Neil A. Carousso produces NewsNation original “Kurt’s Country” – a celebration of country music and a slice of Americana with host Kurt Bardella.
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WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast: ‘Shark Tank’ Star Kevin O’Leary Boasts of ‘Digital 2.0 America’ in Growing Out of Pandemic
In Best Of, Entertainment, Featured, Guest, Interview, Latest, News Stories, Technology, The World, Top News, videosBy Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Kevin O’Leary, the self-made entrepreneur turned TV “Shark,” brought his straight-shooting, no-frills flare to the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast with Joe Connolly, presented by The First National Bank of Long Island, in sharing how to grow one’s business again.
O’Leary, who was nicknamed “Mr. Wonderful” by co-star Barbara Corcoran in season one of ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank,” praised business owners for their grit and resilience during the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic that has levied a burden on the economy over the past year and shut down major industries, namely restaurants and hospitality companies.
“The great thing about the American entrepreneur is they don’t let failure stop them,” he said. “The majority of them try again and learn from their mistakes.”
O’Leary emphasized a changed economy, telling Connolly owners must pursue a digital “transformation” to survive the pandemic.
“You’ve got to realize that you have to do a digital pivot,” he explained.
Mr. Wonderful said only 36 of the 56 companies he had been invested in are still in business a year into the pandemic, noting many of his still-standing “Shark Tank’ companies shifted to using Shopify for their e-commerce platform and incorporated high-quality photography and video to connect and find new customers.
“They really engaged people for the first time in ways they’ve never done before because they were forced to – everybody was working remotely,” said O’Leary.
“Retail is really challenged because if you’re just (in a) 1,200 square-foot space in a mall and the traffic’s dropped 20 percent, I don’t think that’s going to work out for anybody because consumer preferences have dramatically changed in the last year towards online retail,” he noted.
He suggested direct-to-consumer sales will help businesses to cut and manage costs, grow their gross margins, and build for the future.
O’Leary does not anticipate remote work habits will be broken. He’s actually betting on it to stay by shrinking his real estate portfolio from 31 percent to 8 percent over the next three years while the market adjusts to the post-pandemic economy.
“I haven’t had a cold or been sick since March 7th of last year and I’m starting to like it,” he said, adding, “I don’t think I’m getting in an elevator in New York going up to the 78th floor with 60 people ever again – not in December. I’m not going into a packed restaurant. That may just be me; I’m a germaphobe, but I’ve talked to lots of other people that have the same concerns.”
Kathy Wylde, president and chief executive officer of the Partnership for New York City, cited the “burnout” some employees feel by working from home where many feel they are always at work. She believes employers and employees want to return when it’s safe to do so. Mr. Wonderful disagrees with her assessment.
Photo Credit: ABC. “They have no interest in coming back to headquarters – not now, not ever,” O’Leary said of his workers. “In fact, if you try and force them, they’re going to find a job somewhere else where they get that flexibility.”
The O’Leary Financial Group founder told the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast that he hears most of his 10,000 employees enjoy working from home to take care of children and elderly parents while avoiding rough commutes in major metropolitan cities like New York.
Employers in professional services find productivity is up and they have a widened talent pool across the country and world.
The “Shark Tank” investor said he has made informed business decisions by listening to others he encounters while working remotely, himself, from his Miami Beach dream house where he joined Connolly virtually from his home studio.
One example of this is when he struck up a conversation with the nurse who administered his first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine recently. She explained that at 24 years old she was uncomfortable with the lack of data around the vaccine and fertility.
“I had obviously heard of anti-vaxxers before, but I always thought they were the lunatic fringe – the 10 percent that thought the government was injecting them with a chip or something,” O’Leary said.
“I’m under the impression now, or at least in terms of my investment philosophy, that we’re going to get to a place pretty soon in the next 6 weeks, maybe 8 weeks, where we will have vaccinated two-thirds of the country and we’re going to hit a brick wall. The other third isn’t going to take it,” he believes, thus he’s downsizing his physical footprint, beefing investment in the digital space, and encouraging restaurateurs to re-think their indoor and outdoor dining areas while improving their digital ordering systems for takeout and delivery.
