Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts.
Speaker 2: Radio news.
Speaker 3: I sold Duppers dot Com, Amazon, and I wasn't I
Speaker 3: made generational wealth because I had nobody in my family
Speaker 3: ever made money before. But I was depressed. And my
Speaker 3: co founder at the time of Vinnie Burr, we basically
Speaker 3: both felt the same way. And after the money was
Speaker 3: wired to our bank account, we sort of said, like,
Speaker 3: we should be celebrating right now, and we're both like depressed,
Speaker 3: and we went and we had a drink and we're
Speaker 3: just like, man, Like, it just goes to show you
Speaker 3: wasn't about the money. Like the mission that we had
Speaker 3: set out was kind of like crushed. Alex.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a very special episode of
Speaker 1: the Deal in the sense that we're bringing your business
Speaker 1: partner in for a different kind of conversation. Mark LORI,
Speaker 1: who is he to you?
Speaker 2: Well, he's one of my best friends. He's one of
Speaker 2: my most important partners. He is a mentor, someone who
Speaker 2: I look up to, someone who we learn a lot
Speaker 2: from each other, and quite honestly, has been a great
Speaker 2: partnership because we have complimentary set of skills.
Speaker 1: What I think about is this entrepreneur who keeps finding
Speaker 1: these new ways to win. So you think about selling
Speaker 1: diapers dot Com, that was a real company to Amazon
Speaker 1: for more than five hundred million dollars. That actually is
Speaker 1: an acquisition that he's not so happy with. So he
Speaker 1: goes and does it again. He creates jet dot Com,
Speaker 1: sells that to Walmart, and as you say, from deck
Speaker 1: to exit, in twenty six months, three plus billion dollars.
Speaker 2: What unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And now he's onto the next thing. Wonder he talks
Speaker 1: a lot about that. Big takeaway for me is his
Speaker 1: willingness to just either make a mistake or change his mind.
Speaker 1: You see, I would imagine almost every day talking to him,
Speaker 1: he is truly a phenomenal talent. He talks about six gear,
Speaker 1: which means working one hundred hours a week, twenty hours
Speaker 1: a day. He has an incredible engine, and this is
Speaker 1: his baby.
Speaker 3: Wonder.
Speaker 2: He's raised over a billion dollars. He just finished a
Speaker 2: seven hundred million dollar raise. The company just got a
Speaker 2: praised at three point five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have spent as much time
Speaker 1: with anyone yet talking so in depth and in such
Speaker 1: a nuanced way about entrepreneurship and the mechanics of it.
Speaker 1: It's just fascinating to hear someone who can talk so
Speaker 1: eloquently about what seemed to be soft things in very
Speaker 1: hard terms. On this episode of The Deal, Mark Lori, So, Mark,
Speaker 1: introduce yourself.
Speaker 3: I'm Mark Laurie. I'm the founder and CEO of Wonder
Speaker 3: Group and co owner with Alex in the Minnesota Timberwalls
Speaker 3: and Links.
Speaker 1: So we should say this is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different episode of the Deal, but I think that's
Speaker 1: the best place. Like how do you guys come together?
Speaker 1: Like how does this all happen that these two guys
Speaker 1: are in business together.
Speaker 2: What I'm going to start with you full disclosure, Mark
Speaker 2: and I are partners in several businesses, including the timbleles
Speaker 2: and the Links, as you said, But how we came
Speaker 2: together it was actually funny. Is around COVID and we
Speaker 2: had a mutual friend that kept telling me you have
Speaker 2: to meet this Walmart guy. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm really busy with the Mets now, but I wasn't
Speaker 2: expected to meet Mark, and we kind of hit it
Speaker 2: off right away. We're both in New Yorkers, we both
Speaker 2: have two daughters. We both come from like humble beginnings,
Speaker 2: and I was like, wow, I don't know what this
Speaker 2: means about, but I want to do something with Mark,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of how it started.
Speaker 1: What do you remember about that.
Speaker 3: I remember being a big Yankees fan growing up a
Speaker 3: New Yorker, heard things about Alex before we met, and
Speaker 3: when we actually met on Zoom the first time, I
Speaker 3: was just a little bit surprised at how down to
Speaker 3: earthy was, how we shared a common set of values
Speaker 3: and he was different than I think the perception of
Speaker 3: him in the world with me and others, and yeah,
Speaker 3: we just really hit it off.
Speaker 1: Alex and I have had this interview circled on the
Speaker 1: calendar for a long time because from my perspective for
Speaker 1: where I said, this is one of the most fascinating partnerships,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to sports. So let's talk about that, because,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, you're in the midst of the Mets
Speaker 1: deal when you guys meet, and that I believe creates
Speaker 1: this catalyst for you guys to really come together. What
Speaker 1: was it about sports that appealed to you Mark?
Speaker 3: For me, I don't know, it wasn't like, well, I
Speaker 3: see a business opportunity to go after. It was driven
Speaker 3: by a passion for sports. I think Alex and I
Speaker 3: share this though, but we went to Minnesota and originally
Speaker 3: met with Glenn and Becky and they shared sort of
Speaker 3: the thirty year history of the team and how the
Speaker 3: city was sort of down on it. There's some events
Speaker 3: that happened in Minnesota, and it just sports have the
Speaker 3: ability to make people happy and aspire people and things.
Speaker 3: And were both like this underdog. We would like the underdog.
Speaker 3: We feel like we're underdogs, and we kind of just
Speaker 3: felt this like story in Minnesota of the underdog, and
Speaker 3: I think we just had this drive to say, man,
Speaker 3: let's get in there and really, let's put our energy
Speaker 3: into this and let's like help turn this thing around.
Speaker 3: And if we do that, we could add a lot
Speaker 3: of collective happiness in the city, the fans. Players like
Speaker 3: there was some drive for me. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you felt the same way, but it was like the
Speaker 3: money was second. There was like okay, and like NBA
Speaker 3: is a great league, it's growing, it's progressive. These team
Speaker 3: valuations been going up. It's going to be a good investment.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't like we're just searching like pe Firm
Speaker 3: or something, searching for some good investment. Interesting, it was
Speaker 3: really the story and the history of Minnesota that really
Speaker 3: was aspiring.
