Episode 180: Mark Cuban

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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle.

Fresh it.

All right, you guys, this is a special one.

We have the one, the only Mark Cuban on the podcast today.

I know he doesn't even need an introduction, but because that's what we do here on Habits and Hustle, I'll just go through a few bullet points here.

He is the main shark on Shark Tank, and quite frankly, in my opinion, the best shark and my favorite.

I might be a little biased.

He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

He is an investor in over 300 companies.

And his latest company that he's extremely passionate about, which really affects all of us, is a company called Cost Plus, which is disrupting the healthcare market, the drug market, by giving people...

drugs, medicine at a low price by eliminating the middleman.

It is amazing.

He's providing transparency to the market, and it is really causing quite a stir for good reason.

I got to tell you, I was a huge fan of Mark before I even did this interview, and I'm even a bigger fan after.

He is so down to earth.

He is exactly exactly what you see when you see him on Shark Tank or in interviews.

Really cool.

He really, he's just, he's awesome.

I have to say, I love this interview.

I really hope you guys do as well.

I think you will.

He tells it as it is, and what you see is really what you get.

He is just, he's awesome.

Enjoy the interview and leave me a comment.

Let me know what you think.

Give me some feedback.

Enjoy.

I don't even think you need an introduction, of course.

I mean, you were like the entrepreneur, like extraordinaire, right?

Like, whatever.

You really are, though.

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I even remember I was, you were the only, you were the only, like, when I was a little, little, you were the only one I ever knew of.

You and Donald Trump.

Those are the, I know.

So you're saying you're connected to Donald Trump, and you're telling me I'm old.

I'm not,

no, I never said.

You were like super not.

You were like, by the way, you still had the same like vigor and energy.

You look exactly the same as you did back.

I swear to you.

Anyways, moving on.

No, I swear.

But like, you were like the, like, you were the Maverick.

You were the, funnily enough.

And you were like the entrepreneur that kind of was so mainstream back then.

And it kind of like stayed.

So I don't think you really need an introduction, but I appreciate that.

And no, it's true.

And by the way, you are, you are Shark Tank, I have to just say.

Yeah, I don't know about that, but you know, good editing.

And the other guys are good too.

Yeah, they're okay.

They're okay.

But what did they do to kind of get you involved?

What was the pitch that they gave you?

We're doing this TV show for entrepreneurs.

Do you want to come on?

And this was the second year and they're like, come on as a guest shark.

I'm like, sure.

And honestly, back then, it was 2010 and they wanted me to do three episodes, but it would bounce around Tuesday night, Thursday night.

You know, if Desperate Housewives wasn't on on Sunday night, they'd put it there.

And I'm like, there's no way this show is going to last.

So I'm figuring, okay, I'm going to go do my three episodes and just raise hell, you know, and just cause as much trouble as I can and, you know, and maybe get some good businesses.

And that's what I did.

They didn't see me coming.

Like the first season was really demure.

It was low-key.

You know, and I was like, screw that.

I'm just going to tear it up.

And so once I did that and, you know,

none of the other sharks knew how to deal with me, it was like, okay, come on back.

And then the rest is history.

And actually, tomorrow we start filming season 14.

I can't even believe this has been on that long.

And it's crazy.

And the funny thing is, it's like, it's, it's across the board.

Like my little nine-year-old likes to watch it.

Like kids like it.

Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons I do the show because it sends the message that the American Dream is alive and well.

And you can be anywhere.

You can be in LA, you can be in Idaho, you can be in Mississippi.

And if you have an idea in your garage, your basement, your bedroom, you know, something's possible.

And you can make your way into Shark Tank and maybe get rich.

It's true.

And also, though, you give the most deals by far.

Like, does Damon even like give any deals?

I've never seen him once give a deal.

Well, Damon's not on every episode anymore.

Not anymore.

But yeah, he does his fair share, but I've probably probably done more than everybody else combined.

Oh.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's good or bad, but yeah,

that's the reality.

Well, it's funny on your website, like it is unbelievable how much stuff that you do.

Like I, when I was doing all this research on you, and I'm like, oh, I thought there'd be like just a little bit of stuff.

All your speeches from like

for forever are on there.

Oh, are they really?

I didn't even know they put them on there.

Oh, my God.

Like, so much stuff is there.

Plus, like, everything is in like in subcategory.

So

the businesses I know are.

How many companies are you invested in?

I don't know, because we sell them, some go out of business.

You know, right now, probably 200, you know, give or take.

That's crazy.

Yeah, I've got a lot of smart people who help me manage all that.

How many people actually work for you and your organization?

Just in dealing with the Shark Tank and other deals,

probably

12.

That's all.

Oh, that's it?

Yeah.

You have one.

This is like a side note.

Alyssa's cookies or Alyssa's Healthy's Cookies.

Oh my God.

I'm obsessed with those.

So I am every morning for breakfast.

No exceptions.

They are delicious.

You can't get them on the West Coast.

Yeah, you can.

You can get them at

Ralph's, I think.

No.

No?

Trust me.

I've checked because I found them in Florida at the Super Bowl two years ago and I became obsessed with them.

And you can only get them at like Public Safeway.

And I, on the website, it was a whole schmade rate.

So I never ended up ordering them, but I called them a bunch.

I was wondering when they're going to be here because they are so delicious.

Because no, because I know, because one of my deal parts with Shark Tank is they got to have Alyssa's there there during the day for me to munch on.

Well, they're here.

I'll find out for you.

But you got to hear a story about, yeah, this guy,

Doug,

sent me an email saying basically he was living out of his car and broke.

And he sent me samples of these cookies.

And the first thing I always do when anybody sends me any food is I look at the nutritional information.

Yeah.

You know, because if it's all fat, sugar, whatever, I'm not going to be interested.

Right.

So it's this huge cookie.

And I turn it over.

It's 190 calories for enormous cooking.

That's not bad.

Then I look, it's like, no added sugar.

I'm like, that's good.

All this fiber, you know, huge amount of fiber, like a whole day's worth of fiber.

And then protein.

Yep.

I'm like, okay, let's see how this thing tastes.

So I break off a little piece.

I'm like, this is good.

I'm like, what's wrong with it?

What's, you know, so then I go to pull the cookie out of the wrapper and it falls apart.

And I'm like, ah, that's the problem.

Because when people go to buy a cookie, they want to eat a cookie.

So I made them change it to healthy bites because the way their whole manufacturing process works, it's really easy to combine it with a little bit of moisture and put it together so it tastes moist, right?

And they're just these little bites and they stay together.

Put eight into a package and with eight of them, it's only 360 calories, right?

So I eat, yeah, so 45 each.

So I eat like all eight of them for breakfast.

Oh, that's what I do too.

You can't just eat four or two.

No, no, and it's only 360 calories for breakfast and I'm getting my fiber.

I'm getting, you know, it's like eating healthy cereal, only it tastes better.

It's delicious and you don't, and you feel like you're actually giving, like, you're, you don't feel like you're depriving yourself with it.

Like, that's what I felt like.

I feel like, but I could, this is like two years ago or three years with COVID, I can't remember.

Everything like blends, but I haven't looked for the last probably a year, but I did, I was like obsessive over them.

You gotta, we gotta find you where they are up here because I know they are.

And I order them either from Amazon or from

right from the website, Alyssa's Healthy Cookies website.

I should just do that too.

Are they doing well?

Oh, crushing.

So this guy, this guy went from living out of his car and

helping him get started.

I mean, I went to Central Market in Dallas and did one tasting thing.

Yeah.

And then it just blew up from there.

Really?

And that was more than 10 years ago.

Now

they'll do just under $20 million in revenue, but that's not even the good part.

We spend no money on advertising, not a nickel.

Right.

Yeah.

Nobody knew what they were when I was telling them.

Yeah.

And but people go in there and buy them, but people who buy them keep on buying them over and over and over again.

And we'll make $10 million in profits.

That is amazing.

So this guy went from living out of his car to like being Mr.

Badass down in Florida, making millions of dollars a year.

That's incredible.

You know, it's funny that you say that because for the super, it was for like Maxim Super Bowl party and the whole stat, like everybody who was doing it, everyone became obsessed with these things.

And we would buy, we would,

we would like clean the shelf of every single.

yeah i mean i go in there and i buy like six at a time eight at a time wherever i'm traveling for sure for sure i mean alyssa's healthy cookies and now we have a vegan version and we've got a chocolate version yeah they're all really really really good and like if you got a little bit of time you throw them in the microwave and they get really like smushy yes off um they're great they're great and they've got a little travel pack so you can i take them in the row with me in my little computer bag i'm back

yeah so i can travel with them and i always have something healthy okay we got to find out about this west coast thing because that doesn't doesn't, yeah, because that doesn't make sense.

You must love, what's with you and oats, though, with mush?

Mush is mush.

I call it mush.

I'm Canadian.

Mush.

And do you just love oats?

Is that bad?

No, it's not bad at all.

I like things that are tasty and healthy.

Yeah, it's true.

You know, and you know, Ashley, the female entrepreneur behind it is just insane.

I mean, she's just amazing.

Yeah, she's a force of nature.

So when you get companies like that and the entrepreneurs are amazing and the product's amazing and it's healthy.

Yeah, why not?

Totally.

What's the one thing you look for when you do an investment with a startup?

Is it the people or is it the product?

Product first, because you can have great people, but if it's not going to sell, it's not going to work.

But, you know, I look to see, is this something where I say to myself, why didn't I think of that?

Yeah.

That's the first thing.

And then even if it's not quite that, I'm like, okay, you know, if I'm looking to buy it or a typical consumer or company is looking to buy, is this something that's going to be compelling, differentiated, easy to buy?

And if it passed those tests, then I look at the entrepreneur and say, okay, can these people do it?

Yeah.

Well, you know know what?

I find it interesting.

I always stare at you when I watch this show because I feel like you're very decisive.

