YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Rodriguez

lines on the record: 72
first: 2021-06-07
most recent: 2021-06-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Understanding that I'm enough. I don't need anything else than what I have. And at some point, I've done this many times where I say, hey, I just put my hands up, but I can't get there. I'm sorry. And you feel so much better when you can do that.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think humility never giving up for my mother. And what I've learned as of late is, again, this is a little bit post-suspension, levity and not taking yourself so seriously. That's been, boy, I wish I had that for all my time in New York.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give you the themes of why. I think just being in a rush, feeling like I'm going to miss something, and not really looking at the underlying business, sometimes understanding that it's just more than an idea. My space was first Facebook one. So it's not just the ideas, the team to be able to execute that idea.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great question. I can answer that with like 20. I would say Mark Mastro from 24 Hour Fitness. He's a partner and a bunch of things that we've done together. Mark is also part of the Sacramento Kings. He owns Crunch. He owns USC. We're partners in a bunch of stuff. Great guy, great family guy. His wife Mindy and his four kids kind of grew up with my kids. We went to a place together down in Mexico. And he's just a wonderful guy who I trust has given me great advice over the years. The other one's a little tougher. I would just say just because as of late, I'll give you two more. Mark Lori, because we were doing so much. I mean, we're like speed dating. And it's kind of been a marriage. I was like, love at first sight and we're very complimentary to each other and hit the ground running there. But I would say Mary Ordoz from JP Morgan is someone who I see as a great friend and a mentor and someone who will always give me the best advice and I trust her 100%.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just an old school fundamental guy. As a result, I miss a lot of great opportunities. I don't like to speculate. I like predictability. And something that Warren's taught me predictable cash flow, predictable management team, things that you can actually control.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say working out and meditating. I think part of wanting to live a great long life and get a chance to spend time with your kids and your grandkids and your family is being healthy and working out is such a big part of my life as an athlete and then meditating to be able to talk about what Matt talks about is slowing down to speed up is to really get that mojo in that zone.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think about the conversation I had with George Seinbrenner in 2004, he was laser focused on building dynasties. He had just finished one in the late 90s with the Yankees. They won three championships in four years or four championships in five years. I want to build a dynasty, a dynasty that looks like the private version of Berkshire Hathaway, portfolio of great companies that fit off a lot of cash that increase over value over time. With that, I want to build a championship team with a championship culture and have something that I can be proud of. I can leave to my daughters and my grandkids.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, the boys and girls club has been a lifesaver. You know, I mentioned my father left us and I was left with my great cast, a threesome of my mother, my sister, Susie, and my brother Joe. I looked at mom was like the president of the house. My brother Joe was the secretary of sports. My sister, Susie was Secretary of Education. And they all played their roles beautifully. And I've always had to kind of put things in my mind where I can visualize it and touch it. So the Boys and Girls Club for me was definitely a lifesaver because that's where I went every day after school. It kept me away from trouble in the streets and gave me a place where I could do my homework and learn how to play baseball formally. I continued to be very involved with the club because again, as a lifesaver for so many. And then my other part is the University of Miami putting 40 kids through the University of Miami. And my goal is to put 400 or 4,000 kids of kids like me that are brown skinned come from single families and modest backgrounds.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to ask you a couple of my closing questions before we do that? I know you're recently honored by the Boys and Girls Club and you spend a lot of time taking all that mentoring that you were given early on and passing it forward to others. How do you think about that and how are you involved in sharing the lessons you've learned along the way?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“12 phone calls today are still my friends, my partners. And they signal to those phone calls as the thing that really kind of cemented our trust and our friendship and our partnership. And the reason why is because they said they wouldn't hear from people when it wasn't a winning day. And the lesson there for me was that even when things are really dark, you can turn a negative situation into a positive one.