Everyone wants to know how I started my very successful business, and I’m honored to share my path to greatness with you. The answer to how I got where I am today is simple. It took blood, sweat, and tears, and a lot of money that I already had from my previous super-successful business.
Don’t get me wrong. When I started my previous business, I did it out of a garage like everyone else. Only my garage was located in the headquarters of my previous, previous company. It was private access in a heated high-rise with twenty-four-hour security. From there, I packed and shipped all the items myself. And “by myself” I mean with the help of the employees of my previous, previous company who did all the work without any overtime wages.
I scrimped and saved and pinched and banked every last million.
I survived on just eight-dollar lattes and pasta flown in from my favorite restaurant in Italy. On the days my private driver was out doing deliveries, I rode my Vespa to work. If it rained, I would order an Uber, where all my rides were comped because I was an angel investor.
People often ask me how I started my previous previous business, and I assure them there are no shortcuts to success. Just the personal phone numbers of people like Mark Cuban, which I acquired because we often bumped into each other in first class when I was traveling for my previous, previous, previous business. Then I set up a meeting with these venture capitalists who’d made a killing on my previous, previous, previous, previous business and said, “You’ve got to see my latest idea.”
I hustled like no one with a publicly traded previous, previous, previous, previous business has ever hustled before. I sold products out of the trunk of my Mercedes-Benz E-Class, which I had my in-house graphics department at my previous, previous, previous, previous, previous company modify so that it resembled the DeLorean from Back to the Future. Then I asked my buddy Michael J. Fox to do me a favor and drive it around town.
I knocked on the doors of potential clients just like everyone else. And those doors were usually opened wide by butlers in tuxedos saying, “Welcome, please do come inside.” Then the homeowners threw loads of cash at me in exchange for coming up with another flicker of an idea because my previous, previous, previous, previous, previous, previous company turned to literal gold.
And to start that first company, how’d I do it? Well, I dropped out of school, moved back into my parents’ Beverly Hills mansion, and said, “Mom, Dad, I need money to start my own business.” And after just a moment of thought, they granted me access to the trust fund my grandparents set up for me when I was born with the millions they made from their own previous business.
They started that when they were still living in England on land given to them by their friends in the Royal Family.