So here's the question. When I was 16 years old and I ran out of money, and the Sheriff showed up in my house every day with a new lawsuit, and then I turned that near-bankrupt experience into being the largest close-out company in the world, was that luck? Or was that hard work and just unrelenting personality? Global sports company, Fanatics. Have you heard of it? Yeah, founder and CEO. That's Fanatics CEO, Michael Rubin. Very, very, very successful business guy. We got a special guest in the building. Michael Rubin.

One and only Michael Rubin. Come on. What are the three things you think of launching into a space and how to really take over market share?

Great question. I'm going to let you into my brain right now. This is something I've definitely never talked about. It's fascinating to even examine it myself. I got lots of companies trying to kill me, so that's my normal day.

You were about to lose it all.

I was about to lose it all. Most importantly, and this is the most important thing, every failure leads to your next success. How do you make better luck? I think be a better human. That's the truth. Being a good human, you create your luck. Hard work and be a good human.

What would you say are the habits of the millionaires, billionaires who are successful that you know who are actually healthy over the ones that are empty inside?

I'll give you one example that's jumping to the top of mind for me, which I don't think I've ever talked about before, but it's super interesting, is...

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Michael Rubin in the house. Good to see you, sir.

Hey, good to be here.

The legendary fanatics parties that I've been to, Super Bowl parties, have been an amazing experience. I was just telling you before, but everything that I feel like you do, from the people I know who know you, and what I've seen from the outside, looking in and being at some of your events, you do it at a world-class experience with world-class people. So I just want to acknowledge you, first and foremost, for having a vision of excellence and for constantly striving to live up to that standard in everything you do. I'm sure you'll say, Well, we've got a lot of work to do, and we're not there in all these different areas.

You know me well already.That's exactly what I was thinking. I already know. We haven't done two. We got a lot of work to do, and we're just getting started. But look, we always want to put our best foot forward in everything we do. And we never think we do anything well enough, and we always want to keep figuring out how to do it better.

Absolutely. Well, it's inspiring to watch.Thank you.Congrats on everything. One of the things that I've seen you talk about is that you were really bad in school. You didn't read that well, just like me.I.

Don't read that well today.I.

Still don't either. I had a 7:40 on my SATs. I'm not sure if that was the worst than yours.Wow..

I finally met somebody who did worst.Let's I got a 780.I.

Don't know if that's something.I feel great.I'm killing it here.I don't know if that's something to celebrate.I'm killing it here. But I couldn't get into college because my SAT was so low. So I remember feeling very insecure around my abilities, my lack of ability from school, and it affected my self-worth. And I wanted to ask you this. You dropped out of college at one point, struggled in high school, probably all the way through school. Did you ever feel a lack of confidence, an insecurity, or a lack of self-worth because of school? Or did always have confidence to go after what you wanted in business?

Honestly, not really. For me, everything you said was right. I considered myself to be an awful student. I barely graduated high school. I went to college for one semester. I actually posted my... Somehow they went back and found my Vilanova report card. I had a 1.87 in the one semester that I went to school. I couldn't then and still don't really read I haven't read a full book since ninth grade. I haven't really read part of a book since ninth grade. We all learned different ways. For me, the one thing I was good at was business, and I always loved it and enjoyed it. I always put everything I had into that. Being a student, failing in school or college didn't actually bother me because I always just had this huge desire to just give it everything I had in business. Even having failures in that didn't bother me. Really? Because I just felt like You get back up and do it again. You were an athlete. What happened when something goes wrong, you just work harder. I just felt like I could always outwork, out hustle everybody else. A lot of people are taking...

Failure has never bothered me. I've dealt with it my whole life in different things. I'm always like, whatever, I can overcome it. I can keep pushing through it. That's just my personality.

But did you ever tie then your self-worth to your business success or your net-worth? As it went up? Or sometimes if it went down or you had failures, did you ever tie it to that?

Again, this sounds weird, not really. I've been through, even in somewhat recent times, I mean, I almost got margined out, which means pushed out of my company in 2009 during the financial crisis. I was near business death, and I thought it was fun. I'm like, This is a fun adventure, man. I like this. I like the action. It just didn't It bothered me. I liked more playing the game. That was what really got me excited was figuring out how to try to get more wins than losses, how to try to put my best foot forward. I don't know. I'm a pretty thick skin person. I've always been that way. Maybe it's like different people grow up with different ways. My parents always beat on me to do better. When I mean beat on me, like, Hey, you can do better. Not physically beat on me. I had two parents that were amazing I got amazing parents. Both were, one was a veterinary, one was a psychiatrist, but they'd always say nothing was ever good enough. They were always pushing me. I had that attitude of it didn't bother me to be put on, picked on, have things go wrong.

I had every learning impediment. I had a speech tutor and this tutor and that tutor. Because I had all these things. I had a lot of learning disabilities before people knew what ADD was. I had the worst ADD is dyslexia. I'm a 10-year-old. I'm very dyslexic today. But all this stuff for me, it's just like, I don't know. I just had fun playing the game.

When you failed, did you ever get down on yourself or did you look at it as an opportunity of what you could do better next time?

Always what you can do better next time. I think anytime I've had a really bad moment, I just say tomorrow is a fresh day. If everything went wrong for me in a day or something really happened in business or something I really didn't like. I'd always be like, All right, tomorrow's a new day. It might feel bad in that night. By the way, things always... I don't sleep that much, but even sleeping five hours, it's a new day. You feel like things feel less intense. You just go deal with the issue the next day.

What was the biggest loss you had in business, would you say?I've.

Had so many.Really? Yeah. My first big loss in business was at 16. That was my first real loss. I grew up as a... You remember, I was an entrepreneur before being an entrepreneur was cool, before it was normal, before technology. I started with a...Ski shop, right? Yeah, people know the story. I started with a ski shop, and By the time I was 16, I had the ski shop. I started with a little ski tuning shop in my parents' basement. First, a couple of thousand dollars when I was 12 in business. Then when I was 13, I did $25,000 in business by borrowing inventory from other ski shops on consignment, paying them for it as I sold it. But I opened my first ski shop when I was 14. It's crazy. I killed it the first year, 14. Killed it the second year at 15. Then I got cocky at 16. The way the story goes is it didn't snow that year. When the season was over, I had $80,000 in inventory and $200,000 in bills. I literally got sued. That That off ski season, that spring, probably a hundred times. The sheriff used to come.