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That middle third was getting my body back to see if it was going to react to play major league baseball to be able to hit 95 miles an hour fastball. I'm 40, two hip surgeries, two knee surgeries, a pariah. Nobody wanted me back. They put a pull out and 90% of New Yorkers thought I wouldn't make the team. And that was like pretty accurate. And then the last third was kind of getting into baseball shape, which meant live hitting, fielding, see if I can make this comeback. The interesting part of the entire year was those 12 phone calls that I made when I was in the black hole in my darkest moment.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That have backed me throughout my career. And I just wanted them to hear from me how sorry I was and how I let them down. I'm going to serve my suspension. I'm going to be very, very quiet. But along the way, I'm going to do work on myself. And basically thank you. And I'm sorry. And I would just hang up. It was about a three-minute phone call.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of it was therapy. I broke it probably down into three buckets. The first third, I was basically 40 years old and like washed up. I had two hip surgeries, recent hip surgery. My second one, I just got suspended. I was going to go a year and a half without playing baseball. So the first third was literally I took a trip like very far away for like two weeks. And I was just exhausted. I needed to literally decompress, and that was the first part. The second third was writing a lot of wrongs, right? I had to go out and contact people that I've let down. So I wrote down on a piece of paper. About 12 names of friends, partners, bankers, couple owners.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But to me, when you are always attacking your weakness, your narcissism, or your ego, or your self-awareness, I think not only do you become a better person, but I think you become a better partner, a better father, a better friend. And look, this thing that I did may cost me the Hall of Fame. And that would suck. But I have no one to blame but myself. But along the way, if I become a better father and a better partner and a better person and a happier person, then that's my pill I have to swallow.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was like, I laugh at it now, and I was crying back then. But you look back and you cringe and you're like, what am I doing? And it took a lot of work that started in 2012 and to this day. I see my therapist twice a week for 90 minutes. And it's the most valuable time of my week along with my breakfast club that I have with my girls every Saturday night, which I spend another 90 minutes with them. They hate it. I love it. No electronics. They go deep.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I looked behind me. I said, Who are you talking to? He said, number one peg. Since I was 15. So now you take a sprint from 15 to the time I got suspended. There's a lot of yeses, not too many noes along the way. And my father left at 10. And I needed my father to grab my, you know what, kick me in the butt and get my ear and just twist it about 50 times. And maybe I wouldn't have been such a knucklehead when I was older. But what I realized was that I needed that year to reset. And a lot of people needed to just kind of do a makeover in your house, paint the windows, paint the walls, fix the roof, and you got to go. I needed to tear the entire house down and rebuild it one brick at a time. And through that, I had an opportunity to turn the lens in.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, the big change in my life was the suspension in 2014. That was the toughest time of my life because I made some poor decisions. I surrounded myself with the wrong people and ultimately had no one to blame but myself. And accountability is the lesson that I had to learn the hard way. And I put myself an entire season, the longest suspension of major league baseball history. That was a tough pill to swallow. But I was really down and out that it was an entire season because I was hoping it was like a third of the season, maybe half a season. It was a blessing in disguise because I needed that entire year. Now think about this. Ever since I was 15 years old, my high school coach said, you're going to be the number one pick in the country in three years.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't really believe in branding. I believe in reputation. Branding to me is short term. When you build the reputation, a reputation for me is to do the right thing when nobody's looking. Reputation is, I don't remember the last time that I had to look at a contract and see what my rights were if I have to do that, it's way too late. I believe in doing the right thing regardless of what the letter says. I believe in fairness. One of the reasons why I put into work the 90% role is because during my career, we had like the 130% role, which was if I can sell you this for $1, yeah, I can sell it to you for $140 because I have the hammer and I have the leverage. But that'll be the last deal that I ever did with Ted, right? If I can sell you this for nine bucks when you know it's worth $10, then not only am I going to create good energy and alignment with you, but you're probably going to tell four or five friends that you actually like doing business with us. And there's a good chance that we're going to probably do three, four, five, 10, 12 deals together.