In short
Renan Harari’s book “No Experience Necessary” argues that people in their 20s should follow internal “knowing” and take risks because the upside (agency, equity, momentum, “inverse risk”) is hard to predict, while the downside is easier to imagine. It also frames risk as aligned time/energy, not only entrepreneurship.
Guest backgrounds
Renan Harari is a Spin Master board member and co-founder/creator in toy and media. He grew up with dysgraphia. He co-founded Spin Master at 23 (with Anton and Ben), after selling fertilizer door-to-door to pay for university. Spin Master’s major brands include Paw Patrol, Bakugan, Hatchimals, Air Hogs, Melissa & Doug, and Rubik’s Cube.
Key claims
Risk should be reframed; luck is created through doing and momentum; “maybe” beats “no” for finding opportunities; not everyone should be an entrepreneur—alignment matters more than a single path.
Notable examples
EarthBuddies (grass “chia pet”); selling 700 pieces at 7 Toronto tables; Kmart buyer purchase leading to 1M units. Air Hogs (1996 prototype; $50k option; later $35M in 2008; ~$1B over 10 years). Luck via inventors (e.g., Flicktricks/BMX leading to $100M).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VORenan Harari's Journey and Challenges
2:20 to 3:45
Ronan shares his background, including his learning disability and the motivation behind his book.
“Yes, my name is Renan Harari, and I've known Gary now for about a year, which is a privilege and an honor.”
The Purpose of the Book
3:45 to 6:00
Ronan discusses the book's aim to help young people find agency in their lives.
“If you were at a dinner party right now and everyone's going around and saying who they are in the cliche of name and what they do for a living, taking the authorship out, how would you introduce yourself?”
Entrepreneurial Origins
6:00 to 8:10
Renan recounts the beginnings of his entrepreneurial journey starting at a young age.
“So we started the business when we were 23, right out of university, and we actually started pre-graduating.”
Launching EarthBuddies: The Early Days
8:10 to 10:00
Renan shares the story of launching his first successful product, EarthBuddies.
“I mean, we're literally sitting in the VFriends studio where the only thing I've licensed out is the trading cards.”
Launching EarthBuddies: The Early Days
10:06 to 10:28
Renan shares the story of launching his first successful product, EarthBuddies.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
Scaling the Business
10:28 to 14:00
Renan explains how he scaled his business and the pivotal moments that contributed to its growth.
“New markdowns up to 70 % off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now.”
The Pitch Journey Begins
14:00 to 15:30
Learn how persistence led to an important business connection.
“Oh, that's why he asked him, because that was their HQ.”
Securing the Big Order
15:30 to 18:04
Discover the strategy behind landing a large order from Kmart.
“And I start walking around the offices in Troy, Michigan.”
The Impact of Tenacity
18:04 to 19:09
Understand how tenacity and connections can drive business success.
“And it just set the company fully in motion.”
The Evolution of Spin Master
19:09 to 20:22
Explore the range of popular toys under the Spin Master brand.
“And for context for everybody, because now we've just given them a lot of stories, currently today, tell people some of the – a lot of times people don't know the corporate name.”
Show all 26 chapters
Reflecting on the Past
20:22 to 22:08
Hear about the lessons learned during a sabbatical and writing a book.
“and for the listeners, it's an amazing...”
Reframing Risk in Your 20s
22:08 to 24:06
Learn about facing risks during youth and pursuing passions.
“They're like, do this in the next 36 months.”
Understanding Self-Awareness and Success
24:06 to 27:21
Examine how self-awareness influences career choices and success.
“Real quick, before I interrupt, as I often do in these things, because it's so important.”
Supporting Risk Across Generations
27:21 to 28:00
Discuss the generational perspectives on taking risks and pursuing dreams.
“and follow your own internal knowing and what you're passionate about.”
Interpersonal Relationships and Risk
28:00 to 28:39
Explore how interpersonal dynamics affect risk-taking in young adults.
“Any thoughts on a grandparent that sees this in their 26-year-old granddaughter, but their parents are potentially the issue because they're pushing don't take risk and all this?”
Creating Conversations with a Card Game
28:39 to 29:16
Learn about a card game designed to foster discussions around risk-taking.
“How do you think about interpersonal relationships in supporting risk because oftentimes that's the issue?”
Family Dynamics and Unspoken Topics
29:16 to 30:06
Discuss the importance of addressing unspoken issues within families.
“I think in so many families, I know in my family, there's a lot of unsets.”
The Power of Not Knowing
30:06 to 30:28
Understand the benefits of embracing uncertainty in business and life.
“And I really encourage people to find what's right for them at the end of the day.”
The Journey of Air Hogs Development
30:28 to 34:39
Follow the story of how Air Hogs was developed and the lessons learned.
“Give me something that stands out for you.”
Luck and Opportunity in Business
34:39 to 36:51
Discover how luck plays a role in recognizing and seizing business opportunities.
“And for some reason, we hold ourselves back from going in.”
Challenges of Writing and Marketing a Book
36:51 to 41:03
Explore the difficulties faced in writing and promoting a book today.
“and being in momentum and being in movement um and so i share a story in the book about uh how i was going to chicago when i was working on the development for the air hogs and I got lucky on one of my trips.”
Reactions to the Book
41:03 to 42:00
Hear about the unexpected reactions from readers upon finishing the book.
“So for me, it was, fortunately, it wasn't a hindrance because I found a great agent and he got it done for me.”
Impact of Gary's Book on Friends
42:00 to 44:30
Learn how Gary's book impacted his friends and their perspectives on life.
“You're speaking to someone who's incapable of writing or reading.”
The Low Point of Spin Master
44:30 to 48:51
Explore the struggles and challenges faced by Spin Master during a downturn.
“with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills.”
Creating Paw Patrol
48:51 to 51:58
Discover the creative journey behind the development of Paw Patrol.
“So, here we have this massive success and all the follow-on stuff is not doing well, but we're trying.”
Lessons from the Journey
51:58 to 54:35
Reflect on the importance of momentum and enjoying the journey in life.
