Chapter 1: What key business philosophy does Kevin O'Leary emphasize?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting episode of Mic Unplugged. And today we are talking to MyBlueprint. He's the man who turned discipline into currency and results into legacy. Before the world called him Mr. Wonderful, I called him the blueprint.
Because everything that I teach about leadership, about accountability, about performance, he's the force that made excellence the expectation again. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome my guy. You know him as Mr. Wonderful, Kevin O'Leary. Welcome to the show, sir. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. You know, I said that you're the blueprint and here's why.
Early on watching you back on the days of the Dragon's Den and then reading your books, you taught me something that I think most business leaders and entrepreneurs miss. And that's that results matter. We care about a lot of things that are cute, that are nice to have. But at the end of the day, results matter the most.
And so I owe you that because everything about all of my businesses, my teams will tell you the philosophies that I teach are centered around you telling me that one day. Everything is cute, but results matter the most. So I owe you that.
Well, thank you. But, you know, that is a consistent and it's perpetual and it is really important more today than ever.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And before we get into where that started, like I always like to ask my guests, What's your because, right? Like Simon Sinek taught us to start with why. And for a lot of folks, your why is your family, right? Maybe your friends or your businesses. But I think your because is something deeper.
If I were to ask you why your kids are your why, you normally start with because A, B, and C. And so I care about your because. So if I were to say, Mr. Wonderful, what's your because? What's your purpose? What's your mission today?
What drives me and what my because is, is I absolutely love it when people tell me I can't do something and that I shouldn't try because I'll never make it. I love that. I absolutely love that. And every once in a while, when I hear something like that, it's usually in industries that are well-established. And I'll give you an example. Watch insurance. The insurance market
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Chapter 2: How does discipline play a role in entrepreneurship according to Kevin?
is incredibly difficult to break into because it's highly regulated in every state and it's impossible to acquire customers from the behemoths and you know who they are. And I'm a watch collector. And so I'm not happy with my insurance options and many other watch owners are not happy either. Cause the basic problem is you put it on your home plan, you know, as a rider,
And then 10 years later, your Rolex is stolen or lost, and it's worth five or 10 times what you bought it for. And they're paying you out a depreciated value. That's one of the problems with many houseplants. But I remember people saying to me, oh, you can't get into that business. And I say, bullshit. Watch this. My secret sauce is my army of followers that I tell the truth to.
And millions of them, over 10 million of them. And I say to them, hey, guys, does anybody want to try a different idea for watch insurance? If you don't want it, don't worry about it. But I'm going to create this company called WonderCare. And it's going to do an incredible job on watch insurance. Does anybody want a policy? And I put one of those out there and got 3,500 policy requests.
And I showed it to Chubb and said, have you ever seen anything like this? Have you ever been able to get 3,000 policy requests with zero customer acquisition costs? Has anybody you know ever done that? Why don't you partner with me? And they looked at it and said, whoa, okay. So there's always a way if you're motivated. And I'm kicking ass with Wondercare right now. And I'm proud.
So all those people that told me I couldn't do it, fuck you. That's how I feel about it.
Absolutely.
And here's what Mr. Wonderful didn't know about me is that my career and life started in the insurance space, in the property and casualty. So business insurance and the home side. So I personally am about to send all of my clients and followers information on WonderCare because you're right. The basic insurance rider, whatever you set it for day one, typically is what it is 12 years later.
Now you have something that you can't ever get replaced. So kudos to you for breaking that.
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Chapter 3: Why does Kevin believe in embracing risk over consulting?
I appreciate it. But that's what keeps me going. I want to win. I want to compete. I've got a great team of people that come with me, and I want to make them all rich. And I just, you know, this is the American dream. That's what it is. You've got to find a pain point. You've got to come up with a solution and you've got to drive it home.
Chapter 4: What does Kevin mean by 'results matter most'?
That's how it works. And you can't let anything get in your way, particularly people that say you can't do it. That's just noise, absolute noise. Don't worry about it.
Yep. And again, that's why you're my blueprint. That's why you're the person that I follow and believe in. And you talk about winning. And to me, that ties into the results, right? Because you taught me that, Mick, results create freedom. Results create credibility. Results create legacy. Why do you believe that results are the true language of business and leadership?
Because you can measure them.
It's very simple. Business is very binary. Either you make money or you lose money. And there's no in between. You're either profitable or you're not. break even, that's okay, but that's on the way to one side or the other. You're either on the way up to being profitable or on the way down when you're breaking even to losing money. And so it's just a way stop. It's like a bus stop on the way.
Setting goals allows you to put measurement into the model. And so results are the outcome of your team agreeing on the roadmap. And You know, you can pivot, you can change based on new information, but if you don't get results, you're going to fail. And there's no, you know, messing around with it. You got to set a goal, you got to make it. You know, there's no room for excuses.
