Why You Must Be Ruthless in Business or Fail | Kevin O'Leary

[Music] Yeah, well, you're preaching to the choir here, and I completely agree. That's why I jumped ship from my, you know, job at the studio table your door, because you were personally motivated to stop living that way.

Yeah, but can you talk about the dark side? Because I think there is a dark side. You know, "Mo Money, mo problems," right? Yeah. You know how does one - and I think maybe people watching will want to know sort of like, how do we navigate those choppy waters? Because it's not just - it's not so simple, right? When success starts to come, no, you start being less kind to the hospitality people or the, you know, the person who brings you your food.

You know, right? You used to be the bottle washer or the gum paper, and now you're the owner. So, like, how do you navigate around staying grounded, staying a human being, and not becoming such a rich jerk?

That's a great question, perhaps your best one of the day in some ways. Because it's easy to slide into that rich jerk mode. The answer is, you have to have respect for people, for their own talents, for who they are, what they do. The guy that delivers your breakfast in the morning, you should respect him like - like the, like the - like Warren Buffett. It's this - it doesn't matter, he's a person. He's trying to do his job; she's trying to do her job. They deserve your respect.

If you can't give them respect and you treat them without respect, you have become an [expletive] and you deserve, in my view, the karma that comes with that. I believe there is karma, and I think if you're a real [expletive], you're gonna pay the price one day. That's why I have to give back. That's why I have to treat people with respect, and you have to remember that there's always the weighing in during your life - and karma is how that gets settled.

The other big area that it manifests itself as a huge problem is in children. If you de-risk your children's lives, you are giving them a disease. So you're talking about kind of how Bill Gates and Warren Buffett deal with their children. They say, "You get nothing; you're entitled to nothing." What is your outlook on, you know, the success you've had? Do your children feel entitled to it? Do they know they're getting something - nothing or all of it?

Well, here's the lesson I learned when I was graduating from college. My mother said to me, "I'm coming into graduation; I've got the great news. I'm coming; I want to see this happen, but no more checks. That's it. I've paid from birth to the last day of college. You're on your own."

And I said, "Mom, I don't have a job; I have no money." You know? And she said, "The dead bird under the nest never learns how to fly." And I said, "Mom, that's a great poem, but I need some cash." She said, "No."

And it was a very traumatic couple of years after that, trying to find my way, and I had no money, and I was really in a bad, bad shape. But the whole point was, she felt that the journey of, you know, paying for right to the end of college was on her back, and that she had done that, and now it was my turn to launch and go on.

That was such a powerful experience for me that I've now mandated that into my family trust, which is a generational skipping trust. It provides for children born into future generations, even out of wedlock. I don't care; it's a full freight pay from birth to last day of college, and then they get this - nothing.

Now, when I put the structure in place on my first liquidity event, it was around the sale of the Learning Company. I walked across the river to Cambridge, met with the lawyers, and said, "I want to structure this thing this way." And they said, "You sure?" I said, "I've talked to my wife about it." We had, you know, when we were married, we had no money, and I went back and explained the structure, and my kids, after I'd locked and loaded it, they were four and six decades late.

Well, you know, I guess 12 years later, my son was doing very poorly in high school. I think it was around grade 10; he was not gonna get to college, and he came to me and said, "Dad, walk me through the trust deal again." I said, "Sure, Trevor, it's very easy. Here's how it works. If mom and I go out to a movie tonight and we get run over, you're gonna be okay because you're gonna be taken care of right to finish high school because it doesn't look like you have to worry about college."

And then he said, "Well, what happens after that?" I said, "You're on your own; you get nothing." He said, "I get nothing?" I said, "Yeah. The dead bird under the nest never learns how to fly." And he said, "That sucks." But I said, "Why don't you take advantage of the runway you've got? You're in grade 10; it's full frame."

Now he's in third-year electrical engineering. Maybe that was a night that it hit him where the fear of the unknown could be avoided by finding a path, and he's used it. He's spent a lot of money getting his education, but I'm sure when he graduates, he'll have a job. And I told him, "If you want to start a company, don't come to me; I'm expensive. I want a royalty. But then raise some dough and come to me later for second-round financing or something because I really think, you know, that's the whole point of helping.

You know, having everything taken care of from birth to college is a good deal for anybody. Yeah, but I'm not giving them a de-risked life, and I think that's another, you know, issue you have to deal with. And so that money will sit in trust and just roll on long after I'm gone to do whatever it does. I want Carol to be dead.

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