Mark Cuban: AI Could Bankrupt Us Into A Deep Debt Bubble!

It takes a little bit of time to realize this as a founder, but once you do, it's something you can't unsee. That having the right systems in place with your business is critical. One that's helped me across all of my investments is NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system and sponsor of today's conversation. Through their streamlined platform, you'll find all of your accounting, finance, management, inventory, and HR in one place. And their technology has been a massive unlock for all of my companies, especially for my team at Flight Story. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode into scale-up mode. And that's the stage where we found it mission critical to use NetSuite. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks and of course, the number of errors. Over 42,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite.com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite.com slash Bartlett. AI is not smart. AI doesn't know the consequences of its actions. It doesn't have inherent ethics. Those companies keep on borrowing and spending more money in order to power all of the AI, but they're borrowing more than they're making. We literally could get into a debt bubble. You do think we're in a bubble, don't you? Yeah. What causes it to burst? I'll tell you this. So what are the most sort of foundational things I need to understand the Mark Cuban that we've all grown to love from the Shark Tank and the businesses and the Dallas Mavs? So business was an area where I was always ahead of the curve, no matter how old I was. Growing up, I went door to door in the neighborhood selling garbage bags. And that probably catapulted me more than anything because if you can go door to door and sell, you can do anything. Like on the Shark Tank, when somebody walked in and told me about their company, I knew exactly how I would sell it. What are the sort of consistent themes amongst all people that become an entrepreneur? Oh, you've got to find one thing and be great at it and then find a way to turn that something into a business. Next, if you're going to do anything with technology, media, whatever it may be, you better be ahead of the curve because business is like a sport. If you don't keep on getting better and improving your game, you're not going to be able to compete. But what we don't talk about is what do I suck at? Suck at it. And one of the biggest mistakes I made was I was a jerk. I would yell, I would scream. And I found that I got a lot further by being nice than by being a dick. The last thing I want to ask you about is your more recent decisions around leaving Shark Tank, selling the Mavs. I'll tell you this, that tells you all you need to know. Got some wonderful photos here, don't we? Yeah, that's my brother, Brian. Brian, he wrote you a letter. Oh my God, I'll probably start crying. Guys, I've got a favour to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Mark, there are so many things happening in the world at the moment, and just specifically focusing in on business and technology and AI. One of the remarkable things I often reference about you is in spite of your success, you continue to self-educate. And I've watched this in you over multiple cycles of technology, when crypto became a thing, when AI showed up. One of the first things I see on my timeline is Mark Cuban going back to school. Yeah, for sure. What's going on in your head at the moment? To me, business is like a sport. And if you don't keep on getting better and improving your game, you're not going to be able to compete. And if you're going to do anything with technology, media, whatever it may be, you better be ahead of the curve. Otherwise, there's going to be some kid in high school somewhere who's going to kick your ass. And I want to be the one doing the ass kicking instead of getting their ass kicked. What are the most sort of foundational things I need to know about your earliest context to understand the Mark Cuban that we've all grown to love and know from the Shark Tank and the businesses and the Dallas Mavs? I think I just grew up in a regular family and just had the piss and vinegar in me to always want to compete, like I said. And I was able to turn an idea into a business and be successful. And you had very formative parents by the sounds of things? Yeah, I mean, I had great upbringing. My dad did upholstery on cars, pure blue collar. My mom did odd jobs. Yeah, that's my grandparents, my mom. My mom was only 20 when I was born. We've got some more wonderful photos here. That's my brother, Brian, who's the middle brother, and my dad. That's when we lived on Meadowlark and Pittsburgh. Your father never made more than $40,000 in his life? Never, no. He would be up at work and gone by the time we were leaving for school. He actually lost an eye when he was doing upholstery. There was a staple that broke when I was in sixth grade, but he just always was a grinder and just amazing. I miss him. You miss him? I miss him both. Everywhere we went, he always had friends, and if he didn't know people there, they quickly became his friends. I think that set a great example for my brothers and I more than anything. What are some of those high-level lessons that you always reference come from him? He would say things like, you don't live in the world you were born into. Today's the youngest you'll ever be, that type of thing, where no matter what hustle I had going on, he was always supportive, always. And what did you think you were going to be when you were older at that age in those photos? Oh, a baseball player. Really? Yeah, I was good, but not good enough. But then after that, it became apparent that I was going to be a business guy. I mean, I think it was apparent from your- Yeah, selling baseball cards when I was a kid? Yeah. Oh my God, you got some good ones. I mean, you also started selling some of these I hear as well. Yeah, so what I would do is, yeah, so when I was like nine or 10 years old, I would go to the local pharmacy and they would sell packs of baseball cards. And I would buy a bunch of them with my allowance, and then I would repackage them using the comics and everything from the paper, and then I would buy these for like, it cost me like a quarter, buy them for 50 cents. You're guaranteed to get a Pittsburgh Pirate, like Roberto Clemente or Willie Stargel. And I would sell them and make money. Then I'd go and turn it around and make more. And that literally was my first start in hustling. And then one day my dad was playing poker with his buddies. You know, they'd rotate to each other's houses. And they were at our house and I went in there to grab a donut. And I was like, and he looks at my feet and he goes, those shoes work. When you have a job, you can buy whatever you want. I'm like, dad, I'm 12. And one of his buddies who had to have been drunk was like, hey, I got something you can sell. I've got boxes of garbage bags that I'll sell to you for $3 and you can sell them for six. And literally I went door to door in the neighborhood and I'd be like, hi, I'm your neighbor, Mark. Do you use garbage bags? Easy sell, right? And that probably catapulted me more than anything because if you can go door to door and sell, you can do anything. This idea of selling is sort of very top of mind for you in terms of one of the ultimate skills of building, becoming an entrepreneur. And it's so funny because I spent a lot of time in call centers when I was younger doing cold calls. But I always say that the best sales experience is door to door sales. Or call centers, right? Every no gets you closer to a yes, right? Just knowing how to deal with people telling you no and how to deal with objections and how to respond quickly. It just trains your mind to be quick. And once you can sell, I mean, you have a job for life. Why is selling so important as it relates to becoming an entrepreneur? No business has ever succeeded without sales. And if you don't think your product or service is so good that you're dying to sell it, that you think that by talking to somebody about whatever product it is, you're not helping them, right, because that's the whole point of sales. You know, when you were in that call center, what did you sell? Everything, windows, doors, conservatories, Right, right. And it was all about helping them and you'd have the objections and I'd go sell it. I was selling magazines door to door. Once you learn how to sell, once you learn how to deal with objections, once your mind is spinning, waiting and reacting, just like you did in a call center, what can't you sell? Are there any principles of being a good salesperson or even in, you know, on Shark Tank, when you see someone come in and they're great at sales, what are those principles? You care, you know your product, you wanna help people. You're not trying to convince them to do something against their interests. You're trying to understand and learn their interests and help them achieve their goals or whatever your product may happen to do. It may be, hey, you don't have to go to the store and pick up a bag or it may be when you're selling something, you know, windows. You know, you don't wanna look through those dirty windows. You know, you know there's a crack. You know, your electricity bill is up way too high because of your windows and we're here to replace them. And for only $17 a month, we'll save you, you know, more than pay for itself in the electricity bill, right? Like on a Shark Tank, when somebody walked in and told me about their company, I knew exactly how I would sell it or could not sell it. And once you can do that, you're always gonna be able to get a job. And if you are an entrepreneur or wanna be an entrepreneur and you find something that you love and a product or service you love, then selling it's easy. You know, oftentimes we hear about people becoming wildly successful billionaires because they came up with some tech idea. It was their first thing like a Zuckerberg and it becomes this huge success. And they're like 25. So sometimes when we're like 32, we miss the boat. But then when I read your story, you know, I think you were like 31 years old, 32 years old and your first business is sold for $2 million, which is a- What sold