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Tag: kevin o'leary

  • Kevin O’Leary Was Proud to Play a “Real Asshole” in ‘Marty Supreme’

    “We’re looking for a real asshole, and you’re it.” That’s how director Josh Safdie tried to convince Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame to play an intense ink-pen tycoon in Safdie’s 1950s-set sports dramedy Marty Supreme. O’Leary, the entrepreneur and investor known as “Mr. Wonderful,” was unfazed. He had heard the same thing 17 years earlier, when Mark Burnett’s production company recruited him for the American version of a Japanese reality TV show.

    “I say this asshole thing’s starting to work for me,” O’Leary jokes about making his acting debut opposite Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow. “I am not an asshole. I just tell the truth, and some people don’t like it. I think maybe I’m going to become the honorary chairman of all assholes everywhere after this. And it’s a job I’m happy to take.”

    Marty Supreme is filled with dynamic visuals, 1980s synth-pop needle drops, and other arresting non-actors, including Isaac Mizrahi, Abel Ferrara, and John Catsimatidis. But O’Leary steals most of his scenes as Milton Rockwell, a no-nonsense New York multimillionaire in a loveless marriage to trophy wife Kay Stone (Paltrow), a former Hollywood star. Chalamet’s pushy Lower East Side ping-pong prodigy Marty Mauser—who is still living with his Jewish hypochondriac mother (Fran Drescher), schtupping his married ex-girlfriend (Odessa A’Zion), and grifting with his pal (Tyler Okonma, a.k.a. Tyler, The Creator)—sees the patrician couple as a means to realizing his dream of becoming the world tennis-table champion.

    Milton is taken with Marty’s talent, but he’s no easy mark. Marty’s a hustler with chutzpah; when talking about an opponent who’s a Holocaust survivor, he boasts to a journalist, “I’m gonna do to Kletzski what Auschwitz couldn’t.” Yet Milton tells Marty that he can “smell bullshit from a mile away.” The CEO wants Marty to throw a series of company-sponsored exhibition matches against his deft rival, Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi, the real-life winner of the Japanese National Deaf Table Tennis Championships), in Japan. But the ambitious competitor just can’t agree to the deal.

    “What I love about this film is it’s a chronicle of the birth of the American dream right after the optimism of the Second World War,” O’Leary tells me. “Yes, it’s got a crazy, kinetic roller-coaster [energy]. But Marty’s like every Shark Tank hustler.”

    Lisa Liebman

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  • Kevin O’Leary: I Got an MBA Instead of Following My Passion | Entrepreneur

    Kevin O’Leary: I Got an MBA Instead of Following My Passion | Entrepreneur

    Kevin O’Leary once had a photography lab in his basement.

    As a teenager, he did all he could to follow his dreams of becoming a photographer. There was one issue — his father didn’t approve.

    “He said you’re not good enough and you’ll starve to death,” O’Leary said in a video posted to X. “He said you should go to college and get a degree and I went on to do an MBA which ended up being a very important tool for me later.”

    Related: Kevin O’Leary Says This Is the One Skill He Looks For in a Leader — But It’s ‘Almost Impossible to Find’

    O’Leary has previously explained why he thinks an MBA, which can cost $231,420 on average for a top 10 program in the U.S., was worth it.

    In a 2021 Facebook post, he wrote that the degree gave him “a head start” and taught him “discipline,” turning him from a 20-something with poor study habits to someone who knew how to make money, defend his ideas, and focus on his strengths.

    O’Leary graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1980, which now costs $83,250 per year for domestic students.

    Photography still played a key role in his life: After graduating, the first company he started, Special Event Television, was a production company focused on sports entertainment.

    Related: Kevin O’Leary Is Launching a New Agency With the Founder of Shazam

    “It was my attempt to get back to the thing I loved, which was photography and production, and make money doing it,” O’Leary said in the X video. “There was that science and that art coming together in my life.”

    O’Leary sold the company and then used the proceeds to start SoftKey, which sold education and entertainment software, in 1986. He and his two business partners sold SoftKey to Mattel in 1999 for $4.2 billion.

    Looking back, he has no regrets.

