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getreadytosmash · 7 years

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Chapter 11

A-Bomb’s POV

We all stared at her for a long while not knowing what to say.

“Hey Hulk. What did you have to save Sammy from?” asked Carla.

“Oh! Yeah…right. I had to get you both out of a swimming pool because of a radio that fell in.”

Wait. That sounds a little too familiar.

“A-Bomb!” called Carla.

“Uh, yes ma'am?”

“You a fan of my movies right? I saw how you have designs that was based off of some of my films.”

“Yeah, but how did you know?”

“Well I kinda watch your show to know when it was time to come. Anyway, back to the question. There’s no time to talk about everything else.”

“Okay? I watched a lot of your films since they are so amazing and you are my favorite director.”

“Perfect. And I see that you are watching my ‘Crystal Aquarium’ film,” Hulk, describe what type of floaties we were on and what caused the radio to cause,” ordered Carla while pointing a stuff snake at him with the name Mattie on it.

“Sure,” Hulk said uncertainty, not knowing the purpose.

“You were in a turtle floatie and Sammy was in a whale floatie. The radio fell because of a cat that was there.”

“Alright A-Bomb. Here’s the last thing I have for you. It will all come together for you and tell everyone else the meaning of this,” proclaimed Carla.

Carla went up to me and stood in front of me and simply said, “the S Theory.”

Oh. Ohhh. OHHHHHH! OH MY FUCKING GOD!

“No! You- It- it can’t be! Well. Uhhhh,” I stuttered like an idiot in front of Carla.

“Jones! What is it? What does it all mean?” demanded Red.

I couldn’t believe this. This is too much for me. Where do I even start? I looked at the TV and saw the movie. I went to pick up the remote and fast forward to a particular scene that Hulk will find out familiar.

“Okay. Let’s start from here.”

“Hold up. Why-”

“Let me explain Hulk. The climax of the movie is that the crew had to get all the fish out of the tank to another one correct? Well the last mermaids that were left was….Silas, a shark mermaid and Donna, who was a turtle mermaid. One of the feeders named Cordelia and a scientists named Mila tried to get them out of the tank. The bad guy, Mr. Katz, tried to drop this huge machine that will shock everyone in the water. The person who saves them was a visitor named Henry who saves everyone with a crane and carried everyone to safety. The movie was based off of that moment that Hulk was in,” I explain.

“However, there is a certain theory that everyone is talking about. The S Theory. For some reason in every movie there is a character that plays a huge part in it, starts with the letter S. As we see here this one is Silas. Then others like in EyeCatch that has Silvester, Long Hair that has Sean, and others too. Coat Black didn’t had one because it was a prequel to EyeCatch that was an organization that deals with weapons and and Coat Black that deals with stolen artifacts like paintings and selling them. Coat Black was EyeCatch’s backup if something goes wrong and that is why we saw Silvester in the end of Black Coat. Only in Samantha is where that main character has the letter S AND was based off of a true story and involve Carla but names and genders were change. The theory is that every person with the letter S is the same person in different universes because of the S and the same personality they all have that they were based off of someone. So if the theory is right then the person she based it off of was Sammy.”

Jesus Christ that was long. I don’t know if the others got it. Carla seems happy and looks very proud of herself that I understood it.

“That must mean that you were Cordelia,” thought Jen.

“And Dawn! That must have been Donna. Dawn is Sammy’s cousin,” Hulk explain.

“But what about Mila?” wondered Red.

“Mila was Sam and my kindergarten teacher and Sam did have a shark plushie named Millie after her,” said Carla.

“And Henry must be Hulk,” said Jen.

“Yup, you guys got it,” agreed Carla.

“Carla tell Hulk who Sam is?” asked Skaar.

“…Nope!”

“What!” shouted everyone in union.

“I only came here because Sam told me to after he left and never came back. All he said was that he will find me somehow but made me make a promise to him that I will come when Hulk was going to the past. I will refuse to give out Sam’s whereabouts so you are going to have to figure it out yourself. Every time you go to the past, I will tell you what happened later or any other information. Got it?”

Aww! The suspense of Sam’s or Sammy’s or whatever his name is identity. Well I least I can confirm the theory and I can ask a lot of questions about her movies. I feel like I have to binge watch all her movies just in case Hulk goes back.

“By the way, what ever happened to Mattie?” asked Hulk.

“Well, it turns out she wasn’t exactly a real snake and she actually escape from the zoo again at the same time Sam disappeared. Probably went looking for him. They never found her. It turns out she was human that was forced to transform into a snake by magic and couldn’t get back to normal. That explains her human personality.”

“Why Carla knows what happened to Mattie?” asked Skaar.

“Uhhh. I’m not telling. I already told too much anyway. It will ruin the fun and beside it Sam we want not Mattie,” declared Carla trying to hide her slip.

“You know what? Here have this stuff Mattie, I only bought it to scare Hulk. In surprised that they still sell these.”

Skaar took the snake and wrap it around his arm petting its head.

“Skaar likes Mattie.”

“Alright. Back to business,” said Red.

“Nope,” denied Carla.

“What do you mean no?”

“I have to go hide at a hotel and hope that no one saw me. You see how big my hair is? Do you know how hard it is to straighten it? Unless you don’t have another room.”

“You can stay here. Right Hulk?” I said. We have the answers right here and I’m not letting her identity be caught in public. If that happen, she’s going to have to go and people will ask why she’s with us.

“*sign* You can take my room, Carla” admitted Hulk. “I’ll see where I’m going to sleep at.”

“No that’s okay, I can get a-”

“My room! She can go to my room, since we are both the only girls here,” exclaimed Jen with the same idea of not letting her go.

Carla smiled really big. Oh Jen. You have no idea what you did. Should I tell her? Nah.

“Perfect. I need to get my stuff. Can you help me, Skaar.”

“Skaar help!”

They both went to get her stuff and Red look at me.

“Jones, stop trying to flirt with Albizu.”

“I’m no trying to flirt with her and I can’t. I’m trying to make her stay so we can have answers.”

“Wait, what do you mean you can’t?” asked Jen.

To say or not to say? That is the question. Imma say it.

“Well, it’s really hard to flirt with someone who is a lesbian. And jokes on you Jen and think she’s going to be after you.”

Red started to laugh while Jen didn’t know what to say. She was thinking about what she offered and blushed.

Carla and Skaar came back with a suitcase, a large bag, and…a cage? Because of the large bag was really heavy, the cage are fell down and -OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT!

Something really huge and furry came out of it. Me and Jen both screamed at it as came toward us and went into the vents.

“Was that a rat?” asked Jen.

“No, I think it was a pony,” replied Red.

“Oh no! Icarus!” Carla went after the rat and followed the sounds of where the rat was walking in the vents.

“Rick, go follow her,” ordered Hulk.

“Me! Did you see how big that thing is?”

“Okay then, why don’t we get Walters to go get it,” suggest Red with a smirk.

“Oh hell no! I’m not getting that! Make Skaar get it!”

“Skaar carries bag and can’t go.”

“For fuck sake. I’m going,” said Red. “I’m going to the camera room first to look for her first. Get the room ready. And no flirting with the director.”

“I’m not flirting with her-” I started but was cut off.

“I’m not talking about you Jones.”

…oh.

“Hey!” yelled Jen after she realized who he was referring to.

Red laughed as the went to the camera room.

Carla’s POV

I ran all over the place to get Icarus, Sam’s pet rat, but she won’t stop running. Suddenly her took a left turn that lead to a closed door. Since I watched the show before I opened it and saw Icarus running into a glass case and was trying to get in.

“Icarus! Don’t run away from me like that!”

I noticed how hard it was struggling to get out of my arms and wanted to get into the glass case.

I looked up and almost cried. I held Icarus tighter as I saw who was watching me. Sam was on the other side of the glass.

We stared at each other. I can see tears almost coming out of his eyes. I want to say so many things to him….but I can’t. There are cameras here and I’m not giving Sam away.

The door opened and Red Hulk came in.

“I see that you met the Leader. Don’t worry, he’s not coming out of there anytime soon,” he assured me.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. Icarus would go to….random strangers if they smell like….anyone familiar to her,” I lied. Great fucking Carla. That’s the best lie I can give.

“If I was that rat, I would have run the opposite direction from him,” joked Red.

God I wanted to punch him.

“So is the room ready?”

“Yep. Follow me, I’ll show you where it is.”

I went up and followed him through the door and looked at Sammy one last time. Red was already ahead of me and I swore I heard him sobbing from the other side.

Jen took me to her room and made another bed for her on the floor. She left me alone so I can get comfortable with the room. As soon as she left, I cried.

??????’s POV

My phone was buzzing. How strange. I never had text messages for a long time. How annoying but I went to pick it up anyway.

Unknown: Shorts. Is that you?

Agent Rag Doll: Who’s asking. Get lost if you know what’s good for you. I don’t want to get into any problems. That’s too much trouble.

Unknown: I’ll tell you later, but I have something that might interest you.

Agent Rag Doll: How did you get into S.H.E.I.D’s contacts?

Unknown: Enn…it’s about Samuel Sterns.

Agent Rag Doll: …

Agent Rag Doll: I’m listening.

\Holy Crap that was a lot! The movies are based off my imagination like different dimensions that I decided to put in there. Leave me and my naming skills alone :P I had these names for a long time. Oh yeah introducing person A. Hope you enjoy.\

(Oh boy that was emotional! I can't believe Carla and Leader got to see each other for only a few moments before Red ripped them apart 😢. I really love the names and the s theory, top notch fan theory there! And Skaar's showing an affection to Mattie, *wiggles eyebrows* wait till he sees the actual girl, cue heart eyes. And oh boy Jen, you've gotten yourself into a wild predicament and Red ain't helping one bit XD. And person A!!! I'm looking really forward to learning more about Rag Doll and their goal with Leader. Dang Samuel, bringing all the lovers and drama to the smashers, aren't you?)

#Marvel #Fanfic #The past that smashed #Skaar #A-bomb #She-hulk #Red #Hulk #Carla #Leader #awkward-snake-girl #Rag Doll #nice chapter #time for Leader to get some attention #from shield nonetheless #submission

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dwtscommissioner · 7 years

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DWTS: Season 25 Cast Announcement

It’s that time of year again!! The season 25 cast of DWTS was announced this morning on Good Morning America. Let me know who you’re pulling for, who you’ve never heard of and who you aren’t excited about!! (My thoughts are in italics.)

BARBARA CORCORAN (pro partner Keo Motsepe) - Barbara Corcoran has been an investor/Shark for the past nine seasons on Shark Tank. (Love Barbara on SharkTank! She’s a smart lady.)

DEBBIE GIBSON (pro partner Alan Bersten) - From singer, songwriter and musician to actress and dancer, Debbie Gibson embodies what it truly means to be an entertainer. (I loved Debbie when I was growing up! Excited to see what she brings to the ballroom!)

DEREK FISHER (pro partner Sharna Burgess) - In 1996, Derek Fisher was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers, with whom he won 5 NBA Championships. He is the all-time NBA record holder in playoff games played and served as president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). (I remember watching him play for the Lakers. I always love the athletes on the show.)

DREW SCOTT (pro partner Emma Slater) - Drew Scott and his twin brother, Jonathan, host multiple top-rated HGTV series, including the Emmy-nominated Property Brothers, Brother vs. Brother and Property Brothers at Home. (I’ve watched at least one of the brothers’ shows, but otherwise I don’t know a lot about him. I just hope Emma has a good season.)

FRANKIE MUNIZ (pro partner Witney Carson) - Frankie Muniz is an actor, musician, writer, producer, race car driver and band manager. He is best known for playing the title character in the FOX comedy Malcolm in the Middle, which earned him an Emmy nomination, two Golden Globe Award nods and The Hollywood Reporter's "Young Star Award." (I never watched Malcolm in the Middle, but I do know who Frankie is. It should be fun to see his journey on the show.)

JORDAN FISHER (pro partner Lindsay Arnold) – Jordan Fisher's take as Doody in FOX's Emmy-winning broadcast of Grease: LIVE earned him critical acclaim and was deemed the show's breakout star by MTV and People Magazine. That spring, he released his first single, "All About Us," which was the #2 most added song and a top 30 hit at pop radio. (I don’t know anything about Jordan. It’ll be fun to see his story with Lindsay who is always fantastic at bringing out the best in her partners.)

LINDSEY STIRLING (pro partner Mark Ballas) – Acclaimed violinist Lindsey Stirling used her classical violin training to leap through the music industry with almost 10 million YouTube subscribers, over 1.9 billion views on her YouTube channel, two Billboard Music Awards and sold out tours worldwide. (I don’t know anything about her other than Mark saying they were friends. I’m always curious when a YouTuber joins the show.)

NICK LACHEY (pro partner Peta Murgatroyd) – Nick Lachey, a multi-platinum recording artist, television personality and businessman, first rose to stardom as the front-man of the popular band 98 Degrees, selling over 10 million albums worldwide and charting several top-40 hits. In 2003 he launched a successful solo music career and segued into television when he starred on MTV's Newlyweds. (I was a 98 fan back in the day... I don’t know that Nick will do as well as Drew but let’s see. I personally would have preferred him with Emma, Sharna or Cheryl.)

NIKKI BELLA (pro partner Artem Chigvintsev) - Nikki Bella is a philanthropist, YouTuber, motivational speaker and the longest-reigning Divas Champion. She and her twin sister, Brie, stirred up the WWE, culminating with a Divas title reign apiece in 2011 and 2012. (I don’t know anything about Nikki, but I hope Artem has a good season.)

SASHA PIETERSE (pro partner Gleb Savchenko) - Sasha Pieterse is best known for her lead role on Freeform's Pretty Little Liars, which wrapped its seventh and final season earlier this year. Despite being only 12 when she was cast, she held her own as the youngest regular cast member. Sasha has also launched her singing career releasing four singles. (I watched most of Pretty Little Liars and I am actually excited to see her take on the ballroom.)

TERRELL OWENS (pro partner Cheryl Burke) - Terrell Owens is one of the most exciting and electrifying players to ever play pro football, with 1078 Receptions, 15,935 yards and 153 touchdowns during the span of his 15-year career. Terrell is also a respected and best-selling author, penning a children's book, Little T Learns to Share and a fitness book, T.O.'s Finding Fitness. (Terrell is someone you either love or hate... I love him. Great football player and a great sense of humor.)

VANESSA LACHEY (pro partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy) - As the winner of the 1998 Miss Teen USA pageant, Vanessa Lachey (then Minnillo) was awarded the title of Miss Congeniality 1998. She went on to serve as co-host for Total Request Live and MTV Hits as well as taking on many other hosting duties, including two seasons as the New York-based correspondent for Entertainment Tonight. (I remember Vanessa from her TRL days, she annoyed me then... let’s see how she is now.)

VICTORIA ARLEN (pro partner Valentin Chmerkovskiy) - At the age of 11, lifelong swimmer Victoria Arlen fell ill with a rare viral disease that left her without use of her legs for nearly 10 years. Her health improved tremendously and, not only did she participate in four events at the London Paralympic Games, but she also took home one Gold and three Silver medals while also setting a world record in in the 100-meter free. (I had never heard of Victoria until she was announced for DWTS. She sounds like quite the fighter. Looking forward to seeing what she does in the ballroom.)

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mariatramp56-blog · 5 years

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12 Best Things to Do in L.A. This Week

From Vegan Sweets Con to an event tackling L.A.'s homelessness crisis, a dance benefit and Latinx performance art, here are the 12 best things to do in L.A. this week.

DANCE

Tilting at Windmills

Miguel de Cervantes' epic novel Don Quixote, about an idealistic knight-errant and his comrade Sancho Panza, has proved to be a universally resonant tale over the past four centuries, with interpretations in multiple formats, including film and opera. The ballet adaptation, with music by Ludwig Minkus and choreography by Marius Petipa, staged and choreographed further by Alexander Gorsky in 1900, has endured as the definitive ballet adaptation, and that's the version brought to the Southland this week by St. Petersburg's high-flying and stylish Mikhailovsky Ballet. Principal dancer Ivan Vasiliev portrays Basilio in the first two evening performances, and Victor Lebedev takes over in the role in the matinees on Saturday and Sunday, with Angelina Vorontsova and Anastasia Soboleva alternating as Kitri. Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa; Fri., Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 10, 2 & 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 11, 1 p.m.; $29-$189. (714) 556-2787, scfta.org. —Falling James

ART

Check in Here

The last time Art at the Rendon let a few dozen artists loose inside the walls of the mid-transformation Rendon Hotel, they took over every room with a series of art installations that made for an immersive and sometimes intense, hallucinatory experience. A lot of that art is still in place but this weekend, it's interior and exterior video projections and live performance art throughout the building that take center stage. Well, less of a stage and more of a choose-your-own-adventure narrative pastiche of theater and visual reimaginings of the history of this gloriously seedy original Arts District location. In fact, the corner dive bar (familiar to fans of Bukowski's Barfly, and which in the film version basically played itself) will be reactivated as a jazzy period piece serving local brews. All proceeds benefit the theatre programs at nearby Inner City Arts. Rendon Hotel, 2055 E. Seventh St., downtown; Fri.-Sat., Nov. 9-10, 7 p.m.; Sun. Nov. 11, 6 p.m.; $25. (213) 537-0687, artattherendon.com. —Shana Nys Dambrot

BrockusRED hosts Dance/BACK.

