I lost probably $50 million over the course of making all the shows and I would do it again. I suffer from debilitating depression and anxiety. And the reason that I work as much as I do is because it medicates me. Sundays are my least favorite day of the whole week. I hate them. And I love Monday. Monday I'm fired up and I start firing off emails. And that's what I would tell anybody that feels like they don't know what to do with their lives. Business is a safe place. I grew up poor, no money for food, and entrepreneurship gave me everything. 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. It's my connection to humanity. I don't know what I would do or who I would be if I didn't have business. If you want to be a good business person, you have to try things that make you wildly uncomfortable. One of my all-time business heroes is Marcus Lemonis. He is the star of the hit NBC show, The Profit, 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 at Caesar's Palace in Vegas. And I said, 'Marcus, can I 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 and it was one of the best hours and a 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.
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. I'll be direct. But I want you to know there's nothing you don't have to walk on eggshells about because I saw some of the questions. I'm like, I hope he asks me that.
Well, this isn't like a hard-hitting podcast. It's okay. You know, but it's if people have questions, people ask me those questions all the time.
Well, it's funny cuz I see both sides of it, right? And I have a lot of surface area for 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 judgment? Was it them? What was it? And there's a common theme and it took me a while to learn that common theme. And I would talk about it with a friend of mine and my friend's like, 'Look, you throw more stuff against the wall and you do it publicly.' So, you kind of are saying to people, 'Hey, just want you to know I have some money and I'm going to try to help, but if at any moment in time you don't like something, you should just sue me.' You're begging for it. But you're willing to. You know what you're doing? I'm less willing to than I used to be.
Is there a certain story or specific thing that happened that got you to look at that differently or is it just a combination of things?
That got me to change my willingness to do it? I would say emotional exhaustion. Not mental. I have a high belief in people. I go into every situation assuming that somebody's going to 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. People have been very critical of me, 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 maybe a little I don't want to get into a public discourse 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 really fast. The Streisand effect, right? If you say nothing and you know you did the right thing or you don't want to get into it, you just let it go. There's a pain for like a minute. And certain people may fall out of love with you or feel differently about you because you don't get to tell your side of the story. But if you start to tell your side of the story, then everybody crowds around and then more people. So it took me a while to learn that because early on I was like no we have to go on the offense. We have to say something. People are like stop. If you give it oxygen it will breathe.
So you remind me of myself 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 tell me if it's total BS. I'm just justifying my own life. Or if you agree with it, right? And maybe you're the most biased person to ask. I think people should focus on their superpower. 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 hate or I'm bad at, and that's how I live my life. Is that just BS?
No. I think there's a more vulnerable layer there that you probably should spend time unpacking yourself. I get bored easy. Same. 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 every idea I have isn't a good one. I find myself wanting to be more focused. 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 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. I like doing deals. I don't mind the early stages of running it, but once it's kind of going, I'm like, 'Okay, 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. 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 of itself. That is what I love to do. Hard stop.
Now back to your example of if I partner 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 one specifically. I'm looking at trying to merge one public company with one of 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, '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 relighting it. I'm going to move on to something else. Time kills all deals. It kills the fire for me.
What about the other side of it? What if you partner with someone or you start it? You've never started. 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 different way. People will know upfront because they should have a high level of 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. Then that time can't continue that way. 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 to make the popcorn every day or walk the dog every day?' Like, 'Did you actually think that was going to happen?' They're like, 'I did.' And I said, 'Okay, 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 going to see me once a month, and at the end of the next year, you may see me once a quarter.' I don't do a good job of because I would never go into a relationship and say to somebody, 'We're going to start off hot and then it's going to go cold.'
Do you structure like the equity of your deals differently being self-aware of that today? If they're expecting you to spend more time with them and they want to give you 30%, do you say, 'Listen,' because this is what 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 try to tell them upfront, I'm going to be much less involved than you think. You always do that?
No. That's This is a very new development. I'm going to spend less time in this, but 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 any equity in your business, but I'm going to give you all that I can and 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. 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 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 don't work there. Well, but you're an owner. So, I did learn over time I 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?
How many different businesses would you say you've had equity in other than like stocks and?
Well, I've only owned two stocks in my entire life, Camping World and 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 a I 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 something either equity or debt over a hundred. How many of them have worked out? You got ahead of my next question. Less than 10.
