Transcript of Episode 571: Ronnen Harary: The Bite-Sized Decisions That Built a Billion-Dollar Company From Nothing

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

Welcome to Habits and Hustle, where I sit down with the world's biggest thinkers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and top experts to uncover the habits, strategies, and mindset shifts that actually move the needle in your health, happiness, and success. Today I'm sitting down with Ronan Harare, who is the co-founder of Spin Master. This is the company behind Paw Patrol, Rubik's Cube, and some of the biggest names that you've heard of in children's toys. Ronan built one of the biggest children's entertainment companies in the world by moving fast, trusting his instincts, and figuring things out before he had the perfect plan. In this episode, we get into how a weird grass toy became his first big win and why speed beats overthinking. Every time. This conversation will make you rethink experience, failure, momentum, partnerships, and what it really takes to build something that lasts. So let's dive in. Uh, welcome to Habits and Hustle, you guys. I'm so excited about today's guest, legit, because he is not only a great guy, he is Canadian, he is a true entrepreneur. Like, I'm talking like a a legit baller, started the, or ha, basically founded one of the most successful toy companies on the planet called Spin Master.

It is equivalent to like a Mattel. Like where is it in the Mattel, in that world?

It's, uh, Lego, Hasbro, Mattel, Spin Master.

Oh, so you're number 4 in the world. Okay. You should be embarrassed. Like I said, the Rubik's Cube is one of his, Paw Patrol. If you are someone who has a child, you will know probably half of the products that they have. But more than that, what he built, we're gonna learn so many things about leadership, entrepreneurship, grit, and how to basically get what you want. And I'm very happy to have you today.

Thanks for having me.

I so—

It's so nice to be here.

I'm so happy. Okay. By, by the way, his name is Ronan Harari. I forgot to— I was so excited. I don't think I even said your name. And he wrote a book called No Experience Necessary. What it was, so I was saying to Ronan, I was saying before we even started, what I found so interesting about what your I mean, I never, I never founded a multi-billion dollar company, founded a few other ones that were not that, not like that. But what your pillars are about how to build success and get success, like it's literally like I, it was like reading my own book or like my own saying the same thing I say to myself. So the fact that I felt like there was like a real like synergy here. So I really, I wanna like dive into this book, but my first question is like someone like you who's already like made so much money, has had so much success, why would you even like take, like, why are you writing a book? Like, why do you even want to do this whole grind in the first place?

You know? It's a great question. I think that part of it's to give back for me.

Okay.

And, you know, I, in a way, I kind of wanted a book like this to be written when I was a kid. And because the book is there to be a supportive parent to you. And to encourage you to do what you want to do in your life. And I was actually very blessed in a sense, because after my parents divorced, my mother was like super encouraging for me to do whatever I wanted. And there was no negativity in any parts of the conversation. And when I look back, when I hit, you know, in my forties, I was like, there's something so special about the twenties. There's something so special about that decade.

So true. Yeah.

And I wanted to put it down on paper and explain what's so special about that decade and what accrues to you during that time. And I love reading books and it was a challenge for me. And it's kind of an irony because I grew up with learning disability called dysgraphia, which is all about the inability to get your thoughts out through your hands. So it was kind of like a challenge. And plus the last part is that I took a sabbatical for a year and a half and I'm a bit of a workaholic, so I needed a project.

No, no, I think that's a great reason though. It's a great— I think everyone needs to have something to a purpose and a project, right? Because then what? Like, especially someone that's built the way you are, it seems that you are. But one second, I've never heard of that type of learning disability. What do you mean? So you're not able to get your thoughts from your head to the paper? Is that what the disability is?

Correct. Like, if you ask me to sign the book for you and write a note, okay, you'll be hard for you to read it. I'd have to write it really slowly. So it's basically like I write like a doctor, but I'm not a doctor, right? Okay. So basically as I start writing, my hand starts to cramp up and then I can't even read my own handwriting. So then I gotta go back and scratch it out and write very slowly so I can read it later. And it's basically, it's just, I get stuck and then my, basically I gotta reboot my thoughts to actually start again. So it slows you down. And I have some other, you know, learning disabilities around spatial stuff and, but please go ahead.

No, what I was gonna say is I, when I was reading your book, You did mention in there how like the way you work and process information is different than how other people do, which, and you kind of made a point, which I thought again resonated with me is like a lot of people like spreadsheets and graphs and like doing a lot of this like busy admin work or like PowerPoints. It was about a PowerPoint.

Right.

And you're like, I just don't work that way. Right. Like, I don't, that's not the way that works for me. And when I read that, I was like, oh my God, I'm so glad that you put that in paper because my brain again is very similar. Not, I don't write like a doctor, but probably similar. Like I have really bad handwriting and my superpower is getting things done off paper. Right, right. And the second someone says you have to be giving me a PowerPoint and this type of agreement and con— like I get so like anxiety str— I'm like, I can't do that. That's not how I work. Because not everybody learns and succeeds in the same way.

100%. Well, I've never done a PowerPoint in my whole life.

Yeah. Neither have I, by the way.

I've never done PowerPoint. So we're very similar. Neither have I. Yeah. So, I mean, my brain processes it. It's the thing about a learning disability is not a sign of lack of intelligence. It just means it's just a sign that you intake information differently and the information comes out differently. And the unfortunate part is that most of us that go to public school, the system is not built for us. And so it's very difficult, but I was very lucky because I got identified at 10 years old. And as a result of that, I got accommodations. I got extra time on my exams. I got a tutor at the end of the day. And if I didn't get identified, there was no way, I can tell you 100%, there was no way that I would've made it through school. And I probably would've been either in jail or something else.

Interesting. 'Cause you normally, I would say if, if you were, if you were born today, right? They would say that, you know, I don't even know if that, that would even, it, it, well, actually that's not true because I would say they would actually give you a lot of like, it, it would actually be different. What I was gonna say is sometimes when you, you put emphasis on that disability, that becomes your identity and that defines who you are. So a lot of times people will then not work as hard and they will just like fall back on, well, you know, I can't do it. So like, how did you kind of like negate that and not let that become the who you are? Like, oh, 'cause when you're young you think, oh, I'm stupid, I can't do this. I'm, I, I have a, something's wrong with me. All those things.

You know, it's the irony is is that it was never talked about in my family. Okay. And my parents never recognized it. So I hid it from everybody. Everybody, no one even knew. Okay. Even my classmates didn't even know. I was the guy in the class. Everybody was like, where were you, Ronan? We just wrote the exam. And I was like, nah, you know, like I was like the king of stories. Okay.

Really?

I was the king of stories. And I never told anybody about my learning disability. Okay. The knock-on effect of that is I grew up with a lot of shame. As a result of it.

Yeah.

Right. So I was just like, but I didn't tell anybody and maybe it was a, maybe internally I just wanted to like prove that I can like fit in or I wanted, I could be like everybody else and maybe that was the thing that got me through it. Or it was just like, um, and also the, the, the accommodations at the end of the day, like it gave me the ability to like figure it, figure it out.

Right. Right.

And then the gift it gave me was actually, it turned me into a person that was able to overcome challenges 'cause I constantly had to do it. Like I, I learned, I had the muscle memory by the time I graduated, I had the muscle memory on powering through things and anything. And I think that taught me that anything was possible. If I could make it through school, anything was possible. 'Cause after school it was like, oh, I could breathe. I was like, oh, you know, now I could do things my way. And that's part of the reason why I wanted to start my own business.

Right. It made you, it made you much more resourceful because you had to be. 100%, right? But that's interesting. So you did grow up with the shame, but yet the shame worked to your advantage because it, it, it worked as a positive, as a strength, right? Because you know, you were, it, it was kind of like you had to prove to yourself that you can do it and work through past the shame and like still do the things and become more resourceful.

No, the shame, the shame was, that's, that was a negative. I don't wish it on anybody. No one should grow up with that.

How, how did your parents not even know when you got tested at 10? They didn't know that you got tested at 10?

No, they, they knew.

They knew. Okay. I was like, good, good. Did the, did the people at school just come up to you or what happened?

They, they I mean, you know, it's just my parents who were classic, you know, immigrants and they, they just, they didn't know how to deal with it.

Yeah.

And they just, they were like, oh, the, the school system will deal with it. And we just—

Oh, okay. So that's what you meant.

Yeah.

And so then like they gave you extra time, like, so the school tested you, they knew, but it was never like me, you weren't coddled at home because of it. Correct. Exactly.

I, I like, I'm the king of Cs. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I got lots of Cs. Yeah.

That's what Katie was saying.

I'm the king of Cs. Occasionally I got a B and I come home with my report card. My parents were like, Why is it just a C, you know? But it wasn't like, oh, it's a C because we understand that you got some other issues going on.

Right, right, right, right, right. They did it. And that was okay. And that worked though for your, for your, for your advantage because they didn't like emphasize it all the time.

They were not coddling. There was zero coddling.

I know. I mean, okay. So let's talk about the shame for one second. So how did that manifest itself?