Denise Leitner

sat 11/10

DANCE

Giving Back

Deborah Brockus is the prime mover of the L.A. Dance Festival and her own contemporary company, BrockusRED. For the past three years they've hosted the local dance community's charity event Dance/BACK, with 100 percent of the proceeds donated to a designated charity or nonprofit. This year's participants include Maura Townsend's PROJECT21DANCE, Nancy Evans' Dodge Dance Company, Sean Greene, Fuse Dance Company, Lindsey Lollie, Leah Hamel's Carpool Dance Collective, Luke Zendar, Charlotte K. Smith and the host company. Past recipients include Doctors Without Borders (2015), Family Rescue Center (2016) and Doctors Without Borders/International Rescue Committee (2016). This year, the ACLU and the Good Shepherd Women's Shelter will benefit. Whatever finally happens when the dust settles on the midterms, the ACLU undoubtedly will be going to court or paying for current court cases challenging voter suppression efforts in states like Kansas, North Dakota and Georgia. This annual event has become a way to channel the energy of the local dance community and its audience to dance and give back. Entry is an online donation (action.aclu.org/teamaclu/campaign/danceback-2018) or a donation for the shelter brought to the show; advise which you'll do when making the required reservation ([email protected]). Brockus Project Studios, 618B Moulton Ave., Lincoln Heights; Sat., Nov. 10, 8 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 11, 6 p.m.; entry by donation. brockusproject.org. —Ann Haskins

FOOD & DRINK

Block Party

While it may not be summer anymore, SoCal's temperate climes mean there's never really a bad time of the year to have an event like the Gonzoplex Block Party, with Pitfire Artisan Pizza celebrating the opening of Superba Snacks + Coffee. A host of food — burgers, pretzels, pizza, french fry cones and more — awaits attendees, as well as live music, games and a cash beer garden.There will be various contests of skill, or at least appetite, including pizza making, pizza eating and latte art competitions. All proceeds from the block party's raffle benefit KPCC/Southern California Public Radio (and really, when you think about it, you and your commute, too). Superba Snacks + Coffee, 730 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena; Sat., Nov. 10, noon-5 p.m.; free. eventbrite.com/e/the-gonzoplex-block-party-tickets-48671148716. —Avery Bissett

Courtesy Druid Underground

FILM

Prepare to Be Provoked

"No one knows who they were or what they were doing, but their legacy remains," the great hard-rock philosophers Spinal Tap once mused about the druids in their daft musical homage "Stonehenge." The druids' legacy resurfaces in another form this evening at the 12th annual Druid Underground Film Festival, with a two-hour program of short films and found footage. While the works in this year's edition will shed little light on the actual culture of the druids, they do represent a fascinating collision of provocative short films on numerous subjects presented by series founder Billy Burgess. HM157, 3110 N. Broadway, Lincoln Heights; Sat., Nov. 10, 8 p.m.; $10. (562) 895-9399. —Falling James

sun 11/11

FOOD & DRINK

Dairy-Free Deliciousness

Vegans tend to get ridiculed for their strict diets. But at Vegan Sweets Con — fittingly taking place around the holidays, the most sugar-filled time of year — the healthy and animal-free desserts are anything but boring. Following this summer's Long Beach Vegan Festival, this event gathers more than 30 vendors selling every type of sweet, from cookies and macaroons to chocolates and shakes, in addition to savory options, such as Compton Vegan, which specializes in soul food and BBQ. The schedule also features a cookie bake-off, children's cookie decorating and a dairy-free milk and cookies lounge, as well as demonstrations and appearances by Lauren Toyota, Nicole Allen and Flower Bullock, creator of Stone Girl Treats & Eats, who teaches how to use cannabidiol. The Renaissance Hotel, 1111 Ocean Blvd., Long Beach; Sun., Nov. 11, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; $10-$40, 12 & under free. (562) 437-5900, vegancookiecon.com. —Siran Babayan

mon 11/12

BOOKS

Murder Mystery

That dozens of unsolved murders were finally solved remains a high point of 2018, and detective novelists have seized upon these latest developments with characteristic vigor. Tonight, Live Talks L.A. presents Paul Levine and Michael Connelly discussing Connelly's new book, Dark Sacred Night (A Ballard and Bosch Novel) ($29, Little, Brown and Company). In this latest page-burner, Detective Renée Ballard stumbles upon former detective Harry Bosch rummaging through old files to solve a cold case. After he leaves, she finds out that he's really on to something and they join forces to close the books on the case at last. Ann and Jerry Moss Theater, 3131 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica; Mon., Nov. 12, 8 p.m.; $52 reserved + book/$42 general + book/$20 general. (310) 855-0005, livetalksla.org/events/michael-connelly/. —David Cotner

EXPAND

Susanna Mälkki

Simon Fowler

tue 11/13

MUSIC

A Quintet of Premieres

The Green Umbrella series is always one of the highlights of L.A. Philharmonic's season, as adventurous members of the orchestra band together as the L.A. Phil New Music Group to perform strange and experimental avant-garde pieces in front of diverse, open-minded audiences on Tuesday nights. But with L.A. Phil celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, the orchestra is taking the bold step of filling every Green Umbrella program this season with the world premieres of new works. Tonight, Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki presents a program of new music by European composers Francesco Filidei, Arnulf Herrmann, Lotta Wennäkoski, Miroslav Srnka and Yann Robin. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Tue., Nov. 13, 8 p.m.; $20-$60. (323) 850-2000, laphil.com. —Falling James

wed 11/14

ART

Clay Makes a Comeback

Ceramics has been having an extended moment of popularity and acclaim in fine-art circles, as more and more contemporary artists embrace the appeal of this slow, heavy, messy medium. Not content to simply appreciate the appeal of this exceptionally analog and physical material, perhaps as a countermeasure against the surge of the digital and virtual, new generations of sculptors are pressing tradition into the service of the modern. One of the most intriguing voices in the clay conversation has been Matt Wedel, whose new show, "Everything is everything," opens in Venice this week. Wedel's unique vision merges his own family background (his dad is a potter) with art historical confidence and expressively personal narrative to create eccentric, painterly ceramic sculptures that innovatively interpret elements from natural and psychological landscapes. L.A. Louver, 45 N. Venice Blvd., Venice; opening reception: Wed., Nov. 14, 6-8 p.m.; exhibit Tue.-Sat., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., thru Jan. 5; free. (310) 822-4955, lalouver.com. —Shana Nys Dambrot

ACTIVISM

Challenging Homelessness

While the response from Los Angeles' political leaders to the city's homeless epidemic has been less decisive leadership and more unfulfilled promises and moribund policymaking, the participants at the L.A. Homelessness Challenge aren't as content to sit around waiting for the status quo to change. Sponsored by United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Watt Companies, the Shark Tank (but with better ideas!)–style event will award $200,000 to the best service solution for tackling homelessness. The finalists include Venice Family Clinic's proposal to expand and educate the public on street medicine; a program that offers families mobile childcare; and various housing and support regimes. The evening opens with hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar. InterContinental Hotel Los Angeles, 900 Wilshire Blvd., downtown; Wed., Nov. 14, 5:30-8:30 p.m.; free, RSVP required. eventbrite.com/e/la-homelessness-challenge-pitch-event-tickets-50787065480. —Avery Bissett

thu 11/15

ART

The Body Politic

En Cuatro Patas is the Broad's feminist Latinx performance series, in which an eclectic range of possible identities across the community and positions as citizens of the world have been explored, manifesting as interdisciplinary avant-garde quasi-theatrical experiences. This edition features Given Over to Want by internationally acclaimed multimedia artist Nao Bustamante; Shadow Woman by Gina Osterloh, a visual artist who has always enacted performative elements as part of her installations and compositions; and INFESTACIÓN: PISOS I, II, III by the operatically soulful composer-singer-activist Dorian Wood. The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., downtown; Thu., Nov. 15, 8:30 p.m.; $15. (213) 232-6200, thebroad.org. —Shana Nys Dambrot

Damien Echols

Courtesy Sounds True

BOOKS

Wrongly Convicted

Damien Echols was one of the West Memphis Three, a trio of teenagers who were convicted in 1994 of murdering three young boys in Arkansas in 1993. The case attracted a lot of media attention, with many followers, including Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, decrying the judicial process, and the West Memphis Three eventually were freed from prison, if not fully exonerated. Echols and his friends appeared to have been convicted based more on their lifestyle as fans of heavy metal than on hard evidence that definitively proved their guilt. "Magick saved my life," Echols writes in his new book, High Magick. "Magick was the only thing in prison that gave my life purpose and kept me sane." He discusses the book with The Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines. The Regent Theater, 448 S. Main St., downtown; Thu., Nov. 15, 8 p.m.; $32. (323) 934-2944, ticketfly.com/event/1769072-damien-echols-in-conversation-los-angeles/. —Falling James

Source: https://www.laweekly.com/arts/12-best-things-to-do-in-la-this-week-10036509

