Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin sits down with Steph McMahon at WWE World to talk about his career, WrestleMania weekend and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is Fanatics Fest and which WWE superstars are featured?
Ever wanted to meet your favorite WWE superstars up close? Snap a pic, grab an autograph, and share a moment with the legends you've been cheering for? Well, now it's your shot, because Fanatics Fest is coming back to New York City this summer. It's the ultimate hangout for WWE fans, a full weekend of unforgettable moments, surprises, and superstar access like no other.
WWE superstars already confirmed include Cody Rhodes, Rhea Ripley, The Undertaker, Jey Uso, Chelsea Green, Trish Stratus, Liv Morgan, Damian Priest, Charlotte Flair, and trust us, there is more on the way. So stay locked in. Fanatics Fest takes over the Javits Center in New York City June 20th through the 22nd. Hit up fanaticsfest.com for tickets and all the latest updates.
Don't miss your moment.
WWE World. Let's welcome on the next show, the newest podcast in the WWE and Fanatics family. What's your story with Steph McMahon and Elise Dudzinski.
Before we get started, I wanted to say thank you to all of you. You know, last night, clearly Paul went into the Hall of Fame, and congratulations to all of the Hall of Famers who were honored last night. You know, I recognize so much that his career started and his relationship with all of you started way before his relationship started with me.
And that's something that I have great respect and admiration for. And I just love all you guys and really appreciate all the support for him last night. So without further ado, this is our podcast, What's Your Story? It's like a totally different format live with an audience. It's supposed to be very, what, calm and conversational, right?
So it feels a little less intimate, clearly, with all the music and everything, but we're going to make this work. We're going to hopefully deliver to you a really genuine conversation, and hopefully it's something that you have some key takeaways from and really enjoy. And the thing to know about our guest...
is that he is responsible for all of this here, everything you see at the world, for this incredible commemorative title, and for all of the unique activations that you're seeing for collectibles. This is the CEO and founder of Fanatics. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Michael Rubin!
Thank you. Thank you.
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Chapter 2: How did Michael Rubin start his entrepreneurial journey?
I'd say today there's probably not a person in the entire world that drives culture more than Travis Scott. So it's been a great partnership, a great friendship. By the way, he's headlining Coachella last weekend. Tonight, I watched the performance online. It was so spectacular. So it's fun to learn from each other, and I think that's what we all should do.
Yeah, that's right. And that's sort of how you built your career. And, you know, for those of you who don't know, and if you don't mind expounding upon, you started your first business at how old?
Eight years old. I was eight. I tell you, somebody just asked me this yesterday. I'm like, look. You know, I grew up with like every learning disability in the planet. Like I could barely speak, I couldn't read, I dyslexic. I was like everything that could go wrong could go wrong. I was always told like, you suck at all these things. And like, I always did poorly in school.
I was always never a good athlete, but I loved to work as a kid. So eight years old, I'm selling, you know, trading cards, not to my friends, but to my friends' parents. I was selling like vegetable seeds door to door. When it would snow in Philadelphia,
I would like hire five kids to work for me and I would just sell the snow shoveling for like 20 bucks a driveway, you know, 35 years ago or 40 years ago. And, you know, I'd be paying him like, you know, a buck a driveway. So I just always had those entrepreneurial skills. And, you know. And what do you think inspired that? I think sometimes you're just born with it, you know.
My parents, my mom was a psychiatrist. My father was a veterinarian. My mom always tried to, like, make me a normal kid because she thought that's what would be best for me. He wasn't a normal kid. Yeah, I was not a normal kid. But I really just loved business from the time I was a little kid. It's funny because today it's normal to be a young entrepreneur.
There's so many people that are entrepreneurs in their teens or 20s or 30s now. When I started in business, it was like people looked at me like so weird because people didn't start businesses when they were eight years old. I started a ski tuning shop in my parents' basement when I was 12. I actually owned a ski shop in a retail shopping center at 14.
But you owned a shopping center?
No, I owned a ski shop in a shopping center. A ski shop in the shopping center. Okay. This is 1986. And what do your parents say? They thought I was crazy.
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Chapter 3: What role does Travis Scott play in Michael Rubin's business collaborations?
I figured out how to, like, I have a will where I will not quit, period, end of story. And I think that is probably the number one reason, whatever success I've had, that I've had.
Yeah. Well, one of the things I love that you said is really giving the people what they want. And I think that that's what's been so unique about this partnership is it has gone to the next level. I mean, I was talking about my husband, you know, who was inducted in the Hall of Fame last night. And I was talking about the championship belt. Thank you. Thank you. And everything else.
