FULL SEND PODCAST - Mark Cuban x Nelk Boys | Ep. 50

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Mark Cuban on Bill Gates Stealing His Girl! Presented by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer. Find Happy Dad near you http://happydad.com/find (21+ only). Video is available on http://youtube.com/fullsendpodcast/videos. Follow Nelk Boys on Instagram http://instagram.com/nelkboys. Part of the Shots Podcast Network (shots.com). You can listen to the audio version of this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & anywhere you listen to podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We want out. We want out. We want out. We want out. So what are you in Vegas for, the Summer League? Yeah. Nice. How's that been? I like you got all the sponsored, man. You all shark tanked out. You got to get the Happy Dads. We've got to get the Happy Dads everywhere. I know, I know, I know. I know. We don't do. We don't do. We don't do. We don't do yours, only yours. This is our Seltor, Happy Dad. I knew you had that. Yeah. We launched about, what, a year ago now? I know you guys have been killing it. I think we're actually, I don't know if you've seen our, when we do our tours with Happy Dad. Like, we physically shows up to the liquor stores. And it's

always like crazy we're actually going to bring uh we're going to do a b sb with jamie oh that's even better we're going to bring him to one of our tours and like help promote bsb yeah yeah that's been awesome yeah yeah i love that stuff how's the summer league you know ups and downs yeah i mean it's cool just to see everybody but um you know watching other games they're just sloppy right but they're fun you like anybody yeah i mean like our guys jane hardin yeah yeah he's jett hard he's really good what about uh chat hologram he's got a lot of people you know he's going to have to get younger, but he's talented. Yeah.

Talented, I think Baccharas is going to be really good right off the bat. Jabari Smith, I didn't really get to see play yet. But, I mean, all these guys are talented. Yeah. You know, and even if they don't, like, just dive in and hit it running, they're going to figure it out. They're just that good. Any of your guys out here watching?

Yeah, a bunch of our players are out here. Reggie Bullock, Dwight Powell, Maxi Kleba, Josh Green, Theo Pinson, Christian Wood, a whole contingency. That's good. You think Vegas is ever going to get an NBA team? Yeah. How do you think it'll do here? It's all the NHL.

Yeah. I mean, if NHL does well, I mean, it's just, if they just play the Lakers and Clippers, everybody will just come down from L.A. and just tear it up. But, yeah, they'll do great here. How do you go about, like, buying a team like that? You make a lot of motherfuck of money first. I mean, seriously, I mean, it's just, you know, it's just you've, the prices keep on going up because the business keeps on getting better.

And it's getting to the point now where it's almost impossible for a single person just to buy one. You know, so now you're seeing ownership groups come together to buy teams. And, you know, and there might be five, 10, 20 even organizations involved. But that's what it takes. It's just, it's expensive. What's like the business model of like owning a team? Like is it when you take a stake in a team, is it like a long-term play? Are you like cashing out like along the way?

It just depends. Like for me, it was more about winning, you know, and just because, before I bought the MAVs, the MAFs sucked, right? And, you know, and I've been a basketball with junkie as long as I can remember. And so it was really, all right, are you doing this as a business or are you doing it because you love basketball? And I'm truly a ball as life guy, man. You know, some of the best parts for me are going out before a game and getting shots up or shooting with the guys or, you know, just, yeah, no, it's really cool, man. And so, you know, I put, you know, winning over profits and always have. I mean, most of the years I've

had the team I have not made money. You're like a, you're a player's guy, though. You have a good relationship with all the players off the court. Pretty much. I mean, I'm not close to all of them.

It's like any other business. You get closer to some than others. You know, you know, I was hanging out with a bunch of the guys here this weekend and having fun. And it just depends. You know,

it just depends on the circumstances. You think they, like, clean up their act when you're around? No. No. You know, because it's more can they keep up with me than the train up.

Yeah. All right. Do you want to get in here? Yeah, I just got to change my shirt. I spilled coffee on the shirt. Yeah. All right, we want to give a shout out to the win and excess nightclub. Love you guys.

Honestly, had some good and bad nights here. We were here last weekend, yeah. Oh, you were? Yeah, we're back too soon. We're here for the UFC fight. Oh, wow. Yeah, we're here this weekend, too. I love this spot.

You ever been to any fights? Yeah, yeah. I went to, um, actually got, I went to, um... Brad? Holy. What's up? What's my shirt? You guys got the...

What's my shirt is that? It's not my shirt. That is not your shirt. That is my shirt, bro. This is not my shirt. I dropped coffee right when I came in here. I'm sorry. This is an intimidation thing for him or what's going on? I had a shirt. Yeah, you might as well not wear a shirt. We're going to start doing push-ups. No, no, no, no, no. It's not what it looks. Like, I swear I spilled coffee. What did I miss? Nothing. Nothing. We just get started. Okay, cool. No, I wanted to bring Mark on too because the new thing you're doing with the pharmacy and the drugs. That's interesting. How does that work where you're getting like the drug prices lower?

So, you know, everybody has known somebody who's just been messed up because of pricing the drugs, right? And in this day and age, to have to choose between your rent or your food or an emergency or your medication, that's just wrong. And so, you know, when you look at what I like to do as a business guy as an entrepreneur is look for industries you can disrupt, right? And when you see something that's been done the same way all the time, that's usually a good signal, time to take a look. And when you look at the pharmaceutical industry, there's these things called pharmacy benefit managers that just act as middlemen and just squeeze a little bit from everybody so that, and as a result, prices go up for medications and, you know, even stuff that should be low cost, isn't. And so what we said was, okay, could we create a drug, I don't want to call a drug store, but could we create a platform where we could sell starting generics and then brand name drugs cheaper than everybody else? And if we do this outside of the traditional system of the existing system, can we be profitable and can we grow this thing so that we literally can change the game for medications? And that's what we did with cost plus drugs.com.

So we buy, rather than going through these pharmacy benefit managers, we buy straight from the manufacturer. We post the price that we pay for it for, pay for it right on the cost plus drugs.com, mark it up 15%. Add three bucks for shipping and handling, five bucks for shipping for three bucks for pharmacy handling. five bucks for shipping that. So the main hit is transparency. 100%. Yeah, because you don't know, like, if you look at their price of insulin or something, you have no idea why it costs, what it costs.

Yeah, because I know that it could be a lot cheaper. There's a lot of things that can be a lot cheaper. I mean, there's drugs, like there's a chemotherapy drug in Monotap, I think, is pronounced. And if you don't have insurance and your doctor just prescribes it, and that's for someone who has leukemia, it could be as high as $2,700. We sell it for $54. What? You know, it's that big of a price difference?

Yeah, it's insane, right? And they, look, when you're sick, you find out you have leukemia, you go to the hospital, you go to the doctor, I mean, you're not in a good spot as it is. And they say, okay, you know, here's what you need to pay this or die. How can they mark it up that much? Pay this or die. Control, right? Does big farm have like a lot of control over?

Yeah, I mean, it's not even the manufacturers. It's all these middlemen that just take their vig, take their vig, take their vig, right and then the next thing you know unless you are you know have great insurance not just good insurance great insurance you're paying a shitload of money for it and there's nobody to stop them that's why we're in the game that's why we're out there how pissed like borderline criminal that they could like yeah they're pissed off you yeah they are right you know our partners and stuff they're already telling them you know you know they can't stop them per se but they can you know they all have contracts and it's like you know this is the way we're enforcing the contracts

and so we might not be able to deal with this one company or manufacturer today but the minute that contracts over they'll come and work with us do you think that you doing this will make other people other companies start to like follow suit and start to change their models yeah there's two parts of that right why doesn't someone else do what we do exactly yeah and you know in the past they have tried but what ends up happening is those big pharma companies just buy them it's like you guys know as an entrepreneur right someone walks in and says 200 million deal they're going Yep. You know, we'll take it, you know. And then they just control it. Yeah. Then they just control it. So that's happened in the past. Yeah. Yeah. But my next dollar is not going to change my life. And I get a lot more enjoyment just fucking them up. It's different. Yeah, it's totally different. And so I've been through that side. And so that's on one side of it. So that's why people haven't done it before. And in terms of can someone else now come in and do it, it feels the same way, yeah, they could. But that's not a bad thing. You know, I might not make money off of it. But at the same time of going forward, everybody gets their medications at a price they can afford. And, you know, You know, you don't have people die.

No, you're actually making change. Change in the game. Yeah, we're changing the game. So I'm down with that. Didn't Amazon buy a pharma company? Yeah. And pill pack. And they're doing it too.

