Marcus Lemonis: "Business Is Not Freedom" (Lessons Learned from The Profit)⏐Ep. #251

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I have a lot of surface area forfraud and scams and partnership
fallout. The more businesses you start,
the more of that you'll have. If you want to be a good
business person, you have to trythings in and outside of
business that make you wildly uncomfortable.
I have interest in taking your idea and thinking about it
differently. And ultimately I have one goal,

(00:20):
and that's to get the best version of you so that the
business can be the best versionof itself.
That is what I love to do. We publish this big hit piece
about him and his personal life.Never said a word ever.
And it just died. If you give it oxygen.
It will breathe. I grew up poor, lower middle
class, no money for food and entrepreneurship gave me
everything I want. Everyone that's curious that

(00:41):
wants to try it wants to taste business ownership.
I want to help them get there. One of my all time business
heroes is Marcus Lemonis. He is the star of the hit NBC
show The Prophet and he is a business addict.
He is a shiny object driven entrepreneur just like myself.
I've looked up to him for 15 years.
And so I ran into him by accident, accident at Caesar's
Palace in Vegas. And I said, Marcus, can I

(01:02):
interview you? He said absolutely.
So I flew all the way here to New York City, where I am right
now, and I spent an hour and a half with him.
It was one of the best hours anda half of my life.
So we discuss everything from the profit, learnings, regrets,
failures, how to start a business, what ideas he loves,
what ideas he hates. I hope you enjoy.

(01:23):
So I saw that you posted, hey, what should we talk about?
And I want you to know that anything that was given to you,
there's nothing that I won't talk to you about.
If there's a reason that I can't, I will tell you the
reason that I cannot. Ndas or whatever.
No, I'll just say to you, I'll just tell you exactly what the
answer is. I'll never be evasive.

(01:44):
I'll be direct. But I want you to know there's
nothing. You don't have to walk on egg
shells because I saw some of thequestions.
I'm like, I hope you asked me that.
Well, this isn't like a hard hitting podcast.
It's OK, but it's if people havequestions, just people.
People ask me those questions. People ask me all the time.
Well, it's funny because I see both sides of it, right?

(02:05):
And I have a lot of surface areafor fraud and scams and
partnership fallouts. And the more businesses you
start, the more of that you'll have, and it's messy.
I used to get sued a lot. I get really bummed out about it
more than I would let anybody ever know.
And I do a lot of reflecting, like, was it me?
Was it my judgement? Was it them?

(02:27):
What was it? And there's a common theme.
And, and it took me a while to learn that common theme.
And I would talked about it witha friend of mine.
And my friends like, look, you throw more stuff against the
wall and you do it publicly. So you kind of were saying to
people, hey, just want you to know I have some money and I'm

(02:49):
going to try to help. But if at any moment in time you
don't like something, you shouldjust sue me.
Yeah, you're begging for it, yeah, but you're willing to.
You know what you're doing. I'm less willing to than I used
to be. Yeah.
Is there a certain story or specific thing that happened
that got you to look at that differently or is it just a a
combination of things? That got me to change my
willingness to do it. I would say emotional

(03:12):
exhaustion, not mental. I have a high belief in people.
I go into every situation assuming that somebody's going
to be do the right thing and they're going to work hard.
And in many cases they do. And when they don't, I tend to
not become disenfranchised by people.
I'm like, well, that's that person.
The next person is going to be great.

(03:33):
People have been very critical of me and my wife particularly
that I'm too naive and I'm too trusting and everybody can't be
good. And my response is like,
everybody actually is good. It's they make bad choices,
including me sometimes, but emotional exhaustion and and
maybe a little I don't want to get into A to public discourse

(03:56):
about what really happened. What I've learned over time and
I had a journalist tell me this.If you talk about it, you give
it oxygen, and if you give it oxygen, when you give a fire
oxygen, it grows it really the. Streisand effect, right?
If you say nothing and you know you did the right thing or you

(04:18):
don't want to get into it, you just let it go.
There's a pain for like a minuteand people may, certain people
may fall out of love with you orfeel differently about you
because you don't get to tell your side of the story.
But if you'd start to tell your side of the story, then
everybody crowds around and thenmore people.
So I, it took me a while to learn because early on I was
like, no, we have to go on the offense.

(04:40):
We have to, we have to say something.
People are like. Stop.
Was it Andrew Huberman that had like a big hit piece come out?
I think it was the New York Times.
They published this big hit piece about him and his personal
life. He never said a word ever.
Not once. No rebuttal, no retort, and it
just died. If you give it oxygen, it will
breathe. Yeah, so you remind me of myself

(05:01):
for a lot of reasons, right? I think people might look at you
and say this guy isn't focused. He's doing all these things.
You got to focus, focus, focus. Let me tell you my theory and I
know you won't be afraid to tellme if it's total BS I'm just
justifying my own life or if youagree with it, right?
And maybe you're the most biasedperson to ask.
I think people should focus on their superpower.

(05:21):
And maybe that's across a dozen businesses.
Maybe it's all in on one and people assume focus means
focusing on one business one thing.
But I like to focus on my superpower, delegate the things
that I I hate or I'm bad at, andthat's how I live my life.
Is that just BS? No, I think there's a more
vulnerable layer there that thatyou probably should spend time

(05:43):
unpacking yourself. I get bored easy, and I like
shiny objects. And if you and I were doing a
deal and I was really hot on it and then you went on vacation
for a week, I'm out. And it's not a good quality, but
it is what it is. The same thing happens to me
with ideas. I have an idea addiction, and

(06:06):
every idea I have isn't a good one.
I find myself wanting to be morefocused.
I have a high level of self-awareness that in many
cases I'm not capable of it. I actually don't have the
ability to do it. I think I could say, yeah, I
could delegate. For me, I've had to.

(06:26):
I think the big pivot for me is if I want to be the way that I
am, I have to accept the things that come with that and I have
to do one thing materially different, which is I have to
hire way up or partner way up because all those people need to
fill the many gaps that I have. I like being a connector.

(06:49):
I like doing deals. I don't mind the early stages of
running it, but once it's kind of going I'm like, OK.
I'm bored, you got that exact same.
I don't want to do that. I don't like I've never started
a business in my entire life. Really.
I don't know how. I mean, you do.
I don't know how. It's bias for action.

(07:10):
You just. I don't know how.
Interesting. And I have no interest in doing
it. I have interest in taking your
idea or her idea and thinking about it differently.
And ultimately I have one goal, and that's to get the best
version of you so that the business can be the best version

(07:32):
of itself. That is what I love to do.
Yeah. Hard stop.
Now back to your example of if Ipartner with you and then you go
on vacation, what about the reverse?
I didn't. Partner with you.
We were going to do a deal. You wanted to sell me a
business. You, whoever the person is, we
were talking about doing, I can think of 1 specifically, I'm
looking at trying to merge one public company with the one of

(07:54):
the public companies that I oversee today.
And I was hot on it, hot on it, hot on it.
And then the person is like, God, Oh well, I'm thinking about
some other things and I need to do this.
And I said to him, I'm just telling you that fire and that
flame in me is going to go. And when it goes, there's no

(08:14):
relighting it. I'm going to move on to
something else. Time kills all deals.
It kills the fire. From me, What about the other
side of it? What if you partner with someone
or you start it? You've never started you, you
buy a business and then you get shiny object and you move on and
they're like, Marcus, what's going on, man?
We were doing this. Does that happen?
That's happened to me. It happens, but it happens in a

(08:35):
different way. People will know up front
because they should have a high level of like knowledge that I'm
not going to work at their business every day.
And too often I've made the mistake of getting involved or
making an investment and I romanticize it so much.
And I spend so much time with them right up front.

(08:56):
Then that time can't continue that way.
I, I can't and they can. And then they become
disheartened or they feel like we broke up or they feel like I
left them behind. And then they get mad.
And then it leads to it escalates.
And I'll say to them, did you actually think that I was going

(09:16):
to make the popcorn every day orwalk the dog every day?
Did you actually think that was going to happen?
They're like I did. And I said, OK, well, either I
did a bad job of clearly saying to you, we're going to be
together for a week. At the end of that week, you're
going to see me twice a month. And at the end of a year, you're

(09:37):
going to see me once a month. And at the end of the next year,
you may see me once. 1/4 I don'tdo a good job of because I'm I
would never go into a relationship and say to somebody
we're going to start off hot andthen it's going to go cold.
Do you structure like the equityof your deals differently, being
self aware of that today? If they're expecting you to

(09:59):
spend more time with them and they want to give you 30%, do
you say, listen, because this iswhat I do.
People come to me and they say, Chris, give me 10 hours a week,
I'll give you 10% of the business.
And I say, let's do 1% of the business and 30 minutes a week.
And I just tried to tell them upfront, I'm going to be much less
involved than you think. And I always do that.
No, that's, this is a very new development.

