YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Rubin

lines on the record: 87
first: 2025-01-27
most recent: 2025-01-27
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

“Yeah, I gotta pay for the shoes. He's like, so you bought the shoes without me agreeing to lend you the money? I said, yeah, but you're going to lend me the money because I'm going to make this much money and pay you back and be a great customer of yours. And sure enough, Dennis lent me the money. This was a different day. This is like, this was when banking was done on like honor back in the day. He said, no problem. They lent me the money. I sold all the shoes and probably made a million eight.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he had a shoe called X Man Shoes They didn't sell very well. So I bought 300,000 pairs. I would have been 18 or 19. Bought 300,000 pair for nine bucks a pair, so $2.7 million. Okay. I remember going to the payphone and I called this guy Dennis Wazeluski. Okay, he was the banker from Continental Bank, my banker. I said, hey, from the payphone, like, you know, call, I said, hey, Dennis, I got great news. I just made like a million and a half, two million dollars. He's like, what are you talking about? He says, yeah, I just bought, you know, $300,000 pair of X-Man shoes for nine bucks a pair. And I'm going to, you know, get them all sold to Models and TJ Maxx and Marshall's and raw stores. And we get like $15 a pair. So we're going to make like $6 a pair on, you know, $300,000. I'm going to make like a million eight. She says, well, that's great. Why are you calling me? I'm like, well, how the fuck do you think I'm getting the money? You're a bank. I need the money. He's like,”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't even big block cell phones all the time. It was still payphones, okay? Because I remember one other quick story, I'll tell you, that's a great story. And I bet you this guy's still alive. I remember being at something called the super show. It was a big show in the sporting goods business where all the big retailers went to this show.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's it. And that's the beginning. Okay, so now you've got this shoe experience. But again, this is like pre-internet, right? It's all yellow pages and relationships and big block cell phones, right? How are you going to the next? How are you getting the next connection? How are you finding the next place to buy bulk stuff?”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was for me, who sucked in sports, who sucked in school, to know hey, on one day I could see these shoes in a ski shop that I owned, find out that there were clothes out, and make $70 or $80,000 overnight without ever touching the shoes. That was pretty spectacular.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nope. I went to the yellow pages because that's how we found people then. I found this company called Boskov's department stores. I just cold called them and I get this meeting with this guy, Albert Boscovs, who owns Boscov. Said, Michael, how much do you want for these? I said, $15 a pair. He said, I'll take them off for $11.50. I hadn't even got them in yet. And I made $6.50 a pair on 12,000 pair of shoes. So now I'm 18. It's like $70,000 or $80,000. But I haven't even paid for the shoes I bought yet. I got them resold to somebody else. So it was just, it was that instinct to hustle, that instinct to keep asking, to never have fear that worked for me. You know, that was my first big bold deal was buying all the shoes at five bucks a pair and selling them for $11.50 to Bosco's department.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they were like 65 bucks, they were on sale for $29.99. I said to the manager of the store, I said, oh, you know, he's not selling well. They said, no, we bought them as closeouts. I said, oh, how much did you buy them for? They say $11.50 a pair. I said, wow, so we're selling them for $29.99 at half off. Bought them for $11.50 a pair. Can you find out how many pair they have? So they called the person Umbra and they said they had 12,000 pair. So I just got on the phone with the person. Right then I said, hey, you have 12,000 pair How much can I buy them for? You can buy them all for 850. I said, how about I give you four bucks? They said, how about six? I said, can we agree at five? I bought the 12,000 pair. For $60,000 that day, okay? That was the first time I got in the shoe business buying and selling shoe clothes.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I remember doing my first big deal. My first big deal was I owned, when I was graduating high school, I had five ski shops at this point. I remember going to one of the ski shops and they were selling these umbro sneakers for they were like soccer cleats.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you know that there's a value in the greater interest of the greater good, 100% work with them. But I got a long memory for people who've done me wrong. And I think that makes me smarter. That makes me better. That makes sure I don't get screwed multiple times.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's accurate of a lot of good leaders and entrepreneurs and much easier for a founder than for hire CEO. Now, grudges are different because there could be somebody I may not like. Somebody who's done me dirty, I may have no problem working with them, but I'll always remember. But”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They would say, like, you know, it's okay to be sensitive. I'd say that's bullshit. Now, for some people, and it's interesting thing about managing people and leading people is what works for different people. You may go in a sports team to one person and you can beat the shit out of them and that makes them play better. You may take that same approach with somebody else and they're going to be dejected in the corner of the locker room. I was the person you could beat on that would do better through the beatings and didn't bother me.