Mark Cuban's Full Talk Live at Inc.'s GrowCo Conference 2014 | Inc. Magazine

so mark thanks for being here you know fixer we have entrepreneurs up here all the time occasionally we have billionaire entrepreneurs I hear all the time what we rarely very rarely have our billionaire entrepreneurs who have been thrown through a table on WWE Raw who check out RKO - who shaken their ass when front of 23 million viewers on Dancing with the Stars there was a lot in the shake upin find 1.3 million dollars by the NBA and who still found time to run a company and create a fund that would compensate the families of fallen soldiers in Iraq I imagine we're not gonna have too many entrepreneurs like that for a while so it's a distinction you hold for a while okay don't worry about it um now mark you happy when you came out here the condition was that you would come out of your shell you you'd be afraid you wouldn't be afraid to speak your mind I'll hold you to that okay I just got a Warner but if anybody is upset by cursing first of all screw you but you were going to be a felon so I apologize in advance all right mark congratulations uh you I just learned the other day that you are going to be waving the green flag at the Indianapolis 500 next week yes I am and then we just have two entrepreneurs here this is relevant because to wave the green flag you've got to go up top of a tower and I am scared shitless of heights and so if you see a guy go up and down and up and down before you get to the top that'll be me so it's kind of like my own little fight your way through it and you know deal with it type thing so that's going to be interesting oh that's great that is this a something you've always wanted to do no I literally wanted to see if I can climb up there and actually do this and I would scoot Indiana so I have a lot of friends that go and I've and I've gone to the race and um so it'll be good to see a lot of friends and it's just one of those I I didn't want to ever think that oh I had a chance to you know way the green flag and not do it so I had to do it now that news captain week in which you start on shark tanks final episode of season 5 in which you appeared on the Billboard Music Awards yeah and gained some notoriety for poking fun at jay-z yep you were all no one else would do it by the way no one else would do it that's why they gave it to me everybody else was afraid I was like afraid of what you know I guess you know I still haven't figure out what but yeah other people like back down from that as interesting so they were talking about it ahead of time huh yep um did you ever say to yourself why did this happen to me I mean did you always believe that you were destined to be a billionaire oh hell no I mean yeah every day I look in the mirror and you know I just make sure I don't pitch myself so I don't wake up um and I don't take it for granted and yeah I all the time I say why me and you know you learn in life that a lot of things are the result of effort but some things in terms of scale or random you know I I was you know well-off by the time you know I was 28 29 I retired at 29 I literally retired at 29 about a lifetime pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a madman and get drunk with as many people as possible and I was happy right there but then when we started the streaming business I knew it could be something big and I remember telling you know it was a company called audio net we had 10 employees and I'm ever telling everybody that if we do this right this is a multi-billion dollar idea and if we don't we're going to kick ourselves and so once we got audio net started I knew I had a chance to to make an obscene amount of money and and you know if I really bust my ass there's a time in every entrepreneurs life and he realizes that you know this is his calling or at least that he can't bring himself to work for anybody else that he's an entrepreneur when did that moment come for you um I had a job out of college working for a bank for a short period of time Mellon Bank and I am decided to well first it might have been ink magazine this is way back when but there was an article about using changing something in how you deduct social how you save Social Security from employees paychecks and literally hadn't been working there for three weeks and so I sent it to the CEO of Mellon Bank hey I thought you might be interested this literally some guy he never heard of and I got an OPEX said thank you nothing and okay you look my whole job my whole motive in taking a job working for somebody was to help them become more profitable that's why I always looked at it and then I started a rookies Club where I reached out to some executives and all the people who had started at the same time at Mellon Bank we don't go out and get a drink and we'd get this executive start and I didn't like run it through my boss or anything and so my boss at the time calls me in and said you're doing this is I said yeah I think he's going to say great it's just her screaming at me and rima me how could you do this you go everything through me you work for me yeah it so I knew I wasn't destined there and then left and I went down to um ended up down in Dallas and got a job working for a company called your business software and we were we sold software and I didn't know anything about software I took one computer class at Indiana and kind of cheated to pass but not that I condone that but um and so I had a customer and I thought might stay up all night teach reading I think you know computers were new and technology was new this technology was new so no way had a head start of me because it was changing so rapidly like it is today that if I just put in the time I can learn as much as anybody else and so I taught myself I'd stay up late reading software manuals um taught myself different little simple programming languages and kept on getting bigger and bigger and better and better but it was at a retail store and one of my responsibilities was to come in sweep the floor wipe down the windows and open the store and I had a customer who wanted me to come out there and close the deal and it was a fifteen thousand dollar deal fifteen hundred dollar commission to me told my boss he said no you need to be there to open the store and I made the executive decision that I was going to go get the check because you know I was living six guys in a three-bedroom apartment sleeping on the floor and this check meant I could like not use the same holiday in towels with holes in them that I'd stolen you know um but anyway so I went and picked up the check thank you when I came back and gave the check to my boss all would be forgiven and you know the sales cures all fired me fired me and so those back-to-back experiences confirmed what I already knew that that I was a shitty-ass employee and then I better start mine but your first entrepreneurial job really was the bar at at the University of India yeah Motley's pub Motley's pub yeah I wasn't 21 so let me take a step back I played on the rugby team and we would have fundraisers we figured if we party as hard in as well as we did we were