'No Experience Necessary': Betting on Yourself in Your Twenties

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:14)
Carol, you know what they say.

**Carol Massar** (0:16)
Yes.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:16)
Youth is wasted on the young.

**Carol Massar** (0:17)
They do say that a lot.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:18)
The older I get, the more I think that's true.

**Carol Massar** (0:20)
I totally agree. Like I look back now and I'm like, wait, was I so worried about, you know? Yeah, I wonder how much- And taking risks and just lots of different things.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:29)
Well, let's talk about taking risks and betting on yourself, especially when you're young. Ronnen Harary is the co-founder and former CEO of Spin Master. The company Spin Master, the company that brought us PAW Patrol and more.

**Carol Massar** (0:40)
And so much more.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:41)
And more. Air Hogs is what I'm thinking of. He's also the author of a brand new book. It's called No Experience Necessary, Why Betting on Yourself in Your 20s is the best decision you'll ever make. We're going to talk about the book in a second, but I mean, how much of your work life have you spent playing with toys?

**Ronnen Harary** (0:57)
You know, the funniest thing is I didn't play with any toys growing up as a kid. And if you would have asked me in university if I was going to go into the toy business, I would have told you like, you're probably crazy.
So the first part of my life, not very much and the second half, a lot.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:09)
So you made up for it as an adult.

**Ronnen Harary** (1:10)
Correct.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:12)
What makes it what? Well, there's so many questions about like toys today versus toys, you know, in my era, which is a lot of what you were bringing to us. But I'm curious about what makes a toy successful.

**Ronnen Harary** (1:25)
You know, it's the toy business is half art, half science. And at the end of the day, you're looking for something that creates imagination in the kids.
There's some sort of magic, some sort of pixie dust that wasn't there before. And, you know, we sift through thousands of ideas every year to get down to like the four or five or six ones that can actually bring the innovation.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:44)
Is the magic still there in a world of screens?

**Ronnen Harary** (1:47)
Yeah, very much so. I think if you would have asked me in 2012, I would have said to you, you know, like, it's not going to be good for the toy industry. But people still love the physical toys. They love the interaction. You know, they love the magical transformation, you know, with our toys like Bakugan and stuff like that.
You know, we made an acquisition with Melissa and Doug, which is all about wooden toys and it's open-ended play. And parents love when their kids are using physical things with their hands and their imaginations going.

**Carol Massar** (2:14)
Love their stuff.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:15)
Every parent of a certain era knows Melissa and Doug.

**Carol Massar** (2:17)
Well, and I would say in our house too, an old-fashioned wooden doll house. And my daughter just would love all her little guys, we used to say, and just the little toys that she would play with. And it was just great. Like not in front of a screen or anything, but we'd just play for hours and hours.

**Ronnen Harary** (2:35)
Yeah. And if anything, I think there's a trend back where parents drop them off the screens. I think that there's room for both. And I think the industry is actually on screen and off screen. They're very complimentary to each other.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:48)
More toys than reading, okay? What about areas of innovation right now in the toy industry?

**Ronnen Harary** (2:54)
I think the toy industry is actually almost a tale of two cities or two worlds. Like fashion dolls are down, games and puzzles are up, trading cards are up big time, activities are down. So it's kind of a mix.
But if you're into collectibles, it's a good space to be in.

**Carol Massar** (3:15)
I want to talk to you about being in your 20s and what's so magic about that, especially, it is essentially your story of just having kind of the world at your feet and you maybe don't even know it. In a world where we are so much, kids go to school for four years, do this for, you know, like, tell us about that.

**Ronnen Harary** (3:36)