Consider This from NPR - BONUS: Maverick Carter On Building The LeBron James Empire

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Before they built one of the biggest athlete-driven business empires in the world, LeBron James and Maverick Carter were just two kids from Akron, Ohio. On this episode of NPR's newest podcast, The Limits With Jay Williams, Carter explains how he and James succeeded — on their own terms. Carter is CEO of the SpringHill Company. Listen to more of The Limits via Apple, Google, or Spotify.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, consider this, listeners. It's Sunday, which means we have a bonus episode for you. It's a story about two kids from Akron, Ohio. You might know one of them. His name is LeBron James. Well, the other, his longtime friend and business partner, Maverick Carter. Carter isn't in the spotlight on the court, but he's at the center of everything that LeBron James does off the court. But you know, he's at the center of everything that LeBron James does off the court. And this is the story of how the two of them built one of the biggest athlete

driven business empires in the world. It comes to us from our colleagues at NPR's newest podcast, The Limits, hosted by former NBA star and ESPN host Jay Williams. You can find links to more from the show in our episode notes. Jay Williams takes it from here, and we will be back with a regular episode of the show tomorrow. Welcome to The Limits. I'm Jay Williams. You know, there is this moment that I absolutely love from the year 2013. First of all, I want to give a lot of credit to the San Antonio Spurs. First class organization, they pushed us to the limit. This was the year LeBron James won his second straight NBA championship with the Miami Heat. You see,

he had just become the third player in the history of the NBA to win back-to-back titles. It was a decade after his NBA debut, and he was already cementing his legacy as one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all time. And here's what he said in a courtside interview holding that championship trophy. I'm LeBron James from Akron, Ohio, from the inner city. I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm not even supposed to be here. I'm not even supposed to be here.

But see, here for Braun was not just on the court. It was in C-suites, sitting down with investors, private equity, venture capitalists, and moguls in sports, finance, and media. See, all these years, while everyone was so focused on what Braun was building on the court, he was also building a business empire that today is valued at three quarters of a billion dollars. The keystone of that empire is called the Spring Hill Company. They do marketing, branding, content. They own a part of the Boston Red Sox. They even produce The Shop, an HBO talk show and barbershops where Bron and other NBA stars chop it up with everyone from Barack Obama to Megan Rapinoe.

And if you didn't hear, Spring Hill recently secured a massive round of funding from corporate investors, including Nike and Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite. But all that, LeBron doesn't do alone. The architect behind the scenes is his partner in the business and his childhood friend from Akron, Ohio. My guest today, Maverick Carter. So how did two kids from Akron build one of the biggest athlete-driven business empires on the planet? It wasn't easy. The story of how they did that is full of so many things I want this show to be about. Challenging the status quo, the power of ownership, growth, staying true to who you are, fighting and clawing against the idea you're not even supposed to be here.

It's a struggle we all know in some way, right? Imposter syndrome. Walking into a room and feeling like you don't belong. You've been there, right? People's preconceived notions of you, your background, where you come from, what you look like, how you sound when you speak. Those struggles were as real for Maverick Carter as anyone. And this is a guy I knew from way, way back in the day. In some ways, he still reminded me of the kid I met at basketball camp decades ago.

But there's also a part of his struggle that he's never shared before until now. Here's my conversation in the first episode of The Limits with the architect, Maverick Carter. Thank you for doing this, man. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Congrats on the show. I love when we become very corporate with each other. It's like, congrats on the show.

I would tell you that if we were at a bar having a drink, like, just congrats on the show. It was amazing. It's been a dream come true for me, frankly, man. You know, let's actually go back to when we were both kids because it was like yesterday, you and I were at five-star camp playing on the same team. Man, I'm dating myself 25 plus years ago. If I would have told you then

that you would be the architect for one of the biggest, most powerful athlete-driven businesses in the world, what would you have said? Oh man, you're taking me back. Yeah, you're making me think about, to your point, I was 16. So you and I were probably both 16. You might be just a year ahead of me i was 15 i was a year younger than you yeah you're a year younger yeah man that was a long time ago and people don't know this but i got a division one basketball scholarship and i was not good enough to play division one but man what are you talking about you'll be stop i'm not gonna let you do that to yourself that you had game that

week at camp you were serving me up and i was just finishing it i was just finishing the breakfast but you you were doing the hard work you were so fucking good but what i've for you to told me that then i would have not even understood what that meant or thought that was possible or you know i didn't even know what it meant to work in sports other than be an athlete or an athletic trainer. Then I knew what a trainer did. So I would have been like, what are you talking about? What does even an athlete business mean?

