KEVIN O'LEARY Talks Marty Supreme, Shark Tank, Millionaire Lifestyle

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] not FDA-approved and do not undergo FDA safety effectiveness or manufacturing review. For full safety information, go to row.co/safetyinfo. Ladies and gentlemen, entrepreneurs, business legend, entertainment legend now, and now actor, he's in the movie, Marty Supreme, coming out Christmas, everyone, please put your hands together for Kevin O'Leary. More noise. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. I really appreciate it, that's great. So Kevin's a massive fan, he's been emailing us non-stop, I said you can finally do the show. Before I came in, I checked you out, you're okay. I'm okay. I'm going to give you 7.2 out of 10, I think that's reasonable. You may be able to increase your score depending on how today goes. I think I'm going to be 9.9 after this. Really? I have a feeling we're going to be best friends, I don't know why. Okay, that's good. And I need a lot of advice from you. I'm ready to give it. First of all, I want to congratulate you on the film on Marty. I was at the premiere at Lincoln Center. Were you there or no? No, I have only seen the sequences that I do the voiceovers on. I intentionally waited, and I do not talk to Josh every day almost. I'm going to do the sag screening for the first time on Sunday and then do the LA premiere on Monday of next week. Then come to New York, we're on a full promotional swing on this movie. Yeah. Obviously a 24 is excited about it, there's a good Oscar buzz for Timmy. I want to see him win it obviously, that would be great. What about you? I don't think they push us hard on the supporting actor role somehow. But you know, we'll see. I was seeing that, honestly, at least in nomination. I love it. I mean, I've never acted before. I had no idea what I was getting into. And I have a theory that you may want to consider. And here's what it is. I'm really primarily an investor. That's what I do. I invest in a lot of businesses and people. And so over the years, you know, you invest in a startup or a nascent company. Half of them fail. But five years later, maybe seven years later, the winning companies when you're exiting and you're getting 10,000 X on your money. The men and women that run those, do they have any common attributes? I started to ask myself, what do they have that's common, even though they don't know each other, even though the businesses are different sectors, they're all different. And what is common? Well, there is one thing. And this is kind of unique. If you look and talk to them, because you get to know them after five years. And they say, you know, you ask them, how do you spend your time? I mean, I know you're working like hell, but what else do you do? In every case, they spend 20, 30% of their day doing something completely out of their comfort zone. Crazy shit. Like paragliding, going to Switzerland and jumping off a cliff. And learning how to do that, which is, I think, nuts, but they do it. Or they go to space. They buy one of those things up in, you know, virgin or whatever. Or they learn how to play the cello. What's yours? Well, I like to think that the things that really keep me passionate are my black and white photography that I still do with, like, cameras and hassle-blads. I've been doing that my whole life. I remain an editor. I cut at least one of our social media posts every week on Premiere, because I used to cut film. I practice my guitar as much as I can. I collect watches. Those are all different than what I do as an investor. But my point is, when you get an opportunity, so here's what happened to Rani's Supreme. I got a call from Josh and Ronnie. And it actually came through my agent. And he said, listen, Kevin, great guy. J. Sirus, I've known him forever. Been all the way up through television for years with him. He said, you know, look, I want you to think about this seriously. You've built a big franchise here. But you don't know how to act, and you never have done this. You could go out there and shit the bed and totally destroy our franchise that we've built together. And I said, Jay, fuck him. Well, I said, how do you know I'm going to shit the bed? How do I know I'm going to shit the bed? How do I know until I try it? My whole point is you've got to go do something that you, even though you may think, shit, it may not work. Why not give it a shot? Because if you percent of the time you have a great outcome. Yeah. Which I think hopefully will let the audience decide in the case of the reviews look pretty good. But I didn't know how to act. And they told me after we read the lines and they came up to my lighthouse. They said, look, we're looking for a real asshole and you do that naturally. Yeah. So, okay. The answer is you did know how to act because you've been in show business. You've been on television. Yeah, but I wouldn't say that reality TV is the same as the cadence between scripted lines. Which is what I learned the first day. Sure. Yeah, it's different. I will say, and I'm just some guy. But in my opinion, as a first time actor, and it's a sizable performance. I mean, it is natural. I mean, you do not communicate as like, oh, this is a gimmick casting. You communicate as a great actor. And I like, I commend you on it. I'm very, I'm really flattered. I feel that way. But when you're, you know, what I learned and what I saw and when I saw the rushes and I saw the cuts. Yeah. What those guys, the way those two work, and I hope I'm not giving any industry secrets away here, is they wrote the script together. So, they've been living this thing for seven years. That's it. Here's what actually happens when you're shooting. Ronnie goes into the production downstairs, wherever the hell it is, different sets in Tokyo or in New York or whatever. But he's in Josh's ear with an IFB. And he's the editor. Well, they cut it together, but he's kind of the lead editor guy. And, you know, I'm not used to being told what to do. So, obviously, I learned right away that a film set is not a democracy. Because I'd say to Josh, what the fuck? I got it. We're done. We shot it ten times. I nailed it already. He said, you haven't nailed it. Till I say you've nailed it, do it again. And then after multiple takes of the script, he'd say, okay, let's improvise. We got a cadence going here with Timmy or with Brett, you know, whoever. And let's pick up on what you said on that last one, or what he said on that last one. But when you see the final edit, what they did, is they