“They really helped with the, creating the, you know, they helped shape it because they were great storytellers themselves.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00All right, Vayner Nation, this is very exciting to me. I know all of you are very aware of this. The days of me doing original content and the audio experience are far and few between. Usually I just like to take it from CNBC or keynotes or vlogs, but occasionally there's something compelling enough for me to kind of sit down and allocate actual time to the actual podcast. And you can hear the giggles on the other side of the mic here. this gentleman has become a real friend and I'm really excited about the book he wrote for a trillion different reasons and we're going to go into that and so before anything else like immediately I need you to go to Amazon or your book choice and put no experience necessary into the search or use an AI bot or however you do it these days I'm just going to make this very clear I know I do this once or twice every two years if I've brought you any value ever in the history of my career you picking up this small token in support of a gentleman who I think really let me I'll give you right to the punchline of why I'm saying what I'm saying I know a million authors I am one not not only not everyone almost no one actually pours their heart into the project for a lot of people it's a piece of the pie when it's in the context of business.
1:21There's a lot of authors, I think, actually, who do pour their heart into something and have something meaningful to say. But in the business world, it's a little bit more part of the pie, not the pie. And when Ronan was explaining this project to me, and we'll get into a minute of our relationship, from the first time and then the second time, really, is when I remember feeling it. I'm like, oh, okay, this is like, this really fucking matters to him. And then once I understood the context of the book, and you'll understand why we're going to get into it here, I knew that it was going to matter for a lot of people.
2:00So for a lot of parents that are listening right now, I think this book is going to matter quite a bit. And for a lot of you 20 to 30-year-olds that I know consume this podcast at scale, it matters. And so please, please, please pick up this book. And now I'm going to let my esteemed guest introduce himself and give you a little context of one or two minutes of who he is, and then we'll go into the book. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. Thanks, Gary. That was a very warm introduction. It was real for me. Thank you. It's very generous. Yes, my name is Renan Harari, and I've known Gary now for about a year, which is a privilege and an honor.
2:41More, because the courting of the board seat. So I'm on the board. Some of you know this. I'm on the board of Spin Master. This is one of the iconic co-founders of the company. The process, I've been on the board for over a year. It was like dating. Yes, it was. So a year and a half now, brother. But I'm glad you feel like it feels like a year. It means I'm not overstaying my welcome. First of all, and as you guys will pick up, Gary and I are complete opposites. We're complete opposites. But similar. But similar, yes. But thank you for having me on, and thanks for the kind words about the book.
3:10And for me, this book's been a journey. It took me four years to write. Um, and, uh, you know, I grew up with a learning disability, so it's quite a learning disability called dysgraphia. So it was quite ironic that I wrote a book when dysgraphia is about writing, um, or writing is very difficult. Uh, and, uh, but it's been such a pleasure to actually put my thoughts into a physical book and bring it out into the world. and you know for me the importance of this book is to help people have agency in their life and I wrote it as if it's a supportive parent because I had one parent that was super supportive to me in my 20s and I know what that feels like to just have all the wind in your sails and no one doubting what you want to do in your life and so I wanted to actually put something my shared experiences experiences in terms of what are the benefits that accrue to you when you start something in your 20s and how to make the case to yourself or how to make the case to your parents because there's so many pressures when you grow up you know in terms of what your parents want you to do or what society wants you to do but only you really know what you want to do in your life you have your own internal knowing and um i really want the book to help create discussion around that internal knowing whether or not you should go forward or not go forward but at least talk about it and have the conversation.
4:36I think that's right. If you were at a dinner party right now and everyone's going around and saying who they are in the cliche of name and what they do for a living, taking the authorship out, how would you introduce yourself?
4:51I would say I'm a creator. I bring things into the world that never existed before. We've done it in the whole toy realm. We were a toy company for the first 16 years of our existence. Then we started producing TV shows. Then we started producing movies. Then we started doing digital games. And we brought things into the world that never existed before. And to that point, just to anchor it, because I have such an entrepreneurial crowd, and I think people will enjoy this. From a professional career standpoint, at what age did Spin start? You had two partners. I believe you'll correct me if I missed that up.
5:27And then I want to go into your part, because I do think I like how you just answered that. because I did want to touch on your creativity and curiosity, which I think is a superpower of yours. And I think it could help a lot of people who I think underestimate curiosity and creativity as a... I think people understand it's a strength. I don't think people understand how much of a strength it is. And I think a lot of people suppress it because they live in black and white environments. So just a little origin story of your actual entrepreneurial career for five seconds. Sure. So we started the business when we were 23, right out of university, and we actually started pre-graduating.
6:09So Anton and I, my first business partner, there's three of us. My other business partner's name is Ben. We needed to pay for university. So we were selling fertilizer door to door. That's our first job. Love. And then we were like, this is really difficult. You know, when you knock on someone's door, you know, knocking on people's doors to ask them, you know, to fertilize their lawn. Like, it's not an easy gig. No. And then we noticed the kids in, they were seniors in our university that were doing this thing called Campus Faces. And so they would take pictures of kids during Frosh Week, create this collage, sell advertising around the perimeter, and then they'd distribute 9 ,000 posters for free.
6:47And this is pre-internet. And they graduated, and they weren't doing it. So I said to Anton, let's just do it ourselves. And then we did. And by the end of the third year university, we were doing it at five universities grossing$100 ,000 a year. Wow. And we graduated with no debt, and we had$10 ,000 in our bank account. And we paid for all school. Wow. And then the most magical thing happened. My mom sat me down, and she said, Renan, I got to translate this article that was in the Israeli newspaper. And it was an article about these six people that were making this product called an EarthBuddy.
7:20It was a small little chia pet. It was made out of grassy nylon sawdust, and you put it in water and grew grass for hair. It's kind of like the new version of chia pet in the 90s. and in this article it talked about how they had sold 300 000 pieces in israel jesus and for a country of 10 million people i figured i figured in north america it could be like millions so i said to anton why don't we do this and he thought it was crazy took me two weeks to convince him and and then the light bulb went off in his head and he said yes and next thing i know we're in k-mart we're buying pantyhose and we're sourcing sawdust and i'm getting my brother-in-law to help us manufacture the product and we said let's make 5 000 pieces for mother's day got it your track then wasn't let's like you it probably didn't even cross your mind let's go to israel make a deal with them and be exclusive in north america you're like we're going to replicate something similar correct understood can i tell you it's it's amazing you pick up on that because i had one discussion with my mother and my late grandmother and it was about risk and they said you know it's too risky for you to make it yourself why don't you do exactly what you described and i said well well, it's too risky to do what you're describing because then we're in control.
