Kevin O'Leary's Shocking Prediction For The Stock Market, Housing Prices, & 2026 Economy

14:05Graham Stephan:What's the most valuable card you have?

14:07Kevin O'Leary:Dual Logo Man, Jordan Kobe. You know, I'm going to be walking on the red carpet of, uh, first SAG-AFTRA, the Actors Awards on Sunday here, but then the Oscars on the 15th. And I thought, what could I give back to Los Angeles that would be really cool? And I came up with this idea. I thought if we could take the Jordan-Cobie dual logo man, that card we bought last August for$12.93 million.

14:36Graham Stephan:I also didn't know you bought that. I know the card sold for that. I didn't know it was you. It was everywhere. Yeah, I saw the press tour afterwards. But then I thought to myself, Paul Logan did something cool with his Pokemon.

14:48Kevin O'Leary:He hung it on a necklace and he wore it. I thought, how can I take Paul's idea and elevate it, turn it to 11? How can I max it out? So I called up my good friends at Tiffany's and I said, can we talk to Paris? Let's dream up a necklace made of all diamonds and rubies and I'll wear that at the Oscars. because Kobe should be back in LA. And nobody knows I'm coming with that. That thing's going to be worth about$25 million. I'm only going to have security everywhere, obviously, brings trucks and everything. But when I get on that red carpet, I'm going to be wearing that. It's going to be a mind blower.

15:31Kevin O'Leary:And it's going to make the necklace that we've designed. I actually am wearing the two watches that we designed it for. The classic Daytona rainbow, which is rubies and diamonds, graded colors. And then, of course, all ruby, diamond, AP, skeleton. I think I'll be wearing both of those with a card here. Can you imagine the bling? I mean, that's -

15:56Graham Stephan:You're like the rich person final boss. You're like, literally like Mr. Burns. This is like a side quest at this point.

16:01Kevin O'Leary:It's about art. It's about taking it into wearable art because the Kobe, do a logo man, is considered by some the supreme card. Yeah. In its design, the fact that it has the original jerseys, both logos are perfect. I mean, the whole thing, and I've only been able to see that out of the vault once because it's vaulted, it's insured. But it's coming out on the streets of LA on the red carpet and it's going to be insane. That's going to be insane.

16:30Graham Stephan:So we just had Logan Paul on the podcast. Yeah. And we were talking about the card and I was asking what the Logan Paul premium was for the card. And he definitely said his name associated in the story behind it and him showing it adds a level of premium for a buyer because that has a story to it. Well, imagine what this car is.

16:48Kevin O'Leary:Yeah. I mean, think about walking the red carpet of the Oscars. We're nominated for nine Academy Awards on Marty Supreme. This is a chance of a lifetime to bring Kobe back into L.A. in its flashiest moment. So what's your plan with the card?

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18:26Kevin O'Leary:we talked earlier about ETFs, right? I like diversification. So if I own Europe, I own 50 stocks. My portfolio is 50 of the largest European stocks in that O share. I want to own 50 cards. I don't want to bet the farm on one card. I want the 50est most valuable cards on earth in one holdco that I'm a shareholder in. That's what I want. Because I went back and did the research. Go back to 1958 in modern and contemporary art. Track every single painting. You can do this online now easily. What you're going to find out is 98 % of the returns of the modern and contemporary art market came from the top 20 pieces of art, top 20 artists, that they're rarest pieces.

19:19Kevin O'Leary:So a Picasso that you bought for$2 ,500 in 1962, that trades for$140 million today. Not some other artists, the Picasso. There were thousands of modern artists. but Picasso's the one you wanted. Warhol. There were all kinds of people in New York in the 70s doing what Warhol was doing, but none of those have traded up. You gotta own the Warhol. You want the Mick Jagger. So that's my philosophy with cards. So I got together with two other guys, Shine, probably the number one collector on earth. I said, Shine, go find me every single Picasso and Warhol in every sport. and it doesn't, and what you've learned about the data, it doesn't matter what you pay.

20:06Kevin O'Leary:It just doesn't matter. You know, whether you pay 8 million or 20 million or 50 million, it doesn't matter. If you just let time do its thing, those cards outperform all the rest of that sector if they are piece uniques. So that code, the Jordan code, you know, Kobe logo, man, that's a piece unique there's only one of those so we paid 12.93 million middle of august last year go to card ladder it's 17.2 million right now it's better than the s &p have you gotten an offer after purchasing oh yeah yeah yeah we're not selling that card i'm not selling any cards like how am i going to buy them back they're peace uniques like this is better it's done way better than crypto, way better, like way better than Bitcoin, way better than the S &P 500.

20:57Graham Stephan:So in terms of your portfolio, then, if you were to allocate percentages and how it's invested, what percent would be alternative investments like cards, collectibles, as opposed to index funds, individual stock picks, private companies, real estate? Like how are you currently diversified?

21:15Kevin O'Leary:Yeah, that's actually the secret sauce. And it's the thing about diversity. It's the only free lunch in investing. Very simple rule for me. On traditional equities and debt, no more than 20 % in any one sector, there's 11 sectors in the economy, and no more than 5 % in any one stock or bond. So think about, you've got 11 sectors, real estate's the 11th sector in the S &P, the most recent. The only rule I break is real estate. I have about 32 % of my portfolio in real estate. Is that commercial real estate? No, it's a blend. But right now, what's really exploding in terms of value for me are the deals I did in data centers.

22:02Kevin O'Leary:I bought 10 ,200 acres in Alberta, Canada. And last week, we announced 10 ,300 acres in Utah. Both locations have extraordinary attributes in terms of what the hyperscalers need. So I'm really, really long real estate right now because if you look at the cash flow in all commercial real estate, there's never been in history this much capex allocated to this sector. We have demand right now for 45 gigawatts of data centers and only five under construction. Think about that. So for the next seven years, I want to be long land that has power, fiber, permits, and water.

22:46Graham Stephan:So how does it look then in terms of like percentages? Like if some person out there watching with 10K to their name, how are they going to mirror your portfolio? Right now, what's declined the most in the last year. So let's look at where we sit right now. I would say on a portfolio basis, I'm about 60 % equities globally. Is that private, public? Yeah, we're going to make it much simple numbers here.

23:18Kevin O'Leary:It's private and public. I'm about 5 % in alternatives, including cards. I used to be 11 % in crypto, but I discovered something quite disturbing, I might add. We'll take a little derivative here. So I'm down quite a bit on crypto because last October, when the Genius Act passed and the SEC made stablecoins legal tender, something really crazy happened. The Stability Act, or the Clarity Act as it was called then, looked like it was going to close by December. So here we are in October with the Cantor conference in October, October 20th was the date, I think. And the word on the street was that within six weeks that we were going to get the final act for crypto, which was going to be the structure clarity act.

24:14So all of the sovereign wealth funds that we index with on the equities started to say,

24:21Kevin O'Leary:okay, we're going to do some work on preparing for which positions to put on in crypto, which ones do we need to own to actually get exposure to the alpha the volatility of the market do we own bitcoin do we own ethereum do we own solana do we own whatever whatever you know there's 10 000 coins and they independently without any emotion because there's a lot of emotion in the crypto market a lot of kryptonians and all that stuff these guys were just independently saying we're going to allocate 500 million dollars into crypto and their researchers started to go to work. Here's what they found out.

24:58Kevin O'Leary:You only need to own Bitcoin and Ethereum, and you capture 98 % of the entire crypto market. You don't need anything else. All the rest is poopoo. So the poopoo coins collapsed. I mean, it was brutal. Some of them went down 80, 90%, and they're never coming back because they're poopoo coins. They have no reason to exist and there's nobody going to save them. And they have no marketing money to go get the ticker that Ethereum gets every day on every cable network in the world that looks at business and Bitcoin's Bitcoin. So that's very sobering. People lost a ton of money that they're never going to get back on the poopoo scale.