for five, I netted two. You netted two, okay. What is the big misconception that like young people these days have about what it takes, whether it's in terms of sacrifice or time or patience or compounding skills, because they are incredibly impatient, I think. Yeah, I mean, I was just as impatient, but I think it really depends on your personal circumstances. Like I had nothing to lose. I was broke. You know, I had gotten fired from a job. So starting MicroSolutions was an easy choice. I was living six guys in a three bedroom apartment, didn't have my own bedroom. So it was like, why not? And I remember being terrified and thinking, okay, I've been in business one month. That's a win. Three months, six months, nine months. I have $15,000 in accounts receivable. You know, I'm on my way of moving out of this shithole I live in. So it really depends on your personal circumstances. But I always tell young entrepreneurs, like if you're broken, you got nothing to lose. You know, even if you're working a job, like I was working as a bartender and, you know, go out and do what you got to do and start what you've got to start. I think one of the big misconceptions is, A, you have to raise money. And B, if you do raise money, hitting big sales numbers is like the ultimate end all be all as opposed to being profitable. For MicroSolutions, our entire eight year existence, we were profitable every single month. I mean, we made sure that we sold enough and kept our cost in line so that I was gonna be able to stay alive and keep on moving forward. And I think kids today, they hear the stories about the Zuckerbergs and, you know, Sam Altman's and it's like billions of dollars by the time you're, you know, 12. And they think, okay, that's the way I'll do it. They went out to Silicon Valley and they raised all this money. And they don't even realize that the greatest number of successful people aren't the billionaires, right? It's the people that have made a few million, 5 million, 10 million, 25, 50, $100 million. There's a multiple number of people in those set of circumstances. And I'm not saying it's easy to get there, but it's doable, right? It's not a Silicon Valley dream, it's the American dream. And it's where you are and what you can do and what skills you have to accomplish it that makes the difference when you get started. If I'm trying to become a millionaire, let's say, what are the sort of consistent themes amongst all people that become millionaires, 10 millionaire, 100 millionaire? Is there like certain principles that you're gonna need regardless of what industry you're playing in? So we talked about sales. Yeah, sales, obviously. But to be a millionaire, I think you've just gotta be really good at something and then find a way to turn that something into a business. It may be sales, it may be programming, it may be tinkering, it may be drawing, it may be being a creator, whatever it may be. But if you're not good at it, there's no business that you start that's gonna make you a millionaire. You gotta be good at something. This brings me to the point about focus because lots of entrepreneurs, I'm sure you get this a lot in Shark Tank, but outside of the tank, is they think that having three ideas or three things is increasing their odds. Right, no, that's ridiculous. Or they say, I wanna be an entrepreneur, what should I do? What business should I start? I'm like, oh my God. No, you've gotta find one thing and be great at it. Because once you're great at something, doors open up wide. Because if it's not your company, then they gotta keep you because you're great. And whoever you compete with in that company, they're looking and saying, wow, Stephen's great, or Mark's great. And then you're like, I'm great at this. Maybe if I wanna be an entrepreneur, I can start a business about what I'm great at. What are you most likely to become great at? Where you spend your time. Like people think it's about passion. Oh, I'm passionate. I was passionate to be a baseball player. Basketball player did help me at all, right? And I think when you realize where you're spending your time is where you find things that you like to do. And when you like to do something, if it's convertible to a business at all, then you keep on getting better and better and better. Because it's like anything else, whether it's tech, selling windows, right? Whatever it is, installing windows. When you start realizing you're better than the people around you, your confidence goes up, your willingness to learn more goes up. You wanna find how you can be even better so you could be the absolute best. When those things happen, you can start a company and there's no limit to what you can do. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about long-termism as an idea. And what I mean by this is, it's just interesting that when you take a longer term view to almost anything, like you have in many sort of endeavors in your career. Yeah, yeah, right? I was thinking about the mouse there. It's interesting how today's decisions change and how that creates a moat. Because we live in a world, I think, where people plan sometimes in quarterly cycles or sometimes they plan their lives in five years. seasons. But there's a couple of entrepreneurs that I look out into the world and think, oh, they were thinking like 10, 20 years. That wasn't me. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, what about with what about the Mavs though? So when I got into the, with the Mavs and I bought the Mavs. Which is a basketball team pretty much. Basketball team, yeah. In the NBA. And so I was a basketball junkie, right? And I was a season ticket holder and went to a game and I was like, wait, maybe I could buy this team, right? Because I just made all this money. And I was like, that sounds fun. And I did it not because it was a business, not because I saw this long, you know, horizon of owning the team. I thought this could just really be fun. And what could be better than, you know, going and shooting baskets with Dirk Nowitzki or Steve Nash and Michael Finley. So that's what got me into it. But I didn't even really look at it as a business. I looked at it more as an intellectual endeavor, right? An intellectual challenge. Can I take a team that was awful and got voted the worst professional sports franchise of the previous decade and turn it into a winning team? And that was my goal. And for a long time, it was stressful because I'm so competitive, losing a game, it would take me two days to get over a loss. But then it got to the point, you know, not long before I sold where, in my opinion, it went from being about basketball to being about valuations. And it went from, hey, I love basketball and this is all about basketball, to the NBA being more about, OK, how much are these teams worth? And the conversation is not being about how can we make the game better, but how can we make it more valuable? And to me, that just created more stress, you know, because in order to compete, you had to be good at real estate and things that had nothing to do with basketball. So I wish I could tell you that I was like, OK, I have this 25-year horizon, but I can't tell you, I never thought I would sell. But then things changed around me and I guess, you know, having kids changed me as well. You bought the team for, is it $200 million roughly? $285, yeah. And you sold it for? $4.3 billion. Yeah. What I find interesting is the point you just made about you'll become great at the things where you want to spend your time on them. And again, the point you made before that was entrepreneurs, when they come to you and say, I want to be an entrepreneur, and then they go looking for an idea, tend to fail. This is a prime example of you doing exactly what you described, where it was somewhere you wanted to spend your time, which meant that you became good at it. I loved it, yeah. I saw how the team's performance drastically improved over the years where he was the majority owner, but also some of the things you implemented around data and performance and technology into the mouse, and it becomes a great business. Not a bad business, yeah. It turned out to be a great business, yeah. You just don't know, but when you're doing something you love, right? It's the old cliche, you don't work a day in your life, but it's true. How do you define success? Waking up in the morning with a smile on your face, excited about the day. And that's hard. Most people can't do that. Most people look and they say, okay, I got to go to work. I got to do this. I've got these five things I got to get done or whatever. Even when I was broke, I was fired up, and the Mavs got me. It was amazing because sports are so much different than every other business. You can work for a company like Google and they have the best quarter ever. They set records. Apple becomes the most valuable company in the world. Nobody throws a parade. If you win a championship, the whole city's on fire, and they're throwing parades. A half a million, a million people converge on downtown in 100 degrees heat to scream at the players and everybody. It's just so different, and that's what made the Mavs special. Is that amongst your best days in your life, winning the championship? Business-wise, yeah, for sure. I'll tell you this. It was so anticlimactic internally for me. I've seen so many games where we thought we were going to win and ended up losing them, and they had LeBron and et cetera. I was like, okay, we're up by 10 points with 30 seconds to go. There's no chance that we're losing this. Then they hit a three. I'm like, oh, shut the fuck up, Mark, right? Then we got to the point where we won. I'm like, okay, the clouds should open up and the sun should shine. I just realized, oh, this is great. I'm screaming and yelling, but now what? What comes next? It wasn't so much how I felt and hugging all the guys and hugging everybody, but it was how the city felt. That's what really made it special when I would take the trophy to schools, I would take it to bars, I would take it to restaurants, I would take it to my kids' events, whatever it was, and to see their eyes light up. Just that communal joy, that's what made it special. You said there's many people that are listening that are basically trapped. They feel trapped. They feel stuck