Kevin O'Leary: The Game-Changing Habits That Set Top Entrepreneurs Apart | Entrepreneurship | YAPLive | E376

Starting a business is brutally hard, and Kevin O’Leary is a living example of that truth. Despite early failures, he went on to build and sell The Learning Company for $4.2 billion in one of the most competitive tech markets in history. As an investor in over 50 companies, he can spot true entrepreneurs from a mile away and knows exactly what it takes to stay in the game. In this episode, Kevin exposes the harsh realities of entrepreneurship and shares the essential traits, skills, and strategies that separate successful founders from those who fail. In this episode, Hala and Kevin will discuss: (00:00) His Early Life and Path to Entrepreneurship (06:04) Kevin’s Rules for Scaling Beyond $5M (14:05) Lessons From a $4.2B Business Exit (22:37) Transitioning From Operator to Investor (27:42) Managing the Highs and Lows in Business (32:32) What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur? (36:51) Rating the Traits of True Entrepreneurs (46:29) High-Performance Habits for Entrepreneurs (01:01:16) The Power of Creator Entrepreneurship Kevin O’Leary is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and television personality, best known as “Mr. Wonderful” on ABC’s Shark Tank. He co-founded and built The Learning Company, which was later sold for $4.2 billion, making it one of the largest tech exits of its time. Kevin is also the Chairman of O’Leary Ventures, as well as a bestselling author, global speaker, and advocate for entrepreneurship and financial literacy. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/PROFITING Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Revolve - Head to REVOLVE.com/PROFITING and take 15% off your first order with code PROFITING DeleteMe - Remove your personal data online. Get 20% off DeleteMe consumer plans at to joindeleteme.com/profiting Spectrum Business - Visit Spectrum.com/FreeForLife to learn how you can get Business Internet Free Forever. Airbnb - Find yourself a cohost at airbnb.com/host Northwest Registered Agent - Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes at northwestregisteredagent.com/paidyap Framer - Publish beautiful and production-ready websites. Go to Framer.com/design and use code PROFITING Intuit QuickBooks - Bring your money and your books together in one platform at QuickBooks.com/money Resources Mentioned: Kevin's Website: kevinoleary.com Kevin's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kevinolearyshark Kevin's Instagram: instagram.com/kevinolearytv/?hl=en Kevin's YouTube: youtube.com/channel Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Side Hustle, Startup, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  There's so many people that want to buy, "Oh, the market changed. Oh, the competitors changed their prices. Oh, there was dumping on the market from China." Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Bullshit, all bullshit. The founder and the CEO, they are the person who failed. Unless I hear that, I never invest in them.

• 1:27Hala Taha?

  In this episode, we're diving deep with the one and only Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O'Leary. Kevin is a world-famous entrepreneur, investor, Shark Tank star, and a self-made multimillionaire who's turned setbacks into strategies for massive success.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Entrepreneurship is a disease, actually. It's a virus. It never sets you free. And so you have to know that, and the more successful you are, the harder you work. You're never going to be free, and then you have to decide, "What's my life balance like?" Well, there isn't any. It's a bullshit concept. You know, when I go to a value a company, there's only two people I want to talk to before the CEO. Just those two people will tell you, is this a good business or not? I want to meet the person running and I want to meet the head of. A lot of entrepreneurs forget to do this. Get that first five million really secure in your name.

• 2:14Hala Taha?

  I like that goal.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  It's a good goal. It's enough to push you, but you're not going to stop working. You're going to keep going.

• 2:19Hala Taha?

  So what needs to change at five million to then hit 10 and 30 and 100?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  At the five million point, you need to transition from being the entrepreneur to the leader. And many fail at that point because.

• 2:33Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiteers. What does it take to build an empire, sell it for billions, and stay on top when the stakes are sky high? In this episode, we're diving deep with the one and only Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O'Leary. Kevin is a world famous entrepreneur, investor, Shark Tank star, and a self-made millionaire who turned setbacks into strategies for massive success. We'll talk about how Kevin built and sold the learning company for $4.2 billion, why culture clashes can destroy great businesses, and the biggest lessons he's learned from decades of investing in over 50 companies. Kevin also shares his secrets to staying focused on what matters, cutting through the noise, managing the emotional roller coaster of entrepreneurship, and using storytelling and personal branding to dominate

• 3:16Hala Taha?

  in today's creator economy. Believe me, you don't want to miss this conversation. And without further delay, Kevin, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Thank you, Ella. Great to be here.

• 3:27Hala Taha?

  I'm so excited for this interview. I've been watching Shark Tank for years. It was actually like the show that me and my family always watched.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I think Shark Tank's older than you are.

• 3:36Hala Taha?

  I wish. But I watched it all the time. And now I'm running a company that's about to hit eight figures this year. And I feel like Shark Tank was really one of the things that inspired me when I was growing up. So thank you for all the work that you've done for young entrepreneurs.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're very proud of the platform. We certainly didn't know when we started out what would happen. The first three years, it was canceled three years in a row and.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  It was kind of interesting that Disney just kept it going. And we found out that Willow Bay, Iger's wife, was part of the reason. Her kids were watching it. She loved the show. She was an advocate for us. And then, of course, season four exploded.

• 4:13Hala Taha?

  It's just like a classic in terms of TV, and you guys have done so much. So Kevin, you're one of the most recognizable businessmen in the world. You're an extremely successful entrepreneur. But what was Kevin like growing up?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  You know, I was like any other kid. I was really very interested in that time in photography. And I was part of the photo club in my high school. And I told my father I wanted to pursue photography and film production. And he said, "You're going to starve to death. You're just not good enough." You've got to realize you're competing with a million other people who want to do the same thing. And there's nothing special about what you do. And you would think that would be very hard love to hear from a stepfather, but he was factually correct. And it forced me to take a different path to pursue some business education, which ended up being immensely valuable, but not for the education I learned later. I don't remember anything I did in my MBA at all.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  But I met all these people that went on to become leaders in pretty well all 11 sectors of the economy. And I can phone them today and get instantly through to them and use them as my network. Business school is not about balance sheet training or incomes. If you're successful entrepreneur, you're going to hire a bean counter. So I don't do the books anymore. But I certainly needed that network to get ahead in those critical years. And I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I spent the time. So an education isn't worthless, although there's lots of billionaires that never finished high school.

• 5:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So if somebody was considering going to college or getting an MBA now, would you say it's necessary or don't do it?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't say it's necessary. I would say it's a... The reason you would do it is to understand for 24 months, you're in a cohort of some of the most incredible people from around the world because these institutions, I teach at them, these Ivy League schools, they curate an international group of people that are extraordinary. And it doesn't mean they're all going to be successful, but they all have unique attributes and they kind of build these cohorts around each other. So there you are, put into this place where there's some really smart people challenging your ideas for two years.

• 6:30Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And you have to fend for yourself, but it has nothing to do, you know, it's, when I teach these classes myself, I walk in there and I say, "Look, everybody, you're all gonna forget me. It doesn't matter." But the real value in this class is you. Is these relationships you're forming in here, you should never forget that. And I think that's a wonderful thing, and if you can get in, it's worth it. And you know, that to me was what made it worth it. And now I know that with certainty because I'm decades past it.