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topicprinter · 5 years

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Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Summer Pierce of the POP IT PAL, a pimple popping simulator toy.Some stats:Product: Pimple Popping SimulatorRevenue/mo: $53,675Started: January 2018Location: MonroeFounders: 4Employees: 4Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Summer Pierce. I’m the Co-Owner, Co-Inventor along with my husband Bill Pierce who is the CEO & Co-Inventor of the product known as the POP IT PAL! Billy and I are from Monroe, Michigan and have been together since we were teenagers and have been married for 15 years. Together we have 3 beautiful, amazing children. We are just your normal hard working family who had an idea for a new product that had never been created before. We decided not to sit on our idea, but to act on it. We wanted to teach/show our children that if you have an idea, you should go for it and make it happen no matter what obstacles come your way.We started our company Unique Obsessions, LLC along Billy’s cousin Kayla Roof VP of Marketing & Sales and her husband Collin Roof VP of Engineering & Logistics.We sell the POP IT PAL which comes in 3 versions peach, brown & glitter edition. We also sell our Pimple Pus and Glitter edition Pimple Pus. The Pop it Pal is the world's first ever pimple popping simulator!We have a broad range of customers that range from 5 years old and up. Some of our customers purchase the POP IT PAL for a gag gift, a fidget toy, just a toy to play with and then we also have customers who have a skin picking condition called Dermatillomania.The POP IT PAL for these customers serves a different purpose. I have received multiple emails from numerous customers who suffer from this disorder.They have told me how this product has changed their life. As the person who came up with this idea, to hear them say that really touches my heart. For me to think I had an idea for a product that my husband was able to bring to life has made a difference in other people's lives makes me feel as though, just maybe I’ve helped make a difference in this crazy world we live in.After launching our website on January 19th, 2018 we ended up going viral within the first two weeks of selling our product online. We did over $100,000.00 in sales within 8 days and almost 200k in February 2018 the second month since we launched. We never imagined that we would go viral or that we would end up on season 10 of Shark Tank, The Today Show, The Doctor’s and Pickler & Ben! We’ve done many Radio Show interviews and have had over 50 articles written about us through different magazines and online articles! We definitely never would’ve imagined that BuzzFeed, Forbes, Fast Company, Cosmopolitan, Aol. and Yahoo News would’ve wrote stories about us! We’ve had over 50 million views worldwide.Fast Company actually dubbed us “the next fidget spinner”. I’ll never forget opening up my browser to Aol.com and seeing my product on the front page. It was AMAZING to say the least.What it looks likeWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?The idea came to me while my husband Billy and I were driving. As we were driving down the I75 on our way back from seeing a sick relative, we were bouncing different business ideas off of one another like we’d done many many times in the past. When all of a sudden I said to Billy what if we could make a pimple that actually popped like a real pimple? Just like the video’s we watch on YouTube?Billy instantly looked at me and said I think I can make that! I immediately searched all over the internet to see if there was anything like this that existed. I couldn’t find anything at all. That’s when I grabbed a pen and paper and we started thinking what it would look like, what could we make the pimple pus out of, what to name the product & our business.Billy and I have been together since I was 14 and him 17. As far back as I can remember we have always talked about owning our own business or inventing a product one day. Every time we would have an idea I would look it up and it would be taken. I wanted to be original. I didn’t want to bite off someone else’s idea. So it took years to finally think of something that wasn’t yet created, but we were determined.I’m a Licensed Practical Nurse and I have always loved gross things like picking pimples. My husband Billy has his Associates in Business Management and a background in Managing Production Manufacturing, but he loves gross things just as much as I do.Anytime either one of us gets a pimple the other person will spot it and it’s all over. Whoever has the pimple is now laying down with a spotlight over them and the other person has the pimple popping tool in hand, ready to get at it!At the time we created this product we had just moved to South Carolina, Billy had taken a position with Samsung and since we had moved somewhere we knew nobody, we didn’t have help with the kids.Since we didn’t have family to help with the kids I was not working any longer. I really wanted to find a way to contribute financially. When I had the idea for the Pop it Pal I had done a google search and could not find anything anywhere like it at all. So I knew at that moment that this would be something that had never been invented yet. At that time though I really had no idea what the public would think of it.I wasn’t sure if people would be totally disgusted or intrigued and interested in it. We built it with the intention of starting a business, but we had no idea if it would sell or not. The day that we went viral is a day we will never forget. At that moment when my phone was sending me notifications (making a cha-ching noise when we make a sale) one every 1 -2 minutes sometimes less, I had a realization.I thought to myself... wow! We went from not knowing how it would be perceived to selling one every 1-2 minutes! I was overcome with happiness, joy, thankfulness and I was scared to death. We had no manufacturing set up. We made everything by hand, down to making the pus, filling the pimple pus bottles and having to hand-label everything. At that time we had only 70 made up ahead! That first day we went viral we made $13,050.00.We were so excited but what were we going to do? We instantly started with good customer service and were honest and upfront with our customers letting them know that we were on a six week wait.Thankfully, they were very nice and understanding. It took us from that day which was February 2, 2018 until May 15th 2018 to get off the six-week wait. Thank God for family! My parents, as well as Billy’s parents, dropped what they were doing to drive down immediately and help us. Two of my sisters were able to come as well as one of Billy’s sisters and her husband and our niece.Billy and I were so appreciative of everyone's help. While we were working hard making, filling, packaging and shipping the orders, Kayla was handling everything else and her husband Collin was hard at work looking for a manufacturer.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.DesigningWhen designing this product, my husband Billy had to think of what would feel the most realistic.We found that medical grade silicone was definitely best! Although expensive, it was worth the money, because other types of silicone doesn’t have a realistic feel and were too hard.The first prototype was made from a small wooden box, with little wooden sticks glued to the lid. Billy poured the silicone in the box, put the lid on it and waited on it to finish curing. Once it was finished curing in order to get the silicone out of the box he had to actually break the box because the silicone wouldn’t peel out.Some images of early prototypes:1234Once we had it out of the box we put candle wax inside, but when we tried to squeeze it, it wouldn’t work correctly. It didn’t have that pop and the wax was hard. Billy then started doing some research on what does the human pore look like… he found out it’s kind of similar to a teardrop. We loaded up the family and went to hobby lobby. We found these tiny footballs that you can string on a necklace or bracelet. We also bought a plastic pencil holder with a lid.He was able to drill holes into the lid, put the wooden sticks through the holes and hot glue the footballs to the end of the sticks. Billy then poured the silicone into the plastic pencil holder and placed the lid on top. When that was finished we were trying to think what can we make the Pimple Pus out of? We tried boiling flaxseed which turned into some sort of clear snot mixture that we attempted to drain off but didn’t work.Then a few days later while Billy was applying chapstick he said the idea just came to him. Chapstick melts when you apply it but stays formed when in the applicator. He looked up the ingredients of chapstick and found that a lot of them use beeswax. But we needed the beeswax to be thinner so it would come out of our pore he had made.We started looking at oils, I went to the store and picked up regular cooking oil and seen on the back that it may contain peanuts! I knew with the amount of people with peanut allergies that kind of oil wouldn’t work. Then I saw Olive Oil and it was only made by pressing olives so there was nothing that was harmful about it. When I got home Billy took the beeswax and olive oil and melted them together. Billy then used a dropper to put the oil/wax mixture inside the fake pores he had made. He let it sit for a couple minutes and then I heard Summer!!! Summer! I did it! I’m thinking there's no way because we had been working on it for so long now. He brought it over to me and had me squeeze it and it WORKED! He had done it!We did it but would people really like it? We weren’t sure so we decided to contact some close friends and family members. We collected 8 of our closest friends and family members addresses and sent them out. We asked our friends and family to give us their honest opinions. Every single one of them said they loved it!PackagingNow that we had our product we needed to package it. I went out and bought cellophane bags, cellophane clear wrap to wrap the POP IT PAL’S in, bottles to put the Pimple Pus in and droppers to put inside each package.While Kayla was working on writing the directions, I went and bought stickers to use as labels on the Pimple Pus bottles and on the outside of the cellophane bag to seal the packaging. Once we had everything we needed, Billy would build the POP IT PAL, I would then fill them with PIMPLE PUS, I would cut the rolls of clear cellophane and wrap each Pop it Pal in it. I would then put the Pop it Pal inside the cellophane bag along with 1 bottle of our hand filled & hand labeled Pimple Pus, 1 filling tool and the folded directions.Building the websiteNow when we contacted Kayla Roof who has her MBA once we had the prototype for made, she asked us “What platform are you guys selling on?” Billy and I looked at each other and said what the heck is a platform!? We had no clue and we had no clue on how to create a website… I had been attempting to create one for days and was seriously struggling.Thankfully Kayla took over and built an amazing website. We spoke with Kayla and her husband Collin Roof who has his Masters in Mechanical Engineering that night and asked if they would like to be apart of this business/journey with us to which they happily accepted! Now that we had this product with good feedback from family and friends we needed to protect it and it’s name. The day that we had a working prototype was December 26th, 2017. We immediately that day we filed for our patent.Going viralThen on January 19th 2018, we launched our Facebook and website and within 2 weeks and $35 in facebook ads I received a private message from LAD Bible asking if they could share the video. I had no idea who LAD Bible was so I got on our group text with the 4 of us and said hey these people by the name of LAD Bible want to know if they can share the video.Kayla immediately said umm YES! We gave LAD Bible permission that day to share the video. About an hour after hearing from LAD Bible we started getting more and more social media sites asking if they could use the video and add GIF’s to them. We, of course, said yes.Here’s an example of one of the videos that went viral.As soon as the social media sites started sharing the videos, the sales started coming in! Our apartment then turned into a full-time manufacturing facility with family members coming down from Michigan to help us lol!Following our first viral video, we did over 100k in 8 days! At this time and up until December 2018 we have been making them by hand! We hand built over 10k POP IT PALS in that year! We were on a 6-week wait and thankfully our customers were very nice and understanding. We were just normal people making a handmade product out of our house. Family and friends came down to South Carolina to help us build, fill and package the POP IT PALS.Since there had never been a toy like this made before there was no mold for what we were doing. We contacted a management company who helped us find a manufacture overseas. The mold had to be made, once the mold was made our manufacture would send us samples which took about 3 separate times before we finally had a product that we felt was as good as the one we hand built. This process took 10 months start to finish.To initially start this business it took $7,500.00 out of pocket. That was for silicone and start up items. Once we went viral the money was made back! We were able to use the funds that the business made and pay for the patents, lawyer fees, packaging design, trademarks and manufacturing start up.Our 1st packagingOur 2nd packagingOur newest PackagingLessons learnedDuring those first 2 weeks before we went viral Billy and I would sit on the couch and watch the traffic on our website through Shopify. We would see a person get on, then they would start a cart then all of a sudden they would leave. We would be like no!!! Why didn’t they buy lol! We were so new and nobody had heard of us, they didn’t know if we were legit or not.Lessons learned from the start up process would be once you have your prototype made do some research and find potential manufactures before you start selling your product. That way if your product does very well you know exactly where to go to start producing it on a mass scale.Another lesson would be is that Amazon is huge, people love to buy from their site. As a seller, actually selling your product on Amazon can be very aggravating. I say this because before we became entrepreneurs I would order from Amazon and never actually look at who was selling the products I was purchasing. Since starting the business we have learned if you don’t have a full patent (not just pending) or trademark (brand registered on Amazon) people can hijack your listing and sell counterfeit versions of your product. So as people are buying from what “they think” is your listing because everything looks the same, you have to read the fine print to know who your buying from. When the buyers receive their orders which have the same name as your product, product can look the same but may be inferior to yours in many ways. The buyer will either assume this was the real thing and give you a bad review or they will recognize that it is a counterfeit and leave a review saying YOU are selling a counterfeit product. You as the seller will then call Amazon and tell them what’s going on and they will do nothing to help you, if you do not have a patent or registered trademark.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?We have found that social media, the ads you can create has been the best way for us to attract and retain customers. You can create a video of how your product works or show someone else using the product and enjoying themselves.There are many different tools for creating videos. A really good one is Animoto which allows you to create videos that look professional and you can use them to create an ad. You can add in different Gif’s, text, stickers and combine multiple videos.Also, being able to say As Seen On Shark Tank and that we’re invested in by Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful has also been a unique tool we’re able to use when advertising.It’s amazing how you can target the people who you know are buying or interested in buying your product. The power of social media is huge. It took us from selling 1, 2 or 3 a day to in one day making over 27 thousand dollars!Shark TankOur Shark Tank experience was honestly amazing. Shark Tank is a huge T.V. show! We have watched Shark Tank for years and so have my parents who watch is religiously.In February of 2018 a producer of Shark Tank contacted us, he had seen the article that Fast Company wrote about the Pop it Pal. He said if we wanted to apply to the show that the deadline was in March or April.We, of course, wanted to apply. We were beyond ecstatic when we found out that we had made it onto the show! Everyone who is involved with the t.v. show was so very nice. We will never forget walking out and pitching to the Sharks. We were, of course, nervous but we nailed the pitch!We had been practicing for months so that we hopefully wouldn’t mess it up. I told Billy that next to having our children that going on Shark Tank was the coolest most amazing thing we’ve ever done.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Unique Obsessions, LLC future is very exciting to think about. We have lots of ideas for new products and are currently in the process of our 2nd Unique Obsession. We’re very excited to be doing a product test run with Spencer’s!We have quite a few things working in the pipeline, we’re very excited to see what’s going to happen in the future.We are profitable, but we have learned that running a business is not easy. It takes time, money, hardwork and dedication. Often times I will be asleep and will hear my phone go off with either an email, social media message/comment or even a text. I will wake up out of a dead sleep and squint to see the message so I can respond right away.As business owners we want to be available for our customers at all times and while you’re asleep the other side of the world is awake and on the go. So as you lay in bed asleep someone else is awake and working just as hard as you are and it could be your competition.Our ultimate goal is to get into major retail stores and create all types of Unique Obsessions (new products). I have to say the day that I walk into a major retail store and see the product that Billy and I invented will be one of the happiest days of our lives and I will most definitely cry tears of joy!Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Since starting the business we have learned that a pending patent or trademark really does not help you at all. Until your patent has been fully issued or your trademark has been fully registered other people throughout the world can copy your product and call it the same thing.About 60 days after we launched our product, we started seeing counterfeits. At first, I felt like someone had my child. It was devastating and I thought to myself this was my idea something my husband and I worked so hard on, to build and bring to life. Now there are people ripping us off!I’m not going to sugar coat it, it was hard and brought me to tears a few times. I would pray every night and ask God why is this happening? As a hardworking normal couple that invented a product it’s hard to take a look around and see the counterfeits out there making money on our hard work, our blood sweat and tears.Then it hit me.I’m looking at this the wrong way. Of course it sucks to watch people make money off your invention but if it wasn’t popular or something that was sought after, then they wouldn’t be making counterfeits!Now I choose to look at it as a compliment. Unfortunately, our patent is still pending, patents take a long time for approval. We send cease/desist letters to the people infringing on our pending patent and once it’s issued we will do what needs to be done. We let them know we will be taking further action when our patent is approved.Because it’s not ok for people to steal other people’s ideas. It took us years to come up with an original idea but we never stopped. We were always trying to think of an invention. If you put your mind to something, you can accomplish anything.What platform/tools do you use for your business?The platform we use is Shopify which has been awesome. Shopify has an app for your phone that will alert you when you make a sale. When someone purchases your product it will make a cha-ching sound which is fun to hear.The Shopify platform is very user-friendly and has many different reports such as your conversion rate, online store sessions by traffic source, sales by social source, average order value and total sales attributed to marketing campaigns just to name a few. The only thing I think that they should add is a scanning sheet.I fulfill and ship all of our orders through Shopify, eBay, and Etsy. I also use to fulfill all of our Amazon orders until we switched to FBA (which means Amazon fulfills the orders). When we started shipping hundreds of orders a day I remember the post office asking if we had a scanning sheet.A scanning sheet would include all of the orders that you are shipping that day and would allow the post office to just scan one barcode for all of the orders being shipped.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?We have always been huge fans of Shark Tank. So when the opportunity came about for us to be on the show, we jumped at the opportunity. Being apart of Shark Tank was such an amazing experience and thankfully we were able to land a deal with the one and only Kevin O’leary aka Mr. Wonderful! My husband and I really enjoy listening to Kevin O’leary’s Podcast Ask Mr. Wonderful. There is a lot of use information on his Podcast.Dr. Matthew Loop, DC is a Social Media Revenue Strategist is Billy’s Cousin and Kayla VP of Marketing & Sales Brother. He has also been very resourceful to us. When it comes to social media he’s an expert!Kayla Roof who is our VP of Marketing & Sales has her MBA. She is also a Business Advisor and creator of The Work from Anywhere Business Academy. She helps women create purpose-driven businesses that allow them to work from anywhere.Billy and I were very lucky that when we started this business we had family who had the knowledge, skills and schooling in marketing & sales which were skills that we lacked. I believe that’s why the four of us make such an awesome team. The four of us also have a strong Christian Faith and we know that whatever happens, happens for a reason. We want to somehow make a difference in this world. Part of our mission is to spread kindness into the world. Inspired by our daughters movement, we will be donating a portion of every sale to charities that support kindness and the anti-bullying movement.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?My advice for other entrepreneurs who would like to invent a product or start a business would be... If you have an idea or dream do not sit on it because if I can do this, anyone can! Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. We’re all human and we learn from them.Growing up Billy and I both struggled in school. We were both in educational support classes, school was hard for us and we’re not ashamed to say that. Billy was determined to get his Associates in Business Management and I was determined to get my Nursing License.. At the time our three children were ages 1, 4 and 6 when Billy obtained his Associates and I went to Nursing School and received my Licensed Practical Nursing Degree.So if you’re reading this article and you struggled in school or feel you don’t have the skills and think to yourself there’s no way I could start a business or invent a product. I’m here to tell you that, YES YOU CAN. If I can do this anyone can. If you sit on your idea someone else will have the same idea and they will act on it.If you’re thinking of inventing a product or starting a business and you're not sure of what to do to get it started, please feel free to email me [email protected]. We want to see people succeed. If the journey and things we’ve learned along the way can help someone succeed, then we would be more than happy to help.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We’re looking for a Sales Rep that can help us achieve our goal of getting into the big box stores.Where can we go to learn [email protected] you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

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jeroldlockettus · 5 years

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Extra: Mark Cuban Full Interview

Mark Cuban is owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His boyhood basketball hero: Julius Erving. (Photo: Johnathan Daniel/Getty)

A conversation with the Shark Tank star, entrepreneur, and Dallas Mavericks owner recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability.

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Before we get to this bonus episode, a quick offer. If you happen to be a member of 24-Hour Fitness, the national gym chain, and you want to be part of a behavioral-science experiment, go to 24go.co/freak. You can enroll in a program called StepUp, which was created by our friends at Behavior Change for Good, a group of scientists who are running big experiments to help people achieve better outcomes in health, education and personal finance. You’ve heard about their work in a couple previous episodes. One was called “How to Launch a Behavior-Change Revolution”; the other was “Could Solving This One Problem Solve All the Others?” The StepUp deadline is January 31st, so hurry! Now, on with our show.

This is a Freakonomics Radio extra: our full interview with the entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who’s been appearing in our “Hidden Side of Sports” series. Cuban has owned the Mavs since 2000, and he’s one of the investors regularly appearing on the reality TV show Shark Tank. He made his fortune in the late 1990’s, selling the streaming service Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Our conversation took place last summer, before the current N.B.A. season had began. LeBron James was still a free agent at the time. The Mavs had already drafted the Slovenian teenager Luka Doncic, who has been having an excellent rookie season, even though the Mavs are doing poorly overall.

The conversation covers a lot of ground — including Cuban’s ambitions to own a baseball team and maybe, just maybe, run for President. You’ll hear a number of names that you may not be familiar with. Byron “Whizzer” White, for instance, was a great collegiate athlete who played three seasons in the N.F.L., twice leading the league in rushing, but left for law school and, ultimately, a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The “Rick” that Cuban mentions is Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle; Tim Donaghy is a former N.B.A. ref who pled guilty to betting on games he was involved in. If there’s anything else you don’t catch — well, that’s what Google is for. Thanks for listening.

CUBAN: My name is Mark Cuban and you’re listening to Freakonomics Radio.

DUBNER: Hey, this is Stephen Dubner. Hey Mark Cuban, how’s it going?

CUBAN: Great, Stephen Dubner, how are you?

DUBNER: Great. Nice to talk to you. Congrats on Luka, do we say Doncic? How are we saying his last —

CUBAN: Doncic.

DUBNER: Doncic, yeah.

CUBAN: Thank you.

DUBNER: Congratulations. Yeah, he looks amazing.

CUBAN: We hope he is.

DUBNER: So let me ask you this. You’re roughly 60 years old, you grew up in Pittsburgh, which is one of the best sports towns. I’m just curious, in a nutshell, how you think pro sports has changed since you were a kid.

CUBAN: Oh my goodness. That’s a big question. It depends on which sport, it depends on what city. Depends on whose perspective. I think in a lot of ways it hasn’t changed but in a lot of ways depending on what city you’re in, your teams have come and gone, are better or worse. And it just depends on perspective.

DUBNER: Okay, let’s pick a team. Let’s pick the Steelers of your childhood and my childhood. Guys like Rocky Bleier and Andy Russell, even Franco — well maybe not quite Franco, but these guys would typically work an off-season job, and they weren’t making money to retire on. And now, obviously, the economics are a lot different, but the economics are a lot different on the business side as well. There’s just been tremendous, tremendous, tremendous growth and I guess I’m curious — as sport has become such a massive and global business — whether you think that’s basically made the product, the games, better, worse, different. How so?

CUBAN: I mean I think it’s made it better because it’s an incentive for more people to become professional athletes. For all the stories of athletes working in the summer there’s the Whizzer Whites of the world and other athletes who chose not to go into professional sports at all. And so now the money creates enough of incentive. But again, that— that’s just part of the equation. Now there’s other issues there’s CTE for hockey and football, there’s — soccer is much more—is a much bigger sport in the U.S. than it used to be when I was growing up. It wasn’t even a varsity sport when I was in high school. And so a lot of things have changed.

DUBNER: You’re best known probably for two things: Shark Tank and owning the Dallas Mavericks. Can you just give us a quick catalog of your other sports business interests?

CUBAN: Oh my goodness. Most of my other sports interests are driven through technology, whether it’s Synergy Sports which does cataloging and video of all things basketball. Sports Radar, which is an information service for sports. Unikrn, which is delivery for e-sports. It allows for tokenized betting for e-sports right now. What else? Axon, which does neural development so that athletes can improve their neurological responses to stimuli and their physical responses as a result. Another company that uses virtual reality and like a Wii-like technology to help kids and athletes and professionals improve their dribbling skills and other basketball skills.

DUBNER: Now, I would say of everything that you just named there if you were to rewind the tape to 40 years ago or 50 years ago when you were a kid, most of those would have been somewhere between unimaginable and not feasible. I mean that— that’s one direction in which sport has just blown up in terms of technology. Again, do you see the technology and we hear all the time about how the data revolution is changing the way the game is played. I’m curious whether it’s really having as big an impact as we’d like to think or imagine.

CUBAN: Oh yeah, absolutely. Analytics obviously has helped in terms of team strategy but that’s actually become a relatively efficient market because all teams are involved and they’re all hiring smart people to do mostly the same things. And then there’s bioanalytics, where we’re becoming smarter about the body, nutrition, sleep, genetics. There’s just so many elements involved with bio analytics that it’s a never ending improvement cycle.

DUBNER: So, in terms of turnarounds, franchise turnarounds, your team, the Mavericks, have been one of the most drastic. When you came in, I guess the nine seasons before you arrived, the Mavs winning percentage is about 40 percent.

CUBAN: Yeah, we were awful.

DUBNER: And since you’ve been there, about 70 percent, so that’s really remarkable. So we could either say I mean if we’re going to try to draw a causal relationship, we could say either Mark Cuban is one of the best owners ever, or he was really lucky to intersect perfectly with Dirk Nowitzki’s career, or five, ten other things. Can you just talk about what you did that you think worked, and what are the other factors that led to that success?

CUBAN: Well, hopefully the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I think sometimes when you’re dealt a good hand, not screwing it up is a talent. But I think what I did was try to change the culture. Because like any work environment, you can have really really talented people but if they don’t like coming to work, or they don’t like working together, then you’re not going to get optimal results. And so what I came in, the previous owner nickeled and dimed everything, didn’t recognize that the players were the key to the organization. We did things like spend more money on computer repair and training than we did on medical issues, and development for our players. And so I just changed that. I just flipped the script and said, look, my job is to provide the resources to put everybody in a position to succeed. And if I do that good things will happen. And so we had Dirk. We had Steve Nash. We had Michael Finley. The same three guys were awful the year before I got there.

The day I bought the team, our record was 9 and 23, and we finished out the season, I think 31 and 19, and won 50 games the next season. So while I certainly didn’t hit any jumpers, I think I recognized that there was an opportunity to invest in some great players and make them better at what they do.

DUBNER: What was the mental state of the organization in the building when you came in with that losing record that year?

CUBAN: Get me out of here everybody — it was a way station if you couldn’t get a job somewhere else you came to the Mavericks. When players were traded here they just couldn’t wait to get out.

