In Search Of Excellence - Marc Lore : Why 95% of Success is Just "Shit Work" | E181

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

In this explosive episode of In Search of Excellence, Randall Kaplan sits down with Marc Lore—the billionaire entrepreneur, owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the visionary founder behind Diapers.com (sold to Amazon for $545M) and Jet.com (sold to Walmart for $3.3B).If you think entrepreneurship is glamorous, think again. Marc drops the filter to reveal that "95% of the day is shit work"—boring, repetitive, and unexciting tasks that most people quit on. From hauling thousands of diaper boxes out of Costco in an 18-wheeler because manufacturers wouldn't sell to him , to counting cards in Atlantic City casinos, Marc shares the raw stories of resourcefulness and resilience that defined his path to billions.SUBSCRIBE for more masterclasses with the world's most successful leaders!Key Moments & Timestamps00:00 – Intro: Why entrepreneurship is low probability and "shit work" 01:46 – The Story: Marc’s dad crashing Bruce Springsteen’s house 03:44 – How Marc’s dad "hacked" the job market for programmers 07:44 – Marc’s mom becoming a competitive bodybuilder at age 36 11:31 – The "Farmer Mindset": Creating something from nothing 13:32 – Nature vs. Nurture: Are entrepreneurs born or made? 14:44 – Overcoming bullies and the power of being alone 19:48 – Why "A-students" from top schools often struggle with failure 23:40 – Hiring Strategy: Why Marc is a "Resume Snob" 31:30 – Trading options and derivatives at 12 years old 35:32 – The Fake ID Ring: Deconstructing licenses to beat the system 40:12 – Why manual labor is the best training for CEOs 43:55 – The Diapers.com Hustle: Buying inventory from Costco with an 18-wheeler 45:48 – The "Loss Leader" Strategy: Losing money to win the customer 48:14 – The Human Calculator: Marc proves his insane math skills live 51:51 – Why visionary founders are obsessed with magic About the Guest: Marc LoreMarc Lore is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves. He is one of the few founders to sell a company to Amazon (Diapers.com) and another to Walmart (Jet.com) for multibillion-dollar exits. Known for his "human calculator" math skills and extreme risk tolerance, Marc is currently building the utopian city project Telosa and the food delivery startup Wonder.About the Host: Randall KaplanRandall Kaplan is a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the founder of In Search of Excellence. He has been an advisor to more than 50 companies and invested in nearly 100, including Google, Lyft, and Seagate.Apply for One-On-One CoachingIf you're ready to change your life and achieve your goals, apply here: https://www.randallkaplan.com/coaching Listen to my Extreme Preparation TEDx Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIvlFpoLfgs Listen to this episode on the go!Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/23q0XIC... For more information about this episode, visit https://www.randallkaplan.com/ Follow Randall!Instagram: @randallkaplan LinkedIn:  @randallkaplan TikTok:  @randall_kaplan Twitter / X: https://x.com/RandallKaplanWebsite: https://www.randallkaplan.com/1-on-1 Coaching: https://www.randallkaplan.com/coachingCoaching and Staying Connected:1-on-1 Coaching | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok | LinkedIn

Most of the biggest opportunities and ways to move the ball forward lies in the probabilities that nobody else wants to touch. I was born with the entrepreneurial DNA. Can you learn it if you weren't born with it? I think you can be an entrepreneur without the straight DNA of it. But I do think, especially if you want to do it over and over again, I think you have to have the DNA. When I look at hiring now, I want to see someone have shown a demonstable level of success in every job

they've been in. And when they move, better be a really good reason. Those are the stars. People that jump, especially jump too quickly from a good company, I won't even interview them. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. My guest today is Mark Lour, the billionaire owner of the Minnesota Timberwolf, serial entrepreneur, sold diapers.com to Amazon for $545 million. And then Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion. Mark, thanks for being here.

Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Thanks, Randy. Great to be here. I always start with our family. And I want to go to your dad when you were 17 years old. He drove to Bruce Springsteen's house and asked to go on a fishing trip. Tell us about security, throwing him out, him still wanting to go on the trip, and how that image influenced your future. Wow. So you're jumping right in. Yeah, my mom was actually became a bodybuilder. Never did anything in her life. and was training Bruce Springsteen's then wife. My dad kept asking her to ask Bruce to go deep-sea fishing once he heard that he liked fishing. And so my dad is one of these guys. He just told me and my brother, we're going fishing with Bruce before he hurried back. And he just had it in his head that we were going.

And in that morning, he still hadn't heard back after multiple times of follow-through. So he's like, just go to his house at 5.30 in the morning. And after, yeah, he was knocking on the door. It was dark out. My brother and I were, like, so excited. He actually thought this was going to happen. Oh, definitely. He told all our friends, everybody, you know.

And then there's my dad, sure enough, getting, you know, carried out. He's on the shortest side. And he was just kicking his feet as he was being carried out to his car. Lifted. And me and my brother are like, like, we're in shock, right? And he gets in the car. We're breathing heavy because he's just been sort of manhandled. And he gets in the front seat.

and we're like, Dad, you okay? What's going? He's like, guys, doesn't seem like Bruce wants to go fishing. You guys still up for it? And he's like, totally like calm, nothing. And we're like, yeah, okay. That was it.

