THIS IS The FUTURE Of Technology! | Kevin O'Leary & MKBHD

It’s what's up, guys? MKBHD here, and you're watching a special edition of Ask Mr. Wonderful, where you guys ask the questions, and we answer. I mean, we were just sitting back, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good ol' days, another track of my roots, where I came from. You want to talk tech? I got the tech guy here. Marques is the man today. We'll answer your questions about anything. Ready? Let's go.

Hey, Mr. Wonderful and MKBHD, you both have strong personal brands. How different was your journey since you built your brands at different times? And also, what advice would you give to someone who wants to build their personal brand in the next few years to come?

So definitely, it’s about different times and different methods. I can say that my personal brand was built by just being really genuine about my passion for tech and putting it in video form, controlling all of that, evolving the craft, and posting it online. So, I kind of think that’s... if I gave any advice for someone today where that particular method is easier than ever, I would say to stay true to something you're passionate about. You know, if you have the goal of just making money, that’s not good enough. And then to just be comfortable with doing it until it eventually succeeds.

I take a stab at it this way: if your mandate in your life is to just build your personal brand, you will fail. That’s not how it works. You have to be transparent and honest about something you know a lot about, or at least feel very passionate about. People feel that connection, and if they connect because they believe you, and you’re honest, it will work. And I'll tell you something: you should understand people smell [ __ ] a mile away. It's true, real fast. If you just can't do it without bullshitting them, you are never gonna get anywhere. So try and be honest and see if you can actually play it out that way. Not everybody can do it; this guy built a huge brand. My son is a massive fan of his because he said, “Dad, that guy just tells the truth wherever he goes.” That’s it! That's why he’s a rock star.

So if I were to summarize what the MKBHD brand is, it’s kind of in the name. MKB stands for my initials, and HD stands for high definition. But what that really sort of means is it’s a high-quality look at technology, and it's an honest look. Like you mentioned, I tell the truth, and that’s kind of the whole point. So if you're trying to figure out if something’s worth buying, I’m gonna use it and tell you if it is worth buying or if it’s not, and you’re gonna get the cold hard truth in a quality, entertaining, informative way.

Let me ask you a question. Sure. Remember Walter Mossberg? Yeah, yeah. One of the things he did right — he was your predecessor in some ways. No brand could ever convince him to become a spokesperson for them if he didn't use it. But he didn't like it; he didn't believe in it, right? You’re kind of the same way. I bet all kinds of companies, particularly consumer electronics, want you to give the endorsement to them. Yeah, and you have to fight that back with a stick. Yeah. How do you get away with that?

Well, I mean, it sort of was built up that way. I was doing this before it was ever a business. So companies would come along and offer money, like you said, to be a spokesperson, and the obvious answer was no because I didn't use it, and I didn't really feel passionately about it, and it didn’t matter. Now that it is a business, you would think it would be, like, more tempting to deviate from that path. But it’s sort of so ingrained now that I continue to make the choice of only working with companies and products that I actually care about. It just feels natural.

So that justifies it. Are you okay being critical, too? Oh, absolutely! That’s actually usually more helpful than praise. You know, you see praise for good products all the time, “I love this thing, it’s so great, it’s so fast, it makes my life easy.” But the criticism of the bad things is what helps them make their next version or their software update better. So I find oftentimes the criticism is actually more valuable than the praise.

I was sitting with a bunch of engineers at work on the battery opposite Tesla last week, and I said I was going to be doing this with you. They went out of their minds. They said, “Look, that guy is the straight dope. He just calls it the way it is, and we love that!” Yes, that is your brand. Yeah, the no [ __ ] aspect.

Absolutely! Fairly recently, you’ve had bigger companies invite me behind the curtain, behind the scenes, to talk with engineers and executives and even high public-facing people out there. To an extent, there’s a lot of trust involved in that. Like you said, there’s a risk in me. You know, does it change there when you’re sitting there realizing you’re on the other side of the curtain now? Does that change the way you ask a question? Does it make you force yourself to edit yourself?

