Speaker 1AI is not smart. AI doesn't know the consequences of its actions. It doesn't have inherent ethics. Those companies keep on borrowing and spending more money in order to power all the AI, but they're borrowing more than they're making. We literally could get into a debt bubble. You do think we're in a bubble, don't you?
Speaker 2Yeah. What causes it to burst? I'll tell you this. So what are the most sort of foundational things I need to understand the Mark Cuban that we've all grown to love from the Shark Tank and the businesses and the Dallas Mavs?
Speaker 1So business was an area where I was always ahead of the curve, no matter how old I was. Growing up, I went door to door in the neighborhood selling garbage bags, and that probably catapulted me more than anything, because if you can go door to door and sell, you can do anything. Like on a Shark Tank, when somebody walked in and told me about their company, I knew exactly how I would sell it.
Speaker 2What are the sort of consistent themes amongst all people that become an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1You've got to find one thing and be great at it, and then find a way to turn that something into a business. Next, if you're going to do anything with technology, media, whatever, it may be, you better be ahead of the curve, because business is like a sport. If you don't keep on getting better and improving your game, you're not going to be able to compete. But what we don't talk about is, what do I suck at? Suck at it. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was, I was a jerk. I would yell, I would scream, and I found that I got a lot further by being nice than by being a dick.
Speaker 2The last thing I want to ask you about is your more recent decisions around leaving Shark Tank, selling the Mavs. I'll tell you this, that tells you all you need to know. We've got some wonderful photos here.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's my brother, Brian. Brian, he
Speaker 2wrote
Speaker 1you a letter. Oh my God, I'll probably start crying.
Speaker 2Yeah, he wrote me a letter, he wrote me a letter, he wrote me a letter, he wrote me a letter. And he wrote me a letter, he wrote me a letter. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Mark, there are so many things happening in the world at the moment, and just specifically focusing in on business and technology and AI. What are the remarkable things that are happening in the world at the moment? One of the remarkable things I often reference about you is in spite of your success, you continue to self-educate. And I've watched this in you over multiple cycles of technology. When crypto became a thing, when AI showed up, one of the first things I see on my timeline is Mark Cuban going back to school. Yeah, for sure. What's going on in your head at the moment? To me, business is like a sport.
Speaker 1And if you don't keep on getting better and improving your game, you're not going to be able to compete. And if you're going to do anything with technology, media, whatever it may be, you better be ahead of the curve. Otherwise, there's going to be some kid in high school somewhere who's going to kick your ass. And I want to be the one doing the ass kicking instead of getting their ass kicked.
Speaker 2What are the most sort of foundational things I need to know about your earliest context to understand the Mark Cuban that we've all grown to love and know from the Shark Tank and the businesses and the Dallas Mavs?
Speaker 1I think I just grew up in a regular family and just had the piss and vinegar in me to always want to be a part of it. I wanted to compete, like I said, and I was able to turn an idea into a business and be successful.
Speaker 2And you had very formative parents, by the sounds of things.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, I had great upbringing. My dad did upholstery on cars, pure blue collar. My mom did odd jobs. Yeah, that's my grandparents, my mom. My mom was only 20 when I was born. We've got some more wonderful photos here. That's my brother, Brian, who's the middle brother, and my dad. That's when we lived on Meadowlark in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2Your father never made more than $40,000 in his life?
Speaker 1Never. No. He would be up at work and gone by the time we were leaving for school. He actually lost an eye when he was doing upholstery. There was a staple that broke when I was in sixth grade, but he just always was a grinder and just, yeah, amazing. I miss him. You miss him? I miss him both. Everywhere we went, he always had friends, and if he didn't know people there, they quickly became his friends. And I think that set a great example for my brothers and I more than anything.
Speaker 2What are some of those sort of high-level lessons? What are some of the lessons that you always reference come from him?
Speaker 1You know, he would say things that, like, you don't live in the world you were born into. You know, today's the youngest you'll ever be, that type of thing, where, you know, no matter what hustle I had going on, he was always supportive.
Speaker 2Always. And what did you think you were going to be when you were older, at that age, in those
Speaker 1photos? Oh, a baseball player. Really? Yeah, I was good, but not good enough. But then, after that, it became apparent that I was going to be a business guy.
Speaker 2I mean, I think it was apparent from your photos.
Speaker 1You were selling baseball cards when I was a kid?
Speaker 2Yeah. Oh, my God, you got some good ones. I mean, you also started selling some of these, I hear, as well.
Speaker 1Yeah, so what I would do is, yeah, so when I was, like, nine or ten years old, I would go to the local pharmacy, and they would sell packs of baseball cards. And I would buy a bunch of them with my allowance, and then I would repackage them using, like, the comics and everything from the paper. Buy these for, like, it cost me, like, a quarter. Buy them for 50 cents. You're guaranteed to get a Pittsburgh Pirate, like Roberto Clemente or Willie. Willie Stargell. And I would sell them and make money. Then I'd go and turn it around and make more. And that literally was my first start in hustling. And then, one day, my dad was playing poker with his buddies. You know, they'd rotate to each other's houses. And they were at our house, and I went in there to grab a donut. And I was like, Dad, I want a new pair of basketball shoes. And he looks at my feet, and he goes, those shoes work. When you have a job, you can buy whatever you want. I'm like, Dad, I'm 12. And one of his buddies who had to. who had been drunk, was like, hey, I got something you can sell. I've got boxes of garbage bags that I'll sell to you for $3, and you can sell them for $6. And literally, I went door-to-door in the neighborhood, and I'd be like, hi, I'm your neighbor, Mark. Do you use garbage bags? Easy sell, right? And that probably catapulted me more than anything, because if you can go door-to-door and sell, you can do anything.
Speaker 2This idea of selling is sort of very top-of-mind for you in terms of one of the ultimate skills of building, becoming an entrepreneur. And it's so funny, because I spent a lot of time in call centers when I was younger, doing cold calls. But I always say that the best sales experience is door-to-door sales. Or call centers, right?
Speaker 1Every no gets you closer to a yes, right? Just knowing how to deal with people telling you no, and how to deal with objections, and how to respond quickly. It just trains your mind to be quick. And once you can sell, I mean, you have a job for life.
Speaker 2Why is selling so important as it relates to becoming an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1No business has ever succeeded without sales. And if you don't think about it, your product or service is so good that you're dying to sell it, that you think that by talking to somebody about whatever product it is, you're not helping them, right? Because that's the whole point of sales. You know, when you were in that call center, what did you sell?
Speaker 2Everything. Windows, doors, conservatories, double glazing.
Speaker 1Right, right. And it was all about helping them. And you'd have the objections, and I'd go sell it. I was selling magazines door-to-door. Once you learn how to sell, once you learn how to deal with objections, once your mind is spinning, waiting and reacting, just like you did in a call center. What can't you sell?
Speaker 2Are there any principles of being a good salesperson? Or even in, you know, on Shark Tank, when you see someone come in and they're great at sales, what are those principles?
Speaker 1You care. You know your product. You want to help people. You're not trying to convince them to do something against their interests. You're trying to understand and learn their interests and help them achieve their goals or whatever your product may have happened to do. It may be, hey, you don't have to go to the store and pick up a bag. Or it may be when you're selling something, you know, windows, you know, you don't want to look through those dirty windows. You know, you know, there's a crack, you know, your electricity bill is up way too high because of your windows and we're here to replace them. And for only $17 a month, we'll save you, you know, it'll more than pay for itself in the electricity bill, right? Like on a Shark Tank, when somebody walked in and told me about their company, I knew exactly how I would sell it or could not sell it. And once you can do that, you're always going to be able to get a job. And if you are an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur and you find something that you love and a product or service you love, then selling it's easy.
Speaker 2You know, oftentimes we hear about people becoming wildly successful billionaires because they came up with some tech idea. It was their first thing, like a Zuckerberg. Right. And it becomes this huge success. And they're like 25. Right. So sometimes when we're like 32. Miss the boat, right? We miss the boat. Yeah. But then when I read your story, you know, I think you were like 31 years old, 32. And your first business I sold for $2 million, which is a. Well, I sold for five. I netted two. You netted two. Okay. What is the big misconception that like young people these days have about what it takes, whether it's in terms of sacrifice or time or patience or compounding skills? Because they are incredibly impatient, I think.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, I was just as impatient, but I think it really depends on your personal circumstances. Like I had nothing to lose. I was broke. You know, I had gotten fired from a job. So starting micro solutions. Was an easy choice. I was living six guys in a three bedroom apartment, didn't have my own bedroom. So it was like, why not? And I remember being terrified and thinking, okay, I've been in business one month. That's a win. Three months, six months, nine months. I have $15,000 in accounts receivable. You know, I'm on my way of moving out of this shithole I live in. So it really depends on your personal circumstances. But I always tell young entrepreneurs, like if you're broke and you got nothing to lose. You know, even if you're working a job. Like, I was working as a bartender, and, you know, go out and do what you got to do, and, you know, start what you've got to start. I think one of the big misconceptions is, A, you have to raise money. And B, if you do raise money, hitting big sales numbers is like the ultimate end-all be-all as opposed to being profitable. For MicroSolutions, our entire eight-year existence, we were profitable every single month. I mean, we made sure that we sold enough and kept our costs in line so that I was going to be able to stay alive and keep on moving forward. And I think kids today, they hear the stories about the Zuckerbergs and, you know, the Sam Altmans, and it's like billions of dollars by the time you're, you know, 12. And they think, okay, that's the way I'll do it. They went out to Silicon Valley and they raised all this money. And they don't even realize that the greatest number of successful people aren't the billionaires, right? It's the people that have made a few million, 5 million, 10 million, 20 million. 50, $100 million. There's a multiple number of people in those set of circumstances. And I'm not saying it's easy to get there, but it's doable, right? It's not a Silicon Valley dream. It's the American dream. And it's where you are and what you can do and what skills you have to accomplish it that makes the difference when you get started.