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Curious what lessons you've learned about branding. Your baseball career had ups and downs and then ups at the ends and your business career and what you've been doing has just been a straight up and to the right in terms of the AROD brand. What have you learned along the way?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't look at it like that. I think about it as how can I use the platform that I've built over the last 25, 30 years is one of the luckiest human beings in the world to help out your business. I'm hoping that this works out great for you, this podcast. I'm not thinking about like, oh, what can I get out of this? I'm not in that place in my life. Now, at one point, I was a mercenary because I came up as a broke kid with nothing and if I didn't make enough capital, then I couldn't help my mother. And my mother was older and I wanted to retire her. But I've kind of entered a point in my life that I've made enough mistakes. I've learned some great lessons to really be a missionary and think about what are the things that I can do to help out my partners. And I just believe if you have that point of view, that PRISM, I think that in the long haul, you'll do better because there's less pressure.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the drawbacks I'll start with that is I think they're going to compare you to athletes and entertainers over the last 50 years. And it's so easy to read an article, so easy to say, well, you're an athlete, there's no way you can be sophisticated in business, and so on and so forth. But I got to tell you, I have athletes that are my partners, and there's no better partners that I want to be foxal with. They're smart, they're gritty, they're patient, they have perseverance. They don't quit easy. If you're down, they don't give up on the score. If they're down, they don't whine and complain. I'm here to tell you, athletes are incredibly smart people. And I love standing up for them because I was one and I know what kind of heart and what kind of loyalty they have. And I feel the same way about entertainers. Now, you have to pick one that matches you, someone that has your moral compass, someone has your vision, long-term vision. And I always tell people invest.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You mentioned earlier about the blessing and a curse of being a celebrity, and I'm curious as you reflect on that for A-Rod Corp and you're investing, what are the benefits and what are the drawbacks of being so well known?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of it is the players are the stars and really making them feel that way, treating not only them but their families and their parents and those loved ones around them is really about educating them and setting them up to win. One of the things that Mark and I are thinking about is creating an MBA program for our players that's almost mandatory. Obviously we'll have to check with the union and players today is not good enough. I grew up. I wanted to be like Count Ripkin and Dale Murphy and Keith Hernandez today kids want to be like Mark Lori and Mark Cuban just as much as they want to be like LeBron James. Now LeBron James is both because he's a great businessman and a goat on the basketball court. But the truth is not good enough for these young guys or women to be thinking I'm just going to be an athlete. They want more. And I think if you can provide more and treat them where they feel like they are really the star and their families, I think we have an advantage to bring value to them, not only when they're playing, but post their career.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Curious how you think about the player perspective given that's your career as an athlete and some of the things that you found productive for success, how can you bring that into a franchise like the Timberwolves?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“10.7 million dollars with a million dollars of equity is like flabbergasting so i look at these platforms today more like media sports entertainment platforms that are when you look at the nba is a great league is is a league that's global is a league that has tremendous tailwinds is a league that has young demographics and groin Africa just opened up Asia is very big in China and it has wonderful leadership, a great commissioner and there's a lot of things to like in the NBA and what can we do with that franchise well if I did it alone I probably wouldn't have done it right but I have an incredible partner a 50-50 partner Mark Lori who is a wizard when it comes to tech and marketing and all the things he's done with diapers jet.com and Walmart I think together with my sports background in business and what he brings in the tech side and his vision AI and other things we're thinking about doing there I think it's America”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think it fits in beautifully because if you think about who I am is I'm an athlete that loves business. And when you think about a team in the NBA blends in all those wheelhouses, first of all, I don't see it as a sports team. Like when you and I grew up, franchise used to go for 20.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the venture side, because of who we are and what we've built and the brand we've built, we feel like we can invest in companies at favorable terms with some downside protection that has an opportunity to be a home run or grand slam. In real estate, we never look at home runs or grand slam. We look at singles and doubles. So again, it's an opportunity that if everything implodes here, the real estate will save us and vice versa.