So I'm always just picking things up from people. But I think. So I start from the place of I'm very focused, fortunate to have such great exposure. That teaches me what I learned every day. I'd say, what I would say is some people really struggle with it more than others. Like, look, I've had, you know, you know, some of the financial success, you know, I, you know, I'm, you know, I'm the least well known person of, you know, a lot of people we do, we do business with, you know, some of the biggest athletes, artists, celebrities in the planet. I think for some people it's really natural, and for other people it's hard to deal with it. You know, for me, I'm just always paying attention to studying and even look, in the last few years, I'm probably more well known. But for me, it's like I'm humbled by it. Like, you know, anyone who wants to stop and ask me a question, who wants to, like, I'm just like, I know how lucky I am.

Yeah.

And so, you know, but I think it is, I think for, you know, to answer the question directly that you asked me, I think for some people it's really hard. It's an adjustment. It's these last times. This stuff can happen quick, too.

I know.

So look, you saw it. You. I mean, you know, you, you know, you Played at a really high level athletic perspective. Some people can deal with this great and others can't.

What do you think it is about? I mean, I know you probably. You don't need to name. I'm not asking you to name names, but I know, you know people who are billionaires and super famous that are happy, that are truly happy and grateful.

Human beings and a lot that aren't.

And a lot probably more that are stressed out, overwhelmed, bad relationships, you know, constantly living in fight or flight or competition versus collaboration. What would you say are the habits of the. The millionaires. Billionaires are successful that you know, who are actually healthy, which is probably a smaller percentage over the ones that are have it all but are empty inside.

So I'll give you one example that's jumping to the top of mind for me, which is I really, I don't think I've ever talked about before, but it's super interesting is. And all of my good friends know this about me. And you know, you could get. A lot of people would say they know this about me. I want all of my friends to do great and do better than me in any way they can because like I'm living my dream, okay? So why would I know when I want to do great? Around me, a lot of people feel like they're in competition. And it's one thing like you're playing football, kill your competitor.

Right, right, right.

You're playing basketball, kill, kill your competitor. If I'm in business and there's someone I'm competing against, that's different story.

Okay?

But I'm talking about in life, I want my friends to do amazing. I'd say like, I have certain friends who are like, hey, if you could make X or I could make 50 times, I'd rather you make X because like I'm good and I'm happy. I'm having a great time and I'm living my dream. So I think it's, I think it's the healthy people want the best for the others around them. One of the things I see a lot of time is like cultures of like people trying to bring people down. I hate that. And I'm always, I'm always saying this to like my daughter because she's 18 and she's like, you know, she's you know, developing the same way I'm still developing. I'm always like you, like you want always be inclusive, you know, bring everyone together, have people want to do great. You know, that's what I say is an interesting observation, is a Lot of people don't want people to do great around them. And that's like really weird to me.

You think that's what makes them, you know, stressed and miserable or unhappy or have broken relationships is because of that.

Look, people think it's just so hard to say. No one's. I'm going to get ridiculed for saying this, but people think money fixes things. It doesn't. Okay? You're either, you're either going to make the most of your life or you're not. So obviously with money, you have more access to so many things. Okay. But you know, I tell you, I outwork just about anybody. I'm still working 18 hours a day, 350 days a year. And I love it. And that for me is fun and I enjoy it. I'm learning and growing from it. So it's not like I'm trying to, like, I'm not like, you know, people see, like, oh, they see the white party and you know, great. So I do, you know, three fun. You know, I do the white party, this fanatical part party and together the reform alliance, which, you know, when the panels that we do, the re. You know, we started last year, the gal. So we do three big events a year. So those are fun moments people see. But my life is about grinding day in and day out. And I like that.

That's not every day.

Yeah, yeah, that's the grinding's every day. No, I mean the grinds every day.

Three days a year.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Do I do a fun Christmas vacation? You know, I used to be able to make fun of my friends publicly. Now we have to do it privately because I get rid of cool if I make fun of my friends.

Now what do you think is the energy of, you know, that that drives people to again? I think a lot of people that want to learn from you or someone that's like you with, you know, massive net worth, big businesses, all these different things. I think a lot of people want to know can, how can I do that? Or my own way of doing that in my life or while also being healthy and happy. Because I see a lot of people get burned out. Celebrities who are young, not know how to manage the success of the fame, billionaires go bankrupt, all these. Or just do things that maybe don't align with the values. So I guess I'm curious about, do you think it's possible to be actually healthy and happy, have good relationships with your family and friends and be uber successful? And if so, what does it take what are the key habits that your friends who are that do on a consistent basis?