I told the story a few times, but it's actually amazing. The sheriff used to come to my house every Monday through Friday. She'd be there with lawsuits every Monday. I would before school, Hey, Michael, here are your lawsuits for the day. From the hundreds of vendors that I owed money to. I thought my world was over and I completely failed and I was a disaster. I ended up hiring a bankruptcy lawyer who actually told me you had to be 18 to incur debt legally. I didn't know that. I ended up settling my debts for $38,000. It was the only time I ever went to my parents for money. And by the way, that was a ton of money to my parents. Barring $38,000 was a huge amount of money. And they said, One condition, you go to college. But you have to be a normal kid afterwards. You tried. I did try.

Was it one semester or one year?

Well, first, what happened was, good fortune. So I settled my debts for $38,000. And literally, weeks later, another ski shop because everyone was going bankrupt because it didn't snow that previous season. They went bankrupt. They had $200,000 inventory, got auction for $13,000. So I went and I bought that inventory at a government auction for $13,000. I went back to my dad and said, Hey, great news. I'm going to be able to pay you back the $38,000 more quickly, but I need to borrow another $13,000. He looked at me, he's like, Are you out of your mind? Do you want to borrow another? I'm like, No. Your mom and I lent you $38,000, which is a huge amount of money, so you would agree to go to college and get out of this business thing that doesn't make sense. I said, Okay, but I'm going to probably go to prison because I made a commitment to a government auction of $13,000. So I went door to door to my neighbor's. Come on. Knocking, Hey, got a great opportunity for you. I need to borrow $13,000, but I'll be able to pay you back with a lot of interest.

Someone lent me the money at $1,000 a week interest, which I thought was a great deal. Now I'm like, This is amazing. So what I do, I got the yellow pages and literally When I went to ski shops, started calling every ski shop and said, Hey, I've got these Dolemite boots, these Dyna-Star skis, these Rosinal skis. I was able to sell $17,000 of equipment within three or four weeks, pay back all the money. I had like 80, 90% of the inventory left. Wow. And that literally, three years later, I was the biggest buyer and seller of close-out skis and footwear doing $100 million a year in business making $10 million. So my point is, near-death experience, almost going bankrupt at '16 to a '21, number one in the world of buying and selling athletic footwear and closeouts and skis in the world, all from that near disastrous failure. So it didn't bother me. It was a fun ride. When I was getting sued every time, It was just like, okay, great. If I go bankrupt, maybe I'm an idiot. I don't know. I'll figure it out. None of that bothered me.

It's almost like if you didn't have that failure, you wouldn't have had the... I guess, you wouldn't have seen the opportunity of like, Oh, I can go and buy these things at discount and then sell them for more in the future and build a business that way. 100%.

That's the way life is. That's why I really believe every failure leads to your next success. We have things that don't work out every day. Yes, I was sitting in a fanatics meeting going through our quarterly review in our commerce business, and the guy who took over our international business who's just doing a great job, went through three things he tested that all didn't work. He was talking about, great, this didn't work, this didn't work, this didn't work. Here's doing about it because that's part of how you grow in business. A lot of people are scared to take risks and scared to fail. Then if you do that, then you never go anywhere.

Wow. But someone might be listening or watching and thinking, well, that's easy to do as a teenager to take these risks because you got your parents to support you. You're living at home. They're going to take care of you if you fall. But what about a big risk when you had a lot to lose? What was the biggest failure in your 30s or 40s?

I'll give you the best story I think of off the top month. In my head. In 2009, during the financial crisis, my company was a public company called GSI Commerce. I was not paid. I was paid a pretty small amount of money on a relative basis to run the company. What I actually did was I borrowed money against my public company's stock, and then I invested in a bunch of different investments. That was great. From '99 until 2008, till the financial crisis. When the financial crisis happened and my stock went from being worth $250 million personally to being worth $25 million over a few months. Then the banks went from lending 50% to lending 15%. So I went from being able to borrow $125 million to being able to borrow whatever, $3.7 million. Basically, it's called almost getting larger data of your company. Yes. Wow. At one point, the most money I owed… It was actually one of the big banks. I don't want to name them to not embarrass anybody. But I owed $50 million a peak, and it worked great for eight years. Now, they keep saying, Hey, you got to pay the loan down.

You got to pay the loan down because the stock's going down and the rate, the advance rate is going down. I got the loan down to about $3 million, fighting with everything. I couldn't get it. I was done. I was calling all my friends, Hey, can I borrow a million here? Can I borrow... Because I was running a big business. In 2009, no one was lending anybody money. So it was like, I was getting notes from everybody. So I enough investments to get the loan from 50 million down to 3 million. 3 million, I'm done. No one else will give me money. You had no more cash. Nothing. By the way, my networth wasn't at this point, maybe at a $10 million networth. I think this was only 15 years ago. My stock that was worth $250 was now only worth $25 million. I couldn't sell it. The bank was basically going to sell my stock and basically throw me out of my company. Push you out of your company. Push me out of my company. There was one person who I seated in their hedge fund, and I invested, and I had maybe $4 or five million dollars with them.

I called them 50 times to get the money back, and they wouldn't give me. They said, If I give the money back to you, I have to give it to other investors. On the 50th try, if me calling and saying, Hey, man, I need this money back. I'm going to get thrown out of my company. On the 50th try, he said, You're so annoying. I'm going to give you the money back. Don't call me ever again. I got the money back, paid the bank off. They were to start selling the stock the next day. Come on. I sold the company 18 months later for $2.4 billion to eBay.

How much was the company worth at the time? Because your stock was $250, but how much was the company?

The company was down to $250 million. We sold it 18 months later for $2.4 billion to eBay. And you were about to lose it all. I was about to lose it all. You wouldn't have me here today if that happened, by the way. Because I wouldn't have then sold my company to eBay, had that be a great transaction, buy back fanatics, turned into what it is today, which is just in the beginning phases. But my point is, I was just unrelent. I just quit. Wow. The funniest thing about the whole thing, it was almost a little bit psychopathic. During the whole period of time, I was calm as a cucumber. I remember my now ex-wife saying to me, Michael, are we going to be okay? Like, you know? Like, had I got thrown out of my company, I don't know. I couldn't afford the house I was living, and I couldn't... I'm like, We'll be fine. Don't worry about it. She's like, How are you sleeping? I'm like, Wow. I sleep my five hours. I'm good. My four or five hours, I'm good.

