THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Kevin Harrington - The Original Shark on "Shark Tank"

Episode Date: June 12, 2018

Kevin Harrington is an American entrepreneur and business executive. Harrington is the founder of As Seen On TV. He has appeared on the television series Shark Tank. He co-founded HSN Direct International Inc. and served as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President between 1994 and 1998. An original “shark” on the hit TV show Shark Tank, the creator of the infomercial, pioneer of the As Seen on TV brand, and co-founding board member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization—Kevin Harrington has pushed past all the questions and excuses to repeatedly enjoy 100X success. His legendary work behind-the-scenes of business ventures has produced well over $5 billion in global sales, the launch of more than 500 products, and the making dozens of millionaires. Twenty of his companies have each topped $100 million in revenue.

This is the Ed Milett Show. Complete, lead and win. Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Milett. This gentleman to my left is one of the great American entrepreneurs. One of the original sharks from Shark Tank, this man's company is of generated over $5 billion in sales. He's had 20 different companies do over 100 million. He is called the Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs. He's kind of the answer man.

We're going to get some answers out of this man here today. So Kevin, Harry, take welcome. Thank you. Great introduction. I like being here already. It's all true. So that's a good part. I don't have to make anything up. Thank you. Thank you. Great introduction. I like being here already. It's all true, so that's a good part. I'd have to make anything up.

Thank you, thank you for doing this. And I know a lot of you, at the beginning of the year, just so you know, I sent out a list of who are the 20 people you'd most want on my show and ended up 10 people's names kept showing up over and over, and you were one of those 10 names. Well, thank you. And it's great to be here. What a beautiful place to hang out and have a nice talk today.

It's a pleasure to have you. And honor, frankly, to have you here. So let's get some answers. Yeah, cool. Cool, yeah. So let's start out a little bit. I don't want to go all the way back to when you were a kid because that will take us a long time, right?

To go through it. My story takes a long time, so it was years. But you're kind of a Midwest boy, right? Ohio, you grew up that way. Did you grow up in an affluent family? I'm just curious. No, no, I was one of six kids. My dad owned bars, and my mom was a school teacher.

So my father wanted me to be an entrepreneur though. My mom wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer and my older, two older sisters, one married a doctor, one married a lawyer. So got that out of the way so I could be the entrepreneur. Were you that way as a little guy? Did you have a little business when you get? Yeah, I was, you know, mowing lawns, selling newspapers at nine years old. Oh, wow.

And then my, I was in my dad's restaurants when I was 11 and helping him out, you know, and working literally 30, 40 hours a week, some weeks. Were you like a 10-year-old? Yeah, after school, I'd take two buses to get to his place, and then he, someone would drive me home 10, 11 o'clock at night. Oh my God. Go back to school. So when I was 15, I started a driveway ceiling business.

And in Ohio, if you had a cracks in your driveway, and the water got in there, and it froze, you get a triple the size of the crack. So I knocked on doors, and I was selling eight to 10 jobs a week. Oh my gosh. 15. So very just entrepreneurial and then I did that all through high school. Okay.

And I grew up in a nice neighborhood, but we had the poorest house in the neighborhood. So friends of mine would get their cars given to them when they were 16. Me, I paid cash. You earned your own earnings. And then when I went to college, I had to pay my own way through, all through college. And actually, I say all through, my father said, wait a minute, you're this drive we ceiling, only is good for the summertime. What are you going to do now that you're in college? You got more expenses. You got, so I had an apartment and a car and this and that.

So I said, I need something year round. So I said, what's your round? Heating and air conditioning. So I started a Heating and cooling company. My freshman year in college. So you paid for everything though. You don't talk about the housing, everything. Everything.

Books, education, housing, the whole thing. As an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur. Well, so when you did your graduate college? Nope. Nope. Because by the time I got to my junior year, we were doing in today's terms of finance, about 5 million year in sales, with 25 employees. I had six trucks going out every day, going to school. So, so, so then I find I just couldn't do both. So I quit school. And I, at that point, I realized I just couldn't do both. So I quit school and I, at that

point I realized I'm an entrepreneur. Yeah, right there. I know, you know, what is the degree going to ultimately give me, right? Right. Because the University of Cincinnati, there was one class, 800 students and like one day the teacher didn't show and there's a video playing, sorry I couldn't be here. I'm like, wait a minute, if you're not going to be here, I don't think I need to be here. Exactly. So, so a minute. You're not gonna be here. I don't think I need to be here. I need to be here, you know? So that's when I find, I said, you know, I think I've done, you know.