No, so I kind of put myself in the shoes of who’s going to end up watching this, which is what I want to know. What I wanted is, and that's what I want to ask. I want to feel like I can deliver something because of my access that ordinarily, I wouldn't. Did they lay down any ground rules on you?

It would depend on who the interview is with. I’ve actually found tech to be some of the least restrictive. Just because I spoke with, you know, like a real A-lister, Will Smith, for example, and they’re working with, like, Disney and Paramount, and they’re trying to focus the questions on a certain thing. But a lot of these tech guys just sort of like talking tech, so it’s never really been a problem.

So you don’t have the PR people squeezing your head to keep promoting something? Not yet! That’s a beautiful thing.

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The Mr. Wonderful brand is simply by telling the truth. I take a lot of heat for telling the truth, particularly entrepreneurs who don’t want to hear their ideas — no merit; it is bankrupt. But the truth is the market’s gonna bite their hiney anyways. So if you can’t get past me, the market’s gonna eat you alive anyway. And I really feel that telling the truth helps people. It doesn’t mean they love you, but in the long run, it helps them. And so I’m not the mean shark; I’m the shark that tells the truth. Get off my back.

Stop bugging me! I got to get you in to watch, man. Like, that's... you know, well, I'm gonna ask you about my watch. That’s a piece of consumer electronics. It absolutely is! And you know, again, because I’m Mr. Wonderful, I want to tell you the truth: when you walk in a room with that on your wrist, you’re telling everybody, “I’m 20% off retail.”

You want to get a watch that talks about you as, you know, it’s a style thing. Know what I’m saying? Fred, I wouldn’t be caught dead with that on my wrist.

So here’s how I see it, okay? Because I kind of see parallels in the car industry. Anyway, you know, an investment watch versus a utility watch. Yes. So when I’m walking down the street and I get a notification on my phone, and this shows up, and I can just dismiss it real quick, right? Well, someone calls me, and I don’t have to take my phone out of my pocket. I’m just hanging onto the subway with one hand, and I can take the call real quick and then end it. That is some of the things that I value in a utility watch.

Where if I was just buying a fashion piece or an investment watch, or I have different goals, whether I wanted to appreciate in value or I want to look better, this is not what I would choose.

So what would be cool for you would be to have a watch that speaks to you from a style perspective or an investment perspective and the electronics utility.

Right? You know, the other day I looked, I was looking at this watch, and a woman beside me who I didn’t know said, “What time is it?” I said, “I have no idea.” She said, “You just looked at your watch.” I said, “That is nothing — at the time. I’m appreciating the art, the mastery of making this piece, which is one of ten in the world. It just brings a tear to my eye, and I love to look at it.” Yeah, I have no idea what time it is. I don’t care!

Yeah, yeah! That’s what a watch is about. Holy! And you see the same thing in cars too, right? Sure. Someone will just love and appreciate a car sitting in their garage beautifully. I might not drive this thing but once a year, but I can look at it and admire it for the mechanical art that it is.

Or I can buy a borderline piece of tech, an electric car at Tesla, and it’s just getting me from point A to point B over and over and over, and I’m saving money because I don’t buy gas, and it gives all these other values to it.

Well, maybe it’s because you’re a young guy, but at some point you want to appreciate the art, the mastery of a man spending a thousand hours to make something that has no reason to exist other than it’s a piece of art.

Because that watch, yeah, it tells the time a lot better than this piece of art, right? But this thing costs four thousand times what that does, and I appreciate what this person did with his life to make this thing.

What is this watch, and should I get it, or is that not the appropriate?

Well, this is an F.P. Journe Centagraph, of which there are only ten on earth. It sounds like I can’t afford that. This is number six. I’ll tell you what it costs; it’s about eighty thousand dollars.

But it’s not about the money; it’s about that the F.P. Journe, who was actually Picasso alive, if you could buy a Picasso from Picasso in the South of France, walk into a studio and say, “I really love that, I’m gonna buy it from you, and I know who you are,” that would be really what’s happening here with an F.P. Journe, right?