Shame causes you to not ask people for help and causes you to be shy, you know, I'm typically, you know, I'm naturally a bit more of a shy introverted person. I'm like somewhere in the middle, but it causes you to like even go deeper and just to be more in your own thoughts and to not ask for help. And then, and then you have like self-esteem issues. There's a whole lot, a lot of knock-on effects. No, but that probably, probably for another podcast.

No, but I think it's very important. I think it's part of why you're successful though. Right. Cause you had to over like, Even with the shame, like you said, because of that, you never asked for help. So you had to figure things out on your own. It made you more resourceful because you didn't ask for help. You know, like also like it was, you, it, it made you more resilient. Like you got used to being, you, you got used to failing, so you got immune to the feeling of being a failure. So you kept on going. Like, I think shame can be a huge advantage if you're lucky and you like deal with it the right way. Right? Like you started a business, you were 20, 3 or 22 years old?

I think, I think I could have gotten there without it.

Why, why do you say that?

Because I think that for me, I'm a very curious individual, right? And I'm curious and, uh, uh, I have some boldness in me and I like trying different things. I like bringing things into the world. So I think it could have been an easier journey. I don't, I, I actually, I'm not a, advocate, or I don't subscribe to the, what we're describing, what we're talking about here, that like deep, deep adversity brings you to success. I think, I think, I think if you have the natural, everybody's got natural gifts inside and the gifts are the gifts, right? And they can be, and they're just deep. They're, they're just there and they can be expressed in many different ways. And I don't believe in people having to suffer their way to get to success, right?

What you don't have to, but sometimes that is the path, something, you know, that, that's why sometimes some people get there because they had to go through all this suffering to teach them certain things or show them certain things or build them, build their character.

I agree. I just don't, I just, I don't, I don't, I don't wish the knock-on effects on anybody.

Yeah.

And I also, there's certain things like I was very like I loved reading the business section. Like, I don't read sports. I still don't read sports today.

Right, right, right.

You know, and I, and I was surrounded, my parents were, you know, small business entrepreneurs and business was discussed in the house and I got exposed to a lot of interesting people. And so there's a lot of things that led me to this.

What did they do?

To this path? My parents were classic entrepreneurs and they had a gallery in Toronto that sold Persian carpets.

Really?

Yeah, they sold Persian carpets. And I was like, and then I knew I used to go to my dad's place every Saturday and work and I used to like, roll the rugs. I was like a good roll rugger and rug roller and fold in the subway. And I knew exactly that I did not wanna go into retail.

That's right. Exactly. That's okay. Good. So I knew I did. Process of elimination of what you don't wanna do. So then how did the whole toy thing happen? Like, give me, like, start, gimme the evolution of how it even began.

Well, it started when we were in university. Anton and I was my business partner who, we were best friends growing up and we swore we'd never go into business together.

Really?

Yeah. We swore we'd never go into business together until we had to pay for school. And then we were like, okay. And we were selling fertilizer door to door after our first year.

You know, where'd you go to school, by the way?

I went to Western.

You went to Western? That's what I thought.

Okay. Yeah. I went to Western and we were selling fertilizer door to door and that was like not so much fun. And we had noticed these sophomores that had just graduated, they created this product called Campus We call it the camp space. It's basically, it was a collage of these posters, sorry, collage of students that were taken during Frosh Week. And then around the collage of all these pictures, they would sell advertising and they'd print up 9,000 posters and give 'em to the kids for free at the university campus. So they just graduated and they weren't doing it anymore. So I said to Anton, like, why don't we just do it? And that's what we did. And within 2 weeks we basically sold all the advertising and, and took deposits of $4,000. I remember I took $2,000 of the $4,000 and I went to Europe. I came, I came, I came back and we finished, we produced posters and we distributed them. It was great. And then we ended up doing them at 5 other schools by the time we graduated. And Anton was, went to business school and we kind of said to ourselves, we're gonna do something in marketing when he graduates.

We'll continue doing the posters and we'll figure something out. But we made this commitment to each other that we'll do something. We want to go into business for ourselves. Which I think is like the key defining decision that you need to make. It's like, don't wait for the idea, just make the decision if you wanna go into business for yourself. So we made that decision and then literally a month before Anton graduated from business school, my mother was reading this Israeli newspaper called the Yedioth HaAronot. And in there, there was a 2-page spread, okay, of these 6 different people that were manufacturing this product called the Grass Head.

It was a small little kind of like, oh, like a chia pet kind of deal.

It's kind of like a new age version of a chia pet.

Okay. Okay.

Right? So it's, it's a softball made of grassy nylon sawdust that has a happy face on it, and you put it in water and it grows grass for hair. And in the article, okay, classic, the Israelis, you know, they love sharing all their secrets.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, so they basically said that they, that I added it up. It said it sold like 300,000 pieces in the country of 10 million and no one was doing it in Canada. So I drove up to Western and I said to Anton, I was like, why don't we make these? And he thought I was crazy and he basically said, I'm not in. Anyways, I convinced him and finally 2 weeks later he said, I'm in. He graduated. Next thing I know, we're at like Kmart, we're buying all these raw materials, nylons, pantyhose, sawdust, you know, like everything. Actually, no sawdust, they didn't sell it. But anyways, and then, and then I got my brother-in-law, we gave him some profit sharing to help us figure out how to manufacture them. My sister to design the packaging, we gave her profit sharing on it. And we decided to make 5,000 pieces for Mother's Day. And it was the most magical 20, 20 days of my life. Like, just like figuring out how to like source it.

You guys made them yourself?

Yeah, we made them.

Sorry. 5,000 pieces.

5,000 pieces. I remember having this conversation with my mom. She's like, why don't you just buy it from the people in Israel?

I was gonna say that, that was why I'm confused. Why don't you just license it from them and just bring it to Canada or wherever?

Because I didn't wanna give up the control. I didn't wanna wait the time, you know?

I knew that the whole deal, the whole thing.

I didn't wanna be, I didn't wanna be anybody else's hands. And I was like, it's easier to do it myself than to like call these people and figure it out.

Was it the Earth Buddy one? Is this the one?

Chris? Yeah, that's the Earth Buddy.

That's the Earth Buddy.

Yeah. So that was our product.

Okay.

So we make 5,000 pieces for Mother's Day. We start selling 'em on the streets of Toronto and we sell like 700 pieces and we're like, oh, we've got more in the warehouse.

So 5,000's a lot to make on your own.

Well, try a million.

I, I, I can't even imagine. Well, but like two little kids, you know, like two young guys doing it with their family, you know, it's a lot.

Well, I, I, you know, it's, it's amazing. My, my brother-in-law is like an, my ex-brother-in-law, he's an autodidact, so he kind of figured it out and we hired workers and we hired people from a homeless shelter and then we just kind of like figured everything out. So we made these 5,000 pieces and then we came back to work on Monday. We're like, we got more to sell. And 2 weeks later we sold 26,000 pieces.

How, where, how are you selling them?

Well, basically what happened was through, through another contact, another contact through my mother. She said, go meet this person. So I go and meet them and it was the strangest meeting ever. Okay. It was like in downtown Toronto and there they sell closeout toys. Okay. And so for anybody listening, closeout toys are like what you sell to someone when, when it's like you can't sell 'em anymore. So we had this brand new product, we take it to the closeout, person, and they're a lovely family, the Kotzer family. They say, yeah, we'll sell it for you. And we don't hear anything for 2 weeks. And then they call us back and they say, can we deliver 26,000 pieces? 'Cause they sold it to Walmart in Canada.

Wow. Okay. Wow.

So then we moved factories, we hired more workers and stuff like this. And then the most magical thing happened was we got an order for half a million pieces from Kmart.

Within how much? Give me the timeframe from when you started to make these in, you know, you went to Kmart to get the seed, the whatever, all the, the stuff and you sold 700 on the street. How did, like, what was the timeframe between the 700 and the getting that pe— like the purchase order for that many?

So basically from the time we hit, started selling on the street to the time we got the 26,000 pieces was 2 weeks. And then we sold, then we sold to Roots. Remember Roots?

Yeah, of course I know Roots.

Okay. Roots was, Roots put us on the front counter of the store. So it was so wonderful.

How did you do that? Do you know Michael Budman? Is that his name?

Yeah. So it was Mike Budman, but we, we went there ourselves and, and you did, and we showed him the product and he was so nice. He was like, this fits with our brand and our ethos. And then we shipped a live grown EarthBuddy to every store so they can have it on display. Wow. Yeah. And then we broke into Zellers into their, uh, Zellers.

Yes.

Remember Zellers? That was the day.

Uh, God, this is like so nostalgic. Okay. Go on. Yes.

And then the craziest thing happened. So Anton was backpacking the year before in Europe, and he met this guy by the name of Aaron Hermelin, and Aaron lived in Detroit.

Yeah, I remember this from the book. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me, I love it.