That's not the answer I wanted after you said that.

Oh, yeah.

Well, maybe I stare at you further pretty soon, but this is like an ad, you know, a family show.

But

what would, why is it that like, I feel like it's my, maybe it's just my opinion, but like you're like so decisive that you like could, either you like someone, I feel, or you don't like them.

Like you know pretty quickly.

Well, remember, there's a lot of editing that goes on.

I know, that's what I'm going to say.

Is it just because of the editing?

It's because of the editing.

Because how long is each pitch, really, in real life?

Stupid ones, 20 to 30 minutes.

Oh, wow.

Intense ones, 90 minutes to two hours.

Medium ones, an hour.

Oh, so they're, so that's why, because

there's so much longer ones.

Oh, yeah, because it's our money, and we know nothing about them when they walk into the room.

They're not vetted at all.

They're vetted by producers, but not by us.

So we know nothing about them.

Here comes Jen.

They'll say, this is Jen, and that's it.

So you really, so it really is a surprise when people walk in.

Yeah, no idea whatsoever.

So then what happens, like, well, then you guys do due diligence, right?

After we say yes to a deal, we can do due diligence.

So what's the, what's the ratio or how much percentage of things that go through?

So early on for me, it was about 75%.

But now we get more and more people who just come on for the commercial.

Yeah.

And so they'll say, oh, great, we got a deal.

And then they'll ghost it.

They do.

They do, yeah.

Because I've had a few people come on here or I've met in like real life, whatever, and like they said that they went on and it was not you, actually.

Other people, other sharks.

Wouldn't close the deal.

Wouldn't close the deal.

And it just like

it dragged on and dragged on.

That's not me.

Yeah.

Some of the other ones will do that where they'll like try to change the deal terms and this and that.

And that's up to them, right?

However they want to do it.

But if I agree to it, I'll agree to it.

But if you drag me out, then you're playing with fire.

Yeah.

Because either you want to do a deal and you agree to what you agree to or not.

Yeah.

And who's your favorite shark besides, you know?

I like Barbara, the work with the best.

Yeah, I like her too.

Because we compliment each other because she's really, she looks at people first, and I look at deal first or product service first.

And so we compliment each other really well.

Right.

So do you do most of the deals you do with her, though?

If I can, yeah, if I can, yeah.

How about those other two?

We'll move off of this, but like, I'm so fascinated by this show.

Like, how about the Mr.

Wonderful?

Yeah, he's okay, but Kevin doesn't do a lot of deals.

And he also wastes people's time.

That's yeah, that's just shtick, right?

And so, um, but he's a great guy.

So yeah, he's a really good guy.

He's not like he is on TV.

Oh, he's not?

No, he's a really good guy.

The other one seems very nice.

Robert's too nice, you know.

Yeah.

But he's a good guy too.

Lori does a good job.

You know, Lori is all about her wheelhouse, things that she could just plug in and sell, QVC or whatever, she's going to be great at.

Right.

So then I want to ask you back because when you were a kid, obviously you were selling the baseball cards and the garbage bags and like stamps, everything for those basketball shoes that your dad didn't want to get you.

Like you were like a bore, you were like a born hustler.

Like you just were.

Without question.

Without question.

So were you like the guy, like if I went to school with you, would I I be like, oh, that guy's for sure going to be a billionaire.

That guy's for sure going to be successful.

No, no, you probably didn't even know who I was.

You'd be cute and I'd be the little fat guy.

I don't know.

I don't know if I'd be the cute one back then either.

Yeah, like when I was 16, no, when I was 15, 14,

14,

freshman in high school, I was playing baseball and I ran into a bicycle.

And my parents, like my dad did upholstery and cars, didn't have a whole lot.

And like, rather than getting me caps, because I broke two teeth, running into a bicycle, and rather than getting me caps that matched all my other teeth, they got me stainless steel caps so that because they would last longer, they were cheaper.

No way.

And so every time I smiled, even like in my high school graduation picture, like there would be these two teeth at the bottom that were steel colored.

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, and like if I showed you my 16-year-old picture, I was like 5'8, 5'9.

Weighed 30 pounds more than I do now.

Really?

Can I see a picture?

Do you have have one?

Let me see.

That is so.

I would never have guessed it.

Because you seem super.

Yeah, things change.

No kidding.

Things definitely, you know, yes, $4.7 billion later, things definitely change.

But like, you seemed very all.

I mean, I don't know what that is.

That's a picture of me at 16.

Oh, my God.

No, it isn't.

Yep.

This does not even look like you.

That's me at 16.

Wow.

Wow.

I don't even know what to say.

The teeth are gone, like you got them fixed.

No, no, no, no, you just can't see it there.

No, I'm saying that right now, the teeth are gone.

Like, you got them fixed after you kind of like got out of this whole phase.

That's insane.

So, like, you

showing everybody, it's pretty amazing, actually.

I would never, but also, that's one handsome motherfucker.

I was gonna say, the truth is, like, at the time, if you saw some pictures of me when I was 15, 16, it would, it's mortifying.

You know, exactly.

Thank you.

I'm like, you're not so, you know, dramatic there.

But like, the point is that still, like, you are not known.

Like, you seem to have like a confidence, though, a self-confidence.

Where did it come from to even do all these deals and wheeling and dealing?

I mean, there's two different things, right?

Like being confident about girls when you're 16.

Yeah.

And then being in business.

Like in business, you can just do the work.

Right.

You know, that's your thing.

Yeah.

You do the work.

So you pick whatever topic.

And if I need to learn it for business for whatever reason, I can just spend the time.

Yeah.

And it's just up to me.

You know, it's like the saying, you know, the one thing in life you can control is your effort.

Absolutely.

And so that's just my style.

I mean, you know, I learned early, early, early on that most people didn't.

You know, and whether it's learning how to code, whether it's learning about business, whether reading this book or watching that video, you can figure shit out.

Yeah.

Most people don't do it.

And so that's what gave me confidence because I knew I do the work.

I'm prepared.

And that set me apart always.

So you're just like, love, I read this a bazillion times.

And I know if you've said this, like, you just love to learn.

You read a ton, like four hours a day.

Curiosity is one of the greatest business skills anybody can have.

Yeah.

And once you're curious and you find something that's interesting to you, particularly if it fits what you're trying to accomplish, then it's just a matter of taking the time to learn it.

Right.

And you were, were you always just very interested in like computers and not computers necessarily?

Yeah.

That's my software.

What do you call it?

Like just all the above, right?

Technology.

And

it wasn't until when I got to Dallas, I got a job working for a software store.

And I had to learn it all right there and then on my own.

And that's really what got me into it.

I found out that because, you know, I didn't mind reading software manuals, hardware manuals, whatever,

that that gave me an edge and I could sell.

So you combine the two together and I taught myself how to program.

And, you know, I did really well as a salesperson selling software until I got fired.

You know, and then I started my own company and the rest is history.

Well, also, like, you're very self-reliant.

Like, you don't like mentors.

You never had a mentor, right?

No, never.

Nope.

What's your reason for?

Like, do you like, because when people have asked you that before, you're like, no, I don't believe in them.

It's not that I don't believe in them to each their own, but it's just like you just going through the process of figuring things out is a skill.

Yeah.

Learning how to understand a market or a company or

a product or service is a skill.

Right.

And, you know, there really aren't shortcuts.

And I get, you know, having a mentor to introduce you to people and all that kind of stuff.

But, you know,

those same people will introduce you just as a referral if you have a great product or service and you're good at what you do.

Right.

And that's the way I always looked at it.

And like, so like, what do you do?

Because you're in the situation now where everybody wants you to be their mentor or something from you.

You can all the time.

All the time, right?

And you say, fuck off.

Did you say that?

Does it work?

Does it work?

Yeah, especially the 16-year-old kids, you know?

Yeah.

Exactly, right?

No, I mean, it just depends on the circumstances.

Like, typically what I'll do is just say, okay, you know, send me an email.

Yeah.

And if it's a question I can answer, I will.

And as long as they don't ask me 50 questions, you know, as long as they don't ask me things that are easily answered just by searching online,

you know, then I'll try to help them.

Because sometimes, I mean, it's crazy.

Even like probably what I would have done, like 12, 13-year-old kids that'll email me with business questions, you know,

they'll.

It's very, you can tell it's very self-serving, you know, or I'll get parents emailing me for their kids.

And so they do what they say.

Yeah, it's just like, oh, my son or daughter is really interested in ABC.

Can you answer these questions?

I'm like, no, I'm not going to answer them for you.

Now, if your son or daughter took the initiative, what's insane, not to go too far.

Like, now I'll get emails from parents of adults, you know, 22, 24, 28 years old,

you know, asking for job advice for their kids.

I'm like, hell no.

You know, it's so crazy the caudal

culture we have now.

I don't know if it's culture per se or just like these parents that are just like a lot of them yeah helicopter parents to the nine thousandth degree absolutely and I'm like no you know

your information like you're so accessible though like yeah my email is public like so I was gonna say like every how do you not have like aren't you just inundated all day I know you have two phones you carry around well no I got two yeah well three I have yeah um just in case I need bed or service or I can be working on one and whatever talking about them but in any event um like you know how you can just set up preview mode on your email so i just read the preview and if it's interesting i read it and if it's not i hit the delete key takes me two seconds wow you must be doing that all day though yeah you know it doesn't matter if i'm eating lunch or doing whatever you know and it's you know me time where i can just bang through them and there's always something interesting there and i've literally gotten emails where i've invested probably over a hundred million dollars from people i don't know and a lot of them there's one company that i invested i don't know how many millions now and they're out here in LA, and they're begging me to come visit because I've never

met the guy, Relativity Space.

And that's what it's called?

Yeah, Relativity Space.

They do 3D printing for space rockets, for rockets.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, and it's enormous.

And, you know, I think their last valuation was $4 billion,

which made my stuff worth like a whole lot of money.

