Michael Rubin: The TRUTH About The White Party and Becoming a Billionaire

People have called you the Great Gatsby of business. We've gotten a ton of comments on the white party. How did you decide to start doing that?

Everyone who comes to that party knows they're going to meet people around them that are really good for them in business. You have the most important people in culture coming together, and we've got multiple marriages.

No way, who?

I'm trying to think what I could say and what I can't say. People think, oh, it's Michael Rubin's Fanatics, he's built this company worth $40 billion, like, oh, it's easy, man. We grind every day. People said like, Michael, you have no fucking chance.

If you lost everything today and you were rebuilding from scratch, what would you do first?

Hi, I'm Michael Rubin, and welcome to The Burnouts.

How important do you think relationships are in your business?

Forget about my business. Relationships are everything in every business, okay? And people who don't understand that are completely missing it. Let me tell you something. Relationships don't matter during good times. When they matter is during tough times, when you're getting punched in the face, when things aren't going the way you want them to go. So for me, like, we all have strengths and weaknesses. One of my strengths is like, I'm pretty like, you know, good relationship skills. And I build these authentic relationships over a long period of time. So when guys like you call me and say, hey, come out and do my podcast, here I am. Might have taken us a year to get here, but we're still here. So I think relationships are undervalued by most people. I think people don't understand, like, again, if things are going great, you don't need a good relationship. But shit goes wrong all the time. Every day for us, shit goes wrong. Like, people think, oh, you know, it's Michael Rubin's Fanatics, he's built this company worth, you know, $30 or $40 billion, got $13 billion in revenue and 22,000 employees. Like, oh, it's easy. Man, we grind every day. We do this shit 18, 19, 20 hours a day. I got 22,000 people that wake up saying, how do we relentlessly enhance the fan experience? We go to bed thinking the same thing. Without the relationships of the biggest stars in the world, the sports properties, and most importantly, sports fans, we got nothing.

And tell us about some of the— obviously, we have been witness to seeing the way that you work with, like, Meek Mill and some of these amazing people, and especially the work that you've now done with Reform. Tell us a little bit more about that, and how did those relationships start?

You know, the most interesting thing And you guys probably know the Meek story. Whenever someone would ask me to help with a charity before, I was the greatest person to ask, 'cause I would just wanna give away money to have them not, to like finish the conversation as quickly as possible. Someone said, hey Michael, I'm doing this thing, can you come? Let me just write you a check. No, you can't honor me, no you can't do this, but I'm happy to write you a check, okay? And I was always a pretty charitable person financially, but I never put my time into it. The thing with Meek that changed my life and changed his life was, as everyone knows, Meek got sent to prison for 2 to 4 years for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle, for the most simple probation violation, because he had a crazy judge who was power hungry and who wanted to control him. And she sent him to prison for 2 to 4 years for literally getting a ticket for $62.50 for popping a wheelie on a motorcycle. What changed my life and what changed Meek's life is he said to me— call me on Friday— he's like, yo, can you come to court with me on Monday? I'm like, for what? He's like, you remember I told you I have that probation hearing? He's like, I really want you to see what happens when a Black person goes to court. I'm like, do you really want me to come? And like, he had always told me all these stories, and like, you hear them but you don't fully appreciate it, to be honest. I think it's hard to believe because they seem so Unbelievable. So I'm like, "Do you really want me to come?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "No problem. I live 20 minutes away." I think the court hearing was like at maybe 1 o'clock. I get there and I watch this probation officer get up and said, "You know, Robert Williams is a model probationer. He's done everything we've ever asked. We suggest no sentencing." She sits down. The DA gets up and says, "You know, we recommend no sentencing." And the judge starts screaming at the DA and the probation officer in front of me saying, you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know the problem he is, screaming at them. Then they said, hey, they asked me like impromptu, can you get up and speak about your relationship with Mick? And I got up, I was really honest. I'm like, look, this is a guy I've been around my kids, my mom, I love the guy. Is he perfect? Hell no, but I'm not perfect. Does he deserve to go to prison for popping a wheel on a motorcycle? Nothing makes less sense. He's employing people, he's paying taxes. And I was giving this great impassioned speech. And you know when someone's paying attention and when they're not. I looked at this woman and she didn't hear a word I was saying. She didn't care. She tuned me out. She sent him to jail for 2 to 4 years in front of me. That was the most powerless I ever felt in my life. I remember leaving there and I called the now governor of Pennsylvania, he was the attorney general there, Josh Shapiro. I said, "How do we get him out of prison?" And then I called the mayor and I called the then governor. And like, I didn't realize it's pretty hard to get someone out of prison, right? Like, there's not just like some powerful person calls and says, hey, can you get— it doesn't work that way. So that was a wake-up call for me. And I was so shaken that myself and Jay-Z's partner, Desiree Perez, who runs Roc Nation, the two of us kind of spent the next 5 and a half months working to get him out of prison. And it was like, her mission and my mission, and we talked 10, 20 times a day. And by the way, there were times you just felt like giving up. You're like, fuck that, I'm not giving up. And he had a 2 to 4 year sentence, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ordered his release 5 and a half months later. It turned out that the original thing he was arrested for, which is why he was on probation, the cops had made up the story and lied, that they all came forward and admitted it. It was like a scene out of Training Day, the movie. And so ultimately, he got out of prison 5 and a half months later, but the important thing was, the now governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, said to me, like, Michael, shit always happens for a reason. Like, Meek is your special friend. You got to fix this for the everyday person. And that's how we created the Reform Alliance. Myself, Jay-Z, Robert Kraft, Meek got together and started the Reform Alliance. And we've done some pretty powerful work in the— you know, we started it in 2019. We've got more than 1 million people off of probation parole who shouldn't have been on it. It's been mathematically proven that, like, a longer sentence actually hurts you. It doesn't help you. And by the way, I'm, like, a really logical person. Someone goes out and commits a bad crime, they should go to prison. But if someone like pops a wheelie on a motorcycle, they shouldn't, you know, get sent back to prison for 2 to 4 years. That doesn't make a lot of sense. So, yeah, my passion's business and that's what I love to do. But actually making a difference in this world is really frickin' important.