in a nine to five job, living paycheck to paycheck. I've been there. You've been there. What advice would you have for them? They might have $1,000 in savings, and they're trying to get out of that situation. Is there some type of life raft? Are there principles of how to escape? I say this to new college graduates all the time. Don't go get the best job because that's the hardest to find. Don't get the perfect job because those are hard to find. Just get a job, and when you have a job, just work to be really good at it. The second part of that is you have to be brutally honest with yourself because nobody looks at the job they're doing and says, I suck. They're like, oh, I'm great at this. They just don't realize it. No, you have to be honest and talk to people around you, but when you're really good at something, that's when doors do open up. Even in the worst possible job, you could be working at a McDonald's at a Dairy Queen, but there's a path. If you understand how to move up that path, even though your life mission isn't to be the manager of a McDonald's or a Dairy Queen or whatever, the fact that you can show a future employer that you moved up the line, and then when they ask for a reference, they said, Stephen was incredibly valuable. We're really sorry that he's leaving. We tried to keep him. That's what you need, and that can happen in two, three years. Most people don't want to think like that. You get in your head and you get inside yourself. It's just like, oh, this is miserable, yada, yada, yada. It's funny looking backwards on journeys like yours where it's often jobs that most people wouldn't think are glamorous that end up being the most important or formative to your skill stack. You were talking about door-to-door salespeople. You mentioned Dairy Queens. They're all like McDonald's. I think I remember that Jeff Bezos worked at McDonald's, and this is really where he learned about this customer obsession, customer service. Yes, you start to understand. Yeah, boy, Molly's Pub. Yeah, you learn how to deal with people, how to deal with customers. That can happen in any job. I read this book in high school. It was called Why Men Rebel, and it said most people have aspirations that are up here, and when their real lives they feel like are down here, then a lot of people won't just accept it okay because no one wants to think, I'm not going to do or not to accomplish anything. That's when they start fighting and rebelling and joining groups that are counter to what's happening in society. I think understanding that in yourself, you have to be at least self-aware a little bit to understand that it's okay to be frustrated, but you can't let it overtake your life. You've got to be able to put yourself in a position to at least feel better about yourself, even if it's not perfect. Did you rebel? Oh, my whole life. Yeah, I was always counterculture. I remember being in high school, and I was four inches shorter, 25 pounds heavier. You can't tell here, but these two teeth are caps because my parents didn't have any money. I ran into a bicycle, it broke my teeth, and I got caps that were aluminum steel. That's what they were. They were steel. I'm 16 years old, and my friends would be like, ah, the reflection. You just have to find your path. You can't get down on yourself. One of the things that a lot of people who feel stuck are probably thinking about is they're probably trying to weight mentally the amount of sacrifice it's going to take. When I've heard you talk about hard work and the sacrifices that you had to take to build yourself from this 22-year-old who is in Pittsburgh, I believe at the time, to starting your first business, which ended up being Acquired Microsolutions, what does the sacrifice look like? If I was a fly on the wall, presumably you had a job at that time, and then you started building the business, what would I have seen in terms of how did your life look? So when I got to Dallas, moved in with, like I said, five roommates, didn't have a bed. I just slept on the floor. That's an example of sacrifice, living in a shithole. Got a job working at night as a bartender, but then almost immediately got a job working at a software store. That was going to be, for me, my first step into a real job where I could have a future, but I got fired nine months later. I wanted to move out of the shithole I lived in, and I was going to be looking at a $1,500 commission, which would have done it for me. So I called my boss, and I'm like, I need to go pick up this check. You'll make money, I'll make money, and I have somebody to cover opening up the retail store that I worked in. And he was like, no, I need you in the store. And I made the executive decision to go pick up the check, thinking when I brought it in, everything would be well. He fired me on the spot. Fired me, and I'm like, okay, I suck as an employee. This is not what I want. I'm going to start my own company. And I don't know if I'd call it sacrifice, but I'd call it deferring immediate gratification. I knew that it was going to take time for me to get any level of success to move out of that apartment. I was going to have to sell hard, learn stuff I didn't understand. This was the early days of the PC revolution, when PCs were starting to happen. I don't know this shit, but either does anybody else. In my mind, when it came to software, there was only going to be one person who understood any given software better than me, and that would be the person who wrote it. And that if I busted my ass, I was tied per second, right? When that's a new program like Lotus 1-2-3, if you remember that one kid. No, shut up. It was the second spreadsheet that was a big spreadsheet. And so anyways, my idea was, I was going to put in the time to learn that software, however many software packages that is, more than everybody. And I literally would stay in that retail store overnight, or I'd take the computer back to the shithole apartment and just sit there and teach myself and teach myself, read the manuals over and over. Because if I can get ahead of everybody else to be in second by myself, I would have a huge edge over everybody else for microsolutions. It's the same with AI. New AI comes out, new model comes out, new software comes out. There's the creator and everybody else is tied per second. And I'm going to kick their ass by learning it faster, better. And AI is obviously like the term of the moment in business. How significant do you think this is? I mean, I've been in the tech business a long time. This dwarfs everything else in aggregate. This is so much bigger. With AI, you can just say, hey, I need to learn more about Stephen Bartlett. Tell me everything there is to know. It's able to make me a lot more productive. And I think it can make anybody more productive. And I think that's the beauty of artificial intelligence. And from an educational perspective of done right, it's a democratiser of information. You have access to every library, every book, every speech, everywhere. And so if you're interested, there's nothing you can't learn. Everywhere I go around the world, people are asking me whether this technology is the real deal. And business owners and entrepreneurs are asking how they should be responding in a moment like this. Because in my life, I'm 34 years old now, there's almost no precedence of such a disruptive technology. It can be quite threatening to many people because there's this sort of process of, they call it creative destruction, where it rips down the old way of doing things. And in that, it could be ripping down your identity, your degree, your job. And so there was a psychologist called Leon Fessinger that coined a term called cognitive dissonance, which even hearing the term helped me understand myself and my feelings, which is the discomfort you feel when something sort of threatens or conflicts with what you know. The whole world is experiencing this right now, all at once, globally. And what some people are doing is an attempt to alleviate the dissonance, bury their heads in the sand, deny it, it won't come for me, I'll be fine. Michael Malice Right. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Not going to happen. For me, with AI, I see it as an opportunity. Wherever there's change, there's opportunity. Something's changing, and to your point, the cognitive dissonance, people are avoiding it and not dealing with it at all. And then there's others who are picking up on it and saying, let's go, let's go. And that's always been my approach, because you know most people aren't going to do the work. There was an old basketball coach, Bobby Knight, from Indiana University. And when I was in college, he was on 60 Minutes, and he had this one line, and my jaw just dropped. I'm like, oh shit, that's it, that's my line. He goes, everybody's got the will to win, but it's only those with the will to prepare that actually do win. And I'm like, bingo, that's all I needed. You know, you get one little line as a kid in your head, and I'm just like, let's go. Tom Clougherty Problem is, you never see people prepare. Michael Malice You may not see it. Right, yeah, so there's a role model in preparation, right? Tom Clougherty No one gets to see you going and taking the software from the store and taking it home to the shuttle apartment, because there was no cameras, there was no interest at that point. So we almost don't appreciate that that's part of the win. But they probably saw you on the double-decker bus with the trophy, with the Mavs. So, you know, this is the illusion of success, I guess, in this context. Michael Malice That's why we have conversations like this, to convey that. That's why you've been so successful. Tom Clougherty Well, no, but this is why I love having these conversations, because it's almost counter-narrative to Instagram, to hear that you spent years— Michael Malice It's even worse. Okay, so my 16-year-old son, 17-year-old, just turned, drove me nuts, because how the algorithms work, right? Whatever you see, you get more of. And each of us have our own unique algorithm on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, right? Nobody sees the same stuff. And obviously, he was interested in business, because he would come up to me and show me these get-rich-quick schemes. You're going