The Jordan Harbinger Show - 362: Mark Cuban | Tales from the Shark Side

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

Mark Cuban (@mcuban) is a Shark Tank investor in over 200 companies, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and author of How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. What We Discuss with Mark Cuban: The advice Mark is giving his CEOs and founders during these angry, uncertain, and unprecedented times. What Mark sees as the future of the knowledge and technology economies here in the United States. What jobs will exist in the not-so-distant future? How America can beat China, and the areas we need to invest in to do so. How Mark stays on top of trends and separates fact from fiction when it comes to his investments -- and how to reach Mark and get his attention for your own business idea. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/362 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When they go out, I'm not going to have to explain to Jake what it's like to be afraid if you get pulled over by an officer and to only pull over where there's light, not where it's dark. Or if you have somebody in the car with the phone, have them video recorded. That's not a conversation I've ever had to have or whatever I ever have to have with my kids. That's the kind of stress they deal with. They're diminished. People don't respect them. They're walking or running through a neighborhood. Someone might call the cops in a store. Someone's looking at them.

How afraid would you be? Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's sharpest minds and most fascinating people. Turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. We want to help you see the Matrix when it comes to how these amazing people think and behave, and our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. So you can get a much deeper understanding of how the world works and makes sense of what's really happening.

If you're new to the show, we've got episodes with spies and CEOs, athletes and authors, thinkers and performers, as well as toolboxes for skills like negotiation, body language, persuasion, and more. So if you're smart and you'll like to learn and improve, you're going to be right at home here with us. For a selection of featured episodes to get you started with some of our favorite guests and popular topics, go to Jordan Harbinger.com and we'll hook you up. Today, Shark Tank Investor in over 200 companies and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. Usually I do a deep dive into someone's backstory on this show, as you all know,

but for Mark Cuban, I feel like I just had too many timely and topical questions. So we'll do another show in the future and deep dive into what makes Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban. Today, what advice Mark is giving to his CEOs and founders and what he sees as the future of knowledge and technology economies here in the United States? What jobs will exist in the future? How America can beat China in manufacturing and business period and the areas in which we need to invest in order to do so. Also, we'll learn how Mark stays on top of trends

and separates fact from fiction when it comes to his investments, and how you can reach Mark to get his attention for your business idea, should you have one. Much more in this episode as well. And if you want to know how I managed to get all these amazing folks on the show, it's always, always about the network. You've got to dig the well before you get thirsty, build relationships before you need them.

I'm teaching you how to do this for free in our course six-minute networking. It's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course in the newsletter. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Mark Cuban. I know you're an investor in over 200 businesses.

What do those founders need from you right now? I assume that everybody needs different advice, but what do you tell on all of them? I'm telling them all the exact same thing. One, you have to be transparent. Two, you have to be honest. Three, you have to be authentic. Four, you have to talk. You have to communicate because everybody's freaked out.

Everybody's uncertain. Everybody's working with imperfect information. you have to be recognized that when everybody's afraid, the best way to deal with it is by coming together. And now we're hearing high-level executives, for example, at J.P. Morgan saying things like, we have to rethink capitalism. And this is not their usual tagline. What's going on here? I mean, a lot has changed, right? A lot of how people perceive companies that they want to do business with was evolving with Gen Z and to a lesser extent the younger millennials. I mean, everybody on Instagram effectively, no matter how old you are, is a brand, right?

What you put on Instagram is how you want to be perceived as a brand. And when you're doing that, that's been extended now, particularly with everything that's been going on, you only want to do business with people who represent the things that are important to you. And if you're not taking care of your employees, if you're not taking care of your stakeholders, your brand is going to be damaged forever. Young kids are going to carry that with them for decades.

And so I think those big companies are recognizing how they present themselves, how they, you know, interact in society, how they work from the bottom up instead of the traditional top down is going to define their brand for decades. It seems like a lot of these guys, these executives, are seeing that this might be the real time that things change. I mean, maybe that's delusional. Maybe I'm a little naive. I mean, you never know, right?

That's the whole thing. You know, when there's a school shooting, we're changing gun laws, right? When there's this, there's that. It always seems like an inflection point, and you never know until it is. It certainly seems a lot bigger than anything we've seen, you know, in my lifetime. and the combination of the protests and looting and the pandemic. And plus the fact that people are home, right? The fact that you have more time to think about it and you're more concerned about your future,

all these things combined together to make for really uncertain times. And when people are uncertain about their future, that's why people rebel. You know, it does seem a little bit impossible. Just I'm 40, right? I've never seen a mass civil unrest. The last big riot like this was what? L.A. localized to L.A. Rodney King.

I had to drive through that. I had to drive through that. Why? I had just moved to L.A. in 1992, and I was in Hollywood. I was taking acting classes. And I went up and I just started as like my first acting class. The only way I knew how to get home just took me right through the middle of it, people with machine guns and machetes and everything burning.

And I'm in Alexis thinking, oh, my God, you know, this is not good. And obviously it wasn't good for, you know, didn't matter about me. The people that lived there was awful. I don't know that that area of L.A. is recovered yet. No. I think a lot of the Korean population moved out of there. A lot of people just went under never to come back. Why are we taking acting classes? Just because I sold my company, moved to L.A. and wanted to meet people.

Sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, they're paying off now, right, with the tank. Yeah, exactly. Do you think that the protesters, I mean, look, the rioters are one thing. But it seems almost like the violence, it's not just merely taking advantage of chaos. There's a lot of people who are actually angry at the country and at their state. circumstances right now. It's not easy to brush it off and just say, oh, well, you know, those are just people who would steal TVs anyway. No, of course not. No, no, people are angry. You know, there's systemic racism, the people who have just been disadvantaged their entire lives

and every day they wake up, it's a concern that they, in an uncertainty that they need to deal with that just creates, you know, unbound stress. You know, they're losing 40 plus million people have lost their jobs. Who knows how many people have had their hours reduced, had their wages reduced, to what that total number is. You've got the pandemic where you're not certain about your health and you're reading. And in fact, your minority communities are getting the brunt of it. There's a significant percentage of people working in health care that are minorities. And so there's a disproportion there on the front lines.

That's just a lot of stress. And what, you know, I'm going to butcher this, but, you know, Martin Luther King said writing is the voice of the unheard. The only surprise is that it's taken this long. I think you're right. It seems like it would have boiled over. I mean, this was just the whole take a new thing was, a canary in the coal mine actually at this point. Yeah, of course. The irony is just so steep.

Capradic did even bring the focus to himself. You know, he just happened to be taking a knee and somebody caught him with a phone camera, you know, and that elevated it and escalated it. And it was as peaceful and respectful as you can possibly be. He told everybody why he was doing it. And here we are, you know, when you don't respect somebody just peacefully protesting and you don't respect civil unrest, you get what we have now. And it's unfortunate but a reality. What was your reaction to Drew Bree's apology for his remarks about taking any, about the kneeling during the National Anthem? Do you understand that? Yeah, I actually felt bad for Drew. Honestly, I think he was trying to be positive. It's hard not to be tone deaf in those circumstances. You know, I've been there before. I mean, where I said something,

where I thought I was starting a legitimate conversation on race. And I made a tone deaf statement that I thought was accurate and honest. And, you know, I learned from it. And, you know, And I think Drew alone from it as well. I think it's harsh in the right place. But, you know, being white, we don't have standing. People are going to, I'm going to catch flag for this. I don't care. It's got to be pretty hard for people in your position and his position to learn lessons

in front of millions of people that I would have learned in college in a quiet corner conversation. But you learn them, right? Yeah. And the benefit is, even when I say something that comes across tone depth or true breeze, people correct you. And having that platform gives them not only the opportunity for them to hear you and then correct you, but a chance for you to respond and to have people understand and then get to a point where you understand each other. So it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate that he said it that way

and the pain that people felt because of it, but hopefully it'll lead to something stronger. You think Colin Kaepernick kneeled in protested, lost his job, essentially. I mean, should that have happened? No. If you could play basketball, I'd give him a job. Yeah. You know, Kep, you know, we're going back here July 31st. If you can play, if we have a roster spot, you let me know. No, because it's just ridiculous. And, you know, from a business perspective, it would have been great for business. But from a football perspective, it sure looked like he could play.

And look, I hate when you have armchair GMs tell me who to add to my team. So, you know, I'm on that armchair talking about, you know, a football team adding cap. But every indication says he at least should have been given a shot. What would you have done in that moment at that time? If he were your player, would you, how would you've handled that? I'd hug him. Yeah? Yeah, absolutely.

You know, going back, you know, when we invaded Iraq, Steve Nash stood up and said, I'm against the Iraqi war. And he got criticized. I said, say what's on your mind. Just all these ongoing instances, that's what I've always said to my players, say what's on your mind. It seems a shame to have a platform and then have people say, hey, just play basketball. I don't want to hear from you. It's like, whoa, whoa, what? Idiots say that.

Idiots say that. Agree. Yeah, agree. You want to hold these people to a standard as you're a role model for kids. Okay. So I have to be a good role model. I can't say I didn't ask for that. But then when I say my opinion, it's, hey, know your role, just shoot a ball.

No, that's part of being a good role model. Right, right. Being able to say what's on your mind, being able to back up what you say. When you're famous or you're a celebrity or an athlete and people are listening to and you have a platform on social media and traditional media, just like we're talking about Drew Brees, you are going to get criticized by one side or the other. There is no down the middle where everybody's going to love you when it comes to a subject like this. And so you are going to get crushed by one side or the other. Being a role model means

here's how you stand up for what you believe, recognizing you're going to get criticism. You know, Cap is a role model. He stood up for what he believed, you know, and it's unfortunate that from a job perspective, it hurt him. But, you know, he found other ways financially to really move ahead and become a brand. You know, was it worth it? Only he'll know, but I'd give him a hug. I tell all my players, I tell anybody with a platform or without a platform. because every change has to start somewhere. You've said we need loads of new jobs for people to feel secure becoming consumers again, which makes obvious sense to some of us, I think.

I wasn't good to say everybody, but you know how that goes. No amount of loans to businesses will save them or save jobs if customers aren't buying. And you'd recommended this transitional federal jobs program that trains and hires millions for tracking, tracing, and testing and long-term care at-risk populations. it seems like a no-brainer for some folks. I wonder if you worry about privacy and data collection when it comes to contact tracing and tracking. Of course I do. Of course I do.

And that's why I always mention HIPAA because there's very specific HIPAA regulations when it comes to privacy. I worry about government accumulating all that information for sure. That's why as much as I can or have time to when I talk about these programs, there also is a programming, data analytics, security component that goes with it as well. But we already deal with that at hospitals. right? You're not finding your hospital information 99% of the time out there everywhere. Sure. And this should be no different. Did you think you'd be advocating for an expansion of the government before COVID-19? Never in my wildest dreams. Every thought I've ever had in my professional life, even when I was a kid, reading

and I and ran, it was always small government, government's inefficient. If you go back to some of my older blog posts, it's like, okay, we can do these programs, but the whole goal is to make government smaller. Right. And more efficient. But the flip side of everything. not just the whole COVID thing, but I have started to say over the last two years or so, with artificial intelligence, we'll be able to start seeing government as a service more. And so, you know, if we ever have any politicians that ever understand technology and where it's going, which is a whole other issue, then they'll be able to see that as advances occur in the AI, there's risk, there's bias risk, you know, there's performance risk,

there's accuracy risk. But as we get through those problems, AI as a service can replace that old historical model or form of the paper pusher, right? The bureaucrat that just sits at their desk, you know, stamping things all day long and trying to do anything not to work. Technology can start to solve some of those problems in government and make it smaller, but effectively do more and leave more money for the people and the services that we all need. And I think, you know, from that perspective, bigger impact with fewer people. There you go. Yeah. Okay. All right, fair. I've heard you say TikTok has the best AI in terms of social media.

especially with how it serves up content and I guess creates the feed or serves up that content for each individual user. You said you worry about how the government is using data. I assume you also worry about how companies are going to use data. Yeah, it depends what it is. I mean, a lot of people are freaking out because it's Chinese-owned. The thing about TikTok is if you sit there, they are going to find things that entertain. And because the AI is driven by entertainment, you know, maybe if you're skeezy and you're looking at stuff, you don't think you should be. And that could be used against you.

Okay. but actually they do a better job than any platform of weeding out any type of risque content. I had a thing I did with this guy. This guy goes on TikTok and just on his own says, you know, here are the five worst names to name your child, goes through the list. And the number one worst name is Mark. And so on TikTok, you can do these duets, right? And so I did a duet and I'm laughing and he gets to my name and I'm like, oh, you know. And because I cursed in it after getting 5.1 million.

views, they took it down. Oh. Yeah, it was crazy. And so in a lot of respects, it's literally the best and safest platform for kids. At least my experience, maybe I'm missing something, but I get the part about the Chinese controlling it. And that's why you've seen them hire, you know, American CEO and others to and moving the headquarters here or expanding their headquarters here. I mean, their AI is brilliant. There is no other platform just about anybody can go to. And after watching 10 videos, it knows pretty much what you want. A lot of people are going to be. displaced through AI. I hate saying paper pushers because it is pejorative, but people who do a lot of knowledge worker jobs that are sort of at the rudimentary level, what future jobs do you think will

actually exist? Maybe even jobs that do not exist right now, other than, of course, AI programmers or creators. Look, there'll be disruption. There will be jobs lost in the short term. We're already seeing that with call centers. You're seeing it with bots, right? You know, that little thing that pops up when you go to the website, how can I help you? It's not a person. And so there'll be the equivalent of the mind-numbing job is going to be data later. And there'll be a zillion data labeling jobs potentially that show up. If you want to be able to have accuracy, you need to have correct labeling. Now, you know, you can use unstructured data and figure things out, but it's a lot less

efficient and requires a lot more resources. So there'll be labelers. There'll also be people who need to make sure that there aren't biases and to make sure that the data is accurate. So I think you'll see an increase in the need for liberal arts majors. So if there's a bot that needs to use Shakespeare, just to pull. something out of left field. You can't do that unless you have somebody with domain knowledge and domain expertise about Shakespeare, if there's a history about it, or whatever it is. So there's going to be

a lot of domain expertise requirements in order to push AI forward. What should people be studying so that they future proof themselves, or is that even possible? You know, the current new stuff, you always want to stay up to speed on. Robotics, precision medicine, you know, AI, statistics, math is always a good thing to study no matter what. But the key, I think, when you're going to college is just learning how to learn, you know, because the only constant has changed. We went from pre-pandemic in January to, okay, trying to understand the impact of viruses and will they occur again? Pre-pandemic, we never had a concept of working from home, and you never would have thought of how do I enhance the audio for Zoom, right? So there's always going to be change that

leads to opportunity. And there's never going to be a better time than right now, hopefully, to start a business. I mean, simply because everything's going through this reset. I know you taught yourself computers by staying late at the computer store, learning computers, where you were actually selling software, selling computers, reading manuals, which now you can't even do. There's just too many. But how do you decide now what to learn and stay informed with? Because you're huge on learning from the jump. We're in a pandemic right now, changes in vaccine manufacturing, telemedicine, manufacturing. What are you aiming at right now? my biggest strength has always been being able to look at any type of business.

I don't care what it is and be able to understand them and understand how I can make them more productive, more profitable, and give them a competitive advantage. And so for me, every time there's new technology that I think is impactful, I want to learn it, right? So, Alexa, who is Jake Cuban? According to Wikipedia, Jake is often referred to as the peak manhood or the farting fiasco. He won a lifetime achievement of work for most Dutch ovens in a single night. Daug his friends called him J.C. And he has been known to run the mile in under seven minutes. So just your ambient voice is going to be huge.

So I had to learn how to write scripts. Right. You know, AI is going to be huge. So I'm on Amazon, AWS taking machine learning tutorials. I'm on YouTube watching introduction to neural networks. I'm reading research papers about reinforcement learning and that's how they beat go and how that works. or generative adversarial networks, because that's how they do all the fancy graphics and pictures.

And that allows me to start investing in companies and be able to separate what's real and what's nonsense because everybody's got an AI component in their company, but 99.99% of them are nonsense. And so I can't tell one from the other unless I do the work. Now I'm starting to dig more into robotics. I always had a good understanding from a software perspective, but not from the hardware side of it.

