Brooks

Fortunes made. Fortunes lost.
The stories money leaves behind.

[Brooks @evanbrooksq]

@thereallisaann Great interview, wishing you all the best 😚

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@thereallisaann @StuartCanterbry Legend, we all love you 😊

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According to Pornhub, Lisa Ann was the most searched adult actress on the site when she retired. Ten months later, she hosted two fantasy football shows on Sirius XM.

She explains how she kept the money: "The only time you get residuals in our business is if you own the content. I own about 80% of my library."

She says she paid for her own movies. "I would invest anywhere from 25 to $30,000 per movie, which was four scenes." A distributor sold them for her.

The lesson came at a trade show. She says a company owner had reused one of her movies in compilations and changed her outfit color on the covers. She told him it was like they barely paid her. His answer: "We're allowed to do that."

So she changed the deal. She says she took a lower rate in exchange for her internet rights. When companies folded, she says, "I bought back my scenes and my paperwork."

Then she left. "It's hard to walk away from 99.9% of your income," she says. "I did save."

In 2015, Fox Sports found her in a condo in Los Angeles, with a second apartment in Manhattan. On the wall hung a signed Michael Jordan jersey. In her divorce, she says, her husband claimed it. "He didn't say which Jordan jersey, so I bought him a cheap replica and kept the signed one."

Her new job was two weekly fantasy shows on Sirius XM, in a sport she barely knew. A caller asked: "What makes you think you know anything about this?"

She won the network's fantasy football league the year before the article.

So which was the bigger move: owning 80% of her library, or leaving before the business left her?

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@XRaoulDuke Gotta respect the business strategy

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Mitchell Rose beat Butterbean with the jab in 1995 and reportedly wore a shirt saying so, and in 1997 a 6 foot 7 boxer tried the same plan.

"I will personally buy another one for Ed White," a commentator said. Here is how it went.

On April 12, 1997, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Eric "Butterbean" Esch defended the IBA four round super heavyweight title against Ed White, a 34 year old rookie pro. White was 6 feet 7 and 255 pounds, and Butterbean weighed 320.

The plan was Rose's. In December 1995 at Madison Square Garden, Rose cut Butterbean up with the jab, and the commentator said he wears a shirt that reads "I beat Butterbean."

Early on, it worked. White stuck the jab, landed a right hand behind it and had the better of the opening minutes. A big man who works behind the jab has a chance, the commentator said.

Then it fell fast. White kept his hands well below his waist, breathing hard, and the commentator warned that sooner or later he would get tagged. Butterbean waited, and then a right hand dropped White.

Here is the part that stings. "Ed White paying the price for dropping his hands so low," the commentator said. Butterbean won by TKO at 1:14 of round 2, with blood running down his face from a cut.

Now look at the numbers. Butterbean fought on April 2, April 12 and April 17, three fights in 15 days.

Rose beat Butterbean with the jab in 1995. White tried the same plan in 1997, and it lasted until he dropped his hands.

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@raymond30585438 Nobody knows exactly what happened make it even sadder.

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An NBA champion walked away from $36 million, and three years later the boat he sailed on came back with someone else in command.

Bison Dele said it himself in 1999: "There's never been two snowflakes alike." Here is what happened next.

In the video below, filmed after a game on May 3, 1999, Dele, then a Detroit Pistons center, is asked to compare teammate Joe Dumars with Michael Jordan. He answers: "It's like snowflakes. They're all unique, different."

He was born Brian Williams, won a title with the Chicago Bulls in 1997 and changed his name to Bison Dele in 1998. Before the 1999 to 2000 season, he retired at 30, giving up the last five years and $36.45 million of his contract rather than be traded. Then he bought a catamaran.

On July 6, 2002, he sailed from Tahiti with his girlfriend, Serena Karlan, his brother, Miles Dabord, and skipper Bertrand Saldo. The last satellite phone call was on July 8. On July 20, Dabord brought the boat back to Tahiti alone.

Then it fell fast. The boat was later found with its name plate removed and possible bullet holes patched. Dabord was detained in Phoenix on September 6, accused of using Dele's signature and passport to buy about $152,000 in gold. He died on September 27.

Here is the part nobody can settle. Dabord's version, relayed through others, was an accident and self defense. The FBI said the boat showed no evidence of it. Authorities concluded Dele, Karlan and Saldo were probably killed and thrown overboard. No bodies were found.

He walked away from $36 million and sailed into the Pacific. The boat came back without him.

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@CoachDijon The hard part is knowing whether your chasing freedom or running from something

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@FearBrahma Thats a wild detail
Dude was living a whole different life before the NBA money

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@KevG163 Don Meredith got the full broadcast experience that night

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@garaa_arc People often confuse being able to drink casually with alcohol being harmless

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@rheacts The dollar runs on trust, but trust hits different when you have the worlds strongest military

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@theosterlingx And the silence became part of the legend

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@Aspect0F Came back from the hospital just to find out the real emergency was at work.

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Jack Whittaker gave his 17 year old granddaughter $2,000 a week and bought her four cars, and he later wished he had torn up his Powerball ticket.

Asked about those cars, he says: "I'm very proud that she had four cars." Here is how a $314.9 million jackpot ended for him.

In the video below, Whittaker describes how he treated his granddaughter after the win: "I gave her about $2,000 a week."

