Influencers with Andy Serwer: Alex Rodriguez

In this episode of Influencers, Andy speaks with former MLB superstar, Alex Rodriguez as they discuss Alex’s real estate business, his relationship with Warren Buffett, and why he decided to take a partial stake in an NBA franchise.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, David Beckham. It's a short list of players who made the leap from the field to the owner's box. Now their ranks include former baseball star, Alex Rodriguez. This summer, he and e-commerce billionaire Marc Lore, took a major stake in the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx. Before that, the two launched a venture capital firm and a $500 million SPAC.

On this episode of Influencers, Alex Rodriguez joins me to talk about why he's bullish on the NBA, the biggest misconception about athletes who go into business, and his admiration for Warren Buffett.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to Influencers. I'm Andy Serwer. And welcome to our guest, Alex Rodriguez, three time Major League Baseball MVP, ESPN baseball analyst, and part owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves, CEO of A-Rod corp, and co-founder of the venture capital firm VCP. Alex, welcome.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Thank you, Andy. Great to be here.

ANDY SERWER: That's a lot of stuff. I mean, that was a long intro. You've got a lot of stuff on your plate, right?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: It sounds more exciting than what it really is. But I certainly have a lot of fun every day here at A-Rod corp.

ANDY SERWER: Let's start off with A-Rod corp, because you started it decades ago. I don't know if people realize that. Give us the lay of the land there. What are you guys doing?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. I think, Andy, for us, we started just like I started my career, very slow with fundamentals. And it's something that I never dreamed it would be to the scale of where we are today. I started very, very small with exactly what I understood most, which was apartments. As a as a young kid, my single mother with two jobs, she served tables at night. She was Secretary in the morning.

And I just remember the stress that she had every single day, week, month just having the pressure of paying rent every month. And every eighteen months or so we kept moving. And I just remember, boy, if I can just one day trade places with the landlord and be the landlord, and not the tenant, I would. And that opportunity came about 15 years later, when I was in my early 20s. And I was able to buy my first duplex, and then grew that portfolio over time to over 10,000 apartment units in 14 cities.

So we basically do two things. We do real estate and we do venture investing.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah. And the real estate business, so that was your core, and still is your core, maybe, or a very important part of the business. I had no idea that it was that big. Does that company have a name underneath A-Rod?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: It does. It's monument. And within the real estate umbrella, were fully integrated. And we have our multifamily fund, which we've done that through monument over the last several decades. We've deployed hundreds of millions of dollars and acquired over a billion of multifamily apartments. Our returns have been North of 30% to our LP's net of fees.

So we have a wonderful track record. We're one of the largest single family house buyers in the country today. We bought over 800 homes last month alone. And all of this is done through tech, and data, and analytics. So we're able to move very fast. And then the third thing we do within the real estate bucket is we have our CGI fund, which is hotels and hospitality.

We have a construction company underneath that that's repositioned over 10 or 15,000 apartment units. So what we've learned, Andy, that once you're in the space, we want to go narrow and deep, not wide and shallow. And really kind of cover it from the first inning to the ninth inning. And as you scale, it actually becomes easier, not harder.

ANDY SERWER: So you're not in commercial real estate, particularly. Why is that?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Well we really stick to our knitting, right? And it's something that Warren Buffett talked to me about. Stay in your circle of competence. Do what you do really well. And apartment is kind of a go to and it's been from day one. I have a 40 year veteran in Stuart Zook, who came from Sam Zell. Used to work for Jerry Reinsdorf in the early-- in the late 70s.

And Stuart has just done a wonderful job over a dozen years of being the CEO of monument in deploying capital and finding wonderful opportunities for us. And we stick to the Southeast states, where it's warm, the Sun Belt. And we've been having a lot of success as of late. As you know, Andy, the real estate, especially multifamily, has been humming now for over 11 years. So we're a little bit more cautious. But the fundamentals, we still like. Especially when you buy assets and you want to own them for a really long time.

ANDY SERWER: Some of those boldface names you just mentioned, I mean, you were very much speaking our language here at Yahoo Finance, Alex. But I got to ask you about Warren Buffett. OK. Come on. You spent some time with the Oracle. Tell us about how you met him and your experiences with him.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah, I met him over 20 years ago. Funny stories, you know, Warren is just a gigantic baseball fan. And one of his favorites, he always talked about Ted Williams, and the art of hitting and the discipline of hitting. As you know, that was one of his favorite books early on.