Speaker 2If I'm trying to become a millionaire, let's say, what are the sort of consistent themes amongst all people that become millionaires, 10, you know, a 10 millionaire, a hundred millionaire, is there like certain principles that you're going to need regardless of what industry you're playing in? Of course. So we talked about sales. Yeah, sales obviously.
Speaker 1But, you know, to be a millionaire, I think you've just got to be really good at something and then find a way to turn that something into a business. It may be sales, it may be programming, it may be tinkering, it may be drawing, it may be being a creator, whatever it may be. But if you're not good at it, there's no business that you start that's going to make you a millionaire. You know, you got to be good at something.
Speaker 2This brings me to the point about focus, because lots of entrepreneurs, I'm sure you get this a lot in Shark Tank, but outside of the tank is they think that having three ideas or three things is increasing their odds.
Speaker 1Right. No, that's ridiculous. Or they say, I want to be an entrepreneur. What should I do? What business should I start? Oh, my God. No, you've got to find one thing and be great at it, because once you're great at something, doors open up wide, because if it's not your company, then they got to keep you because you're great. And whoever you compete with in that company, they're looking and saying, wow, you know, Stephen's great, you know, or Mark's great. And then you're like, I'm great at this. Maybe if I want to be an entrepreneur, I can start a business about what I'm great at. What are you most likely to become great at? Where you spend your time. Like people think it's about passion. Oh, I'm passionate. I was passionate to be a baseball player. Basketball player didn't help me at all. Right. And I think when you realize where you're spending your time is where you find things that you like to do. And when you like to do something, if it's convertible to a business at all, then you keep on getting better and better and better because it's like anything else, whether it's tech, selling windows, right, whatever it is, installing windows. When you start realizing you're better than the people around you. Your confidence goes up. Your willingness to learn more goes up. You want to find how you can be even better so you could be the absolute best. When those things happen, you can start a company and there's no limit to what you can do.
Speaker 2I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about long-termism as an idea. And what I mean by this is it's just interesting that when you take a longer term view to almost anything, like you have in many sort of endeavors in your career. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I was thinking about the mouse there. Yep. It's interesting how today's decisions change and how that creates a moat. Yeah. Because we live in a world, I think, where people plan sometimes in quarterly cycles, or sometimes they plan their lives in five-year seasons. But there's a couple of entrepreneurs that I look out into the world and think, oh, they were thinking like 10, 20 years. That wasn't me.
Speaker 1Oh, really? Yeah. No. What about with the Mavs though? So when I got into the, with the Mavs and I bought the Mavs.
Speaker 2Which is a basketball team for anyone.
Speaker 1Basketball team. Yeah. In the NBA. And so I was a basketball junkie, right? And I was a season ticket holder and went to a game and I was like, wait, maybe I could buy this team, right? Because I just made all this money. And I was like, that sounds fun. And I did it not because it was a business, not because I saw this long, you know, horizon of owning the team. I thought this could just really be fun. And what could be better than, you know, going and shooting baskets with Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash and Michael Finley. So that's what got me into it. But I didn't even really look at it as a business. I looked at it more as, an intellectual endeavor, right? An intellectual challenge. Can I take a team that was awful and got voted the worst professional sports franchise of the previous decade and turn it into a winning team? And that was my goal. And for a long time, it was stressful because I'm so competitive losing a game. It would take me two days to get over a loss. But then it got to the point, you know, not long before I sold where, in my opinion, it went from being about basketball, to being about valuations. And it went from, hey, I love basketball, and this is all about basketball, to the NBA being more about, okay, how much are these teams worth? And the conversation is not being about how can we make the game better, but how can we make it more valuable? And to me, that just created more stress, you know, because in order to compete, you had to be good at real estate and things that had nothing to do with basketball. So I wish I could tell you that I was like, okay, I have this 25-year horizon, but I can't tell you, I never thought I would sell. But then things changed around me. And I guess, you know, having kids changed me as well. You bought the team for, is it $200 million roughly?
Speaker 2285, yeah. And you sold it for?
Speaker 14.3. Billion. Yeah.
Speaker 2What I find interesting is the point you just made about you'll become great at the things where you want to spend your time on them. And again, the point you made before that was entrepreneurs, when they come to you and say, I want to be an entrepreneur, and then they go looking for an idea, tend to fail. This is a prime example of you doing exactly what you described, it was somewhere you wanted to spend your time, which meant that you became good at it. I loved it. Yeah, yeah. I saw how the team's performance drastically improved over the years that where you were the majority owner, but also some of the things you implemented around data and performance and technology into the mouse. And it becomes a great business.
Speaker 1Not a bad business, yeah. It turned out to be a great business, yeah. You just don't know, but when you're doing something you love, right? It's the old cliche, you don't work a day in your life, but it's true. It's true. How do you define success? Waking up in the morning with a smile on your face, excited about the day. And that's hard. Most people can't do that. Most people look and they say, okay, I got to go to work. I got to do this. I've got these five things I got to get done or whatever. Even when I was broke, I was fired up. And the Mavs got me, it was amazing because sports are so much different than every other business. You can work for a company like Google and they have the best quarter ever. They set records. Apple becomes the most valuable company in the world. Nobody throws a parade. If you win a championship, the whole city's on fire and they're throwing parades. And a half a million, a million people converge on downtown in a hundred degrees heat to scream at the players and everybody. So that's just so different. And that's what made the Mavs special.
Speaker 2Is that amongst your best days in your life, winning the championship?
Speaker 1Business-wise, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I'll tell you this, it was so climatic internally for me. I've seen so many games where we thought we were going to win and ended up losing them and they had LeBron and et cetera. And I was like, okay, we're up by 10 points with 30 seconds to go. There's no chance that we're losing this. And then they hit a three. I'm like, oh, shut the fuck up, Mark. And then we got to the point where we won. I'm like, okay, the clouds should open up and the sun should shine. And I just realized, oh, this is great. I'm like, now what? What comes next? And it wasn't so much how I felt and hugging all the guys and hugging everybody, but it was how the city felt. And that's what really made it special when I would take the trophy to schools. I would take it to bars. I would take it to restaurants. I would take it to my kids' events, whatever it was, and to see their eyes light up. Just that communal joy. That's what made it special. You said there's
Speaker 2many people that are listening that are trapped. They feel trapped. They feel stuck in a nine to five job. They're living paycheck to paycheck. I've been there. You've been there. What advice would you have for them? They might have a thousand dollars in savings and they're trying to get out of that situation. Is there some type of life raft? Are there principles of how to escape?