What do you think? I mean, most people would be stressed out, anxious, and worried if they lose a little bit, let alone losing almost all of it. What do you think were the three skills that you learned growing up, whether it be from your parents or sports or whatever it was, what were those three skills, let's say, whatever it was, what were those three skills, let's say, supported you through the growth phases, through the losses, through the high stakes, last minute, lose it all, all of that?

What were those three skills? I just want to tell you one thing I'm thinking about, then you're going to have to ask me that again because I'm ADD.Go ahead. I have a question that I love asking people. The answer is like 50/50. When you're in business, while you meet a lot of really successful people. I always ask people who really made it big, made tens of billions of dollars. If you could be 10 years younger in the same health and give up everything you had 100% of your money, would you? The answer gets like 50/50. Really? My answer is 100% yes. I would give I have. Okay? To just be 10 years younger because I feel like I could do it again tomorrow morning. Wow. Okay? Now, a lot of people look at me like there's a screw loose in my head. They're like, How would you possibly give up everything you have to be 10 years younger? For me, I'm like, Okay, I'm 51. If I can go from 51 to 41, I'm in. Take it all. Zero hesitation. Wow. That goes to my mindset of I can always figure out how to do it.

I don't know. While I'm humble, I'm confident from that That's interesting.

Speaking of that question, I'm 41. If you could go back to 41 right now, or if you could give advice to your 41-year-old self, with all the wisdom and experience you have now, what advice would you give him?

I give advice to I was a 41-year-old, so.

Where were you at 41?

Yeah. I was really just beginning in building fanatics. I would say, I think I've always known you need to get the best people in the world around you to really I've always known that, but I didn't always practice as hard as I do today. It's the unrelenting skill of getting the best people in the world to work with and then making sure they work really well together because you can get a ton of really smart people, but then they don't work well together. You play football, right? It's a little better than football, but go to a basketball court. Get three superstars to work together.Not always easy.That's tricky. Okay? To me, I think it would be, don't just say you're going to get the best people in the world. Make sure you get the best people in order to get them to work together. The other thing, if I could give myself advice, in a consumer business, everything starts with the consumer or in our case, the fan. Make everything... We've always thought about the fan, but I think I wasn't... The same way you said certain things, but you weren't unrelenting enough. To be unrelent on everything we need to do needs to make the experience better for the fan.

We've delivered on that sometimes and not delivered on that other times. I think being unrelenting and delivering that, which is something now that I have so much excitement about it. I I feel like every day is a new day to just be better at what we do, and there's so many things we can do better.

Wow. Okay, so those are two things. How did you, over the last 10 years, how did you learn to enroll, attract, convince the greatest people to come work with you? And how did you get them to separate their egos and work together?

Yeah, well, first, I think when you're going to get great people to work together, you need to make sure you don't... You need to make you get people that don't have egos that are too big. Because if people have... Tom braided always says to me, I've heard him say this so many times, there's only so many people you can pass the ball to. People need to know their role. To me, You need to get people who want to do what they do, and you need to get people who want to work well together. Some people you could find are amazing athletes or amazing business people, but maybe they're not going to be a great fit to us. That, to me, is about backdoor reference checking. Because I'm always... If I meet someone I want to hire, I've never asked somebody for a reference once in my life. Why? Because the world's small. If I'm interested in somebody, I'm going to find five people that know them. Not one. I'm going to ask five people or 10 people, and I'm going to figure out what I need to know about them and figure out... When you meet someone, it's like 50% of it is what you see in that interview.

The more important 50% is what you're doing back to a reference. Interesting.

How do you find the right people, first off? How do you even recruit them or know where they are? Then what type of conversation you have when you first meet with them where you want to get them to buy into your vision and be a part of your team or your company? What do you say to them? What's the vision conversation?

To start with, I'd say we have a...

Especially a big executive, a big leader.

I'd say first, the world is really small. We're always able... Whenever we've got a key role, we'll do two things. One, we'll run a search with an outside search firm or internal search team. But then we'll also do a lot of work on that search yourself. Because to me, if you just hire a search firm, you just do it internally without working it hard, you're going to get a less good result. To me, if you work out of it, and then you also have great professionals doing it, you merge those two together, you're going to get a better result. That's smart. Generally, for me, look, at this point, I think it's us more trying to figure out quickly whether someone's interesting to us Then if we think they're interesting to us, then we'll go to start selling them. So generally, if I'm trying to get to know somebody, you generally see, I asked you a thousand questions first. Then if I'm interested, I'll start selling you. Got it. If anyone's listening to this and they see me in an interview, they'd say, That's what you'll see. I go from asking a lot of questions if I'm not interested.

I quickly get myself out of it, extract myself from that meeting. If I am interested, then you'll hear me getting you excited about the opportunity. That's That's really cool.

The thing that I feel like a lot of people know about you, at least from the outside looking in, is that you are one of the most connected people in the world to other successful business leaders and billionaires, the world's there is athletes, artists, musicians, and cultural icons. They see this from your Instagram and videos that you have out there online. And if people have been to your parties, they see that as well. I went to your party a couple of times. It was just who's who of everyone is there. I'm curious. A lot of people desire to have fame, success, and money, but not everyone knows how to be happy and have healthy relationships. I have a healthy relationship with themselves while they acquire those things. You've been around all the wealthy, successful, and famous people. What do you wish people knew about Fame, success, and money that you don't think they truly know about?

Well, I think, first of all, I'm very lucky to have all the exposure that I have to so many great, different, interesting people. For me, that's how I learn. Because I don't learn from reading because I really don't read. I learn from listening. That's what I enjoy the most doing is getting so many people with different backgrounds together and always picking up different things from people all day long. If you say different people, I Everyone's got their strengths. That's my strength. That's my superpower. It's the ability to just be a sponge to other interesting people around me. That happens every day in my life that I'm just picking up data points that make me better. Last week, I'm sure you saw, we launched with Travis Scott and Cactus Jack, our collab with Mitchell Ness and Fanatics, and just flying with Travis. Travis is a good friend of mine, but flying with Travis from LSU to Texas, and the Texas and the Texas to USA, and just the questions I'm asking and the conversation we have. We're each learning. He's doing the same thing for me, by the way. We're each learning from each other. I'm doing that in every interaction, no matter what, someone's background.