And he takes investing, just like Ted Williams talked about discipline at the plate right, stay away from the edges. When you get a fat pitch to hit, don't go for a single or double, but hit a grand slam, not even a home run. But Warren and I met through, believe it or not, he was insuring my contract with the Texas Rangers.

And when I heard that story, I got really excited. I cold called his office. Got Debbie, who's his longtime assistant, as you know, and just like Warren Buffett, he invited me down to Omaha. And that started a streak of about half a dozen years, where I will go every year and visit with him. We would meet for two or three hours at his office, and then we'll go and have a couple of our dinner, and have a steak.

And because he was assuring me, he would always like touch my biceps and go, you better be ready to go this year. Showing me I don't want to lose any of my money. And I made sure that he made his investment was good with me. And at the end of every dinner he always made me drink one of the big ice cream sundaes, which we had a lot of fun doing.

ANDY SERWER: Oh, Yeah. I mean, we were not going to talk about his diet, right? But on the other hand, he's got longevity. So I'm not going to argue with it. So Berkshire shareholder, can I ask, do you ever go to the meetings?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: I've gone to several meetings. I really, really enjoy listening to him and Charlie Munger. And the fact they can sit out there for hours and hours and just answer every question at their age is fascinating. But absolutely a big fan of Berkshire. I've been a shareholder for a really long time.

ANDY SERWER: Right. So let's talk a little bit about the rest of A-Rod corp, Alex. You've invested, I was just looking in Wikipedia, it's a reportedly, because you never know. Coconut water, gyms, fitness centers, auto dealers, Wheels Up, Snapchat. What's the strategy? How do you decide what to invest in there and what's the latest things that you're looking to do?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah, our silos of focus are media sports, entertainment, and health and wellness. And when you think about gyms, or Vita Coco, or any of those investments, they kind of sit in our wheelhouse. Because obviously, my long time playing 25 years of professional baseball. And one example, Andy, is we like to get the big themes right.

And about 15-17 years ago I got into the auto business. And about five years ago, I made a decision to exit the auto business as I saw these trends coming and spending a lot of time at Stanford in Silicon Valley. I felt like cars and young people wanted to do two things. You and I, Andy, we wanted to live out the American dream. We wanted to buy a car, and move to the suburbs, and have a nice house, raise kids, and have a nice pool. That's what our parents taught us.

Today, kids don't want to own a house. They don't want to own a car. They want to own an app. And they want to go and Uber into their rental apartment. Or today, their rental homes. So what I've learned is kids want to pay-- they will pay more rent, and will pay a higher upfront money for the price of flexibility. And young kids today, they value flexibility, which is really interesting.

So we exited the auto space and we've entered other spaces, as an example, single family housing today, which is just an incredible growing market as a $5 trillion opportunity. Of those $5 trillion, that's 16 million homes out there that are available for rent. And $2 trillion of equity that could be unlocked here over the next five or six years. And 1%, just 1% of institutional capital is playing into single family homes.

And what I mean by that is if entrepreneur X wants to go buy 15 homes, he has to go to a single bank, local bank, and get 15 different loans, which is wholly different if you want to buy a multifamily. Where you have programs like Fannie Mae, that you can actually do non-recourse debt. You can scale much easier. That does not exist today. I think of over the next five years, you're going to have institutional capital enter their space, just like multifamily.

And Fannie Mae and Freddie are going to be really involved in scaling this business. Blackstone has done a great job of it. So those are the macro bets that we like to make.

ANDY SERWER: I mentioned Snapchat. Do you guys in fact have an investment there? And what do you like about that company, Alex?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. My daughters don't get off of it, right? I always say that my greatest investments, I go into the library and talk to my girls. And I just tell them, hey, is this cool? Is this not cool? And they're like, dad, that's old. I mean, they told me Facebook was old 15 to 10 years ago. They told me about Instagram, but they said even Instagram is old. Now you got to go to Snapchat. And I'm like what's Snapchat? And they started showing me. And we made an early investment early on, and that's been incredible what they've done with that company.