But Amazon, you have to be a member. And most people are. But their prices are just higher. You know, could they match it? Yeah, obviously they could even undercut us and subsidize it. But at the same time, Amazon's so big, they don't need to do that. Yeah. You know, they don't want to lose money on this because if, you know, they start subsidizing

it and losing money on it, then all of a sudden. And, you know, that it's big. This is a big industry, right? It's not like it's just $10 million, why mess with it. You know, that's real money that they would lose. So I have a question. I want to take it back. Uh-huh.

Okay. Because you said something earlier about, like, identifying something and disrupting it. Like, that's how you make moves now. Before, like, because you started something that was pretty groundbreaking. Yeah, we started the streaming industry. Yes. Yeah. Right.

Extremely groundbreaking. Yeah. And that was like your first, like, big success? Second. Second big success. So I have a question for you. Do you think that, like, people, like, because I also know that you kind of came from nothing. Just normal family, yeah.

You weren't handed anything. No, nothing. Do you think it's harder for people now to reach the level of success that you have because of a saturation? No, no. I think it's easier. You think it's easier. I mean, look at you all, right? You all have good idea, good connection to people, right?

Just went for it. And when other people might say you do A, B, and C, or you should do A, B, and C, you did D, E, and F, right? And found your angle. you know, the only thing that can stop you is, would it work or, you know, was it a good idea or not? And that's the thing. Like, you have so many tools. Like, back in the day, you know, you had to buy these big computers and, you know, shit was more expensive. Now you get a laptop or an iPad and you get an internet connection and you can have any tech company. The world's more right now, I think. Social media too. And I mean, look what we're doing now,

right? We're doing this and you're going to have it up on YouTube and streaming it and millions of people are going to be able to get to it. Yeah. And it's not like you're spending millions of like a TV show or a movie would have been 25 years ago, right? It's actually easier. Now, on one hand, the tools are cheaper and more accessible. The other hand, there's more competition. Yeah. And I also say like there's less, I mean, it seems like there's less space.

You don't know what I'm saying in the sense of more competition. Like, you know, back then you could create this streaming thing. But now it's like there's already a thousand versions of it. Right. But look, again, look what you guys are doing. And so you went from, you know, it was all about Instagram. Instagram and Snapchat to here's TikTok, right? And you, if you're first and you start rolling on TikTok, you got an itch. Then you got, you know, YouTube, right? So look at how YouTube's evolved

and were you guys, you guys, how long have you guys been doing this? The podcast? You've probably been doing YouTube. I've been doing YouTube 10 years, 11 years almost. How much has it changed? So much. Oh my God. Crazy. The evolution of YouTube's insane. Yeah. I mean, and I could take you back 20 to 1998 when we started doing the first video podcast or internet broadcast. And a lot of of this it was the same stuff right the exact you sit there this type of stuff only and you can stream it live only look like a posted stamp right yeah but you know it just takes creative people who are curious to try new things that have the balls to go out and do it yeah you know what's funny is i see you on ticot a little bit yeah hell yeah you're doing the dances go oh yeah yeah i'm doing the dances

i saw it the other day yeah i'll give it to you are you is it on your page or is that your daughters oh nice yeah so you're just having fun with it yeah why not man you know because if you're going to be in tech and you're going to be in marketing and you're going to know how to start a business and run a business. You've got to know all the platforms and you've got to know what's going to work and what's not going to work. You got to look like you talked about YouTube and it's changed, right? How you get paid on YouTube through, how you promote, right? What works and who doesn't work, right? Who's big? Who's not? Who's coming? Who's going? And, you know, and then all of a sudden someone comes in, okay, we're going to roll up all these guys, right? We're going to create a network

of all this. And those come and those go. And so you've just got to stay on top of it. I got to stay on top of it. That's the only way to get ahead. How do you identify what's next? You know, I just read a lot, right? I'm just one of those guys that just consumes information. I want the internet or where? Everything. Yeah, everything. Anywhere I can get, I just try to learn. And you've always been this way. Yeah. Yeah. I've always been like a knowledge geek where it mostly tech, but it could be anything. I just anything business related, technology related, marketing related, you know, culture related. I want to try to stay at top of it. You know, Steve Jobs had this one quote that really stuck with me. He said everything's a remix. And if you look at the early days of the Apple

products, there was this company back in the day called Xerox Park. And Xerox came out with the first mouse-driven PC. But their marketing sucked. And they had no idea what they were doing. No one knew what they were about. Steve Jobs came in, a little bit of this, a little bit, remixed, and bam, right? All of a sudden you got Apple and then a Macintosh and then they're- Yeah, he made it sexier. Yeah. And then even he got fired, right? He got fired from that company and then they had to bring him back to make it work. And so, you know, for me, the more you learn, the more you know how to remix. And that's what this is all about. So, you know, how do you go from YouTube, which was the first platform for video that got big to Instagram, to Snapchat, and know, okay, do I want to be on Discover? Do I want to be

on Reels? Do I want to be on TikTok? You know, and if I do this, you know, how's YouTube going to treat me? And all the decisions you guys have got to make on a daily basis, you know, and the fact that like we're just talking, you created all these products and you wanted to be organized. organic, that's a business decision too. And then you have to learn by trial and error, right? You were curious about what might work. You know, obviously you're, you know, you're walking proof of what does work, right? And now you've got to be able to continue to make those decisions. Because in this business with all the margins on these products, everybody's coming at you all the time, right? Yeah. And they think they can do the exact same thing, but it's not that easy. But for me,

it's like, that's why I try to stay ahead. Because whether it's artificial intelligence, whether it's VR, whether it's crypto, whether it's Metaverse, all these things may not be prime time yet, but I want to know when they will be and I want to be out front when they, when they are. Have you ever made any major mistakes, like any big issues where you're like, where you miss like, you miss the ship, you missed the boat on it. Yeah, lots of times. I mean. What was the biggest one?

Ring. No, that was not my, that was not a shark tank at least. A shark tank, no, it wasn't or missed at all. No. No, I still wouldn't do that deal. Why? So all respect to Jamie, the guy who started. but I've and same thing like my biggest biggest miss probably was Uber right because the guy before

Travis Kalani his I was an investor in his previous company it was called Red Swoosh we made money and we sold it and we did good and he brought Uber to me it was called Uber Cab and I still got the emails but his whole thing was you know he was just going to go into every municipality and just say fuck it all we're just going to start and I'm like all the taxi cab commissions are just going to just sit on you, right? And you're going to have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to do tens of millions of dollars in business. Talk about it, like a revolutionary idea. No, and it was amazing, right? And I thought it was, and, you know, it wasn't that I was wrong on the idea. It was just for the execution, it was going to be, it was going to, you're going to have

to raise so much money that you get diluted to next to nothing. Ring was the same way, right? You know, it's great they sold for a billion. It's the doorbell thing, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, more power to them. But they had to raise $400 million. And if they weren't but they wouldn't be here. So it's high risk. And it's just as an investor, you keep on getting diluted and diluted and diluted till you start off owning 15 or 20% of the company,

then you own one half or one percent. When you're as successful as you are and you miss these, do you care? Does it haunt you? Yeah, I mean, no one wants to miss, you know. But producing since it was like Uber was like a layup, you know. But, you know, I recovered. I'm okay.

I feel like you can't get too pissed at the ones you miss if you're getting a lot of Ws too. Yeah, I mean, and that's it, right? I mean, you know, whether it's cost plus drugs, which is like we're already, you know, in our projections, we're five months in. We just launched January 19th of 2022. And where we're at today, we expected to be two years from now. And we have a chance to add a lot of really impactful drugs here.

What do you think that is? Well, we always knew that there was a market, right? I mean, anybody, you know, that's out there, or your mom or your dad or your grandparents or whoever, you know, if we go to cost. plus drugs, and you put in the price you're already paying, and then you see we're 10 times less or 50% less, whatever it is, like, okay, and now you're getting that prescription because something's wrong, right? Because there's a health issue somewhere along the line. And whoever you share that health issue with, you're telling everybody else. Yeah. Right? So if you have leukemia

and you need a Montaab and you were, you know, you even see somebody was paying $2,000 or $2,700, And here it is, you came in and bought it for $54. You're telling your doctor, who's telling the other doctors. Because it's such a necessity. Yeah. And all the people, when you're sick like that, everybody gets in the same Facebook groups or whatever, Twitter groups, you know, and they communicate with each other. And you're like, oh, let me help you out, right?