really good at it that we can make I figured we can make money at it too so we turned into party promoters and we throw these parties and they got bigger and bigger and bigger and home at this one bar and um the bar was getting ready to go out of business we were really their only source of business and he said well why don't you buy it and so I took and this was right before my senior year I hadn't turned 21 yet I took my student loan money and another buddy took some money he had and we put that as a down payment on the bar and we opened it up September 27th um and there was lines I mean lines because you know our my idea of carding you know I wasn't 20 why just turned 21 by the time we opened my idea of carding people was like aunt okay go ahead and go ahead and so there are lines everywhere and it was the hot spot on campus until we had a wet t-shirt contest what happened in the wet t-shirt contest you don't know what happens at what t-shirt contest I don't know what happened in maybe one explain so I was carded because I knew we would be under some scrutiny so I literally was actually carding and I'll never forget out this person I'll get to in a second I remember looking at her ID vividly and it was a good ID and thinking okay all good and so that the wet t-shirt contest goes off without a hitch and the local newspaper writes an article about it and mostly because we were a student bar and all that kind of stuff student run and run bar and turns out they had taken a picture of the girls on the bar wet with their t-shirts on um and turns out one of the girls was 16 but she was on probation for prostitution at 16 she doesn't look like it I thought she was a junior and Finance you know I and that got us closed down so and you know those are one of those you know kismet things one of those things that turns out to be good for you in the long run because otherwise I still might be bartending and throwing wet t-shirt contests and Bluma didn't okay somehow I doubt that yeah I don't know she was a five no just kidding so uh let's go back to that retail store where you found out that you were a shitty-ass employee okay and had to be an entrepreneur the company you started was micro solution yes sir tell me about that um so I took Mike when I went to close the deal and he fired me I took the check back um I'm not stupid I might not be a good employee but I'm not stupid because I was going to have to do all the work to install it anyways and they didn't have anybody else who could who knew the software could integrated etc and so I started a company called micro solutions but before I could even get it off the ground because I didn't have credit to go by that software and I had to get credit setup and I really didn't have a way to get started so I went to this other company and I said look you were looking at buying software from me over here but I got fired um I don't have any money I'm sleeping I'm living living on the floor six guys is a three bedroom apartment I have my two polyester suits that I bought for $99 that stand up in the corner by themselves Toofer madness you can never go wrong um and but I don't have the money would you front me the money I was a company called architectural lighting and I told them look I promise you that if it does if I can't make it work and you're not happy I'll just come work for you and work work it off right and they fronted me the 500 bucks I took that money started micro solutions went back was able to finalize this other deal with the other company and that turn that got me going with micro solutions and seven years later um I sold it and mentioned I bought sold my company sold micro solutions we saw her for six million dollars and I learned to party like a rock yeah that's when you got that air pass my lifetime passed in American Airlines yeah a lifetime pass lasted about two years until you uh well no no no no no the the lifetime pass has lasted a lot of years um I retired it when I bought my own plane and gave it to my dad yeah all right big context where everybody get it wait here I got it with me so I sold my company and obviously I won I was 29 I went out with all my buddies and we drank too much not that it ever really happens very often but um and so I we were at a steak bar sake restaurant and it was one of those old-school steak places that had phones you could plug in right like real old-school and you know I could barely see and they're like um you know what do you want you gonna buy a car and now I'm not into cars the house no I'm fine where I live I want a life I want to see if they have a lifetime pass in American Airlines cuz I traveled so much with my company that I wanted to just be able to relax and go have fun so I called them up and they said yeah we sell these air passes so for $125,000 I bought 125,000 miles for me and somebody else for the rest of my life and so this is what it looks like and I used to be able to just literally I would go out with friends and we'd go you know go drink in LA fly to Vegas fly somewhere else you know let's go to Moscow okay let's go to Moscow I mean I don't know why I stopped that but it was fun it sounds like a good investment yeah it was what kind of plane did you buy I bought a g5 Gulfstream Jesus I've heard of those yeah did you buy that over the phone as well know about that online it was the largest little I've reached out to him and said I wanted to buy one and they said okay but I said and I hired somebody to be my pilot and we had to I wanted to test fly at first and so they took me on a test flight Mike this doesn't suck and um went back online and sent him the filled out the forms and everything online sent him the email and said okay send me the wiring instructions and turns in and we didn't think about the time but it turns out it ended up in the Guinness World Book of Records one day my my buddy's like going through the the Guinness World Book of Records and he's like you're in here for the the largest online purchase ever made which it still stands to this day on 41 million dollars for a plane and I could tell you without hesitation is really good to be able to do that does that like change that recommendations you get on Amazon yeah okay um after that came so after micro solutions and a six million dollar payday came audio net which was really really the thing that made right about six years late five and half years later Mohammed um so broadcast comm what made it so great um well okay let's take a step back um a buddy of mine that I went to school with Todd Wagner came to me and goes look the Internet is just now starting to happen and he had talked to some guy who had this idea of trying to get sporting events on pagers beamed you on pagers I'm like that's ridiculous um the Internet's just happening there's no audio or video on the internet there will be eventually let's figure out how to put audio and video audio first and then eventually video online and so literally there was no place to get audio or video online and so I bought a Packard Bell computer set it up in the second house second on the second bedroom my house got an ISDN line which was