Speaker 1I say this to new college graduates all the time. Don't go get the best job because that's the hardest to find. Don't get the perfect job because those are hard to find. Just get a job. And when you have a job, just work to be really good at it. The second part of that is you have to be brutally honest with yourself because nobody looks at the job they're doing and says, I suck, right? They're like, oh, I'm great at this. They just don't realize it. No, you have to be honest and talk to people around you. But when you're really good at something, that's when doors do open up. And even in the worst possible job, you could be working at a McDonald's, at a dairy cream, but there's a path. And if you understand how to move up that path, even though your life mission isn't to be the of a McDonald's or a dairy queen or whatever, the fact that you can show a future employer that you moved up the line and then when they ask for a reference, they said Stephen was incredibly valuable we're really sorry you know that he's leaving we tried to keep him that's what you need and that can happen in two three years it's just most people don't want to think like that you know you get in your head and you get inside yourself it's just like oh this is miserable yada yada yada and it's funny
Speaker 2looking backwards on journeys like yours where it's often jobs that most people wouldn't think were glamorous that end up being the most sort of important or formative to your skill stack yeah you're talking about door-to-door sales people you mentioned what's Dairy Queen's they're all like McDonald's I think I remember that Jeff Bezos worked at McDonald's and this is really where he learned about this sort of like customer
Speaker 1obsession customer service you start to understand yeah boy Molly's pub but yeah you learn how to deal with people how to deal with customers that can happen in any job it's just I read this book in high school it was called why men rebel and it said most people have aspirations that are up here and when their real lives they feel like are down here here they you know a lot of people won't just accept it okay because no one wants to think I'm not going to do or not to accomplish anything so that's when they start fighting and rebelling and joining you know groups that are counter to what's happening in society and and I think understanding that in yourself you know you have to be at least self-aware a little bit to understand that it's okay to be frustrated but you can't let it overtake your life you've got to be able to put yourself in a position to at least feel better about yourself even if it's not perfect did you rebel oh my whole life yeah I was always counterculture I remember being in high school and I was four inches shorter 25 pounds heavier you can't tell here but these two teeth are capped I'm not going to lie to you I'm not going to and because my parents didn't have any money I ran into a bicycle it broke my teeth and I got caps that were aluminum steel that's what they were they were steel and I'm 16 years old like and people like my friends be like ah the reflection but you just you just have to find your path you can't get down on yourself
Speaker 2one of the things that a lot of people who feel stuck um are probably thinking about is they're probably wait trying to wait mentally the amount of sacrifice that you're going to take and what I've heard you talk about hard work and the sacrifices that you had to take to build yourself from this sort of 22 year old who is in Pittsburgh I believe at the time to starting your first business which ended up being acquired micro solutions what does the sacrifice look like if I was a fly on the wall when you were presumably you had a job at that time yeah and then you started building the business what would I have seen in terms of your how did your life
Speaker 1look so when I got to Dallas moved in with like I said five roommates didn't have a bed I just slept on the floor I mean that's example of sacrifice living in a shithole got a job working at night as a bartender but then almost immediately got a job working at a software store and that was going to be for me my first step into a real job right where I could have a future but I got fired nine months later and I wanted to move out of the shithole I lived in and I was going to be looking at a fifteen hundred dollar commission which would have done it for me so I called my boss and I'm like I need to go pick up this check and I'm like you'll make money I'll make money but I have somebody to cover opening up the retail store that I worked in and he was like no I need you in the store and I made the executive decision to go pick up the check thinking when I brought it in everything would be well he fired me on the spot fired me and I'm like okay you know I suck as an employee this is not what I want I'm going to start my own company and I don't know if I'd call it sacrifice but I'd call it deferring immediate gratification you know I knew that I was going to be a failure and I was going to be a failure and I knew that it was going to take time for me to get any level of success to move out of that apartment I was going to have to sell hard learn stuff I didn't understand this was the early days of the pc revolution when pcs were starting to happen I don't know this shit but either does anybody else in my mind when it came to software there was only going to be one person who understood any given software better than me and that would be the person who wrote it and that if I busted my ass I was tied for second right when that's new program like lotus one two three if you remember that one kid no what shut up um it was a very it was the second spreadsheet that was a big spreadsheet and so anyways my idea was I was going to put in the time to learn that software however many software packages that is more than everybody and I literally would stay in that retail store overnight or I'd take the computer back to the shithole apartment and just sit there and teach myself and teach myself read the manuals over and over because if I can get ahead of everybody else to be in second by myself I would have a huge edge over everybody else in my you know for micro solutions it's the same with ai new ai comes out new model comes out new software comes out there's the creator and everybody else is tied for second and I'm going to kick their ass by learning it faster
Speaker 2better and ai is obviously like the term of the moment in business how significant do you think
Speaker 1this is oh I mean I've been in the tech business a long time this dwarfs everything else in aggregate yeah this is so much bigger with ai you can just say hey I need to learn more about Stephen Bartlett tell me everything there is to know it's able to make me a lot more productive and I think it anybody more productive and I think that's the beauty of artificial intelligence and from an educational perspective of done right it's a democratizer of information you have access to every library every book every speech everywhere and so if you're interested there's nothing you can't learn everywhere
Speaker 2I go around the world people are asking me whether this is this technology is the real deal and business owners and entrepreneurs are asking like how they should be responding in a moment like this because in my life I'm 30 34 years old now there's almost no precedence of such a disruptive technology it can be quite threatening to many people because it there's this sort of process of they call it creative destruction where it like rips down the old way of doing things and in that it could be ripping down your identity your degree your job yeah and so there was a psychologist called Leon Festinger that coined a term called cognitive dissonance which even hearing the term helped me understand myself and my feelings which is the discomfort you feel when something sort of threatens or conflicts with what you know the whole world is experiencing this right now yep all at once globally and what people are doing some people are doing is they you know an attempt to alleviate the dissonance bury their heads in the sand deny it not it won't come for me I'll be fine right
Speaker 1yeah that's not gonna happen yeah not gonna happen like for me with AI I see it as an opportunity wherever there's change there's opportunity you know something's changing and to your point the cognitive dissonance people are avoiding it and not dealing with it at all and then there's others who are picking up on it and saying let's go let's go and that's always been my approach because you know most people aren't going to do the work yeah you know there was an old basketball coach Bobby Knight from Indiana University and when I was in college he was on 60 minutes and he had this one line and my jaw just dropped on oh shit that's it that's my line he goes everybody's got the will to win but it's only those with the will to prepare that actually do win and I'm like bingo that's all I needed you know you get one little line as a kid in your head and I'm just like let's go problem
Speaker 2is you never see people prepare you may not see it right yeah so there's no role model
Speaker 1preparation right no one gets
Speaker 2to see you going and taking the software from the store and taking it home to the shuttle apartment because there was no cameras there was no interest at that point yeah so we almost don't appreciate that that's part of the win but they probably saw you on the like the double decker bus with the trophy yeah right so you know this is the illusion of like success I guess in this context that's why we have conversations like this yeah yeah to
Speaker 1convey that yeah that's why you've been
Speaker 2so successful well no it's it but but this is why I love having these conversations because it it's almost counter narrative to Instagram to hear that you spent years right it's even worse
Speaker 1like okay so my 16 year old son 17 year old just turned right drove me nuts because you know how the algorithms work right whatever you see you get more of and each of us have our own unique algorithm on Instagram TikTok YouTube right nobody sees the same stuff and obviously he was interested in business because he would come up to me and show me these get rich quick schemes you know you're gonna drop ship you're gonna do you know shoe drops even there was one where they had a blaster you know water blaster so you can clean sidewalks and I'm like no right if those were good businesses they wouldn't be telling you about them they would just be doing them or make all this money in the stock market nobody would be telling you about them nobody who has an edge in the stock market is selling it they're using it and the the point of all that is people particularly now in this social media world where you just get more of what you want they get misled section 230 the protections on the internet and the fact that that protects algorithms I think really is a big part of holding kids back these days because that's why you talk about not seeing people do the preparatory work you know not seeing what happens behind the scenes that doesn't get more views or more engagement on instagram or tiktok no one's gonna okay mark's looking at this reading a manual no right and it's tougher for society today you know we talk about socialism or capitalism no one knows what it actually means they just whatever is presented to them in you know a 10 second bite and you see it enough you presume it must
Speaker 2be true that's why I think I asked about long-termism is because I'm trying to figure out what the sort of you know you said earlier you said you know most people won't do it and right now with algorithms and a certain sort of online narrative that I think there becomes like a winning opportunity to do the opposite. So get rich quick schemes. The opposite of that is like taking a long-term approach, doing the preparation, mastering a skill, and setting yourself a tenure time horizon as opposed to like, I'm going to be rich next year.
Speaker 1Even Charlie Munger used to say it all the time, right? There's no delayed gratification anymore. Never. And if you don't realize you have to do the work first, you're not going to get the gratification.
Speaker 2And Charlie and Warren are obsessed with compounding.
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, for sure. They were the kings of it.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. That's one of the things I always found fascinating about them when I started reading about why they were such great investors is that I read that there'd be like a couple of years where they wouldn't invest any money at all.
Speaker 1No. What the fuck? No, and I've tried to do the same thing. Again, just trying to not, don't just jump into the market. Jump in the market. There's always going to be a bear market, and that's where the money was made. During COVID, you know, I just started buying up everything when it hit, and I crushed it. You know, you can say that's wrong in some respects, right? But now it's just like you see. These stocks and everything just, you know, AI-related stuff just going to the moon and all this debt. I'm like, just be patient. You can invest a little bit for the fun of it, but be patient. Have some cash because at some point it's going to turn. And when that happens, that's when the real magic happens and where all the real money is made. The delayed gratification.
Speaker 2I heard you talk about this.
Speaker 1I think we're in a bubble, but not the same as the internet bubble back in 2000, 2001. I think what's different now is. Everything's a meme stock. Bitcoin is a meme stock, right? Pick Micron, you know, pick Google, Apple. They're meme stocks. And the reason I say that is by watching how stocks move with just a little bit of news. So a company might miss earnings by a penny or only beat by a penny, and their stock will be down 18%. The intrinsic value of that company hasn't changed 18%. It's just that buyers and sellers move. They move in and move out very quickly based off of anticipated information, as opposed to the net present value of the future cash flows and all that. We're trading them like baseball cards. You know, there's no intrinsic value to this. It's just perceived value and what you think somebody else will pay for it. And I think we're in a bubble for that very reason.
Speaker 2I have no idea. Because we said, you know, this technology, AI is without precedence. You know, it is quite tempting for someone like. Like me to put, you know, put a couple of dollars into. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2Because you think maybe this is like the last technology.
Speaker 1Right. Because even, you know, I don't think it'll be the last technology because it'll always, something will always happen. There'll always be somebody smarter than the AI, I believe. But look at Dell and Amazon. They were companies whose stocks went from way up high, got crushed when the internet bubble burst. Amazon was losing money hand over foot. I mean, people used to give them a hard time because they were losing so much. Now they're worth trillions of dollars. And if you would just stuck it out with them. So there will be winners. I just don't know which company. Is it Anthropic? Is it OpenAI? I don't know.
Speaker 2You think there'll always be someone smarter than the AI?
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2What do you mean by that? I've never heard that.