And so Aaron lived in Detroit and his uncle owned the Palace where the Detroit Pistons played. So we kind of figured maybe they have some connection, stuff like this. So he called me, he said, can you get us a meeting at Kmart Corporation? And at the time, Kmart was the number one retailer in the world in the '90s, bigger than Amazon, bigger than Walmart. They, they were it. So he says, yes, I can get you a meeting. And for some reason, I don't know why I was the one that actually ended up doing the sales call.

Yeah, actually, why did you go? Why did Anton not go?

You know, I have to tell you, I don't even know. You know, still to this day, I don't know why. Maybe it was under the weather or something. I can't remember. So I go and I drive it. I leave my house at like 3:30 in the morning. I didn't even think about staying in a hotel. Okay. And getting a good night's rest.

Yeah, exactly. You're like, I'm just gonna save money.

No, save, save money.

Yeah, of course.

And you're in your 20s, you know, you're saving money and you got the energy to do it. Of course I could wake up at 3:30. And then I go there and I get there for 9 o'clock, meet the buyer, meet Aaron, meet the rep. And I pitch this buyer for 30 minutes and he's lovely gentleman. I'm in his boardroom and he says, I'm not the buyer for this product. And I was like, okay, maybe he's lying to me. So I'm like, I pitch him for another 15 minutes and he doesn't say anything. And then after he says, I'm not the buyer, of which I said to him, well, we'll give it to you on consigned sales. And if it sells, you know, like just pay us. He said, I'm not the buyer. At which point I was like, if you're giving someone something for free and they still don't want it and they still don't want it. So I said, who is the buyer? And he came back with this name, Adrienne Zacks, on a piece of paper. I shook his hand and I started walking around Kmart Corporation looking for this woman. And I was super lucky.

She was sitting at her desk and I did like, I said something to her over 30 seconds and she said, I'll meet you. At 3:30, you can come back to my office. I go downstairs and the guys are like, what happened? I'm like, 'cause I just left them. I didn't even say anything. I just left.

You just like, yeah, you just walked out.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, and, and, uh, and I was really lucky. I was so young. 'Cause I look back now, if I was like probably 40, they would've kicked me out. And I think they, they probably thought I was someone's kid.

Probably. You were like 22 years old.

Yeah. And so they, they were like, let's go for lunch. So I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. And I didn't leave and I stayed there and then I went up at 3:30 and I walk into her office and it was so nice. It was like, it wasn't in the boardroom, it was in her office, just this tiny office, this desk. And she was sitting behind it and it was like cluttered with stuff. And she was a horticulture buyer. She had like these gnomes and all these different things around. And then I noticed she had 7 other competing products sitting in her office, other grass heads from other people. Anyways, I gave her the whole spiel and told her everything about like the Earth Buddies and, and, uh, the factory and, and the campus spaces. I told her everything about my, You know, my life up until that point. And then she did the most magical thing and she gave me the vendor book and she said, I'm gonna order 48,000 pieces and if it goes well, I'm ordering half a million pieces from you. And, and then I asked her for her garden gnome, which is a strange thing.

You did? Why did you ask her for that?

You know, I just wanted something to like remember the occasion. I didn't, I, it was almost like surreal. I didn't believe it was almost, I didn't believe it was true.

So you got 48,000 from her.

How did you find— 48, 48 and then a half a million.

Yeah. Then a half a mil. But I was gonna say for the 48,000 first, because At these numbers, you're two young guys, you've never done this before. Two, 3 weeks prior, you were making, like, you were making them yourself, but you made 5,000. I don't know how you made 5,000. You, you had to like find the fact, you had to find a factory at some point to like make this quantity, right?

No.

No?

No, we, we opened our own factory.

Well, okay. Okay. Already at this point at 22, 23 years old?

Yeah. Yeah.

At 23. Okay. So let, this timeframe is insane. So then you guys opened your own factory, hired factory workers. How did you do all this in like such a speedy amount of time?

We got a ton of energy. Yeah.

But like even like to find the people, like to interview the people, like to even know the, the materials, like the machines to buy, like what, like how did you do that?

Well, first of all, we built the machines ourselves.

Oh, even more so.

It was, we were able to, we were able to surround ourselves. The truth is we were able to surround ourselves with amazing people. That's when we brought our third partner, Ben, in.

Ben. Okay. So what did Ben do for the company?

The irony is Ben is the most creative person. He's not an operations person, but he ran the factory for the first 9 months. Okay.

I mean, this is crazy.

He ran the factory, but amazing things happened. Okay. Can I tell you, we, the first people we went to hire in terms of workers were people from a homeless shelter. Okay. It didn't work out that well, but 2 of the people, okay, that we hired from the homeless shelter stayed in our company for 5 years. And one of the gentlemen was a manufacturing savant. And he came into Ben's office, okay, after like 1 or 2 months of being in production. And he is like, you guys can go way quicker if you do things this way. And one morning Ben came in and he had all these Gantt charts already all figured out. The guy figured out like the whole line flow. This is a man from a homeless shelter. So the, just the universe just kind of like coalesced to bring the right people to us to make it happen. And we worked really hard. Like my brother-in-law came every night after, he was a lawyer and he'd come to our factory and he worked from like 6 to 11 o'clock at night and he'd build everything and he hired people to build it. And then we, you know, we're working with different, uh, agencies to bring in workers.

We have people from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, like all these different, uh, uh, agencies were giving us workers and, and then Ben was running the factory and I was ordering the raw materials and Anton was out doing sales and, and we started hiring people. It just kind of just happened.

So you make, you, you basically then make a million of these Earth Buddies, right?

And then to answer your question, how we got into toy business. So now, oh yeah, I was gonna say, now we're getting, now we're getting to the toy business part.

But, but wait, I'm still on the Earth Buddy thing. 'Cause the fact that the, the amount that like I, how my brain works is like I'm chronologically going through all the steps that have to take place for you to even be able to make even a fraction of that amount is absurd in that amount of time. People get stuck who are listening to this, they get stuck in minutia, like analysis paralysis for even like the first step. Like, okay, how do I make 2? Never mind a million. Can you give a little in— like if someone listening to this who's young in their 20s or not, when they're sitting on their couch and they go, I don't know how to, I don't know how to do this. What would you say that one thing is that got you that ability just to like stop overthinking and just do?

Think about, first of all, make bite-sized decisions, right? 'Cause we said we're gonna make 5,000 pieces for Mother's Day. We didn't say we're gonna sell a million pieces. So that was a bite-sized decision. The reason why we got 5,000 was because that was the minimum order quantity the printer would do for us.

Oh, right.

Okay. We probably would've done 2,000, right? So it was like, what's the most manageable thing you could do in this moment in time just to get started?

Mm-hmm.

Right? And once you start, you unlock the magic.

Mm-hmm. Momentum.

It's everything's about momentum. It's all momentum. Momentum brings you the luck into your life, right? So it was do it in a bite-sized chunk. Okay. Don't overwhelm yourself. 'Cause if you think so big, you're gonna get like stuck and you're gonna get doubt and doubt is the anti-luck. So that'd be the first thing. The second thing I would say is think who, who's around you in your life, right? They can come in and help and participate in whatever you're doing. And I think that people have so much excess capacity. Right? And so much desire to be included in something. And if you're the one with the idea, you can bring people along. And so think about who's in your network and you can do things on a project basis. It's not like, you know, we gave profit sharing. My brother-in-law got 5% profits on the EarthBodies. My sister got 5% profits. We didn't pay them a cent. They just put it. And then more than anything, they were invested in the upside. And when people are invested in the upside, boy, do they actually like, they're like, you unleash this incredible amount of energy. Right, right.

So just think about who's, who's around you and who's got what talents. And then don't be afraid to start asking, telling people what you want to accomplish. And when you tell people what you wanna accomplish, they're like, oh, I know this person. I know this person. I know that person. I know this. And then if you're not, and then if you don't overthink it, like I didn't overthink going to the closeout guy, I didn't even know about closeouts. And he surprised us with 26,000 pieces. And then we went to Roots and like, so it's, it's—

So you made off of that one Earth Buddy, how much How much did you make off of that?

In, in the first 9 months, I think we, we grossed probably upwards of like, I think it's like $3 million in that 9 months.

And you guys, and like, this was like your first main pro— major project. So you were like, how much does it make? How much did it cost you to make one of those?

It cost us about, I think about 60 cents.

And how much were you selling them for?

Probably on average, like around $2.50. Something like that.

Wow. So then here you get the million dollars, all these are, and, and how long were you selling those for? How did that ricochet into a toy company?

Well, we sold the Earth Buddies made for like 2.5 years, and I think maybe over the course we sold like 3 million pieces or something, 2.5 million pieces. But we knew very early on that this, this was a fad. It was a Chia Pet.

Mm-hmm.

It was like a moment. There was something magical at doing it once, but you're not gonna do it more multiple times.

There's no longevity. You knew there was no longevity.

Yeah. We knew that going in and there was a moment and that's why we wanted to be like first to market.

And, but you weren't even first. Some other people were doing it. You said that woman in the office had 5 different competing competitors, like 5 different green, correct things.