to drop ship, you're going to do shoe drops. There was one where they had a blaster, you know, water blaster, so you can clean sidewalks. And I'm like, no, right? If those were good businesses, they wouldn't be telling you about them. They would just be doing them, or make all this money in the stock market. Nobody who has an edge in the stock market is selling it. They're using it. And the point of all that is, people, particularly now in this social media world, where you just get more of what you want, they get misled. Section 230, the protections on the internet, and the fact that that protects algorithms, I think, really is a big part of holding kids back these days. Because that's why you talk about not seeing people do the preparatory work. You know, not seeing what happens behind the scenes. Because that doesn't get more views or more engagement on Instagram or TikTok. No one's gonna, okay, Mark's looking at this, reading a manual, no, right? And it's tougher for society today. You know, we talk about socialism or capitalism. No one knows what it actually means. They just, whatever is presented to them in a 10-second bite, and you see it enough, you presume it must be true. That's why I think I asked about long-termism is because I'm trying to figure out what the sort of, you know, you said earlier, you said, you know most people won't do it. And right now, with algorithms and a certain sort of online narrative, that I think there becomes like a winning opportunity to do the opposite. So get rich quick schemes, the opposite of that is like taking a long-term approach, doing the preparation, mastering a skill, and setting yourself a 10-year time horizon as opposed to like, I'm gonna be rich next year. Even Charlie Munger used to say it all the time, right? There's no delayed gratification anymore, never. And if you don't realize you have to do the work first, you're not gonna get the gratification. And Charlie and Warren are obsessed with compounding. Oh yeah, for sure. And they were the kings of it, yeah, for sure. That's one of the things I always found fascinating about them when I started reading about why they were such great investors is that I read that there'd be like a couple of years where they wouldn't invest any money at all. No. What the fuck? No, and I've tried to do the same thing. And like, again, just trying to not, don't just jump into the market, jump in the market. There's always gonna be a bear market, and that's where the money was made. During COVID, you know, I just started buying up. Everything went and hit, and I crushed it. You know, you can say that's wrong in some respects, right? But now it's just like you see these stocks and everything just go, you know, AI-related stuff just going to the moon and all this debt. I'm like, just be patient. You can invest a little bit for the fun of it, but be patient, have some cash, because at some point it's going to turn. And when that happens, that's when the real magic happens and where all the real money is made, the delayed gratification. You do think we're in a bubble, don't you? How'd you talk about this? I think we're in a bubble, but not the same as the internet bubble back in 2000, 2001. I think what's different now is everything's a meme stock. Bitcoin is a meme stock, right? Pick Micron, you know, Google, Apple, they're meme stocks. And the reason I say that is by watching how stocks move with just a little bit of news. So a company might miss earnings by a penny or only beat by a penny, and their stock will be down 18%. The intrinsic value of that company hasn't changed 18%. It's just that buyers and sellers move in and move out very quickly based off of anticipated information, as opposed to the net present value of the future cash flows and all that. We're trading them like baseball cards. You know, there's no intrinsic value to this. It's just perceived value. And what do you think somebody else will pay for it? And I think we're in a bubble for that very reason. What causes it to burst? I have no idea. Because we said, you know, this technology, AI is without precedence. You know, it is quite tempting for someone like me to put, you know, put a couple of dollars into the NVIDIA. Yeah, of course, I am. Yeah, for sure. Because you think maybe this is the last technology. Right, because even, you know, I don't think it'll be the last technology because it'll always, something will always happen. There'll always be somebody smarter than the AI, I believe. But look at Dell and Amazon. They were companies whose stocks went from way up high, got crushed when the internet bubble burst. Amazon was losing money hand over foot. I mean, people used to give them a hard time because they were losing so much money. Now they're worth trillions of dollars. And if you would just stuck it out with them, so there will be winners. I just don't know which company. Is it Anthropic? Is it OpenAI? I don't know. You think there'll always be someone smarter than the AI? Yeah, for sure. What do you mean by that? I've never heard that. Take a model from Anthropic, AI model for Anthropic, or Google Gemini, or ChatGPT, OpenAI, right? It gets released. It's immediately out of date, immediately. The brilliance of this conversation is not incorporated in any model anywhere, right? AI is not smart. It just knows how to use statistics, basically, to predict the next word. It's predictive, it's not deterministic. Meaning if you asked four different AIs the same question, you're gonna get four different answers. If you modify a question to the same AI, just marginally, that shouldn't change the meeting, it'll give you a different answer every time. That doesn't work in the real world. AI doesn't know the consequences of its actions. AI doesn't have inherent ethics. AI can't take video and consume it or absorb it, at least not yet. If I'm standing at a four-way intersection and there's cars going back and forth, and I have video in my phone, and the best models ever, and I have a seeing eye dog right here, I'm letting the seeing eye dog take me across the street before I let the AI take me across the street. It's always going to be behind. There's always going to be a latency. And so many things can change in a blink of the eye in this world that there's always gonna be a human who says, oh, you know what, I can do this better because while all these other companies are competing with their models to try to hit these benchmarks and outperform in these benchmarks and do recursive self-improvement so it just keeps on training itself more and more, it doesn't have access. A two-year-old sitting on a high chair with a sippy cup knows that if it pushes the sippy cup off the high chair, mom's gonna come running and it knows it's gonna crack up, right? AI's not gonna figure that out ever. Do you know, if you think of it as like an exponential technology, this is what I always try and, because it's tempting to think of it as a sort of a static state. I'm thinking of like a graph here, like where it kind of goes like this. But these technologies, from even what I've observed with every new release, seem to be almost like this. So it's quite hard, like even think about full self-driving. Yeah. Like my Tesla drives itself and apparently the crash rate is significantly lower than if a human was driving. Yeah, of course. And if I imagine that as an exponential, at some point, this shit's gonna be pretty. Except. Yeah. Except, they're just like you see the protests about data centers. Yeah. When we talk about why men rebel, a book I haven't thought about since high school, right? People are gonna rebel. People are going to create their own communities where there is, if it's that dominant, there'll be people say, I don't want that in my life. There'll be communes and kibbutzes where there's no technology. There's something called adversarial actions for AI, where like with full self-driving, there's certain things that when it sees it, it reacts in the wrong way. And once you know how to do that, and you can cause AI to do things that it doesn't want to do, or you don't expect it to do, then you're gonna get people who do that all the time. And you're also seeing it, like when I go and talk to hospitals and researchers for cost plus drugs, right? What I tell them is you're crazy if you publish everything, or if you try to patent everything, because it's immediately available to every model and you lose control of your intellectual property. And you're starting to see more and more and more people instead of patenting it, it's a trade secret. Instead of publishing it, I'll put it in my model or I'll sell it to you. And so you get this bifurcation with each model where Gemini is not trained on the same data as ChatGPT, as Claude, as Grok, et cetera. And if they're all giving you different answers, kind of defeats the purpose in a lot of respects. And if they can't deal with live video or they're always have latency. And look, when I say this, I'm not saying AI is useless. No, exact opposite, AI is incredible. But like having four of the smartest people next to you, they're not all gonna give you the same answer. And you have to have the skillset to be able to ask the right question and ask the right question of multiple sources and be able to take the output from each of them, the responses from each of them and come to a conclusion that you think is in your best interest or whatever interest that is. You'd think the former president of Nespresso would be a pretty hard person to convert to a new coffee company. But just one sip of Commoteer coffee made him invest. But let me tell you the reason why I became an investor. So I had a big box of this arrive on my desk in the London office. And then I'd say within about an hour and a half, the Slack channel that we have starts blowing up with people asking, what the hell is that thing that's been left in the kitchen? It is unbelievable. So instead of trying to make it yourself at home and balance the flavors, they flash freeze at the perfect moment. So all you have to do is pop it out of here into a cup, pour hot water on it. And it tastes like nothing you've tasted before. You can also make delicious iced coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in. No machine, no brewing with plastic and all that nasty stuff. And