It could be someone who just started a job at Fanatics. By the way, I learned so much from my teenage daughter about how they consume information differently than how I consume information. I'm always just picking things up from people. I start from place of I'm very fortunate to have such great exposure that teaches me what I learn every day. What I would say is some people really struggle with it more than others. Look, I've had Some of the financial success. I'm the least well-known person of a lot of people we do business with. Sure. Some of the biggest athletes, artists, celebrities in the planet. I think for some people, it's really natural, and for other people, it's hard to deal with it. For me, I'm just always paying attention to study. Even, look, in the last few years, I'm probably more well known. But for me, it's like I'm humbled by it. Anyone who wants to stop and ask me a question, who wants to I know how lucky I am. But I think it is... I think to answer the question directly that you asked me, I think for some people, it's really hard.

It's an adjustment. A lot of times this stuff can happen quick, too. I know. Look, you You played at a really high level. From an athletic perspective, some people can deal with this great and others can't.

What do you think it is about... I know you probably... You don't need to name. I'm not asking you to name names, but I know you know people who are billionaires and super famous that are happy, that are truly happy and grateful human beings.

And a lot that aren't.

And a lot, probably more, that are stressed out, overwhelmed, bad relationships, constantly living in fight or flight or competition versus collaboration. What would you say are the habits of the millionaires, billionaires who are successful that you know who are actually healthy, which is probably a smaller percentage, over the ones that have it all but are empty inside?

I'll give you one example that's jumping to the top of my mind for me, which I don't think I've ever talked about before, but it's super interesting. All of my good friends know this about me. You could get a lot of people would say they know this me. I want all my friends to do great and do better than me in any way they can because I'm living my dream. Why would I know when I want to do great around me? A lot of people feel like they're in competition. It's one thing, you're playing football, kill your competitor. You're playing basketball, kill your competitor. If I'm in business and there's someone I'm competing against, that's a different story. When I'm talking about in life, I want my friends to do amazing. I'd say, I have certain friends where, Hey, if you could make X or I could make 50 times that, I'd rather you make X because I'm good and I'm happy and I'm having a great time and I'm living my dream. I think it's the healthy people want the best for the others around them. One of the things I see a lot of time is cultures of people trying to bring people down.

I hate that. I'm always saying this to my daughter because she's 18 and she's developing the same way I'm still developing. I'm always like, You want to always be inclusive, bring everyone together, have people want to do great. That's what I say is an interesting observation. A lot of people don't want people to do great around them, and that's really weird to me.

You think that's what makes them stressed and miserable or unhappy or have broken relationships? Is it because of that?

Look, people think, it's just so hard to say. I'm going to get ridiculed for saying this. But people think money fixes things. It doesn't. You're either going to make the most of your life or you're not. So obviously, with money, you have more access to so many things. But I tell you, I outwork just about anybody. I'm still working 18 hours a day, 350 days a I love it. And that for me is fun. And I enjoy it. I'm learning and I'm growing from it. So it's not like I'm trying to... People see like, Oh, they see the white partying. Great. So I do three fun... I do the white party, this Finax World War Party, and together, the Reform Alliance, which when the fad was up, we started last year, The Gal. We do three big events a year. You see, those are fun moments people see. But my life is about grinding day in and day out. I like that.

That's not every day.

The grinding is every day. No, I mean, the grind is every day. The grind is every day. Three days a year. Yeah, of course. Do I do a fun Christmas I used to be able to make fun of my friends publicly. Now, we have to do it privately because I get ready to cool if I make fun of my friends now. What do you think is the energy that drives people?

Again, I think a lot of people For me, for people that want to learn from you or someone that's like you with a massive net worth, big businesses, all these different things, I think a lot of people want to know, How can I do that or my own way of doing that in my life while also being healthy and happy? Because they see a lot of people get burned out. Celebrities who are young, not know how to manage the success of the fame, billionaires go bankrupt, all these are just do things that maybe don't align with the values. So I guess I'm curious about, do you think it's possible to be actually healthy and happy be, have good relationships with your family and friends, and be uber-successful? And if so, what does it take? What are the key habits that your friends who are that do on a consistent basis?

Yeah, I I think it's 100% doable, and a lot of people do it. But some people... Look, the thing with a lot of really successful people is what makes me... I'll say it does make me a little bit different is barely having made it out of high school, not having gone to college, not reading. I'm not an intellectual. I'm just like a street smart. I still feel like a kid, even though I'm not. A lot of really successful people, they're naturally, they're awkward, they're not. They're a little uncomfortable in their own skin. You've gone out, you've had all this success, and you're not sure how to deal with it, to be still a normal, logical, rational person. If you listen to the conversations I have with my friends, we make fun of each other the same way we did 10 or 20 years ago. I take more shit from people. I take more shit than I give, although I give a lot of it as well. I think it's just like, look, I see the greatest people in the world do great with Aaron I see a lot of people that get huge success, and it's really hard for them.

I say, Keep the eye on the prize. For the way you're asking the question, it's a really small percentage of people. They're super lucky. I appreciate that. Look, I know it's easier to say that, but people say to me all the time, Anyone who stops me always trying to be as nice as could be. People say, Why? Why is it like that? Because I'm lucky. If I'm not, I'm a bad person. There's a problem if I'm not like that.

That's probably what keeps you fulfilled and happy.

Yeah. I'm rooting for everybody, too. I'm rooting for everyone to do great.

I think that's a key differentiator because most people that I think are unhappy with success or with what they have at a big level, they're competitive in terms of they don't want to see their friends and they think of more, it's win, I have to win and you have to lose, versus, how can we all win together?

Yeah. Look, I know a fair amount of people who have gone down in business because you just You meet a lot of people. A lot of them have handled it great, and some haven't. It just depends who it is. It just depends who that person is. The thing I like to see by the time is someone who can do it two or three times. You get one success, it could be luck. You get two or three successes, that's proven skill. By the way, you win one Super Bowl, you're really good, but you win a couple, you're really special. At the never level.

Speaking of Super Bowl, what do you think? You're close with Tom. I'm supposed to be interviewing him next week. Out of the vent, what's something about him that makes him so unique that other people, other athletes, don't have?