took some of the script, and some of the improvisation, and they cut it together into what I think is masterful. They captured a moment. And sometimes those two dudes don't agree. And they take it outside. Because you don't want to be fighting in front of the cast. But, you know, they just don't agree. And it's three in the morning. And they're going at each other. And they come back with a solution. It's an intense. It's a fucked up creative process that I think you can't emulate any other way than just doing it, you know, shooting it. In some ways, Josh was your first boss since Nabisco. Is that right? You had that boss since then. That's a great analogy. Listen, I've never had a boss except back then. I've only been fired once and I've never worked for anything. But I did work for Josh Safty. I actually was an employee. That's how I felt. And he's a reasonable guy. But the hours we worked, the hours, immense hours, like 18, 20 hours. You might get them in trouble with the union. Well, I don't. You know, it's. They worked regular hours and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, regular hours. But when we were shooting the. Shoot me off of my break your knees. When we were shooting the spanking scene, that happened at about 4 a.m. And it was intense. And it was really intense. And we didn't get it at the beginning. The cadence wasn't right. The vibe wasn't right. The room wasn't right. Whatever the hell it was. We just kept going. And we had a stand in ass. But. A stunt ass. A stunt ass. Yeah, yeah. But Timmy didn't want the stunt ass. He wanted to immortalize his ass. Incredible. And I said, look, I got to hit your ass with this. Because the fake ping pong paddle broke. So now we're dealing with a real paddle, stiff wood. And Josh is saying, look, I want to hear that smack Latino. I want to hear an explosion of ass here. I mean, they're women all over the country. And very jealous. I wound up like a baseball bat and hit him. And. You fucked his ass up. His ass had imprints of the paddle rubber on him. That's a hot ass right now. It's a hot ass, but it was very hot after that. You're doing a little bit of a brag right now, I think. But I'm telling you. All 12 ladies watching this are going to be very proud of that scene. But when I got back. Did he say anything about me the whole time you were working with him? I don't recall. No, I don't recall. But when I got back to Casatua, I was staying there down on South Street in New York. It was 7 a.m. And I was fried. I mean, I was just wired, you know. And I said to the matriotee, look, I want some scrambled eggs and some smoked salmon. And a bottle of. of 2022 Bouliné Martrechet. He said, it's breakfast. What are you? Not so I said, well, it's not breakfast for me. I've been awake for two days. So I want the bottle. And I drank the whole. I put a straw in it. And I called my wife. I said, you want some matriote? She said, it's 7.30 in the morning. So it's a guilty pleasure. But that's how I wound that day. And I'll never forget. forget it. It was a great experience. The whole thing. So you're you're you just played music for us. You're a guitarist. You're a photographer. You're now an actor. You are a documentary. You've made a documentary film before in your early years. You are an entrepreneur. You are a kind of a kind of a elder statesman of business in North America. I'd say would you consider yourself a modern-day Renaissance man or like a Da Vinci of sorts. You know the the journey of entrepreneurship is not a destination to journey and the reason you would want to do that now when I tell everybody this because I teach entrepreneurship at places like MIT and Harvard now. It's not about the great of money because you just listed off a bunch of things I couldn't do if I wasn't free to do them. And so it's what money buys you the free time. It's it's it's not about the great of money. I don't need more money. I need more time to pursue the things I really interest me. And so what what you find out is that if you're motivated by money as an entrepreneur you will never get it. You you have to be so insanely passionate about what you're doing and all the competitors are pursuing you and then one day you wake up and you're filthy rich. That's how it happens. Every guy I've ever talked to that's how the huge accident has said I never sought coming because I was just my opically focused on my business. That was the same for me. And then one day we were acquired for 4.2 billion. And then what I found was amazing for all of us the not you know people that nine core people. We didn't know what to do the next day. We just went back to work. I mean that's that's all we know. And so we just kept doing other things and I've done many other successes and failures in that period. But you know it's allowed me to do some really interesting things and that's what keeps me going and you know pursuing stuff. It's very interesting. But you have to be able to afford the time right. The time is the problem you can't buy any and that's the one thing no matter how rich you get you can't buy. You can't buy health and you can't buy you know you can't be guaranteed health. You've got to be very careful. I certainly think about that a lot and I do try and use my time very carefully because I don't have to do anything. So I'm kind of I'm here because I want to be here. And so I block this big fan. Yeah well also I just you guys do interesting work. I've seen some of it. It's interesting. I thought this could be good. So you know that's why and then then I'm going to do some other crazy shit tonight and what's that I'm going to have a dinner with the auctioneer of the FPjorn Francis Ford Coppola watch which I put on television about an hour ago. Oh wow yeah it's probably the most coveted watch on earth. It's probably going to sell on Saturday for between three and five million dollars. I wanted to hold it in my hand before it went into a private collection for a generation. So I suggested we bring it to television. Did you consider stealing it? Yeah the problem with that is I know Jorren. I'm wearing one of his watches. The thing about watchmaking which I really learned as time passed is collectors now covet the independent watchmaker and Jorren has now considered a living Picasso. He is making only 900 watches a year. There are thousands of collectors around the world that want to Jorren but he personally decides who gets each piece. Yeah and so and they cost what over a thousand dollars probably. What's funny? Yeah the secondary market would be in