Be a two-hit wonder instead of a one-hit wonder. Very few people get to succeed at different things. For you to be doing this & then say "I'm gonna go conquer that", told me everything I wanted to know about you. You're my kind of guy. Does my versatility take away from the overall goal of being the best? Do you believe you can spread your talent into different buckets & be ultra successful in each one? Absolutely I do. Not only does Forbes call me the richest restauranter but I have a very successful gaming company & a great basketball team. You can do it all, absolutely I do. Don't think about that crap. Go do something else too. Have at it. At what point do you have too many wonders? If you can do two or three good things at once, that's all you can do. We can only handle so much. You can easily box & do this show. How are you managing all the things you're doing? It's great and that's probably the greatest pleasure of them all - to go to them games and watch them, especially a team in your home town. Very few people get to own a team in their home town. Is your favorite burger joint Whataburger? I grew up eating Whataburger. It's just what we did. It's amazing. Out here, it was In-&-Out Burger? Shake Shack on the East Coast. 5 Guys in Ohio. ... Are you into food & that's how you got into the restaurant business? No, I'm into money. I heard the restaurant business is struggling or it's hard to succeed. It is. It's hard to succeed in what you're doing. The good ones survive. I talk about it in the book - find out what you do well and separate yourself from everyone else. It's easy to stand out. All of us are given a God-given talent. I can't win a Grammy singing but God gave me an entrepreneur brain to understand business. I can talk to you about any business for a minute and a half and I'll tell you if you know your **** or not. Did you say gaming? Gaming team? I do have one also. Clutch Gaming & just merged with another so we have like five of them. I own the Golden Nugget Casino but I also have Clutch Gaming. When did you find out you had an entrepreneur brain? When I was a little kid, I would carry around my grandfather's brief case. I didn't want to read comic books or watch cartoons. When I was in junior high, I was buying candy at the store and selling it to kids. In high school, I was trading the stock market. When I was 21, I won my first Cadillac selling vitamins. Then I said you're gonna own a jet by the time you're 35. I bought my first jet at 35. Are you a hustler? I'm not a hustler promoter because I always talk the talk & walk the walk. I always worked hard & knew how to make money. I meant in the sense of grinding. Yeah, keep punching, don't ever give up. You get your ass kicked on the 9th, just get up & keep punching again. You have something in you that you want it. One reason I was successful was I always wanted it a little more than everyone else. If you want it more, you're gonna eventually get it, I can promise that. Is that an innate thing? You sound like me. You set a goal & then I do whatever it takes to get from point A to point B to get there. Even though I came out on Forbes as 140th richest guy in America, I still have goals I want to accomplish. What is that? I'd like to own an NFL team now. In Texas? I don't know. NFL is the NFL just like NBA is the NBA. Perks of owning an NBA team? Of course it's a business venture. I paid $2.2B. At the same time, never been a sports team sell for less. You can almost book it ten years from now that team will be worth $3.2B. That's just life. That's history. You gotta have dreams. You have dreams of being a great boxer. [Talks about boxing] Any other qualms with this generation? Part of it is it's not your damn fault technology is different but you gotta understand when I was growing up, if we wanted to talk to a friend, we had to go get on our parents phone. And when we turned 16, we ran our ass over to the DMV to get a driver's license. My kids, why aren't they worried about the same thing? You're able to face time & communicate & talk. It's a different world. I don't know that you're softer. I don't believe that. Things are at your finger tips. I realized that when I'm watching them order protein shakes or whatever & it shows up. Another sitting by the fire outside and firewood shows up at midnight & he wasn't gonna get his ass in the car & go