    “All of that stuff made me what I am today, the good, the bad, and the ugly,” O’Leary said in the video. “And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

    Related: Kevin O’Leary Says ‘Right to Disconnect’ Laws Are ‘Crazy’

    Sherin Shibu

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  • Kevin O’Leary: This Is What I Do When Family Asks for Money | Entrepreneur

    Kevin O’Leary: This Is What I Do When Family Asks for Money | Entrepreneur

    This article was originally published on Business Insider.

    This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kevin O’Leary. It has been edited for length and clarity.

    I’ve been asked countless times about what to do when family members come looking for money. It’s a very complex issue because you don’t want to disvalue your brother, sister, or cousin.

    But when it comes to mixing family and money, it’s often a bad outcome. My extended family comes to me for money all the time. Through much trial and error, I’ve developed a very simple strategy. Ultimately, it’s the only way I would recommend approaching this situation — it’s really the only way to do it.

    I only gift and never loan

    I don’t want to loan anybody money. I don’t want anyone to owe me or to drive a wedge in my family. So, instead, I’ll agree to a one-time gift.

    For example, if a family member asks for $150,000 to start a restaurant, I’ll give them a $50,000 gift that I never want back.

    I look them in the eye or give them a handshake to solidify a contract between us that I’m giving this money and that they will never, ever ask for more — they can never come back looking for more money ever again. I also make them promise to never talk about the gift again.

    I do this because expecting a family member to pay you back is a real issue. If they’re already in a bad place, why would loaning them money help them if next week you expect back payments? That’s just not the case, and it’s almost never the case.

    Instead, call it what it is — a gift. I’m happy to give that gift. I feel good about it, and I understand I’m never going to get it back, and I never intended to. Make it a generous one and make it the last time.

    This approach has caused some problems. But if the family member tries to ask again, I remind them of our contract. Frankly, it’s still a better outcome than any other I know. Here are four reasons this is the best way to handle money and family.

    1. Money breaks up families

    Money issues and financial stress are common reasons marriages break up. The power of money needs to be respected. My extended family keeps getting bigger and bigger, and the more money you have, the more problems you have — that’s the bottom line.

    Loaning money to each other is not what keeps families together.

    2. You can’t make everyone happy

    If you try to take care of everyone in your circle, it only becomes ever-expanding. It’s impossible to take care of that many people, and it will generate a lot of friction and negative feelings.

    So stop trying. You can’t do it. It’s not how life works.

    3. Entitlement is a disease

    Something I learned from my mother decades ago is that entitlement is a curse.

    If you guarantee someone that they never have to take risks, they never do. They never do anything because they don’t have to. They take the path of least resistance to a life of mediocrity. And I really think that’s a horrible outcome for any human being. So I don’t want to hand loans to the people I love.

    4. I’ve earned my freedom

    I’m very fortunate, and I’ve said this so many times — and I believe it today more than ever: The reason you pursue entrepreneurship is not for the greed of money. It has nothing to do with it. It’s the pursuit of personal freedom. And that’s why it’s so valuable that you sacrifice so much in your early years to build freedom in your later years.

    The whole idea is that you could spend your time doing whatever you wish because you’ve earned that freedom. And that’s certainly how I live my life today.

    I look at every 30-minute block of every day. And if I don’t want to do it, I simply don’t do it because I don’t have to. I want to do meaningful things that mean something to me and have an impact on others.

    But if it’s a waste of my time, I don’t waste it. Time is my most valuable asset, and it just becomes more precious every day. Don’t listen to the noise competing for your energy and time.

    I’ve seen the benefits of this approach in my own children

    My children have been very successful in their careers because they realized there’s no free lunch. They decided on their own to pursue careers because they were not entitled.

    I stand by my approach and really don’t think there’s a better way out there.

    Kevin O'Leary, as told to Jenna Gyimesi

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  • Conflict Resolution: 4 Principles Behind Constructive and Peaceful Negotiation

    Conflict Resolution: 4 Principles Behind Constructive and Peaceful Negotiation


    In a world filled with conflict and hostility, one of the most important skills we can learn in life is conflict resolution and our ability to negotiate peacefully and effectively.


    This content is for Monthly, Yearly, and Lifetime members only.
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    Steven Handel

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  • ‘Things are going to break’: Kevin O’Leary predicts Fed hikes will lead to more U.S. regional bank failures

    ‘Things are going to break’: Kevin O’Leary predicts Fed hikes will lead to more U.S. regional bank failures

    “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary predicts the ongoing cycle of U.S. Federal Reserve rate hikes could lead to more regional U.S. bank failures.

    Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is not yet fully confident that inflation is defeated even though recent headline reads show that price increases have cooled significantly.

    The consumer price index rose 3% from a year ago in June — the lowest level since March 2021. But Powell said the Fed would need to “hold policy at a restrictive level for some time” and be prepared to raise rates further, given that core inflation is still above 3% — higher than its 2% annual target.

    “You keep squeezing the toothpaste tube, you keep rolling it up, you keep raising rates, and you know things are going to break, you just don’t know when and where,” O’Leary, who runs his own early stage venture capital firm, O’Leary Ventures, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” early Thursday after the Fed’s latest rate hike announcement.

    “I am just predicting — and I am very cautious on this — it will break down in the regional banks, which supports 60% of the economy,” he said, adding that the rapid rise in the cost of capital is “killing them on their real estate loans.”

    “You keep squeezing the toothpaste tube, you keep rolling it up, you keep raising rates, and you know things are going to break, you just don’t know when and where,” Kevin O’Leary said.

    Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    Traders react as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is seen delivering remarks on a screen, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, March 22, 2023.

    15 years of low interest rates reshaped the U.S. economy. Here’s what’s changing as rates stay higher for longer

    “Terminal rate, where the Fed stops, could be 6.25, could be 6.50,” O’Leary said. “So you’ve really got to think about this if you think about the long term and the short-term effect.”

    That’s higher than the Fed’s median end-2023 forecast for its funds rate, which stands at 5.6% as of the June meeting. It is also higher than the most hawkish prediction of 6.1%, according to the Fed’s latest summary of economic projections issued in June.

    “We’ve started to see the cracks, the Titanic has not [sunk],” O’Leary said.

    Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”

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  • Kevin O’Leary says he’ll likely invest in ChatGPT maker OpenAI—and likens its disruptive power to Amazon’s 

    Kevin O’Leary says he’ll likely invest in ChatGPT maker OpenAI—and likens its disruptive power to Amazon’s 

    Kevin O’Leary remembers what a disruptive force Amazon was in the early 2000s. Lucky for him, he was an early investor in the company. Now, he sees similar disruption occurring in the search business courtesy artificial intelligence and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. 

    “ChatGPT certainly is a threat to Google, and Google must know that,” the Shark Tank star told Insider in an interview published this week. About half of his own search queries, he added, are now done via ChatGPT. The “loser is Google,” he said, adding, “the A.I. search wars on are.”

    O’Leary indicated he’s now mulling an opportunity to be an early investor in OpenAI, adding he’s “fortunate to be offered a piece of it.” He considers the loss-making venture’s valuation “very, very extreme”—it’s reportedly near the $30 billion mark—given how new the technology is, but he said a deal would likely close in the near future.

    If he does invest, he told Insider, it’ll be a modest bet: “Either it’ll have a good outcome or it won’t, but I won’t take down the ship or sell the farm for it. I know there’s going to be a lot of competition and a lot of disruption, but I certainly like always to have a piece of the first mover.”

    He favors first movers, he added, because they have a marketing advantage. 

    OpenAI itself has been stunned by the amount of attention ChatGPT has generated.

    “We weren’t anticipating this level of excitement from putting our child in the world,” OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said this month in a Time interview. “We, in fact, even had some trepidation about putting it out there.”

    But as angel investor Elad Gil noted last month, the rapid uptake of ChatGPT despite it being down much of the time is a good sign of product-market fit. The Google alum added that when an idea works, it tends to work very quickly, something that he’s seen repeatedly with companies he’s worked at and invested in over the years. (Gil was an early investor in Airbnb, Instacart, and Square.)

    Of course, OpenAI currently faces heavy losses, not to mention enormous computing costs from all the ChatGPT users it didn’t expect. Microsoft’s large investments should help with that. And this week, the tech giant unveiled an update to its Bing search engine that incorporates ChatGPT technology.

    Earlier this month, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Plus, a $20 monthly subscription that provides faster response times and better access to the chatbot when it’s otherwise down due to traffic.

    After noting the ChatGPT threat to Google, O’Leary told Insider, “The market hasn’t really punished Google stock for this. But a few quarters from now, if ChatGPT really starts to bring in significant subscriber fees, then we’ll see what happens.”

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    Steve Mollman

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