Speaker 1: That gives me an opportunity to ask a question that
Speaker 1: I've asked Alex before, but I really want to ask
Speaker 1: the two of you together, which is kind of getting
Speaker 1: into this partnership because I would say I know a
Speaker 1: lot about him, I know a little bit about you,
Speaker 1: but like, how does it work.
Speaker 2: I'll go first because I think this will give you
Speaker 2: an example. As I pulled the curtain back on our
Speaker 2: early days, I hope you don't mind me sharing some finances,
Speaker 2: but I'll do it anyways. So within the first ten
Speaker 2: days of Mark and I getting to know each other,
Speaker 2: it went from wow, okay, like we're in the middle
Speaker 2: of COVID, I'm in the middle of the Mets and
Speaker 2: pursuing that acquisition. In the first ten days, Mark send
Speaker 2: over his finances, like just the sheet, like his whole
Speaker 2: balance sheet. I was like, Okay, that was quick, Like no, Nda, no,
Speaker 2: I mean just send it to me. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: this is aggressive when that's quite an attachment. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that's like first date boom. And then the second
Speaker 2: thing he did, he said, Hey, I like this. I
Speaker 2: like the way we're driving here, I'm in for twenty
Speaker 2: five million bucks. I'm like, wow, okay, finance is twenty
Speaker 2: five million bucks within ten days. He was so invested.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm good for two hundred let's go. And
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, this is my kind of partner man.
Speaker 2: But it was example of him trusting his gut, him
Speaker 2: being a New Yorker. We both loved the Mets. We
Speaker 2: thought it was an incredible opportunity. I would say, not
Speaker 2: the greatest business opportunity, but an opportunity we can exercise
Speaker 2: our passion what we can do for the city. We're
Speaker 2: talking about how can we impact young kids? Are on math.
Speaker 2: He's a math guy. I'm a baseball guy. So that's
Speaker 2: how we started. And I very quickly found out I
Speaker 2: wanted to do things with Mark outside of the Mets
Speaker 2: and other things, and I can learn a lot from him,
Speaker 2: and I thought our skills were very complimentary to each other.
Speaker 1: What did you see in him?
Speaker 3: I think I was really impressed with Alex's intellect and empathy.
Speaker 3: I think we share a lot of the same core values.
Speaker 3: I think that struck me. I think Alex is very trusting.
Speaker 3: I think we know with trust comes from some great things,
Speaker 3: but there's also downside to it, and I think we're
Speaker 3: both similar in accepting the downside. Sometimes you're overly trusting,
Speaker 3: you get burned. That's kind of a byproduct, but there's
Speaker 3: something magical that happens when you trust. I think we
Speaker 3: were both like loyal. I think that's important. I think
Speaker 3: we're both missionary, not mercenary. It's not about like every dollar,
Speaker 3: every penny, like striking a deal. We deal make the
Speaker 3: same way. I think when we did the deal with
Speaker 3: Glenn and Becky, it was very much like just kind
Speaker 3: of tell us what you want and we're good. We
Speaker 3: didn't have to like squeeze or anything. And then I
Speaker 3: think even when we operate on a data basis, we
Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff handshake, there's like things that
Speaker 3: we're signing together. It's very very trusting, so that builds,
Speaker 3: that builds a bond. I think Alex is also incredibly knowledgeable,
Speaker 3: obviously in sports and yes the business sports, but more
Speaker 3: he's been in and knows what it's like to be
Speaker 3: a player at the most elite level, and it's been
Speaker 3: super helpful I think with helping to mentor the players
Speaker 3: on the walls understand what it means to create a
Speaker 3: great culture.
Speaker 1: And so were you guys like texting all day? Like
Speaker 1: do you call each other?
Speaker 3: Like what is that?
Speaker 1: What is this relationship?
Speaker 3: Look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot. I mean sometimes we talked five or
Speaker 2: six times a day. I mean that's been the average lately.
Speaker 2: But you know, even with Glenn and Becky, their experience
Speaker 2: was so good. When we went down to Apris in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: we did not negotiate. He said the terms price, We
Speaker 2: did it and.
Speaker 3: We got in.
Speaker 2: And in all the conversations we've had around the Timberwolves,
Speaker 2: I don't think we've ever talked about revenues. It's really
Speaker 2: been about how do we make it better?
Speaker 3: Inputs versus outputs exactly? Exactly would say more about that,
Speaker 3: inputs versus outputs. You know, like in a company, you
Speaker 3: could either be focused on what is the revenue, what
Speaker 3: is the profit? Those are like output numbers. I care
Speaker 3: less about that. I care more about the inputs that
Speaker 3: will lead to good outputs in the future. So making
Speaker 3: sure because you can you can hit out get good
Speaker 3: outputs with bad inputs.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about like sustainable, the right hires, the
Speaker 1: right investments, the right I think in order to create
Speaker 1: a sustainable culture of winning and eventually profit over a long.
Speaker 3: Sustain period of time. You have to make the right
Speaker 3: investments in the inputs that will lead to the outputs.
Speaker 3: Maybe not today because it's an investment, but five or
Speaker 3: ten or twenty years down the road.
Speaker 1: So let's go back as we go through your business life.
Speaker 1: You know, as we were researching this, and obviously Alex
Speaker 1: knows so much about you already, and I've gotten a
Speaker 1: chance to talk to you a few times. But if
Speaker 1: you look at type in diapers dot com or jet
Speaker 1: dot com into Google, they lead you just to some
Speaker 1: interesting places. They led you to some interesting places too.
Speaker 1: So take us into your life as an entrepreneur diapers
Speaker 1: dot com. Just let's start there.
Speaker 3: I have to say, though, I was born an entrepreneur. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: When I was four years old, you know, the chief
Speaker 3: just said what do you want to be when you
Speaker 3: grow up? And I said, I want to be a farmer.
Speaker 3: And she was like, farmer. Why farmer? And I said,
Speaker 3: because they grow stuff from nothing. And that was sort
Speaker 3: of just the way I was sort of like born
Speaker 3: into the world. I loved the idea of growing stuff
Speaker 3: from nothing. As a kid, I didn't know anything other
Speaker 3: than farmer, grows stuff from nothing, didn't know about startups
Speaker 3: and things like that. And my parents had me when
Speaker 3: they were twenty years old. So I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time with my grandmother and grandfather, and so I
Speaker 3: came home. I was the first person in my family
Speaker 3: ever to go to college. So I came home with
Speaker 3: this this crayon thing that said what do you want
Speaker 3: to be when you grew up? And I said farmer?