get it. The softness is created by the technology. I guess I'd be a soft son of a gun myself. When I bought my first jet, I learned how to fly it but now I prefer sitting in the back seat and letting someone else take care of my ass. You learned how to fly your own jet? Absolutely. Why? Because I like to know a little bit about everything I do. I dropped out of college to make money my 3rd year because I preferred money more than learning any more about English & math and not being great at school. Since I didn't get me a degree, I'll go back & get a pilot's license. The school I dropped out of, I'm now the longest running chairman of the Board of Regents, University of Houston. Seems like 90% of ultra successful people are the ones who dropped out of school. What it is is we have something in us & we are so anxious to go out & make that money and do things. This is bullshit! I'm not learning anything here! I'm not telling any kid to drop out. All four of my kids, I'll disown them if they don't...she graduates this year from USC. I had another son graduate and one from Ole Miss, who is now in law school and I have one that will graduate from LSU. We're all over the map. You have to have a college degree today. If I could evaluate one of them & say "I understand you're not made for school & it's not in you", I'd understand. I don't dictate anything to my kids. Whatever they wanted to do, I've never been one of those parents, I don't make them something they're not. If they were not fit for school, I would not have them go to school. Will we see a day where Bachelor degrees are obsolete? It's already happening. We need a work force in America. There's no one doing construction anymore. There's no one repairing cars anymore. It's crazy. They're talking about going to 1 and 2 year programs where you have a profession that way. Is James Harden stepback a travel? Absolutely not. Are you crazy? What are you watching? Will him & Russ get along on the court? Chris & James were East Coast & West Coast. James & Russ are both West Coast LA guys. Chris is 34 and James is 30. In basketball years, that's like 12 years difference. Russ & James are both 30 years old, they know this is it. They're both under contract with the Houston Rockets for the next 4 years. You can take all their greatness & awards they've won but if you don't win a championship, it's just something off your resume & you'll never been known as one of the greatest. If they win a championship or two, they'll always be known as one of the greatest. Hakeem Olajuwon is a great example. Hakeem is always on everyone's Mount Rushmore. If he doesn't win those two championships, he's just another center. Strategy for getting over the hump to win a championship? I have all these Tilmanisms in the book. The 95-5 rule is one of them. At the end of the year, I sat down with Daryl Morey & Mike D'Antoni and said 'We're gonna apply some business principles here. We do 95% of everything right. That's why we're so damn good in the last 2 years but we're gonna figure out the 5%. We sat there & wanted our pace to move up a little bit. When Paul George got traded out here to the Clippers & Russ came, we feel Russ is truly that missing link, that we're gonna be able to put this whole thing together. So that 95-5 is analyzing weakness? We all do 95% of everything right. It's pulling up here just now. You have someone meeting me, couldn't be more polite. What can we do for you before you walk in here. You walk in here, you've done everything right. What did we do wrong? Haven't found the 5% yet but I'll let your ass know before we get done. It's like driving up to a restaurant. I can judge it. Is the parking lot clean? Are lights burned out? Is there trash at the front door? Dead weeds. Is the window smudged? It's all those little things that separate you from everyone else. I talk about it so much in the book. It's so easy to separate yourself from everyone else, you just have to want to do it. Go-to method to finding your weakness? It's culture in my company. Everybody here is about the 95-5 rule. It becomes a culture in your company. I'm not saying we're perfect but you strive for perfection & why you're successful. That's why I'm the guy that keeps being able to buy companies because they don't do the 95-5 rule. All it does for me is create an opportunity. I call it eating the weak.