• 7:03Hala Taha?

  I got a 4.0 on my MBA and I don't remember anything from what I actually learned, but I didn't go to an Ivy League school and I have to say like, I didn't really get connections from it. So I feel like if you go to an Ivy League school and you can get into an Ivy League school, maybe it's worth it, but otherwise.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Well, the brand helps, Harvard helps, MIT helps, any of these Ivy League names, I get it. But I think the education, I'm glad I did it. It certainly set me up to do, and by the way, I went right back into photography afterwards. But I figured out how to turn it into a business. I started making films for the NHL for Saturday hockey games. Built a business, we eventually sold it called Special Man Television. It was my first exit. So I kind of got in the groove of being an entrepreneur from the things I was passionate about. And that's the secret to entrepreneurship. You want to do it in something that you're willing to work 25 hours a day, eight days a week because some guy in Mumbai or Shanghai is kicking your ass. Because they're working that hard.

• 8:01Hala Taha?

  Let's talk about how you actually got your start into entrepreneurship. I heard that you've only had one job in your life and you got fired on the first day.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  It's true. It's the ice cream story, Magoo's Ice Cream Parlor. That was the name of it and I wouldn't scrape the gum off the floor. Because the girl I was hot for in high school was selling shoes across the mall and she was watching me. And I thought the only reason I took the job is to hit on her afterwards. So we got off, you know, six o'clock. But, um, yeah, she whacked me and it was very humiliating and it actually was so important because it really gave me the understanding of there's the people that own the store and there's the people that scrape the shit off the floor. And I didn't want to be the guy scraping. I wanted to own the store. And, and I owe her a great, um, you know, sum of gratitude.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  I went back to find her decades later when I could afford to bulldoze the whole mall myself if I wanted to. But it had already been bulldozed. So I never found her. But most entrepreneurs I talk to have that definitive moment that pushed them on the path towards entrepreneurship. That somehow their lives are changed and they get this burning desire to pursue something where they're in control of their destiny. Doesn't mean they're always successful. But if you don't have that fire, you don't have that passion and you're not willing to take that risk, you're not going to succeed.

• 9:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So you have so much money, right? But you're still working and you could retire today, of course. So what actually drives you in entrepreneurship?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  I don't need more money. Um, I need more time. There's so many things I'm pursuing now that interest me. I'm able to invest in almost all of them. They don't always work out, but enough are, you know, successful. I mean, the whole thing about money that, that, um, a lot of people don't understand, you're going to find this out as time passes and only the experience of going through it gives you the knowledge. Because nobody believes this when, you know... If you're an entrepreneur and you can sell a hundred thousand dollars of the product to people that are not your relatives, that's the first thing, because your aunt will always buy your shit from you.

• 10:08Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  But that's useless. You've got to sell it to an arms-length person who wants the product and the service independent of the fact that they want to help you. They want to be served a product that helps reduce a pain point for them, and they're willing to pay you money for it. If you can do a hundred thousand of that, you can do five hundred thousand. If you can do five hundred thousand, you can do five million.

• 10:27Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  If you do five million, you do fifty. If you do fifty million, you do half a billion. That's how it goes. But at the five million point, that's when the whole system tests you, because you need to be able to build a team. You need to transition from being the entrepreneur to the leader.

• 10:47Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And many fail at that point. And I see this when I invest in them, and I have to take them behind the barn and whack them eventually. They're still shareholders, but they don't have the leadership skills, the ability to lead people so that you can get the leverage to build a business past five million. But really, what's driving you, if you're going to do that, is you're competitive and you want to win. And I never thought about, ever, the money when we were doing the journey on my big exit at the learning company, neither the other nine guys that were sort of founders.

• 11:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  We just one day woke up and someone bought our company for 4.2 billion, and we were all, you know, filthy rich. And that didn't change anything. We still went back to work the next day. It's weird, but it just doesn't matter. It's great to have the liquidity, but it doesn't really change your life that much.

• 11:44Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  And so people should understand that. It's, all you really need in the bank to be secure for the rest of your life is five million dollars. And I tell every entrepreneur that go well past that, the discipline is get five million.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  And put it in T bills and just look at it. It's just sitting there and don't touch it. Because if poo poo hits the fan, you're still good.

• 12:11Hala Taha?

  What are T bills in case people don't know?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Treasury bills, US Treasury bills. You know, you can also buy gold, but it doesn't have any yield. I have T bills. I roll a bunch of T bills. That's my Q account and it always has been. I've never touched it and you know, I buy dinner with the interest.

• 12:28Hala Taha?

  So you never touch it and then whatever you make off of it, that's what you spend?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Well, that's the protection. I had that goal decades ago. I mean, it's more than five. It's grown over the years. I just leave it in there, but it's something that gets you, that sets you free. It's, you know, it's a lot of money, but a lot of entrepreneurs forget to do this on their way.

• 12:51Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  They keep rolling all the dice all the time and they don't take anything out. And something goes wrong and they end up with nothing because it puts too much leverage on their business or something, you know, happened. It's get that first five million really secure in your name. And then look at it on your phone every day and say, I've achieved that.

• 13:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I like that goal.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  It's a good goal. It's enough to push you, but it's not, it's enough to make, make it safe for you and your family. But it's certainly, you're not going to stop working. You're going to keep going.

• 13:29Hala Taha?

  Something that you said reminded me of what Brandon Dawson talked to me about. So he's a co-founder of Cardone Ventures and he's like a very successful entrepreneur. And he was telling me there's like three pivotal moments for entrepreneurs, like hitting one million, hitting 10 million and 30 million. And like each one of those stages requires different things. You say, you were just saying like five million to you is like a pivotal point. So what needs to change at five million to then hit 10 and 30 and 100?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you won't get past five if you haven't started to build a team because you know, no one is perfect in all aspects of business. You have to hire to fulfill or fill in. It's like a crack in the wall. You put plaster on. You have to find and understand your own weaknesses and hire people that are strong in that attribute. And give them equity in your business, make them your partner. It's sort of like Steve Jobs and Wozniak. I worked for those guys in the early 90s. They were both brilliant, but they had completely different skill sets. They couldn't have made it without each other. It was impossible. But it's because of they had that, because they had that partnership and they were able to build it together, knowing they couldn't do it without each other.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  You will find out what you're weak at by the time you hit five. You may start it on your own and be just the sole proprietor, own all the shares, but your cracks will start to show at five million. Now, it might be in logistics, it might be in compliance, it might be in accounting, it might, whatever it is, you have to hire the person that's gonna take that off your back so you can focus on your strengths. I'm sales and marketing. That, in that I trust. Very few people are better than I am at that. And that's arrogant, but I'm, I know I'm right. And so, that's my competitive weapon. You can't touch me. But I am shit at logistics. I don't care about worrying about the bookkeeping. I want someone else that knows what they're doing to do that.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Manufacturing, distribution, all that crap. To me, the only reason those people exist is to serve my needs as the sales guy. There are no widgets if I'm not selling them. So, I value the salesperson in the, the head of sales is more valuable to me than the CEO. I can always replace the CEO, but I can't replace a great saleswoman or a great salesman. Because they know, not only their product inside out, they know their distribution channel, they have relationships with their buyers, or whatever it is. It's all about sales. And so, you know, when I go to a value of company, there's only two people I wanna talk to before the CEO.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  I wanna meet the person running social media, and I wanna meet the head of sales. And I take them out for dinner separately. We drink really good wine on my tab. Everything goes better with a couple of bottles of wine, you're gonna learn a lot more. And...

