WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast: How to Grow Again Featuring Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful

How to Grow Again Featuring Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful – WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast, Presented by The First National Bank of Long Island

Streaming Thursday, March 18, 2021 – 9 AM

Be part of the program! Share your questions for Joe Connolly and Kevin O’Leary here.

NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – Businesses are looking to rise up from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic and offer solutions in the post-pandemic economy. WCBS 880 is producing a premier virtual event for entrepreneurs, owners, managers, and dreamers to tackle critical areas where opportunities lie for growth despite the unprecedented global pandemic.

WCBS Business Reporter Joe Connolly will host a virtual video conversation with “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary as part of the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast series, presented by The First National Bank of Long Island. You can stream the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast at WCBS880.com or the WCBS 880 YouTube channel on Thursday, March 18, 2021 beginning at 9 AM.

“Mr. Wonderful” will share his keys to business recovery, actionable advice for small and mid-size business owners in various industries, and what they need to be focused on heading into the spring.

“In times like these, you really want to play to your strengths,” O’Leary told Connolly on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight in April, emphasizing decisive actions to grow despite the crippling pandemic.

The “Shark Tank” star will highlight relatable stories of business pivots, explain digital sales strategies that are yielding results for his companies, and reveal the top new business opportunities in growing markets amid the pandemic.

“(Customers) genuinely care about companies and products and services that they’ve grown to trust and they want to support them during this period of difficulty to make sure that these businesses survive,” O’Leary told WCBS 880.

Learn how to survive and grow in this new era at the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast with Joe Connolly, presented by The First National Bank of Long Island, on March 18.

You can share your questions for Joe and Kevin here or Tweet @WCBS880 and @JoeConnollybiz using #WCBSBizBreakfast in your post.

About Kevin O’Leary:

Kevin O’Leary’s success story starts where most entrepreneurs begin: with a big idea and zero cash.

Kevin O’Leary was born to a middle class family in 1954. The combination of Kevin’s mother’s family heritage as merchants and his father’s Irish charisma truly meant that O’Leary was born for business. Kevin learned most of his business intuition from his mother. She taught him key business and financial insights from an early age. These became Kevin’s core philosophies, and the pillars upon which he would one day build his empire.

Kevin’s approach to business went through major changes as a teenager. During his second day on the job at a local ice cream shop, his boss came into the front of the store where Kevin was scooping ice cream. She looked at Kevin and asked him to scrape all the gum between the Mexican tiles on the floor. Kevin refused and he was fired. That was the moment he realized he never wanted to work for someone else again and charted his path into entrepreneurship as a high school student.

As a university student, Kevin’s innate business sense led him along several different paths – including some very unusual, very entrepreneurial ways of making a profit.

Not long after he finished his MBA, Kevin had a meeting that changed his life forever. He met a man who had a strange idea for a software product – an idea with huge, high-profit potential that Kevin immediately recognized.

After years of ups, downs, sacrifices, challenges, and lessons learned — not to mention a critical phone call that nearly cost him everything — the opportunity that Kevin saw eventually turned into a computer software giant that was acquired for more than $4 billion dollars.

After his extraordinary success at the software company, he founded – and a difficult period of obstacles and legal disputes – Kevin eventually found himself on television, quickly becoming a sought-after host and personality on a range of shows – including Discovery’s Project Earth, CBC’s Dragons’ Den, and ABC’s Shark Tank.

Kevin has since launched O’Leary Funds, an investment fund company; O’Leary Fine Wines; and a best-selling book series on financial literacy.

In 2014, Kevin founded O’Leary Financial Group – a group of brands and services that share Kevin’s guiding principles of honesty, directness, convenience, and above all, great value.

His net worth is estimated at $400 million.

Executive produced by Neil A. Carousso.