8:27I don't have control. I'm in their hands. I get it. And I made the decision. I mean, we're literally sitting in the VFriends studio where the only thing I've licensed out is the trading cards. Okay. Only because I love Ruben and Topps does have a lot of leverage. But, boy, do I agree with you with the control. So go ahead. So I got my brother-in-law. We gave him a 5 % prop sharing on the product. What's up with you? Well, I love the way you delivered it. You want to make sure the audience knows, like, we were smart about how we thought about business. No, I want people to understand that you can share profits.
9:00You can scale your business when you don't have money. Bring in human capital. That's right. Okay? And you can share the profits. You don't have to share on the gestalt of the whole business. That's right. That's a very important point. But on that specific product itself. So he was pumped. How old was he at the time? He was 26. He was the elder statesman. Yeah, he was 26. Right. He's an autodeck. He's incredible. And then I got my sister. She did the packaging. We gave her 5 % profit sharing. They're incredible. They actually took, they probably made a few hundred thousand dollars in total, and they took the money, and my sister started a business with that money.
9:30Unbelievable. Yeah. So you guys, you obviously gave us the punchline. I didn't know how much it did or didn't work. Clearly, I'm doing the math. It worked. Well, yeah, yeah. If you do the math backwards, correct. So we did 5 ,000 pieces for Mother's Day. We started selling them in the streets of Toronto. Literally on the street. Streets of Toronto. When you say the streets, going door to door to small shops and saying, will you buy this, or you stood out there like a lemonade stand and sold them? Like a lemonade stand. Get the fuck out of here. We had seven tables, okay? We had seven tables set up, okay, across the city.
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10:57unbelievable keep going and i i get emotional because even my late grandmother manned a table she sure did yeah with my sister and we got friends to do it we sold 700 pieces came back into the office on monday and we're like oh we got 4 300 pieces let's let's get moving and we started working with like floor shops we found a distributor Then we got super lucky. I went to a closeout toy company, okay, based on a recommendation from my mother. And I pitched them the idea. By the way, your mother sounds like a genius. So far I've heard my mother gave me this article. My mother told me about this.
11:29Then I got lucky. My mother told me to go to this. I think, I mean, she's really the architect of this company. You've never met my mother before. You guys would be like, you're like kindred spirits. Yeah, I can't wait. You're like two peas in a pod. Go ahead. No wonder you liked me. She would be the king of social media today. I believe that. She'd have as many followers as you. She had it. No filter. Yeah, I love her. Go ahead. Anyway, so I go to this meeting at this closeout company. They say, yeah, we'll represent you. We don't hear anything from them. Two weeks later, they call us. They said, no, they said, when can you deliver us 26 ,000 pieces?
12:05And then I said to them, we can, but we're short on capital. We're short on capital. And they were so nice. and they were rooting for us. They missed it. No. They just said, we'll pay you COD, cash on delivery. So the whole journey of EarthBuddies, our receivables were probably net 20 and our payables were net 75. They ended up being net 90. I pushed it. So we had this free cash flow. And then the most magical thing happened two months later. So Anton, which you know, he was traveling in Europe the summer before and he met this guy by the name of Aaron Hermelin and he lived in Detroit and his uncle owned the palace where the Detroit Pistons played.
12:49So he called him up and he said, do you have any connections to Kmart? And back in the 90s, Kmart was like Amazon. Correct. They were massive. They were truly Walmart. They were the Walmart. They were the Walmart. Truly. And Aaron said, yeah, I can get you an appointment with a buyer for the product. I'm going to charge you 10 percent, which was not right. OK. No. Old school. Old school. It should be in 5 percent. But anyways, we were just like, let's keep the momentum going. I mean, now, kids, if you're listening now, you could just DM or hit somebody. The whole world used to literally, like L.A.
13:21especially, and L.A. in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, if someone introduced you to someone, they were getting a piece of the action. That's how much access was worth something. This is why when you kids are like, I can't do it, and I know you can DM someone on Instagram or LinkedIn and your whole life changes, like, this is how it worked back then. Keep going. Yeah, so it was 10 % for us. And so we took the, we said, great. And for some reason, I took the appointment. Okay? I don't know why Anton. Anton's done more sales than I have. Yeah. But I went down to do this appointment. Serendipity, or you wanted to, or you just don't even remember why?
13:56I don't remember why. Keep going. So I wake up at 3.30 in the morning. Where was Kmart? It was in Detroit, Michigan. Oh, that's why he asked him, because that was their HQ. I didn't know that. They're based in Troy, Michigan. Got it. So I woke up at 3.30 in the morning. Okay? Drove down to Detroit. I didn't even think about going there the night before and waking up fresh. We were saving money, right? Didn't want to pay for the hotel. So I get there at 9.30 in the morning. We're in the room. It's myself. It's the rep and Aaron. And I pitch the buyer for 30 minutes. And after 30 minutes, the buyer says, I'm not the buyer for this product.
14:35And then I look at him and I'm thinking to myself, he's lying to me. You thought he was joking? No, I thought he was... Turning you down? Turning me down by not telling me the truth. Understood. Okay. I love that about you. That's good cynicism. Slightly paranoid back in the day. Yeah, clearly. What do you mean back in the day? So I pitched him again for another 15 minutes. And he was the nicest guy. He didn't interrupt me at all. 15 minutes listens to me. He says, I'm not the buyer for this product. So I said to him, well... Who is? No. I said, I still didn't believe him. I said, we'll give you the product on consigned sales.
15:10Oh, you're still selling. I'm impressed. Go ahead. We'll give you the product on consigned sales. If you sell it, you'll pay us. And he said to me, I'm not the buyer for this product. So I figured when I'm giving him the product for free, he's really not the buyer. So I said to him, well, who is the buyer? So he got up, left the room, came back, and he gave me a piece of paper. And written on it was the words Adrian Zacks. I shook his hands. I said, thank you very much. And I start walking around the offices in Troy, Michigan. Start walking around the office. I want to stop for your second. Everyone, a lot of you know this.
15:40One of my favorite V friends is tenacious termite. Tenacity continues to be underestimated. This is not where I thought the story was going. This is pure tenacity. Go ahead. So I start walking around Cameret Corporation looking for the buyer. And I got so lucky that she was sitting at her desk. And I pitched her right there on the spot, 30 seconds, and she said, okay, I'll see you at 3.30. I go downstairs. Aaron and the rapper downstairs are like, let's go for lunch. I said, I'm not going anywhere. Yeah, I thought they wouldn't let me in the building, okay, or she canceled or she may call me early or something like this.