Is there a downfall to eating the weak mentality and anything money has done for your life you don't like? Not at all. I haven't changed. People still watch me walk through a casino and if there's a cigarette butt on the floor or candy wrapper, they'll still see me pick it up. That's part of the culture of the company. I still walk back in that kitchen & say hello to the guy washing the dishes. If that guy wasn't washing dishes, we wouldn't have anyone sitting in that restaurant because people don't like eating off dirty dishes. That guy is really important to me. That mentality, how important was that to your success vs cold-hearted business man? A lot to do with my success. That's what a leader does. You don't see me walk around in a 3-piece suit and play big shot ever. What are you driving these days? I will tell you this: I've owned a Bentley-Rolls-Bugatti dealership in Houston for a long time. For the first time ever, I went out & drove my Bugatti last week. This is the truth: when you can buy whatever you want, you don't need to do it. I've been driving an Escalade for years & years. They asked me to drive this new Bentley SUV and it was black on black. I said 'I'll take it out for a spin.' Took it for a spin, got back in my Escalade and started driving home. "This thing drives like **** compared to this Bentley." I went back & grabbed the Bentley and been driving it now. It's a great, great vehicle. ... Most expensive thing you've bought as a recreational toy for yourself? Probably the Houston Rockets at $2.2B. No, probably a yacht as a toy. I just can't help myself. It's the greatest most relaxing thing. Where is it docked? Right now, Atlantic City. Just brought it back from Europe. Used it all summer in Europe. I'm building a bigger one right now myself. This is my 5th one I'm on. I love the yachting world. It's very relaxing. Does money solve everything? Absolutely not. No. I hate to say this but you give me a comfortable bed, a cold room & good TV and good remote, most people are pretty happy. The one luxury I say is and if I never went on a yacht again the rest of my life, I'd be fine but it's nice going from city to city and not have to check out hotels. The greatest luxury I have to say is private travel. I've never been through TSA. I bought my first jet in 1991. TSA didn't exist. I've vowed to never fly public. And then they're gonna start throwing my **** in the trash. I wouldn't even know how to pack that way. It's become a joke to me. Almost 30 years I haven't flown on commercial. Are you a Trump guy or I don't discuss it guy? I'm a I don't discuss it guy. We live in a great country. I've been friends with the last 4 presidents. I've had Bush in my house. I've had Clinton in my house 3 times when he was president. We're at a polarizing time and I don't like it either way. It's not good for this country. Both sides need to get their **** together. Favorite one to hang out with? Bill Clinton is a lot of fun but 43, great guy, very smart, loves to have a beer & sit there. Presidents are very special guys. Activity you like to do? Probably watching sports or going to a movie. I'm able to zone everything out for a few minutes & eat a big ol' thing of popcorn and drink a diet coke. That's probably my number one relaxation. My last birthday, we all go eat at these fancy restaurants because we can but my last birthday, I went & got Popeye's fried chicken. To eat a couple big ol' juicy spicy breasts and have that red beans & rice. Why am I gonna go out & eat something fancy? Why not just have what you really want: Popeye's fried chicken. That's a regret that I didn't buy the company a few years ago. Popeye's fried chicken or Mastro's butter cake for the rest of your life? It's not even close, Popeye's fried chicken. How old are you? I'm an old son of a gun. You wouldn't believe how old I am. You look young. I'm 60. Secret? I've never smoked. Never really drank that much until I got older in life. Never really did drugs. Did you start drinking later in life because you had the time to do so? I think so. All of a sudden I realized this is fun. Just relaxing. It's fun to go out after work & sit there and have a couple of drinks. How long do you work every day? I probably wake up at 8-8:30, drink coffee, read e-mails and see everything that happened the day before, read a couple newspapers on my iPad, want to know what's going on in the world of business, CNBC, watching Stephen A., watching what's going on in the sports world, probably get to my office around 11:30-12 and might be there until 8-9-10 o'clock at night. 