The Best One Yet - 🎙️ “LIVE Interview with Marc Lore — The Billionaire Icon of Ecommerce” 🗽

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

We brought up a surprise guest for our Live TBOY show in NYC: Marc Lore, the founder of the most iconic ecommerce brands of all time — and the most energetic entrepreneur we’ve ever met…Marc sold Diapers.com to Amazon for $550M, he sold Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3B, he owns an NBA team, he’s building a tech city in the desert, and he just raised nearly $1B for Wonder to disrupt the restaurant industry.He almost left the interview in the middle of the show because he had a business idea he wanted to get a head start on.We’re kidding (but not really). Marc is just that exciting, smart, and unique. So we wanted to share this entire chat from our live performance with you, our whole podcast audience. Because few people in life are as motivating as this legendary New Yorker, Marc Lore. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Yeti is Nick and Jack here from our T-Boy studio. We wanted to whip up something special for you today. Yeah. Our live interview with a surprised guest from our New York City Live show. All right. So Jack and I, we sat down with Mark Lorry, the legendary serial entrepreneur for a 30-minute talk on stage at the live show. We thought the conversation was so valuable, so much fun, so interesting. We had to share it with the whole audience on this pod feed. So we cut up that interview from the live show this week and turned it into today's podcast.

So enjoy today's interview pod. It's the best one we've ever done. Oh, it's a total T-Bloin. And on Monday, we'll be back with our regular programming, which will also be a T-Buy. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm. You need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. T-boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's special guest is the ultimate New York entrepreneur in our opinion.

This man is the most energetic serial founder we've ever met or heard of. He was born on Staten Island, raised in New Jersey, and yeah, he drank the New York tap water. Yeah, he did. If you have started a business or want to start a business, this interview is for you because this man has founded, give or take a baker's dozen businesses. Okay, he founded a baseball card company years ago that he sold to tops like right after college. He founded diapers.com and sold it to Amazon for half a billion dollars. And get this. After that, he left Amazon, started a rival to Amazon, jet.com, and then sold that to another rival of Amazon for $3 billion.

And he can't pass. This man is not a conventional billionaire. He's not just buying a sports team and retiring. Although he does own the Minnesota Timberwolves. True. He is still quite hungry, though, literally. Yeah. Jack and I like to describe his company, his new venture, as if DoorDash and Domino's and Eataly had a baby, and then that baby was raised by Bobby Flay. That company is wonder, and it exists thanks to the entrepreneurship of Mark Lorry.

Yet he's. He's the Earl of E-Commerce. He is the leader of launching. And there is a high chance he ends this interview early because he has another business idea. He wants to get a head start on. So we got to get to this. We won't take offense if that happens. You're ready.

Today's guest is Mark Lorry, the legendary risk-tolerant entrepreneur. The most risk-tolerant person we've ever met. The ultimate serial entrepreneur. Let's give it up for Mark Lorry of Wonder. Mark, we wanted to talk to you. We thought, okay, what is like one story? We could just kick things off with, it says everything about Mark. And out of all the stories you have, the one story we thought is Bob Sledding.

Yeah, forget about all those businesses prevention launching. Yeah. Mark qualified for the 1998 Winter Olympics. Oh, Bob sledding for Team USA. And you were working on Wall Street at the time when you qualified. Can you tell us about this story? Because we think it kind of sets the tone and says everything about that. We understand you literally stumbled into the opportunity.

That's right. Yeah, it's kind of just a crazy story. So the U.S. national bobsled team was doing, like, just building momentum for the sport. They were going to cities around the country, and they laid a bobsled track down at the World Financial Center. And they basically had people push the sled. They would sort of time you, and they basically said, we're going to be here for a week, and the fastest time gets invited to training camp in Lake Placid. Was it the wintertime?

Was there ice? No. They just laid a track in a sled, and you just pushed it. down the track on flat on flat you know and uh i'd done tracking college and stuff so i was like well i'll give it a try i was lunchtime i took my jacket off you know went up there push the sled i didn't think anything of it the guy seemed impressed with the time and then that was that and then a few weeks later i got this call i thought it was a joke you know somebody's like hey this is so-and-so from the u.s national bobslet team um you know you uh did you push a sledge

I led down at the World Financial Center a few weeks ago. I said, yeah, I did. And they said, well, you had the fastest time. So we're inviting you up to the training center at Lake Placid, where they'll put you through a battery of test. And if you pass the test, you'll make a team that basically trains together. And then there's a competition to see who makes the team, basically. That's what they said.