Stop paying that money. You stop paying that, you know, co-pay because this is better. It sounds like you're really trying to help the people out, though. If you go from $2,750 to $2,000, like, you could be selling it for more than $50. I'm surprised you're not getting more pressure. I'm surprised more people aren't being like, what the fuck are you doing, Mark? Are you ever scared, like fucking around in that industry? Because I feel like that's a scary industry to not really scared.

But I know they're going to try to fuck with me. They already have. Like I told you before, right? Yeah. You know, live up to the letter of your contract. You know, maybe you shouldn't do business with cost plus drugs. We're already hearing those stories. But that's okay.

They can fuck with me. I'm good. Is there any like media stories coming after you or anything like that? Any which? Like media coming up? Yeah, there's been little things like, you know, where it's like, well, this isn't all that right that people are making out to be and i'm like fine i don't care about that just spell her name right because this is one of those things that you know if you make people a little bit

curious i mean who doesn't want to pay less for their medications yeah especially if it's like a life life for anyone anything right it almost sounds too good to be true it's so good well that's what people say right that's that's the rip on it right no it's mark Cuban you know he's not doing this for charity what the fuck right why why is he doing this my next dollar is not going to change my life but the ability to say you know what what did i do right yeah Look at all the shit, you know, that the farmer bro and all the publicity he got for that. Now, just imagine turning it the other way and saving lives and making people's lives better. Yeah.

I mean, you know, I don't need my name on buildings, but that's why I put my name on this drug, on this company, rather. It's called the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company because I wanted people to know. It's like a legacy thing. Yeah, and I'm serious about it. I want my kids to be proud of it, you know, that this is going to be around for a long time. I love it. How do people find it? What's that?

How do people find cost plus drugs.com. That's it. cost of getting out there you're just like word of mouth we don't spend a nickel on advertising not a penny what's the plan B prices compared to like regular yeah a lot cheaper yeah no it's not our price is always the same our price is always the same cost plus 15 percent the three dollars for handling five dollars for shipping he's got a customer and for contraceptive and for plan B he's like what's that website yeah you could order like a dozen of them right as long as the doctor prescribes them it doesn't matter you won't need them don't worry about

Yeah, I'm guessing. I mean, we're getting a baby mama. He's not weird. We're getting a baby mama, maybe. I have a question for you though, like personally, and I, and I've always wondered this, like, you, you're a billionaire, got all the money. You can do anything you want in the world. Like, what do you do on your free time?

Like when you can do anything. Yeah, now it's my kids, right? My kids are 12, 15, and 18, so I'm at that spot now. We're like going to play one-on-one with my son is pretty cool. Just, you know, my 18-year-old daughter's getting ready to go to college. So just getting any of her time is cool. And then my middle daughter's, you know, is just unique, man.

She's just, she's crazy, and I love hanging time. So that's really like my number one priority now. But, you know, I was here in Vegas this weekend, and there was the Encore Beach Club, and, you know, our guys were there. And so I'm not above hanging. You were there? Behind the chain smokers, weren't you?

Yeah, yeah. Chill. You know what? You guys couldn't hang, but that's okay. Yeah. I don't know about that. I don't think you want to go down that road. No, trust me. I don't want to go down that road.

Trust me, you know, I have a lot more experience. But what do you, what do you, so if it wasn't family and if it was not business, what do you enjoy the most? You play golf? I'm not a golfer. I hate golf, but I play pickup basketball. So like a couple times a week, I'll go play pickup basketball, go work out, you know, go hang with my friends, whatever, chill. But now, you know, it's family and business and and working out more than anything else. What drives you, if it's not money now? Is it just like winning? Oh, competition. I love that. I think a lot of people, too, like we're not obviously on your level, but. I think people always think it's just about money too, but sometimes it's just about like achieving something. Oh, no. You want to prove people wrong. Business is the ultimate sport. You know, I wrote this little book called the sport of business and like 10 years ago. And it was only 94

pages because I wanted to keep it really, really short because I wanted people just to bang through all my experiences. Yeah. And it's all about competition. Because, you know, like I've said to our players, you know, Luke or whoever, it's just like, look, you bust your ass. You get to be one of the top 450 players in the world in the NBA, but you only play nine months. It's a 48-minute game and you know exactly who you're going to play. In business, like you guys know as well as anybody, you don't know who the competition is. It's 24 by 7, by 365, by forever, that you're competing. You know, you can think you're going to take a minute off, but you can't, right?

And when you get to that point, like where you guys are now, you dream about it, right? You wake up and you're just consumed by it all the time. Does that sound familiar? Absolutely. Yeah, right? where you're just like, and the minute somebody says something that you think might even be a smidge in a competition or even challenge you a little bit, you just bow up, right? It's just like, you know, but you know, just like, you know, if you're working out,

if you want to get to that next level, if you want to get better or whatever sport, you've got to outwork the next guy or the next woman. Business is 10 times harder. Who's like some of your competition, though? Like who's keeping you up at night that you're like, nobody. Yeah, nobody now. The warriors or no? Because I could.

Well, what? What? What? I said the Warriors. I don't know. No, that basketball. Like, you know,

my jump rate. But like the other business moguls. Like, yeah, outside of sports. But yeah, trying to win, right?

You're gonna box Jeff or something? Like, what's going on here? Nah, man, no. No, boxing Jeff? No,

no, no. No. Bezos? No, he's, no, he's working out. He's looking jacked. He's looking jacked. Yeah, he's like your shit.

Yeah. He's wearing the same size teas as you made. He's wearing the same size teas as you made. He's medium? Yeah. The Smedium? Yeah. I didn't do this on purpose.

I swear. No, I don't care. I get accused of wearing Smediums, but for no good reason like you. I'm actually embarrassed. How about Bill Gates? No, I mean, look, those guys have earned everything. He's not going to encore for sure. No, he's not a story, though.

I'll tell you a story about in Vegas back in the day about Bill Gates. Oh, yeah. Okay, so this was way back. There used to be like the biggest trade show in the world was called Comdex. It was a technology trade show. And it was like 125,000 people here. And I was, I started my company. I was like 26, 27.

And literally right along this. And so I just thought I was a badass, right? And so I'm hanging with these girls. And this was right when Microsoft had gone public. So one day no one knows who Bill Gates is. The next day, like, he's the king of tech and all this money and all this and that. Do you have money at this time? I was maybe worth a million dollars.

Okay. Right. And so I'm buying these girls drinks and doing shots and everything. And they're like, I got to go to the bathroom. literally, I think for real. And then they don't come back. And I'm like, what the fuck? And then my buddy comes back.

Yo, do you know who Bill Gates is? No way. Bill Gates, Rob, but Gates took my girl. Did that fire you up? That should have motivated you probably, right? Yeah, it did motivate me, right, to find, go on to the next ones. Such a good story. Oh, yeah, but it's true, 100% true.

Was he like a cool guy back then? I didn't know him that well. The only time I ever really met Bill Gates was right after I sold Broadcast com and they invited me to give a speech at another conference and bill gates was speaking right before me and they told me when i would go on and speak and i'm like the only reason i'm doing this is because bill gates is talking right before me and they're like okay whatever so i get on there and i said you know what i'm excited to tell you i sold my company and finally after all these years bill gates is my opening act oh he got so pissed and i've never talked to him since

holy shit it's today not to this day wow not that i've had any reason to talk to him Beef in the tech world, though. Beef, man. Yeah. But that's online somewhere, me saying that. So it was just like. Didn't you used to throw a lot of college parties back in your day, too? Oh, my God.

Yeah. And after college, too. So my sophomore year at Indiana, we rented the Bloomington National Guard Armory. Because I had to pay for my own school, right? So I always, I was throwing parties or doing whatever. And the Bloomington National Guard Armory held, I don't know, 1,500 people. And so this was way back when. And so we rented it.

and got some friends that all kicking some money, rented it and rented school buses and told all the kids at all the dorms that we were going to have free beer. And it was 10 bucks or whatever to get in. And we just had, you know, just school bus after school bus going back and forth this is how you were paying for things. This is how I was paying for college, right? And so I did that. You're profiting off the parties? Oh, hell yeah, I was profiting off of the parties. And having a good time. And having a good time. So like even fast forward to Dallas. And, seven years, eight years later, there was this part of Dallas that's called DeBellum. And all they had were these big empty warehouses.