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if the real estate, if I'm buying a piece of real estate and I can put some modest debt on it and I bought 10 of them, well, when I was age 32, I would have 10 assets. Over time, they would pay that down. Over time, they would appreciate in value. They would appreciate in cash flow. So by the time my earning power would wear down, my real estate portfolio would go up. And that was the way I started with real estate around baseball. When I look at venture, it's almost exactly the same drill. Real estate is the cash cow that throws off a lot of cash, nothing sexy, middle of the road. We're buying units from anywhere from 100 to 200,000 per door. We're putting in 75% Fannie Mae non-recourse debt. We put in 25% equity. We usually refi all our money out in two years, and we do it over and over again, like nothing sexy and exciting about that, but just an incredible cash machine.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way my brain works, Ted is I like hedges. The reason why real estate was so on point for me is as I saw it, the average career, as I said, is five and a half years for a baseball player. Well, I was lucky enough to play for almost 25 years. So you can't forecast for me or any human being to play that long, right? That would not be fair. So I obviously didn't do that. But what I saw is, okay, let's just say I play for 10 years. And let's just say that I'm 22 when I buy my duplex. I figured that if I bought one asset of real estate a year per year, My competitive advantage was I had very good W2 income from my teams.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Curious how you think about this spectrum of you started in real estate, which were all these stable cash flow generating businesses, and then you have venture, on the other hand, which are speculative, aggressive, as you said earlier. Do you put a portfolio hat on for yourself in ARC and look at these things across the spectrum?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More clear obviously we're giving you the capital and we'll help you capital in the future, and then we'll go out and bring the right people around to help us reach our goal. So it was done beautifully with Archer. Archer, Mark, and I came in sub $100 million. Mark was a big, big investor there. I came in a little bit later. And we took Archer from $100 million, and it went public at $3.6 billion. And all this happened in less than two years. So we looked at that as taking massive positions on early stage or incubating our companies from the ground up. The one thing about Mark and I, with a 25 years, 50 years between us of experiences, we have an army of people out there, him in tech, me and sports and media, that we know were the best players are. We have a big idea. We put the team together. We fund it, and we bring the people, and there we go.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're doing both. So, ARC still has this portfolio of about 40 companies. We're taking about six or seven public this year and 21, probably the same next year. So the market, especially early on, was really hot on taking companies public either through an IPO or a SPAC. When we looked, Mark and I looked at the market. We saw a soft spot in the zone where a lot of people were not doing what we're doing with VCP, which is the following is we're looking to incubate companies or take companies that are right at the seed level, definitely pre-A. And a lot of these young entrepreneurs, they're going around trying to raise a million or a million five. And Mark and I, if we have the VCP and we feel there's a vision and these young founders or founder is capable of doing something really special, we'll say forget the one and a half. Here's 10. We'll take 40 or 50% of the company today. We'll help you with your vision.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We look at founders just like scouts. Look at a young Robinson Canoe or Derek Jeter or the next great player coming up. We're making bets on founders that we believe in that have VCP in their DNA.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early on, I started probably about a decade ago making smaller investments, anywhere from $250 to a million dollars. And a lot of it was knowing that I would make a bunch of mistakes along the way, but I wanted to learn great lessons. And I felt that if I made a good return, not a great return, but I had incredible lessons to learn. As long as I protected my downside, this was an exercise worth doing, especially the last five or seven years of my career. So I started doing that with smaller investments and like Snapchat, Vita Coco, UFC Gyms and I started doing some smaller investing and then I started really kind of getting my footing and as I retired then I kind of hired my team and started rolling up my sleeves and really understanding what is a wheelhouse, where do we bring the most value. And then that's how we got into investments like him's and hers and others because we had the time, the energy, the resources, and the team to allocate to our partners and our founders.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm sure there'll be more to say about this down the road, but let's turn to the venture business. I know you've done a lot of venture investing previously, and now you're going to do a fund with Mark Lori. So why don't you walk me through how you got into the venture business, what those investments look like today, and where you're headed with it.