O’Leary sold his first business, renamed The Learning Company from SoftKey Software Products, to Mattel for $4.2 billion in 1999. Now, he owns O’Leary Financial Group, which is a conglomerate of brands that includes investment firm O’Leary Funds. He also serves as chairman of O’Shares ETFs. Kevin, a self-proclaimed wine connoisseur, owns O’Leary Fine Wines. Mr. Wonderful is also heavily invested in financial literacy firm Beanstox, Inc., which is geared towards young people in their 20s and 30s who are more interested in business and investing because of the pandemic.
“Basically, we’ve made it so simple that you try and take 100 dollars a week and put it into the markets through indexing,” he told Connolly of Beanstox. “It’s a tool to help people solve a big problem in America: 100 million Americans do not have anything set aside for their retirement.”
Mr. Wonderful knows how to have fun, too. He shows his lighter side to his 401,000 YouTube subscribers. His hobbies include biking, cooking and playing the guitar.
“I don’t work 9 to 5, obviously, and I try and find life balance in doing the things I love to do while I’m working,” O’Leary said in response to a question from WCBS Business Producer Neil A. Carousso, adding, “I work seven days a week, but I don’t work every hour.”
You can see Kevin O’Leary’s routine, his business philosophy, and actionable advice for growing your business again despite the pandemic on the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast with Joe Connolly, presented by The First National Bank of Long Island. Watch the full program above.
About Kevin O’Leary:
Photo Credit: ABC 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.
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WATCH: NYC Mayoral Candidate Andrew Yang Calls on Cuomo to Step Aside, Lays Out Plans for City’s Recovery
By Lynda Lopez, WCBS Newsradio 880
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Andrew Yang, the leading candidate for mayor of New York City, is concerned local government is handicapped while state lawmakers in Albany investigate the mounting claims of sexual harassment and assault against Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James and the feds are also investigating whether Cuomo intentionally underreported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
Yang has sent a letter to Cuomo asking him to step aside while the investigations play out and he believes that remains the best path forward.
“We need someone who can do the work of the state and right now that does not seem to be Gov. Cuomo,” Yang said. “I sent a letter asking him to step aside and have the lieutenant governor assume that role pending the conclusion of the investigation, I think that’s the right move, I think that would make everyone feel satisfied that there is someone who is able to lead the state, frankly, not distracted by a continuous drumbeat of accusations and scandals.”
In a wide-ranging interview for the 880 Weekly Rewind, the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate told anchor Lynda Lopez that the governor and his scandals have become a distraction and are getting in the way of the city’s recovery.
“The job of the mayor is to deliver for the people of New York City and in order to deliver for the people of New York City, you need to have a good working relationship with the governor and the legislators in Albany. If you don’t have that, then you can’t deliver at high a level,” Yang said. “I talked to a state legislator last night and he said that obviously everything is focused right now on these proceedings against the governor and a lot of other business. Ordinarily right now they’d be focused on the budget, which is enormously important, but that’s not happening right now. So the interests of the city and the state are aligned in the sense that the city is the economic engine of the state, but we need state legislators to be doing their jobs in order for us to be able to do our jobs so it’s one reason why I think Gov. Cuomo stepping aside is the right thing because we need them focused on the business of the state and that affects the city every day.”
Cuomo on Friday again denied the sexual harassment allegations and insisted that he would not resign, despite growing calls from both political opponents and allies to do so.
The governor said he doesn’t want to let the allegations be a distraction, and will remain focused on the state budget, the state’s recovery, and ramping up vaccination efforts.
With his sights set on Gracie Mansion, Yang is fully focused on jumpstarting the economy and bringing the city back.