16:12So I sat there for five hours, okay, and waited until 3.30. I get up there at 3.30. I walk in. And I didn't notice this before because my adrenaline was going. And as I walk in, there's seven other competing products, okay, on the left side of her shelf. So then I'm like, okay, I know I'm in the right office. And then I made a quick calculus in my mind. I'm like, I'm up against seven other people. I got to drop my price. I dropped my price from$265 to$165. It was costing us about 70 cents to make it back in the day. Anyways, I sit down. I do the whole pitch, 15 minutes. She doesn't say anything.
16:47And then she does the most magical thing. She turns around and she grabs this big book and gives it to me, which was the vendor book to become a supplier of Kmart. And she says to me, I'm going to order 48 ,000 pieces from you. And if it goes well, I'm ordering half a million for Christmas. and I was just like in complete shock and then we talked about a bunch of things and then I did the strangest thing, Gary. I asked her, because she was the buyer for horticulture because it was like a plant, right? And I asked her for her garden gnome. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now.
17:19Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. Do you ever have a garden gnome? I didn't have one, but of course I know what it is. I was like, I didn't believe the whole thing was real. So I wanted some tangible object. So I saw this garden gnome sitting up on her shelf and I'm like, can I have your garden gnome? What did she say? She's like, yes. How can you say no to someone asking for a garden gnome? She didn't want that. What is that? Like seven years of bad luck or something? It is. It feels like it, right?
17:51What? If you don't, if someone asks you for a garden gnome, if you don't give it to them, the gnome spell puts a spell on you. Like I'm trying to figure out. No, I didn't know anything like that. I mean, she very much could have been like, that's a strange request please leave my office she's clearly a wonderful lady no she's a wonderful lady and and i can just tell you this much is that that i read about in the book a chapter called everybody's rooting for you yes and i believe when you're young everybody wants you to succeed um and everybody wants to give you their their time they are rooting for you plus they love being around young people they love the energy of the young people and i am 100 convinced she had seven other options of places where she'd buy this but i'm convinced that she bought it a because i was in the room i got in the room i didn't i didn't send it who you are at that moment and and she felt the passion in the moment yep um and it was confirmed to me because four years later she asked me to come to detroit and speak to some inner city youth um and tell my story about the earth buddy i love it that's an incredible story brother and that was it right that purchase order yeah so So we ended up at the end of that year, we produced a million pieces.
18:54We had a factory in Toronto. We had 200 workers in our factory. We produced 17 ,500 a day. And it just set the company fully in motion. And that's that. I mean, obviously, there's a million things, but that's the origin story. That was the liftoff for the company. And for context for everybody, because now we've just given them a lot of stories, currently today, tell people some of the – a lot of times people don't know the corporate name. Spin Master, what are some of the brands, IPs, toys within the spin? spin portfolio? So, you know, the most famous one is Paw Patrol, Bakugan, Hatchimals, Air Hogs, Melissa and Doug, Rubik's Cube.
19:32And what about mobile gaming? Mobile gaming is interesting. We tried. It's wild. We tried in 2010. Okay. We set up our own studio. You saw it early. In Los Angeles. We built it from scratch. We had 100 people. We were$10 million in. And we were doing a virtual world under our TechDeck brand. pre-Rollblocks, okay? And I'll never forget, I took two months off. I went to Israel, took a break, came back, and everybody was just like, we need to close this down. We're spending too much money. It's not working. We're too deep. It's just not going to work. And it was a weak moment. We just shut down the studio before we completed it.
20:10Yeah. Yeah. And it could have been the Rollblocks of today. Yeah. And then six years later, we had an opportunity to buy a company called Tokaboka.
20:22and for the listeners, it's an amazing... Oh, they know. Okay. Good, good, good, good. And, yeah, and the crazy... And then we... So we were able to acquire our way into digital gaming. I love it. But the... Please. The crazy thing about Tokaboka is that Tokaboka got turned down by everybody. Everybody turned it down. Disney turned it down. It was being shopped? It got shopped for a year before it came to Spin Master. People thought it was overpriced? Too small. Too small. Too small. I see. Because they were being shopped at places like Disney and others and it was too small. Got it. To the book, let's start with the opening question.
21:05Why did you decide to write it for real? What's the mix? Because it can't be just one thing. What's the mix of things that were going on in your life when you decided, yes, I want to do this? I stepped down from being co-CEO of the company and I took a sabbatical for a year and a half. Let's time this for everybody. You stepped down as co-CEO of the company when? 2021. Okay. Around 50. So from 23 to 50, I was going full out. Yep. And then I was pretty, intuitively I knew that I was burnt out. I didn't know how burnt out I was until I was actually on six months into my sabbatical. But because I'm a workaholic, I needed another project.
21:45So I put the book into my sabbatical and I wrote it over a three-month period of time, the core part of the book. But it was the idea of being able to look back and see the magical things that happened in your 20s, and I wanted to write about it. It was just something – it was like a product that wanted to come out of me. It was an idea that I wanted to come out and that I just wanted to share. So that was one. Two is the time. Three is I love books. so just the whole thought like I love reading Right so you're like oh my god I'll have one that's so cool Yeah I'll have one that's so cool and be able to and also I was like I better write it down before my memory goes I love it What um so there's a lot of people listening and a lot of people listen to this over the course of a year and what's great about books I feel that every day I mean somebody emailed me today Right Like I just read Crush It I wrote it in 2009 and I write books that are different than this You're writing a book I have one or two that are kind of evergreen, a lot of my books are timely.
22:47They're like, do this in the next 36 months. I've rewritten Crush It two times. One's called Crushing It and one's called Day Trading Attention. And still the person's like, I got so much value. It's so interesting how long. So this podcast, the way the world works, obviously we're gonna push this hard. I want everybody to buy the book. I really think it's valuable. But this is gonna last a long time and have a long tail. If someone's listening right now and they're intrigued, they're compelled to my opening rant and wanna support it, what do you want someone to get, or not just someone, give me different groups of people and what your hopes they'll get out of the book if they read it?
