How Kevin O’Leary Grows Wealth: ‘I Think of My Money as Soldiers’
Written by
Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
Edited by
Cory Dudak
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Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary has an interesting approach to how he views his money, saying he treats it like “soldiers.”
“Here’s how I think of my money — as soldiers — I send them out to war every day. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there’s more of them,” O’Leary wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Oct. 5.
This is something he has said numerous times over the years. According to ABC, O’Leary is partly referring to the fact that he sold his company to the Mattel Toy Company in 1999 for a whopping $3.7 billion, one of the largest deals ever done in the consumer software industry.
To keep his money working hard, O’Leary took control of his wealth from his lackluster money managers and founded his own mutual fund company, O’Leary Funds. “He raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors who share his ‘get paid while you wait’ yield oriented, value investing philosophy,” according to ABC.
According to Collin Plume, founder and CEO of Noble Gold Investments, the core concept is nothing new. “This is what every entrepreneur does every day. You make an investment, whether that is stocks, a business, or even a savings account. You deploy them somewhere you think will be profitable and you expect yield,” he elaborated.
Plume noted, however, that there is an underlying major message that many miss, as some investments don’t yield financial gains, at least not directly.
“If I pay a publicist to get my name out there, I wouldn’t expect people to hand me money as a result of an interview but the name I could build or the reputation I could establish could widen the net of my influence which positions me to make better deals or help me sell more of my product,” he said. “Mr. Wonderful, like a good military tactician, knows he can’t just have more soldiers, he needs to bring more ‘prisoners’ to work on his camp, build better artillery, stand guard, and others. That’s what makes his statement loaded, it isn’t just about making money but a bigger concept of building wealth.”
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