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
We're investing aggressively. It's all right, because I know you're profitable in the other two. Look, the collectibles and trading card business is a very good business. Commerce business is a big business that's grown its profitability. But for us, think about the trading card and collectibles business. That idea popped in my brain the day before Thanksgiving of 2020.
That business next year will be a $3 billion business.
So it shows you when you get something right, how quickly you can do it. But we've really gone from one business to three businesses. And then how do you bring it all together for the fan? And so that takes, you have to be on top of it. Like one of the things that we don't probably talk enough about, I think one of the key jobs of a leader is to stop dumb shit from happening. Okay.
And you know, I'm right when I say this, like how many times you're like, what the fuck? Like, why is someone thinking this? Why is someone doing that? So as a leader, you need to be on top of your business. You need to make sure you're working with your team. You're paying attention to what's going on. And sometimes you need to stop dumb things from happening.
So it's like, one, you need to lead the organization. You need to have the right vision, get everyone bought in. But then when you're growing very fast, when you go from one business to three businesses, you go from 8,000 people to 22,000 people, like, you know, kind of, crazy shit can happen. So you got to be on your business to stop that from happening.
So there's so much to do in any given day for what we do.
Well, I think I have some really good ones. I also think I have some bad ones as well. Of course, we all do. Yeah. So I think the first thing is you do need to have, like one of the things I think I'm pretty good at is coming up with a big idea and then sizing it up. Like you need something that's good for the consumer, in our case, good for the fan, but also something that's a good business.
So I'm pretty good at figuring out, is this a big and good idea? And is it also a good business? A lot of people come up with great ideas, but they're bad businesses. Yeah. Totally.
And by the way, you and I've seen these things before, you know, so many, they have a great idea. It seems like it's a great thing, but actually it's not a good business. So I'm pretty good at first having the common sense to figure that out. I think we go back to like, as a founder, a CEO, you do need to be a really good communicator to let people know, you know, kind of what are we doing?
What are we going after? Bringing teams together is really important. That's something I've got a lot better experience. over the last 10 years, because as a decent sized company now, like you need the greatest people in the world to do what we do. And if you don't, you absolutely fail. So I'm unrelenting from that perspective.
Like when I think someone can make a difference to our company, I'll fly anywhere in the world to recruit them. The amount of people have said to me like, Hey, Michael, like, Hey, you know, I made so much money. I'm not into doing this. I don't want to do this. I'm like, Watch this. I'll get on a plane. I'll go see them. I'll convince them why this is a great idea.
And before you know it, we're building together. So, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the people that are my senior leaders, they've been really successful in their business career and financially before they joined me. They didn't need to do this. They bought into the vision, the idea of what they want to do together with us.
And so I think being able to sell that vision, be able to get somebody on board is so important. But if you don't get the right people at the top, you have no shot. So when you look at your team... If you don't have, you know, your direct reports, your key people that are really A's, then you're dead. Because A's don't go to work for B's. Okay? Never going to happen.
An A person is never going to go to work for B. And if A person goes to work for B, they're going to move on. Okay? Pretty quickly. So you need A's in the top. I think... When shit's not working, I know how to rip the bandaid off. Like, I'm not scared about that. Are you quick with that?
You're like... Yeah, like, I will throw shit against the wall, but when it doesn't work, like, fuck it, move on. Like, I don't care at all. And so, I think part of being, you know, having had so many failures in my life, having learned from so many of those failures...
It gives me great confidence to go for things and, you know, not have any fear about if it doesn't work, we're just going to rip the bandaid off. I mean, think about what we've done in the past four years. We were only in the, you know, Fangir business, which now is, you know, this year it's about a $7 billion business. And we started the collectibles business. We started the gaming business.
Within the collectibles business, we started a live commerce platform, a marketplace. We started a fanatics events business. We started, but by the way, I started an NFT business. Four months into that, I was like, this isn't a real business. It's a bullshit business. And I knew, okay, we're getting out of it. I got the investors the money back. I'm like, I'm moving on.
I've seen death in its eyes.
So many times. I'm sorry. I got to tell you something, that's fun. Oh, stop it. It's fun.
It's fun. It's fun. It's like, because I remember even recently, the last time that I really thought I was done was 2009. We're in the middle of the financial crisis. My stock and my company had been worth $250 million. It went down by 90%. Okay.
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