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of that going on. So, again, if you go narrow and deep and you focus and you tell your story in a crisp way where you can add value to your partners, so many people start meetings and they'll tell you all the great things that they are and all the great things that they need. And they should start the meeting saying, how can we be helpful, hear their story, and then pitch to them, you spend 30 minutes pitching yourself on a spec and they're not ready to give back to me that's 30 minutes of waste of time. So what are the ways that you can be helpful?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was one article in the paper that everybody knows their story, but the truth is, nobody knows anything about anything, right? They're reading headlines and they're moving headlines. They're sending articles. They're having read the articles. So many people send me an article. I read it. I'm like, oh, I liked it. Did you like this part? Oh, I haven't read it yet. Why'd you send it to me?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've seen a great deal of opportunities. One of the reasons why we like to spack markets so much for us in particular is because we're the deal flow machine. We see so many companies. We see, just to say number 500 companies per year, more than half of those are coming to us. We're the hunting, not the hunter. So the barrier for entry for us has been institutional capital. And now we have both. So when you marry those, I think it creates a great opportunity for us. How we're seeing deals is through our network. A lot of times you got to go out and create your own opportunities. We're looking at companies, for example, that would not look at a SPAC business, that would look at more of an IPO or an extra round in the private markets, but because us, there's a consideration and we're in some interesting conversations there. But a lot of it is, you know, you have to hustle, you have to go out and tell your story. A lot of entrepreneurs tell to me that make the mistake of they think because”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look at these opportunities today, it seems the public market's cooled on SPACs. There are lots of potential businesses, cash flow generated businesses, late-stage private businesses looking to go public. How have you thought about who you want to partner with and bring public through the spec?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In many ways, we actually like the things I've cooled a little bit because I think the point of entry becomes more challenging. And that's why I'm so happy that we picked Antara as our partner. Number one, they have a lot of the virtues that we don't have at ARC. They're very institutional. They have institutional capital. Blackstone is their top investor. You know, they're looking at it from a debt side. So they're very conservative, very wise, very frugal investors and they're gritty as heck. So I loved all those things. We're very much on the commercial side witness in the retail market. We can market and brand our story really well. So the institutional gritty Antara with what we do on the front end together, we felt like OnePlus 20 was three. So that's kind of how we thought about that. The reason why I didn't want to get into the SPAC market is if we didn't have that institutional arm, then we weren't just going to compete and try to be a B or C. We wanted to.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I'm looking for people that have a moral compass that align with mine and ours at ARC. And then the third thing, I'm looking for non-transactional people. I'm looking for people, folks that have a long-term view that want to build a great portfolio over time, much like Berkshire Hathaway, much like Barry. And that's kind of how I think about it. And then when I find someone that I really like, Ted and I trust and I like being around them, then it becomes really easy. Then you figure out ways like how do we work together? I don't worry. Like if I find a great talent, I'll bring them in and great talent finds their way to bring great value to my company. The same thing with someone, if I trust you, if you're a missionary, if you have a long-term view, whether it's Barry or Mark Master of or other ones or my partners, I would say, let's just figure out a way to do more together because we have a lot of fun. And by the way, the more we do together, the more we can vacation together, the more we can hang out together. That's been pretty simple.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they could do me the sucker pitch, the one that looked right down the middle. Now, this one I didn't flinch. I swung at it. But that one was in the dirt. And what I realized was I needed to fix this. So I bought a breaking ball machine and it would throw me curveballs at my face every day. And I saw about 200 of them every day. And what I realized was it was a training of the eye that once I saw the curveball on my face, think about it. An object is coming at 80, 90 miles an hour at your face. You have to budge or you got to be nuts. But when I sees it every day in a batting practice, you all of a sudden start getting comfortable with that ball coming at your jaw. And that's the curve ball that's going to dive into a strike. And that's the home run ball. And then you realize that the one that looks like a strike is going to be a ball. I think the same thing is true in business. You start getting a feel for people, reputation. I'm looking for a few things. One, I'm looking for missionaries, not mercenaries.