And so I said, okay, sure. I went up to Lake Placid. I did this battery of test. They had your jump, sprint, lift weights. high jump, long jump, sprint, all this stuff. And they score you. And if you get a certain score, then you can train with the team before the competition.

And so pass this test. And then they said, well, now we're going to, you're going to train for a month all day, every day. And you're working in finance. I'm working at a bank. Yeah, I'm working at a bank. So I'm up there and they say, you know, you're going to train for a month.

And then we're going to have the time trials. And so I said, Okay, hold on a second I need to call my boss So I called my boss and I said This is, you're not going to believe this But I'm up at Lake Placid And I need to take a month off

Yeah Cool running's three What are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to train, learn how to push to Bob sled So I did that for a month And I got the month And then at the end of the month

There was the time trials and basically certain top 13 make it. And then I had to decide whether I was going to train for the next two years to go to the Olympics or... How many years? It would be two years. This was 96, the Olympics were 98. So you didn't end up going to the Olympics.

But the funny thing we noticed when we were chatting with you is you also went to business school of Columbia, but then you dropped out of that. And then you went to Warden. We dropped out of that too. So we noticed you kind of dropped out of the Olympic team in a way. And two Ivy League business schools. It's just a really funny pattern. And it seems like when there's an urgent opportunity to build something, you have to go do it.

Yeah, that's basically what happens. And we actually think that that goes way back to your childhood. You said that from, you know, the age of childhood, you wanted to make money. Can you tell us, like, how did that feel when you were a kid? So I remember, so I grew up in Staten Island, as you said, you know, the first person in my family ever go to college. My parents had me when they were 20 years old, you know, no money, left me at my grandparents. So my grandparents raised me quite a bit of the time.

And I came home from school one day with my grandmother and there was a crayon. I was four years old. And it said, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the teacher kind of wrote it. And it said, farmer. And I grew all these like vegetables and things, you know. and I gave it to my grandmother and she goes, you want to be a farmer?

Why do you want to be a farmer? Does Staten Island have farmers? I never saw a farm at that point. But somehow, maybe it was TV, but I said because they grow stuff from nothing. This is what I said at four years old. Wow. And I just had this innate sort of wanting to grow, build, you know, stuff.

And my grandmother quickly, like, said, no, no, no, no. Doctor or lawyer? I said, no, no, farmer. because, you know, nobody, there's no professionals in my family at that point. Well, that's funny you said that about growing something, because what excited Jack and I about interviewing Mark was that he's a different kind of entrepreneur. He doesn't just build something from scratch that is unprecedented.

What's so cool about you is that you taste that already existed and then you just do this new different version of it. And that's like your style of entrepreneurship, like with diapers.com, which you found it. Funny story. When I moved to New Jersey, moved to this. Newtown Mount Lakes, had some neighbors. And I was doing diapers at the time. And I met the neighbor, the guy.

And he said, you know, what do you do? And I said, you know, I basically sell diapers over the internet. So to this day, he said, right after that, he went back to his wife and said, don't get too close to them. The guy sells diapers. On the internet. So why did you, why did you do that, Mike? Because we notice with the diaper business model, diapers, you'll lose.

money on. It's a lost llama. And selling diapers on the internet, you lose even more money on each diaper. So what was your thought behind you? So I think this is funny. Like as an entrepreneur, you have to have that naivete going into any business. And that's usually the secret weapon because anybody in the space I talked to that knew anything about diapers or retail said that's the worst possible idea I could possibly think of it. You're going to basically take something that makes no money. And then you're going to basically ship it to somebody's house, pay for shipping, pay to put in a box, pay all the labor, everything. Like, you're going to lose even more money.

So how's that a good idea? That was sort of the thinking generally across the board. I was, like, sort of naive at the time. And I'm like, yeah, but they're a lost leader for a reason. They drive traffic into Walmart or Target. There's a reason why they don't make money on diapers because they sell everything else. And I just thought, well, online, you can sell a lot more than what you can sell in a Walmart. And so doesn't that mean you can lose even more money on?

on the diapers. That was the original aha moment. And it turned out to be that way. And even today, you know, Amazon or whatever, Walmart loses a ton of money on diapers because it is the single best driver of that relationship with new parents. So you got everyone hooked on the diapers. Hooked on diapers should have been the website. Yeah. The more honest business name. But then you booked them on other products that you would sell through the website. Yeah. Eventually everything, I mean, everything for baby on diapers.com. But then we opened a a pet site and a toy site and a home site and all these sites that were all under one common card.