I've got a couple investments and I'm adding more and more, but I want to be able to pull that forward because if we're going to bring manufacturing from overseas to domestic, the only way we're going to beat low-cost employees and lack of interest in the environment and environmental protections, we're going to have to do that through robotics. And then there's going to be disruption because of that, the traditional manufacturing that was done here, the limited amount, is probably going to be displaced. And so understanding what type of jobs we can create and how we can scale that, that in aggregate you create a lot more jobs. And so just those are the types of things where I just try to dig in. And I'm competitive as well, right? Because I want to be able to walk in the room.

And I might not be the smartest person in the room for any of these things. But I know I'm going to understand the business impact. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Mark Cuban. We'll be right back. And now back to Mark Cuban on the Jordan Harbinger Show. One thing we learned from this pandemic is that our supply chain needs to have more robust roots here in the U.S. kind of mention, hey, look, we outsource all this manufacturing. That's not going to work. It exposed the cracks in the system. It seems like you don't think it's too late to turn things around and manufacture critical resources in the States. No, it's not. It's not even close to being too late. I'll give you a perfect example. About a year ago, I invested in a company called the Mark Cuban

low-cost drug company. And we wanted to be very clear. It was a private benefit corporation as opposed to a C-Corp. And we're going to use robotics to be able to make a bunch of drugs that often had shortages, generic drugs that had shortages or were overpriced and I'm not going to tell you which drugs because I don't want those companies to come after us. You know, we're going to use robotics and be able to be a lower cost provider than what was being made in India or China. And being able to take robotics, which unfortunately were still like fourth in the world behind Japan, Germany, maybe we're tied with China. If we're able to really invest and I'd rather see infrastructure investments go into robotics, then we can using robotic.

in advanced software, because we are good at robotic software, we can steal manufacturing from China, right, and from overseas by just outperforming that. You know, because they're pushing for robotics and they're expanding it. I mean, they have manufacturing facilities that have thousands of robots, but if we invest in it, I'm confident we can do better. So now when it comes to manufacturing Chotchkes, this, this, this, whatever, if we're all robotics, we can jump ahead of them. But if we do what the administration is trying to do and just recreate 1985 manufacturing and add tariffs to protect people, we're going to get torched because what they're missing is China, Germany, Russia, Japan, they're not standing still in robotics.

They continue to invest in China every single day is asking themselves, how can I kick America's ass in business? And unless we recognize that and invest and push forward as a sovereign state, we're going to get torched. And that's worrisome because it seems like, oh, we're focused on dragging everybody. down. We're focused on being a heavy-ass anchor and saying, well, we're going to screw up the world economy if you don't play our game, instead of saying, we're going to be better than you because we've been working out harder. That's what we do, man. I'm a huge believer in American exceptionalism, and it's just shame this administration doesn't think we can compete and needs tariffs. The way we're going to bring back all those businesses and the way it's always been to bring

back those businesses, we go through transitions. We started off as an agrarian economy. Then we became industrial. Then we became a hybrid, a digital and physical. Now we're going as much digital as we possibly can. And we've got to continue that with AI and robotics and precision medicine, but we have to invest in it as a country and we have to just be better than that, right? Because they're not standing still and that's what this administration doesn't get. I've talked to them. You know, they think it's just, this is the way China does it. No, China is doing, like I said earlier, doing everything in their power to keep on moving forward and getting and pass us by. And, you know, we're not doing all we can to prevent that.

We both hate scams and how you make your money is important. And one thing I love about watching you on Shark Tank is I routinely debunk scams or talk about why something is just total bullshit even on this show. And I take a lot of flack for it. I know you do too. It's important because how you make your money is also important, although you did start a chain letter in college, which I don't know. But I made sure everybody that I put on the chain letter made their money back.

Okay, well, there's that. All right, fine. But when I saw that, I was like, oh, well, he changed his ways. No, I did. I did. Thank you for doing that. I think a lot of people invest in scams, though, because they can be lucrative. And I don't see you doing that. I'd love to know your philosophy on this, because there's a lot of rich people on YouTube going, hey, kid, who's 20 and you don't want a job, here's this thing you can do to do Forex or this other bullshit. And it's just getting... The hustle porn. Yeah, hustle porn. The Forex porn, those types of companies just have reached that

wasn't there before, right? And so they can make it work. And that's unfortunate. But yeah, I just, I won't touch that stuff. It's just not worth it. it's not worth anything, and I haven't since I was in college. Sure. A lot of people might go, well, fine, he's a billionaire. He doesn't have to do things like that. He can choose any way to make money that he wants. I assume you would never tell Jake, hey, you know what, it's okay.

No, hell, no. You see it on Shark Tank. You see me yelling at Kevin and some of the others, and they yell back to me, well, at least let the guy, you know, whoever's pitching. Once I see it's a scam or they're making a false claim, they're like, why don't you let the guy talk? I'm like, why would I let this guy talk and maybe convince people that they're balanced bracelet is real, you know? Yeah. And that it might work. Or when you say that you can lose

11% of your body weight by taking this pill, it might work. I mean, no, there is no reason to let them continue at all. And I don't pick the deals that come on, obviously, but I love it when I get to tear people apart like that. One, I enjoy it, but two, I want to protect people. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's admirable. A lot of people would just say, you know what, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. That's the phrase. I don't really think that's a good thing to say when you're talking about 18-year-old No, or anybody for that matter. Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

You also hate patent trolls, and I've done shows on this, what other business damaging government or otherwise systems do you think need to be dismantled? You know, is there anything that ranks up there with the patent system in terms of having outgrown? Patents across the board, but licensing, right? I think it's the state of Louisiana that in order to wash hair, you have to be licensed and you have to have some ridiculous 200 hours of apprentice experience. I mean, that's ridiculous. the fact that just starting a business isn't just one button click.