No kidding.

Because it was just these guys from Dallas who were talking to me about, you know, they want to use 3D printing to build rockets.

I'm like, that's really cool.

I asked them questions, did some homework.

They answered all the questions great and everything and so i gave them like 75 750 grand for 20 or 25 of the company now i've been diluted significantly since then because they've raised a bunch but and you know even as i've put in more um but yeah it's worth you know enough cover all my bad investments that is amazing and you never met them yeah the with the cost plus drugs um dr osh myansko that was a cold email i was gonna say tell the story that is crazy the guy just called like just emailed yeah just emailed me um guy named dr osh myanski who is a radiologist radiologist, practicing radiologist, also has a PhD in math and statistics.

Also, did one year of law school just for the fun of it.

I mean, just insanely smart.

Everything comes easy to him intellectually.

And he sends me an email.

What was the subject line?

I don't even remember.

But it was basically saying that he wanted to create a compounding pharmacy

to make generic drugs that are often out of supply.

And because they're out of supply, the people who make them can charge anything they want.

Because if you happen to have that disease that needs it, you're going to do all you can to get it.

And I'm like, well, that's pretty cool, but that's too short-sighted.

We got to do it for all generics.

And so this was going up four years ago.

We started what turned out to be a company called costplustdrugs.com.

And I kind of massaged the whole business plan and invested.

And basically, we have built this company.

If you go to costplustdrugs.com, we tell you exactly what our cost is for any drug we sell.

We just added 113 more today.

So now we're closing in on a thousand different SKUs.

Today alone?

Because yesterday you added a few.

No, we reduced prices yesterday.

Oh, those are the people and added a bunch today.

And so.

You know, just the fact you're reducing prices on drugs at all is insane, right?

People are, that's a real problem.

No, it's a huge problem, right?

That's why we did this.

And so now if you go to costplustdrugs.com and you put in a monotelub, which is for people with leukemia, as I found out,

And you can see that our cost is $45 and we sell it for, or $48, and we sell it for $54, right?

You'll see our cost, we add 15%.

That's it.

It's $3 for the pharmacy handling fee and $5 for shipping.

That's like a game changer disruptive.

That is a disruptive.

It's changing a lot of things.

You know, what's crazy, some things that we didn't even expect to see.

Somebody, because they see our cost, let alone our pricing, now they're able to back into a lot of the bidding that goes on for different insurance companies.

And somebody did some research that said, if for just 77 of our drugs buying at basic quantities, if Medicare bought from us instead of where they buy now, it would say $3.6 billion a year.

And that's just 77 drugs.

And, you know,

now we've got more than 900.

So you can see where it's going.

But, you know, in this country in 2022, we should never be in a position where you have to choose between your rent, your food, and your medication.

And we've been able to change that.

And, you know, we were thought we were going to primarily deal with people without insurance.

But as it turns out, not only were people without insurance really benefiting and saving a ton of money, but people with insurance were more often than not cheaper than people's copays.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say to you.

Because if copays alone are so high.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you might have a $25 copay.

Yeah.

You know, and if any of our, you're buying a drug that costs less than 25 bucks, you're saving money that is well actually the other thing is like you have to hit a minimum so for me i don't even bother i have to just pay out of pocket until i hit a place where it's so expensive that like this even like it doesn't even matter where you are socioeconomically it's so helpful yep so check us out costplustdrugs.com just go in there look for the medication or your parents or your aunts your uncles your grandparents whatever and if we have it we will save you money guaranteed that's amazing so like even like something like a good rx right that was that you know that crushed and all these other ones are coming in.

GodRX is great, but any of the coupon companies, what they do is they work within the system.

Right.

And so you'll see like the Walmart's two, you know, two miles away is a different price than the Walmart's one mile away.

Right.

And CBS, you know, because they've got a different market.

And then if you go, yeah, and if you go back two weeks later, it's a completely different price.

And so with ours, it's just the same price.

Right.

No matter what.

Now, you can't just go pick it up because we mail it to you, right?

But it'll show up in three to seven days and you can order as, you know, whatever quantity you want.

And the more, the bigger the quantity, as long as your doctor prescribes it, the lower the price you'll pay.

So, guys out there that want

generic sialis, I mean, it's like 18 cents a tablet where it was, you know, who knows how much otherwise.

So, how do you,

how are you guys, like, what's your projection?

Like, by next year, are you going to have how many drugs?

And, like, what's available?

You have to have over, you know, close to 2,000 by year end.

And, you know, and there's other things like

methoroxane, I forget which drug it is, that

is really

an issue right now because of Roe versus Wade being overturned.

Yes.

You know, birth control.

So our pricing, you know, both are generic.

And so our pricing is so much lower.

So people can buy birth control far less expensively than they could before.

This drug that has a lot of different uses, but because one of them is for

could potentially cause a medical abortion, there's a lot of pharmacists who won't sell it now, particularly in southern states.

So So we'll sell all that stuff.

As long as it's prescribable and we can carry it, we'll sell it.

That is incredible.

And I went last night and I looked around.

It's also very simple.

It's user-friendly.

Yeah, you just put it in.

Yeah.

So if you're buying birth control, you just put in whatever brand you use and we'll show you the generic version.

And you can buy it.

What did I just say?

I was talking to somebody.

Three count, 48.

you know, for $25 or whatever.

It's like just insanely low versus.

And also, I saw there was a button there where it's like well if you don't have a drug I can say okay I'm looking for that just sign up and tell us what drug you're looking for yeah and then what's the problem like can you guys like if you get enough requests are you gonna we try to yeah we try to we're trying to add everything but it's just good to know if we you know if we get a ton of people asking for one specific drug then we'll prioritize that first now is that your major thing right now that you're super excited for yeah that's like that you're super excited

type thing that is more than game changing like i mean when i heard when i initially heard about it i was like i was i didn't even believe it because I thought it was too good to be true.

That's what a lot of people say.

What's the catch?

Yeah.

You know, we don't sell your information.

You don't have to pay a monthly fee.

None of that stuff.

You don't need a card.

It's just straight up.

You know, we take our cost plus 15%

and then we just hope we sell enough to cover all our costs.

And is it true that you guys now have already surpassed what you thought you were going to have?

Yeah, I mean, we're way past what we thought we'd be two years.

in.

That's amazing.

That's incredible.

Yeah, it's incredible.

So no wonder you're like all in on that one.

Yeah, no, you have to be, right?

And, you know, if we get enough customers or patients,

then the brand names are going to have to sell to us.

And we think we'll have some brand name drugs by the end of the year.

What is Fire Chat?

Is that FireChat?

Oh, no, that's Fireside Chat.

Yeah, what's Fireside Chat?

So imagine doing this podcast right now, and it's really got a lot of interactivity.

So

when you do a podcast, particularly if you do it live, you're doing it.

to the ether, right?

You just don't know.

With Fireside Chat, if you're doing particularly a live podcast, we're the only platform we patented it and it was my idea.

Of course it was.

Yeah, while people are listening, you can hit one button for applause, right?

So while we're having this conversation, if we were streaming it live, and it can be audio, video, whatever, however you want to do it, multi-platform.

And, you know,

you say, talk about cost plus drugs and people will clap, right?

Yeah.

You show that picture and people boo, right?

Hit a button for that, right?

Or nothing, you know, or you just, just having that feedback, because that's always the hardest part about doing a podcast.

Yeah.

You know, whether it's audio or video, you just don't know how people respond.

And then the minute you drop it, you look for the emails, but it's the same people that send you emails.

Oh, it's great.

It's great.

Why don't you talk about this?

Please talk about this.

That's exactly.

Or the PR person who says, can we come on?

Right.

And that's your only feedback.

Maybe there's something on social media.

There's reviews and stuff like that, but it's not, you're right.

It's not really a consumer, right?

It's not the people who are watching or listening.

Absolutely not.

And that's a real challenge.

And then the analytics are awful too.

You know, now they're getting better, but they're still pretty bad.

And so we solve all that.

So we got got to get you hooked up with Fallon Fatimi, who's the CEO.

Is that the founder?

She's a, because the reason how I found out, again, weirdly enough, a couple weeks ago, my friend said, hey, have you heard of this?

What?

Fireside chat?

Fireside chat.

And I'm like, no, I've never heard of it.

Because you were involved in another platform that I thought they were talking about.

What was another?

Not Bright.

That's, what's his name?

Who's Madonna's manager?

What's his name?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He has one of these platforms.

Like, everyone says that.

That was Clubhouse.

Yeah.

Not Clubhouse.

It was, what was that one?

Bright signs.

Bright, something like that.

Like every day, there's a new

one.

There's a new, like a new one coming up, and they knock on my door.

And I'm like, I'm not going to be involved with this.

I mean, because they all like come and go so quickly.

Yep, you know.

This one's got us behind it.

And

it's good.

Just being able to have that interactivity and just get that feedback, that tactical feedback

is everything, right?

Because, you know, because that's the one piece that nobody has.

No, and that's the one piece that makes it hard.

Yes.

And particularly since, you know, as you're growing, it's hard to know if, you know, the listeners or viewers are appreciating what you're doing.

Yeah.

And, you know, everybody tries to have a little personality in what you do, and you try to bring the energy, but you just don't know if it's falling on deaf ears.

Yeah.

You know, it's hard enough to know the downloads and how, you know, how long people actually listened.

But if people are, if, you know, if we decide to do this live next time and, you know, we do it on fireside, then you just can get people responding in real time.

Yeah.

Plus, you know, if you want to add the regular chat to get people to talk, but you know, we don't recommend that because then you spend your whole time, like if you do a Twitch or, you know, live YouTube, you're looking or even TikTok, you're looking at the feed the whole time and you're not really entertaining or communicating.

Exactly.

You're looking down to see if anybody typed anything to you.

That's true.

With this IG lives.

That's why I don't like those IG lives.