Went fishing and didn't rattle at all. It was almost like just part of an ordinary day, ordinary morning. He was a dreamer. He was a dreamer. He never really achieved his dreams. He never really achieved financial success. But he had a great work ethic. So as you watched him from companies to companies,

I know he had a company named after you and your brother. Tell us about watching throughout all those years your dad really struggling to make it and not achieving his dream. Yeah, I mean, you had me, my mom and dad were 20. So when they had me, we lived on top of my grandparents' house in Staten Island, New York. And he was selling vacuum cleaners early on, door to door. He was like more that door-to-door salesman, always selling something, tattoos, vacuum cleaners, whatever he could find.

he, this is one of computers like in the early, I guess it was early 70s, that he went to school to learn how to be a programmer, a computer engineer. They called him programmers back then. What year was this? This had to be early 70s. So between 71 and 75, like early 70s. Early, early. Early, early.

So he learned how to be a programmer and he got a job, J.P. Morgan. And he quickly realized that they realized that he wasn't actually that great of a programmer. but he was there long enough to friend this guy, Greenberg. Greenberg was a very good programmer that worked for JP Morgan, but always complained that he's not getting paid enough. So my dad, on the last day before he was going to get fired, came up with this brilliant idea of asking Greenberg if Greenberg would work for my dad. So he went up to Greenberg and he said, hey, how would you like to work for me and I'll

pay you 50% more than you're making? And he said, Pete, like, what do you want me to do? He goes, I just want you to keep doing what you're doing, but you'd work for me and I'll pay you 50% more. He says, ha ha, how does that work? He's like, how does it sound? He's like, well, sure, Pete. And so he went into his boss's office and said, hey, Greenberg, he works for me now.

Here's his new weekly rate. So he basically, this is like the early days of like computer consultants, you know, like where people worked at banks doing programming, but they were on like weekly, hourly, daily rates. I don't remember. But they couldn't afford to lose Greenberg. So they said yes. That was his first client, I guess. I remember Greenberg was like a, I thought he was like some sort of rock star or something because like his name would come up.

His phone, the phone rang and it was Greenberg. Everybody had to stop what they're doing, you know? It was like our entire life was like in the hands of this guy, Greenberg. And that was the first one. He was like an agent. Basically, my dad was an agent for computer programmers and engineers at the time. And he started this Chadmark systems, which is my brother's chat. And I'm Mark.

he started and yeah he just started getting more of these computer consultants part of his company that's how he built a business i hope you're enjoying this video so far but before we jump back in i want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life over the last 25 years i've been an advisor to more than 50 companies i've invested nearly 100 including google lift and sea gate and i also co-founded a company that today is worth more than 15 billion dollars i've been incredibly blessed in my journey and if this stage in my life. I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the

right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs who are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity. In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions, and if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan together. All right, now let's get back to the video. Her mom, Chiarro, as you mentioned, was a trainer. She weighed 110 pounds, but could squat 320 pounds. So what did that look like? She must have been training every day because that's when I think about squatting 320 pounds, weighing 110 pounds.

I wonder, how's that even possible? Yeah, my mom was incredibly strong, and everybody in the gym would be looking at her and couldn't believe it, you know? She'd go to the gym daily? She would go every day. Yep, but keep in mind, you know, she didn't play any sports in high school. She didn't finish graduate in high school. So she met my dad when she was 16, got married, and had me when she was 20, right? So, and then had three kids and didn't start doing anything working out wise or anything until she was, I think, 30. She said, I can't run. I'm only going to walk because I don't feel comfortable running. And she used to go to the gym every day and walk on the treadmill. And then one day, I remember this, she came home and she goes, you guys aren't going to believe this. I actually tried

running on the treadmill and I was able to do it. I'm like, that's great, mom. Like, now you can, you can run. Run, running, you're going to get in really good shape. And then from that day on, she just started running. Next thing you know, she's running like five miles a day on the treadmill. And then somebody introduced her to lifting. She started lifting.

She got really into it. And then like a few years later, when I was 16, she's entering like bodybuilding competitions. And it was like, you know, I'm telling my friends in high school, I'm like, I'm going to my mom's bodybuilding contest, you know. Like, what? Because most moms were like at that point, moms were, you know, in their mid 40s, late 40s, even 50, you know. And here's my mom, you know, 36 years old when I was 16, like still like bodybuilding. So it was pretty cool watching her do that. And more just watching it go from nothing to that in a very short period of time was very inspiring. We're all a product of the home in which we grew up. And a lot of that is how our parents get along with one another, right? Some of my. friends are have amazing parents it's different some of us didn't really you know my parents didn't get along divorce you know had a big toll on me you grew up in a tumultuous household as well

screaming matches and drug use as well do you want to talk about some of that and how that influenced you and exactly what the drug use was yeah I mean I would say the hardest part was the unpredictability I think if you if you've said you know your experience had as well where you just didn't know whether it was going to be an explosive day or a calm day. And there was really no rhyme or reason. So I think you get really in tune to knowing how to read people because as a little kid, you're trying to read the room, read my mom, read my dad. Is he going to blow up today or is he not? Is it going to be calm? What can I do? So you grow up kind of a little bit with a pleasing mentality, like try and not cause problems, you know, always thinking about my mom and wanting to make

sure she, you know, wasn't upset and things. So I think probably where I got a lot of empathy from and being able, like the EQ part of my DNA comes from that childhood. But at the same time, I think if I just saw that, I think I would have been not in the place I'm in, but I spent a lot of time with my mom's parents who were the opposite. You have the entrepreneurial gene. You've been thinking about it since you were a little kid. I remember when I was growing up and single mom, we lived in a small apartment, and you'd see people around you.

And I kept saying, you know, where do all these people have money from? Because you drive by his homes. And I didn't really know what it meant back then, but I thought, you know, one day, I'd like to live better than this. At four years old, you mentioned your grandmother, big nan, that you wanted to own a farm. Tell us about that. So, yeah, I spent a lot of time with my mom's parents were also very young.