So my friends and I were looking for a spot to throw a real party where we can make some money. So what we would do, we found this place that stored Chucky Cheese characters. And it was just really crazy and insane. And we cleaned it all up, rented it for $300 a month for a couple months. And we started throwing these life in a warehouse parties where we would buy these kegs, and we would when a guy would well first we our deal was we would print up business cards

there were pink business cards and we would print thousands of them so we handed it to girls and it had the time and the address and the date and all that kind of stuff and we had white business cards where we handed it to like a hundred dudes that's it a hundred business cards and so we knew there'd be thousands of women and it was 20 bucks to get in and

the guys got a cup for the beer and the girls got a $10 bottle of frizzle net champagne and every single girl that came in got one i mean i don't even know how many hundreds of bottles when it was all said and done we had collected 40 grand and made like 35 thousand dollars off of it you're talking about a night a weekend in the night at one single night yeah 40 grand yeah yeah so we did a couple more sleep in a profit or god we're taking ells like what the fuck we're fucking spending that

unfortunately i feel like you know that's crazy yeah i mean yeah it was yeah we did it Right. I mean, my senior year in college, before I was even 21, I would throw these parties, too, at this one bar. And we would throw them and we were doing well and making a little bit of money. But then the owner said, look, of the bar we were renting, it was like, look, we're going to get kicked out. I'm not making any money. Would you buy it? And one of my buddies who had already graduated had a little bit of money. And so Evan put up the money for us to put a down payment on this bar. We redid the whole thing, renamed it. Motley's Pub. And literally, I took my $2,500 in student loans. And if we had not had a line to get in the first night, there wouldn't not have been a second night. So started, paid back my, got set up and everything. And so we opened in September 29th. And on February 12th, I never forget, we got busted. And so, but for those months, we were like the bar on campus. But then they shut us down. But yeah, we, so I've been in the bar business, the party business, the party promotion business. What's the key to throw in?

the best party like what's the number one thing that you like you got a having women there oh yeah yeah mark knows the shit that's all the matter so how do you get the woman there like what's the key like what do you go at the best part of throwing a party is that like if you're the promoter the best part is not the party it's going out there and promoting about the party yeah right like we would have these little business cards printing out the pink business cards and just going to every bar every club everywhere we could and handing out the invites introducing yourself talking meeting and all that um But then just getting there, just have a decent DJ and just a good vibe and an angle. Like for us, you know, it didn't matter that the champagne was cheap.

If a girl thought she was going to get a free bottle of champagne that she could watch. And no glasses, by the way. They had to drink out of the bottle. There were no glasses. And so we would just have this little angle, right? And then at the end of the night, we had champagne bowling where we took the extra, the empty kegs. And we would line up all the bottle, empty bottles of champagne. And we would have bowling matches where you would just bowl the empty kegs.

So we, yeah, we did it all. Did you ever have like an appearance or anybody show up? No. No. No, we didn't need to do any of that. Damn. So as far as, as far as like you're, you have all these like things making money, how did you start to identify this on a business tip?

How did you start to identify like what really works? And then when you started to grow and get, get more and get more like, how are you identifying what were your better ideas versus your worst idea? It wasn't so much that I came up with ideas. It was more like, what do I know? What am I good at? What am I good at? So I was always good at sales.

And then I got better and better and better tech. taught myself to write software. So let me take a step back. So I went to Indiana, graduated, did some stuff, went back to Pittsburgh for a little bit, but then ended up in Dallas living six guys in a three-bedroom apartment, got a job working at night as a bartender slash barback, more barback than bartender, but then got a job during the day working for a software company. And I don't really know software at the time, but I'm like, okay, you know, I can teach myself

this stuff. And so I literally just spent time teaching myself out of write software, teaching myself about all these different software programs and got better and better until I got fired. And then I'm like, okay, I'm living six guys in a three bedroom apartment, sleeping on the floor. I got nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing to lose. I mean, my car, the way I got my car because my first car blew up, I'm driving down the

side of the road. And I was one of these guys where there was always bill collectors chasing me, right? So I knew the whole drill. And so I saw a car just sitting a transam that looked like it was legit sitting on the side of the road. and I told my guy, stop the car. Somebody abandoned that car, right? That Trans Am.

Door was unlocked. We reached in there. There literally was the loan papers for the car sitting on the front seat. So we get back, I'm like, this car is abandoned. I'm going to tell whoever the bank is that their car is there. You pulled a GTA. You stole the car. I didn't steal it, right?

I did not still pull the GTA. What I did was I called the bank and said, look, somebody's not making the payments on this car and they just abandoned it. If you let me take over the payments because my credit was shit, Yeah. So then that's how I got my first car. But then, you know, I started this company, microsolutions after I got fired. And, you know, to your point, how do I know? Right. At the beginning, I was just learning shit and just selling people that I can do this, right? Just like with this, right? You're proven the point that it works for you, right? And that you can get this, these people can get results. And that's what I would do. Right. I would say, okay, here's the business.

I understand your business. Let me write the software for you. And if it works, you pay me. And if it doesn't work you don't and then slowly but surely i just added another customer another customer another customer that's how i built it was it was like the first thing you coded for someone oh it was baby fair it was a company that sold baby clothes baby's clothing to walmart and they needed a way to to track everything and to interface with walmart and so i would just stay up all motherfucking night literally teaching myself how to figure all this out reading stuff just okay whatever it takes because it was do or die and um i wrote that software program them, they referred me to somebody else who referred me to somewhere else. So do or die,

but it is like, did you, you knew how much you were going to get paid if you were completing it? Yeah. So I told them, you know, two grand or three grand or five grand or ten grand, whatever it is, but if it doesn't work, you don't pay me. So you, you yourself knew how to code. I taught myself, yeah. Oh, wow. Do you know how to, can you edit at all? Can I what? Edit? We're looking for editors. No, like my video editing skills suck. Oh, right. Did you ever want to learn that? I did at one point, but it was like old shit. Like now it's, you know, it's all different. You've got to be like, that's like a new wave. No, for sure.

Like with all the special effects and everything and AI and all that, it's all changing. Yeah. But you know, if you guys, I got a company, synthesia. Dot I.O. So you can like do your stuff in multiple languages. Oh, wow. Like YouTube channels? Not subtitle it, but like once you train.

So if we're sitting here having a conversation and I go through this training process, so you sit in front of the camera and you talk, you say the things that they want you to say so they get all the mouth and facial gestures. gestations or whatever, then they can then take that and using artificial intelligence make it look like you're speaking as a native speaker. So we could all do that right now. It's harder with multi people, right? But if you did it one at a time, that's where the technology kind of is right now. But let's just say you want to do a promotion in Swedish, right? And you want to say, hey, that's so awesome. Yeah. So you could just do it. It's like 30 bucks a month to sign up to do

a basic account. And that's the type of stuff. But it's amazing. We could do like a happy dad commercial and like Hungarian. In Chinese. We got to do that. Yeah, we do want to try you. 27 different languages. Chinese too?

Yeah, you gotta do it. What's your idea? No, why don't you pitch it? No, it's not an idea. It's just this,

the whole like AI thing, like the future of where all this stuff. So like you want to sell your stuff on Alibaba right? Yeah. And you want to do it in native Chinese. That is so insane. So what's it called? Synthesia.

S-Y-N-T-H-E-S-I-A. You got to do a happy-de-commercial. I'm going to do that one. I'm bored on a Saturday. Yeah. It's cool. I mean, it's like,

why not? But learning that, all that AI stuff, right, that's just keep them pushing the envelope and because like, I've got a good business head

and sales head, it's like I can mix those things, remix them together to make things work. Does that, yeah, does that like industry or like concept,

like the AI, like, because I've seen things where like you could make someone it almost say something completely that they didn't say. You can do the deep fakes, right?

You can make it look like someone, you know, you put someone's face on someone else having sex. Is that not concerning to you? Yeah, fuck yeah people could like frame people and shit

yeah yeah but you can on the internet it's like you could say anything it's a fucked up situation where it's like and it just becomes true and everyone goes they run with it you just gave Steve a new idea no oh my god no but you can tell right

you can still tell the novice can't tell right but if you put an expert there you can tell right yeah protect everybody from Steve yeah that's not that's not that's not possible it can't be protected from Steve

not to completely switch up but are you what do you think about the crypto future of crypto and all that I'm still bull on crypto on bullish obviously you know it's way down right now i mean i took a hit everybody took a hit on crypto um you know so crypto divides into two different categories if you will there's store value which is bitcoin right bitcoin i don't care what the maxis say bitcoin's worth what somebody will pay for it you know what the maximum number of bitcoins out there are going to be right 21 million that's it

right and that's a good thing but you've got to have people who want to own it and hold it in order for the price to go up yeah and what happened when everybody was buying it price one up. It's a store value. It's driven by supply and demand. I think it'll replace a lot of gold holders, people who in the past have owned gold. Because no one owns physical gold. It's really just a digital transaction anyways. And Bitcoin's a better version of that than gold. So I think Bitcoin's going to be okay, but where the price is going to go and win, it's just supplying them. What about Ethereum? Ethereum I like the best, right? Oh, me too. But here's why. So Ethereum is driven by utility, right? A reason to use it. You know, Bitcoin Maxis will tell you that there's the lightning

network and you can do wire, you can do transfers, money transfers around the, and that's true, right? But there's, there's like, there's a site called cryptophies. Info, right? And that tells you how much, how much in transaction fees, the network is actually generated. So you know how busy it is and whether people are paying gas fees for transaction. And you can see on Bitcoin, it's been going down, not up. Yeah. And on a. Ethereum, it's the same way, but there's millions of dollars worth of transactions that take place there. The issue is what drove the price of Ethereum up is people needed to buy for gas fees for

NFTs. Yeah. Right? And when everybody was just game over NFTs and everybody was going nuts over, people were minting them, that used gas fees. People were buying them, that used gas fees. People were trading them. That used gas fees.