I never asked anybody this. It just occurs to me right now. Do you think everybody should be or could be an entrepreneur? I mean, I never asked. I think you can definitely learn how to be an entrepreneur. I have two boys. One is 29, went all through Penn State,

you know, fraternity, the whole thing, and he's now an entrepreneur. He wanted, I think, to get into corporate world, but he started in the corporate world and hated it, and then interviewed inside the entrepreneurial world that I'm in, and then joined me, and then my youngest is probably going to be an entrepreneur also, my 20-year-old. Yeah, you make good point, because you and I both, I become an entrepreneur basically out of the gate. I want to college, but I became one, but I have a lot of friends I suppose

who had corporate careers first. So when was your first big hit? I've read about this quantum international, did I say that right? Without your first big hit, I mean, he'd be an air conditioning work. Did you eventually say a way out of that? Oh yeah, yeah, he'd be an,

that was just earns him, yeah, I thought, yes, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I realized that's a local business. It's labor oriented. It's limited in scope and income. But what I did from there, just quickly, I transitioned because I sold the business, because I didn't like the labor side, because the installation and the service,

and it's not easy getting installers. I could sell them, but I couldn't service or personally install them. So I couldn't find enough good installers back then. But I sold the business to one of my employees. I had a little pocket of cash on a ton, but you know enough to go buy something. So I started exploring getting into another business and I'm meeting with this business broker and he's got hundreds of businesses for sale sitting on his desk. The books and records of all of them. And I'm like, wow, let me see this laundromat.

Let me see this flower shop. And I'm like, wow, what a candy store. I sold my business and I became a business broker. So I was a real estate broker and a business broker. So I sold the real estate and the, but I specialized in the business. So I sold pizza, parlors, restaurants, delicate testons, flower shops, laundromats,

you know, you name it. And now I was starting to partner with some of these people. I call it my pre-shark days, mini-shark days, but it was my curiosity overload of being able to see all these different businesses and what I didn't want to do. I didn't want to be in, I didn't want to own a laundromat, I didn't want to own a flower shop, right? But I had to go to all these trade shows.

I went to the housework shows for, you know, I'm selling all these businesses. I went to the real estate, I went to the, rather the restaurant shows, the, the, um, homing garden shows, and here I am at a trade show, and a guy was cutting through a Coca-Cola can with a knife, and he's cutting through a muffler and a pair of sneakers. It's the Ginsu knife, and so I'm watching this pitch. Ginsu knife. Right. So this gentleman was pulling in thousands of dollars in cash.

And so when he got on break and I saw him do it again and again, same set of words and I'm thinking, wait a minute, that guy, he's been doing this a while. 40 years, this guy Arnold Morris was the best, as he called him, the best knife salesman in the world, right? I don't know if that put that on my wrist, is he the guy in the information? Yeah, that's Arnold Morris. That's Arnold Morris. So we used Arnold and so right at this time I had been tuning in to, I got cable television, this is 1984. And so if you got to go back 34 years, you know, they'll think about TV. When cable first hit, it was 30 channels.

ESPN, HBO, MTV, Discovery, CNN, right? And you know, movies and sports and whatever. But I got to Discovery Channel and there was nothing there. There was just colored bars on the screen. So I called the cable company and I said what's going on They said well discoveries only an 18 hour a day channel Six hours is nothing so I said wait a minute. I can I can put something on there Let me find something and but because here I was this this entrepreneur selling businesses and going all these trade shows

That's when I met Arnold and I said to Arnold, let's film that presentation and put it on Discovery Channel. So that was the big break. That was the big break. And what did that do? What did you invest in that and then what did it turn into? I mean, it literally was only a couple grand because we just had to get a camera, turn the camera on and we shot it in the back of a supermarket.

So we filmed it, put it on Discovery and then we paid Discovery Channel percentage of the sales and it just went, I mean it took off like it was unbelievable. That's crazy. How do you do life changed instantly within hours of that? That's amazing. So take everybody inside this for a second. So do you invest in these companies or do you license them? Yeah. How's it work, too? By the way, this man's amazing. And so take everybody inside this for a second. So do you invest in these companies or do you license them? Yeah.

How's it work, too? By the way, this man's done. How many information have you done? 500 plus. Yeah. Yeah. Almost kind of the creator of the medium itself, right? Yeah, you know, nobody else was, you know, I mean, Ron Popeel had been doing short form spots

prior to this, but as infomercials go, this really was the beginning of the infomercial process. So, how do you do it? Not to be specific, but do you license with that person and take a percentage? Yeah, so what we do, and this is I think probably that I'm not an inventor and the best part of my business, I don't out of the 500 that I've done and the five billion, I have an invented or owned any of those products. I partner with people that develop the products. So, but licensed them partner with them. When Tony little came to me and he had the ab isolator, I said Tony, I want to license that from you. Right? Now

I'll put up all the money, I'll finance the production, I'll finance the media, I'll finance the manufacturing. So we do all of that and then we pay him a royalty. So we actually end up owning it though. You end up owning it. So the good thing for them is they've basically created this asset now you're monetizing everything. There's no cash from them at all. They don't have to put up any money.

