Let experts manage 90% of your money and keep 10% to play with.

[05:04]

"We actually found someone to give us $2 million and we didn't know that wasn't enough so we just did it anyway. But he actually started with 11 employees and 31 interns."

[11:50]

"I surrounded myself with, like, people who really know money a lot better than I do, and the way we've done it is like they manage 90% of what I have and then they give me 10% to play with."

[00:23]

"I grew up in Brooklyn: family immigrants, my dad drove Pepsi Cola truck, my mom worked with Department of Social Services. I was supposed to get a civil service job and retire at 65 with a pension and all of that, but for whatever reason, I didn't follow that path."

Full transcript

Nice to be here. It's always, always fun to do this stuff with you, Richard, so awesome. I appreciate it. So I know, last time you were on sh on stage you shared, uh, a bit of your story, um, but if you want to introduce yourself just a little bit, and, um, and I'll start, I'll start jumping into the questions after that.

Sure, um, I grew up in Brooklyn: family immigrants, my, my dad drove pepsic Cola truck, my mom worked with Department of Social Services. I was supposed to get a civil service job and retire at 65 with a pension and all of that, but for whatever reason, I didn't follow that path. I ended up, um, getting into the Cable business before anybody knew what cable TV was. Um, actually, here in New York, I was in Manhattan splicing the cables under the streets for 90 bucks a week, um, but I realized where things were going and I ended up building a big cable system out in Los Angeles and, um, you know, as a Brooklyn kid, you go out to LA, everybody's going to parties and premieres and all that stuff.

So I decided I needed to get into that. So I get invited to the parties and Premier. So I started a TV network called e Entertainment Television which, um, you know to, to me seemed logical. It's people around the world love Hollywood gossip. I mean we did pretty good with how Stern and Kardashians and stuff like that.

And, um, today you know, everybody talks about influencers and there's no bigger influencer or pop culture in the world than e. On any given day, we reach more. If you took all the influences of pop culture in the world and you added up who they reach, we reach more people in any given day. And, um, the company went from the VCS love us because they gave us $2 million.

Start a TV network, which is supposedly impossible, and the company's up around 5.2 billion now. So that's me awesome. Yeah, congrats on that huge, uh huge story. I think everyone's heard of E channel, um, so one thing that I wanted to point out is that we have the last time lar is on stage. We have that on billionaires.

Comom, you can stream that if you want. We're going to ask completely different questions today, but I do want to highlight that what struck me and what I still remember from the last interview was that you had a real focus on, and a strategy around, working smart and not working yourself to death 14 hours a day. You know, some people, like Ariana Huff, say, hey, don't work yourself to death, you have to be balanced. But that's after she worked herself to death for 20 years and passed out and broke her jaw on a desk and you wonder if she only became wealthy because she did work herself to death for 20 years.

So, um, can you comment on that and how you worked smart, not ridiculously hard, although I'm sure you worked hard sometimes? Yeah, no, sometimes I do. But, um, oh, number one, I just hire the smartest people I could find. Um, so typically when I interview for something, whatever that spefic, specific task is, I make sure the person I hire was actually smarter than me in that task.

But I know how to manage them, uh, but other than that, um, I go to gym an hour a day, six days a week. Um, because I see my friends that I went to school with walking, with canes and Walkers and stuff like that and I don't want to go that way. And um, um, I'm actually finally writing, writing the book. People have been asking me to write the book but I'm writing the book with kind of the parts of my life.

But it's going to be a cookbook, so it's going to be the recipes that I learned to cook during the various phases, because I love cooking. In 6:00 to 8:00 every day, I, no matter what I'm doing, I go in the kitchen and I cook myself dinner or I cook friends dinner and stuff, and it's just a, it's a replacement for go having to go into therapy, um, so I I make sure I take that alone time every day. The other thing I do, which a lot of people don't do that and entrepreneurs, is I literally look at all the things that I'm working on every single night and I self assess of these things that I should be working on again tomorrow. Um, most of the time they're not.

Most of the time I go. Boy, I had that idea in the morning. Boy was that, Dopey and I get rid of it real quick, where a lot of entrepreneurs just get stuck in this Follow Your Passion thing and the world changes, the environment changes, maybe it wasn't such a good idea and they spend all their time working on stuff that's not going to work, as opposed to just putting the ego aside and going: okay, he bad idea, next awesome, thank you. Um.

So lots of times we hear, oh, you have to hire really smart people. So youve probably learned some tricks and strategies to that. If you want to find someone smarter than you are in a niche, do you have like a go-to strategy or tactic you could share with your room? Sure, I, I, um, we kind of self-develop a lot of people.