It's very distracting.

Yeah, because you just want to read it if it's going too fast and da-da-da-da-da.

Exactly.

With this, you know, you get the same net effect.

Well, that's, I mean, that's actually a very interesting kind of platform.

And how long has it been around?

We launched less than a year ago.

And is it doing well?

Yeah, yeah.

Now, we're really controlled.

We don't want to make the same mistake that Clubhouse made.

Right.

So we really try to make sure that we vet all content creators because we don't want it to go far right, far left,

too far up, too far down.

And we have vetted listeners, viewers, and general mission.

And they each have different because we don't want it all of a sudden to be hijacked.

Because, you know, like on IG Live and everything, people come in and hike Clubhouse and people hijack it.

So we really try to control all those things.

And so the people who use it love it.

What do you think of Clubhouse?

I never got into it.

I thought it was.

I mean, it was fine.

Like I didn't like it.

It's a funny story.

The guy, I forget his name though, but one of the founders

had the very first podcast on broadcast.com, Audionet, in 1995.

For

the Snow Mountain Report.

Yeah.

And so you're talking about a small world, but, you know, sometimes you get caught up in your KPIs, right?

Where you just want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and show the world that you're dominating.

But like happens in any communities, people try to take over.

And people, you know, it could be a multiverse, a metaverse, it can be any, you know, chat, community, chat room.

There's always somebody who tries to dominate it to take possession of it and get power.

And that's what happened to Clubhouse.

And that's the exact thing we're trying to avoid with Fireside Chat.

Yeah.

Wow.

I mean, I'm going to check that out more.

Please, yeah, I can connect you to Filch is great.

I'm curious about it.

So now that Elon's not buying Twitter, are you going to buy Twitter?

No, I can't afford it.

No, yeah.

What do you mean you can't?

Well, yeah, you're right.

You can't afford it.

But you can get some other investors behind you.

I'd rather do the cost plus drugs.

Yeah, no, that to me is.

And it could be a much bigger company, too.

It's going to, that's literally can overtake the entire met, like the whole healthcare system.

Yeah, I don't know if we can get the whole health care system, but we can at least influence, we can be big enough that even if we don't make any money and we just break even and reinvest, we can be big enough that we change behavior for all the other pharmaceutical companies.

Yeah.

Wow.

That is such a lofty undertaking.

Isn't it?

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's so crazy.

And I never, you know, we didn't know when we first launched

whether or not, you know, what the uptake would be.

You know, I knew, we knew, like, we don't spend any money on advertising like Alyssa's cookies because we know that like if you have leukemia and you're paying, you know, $500 for a monotab and now you're getting it for $54, you're telling your doctor and you're telling everybody you know in your Facebook group, but everybody with leukemia, that to buy it here for cheaper.

And that's what happens.

Absolutely.

You don't need to have any investment.

You don't need to have any advertising.

No, and it keeps our costs a lot lower so we can keep on selling for cost plus 15%.

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How do you do all of this?

I mean, honestly, like you're scheduled between the

shark tank, all those companies doing like these things.

I mean, like, what time are you waking up in the morning?

6, 5.36.

Like, what's the day?

Like, give me a day in the life of you.

You probably should admit this, but like, I'll get up at 5.36, particularly during the school year.

My kids are going to school.

You have three kids, 12.

Yeah, 12, 15, and 18.

Yeah.

Are you involved?

Do you see these kids?

Because

how are you able to do all of this?

I don't travel that much unless they're out doing stuff.

So right now, my middle daughter, Alyssa, is at camp.

My wife and my youngest son, Jake, who's 12, are in Iceland right now.

They went on a trip because while I'm shooting shark tanks, that's when they all know to go do their trips.

That's a good idea.

Yeah, and then my oldest is on a trip as well, so with her class.

And so all, you know, so while we're shooting, they're gone.

And so that's when I pack everything in.

And then you do everything.

Yeah.

But otherwise, you know, I can do one-day trips here and one-day trips there because, you know, I'd rather spend time with my family.

So you are like, you spend a lot of time with your kids?

Yeah,

that's the the best part of my life okay so tell me the day give me your day like you wake up at you said six o'clock wake up yeah 536

do you know say hi to everybody kiss everybody going to school if that's what's up and um then do my email and typically get back in bed do my email get through any emergencies go back take a nap really yeah hell yeah so wait so you do the emails first before you do anything else right

i saw that you'd said that a bunch of times now and you know i've got an eye watch like you right so i look at my sleep right so i wear it while i sleep so do you wear an aura ring or anything like that No,

I didn't get the response.

I'm surprised because you love all the technology.

I love all the technology and stuff, yeah, but I just didn't get the feedback the way, you know, I tried a whoop and just the data, yeah.

I didn't like that either.

It was also like cumbersome.

Yeah, it was a pain in the ass, right?

Terrible.

Yeah, and so I get good data with this.

And yeah, whoop wasn't awful, but I already had this, right?

So you know, exactly.

Like then you're just constantly like looking at all these different things.

Right.

And it's not just exercise.

stuff.

I can get stock prices and all that other shit, right?

Absolutely.

And so I'll see how much sleep I got, you know, because you don't really, you might feel okay.

And you don't, you know, when you didn't sleep, but sometimes you don't know how much sleep you got.

100%.

Exactly.

And so like, if I got my 200 deep, deepest sleep, right?

My two miles, my two hours rather, then I'm usually pretty good.

Right.

Right.

So wait, what time do you go to bed at night?

Typically anywhere from midnight to 1.30.

Okay.

And then you wake up around.

Okay.

So you get like you're in bed for like five, six hours.

And then if like, if I didn't really get good sleep, then I can get my email done.

I go back to bed.

Go back to sleep.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

I am just getting so shocked.

Yeah.

So I get an hour.

Like, I'm not one of these people that's just like, oh, I just got to slug it out, whatever.

Yeah.

Because remember, everybody's got to kiss my ass.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I love you so much.

Yes, they do.

You know, they might say not, right?

And I might not like it because I hate that.

But everybody works to my schedule.

Yes.

You know, it's like I love you.

Tomorrow?

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Can you come over now?

Sure.

Now, and I don't really do meetings or calls.

I really, really don't because waste of time.

Yeah.

and plus, like, there's no record of it.

I can't, it's not searchable because I have so much shit going on that I want to be able to go back and look and say, okay, when did Jen hit me up last?

And, you know, what were we talking about?

What was the topic?

So you like to have it in writing.

Yeah, I like to have it so it's searchable.

Which is different than that dust thing that you're involved in.

Yeah, well, dust is like a real-time version of a face-to-face conversation.

So with dust, it's important because there's certain business things that I want to talk about that we're not going to be face-to-face, but I don't want it to be in email.

And I I don't want there to be a record of a phone call.

Exactly.

You know, because let's say we're getting ready to fire somebody or, you know, there's a lawsuit, you know, that I don't know.

Do you get sued a lot?

No, hardly ever.

Really?

Yeah, hardly ever.

Your level?

Yeah, less than 10 times my entire life.

And, you know, half of them were garbage.

Yeah.

That is, that's incredible, by the way.

I've never heard of such a thing.

Yeah, I mean, you're kind of like wealth.

Yeah, and I never sue people either.

It's just not worth a hassle.

I know.

It's probably like, it's worth, it's like the time and energy and the money that it actually takes.

It's not worth it.

But yeah, so I use Dust all the time.

You can hit me up on their blog, Maverick.

And I answer questions

just because I want to support the platform.

But, you know, it's just because I want some things to be private.

Yeah.

And, you know, with Dust, when you send a message, it auto, you can delete it when you want it or it auto deletes, but it's never stored on a hard drive anywhere.

And so there's just no way to retrieve it, period, end of story.

So I never even heard of this before I started like digging deep into into your life.

Like, I mean, I didn't realize like this is like a thing.

Like, people are using it.

And it's, Amir, did you even know it existed?

Of course.

Oh, sorry.

That's been around like eight years, yeah.

It's a genius.

That's why you know, but like, but it sounded like Snapchat to me when some respects, but Snapchat still keeps everything, right?

It might disappear, but it's on their server somewhere.

That's right.

Right.

Same with Instagram and vanish mode or whatever or the other ones, right?

Telegram.

You can set it to delete so the other people don't see it.

But, you know, if there's a subpoena because you were doing some business deal and and somebody wants to get those records, it's still possible to get them.

Oh, wow.

Okay, so go about your schedule.

So, you wake up at six o'clock, you do your email.

Take a nap if I'm tired.

How long is the email part?

Like a half an hour, an hour?

No, an hour and a half, two hours.

Oh my gosh, okay.

So, that's from like six to eight p.m., right?

But when you're doing it, yeah, just laying in bed, whatever, okay, and then um, go get my list of cookies, yes, some water.

Um, how about coffee?

Do you drink coffee?

No, I'm not a coffee drinker, no.

Tea?

No, sometimes I'll drink tea, but usually just water.

Um, and then if I have anything to do, then I'll just go do it.

If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll try to set time to go play basketball.

Then back about 2 p.m.

and back to my email.

And no matter where I'm at, if I'm eating, whatever, I'm always doing my email.

Always.

Yeah.

I cannot believe how accessible and easy.

It's unbelievable.

Like if I email you, I will get it.

If I don't get a response in like the five, 10 minutes, I would think, I think, oh, he's just going to like, he doesn't care.

Yeah.

I was going to say, either he just deleted my email or like something was actually wrong with you because you were so accessible.

Like, unbelievable.

Yeah, I take pride in it because, you know,

unless someone's just like being annoying or pitching me or whatever, well, then I just block them,

which is a great feature that Gmail added.

You just hit block.

It's a great one.

You're right.

But yeah, then I'll try to respond.

So then, okay, so you go back to bed.

If not, then you have basketball.

When did you work out?

Because I thought like

I set my move points to try to get a thousand move points a day.

Okay.