Speaker 3: And I showed it to my grandmother and she says farmer. No, No,
Speaker 3: no doctor or lawyer. And I said no, no, farmer,
Speaker 3: doctor or lawyer. And she was wanting me to be,
Speaker 3: you know, the first professional, yeah, in the family. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so I was. I did every entrepreneurial business you can
Speaker 3: imagine as a kid, car wash, newspaper, route, recycling, baseball cards, lemonade,
Speaker 3: stands like anything you could think of it did, And
Speaker 3: just was born with this sort of dry to want
Speaker 3: to like work hard and build something and.
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurial and casinos as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little of that too, A little of that too.
Speaker 3: We used to go down to ac and sneak into
Speaker 3: the casino in high school, get all dressed up and
Speaker 3: like jacket and stuff like that and see how long
Speaker 3: we could stay there before we got kicked out on age.
Speaker 3: But yeah, then I graduated in ninety three. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like you would just go work for a startup at
Speaker 3: that time. It was still kind of early days of tech,
Speaker 3: and so I went to work at a bank. Started
Speaker 3: out in Banker's Trust and then credits was first Boston
Speaker 3: San Jua Bank. So I was in financial risk management
Speaker 3: there and one day, like this is in the like
Speaker 3: late nineties, tech is booming, yeah, and all everyone's talking
Speaker 3: about is these like hot startups, tech companies and things,
Speaker 3: and I'd save a decent amount of money, and I
Speaker 3: just one day said that's it. I'm going to be
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur. I woke up that morning and said I'm
Speaker 3: going to do it. I walked into my boss's office
Speaker 3: and I said I'm quitting to be an entrepreneur. And
Speaker 3: he's like what He's like, get out of here, go
Speaker 3: back to the work. You know much I'm paying you
Speaker 3: is what he say. What he said, And I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: I got to do this. He's like, all right, you
Speaker 3: must have a great idea, and I'm like no, I
Speaker 3: just need to do this because I'm like all in
Speaker 3: kind of guy, Like I was just doing banking so
Speaker 3: intensely I couldn't like focus. So he said, you're serious.
Speaker 3: I said yeah. He said, all right, well, I don't
Speaker 3: know what you're going to do, but like put me
Speaker 3: down for fifty thousand. So I got that fifty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars investment. And I didn't know anyone else with money,
Speaker 3: so I asked, I said, well, now you're my investor,
Speaker 3: do you have any other people that you could recommend?
Speaker 3: And he recommended a couple of people. They recommended a
Speaker 3: couple of people. I wind up raising money from sixty
Speaker 3: five like angel investors with an average tex size of
Speaker 3: like eighty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So that was like the first business.
Speaker 3: This would be four diapers a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is in the early days. How old were
Speaker 2: you when he said he was paying a lot of money?
Speaker 2: How much was he paying you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So I was twenty seven years old, five hundred
Speaker 3: thousand a year. Wow then, which was big money? Wow,
Speaker 3: it was big money. I was executive is big money?
Speaker 2: You're one of the top earners.
Speaker 3: I was executive vice president of the bank at twenty
Speaker 3: seven funny story. But I went to see this guy,
Speaker 3: Jerry Goldstein a couple of years later after i'd been
Speaker 3: out of the air and doing my startup, and had
Speaker 3: lunch with him and he's like, I still can't believe you.
Speaker 3: You know, you just quit on me and just did
Speaker 3: this entrepreneur thing. But but it seems like it's working
Speaker 3: out great. He's like, how old are you now? You're
Speaker 3: thirty five. I said no, I'm like twenty nine. And
Speaker 3: he said that's impossible. And I said, what do you mean.
Speaker 3: He goes, well, but then when I hired you to
Speaker 3: be the EVP, you were only twenty six years old.
Speaker 3: That's impossible. He said, no, I was twenty six. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he said, yeah, I guess the bald head threw me off.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is a huge breakthrough for the
Speaker 1: ball This is amazing.
Speaker 2: It was a shameless for you guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, we're doing it. Mark. One of the.
Speaker 2: Stories that it resonated so well with me is either
Speaker 2: ultimate missionary not mercenary. You're all in you talk about mission,
Speaker 2: but you said a story talking about baseball cards. You
Speaker 2: had a Reggie Jackson story, and I think this story,
Speaker 2: I think we were ten or eleven years old, tell
Speaker 2: me that story because I think it tells me a
Speaker 2: lot about who you are and what you mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's still triggering to this day. So fifth grade,
Speaker 3: never forget it. It was a you know baseball cards
Speaker 3: when you used to have to flip them heads or
Speaker 3: tails on the floor. There was this bully and it
Speaker 3: was a flipping for Reggie Jackson. And originally I thought
Speaker 3: it was going to be whoever flip more heads wins
Speaker 3: Reggie Jackson. And he's like, no, you gotta flip ten
Speaker 3: heads in a row. Wow. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: then out of our place, like, no, you're playing you
Speaker 3: go like and I was like, and I flipped ten
Speaker 3: heads in a row, and I was like, wow, I
Speaker 3: did it. Even though he forced me into this, I
Speaker 3: got the Reggie Jackson and I was so happy. I'm
Speaker 3: walking away and he comes over and he punches me
Speaker 3: in the face takes the Reggie Jackson. So I go
Speaker 3: and tell the teacher. Now I'm like ten years old.
Speaker 3: They go tell the teacher and I say, hey, I
Speaker 3: won this Reggie Jackson. And he punched me and took
Speaker 3: the card and the teacher said, well, whose card is it?
Speaker 3: I said, well, it was his card, but then I
Speaker 3: want it and she's like, well, if it was his card,
Speaker 3: then I'm sorry. And to this day, bullies are triggering
Speaker 3: I get I asked like people on an interview, every interview,
Speaker 3: I asked them, look, get your blood boiling. What gets
Speaker 3: you just angry? You know, everyone's got that thing. And
Speaker 3: every once in a while somebody asked me, well, what
Speaker 3: gets your blood boiling? And it's always the bully.
