How an $11M Failure Led to PAW Patrol’s $15 BILLION Empire

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - Ontown is the founder of a company called Spin Master. [00:00:03] Anton: - I was just told that I was weird and eccentric and crazy. And I didn't realize until I was in my late 20s that my difference was my advantage. [00:00:14] Speaker 1: - And if you've got kids, I'm sure you know Paw Patrol or Bakugan, or if you're an adult, Rubik's Cube. And he's scaled that business from absolutely nothing to $2 billion. - It's the partnerships that scaled our company into the billions. - And he's done it by just being daring and thinking differently. Can you imagine building your business to a billion dollars and then all of a sudden you're next to nothing? [00:00:35] Anton: - He lost $11 million in Tech Deck Live. He's done over 15 billion at Paw Patrol. You want to know why I love failures? [00:00:47] Speaker 1: - Ladies and gentlemen, give it up a stand for Anton. I want to start with a little bit of your background because I was doing some homework on you, and I guess your family comes from Cape Town, and your father was very successful. You came up from kind of a well-to-do family to some extent, but he was chased out of the country during apartheid, I understand. So at six, you won't go to Canada. I'm wondering how that starting over reset, has that influenced you as an entrepreneur? [00:01:14] Anton: - Yeah, we came over in '77, and my parents struggled on the immigration. For my dad, his whole career didn't make it easy because he wasn't like a doctor or an accountant or anything. So that was tough. My mom got a little depressed when we moved into Toronto, and having three wild boys is not easy, right? I'm in the middle of it. And then, you know, in my house, it was all about sports and school. There was no real arts. So my dad signs us up for all the sports, and I was playing house league. And you know, there's only one rule in house league. I don't know if it's the same in America as in Canada. The rule in house league is the coach needs to make sure everyone participates. And Tony, I was the shortest person in my class by a fact. I was the skinniest by a fact. And I went through puberty last. And I'm playing sports. It's tied one all in the third period. And guess who's on the bench? Yeah, it was like for a decade, I didn't feel like enough because I'm always on the bench. Right. And then school was even harder than, school was much harder for me than sports. Like, I had trouble with the traditional subjects. I had trouble focusing. I was the class clown. [00:02:44] Speaker 1: I heard you were the kid that wouldn't sit still, right? [00:02:47] Anton: Yeah. [00:02:48] Speaker 1: But you were so different. How did being different affect you? How did it affect you today in a good way? Because I think so many people out here are different. It's part of their skill. I know you've got your new book coming out. [00:03:00] Anton: You know, I didn't realize how different I was when I was a kid. Like, I was just told that I was weird and eccentric and crazy. And I didn't realize until I was in my late 20s that my difference was my advantage. I had no idea. No one, I think of this, Tony, I'm here as a kid and no parent, no teacher. No one says to me that all these peculiar behaviors of mine, like, for example, I have low fear and a lack of inhibition, so I would approach anyone in class. And people thought I was weird because I would just talk to anyone. No one said to me, you know, when you're a founder of a company one day, that will help you out. And then no one said to me, you know, people called me intense and crazy as a kid. And I didn't realize that that energy would help pace setting an organization. And then my out of the box brain. So for me, it was really difficult growing up because what appeared as my flaws, that was actually my strengths. And what I want, what I want from all of you today is I want all of you to understand that your difference is your advantage, right? Like, don't, don't, none of you should be ashamed of your difference. Like you could be neurodivergent. You could just, you know, you could just be, you know, weird and wonderful. And when, when I discovered my difference in my twenties, that's when my career took off. And that's what I want for everyone out here. [00:04:41] Speaker 1: What made you know that your difference is finally an advantage? When did that, when did that switch for you? By the way, I was, I was five, one in high school too. I was the smallest guy. I believe that things changed for me physically. Obviously I had a tumor in my brain, so I grew 10 inches in a year. So I felt experienced that too. I was the outsider. I was not a part of the group of any sort of same way. So I can relate. But at what point did you realize that difference was an advantage? What shifted for you? [00:05:07] Anton: It was in my late teenagers. I mean, so I felt underestimated. I felt like I wasn't enough and I felt like a problem kid. And the first time I had agency in my life was when I started weightlifting. I'm 13 years old and I took money from a paper route and from shoveling drive. You know, in Canada, there's quite a bit of snow. I know Minneapolis has snow too. But yeah, so I, I start weightlifting as a kid and I start to see a month later, I start to see results. I'm flexing in the mirror. And I realized if