And so that utility is what helped push Ethereum up. Right. Once, you know, the number of NFT transactions started to fall. then there weren't any natural buyers and then it was the same you know play to earn you know is not going to work the way it's structured right now so you need something that's going to be an application it's like if you think about the early days of the iPhone and mobile computing and we really didn't know anything about apps right and it was just like okay what apps am i possibly going to use then all of a sudden instagram's there social media yeah social media bam right and now all of a

sudden okay everybody's going to download instagram every kid's going to download snapchat every kid's going to download tic talk now right every kid's going to download even the youtube app right and so that is utility that forces people to use your iPhone use the apps or whatever took a way of looking at it yeah with ethereum it's the same type of thing there's no app where you say okay we all got to use it yeah that's what it needs and it's not going to be like okay here's instagram for ethereum or how do you think that happens then somebody just has a smart idea. It created.

Like, like more people got a, it was driving it right, right, the whole time. Right. And I'm an investor

in OpenC and it's been great, right? But, you know, and then played earn, I'm an investor in Axi Infinity, Mavis,

and I think they, they messed it up, right? And they kind of got hurt because they got hacked. And so it's not fully fair. But, you know, you've got to have a reason

for people to buy the, the token, whether it's Ethereum or another one, other than just speculation. Sure. Because when the speculators leave, it's like Dogecoin. Dogecoin.

Dogecoin is kind of the starter drug for crypto. You know, it's cheap, easy, maybe cheap. It is, right? You can't do anything with Dogecoin, though. You can't buy stuff. Go to mavvv.mavs.com. You can buy tickets. You can buy whatever you want.

Yeah, for sure. Oh, wow. You know, when people were buying and trading Dogecoin a lot, we were making thousands of dollars a week, 10,000 week here and there, right? So it was real money for us. But at the same time, once people stop speculating on it, people lost kind of the vibe for it. Right.

Like a novelty in it. Yeah. And it's novelty. but like I got you know back when it was under a penny my my 12 years back then he was like nine he was like oh we got to buy doge coin on robin hood but it was his way to start yeah what's that your kid but yeah now he's not supposed to because he wasn't 18 or whatever but i hooked him up yeah that's so funny he's into that that young yeah and now he said up um he took his PC that he has for school and he um mine's ethereum on it and he's like well i don't think the ethereum 2.0 is

going to happen so i'm going to keep on this kid now he's 12. Wow. He's got a Yeah, he's not a crypto wizard but he knows where the money is. That's crazy. These kids growing up like around crypto now.

It's totally different. Like for us it's so new but for them it's like that's just all they're going to know. Is that influence from you though or from where does he get that? And his friends too, but me and his friends. Like me like you know, he sees me trying to make money and just being an entrepreneurial. So he likes being entrepreneurial.

Yeah. But you know, in crypto in general, you need a reason to buy the token. Right. And if it's just for speculation, it's going to go up and down. It's probably going to disappear at some point because 95% of the blockchains are going to go. There's just no reason for them to exist. But overall, you think Ethereum, Bitcoin. I think Ethereum will survive.

I just don't know what the price is going to be and when. And I do think with Ethereum with smart contracts, you know, like the reason I got excited about Ethereum, I went in and I just, okay, what's all this buzz about an NFT? Right. And so I went and put in an NFT and as I'm setting it up and getting ready to. to mint one, one little field said royalties, right? Because when you mint an NFT and you set a royalty percentage, 5, 10, 20, whatever percent, and then it gets resold, you get paid a royalty.

There's nothing else in media that allows you to do that. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Right? So you guys make money from your selling a product, you know, and I don't know if you do ads or whatever, but, you know, you're a platform. But if you wanted to sell, you know, your podcast, You know, you could, but there's just no way really to monetize it after that first sale.

Yeah. And for most content, there's no way to monetize. Like, you've been in a YouTube game forever. And if it's downloaded or watched and shared, that's it. We actually drop one, well, when do we drop it? Six months ago. Yeah, we did our full send medicard. So we dropped an NFT too.

Yeah. And soon we're going to, we're working on like a new venture. Like we have Happy Dad. We're going to launch like a new one and we're going to make them partners in the venture. Which is cool. So like with the MAVs, though, like for the MAVs, we did an NFT, but the first thing we asked when we, we minted an NFT is what's really our value proposition for us and for the consumer. For the MAVs, we wanted to reward people who came to games. And we wanted to reward them even more if they came to a game early.

So what I, and what I didn't want to do was being a position where I sold NFTs to somebody. And if the price went down, they were pissed at the MAVs. Why did you want to write the game early? Sorry. Oh, just because more vibe, more energy at a game, right? When you walk into an NBA game and you feel the energy, right, that's why you go to the games instead of watching television. Got it.

And so we started creating these NFTs and you can go to mavs collectibles.com, but we gave them for free. So if you go to a MAVs game, get there before the end of the first quarter, scan in your ticket, boom, we're set it up with Live Nation Ticketmaster where we create a wallet for you and that NFT is waiting not long after the game. And then people trade them, buy them, sell them. Some people sell them from more than the price of the ticket. but the point being that I don't want to be in the game

where I'm selling NFTs to try to make a quick buck because when the price go down like they are now your brand is impacted right they're thinking yeah I bought it you know and got my happy dad

NFT but it no go up you could be a hero one day and then the next day that's what's tough about it why do you think the whole NFT thing kind of slowed down why do you think

because once there wasn't enough money coming in right I mean it was all speculation there's like 90% speculation, 10% I just like what I like to own this. You know, like having a board ape, okay, there's still some cash a for it, whether or not you have it as your profile or not.

But, you know, at least, hey, I get to say I have a board ape. And so someone will pay some amount for it. I go like on open sea or mintable or wherever, rarable. And like, I'll look every now and then. If there's something that just catches my eye, it's just cool. And I'll buy it. I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars, but I'll spend $10, $20, $50 on an NFT. if I think it's good

and if you want to check them out I actually created a little company I had somebody come in in code called lazy.com so if you go to lazy.com you can just attach your wallet lazy.com yeah lazy dot com

how did you get that fucking I had it for like forever right I'm like what's what's what's do I have any URLs what's lazy.com it's called lazy.com so if you have a wallet from like most of the major blockchains and that has NFTs in it

you just go to lazy.com you takes two seconds to set up an account you connect your wallets and then you know if you want to see my NFTs, you go lazy.com slash mcubin. And I just put it like in my Instagram profile or put it at the bottoms of emails. That way anybody can look at any of my NFTs and they're all set up there. You can pin some to the top, little profile, all that kind of stuff. And it's free.

Yeah. What are your favorite NFTs besides like bored apes or like? And the met besides the Mavs. Just random stuff like like sci-fi looking stuff and some, you know, just go and check it out. I pin my favorites up there. I like my mutinate, but even more than the high-profile ones, it's more just the ones that I look at and go, that's talented, that's creative. Could I switch it up real quick? Yeah, of course.

What do you think in your entire life, what was your biggest success? Like your number one, you can't say family. Yeah, after my family. Like in your words. Probably going from being broke to selling my first company. Because, you know, when you're sleeping on the floor, eating mustard and ketchup sandwiches. Damn, I felt that. Yeah, going to bars and buying one beer so you can eat all the shit on the bar and all the fried mushrooms.