Speaker 1: Well, and to that point, I mean, you come up against.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is as an entrepreneur, you come up against
Speaker 1: I'm not calling them bullies necessarily, but some of the
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the world as competitors. And so that
Speaker 1: is what you just described fuel or is it motivation?
Speaker 1: Like hell yeah, I can't play it.
Speaker 3: I can't even describe. And Alex and I talk about
Speaker 3: this of what it feels like when you're up against
Speaker 3: a bully. It is and I think Alex said, this
Speaker 3: is okay, if.
Speaker 2: I whatever you want, I mean, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm TV.
Speaker 3: Alex said it. He said, I don't like bullies either.
Speaker 3: He's like, I rather like lose everything I have than
Speaker 3: lose to a bully. I'll sleep under a freaking bridge,
Speaker 3: I don't care, And then like that resonated with me.
Speaker 3: I'm like the same way. I rather lose every single
Speaker 3: penny and sleep under a bridge with Alex than lose
Speaker 3: to a bully. But if it's like, if somebody is reasonable,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, they can get away with a lot.
Speaker 3: With me, I'm very empathetic. I think Alex is very similar.
Speaker 3: That's why we kind of connected and fair and fair,
Speaker 3: fair and like empathetic and sort of like if somebody
Speaker 3: comes up to you and says, hey, sorry, like you know,
Speaker 3: it's like okay, Like it's okay, like even if they
Speaker 3: screwed you over whatever, like there's empathy there. But if
Speaker 3: you're going to just play the bully all the way
Speaker 3: through now, So.
Speaker 2: Mark, that's one of the things, Jason, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know this, but this is one of the
Speaker 2: most incredible things about Mark, besides him being a great
Speaker 2: business person and a father and all of that and
Speaker 2: a great friend. How have you been one of the
Speaker 2: most highest paced seals of all time at Walmart e commerce?
Speaker 2: You grew that business from eight billion to fifty billion.
Speaker 2: You've done all these great things. How in thirty plus
Speaker 2: years having you sued anyone and never been sued. Now
Speaker 2: that is a feed on his own.
Speaker 3: How again, it comes to the fairness thing. I can
Speaker 3: see somebody's point of view, So somebody even is the
Speaker 3: least bit reasonable, then there's always a resolution, right, And
Speaker 3: I'm don't have the ego to say, you know, and
Speaker 3: I think it's the opposite of my dad, And so
Speaker 3: I learned this from my dad. My dad was the
Speaker 3: kind of guy that, like, if he thought you were
Speaker 3: trying to like negotiate too hard, he would just on principle,
Speaker 3: refuse to negotiate. So I can kind of learn that
Speaker 3: and like saw the turmoil that that causes when you
Speaker 3: dig your heels in on principle and ego as opposed
Speaker 3: to like just check the ego. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 3: you're going to be reasonable. We'll debate it and debate it,
Speaker 3: and I'll listen, and there's got to be a resolution
Speaker 3: because you feel that way for a reason. And I
Speaker 3: think that's always been the case, is that people. I
Speaker 3: think when you be vulnerable, people be vulnerable back, you
Speaker 3: let down your card, you talk it through, and people generally,
Speaker 3: I think one a good thing.
Speaker 1: Stitch that together for us with that is a very
Speaker 1: like humane and empathetic approach to business. Being an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: is hard, and starting something is hard. And so take
Speaker 1: us back, you make that huge decision, you go in,
Speaker 1: you quit your half a million dollar a year job,
Speaker 1: you start a company, then you eventually start diapers dot com. Like,
Speaker 1: what's the journey briefly that gets you from I'm working
Speaker 1: on Wall Street to I'm selling stuff online.
Speaker 3: I mean, it started very simply. I think I always
Speaker 3: tell people it's the the ideas usually not the thing
Speaker 3: that decides whether it works it doesn't work. It all
Speaker 3: comes down to execution and people, and bad ideas can
Speaker 3: work and good ideas could fail. And the idea was
Speaker 3: quite simple. People weren't really able to buy diapers online
Speaker 3: at normal like Walmart target prices. It just didn't exist.
Speaker 3: If you went on Amazon, which was one of the
Speaker 3: only places selling diapers, there were ten dollars more in
Speaker 3: Amazon than they were in Walmart, for example. And it
Speaker 3: just seems strange to me. I'm like, it's kind of
Speaker 3: a pain. You have babies, you got to go out
Speaker 3: to the store, you come back. Why is it so expensive?
Speaker 3: And I think in the early days of e commerce.
Speaker 3: They just marked up a box of diapers because they're
Speaker 3: heavy and it costs a lot to ship. And that
Speaker 3: was kind of like just like the very simple, simple approach.
Speaker 3: And the thinking at the time was, well, why are
Speaker 3: diapers in Walmart and Target a lost leader? Why do
Speaker 3: they not make any money in diapers? And people in retail,
Speaker 3: because I didn't know retail at the time, said well,
Speaker 3: that's because they drive people into the store they have
Speaker 3: to get diapers, and when they come in for the diapers,
Speaker 3: they buy everything else.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting.
Speaker 3: So if they can be a loss leader for brick
Speaker 3: and mortar, why couldn't they be a loss leader online? Now,
Speaker 3: the loss albeit was a lot larger because you had
Speaker 3: to pay for shipping, right, but you also had a
Speaker 3: lot more products online than in the store. So it's
Speaker 3: the same thing. If I can lose lose a dollar
Speaker 3: and go in to Walmart and make two, great if
Speaker 3: I lose ten dollars online on a box of diapers
Speaker 3: and make twenty sort of the same math, right, And
Speaker 3: so that was the big vision is let's sell diapers,
Speaker 3: deliver them overnight at Walmart prices, build a relationship with parents,
Speaker 3: and then sell them everything else.
Speaker 1: I mean on that point of entrepreneurship. I mean, you
Speaker 1: talk about this a lot, in this notion that the
Speaker 1: struggle is real and you embrace it in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. And how does that come up as you
Speaker 1: mentor people?