He's one of the most unique individuals in planet Earth. Look, he's become a really close friend of mine in the last few years. I'll tell you that when you see his determination and grind, you see why he had the success that he had. He's very athletic. He's not the most athletic guy relative to whoever would be the most skilled or whatever. He did it based on will to I see. You're going to text me after and you're going to say, I fully get it. This guy is a beast, and he's going to win whatever he puts his mind to. When I look at him having won seven Superballs, I'm like, Yeah, I would expect that. He's more determined. By the way, I talk to him at 5:30 in the morning more days than I talk to him at 9:00 in the night. He's so disciplined. He's so focused. You see it in business, too. He's one of the greatest human beings, one of the hardest working human beings. I will tell you, he's had no luck. That's all will to win. Wow. Ask him to tell you the story of how he came back in 28:03.

You'll probably give me a little bit of a PG version of it. But tell him I told you to ask him. I will. But it's just like, it's his personality. We had a meeting with our biggest investors, and I asked him to come and interview him in front of our investors. You literally are there. You're just like, I want to get up and go kill everyone. He inspires you like that. It's like, I know people are some of the greatest athletes in the world. They just don't have the heart. He's got the heart.

But it sounds like you've got the heart in life and business. How did you develop that heart? Or is that from parents? Is that from kids? Is that from not being good in school? Where did the heart come from? And how did you sustain it for decades?

I think it's a combination of, one, not being good at so many things. I was the worst athlete always. I was always picked last on every team. It was a joke. You go to pick teams as a kid, I was always the last kid picked. I was that uncoordinated.

How did that make you feel?

That a little bit, maybe angry. But that fire was good for me. It just made me want to work harder in business. Okay, if I was going to be a loser in sports, let me be a winner in business. Let me go to what I do best. The school thing bothered me less. I thought it was like, I was like, I was like, Farrish Buhler in high school. It's just like, and by the way, I didn't... You could be out of here. Yeah. I did a co-op program In high school, where in my 11th and 12th grade years, I got out of high school at 11 o'clock in the morning to work at the ski shop that I owned. And 50% of my grades came from the grade that my landlord gave me. He just said, Pay my rent on time. I'll give you an A on your co-up. But I still almost didn't graduate high school because I couldn't pass chemistry. I literally couldn't pass chemistry. That stuff was all motivation to me. Even if something makes me mad or sad, it's motivation. Period, end of story.

Motivation.

Tommy is exactly the same way. You're going to see that next week. Yeah.

But what makes you motivated, though? And how do you sustain motivation to be driven to overcome all the obstacles that come on your way every single day. You're working with big business challenges.

People are trying to kill me every day. The bigger we get, people are trying to kill me every day. That's just the reality. You close one eye and there's someone coming for you behind. Yeah, That's business.

How do you stay calm, though, during the chaos and stay motivated when everyone's coming after you?

Well, if you're not calm, you're going to make worse decisions. I think you need to be calmer during the most important times. Also, by the way, something I've always believed. I actually put something out when I put Tom in front of our thousands of employees. We were talking about how do you deal with the most high pressure situations. Always be calm during these situations. Interesting. You Look, I think some of it you're born with it, and some of it you can just muscle to. But the most interesting thing, I guess, is there's never a time I need to work less, and I've never worked harder, because to me, business is my drug. That's what I love because I'm overall good at it. By the way, there's lots of things I need to improve my game on, but I'm overall good at it. I don't know. Let me ask you a question. If you're a professional athlete, do you want to stop playing sports? Do you want to play as long as you can.

I wanted to as long as I could. I got injured, which made me stop.

Most athletes want to play as long as they can. For me, the great thing about being in business, I think I'm going to do this sport for the rest of my life.

You don't have to worry about injury, holding your back from playing. I hope not. You could still be injured and be on the phone and negotiate deals.

I worry about mental injury, which some might argue I have already.

You and me both, man. One of the things that I really appreciate about you is that obviously you've built massive businesses, but you care a lot about philanthropy and giving back as Make A Wish Foundation, you guys did a big partnership with them, which I think is really cool. But also the Reform Alliance, I think is really inspiring. It's really about criminal justice reform. Growing up, my older brother went to prison for four and a half years. And just watching what happens to inmates in prison after prison is a challenge.

It's supposed to be rehabilitation. Yeah, exactly. And in a lot of cases, it's actually getting you stuck in the system. And I know there's a lot of people who will say, Oh, once something does something wrong, they need to be in prison. That could be the right answer in a lot of cases. But the point of prison is to help rehabilitate someone, not to entrap them for the rest of their life. Exactly.

So I really acknowledge you for not just wanting to make the most money and build the biggest business, but also for trying to make change in different areas with kids, with prison reform, all these different things that you do. And a lot of these things are public, and you have partners on all these things. But I'm curious, what's the thing that people don't know about you that you're most proud of? The stuff that's not out there online, the stuff that isn't public information, what's the thing about you that you're most proud of that people don't know?

Well, first, you brought out the things that we try to do to make the world a better place. That's our responsibility. If you're in the position that you have a responsibility to try to make the world a better place, I don't think we can do enough of that. I really feel that way. I also will tell you something that I didn't know. Remember, I was a person. I've been very public about this. Until 2017, I would always give money to people that were important to me, causes that were important to me, always helped financially. I never did the work. My work was just giving them money. Then obviously, I went through the experience that everyone knows with my friend who went to prison for not committing any crime. Seeing that firsthand, being in a courtroom, watching someone go to prison for two to four years for not committing any crime, for going for a probation violation, for popping a wheel on a motorcycle, I felt powerless and hopeless for what was happening to my friend for the first time because I couldn't help him. I think putting the work in for that changed my whole perspective because up front people thought...

And what everyone said to me is, Don't get involved with this. It's going to hurt your business. Everyone told me that. I just went with my instincts of like, I had to be there together with... We had another friend that helped as well to help make a... To help fix this. And the most interesting thing was a couple of years later, when the pandemic started, we did this giant fundraiser called the All-In Challenge. It was pretty spectacular. We raised $60 million for food insecurity, and we were sure it was going to hurt our business and ended up helping our... We thought, Hey, we're going to be asking our customers to donate to this at a time when there's no sports from our sports company. It's going to hurt the business. What actually happened was it created a halo for our business. One of the fascinating thing. Interesting. If you do the right thing, some way, somehow, you're going to get paid back in karma eventually. I didn't know that before. Really? I will tell you, I just gave money my whole life until 2017. Then when we put the time, and I spent real I spend real time, not money.