Before I met you, one thing I always admire about you is that you said you run your philanthropy like a business. What does that look like on the day-to-day level? Like, what KPIs are you holding your team to?

Yeah, look, I think a lot of charities operate like charities. And I think, you know, a lot of governments operate like governments. I think if you want to run a, you know, a nonprofit, I think you got to run it like a business. So I think we try to be more effective. Um, I think we try to count every penny. Like, you, you want to make sure, hey, just because we raised this money— like, we went out, you guys have been to the two casino nights we've done, and we raised, I think, like $22 and $24 million each of those two nights, which is incredible how giving people were. But we got to value that money. We got to treat it like it's the money you just raised for, for fee, you're a startup, you gotta make sure that you're not wasting that money. So I think a lot of charities don't act that way. So I think the proof is in the results. You know, we've spent less than $100 million in the 7 years we've started this cumulatively, and we've got, you know, more than a million people off of probation and parole that shouldn't have been. I'll tell you the best thing I can tell you about running this like a business without giving you the names of the people involved here. It's a great story. So when we decided to start reform, someone said, "We need a goal of how many people we're going to get off of probation and parole." So I called someone who was really smart, and they said, "Michael, you should go with 10,000." I said, "10,000?" I said, "There's 4—" At this point, there were 4.2 million people on probation and parole. Probably half shouldn't be on probation and parole. So probably the pool is 2 million, 2.5 million." They said, "Well, what do you want to go with?" I said, "A million." They said, "How are you getting to a million?" I said, "Half the people I think should get out." They said, "Well, what kind of analysis have you done?" I said, "I haven't. Fucking made up the number, we're gonna go for it." By the way, we got a million people out of the system in 7 years that shouldn't have been in the system. So like, that's operating like a business. Come up with a bold goal, fucking go for it, and don't take no for an answer, okay? And so that's how you operate, and that's how entrepreneurs operate. And again, So many things have gone wrong on that journey, but like, we've got it right a lot more than we've got it wrong.

You guys have deployed over $100 million. When you think about your legacy, like, do you think you'll put billions of dollars into this and like, you know, a huge chunk of your net worth?