you can get $30 off your first order at commoteer.com slash Steven today. That's commoteer.com slash Steven. There's something your business depends on that most of us never even think about. One thing you realize when you're building your business is just how dependent you become on being connected. Your team is on video calls, files are in the cloud, payments, customer conversations, teams collaborating across the globe. So much of the business is happening online. And you don't really think about your internet when it's working. You notice it when it stops working. T-Mobile is now a sponsor of the show, provided that I've used for the longest time. And they have developed something called Super Broadband, the only nationwide broadband solution to integrate 5G and Starlink, which by the way is a lifesaver for virtually unbreakable connectivity. Terrestrial 5G and Starlink satellites are two independent pathways that work together to keep you online through outages and disruptions, which means if one of them fails, the other instantly takes over without anything being interrupted, all with one contract and coverage that reaches every zip code in the United States. Super Broadband from T-Mobile is a new era of business internet. Discover more at superbroadband.com. Speeds vary due to local network characteristics and management. Satellite connectivity requires hardware installation and clear view of the sky with 36-month commitment. What do you make of all these AI CEOs saying that it's gonna transform how we work and there's not really gonna be any jobs left? Well, it will transform how we work, but I think there'll be creative destruction. Like, you know, I went to school at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and right by Bloomington is Terre Haute, Indiana. Terre Haute, Indiana used to be the location for RCA Records, which then became CDs, right? And then they made DVDs. You probably don't even remember that shit, right? I remember CDs and DVDs. Okay, gone, gone, right? But it's not like there aren't people making money on music. And so there will be creative destruction. There will be new things that pop up that leverage this new technology that create different kinds of jobs. Is the path gonna be painful for people? Yeah, just like the people in Terre Haute, Indiana. It's gonna be painful. Because this technology feels so different because when you start to think about how much of our lives run both on the internet, but just based on intelligence. Like driving is not something I considered would be impacted by AI, for example. And then now I'm experienced, you know, I heard you talking about your use of AI agents, but I've got, I don't know, 25 AI agents on my phone now going through all of my stuff. It's great, right? It's amazing. It's amazing. But you go, fuck, oh my God. But it's not smart. I hadn't read a nonfiction book in 25 years. And the only reason I had the time to do it was I had these agents, all the shit that I had on my to-do list that I would have to go search for this, read that, do this. Boom, my agents, just like I'm sure you use it for the same thing, right? All the tedious bullshit work that you didn't want to do or always couldn't get to, or thought you had to hire somebody for, now you have an agent that does it. And your biggest decision to use Crock-Bot, to use, you know, Dot, to use, you know, Cowork. And then you try them all and you see they all give you a different answer. And then you have to use your brain again. But you said that you would have otherwise hired people to do some of those things, right? Yes, that's true. But now I can get more done, just like you can get more done. And when you get more done using your agents, you have better opportunities to use what you know to create other things. So I might've brought in an intern and paid them $15 an hour or $20 an hour, whatever it was. Now maybe it creates a new business idea. And with that new business idea, I need to hire people to do that. Because, so I'll give you a perfect example of what I use agents for. For costplusdrugs.com, I always, you know, I'm trying to break the healthcare industry. And there's these big conglomerates who I think are the real problem. And now I have an agent, every time they get sued, it comes to me and tells me. Every time there's a bid that they're bidding on, right, it comes and the agents tell me. And I can use the agent to create an email to send to the Open Records Act to get me copies of all those contracts. Shit, I could never have imagined doing before unless I hired somebody, but that meant I had to take the time to hire them and train them and manage them so it never got done. Now it gets done, and now I have other types of people that I hire to do different things that are at a completely different level. And it takes less of my time to do all of that. And for your son, your son's 16? 17, just turned 17. When he's saying, Dan, you know, you know a lot about the future, you've been able to predict the future several times. So what should I be focused on, Dad? He's 17. My kids are 17, 20, and 23. The one thing they never say is, Dad, you know a lot about filling the blanket. Never, never, ever. My oldest daughter, though, when she was at college, I told her she had to learn how to do agents. And she was like, yeah, whatever, whatever. And then I went and watched one of her presentations and she was like, yeah, I got an agent to do this, I got an agent to do that. I was like, proud papa, right? But yeah, but I tell them, you have to learn this stuff because if you don't, the person who does is gonna be so much more productive than you are. If you have access to a smartphone or a PC or laptop at the library that has access to Clyde Gemini, etc There's no question. You can't ask does hard work matter. Yes, of course You got to take the time to ask the question You have to take the time to consume the information It gives you and get and learn how to ask better and better questions to get better at it But people always talk about mentors and having access to a network. I never had any of that shit, right? I just sat and learned and read and did it by reading now. I don't go grab a book, right? I just go right to you know Clyde or co-work and I'm like fine all about this and tell me what Warren Buffett thought about that. It's insane What does the edge become in such a world where everybody has the same information? Because you've got to know how to take what you've read or seen and integrate it and apply it to what you're trying to accomplish Because it's cool like I can say write me a business plan for this business and it'll create all the agents It'll create the bots. It'll do all that stuff But I've got to be the one to say this is right. This is wrong This is right and then I've got to be the one that goes out and sells it or teaches the agents how to sell when we get to That point so that the business could actually work AI is not smart It's just Grinds and grinds and grinds when you hear about the risk profile the doomers, right? When you when I talk to security people I ask this very specific question We're hearing these stories about AI breaking in here or doing that. Did they invent anything? Did they come up with a new approach for hacking into this system or for stealing this data? No, they didn't do anything new What they did was get the same list that every security person has and Because you can create an unlimited number of agents to go through and try it and every possible combination It's all brute force where AI has a huge advantage is in doing brute force Approaches to things because you know, we'd always done security by trying to catch all the problems knowing that you know Unless it's a DDoS attack, right? Nobody has the the resources to do a full brute force to have more resources than we do. Mm-hmm Those days are gone But what we don't talk about is using that same brute force on the defense side That you can go out there and find all the holes in yourself and go be proactive to attack the bad guys So I don't think I'm not a doomer at all. There'll be instances of shit that happens But I'm more afraid of what people do because of their concerns and lack of understanding of AI Than I am about what AI I'll do AI is not smart. No Even when we call it intelligent like we remember how we talk about book smart Mm-hmm, somebody who can read a book remember what's in it? They're book smart get A's on tests because they memorize everything and then that's AI So what is what is I want to be clearing your definition of smart smart is being able to Aggregate information and inputs. Yeah, smart is being able to know where to look for the inputs and being able to take them and then Aggregate them to solve a problem. Mm-hmm and Also being able to identify the problem you're trying to solve And I doesn't do that. And again, you have to be in the real time. We're having this conversation I didn't know what questions you were going to ask right? It's just whatever right AI Is missing all that Mm-hmm There's no way to feed AI everything that humans have access to like we talked about replacing doctors Okay, if I'm a doctor and Stevens there This speeds it up. I have access to every research report whatever maybe Article and then Steven pukes all over me Hey, I can't help me with that. Right Steven. What's wrong? It's like I Can't say to the AI what's wrong with Steven? I Have to use my senses look, you know Take my experience and be smart enough to ask the right question Is there a probability that something could happen that changes your mind on this point? it was Whether it's the recursive self-improvement that they will talk about where it starts improving itself or some kind What would what evidence would you need to see to go to I think AI is smart I think where you take a minimal resource AI and It can ask and solve questions with minimal resources Meaning you can have a 12 year old kid who comes from the worst part of the world be brilliant No access to resource to seize and figures things out finds places sources of information Now when you talk about AI More GPUs more power better algorithms and whether it's recursive self-improvement or not Where it teaches itself to try to get better. I Don't think we reach that point where you can do it with