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Common sense Street smarts work ethic. I would always work harder than I would always outwork my competition. Ability to really build authentic and strong relationships. Like nothing insults me. You could say anything to me You know, look, you can't Being sensitive, you know, and by the way, you would, you know, a lot of people in my family would disagree with this.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember always sitting in the parking lot of Villanova on this giant cell phone, buying and selling things always like knowing that I had to get to class, but having no interest in getting to class because I was making deals. And, you know, I can remember times where I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars in a trade in the parking lot of Villanova before I go to school. So that was very difficult. And finally, after, you know, kind of part of semester, I'm just like, I'm done. This is it. College isn't”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I'd say the reason I went to college was because I gave my mom and dad my word that I would go to college and it was important my mom's like, look, I'm a psychiatrist. I know what's best for you. You're not a normal kid. You need to be a normal kid. Go to school. Play sports. Have friends. Why are you obsessed with this business thing? But I never got out of business. Like, you know, never shut the shops down. And then I basically became very big at buying and selling excess footwear, sporting goods inventory, skis, buying and selling excess inventory, you know, primarily footwear and close-ups. So by the time I got into college, the biggest memory of you say, what do I remember about college? I remember cell phones at this point. So you're talking about 1990. Cell phones were gigantic.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you were eventually able to settle your debts, partly because you made a deal with your parents, I guess, where they agreed to lend you some of the money if you agreed to go to college. And you kept up your end of the deal. You started at Villanova, but you barely lasted a semester, right?”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I prepared to go bankrupt. And so I hired a bankruptcy lawyer and they said, hey, let's have a meeting with the creditors that all the people you owe money. So all these people came around. And one of the creditors, hey, Mr. Rubin, how old are you today? I guess I just looked older than my age and at this point everyone assumes you're older. I set him 16. And the ruby went dead silent. I didn't know you weren't allowing her debt legally until you were 18.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I also made a mistake. I got a little bit cocky, okay? And I was now 15, turning 16, but I went out and I bought a Porsche that I went 50-50 with a neighbor. I wasn't old enough to drive the Porsche yet, but I bought and kept it down the street for my parents. So now the season ends and I have $200,000 of bills, $80,000 of inventory, and half of a push. By February, all the ski vendors that had shipped me inventory, shipped me skis on open credit, wanted to get paid But I didn't have the money to pay him. And I started getting sued. I'd say the spring of the year that I was sixteen, I probably got sued a hundred times. The sheriff became my friend who'd come before I went to school and she'd drop off each day's lawsuits to me. And I thought I was complete failure. It was over. I'm never going to be able to be successful in business.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the first I had the ski shop, we did great. We did like 125,000 hours in business. I made about $25,000 profit. Second year, very good. I think we $500,000 in business and maybe made 100 grand, you know, get them 15 years old. This is pretty spectacular. By the way, think about this. This is also going back 37 years ago. So, half a million dollars in business, $100,000 a profit when you're 15, 37 years ago. Kind of insane With the next year, we had a little bit of an issue, it didn't snow. If you're in the ski business, it doesn't snow. That's not like an ingredient for really killing it.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go back to bed. What are you talking about? Sure enough, a month later, I went out. It was like 2,500 bucks, about 40,000 pounds of ice cube, brandy wine ice company on the high remember this. I set these up and every news outlet covered that this 15-year-old entrepreneur had set up a ski mountain outside of a ski shop, and that was my”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember I came back. I remember waking my mom and dad up at like two o'clock in the morning. I'm like, I got the greatest idea on the planet. They're like, what? I'm like, sorry, I'm going to set up a ski mountain in the middle of the summertime”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't have fear. And I just went for it. And I think, you know, so many people have ideas and they talk about what they want to do, but they don't do it. I was just always more of a person, I'm going to go out and fucking do it. And if it works out great, and if it doesn't, all good. I mean, you could go back to 1986, 1988, you know, I remember after coming to ski in the summertime, I said, well, why did I build a ski mountain in the middle of the summertime? And I went out in about 40,000 pounds of ice cubes, set up an a ski slope at 15 years old.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so my landlord just had to, so I just had to pay the rent on time that he gave me an A for my co-op program. And that was like half of my curriculum.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that school thing definitely got in the way. And I definitely focused on business. You know, I actually had a, they had a co-op program at my school you could get out at 11 o'clock if you had a co-op program in 12th grade. Somehow I talked to our school allowing me to do that in 11th grade.