broadband back then 128k set up set up a website and figured out how to send audio over the Internet and initially what we would do we worked went to some local radio stations and said we want we we're going to hook up an eight hour VCR with an eight hour VCR tape then we're going to encode it to put it in a digital format then we're going to put it online on this website when we're going to require some special software because it was a pain in the ass to get online back then and we're going to see if anybody cares and this is how Cape you know I would tell people this is how cable TV started you know maybe the same thing will happen here and we put it online called it audio net and I just went everywhere I could and told people you need to check this out and all of a sudden started getting people from all over the world you know basically downloading streaming these these replays of radio broadcasts that we had and then soon after some people came out with software to stream live we integrated it into audio net and started going out and locking up deals with radio stations and sports teams and so literally all the initial streaming that ever happened happened on for the happen on audio net we were kind of the YouTube of the start of the Internet and we just grew that and grew that then did video and just dominated audio and video until we sold to Yahoo five point seven billion five point seven billion dollars that was in 1999 at a time when a lot of companies were getting pretty huge valuations yes could someone do that against someone replicate that kind of success oh yeah you see look at whatsapp or I can should you know yeah if you're kind of ahead of the curve and you can anticipate where things are going you know the beauty of whatsapp wasn't messaging there was IM forever but they went multi-platform and went everywhere around the world what seps not huge in the US but it's huge everywhere else and being able to get onto lower end phones across the world took something that was really pretty simple and not technically difficult to do and turn it into you know a mega sale so yeah the you know anything's possible well I mean does it take a bubble you sold in 1999 which we now know as a bubble of whatsapp sold now maybe to now and maybe now today is a bubble yeah it's not a bubble yeah it's definitely out above I mean um you know when I sold um when we sold back then you would go places in you take a cap somewhere and people would be talking in a language you didn't understand except you would hear stock symbols dündar that of the Netscape stock did it at a broadcast Comstock dead of I got a cell you know and that that's not what happens today I mean most people here probably aren't even vested in the stock market and if you are it's you know probably a 401k or some other fund and you're not trading back then you know every other commercial you saw was today trade and every other story you heard was somebody making a killing you know day trading some stock and so completely different beast today so you came away from that deal with a couple billion dollars um a lot of people lost that money that they made in those days in the crash that followed why didn't you well I'm one I wasn't greedy I mean you know I want to see him okay so we sold and then right after I sold and call it I did something called a caller where I sold calls and bought puts to protect against their going down and right after I did that and mentioned it I went on CNBC and they're like don't you feel stupid you know the stock is up another thirty percent I'm like yeah I feel real stupid flying around on my g5 now when I can pay for it um but the bigger point was I had been in the technology business for so long I had seen the PC bubble come and burst I had seen the local area and wide area networking bubble come and burst it was no shock that the the internet bubble was going to burst you know and again back then people actually in all three of those bubbles there was a lot of individual buying and selling of stock now it's almost impossible to really be good at trading stocks because there's so much money chasing it um so I don't think we're in that type of scenario again uh let's talk about the Mavericks okay um when you bought them it was a losing franchise um you had a few billion bucks to kick around why did you invest it in a losing franchise and the in the basketball game um one I was a season ticket holder um I'm ever going to the Mavs game started in 99 2000 season and it wasn't a sellout there wasn't a lot of energy in the arena of the arena I'm like Dan were undefeated right it's the first game of the season this is the time to be excited you know and you the context is you know at that point in time the Mavs had been voted the worst professional sports franchise of the 90s that was that mean they were horrible and you know paper bags over the heads type horrible um but I mean I was always been a basketball junkie you know I loved basketball I still get out there and play if I don't shoot just go out there and shoot you know I feel like I'm missing some feel right um so it just made sense and having just sold broadcast comm you know what could be more exciting than to take your favorite basketball team and try to turn it around and then you know having this big German guy that's been with us ever since doesn't doesn't hurt either so let's look at the maps as a business challenge okay so as a business what you have to do when you saw it but first first thing I had to do was change the culture right because everybody in that organization was just beat up and had just tried to overcome the fact that we were losers right and felt like we were losing organization so the first rule I installed was if you mention a win-loss record you're fired period end of story because we don't sell wins or losses the one thing you can't control in sports is which games you're going to win or which games you're going to lose but what I could control was the experienced fans have and from then to this day you know let me take a step back culture and then I also had to explain to our team and to the entire NBA I got a lot of hate from the NBA what business we were in you always have to know what business you're in right and everybody thought we were in the basketball business it's an NBA team we're not in the basketball business you know we're in the business of creating experiences and memories that's where and I had to try to explain to everybody then and a lot now still that having to creating a great experience at a Mavs game or any NBA or any sporting event is more like a good wedding right at a great wedding you know aunt Suzie who you've never seen take a drink as her one glass of wine is tipsy and she's dancing with you know cousin Johnny who's all goth doubt and you know painted black and we're all you know doing the Macarena or you know some line dance with the Brian the groom and everybody's loving every minute of it and can't believe it and it's unique and when you go to a great sporting event you know when you you feel an energy when you walk into the door and that energy is the first thing that