Fun fact, 80% of the people that watch my YouTube videos are not subscribed to me. And most of them think they are. They see them in the feed, but they're not subscribed to me. So, please, it'll take half a second, just click subscribe, and it would mean a ton to me. Less than 10 of them. So, less than 10%. Yep. Wow. What does that tell you?
It tells me that I live my life in two stacks of business. True capitalism in my big businesses where I'm pushing and driving for 7 billion, 10 billion, 12 billion dollars of business, two public companies that I'm running and I run those very differently. Yeah, there's relationships that are 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 giving back. And I went into it with the mindset that I was going to make a 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 $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 to deal with K1s and I don't know what you're doing on a daily basis, and it's your business. So think about it not as a grant or a gift, but think about it as like 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 time that I was spending on those small businesses was taking away from the amount of effort and capital that needed to go into the big businesses. And I started to feel sad about it that, oh, I still want to do both. And so I said to myself, okay, 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 whatever it is and I'm just going to say to myself, that's it. That's what I'm going to do with it. It's not a gift. I have high expectations. I'm going to hold your feet to the fire. But when I formalize things with you, 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 misbehave. And if you want to call me about anything and you want to text me about anything or you need me to come do whatever, I'll do all of those 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, just give me what you feel is right sometime in the future.' And then I go off and do all these other things, most people won't follow up. 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 55 and my business went from X to Y, not because you're 55, but because of the time we spent together. The 55 was a great bridge. You 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. 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. What else could you do with the money? Are there some team members that deserve a raise? Is there something that needs to happen? More recently though, I've said I'll take the 150 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 back and I don't take it back? Am I sending a bad message? And I think ultimately I was. So I 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 little bummed out because I wish I could help everybody all the time. And it's not a money thing. It's an expectation thing that I can't fulfill. 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. 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 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. And I want some of my life back. Because sometimes if they're overcommunicating, it's because of the relationship because they want to exploit that at some point in the future or they want to No. No. No, I don't think it's an exploitation thing. Not exploit, but like asking for favors. They want to know. No, they I think they like the connection. They feel like that's the way to stay 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. Pennsylvania and Maryland. And it was an episode of The Profit. And it was a Greek family, young lady and her two brothers. And what was the business? I think Zoe's Chocolates. I think I remember that. And a 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 do it all and they were so adamant about paying it back and I said to them but I didn't ask 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 pay that back and you could pay me interest every month we could do whatever not only did They pay it back. And not only do they pay it back with interest, but there isn't a holiday that goes by of any kind, could be Fourth of July, where a box doesn't show up to my house with a 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 trouble,' there isn't anything that they could ask me for that I wouldn't do.
And you know that they're not sending that to you to ask a favor 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 work out.
It didn't work out. I had another group that maybe one of my most proud moments of the entire series where there's these two brothers in Seal Beach, California. 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. 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 will always say this is what helped us. He helped us. He lent us money. We got out of this. But what he really did is he got us focused and he got us over the loss of our brother and he got us to get along and he got us to change our whole business model and he did it in such a loving way and a stern way that even though he's not legally our partner, 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 misnomer about the show when I meet people is like, 'Oh, you helped this person and that person and this person and that person.' And I will say to people, 'No, maybe I helped them, but I got a lot out of it.' Well, 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 with them. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about my gaps and 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 I was able to do it in this petri dish.
I lost probably $50 million over the course of making all the shows and I would do it again. Like personally? Uh-huh. Nobody ever invested but me. Wow. Just investing in these small businesses. Yeah. I would do it again. Wow. Through all the legal drama, through all the TV drama, through all the good and the bad, at the end of the day, while people know that I do other things that I sell campers or I sell bed sheets, that's not what people will remember me for. And as an only child, adopted only child with parents gone, I used to spend a lot of time thinking like, what do I want to be 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 I was inspired or whatever word people would 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 what'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. So, I was like, 'Is it marketing or if I did take equity, was it a capital loss?' And I had the IRS come and audit and they did an audit of a couple of the years and 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 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 or spend or give infinitely more money than anybody ever saw on that episode. Infinitely more just because they needed it. Well, yeah, we'll go with that.
Yeah. Was there like an 80/20 rule of that 50 million? Were there a couple businesses that just bled you dry or was it pretty evenly distributed?
They didn't bleed me dry because 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 people that are good and there's people 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 that they made them for that didn't work out for me.
When it comes to people, process, product, 80/20 of that has got to be 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?