ANDY SERWER: I want to ask you a little bit about a venture capital firm that you founded a co-launch called Vision Capital People. And so tell us about that. And that focuses on startups-- early stage startups. What do you like about startups? First of all, is this part of A-Rod or is this a separate thing? Talk to us about the structure and then what you're trying to do with VCP.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Andy, what we try to do with A-Rod corp is almost emulate my hero, Warren Buffett. Look at it as our Berkshire Hathaway, except we're private and Berkshire's public. And obviously, we're tiny and they're not. But everything goes under the ARC umbrella. What I learned with my partner, Marc Lore, he and I were introduced by a mutual friend. We quickly became kind of like Bros, and we really got along really, really well.

And our set of skills really complement each other. Marc had started talking about the six companies that he started from ground up, like diapers.com, jet.com, and others. And what he found was that great, great young entrepreneurs, they ran into a wall when it came to early on raising capital and getting the best people in the world. So VCP ventures basically stands for, as you said, Vision Capital People.

You have to have a crystal clear vision. You have to be able to deploy capital. And then the hardest part is finding the people to go run these great companies. And we think of ourselves as SoftBank for starters. So if you're a young entrepreneur, and you had a couple of exits, and you made a few million bucks, but you're still hungry. You have a chip on your shoulder. You're a proven commodity as a leader. We would fund you $10 million dollars day one on an idea.

OK. And then that would allow you to get talent that you would get usually in the fifth inning, you're able to now get it in the first inning. So it turbochargers your idea. But more importantly, we go there in the series A, and we give you another 20, and will help you raise 30. So when you come as a young entrepreneur to us versus others, you're coming to us with a guaranteed $60 million, which would take then 50% of the time that you would be spending writing up models, and decks, and pretty forecast.

And you don't have to worry about going out and raising capital. You just go out and find the greatest people in the world and 24/7 start thinking about how do I build this business to go from 0 to several billion overnight. And that's what we think is the sweet spot. That a lot of institutional capital can't underwrite that. And Marc has found a way through modeling that if you get the people early and you get the capital right, that you have a better chance of winning than not.

ANDY SERWER: How many investments have you guys made, Alex, under VCP now.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: So we have right around half a dozen that we've either incubated from the ground up, or very early on, we will come in and make a $10 million bet and own a big portion about 40% to 60% of the company. And then we will start going to work with the founders. And what we found today, more than ever, is founders want it easy. They want it simple. They don't want dilution.

And they want to be able to pick up the phone and call a partner that can get things done quickly, not just the big institutional that has tons of institutional capital, because there's tons of that available.

ANDY SERWER: You mentioned your partner, Marc Lore. And fascinating guy. Some of the startups. He also worked at Walmart, of course. Talk to us a little bit more about your relationship with him. And we'll get to the t-wolves in a second, because I know you guys are in that together as well. But how do you work together? You mentioned you're very complementary. What's that like?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Marc is one of the most unique individuals I've ever met. He has fast become one of my closest friends. We're friends first and we have this incredible respect. He's the ultimate trust guy. Here's a guy who's been in business for over 30 years. Never sued anyone, never been sued. And of course, ran one of the biggest companies in the world and Walmart, and just did phenomenal work there.

He took them in four years from eight million $8 billion in e-commerce to over $50 billion, and that stock doubled. And a lot of it had to do with the work that Marc Lore and the system core values he put into the e-commerce business for them. And it was a fantastic partnership for him. But what I've learned from him is really all about, you core values and vision, and really crystallizing what his vision is.

And then he has this incredible ecosystem of people that are following him. Almost like he's Bon Jovi. They just follow him around for decades because he's been so good to work with. And he's one of the most honest people that I've ever met. And then he's incredibly talented when it comes to e-commerce and tech. And when him and I come together, we complement each other because what he is really, really great at, I'm not so good at. And what I do well, obviously he didn't play 25 years of professional sports.

But I think we hit it off, Andy, I think both being new Yorkers, both coming from single mothers. We both have two daughters. We both are gritty, and we both really respect and enjoy working with people. And we're handshake people, a lot like Warren and Charlie Munger. I don't even have arguments with Marc when we have a conversation or debate. It usually lasts less than two minutes and we move on to the next thing. So it's just been a wonderful partnership.