sets it apart and you always want people looking up at the court you want them involved and just the opportunity to to be there when Vince Carter hits a game-winning fadeaway and people you don't know you're hugging you're kissing you know people are running in the streets and jumping up and down you know it's just completely unique and different and so I had to really change the culture to remind people that we're here to create experiences you don't remember the jump shots you don't remember the score the games you've been to you remember who you were with you remember you know hey that was I went with my buddies and so-and-so got drunk and passed out I had my first date why'd you go in the first date to a game because I didn't have to say a word right we talked you know huh you know you know I whatever it is I went with you know for business and close the deal whatever it is that it's what makes it memorable or you know we all remember the first time a parent took us to a sporting event you know and those things are memorable those are lifetime memories and it's unique in sports to do that and that's what we sold so you know and I got a lot a lot of grief there as well in terms of trying to tell people the old-school guys that no we don't sell basketball no one comes to see a basketball game you know we're very few people do they come because it's special unique experience I'm surprised you got resistance on that from the basketball league oh yeah I mean because they had always been you know there are a lot of people that felt that if you couldn't hear the squeaker squeak the sneaker squeaking it wasn't really basketball um and so what I did was set up a mic on the court and stream just the sneakers so you could hear it didn't go over very well but it allowed me to it allowed me to kind of scent make a point with all of them and you didn't get fine for that though I probably did you good yeah out here it's so funny you know you talk about changing cultures and organizations and then being the one that kind of says it I don't care I got to do what I think is right um part of what I think is important is being able to to relate to people that I work with or that work for me um so that I don't want them to think I'm special I want them to respect me for the job I do um and to work their ass off to help us accomplish our goals but one of the first nuts first with first few road games I went on was to Minnesota and I thought you know what you know if you watch an NBA game there's all the different guys who are sitting on the ground next to the bench right and then when guys come in they get their gear you know they give them the warm-up jackets or take them you know take whatever it is and you know give them the towels and all that kind of stuff they just sit on the floor I said I don't really know these guys I'm just sit on the floor next to them during the game so I'm just sitting there I'm just watching again I get a call on the next day from the league saying that I was getting fined $100,000 I'm like what what did I do I make sure they yell at any reps that game what did I do they said because I slept sat on the floor next to the equipment people that it was conduct unbecoming an owner and they were finding me and it's like okay um I'm gonna do it again and if you don't like it well you know you'll keep on finding me which they did um until they stopped but everybody in my organization knew point blank where I stood and you know I think it set the tone and how to communicate with me and my relationship to them this question probably answers itself but you know you were fined a total before Stern left of 1.3 million dollars it was more than that I think it was like one point seven or eight but who's counting but who's counting yes I couldn't you and he just get along we got on great we got a lot great right we just didn't always agree on everything and the few things we didn't agree on you know he had the authority to find me on and you know when he find me it would so it's always fun to me it's like your dad getting ready to spank you right hey I'm doing this for your own good right you know and I bend over and pull down my pants but um but at least David use lotion but I didn't know where those boards would hold no um but yes literally he was like look it's not me it's the other owners who think that you're trying to show them up and this and I'm like okay you know this is how I've always run my businesses and just because it's the NBA's there's no reason to change there's enough I'm a big believer that you always reiterate you always learn you always realize your business is evolving and there's there's nothing that you just stay pack with you always try to change and part of meet changing is taking chances and yeah you know some of the other owners are going to disagree they're going to be upset and that's okay you know this is a business expense and he'd say I understand you know but I got to find you and you did hmm look at moving to a kind of a more somber note but related to Commissioners the new Commissioner Adam Silver has recommended to the owners that they force Don sterling to sell e LA Clippers the vote is the week after next I think how are you going to vote we'll find out um I know how I'm going to vote but that yeah I don't I'm not ready to make any announcements well what do you think about the recommendation that that sterling be banished from the league's you know I can make an argument for both sides but I think it's something that Adam had to do um I think there was a lot at stake for the NBA as a whole as a business um but as I've said outside the business you know the NBA can be a leader in culture a lot of times and you know what we do sometimes is reflected in in culture and you know it are in different areas by different people and you know there's always a lot of independent consequences and it's going to be interesting and you know to see where what happens after our vote um you know I called it a slippery slope in it and it is but you know that's separate from what we have to do and what's the right thing for our organization I take it that Sterling's attitudes are not widely shared among the owners but how do you prevent that kind of ugliness from getting out and how do you keep it out of the lead you don't you know there's no law against stupid you know I learned a long time ago you can't you know talking not from Acts but you can't beats to people stupid out of people you know you can't talk stupid out of people you can't expect stupid to disappear or dissipate arm you can try to help people who are and that's typically what I try to do when I find it in my organization's but I also try not to be a hypocrite um I know I'm prejudiced I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways you know and I've said this before if I see a black kid in a hoodie at night on the other side of the street bouncing you know I'm probably on the same side of the street I'm probably going to walk to the other side of the street if I see a white guy with a shaved head and lots of tattoos I'm going back to the other side of the street right