And that typically gets me to 3,000 calories a day.

And then I also

eat besides the Alyssa cookies that I know you're obsessed with.

You know, I've got a woman who makes me natural foods, right?

Because you're a vegan, right?

Just vegetarian.

Vegetarian.

Yeah, so I like eggplants.

I'll put cheese on eggplant.

Oh, okay.

So my little version of eggplant parmesan, but I use MyFitnessPal to track all of my everything that I eat.

So I try to keep it to 2,000 to 2,200 calories.

Okay.

And so you can never get the calories exactly right.

And, you know, and the tracking is never exactly right.

So it's a round, like.

Yeah, so it's a close enough approximation approximation um that it works for me right and it makes me you know keeps me good i try to make sure that um i get enough iron because i'm vegetarian so you know i'll typically at lunch or maybe after the cookies i'll get one of these little cups of rice krispies yeah and um that is one serving plus a little bit 140 calories but it's got like 70 of the iron right and then iron is absorbed better if you drink it if you have it with vitamin c so i'll drink a glass of orange juice with it oh so you're doing all so basically, when did you become a vegetarian?

Like four years ago.

Is it because of a health no, not an issue, just because I wanted to feel better.

You know, supposedly it reduced inflammation.

I've had both my hips replaced.

You know, I'm still playing basketball, so I'm going to be sore.

And, you know, so it makes me feel better.

Do you feel better?

Oh, yeah, it's night and day.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I don't eat meat or, you know, sometimes I'll eat fish.

Like if I'm starving, I have no choice.

Yeah.

But typically I won't.

And then, you know, I won't eat fried foods and I try to avoid sweets, which is almost impossible.

So my strategy is to always have a thing of Alyssa's cookies out.

So when my kids have all the garbage on the

counter, then I can grab an Alyssa's.

So you really are like that obsessed with these cookies because I've heard you talk about them too.

Like that's how I was for like a good year about these cookies.

They are that good though.

They're that good, yeah.

Do you eat mush, mush, whatever you have?

Mush, yeah, I have mush in the fridge too.

You have that too.

And then, okay, so let's get back to the exercise.

So do you do, you're an investor maybe in Rise Nation or you're not an investor in Rise Nation.

I love Rise Nation.

Yes, it's a hard workout.

Yeah, you get to go your own speed, right?

So it's a versatile is like, it's also like.

But, you know, the beauty of it, one, it's low impact.

Yeah.

You know, so you're not going to feel your joints.

You're not going to hurt that.

That's full body, too.

Yeah, and it's full body, right?

Because you're moving legs and arms.

But, you know, when you first start, you know, in a 30-minute class, you might get a thousand steps.

Yeah.

And then you build it to 1,500, then you build it to 2,000, then 3,500, then 4,000, right?

And then the superstars can do more.

But your cardio, like, I don't get tired when I play basketball anymore.

Right.

Because

I can go in a Peloton bike and just crank through 30-minute class or 45-minute class.

Did you do Peloton then too?

Okay.

So you do everything.

You're very, like, you're very versatile.

Well, just accessibility, right?

So if I'm on the road sometimes, there's not going to be a versatile, you know, there's not going to be a rise nation there.

So I'll do Peloton, either the treadmill or

the bike.

And lots of times when I'm doing the bike, you know, I try to go, if I'm just cruising, I try to hit the 180 average output or 190.

And if I'm really pushing, I'll try to do 200, 210.

Wow.

And then, you know, just, you know, but, you know, it's great.

It's a great workout.

I want to show you something.

There's like a thing.

Have you seen the hit axle before?

I'm going to show this to you.

You're going to love it.

A lot of the athletes are using it and sports teams use it.

I'll show it to you.

It's like a side thing.

But so you're doing, how many times a week would you say you work out besides the basketball?

Six.

You know, well, basketball is a workout.

It's a huge workout.

Yeah, yeah, it's a workout.

But so one or the other, six times a week, sometimes seven.

Do you still work out at lifetime fitness?

Yeah.

That's That's where I play basketball, yeah.

That is so funny.

We don't have any here in LA.

Really?

No, and they should bring it because it's the best gym.

It's nice, as long as they have a basketball court.

It's a huge basketball, and they have every piece of equipment.

Yeah, they got everything.

I'm telling you, the West Coast.

Then I take Zumba classes on Saturday morning.

Do you really?

Hell yeah.

Oh, my God.

That is so fun.

And, you know, because way back when, when I started, it was like three guys and 80 women.

And so it's just like, it's just

the ultimate distraction.

That's actually a great, that's a great place for guys to go to meet girls.

That's where I met my wife.

At a Zoom book class?

No, no, no.

Playing basketball.

Yeah.

You were saying a Zoom book class?

You've been married for what, 20 years?

20 years, yeah.

Wow.

And so, okay, so let's get back to the, since this is with entrepreneur, let's ask some more entrepreneurial questions since we should probably do that.

So would you say the number one, not to pivot that hard, but like, would you say the number one reason why people are failing then is because their lack of ability to work hard and to kind of dig in?

What would it be?

No, I'd say they're misguided and they sell themselves.

They lie to themselves when they start, right?

Oh, I think this business is good.

Everybody goes through that same process with a new business.

You know, hey, what do you think about this idea?

Right.

Then you go on Google and you look up, oh, I don't see it.

It's great.

Of course, no one tells you that it's not there because 50 companies have failed doing the same thing and there's nothing left to show that they died.

But, you know, then you get excited, you check with your friends, and then they try to raise money.

Yeah.

That's what screws them up, right?

Raising money is not an accomplishment, it's an obligation.

Yeah.

You know, if at all possible, you want to start just organically with sweat equity.

Those are the best businesses because you get to retain 100% of it.

Right.

You know, and there's no rush.

And then the second mistake people make is they push the top line instead of the bottom line or gross margin dollars.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, oh, I'm a million in sales.

Like, that's an accomplishment or 10 million.

Where like if you've raised funding, you have your quote-unquote KPIs, right?

Yeah.

Right.

Or what's the new one?

QOKs or something.

there's something ridiculous that um qkp i don't know they always come up with these aggregates what is it

qkp i don't know okay just the one i started seeing

and so everybody's like oh yeah you know and they think it's an accomplishment if you're doing i went from one million to five million in sales okay that's somewhat great but what matters is what's your gross margin right because if you're in that hamster wheel where you're growing but you need to keep on raising money to grow right

that's you know no you can see what's happening now when people can't raise money, you're done.

You know, and while others have said, well, you know, I've, you know, raised 30 million or 50 or $100 million, unless you have a really good reason, you know, that you're relativity space and you need to raise money because you're building, you know, 80-foot-tall 3D printers.

Yeah.

Right.

You're not going to do that out of your basement.

But for most entrepreneurs, it's something where they're.

It's an arbitrage on their time.

Yeah.

Right.

Here's, I can do this more efficiently than Jen or Mark can.

So it's worth it for Jen or Mark to buy this product or service from me so that they can use their time more efficiently.

So you'll pay.

So, you know, effectively, I'm so efficient that my cost to do this is $10.

You value it at 25.

I sell it at 18.

We're both happy.

Yeah.

Right.

Most people sell an arbitrage on their time.

And, and, but they don't, that's

basically what their product or service is, but they don't look at it that way.

They look at it and say, okay, I'm creating this, you know, know, I'm going to open up my own training facility, right?

Because I'm a personal trainer and I have 40 clients and I need a place to take them.

Why not open my own?

I'll get six others or I have a beauty salon and I'll get, you know, I'll have

slots for eight other

stylists to come in and rent a spot.

Right.

Right.

They don't think it through that you got to make money at this stuff, right?

It's not just about top line, it's bottom line.

And I think that's where most entrepreneurs make their mistake.

And, you know, you get caught, and if you get caught up in growth, you can grow yourself out of business.

Yeah.

And most people don't realize that.

That's true.

I also do think that people, like, I feel like it's become like the sexy thing to do now.

The word entrepreneur is like

sexy.

I hope so, right?

It's because of you, actually.

Shark Tank has made it much more.

No, but Shark Tank has definitely, but you know, if 90% fail, 10% could change the world.

Yes.

And look, like the cost plus is going to probably change the world.

Yeah, you know, I always tell entrepreneurs, you know, or when I talk to kids, I always tell them, you know, just ask yourself a question.

Why not not me?

Why can't I be the one that just changes everything?

Because one of them's going to.

And even though, you know, some might feel entitled, some might not do the work, some may be lazy and not realize how much work is involved to be an entrepreneur, that happens.

You're going to find the same thing if you're a carpenter, a videographer, you know, an editor, where some people don't do the work and the great ones do.

Yeah.

And, you know, And, but, you know, I, this is cliche now, but I say it all the time, it doesn't matter how many times you fail, you only got to be right one time.

That's the hundred.

You have a lot of these, like, good.

Yeah, I know, I know.

I love them.

I love them.

Like, well, how you do anything is how you do everything.

Yeah, that one I stole.

Yeah, yeah.

I was going to say, that one really wasn't yours.

There's one, hold on.

I have one here that I really liked.

Hold on a minute.

Which one was it?

Because you have so many good ones.

Most people don't put the one.

Which one was it?

Practice until you can't.

Well, that one, I'm not sure.

I stole one.

Yeah, I stopped.

Was that Nick Saban, actually?

Practice until you can't get it wrong?

Yeah, that's been around a long time.

Oh, which one's selling?

That one on selling.

Oh, sales cures all.

Yes.

Yeah, that one's mine.

That's yours.

So basically what you mean is like, as long as you can, if you can sell, then that's all that really matters, right?

Then you're gold.

Yeah, you're good.

Right.

Right.

Because no company's ever succeeded without sales.

Right.

You need sales no matter what.

Otherwise, you're out of business before you start.

Exactly.

Sales cures all.

So does that mean that like you have to be a good salesperson as well?

Yeah.

Yes.