So which kind of goes back to being a business broker again. Yeah. You're almost the business broker of infomercial. Exactly. So that model continues. No, no, it's the same model because they have the asset, but they don't know how to take it to the next level.

In fact, of all these guys, I mean, Tony at one time said, you know, you're giving me 5%. Well, we did 300 and some million. So he got 15 million bucks. With no counter, right off the top, right? So I had to do all the grunt work, the leg work, the financing, and by the way, in the early days, I didn't have the money, so I had to do all the the grunt work the leg work the

financing the and by the way in the early days I didn't have the money so I had to raise the money right so we were raising millions to finance the inventories right so it was not an easy process but wow the but it's a one day Tony said I want to go 50 50 okay and I said hey I'm happy to go 50 50 that means if it's we got to produce this, so you got to put up half that, that's not the hard cost. But every week we're spending $300,000 in media.

50-50, 150 grand a piece a week. So that's 600 grand a month. And it takes months and months. Welcome to Real Business Tony. So after six months, and he had put out like a million plus dollars, he's like, wait a minute. I thought I was supposed to be making money in this deal. Yeah, right.

I'm like Tony, it's about 18 months before we get our money back. Okay. Oh boy. So, you know, now, once it starts coming back, it's now it's coming back in big number. So, he continued with that. He said, let me go back to the royalty show. We went back to a royalty deal. What makes one of them good?

Like, you must have had some that didn't hit went back to a royalty deal. What makes one of them good? You must have had something that didn't hit and something that did, right? What makes a, let me say one thing, I've noticed about it, if I'm correct me if I'm wrong on this, I want everybody to get this. I think business nowadays is about getting attention. Yeah.

I think you have to get attention to me and at that time with all of the viewership being on television, right? Yeah. That's the best way to get attention now. Obviously now, you can get attention on TV, but small entrepreneurs out there can leverage social media now too. Sure.

Can't they? Absolutely. Was that part of the concept is get attention number one and number two, what makes a winner? Yeah. So, yeah, and the sequencing of producing, and we call it kind of creating a perfect pitch. The first step is, you've got six seconds to get the people's attention on TV because they're watching a movie,

they just got done, they're gonna go make a sandwich. Go to the bathroom, you got six seconds. So if you watch any information we ever did, whether it was Tony Little in the gazelle, Billy Mays or Jacqueline in the juicer, let's say Billy Mays on oxyclean. Legend. In six seconds, he's eating a meatball sandwich and it's,

hey, it's Billy Mays. Boom, three strips on a shirt. Is this ever happened to you? That's in six seconds. He's caught your attention because now he's got grease stains all over his shirt. People are thinking, yeah, that happens to me. So that's very quick, very hard hitting on the front end

of getting their attention. Now, once you have their attention, then you need to solve, you have to state a problem, and now you did, because there's a problem, but then you need to solve the problem. Such that you solve it in a way that no other product or service solves in identical fashion. And the same thing, kind of with Tony Little's gazelle, and Oxi clean the unique positioning. it was the power of oxygen and oxygen that oxygenated the cleaning system, the cleaning process.

So you always, in the world of, that I used to be in full time. I mean, my business for, you know, for 30 years was pretty much exclusively selling products on TV, shopping channels, and the internet. And so we had to create these unique positioning with each one of these. So that model that you have is called

T's, please and C's. Yeah, correct. T's please and C's. So you tease them with an attention getting problem. You please them by solving the problem with unique benefits and solutions and some great testimonials. And sometimes you need also maybe a little bit of clinical data.

If you're going to sell skincare, like proactive, you've got to have a product testing lab that says that you could make this claim. Because the one thing in 35 years that I've never done, I've never crossed the line of getting aggressive, I mean, we get aggressive, but we don't cross the line into illegal claims. And this is what a lot of guys are doing on the internet. Oh, you can do this. You can lose 30 pounds and one week,

and all this kind of crap. You know, we don't do that. We deal with every government agency from the FDA, did the FTC, did this, and make sure that we say, what we can't say based on the clinical data we have. It's interesting, because I think for people that are listening to this business wise too, I think sometimes principles don't change strategies do,

right, so these principles apply all the time. And one of the things that I, right when I first got into the social media space because mine's grown pretty well, it's interesting to me, someone said to me, you better get their attention the first six seconds. There you go. Because if you don't get their attention

the first seconds they're gone. And so the same exact principles and when I'm putting a video together, even to this day, I want to do something that gets their attention and then I seconds. Because if you don't get their attention the first seconds they're gone. And so the same exact person was in when I'm putting a video together even to this day. I want to do something that gets their attention and then I want to create the problem. Do you have an issue with not closing? Are you down on yourself confidence? Right. So it's very interesting how transcendent that is. One thing I want to make sure that everybody gets to, I don't like to just promote things

at the end of an interview. And so Kevin, you can get access to Kevin on tips like this, right? On the perfect pitchers, actually. Don't you have some sort of a whole spreadsheet on this stuff or a pro form? Yeah, yeah, I do. In fact, it's called the cheat sheet because I've taken actually now over 35 years. 50,000 pitches sound like a lot. It's over 35 years, so it's, you know, a thousand to 2,000 a year.

