Mark Cuban discusses what it takes to be successful

let's talk a little bit about growing up I'm grew up in Pittsburgh your father ran an auto upholstery don't run it he won't he worked there okay so what was that like Mark and and how did that inspire you I mean my dad busted his ass I mean he worked six six days a week left at seven at 7:00 7:30 in the morning got back at 6 or 7 o'clock lost his eye in an accident doing upholstery he had a staple break when he was putting some covering on a car seat you know it was it was a middle-class upbringing my mom did odd jobs you know they just wanted something better I mean my grandparents came over from Russia and you know my dad was the first generation my uncles were the first generation Americans like my mom too and you know like every child of immigrants they want it better for their kids you know it's funny I mean a lot of people grew up that way all right but now many people end up like you so what do you think that's the result of I think you know everybody's got something that they're good at and the hard part is finding it and I found out early that I was a good salesperson that I really liked business you know like I like sports I mean I read everything I possibly could played sports as much as I could just wasn't as good as I wanted to be and and business was the same way I mean as long as I could remember I was buying and selling baseball cards garbage bags whatever I could find stamps to collectors but I was also reading everything I possibly could about business and you know I was that unusual kid that I'd rather read about Ted Turner then go to the movies and and so I think that created a foundation of my parents you know my dad used to always say I don't understand what you're doing but I'm glad you're doing it and and so I have my ups and downs along the way of course but um I just think that I just I just put in the time and was fortunate enough to really get excited about business and that paid off benefits over the long haul I mean you almost have to have that drive like in other words you can't fake it you can't like pretend that you want to read about Ted Turner and okay I'll skip one movie I mean you're your soul yeah I mean you can fake it to you make it in a lot of areas particular if you working for somebody else but at the end of the day if you're going to be created something you've got to make the effort to be great at something whether it's sports whether it's physics math science business whatever it may be you know it's not just a natural skill you've got you've got to to learn and particularly if you're in the technology industry because it changes everyday you know when I got started and in you know after I got I got it was a bartender when I first came to Dallas got into the PC industry got fired started my own company but there I learned early on that there was always something new and most people didn't put in the time to learn it it's like now with artificial intelligence lots of people talk about artificial intelligence lots people talk about machine learning and neural networks not a lot of people are putting in the time to take classes or do the tutorials or to learn how to apply it to business and that's what it takes and and you know that's just something I've always enjoyed so I've been fortunate at no wait a minute are you doing that with AI really what are you doing I mean I've been on Amazon doing the machine learning tutorials right now I'm going through I've taken Python online classes I really yeah absolutely if you go in my bathroom there's a machine learning for dummies book I just started JavaScript neural networks there's a little tutorial where they've got most of the library brain Das and all the libraries and it's not if you have a background in programming it's not hard but I'm not trying to be great at that but I want to understand it so I understand all the you know so I the nuance elements of it and how it works so that I have an advantage but where would that take you like with your businesses here or the Mavericks or you know everyone takes me everywhere right I mean there's nothing that AI won't impact as big as the M so having been around a while I saw the impact of pcs then I saw the impact of local area networks then I saw the impact of wide area networks then I saw the impact of the internet then I saw the impact of mobile then I saw the impact of Wireless you know now I'm seeing the impact of artificial intelligence and a Dwarfs any of those things and if I don't understand how to apply it to my businesses I mean I remember selling pcs software and walking insane you don't need to use that pen and paper on a you know on a notepad or a ledger pad now we're gonna give you a spreadsheet and by the way here's a here's a spreadsheet that cost four hundred ninety five dollars and I had to pay to go get trained on how to sell it which is crazy now when you think about it but then we said okay now you can play what if then we said you can connect these pcs unless I understood the technology how is that going to explain it how was I going to understand it unless I understand it now how am I going to invest in it you know then I gotta go trust somebody who says oh yeah I know AI and maybe they do maybe they don't and it's really easy just ahead just that okay say you figure it out that's just not my style so you're building a base of knowledge and then you think that at some point it's gonna pay dividends and Tory has right I mean if they if you truly believe a AI is going to change everything how are you going to understand what people are doing to change everything unless you at least have a foundational understanding of it now I'm not going to build a million layer neural network and try to change the world and I'm not going to show you I'm not gonna write a research paper and saying here's how why the lottery ticket approach works and you can build smaller neural networks with less data and be more you know resource efficient but I can read that stuff and understand that when somebody says ok we're building this project and we need this sized data set or this size data set we need this amount of resources I can ask questions and understand the answers so he grew up in Pittsburgh went to University of Indiana for a while then you said you came here how have you adopted this city why did this become your home Dallas well I mean when I went to IU I had a bunch of friends that graduated it came down here and they're like you got to get your ass down here the weather's great the women are beautiful the economy is good I said wait back up and then I came down lived six guys in a three-bedroom apartment until I found my way and I've had a blast and loved it ever since so how do you describe yourself mark I mean I said