“We’re down 60 million tourists and those 60 million tourists supported 300,000 jobs, about half of the jobs we’re missing, so the first order is business is to let everyone know that New York City is open, that we’re welcoming tourists back,” Yang said. “The second thing that everyone can also see around us is we’re missing 82% of commuters and when someone doesn’t come into the office, that’s not just that company, that’s the security guards, the cleaning staff, the food truck operators, the retail storefronts that ordinarily serve those commuters. We need to let companies have the confidence to say to their workers, ‘You need to come back to the office’ because that’s vital for New York City’s recovery.”
Yang said that he’s been talking to CEOs who are desperate to get people back as soon as the vaccine is distributed broadly enough.
But that will require building public confidence that it’s safe to come back and Yang said the best way to accomplish that is by letting people know that everyone around them has been fully vaccinated.
“There are two straightforward possibilities number one is to have an app on your smartphone that’s a vaccine passport,” Yang said. “Israel, which is actually ahead of us on this curve, has actually started distributing bracelets to people where you just have the bracelet and you show the bracelet. It’s like New York City is the biggest VIP section of a club in history where you get the bracelet so you can walk on in. But that’s the kind of measure that we need to adopt and champion for people to feel confident that they’re perfectly safe cause everyone around them has already been vaccinated.”
Neil A. Carousso produces The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM on WCBS Newsradio 880. Listen to this week’s full show on the media player above.
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Marking One Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — It has been one year since COVID-19 reared its ugly head in New York. On The 880 Weekly Rewind this week, Lynda Lopez looks at the past year in the pandemic from the human toll to the lessons learned and how we recover.
Plus, WCBS reporter Steve Burns covers a tumultuous week for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo whose emergency pandemic powers were rescinded by the state legislature Friday amid dual scandals in how he handled COVID-19 in nursing homes and allegations of sexual harassment from three women.
Neil A. Carousso produces The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM on WCBS Newsradio 880. Listen to this week’s full show on the media player above.
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NY State Sen. Gustavo Rivera to Gov. Cuomo: Acknowledge Your Mistakes
By Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — New York officials aim to fix inequities in its vaccine distribution after a damning report this week that showed white New Yorkers received 48 percent of the city’s COVID-19 vaccines while Blacks received 11 percent of the doses, 15 percent went to Asians and another 15 percent to Latinos.
New York State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-NY-33), the chair of the health committee, called on Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) to listen to his public health experts in the wake of nine state health officials resigning over the Governor’s public disparagement of experts’ guidance in responding to the pandemic, as reported by The New York Times.
“If you have made a mistake, Governor, acknowledge it, and then, try to move forward and build from that and listen to folks who are experts who can help you make better choices in the future,” Sen. Rivera addressed Gov. Cuomo on The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez. “Sometimes, he just doesn’t,” he added.
Lopez also asked him about the recent report from New York Attorney General Letitia James that showed the Cuomo administration undercounted nursing home deaths “by as much as 50 percent.”
“The reason why this data is so important is for us to make better policy to make certain that we can avert unnecessary deaths,” sad Sen. Rivera, noting he chaired 30 hours of hearings on the impact of COVID-19 in nursing homes last summer without cooperation from the Cuomo administration.
Hear Lopez’s full interview with Sen. Rivera on The 880 Weekly Rewind podcast above, plus how former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s presence looms large over Super Bowl LV, and “The Good Life” of legendary singer Tony Bennett whose wife revealed was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease four years ago.
Neil A. Carousso produces The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM on WCBS Newsradio 880.
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Major Winter Storm Expected to Bring Over a Foot of snow to NYC Area through Tuesday, Blizzard-Like Conditions
By WCBS 880 Newsroom
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – A high-impact winter storm that arrived Sunday night could bring well over a foot of snow to New York City, and even more to the northern suburbs and New Jersey, before it departs on Tuesday.
While the city and nearby suburbs could see 12 to 18 inches, even more may be in store for inland New Jersey and the Hudson Valley suburbs, according to WCBS 880 meteorologist Craig Allen. Eastern Long Island and the Jersey Shore are likely to see less than the city and surrounding areas as snow mixes with rain.
The National Weather Service is forecasting as much as 18 to 24 inches in the city, eastern Nassau, northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley and southwestern Connecticut.