25:41Kevin O'Leary:So if you're going to get exposure to crypto, avoid poopoo and just simply buy the two that matter. That's what I did. So I sold 27 positions, gone, put it into USDC, which, you know, is giving me yield of 3.9 % and just bought more Ethereum and Bitcoin. And now it's a very interesting time. Those things have been crushed too. So, you know, my, I'd allocate, I call that an alternative too, but it didn't perform as well as gold. So, you know, if you think about it this way, for me right now, it's probably 60 equities globally, 20 fixed income, and 20 alternatives, including cards, crypto, gold.

26:26And that portfolio has done quite well.

26:28Graham Stephan:What's an investment that everyone loves right now that you think is going to collapse? It's never the one you think.

26:35Kevin O'Leary:In fact, that's the great question because Because it's the reason that you should force yourself into diversification. Because you think you know, you don't know. But you're right, something will collapse. But because you only own 5 % of it, or max 20 % in that sector, it's very hard for a sector to completely collapse. We're the Hartford, with decades of experience insuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. You know, there's been a real correction on a lot of the AI assumptions lately.

27:18Kevin O'Leary:And some of those stocks have pulled back. But because for me, it's just a 5 % position, it doesn't really hurt. And yet gold, everybody got that wrong. And that thing really saved my rear end. Like, look at my gold portfolio. It was insane, the performance.

27:34Graham Stephan:If you had to throw out a guess, though, if you were to speculate, Not that people should listen to what you're speculating on, but what would you say could be something people are bullish on right now that you're bearish on? I think the disruption that's going to occur in AI around, I would say, financial services. You saw what Jack Dorsey did.

27:54Kevin O'Leary:He laid off 40 % of his people yesterday. He, in a sense, sees financial services. I think that's going to happen again. Now, the weird thing is the stock price didn't collapse, but the employment numbers did. So it's hard for me to pick where AI is going to disrupt next. I would have thought it would have happened sooner, but it's this next year. The year we're in, here we are in February. If we have this gathering again in 12 months, something's going to go down 80%. I just don't know what it is yet, but it will be because of AI's disruption.

28:28Graham Stephan:So I'm curious for you, do you just pop open your brokerage every morning in like dollar cost average? No, no.

28:36Kevin O'Leary:What I do is I mark to market with a dashboard. It's a proprietary dashboard, but it takes every single global, because I have accounts in the UAE, in Switzerland. What do you mean a council? Well, I have a company called O 'Leary Global in Abu Dhabi, and it has investments. So those stocks go up and down on that exchange. So I need to know what they are. And so at 405, although, remember, 13 hours ahead over there, I just take a snapshot. I look at it on my phone, and I say, I just looked for variance. What moved more than 3 %? And so it flags any position that had more than a 3 % move in this trading session.

29:25Kevin O'Leary:And what's occurring now is there's more and more names every day. There's a lot of vol. Let me give you an example. I'm a shareholder in Circle. You're probably unaware of this. It went up 35 % yesterday. That's a lot. Now, why did it go up 35 %? Because there's a motion in the market now that it looks like the Clarity Act is going to clear in the next couple of months. And that solves the issue around interest on stable coins. So boom, I have a big position in that company because I bought it privately years ago. 35 % move in one day. You don't see that very often, but it was a huge winner in the portfolio.

30:04Kevin O'Leary:But my whole point is it's not more than 5%. But when you get one 5 % position to move 35%, And then you outperform the market that day. That's what happens.

30:15Graham Stephan:When do you think the next recession is going to hit? And what do you think is going to cause that? I always look at the canary in the coal mine. That's the consumer. When the consumer rolls over, you'll see it. It'll be three data sets in a row.

30:32Kevin O'Leary:And that means we're entering a recession. Now, you know, each recession is different. The wild card again is AI. people are saying today because of Jack Dorsey's thing, the recession is going to be caused by AI. The only problem with that statement is, yes, the people who lost their jobs don't have the same earnings power, except how do you know they're not going to be sucked up into another sector? You don't. And so will AI self-correct the economy by making it more productive with higher free cash flow? Like even in our companies in the last two years, just the private ones like, you know, Boost Oxygen or Blue Land Detergent or Hello Prenup, you know, these are all small cap businesses.

31:21Cash flows are up 20%. Why? AI.

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32:45What do you think of the wealth tax?

32:47Graham Stephan:Because Jack, we were having a discussion earlier, believes that it might be a good thing.

32:53Kevin O'Leary:No, no, Jack, you're going to hell for saying that.

32:56Graham Stephan:But there is an argument to be made.

32:58Kevin O'Leary:No, there isn't. It's un-American. It will destroy the fabric of the economy, punishing wealth and success.

33:06Graham Stephan:Well, it's not punishing because they already have billions of dollars. Right. The difference between having$5 billion and then let's just say a 10 % wealth tax, you know,$4.5 billion is not quite significant. It's just the idea that you made a promise to come to America as an entrepreneur to achieve the American dream. And then some arbitrary politician randomly decides, we're going to appropriate that from you. We're going to steal your wealth just because we feel that a 10 % wealth tax is appropriate. It's not really stealing, it's redistributing. You're going to go to hell too. Like both of you are going to hell.

33:53I feel sorry. I mean, I've heard that word before in Cuba, in North Korea, in Russia. It just hasn't been done right. They're all sh**holes now. How about Venezuela? They redistribute all the time to corruption. It's a sh**hole.

34:12Graham Stephan:Assuming it goes to corruption. But if it doesn't... No, the point is... We're not very corrupt here in America.

34:19Kevin O'Leary:No, because we have laws and we abide by them. But one of those laws is you can't steal people's money. So this idea of a wealth tax is going to be litigated right to the Supreme Court and it's going to lose because it's un-American. And there is no such thing as too much wealth because it all goes back anyways. The guy dies or the woman dies that has that wealth. And then we hit it again with state tax. You get it back. And during their lifetime, they should be able to enjoy their success unfettered because they took the risk to create what people keep forgetting on this issue. And Elon Musk is often used as the example, nearly the wealthiest man on earth now.

35:04How many jobs has he created? How much tax has he paid? I mean, if we didn't have him, would there be Starlink? Would there be Tesla?

35:15Kevin O'Leary:No. would there be all this innovation in robotics? No. Let's punish him for his success. Let's make damn sure.

35:22Graham Stephan:I think he would be fine with$100 billion. He's not on the street. No, no, he wants to use that money.

35:28Kevin O'Leary:He lives in a shack somewhere. He doesn't care. We're totally kidding. We don't actually leave in a wealth tax.

35:33Graham Stephan:Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're just trying to bait you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just thought this was a fun discussion.

35:37Kevin O'Leary:You're not going to hell then, and you're lucky. Let's try to hold back a lot. The whole issue is, and he said this publicly, I need that capital to deploy the next mission. And he's turned it from Mars to being the moon just in the last two weeks. I want to give him as much money because if you look at executional skills, show me anywhere on earth where there's a person like that. And thank goodness he doesn't live in Russia or in China or in North Korea. He's here in America because he wants to pursue the American dream. The reason those countries, you think about even Europe, if you have a great idea and you're sitting in France, you get on a plane and you go to Texas.

36:18That's where you make it happen.

36:20Kevin O'Leary:Even as far back as the V2 rockets, when they were Germans, they came to America and set up NASA. We bring the geniuses here because they want to live in freedom and they want to be rewarded the American dream. Look, I'm very stalwart on this. I'm very focused on it. And when I see bad policy, I rage against it.