So they were had my mom when they were 20. So they are, you know, really the age of some of my parents' friends. So I spent a lot of time with them. They were the most gentle, kind, loving, not volatile, steady, emotionally, consistent, like the absolute opposite of my household. So I got to see sort of both sides. I definitely thought I choose this, you know, as a way I wanted to be. But yeah, when I was four years old, my school teacher asked us, like in crayon to sort of draw what we wanted to be when we grow up.

And then I feel like the teacher wrote it, you know, but I said it, you know, I want to be a farmer and grew some stuff growing up. And I brought it home to my grandmother. And she sighed and she said, you want to be a farmer? No, no, no, you're too smart to be a farmer. You want to be a farmer. You a doctor or a lawyer. Meanwhile, nobody had ever gone to college, no, professionals and my family to be seen anywhere. And I'm like, no, no, I want to be a farmer. And she asked, why do you want to be a farmer? And I said, because they grow stuff from nothing. And I remember as a kid being fascinated with the idea that you could put a seed in the ground and then have created something that you can eat and live on. I just found that fascinating as a little kid. Did you plant those seeds when we were

maybe in kindergarten or first grade, we put a seed in a little plant and you'd water to the plant and you'd see it sprout? Yes, absolutely. Yes. That was very cool to see at a young age. I was born like with the entrepreneurial DNA. Can you learn it if you weren't born with it? And are people who are born with it more successful entrepreneurs than those not?

I think those who born with it, I think are more successfully. Yes. I think you can be an entrepreneur without the straight DNA of it. But I do think, especially if you want to do it over and over again, I think you have to have the DNA. Like the ability to work extremely hard with something that has a low probability of success. I think that defines an entrepreneur. If you're starting a company and it has a high degree of success, that's not really entrepreneurship. It's low probability, big outcome, and you work incredibly hard, 100 hours a week,

and you can lose everything and have nothing to show for it. That's entrepreneurship. You're listening to Part 1 of my credible interview with Mark Lawrence. one of the great serial entrepreneurs of our day who has had multiple exits of many billions of dollars and has raised many billions of dollars. And he's also the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team. Be sure to tune in next week for part two of my credible interview with Mark. When I was younger, I was bullied, I stuttered. I didn't have a lot of friends.

And I would sit in the middle of these assemblies by myself, pretending like it didn't bother me, hurting inside. I had G.I. Joe dolls or figures, not dolls. and I played with my Legos, you went through something similar. Yes. So tell us about how you dealt with periods of difficulty, being alone. And then what's your advice to all the parents out there whose kids are in the same situation? Yeah. I mean, I, like you, I spent a lot of time. I remember just by myself, I would play Legos, like you, play Legos, but also similarly, the Little Green Armymen. Yeah, those two.

Yeah, hundreds of little ones. And sort of like just creative. thinking about how to set them up and how to play with them, build things. I think being left alone and being forced to be creative is incredibly valuable skill to have. One, to just be able to self-soothe. I also counted. So that was my soothing mechanism when things would get volatile in the house. I would just kind of go in the corner and just count. This is a very little kid and I would count and the number would just keep going. I would be like 10,183, 10,184 and just keep counting until the number's got big, but it got me very fluent in numbers. And then as I got a little older, I started doing the

same thing, but doing multiplication, division, and other kinds of like math stuff. I attribute probably that to sort of why I tend to gravitate toward math and numbers now to this day. But to the parents out there, you know, I just notice a lot of parents now are a little bit too protective of their kids. I mean, certainly I believe in being protective when they're safety, like the actual physical safety is in danger, then be very protective. But they need to learn how to fail and be resilient and not, you know, if they forget their homework, just like run and get it and bring it to them because they're going to be upset, not having it. It's like, you forgot it, you know, let them feel what it feels like to fail or do something wrong. I think it's really important.

I failed so much as a kid because my parents weren't around, you know, and I was by myself a lot and just failed to things all the time. And I was very comfortable failing, even in school. school, I didn't get good grades at all. I didn't study. I didn't think about it being important. I was always daydreaming, thinking, connecting dots, being creative in my head, teachers talking and telling us what's going to be on the exam. And I'm thinking about how this could be used in some other way, in some other business. I was always thinking and thinking, never reading. I still to this day, haven't read like a novel or a book because I was always thinking. And I think as a kid I didn't get read to and I didn't. So I didn't like reading for that. I didn't like books. And so I avoided books. If it's a

textbook and I'm really learning something, I could open it and read it very slowly and think and read a page and think. But any sort of, I've never read a book like for just pleasure, I guess. I'm always, if I try, I've tried, read a few pages and then I start thinking. And I much rather think. So I spend a lot of time every day just thinking, connecting dots. I think as a parent too. I have 23 year old twins and then I have a five-year-old. And my parenting style, of course, it depends on your wife, who's in charge. You know, I go along with 95% of her plan. I've been married to my wife, Madison, coming out about 11 years. She's the most amazing woman in the world. And she is definitely different than how I was as a first-time parent 23 years ago, where it's, okay, she's going to fall.

