Habits and Hustle - Episode 571: Ronnen Harary: The Bite-Sized Decisions That Built a Billion-Dollar Company From Nothing

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

What if waiting until you feel ready is the reason you keep missing the opportunity? A lot of people have ideas, ambition, and opinions, but very few are willing to move before they have the perfect plan. Ronnen Harary built Spin Master by doing the thing so many people avoid: making the first small decision, trusting his gut, asking who could help, and moving fast enough to catch the opportunity while everyone else was still thinking about it. He did not start with decades of experience, unlimited resources, or a perfect roadmap. He started with curiosity, speed, persistence, and a willingness to figure it out in real time. This matters because opportunity rarely looks polished when it first shows up. Sometimes it looks like a weird grass toy, a product everyone else passed on, or a preschool show created after two brutal years of company losses. Ronnen's story is a reminder that success is built through motion, not overthinking. The people who win are the ones who create momentum, learn fast, build the right partnerships, and keep going long enough for the next big thing to appear. Ronnen Harary is the co-founder and former CEO of Spin Master, one of the world's largest children's entertainment companies, behind brands including Paw Patrol, Bakugan, Air Hogs, Rubik's Cube, Melissa & Doug, and Toca Boca. He is also the author of No Experience Necessary. In this episode, he breaks down entrepreneurship, instinct, failure, culture, partnerships, decision-making, and why not knowing too much can sometimes be the advantage that gets you moving. What's discussed: (02:11) Why Ronnen wrote No Experience Necessary after building one of the biggest toy companies in the world. (05:48) Why a learning disability does not mean a lack of intelligence. (13:27) How Spin Master started with two college friends, fertilizer sales, and the decision to go into business for themselves. (20:46) How one bold Kmart meeting turned into an order for 48,000 pieces and the possibility of half a million more. (27:02) Why bite-sized decisions, momentum, and asking for help matter more than having the full plan. (30:11) Why speed to market and fast scaling helped Earth Buddies beat the competition. (36:56) How Air Hogs became the product everyone passed on before it took Spin Master from $7 million to $35 million in sales. (48:57) How Paw Patrol was created during Spin Master's lowest point after losses, layoffs, and failed shows. (01:02:43) Why the ability to say sorry, debate well, and remove ego is critical in business partnerships. (01:21:17) How overthinking led him to turn down a $100 million Universal movie deal.   Thank You to Our Sponsors! Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Pique: Go to piquelife.com/jenniferrsd to get 20% off for life plus free gifts Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription.  Therasage: Visit therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements   Find more from Ronnen Harary:  Website: ronnenharary.com Book: No Experience Necessary Foundation: Robert Harary Foundation Initiative: The Toy Movement

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and top experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. Today, I'm sitting down with Renan Horari, who is the co-founder of Spin Master. This is the company behind Paw Patrol, Rubik's Cube, and some of the biggest names that you've heard of in children's toys. Renan built one of the biggest children's entertainment companies in the world by moving fast, trusting his instincts, and figuring things out before he had the perfect plan.

In this episode, we get into how a weird grass toy became his first big win and why speed beats overthinking every time. This conversation will make you rethink experience, failure, momentum, partnerships, and what it really takes to build something that lasts. So let's dive in. Welcome to Habits and Hustle. You guys, I'm so excited about today's guest, legit, because he is not only a great guy.

He is Canadian. He is a true entrepreneur. Like, I'm talking like a legit baller. Started the, or basically founded one of the most successful toy companies on the planet called Spin Master. It is equivalent to like a Mattel. Like, where is it in that world? It's Lego, Hasbroro, Mattel, Spimmaster. Oh, so you're number four in the world.

Okay, you should be embarrassed. Like I said, the Rubik's Cube is one of his Paw Patrol. If you are someone who has a child, you will know probably half of the products that they have. But more than that, what he built, we're going to learn so many things about leadership, entrepreneurship, grit, and how to basically get what you want. And I'm very happy to have you today. For having me. I'm glad you. It's so nice to be here. That's so happy. By the way, his name is Ronan Harari. I forgot to you. I was so excited. I don't think I even said your name. And he wrote a book called No Experience Necessary.

What was so, I was saying to Ronet, I was saying before we even started, what I found so interesting about what your, I never, I never founded a multi-billion dollar company, founded a few other ones that were not like that. But what your pillars are about how to build success and get success, like, it's literally, like, it was like reading my own book or like my own saying the same thing I say to myself. So the fact that I felt like there was like a real like synergy here. So I really, I want to like dive into this book. But my first question is like someone like you who's already like made so much money, has had so much success. Why would you even like take, like, why are you writing a book?

Like, why do you even want to do this whole grind in the first place? place. You know? It's a great question. I think that part of us to get back for me. Okay. And, you know, I, in a way, I kind of wanted a book like this to be written when I was a kid. And it's because the the book is there to be a supportive parent to you and to encourage you to do what you want to do in your life. And I was actually very blessed in a sense because after my parents divorced, my mother was, like, super encouraging for me to do whatever I wanted. And there was no negativity in any parts of the conversation. And when I looked back, when I hit, you know, in my 40s, I was like,

there's something so special about the 20s. There's something so special about that decade. So true. Yeah. And I wanted to put it down on paper and explain what's so special about that decade and what accrues to you during that time. And I love reading books. And it was a challenge for me.

And it's kind of an irony because I grew up with learning about disability. he'd call it discraphia, which is all about the inability to get your thoughts out through your hands. So it was kind of like a challenge. And plus, the last part is that I took a sabbatical for a year and a half and I'm a bit of a workaholic, so I needed a project. I think that's a great reason, though. It's a great. I think everyone needs to have something to do, a purpose and a project, right? Because then what? Like, especially someone that's built the way you are, it seems that you are. But when second, I've never heard of that type of learning disability. What do you mean? So you're not able to get your thoughts from your head to the paper? Is that what the

disability is? Correct. Like if you ask me to sign the book for you and write a note, okay, you'll be hard for you to read it. I'd have to write it really slowly. So it's basically like, I write like a doctor, but I'm not a doctor. Right. Okay. So basically as I start writing, my hand starts to cramp up and then I can't even read my own handwriting. So then I got to go back and scratch it out and write very slowly so I can read it later. And it's basically, it's just, I get stuck. And then my, Basically, I got to rebut my thoughts to actually start again. So it slows you down. And I have some other, you know, learning disabilities around spatial stuff. But please go ahead.

No, what I was going to say is that when I was reading your book, you did mention in there how, like, the way you work and process information is different than how other people do, which, and you kind of made a point, which I thought, again, resonated with me. It's like, a lot of people like spreadsheets and graphs and, like, doing a lot of these, like, busy admin work or like PowerPoints. It was about a PowerPoint. And you're like, I just don't work that way. Like, I don't, that's not the way that works for me. And when I read that, I was like, oh my God, I'm so glad that you put that in paper because my brain, again, is very similar.

Not, I don't write like a doctor, but probably similar. Like, I have a really bad handwriting. And my superpower is getting things done off paper. Right. Right. And the second someone says, you have to be giving me a PowerPoint and this type of agreement and content. I get so like anxiety. I'm like, I can't do that. That's not how I work because not everybody learns and succeeds in the same way. 100%. Well, I've never done a PowerPoint in my whole life.

Yeah, neither have I, by the way. Never done PowerPoint. They're very similar. Neither of I. Yeah. So, I mean, my brain processes it's, the thing about a learning disability is not a sign of black intelligence. It just means it's just a sign that you intake information differently.

and the information comes out differently. And the unfortunate part is that most of us that go to public school, the system is not built for us. And so it's very difficult. But I was very lucky because I got identified at 10 years old. And as a result of that, I got accommodations. I got extra time on my exams. I got a tutor at the end of the day.

And if I didn't get identified, there is no way I can tell you 100%. There was no way that I would have made it through school. And I probably would have been either in jail or something else. Interesting. Because normally I would say if you were, if you were born today, right? They would say that, you know, I don't even know if that would even, well, actually it's not true because I would say they would actually give you a lot of like, it would actually be different. What I was going to say is sometimes when you put emphasis on that disability, that becomes your identity and that defines who you are. So a lot of times people will then not work as hard and they will just like fall back on, well, you know, I can't do it.

So like how did you kind of like negate that? And not let that become who you are. Like, oh, because when you're young, you think, oh, I'm stupid. I can't do this. I have a, something's wrong with me, all those things. You know, the irony is, is that it was never talked about in my family. Okay. And my parents never recognized it.