Speaker 3: I always tell peopleople see like the successes, say, oh
Speaker 3: you had one successfullized with two three, and now it's
Speaker 3: wonders working again. Like you make it look easy and
Speaker 3: it's anything but easy. I just want people to know,
Speaker 3: like I feel like I'm eating glass every day and
Speaker 3: just hoping that it doesn't get I don't get cut
Speaker 3: on the way down, like every day. That's what it
Speaker 3: feels like. And it's the entrepreneurs that don't get down
Speaker 3: on themselves and think I'm a failure? What am I
Speaker 3: even doing this for? I can be doing other things,
Speaker 3: Like once your brain goes there, you're done, Like it requires.
Speaker 3: Being an entrepreneur is going to You're gonna face really
Speaker 3: tough times. And it's those that go into what I
Speaker 3: call the sixth gear, where you literally give it every
Speaker 3: ounce of energy you've got more than one hundred hours
Speaker 3: a week. Your brain is focused and dialid in on
Speaker 3: exactly what you need to do, and you can couple
Speaker 3: that with the ability to take risk and try things
Speaker 3: and move very, very very quickly, and be comfortable with uncertainty.
Speaker 3: If you've got those attributes as an entrepreneur, you're gonna
Speaker 3: be okay, You're going to figure it out. But it's
Speaker 3: not easy. It's really really hard and hiring. And I
Speaker 3: take a lot of pride in being more on the
Speaker 3: empathetic side of being a leader, because I think at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, you can only do so
Speaker 3: much as an individual. It's about the team and you
Speaker 3: have to create the right culture. Culture in a startup
Speaker 3: is not ping pong tables and stuff like that. It
Speaker 3: really is about how you treat people and the value
Speaker 3: system of the organization. That's one part of a framework
Speaker 3: that I've created called VCP, Vision Capital, People, and I
Speaker 3: think as a startup founder, you need to focus the
Speaker 3: vast majority, if not all, your time, thinking about VCP,
Speaker 3: vision Capital and People.
Speaker 1: I want to frame this in the context of Wonder
Speaker 1: because it's such an interesting company. So what does that
Speaker 1: vision say for Wonder?
Speaker 3: So the vision says, we want to create the super
Speaker 3: app for meal time anytime somebody wants to eat a meal, breakfast, lunch,
Speaker 3: or dinner. They'd be able to go to the Wonder
Speaker 3: app and whether it be food delivered hot to their door,
Speaker 3: whether it be a Blue Apien meal kit, whether it
Speaker 3: be an oven ready meal. Eventually in the future, sure
Speaker 3: groceries with recipes. It could be booking a reservation to
Speaker 3: a restaurant. Even like anytime you want to eat, you
Speaker 3: pull up the app. And then in the future, when
Speaker 3: we are covering all of your meal occasions, we can
Speaker 3: track your health calories, fat, protein, vitamins, we can give
Speaker 3: you a health score. We can use AI to meal
Speaker 3: plan based on a budget and how your lifestyle, how
Speaker 3: you operate. Some days Friday Saturday, you want food delivered
Speaker 3: to your door. You don't want to do anything. Sometimes Wednesday,
Speaker 3: Thursday it's an oven ready meal, you just throw it
Speaker 3: in the oven. On Monday, you're willing to do some
Speaker 3: cooking and make it fun and get a meal kit delivered.
Speaker 3: So that's really the big vision for.
Speaker 2: So tonight, I'm in the Upper West Side, I want
Speaker 2: to have dinner. If I go to the Wonder app,
Speaker 2: how many restaurants and how quickly would dinner get to
Speaker 2: my house?
Speaker 3: So right now we've got twenty five restaurants live on
Speaker 3: the Upper west Side on the winder app, and you
Speaker 3: can order from all the restaurants and a single delivery
Speaker 3: and a single checkout, so everybody in the family can
Speaker 3: order from a different restaurant. All the food will be
Speaker 3: cooked and delivered with our own delivery network in under
Speaker 3: thirty minutes, and the food's going to come hot because
Speaker 3: we won't deliver more than six minutes and so from
Speaker 3: the time it leaves the kitchen til tom it gets
Speaker 3: to your doors maximum six minutes in the Upper west Side,
Speaker 3: So this food's coming hot. It's great quality, get multi
Speaker 3: restaurant ordering, it's on time, it's accurate. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot of benefits of vertical kind of creation.
Speaker 2: Have you got from some of the consumers that have tasted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's been We have some of the
Speaker 3: best chefs in the world on the platform. Jose Andres,
Speaker 3: Bobby Flay, Marcus Samuelson, J. J. Johnson, Mark Murphy, We've
Speaker 3: got Nancy Silverton, We've got a great group of chefs.
Speaker 3: The chefs are I think, really love wonder and the
Speaker 3: customers do as well, So we get really really high
Speaker 3: marks from customers and the overall experience.
Speaker 1: Before we get too far into the current, go a
Speaker 1: little bit back to the past, because it feels like
Speaker 1: so much of what you're doing with Wonder what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing as investors really does come from those
Speaker 1: early entrepreneurial days because you're going up against massive companies.
Speaker 1: Like what are the lessons that you take from competing
Speaker 1: with the Amazon, for instance?
Speaker 3: I think the ability to take risk and understand where
Speaker 3: you are on the risk spectrum. So the lower the
Speaker 3: probability of success, the more risk you need to take.
Speaker 3: When you have a high probability success, you take less risk.
Speaker 3: That's why a big company they're not taking legal risk
Speaker 3: or any kind of risks like that why things are working.
Speaker 3: It's good when you're a startup in your early stages
Speaker 3: and you talk to a lawyer. They shouldn't be giving
Speaker 3: you the same advice about whether you should do something
Speaker 3: or not do something when you're a startup versus a
Speaker 3: big company, But lawyers tend to give you the same advice.
Speaker 1: It is what it is.
Speaker 3: You as an entrepreneur need to be able to understand
Speaker 3: that the biggest risk you take as a startup is
Speaker 3: you're going to run out of money and die. People
Speaker 3: often underestimate the risk of the status quo and they
Speaker 3: overestimate the risk of change, and entrepreneur has to be
Speaker 3: the opposite.
Speaker 1: Do you remember a time when you had to take
Speaker 1: a bigger risk than maybe you were comfortable with.