(10:19):
I'm going to spend less time in this, but I'm I'm willing to
take much less of the business because I have my hands in a
million pots. That's something for me to learn
from. I would probably take it a step
further and say I don't want anyequity in your business, but I'm
going to give you all that I canand it will be inconsistent.
And if at some point the things that I did helped you, you could
do me a solid, but that's on you.

(10:41):
I don't want the formality of the relationship because what I
learned from me is I would take equity in businesses and then
their behavior, their behavior or their actions became a
liability for me. They didn't pay a vendor.
The vendor found out I was involved.
The vendor sued me. I was like, I, I don't work
there well, but you're an owner.So I did learn over time, I

(11:03):
don't take equity in businesses like I used to unless I'm
actually going to be in them because I started to accumulate
a bunch of little things that ended up being not worth much or
I would give them back. And in the end, I would be like,
I just what was that? Yeah.
How many different businesses would you say you've had equity

(11:24):
in other than like stocks and. Well, I've only owned 2 stocks
in my entire life, Camping Worldand beyond.
I've never bought a stock of a business that I wasn't involved
in. Wow.
Because I don't I'm. You're not involved in them.
I have a problem. It's AI think I just can't do
it. I would say how many businesses
have received money from me and I've gotten some form of

(11:46):
something, either equity or debt, over 100, How many of them
have worked out? You got ahead of my next
question. Less than 10.
Less than 10 of them, so less than 10%.
Yeah. Wow, what does that tell you?
It tells me that I live my life in two stacks of business, true

(12:10):
capitalism in my big businesses where I'm pushing and driving
for 7 billion, ten billion, $12 billion of business, public to
public companies that I'm running.
And I run those very differently.
Yeah, there's relationships thatare involved, but I'm very
maniacal about them. The other one feels like
something that I'm passionate about, and it is my form of

(12:33):
giving back. And I went into it with the
mindset that I was going to makea lot of money.
And halfway through, I realized that that was not going to
happen. And I kept going and the
consequences got more complicated, but I continue to
do it today. I just structure it differently.
I'll say to people, I want you to do these things and it costs

(12:55):
$55,000 to do it. I'm going to give you the
55,000. You don't have to sign anything.
I gave you 55,000. You decide what you think that
should look like. I don't want equity in your
business because I don't want todeal with K ones and and I don't
I don't know what you're doing on a daily basis and it's your

(13:16):
business. So think about it not as a grant
or a gift, but think about it aslike, I'm doing you a solid.
You have to figure out how you're going to do me one too.
Because I realized that the timethat I was spending on those
small businesses was taking awayfrom the amount of effort and
capital that needed to go into the big businesses.

(13:37):
And I started to feel sad about it that, Oh, I still want to do
both. And so I said to myself, OK, I'm
going to take a portion of what I have or a portion of what I
get on an annual basis or a portion of what whatever it is.
And I'm just going to say to myself, that's it.
That's what I'm going to do withit.
It's not a gift. I have high expectations.
I'm going to hold your feet to the fire.

(13:58):
But when I formalize things withyou, it sticks me to the tar
more than it sticks you. And the liability for me and the
risk for me don't outweigh the return for me.
If I give you something and you want to tell people that I'm
your partner, I don't have a problem with it.
I'm proud to be associated with you until I'm not, until you

(14:20):
misbehave. And if you want to call me about
anything and you want to text meabout anything or you need me to
come do whatever, I'll do all ofthose things to the extent that
I can. But I don't need you to be
obligated to me. It's not a good place for me
because then I get resentment. I would think that if I give
someone 55,000 and say hey, justgive me what you feel is right

(14:41):
sometime in the future and then I go off and do all these other
things, most people won't followup and I'm optimistic about
people like you. Some do.
Yeah, a minority of people. I know, but the ones that do
make it worth it for me, the ones that will say to me, and
I've had many say you gave me 55and my business went from X to

(15:02):
Y, not because you're 55, but because of the time we spent
together. The 55 was a great bridge.
He's got me out of trouble. I learned a lot.
I love the fact that we could talk and you give me the honest
feedback. You helped me in ways that I
can't express. And I want to give you 150 back.
And I'll say to them, first of all, thank you.

(15:24):
You don't have to give me 150 back.
You can give me my 55 back. If you want to give me a little
interest because it's like the right thing to do.
I'll take that. And people will say to me, no,
no, I can't do it that way because when I needed it, you
were there for me. And now my business went from 2
million to 20 million and I can't afford to give it to you.
And my response is, I know you can.

(15:46):
What else could you do with the money?
Are there some team members thatdeserve a raise?
Is there something that needs tohappen?
More recently though, I've said I'll take the 1:50 because I
want to build the discipline. If they I started to think like
what message am I sending them? If they have offered to pay it

(16:06):
back and I don't take it back, am I sending a bad message?
And I think ultimately I was, soI take it now.
Has your hit rate on finding people like that gotten better
over the years, and if So, what signals do you look for when you
hand that 55 grand over? It's only gotten better because
I've become more judicious with my choices, which makes me a

(16:27):
little bummed out because I wishI could help everybody all the
time. And it's not a money thing, it's
a expectation thing that I can'tfulfill.
But I've figured out what the signals are and what the
attributes are and the characteristics of those people
are. They ask a lot of questions,
They communicate without me having to communicate to them.

(16:49):
They send me information that I didn't ask for.
They are overly transparent and they share more than anybody
would expect, and that's a sign to me that I have nothing to
hide and I want you to see everything.
They tend to be the kind of folks that just want a
relationship and they just want to feel like they have a cord

(17:13):
that they can pull on. I tend to be pretty liberal with
that, to my own peril, and that's what started to become a
bigger problem for me. I want some of my time back,
yeah. And I want some of my life back.
'Cause sometimes if they're overcommunicating it's because of
the relationship because they want to exploit that at some
point in the future. They want to.
No, no, I don't think it's an exploitation thing.

(17:35):
Not exploit, but like asking forfavors.
They want to know. No they.
I think they like the connection.
They feel like that's the way tostay connected.
And they're probably not wrong because it's a bit of out of
sight, out of mind. There's a small business in
Pennsylvania. Excuse me.
Yeah. Pennsylvania and Maryland.
And it was an episode of the Prophet, and it was a Greek
family young lady and her two brothers and.

(17:58):
What was the business I. Think Zoe's chocolates.
I think I remember that. And a Greek Greek family and
some of the hardest working people ever.
And I did more for them than they ever asked for.
And it cost a lot of money to doit all.
And they were so adamant about paying it back.

(18:19):
And I said to them, but I didn'task you to do these things.
You don't have to pay it back. The portion that I gave you for
working capital, you have to paythat back.
And you can pay me interest every month.
We can do whatever. Not only did they pay it back
and not only did they pay it back with interest, but there
isn't a holiday I haven't. I haven't seen them in probably

(18:39):
7 years. Maybe talk to them two, three
times a year. There's not a holiday that goes
by of any kind. Could be 4th of July where a box
doesn't show up to my house witha note with a whole assortment
of gifts that just say thank you.
And for me, if they called me tomorrow and they said we're in

(19:02):
trouble, there isn't anything that they could ask me for that
I wouldn't do. Yeah, and you know that they're
not sending that to you to ask afavor in the future.
You know, they're genuine good people.
And that makes up for the 10 people that you partner with
where it. Didn't it didn't work out, I had
another. I had another group that maybe
one of my most proud moments of the entire series where there's

(19:24):
these two brothers in Seal Beach, CA, Anderson brothers.
There was three brothers in the business and the one brother
died and they're young. They're our age, Your age.
I was really taken aback by, I had never, I couldn't even
imagine like as a parent, what that would mean to lose your
child, as a brother, what that would mean to lose a sibling.