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Then I know two things. What the sales distribution channel feels like and CAC and ROAS, customer acquisition costs and return on ad spend. Just those two people will tell you. Is this a good business or not?

• 16:44Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Because if they know what they're talking about and I know what if they know right away.

• 16:48Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  All I'm doing is pouring gasoline on the fire. And building the business because they've already figured out the business model. Now, it doesn't mean I whack the CEO, but usually you find out often the CEO is not the original founder and they don't have that much stock. It's some guy that found the company that's still in there that's the engineer or something. It's very, it's different every time.

• 17:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  But sales and social media are really what it's all about.

• 17:18Hala Taha?

  I want to go back to talk about the learning company. So you sold it for $4.2 billion.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:25Hala Taha?

  And later on, the company basically failed after it was bought. And for me, I've got this company, App Media. I've essentially been growing it for five years. And selling it really scares me because I know that like so much can go wrong after you sell your company. So walk us through like, would you have done anything differently with that sale? And like, how should we think about exits as entrepreneurs?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  So it's, that's a classic example of failure of meshing two cultures together. Learning company was extremely entrepreneurial. It would do a new title every four months, maybe even every 90 days. And we had a very tight relationship with retailers back then. The distribution of software, all software was on CD-ROMs. Slowly transitioning to online, but majority of titles and particularly the gaming side were all CD-ROMs. And so there was retail distribution and shelf space and purchases online and everything else. But it was CD-ROMs. And so you would go to Walmart or Target or any of the large retailers that had multiple yards of shelf space for their, their software titles like records. And you'd have a planogram set up for an annual basis and you would always hit your targets.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  If you're going to drop a new version of Oregon Trail, you're going to make 12 million copies. If the manufacturer, you've got a massive logistics problem, you're going to deliver them to every Walmart and every Target and everywhere else they were going. And you never missed that slot because the retailer was giving you maybe 18 inches of space, which is extremely valuable for, you know, six or seven facing SKUs. And so when we hit Walmart, um, when we were doing our, our plans, one of the great advantages was they had these incredible brands like Fisher Price and Barbie and um, American Girl.

• 19:08Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And so what we had modeled out in the learning company so successfully is I had a job decades earlier, just for the summer, you know, between my first and second year of MBA, uh, Nabisco Brands. And I worked for a Dutch product manager who had Miss Mew cat food. And I, and I, it's remarkable how experiences in your life, that you inventory in your brain, that you don't use for a decade, come back and serve you later.

• 19:36Hala Taha?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I guess they call that experience.

• 19:38Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  My first day on the job, my Dutch, uh, you know, boss basically said, look, you're gonna be here for four months and I want you to launch two new flavors so that we can get more shelf space on Miss Mew. But you should understand something about cat food. There's only two engines of protein. It's beef renderings and chicken faces, which are boiled in papaya juice and compressed, or it's tuna from the Sea of Japan, dark, the underbelly of tuna. That is your protein base. Your job is to dream up a flavor on one of those two engines of protein.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  So whether it's gonna be bacon bits or egg bits or green pepper, and you call that the flambe or something, whatever it is.

• 20:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Because the cats don't have credit cards. It's their owners.

• 20:31Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  That buy the flavor. And they say, well, I think Kitty would love that one. And so you have to dream up a flavor. And I was pretty good at that, but the, the thing that hit me when I went to the rendering plant to see the two stacks of protein manufacturing, like the, the face of a cow getting scraped off the skull and getting boiled in papaya juice was pretty fucking freak, excuse my language, pretty freaky. I mean, it really freaked me out and then slabs of tuna. But two engines, it was two engines and everything else was just.

• 21:03Hala Taha?

  Marketing.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Marketing. Years later, I'm looking at our business at the learning company and we're, you know, we're just, we're growing, but we had lots of competitors. And I said to my partner, cause I had a fantastic, cause my weakness was logistics, so I found a partner and became partners in the business. I was sitting with him one day in the office around six at night in Boston and I said, I want to tell you a story about this trip to the rendering plant. And hear me on this, because if you looked at our business, that 80% of it was advancing math and reading scores. So we had Math Rabbit, Read a Rabbit, this title, that title. We're advancing these two scores that parents bought the titles for to advance those scores for their children.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Because in school, you gotta, it's math and reading, all the tests, right? So we would advance math and reading scores, and we're pretty good at it. And I said, if, if those are the two engines, math and reading, why do we have all these programmers? Why don't we just get two teams that just do math and reading core code? And then we add a license, like a, you know, Big Bird? Or we get, you know, whatever, you know, character we would go license, whatever it was. It was Big Bird, it was The Muppets, it was whatever it was. And we just slammed it on top of one of the engines.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And my argument was, our kids are four years old. They don't care if it's the same software. They're four, and they're five, and they're six, they just want the character. So we can license the character, we can fire 2/3 of the coders, which are really expensive, and just use the two tuna and beef. I love that. That was the moment that changed everything. And he said, "I love it, let's do it." And the shit hit the fan, there's even an article in the Wall Street Journal. It's just, no one had ever done this in the software industry, the consumer software industry before. Our cost of capital dropped dramatically, because our margins went up dramatically.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  And we were so, our valuation was so high that we used our stock to, to hostile acquisitions on all our competitors. We ate them alive. And we fired all their programmers, and we just licensed our characters. And we dropped our prices by 50%, and we increased our volumes by 5X. We took the software business down from $99 to $12.99. And we were profitable. All from that magic moment with that Dutch product manager showing me beef and tuna.

• 23:46Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I owe so much to that guy. But that's how life is. It's serendipitous. You don't know the moment that's gonna change everything. We commoditized educational software. We sold hundreds of millions of copies of it in multiple languages all around the world of the tuna and the beef.

• 24:09Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 24:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  You know, so when we tried to integrate that philosophy, going back to your original question.

• 24:16Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  I was, I said to the CEO then, "Look, we're gonna have to get the Barbie title out in 90 days. We don't need anything. We're gonna do it off the tuna and beef." And she said, "No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna have to study this for two years." I said, "No, no. We're gonna study it for two minutes because we have an order for 12,000 units the first day and 12,000 the day after that and 12,000 the day after that. It's the holiday. We're putting it in for September. We've got $24 million worth of orders here just on the Barbie reading title. And then we're gonna do the American Girls title, same thing. Then we're gonna do the math-reading American Girl." It didn't matter to me, but the philosophy there was completely different, that these

• 25:01Speaker 01

  were very coveted brands and I understand it. But the amount of money we left on the table, the profit margins on just putting our own character onto a title, our margins were like 70%. So we gave up hundreds of millions of dollars. And that is what I call a cultural error because I didn't control the board, although I was one of the largest shareholders. And I went and saw the board and said, "Guys, this is nuts." But it put me in a conflict with the management there. But I lasted quite a while, explained to them how to do it. And unfortunately, it didn't work out for them because they went and said, "No, no, no, let's wait two years." Two years, it's over in the software business. We, we left hundreds of millions of profit on the table.