entrepreneur is that how you would describe yourself what do you do for a living I Drive describe myself as a grinder um you know I just like we talked about learning that's a grind but I love it you know and I just I think I've just learned what I'm good at and learned to focus on those things and and try to you know utilize those skills to now you know not just be an entrepreneur but probably more often now invest in and help other entrepreneurs okay so take us through your business interest right now you have the basketball team you write stuff for sure meaning you have stuff here you can go to Mark Cuban comm I list them all right right and so really I mean I've got Shark Tank and I've invested in 100-plus companies there we sold a bunch so I think I've got 70 that are active now and you know it follows a normal distribution probably ten are struggling 50 are doing great and Tanner are doing it incredibly but I think now I've really evolved some of my focus to trying to help disadvantaged entrepreneurs people who have less opportunity I just invested with a woman Arlen Hamilton who we together created a little million dollar fund where she's going out and finding ten businesses run by people of color or disadvantaged LGBTQ type communities and just opening doors because I think my experience applies to anybody right any entrepreneur no matter what you're trying to sell and I also think that it's a great business opportunity simply because the markets that they wanted to sell to are underserved there just aren't as many entrepreneurs so there's more opportunity and so I think it makes great business sense as well let's go through some of these other things are starting with Shark Tank uh-huh what's Shark Tank like is it really a kick the way it looks like yes I mean it's great we start shooting here probably in a couple of weeks June 12th or 13th I think it is and the way it works literally is we show up on set and Sony Studios and I get there about 8:30 and put on they're putting on a little bit of makeup I throw on my suit like Kevin mr. Wonderful's or launder Laurie they have to get there two hours earlier because they need things even more work they did oh okay we've got a lot more layer listening to that Kevin's got a lot more landmass to cover lorries lorry but in any event we start shooting at about 9:00 and they just bring in deal after deal after deal we know nothing about them they'll say you know this is you know Joe and Sally and this is the name of the business and they'll walk in and give our pitch now on television it might take 10 to 14 minutes in real life if it's a stupid deal it might take 20 minutes and then before we were all out and then if it's an intense deal it could go 90 minutes two hours and then they'd have to edit it down but it's our money it's all real we know nothing about them if we decide to do a deal then we have the opportunity to do due diligence after my back because sometimes they'll embellish it's a polite way to put it you know my widget cost a dollar to make and we sold a million of them when in reality the widget costs $10 and they've sold six then Helen sometimes yeah that does happen more often than you think I'm the producers of spokes supposed to UM ferret that stuff out but yeah not a lot doesn't happen as much as we'd like so yeah we'll do due diligence and about 60% of my deals close um the other little thing is of the deals that present to us and we'll see in any given season 250 to 300 that are presented probably 25% of people who pitch us they come in are taped and pitched to us don't even make it on air mmm for a variety of reasons yeah and let me ask you about your entertainment business the movies and 29:29 Magnolia what's that all about well back in 2002 thousand I guess it was after I sold Yahoo right after I bought the Mavs I started the world's first all high-definition TV network when everybody was saying high-definition television is not going to happen I created a network called HD net and HD net movies and there was very little content for it I mean literally this is when high-def televisions cost fifteen thousand dollars and everybody said who the hell is gonna pay fifteen thousand dollars for a TV and I was I went around telling everybody no you just wait those televisions are gonna drop like a rock in terms of price and everybody's gonna want one that goes on their wall instead of this big ugly hunks of analog TV so I had that but we didn't have content and so we wanted to go out there and create content and we also Bart Landmark Theatres which we have since sold but we wanted that vertical and we can show it on television put it online offer DVDs put put it video on demand and I'll also offer in theaters and so we created we created 29 29 productions first where we produce movies what does that name mean both 29 29 was because the address for audio net the the streaming company we thought it was 29 29 Elm Street okay so that's where that came from and then so we had movie production 29 29 we had Landmark Theaters we also bought ricer entertainment which we've since sold that own Oh get Hogan's Heroes and some others so that we could put it on HDNet HT net films and then landmark and so the idea was have a vertically integrated so we were the first company to to put create to produce a movie put it online download we did basically offer a day and day release of it called bubble and we we've been doing Magnolia and 29:29 productions ever since the others yeah I'm ignoring 29 $20 we've sold one of all these businesses tell you about the economy right now what do you think the outlook that's a good question so some of my smaller shark tank companies that are that resell products are getting crushed by the tariffs I mean I've got one that's may go out of business simply because tariffs at 10% were one thing tariffs are 25% they just can't compete there's other companies that have bigger and better supply chains where they were more creative and were within 5% of their prices but now with the tariffs it's it's almost impossible in the uncertainty it's made it very very difficult but beyond that I mean business is going well in urban markets and it's a little bit tougher in smaller markets so I mean it pretty much mirrors what you see in the general economy right

Channel: Yahoo Finance

Views: 436,855

Keywords: Yahoo Finance, Personal Finance, Money, Investing, Business, Savings, Investment, Stocks, Bonds, FX, Currencies, NYSE, Equities, News, Politics, Market, Markets, Market Movers, Midday Movers, The Final Round, Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban childhood, Mark Cuban parents, Mark Cuban working, How Mark Cuban became a billionaire, Mark Cuban successful

Id: gtMg4jqEylA

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Fri May 31 2019