Speaker 1Take a model from Anthropic, AI model for Anthropic. Or Google Gemini. Or ChatGPT OpenAI, right? It gets released. It's immediately out of date. Immediately. The brilliance of this conversation is not in question. Incorporated in any model, anywhere, right? AI is not smart. It just knows how to use statistics, basically, to predict the next word. It's predictive. It's not deterministic. Meaning if you asked four different AIs the same question, you're going to get four different answers. If you modify a question to the same AI, just marginally, that shouldn't change the meeting. It'll give you a different answer every time. That doesn't work in the real world. AI doesn't have inherent ethics. AI can't take video and consume it or absorb it, at least not yet. If I'm standing at a four-way intersection and there's cars going back and forth, and I have video in my phone and the best models ever, and I have a seeing-eye dog right here, I'm letting the seeing-eye dog take me across the street before I let the AI take me across the street. It's always going to be behind. There's always going to be a latency. It's always going to be a latency. And so many things can change in a blink of the eye in this world that there's always going to be a human who says, oh, you know what? I can do this better because while all these other companies are competing with their models to try to, you know, hit these benchmarks and outperform in these benchmarks or do recursive self-improvement so it just keeps on training itself more and more, it doesn't have access. A two-year-old sitting on a high chair with a sippy cup knows that if it pushes the sippy cup. off the high chair, mom's going to come running and it knows it's going to crack up, right? AI's not going to figure that out ever.
Speaker 2Do you know, if you plot, if you think of it as like an exponential technology, this is what I always try and, because it's tempting to think of it as a sort of a static state. I'm thinking of like a graph here, like where it kind of goes like this. But these technologies from even what I've observed with every new release seem to be almost like this. So it's quite hard, like even think about full self-driving. Yeah. Tesla drives itself and apparently the crash rate is significantly lower than if a human was driving. Yeah, of course. And if I imagine that as an exponential, at some point, this shit's going to be pretty.
Speaker 1Except, except, they're just like you see the protests about data centers. Yeah. When we talked about why men rebel, a book I haven't thought about since high school, right? People are going to rebel. People are going to create their own communities where there is, if it's that dominant, there'll be people say, I don't want that in my life. There'll be communes and kibbutzes where there's no technology. There's something called adversarial actions for AI, where like with full self-driving, there's certain things that when it sees it, it reacts in the wrong way. And once you know how to do that, and you can cause AI to do things that it doesn't want to do, or you don't expect it to do, then you're going to get people who do that all the time. And you're also seeing it, like when I go and talk to hospitals and researchers for cost-plus drugs, right? What I tell them is you're crazy if you publish everything or if you try to patent everything, because it's immediately available to every model and you lose control of your intellectual property. And you're starting to see more and more and more people, instead of patenting it, it's a trade secret. Instead of publishing it, I'll put it in my model or I'll sell it to you. And so you get this bifurcation. But with each model where Gemini is not trained on the same data as ChatGPT, as Claude, as Grok, et cetera, and if they're all giving you different answers, kind of defeats the purpose in a lot of respects. And if they can't deal with live video or they're always have latency. And look, when I say this, I'm not saying AI is useless. No, exact opposite. AI is incredible. But like having four of the smartest people next to you, they're not all going to give you the same answer. And you have to have the skill set to be able to ask the right question and ask the right question of multiple sources and be able to take the output from each of them, the responses from each of them, and come to a conclusion that you think is in your best interest or whatever interest that is.
Speaker 2You'd think the former president of Nespresso would be a pretty hard person to convert to a new coffee company. But just one sip of Cometeer coffee made him invest. But let me tell you the reason why I became an investor. So I had a big box of this arrive on my desk in the London office. And then I'd say within about an hour and a half, the Slack channel that we have starts blowing up with people asking, what the hell is that thing that's been left in the kitchen? It is unbelievable. So instead of trying to make it yourself at home and balance the flavors, they flash freeze it at the perfect moment. So all you have to do is pop it out of here into a cup, pour hot water on it, and it tastes like nothing you've tasted before. You can also make. Delicious iced coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in. No machine, no brewing with plastic and all that nasty stuff. And you can get $30 off your first order at Cometeer.com slash Stephen today. That's Cometeer.com slash Stephen. There's something your business depends on that most of us never even think about. One thing you realize when you're building your business is just how dependent you become on being connected. Your team is on video calls. Files are in the cloud. Payments. Customer conversations. Teams collaborating across the globe. So much of the business is happening online. And you don't really think about your internet when it's working. You notice it when it stops working. T-Mobile is now a sponsor of this show, provider that I've used for the longest time. And they have developed something called Super Broadband, the only nationwide broadband solution to integrate 5G and Starlink, which by the way is a lifesaver, for virtually unbreakable connectivity. Terrestrial 5G and Starlink satellites are two of the most important technologies in the world. And they work together to keep you online through outages and disruptions, which means if one of them fails, the other instantly takes over without anything being interrupted. All with one contract and coverage that reaches every zip code in the United States. Super Broadband from T-Mobile is a new era of business internet. Discover more at superbroadband.com. Speeds vary due to local network characteristics and management. Satellite connectivity requires hardware installation and clear view of the sky, with 30% of the time, you don't have to worry about the internet. 36th month commitment. What do you make of all these AICOs saying that it's going to transform how we work and there's not really going to be any jobs left?
Speaker 1Well, it will transform how we work, but I think there'll be creative destruction. Like, you know, I went to school at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and right by Bloomington is Terre Haute, Indiana. Terre Haute, Indiana used to be the location for RCA Records, which then became CDs, right? And then they made DVDs. You probably don't even remember that shit, right? I remember CDs and DVDs. Okay. Gone. Gone, right? But it's not like there aren't people making money on music. And so there will be creative destruction. There will be new things that pop up that leverage this new technology that create different kinds of jobs. Is the path going to be painful for people? Yeah, just like the people in Terre Haute, Indiana. It's going to be painful.
Speaker 2Because this technology feels so different because when you start to think about how much of our lives run both on the internet, but just based on intelligence, like driving is not something I considered would be impacted by AI, for example. And then now I'm experiencing, you know, I heard you talking about your use of AI agents, but I've got, I don't know, 25 AI agents on my phone now going through all of my stuff. It's great, right?
Speaker 1It's amazing. But it's not smart. I hadn't read a nonfiction book in 25 years. And the only reason I had the time to do it was I had these agents, all the shit that I had on my to-do list that I would have to go search for this, read that, do this. Boom. My agents, just like I'm sure you use it for the same thing, right? All the tedious bullshit work that you didn't want to do or always couldn't get to or thought you had to hire somebody for, now you have an agent that does it. And your biggest decision, do you use GrokBot, do you use, you know, DOT, do you use, you know, Cowork? And then you try them all and you see they all give you a different answer. And then you have to use your brain again.
Speaker 2But you said that you would have otherwise hired people to do some of those things, right?
Speaker 1Yes, that's true. But now I can get more done, just like you can get more done. And when you get more done using your agents, you have better opportunities to use what you know to create other things. So I might have brought in an intern and paid them $15 an hour, $20 an hour, whatever it was. Now maybe it creates a new business idea. And with that new business idea, I need to hire people to do that. Because, so I'll give you a perfect example of what I use agents for. For costplustrugs.com, I always, you know, I'm trying to break the healthcare industry. And there's these big conglomerates who I think are the real problem. And now I have an agent, every time they get sued, it comes to me and tells me. Every time there's a bid that they're bidding on, right, it comes and the agents tell me. And I can use the agent to create an email to send to the Open Records Act to get me copies of all those contracts. Shoot, I could never have imagined, doing before, unless I hired somebody. That meant I had to take the time to hire them and train them and manage them. So it never got done. Now it gets done. And now I have other types of people that I hired to do different things that are at a completely different level. And it takes less of my time to do all of that.
Speaker 2And for your son, your son's 16? 17, just turned. 17. When he's saying, Dad, you know, you know a lot about the future. You've been able to predict the future several times. So what should I be focused on, Dad?
Speaker 1He's 17. My kids are 17, 20, and 23. The one thing they never say is, Dad, you know a lot about fill in the blanket. Never, never, ever. My oldest daughter, though, when she was at college, I told her she had to learn how to do agents. And she was like, yeah, whatever, whatever. And then I went and watched one of our presentations. And she was like, yeah, I got an agent to do this. I got an agent to do that. I was like, proud papa, right? But yeah, but I tell them, you have to learn this stuff because if you don't, the person who does is going to be so much more productive than you are. If you have access to a smartphone or a PC or laptop at the library that has access to Clyde, Gemini, et cetera, there's no question you can't ask.
Speaker 2Does hard work matter?
Speaker 1Yes, of course. You got to take the time to ask the question. You have to take the time to consume the information it gives you and get and learn how to ask better and better questions to get better at it. But people always talk about mentors. And having access to a network. I never had any of that shit, right? I just sat and learned and read and did it by reading. Now I don't go grab a book, right? I just go right to, you know, Clyde or cowork. And I'm like, find all about this and tell me what Warren Buffett thought about that.
Speaker 2It's insane. What does the edge become in such a world where everybody has the same information?