(19:45):
And I invested both money and time and I've gotten all my
money back and then some. And their business went from 2
million a year to 20 million a year.
And not a day goes by where I see them do an interview or I
hear something somewhere eight years later, we'll always say

(20:09):
this is what helped us. He helped us.
He lent US money. We got out of this.
But what he really did is he gotus focused and he got us over
the loss of our brother. And he got us to get along and
he got us to change to our wholebusiness model.
And he did it in such a. Loving way and a stern way that

(20:30):
even though he's not legally ourpartner, we tell everybody he's
our partner. And I called him up one day and
I said, hey, I saw this interview that you did.
You guys told people that I'm not legally your partner, but I
am your partner. I said, well, a, I'm flattered
by that, but let me tell you what you did for me.
And I think the biggest misnomerabout the show, when I meet

(20:53):
people, it's like, oh, you help this person and that person and
this person and that person. And I will say to people, no,
maybe I help them, but I got a lot out of it.
What did you learn? Well, I learned about their
industry. I learned about what not to do.
I learned about certain behavioral traits.
I learned a lot about that type of personality and how to deal

(21:15):
with them. I learned a lot about myself.
I learned a lot about my my gapsand my flaws and I reaffirmed
the things that I was good at and it gave me confidence to do
other things or it changed the way I operate my big businesses
because they was able to do it in this Petri dish.

(21:35):
I lost probably 50550 million dollars over the course of
making all the shows and I woulddo it again.
Like personally. Nobody ever invested but me.
Wow, just investing in these small businesses.
Yeah, I would do it again. Wow.

(21:56):
I through all the legal drama, through all the TV drama,
through all the good and the bad.
At the end of the day, while I people know that I do other
things, that I sell campers or Isell bed sheets, that's not what
people will Remember Me for. And as an only child, adopted

(22:19):
only child with parents gone, I used to spend a lot of time
thinking like, what do I want tobe known for?
What do I want? How do I want to leave my
thumbprint? And for me, I just came from an
event at the Javits Center, talking to at an event there.
And when I hear people say like,Oh, I learned a lot or I thought
about things differently, or I was entertained or, or I was

(22:41):
inspired or whatever word peoplewould use the return on
investment for me for that. I don't know if I could put a
price tag on it. And you know, it's even crazier
when I lost all that money. And I'm not embarrassed to admit
this. I didn't know how to record the
losses on my taxes like because I never took equity in them.

(23:02):
So it's like it was a marketing or if I did take equity, was it
a capital loss? And I had the IRS come in audit
and they did an audit of a couple of the years and the, the
auditor said to me, we've never seen anything like this.
This just looks totally fraudulent.
I was like. Go watch the show.
And she did. And then she came back to me and
said, well, the deal that you did, I was like, I ended up

(23:26):
giving way more money. I can't think of a case.
And I've been, I can't think of a situation I've been challenged
on this where I didn't invest orspend or give infinitely more
money than anybody ever saw on that episode.
Infinitely more. Just because they needed it.

(23:50):
Well, yeah, we'll go with that. Yeah, yeah.
Was there like an 8020 rule of that 50 million, were there a
couple businesses that just bledyou dry or was it pretty evenly
distributed? They didn't believe me dry
because that would that would imply that they had malice in
their heart. But I clean that up for their
sake. I'm sure that in life there's

(24:11):
people that are good and there'speople that are not good.
I've decided not to cast any sort of opinion on that.
People have to live with their own decisions.
I'll say this, there were a subset of people who always did
the right thing, like there is in life, and there are people
who made choices for whatever reason they made them for.

(24:36):
That didn't work out for me. When it comes to people process
product, 8020 of that has got tobe people, right?
I mean, when you walk away from a business on the profit, you
move on to the next one of the ones that just go back down.
Is it usually people related they just don't keep doing what
you told them to do? Or is it something?
Else you're assuming they did what I told them to do in the

(24:57):
beginning and in most cases people have to make their own
choices. And they would say he didn't
understand the business or he didn't really listen.
And I don't want to get into a healthy debate with them about
that. But in, in most cases, the
businesses did fine after. In some cases, they weren't

(25:18):
going to make it no matter what.No amount of money could have
fixed it because ultimately it is a people business is a people
business. But what's changed for me
recently, particularly with AI, is that process does matter.
When you have technology like AIgiving your competitors an
advantage if they use it properly, to be smarter, to

(25:41):
improve their supply chain, to improve their pricing, to be
able to use scrape data, to knowhow to source better, to know
how to market better, to know how to to know how to convert
better, to know how to do anything better.
Process will matter more in the next decade.
And I'm nervous and fearful thatpeople are going to matter less.

(26:04):
Yeah. And that is, that's a pretty
frightening thing because I've lived my whole life and I still
believe it today that people arethe difference maker.
But maybe it's 1% less tomorrow than it was yesterday.
Yeah, and that's coming from an optimist.
I'm a super optimist. I'm actually whatever's above
optimism. I live in fantasyland.
Yeah, so do I. You have to to be a serial

(26:25):
entrepreneur. You have to to not want to stop
doing it, Yeah. To believe the good in everybody
and that everything's going to work.
Out. Yeah.
Well, when I have a win, it compensates for 20 losses.
I forget the losses. I remember the wins.
It's just so much sweeter for me.
Do you? Yeah.
You forget them. So I have a theory that
insecurities drive us to be our best or our worst selves, right?

(26:48):
If we're, if we're self aware ofthe insecurity, it, it can
propel us to be our best selves.And so I'm a big believer in the
chip on the shoulder and if someone screws me or if I have a
bad deal or just outright a, a toxic relationship, that propels
me more than like my mom saying,I'm so proud of you son, you
know, so I don't know what that is or what you call that, but.

(27:11):
I used to have that chip on my shoulder.
I got rid of it. Unfortunately, it turned into
wiping it from my memory as opposed to like having it be a
motivator for me. It needed to be a lost thought
because it would contaminate me.I think far too much.
I love business so much because it's people always say that food

(27:34):
is a unifier. For me, business is a is a
unifier and it's my connection to humanity.
I don't know what I would do or what I would be or who I would
be if I didn't have business. Do you feel an obligation to
keep making content about business?
I do. Recently, you know, I started
making a new version of the Profit at Fox called The Fixer.

(27:55):
I would tell you that this has been the last 12 months have
been a more of a learning curve for me than ever around content.
And the nice thing about being at Fox is our show airs at Fox
network where The Simpsons and NFL airs, but it's all connected
to Fox News, Fox Business and everything else.
I had been at CNBC for a decade,which was an amazing platform

(28:18):
and I I'm grateful eternally. But in the end, I needed to to
move on to see a different see adifferent part of the world and,
and do something different. And going to Fox was a totally
different place, like ideologically and politically
and philosophically is a different place.
And I wanted to dump myself intoa tank that would be
uncomfortable for me. And the way that they wanted to

(28:40):
handle my dissemination of content was very different.
So I'll tell you a quick story. We're making the fixer.
It would air on Fox. It re airs on Fox Business and
airs on Hulu and all these otherplaces.
They brought me on to different shows, as you would imagine, to
promote the show and so I would go on to Fox and Friends in the
morning or I would do something on Fox Business and over time I

(29:01):
started doing more and more and more.
It was almost becoming invigorating for me because I
was able to take my experience as a business person, big
business person and small business person and mush them
together and plug them into realworld events.
So about three months ago, one of the senior people there said
to me, hey, we had somebody callin sick, you're going to Co

(29:23):
anchor the news tonight. And I was like, no, I'm not.
I was like, no, I'm not. There's like, why not?
I was like, I don't know how to do that.
I can sit on a panel and I can jam with the best of them.
I could do this and be fine, butthat's me riffing and ad
libbing. You're asking me to do the news
in front of a camera with a teleprompter for content that is

(29:46):
not my content. It's a real challenge.
And they said, well, let's thankyou for that feedback.
You, you have two hours. And I was like, I don't think
this is a good idea. I'm going to do a really bad
job. Now, did you have to do this?
Did you contractually? None.
Nothing with them is contractual, but I respect, I
respect the environment that I'min and and I want to be a good

(30:08):
teammate. And the lady said to me, oh, I
totally know it's going to suck.I'm OK with it and I'm in
charge. And so I want you to go do it.
And I also want you to do it because I know you're
uncomfortable and I know that you love challenges.
So I did it. And I went up to her office
after and I said, how was that? She's like, yeah, it was, it

(30:30):
was. As expected.
It was interesting and I said, Itold you she's like, I know.
And I was like, she said, well, you're going to do it again
tomorrow. And I was like, no, but that
person's back. She's like, you're going to do
it again tomorrow. I was like, honestly, I don't
enjoy it. I don't want to do it, please.
She's like, you're going to do it again tomorrow.
And I did it again the next day and it was a little better.