So when a man only makes ten watches, he’s really gutting his soul for you because he’s not doing it for the money.

That’s like the McLaren GTR, like a special edition that exists in the world. Exam this; they can only make so many before that. Does that sing to you? Would you like to own one of those cars?

You’re a car guy.

I’d say I’m more of a car guy than a watch guy, and I can make those parallels. I appreciate the mastery of the mechanical design of a watch in the same way. But let’s say I want to get a watch, and I can’t go headfirst into the McLaren GT of watches. Where should I start?

The watch that I think would be perfect for you as a starter watch would probably be the Patek Philippe 5711 Nautilus. It is the most pursued watch on earth today. It’s steel with a blue face.

Yeah, but it is a beautiful mastery of what Patek Philippe is all about. That’s my face; it’s like copying some of that.

Yeah, I know, but the point is when you walk in a room with that, people that love watches know right away that you respect the mastery of making something like that. And also, that you would have one says Patek really digs you.

Okay, yes, there’s a thousand guys around the world that want one of those, but it’s difficult to actually get. I think I could help you out.

Okay, did you have to make that decision that I want to get there? All right, that might be something I can dip my feet into. Just, you know, I ever... The thing is, watch collecting, once you get that bug, is a horrible disease. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody! You get your purse protecting say, “Wow, I really loved in the waist. This is working with me in my style statement, and I want more.”

Then, in your case, you stepped it up. You call cars utilities, and yet you stepped up as one of the first guys to buy the Cybertruck, which I thought was a crazy chicken design when I saw it! Not alone!

Yeah, but I know I went too. Why didn't you decide to buy? Curious why you say you want one too. Because this is something that grew on you with a lot of other people. But when you first saw it?

When I first saw it, okay, I first saw... and I'm sure you wouldn't give a damn what you thought, I said, “I don’t need that!” Like, I went into the event knowing we’re gonna see a pickup truck, and I walked in saying we’re gonna see a pickup truck, and I’m not gonna get it because I don’t need a pickup truck.

Right? It rolls out on stage; it seems wild. The atmosphere in the room changes; everyone has the same pulled-back reaction, like, “What are we really looking at right now? Is this real?” The presentation goes on, and I’m eventually convinced that it’s real. He goes through its merits and typically Elon style, and even after all that, I was not convinced I wanted one.

But then, in Tesla fashion, the test drive was actually the first—and you’re one of the guys that got to test-drive it! I was the first one to get a test ride! I mean, that says it all!

And so that was the beginning of my switching over. This has happened to me in Teslas before, but you know it’s roomy inside. You’re not thinking about the design anymore; you’re thinking about how fast this thing is, how quiet the thing is. And what finally rolled me over into purchasing or reserving, yeah, as you’d say, is we’re actually shooting a bunch of car videos for our tech channel now, and we would have at some point in the next year or two anyway needed to get another utility vehicle to shoot the car video for just a street of cars to put all the stuff in—the mean and rest, a second vehicle to do that.

You have those rolling shots and all sorts of things; we thought about a minivan because you can hang out the side, or maybe a pickup truck, which we have used because you can hang out the back of the bed. It turned out this Cybertruck is sort of the best version of all of these things.

How are you gonna actually open the back of the Cybertruck to be able to shoot clean out of the back? The same way we did when we did it out of a F-150 or whatever it was in West Palm Beach. You can take the back off; you can either take the back off or put it halfway down and tie it to the sides so that you can use it as sort of a bed for holding the stabilizer.

It’s also silent, so you can mic up whatever. Beautiful! Now, to take any flat because it's almost like a Humvee, you know? It’s like a really big, honking military-sized monster.

Yes, the design is definitely still that hard-to-get-over hump for me and for many others. But you know they’re starting to drive it around a little bit in L.A. They’re getting eyes on it. It’s gonna be in tons of press in the next three years. By the time it comes out, I think it’s gonna grow on people.

And it’s going well! Me, I want that black stealth carbon look, Sam. That’s the one!