I work harder than anyone and more relentless and discipline, my discipline was incredible. I could get great results and I loved working. It gave me independence. But the first time I figured out my difference when I was doing cold calling door to door. [00:05:57] Speaker 1: Let's tell us about that because you have a partner named Ronan, right? [00:06:01] Anton: Yes. [00:06:01] Speaker 1: And Ronan you met when you were 11, is that right? [00:06:03] Anton: Yeah, when we were eight years old at summer camp. [00:06:05] Speaker 1: Okay. He said that when you guys went out, you were marketing shit. Let's be honest. Fertilizer. Yeah, exactly. They marketed fertilizer. Yeah. Tell us a little about that. But what he said was, I was reading an article and he said he'd never seen anyone take rejection like you. You get 20 or 30 no's, it didn't affect you at all. Tell us a little bit about that starter business and tell us a little bit about how your difference helped there. [00:06:28] Anton: Well, going door to door, I did both door to door personal and I did door to door business because I was selling advertising door to door business. Yes. And when I went, people would say to me, you have a magic, you connect with people in a magical way. And that's when I started to hear that I had, that my difference, you know, was a gift. Okay. When I started to connect with people in that setting. And then doing door to door sales, I would just learn, practice influencing. I would go to people's homes and then I would say to them, let me go check your grass. I'd go and then I'd put my hand through their thatch. I'd ask for a glass of water to have more time in the selling process. So I was learning different ways of influencing. Yeah. [00:07:22] Speaker 1: That's great. [00:07:22] Anton: Yeah. And door to door sales is just such an incredible way to practice the art of influence. [00:07:28] Speaker 1: Well, it's, there is no greater way to earn a psychology. I learned, I was part of a music company. They call people up and say, we're a new music company in the area. We have some new ideas for sound and music. One of my body is going to stop by and give you a free gift. What do you like? Rock and roll, classic, et cetera. And then they'd send me in. And I had to talk my own in the door and give a two hour presentation. Wow. On why they should buy these, this music over a period of time, like a music group that they did. And I learned more in that situation every day in my life. Because people were drunk, people were angry. Some people brought you in for entertainment. So, but you handled rejection extremely well. He said, he said, just like it didn't seem to stop you. Why has rejection never really stopped you? Because that's what stops most people. Wouldn't you agree? Yeah. [00:08:09] Anton: I have been failing my whole life. Failure, I love failure. I saw in your video you put together that says something about, you know, for me, failure has just been my greatest teacher. Right? Like. Give me a hand for that. That sounds so true. Yeah. You know, when we moved into the Spin Master headquarters, I created a shrine of our failures. So, on the sixth floor outside of our boardroom right now today, the place people love, it's their favorite part of the tour. You have a showcase of all of our products have failed, right? Like for example, there's Live Dole, la-dee-da. And you have the glass and then you have underneath it, it explains what was the learning. You know, and you talk about mindset so much. And unfortunately, so many people, their fear get in the way. That's right. And they're afraid, you know, they could be ashamed or whatever it is. And it gets in their way of failure. And I don't even think people should use the word failure. I agree with you. Like testing. There's so many other words people could use instead of failure. But for me, failure became the biggest moment of gift. Yes. Right? Like I look back at any single struggle I had or any challenging time in the company, there was such a great gift. And failure provides an opportunity to just kind of reset, to capture the learnings. And I mean, there's just some incredible stories of failure. I mean, I love failure so much. I'll tell you, about 20 years ago, we buy this company, Tech Deck. It's these miniature finger skateboards. And after three years, we grew the business from 20 million to about 70 million. And then we decide, this was 20 years ago, we decide to create a mobile digital game. Yeah, there's Tech Deck. Yeah. So we create this mobile digital game and it's called Tech Deck Live. How many of you, I want to see a show of hands, how many of you have heard of Tech Deck Live? Well, we didn't even come to market with it. We spent two and a half years and we made every single mistake you can imagine. No, we had the wrong software. We had the wrong go-to-market strategy. After two and a half years, I had to let go of 36 people. And it was, we shut down the lights. It was in LA. And the biggest learning that we had with Tech Deck Live, we took designers from Mattel that are used to, they were on Hot Wheels. They're used to plastics and metal. And then we put them in charge of software code. And the biggest mistake that we made from Tech Deck Live was we didn't, we never, the leaders of Tech Deck Live didn't have domain mastery. And after we made that mistake, one of the things my partners and I do well