Because if it's your baby and you don't love it enough to be able to sell it or figure out how to sell it, It's awful tough.

Well, look at you, right?

Like you're already established and you're going on all these things promoting these companies that you're involved with like most people don't have that kind of ethic to do that work ethic they get bored they think they're too good for it now they don't want to do it i don't do a lot of these but not podcasts but you're out there like you know talking about whatever whatever yeah well i mean look i've got a platform that most people don't have well yeah but but it brings for sure yeah but it brings up

more dollars than most people yeah right that's a whole but i wasn't always in that position right and so even you know back in the day when i had micro solutions my first company after i got fired like one of the things I learned, I learned a lot from companies I got fired from.

Most of them, it was like what not to do.

You know, I had a boss that my boss had fired me, a guy named Michael Humecki at the software store.

And H-U-M-Exactly at the software store.

I love it.

Yeah.

Anyways, that went out of business three months later.

You fucked up, Michael.

Yeah, he was.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for doing it.

But like, he would never go on sales calls.

He would never, see?

He probably thought he was too good for it.

He was a CEO.

Yeah.

And I had another job, same thing.

Guy named David, I forget his last name now, but

he told me where to buy a suit when I was buying my suits too for $99.

Oh, that's great.

You know, and I was, my shirts, I would wear button-down shirts, but I bought them at this place called the Clothes Horse, which is all resale.

So like.

I went five years before I bought my first business shirt that someone hadn't worn before.

Oh, really?

Wow.

But I learned, you know, you got to sell.

Yeah.

Because in my experience, the CEOs, the owners, the founders that didn't sell, they all failed.

Yeah.

With no exceptions, 100% of them failed.

And, you know, when you're just starting and it's just you, who else is going to sell?

Nobody.

And that's the other, you know, and that leads to another mistake entrepreneurs make.

They try to hit hiring home runs, right?

So when the minute they hit a roadblock, I'll just hire a, you know, I'll hire a new marketing person, right?

Or I'll hire a new head of sales.

Hope thinking that, oh, this person's amazing.

No one's ever hired somebody and said, they suck really bad.

Of course not.

Right.

Oh, I found the most amazing person.

Why'd they leave the last five jobs?

Oh, they were amazing, but, right?

That's such a good point.

See, that's what I, I love how your brain works.

It's like exactly, it's so true.

It's so practical.

And common sense.

It's pragmatic, yeah, right.

It's common sense, but common sense isn't so common.

No, I know.

You know, you just ask why, why'd they leave?

You know, but, but entrepreneurs tend to think, okay, I'm hiring hiring this amazing marketing person and he or she is

going to know what to do.

Yep.

And then they tell that to their investors because that's typically why they're hiring a marketing person.

And they say, oh, this person's amazing.

You know, our next quarter is going to be great.

Then it's not.

Then they go to the next marketing person.

You know, then they're in this hamster wheel again and they're screwed.

And it's also relying on other people.

Well, yes.

And that's the whole thing, right?

You've got to be able to solve the problems yourself.

Self-reliant.

Now, you know, at some point your business gets bigger and you have to learn how to do a lot of other things.

You know, when you go to five people, it's one thing.

You go to 10 or 15, it's another challenge, you know, as you learn how to manage and deal with people.

But at the same time, if you're not great at your core competency, how are you going to train those people?

Right.

How are you going to know what the goals are for the organization and how to communicate to them how to do what you need them to do?

Right.

You know, and

but every entrepreneur goes through that terror, right?

I've gone through it.

It's like, oh, shit, you know, can I do this?

right or am I smart enough or good enough or talented enough to do these

yeah I mean we all have imposter syndrome I still have imposter syndrome no way oh hell yeah you walk into a circumstance I'm like and there's named people that any names anybody would recognize yeah and I'm like what the fuck am I doing here no way oh yeah all the time

you who would you be intimidating I'm not gonna get named names but yeah

there are people that for sure yeah for sure yeah really and it's not like an Elon Musk or whatever it's just somebody who has domain knowledge.

Like if I'm sitting in a meeting and we're discussing artificial intelligence.

Yeah.

Like I understand artificial intelligence and I've done a lot of reading.

So I have a good grasp of it.

But this person has created neural networks and models that, you know, have a billion parameters, things that I won't even know how to start to do.

Yeah.

I can understand the conversation.

Right.

The concept.

Right.

Yeah.

But I'm not going to know operationally how to execute on it.

Right.

That's just scary.

It is scary.

Because you're afraid that, okay, did I read enough?

Right.

Because they're living this day to day.

And I'm never going to catch up and know the state of you.

Sitting down with the Mavs, you know, with Jason Kidd there, he's forgotten more about basketball than I'll ever know.

Right.

And so you just, you know, it's just.

But you, but you're his boss, technically.

So

I can teach you on the side.

I don't know.

Yeah, but you know, I mean, I can read and learn and add the value that I add, you know, for analytics, et cetera, whatever it may be.

But

yeah, everybody's going to have that self-doubt.

The question is, what business are you in?

Because a lot of companies don't even know.

Yeah.

Like when I got to the NBA, they thought they were in the basketball business.

I know, but you changed that whole team around.

Well, it's not just a team, right?

The NBA.

Yeah, the NBA used to think they marketed basketball.

Oh, that's true, yeah.

But, you know, I sat there with them.

I said, okay, name the last game you went to and tell me what the score was.

Nobody remembers unless it was just a big game.

Right.

Right.

Name your favorite donk or shot.

No one remembers anyone.

Now tell me who you were with.

And then everybody knows.

Everyone remembers that.

You remember the first game you went to with your parents, your aunt, your uncle, whatever.

You're going to remember that.

The emotional part.

Yeah, because that's why you go, because it's the one place you can scream and yell.

Yeah, and you do.

Yeah, and I do, right?

But where else?

You know, you're not going to see me yell here or there or whatever.

But when you go to a game, you know,

if, you know, you feel that energy and everybody knows they're part of the entertainment, right?

Because you're yelling defense, defense, and that ball's in the air for a game winning or losing shot.

And everybody's holding their breath.

And if it goes through, you're high-fiving and hugging people you've never seen before in your life.

That's what makes going to a game special, feeling that energy.

And they thought it was about, you know, oh, you know, who has the prettiest jump shot?

Yeah.

You're right.

It's all about the emotional part.

All about the emotional attachment because that's what sports are.

And that's what makes sports different than any other business.

And I had to explain that to them.

It was just like, you know, when Apple, which has the biggest market cap in the world, has a great quarter, they don't throw parades in Cupertino.

No, they do not.

Right.

When the Lakers or Mavericks or whoever win a championship, the whole city goes insane.

It's so true.

You know, that's unique to sports.

And you have to recognize what business are you in.

Basketball is the platform, but emotion and entertainment is what we sell.

So, how did you turn it?

Like, so you bought the Mavericks, by the way.

I mean,

by the way, great investment for

you.

Yeah, it's really good.

What, $285?

You went for $285 million, and now it's worth like $2.50 a lot more than that.

How much now is it worth?

Like four?

I'm not going to sell it.

So it doesn't.

Why would you?

I mean, exactly, you're not going to sell it.

But I'm just curious.

It's all sports franchises.

Turned out to be undervalue.

Yeah.

Still is.

I mean, that's pretty amazing, though.

It is, it's crazy.

And that's, you bought it purely on just passion for bash.

I mean, I still play pickup.

You know, so that tells you, you know, I can go out before the game starts and just get up shots, you know, on my own court, you know, my own arena.

It must be so.

Can you,

would you ever, when you were a kid, did you ever think that that was

ever going to be a moment?

No, no, never, yeah, never in my wildest dreams did it ever cross my mind.

It really didn't cross my mind until after I sold my company and had enough money and it was like,

shit, yeah, now I can put my money where my mouth is.

But you're smart.

Then can you explain why?

Like, how did you even think?

Because

when Yahoo bought broadcast.com, that you got it in stock, right?

Yes.

And you turned, you hedged it or something.

What does that even mean to get it into cash?

So it was a public, you know, when we got sold to Yahoo, we were a public company.

We paid fest in stock.

And because Yahoo also was a public company, you could sell options on it.

So I could sell calls, which gave up part of the upside, but allowed me to buy something called puts, which protected my downside.

Wow.

And so I sold calls, bought puts.

That's called a hedge.

And I did it for my entire position.

And it was

when the whole, you know, bubble burst for the dot-com era, you know, I actually made more money.

And so, yeah, it's been called one of the top 10 trades of all time.

Of all time.

Yeah.

Because that like changed your entire life.

Well, of course.

I mean, because there were a lot of people who made a lot of money in stock and on paper and just saw it all disappear.

If it wasn't for that, like that little decision point, yeah, you wouldn't know who I am.

I would never know who you were.

Like, you sold the first one for six million or something, like, which is not

a 29, 30-year-old, right?

But it's not, you know, it's not billions of dollars.

Like, and then, like, you bought this company, you bought the Mavericks from how did that happen from Bros Peraz?

I was, yeah, he didn't care about basketball, it was a real estate deal for me, but I was a seasoned ticket holder, and somebody connected me.

And, like, in less than a month, I bought it.

And that was like Jerry Buss.

I'm sure you've been seeing the Showtimes.

Yep.

That's amazing.

And so, do you go to all the games?

Unless my kids have something.

Unless, well, don't the kids also want to go to most?

Now they're probably, are they as obsessed with it as you are?

My son is becoming more and more so.

My daughter, my middle daughter likes it.

My oldest daughter, it's just

social.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just for the social part.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

So basically, right now it's the basketball and it's cost plus.

Those are the two biggies.

Well, cost plus.

Basketball, you know, except for free agency, basketball kind of runs itself.

Yeah.

Were you at Summer League just now?

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

And I do it because I love it, right?

Well, yeah, why do people go anyway, like your level?

Like, are they just going to see the players?