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so it meant that your dad had to co-sign that, and you had to take a lease out. First of all, how did you operate that business? I mean, you were a 14, 15-year-old kid. You had to go to school during the day. So how did that work? Did you How did you manage that business and also go to school”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, school flyers, you know, I actually remember it's a great story. I don't think I've ever told this before. There was a ski shop called Ray Pinella Ski Shop in the Plymouth Media Mall. I buy these flowers I put on all the cars, thousands of cars in the parking lot. And I get home and my dad says, you know, hey, Michael, I need to speak to you. Says, I said, like, Dad, what's up? He says, Well, Ray Pinella, who owns Ray Pinella ski shops, called to say that you were trespassing and that he was going to call the police and have you arrested for trespassing because you were putting flyers out in the Moss parking lot. He has a ski shop in the mall and he thought that you were unfairly competing. I said, well, what'd you tell him? He said, I told my son was 13 if you need to worry about competing as a 13-year-old, you got bigger problems.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They had the ski swap every year where all the ski retailers in the Philadelphia area would bring their excess inventory to a ski swap. And I worked that swap the whole weekend, you know, just trying to help out the other ski shop owners. And then I said to one of the guys, this guy, Brett Bauman, who owned something called Bauman Ski Shop, I said, hey, you know, I live 45 minutes from you, so there's no competition. Why don't you lend me some of your excess equipment? And I'll pay you for it as I sell it. And he did exactly that. And that year at 13 years old, I did $25,000 in revenue”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, alright, so age 12, you start a ski tuning shop. I guess you learned how to tune skis at like a ski camp you went to. Yeah. And so you're in Philadelphia, or outside Philadelphia, you open a ski tuning service, but I guess after your bar mitzvah, you made a little bit of cash and you were able to use that cash to actually open a storefront, like a location?”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but I'll tell you one story that I do remember when I was 12. I really learned how to tune skis and a friend of mine said to me, like, hey, you love skiing and you love business. Why don't you start a ski tuning shop? And that's a great idea. And, you know, like an hour later, I had the mic ski tuning flyers made with the prices of all the different things you could do for ski tuning.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eight years old when it would snow, I would go around door to door, sell the snow shoveling, and then hire, you know, six kids to five bucks an hour to shove all the driveways. You would go door to door.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I believe, what that makes you do is you figure out well, what are you good at? Where can you win? And to me, business and working was a place I always excelled. I loved doing it. It's a place where I could be number one. I could be the best that there was.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was failing in sports And socially, what that meant was I was always last to be picked on a sports team. You're going to pick 10 people on each team. I'm 10.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great question. I don't think I grew up in a family where they told you what you couldn't do, and then that just provided motivation to me of what I could do. I had great two incredible parents. They just, you know, it was kind of like they told you all the things you couldn't do, all the things you couldn't accomplish. And to me, it's like, fuck that. Like I can do anything I set my mind to. But as bad as a student as I was, and as much as I struggled in school, and even though it wasn't diagnosed at that point in real ADD issues, I think I was equally as bad as an athlete. Okay. So I wasn't just failing in school.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was not a good student. I just didn't connect with school. So did I get in trouble? Yes, absolutely. Was I still well liked by everybody at school, including all the teachers and everything? Absolutely.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I read a page and I read two lines, then I have to go back, I reread it. Yeah, and today, you know, again, since I haven't read a book since ninth grade My reading comes a very short kind of pieces. If someone sends me an email that's your three or four paragraphs, I'm 99% not reading it. Certainly, 40 years ago, it was a lot less common than it is today Tell you about all the learning disabilities. But when you have a mother's psychiatrist Fathers of veterinarian both go up very education oriented and you have a kid who's just not kind of doing well in school. You know, they worry and figure out like how do we help them? What do we do?”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People don't believe me when I say this. The last book that I read was the book called The Swoosh, the Unauthorized Story of Nike. I read it, I think, when I was in... Or ninth grade, so it probably came out in 1986, 1987. It's hard for you.”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and for us, that was actually an incredible moment. We embrace the ass whipping. We said we need to be a lot better. You know what? We got to speak up louder. We got to be stronger. You can't just go along for the ride. So that's why I'm so excited about this business because I get to learn every day. It's a, you know, if you like action This is the job for you”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, this is no secret. We went through a tough experience earlier this year in our partnership with Major League Baseball and with Nike, where Nike redesigned the jersey that we'd been making for eight years. And there was a really negative reaction to it. And with”
2025-01-27 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Fanatics: Michael Rubin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT