Mark Cuban On Becoming An Entrepreneur | How I Got Here with Chris Paul

i think one of the things that you can say about me is i never when i was broke i didn't let my my bank account define me and right when i'm not broke i'm not gonna let my bank account to find me i am you know i'll try to be my own person and just my friends are my friends that never changed my pittsburgh friends are still my my great friends you know my college friends my rugby friends all the different segments of my life they're still my guys [Music] what's going on what up tv not a thing how you doing good man thanks for having me man i appreciate you my pleasure appreciate you coming through absolutely um so to start it off uh tell us who you are oh my goodness um grew up in pittsburgh pennsylvania um born in squirrel hill moved to the south hills birdland um and then mount lebanon and um my dad did upholstery on cars my mom did odd jobs just just a normal kid man that just happened to be have an aptitude for business from as long as i can remember was was it one of your dreams like as a kid like i know i was in the backyard man my brother was trying to be michael jordan and scottie pippen uh i was mj of course but uh like was it a dream of yours to own an nba team no hell no yeah honestly it wasn't until i tried to buy the mavs that even crossed my mind really like yeah when i was a kid you know i played sports not very well but yeah i wanted to be earl of pearl monroe i had to skip moving everything and a baseball with salem state university by the way exactly i never really thought that i would ever be in a position to own anything man i just wanted to have a good life and try to find my way to college so now you know all these things that you've done in life all this stuff that's been a part of your journey tell us a little bit about what that was like like what it was like growing up and um in pittsburgh you know my mom was really young when she had me she was 20 and so you know in hindsight i realized how little my parents really knew right because they were just young but my dad would just get up and go to work and he was he neither one of them went to college and they were like you guys i have two younger brothers brian and jeff like you guys are going to college and we're going to figure it out because education is important and you've got to find your own path and he was always pushing me and both my parents were pushing me to to be independent and however it started i don't know from the time i was nine ten years old i was hustling i was i was one of those kids that was always selling something yeah yeah like i was selling baseball cards right i would go buy baseball cards and then i'd flip them right get as many you know get good and flip and package it then i'd go down to the park where we would pick up play pickup or whatever there would be this bench that was there and i would just sit there and repackage baseball cards and i'd say okay there's definitely one pittsburgh pirate in one of these right you might get roberto clemente you might get willie stargeon and i'd mark him up and make some money and you know and that's how i'd get spending money and i remember one day my dad was playing poker i was like dad i need a new pair of converse right and he's like i see those you know those shoes on your feet they still work right and i'm like yeah he's like well when you have a job you can buy whatever you want but until then those shoes still work and i'm like dad i can't get a job i'm 12 years old and one of his poker buddies speaks up and goes yeah i got a job for you i'm like what he goes i've got these boxes of garbage bags and you can go sell them around the neighborhood and i'm like cool like boxes and boxes right so literally i would go to our neighbors and i go hi i'm your neighbor mark do you use garbage bags you sound like a shark tank yeah right yeah exactly and of course everybody uses garbage bags so never forget they cost me three bucks for a box of a hundred i would sell them for six bucks and i would just take them to them every couple weeks right whenever they needed more garbage bags and i'm making 20 bucks a week which was like big time i got my shoes and you know but that taught me to be confident and that taught me that i could sell and that taught me that selling was helping not convincing you know because once i figured out that everybody needed garbage bags then it really became obvious to me that if i can find things that people needed right and wanted and i could do it a better way than what they were doing it then i could make some money and that's kind of stayed with me i was just about to say it's crazy how you was thinking about that at 12 and everything you just said basically translates to everything you're basically doing now in life yeah exactly i mean because that's what it's all about i mean you know selling isn't convincing somebody to do something they don't want to do selling is understanding what chris paul needs and then finding a way to provide it in a better way than what they're doing now you make it sound way too easy but it's not as hard as it sounds right but most you know it's like basketball right there's a lot of guys that maybe we're more talented than you right right one thing i know and respect about you and the few times we've talked like you talk about you know doing the work right getting on synergy sports which i was excited about because there's a company i had helped get going right and invested them and always watching the place knowing the other teams plays you know when they call them out so you know what's going to happen being able to guide business is the exact same way most people don't put in the work business is the