• 25:46Hala Taha?

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• 26:29Hala Taha?

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• 26:54Hala Taha?

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• 27:38Hala Taha?

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• 28:01Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools

• 28:46Hala Taha?

  that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. Thirty million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-R-O-F-I-T-I-N-G. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  I mean, which ones to back and which ones not to, which I've become, I think, very good at. And, you know, I can see the ones that have what it takes. But it's really from the experience that I learned during that time.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  And life got even more interesting because today,

• 29:31Speaker 01

  you know, in an average day, starting for me at 5:45, because I was riding my bike on Miami Boardwalk along with a lot of other people do the same thing at sunrise. And I'm listening to all of my messages or the feeds of the networks. I'll listen to BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, Fox, CNBC, all of them. I just listen for the seven stories of the day because I'm often going back on those networks and, you know, doing my contribution.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  The phone will start ringing. And in any one-hour cycle, there will be a phone call of utter catastrophe. Just got sued for a hundred million dollars, you know, product, food poisoning or something in the product line of a company I'm invested in, whatever, something catastrophic. Minutes later, total euphoria. Just got an offer to be bought up for quarter of a million cash and you're, you know, crawling shareholder, are you going to agree with this deal or not? I'm thinking to myself, you have to learn how to be, what's a great word for it? You can't get emotional about this stuff.

• 30:43Hala Taha?

  Like stoic.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  You just have to realize that for every catastrophe, there's your euphoric outcome. And by the end of the day, your life is balanced again. So I just wait. I wait for the bad news, I wait for the good news, and I just roll with it. And I found it very, very interesting to see how that plays out. And our portfolio is now fifty-four companies, plus a bunch of other stuff we do. But I will say that that was quite a journey to understand how that works because you can hit me with, I mean, I, people, you're getting sued or something. I don't give a shit. Like, it just, you know,

• 31:26Speaker 01

  people that sue me, and I get a lot of litigation, these are, you know, there's contingency lawyers. I always say to them, "Go back and look at the last thirty lawsuits and show me, can you outlast me? Because I know how you work. You're a single-cell amoeba contingency lawyer. You're only going to be able to hold this up for seven years, and I will outlast you. And your partners will say, we got to give up on this guy. But you should know that now." Because, you know, I get a lot of this crap. It's one of the bad things about the system. But I love to with them.

• 32:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I really like to with them.

• 32:08Hala Taha?

  It's really powerful what you're saying. You're saying like, don't, you know, get too excited about the highs. Don't go so down when there's anything bad happening in the lows. So for new entrepreneurs, that's really difficult. Like entrepreneurship, sometimes it can feel like you're just getting punched in the face over and over again. And sometimes it can be really good. But how can we better manage those highs and lows? What advice do you have?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It's important that you get punched in the face. It's important that you get bloodied and get knocked down multiple times. It will never be an easy ride, ever. No matter what you think, and no matter what you think your plan is, it won't be that that works. It just never is. And so really, what the punch in the face is teaching you is how to pivot. And the more you get beaten to a pulp, the better it gets. Because you start to realize, if I go in that direction, I'm getting another smack right in the face. I'm gonna go in this direction. It's less painful. It's sort of trying to figure out the path of least resistance based on your experiences of what didn't work. But I have never met anybody that's been successful, ever,

• 33:15Speaker 01

  that said it was easy, that ever said they were able to take their original business plan and execute on it, because that never, ever, ever happens. Or didn't go through hell on earth to get to where they are. And so only one third of the population can do it. That's it. And I'll tell you a story that I think is very important, that I always bring up for everybody to think about. We talked about business school. You and I have both been there. In my last week, in the second year, they were getting, you know, Jamie Dimon kind of guys would come in and lecture about their sector, and you know, people are gonna go work in financial services or whatever.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And this guy came in, I'll never forget it, never. I mean, he's probably the only one I'll ever remember of all the guests we had that week. And he didn't say anything for like a minute and a half. You know, the amphitheater type thing, there's a staircase up the sides, and you got 240 people sitting in this thing, and you got the nameplate in front of you. He just looked at everybody and like for the most uncomfortable period of time. And then he finally said, "Oh, MBAs. You think you're so damn smart and you're just gonna get out there and kick the world's ass and you just can't wait to leave here. Well, let me tell you what's really gonna happen to you people.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  A third of you are going to become consultants and leave a life of mediocrity and never make a decision of consequence in your life and eventually go to consulting hell when you die."

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Because it's true, about a third of the class were gonna become consultants.

• 35:01Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And they were going to lead a life of mediocrity and never make a decision of consequence. They were just gonna be consultants, which is such a waste of a life. And then he said, "A third of you are, think you're entrepreneurs and you're gonna try and you're gonna fail over and over and over again until you're an employee again because you don't have what it takes." Very depressing. And the third, he said, "Are gonna work like hell for much longer than you think and you will make it, but it will change you forever. It's so hard." And I leaned over to Barry, my guy beside me, and said, "This guy is such an asshole." But today, that guy is me.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Because when I meet my new cohort, I give them the same speech. Because he was right. He was 100% right. And so it's sort of, you learn that as, as time passes, that the journey for entrepreneurship is into the valley of death. It, it has to be, or you will never be successful. And when you get out of the valley of death and you all of a sudden have your five mil in your T-bills and, and you're working even harder than you started because you're trying to do something else. Entrepreneurship is a disease, actually. It's a virus and it never sets you free. And so you have to know that. And the more successful you are, the harder you work. It's never, you're never gonna be free. And then you have to decide, what's my life balance like? Well, there isn't any.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  It's a bullshit concept. It's bullshit. The idea, oh, I'm gonna have time for my family. That's such shit. That's bullshit. You might as well face it. You're gonna work like hell. And as you grow a family, you better have a better significant other that can take time to raise them, because you won't have any. And I know that sounds like a sacrifice, because it is. But you will buy your family freedom. That's what you will do.

• 36:53Hala Taha?

  Now, do you feel like some people are not cut out for entrepreneurship at all? And do you feel like there's some people who can be, you know? Some people are natural entrepreneurs. I think you're a natural entrepreneur, and some people can be taught. What are your thoughts on that?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  I think you have to have certain personality traits that... I mean, for me, it's marketing and sales. Other entrepreneurs have great technical skills or whatever. Everybody has something that they are particularly good at. It's in their DNA. But there are attributes you learn over time, because you're getting punched in the face, as you brought up earlier. These are important lessons that give you ammunition for the future, not to make those mistakes again. There are some lessons, and I've talked about this quite a bit lately, that I find very, very important, that I have to share with you. Because everybody should listen to this.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  When working for Jobs, for Steve Jobs, in the early 90s, he... not a nice guy. That's well documented. But he had a concept that I'll never forget. And I've used it, and it really works. And he changed me forever with this. He said, in any day, in any 18-hour working day, because he worked 18 hours a day. The guy was unbelievable. What a ferocious guy. I mean, damn. You never met anybody like him. I hadn't anyways. He said, "There are three things you have to get done." In this one eighteen hour cycle. That is called the signal.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Your ability to know what the three things are is what you must learn. But once you know what the three things are, that is the signal. And all the things that will happen that stop you from getting the three things done is the noise.