You know, so when I was able to understand that and learn it, that kind of changed my perspective, which was many years after that. When was that? And how did that moment come about? It was when I was 19 years old, I met a gentleman named Len Merritt, who still works at Nike to this day, who I met. And he was, you know, he was, he is an African-American man who worked in sports marketing at Nike. And I had no idea what that meant. And I was having dinner with him in Chicago and got

introduced to him because he was coming to Akron, obviously, to see LeBron. By that time, LeBron was, you know, a 17-year-old best high school basketball player in the country. And he got introduced to me and I just asked him a lot of questions. And I started to understand that, whoa, there is this other business that kind of is around sports. So meaning when I was a kid, I thought Michael Jordan, I love Jordans and I love the commercials. But you could have told me Michael Jordan made the commercial, right? But he's a big part of it, but there's a whole team. So I started to understand that and learn that.

That's when I first was like, whoa, this is what I want to do. It's fascinating hearing you say that because I remember my sophomore year in college, there were so many people on my doorstep, Mav, so many people through childhood relationships, through random relationships that all wanted to be in business with me. And it had me scared as hell because I didn't know how to navigate nor vet who was the most competent right I knew I wanted to make sure but I didn't I didn't know who I wanted to put in a position of power and how did you navigate the sensitivity of that relationship with Bron and his family to be in that position to start to architect what the future of your business looked like you know that's a great question because much like many young athletes and basketball

players, which I happen to be around and you were one, at first, when he first came out, his agent was basically chosen by his mom. And then two years in, when he decided to move on from his agent and asked me to leave Nike, I was working at Nike, and come back and work with him. And come back meaning leave Nike and move back to Ohio where he was playing, obviously, for the Cavs and work with him. He kind of, he arrived at that decision and then said, yeah, I'm making this decision. And he was like, it's time. You know, I love my mom, but I got to make this decision for myself. Well, the truth is, I've never really talked about this, but his mom called

me furious. And Aunt Glo, who I love dearly, cursed me out because she thought I had kind of pushed him to that decision. And then her next point was, basically, you two idiots don't know what the hell you're doing. You're not ready for this. She didn't and then her next point was, you know, basically you two idiots don't know what the hell you're doing. You're not ready for this. She didn't call us idiots. I'm being a little facetious, but, but just that you're,

you guys aren't ready. You know, he was probably 20 at the time and I was 22. You know, what do we know? We had no experience. And she thought I had pushed him to the decision and I kind of talked her down, but then I kind of talked her through what we were thinking.

And the truth was, to your point, our thought was we understand who we are and where we want to go and what we want to be and how we want the world to see us. But we're definitely going to hire some experts. And that's what I explained to her, a lawyer, an accountant. But the vision and the creative and how we map who we want to be and what we're going to do is going to be up to us, but the experts we're going to bring in to do their job. And so she got comfortable with that, but it definitely was a point where she was a little pissed off. Oh, I can see that. I mean, have you ever had a conversation with Bron about how he got to the point? Because for a 20-year-old to do that with everything that came along with it for him, Mav, I mean, being on the cover of Sports Illustrated,

being called the chosen one, having a Nike deal right out of high school, what was the vision initially for you guys? The vision always was long-term, meaning think about everything in big picture, long-term, meaning think about everything in big picture long-term because our bet was you either had to bet LeBron was going to be the LeBron that he is today that we know, which is awards and all-star games and win championships and become kind of who he is today, who he actually became,

or you take the short view and go, who knows what he's going to turn into so let's do what i would call a cash grab meaning do as many deals as possible just grab as much money do as many things as fast as possible and then hold on and see what happens and our bet was that he was going to be the lebron he is today as far as i'm just talking as far as a basketball player right it's everything else we had to figure out but if he's going to be that as a basketball player then it's a long view of like how do we get to a place where we own things build things create value in enterprise but also be able to decide if we want to how and when we want to capture that value was always the kind of the long-term mission.