I don't think this is one that needs billions of dollars, which is pretty cool. I think this— that what we did here is we fixed the underlying laws. The problem with the laws is that they were so illogical. So you could have one state, like in California, we were able to get the laws changed to where you couldn't be on probation for a, um, for a felony more than 2 years, for misdemeanor more than a year. That was logical. In Pennsylvania, Meek had a felony. He was on probation for— between the sentence he served and the sentence he had left, it was like 20 years. Okay, by the way, you put any of the 3 of us on probation for 20 years, one of us going to jail one night for sure. Like, it's the— every people make mistakes. That's just life. Bobby, imagine— do you know it's a rule that you can't be around another felon? Okay? Well, guess what? You grow up in a tough neighborhood and a lot of people you grow up with have felonies. So it's actually illegal just to live with somebody or walk outside the street with somebody. So the system is made to— it's just a broken system. So we're fixing the underlying system. So it doesn't need billions of dollars. What it needs is logic.

And I want to shift gears a little bit and ask about what I know we've gotten a ton of comments on, which is the white party. How did you decide to start doing that and why do you think it's become such a huge cultural phenomenon?

You know, it was a much like simpler decision than people would think. I bought a house in the Hamptons in 2020, and literally my buddy Will Mackris, who I think you guys have met, is like, we should do a fun party in the summertime. And like I had done the Super Bowl party, which was like, our Super Bowl party had become the most important party of Super Bowl weekend, and it gets the athletes that are most important to us, the stars that are most important to us, the owners, the league executives, our business partners. So it brought up all the people that were most important to us. So it was a really good way for us to bring people together that really benefited our ecosystem. So when Will said that, I was like, yeah, let's fucking do it. And, you know, I think one of the things, because relationships are so important to me, it was kind of funny because I remember the first year doing it, you're calling people and say, hey man, I'm doing this. And we just— I don't know how we even named the white party. I think we were just like, whatever, it's the summertime, so it's like you go white. And we just started calling people and say like, we're doing this party, we're going to keep it super tight and I remember the first year, like everyone showed up, and for me, the capability that I have that a lot of people don't have is that I'm very comfortable to really curate something really tightly, and so that everyone knows when they walk into the party, everyone who comes to that party knows they're gonna meet people around them that are really good for them in business. I think, you know, for us, the amount of great business things that have come out of that party, the amount of deals that have come out of the party, by the way, marriages, and we've got multiple marriages. No way, who? Um, well, um, there's been, there's been, there's been multiple. I'm trying to think what I could say and what I can't say. Let me just say people have met there. Um, Megan Thee Stallion and Klay Thompson met there. Okay, they're not married, but they met there, um, which I remember that night distinctly. Um, we could say Coco and, um, yeah, Donovan Mitchell met there. Yeah, um, Mo Bamba and his wife met there. So like we've been— That's crazy.

We at the same night or different ones?

Well, there's been 4 parties. I think it's 3 strong relationships. By the way, this is just something to think about. So we've created some great relationships, great, way more business opportunities than rela— I'm much more better at creating the business opportunities than the relationships. But it's been like, it's like, look, I love bringing people together. It's a fun thing to do. Obviously we're doing the big party for reform that we do every other year. I decide to rotate them. I actually decided at the end of this year that reform is such a great cause, but we've raised enough money for it now, we're just gonna go back to the white party every year, 'cause I actually like giving money, I don't like asking people to give money, so we're just gonna go back to the white party every year starting this July. But it's a fun party to do. Why is it so, look, you have the most important people in culture coming together, and so I think that makes it super interesting, and I will say it's a little weird when you look outside your house and there's like hundreds of paparazzi, You know, with crazy cameras outside. It's like people love the party. It's so fun. It's, you know, it's one night to let loose here. I think people also feel safe there. Like, I think the biggest stars in the world know they can come there and feel safe.

And we met so many people at the White Party now that I think about it who are investors, advisors, and people were not just— I mean, it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun. But it definitely— you're right.

What time do you make it till?

Maybe like 2 or 3. That's respectable. I think it was fun.

The story I like most about you that I saw actually online, because I do, I like social media in the morning and when I go to bed. Was the you falling down the stairs.

Oh, that was so bad.

Yeah, that was at Reform, right? Yeah. You tripped over yourself. Yeah.

Wait, so do you have any good footage of that? I, I, I'm sure— I wish. I wish. Yeah.

Okay, so basically, each birthday, right?

