The Exchanges

Q How did you get the word out? You would just tell people, I'm selling skis?

A Yeah, school, flyers, you know, I actually, I remember, it's a great story, I don't think I've ever told this before, there was a ski shop called Ray Pinellas Ski Shop in the Plymouth Meeting Mall. Um, I had these flyers I put on all the cars, thousands of cars in the parking lot, and I get home, and my dad says, you know, hey Michael, I need to speak to you. He says, I said, like, Dad, what's up? He says, well, Ray Piniella, who owns Ray Piniella Ski Shops, called to say that you were trespassing, and that, um, he was gonna call the police and have you arrested for trespassing, because you were putting flyers out in the mall's parking lot, and he has a ski shop in the mall, and he thought that you were unfairly competing. I said, well, what'd you tell him? He said, I told him my son was 13, if you need to worry about competing against a thirteen-year-old, you got bigger problems.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, school, flyers, you know, I actually, I remember”

Q Michael, how are you, first of all, at 15, were you, um, like, were you fully grown, or were you still growing? Like, were you, were you short, were you tall? I don't remember. Because 15 is young, man, like, I, how did you have, how did, how were you able to get people to take you seriously?

A Because I didn't have fear, and I just went for it, and I think, you know, so many people have ideas, and they talk about what they want to do, but they don't do it. I was just always more of a person, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out and fucking do it, and if it works out, great, and if it doesn't, you know, all, all good, and so, so, I mean, you could go back to 1986, 1988, you know, I remember after coming to, you know, ski in the summertime, I said, well, why don't I build a ski mountain in the middle of the summertime, and I went out and I bought 40,000 pounds of ice cubes, set up in a ski slope, At 15 years old.

AI assessment note: “Because I didn't have fear, and I just went for it”

Q Yeah, I think, I think you were eventually able to settle your debts, partly because you made a deal with your parents, I guess, where they, they agreed to lend you some, some of the money if you agreed to, to go to college, uh, and you kept up your end of the deal. You, you started at Villanova, uh, but, but you barely lasted a semester, right?

A That's right. I'd say the reason I went to college was because I gave my mom and dad my word That I would go to college, and it was important. My mom's like, look, I'm a psychiatrist. I know what's best for you. You're not a normal kid. You need to be a normal kid. Go to school, play sports, have friends. Why are you obsessed with this business thing? But I never got out of business, like, you know, never shut the shops down, and then I basically became very big at buying and selling excess footwear, sporting goods inventory, Skis, buying and selling excess inventory, you know, primarily footwear and clothes. So by the time I got into college, the biggest memory of you say, what do I remember about college? I remember cell phones at this point. So you're talking about 1990. Cell phones were gigantic. Yeah. And I remember always sitting in the parking lot of Villanova on this giant cell phone, buying and selling things, always like knowing that I had to get to class, but having no interest in getting to class because I was making deals. And, you know, I can remember times when I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars in a trade, you know, in the parking lot of Villanova, you know, before I go to school. So that, that was very difficult. Finally, after, you know, kind of part of semester, I'm just like, I'm done. This is it. College isn't for me.

AI assessment note: “That's right. I'd say the reason I went to college was because I gave”

Q And you were gonna sell the shoes at the ski shops?

A Nope. I went to the Yellow Pages, cause that's how we found people then. I found this company called Boscov's Department Stores. I just cold called them, and I get this meeting with this guy, Albert Boscov's, who owns Boscov's Department Stores, and he said, Michael, how much do you want for these? I said, 15 bucks a pair. He said, I'll take them all for 1150. I, I hadn't even got them in yet, And I made six 50 pair on 12,000 pair of shoes, so now I'm 18, it's like 70 or 80,000 dollars, but I haven't even paid for the shoes I bought yet. I got them resold to somebody else. So it was just, it was that instinct to hustle, that instinct to keep asking, to never have fear that worked for me. You know, that was my first big bulk deal, was buying all the shoes at five bucks a pair and selling them for 1150 to Boss Cups department store.

AI assessment note: “Nope. I went to the Yellow Pages, cause that's how we found people then.”

Q And so, you're in Philadelphia, or outside Philadelphia, and you opened, you opened a ski tuning service, but I guess, uh, after your bar mitzvah, you made a little bit of cash, and you were able to use that cash to actually open a, a storefront, like a location?

A Um, they had the ski swap every year where all the ski retailers in the, uh, Philadelphia area would bring their excess inventory to a ski swap, and I worked that swap the whole weekend, you know, just trying to help out the other ski shop owners, and then I said to one of the guys, this guy Brett Bauman, who owned something called Bauman Ski Shop, I said, hey, you know, I live 45 minutes from you, so there's no competition, why don't you lend me some of your excess equipment, and I'll pay you for it as I sell it, and he did exactly that, and that year, at 13 years old, I did 25,000 dollars in revenue.

AI assessment note: “why don't you lend me some of your excess equipment, and I'll pay”

Q What about as a parent? Did you have to, presumably to sacrifice time with your kids?

A I have, and I do. But what I try to be there is for the things that really matter, and no, I'm not, like, you know, look, I have, you know, two young kids now as well, and, you know, I think, you know, when Camille and I had, you know, when we had Romy and then Gemma are the two young ones, you know, she knew that, like, I'd be there when it mattered, but I, like, that I'm gonna, like, she knew that I work 17 hours of most days, so, you know, this morning when I woke up and the kids were up at, you know, five o'clock in the morning, I went down and played with the kids for 10 minutes, and I went to work. Five a.m. in the morning, and, you know, tonight they'll be in bed when I get home, but tomorrow morning I'll go see him for 10 minutes, and, you know, but I'm, I'm there when it matters, and I'd say with my older daughter.

AI assessment note: “I have, and I do. But what I try to be there is for”