is, we didn't have a regret, we didn't blame each other, we wrote down the learning. That's great. That's great. So after Tech Deck Live, a couple of years later, we decided to come up with this preschool show. [00:11:37] Speaker 1: Wow, which is the biggest thing you've done. [00:11:39] Anton: Yeah, I mean, and this, we decided we want to create this magical transformation for preschool, because Bakugan, the balls with the trading cards, that did billions of sales. And we said, how do we create some white space? How do we rain make in the area of preschool? So we, the first thing we do is we make a list of the five best creators in preschool. And we go out and we send a brief to them. And the one gentleman comes back to us. His name is Keith Chapman. He created Bob the Builder. Yes. So, you know, here's a great learning is you want to create something great. Who in the world has the incredible track record? And how do you approach them? Then, instead of creating our own animation studio, like the mistake we made with Tech Deck Live, we contacted this company, Guru, in Toronto, and they did the animation. And then also we partnered with Paramount and Nickelodeon and helped us with the broadcast. [00:12:37] Speaker 1: You got the best of the best in every category. Yeah. [00:12:40] Anton: Think about this, Tony. We lost $11 million in Tech Deck Live, and we've done over $15 billion at Paw Patrol. You want to know why I love failures? [00:12:54] Speaker 1: Give it up for them, for Anton. That's awesome. Well, you always tell people, it's like when people succeed, they tend to party. When they fail, they ponder. And if the pondering leads to learning, the learning always leads to something greater. [00:13:09] Anton: Exactly. Every single area of the business I failed in. You pick any area of the business, I'll tell you my failure. [00:13:18] Speaker 1: I'd like to do a little progression so people see your growth. So you come out of college, you and Ronan together, and you're looking for some kind of product that you're going to do. And he approaches you with a product that you think he's crazy about. [00:13:28] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:13:28] Speaker 1: To even bring to you. It's a product, as I understand, that's nylon stocking. It's got sawdust and grass seed. And when you water it, it grows hair. And you said, this is insane. Exactly. I guess it's a product that was in Israel. And he had the idea that if we do so well in Israel, in a small country, do bigger here. And so, EarthBuddy. Tell us a little about EarthBuddy. Why were you opposed to it? And what convinced you to finally do it? How do you know an idea is a really good idea or a bad idea? Right. [00:13:56] Anton: So, Ronan and I, we met at Sleepover Camp when we were eight years old. We became friends. And then we had this university poster called Camp. We had this business during university called Campus Faces, where you had ads around the edge and Frosh Week pictures in the center. We'd hand it out for free in local pubs and pizza joints. They would have advertising in kids' dorms on college campuses. During my last year of university, in November of '93, Ronan says to me, "Anton, let's go into business together." And I'm like, "With what?" And he's like, "I don't know." He's like, "Why don't I go travel the Grateful Dead, and I'll wait for you for seven months, and let's go into business." Travel the Grateful Dead. We were selling fertilizer, and he's Westerphelia the year before that. Anyways, so-- What's your competitive advantage when you sell shit? I'm just curious. [00:14:56] Speaker 1: Say that again? What was your competitive advantage when you're selling shit, when you're selling fertilizer? [00:14:59] Anton: Well, I would work harder than anyone else. [00:15:01] Speaker 1: It didn't matter what the product-- [00:15:03] Anton: I understand, it didn't matter the product. [00:15:04] Speaker 1: Give him a hand for that. It's awesome. Yeah. So he says to-- [00:15:08] Anton: Yeah, so what happens is, he comes up to-- he says to me, "Let's go into business together." And we didn't know what we were doing, and we were not-- we didn't know what we were going to do. So the first thing is, the founding of Spin Master was about the who, not the what. Yes, we'll teach that. Yeah, Jim Collins, good to great. Hewlett Packard. It's about the who, not the what. Yeah. So he-- I'm writing my last exam, April of '94. I'm at Ivy Business School, which I-- you know, how I got in is another whole thing, because I struggled in school so much, I only figured out at the age of 54 that I have ADHD combined. Yeah. Which, another conversation for another time. I'll leave it to you. You're there. Anyway, so he shows me this grass head, and he says, "Let's bring it to market." I look at it. He has the product sense. I don't have the product sense. I said, "Okay, no problem. We'll try it." We drive back to Toronto. We go into his kitchen, and we're taking apart the sample from Israel with our hands, and sawdust is all over the place, nylons. We wanted to make 300 samples for Mother's Day. So we took, like, his mom comes in and is like, "What are you doing with the cereal bowls? They're red." Because we're, like, sawdust and nylons are going all over the place. And we made 300 samples for Mother's Day. We go to-- the biggest street in Canada is Yonge Street. Yonge Street's the