ANDY SERWER: Sounds like an incredible comfort level. And as I mentioned, you guys took a stake in the T Wolves, the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Minnesota Lynx WNBA with a pathway to full ownership. Why those teams? And why now, Alex?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: First, at a macro, we love the NBA. We love that as a global sport. Growing by the minute. Just opened Africa, been in Asia for a long time. You have a young demographic watching. Really connected to urban America. Wonderful leadership under Adam Silver and the rest of his leadership group.

And then you have a set of owners of the 30 teams that are some of the most dynamic prolific investors in the world. They're very forward thinking as a very progressive league. And really, really excited about Minnesota. Minnesota, for a long time, has been one of my favorite places to go play. We've invested in real estate.

My first real estate investment in Minnesota was over 20 years ago in a local hotel. Over the last five years, we've invested heavily into our multifamily portfolio. And just two days ago, we closed in over 200 units about 15 minutes away from Target Center. So we think Minnesota is a wonderful market. Minnesota people are very proud to be there.

They're starving for winter. I remember '87 and '91, when Kirby Puckett, Jack Morris, and Ken Herbig led the way for them. That place was rocking every day, the Metrodome. And we think there's a lot of corporate fortune 100 companies that are there. They want to get involved. There's a lot of value to unlock, both on the business level, on the sports franchise level, and also on the social good. I think there's opportunities for us to come in and make an impact socially and bring people together.

ANDY SERWER: I love you dropping some of those vintage Twinkies names there. That was good stuff on that. So did you ever imagine, like you're a baseball guy owning an NBA team. Does that seem weird to you?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: It seems a little weird, Andy, but about 25 years ago my mentor Magic Johnson, who gave me an inspiration that men of color can actually go out and play great baseball in the field and can transfer some of his set of skills to the boardroom. And he gave me some incredible insight in a meeting that was supposed to be 30 minutes. That his agent Lon Rosen set up for us in Beverly Hills.

And that 30 minutes went to about 3 and 1/2 hours. And where I had like tens of pages of notes. And in that meeting, he said to me, over the course of your career, you are going to have a lot of Titans that are going to want to meet with you, have lunch, take pictures. That's your opportunity to build some wonderful relationships out there. And I did just that, Andy. As I kind of went with the Yankees and the Rangers in all these great cities.

I would cold call a lot of CEOs, would meet with them, and with no agenda. Just wanted to build a relationship over time. And when I saw Magic do what he's done institutional with Starbucks, 24 Hour Fitness, and others. And what he's done for communities with Brown skin and Black skin, that also inspired me to do that. And then I saw him go from the Dodge-- I mean, from the Lakers to the Dodgers. And I go, wait a minute, that actually-- why couldn't I go from NBA to Major League Baseball? I mean, from Major League Baseball to the NBA.

And that's exactly what happened. And we laugh about that now. I'm in the NBA and he is in baseball. So I guess we can coach each other.

ANDY SERWER: That's crazy. You're doing like a reverse Magic, or Magic shooting reverse A-rod.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah.

ANDY SERWER: That's great. And you know, it strikes me listening to you speak here, Alex. That you-- two things. You take the initiative to reach out to people. Mentors, number one. And number two, you really listen to them. Is that something that young athletes really need to listen to themselves?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. Look, Andy, I didn't go, like yourself that you had the formal education, went to undergrad, and then went to business school. So we have to learn, just like I learned in baseball, through hard work, great leadership, mentorship. And I really believe you're an average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I've been so lucky to have the likes of Magic Johnson, Warren Buffett, Barry Sterling, and others that really kind of Lent a hand into my career, Marc Lajoie's. I can go on and on about people that I've invested hours and hours, but more importantly, they invested in me.

And it's been a great thrill. And I think as an athlete, athletes get sometimes bad raps. Oh, well, they're not good business people. But I actually think that athletes, in this next generation, because they have a thirst to not only be good on the Court of the field, they want to be good investors. And they have great role models like LeBron James and others who are taking more initiative of their careers.

They have a set of skills of hard work, toughness, grittiness. They can roll up their sleeves. They don't believe in a time clock. They're there to get the job done. And they can transfer those set of skills into the boardroom, and have the right partners, and have the right alignment. I think they have wonderful careers, even bigger careers once they're done playing.