But I would say that we probably got at least 50%, 60% of the market.

Why do you think that is?

Is, was it a better product or was it just because, because we didn't wait to get it from Israel and we didn't speed. It was speed to market. All of it. We were the quickest. And we were able to scale. It was those two things together.

So speed and being able to scale. I think the speed because people sit too long and then someone else comes and does it.

It was there. It was there. It was there in the ether. It was in the zeitgeist.

That's why I asked you about why you didn't license it from Israel. Because that would be the most obvious thing, right? Like just license the thing. But it actually would have— you said something that it would have taken way too long to do that.

I couldn't even look the one Kmart. Adrian Zak in the face and say, I can deliver the half million pieces for you. If I wasn't, if we didn't have our own factory.

I mean, that's pretty amazing.

We were, we were like unshackled. It was like, it was our—

because you did it like from the, from the, you like owned it right away. So you didn't, a lot of people like do second, like, you know, um, third party stuff. So would you say, would you say a big piece of advice would be if you could eliminate the third party starting a business? People listening, would you say that would be a really good idea and try to do everything yourself in-house?

It's hard to make a blanket statement and not knowing what specifically, what type of businesses people have. I do think the more vertically integrated you are, the better it is because A, your costing is better, your margins are better, right? B is that you're learning more about the whole process. And I think it's great to like, it's great to learn, right? And so to, to all, to know all the pieces that come into it. Right. And then I think you can have much more creative control in what you're doing. And there's lots of knock-on effects that, that come along with it. But I think it really depends on, on the type of business.

Okay. Fair.

Itself.

Okay. Now go into how it started.

So, so it was like, so we were in the horticulture business and we did, we did, we did one follow-up. We did one thing, which is called the Herb Garden and it bombed. It was like, it was like basically growing herbs and my sister was on the package.

Oh my God.

But, um, so we knew that Earth Buddy was gonna have a life to life to it. And about 6 months into the Earth Buddy, I started to notice the kids in Toronto were playing with this product called Devil Sticks. So I don't know if you ever remember those. It's just a 3-piece juggling set for kids, old 2 sticks. And you got this bigger stick, it's weighted on the end, it's got tassels and you hit it back and forth. It starts to spin.

I kind of do.

Maybe, you know, yeah. If you, if you were a hippie back in the '80s and you went to Grateful Dead shows, you would see it.

I kind of do.

So I, I went to a lot of Dead shows, and so I could see that.

I could totally see you being a huge Deadhead. You guys still are. Did you go see them in— at the Sphere?

And, uh, I have not been to the Sphere. I am so upset I did not miss that. Oh, you would have loved it. Yeah, yeah. So I used to play with them myself, and then I started to notice the kids were actually playing with them in the schoolyards in Toronto. And they were making them themselves. So I, I kind of put it together. I was like, something's, something's here. Maybe there's a fad going on. And we had our factory, so I said, why don't we actually make some ourselves and, and see how it goes? And so we, we made our prototype, we made some packaging through the company that bought the 26,000 pieces from us for Walmart. They knew a, a rep company in the United States, and next thing I know, myself, Anton, and my ex-girlfriend Melissa are at New York at, uh, the Toy Fair in 1995. And we're there in like this back room with our like one prototype of the Devil Sticks. And, uh, and whenever the, you know, a buyer would come in, you know, I would go out and I would juggle the sticks and I'd go behind the curtain again.

And, and these reps broke us into Toys R Us and KB Toys, and suddenly we shipped the product into those accounts and Devil Stix was such a, something was in the ether. There was something like in the zeitgeist for kids around this particular product that the moment we shipped it, it just took off.

Really?

It just took off.

So you're two for two, kind of like you found these two juggernauts basically. First was the Earth Buddies that you found.

Correct.

And second is this stick thing.

Correct. So at the, at the end of that year of selling the stick things, devil sticks.

Yeah. Devil sticks. Yep. AKA devil sticks.

AKA devil sticks. So we sold a million and a half of the devil sticks. We manufactured and shipped a million and a half.

In how long?

In that year, in that 12 months.

Wow.

And then we had a decision to make. We were like, should we go into horticulture or should we go into toys? And we were like, toy sounds a lot more fun.

Is that really what happened?

Yeah, it's what happened. And so my third, the third, and if you want a little more details, so our third partner, Ben, he left the business, okay? 'Cause he didn't like the manufacturing. Anton had the insight. He is like, let's bring Ben back into the business. Ben comes back and Ben's living with Jen Irwin. Do you remember Irwin Toys? They were the biggest Canadian toy company back in the day.

I know, remember?

So the Irwin Toy family says to us, you know, if you guys are going into the toy business, there's this list of 200 inventors around the world that come up with ideas, but they don't commercialize them. And here's the list. So Ben took the list and he started traveling around North America meeting all these toy inventors and showing them the work that we had done so far and started to generate a bunch of ideas. And that's how we got into the toy business as a result of—

How does that work? Do you pay the inventors for ideas? How does that work?

Yeah, it's, it's basically they come up with the ideas, they'll show you the ideas for free, and if you license one from them, you pay them a 5% royalty in perpetuity on the selling, on the sales of the product.

So what was the first thing you took from that? Inventor?

Well, we, we started to meet with hundreds of inventors.

Yeah. What was the first one that you actually bought or licensed?

The, and I just wanna sh— I, I do wanna say that after, after the, the devil sticks, we were marketing some like open source products and they weren't like very fancy just to pay the bills. But the first one we, our first big toy product was a thing called Air Hogs. It was an airplane and you pumped it up. It had like a PT bottle and a little pneumatic engine and a propeller on it. And would fly around for 45 seconds. And so these two British inventors, John Dixon, Peter Manning, came to show it to me and Ben, and it was like the funnest day of my life. Okay. We'd go to the park. Okay. We flew the plane. You gotta understand, back in the '90s, they only had the balsa planes or the Cox gas-powered planes, which took off your finger. And so we go fly this airplane and all I wanted to do was I wanted to pick it up and fly it again. And Ben wanted to fly it. And I'm 25 at the time and I felt like a 7-year-old kid. And so we said to 'em, okay, we wanna, we wanna license this from you.

And we spent 2 years developing this product. Little did we know, and this is like the thing about being young and all the amazing things that happened to you, everybody had turned down the product. Really?

All the, all the—

They had shopped, they had shopped it to all the toy companies.

So, oh really? Okay. But they didn't take it out to the, to the stores, like to the—

No, no, it was still a prototype.

It was still a prototype. So all the other like Mattels of the world, Irwin, whoever.

Mattel and Hasbro, the biggest guys, they turned it down.

They all said no. Okay.

They all said no. But we didn't know it till about a year and a half later.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay. So you guys said yes, and then what happened?

And then we basically took all the money we made from EarthBuddies, all the money we made from Devil 6, all the money we made from these small little tchotchke products that we're selling, and we put it into engineering and developing this, this very highly complex product.

So you believed in this product that much, you put all your money into that?

Everything.

How much did you sell of that product?

That product at the time that we brought it to market, which was in 1998, we were doing $7 million in sales. And the year we launched the Air Hogs, we jumped up to about $35 million in sales.

So that was a great bet.

It was amazing. And then we became the kings of flight. We were producing flying toys for 15 years.

So who was the person that said, we have to go out with this one? You?

It was myself and Ben. It was together. Okay.

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Well, sometimes I can tell you that our 3 follow-up products after Air Hogs, we were still producing them, but we wanted to get into new categories and meeting with new inventors. Okay. And all 3 bombed.

Which ones were they?

Don't, Don't Free Freddy.

Okay.

Tickle Secrets Baby. I can't even pronounce the name. It was like, wasn't even a great name.

Okay.

And Key Charm Cuties.

Okay. So let me ask you a question. When did you get the Rubik's Cube?

The Rubik's Cube, we acquired it in 2016, maybe 2018.

Okay, so this was obviously a license 'cause this has been around for 100 years, right? Like—

No, we actually, we acquired it. We bought it.

You bought— okay, but wait, so you bought it?

We bought, we bought—

You didn't license it originally?

Nope. No, we had nothing to do with the Rubik's Cube up until 2018.

You bought it. Correct. What made you buy it?

In the toy business, to have an iconic brand that's got like 99% word of mouth awareness. That's— yeah. It's like, it's, it's very rare that it comes along.

So how much did you buy it for?

We paid about $55 million for it.

Did you make your money back on it?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

How many Rubik's Cubes have you sold in the last 10 years?

I don't, I don't know the number, but I think we do, you know, it's millions of cubes a year.

You sell millions of these still a year?

Oh yeah.

Well, so what would you say was the—

The crazy thing about the Rubik's Cube is like, it's, it's part of culture.

It's part of society. I was gonna say that. Yeah. It's a major part of culture. Would you like, I was gonna say what of all the toys in the world, where would Rubik's Cube fall as one of them in iconic, in icon history? Probably in the top 3.