Speaker 3: Well, i'll tell I mean, i'll tell you when there's
Speaker 3: an easy example. Two years ago, we had four hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty trucks on the road and we had tested
Speaker 3: a brick and mortar and the brick and mortar was
Speaker 3: doing really well, and felt like that was the future
Speaker 3: of the company. Better eternal capital, more profitable, more scalable.
Speaker 3: But we only had one brick and mortar. It was
Speaker 3: tested for a month. We had four hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: trucks on the road that were working really well, and
Speaker 3: customers loved it. Investors, press, employees, everybody loved the trucks.
Speaker 3: But you have to acknowledge and be completely objective and say, okay,
Speaker 3: it's still a startup. What's the probability you continue with
Speaker 3: the truck business? And then you got to always be
Speaker 3: the objective and looking for opportunities to take risk to
Speaker 3: increase the probability success. And when I saw that brick
Speaker 3: and mortar I said, that's it. That's going to improve
Speaker 3: the probability of getting a big outcome, the big outcome
Speaker 3: much more scalable, got it much higher return on capital,
Speaker 3: more profitable, and so just felt like that was the
Speaker 3: right But still in that position, if you're in a
Speaker 3: big company, do you literally tell employees, press shareholders, these
Speaker 3: trucks that have been working, that we've been talking about
Speaker 3: for three years, We're going to stop it, take revenue
Speaker 3: to zero, sell the trucks, and start over with this
Speaker 3: brick and mortar based on one month's worth of experience.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm talking about. And now when I did it,
Speaker 3: people said that's crazy. And now today, fast forward, we're
Speaker 3: sixteen months removed from that, people are saying, I can't
Speaker 3: imagine us not being in the brick and mortar business
Speaker 3: and being in the truck business still. So as an entrepreneur,
Speaker 3: the key learning there is being really objective and thinking
Speaker 3: the trucks are working, and thinking, oh, we're great, don't
Speaker 3: take that risk. Things are good. When things are good
Speaker 3: in a startup, you still have an eighty percent chance
Speaker 3: of dying, right, Like, that's just the way, that's just
Speaker 3: the nature of startup, right And so you have to
Speaker 3: like be you have to understand what you're dealing with
Speaker 3: and factor that into your decision making. That is really
Speaker 3: really important, and it's the objectivity coming up.
Speaker 1: Mark discusses selling the companies that made him famous as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur and what he learned working inside Walmart and Amazon.
Speaker 2: And Mark, I've heard you say, you know, putting the
Speaker 2: car in front of the horse. Talk a minute bit
Speaker 2: about that.
Speaker 3: As an entrepreneur, you've heard the phrase don't put the
Speaker 3: cart in front of the horse, and I think people
Speaker 3: sort of trained to think that way, like don't get
Speaker 3: ahead of yourself. I think, as an entrepreneur in the
Speaker 3: early days, because the risk of it not working is
Speaker 3: so high or the risk of it working is so low,
Speaker 3: that there's a benefit to putting the cart in front
Speaker 3: of the horse to sort of like flush things out
Speaker 3: faster and get the answer faster than you ordinarily would. So,
Speaker 3: for example, when I was actually at the bank, I
Speaker 3: started this financial Risk Management certification exam the FRM with
Speaker 3: my colleague Lev and I was twenty four years old.
Speaker 3: There was no certification exam for financial risk managers like
Speaker 3: a CPA and things, and I just thought like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's create a certification exam. And friends would say, well,
Speaker 3: you can't do. Who's going to take your exam? Like
Speaker 3: you're a twenty four year old kid, They're not going
Speaker 3: to take your exam. So I said, all right, good point.
Speaker 3: So we created like the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Speaker 3: It was an association. We said, oh, the association will
Speaker 3: give the exam. They said, yeah, but you just created that,
Speaker 3: so how does that work? So I said, good point. Okay,
Speaker 3: so this is putting the cart in front of the horse.
Speaker 3: Rather than go through this whole like build an examination,
Speaker 3: bring in professors, all the things that you would need
Speaker 3: to do, you basically just put on the website. In
Speaker 3: one weekend, here are all the topics, here are some
Speaker 3: books to read. The exam is in May in New
Speaker 3: York City, and it's five hundred and fifty bucks if
Speaker 3: you want to sit for the exam. How's it? One weekend,
Speaker 3: put the cart in front of the horse. Started getting checks,
Speaker 3: one check, two checks, three checks. I think it was
Speaker 3: thirty four checks that we got the first year. So
Speaker 3: we said, all right, I guess we got to I
Speaker 3: guess we got to create this examination.
Speaker 1: Then you get horse.
Speaker 3: Now then you get the professors, then you put the
Speaker 3: exam together, then you administer it, and then you do it.
Speaker 3: And so that's just a great example of like you
Speaker 3: don't know huntil you do it. So how do you
Speaker 3: take the biggest step you can take with the minimum
Speaker 3: amount of effort and time to kind of flush out
Speaker 3: the answer as quickly as possible. So that's the technique
Speaker 3: that that's to start a whole company, But inside of
Speaker 3: a startup, inside of a big company, there are lots
Speaker 3: of opportunities to sort of like very quickly put the
Speaker 3: cart in front of the horse, to learn something that
Speaker 3: could dictate the future strategy of the of the organization.
Speaker 3: And so that's a good good lesson there.
Speaker 1: So with the sale of diapers dot com it goes
Speaker 1: to Amazon. That's the story in and of itself. Some people,
Speaker 1: having gone through that successfully, it'd be like, yeah, entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: done it. Maybe I'll go go do something else. What
Speaker 1: was your mindset as an entrepreneur? What did you learn?
Speaker 1: What had you learned at that point? I guess that
Speaker 1: sort of fueled you and about the role of an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: I sold diapers dot Com Amazon, and I wasn't I
Speaker 3: made generational wealth as I had nobody in my family
Speaker 3: ever made money before. But I was depressed and my
Speaker 3: co found at the time of Vinnie Burr, we basically
Speaker 3: both felt the same way. And after the money was
Speaker 3: wired to our bank account, we sort of said, like,
Speaker 3: we should be celebrating right now, and we're both like depressed,
Speaker 3: and we went and we had a drink and we're
Speaker 3: just like, man, Like, it just goes to show you
Speaker 3: it wasn't about the money. Like the mission that we
Speaker 3: had set out was kind of like crushed with the
Speaker 3: sale to Amazon, and we had just really big dreams
Speaker 3: for what that could be and it was kind of over.