DUBNER: Your last couple seasons, though, have been fairly stinky at least by Mavs standards, so much so that you got a high draft pick this year. So what happened?

CUBAN: What happened is guys get older. Guys get injured, and so you play it out as long as you can, as best you can and we try to respond and rebuild as quickly as possible. And hopefully this summer with our draft picks and and anybody we sign in free agency, we’ll be able to do that and start fighting our way back.

DUBNER: You’ve been fined a few times by the N.B.A., most recent one was 600k for talking about that it was essentially in the best interest in the team to lose to get a higher draft pick. I’m just curious. You’re worth about 4 billion from what I’ve seen. Do you care much — I mean is that strategic outspokenness?

CUBAN: In that case it wasn’t. More often than not it was. In that particular case I was being interviewed by Julius Erving and I just fanboyed and said the wrong thing. Seriously. Julius Erving was my boyhood basketball hero. I mean yeah he was the one guy I looked up to, and it was the first time I’d met him. And to give you an idea of how much of a fanboy I am, of Julius Erving, when I was a kid, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, an old basketball movie was being filmed at the Civic Arena. And I took a bus down there just to see him just— just to be able to see Julius Erving. Not playing basketball, just to see him. And then when I first bought the Mavs, I was at an N.B.A. All-Star game, I think it was in Philly, and I took a picture with Dr. J. He didn’t know he was in the picture. It was me having someone take a picture with him in it, with me smiling. And then when he asked me to do his podcast it was just like yeah. And so I was trying to be too cool and tried to impress him, and when I start talking about being a player’s owner he said he would have liked to have played for me as an owner. Then I had to show off, and that’s when I said the wrong thing.

DUBNER: What was it about Dr. J as a player that you loved so much?

CUBAN: Oh, just his athleticism, his winning attitude, his uniqueness on the court and off. He had a certain style that he didn’t take any prisoners and he was who he was without regrets. And I always admire those qualities.

DUBNER: And this was also the A.B.A., which was the upstart league. I sense that you’ve kind of identified with upstarts throughout your life?

CUBAN: Yeah, I would I would say underdogs more than upstarts. Maybe they’re one and the same in a lot of instances. But it’s not like I expected all this to happen. And so every step of the way I would try to just keep on grinding and and try to accomplish what I could accomplish and go from there.

DUBNER: I am curious who your favorite Steelers were.

CUBAN: Oh Franco Harris, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Lambert.

DUBNER: Any dark horses, any — any more obscure guys?

CUBAN: Joe Gilliam, the first black quarterback. Who else, let me think. There’s a guy named Tunch Ilkin that —

DUBNER: Tunch Ilkin, sure, he’s still broadcasting for them.

CUBAN: Oh is he really? Yeah. So Tunch came from Indiana State and we had a mutual friend and so when he came to the Steelers I would go hang out with him and some of the Steelers and, to tell you a quick story, one time we went out with Jack Lambert, Steve Courson, Tunch Ilkin, Lynn Swann to a place in Green Tree, Pennsylvania. Horrible snowy day. I had a nasty old 1977 Fiat X1-9 which is a tiny car. And they got up, left earlier before I did. I go out to find my car in the snow, and they literally had picked it up between them and carried it up and put it on a hill, so that I had to go and figure out how to get it through the snow down the hill back into the street.

DUBNER: Alright. So you did not become a professional athlete yourself, but you went one better and became a billionaire. And the story for people who don’t know it, it reads like fiction. So can you just briefly tell us that story?

CUBAN: I would tell you we started the streaming industry. There was a point in time in the early ’90s where the Internet was becoming functional, and one of my buddies from college was like we’ve got to be able to use all this new Internet stuff to be able listen to Indiana basketball. And so I was like okay, I’m a tech guy. Let me see if I can figure it out. And I had just sold a few years earlier my first company, which was a networking company, so I was familiar with the technology and had a little bit of money. And so I went to work. Bought a PC — a 90 megahertz Packard Bell, an ISDN line, and just started figuring out, and we created a website called AudioNet. Fast forward a few years we go public, it’s the biggest IPO in the history of the stock market. And what you probably don’t realize is we dominated all things audio and video on the Internet. There was nobody close. As dominant as YouTube is today, we were that dominant then. We had a unique opportunity that when we sold to Yahoo, if they would’ve kept on doing what we were doing, even after the the stock market bubble had burst, there would be no YouTube. There might not even be a Google. I mean they chose the direction, and they chose to de-invest when Google chose the opposite, to invest. And that changed the course of history for streaming.

DUBNER: So that was nearly 20 years ago, that was ‘99, that you sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo.

CUBAN: Right.

DUBNER: Can I ask you to speculate a little bit, maybe not looking 20 years forward but maybe five or ten? Big live sport events are in some ways keeping the legacy broadcast networks alive. They are one of the few destination points for watching TV these days. I’m really curious, the streaming companies and companies like Amazon that have streaming as well, they have so much money now that I’m guessing — I mean they could buy the leagues if they wanted to — So I’m really curious to know what you see the future of watching sports looks like. And will it be kind of, gradually changed so that we won’t even notice so much, or you think it will be radically different than now?

CUBAN: I think it’ll be gradual but it’ll be different for a couple of different reasons. One, one of the reasons sports is still so prevalent on traditional television is it’s a destination. If you want to watch the Mavericks, if you want to watch the Pirates, if you want watch the Penguins, the Dallas Stars, whatever, you have to go to traditional TV, and that’s one of the keys to retaining the customers, the subscribers that they have. Particularly for older viewers, which leads to a big question that’ll drive some of this at some level. When people turn 40, 50, 60, do they start consuming more television or will millennials, as they age, stick to traditional digital over-the-top? That’s the unknown question because you still— for over-the-top, you still have to do work. You still have to choose from 20 apps, 30 apps which is more annoying than going through a DirecTV programming guide. And so those things have to improve dramatically, I think, before the older consumers switch from traditional television. All that said, one of the challenges for over-the-top is that there’s an unlimited number of choices. When you go on Charter, Comcast, DirecTV, AT&T, whatever, you’ve got 250, 300 choices maybe. And that might be daunting, but it’s still somewhat manageable. When you go online there’s a zillion choices. There’s no limit to the number of choices. You can spend a day in YouTube, so destination content is much rarer. There aren’t a lot of hits online, and even when you see YouTube stars or Instagram stars, they have to create content every single day, and the same applies to Twitch. Ninja has got to be playing — there’s a thing from Ninja, the guy who’s the Fortnite superstar, that when he didn’t broadcast one day, he lost 40,000 subscribers. So it’s a whole different beast.

And so over-the-top, when it comes to sports, I think that the license value of the N.B.A., college sports et cetera is going to escalate significantly, because it’s harder to draw an audience over-the-top. And for the reason you mentioned, right now the market caps are bigger than the top — the FANGS, the top five— four, five or six different online media companies just dwarfs traditional media. So I think a lot’s going to change. Then you add the impact of 5G. And so 5G smaller cells but much higher bandwidth which means you can broadcast different types of things at higher bit rates and it also may lead to people cutting the broadband cord. So all that money you paid for your Internet subscription, you may be paying 50 bucks, 75, a hundred bucks a month for broadband. That might go away and the same subscription you use for your phone, you might use for your broadband as well, which can in turn change how we consume content as well.

DUBNER: Right. Let me ask you this. Let’s look at individual sports or leagues especially with the future of the way the material’s distributed, and the future of those games or leagues themselves. So let’s pretend that you have the choice of three stocks to buy, and I’m going to make you— I’m going to make you buy one, sell one, and hold one. And the three are going to be N.F.L., U.F.C., and we’ll say a basket of e-sports leagues or games, Overwatch.

CUBAN: I’d take e-sports. Yeah if it’s against those three, I take— I buy e-sports, sell N.F.L.

DUBNER: Right. Okay. And hold U.F.C. for now. Okay. Let’s get into both of those a little bit. First of all why sell N.F.L.?

CUBAN: I just think CTE creates a problem so participation has been dropping the last few years, and will continue to drop more. And I have an 8-year-old son there’s no way I’d let him play tackle football. My brother lets my nephew play high school football but he’s not that good. So it’s not like he’s got a future in football.

DUBNER: Right. What about the political stuff that’s happening, mostly the anthem protests? Do you think that’s legitimately hurting football, or is that more of a sideshow?

CUBAN: No that’s short term. that’s short term.

DUBNER: Okay, so you think CTE is the biggest barrier that’ll —

CUBAN: Yeah because—

DUBNER: That’ll —

CUBAN: A parent if you don’t want your son playing— daughter I guess, I don’t want to be gender-specific. But if you don’t want your child playing contact football, then you diminish the viewing in the house. It’s like, I don’t want my son to get excited about watching football. And in reality, it’s crazy because, “Hey let’s watch a Cowboys game, let’s watch a Steeler game.” When I was growing up, it was a certainty. That’s what you did. Now he’d much rather play Fortnite or do other things than watch football.

DUBNER: So how do we explain, though, the success of U.F.C., especially given the concern over the N.F.L. and the decline of boxing? I mean boxing used to be the biggest sport in America and it went —

CUBAN: Right.

DUBNER: It was hurt for a lot of different reasons obviously, but — But what do you think U.F.C., the league, has done or the sport has done that the N.F.L. maybe isn’t doing as well?

CUBAN: I think it’s just different, because it’s individuals and individuals can make their own choices. You don’t need a lot of participants. In any given U.F.C. fight there’s 10 matches, 20 guys, and so you don’t need the number of participants that you do obviously for football, where there’s 53 guys on a team, and 32 teams and then college football, high school football, et cetera.

DUBNER: Right. OK. And you’re buying e-sports. So say why and especially explain to people who can’t get their mind around it at all. What is the appeal of watching— I mean especially Dallas where you are has become really a hotbed.

CUBAN: It’s become a hub. Yeah.

DUBNER: Yeah, I mean there’s arenas, stadiums being built and so on. So why do 20, 50,000 people want to go to a stadium to watch other people play video games?

CUBAN: Because once you understand the game it’s like— once you play, you understand the nuances of the game and it’s aspirational and educational. And so if you like to play League of Legends, it’s hard. But one of the ways to get better at League of Legends is to watch other people play. And to learn the nuances and to learn the strategies, particularly given that they change the rules every 90 or 120 days. And so because of that, the e-sports teams have got to practice hours and hours and hours a day. So it takes a real skill, it’s a real sport, and if you like it, watching it is entertaining, educational, aspirational. And you also have to realize that anybody in front of a PS2, Xbox, PC watching these kids that play, in their mind — just like maybe we watched sports growing up — it’s like hey if they can do it I can do it. And so that’s the aspirational part of it as well. There’s no physical hurdles. You can be 4-foot-1 or 7-foot-1, and if you’ve got the hand eye coordination and the the brain processing speed, anything’s possible. You could do it too.

DUBNER: One of the investments you mentioned, Unikrn, is a company that facilitates betting on e-sports. Can you just tell us a little bit about how that’ll work and whether gambling on e-sports is maybe a little bit more susceptible to match fixing than other sports, or not necessarily.

CUBAN: Yeah I don’t — First let me start there. I don’t think it’s more susceptible at all because it’s much more difficult. Most e-sports are multi-dimensional chess where there’s so many pieces involved that it’d be nearly impossible. There’s two billion different chess moves and there’s probably exponentially more in League of Legends. And why Unikrn? Just because—

DUBNER: Yeah and how does it work? I mean what kind of access will we have to what kind of bets?

CUBAN: Well you realize, gambling is legal in 118 countries. And so right now for e-sports in those countries, you can just go bet on who wins and different prop bets just like you could any other sports.

DUBNER: Let me ask you about American pro sports leagues. So you’re an N.B.A. owner. I don’t know too much about how “the league” works. I know a little bit more about the N.F.L., but in the N.F.L. the owners are essentially “the league.” Is it much different in the N.B.A. or is it pretty similar setup?

CUBAN: No, not really.

DUBNER: Okay.

CUBAN: No, not really. Yeah, not really at all. I think the biggest difference between the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. is the emphasis put on talent. In the N.F.L., they sell the N.F.L. In the N.B.A., we sell the talent, the players. We promote the players and they promote themselves because it’s mutually beneficial. I think with the exception of just a few stars— this is just my opinion — the N.F.L. appears to look at their players as being more fungible. There’s 53 of them. You’re going to rotate X number through every year, and honestly, if the entire Steelers team was in a mall or the entire Dallas Cowboys team was in a mall, maybe two or three of the players would get recognized and so — it’s a different world.

DUBNER: That’s partly cause they’re helmeted, yeah? But it’s more than that. Right?

CUBAN: It’s not — Yeah, it’s not just cause they’re helmeted.

DUBNER: Okay. So given that the leagues operate — there’s obviously a lot of differences, roster size, number of games, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But let’s assume that for the sake of argument that all four major sports leagues in America are pretty similar in that they have — it’s a membership and once you’re in you’re in. And it’s pretty hard to lose money as a professional sports team because of the way revenues are divided.

CUBAN: No, that’s not true at all. No, that is not true at all. Oh, hell no.

DUBNER: Give me an example.

CUBAN: I can’t throw out names, but yeah.

DUBNER: Well how many N.B.A. teams in a given year are going to lose money?

CUBAN: More than you think.

DUBNER: Really?

CUBAN: Yeah.

DUBNER: So even with the revenue-sharing, with all the broadcast and other monies distributed evenly, and with a salary cap that guarantees that you don’t have to overspend a certain amount, you’re saying that— How do you lose money? Is it by lacking gate revenue?

CUBAN: Yeah. Lacking revenue period. Just like any business.

DUBNER: Right. But what’s the major variable, is it gate revenue or is it broadcast revenue?

CUBAN: Gate, broadcast, players, all the obvious things.

DUBNER: Right. Okay. So that said, leagues in major American pro sports are more protected than let’s say European soccer, right?

CUBAN: Right, cause there’s no relegation, yeah.

DUBNER: Exactly. Do you think—and it’s always funny because our capitalism is more cutthroat than theirs. They’re a little bit more socialist but we have the slightly more socialist setup. Which do you prefer, I guess I’d like to know.

CUBAN: Well it depends where you are, right? If you already have a significant brand like Real Madrid — you, because you can spend more money than everybody else. And they put some limits on how much money teams can lose and how much debt they can have and that’s impacted things. But if you’re on the bottom and you can buy a team inexpensively and you think you’ve got a secret formula that can get you into the Premier League et cetera. Then that’s the position you want to be in if you’re on the top and there’s nothing that’s going to impact your revenues and you’re a global brand and you generate licensing and other incomes globally. You want to be at the top. The N.B.A., we’re a global brand, but the Dallas Mavericks get one thirtieth of anything sold, whether it’s in China or Germany or San Francisco. We don’t control the generation of revenues for ourselves except in our local markets.

DUBNER: In what league in U.S. sports do you think players, the athletes, have the most leverage and the least leverage?

CUBAN: I’d say the N.B.A. and the N.F.L.

DUBNER: N.B.A. is most and N.F.L. is least?

CUBAN: Yeah. Without question.

DUBNER: And does that have to do with roster size primarily, or does it go beyond that?

CUBAN: Roster size, injury, contact sports. The number of college football teams providing talent. The fact that they go four years so you get to see— or most of them go four years, so it’s easier to evaluate talent.

DUBNER: Right. Speaking of college football, what’s your overall view of the N.C.A.A.?

CUBAN: I think it’s worthless.

DUBNER: Yeah. Obviously there’s a lot of incentive to keep it as it is. A lot of people are benefiting, although you could easily argue that the one set of people who should be benefiting, the people who are actually providing the physical labor are are not benefiting very much. If you could blow it up entirely, what would you do? Would you have football attached to college at all, would you make it some sort of a D-league instead?

CUBAN: Yeah, I don’t mind having it attached to college, but I would make it an independent entity, so that it would operate independently. Look, if I wanted to create a League of Legends team, that’s not N.C.A.A. bound, so I can pay players if I choose or incent them. I can let them have a job, right? Let them go get a job, let them practice as much as they need to. Much as I could if I wanted to create a band and I went to Indiana University, my alma mater, and found— which has a great music school — and found the best musicians for the band I want to put together, I can pay them and they can stay in school. They can practice together as much as they want. That’s the hypocrisy. If you want to be a professional athlete, you can’t practice your craft as much as you would like. There’s limits to coaching and playing with your teammates. There’s limits on jobs you can take. There’s there’s so many different things that are bound in stone that it just doesn’t make sense. And so there’s reasons why they evolved to where they are, but it’s time to take a whole different look.

DUBNER: Yeah. Do you know Domonique Foxworth?

CUBAN: No, I do not.

DUBNER: He was the number two of the N.B.A. Players Association for a while. He was the president of the N.F.L. Players Association. He was a player, he was a cornerback, played for I guess Denver, Atlanta, then Baltimore. So he’s an interesting guy. A career cut short by injury, but he cashed out because he had insurance. And now he’s kind of mid-life, early 30s, and he’s looking back and trying to figure out how to help the next generation of athlete do better. He told us that he thinks it would be in the best interest of players to dissolve the unions, the N.F.L.P.A., the N.B.A. Players Association, because that would put the leagues in violation of labor laws, and it would give players the power to negotiate better deals and to make more money.