most famous street in Toronto. We go on the street without a permit. I just-- we put a table with, like, a sheet on it, and I'm sitting there at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton in Toronto saying, "Come over here. Check out the earth, buddy. It grows grass from its head. You can trim it. It will be your pet. It won't even talk to you." Tony, we sell out. We totally sell out. And then-- What did you charge for them? What did you charge for them? Six dollars. It was like a Chia Pet, a cheaper version of the Chia Pet. But you know what? Everyone thinks, a couple months later, it started to take off in Toronto. We got a multi-million dollar order from Kmart. [00:17:25] Speaker 1: Yeah. Your partner went in. How did he do that? And yeah. He cold called, right? Correct. [00:17:30] Anton: Yeah. He cold called in Kmart. Well, I met someone in Europe traveling. When I was backpacking Europe, I met a wealthy family from West Bloomfield. And they hooked up the appointment and then charged us a bit. But what happened was, you know, when you look back to Spin Master, everyone believes the breakthrough was that multi-million dollar order at Kmart. But they're wrong. The breakthrough of Spin Master was about partnerships. It was about the three of us. There's a third guy, Ben Verity. He's the creative genius. And when you look back, 90% of the biggest brands we've created, 90% of the biggest franchises have come through these unique partnerships. And when we founded the company, the three of us were as opposite as you can humanly imagine. People would think, like, these guys are like a rock band. Each one plays a different instrument. We have the most opposite skill sets you can imagine. [00:18:39] Speaker 1: Describe how you guys worked together. I'm curious, what's the role of each of you? [00:18:42] Anton: Well, I handled the whole people side. Human resources, sales, parts of marketing. Benny did all the creative. Renan was quite visionary. He would float a lot. But we had the exact same core values. We had the same hunger to succeed, the passion to build. So for all of you, if any of you are looking for a partner, all of you should try to find someone with the most opposite skill sets possible. But with the same core values. Right? And that's what we had. And that was the magic. And the other thing is, remember I told you that we had that university business together, Renan and I? We got a chance to get to know each other on a project basis. We took our university poster business to 100,000 in sales before we opened Spin Master. Wow. So for any of you, if someone knocks on your shoulder and says to you, I'd like to be your partner, you should say to them, hey, how do we do a test run together and beta test that? Are you going to get married before dating? Right? So that's such an important lesson. But Tony, let's go back to partnerships because I think there's so much here to share with your audience because Spin Master wouldn't be where we were today if it wasn't for partnerships. We treated people like no others. Like when, you know, when we started with inventors, when we came into the toy industry, we researched the history of toys. Furby, this super soaker, every single great toy came from an inventor, 90%. So we were like, how do we treat the inventors differently to the other public companies at that time? This is 30 years ago. So what we do is we, because most companies, they would take the inventor, they'd option their product, grind them out, sign it, and then sometimes they didn't even return calls. When we want, when, what we did with the inventors is we took them, okay, for over, we took them on these retreats. We took them to Africa on a safari, did no business. We bonded with them. We, when we won the toy of the year, like the Grammys award, we had the inventor go up on the stage. We never went on the stage. We said to the inventor of the zero gravity, the air hogs that climbs up the wall, go up on the stage. You're the inventor. We paid the inventors a little bit more. We treated them better than anyone. We had this in, we allowed the inventors to sit in our office for months in the design and development. The guy who invented Zoomer the dog, Pete, you know, and our, our competitors wouldn't allow it. So you know what happened? The inventor showed us their ideas first. Yeah. Because we treated the inventors better than anyone else. And talk, yeah. And then talk about partnerships, right. Bakugan. Bakugan, you know, we, we created this partnership. We, there's Bakugan on the screen and, you know, we, we decided we needed to find, we, this inventor brought us Bakugan from California and it was a marble ball this size. And you throw it on the trading card, it would open up. So we thought to ourselves, how do we take this to another level? At that time, boys anime was like Dragon Ball Z. Boys just love Japanese anime. It came from mangas. They have these, they have these comic books in Japan. So we fly to Japan and we say, who's the number one company in the world in Japanese anime? TMS, TMS. And we said, okay, we, we, we need an incredible partner in Japan to help us with the engineering, with the small parts, Sega toys. Who would help us with the broadcasting chorus in Canada? So we create this partnership. And what's different about our partnerships is everyone's a lot. It's not work for hire. All the royalty that came