And so in the city of Dallas, you want to start a business. You go online, you fill out a couple forms, you hit one button. Maybe you put in your credit card and it's $99. Stuff like that should just, you have to remove the friction from those things. And licensing, those crazy licensing protects people who don't need to be protected. Yeah, that actually is a good point. I hadn't thought about licensing at all. But you're right.

There's something there that just says, you know what, we're going to kind of tax it. but in this way that makes you start your business later, which makes no sense. Just tax it. Just tax it. I mean, if the city needs money, just tax it. Right. Every time you watch somebody's hair, it's a dollar ahead. Don't make them work 200 hours and hit a licensing fee because that just reduces employment.

It makes things difficult. I was surprised to hear you say that there's luck involved in being a billionaire. I think many, many people who are well off think that their wealth is solely the result or almost solely the result of their own hard work. And this has been studied. It's just rare to acknowledge this in public, I think. And I respect that. Well, I appreciate it.

I mean, look, I mean, in my first company, the stock market wasn't huge for those types of companies. My second company, the stock market was huge for that type of internet company. I didn't plan that. I didn't predict it. But I certainly benefited from it. And could I become a millionaire again? Absolutely.

Multiple times over. I've done it many times. But could I hit a billionaire again? Only if I got lucky. Yeah. The level of scale involved with that is just something that requires you catching fire in multiple areas. Yeah.

You knew early on that you wouldn't be an employee. I wonder how you knew that and also how you knew you could succeed outside the structure of the 9 to 5 job. I knew it because I got fired because my bosses hated me because I was too belligerent and too aggressive. That's just the way it was. First three jobs I had never lasted more than nine months. That's a good indication. And then I knew I had to do it on my own and I just didn't have a choice. You know, I'm living six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. And this is at a time when the last time

that unemployment was above 10% was the year I graduated from college. You know, and that extended for a few years. And so it wasn't like jobs were easy to come by. Yeah, I sort of fell into a similar, I graduated in 2007 from law school. And it was like, oh, you're not getting another job. I luckily had already started the internship, so they hired us, but they let all of us go. the romance of this will all be over by May, the whole recession, that ended really quick. And it was like, really quick. It was like, oh, you're doing this radio show thing. Why don't you go ahead and do that for a few years?

You're not getting into this patent. There you go. And here we are. Here's the thing, though, plenty of kids and young people, they don't want to be employees. And they're going, I get fired all the time. I'm the next smart Cuban. Most of them are not necessarily able to be entrepreneurs. You know, what's the difference?

You know, what's the difference. Oh, yeah, but the difference. Oh, yeah, but the difference. So there's people who are born to do it. I was just always selling and selling and selling. And if you can sell, you can be an entrepreneur. You just have to start that company for whatever you're good at selling, right? But for everybody else, if you have a vision, but you're willing to do the work to follow

through, it's more about preparation and it's more about investing the time to become knowledgeable, right? It's just like what you've done with the podcast. It wasn't like it was inherent to you to know all about podcasts and shows. You learned it as you went along. And most people aren't willing to do that. So it's not that anybody can't be an entrepreneur. But if you're finding yourself asking, what kind of company should I start?

You're not ready. You know, what do you think I should do? You're not ready. Am I ready to start this company? You're not ready, right? If you find yourself, I know this so much better than this company, this company, this company. If I can get in there and just get one account, then you're ready. Yeah, there's those kids that made CRMs pre-s, pre-s Salesforce.

But I had friends who were like, look, you know those people you've got to email and you got to remember? I got a database, but it's not just a spreadsheet. And I was thinking, this guy's going to be rich as hell. Yeah, actually, I wrote an app back in the 80s that mimic that app called Act. And it was going way back when, right? And CRM, it was just sales management, then customer, you know, revenue management or retention management, you know, resource management, depending on your angle. But yeah, I mean, wherever you can go with it, if you can do it better and solve a problem, go.

You've said to ask yourself, why can't it be me or my company that changes the game? that seems like a good thing to do. I think it took me years to even be like, I have permission to start my own business because I didn't grow up that way. And I think a lot of us don't. You know, you have to get a job. Yeah, I just had no choice.

Yeah, with me, I was trying to get jobs. I just couldn't keep them. And I just got to the point, like we said earlier, I just knew I was a lousy-ass employee. And my next job was not going to be any different than the last jobs. Should we be manufacturing in China? I mean, now that came out of my,

should we even be talking about this? Maybe we shouldn't endanger the NBA more it already is. Yeah, look, you can manufacture in China, but we still should be doing everything possible to kick their ass so we don't have to anymore. I get all these emails from people, oh, you push people to manufacture in China. No, I don't. Every single product I've ever had manufactured I've tried to make here first. But now what we're doing that's differently, I'm working with those companies because the cost of robotics is dropping and the software is improving. Now, you still don't have full manual dexterity, so you can't do everything. But we've got to get to a point

where we can kick their ass. Just making it here is just going to make it harder for us to compete globally. And we've been through the process. Maybe it'll be different this time of, okay, buy USA, spend the premium. But when you're back against the wall and you barely have enough money to live or you don't have a job, you're just buying whatever's cheaper. Sure. Yeah. And so while it sounds good, you know, we're not ready for that. How often do people come to you with business ideas? I imagine every single day. Oh, of course. Yeah. I get emails everything every day. Is email the best way to get a hold of you or are there other ways of better? Yeah. You know, email is always the best way because I'll read the first paragraph and if I'm interested, I'll keep reading it. If not, I'll hit delete.