Yeah, I think it's a hundred percent. It's 100% doable and a lot of people do it. But some people, you know, look, the thing with a lot of really successful people is, like, what makes me. I'll say it does make me a little bit different is, you know, barely having made it out of high school, not having gone to college, not reading, Like, I'm not an intellectual. I'm like, you know, I'm kind of like a, you know, you know, just like a street smart. You know, I still feel like a kid even though I'm not. So that's that, like a lot of really successful people, they're naturally, they're awkward, they're not like, they're just like, they're a little uncomfortable in their own skin. You feel like, you know, you've gone out, you've had all this success, and you're not sure how to deal with it, like, to be like, still like a normal, logical, rational person. I'm still like, you know. You know, if you listen to the conversations I have with my friends, we make fun of each other the same way we did 10 or 20 years ago. And, you know, I take more from people. I take and I give, although I give a lot of it as well. You know, I think it's just like, look, you know, I look, I see the greatest people in the world do great with handling. I see a lot of people that get, you know, huge success and, you know, it's really hard for them. I say, like, you know, keep the eye on the prize. Just like you were also like, you know, for the, for the way you're asking the question. It's a really small percentage of people, they're super lucky. Like, appreciate that. And like, look, I know it's easier to say that, but like, you know, people say to me all the time, like, anyone who stops me, I always try to be as nice as could be. And people say, like, why always like that? I'm like, because I'm lucky. Like, if I'm not, I'm a bad person. It's a problem if I'm not like that.

Right. That's probably what keeps you fulfilled and happy.

Yeah, and like, I'm, I'm rooting for everybody too. I'm rooting for everyone to do great.

I think that's a key differentiator because most people that I think are unhappy with success or with what they have at a big level, they're competitive in terms of they don't want to see their friends and they think of more. It's when I have to win and you have to lose versus how can we all win together?

Yeah. Look, I know a fair amount of people who have gone down in business because you just, you meet a lot of people, you know, and a lot of them have handled it great and some haven't, you know, and it just depends who it is. It just depends who that person is. And the thing I like to see by the time is someone who can do something, who can do it two or three times. Like, you get one success, it could be luck. You get two or three successes, that's proven skill. By the way, you win one super bowl, you're really good. But, you know, you win a couple, you're really special.

That's another level.

Yeah.

Speaking of Super Bowls, what do you think you're close with Tom? I'm supposed to be interviewing him next week at an event. What's something about him that makes him so unique that other people, other athletes don't have?

He's one of the most unique individuals on planet Earth. Look, he's become a really close friend of mine in the last few years, I'll tell you that. When you see his determination and grind, you see why he had the success that he had. And you know, he's very athletic. He's not the most athletic guy relative to, you know, whoever would be the most skilled and whatever they he did it based on will to win. And I see when you, you're going to text me afterward, you're going to say, sure, like, I fully get it. This guy is a beast and he's going to win whatever he puts his mind to. And so when I look at him having won seven Super Bowls, I'm like, yeah, I would expect that. Like, he's more determined. Like, by the way, I talk to him at 5:30 in the morning, you know, more days than I talk to him at nine o'clock in the night. He's so disciplined, he's so focused. And you see it in business too. And he's, he's one of the greatest human beings, one of the hardest working human beings. And I will tell you, there's no. He's had no luck. That's all. Really? That's all. That's all. Will to win.

Wow.

Ask him to tell you the story of how he came back 28 3. You'll probably give you a little bit of a PG version of it.

Okay.

But tell him I Told you to ask him. But it's just like, it's his personality, like I've put in. We had a meeting with our biggest investors and I asked him to come and interview him in front of our investors. And like, you just like, you literally, you there, you just like want to get up and go kill everyone. It's just like he inspires you like that. And it's like, I know people, some of the greatest athletes in the world, they just don't have the heart, man. He's got the heart, but it sounds.

Like you've got the heart in life and business. How did you develop that heart? Or is that from parents? Is that from kids? Is that from not being good in school? Like, where did the heart come from? And how did you sustain it for decades?

I think it's a combination of one, not being good at so many things. Like, I was the worst athlete always. I was always picked last on every team. Like it was a joke. Like, you go to pick teams as a kid. I was always the last kid picked. I was that uncoordinated.

Okay, how did that make you feel?

That A little bit, maybe angry?

Yeah.