You know, you don't know. And I remember laying in bed hung over, actually, and just having $15,000 in accounts receivable going, oh, fuck. I, you know, I might be able to make some money at this and it might last. And then being in business, two months, going, it's been two months, three months, three months, right? just like when you guys start this. You don't know until you know. And so that first one is always the hardest because it's just complete terror. But on the flip side, you know, what was I going to do? You know, how much worse could it be? And it wasn't like I hated my life. Right. I was having fun, you know, living with my friends. But it's no fun when you don't have your own room. You don't

have your own bathroom. You don't have your own closet. Did you ever concept like not doing certain things back then? Were you like, I'm just going to quit? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Many times. It's again it wasn't easy you know and you know I got one of my roommates had a job selling burglar bars door to door and I mean like none of us had like cushy jobs we wouldn't have five roommates um but yeah that first one micro solutions was the real deal and then like um and I've told the story before but like we were two years in and we had 84 thousand dollars in the bank and we did you know just like a normal business we would have you know we would do our accounts payable and then we put the accounts payable in the envelope back before everything was just

automated and then we just give it to a girl who did part-time work for us and said you know take it to the post office no big deal right well i get a call from the bank wait i get a call from the bank and you know texas banker sir we have this young lady that just went through the drive-thru and she cashed these checks i'm like what yeah and she like whited out the payee and wrote her name over top of them and I'm like you didn't let her cash him well of course we did we're a bank son what do you think we do 82 of the 84 thousand dollars that we had gone what gone she robbed you robbed us damn renay hardy you never tracked her down tried to couldn't can't find her couldn't find her she must have changed her name oh hell yes hell yes because i've sold this story

and mentioned her name like on national tv her name's for sure she's fucking watching these smiling probably like you can't get me yeah it's just like but anyways yeah so we had to go to all of our vendors and go look here's what happened um you believe in us we believe in ourselves and we'll figure it out and we did what was the first sale of your company what was the amount um six million dollars what was that like like that first it was in the money just come right away or was it like yeah no it came right away and um so million i gave a million to employees i had a guy who i brought in he got almost half and then i had like two million um left after Texas. And the first thing, but the first thing I did when I closed the deal and we got the

checks, we went to this Italian restaurant. And back then, it was one of these deals kind of looked like this, but it had phones that you could plug into the wall. And I was so obliterated, right? I could barely see, barely talk. And all my guys are like, and I'm not into cars big time. And I'm like, well, what do you want to do? I'm like, I wonder if American Airlines has lifetime passes. Because for me, the idea, like, my goal always was to retire by the time I was 35. And when this happened, I was 30, just turned 30. And I was like, okay. So they plugged in one of those phones.

And my guys were just laughing because I'm slurring. And I traveled so much. I knew the American Airlines phone numbers, like 1-800, 433, 6-4, something like that. I bet you that's still a number. And they plugged it in and I called. And I said, do you guys sell lifetime passes? And they're like, yeah, let us connect you to the Air Pass department. And I'm like, thank you, that he met.

They connected me. They sent me the paperwork. And I spent 125 grand of my $2 million. And I got a lifetime pass on American Airlines for me and anybody else to go anywhere we want, first class for the rest of our lives. Do you still use that? I gave it to a friend. My friend has it now because I have a plane. That's a pretty sweet deal.

How do your parents feel when you're 30 or 29, you make $6 million? They were freaked out because my dad did upholstery on cars, right? So if you had a rip in a seat like this, you'd take it to my dad to fix it, you wanted to turn your, you know, El Dorado into a convertible El Dorado. He would do that shit. And my mom just did odd jobs. Did they ever doubt you your parents? No. Did anyone in your circle doubt you?

Oh, yes. Oh, hell yes. They're like, what the fuck are you doing, you moron, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's not like a victory right there. Yeah. Like even if you talk to him now, if you would say, oh, did you think this was going to happen? What they typically say was he was either going to be really rich or really.

really in jail. That's good. And what was the next sale after that? The next sale, well, so I put my money with Goldman Sachs and the guy there was a friend that worked there. And so I told him, I want you to invest this because I'm 29 turning 30. And I want you to invest this like an old man. And so he's like, you're sure, because you got a lot of time.

I'm like, no, because I don't want to have to work again. And I've got to live like a student in order for this work, but I'm cool with that. I got my lifetime passing American Airlines. And he would just start asking me these questions about technology because, you know, writing software and doing all this shit, I knew technology really well. And so as I would answer these questions, I would see these bankers making these announcements about the stocks for shit I was telling them. And the stocks would move like this and this.

And I'm like, okay. And he's like, I told you you got to be doing more. And so I started trading stocks based off of what I knew about the technology and crushed it, crushed it. I was making like 80, 90, 100% a year. And then all of a sudden, he connected me with this guy who wanted to start a hedge fund, just using my trades. And we did that, and that lasted about 90 days before somebody bought it from it. This is just because where you knew, you knew the direction technology was moving in. Yeah, I just knew. I knew technology called, and I was one of those geeks that, like I said earlier, I love reading all this shit, right? So, you know, whether it was then

or now, I just like to just read the manuals, read whatever, because when you know this shit, you have an edge because no one does the fucking work yeah what's the what's like the biggest keys to position your company for a sale any tips on that yeah i mean be profitable i mean that you know now particularly with the markets down profits matter more than anything i think one of the things people get caught up in particularly now is raising money is the end all be off raising money is not an accomplishment it's an obligation now you got a bank or an investor you know or just like okay what are you going to do for me if you can get by without raising money, all the better because you still have complete control. So that's number one. And

number two is people get all caught up on top line. Like my sales went, and I was just as much victim for that as well. My first company, our sales went from a couple hundred thousand to a million to five to 10 to 25 to 30. And I was like $30 million company. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it really came down to profits because you can always find something just to juice your sales. But what matters is gross margin dollars because you got to be able to pay the bills. And as everybody else that you're competing with keeps on trying to raise money, particularly in a market where it's hard to raise money like now, if you're the profitable one and everybody else can't exist without raising more money, most of them are going to collapse and you're the one left standing. If you're the one

left standing, you're taking their market share. I mean, you see it with the products you sell. They come and they go. They come and they go and they think they're going to raise a ton of money, but you guys are making money and you get to reinvest and you get to juice it, but you've got to be making money to have that edge. Have you ever been taken advantage of by any like business partner yeah yeah because um i'm trusting you know so i've had probably 25 million dollars where i basically probably three different deals maybe four different deals where i've gotten just juiced by some guy um or person and and so because it's like okay i trust you i've known you for 20 years those types of things yeah happens it's a part of it yeah yeah i want to hear your opinion

on something this is like way off topic but have you seen you've obviously seen all the brittney Griner stuff. What's your opinion on that? I mean, it's awful. Yeah. Yeah, for her, for her family. I mean, you think they're doing enough to try and get her back? I mean, it's fucking Putin. Yeah. The guy you're negotiating with is the same guy who attacked a motherfucking company is blowing up schools and churches and, and apartment buildings. You're not negotiating with somebody. It's just, okay, let's just have a better negotiation. Sure. You know, motherfuckers dropping bombs on innocent people. Do you think there's any chance we get her back or? Yeah, I think there is, right? I just don't, I don't know what they have to trade.

It was like a marijuana charge or some shit? Yeah. Yeah. CBD stuff. Yeah. What did you say the update was they wanted? I saw something that they want to like release. We have somebody who we have walked up here and they want to do like a trade that we release.

Yeah. I mean, who knows, right? Because then they just snatch somebody else and trade somebody. I don't know. That, you know, that's a hard part of politics, I guess. Yeah. I liked your question earlier. What do you think about where technology is going and like all the AI or like what Elon's going to be

planning with like the robots and. Nerling. Chips. Yeah, Nerling. What's your opinion on like nerling? I think it's real, right? So if you think of your body as a big, one big math equation with just a bunch of different connections, like trillions of connections, once you can get discreet enough to be able to read what's coming out of them, and once you have enough processing power to be able to process what you're reading, anything's possible. You know, and once robots get real manual dexterity, and batteries are strong enough and Terminator is like we're there how far out are we from all this 100 years 100 do you think

I thought it was sooner than that I thought it was sooner than that I don't talk about it like that though if it's so far out no it's that now in terms of like both yeah I don't mean

like planes and you know bombers being able to make decisions using AI that's probably 15 years you know drones being able to make you know based on AI make decisions using computer vision what's in front of you racking what's in front of you

but you know we've been talking about self-driving cars for 10 years and they're you know oh they're going to be here in 2019 they're going to be here in 2021 2020 and it's so hard to solve those problems if you can't make a car drive but do you think Tesla's kind of close though I don't think they're close I think they're trying right because they have to yeah but if you can't make you know as smart as Elon in as smart as everything they're doing is if you can't make a car just be able to drive safely you're not going to be able to create a droid that acts human or anything close yeah that's good point would you ever would you ever get a neuralink if it came out i don't know yeah i don't know would i consider it yeah would i dig into it just to learn about it yeah for sure yeah because why

the fuck not i feel like that'd be scary especially like if you're like 110 years old right and then you know by then you know you can fucking you know almost be dead and look like that and you know sorry hold on i was sitting in the bathroom we asked him if you get a nerd Yeah. Also, do you think Elon Musk is an alien? No. No? Okay, you murder. But, you know, I know Elon like a tiny bit, tiny bit. And how can you guys are never boys? What's that? You think he'd be boys maybe? He's a different. He's a different dude, man. He's a different dude, yeah. So he's a robot then? No, no. I'd be more interesting if he was. But he had another kid, right? This was before the last three or whatever it was. And I'm like, dude, congratulations. How many are you going to have? He goes, sends me a text back.