if I see anybody that looks threatening you know probably chances are there's part of me that takes into account race and gender and age you know I'm prejudiced but other than safety issues I try to always catch my prejudices and recognize and be very self aware that you know my stream of thought is never perfect and I've got to be careful and you know to me that's part of growing up and that's part of you know it's what I try to instill in my kids that you know not none of us have pure thoughts we all live in glass houses and that part of maturing is recognizing when you're having thoughts that probably aren't right catching yourself and going forward um but not everybody does that and whether you're an employee or an employer you know people are going to be stupid and make mistakes and the thing that scares me about this whole thing is I don't want to be a hypocrite and I think I might have to be you know and that I you know being a hypocrite bothers me more than anything after my family so it won't be fun a hypocrite in what way well you know I just said here sat here and said I'm a bigot you know I just can say it out loud let me um create a no qualify that because someone's going to take it as a media thing right I've always got to be careful now um you know I think we're all bigots right I don't think there's any question about that but I also think that I I was raised I remember when I was one of my earliest memories my father telling my uncle was the superintendent of the DC school districts in the 60s all right and um I remember us sitting down and and being very clear to me that the way we think in this family is that everybody's equal that if you go back and look at the history of people who have been oppressed um that's never been for a good reason and it's never valid and it's never acceptable and if any of everything and anything you possibly can do treating anybody differently for race religion or any other reason is wrong um but that doesn't mean you're not going to have those thoughts from time to time right we all we all succumb to those thoughts and you've got to realize that when you have those thoughts they're wrong and as you know my point in saying all this is I do you know like I said I'll go to the other side of the street um but to me that makes me a hypocrite in some respects by trying to hold somebody else to a different standard so sure that'll be all over the place I think what you just said qualifies you for this sort of hypothetical thing that I X I want to put you want to make you Commissioner of a lot of different things that's never going to happen eeeh let's make you Commissioner first of all of US patent law okay I'll take that job you've been sued by patent trolls what would you change um I would get rid of software patents all together um I read somewhere that Apple had in 1989 Apple had one patent one I mean back in the early days of computers no one talked about patents right um major OBM had some you know but the compacts the you know Microsoft had some once they got big but you didn't really think about pets I mean look at there used to be Intel versus AMD there were Clone Wars right you know and you would have compact which was a clone of the IBM PC and that was okay right as long as you did it thinking independently in a cleanroom you could have clones and you know that that's inconceivable today yet that pushed things forward like Steve like Steve Jobs said and you know he stole things better than most everything is a remix arm and I just think that patent law right now holds us back in every which way shape or form and there's places for it in physical products there's places for it in biological biological but in pharmaceuticals arm but in software there in particular there's no place for it I get sued it's okay so I in 2006 I have Landmark Theatres and a company called Magnolia Pictures and Magno is a distribution company and we were looking for ways to compete other than traditional distribution of movies traditional distribution of movies you you have a movie do you buy it you you come make it and then you distribute it and you spend a lot of money in advertising and then you just pray people get off their butt and go to the theater right you hope your advertising would good in work and I thought you know what 2006 television is just really pushing digital um and with VOD and pay-per-view its hosting on their servers is digital it's no different than YouTube you know you host you encode it hosted on the server and you stream it and so I thought okay well let's take our movies and put it in online for unput it on VOD for DirecTV Comcast charter etc first before it's in theaters and by doing that we wouldn't have to spend spend all the money on advertising because you know the Comcast and the charters etc would run all the commercials to drive people because it was found it was found revenue for them and we did that and it just blew up right we were making money everybody was happy our the producers the people who created the films were thrilled things were going great and and they still are to this day somebody decided to patent the idea of if you release a movie before it's in theaters and distribute the film digitally through a wireless connection and they got a patent they literally copied my idea and all he did was add okay if it's distributed wirelessly and then they showed me I mean what the is up with that I mean is the dumbest ever and that's just the perfect example of for software in particular it makes no sense none I mean the software is is math you know copyright it yeah if you have particular functions whatever you've written great you know get your copyright but um then even then oh we can argue both ways but patents that's ridiculous all right all right you're also the Commissioner of the economy you have a Mark Cuban stimulus plan mm-hmm how do you fix the economy um okay I'm telling exactly how you fix the economy student loans okay right now we've seen college tuitions skyrocket and they've skyrocketed because of the easy money that's available to colleges if you want to go to college today five years ago you go out get a loan and it's guaranteed by the government great well it's easy to get that loan because the government guarantees it and because it's easy for you to take out a loan it's easy for the colleges to s4 more because then the potential students just take out bigger loans right all those bigger loans that are guaranteed by the government have led to a trillion dollars in student loan debt a trillion dollars that's more than credit card debt that's more than auto debt right I don't know if it's more than mortgage debt but it's probably pretty close now if you take that trillion dollars and think what was there before we wasted that trillion dollars right well those are that's the same money that when you graduated you used to move out of the house or when you leave college you know you rented an apartment or you bought a house or you bought a car or you didn't have to buy a 2 for $99 suit like I did or you know you went out and spent money in the economy that improve the economy and