But these are one-on-one pitches. So some days are long days for me. But I go to the houseware show and the hardware show. To this day, you still go to all those. Yes, beauty shows, everything. But the cheat sheet for pitching, because we're going to teach you how to actually pitch, you can text me. It's my own number.

It texts the word pitch to 7278882100. It's 7278882100. Thank you. I want to make sure they all get that stuff. We're going to give a cheat sheet on how to develop their own pitch. I love that. And these pitches transcend whether it's TV, one-on-one, Internet doesn't matter. This is how to transcend and make a terrific pitch to... I'm just curious of all those infomercials. Was there one that stood out that was the biggest hit of all of them?

Yeah. When I met Tony Little, he was the shy guy. Tony Little was a little bit overweight, very timid in person, but he would get on TV and he turned into a beast. Yeah, so we did over a billion and a half dollars. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I mean, the gazelle was huge. The abisillator was another one. We did his videotapes. To this day, Tony has created a big fitness brand for himself. But now he's kind of morphed into he does foods and he does pillows and he does.

You know, he's actually a pretty big food vendor at HSN, for example. That was the number one of all of them. Tony Loto was number one. Imagine there's 20 different ones that generate over 100 million. That's just bananas to me. You've had all this success. I'm curious, we'll talk a little bit more about some business principles in a minute,

but you don't look at, but you're 60 plus years old, right? I say that because I want all the entrepreneurs out here, you're obviously generated an awful lot of revenue, an awful lot of income, obviously a pretty significant network. What drives you right now? Like why are you still after it and in the hunt so aggressively? Because I know your schedule's crazy. You're leaving here going to something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, so I got lucky along the way, and I say luck because you kind of force you luck, you know, I mean sure that phone call from Mark Burnett. He says hey, we come on Shark Tank, right? And I told my wife, he won't tell me what the show is all about, but I just got off the Mark Burnett. He's called Shark Tank.

She says, wait, I know what he does to those people on Survivor Island. Why do you want to be on Shark Tank, right? That sounds dangerous. Yeah, I don't know about it. He wouldn't tell me what they're going to do to me. But I went out, I met with Mark, and so they made me do a little rehearsal. And so I was taking pitches, and they were rolling tape,

and I'm asking questions, but I said, they said, Kevin, you did an amazing job, but I said, I've been doing this for 30 years. OK, you got to remember it. That's what they do every day when I go to these shows, right? So they said, you're in. You're done. And I did the pilot.

I did the first couple of seasons with all the sharks. And had an amazing time. But now, Shark Tank is running all around the world. So what happened is they put all the reruns on CNBC. That started in two hours a night, and then they do weekend. So my episodes, because I was in the first 150 plus segments, they were all running and running and running.

So now my phone just started ringing. And my wife's like, you know, you gotta just, you gotta take the calls. So people wanting me to speak, and you gotta go here, you gotta, you got to take the calls. So people wanting me to speak and you got to go here. So I figure, you know, if it's sort of like, I had a boat one time and I wasn't the greatest boater and I was having some trouble with it here.

And one time a guy called, I want to buy your boat. I'm like, so I'm just telling me I should sell my boat. I sold it, right? But, you know, bottom line is that when the phone is ringing, I think you got to take it. And yours is blowing up. phone is ringing, I think you gotta take it. And yours is blowing up. And so I think I figure I got a couple of years of doing I'm on a kind of a little speaking tour.

And you know, in the last year, you said you're gonna build your brand. Right. And look what you've done in a short period of time. It's been amazing. Thank you. And I actually, when I was on Shark Tank back in 2009, 10, 11, the Twitter and all these things were just,

there was really no, it wasn't big at all. So I'm doing a little bit of the brand thing now. And I think it's kind of fun. Yeah, I mean, you're doing a lot of different things. So like for example, one of the things you've done, you're partnered with Virtuity Financial, which is affiliated with my company. You've sort of got into the financial space and you're also helping with the NFL alumni.

So talk a little bit about that. You got involved with it. Why'd that catch your eye and catch your attention? What are you doing with it? You know, so the NFL alumni, there's Virtuity as you know, is a financial planning company. And I realized, because I think we're talking privately, Billy Maze was an amazing guy. He died without proper planning, right? And he had made a lot of money and had homes and cars

and all kinds of stuff when he passed away, but no life insurance and no planning. And I, you know, no will even. So Debra Maze had called and asked, you know, can I help her? And so some good legal people got in there and did the best they could, but people, NFL alumni, some of them have done well,

and some of them, you know, a lot of them haven't, right? Absolutely. So, we signed to deal with the NFL alumni to give them not only better planning, but also an income opportunity. So, I think bottom line is that, you know, I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to figure out what I wanted to do being an entrepreneur, I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to figure out what I wanted to do being an entrepreneur.