So I guess this is where stereotypes come into play because it's something that my parents and I talked about being a young black athlete. You talked about it when you first came out or later in life? Exactly. Because we hired a black agent in Bill Duffy who represented us, and there were some stereotypes that came along with that. And I remember some of the things that they were saying about you guys in the media about cash grabs and a lot of the parties you guys were doing on the road

and LeBron would show up for cash grabs. How did that ultimately, Mav, affect just what you thought about the industry in general? Because you had a lot of people, and you know this, man, swiping at your knees, trying to backdoor cut you guys to get in business with braun yeah um because i i try and consider all of the when i'm thinking about something or going through something i try and consider all the perspectives that are at the table all the players probably a little bit from growing up being a card player you try and understand what everyone's thinking in order to um decide where this thing is going and how and what decision you got to make next i think you know there was media lots of media that wrote horrible stories about us and i remember

adrian warginowski he just had like an obsession for a while when he was working with fox and just kept writing article and article and article going after me and LeBron and and what the conclusion I came to is when you really looked at all the perspectives the media has to you know sports media which is right they're very tied in with GMs and agents that's where they get their information from a report so from a GM standpoint what did they care unless they were just being nosy? But from an agent standpoint, it was more about the fact that if this thing worked, if LeBron and his, you know, his friends thing worked, where does that leave us? We could be out of business because if LeBron and his friends are successful, then the next LeBron or the next Jason Williams is going to have their friend who's going to want to represent them.

And then how do we get in and represent them? So the fact of the matter is, from an agent's perspective, trying to wipe us out was just them trying to protect their territory. How did you navigate that, though, Mav? Because I don't care what anybody says. As an athlete, I always paid attention to what people said. It either motivated me or it gave me love, right? There was no in between, there was no gray space. So when there were crazy articles written about maybe mistakes that you had made or, you know, perspectives that were different than the ones you guys had

internally, how did you communicate that and manage that with LeBron? Yeah, I think a lot of it was frustrating and pisses you off and is a little bit like, also you have to take into perspective, this is largely, especially then, even white controlled media with white agents and white gyms, and you're going, wow, we're these young black guys, and they're just taking aim at us. So you take it personal at a point, but then also it becomes personally motivating too. So the same way you take it personal and get frustrated and pissed,

take it personal and let it motivate you and drive you. And you just have to have that discussion and talk about it and understand it. It's fascinating to hear you say that, because I remember Scooter, even though his name is Scott, he tells me to call him Scott now, but we had a moment when I was 20 years old where he brought me to Puff's place in Atlanta, Mav. And Puff was telling me at that time, I was a sophomore in college, how I could be the face of bad boy and how they were going to help me build the marketing around his brand and how we're going to be involved in business. And I remember sitting down with my dad saying,

this is an incredible opportunity. This is the culture of sport. And I know it's drastically different than the approach that you guys feel like I should take, but I want to explore it. And my dad said, you know, son, it's something we can look at, but how people view you is very important. And are you going to be a person that sits in a room with executives, with younger people who are talking in the hip hop slang?

It was almost in the early 2000s. My dad was like, I don't know if that's acceptable, son. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. I don't know. But it's crazy though, man, because then when I hear guys like Phil Jackson, when he was working with the Knicks, when he referred to you, Randy Mims, Rich Paul as a posse for LeBron, that's how a certain part of people view you guys at that time. What happened with that and how were you able to counter that? Yeah, absolutely. I think what your dad is saying, which is he was not wrong, which is in that time, can you show up in that room and express exactly how you feel?

And that expression could come through how you talk, how you walk in, how you're dressed, whatever. And it's funny to your point now, if you're not in those rooms being yourself, you're going to be frowned upon. But back then it was like, whoa, how do you, you sure you want to go in with younger people? And we did that. And we went in as ourselves, but we got that,

I always tell people, we got that audacity from the Jay-Z's and the Puffy's because they, you know, through hip hop and hip hop language, we were able to go in the room and be exactly who we were. And we were doing it a bit earlier, I think, than most people in the sports world.

But also, you know, we were fortunate enough to work with Nike for a very long time. And they always wanted us to be us and wanted us to express who we are. So that was my point when I was upset about, I don't know, Phil Jackson. I never even met Phil Jackson. So, you know, for him to use that language, we all knew what he was trying to say. And my point was mostly anyone who knows us know that's not true. And you never hear them say that. You never hear them use that kind of coded language about owners. You know, when LeBron played in Cleveland, the owner of the Cavs, Dan Gilbert, he showed up to a game with 40 people, three airplanes, two, three, you know, four vans,

and he could do whatever he wants since he owns a team, right? He has suites and access, but great. But nobody said, well, look at Dan Gilbert's crew or his posse. That was my point about Phil Jackson. I don't know if Phil Jackson ever met him. I don't want to meet him, but for him to say that, we know what he was trying to say, especially in the way that he put the context around it.