(30:53):
And I happened to be in New Yorkthis week because I'm doing it
all week. But now I want to do it.
And now I'm actually pretty goodat it.
And now it's become like a drug because I'm able to control a
different kind of environment and I'm making the profit of the
fixer. It's a live set, it's real, it's

(31:13):
all happening, but it gets edited down South. 5 days of
filming turns into 42 minutes. So 40 hours turns into 42
minutes, right? I'm not controlling the editing.
When you're doing the news and it's live, it's performance
based and you have to, you have to achieve a certain thing.
And So what I've started to learn, and maybe my message to

(31:33):
everybody is if you want to be agood business person, you have
to try things in and outside of business that make you wildly
uncomfortable. And fish out of water is the
best curriculum for anything. And I started to reflect on why
I got involved in all the different businesses on the

(31:54):
profit. And why you get involved in all
these different businesses is because it's almost like a
challenge to learn a different industry, to meet different
people, to not know the answers to everything, to learn with
somebody, to learn how things work and to put it all together.
When you're making the news, youhave to do all that in one hour,

(32:16):
but live. And when you're making a show,
or when you're running a business or when you're running
a family or when you're doing anything like that, you still
have to do all those things, butyou have a chance to reflect.
I've noticed that my reaction skills are getting better
because you're interviewing somebody and you have to react.
That's the message I would send to business owners.

(32:37):
Try things that make you uncomfortable.
Try different ventures that makeyou uncomfortable.
When I watch your videos, I, which I'm really entertained by
them, by the way. I'm like, oh, I think that car
wash idea is good, but what if I, what if I did it at my RV
dealerships? And I wonder what it would cost.
And then I watched the one and we were talking about it

(32:57):
earlier. I watched the one that you did
about the gummy guy in Miami. And I was like, I love gummies.
Maybe I should do that or maybe I should just be a good
customer. And so I think that what you do
and I think what people don't appreciate enough about you and
maybe where you and I are similar is we're both willing to
talk about things and try thingsand some work and most don't.

(33:19):
Yeah. How much are you able to be
creative on set? Like how much of it is it
prepared? Like all right, here's your
talking points verse. You just like riffing on the
fixer or on the profit? The fixer's on profit's 100% me.
There's no talking points, there's no script, no producer
about research beforehand. No, I do no research really.
I know nothing. That's awesome.
And it's intentional. Yeah.

(33:40):
Part of it is I have AI, have a learning disability in one
sense, where if I know too much information, I don't ask
questions. I'm like, I already know it.
And So what I learned early on in making the show is if if I
know nothing, I ask all the questions that you're asking.
So I walk in the front door and whatever I see, you see it too.

(34:01):
And then I ask and you're like, yeah, that's a totally good
question. So I started to realize that
what what worked about it was the freedom to ask questions and
the freedom to do a follow up question and the freedom to make
a decision. And I want entrepreneurs to go
into businesses that they're interested in, that they want to

(34:21):
invest in, more curious than knowledgeable.
I've started to notice that whenI meet business owners today,
instead of being curious, they come too prepared and you can
tell they're typing things in a machine.
Well, I know that 29% of my market, nothing's more of a turn
off for businesses who are doingthe research in AI exclusively.

(34:43):
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(36:09):
Do you do a lot of research? I do, yeah.
But I feel like people don't understand the trade off they're
making when they rely on AI. They just feel like it's all
upside. They don't realize there's a
trade off there, right? What if the information is
wrong? Often times it is.
Or it's slanted. Right.
I'm not much of a planner or a preparer.
So with this podcast, I don't really do any prep.

(36:31):
Like I have all these questions prepared.
I haven't looked down at it once, and I think that makes for
the best podcast because if I were to do all this research
beforehand, then I'll ask questions for the sake of asking
questions and then feign surprise when I hear the answer.
But like you said, when you truly don't know anything about
it going in, it's more genuine and you get better answers.
So when you go look at a business for the first time, you

(36:53):
go in prepared. No, that wasn't really a
strategy. That's my ADHD and just being
poor at planning and last minute.
Yeah, very curious. I treat my episodes as if I sat
next to a business owner at a dinner party and just was
quizzing him about his business.And then if it's interesting to
you, what happens next? I just ask him 1000 questions

(37:15):
and I get energy and I get excited.
Or you get disturbed and bored, depending on their answers.
Well I get bored if I sit down next to AW2 worker just cuz I
don't relate with them and I'm an introvert so I I naturally
thrive on one to one and with other business owners.
Can you go to a party? I don't I I can, I don't prefer

(37:35):
it. Me neither really.
Hate it. I I felt like you were an
extrovert. Hate it?
You lose energy. No, I have social anxiety, I
suffer from debilitating depression and anxiety and the
reason that I work as much as I do is because it medicates me.
It's like a soother for me. If I Sundays are my least
favorite day of the whole week. I hate them because I don't want

(37:58):
to call people because they're off with their family.
I don't know what to do. And I love Monday because I'm
ready to like Monday. I'm fired up everybody.
And Sunday night I have to like wait till a certain time and I
start firing off emails. I've gotten better at it is like
sending them and like putting it, letting them go like in the

(38:19):
morning. But Sunday's a terrible day for
me. Parties are terrible for me.
Relationships are hard for me. Very hard.
So how do you deal with being onset with all these people?
Do you not get social anxiety there?
No, because I'm there for work. I love meeting new people.
I love asking them questions. I love to see how they can
shine. I like seeing the best out of

(38:41):
people. And I'll if I meet somebody on
the street or or even in the room like this, I like asking
questions because I'm genuinely,genuinely curious.
But I also think it's fun. I think people are fun and I'm
inspired by him. I selfishly, if I'm being overly
transparent, I want to learn something that I didn't know

(39:03):
before I met him. I just want to learn something.
And so if it's an audio guy or acameraman who I've never worked
with before and most of the people have side hustles because
the works not consistent, I likejust to know about them and then
I'll start getting into their business and asking them
questions and sometimes they answer, sometimes they don't.

(39:25):
Would you say that if you had tochoose?
Are you an introvert or an extrovert if you had to choose?
I am a true introvert, but I canpresent myself as an extrovert.
But when I present myself as an extrovert, as we get to know
each other, I will reveal myselfwho I really AM and share with

(39:48):
them, just like it just did withyou.
I don't normally walk around meeting people on the street and
say I suffer from terrible depression.
How about you? Nice.
To meet you. But I want people to know that
if they are going to have a relationship with me and there's
a day where I'm off or there's aday that I'm not engaged or
there's a day where my attitude is bad, that it's not an excuse.

(40:09):
It's not an excuse and it's not a license to be that way, but it
is. It's context.
It is what it is. Yeah, sometimes I'll disappear
for a week. From everyone just to recharge.
No recharge. Sounds like I I needed a
vacation. It's to dig myself out of a
hole. How often do you do that?

(40:30):
It happens less than it used to.I think as an entrepreneur, as a
business owner, I have learned how to self medicate and so if
I'm feeling a certain way, I'll retreat to something that I know
is going to give me comfort. It's happened a lot less since I
got married because I really enjoy being with my wife and so

(40:51):
if I'm feeling a certain way, I can cocoon with her and she can
dig me out of it pretty quick, like much quicker than anybody
can. But as a business owner, I also
know that I'm responsible for people and that is usually what
gets me out of it pretty quick. What do you do during that week?
I eat more than I should. I watch more TV than I should.