We we take in um interns and, and one of the things people don't realize, with E, when, when we started e, the going number to start a TV network um back then was around $100 million and it was only done by big corporations, we actually found someone to give us $2 million and we didn't know that wasn't enough so we just did it anyway. But he actually started with 11 employees and 31 interns. I had a friend teaching radio television film in University of uh, Texas in um, in Austin, and um, he just sent me 31 interns and they came for the summer. But we, as soon as we went on the air, we just grew so fast that you know half of those kids became vice presidents by the end of the summer.

Um, and never my friend never forgave me for not sending the kids back to Texas. But um, we, uh, we, we give people. I still love interns. I bring in interns um early, we take the best of the interns and we give them kind of lower level jobs and then we take the best of those and stuff.

So, um, basically we get really smart kids. Uh, in the business that I'm in, I have to understand the way people are using Tik toks and YouTubes and all of that stuff. So I I hire people that live that World um, and we've done well, just some interesting stuff. 80% of our company is female, um, and it's not based on any given thing, it's just we.

We hire smart people that we feel we could get along with, and that's kind of the way it's been awesome. So I want to back up a minute to when you talked about looking at things at nighttime and discarding projects that are not a good use of your time. Um, so, so, basically, what you're saying is like some things that got a yes from you after you get into it, you're like, nah, this is actually a no and you get it quickly off your plate. What other time management or mindset, you know, success rituals, could you share with the room?

Well, again, I'm, I'm very much against this. You know, Follow Your Passion thing. I just see so many people go, you know, spend so much time on stuff, and you know I, I owned, um, uh, a domain name called television.com and I thought it was like the smartest. You know, like amazing, I'm going to do with it and I launched it and, um, when we launched it, it was $25 for th000 users that we got from advertisers and then the market crashed and it went to 25 cents.

So the more people that used it, um, the more money we lost and we couldn't figure out. So it really learned me to pay attention to the environment, to the technology, and really think about where things are going and again, put your ego aside and go. It sounded good, things changed. What's next got it awesome? So if you want to get past Gatekeepers for Billion Dollar Plus net worth, people for publicly traded companies, powerful Partners, celebrities, um, what's your suggestion for actually getting their attention and making like a meaningful relationship or actually getting something done?

Um, we use a whole bunch of things I'm doing. Um, uh, just a Side Story with I. I have a big company in China, I. I think we're still the only Western media company that's legally allowed to operate in China. We do film, television, stuff for Brands and all of that stuff. But when Co came, I started doing stuff here in the US again, um, so I call this era of my life.

It's my Kardashian's repentance tour, um, and uh, I apologize to everybody for unleashing them on the world, but uh, they've they've done quite well, but I'm I'm doing. You know, I hear you know, in these things people talk about impact, investing and social good and stuff. Um, all I can say to all you folks is: you got to start putting your money where your mouth is. Uh, everybody talks about it and very few people do it.

Um, everybody still looks at you know. It's. The only consideration I see is the bottom line. Um, we're doing stuff now. Um, I'm doing a, a show called conscious parenting. It's all about being a parent in this crazy world.

Um, we're doing another one called uncancelled, which is all about the craziness of cancel culture and what's that. You know how it's swung to for, um, we're, we're doing, uh, I got a nighttime uh talk show with a woman host and, um, the, the way we pitched that was kind of interesting. I go to the TV networks and I go: hey, how many women do you have in late night TV? And they go: uh, uh, zero.

I go, yeah, and I brought in John lug gu's um production company, John the comedian from the Bronx, and then I you know, after that I go. Well, how many Hispanic production companies you got? They go, uh, I go. I could help you on that one: zero. So, basically what we do: we analyze where we're going to go in pitch and we make sure we check off the boxes before we go in and Pitch it.

Great, uh, we were just talking about nextg strategies and you brought up the parenting Show. Are there any insights you've gotten from that already or any main point you're trying to get across via the show that you want to share with the audience? Well, I, you know when, when you look at when I was B at first, when there's a woman who, um, uh, does all the TED talks on parenting and stuff. When I was a kid, the the slogan was, you know, children should be seen and not heard.

Today it's kids of human beings. You got to start treating them like that, um, so I really begun to dig into it. And when I was born, you know, my grandmother lived upstairs, my aunt lived next door. My mother had the proverbial Village: um, today, kids go away to school. You have the baby in the morning, they hand it te in the afternoon and you have nothing.