What sort of structure do you think people should follow? You said the first paragraph, but what goes in there where you go? This person's not a moron. I'm going to keep going. You know, they tell me, this is what I do that's different and unique and here's why we can make money with it. If you go into your backstory, I went to college at Indiana University and my junior year I did this and my sophomore year, I broke my leg skiing. So I wasn't able to do that. No, delete. You know, if it's. I wrote the software package that I don't think anybody else is able to do. Here's the problem it solves. I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. I don't have access to a lot of resources.

Could you keep on reading and tell me what you think? I'll keep on reading. Yeah. It seems like a great way to get invested in how many companies? How many? Yeah, 200. Yeah. Lost track.

Yeah. Yeah, it's embarrassing, Jordan. Someone will send me an email from one of the companies and I'll forget what they did. It's brutal. Oh, yeah. So I always have to go to mark Cuban.com where I have all the list of my companies. Yeah. I know which ones are the shark tank companies or which ones are others, but I go through and I look through the list.

It's like, note to self, name your company stand up paddle boards so that when you sees that, he knows what I do. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Mark Cuban. We'll be right back. By the way, stay tuned after this show because after the jump, we're going to have a trailer for our episode with Ken Perreni, an art forger who dodged both the FBI and the mafia and forged thousands of paintings very well, apparently,

because he was never caught. So stay tuned after the show for a trailer of that episode from that interview. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. To learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard so you can check out those amazing sponsors for yourself, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget that worksheet for today's episode. The link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of our episode here with Mark Cuban. I think you should run for president. I know you said it's not off the table.

I mean, obviously it's maybe too late for 2020. I don't know how those things work. But I'm not even just blowing smoke here because you're a businessman who actually gives a crap about workers and the economy as it affects people other than you and other people with yachts that have other yachts inside them. Right. And there's a trend of having TV stars in the White House, you know? Yeah, that's not a good trend.

You know, that's the work I ever did run. him being there is the worst thing that ever happened to that opportunity. Yeah, probably. Because people kind of associate that with him. But yeah, it'd have to take just a strange, strange, crazy confluence of events, which are marginally better than zero, but not much. So I don't see it happening this time. And it's not my life dream.

It was more about these are the candidates that aren't that great. I think I could do the job. And here's my skill set. I think it's a necessary skill set. And that's why I've had the conversations. What do you think of it? I know you're big on independent candidates, but what do you think of the ones that we have right now, like Andrew Yang, Bernie, you know,

what do you think of those types of candidates? That we had you mean? Yeah, that we had. Sorry. Yeah, I guess. You know, I liked Andrew. I'm not a fan of Bernie's. Bernie talks in great, in big platitudes, his heart's in the right place, but he never says how he's

going to do it. And he says that's intentional. He doesn't want to have to say how he's going to do it. And that just doesn't sit well with me. And Elizabeth Warren kind of fell into the same role. I like Andrew. He's open. He's honest.

He's, you know, self-aware. He's not a politician. I'm a fan of CBI, but not UBI. And, you know, I think caretaker basic income is great, particularly now given the circumstances. I may not have had the same answer months ago. But right now, I think it's important that if you're caring for your kids, your parents, your grandparents, you know, somebody who's ill and your family, then, yeah, we should be giving you some money so that because you're working, you're actually improving the productivity of the country. I'm not a fan of UBI. I'm a believer in what John F. Kennedy had to say, that's not what your country can do for you,

but what you can do for your country. And that's why I'm more positive about the transitional jobs program, because there's productivity. And from productivity comes improvements in the economy and the state of living for everybody. You kind of hinted at this earlier in the show that someone at the top absolutely has to get a handle on technology, especially AI robotics. Was it 5G networking? Was the other area that you mentioned? Yeah, 5G precision medicine was the other one I mentioned. Now, effectively, our bodies are one big math equation. And every single day, we learn a little bit more about the variables and what they are.

And, you know, we need to keep on pushing that forward as we're finding out now with the virus. Do you think China has a massive advantage with AI because of the amount of data they have access to? Not yet, but that's an opportunity for them to pass us. Yeah. And so when you look at where the research is coming from, they're expanding exponentially. So are we. And so we're still ahead. They still don't have, they don't do a good job with semiconductors.

they don't do a good job with cloud computing and processing speed availability to deal with AI, but they're investing a whole lot more than we are as a country. And that's critical. I mean, look, in every one of my businesses, I've always said, how can my competitors kick my ass? Well, for USA Inc., America, Inc., China, we have to ask, how can China kick our ass? And they're investing in technologies, and it's not that we're not investing, but we're not nearly investing as much as they are. And to your point, you know, they don't care about individual human rights. And so or privacy. And so there's cameras everywhere, which allows them to learn more. And, you know, they're using that in bad ways, but that's still knowledge that they have that we don't have access to.

What would you tackle first if you were to end up in the White House? Let's see you woke up tomorrow and you're the president. Health care. Health care. Yeah, because here we are in the middle of a pandemic. We're having riots and looting and we don't know how that's going to intercept. with the pandemic and there's a lot of uncertainty. Yet we know that more people are going to get sick, yet no one's talking about health care. There's some basic things on people being added to the ACA. There's not a whole lot of talk about the expansion of Medicare. There's not a lot of talk about Medicaid or the expansion of Medicaid, rather. There's not a lot of talk. You know, we've got hospitals who are laying off people and not going out of business yet, but, you know, we're subsidizing.