23:25Well, I would love for the book to be a reframe on multiple topics. So first one is risk. So I write a chapter called The Inverse Risk, which I actually wanted the book to be called The Inverse Risk. Oh, interesting. I understand where you're going. And so the whole notion of risk, it's so easy to game out the downsides. We always know what is going to happen, the bad things that are going to happen. We never know the magical things that can happen once we start. Correct. Right? We can't visualize it. And so I want to encourage people to reframe their thoughts and say to themselves, if I don't do what I'm super passionate about, if I don't follow my internal knowing, you may be missing out on the screenplay of your life.
24:06Right? Real quick, before I interrupt, as I often do in these things, because it's so important. That last minute, I think a lot of you have consumed content from me, and I talk about 22 to 30 is when you should be all at risk. The world tells you, now grow up, now take a job. Everything is in your favor to dream it out, to scratch the itch, and most of all, for me personally, it's because I fear regret so much. It just feels so nice to hear you talking about this because I don't think this is talked about enough. I agree. I agree. I'm also passionate. I write about equity. Okay. Talk about taking the risk.
24:47It's like, how does equity work? And equity is actually not very complicated. How do you get equity? You just get equity by starting something. The moment you start something, you own it. The moment you make a decision, I want to go into business for myself. You may not have the idea, but you want to do something for yourself. Whatever you're going to do, you own it 100%. How you want to share it is your decision. how you want to get profit sharing, how much equity you want to give away. It's all up to you. The culture that you want to build, how you want to operate in that environment, it's all up to you.
25:19And then the question is, especially in your 20s, it's a time of so much energy. You have like 3x the amount of energy, 4x. So do you want that 4x energy to accrue to someone else or do you want to accrue to you? That's right. Are you renting your time? Yeah. Or are you owning your time? Where do you sit? So I'm the biggest, Read the subtitle. Oh. No experience necessary. Why betting on yourself in your 20s is the best decision you'll ever make. So I've talked on this platform of the same thesis for a very long time. Talk to me about where self-awareness comes in. So you're talking about betting on yourself.
Read the full transcript
26:00Now, I'm actually not going to lead the witness. What about somebody who's listening right now, is 24 years old, and has been gifted the blessing of really solid self-awareness and she or he knows that they do not have the stomach, the temperament, or the skill set to be entrepreneurial that they see themselves as, I'd rather be the number seven at Spin Master and that could be a very good career. I'm sure the number seven at Spin Master did quite well versus where I just know myself. I don't want that. That won't work for me. what's your thought about that? Then it's not for them. Then it's just not for them.
26:38What about the idea of like find what about that middle that I just painted which is like instead of going to Coca-Cola try to find your spin master. You think that's a version of that? Well so I think what I'm saying and I think we're agreeing I'm just curious where we're going to go is I do think high risk, high reward in your 20s over everything. What I don't believe is that everyone's an entrepreneur. Some people are a content creator, a musician and some people actually know they're a COO project manager type. To those people say, your version of risk is go to a startup company and be number seven versus Coca-Cola.
27:11You might lose because most startups go out of business. Most companies are not Spin Master or Facebook. Just your overall thoughts. Do you agree with that? I totally agree. I think the most important thing is to listen and follow your own internal knowing and what you're passionate about. And there is no right or wrong. There is zero right or wrong. and I think that certain people are born entrepreneurs. I think other people can become entrepreneurs. I think that you can contribute in so many different ways. It's more about just how you're spending your time to make sure that it's aligned with what is giving you energy in life.
27:48So there's a 20-year-old, there's the 15-year-old, there's the 50-year-old with the 20-year-old, there's an 80-year-old with a grandchild that's in their 20s. the coolest part about this podcast is we have them all listening which is really neat thoughts on intervention on this right so there's the human that you're trying to talk to here it's an intervention within themselves you're challenging them through this book through this podcast through all the press you're going to do to say hey man listen to me the 20s is like go go what about for the 50 now let's talk to the 50 and 80 year old you know for the grandparent the parent thoughts Let's start with a weird one.
28:28Any thoughts on a grandparent that sees this in their 26-year-old granddaughter, but their parents are potentially the issue because they're pushing don't take risk and all this? How do you think about interpersonal relationships in supporting risk because oftentimes that's the issue? Correct. Well, I hope the book actually creates the discussion, and we're actually creating a card game. it's going to be 120 cards 20 cards are called foundation cards which is for you to get to know the other person that you're sitting with and the other 10 cards are questions based on the chapters of the book and so you could actually read the book or play the game when does the game come out?
29:15it's going to come out in a month so it's more for promotional purposes you go into a strength of yours this is what you do I guess so but it's all there to just create the conversation and dialogue so you can sit down with your grandparents and your parents and you and you guys can talk it out. I think in so many families, I know in my family, there's a lot of unsets. There's not a family on earth that doesn't have a lot of unsets. There's just a lot. Different topics that are unsaid. But everyone who's behind the scenes right now is shaking their head adamantly. Every family has unsets. Every family's unsets sit in different categories.
29:50Correct. So I wanted to just create the dialogue and discussion. I think it's so healthy when people talk about it. then you'll be able to, you can work it out. And then your parents understand where you're coming from and your grandparents. It's just through the discussion. And I really encourage people to find what's right for them at the end of the day. And sometimes starting a business is not right. Yeah, I think that's right. Talk to me about, here we are, we're looking at the contents. Dig into one of these chapters or parts for me. Give me an anecdote, a story. Like, I see luck in here, which I'm fascinated by.
30:28Give me something that stands out for you. Well, we can talk about the power of not knowing. No, go with that. So break it down. I think the greatest thing. So this is in part two, build chapter five, the power of not knowing. Go into it. After we did Earth Buddies, we did a product called Devil Sticks. Then we did a couple of mediocre products to pay the bills. And then we came across this product called Air Hogs, this airplane that ran off compressed air for 45 seconds. If you remember back in the 90s, all we had to play with were the rubber band planes or the Cox planes that basically get one flight, they break, or they take your finger off.
31:01That's right. And the second part happened more often than you think, kids. Shit was crazy back in the day. It's like the fact you give your kids a gas-powered plane back in the day. Do you know that there's a million-dollar Boba Fett action figure because it was the one that the missile actually shot out of his backpack? But a kid swallowed it, and they had to stop making it. So there's only like a dozen in the world. I didn't know about that. Yeah, kids, everything was dangerous back in the day. The lead that was in the toys alone. And by the way, we're all still alive. So that's just a conversation.