help companies grow eccentrics created more you know revenue more spending power for everybody in this room instead it's going to build you know a better fitness center at your school right it's going to increase tuition which is going to more administrators so Mark Cuban is running the economy I go and I say Sallie Mae maximum amount that you're allowed to guarantee for any student in a year a semester in a year is $10,000 period in a story now the the downside of that is about 50% of universities are going to go out of business but it you'll see what it's like what happened to the newspaper industry it would be reformulated they'd be smarter they'd be more efficient um and which is on the magazine business right there was so much money invested in printing presses and in physical locations and with so much debt that when they were deleveraged they imploded in a lot of respects and the same thing will happen to universities but the next generation the kids that are getting ready to go to school at the year after that happens they're going to graduate and actually be able to pay off their tuition you know within a reasonable time um and be able to spend money of the economy and actually help the economy so you know we can talk about you know Republican or Democratic approaches to the economy but until you fix the student loan bubble and that's really where real bubble is and the the tuition bubble you know we don't have a chance all this other stuff is shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic probably fewer kids to go to college well yeah you know or they'll go to different colleges I get I get emails now okay I'm looking to go into this college but I went to any anniversary I love in the end of University and someone asked me you know should I go there and I said how much money are you going to have to borrow and they're like basically student loans and Pell grants etc all of it I'm like no don't go there you know you've got you know the smart thing to do now is find a local Community College take all the classes that you have to take up front right the cycle intro to psychology intro to this intro to that just make sure it's transferable but find you know the best place you can Ford without loaning money get your you know your freshman and sophomore credits out of the way and then go to another school that you can afford and you know if enough people do that tuition will come down but if you put a limit on how much money can be guaranteed loans it's over everything changes great right mark um let's talk about Mark Cuban the businessman okay what's it like to work for you I'm a dick no not really um haha at least one person told me not but act now it's totally different than than before because I'm not as day-to-day with all my businesses but I'm very when you first start working for me directly for me I'm micromanage until I trust you so you're going to get back and forth with me daily continuously like I started this app this app literally started in myself called cyberdust cyb er dust dust2 words available on the iPhone store now Android in a couple weeks and I did in a response to fighting the SEC on when the SEC sued me they took every message and email that I had and created their own context for it and so now to get your question so I went and I have these guys who are working directly for me now and 30 emails back and forth or 30 or more cyberdust messages a day going back and forth where I expect quick and direct and precise answers and I expect action but once we get going and you start to understand how I think and what do I expect excuse me then you give me weekly reports and that's pretty much how I work with everybody now um unless it's a start-up like cyberdust two words cyb er D UST are great messaging app and what I'll do is I'll ask for a weekly report you know Friday Saturday Sunday or Monday so they don't come at once I always want bad news first you know I don't want that oh we had a great week you know Billy brought it you know great I'm sure Billy had fun um I want to read goddamnit we lost this sale you know and here's why because I expect you to do well I'm not in it because I think you suck right I think you're good but every company is going to have setbacks I want to know where what those setbacks what those problems are so I can help you and whether it's a start-up whether it's something I created whether something I invested in that I'm active in or it's a shark tank company that I'm active in and I'm active in all of them um that's how it's going to work and you know and if things are going well then it's easy it's just a weekly report and I say thank you and that's it yeah um what is your favorite shark tank company they're all my babies yeah um I've got a couple that I like a little bit more um there's a company called simple sugars um there's a woman by the name of Lanie Lazzari who started at she had eczema when she was a kid so when she was 11 she started putting together these face scrubs and body scrubs out of fruit and different components as she started refining it and she's in Pittsburgh my hometown and she got into a local grocery store and had like 40,000 in sales got onto shark tank and with when she was 19 and within 30 days of airing she did 974 thousand dollars in business and scrubs and so now she's killing it and the good thing about Laney is you know I expected her to be very needy you know lots of advice all the time the exact opposite she's like okay here's what I'm doing mark leave me alone if you have a problem say something but otherwise you know get out of here and yeah I got an email from her now it's been probably five months mark I got a million dollars in cash now what should I do which is kind of emails I like to get mom you know I got an inquiry would she sell and I said Lanie we might be able to sell for three million dollars give or take she's own hell no you know like what she's like no I mean you know we're gonna do three million in sales this year I want to take this to 30 million in sales and I don't doubt her at all she's good and you know she just turned 20 um so that's one of my favorites um there's another company called tower paddle board which is stand-up paddle boarding this guy had the worst presentation ever that got a deal not the worst presentation ever in Shark Tank there are two doctors that earned that award but uh you guys know that what I'm talking about I had so much pleasure anyways um but this guy came up came up um Stephen Aris tall and started talking about paddleboarding and just melted down just then you know one of those and it's happened to all of us but sometimes you've got to see through you know what's on the outside and get to the core what's in there and all the other sharks wink you're an idiot da da da da and I'm like no this I like it because you know it's a growing industry you know the industry called you know how you're going to sell the products through SEL it's not a huge capital investment for the marketing it is somewhat for the boards but I can finance that and so now I mean he's returned all my money and then some and he's just growing