I spend real time, in addition to money, trying to do things to make the world a better place. Those things, whether they pay dividends to yourself, how you feel, whether it's the people you help, it's whether there's overall just good karma that comes back to you, they always benefit in the long run. I'm always saying to big business leaders, Man, do the right thing. Personally, helping people, you'll get that paid back for sure. I've seen that a thousand times over.

It may not happen this year or right away.

You're building up chips. You're building up chips.

So you used to give financially, but now you're giving me more energy time.

I gave zero energy, only money until 2017. To me, the question is, Hey, you're someone that's important to me. You have something that's important to you. How can I write you the check as quickly as possible to get you out of my office so I can go back to business? Then I had this life-changing experience with my friend, and that really opened my eyes. Then we've done so many charitable things since. It's like, Do we make a wish? Oh, my God, would it not? By the way, if you don't care about make a wish, I say this all the time because make a wish is the greatest thing we're involved with. No one could say they don't make a wish. You could say you don't believe in criminal justice reform. There are a lot of people that say, Hey, they don't care about your brother. They don't care what happened to my friend. They made a mistake. They should go rot in prison. I've heard that a thousand times been said to me. I don't agree. I believe we should help people get a second chance, a third chance. But that's up for debate to who you want to debate it with.

But helping kids who are terming their ill? Right.

If you don't like that, you're a band. I'll say right now, you're a bad person. If you don't like Make A Wish, you're a bad person. Like, tune me out of your life. Okay? What an honor it is for us. I remember I was in an All-Star game and we had these kids and we brought them to All-Star Weekend with Make A Wish. We do all the sports things. We do together with Make A Wish and Finax. We do everything together in sports. I said, these kids, you guys are so gracious to me. I want to thank you because you're inspiring me. You're inspiring our company. All the people that get to work with Make a Wish, they're inspired by you. It's such a great thing to do. That's beautiful, man.

But what would you say, is there a moment or something that you're most proud of that people don't know about?

It's probably the... Look, there's so many little things you do every day to help people that you never talk about. You want to do it to make a difference for people. I care about that because I think I'm lucky. So if I'm lucky, I should be able to give back in whatever way I can. Absolutely.

How do you think someone creates more luck in their life?

I'm a pretty superstitious person, which might sound weird, but I'm a pretty superstitious person. But I'm the type of person that can't… If my team is winning, I'm not moving. I'm weird like this. I've got some weird superstitions. Don't switch seat. If I'm playing blackjack in a casino, I'm not switching up. I believe in keeping what's working going. How do you make better luck? I think be a better human. That's the fucking truth. Be a good human, create your luck. Hard work and be a good human.

Yeah. Do you ever feel guilty for your luck?

No. No.

You ever feel I feel appreciative. That's good.

I feel appreciative, but I don't feel guilty. Yeah. The things I would feel guilty about would be if I miss something, if I let somebody down, that's where I feel the guilt.

Why do you think some people who have created more opportunities for themselves sometimes feel bad for the success they've created? Have you ever seen that with anyone?

Not much, to be honest. I think, look, at the end of the day, you make your own luck. Anyone who says, Look, to be successful in business, you need to be smart, have a good strategy, get the right people, outwork your competition, and luck to that. You need luck to go with that. It's a component, but I think you make your own luck, too.

Do you think if you would have chosen a different business model or a different industry, you'd be able to create what you've already created by now? Or do you think a lot of it is timing, the luck, being in the right place, right time to get you launched? But obviously, you have to keep sustaining it year after year, and you could go out of business like you almost did in 2009. But do you think you could also just do this in a completely different industry at this time as well?

I do, really. I do. I know it sounds obnoxious and confident, but I do. I'm not going to lie about that. Here's the question. When I was 16 years old and I ran out of money and the Sheriff showed up in my house every day with a new lawsuit for three months straight, and then I turned that near your bankrupt experience into being the largest close-out company in the world at age 21, doing $100 million and making $10 million a year. Was that luck? Or was that hard work and just unrelenting personality? When I almost got margined out of my company, pushed out my company in 2009, was that luck? Or was that my just unrelenting attitude? I would say I made my luck in those situations. Now, still, I might leave here, look at my phone, and someone might tip me off to something that I need to know about competition or something. But it's like, again, great relationships. Build great relationships. That'll make good luck for you, too. That's great.

A lot of people here who are watching and listening, there's a lot of entrepreneurs here. I see people struggle as they don't have a lot and they start to earn more and more. If they go from zero to 100,000 in sales, then to a million, then 10 million and beyond, you see people's energy start to shift as they earn more. Did anything shift for you energetically inside or emotionally when you went from your first million to 100 million to a billion?

Yeah. What was that? I got hungrier. Come on. I'm just being honest. And by the way, I shouldn't say this, but I think it's lame for the people that got more lazy and more complacent. I have a friend who we will not name or give any hints to, but the person made tens of billions of dollars. I was sitting with them once. I won't talk about where, so I don't call anybody out. And they were just like, they were done. They didn't want to do it again. I was so uninspired by that. I was like, This is lame, man. I left like I had no interest in that person.

Interesting. I see. But what is there besides hunger of wanting to create more, give more, all these different things, contribute more, was there an emotional energy shift of like, Oh, this is more exciting. I have more money in my bank account or my networth. Now it's like I've got a different feeling or identity about myself? Because I think a lot of people's identities shift when they hit certain financial markets or exit companies.

Mine have never. People might call on that.Go for it.Yeah. I will tell you because I'm always paranoid about what's going to go wrong. If you stay paranoid and you stay hungry, then I don't feel those things. When we do great things that we happen all the time, I'll be like, Okay, we can celebrate it for 60 seconds. Let's get right back at it. But I think it's more the fear of… I recognize, we have three businesses today, FinTech's Commerce. I built it from a $250 million business to a $6.3 billion business. I look at that and some people would say, Oh, that's great. I'm looking at what are all the things we need to do to reinvent the business, to get from where we are today, to get to our next chapter. For us, it's about we haven't been good enough from a consumer experience. We need to be great, not good. Getting 99% right if you get 1% wrong when you have 70 million transactions a year, that ain't good enough. We're worried about how do we become just greater product where we haven't been greater product. I'm always thinking about how to… I'm not saying, Oh, This was some great accomplishment.