31:33The fact that we're still standing. I need to make Mona listen to this part. We're still alive. All right, go ahead. So you come across this thing. What year was that? Do you remember? Yes, 1996. So Ben's role was to go out and look for it. Yeah, let's talk about Ben. He was the third partner, right? So Ben's our third partner. When did he come along? He came in when we started producing Earth Buddies. So pretty quickly. Pretty quickly. I had not even known him, and he went to school with Anton University. I met him for 45 minutes, loved him. You knew? Just knew. This is his third Amiga? Yes, correct.
32:00Wow. So Ben's role was to go out there and actually meet with inventors. And in the toy industry, there's 200 inventors that come up with ideas. They never commercialize them, but if you take one from them, they will... Get a royalty? They get a 5 % royalty in perpetuity. Right, so there's a lot of toys, just for everybody, this could be what you do for a living. You invent toys and you hope one of the companies, you guys, the other two big ones, the others come along and say, I like it. And you get a 5 % big and then they go do all the hard work. Make it, sell it, manufacture it, all that. And you just sparked my thoughts.
32:32Bakugan was actually created by a 23-year-old inventor, first-time inventor. No shit. The first product he ever invented, the last one he ever invented. Okay. By the way, if everybody's not sharp enough to follow along, he made so much fucking money he never had to do it again. Correct. He didn't die, just so you know. No, no, he did not die. Wow. Okay, so we go back to Air Hogs. So Ben was going out meeting with all these inventors, and he met with these two British inventors, John Dix and Peter Manning, two British guys in their 50s, and they came to show us this toy that went on to become Air Hogs, and we go to the park and we fly the airplane, and it's just like magic.
33:09And I just run, pick it up, I fly it, Ben runs, picks it up. We just want to do it over and over again. Then they're like, okay, hold on, it's a prototype. Just chill it. In my break, yeah. It's going to break. But literally, I felt like a seven-year-old kid, and I was 25 at the time. Right? Yeah, it was so much fun. Yeah. So we ended up giving a$50 ,000 option. We took all the money from Earth Buddies, from Devil Sticks, and we spent two years designing and developing this airplane. About a year and a half in, we realized, or we found out, that Hasbro had passed on the product, Mattel had passed on the product, every toy company had passed on it, and we thought we were the first to see it.
33:52We thought we were the first to see it, and at the time, okay, we realized, like, it's an airplane, it's going to come down, it's going to break, okay, it's a spinning propeller, it's not so safe, so we were, like, cognizant of all those things, but they didn't, like, sit in our brain too long. We figured, we were, like, you know, we figured it out, but we didn't know enough of what we didn't know, And that led us, all we knew was that we loved it. And if we loved it, a seven-year-old was going to love it. So let's go ahead and do it. Real quick to jump in. This is the framework I always talk about, which is A, intuition.
34:23But B, I always say fresh eyes or dangerous eyes because they don't know what's wrong. And the other competitors, often much bigger, do know what's wrong. And they talk themselves out of it, missing out on the magic. Correct. And it's that combination of, like, when you're young, you're so close to the zeitgeist. You see the world so differently. You see the opportunities. And for some reason, we hold ourselves back from going in. But if you went forward, you would bring what you see differently into the world, and you'll overcome the obstacles. So we overcame the obstacles. We put on a beautiful foam nose cone.
34:57We put on plastic tips on the ends of the propellers. Our wings popped off on impact, and then you put them back on again. So that's how we solved that problem. And it went on to redefine the whole flying category. We did$35 million in 2008 on it. And over the course of 10 years, we probably did over a billion dollars in sales in flying toys. We were the kings of flying toys. Wow. And that's all a result of power of not knowing. Just for nerdom, and there's just a lot of business people, who was the company at a place with a couple of wins? You had good distribution at that point. Like, everyone took it in.
35:33Did the buyers like it? Just a little nerdom there. Sure. If you want to, we, Anton was doing sales. He sold it in pretty much to every single retailer. Everybody wanted it. Every retailer wanted it. They loved the innovation. They saw the uniqueness in it. And it was shipping May 2008, and I was in China, okay, doing the debug. We shipped it in, committed, and the retailers, as you know, Gary, it's like the retailers allocate the space. If you don't fill the space, it's a huge sin. Oh, I mean, it could be a death blow. Right. so we took a risk of selling it in at that time when it wasn't 100 % ready we were getting it 100 % ready but we didn't know 100 % if we'd be able to do it but we got it done those were sleepless nights for you in China?
36:22they were sleepless nights for other reasons I give more details in the book you want to give some scoops? no we're going to save that I'll save that something important to me during this interview right now what have we not talked about yet from the book or the thesis or what you want to get out there that we should well i think i think luck okay let's talk about it it's a big big one for me it's like i i do believe that we have the ability to create our own luck um but the luck starts in the doing and being in momentum and being in movement um and so i share a story in the book about uh how i was going to chicago when i was working on the development for the air hogs and I got lucky on one of my trips.
37:04Totally unexpected. I went there. I was basically going back and forth all the time working on the development. And on one trip, I go, and Jeff Raykemper, who is one of the owners that I was working with, he says, Renan, I got this product to show you. And so the one thing to know is, like, toy inventors are like kids. Whenever they invent something... It's the next greatest thing, right? It's the next greatest thing. It's distracting. No, they want to show you. They want to show whoever's coming in the door. So you always say yes, right? Sorry? You got to always say yes to the inventors, right?
37:30You never know. Listen, our whole philosophy at Spin Master is we're open to ideas wherever they come from. We'll take a meeting whenever it's available. We will ask questions. So everybody, if you're an inventor of toys, good news. I'm now on the board. I actually have say. So if you want to just message me on LinkedIn, I'm going to leave it at that because you can't figure out how to message me on LinkedIn. Then we don't want to take the meeting anyway. but if you got a crazy toy invention I would love the output of this is to sell a lot of books and to get the next big colossal toy product and to spin that we can so that him and I at the board meetings will be like we fucking did this during the podcast it would be great to have another Bakugan story from a 23 year old so go ahead so he says yes he shows you something so he shows me this miniature BMX bike which is a rep this miniature BMX bike with real working brakes and a chain and everything.