No, I wouldn't say top 3, but maybe top 10.

What's number 1?

Probably Barbie.

Oh, Barbie.

Barbie. Hot Wheels, Lego. Right. That's true.

Okay. What's number 5? Okay, let's go. This is actually very interesting. Okay. Most iconic toys of all time with the, uh, iconic Ronan. Number 1, Ronan. Ronan. I say Ronan. Ronan. Number 1 is Barbie.

Barbie.

Number 2 is Hot Wheels.

Hot Wheels.

Number 3 is Lego. You said Lego.

4, uh, 4, this?

No, no, you don't think like, you don't think so?

What else have we got in there? I'd say, you know, I, I'd start to go things like, um, Things like, but they're licenses. Like I'm thinking about like Star Wars or, but pure play toys from scratch. Those are the three, the three biggest. There's things like Etch A Sketch.

I bet you if we ChatGPT it, it will tell us. You want to chat it? What is it? Rubik's Cube. I was right.

Seriously?

Rubik's Cube was number one.

According to who? Chat?

Okay. So, okay. I'm not even in the toy business, my dear.

You know, you're hired.

You should have hired me for innovation. Was that not right? So Rubik's Cube is number 1. What's number 2? Lego is number 2. What's number 3? Barbie is number 3. Hot Wheels number 4. Yo-yo is number 5.

So I sold us, I sold us a little short.

Oh my gosh.

But I have the top 2.

You own this and you didn't know it was the number 1 toy of all time?

Listen, baby, because I'm— maybe I'm looking— I'm thinking about sales and revenue and other topics.

You own the number one toy, the most iconic toy of all time. You own, and you didn't even know that. You thought it was Barbie. By the way, so did I. That's insane. Wow. And by the way, I was still stuck on the fact that you guys created PAW Patrol, or you guys licensed PAW Patrol, or you created it?

No, we created it.

So you actually created Paw Patrol?

It's our baby.

Okay. If you're a parent listening to this episode, this is insane. Paw Patrol's pro— I'm surprised Paw Patrol's not even on that. Wait, where's Paw Patrol on that? You must have sold, what, $100 million a year on just Paw Patrol?

Uh-huh.

More? $200 million a year on Paw Patrol?

I can't tell you the exact number. It's a lot.

$300 million?

It's a lot.

400 million? That's a lot. Because people— this is how people like these facts. We're gonna clip this because this is gonna go viral because people, if you're a parent or someone who knows, you know, I would say what, a half a billion a year just on Paw Patrol?

You're— it's, it's a multi-billion dollar franchise. That's what I can tell you.

This is what I'm gonna say. Okay. I would say maybe even a billion dollars a year on Paw Patrol.

No, now, now you're, now you're going a little bit.

I'm gonna tell you why I say this.

You're going a little bit, getting a little excited.

One of our, one of our Chaim Saban, another Israeli, he created the Power Rangers, his company, right?

Right.

And when he sold it to Fox, he made $4 billion just on that one thing on Power Rangers. The fact that you had Paw Patrol as just one of this massive umbrella of like fantastic, iconic, legendary toys, I can't even imagine how much money. Spin Master has made or how much you're worth. I can't even imagine. PAW Patrol is like, it's like, it's like, it's like not even something we're even talking. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't even know. You didn't even know that Rubik's Cube was number 1 in the world in iconic products. This is absurd. I mean, what you guys have created is like, it's, this will live on in like forever for every, with every child in the world. Like, my kid, you know, someone who's getting born, who's being born right this second, 20 years ago, like they all play with these things. Is that not insane?

You know, just, it's, it's, I'm taking it all in as you're talking about it.

It's pretty, it's pretty remarkable. Like, you know, I'm just thinking of, you know, when I first moved to LA and when I, I met Chaim Saban and he was like, everyone was like, he was like the, like such a, like everyone was like such a, he's such a big mothler, which is like a big deal, you know, like because he's old. PAW Patrol, oh yeah, all these billions and blah, blah, blah. And he was a great— he was a big philanthropist. And it's funny, you know, like everything in life is so relative, right? Cut to how many years later we're talking about like, you know, like PAW Patrol, which is much bigger than Power Rangers. And you're like, I don't know, I don't know, maybe it's like, it's not even part of the conversation.

What do you mean not part of the conversation?

Like, it's like, it's like, it's like a throwaway. No. Because there's been so many others. Like PAW Patrol's big, but like, no, it's just— okay, this. This is big. This is massive.

Listen, first of all, nothing's a throwaway. Every— everything is like so much time, care, attention.

Like, like stuff doesn't—

stuff doesn't just happen, you know, like we, you know, Anton, he actually was running mergers and acquisitions for us for many, many years. And like, he managed the relationship with the people that owned Rubik's for probably 15 years. He kept in touch with them. He was always calm.

Did you distribute them at the beginning or no?

No, we had no relationship. We didn't have any— we didn't have any relationship with them. We just knew them as a result of being in the industry.

Okay.

You know, our whole thing's been, and that's where like we went to every trade show, every event, anytime we could be in front of people.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Our whole ethos in our business is, okay, we'll, we're open to ideas wherever they come from. That's our ethos.

Okay.

Okay. And we'll partner with people. We're the partnership company.

Right. Oh, okay.

Right. Because you can, you can do incr— you can do bigger things when you partner with other people. Totally. Especially when you don't have the equities at the beginning., right? And when I say equity, I'm just talking about like confidence.

So he maintained that relationship.

So anyway, so yeah, I'm going a bit far afield, but he managed that relationship for many years. And then when they were ready to sell, and it was actually complex, it was actually owned by like 4 different people and they had a bit of, there was issues there and, and Anton was able to manage it and that's his gift is managing people. And, and, and then we bought it.

So he's like a people person.

Yeah. It was just a moment in time.

Yeah. It's a good moment in time.

But it's, but it's also, So everything's like, nothing's, nothing's throwaway. Like it's—

Well, no, what I mean by the throwaway is when you think about the, the magnitude of some of these iconic brands that, you know, there are blockbuster movies being made of, there's, these are like his, this is like historic brands that have like really impacted like life. Like my kid used to love Paw, like I would put on Paw Patrol every single Morning, right? 'Cause then like that would calm them down. You know what I mean? Like they also, my daughter liked the, the piggy one. What was that one? Oh, Peppa Pig. Peppa Pig.

Great show. Amazing show.

Do you own Peppa Pig too?

No, no, no.

You should. Can you get the rights for that? Can you buy that?

No. Hasbro, Hasbro paid $3.5 billion for E1 and in the E1 deal came Peppa Pig. So I, I don't think they're gonna get that.

Oh, that's a, that one's a juggernaut also.

Yes. That's great. Amazing. I love the show.

Peppa Pig is a good show.

Also created by British people, and Paw Patrol was also created by a British person.

Okay. So tell me how Paw Patrol happened.

You know, Paw Patrol happened in, first of all, happened at the lowest point in our company. Okay. Because our company was doing about $1 billion in sales at the peak of Bakugan. And then we went and we lost half our sales for 16 years, 16 years in a row, our company was profitable. And then in year 17 and 18, we lost money for 2 years straight. Why? Because there was too much hubris, right? And hubris, too much hubris, too much believing like everything you touch is gonna turn to gold. Everything's gonna be great. You can do, we can launch tons of products at the same time. We weren't being very judicious at that moment in time. We got ahead of our skis. We hired so many people. We were just like, everything's just gonna work out great. And we didn't have the experience to realize that, you know, as fast as something like a Bakugan can go up, go up, it can also come down. And also you need to have the consistent recurring revenue underneath to maintain growing your company. And so that was one of the most pain— painful moments in my personal career because we had to let go of 350 people in our company.

Mm-hmm. Um, we had to do 4 restructurings, right? And we weren't even mature enough at the time. Like we probably could have got it done and we should have gotten done it too. But like to be able to, to do it 4 times, people felt so unsettled in that 24-month period, right? So during that, that time we, we said, okay, we really need to be much more judicious with what we're doing and give everything a lot more time, attention, and care. And we still wanted to stay in the entertainment business after Bakugan started to go down. So we said, what else can we do? And we actually launched 3 shows post-Bakugan. They all failed. Redakai, Tenkai Knights, and Little Charmers. You could not give away the show and you could not You cannot literally take the product off the shelf at retail. Like, I thought it was like stuck with glue. Okay. Like, I really— because there was so much product there. Like, it was like no one was taking it, you know?

Like, it was that bad. Wow.

The most important— like, when you walk retail and you see the empty shelves, you know that that brand's doing well.

Really? Yeah.

If the shelves are full, it just tells you straight away. Easiest way to know if something's doing well or bad.

And, uh, there's an abundance of your product over there.

Say again?

There was an abundance of your TV products or—

Yeah, you go in one week, you come back next week, it's still the same. Nothing moved off the shelf. It was like stuck.

It's hilarious.

Yeah, stuck. It's funny, but not funny.

You're just like, what's not funny?