(41:13):
My favorite thing actually is ifI'm feeling that way and my wife
goes out of town. I'm a neat freak and a clean
freak in my closet. Like the hangers have a certain
amount of space between them forthat week.
All hell breaks loose. Nothing safe.
Nothing my own persona like I probably don't shower for a

(41:33):
couple days. I clothes my house looks like a
total wreck. I don't care.
I eat food that I know I shouldn't be eating.
It's like a guilty pleasure and I can see why other people on a
serious note, I could see why other people fall into other
traps of addictions or things like that, because that's my
form of addiction. It's like I I can just I can

(41:57):
self soothe that way. Do.
You have a DHD. I don't even know what that I
mean. I know what it means.
I don't know. I don't.
I know that I'm difficult to be around.
I know that I'm difficult to work with.
I know that I'm fun to be with. I know that I will do anything
for you. I know that I will ask you for

(42:18):
nothing, and I know that my intensity overwhelms you.
So whatever that is, you have. I have whatever that is.
And you know, we brought a bunchof people that have known me for
a long time. I would be like escargot.
You either like them like it or you don't, and it's an acquired
taste. But if you like it and you

(42:40):
really like it, you will love being with me.
You may roll your eyes as the person listening to this who is
with me all the time saying I don't know that I love being
with you, but you will like it because there's lots of
different sides of me. And the closer I feel to you in
business, the more I'll reveal. I think it was Washington,

(43:04):
George Washington Carver said. Anything will reveal its secrets
to you if you love it enough. And I love that quote.
I think about it a lot. Anything.
Not just a person, but a thing, a business, an idea.
I tend to, I tend to be far morerevealing when I'm in an
environment that I'm comfortablein and business is the only

(43:25):
environment that I'm comfortablein.
And making television, I made anHGTV show one year after making
the profit and it was the worst experience I ever had.
And I thought that I just liked making television and I don't
like making television. I like making business
television. And now I'm, I like doing the
business news. It's got to be a subject that

(43:48):
I'm comfortable in that I feel safe in.
And and that's what I would tellanybody that feels like they
don't know what to do with theirlives is business is a safe
place. It's a really safe place.
One of my dreams is something that I don't know that I would
actually like if I got there, and that's to have a show.
Not like the profit, but kind oflike Diners, Dr. insurance and

(44:08):
Dives or Dirty Jobs where I justpick a part of business.
I help them with marketing, I help them grow initiatives and
just learn everything about it, be curious about it and like
reveal it, right? I don't know that I would
actually like it if I did that because I'm an introvert,
because I don't want to F4 kids.I don't want to be away from
them all the time just to satisfy some dream.
What do you think? Do you think, based on the

(44:31):
little you know about me, do youthink I would like that or not?
I think you're looking at it thewrong way because you could do
all the businesses in your town and go home every night.
That would be the ideal scenario.
Right, you could do that no problem.
There's a couple things you haveto be able to do, which I know
you do well. You have to be able to code
switch. That is something that I would

(44:54):
say you cannot learn. And and for those people that
don't know what code switching is, is that you can move from
topic to topic. For me, because I'm involved in
so many different things, I could be talking about the news
at six and the acquisition of Bed Bath and Beyond at Four, and
the divestiture of something at 3 and a family reunion at 2, and

(45:18):
I'm making that up. Break those down into minutes,
not hours, and you have to be able to move that quick.
So that's one thing that you'd have to do really well, which
you do would do well. Are you willing to put yourself
in a situation where you could fail publicly?
And are you willing to put yourself in a situation where
you can look dumb? Yeah.

(45:40):
It's different than failing. It's interesting I I'm more
insecure about the people on setlooking at me than I am about
the the millions of people that will be.
That'll go away. It goes away like that.
The idea of making television and when when we start a new
episode of the new business, I always tell them the first day,
this is going to be really weirdfor you for the first couple of

(46:02):
hours, you're going to see that camera and it's going to feel
like you have a microscope. Here's what I would ask for my
sake. I need us to have a
relationship, not you to have a relationship with the camera.
The people on the, the guy that's shooting it doesn't care
and the camera doesn't care. And the people that are watching
it, they don't care yet. And the only way they're going

(46:24):
to care is if I get 100% of you and me and I get to reveal
everything about you that they're going to love and
everything about you that they're not going to love.
But if you try to regulate your behavior, and by the way, I'm
saying it to you, and I had to say that to myself before I
started making it, if you try toregulate your own behavior and

(46:46):
have too much self-awareness, you're going to have a problem.
I'm going to share a little inside baseball and he's going
to be really mad at me for this.I have a nice relationship with
Alex Rodriguez. I find him to be one of the
smartest people intellectually, really misunderstood
intellectually, but unbelievablysmart.

(47:07):
He's a great capitalist, but he's got a huge heart.
I say that not as the preface towhat I'm about to tell you, but
I genuinely feel that way. When him and I first re engaged,
he was, he loved the prophet andhe's like, I want to do that.
I want to do that. And I said to him, OK, but why?
He goes because I love what you do and I want to do that too.

(47:28):
And I was like, OK, great, let'sdo it.
And what I said to him was, Alex, the challenge is I don't
care what people think of me on the surface.
I do. Deep down, we all do.
Deep down, you care what people think of you.
And people have tried to RIP youdown and whether it was, you

(47:50):
know, the good, the bad. He's got a new doc, a
documentary on HBO, which is really good.
You have to be able willing to reveal yourself in a way.
And it can't always be. Does my hair look good?
Does my suit look good? He's a super handsome dude,
dresses amazing. Do I have the answer to every
question? Am I ever going to make the
right decision? What are they going to think
about me? Do I have to prove this?

(48:11):
Do I have to prove that? If you do that, he made a show
at CNBC a few years ago and I did 1 episode with him just to
try to help him understand how it would work.
And he is so charismatic and so smart, but he struggled
initially. He doesn't struggle with this
anymore, but he struggled initially coming off of people

(48:32):
just beating on him for whateverreason.
They didn't. I'm, I'm he's my friend.
So it doesn't matter what he did.
I love him no matter what. But he struggled to be, to not
have self-awareness. Whether you are a business
owner, not on TVA, newscaster, apublic speaker or you want to be

(48:52):
on TV, if you regulate your behavior and you have a high
level of self-awareness, worriedabout what the people on set
think of you, it the whole idea would be dead on arrival.
It'd be totally dead on arrival.And the best thing that I would
tell him is like just make fun of yourself.
Just make fun of yourself. It's so much easier 'cause if
you make fun of yourself, everybody's like, everybody's

(49:13):
like expectations get lowered ina good way.
You're like, God, I am really bad at this.
I don't think we should do this.People are like, no, you'll be
fine. It's like, no, I'm honestly, I'm
not. Good people will help you and
they will forgive you when you fudge it up.
So that's my message to if you really want to do it, you can
only do it if you have 00 self policing.

(49:36):
Yeah, well, I did this one YouTube video where I went
around a grocery store and askedthe manager for help if we could
give away puppies. And I was so concerned about
what the people in the grocery store thought about the guy that
had the camera on him. I didn't care about the
cameraman or the viewers. I just felt weird for everyone
in the store to be looking at me.
You. Know why is that?
I don't know. I I don't like to be on the

(49:56):
spot. I know that seems weird.
I get 100 million views a month on my content, but in person I
don't like the spotlight to be on me.
Well, I'm going to give it to you a different way.
You don't have a choice. You were given a gift, and this
applies to anybody out there. Whatever gift you were given,
you have an obligation to use it.

(50:17):
And whatever issues you have, whatever anxiety you need to
overcome, that's your garbage. And if you have the ability to
change the outcome of somebody else where they're going to
learn something, they're going to get information, or they're
going to be inspired, you have an obligation to do that.
It would be like a really good athlete not doing something, or

(50:40):
a really good scientist not launching rockets, or really
good musician not singing. You were given a gift and you
have an obligation to share it. And your gift is being able to
communicate to people your ideascrisp, crisply and cleanly and
in a way that they can digest tobetter themselves.
Isn't that right? So it's not about you feeling

(51:01):
uncomfortable at the grocery store.
No one cares. No one cares that you're
uncomfortable. Get over it.
Because what you're giving people is more valuable than the
uncomfortableness you're feeling.
And maybe you should flip the script and go in and say, I know
I'm good at this and I'm going to have fun and I'm going to

(51:21):
make fun of myself. And I'm going to laugh with the
people in the grocery store. And I'm going to say to them,
you guys are probably think thisis the craziest thing ever.
You're just came here to buy toilet paper.
And I'm talking a bunch. You have fun with it, you'll be
OK, but if you're not OK with it, too bad.
Like I run ultra marathons, That's uncomfortable and I do
that because it's uncomfortable.I don't like running.