So I hit it from everybody. Everybody, no one even knew, okay? Even my classmates didn't even know. I was the guy in the class where were you, Renan? We just wrote the exam. And I was like, yeah, you know, the guy was like the king of stories. Okay. I was the king of stories.

And I never told anybody about my learned disability. Okay. The knock on the fact of that is I grew up with a lot of shame as a result of it. Yeah. Right. So I was just like, but I didn't tell anybody and maybe it was, maybe internally I just wanted to like prove that I can like fit in or I want to be like

everybody else. And maybe that was the thing that got me through it or it was just like. And also the, the accommodations at the end of the day. Like it gave me the ability to like figure, figure it out, right? Right. And then the gift that gave me was actually it turned me into a person that was able to overcome challenges because I constantly had to do it. Like I learned, I had the muscle memory. By the time I graduated, I had the muscle memory on powering through things and anything.

And I think that taught me that anything was possible. If I could make it through school, anything was possible. Because after school, it was like, oh, I could breathe. I was like, oh, you know, now I could do things my way. And that's part of the reason why I wanted to start my own business. Right. It made you much more resourceful. because you had to be. 100%. Right? But that's interesting.

So you did grow up with the shame, but yet the shame worked to your advantage because it worked as a positive as a strength, right? Because, you know, it was kind of like

you had to prove to yourself that you can do it and work through past the shame and like still do the things and become more resourceful? No, the shame was, that was a negative. I don't wish it on anybody.

No one should grow up with that. How did your parents not even know when you got tested at 10? They didn't know that you got tested at 10? No, they knew. Okay. Did the people at school just come up to you? They knew.

It's just my parents who were classic, you know, immigrants, and they just, they didn't know how to deal with it. Yeah. And they just, they were like, oh, the school system will deal with it. And we just. Oh, okay. So that's what you meant. Yeah. And so then, like, they gave you extra.

Like, so the school tested you, they knew, but it was never like, me. You weren't coddled at home because of it. Correct. Exactly. Like, I'm the king of C's. Okay. I got lots of Cs. Yeah.

I'm the king of C's occasionally got a B. and I come home with my report. And everyone's were like, why is it just a C? You know? But it wasn't like, oh, I had to see because we understand that you got some other issues going on. Right, right, right, right. They did it.

And that worked, though, for your advantage because they didn't like emphasize it all the time. They were not coddling. There was zero coddling. I know. I mean, okay, so let's talk about the shame for one second. So how did that manifest itself? Shame causes you to not ask people for help

and causes you to be shy. you know, I'm typically, you know, I'm naturally a bit more of a shy, introverted person. I'm like somewhere in the middle. But it caused you to like even go deeper and just to be more in your own thoughts and to not ask for help. And then and then you have like self-esteem issue. There's a whole lot of knock on effects. No, but probably for another podcast. No, but I think it's very, I think it's part of why you're successful though, right? Because you had to over like, even with the shame like you said, because of that, you never asked for help. So you have to figure things out on your own. It made you more. It made you more. resourceful because you didn't ask for help. You know, like, also, like, it was, it made you more resilient. Like, you got used to being, you, you got used to failing, so you got immune to the feeling of being a failure, so you kept on going. Like, I think shame can be a huge advantage if you're lucky and you'd, like, deal with it the right way, right?

Like, you started a business. You were 23 or 22 years old. I think I could have gone there without it. Why do you say that? Because I think that for me, I'm a very curious individual, right? And I'm curious and I have some boldness in me. And I like trying different things. I like bring things into the world.

So I think it could have been an easier journey. I don't, I actually, I'm not an advocate or I don't subscribe to the, what we're described, what we're talking about here that like deep, deep adversity. brings you to success. I think if you have the natural, everybody's got natural gifts inside and the gifts are the gifts, right? And they're just deep,

they're just there and they can be expressed in many different ways. And I don't believe in people having to suffer their ways to get to success, right? What you don't have to, but sometimes that is the path, you know, that that's why, some people get there because they had to go through

all this suffering. to teach them certain things or show them certain things or build them, build their character. I agree. I just don't, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't wish the knock on effects on anybody. Yeah. And also there's certain things like I was very, like, I was very, like, I love reading the business section. Like I don't read sports. I still don't read sports today. Right, right, right. You know, and I was surround. My parents were, you know, small business entrepreneurs and business was discussed in the house and I got exposed to a lot of interesting people. And so there's a lot of things that led me. What did they do?

My parents were classic entrepreneurs and they had a gallery in Toronto that sold Persian carpets. Really? Yeah, they sold Persian carpets and I was like, and then I knew I used to go to my dad's place every Saturday and work and I used to like roll the rugs. I was like a good roll rugger and rug roller and fold and the study. And I knew exactly that I did not want to go into retail. That's right. Okay, good. So a process of elimination of what you don't want to do.

So then how did the whole toy thing happen? Like, give me, like, start, give me the evolution of how it even began. Well, it started when we were in university, Antoni, is my business partner, who we were best friends growing up, and we swore we'd never go into business together. Really? Yeah. We swore we never going to business together until we had to pay for school. And then we were like, okay. And we were selling fertilizer door to dur after our first year.

Where'd you go to school, by the way? I went to Western. You went to West. I thought's what I thought. Okay. Yeah, I went to Western. And we were selling fertilizer door to door. That was like not so much fun.

And we had noticed these sophomores that had just graduated. They created this product called campus. We call the campus space. It basically was a collage of these posters. Sorry, collage of students that were taken during Frosh week. And then around the collage of all these pictures, they would sell advertising and they print up 9,000 posters and give them to the kids for free at the university campus. So they just graduated and they weren't doing it anymore.

So I said to Anton, like, why don't we just do it? And that's what we did. Within two weeks, we basically sold all the advertising and took deposit of $4,000. I remember I took 2,000 of the four and I went to Europe. I came back and we finished, we produced posters and we distributed them. It was great. And then we ended up doing them at five other schools by the time we graduated. And Anton went to business school and we kind of said to ourselves,

we're going to do something in marketing when he graduates. We'll continue doing the posters and we'll figure something out. We made this commitment to each other that we'll do something we want to go into business for ourselves, which I think is like the key defined decision that you need to make. It's like, don't wait for the idea. Just make the decision if you want to go into business for yourself. So we made that decision. And then literally a month before Anton graduated from business school, my mother was reading this Israeli newspaper called the Idiotrachronaut.

And in there, there was a two-page spread, okay, of these six different people that were manufacturing this product called the grasshead. It was a small little kind of like. Oh, look at she. It's kind of like a new age version of a chia pet. Okay, okay. Right? So it's a softball made a grassyed nylon stodess that has a happy face on it. And you put it in water and a grow grass for hair.

And in the article, okay, classic, the Israelis, you know, they love sharing all their secrets. Yeah, yeah. So they basically said that they, that I added it up, it said that it sold like 300,000 pieces in the country of 10 million. And no one was doing it in Canada. So I drove up to Western and I said to Anton, I was like, why don't we make these? and he thought it was crazy. And he basically said, I'm not in. Anyways, I convinced him.

And finally two weeks later, he said, I'm in. He graduated. Next day I know where it like Kemer, we're buying all these raw materials, nylon, panty hose, sawdust, you know, like everything. Actually, no sawdust. I didn't sell it. But anyways. And then I got my brother-in-law.

We gave him some profit sharing to help us figure out how to manufacture them, my sister to design the packaging. We gave her prof sharing on it. And we decided to make 5,000 pieces for Mother's Day. And it was the most magical 20, 20, days of my life, like, just like figuring out how to, like, you guys made them yourself? Yeah. We made them so. Five thousand pieces. Five thousand pieces. I remember having this conversation my mom. She's like, why don't you just buy it from the people in Israel. I was why I'm confused. Why don't

just license it from them and just bring it to Canada or wherever? Because I didn't want to give up the control. I didn't want to wait the time. You know, I knew. The whole deal, the whole thing. I didn't want to be, I don't want to be anybody else's hands. And I was like, it's easier to do it myself, then to, like, call these people and figure it out. Was it the Earth Buddy one? Is this the worst? Yeah, that's the Earth Buddy. That's the Earth Buddy. Yes, so that was our product. Okay. So we make 5,000 pieces for Mother's Day. We start selling them in the streets of Toronto and we sell like, oh, we've got four in the warehouse. Five thousand is a lot to make on your own. Well, try a million.