So, so, uh, but we still wanted to stay in kids. And so we said to ourselves, let's try to do something in preschool and let's try to do something around preschool and transformation. 'Cause transformation was such a magical play pattern for children. And so we created this brief. And we sent it around to 5 different creators around the world. And the creator that I really wanted to work with was Keith Chapman. He created Bob the Builder. Oh. And yeah, which is a great show.

I love that one too.

Yes. And so I have this, I have this whole thing where I love, I love being around lucky people.

Mm-hmm.

Right. I'll mark a person like you're a lucky person. Right. So I just wanna like be close to you.

Are you sure I'm a lucky person?

I think you're pretty lucky.

How do you know?

I don't know. You got good energy.

Thank you.

You got energy.

Thank you.

So,, and you make things happen.

I do.

Right.

So, so do you, obviously.

So anyway, so Keith Chapman, I was like, I really wanted to, I really wanted to work with him. And he came back with this really interesting take about these 5 pups that go on these rescue missions. It was originally called Robbie and the Rescue Pups.

Mm. Okay.

And, uh, but the crazy thing was that he didn't actually follow the brief. The brief was about transformation. So he gave us this, story about Robbie and the Rescue Pups, but had nothing to do with transformation.

Right.

But we loved it so much and, and we loved him and we said, okay, let's start. And we, we went and started developing it. We found an incredible director, Jamie Whitney, incredible writers. We found an incredible studio. Just by the way, like PAW Patrol is 100% Canadian. Canadian director.

I was just going to say that. I had no idea. Does anybody know that PAW Patrol is Canadian?

No, no. Very, very— I know that's you.

I can't believe this. I can't believe that PAW Patrol is Canadian.

Yes, 100% Canadian. That's why all the pups are so nice, you know. You know, and I kept, of course, Captain Turbot, you know, Cap Venture Bay is from, from British Columbia. It's modeled off a bay in British Columbia.

Do you own the TV show?

Yeah, it's ours.

We partner. You own the rights and all of that?

Yeah, we, we created it and we sold it and we partnered with Nickelodeon. So they're, they're our partner on the sales, distribution, and licensing merchandising.

Do you have a swimming pool of money that you just swim in and dive into every day?

Well, listen, a lot of it gets reinvested back into the business and all the people that, I can't even think of, like, there's like a million of, like, I, it's, this is remarkable.

Your mom must be like, just like, Like, she must be just like unbelievably, like, so proud of you. She's kvelling every minute of the day, I'm sure. Like, that's a Jewish word, people. Is she just like going around bragging about her son on a regular basis? Like, what you've done from an immigrant parent, I understand what a massive— this on every level, this is amazing. Between the disability, learning disability of immigrant parents, You weren't handed a bunch of money. You literally did this on your own. Correct. Like legitimately, you did this on their own. Like I have to again say, and I say this a lot on this podcast, I'm a big believer of like, you know, self-made. And there's very few people are ever really self-made. They sit here and they like go on and on about how they've done this and that and the other. Meanwhile, they were given a majority of it. You are like legitimately like full-on self-made, which is why you're so impressive to me. I think it's incredible. Your mom, Miss—

you guys are like two peas in a pod.

Really?

I gotta introduce you guys.

What did she say the same thing to you?

In terms of what?

Did she say this to your— does your mom say this to you?

Once in a while.

I've never talked— I want to meet your mom. When can we make that happen? Is your mom— where does she live now?

She's back in Canada for the summer, so we can—

is she— where, where is she? Where? In Toronto?

She's in Toronto most of the time. She's in Israel, but she's back in Toronto.

Is she feisty? I bet you she's like—

she's, she's like, if my mother was 20 today, she would have like 10 million followers on Instagram. She has no filter, you know. She loves— she loves— yeah, I love her.

I love her.

She's like super chatty. She's a people person. She loves, loves people. And, and she just tells it to you straight.

She's just straight. Good. You're right, we'll be BFFs. Yeah, I love her already. I, I really appreciate people like that because we don't have enough of them anymore. Everyone stands on ceremony and has to care so much of how they appear and look and feel, and I hate that.

No, not my mother.

Yeah, but this is probably why you are who you are. Your mother, like, your mother created some, like, you, and she believed in you, and she let you do whatever you wanted to do. That's why— oh, you love your mom. I love— oh my God, I love you because you love your mom. Oh my God, I'm so in love with you right now because you love your mom. Oh my God, you're so good. You're such a great little— I love you. Okay, I'm gonna cry, so let's move on. Okay. I want to take a quick break from this episode to thank our sponsor, Therasage. Their Tri-Light Panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go, and I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to, plus it also has amazing anti-aging benefits including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for.

I personally use Therasage Tri-Light everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therasage.com right now and use code BEBOLD for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to Therasage, T-H-E-R-A-S-A-G-E.com, and use code BEBOLD for 15% off any of their products. Paw Patrol. So then here you are doing the Paw Patrol, and then what happens? And then the rights— I mean, you do all the TV, and then that was a juggernaut in itself.

You know, it was— it, it was— we took it to Nickelodeon. We actually pitched them, and it was myself and Jen and Keith Chapman and Adam Beeder, and we brought a bunch of toys that we made. And Seema, who was the president of Nickelodeon at the time, she said, Okay, let's partner on it. We're gonna buy the show from you. And yeah, and it was just a magical thing. We'd never produced a preschool show and they were our partners and they helped us, you know, with giving us notes on the show. They get full credit for the, the theme song, right? 'Cause we tried to break the theme song. We, we just couldn't get it right.

Right.

And they, they pointed us in the right direction to work with these people who were incredible at writing music. And, and then it hit the air in 2013. And I, I knew, and you're a social media person, so you'll appreciate this. I used to go on Instagram, okay? And I used to check in the first like 2, 3, 4 months how many birthday cakes were being made for kids with Paw Patrol characters. And I kept on seeing, I was like more and more and more and more. And then I was like, then I kind of, I knew that something was, was happening here. And, and then our toys hit and our toys did really well. And then, and then we put out our second season and then we said, okay, let's try to get Paw for Five. Let's try to get 5 seasons of PAW Patrol made, done. Let's not jump the shark. Let's keep the same tone and tenor. And then we hit 5 years. And then after 5, we said, let's do PAW for 10. And then we did 7 seasons of PAW Patrol. And then by our 7th, 8th season, we said, OK, let's change the mantra.

We're going to do PAW forever.

Forever?

Forever.

Forever. You said PAW— we're going to do PAW forever.

Forever.

Like, ever, ever?

Ever, ever, ever. Every single year, we're going to come out with 52 new episodes of Paw Patrol, okay, with special themes every single year without fail.

Okay.

Right. And that's what we've done now. We're in, I think we're shooting our 15th season.

Okay. How's it doing now versus how it was doing back then?

It's doing very well.

Like, what's it not like? I'm curious. 'Cause I guess, like, I remember when my kids were small.

We're very blessed. It, it airs in over 180 countries around the world and it's the number one.

Still.

It's the number one show for preschoolers still in the globe.

Still.

And it touches, it touches probably, you know, I'd probably say, you know, 12 million new kids every single year. And if you add it up over the years, it's touched over like 200 million kids.

You don't understand. I know because I had a Paw Patrol cake for my kid.

I probably saw it on Instagram. You probably saw my kid.

So where does it, where is it? Can you ChatGPT this? Where is Paw Patrol in relation to Peppa Pig, Bob the Builder, There's one other one that everyone used to watch too.

There's Dora the Explorer.

Dora the Explorer.

There's, uh, today you have Peppa the Pig. You have, you have, uh, Bluey, which is very popular today. That's our biggest competitor today.

Bluey.

Yeah.

Peppa Pig was the one I honestly, that's the one people always talk about.

I remember. It's a classic.

It's classic.

It's been running, it's been running probably for 20+ years.

Yeah. Which again, number one. Jesus Christ. Oh, Street. That's it. I forgot about Daniel Tiger, but I loved—

yeah, Daniel Tiger's a good show.

Daniel Tiger is a great show for kids too. And so what? Well, Sesame Street's a— you mean Paw Patrol beat out Sesame Street? Do you walk around with like 7 security guards?

No, I have zero.

You should.

I mean, I have no—

you're telling me that I have no social media, so I know nobody knows anything about anything. So you're trying to tell me that Paw Patrol is the number one You own the number one show and number one toy of all time.

Yes, I guess so, according to Chad.

And you didn't even know this.