36:43Graham Stephan:I got a question. Have you ever met Elon Musk?

36:45Kevin O'Leary:Yeah.

36:46Graham Stephan:When's the last time you met him?

36:47Kevin O'Leary:Mark Burnett's Christmas party. It has to be at least four years ago. Cause Mark used to do a Christmas party for all of the shark tank, you know, it's television companies. It was great party on the, on the West coast and everybody showed up. I, I'm, I'm, I was talking to him and Lady Gaga at the same time. It was just wild.

37:08Graham Stephan:So Elon was talking to Lady Gaga. What are they talking about?

37:12Kevin O'Leary:What do they have in common? It's interesting because I found her fascinating too. She was really interested in business. And we were talking, I think we're talking indexing. It's so random. I think she's, it's very random. And yeah, I mean, I really enjoy, you know, and I'm thrilled to be part of the acting community now because that's as eclectic as hell. I mean, these parties are incredible. and they're just so interesting because i'm so used to financial services to find myself acting in a feature movie and then you know hitting the parties and all the rest of that okay but people

37:46Graham Stephan:also the viewers out there that don't attend the hollywood parties have a very controversial opinion

37:50Kevin O'Leary:on the hollywood parties how i get it but what you find out is those people um and i'll speak on their behalf i thought the same way about hollywood parties complete bull then i actually went to work on a feature film for eight months. They work like hell. Their working conditions are brutal. They work 18 hours a day. You know, when you're shooting on the streets of New York or in Tokyo, I mean, it is exhausting. And you're living in a ball trailer with a port-o-can toilet. It sounds glamorous to make a movie. It is not glamorous. It is not at all. It's hard work. and now I get it and I have a new respect for them.

38:35Kevin O'Leary:So, you know, for anybody listening, don't make an assumption that a Timothee Chalamet runs around making movies and lives like a king. He lives like shit. Like, you know, it's shit. It's really, really hard. And it's exhausting because you got to get through that seven pages of script. And if you have to stay there till six in the morning, you're gonna stay at six in the morning. And then you got to get up two hours later and do it again.

39:00Graham Stephan:So when they were casting for the movie, They said they were looking for a real asshole. I'm curious if that's how you see yourself.

39:06Kevin O'Leary:No, I just tell the truth. Some people don't like it. It goes right back to the beginning of this narrative we had about, you know, what happened on CNN. Some people just go crazy when they hear the truth. And I don't care. Listen, the thing is, and I've said this to a lot of my students, If you try to live your life pleasing everybody, you're going to fail. You cannot make everybody happy. If you decide to take on a leadership role in business, you are definitely not going to make everybody happy. If you want to get and be part of the narrative on policy, you are definitely not going to make everybody happy.

39:48The only people you need to keep happy are your 20s.

39:55Kevin O'Leary:Most people only have 20 people in their lives that mean anything to them, their family and maybe an extended family and some close friends. There's not 200 people that you spend every day with. Everybody else, your role is not to make them happy. It's to tell them the truth and make sure you don't do anything that you lose their respect. I mean, I think people dislike me. Many do. But I believe that most of them respect me, even though they don't like me. You know, that's... Because I haven't done anything to do. I never lie about anything. Sometimes that causes a lot of problems.

40:30Graham Stephan:And have you ever taken your honesty too far? Like, has there ever been a point where you were too brutally honest or too blunt about something that the outcome was just objectively bad? Yeah, that happens. I mean, yes, I have. I can think of... you know, uh, recently Billie Eilish comment, I didn't mean it to be, I think she's a great

40:53Kevin O'Leary:artist that I had, I listened to her music all the time, but I didn't like what she was doing in terms of, um, being political in an award show that really, she really got pissed off at me,

41:04Graham Stephan:but what is it like to have Billie Eilish mad at you? Is she like DMing you? Like,

41:09Kevin O'Leary:yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's, you know, she had, she had a bunch of actors come out and her support, and I think that's great. I don't dislike these people. Most of them I haven't even met. But to me is, when you talk about indigenous rights, something I know a lot about because they're my partners in data centers, what people don't understand about First Nation all over North America, very simple to understand this, there is no border for them. They have the First Nations rights. They drift over the Canadian-American border anytime they want. They don't recognize the border and we allow them to do that.

41:46Kevin O'Leary:They own the water rights to many, many places in America and Canada. It's their water. And so they're going to be your partners. And they are my partners. And I don't like to hear anything said about them that isn't true. And so I stand up for my business partners and I claim why I do it. And, you know, it's sort of important because they need to hear that signal from me that I am truly looking out for their interests because it's in my best interest that they do okay. And so when we build a data center there, because they have what we need water, we can't do it without them. So it gets into that.

42:28Kevin O'Leary:That's how complicated my life is. I'm always thinking about what's factual here. Now, if that pisses somebody off. Okay. But you know, I don't think I'm a bad guy. I'm just telling the truth. It's still the truth today.

42:40Graham Stephan:Do you think that as time has gone on, that the truth has become more elusive in terms of people now prioritize feelings over some form of objective reality? Like back in the day, you could be blunt, you could be brutally honest and people were more okay with it. But as time has gone on, it's not as acceptable now?

42:59Kevin O'Leary:I think the answer to that is yes, that's true, but not for me. I don't care. I just don't care. I'm going to tell the truth every day. And the reason you need to do that is if you only tell the truth every day, you're never going to have to remember what you said. It's still going to be the truth tomorrow. And I really think there's something else going on. Just look at what's occurred on the Epstein files now that We have AI, millions of pages, okay? If you're in that, it's not about the criminal prosecution. It's destroyed hundreds of people's careers just to have their name in it. In some cases, maybe it's fair.

43:44Kevin O'Leary:Some cases, it may not be. I don't know the details. But every day, you see fall from grace from somebody. Cancelled. Because, you know, they obviously didn't think that through. You have to live your life every day thinking, is everything I did today, am I comfortable with it? Was I honest? Did I do anything that I'd be ashamed of tomorrow? Because with AI coming and social media, everything you do is seen by everybody all the time. So it goes back to the truth thing. I would argue the best thing you can do is tell the truth because if it's not true, you're going to get 100 % and they will cancel you in two seconds.

44:27Graham Stephan:Did someone like lie to you early on or did something happen for you to have such a strong emotional attachment towards the truth? Because I remember the last time.

44:36Kevin O'Leary:Yeah, my mother caught me in a lie when I was like 15 years old. And it was a bold face lie. What was the lie? I'm trying to remember. I was in high school. I think it's about smoking drugs, I think. You know, I rolled a big fat joint and smoked it. And she came home early and she could smell it. And, you know, at that time I was smoking drugs. I don't do drugs anymore, but, you know, I was experimenting with a lot of stuff back then. And she said, you should have told me the truth because I've caught you in a lie. And, and she said, then look, if you only tell the truth every day, you'll never have to remember what you said because I just caught you lying to me.

45:11Kevin O'Leary:And it really had an impact on me. It really hit me. And I thought she's right. And I remember, you know, it was in the kitchen. I remember it crystal clear. And ever since then, I've tried the truth. It's worked for me, but shit, it's got me a lot of trouble too.

45:27Graham Stephan:What's the hardest truth you've had to deliver? And what's the hardest truth you've had delivered to you? It's always when I'm terminating somebody.