every month so you know has been a record month and he keeps them coming up with new ways to sell building boards he's moved some of the manufacturing from overseas down to San Diego and across the board a little bit of Mexico and and just grown and grown and grown and and so those are two great examples and on the flip side um the only businesses I had problems with the first one I did company called toy guru the very first one I did when as a guest shark went out of business um you know they don't want to work she wanted to be on Good Morning America and be on TV um and then the second one is out of business but she's not smart enough to know it and I know I know I have a problem when I'm like your sales I'm sending you so much business the show sent you so much business that's great sales are going but I'm looking at your cash and it's going down you know something's wrong and you know then I dig into the books and you know she's making 40% margins on the product but she's losing 50% on her shipping costs and so I don't think she still realized it but um so that was that she's you know she's limiting her sales which is good you know you don't hear me say that very often but in this case the less she sells the more she makes um but other than that um you know it's I love being part of it um most of my businesses are at worst you know losing a little bit with the chance to grow and at best like Laney ready to skyrocket let's talk about the other sharks you know you see them when the cameras are running yeah so tell us what would surprised us most about you fellow sharks you know one by one if we if we were to see them the way you see them I think people expect them to to be the same like off camera as they are and so like with Kevin you know he's a jerk on camera and he's a bigger jerk off camera no Kevin's actually a good guy he just has his own way of doing business I think we we all get along right um but where you see tension with us um on this on air is because when we film we get there like we start season 6 in a couple of weeks I think we start shooting June 14 and you can tell the things that are shot the first couple days of shooting because we're all excited to see each other and it's fun and it's competitive and by the tenth day of ten hours a day you're like I just want to knock this out you know you know seriously because this guy's this a wimp or a woman right this sitting next to me and I'm sure they say the same thing about me and they all have the same things right so here comes Kevin's next licensing deal and so that's where you get me given what I mean right and though but then Laurie afterward you know Laurie is going to go out and is going to take 15 minutes to explain how you know when she was young um she was struggling and hang in there and she loves what you you're doing and oh my god what a great product it's not a zero it's definitely a hero but it's just not I mean and she'll say the exact same thing and so and again they probably say the same thing about me but when you hear that same thing is like you know Groundhog Day um and yeah and then you got Robert right Robert is great guy great guy but he's so syrupy oh my god you know Robert is it hot outside yeah but when I was in Croatia and he's so naive to UM everybody here over 18 okay no yes okay um there's this spray that came on right where it was a better taking it vitamin ingesting which I thought was a scam in the first place but it was like vitamins um and you sprayed him in their mouth right and he's talking about she likes it I think it's a scam and Lori say well there's some people you know they can't take vitamins orally and da-da-da-da-da and Robert with a straight face as he's saying this goes to Lori goes so Lori do you swallow and the best part is the best part is there's no husband in the background right and you hear his name Bubba that did not make it on air or you know and there was one I think it was it was there was a deal called morning head and the producers are smart right they know when it's been long days for us and they put the silly ones towards the end of the day to kind of re energize us or towards the end of all the shoots and um Robert didn't get it would die and David and I are just dying I mean would every time there's times like I wish you guys can see the outtake reels um like on TV these deals like ten minutes long eight to twelve minutes long in real time the stupid ones last twenty minutes um like the good businesses that we all want that we compete for that we're all very interested you know the longest one is two and a half hours right it was this plate topper guy um and so they can go on and it gets really really really intense and so you know you and so and the progression is we don't shoot these by episode right there's a reason why we all wear the same clothes every time because we start at 8:00 8:30 in the morning and then they deal walks in like if this is the shark tank they walk up and they'll say this is Barbara and Michael that's all we know and Barbra and Michael will start talking and that's why you see us pick up our pads because we're not allowed to have phones or computers or tablets and we start taking notes because we have to remember and that's the only way we can do it and so they'll do and the deal either closes or it doesn't then they'll bring it the next one and the next one and the next one and so you know over the course we'll shoot like ten days I forget the exact amount ten days in June and another ten or eleven in September but so in each one of those pods by the time you get to the end we're sick of each other right and we'll have our giggle fits you know we'll have our mad at each other and just and it creates an interesting dynamic that comes through on the show but it's all real none of its scripted when we're mad at each other we're mad we truly are very very competitive um we each want to beat each other for a deal where we like the deal and we all get annoyed with each other like I said but it's real but it's fun and you know I'm proud to be part of it um I'm glad to hear that somehow but glad to hear that it wasn't scripted or faked in any way that's not well now okay so to finish through now do all deals closed no right so after a deal we're allowed to do due diligence and a lot of times I'd say 30 percent of times people fudge the numbers and one way or the other um or they don't even have books and you know and they said they're all you know because we'll ask questions that don't show up on air do you have a bookkeeper do you have an accountant you know do you know what are the procedures you take for this this and this because we want to know if it's a real business that we do get to do due diligence after the fact and we'll do it and you know they'll say on air oh yeah it costs me $1 per unit to make this widget and then you do the due diligence it's like yeah it's a dollar to make if you sell a billion you know you've sold 13 and you know um I had another one where I was really excited about the business and it bummed me out because the husband of one of the entrepreneurs was somebody who thought it was