38:26And it turned into Flicktricks, which turned into licensing Mongoose, Hoffman, Redline, all these great BMX companies and turning them into real diecast replicas. And it turned into$100 million business for us. And it was only as a result of being there at that moment in time because I was in the momentum of the doing of the... Do you think luck has a lot to do with the framework of maybe versus the framework of no that most people live in? So let me break it down for you because I can see your face. Back to your point. For example, there's just a lot of people I know that when that inventor came, because you're working on this thing and maybe other things are going on, you'd be like, hey, we've got to stay focused.
39:09And they don't even go to, and to me, so much of my luck is that almost everything that comes my way is a maybe. There is no starting point with no. And I've observed that almost all my contemporaries are obsessed with no. Right, interesting. And so for me, it's maybe, and then I'll wait. This is what they're scared of. I'll waste the 30 minutes to say no most of the time. Right. But I think it gets trumped by the five times I said maybe that became a yes that changed the course of everything. Right. And they overvalue this efficiency in the short term on something that does not have home run power.
39:45That's a great point. I think about in our business, for us to be successful, we need to have the widest funnel at the top. We need to be looking at the greatest amount of products so that we're very judicious on what we're allocating capital to. So the same thing applies with your maybe. Yeah, same thing, being open to ideas wherever they come from. But I do think that the luck is a – the universe will meet you halfway and give you the opportunities. Then you have to be like uber luck to recognize the opportunities that are in front of you. Sure. what's been the most surprising lot of authors want to be authors listening right now lot of people curious about process in my community what has been the most surprising things about writing a book
40:38commercially it's more about the marketing of the book marketing a book today is very difficult so I've never done any social media I have no Instagram. I have no Facebook. I have no LinkedIn. And I actually, I got turned down by 19 out of 20 publishers. Because of those variables? Because of those variables. Because I had no social media. So today, they want you to have a, they want you to be a known entity and then write a book. Right. Okay, versus writing a book and then becoming a known entity. Yes. So that was. They want to de-risk. They want to de-risk it. So for me, it was, fortunately, it wasn't a hindrance because I found a great agent and he got it done for me.
41:13and I ended up at the top publisher. So it's being published by Crown. It's owned by Pengo Random House. And then I'd say the marketing. So being able to put yourself out there, sit on a show like yourselves, feel comfortable in front of, we've got like 17 cameras here. Like feel comfortable in front of a camera, being able to like talk and feel natural. It's all foreign stuff to me. Yeah. How's it been? So I would say the first few podcasts I did were terrible. They were very rough. Very rough. Very rough. Very rough. I did get some media training. How was that? Amazing. Yeah? You recommend it for people that it doesn't come natural?
41:53A hundred percent. Especially for authors. And I found out from the person who gave me the media training that writing and speaking is two different things. You're speaking to someone who's incapable of writing or reading. It's two different things. So we all talk all the time, so we think we can do it naturally. but it's a learned skill and it's good to get advice. Like I would say do not start this process without getting a little bit of media training and understanding how to share what's important to the audience. That's right. That's very well said. Early reactions. Friends that read it first, consumer.
42:31Give me an anecdote, a story, something that kind of touched you, something that even if it's frivolous, like, oh, that was rad, somebody out of left field, something random. It's a great question. I can give you two. I have a lot of friends in their 30s that they got upset with me after they read the book. They're like, why didn't you fucking write this 10 years ago? Correct. Yes. It was kind of a gut punch for them, and it made them rethink their life for the time they were reading it, and maybe that was a little unpleasant for them. So that was an interesting, I never expected it. Did you send them a Gary V piece of content that told them when you're 70, you're still a child, and 30 is a fetus, you know?
43:04It's true. Yeah, I say it. You're so long. You're so right. The average age for an entrepreneur is 38. Yeah. 38. That's not what it feels like to people out there. Correct. I know. I agree. Okay, that's one. The other one that was really touching, which I would have never expected, a lady that works for a PR company that I hired. Her son got a concussion. He's nine years old. Okay, he's got a learning disability. Sorry, he's got a learning disability. He's behind on his reading. He had a concussion. He was staying home that day. And she needed to read the book for work. So she decided to read him some chapters and some parts from the book because he was a big Paw Patrol fan.
43:43and she she read him the book and he said I could be like the Paw Patrol guy and then that night she said to him mom I want to try reading from the book myself wow yeah that's awesome bro yeah that's really wonderful who would have ever thought well that's the best part of content right you know just impacting someone actually let's use that emotional thing to go to something very fun. You are the Paw Patrol guy. You know, obviously it was, actually, I'm going to actually, actually want to hear it. This is selfish now. Origin, real life origin story of one of the most beloved intellectual properties in the world had a Paw Patrol happen.
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45:09Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. It actually happened in the lowest point of Spin Master history. take us there so basically after Bakugan Bakugan took us from$450 million in sales to a billion dollars in sales and three years later we went from a billion dollars in sales back to$450 million yeah and real quick if you guys don't and gals don't know what's interesting about the toys business is it's kind of like the hits business meaning you know in a lot of businesses it kind of gradually goes one way or gradually goes the other way obviously there could be random stuff but when you're in the hits business when you're hot it's like being an artist When you've got two albums in a row that are ripping, you're at the top.
46:04You have three albums that come out that are donkeys after that, you're in trouble. Like, this is why you guys could bounce up and down like that. Yes, yes. But the problem was that you don't want to bounce up. You want to be cognitive of the fact that it can actually go down, and you want to have good products that are coming afterwards, and you don't want to believe your own BS. Yes, but when you're young and it's early, you can get very vulnerable to your own BS. You can get a lot of humorous. You can get a lot of humorous. So go ahead. So you're at this low point. You guys are feeling it. You guys are feeling stressed?
46:36Well, not only do we feel stressed. Well, we lost money, okay, for two years straight. Okay, for 16 years in a row. We made money. We made money. I'd never seen brackets before. I'd never seen brackets, okay? When I see brackets, I get hives. Yep. And so we lost money for two years in a row. We had to recapitalize, put money back into the business. We had to let go of 350 people in the business. Which is the worst part. Okay, which is the worst part. We did it over four restructurings, okay, because we weren't cognate enough to realize. It's the second worst part. We weren't even cognate. Like every time we said, oh, we're going to hit our numbers, we didn't hit our numbers.
