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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
That was kind of how I was living, you know, because I didn't want to pay myself anything for my company. I worked for virtually nothing. Anyway, stock kept going down. I kept getting something called a margin call. So the bank says either you pay me back or we're going to sell your assets. And so I got it down to $3 million. And I could not get another penny.
The bank said, we're going to sell all of your stock. Well, there was a guy who had lent me... Sorry, there was a guy who I had invested $3 million in his fund like five years earlier. And I called the guy 50 times for the money back. Like every day, like, man, I need this money.
Like, I'm going to lose my company if not... He's like, if I give you your money back, I'm going to have to give everyone their money back. Well... Literally, he kept saying, no, no, no. It was probably like around the 51st time. I don't know exactly, but like I called it a lot on the 51st time. Like, man, I need that money. I'm going to like I'm going to lose my company. Like, I need that money.
He's like, I hate you, but I love you. He gave me three million bucks back that day. Wow. I sold my company a year and a half later for two point four billion dollars. OK, so talk about relationships. Yeah, I was like I saw death in his eyes. In spring 2009, spring 2011, EVA buys GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion. So without that relationship, without that work ethic, I wouldn't be sitting here today.
And never giving up. I would have been that guy you heard about that lost this company. By the way, people like negative stories more than positive stories. But I like talking about positive stories because you know what? There's too much bullshit negativity in this world. We've got to all push each other up. That's right. I'm a huge believer in that.
By the way, I'll tell you guys a great story about WWE and Topps. So I'm walking in the Grove. I live part-time in Los Angeles. And I'm walking in the Grove maybe a year ago, and this guy runs up to me. He's like, hey, I was giving my daughter a piggyback.
He's like, hey, I hate to bother you with your kids, but I've got this company that makes incredible exhibits, and I would just die to get a meeting with your guys. Um, anyway, I get that like every day of my life. So I just, I said, email me. I forwarded guy hits me two months ago. He says, Hey, I met you at the Grove. Um, we built the most incredible exhibit for you.
I can't wait till you see it. It's that booth right there. This guy who just found me at the Grove one year ago. And you know what? That's great. It didn't bother me. I love the guy. I want to pitch me on what he was doing. And here he is. I got to tell you something. Our experience. for WWE trading cards this year, you guys got to all go through it. It's incredible.
And that's just like, this guy was already like, I did it the other night.
He loved it. And some guy who just hit me up in the grove, and here he is helping us to build a better business, and that's just being unrelenting and work ethic.
Yeah, by the way, I'll tell you another thing I believe. Others may not agree with this. To be successful in business, you need... If you don't think you need luck and timing, you are so wrong. Luck and timing is part of life. Yeah. Okay? And I've had... I've had a lot of good luck. I've had some bad luck. But you know what?
You've got to make some of your luck, but you need good luck and good energy. When you do good things in this world, you also get good karma.
You know, by the way, you asked about relationships. Like, I'll talk about, like, the relationship between WWE and Fanatics. Like, we went from not being in business together three years ago to now we do all the event retail, all the merchandise, all of the e-commerce. We do all of the trading cards. We're doing all the podcasts together now.
We have several other new things that we're not going to announce on stage today. But my point is, like, we built this great partnership, and now we're helping each other build our businesses. So, like, relationships are absolutely everything in business.
It really is. I'm also not scared. Like, I'll tell you another thing. This will sound crazy. Not only am I not afraid to fail. I kind of like it a little bit. Yeah. Because in each failure, you get great lessons. You learn from it and then you just use it to do the next thing better and better. Like we have we have like in my career, every year we have epic failures. I mean, epic failures.
But like we say, OK, well, what do we learn from? How do we fail fast? How do we use it to be a better company? If we ain't failing, we ain't trying hard enough. And so I'm a huge believer in failure is a key part of life. I say it to my friends. to my older daughter all the time. Like you got to fail. Like you got to take shots. Like she's got this idea for this new business.
She pitched me two months ago. I'm like, okay, when are you launching it? What like learn from it? Like, I don't care whether it works or not. I care about you doing it and going through that experience.
Yeah. Well, it was even worse than that. So I was 16 years old. I had, um, One ski shop is about a half a million dollars in revenue. And if you're in the ski business and it doesn't snow, that's not very good. It's like you need snow if you're selling skis. So I was also a cocky little 16-year-old. So I went out when I was 15.
I bought a Porsche with a friend of mine before I was legal to drive that car. So the ski season ends at 16. I have half a Porsche that I own. I have $80,000 of inventory. I have $200,000 of bills. It was so bad. I'm not exaggerating this. In the spring... In the spring of that ski season, I probably got sued 100 times.
The sheriff would show up at my mom and dad's house every day before I go to school. It was this nice woman. She'd ring the doorbell at like 7.30. Hey, Michael, here are today's lawsuits. I'd give her a hug. I would take the lawsuits. Thank you. And it went on for like 60 days. Like I said, I probably got sued 100 times. Now I'm like, I'm done.
Showing 281–300 of 330 · page 15 of 17
← Previous
Next →