Yeah, well, it just depends.

For me, I just like basketball.

Well, yeah, you're a different story.

But

yeah, you know, you've got to recruit and you've got to identify talent and all that kind of stuff.

It's just like hiring programmers or hiring videographers or hiring producers or whatever.

But you just love it so much.

Yeah, you know, I enjoy it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

So what was the other?

Okay, wait, I lost what I was going to say to you.

Hold on.

I think that's basically,

well, where were we before I talked about the Summer League?

The thing that

we have to do is the

other thing, too.

What was the other thing I was going to say?

Just about entrepreneurial stuff.

Just entrepreneurial stuff.

I don't even remember what I was going to say.

Do you have anything else you want to say?

What were we talking about?

Entrepreneurs.

We're talking about entrepreneurs' failure.

I mean,

sure.

Oh, sure.

So for the

mirror.

Yeah.

I know I saw a shark thing.

I got to put that over there.

Yeah, exactly.

What was was it?

Talked about like these companies not raising or not advertising and making margin.

That's what you talk about a lot is like, what's your margin?

Forget about the top line.

Obviously with like Facebook and Instagram, there's been an opportunity for companies to scale using ads.

Well, it depends on how much money you have.

So the question about, you know, spending money for advertising, whether it was search or other things.

It depends what type of company you are.

You know, I think for most entrepreneurial companies, particularly startups, that you have to know what sells your product.

Now, if you're just trying to get scale and you're selling it direct to consumer, you're probably going to have to advertise unless you find a better way to do it virally, right?

But you have to know what sells your product.

Like with Alyssa's, you know, it's...

I love the always use her.

Yeah, it's easy, right?

Cost plus drugs, it's easy.

It's easy.

Right?

Yeah.

You know, we have another company, Wild Earth, which is vegan dog food.

It's harder because you have to explain it.

Yeah.

The education piece is

an education piece.

But the challenge now is because of the changes Apple made to privacy, getting a return on advertising spend, ROAS,

is much more difficult.

And so you're having to become a lot more innovative in how you sell your products,

you know, in streaming products, whatever it is, you've got to find what the most cost-effective way to go is.

Now, part of the challenge is that learning process.

So I'm never a fan of selling, of spending a boatload.

I'm a fan of test a lot, test and retest, test and learn, because it always evolves.

And spending for search engine advertising or Facebook ads, whatever it may be,

YouTube, you're competing with everybody in your category.

And that's getting the price higher and it's getting the returns lower in a lot of respects.

So you've got to understand what the compelling aspect is for people to say yes.

You know, what is the path of least resistance for you getting someone to say yes?

And

you don't want to go all in.

And the other thing I'll say for startups is I'm not a fan of brand advertising.

You're not.

No, not even a little, but you earn your brand and your brand

captures an identity based off of your execution, right?

What do you mean to your customers?

That is your brand.

And the customers do.

Yeah, the customers define your brand.

If you're trying to show pretty pictures and people running on the beach and all this and you're kind of, of, you know, virtue signaling to your business.

Yeah.

That's typically a waste of money.

Now, unless you're Pepsi or coke or whatever.

And, you know, and then the other thing that I see a lot of companies make mistakes and they hire a marketing or finance, whatever, and they just do MBA 101.

Yeah.

Right.

This is what I learned in, you know, in finance or entrepreneurship or my MBA classes.

So this must be what you do.

Right.

No, right.

Context matters a lot.

You know, what's your competition doing how do you differentiate yourself and you always want to focus on your differentiation business is about selling two things how you're different and why you're the path of least resistance so that people have a reason to buy and maybe you can encapsulate that is how do you reduce your customer stress how about community now i feel like everybody's doing two different things one is trying like they're trying to build a community right the other is attaching to a cause yeah right having a mission is all having a mission right and you know community typically with nfts you see that right that's what that's what i didn't i was like avoiding yeah that's right um but with community

again it's got to be organic and it's great to set up a discord server or set up a facebook group and have somebody that you work with that works for you or you even i try to do it myself a lot of cases yeah um be responsive to everybody because you get to learn about your customers right so community is great right right um and it should be part of every business that to me that's part of the blocking and tackling right you know it's like answering your emails or having an info email address, right?

That's so, okay, so that's actually very, I mean, that's interesting because I found like that's the hardest part for companies to do is build that community, right?

Yeah, it takes time, but it takes happy customers because it can work against you, children.

Yeah, yeah, because if your customers are not happy, you're toast.

Yeah.

Because that community is just going to turn on you so fast.

100%, especially now, you know.

So, okay, this is the area.

I'm not great at this area, so I'll just

fake it a little bit here.

But like the whole cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, blockchain, blah, blah, blah, NFTs.

So I, so the whole, by the way, I had a lot of money in Voyager also, but me too.

Yeah.

A lot.

So is it gone now?

No, I don't think it's gone.

No.

It's gone.

You might not get all of it back.

So if you had US dollars, USD, you'll get it all back.

I will?

Yes.

Yeah.

So not USDC, but USD.

There's two different things.

USD was stored

in a bank account.

USDC is still considered crypto.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay.

Cause that's like, I was mortified.

I don't know.

I got to check now because I just found out, obviously, a couple of days ago about this.

I was like mortified.

No, it's brutal.

Yeah, it's hard.

The whole thing, because also it was, it was such hype.

It was such, it was so hyped.

They made a mistake.

I mean, it's like, look, I've been investing a long time and I've seen companies make mistakes for things that were supposed to be riskless.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, nothing's ever riskless, right?

But close enough.

Yeah, I mean, I remember I had a bank call me.

I had a lot of money in the bank.

And fortunately, they called me and said, this bank's about to go under.

And so you better pull your money out now.

And so, you know, I was fortunate.

But

unfortunately, Voyager did a deal with this company called 3ac, Three Arrows Capital, and that it looked good on paper, but the company basically lied about their finances.

And

Voyager is a public company in Toronto.

I actually even owned stock.

I bought stock, you know, in Toronto.

So did I buy?

I'm Canadian, too.

So from Toronto.

Yeah.

So I bought stock in the company on the Toronto Exchange, thinking, okay, you know, but when 3AC went bankrupt, it just had that contagion.

But, you know, in reading all the filings,

basically what Voyager is saying is, you know,

we have, we have the USD is cash in the bank at their bank, right?

Right.

And so if you have that, you'll get 100% back.

The USDC and crypto, it really depends on how much they're able to collect from?

I have the other one, not the one I'm going to get back basically.

Yeah, the USDC.

Yeah.

And I had a lot of USDC there too.

Yeah.

Because it was making 8.5%.

It was making exactly.

Yeah.

And so, and this is why I was making 8.5%.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And so hopefully, you know, if what they say in their filing is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it's not, and the judge that's dealing with the bankruptcy agrees, then they'll be able to put consumer accounts first to get.

probably 60, 70% of the crypto back.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

And then what they've said in their filings filings and public that they're going to try to do is for the other 30 or 40%,

because they're bankrupt, the old stock that I own is worthless, right?

Right.

They'll try to, in the new company, they'll

recreate it and give stock and tokens to those people to hopefully, if it turns out to be worth anything, make up the Delta.

Wow.

So what do you think?

Okay, I mean, obviously, you're like very involved.

You invest in a lot of this stuff.

People like me and probably a lot of more, I would say a majority of the population don't really understand this whole idea.

But then what happens is we get like not pressure, kind of pressure.

It's like anything else.

Everybody's making money.

Why aren't you?

Exactly.

Everyone's making all everyone's like telling me that's like crazy monopoly money.

So then I feel like I'm missing out.

And then I put a bunch of money.

You got to fight that feeling.

Tell me about it.

Now you know, yeah.

And so the question is, like, is there a way to educate people properly?

Because you just got to do the work.

And I mean, I knew you were going to say that, but.

There's just no shortcuts.

I wish there were.

This is one area that you're going to be doing.

So So one difference between, look, stocks are the same way.

Yeah.

Right.

So if you look at your stock portfolio, if you have any tech stocks at all, it's gotten crushed.

Everything's getting crushed.

Yeah, and it's gotten crushed as much as Bitcoin or Ethereum, right?

So you always have to ask yourself, is the company a good company?

You know, or is the value?

Because part of the problem with the tech stocks is their valuations went too high because interest rates were so low.

And so people had nowhere else to put their money.

So they put it into crypto and they put it into high-flyer tech stocks and other things, right?

And when interest rates have been going up over the last few months, it's like, okay, well, I can earn two or three or 4%.

Why am I going to take the risk on the, on crypto or on these stocks?

Right.

So I'll just yank it out.

And, you know, Amazon has fallen, what, 50%, 60, 70%?

Netflix, 70% or 80%.

Yeah.

Everything has gotten destroyed.

Even Apple has gone down 30-some percent.

And so, you know,

there's no way you can predict all of that.

You know, it's just.

It doesn't matter who you are.

Stocks don't always just go up, even though it feels like it.

And it's the same with crypto.

But for me with crypto,

there's two types of crypto tokens.

One is store of value, which is really only Bitcoin.

And that's kind of like gold.

You know, there's all kinds of narratives that say, well, if you hold gold when there's heavy inflation, the price of gold will go up.

Right.

Price of gold has gone down during all this inflation.

And so that's bullshit, but it's a narrative that gets people to buy.

And it's the same with Bitcoin.

You know, there's only 21 million going to be made.

So if there's inflation, you don't have to worry about that hasn't worked either.

But the reality is those store values are just about supply and demand.

If there's more people buying than selling, the price goes up.

If there's more people selling than buying, the price goes down.

The good news with both gold and Bitcoin is most people just hold them and wait it out.

That's one kind of crypto.

The other kind are just tokens and like Ethereum.

You guys use Doge Doge?

Dogecoin.

Yeah, Dogecoin is just fun.

Dogecoin is like the on-ramp for crypto.

Oh, okay.

