Michael Rubin
speaker
330 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard May 2025
Michael Rubin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There's so many people that are entrepreneurs in their teens or 20s or 30s now. When I started in business, it was like people looked at me like so weird because people didn't start businesses when they were eight years old. I started a ski tuning shop in my parents' basement when I was 12. I actually owned a ski shop in a retail shopping center at 14.
No, I owned a ski shop in a shopping center. A ski shop in the shopping center. Okay. This is 1986. And what do your parents say? They thought I was crazy.
Well, they did. And it's actually a great story of how I got into business because I first started in my parents' basement with like a little ski tuning shop. It was great. I did $25,000 at age 12 in business. Insane. Well, two years later, I went to my mom. I said, hey, mom, like, you know, I really want to open a ski shop. You know, I found this location. It's $850 a month.
You know, and she's like, like, Michael, you need to be a normal kid. Like, this isn't in your best interest. Like, I can't support this. Like, you know, I don't like I don't want you to do it. So instead of being depressed, like most kids would be, I did what any smart kid would do. I waited until my mom went to work.
Like, I want to start a ski shop. You know, it's in Conchahock and at Ridge and Butler Pikes. He's like, well, why are you asking me? I'm like, well, it was the first time I ever needed anything from him. I'm like, I need you to co-sign the lease. As you know, I'm 14. You have to be 18. It was $844 a month. And he said, look, I'll make you a deal. Well, he actually said, did you talk to your mom?
I'm like, no, no. I did talk to my mom about this. And he couldn't tell you were lying? He said to me, I'll sign the lease so long as you get good grades in school. Okay. So the good thing was we had a co-op program in our high school where – starting in 12th grade, you could get out of half of your schoolwork to do your co-op program, and that was half your GPA.
Somehow I got them to let me do that in 10th grade. So half of my grades started, half of my entire grades were from, like, if I paid my rent on time, the landlord gave me a good, he gave me an A, so I started with a 2.0. By the way, my finishing grades were also about a 2.0. I got a lot of Fs outside of the, got a lot of Fs outside of the paid my rent on time.
Sounds like you were focused on other things. Yeah, I was focused on building Mike's Ski Shop.
I was not a good student. That was not my strength. And you know what? I think that's okay. Like, look, you know, I think college is for a lot of people, but it's not for everybody. And it wasn't for me. I went for six weeks. I flunked out. I actually posted my report card about 10 years ago at a 1.87 for the short period of time I was there. 1.87 and...
Like, look, to me, what I really believe is you can do anything you set your mind to. And, like, what's always made me, you know, any success I've had has been because I've outworked, I've out-hustled anyone around me. And I believe, like, you know, if you just, you know, if you can will something to happen, okay? And, you know, like, think about WWE World.
I mean, this was a conversation that, you know, we had, Nick Khan had. You know, probably a year and a half ago. And then we launched our first WWE world last year. I think 60 or 70,000 people showed up. And, you know, you'd see how, like, awesome this is. It's just about, like, having ideas, going after it, having no fear of failing. And that's what I've done my entire life.
Thanks, guys. I think it's completely real. I can tell you. That a lot of people think I try to just be self-deprecating to, like, give a good message. I'm not. Like, I haven't read a book since ninth grade. Like, I don't read emails that are more than a paragraph or two.
Like, my brain wouldn't allow me. I would, like, read each line and then, like, have to reread the line.
No, like, the way I learn.
walking around here i'm learning like what do wwe fans want well the best way to figure that out is just walk around talk to people ask questions there's no dumb questions so like i learned from you guys like i learned from everyone around me like that's my personality so like work like work ethic matters a lot i can tell you there's been so many things that i've fucked up in my life and um you know i've just figured out a way to like someone said oh this is impossible you can't do it i just like
I figured out how to, like, I have a will where I will not quit, period, end of story. And I think that is probably the number one reason, whatever success I've had, that I've had.
Yeah, I think you have to listen to your customer and everything that you do. And if I'm completely blunt, we haven't always been as good at that as we are today. Gross. Yeah, no, look, I started, I really like, I've been building, I sold my first real company, eBay bought it in 2011 for $2.4 billion. And they had this little business called Fanatics that they didn't want.
So they said to me, hey, Michael, you know, we don't want to own inventory. It's not what eBay does. Would you like this? And, you know, we bought it back then. It was a pretty small business. And my biggest fear at that point was going out of business from the sort of Amazon.
Because Amazon's this incredible company, and I'd watch them put so many of the big customers of my old company out of business. Toys R Us. was my biggest customer. They're gone. Sports authority, gone. GNC through bankruptcy. Arabistel through bankruptcy. So like, the first thing I wanted to do was completely differentiate myself so that we wouldn't die.
I think what happened is we got bigger, um, You know, I think I really learned, like, you have to both build your business model and listen to your customer at the same time. And I'd say I've really become obsessed in the last five years of just, like, just being, like, manic at looking at everything a customer wants and says.
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