This video follows the hosts of the My First Million podcast as they spend 24 hours with Ryan Smith, the billionaire owner of the Utah Jazz, to learn about his journey from a basement startup to professional sports ownership. The conversation covers the importance of resilience, the value of building a strong team, and the unique challenges and rewards of managing high-stakes business ventures.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Sports Ownership, Business Strategy, Resilience, Networking, Leadership
Introduction [00:00]
Sam: Your success is directly correlated with your pain threshold. This is Ryan Smith. He built a $10 billion company from his dad’s basement, then he bought an NBA team, and now he’s building his own city from scratch. He’s living large and he’s really living the dream of every 12-year-old boy out there. So, I flew out to Utah with my crew to see what a day in his life is really like. We recorded a podcast, we got a tour of the stadium he’s rebuilding, and of course, we played some basketball. I’m Sean and I want to take you behind the pod.
Morning Routine and Basketball [00:28]
Shaan: What’s up? What’s up? Big dog. Stayed up for us, man. Ryan: I did. Sam: 1:00 AM. We got basketball. We’re leaving here at 5:30 in the morning, so we got a solid four and a half hours of sleep. That’ll do. I feel like we’re NBA players. Got off the flight, we got a game tonight, we got a double header. This is it. We’re living the dream.
Getting Ready for the Day [00:50]
Ryan: You need a water bottle? Sam: All right, four hours of sleep later. It’s time for the big day. I woke up early and was trying to get the knees ready. I got old man double knee brace. I got made fun of in my school pickup line the other day for wearing these. Some guy goes, “Man, that’s some old shit right there.” And I couldn’t disagree. It truly is. Shaan: I don’t know what’s with these billionaires, 5:00 AM. You guys are killing me out here.
Basketball and Business [01:26]
Sam: What’s up, fellas? We’re going to make 10 threes today. Let’s see how we roll. Shaan: What’s up? I’m Ryan. Ryan: Sean, what’s up, man? How are you guys? Shaan: Good, man. Ben, nice to meet you. Ryan: Ben, what’s up, guys? You guys local? Do you all fly in? Shaan: We all flew in. Ryan: Jeez, that’s insane. Sam: We never seem to win in a bunch of areas. Not every area, nobody’s perfect. But they have, it’s never just one. There’s these great stories about Travis from Uber, how he was also like the number one or two ranked Wii tennis player in the world. LeBron is a top 100 Madden player. Luka Doncic is a top 500 Overwatch player. Almost everyone I know who’s had extreme success on the business side, out of our guests, there’s at least one or two other areas where they’re like surprisingly elite. And I think that’s just because how you do anything is how you do everything. Ryan is fucking great. He’s got to be the best NBA team owner that actually plays ball. He’s very low key about it, but look at this guy. Athletic. It’s so much more fun than playing basketball, dude. We can talk business all we want, but it’s so much more fun.
Team Dynamics and History [02:48]
Sam: How many days a week are you playing now? Ryan: What are we playing? Three? Two, three. Depends on the week. When everybody’s in town. Sam: Sometimes we’ll go four. Who started this whole thing? You? Kind of established this? Ryan: Like, B, how long have we been going? 15 years? Same group? Sam: Let’s go. We’ve been going, yeah, 15. Ryan: Damn. It’s been good. Sam: All summer, all winter. Ryan: All, hey, all during COVID, finding church houses, playing, playing 6:00 in the morning, two on two, three on three. Whatever, whatever we could do. Wearing masks, four of us in a little church gym, wearing masks. It was classic.
The “First One to Miss” Bet [03:22]
Sam: Do we end on the first one to miss runs a suicide between you and Sean? Ryan: Oh yeah, let’s go. All right, let’s go. What do we got here? Sam: You’re in the YouTube comments right now. Somebody comments, “Wish, I’ll bet my you $1,000.” Ryan: First one to miss, face, has to pay $1,000 to somebody in the comments who says, “Wish.” Sam: Behind the blue lines. You got to get ready. Sam: First one to make or miss? Ryan: You make and I miss. You’re paying. I’m paying. Sam: Stop. Sam: Tax evasion. Ryan: Hey. Sam: Still we got. Ryan: I’m a Taurus. You can let me come to your gym. Sam: You can match it. You can match it. Ryan: All right.
Post-Game Reflection [04:09]
Sam: We left the basketball court and had to get ready for the podcast. Now, these podcasts don’t just happen, right? We’re going for the most successful, interesting people we can find, and those people happen to be pretty busy. So, my secret weapon is my business partner, Ben. Ben’s the connector. He’s a guy who’s great with people, and he’s a hustler. He makes stuff happen. People don’t really realize how relentless you have to be with follow-ups to make these podcasts happen. 24 emails on April 8th, the first email, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Took nine follow-ups. Took nine follow-ups to get a yes, and here we are. I said, “Hey Ryan, I can promise this will be one of the best conversations you’ve had. We’ll come to your 6:00 AM game and I’ll hit at least one three-pointer. Let me know.” I just played basketball with Hayes Barner and he said you’re the man. Let’s make this happen. Isaiah, call you, looks good in Summer League. We should record a podcast. And he said, “Hey Ben, happy to do it if you guys really come to 6:00 AM morning ball. Let’s do it.”
The Nature of Success [05:07]
Sam: I feel like most people, nobody follows up eight times, you know what I mean? People even when they follow up, they follow up once, twice. And the key to Ben is Ben doesn’t take it personal. It’s as simple as that. You know, they’re they’re busy, they get a thousand emails a day. Even from those, those aren’t like the most suave, finessed emails, right? Heard you hit a three-pointer today. Would you like to do a podcast? All right, it’s podcast time and we just got to his family office. I got to go see the setup, make sure it’s all good and do my little pre-game routine before the podcast. So, here we go.