exact same way you know i have all these corny sayings practice too you can't get it wrong how you do anything is how you do everything yeah yeah i just still to this day try to remind myself of these things all the time for you you started college in pittsburgh yeah and then went to indiana yeah why when i was 16 i decided i wanted to take college classes at night just to see if i was as smart as i thought i was and so so at 16 you were what uh junior junior yeah in high school yeah and you just started taking college yeah so i just said what the hell right i'll just take these classes and i took a psychology class and did good in it and then i wanted to um take a business class at my high school mount lebanon high school and they wouldn't let me do that and so i'm like well then i'm just going to go to college right so i dropped out of high school didn't go back for my senior year and went to the university of pittsburgh but they didn't have a real business school back then i decided i wanted to go to business school saw a list of the top 10 undergraduate business schools and indiana was the cheapest and got in and had never seen the campus didn't visit none of that stuff just went sight unseen and turned out okay you graduated from indiana what was your dream job well i was i wanted to start my own company at some level right so all through indiana i had all kinds of side hustles because i pretty much had to pay for my own college and so whether it was party promoting my freshman and sophomore years to um having a chain letter to pay for my junior year to um opening up a bar that was like the hot spot on campus my senior year until we got busted for letting all my friends in because i i just turned 21 you know so i was a hustler a bunch of my buddies had come down to dallas and they were like you got to come down is that what got you to texas yeah yeah a bunch of my buddies were down here and they're like look the weather's good the economy's really starting to hop um and the women are hot i'm like i didn't hear the first two i'm like i'm coming boom right i'm on my way on my way three bedroom apartments five other roommates so six of us live in a three-bedroom apartment i was in last so i was the guy who didn't have his own room didn't have his own closet on the floor couch right or some you know buddies were out i'm taking their bed so that's where i got started in dallas and i got a job working as a bartender at night and then finally got a job um in the computer industry and that's really where i realized okay i really like these computers i mean i have an aptitude for it and this this is it i'm going for it so when i say broadcast.com is that menu [Laughter] right yeah i don't think people realize what it was all about though um because it's been so long now i sold my first company micro solutions in 1989 um 1990 i guess when it closed and retired just took time off party like a rock star and would get together with one of my indiana buddies todd wagner and one day he's sitting down it's you know late 1994 early 95 and he's like look this new internet thing there's got to be a way that we can use it to listen to indiana basketball because we're in dallas and you know this is before you could get it with directv or cable or whatever right and i'm like okay let me see if i can figure it out because my first company i would write software taught myself the right software did networking wider so it was a perfect fit to figure it out so i bought a packer bell computer put into the second bedroom my house connected a radio to it and we just started working with different software didn't write all the software but wrote enough to get it up and running next thing you know we started this website called audionet worked with the local radio station kliff i set up an a vcr an old school vcr next to their radio station i would record it take the vcr tapes encode it put it on a server in the second bedroom my house and then just email and go online and tell as many people look if you want to listen to dallas sports and stuff come to the site called audionet.com blew up immediately three years later it turned into broadcast.com we added video we went public it was the biggest first day ip on the history of the stock market at the time and we were youtube i mean literally hundreds of internet radio stations hundreds of radio stations tv stations you know streaming like we went and got the rights to um north carolina basketball and we were showing online michael jordan mixtapes once you get that it's a wrap yeah right so we would just we just blew up and then yahoo came along and bought us and paid us um i think was 5.7 billion dollars in stock not in cash so then i had to protect my the stock that i got because you know fortunately i did i did this thing called hedging and it protected me when the whole internet bubble burst and that allowed me to turn it into cash and then a couple weeks later i was trying to buy the mavs yeah so on to that onto that so all of the stuff that you were doing in technology computers and everything like that why the mavericks well i was season ticket holder right but i had been going to mavs games since i got to dallas um but in the 90s they were really bad and literally you could buy a ticket upstairs and just walk down and sit in the front row right because there was nobody there and even though we were awful it was the start of the 99 2000 season i was there with my girlfriend now wife and the place wasn't sold out you know and so you're a season ticket holder 99 2000 yeah right and where are your seats at my seats are right by the mavs bench where you sit close closer yeah a little bit yeah two rows back i was into it right and then there was