Okay. But that fire was good for me. It just made me want to work harder in business. Like, okay, if I was going to be a loser in sports, let me be a winner in business. Let me go to what I do best. The school thing bothered me less. I thought it was like, I was like, I mean, I was like Ferris Bueller in, you know, high school. Just like. And by the way, I didn't. Get me out of here.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, I, I, I, I, I did a co op program in high school. We're in my 11th and 12th grade years. I got out of high school at 11 o' clock in the morning to work at the ski shop that I owned. And my grade, 50% of my grades came from the grade that my landlord gave me. You said, pay my rent on time, I'll give you an A on your co op. And I buy. I still almost didn't graduate high school because I couldn't pass chemistry. Like, I literally couldn't pass chemistry. And so, like, that stuff was all motivation to me. And even if, like something, if something makes me mad or sad, it's motivation, period. End of story. Motivation, by the way, Tommy, is exactly the same way. You're going to see that next week.

Yeah, but what makes you motivated, though? And how do you sustain motivation? To be driven to overcome all the obstacles that come in your way every single day? You're Working with big business, people trying.

To kill me every day. Like, the bigger we get, people trying to kill me every day. That's just the reality. You know, you close one eye and there's someone coming for you behind. Yeah, 100. That's. That's business.

How do you stay calm, though, during the chaos and stay motivated when everyone's coming after you?

Well, if you're not calm, you're gonna make worse decisions. So I think you need to be calmer during the most important times. Also, by the way, something I've always believed. You see, I actually put something out when I put Tom in front of our thousands of employees. We were talking about, how do you deal with the most high pressure situations? Always be calm during these situations.

Interesting.

So, you know, it's. Look, I think some of it you're born with it, and some of it you can just muscle to. But the most interesting thing, I guess, is there's never a time I need to work less, and I've never worked harder because to me, this is business is my drug. Okay. That's what I love because I'm overall good at it, by the way. There's lots of things I need to improve my game on, but I'm overall good at it. And that's how I, you know, that's how I. I don't know if you're. Let me ask you a question. If you're a professional athlete, you want to stop playing sports, you want to play as long as you can.

I wanted to play as long as I could. I got injured, which made me stop.

And most athletes want to play as long as they can. Right. For me, the great thing about being in business, I think I can do the sport for the rest of my life.

Yeah. So you don't have to worry about, you know, injury holding you back from playing. Yeah, yeah. You could still be injured and be on the phone and negotiate deals.

And I worry about mental injury, which some might argue I have already, but.

You and me both, man. One of the things that I. I really appreciate about you is that obviously you've built, you know, massive businesses, but you care a lot about philanthropy and giving back as well. Make a Wish foundation, you guys have did a big partnership with them, which I think is really cool. But also the Reform Alliance, I think it's really inspiring. It's really about criminal justice reform. Growing up, my older brother went to prison for four and a half years. And just watching what happens to inmates in prison after prison is a challenge.

So I'm supposed to Be rehabilitation.

Yeah, exactly.

And in a lot of cases, it's actually getting you stuck in the system. And I know there's a lot of people who say, oh, when someone does something wrong, they need to be in prison. That could be the right answer in a lot of cases. But the point of prison is to help rehabilitate someone, not to entrap them for the rest of their life.

Exactly. So I really acknowledge you for not just wanting to make the most money and build the biggest business, but also for trying to make change in different areas with kids, with prison reform, all these different things that you do. And a lot of these things are public, and you have partners in all these things. But I'm curious, what's the thing that people don't know about you that you're most proud of? The stuff that's not out there online, the stuff that you know isn't public information. What's the thing about you that you're most proud of that people don't know?

Well, first let me. You know, you brought out the things that we try to do to make the world a better place. That's our responsibility.

Yeah.

Like, if you're in the position that I'm in, you have a responsibility. Trying to make the world a better place. I don't think we can do enough of that. And I really feel that way. I also will tell you something that I know. Remember, I was a person. I've been very public about this until 2017. I would always give money to people that were important to me. Causes that were important to me, always helped financially. I never did the work. My work was just giving the money. And then obviously, I went through the experience that everyone knows my friend who went to prison for not committing any crime. And seeing that firsthand, being in a courtroom, watching someone go to prison for two to four years for not committing a crime, for going for a probation violation, for pupping Willie on a motorcycle. Like, I felt powerless and hopeless for what was happening to my friend for the first time because I couldn't help him. And I think putting the work in for that changed my whole perspective. Because up front, people thought. And what everyone said to me is, don't get involved with this. It's going to hurt your business. You know, everyone told me I just went with my instincts of like, you know, I had to be there together with, you know, we ended up with another friend that helped as well, to help make a. You know, to help fix this. And the most interesting thing was a couple years later when the pandemic started, we did this giant, you know, kind of fundraiser called the All In Challenge. You know, pretty spectacular. Raised $60 million for, you know, for food insecurity. And we were sure it was going to hurt our business and ended up helping. Like we thought, hey, we're going to be asking our customers to donate to this. At a time when there's no sports and we're a sports company, it's going to hurt the business.