Okay, let them fall, you know, catch them before they fall. They're going to scrape their knee. And she's different. Like you said, she, if your kid falls, your kid falls, scrape your knees, scrape your knee, you shouldn't be there for every little thing. Try to save your kids. The homework, like you said, it's the exact thing. Don't get your homework done. You come up, you know, with a five on a 10. You get the worksheet bag and say, hey, Carter, what's up with this? You know? And it just makes them more motivated to get it right. All kids want to please their parents, obviously. And, you know, they want to do their best if you have the right kind of parents motivating your kids to do their best. Yeah. And also, as an entrepreneur, you do fail a lot. So you have to be comfortable with failure,

you have to be able to learn from it very quickly and not dwell on it. So I think as an entrepreneur, one of the greatest skills to have is the ability to not think about anything that's gone wrong today or in the past and not worry about anything that might happen in the future. It's to like be in the now and do everything you can and put all your energy into making today the most productive day possible. But you do think back to the mistakes you made and you don't want to make the same mistake twice as you... You catalog them, but you don't think about them. You just take the lesson, catalog it, and then that's it. So, yes, you don't want to make the same mistake again. But I think the biggest issue I see even in the workforce as I hire people in entrepreneurial

startups is especially ones that have gone to very good schools and done very well in school, that they have a really hard time engaging in any activity that has, you know, a decent probability of failure. This is a naturally gravitating look for, no, but how can I make this so it's going to not fail and it's 95%. And that's where you miss out on a lot of opportunities because most of the biggest opportunities in ways to move the ball forward lies in the probabilities that nobody else wants to touch. Certainly less than 50-50. Right. And all the students today from the best. schools, even not the best schools, want to go to the hot companies, right? I'm going to work in AI. I want these jobs. And like you said, I think there's more opportunity. If you're a young go-getter,

meritocracy to go into something that isn't working, you can make more of an impact. And even if the company doesn't work, the experience is worth more than the monetary gain. And I think in our day and age, people, the young students today, even the young professionals, they don't think about it that way. No, it's true. They're not as focused on learning. And it's more about wanting consistent movement and not just being happy and content, just learning. I think as long as you're learning early in your career, there's nothing better that you could be doing. I hope you're enjoying this video so far.

But before we jump back in, I want to know if you've ever thought about what you need to do to reach a nice level of success in your life. Over the last 25 years, I've been an advisor to more than 50 companies. I've invested nearly 100, including Google Lift and Seagate. And I also co-founded a company that today is worth more than $15 billion. I've been incredibly blessed in my journey. And at this stage in my life, I want to give back. I want to share the lessons I've learned

so you can reach incredible success way faster than I did. In my own journey, I've learned that having the right mentor is a massive advantage to achieving our goals. I'm hugely passionate about mentoring others. I'm looking for a few hungry entrepreneurs are excited to take action on their journey to incredible future success. So if that's you, I've got an opportunity.

In the description of this video, there's a link where you can apply to work with me. All you need to do is answer a few simple questions. And if you're a good fit, my team will reach out so we can build a game plan. together. All right, now let's get back to the video. Do you believe in this thing you learn in your 20s and you earn in your 30s? I've heard that before. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, absolutely. Learn. I think the most important thing you can do when you come out of school

and looking where to work is who you're going to work for, which didn't even come on my radar. If I'm thinking about, you know, when I graduated, it was, you know, how much money is it? What's the company and what's the job, right? Who you're working for wasn't even in the top three. I do think that's probably the most important thing. And I got very lucky with who I worked for because that's where you learn. And you're most impressionable when you graduate college. That first boss is very important. And I got very lucky with multiple bosses in my career.

And I think if you get with the right person early in your career to like teach you about leadership and values, work ethic, I mean, that is those lessons will last a lifetime. In today's the end age, I see job hopping being a huge thing, right? You've got a boss, maybe an asshole, they're hard to work with. You don't like your boss. I mean, work is work. Mark Cuban was on my show and he said, if you can't survive a difficult boss, you're not going to make it in the real world.

Do you agree with that? Well, this is where I mean, I would be a little bit more discerning up front as to who you're going to work for and do we do diligence on who you're going to work for and make sure that's a good fit. I think some of these situations happen because they don't ask who they're working for, don't care. They pay me. It's a good company and and that's it. But let's assume you do get in a situation where the boss isn't a great boss. I think you just learn how to suck it up and, you know, put your head down and, you know, be the one to prove to the boss that you're worthy of a

promotion. And when I look at in hiring now, I've become somewhat of a resume snob because, and I don't mean snob meaning like, what school did you go to? I mean, I want to see. I want to see. someone have shown a demonstrable level of success in every job they've been in. And when they move, it better be a really good reason, like a job too good to turn down, an opportunity too good to turn down. I found that those people that have those types of resumes, those are the stars. People that jump, especially jump too quickly from a good company, I won't even interview them anymore. Whereas before, I used to interview a lot of people that I probably shouldn't have, and I got what I call honey potted, where you just have a good hour discussion, you like the person,

they say all the right things, you hire them, and then you regret it after. So I don't even go down and won't interview somebody, even if somebody recommends somebody and says, no, I've worked with this person. If that resume, they've not shown a demonstrable level of success and been at a company's long enough to prove success, I won't even interview. him anymore. And it's proven that has been a, has caused a seismic shift in, in the talent level of the people brought into, into my company. You mentioned it's so important, the name, not the name of the person, but who you're going to work for. And it kind of works both ways. When I made money, this woman who had been out of school for a year or two worked for Morgan,

Stanley, is like, you're the first one to touch Randy Kaplan, so now Randy's mine. Right? And it just just wasn't working. And so I had to go above her head, obviously, if I wanted to work with Morgan Stanley, which I did, want to work with him. And I did. I said, hey, she should not be on the account because I raised this with her and it wasn't a good conversation. I was like, whoa, that is not, that is not how it should go. Right. Right. On the client, I should be able to pick who I want to pick. And I think a lot of founders, Mark, don't get it that the person at the VC firm is your captain and your coach. And you could get stuck with the wrong person at a VC firm. Not all firms are created equal. I mean, all people at Goldman Sachs, I have a lot of mentees and clients who want

to work at Goldman Sachs. And I'll just take whatever job I can get there. Well, there's great people of Goldman Sachs to work for and there's horrible people at Goldman Sachs to work for. So how do entrepreneurs who are so desperate for funding, though they just want it, how are they in a position, how can they get the confidence to say, who am I going to work for? Well, as someone who has always struggled to raise money in every company and every round I've done, I think it's 15 rounds of venture capital. And each round is probably average over 100 pitches. So I'm probably 2,000 pitches in.