I can't even imagine, but like two little kids, you know, like two young guys doing it with their family, you know, it's a lot. Well, you know, it's amazing. My, my brother, brother-in-law is like my ex-brother. He's an auto dact. So he kind of figured it out. And we hired workers and we hired people from a homeless shelter. And then we just kind of like figured everything out. So we made these 5,000 pieces. And then we came back to work on Monday. We're like, we got more to sell. And two weeks later, we sold 26,000 pieces. How? How are you selling them? Well, basically what happened was through, through another contact. Another contact through my mother. She said, go meet this person. So I go and meet them. And it was a, and it was a, the strangest meeting ever, okay, it was like in downtown Toronto and there they sell close out toys. Okay. And so for anybody listening, close out toys are like what you sell to someone. When it's like you can't sell them anymore. So we have this brand new product. We take it to a close out person and they're a lovely family, the Cotser family. They say, yeah, we'll sell it for you and we don't hear anything for two weeks. And then they call us back and they say, can we

deliver 26,000 pieces? Because they sold it to Walmart in Canada. Wow. Okay. Wow. So then we We moved factories, we hired more workers and stuff like this. And then the most magical thing happened was we got an order for half a million pieces from Kmart. Give me the time frame from when you started to make these in, you know, you went to Kmart to get the seed, whatever, all the stuff. And you sold 700 on the street. How did, like, what was the timeframe between the 700 and the getting that piece, like the purchase order for that many? So basically from the time we hit started selling on the street to the time we got the 26,000 pieces was two weeks. And then we sold to Roots.

Remember Roots? Yeah, of course I know Roots. Okay. Roots put us on the front counter of the store. So it was so wonderful. How did you do that? Do you know Michael? Budman?

Is that his name? Yeah, so it was Mike Budman, but we went there ourselves and we did. And we showed him the product and he was so nice. He was like, this fits with our brand and our ethos. And then we ship a live grown Earth Buddy to every store so they can have it on display. Wow. Yeah. And then we broke into Zellers into their.

Zellers. Yes. Remember Zellert back in the day? God, this is like so nostalgia. Okay, go on, yes. And then the craziest thing happened. So Anton was backpacking the year before in Europe. And he met this guy by the name of Aaron Hermelin.

And Aaron lived in Detroit. I remember this from the book. Yeah. Tell me. I love it. And so Aaron lived in Detroit and his uncle owned the palace where the Detroit prisons played. So we kind of figured maybe they have some connection, stuff like this. So he called me, he said, can you get us a,

meeting a Kmart corporation. And at the time, Kmart was the number one retailer in the world in the 90s. Bigger than Amazon, bigger than Walmart, they were it. So he says, yes, you can get you a meeting. And for some reason, I don't know why I was the one that actually ended up doing the sales call. Why did you go? Why did Anton not go? You know, I have to tie. I don't even know. You know? Dull to this day, I don't know why. Maybe it was under the weather or something. I can't remember. So I go and I drive it. I leave my house like 3.30 in the morning. I didn't even think was staying in a hotel, okay, and getting a good night rest. Yeah, exactly. You're like, I'm just going to save money. No, save money. And you're in 20s, you know, you're saving money.

You got the energy to do. Of course I can wake up at 3.30. And then I go there and I get there for nine o'clock, meet the buyer, meet Aaron, meet the rep. And I pitch this buyer for 30 minutes. And he's lovely gentleman. I'm in his board room. And he says, I'm not the buyer for this product. And I was like, okay, maybe he's lying to me. So I'm like, I pitch him for another 15 minutes and he doesn't say anything. And then after he says, I'm not the buyer, of which I said to him, well, we'll give it to you on consigned sales. And if it sells, you know, like just pay us. He said, I'm, I'm not the buyer. At which point, I was like, if you're giving someone something for free. And they still don't want it. And they still don't want it. So I said, who is a buyer?

And he came back with this name, Adrian Zax on a piece of paper. I shook his hand. And I started walking around Camer Corporation looking for this woman. And I was super lucky. She was sitting at her desk, and I did like, I said something to her over 30 seconds. And she said, I'll meet you at 3.30. You can come back to my office. I go downstairs and the guys are like, what happened? I'm like, because I just left them. I didn't even say anything.

I just left them. Yeah, you just walked out. Yeah. Yeah. And I was really lucky I was so young because I look back now. If I was like probably 40, they would have kicked me out. And I think they probably thought I was someone's kid. Probably.

You were like 22 years old. Yeah. And so they were like, let's go for lunch. So I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. And I didn't leave and I stayed there. And then I went up at 3.30 and I walked into her office and it was so nice. It was like it wasn't in the boardroom. It was in her office.

It was in the tiny office desk and she was sitting behind it and it was like cluttered with stuff and she was a quarter culture buyer ship like these gnomes and all these different things around. And then I noticed she had seven other competing products sitting in her office, other grass hats from other people. Anyways, he gave her the whole spiel and told her everything about like the Earth Buddies and the factory. and the campus faces.

I told her everything about my, you know, my life up until that point. And then she did the most magical thing. And she gave me the vendor book. And she said, I'm going to order 48,000 pieces. And if it goes well, I'm ordering half a million pieces from you. And then I asked her for her garden home, which is a strange thing. You did? Why did you ask her for that?

You know, I just wanted something to, like, remember the occasion. I didn't, it was almost like surreal. I didn't believe it was almost, I didn't believe it was true. So you got 48,000 from her. How did you find it? 48, 48 and then a half a million. Yeah, then a half a million. But I was going to say for the 48,000 first, because at these numbers, you're two young guys, you've never done this before.

Two, three weeks prior, you're making, like, you're making them yourself, but you made $5,000. I don't know how you made $5,000. You had to, like, find the fact, you had to find a factory at some point to, like, make this quantity, right? No. No? No, we know. We open our own factory. Well, okay, okay, already at this point, at 22, 23 years old?

Yeah, yeah. At 20, okay, so this time frame is insane. So then you guys opened your own factory, hired factory workers. How did you do all this in such a speedy amount of time? We got a ton of energy. Yeah, but even like to find the people, like to interview the people, like to even know the materials, like the machines to buy. Like what like how did you do that? Well, first of all, we built the machines ourselves.

Oh, even more so. It was we were able to, we were able to surround ourselves. The truth is we were able to surround ourselves with amazing people. That's when we brought our third partner Ben in. Okay. So what did Ben do for the company? The irony is Ben is the most creative person. He's not an operations person, but he ran the factory for the first nine months.

I mean, this is crazy. He ran the factory, but amazing things happened. Okay. Can I tell you, the first people we went to hire in terms of workers were people from our homeless shelter. Okay. It didn't work out that well, but two of the people, okay, that we hired from the homeless shelter, stayed in our company for five years. And one of the gentlemen was a manufacturing savant.

and he came into Ben's office, okay, after like one or two months of being in production, and he's like, you guys can go way quicker if you do things this way. And one morning Ben came in

and he had all these Gant charts already all figured out. The guy figured out like the whole line flow. This is a man from a homeless shelter. So just the universe just kind of like coalesced to bring the right people to us to make it happen. And we worked really hard.

Like my brother-in-law came every night after he was a lawyer and he'd come to our factory and he worked from like six to 11 o'clock at night. and he'd build everything and he hired people to build it. And then we, you know, we're working with different agencies to bring workers. We have people from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, like all these different agencies were giving us workers. And Ben was running the factory and I was ordering the raw materials and Anton was out doing sales.

And we started hiring people. It just kind of just happened. So you basically then make a million of these earth buddies. Right. And then to answer your question, how we got into toy business. So now we're going to say. Now we're getting into the toy business part. But wait, I'm still on the Earth buddy thing because the fact that the amount that, like, how my brain works is like I'm chronologically going through all the steps that have to take place for you to even be able to make even a fraction of that amount is absurd in that amount of time.

People get stuck who are listening to this. They get stuck in minutia like analysis paralysis for even like the first step. Like, okay, how do I make two? Never mind a million. Can you give a little, like if. someone listening to this who's young in their 20s or not, when they're sitting on their couch and they go, I don't know how to, I don't know how to do this. What would you say that one thing is that what that got you that ability just to like stop

overthinking and just do? Think about, first of all, make, make bite-sized decisions, right? Because we say we're going to make 5,000 pieces from others. We didn't say we're going to sell a million pieces. So that was a bite-sized decision. The reason why we got 5,000 was because that was the minimum. order quantity that the printer would defress. Oh, right.

Okay, we probably would have done 2000, right? So it was like, what's, what's the most manageable thing you can do in this moment in time just to get started, right? And once you start, you unlock the magic. Momentum. Everything's about momentum. It's all momentum. Momentum brings you the luck into your life, right? So it was do it in a bite-sized chunk.

Okay, don't overwhelm yourself because if you think so big, you're going to get, like, stuck and you're going to get doubt and doubt is the anti-lock. So that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is think, who, who's around you in your life, right? They can come in and help and participate in whatever you're doing. And I think that people have so much excess capacity, right, and so much desire to be included in something. And if you're the one with the idea, you can bring people along.