ANDY SERWER: Let's drill down a little bit into the NBA and the Timberwolves, Alex. You're off to the races here. This season starts later next month. You just had media day. But you got COVID, and there's all these challenges with the fans, and the players, and vaccines, and what's the league going to do. Tell us what's the thinking here, and how is that so difficult, and what are you guys doing to mitigate some of these risks?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Well look, it's a very difficult and challenging time, not only here in America, but around the world. And until we figure out exactly when this COVID thing ends, we're still going to be very aware and be very proactive. The NBA does a wonderful job of communicating with the owners, with the players. And does a great job working collectively with the players union.

But for us, we're a little bit in the back seat. Glen Taylor is the man in charge. Marc and I are very, very fortunate to be mentees of Glen Taylor, who's been around for about 30 years and served in almost every committee in the NBA. Going back to the David Stern days and now Adam Silver. So Marc and I are trying to get our MBA here in the next two years, before we take control of the team, as we go to school and learn as much as possible.

ANDY SERWER: In this environment, a learning experience for everyone. No doubt about that. And you're optimistic about the T-wolves season. What do you like the players, you like you like their chances at this point? What do you think?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. Look, we're taking this. We have some young wonderful players. We're excited about what we're going to do. We're doing a lot of work behind the scenes on core values and really establishing a foundation that has an opportunity to be sustainable over time. We talk about being long term greedy, not short term, and it's going to take time.

We're taking a very, very methodical and patient approach. And put all the resources in place for the long run. So we're excited about the season and looking forward for opening day soon.

ANDY SERWER: Yeah. Just one more question there, because I think you predicted that NBA franchises could triple in value over the next 10 or 15 years. What makes you so confident about that, Alex?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. I think if you think about it, and this goes not just for basketball, but for other sports as well. We grew up in an era where investors, take Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, their whole goal was to run a great business and never be seen. Be like a ghost. Be underground.

Our kids and their kids' generation, they've grown up with you a cell phone in their face and they want to be famous more and more so than rich. And what better way to become a big time name than to own a franchise. So that's one simple thing. But if you look at the macro, and the tailwinds, and the TV contracts. You saw what happened in the NFL, NBA deals up in 2025.

And as this league continues to grow and more people get to watch, I think the numbers will continue to double and triple over time, which as a result of that, the franchise values will continue to explode. And I think lastly, there's only 30 of them. So in many ways, as a monopoly, and they're not making anymore. And there's never been a time over the last 10 years that more wealth has been created from individuals around the world, and the teams are not multiplying to keep up with that.

So I just think a macro bet, you won't be able to buy a franchise in 10 or 15 years for less than $5 billion. No matter what sport.

ANDY SERWER: Wow. I hear you, though. Shifting gears. Cryptocurrency, NFTs, I don't know if you're into this stuff. NFTs are taking professional sports by storm, especially the NBA with Top Shot. Have you invested in any, and is this something you're into, you've got your eye on?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: We have a couple young people over there that went to Ivy League that played soccer, that are way smarter than me. And they run those accounts. They know about it. We've made some really small investments. It's not my circle of competence. I don't talk about it. I don't really understand it. But we certainly know that there's movement there. We're keeping our eye on it, but not something that we're really heavily thinking too much about.

ANDY SERWER: Got it. I want to ask you about amateur athletes and being able to profit off their name, and image, and likeness. And a lot of talk about college sports, but you can do it as a high school player. And I'm wondering if this was available to you in high school, would you have taken advantage of this? And what do you think? Do you think this is a good thing for young people? Bad thing? Unknown at this point? What's your take?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Andy, this is a tough one for me. It's a little bit of a slippery slope. I think there's not enough information or data out there for me to make a decision on it. I'm certainly watching closely. I do think there will be some incredible challenges. How do you differentiate from your top tier, second tier, to the guys and women that are on the bench? How do you differentiate from football to volleyball?

So I'm watching. I'm curious. I have some apprehensions, but I'm certainly, like you, just watching. It's the early days. So let's see what happens.

ANDY SERWER: Speaking of early days, I want to ask you a little bit about your growing up in Washington Heights. Right uptown from where I am in Manhattan. Your mom, you talked about her working two jobs, and eventually transfer to play baseball at a high school in Florida. So how did your early life prepare you for a career in sports, Alex?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Yeah. I spoke about my mother, but my father, he was with me from 0 to basically 10. And early on, right around 10 years old, I started thinking about the two B's. And that was baseball on business. And baseball is a natural because I have a Dominican background. My father's Dominican. He played baseball, but he was also a businessman and he was really good with numbers. Soft spoken.