6/7 days a week? 5 days a week but go to the office for a couple hours on Saturday. What are the importance of off-days, if any? You need that one day to let your brain rest. I'm a guy that if I'm in town and it's Memorial Day or Labor Day and you don't have work that Monday, I'm kinda lost. My sport is business. I loving going in & making decisions & telling people what to do. Just don't go to the extreme that you get burn out. I've never burned out. I've never suffered from burn out & I've been at this a long time. Self-care ritual? You just try to work out a little bit every week but you gotta watch what you eat. Food is the one that gets you. Older you get, the harder it is. You gotta watch what you eat. First million you ever made? How old were you and how did you do it? Good question. When I was 21, I was selling vitamins and I said I'm gonna take it to a different level, open up stores. This is in the early 80s. I string that into when Pac-Man & Asteroids came out. I'm gonna go out and buy these machines. All of a sudden before I look up I had hundreds of these machines around town. I'd go to location to location. All of a sudden you're in your 20s making $100,000 a month. I had a couple million dollars in the bank in my mid-20s. Then I built my first hotel when I was 26. Then the world fell apart. I'm like 26/27, I'm blowin' and goin'. I had loans at 9 different banks in town. The world is truly coming apart. This was late 80s like 1986. This is unbelievable. I'm really starting to struggle & get behind on bank loans. The world fell apart. It was horrible. Every bank I was doing business with failed. All of a sudden, you have a payment due, there is no bank to pay. There is no one to call. There were so many bad loans out there, they had to form this company (The Resolution Trust) to start working with everyone. I didn't hear from them for 4 years. I got a reprieve from the governor. Over the next 4 years, you can't build buildings anymore. I still had my video game business but it had fallen because half the restaurants closed. I start building more restaurants. That's when the big growth of chain restaurants came in. (Outback, Cheesecake Factory, Landry's, Chili's) We all went public in the early 90s. It was 1992. I was doing 30 million in revenue, making $5M a year. I take my company public and all the sudden you're worth $100M on the stock market. That's then. I grew it for the next 20 years to do over $2B in revenue then you had the next recession in 08-09. My stock fell. I was tired of being public & took it private owning 100%. Today it's a $4B revenue company, does $700M in ebita, probably the largest single shareholder company in America. [Coyote talk] Dow down 800. Let me just tell you this. I've been around for a few of these. History repeats itself. When things are really good, we forget they'll ever be bad again and things are really bad we forget they'll be good again. Things have been really good & we've been good long enough that you forget it'll be bad. What's gonna happen is we're all fat. We've bought all the TVs/cars we can buy. We've built apartments & homes everywhere. Everyone is fat. Developers keep building because how that's they make money, get fees. Developers are always gonna develop until they get whacked across the head and lenders lend until they get whacked across the head and there's no one to buy anything anymore and that's where I think we're headed right now. We're all fat. There's nothing else to buy. How do we insulate? I build my balance sheet in my liquidity when times are bad so I eat the weak when times are not. I know that's tough but I watch people spend all their money because things are good and think it's never gonna stop. Save your money because you'll be shocked...don't buy a house when the market is at the top. You buy a house when the market isn't good. You invest when the market isn't good. Do you believe in safety nets? For sure. I've always had liquidity and the reason I'm worth $5B by Forbes is because I was able to buy things when other people can't because I kept a liquidity in the balance sheet to do it. Are you a stock guy? Personal stock portfolio? I'm build, I'm a developer. I probably have $100M worth of stocks. I like to take it & get a better return in businesses I can own & operate. As you guys keep making money, remember this, don't ever invest money with someone who has less money than you. Don't ever do that. Personal portfolio? Not worried about it and not worried about a dip because it comes back. People panic. Just always ride out the wave. If you're thinking about buying something, don't go buy a house right now because in 2 years you'll buy it for a hell of a lot cheaper. People don't realize when things go bad how bad they really get. Something that cost $5M today you could buy for a million dollars. That's how bad it gets. Maybe $500,000. Met Jimmy Buffett? I have met him. Buffett, there's no one that eats the weak more than Buffett. He wants to act like 'Oh I'm just doing capitalism' but he's the greatest of taking advantage of people when they're down.
Thank you J.R. for writing that out for us, because there's no way I'd click on that link. F*ck Logan Paul in particular, he's an asshat. And the hat is a fedora. And the ass is full of sh*t. He represents so much that's wrong with online fandom right now.
He talked about the banks going under in the late 80's. I remember every Friday the local news started with the announcement of the latest bank to fail. We sat in front of the TV like it was the "Bank Failure Lottery". Man, it is was such a gut punch when your bank was announced as failing. Tillman had 7 banks and S&Ls fail. I had 3. Yeah, those were the days! One failed while we were back in Indiana for Christmas. Came home, and our bank was a taken over by another bank. Merry Christmas!
Just when you think Fertitta can’t go sink any lower. We are dipping our toes in Sarver / Dolan level ownership.