You can use it to buy stuff and everything.

You can go to the Mav store and buy tickets and buy whatever.

But, you know, there's,

it's, it's like what I've said is just, it's a better lottery ticket than a lottery ticket.

Because once you scratch it, if you don't win on your lottery ticket, it's over.

At least with Dogecoin, it's got a chance still to go.

That has a chance.

So, like, so how about NFTs?

What's with this NFT?

Like,

you told me about Chris, what's his face?

Chris.

Chris Brown.

Chris Brown.

Do you see this?

He has like 100 million followers, 120 million followers on social media.

He made an NFL.

Chris Browner?

The singer?

Yeah.

Okay.

And he sold like, what, they made how many of these?

They made to 300 out of 10,000.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's like art.

No, it's, yeah, no, I understand what it is, but I feel like everybody and their dog now is like doing one and having one.

But it's just, it's just like, you know, anybody who collected baseball cards.

So is it the same?

Same thing.

Yeah, only a digital version of a collectible.

That's it.

And so, you know, if I buy,

and if you want to see my NFTs, go to lazy.com slash M Cuban.

Okay, yeah.

It's another company I started, right?

I saw them late.

I was going to ask you about this lazy one, also.

What is that?

It's just a way you just go to lazy.com, set up an account, connect your wallets, and it's an easy way, you know, to put in your Instagram profile or at the bottom of an email, check out my NFTs, lazy.com/slash M Cuban.

Okay, I'm going to check them out.

Yes.

So if you have NFTs in your wallet, it's a really easy thing to do.

Yeah.

But NFTs, you know, they're like any other collectible art, right?

What makes a Picasso worth all that money?

True, but

I'll have a Picasso.

If I were to buy a print of the Picasso, it doesn't cost me anything.

It costs me like 10 bucks, 20.

Well, yeah, well, it's the same thing, right?

But there are certain prints of things that cost you a lot.

True.

But it's online.

Like, who cares?

Like, wouldn't I rather have it on my phone?

Well, think about it this way.

If you run out of space on your phone.

Yes.

And you have to delete pictures.

Yes.

How painful is that?

I don't like it.

It's painful.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

Oh, there's my baby and there's this.

Right.

There's value.

Just because it's digital doesn't mean there's not value.

True.

And if it's art from somebody that you respect or like, and, you know, you can, you can have it show up on your screensaver, on your laptop, on your PC, on your phone.

So, you know, it's just a collectible.

And the fact that it's digital doesn't make it digital, doesn't make it any more or less valuable.

It makes it easier to buy and sell, faster to buy and sell, but it comes down to supply and demand.

You know, if nobody cares about Picasso,

that Picasso is going down in value.

Like, are you buying, you know, how Snoop bought some area in metaverse and like when you're doing it?

No, I think that's a joke.

Yeah.

What is this?

You know, in the metaverse, you know, if you can get people to go there

and that's a place to, you know, congregate and hang out with your avatar.

And I look at.

Do you understand why it's so complicated?

Yeah, I get it.

And you know, in this Second Life and other places like that have been around forever, it's just that the technology has advanced.

Yeah.

But the idea of, you buying digital real estate in the metaverse and thinking it's going to appreciate for some reason other than just convincing somebody else to buy it.

Yeah, I'm not sold on that.

So you're not doing that.

So what's the next wave?

Like, what's the next thing we should look for?

Well, it'll be crypto.

Yeah.

There's artificial intelligence, but that's way too complicated.

That's a whole nother beast.

But

that's all happening.

Like everything is.

For sure.

AI is driving a lot.

But

that's one of the things you're really big in.

You're right here in the market.

No, because you got to know it.

Yeah, because I've got to know it for my companies.

But with crypto, it comes down to utility.

Yeah.

Right.

So like with the Dallas Mavericks, if you go to a Mavs game and you scan your ticket before the end of the first quarter, for every game, we create a unique NFT

and you get it for free.

You don't have to buy it.

You get it for free.

And if you go to mavscollectibles.com,

you can see what we have there.

And once you've scanned your ticket in, you go to Mavs Collectibles, it'll be there waiting for you.

You don't have to create a wallet or do all this other stuff.

And you can buy them and trade them and sell them or, you know, whatever.

But whoever goes to the most games or collects the most, you know, we'll give you free tickets to a preseason game.

Right.

And we don't say in advance what we're going to give you, right?

We just try to reward you based off of what we see in the market and all that.

So sometimes, like in this case, an NFT is a reflection of something you've done.

And in our case with the Mavs, you've gone to a game and we want to reward that.

And so, you know, by having whoever had the biggest collection, I think we sent them a special jacket, you know, and just stuff like that.

but we don't we don't say buy this so you can get a jacket we say you know this tells us you're fandom because you're going to games right because that's the behavior we want to reward more than anything going to games and even watching a game you know so that's one element and then you know there's other utility it really comes down to crypto will start taking off again when you can use it for some level of utility right you know when when iphones first came out people didn't think snapchat yeah no way exactly You know, they didn't think Instagram.

Nope.

But when those came out, you start saying, oh, I can use my phone for a whole lot more than just.

Yeah.

You know, I can use it for a whole lot more than just taking pictures and making phone calls.

Right.

You know, or

going on the internet.

And so that's an example of utility where there was an application that was so compelling, people needed that platform to use it.

It was just like streaming.

When we started streaming in 1995, if you wanted to listen to the Chicago Cubs and you were in Dallas, the only way you can get those games was by getting a PC, downloading, you know, having to move, all it was a pain in the ass.

Absolutely.

Right.

But people went through it because if you're a Cubs fan and you're at work, it was the only way.

Right.

And it'll be the same with crypto.

So if there's an application that, you know, the only way I can do this application, then that's what it's going to take.

And when that happens, you'll see crypto go boom again.

Wow.

Well, hopefully sooner than later, right?

No, kidding.

Yeah, from your mouth to God's ears.

And then one other thing about, well, actually, actually, I wanted to ask you this only because I was curious when I was like doing all this research.

How are you able to get into Indiana without finishing high school?

I was taking college classes.

So, don't you need to have like a college, a high school,

you know, yeah.

So, when I dropped out, I went to the University of Pittsburgh, took classes there, and they let me take those classes and apply that.

That's how you did it.

That's how I did it.

And then, when I got to Indiana, I snuck into a graduate level statistics class, got an A in it,

and they thought I was in the MBA program when I was 18.

But I just kept on taking MBA classes, and I was even tutoring people.

I was inside.

Oh, my God, that is so cute.

You're so sly.

What's your favorite book that you, well, Fountainhead, right?

Okay, that wasn't easy.

I shouldn't have said that.

Well, I shouldn't have extra pretended.

And that doesn't mean like I'm a big Ayn Rand advocate or anything.

I just like.

I loved Howard Wourke, though.

Yeah, that's the whole thing, right?

Howard Work is just the big old fuck you guy.

Yeah, right.

I love him.

Yeah, so that's why.

That's right.

Okay.

Other than that, what's like your favorite business book?

Besides yours?

Yeah, How to Win a Sport of Business.

My little plug in there um

it's like 65 pages

it's more like a pamphlet than a book yeah i want it to be really easy to read and motivating um

i don't know probably

so much so you have yeah always the last book i read typically um

signal and noise which is a book about statistics um

was good fun um the master algorithm which is about ai was good um

what's your favorite movie do you watch movies yeah yeah, like I just finished Stranger Things.

You did, yeah, like if I'm on the Peloton and my kids were watching it, so did you like it?

Yeah, I liked it actually.

Yeah, I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did.

Yeah, they're bringing back all these great songs from like

Metallica, yeah, right, so good.

Yeah, what's your favorite, other than that, a favorite?

That's a TV show, though.

What's your favorite?

Movie, movie, movie.

I like stupid ass movies, like what?

Um,

Good Burger,

um, Good burger.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you know what it is?

No, but it sounds crazy.

I'm a dude.

You're a dude.

She's a dude.

We're all dudes.

Is it like a recent movie?

No, it's old.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, it's all.

You know, the goonies.

They're old school.

Yeah, old school type stuff.

Like John Hughes, 16 Candles.

Yeah, so, you know, I mean, Top Gun, new one was.

Did you see the new one?

Oh my god, it's amazing.

The new one was really good.

So good.

I just saw the new Elvis.

It was okay.

I was going to go take my kid to that that one.

It was okay.

Yeah, my kids liked it, but it wasn't great, but it was okay.

I heard the guy that did a great job.

No, he was amazing.

Yeah, he was incredible.

Yeah.

Yeah, nothing recent is just, oh, that's incredible.

I need to see it five times.

Like, oh, new Batman was good.

Oh, I didn't like it.

Yeah.

It was like kind of dark.

It was really dark, but that was long.

It was really long, too.

Yeah.

So, so, okay, so who's your favorite superhero?

Would that be Batman?

Batman or Iron Man?

Iron Man's my favorite.

Okay.

I think that's basically all.

I don't know what else I can ask you.

My God, it's been like for how long has it been?

It's been an hour.

Oh my God.

I think I've like went way over my time limit with that.

That's okay.

It was cool.

You are like amazing.

I have nothing.

By the way, everyone, go check out Cost Plus.

It really is.

Tell them because.

Go check out costplusdrugs.com.

If you want to find the other companies I'm invested in, go to markcubin.com.

If you have a few minutes.

Yeah, right.

God.

And buy those Alyssa cookies because they're just a little bit more.

If you go to markcubin.com, you'll see the link.

And I have to say, mush, mush, mush,

because I love Ashley.

I love Ashley.

So she's amazing.

You have to enforce nature.

She's a great person.

Amazing.

She's so smart and she's great.

And you can also follow Mark, of course, on MCU and all the social media.

I'm MQ.

And email him because obviously he's going to answer.

I'm not going to have my email again.

Exactly.

Thank you so much.

Thanks, Jen.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Habits and hustle.

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