He was already a wealthy contractor in West Virginia when he won on Christmas Day 2002, in what was then the largest single lottery jackpot in history. He took the cash option and netted $113.4 million after taxes. He gave heavily to Church of God congregations and set up the Jack Whittaker Foundation to manage his giving.

Then it fell fast. In 2003, he was robbed of $545,000 outside a dance club near Charleston, and later his vehicles, office and house were targeted by thieves. In 2004, his granddaughter died.

Here is the part that stings. In 2007, he told ABC News he had "pretty much lost everything I held dear in my life." His daughter died in 2009. He divorced in 2011, and his house in Virginia burned in 2016.

He said he wished he had torn up the ticket. He died on June 27, 2020, at 73.

He gave his granddaughter four cars and $2,000 a week. He later wished he had torn up the ticket.

[Brooks @evanbrooksq]

Mark Cuban sold his company to Yahoo in 1999, and months later he spent $40 million on a jet by sending one email.

But the trade he made first is the real story.

It started in July 1998, when his company https://t.co/xjojKqzNDT went public. He expected the stock to open around $33. It opened at $62.75, and he says he was suddenly worth more than $300 million.

In the video below, he jumps ahead to the ending himself: "I sent him an email saying done, 40 million dollars."

Then Yahoo bought the company in 1999 for stock, in a deal reportedly worth $5.7 billion. He says he knew a crash could come, so he sold some of the upside and bought puts on the downside. Three months later, he says, the market cratered, and the trade was called one of the top 10 Wall Street trades of all time.

Only then came the jet.

He did almost all of it online. He researched the Gulfstream on the company's website, emailed to ask for a test flight for his pilot, then emailed that he wanted to buy it. According to aviation reports, he received banking instructions and wired the money in October 1999.

Guinness lists it as the largest single online transaction, well above the $22.9 million paid for a used Gulfstream the year before. In his words: "Biggest online purchase in the history of the internet, still to this day."

Why? "The most valuable asset you can never own is your time," he says.

A billion dollars, one trade to protect it, and one email to spend $40 million of it.

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Elizabeth Holmes promised to build Theranos for the rest of her life, and three years later her $9 billion company was gone.

In the video below, recorded in 2015, she says: "What matters here is the integrity of our data." On her valuation, she adds: "If we don't, it'll go down, and that's fine." Then: "I want to be building this company for the rest of my life."

Prosecutors said she convinced investors that Theranos machines could run a range of tests from a few drops of blood taken from a finger. Rupert Murdoch bought about 7.3 million shares at $17 each, roughly $125 million. Larry Ellison, Betsy DeVos and Tim Draper also invested.

At its peak, the company was reportedly valued at about $9 billion. Then it fell fast.

October 2015: a Wall Street Journal investigation questions the blood tests. 2018: the company shuts down. January 3, 2022: a jury finds her guilty on four of 11 counts, including conspiracy to defraud investors, acquits her on four and deadlocks on three. November 2022: 11¼ years in prison and $452 million in restitution.

Here is the part that stings. Holmes has said she is essentially broke, and the Justice Department says full recovery is very unlikely.

She is held at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, with release reportedly set for December 2031. Her request for a commutation from President Trump is reportedly still pending.

Did Elizabeth Holmes believe her own pitch, or did she always know the tests did not work?

[Brooks @evanbrooksq]

@xoldmoneytapes That "no" probably change his entire life.

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In the 1970s, Sylvester Stallone sold his dog for about $50 to eat. In 1977, his movie won Best Picture.

He was an unknown actor working as an usher for $36 a week. In the video below, he says he was so broke that he had to sell his dog just to keep food on the table.

Then he wrote a script. Reportedly in less than four days, right after watching a heavyweight title fight.

The studios liked the script. They just did not want him in it. He says they started naming bankable stars, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford.

"It was just one of those crossroad situations that every artist faces early on."

Go left, or go right.

In popular tellings, the offers for the script climbed into six figures. He was an usher with no dog, and he said no unless he played the lead.

Rocky came out in November 1976. A few months later, it won the Oscar for Best Picture.

When he finally had the money, he went back to the man who bought the dog. The man would not give him back for free. He wanted $3,000.

Stallone did not have $3,000. So the man asked for something else. He wanted to be in the movie.

"So I put him in the movie," Stallone says.

The details of this story change from one telling to the next, but this is how he tells it in the video.

He sold his dog for pocket change. He got him back with a part in the movie that made him a star.

[Brooks @evanbrooksq]

@JasonIn16370144 People forget that raising kids is work too, even when it doesnt come with a paycheck.

[Brooks @evanbrooksq]

Mel Gibson bet $45 million of his own money on one film, and seven years later his divorce reportedly cost him $425 million.

The film was The Passion of the Christ. Gibson and his company paid the $30 million budget and about $15 million in marketing. It made $370.8 million in the US alone, and more than $600 million worldwide.

In the video below, he explains why he had to do it alone: “I had no alternative, because no major would back it.”

He says Rupert Murdoch wanted to distribute it, then was advised he would be “out of business in five years.”

Gibson had been married to Robyn Moore since 1980. Reportedly there was no prenup. When the divorce was finalized in December 2011, the reported settlement was about $425 million, half of an estimated $850 million fortune.

The case for Gibson: he bet his own money when Hollywood said no, and the bet paid off many times over.

The case for Robyn: they were married for 31 years and had seven children, and she was there before any of it made money.

Do the math. $425 million is about nine times the $45 million he put into the film.

Here’s the lesson. Without a prenup, a hit film has two owners.