no resources did you think the like people like Elon who you talk about how they're basically working is going to become a choice and how smart this technology is going to be in the humanoid robots that are going to be empowered by AI and Are those forecasts overblown, you know, Elon's amazing. He's a brilliant entrepreneur. Don't get me wrong He's the best entrepreneur of our lifetimes for sure, but he's a sales guy You know when he has to raise a lot of money for all the things he likes to do and he's good at that And so I don't begrudge Elon anything even though he gives me shit on Twitter or X and I give him shit right back But I think he's got to sell what he's got to sell and I think that carries the day for Elon Yeah, I'm it's funny because I see it was so many different people from the world of AI safety experts and then some of the frontier Labs, you know team members or CEOs or ex-employees and one of the remarkable things is I hear Everything. Yeah, there's no one No, two people give you the same answer that tells you all you need to know, right? Yes, it should be obvious if it was so dominant and there was a destination that everybody understood is where we would get to It would be obvious to everybody and we all would see it again you have to have more power and more GPUs than The history of power and GPUs prior to last year That's not intelligence there's a reason why you have to have all that, you know, you have to it's just brute force Computers started a bit like that, didn't they? Um, no, it's the exact opposite Yeah they were minimally capable and So it took brilliance to program on Fortran on cards and put them into a this huge Mainframe that didn't have a hundredth of the power of your phone So they start off with minimal power and smart people figured out how to encode them and then you got Moore's Law and we saw Chips, you know silicon and all this stuff and it just got you know faster faster and faster Maybe that's why I'm prejudiced in this right because I've seen computers get Incrementally faster faster faster by the minute day and year and the output and the capabilities that they create Mm-hmm, and so maybe that holds me back right my experience holds me back But I think it I think it's indicative of what comes next pretty much all the time with technology That it's going to get more powerful for sure. It's going to get more capable for sure But as long as there's latency people have the edge It's gonna get cheaper Yeah, it'll get cheaper for sure. It already is a lot cheaper than it was two weeks ago It's getting cheaper because those companies keep on borrowing and spending more money To get more power in order to power all the the AI I think this is surprising to hear from you because you're someone who built broadcast comm at a moment when we were living in and Like an exponential era. Yeah an analog era. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, the Internet was I mean people were skeptical about the Internet Yeah, when I said we were gonna stream or you know netcast is what we called it. They're like you're an idiot I'll just turn on the TV. You're an idiot. I'll just turn on the radio. I Just I'm not a naysayer on AI. I am the biggest proponent of AI that there is But in order to to really get the benefit you have to be you know, honest about it Like I said one time that a lot of these data centers will turn into pickleball cards courts, right as a metaphor Not that literally they'd be pickleball courts Because in order for AI to reach the pinnacle that everybody wants to reach it you have to have less power Doing more not more power doing more because then you run into constraints like we're running into right now we literally could get into a debt bubble in the United States of America because there's so much debt being taken out by all these You know hyperscalers you think that's possible. Yeah, of course it is because our deficit keeps on rising in the United States Which means we have to borrow more money and the hyperscalers are borrowing more than they're making and so they're borrowing more and that Lenders are competing for that business or they're competing to get lenders to lend to them rates. Keep on going up I mean if you've got a 40 billion dollar debt and your interest rates keeps on going up at some point You can't raise money anymore There's a lot of praying going on right now I'm a huge fan of Nvidia and Jensen Wong, but they're basically subsidizing half the industry because they have the cash to do it and You've got What's it good? No meta. I think it is borrowing more than they have in cash flow by a factor of I Mean if it were the brilliance of brilliant, it should be the opposite right and at some point it may get there But until then we're in this private credit debt environment where there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of things can go wrong I mean if you read what Ray Dalio says, you know Ray says we've already crossed the the curve, right? We're already past that point where we could be a debt laden society where our currency becomes, you know Worthless at some point. Where are we in this at the moment in terms of the symptoms or markers of the next big? Well, it's where over in this vicinity over here the u.s. The UK number of other countries are Later in that cycle when there's the loss of the things that we've been talking about Over indebtedness more over indebtedness the loss of power. So we're in the collapse period of the decline decline I'll call that the decline It's hard to imagine that for America, especially when you're 34 years old because you've just always seen the dominance of America Right. No as an American, it's it's hard to imagine and you think we'll figure it out. Yeah, we'll always figure it out and I'm optimistic enough to think that we will but there'll be pain associated with that. Our politicians are great at sloganeering They're really bad at actually doing things and I think that's going to be tough in this country in all countries I think a lot of people think AI is the life raft out of the debt as well because if you hear this age of abundance It's a race. It's a race right will lenders lend to AI companies if Interest rates hit, you know now the 10 years like 5.2 percent if it goes to 6 percent 8 percent 10 percent something's got to give and right now it current interest rates we're paying a trillion dollars in interest every year in this country a Trillion and if the interest rates keep on going up and what we have to borrow keeps on going up and then you've got all These hyperscalers competing to get access to that money. Something gets crowded out. I don't know which or what I'm not enough of a financial expert to do that, but something's going to give are you playing defense in any way? Just in case yeah. Yeah, what does that look like? I've got money in this country in that country, you know And I haven't invested nearly as much. It's the old Warren Buffett thing. I'll wait and see as things happen I might lose a little bit because I'm not as Protected as I should have been but I want to give it some time to see how things play out I am I often wonder for the average person that's listening now Like what is the advice for them when they hear about this AI stuff going on with all these big San Francisco CEOs and this geopolitical race of AI They're thinking like what can I like what should I be doing? and I think some of the advice that springs to mind is what you said earlier on about actually what you can do in these moments is like get good at something that feels like the The the bucket that nobody can sort of unfill is like your skills and your knowledge at the other percent Yeah, you're exactly right and you said it well Because what else are you going to do? Mm-hmm? And why would you give up? And the other thing I think a lot about is um people skills In a world where you know, maybe my agent's gonna run my computer for me, but I'm still gonna have to because we're valuable Doesn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah I mean some of the investments I've made smaller investments are like a company that does silent discos You know and Brentwood and it's face-to-face communications and that's part of the reasons why you've seen sports valuations go up so much they think that it's AI proof, but That it has other issues I've spent the last decade building and investing in companies and so often the conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern the budget Gets approved but then the results don't come back and most of the time the creative pitch and the offer is fine the problem lies with the audience ads reach people who will never buy or Refer nor do they have the power to sign off anything at all? And this is why so much budget gets wasted LinkedIn ads are a sponsor of this podcast lets you reach them specifically by job title Seniority company size industry the skills that they have and much more you're no longer hoping your ad reaches the right person Instead you're defining exactly who sees it and LinkedIn ads drives the highest B2b return on ad spend across all major ad networks Give them a try at linkedin.com slash diary And if you spend $250 in your first campaign, you'll get a $250 credit for your next one Just by going to linkedin.com slash diary. Keep this to yourself terms and conditions apply You mentioned earlier on having your teeth knocked out Uh-huh, and you were sort of alluding to the fact that this made you I mean a little bit of an insecure young man Yeah to some degree hundred percent. Yeah, and often times when we you know, I interview someone like yourself The audience and me will assume that you are very Intentionally consciously driven but the more I've interviewed people sometimes you figure out that sometimes they're a little bit dragged Oh, yeah by their insecurities. Oh, yeah hundred percent, right? That kid right and I would do anything I like I literally wear a shirt to school that said bullshit my mom's like you're gonna get Suspended 20 minutes after I got there I had a pair of jeans that I ripped up from the bottom all the way up to my hip and then I Stapled it together just to stand out and get attention because I like like after I became famous People went back to my high school peers, you know kids in my