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Welcome back to The Deal everyone, I'm Jason Kelly alongside Alex Rodriguez a very special episode of The Deal Today, Magic Johnson, the one and only. We taped this live at the Milkon and Stuke Global Conference in Beverly Hills. It was electric man, so electric.
Well Magic, I mean, he's one of one, right, and we were in his hometown right there in LA where he played for the Lakers and won five titles.
I've known him almost thirty years.
She's been a friend and a mentor, and I love the way he talked about value partnerships, demanding excellence.
And he talked about some of his most recent partnerships, most notably his ownership stake in the Washington Commanders. He talked about Starbucks and a seminal deal that he made with Howard Schultz and what that took. He talked about institutional capital, and he talked about a couple iconic players. I mean a team that we followed so closely.
Right, oh yeah, and that was the Olympic team in nineteen ninety two, and of course that changed the NBA, made it a global sport. And he specifically talked about none other than Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.
You'll hear all of that coming up on this very special episode of the Deal. All right, So I'm gonna say just you know, as a human being, this is exciting for me. But my excitement, I'm telling you, is nothing compared to this guys. Alex Rodriguez is not He does not swoon, He does not you know, be like, oh, I'm so excited about this.
He's beside himself right now. All right, So I'm Jason Kelly. This is Alex Rodriguez. We have home embarrassed.
Yeah, oh just wait.
We host to show a Bloomberg called The Deal, and we couldn't be more excited to have you here with us Magic.
So thank you, thank you. I appreciate that.
So what's so interesting is there are a lot of fans in this room of both of these guys, but there is a very special relationship between these two.
It's so interesting.
As Alex and I have been doing this show, we have had a north star and I know Alex has a north star in Magic and this is a this is a relationship that goes back a long way to a young Seattle Mariner who was essentially cold calling heroes and trying to learn about business. Alex, I want you to take us back happened here in Los Angeles, to what you took from what was meant to be thirty minutes turned you into a few hours.
You still have the notes. What's the takeaway from magic?
Yeah?
Thanks Jason, and thanks everybody for being here. I'm a huge believer in the power of mentorship. So I called Lon Rosen, who's a longtime partner of Irvin, and I said, is there any way now we're with the Mariners, there's like twenty five, twenty seven years ago. I'm just a young kid, twenty two to twenty three, and I said, long, can I get thirty minutes with the guy? And I'm thinking like, yeah, maybe in a couple of years. He's like, hey,
how's tomorrow night. I'm like, bet, I'm there. So we sat in a room it was supposed to be thirty minutes. That led to him with a three hour dinner where I have like nine pages of notes and there's no question in my mind that Irvin has impacted me. And without that dinner, because here's a man of color, here's a guy that was a Hall of Fame basketball player. He comes from humble beginnings, all things that I can
relate with. And I said, if Magic can do it, why can't I. So anyways, I wouldn't own a team without Magic. I wouldn't have a Rod Corp Without Irvin. And I just want to say thank you, and I wanted to share that story with you.
No, thank you.
Well, let's talk about that, because what you have done over the course of the last you know, thirty forty years, is a series of unbelievable deals and one of the most interesting things, and Alex and I talk about this all the time, is your movement to ownership. You know, you have a partner mark in here in the front row with the Washington Commanders. We spent some time with your Josh Harris last week in Miami. That's a seminal deal for the NFL. I would argue, it's a seminal
deal for you. Would you agree? And how do you.
Put that in the context of your dealmaking?
No, it's the greatest deal I've ever done. I mean, listen, first, as a kid, I'm already a football fan. I played football, but I knew I was better at basketball, So I gave it up in high school to concentrate on basketball. But to know that I've been a big fan of the NFL, not knowing that a man of color could actually become an owner in the NFL, but I had. Josh Harris said, hey, I want you to be a
part of this ownership group. We had went after the Denver Broncos, but a young man for Walmark said I don't care what you bid. I'm gonna outbid you, so you might well just keep your money right and Josh I said, okay, we give.
But the team we're supposed to own, we own.
Why did I say that Josh Harris is from d C, so he watched the Redskins as a boy. Marks from d C, so he watched the Redskins as a boy.
Mitch Rails is from d C.