Unexpected Situations [05:37]
Sam: As we showered up and I started doing my last-minute prep and tweaks before the podcast, we found ourselves in an unexpected situation. Ryan: During COVID, we we really had to think about like, okay, this work from home. I I don’t work from home. Like I it’s like the worst place for me to work and I I think you know with with five kids, it’s a little distracting, but I I need to work with people and I need to be in a spot to create. I think Utah is a very unique spot. You guys saw that this morning when you went and you woke up and there’s like these mountains, like it is literally good for the soul. Sam: I think the part for me that’s like, this is what this is what we get to wake up to. If you’re sitting here like like this is like a movie. Yeah. It’s like a backdrop where you’re like, okay, and there’s just something about it. Ryan: This looks like AI. Sam: What about this uh this sign? What’s the uh Yeah, like when we designed this, I I think everything that’s happened in my life, like it was pretty much wrong at first. We’re we’re in the business of like constant iteration. If you look at Qualtrics, like we were early on competing with people who had more money, we had this, we were in Utah, no one had really done it in Utah and it was like, all right, you’ve got to set your goal and you’ve got to be confident in what you’re doing and you have to play the long game. Your success is directly correlated with your pain threshold. How much pain can you handle? Everyone’s like, “Oh, you bootstrapped your business for 10 years.” Taking money was the easy thing. Right. Can you handle the pain of going through it? And you know, we’re seeing that a little bit in sports. Like you watch OKC, it’s like they handled a lot of pain. Right. More than a lot of other markets could. And look look what they got.
The Importance of Constant Learning [07:27]
Sam: I’m needy to fix and I need an ambition. I need a mission to be this a mission with no in the mission. I see the collision, the crashing the dishes, they’re coming off track. No. No one the yes with the motive. Don’t talk. I just show them that y’all about to see what I mean in the moment. I got to keep going. I’m shaking the dice and I’m kicking the floor and they don’t even know. Ryan: Ryan, we got one thing for you. We wanted to give you this. This was All right, you know, our favorite, you know, pick as we were doing the research. And just the the one that stuck with us, tune out the noise, play the long game. Oh, you guys are awesome. I know you got photos everywhere, but I just No, but I don’t have one up here. I’ll put it up here actually. Thanks guys. That’s super thoughtful of you guys.
The Ideal Conference [08:10]
Sam: After the podcast wrapped up, when we were in the truck, I decided that it was time to finally pop the question. I wanted to invite Ryan to this year’s Hoop Group, a basketball event I throw with 25 of the best people I know. My ideal conference would be a place like that where we play ball for like three, four hours till we’re dead. We go hit the sauna, the plunge, we we sort of recover, but it’s a group of, you know, just 20, 25 of the most inspiring, interesting people we know. We should we should do it here. Like I’ll show you, but um it’s like it it’d be actually be fun to do it at the Jazz facility. Yeah. And like you could totally plan when they’re on the road. And like, cuz it it’s it’s really clear like there’s just windows and then you’ve got it all right there with the chefs, like everything and like it it’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen. The whole operation. The whole operation. I mean, from If I’m being honest, I had no idea Ryan would say that, but now I was excited to go see the Jazz facility, which was also cool because Ryan’s a guy who spent most of his career in software building apps. It’s a reminder that you always got to keep learning and reinventing yourself.
Expertise in Business [09:02]
Ryan: You’ve got to become an expert in every business that you’re a part of. You think about a sports team, you’re a payments company, you’re a security company, um, you’re an events company. You’re an events, you’re in the music business. I mean, it’s not about streaming anymore. It’s definitely about touring. Right. And so you’re you’re in that business. Media business. Yeah, you’re in the digital media as well as online. You’re a social media brand. Like you actually are the sum of all these businesses. You know, we’re an audience for a lot of this.
Scouting Report [09:32]
Sam: So this is this is Sean. He runs college scouting for them. Give me the the give me the scouting report on Ryan’s game. Shaan: Listen, right now you can see Ryan is tired. So you won’t see the best version of Ryan right now because fatigue is going to You see that? Oh my gosh. He heard me talking and just bang, send a three. Sam: So we have a tradition after every podcast, we feast. We usually don’t eat very much before, but afterwards we got to feast. And we try to do it off something where the guest is, so we’ll ask them for their favorite restaurant, a sandwich shop nearby, or something that’s local that we get to go have as an experience as a team together. Because, you know, you do a bunch of work, you’re not just here to work, you’re here to enjoy. So this one, we’re at the practice facility. He’s playing basketball right there. This is how the team eats. They have a chef here, so we’re going to get to eat like the players do, which is the kind of core experience, core memory that I’m going to remember from uh from the end of this.
Surprise and Delight [10:25]
Sam: A little surprise, surprise and delight for him. Retro, vintage, Carl Malone, John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek. We’re converted. We’re fully converted. Look at this. You spend one day with this guy. All right, this is how we Hey, we’re building the brand, one brick at a time. Our request is bring the retro warm-ups back for one game in the playoffs. All right. Oh yeah, for sure. Fans will go crazy. Bring everything back. We got to win of this time, though. The only one happy about those finals is MJ. We got a ways to go. Fair enough. Fair enough. But no, it was a cool moment. You guys good? Yeah, we’re good, man. We’re wrapped up. That’s it. That’s behind the behind the pod episode two. Ryan, thank you for doing it, man. We really appreciate you. Yeah, sweet. Having us out here. A lot of a lot of hoops today. Yeah, a lot of hoops.