• 38:48Hala Taha?

  Yep.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And the ratio must be eighty percent signal, minimum twenty percent noise, or you will fail. Wow, was he right.

• 38:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  And so if you can learn to do that, nothing can stop you. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this strategy, as you will find, is you will have no time to suffer fools. You don't have any time. So if somebody comes at you with something that's clearly noise, you don't have any time for them. And they take it personally.

• 39:25Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  I don't give a shit. Because what I've learned is they will come around when they realize that you're achieving your goals and you're executing. They will stay part of your team because they want to be led by somebody that gets it done and wins. And you can only win if you understand that you must get the three things done. You don't need friends in business. You need people that respect you. I'm trying to teach this. You don't need to make everybody happy because you can't. It's impossible. You want to make your friends and family happy, which is probably no more than fifteen to twenty people that matter to you in your life. Everybody else is either noise or signal. And you have to treat them that way because that's the right way to treat them. That's the fair way to treat them.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  That's what helps them get their job done. And I go through this every day. Now, the only guy that I've seen that's higher ratio than Jobs was is Elon Musk. Hundred percent signal, will not waste one nanosecond on noise, which makes him very awkward socially. He'll walk away from conversation two seconds the minute he knows it's noise.

• 40:36Hala Taha?

  Really?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  So if you're not contributing towards getting something done, see you later. Ask anybody that works for him. But boy, do they want to work for him. Because look at the success he's achieved.

• 40:47Hala Taha?

  Yeah, people want to follow a successful leader.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  As an entrepreneur, your job is not to make everybody happy. You will fail. You can't make everybody happy. You want to respect people, you want to honor them, and you want their respect. But don't try and make them happy. Not gonna work.

• 41:07Hala Taha?

  You mentioned earlier that you've invested in 52 or so companies. You obviously have been on Shark Tank for a very long time. You know what founders, what successful founders look like, what entrepreneurs that are really successful sound like and all their different traits. So I thought we could play a fun game called Rate the Traits. And basically, I'm going to list off a trait about entrepreneurship, and you're gonna let me know, is it a 10? Is it a 1? We'll rate them 1 through 10.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  10 is the high score.

• 41:36Hala Taha?

  10 is the high score.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Got it. I'm interested. I'm interested.

• 41:38Hala Taha?

  All right. So we're gonna rate them 1 through 10, 10 being really needed for successful entrepreneurship, 1 being not so needed. Okay? First prompt, creativity.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  10.

• 41:51Hala Taha?

  Why?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  That's problem solving. That's when you get punched in the face. If you don't have a creative bone in your body, you're just gonna keep getting punched in the face. You gotta think outside of the box. That is the definition of creativity. You have to realize, ouch, that hurt. I don't want another punch like that. How am I gonna solve for that? That is using the brain.

• 42:15Hala Taha?

  Okay, next one. High risk tolerance.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  I'm gonna give it a 5. Risk tolerance can also be stupidity. Doing things because you, oh, I can take the risk. I can take the risk and keep failing. You're an idiot. I mean, the whole idea is to mitigate risk. In fact, I'm gonna give it a 1. Don't do stupid stuff. Like, don't do it. Don't, don't keep risking it all over and over again. The whole idea is to find the path of least resistance without the risk. But it's true that when you launch, you're taking huge risks. But as you build it past the first 100,000, you want to stop taking the risks. And start to mitigate the risk. So it's, it's the launch itself.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  You need some kahunas because most people say, I don't want to do it. I'm not going to do it. You have to try, even though you're going to fail three times at least probably. But the four, you only need one hit.

• 43:13Hala Taha?

  What's up yap fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content.

• 43:56Hala Taha?

  And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first three videos are free at heygen.com/profitting. That's H E Y G E N dot com slash P R O F I T I N G. Heygen.com/profitting.

• 44:25Hala Taha?

  Hello, young and profiteers. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers. And I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales. That's why I always say, serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience.

• 45:07Hala Taha?

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• 45:25Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over $1 million a year on the platform has doubled. So if you've got products to sell

• 46:10Hala Taha?

  and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Particularly important in the watchmaking industry. When they identify you to be a master watchmaker when you're 14, you're going to commit your whole life to it. I know a lot about that. And that's industry experience, but at a very early age. So you can find out, do you connect with the cosmos of that business? And is that your path for your life? You don't know until you try.

• 46:43Hala Taha?

  Okay, last one. Failing fast.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a buzzword in the valley. I don't put a lot of weight on it. I'll tell you why I'm going to give it a two. But here's the rule that I've put in place. In your launch years, in your mid to late twenties, and you've decided you're going to pursue the entrepreneurial path, one of your most important assets is time. So, and I've seen this countless times with entrepreneurs. I meet them in their fifth year of beating a dead horse that just never took off. But they're so emotionally attached to this piece of shit idea that they're going to bankrupt their parents through mortgaging their parents' home. I mean, I've seen it so many times.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  If after 36 months...

• 47:35Speaker 01

  It's not working, and by working, I mean it's growing and it's profitable. And you clearly have figured out how to acquire customers. Take it behind the barn and shoot it. I'll do it for you. Good bottle of wine, shoot it behind the barn because it is killing you. It is sucking your energy and it is basically taking away from the most valuable thing you have, the time to start a new idea. Entrepreneurs deal with failure. They have to because they're going to fail. There's no such thing of just starting something out of the basement. It happens so rarely that it won't happen to you, I can tell you that. You can't, I prefer to shoot them after two years.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  If in 15 months, they haven't figured out CAC, Customer Acquisition, they're going to fail.

• 48:26Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And why spend any time on a dead idea that didn't work? It's okay, it didn't work. Who gives a shit? Move on. I much prefer to invest in entrepreneurs that felt the sting of failure but understand. So, you know, fail fast. If it means take it behind the barn and shoot it early, great. But shoot it. And don't let anybody tell you, no, you gotta keep on going and wasting everybody's time and money. Because remember, the people that you're employing, you're also hurting them. You have a responsibility to tell the truth to them and say, look, this idea didn't work. I'm gonna fire you with as best, you know, package I can give you, but I'm also starting something else. You get a lot of respect for that.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  You really do, to admit failure and own it. And the thing that drives me crazy about people, and I'm telling you to listen to this because I get pitched a lot. And I say, well, what did you do before this? What were you doing the last two years? And they talk about a business and they tell you it failed, but it wasn't their fault. They'll tell you every reason on earth why it wasn't their fault. Bullshit. They should own it. It's 100% their fault. They were the founder and the CEO. It wasn't anybody else. They are the person who failed.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Unless I hear that, I never invest in them. There's so many people that want to believe, "Oh, the market changed. Oh, the competitors changed their prices. Oh, there was dumping on the market from China." Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Bullshit, all bullshit. They failed.

• 50:07Hala Taha?

  So accountability.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  100%. And some of them walk away in tears when I force their nose into... You know when a puppy takes a shit in the house? And the first time you're gonna roll up a newspaper, stick his nose in it? Give him a little whack? They never shit in the house again. I stick their nose in their failure and I whack them with a newspaper and say, "This shit is your shit. You dumped this. You failed. Now smell it." That's what has to happen.