Speaker 1Because you've got to know how to take what you've read or seen and integrate it and apply it to what you're trying to accomplish. Because it's cool. Like I can say, write me a business plan for this business and it'll create all the agents. It'll create the bots. It'll do all that stuff. But I've got to be the one to say, this is right. This is wrong. This is right. And then I've got to be the one that goes out and sells it or teaches the agents how to sell when we get to that point so that the business could actually work. AI is not smart. It's just grinds and grinds and grinds. When you hear about the risk profile, the doomers, right? When I talk to security people, I ask this very specific question. We're hearing these stories about AI breaking in here or doing that. Did they invent anything? Did they come up with a new approach for hacking into this system or for stealing this data? No, they didn't do anything new. What they did was get the same list that every security person has. And because you can create an unlimited number of agents to go through and try it in every possible combination. It's all brute force. Where AI has a huge advantage is in doing brute force approaches to things because, you know, we'd always done security by trying to catch all the problems, knowing that, you know, unless it's a DDoS attack, right? Nobody has the resources to do a full brute force to have more resources than we do. Those days are gone. But what we don't talk about is using that same brute force on the defense side, that you can go out there and find all the holes to attack the bad guys. So I don't think I'm not a doomer at all. There'll be instances of shit that happens, but I'm more afraid of what people do because of their concerns and lack of understanding of AI than I am about what AI will do.
Speaker 2AI is not smart.
Speaker 1No. Even when we call it intelligent, like we remember how we talk about book smart, somebody who can read a book, remember what's in it. They're book smart, get A's on tests because they memorize everything. And then that's AI.
Speaker 2So what is, what is, I want to be clear on your definition of smart.
Speaker 1Smart is being able to aggregate information and inputs. Smart is being able to know where to look for the inputs and being able to take them and then aggregate them to solve a problem and also being able to identify the problem you're trying to solve. AI doesn't do that. And again, you have to be in the real time. We're having this conversation. I didn't know what questions you were going to ask, right? It's just whatever, right? AI is missing all that. There's no way to feed AI everything that humans have access to. Like we talk about replacing doctors. Okay. If I'm a doctor and Steven's there, this speeds it up. I have access to every research report, whatever it may be, article. And then Steven pukes all over me. AI can't help me with that, right? Steven, what's wrong? It's like, I can't say to the AI, what's wrong with Steven? I have to use my senses, look, you know, take my experience and be smart enough to ask the
Speaker 2right question. Is there a probability that something could happen that changes your mind on this point? Whether it's the recursive self-improvement that they will talk about where it starts improving itself or some kind, what would, what evidence would you need to see to go to, you know, I think AI is smart.
Speaker 1I think where you take a minimal resource AI and it can ask and solve questions with minimal resources. Meaning you can have a 12 year old kid who comes from the worst part of the world be brilliant. No access to resource to seize and figures things out, finds places, sources of information. Now, when you talk about AI, more GPUs, more power, better algorithms, and whether it's recursive self-improvement or not, where it teaches itself to try to get better. I don't think we reached that point where you can do it with no resources.
Speaker 2Do you think the people like Elon who, you know, talk about how they're basically working is going to become a choice and how smart this technology is going to be in the humanoid robots that are going to be empowered by AI and are those forecasts overblown?
Speaker 1Elon's amazing. He's a brilliant entrepreneur. Don't get me wrong. He's the best entrepreneur of our lifetimes for sure, but he's a sales guy, you know, and he has to raise a lot of money for all the things he likes to do. And he's good at that. And so I don't begrudge Elon anything, even though he gives me shit on Twitter or X and I give him shit right back, but I think he's got to sell what he's got to sell. And I think that carries the day for Elon.
Speaker 2It's funny because I sit here with so many different people from the world of AI safety experts and then some of the frontier labs, you know, team members or remarkable things is I hear everything.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's no one continuous thing, right? No two people give you the same answer. That tells you all you need to know, right? Yes. Because it should be obvious. If it was so dominant and there was a destination that everybody understood is where we would get to, it would be obvious to everybody and we all would see it. Again, you have to have more power and more GPUs than the history of power and GPUs prior to last year. That's not intelligence. There's a reason why you have to have all that. It's just brute force. Computers started a bit like that, didn't they? No, it's the exact opposite. Really? Yeah, because they were minimally capable. And so it took brilliance to program Fortran on cards and put them in. Into this huge mainframe that didn't have a hundredth of the power of your phone. So they start off with minimal power and smart people figured out how to encode them. And then you got Moore's Law and we saw chips, you know, silicon and all this stuff. And it just got, you know, faster, faster and faster. Maybe that's why I'm prejudiced in this, right? Because I've seen computers get incrementally faster, faster, faster by the minute, day and year. And the output and the capabilities that they create. And so maybe. Maybe that holds me back, right? My experience holds me back, but I think it's indicative of what comes next pretty much all the time with technology. That it's going to get more powerful, for sure. It's going to get more capable, for sure. But as long as there's latency, people have the edge.
Speaker 2It's going to get cheaper?
Speaker 1Yeah, it'll get cheaper for sure. It already is a lot cheaper than it was two weeks ago. It's getting cheaper because those companies keep on borrowing and spending more money. It's getting cheaper to get more power in order to power all the AI.
Speaker 2I think this is surprising to hear from you because you're someone who built Broadcast.com at a moment when we were living in like an exponential era.
Speaker 1Yeah, an analog era.
Speaker 2Yeah. And, you know, the internet was, I mean, people were skeptical about the internet.
Speaker 1Yeah, when I said we were going to stream or, you know, netcast is what we called it. They were like, you're an idiot. I'll just turn on the TV. You're an idiot. I'll just turn on the radio. I just. I'm not a naysayer on AI. I am the biggest proponent of AI that there is. But in order to really get the benefit, you have to be, you know, honest about it. Like I said one time that a lot of these data centers will turn into pickleball courts, right? As a metaphor, not that literally they'd be pickleball courts. Because in order for AI to reach the pinnacle that everybody wants to reach it, you have to have less power doing more, not more power doing more. Because then you run into. We literally could get into a debt bubble in the United States of America because there's so much debt being taken out by all these, you know, hyperscalers. You think that's possible? Yeah, of course it is. Because our deficit keeps on rising in the United States, which means we have to borrow more money. And the hyperscalers are borrowing more than they're making. And so they're borrowing more and that lenders are competing for that business or they're competing to get lenders to lend to them. Rates keep on going up. I mean, if you've got a $40 billion debt and your interest rates keeps on going up, at some point, you can't raise money anymore. There's a lot of praying going on right now. I'm a huge fan of NVIDIA and Jensen Wong, but they're basically subsidizing half the industry because they have the cash to do it. And you've got, was it Google? No, Meta, I think it is, borrowing more than they have in cash flow by a factor of. I mean, if it were the brilliance of brilliant, it should be the opposite, right? And at some point it may get there. But until then, we're in this private credit debt environment where there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of things can go wrong. I mean, if you read what Ray Dalio says, you know, Ray says we've already crossed the curve, right? We're already past that point where we could be a debt-laden society where our currency becomes, you know, worthless at some point.
Speaker 2Where are we in this at the moment in terms of the symptoms or markers of the next big collapse?
Speaker 3Well, we're over in this vicinity over here. The U.S., the U.K., a number of other countries are later in that cycle when there's the loss of the things that we've been talking about, over-indebtedness, more over-indebtedness, the loss of power. So we're in the collapse period of the decline. The decline, I would call that.
Speaker 2The decline. It's hard to imagine that for America, especially when you're 34 years old because you've just always seen the dominance of America.
Speaker 1Right. No, as an American, it's hard to imagine. And you think we'll figure it out. Yeah. We'll always figure it out. And I'm optimistic enough to think that we will, but there'll be pain associated with that. Our politicians are great at sloganeering. They're really bad at actually doing things. And I think that's going to be tough in this country, in all countries.
Speaker 2I think a lot of people think AI is the life raft out of. The debt as well, because if you hear this age of abundance idea. It's a race.
Speaker 1It's a race, right? Will lenders lend to AI companies if interest rates hit, you know, now the 10 year is like 5.2%. If it goes to 6%, 8%, 10%, something's got to give. And right now at current interest rates, we're paying a trillion dollars in interest every year in this country, a trillion. And if the interest rates keep on going up and what we have to borrow keeps on going up, and then you've got all these hyperscalers competing to get access to that money, something gets crowded out. I don't know which or what. I'm not enough of a financial expert to do that, but something's going to give.
Speaker 2Are you playing defense in any way, just in case?
Speaker 1Yeah. What does that look like? I've got money in this country, in that country, you know, and I haven't invested nearly as much. It's the old Warren Buffett thing. I'll wait and see as things happen. I might lose a little bit because I'm not as. protected as I should have been, but I want to give it some time to see how things play out.
Speaker 2I often wonder for the average person that's listening now, like, what is the advice for them when they hear about this AI stuff going on with all these big San Francisco CEOs and this geopolitical race of AI? They're thinking, like, what should I be doing? And I think some of the advice that springs to mind is what you said earlier on about actually what you can do in these moments is, like, get good at something. That feels like the bucket that nobody can sort of unfill. It's like your skills and your knowledge at the end of the day.
Speaker 1100%. Yeah, you're exactly right. And you said it well, because what else are you going to do? And why would you give up?
Speaker 2And the other thing I think a lot about is people skills. In a world where, you know, maybe my agent's going to run my computer for me, but I'm still going to have to.
Speaker 1Because it's more valuable, doesn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of the investments I've made, smaller investments are like a company that does silent discos, you know, and it's face-to-face. It's face-to-face communications. And that's part of the reason why you've seen sports valuations go up so much. They think that it's AI-proof, but it has other issues.