It's always been so hard for me. and I've never, I can't remember a situation where I had multiple people to pick from, where I can say, you know what, I like you better, I'll take money from you, and I'm going to say no to you. I've never been in that position, maybe because I've always pushed the envelope on, you know, wanting to push the size of the rounds and always been a little bit outside the box. But so I'm not the right person to ask because I've never been in that situation. But if I was in a situation where I could pick, yeah, I think it was. would be really meaningful. I got very lucky. The VCs that are in my company, Wonder Now, or most of them were in my last two companies, and they're the best. And I feel very fortunate and

lucky had they been different, you know, probably wouldn't be here today. So let's step back again. I want to go back to your 11 years old. You somehow came up with this crazy idea that you're going to flip a coin 10 times. If it landed on heads or tails 10 in a row, you're going to get a Reggie Jackson baseball card. Now, you and I are the same age. I'm 56. You're 56? 54. 54. Okay. Well, we're near the same age. Reggie Jackson was probably the most famous baseball player ever. And as a Yankees fan. And so I grew up a Tigers fan, but I still loved Reggie Jackson, except when they were playing the Tigers. Tell us what happened to that card and what lessons you learned and took from that experience that had helped you in your career.

Well, just to set up, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the bathroom. in school. I had to be around 10 years old. I was very good at flipping cards. You'd flip them and try to land all on heads. I was under the impression that it was, we're going to each flip 10 cards and whoever got more heads. I was flipping and it was heads, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails. He's like, tail, you lose. I'm like, no, no, you didn't go yet. It's like, no, you had to get all 10 in a row. Otherwise, I went. I'm like, that's not what we said. But he took the card, he was a bully, took the card, and then that was it. And I went to the teacher and said, hey, you know, we did this thing. And she's like, I don't know. I'm not going to get involved.

And I still remember that to this day, and why I despise bullies, I think. So yeah, it was, it was, it was my first experience of dealing with a bully, basically. And he was much bigger than me and older and, you know, and I still remember it. And I don't like bullies to this day. Bullying when we were younger was a different kind of a thing. You know, it was, okay, don't do that. Today, you get kicked out of school. And it was very interesting. Oh, no.

Back then, it was very different. Yeah. Very different. Someone was making fun of Randy calling me retarded. We're Randy. You know, don't do that. And I come home crying every day. It all happened the next day at school.

It was, I mean, yeah, very different. It was very different. You know, some ungodly percentage of mass shooters were bullied. I think the number is 85, 90 percent. Wow. Which doesn't. surprise you when you really think about it. Yeah. There's nothing worse than being bullied. Let's go to seventh grade. I think when you're a little different than most, you're reading books that people

are not reading. Seventh grade, you're reading books on options and derivatives, which a lot of people don't read until they graduate college and they're in business school. And so how did that come about? And how would you find a book on options or derivatives when you're 12 years old? So I know. So I said before I don't read novels, but I did like reading like textbooks and like option derivative books I was fascinated with. Yeah, we would even maybe go on vacation and I would like try to find the bookstore and go in there and see. And they would sell in bookstores. They would sell like books on derivatives, options, derivatives. I would always get a book and just read it and read it very closely like one page, think about it.

Try some problems. Flip a page. I really, like, at a young age, mastered options trading at, you know, 13 years old. And I was just obsessed with it. Back then, you couldn't trade. There was no, couldn't go on fidelity. No, Robin Hood. So we're actually trading for an accountant or it was all more in your mind?

Not at all in my head. When I got a little older, like in high school, I got my dad to open up an account where you could sell covered calls, which is the most basic form of option trading. But that was also super fun. Do you explain everyone what a covered call is? Covered call is when you buy a stock, let's say you buy a share of stock at $100 a share, you can sell somebody the ability to buy your stock at, let's say, $110 at some point in the future. They would pay you, let's say, a dollar for that right.

So if the stock never gets to $110, you just keep the dollar. So you own the stock in $100, you keep the dollar, it never gets to $110. If it gets above $110, you're forced to sell it at $110, and you still keep the dollar. So the worst case is you have to sell the stock at 111. So I thought as a kid, I was always fascinated by this. I'm like, this is amazing because I would love to sell it at 110. So if it gets there, fine. But if it doesn't, I keep the dollar.

And that was sort of like the original like excitement around options as a kid in high school. And yeah, we would do that. But nothing risky in options at that age until I started a hedge fund in college. and then did more of the risky options and derivatives and stuff. I grew up in Detroit, Windsor, Canada, right across the border. We'd drive through the tunnel. And back then, you couldn't get these fake IDs, which all the kids do now. They're made in China.

The barcode works. Right, right. I've seen them. Someone I just... Very impressive. I just heard Mark from one of my kids' friends that it passed TSA last year, one of the cars that they made, which is just... Just remarkable.

We were using colored pencils back in the day, and we'd get someone that was ridiculous. And we'd go to Windsor, which is the drinking age was 19. And it was like, okay, you know, we had a beer or so, you know, you hate beer, but you want to be cool and, you know, drink that, drink that beer. The one place you cannot use a fake ID is Las Vegas in a casino. It's a bad. And I took my son, we did a podcast with Sugar Sean O'Malley. Yeah. And he was the champ.