CUBAN: Every time there’s a lock — Look I’m not a C.B.A. expert, I can’t get into details. The N.F.L., there’s a long history of labor unrest and the first thing they do is dissolve the union.

DUBNER: Well, let’s say that for a minute you’re not on the ownership side at all and that you’re either with your— let’s say you run the biggest sports agency in the country, or maybe are associated with players in some way.

CUBAN: Let me slow you down right there because if I do anything relative to the C.B.A., I’ll get fined again. And while I like you, it’s not strategic right now.

DUBNER: Basically you like me fine but not as much as Dr. J is what you’re saying, but that’s alright, I can —

CUBAN: Exactly.

DUBNER: I can accept that.

CUBAN: Appreciate that.

DUBNER: Let me ask you this: big development from the Supreme Court not so long ago about sports gambling. I would assume that really changes the valuation of every professional or even semi-professional sports franchise. Can you talk about how that’s going to affect you?

CUBAN: Yeah I think it’ll lead to our franchise valuations doubling, literally, because there’s a lot more reasons for people to pay attention, a lot more reasons for people to watch. And that’s good for our bottom line. People will attend more and watch more hours of N.B.A. basketball. And same for all professional sports.

DUBNER: All right, I got a quiz for you, or a riddle. I know you’re a very smart guy, I won’t be surprised if you get this right. Home field advantage exists in every sport all over the world. What would you say is the primary driver of home-field advantage according to academics who’ve studied this?

CUBAN: My guess would — and it’s not home-court, home-ice advantage doesn’t necessarily hold true. Like in hockey, it doesn’t hold true. So, I would tell you probably the energy and — so there’s a couple of things. One, I know there are studies that say that the officials give benefit to home teams across all sports. People have tried to argue that that’s not the case. Whatever it is, it is. And then there’s the energy of a crowd. I mean, crowds do make players play harder. And then I’d also say there’s just the comfort of playing in a place that you’re used to shooting and playing in, hitting in, fielding in, et cetera.

DUBNER: So what the academics argue is that it’s basically unconscious ref bias. That they’re not rooting for the home team, obviously, but that basically the crowd’s sentiment puts the refs unconsciously in that moment.

CUBAN: I think Justin Wolfers wrote that.

DUBNER: Justin wrote about race actually. Most of the studies about home field advantage come from soccer where there are some nice little instrumental variables that you can use to determine.

CUBAN: And plus, depending on the level of soccer, where you’re playing — Yeah there’s concern for their lives.

DUBNER: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah like one of the best pieces of evidence came from measuring soccer played in stadiums where there was a running track around the field. So the refs are literally 20 yards further from the crowd, and there the home field advantage is much less so. But that said, you are probably most famous, as an owner, for — I don’t know if you want to call it working the refs, but communicating with the refs. Just talk about that, how it evolved and how successful you think it is.

CUBAN: It’s funny. Everybody’s wired differently and when I play basketball — and by the way I just got done playing basketball and I’ve just had a Diet Coke up against my Achilles. So, I’ve been a basketball junkie my entire life. Everybody’s got something and for whatever reason when I got to the Mavs, I just looked at the officiating, and it just drove me nuts because my attitude has always been that the three officials in basketball, no matter what the level, have more impact than 80 percent of the players on the court. And that’s why it’s always driven me crazy. And when I first got in and started doing my homework, one of the things that was conventional wisdom is that games weren’t officiated the same in the first minute as they were in the last minute, and that just drove me nuts. And the more I got to know, the more I got to learn. Then I started to understand how officials at all levels manage games and deal with certain issues. And it wasn’t always about making the right call throughout the game. And so that just ticked me off. And that just led to everything else. And so was it worth it? Yeah, I think it has been, because I can tell you that things have changed dramatically. At various times they’ve changed dramatically for the better. At various times personnel changed and it got worse. So we’ll see what happens this season.

DUBNER: Do you think that your input on that has changed the way N.B.A. games are refereed now? At least more consistency?

CUBAN: I don’t know if there’s more consistency, but yeah.

DUBNER: What are the channels by which it’s worked? Have there been actual committees where you sit down and say, listen this is plainly going on and it’s not right, not fair, not transparent?

CUBAN: No, it’s not even like that. It’s not like I come in and say this ref is biased or this guy’s got a problem. Couple of times I’ve done that, and it’s been investigated and it’s been fixed. And it’s not like Tim Donaghy, it’s just little marginal things. But in any event, what has changed in my— The thing that I have always harped on the most is from all my experience in business, you always want to get the best possible manager. And where I’ve seen a lot of companies make mistakes is they’ll take their best salesperson and make them a sales manager. Well, just cause you’re a good salesperson doesn’t make you a good sales manager. And so using that analogy, just because you were a good referee or just cause you were good in management somewhere in the N.B.A., doesn’t mean you’re the best person to be in charge of the officiating group. And that’s been my biggest battle, that they promote people not because they were the best for the job but because they were there. Or they promoted refs into positions of authority, not because they were great managers or not because they could get great results, but because they used to be good refs, and those guys wanted to keep on working. And so that’s where I had the greatest amount of problem and that’s where I think I’ve had the greatest impact.

DUBNER: Gotcha. There’s another piece of research that argues that a lot of N.B.A. coaches are bad strategically when it comes to sitting players in foul trouble. That if a player is good enough to sit because you’re worried about losing him then is his value is actually greater by playing. I’m curious if you have any thoughts on that and if you’ve ever talked to your coaches about that.

CUBAN: No, I agree. Because — going back to the refs — even the refs know how many fouls a guy has. And so they understand that if it’s a toss-up call and it’s a gray area call, they’re probably not going to call it. And players are smart enough to adjust. Now on the flip side when you know a great player has three fouls in the first quarter, you’re going to go at him and try to get that fourth foul, because there is a point of diminishing returns. And so typically if it’s two fouls, I’m fine if Rick keeps them in, and Rick’s gotten to that point. If it’s again a qualified depending on the opponent, right? Because the value of that player is relative to the time, the score, and the opponent. And so if the numbers say keep him in, I’m fine with keeping him in.

DUBNER: When are you finally going to buy a Major League Baseball team?

CUBAN: Never.

DUBNER: What happened?

CUBAN: Never. Oh, well two things happened. One, they didn’t want me in. And two I had — my kids got older and they’re too much fun. 162 games, my wife would divorce me.

DUBNER: Why didn’t baseball want you in?

CUBAN: Because they knew I’d try to change things. I just did an interview with C.C. Sabathia and he was like “What would you do differently?” One I would teach all our guys to bat flip, every time they hit a home run, because you got to just change things up. These unwritten rules are ridiculous and the fans pay the bills, you gotta give them a reason to come. Two, I’d push for the designated hitter in both leagues so that pitchers in between innings can go right to the bullpen and warm up or do whatever they needed to. And that way when you come back on the field, you don’t throw any warmup pitches, you go right into pitching and there’s no throwing the ball around the infield and the outfield. You just go right in. The breaks aren’t the breaks, and you go right up to bat and you reduce an hour off the game.

DUBNER: It is pretty weird. It would be like in the N.B.A. between every dead ball there’s like lay up practice again.

CUBAN: Yeah, exactly you get to get shots up and everything to get your rhythm. And so there’s so many ways you can speed up the game. And I would have been pushing for them and talking about them and they didn’t want to see that.

DUBNER: Yeah. What would you say have been your most significant changes to the way basketball is played since you’ve owned the team?

CUBAN: Oh, little things. Things like the Clear Path Rule. I changed it because I showed them the math was wrong. That it used to be one shot and the ball, I changed it to two shots and the ball. Different replay things. Now, with the latest collective bargaining agreement, there’s a thing called the cap-room exception. So it used to be when a team had cap room you just had your cap room. Now there’s a $4.4 million exception that I pushed to get through in our collective bargaining agreement in 2011. And so that’s been a big change, and I’m sure there’s other things that’s just what comes to the top of my head.

DUBNER: The effect of that exception is what then?

CUBAN: So, if the Mavericks have $25 million in cap room this year and we use that cap room to sign three players and fully use it, we still have one exception where we can sign one or more players for up to $4.4 million dollars. And the logic was you want to incent teams to have cap room and to try to improve their teams, and one way to improve the incentive was to create this cap room exception.

DUBNER: Right. All right, last question. Where is LeBron going?

CUBAN: I don’t know and I can’t comment on other teams’ players.

DUBNER: Dallas is not a team I’ve heard mentioned at all. Should they be?

CUBAN: Who knows. Who knows. Like I said, you’re— I’m not ready to get fined again.

DUBNER: Basically I’m no Dr. J. I’ve learned my lesson I stand down.

CUBAN: I would never say that.

DUBNER: That said, I very much enjoyed it and I really appreciate your time and I wish you the best of luck this season.

CUBAN: I appreciate it.

DUBNER: Hey, you going to run for some office at some point?

CUBAN: Yeah, I’m going to run to the bathroom right now. So I don’t know, we’ll see what happens in the midterms.

DUBNER: But would you enjoy, do you think, the presidency would that be a job that — I mean just in the abstract, is it a job that you think —

CUBAN: Could I do the job? Yeah. Would I enjoy it, that’s hard to say. The challenge isn’t doing the job, it’s the process to get there. The definition of poor parenting is having kids eight, 11, and 14 and running for the presidency.

DUBNER: Yeah but just think how cute they’d be on the posters. I mean that’s a real — I mean if you want to just talk pure strategic exploitation of your family that would be pretty —

CUBAN: No, I’m not a pimp. When it comes to my kids, no. It would be the exact opposite.

DUBNER: All right, well whatever you do, I wish you continued huge success and I thank you very much for the time.

CUBAN: Thanks I enjoyed the interview.

Thanks to Mark Cuban for the conversation. You can hear Cuban and many others in our “ Hidden Side of Sports” series.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. Our “Hidden Side of Sports” series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John, with help from Alvin Melathe, Matt Stroup, and Harry Huggins. Our staff includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, and Zack Lapinski. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country — check your local station for the schedule — as well as on SiriusXM, Spotify, and even your better airlines!

The post Extra: Mark Cuban Full Interview appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mark-cuban/

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eddiejpoplar · 6 years

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Sputtering from Bavaria to Serbia in a 1984 Yugo

The color was nicknamed “non-metallic pus” by the toothless gas station attendant with the red Partizan Belgrade cap. The turgid upholstery could have been cut from a wizened hermit’s bathrobe. The mocha brown all-plastic dashboard epitomized the fine Yugoslav art of brittle discoloring. So how come this frail-looking econobox on tricycle-like 13-inch tires got more thumbs-up, more video clips on Instagram, and more friendly pats on the roof during our 780-mile journey from Bavaria to Serbia than a gold-plated McLaren P1? Because for every Eastern Bloc truck driver and every Serbian expat, the Yugo brought back memories of Josip Broz Tito’s protracted effort to keep the multiethnic Yugoslavia together.

On the far side of the heavily guarded border between Hungary and Serbia, our pale two-plus-folding-rear-bench-seater awaited, an apparition that long ago earned its reputation for breaking down at random or rotting away at warp speed. Built by the former arms manufacturer Zastava, which only added cars to its portfolio of cannons and howitzers in the early 1950s, the Yugo was, shortly after its 1981 launch, almost unanimously rated as the world’s worst automobile, inferior even to that uncrowned king of four-wheeled craptacularity, the plastic-bodied Sachsenring Trabant. After a week at the helm, we came to fervently disagree with this gross misjudgment. True, the baby Zastava is not a quality piece of work, but it oozes affability, simplicity, and approachability. This car wants to be your friend, even if the odd specimen was, without a doubt, a habitual troublemaker.

Victor Hugo (our Yugo) was delivered new to Belgium, where a steadfast Serbian-born pensioner kept it for 32 years before selling it to me for 2,000 euros, or about $2,350. A couple of weeks later, I had collected additional bills running to roughly $3,350 for mandatory repair work, licensing, and third-party insurance. Although the retro-funky 55L arrived in Germany with a European Union declaration of roadworthiness, roadworthy it certainly was not. For a start, it needed new tires and fresh brakes—and a Saint Christopher plaque on the dashboard to protect us from evil, both within and without. When it tiptoed off the flatbed in the middle of the night in a bright yellow sheen and covered in ADAC (Germany’s AAA) stickers, it reeked of gasoline and soon misfired to a puffing halt.

Initially, the fuel gauge showed empty when the tank was full, and consumption worked out to a Porsche-like 23.5 mpg. But to be fair, things did get better by the mile.

Two hours later, the engine started. Three hours later, it actually ran, firing order 3-1-4-2 counting down. Four hours later, it even idled without stalling the instant you attempted to put it into gear. The first leg of this epic journey from Munich to Vienna was thus, kind of, OK. Initially, the top speed leveled off at an indicated 65 mph, the fuel gauge showed empty when the tank was full, wind noise challenged road noise for lead vocals, and fuel consumption worked out to a Porsche-like 23.5 mpg. But to be fair, things did get better by the mile.

As Vienna’s trademark Ferris wheel rotated into sight, top speed climbed to 80 mph, and with the engine having cleaned itself out a bit, the entire 59 lb-ft of pulling power was now on call to twist the driveshafts with something resembling mild urgency. Having said that, smoking was out of the question due to low-octane fumes that filled the cabin (and which took three washing cycles to clear from our clothes). As for the rest, the battery light warned of impending electrical doom, the aftermarket radio’s loose wiring sizzled the speakers to stubborn silence, aero drag kept flattening the door mirror, and the driver’s seat backrest adjuster had seized in an excessively laid-back position. Everything else worked spot-on, though, absolutely spot-on.

Other than the broken radio, balky seat back, battery warning light, and noxious gas fumes, all was well in the cabin. The fire extinguisher was a good call.

Austrians love to go shopping in Hungary, where salami is half price, a fresh hairdo costs as much as an iced coffee back home, and dentists charge market price for new teeth. On the A1 autobahn infested by bargain sharks, eastbound traffic eventually came to a halt, and the Yugo’s engine felt first inclined to overheat and then reluctant to restart. To avoid embarrassment, we fled the highway and followed Google maps on bumpy but mostly arrow-straight B-roads last surfaced when Hungary was still a monarchy. With a meager 54 hp at the disposal of a foot used to several times that, overtaking semis was an equation with multiple unknowns, including suicidal stray dogs, deep potholes, enormous speed bumps, and packs of motorbikes driven by MotoGP wannabes approaching from behind.

Contrary to the propaganda, we were actually rather impressed by Victor’s mile-munching abilities. Although the dodgy thermometer suggested cabin temperatures in excess of 104 degrees Fahrenheit, opening the quarter panes had almost the same effect as switching on an only mildly dysfunctional A/C. Despite their dilapidated appearance, the seats were upholstered with horsehair and real springs for what turned out to be acceptable long-distance comfort. Likewise, although aero efficiency was evidently not part of the design brief, the upright Pocky-like roof pillars barely cluttered the good all-around visibility. Lack of performance is only a problem if you ignore what’s happening in the rearview mirror. Keep your eyes peeled in both directions, and the narrow-track econobox displays an unexpected swiftness not unlike the original Mini.

Why the look of concern, Georg? Victor Hugo made the trip, um, interesting.

Stuck in a nerve-wracking three-hour traffic jam at the Serbian border, the featherweight Yugo preferred being pushed to the roadside as opposed to creeping along with the pack. When we finally headed for Belgrade a couple of heart attacks later, a monsoon put the wipers to the test. This should have been a piece of cake for the brand-new Uniroyal rain tires; unfortunately, the communist crate started hydroplaning at just 40 mph, a disconcerting trait encouraged by the bonsai wheelbase, which is closer to the Smart Fortwo’s than, say, the Toyota Yaris’. While it rained, the brakes were on strike, too, juddering and droning in protest.

But who cares? At the end of the 10-hour day, no more than 20 cars had passed our econobox en route to its birthplace. We had spotted about the same number of Zastavas stranded on the hard shoulder, waiting for DIY talent, professional help, or last rites. The Serbian Yugo population increases with poverty; there are precious few Zastavas to be seen in big cities, but they still splutter in droves through rural areas, ranking fourth in the mobility hierarchy, after donkeys, prewar tractors, and scooters.

The display near the welcome monument at the northern entrance to Kragujevac read 10:47 p.m. and 77 degrees when we finally arrived. Hot, exhausted, and a little wounded, the Yugo would now stall at every set of traffic lights, limping home on two or three cylinders to the bed and breakfast across the railway track from the Fiat factory located on the site where Zastavas were built. The morning after, the engine didn’t start, and that’s when local wrench Rocky and his team took over.

The stout Serbian spanner wrestler welcomed Victor like a long-lost son. Chewing consonants with an impatient mutter, Rocky held one ear close to the engine while fumbling with greasy fingers on the carburetor until the idle speed dropped from 2,000 to 750 rpm. While he was at it, he caulked the fuel tank, fixed some wiring, and adjusted the handbrake’s travel. In the meantime, his son had dashed to a nearby accessory store for an air filter and a distributor cap. Probably lured by the German patient’s charismatic pinging noises, other Zastavas started to creep out of their holes. Their owners marveled with emphatic gestures at our car, praising its original paint job, ultra-rare L specification, and the slickness of the notoriously balky transmission. This impromptu gathering stimulated the national pride to the effect that we agreed to meet again at 7 p.m. for food and drinks.