Speaker 2I've spent the last decade building and investing in companies, and so often the conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern. The budget gets approved, but then the results don't come back. And most of the time, the creative pitch and the offer is fine. The problem lies with the audience. Ads reach people who will never buy or refer. Nor do they have the power to sign off anything at all. And this is why so much budget gets wasted. LinkedIn Ads, who are a sponsor of this podcast, lets you reach them specifically by job title, seniority, company size, industry, the skills that they have, and much more. You're no longer hoping your ad reaches the right person. Instead, you're defining exactly who sees it. And LinkedIn Ads drives the highest B2B return on ad spend across all major ad networks. Give them a try at linkedin.com slash diary. And if you spend $250 on your first campaign, you'll get a $250 credit for your next one. Just by going to linkedin.com slash diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and conditions apply. You mentioned earlier on having your teeth knocked out. And you were sort of alluding to the fact that this made you a little bit of an insecure young man. Yeah. To some degree. 100%. Oftentimes when I interview someone like yourself, the audience and me will assume that you are intentionally, consciously driven. But the more I've interviewed people, sometimes you figure out that sometimes they're a little bit dragged. Oh, yeah. By their insecurities.
Speaker 1Oh, 100%, right? I was the fat kid, right? And I would do anything. Like, I literally wore a shirt to school that said bullshit. My mom's like, you're going to get suspended. 20 minutes after I got there, I had a pair of jeans that I ripped up from the bottom all the way up to my hip. And then I stapled it together just to stand out and get attention. Because I like, like, after I became famous. People went back to my high school peers, you know, kids in my class. They had no idea who I was. My friends did, right? The people I was close to, but nobody. And I saw something where somebody took one of the pictures from my high school yearbook and they circled it as being me. It wasn't me. So, yeah, I was not somebody who stood out or was considered to be, you know, most likely to be successful at all.
Speaker 2Was that sort of shame, insecurity part of your drive?
Speaker 1Oh, yeah, for sure. Just to prove people wrong. That's one of the reasons I went to Indiana. And I remember getting to IU and saying, you know, here's my chance for a fresh start. I get to be whoever I want to be. Act like it.
Speaker 2Did you think becoming successful and or famous was. would fix the insecurity, the thing that was invalidating you at some level?
Speaker 1I didn't think, no, I didn't think about that directly. I didn't, you know, one or the other. I just thought I hated being broke. You know, I wanted to control my own destiny. That was a big thing. And I wanted to be able to control my own time. Like after I sold micro solutions, I didn't immediately say, I'm going to take this money, invest it. And I'm going to go out there and make as much money as I can. I did the exact opposite. I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines. And my mission was to go out there and get as fucked up as possible with as many people as possible in as many countries as possible. And just to enjoy, like I have an iWatch now because all the data and the day I sold micro solutions, I took off my watch and I said, I'm never going to wear a watch again because that means I'm working on somebody else's time. When, by not having a watch, by being successful, it's my time. Why don't get dressed up? Why I won't wear a tie? It's like swag isn't how you dress. Swag is being able to tell somebody else how they dress, you know, and I just want to control my own destiny and my own time.
Speaker 2And you made a couple million dollars from selling micro solutions as a young man. You then start the broadcast.com company in your early thirties? 37, yeah. Oh, you're 37. And that sold four years later to Yahoo for 5.7 billion in stock. In stock, yeah. Which gave you a paper net worth of somewhere between roughly 1.5, 1.7 billion dollars. Paper, yeah. Did that change anything? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Changed everything, you know.
Speaker 1Inside. Yeah, because it meant instead of hustling and worrying about what came next, I got to do whatever the fuck I wanted to do. And that was the beauty of the whole thing. I mean, buying the maps. It never in a million years would have crossed my mind that I would own an NBA team. And again, going back to, I wanted to control my own time. That was something my parents never had the option to do. They always were obligated to somebody else. They had to show up at work. They had to be nice to so-and-so. They had to do such-and-such. And just being able to come home and eat dinner and watch TV was their joy.
Speaker 2Your dad got to see you become a successful man.
Speaker 1Yeah. What did he think? Oh, he would just cry and cry and cry. Really? We're an emotional family. Let's put it that way. Yeah. He obviously was proud of all of us. And he would just shake his head and he goes, I don't know where you got it.
Speaker 2It certainly didn't come from being your mom. Are there anything, is there anything else that acquiring lots of money has taught you about meaning happiness or what this is all really about?
Speaker 1Yeah. If you're miserable when you're poor, good chance you're going to be miserable when you're rich. Money can't change who you are. Money can't change your approach to life. Money can't change how you feel about yourself. It really won't. I mean, it's nice. I like being rich a whole lot more than I like being broke, but I really take pride in the fact that I still have the same friends. You know, my high school buddies are still my high school buddies. I'm still close to my brothers. I'm still close to my rugby teammates. I'm still close to, you know, the same people that always have meant something to me. Those are my friends.
Speaker 2Do you have to be ruthless in business?
Speaker 1No, absolutely not. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made. In micro solutions, I used to scream. And then Todd Wagner, my partner at broadcast.com told me, Mark, people are afraid of you. It's counterproductive. You have to, you know, chill out. And he was right. And I found that I got a lot further. By being nice than by being a dick.
Speaker 2This idea of being nice is another lesson that your father was quite clear on.
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure. I mean, he was nice to everybody. I can be mad, but it's not going to change anything, you know, and if it's not going to change anything and it makes me feel worse by being mad, fuck it.
Speaker 2But aren't people going to fuck with you if they don't know that you have it in the locker?
Speaker 1What are they going to do?
Speaker 2You know, people might, again, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but if people think you're a soft touch, aren't they going to. I'm not writing them checks for nothing.
Speaker 1Right? I'm just not going to be. I mean, look, if you saw me with referees at a basketball game, that was like my outlet, right? That's where I got it out of my system. But like in business, it's just not worth it, particularly now. Like when I was first getting started, I'm in my 20s and I didn't know any better. I didn't really, I didn't have any role models. I was just learning as I went. Then, you know, I was, I was a jerk. I would yell, I would scream. But once I got to broadcast.com, audionetbroadcast.com, I got a lot more done. And I was happy about it. You know, it just made it easier and people, you know, reacted better to me. And so it was, it worked out.
Speaker 2Because we hear about these stories of Steve Jobs and his anger and his rage. And I was just reading Ari Emanuel's book about a rage. Yeah. Ari can let it loose.
Speaker 1Yeah. But everybody's different. You know, I mean, what works for you and just for me, like now, why would I get mad at somebody? What good does it do me? You seem like a very happy person. I try to be, right? I mean. On and off camera.
Speaker 2On and off camera. I felt like you were a very optimistic, happy person.
Speaker 1Yeah. Because why not?
Speaker 2It's actually, it's actually quite rare to meet someone who is a billionaire, who has that positive energy and sort of contentment for some reason.
Speaker 1Money changed my life, but it didn't change my life. You know, the things I could buy, not having stress about where I lived or paying the bills, all the stuff that money can do. But it didn't make me a better person. Or a worse person. It didn't change my relationship. I mean, honestly, being a celebrity was a lot harder than being rich. Really? Yeah. Particularly as social media became more prevalent. And when Shark Tank blew up, it was, you know, the Mavs had just won a championship. Shark Tank now is at the top, at its peak ratings and everything. And I mean, celebrities everywhere. Oh, I love Shark Tank. It's my new favorite show. You know how all that stuff goes, right? And being rich doesn't give you attention, right? It just changes. How you deal with things. Being a celebrity brings you attention, some good, some bad.
Speaker 2And you were, you're an older brother of three. Yeah. Brothers. Yeah, two younger brothers. How has that been formative to you? Because I, you know, I'm a younger brother of four, but I always think of older brothers as being, I mean, more likely to lead. Is that an accurate reflection of what it was like being an older brother?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. Because they both followed me to Dallas. Both super smart guys, great guys, we're close, but they always copied me. And, you know, there's two and a half year difference to Brian, my middle brother, and six year difference. So I was gone because I left early for college. We weren't as close then because they were super young and I was out of the house. But then I went to Indiana and they would come visit me. And, you know, then I came after Indiana, I went to Dallas and they came and lived with me. Both of them lived with me at some point. And that's when we got close.
Speaker 2What role do you think you've played in their lives as big brother?
Speaker 1You know, that's a great question. I hope I've been able to set a good example. You know, I think I've been a double-edged sword for them as a big brother in that I think I've set a good example in many ways and I tried to be supportive and help them where I could. But then, you know, what it's like when it comes with celebrity, right, that creates a whole different set of pressures. And I think, you know, particularly living in Dallas as things started to really take off for me was tough on them. And I could tell, you know, it's not that they weren't supportive, but, you know, it's not like Cuban. Cuban is Smith, right? Where, you know, it's like Cuban, oh, you must be related to, or your brother, you know, how are you related to Mark? And I mean, I know that that put a lot of pressure on them.
Speaker 2Put a lot of pressure on them.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, well, what are you doing, right? Or you just live off your brother or this or that. And both of them are smart and both of them have made their own way and done really well. But, you know, and we haven't talked about it a lot, but, you know, it was definitely tougher on them as things really started to take off for me. Yeah. Brian struggled.