And so think about who's in your, your network and you can do things on a project basis. It's not like, you know, we gave profit share. My brother and I got 5% profits on the earth buddies. My sister got 5% profits. We didn't pay them a cent. Right. They just put it.

And then more than anything, they were invested in the upside. And when people are invested in the upside, boy, do they actually like, they're like, you unleash this incredible amount of energy. Right. Right. So just think about who's around you and who's got what talents. And then don't be afraid to start asking, telling people what you want to accomplish. And when you tell people what you want to accomplish, they're like, oh, I know this person. I know this person.

I know that person. I know this. And then if you don't overthink it, like I didn't overthink going to the closeout guy. I didn't even know about closeouts. And he surprised us with 26,000 pieces. And then we went to roots. And like, so it's, it's. So you made off of that one Earth buddy.

How much did you make off of that? And in the first nine months, I think we, we grossed probably upwards of like, I think it's like three million dollars at nine months. And you guys, and like this was like your first main, major project. So you were, like, how much does it make, how much did it cost you to make one of those? It costs is about, I think about 60 cents. And how much were you selling them for? Probably on average, like around 250. Some of that.

Wow. So then here you get the million dollars, all those, and how long were you selling those for? How did that ricochet into a toy company? Well, we sold the EarthBadies made for like two and a half years. And I think maybe over the course we sold like three million pieces or something, two and a half million pieces. But we knew very early on, this was a fad, it was a chia pet. It was like a moment. There was something magical doing it once, but you're not going to do it more than multiple times.

There's no longevity. You knew there was no longevity. Yeah, we knew that going in and there was a moment. And that's why we wanted to be like first market. And... But you weren't even for some more. Other people were doing it. You said that woman in the office had five different competitors, like five different green things. But I would say that we probably got at least 50%, 60% of the market. Why do you think that is? Was it a better product? Or was it just... Because we didn't wait to get it from Israel and we didn't...

Speed. It was speed to market, all of it. We were the quickest. And we were able to scale. It was those two things together. So speed and being able to scale. I think the speed because people sit too long and then someone else comes and does it. It was there. It was there. It was there in the ether. It was in the zeitgeist.

That's why I asked you about why you didn't license it from Israel, because that would be the most obvious thing, right? Like, just license the thing. But it actually would have, you said something that it would have taken way too long to do that. I couldn't even look the one Kmart, Adrian Zax, in the face, and say I can deliver the half million pieces for you if I wasn't, if we didn't have our own back. I mean, that's pretty amazing.

We were like unshackled. It was like it was our... Because you did it like from the, like owned it right away. So you didn't, a lot of people like do second, like, you know, third party stuff. So would you say, would you say a big piece of advice would be if you could eliminate the third party starting a business, people listening, would you say that would be a really good idea and try to do everything yourself in-house? It's hard to make a blanket statement and not knowing what specifically, what type of business. businesses people have. I do think the more vertically integrated you are, the better it is because A, your costing is better. Your margins are better. B, is that you're learning more about the whole

process. And I think it's great to like, it's great to learn, right? And so to all the pieces that come into it. Right. And then I think you can have much more creative control in what you're doing. And there's lots of knock on effects that come along with it. But I think it really depends on, on type of business. Okay. Fair. Okay, now go into how it started it. Yes. So it's like, so we were in the horticulture business. And we did, we did one follow. We did one thing which is called the herb garden and it bombed.

It was like, it was like facing growing herds and my sister was on the package. Oh my God. But so we knew that EarthBuddy was going to have a life to it. And about six months into the Earth Buddy, I started to notice the kids in Toronto were playing with this product called Devil Sticks. So I don't know if you ever remember those. It's just a three-piece juggling set for kids. You've got two sticks and you got this bigger stick. It's weighted on the end.

It's got tassels. And you hit it back and forth that starts to spin. I kind of do. Maybe, you know, if you were a hippie back in the 80s and you went to great for dead shows, you would see it. I kind of do. So I went to a lot of dead shows. Yeah, I can see that. I could totally see me a huge deadhead.

You know, I still are. Did you go see them at the sphere in, uh, in Vegas? I have not been in the sphere. I am so upset. I did not see that. Oh, you would have loved it. Before Bob died. Yeah.

Yeah. So I used to play with them myself. And then I started to notice the kids were actually playing with them in the schoolyards in Toronto. And they were making them themselves. So I kind of put it together. I was like, something's here. Maybe there's a fad going on. And we had our factory.

So I said, why don't we actually make some ourselves and see how it goes? And so we made our prototype. We made some packaging through. The company that bought the 26,000 pieces from us for Walmart, they knew a rep company in the United States. And next thing I know, myself, Anton, and my ex-girlfer Melissa, are at New York at the Toy Fair in 1995. And we're there in like this back room with our like one prototype of the devil sticks. And whenever the, you know, a buyer would come in, you know, I would go out and I would juggle the sticks and I'd go behind the curtain again. And these reps broke us into Toys R Us and KB Toys.

And suddenly we shipped the product into those accounts. And Devil Six was such a, something was in the ether. There was something like in the zeitgeist for kids around this particular product that the moment we shipped it, it just took off. Really? It just took off. So you're two for two kind of like you found these two juggernauts basically. First was the earth buddies that you found. Correct.

And second is this stick thing. Correct. So at the end of that year of selling the stick things, devil sticks. Yeah, devil sticks, yeah, devil sticks, aka devil sticks. So we sold a million and a half of the devil sticks. We manufactured a million and shipped a million and a half. In how long? In that year, in that 12 months.

Wow. And then we had a decision to make. We were like, should we go into horticulture or should we go into toys? And we were like, toys sounds a lot more fun. Is that really what happened? Yes, what happened. And so my third, the third, and if you want a little more detail, So our third partner, Ben, he left the business, okay, because he didn't like the manufacturing.

Anton had the insight. He's like, let's bring Ben back into the business. Ben comes back. And Ben's living with Jen Irwin. Do you remember Irwin toys? They were the biggest Canadian toy company back in the day. I don't remember. So the Irwin Toy family says to us, you know, if you guys are going into the toy business,

there's this list of 200 inventors around the world that come up with ideas, but they don't commercialize them. And here's the list. So Ben took the list and he started traveling around North America, meeting all these toys inventors and showing them the work that we had done so far and started to generate a bunch of ideas. And that's how we got into the toy business as a result of how does that work? Do you pay the inventors for ideas? How does that work? Yeah, it's basically they come up with the ideas. They'll show you the ideas for free. And if you license one from them, you pay them a 5% royalty

in perpetuity on the sales of the product. So what was the first thing you took from that inventor? Well, we started to meet with hundreds of inventors. Yeah, what was the first one that you actually bought or licensed. The, and I just want to, I do want to say that after the devil sticks, we were marketing some like open source products and they weren't like very fancy just to pay the bills. But the first one we, our first big toy product was a thing called airhawks. It was an airplane and you pumped it up. It had like a PT bottle and a little pneumatic engine and a propeller on it and it would fly

around for 45 seconds. And so these two British inventors, John Dixon, Peter Manning came to show it to me and Ben. and it was like the funnest day of my life. Okay, we'd go to the park, okay? We flew the plane. You gotta understand back in the 90s, they only had the balls of planes or the Cox gas power planes, which took off your finger. And so we go fly this airplane and all I wanted to do was I wanted to pick it up and fly it again.

And Ben wanted to fly it. And I'm 25 at the time and I felt like a seven year old kid. And so we said to them, okay, we want to license this from you. And we spent two years developing this product. Little did we know. And this is like the thing about being young and all the amazing things. that happened to you, everybody had turned down the product. All the, all the, all the, they had shopped it to all the toy companies.

So, oh, really? Okay, but they didn't take it out to the, to the stores, like to the, no, no, no, it was still a prototype. It was still a prototype. So all the other, like, Mattels of the world, Irwin, whoever. Mattel and Hasbro, the biggest guy, they turned to death. They all said no, okay. They all said no.

But we didn't know it until about a year and a half later. Really? Okay, so you guys said yes, and then what happened? And then we basically took all the money we made from EarthBuddies, all the money we made from devil six, all the money we made from these small little Chotchky products that we're selling, and we put it into engineering and developing this very highly complex product. So you believed in this product that much? You put all your money into that. How much did you sell of that product? That product, at the time that we brought it to market,

which was in 1998, we were doing $7 million in sales, and the year we launched the air hogs, we jumped up to about $35 million in sales. So that was a great bet. It was amazing. And then we became the Kings of Flight. We were producing flying toys for 15 years. So who was the person that said we have to go out with this one? You? It was myself and Ben. It was together. Okay. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentus 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and Omega 3 combo for months now. And the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health. and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone.