Mars needs people. no way that's how he texted you yeah that's what he talked with that response yeah i did i did did you laugh at that fuck yeah he gave him shit but he doesn't reply i don't think he likes them so we're talking about the neural links of the future so i'm curious about you um how old do you 63 63 you don't look oh you look good man so great yeah i'm genuinely curious do you you try to train him no oh okay my fault unless you need a trainer i mean i'm sure you got tons Dallas, sorry, go ahead. Anyways, do you take, obviously you take your health serious. Yeah. Do you do anything that's like maybe kind of left field as far as medicine-wise?

No, I'm more, I'm more of a food-as-medicine type guy, right? So I use my fitness pound. I track pretty much everything that I eat. Not exactly, but, you know, when I was y'all's age, you can eat anything, drink anything, right? And maybe, you know, you have. How old do you think we are? I don't mean 40 you 21 no no me how do you think he is he looks a little younger than he probably is right

I'm cool with that yeah probably 32 32 33 no oh shit how do you think I have literally 38 okay okay fine fair how old are you 33 okay sorry anyway it's not important 27 27 what size is that sure how are you

28 20 okay so I wasn't that far off super small so because when somebody asks you use it a little bit older than you yeah no I like that's a good tactic. Yeah. For us, I guess. But yeah, so I'm a food as medicine guy, but, you know, when you're younger, your body's just as adaptive and you can deal with abuse you give it. But as you get older, you start noticing every little thing. Like, you know, if I eat too much gluten, even though I'm not gluten intolerant, like I wish some, right? So I've got to manage that. Like my iron, the ferdin, I get my blood tested every three to four months, right? Because I want to know what

my base levels are, right? And so if I don't eat enough iron, like, Literally, I'll have orange juice and rice Krispies because rice Krispies are fortified with iron. And vitamin C from orange juice makes you absorb the iron, which helps my ferretton levels, right? There's got to be a better way to get that, though. I mean, but if I just do so. It's a deadly combo of the Red Krispies and OJay. No, it's great, though. No, it's great.

Because the rice Krispies are only 140 calories in the little thing, and that gives me 100%, almost 100% of my iron. And the simply orange is all my vitamin C that I need, and it's 110 calories. And so because I've got the iron supplements. but your body doesn't absorb supplements as well as it does food. And because it's got to break them down differently. And so by combining the two, I can feel the difference. And so, you know, I'll have that.

I have to take synthroid for hypothyroidism. That's no big deal. You know, just try to be balanced and get all my nutrients. When did you start to be more focused on that stuff? As you got older? Yeah, as I got older. Yeah, because I would abuse the shit out of myself. How do you delegate all your time with everything you've going on?

Yeah. With the Mavs, you've got all these business ventures. I don't do meetings. I don't do phone calls. Oh, really? No, you've got to hit me up via email. Just like Sheidi got a hold of me, right? So you do emails all day?

Is that what you're doing? Yeah, I'll get a thousand emails a day. So you never get about your number or how do you do that? Yeah, never. Wait, how do you get a phone call with Mark Cuban then? How do you don't? Never. Unless you write me a big ass check.

Then I'll take your call. Really? Yeah. That's dope. This is dope then. This is special. Yeah. Doesn't email take like a long time to like.

No, it takes less time. Yeah, it takes less time. Yeah, it takes a less time. So you're just like bang like one sentence. you know because people will send me whatever you know how you can just set your preview and your email and everything i'll read that and if there's nothing there that's of interest boom do you even go like high comma sentence thanks or you just bang one sentence no it'll be like delete if it's bullshit but if it's somebody i got to respond to where i know i love it then i'll reply and i've got

you know like in gmail you can set like um like i just type in a tb which turns into a all the best comma nice and then a little m underneath it so it's just bam bam bam bam bam bam what's your your biggest focus right now at everything you got going on. Yeah. It's a good question. Cost plus drugs. Yeah. Yeah, because that's the world changer.

Because when you get to just change people's lives like that, yeah, you got to do it. Or people like kidding you up like, yo, this is like the next big thing. Like thank you for your big people. All the time, all day, every day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cost plus drugs. com. If you take any medications whatsoever, go in there. They're changing the game right now. Yeah, for sure. Can we talk a little NBA? Sure.

Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot's going on. I got to ask you, like, with the Nets, it's like the Nets situation, right? Now, remember, I can't really talk about individual players. You can't? No, because that's the NBA violation. Okay.

You're going towards KD or something? Yeah. Well, I mean, you can't talk at all about KD? No, I can't. Individual players from other teams. What about Luka? It's called Tamp-Prey. Look, I can talk about all day long.

Yeah. What's your guys relationship like? Get along great. Yeah, I mean, he's great, too. I mean, he's just a good, good guy, 23, just chills, got a girlfriend, likes to hang, likes to play video games, watch basketball.

You got beef with little Wayne? No, that's over. That's over. That's over. What I do want to ask you, though, is like all these high school players, I don't know if you've seen like Mikey, right? Yeah, Mikey Williams. These guys are like 16, 17.

They're making six figures in the high school age. Yeah, over time a little. How bad is that for their future you think? Yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean, because a lot of the kids, you know, there's a difference between potentially being an NBA player and being good for Instagram, right? So if you're like good for reels or Instagram or whatever, that's one thing, right? You know, you can be a walking human highlight film. That doesn't

necessarily make you a good basketball player. And so a lot of these kids are being geared towards how do I get more followers and how do I get paid that way as opposed to how do I become the best basketball player? And I think that's part of the corruption that's happening. Not necessarily that overtime elite is the only one doing it or that they're even trying to corrupt kids, right? But like if you're a kid and you're 16 and you're taking their money, you ain't going to college to play basketball. Yeah. That's a lot to give up if you're not good enough for the NBA. You think overtime elite's a negative?

I'm not as big a fan as some people are. Overtime elite, just to get it right, they pay a kid 100K a year to play at their school, right? Or their league. At a high school? Yeah. In high school. What the fuck? In high school, not out of high school, in high school.

But the problem is, like, you can't stay there for the next 20 years. Right. But how, if you're a kid, right, and your family's not that well off in a school like that. I don't blame it for doing it, right? But remember now with NIL, if you're, if you're, if you're a kid. You can ball, right? Even in high school, you can get paid. Yeah.

And if you go to college, you can get it. It's crazy how it's changing like that. That's why I think of Luca because you have a guy overseas who didn't have all those distractions, all that bullshit. And they say focus on just basketball. Yeah. Yeah, it's totally different than it was. So he's an animal. Where do you rank among the best players right now?

Luca, top one or two. Really? Yeah. He's a beast. He's so good. And he's adding stuff to his game this summer. I mean, he's going to come back even better. Thank you.

Yeah, he's amazing. man yeah look no look is one of a kind what's your what's your thoughts on all the california people moving to texas come on i don't care just come to texas potential season ticket holders yeah is that helping has that help math business yeah for sure i mean not just from california but the fact that so many people are coming to dallas yeah you know we're Dallas is like top three in destination cities now now the good news is we sell tickets the bad news is like you know they'll root for the lakers or the clippers or whoever wherever city they came from but that's okay you got to stay in texas

it's long enough, then they'll start, you know. I'm not worried about that at all, yeah, for sure. They're trying to get away from California, for sure. Yeah, taxes and everything. I'm fine with that. What do you think about the LIV? Have you seen all that? I know you're not a golfer.

Oh, yeah, yeah. The live stuff? Yeah. I thought you're going to ask me where I was like to go to live. No, no, no, no. I know you've been there, though. We could talk about live instead. Like, do you think that gets crazy that's probably more interesting?

Like the Saudis just come in there. There's a price for everything. Yeah. Right. Here's the way I look at it from the golfer's perspective. You know, you bust your ass and there's complete uncertainty. You don't know how much you're going to make. Maybe you have some sponsors.