Well, I knew the stat on pod and I wasn't, but I think it's, I think the real, the real thing is longevity, right? It's the longevity. And, and, uh, you know, we actually, it was, it was something we learned from, from Bakugan because we weren't able to do it, keep Bakugan going. And there was a lot of lessons there and there was a lot of failures. That we applied to PAW. So like the one thing I would say is like, this is like PAW Patrol didn't happen. It's PAW Patrol happened in our 19th year of business. So we were in business for 19 years. Okay. We were students of animation and how people producing shows. We were going to MIPCOM from like 2001. We'd go to France every single year. We were reviewing everybody's TV shows and we were learning the business. So all this type of stuff, like it just, it's important to know, like it doesn't just happened. It was 19 years worth of work before we—

But you, but you, but out of the gate, you were fortunate enough to have a big success with the Earth Buddies. You bought the Rubik's Cube in 2016, you said? 13, 16? Massive. That airplane thing, $35 million. But like, so yes, you could say 19 years to find, to get to PAW Patrol, but you had one, you had one massive success. Yeah, you had some failures and then you had another success. I think the, real big point is that you people should not be giving up if they fail because you never know what's around the corner, right?

Totally, totally.

Right. That's the big, that's the big thing. Like life is full of hills and valleys basically.

Yeah. We got super lucky with our first animated show called Bakugan, which ran for 4 seasons. And then our 3 next shows, which we talked about, failures, failures. So we could have given up, but we didn't. We were just like, let's, let's keep staying at it.

What would you say? I think 'Cause this is what's interesting. You have these two business partners, Ben and Anton. A lot of times people fail or, sorry, or, or yeah, fail or lose because they pick badly. Right. What do you think the secret sauce is to, to partnering and like, how did you guys make it work? Because personalities usually can clash, especially as you get bigger and bigger and more successful.

Yeah. I think that's the ability to say sorry. Okay. Sorry. Sorry is a strong one for partners.

Yeah.

Like if you can't say sorry to your partner, like just like, give up and just, you know, move on to something else.

Yeah.

We fought all the time. We micromanaged each other for years and there was so much like, you know, tension that came outta the micromanaging. But we had healthy debates. I think the thing that, the thing that led to better decisions and not always the right decisions, but good decisions came from the healthy debate that we had amongst the three of us. And that was cascaded out to a larger group as the company grew. It was the ability to have that conversation, but at the same time, when the right idea popped out in the conversation, to recognize it and don't have any ego attached to it.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Right. And then you're like, okay, and let's just run with it. And we were, we'd repeat that and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. And then there was other parts, which was just the trust and respect. And then there was other parts in terms of like, we had the same ethics, right? We always wanted to be, treat our partners well. Ben was always like, you know, it's okay if we paid an event or an extra half a point or an extra point, like if they're making money, like, that's great. And we're making money. That's great. So we always had the same ethos. You know, I had this, we had this situation in our second year of business. Someone wanted to actually encourage us to buy a Whirlpool for a buyer.

Mm. A Whirlpool for the buyer. Okay.

Yeah. You can, you can do more business at this retailer if you buy the buyer a Whirlpool. Yeah.

So it's back in the— That's a strange thing to buy, but okay.

We wanted it for his backyard.

Yeah. Well, I, I figured not for like his office.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I didn't think he was buying it for his, you know, bathroom. Yeah.

Anyway, so I was like—

You wanted to, you wanted a bride, basically.

Correct.

Yes. Correct. I was, I was picking up what you were putting down.

Yes.

Yeah.

You know, and we didn't even consider it. So like our ethics were always aligned. So like ethics, our work ethic.

Yeah.

Right. The work ethic's a big one. Like we were all working super hard. Right. And we, and we recognized that there was also a big thing, which was, which was we recognized that we worked differently and we respected that.

Do you know, like, big one?

Yeah.

Like what was, I know how you work, right? You, you don't like graphs and PowerPoints. What is your methodology? No, but I'm just talking about like, like, no, no, I know what you mean. Yeah. But I'm saying like everyone does it differently. How were they, what was their, how did they work? How did you work? Like what was, what was your lane? What was his and Tommy's lane?

You mean in terms of things we actually did in the business? Yeah.

And also like style. Yeah. Style and focus.

Well, I, I did in the early days product development operations.

Yeah.

And then I moved into the entertainment side of the business. Ben did product development and creative, and Anton did like HR and sales.

Hmm. Okay. Were you guys all like equal partners?

Anton and I were equal partners 'cause we started the business and Ben was an equal partner in terms of being treated as a partner, but his equity stake was lower than, than ours 'cause he came in afterwards.

So what happened, by the way, you guys sold the business or you guys—

No, we took the business public in 2015.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's right.

Took the— So we're, we're a public company. Today.

How's the stock?

Not great. Not great.

Why? You have all these massive—

listen, that's a whole podcast in itself.

It is. But it's, this is what we, people want to, what I want to know. You can come back again.

It's, it's okay. You don't live here though, but it's, it's basically, I can tell you that the, it's, it's very multifaceted, but the most important thing, if you're a public company, you never, you should never miss your numbers. And if you miss your numbers, then the street loses confidence in your ability to grow consistently and no one loves anything inconsistent. So that's, that's the root why we, why we're missing some numbers. We missed our numbers over a number of years. One is like some bad luck, things like tariffs, you know, it doesn't, doesn't help our business.

That was my next, I had a question about tariffs.

Yeah, like tariffs, like tariffs and this year it's oil and stuff like that. But we're back on track. But a lot of it, the root of it is that we, when I stepped down from co-CEOing the business myself and Anton, the transition to bring in outside CEO, we didn't manage it as well as we should manage it the first time. And there's a lot to be said about culture. The most important thing in a business is culture, right? And the most thing, the thing that you have, the most valuable asset, which is more valuable than even the brands and the franchises, is your culture. Because your culture is your ability to replicate what you've done over and over again. And if you lose that part of the culture, that replication factor, then your company can't continue doing what it's done before. And so our culture shifted in the last number of years and we're on track to bring it back. But I think that's a big part of why the stock is not where it is, where it's truly valued because it is not really representative of what, where the company's at.

No, I mean, it's not at all, right? No. When did you step down as CEO?

2021.

Oh, so you did. Okay. Yeah. What made you just step down?

You know, it was a combination between the co-CEO model wasn't working anymore.

Why? So you guys were co-CEOs this whole time?

Yeah, the whole time. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So what made it stop working?

It was just, it just, it just got tired, a little bit old and yeah, it just, it just got tired. It just got tired. It's like being married for a long, long, long time. Right. You know what I mean? This is like being married for a long time.

I understand. Have you ever been married? I've never been married. And you have no kids?

I don't have kids.

But you have a toy company.

I've been married to two business partners, you know, but personally I haven't been married.

So then you decide to step down and then who becomes the CEO?

Yeah. So we, we searched for like a year and we brought someone in from the outside.

Who, who was the guy?

His name is Max Rangel.

Where did he come from?

He came, his career, he did a lot of his career at P&G and he, his, before he came to us, he was at SC Johnson. So it was a classically trained.

Yeah. He was a trained CEO.

Classically trained. CPG, CPO, CEO, which he, listen, he, he did, he did, uh, a great job. But I think that the biggest learning for us is like, first of all, any transition with CEO is very difficult and you have the highest chance of success if you bring someone in from the inside, right? It's very hard to bring people in from the outside.

Very. Yeah.

So now we're—

especially when they're classically trained to be a CEO. Yeah. It's a different mindset than someone who grinded it out.

Correct. So now we're on our second COO, female, Christina Miller.

When did that start?

Uh, she came about 10 months ago.

And where is she from?

She, most of her tenure was at, uh, Cartoon Network. So she came from the entertainment—

To do what? What was she doing at the Cartoon Network?

She was president. She was running the, the network there.

And then how many employees did that place have?

I think that part of the, was maybe a couple thousand.

How many employees, you guys have thousands though, right?

We're about 3,000.

Around the world. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then you've stepped down. So what would you say? Okay. I have a couple of questions. I'm gonna do some rapid fire with you if you don't mind. Okay. Do you mind? No. Don't you have a plane to catch? Or is it your plane? So I'll wait for you, Tony Stark.

No, it's not my plane. I could fire up the jet. No, I need to go back to the office and actually shoot some social media stuff.

You're gonna shoot some social— is he really making you do this?

No. Listen, no one's making me do anything.

Why do you wanna do it? Why do you wanna do, like, what, what, like, what is the—

That's not—

if, if I were you and I had all the money like you and I had all the success as you, why would you put yourself like on display like that? Just what's the point? You don't need to.

It's to, to get the book out. And I think the book will—

is it all for the book?

It's all for the book. There's nothing else. I have no other reason to do it.

Like you're not gonna be doing a fitness video. I was gonna say you're doing squats and lunges on there. Okay. Wait.

Yeah. I, I, I truly want the people to find out about the book, so I'm trying to meet people where they're at.

Okay. So you're basically going to go back to the office and do somewhat some like chit chats about the book?

Yeah. Like people are gonna interview me and I'm gonna give answers.

Oh, okay. All right. Can I, I'm gonna interview you some more and you can give me answers. Are you ready? Okay. Okay. Here we go. First question. What, and, and try to keep it brief so I can make it into like a clip. You do it?

I'll try. I'm not, it's not my skill, but I'll try. Okay.

Try your best. When someone has a creative idea they are excited about, how can they tell if it is actually worth building into a real business?

If they feel it in their body.

Okay. So you felt the Earth Buddy in your body.