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It sounds like you know, you've had some really good idea. Like you've got a very good vision for what's going to like be where the puck is going. not where the puck is. Do you know what I mean? Well, sometimes I can tell you that our three follow-up products after Airhogs, we were still producing them, but we wanted to get into new categories and we'd be new inventors. Okay. And all three bombed.

Which ones were they? Don't free Freddy. Okay. Take a little secrets baby. I can't even pronounce the name. It was like, wasn't even a great name. Okay. In key charm cuties.

Okay. So let me ask you a question. When did you get the Rubik's Cube? The Rubik's Cube. We acquired it in 2000. And then 16, maybe 2018. Okay. So this was obviously a license because this has been around for 100 years, right?

No, we actually, we acquired it. We bought it. You bought it? Okay, but wait. So you bought it. We bought it. You didn't license it originally? No.

No, we had nothing to do with the Rubik's Cube up until 2018. You bought it. What made you buy it? In the toy business, I have an iconic brand that's got like 99% word of mouth awareness. It's like, it's very rare that it comes along. So how much did you buy it for? We paid about $55 million for it. Did you make your money back on it?

Yes. Really? How many Rubik's cubes have you sold in the last 10 years? I don't know the number, but I think we do, you know, it's millions of cubes a year. You sell millions of these still a year? Oh, yeah. So what would you say? The crazy thing about the Rubik's cube is like it's part of culture, it's part of society.

I was going to say that. It's a major part of culture. Would you say, like, I was going to say, of all the toys in the world, Where would Rubus Cube fall as one of them in icon, like in icon history? Probably in the top three? No, I wouldn't say top three, but maybe top ten. What's number one? Holy Barbie.

Oh, Barbie. Barbie, Hot Wheels, Lego. Right? That's true. Okay. What's number five? Okay, let's go. This is actually very interesting.

Okay, most iconic toys of all time with the iconic Ronan. Number one? Renan. Renan. Renan. Renan. Renet. Number one is Barbie. Number two is Hot Wheels.

Hot Wheels. Number three is Lego, you said? Lego. Four. Four. This? No. No. You don't think so? What else have we got in there? I'd say, you know, I'd start to go things like, but they're licenses. I think about Star Wars or, But Pure Play toys from scratch, those are the three biggest.

There's things like Etch as Sketch. I bet you if we chat GPT it will tell us. You did? What is it? Rubik's Q, I was right. Seriously? Rubik's Q is number one. According to who, chat.

Okay, so, okay, I'm not even in the toy business, my dear. You know, you're hired. You should have hired me for innovation. Was that not right? So Rubik's Cube is number one. What's number two? Lego is number two. What's number three?

Barbie is number three. Hot Wheels number four. Yo-yo is number five. So I sold this a little short. Oh my gosh. But I had the top three. You own this and you didn't know it was the number one toy of all time? Because maybe I'm looking, I'm thinking about sales and revenue and other topics.

You own the number one toy, the most iconic toy of all time. You own, and you didn't even know that. You thought it was Barbie. By the way, so did I. That's insane. Wow. And by the way, I was still stuck on the fact that you guys created Paw Patrol, or are you guys licensed Paw Patrol or you created it?

No, we created it. So you actually created Paw Patrol. That's our baby. Okay. If you're a parent listening to this episode, This is insane. Paw Patrol's, I'm surprised Paw Patrol is not even on that.

Where's Paw Patrol on that? You must have sold, what, $100 million a year on just Paw Patrol? More? $200 million a year on Paw Patrol? I can't tell you the exact number. It's a lot. $300 million?

It's a lot. $400 million? It's a lot. Because this is how people like these facts. We're going to clip this because this is going to go viral because people, if you're a parent or someone who knows, you know. would say, what, a half a billion a year just on Paw Patrol?

It's a multi-billion dollar franchise. That's what I can tell you. This is what I'm going to say. Okay, I would say maybe even a billion dollars a year on Pop-Irol. No, now you're going a little bit. I'm going to tell you why I say this. You're going a little bit, getting a little excited. One of our, one of our Chaim Saban, another Israeli, he created the Power Rangers,

his company, right? Right. And when he sold it to Fox, he made $4 billion, just on that one thing on Power Rangers. The fact that you had Paw Patrol is just one of this massive umbrella of like fantastic, iconic, legendary toys. I can't even imagine how much money Spin Master has made or how much you're worth. I can't even imagine. Pop Patrol is like, it's like, it's like, do you have something where you're even talking? You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't even know.

You didn't even know that Rubik's Cube was number one in the world in iconic products. This is absurd. I mean, what you guys have created is like it's, this will live on in like forever, for every, with every child in the world. Like my kid, you know,

someone who's being born right the second, 20 years ago, like they all play with these things. Is that not insane? You know, it's, I'm taking it all in as you're talking about it. It's pretty remarkable.

Like, you know, I'm just thinking of, You know, when I first moved to L.A., when I met Chaim Saban, and he was like, everyone was like, he was like, he was like, such a big mothar, which is like a big deal, you know, like, because he sold Paw Patrol, all these billions and blah, blah, blah,

and he was a big philanthropist. And it's funny, you know, like everything in life is so relative, right? Cut to how many years later we're talking about, like, you know, like Popatrol, which is much bigger than Power Rangers. And you're like, I don't know, I don't know. It's like, it's not even part of the conversation. What do you mean? Like it's like it's like it's like a throwaway because there's been so many others.

They Pop Patrol is big but like okay this this is big this is massive. Listen first of all nothing's a throw away. Everything is like so much time, care, attention. Like how did it happen? Stuff doesn't just happen. You know like we you know Anton he actually was running mergers and acquisitions for us for many, many years. And like he managed the relationship with the people that own group. for probably 15 years.

He kept in touch with them. He was always calm. Did you distribute them at beginning or no? No, no relationship. We didn't have any relationship with them. We just knew them as a result of being in the industry. You know, our whole thing, spin master, like, we went to every trade show, every event.

Anytime we could be in front of people, right? Our whole ethos in our business is, okay, we're open to ideas wherever they come from. That's our ethos. Okay. Okay. And we'll partner with people. We're the partnership company, right?

Oh, okay. Right. Because you can, you can do, you can do bigger things. when you partner with other people, especially when you don't have the equities at the beginning, right? And when I say equity, I'm just talking about competence. So he maintained that relationship. So anyway, so, yeah, I'm going a bit far afield, but he managed that relationship for many years. And then when they were ready to sell, and it was actually complex. It was actually owned by like four different people. And they had a bit of, there was issues there. And Antone was able to manage it. And that's his gift is managing people. And, and then we bought it.

She was like a people person. Yeah, it was just a moment in time. Yeah. It's a good moment in time. But there's also, so everything's like, nothing's throwaway. Like it's, well, no, what I mean by the throwaway is when you think about the magnitude of some of these iconic brands that, you know, there are blockbuster movies being made of. There's, these are like, this is like historic brands that have like really impacted like life. Like my kid used to love pop, like I would put on Paw Patrol every single morning, right? And that would calm them down. You know what I mean? Like they also, my daughter liked the pig you one.

What was that one? Peppa Pig. A great show. Amazing show. Do you own Peppa Pig too? No, no. Can you get the rights for that? Can you buy Peppa Pig?

No, Hasbro paid $3.5 billion for E1 and in the E1 deal came Peppa Pig. So I don't think they're going to go up. Oh, that was a juggernaut also. Yes, that's great. I love the show. Pepper PEP is a good show. It's a good show. Also created by British people and Paw Patrol was also created by a British person.

Okay, so tell me how Paw Patrol happened. You know, Paw Patrol happened in, first of what happened in the lowest point in our company, okay, because our company was doing about a billion dollars in sales at the peak of Bakugan. And then we went, we lost half our sales. For 16 years in a row, our company was profitable. And then in year 17 and 18, we lost money for two years straight. Why? Because there was too much hubris.

Mm. Right? And hubris, too much hubris, too much believing, like, everything you touch is going to turn to gold. everything's going to be great. Um, you can do, we can launch tons of products at the same time. We weren't being very judicious at that moment in time. We got ahead of our skis. We hired so many people.

We were just like everything's just going to work out great. And we didn't have the experience to realize that, you know, as fast as something like a Bacca gun can go up, go up, it can also come down. And also you need to have the consistent reoccurring revenue underneath to maintain growing your company. And so that was one of the most painful moments in my personal career, because was we had to let go of 350 people in our company. Um, we had to do four restructurings, right? And we weren't even mature enough at the time.