45:35Kevin O'Leary:I have such a massive organization now and I'm very fortunate in business, but I really require executional excellence. And people, when you, You know, we're going back into entrepreneurship here, but when you become a leader and you take other people's money and you start investing it, they make the assumption that you are going to protect their capital and give them a return. And in order to do that, your mandate is to find the very best people to work in these companies. And so my job is to find the right CFO, find the right CEO, find the right tech person. And then you have to not only do that, gel a team.

46:14Kevin O'Leary:The team has to work together. So my strategy has always been, let's hire someone for six months first, see if it works on a consulting basis, a 30 % higher salary and no stock options or anything. And then if it doesn't work out on their resume, it simply says I consulted with one of the O 'Leary Ventures groups and I just moved on. But the hardest thing is when you finally come to the point where you've got to make a change, you have to tell them why. You've got to be honest. And that's tough. It's really tough. But you also have to be fair. I think, oh, you know, it's got to be thousands of people now that I've let go, you know, in my career.

46:54Kevin O'Leary:But every one of them got a great exit package. I've never heard anybody badmouth me afterwards saying he wasn't fair to me, man or woman.

47:00Graham Stephan:What's the harshest truth that someone's ever delivered to you?

47:03Kevin O'Leary:Yeah, I would say my stepfather said to me, you know, I was very much interested in becoming a photographer because I was working as a cameraman at that time before I was going to college. And he sat me down and said, I'm sorry, but you're just not good enough. You don't have what it takes to survive against the level of quality that's out there. You're just not good enough. and that was a real stunner and he was right he was right and it forced me to go back into college and i did a business degree and then the first thing i did to spite him was to start a production company and i but i made sure i didn't i wasn't the chief photographer anymore so you still kind of listen well but i and i sold that was my first deal it's called special event television it did all the uh nhl saturday programming but i hired great cameraman and hire and then i learned how to edit myself.

47:57Kevin O'Leary:I was a good editor, still am. But it's sort of, it's very hard to have somebody tell you you're just not good enough when it's true. It's true. He was right. Some people can't accept that. They can say, well, no, I'm going to get better. Executional skills vary on different mandates. You may be very, very good at one thing and not in another. And the real strength in life is figuring out what you're not good at. That's more important than knowing what you're good at so that you don't try and do things. I'm really sure of logistics. It bores the crap out of me. Making widgets, shipping widgets.

48:33Kevin O'Leary:I've always had a partner that does that in every business I've done. I'm the marketing sales guy. I'm really good at that, and I know that, and I can measure that. But when it comes to where do we inventory our widgets, I don't give a shit. Go figure it out. And I'm willing to give up equity

48:48Graham Stephan:to people who can solve that. So in terms of telling the truth, you recently upset a lot of people saying that the movie Marty Supreme could have saved millions replacing the background actors with AI.

48:57Kevin O'Leary:Yeah.

48:58Graham Stephan:Why do you think that upsets so many people?

49:00Kevin O'Leary:So let me tell you what I learned about that. I'm going to modify that statement a little bit because I experienced it myself. In a scene where you have, let's say, 30, we had scenes with 250 extras, and you're shooting it, and there's people in a cafe or walking or bringing over a drink, or there's a narrative. When you have an interaction with an extra, that can't be AI. I would have thought it could have been, but it can't be. Because what I realized is the real magic of filmmaking are the mistakes you make. So I got to retract that statement a bit. Where you can use AI would be like Ben-Hur had cutouts in the stands when it was shot in the 60s.

49:51Kevin O'Leary:They couldn't put 1 ,100 people in blazing sun for 12 hours. So they made cutouts. When we used to do hockey shots, we had blow-up dolls. We had the first row with live people in the hockey arena, and then everybody else was a sex doll. We just went and bought and blew them up. And because the motion is very blurry in the background, that's going to be AI. You're going to get backgrounds that are AI, but not where there's interaction between the actors. That's never going to change. And I realized why. I mean, you know, I said that uninformed. So I've changed my views because I've actually done it.

50:28Kevin O'Leary:What did you end up doing with all those dolls? What we would do is we'd pop them and just throw them out. You didn't donate them? You blow them out with a CO2 cartridge. They come with a poosh. And, you know, they always have really big lips. And we put like baseball hats on them and stuff.

50:48Graham Stephan:You should have donated them, really.

50:51Kevin O'Leary:And then we'd shoot the scene and then someone would run up there with a knife and just chop them up. Oh my gosh. Take the hats off.

50:56Graham Stephan:Take a few of them home too.

50:58Kevin O'Leary:It's really hard. It takes a long time to get the air out of them. Oh, so you just got it.

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52:03Kevin O'Leary:Yeah, there was actually a Shark Tank deal last year. It's called Gertie. This guy comes out and he says, he shows a video of a dog. You know your security cameras? You leave. And the dog starts howling, oh, because he's got anxiety. The owner's left. So he gets a sex doll, blows it up, and puts his jacket on it so his smell is on it. And sticks it in the living room, sitting there like this. And the dog just lies down beside it all night.

52:32Graham Stephan:I thought you were going to go somewhere else. No, no, no.

52:34Kevin O'Leary:And so what he decided to do was take out the big lips part, because that's what the sex dolls have, and put his girlfriend's face on it. Her name is Gertie. We put it on Shark Tank. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen, but it was so crazy that I invested in it. It's been one of my best deals. You can go look at it, gertie.com, and you can buy a doll for your cat, your dog, your turtle, whatever it is. And the animal will eventually, because it has legs and it's got arms, and you put sweater on it. And when you leave, they just say,

53:04Graham Stephan:oh, there, he's still here. It works. So when you say it was one of your best investments, what does that even mean? How long have you held on to it? Are you taking distributions? How much did you put in? What's it worth now?

53:16Kevin O'Leary:In venture investing, you don't treat it like a normal investment because you don't get anything back to your capital's return. It's not return on capital. It's return of capital. If you give somebody$500 ,000 and you never get any cash back, you've made nothing. You can't argue that the private company that is a consumer goods service company, your risk is really high. because they may never figure out how to get their customer acquisition costs down. That's why I came up with the royalty idea. In the beginning, everybody thought it was bad and they've abused me for it. Now every shark wants to do royalties because what you're doing there is you're slowly getting back your principal and you don't make any money till the first dollar after all your principal's returned.

53:57Kevin O'Leary:So my most successful deals are ones that have strong cash flows that can pay the 7 % royalty and eventually we sell the company and some like deals like Blue Land, for example. My cost base on Blue Land is zero. All my capital's back. The business is probably worth today 150 million. I bet you it's going to sell for half a billion because it's growing like a weed. And I own, I don't know, three or 5 % of it, but all the capital's returned through royalties. That's a great deal. That's how you should structure venture investing. How do you think AI is going to change the structure of your businesses in the future?

54:34Kevin O'Leary:I don't think it's going to change the structure. it's going to change which ones I invest in. Because if you're not using AI tools now for customer acquisition, I'm not investing in you. In this season of Shark Tank, the first question I'm asking is, what's your customer acquisition cost and which AI tools are you using? Because I use them all. We know every single tool out there. I mean, what people don't realize is only five vertical stacks of AI that cost billions to maintain and develop. But off of those verticals come very interesting applications that you can buy a subscription for. For example, let's say like in my case, I've got 12 terabytes of video and photographs, 12 terabytes in the cloud right now.

55:17Kevin O'Leary:That's because I've been doing television for 25 years, every show, every photo, every, you know, that, that thing doing this wide angle shot, all of that sitting in the cloud. how do I index that? How do you even remember where that stuff is? And so recently I found a tool, a very, very specific tool that if you put it in a giant database in the cloud and you let the AI look at every frame of every photograph and every video and every film, it takes a long time, a couple of months. But once it's indexed, you can say, I recall a picture and I was on a paddleboard in Jamaica and a dolphin looked up at me and somebody took a picture.