47:06We didn't hit our numbers for 24 months. That wears on people. And so at that moment in time, we had this, you know, Anton, myself, and Ben, like our relationship went down, and we were like, should we continue? What should we do, et cetera, et cetera. Like contemplating selling to a bigger company? Sell the company, move on, pack it in. Yep. Like this is too hard. This is 2012. Okay. so you're in this moment we're in the lowest moment um and we decide that we're going to get through it and the way we're going to get through it was we were going to see more products more opportunities be more judicious and whatever we were going to work on we were not going to dial it in we were really going to give it the tension time and focus right so instead of going super wide and like all that kind of stuff like let's pick our stuff and let's go deep.
47:59Correct. Okay, and keep going. This is interesting. And off the heels of the success of Bakugan. Bakugan, we had created four seasons. We sold it into Cartoon Network. So it introduced us to the whole world of TV. Right. We actually followed it up with three other shows and the three shows did not do well. What were they? Do you remember? Yeah, Tenkai Knights. Okay. Don't know it. Don't know it because it didn't do too well. Redikai. Oh, I remember that actually. Redikai. It was a co-pro with the French company, and another show. And Redekai... That was the best part of the whole damn thing. Yes, I remember that.
48:37And the third one. Another show. I can't remember. And Redekai... Redekai and Tenkai Nights, we made product for the shows, and you could not take them off the shelf. They were like glued to the shelf. Right. They ended up in dollar stores for$99. Correct. Right? So, here we have this massive success and all the follow-on stuff is not doing well, but we're trying. And then we had the idea and said, okay, let's open up our own production company in Toronto. There's incredible talent in Canada when it comes to animation, storytelling. There's tax credits. And there's a magic in transformation because we saw the magic in Bakugan, in the play pattern.
49:20And so we said, what if we can bring that magical play pattern to preschoolers? It had never been done before. And we were looking at the preschool space, and we were saying there hasn't been a new show, anything fresh in like a decade. So there's a white space opportunity here. So we created a brief which said, can you come up with an idea for a preschool show for us around transformation? And that was a brief. It was super simple. And? We sent it to five creators around the world. and the one that we got back, which actually had nothing to do with transformation, came from a gentleman by the name Keith Chapman and he's the creator of Bob the Builder.
50:00And so I'd wanted to work with Keith for like over 10 years. I love him. He's British, super smart, and he's a lucky guy. Talk about luck. Like I have a whole theory, but like you just want to be around lucky people and you want to work with lucky people because then it just, you get part of their shefa, their energy. And he came back with the idea for Paw Patrol, which was originally called Robbie and the Rescue Pups. And it was about this archetype, this 12-year-old kid that had these five different puppies, and each puppy had an archetype, fireman, police dog, etc., etc. And they would go on rescue missions.
50:38And then what we did was something very... Did you guys love it right away? Yeah, it was like... Do you remember? Yeah, it was... Or it was like, there's something here. There's something here. There's something here. And what we did, because we produced our first show in Japan, Japan is, they're the kings of mashing up toy play and storytelling together. 100%. Right? And so we said, let's apply this and do this in the preschool area. And so we basically took all our knowledge in toy development, and we married it together with storytelling. And it was a mashup. And basically you had toy designers working with animators.
51:09The toy designers were drawing over the animators' designs. The animators were drawing over the toy guys' designs. I'm supposed to say, I love it. Because we understood what was aspirational for kids. So what we did was, so we added, we said, it would be super cool if there's backpacks on the pups and the backpacks transformed. And it wouldn't be cool, okay, if they were all going up into this tower and they'd get their missions and then they'd ride down on a great slide and then go into their dog houses that would pop open into vehicles and then they'd go do their rescue missions. So it was a real mashup of the arts.
51:40And then we got really lucky. We had incredible director Jamie Whitney, who had done many, many preschool shows and just loved kids and love storytelling. And so we got him to work on it. We had two incredible writers and they were great storytellers. Where did it premiere? We ended up, we did a premiere on Nickelodeon. Yeah. And so we did a partnership with them. They really helped with the, creating the, you know, they helped shape it because they were great storytellers themselves. Yeah. So everybody contributed. They get full credit for the song. Which mattered. Which Matters. Which Matters.
52:19It's an iconic song. So it was a real collaboration of, I would say it's one of the greatest American-Canadian partnerships. That's how it would. I love that. It really is. It really is. Because it's all animated. What an icon. Yeah, thank you. It's just crazy. It became such, and right away, was it a commercial success? It was very quick. I can tell you, as the king of social media, you'll appreciate this, I would go to Instagram and I would look at the birthday cakes. And when I saw there was a lot of people making birthday cakes, I knew it. Yeah. What a great one. How much time do we have? Wrap up.
52:59Ronan, this is so exciting. I want to give you the last word here. By the way, do not edit out the how much time do we have left. I just like it. You know how I like it real. Whether we didn't get to touch on something that you wanted to, whether you want to put a bow on it. I want to give you the floor to wrap this up. Everybody, please, no experience necessary. Go pick it up. Buy it for that, especially if you're fortunate enough to have a 15 to 25-year-old, 15 to 30-year-old in your life. I think it's a must-read. We're going into that fun time of year where people are reading by the pool or on vacation.
53:37I couldn't recommend it more. What are your parting shots, my friend? Well, first, thank you. that's number one number two is I would say the 20s is such a magical decade and life is short but at the same time life is long and you have way more time than you think and enjoy the journey enjoy the journey enjoy the ride because it quick it goes really quick so and uh don't don't stress do you know it's just it's really not care about it it's really not worth it don't don't stress everything will happen every and everything that didn't happen is meant to happen that's right and as long as you're in the doing and as long as you're moving in momentum the most important thing is just momentum and uh just keep on moving thank you my friend thanks care everybody if you enjoyed this podcast Please go back and look at the prior episodes.
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55:32Thank you. AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com. Journey. See you later.
From the publisher
In this episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, I’m joined by Ronen Harary, co-founder of Spin Master and the creator of global hits like Paw Patrol and Bakugan. We dive deep into his new book and why I believe the decade between 20 and 30 is the most important time to bet on yourself and follow your internal knowing. We also discuss the "Power of Not Knowing," how to handle massive business failures, and why staying in motion is the only way to create real luck.
Ronnen's book No Experience Necessary is available for pre-order. Order your copy today at Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever books are sold!
You’ll learn about:
- The "Inverse Risk" of not following your passion.
- How Spin Master survived two years of losses to create Paw Patrol.
- Why "fresh eyes" are more dangerous than experience.
- The strategy of profit sharing to scale human capital.
- How to facilitate difficult "unsaid" conversations within families.