We.

What actually happened was it created a halo for our business. So one of the fascinating things interesting, if you do the right thing some way, somehow you're going to get paid back in karma eventually. And I didn't know that before, really. So I will tell you, I just gave money my whole life until 2017. Then when we put the time. And I spend real money, like I spend. I'm sorry, I spend real time, not money. I spend real time in addition to money, trying to do things to make the world a better place. Those things, whether they pay dividends to yourself, how you feel, whether it's the people you help, it's whether there's overall just good karma that comes back to you, they always benefit in the long run. So I'm always saying to big business leaders, man, do the right thing personally helping people. You'll get that paid back for sure.

Yeah.

And I've seen that a thousand times over.

And it may not happen this year or right away, does it?

You just, it, you're just, you're building up chips. Yeah, you're building up chips. And look, so, so you used to.

Give financially, but now you're, you're giving more energy.

I gave zero energy only money until 2017.

Yeah, yeah.

And I used to me, the question is, hey, you know, you're someone that's important to me. You have something that's important to you. How can I write the check as quickly as possible to get you out of my office so I can go back to business? And then I had this life changing experience with my friend and that really opened my eyes. And then we've done so many charitable things since. So, like, do we make a wish?

Oh, my God.

What a. Not. By the way, if you don't care about make a wish. I say this all the time because make a wish is like the greatest thing we're involved with. No one can say they don't like, make a wish. You could say you don't, you don't believe in criminal justice reform. There are a lot of people would say, hey, they don't care about Your brother, they don't care what happened to my friend. You know, they made a mistake. They should go rot in prison. Okay, I've heard that a thousand times been said to me, okay? I don't agree. I believe we should help people get a second chance, a third chance, but that's up for debate to who you want to debate it with.

But helping kids who are turn me ill, Right?

If you don't like that, you're a bad. I'll say right now you're a bad person. If you don't, like, make a wish, you're a bad person. Like, tune me out of your life, okay? So what an honor it is for us. Like, I remember, I just. I was at an All Star game, and we had these. These kids and, you know, we brought them to All Star Weekend with Make a Wish. And, you know, we're the. We do all the sports things we do together, you know, with Make a Wish and fanatics, you know, we do everything together in sports. And like I said to these kids, you guys are so gracious to me. Like, I want to thank you because you're inspiring me. You're inspiring our company. All the people that get to work with make at Wish, man, they're inspired by you, and it's such a, you know, it's such a great thing to do.

That's beautiful, man. But what would you say? Is there a moment or something that you're most proud of that people don't know about?

It's probably the this look. There's so many little things you do every day to help people that, you know, you never talk about. You want to do it to make.

A difference for people.

And, you know, and I care about that because I think I'm lucky. And so if I'm lucky, I should be able to, you know, give back in whatever way I can.

Absolutely. How do you think someone creates more luck in their life?

So I'm a. So I'm a pretty superstitious person, which might sound weird, but I'm a pretty superstitious person, by the way, I'm the type of person that can't, like, if my team is winning, like, I'm not moving. Like, I'm weird. I'm weird like this. I'm just. I've got some weird superstitions, you know, don't switch seats if I'm playing blackjack in a casino. You know, I'm not. I. You know, I don't want. I'm not switching up. Like, I believe in keeping what's working Going, how do you make better luck? I think be a better human. Like, that's, that's, that's the truth. Like, be a good human. You'll create your luck. Okay. Hard work and be a good human.

Yeah. Do you ever feel guilty for your luck? No.

No.

Feel like I feel appreciative. That's good.

Feel appreciative, but I don't feel guilty.

Yeah.

What would I have to. Why do you think, you know what I feel? The things I would feel guilty about would be like, if I miss something, if I let somebody down, that's where I feel the guilt.

Why do you think some people who, who have created more opportunities for themselves sometimes feel like, bad for the success they've created? Have you ever seen that with anyone?