56:06Bang,

56:07Kevin O'Leary:there it is on the screen with the index to where it is, or if it's a video, how long it is, what the resolution is, all of it, just sitting there. And you can just say, click to download. So you know how much time that's going to save? So that's a tool that really saves time. So we're able to do these real deep dive social media things now for our own platform of, you know, young Kevin, old Kevin, Kevin with a beard, Kevin with full hair, all that stuff. Because all of it is at a second away from us. And the guys that do that are over in the UAE. Do you think you could be replaced by AI? I think I already am.

56:46Kevin O'Leary:I have an AI Kevin. my wife can still discern the difference on a screen but in about a month she won't be able to because the only thing now that is the slight tell is the voice intonation and there's a new model just came out last week that you have to basically let your phone listen to you for about three days just record your daily life for three days and let it learn off that because in a three-day period you go through everything sleep you go through waking up wake up voice dinner voice you know drinking wine voice coffee voice all of it and the and the tool then applies that to your ai model that's an agent i have a kevin o 'leary agent and i'm able to you know it's remarkable i i that agent's incredible and we're starting to use it do you think that could eventually replace your

57:39Graham Stephan:work hours that you just have your AI Kevin go and go to work for you, answer emails for you, take phone calls for you. And if it gets to a certain point, then it alerts you and say, actually, Kevin, you should hop on this call just to make sure. But like it does 90 % of the work, the filter.

57:57Kevin O'Leary:I think we're way off on that because I realize my best ideas actually happen very early in the morning when I'm on my bike riding at, you know, 645.

58:10something will hit me like that whole idea I'm so excited about because when I leave here I'm on my way to go see the first iteration of the Parisian diamond necklace and so I was on my bike

58:26Kevin O'Leary:in Miami and I was thinking about that Kobe card and you know Logan Paul he's good friends with you know, I've done his podcast and I like the guy a lot and another guy involved. And I was thinking, And how could I raise that? How could I make a piece unique like my watches? And while I was on the bike, I have Nicole Weiss. She's the head of High Jewelry for LVMH. And I just called her randomly. And I said, Nicole, listen to this. She said, I love it. It's crazy. How would we know how thick the card is? How would we know all that stuff? So we went to work on it and we just got in a group chat and we designed this thing based on how that card looks and which diamond should be where.

59:16Kevin O'Leary:But we had the full support of LVMH. And I thought to myself, would AI ever do that? Nah, probably not. They wouldn't have the same reason to do that. I'm not sure that pure innovation comes from that. I think implementation execution comes from AI, but I think the human being is so random in its thinking process that you're still going to need it. That's my iteration of it anyways, because I use a lot of AI tools now. And I'll give you an example. When one of my students, and this has been talked about a lot, sends me an answer to a question or an essay, i just look at it say ai slop like it's you get to you get to see it it's just it's not their voice you know the person they write this thing as you know i just say look do it again i don't mind you using ai to start it but don't like this is bullshit and i'm not even using an ai you know discovery tool because you have tools to discover AI in text too.

1:00:27Kevin O'Leary:So I'm not, we're very, I think we're in the first inning and maybe it gets better and better and better, but I don't think it's going to be, it's going to be creative enough because people are trying to do this now. Let me give an example. Write me a song with a country S kind of middle eight. And it writes it. Sounds like I can tell right away that it's an AI song write me a song that sounds like Steely Dan uh you know younger Steely Dan second album kind of thing sounds like some of them sound incredible

1:01:02Graham Stephan:though I've been listening to uh Korn the the band as gospel right and soul it's amazing and I'll play that on repeat it is so incredibly good I get it but you know if you listen to the real

1:01:15Kevin O'Leary:thing and you find the nuance and the little distortion and the mistakes make it better, I think. Because I've listened, you know, I have a lot of music and I try to listen to a lot of new bands. I listen to the AI bands. I mean, they sound so formulaic. They don't have, you know, what makes great, I listen to a lot of jazz. If you go back and listen to even the 50s records kind of blue is the classic the the first version of that album was a mistake it was it was about 10 slow they recorded on a broken recorder they had two machines in the room and they released the one that was slow because when people tried to play against it they said i gotta tune down here what this isn't in tune then they found the master tape that wasn't slow and they put the album out again.

1:02:09Kevin O'Leary:And yet you listen to those two things, they are definitely not AI. There's all kinds of little nuances and mistakes in there. And I think you could argue, well, maybe AI can make mistakes too, but that's where I think the creativity is lost. I don't know. Show me a commercial success so far with AI. People want to go to a concert and listen to a machine play something to them.

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1:03:27Graham Stephan:Thanks again to Lennar for sponsoring the Ice Coffee Hour and back to the episode. This episode is in partnership with Airbnb. So Graham and I just wrapped up a trip. We were in Austin for a few days. We filmed episodes with Togi, Chris Camillo, and Caleb Hammer. And honestly, every time we're on the road, we're staying at homes on Airbnb. It's just become the default. And here's the thing most people don't think about. When you're the one traveling, your place back home is just sitting there empty. And that's a real missed opportunity. Whether you're gone for a long weekend or a few weeks, you can list your space on Airbnb and let it work for you while you're away.

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1:04:58Well, the thing about that is it's only numbers because who made the most money?

1:05:05Kevin O'Leary:Remember, investment's very binary. You either make it or you lose it. And clearly Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, no one has been close to their success. And they had a very simple model, cashflow. Charlie, he could never be bullshitting into anything that didn't have cashflow. He didn't believe in anything that didn't have cash flow. And he would just say, no, no, no. He was the no in Warren's yes. And they needed each other in the beginning. And then they got into their own discipline of, you know, buying things that have very long-term stable cash flows. And that ended up being the right thing to do.

1:05:42Kevin O'Leary:The other thing I've learned is just buy the market. Like betting on hedge fund guys and stock pickers, there aren't too many good ones.

1:05:53Graham Stephan:So to the average person out there that's watching this right now, let's say they're making$50 ,000 a year, 40 to$80 ,000 a year, living all across America. How do they go from maybe month to month, not really being able to save too much to then being able to have discretionary spending, to start to live a life of comfort? Like what is, if you could instill one idea, one belief into them that could hopefully bridge that gap, what would it be?

1:06:20Kevin O'Leary:Well, the hardest part of that is the discipline it takes to decide that you're going to put aside 10 or 15 % every week. It's so hard to do that because there's always the next pair of sneakers you want to buy that you don't need. People are weak. They don't have discipline. Don't buy shit you don't need. And if you look at yourself and see all the clothes you have, you don't wear. You bought them because you had a whim for it or something, but you basically wear the same two pair of jeans and five t-shirts. It's crazy that you would take that money and put it into something you're going to throw away in 20 months when you could have put it into the market.

1:06:56Kevin O'Leary:And the way you put it in the market, if you don't understand the market, you don't have a brokerage account, download one of these apps that does it for you on your phone, link your bank account to it and just transfer in 10 % each week. Obviously I have the one I like is Beanstalks, but it's not the only one. There's plenty of them that'll do it for you. I like them really simple. And then if you start doing that, two years later, you'll say, wow, where'd this money come from?

1:07:21Graham Stephan:At what income is it just impossible to build wealth?

1:07:25Kevin O'Leary:I would say probably under$35 ,000. That's tough if you live in a major city because you're being forced to spend$1 ,200 to$1 ,500 on rent, which is very, very hard. But even in that, the discipline of not overspending because you're going to get yourself that the real task there is not to go into credit card debt. That's tough. What jobs do you think those people should take? Oh, I think the job that gets you the most money now is if you have talents in social media for customer acquisition. I used to pay those guys 48 grand a year and now they're 250 ,000 because you can measure their work based on customer acquisition every week.