Well, you're assuming they did what I told them to do in the 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 most cases, the businesses did fine after. In some cases, they weren't going to make it no matter what. No amount of money could have fixed it because ultimately a 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 AI giving your competitors an advantage if they use it properly to be smarter, to improve their supply chain, to improve their pricing, to be able to scrape data, to know how to source better, to know how to market better, 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 that people are going to matter less. And that is a pretty frightening thing because I've lived my whole life and I still believe it today that people are the 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 fantasy land.
Yeah. So do I. You have to to be a serial entrepreneur. You have to to not want to stop doing it. 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. If we're self-aware of the insecurity, 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 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 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 people always say that food is a unifier. For me, business 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. I would tell you that this has been the last 12 months have been 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, and I'm grateful eternally, but in the end, I needed to move on to see a different part of the world and do something different. And then going to Fox was a totally different place. Like ideologically and politically and philosophically is a different place. And I wanted to dump myself into a tank that would be uncomfortable for me. And the way that they wanted to 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 other places. 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 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 real world events. So about three months ago, one of the senior people there said to me, 'Hey, we had somebody call in sick. You're going to co-anchor the news tonight.' And I was like, 'No, I'm not.' I was like, 'No, I'm not.' They was 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, but that'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 not my content. It's a real challenge.' And they said, 'Well, that's Thank you for that feedback. 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?
Not nothing with them is contractual, but I respect the environment that I'm in and I want to be a good teammate. And the lady said to me, 'Oh, I totally know it's going to suck. I'm okay 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 as expected. It was interesting.' And I said, 'I told 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 gonna do it again tomorrow.' And I did it again the next day and it was a little better. And I happened to be in New York this week because I'm doing it all week. But now I want to do it really. And now I'm actually pretty good at 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 and The Fixer. It's a live set. It's real. It's all happening, but it gets edited down. So 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 achieve a certain thing. And so what I've started to learn and maybe my message to everybody is if you want to be a good 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 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, you have to do all that in one hour 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, but you 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. Try things that make you uncomfortable. Try different ventures that make you uncomfortable.
When I watch your videos, which I'm really entertained by, by the way, thank you. I'm like, 'Oh, I think that car wash idea is good, but what if I did it at my RV dealerships and I wonder what it would cost?' And then I watched the one, we were talking about it 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 things and some work and most don't. 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 versus you just like riffing on The Fixer or on The Profit?
The Fixer is on Profit's 100% me. There's no talking points. There's no script. No producer research beforehand. No, I do no research really. I know nothing. That's awesome. And it's intentional. Part of it is I 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 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. And then I ask and you're like, 'Yeah, that's a totally good question.' So, I started to realize that 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 invest in, more curious than knowledgeable. I've started to notice that when I 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 turnoff. Yeah. For businesses who are doing their research in AI exclusively.
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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. 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 go in prepared.
No, that wasn't really a strategy. That's my ADHD and just being poor at planning and last minute.
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. Right. And then if it's interesting to you, what happens next? I just ask him a thousand questions 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 a W2 worker just cuz I don't relate with them and I'm an introvert so I naturally thrive on one-to-one and with other business owners. Can you go to a party? I don't I can. I don't prefer it. Me neither. Really hate it. 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. Sundays are my least favorite day of the whole week, I hate them because I don't want 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 of like sending them and like letting them go like in the morning, but Sunday is a terrible day for me. Parties are terrible for me. Relationships are hard for me. Very hard.
So, how do you deal with being on set 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 people. And I'll if I meet somebody on the street or even in the room like this, I like asking questions because I'm genuinely curious. But I also think it's fun. I think people are fun and I'm inspired by them. I selfishly, if I'm being overly transparent, I want to learn something that I didn't know before I met him. I just want to learn something. And so if it's an audio guy or a cameraman who I've never worked with before and most of people have side hustles because the work's not consistent, I like just 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.
Would you say that if you had to choose, are you an introvert or an extrovert? If you had to choose.
I am a true introvert, but I can present myself as an extrovert. But when I present myself as an extrovert, as we get to know each other, I will reveal myself who I really am and share with them just like I just did with you. 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 a day that I'm not engaged or there's a day where my attitude is bad that it's not an excuse. 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. Sometimes I'll disappear for a week from everyone. Just to recharge. No, but recharge sounds like I needed a vacation. It's to dig myself out of a hole.
How often do you do that?
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 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. My favorite thing, actually, is if I'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 for that week. All hell breaks loose. Nothing's safe.