Like we probably could have got it done and we should have gotten done it too. But like to be able to to do it four times, people felt so unsettled in that 24 months period. Right. So during that that time, we we, we said, okay, we really need to be much more judicious with what we're doing and give everything a lot more time, attention and care. And we still want to stay in the entertainment business after Buckingham started to go to do. down. So we said, what else can we do? And we actually launched three shows post-Bakagan. They all failed. Redekai, Tenkai nights and Little Charmers. You could not give away the show and you can not, you can not literally take the product off the shelf at retail. Like, I thought it was like

stuck with glue. Okay. Really? Because there was so much product there. Like it was like no one was taking it. You know, like it was that bad. Wow. The most important, like when you walk retail and you see the empty shelves, you know that that brand's doing well. Really? Yeah. If, if, the shelves are full, it just tells you straight away. Easiest way to know if something's doing well or bad. It's an abundance of your product over there for that while. Say again? There was an abundance of your TV products or whatever.

You go in one week, you come back next week. It's still saying. Nothing moved off the shelf. It was like stuck. That's hilarious. It's funny, but not funny. Yeah. That's not funny.

So, but we still want to stay in kids. And so we said to ourselves, let's try to do something in preschool. and let's try to do something around preschool and transformation, because transformation is such a magical play pattern for children. And so we created this brief, and we sent it around to five different creators around the world. And the creator that I really wanted to work with was Keith Chapin. He created Bob the Builder.

And, yeah, which is a great show. I love that one too. And so I have this whole thing where I love being around lucky people. Right. I'll mark a person, like, you're a lucky person, right? So I just want to, like, be close to you. Are you sure I'm a lucky person? I think you're pretty lucky.

How do you know? I don't know. You got good energy. Thank you. Good energy. Thank you. So, and you make things happen. I do.

Right. So. So to you. Obviously. So anyway, so Keith Chapman was like, I really wanted to, I really wanted to work with him. And he came back with this really interesting take about these five pups that go on these rescue missions. It was originally called Robbie and the Rescue Pups. Mm, okay.

And, but the crazy thing was that he didn't actually follow the brief. The brief was about transformation. So he gave us this story about Robbie and the Rescue Pops, but had nothing to do with transformation. Right. But we loved it so much. And we loved him. And we said, okay, let's start. And we went and we started developing it.

We found an incredible director, Jamie Whitney, incredible writers. We found an incredible studio. Just by the way, like PopTroll is 100% Canadian. Canadian director. I was just going to say that I had no, does anybody know that Pop Patrol is Canadian? No. No, no, very, very, I know how to set to you. I can't believe this.

I can't believe that Paw Patrol is Canadian. Yeah, 100% Canadian. That's why all the pups are so nice, you know. Of course. Captain Turbitt, you know, venture bay is from British Columbia. It's modeled off a bay in British Columbia. Do you own the TV show? Yeah, it's ours.

You own the rights and all of that? Yeah, we created it and we sold it, and we partnered with Nickelodeon. So they're a partner on the sales distribution and licensing merchandising. Do you have a swimming pool of money that you just swim in and dive into every day? Well, listen, a lot of it gets reinvested back into. the business and all the people. I can't think. There's like a million of,

like, it's, this is remarkable. Your mom must be like, just like, like, she must be just like, unbelievably like, so proud of you. She's compelling every minute of the day.

I'm sure. Like, that's a Jewish word, people. Is she just like going around bragging about her son on a regular basis? It's like, what you've done from an immigrant parent, I understand what a massive, this, on every level, this is amazing

between the disability, learning disability of immigrant parents, you weren't handed a bunch of money. You literally did this on your own. Like, legitimately you did this on their own. Like, I have to again say, and I say this a lot on this podcast, I'm a big believer of like, you know, self-made and there's very few people are ever really self-made. They sit here and they like go on and on about how they've done this and that, the other. Meanwhile, they were given a majority of it. You are like legitimately like full on self-made, which is why you're so impressed.

to me. I think it's incredible. Your mom missed... You guys are like two peas in a pod. Really? I got to introduce you guys. I want to meet your mom. Did she say the same thing to you? In terms of what? Does she say this to your, is your mom say this to you? Once in a while. I've heard of talk. I want to meet your mom. Where does she live now? Is your mom in Canada for the summer? So we can... Is she, where is she? Where is she? She's in Toronto. Most of the time she's in Israel, but she's back in Toronto for the time. Is she feisty? I bet you she's She's like, if my mother was 20 today, she would have like 10 million followers on Instagram. She has no filter.

You know, she loves, she loves, yeah. I love her, I love her. She's like super chatty. She's a people person. She loves, loves people. And she just tells it too straight. Good. You're right.

We'll be BFFs. I love her already. I really appreciate people like that because we don't have enough of them anymore. Everyone stands on ceremony and has to care so much of how they appear and live. look and feel and I hate that. No, not my mother. Yeah, but this is probably why you are who you are. Your mother, like your mother created something like you.

And she believed in you and she let you do whatever you wanted to do. That's what I, oh, you love your mom. I love you. I love you because you love your mom. Oh my God, I'm so in love with you right now. Okay, let's go on. Because you love your mom. Oh, my God.

You're so good. You're such a great little, I love you. Okay, I'm going to cry, so let's move on. Okay. I want to take a quick, break from this episode to thank our sponsor Therasage. Their trite panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce

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T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E dot com, and use code be bold for 15% off any of their products. Paw Patrol. So then here you are doing the pop patrol and then what happens? You get the rights, I mean, you do all the TV and then that was a juggernaut in itself.

You know, it was, it was, we took it to Nickelodeon. We actually pitched them. And it was myself and Jen and Keith Chapman and Adam Beter. And we brought a bunch of toys that we made. And Seema, who was the president of Nickelodeon in time, she said, okay, let's partner on it. We're going to buy the show from you. And yeah, and it was just a magical thing. We'd never produced a preschool show.

And they were our partners and they helped us, you know, with giving us notes on the show. They get full credit for the theme song. Right, because we tried to break the theme song. We just couldn't get it right. Right. And they pointed us in the right direction to work with these people who were incredible at writing music. And then it hit the airs in 2013. And I knew, and you're a social media person, so you'll appreciate this.

I used to go on Instagram, okay? And I used to check in the first like two, three, four months how many birthday cakes were being made for kids with Pop Patrol characters. And I kept on seeing, I was like more and more and more and more. And then I was like, then I kind of, I knew that. something was happening here. And, uh, and then our toys hit and our toys did really well. And then, and then we put our second season and then we said, okay, let's try to get Paul for five. Let's try to get five seasons of Paw Patrol. Made, done. Let's not jump the shark. Let's keep the same tone and tenor. And then we hit five years. And then after five, we said, let's do Paa for 10.

And then we did seven seasons of Paw Patrol. And then by our seventh, eighth season, we said, okay, let's change the mantra. We're going to do Paul forever. Forever? Forever. Forever. Forever. You said pop, we're going to do PAA forever. Forever. Like ever, ever, ever. Every single year we're going to come out with 52 new episodes of Paw Patrol, okay, with special themes every single year without fail. Okay.

Right. And that's what we've done now. I think we're shooting our 50th season. Okay. How is it doing now versus how it was doing back then? It's doing very well. Like, what's the not? Like, I'm curious because I remember when my kids were small. We're very blessed. It airs in over 180 countries around the world, and it's the number one show for preschoolers in the globe. Still. And it touches, it touches probably, you know, I'd probably say, you know, 12 million new kids every single year.

And if you add it up over the years, it's touched over like 200 million kids. You don't understand. I know because I had a Pop Patrol cake for my kid. I probably saw an Instagram. You probably found my kid. So where is it? Where is it? Can you chat GPT this? Where is Paw Patrol in relation to Peppa Pig, Bob the Builder?

There's one other one that everyone used to watch too. There's Dorah the Explorer. Door the Explorer. There's today you have Peppa the Pig, you have, you have Bluey, which is very popular today. That's our biggest competitor today. Bluey? Yeah. Peppa Pig was the one, I honestly, that's the one people always talk about.

I remember. It's a classic. It's classic. It's been running probably for 20 plus years. Yeah. Again, number one. Jesus Christ. That's it.

I forgot about Daniel Tiger. I loved. Yeah, Daniel Tiger is a good show. Daniel Tiger is a great show for kids too. And so what, well, Sesame Street's a classic. You mean Paw Patrol beat out Sesame Street? Do you walk around like seven security guards? No, I have zero security.

