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
Look, I have seen lots of people that were in different jobs, find that entrepreneurialism within themselves, and then go out and do absolutely amazing things. I've seen lots of people go out and fail miserably and then do amazing things afterward. So, you know, to me, I think it's about having the self-confidence to not be scared to fail.
It's about having the ability to come up with the right idea and test idea, make sure it's big enough to go out and put your energy into it. And it's about doing things you love too. You have to love this. If you don't love it, like why do it?
No. Never. I'm going to tell you why. Because I'm immune and numb to it. Like I've had so many... I could go through like every week of this year and there's always disasters. There's always... You're like... This year, for sure. By the way, I'll give you an example. It's like someone walks in and say, hey, this tariff thing came and it costs $100 million. I'm like... What are we doing about it?
How do we turn this into an opportunity? Like you can use these things.
Yeah, profits. Oh my, all right.
Sometimes those can be really good things because you build up, like right now, here's the way- So you go straight to like- Take the existing crisis we're in right now, the tariff crisis, okay? I got together with my team, that business, $7 billion business. We have 8,000 employees in that team, actually more than that in that team. And I said, guys, this is a great opportunity. Like-
We have to reinvent our supply chain. We have to be fast. And by the way, the CEO of that business is amazing. This guy, Andrew. Amazing. He's so good, Andrew. He's been talking about these things. And I'm like, well, now we have to do these things faster. We need to own less inventory. We need to turn faster. We need to change how we actually make goods. I'm almost excited by it.
I will tell you, I had not one negative feeling to someone saying, we're going to lose $100 million in profits, not revenue. This year? Great. How do we help that to be better in the future? I could give you 10 examples right now of different things like that. I mean, you know, probably the only thing where I feel pain, probably I came up with one thing where I feel pain.
A sight outage.
I'm being serious. I remember Super Bowl like five or six years ago, there was so much traffic. The site went down. I feel like someone's stabbing me. And I'm caught. And like, you know, if you keep calling the guy who runs technology, he's not actually... No, he's actually fixing the problem. He's trying to fix the problem with his team. You have to boost that.
If the sports book is down, like something like that, that actually... That kills my inner soul. Okay. Because I just want to fix it. I think I feel pain. Maybe something goes wrong for my kids. Yes. But in business, no. Because like I think… One of the things of a good leader is someone who can deal with whatever comes at them in a calm and thoughtful way.
I calm down during the most difficult period. So when like shit's going crazy, that's why I think we have to be calmest, most focused, like game on.
You can't panic because the reality is, every consumer company that makes merchandise is dealing with this issue. And by the way, you're going to be able to reinvent your supply chain. Like, look, China's probably not going to be a place where a lot of American companies make merchandise because of the, you know, relationships right now.
And so, and by the way, China's, you know, they're a really good, you know, partner in making merchandise. But you'll figure out, how do I shift that? How do I make my company better? Like, I know in 2026- SKIMS will be a better company from what you went through in 2025?
I'm sure of that. Absolutely no doubt. And even though many companies are taking a drop in value today, the good ones will be more valuable next year because they figured out how to take advantage of this opportunity.
Yeah. I say I generally try to think about what things look like in the period of five to 10 years. I don't think about what's it going to mean over the next year or two years. Cause I think that's too near term focus. I think it's what, what can you do over five to 10 years after that? I'm like, okay, I hope I'm here.
So she, you know, like I think five to 10 years is kind of periods of time that I think about, I think you can do a lot five to 10 years. You can build something that's, that's really, you know, a leader. You can do something that's just so good for the fan. If you take that kind of long-term mentality.
Yeah, I think history is a great prediction of the future. So, you know, one example that I've used is I interview more people in a given year than anybody at my level. And the reason is I realize how important people are to our company. That is the most important asset.
You know, I bet you in a given year, Um, and I work, you know, probably 80 hours a week on average, 78 hours a week, every week, probably eight hours a week. Um, I'd say 10 to 20% of my time. Okay. And during that period of time, I've never asked somebody for a reference in my life. Why? Because anyone I meet I'm going to figure out who I know that knows them. I'm going to do backdoor chat.
I'm not, if you ask me for a reference, I would call the people that I gave you and say, Hey, make sure you tell Emma this about me. Anyone who's listening to this, when someone asks you for a reference, when someone asks you for your references, if you don't give them the three or five references, then call each reference and tell them what you want them to say. You're not thinking very clearly.
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