• 50:37Hala Taha?

  Well, that was a fun game. Is there any other traits that you want to call out that you think makes a good entrepreneur?

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna give you some interesting points that I learned. You know, after all this time and investing in so many different people, and after, you know, a few years, I start to see which ones are successful and I look at their traits. And let me give you some. Remember, these are in different sectors. They don't know each other. Different businesses completely. And yet they're successful versus ones that are not so much. Because even in a venture portfolio like mine, maybe three out of 10 really work.

• 51:11Hala Taha?

  And what do you consider a successful business? Like, how big do you have to grow before you can...

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Well, you know, what's your... The classic venture capital model is if you invest in 10 deals, five years later, two have gone bankrupt. Six of them are living dead, just sucking your time. They're not going anywhere. They should be shot behind the barn, but they won't shoot them. And two of them made 1,000x. And they paid for all your mistakes. So, you know, as an investor, you want to focus on your winners and you got to figure out which ones are losers and winners. We do a little bit better on Shark Tank deals because we have 110 million eyeballs seeing the product and syndication. So our customer acquisition costs are lower. So we'll call it three to four out of 10 work. So even a marginal business works on Shark Tank. One of the reasons you want to get on Shark Tank is that free eight minutes

• 52:00Speaker 01

  of network television on in perpetuity and syndications. Ask any entrepreneur. Their product just keeps showing up on television every night. Yeah. It's pretty good. And so we want to invest in companies like that. But what happens is you look at the traits of those people in the winners. And let me tell you what they are. Very boring in some ways, but you'll find this fascinating. Number one, this may sound crazy, but it's true. Diet. Somehow along the way, they've decided that food is important to them. Not some crazy Atkins diet, none of that stuff. The rule that I learned from two of them, and they didn't even know each other, was they look at their body weight. Let's say they weigh 150 pounds.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  They eat 150 grams of protein a day, one gram for each pound, which is very hard to do, by the way, very hard. But you don't have to modify your diet that much. You just have to decide what you're eating. And it has to be more protein based. There's lots of ways to do it. There's lots of apps you can use. Lose it, it's free. Just take a picture. AI tells you how many grams of protein in the serving, and it just adds it up for you during the day. And the other app that I use, because I'm doing this myself now, is Yuka, Y U K A. Scan any snack and it tells you a score from zero to 100. Anything lower than 60, don't put it in your mouth. After about 10 weeks of just following this protocol, your energy level goes through the roof. It's unfucking real how good you feel. That's number one. Number two, the classic exercise.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  All the entrepreneurs that are successful have found a way to spend some portion of the day exercising. Sometimes it's only 10,000 steps a day. That's it. I do cycling. Those two together, kind of. This one is really interesting. See, I'm wearing an Oura ring here. I got into this about four years ago. A great entrepreneur showed me this product. It was more of a prototype back then. Sleep.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  You know, decision making and critical thinking and sleep go together. Yeah. So you really want to try and figure out sleep. And it's not just any sleep. These rings and these other devices, there's many other devices, break down your sleep into the REM sleep and the deep sleep. You want REM sleep. That's your brain being cleansed for the next day. Unfortunately, sleep doesn't work with alcohol. And this is a big problem for me. I don't drink, I mean, sorry, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, but I love wine.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And if you drink wine three hours before you go to bed, you don't get any REM sleep. It really [BLEEP] your sleep. So the strategy you got to go to is drink at breakfast. And don't drink again. Because at the end of the day, if you can get those seven hours, the sleep, the diet, and the exercise, you can't believe how you feel. As an entrepreneur, you need that energy. Yeah. And you're going to get it. And most of my entrepreneurs are hip to this now and are struggling with the whole wine thing, or they're moving to the purest tequila or something, or they don't drink it before they go to bed, or they don't drink three days a week, or whatever it is. Everybody's trying to solve for this alcohol problem because all the rings are showing

• 55:22Speaker 01

  you you get no REM. And one last one, and this is the one that I really have learned, and you got to try it. Entrepreneurs, once they're successful, or they're growing their business, get in a rut. They only want to do things that give them a good outcome because they've been trained or punched in the face so many times that they get into this routine of only doing the things they know well, over and over and over again, all day long. And it's easy to get there, particularly when the team is humming, sales are coming in, everything's going great.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  But the one most important exercise you're not getting is that on your brain.

• 56:10Hala Taha?

  Hmm.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Because you're now in the maintenance mode. And that's not where great creativity comes from. So you have to get into a position, and this is very, very difficult, but I've done it, and believe me, it works. And I learned it from one of my great women CEOs years ago. She said, "You've got to spend a portion of every day outside of your comfort zone, in some space that you're very nervous about getting into because you're scared you're gonna fail and you're going to be embarrassed in front of your team or in front of your family, or you can't do it, or you don't think you can do it." It could be learning how to play the cello. It could be painting. It could be Mahjong or something, or chess, or it doesn't matter.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  It's something you don't know how to do, that you're forcing your brain to deal with, and the uncertainty. This gives you a superpower because you're basically recharging your ability to solve problems that you have no idea how to solve. And 50% of the time, you're successful. This is the superpower for really good entrepreneurs to do. And yet, no one wants to do it because, "Oh, I don't want to be embarrassed." So I'm telling you the story because last year, I got a phone call from one of my agents, and he said, "Listen, Kevin, have you ever heard of Josh Safdie?"

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I said, "Yeah, that's the guy that directed Uncut Gems, and Ronnie Bronstein wrote it. It's a great movie, Adam Sandler, dark comedy." He said, "He's making a new movie called Marty Supreme, and they're looking for a real asshole, and they think you're it." I said, "I don't act." He said, "Yeah, I know that. And I'm just telling you, if you're gonna pursue this, you could shit the bed and destroy your brand. You could look like a real..." But that's when it hit me. I gotta do this.

• 58:08Hala Taha?

  Yes.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  I gotta try it. I gotta see if I can learn seventy pages of script. You know, how do I do that when I'm dyslexic? How am I gonna memorize all that stuff? I said, "Do it, like, just see what happens." We finished it a few weeks ago. It's had some screenings. And the buzz for Timothy Chalamet, so it's Timothy Chalamet, I'm Gwyneth Paltrow's husband. It's a movie from the fifties.

• 58:32Hala Taha?

  Amazing.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was shot in New York and Tokyo. And the experience was remarkable. But the buzz for that movie, and this has really not that much to do with me because I'm just a, you know, a supporting actor, is Oscar. So I would love that thing to win.

• 58:50Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I'd like Timmy to win one. I'd like the director to win one because that would be great for my little contribution in that. But I worked on that for eight months. And it was totally outside of my comfort zone. So I'm waiting to see what audiences think when they see me in it. So go see that movie Christmas Day.

• 59:06Hala Taha?

  Amazing.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  You know, Mardi Supreme. But the point is, do something today outside of your comfort zone, whatever it is. Because you're not doing that. I know you're not doing that. No one's doing that. And it's a superpower.

• 59:18Hala Taha?