the millions. Well primarily you can get one as inexpensive as 18,000 but you can't. I mean that's the problem. The elegant which is the entry level watch sells for 18 secondary markets 158,000 and that's a beautiful piece. I want to try something because this is like a kind of a free education for me. I'm because I'm a new entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur of sort. I don't think of myself as one. I'm kind of supporting yourself with what you do. I'm a staff now and I have a responsibility. Yeah and I they look up to me and I you know they they see me as a friend more than a but but I bet some other think you're an asshole. That's probably true. No I think well okay one thing that I've struggled with and I'm and maybe you can as an educational thing for the audience you could kind of impart some wisdom on me is firing like I don't like I've there is one individual who's not here today because you whack them. No because I and I've it's probably been a matter of three months that he's should have been fired but every time I get close I just don't have it. So perhaps if we could like act it out you could we could kind of you could kind of show me you could be me I'll be him and then you could kind of like because I really I don't know how to do this. I called my girlfriend's dad and said how do you fire? What's his name? Paul. Okay so you're Paul. No no the guy. Yeah. Yeah so hey hey Skip. Okay so listen he's not here right now also. You know I get it but I'm gonna give you here's how it goes down. You know I want you to be happy. I really want to be I want you to be happy and I have a feeling you're not happy and the reason I feel that way is you're not with the team anymore you're not on the same agenda and that must be that you're not happy. Now I'm happy I'm fine I like it. Well the team isn't happy with you because they feel you're not happy and I'm gonna make it very simple for you. We're gonna end our relationship today but the good news is I'm gonna give you a fantastic exit package because I want you to be fairly treated that's number one. How much? And number two is you know how much of an exit package? I'm gonna pay you three months of your salary. Okay I don't have to I could pay you six weeks. To be a good guy because I know I listen that's why they call me Mr. Wonderful. Yeah so I'm gonna give you my story. I call myself Mr. Wonderful. But what's important is that we that we go our own ways now. I know why you're sitting around. In fact I've cleaned out your whole place as a box outside on the street. It's waiting for you. Yeah okay and but I've got you a limo the box is in the limo and it's gonna take a wherever you want. Okay can I just do that right now? I swear to God. Yeah yeah I mean you did well that's how you do a fair a fair yeah oh shit can okay I mean I'll be nice about it but okay I mean just give me a minute I know we're press for time but I'll just I'll just get it out of here because it's been driving me nuts. Well I think you got it you got to make a decision that's my whole point. Hey hey hey where are you? What you want? Yeah well why aren't you here? Right now. Hold on one second. He bullshit it's the worst it's the worst bullshit I've ever heard. Well okay well you know I got to say I'm starting not to listen it doesn't matter but I don't. He is? Yeah he relaps you know I know that you know it's just but he is he okay? He's gonna be he's not dead or anything he's okay but he is he was pretty bad. I'm sorry dude and since you're since your wife yeah I know he's got the same because it's a disease yeah I know it's just like it's happening again and I just can't lose him both it's just I'm sorry I didn't text you. I thought I did. Well here's what I'm gonna do. I can tell that you're not happy and the team isn't happy with you. Yeah and what I'm gonna do is offer you a very generous package. What I'm gonna do is I want you to be happy so I'm gonna offer you three months of your pay and then and then you're bought I packed up a box and your stuff is outside right now. My son is in the hospital right now and you're telling me I'm gonna lose my health insurance. Well listen. This is this is it's business. No I'm not filming this. No I wouldn't. No no I'm just saying I got it but no no I got to go it just good luck with everything in three months and okay anyway well oh man that's that's a horrible story if it's true. If he made that up he's a bad person right I don't know I just you know I feel like an asshole right now. Well I think you know there could be asshole factors six and you I don't know. Was it not the right time should I not have done it then? It unfortunately these two things are horrific. They're both bad. But there has to be some, there has to be an outcome. That's the whole point. Because it's, I don't think it's gonna get better for him. I mean, this is, listen, my heart goes out to him if that story's true. - Now I didn't know that at all. - Well, do you know that? - Well, I know that there've been problems in the family and he is dealing with a lot. - Well, that's a very, very tough situation. I mean, I don't wish that on anybody. - Should I say sorry? Should I hire him back? I feel like I should. - Why do you think it'll be better? - I'm like, he's in love. But the whole point is, why is the original problem still, it's still gonna be there, whatever it was. I mean, I don't know the details. - Yeah, yeah. - Listen, you know business is. - You're right, you know what you're talking about, right? - It's kind of like you have to take care of the remaining employees. That's what matters. - Yeah, you could be more generous if that story's really true. - Maybe six months, or maybe a year, or maybe a raise? Maybe, thank you, maybe a. - Well, okay, let's move on, 'cause we have to wait this time. (upbeat music) , yeah. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Hey, listen, I know I'm not who you're looking for. I know I'm not the usual type of girl that gets the guy at the end of the movie. I know I'm definitely not much a girl. But when I saw the words on your website, that you made using squarespace.com, it made me want to be wanted, the way that you wanted much a girl to be wanting you. Look, I know I'm a loser, I'm a freak, and I can't imagine why someone like you, who could make such an amazing website on Squarespace, using their built-in tools like AI assisted blueprint, and search engine optimization, and they're. - Oh, scheduling. - Yeah, they're scheduling. - Could ever want me, but just so you know, if you ever did, I'd love you. I'd love you until. - Yeah, sure, you want to go? - Oh. - All right. (dramatic music) - Yeah, yeah, thank you. (laughs) - As I'm saying, I'm a nascent entrepreneur. But I happen, I have business partners that kind of engage in the business side, I get to focus on the creative, and I fancied myself a businessman for far too long, and I realized I got my shit handed to me too much, and then what's important is that I'm good at this part, and I have business folks that do the other part. So how would you, to an idiot, a real dumb dumb? Like, explain, what is economics? Like, in your, like, and you're talking about. - The thing about entrepreneurship is very binary, you either make money or you lose money. There's no great, it's one or the other, and so you should put time into the equation, you say to yourself, I'm starting a business, and if I can't make money in 36 months, I'm gonna take it behind the barn and shoot it. Because at that point, you've run out of an idea, that idea is not working. We weren't able to prove that you could acquire customers, economically, the business is unprofitable, and you're burning cash, and you're bankrupting yourself, if you're borrowing money against your house, or whatever it is. And so, we're doing good, we're doing it. - Okay, so the idea is that entrepreneurs fail sometimes, but they shouldn't spend all their time wallowing in failure, and entrepreneurs that are unsuccessful don't have the guts to take it behind the barn and shoot it. That's what you have to do. Bad businesses are like a cancer, they kill your time. So you gotta shoot it, that's it. And I've done that, you know, I've had good ideas, bad ideas, but I never, never let them spend. Like these days, if I can't figure it out in 18 months, I shoot it. - This thing is good, I mean, it's a good product. - But once you know it works, you gotta spend 110% of your time on it. - Oh, I'm married to this. - Yeah, of course. - What do you do when you get in trouble from the lady for working too much? - Well, that's a big challenge for everybody, you know, you should basically set aside some quality time for me. I try and make it weekends, and I'm very fortunate. I can say, look, where does the family want to go this weekend? You want to go Geneva, you want to go to Thailand, you want to go to Paris. Let's go, the tickets on me spend the weekend together, and then after that we all disperse again, 'cause I'm traveling all week. - Yeah. - So, you know, it's quite, and lately, particularly on this Marty's Supreme promotional tour, we're going everywhere. My wife Linda said, I want to go with you to see what it's like, and after the first week, she went, wow, I don't want to get another airplane. I said, well, we're just starting. 'Cause you spend most of your time hopping cities. Sometimes three cities in a day. - You seem like the concept of a business man, like a successful person, I guess maybe it comes from movies, is that because they're making big bets, and there's a rush coming from it, that they also have other like, vices, but you seem like relatively well-adjusted in your life. - Well, what I try and do, and not everybody has vices, but my routine is, I get up at five, or I live in Miami, I live on the beach, and we have a 22 mile boardwalk fabulous. So, when the sun rises at about, so at five to six, I'm kind of listening to all the news feeds, 'cause I do a lot of live TV during the day, there's usually five news stories worldwide. I listen to them, the outlets I listen to, I try and get balanced, BBC in London is very good. Al Jazeera, Fox, CNBC, BBC in Canada, 'cause a lot of stuff going on. - You guys have a BBC too? - No, BBC is England, but CBC is in Canada. - CBC, yes, CBC. - But the point is, they all have the same five stories of the different tilt on it. So by the time I'm finished like 40 minutes of that stuff, I've got a pretty good idea of what's on the plate for the day. And I get on the bike, and I ride for about an hour and 20 minutes with thousands of other bikers as the sun is coming up. There's only bikes and dog walkers, that's it. Then I go to the gym for 20 minutes. I don't eat breakfast, so I fast for 16 hours a day, and then I eat it to a clock. My only, I don't take drugs, I don't smoke. My only vice is wine, I like wine. So I have to limit myself, I don't drink till six o'clock, I have a glass of lingerie. The thing about wine, the problem with wine is, if you drink it before you go to bed, you don't sleep well. If you can get seven hours of sleep a night, you feel amazing. So you don't eat shit food, get some exercise, and don't drink too much, so that's the problem, and that's where I, that's my advice. I love you. He's happy. Yeah. You know, the thing is, the key is-- Are you a happy person? Yeah. I'm pretty happy. Yeah. I should be drinking at breakfast. That way I'd have plenty of time before I went to bed. Yeah. Trying to convince my wife of that. Let's do some more Montruché in the morning. Well, I can talk to her. At your level of elite entrepreneurial business people, you must have met some real freak avoidance that outside of the boardroom. Well, where I see the guys from other planets is in the technology deals I invest in. The programmers, the coders, the firmware developers-- And what are they doing? They're just eclectic, too. The really good ones are-- really great engineers are not normal people. They're just unusual people. And they have the ability to be extremely focused on the signal of the work they're doing and they don't let noise get in the way. They're very eclectic. And I've been working with guys like that and women like that for 20 years. So the guys that wrote, missed-- it's a title from Wayback that became very famous-- five guys in the house, they all had Ferraris using unusual-- they were unusual. But they wrote this software-- An unusual how? Well, you know, I don't want to say, but they were on the edge, but they wrote amazing code. And I have to go out there and get them to finish it on time, so we'd ship 12 million copies to Walmart. And they keep trying to pull you into a cuddle puddle. Yeah, but the thing is, my coders, they never want to stop. They just want to make it better and better, but at some point you have to cut the version and ship it. Yeah, yeah. But I did that my whole life, and so I've got a pretty good respect for what they do. And that was one of our competitive advantages. Developers like to work for me, because I gave them a lot of slack on the creativity, but was able to manage