Speaking of being yourself in rooms with powerful people, which is not easy to do, by the way, in just a minute, a story about how Mav did just that, to unite pro athletes with the little tiny startup headphone company called Beats by Dre. You have to hear this. I'm Jay Williams. You're listening to The Limits from NPR. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Hey, before we get back to the show, I have a secret for you. There's so much more to hear from me and my guests, stuff you won't hear anywhere else. So for bonus content, a sponsor free version of the podcast and more, subscribe to The Limits Plus. You'll be supporting the show and NPR. And each week, you'll get bonus episodes made especially for just you, the subscribers. But you got to subscribe. Do that at plus.npr.org slash the limits. That link is in our episode description as well. To all the people in the back, here you go.

Write it down. Plus.npr.org slash the limits. So it's 2008. Maverick Carter is sitting in a meeting in LA with legendary music executive and mogul Jimmy Iovine, the founder of Interscope Records. Iovine is just starting up a business with Dr. Dre, and they want to make headphones that deliver studio quality sound. Of course, you know the name of the business and the headphones, Beats by Dre. Today, athletes in every major sport walk off buses and into stadiums wearing these headphones. Apple acquired the company in 2014 for $3 billion. But long before that, Maverick Carter had a wild idea for Jimmy Iovine.

He said to Jimmy, listen, I know your headphones aren't even out yet, but why don't you let me have a handful? I'll get LeBron James to give them to his teammates on the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team. That team, of course, was just about to leave for the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. And when they got off that plane in Beijing, yeah, they were all rocking Beats by Dre. Can you provide us context with how that all went down?

Yeah, I mean, that was, obviously, Beats was the brainchild of Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine. And Jimmy and Dre were set out to disrupt the marketplace. And we were fortunate enough to know Jimmy. I had just started my relationship getting to know Jimmy. And again, he showed me the headphones and I thought this was cool. And he talked me all through the kind of marketing and how he's going to bring them to market. And my first thought was, he's not thinking about sport.

And I kind of explained to him why I thought sport was going to be very important to headphones. It was right. He didn't think about sport, right? He was in the music business and running Interscope Records. But the brilliance of Jimmy is he understood that I had passion about what I was talking about. And he's like, well, show me. And so

getting the headphones to LeBron to give them to the 08 Olympic team before they landed in Beijing was kind of my way of doing it. And I had this idea about marketing through the form of gift giving and did it saw the how it took off and jimmy then offered myself and lebron equity in the in the company it was just starting they hadn't even sold a one pair of headphones yet and kind of built a brand uh that was mostly honestly became about sport and that was kind of the kicking off of it and obviously ended with the exit to Apple, which was obviously a fantastic deal and a great partnership with Apple for sure. But that idea was another one about disruption also. What went through your mind that made you want equity more so than a traditional sponsorship deal? Great question. Well, I had started to understand and think about, as I said, if we think about long term and patience and really building something and the value you get in that versus just taking cash and you start to understand that owning a piece of an enterprise is much more valuable than cash as long as that enterprise is growing and flourishing.

And it is because you have much more things you can do because we all need a platform. So once you have an enterprise like, you know, Spring Hill has become my platform, right? So people get all called up on the valuation of this or that, but it's the place I work at. It's the thing, you know, NPR is now your platform, Jay. So we all need a platform that's much greater if you control a platform, right? If you really are in control of a platform versus just getting cash. And then I, you know, secondly, you just think about from a pure tax standpoint, if you own assets and you sell them, you know, you pay capital gains versus ordinary income against just getting cash payments. So it's just those two things were my main thought, what I was thinking. Is it something that you always felt you were supposed to be in these rooms,

Mav? When I talk to Tim Cook, he gives me insight into what you guys are thinking. When I talk to some of the biggest people in media, in business, it's always centered around what's happening in the sports realm and what brands, like the one you've been able to create with Spring Hill Entertainment, with Uninterrupted, what you guys are doing to constantly move the needle in that marketplace. Have you always felt like you belonged in those type of rooms? Yes, I do. Honestly, I've always felt like I belong for sure. Even when I was still young and green, though, I am still learning. I pride myself on learning all the time, but because I'm willing to admit what I don't know and I'm clear on what I know. So I've always felt like I belong because I'm able to learn and listen. And what I do know is I know

I can bring things to the table that will drive value. And I know where I need help and to be surrounded by great people. How the hell did you get the name Maverick? It's something I've always wanted to ask you. I don't think I've, I'm sitting here thinking all these questions I want to ask you. And I never asked you that, Mav. Well, I have my grandmother to thank who gave me the name based off of a TV show with the character's name. The show was called Maverick and the character's last name was Maverick. They were called Brett, two brothers, Brett and Bart Maverick, who were cowboys in the West and played poker.