from Bakugan, whether it was Bakugan, pajamas or two, all the licensing went into a pool. A quarter went to TMS. A quarter went. Wow. Yes. So everyone was financially, every single body was lined up financially with the same interest, interest long-term. Then the communication. Do you know what we did with the Japanese? Every quarter we would meet. We had this discipline of incredible communication and sharing ideas and ideation. And we, you know, everyone treated each other well. But again, you know, searching the world for the best, aligning your interests. And for us, it's the partnerships that scaled our company into the billions. And it's what made the company what it is today. And I think for all of you who want to scale your company, who in the world could you contact who's best at what they do and really get them, not just work for hire. It's like we shared a percentage of Bakugan. We shared a percentage of Paw Patrol. And we were so aligned with our interests. [00:24:03] Speaker 1: That is so solid and so rarely done today. That's beautiful. Going back a little bit to your history so the people get the flow. So after you come up with your version of a Chia Pet, the Earth Buddy, the next thing I guess was Devil Sticks, as I understand. It was the next big hit. Tell us about how that was covered. Because that was kind of something you guys discovered that people were doing. And then you turned it into something that was a giant big win. And then tell us all these things you've begun. They've all had a pattern I've seen sometimes where some of them caught on like crazy. And then you made a lot of money and then it disappeared. And that happens to a lot of people with their products, right? Tell us a little bit about both those items. [00:24:39] Anton: The magic in the marketing with Devil Sticks was doing in-store demonstrations. So we would have vans driving around in KB Toys, which no longer is this, and Toys R Us. And we were doing, we were sitting there. We hired friends from university who would drive around vans in the northeast doing demonstrations. So just incredible grassroots marketing. [00:25:02] Speaker 1: Because if you just looked at it, you wouldn't do anything, right? So, but watching it, someone doing it would be fascinating. [00:25:07] Anton: Yeah, so I mean, I could, if you had a pair, I would do some of the tricks today. And it'd been around forever. Like they're juggling sticks, the devil sticks. And what was your second question? But that had its run, right? [00:25:20] Speaker 1: Yes. Then when it ran out, you had a couple of years that were kind of cold, if I remember correctly. And then you had to come up with something new. And you really went all in on Sky Shark. And you learned some interesting lessons from that. Yeah. [00:25:31] Anton: The nature, the nature of a certain part of the industry with kids is, kids are not loyal in many ways. How loyal is it? Those are parents that are laughing right now. How loyal is a five or six year old? So what you're saying is correct, is that part of our industry is things come and go. And they have like a four year cycle. Like Bakugan went to a billion in sales and then came down to zero. And we knew that was going to happen. So the challenge is to try to create core brands. And that's the hardest thing. There's nothing in our industry harder than creating reoccurring revenue. And that's why we are so fortunate with something like Paw Patrol. Yes. That we've had it. Paw Patrol, we've been able to, it's thriving. I mean, do you know that the Paw Patrol movie is out right now? This weekend. The third movie. Yeah. It's the third one, right? Yeah. So it's the, and it's the Paw Patrol movie. So for us, what we've been doing the first 10, 15 years, we were just grinding it out. And we always had to reinvent ourself. We would lose 40% of our revenue a year. And then we looked at ourselves and we said to ourselves, we need to rethink our strategy. How do we, how do we create content? And how do we build brands so that we don't have to find, if we want it, if we wanted to grow 10%, we would have to grow 40% plus 10% because we lost. Yeah, because you want to make up for what you lost, right. And that's when we started to do acquisitions like Rubik's Cube, reoccurring revenue, where it was known. That's when we started to, to be more strategic with things like Paw Patrol, making sure that the content was fresh. Making sure that we had spinoffs like Rubble. And then we added the movie and we've always, you know, you talk about difference. I mean, Paw Patrol, we did things with Paw Patrol, never been done before. When, when we decided to create the show, we took, we took the designers who, who only spent their whole career designing toys. And we put storytellers together sitting. This was before they even came up with the show. And we, we said to them, how, how do you create innovative toys and storytelling all together? So we, we did a mashup of people sitting in the same, and then we went to them and we said to them, Bakugan, Bakugan did so well with magical transformation. How do you put magical transformation in five rescue dogs? And we put, and there were two, two things, yeah. So what we did is we took the, the people's, the pups home and they transformed into vehicles. And the toy designers could see the transformation and the storytellers. So that's where we did something different