He passed about five or six years ago. I wasn't very close, obviously. He left when I was 10. But one of the things that he was known for is in our Washington Heights apartments, not too far from where you are today, Andy. We had a shoe store in our apartment. And we sold a lot of shoes. And I guess my father was very nice and very charming. And I have women from all over, obviously older, that would say, hey, I used to buy shoes from your father.

He was like a mathematician. He never used a calculator. And he was just a really, really nice man. So I thought that was really interesting. So at that point, my entrepreneurial spirit woke up a little bit. But what's interesting about my father and I, we reconnected years later, in the year 2000. And my wife at the time, Cynthia, who's a dear friend of mine now, and the mother of my two beautiful girls, came up with this wonderful idea. That she wanted to get my father and I together.

And I was in my last year in Seattle. So we looked at the map, and said, where can my father come where we can keep it low key. We're going to stay in a separate hotel. And we can, not only play four games, but have like the meetings of the minds of father son. So we chose Minnesota. And we chose a hotel that was not the team hotel.

And I remember, Cynthia took him shopping. He used to always like to wear his suit and tie. So he wore at the Metrodome suit and tie. And sure enough, I had a good series because I wanted to show off to him what he had missed out on. And Andy, I went like 9 or 17. I looked it up. Two home runs, like six ribbies. And I was playing both sad and angry a little bit, which was strange.

And it so happened, that those are the only four games, that he watched me in Minnesota, that he ever got to watch me play my 25 year professional career. So Minnesota, for that alone, has a very special place in my heart.

ANDY SERWER: Wow. That's a great story. Since you're being introspective, let's continue a little bit with that. You had such an incredible career as a professional athlete. And yet, you seem so driven in this next field of endeavor, business. That you were doing concurrently, but you've really taken it to a whole other level now. Why are you, unlike so many others who just want to rest on their laurels, and maybe do a little coaching, a little announcing, and just chill. What drives you, Alex?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: It's funny, Andy. I get calls from athletes all the time who are my former teammates or colleagues. And they send me the numbers to their therapist, their psychologists. They are like, Alex, you should be on a boat somewhere in the French Riviera. What the heck are you doing in an office with a suit and tie. You're nuts. So they might be a little bit right. But like I said, my passion for baseball and business started when I was a 10-year-old boy watching my father and doing his thing.

And I've always been driven by process and not results. And that's exactly how I built my 25 year baseball career. And in business, I don't think about the results. I think about teamwork. I think about developing young talent, just like people invested in me. I like to invest in young people.

We like to spend time teaching, and mentoring, and having people of color in the room. My company here, A-Rod corp, we have three major division. All three major divisions, my three partners are driven by strong women who are great mothers. That's a signal of my great mother. So those are the kind of things the leader here at A-Rod corp that we get to invest in great businesses. We get to empower people of color and women of a lot of power.

And then we get to go back into the community. And we've put over 40 kids through college at the University of Miami. And we do tons of work here at the Boys Girls Club. So I'm living my dream. It's like Warren always says, he kind of skips to work every day. I feel the same way and I feel like I'm so lucky.

ANDY SERWER: And last question, Alex. What do you hope your legacy will be?

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Well, I think my legacy is going to be for sure someone that played baseball. Played for a wonderful-- had a wonderful career, won a World championship, fell on his face miserably through PED's, and served the longest suspension of Major League Baseball history. And had a chance to fold it and go home. Instead, went out and got help.

Turned the lens inward. Did a tremendous amount of work in myself, understanding why I was making this mistakes, and self imploding. And picked up the chips, dusted off, went back to the plate and learned from those mistakes, and build himself back up. And overall, may have given up his opportunity to do great things and even go to the Hall of Fame, but has a bigger responsibility to teach the next generation of athletes and young people to learn from my mistakes.

But I do have an opportunity to be a Hall of Fame father, Hall of Fame friend, and to run my business in a way that's a great example.

ANDY SERWER: It's great stuff. Alex Rodriguez, baseball great, CEO of A-rod corp. Thank you so much for your time.

ALEX RODRIQUEZ: Thank you, Andy.

ANDY SERWER: You've been watching Influencers. I'm Andy Serwer. We'll see you next time.