For anyone who didn't see it, I was at Reform, which is— you have a casino night party. So I was at the casino night party for the Reform charity. And so there's a gigantic spiral staircase, and obviously I'm a little lit, so I'm walking down and I trip, I fall, I tumble down downstairs. So embarrassing. Literally my leg is bleeding. And so I'm dazed and I'm getting up, and I think Phoebe's right in front of me, so I'm giving her my hand, and instead it's Jay-Z. And he's like, are you okay? And I was like, oh fuck, like, this is so embarrassing. And I was like, oh, I'm totally fine, right? Like, my leg's literally bleeding, I'm very much in pain, but I'm like, no, no, no, sir, don't worry, I'm so fine, thank you. And then he was like, you're a little embarrassed, aren't you? It's okay, don't be. And he was so nice. And I was like, that's really nice of you, like, thank you, like, no, don't worry. And then Phoebe's like in the corner.

Okay, to be fair, My hand was also extended. My hand was not taken, which was hurtful.

Well, I was just like, I have a concussion, I think.

As this is going on, how'd you not at least get your camera out for the latter part of the— like, I understand you missed the fall, but you could have at least got like the highlights.

You want us to post a photo of Sophia's like bloody knee like gushing out while she was too busy winning blackjack against Tom Brady is what she was doing.

What a night, actually.

It's a fun— look, we love— look, I do 3 big events a year. I do the white party, which is, you know, kind of the most intimate, you know, bringing people that are so important to us in one way or different together. I do the Super Bowl festivities, which is like, look, the NFL is our biggest business, and, you know, we have the best party of the weekend there, and we bring so many great people together. And then we do Fanatics Fest, which is actually for the fans. We're gonna have 200,000 fans at Javits. You guys came to that, right? Yeah, yeah. Which is— and by the way, each— like, this year is going to be so crazy. Like, each year we've done it now this will be our third time. That, that's probably the most humbling thing to me, is to see every big star coming out, you know, to support their fans, to support Fanatics, to do great things and kind of, you know, have the best relationship they can with their fans. It's so fun. So to me, those are the only three events we do. It's funny, people are like, oh Michael, like, you throw so many parties. I do three parties per year. I do Fanatics Fest for 200,000 fans, I do the White Party, and I do Super Bowl, and that's it. Those are my parties.

You know who else we became friends with because of your parties is the Nader sisters. And you were friends with them before they even had their reality show.

Yeah, very, very introverted, you know, trying to come out of their shell.

Just kidding. No, so shy. Well, it's funny because also something that I realized is I met a bunch of these people like years ago, like through all these parties and everything. And I feel like you have such an eye for up-and-coming talent. Like, I feel like people don't realize the rooms are so curated. Like, it's Kim Kardashian, sure, all these great people, but there's also people who now have become like such rising stars.

I think that's the way I learn. And so for me, you know, like, I still, I really can barely read. Like, people don't believe that. I was watching someone, um, was it somebody a day or two ago who had a book? They had Andrew Sorkin's book 1929 that he just wrote. And they're like, hey, I'm like, oh, how's the book? They're like, tell me, it's really good. They're like, have you read it? I'm like, I haven't read a book since 9th grade, literally. Like, the last book I read was The Unauthorized Story of Phil Knight in 9th grade, okay? That said, I learn differently. I learn by talking to people, by bringing people around me that I can learn from, that I can help. And so everyone's always like, oh, Michael, you're so gracious, you know, you're trying to help me. But if I sit with you guys, yeah, I'm gonna try to help you in every way I can, but I'm also gonna learn from you guys and the things that you're talking about. So that's my process. So for me, I think we are very thoughtful about making sure that everyone that we put into a room at the white party or at our Super Bowl party is someone that is be mutually beneficial for the people there. So when you come to the white party, I think you could ask the biggest stars in the world, or reform, when Jay helped you from your traumatic fall, um, you know, I think what people would say is they know who's ever there is someone they want to meet because they're a special person. And I do love identifying young talent. That's how I learn. And I can think back to so many people, you know, I just even give you an example of people who some people love and some people hate. But I remember meeting Jake Paul as a 15-year-old or a boxer. And like, I look at that and I look at what a great marketer is. I look at his brother, I'm like, these guys are some of the best marketing celebrities that you think about. But like, we're all always learning from each other. And that's, you know, the same thing with, I think, all of my relationships.

Yeah, because you've had Alex Earle there, Libby Dunn there. Like, you always have had the up-and-coming people who are of the moment so early in your orbit that it's always been something I thought was really cool.