their time and say, look, we got to ship it next month. Yeah. It's got to ship. Yeah. And because you're trying to fill shelves for holiday and whatever else. But-- and I still do that to a certain extent, but I'm not an operator anymore. I'm just an investor. When you see-- like in New York City, when you see someone on the street, like a homeless person, like, what do you make of the-- what's your-- what's your whole take on that? It's sad, but usually it's mental illness. Yeah. That's what it is. And our society has a very hard time. You shouldn't tell them to take it outside. It's kind of unique. No, I mean. You look at other societies, like Asian societies, for example, or even in Europe and Switzerland, they covet the elderly. Yeah. They want to bring them into their homes, and they keep their grandparents around. Because that's how the family values work, we don't have that in North America. I feel like in the future, have you seen the show "Mad Men?" Yeah, of course. You remember they're going for a picnic, and then they shake out all their garbage into a field, and you're like, oh, they didn't know what littering was. I feel like in the future, they'll look back at us, and they'll be like, you just walked past a guy just suffering and dying on the street? Yeah, I think like-- There's homeless in every society, but usually if it's mental illness, it's being supported by a family somewhere. So there's less of it, certainly the Asian countries are the same. Can we do a thought experiment? Sure. You go to bed. Miami. Beautiful life. Beautiful house. You're Mr. Wonderful. You open your eyes. You are-- you have zero dollars, and you go around, you're like, I'm Mr. Wonderful. People are like, I've never heard of Mr. Wonderful, okay? What do you do? Seriously, the first thing that happened to me in a dream, you never know. But I was saying, that's a thought experiment, you wake up, you're on the street, and you have zero dollars, what do you do your first day to get back on your feet? Make money. Yeah, I would probably go be a laborer as I did when I was young. I was a brick layer, and then I washed dishes. But you can't really go-- you can't really go up that way, right? No, no, but you have to get some cash. I mean, you'd be going to be pragmatic. Okay. You've got to get some clothes, get some cash. I would probably go and use my skills and photography and find a job and doing social media or something, because that's a growth area. But you've got to start at the bottom again, and basically there's a lot of work for people that want to work. Maybe it's in the field, or maybe it's in service industries. They don't want to do that, though. Yeah. So how long would it take you to get a million dollars from zero? It's just a thought experiment. For that circumstance, no one knows who you are. You're not a star of screen and a small-- I think I can do it again. Do you think three months, you get a million? I don't think-- I don't think I can do it in three months, but-- I would assume three weeks. You know, the way you make a million dollars is you don't buy shit, like you actually have money to invest. Really? That's how I figured it out. It took me a while to figure it out. You know, I was able to make a million, when I was pretty young, by just, you know, when you go into someone, go into your own closet and look at all the shit you bought over the years, you don't-- I mean, that's such an easy one to see. But you're a-- you're a-- you're a-- you're a damn-- No, I can-- I can afford it. But you can afford it. I can afford to get good clothes now, and I have a lot of fun, you know, between the different brands. Right now, I'm working with Dolce. They're doing-- Really? That's because I'm already supreme. Give it up back. Dolce Shae is doing-- thank you, thank you. What I like about you-- The weakest applause, everybody. You know, what the hell is going on? But they are working with material and designs from the '30s and '40s, which kind of fit the whole Marty's pretty vibe. So for the-- I've got some very crazy shit coming for the premieres in New York and LA. No. Like, Lady Gaga level? I think I might be there on these-- You're going to wear meat? And I should wear meat, but I've got an amazing jacket from, sort of, Louis the 14th kind of vibe. Whoa. And-- I love that for you. That's pretty cool. It's definitely me. Yeah, that is-- Yeah, that is this wonderful. It's-- it's a wonderful kind of, you know. Anyways, it's-- it's fine, and I bring it home, and my daughter and wife just go out of their minds when they see this stuff. Your wife-- your wife gets turned on a little while ago. Well, I remember when I bought my first Porsche, I collect Porsche, and, you know, I drove it home. It was, um-- 9/11? Yeah, it was a 9/11 turbo convertible, Cabriolet, stick shift. And all she said to me was, "Oh, great, another bald asshole in a Porsche." They don't understand how cool, cool stuff is. I love that car, and, um, I like the new Porsche's, I got the 50th anniversary. These cars are amazing. They're, you know, German precision, all that stuff. It's like a watch. I might put 1,000 miles on it a year. I don't drive it very often, but I like to just look at it. Yeah. Come on, dude. Yeah. Why don't you just lay a thing about a car? I'ma young you. I-- watches are easy to collect, as you can actually store them in a bank vault, but cars you got to get a garage and climate-controlled facility, and then the tricklers and all that. Yeah. It's complicated. Yeah, it's a lot of-- Sure, it's crazy. And the maintenance. Yeah. That's nuts. Yeah, yeah. 