nobody there and i remember tuning in yeah there was nobody there right nobody it was opening night and the place wasn't sold out and this was in the old reunion arena and i'm like i can do a better job than this right then it hit me ding ding ding now i can afford this stuff right right right you know so my my i talked to my ticket rep um a guy named mark who then connected me to mark mcguire and mark aguirre was working for ross perot jr who was the owner then and he connected me together and the season started like beginning november end of october by january 4th um so only six weeks later give or take i owned the mavs what yeah no no no no talent you rewind you don't just sit at the game and then six weeks later pretty much on the yeah i like that and what's what's crazy for me is around then i was 16 years old 16 17 years old and i'm a high school basketball player and i i'm telling you man like my senior high school even like when i was a freshman at wake like i loved everything dirk yo yeah everything jerk was the bad yeah i used to like turn my feet in on my free throws you remember when dirk used to shoot free throws like this yeah a little knock knock yeah yeah yeah i used to do that for a little while what not just so i could shoot like dirk and i tell you even to sit here and have this conversation is so crazy because i i remember when you bought the team and i saw you like this right seriously i think at some point we all thought that someone buying a team or something had to have a suit on and all this different type stuff and to see you today the same way you were then i think says a lot you've always genuinely been a fan of not just your team but the game and that's that's dope to see man yeah i mean because it's it's for all of us right yeah and i always say i don't own the team i just handle the finances but all mavs fans everywhere own the team that's what makes basketball or all sports right so much different than traditional businesses look at apple right multi-trillion dollar market cap no one's throwing a parade in cupertino when they have you know a super quarter right right right right there's not a whole city that gets on fire right when you're moving like when you guys you know with the suns last year just coming out of nowhere and bam getting into the finals the whole city is on fire that's a great point yeah shark tank yeah what was the pitch to you that got you involved in shark tank um it was like we're doing this this business show right do you want to come on as a guest and i'd watch the show and i'm like okay you know it was on abc and it was bouncing around right it wasn't on any one night and i'm thinking all right i'm gonna go on and i'm just gonna blow them up right because they're not gonna see me coming and this is a business show and it's okay right but i don't think it's gonna last so i'm just gonna this is you know prime time network tv and i'm just going to mess with everybody so i get on there and just tear them all up they had no idea what was coming but all of a sudden you know like it did in other countries shark tank starts to take off and you know what it from what it started as me just having fun to what it's become which is a way to educate families kids about businesses and really get kids excited about entrepreneurship that's what got me really to stay with the show we'll be locked in yeah we'll be locked it's the coolest thing because like you said it's not just for adults right like my whole family my parents my wife my kids will be sitting there watching you know and there are products that we buy now all the time that came from as long as you're mine right right so but for you but for you you heard hundreds of pitches like maybe thousands of pitches thousands of pitches in trying to figure out all these different deals and whatnot what would be your biggest advice to a entrepreneur or somebody trying to start a business well you know first know your business right i think people will always stop and say well i want to start a business what should i do and if you don't know you're not ready right you know you've got to have something that you're good at and if you're going to be if you're going to do it you got to be the best at it because i'll tell them look if i come in and compete with you i'm going to kick your ass are you ready to compete with me yeah right and you've got to work like there's someone working 24 hours a day to take it away from you you have a website that lists all your different businesses yes mark cuban.com right right yeah all all your different businesses and all because do you have like a separate company that's just for like shark tape no right no no they're all i mean so i don't have like a fund that i that invests in all the different companies it's just me making direct investments and all of yeah but this is it's not just the money it's the time oh yeah yeah yeah there's a lot going on people who help me yeah it takes some people a lot smarter than me to make all this work right i've got a lot of really really great people that are um around that make me look smart so when it comes to crypto and blockchain and stuff how do you feel about that i think it's a big part of the future right i really really do but i think people are looking at the wrong way people get really amped up about um the price of the the currency the cryptocurrencies right the tokens and they think that's really what crypto is but it's not that's the noise right the signal is if i were going to start a business how can i use this new technology to give myself a competitive advantage and disrupt an industry and so you know to give you an example is nfts right everybody's all amped about nfts and you see guys with their