And it generally starts very authentically, like, you know, the D'Amelios. Yeah, yeah. Well, the D'Amelios came from Kylie because Kylie was like— my daughter Kylie was like, when she was, let's say, 12 or 13, and, you know, Charli and Dixie were at the absolute top of the TikTok craziness. Kylie's like, oh, I really like these guys, they're cool. And their dad, believe it or not, worked for a company that I subsequently bought, Mitchell Ness. Okay. And so like, we just all got together and we were all excited to spend time. But I do like learning from all types of people. And I could, I could tell you often As you get bigger, you can get set in your ways. And what you can be really smart is who's the young disruptor? Who's the person who's going to take out the business model you created? So I love learning from people, and I love giving to people, and they can learn from me. So I'm— I do spend more time— like, I'm very conversational, and it's the way I learn. I mean, I was as bad as a student as you could possibly imagine. Definitely the opposite of the two of you. I was— and I did have every learning disability. I mean, I couldn't read. I did have dyslexia. I just speech impediment, and I was just generally terrible in school and bored by it. And as much as I talk about how bad of a student I was, I was really that bad of an athlete. Like, I just was always the guy that'd get picked last on a team and like just wasn't, you know, didn't have good hand-eye coordination. And for me, like, I loved working from when I, like, as long as I can remember, I can remember loving working. So like when I was an 8-year-old, I had like 5, you know, side hustles. I was, you know, selling snow shoveling, you know, driveway to driveway, and kind of hiring kids and paying them, you know, a buck an hour, whatever it was for, you know, 45 years ago. And, you know, selling for $20 a driveway. And, you know, I was selling vegetable seeds door-to-door and making stationery on the computer. And like, I just love to do that. So for me, um, you know, I think you gravitate to what you're good at, and that's something I was always good at and really always loved from as long as I can remember. And I I've been in business nonstop since I've been, you know, legitimately 11 or 12 years old. So I'm now 53. I think I've been doing this for 41, 42 years as like my obsession.

And would you say you're really good at making money?

I don't like, I don't think about it as making. I think the way I think about it is I think I'm pretty good at figuring things out and then bringing people together to go after that opportunity. I'm very much like a, what really drives me is winning in business. That's the way I compete. So I think one of the great things about being a business person, one of the more difficult things about being one of the best athletes in the world. Eventually, when you're an athlete, you have to stop playing. Like, you know, eventually LeBron James will retire. Tom Brady eventually retired. You know, eventually Father Time gets to you in sports. In business, you can do this for as long as you're alive. And I like that I can play at the highest level every single day. And for me, that completely drives me. So yeah, of course, do I think I'm, you know, pretty good at, you know, creating value? I do. But like, what I love about it is coming up with big ideas, doing shit people tell me is impossible and kind of bringing people together. And like, you know, we were just talking about getting punched in the face. Like, I get punched in the face all the time. I fucking love that. That's fun. That's sport. You mentioned your daughter.

I'm curious how being a father has changed who you are as an entrepreneur. Humbling.

I mean, by the way, all 3 of my— it's funny. We have a deal we're in the middle of doing right now because my 3-year-old told me that she— Daddy, why don't you have the trading cards for this? I'm like, fucking right, why don't we not do trading cards? I call the person, we're in the middle of doing the deal, it's gonna be very big for us. So you have to learn from everyone around you. Imagine that I have a 3-year-old that I'm taking input from into our business. I think you have to listen to consumers. And so to me, Kylie's obviously like at this point more like my friend than my daughter. She's 20 years old, she's, you know, it's funny at this point Kylie, like she more hazes me on a daily basis. Dad, like why are you a bitch? Why are you going to bed so early? Why can't you drink as many shots as I can drink? Drink. It's, it's more entertaining, but it shows I, I, I, I, uh, I trained a tough one who likes to give it back to me.

Now, what do you think is the biggest thing she's learned from you?

Work ethic, without any question. Yeah. And, and by the way, that's got its good and bad parts, but I'd say what all of my kids know, but particularly Kylie, who, you know, I raised, you know, a tremendous amount of her life she was with me and just moving around with me, moving around, is work ethic. She saw me always grinding. From when she woke up to she went to bed. I'll tell you right now, when I'm in Philadelphia a few days a week, my two little ones who are now 5 and 3, as soon as they wake up, they know where to go, which is my office. And they get up, one gets up at like 6, the other gets up at like 6:30, and they run in and then they do projects and work in my office while I'm working and they see me working. And so it's like, I think I'm teaching them about work ethic as a 3 and 5-year-old and about hustling as a 3 and 5-year-old, and hopefully that translates.