1:08:04Kevin O'Leary:So most of them become contractors. You know, they make half a million dollars a year because they know how to take content turn it into a 59 second ad on social and acquire 200 customers. That's a very specific. So remember, everybody say you have to be an engineer, an engineer, an engineer. Now you want to be an artist again. Write stories, acquire customers, know how the social media platforms work, know how to post on TikTok versus LinkedIn versus Twitter versus Instagram. Those people in their early 20s are so valuable now. So if you know how to use your phone,

1:08:40Graham Stephan:somebody wants to hire you. So if you were to go back in time with the specific skillset that you currently possess, is that what you would do?

1:08:47Kevin O'Leary:Yeah, I would use my editing skills to make 15s, 30s, and 59s. And I would basically say, look, pay me a hundred bucks for each customer I require for you. I'd make millions. I mean, I know how to do it.

1:09:02Graham Stephan:Now, you previously said that someone should spend 30 % of their time outside of their comfort zone. What does that look like for you? For me, that's going to be acting. I'm here in LA working on my next project. The difference between feature film and television is massive. Most people don't think there's much of a difference, but there's a massive difference. It's a completely different skill set, and I want to do more of it. So for me, it's going to be shoot a film every year. I don't mean you know a television series I mean a feature film that's going to get theatrical release so that's everybody wants to do that I'm going to let my performance be the judge for those

1:09:45Kevin O'Leary:agents directors producers casters that have seen Marty Supreme nobody knew how it was going to come out for me I think I've done you know no one's telling me I shit the bed on it that's for sure so I'm going to take that tape that's my my only role ever and I'm going to say look I'd like to do this again I want to be the antagonist I think that role is far more interesting it's far more interesting uh to be the bad guy because there's so many places you can go there's so many twists and turns in being the antagonist of any story every story has a hero it has a bad guy I want to be the bad guy.

1:10:23So that's what I'm looking at now is various opportunities for bad guy. Why are you so drawn to the bad guy? It's so interesting. You're reading these scripts. I've read a lot of scripts lately. And I look at them and I say to the director, that's not what the bad guy would say. This is what he would say. And they say, no.

1:10:46Kevin O'Leary:So I find that with the writers and the directors, you get a lot more latitude to creating your role as the bad guy. Because the hero always has an outcome that's hard to change. They're going to kill the bad guy. They're going to get the girl. They're going to save somebody or something. You can't change that outcome. That's the core of the story. If it's a big action movie, it's an Avenger type thing. They got to save the world. But the way the bad guy during his interaction, he can go everywhere. and so you you basically what i find this is my own observation is when you're the bad guy you get a lot of latitude in every scene because when we were doing marty supreme and i with ronnie bronstein and josh safty who were co-wrote it i'd say guys guys guys he's got to say this not that and they said no okay let's shoot it that way too so it was sort of like the whole vampire thing remember that at the end of the movie i don't know if you've seen it um we dreamt that up on my dock at my lake house because we're at the end of the movie and I'm looking at the three of them.

1:11:53Eli Bush was there and I said, guys, do you think if I was the richest guy in America, I would let this little screw me over this way? Do you think there'd be a chance that would ever happen? They said, what are you saying? I'm saying, there's no way it ends this way. This kid has to die. They said, can't die. You know, we have a different ending. I said, well, then I'm going to bite his neck. And they said, what are you talking about? I said, yeah, I'm going to tell him I'm a vampire.

1:12:24Kevin O'Leary:And they looked at each other and said, whoa, that's crazy. Let's go there. So it was sort of like bring the dark arts into it, make him think if there's even a 1 % chance that it could be true that I'm a vampire. And that's where the line came out. I was born in 1601. That gave Milton Rockwell the satisfaction that he held the dark arts over this kid for the rest of his life. And you could see, you know, Chalamet played it so beautifully, because we did that in Japan. He freaked out. He kind of smiled and went, whoa, like that's crazy. And it was crazy in the moment we shot it. But to me, that's why you want to be the antagonist.

1:13:08you can explore many different directions where you can't if you're the hero how many times did you have to do that scene yeah that's one take that one just one take they didn't they didn't want to put you guys through that we did many scenes that were 50 takes but that one was so

1:13:28Kevin O'Leary:crazy that was one take i'm curious on marty supreme how much did they pay you oh i don't even know. I mean, I couldn't buy protein with what they paid. I mean, it was like, it was, I'd never acted before. You know, the only question they had, are you a member of SAG? I said, yeah, because I think I was the last guy cast. They couldn't find, you know, Milton. They wanted a real bad guy. And he just called me out of the blue and said, look, you got to come to New York. I said, no way. I'm sitting on the dock. I'm relaxing up here. I'll send you my plane. I'll pick you up. You come up here. We'll do it tomorrow morning.

1:14:05And they said, shit, yeah, let's do it. And then I really got into it. There is a weird story about that though, that you should know.

1:14:14Kevin O'Leary:That script is the size of a phone book. And I hadn't really read it after they sent it to me and I forgot about it. And I left it on the bar. And this guy named Gene McBurney got up at five in the morning. We have a lot of people staying at the lake. It's a big party every night. And he got up five o 'clock to watch the sunrise and he took the script with him, not knowing what it was or anything about the project. And he read it. And by the time I got to at 10 in the morning, I went outside and he was sitting there saying, Kevin, have you read this thing? I said, no, this is the craziest, most insane story I've ever read.

1:14:48Kevin O'Leary:It's whoever wrote this is a very sick, demented person, but you've got to be Marty. You know, you've got to be the guy that what he meant was you've got to be the antagonist to Marty. You've got to be Milton Rockwell. And I said, I got to read this, right? He said, you got to read it. And I read it and I realized what he was talking about. He, he saw the force that your force of good and evil between Marty and Milton as being the fulcrum of the whole story. And if you're not Marty, you got to be melted that was his point i'd like to see you as a bond villain yeah i mean you know bond is not produced for years so i i have to do other stuff i mean for me it's sort of here's the thing i learned this is tough i came in at the top i worked with an a plus writing team an a plus director.

1:15:47A24, the number one hot team in Hollywood right now. Gwyneth Paltrow, a huge budget movie. I don't know what it is to work on a dog shit movie.

1:15:58Kevin O'Leary:How am I going to do that? I've got to get another fantastic movie. I've got to find another fantastic director. I mean, there's a lot of crap that's made. I don't want to work on that. I want to work on the El Supremo stuff. Now that sounds ridiculous to make a demand like that, but I don't actually need a job. So I want to do it because it's extraordinary. I want to do it because they're considering risking part on me based on the merit of my work. I want to do it because I'm a good actor. Not, I don't, you know, it's not like I need, I'm not a starving artist. That's the problem. Are you going to get royalties from this?

1:16:38Kevin O'Leary:I said to my agents who I like a lot, they're UTA, a guy named Jay Suris. I said, Jay, why don't you let me negotiate the deals? I'll handle everything. The agency can still get its piece. He said, what are you, out of your mind? I said, no. There's one thing I learned about Hollywood that a lot of people don't know. When you're negotiating on behalf of one performer, let's say it's me, and you're dealing with a network or a producer, or you also have in your portfolio, many other artists. So let's say a certain television network wants to hire me and they're not meeting my agent's price or whatever it is.

1:17:21Cause in the end, these guys are about the money. It may go down like this. Give him what, give O 'Leary what he wants and we'll get you X, Y, Z for that movie you're doing in your studio. I can't do that. they can't. And all of a sudden, bingo, everybody's happy. That's what these guys do in Hollywood. They trade assets all over the place. It's a dirty secret, but that's exactly how it works.