I spent the next 30 years of my life being a scene in PV entrepreneur and had a lot of fun building businesses, making a lot of money and, you know, spending a little bit here too, a long way, but now I'm spending the next 30 years of my life empowering entrepreneurs and helping entrepreneurs be more successful. And this applies to the NFL alumni. Many of them want to be entrepreneurs and can be. And so through vertuity, we're going to offer them that opportunity.

I love that. Vertuity's a associate with WFG with my firm. And I'm excited to work on that. And I'm doing the same thing. I spent my first 30 years kind of building and now I want to teach it and pay it forward. Just like there. There you go.

Speaking of entrepreneurs, I'm curious. Because that's who's watching this, many of them are. What traits make up a successful one that you've seen? So, for example, I don't know the exact numbers, but something like, you know, what, 500,000 people apply to get on Shark Tank, only 350 even get on the darn show. Exactly. So, obviously they are better at the pitch, the perfect pitch that you've talked about.

Absolutely. But once they've pitched and once you've met, you know, they're now in there being evaluated, what is some of the qualities of 500 different infomercials, all the entrepreneurs you coach outside of the infomercial business? What do they have at the ones who lose stone? So first of all, I love an entrepreneur that's got a big vision. Because I don't want to get involved in a deal that's a flatline deal or a small growth. I like exponential growth. So I wanna see somebody that sees how they can get in early and create something that can go to $100 million, right?

So I don't like $10 million businesses, I like $100 million, in fact, I'd love to have a couple of billion dollar businesses, right? So I love vision, but I also, I, you know, O'Leary and I missed a wonderful, got into a little battle one time on the show and O'Leary's like, I bet on the, the jockey.

And I said, you know what, I don't bet on the jockey anymore because when I did, I gave O'Leary a half a million dollars. She went out and went in six months, went through it and closed the doors down because I bet on the jockey. I trusted her and thought she was gonna be fantastic, right? But at the end of the day, it just things weren't, right? It didn't work, but I wanna see, I mean,

if you talked to any horse trainer, because I'm in the horse business also, because I have a betting app that I'm involved with, the horse trainer is gonna tell you, I can put any jockey on my horse, okay? It's the jockey is part of the process. You need the trainer, you need the doctor, you need the jockey.

But I believe an entrepreneur has to be good enough to be able to assemble the teams. And that is the key to me, is that if I see a guy that's so passionate and headstrong about himself, and he's not gonna allow input from the outside and not gonna bring the right people in, I don't want any part of it though, you know? So it's vision and then surrounding yourself

with the right people. And it's vision and surrounding yourself with the right team. It's fun to say, because I talk all the time about, I think entrepreneurs, great entrepreneurs are evangelical about their cause. Steve Jobs was an evangelist, really, right? Oprah Winfrey was an evangelist, right?

Mark Zuckerberg and his ways and evangelists, right? So you have this visionary leader, but all of them were smart enough jobs doesn't make it without having the people surround him like Scully from Pepsi he brings in to run the thing because he couldn't run it right or Wasney act the tech type person and so yeah, so you got us around yourself with a team This is such a huge thing for those of you that bring people into your organizations into your, that make up for what your weaknesses are and play to your strengths. It's an honor to be enough of time to fix all of this in yourself. I mean, I'm an old school TV guy. I see the TV guy.

I'm not getting into digital. I'm surrounding myself with some of the greatest digital guys that I can get. So I'm sure you're doing some of the same thing. I'm very, I think, I'm under 25 years old. Right. It's only in the under than that, isn't that the truth? And it's funny, but because I always say all the time, I think that I'm under 25 years old, right? It's only under the net, isn't that the truth? It's funny, but because I always say all the time, I think that becoming an entrepreneur

is one of the great self-discovery processes of all time. You're gonna learn about what you don't know, you're gonna learn about your resiliency, your toughness, but it's also self-improvement program with a big old compensation package test. So you need to be able to grow and improve and surround yourself with people. And I talk a lot about mentors as a result of that.

Like, I think my value, we both evaluate businesses, I can evolve in other businesses. Part of the value I bring is capital. But oftentimes that's not the biggest value. I bring my connectivity, who I can connect to. I look at you as almost a connector too. Yes. You've built all these relationships now globally.

Around the world, you got relationships in China and India. And so I read something about you. You used the word differently. So I thought it was wonderful. It was that you found a guide when you were young. Right. So I use the word meant to I really like that word a lot. How important is it for people out there that are entrepreneurs to find themselves a guide? A guide. What is that like? I think it's vital. And so when I was, I mentioned I didn't have the capital money for started. And so I went to banks and like, was, I mentioned I didn't have the capital going for started.