When things started to go south, former Zastava racer Rocky and friends all pitched in to help.

That evening we were introduced to Slato and his bespoilered one-off 600 (Fico) convertible, Aleksandar in a barely street-legal stealth 120-hp Yugo 55, and Vladan at the wheel of a Zastava 600 on steroids with bordello-red velour upholstery and a roof trimmed in black leather. Before everyone started hitting the sauce, the three Yugoista offered to give their newly found brother a thorough checkup. The next day at 8 a.m. sharp, the timing belt, distributor rotor, spark plugs, head gasket, and oil and filter had been changed in less than two hours. The charge? Around 100 euros, including parts. The labor rate came to 18 euros, which compares favorably to the average Serbian hourly wage of 7 to 10 euros.

When the Yugo plant thrived, some 30,000 employees worked three shifts, and in its best-ever year, Zastava built roughly 230,000 cars. But in April 1999, NATO troops attacked Kragujevac and almost completely destroyed the factory. Although the last Yugo rolled off the makeshift assembly line in 2008, the company never recovered from the aftermath of the war.

Fiat eventually bought the ailing carmaker, razed the old buildings, and erected a bespoke new assembly site where 5,000 workers put together the 500L microvan. Ten years later, Fiat pays workers 250 to 300 euros per month, and because the average pension barely comes to 200 euros per month, DIY is the name of almost every game.

When we told them that the original plan was to donate this mint piece of Serbian motor history to a local charity for auction, awkward silence spread. “Don’t take it personal, but in Kragujevac we have more than enough Yugos, and even the best ones are worth almost nothing,” said Slato Bataveljic, the chairman of the Zastava owners club. “I value your car at approximately 600 euros. After all, it is still possible to buy brand-new models for 4,000 euros or less. In terms of street cred, a Yugo ranks right at the bottom. Everyone who can afford it drives an import.”

Unloved, unwanted, and underrated in its hometown, Victor Hugo retained its German plates, made a U-turn with considerable steering effort, and headed back north to photographer Tom Salt’s Old Car Nursing Home in Ratzeburg, near Hamburg. Even though the actual mileage may after all be closer to 113,000 than the claimed 13,000 kilometers, and despite full-throttle emissions capable of knocking birds directly from the sky, the world’s worst car is still good enough to spend its second life as an economical, practical urban runabout.

There are plenty of better cars in the market than this oddball Zastava, but in the course of the pending paradigm shift from big engines to electrification, this light, compact, and nimble underdog doesn’t stray as far from the new road to the future as its banjaxed image suggests.

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jonathanbelloblog · 6 years

Text

Sputtering from Bavaria to Serbia in a 1984 Yugo

Initially, the fuel gauge showed empty when the tank was full, and consumption worked out to a Porsche-like 23.5 mpg. But to be fair, things did get better by the mile.

Other than the broken radio, balky seat back, battery warning light, and noxious gas fumes, all was well in the cabin. The fire extinguisher was a good call.

Why the look of concern, Georg? Victor Hugo made the trip, um, interesting.

When things started to go south, former Zastava racer Rocky and friends all pitched in to help.

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#IFTTT #Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4

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jesusvasser · 6 years

Text

Sputtering from Bavaria to Serbia in a 1984 Yugo

Initially, the fuel gauge showed empty when the tank was full, and consumption worked out to a Porsche-like 23.5 mpg. But to be fair, things did get better by the mile.

Other than the broken radio, balky seat back, battery warning light, and noxious gas fumes, all was well in the cabin. The fire extinguisher was a good call.

Why the look of concern, Georg? Victor Hugo made the trip, um, interesting.

When things started to go south, former Zastava racer Rocky and friends all pitched in to help.

IFTTT

#IFTTT #Performance Junk WP Feed 4

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davidmhomerjr · 6 years

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The 2 Quickest Ways to Generate an Income Online — UPDATED!

Today, I’m sharing the two quickest ways to generate an income online. In this post, you will learn:

Gary Vaynerchuk’s timeless lesson on patience and hard work.

How your skills are foundational to your online business success.

The many benefits of starting with freelancing.

How to adopt affiliate marketing into your business.

Why quick has value, but how being too quick can also set you up for failure.

On my podcast, AskPat, I’ve collected over 3,000 voicemail questions related to starting an online business. The most common question of those I get is this:

“What’s the quickest way to generate an income online?”

Before I get into my answer, let me tell you exactly why this question is tricky and a little problematic. There are two specific reasons for this:

First, the emphasis on being quick. I’ve witnessed several new business owners who’ve put speed over quality and value, only to end up further behind than where they were when they started. Quick can be good, but if that’s your focus, you may be setting yourself up for a stumble down the road.

Second, it implies trying to avoid the work it really takes to make money online. Building a successful business takes a lot of effort and strategy. From research to execution and everything in between—it takes blood, sweat, and tears. The question is in search of a magic button, but there is no magic button.

Gary Vaynerchuk puts it best. In order to succeed, you need “micro hustle, and macro patience.”

Micro hustle is focusing all of your work and effort on the next task at hand (not the task ten tasks from now), while macro patience is about allowing time to give you the results, because they will not often happen right away.

The question “What’s the quickest way to generate an income online?” is the opposite of Gary’s advice.

I’ve thought for years about how to best answer this question. I’ve been asked this question in person before, and even during a live Q&A on stage in front of hundreds of people, and my answer usually reflects the two points I’ve made above.

After I share my thoughts with those who’ve asked this question, their body language usually very clearly reflects disappointment. They were expecting an all-in-one solution, after all, and it’s not that simple.

As I’ve thought more deeply about how to answer this question over the years, I’ve come to a realization that the problem is not the answer, but the question itself. For those who’ve asked it, I don’t think it’s always coming from a place of “quick money.” If we reframe the question, I think there’s room to empower and actually help those who’ve asked it—to give them a foundational understanding of what it really means to generate an income online.

Here’s how I would reframe the question:

“With the resources I have available to me now, what can I possibly offer to others in exchange for money?”

Now this is a question we can begin to answer. And, as you can likely tell, the answers will come to each person on an individual basis based on the resources they have available, and to whom they may be able to share and offer those resources.

The answer doesn’t come from me, it comes from the individual.

If you’re ten years old, you might not have much, but perhaps you may have access to a lawnmower in your garage, so you (after asking your parents) offer to cut the lawn for your neighbors, in exchange for money.

If you’re a writer who’s been trying to build your own brand and sell your own books, offering your talent to others who need it would be the best way to go. It’s a resource you have available to you now, and it’s something others (i.e. non writers) may be willing to pay for if they need writing for their website or blog.

By the way, today’s post is on “quick,” but if you have more time and want a more in-depth look at how to make money online, check out my recent video on how to create multiple streams of income online:

youtube

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

Okay, back to our topic today: If you’re struggling to figure out how to make money online FAST—in a way that focuses on your strengths—that’s how you do it. Think about the resources you have available to you, the skills and talents you have, the superpowers that you’ve so severely underrated these past years, and journey out there to find those people who are looking for the resources and skills you offer. They are out there.

Remember, the skills you have are an asset, they are your “unfair advantage.” They are essential to your unique personal brand, and you can start making money online using those skills if you have the right strategy, tactics, and mindset in place. Another way to describe this is your “unfair advantage,” a term I was first introduced to by Lain Ehmann in SPI Podcast Session #37.

Lain described an unfair advantage as a skill or asset that you have that no one else has, or very few others might have in your specific niche. There are a few different types of unfair advantages, including:

1. Your Rolodex: The People You Know

You know and have access to the right people in your industry, people who others do not have access to. You’re a connector, and you can provide value to a specific audience by using the connections you’ve made over time.

Who do you know that others in your industry may not know?

2. Your Experience: What You’ve Been Through

I watched an episode of Shark Tank once where I was introduced to Major Robert Dyer. Major Dyer was pitching a new energy drink called The Ruck Pack Energy Drink. It’s not like the world needs another energy drink, but he was able to convince both Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjevic, two of the investors on the show, to give him $150k in exchange for 20 percent of the company.

Major Dyer used his experience in the Army to create an energy drink that was perfect for a combating soldier. He was actually in Afghanistan when he came up with the concoction.

His experience became his advantage because he was in extreme conditions that allowed him to create and test a drink of this kind of caliber, one that provided this kind of energy and focus that a combating soldier needed. I doubt the guys at Red Bull or Monster put themselves in the line of fire when testing the capability of their drinks.

When I started SmartPassiveIncome.com, I already had experience with a successful, automated online business at Green Exam Academy. A lot of people were providing online business advice at the time, but most were using other people’s businesses as examples, or just spoke theory with no real case studies to back it up. Here, I was able to use my own experience as evidence, and it helped me become more credible right from the start.

What experiences in your life have given you the ability to prove yourself or your business more than others?

3. Your Story: And How To Tell It

Stories are incredible marketing tools. They stick. People who listen to or read stories transport themselves into the situations that are described and the storyteller is better able to make a deeper connection with their audience.

We all have a story to tell. If you have a good one, tell it and use it to your advantage.

I know I have a great story. I’ve shared it here on the blog and I even went deeper into the story for my first book, Let Go.

It’s funny because when I’m interviewed for podcasts and radio shows, many times the interviewer will apologize and say, “I’m sorry . . . I know you’ve probably told your story hundreds of times before, but I’d like you to tell it again if you don’t mind.”

I always respond with “Of course!”

I love telling my story, not just because it reminds me of where I came from which always gives me a motivational boost, but because I know it’s a great way to connect with an audience. To have the opportunity to share it right from the start is awesome.

Of course, your stories should always be true, but if you have a good one make sure there’s a way for people to hear it.

What’s your story and how can it help your business?

4. Your Hustle: How Much You Put In and Where

Gary Vaynerchuk would probably agree with me when I say that sometimes all you need to do is hustle. I mean like, truly hustle. The all-out just insane amounts of work kind of hustle.

Not everyone has the time or ability to hustle, and of course the work that’s done has to be the right kind of work – the right kind of hustle.

John Lee Dumas, host of Entrepreneur On Fire, is a perfect example of someone who is using his ability to hustle to his advantage.

John has a daily (yes, daily) podcast where he features an interview with a successful entrepreneur. Now, John enjoys many hundreds of thousands of downloads per month, he’s written a book, has products and has opened up a ton of opportunities for sponsorships and partnerships that wouldn’t have come otherwise. He’s not the first person to have a show dedicated to interviewing rock star entrepreneurs—not even close—but he’s definitely the fastest to see these kinds of results.

He’s not just working hard either, he’s working smart. Hustle doesn’t mean just pure physical and mental work, it can mean spending the time to put the right systems into place to generate more output.

What’s something successful that other businesses are doing that could use your hustle to stand out?

5. Your Personality and Your Ability to Connect With Others

Out of the 7 billion people in this world, you are uniquely you. Within specific markets and niches, you are definitely uniquely you. If you have a personality that people can easily connect with you shouldn’t be afraid to share it.

In 2009 when struggling to get traffic to this blog, I had a chat with Jeremy Frandsen from Internet Business Mastery.

He told me I had a magnetic personality and I should find other ways to share it. That’s when I started my YouTube Channel, and then later, my podcast, which just passed 33,000,000 downloads.

How will you connect with others and grow your business by being you?

6. Your Ability To Listen, Build, Measure, and Learn

All companies build something, but not all of them measure, learn, and then adapt or shift.

In Eric Reis’s The Lean Startup, a fantastic book about how today’s entrepreneurs and startup companies are approaching the way they create and innovate, Eric talks about how vital it is to use validated learning and scientific experimentation to be able to steer a company in the right direction. In other words, to use customer feedback and quantified data analysis (of real, non-vanity metrics) from a minimal viable product to make decisions and pivot a business one way or another.

If you have the ability to see what holes lie in existing markets before you enter it, the ability to listen to a target market (or become a customer yourself who is extremely conscious of the overall customer experience), and learn from the wins and failures of the companies that already exist, you will have an edge over your competition.

Like I mentioned earlier, coming in late in the game can be an advantage if you listen, learn and provide solutions for what seems to be missing. Even coming into a market with a minimal viable product, you’ll have the advantage of being able to get deep into the customer experience to shape your product or service to what it should be, again, all based on what you’re able to measure and learn.

There is a lot more to be said about lean startup methods and the build-measure-learn feedback loop.

7. Your Specialization: Who You Serve and Your Ability To Do So

It’s not just the skills and experiences that you have to offer that can give you a competitive edge, it can also be that fact that you want to serve a more specialized segment of a market.

Generally, the more specialized you get, the less competition you have to deal with. In addition to that, the more specialized you get, the better you can hone in your skills for a particular group of people. Your advantage is your knowledge of and ability to serve that particular segment of the larger market.

Take for example, shoes.

Everyone (well, almost everyone) buys shoes. If you wanted to enter the shoe market, you might think your competitors are retailers like Zappos, EastBay, Sketchers and other large online retailers. Then there’s Nike, Reebok too. It’s virtually impossible to compete with them, especially when you’re bootstrapped. So what can we do?

Specialize.

Instead of getting into the market to sell all types of shoes, how about serving a part of the market that’s looking for a specific type of shoe: running shoes, walking shoes, children’s shoes, etc.

Even at this level of specialization, however, it’s not quite an advantage yet because companies already specialize in these types of shoes: Foot Locker, The Walking Company, and Stride Rite, respectively. Now what?

Specialize again.

Within running shoes, how about soccer cleats? Within soccer cleats, how about women’s soccer cleats?

When your target market is women who are looking for soccer cleats, it’s much easier to do market research and enter the build-measure-learn feedback loop. You have an advantage over others who are targeting a larger segment of the market.

Trunk Club, is a great example of this kind of specialization at work.

Like lots of other businesses, they sell clothes. That in itself is not very special.

But, their target market and who they serve is special, and it’s not everyone. Their target market is specifically men who want to dress well who either don’t like to go shopping, or don’t have the time to do so.

It works like this:

You speak to a personal stylist over the phone, they ask you a number of questions to get to know you a little better and figure out your style, and then they send you a Trunk with a number of pieces of clothing in it based on your conversation.

You try stuff on, keep what you like, and ship back what you don’t like in the same trunk. Shipping is already paid for.

Boom. New clothes and I didn’t even have to leave my house. No membership fees, you just get a trunk whenever you want, and they charge you for pieces that don’t return.

I’ve received two trunks so far and another is on the way. I’ve kept roughly 35-40% of what was shipped to me.

I heard about this service from a friend, and I’ve definitely passed this service onto others. Not everyone, but other men around the same age who are in situations where they might need to dress up and they might be too busy to go shopping on their own.

You see, when you specialize and can provide value to a specific segment of a market, those people within that market tend to talk to each other about you.

How can you specialize and become the topic of conversation when those people get together?

All of this brings me to the first way to generate an income online, and that is:

Freelance.

When you think of all of your skills, and what you have to offer the world, your “unfair advantages,” chances are there’s someone out there who will pay you for it. No, it’s not at all passive, but it’s the quickest and easiest way to get paid for something that can actually help people and solve one of their problems.

There are two more major benefits of going down the freelancing route:

It’s a fantastic way to immerse yourself in an industry and get to know the lay of the land—the marketplace—so you can carve out your own niche in the future in some way, shape, or form. You’ll also be able to connect with the people you need to connect with, and build on those relationships to create more opportunities.

A freelancing service is something that can, with the right strategy and action, turn into something more productized and passive. Brian Casel, featured guest on SPI Podcast Session #158, talks about how he was able to turn his stress-inducing one-on-one design service business into something that was actually more productized, passive, and profitable. I highly recommend you listen to that episode if you have a service-based business and you feel stuck.

You can also check out my post, How to Start Freelancing (and Get Your First Client), which walks you through the steps you’ll need to kick off your freelance gig, including:

Why there’s huge opportunity in freelancing.

The many freelance skill sets you can build into a freelancing career.

The secrets to landing your first freelance client.

Five ways to make more money as a freelancer.

Career and business options for freelancers.

And once you get started, here’s a great video on FIVE WAYS to make even more money as a freelancer:

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Subscribe to my YouTube Channel

Okay, so beyond freelancing, what else can you do to make money online? Well, you could literally just start contacting everyone you know and offer a service today, right now, right at this moment.

I’ll just wait a moment while you do that 😀

There is one more method of generating an income I’d like to share with you. This method is:

Even easier and faster than freelancing.

Something that has helped me earn more than $3 million since I started my online business.

Something you’re likely, in a way, already doing.

What is this sorcery I’m speaking of?

It’s not magic. It’s simply recommending products you already use to those who trust you. In online business terms, we call this:

Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the process of generating an income through a partnership you have with a company by recommending their product(s) to others.

To learn about the basics of affiliate marketing, watch my Affiliate Marketing 101 video series:

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Just think of how often you’ve shared with a friend or online network an amazing tool, service, or product that you love. What if you could potentially earn a percentage of the sale of any products you helped sell through your recommendation? Well, that’s possible, and it’s been around for a while.