unconstitutional to pay taxes and I tried to explain to the lady who do you think they're going to go after right they're not going after him right they're going to come back and tie it back to me and yeah I have corporate protections and this and that but I don't want to deal with you know deal with the hassles of it all so you know there might be different non-business elements like that um it might well be literally you know they don't have any books it might well be that they came across really really well but they don't fully understand everything that they were saying you know I had one little deal that um they had I asked him how much debt they have and they said oh I have we have no debt and then we went to do our due diligence it was like $60,000 in credit card debt I'm like you have $60,000 in debt well that's credit card that's not really dead and and then the other thing the final thing to know probably 25% of the companies that come in and pitch to us don't make it on air and so um you know there for those of you who dream of going on Shark Tank even if you make it there and even if you pitch there's that 25% chance that you don't make it on air even if you're dressed like a shark we're gonna I'm going to open this to questions in a few minutes but I have a couple closing questions I want to put two more you know one of the things that I didn't mention about Mark Cuban's week last week was that he was exposed over the last couple of days as having funded the wedding of a couple who were afflicted by cancer and didn't have the money to go through with the wedding this was an anonymous gift well not exactly an honest but it wasn't anybody that Mark knew do you do that a lot yeah but the deal is they're not allowed to say anything on this couple did so I was not happy um yeah I mean there's a lot of times when I'll find somebody in need and try to do something but the quid-pro-quo is they're not allowed to say where it came from I just don't I want to do it because I'm selfish and it makes me feel good I want to do it because I'm selfish and I think it's the right thing to do but I never want to do it because okay here's what other people might think and so you know I was I was happy for this couple but I wasn't happy you know when they try to make a media event out of it why do you do what you do you have more money than a person could spend on a lifetime you don't have to go to work you don't have to work on these companies you invest in you don't have to work on Magnolia you don't have to even work on the Mavs very much if you don't want to why do you because I love to compete right I mean some somebody out there is competing against me I won't kick your ass right I mean you know I say it all the time that business is the ultimate sport you know I'll sit down with you know different players we'll talk business and I'm like look you know in NBA games 48 minutes you practice a couple hours a day take a day off here now and then to rest in sport in business it's 24 by 7 by 365 by forever and you compete against everybody and you don't even know who your competition is as often is not um and I love it right you know I loved it when I was the young kid you know trying to kick ass of everybody older now the older guy and I'm every 18 or 19 year old you know young gun trying to come in and thinks they're the I want to knock the out of them you know um it just I just I just love the competitive aspect of it um you know and that's the way I am whether I'm playing pickup basketball whether I'm bowling with the kids you think I'll let my four-year-old beat me hell no I'm just kidding but um maybe um but yeah I just love to compete and it drives me all the time yeah because I you know it's more the marketplace of ideas you know I want to know that in this evolving world that not only I can keep up but I can continue to excel and have an impact and you know whether it's helping Shark Tank companies go out you know and look the reason I do Shark Tank isn't to try to make more money off the deals even though every deal I want to make money off of and even more so I want the entrepreneurs to be very successful make money but Shark Tank sends a message to everybody that the American Dream is alive and well it's number one show in all of television watch by families together I every where I go you know there's a parent pointing out their child whether they're six years old even 10 11 15 whatever it may be you know we talk about valuations we talk about why is this person able to start a company from their idea and make it the shark tank and be successful why couldn't we do it you know my daughter came home one day all upset because she was she was mad because someone had started a business in her class she's 10 someone had started a business in her class before her and it was like an insult to the Cuban family so I had to help her start a little band business and all this kind of stuff and she sold one and quit you know um but yeah it's just I just I love the competitive aspect of it it's just it's like playing chess why don't you know why do people play chess knowing you know the realm of moves you know but even when when you're get to be a chess master there's other chess masters you want to beat or you want you want to outperform and and to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in it's just a continuous intellectual challenge that that just really you know motivates me cool so I get you like to compete now this morning Burt Jacobs who's sitting right over there had a kind of metric that I thought was really interesting for measuring whether you have for lack of a better word whether you have one in life okay you like to compete for you how do you know when you've won in life yeah in life all that is the measure for the victory for you oh that was easy I was poorest living on the floor and I had already won right I mean it has nothing to do with money if you can wake up in the morning with a smile on your face excited about the day and say you know what I'm gonna get it done today I'm gonna do something I love to do then you've won right it's not so much about money or anything like that I mean I didn't know I mean I knew I was going to go down swinging but I knew there's a chance I could fail and if I failed you know I was going to keep on trying but you know like I said I love to compete so even when I had nothing I had everything and and I could I would have been satisfied but I want to thought I'd failed so

Channel: Inc.

Views: 396,657

Rating: 4.8831615 out of 5

Keywords: Inc.com, Mark Cuban (Organization Founder), GrowCo, GrowCo Conference, mark cuban ted talk, mark cuban full onstage, Mark Cuban Interview, Marc Cuban Interview, mark cuban audiobook, marc cuban, Mark Cuban Inc, Mark Cuban Growco, mark cuban inc interview, mark cuban talk, mark cub, mark cuban interview inc, inc magazine, mark cuban documentary, mark cuban how to win, inc.com videos, mark cuban growco interview, mark cuban talks, marc cuban inc, mark cuban entrepreneurship

Id: A2kjYnmFv0U

Length: 60min 18sec (3618 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 10 2014