(51:43):
I just need to frame it. Nobody's getting anything out of
that but you. Right.
I'm just saying if I framed it that way like.
It's not the same. Well, I'm saying, Chris, do this
because it's uncomfortable and because you have an obligation.
Those are different. Run the marathon because it's
fish out of water uncomfortable.Make the content in the middle
of the grocery store because youwere given a gift that you have
an obligation to display to people?

(52:05):
Too bad. So you don't think I should ever
say, you know what, I'm just going to make stuff in my office
at home. You think it's I have an
obligation to go out there and make better content about
business because it's already proven that people are inspired
by it. So I need to lean into that
more. What if you change somebody's
life? Yeah, and I promise you that
whoever's watching it has more anxiety than you do, and

(52:26):
whoever's in the grocery store has more fears than you do.
I don't think you have a right to choose.
I think you've lost that right? There was this one comment on a
YouTube video where I went door to door selling things and he
was like, Chris, I had no idea how bad you are at sales, how
bad you are at small talk, and it's so refreshing.
Like that is awesome. I feel so much more confident
seeing that you're not good at sales.

(52:47):
And I took that to be a compliment.
I was grateful for that. You exposed your vulnerabilities
and you gave people permission to feel OK with themselves.
Yeah, it's more relatable. That's what the that's why the
profit work, to be honest, is because we would make the math
really simple. That was always a big thing of
mine. Dumb it all the way down.
Do the work with people so that they understand that you're

(53:09):
invested in them. And don't be the smartest guy in
the room all the time, because you can't be.
Yeah, be relatable. You were talking about code
switching. I tweeted this 12 hours ago.
I'm going to read this. Here's a secret the productivity
gurus don't want you to know. The more you contact switch, the
more you get used to context switching and the faster you can
contact switch without skipping a beat.

(53:31):
Our minds adapt. Context switching should be all
or nothing for me it's all. It's difficult to to code
switch, contact switch without having remnants of the previous
conversation leak into the current one.
It's, it's difficult. I would think about it like a
reverse paperboy. A paperboy rides on his bike and

(53:52):
he disseminates information by throwing it into the yard.
And what I do and what you do isthat I drive around on my bike
and I pick information up and I put it in my basket and I have
to figure out how to sort it andI have to figure out how to use
it and I have to figure out how to disseminate it.
Again, in every single instance,the more I do it, the more

(54:15):
houses I want to go pick up information because I want the
information that I give people to be more relevant, more
current and more accurate. I think that code switching and
the reason I am so invigorated by it is because I can move from
topic to topic. But there's a common thread
through all of those, and that'sthe interaction with people.

(54:37):
And I get a lot of practice at dealing with multiple
personalities in a short period of time with different levels of
emotion. All that I have to process and
give back something. And more importantly, I have to
be a chameleon. So not only do I have to take
all of their stuff, but I have to give them something back and

(55:01):
I have to give them something back that's going to work for
them. I think that ultimately people
who struggle with relationships tend to keep themselves cocooned
long term. People that tend tend to really
grow and have new ideas and get better at their frailties and
get better at their gaps are because they're interacting with

(55:23):
so many things so often. And the fact that you do that I
think makes you a Jack of all trades.
The question is, are you a master of anything?
That's a question. You're a Jack of all trades.
Are you a master of anything? I'm a master of bias for action,
of having ideas, being curious, and executing on it immediately.
And the more I do that, the moreI do that, the better I get at

(55:46):
it. Being impulsive in a
constructive good way or impulsive.
How much time will it take you to meet somebody and make a
decision whether you want to do it?
5 minutes. And how quickly will you act on
it? 5 more minutes.
My interviews with employees are, I know within 5 to 10
minutes, but I'm willing to cut bait within 30 days if it

(56:08):
doesn't work. I don't do like multiple rounds
of interviews multiple hours. I would rather just make a quick
decision. I feel like you and I are
related. When they stay, do they stay for
a long time? It's either all or nothing.
It's either 13 days or 13 years.Is there any part of you that
that thinks that's a problem? I used to.

(56:31):
Part of it is just like, am I just giving in to who I am?
Am I just settling? Or is it this is actually a
feature, not a bug? I need to just lean into this.
I went and got my MBA because I thought I was too distracted.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have done that again.
Waste of time. And money.
I've never used my underwear. For stature.
Yeah, probably, probably an insecurity, but I wanted to be

(56:53):
more organizational, less shoot from the hip.
Were you good in school? I was OK, just OK.
A minus, yeah, that's just OK. A minus just OK.
I don't know. Nobody likes to show off.
No, I, I wasn't like valedictorian type.
I didn't, I didn't apply myself.Like when I got to undergrad, I
had a computer in front of me and I'm like, what?

(57:15):
Why am I supposed to be listening about mitochondria
when I can like research business ideas?
So I completely didn't focus or study or anything.
I did just the bare minimum to get by.
In your yearbook, most likely itwould have written.
What would people have written most likely to?
I was nothing different or special in high school.
What would it have said? Class clown, most likely to be a

(57:36):
comedian. I served a mission for my
church. I knocked doors for two years in
Hungary. LDS.
Yeah, and that changed my life more than anything.
I came home. What's that?
What did you learn? I learned rejection is a good
thing. I got rejected.
I, I counted loosely like 25,000times face to face out the door.
That changes you. So I came home with confidence.

(57:57):
I came home and I was like, thisis America like I did.
My dad used to cry during the Star Spangled Banner and I'd be
like, dad, what are you doing? Get a hold of yourself.
And then I went in Eastern Europe for two years and just
spoke to people all day every day.
And I came home and I'm like, I can do whatever I want.
This is the greatest country. And so it gave me confidence and
I've just, I haven't stopped since.

(58:18):
And had I not gone on a mission,I'd be doing nothing special
today. I truly believe that.
How do people that are not a part of that faith get that same
experience? That's a great question.
I wish I could just tell someonego go to Eastern Europe, learn
Hungarian, knock doors for two years.
That's all you need to do. That's not realistic.

(58:39):
I think maybe it's cold calling.Sales in general.
Yeah, because we don't have enough resilience or grit today,
and that's my superpower. I do have grit.
Like, I won't quit. I'm scrappy.
And it's because of that. I don't know how someone
develops that without just exposure therapy getting
rejected. When you knocked on, you said
25,000. Something like that.

(58:59):
When one would go well, you'd have whatever your definition of
success was. What was the feeling?
I would dance the whole way home.
I'd forget about all the losses.It was the best.
Do you apply that to relationships too?
How so? Do you have every relationship
you've ever had is worked out? Every friendship.

(59:21):
No. So isn't it the same?
Yeah, similar. I have a handful of people that
I'm incredibly close with and loyal to, and then everyone
else. You do business with any of
them? Yeah.
How's that work? Not great a lot of times.
Not great. I've had about 15 business
partners, some of them my best friends, family members.
Not great, no. I had to find the common

(59:43):
denominator after a while. And it's like statistically
speaking, Chris, you're you might be the problem here.
How do you structure partnerships?
With as much distance as I can because I got burned too many
times. I had a really good friend that
I did business with and we had afalling out and our friendship
is very different today. And I as I've gotten older, I've

(01:00:05):
tried to think about resuscitating that I tend to
unfortunately not be. Great at forgiving people.
It's a terrible quality of mine.Like once we're done, we're kind
of done. I try not to do business with
people that I have relationshipswith, but I have a very
difficult time saying no to people.

(01:00:26):
And so people will ask for things and I'll do it for them.
And I've just repositioned my brain to say OK, OK, it's just
like it's gone. My relationship changes with
them though once they ask me forsomething because then I'm
always anticipating that there'sgoing to be the next round it it
definitely changes. How has your relationship with

(01:00:47):
business changed since being married, if at all?
I take less chances. My wife's considerably older
than I am. And so more than likely, you
know, if natural causes sort of bring us to our death, she'll,
she'll won't live as long. I feel responsible for her.