Maybe you're doing some deals. And that's great. You're making some money. But you have a limited lifespan in your golf career. Yeah. And if you're apolitical, you're not really into politics one way or the other. Someone offers you $30, $40, $50 million. Your family is more important than what the media is going to say about you.

Right. You think that scares any other leagues that this is happening like that? I don't know that it scares other. other leagues um but it makes us pay attention yes for sure because you know who knows what for what other sport or what other you know country whatever it may be that is going to come in and try to buy recognition right it's fucking nuts what was your favorite shark tank investment ever probably get that a lot but um it was a curious about this yeah um it was a company called cycloramic and it was interesting story because when um they came in it was when the iPhone 5 was happening and

And the iPhone 5, the bottom of it was flat. But then the iPhone changed so you couldn't stand it up. So they had to pivot. And they started doing something called computer vision, which is, you know, kind of computers and video and AI all combined. And we got them into the automotive industry. And fast forward three years later maybe, Carvana bottom for a lot of money. And so that was one of my favorites. Are you up all time on Shark Tank investments?

No, not, am I up, like up financially? Yeah. Oh, no, I've gotten beat. Really? What was your biggest loss? My biggest loss was probably a million dollars. There was this company that had, oh, what the hell was it called? But you would blow into it and it did alcohol detection.

And it was a great idea. Yeah. And actually a decent product. But like the guy, Charles, I look at his Instagram and he'd be in Bora Bora. and then I look at his intram Oh, this guy's too much. Yes. Two weeks later, and he'd be in Vegas partying, you know,

then he'd be on Nectar Island with Richard Branson. And I'd text, I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? You're supposed to be working. Oh, no, I'm networking. Next thing you know, all the money's gone. And then the next thing, I mean, it's just like, yeah, so that was my biggest beating. Do you blow up on these guys or you just say, fuck it?

There's no point. They ain't going to change. Maybe he was testing the product, though. What's that? He's probably testing the product. Getting wasted. Yeah, getting wasted and making sure it work. It's going around.

Yeah, he just, yeah, it was not cool at all. Do you ever worry about since Shark Tank's a part of Disney, like how you have to be so like PC? I mean, they're a little bit like that. Like, so Shark Tank, what you see on air, the 10 or 12 or 14 minutes gets cut down from like 30 minutes to 90 minutes, depending on the deal. And so we know it gets edited, but a lot of times the people coming in pitching, they don't know how edited it is it is. And so I'll curse. And I'll, you know, I'll be like, what the fuck are you trying to do? You know, shit like that.

And you see everybody going like this, but they won't let us curse, but they're pretty open with us. But there's dumb shit, too, that Disney makes us do. Like, you can't have a URL on any product. You can't, they won't let us say the URL. And it's been like that since the beginning. I'm like, what the fuck is this? Why can't you say, you know, cost plus drugs.com. Yeah.

It's still not a good explanation, but, you know, you can only, like, beat your head against the wall so many times before he was like, like, At what point is it like it's too much promo? I don't get it's already the whole thing is I don't know. I can't even explain it. It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. How much of that is like making money or just trying to like help people out? For me? Yeah. I did 99.99% just to because it teaches kids about the power of entrepreneurship and that the American dream is alive and well. And you can be, you know, a 14 year old and some small town in Iowa and come up with an idea in your garage. And the next thing you know, you're standing on the carpet and Shark Tank. firing away, you know, and anything's possible. And if you can, you know, just like cost plus drugs can change the drug industry, if I can, you know, inspire entrepreneurs, young entrepreneurs to come out and do something like y'all, you know, are young enough that 10 years ago, you know, now we're getting ready to shoot season 14 next week, you know, you all were just kids when this shit started to happen. And so, you know, if we can inspire people like y'all to go out there and just start companies, that's huge. You give a lot back. I saw a clip of you getting fined. I think it was

like 15,000. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah for the fuck it clip. And then you were and then you're like, if I do it again, you're like, fuck it. What happened with that? He was getting fine. Why did you get fine? No, I've played in a league of Legends tournament, right? And I'm awful. I'm awful. Let's fucking go. Do you still play league?

Oh, I've been playing so much. I tried that. You're playing on a PC? Harder than hard. You're playing on PC? Yeah, it had to. Right. And it was in a tournament. It was like a celebrity deal where I was like the one newbie, right? And so we ended up losing. And I thought, but anyways, and I was cursing while we were doing it.

And so it was to raise money for charity. And so the host that brought me on stage, and they're like, you're being fine because you cursed. And you're being fined $15,000. And she has the mic there. What do you think about that? And so she hands me to mic. And I go, well, does that mean if I curse again?

I get fined again? She goes, yes. I go, fuck it. It was going to kids, though. It was going to kids. Yeah, it was going to smile, yeah. So Shark Tank find you. No, it was the Shark Tank.

This is the League of Legends. Oh, shit. Yeah, but it was a fine. Can you talk about it or no? Um, it was 15 grand. 15 k times 2, 30 grand. Yeah. So it was worth it.

Yeah. Yeah, you play league? Yeah. Yeah. It's so fucking hard. It's so hard. It's so hard. Do you play it all anymore now?

Do you play any video games now? No, not really. I played, you know, I'll play, um, I mean, I played Fortnite for a while and then, um, what's the one when when they rolled off the, um, it just came back. They just made a, fall guys fall guys yeah yeah yeah play some of that i love this guy but it's like because i got a 12 year son and he's doing it's just yeah i'm a big nerd sorry i love video games no i mean yeah yeah damn dude are you still a pens fan hockey anything pittsburgh i'm a fan yeah even the parts

you like crosby yeah sid yeah for sure and malcan yep do you have anything brad you want to pitch anything real quick oh yeah for the shark for the shirt yeah like baby shirts for ripped guys Yeah, I was thinking like, seriously. It came and looking. You got to change it if we go to dinner or some shit. It's Jacob's fucking shirt, man. He has my shirt on. I spilled coffee on it.

I didn't want to come in here with coffee stain and talk to fucking Markubi. I was embarrassed, man. Anything you want to pitch or are you good? I think, I just think like we should, I think, you know, think about this. We should go on Shark Tank with something. That'd be amazing. You should. Imagine this, right?

Yeah, sure. We're trying to be in shape. Everyone's trying to get in shape. A lot of guys are trying to be in shape, right? Yep. What if we just was like, we created a clothing brand company where every, it was just one size down so you looked bigger you know what I'm saying so a large is a medium I think you just like because you could just buy a smaller sure I'm out yeah I'm out of you're

not it's not that's terrible if you should wear an XL and you just buy an L oh shit but like but you want to still feel big so you buy an L you want to buy a medium it's like right no but you want more to be fitted like you just a little bit little padding here because that's not those aren't real oh so we're to add some some density to it oh that might be you'll say yeah a little bit fitted right because you know because the problem like when you're getting the shape you still got that little pudge right and you want to squeeze it yeah exactly yeah yeah you'd buy a few of those i feel like no i'm good like the padded chest no i think we're about to do a happy dad partnership with the clippers arena oh yeah how do we do something with the mavs just email me and i'll connect you to the right people

well that's lit we're doing really good in texas i think that's our biggest state that's cool texas amazing shout out texas i fucking shout out texas yeah i think this is like so what kind of electrolights you guys put here they're good electric lights you check them out Some good macros, right, Brad? Do you drink it all or no? Yeah, I'll drink for sure. Yeah. What's your drink a choice?

I was actually, I was actually... Like either Bud Light or Tito's and soda. Okay. I can't. I mean, I was so curious. Have you ever shotgun before? Yeah. You're going to try to make him shotgun?

No, I'm not going to try and tell me to do it. Yeah, what the hell do? No, I'm not going to do either. I got a lot of meetings and shit. You have stuff to do? So I can show you a video of me chugging against Post Malone. So I've got postmal, same type of conversation, right? Do you drink, do you party?

We just had him on too, too, like two weeks ago. And so he was in Atlanta for NBA All-Star, was it? Or whatever? No, Super Bowl, maybe. And I was partying with him after one of his concerts. And he has all these people there. And he's just pounding, right, and chugging against all these people. And he's like, okay, come on.

Let's see what you got. I can chuck. Bam. Just like, gone. Gone. You can delete him? Wait, did you beat him? What was his reaction?

he was like holy shit yeah i'm like gotta get cable bro that's dope oh yeah i think this is awesome bro yeah mark thank you bro you're fucking awesome mark cubin appreciate you guys thank you bro let's go that was awesome that was dope