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You have a really interesting background in childhood. And I wouldn't have expected it. I kind of knew you from TV. I'm like, oh, this guy is like, I don't know, blue blood, like Wharton boy. But you lived, you were born in Canada, obviously. Montreal moved to Champaign, Urbana. Yeah. Outside of Chicago in Illinois. Went to, you know, school there, a botan field. I'll never forget it. I lived a botan field at school. I don't even know if it's still there. But you lived in Cambodia as well. Before the, before the Commonwealth. Yeah, after that one, my stepdad, my original dad died. My stepdad was graduating from University of Illinois. And he became a PhD in management. And he got a job with the ILO of the United Nations. And we traveled every two years. He worked on infrastructure projects like water and highways. He was a spook. Sounds like a spook to me. Well, he did a hell of a job for the UAE. He was there when the founder was there. And that's how I got my residency there. He helped get the water system going for those guys. Now look at them. Yeah, they're doing all right. Yeah, they actually were pretty smart about how they made that kind of thing. You met Haile Selassie? I did. And is it true? Is he, is he jaw? He was. He was. Are you Rastafar eye kind of guy? Yeah. Well, he is the leader of the Rastafarians. Yeah, I know. He also, I met his lion cubs. I met Paul Pot, who went nuts and killed everybody in Cambodia. What are you, James Bond? It was just random. I mean, you know, the expats would always get together at these cocktail parties. And they would throw them at the palace. Uh-huh. And, uh, you know, the ILOers would bring their kids. And that's how I met him. I just-- And you play poker against a guy with an eye patch? Well, I met you as an sexy girl next to you. And you see a sexy girl next to you. And you see a nook too. I mean, that was when they-- No, no. And more was spreading into Cambodia. Why, everywhere you go, war follows? It was tough. I mean, that was tough. You're the angel of death, Kevin. Yeah. Wait. But, you know, a bit just some interesting places. So you were raised by your stepfather primarily? Yeah. And he was very pragmatic with me. And your parents split up after you moved her before? No. My parents, my original father, they got divorced. And then, um, he died, actually, when he was 37. When did he die? When you moved her around the time? No, we-- he had-- They were divorced already. My mother was now, you know, starting dating, I guess. My stepfather, but then he passed away. My original father. And then they moved to finish off George's PhD. Oh, what happened? And did you-- you didn't get a chance to say goodbye? Or-- I did. I knew-- you know, I spent weekends with him. But one day it was just gone. It was tough. It was just really hard. It was really hard on him. Yeah. That was difficult. But, you know, when I started moving every two years, I thought everybody lived that way. But it's not true. Oh. But it ended up being a huge advantage for me, because I've been to every culture in the world. Yeah. So, you know, Iceland and Norway and France and Switzerland and Germany and Japan and Ethiopia. All of those places. Yeah. And another thing is-- Well, a funny thing. Correct me if this is wrong. But your stepfather at the end of high school asked you what you wanted to do. And you said, "I want to take photographs of hot chicks." He said, "You're not good enough." That's awesome. That is the most awesome answer I've ever heard. And he said, "Look, you're not good enough. You'll starve to death. Why don't you just take a couple of years off and go get a business degree?" Then you can figure out what to do. He was right. But I went right back into photography. I founded a company called Special Event Television. We did all the hockey programming on Saturday nights for the original 16s. And you developed the technology for, like, digital graphics. Yeah, we did that. Yeah. That turned into the learning company. There was a bunch of things that happened in that journey. And you just don't know what's going to happen when you start a company. But we did Don Cherry's Great Fine. The original six was another format we owned. I didn't know what a television format was, but I owned it. And so somebody came along and said, "I want to buy it." That was the first exit we had. And we took that money, started the learning company, and the rest is history. Yeah. Another surprising thing about you is that you, you know, the old Pinko Glasses New York Jew over here, I would assume, like, I would never have assumed that you'd be an environmentalist. That you'd study environmental studies. You made a documentary. Yeah. And you happen to be one to this day? You think? I was one of the first cohorts with Sally Lerner and Reg McElachee with the two of them. They founded it in the architecture department. But what Sally told me, which I'll never forget, she said, "You know, Kevin, you should pursue entrepreneurship. You should go start a business." Because, you know, this-- you don't look to me like a guy who's ever going to keep a job. You just don't know how to work for anybody. And it could be bad. It could be good. But she was one of the ones that really edged me on. And I'll never forget that. Because she was right. I mean, in the end, I never was able to hold down a job for anybody. I never will. Tell us about the cat food. Yeah, that was the cat food. I had to have a summer job. And I worked for a guy. But that ended up being a very important lesson. Because he took me to show how cat food was made. And it's just two engines. It's-- see the pan-- of Japan tuna, the belly. That's for the fish protein. And the other is chicken faces and beef faces. And all the parts that we don't eat of a cow. And they get sort of melted into a mush with papaya juice. And then squeezed out. And that paste is the protein that is-- Next chicken McNuggets, I mean garlic. Well, these are for cats. But think about the idea. It's either-- it's either a sea of Japan tuna on this side or the chicken faces on the right. Sounds nicer to the tuna. 15 years later, I'm sitting with my partner at the learning company. We're buying all these software companies with their developers, making educational software. And the only two things we're doing is math and reading scores. We're doing hundreds of millions of dollars of sales, advancing math and reading scores. And I said to my-- let me tell you the story about cat food. And I said, why don't we fire all the developers that we don't need and just have one chicken face team and one sea of Japan tuna team? The sea of Japan tuna does the reading software. The other guys do the math. And then all we do is take the titles. When you make cat food, you add bacon bits, a little egg bits, and you call it soufflé or whatever. But it's just the same paste. We did the same thing. We licensed characters from Disney and characters from-- Mattel, right? Yeah, Big Bird. We had all these titles. And we pay our royalty on it. And our cost of the album dropped by 30%. But didn't you try to rebrand the cat food? And then they said, would you eat it? That's what I was-- I did have to eat it in front of the sales force. But apparently, that's sort of like a hazing thing they did at that company. They made the young guy eat the food. And I knew how it was made, so it really made me sick. And then you were like, I'm not going to have a boss ever again. It's kind of for a good