And he said, hey, I'm having this party. And I forget at what nightclub it was. And so, yeah, come. You know, we come with his posse. You know, Charlie's excited. He's 19 years old. He's got the fake ID. And we get there around midnight.

And I said, hey, this is fake. Normally, they would take the ID when you'd get on a restricted list. And you couldn't come back to the casino for some amount of time. Yeah. That's how it's strict. But on the flip side, my wife, who's a beautiful woman, was going to Vegas, 22 years ago, 18 years old, no one checking her ID. So I think there's a little, you know, inequity going on there. Tell us about what you were doing in Atlantic City casinos and where you

were buying these suits from. Let me also tell you about the ID, since you asked about ID, because me and my friend spent an entire summer deconstructing all the elements of a license into a big board and it was basically the exact size that if you put your head in front of the white part and took a picture and then cut the picture out, it would be the exact size of a license. And that took an entire summer. It was so hard to make, especially like the different seals and things. But we had the ability then, yeah, you just take a picture and anybody can have a license. You just changed the name on the board with the different letters and date of birth and take a picture.

You were counting cards, which is great for you, bad for the casinos. How much money did you make doing that before you got booted? I don't know how much I want to talk about this. A lot of money. A lot of money. Statue of limitations has run out. A lot of money. A lot of money.

Let's talk about, well, I'll tell you a funny thing about fake ID. So I take my kids away on one-on-one trips every year for all the parents out there who want to do something amazing. One of the best things I've done as a dad, especially as your kids get teenage years where you're competing for their time is take your kids on a one-on-one trip. It's the best thing I've ever done. You're not competing with their friends as much. You're not competing with their phone as much, although they're on their phone. So I took my twin girls to Cabo and how old? They were 16.

Okay. And we were going to Chileo Bay. And we were saying Chileo Bay Discovery property. Mike Melon was on my show. If you haven't listened to that show, it's a great show. And I'm in first class and I hear some guy in front of me talking about Calvin Harris is playing at this hotel, opening the hotel. And I said, oh, you know, Calvin's playing? He said, oh, yeah. And my wife, one of her best friends, had dated Calvin. Okay. And so, and I knew his manager because for our bachelorette and bachelor party, we did a night solo in Vegas, my wife and I. And then last night we were in Calvin's DJ booth for the night. So I knew Calvin's manager, Mark Gillespie, who's a great guy. And so I call Mark and I say, hey, Mark, I'm with my kids. You know, we'd like,

to go to this. He said, no, no, no, this is a hotel thing. The government's going to be there. The minister, whatever, of Cabo is going to be there. It's 21. There's strict. Can't do it. I said, okay. Huh. Interesting. So we're in the SUV going to Chileo Bay. And the driver's listening to me, basically I have said, hey, Mark, you've got to do this for me. This has to happen. And so the driver, you know, I hang up the phone and said, hey, you know, what's going on? What do you need? I said, well, I need, you know, fake IDs for these kids to get into Calvin Harris. He said, okay, let me work out it and I'll call you back. So he calls me back at

3.30 and it says, I can pick you up, but you have to be at the police station by 5. He was going to get actual Mexican driver's license to get fake IDs so we can go to Calvin Harris. I'm thinking there's no way that is happening. But I did figure out a way to get them and they were in the Kelvin Harris, DJ booth, we were hanging out with them for the night. Resourcefulness, definitely pays.

Let's talk about odd jobs we all have in school. And we can talk about things moving on later. But I want to talk about picking weeds and doing manual labor. I feel like in today's society, so many kids don't want to do that, right? I knocked door to door. I want money. Hey, can I pick weeds? Some people would say, sure, they'd see this 14, 50,

you're all a kid, I'd sit there in the baking sun, I'd pull weeds, blisters on my fingers. Yep. You had a lot of those odd jobs, too. So in today's society, I feel like people don't want those jobs. Yeah. They don't want them when they're younger and they don't want them as they grow up even in the college years. What's your advice to all those people who look down upon the odd jobs?

Should they take them? And is they experience better than getting some other job in a store or somewhere else? I mean, just like you, same thing, weeds, shoveling snow, car wash, newspaper, recycling, baseball. I mean, I basically would work as hard as people would allow me to work, you know. And I do think that's great training if you want to be an entrepreneur because, you know, you have to be prepared for 100-hour weeks intense over many, many years. So I think it's great training ground. I think if you're not willing to do that sort of hard work, you're going to fold, I think,

as you get older. I don't think this idea that, oh, no, but that's not, that's manual and this is now, I'm using my brain. Entrepreneurship's more closely aligned to manual labor than it is to some sort of cerebral thing. I mean, it is tough. You're, unless you're just sitting in a closet, you know, coding or something. But if you're in a business that has like a physical product or service or things, especially the service. Service, forget it. You're running around like crazy. I mean, you're working harder than pulling weeds, especially in the early days. And if it's a product, you're constantly on the move,

doing stuff. So I think it's great training. It's just like anything. I mean, if you were going to learn like a martial art or something, right? I mean, before you start going into competitions, you're doing the basic technique and form. And it's boring. It's hard, right? It's like a little bit of that. It's like you're building the foundational capabilities, I think, as a kid. it means to work hard. I do a lot of mentoring. I do a lot of paid coaching now as well, which I just, I love doing. It's fun and fulfilling for me. And one of the things that people just don't get today is they don't want to do what I call the shit work. And if people saw the work I do every day, you know, oh, Randy, Akamai co-founder, oh, look at these, all these great investments that he did.