Speaker 2Yeah. We actually spoke to Brian. Oh, you did? We did speak to Brian. Yeah. And he sort of spoke to some of those struggles. Yeah. But he also, he wrote you a letter. Oh, my God. I'll probably start crying. Want to read it? Yeah. I read it and I found it to be, you know, very emotional.
Speaker 1Do you want me to read it out loud? Yeah. We have so many great childhood memories. It's hard to pick one. So I'll go to the one that feels most personal to me. July 2005 is the lowest moment of my life, wanting to end it. You and Jeff were there for me as you both always have been. I wouldn't be here today if not for you both. As our dad told us growing up, no matter what happens or where you go, always stay in contact with your brothers. It's no accident that after so many decades, 1,200 miles from Pittsburgh, we all live within walking distance of each other. I love you. Bye. Yeah, it was not a good time in 2005. You know, he, and again, that goes part and parcel to, you know, being my little brother, you know, and being out and about in the social scene. And, you know, I bought the Mavs in 2000. You know, I was becoming famous. And all of a sudden, it wasn't a burden he chose, right, or it wasn't his burden. It wasn't his choice. It was just the way things turned out. And, you know, he took a turn. I mean, he just had issues, had problems. And Jeff called me. I was out of town. I came back in. And we went and got him and put him in rehab. And, you know, he's been sober ever since. So thank God for that.
Speaker 2It puts things into perspective, doesn't it? Yeah. In so many ways.
Speaker 1It's great. because, you know, it's not like we were all best friends and did everything together. but we always connected and stayed together, family trips, going places with my dad or my mom, or to this day, you know, we're texting each other, I don't even know how many times a week, or if there's a Steelers game or Pirates game or something going on, we're still connected.
Speaker 2Your mother, you mentioned missing your father, your mother and your father passed over 2017 and 2022. Did that moment bring the family together or bring your siblings together?
Speaker 1I mean, in the obvious sense, yes, I mean, at that point in time, but I think it makes you feel, when your parents pass, it makes you feel your own mortality. Everybody's time comes at some point. And my dad made it to 92, my mom made it to 85, and that sounds like a long time until you realize it's not as long as you hope. And so, yeah, it definitely connects to us even more strongly than we were.
Speaker 2When I read about some of these things, and I thought about some of your more recent decisions around leaving Shark Tank, selling the Mavs, they felt like they were part of the same puzzle.
Speaker 1100%, yeah, definitely. Because, again, when you start feeling your own mortality and you start recognizing what's important, my kids, my family, that next business trip didn't seem nearly as important as it used to. And missing a birthday, and telling myself, well, I'll be there for the next one, you know, became a mistake. And it was just like, okay, what's the point of doing this? You know, they were 13, 16, and 19 when I sold the Mavs, and a little bit older when I got out of Shark Tank. And, you know, it wasn't going to be all that long until they were on their own. And I just wanted to be there as much as I could.
Speaker 2Should everyone be an entrepreneur?
Speaker 1No, not everybody's built to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2What are they missing?
Speaker 1If you have to ask yourself if you can be an entrepreneur, you're probably not an entrepreneur. There's something that you want to accomplish, or there's a skill that you have that you want to use to your own benefit, financial benefit. But not everybody's willing to do the work like we talked about earlier, to do the preparation, to fight the battles. And I think a lot of people think that when you become an entrepreneur, you get more control of your life as opposed to being an entrepreneur. You don't have to be subject to the whims of your bosses. It's the exact opposite. You have no control of your life as an entrepreneur because your customers, your employees, there's always something. Some employee's child is sick and you have to work it through because particularly, you know, if you have a company that has under 100 employees, everybody's family at some level, you know? And you know everybody, you talk to them, you know what's happening in your lives. People don't expect that when they become an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2If I sat and mocked the 20-year-old, Mark, just give you the preface on why I'm asking this question. I think that the journey you've been on changes a man, you know, in several ways, small ways. It's kind of like being pelted by hail. And especially if you're a famous person. So I think people become clearer on their principles and they learn principles, but they also become clearer on their principles. So if I sat 21-year-old Mark there and then you're sat here now, how has this journey being pelted by the world, good and bad? How has it shaped you? And like, what's changed? That's a great question.
Speaker 1I mean, I think family obviously changes you the most, but from a business perspective here, and it's great that you brought this picture. So you see that poster right there that hadn't been hung up yet? It says poverty sucks. And I used to have it, I just moved into the house, that's the second bedroom of my house. Every house or apartment that I lived in, that was on the wall. Poverty sucks. And I think that's, that's the big difference. You know, this Mark was, you know, I would sit there for 25, 26 straight hours writing software for customers because I knew I had to do it.
Speaker 2And you had no degree in software engineering. No, I had to teach myself everything.
Speaker 1So anything I didn't know, I had to learn, teach myself. And that's what I would do. I literally, I would get a bucket of ribs. It's so gross now, but I would sit there because I would start concentrating so hard and I would look up thinking it's three or four hours later, and it'd be 28 hours later because I was just so consumed by what I was doing because I wanted to get to that next level.
Speaker 2You found out what you were good at and what you were capable of. Did you also find out what you were not capable of and what you were not good at? Oh yeah, a lot of stuff. What do I suck at? I want to just preface this by saying, I think this is also really important because sometimes people look at a billionaire successful businessman like you and go, he must just fucking be.
Speaker 1Oh no, no. There's a lot of things I'm awful at. At Micro Solutions, I had a partner, Martin Woodall. Martin Woodall was anal. He was just a perfectionist about everything. I'm not. I'm ready, fire, aim. Go, go, go, go, go. And if you go out of the baseline, so be it, right? If it goes into touch, so be it. It doesn't matter, right? That's for somebody else to deal with. When I got to broadcast.com, Todd Wagner, same way. His skillset complimented mine. It wasn't that I needed a partner. It's that I needed a partner, you know? And recognizing that I never was going to be good at the details. Dr. Oshmayansky, now at Cost Plus Drugs, very detail-oriented. I need that compliment to my skillset because I'm awful at the details.
Speaker 2What about finance? Were you good at finance? Because you didn't have a finance degree, did you?
Speaker 1Oh no, but I had taken finance classes. I had taken entrepreneurship classes. So yeah, I get finance. I might not be able to structure the most advanced M&A deal, but I'm going to understand it. What about hiring and leadership? That's another thing, right? Let's separate hiring and leadership. Leadership is one thing I think I'm good at. Hiring, suck at it. As a salesperson, I would see Stephen sitting across from me and Stephen would give me an answer to a question. I'm like, okay, I can help Stephen. I can make it work. I want this guy to be successful at my company. And I would hire the worst possible people. Why did you hire this guy? Well, I thought it's like a shark tank deal. This company sucks. Why were you investing in this guy? Oh, I can make it work. I can make it work. So people are like, hey, Mark, can I get a job? Can I send you my resume? I'm like, don't send it to me. Because I might hire you.
Speaker 2I'm awful at it. How important is it though as a skill in terms of outcomes, do you think?
Speaker 1Oh, hiring is critical, right? I mean, if you don't have the right people and the right culture, the people that fit into that culture, you're going to suck. But, you know, we would hire slow, but fire fast. So if there's somebody that these guys hired and I'm like, they're not going to work, they would know and it'd get resolved.
Speaker 2People, founders don't talk about that enough. They talk about like creating a fancy, shiny product that does something awesome. But the actual art of like building the team.
Speaker 1Is more important. More important. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to have the right product, the right service, but.
Speaker 2It makes me think about this again.