A nor’easter begins to take shape on Monday. Wind and snow will increase in intensity on Monday afternoon and evening. Near-blizzard conditions are possible, creating hazardous travel conditions.
“We are dealing with our second major snowstorm of the season the first one was pre-Christmas with 10.5 inches of snow for the city and this one could double it in some locales,” WCBS 880 meteorologist Craig Allen said.
Wind gusts of up to 50 mph are possible at the height of the storm Monday. There is a likelihood of power outages.
It will also be very cold. The low Sunday is 26. The high Monday is 34 but the wind will make for RealFeels in the single digits.
A winter storm warning has been issued from 7 p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Tuesday for all of New York City, Nassau County, eastern Suffolk County, northern New Jersey, the lower Hudson Valley and southwestern Connecticut.
Eastern Suffolk County and the Jersey Shore are under a coastal flood warning and winter storm watch starting Sunday night through Tuesday. Snow is forecast to mix with sleet and rain along the coasts, pushing the snow totals down there.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that there will be no in-person learning at public schools on Monday and Tuesday. Students will pivot to all-remote. He said a decision hasn’t been made yet for Tuesday. The Learning Bridges childcare program is also canceled Monday.
All Catholic elementary schools in the Archdiocese of New York, will be closed Monday for a traditional snow day with no remote learning. High schools within the archdiocese operate independently, so families should check with their schools about closings.
“While we are all looking forward to kicking off Catholic Schools Week, the safety and well-being of our teachers, staff and families are always primary, and this is a serious storm that will impact the entire metropolitan area,” said Superintendent of Schools Mr. Michael J. Deegan. “All schools in the archdiocese have provisions for ‘traditional snow days’ in their calendars, and Monday will be exactly that, with no online instruction and all school buildings closed. We will launch our annual celebrations Tuesday.”
Alternate side parking is canceled Monday and Tuesday in the city. Open Restaurants is also canceled Monday. Vaccine appointments scheduled for Monday will be postponed.
“Everyone stay off the roads, we’re going to say it 100 times,” de Blasio said, adding that the city is expecting five inches of snow by Monday morning. “The Monday vaccine appointments will be postponed. We’ll get them done as quickly as humanly possible, but it’s just not going to be safe out there on Monday.”
A Code Blue alert has also been issued for Monday in the city. A hazardous travel advisory will be in effect on both Monday and Tuesday as well.
The city Department of Sanitation has issued a Snow Alert starting Sunday at 7 p.m.
City Sanitation Commissioner Ed Grayson said over 2,000 plow vehicles and 270,000 tons of salt are on hand for the storm.
“This is definitely shaping up to be a challenging and unpredictable storm,” Grayson said. “Very dangerous conditions out there that we’re prepping for, and we’re pulling out all the stops. We’ll have all hands on deck. Our workforce has been split into two 12-hour shifts beginning this evening at 7 p.m. And we will be out there in full force throughout the storm.”
The department has already pre-applied liquid brine to more than 400 miles of city roadways.
Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell said its downed tree and tow truck task forces will be on alert.
“Our Emergency Operations Center is going to be activated virtually and it will bring together all of our agencies, private partners, stakeholders so we can respond accordingly as the event continues to unfold,” Criswell said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed state agencies to prepare emergency response assets, anticipating up to a foot of snow in New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley.
“Another storm system is set to impact New York with potentially heavy snow, strong winds and possibly coastal flooding downstate,” Cuomo said in a statement. “I have directed state agencies to prepare all emergency response assets and they stand ready to assist any of our local partners who may need help in the coming days. We will also be closely watching the response of utility companies to ensure any power outages are addressed immediately. In the meantime, I am urging all New Yorkers to pay close attention to their local forecasts and to begin preparing their households for this latest round of winter weather.”
After the storm moves out, Wednesday will be breezy and cold with a high of 34. RealFeels will be in the teens.
Thursday is sunny and not as cold, with a high of 40.
Neil A. Carousso produced and edited WCBS Chief Meteorologist Craig Allen’s snowstorm video updates.