1:17:48Kevin O'Leary:So to be successful, you have to be under the wing of an agency that has a lot of assets and they're worth every cent because you can't. I remember in season four of Shark Tank, like walking into whoever the president of ABC television was then saying, don't need an agent. I'm going to handle this myself, just you and me. He said, no, not doing that. I don't want to taint our relationship because we're going to have a bloody negotiation in season four. The show was on fire. It was growing geometrically. And I said, well, why don't you just let me handle it? I'm a big boy. I have a thick scan. He said, no, I've made a few calls.

1:18:28You're going to get a call.

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1:19:06Kevin O'Leary:I said, I don't need no stinking agent. They said, yeah, you do. And I think you're going to like these guys, and I think you're going to sign with them. And that's exactly what happened. What's been your toughest negotiation? It's not around television. it's with government in what I'm doing in real estate is so many moving parts. You know, when you're building a$20 billion data center, it's tough. You got to negotiate everything. And you need the senators, you need the governor, You need the mayor. You need the feds. You need FERC. You need everything. And I'm the guy. Sometimes it flies in there and sits down with the staffers of the senator.

1:19:56Kevin O'Leary:I say, here's how it has to happen. And those are very difficult negotiations because they're public in some sense. They're complicated. The dollars are huge. And you can't it up. Every piece has to work. I've never worked this hard in my life. But the deals we're doing now, I'm now the largest in North America company with land under agreement for data center development. 26 ,000 acres. That's a lot. That's one hell of a ranch.

1:20:28Graham Stephan:What's the biggest screw up that you've had during a negotiation? That's a good one. very in the last 48 hours um there is a card out there that we made a deal on and the guy that sold it who i did not know um it turns out what he did is he and i don't know

1:20:52Kevin O'Leary:this for sure yet but i think we're going to find out this is the case he used my name to trade it sideways to somebody else what's going to happen in the next few hours to him is he's not going to like it. It's going to be raining from the sky, lawsuits from hell because in the market, it's like the market in New York for diamond merchants. There is no paper. There's an agreement. There's a handshake and that stone is sold. It never goes sideways. And should you ever breach that hundred-year-old trust that's been generation to generation, you're banned from the industry forever in cards when you make a deal because you're working with people all over the world when you finally come to a price and you say are we done and the other side says we are it's sold it's over and in this case i've never seen it happen before but he reneged.

1:21:55And I consider this contemporary art, modern art. The piece is now tainted because from my legal perspective, I own it. The other buyer, everybody that touches that card is going

1:22:10Kevin O'Leary:to know that I'm going to litigate for my legal claim. So that card is going to be very hairy for the next few years. Even though it's a very valuable card, it's probably going to become very famous because of the litigation, not the card. Everybody that touches that card, I'm going to sue them. Anybody that tries to be an agent, I'm going to sue them. Anybody that tries to auction it, I'm going to sue them. As far as I'm concerned, that's my card because the transaction took place.

1:22:37Graham Stephan:Were you on the phone or in person with this person? You guys agree verbally on a price, shake hands. One of my partners was on the phone and there was a witness as well. Now, because he's reneged,

1:22:53Kevin O'Leary:the only legal recourse we have is to bring a claim. I'm going to let the process run its course, but every other, I know every buyer of cards of this price on earth. I know who they are. And they also know who I am. And they know that I don't let this happen to me. What was the card? I can't say, but you will find out soon enough. Why not get it in writing at that point? There is no writing on cards. That's not how it works.

1:23:22Graham Stephan:Why? I feel like just with any other thing that you would buy, you would get a contract, you'd sign it, you'd purchase.

1:23:27Kevin O'Leary:The way it works is you're on the phone with someone in Malaysia or the Philippines. The card is, you've been discussing it for sometimes six months. You don't have an agreement on price. You're watching the markets move. You finally come to an agreement on price. The trust is unbelievable. You wire$13 million to that person while your representative is right at the table and they pass over the card and it's clam like that when they see the money in the bank. That's it. You take the card, you leave. You go get it graded or you put it in a vault. You get back on an airplane and you fly with it, whatever you have to do.

1:24:09That's how it's done. The trust is immense. It's just the market. is a well-known mark. You just don't breach. You don't do that.

1:24:19Kevin O'Leary:Nobody does that. It's nobody does that. It's just, it's like a diamond merchant. If you did that in the streets of New York, your family would be banned for life and the next generation. You just don't do it. I was stunned. I couldn't even believe it. I mean, I just said, no. This is after you already sent money? No, no, no, no. Oh. No, we were actually in the process of setting up a global live broadcast. to actually, with a network I won't mention, but we were already, and from Paris, you know, another frame was being built for that card. And all of this was arranged over a one-month period.

1:25:00Kevin O'Leary:And everybody was flying to this location for the shoot, which was going to happen at five in the morning, eight o 'clock East Coast time, New York time. And then, of course, in the afternoon in Europe, it was going to be worldwide. And this guy just went AWOL. we thought something bad happened to him. It turns out he was trying to trade it to somebody else after an agreement had taken place. I mean, it's not going to end well in terms of how tied up that card's going to be. I don't know what the resolution is going to be, but for the next three, four, five, six, seven years, I think it's radioactive waste.

1:25:36Graham Stephan:Alongside cards in alternative investments, you have quite a few watches. I'm curious, First of all, when you check the time, which wrist do you look at?

1:25:44Kevin O'Leary:Well, left wrist is always local time. Right wrist is wherever, you know, the majority of the phone calls are going to be this day. In this case, it's New York. So it's New York time on the right, LA on the left right now. And I do that when I'm in Dubai or Switzerland. And sometimes I have three time zones.

1:25:59Graham Stephan:And so as a watch fanatic, let's say someone has a budget of$1 ,000,$5 ,000. We could throw$10 ,000 in there. Yeah. And then$25 ,000 and maybe$100 ,000. What is the perfect watch at those different prices? Yeah, I get it.

1:26:14Kevin O'Leary:So, you know, it's a great question because I'm going to tell you a really interesting story about this. About five years ago, maybe it's six now, this woman came out in the set of Shark Tank and she said, can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure. You know, we break between hits. We get about 20 minutes while they set up the next pitch. And she said, we're having a problem with the two watches. I said, what's the problem? She said, nobody can afford them. this shows about inspiration about inspiring about getting they start on the carpet they want to become sharks they want to become sharks so you have to stop wearing watches no one can afford it on your left you can wear whatever you want on your right has to be an entry-level watch so what's entry level she said how about 200 bucks i said i don't wear 200 watch she says you do now from now on you're going to wear something that people can afford and i thought well that's but you know anyway she was right because i immediately called teddy baldazar and we started doing videos together of every price point under 200 200 to a thousand a thousand to two thousand and teddy introduced me to all these incredible watchmakers that make these amazing dials for like 1700 bucks but if you're buying a piece it's to shorten this narrative here because we've been tell parents.

1:27:36Kevin O'Leary:They're always calling me up saying, my son is graduating, my daughter's graduating, what do I do? There are certain truths. Number one, Tudor. You cannot go wrong with a Tudor. It'll last your whole life. The parent company's Rolex, people get it, but Tudor's different. It's very, very entrepreneurial in terms of case materials. You can get silver, you can get ceramic, you can get carbon. They got beautiful, beautiful cases. And the Black Bay is an amazing, It's the precursor almost of almost every Rolex style. It's beautiful. Remember that these companies have been around a long time. Number two, Grand Seiko.