Now, Mark's being a little modest here because he's not saying that he actually became the biggest diaper salesman on earth through diapers.com, which attracted the attention of a big e-commerce company. Amazon. You eventually sold the business to Amazon for $550 million. You were a father by that point, right? Yes. Yes.

And you sold a company for a tremendous amount of money. You made it. You had three years to rest and best. But those are the best years of your life. Jack and I always say celebrate the wins. Man, selling your company were half a billion dollars like that? How did you celebrate that win? Well, I wasn't, I mean, after the sale was sort of depressed.

So you sold the company and you were not, you were depressed. I was depressed, yeah. Did you go and like have a drink after in a pot of champagne? A drink, not to celebrate, but in depression. Can you share more? You know, as an entrepreneur, you know, you have a vision and you kind of like see what you want to become. And you start moving along that trajectory and you get more excited about the idea of actually getting there. And you're sort of driven by the mission more than the money at that point.

And Amazon didn't like it. And they cut the price of diapers 30 percent came after us and slowed the business. But not too much. More importantly, investors were like, whoa, I'm not going to give you money. You got this giant here coming after you. And that's when it was very hard to raise, like, hundreds of millions of dollars. There was no soft bank and Tiger and these guys that would write these big checks and stuff at the time. So, Mark, what did you do at that moment?

Like when Amazon comes after you and tries to destroy you, what do you do? Then you sell to them. So Amazon tried to destroy your company by cutting the price of your corporate. product by 30%. They were willing to take any losses necessary to take your customers. But they didn't destroy you. No, they just slowed it slightly. And I think that's what convinced them, wait a second. This brand was more than about just price. It really meant something. People had an emotional connection to it. So the 30% price cut, people were still buying from diapers.com despite it being available for cheaper on Amazon. And what's going through your head?

You know, you sold to them. You're right. You got that financial win. You know, Jack and I always talk about being rich first being king. You got the rich side, but you lost control. What are those three years like after you sell your company? Yeah, it was two and a half years. You know, we continue to grow the company inside Amazon, but very quickly the brain started to think about what's next in two and a half years. So Mark didn't go away. No, no, like Amazon hoped you would. A few years later, he goes independent again and he launches another e-commerce company. This isn't no Michael Scott paper company. This is like something out of Game of Thrones.

Here's what Mark does. He leaves Amazon, starts an Amazon rival called Jet.com, which he ultimately sells to Amazon's biggest rival, Walmart, for $3.3 billion, the largest e-commerce exit in history at that time. It was, I mean, look, I would have quit my career after the bobsled invitation, and he was just beginning. I would have opened a diapers, brick and mortar store. Costanza. I'm done everybody.

Oh, yeah, he's. We still got a whole bunch more to talk to Mark about, don't with Jack? But first, a quick commercial break. Then we'll go back to the live interview with Mark. So what was the motivating factor behind launching another e-commerce company? Was this your count of Monte Cristo moment? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't necessarily like to get back at Amazon. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I mean, it was a nice, nice to have. But it was really, I felt like just unfinished business in e-commerce, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Had access to capital, had great people that knew the space really well and just came up with an idea in the space knowing it well. So it did know it well. I remember I was living in New York City when Jet.com launched. All over the subway, you'd see the purple ads for Jet.com. I remember there was just these really smart, like marginal pricing perks. For example, if you pay with the debit card, your bills less.

If you order like a certain product and have it delivered a certain day, you save money. It was really interesting. That was like your differentiator. Because again, Mark starts companies that already existed, but you do them slightly differently. So like how do you look at the problem of how do I do better than Amazon? Yeah, this was just looking, having been inside there, the logistics are a big part of the expense and the margins are low. And Amazon, and this really still do is very inefficient the way they ship products and very expensive. I thought, what have you created a website where you can empower people to shop smarter and

share the logistic savings with them? So if you're shopping on Jet.com and you buy your first item and it's located in these four warehouses around the country, all the products in those four warehouses become cheaper because the marginal cost to ship it is now lower because it can go in the same box rather than buying something that will ship from a different warehouse. So that's an example. And you share the savings. Share the savings.

It's almost like those company travel policies where, like, Like, if you spend the night on your buddy's couch during a business trip, your company will give you some of the money you would have spent at the hotel. That's it. That's exactly right. The funny thing is that your latest venture, what you're doing right now, isn't e-commerce, it's food. Again, Jack and I like to think of it as DoorDash and Dominoes and Edelie had a baby that was raised by Bobby Fleigh. I love that. I'm going to use that. Can I use that?