Speaker 3: Even though it was a great exit. We made a
Speaker 3: lot of money and Cheryl's made a lot of money,
Speaker 3: it was depressing and so I felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: there was just some unfit finished business in e commerce.
Speaker 3: We had learned so much, had new great talented people,
Speaker 3: had access to capital, and went after it with Jet again.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the reasons why I think
Speaker 3: we were able to grow so fast and have all
Speaker 3: this happened in twenty six month period was because we
Speaker 3: kind of felt behind. It was like diapers would have
Speaker 3: been here by now, had, we just stuck with it,
Speaker 3: and so there's a little bit of catch up. I
Speaker 3: kind of regret kind of going as fast as we
Speaker 3: did on Jet because I think some of the core
Speaker 3: principles that I have around around entrepreneurship were sort of
Speaker 3: broken during that run. But again, it was a successful
Speaker 3: exit for shareholders, for employees, and for Walmart.
Speaker 2: So Mark, I want to go back to Jet dot com.
Speaker 2: You went from deck to exit in about twenty six months.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. There were some articles around the time that
Speaker 2: they may have overpaid, but as somebody said from inside
Speaker 2: the company, is one of the greatest acquisitions that Walmart
Speaker 2: made because along with Jet came Mark Lori and they
Speaker 2: wanted to kind of turbo charge their e commerce business
Speaker 2: that were doing around eight billion dollars a year, which
Speaker 2: was pretty pretestrin for that, and you took it with
Speaker 2: your team to about fifty billion in like four years.
Speaker 2: How hard was that and how the heck did you
Speaker 2: do that?
Speaker 3: We had a great team at Jet that really helped.
Speaker 3: Once I came into Walmart and just assessed the situation
Speaker 3: was we needed to change the narrative. I think the
Speaker 3: narrative around Walmart eCOM was they were losing big time
Speaker 3: to Amazon. I think as a result, it was challenging
Speaker 3: for Walmart to recruit great people into e commerce business.
Speaker 3: I think Walmart had had great people on the store
Speaker 3: side of the business, a very big, profitable business, but
Speaker 3: on the eCOM side, Walmart wasn't known as a tech company.
Speaker 3: I probably made a series of decisions that any one
Speaker 3: decision on its own, if you just isolated and studied,
Speaker 3: it would have been a bad decision. But the sum
Speaker 3: total of a bunch of bad decisions actually turned out
Speaker 3: to be a really good decision. One bad decision would be,
Speaker 3: you know, we had the cost to acquire a customer
Speaker 3: and the lifetime value, and typically you want to have
Speaker 3: the lifetime value of a customer some multiple of what
Speaker 3: it costs to acquire, so that you were pay to
Speaker 3: acquire and then you make a return.
Speaker 1: And it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Well, they didn't have a very high lifetime value of
Speaker 3: a customer, and so the cost to acquire customer in
Speaker 3: the LTV was sort of upside down. You wouldn't typically
Speaker 3: recommend spending marketing into an upside down scenario, but my
Speaker 3: view was we need to get top line moving, and
Speaker 3: so the first year we grew. I think again spending
Speaker 3: marketing I would say inefficiently, not something that on an
Speaker 3: isolated decision would recommend, but getting that business growing, and
Speaker 3: people were like, wow, what's going on over Walmart e commerce?
Speaker 3: And there are some tech folks, so investing the styles
Speaker 3: are growing. So a series of decisions like that interesting
Speaker 3: that helped change the narrative because at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, I knew we had to have a clear
Speaker 3: vision as VCP. We had the capital from Walmart, what
Speaker 3: we didn't have was the people, and so how do
Speaker 3: we change the narrative to bring in the very best
Speaker 3: people in the world. And I think we were able
Speaker 3: to bring in some amazing people that really helped transform
Speaker 3: the business. So I was sort of helped be the
Speaker 3: catalyst to it, but it was the great people we
Speaker 3: hired that ultimately executed and grew that business.
Speaker 1: And what is it like for someone who thinks so
Speaker 1: much about entrepreneurism and startups to be in I mean
Speaker 1: talk about the belly of the beast. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: in literally one of the largest companies in the world.
Speaker 1: How do you create a playbook that is both true
Speaker 1: to you and successful inside this massive organization?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I was fortunate that Doug McMillan and
Speaker 3: the board Walmart, so so here are the keys, we
Speaker 3: need help on e comm and sort of they definitely
Speaker 3: let me run the first couple of years to kind
Speaker 3: of get a lot of these things in motion. I
Speaker 3: think maybe they wish that things happened faster than they did,
Speaker 3: but it was it was tough to turn over that
Speaker 3: that team and culture and get that moving. But I
Speaker 3: think in order to be successful there you have to
Speaker 3: be a sort of missionary. And just like when we
Speaker 3: sold the company, I just felt like I was in
Speaker 3: service to Doug and the board and I was going
Speaker 3: to do whatever I could to do what's in the
Speaker 3: best interest to Walmart. It wasn't about me, It wasn't
Speaker 3: about the team, wasn't about Jet. One of the first
Speaker 3: decisions I made was to merge Jet and Walmart into
Speaker 3: one e commerce site. It didn't make sense to have
Speaker 3: too that. Of course, didn't want to see my baby
Speaker 3: get merged in, but that was the right decision. So
Speaker 3: I think if you go into a big company like
Speaker 3: that and you approach it with this idea that like,
Speaker 3: whatever's in the best interest of the company, they acquired us,
Speaker 3: and you put all your thought and effort into that,
Speaker 3: then good things will happen.
Speaker 2: And Mark just one simple question. I mean for me,
Speaker 2: it's always intriguing. And when you build a company from
Speaker 2: deck to exit in twenty six months, how does Walmart
Speaker 2: get ahold of Mark? I mean you to get an
Speaker 2: investment banker and says, hey, Walmart's interested or Amazon's interested?
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 3: Both Amazon sale and the Walmart sale? No banker? Wow.