I'm saying, Man, here are all the things we don't do right so we can be that much better in the future. In our gambling business that we've just launched now in 20 states with Finax Sportsbook, I'm like, Hey, I got FanDuel and DraftKings that own 80% of the market. I want to figure out how I take real share from them. I'm friends with both of them. Great companies, but we're playing a game. I want action. Let's go, baby. In the collectibles business that I just got in three and a half years ago, I got lots of companies trying to kill me. That's my normal day. It's people trying to get me from behind all kinds of things going wrong. So you just got to be smart, be disciplined, be thoughtful, prioritize, and focus.

Wow. So when you go into a new business, like the gambling business, let's say, and there's already different market share leaders. There's a couple, two or three people that are having the market share. What is the mindset you go into? We're going to launch into a new space. Sure, we've got a big customer base already, a big brand, lots of money, resources team, but they own the market right now. What's the thought process of saying, We're going to go into this. And what are the three things you think about of launching into the space and how to really take over market share?

It's a great question. I'm going to let you into my brain right now. This is something I've definitely never talked about. It's fascinating to even examine it myself every day, which I do. When we started in the merchandise business that we call FinTechs Commerce, we were the third player in the market. And through a lot of hard work and innovation, we became the number one player. Still was so much to do. We have so much to be better in that business.Of course.Okay. But you're number one. We are. And in the collectibles business-Side note there, how long did it take you to go from third to number one after launch? Third to one was probably only three or four years.

Three or four years. Okay. Sorry, go next. Collectibles.

By the way, 24/7. I'm worried about everything. Powered out about everything. Obsessed. I think what's more interesting for me actually is where we are today. How do we completely reinvent ourselves? Because now we're only focused on how do we become the best consumer company in the world. Anytime someone gives us shade over something we screwed up or something that didn't go well, it actually hurts me. It bothers me. I sit up, I'm obsessive. I sit up and look in social media. I don't look for people saying great things. I look for the negative comments. Are they right or wrong? If they're wrong, I don't care. If they're right, how do I use that to be better? I'm sending to people all day long saying, How did this happen? How do we be better? Just to use it to make us a better business. In the collectibles business, we weren't in the business three and a half years ago. Now, we're the top player in the business and we're innovating and we're making the consumer experience and the collector experience so much better. We're marketing that hasn't been done before. It's fascinating. But the interesting thing is, I'd say we're the leader in each of those two businesses.

In gaming, I said, Okay, look, gaming, online sports betting, and iGaming is going to be a really big business long term. Potentially, if we had that same type of leadership, it would be the best of the three businesses. But today we're not in it, but we have some real strategic advantage. We We do 110 million customers. We do 70 million transactions a year offline and online. We use that to cross-sell customers into gaming. But now, I came with the idea three years ago. We're now launched a year ago. Just as of today, we're in 20 states, 19 under the Fnatic's brand, one under the Point of Point brand. We'll be all under the Fnatic's brand April 30th. Everything will be on one brand. What we've been focused on is obsessively building the best product. Then once we do that, getting ready to cross on, the most interesting thing is, I don't know sitting here today, am I going to win or not? Now, I have that confidence that I've done it in commerce, I've done it in collectibles, but I have that concern, hey, you got Fandle, DraftKings, MGM, great companies that are really good competitors.

But I love playing that game. That, to me, is so fun. Not knowing exactly what the Am I confident? Yes. But do I know? No. What do I need to do? I need to build a great product. I need to have great relationships with my customers. I need to leverage all the assets that I have at Fnatics, the relationships with 110 million the relationships with thousands of athletes, and use that to build our business in a way that's great for everybody. But I don't know what the answer is yet.

This is fascinating.

By the way, if you're listening, make sure you give us a chance. Go to Fnatics Sportsbook. Get on the app, try it out. I think you're going to like it.

There you go.My only pitch.I like it. So when you're thinking of a new space to launch into, you did the commerce, you did the collectibles, you did now gaming, are you thinking, this is a really interesting space I could see see it blowing up, we should get into this. Is that part of the philosophy?

So what I'm generally thinking about is, is it a big enough business to be worth our time?

Which is probably a billion dollar minimum.

I'd say at this point, we need to think it's a billion dollar profit business long term, not revenue, profit. Okay. Number one, is it a billion dollar profit business long term? That's actually our number. Number two, is it completely synergistic with the rest of our business? Most importantly, this is the most important thing, can we make it better for the fan?

Then what's already out there. Yeah.

Interesting. By the way, in some cases, what's out there has not been good enough, so better is still not good enough. Still not great. We've been there certain times. But at this point, it's like, Can I do something that's better for the fan? Is it completely synergistic? Is it a big opportunity? If we don't get yeses to all three, we're out.

That's interesting. I love getting inside your mind now. Now, when you're thinking of like, Okay, here's gaming, batting all these different things, are you then checking out all the competitors that are out there, the leaders?Maniically.So you're downloading the apps, you're checking out, you're researching it, how many of their business model, everything.

I'm talking to everybody, knowing the mankind. Really? I'm meeting with the companies, I'm meeting with the analyst. I'm meeting with employees. I'm interviewing people to learn. I'm learning everything I can.How long are youI can't read.

Right, right. So you're interviewing everyone to research. How long will you do that research phase four? Is that a few months? Is that a year before you decide we're going How do you think all in?

It depends. There's sometimes... I've researched media for years and said we're not doing anything. Really? I researched ticketing and said, We want to offer tickets to our customer. We don't want to be a ticketing company. We just want to work to have them for our loyalty program, for our most important customers. I do a lot of research that nets out on not doing it. Interesting. For me, right now, we have three businesses, Finax Commerce, Finax Collectibles, Finax Gaming. They're all massive opportunities. I don't want to do anything new. Anything I do is to support those three businesses, to be better in those three businesses, to make the fan experience better.

Wow. You'll research yourself. I'm sure you'll have teams researching as well.

But I'm a big... I will say on something new, I'm the biggest researcher myself always. That's always how I'm working.

You have to love it and be excited about it.

Look, we just started a new business called Fanatics Events, which is basically, there's so many of these local trading card shows, and they look like their flea markets from 30 years ago. Mom-and-pop stuff. Then I went to Comicon. I'm like, This is incredible. How do This for sports? Then we said, We're going to launch this. By the way, I did that. I walked in the Comicon 10 minutes later. I said, I'm launching Fanatics Events, and I'm hiring the CEO of Comicon. Really? I got this guy in my office, and we hire this guy.