There's always an excuse, but there's no room for it. You have to deliver. You have to figure a way around the obstacle and you got to go get it done. And the great managers, the great leaders get stuff done. And, you know, it's sometimes they don't, it gets prickly, but you're not trying to win friends in business. You're trying to have people respect you.
And the way they respect you is you deliver results. I do business with a lot of assholes that are not nice people, but boy, are they productive. And that's why I'm doing business with them. You know, they don't come to my cookout, but I do business with them and I risk money with them and I invest in them because they deliver results. Yeah, it's not. It can't make everybody happy.
That's not what the game is about. The game is setting a goal and achieving it. And along the way, there's going to be some people you offend. Well, that's too bad.
That's life, right? That's life. You know, and on the way to winning and getting results, something that you talk about is a critical pillar in what you believe in is discipline. You told me, or not just me, but you told the world in a bunch of masterclasses and conversations that success is built on discipline, not desires. Where did that mindset start for you?
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Chapter 5: What is the founder's mindset and why is it important?
And if you don't try, you'll never get the outcome you want. I mean, or if you're happy working for some of the rest of your life or even worse, don't be a consultant. Please don't go to hell. Don't do that.
No, but you're exactly right. I mean, I talk to young people all the time. I get asked this question a lot and I always hate it. Like, Mick, if you could talk to the 16 year old version of yourself, what would you say? I'm like, why would I do that when I can't, when I can go talk to 16 year olds, when I can go talk to real 18 year olds and impact their lives.
And I tell them the same thing our grandparents told me. There's more resources for you to be a business leader, to be an entrepreneur than there ever has been. Right. Access it. But you've got to have that that earning for learning, as I like to call it, which you just talked about so eloquently.
The information that young people have today and not just young people, but society has today to go start a business, the resources, the knowledge to be able to tap in to a Mr. Wonderful. Right. I mean, you speak all over the country. and you give so many nuggets of wisdom at all of your speeches and all your masterclasses, people can go get that, right?
They don't have to go hire you for an hour. They can buy a ticket to an event that you're at because you're going to give everybody everything that they need right there. But I don't think people are taking advantage of it the way that they could or should. And so I try to help them understand where these resources are, because to me, it's critically important.
Well, I really appreciate it. I mean, that's it's you know people say you're the mean shark i'm not the mean shark i just tell the truth and you've got to deal with the truth if you think i'm bad wait till the real world hits you wait till the real market chews you up and spits you out three times before you get it right. I mean, that's how it works.
And that's okay because that's in, we talked about earlier, the founder's mindset. You got to be ready to take it all because some guy in Mumbai or Shanghai wants to kick your ass and you got to get competitive and they're going to work 25 hours a day, eight days a week. So you're going to have to do the same thing.
But the whole idea is if you get if you're successful, you bought yourself total freedom to work even harder because that's what you're going to do. You're going to keep going. And that's what every entrepreneur I know when they tell me the success story, they're working harder today than they ever have because they love what they do. I love what I do.
I really love getting up in the morning and taking it all on. And the phone calls come and all the drama and all that stuff.
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Chapter 6: How does Kevin define success in business?
Love it. You just closed a big deal and you want to celebrate with the mill. Where are you eating?
Depends what city, but I would say in Miami, it would be Casa Tua on James Street. So that's on the beach outside in the garden. In New York, it's got to be the Polo Lounge downstairs. I love that place. The vibe is so amazing and media. Sometimes I go to the Amman Club there. There's an incredible sushi restaurant inside that.
In Toronto, Canada, I go to my own restaurant there, Blue Bovine, also one of the best. It ain't cheap, but it's pretty good. And it's attached to where the Blue Jays are playing. So people are loving that. And in... San Francisco, maybe LA, I'll pick LA. Two places, Avra and Casa Cipriani. So those are kind of my celebratory places and I've celebrated deals in all of those places.
Love it.
Love it.
If you had to do a deal randomly with the shark, which shark would it be?
Oh, I get asked this all the time. The guy I love doing business with is Mr. Wonderful. I love that guy. I mean, you can't go wrong with a deal with Mr. Wonderful. So I'm sticking with that.
Love it. Last question, Mr. Wonderful. And this is just more of a shout out to you and who you are. And I'm trying not to get emotional on this because you really do mean the world to me, man. Like, The advice that you give, the time that you actually take to interact with people, and people don't see this, but I got to see this with my own eyes.
You take time to talk to people, to answer questions, to give advice. If you had to give advice to the entrepreneur that's thinking about taking that step and saying, I'm going to start a business, what's the first one or two things that they need to do to make that happen?
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