  What do you feel like you learned from, you know, you were in this movie, like, you weren't just like a little blip in the movie. It sounds like you were in it.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  No, I played a role as the richest man in America, married to, you know, in a loveless marriage with Gwyneth Paltrow. It was very dark. I'll tell you what I learned. And I could have never known this until I was in the moment. When you make a movie like this, particularly a period piece, and you have a great director like Safdie, what he wants to do is create an environment with like a hundred extras. And you took over the Plaza Hotel from seven at night to seven in the morning. And I'm just remembering this one sequence we shot all night long.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  When you close your eyes before he says action and everything on the table is vintage fifty-two, your clothes are fifty-two, your watch is fifty-two, everybody, the menu is nineteen fifty-two, the art is fifty-two, everything around you is nineteen fifty-two. All of a sudden, you magically transform to nineteen fifty-two. You're there, you're in it, and everybody is in nineteen fifty-two. And it's not, you're not acting anymore. You're just there. You're just being your character in nineteen fifty-two with everybody else in nineteen fifty-two. And magic happens. And by the time you do the fortieth take, you are definitely, you know, in the zone because you're doing it on film and they have to move the single camera back and forth and you're there all night long.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  I remember that day in New York when that day was over. It was a very, very important scene, which if you see the movie, you will definitely remember this scene.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  It's dark, it's dark. But I was so wired when I got back to Casa Cipriani's in New York where we were staying, my wife and I. It was seven AM and I went upstairs to the restaurant and I said, "Look, I want the scrambled eggs and I want some smoked salmon and I want a nineteen twenty-two, or twenty twenty-two bottle of Montreux. He said, "Sir, it's seven in the morning." I said, "Not for me, it's..." I just got back from nineteen fifty-two. I need a bottle of Montreux. And I called my wife, said, "Look, I'm drinking up here." And she said, "What, are you crazy? It's breakfast." And I said, "No, I'm just so wired. I'm just so stuck in fifty-two. I gotta snap out of it." It's like, if you're dyslexic,

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  sometimes the world will shift one hundred and eighty degrees and you have to shake your head and get back. It snaps back. I was in that kind of a mode. I had to get back to twenty twenty-five and I didn't want to go back to twenty twenty-five. It was so magical to be in the birthplace of entrepreneurship in nineteen fifty-two in America because that's where the American dream started, in Brooklyn back then. And that's what the movie's about. And so I was, I mean, it was emotional for me. It was crazy. And damn, that Montreux was good.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's how that experience was.

• 1:02:11Hala Taha?

  And it comes out Christmas Day. I can't wait to see it.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  You gotta see it. I mean, I'm so proud of the work. I mean, I just dying to see what people think.

• 1:02:17Hala Taha?

  Okay, let's switch gears back into your investing in other companies. I learned that you only invest in profitable companies.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  That's not quite true.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  The larger investments, that's astute on your part. When if I'm, if I'm gonna put in five, 10, 15 million dollars, it's into a business model, it's proven it's profitable. And I'm just negotiating my liquidity, my position on the cap table, what I bring to the table, what my team brings. It's a negotiation. That's really the majority of what I do. But I also have a massive, you know, I feel that all of us on Shark Tank can become ambassadors of the American dream. And, and so we invest in many, many, many startups. And my job is to figure out, you know, which ones to back. But I have learned something about this whole Shark Tank journey that goes to this point. I always thought, a decade ago, that, that, you know,

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  people thought of America, our number one export's probably technology or energy. It's not. It's the American dream. That's what we export. And, and Shark Tank's just part of that whole thing. The number one thing that we export around the world is the idea that you can start with an idea and, and change your life forever with it. So that's what Shark Tank's about. But most of my larger investments are, as you suggest, they're in profitable companies. My job is to make them more profitable. But I also do my own startups outside of Shark Tank. Recently, I just did Wonder Care, um, watch insurance for, for people that own watches. Because if you put it on your home package, you may find this out the hard way. Many home package insurances with a rider for watches or jewelry, they give you the depreciated value.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  Watches do not depreciate. Rolex goes up in value over time. So you wanna get the replacement price. So that's what we offer at Wonder Care. To do that business, I partnered with seasoned professionals on the tech stack of AI to be able to scrape insurance data so we could issue policies through AI. Wonderful relationships with companies like Chubb. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm one shareholder in it. I think I'm the largest shareholder because I funded it from the beginning, but. I probably won't end up remaining the largest shareholder because I'm going to bring a lot of talent and we just hired a new CEO. And it's growing, business is growing. And so that's from scratch.

• 1:04:35Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  And I'm very fortunate, as you are, I have millions of followers, millions of followers, and they all know I'm a watch guy. So my customer acquisition cost is zero. I just do my own 15-second ads on my own social media and I say, "Look, I'm selling this product. I use it myself, and here's why." And I'm fortunate enough to issue policies without any customer acquisition cost. I don't know anybody else in the insurance industry that has that luck.

• 1:05:02Hala Taha?

  So you're bringing up a topic that I feel like I talk about almost every show now, which is creator entrepreneurship. I feel like that is totally the future. Having a personal brand is so important, especially with AI coming out and just the ability that, it's like, everybody can start a business, but what is actually going to differentiate you? And I think what it is, is your ability to create content and grow on social media and be a creator entrepreneur. What are your thoughts about personal brand and the importance of it as an entrepreneur?

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  You're more than 100% right. You are more than 100% right. It's the greatest opportunity this economy's ever offered an entrepreneur. It's extraordinary. But it goes back to something you said earlier, storytelling.

• 1:05:45Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  If you don't have the ability to tell a story, you can't do that. Personal brands are built on remarkable, authentic, passionate relationships with communities that you're building. People smell bullshit a mile away on social media. If you're not authentic, if you're not honest, if you're not telling the truth, you're going to get slaughtered, beyond canceled. I mean, so the brands that are working are the ones that say, "Look, here's what I am. Here's what I do. This is the way I see it. You may not agree with me, but I'm always going to be true to what I believe in." And whether it's a product or a service...

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  The people that fail at this think that somehow they can attach celebrity to any product and sell more of it. People smell that bullshit so far away. The only products I ever associate myself with, I eat my own cooking. I would never, ever endorse a product I don't use, ever. I get offered that all the time. Well, we'll pay you to say this is great. I don't know it's great. I'm not using it and I never would use it. You know, it's just not what I want. It's not an easy path, but when you start what you have on your, if you're good at it and a good storyteller and you're authentic, you get advocates. They become your community.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  They tell others about how important their relationship with you is. And that is a remarkable outcome.

• 1:07:14Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  It is the ultimate, ultimate entrepreneurial experience.

• 1:07:21Hala Taha?