Nothing. My own persona. I probably don't shower for a couple days. I wear the same 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 could 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 can just self-soothe that way.
I don't even know what that... I mean, I know what it means. I don't know. 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 nothing. And I know that my intensity overwhelms you. So whatever that is, I have whatever that is. And you know, we brought a bunch of people that have known me for a long time. I would be like escargot. You either like it or you don't. And it's an acquired taste. But if you like it and you 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 George Washington Carver that 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 be far more revealing when I'm in an environment that I'm comfortable in. And business is the only environment that I'm comfortable in. And making television. I made an HGTV 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 like doing the business news. It's got to be a subject that I'm comfortable in, that I feel safe in. And that's what I would tell anybody that feels like they don't know what to do with their lives 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 of like Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives or Dirty Jobs where I just pick apart a 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... I have four 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 little you know about me, do you think I would like that or not?
I think you're looking at it the wrong 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.
Yeah. There's a couple things you have to be able to do which I know you do well. You have to be able to code switch. That is something that I would say you cannot learn. 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 & Beyond at four and the divestiture of something at three and a family reunion at two and 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 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 could look dumb?
That's different than failing. It's interesting. I'm more insecure about the people on set looking at me than I am about the millions of people that will be watching. That'll go away. It goes away like that. The idea of making television and when we start a new episode with the new business, I always tell them the first day, 'This is going to be really weird for you. For the first couple of 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 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 to care is if I get 100% of you in 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 to regulate your own behavior and have too much self-awareness, you're gonna 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 unbelievably smart. He's a great capitalist, but he's got a huge heart. I say that not as the preface to what I'm about to tell you, but I genuinely feel that way. When him and I first re-engaged, he loved The Profit and he's like, 'I want to do that. I want to do that.' And I said to him, 'Okay, but why?' He goes, 'Cuz I love what you do and I want to do that, too.' And I was like, 'Okay, great. Let's do 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 you down. And whether it was, you know, the good, the bad. He's got a new documentary on HBO which is really good. You have to be 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 gonna make the right decision? What are they gonna think about me? Do I have to prove this? Do I have to prove that? If you do that... He made a show at CNBC a few years ago, and I did one 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 just beating on him for whatever reason they did. And he's my friend, so it doesn't matter what he did. I love him no matter what. But he struggled to not have self-awareness.
Whether you are a business owner, not on TV, a newscaster, a public speaker, or you want to be on TV, if you regulate your behavior and you have a high level of self-awareness, worried about what the people on set think of you, 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 because if you make fun of yourself, everybody's expectations get lowered in a 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, 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 zero self-policing.
Yeah. Well, I did this one YouTube video where I went around a grocery store and asked the 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, but I just felt weird for everyone in the store to be looking at me, you know? Why is that? I don't know. I don't like to be on the 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. 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 a really good scientist not launching rockets or a 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 ideas crisply and cleanly and in a way that they can digest to better themselves.
Yeah. So, it's not about you feeling 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 gonna have fun and I'm gonna make fun of myself and I'm gonna laugh with the people in the grocery store and I'm gonna say to them, you guys probably think this is the craziest thing ever. You're just came here to buy toilet paper and I'm talking a bunch of...' If you have fun with it, you'll be okay. But if you're not okay with it, too bad.
Like I run ultramarathons. That's uncomfortable. And I do that because it's uncomfortable. I don't like running. I just need to frame it.
You're not 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 you were given a gift that you have an obligation to display to people. Too bad.
Yeah. 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? And I promise you that whoever's watching it has more anxiety than you do. And 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.' And I took that to be a compliment. I was grateful for that.
You exposed your vulnerabilities and you gave people permission to feel okay with themselves.
Yeah. It's more relatable.
That's why The Profit worked 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 invested in them. And don't be the smartest guy in the room all the time because you can't be. 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 context switch, the more you get used to context switching and the faster you can context switch without skipping a beat. Our minds adapt. Context switching should be all or nothing. For me, it's all. It's difficult to code switch, context switch without having remnants of the previous conversation leak into the current one. It's difficult.
I would think about it like a reverse paper boy. A paper boy rides on his bike and he disseminates information by throwing it into the yard. And what I do and what you do is that 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 and I 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 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's the interaction with people 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 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 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 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?
Mhm. 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 better I get at 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? Five minutes. And how quickly will you act on it? Five 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 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 thinks that's a problem?
I used to. 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 MBA.