And what time do you wake up?

Yes, I just looked at this, my Whoop. I slept 4 hours and 34 minutes. It was not a good night's sleep. I'm trying, the doctors have told me I'm killing myself, that actually sleep is really important. I thought, I honestly until a couple years ago, thought like sleep was like, you're a bitch if you need a lot of sleep. That was my mentality, okay? And then I realized I'm actually the idiot and I'm stupid. And so the doctor basically said to me like, Michael, when you look at all your signs, like you're taking decades off your life. And so I've now got my sleep up to 6 hours and 3 minutes average, which is the hardest thing I've had to ever do.

What was it before that? Like 4.5, and I'm completely functional.

I've slept 4 hours and 34 minutes yesterday, put my Whoop, I feel great.

And you don't drink coffee?

Never once in my life. Wow. Never once.

Okay, so then they tell you that you're killing yourself, you get it up to 6? 6:03, killing it. 6:03, you're killing it. How do you measure it? Whoop, baby.

I'm addicted to this thing. Wow. I'm firmly addicted to this. It's like I compete with myself every day. And I'll tell you the most demoralizing thing, because I love making fun of myself. When I first got the Whoop, I didn't realize they had a Whoop age. And when the Whoop age came out, it told me that I was 7.3 years older than my actual age. And then you can go unpack it and why. It was sleep was the biggest thing, was by far and away number one. And then my heart rate was too high because I'm like so hyperactive. I'm like, now I'm actually working on my breathing in the night when I go to bed and I'm actually sleeping more. So I'm now down to 3 years older than I was. By the end of this year, I'm going to be fucking younger than my actual age. I'm going to beat the whoop to death.

Wait, and you were also so open about taking GLPs. You dressed up— wait, what did you dress up as for Halloween?

Yeah, Will and I dressed up as giant shots of, of Modjerno. We loved it. Like, I, like, I don't— people take themselves too seriously. Like, it's, it's kind of— I was telling somebody last night, they're like, man, you— I, as a, as a joke with these two idiots over here that allowed me to do it, um, like 2 or 3 years ago— yeah, you know exactly what I'm talking about— 2 or 3 years ago, we were in, um, we were at baseball star. And they gave me the pitch, and I took some pitches, and I was trying to throw as fast as I could. And the pitches, most of them were terrible. I said, get the worst pitches and let's put them on social media. Why? Because I want to show that you could take— I could suck in school, I could suck in sports, look what I could do in business. Okay? Now, of course, the internet wants to twist it around, but I don't care. I think it's funny. Every month that reel comes back out. How's this guy running one of the most important sports companies in the world if he can't throw a baseball pitch? I post the worst fucking pictures purposely to make a point. But you also have to not take yourself seriously. So I remember being on CNBC and Andrew Sorkin's like, man, you look great. I'm like, yeah, 'cause I take Bonjona. How else you think I look that good? He's like, wait, you're admitting that? I'm like, do you think I was 30 pounds fat for my entire life and then suddenly I come in here and I'm 30 pounds lighter? What do you think it is? And he's like, You're the first CEO to admit to being on Mondjourno. I'm like, everyone who was fat who got skinny took Mondjourno. Promise, start with that. It's like 1% that actually did it the hard way. Mondjourno is like the greatest drug in the world. Like, I used to be 206 pounds, now I'm 165 pounds. I feel great. Like, thank you, Mondjourno. They should pay you.

I mean, this is—

I'm gonna tell you one thing. If someone came to me 4 years ago and said, Michael, give me half of everything you have to make you 165 pounds, Obviously, please take it. Okay. Buongiorno. It wasn't half. It was a pretty good transaction.

How has it changed your life? Oh, you just feel better.