What should hospitals look like next? What should health care look like on the other side of this pandemic, recognizing we may face this again, no one's having that conversation even a tiny bit. It's scary to think that because it's not, I don't even think we may face it again. I think it's just inevitable. I mean, it's always inevitable. It's not COVID. It's something else, right? Yeah, for sure. And it seems like that's now with invading the environment in the end, if we're really getting those things from animals, like, why would that slow down or stop? Well, exactly. And I think that's what's happened, right? I don't think it's an accident that so many hot spots are meatpacking and slaughtering plants. You know?

So if it was zootropic and jump from a bat to a person, why couldn't it jump from cattle or pigs or chickens, whatever? Because I just put in animals and COVID-19. And it talked about how animals, not pets, but more food-based things that we use for food, they exchange viruses through feasts. So if they're in sloppy locations, these viruses are transmitted between them. And they become hot spots in and of themselves. And so it's just inconceivable that it's just by chance. And particularly when from a business perspective, every slaughter or processing plant, right, they're doing everything possible to keep their employees safe because otherwise they're out

of business. Right. You know, and they're going to get closed down. So I don't think it's where it was maybe at the beginning where they don't have PPE and they're not protecting them. They have to, custom more not to, than it does to protect them. So it just correlation isn't causation, but it just seems to me, like if I had to to toss a coin or make a bet that I think has happened more than just from a bat.

If you were president, how would you improve race relations? Not that I'm trying to constantly lead you in that direction. Yeah, I mean, I'd hug a few people. Yeah. You know, I'd walk out there and listen. You know, I'd take advice. I wouldn't think I had all the answers. What type of job do you think this administration has done on race relations? Just look outside. Yeah, yeah. I can smell the smoke from here, I suppose. This piece you wrote, dear white people, we're the ones. that need to change. This is probably controversial. I would imagine you get some blowback from something like that. Yeah. Look, on Twitter, everything, you're going to get blowback on everything. And so a lot of people felt I was calling them out as racist, which I wasn't doing. In order for things to change,

then people need to take measures and understand, be very self-aware about what's going on with them and how people are living their lives. And the example I used with one guy, so I asked him this. The guy was just ripping on me, right, via email. And I like to engage in some of these. things because it's just interesting to me. I want to see if they'll change their minds, which typically they won't and just where their heads are at. And so I used the example. I said, look, let me try to explain. And I don't have a lot of standing. I'm white, obviously, but let me try to explain how it's been explained to me, you know, black Americans, particularly African American men. When they go out, I'm not going to have to explain to Jake what it's like

to be afraid if you get pulled over by an officer and to only pull over where there's light, not where it's dark. Or if you have somebody in the car with the phone, have them video recorded. That's not a conversation I've ever had to have or whatever I've ever had to have with my kids. I've always grown up that interactions with the police were positive, right? Sure. So I said to this guy, I said, all right, that's the kind of stress they deal with. They're diminished. People don't respect them. They're walking or running through a neighborhood. Someone might call the cops in a store. Someone's looking at them. I said, the only way you're going to be able to feel that and tell me what you would feel like, because this is a big issue for conservatives.

I said, imagine you put on a MAGA hat and a red MAGA T-shirt and you walked through downtown New York, where you walked in one of the protests, peaceful protests, how afraid would you be? Even though all those people around you are law-abiding citizens, you know, would you be concerned? You know, if you walk into a store with that same MAGA hat and MAGA T-shirt, do you think people are going to stare at you, you know, and look at you twice? Because, you know, you look at the conservative media whenever somebody with that outfit gets, what's the right word yelled at or screamed at or even push, it becomes an issue of focus. Now, imagine if you can never take that hat off.

Imagine if you can never take that shirt off. And no matter where you went and no matter what you did, you were always wondering how people were looking at you and whether or not all they saw was that red hat and red shirt that said, keep America great, even though you didn't have it on. How would you feel every single day? And I said, that's still not as bad. as what African-American and other ethnicities have to go through every single day. And the fact that it's an everyday issue for them, that's what bubbled up and that's what led to all this.

And I'm not trying to speak for the African-American or ethnic communities. You know, they have leaders to speak for themselves. But, you know, when we talk about, you know, white people having to do a little bit more, at least trying to understand, gives you some concept and lets you understand that their perspective and what they have to go through and the stresses that they go through are far different than what we go through. Do you think you have an increased awareness of this because of your Jewish history? Well, yeah, not so much because I'm Jewish.

Because of what we went through at the Mazz with sexual harassment, that just changed the game for me. You know, I learned very painfully, more painfully for some of the women that worked there, that, you know, treating people equally does not mean treating them the same. That I always thought that man, woman, white, black, it was more like a math equation. However, I treated Jordan, I was going to trade somebody a woman, right? I was going to treat them exactly the same and didn't really realize that particularly the power dynamics are so different and that you can't do that, right? You can't literally treat them equally and you've got to be able to recognize who they are, where they're from, what challenges they have.

And once I did that, you know, our business got a lot better and obviously bringing in our CEO, St. Marshall certainly educated me a lot more. But, you know, it's a process of learning. Being Jewish, it's one thing, you know, on my mom's side, about a quarter of her family got wiped out in the Holocaust when my, My grandfather came over here on all side, all grandparents, came here from Russia. They didn't come here because they thought the weather was nice. They got here, came here because if they didn't leave, they'd be dead. You know, and when they worked at a grocery store here in Passa, New Jersey in 1938, the crystal knock, they got burned down, and that led to them moving to Pittsburgh.

So, yeah, you know, I think there's an understanding there. And then when I say stuff, like when I said, it's white people that needs to change. I had so many, if you read my mentions, it was crazy. I had so many people saying, you're not white, you're Jewish. Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah, you're not white, you're Jewish, you're Semitic. I'm like, okay, I did not know that. You know, there's always going to be idiots.