Run with it. Also, congratulations, because Mark, for that company, Wonder, just raised $700 million. last month, which is the largest VC fundraise not AI-related in the last three years. And the reason Mark was able to raise such money is because he sold to Walmart for $3 billion, which sounds like a lot of money. However, at the end of his tenure, Walmart had doubled the market cap, just like $200 billion of gains. Totally. Not just because of this guy, but definitely because Walmart had become the number two

player in e-commerce, largely because of JET.com. Because of Mark. So venture capital is like, here you go, here you go, here you go. But then Mark, that brings us to the question, Jack and I are wondering, out of all the industries to go into next, you've been a technologist, diaper, e-commerce. Why wonder and why food? That's a great question. So, I mean, I'm inside Walmart, e-commerce and watching food delivery explode around

the world. It was nothing 13 years ago, we're $100 billion today. people are putting a premium on convenience. People don't want to cook as much. And I just felt like it was the early days of e-commerce where you have marketplaces leading the way and then eventually along comes Amazon with full vertical integration.

And I thought somebody's going to vertically integrate. Somebody's going to take food delivery to a whole other level. That's what we sort of set out to do was to create a fully vertically integrated food delivery platform where we own all the restaurants on the platform. We own the platform. when we own the delivery and we do all the cooking of what is now 30 different restaurants across every cuisine type in a 2,800 square foot kitchen with only two pieces of electric

cooking equipment. Two? That's it. So no hoods, no gas, no flames, no chefs. It's 30 different restaurants. Everything from a high-end steakhouse like Bobby Flay or Jose Andreas down to barbecue, burgers, fried chicken, everything in between, Italian, Mexican, Greek, Middle Eastern, all in one location.

And you're able to get it in 30. 30 minutes, hot. We won't deliver more than six minutes in the city, so you're going to get it hot and fast. And we're able to cook the food, so all the food finishes cooking at the same time. So if you order from multiple restaurants, finish at the same time, one delivery,

everybody in the family can eat something different. We always say Chicago does logistics. I think Mark does logistics. Mark, how do you cook a steak? I mean, it's been five and a half years in the making, but we can cook a steak now. Filet mignon, cooked to perfect temperature, in six minutes,

seared on both sides perfectly by just pushing a button. Wow. How? We can cook a pizza in 88 seconds. We can cook pasta sauteed Aldante with no water. We can cook a wok, stir fry without a walk. Like some really cool. Seriously how?

Every item has a different technique. But we spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last five years to invent new ways of cooking so that we can cook all 600 different meals across 30 restaurants in 1,2,800 square foot kitchen. So it's like an entire platform's worth of food coming out of the same spot. And we can cook it fast and we can time it with the courier so that the food never sits and it gets to you hot. We've covered wonder before in the pods.

The Yetis may remember it. When Jack and I covered it, it was a different business. You started with food trucks in suburban New Jersey, but now you have Zer, zero food trucks, you pivoted the business. Overnight, he decided to sell all of the wonder vans get invested in. How did you tell your company that? You had 2,000 employees at that time, I think. And that seems like a tremendously risky decision.

How did you go about it? Yeah. So I think as an entrepreneur, one of the things that you have to always do is be super objective and not get too wed to what you said in the past, what you told people, the employees, the press, investors. You have to just look at all the information every day and say, if I were starting over today, what would I do? Because as an entrepreneur, when you're doing a startup, you learn a lot along the way. And the vision is the same, vertically integrated food delivery.

But the original thinking was, rather than cooking a kitchen and then deliver it, why not have the kitchen move to you and then cook it outside your door? You can't beat that in terms of quality. It really forced us to learn how to cook a Bobby Flay steak or Jose Andreas in the business. back of a Mercedes Sprint of van with only one piece of electric equipment and you had to do it in under like six minutes and the driver had to cook. So it forced us to innovate in an incredible way that we never would have done had we started in brick and mortar. But what we found was when we tested a brick and mortar, we had 450 trucks on the road, okay? And then it was profitable, it was working, but not a great return on capital because the trucks are expensive. We tested

a brick and mortar and the thought was if we set a really tight delivery radius could we replicate the quality we if we as soon as it comes out of the oven goes right into a hot bag and to your home in six 10 minutes max in the suburbs and we were able to replicate the quality with a much lower cost of capital higher margins you were able to unlock multi restaurant ordering and you were able to bring this to this urban suburban and rural so i saw it was a much bigger idea once we proved that we had one open for a month the store and i knew that we we had we had we had had to make a move. Like, that was the...