So now they got men who grew up loving this team who now become the owners and the gatekeepers. And I think, and I knew that we were going to do a fantastic job, and then for them to bring me in, it's a blessing for me, but also for men of color, but also former athletes as well. It shows them that we can go from the court to the boardroom, and I want to thank Mark because he's here, and Josh has done a wonderful job of leading our team and the ownership group.
And look where we when we bought the team. Look where we are.
Today, you know, and it's going up and up and up. And I'm so happy to be a part of the ownership group.
Sir, that's your best deal in sports, and we agree that's just in the NFL is one of one. I mean, Roger Goodell does an incredible.
Job, we know that.
But going to outside of sports and business, going back to the Howard Shult stage with Starbucks one hundred and twenty five stores, Mark Master for twenty four our fitness and other deals. Also, you got an insurance business. What would you think is your seminal deal outside of sports?
It have to be Starbucks because it gave me the stamp of approval. A lot of people wanted to take the meeting with me because they wanted to autograph in the picture, but then they said no, they didn't want to be in business with me.
I knew we were going.
To Seattle, and I knew Howard shows set court side, So I said to the PR guy or Seattle, which.
One is Howard Shows and he said there, he is right there. I said, cool.
I ran right over there to him right and I said, hey, I'm Irvin Johnson. I know where you are man, And I asked him, I said, could I take you to lunch or dinner the next time that we're back playing the SuperSonics and to sit down and just go over business and talk to you.
And he said okay. So a few weeks later.
We went back up there, and my movie Theaters was crushing it in the inner city. It showed people you can make money doing business in the inner cities of America. So I went up there. I took the numbers up to him. I showed them, Hey, we're doing great. My theaters are top ten highest grosing theaters in the nation. And nobody thought, you know, we can make money. And he looked and said wow. I said, the growth of your business would be through urban America because you got
one on every corner in suburban America. So he said, Urban, let me come down see how you operate your business. But also I got to talk to the board and the shareholders. I said, okay. So he came down saw how I operated it. He was very impressed. And then the hardest thing I thought I was going to do
was play against Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. The hardest thing was to go before the board and then going to a movie theater pack with good shareholders and try to convince them this is a great move for Starbucks. And sure enough I was able to do that and they all signed off, and I became the first person to ever own Starbucks. Outside of Starbucks, we built one hundred and twenty five and forty different markets across America. They all did extremely well, and that really gave me,
first of all, the stamp of approval. It gave me the track record that I needed of success so I can move on to something else.
And then, last but not least, Alex. This is the one thing.
It gave me a chance to go up to cal Purrs and Cal Stirs. Yeah, because I was using my money, but if I wanted sustainability and growth, I had to go to institutional capital. And it took me three years man to convince cal Perrs to give me fifty million dollars and they said, uh, we.
Love you magic, but Urban America, we're not too excited about it. How can we make money.
But they finally gave me the fifty and they said, if you over delivered with this fifty, you can come back and get hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I did that. I over delivered. I bought a shopping center only for twenty two million. It was only forty percent occupied. I made it one hundred percent occupied. I resold it for almost fifty million dollars. Took that twenty eight million dollar profit up north and they.
Said, I said here go.
They said, oh, okay, you do no business, let's do it. So that's when I started my fund. And then you know, I partnered with Canyon Partners to do Urban Urban America.
So we started an urban.
Fundah Ron Burkle and I started a private equity fund together, which was another urban fund U KAIPA Johnson, and then I just took off from there. How do you pick partners, Well, first of all, we all in here have been through a bad marriage with partners, No, every single one of us, at least one, right, So I went through one or
two of those and I said never again. And I always wanted to pick partners that could teach me something that can help expand my knowledge in terms of business mentor me in a sense.
So sure enough.
When I think about Mark Waters and Todd Bowley, Peter Gruber, all these people that we own the Dodgers together, they have done an excellent job of allowing me to grow but also too to use my expertise as well. It's been wonderful, Bobby Patton, all of them, So it's been great. And then Mark and Mitchell and Josh is doing the same thing issues in DC that they know that, Hey, I can, you know, be a part of the board market.