reason. Well, it wasn't important lesson. I think you learn these things in life. And they come back and they're very good for you later. That's the whole idea. But that was an important lesson, the two engines of protein. Because that changed the outcome of the learning company a big way. I want to talk about your turn into entertainment. I mean, I'm in the comedian. I've gone on the road. I've watched thousands of hours of Shark Tank. It's just the best show. And like you are just a fucking hit. You know that. Well, it's been on for 17 years. We're shooting our 18th season. I actually have a theory about why that happens. The real stars, and the reason people keep watching it, is every time someone walks through those doors, they've never seen that product or service before. They can't believe someone else thought of it instead of them. It's why didn't I think of that? Because half of these things turn into huge successes. The other half go to zero. But every once in a while you get some crazy idea that ends up being fucking huge. Yeah, yeah. You may have had a ring door thing, you guys. Ring was huge. Cat DNA was huge. What's that? Looking good cupcakes. It was called base pause. It was a monster. Cat DNA? Cat DNA. You stick a cute tip up the cat's ass, you send it in and it tells you what to feed it to send its life by 30%. That's a dog. That's not a gem. What's your thing, a dog or a gem? No, a dog or a business dog or a business gem? Well, I'd say look, it's a howling dog from hell. That sounds like the dumbest idea for anything. But it's not? It pisses me off that successful. Yeah, but you know, I've seen so many pitches now, I kind of have an idea what's going to work and what isn't. But I like when you're mean to kids. I don't like kids. Yeah, yeah. When they're like, I'm three years old and I have a business that you're like, you're an idiot. Get out of that problem as I say the parents. I'll invest in the three-year-old if you take him out of school if the rest of his life so that he can work for me full time. Yeah, he shouldn't be. I don't know why anybody would invest in a kid in high school. You gotta wake him up. Yeah, and I do it. I think it's dumb. But you know, it's TV and so it happens. You crush it on that. How much of Mr. Wonderful as a character? Because I'm meeting you right now, you seem like you're just a calm, friendly, well-adjusted zend out, dude. Well, I don't think you should ever work again. You can't you can't you really you turn it on. I mean, you know, no, you can't fake it for 17 years. You can't do that. That's who I am when it comes to investing. I scrutinize deals. I am not acting. I'm not faking it. That's that's who I am. And you can ask the people I work with my team. That's how I am. Yeah. And so, you know, it's sort of like, it's for me, Shark Tank. I don't see any cameras on Shark Tank. Nor does anybody else. Right. We've been doing it for so long. I mean, I, you know, it's just bringing on. Let's have a look at it. But if it's dog shit, I'm gonna say it's dog shit. You know, you you tell the truth. That's that. I'm telling the truth is extremely helpful in case of business because you don't want them to waste the money. You want them to actually say, maybe it is dog shit. If everybody won't invest, I find it very disingenuous when Barbara will already say, well, that pisses me off too. Oh, you're so nice. And I think you're wonderful. You should just go do what you do. You don't need any of us. What they're saying is your products a piece of shit. And I would never invest in it. I just say your products a piece of shit. They're setting them up. They're going to lose the money. And I'm, I'm saying, you know, Barbara's on this side of Lori's here and say, what are you doing? You're aligned for your teeth to these people. Yeah. You're giving them such bad advice to tell them to keep going on this dog shit crap they have. Like, why? Why don't you just call it what it is dog shit crap? Yeah. Do them a favor. Tell them the truth. Because in reality, those people are going to think that it's not dog shit crap. And it's going to cost them time. It's so bad I can smell the odor of dog shit off the product. Yeah. It's just from, I mean, the room 10 feet away saying, it's horrible. Shoot it. It's like, it's, it's beat. They're being kind, but they're not being kind. In fact, you're being kind by telling that kid to kill himself. Thank you. Finally, somebody realized it. I mean, I do look at that. Look at the heat I take from everybody. Oh, you're the mean shark. You're the bad shark. No, I'm not. I'm just telling you. You're the star of the show. But you're the star of the show. You're sitting in the middle. The point is, it's a piece of crap. Yeah. It is. And they're going to waste their lives on it. And their parents is money. And their parents money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's the real problem. Yeah. Yeah. Do you respect people that just didn't have to work for it and have a lot of money? Or do you think that they're posseys? Or sorry for saying that word? I don't know. Well, you mean they've inherited it. Yeah. You're like, you're a fucking liquor. Let me tell you what happens. You grind it. Inherited wealth is generally dissipated within two generations. Yeah. Yeah. So you shouldn't give your money to the idiot cousin. It's not a good idea. You know, if you have a business, nepotism destroys it. What you do is you put the kids at the board level and you hire professional managers. Yeah. And that way you can sustain the family for, you know, long after you're gone as long as they don't try and run it. Most people can't do what their parents did. Yeah. Sometimes. It's like the Bush administration, right? It's difficult. Yeah. But you know, you don't want to sometimes there's exceptions, but not often. And so if you're going to be an entrepreneur, it's better to try and do it in your 20s when you can take a hit. You don't have a lot of responsibility. You don't have a family. You don't have a mortgage. Just go do it. And in 18 months, you'll find out if you can pull it off or do it. And if you do, it sets you free. Yeah. There's something wonderful about being able to do what you want to do. And the only way in America you get there is you've got to be successful in the American dream. There's a competitive element to business, right? You want to win. Yeah, of course. Right. So you have to fucking hate the other guy at some point a lot of the time, right? Like, who's the biggest fucking fraud? Just name names. Well, I