One physical location open, and you realize, we have to get rid of the food trucks. After a month. So, Mark, you told your team, hey, guys, we are going to build food halls in highly concentrated, like city areas where there's a lot of people that we could deliver to in a tight radius. And suburban, too. And suburban, too. And that's what we're going to do now. And if someone raised their hand and said, what about the 450 vans we buy?

How do you interpret that kind of response? Yeah, I mean, that... It's just like you would imagine. It was not, you know, people were shocked. And you just said, no, that's a sunk cost or how did you explain it? Yeah, I think sunk cost, sunk in the sense that we also learned how to invent new ways of cooking that we never would have been able to do if we started. If we started in brick and mortar, it would have been a massive kitchen.

Like you couldn't cook 30 restaurants with traditional cooking equipment and mean. So we were like years of iterating with the trucks because you had like a very small amount of square feet. the driver had to cook. You only had one oven. You had to do it really fast. And so we kept pushing ourselves to make the economics work. So I knew we had something incredible in the brick and mortar and that that was a much bigger idea.

Once as an entrepreneur, again, with all new and all like information available at that time, I knew that was a really, really big idea. And so everything else doesn't matter because if you continue down that path, then you could be missing out on this incredible opportunity. And so I think what I've learned is that people, especially entrepreneurs, but I think people in life in general underestimate the risk of the status quo and they

overestimate the risk of change. I'd love to repeat that. People underestimate the risk of continuing the status quo. Just like you feel comfortable. Like, hey, this is working. You know, we were unprofitable with the trucks. We got profitable. Everybody's like, yeah, you know, we did it.

We're there. And it's hard to see the risk at that point. And then you think change, wow, like it's new. There's all these unknowns. And it feels really risky. But I think people overestimate that risk because you got to sometimes just take a step back and say, like, forget about what we've done where we are. Just a clean slate. You're an entrepreneur.

You're starting at 8. You know everything that you've learned over the last five years. What would you do? And I asked myself that question. I said, hands down, not even like a shot. in hell I do the trucks over the brick and mortar. I would do the brick and mortar right now. As soon as I said that to myself with conviction, the next day I came in and told everybody guys, we're cutting down the trucks, we're selling them, we're going in this direction.

Trucks are done. We tell the investors, we have a board meeting, tell the press, tell the employees, it's done. There's no, like, we're going to, like, run down two paths because you don't have enough runway to do that. You can't, you know, you can't have people like in two different, two different places. Well, speaking of risk, what you're describing is the business you're in, which is moonshots. And how would we describe moonshot entrepreneurs, Jack? A moonshot is a very low probability project, like a venture that probably is going to fail. But if it succeeds, could change the world. That's what a moonshot is. I love it. That's a great definition. And you've said that you're pursuing moonshots, which means, in your words, there's a higher chance

it may not work out. So we were curious, you know, if Wonder didn't work out, what do you think the reason why would be? Well, first of all, the business starts out as a moonshot. And then with time, sort of the probability of success rises and feeling pretty good right now. Nice. Well, we actually, Jack and we went to Wonder last night. We went Monday night. And we went to town.

We didn't get like a special VIP treatment. No, no, no. We went to 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue. And we walked in, we saw like 20 different menus of food. We got great Spanacopoda. We got the DeFarra's pizza. We got tacos. We got a brisket sandwich.

We had some leftovers. Yeah, we did. So we're going to have that later tonight. We expensed the whole meal. Before we let you go, Mark, Jack and I wanted to talk to you about a few philosophies we've kind of picked up on, and full disclosure, Yeties. Jack and I spoke with Mark a couple weeks ago to prepare for this show. And when we were talking with you, we noticed a few things.

We noticed that you have a real, focus on fairness in that everyone in one of Mark's companies knows what everyone else is making. There's salary transparency across the board. So we got curious about that. I mean, that's that's super admirable. What are the cost and benefits that you consider of salary transparency and just fairness overall? I think for the most part. So yeah, everyone knows what everyone's making, but also the comp bands, everybody at the director level makes the same amount of money, the same stock and VP, everybody makes the same. So, you know, I have two daughters, you know, 24 and 21. And I'm definitely very sensitive to like this idea that, you know,

some people get paid more just because they're a squeaky wheel and they kind of push for it and other people don't and they can take an advantage of. Like I really didn't want, I wanted to create a really fair system. And I think you get a lot of credit for that, you know, in terms of the kind of culture you want to build. It builds trust and it builds loyalty. And people will be really really respect it. So I think there's a lot of positives that come out of it. I think it also forces the organization to do the right thing because it is transparent. You can't hide from it. Like, you have to make sure, like, is this fair? Is this right? But I think the only downside is it definitely cost the company money because if you like bring somebody in from the outside at a director level

and you're convinced they're a director, but in order to get them, you got to pay a little bit more, than all the directors in the company to get paid more. Like that kind of thing. I really want to be pure about it. But that's only if you bring in that director because you thought that maybe the director level really is under leveled and everyone should be higher.