Not much, to be honest. No, I, I think, look, at the end of the day, you make your own luck. Anyone who says, like, you know, look, to be successful in business, you need to, you know, be smart, have a good strategy, get the right people, outwork your competition, add luck to that. Yeah, you need luck to go with that. Okay. So it's a component. But I think, like, you make your own luck too.

Do you think if, you know, you would have chose a different business model or a different industry, you'd be able to create what you've already created by now? Or do you think a lot of it is kind of timing, the luck being in the right place, right time to get you launched. But obviously you have to keep sustaining it year after year. And you could go out of business like you almost did in 2009, but do you think you could also just do this in a completely different industry at this time as well?

I do. Really, I do. I know it sounds obnoxious and confident, but I do. And I'm not going to lie about that. So here's the question. When I was 16 years old and I ran out of money and the sheriff showed up at my house, you know, every day with the new lawsuits for three months straight. And then I turned that near bankrupt experience into, you know, being the largest, you know, closeout company in the world at age 21, doing $100 million and making $10 million a year, was that luck? It was that, you know, hard work and just unrelenting personality. You know, when I almost, you know, got margined out of my company, pushed out my company in 2009, was that luck? Was that, you know, my just unrelenting attitude? I would say I made my luck in those situations.

Wow.

Now still have good like, like I Might leave here, look at my phone, and someone might tip me off to something that I need to know about competition or something.

And.

And like, that's, you know, something. But it's a common. It's kind of like, again, great relationships. Build great relationships. That'll make good luck for you too.

Wow, that's great. A lot of people here who are watching and listening. There's a lot of entrepreneurs here. I see people struggle as they don't have a lot and they start to.

Earn more and more.

You know, if they go from zero to a hundred thousand in, in sales and then to a million, then 10 million and beyond you. You see people's energy start to shift as they earn more. Did anything shift for you energetically, inside or emotionally when you went from your first million to a hundred million to a billion?

Yeah, I got hungrier.

I love it.

I'm just being honest. And by the way, I shouldn't say this, but I think it's lame for the people that got more lazy and more complacent. Like, I have a friend who we will not name or give any hints to, but the person made tens of billions of dollars. And I was sitting with them once. Well, talk about where. So I don't call anybody out. And they were just like, they were done. They didn't want to do it again. I was so uninspired by that. I was like, this is lame, man. I left, like, I had no interest in that person.

Interesting. But was there besides hunger of wanting to create more, give more, all these different things, contribute more? Was there an emotional energy shift of like, oh, this is more exciting. I have more money in my bank account or my net worth now. It's like I've got a different feeling. Feeling or identity about myself because I think a lot of people's identities shift when they hit certain financial marks or exit companies.

So mine have never. People might call on that. Go for it.

Yeah.

I will tell you because I'm always paranoid about, you know, what's going to go wrong. Okay. And if you stay paranoid and you stay hungry, then I don't think that you, you. I don't feel those things. Like, when we do, like, we, we have great things that we happen all the time. Like, I'll be like, okay, we can celebrate them for 60 seconds. Let's get right back at it. Okay. So. But I think it's more the fear of. I, I recognize, like, you know, I built. We have three businesses today. Fanatics, commerce. I built it from a $250 million business to a $6.3 billion business. And now, and I look at that, and some people would say, oh, that's great. I'm looking at what are all the things we need to do to reinvent the business to get from where we are today to get to, you know, our next chapter? For us, it's about, you know, we haven't been good enough from a consumer space, we need to be great, not Good. Okay. Getting 99% right. If you get 1% wrong when you have 70 million transactions a year, that ain't good enough. Okay. And we're worried about how do we become just great a product where we haven't been great at product. So, like, I'm always about how, like, I'm not worried about. I'm not saying, oh, this was some great accomplishment. We're saying, man, here are all the things we don't do right, so we can be that much better in the future in our gambling business that we've just launched. We're now in 20 states with Fanatic Sportsbook. I'm like, hey, I got FanDuel and DraftKings that own 80% of the market. I want to figure out how I take real share from them. I'm friends with both of them great companies, but we're playing a game. I want action. Let's go, baby. In the collectibles business that I just got in three and a half years ago, I got lots of companies trying to kill me. That's my normal day. People trying to get me from behind, you know, all kinds gone wrong. So you just got to be smart, be disciplined, be thoughtful, prioritize, and, like, focus. Wow.

So when you go into a new, I guess, business like the gambling business, let's say, and there's already different market share leaders, there's a couple, two or three people that are kind of having the market share. What is the mindset you go into of, like, we're going to launch into a new space? Sure. We've got a big customer base already, a big brand, lots of money, resources, team. But they own the market right now.