there too. Wow. Yeah. [00:28:21] Speaker 1: So what was it like though, for you to build a business and hit this, the biggest hit of your career, a billion dollars in Bakugan. Yeah. And then see it drop through the floor that first time. Because now, you know, you understand the process. Yeah. But how did you keep your head together? I mean, that must have been an unbelievable drop for you. That was back in 2011 or something like that? [00:28:39] Anton: Yeah. We did four rounds of layoffs then. Wow. Yeah. It was difficult. We had to, we had to really think a lot of areas. [00:28:47] Speaker 1: Can you imagine building your business to a billion dollars and then all of a sudden you're next to nothing? How did you keep your head straight? How did the three of you? Because you're partners. Yeah. Some people start backbiting each other, blaming each other. You guys, it sounds like you guys didn't do that. [00:29:01] Anton: You know what? It was tough because I had just opened up the international offices and my partners asked me to shut down Germany and Italy. And I was getting a pain in my stomach. And it was, it was a tough moment. But we, you know, we did what we did, what we had to do with the layoffs. And fortunately we had a healthy balance sheet and we just doubled down on innovation. [00:29:28] Speaker ?: Right. [00:29:29] Anton: Yeah. We went, just focused on innovation. Give him a hand for that. Yeah. [00:29:34] Speaker 1: Think of what we talked about the life cycle of a business and talking about when you get to the point where you're at your prime and then it starts to go midlife, where now, you know, you're working just as hard and maybe revenue is not quite as high. Maybe you get more profit. If you don't do it, it ages. The only way to get out of aging is to innovate. That's how you get back. And they did that from that level. That's phenomenal. So how did you break out of that? What was the next innovation that exploded you back out? Well, Paw Patrol. I was Paw Patrol. Yeah. That's right. And that's when you came up with the idea of bringing everybody together this way. How important has acquisition been? Like you said, you brought on Rubik's Cube. And by the way, Rubik's Cube, I saw he, the founder, gave a quote for your book. I was looking at your book and I was like, that's great. It confers with how you said about treating the inventors. Obviously it cares very much about you and you care about him. But how important, you've done what, 30 plus acquisitions? Yeah, 35. Yeah, 35 acquisitions. Yeah. A lot of businesses don't even think about acquiring. So where did acquisitions fit in for you and how important they've been to your growth? [00:30:36] Anton: Over about half of our revenue today comes from acquisitions. Wow. We bought Melissa and Doug. We, you know, for us, the most effective acquisitions we've ever done were the small ones. That's when we get the best returns. Yeah. You know, and we just did a lot of tuck and deals, like a lot of board games. And we weren't afraid of- So you've got something on a small multiple and you have a larger multiple. Totally. And also sometimes we would see something in America that didn't exist in Europe. And for me, doing business overseas was natural for me. Yes. I love doing business. Like when I would arrive in France or anywhere, they just thought I was a local. And what we would do is find stuff doing well in the U.S. that could do well in Europe. We'd put it in our Europe offices. And sometimes, can I tell you what I used to do? Sometimes I used to find out a product selling well. I'd call the Walmart up and I'd call the head of Walmart or Target or Toys R Us and I'd say to them, confidentially, what do you think of this product? And if they gave me the nod, then I'd then I'd do the deal. That's great. Yeah. So then I knew that we could take it from a small specialty store and you put it into Walmart or Target and we had the path to growth. You know, so acquisitions was so important. And the other thing for us is we weren't afraid with acquisitions where there were hair on the deal, where there were troubled companies, where we could, where we saw a great brand. [00:32:07] Speaker 1: That's a good deal, right? [00:32:07] Anton: Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:08] Speaker 1: How did you deal with a hair on the deal? Give us an example. [00:32:11] Anton: Well, I mean, like, for example, when we talk about TechDeck, no one wanted to deal with the two founders in San Diego, Tom and Peter. And they were like, these guys are having trouble being in the same room. I'm very comfortable dealing with difficult people. So I walk into their office and they say to me, Anton, you see that picture on the wall? That's like, you know, the Stooges and they got the gun. And they're like, we are having trouble talking together. So for me, I'm just focused on the prize to buy the company. That doesn't faze me. And dealing with challenging people, I enjoy that. Doesn't faze me. I'm a mindset guy too. I know you are. I can feel you. But, yeah, but, you know, I mean, acquisitions have really been an area that I've loved. And I, you know, for me, there's nothing more that I love in acquisition. When we find a small company and there's no, they have not gone to investment bankers. There's no book. There's no, there's no fancy PowerPoint. And I get to work with the sole proprietor and it's, it