You hired him just like that?

I made the decision in 10 minutes. There are other times I'll look at something for three years and say, We're not doing it.

How did you get the guy to leave Common Con to come run your business?

What would be more fun than building the biggest and best sports event in the world with Fanatics? I mean, think about this. You want to... I mean, Common Con, Fanatics Fest. Fanatics Fest can be so much more fun. That's cool. We're launching our first event, August, Javitz, New York City. I bet you we have 100,000 people come to this with the best athletes in the world, best brands in the world, all the sports properties doing incredible stuff. That's amazing. That's exciting. It's fun.

But I still sweat it.

I worry every day. Is everyone going to show up? Is everyone I need to be there? Can I actually be there? It's no different. You still have these crazy thoughts each night. Sure.

I wanted to ask you about the Fanatics Athlete Immersion program. Can you share more about that?

Yeah. Look, first, without the incredible athletes that play in the field, on the court, on the ice every day, we got no business. I got nothing. I'm in a different industry. We're super appreciative of that. One of the things that I'm always getting people reaching out to me and asking me from current athletes, professional athletes is like, Hey, I'm interested in business, or, Hey, I want to figure out how I could build this business. We thought we were the perfectly positioned to create the dream intern program. Basically, we played around with it for several years, but in the last couple of years, we said, We want to go on and do this. We're now taking 60 professional athletes, three classes of 20. We got a class coming up in July that will be NBA and NHL players. We did-It's not the NFL one you did. We just did an NFL and WNBA one, and then we did one in November that was baseball and WNBA. We'll have a curriculum from having the CEO of Mitchell Nest talk to them about how to build their own brand, the person who runs our social impact talk about how to make in the world a better place, to our CFO talking about how to build the business, to our strategy talk person, how we decide what to do and what not to do.

Then we bring an outside guest. We have the CEO of Verizon, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch, the CMO of Visa, Robert Smith, who's the richest Black guy in the world, come in and talk to these players about how they built their businesses. So it's like fanatics giving them the day course of everything that we can show them and then getting great outside speakers. It's amazing. Watching the look on the player's face, they love going through it. We do it for one week and it's a great program.

That's amazing. There's so much stuff people can find out about you. I've got two final questions for you, but I want people to follow you on Instagram, Michael Rubin on Instagram. Where else should we go to be of support or service to you and learn more about and everything you're up to?

Well, first, we love... Look, we're in the consumer business. I mean, go tell us what we do well and what we don't do well. And by the way, we like when you tell us we do well. We also like when you tell us we don't do well. That's helpful input. That makes us better. Where do they do that? Where do they send that message? People a lot. People email you. They hit the company. Sometimes they hit social. But we're looking at everything and we're trying to fit anything. By the way, look, we're in the consumer business. We have so many transactions. We talk to so many customers.

70 million transactions a year?

Yeah, and we don't get everything right. If we don't get everything, we own that. We want to be better. We love feedback. We love the good feedback. I went out. What we did last week with the launch, it was like the feedback was amazing. There are other things that we'll just Look, we'll have issues that go wrong with things, but we always want that feedback. That's how we get better and we learn and we grow. But we care so much.

That's beautiful, Michael. I want to acknowledge you before the final two questions for your drive, man. It's inspiring to watch your drive at this season of life with the success you have. What do you mean?

I'm a kid.

I mean, I'm a kid? You're a little older than me, at least.

I don't believe that. Making me feel like an old man. You're a kid.

You're older chronologically, but biologically, you've got the heart of a kid and the drive of a kid.

Always.

But the thing I appreciate about you from my interaction is just your desire for feedback and your coachability and saying, How can we get better? We're not perfect. We make mistakes. We want to get better. Send us feedback. And I think that's one of the things that people can take away I say a lot from this interview, but great athletes that sustain it for years are coachable, just like in business, great individuals, great people in relationships. And so I love that you say, I know I'm not perfect with all the things we do, but I want to get better at giving me feedback. I'm not going to take it personally. I'm going to say, Awesome. Thank you. Now I'm going to go and prove it. And I think that mentality and mindset is one of the keys that has supported you continually in making you greater products, greater business, greater teams, and all these So I really acknowledge you for your drive.Thank.

You.your.

Commitment, just your passion for business. You make business look fun.It is.You.

Make it look exciting.I don't make it look fun. It is fun.It is fun.

Well, some people, it's exhausting. And they're drained, and it takes a life out of them. But you show a different side of it.

Then you missed an opportunity.

Exactly.

By the way, when you played football, was it exhausting? But it was also fun.

It was a lot of fun, man.

But it was also exhausting. But I don't know.

It's energy.

One person could say it's exhausting, another person could say it's fun. I look at it and say it's fun. Exactly. It's exhausting sometimes, but I love it.

Yeah, exactly.

But thank you. Look, I think that is a strength of mine. I got lots of weaknesses, but that's a strength of mine. I'm loving every minute of what I do. That's beautiful.

Final two questions. This is a hypothetical question, so bear with me for a second. Imagine you get to live as long as you want in this life, hypothetically. You can live hundreds of years old, and you get to accomplish and create everything you want to create in your life. The businesses, this philanthropy, the success, all of it, it all comes true. But for whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario, you have to take all of your content with you. So this interview is gone in 100 years. Anything you put out in the world of interviews or messages or social media, it's all gone.So.

No one hasThat sounds peaceful.

Yeah, right? But no one has access to your content anymore, the things you said. But on the final day, you get to leave behind three lessons, and this is all we would have of your information and your content. I call it three truths. What would be those three truths for you?

Rolling on this planet for so long, maximize every minute, enjoy every minute. And to me, enjoying every minute is doing what I do at work for the most part. Two, get the right people around you. The right people take you everywhere. The wrong people take you down. So get the right people around you. And by the way, learn from each other. And third, failure is an opportunity. Don't let it bother you. We all fail in life. We all have lots of failures. Take each one of them, learn from it, grow from it. Those three things would be three that I think of right off the top of my head. Those are beautiful, man.

Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

That's a really good question. I would say I would think about two things for me, so I'm not giving you the exact answer you asked me. One would be winning at the highest level, and the second would be doing it the right way every minute of the day.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness. Com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.