Um, uh, but now you have school bullying. You have bullying, school shooting things. You have gender identification issues. It's become incredibly hard, uh, to become a parent, I mean. And then you get to the issue of teaching your kids about money and, um, it's another show. Where're we're doing on financial Wellness for Millennials?

Because my daughter came to me and said she's getting married. Hey, Dad, what's a prenup? I'm going. How do you not know what a prenup is? Don't they teach you anything in school? And the answer is no, they don't teach him anything in school.

So, um, you know, I said to the family lawyer. She came back, she goes: okay, now I understand what it is, but how do I explain this to AJ, her soon to be husband, without him thinking that I'm not doing this forever? Um, so I realize how much emotion is. More than half of the divorces in the US are somehow related to money.

Um, so that's kind of where we're focusing our programming efforts is, yes, we're going to make money on all these shows, but there has to be a component in it where we say: you know what we're actually doing. Something good, great, got it. So, just like dealing with NextGen for the first time, many people in this room have gone through an exit or are preparing to or their goal is to do. You have any insights or lessons learned from your exit that, like you know now you've gone, gone through it like you wish someone would have told you through a fireside chat sometime, like you should have done.

X, Y and Z, yeah, I mean number one. I have. I surrounded myself with, like, people who really know money a lot better than I do, and the way we've done it is like they manage 90% of what I have and then they give me 10% to play with, because sometimes I do really Dopey things. Um, you know things like: uh, you know the ones that don't work are the the greatest lessons?

Um, when in California they mandated you have to have an electric car by 2030 or something. I said I'm going to invest in the people who make the chargings things. Yeah, I've lost 60% of the money on that one, um and stuff, and you know the, the people who take care of the stuff of me. They just look at me and they laugh and go.

You know, have a good time. So you got to surround yourself with really, really smart people and whatever you're going to invest in, uh, my guys have been returning, you know, somewhere between 7 and 8% a year consistently. And you know, when the internet boom, all these booms came, every crypto, everybody, oh, you should put money in Bitcoin and you should put money in that. My guys have just stayed the course.

We do 7, 8% a year without fail. I go to sleep at night, I don't worry, so, um, but with my kids it's actually interesting. Uh, you know, again, I grew up in a pretty strict family and stuff and you know we learned to be, you know, humble about a lot of stuff and with my kids, one of the rules is you're never allowed to invoke the name of your father when you're trying to get something. And my son violated it, um, where he was trying to get in someplace and they wouldn't let him in, and of course, we were watching this on FaceTime or whatever it was, and, um, he did the.

Do you know who my father is? Well, for 5 years he was banned from using his last name, so he had to go from Johnny Namar. He's now Johnny Vegas and he's still going through the penalty. That's a good nextg tip, awesome, um, so you were able to scale E channel massively. I think there's some people here in the room that have successful businesses or they wouldn't be able to come to this event, but they haven't been able to scale it massively.

Um, do you have any tips and strategies? I'm sure you have friends that had decent businesses but never could really scale it. You know what? What's your secret to that? What? What tips and strategies do you have, sure?

Well, we become a world of that's being driven by visual content. One of the things that we've been doing we we consult now to people in every industry, because there's no single place where you don't need visual content. If you're not doing YouTubes and Tik toks and all that kind of stuff, you're, you're leaving a lot on the table. So we actually consult to those people and, and most of it outside of the media world, will we do.

If it's in the media World, we'll do it ourselves, but if it's outside the media world, we we will consult the people on that. Um, artificial intelligence, if you don't know how to prompt learn it, um, it's going to be. You know everybody talks about. You know computer programming and stuff like that. Well, I could take my artificial intelligence programs and I don't have to know how to code or anything.

It's does it for me. I just know how to. I have to know how to ask it the right questions. Artificial intelligence, if put to good use, is amazing. Um, I think our politicians need to catch up to it because there's no rules and regulations for it now. Um, but to me that's where the world is going so great.

I know, with, with each Channel you were able to get, you know, access to movie trailers and stars at pretty much no cost, and it was highly produced content and so, um, that that seemed to be one part that was key to your ability to scale E channel. Was there anything else like two or three components to the recipe that that made it go off? Sure, we? Um.

Some of the stuff we did, which you know, turned out to be really smart. We realized that, um, the Hollywood has stopped being a geographic place. It's really become a mindset, a level of quality and creativity and stuff. So we really concentrated on the entertainment, not just in the US but outside the US. He is now in 142 countries.

Um, I personally, you know, did a lot of that building but I went off um, I had the number one TV show in Russia for 10 years, five days a week, um, and I had to learn Russian in order to do it. Um, now I I have a company in China. I produce only in Mandarin um language and um you got to realize that not just this technology changed, but the geography change. When I started in the business, I do a business plan, I would wait the financials: 95% us and 5% other.