board ape yacht club all day long all day long and it's a collectible just like anything else but to me nfts are just a proof of concept and an example of how smart contracts work when you go through the process of creating an nft one of the things they always ask you is what's your royalty rate and so when i set one up for the first time i'm like royalties right how the hell does that work because there's no other way to make money every time a digital asset is resold and get paid a royalty and then i'm thinking okay well if it works for these nfts where else can i use this stuff right what other business applications can i use right the nfts were just showing you another way to do other things proof of concept right proof of concept again it's like basketball right basketball right now is changing and technology keeps on changing yeah right it went from you know post up and all this different types of the game changes it changed it because the technology made people smarter right you went from synergy right to second spectrum yeah right yeah and then the data's different and now we're getting into using computer vision and ai for pose estimation all this is just technology changing that comes back to biomechanics yeah all the biomechanics but how do you track the biomechanics right right one of your recent hires in the past couple years with cynthia yeah said marshall yeah yeah marshall yeah she's a machine i mean she's she's a force of nature she's she's in she's amazing you know we had some challenges um that we went through three years ago and you know i i hadn't been connected to the business side of it i was always on the basketball side and some things went wrong and i had to own up to him i needed somebody who could come in that understood how to turn the culture of an organization around and she has just been a superstar she don't play either no she don't play yeah yeah she says that all the time i don't play yeah i don't play i don't play but that's who she is and she changed the culture she changed the organization you know diversity inclusion is is a tough topic you know because a lot of people look at it just being about a checklist and what i've learned particularly from her is that it's not about checking the boxes it's about being pragmatic and doing business the right way because what i learned from her is when when we bring people from different communities that opens doors into those communities right and so like dallas has the sixth largest indian population in the country i didn't know that did not know that you just said so you want to find people from that community to sell into that community you want to find people of color who can connect because i can walk in there and people who look like me can walk in there yeah i'm not going to have the same effect or have the same understanding and she she already knew that right she knew how to not only understand it not only recognize the impact but how to deliver it and that's what makes her special and she's just got that energy and that vibe and that love that comes out of her genuine yeah unbelievably genuine so i've known you for a while mark and i didn't even know that you you had had kids until i seen you on tick-tock i've seen you on tick-tock see you on tick-tock with your daughter man to tell you the truth cause i i've done a few of my kids you know what i mean and i'm telling you man i didn't see you win championships i hadn't seen you win big games but i don't ever think i've seen you as happy as you are when you're on those videos with your kids i can get them to do them every day twice a day i would do them i don't care how embarrassed i get by them yeah it's fun right because i mean you know now they're the joy of my life they're everything and you know it took me a while to realize that because like when they're really really little you don't really appreciate it yeah but once they became real people you know there's it's just yeah there's just nothing better and if if i had a choice between just spending time with them it's like i tell people the most precious word in the dictionary for me is dad yeah when you hear your kids call you dad yeah there's only one way there's only three people in the universe who can say that to me and those are most important all that we talked about you could see you was into it but when i brought up your kids yeah jumped out your seat and it's scary too right because you know you had you had to work your way up and you know and it's your success in a lot of respects but then it just terrifies you you know because your kids can't copy that same path right you know as much as you know your path and i know my path and it's not going to be my kid's path they've got to find their own and it scares me because i don't want them to grow up to be entitled right you know i don't want them to take everything for granted i want them to feel something that you have to work for to get it yeah and it's you know but they ain't dumb they ain't down no they they know exactly you know who paid for the house and how you know that's the challenge i think that a lot of us face man and i'm just uh grateful to sit down and talk to you all these years man we never talking this long man so mark thank you so much appreciate you yes [Music] you

Channel: Bloomberg Talk

Views: 1,198,475

Keywords: News, bloomberg, quicktake, business, bloomberg quicktake, quicktake originals, bloomberg quicktake by bloomberg, documentary, mini documentary, mini doc, doc, us news, world news, finance, science, how I got here, chris paul, marc cuban, investing, entrepreneur, NBA, crypto, Elon Musk

Id: B73ebBNrjmg

Length: 21min 23sec (1283 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 21 2022