And so I went to banks and like, yeah, I got this great business and we're selling and we're doing good. I mean, we're actually profitable, but we just need a capital. And so I got turned down, turned five banks in a row, turned me down. And I'm like, what am I doing wrong? Well, I found, let's use the word guide or mentor.

Found a mentor, former bank president. And he went in showed me He said look you're not talking to him the right way your teacher. You're showing them what you've done They want to know where you're going the five-year plan. They want to know they're gonna get paid back So and they also want to see us saw the business and some gray hairs around the company like right? I was a young kid right? I was in my 20s So it within four months he turned this whole thing around aware, we got a $3 million line of credit,

which then took us to $150 million in sales, from what was about 50 million. So we were doing well, but we were flatline. So he became my mentor, I brought him in as the CEO of that. You did? Yes. So because I said, here is a guy, now here is a guy that can take us to the next level. But he brought in a legal team, an ops team, software guys, all the stuff.

Because I was just, I was thinking product sales. Yes. But now, everybody else wanted to make sure, the bank wanted to make sure that we had the team to make sure we're still in this. I don't think that, I think you still do it. I still do it. This is like requisite to go to new levels. This point right here.

So, I think all beginners go, I'd like a guy, I'd like a mentor, but those of you that are already successful, I wanna get to the next level, typically it's not some new thought you're necessarily gonna have, but it's new people. It's new guys, people with new access, new thoughts, new advice, right? I seek them out, I'm seeking it out with you.

You will please seek through me. Like I, I'm constantly trying to find new people I can add to my circle and expand my thinking, but more importantly, I can expand the attention I get. Why are we both doing this show? If you really think about it, we're doing it because we like each other, we have a business relationship, but I can get some of the attention from your brand, you can get some of the attention from my brand. This happens at every level in business now

because information now is cheap. You can get information right in your phone. It used to be who had the best info. Now it's who can execute, who can get the most attention, who has the best relationships. Then there's one other layer that I wanna talk about. And it's the ability to persuade. It's the ability to communicate the idea

and to get people to agree with you. So this is, I don't care if you're a personal trainer It's the ability to communicate the idea, right? Yeah. And to get people to agree with you. So this is, I don't care if you're a personal trainer in a gym. Right. You own a laundry mat. Right. There's got to be a way you communicate your message to the world, whether it's in writing by the spoken word, print digital TV.

You have to be able to communicate and persuade. And so it's another thing, you had Zig Ziglar in your life early as a mentor. Yes. So speak to, because this is just a running theme, right, for me. People aren't good enough at persuading and communicating. So how important do you feel like that is, and I know you do, and there will be some of the answers for somebody to learn to do it better. I mean, it's, to me, you need to learn the techniques of, you know, I say everything is

selling, okay? Yes, one of the things I say, right, because persuading, selling, and, you know, I say everything is selling. Okay. It's one of the things I say, right? Because persuading, selling, and, you know, I learned at an early age, I'll never forget when I was knocking on door selling, drivefully, sealing. The first time I went through this one neighborhood, 20 homes, I got the door pretty much slammed every house, right? So, and I'm like, wow, what am I doing wrong? So, there's something called the new decision clothes, right? So, and I then said, wait, I need one driveway

in this neighborhood that I can show. Look, I see that one across the street. I got my sign. I took a picture before and after. It was beautiful when I was done. It was ugly before. So, terrible before, beautiful after the cracks were sealed, people loved it, I did that job for free to get one done in the neighborhood, get attention.

And then I went back in the neighborhood and said, now, look, there's a new decision, I was allowing them to make, because see the neighbor that I've just done, now that I've given you the new information, now you can make a new decision. Yes, so I got 15 driveways then. So, selling and persuading is all about systems and techniques and just learning the various closes. I mean Zig Zigler has, he was a mentor to me. His book has over a hundred of these closes. That's just one of them, right? I just talked about one more quick one. He said when you're closing the sale and the price is here but

the value is here, you're not going to make the sale. You've got to raise the value above the selling price or the deal's not going to happen. So when we were selling Gensu knife, we were giving them two for $20. And in person when they were doing it, it worked because the people could see it, touch it, feel it, they were there, they could buy it, take it home. But on TV, it was landing a little flat, you know, like two for 20 bucks. I don't know what it's like. It's seen in TV, I'm not sure. Well, let's raise the value. So, hey, if you order the two nice for 20 bucks,

but wait, there's more. We're going to give you three six free steak knives. That's your good. Oh, yeah, that was good. So now, as we're raising the value with state knives and pairing knives and filet knives, now we're up here. But that whole thing was created because of a Ziggs Ziggler mentality of raise the value stacks to create a better value.