The term affiliate marketing has taken a bad rap over the years, primarily because people are abusing just how easy this is to do. Internet marketers are finding products they don’t even use because they come with a sweet commission, and are spamming everyone until they either buy, or unsubscribe. This is also known as the dark side of affiliate marketing.

That’s why I sometimes hesitate to even say I participate in affiliate marketing. But that’s not how I, or you, should approach it. I’m here to lead the change and show people there is so much opportunity out there in affiliate marketing the right way (and the smart way). It’s insane to me that more people aren’t really realizing their full potential with this.

There are products that already exist in this world that provide solutions for your audience (and future audience), and when you align your attention to really help them, with the products out there that already exist, it’s a recipe for success and a win for everyone.

How do you make affiliate marketing work for you? There are a few affiliate marketing principles I stand by:

1. Affiliate Marketing Starts with the First Impression

First impressions are huge because they set the tone for a visitor’s entire experience through your website, including any possible transactions that may take place now, or in the future.

What is the first impression that you get when you go to a site and it’s splattered with advertisements, for example? What does a site like that say to a first time visitor?

“Hi, nice to meet you – click here so I can earn a buck?”

It’s like if you met someone for the first time and the first thing they ask you is if you’re interested in buying something from them. I’d much rather get to know somebody first, trust them, and then have them tell me what they might have to offer. Or better yet, be genuinely interested in what they’re doing, and ask them about it myself. This is the kind of philosophy that I use when promoting other people’s products.

2. Only Promote Products That You Have Used

As I mentioned in a previous post on the 3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained, the way I earn money with affiliate links in ALL of my online businesses is by promoting only products that I have used, and only what I would recommend to my friends who want to achieve similar results. I feel that anyone with an audience has a responsibility to do the same thing.

There’s something fishy about someone promoting Apple Computers who only uses a PC.

3. Always Describe the Product You’re Promoting

If you have an affiliate link that’s just a banner ad, or a link at the bottom of a post with no real description – it’s a waste. If you’re actively promoting a product (that you’ve used), you obviously know something about it. Share your knowledge with your audience, and they’ll be intrigued and more likely to click through to learn more.

4. Content First, Affiliate Link Second

Although I just said you should always describe the products you promote, the content that you write should drive the affiliate links that you offer, not the other way around. Don’t write posts just for the sake of placing an affiliate link within.

5. Share Your Experience with The Product

When describing whatever it is your promoting, share your experience! If you can throw in some data or graphs to go along with it, even better. Back when I was more actively writing about eHow, I promoted an ebook that I read which helped quadruple my earnings per article. I created a graph that showed how much I earned before I read the book versus how much I earned after. To this date, that ebook has been one of the most successful affiliate promotions I’ve done on this blog.

6. Only Promote One or Two of the Same Type of Products

There are a number of reasons why you should never promote more than two of the same type of products:

The more products you promote, the less believable each of them becomes. If today I recommended Company X, and tomorrow I recommended Company Y and Company Z, each of their “stock” immediately goes down.

The more products you promote, the more difficult the decision to choose between them becomes. I’ve been to a number of personal finance websites that offer sign-up bonuses for 4 to 5 different banks (sometimes within the same post!). It hurts my brain.

If you keep promoting the same products time and time again, your audience will begin to realize that there must be something special about the specific ones you keep bringing up.

7. Starve the Horses and Feed the Stallions

This is a fancy (and thankfully not literal) way of saying that you should only promote the products that you know make you the most money, and forget about the ones that don’t. You will only know this after trial and error, so see what works, and get rid of the rest.

For a while, I had a number of banner ads on this blog that were not generating any type of income for me. There’s no point in wasting valuable ad space with banners that don’t pay out.

Test, test, test.

8. Utilize a Resources Page

A resources page is a page that consists of helpful links to websites, products and services related to your niche. This is a perfect spot for affiliate links, so take advantage of this if you haven’t already.

It takes the “books I’m reading” area you often see in blogs (within Amazon affiliate links) to a whole new level. not only is this great for you, but it’s extremely helpful for your readers who may be looking for additional resources related to your niche. Plus, they may come across products or services they weren’t originally looking for while on your resources page.

Everybody wins.

To start your affiliate marketing journey, make sure you sign up for my Affiliate Marketing Masterclass, which will walk you through five steps to finally begin generating an additional passive income stream using authentic affiliate marketing strategies I’ve used myself. Click the link below to sign up for the next Affiliate Marketing Masterclass:

So there you go! There are two QUICK ways you can generate an income online. So go get started today!

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gutwrenchradio-blog · 7 years

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Around the Ring with TCB “Summer Slam Edition”

By: Tom Block, contributor to Gut Wrench Radio SummerSlam, the WWE’s second biggest PPV, is descending on Brooklyn NY this Sunday evening. You have a kickoff show starting at 5 p.m. ET and the main show starting at 7 p.m. ET. There’s so many matches with this co-branding event, let’s get down to the matches and the predictions. Cruiserweight Championship — Akira Tozawa (c) vs. Neville (Kickoff Show) I’ll be honest, I’m one of those who doesn’t pay much attention to this division. Neville has done a tremendous job as the champion but it’s clear his time has come with the surprising decision to have Tozawa win on RAW. The rematch occurs and I can’t see a reason to do another title switch. I wouldn’t be surprised if Neville moves up the card. Prediction: Tozawa Jason Jordan & The Hardy Boyz vs. The Miz & The Miztourage (Kickoff Show) Strung together at the last minute since the Hardy’s had no challengers with Scott Dawson out with injury and you could tell Monday night on RAW this was probably going to happen. Make no mistake, Jason Jordan isn’t getting the rub WWE hoped for with this stupid Kurt Angle story. The Miztourage is too good to be in this match. WWE still wants to ride on this train with Hardy’s and Jason. Prediction: Hardy’s & Jordan SmackDown Tag Team Championship — The New Day (c) vs. The Usos (Kickoff Show) I love The New Day and the crowd loves The New Day. Don’t get me wrong, The Usos have very much stepped up into this role of being a great heel tag team but they just aren’t there yet for an extended run. You had them win clean against TND on Smackdown Live so I don’t see the title changing hands. The rivalry will continue though. Prediction: The New Day Big Show vs. Big Cass with Enzo Amore This is a match that should be on the kickoff show. The shark tank gimmick is stupid. Unless a heel turn from Amore is coming, I hope this is quick. Prediction: Big Cass and his big dumb entrance music Randy Orton vs. Rusev Remember when everyone thought Rusev would be a legit world title contender before his injury? Good times. Him and Lana have something in common in storylines, and that’s being losers and terrible gimmick’s. Orton isn’t jobbing on another PPV to someone who isn’t going anywhere currently. Prediction: Orton SmackDown Women’s Championship — Naomi (c) vs. Natalya Naomi has not been a great woman’s champ. The only GLOW I’ve been feeling is GET LANA OFF WRESLTING the champ for zero reason, which has set up where we are today. That and these multi-women matches for contenders. Anyway, Natalya wins and I don’t think Carmella comes out and cashes in her MITB. Seems too obvious but if she does I bet she Baron Corbin’s it. Prediction: Natalya John Cena vs. Baron Corbin Corbin got the LOL emoji’s after Tuesday night’s failed cash in. Corbin doesn’t excite me as a champion so I’m glad he doesn’t have that briefcase. If the rumor of Cena going to RAW is true, then give the win to Corbin for the heat as he “got rid of John Cena on SD Life” narrative. Prediction: Corbin Finn Balor vs. Bray Wyatt The demon king finally has been awoken for this match. He lost clean to Bray on Monday night so I see no reason to go for all this trouble in getting Balor in his makeup to loss again. I wouldn’t mind seeing this result create a new supernatural heel tag team. Prediction: Balor Raw Tag Team Championship — Sheamus & Cesaro (c) vs. Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins Sheamus and Cesaro have done a great job as tag champs. Probably far exceeding anything I ever expected when it first came up. That time has come for them to drop the titles. You’ve had a tremendous build up to Ambrose and Rollins reuniting. I don’t see the WWE throwing a curve after all that. 2/3’s Shield winning seems like the direction needed and the money draw would be fantastic. Prediction: Shield Reunion Raw Women’s Championship — Alexa Bliss (c) vs. Sasha Banks I’m happy this isn’t Bliss vs Bayley. I’m tired of Bayley. Her character is stale and watered down. This match is now the two best women on the Raw brand in a title match I really don’t know who to pick. I could see Bliss winning and staying as champ for a few more months and Banks getting her chance to really shine as champ. I just don’t see WWE done with Bliss in the spotlight but Banks wins in some fashion that keeps Alexa hunting her down. Prediction: Banks United States Championship — AJ Styles (c) vs. Kevin Owens with Shane McMahon as the special guest referee Here’s a wild statement – there will be controversy in this match. This will easily be the match of the night. And as much as I enjoy them, this is where the train needs to stop. AJ needs to retain and move on with KO probably fighting Shane in an upcoming PPV. Prediction: AJ WWE Championship — Jinder Mahal (c) vs. Shinsuke Nakamura Everyone who reads the dirt sheets, knows the WWE is coming up on a tour of India and the biggest draw for that money will be the Canadian Mahal. I love how Nakamura has been built up since his main roster debut. He deserves to be in the title spotlight but I can see Jinder continuing to sell the narrative that he needs to cheat to win. These two will continue on and I’m willing to bet after the India tour, the title will change. Prediction: Mahal Universal Championship — Brock Lesnar (c) vs. Roman Reigns vs. Braun Strowman vs. Samoa Joe I want nothing more than Samoa Joe to win this match. That’s a guy who has since day one on the main roster, done what has been needed to make him a legit top heel threat. I don’t see Lesnar losing and at the same time there’s too much money to be made on a Lesnar – Stowman match. Roman Reigns can go away. I feel bad for Joe in all of this because of how deserving he is. Prediction: Lesnar

#WWE #NXT #GWR

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njawaidofficial · 7 years

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Alex Rodriguez on Rebooting His Image: "You Have to Own Your Shit"

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/03/alex-rodriguez-on-rebooting-his-image-you-have-to-own-your-shit/

Alex Rodriguez on Rebooting His Image: "You Have to Own Your Shit"

He made $500 million playing baseball then became a scandal-plagued Yankees pariah. Now, Rodriguez is on ABC, CNBC and Fox Sports, rebooting himself as more than a jock turned broadcaster (and J.Lo’s beau), and he may have the secret to a successful second act: “You have to own your shit.”

Alex Rodriguez raises an arm to keep an errant basketball from hitting a reporter. We are seated courtside in plastic chairs at the gym at Wayside Baptist Church — a complex of low-slung white stucco buildings in Kendall, Florida, a suburb southwest of Miami, near where Rodriguez grew up. It is a Thursday in July, and Rodriguez wears dark-wash jeans and a navy polo shirt with a small white A-Rod Corp logo — an abstraction of the erstwhile Yankee slugger’s signature arching swing — on his left breast.

Today he is filming a pilot for CNBC called Back in the Game, a concept that has Rodriguez mentoring down-and-out former athletes. The first episode features Joe Smith Jr., a 1995 NBA No. 1 draft pick whose peripatetic career included an unfortunate salary-cap scam with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Rodriguez will enlist Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank to help Smith realize his ambition to start a youth basketball academy. We are at Wayside’s youth camp so producers can film Smith interacting with the kids. Most of the roughly 100 youth present don’t know Smith, but they of course know Rodriguez, one of the most famous (and, to many, infamous) athletes of his generation, so they’re asking for autographs and selfies.

It’s nearly exactly a year since Rodriguez played his last game at Yankee Stadium after a record-making, scandal-plagued major league career that began in 1994, when he was 18. “It’s night and day how content and happy and proud I am,” he says. “You being here, that would have never happened before.”

Rodriguez, contemplating his dramatic rehabilitation — from pariah to pundit, a credible TV star with a Hollywood girlfriend — continues: “It starts with being accountable. When people can see that you’re genuine, that’s when they pay attention. You have to own your shit.”

I ask whether he ever thinks about the arc of his career from superstar to outcast, and he shoots me a look that says, “Every second of every day!” Then he grabs my notebook and pen. Turning it sideways, he jots down five dates: 1994, 2000, 2004, 2014, 2017. (Curiously, 2009, when he won his only World Series, is not included.) He draws a jagged line under the numbers; 2000 (he hit 41 homers and had 132 RBIs, powering Seattle to the ALCS against the Yankees) and 2004 (his first season with the Yankees) are high points. When he gets to 2014 (when he sat out the season during the longest suspension in baseball history for using performance-enhancing drugs), he drags the pen to the bottom of the page then brings it back up to 2017. No doubt: 2014 was rock bottom. “There were nights in Miami when I was close to tapping out,” he admits.

•••

Once the sport’s biggest outcast, in two years Rodriguez has managed to recast himself as a trusty TV presence and MLB ambassador. (Eight days earlier, during All-Star Game weekend in Miami, he opened a refurbished field at the Miami-Dade Boys & Girls Club with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, who in 2013 led the investigation that resulted in Rodriguez’s suspension.)

It is a rebirth that few — least of all Rodriguez, 42 — would have thought possible a few years ago. He had made more money than anyone in baseball (nearly $500 million), dated famous women (Madonna), been caught taking banned substances (twice), repeatedly lied about it on TV and the radio, faced an investigation that turned up a cast of seedy characters and endured a public fall, a painful exile.

Now, he’s not out of place in the congenial confines of daytime and late night (guest hosting Live With Kelly Ripa; playing Egg Russian Roulette with Jimmy Fallon) and soon makes his debut as an ABC News contributor. (Rodriguez is viewed as an asset by ABC execs for his relationships with C-suite luminaries like Warren Buffet and Starwood Capital Group chairman Barry Bernlicht, whom he counts as mentors. The network hopes he’ll leverage access and conduct a different type of interview than a traditional correspondent.) He has carved out a reputation as a savvy businessman. He’s in the throes of a made-for-social media relationship with Jennifer Lopez, someone whose star wattage equals his own. He’s entering the reality TV circuit, but not on vacuous unscripted shows. The CNBC program matches his mission to help athletes prepare for life after the huge checks stop coming. And he’ll get to display his CEO persona as a “guest shark” on the upcoming season of ABC’s Shark Tank. “He was far more entrepreneurial than I expected,” notes the show’s Mark Cuban.

But it’s his role as an analyst on Fox Sports — which began as a guest stint during the 2015 postseason and where he has teamed with Kevin Burkhardt, Frank Thomas and fellow stigmatized hit machine Pete Rose — that arguably has done the most to repair his image as baseball’s biggest sinner.

“He goes on TV, and he’s really good,” says Bill Simmons, an avowed Red Sox loyalist and no fan of A-Rod as a player, who in 2009 wrote a column for ESPN positing that Rodriguez united the Yankees clubhouse because he was the one guy they all loved to hate. “We’ve seen this with all kinds of athletes; they can reinvent the legacy of their career just by being on TV. It just doesn’t feel like he has the baggage of some of the stuff that he did. You look at [Barry] Bonds, [Roger] Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire; these guys are synonymous with steroids. A-Rod is the only one who has come out of the abyss.”

If any baseball fans didn’t already know that Rodriguez possesses a savant-like knowledge of and reverence for the game, they learn that after watching him as an analyst. “When he was playing and I would see him, all he ever wanted to do is talk about the great players of the past,” says Rose. “He loves the history of the game. He would love to ask me about Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. I used to play against those guys all the time.”

For a journalist, this manifests in a stream of questions. At our first meeting, Rodriguez asks me to describe my workouts, where I come from, with whom else I have talked about him (and what they said), how this interview is going to go down. “I’m a reporter at heart,” he laughs.

But what has surprised many observers (and detractors) is how he plays well with others. “Having done studio shows, a lot of success or failure comes through how well you can sell everybody else and how well they sell you,” says Simmons. “And he’s good at selling the other people, which I would not have expected. Because you would have thought A-Rod would just be like, ‘Oh, I’m in it for myself. It’s not my job to make Pete Rose look better.’ But he’s actually good at selling them. The man’s full of surprises.”

Rodriguez brings the same relentless work ethic he exhibited during his career to his new job; his prep includes dozens of phone calls — to players, managers, trainers, other broadcasters, even the batboy. (“Clubhouse kids and batboys give you the greatest information in the world,” he says.) People joke on set that Rose has zero notes and Rodriguez shows up with a stack of them.

“A lot of people come in who think TV is easy, and they want to show up 20 minutes before the red light is on and wing it,” says John Entz, president of production at Fox Sports. “Alex prepares hours before, he watches the tape afterward, he wants to be critiqued, he wants to hear what was good, what could be worked on.”

Earlier this year, Fox signed him to a multiyear deal as a full-time analyst. But he wasn’t looking for a broadcast job when the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs in 2015, partly because he didn’t think he’d be good at it. It’s a running theme in Rodriguez’s life: his inferiority complex. It’s his Achilles’ heel — and what drives him.

“He needed reinforcement that he was the best,” says Rose. “Some players just want be told every day how good they are. I mean, Alex was so good, I don’t even think he understood how good he was. He always needed that little pat on the back to substantiate that.”