By the way, I talk more about my failures than the wins, because I do think we learn more from our failures than the wins. But what I tell people, man, And, you know, 95% of my day is shit work. It's not exciting. Shit work. It's boring. And by the way, they don't want to do the work that I'm doing. You know, they do 30 minutes.

Oh, gosh, you know, this is really boring. Give me something else. I'm like, no, that's not how it happens. Yeah. There's like a holiday. This thing with you right now, 90 minutes of the week. This is the easiest part of my week. Because just like you.

Most of the week, you're doing the grind, right? I remember at diapers.com, like literally going to the wholesale clubs. and having to buy thousands of boxes of diapers, physically carry them to the checkout, check them out, put them on the truck, bring them home, wrap them up, ship them. I mean, that was a lot of weed picking. Let's get into some of the details on this

because I just want to share with people. Procter & Gamble would not sell to you. So your parents would go into Costco in these clubs with an 18-wheeler in the parking lot and you would basically be buying them at Costco, which is incredible story, resourcefulness. As a role as a day as an entrepreneur, you have to do it. But that's an amazing story for people, I think.

Where did you rent the 18-wheeler to put all the diapers? Well, it didn't start with that. First, it started a car, then van, then truck. And then we had to take them all through checkout. So we couldn't buy pallets and things like that. And we had to take them all through checkout. You had to pay credit card and go through their seat. And it was just brutal.

We realized that the manager wanted us to keep some diapers there. And the deal was, if you leave me some diapers, I will use the forklift and put pallets on a truck view. Then we're like, yes, we can, you know. So then that's where we rented a 18-wheeler. And we didn't drive, but we had somebody come. And then they put it on the truck. And that was a big breakthrough. We were clearing out five, six clubs like a week, maybe even more than that at that time.

And it was like untenable. We couldn't keep buying diapers at, you know, one price and then selling them for a loss online because we were selling them for a lower price. Or actually, we're selling them for the same price that we paid in the club, but obviously had all the shipping and fulfillment and all those other costs. We're losing money on every box of diapers were sold. And that was only sustainable for so long. All right. Let's talk about the concept of lost leaders. And I think that's what you're getting to.

You're losing money on the diapers, but you're trying to sell moms different products with. higher margins. At Costco, for example, for $1.50, you got a hot dog and a drink, and they sell 130 million dogs a year. And it's a lost leader because the average ticket there, they don't tell you exactly what it is $100 to $120. Is loss leader a good strategy for a company that wants to succeed and grow in the future? I think it can be, if done right, if it's strategic. So the thinking was when we first learned, we didn't know anything about retail. We were asking why diapers weren't sold online. And everyone told us well because, you know, it's expensive to ship. They're heavy. And plus, they're a loss leader in the store so you can't make money online. And I was like,

okay, well, why are they a loss leader in the store? Why don't the stores make money on them? Oh, because they drive parents, new parents into the store to get their diapers. And when they come in every month to get their diapers, they wind up buying everything else. And so even though it's a lost leader for them, it still makes sense. I said, huh. And how many products can they buy in the store? Like, wow, the biggest, you know, stores like a Walmart, there could be 100,000 products. I was like, huh. But online, there's millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions. So wouldn't that mean you can lose more money on the diapers online because you have more products to upsell?

And everybody was always, I remember just asking that question. Because when you start and come up with an idea, it's like a piece of clay and you want to mold it. And I always tell people, just tell everyone your idea and just listen to what they say. and when you get to a place where the answers that you're getting back aren't compelling, you know you might have something. And I remember we got to this point where I was just telling everyone, friends, family, everyone, people in the industry, people that know retail, people that know diaper market, just asking everyone.

And nobody had an answer to it. They were just like, no, you're not going to be able to make money. Like it was like, but why? If there's, you know, 100 times as many products online and the stores could lose money, why can we lose more money? And I kept doing it over and over and over and over. Finally realized, no, this is right. We can make this work. We can lose more money on diapers than the stores do. And we can upsell more products online, higher margin. So that was like the original hypothesis that proved to play out. We'll talk about the sale in a few minutes. But I want to go back. You have

an acuity for numbers. You were called the human calculator by your classmates. And I want to talk about a dinner you had with Sonia and I'm going to butcher her last name, Guardo. And then I'm going to ask you what day of the week is it November 22nd? You're 2032? Yes. You're just going to pull this out right here? Right here. That's on the spot, huh?

Right there. That would be, what day you said? November 22nd. I think it would be a Monday, 2032. So tell us about the dinner and where this. incredible unique. Can we see if it's a Monday for you? Yeah. Okay. We're going to wait for the Monday. All right. We're going to cut this part of the podcast. That's insane. It's a Monday. It's a Monday. It's insane. That was under a lot of pressure. That is insane. That was under a lot of

what is going on. That's crazy. Okay, so tell us about the dinner with Sonia. And now where did this insane skill come from? Like I said, I started as a self-sudent mechanism to just count and do multiplication. I used to go to do crazy multiplication, division and things in my head. And then I just realized that there is a formula that's quite a long formula on how to calculate the day the week for any day in history. And I learned that formula and then sort of did it enough times that it's sort of stuck. So now when I hear numbers, like when you tell me the dates, I don't really run through

the full calculation. I sort of hear it. And if I just give myself like a second, it'll do the calculation and spit out the day. So it's just, I can't explain it. It's just something that is, I don't know, just. You mentioned you were an average student. Low average. Low average.