I mean, you're telling me that Paul. I have no social media. I know nobody knows anything about anything. So you're trying to tell me that Paw Patrol is the number one. You own the number one show. and number one toy of all time. Yes. I guess so according to chat.

And you didn't even know this? Well, I knew the stat on paw. I didn't. I wasn't. But I think it's, I think the real thing is longevity. Right. You have it.

It's the longevity. And, you know, we actually, it was, it was something we learned from, from Bakugan because we weren't able to do it, keep Bakugan going. And there was a lot of lessons there. And there was a lot of failures that we applied to,

to, uh, to Paw. So like, the one thing I would say is like this is like, Paw Patrol didn't happen. Paw Patrol happened in our 19th year of business. So we were in business for 19 years. Okay.

We were students of animation and how people were producing shows. We were going to MIPCOM from like 2001. We'd go to France every single year. We were reviewing everybody's TV shows and we were learning the business. So all this type of stuff, like it's important to know like it doesn't just happen. It was 19 years worth of work before we. But you, but out of the gate, you were fortunate enough to have a big success with the Earth Buddies. You bought the Rubik's Scube in 2016, you said?

13, 16. Massive. That airplane thing, $35 million. So, yes, you could say 19 years to get to Paw Patrol, but you had one massive success. Yeah, you had some failures, and then you had another success. I think the real big point is that people should not be giving up if they fail because you never know it's around the corner, right? Totally. Right?

That's the big thing. Like life is full of hills and valleys, basically. Yeah, we got super lucky with our first animated show called Bacagun, which ran four seasons, and then our three next shows, which we talked about. Failures. So we could have given up, but we didn't. We were just like, let's keep staying at it. What would you say, I think, because this is what's interesting.

You have these two business partners, Ben and Anton, a lot of times people fail or, sorry, or, yeah, fail or lose because they pick badly, right? What do you think the secret sauce is to partnering? And like, how did you guys make it work? Because personalities usually can clash, especially as you get bigger and bigger and more successful. Yeah. I think that the ability to say sorry. Sorry is a strong one for partners.

Yeah. Like, if you can't say story to your partner, like, just like, give up and just, you know, move on to something else. Yeah. We fought all the time. We micromanaged each other for years and there was so much like, you know, tension that came out of the micromanaging. But we had healthy debates. I think the thing that the thing that led to better decisions and not always the right decisions, but good decisions came from the healthy debate that we had amongst the three of us.

And that was cascaded out to a larger group as the company grew. It was the ability to have that conversation. But at the same time, when the right idea popped out in the conversation, to recognize it and don't have any ego attached to it. Okay. And then you're like, okay, and let's just run with it. And we would repeat that and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. And then there was other parts.

which was just the trust and respect. And then there was other parts in terms of like, we had the same ethics, right? We always wanted to treat our partners well. Ben was always like, you know, it's okay if we paid an event or an extra half a point or an extra point. Like, if they're making money, like, that's great. And we're making money, that's great.

So we always had the same ethos. You know, I had this, we had the situation in our second year of business. Someone wanted to actually encourage us to buy a whirlpool for a buyer. A whirlpool for the, okay. Yeah, you can do more business at this retailer if you buy the buyer at whirlpool. Yeah, so back in the- That's a strange thing to buy, but okay.

We wanted it for his backyard. Yeah, well, I figured not for like his office. Yeah, you know what I mean? I didn't think he was buying it for his, you know, bathroom. Yeah. Anyway, so I was like- You wanted to, you wanted a bribe, basically. Correct, yes. I was picking up what you were putting down.

Yes. Yeah. You know, we didn't even consider it. So, like, our ethics were always aligned. So like ethics or work ethic. Yeah. Right. The work ethic is a big one.

Like we were all working super hard, right? And we recognized there was also a big thing which was, which was we recognized that we work differently and we respected that. Do you know like. Big one. Yeah. Like what was, I know how you work, right? You don't like graphs and PowerPoints. What is your methodology?

No, what I'm just talking about like like. No, no. I know what you mean. But I'm saying like everyone does it differently. How are they? What was their? How did they work? How did you work?

Like what was your lane? What was his, Anton's lane? In terms of things we actually did in the business? Did and also like, style? Yeah, style and focus. Well, I did in the early days, product development operations. Yeah. And then I moved into the entertainment side of the business.

Ben did product development and creative. And Anton did like HR and sales. Okay. Were you all like equal partners? Anton and I were equal partners because we started the business. And Ben was an equal partner in terms of, of being treated as a partner, but his equity stake was lower than ours

because he came in afterwards. So what happened, by the way? You guys stole the business or you guys? No, we took the business public in 2015. Okay, yeah. Oh, that's right. So we're a public company today. How's the stock?

Not great. Not great. Why? You have all these massive... Listen, that's the whole podcast in itself. It is, but this is what we... People want to know. You can come back again.

You don't live here, though, but... It's basically, I can tell you, It's very multifaceted, but the most important thing of your public company, you never, you should never miss your numbers. And if you miss your numbers, then the street loses confidence in your ability to grow consistently. And no one loves anything inconsistent. So that's the root. Why we're, why we're missing some numbers. We missed our numbers over number of years.

One is like some bad luck, things like tariffs. You know, it doesn't help their business. That was my next. I had a question about the tariffs. Yeah, like tariffs. And this year is oil and stuff like that. that, but we're back on track. But a lot of it, the root it is that we, um, when I stepped down from co-seeing on the

business myself and Anton, the transition to bring in outside CEO, we didn't manage it as well as we should manage it the first time. And there's a lot to be said about culture. The most important thing in a business is culture, right? And the most thing, the thing that you have the most valuable asset, which is more valuable than even the brands and the franchises is your culture because your culture is ability to replicate what you've done over and over again. And if you lose that part of the culture, that replication factor, then your company can't continue doing what it's done before. And so our

culture shifted in the last number of years and we're on track to bring it back. But I think that's a big part of why the stock is not where it is, where it's truly valued because it is not really representative of where the company. No, I mean, it's not at all, right? When did you step down as CEO? So, 2021. Oh, so you did. Okay. What made you to step down?

You know, it was a combination between the co-ceo model wasn't working anymore. Wow. So you guys were co-ceo-ceo this whole time? Yeah, the whole time, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So what made it stop working?

It was just, it just, it just got tired, a little bit old and yeah, it just, it just got tired. It just got tired. It's like being married for a long, long, long time. Mm-hmm. Right. You know what I mean? This was like to be married for a long time. I understand.

Have you ever been married? I've never been married. You know kids. I don't have kids. But you have a toy company. I've been married to two business partners, you know, but personally I haven't been married. So then you decide to step down and then who becomes a CEO? Yes, we search for like a year and we brought someone in from the outside.

Who? Who is the guy? His name is Max Rangel. Where did he come from? He came. He did a lot of his career at P&G. and he has, before he came to us, he was at SC Johnson. So it was a classically trained.

Yeah, he was a trained CEO. Classically trained CPG, C.O. Listen, he did, he did a great job. But I think that the biggest learning for us is like, first of all, any transition with CEO is very difficult. And you have the highest chance of success if you bring someone in from the inside, right? It's very hard to bring people in from the outside. Very.

Yeah. Especially when they're classically trained to be a CEO. It's a different mindset than someone who grinded it out. Correct. So now we're on her second CEO, female, Christina Miller. Where did that start? She came about 10 months ago. And where is she from?

Most of her tenure was at Cartoon Network. So she came from the Entertainment. What was she doing at the Cartoon Network? She was president. She was running the network there. And then how many employees did that place have? I think that part of it was maybe a couple thousand. How many employees?

You guys have thousands, though, right? We're about 3,000. Around the world. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so then you've stepped down. So what would you say, okay, I have a couple of questions. I'm going to do some rapid fire with you if you don't mind.

Do you mind? No. Don't you have a plane to catch? Or is it your plane to I'll wait for you, Tony Stark? No, it's not my plane. I fire up the chat. No, I need to go back to the office and actually shoot some social media stuff. You're going to shoot some social.

Is he really making you do this? No, listen, no one's making me do anything. Why do you want to do it? why do you want to do like what like what is it if i were you and i had all the money like you and i was all the success as you why would you put yourself like on display like that just what's the point you don't need to it's to to get the book out and i think the book will is it all for the book it's all for the book there's nothing else i have no other reason to do it like you're not going to do a fitness video you're doing squats and lunges on there okay i i truly want the

people to find out about the book so i'm trying to meet people where they're at Okay, so you're basically going to go back to the office and do some, like, chit-chats about the book? Yeah, people are going to interview me and I'm going to give me answers. Oh, okay. All right, I'm going to interview you some more and you can give me answers. Are you ready? Okay, here we go. First question, and try to keep it brief so I can make it into like a clip.