But my grandmother, who was a bit of a cowgirl herself, She ran an after hours where she had card games on Thursday and Friday night and sold liquor when the bars closed, and that was her business. So she loved poker players and old Westerns and loved that name. And it was my dad's childhood nickname. And then she told my mom to give me that name as my first name, and that's how I got it.

It almost feels like destiny, right? People oftentimes don't believe me. It's my real name. Yeah, I guess. I was talking to a kid the other day that heard you speak at USC, and you were giving a commencement speech, but he said one of the things that he heard you say somewhere, because he was just rambling on and on about you. He was in love with you, and he said something like, some people are just more prepared to take risks than others. I grew up a gambler. That's my name, Maverick. It's kind of serendipitous, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, yes, it is. It's a little bit of nature and nurture. Yeah, it's for sure. When it comes to risk-taking, I just have have a some people are just more prepared I think my what

you're talking about is I gave the commencement speech at USC a couple years back and I based my whole speech cut around my grandmother and and the difference between kind of going forward and settling for what I call a good-ass job and like having that appetite for risk and how do you manage it and think it through and think about the upside versus the downside. But yes, some people are more equipped. And I think maybe that's a little bit of nature, but a big part of it's, you know, I was nurtured into it also for sure. And I think to your point, it goes a bit with my family history and my name for sure. I think one of the things I've always admired about you is that you don't seem to like making yourself the story. Am I right about that?

Do I? I don't like, no, I don't like making myself the story, but even further, I'm not the story. You know, I've spent basically my whole career standing next to the man who's always the story, right? Who's always the center of the story. So it's not my thing and it's not my place. So no, I don't look to make myself the story ever. But how do you balance that though, Mav? Because not everybody can strive to become LeBron James. It seems like it's a lot more realistic for especially young minority kids

to see the path that you blaze and say, oh, I want to become the next Maverick Carter. So how do you balance the story being LeBron and an entity compared with what your story is? Because your story obviously is very inspirational to people. Thank you. I appreciate that. I think a lot of people know my story and know who I am, but I think if I make it, the story is actually the company and our mission and what we do, then that is the most inspirational to me. When you think about empowerment, and I wouldn't even be on this call with you or in the position I am if I wasn't empowered by LeBron. So I think

the best thing I can do is actually build a company, a place, a platform that empowers others. I think that's better for young kids than me kind of, you know, making myself the story or looking to promote myself. It's more about how do I build a company or a place that really, or content, and sometimes I'm in that content, right, that truly they can watch and be empowered by that content. Empowering people is one thing, but as the saying goes,

with great power comes, yeah, you know the rest. Coming up, Mav takes responsibility for one of the most controversial moments of LeBron James' career. An hour-long primetime TV special

in 2010 known as The Decision, where LeBron announced his choice to leave his hometown in Cleveland and sign with the Miami Heat and Free Agency. Mav weighs in on that and on LeBron's decision a few years later to go back to Cleveland. What he says about that, though, it'll shock you. I'm Jay Williams. We'll be right back. So I remember being in the boardroom with you and LeBron and Rich Kleiman, who is the architect for Kevin Durant and Kevin Durant as well. And I was asking LeBron a question about how he manages his own brand. And I'll never forget this, Mav, because it's something I learned

from you that day as I worked with other athletes in the future of my own business. I said, so LeBron, how do you manage your brand? He said, well, Jay, well, I'm not really a brand. Nike's a brand. Louis Vuitton is a brand. And he talked about himself more as a human being. And as I'm listening to him talk, I remember looking at you and me thinking at that moment that Mav would probably answer that question differently, but you didn't interject yourself in the conversation. You just kind of laid out. And it was almost to me, that was a great lesson because there's not a need when you work with athletes who are so powerful to always inject yourself in the conversation.

You have to let them breathe. You have to let them paint their own narrative, their own picture of how they see it in their mind. And you build your narrative intertwined with theirs. Do you find yourself doing that when you disagree with something maybe one of your clients says in real time um or how do you navigate that aspect of it yeah you know listen i've been fortunate to know a lot of athletes and spend a lot of time and help but the one i've kind of basically only worked with is lebron right from a business from a working relationship so i'm always able to give good advice to other athletes because I don't have a, as my grandmother said, I don't have a nickel in their quarter.