Yeah, and I want that to drive up and down to our cottage with the larger battery full of full of crap. And I don’t want to have to charge it at the top, and I want to be able to come back down, right?

Looks like 350 miles, maybe, right? Yeah, so the triple motor and the biggest battery of 500 miles. Yeah, well, that’s what I’m gonna be getting.

Yeah, I mean, look, it’s not a pickup truck; it’s some kind of other thing, but it’s grown on me. And you know that Elon guy? Kind of steps ahead. He kind of reminds me of Steve Jobs in a way. I used to work for Steve in educational software, and I’d always say to him, “Steve, what about the research?” He said, “Screw the research! People don’t know what they want until I tell them.” And I said, “You arrogant prick! How can you say that?” And he was 100% right!

Yeah, that was it! Yeah, he was not an easy guy to work for. I gotta tell you, every time I get to ask someone about working with Steve, it’s a fascinating story!

So, and I’m trying to be nice.

Yeah, hey, Mr. Wonderful! My name is Kendall. I just wanted to ask you, what is your approach to breaking down doors of opportunity? I’m in the music business, and I sing, I write, I do the whole thing, but obviously struggling to break through. So I'm down for the fight. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make me and my business successful. So I just wanted to know, what do you think is too far to go for yourself in breaking down this barrier, and what do you think isn’t enough?

All right, Kendall, great question! When I think of my own last ten years, you know, specifically in tech and in media, the best procedure for me has always been to make the best possible thing and then let the craft speak for itself. And the word “organic” comes to mind specifically as a way of letting things build and grow.

So I was always sort of against, like, paying for ads on videos and things like, you know, doing extra work to sort of promote this video. I would almost be happier if not enough people watched it, but the people that watched it really liked it rather than the opposite, which was a ton of people watched it, but the video wasn’t good enough, and it wasn’t really as effective. So I always biased towards putting — pouring all the effort into the craft itself, the production value, the production, the value of the content, all of that, and then letting the rest sort of organically grow from that.

Okay, I’ll take a crack at it a little differently. You want to advance; you’re feeling you’re getting held back when you meet with people that can help you grow your career or get your objective done or help you with your mandate. Think about it this way because this is advice I give to everybody that’s trying to get a job or move up or even advance their own business.

If you had 15 minutes with somebody you wanted to work with and you talked about yourself for those 15 minutes, that’s a mistake. What you should be talking about is how you can solve problems for them. All the hires in my companies and the people I hire within my own venture capital firm and private equity firm are people that came to me with really short resumes, basically one line saying, “I need to meet you because I’m gonna solve some big problems for you and help you build your business a lot faster.” That’s it! I’m interested! I want to hear what you have to say. I don’t care where you went to high school, what the name of your dog was; I couldn’t care less!

But if you’ve done some work and you could tell me how you can advance what I’m trying to do, you’re hired, Kendall. And then I'll give you six months to go prove it.

Do that all the time, and it really works. Think about that. Think about talking to people about how you can affect their outcome, and you will be a very, very popular woman.

Hey, Kevin! I’ve heard some of the pessimists about the stock market recently point to the activity going on in the repo market as a sign of an impending economic disaster. I was wondering if you could explain why the banks are doing this and if it’s any cause for concern.

Thanks! So, Mark, you know the repo market is about liquidity, and it’s a technical term for a lot of people that don’t understand it, but here in New York, it’s very important. The reason people have been a little nervous about it of late is there are less and fewer banks now as a result of what’s happened in the market. So repo doesn’t matter; it’s about liquidity of cash basically.

But what really drives the market long-term is economic activity. We’re gonna have 2% GDP growth next year, most likely, maybe 2.1. The domestic economy is on fire! Technology is the most advanced of all those sectors; it has been phenomenally successful. Why? Because it adds productivity to the other 10 sectors. We have 11 sectors in the economy; tech is one of them.

