Karim Meeks

In 1991 Magic Johnson told the world he had HIV and walked off the court at 32. He is 67 now and worth more than $1 billion, and he built almost all of it after that day. The most famous name in Los Angeles could not get a bank loan. 10 of them turned him down. While he was still playing he asked Jerry Buss, who owned the Lakers, to teach him the business, and Buss opened the books to him. Then he got the names and phone numbers of everyone sitting in the courtside seats and cold called 20 of them for lunch. He found that minorities were the largest moviegoing group in the country, and that nobody had built a theater in their neighborhoods. "The demand was already there." The 17 minutes attached to this post are him in a chair at Stanford, going through the deals themselves. Not the diagnosis. What he bought, and what the numbers did after. Watch the part where he takes the founder of Starbucks to the movies. He cold called Howard Schultz and flew to Seattle. Schultz told him Starbucks did not do franchises. Johnson said he was not asking for one, he wanted to be a partner and would put up half the money. Schultz said he would come and look at the theater first. He picked the Friday Waiting to Exhale opened. 5,000 women were wrapped around the block. 20 minutes in, the whole house was talking back to Whitney Houston. Schultz pulled him into the lobby, said he had never had a movie going experience quite like it, and gave him the deal. He did not sell anyone a demographic. He flew across the country and made one man stand in it. They gave him 3 stores as a test. He took the scones out and put in sweet potato pie, swapped Lawrence Welk for Prince, and his per store numbers beat what Starbucks was doing itself. 3 stores became 125, in the neighborhoods everybody had told him would not pay $3 for a cup of coffee. His first real estate fund raised $300 million. The second raised $600 million. The third raised a billion. Everyone waits to be believed. Nobody wants the version where the proof only works if you stand somebody inside it. Being right about a market is the easy half. Getting one person to come and look, after 10 banks have already said no, is the part you will not do. Everyone assumes the name did the work. He says he expected it to be easier because he was Magic Johnson, and it turned out harder. The name got him the meeting. A Friday night in Crenshaw got him the deal.