And I was on boards Josh assigned us too, and so it's been wonderful to be a part of and have a voice, a real voice. And so I thank Josh for that. And so I know what I know and I know what I don't know, right. I think a lot of times when athletes are trying to become businessmen, they got to take their ego out of it and back up and really understand, Hey, what do you really know?
Right?
And to Alice's point, you got to get mentors, and you've got to be with businessmen and women who want to help you grow, right. And so all the teams that I'm involved in It's been great to learn from the different people, men and women, and to expand my own personal growth.
So I remember when you about the Dodgers we started talking, you were kind of peppering me with a questions about baseball and all that. My question to you now, as an owner of an NBA and a WNBA team, what are two or three things now you learn from the best and doctor bus you're one of the greatest of all times. What can I do to be a better owner? What are the two or three things I should be thinking about with my partner Mark Luri.
Well, I think first of all, to have a three to five year plan and where you want to take the franchise.
Make sure that everybody.
Is on the same page and everybody in your organization understands that plan and that strategy right. And have a great relationship with your players. I think that when you have a great relationship with your players, they'll come to you and they'll come and tell you, hey.
We need this, we need that to be successful.
And that's very important that those men or women are very happy and that they know that you care.
You know.
And then, last but not least, listen, be demanding and hold everybody accountable.
You know, I come around that corner.
You may see a smile, but you let us be losing no smiling, right. My job is to hold everybody accountable, and so I will always talk to the guys, make sure they understand what's the identity of this franchise, right, And you have to say, this is who we are, this is who we want to be, and make sure those men or women understand that. And we've done that with we changed the whole identity with the Washington commanders.
They know that we care about them, but they know we want to win, right, and the fans know that, and it's trickled down to everybody in that organization. Some day one when we had a meeting with all the staff, we told them were here to win, and we're going to change the environment that that losing environment that they were in before. And we've done that step by step by step. We changed the stadium, we changed the locker room,
all the things that players were complaining about. Josh did a wonderful job of jumping on top of that, right, and so and then he sends us out and where we're strong. So you make sure Mark, you might go one way, but Alex, you might go another way because there's plenty of things to tackle and then you tackle some together. And so that's what I would say to you.
So to that point, Magic, And actually I'm going to turn this question on you too, Alex. You know, this whole notion of an athlete turned owner is fascinating to me.
This may come as a surprise.
I did not play professional sports, but I know some people who did, and soon asked this question. As a play former player turned owner, what do you say to players? What's the sort of tack that you take to them, because maybe they're in your sport, maybe they're a baseball player or a soccer player or a football player.
What's the tack you take them?
What's the secrets that you can sort of the secret language if there is one that you can speak to them that you know a Josh or Mark Kent.
Well, because you know, we talk about preparation and I talk to our commander players about you know, preparation.
It starts in practice. You got to.
Practice the way you're going to play on Sunday, so that starts on Monday all the way through, right and losing it's got to be a bad taste in your mouth, right, and then we got to be a team. We lose as a team, we win as a team.
Right.
It can't be hitting agendas that kills you every time everybody got there. If a player got his own agenda and it's not about team goes, it's gonna kill you, You're gonna lose, and it trickles down within the locker room. So that's what I would say. But the one thing we both have is that they respect us already. Yeah, and I can say something that Mark can't say right, right, because he's gonna look at me and say, oh, he's been through it.
Right.
Do you find that, Alex? I mean, like, what's your experience so far with that?
Yeah?
I do agree with every hold on one second, and then I walk in with seventeen damn World Series or World Championship ring, right, So I'm walking in with jewelry, so they understand that language, real fans, Okay.
Go ahead, that's right.
No, I think.
Look, I think Irvan and I one thing we know.
We know how the players feel, we know where they come from, we know the pressures, and like, make no mistake, when Irvan and I played, it was hard to be an athlete. It's no harder time to be an athlete than today. Thank God. I ain't play when at the height of social media, I got myself in enough trouble. But in New York City, gonna championship.
But no one knows what you're no one, no one knows, nobody knows.
Good.
That is your fine? All right? Can we do the rapid fire?
Let's do it?
All right?
We're gonna so on our show, The Deal. Please tune in and download wherever you got your podcast. We do a little rapid fire segment. So we're gonna hit you with this magic.
Are you ready?
I'm ready? All right?
Just the first thing that comes to your mind? What's one word to describe your deal making style?