I mean, you didn't even give it a name. Now it's it's 30% us. So you really need to pay attention to, um, you know Russia and China and South America and you know all those kind of places. Again, Hollywood is a mindset, it's not a geographic play. I can make movies anywhere and I can make them on my iPhone.

Great, um, any mistakes that you could share so others could avoid either, while scaling your company, managing a lot of employees going through an exit, any pitfalls to avoid, uh, sure, um, you know, again, it's: they're spending too much time on things that are not going to happen and really not paying paying attention to changes or inevitable changes in technology. Um, again, with AI, everybody's trying to build their businesses on what AI is today, which is a huge mistake. You really need to get a futurist in and say Here's Where It's possibly going to be going and then plan for that, and you want to be there before the big guys. I mean, and that's one of the things we've been able to do, is, you know, people look at me, they go.

How do you get in China? I said, because I analyze why ruper merock failed in China, and that's because he went in and said: here's what I do in Australia and I'll like subtitle it and mandar for you. And the Chinese just laughed at him and, you know, tossed them out and they, they let us in and, um, we're really very mindful. I, I liken, you know, my time in China as being in my mother's house, where my mother would always tell me: if you don't like the rules, go somewhere else.

And and that's kind of the way we deal with other markets, great. Um, what would you say is unique about working with celebrities and film or entertainment that's not obvious or counterintuitive? Well, I mean, the egos are, you know, off the charts. Um, uh, we try and work with people, um, who you know can, can, tone that down and realize that there's a business.

I mean, everybody looks at the Kardashians now and they do it. I mean, those girls are worth four or five billion dollars now. Um, what you see on television is a TV show. People kind of mistake it for go. Oh, this is the way they really are. And you look at people like Kim.

Uh, you know she's involved in, you know, criminal law reform and stuff like that. So there there's a lot of giving back and stuff, but it doesn't make good television. So that's not what you see, right, makes sense. Um, so I know the founders of Home Depot, you know they, they plan to have a thousand stores when they first got started and it's always hard to predict where a company is going to go, like each chnnel.

But did you have a, a vision of creating something pretty big from the beginning, or did it just start small and then grew a little bit larger and then just kind of took on a life of its own? Or what was it? A Grand Vision you had? Uh, no, it certainly wasn't a vision. I I was building this cable system in Los Angeles and a company I worked for was from Toronto and they sold and said, oh, come back to Toronto.

And I go, no, no, no, I didn't go from New York to LA to go to Toronto, I'm not doing that. So I said let me think of something. It was, you know, early days of cable and I I always had trouble getting into all these parties and premieres and I I would go to the pr people at the um, at the studios, and say you know, the the best vehicle you have for making me want to go to the movies is a movie trailer, and the only time I ever seen a movie trailer is when I'm in the movies. It's kind of ass backwards.

I said, give me the trailers, I'll put them on TV. But you got to put me on a list for those parties and they did it. And when we pulled people, um, what's your favorite Channel like? Go, I love ESP P, I love, love MTV. I love that trailer Channel. I mean we didn't even have a name for it.

So when the company sold out, you know I was going wait a second. I mean MTV in its Heyday when it actually did music, would have a green screen behind the host and the host would go and Madonna has a new video. And I go, wait a second. I could take the movie trailer and stand up a host and go, and Schwarz andega has a new movie.

So the odd part about e, again we started with very little money, is I would get the movie trailers, the best part of then a $50 million movie, for free. I would then build an audience around the trailer and then I would go to the Ed Department of the studio and I would actually have them pay to put their ads around the stuff they were giving me for free. It took them three years before they figured it out and said, hey, wait a second. Um, you know, then we had to get the.

You know the traditional, the proactor gambles and you know all of those folks there. So great, um, anything else you want to add that you wanted to make sure and get across before we close up. No, I, I think you know. Like I say, you know the stuff we're doing now, um, again, all has to have some you know, the US stuff all has to have some social good uh component to it and stuff.

And, uh, while we fund these things ourselves, we always like to bring in partners and stuff. And I think you know a lot of family offices there. There is heart there, um, and I think you guys, as their advisors, have to go a little bit beyond just Roi and tell people that that you actually could be doing good with the m, while the returns will be okay, uh, you really start to think of doing something good with the money. Great, thank you, Larry.

Appreciate you being here. Let's give him a round of applause. Join the family office club by visiting family offices.com. We look forward to seeing you at our next live event. [Music].