mean, you're talking about the other shark. Just, no, no, I know. Those are our friends. We love them. Well, no, let me tell you how fun I am. When Mark quit, you're, you're genuinely, I think I can get Mark back on the show. You're trying to get it back. You miss. I am. I am. That's your boy. Because I think we have a great dynamic. I'm teaching him. And he's learning from me. And it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And he's, like, he said, they're the sense A and the student. And, and Bar, you know, he's my grasshopper. And Bar, bro. The only reason that she makes it to the set each year is I buy her new broom. That's how kind of you. You're keeping the band together. You're like, Paul McCartney every year, brand new, the latest broom for the witch. Mark, Mark is like, uh, John Lennon. He's, uh, the yoga, doing heroin. You're like, you just get to the studio. Let's make Abby wrote. Get back in the chair. Let's get back. I love it. So you're like the copy time a little bit. I'd like to think that way. Yeah. I like that. Call me Ella Capita. This is cool for me because I'm a massive fan. This is cool to hear this. Yeah. Look, I don't think of myself as the star of the show. Because I know with certainty, if we didn't have the pitches, there'd be no show. What we've learned is what's really good now about Shark Tank is the 100 plus producers that after 17 years can curate great deals. They go out there just like on American Idol, they listen to pitches, thousands of pitches, thousands of pitches. And the woman has done it from the beginning is named Mindy Casting. I don't know what a real name is, but like for the office and she has seen every pitch. You know, imagine that. And so these shit. And then she says that one, that one, that one, that one, then she sends it into the, you know, the editorial team that says it's appropriate, it isn't. But she has done such an incredible job with her team that that's why the show works. I assume there's due diligence, though, after. There is. Afterwards. What's the craziest before? What's the craziest thing that's come out in due diligence after making a deal with some. The guy was in prison. The guy was way one of our deals. They let him out of prison. He didn't tell the truth, obviously. He was, he was, he was a felon. That's not useful. You know, I think it's better to tell the truth. I'm not against felons. I think they've, they've redeemed themselves. They've served their time. That's what Miami's all about. Well, yeah, he was built on, yeah, on larceny. Yeah, yeah. The point is, you've got to disclose that. You have to tell. You think Timothy would have fun on the show? I do. I do. And I think his, and his, I've met many of his friends when we were shooting. I think he would have. I've met him before he's, he's awesome. He's, he's a great guy. He's really cool. He's a, he's a, to me, he's dated with the classic method actor because he gets into the zone and you shoot the scene and then he checks out and, you know, he's, he's quite, quite something. What lessons did the other actors impart on you on set? Well, they helped you. As you saw in the movie, there's a lot of interaction between a lot of people simultaneously and those big scenes and restaurants. Kind of like Robert Altman, kind of, yeah. Yeah. And so it's, it's a roaming camera and, you know, you do those sequences multiple times and you get no cadence of what the script is. There were some great people in that thing that really knew what they were doing and that made it easy for me. Yeah. I mean, I thought probably by the fourth or fifth day, I was into the kind of groove of how that, you know, Russian and Ronnie worked. He's going to ask you for, like, tips for her group company. Actually, we met a couple years earlier on Shark Tank. Really? She was a guest shark. Yeah, because she's an entrepreneur. Yeah, she was a group, a group. Yeah. Yeah. So the ladies love this stuff. Yeah. You know, she's, that's a, I don't even know what it is. Yeah. And so we, we knew each other already. It was very easy to roll into the husband wife scene. It was very easy. Yeah. You felt like husband and wife are ready from chocolate. Yeah, but a loveless marriage. She was a horrible person to me. Yeah, you felt like she was a bad woman. She hated you. But, you know, you felt like you were being when you were shooting a scene. Like, you were the guy, you were the guy. It was really interesting because it was easy to get into that character. You know, Milton, in 1952, that was quite something. I didn't have a hard time becoming Milton. That was good. Yeah. Yeah. You killed it, dude. I mean, seriously, I genuinely impressed. Can I tell you what happened to me at the premiere? Sure, tell me. It states, we'll end on this. But this guy, I was with this guy there. Yeah. I'm Josh. She's on stage. She said, I finished editing this last night. This is the movie. Enjoy it. The lights are going down. I'm walking down my row and I have a pair of pants and they have a snap button on the back. There's a woman in the row. My pants brushed past her hair and her hair got stuck. Oh, and then the lights are going down. She's screaming. And she's like, "Ouch!" And then her friend, she was with her gay friend and he was like, "You're hurting her!" And then everyone on the other side of me was like, "Sit down, the movie's starting." So I'm like, going like, "Sorry, sorry, sorry." And he's sitting there and he's just laughing in my face at it. And it was, perhaps, that's how I started, the movie started for me, actually. - Yeah, I was apologizing to a woman for her hair. - Well, and I couldn't get it out. - I think you deserve the abuse. I mean, you know, I saw my fault. - I don't know what kind of pants for those. That's crazy. - They were from Double R.O. - Oh, no kidding. - Yeah, it's a nice line. - Yeah. - I wear a lot of, you know, I have them here. - I see that. - Do you know lift shits, Ralph? - Right, of course. - He's a good guy. - I think the thing is, it's a shame that happened, but a little excitement doesn't hurt. - No, it's hilarious. But, you know, I was getting, I think you were discreeting where I had some friends and they were texting me during the, that's the first interaction. - We just saw the most Jewish man in the world. - No, I think they said there's something else. I'll pull some woman's hair out. (laughing) (clapping) - Kevin O'Leary, I'm gonna give it up for you. - Thank you, Kevin O'Leary. - This is good, I'm glad you're here. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)