Well, let's talk about the eight out of a hundred you got on a biology test in school. So how important is. failure and embarrassment as a motivator to being better and doing better. It could be a pretty good motivator. It wasn't that case for me because it was very embarrassing. The teacher, this is crazy back then, but the teacher would call out the highest grade and the lowest grade, like, by name. It's so not cool.

It's so not cool. I remember, and you would do it with a lot of, like, with a smirk, you know, and the lowest grade with an eight, you know, is Mark Lurie. It's like, and everyone's laughing. This is like, it's amazing that people would laugh, you know, would laugh, you know, when they named, especially with such a low score. And I did find it very embarrassing. And it was an incredible motivator because the next test, I got the highest score.

And so I was not going to be embarrassed, even though I was quite comfortable failing in not getting the best grades. I didn't even know you needed to apply to college until junior in high school. I thought you just picked the school you want to go to and you go. So I was never like in the whole academic realm, I guess. You know, my parents didn't know either. One of the goals of this show is to make the impossible possible. And that's also true of my coaching and my mentoring that I do.

You were fascinated by magicians and mentalists when you were younger. So tell us about where that came from. and how that motivate you. And then tell us about the Summer League in Nathan Knight. Okay. So, yeah, I've always been fascinated with magic, similar to being entrepreneurship with my DNA. Like, the love for magic I was kind of born with because as a little kid, all I wanted during any birthday was one of those magicians to come. I wanted a magician's set for Christmas. Like I was just loved it. I was fascinated by the idea that making the impossible possible, similar to like an entrepreneurship like in the DNA, something people don't believe it's possible and then you can make possible.

That feeling of amazement and surprise when somebody can't figure out how it's done. And it feels surreal, right? It feels magical. And I just loved feeling it myself and that I loved the thought of other people having that same feeling. And that's sort of the feeling I get as an entrepreneur sometimes too. So it's very, very similar. Ose Perlman, the mentalist, is going to be on my show on Wednesday. We're filming it right here in the studio.

Amazing. So I'm super pumped about that. Oh, that's amazing. I think people are just going to be shocked at what he's done and what he's managed to accomplish. Yeah, that'll be a fun one. That'll be really good. You're the first person and your family go to college. You went to Bucknell.

We can talk about the track and you're kind of set a state record in the 300-yard dash. But what I really want to talk about at Bucknell is we all have different reasons for going to college. When I was growing up, no Internet, no YouTube, no AI, no chat GPT, it was the same with you. So your parents, my parents said, you know, you're going to college. It was never thought that I wouldn't go to college. If you didn't go to college where I came from, some was wrong with you. Right. Today, you know, my son is a senior in college.

I mean, he gets to college. He said for a while, Mark, he said, I didn't want to go to college. And his mom and I said, well, we're going to live? So I want to live with you. No, you're not going to live with us. You're going to go to college. And eventually, you know, when you tell your kids something, they're going to push back on you, right? And then eventually he came around and said, yeah, I do want to go to college.

The social experience in college of living away from home and making these lifelong friends, I think, is invaluable. Yeah. But in today's day and age, you can learn anything. And when he got to college, Margie said to me, you know, I'm bored, I'm not learning a lot, and are the professors at my school

people who can't make it in the real world? There's some perception like that. That's not always true, it may be true. Sometimes I think college is really important in the development of us academically, intellectually, emotionally, and then the social connections are incredible. Is college necessary today with all the tools we have on YouTube, AI, where you can basically teach yourself whatever you need and focus on a specific area

that you're actually interested in doing? Yeah, I mean, there are compelling cases where it might not make sense, but I think in general, like you said, there is a bit of maturity that happens, personal growth of like it's the first time for many people that they're away from their family and from their parents. And spending those four years in sort of this transition environment where you're learning to spread your wings, be on your own, take care of yourself, make your own decisions. I think it's a nice transition for people. And like you said, you're also at the same time learning.

You're learning, but also learning how to learn, which I think is even more important. And of course, to friendships, friendships that many people have for the rest of their lives. So I think there's a lot of benefits. I would definitely be in favor of it for sure. And both my daughters are continuing after college with postgraduate schools. So, you know. You worked on Wall Street after you graduated Baker's Trust, Credit Suisse, San Juan Bank. a lot of students and graduates think Wall Street's a great thing to do, the experience, the finance, the connections.

Is that a good path to becoming an entrepreneur? So you may be learning something more about financial acuity and numbers, or is your advice to go into something else where you're interested in it or learning and shouldn't just go into a field because people are telling you it's really going to help you? Yeah, this is, I mean, I know entrepreneurs that have started in all different fields. So there's no, like if you want to be an entrepreneur, go to this path. Sure, in banking, you'll learn numbers, but you'll learn numbers just about anywhere you go. You're going to learn spreadsheets and have to deal with numbers in some way or another in most jobs. I think, honestly, to tell people this, it's follow your passion. You know, follow your passion.

What do you love to do? You're going to be doing it, you know, 200 and what is it, 240 days a year kind of thing, and you're going to be working long hours. Make sure it's something you love. And if you do love it, you're going to wind up learning a lot more than if you don't. And the learning, a lot of it's through osmosis, though, just being around colleagues, your boss, leader, learning how they think, learning the culture of the organization, learning how to operate within an organization, potentially after a few years managing people.

There's a lot of skills that I think are very important for an entrepreneur that you can get in any company. But I do think the person you work for is number one, and then number two would be the culture of the organization. So if you work with somebody that you really respect and can learn from, and it's within a company that has a very good culture, we'll learn a lot about what it takes to create a similar culture in your startup. Because at the end of the day, the culture is everything. Like if you have a great culture, you can recruit great people and get the best they've got to give because they're motivated and happy working in the company, then you can do just about anything.