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a few things, you know. It's like algorithm and Google, you see things that just pop up on your Instagram. There's a certain kind of feel you get. I remember as a young kid, they would throw curveballs right at my face. And every time I would flinch and it would be a strike every time. And then they would throw another one. And I would flinch less. And I was 02. And I'm like, fuck. So I had that one. But I was 18. They didn't have curveballs at a Westminster Christian.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father had left at 10, so if somebody's not kicking in the ass and someone has screaming at me, that means they love me. If somebody ignores me, I worry. As you have members on your team, everybody reacts a little differently. Some people are more sensitive. Some people are tougher. I like athletes because athletes, two things. They don't punch a clock. They just go out and get the job done. And if a deal has to go to three in the morning, you just get that job done. And that's something I've really enjoyed about athletes. There's a passion around that. You have to have economic alignment. And if all those things are right, then nobody minds going to three in the morning because you know that you're in it together. If you win a championship, you're going to be on that float drinking champagne. So that's a lot of the idea about how we think about being aligned here to your chain.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, the first time I understood what VCP was through George Steinbren when he brought me to New York in 2004. And he sat down with me and he basically said, look, my vision is very clear. We want to be the greatest franchise in the world, period, end of story. Capital is we're going to great market in New York. We make tremendous resources. We're going to deploy that resources very aggressively. And people, I'm going to find the greatest people in the world, and I'm going to overpay them so they're happy and never leave us. So you, my friend, better hit home runs and catch the ball and bring me some championships.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a lot of it is part of executing VCP, right, is to free you up, to really think big. One of the things I challenge my team all the time on is make sure that my schedule has the flexibility for me to go out and think slowly. Matt always talks about slow down to speed up. In order to slow down to speed up, you need to have that freedom in your schedule. The other thing is I have to be able to think about big ideas and then go out and execute those ideas, whether that's the NBA team we're”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you figure out for you in particular how you spend your time in terms of the relationship on the outside and then also wanting to know what's going on in the details of any of the businesses you're investing in?”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have three or four main silos, and each silo has basically a leader. We run a very flat organization, is myself, is Kelly, is Lisa who runs investment head of investments. Aaron Knight runs a real estate business with Stuart Zuck. I don't micromanage anything. I'm more of a player coach. I get out of their way because things happen better when I'm out of the way. And I really focus on the VCP part of it, right? The vision, the capital, and the people, they're way smarter than I am. So giving them that room to run is really important to me. The idea behind that said is that if you execute VCP Vision Capital People, you can scale in so many different ways. And me as a founder and leader of our company, I can go out and do the really big things, whether that's a Warren Buffett or doing things with other type of leaders like magic, with strategy and the vision and finding the capital and the right partners to go out and”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I did this deal with Jennifer. We marketed the company. We told the story both in English and in Spanish. And the Spanish market is one that we really lean into because we understand that market really well and we feel we can move the needle. So that was an investment that went in a $300 million or so. We took it public early this year at $1.6 billion. It went over $3 billion. Market settled, but it's been a really significant win for us and one that when we did that recently the founders came to my house here in Miami and they said, let's work on three or four of the things together. And to me, that's the ultimate compliment. Once you finish the game that they want to play another game with you.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A significant investment about two and a half years ago, the business was valued around $300 million, but it was telemedicine for the masses at an affordable price. Now that resonated beautifully with me because we couldn't afford to go to the doctor once a month or twice a year. Go to the doctor once every five years if I was lucky. And when I had pink eye, my mom would just say, just go to school or go away. So to think about him and hers, I thought, okay, this is really something that's right in our wheelhouse. And then we went out over the next two and a half years.”
2021-06-07 · Capital Allocators · Alex Rodriguez – Business after Baseball (Capital Allocators, EP.198) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source