class. They had no idea who I was My friends did right the people are close to but nobody and I saw something where somebody took one of the pictures from my high School yearbook and they circled it as being me It wasn't me. So yeah, I was not somebody who stood out or was considered to be, you know Most likely to be successful at all. Was that sort of shame insecurity part of your drive? Oh, yeah for sure just to prove people wrong That's one of the reasons I went to Indiana and I remember getting to IU and saying, you know Here's my chance for a fresh start. I get to be whoever I want to be act like it did you think becoming successful and or famous would Fix the Insecurity the thing that was invalidating you some love I don't think no, I didn't think about it that directly I didn't you know one or the other I just thought I hated being broke, you know I wanted to control my own destiny That was a big thing and I wanted to be able to control my own time like after I sold micro solutions I didn't immediately say I'm gonna take this money invest it and I'm gonna go out there and make as much money as I can I did the exact opposite. I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines And my mission was to go out there and get as fucked up as possible with as many people as possible in as many Countries as possible and just to enjoy like I have an iWatch now because all the data and the day I sold micro solutions I took off my watch and I said I'm never gonna wear a watch again because that means I'm working on somebody else's time When by not having a watch by being successful, it's my time. Why don't get dressed up? Why I won't wear a tie It's like swag isn't how you dress swag is being able to tell somebody else how they dress, you know And I just want to control my own destiny in my own time And you made a couple million dollars from selling micro solutions as a young man And you then start the broadcast dot-com company in your early 30s 7 yeah, you're 37 and that sold four years later to Yahoo for 5.7 billion in stock Yeah, which gave you a paper net worth of somewhere between roughly 1.5 1.7 billion dollars paper Yeah, how did that change anything? Oh, yeah. Yeah changed everything, you know inside yeah, because it meant instead of hustling and worrying about what came next I Got to do whatever the fuck I wanted to do and that was the beauty of the whole thing I mean buying the maps and never in a million years would have crossed my mind that I would own an NBA team and Again going back to I wanted to control my own time That was something my parents never had the option to do. They always are were obligated to somebody else they had to show up at work they had to be nice to so-and-so they had to do such-and-such and Just being able to come home and eat dinner and watch TV Was their joy your dad got to see you become a successful man. Yeah, what did he think? Oh, he would just cry and cry We're an emotional family. Let's put it that way Um, he obviously was proud of all of us and he would just shake his head and he goes I don't know where you got it Certainly didn't come from me your mom and are there anything is anything else that big acquiring lots of money has taught you about Meaning happiness or what? This is all really about. Yeah, if you're miserable when you're poor good chance You can be miserable when you're rich. Hmm money can't change who you are money can't change your approach to life Money can't change how you feel about yourself. It really won't I mean, it's nice I like being rich a whole lot more than I like being broke But I really take pride in the fact that you know, I still have the same friends You know, my high school buddies are still my high school buddies. I'm still close to my brothers I'm still close to my rugby teammates. I'm still close to you know, the same people that always have meant something to me Those are my friends. Do you have to be ruthless in business? No, absolutely not. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made In micro solutions. I used to scream and then Todd Wagner my partner cut Broadcast.com told me mark people are afraid of you. It's counterproductive You have to you know chill out and he was right and I found that I got a lot further by being nice Than by being a dick this idea of being nice is another lesson that your father was quite clear on. Yeah for sure I mean he was nice to everybody I can be mad But it's not gonna change anything, you know And if it's not gonna change anything and it makes me feel worse by being mad Fuck it, but aren't people gonna fuck with you if they don't know that you have it in the locker What are they gonna do? You know people my Again, I'm playing devil's advocate here But um, if people think you're a soft touch aren't they gonna I'm not writing them checks for nothing, right? I'm just not gonna be I mean look if you saw me with referees at a basketball My outlet right? That's where I got it out of my system, but like in business It's just not worth it particularly now like when I was first getting started I'm in my 20s and I didn't know any better. I didn't really it didn't have any role models I was just learning as I went then, you know, I was I was a jerk. I would yell I would scream but once I got Broadcast calm audio net broadcast calm. I got a lot more done and I was happier about it You know, it just made it easier and people, you know reacted better to me. And so it was it worked out Because we hear about these stories of Steve Jobs and his anger and his rage and I was just reading Ari Emanuel's book about a Rage. Yeah, he can let it loose. Yeah, but everybody's different, you know, I mean what works for you and just for me Like now, why would I get mad at somebody? What good does it do me? You seem like a very happy person. I try to be right I mean on and off camera. I felt like you were a very optimistic happy person. Yeah, because why not? It's actually it's actually quite rare to meet someone who is a billionaire who has that Positive energy and sort of contentment for some reason money changed my life, but it didn't change my life You know the things I could buy not having stress about where I lived or paying the bills all the stuff that money can do But it didn't make me a better person or a worse person. It didn't change my relationship I mean honestly being a celebrity was a lot harder than being rich really? Yeah, particularly as social media became more prevalent and when Shark Tank blew up It was you know The Mavs had just won a championship Shark Tank now is at the top at its peak ratings and everything and I mean celebrities everywhere Oh, I love Shark Tank is my new favorite show You know how all that stuff goes right and being rich doesn't give you attention, right? It just changes how you deal with things being a celebrity Brings you attention some good some bad And you were you're an older brother of three. Yeah brothers Yeah, two younger brother. How has that been formative to you? Because I you know, I'm a younger brother of four, but I always think of older brothers as being I mean more likely to lead Is that an accurate reflection of what it was? Yeah, yeah, because they they both followed me to Dallas most super smart guys great guys were close But they always copied me and You know, there's two and a half year difference to Brian my middle brother and six-year difference So I was gone because I left early for college We weren't as close then because they were super young and I was out of the house But then I went to Indiana and they would come visit me and you know Then I got came after India and I went to Dallas and they came and lived with me Both of them live with me at some point and that's when we got close What role do you think you've played in their lives as big brother? You know, that's a great question, um, I hope I've been able to set a good example, you know, I think I've been a double-edged sword for them as a big brother in that I think I've set a good example in many ways and I tried to be supportive and help them where I could But then you know what? It's like what it comes with celebrity right that creates a whole different set of pressures and I think you know Particularly living in Dallas as things started to really take off for me Was tough on them and I could tell you know, it's it's not that they weren't supportive but you know It's not like Cuban is Smith, right? We're a bit, you know, it's like Cuban Oh, you must be related to or your brother, you know How are you related to mark and I mean, I know that that put a lot of pressure on them Put a lot of pressure on them. Yeah Because you know What are you doing right or you just live off your brother or this or that and both of them are smart and both of them have made their own way I've done really well, but You know and we haven't talked about it a lot but you know We it was definitely tougher on them as things really started to take off for me Brian Struggled. Yeah, and we actually spoke to Brian. Oh you did we did speak to Brian? Yeah, and he he sort of spoke to some of those struggles. Yeah, but he also He wrote you a letter. Oh my god I'll probably start crying. I read it. Yeah, I read it and I found it to be You know brand-new show Join me read out loud. Yeah, we have so many great childhood memories. It's hard to pick one So I'll go to the one that feels most personal to me July 2005 the lowest moment in my life Wanting to end it you and Jeff were there for me as you both always have been I Wouldn't be here today if not for you both as our dad told us growing up no matter what happens or where you go Always stay in contact with your brothers It's no accident that after so many decades 1,200 miles from Pittsburgh. We all live within walking distance of each other. I love you Yeah, it was not a good time in 2005 You know he and again that goes part and parcel to you know being my little brother, you know and being out and about in the social scene and You know, I bought the Mavs in 2000 you know, I was becoming famous and all of a sudden it wasn't a burden he chose right or wasn't his choice it was just the way things turned out and You know, he took a turn. I mean he just had issues had problems and Jeff called me I was out of town. I came back in and we went and got him and put him in rehab