Yeah.

What's the thought process of saying we're going to go into this? And what are the three things you think about of launching into a space and how to really take over market share?

So it's a great question. I'm going to let you into my brain right now. This is like something like, I've definitely never talked about, and it's fascinating for. To even examine it myself every day, which I do. So when we started in the merchandise business that we call fanatics commerce, we were the third player in the market. And through, you know, a lot of hard work and innovation, we became the number one player still with so much to do. Like, we have so much to be better in that business.

Of course.

Okay, but you're number one.

We are.

And in the collectibles business, for a.

Side note there from how long did it take you to go from third to number one after launch?

Third to one was probably only three or four years.

Three or four years.

Okay, sorry, go next, by the way, 24, seven. Like, I'm worried about everything, paranoid about everything, obsessed.

Okay, okay.

And I think what's more interesting for me actually is where we are today. How do we completely reinvent ourselves? Because now we're only focused on how do we become the best consumer company in the world. Anytime someone gives us shade over something we screwed up or something that did go well, it actually hurts me. It bothers me. Like I sit up, I'm obsessive. I sit up and look in social media. I don't look for people saying great things, negative comments. I look for the negative comments. Are they right or wrong? If they're wrong, I don't care if they're right. How do I use that to be better? I'm sending notes to people all day long saying, how did this happen? How do we be better? Just to use it to make us a better business. Okay, in the collectibles business, we weren't in the business three and a half years ago. Now we're the top player in the business and we're innovating and we're making the consumer experience and the collector experience so much better. And we're marketing. That hasn't been done before. It's fascinating. But the interesting thing is we're the, you know, I'd say we're the leader in each of those two businesses. In gaming. I said, okay, look, gaming, online sports betting and iGaming is going to be a really big business long term. Okay. Potentially if we had that same type of leadership, it would be the best of the three businesses. Okay, but say we're not in it, but we have some real strategic advantage. We have 110 million customers. We do 70 million transactions a year offline and online. We can, you know, use that to kind of cross sell customers into gaming. But now I'm a year into. I'm a year. Well, I came with the idea three years ago. We're now launched a year ago. We're just, as of Today, we're in 20 states, 19 under the Fanatics brand, one under the Points. My brand will be on to the Fanatics brand April or April 30th. Okay. Would be everything will be under one brand. And what we've been focused on is obsessively building the best product and then once we do that, getting great across on the most interesting thing is, I don't know, sitting here today, am I going to win or not? Now I have that confidence that I've done it in commerce, I've done it in collectibles, but I have that concern. Hey, you got FanDuel, DraftKings, MGM. Great companies, okay. That are really good competitors. But I love playing that game. That to me is so fun and so not knowing exactly what that like, am I confident? Yes. But do I know?

No.

So what do I need to do? I need to build a great product. I need to have great relationships with my customers. Okay. I need to leverage all the assets they have at Fanatics, the relationships with 110 million customers, the relationships with thousands of athletes and use that to build our business in a way that's great for everybody. Wow. But I don't know what the answer is yet.

This is fascinating.

So maybe if you're listening, make sure you give us a chance. Go to Fanatics Sportsbook. Get, get out, get on the app, try it out. I think you'll like it.

There you go. So when you're only pitch, I like it, I like it. So when you're thinking of like a new space to launch into, you know, you did the commerce, you did the collectibles, you did, you know, now gaming, are you thinking this is a really interesting space. I could see it blowing up, we should get into this. Is that kind of part of the philosophy?

So what I'm generally thinking about is is it a big enough business to be worth our time?

Yeah. Which is probably a billion dollar minimum.

I'd say at this point we need to think it's a billion dollar profit business long term, not revenue profit. Okay. So number one, is it a billion dollar profit business long term? That's, that's actually our number. Number two, is it completely synergistic with the rest of our business? And most importantly, this is the most important thing. Can we make it better for the fan?

Okay then what's already out there?

Yep.

Interesting.

And by the way, in some, in some cases you have what's out there has not been good enough. So better is, you know, still not good enough.

You know, still not great.

Right. And We've been there certain times, but at this point it's like, can I do something that's better for the fan? Is it completely synergistic? Is it a big opportunity? If we don't get yeses to all three, we're out.

That's interesting. I love getting inside your mind now. Now when you're thinking of like, okay, here's, you know, gaming, betting, all these different things. Are you then checking out all the competitors that are out there maniacally? So you're, you're downloading the apps, you're checking out, you're researching it, how many, their business model, everything.