(01:01:10):
And when I wasn't married, I didn't feel responsible.
I was like, if I lose everything, I'll go sell cars
And I'm more than happy. This is like, I promise you, I
would be much happier in the studio apartment.
Just like I even have this visual at first apartment that I
ever lived in out of college. There's a studio apartment
overlooking a tennis court. I had furniture that was like

(01:01:31):
cardboard, but I was so happy. It was maybe the happiest time
of my life because it was like my life was simple.
And if you told me you're going to have to go back and live that
life, I'd be like, don't threaten me with a good time.
I'd be totally happy. But being married, I think gave
my perspective. It also gave another person a
seat at the table to say, yeah, we're not doing that or yeah,

(01:01:54):
you're not doing that. I used to always keep my
checkbook with me. Like you would see it on the
show. It's my real checkbook.
Like I kept it in my pocket or in my in my bag.
I have I had no checkbook and noaccess to capital today.
I legitimately do not have a checkbook.
I can't wire money on my own andmy wife didn't take it from me.
I gave it to her and I just saidlike I need to be protected from

(01:02:18):
myself. Is that a relief?
It's a relief because I could say to people like I would love
to, but you have to call her. Like I'm not calling her.
I'm like I can't help you. Is there any part about your
life that you thought would change when you got married that
didn't? There's a part of my life that
still needs to change, that hasn't changed yet.

(01:02:39):
And that is because business is a safe place for me.
I've convinced myself it's the only place.
It needs to be more than that. You know, growing up, I most
people don't know this about me,but in high school I went to a
Catholic elementary and a Catholic High School and I was
going to become a priest and I was really, really heavily into
my faith and I went to college. I went to a Jesuit college and

(01:03:03):
the order of priests that that ran that college just did kind
of disenfranchise me from my faith.
The part that I thought would change when I got married was
that I thought that I would kindof re emerge with my faith
again. I have to a small degree, but
not the way I want to. And I thought that make more
time or spend less time on business and I need to do a

(01:03:27):
better job just as a human finding the balance.
I'm so fascinated by work and I'm so I have to be honest, it's
probably like I'm addicted to itin a not healthy way, but I
don't. But I'm not hurting anybody by
it, including myself, I don't think.
But I'd like to maybe care a little less do.

(01:03:48):
You have any regrets? I have regrets not having kids.
It was the choice that I made. When you're a business owner,
you're the first person to show up in the morning, you're the
last person to leave. Your credit cards are maxed out,
you're the last person to get paid.
You miss out on family functions.
You make bad choices in terms oflike your friend group and being

(01:04:11):
there for them, your family and being present for them.
You make bad choices. I think the bad choice that I
made is I made a conscious decision that being a business
person was more important to me than being a parent.
And I convinced myself that I would get whatever fulfillment
that I wanted to get out of being a parent.
I would get that out of being inbusiness and I would have this
parental relationship with people at work.

(01:04:33):
And to some degree it's happened.
I'd get that same fulfillment. I don't know if it's the same
because I don't have context to know, but I would say, yeah, I
kind of, I would have liked to be responsible, actually
responsible for people as opposed to like being at work.
I'm actually responsible for them.

(01:04:53):
But sometimes I'm like, you got to show up.
I know with my kid, I beg, you're going to show up and this
is how it's going to be. So that I would say that's a
regret. That's a regret.
I would say another regret wouldbe I'm not sure if I had to do
it again, I would do TV. Why?
Because I thought it was going to change my life in a way that

(01:05:15):
I, that I've been doing this since I was 30.
Oh my gosh, I've been doing thissince I was 35.
I'm 51. I've been doing TV for that
long. And when you're 35, you kind of
romanticize the idea of like what it's going to be like.
It's going to be super glamorousand you're going to get a dinner

(01:05:36):
reservation and all those thingsthat you kind of make up in your
mind. It stole a good chunk of my
life. It stole a lot of my time.
I was spending a lot of time doing it and I was spending a
lot of time investing in it and I was spending a lot of time
being labeled by it. And I enjoyed the things that
came with it and I'm grateful for the platform and for all of

(01:05:58):
those things. But it came with like, you know,
it came with some not so good things.
How do you think you would have spent your time otherwise if you
weren't doing TV but still doingbusiness?
I probably would have become a parent.
You still could you're you're adopted, right?
I'm adopted. My wife's adopted.
But I'm a firm believer, just maybe it's a faith-based thing,

(01:06:19):
but I'm a firm believer that if you're going to be a parent, you
have to be a parent. You can't be a part time parent.
And I understand that sometimes people have to make tough
choices to be a part time parentbecause they have to provide for
their family and they have to work two and three jobs.
And that's not a choice, that's a requirement because they're
responsible for their family. And I admire those people

(01:06:40):
greatly. They end up being the biggest
loser in that model because theyget nothing for themselves.
But if I was going to be a parent, I would know that I
would have to change my life. And candidly, I wasn't willing
to do it. I wasn't willing to give up the
drug of business for whatever potential satisfaction that
would come from being a parent. I look back on that and I was

(01:07:01):
like, I was 353637. And even at 51, my life's pretty
baked. And people have said to me,
well, you could just like you could just not work and just do
that. I was like, I could, but then I
would be unhappy. And then if I was unhappy, would
I resent my child because that was the reason that I made the
modification. So when those things start to
populate through your head, and maybe all parents think that, I

(01:07:24):
don't know. But the fact that that even
comes into my head makes me say like, I don't want my child to
have stuff. Yeah.
Well, I know we're both Christian.
We don't share the same faith exactly, but in our faith we
believe that families are eternal.
And I have confidence that when it's all said and done, you
won't have that regret. Like you'll have an opportunity

(01:07:44):
to have a family, to have kids when it's all said and done the
next life included so. I like that.
I think that's I think that's right.
I actually, I don't think we're as far off in in thinking about
that as you may think, but I love the people I work with to
my core. And you know, I've been making

(01:08:05):
some life decisions about what Iwant to do career wise.
I took over another fractured business and the business of my
camping business, it's been 25 years.
I don't want to be defined by it, nor do I want it to be
defined by me. And the young people that are in

(01:08:26):
that Business Today are infinitely smarter than I will
ever be, infinitely more talented and more skilled than I
will ever be. And the one thing that I could
take pride in is maybe I'll helpthem get there.
Every business needs an evolution.
And I spend a lot more time thinking about succession
planning. And I feel like the team that's

(01:08:47):
in place there is right. Biggest challenge for me is do
you partially make that modification or do you have to
make like a clean break? And that's been, you know,
people have said, well, if you don't want to be the CEO
anymore, then just be on the board.
And I don't know that I could ever kind of like be half, half

(01:09:08):
there. No half measures.
Nor do I think it's good for them, nor is it good for me.
I think you have to like. All or nothing?
Yeah, I think so. And I, I've been, I've been
wrestling with that in lots of parts of my life, like it's just
an all or nothing. And while it seems severe, it
seems maybe my philosophy on this topic will help you help
everybody. But the business is always more

(01:09:29):
important than the business owner, infinitely more
important. And people say, well, do you,
were you successful in that business or did you make money?
A person's success in a businessis not defined by the success
that happens while they're there.
It's defined by the success in my mind, of what happens when

(01:09:50):
they're not there. When they leave.
Did they lay the foundation right?
Did they put the right people inplace?
Did the culture get established the right way?
And if the business falls apart when you leave, then the
business actually wasn't good while you were there.
Yeah, you've also said that the employee is more important than
the customer, right? More, which is something I've
always said if you treat your employees right, they'll treat

(01:10:11):
your customers right. Just as long as the employees
don't misunderstand that the customer doesn't matter.
And I've had some knuckleheads so, well, you said I was more
important. I was like, I get it, but that's
how we eat. So like this idea that the
employee is more important to methan the customer doesn't mean
that the customer is not important, but you're the one

(01:10:35):
that had that interacts with thecustomer.
So like, I still need you to make them the most important
thing. Like don't take my words and
think you could apply that to your job.
That's just for me. You have to make them the most
important thing. I want to be respectful of your
time. I could talk all day.
I know you have things. 2 questions Number one for
aspiring entrepreneurs are watching this.
They have analysis paralysis, they're thinking, they're

(01:10:56):
dabbling, they're watching content.
They're AI ING it chat beach. Everything, but they're not
doing the thing. What advice would you give them?
Pick one thing and go do it and be calculated about what you're
going to do because there's a high risk you're going to lose,
lose. It's not a game, it's real life
and you can't put your family oryourself in peril.