is all psychology. Yes. Yes. I love that more than anything. Yes. I love when I sat down with Joel from Cardinal. Okay. Cardinal games. We're sitting there in Arizona and I gave him a valuation on a, on a napkin for his company. And we did the deal right there on the spot. Yes. Right. And that's, that's our advantage. Yeah. For me, for me, when, when I, when we get a phone call from like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs at some companies for sale and they're just trying to get the, the highest amount. I love it when I can sit across from the entrepreneur. That's great. And really understand what motivates them. Meet their needs at a whole different level. [00:34:06] Speaker 1: Yeah. You got it. Sometimes it's not just. You got it. You well know. Right. Say that again. Sometimes it's not just money. Yeah. Other things are even more important. Exactly. [00:34:14] Anton: Like their legacy, like for Rubik's cube. Their legacy. Yeah. For Rubik's cube, Erno, Erno Rubik, the most amazing man from, from Budapest, Hungary. He had an off, he would only sell to us. He told us afterwards. They pretended with Hasbro, but they would only sell based on the goodwill of this company. [00:34:33] Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Yeah. [00:34:34] Anton: Give him for that. That's incredible. [00:34:36] Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah. [00:34:37] Anton: The integrity, the integrity has really paid off and the goodwill of the organization. You know, Tony, if it's okay with you, I'd love to share with you one of the hardest and most unique days of my personal career. That's one of my questions. Yes, it is. Go for it. That's perfect. Yeah. So it's the moment of my 360. We'd been in business for six years. I'm 28 years old. The company's doubling, doubling and doubling. We're doing like 40 million in sales. And I get this phone call from my uncle, Wilfred, and he's, he's a coach. He's a certified business coach. He lives in Connecticut. I'm in Toronto. And he says to me, he says, Anton, you're leading, you know, 60, 70 people. You need to have a 360. So I said, Wil, his name is Wilfred. I call him Wil. What's a 360? So he says, well, it's anonymous tool. You know, you pick eight to 10 people. They fill out an anonymous feedback and it's focused on your leadership skills. A lot of the, it's a different report card from that you're used to from school. Cause it really covers how you showing up as a leader. So he said, you need to do a 360. My response to him was, okay. I didn't really know what it was. I said, okay, I'll try anything. That's when my, my response, whenever anyone says anything to me, I'll try it. One of my girls say, well, I try something. There's nothing I won't try. So he calls me up and he says that the 360 is done. I'm going to fly to Toronto. We go out for lunch. He pulls it out. And on the cover, it says overall rating six. And I'm really excited because I'm thinking my leadership skills are so. Cause the company is doing like 40 million in sales. Been in business for six years. I think I'm doing crazy. The guy pulls out this thing and it says six out of 10. Tony, I was, I was not laughing. It was a humbling moment. Yeah. Well, more humbling is listen to this. He says, look at your, he starts flipping through it. And I circle problem, problem, listening skills, 5.8 out of 10 communication skills. Then he starts reading out the comments to me and he, and it says, shame on him. Tony, I, I felt like I was spinning. Like my, I felt like a truck. It hit me. I didn't, my brain was just combobulating. And it's probably the way a boxer feels after 12 rounds of being knocked out. Yeah. I'm sitting there and I just couldn't believe this 360. And just as a side note, if any of you asked me to invest in any of your companies, unless you did a 360, if you manage a lot of people and don't do a 360, I would never consider investing in any of your companies. Great. But let's, but what happens is that night, I lay, I go to bed, I put my head on the pillow and I say to myself, if I don't, if I don't show up differently as a, I should not be the co-CEO of this company. I said that to myself. And the next morning I woke up, I printed my lowest scores. I put them above my screen in my office. So every day I could see that. I hired two different coaches, started to just read anything I could. And I woke up the next day, relentless to improve myself. And every three years I did another 360 and it got better and better. After 20 years, it was like Sisyphus climbing up the, you know, the Greek, the Greek. Yeah. And I, I spent 20 years improving how I showed up. And what, what appeared as an emotional death that day was the biggest gift I've ever received. I would, I would not be here with this book. Give them a hand for that. [00:38:57] Speaker 1: That's incredible. [00:38:59] Anton: Yeah. [00:39:02] Speaker 1: But I, I, I, I, but also it's what you did with it. Because some people turn that around and get angry or they get pissed. Yeah. You took it in, you took, you didn't take it personal. You took personal responsibility. Yeah. Big difference. And you took responsibility to make it better. Yeah. And you've done it forever to that time. And it's shown up in your life. How has that affected your relationship with your own kids? [00:39:21] Anton: It's made me a better person. Yeah. Yeah. Everything that 