I'm talking to everybody known to mankind, really. I'm meeting with the companies, I'm meeting with the analysts, I'm meeting with employees. I'm interviewing people to learn. I'm learning everything I can and how long I can't. I can't read.

Right, right. So you're interviewing every one of researching. How long will you do that research phase for? Is that a few months? Is that a year before you decide we're going all in?

It depends. There's sometimes like I've researched media for years and said we're not doing anything really. I researched ticketing and said, we want to offer tickets to our customer. We don't want to be a ticketing company. We just want to work to have them for our loyalty program, for our most important customers. So I do a lot of research that nets out and not doing it.

Interesting.

Okay. For me, right now we have three businesses. Fanatics, Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, Fanatics, gaming. They're all massive opportunities. I don't want to do anything new. Anything I do is to support those three businesses, to be better in those three businesses to make the fan experience better. Wow.

And so you'll research yourself. I'm sure you'll have teams researching as well.

But I'm a big. I will say on something new, I'm the biggest researcher myself always. Right.

That's always how you have to love it and be side of the matter.

Look, look, we just started a new business called Fanatics Events, which is basically, you know, I went to. There's so many of these local trading card shows and they look like they're, you know, they look like their flea markets from 30 years ago and pop stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Then I went to Comic Con. I'm like, this is incredible. How do I do this for sports? And then we said, we're going to launch this, by the way. I did that and I walked into Comic Con. Ten minutes later, I said, I'm watching Fanatics events, and I'm hiring the CEO of Comic Con. Really? I get this guy in my office, and we hired this guy, and now.

Yeah, you hired him. Just like that.

Just. Just. I made the decision in 10 minutes. There are other times I'll look at something for three years and say, we're not doing it. Okay.

How did you get the guy to leave Comic Con to come, you know, run your business?

What would be more fun than building the biggest and best sports event in the world with fanatics? I mean, think about this. Do you want to. I mean, Comic Con, you know, Fanatics Fest. Fanatics Fest can be so much more fun.

That's cool.

We're launching our first event. August Javits, New York City. I Bet you have 100,000 people come to this for the best athletes in the world, best brands in the world, all the sports properties, doing incredible stuff.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's exciting, it's fun, but I still sweat it. Like, I'm like, I worry every day, is everyone gonna show up? You know, by the way, is everyone. Is everyone. I need to be there. Can I actually be there? I mean, it's no different. Like, you know, you still have these crazy, you know, thoughts.

Sure, sure.

Each night.

I wanted to ask you about the Fanatics Athlete Immersion Program. Can you share more about that?

Yeah, look, first, without the incredible athletes that playing the field, on the court, on the ice, every day, we got no business. I got nothing. I'm in a different industry, so we're super appreciative of that. One of the things that I'm always getting, you people reaching out to me and asking me from, you know, you know, current athletes, you know, professional athletes is like, you know, hey, I'm interested in business, or, hey, you know, I want to figure out what, you know, how I could build this business. So we thought, like, we were the company perfectly positioned to create, like, the dream intern program. And so basically, we played around with it for several years, but in the last couple years, we said, we want to go on and do this. So we're now taking 60 professional athletes, three classes of 20. We got a class coming up in July that will be NBA and NHL players. We did.

I saw the NFL one. You did?

Yeah, we just did an NFL and WNBA one. And then we did one in November that was baseball and wnba. And we'll have curriculum from having, you know, the CEO of Mitchell Ness talk to them about how to build their own brand. The Person who runs our social impact talk about how to making the world a better place to, you know, our CFO talking about how to build the business to our strategy talk. Person talking about, you know, how we decide what to do and what not to do. Then we bring an outside guest. We had the CEO of Verizon, the CEO of Anheuser Busch, you know, the CEO of, you know, the cmo, Visa, you know, Robert Smith, who's the richest, you know, black guy in the world, you know, come in and, you know, talk to these, these players about how they built their businesses. So it's like fanatics giving them, you know, kind of the day course of everything that we can show them and then getting great outside speakers. It's amazing watching the look on players face. They're just like, so they love going through it. It's like, and we do it for one week and, and it's, it's a great program.

That's amazing. There's so much stuff people can find out about you. I've got two final questions for you, but I want people to follow you on Instagram. Michael Rubin on Instagram. Where else should we go to be of support service to you and learn more about everything you're up to?