Speaker 1Yeah, that as well. Yeah. You've got to have culture. And particularly in sports, you can have the most talent, but if they don't fit together as a team, they're going to suck. Is that what you found when you went into the Mavs originally? Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I got there, nobody wanted to be there. I mean, literally people in the office, people on the court, we were just a way station. If you couldn't get a job with the Lakers or the Celtics or whoever, right? Okay, the Mavs will hire you and that's fine. So when I got there, it was the most important thing that I focused on. I sat there in front of the players. I'm like, we're going to win. And this train is speeding up. It's internet time. It's 2000, right? And if you want to stay, let me know. And if you don't want to stay, let me know and I'll trade you. I got no problem with that because we're going to do things differently. I expect you to win. I'll give you the tools you need to win. Like one of the things I did, like when I took the Mavs, we had a head coach and like three assistant coaches and they were responsible for all the training and player development. And that's the way the entire NBA did it. And we were literally spending more money on computer training and support than we were on player development. For players, we paid more than a million dollars. So I'm like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. And so I asked our general manager and assistant general manager and coaches. I'm like, go find former Mavericks and I want you to bring them in and we're going to assign to each of them one player who has a similar skill set that they had when they were in the NBA and they're going to do nothing but work with them. That's it. Just work with them. That made perfect sense to me because all these former players wanted to get in and we hardly had to play them anything. They just wanted to be part of the game again. And now all of a sudden, all of our players had somebody focused on them and not only did it improve their skills, but it made them realize that the culture of this organization is to win and we will do whatever it takes to win. And, you know, it paid off. But the rest of the NBA, oh my God, they hated me. They hated me. I went out and bought a plane. You know, I spent about the same amount on the team plane because I'm like, we leave Oakland, California at three in the morning or whatever. I don't want us flying on this little ratty plane that they rented or a typical commercial plane when your guy's seven. We had a guy, Sean Bradley, seven foot six. He's not, you know, fitting in a regular seat and he's making his living with his body, right? So I bought a plane and I told, I told the guys, okay, we're going to fuck with everybody. I want you to tell everybody that there's a weight room on the plane, a steam room. We didn't have any of that shit, right? And to this day, people will ask me about the weight room that we had on the plane and just stuff like that, where it's not only is it effective and improves outcomes, but it sends a message that, hey, this is what we're trying to do. This is our culture. We're going to win. We're going to support each other and I'm going to get you all the tools you need. Like even things like a nutritionist, or, you know, preparing food for people them things teams didn't do back then and it just made sense to me did you see
Speaker 2the culture changing
Speaker 1of the maps oh like that it was quickly oh yeah we went when i took over we were 9 and 23 what's that mean um we nine wins and 23 losses oh damn yeah and we finished the season um the next 50 games we were 31 and 19 wow yeah the next season
Speaker 2no we're talking
Speaker 1about that season that season so when i took over in january the season runs towards april when i took over we had nine wins 23 losses and for the remaining 50 50 games of that season we won 31 of them lost 19 of them
Speaker 2since you took over the mavericks had the second highest regular season winning percentage of any nba team the team went from 39 win rate to almost 60 win rate under you the mavericks made their first finals but lost to miami heat in 2006 yep and then the mavericks won the nba championship you in 2011 yes when you were 53 years old and then you sold the majority ownership um 2023 yeah but you still have a significant 27 yeah i always find teams as like the great analogy for learning about how to build businesses because it is there's a scoreboard and you get the scores back quick whereas in business there can be it's kind of a bit more vague as to what's happening oh yeah
Speaker 1like there's always a new season in sports yeah you can make trades you can cut people you know replace them in business it's 24 7 by the way 365 it's the ultimate sport which is you know if you have competitive juices business is the ultimate way to to fill that need is there
Speaker 2anything else you learned from mavericks the maths that might be applicable to building businesses or hiring teams or creating teams
Speaker 1i think you have to be innovative because it's so competitive things like you know using statistics it's quick story when i was at indiana i snuck into the nba program when i got there as an 18 year old and i started taking nba classes and the first nba class i snuck into was a statistics class taught by a guy named wayne winston but fast forward six months after i bought the mavs whatever it was and i'm watching jeopardy on television and he's on there killing it right killing it and then weeks later i'm at indianapolis we're playing the nba program and i'm watching the indiana pacers and i hear mark mark mark from the crowd and it's like if i hadn't watched him on jeopardy i wouldn't have recognized him as my professor from when i was 18 years old and we started talking and he started telling me about what he was doing with statistics for sports and i hired him on the spot and he became the first analytics person in the nba full-time and that helped us grow our way into winning games and winning championships or a championship and the point to your question is you have to keep on innovating in sports like all businesses you can't rest on your laurels
Speaker 2people don't like necessarily always like the idea of data and statistics because it seems to be a threat against their instinct and judgment and creativity
Speaker 1no it's true like the eye test versus the numbers and you have to do both you know you can't exclude one or the other i mean there are some players that just look shoot ugly don't make as many shots but in aggregate they impact winning a game and winning championships more than the guys who score 25 points tiffany i spoke to tiffany i'm
Speaker 2joking i didn't
Speaker 1really oh okay i mean it wouldn't be bad but i was just
Speaker 2like okay i'm surprised you talked to you you nearly choked on your drink maybe i should have um tiffany you met tiffany i think in a gym when you were 39
Speaker 1the la 30s let's say yeah you got married um in 2002 so i was 44
Speaker 2three kids so
Speaker 1far so far no i got snipped okay
Speaker 2so total how does that feed into everything we've talked about around happiness and meaning and purpose and success oh supersedes everything really yeah i
Speaker 1mean you've got one part of my brain that is like business business business business you know compete compete compete and then you've got the better part of me that's my kids my kids my kids um and my wife and they've just changed me for the better in a million ways i can't even describe and there's nothing you know more important to me nothing i may not be great as a dad they'll tell you but um or a husband but i do my best why is
Speaker 2that so important so many of us sacrifice relationships in the pursuit of and i'm
Speaker 1not saying i did right i mean like when i had micro solutions i was dating a woman and it was like i mean i was on a mission i didn't settle down immediately in terms of you know family in front of business but i got to that point in hindsight you
Speaker 2think it would have been possible to do both at
Speaker 1the same time not as well as i did it um and i regret that in a lot of the fact that i didn't do as many of the little events um with my kids as i probably should have i would tell myself um they're too young to remember you know and so i would go do what i needed to do with with business um but in hindsight i probably would have done more of that where does
Speaker 2that regret come from does that come from you or does that come from them no it's i mean they remind
Speaker 1me of certain things for sure but um but i think it's for me you know just in hindsight and you know it took me a while to get there but that's why i left shark tank why i sold the maps or a big part
Speaker 2of it i asked this for my own reasons obviously i'm in the season of life where i'm about to have um kids hopefully touch wood and i hear over and over again exactly what you've just said from successful people so when i ask where does it come from i'm like is it does it feedback the kids give you when they grow up or is it just a feeling you have both both you know
Speaker 1i mean because teenagers are teenagers i mean i'll never forget when my oldest like she was 12 years old i was saying something to her she was like and and it's different for them right i feel bad sometimes because they're under a spotlight and you know i would always with each of them over and over i would have the conversation look if you go out and do something or when your friends goes out and does something stupid your
Speaker 2friend did something
Speaker 1stupid if you do something stupid it's on the front page of the paper and every you know social media feed around the world and so i think that puts some unfair pressure on them but i mean i think they've adapted they're great kids don't get me right they are amazing amazing kids and you know i can still tell you with absolute certainly that my favorite word in the world is dad and they know i'm a crier i can see it
Speaker 2gets you emotional just saying it yeah
Speaker 1yeah
Speaker 2that's that's like every
Speaker 1that
Speaker 2means a lot to me why you know as
Speaker 1you get older you start to recognize your mortality and like with my parents being gone i have their parents gone i have their parents gone i have their parents gone i have their parents you know in in my closet and i say hi to them every morning and every night and i want my kids to be the same way after i'm gone i want them to be proud of me i want them to you know remember me positively as much as possible and i want them to carry on anything that you know we all can do together i have no doubt they will be i have no doubt they are who knows who knows they're at that age where we can't have that we don't have that conversation yet
Speaker 2as you look forward mark um you've talked about your mortality you've talked about um leaving shark tank which i've just become a guest uh shark on the show unfillable they told me you were great yeah i'm good thank you um you're 68 now yeah i'm 48 you look 48 to be fair but you play a lot of sports still right so i see you playing yeah basketball and stuff like that yeah what do you want to accomplish in this next season of your career cost plus drugs is this yeah cost plus drugs obviously i want to change health care
Speaker 1in america it's a mess and you know it was great when with the mav someone say oh great game or whatever but when somebody walks up to me now and says yeah i got my drug from costplusdrugs.com it saves me you know a thousand dollars a month and now i can afford them i mean that's really
Speaker 2something it's crazy it's crazy that someone like you would commit your life to this because regardless of what you've just described there i think personally the biggest thing you're doing is just shining a massive light on an issue that doesn't want to light on it oh and i'll fix it
Speaker 1i promise you i will fix it because there are three basically big companies that dominate all of health care you know hundreds of billions in sales it's crazy and you've got 67 of people who get health insurance from their employer get it through an employer who's self-insured and i bring that up because that means they take all the responsibility for the bills that employer does which means it's their responsibility and who they have to take responsibility for the bills hire to do all their insurance and take care of all that stuff and so i just go door to door with these ceos and i just give them shit left and right and if i can get them to do the right thing to save themselves money and improve the health of their employees and families i'll get a win there and i'll completely change health care in this country and that that's the
Speaker 2mission you and trump have had a bit of a interesting relationship rollercoaster relationship but i saw you um stood next to him talking about this initiative recently
Speaker 1yeah yeah look anything that you've done in the past you've done a lot of work and you've done a lot of work and you've it makes people healthier and saves them money on their health care that's fine by me i don't care you can give me some shit i don't care you know the goal is the goal and the goal is to change health care in this country so that it is what it is truly a right and in order to do that we're going to have to you know make it so that those big companies no longer dominate the industry
Speaker 2we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves the question for the next leaving it for okay and i only get to read it when i open the book um the question left for you is this is a fucking unbelievable it's interesting what's the hardest question you weren't asked? What's the hardest question I wasn't asked? I'm not going to ask you the question, just for the record.
Speaker 1I mean, the family questions you asked, I mean, what hits you most emotionally, effectively, is the hardest questions that I don't get asked.
Speaker 2Mark, thank you so much. Thank you for many reasons, for being a personal inspiration to me, because I remember multiple times where I stumbled across your life story or your work or your ideas at a critical moment that either gave me a bit more belief, that gave me some patience, that gave me some wisdom. But also, you know, the other layer of context I now have is just having spent some time with you as a person. And one of the real things outside of the wisdom that I come away with and outside of the sense of purpose and family is the realization that you can be both very, very successful and you can be a good person and a happy person and a positive
Speaker 1person. Let's not go too far.
Speaker 2But that's how you feel. That's the energy you have. And obviously, I've sat here with 700 people, so you get to see lots of things. So it's been a real pleasure. And thank you for the inspiration.
Speaker 1Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. I really enjoyed it. It was great. Amazing. Thank you.
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