I mean, listen, I'm like, I'm working my— I'm working 18 hours a day, every day of the week, 7 days a week, most weeks of the year. Like, you need to feel good. I feel better. Yeah, I got 2 little kids, you know, they have no mercy on you. So it's like, like, it just— I feel so much better. I see so many people. I am literally a pusher of Mounjaro. I've got hundreds of people on Mounjaro. You need to invest in them. The maddening thing was I called my family office when it came out. I'm like, guys, there's two drugs, Ozempic and Mounjaro. We got to buy the companies. They came back. They're like, well, one's worth like $75 billion. It was Lilly. Lilly was one company and the— I forget the— Novac was the other company. We're like, they're like $150 billion, $75 billion. I'm like, well, let's just buy the stocks. They're like, it's already priced in. The stocks have quadrupled. Stocks have been amazing in the last couple years. They are both great drugs.

Okay, wow. I, I love it.

I mean, one of you guys need it, so it's not relevant for the two of you. It was very relevant for me.

And I'm curious also for you, in terms of like, if you lost everything today and you were rebuilding from scratch, like, what do you think are the most important things you would do?

So let me first tell you that would be fun. Okay? And if you're a real entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm saying. Okay? If you're in it for the action because you fucking love to play the game every day, that would be fun. I say all the time, if— what did you say? 23, 24. I say this to people all the time. I have so many people give me the dumbest response. I ask people all the time, to people who are really well off, if you could, if you had to give up all of your money to be 10 years younger, would you do it? People are like, hell no. Most people say to me, hell no. I would do that in one second. If you told me I could be 43 and take everything I have, and I would love doing it again, it'd be fun.

I had braces when I was 13, so.

But you're too young to understand this.

You're too young. I don't need to go back to the math team days. I don't know about that.

But for me, like, listen, you only have so many years. You don't think about this when you're 23 or 24. When you're 53, you're like, okay, well, Even with advanced medicine, can I live to 100? Can I live to 90? By the way, I want to live healthy. So you're like, time is the most precious asset that we have. And so for me, um, the idea of doing it all over again, I like that. I'm turned on by that. That's fun for me. That's like why I play the game. So think about how I reinvented Fanatics just in the last 5 years. I've started the sports betting and iGaming business, started the collectibles business, created Fanatics Fest. Now we're starting a Fanatics credit card. Like, I'm— like, to me If you have— if you're a good thinker and you're good at getting great people around you, you can do amazing things. And so that doesn't scare me at all.

It actually gets me excited. And what would you do first? I just get up and go grind.

I figure the fuck out.

That ain't hard. True. But I'm curious, like, for a business, what do you think are the most important decisions you need to make early on?

Well, without question, it's getting the strategy right. Like, so many people have bad strategies. Like, if you're like, hey, You're inventing this great product, but there's not a good business model. It could be a good product, but it's not a good business. You got to invite a great— you got to create a great product, a great business that's also a good business model. Then you got to get the right people. So to me, it's really that simple. If I want to create a great business, I need to think about, is this idea— can we make this better for who it impacts? Is this a good business? Is it good for everybody? How can I disrupt? And then how do I get the right people to do that? If you figure out the strategy and you marry it with the right people, you got a good chance of killing it.

And what do you think are the reasons why all these incredible top performers— I mean, I love Jessica Jackson and she is absolutely dedicated to reform. She lives and breathes it. How do you think you make these people so inspired to love working with you?

Well, I think someone like Jessica is so inspired by the mission. I don't think it's me at all. You know, I think where I probably have more of an impact would be at Fanatics. And I'd say I think what people see is we have a like We are— we work— it's funny, from the outside looking in, um, you know, there's a lot of admiration for what we've built, but then there's also the things that we all want to do better. I think from the inside looking out, you have so many people that are just like— they truly believe in our brand purpose, which is how do we relentlessly enhance the fan experience, and how do we wake up and go to bed incredibly passionate about that every day. I think communication is really important. You got to talk to people, you got to sell people on what you're doing, you got to keep people excited. We do— I do a meeting with all of our employees every quarter Okay. I love doing that because you can get people, you know, super aware of everything that's going on, by the way. And we talk about our L's, our punches in the face, the shit that went wrong. How can we be better? We start by— we do this great hype video every quarter, all the shit that went right. But during that meeting, we're always— here's where we need to be better. Here's what didn't go well. Like, you got to just be— it's like great communication as well.

Michael, thank you so much for coming on The Burnouts today. We learned so much from you. We are so grateful to have you as an investor in FIA, and we can't wait to see what you do next.

Honored to be with you guys. Look forward to watching you guys kill it for many decades to come. Look forward to learning from you guys and always love having you guys around.