And he shows me he opens his jacket and he shows me the four patches that he has that's going to be sewn into, you know, the memorabilia that's ultimately going to be sold. And it's like it's real. We've never had anything like that before. And he was really wearing it, you know. Wherever people choose to wear these things. But that's, you know, it's such a cool idea.
And I love how open you are and how you really do delve deeper Because it's customer first, right? And I want to understand that in terms of your business philosophy in general because it seems like that's always been your mentality is where there's a need, I can fix it. Whether it's in business, if there's a product people desire, I can make it. How do you approach that?
Yeah, I think you have to listen to your customer and everything that you do. And if I'm completely blunt, we haven't always been as good at that as we are today. Gross. Yeah, no, look, I started, I really like, I've been building, I sold my first real company, eBay bought it in 2011 for $2.4 billion. And they had this little business called Fanatics that they didn't want.
So they said to me, hey, Michael, you know, we don't want to own inventory. It's not what eBay does. Would you like this? And, you know, we bought it back then. It was a pretty small business. And my biggest fear at that point was going out of business from the sort of Amazon.
Because Amazon's this incredible company, and I'd watch them put so many of the big customers of my old company out of business. Toys R Us. was my biggest customer. They're gone. Sports authority, gone. GNC through bankruptcy. Arabistel through bankruptcy. So like, the first thing I wanted to do was completely differentiate myself so that we wouldn't die.
I think what happened is we got bigger, um, You know, I think I really learned, like, you have to both build your business model and listen to your customer at the same time. And I'd say I've really become obsessed in the last five years of just, like, just being, like, manic at looking at everything a customer wants and says.
You know, we screw things up every day, and it's not like you're going to make mistakes. WWE screws things up every day. But it's like, how do you learn from it? How do you grow from it? How do you get better? And, you know, I think myself, we have 22,000 people today at Fanatics.
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Chapter 4: How does Michael Rubin describe his learning style and work ethic?
There is like I'm telling you new people are disrupting Existing people every day of the week.
Yeah, that's true. Especially now, especially in this environment especially in the digital environment is And now with AI and everything breaking open, I mean, we're having this podcast here right now talking about all different kinds of things, you know, that are going on. It's really, it's a remarkable moment in time, I think, to be alive and to be a part of the world.
And as a dad of three, three girls, right?
Same as you.
Right? And five and three, is that right?
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.
It happens. It happens.
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.
No laziness in your household.
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Chapter 5: What is Michael Rubin's approach to customer focus and business growth?
Yeah.
We're trying this all out together. And again, our audience is a part of it. And they're going to let us know whether it's working or whether it's not working.
I'm sure they're going to tell us, you know, I love that episode. You know, that one with Michael Rubin, it sucked. I don't like that one. Okay. You know, they're going to tell us what they like and what they don't like. And we're going to use that to be better because that's what we do.
That's right. That's right. My god, there's just so many incredible lessons that you have so another question I have as a super successful businessman and family man how important is it to give back and And what are some of the initiatives? I know some that that you have worked on that you're most proud of yeah, so let me say before 2017 I was
pretty great at giving money away to people that I cared about who asked me, but I never cared to spend the time to do the work. So I was really like, you were important to me, you had a cause that was important to you, I will support you. I had a life-changing moment in 2017, and I think You know, a lot of the world knows the story, but a friend of mine went to prison for not committing a crime.
He popped a wheelie on a motorcycle and broke up a fight in the airport and got a traffic ticket for one and no ticket in the other. And a judge sent him to jail for two to four years. And Meekville, it's a pretty famous story. And I sat in court watching this judge sentence him to two to four years. That moment not only changed his life, it changed my life because...
I, like, I felt it was the most powerless I ever felt. Like, you know, I owned, I was, you know, a significant owner of the Philadelphia Sixers. You know, I owned Fanatics. I was a pillar in, you know, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, I'm watching this judge sentence my friend of two to four years for popping a wheel on a motorcycle. And... we spent the next, he got sentenced to two to four years.
We spent the next, we took us about five, five and a half months to get him out of prison. By the way, getting someone out of prison, getting a black man out of prison, that is not easy. No matter, they could have done nothing. That ain't easy. Okay. So we got, we, we got him out of prison five and a half months later, myself, um, rock nation and Jay-Z, we worked together to do it.
And we said right afterward, we have to do something about this. Like this can't be about Meek Mill, the famous rapper. How do you take care of the everyday person? At that point, 5 million plus people that were on probation and parole. How do we fix the underlying problem? And we created the Reform Alliance. By the way, I'm talking about just making something up and going for it.
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