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
You were probably a third of the fans. It was crazy. I had the commissioners of the biggest sports come up to me like, yo, this is crazy. These WWE fans, it's insane.
I say all the time to everyone around me, we always have to stay humble. If we don't stay humble, bad things will happen. And, you know, look at, you know, example, you know, I'm looking right now at all the tops trading cards as I look over that I look left. I think about we're honored. We just relaunched this January 1st, but we took over, you know, we own tops.
We took over NFL cards that we're launching next year and NBA cards and Premier League cards and and WWE cards, UFC cards. And the reason I say this is because. Competitors got complacent. They got lazy. They weren't innovating the product think about we just announced that we're gonna have the debut patch and All everyone in WrestleMania who wrestles we're taking a patch.
Yeah that in a one-on-one card that lets people like these incredible fans Get click. Could you imagine? Yeah, and so taking things and letting fans connect is to, you know, the most important athletes is like something, it's just one of many things that we thought about because we're hungry and humble. The second you get confident, you become irrelevant.
And, you know, I think we came into a lazy business. Like the... Trading card business was complacent was lazy that created opportunity for us when people hear a thing about what they can do in business You want to be an entrepreneur just go look around like things change all the time. There's opportunities all the time We're in the best country in the world.
There is like I'm telling you new people are disrupting Existing people every day of the week.
Same as you.
Almost five, almost three, and a 19-year-old. My 19-year-old best relationship in the world, we've been fighting a little bit the last day or so.
Yeah. I told you she was getting a little lazy and a little complacent. So I was about to throw water in her face yesterday morning.
Look, I think you have to lead by example. And I think there are like, I don't try to act like I'm the perfect parent because I'm not. Like people ask me about work-life balance. I'm not an expert on work-life balance. Like I work 17 hours a day, just probably 350 days a year. And I love it. I'm honored to do it. It's like, it's so fun for me. I think I have the greatest job in the world.
So what I try to teach to my three daughters is like, They see me pushing unrelentlessly every day. And I think that's something that it's contagious. Like I do that for everybody around me. You know, I mess with people like some of my most important people. I'll FaceTime them at 5 a.m. I'll FaceTime them at 12 o'clock. I'll get someone to go wake her up. Like, you know, like that's my mentality.
You know, sometimes I'm doing it to be funny. Sometimes I'm doing it for like, you know, purpose. But I think it's, you know, I really want them to learn work ethic. I want them to learn about relationships. Relationships are everything. Like. If you think about how I built my business, in good times, you don't need relationships. In bad times, relationships are the most important things you have.
So we've built so many authentic relationships that I think have helped us. It's why people are behind us building Fanatics. I look at the opportunity to connect with all of you here live and say, I want to have a relationship with you guys because you're going to help me build my business.
And so that mentality, I think if my kids learn, we'll let them not be a cocky, arrogant, little rich kid, but let them be a humble and appreciative kid. So look, it is like, you know, they grow up, they see a lot of things, they grow up around like, you know. I do this little party. People probably heard I'm called the white party. Okay. My daughter, you know, my daughter's always wanted to go.
My daughter's 19. We got, you know, she started coming when she was 15. I said to her and she's like, look, it's a, it's a, it's a 13 hour party. And she sees, you know, 350 people having the time of their lives. And the next morning I go, I went to bed at five. And like 7 o'clock in my room, okay, let's get up. Let's go work. She's like, Dad, are you fucking serious?
But like work hard, play hard. Like I always want to push that on her.
And by the way, Camille, who I have two daughters with, my 3- and 5-year-old, she's like the sweetest mom in the world. So it's going to be balanced. She's like the nice, super supportive. I'm just like push, push, push.
And she's definitely the sweet one, and I'm definitely the one that's always pushing, so it's a good combination.
Yeah, I could give you a couple great examples. So probably the scariest moment in my modern life was the financial crisis of 2008, 2009. And... My company, a year earlier, was worth about $2, $2.5 billion. When the stock market crashed, even though our business was doing pretty well, our stock went down by 90%. So I had about a 10% stake in the company.
And my stake went from being worth about $250 million to being worth about $25 million. Well, the problem was I owed a bank $50 million. Okay? So if you only have $25 million, you owe a bank $50 million, you're pretty fucked. Okay? And... The, you know, I was using that money to kind of, you know, borrow against and invest in other things.
Showing 261–280 of 330 · page 14 of 17
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