And that's number two clothes we've talked about here today. But he had a hundred closes. And so I used dozens and dozens of Ziggs ZigglerERS closes in all the information that I could not know that. That's what that value add was. Yeah, that's straight from ZIGLAR. Right. And they can get access to some of ZIGLAR's content by interacting with YouTube.

Come back to the pitch. Yeah, right back to the pitch. To the pitch. OK. A number of games. OK, I got three questions for our next question. These are the juicy ones. OK. Biggest mistake you've made.

In your business life. Yeah. I mean, the biggest mistake, when I was growing this company that I mentioned early on, I used all one merchant account. And so I had a dozen products, one merchant account, and I had one product that we were getting terrible defects from the manufacturer. It's a really terrible manufacturer,

and I was getting 20% of them just coming back. The product wasn't good. And so the bank was seeing all these complaints and returns and chargebacks, and that were accelerated just all of a sudden. So one Monday morning I walked in, they grabbed $2 million out of my check-in account. And the good news is I had $2 million that they could grab checking account. And the good news is I had two million that they could grab.

Okay, but the bad news is I didn't have a lot more than two million that they could grab. So there went all my working capital. So I mean, I ended up resolving the situation, but it took a lot of brutal dealings from there to make it happen. But the bottom line is, is now we set up all businesses with separate merchant accounts and separate LLCs. And look, in today's world, things go haywire. Things, you know, not everything works like clockwork every time.

So, you know, it's important to separate them out from a legal perspective and for, I mean, look, you're in the financial planning world, right? You know what it's like to tell people they got to be planning for the future go let one bad deal destroy everything you've got huge advice so that was that was a big mistake oh my gosh and for of course it may not apply with a merchant I applied to something else but winter comes as an entrepreneur every year there's gonna be some winter in your business and in your life and so you having the vision to mitigate what that snow storm may be,

that blizzard may be and inoculate yourself from it is. It's a great advice. Yeah. Second thing is, I think people would want to know this. You've obviously, you've been on Shark Tank. You've had 500 different businesses. You've generated, I mean, on the planet, there aren't that many people, maybe anywhere, if I had so many different businesses do well.

The thing you've done that you don't get credit for too is, you've made yourself a pretty wealthy guy, but you've made an awful lot of other people's lives better. That's what entrepreneurialism is, that's what capitalism is, right? You've made millions of people's lives better through the products, and you've made a whole bunch of entrepreneurs very wealthy,

who have partnered with you. Absolutely, yeah. Why, I guess is the question. So what I mean by that is, what is your great strength? In other words, someone said, I want to be like Kevin Harrington. There's something in him I need to have. What's your big strength?

So, you know, first of all, I think I'll go back to my roots and my upbringing, my mother was an unbelievable mother. I was a one of six Catholic kids in the family, and I went to an old boys' Catholic high school and with priests as my teachers, right? And so all through grade school also with sisters and nuns, right? So I always believed and my foundation was respecting other people, taking care of other people also. And Zigg Ziggler, his philosophy was you can get everything a life you want if you help enough of the people get what they want

So when I was sitting there looking at Arnold Morris and thinking okay, Arnold does this 40 weeks a year for many many years The same pitch to 10 people. How can I help him? Well film it once put it in front of millions now I can help him but it's gonna help me But then you know what Arnold did? He said, Kevin, you've helped me? Can we help Billy Mays? Can Arnold brought me Billy Mays? No, Kevin.

And all these other guys. No way. And he said, Kevin, is it okay if I tell them how well I'm doing? Because I want them to know that you're a good guy and that you're, you know, and by the way, that I was paying Arnold Morris. He was getting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month

and royalty checks and he didn't have to go anywhere. He just, you know, sit there and get the check. But, you know, so, and one day my accountant walked in and said, Kevin, why are you paying this guy all that money? This is ridiculous. This is an expense that we don't need. I'm like, oh, wait a minute. First of all, we have a contract.

Secondly, this is this is this guy's, we're running his shows. This is a partnership, right? It's not an expense. This is an investment into our partnership of Arnold Moore. So, and by the way, we did a billion plus dollars with Arnold Moore. And his projects, right?

So, it's thinking about how you can help other folks, and it comes back and just one last story there. I was sitting around 1987, Michael Dell, from Dell Computers, Ted Leonsis, who owns the Capitol, the Wizards and Dunor View, no Ted, right? So Ted and I just talked via email yesterday. So we go back 30 years. We're all sitting around and we said, you know, we're young entrepreneurs

and none of us were wealthy at the time, but we're like, how do we get, you know, maybe help other entrepreneurs? So we started the young entrepreneurs organization. And 1987, and then we, now it's called EO, no, entrepreneurs organization. I can tell you one thing about that. Like you're going, I cannot tell you how many of my successful friends

that are, say, 45 and under have been a part of EO at some point in their career. It's amazing. I mean, everywhere. I didn't know what it was. I kept hearing what's EO, EO, EO. Now I know where they're all coming from. I didn't know you were feeling that.