One word? Wow? A lot of pressure? Yes, dang success?
Oh?
Or what's more important to you? Data or your gut?
It's always my feel, feel, always my feel. I'm always read the data, no question about it.
But it's a feel.
When they walk in and we I can just feel is it gonna be a deal?
And I know when it's not going to be a deal?
Wow?
Who's your dream deal making partner?
Wow?
Got a lot?
Wow? That's big? Just the next guy? Growth mode.
Hey, no, I'm I'm not choosy or picky the next woman, next man. Let's go get it done. And the one thing they gonna know about me, everything I'm supposed to do as Mark, I'm gonna do it in more so, whatever my role is, I'm gonna play it.
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received on deal making or business?
Ron Berker once told me Irvin, I brought him this little deal. He said, Irvan, the same amount of time I gotta spend on that little deal, It's the same amount of time I gotta spend making a billion dollars.
I said, I got it.
Thank you for that small deals.
What's the worst advice you've ever been given?
The worst advice?
Uh?
Not with smart women and men, they don't give you really worst advice.
Thank God that I'm in rooms.
Like this a lot, and that you with solid people and people who have really been successful at what they do. I think the worst advice Alex and I get it's usually from people that they don't have much right a success right.
They always talk a.
Good game, but they don't really back it up with, you know, action and what they're doing.
Or what's your hype song before a big game, meeting or negotiation.
Oh that's good.
Anything Michael Jackson, okay, all right, anything that's my man, the greatest artists of all time to me, and and I love Prince too, So either one put them on, I'm good.
All right.
You want to few people to win the basketball triple Crown and the NCAA Championship, five NBA championships, and an Olympic gold medal, which meant the most too.
I think the gold medal.
Because of this, I finally got a chance to play with Michael and Larry.
Yeah, I've always on my bucket list.
I've always wanted to just throw a pass to both of those guys, like a no, look past, like come down that damn middle, and I'm coming down and there's Larry in the corner, just no, looking real fast and let him shoot that beautiful jump shot.
Yeah, like Larry does.
And then Larry talks to I love that day. He talks trash.
And then Michael come down the middle with the tongue out.
Nothing like it.
And I'm telling you, when I threw the note, look past that both of them dudes, what's.
Better than that?
That was it?
Yeah? Yeah, nothing like it. I love both of them. They both made their teammates better. Michael's the greatest has ever played this game, This dude when I played with him, Larry, So, Alex, you're gonna love this. So Larry and I got all the championships, right, Yeah, so he true story.
So he walks in. It ain't Brian, you know. So we walk in and Michael comes in.
Larry and I are sitting here talking and he stands right there and he says, I just want both of you guys.
To know there's a new sheriff in town. And we had to bow down. You're right.
And he went on to win six championships and never lost in the finals. So it's hard to argue about a man that great that could do the things that he could do. And his player got some of Michael's quality out in terms of how he can go up in the air and do some of the things that he can do.
Yeah.
Special, all right, last question for this room.
Very successful people aren't successful but with a lot of ambition. What's your best advice to them who want a career like yours?
Wow? Man, oh man? Me giving these people advice? Wow?
I think really just uh you know, continue to be who they are and do what they do, and don't forget this. You know, we all you know, it's great to make a lot of money, but also we'll be remembered by also giving back and how many people we touched too, you know, and that's very important, and so I would say, don't forget that part of it as well. The impact that they can make, whether it's with their wallet or with their power and expertise, is very important,
especially times like now, we really need that. And uh so I would say, continue to do what they're doing. I'm just excited to be here. Listen, Alex and I when we had that meeting, never thought we would be here.
I've been friends with Michael Milkin.
For probably over thirty years and the man has just been incredible in my life. And so for that Alex and I to be on this stage at the Milking Conference, oh man, this is I got goosebumps already, like I'm getting ready to go play basketball, and so this is really outstanding for me.
All Right, well, magicic On behalf of Alex, the giddiest man in Hollywood right now, Thank.
You so much for your time.
This was God blessed everybody.
Thank you everyone.
The Deal is a production from Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals. The Deal is hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly. This show was produced by Anamazarakis, Lizzie Phillip, and Stacey Wong. Original music and engineering by Blake Maples.
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