(01:11:20):
If you're just starting out, have the risk be measured.
I think that taking a chance on yourself is the one regret I
will never have, and that's the run one regret that I don't want
anybody else to have. But it has to be calculated and
it has to be finite. And if you've never done it
before, you can't take your 4O1Kand put a second mortgage on

(01:11:41):
your house. No matter what movie you saw or
what speaker you listen to or what book you read that said lay
it all on the line, don't do. That.
But don't. But don't do it.
Don't do it. Learn in baby steps.
And when we all learn how to ride a bike, our parent parents
put training wheels on our bike because they knew we would fall

(01:12:02):
down. If you're going to be an
entrepreneur, start with something super basic.
Don't be an investor in somebodyelse's business as your first.
Like I'm getting into business. The lemonade stand or whatever
the equivalent is of a lemonade stand is should go down as the
best first business ever. My lemonade stand was the candy

(01:12:26):
business. I started a little candy
business. It's a crazy story how I got
there. I thought you didn't start a
business though. Did you start it?
I mean, I was Hawking other people's wares. 711 was a great
wholesale account for me. What I want people to do is just
take a chance. But no going all in, none of

(01:12:47):
that. And the thing that I like about
what you do maybe more than maybe more than anything you do,
is that you provide people theselittle ideas that are low risk,
potential return, but they're low risk and they feel like some
of them could be side hustles. So if you want to start a

(01:13:09):
business, I want you to start with something like that, 'cause
you still need to make income tofeed your family and pay your
mortgage and pay your tuition and take care of your kids or
whatever it may be. But as you do that side hustle
and then you get to two side hustles and three side hustles
and you get enough cash flow to do that, then you can make the
leap. Once the cash flow is right.
Don't put your family at risk. I call it the wing walkers code

(01:13:33):
that you got an airplane wing Walker.
Never let go of 1 railing until you're already holding on to the
next. And that other one better be
solid. Yeah.
My next question, my last question, what business ideas do
you have right now that you're excited about?
What's your business idea of theweek or of the day?
My business idea of the next 10 years of my life that happens to

(01:13:54):
be today, this week and this month is I got involved in a
very bizarre way with a company based in Salt Lake City where I
kind of kicked down the side door and got onto the board and
took over the company in a month.
And it was Overstock, now known as Bed Bath and Beyond.
We bought Buy Buy Baby and the American Dream, which I feel

(01:14:16):
like has lost its way, is startsand ends with home ownership and
home ownership has become a realproblem.
And it's not a political thing. Oh, this person, that person, 50
year mortgage is like, I don't want to hear any of it.
It's a goal and we have to figure out a way to get there
and it's still possible. You can.

(01:14:37):
You can save a paycheck and get a down payment and you can buy a
house and it may be a further drive than you want, but you can
find affordable housing somewhere.
It exists. I don't, I don't want to hear
that it doesn't. I don't.
I don't believe that to be true.I want to have the last part of
my career. The first part of my career has
been mobile housing and recreational housing.
And I want the last part of my career to be foundational

(01:15:00):
housing and family housing and generational wealth building.
And people thought that I got involved with Bed, Bath and
Beyond because I wanted to sell towels and bedding and, you
know, tape, you know, stuff for your kitchen.
That isn't the reason. I'm want to use that as a
platform to build an everything home business where we can
provide services and products, Fintech, insurance, home buying,

(01:15:25):
home selling, home insurance, home finance, home decorating,
lawn, all those things in one. Because I think home ownership's
an expensive proposition and it's a scary proposition, and I
want to try to figure out a way to make it less intimidating for
people. And I want to do it on
blockchain. Wow.

(01:15:45):
OK. So we own a big blockchain
Business Today that most people don't know about.
And ideally in the end, a home would go on chain, go on
blockchain. And for those people that don't
know what it is, just think about it like a lock box where
all of the information gets stored.
So if you have a safe in your house with a code and you put

(01:16:06):
all your important papers in there, you would essentially
build them into a technology stack and you would access them
all. So ideally, I'd like every home
in America to be on chain with title deed survey, mortgage
insurance, all your assets and everything else.
So if there's a Pacific Palisades fire, you haven't lost
anything. If you pass away unexpectedly,

(01:16:28):
you haven't lost everything. If you want to sell your asset,
the value of your asset will be appreciated because it will have
all of that information. When you go to sell your car,
they say do you have the maintenance records?
Nobody does. If you go to sell your home and
you have all of that in one place and people know what it
looks like and they understand that all and they see every
permit and everything that ever happened to the home, the

(01:16:50):
transferability of that will make financing that asset more
interesting because conventionalfinancing can't live forever.
So I want to change the way people think about home
ownership and I want to change this idea that home ownership
isn't obtainable. But I like, I like the home.
And maybe maybe because I came into this world as an orphan and

(01:17:14):
I'm going to leave this world asan orphan.
Both my parents are gone and I have no siblings and no real
family. That home, that roof idea, that
dwelling idea, that memory idea,that life event idea, birthdays,
anniversaries, childbirths, funerals, marriages, all that

(01:17:34):
stuff. It's really a summary of
someone's whole life. I want to help make that a
little bit more digestible for people.
It's a super ambitious idea, butwhy not try?
I love it. Ethereum.
That blockchain. I don't know yet.
I don't know yet order people will help me figure that out.
That's a great. Idea I want to be able to

(01:17:55):
tokenize things and that's what I ultimately love is the
tokenization we we own a business called T0 that.
I know T0I was an investor in the original T0 ICO.
Back in Salt Lake with Patrick Byrne.
Yeah, like back in 2019 or so. T0 ROP you bought a little bit
of a token. Yeah, I think so, yeah.

(01:18:16):
That business is going to sell for a lot of money someday.
It's a crazy world that we're living in, and whether it's AI,
crypto, blockchain, tokenization, it reminds me of
20 years ago, plasma screen and iPod.
For those young people that listen, I don't know if you know

(01:18:38):
what an iPod is, but it's like asmall part of the iPhone where
the music used to live. Marcus, thank you.
Thanks for the chat. I have a question for you before
you love making content and you love sharing your business ideas
with people, but there's got to be a purpose behind it.

(01:18:59):
What's the purpose? What's the end goal?
No. What is your purpose here?
Aside from family stuff. It could be that not Aside from
anything, what is your purpose? I want to be a loyal, loving
husband and father and disciple of Christ first and foremost.
After that, I want to inspire a million business owners.

(01:19:23):
I want to inspire a million people to start a business with
my content, with my work. Why?
Because business and entrepreneurship has given me
everything. I grew up poor, lower middle
class, no money for food, cans of vegetables in the in the
cabinets and I just didn't like it.
And entrepreneurship gave me everything and it's my biggest

(01:19:44):
joy. Like you, it gives me energy and
I want everyone to see if they like it.
It's not for everyone, right? Business ownership.
I want everyone that's curious, that wants to try it wants to
taste business ownership. I want to help them get there so
at least they can answer that question for themselves.
What are they going to get from it?
They won't have a regret about it.

(01:20:06):
Freedom. Potentially one less regret,
right? We we're more likely to regret
things we didn't do than things that we did.
Business ownership is not freedom.
It's the opposite of freedom. Right, but it's optionality.
But it's a pathway to being ableto solve things for yourself.
Yeah, I mean, having regrets is not freedom either, right?

(01:20:28):
Freedom of the mind. So if, if someone, I just talked
to a lot of people in their 40s,fifties, 60s, like, yeah, I, I
started to do this, I won and I never, and I can just see
they're not saying it outright, but I can just hear and see the
regret on their face. And I don't like that.
I want them to at least know. There's been businesses that
I've thought about starting. I was curious and I started it

(01:20:48):
and it went terribly and then I moved on and I'm like, I, I
tried it. I did that.
I don't regret anything. And I just want people to have
that experience for entrepreneurship in general.
For people that are listening, that don't share our faith or
don't share or have a belief in whatever it is, and I'm fine
with that. The one thing that I always tell

(01:21:09):
people is I need you to have a belief in faith in something,
even if it's just yourself. You have to have it and it
starts from there. And I think too often people
either don't believe in a higherpower, which is their choice,
but more importantly, don't believe in themselves.
And if you don't believe in yourself, don't get in business.

(01:21:32):
Period. That's a good.
Point you will fail because it'sgoing to be hard 100% and the
likelihood of it working out is very low.
Full disclosure. It's like the warning on the
side of a cigarettes getting into business.
It can may may cause harm. This is what could happen.

(01:21:52):
All right, buddy, thank you. Appreciate it.

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Marcus Lemonis: "Business Is Not Freedom" (Lessons Learned from The Profit)⏐Ep. #251

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