The effort seems to be paying off. Says Entz: “One of the comments we heard most frequently, either from people who didn’t like the Yankees or Alex, was along the lines of, ‘Man, I turned on the show, I really didn’t want to like Alex, but he was so good. I can’t help but like him.’ “

Further validation came in May when Fox’s World Series coverage won an Emmy. Adds Entz, “He’s changed a lot of people’s minds.”

Adds Rodriguez, referring to Entz: “He took a lot of shit. The people who took a chance on me early on when everybody was running the other way, those are the people who I go to war for.”

In February 2015, Rodriguez knew it was time to wave the white flag and get to work on a new incarnation of himself: owner of his own mess, charitable do-gooder, fan favorite. He was due at spring training; he released a letter of apology to fans. True to quirky form, it was handwritten. It was a complete reversal of his grievance-filled statement from a year earlier when he vowed to take his fight with baseball to federal court.

“When the thing that you love more than anything in the world is taken away from you, even if you did it to yourself, you really have to take a look at who you are and what you’re doing,” says Suzyn Waldman, the longtime Yankees play-by-play announcer. “When they took baseball away from him, something changed.”

His year of banishment was spent “turning the lens inward,” he says. He saw a psychoanalyst, he kept a journal, and he spent a lot of time with his daughters, Natasha, 12, and Ella, 9, who live nearby in Florida with their mother, Cynthia. (She and Rodriguez divorced in 2008 after five years of marriage; their split was tabloid fodder, courtesy of his then-liaison with Madonna. But they remain close, and Rodriguez mentions more than once how important it is for them to effectively co-parent.)

Never having gone to college is a source of great insecurity for Rodriguez, so during his time off, he took classes — at Columbia (value investing) and the University of Miami (marketing). He got advice from such friends as Jim Sharp, a septuagenarian lawyer who has represented polls (George W. Bush) and players (Rodriguez’s friend Andy Pettitte) and told him to give up the fight and take his punishment, and erstwhile CNN anchor Jessica Yellin (whom he met through a friend), who advised him that reporters are human beings not Schadenfreude-seeking destroyers of lives. “She told me, ‘Lean in to the media; they are people just like you; they have a job, just like you; connect with them, be yourself.’ “

He spent a lot of time apologizing — to his family, teammates, league execs. I ask Manfred if it seems surreal to be opening ballparks with Rodriguez after being on the opposite side of the trench. “When you come up in the side of the business that I did, where you have conflict with people, you learn to move on,” reasons Manfred. “It doesn’t seem surreal to me. I’m not a grudge-holder. It feels perfectly natural to me.”

Key to the reinvention narrative was that A-Rod returned to some approximation of his one-time MVP form when he rejoined the Yankees, not so easy for a “broken-down 40-year-old” who had weathered two hip surgeries and two knee surgeries. Many predicted (or hoped) that he would not make the starting lineup. By September, he had tied Hank Aaron’s record for the most 30-homer seasons of all time.

“It’s probably too soon for me to say this, but maybe in 10 years I’ll be able to say that the ‘ ’14 sabbatical’ was one of the best things that happened in my life,” he says. When I ask if he doesn’t believe that already, he adds, “I’ll say this: That year off I just had to fucking change and stop being a jerk.”

•••

Rodriguez’s work ethic was instilled by his mother, Lourdes Rodriguez, who worked as a secretary, taking a night job waiting tables after his father left the family when Alex was 10. As a child, he delighted in counting her tip money and was impressed when, at the end of the week, her tip pouch could have as much as $60 in it. “I would feel like the richest family in the neighborhood. And it left a mark on me.”

He was recruited out of high school by the University of Miami but signed a three-year, $1.3 million contract with the Seattle Mariners with a $1 million signing bonus. “I knew my mother was tired,” he says. “My responsibility was to sign that contract.”

Among the first things he did was buy his mom a house and a car. “We were constantly moving from apartment to apartment because they were always raising the rent,” he says of his childhood. “It always felt like it was the first of the month. And I remember praying to God to slow down time for my mother.”

Today, A-Rod Corp, the holding company he started 15 years ago, includes a Miami-based real estate and construction firm, Newport Property; fitness centers in Mexico; and a real estate investment and management firm, Monument, that owns 8,500 apartments and manages 13,000 in 12 states, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest.

Buffett has been a mentor for years — ever since Rodriguez placed an unsolicited call in 2001 upon learning that one of Buffett’s companies insured his early 2000s contract with the Texas Rangers. “I called the office and said, ‘Hey, I just want to say thank you.’ “

Buffett called back, and meetings with the Oracle of Omaha soon became a part of Rodriguez’s off-season routine. “We would sit there and go through all my businesses; he would give me all this advice. Then we would have dinner at his favorite steakhouse. At the end, I would have to eat one of those big ice cream sundaes.”

These days, when Rodriquez isn’t on the road for Fox Sports, his time is spent hopscotching among L.A., Miami and New York, where he and Lopez had their first official outing together in May when they appeared on the red carpet at Anna Wintour’s Met Gala. “There was a great deal of paparazzi,” he says. “They were telling me to get the hell out of the way so they could get a good shot of Jennifer.” He’s reluctant to say much about their relationship; they binge-watch TV together is as far as he’ll go. When I ask who asked whom out, he deflects: “You’ll have to ask her that.”

Their social media feeds are populated with pictures and videos of each other and their children. Lopez, 48, has 9-year-old twins with ex-husband Marc Anthony. “We both appreciate where we are in our lives,” he says. “We appreciate being parents, and we’re so similar; we’re both kind of workaholics.” (During one of our interviews, Lopez FaceTimes Rodriguez. “Oh look,” he says, turning his iPhone toward me, “Say hi.”)

He still watches baseball obsessively and often has the East, West and Central time zone games on simultaneously. “My girls are like, ‘Dad, this is too much. Where is the Disney Channel?’ “

He’s wistful about his distance from the game. “I miss my four at-bats every day. I miss the fans, the clubhouse, the boys. But I don’t miss the travel. I don’t miss waking up in pain every day.”

•••

The six-paneled TV in the screening room of Rodriguez’s Coral Gables home beams a huge visage of O.J. Simpson. It is July 20, the day of Simpson’s parole hearing. And the TV is tuned to ESPN, one of nearly a dozen networks carrying the hearing live. It’s jarring watching the fallen superstar in prison-issue clothes while in Rodriguez’s 11,000-square-foot, art-filled home. (Warhol and Basquiat hang on the walls; a Sarah Lucas sculpture featuring a white porcelain toilet is mounted in the entryway.) Rodriguez emerges wearing a black Tom Ford jacket and white cotton shirt. “Turn that O.J. stuff off,” he says to an assistant. “We’ve had enough of O.J.”

In the next room, the production crew from Back in the Game will shoot Rodriguez and Smith discussing the plan for Smith’s youth basketball academy. There is a dry-erase board on an easel; Rodriguez’s housekeeper spreads a freshly ironed white tablecloth on a folding table. “We want to tell the world who Joe Smith is,” explains Rodriguez.

Rodriguez has spent 22 years trying to tell the world who he is. If he has been misinterpreted, maligned (unfairly or not), vilified, perhaps it’s because he didn’t really know himself. “When I came back [after the suspension], I wanted to be a different person.”

And his legacy in the pantheon of America’s pastime? “I think that is to be determined,” he says. “But I left it all on the field. My best two years happened at 19 and as a broken-down 40-year-old. I hadn’t played in basically two years, two hip surgeries, two knee surgeries, scandal. And if you think about that arc, that tells you a hell of a story, right? The mistakes I’ve made are loud and clear. But one thing I am proud of is, I did not let those mistakes define who I am. I kept getting up.”

This story first appeared in the Aug. 2 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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tombaragwanath · 7 years

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138 Haiku for Ahm-Ree-Kah

Said Whitman one time: “America: that great poem.” The greatest, even.

In this tradition, let me present most humbly a Whitman’s sampler.

Only with fewer Cashew Clusters™ and slightly more facetiousness.

Los Angeles

Who has ever seen such strong light hitting green hills? And highways, highways.

A smiling man in a green and white food truck hands me three tacos.

Golden, delicious, they go well with the soda people keep on hand.

Big Sur

Mountains roll sharply into angry green-white surf. Bridges span chasms.

Where did Kerouac sleep, as a local? Was it in this log cabin?

Likely not. This spot is muddy, expensive, and less than fully Zen.

Cannery Row

Rattlesnakes, dusty- eyed and serene, fill my thoughts of this dream-like place.

In reality, Mac & co have moved on. The hotel looks nice, though.

Steinbeck and Ricketts: dudes sharing their many loves. Got to commend that.

I think I buy this book for people because it is short and punchy.

In that it punches the reader in the heart with warm contemplations.

Look, just go buy a copy for yourself. Hell, send me your damn address.

San Francisco

Orange steel stretches impossibly across churn and wash of green salt.

How could you not love the city of Al Ginsberg? Rain falls in warm streets.

I run up to the big red radio tower. A glorious view.

This one other dude was running close behind me. I felt I knew him.

Amtrak: San Francisco to Chicago

The furnishings may be dated, but the burgers? Salty. Prepared weekly.

Who cares? This train goes through snowy mountains, deserts, and seven (eight?) states.

The viewing car is full of folks taking it in with icy cold drinks.

Everyone wants to talk at lunch. Wrestling, birds, democracy, Trump.

Good thing every one of these passengers is well over sixty.

Plenty of time to gather esoteric facts for polite strangers.

There’s a kindness, a lulling passivity of wheels over tracks.

We share a “roomette”. Lordy, to be paid to come up with product names.

Seventy hours on the train. I could have stayed on no problem at all.

Chicago

Where can we find Jeff Tweedy? I guess I thought he would just be around.

Those cake stand towers are right outside our hotel. Black against blue sky.

The freezing wind lifts from Lake Michigan like a swift kick in the teeth.

The lines in the grey city stay sharp as night falls over the water.

In the donut shop a young kid clutches pastry tight in his fingers.

If we lived here I’d likely revert back to him. They were that damn good.

“Fire Cakes”. Hell of a name for sugar, pastry, cream. Better than DD.

Detroit

I keep a lookout for ambiguous danger, but I need not fret.

Once shrines to commerce, now dusty car garages. I guess it happens.

Some dude is buying up city blocks and hiring his own police force.

How do locals feel? Is the cash grab members-only? Who is invited?

Our Uber driver has a kind face. He tutors math on Monday nights.

He drives us to Grosse Pointe. “Old-school rich Detroiters.” He knows a few souls.

A bored waiter feeds us some gourmet duck fried rice. We talk past closing.

New York City (Vol. 1)

Hello again, dear friend. I see your street vendors are still hustling dosas.

We walk in Central Park under light snow. Who keeps knitting dog sweaters?

Bowling, falafel, Animal Collective, beers. Sleepy subway home.

Montreal

We walk a mastiff cross named Mischa. The sidewalk salt hurts her paw pads.

The temperature? Negative butthole degrees. Still kids play hockey.

Poutine, coffee, sleep. When wearing two coats just isn’t enough.

Boston

A guy selling ham sandwiches knows about home. “Mate! Bro!”, he exclaims.

We walk the brick lane of Paul Revere’s freedom trail to get cannoli.

Can one highway off- ramp cleave itself into four? In Boston, it might.

Brattleboro, Vt.

Sweet land of Bernie! Syrup, pie, cider, pecans. Anarchist bookstores.

We find a brewery serving solely sour brews with faux-Catholic names.

“The Angry Bishop.” “Cardinal’s Peach Party Ale.” You get the idea.

Who knew a maple latte could actually be good? Fuck Starbucks™.

Our dear friends have a small human baby! We read Hairy MacLary.

Boston (again)

So much brotherhood present tonight at the men’s candlestick bowling.

They let Dianny rent shoes, but keep an eye out for any girl stuff.

Philadelphia

City of the Roots! Of Federal Fried Chicken! Of Kurt Vile’s soft drawl!

Isaiah Zagar. His name is colour, movement; a poem in itself.

We visit all the historical stuff. Highlight? Hot cheese steaks. No shame.

Washington D.C.

We stand hemmed in with a million other people. And yet, no ruckus.

Except the ruckus of a giant yarn uterus. That’s dedication.

On the bus homeward passengers doze against each other, smiling, spent.

Baltimore

Four-storey spiral shark tank. Kindly swim clockwise, or you’ll be gnawed at.

Aquarium, then Shake Shack™. Penguins, tortoises, wee sloth family.

They have these fishes that aim spit at bugs, knocking them into the stream.

Our Uber driver is a chicken connoisseur. He suggests Popeye’s.

Our burgers make him peckish. We offer to share. He laughs. He’s all good.

We spend the morning with Bloody Marys and some crab cake Benedict.

And the afternoon sharing cheesecake, fudge blocks, and enjoying Face / Off.

Blue Ridge Parkway

It is my birthday. And our anniversary. Waffle House™ it is.

Two lovely old chaps man the lonely tourism centre. It’s winter.

We’re likely the sole visitors for the day. They seem just fine with that.

The long drive rewards us with thick stands of fir trees dripping with winter.

A recreated length of train tracks shows us where commerce once began.

Are the bears sleeping? Unclear. Better keep any Snyder’s™ in the car.

We come upon an abandoned farm house. Trees grow clear through the iron roof.

Grizzled red cattle stand in the shade of an old leaning wooden barn.

Dianny takes a bunch of photos. I prepare myself for locals.

The parkway sometimes seems to run itself purely into the blue sky.

The precise hue of the blue hills evades capture in these meagre words.

Suffice to tell you: the breath quickens, the heart swells, and everything stops.

Asheville

We wind up stopping in Asheville. They have a sweet pinball museum.

Murakami would thoroughly lose his shit with the range of machines.

We eat salty fried green tomatoes, cheese grits, and Madras chilli fries.

Nashville

Yo La Tengo are fans of Prince’s Hot Chicken. Take their word for it.

Did you ever eat chicken so hot you had to avoid touching…parts?

Trust me, dearest friends. Do not mess about with these rocks of pure hellspice.

The old Drake Hotel. “Stay where the stars stay!” In the seventies, perhaps.

We meet a couple from Carolina outside the Bluebird Café.

They have one ticket between them. She goes in. He peers through the glass door.

We continue to eat the kind of barbeque one might brag about.

Charleston

A sign outside a bar proclaims the presence of Bill Murray. Cheap trick.

Doesn’t stop us from pulling off the road in a cloud of gravel dust.

What a pair of chumps. We practice our lines in case he needs two more friends.

An anti-climax, but we still enjoy foaming ale (and more pinball).

Our BNB host has framed pictures of Xena, Warrior Princess.

She is thrilled to hear where we’re from. Less thrilled to hear we don’t know Lucy.

Savannah

Tickets for Moonlight. Two other people in the cinema. Both leave.

More great barbeque. Cornbread, sticky ribs, collards. One meal for the day.

St. Augustine

A diamond-shaped stone fortress keeps the harbour safe from the English hordes.

Portly volunteers fire the neutered guns hourly just to scare tourists.

Orlando

Okay, we did it. We went to Universal™. We have few regrets.

Di got to pretend to be a wizard for a time. Wand included.

Turns out Butter Beer is a kind of ginger fizz with marshmallow foam.

My younger stomach was far better at dealing with roller coasters.

Still, I ride them all. Because I am a tightwad. And also, reals tough.

Two days of this stuff is enough for me to crave a quiet darkened room.

Miami

Will Smith was correct. Miami certainly does bring the heat, for real.

We sneak in to some hotel lounge chairs and disguise ourselves as ballers.

No one is convinced, but the waiters humour us. I get lobster burnt.

I get to practice my toddler-grade español with real life toddlers.

Donde es Tomas? El es aqui! El es muy fuerte, y tonto!

Es peligroso para tocar los…raccoons... (I don’t know “raccoons”).

New Orleans

There is a riot of big band horns lifting through the hot fragrant air.

Carry your open drink anywhere you like, friend. Just be nice, or leave.

We rent bicycles and spend long warm afternoons avoiding pot holes.

A boisterous young dude yells to us through a broken window as we pass.

Stay off Bourbon Street. It’s like Courtenay Place, but somehow even worse.

We stumble upon an impossibly raucous Mardi Gras parade.

One float shows paper mache Putin gleefully rogering Donald.

Another Donald is roped above a sharp-toothed sarlacc vagina.

Elsewhere, Donalds endure a colourful range of brutal torture.

All of the craft stores must have sold out of his shade of neon orange.

The vile bloat of his maniac features seems a popular float choice.

Just not popular enough for the popular vote. Can’t help myself.

Our cab driver is most delighted to hear us use the term “had beef”.

He tells us he has always wanted to travel to Australia.

New York City (Vol. 2)

NYC round two! It’s so nice to be back in your cathedral streets.

We create habits: Morning run, bagel, coffee, then museums.

A couple of films, a trip to Katz’s deli for pastrami on rye.

An afternoon in Bushwick, fossicking about in the vintage aisles.

Time is running out in a nice way. Three months is likely sufficient.

Last day. JFK. John Mayer sings with great breath in duty-free aisles.

A table of young Russians pick hot pineapple from pizza slices.

Soon I will not speak the language. I think I was alright at charades.

Thank you, Ahm-Ree-Kah. Your people have been a trip. All the best with Trump.

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