  I'm part of this entrepreneurship group called Hampton and there's like 10,000 of us in a Slack channel all across America. And I'm probably one of the only like real creator entrepreneurs. And I find that like, I don't relate to them at all. Like, I don't relate to them at all because I feel like all their problems, for me, it's like, I'm coming out with a new LinkedIn offer that's gonna be for small business owners. And to sell it, like, I just have the idea and I'm just gonna, you know, put it online and run a couple of webinars and I'll be sold out, basically. And so like, it's just like so simple. I have an idea and I just put it out and, you know, operationalize it.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  That's because people trust you. They know who you are. I mean, it's all, these, these communities are built on trust. They're built on a, someone who believes what you said and believes you will deliver what you say you're going to deliver and the experience will be a positive one. And if they buy or use the product again a second time, they will experience the same they did on the first. That's a brand being built and that's what the whole deal is about. And you can't do that unless you're authentic and you deliver what you said. It's why the bloom is off the rose on a lot of celebrity endorsements now. Because they're not being transparent and honest. They don't actually use the product.

• 1:08:36Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  I mean, you can't endorse 16 products. You possibly can't use them. The model's changing. That's why you can emerge as a creator out of nowhere because you're authentic. And all of a sudden have, you know, 10 million followers that believe you. I think it's a great and powerful force, but also has a dark side. Look what happened to Bud Light.

• 1:08:55Hala Taha?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  They did that themselves. They didn't think about who their customer was. And they shot themselves in the foot multiple times.

• 1:09:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  And they stored billions of dollars with a market cap. I mean, it was unbelievable. That's the dark side of social media, but shows you the power of it.

• 1:09:11Hala Taha?

  Yeah. One of my weaknesses, I would say, is that like I'm not the best at finance. Right? So I have a business partner who does like a lot of my finances. And I know that you mentioned, um, one of the things that you say, uh, see entrepreneurs fail at is not knowing their numbers.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a big problem.

• 1:09:26Hala Taha?

  So what would you say are the key metrics that founders, CEOs should be following for their business?

• 1:09:33Speaker 01

  If you don't know your numbers, you better get somebody who does, as you've done. You have to have somebody that gives you the dashboard of your business every day. I mark to market my business portfolio, all positions, every day, right after four o'clock. And I work with my finance team to say, okay, there's something happened over here, something happened over here. I see this cash came in this account in this bank. What was that about? Because I don't recognize that revenue stream. You know, every single day, I spend maybe 20 minutes just going through the top line of where I'm anticipating revenues coming in from whatever business, whether it's a royalty or whether it's a stock that's going public or whatever it is, every day. And what I find is that keeps me sharp and it keeps me in touch with the ebb and flow of revenue and margin and free cash flow. And so that's what I focus on.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  If you don't have that skill, you need somebody who has to have, has it. Because that's a really big problem, um, if you don't do that. And then, and I think, you know... You will fail if you can't read.

• 1:10:32Hala Taha?

  I saw that you were just looking at your watch and I noticed you were in two of them.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  I am. This is actually New York time and this is local time.

• 1:10:39Hala Taha?

  So I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improffters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Learn AI. Find out which models you can rent for your business because there is plenty of product on the market now that will enhance your margins and your productivity. Every single one of my companies now is using AI. Most of it primarily for content generation, but they're also using it for all kinds of analytics and data scraping. It's very inexpensive today. Every single one of them is using it. And so if I'm looking at business and they're not using AI, I mean, it's not that complicated. It's very easy to adopt it and you will find ways to save money almost immediately. I mean, some of these models you can rent for 129 bucks a month that do incredible things with content. So save yourself a ton on creating content for your social media.

• 1:11:31Hala Taha?

  And what would you say is your secret to profiting in life and this can go beyond finance and business?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  I would say, going back to focus on the signal. My secret is I'm able to focus on the signal now every day. I know what's signal, I know what's noise. I don't let noise slow me down. And you know, that's why they call me the mean shark. That's complete bullshit. I just tell the truth. But I'm focusing on signal there and I'm determining what's important for me and the things that matter for that day, that just that day, just the three things that day. It's not that complicated, not next month, next year, whatever. It's that day. What do you got that I gotta get done? I'm gonna get it done. And I do it day after day after day after day and the more confidence you build. And then I'm really into this mantra of getting up in the morning feeling good

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  because of the diet and the exercise and the sleep. It's such a game changer. You know that old mantra about sleep on the sofa, only get two hours sleep because you're that amazing entrepreneur? That is such crap. The guys that are winning, and even Bezos talks about this, he doesn't make big decisions after noon. He doesn't want to be tired. He does the sleep thing. He does the diet thing. He does the exercise thing. And you want to make those decisions. I can even think last week, I was... Riding the bike, it hit me. I had an idea and boom, I had that thing executed by four in the afternoon. And it's, I think it's gonna make me a ton of money.

• 1:12:58Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that. Kevin, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Where do you want to send everybody to? I know that you're so visible online, but where do you want to send everybody to?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  I'm on all the platforms of Kevin O'Leary TV. Come and see me anywhere. I love my community and we have a lot of fun together. And I love the discourse. I love to get into debate with people. Because there's always a pro and a con to everything. And I think that's what's great about life, that we have a great discourse and we, you know, we chart the path. I support entrepreneurship in America. We create 72% of the jobs. That's my army.

• 1:13:35Hala Taha?

  Thank you, Kevin. You're such a role model. Thank you for all that you do. I know me and a lot of entrepreneurs really look up to you. So thank you so much.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate that so much. Take care.

• 1:13:44Hala Taha?

  Well, guys, this was such an important interview for me. It was a full circle moment because I've admired Kevin for so long and I grew up watching Shark Tank together with my family. One of the takeaways I found most powerful today was Kevin's signal versus the noise framework that he learned from Steve Jobs. Every single day has three critical tasks that will actually move your business forward. That's your signal. Everything else is noise. The ratio must be 80% signal, 20% noise or less, or else you'll fail. This isn't just productivity advice. It's a complete mindset shift. Stop trying to make everyone happy. Stop wasting times on things that don't matter. You don't need friends in business. You need people who respect you. Kevin also reminded us that getting punched in the face is essential to entrepreneurship. Every step back teaches you how to pivot smarter. But

• 1:14:29Hala Taha?

  here's the brutal truth. If your business isn't profitable after 36 months, take it behind the barn and shoot it. Your time is your most valuable asset, especially in your 20s and 30s. Own your failures completely. No excuses about market conditions or competitors. The moment you can smell your own failure and accept it, that's when the real growth begins. And I loved Kevin's emphasis on fueling your body for peak performance. One gram of protein per pound of body weight, consistent exercise, and seven hours of quality sleep. These aren't just Wellness tips. They're competitive advantages that sharpen your decision making when the stakes are highest. Remember that Kevin said entrepreneurship is a disease that never sets you free. But if you have the guts to focus on your signal, own your own setbacks completely and take care of your mind and body,

• 1:15:15Hala Taha?

  then you have what it takes to make it through the valley of death and come out the other side victorious. Thank you for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listen, learn, and profit it from this conversation with the incredible Kevin O'Leary, then share it with somebody who needs to hear these hard truths about entrepreneurship. And if you enjoyed this episode and learned something valuable, I'd really appreciate it if you left us a five star written review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Castbox. Your support helps more people discover Young and Profiting and allows us to bring a powerhouse guest like Kevin O'Leary on more often. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And before we wrap up, I want to give an incredible shout out to my guest outreach team for always being on top of their game.

• 1:15:59Hala Taha?

  Shout out to Hashem Furkan and Joshua for absolutely crushing it and for snagging an incredible guest like Kevin O'Leary. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.