I'm a co-founder of EO with Leonsis and a hands-flip really tough guy. So I went to Shanghai. 20 guys showed up at lunch to just say, Kevin, what can we help you with? So the camaraderie of being involved with organizations like that, that you're part of, I'm proud to be part of it, but it's just cool and feels good. Wonderful.

It's so hard to get a guy like you to say what he's great at. This is interesting. I listen to your answer, and somehow when you answer that, you still talk about other people. Just so you know. And that, by the way, is your strength. So I said, what is great about you, and then you proceeded to talk about everybody else.

And that's what's great about you. Even your face, I just wanna tell you that, I was watching, look at your face. So I was watching video of you. Speak, I watch your TED Talks I was watching video of you, speak. I watched your TED Talks, and I watched you in different interviews. I just wanna tell you,

because I try to sense people's spirits, and I thought, oh, I got it. So there's this super hard working man, and super hard grinders like you, and I think I'm one I hope, don't really take that credit for that, because it's just who we are. So you outworked everybody.

But the other part of it was, I was watching, I just wanna to tell you this, I thought, this is a really good man. Like he's just a really good man. Like he really wants to help people. There's a goodness to him. Watching you answer that question. You always went back to other people every single time.

So I want to acknowledge that man. It confirmed it. And that's a huge lesson for all of you. You want to be a long lasting person in business. You've got to be about helping other people and you've got to have a heart to give to people. I love it. I love it. That's wonderful.

Last question. This has been fantastic being here. I love it, man. And I like, you know, as I told you before, I said, I don't know how we're only going to do this in 45 minutes or so. But I do want you to share give one gift to the audience when we're finished,

because you are kind of the answer guy. And so if you had a minute, there's an entrepreneur watching this. I don't care what stage of being an entrepreneur they're at. What advice would you if they could I get lunch, but I got a one-minute lunch with the shark. I got one minute lunch with Kevin Harrington. Yeah. What do I need to know on my entrepreneur? What would you tell him? Well, you can talk right to these guys right there. Great. You know, so I would say this. People come on shark tank because most people think because they want money.

Yeah, they want money, but they actually want, they want to connect with the shark. They want to connect into that role of deck. So, you know, they want Mark Cuban to be their partner and just open up every connection that he has. And, or Mr. Wonderful, whoever it might be, myself. So I would say to any entrepreneur, because I sit down with so many entrepreneurs one-on-one and give coaching and advice and mentoring, I say, maybe it's not that shark on Shark Tank, but connect with that shark or that mentor in your local market, in your

community, in your industry. And don't be afraid to go for the best. I mean, I needed a shark in the beauty business, and I found a retired executive from L'Oreal. He was the former president of L'Oreal and he joined my team because I needed someone in beauty. And so you gotta reach high, go for the best you can get, but build your dream team, get experts to surround you, get coaches, gurus, mentors, whatever it takes. And even in today's world, I'm surrounding myself now

with digital gurus and these are those 20, 25-year-old kids we're talking about, but you need to surround yourself with the best that you can get, but don't be afraid and think that you can't afford them. Many of these people, they don't even cost a lot or anything if you approach them the right way. So go for the Gusto, build your dream team, and now have access to everything that they can bring

to the table. Well, that's dream team, and now have access to everything that they can bring to the table. That's outstanding advice, brother. Thank you. Again, say, I want to thank you for today. This is enlightening for me. I have a funny feeling you're not going to partner on some business stuff together,

even outside of the WFG for two-odd stuff as well. So one more time, I want to say to you, everybody, 727-888-2,100 is how you can get access. Also, if you just Google, he's Kevin Harrington. He'll be the first Kevin Harrington to come back up first. And when they get that, what we're going to say about it. They text, text to pitch. And we're going to give you, that's right to me.

And I'm going to give you a personalized cheat sheet on how to develop your perfect pitch. Because the perfect pitch can actually teach you also how to get that dream team in that mentor to come coach. Perfect. Kevin, thank you so much, brother. This is fantastic. I enjoyed it so much. I love it. I love it. Perfect. Kevin, thank you so much, brother. This is fantastic.

I enjoyed it so much. Love it, man. I love it. So everybody, I hope you enjoyed today's program. As always, a couple of things. Make sure you run to the two-minute drill on my post, as you know now, on all the posts that I make on Instagram, the people that comment within the first two minutes, where the hashtag max out after their comment.

We give away free giveaways of my book and hats and gear and all that stuff. And also, if you've enjoyed today's program, which I know you do, go find Kevin, thank him, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, channel if you're watching it here, leave a comment, and if you're on iTunes, leave a review too. God bless you, dreams, and champions.