So use market comp to like adjust the comp for everyone. It's clear that it's been an HR advantage because you've hired so fast. Yeah. I heard an interview with you a couple years ago. You had 2,000 employees, I think. What do you have today? For wonder?

For wonder? Well, that's including our employees. I mean, not hourly. It's like 300, 300 people in corporate, but then a lot of hourly. Okay, okay. Delivering. Yeah, we should clarify. Delivery in the kitchen.

Yeah, that location at 23rd Street between 6 and 7th, we went to Monday night. We dined in. Yeah. But the bread and butter seemed to be delivery and takeout. Just to clarify for our audience. Yeah, it's 50% pickup, 50% delivery. You know, it's not really much to sit down, but, you know, you can. That's really counted as pickup.

But we're launching 80 locations in the tri-state area in the next 18 months. So they're going to start showing up everywhere. We're going to start to see this everywhere. We got $700 million of work. There was one other thing we noticed from the call with Mark. Remember, it was a great line. Yes. Mark, you mentioned, you know, you hear people say, don't put the cart before the horse.

You actually said, you do put the cart before the horse. We were on the call with Mark. I'm like, wait, did we hear that right? Why do you put the cart before the horse? Can you tell us that philosophy you have? Yeah, no, as an entrepreneur. where like a lot of times you have an idea, you don't want to like go through all the research and things. Sometimes you just want to like get going immediately to just see if it's going to work

with the least amount of effort is possible, least amount of money is possible. Like when I started the financial risk management certification exam. Yeah. That's one of the companies we skipped over in his early ages. I was like, yeah, early 20s and wanted to be certified as a financial risk manager, but there wasn't an exam, so I thought I'd start it. And people thought that was really funny because you don't, how can you start a certification exam? So I said, good points. I started an association of risk professionals that would then do the exam so that that

was a little better. But anyway, I didn't want to waste a lot of time. So I put the cart in front of the horse. I basically on the website, basically said, here are the books to read for the exam. Here are the topics. It's going to be in New York City in May. This is the price to set the exam. Send the check here if you want to take it.

And just started getting checks. So the cart was definitely ahead of the horse there. So, you know, some people might hear that and think, did you do it? Did you write those exams? Yeah, wrote the exam. It was me and a colleague. We wrote the exam.

We administered in New York City. We administered personally. We corrected them. Then after we were correcting, wait a second. Who we passed in? Who we failing? So he said, Why don't we just do 50-50?

So the top 50 passed, send out certificates, the bottom 50 we failed. That was the first year. Now it's given in like, I don't know, 80 countries around the world today. If you're still getting this exam exists. People apply for wondering they've got that on the resume. Yeah, this exam is still being given.

I still hear it on the radio sometimes. It's pretty funny. Like, you can just start anything. You can just. Well, on that note, Mark. Thank you so much for being here with us. You know, Jack and I, Jack and I end every story by asking what's the takeaway?

So, Mark, we want to let you tell the audience, what's the takeaway for Mark, Lori, and for wonder? Just the takeaway, like, a high-level? Yeah, your insight, the final thing you want to leave everyone with. I would say give more than you take. I think that's really important. Good things come back to you. good things will come back to you.

Mark, thank you so much for being with us. Yeties, you looked fantastic for today's surprise, bonus interview show. And Jack, you were looking amazing on stage. Thanks, man. It's amazing. You too, dude. We wish we could have had all the Yeties and besties in the studio audience with us, but this is the next best thing. In fact, there's actually a whole bunch that we do at our live shows that we just can't fit into one podcast.

So we hope when T-Boy comes to your city, you'll be able to be there in real life. In the meantime, if you like today's interview with Mark, the serial entrepreneur, or check out his new company wonder. And if you really liked it, share this episode with a buddy. Oh, and then don't forget to click and follow us so that you get a new T-Boy pod every single day. We're back to our regular daily show on Monday. In the meantime, celebrate the lens.