1:28:13Unbelievable quality. I mean, just a spectacular watch. And these are sub$7 ,000. They're going to last a whole lifetime, no question about it. There's other places to go. but those two represent in my view some of the greatest value on earth Japanese watchmaking it's Creed or they cost a fortune but they're also owned by Grand Seiko

1:28:43Kevin O'Leary:I the best advice I give is you go online and just look at any Teddy Balthazar Kevin O 'Leary video and there's you're going to find 400 ideas and I wear those a lot Google estimates your

1:28:55Graham Stephan:net worth to be 400 million. I don't think that's the case. I think that you, based off of what you've said, have more. Is 400 million accurate? You know what I learned, again, from my mother?

1:29:06Kevin O'Leary:Never boast about money or one day you won't have any. I never talk about my net worth. You know, it's, I just think it's the worst thing you can do. It's almost bad karma. Like, look at how much money I have. Well, it doesn't have to be boasting. No, but I'm not like that. I don't need more money. I need more time. That's the way I look at it. I don't want to fuck with karma. I just never talk about it. I've seen estimates all over the place.

1:29:34Graham Stephan:Let me ask you this. What percentage of your net worth would you trade to be 20 years old again? Oh, wow. That's a hell of a question, eh? I mean, I wish I could be 20 with what I have right now. I mean, the things I could do.

1:29:53Kevin O'Leary:The trouble is I wouldn't know anything. That's the big dilemma about this idea. It's what I know today and my experiences that make me what I am. And I wouldn't change anything. So I wouldn't even -

1:30:06Graham Stephan:Let's say you retain all of that. Yeah, and you just - You just can't. You're getting 20 years old again. But you have to say, I'm going to give up 90 plus percent.

1:30:14Kevin O'Leary:But the risk of that, it's such a, it'd be a great movie script. The risk would be you get to go back, but you start again with the outcome. What would the outcome be? You'd get more life. You'd be like a vampire. You'd go back to 20, but you don't know what the outcome could be. You could have a horrible outcome. I like this outcome. I earned it. I made it myself. I made all those mistakes. And look at where I, I remember the first day of shooting, Marty Supreme across from Timothee Chalamet with all those extras. And for a moment, I thought to myself, how the hell did I get here? That was amazing.

1:30:47Kevin O'Leary:How that's happened. And it's the accumulation of all the things that occurred during your life that got you that point. So I wouldn't go back. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

1:30:56Graham Stephan:So some more rapid fire questions. What was your personal best Shark Tank deal? Oh, base pause, cat DNA testing, insane return. What's the worst pitch you've ever seen? Oh, I've seen plenty.

1:31:11I've seen a pitch where a woman sang to a water cooler

1:31:14Kevin O'Leary:and said she could divide the water into three elixirs that you could bottle and sell for$25, one that solved for jealousy, one that made you fall in love when you wanted to, and one that made you more productive. And I said to her, you know, you sound insane. She said, if I came here and told you I had an elixir full of cocaine and you drank it, would you invest in that? I said, no, well, that's Coca-Cola. Touche.

1:31:44Graham Stephan:Bitcoin price year-end 2026. Probably around here because I'm not sure it's going to react until the Clarity Act is. If the Clarity Act, I'm going to answer it this way.

1:31:59Kevin O'Leary:If the Clarity Act is approved, Bitcoin will probably go back to that$100 ,000 range.

1:32:05Graham Stephan:S &P price year-end 2026. Up 8 % from here. Gold buy or sell right now. Buy. Will AI replace more jobs than it creates? No, it's gonna create more jobs.

1:32:19Kevin O'Leary:Everybody's got it wrong. It's just like, oh, television's gonna destroy radio. No, it's not. We just don't know what the transition's gonna look like. AI is gonna be such a powerful tool to create new industries we haven't even thought of. That's what's gonna happen.

1:32:31Graham Stephan:Should a 25 year old buy a house or invest in a stock market with that money?

1:32:35Kevin O'Leary:I would buy a house and I pay that mortgage off as fast as I can. It's always proven to be the best way to make money in America.

1:32:42Graham Stephan:At what net worth does life fundamentally change? Five million. Liquid, liquid. What would you say are the main four tiers of wealth, where if you hit a certain amount, life - Well, I tell everybody this.

1:32:54Kevin O'Leary:You should strive very hard if you're an entrepreneur to have$5 million in T-bills, not in anything else, just T-bills, making 3.82 % this morning. You know you've made it and you've safeguarded your family for the rest of your life if you can get$5 million liquid in T-bills. Most people that consider themselves very successful entrepreneurs do not have$5 million liquid in T-bills.

1:33:21Graham Stephan:They don't. But what net worth should you be at to justify 5 million in T-bills? Well, you should be at, the first thing you should do

1:33:28Kevin O'Leary:is get the 5 million liquid, be worth$5 million liquid. That's far more valuable than anything else. Liquidity with wealth is actually a superpower. Most people say I'm very wealthy. But they couldn't raise a million dollars by two o 'clock in the afternoon if they tried. It's tied up in all kinds of things they think are worth a lot until the shit hits the fan. The plan is, if you're an entrepreneur, the hardest thing is to make the first million really hard. And when you make the first million, put it in T-bills. Just as hard, but not as hard, is to get to two million. Two to three is actually quite easy because you figured something out.

1:34:04Kevin O'Leary:But where you get undisciplined is you start buying shit you don't need because your manatees get to 5 million liquid. You have to have 5 million liquid to call yourself a successful entrepreneur. And I don't care who disagrees with me. They're wrong.

1:34:20Graham Stephan:But if you have a net worth of$5 million, why would it all be in T-bills instead of having it in S &P, international index funds? Because whatever happens, you're safe. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+. Let's go. Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends. Gary Death Snake. And your last name? Death Snake. Dream Team. And new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th.

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1:35:02Kevin O'Leary:in a classroom of sodas most stay quiet then there's mr pib sweet cherry bold outburst the kind of flavor that gets attention and your family so you say get to five million t-bills and then anything after after that after that stick it in and i do go into stocks go into

1:35:22Graham Stephan:alternatives the nut is five million dollars and so the next net worth with the highest quality of life change would be what?

1:35:30Kevin O'Leary:You know, once, once you get to 50, you don't even need any more money. I mean, people say I want to buy a yacht and all this crap, but I didn't, my life didn't change after I had$5 million very much. I mean, it's just, you know, I have a lot more now, but it's other than watches, I don't do crazy stuff with money. What's one stock everyone should own? oh that's there's it's the index that's what you should know because you can't ever get it right timothy chalamet is he a better actor or ping pong player he's a better actor there's a lot of cgi in that he can play ping pong though he's a pretty good guitarist too by the way that kid's pretty talented secret to building wealth in one sentence discipline that was one word that's pretty

1:36:16Graham Stephan:Very good. What's your number one regret? I don't have any. I wouldn't change a thing. Do you still want more money? And if so, how much? No, I don't want more money. I'm very fortunate.

1:36:27Kevin O'Leary:I get more money because I really focus on what I do. But I don't need more. I need more time.

1:36:31Graham Stephan:Would you retire for$10 billion post-tax right now?

1:36:34Kevin O'Leary:No.

1:36:35Graham Stephan:No interest in that. If you were to leave the viewer with one piece of advice, it doesn't have to be money. It doesn't have to be finance. It could be anything. What would it be? Figure out what's signaling your life and focus on that. and avoid the noise. Cool. Kevin, thank you so much. We'll link to your info. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. Until next time. By the way, if you enjoyed this episode, we just posted our next one early for members. So if you click the join button, you could literally begin watching our next episode right now. Really hope you enjoy it.

1:37:15on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread?

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