Speaker 3: So it was just direct relationship to start off, as like, hey,
Speaker 3: they meet each other, and then you know, I think
Speaker 3: when I met Doug, I really liked him and he
Speaker 3: wanted to get e commerce moving and go after Amazon,
Speaker 3: and I did too, and so we just sort of
Speaker 3: bonded over that. And when we were.
Speaker 1: Doing you had a cop I mean you had a
Speaker 1: common foe in Amazon.
Speaker 3: Fair. That's fair. That's fair.
Speaker 1: Because your experience with Amazon, I mean they bought you
Speaker 1: and shut it down.
Speaker 3: I didn't have the best experience selling diapers dot Com
Speaker 3: to Amazon. A much better experience selling Jet to Walmart,
Speaker 3: That's for sure. Learned a lot of lessons in both cases.
Speaker 1: What was the main lesson you took from Amazon? From
Speaker 1: the Amazon acquisition to the Walmart acquisition.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting. This is more nuanced. But it's really
Speaker 3: important to me, is you know, I didn't like the
Speaker 3: Amazon culture, like it wasn't a good fit for me.
Speaker 3: One of the things I came to appreciate about Amazon
Speaker 3: and about culture in general, is the most important thing
Speaker 3: is consistency hiring people that excel in that culture, like
Speaker 3: that's the most and Amazon was really good at that.
Speaker 3: So they knew exactly, this is our culture. These are
Speaker 3: the kind of people that are successful, and they weed
Speaker 3: out people that aren't and they find the people that are.
Speaker 3: And so even though I disagreed with the culture, it
Speaker 3: actually was a good culture. One of the big things
Speaker 3: was and they are not afraid to say this, and
Speaker 3: that's what I respect it. They don't like social cohesion.
Speaker 3: They think you should be very direct and tell somebody
Speaker 3: if you don't like that, just tell them right to
Speaker 3: their face. I don't like that. That's bad, And I'm
Speaker 3: a little bit more like social cohesion empathy. I would
Speaker 3: never tell somebody straight like that. I would do it
Speaker 3: in a much nicer way. They say, no, that takes
Speaker 3: too much time. It causes groupthink to waste the time,
Speaker 3: get to the answer, get to the point. Some people
Speaker 3: love that. Some people operate to say just tell me,
Speaker 3: I don't care, don't beat around the bush, don't sugarcoat it.
Speaker 3: I like to sugarcoat things because I think people human,
Speaker 3: they have emotions, and again I'm trying to get the
Speaker 3: very best out of people. In my view is if
Speaker 3: people feel respected, they feel you're not being kind of
Speaker 3: sent not treating and bad that they're going to develop
Speaker 3: a loyalty and there's a trust that develops, and from
Speaker 3: that trust and loyalty comes that fire to want to
Speaker 3: like be a missionary and want to like help push
Speaker 3: the company forward. And that's what I'm looking for. Mark,
Speaker 3: you and I talk.
Speaker 2: About trust, and I've learned this from you. Talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about your philosophy about trust and how you
Speaker 2: usually get more trust from people that work with you
Speaker 2: or for you by trusting more.
Speaker 3: It's just starting from a place of trust until they
Speaker 3: do something to lose that trust. Yeah. But the three
Speaker 3: core values at Wonder and a Jet trust, transparency, and fairness.
Speaker 3: And I truly believe that if people feel trusted and
Speaker 3: you're transparent with information not the sort of your bad
Speaker 3: it's here's all the information. Here are the financials, here's
Speaker 3: the state of the company. Here's where we are, here's
Speaker 3: our compensation system, here's what everybody makes in the company.
Speaker 3: Be super transparent and they have that, and you're fair
Speaker 3: and equitable, and you create a safe working environment. If
Speaker 3: you have that set of values, then I think people
Speaker 3: find it very empowering and that's how you get the
Speaker 3: best out of people, in my view, and soays always
Speaker 3: look to create that sort of empowering culture.
Speaker 2: So Marklorie, what advice would you give a ten year old,
Speaker 2: a twenty year old, a teenager that wants to be
Speaker 2: the next Mark Glory? What advice would you give them?
Speaker 3: I get this question a lot, and people say, if
Speaker 3: you had to do it over again, what would you do?
Speaker 3: I get really lucky. But I think I've noticed them
Speaker 3: two daughters twenty four and twenty one years old, and
Speaker 3: so they're asking me for advice a lot. And I
Speaker 3: think people at that age, in their teens or twenties,
Speaker 3: they feel like they need to have it all figured out.
Speaker 3: What do I need to do? It's very mechanical. Do
Speaker 3: I need to get this degree to then do that,
Speaker 3: to then do this, and do I do this and
Speaker 3: would what I would say to everyone at that age
Speaker 3: is it's important that you just focus on learning as
Speaker 3: much as you can. Finding mentors or people that have
Speaker 3: been successful that you respect in terms of their values.
Speaker 3: You'll learn a lot about leadership, a lot about people,
Speaker 3: lessons that you don't even realize you're learning just to
Speaker 3: osmosis being around the person that will pay huge dividends
Speaker 3: in the future. So I think I think learning is
Speaker 3: really important. I think also following your passion. So like
Speaker 3: when my daughters asked me, like, I don't know what
Speaker 3: to do? Should I do this? Should I? It's like,
Speaker 3: what do you want to do? What's going to make
Speaker 3: you happy? Like this month, next month, and like, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I want to do that, this would make me happy,
Speaker 3: But then I won't be able to get here or
Speaker 3: get there, and I just sort of disagree with that philosophy.
Speaker 3: I think follow your passion if you've got to drive
Speaker 3: something burning inside you that you want to go do
Speaker 3: or learn about, like the time to do it is
Speaker 3: when you're young, and that'll take you places that you
Speaker 3: have no idea and can plan out. But I do
Speaker 3: know if you follow your passion, you surround yourself with
Speaker 3: great people, you learn, and you give more than you take,
Speaker 3: and give without any regard for what you might get
Speaker 3: in the future. And if you come from that place
Speaker 3: of giving, surrounding yourself with great people, learn, follow your passion,
Speaker 3: I think magical things will happen.
Speaker 1: Great Mark, Thank you so much, Thank you, Mark, Thank you.
Speaker 4: The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals.
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