But technology drives productivity in every sector. And so what has made America work so well is the fact that we advanced so many great technologies. A question mark is emerging though, because China is graduating 250,000 engineers a year, and they’re not making shitty little pencils anymore. These guys are really advancing in some areas that we’re falling behind in: 5G, AI, facial recognition— all kinds of things that they’re challenging us on, so it’s a new global economy.

And I’d argue to you maybe you want to invest globally. I do; I don’t just own the Fang stocks. I own 56 international internet giants because I don’t know who’s gonna win. What do you think?

Yeah, I can’t speak to any of the technicalities of it, but what I will say is, you know, in the sort of... when I think about it in tech, the decision about whether to buy something now or to wait because something better seems to be on the horizon—that's kind of always going to be the case, especially in tech.

So, you know, a new phone comes out, three or four new phones are all sitting there in front of you, and you’re thinking, “Well, one of these seems to be the best, but should I wait for the next generation or this in coming on the horizon better opportunity?” That will always be the case, and so if you just buy the best of what’s available to you now and make the best of it until that next opportunity, then that’s just as good as you can do, so that’s my tech version of that.

That’s been that way; you will always own something.

Yeah, so one of the most popular questions I hear, especially in smartphones, is, are these companies holding back features or advancements in their products in order to intentionally make the next version better? So they can hold back that one little thing they know in their back pocket for next year and then sell that next year. And then the next one, they hold back something else. Is that intentional? Is that real?

And I don’t think that that’s real, and it’s really easy to think it is, but here’s why: you want to win now, and that will build up your potential for winning more in the future. So why would you hold back your current product in any way if you essentially will have all your competitors do that thing that you’re not doing, and then you can move forward in the future, and that’s already your disadvantage?

There are very unique cases of companies like Apple or Google, where they’re in such a position where they can make some stranger decisions and not necessarily have to fall in line with the competition. But the competition is chomping at the bit so hard and doing everything they possibly can every year, so there’s no reason if you’re part of that competition not to do that.

So at the end of the day, I don’t think most companies are holding back features in the tech world in their back pocket because tech moves fast.

Well, let me ask you a specific question about exactly that. It seemed to me last year, and even for the last 18 months, that the Apple camera was substandard or not as good as what was on a Samsung. And as a result, I bought both because when I was taking photographs, particularly with the wide-angle, um, last year, Samsung 10, it was a spectacular image that I couldn’t get on the Apple phone!

They didn't seem to care; they stepped up with the third lens now, and I would say they’re comparable, but that was a lag of a whole generation of phones. So Apple, in particular, has to do or very frequently will do something that you might call a second mover advantage, where they’ll sit back for one year and let these newer features — an under-display fingerprint reader, these new ultra-wide cameras, and these subtle new technologies — bubble up and see which ones hook.

And they’re such a massive company with such a massive... they’re almost like the odd one out in their strategy that they can wait that one year, and then when it turns out, look, every single other phone out there is doing ultra-wide-angle camera and they all love it, then they can come in the next year and do it!

Well, so that’s what happened. So that’s typically what happens with Apple, and with the bigger features where they’re sort of driving, they’re our own direction, like the headphone jack, moving that out, doing wireless audio. They can be pioneers with things like that. But really pushed me off, like, gosh, they’re not alone at all on that.

But yeah, when you look at Apple, you sort of have to take that second thought about where they are in the market because they can wait a little bit on those smaller features, but generally, they want to give people the best product they can to sell as many as possible.

So hey, thanks for watching, everybody, and we'll catch you in the next one!

AC! I mean, we would just say, in fact, you know, chopping it up, reminiscing about the good old days or not... it tracking my roots, where I came from.

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But like I say always, city, it’s not about the destination. Listen, this was a fantastic Ask Mr. Wonderful. They keep getting better. That’s why I love doing this. This question is Connie, the dangling carrot.

It hangs from the river, your dreams in the past. Ain’t no where! Did you backseat drivers got nothing but Seuss’s shotgun riders? To buy and say, “Y’all, Iose, I should get a hey forever, and I'm too tired, but I'm never giving up.”

This one kind of...

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