And, you know, yes, being Jewish has given me, allowed me to be more empathetic. But what I went through with the Mavs and what I learned there and what I watched the people that work for me go through, that was far more impactful for me. What do you think just personally is the biggest change in your life? when you finally made, let's say your first, like, real fortune, not like the first time you sold a company, but the first sort of real fortune where you go, okay, I literally never have to do anything again that I don't want to do. Whenever I talk to people in that position, the changes are surprisingly minute. Like, you live in a big house, you fly it in your own plane. Like, that's great. But some of the minor, the things that nobody thinks of that are the changes that really make a

difference. Do you have anything like that that comes to mind? Yeah, just less stressed. I don't have to worry about the bills. Like, I couldn't tell you what my electric bill was last month. probably don't want to know with my kids. Yeah. You know, I don't stress about bills anymore, and that's the biggest difference. People say, well, what's the worst part about being a billionaire? Nothing. Nothing.

Absolutely positively nothing. But yeah, I've been in both sides where I had credit cards cut up. Like I said, lived six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. Yeah. You know, didn't have any money. I lived off of my roommates and I would go to the grocery store and be there at midnight because that's when they pushed down the price of chicken and we'd get our chicken packs. And so there's just no stress on the financial.

Now, kids and everything, health, I stress about my kids like any parent does. You know, when my 16-year-old learns how to just learn how to drive and start driving, every time that door in our car closed, I was terrified. And money can't change that. Yeah, I assume you bought a really safe car, though. Yeah, but a huge car. Yeah. Try not to run into anything, but if you do, this is the top bag.

This is the best car to run. Yeah. Yeah. I know that you had bill collectors chase. you and things like that. Back in the day, when you were younger, do you ever have nightmares about that stuff still? Oh, I get reminded all the time. You hear it's like, I hear the phone ring or something, right? Or, you know, you just naturally look for color ID and see who it is. And oh, my God,

thank God there's no, you know, don't really use answering machines anymore. Yeah. You know, because, hi, Mr. Cuban, this is such and such bank. We're still expecting that payment. I mean, just, yeah, just not good memories. In closing here, what are you most optimistic about here? A lot of people don't seem to have much to look forward to right now? What do you think we should be looking forward to as a nation? I mean, look, there's no better time ever to start a business than right now because all businesses are effectively going through a reset. You know, as we start to open back up and figure out what's going on, you know, big businesses are protecting their legacy businesses and see what's going

on. Medium-sized businesses is the same thing. You know, small businesses are just trying to adapt. If you're starting from scratch, you can build a restaurant that already deals with social distancing and H-FAC that, you know, considers the virus and all that, you know, if you're starting a service company, you can start off working from home and, you know, be comfortable because people have already gotten used to Zoom. You don't have to find that first office. And so there's a lot of advantages. And with the protests and the riots, that gives us just one inkling a hope that maybe we'll make progress, you know, that maybe this time will listen. And that's why I've tried to speak out, you know, you're asking me these questions are great. I'm trying to, you know, get involved in the

minority community, going to, you know, events, going to black-owned businesses, minority-owned businesses. It's trying to help any business that was looted and impacted. But in particular, those people who are at the greatest disadvantage right now, I've been trying to connect to and help. Mark Cuban, thank you so much. Thanks to Mark Cuban for coming on the show today. Links to everything from him will, of course, be in the show notes. Please do use our website links if you buy anything from the show, books, from authors, things like that, worksheets for this episode. So you can take away everything you learned here from Mark Cuban. Those are in the show notes. transcripts are in the show notes.

There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people like Mark Cuban and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course, which is free and always will be over at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty, build those relationships before you need them, so you can work your network either for business or personal reasons. And honestly, it's just been rewarding for me to have people,

enrich my life like that. And it's a great systematic way to do it in a few minutes a day. You have to go to stupid mixers and stuff like that. The course is free, not enter your credit card free, just free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And by the way, many guests on the show, they subscribed to the course in the newsletter. Come join us. You'll be in smart company. That's where you belong. Tell Mark you enjoyed this episode of the show. Speaking of relationships, you can tweet at him. That'll be in the show notes. And if you want to tweet at me or follow me on Instagram, I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both of those platforms. You can also add me on LinkedIn. I post a lot there, probably more than anywhere else these days.

This show is created in association with Podcast One. This episode, produced by Jen Harbinger, engineered by J. Sanderson. The ads were fun because of Peter Old Ring, show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogarty, music by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Stephen Cohen, and I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Our advice and opinions and those of our guests are their own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show.

And remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. Got a Shark Tank fan, got someone who's trying to get investment, somebody is interested in tech. Mark Cuban, he covers a lot of bases. Share this episode with him. Hopefully you find something great in every episode, so please do share the show with those you love. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. He gave me a book on art forgery.

I found myself drawn to these old masters. How did these artists take paint from a palette, arrange it on a canvas? I began to unlock the secrets. I was a storehouse of knowledge of how to create an illusion, presented to a experienced expert, manipulate his mind. and convince him and bring him to the inevitable conclusion that the painting is genuine. We flooded the market with my paintings, and I couldn't believe what I did. I couldn't believe it.

Then the dominoes started falling, and eventually the FBI were led to my door. They uncovered a mountain of evidence against me. But they never actually got you. At this point, you've sold a lot. like a million dollars in cash you sold one painting for 717,000 why did it go away why did you never get indicted and how are we having this conversation I guess that's the greatest story of all to hear how Ken Perennie made millions in art forgery dodged the mafia and the FBI subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger show and check out episode 282

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