360. Okay. That day, looking back at it, it's spurred me like this book. Originally, this book was going to be called Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie. Because I was so focused on becoming a better version of myself from that 360. And, and if it wasn't for that 360, I would not have been able to successfully lead spin master into the future. And it was the most transformative thing I've ever done. Feedback is a gift. Feedback is a gift. All right. And, and 90% of the time, feedback is a gift. I've come to learn a little bit about that 10% recently. No, that's fine. [00:40:09] Speaker 1: Some people's feedback is not for intention of helping. Yeah. [00:40:12] Anton: But 90% of the times. But when I look back, every moment, like for me, every time someone sees a problem or a struggle, when that moment happens for me, I start getting those tinglys inside now and knowing that, hey, a gift is going to emerge. That's beautiful. Because I'm in a flow mindset now, I've started my journey of spiritual enlightenment. And I'm in such a flow mindset that I can, that I can see the gift easier because, you know, Tony, and you know this better than anyone is those people who see failure, you know, see, you know, they have that fear of failure. Those people who their nervous system, you know, when, when the, when the tough times happen, they don't see the gift as easily. And for me, I get, I get excited for things to emerge unexpected. And for me, my favorite thing today, there's nothing that makes me happier than to walk into a room, create, you know, some laughter, some fun, some psychological safety, and for collective wisdom to pop out, right? Like to me, I'm at the stage now in my career is when I began Spin Master, it was for me, it was all about telling people what to do in my twenties. Go to China, make sure that, make sure the toy is, you know, you check the quality, do this, do that. Today, it's all about coming into a room and lifting others up, bringing the best out of others. And I just get so freaking pumped when collective wisdom happens by putting together people who are so smart. And my job today is to find great brains, put, put them together and just sit back and just have those incredible unexpected moments of brilliance. [00:42:10] Speaker 1: I love you. You're, you're a great human being. I love what you're about. Thank you. Thanks man. Really awesome. Thanks. I would ask you one more question though. Yeah. I'm gonna ask you one more question and then we'll bring you back out if we can with a, with a group so we can have the group ask you questions. Let's do it. I know you're also like myself driven by a contribution and you don't just do it on your own separately. You've made a part of the culture of your company. You give about, I think, 350,000 toys across 27 countries. Tell us a little bit about not only giving and how important it is, but why it's important to make it part of the company itself. Cause many entrepreneurs go do it on their own and there's nothing wrong with that. But when you make it part of the culture, it transforms the people in the culture. Tell me how that's worked in your business and tell us what you do in that area. [00:42:53] Anton: Yeah. You know, we created the toy movement where we go to remote places with refugees. I went with a bunch of staff to Dadaab, Kenya, the largest camp in the world with refugees, you know, at the border of Somalia. And I took six or seven staff with me and we handed out toys and you know, that, that effect that they had on, on, on our staff for them to, to see that and, and how energized they got about the, the power of giving and what they got, get back. So we just, we encourage our staff to donate locally. We donate, we donate globally, locally, and people feel very passionate [00:43:41] Speaker 1: about it, you know, and how's it affected the company to have so many people involved in the giving aspect besides the creation aspect? You know, when, when we have the fortune of putting smiles on [00:43:51] Anton: people's faces, people come to work really charged and feel great about what they do. But for me right now, personally, my giving back is, I, I just want, I want, I, I'm, I'm mentoring people now at scale through this book and my giving back is to help all of you. I want, I want all of you to get more crisp and clear about your difference. Like if all of you could walk, walk out of today, being able to understand your unique ability, um, better. If all of you can spend over 80% of your time in your difference, then your careers can start to take off. Right? Like, I'm, I don't know if you've heard of Dan Sullivan. Of course. Right? So Dan Sullivan, I, when I was in YEO, I, I, I, I was in the stage and I, Dan Sullivan, he came up onto the stage and I was in the audience and he's talked about unique ability. That next day I started delegating and for me, when I started to figure out that, that all my differences, my ADHD and, and my weird behavior and all that stuff, that that was my advantage. Yes. That's when my career took off. Yes. And that's what I want for all of you is none of you should be ashamed of your, of your difference. You guys should celebrate your difference. You should embrace your difference, right? Your difference is your advantage. That's your superpower. Oh yeah. That's your superpower. [00:45:48] Speaker 1: Give it up. Give it up for Anton.