Can you do it? I'll try. It's not my skill, but I'll try. Okay, try your best. When someone has a creative idea, they are excited about. How can they tell if it is actually worth building into a real business? If they feel it in their body. Okay.

So you felt the earth buddy in your body? Yeah. If you actually, if you feel it in your intuition, your own internal knowing, it's a good sign. And I would also say if you have a lot of resistance, it's a good sign too. Really? Yep. Why? Because usually people are more resistance.

Resistance comes up when you really want to go towards something. Interesting. That can be with anything in life. What separates someone who struggles to get their idea off the ground from someone who builds a hundred million dollar company or a billion dollar or multi-billion dollar company? The inability to overthink things. This is not on my list, but what do you think makes a really good entrepreneur? Instincts. If someone has a business idea but no money to build it, what is the smartest first step?

Make a prototype and meet as many people as you can to pitch. What if the prototype costs money? Make even a smaller prototype. Okay. What do you say the most important character trait someone has to have in order to be successful? That's my question. Not on here. Integrity and passion.

If you can only say one quality. Integrity. Why? Because everybody that you partner with and everybody that you interact with is going to make their decision based on who you are as a person. Most people make things rational decisions, but most of the decisions people make is based on a feeling. And if they trust you, they're more inclined to say yes to you. Which is a good segue into my next one. What do you think is more important to be successful in life?

Likeability or competence? Competence. Competence? Competence. Really? Why do you say that? Because at the end of the end of the, the day, like, it's your competence that's going to deliver the end result. And at the end of the

result, that's what really matters. We're living in a time when you don't have to be competent, you don't have to be smart, you don't have to be capable. You know, it's all about facade, right? Like, for example, like, I did this whole talk about, I believe, the most undervalued quality in somebody's success is likability. Because it's the likable person, like your competence or your degree can get you in the door, but your likeability will get you the job, right? Your competence may get you to do the busy work, right? Like the C student will be the boss to the A student, right? I'm a big believer in that. Like I think people want to be around, work with, date, all the things with someone that they like, not with someone who's just competent. That's my opinion. Yeah, no, I totally.

Not because it's right, not because it's right, but because it's what actually human nature gravitates you to. I totally agree with you. I would love to say that you need to have both. Ideally, if you have both your set, like I'm also, you know, what do you think is more important? Talent or work ethic? Work ethic. Work ethic, for sure. 100%. You could be the most talented person in the world. Like, I'm a big work ethic person. I don't believe in balance. I think that's a load of shit. I don't think most people have, I think people who could say, I want it out of balance. Like, who, like, if you're going to be successful, in anything, there's going to be an imbalance. It's just what it is. You have to be obsessed, in my opinion, for something to really take off. Yep, 100%. Do you agree with that? It has to be very, very important to you. And you've got to have the passion for it to break through. Like, how important was being successful to you when you were? I think, first of all, the definition success is so different to so many people. What is your definition of success? I think the definition of success. I think the definition of success for me is living in a line life, doing the things that

with how you want to be in the world. And if you're if you're incongruent to that, then you're unsuccessful, right? So yes, I agree with that. So what is a successful life look like to you? I think successful life is giving yourself the permission to do the things you want to do in your life. That's successful. Okay. I think that betting on yourself is an important thing about success in life, listening to your own internal knowing and following what I know it sounds trite, but at the end of the day, like, only you know what you want to do in your life. And everybody around you, everybody's well-meaning, they got great intentions for you.

Right, right, right. Right. But I think about this a lot, like, it's hard for us to put words to things, right? And so at the end of the day, sometimes it's counterintuitive, but to trust yourself and to listen to yourself and to listen to different parts, not to over-intellectualize everything, it's a very difficult, we're not trained to do that. We're not, we don't live in a society like that. But I think that if you can, then you're being true to yourself.

And there's nothing more successful than being true to yourself at the end of the day. And you're not living anybody else's life. Right. You're living your own. Yes, 100% agree with that. What would you want someone, if they can only have one takeaway from this book, what would you want it to be? That you own your decisions in your life and that it's important for you to make them.

It's important for you to surround yourself with good people. open and have discussions. But at the end of the day, it's your decision. And what I would say is like, I'd love for the book to be a creative, resourceful tool to create discussion and dialogue with the closest people around you, given what you want to potentially do in your life, whether or not it's business or whether or not you want to do something in arts.

Use it as a tool to create dialogue and discussion with yourself and with others and see what comes from it. One question I wanted to ask you because it's very aligned with what I speak about is you talk about the power of not knowing. Correct. And I talk about the naivity as a superpower, right? Do you want to give us an example of something that showed up in your life where that was so evident? I think it plays it on my life. All the time.

All the time. Okay. like even as I've gotten older. Yes, I was going to say it doesn't really stop, right? You know, back to Paw Patrol. We created a movie for Pop Patrol in 2020. And we've got our third one coming out this August. Of course you do.

Well, we're Paw Forever. Yeah, exactly. That's what you said, Forever? Forever. Forever. Niki Mouse is Forever. That's right. So is Paw.

We wanted to be paw forever. We're going to try our hardest to be pop forever. So, wow. So I was naive enough to think that we can make a film. And we did. And no one believed in us, actually. We actually had to green light the film ourselves, right? And because everybody was like, you know, it's like to create a film for pause, like, it's for preschoolers.

How are you going to do a motion picture for preschoolers? But I was like, there's got to be a way to do this. Yeah. And they didn't have it all figured out, but we figured it out. We got it done. But I was naive to like, there's still a little bit of nice. and like in everything that everything I still do. So that's one example.

I think I think it's I think it's the most wonderful thing to actually not be that. I think it's every decisions are an art and a science. You have to know your space, you can the competition and what's come before you. But once you've connected all the dots, a little bit of naivity of what's possible, dreaming a little bit. Yeah. I connected the naivity to the dream.

me to being a dreamer. I also think that naivity also, like, what you don't know actually is an advantage because sometimes when you're two-season, two experience, that's when the overthinking happens. And then you are, like you talk yourself out of doing whatever that is. Well, I want to end on this because it's like everything sounds rosy on this podcast. I think I'm the only person in Los Angeles. Yeah. Because I lived here from 2008 to 2010.

And I worked on creating the Baca Gun film. Okay. Okay. and because anyways, and it took me four years. I finally got an offer from Universal to do $100 million live action film. They were ready to greenlight it. And we said no. You said no?

Said no. Can you imagine? Why? Because of exactly what we're talking about. Because we had this thing in our mind was like, based in toy history, if a franchise has slowed down in sales, you can relaunch to the next generation of kids seven years later. And we said to ourselves, if we do the film, it's going to extend out the franchise, even though, and we may not get sales against it.

So now we're going to have to wait like nine years. And we said, we didn't want to wait. We wanted to like, we were like patiently wait. So I used conventional norms, okay, and made a really bad decision. And I still look back today and I'm like, who passes? Like, it would have been so great for the franchise to do an incredible film. And I could have made more films. And, and we wouldn't.

Wow. Yeah, turn. I had a full work with Scott's, were Pam Abdi, okay, what's your name, the head of Universal, they totally greenlit it. Jeff Kirchbaum, film was done in the can, it was ready, I got the call. And I worked on it for four years. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm the only person that said no.

Oh my God. That's crazy. Yeah, so sometimes if you overthink things and you apply the conventional norms, you miss opportunities. 100%. I'm all about going against any conventional norm. Correct. So you don't have to, you're preaching to the. converted already. All right. Ronan? Renan. Renan. Jennifer. Jennifer. I thought I said it properly. Renan.

All these years, I guess I've been like saying your name wrong. I apologize. I would say where could people find you, but we know they can find you nowhere because you're nowhere on social media. No, I'm going. I'll be on LinkedIn. By the way, LinkedIn's fine, but you don't have to, I'm going to tell you later, whatever, but the book, how about this? The book is called no experience necessary by say your name because I don't want to screw it up. No, no, do you say it? Renan. Perfect.

Thank you. Practice makes perfect. By Renen, Harari. And like I said, this guy is like the real deal. I am so happy that we've got to do this podcast. And thank you for being here. I'm hoping I didn't hold you hostage too long. I loved every minute of it.

It's great. It's two hours. I mean, it's not horrible, but it's not like, it's been like two hours. Yeah. Sorry. Like almost two hours, like an hour in 45 minutes? Jen, you're the best. You're the best.

All right, guys, I hope you enjoy it. Let me know in the comments. And if you haven't subscribed, please take this moment and subscribe. Bye-bye.