So, but with LeBron, it's always kind of give and take and we go back and forth and disagree about a lot of things. And it's just a matter of respect, right? Like him respecting my understanding, my respecting of his understanding also as you know the saying in basketball kyp kind of knowing your personnel knowing who you work with what they're willing to do and not willing to do and what they are good at not good at so i think that's how we get to a level where we can really understand each other and and have good discourse because i believe in good discourse i believe in diversity thought and diversity of environment that you come from.

Because that leads to us not always agreeing. But as they say, iron sharpens iron. So you need that clashing of ideas and thoughts to get to something really amazing. Can you give me an example of good discourse between you two? Between LeBron and I? Yeah. I would say going back to Cleveland. I was against that.

I didn't understand it. I didn't get it. But he was like, for all a bunch of reasons, he really thought it was the right thing to do. And we went back and forth and really, I think, it pushed him to really have to think about it. But he landed in a place where he went with what he thought was right. And was right I was wrong he did it for all but he was doing it for the right reasons and as he said it was it was progress over pride so he got to a place where he wanted to

do it and and and I understood it though I didn't agree at the end but it worked out why why didn't you agree with it I just you know I thought it was a bit of going backwards, but most importantly, I just thought, you know, he was going back to help a man who had wrote a letter that was just so slanderous of him. It's just like, and that was where he came up with the thing of like, yeah, but that's pride. And I'm in favor of progress over pride. So I'm going to choose progress. Wow. I never knew that. Mav, I have to ask you because obviously having my accident, I've had some investments that have fallen flat. What has been your biggest failure thus far? Or let me rephrase that. What has been your biggest moment of growth thus far in your career?

I've had a lot of them where I learned things like, you know, bigger isn't always better and going wider too soon is a problem. And really understanding people's perspectives. I think I learned that that big lesson came through post the decision when LeBron decided to go to Miami and we did the decision. And I just looked at like everything that was going on and how he was being killed in the press and public perception was so down on him. But, but that year it was weird. Like that was the biggest year he had in Jersey sales and sneaker sales. So it was like,

you have to learn to separate the consumer perception from public perception from press perception because they're all very different and what you realize is like you have to pay attention to them all and and be thoughtful with them all but you can't think they all line up so the 17 year old kid in houston texas buying the jersey doesn't give a shit what the columnist in the New York Times is writing. You just have to be thoughtful. And I learned that a decade ago, and that was a huge lesson for me, for sure. Mav, I think it's safe to say you're a master operator, considering you just got $725 million for a Spring Hill deal with Nike, Redbird, and Fenway Sports Group. You guys own a piece of

the Boston Red Sox. You're doing so much at only the age of 41 years old. What's the end game for Maverick Carter? That's a good question. By the way, I'm only 40. I just turned 40 last month. I am older than you. That's on me. I told you you're older than me. I knew you were older than me. You graduated in 99. I graduated in 2000. All right. Respect. I got you.

I just like to make myself feel younger, man. That's all. Listen, it's your show. If you want to be younger, go ahead. No, I'm kidding. Whatever I got to do, man. Exactly. What's next?

I mean, listen, I think we're just getting started. Our aspiration is to be the Disney for culture and do that through the lens and pull that threat of empowerment. As you said, we just got this infusion of capital. Plus, we have cash on the balance sheet to grow this company through all the organic growth that we're doing. We're looking at some M&A that I think shortly we'll be announcing some stuff. So I think we're going to keep doing that. I think, you know, LeBron and I personally are going to keep, you know, we do our personal investing stuff that we do. So we're going to

keep looking for amazing investments. But I think ultimately, you know, the work that he's doing at his foundation and through our company are really, truly trying to change kind of how young kids, young black kids like us kind of have to look forward to and what they think about going forward is a big part of what we do and it's kind of everything. And ultimately that's kind of going to be, I would hope, the definition of what we end up doing and kind of what it is long term for us that we leave behind. Mav, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time out of your crazy day to spend time with me. I think providing a platform for younger people to understand how to push

themselves to the limit, to learn how to build hustle into an actual business and not cut corners, you've just given us a masterclass. So I wanted to say thank you for me and for all my listeners, man. And I have so much respect for you and everything that you've accomplished and that you're going to, brother. And I couldn't be happier for you, man. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for having me on the show and congrats on the show again. So big shout out to Mav and his team for making this happen.

And our team here at The Limits. Karen Kinney, Charlotte Riggi, Lena Sonsgiri, Brent Bachman, Rachel Neal, Yolanda Sanguini. Our executive producer is Anya Grumman. We're back next week. Stay tuned. I'm Jay Williams.