Well, first, we love, like, we love, you know, because look, we're in the consumer business. I mean, you know, go tell us what we do well and we don't do well. And by the way, you know, we like when you tell us we do well. We also like when you tell us we don't do well. That's helpful input that makes us better.

You know, where do they do that? Where do they send that message?

You know, people, people, people, a lot people, people email you, they, they, they, they hit the company, sometimes they hit social. But we're looking at everything and we're trying to fit anything. By the way, look, we're in the consumer business. We have so many transactions, we touch so many customers.

70 million transactions a year.

Yeah. And we don't get everything right. And so, you know, if we don't get everything we own that we want, we want to be better at it. So we love feedback, you know, so we love the good feedback. We love, like I went out, you know, what we did last week with the launch, it was like the feedback was amazing, you know, you know, there are other things that, you know, we'll just, you know, look, you know, we'll have issues that go wrong with things, but we always want that feedback. That's how we get better. And we Learn and we grow, but we care so much.

That's beautiful, Michael. Well, I want to. I want to acknowledge you before the final two questions for your drive, man. It's inspiring to watch your drive at this season of life with the success you have.

What do you mean, I'm a kid?

I mean, you're a little older than me, at least.

I don't believe that. Making me feel like an old man.

You're a kid. You're. You're older chronologically, but biologically, you've got the heart of a kid and the drive of a kid always. But the thing I appreciate about you from our interaction is just your desire for feedback and your coachability and saying, how can we get better? We're not perfect. We make mistakes. We want to get better, send us feedback. And I think that's one of the things that people can take away a lot from this interview, but great athletes that sustain it for years are coachable, just like in business. Great individuals, great people in relationships. And so I love that you say, I know I'm not perfect with all the things we do, but I want to get better at giving me feedback. And I'm not going to take it personally. I'm going to say, awesome. Thank you. Now I'm going to go improve it. And I think that mentality and mindset is one of the keys that has supported you continually in making you greater product, greater business, greater teams, and all these things. So I really acknowledge you for your drive.

Thank you.

Your commitment, just your. Your passion for business. You make business look fun.

It is.

Make it look exciting.

I don't make it look funny. It is fun.

It is fun. Well, some people, it's exhausting. Well, and they're drained and it takes a life out of them, but you show a different side of it.

So then you're missing the opportunity.

Exactly.

By the way, when you play football, was it exhausting, but it was also fun.

It was a lot of fun, but it was also. But I don't know, one person could.

Say it's exhausting, other person could say it's fun. I look at. Say it's fun.

Exactly.

It's exhausting sometimes, but I love it.

Yeah, exactly.

But thank you. Look, I. Look, I think that is. That. That is a strength of mine. And I got lots of weaknesses, but that's a strength of mine. And, like, you know, I'm loving every minute of what I do.

That's beautiful. Final two questions. This is a hypothetical question, so bear with me for a second. Imagine you get to live as long as you want in this life, hypothetically, you can live hundreds of years old, and you get to accomplish and create everything you want to create in your life. The businesses, philanthropy, the success, all of it. It all comes true. But for whatever reason, in this hypothetical scenario, you have to take all of your content with you. So this interview is gone. When you, you know, in a hundred years, anything you put out in the world of interviews or messages or social media, it's all gone. So no one has.

Sounds peaceful.

Yeah, right. But no one has access to your content anymore. The things you said. But on the final day, you get to leave behind three lessons. And this is all we would have of your information and your content. I call it three truths. What would be those three truths for you.

Rolling on this planet for so long? Maximize every minute. Enjoy every minute. And to me, enjoying every minute is doing what I do, you know, at work, for the most part. Two, get the right people around you. The right people take you everywhere. The wrong people take you down.

Yeah.

And so get the right people around you. And by the way, learn from each other. And third, you know, failure is an opportunity. Don't let it bother you. We all fail in life. We all have lots of failures. Take each one of them. Learn from it. Grow from it. I think those three things would be three that I think of right off the top of my head.

Those are beautiful, man. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

That's a really good question. I would say I would think about two things for me. So I'm not giving you the exact answer you asked me. One would be winning at the highest level, and the second would be, you know, doing it the right way every minute of the day.

There you go. Mike, Ruben, thanks for being here, man. Appreciate you, bro.

If you're not happy as you're listening right now, if you're anxious, if you feel a lot of pressure, the answer is, ironically, you have to start doing the opposite of everything you naturally want to do. So. Right. So you naturally want to be at night dealing with this, and you're all stressed. So what you want to naturally do is.