Yeah. I, if you, if you actually, if you feel it in your intuition, your own internal knowing, it's a good sign. And I would also say if you have a lot of resistance, it's a good sign too.

Really?

Yep.

Why?

Because usually people are more resistant. Resistance comes up when you want to, when you really want to go towards something.

Interesting. That could be with anything in life. What separates someone who struggles to get their idea off the ground from someone who builds a $100 million company or a billion dollar or multi-billion dollar company?

The inability To overthink things.

This is not on my list, but what do you think makes a really good entrepreneur?

Instincts.

If someone has a business idea, but no money to build it, what is the smartest first step?

Make a prototype and meet as many people as you can to pitch.

What if the prototype costs money?

Make even a smaller prototype.

Okay. What do you say the most important character trait someone has to have in order to be successful? That's my question. Not on here.

Integrity and passion.

If you can only say one quality.

Integrity.

Why?

Because everybody that you partner with and everybody that you interact with is going to make their decision based on who you are as a person. It's, it's most people make things rational decisions, but most of the decisions people make is based on a feeling. And if they trust you. They're more inclined to say yes to.

Which is a good segue into my next one. What do you think is more important to be successful in life, likability or competence?

Competence.

Competence?

Competence.

Really? Why do you say that?

Because at the end of the day, like it's your competence that's going to deliver the end result. And at the end of the result, that's, that's what really matters.

We're living in a time when you don't have to be competent. You don't have to be smart. You don't have to be capable. You know, it's all about facade, right? Like, for example, like I did, I did this whole talk about, I believe the, the most undervalued quality in somebody's success is likability because it's the likable person. Like your competence or your degree can get you in the door., but your likability will get you the job, right? Your competence may get you to do the busy work, right? You like the, the C student will be the boss to the A student, right? I'm a big believer in that. Like, I think people wanna be around, work with, date, all the things with someone that they like, not with someone who's just competent. That's my opinion.

Yeah. No, I totally—

not because it's right, not because it's right, but because it's what actually human nature gravitates you to.

I totally agree with you. I, I would love to say that you need to, you need to have both.

Ideally, if you have both, you're, you're, you're set. Like, I'm also, you know, what do you think is more important, talent or work ethic?

Work ethic.

Work ethic.

Work ethic for sure.

100%.

For sure.

You could be the most talented person in the world. Like, for sure. I'm a big work ethic person. I don't believe in balance. I think that's a load of shit. I don't think most people have, I think people who could say, I wanna have a balanced life, Right. Who, like, if you're gonna be successful in anything, there's gonna be an imbalance. It's just what it is. You have to be obsessed, in my opinion, for something to really take off.

Yep. 100%.

Do you agree with that?

It has to be very, very important to you, and you gotta have the passion for it to, to break through.

Like how, how important was being successful to you when you were—

I think, I think first of all, the definition of success, mm-hmm, is so different to so many people.

What is your definition of success?

I think the definition of success for me is living an aligned life, doing the things that match with what you, how you want to be in the world. And if you're, if you're incongruent to that, then you're unsuccessful. Right.

So, yes, I agree with that. So what is a successful life look like to you?

I think successful life is giving yourself the permission to do the things you want to do in your life. That's successful.

Okay.

Um, I think that, uh, betting on yourself is an important thing about success in life, listening to your own internal knowing and following what— I know it sounds trite, but at the end of the day, like, only you know what you want to do in your life and everybody around you, everybody's well-meaning and they got great intentions for you. Okay. Right. But I think about this a lot. Like, it's hard for us to put words to things. Right. And, and so at the end of the day, Sometimes it's, it's counterintuitive, but to trust yourself and to listen to yourself and to listen to the different parts, not to over-intellectualize everything. It's a very different— we're not, we're not trained to do that. We're not, we don't live in a society like that. But I think that if you can, then you're being true to yourself and there's nothing more successful than being true to yourself at the end of the day. And you're not living anybody else's life.

Right. You're living your own. Yes. 100% agree with that. What would you want someone, if they can only have one takeaway from this book, what would you want it to be?

That you own your decisions in your life and that it's important for you to make them. It's important for you to surround yourself with good people and open and have discussions. But I, but at the end of the day, it's your decision. And what I would say is like, I'd love for the book to be a creative, resourceful tool to create discussion and dialogue. With the closest people around you, given what you want to potentially do in your life, whether or not it's business or whether or not you want to do something in arts, use it. And you're in your 20s, use it as a tool to create dialogue and discussion with yourself and with others and, and see what comes from it.

One question I wanted to ask you, because it's very aligned with what I speak about, is you talk about the power of not knowing, correct? Right. And I talk about The super naivety is a superpower, right? Do you want to give us an example of something that showed up in your life where that was so evident?

Um, I think it plays out on my own. I think it, it plays out in my life all the time. All the time. Okay. Like even, even as I've gotten older, it doesn't really stop.

Right.

You know, uh, You know, back to PAW Patrol, we created a movie for PAW Patrol in 2020. And we've got our third one coming out this August.

Of course you do.

Well, we're PAW forever.

Yeah, exactly. PAW. That's what you said. Forever.

Forever.

Forever.

Forever. Mickey Mouse is forever.

That's right. So is PAW.

We want it to be PAW forever. We're going to try our hardest to be PAW forever. So Wow. So I was naive enough to think that we could make a film and we did. And no one believed in us actually. We actually had to greenlight the film ourselves. Right. And cuz everybody was like, you know, it's like to create a film for PAW, it's like, it's, it's for preschoolers. How are you gonna do a motion picture for preschoolers? But I was like, there's gotta be a way to do this.

Yeah.

And I didn't have it all figured out, but we, we figured it out. We got it done. But I was naive to like, there's still a little bit of naivety and like, And everything that, everything I still do. So that's one, one example. Um, I think, I think, I think it's, I think, I think it's the most wonderful thing to actually not be that. Um, I think it's every decisions are an art and a science. You have to know your space in the competition and, and what's come before you. But once you've connected all the dots, a little bit of naivety of what's possible. Dreaming a little bit.

Yeah.

I connected the naivety to the dreaming, to being a dreamer.

I also think that naivety also, like what you don't know actually is an advantage because sometimes when you're too seasoned, too experienced, that's when the overthinking happens. And then you are like, you talk yourself out of doing whatever that is.

Well, I, I wanna end on this cuz it's like everything sounds rosy on this podcast. I think I'm the only person in Los Angeles. Yeah, because I lived here from 2008 to 2010 and I worked on creating the Bakugan film.

Okay.

Okay. And because anyways, and it took me 4 years, I finally got an offer from Universal to do a $100 million live-action film. They were ready to greenlight it and we said no.

You said no?

Said no. Can you imagine why? Because of exactly what we're talking about. Because we had this thing in our mind was like, Based in toy history, if a franchise has slowed down in sales, you can relaunch to the next generation of kids 7 years later. And we said to ourselves, if we do the film, it's gonna extend out the franchise even though, and we may not get sales again against this. So now we're gonna have to wait like 9 years. And we said we didn't wanna wait. We wanted to like, we were like patiently wait. So I used conventional norms, okay? And made a really bad decision. And I still look back today and I'm like, Who passes? Like, it would've been so great for the franchise to do an incredible film that could have made more films and, and, and we wouldn't—

Wow.

Yeah. Turn— I had a full— I worked with Scott Stewart, Pam Abdy. Okay. Uh, what's her name? Uh, the head of, uh, Universal. They totally greenlit it. Jeff Kirschbaum. Film was done in the can. It was ready. I got the call and I worked on it for 4 years.

Are you serious? Yeah.

I'm the only person that said no.

Oh my God. That's crazy.

Yeah. So sometimes if you overthink things and you apply the conventional norms, uh, you miss opportunities.

100%. I'm all about going against any conventional norm.

Correct.

So you don't have to— you're preaching to the converted already. All right, Ronan. Ronan. Ronan.

Jennifer.

Jennifer. I thought I said it properly. All these years, I guess I've been like saying your name wrong. I apologize. I would say, where could people find you? But we know they can find you nowhere because you're nowhere on social media.

No, I'm going. I'll be— I'll be on LinkedIn.

And by By the way, don't— LinkedIn's fine, but you don't have to. I am, I'm gonna tell you later, but whatever. But the book, how about this? The book is called No Experience Necessary by— say your name because I don't wanna screw it up.

No, no, do you say it?

Ronen.

Perfect.

Per— thank you. Practice Makes Perfect, uh, by Ronen Harari. And like I said, this guy is like the real deal. I am so happy that we got to do this podcast. And thank you for being here. I'm hoping I didn't hold you hostage too long.

I loved every minute of it. It was great.

2 hours. I mean, it's not horrible, but it's not like— it's been like 2 hours. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sorry. Like almost 2 hours. Like an hour and 45 minutes.

Jen, you're the best.

You're the best. All right, guys, I hope you enjoy it. Let me know in the comments. And if you haven't subscribed, please take this moment and subscribe. Bye-bye.