and You know, and he's been sober ever since so thank God for that Puts things into perspective doesn't it? Yeah in so many ways it's crazy because you know It's not like we were all best friends and did everything together but We always connected and stayed together family trips going places with my dad or my mom or to this day You know, we're texting each other I don't even know how many times a week or if there's a Steelers game or Pirates game or something going on We're still connected Your mother you mentioned missing your father your mother and your father passed over 2017 and 2022 has did that moment bring the family together? Or bring your siblings to go home I mean in the obvious sense. Yes. I mean at that point in time, but I think It makes you feel when your parents passed it makes you feel your own mortality Everybody's time comes at some point And my dad made it to 92. My mom made it to 85 and that sounds like a long time until you realize It's not as long as you hope and so yeah, it definitely connected us Even more strongly than we were When only when I read about some of these things and I thought about some of your more recent decisions around leaving Shark Tank Selling the mouths. They felt like they were part of the same puzzle hundred percent. Yeah, definitely because Again, when you start feeling your own mortality and you start recognizing what's important my kids my family that next business trip didn't seem nearly as important as it used to and missing a birthday and Telling myself well, I'll be there for the next one You know became a mistake and it was just like okay. What's the point of doing this? You know, I'm They were 13 16 and 19 when I sold the Mavs and a little bit older when I got out of Shark Tank and You know, it wasn't gonna be all that long until they were on their own and I just wanted to be there as much as I could Should everyone be an entrepreneur? No, you're not. Everybody's built to be an entrepreneur. What are they missing? If you have to ask yourself if you can be an entrepreneur, you're probably not an entrepreneur There's something that you want to accomplish or there's a skill that you have that you want to to use to your own benefit financial benefit but not everybody's willing to do the work like we talked about earlier to do the preparation to To fight the battles and I think a lot of people think that when you become an entrepreneur You get more control of your life as opposed to being subject to what the whims of your bosses. It's the exact opposite You have no control of your life as an entrepreneur because your customers your employees. There's always something some employees child is sick and You have to work it through because particularly, you know, if you have a company that has under a hundred employees Everybody's family at some level, you know, and you know, everybody you live you talk to them You know what's happening in your lives people don't expect that when they become an entrepreneur First that mark the 20 year old mark here. Yeah program work. Just give me the preface on why I'm asking this question I think that the journey you've been on changes a man, you know in several ways small ways It's kind of like being pelted by hail and especially if you're a famous person so I think people become clearer on their principles and they They they learn principles, but they also become clearer on their principles So if I sat 21 year old mark there and then you're sat here now What how has this journey being pelted by the world good and bad shaped you and like what's changed? That's a great question. Um, I Mean I think family obviously changes you the most but from a business perspective here and it's great that you brought this picture so you see That poster right there that hadn't been hung hung hung up yet. Mm-hmm says poverty sucks And I used to have it I just moved in the house That's the second bedroom my house every house or apartment that I lived in that was on the wall Poverty sucks, and I think that's the big difference, you know, this mark was you know, I would sit there for for 25, 26 straight hours writing software for customers because I knew I had to do it. And you had no degree in software? No, I had to teach myself everything. So anything I didn't know, I had to learn, teach myself. And that's what I would do. I literally, I would get a bucket of ribs. It's so gross now, but I would sit there because I would start concentrating so hard and I would look up thinking it's three or four hours later and it'd be 28 hours later because I was just so consumed by what I was doing because I wanted to get to that next level. You found out what you were good at and what you were capable of. Did you also find out what you were not capable of and what you were not good at? Oh yeah, a lot of stuff. I found out, what do I suck at? I wouldn't just preface this by saying, I think this is also really important because sometimes people look at a billionaire, successful businessman like you and go, he must just fucking be. Oh no, no, there's a lot of things I'm awful at. At MicroSolutions, I had a partner, Martin Woodall. Martin Woodall was anal. He was just a perfectionist about everything. I'm not, I'm ready, fire, aim. Go, go, go, go, go. And if you go out of the baseline, so be it, right? If it goes into touch, so be it, doesn't matter, right? That's for somebody else to deal with. When I got to broadcast.com, Todd Wagner, same way. His skillset complimented mine. It wasn't that I needed a partner, it's that I needed a partner, you know? And recognizing that I never was gonna be good at the details. Dr. Oshmayansky now at Cost Plus Drugs, very detail-oriented. I need that compliment to my skillset because I'm awful at the details. What about finance? Were you good at finance? Because you didn't have a finance degree, did you? Oh no, but I had taken finance classes. I had taken entrepreneurship classes. So yeah, I get finance. I might not be able to structure the most advanced M&A deal, but I'm gonna understand it. What about hiring and leadership? And that's another thing, right? Let's separate hiring and leadership. Leadership is one thing I think I'm good at, right? Hiring, suck at it. As a salesperson, I would see Stephen sitting across from me and Stephen would give me an answer to a question. I'm like, okay, I can help Stephen. I can make it work. I want this guy to be successful at my company. And I would hire the worst possible people. Why did you hire this guy? Well, I thought it's like a Shark Tank deal. This company sucks. Why were you investing in this guy? Oh, I can make it work. I can make it work. So people are like, hey Mark, can I get a job? Can I send you my resume? I'm like, don't send it to me. Cause I might hire you. I'm awful at it. How important is it though as a skill in terms of outcomes, do you think? Oh, hiring is critical, right? I mean, if you don't have the right people and the right culture, the people that fit into that culture, you're going to suck. But, you know, we would hire slow, but fire fast. So if there's somebody that these guys hired and I'm like, they're not going to work, they would know and it'd get resolved. People, founders don't talk about that. And if they talk about like creating a fancy, shiny product that does something awesome, but the actual art of like building the team is more important. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got to have the right product the right service, but It makes me think about this again. Yeah, that as well. Yeah. You got to have culture. And particularly in sports, you can have the most talent, but if they don't fit together as a team, they're going to suck. Is that what you found when you went into the Mavs originally? Oh yeah. Yeah. When I got there, nobody wanted to be there. I mean, literally people in the office, people on the court, we were just a way station. If you couldn't get a job with the Lakers or the Celtics or whoever, right? Okay, the Mavs will hire you and that's fine. So when I got there, it was the most important thing that I focused on. I sat there in front of the players. I'm like, we're going to win. And this train is speeding up, it's internet time, it's 2000, right? And if you want to stay, let me know. And if you don't want to stay, let me know and I'll trade you. I got no problem with that because we're going to do things differently. I expect you to win. I'll give you the tools you need to win. Like one of the things I did, like when I took over, we had a head coach and like three assistant coaches and they were responsible for all the training and player development and that's the way the entire NBA did it. And we were literally spending more money on computer training and support than we were on player development. For players, we paid more than a million dollars. So I'm like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. And so I asked our general manager and assistant general manager and coaches, I'm like, go find former Mavericks and I want you to bring them in and we're going to assign to each of them, one player who has a similar skill set that they had when they were in the NBA and they're going to do nothing but work with them. That's it. Just work with them. That made perfect sense to me because all these former players wanted to get in and we hardly had to play them anything. They just wanted to be part of the game again. And now all of a sudden, all of our players had somebody focused on them and not only did it improve their skills, but it made them realize that the culture of this organization is to win and we will do whatever it takes to win and it paid off. But the rest of the NBA, oh my God, they hated me. They hated me. I went out and bought a plane. I spent about the same amount on the team plane because I'm like, we leave Oakland, California at three in the morning or whatever. I don't want us flying on this little ratty plane that they rented or a typical commercial plane with a guy, Sean Bradley, seven foot six. He's not fitting in a regular seat and he's making his living with his body, right? So I bought a plane and I told the guys, okay, we're going to fuck with everybody. I want you to tell everybody that there's a weight room on the plane, a steam room. We didn't have any of that shit, right? And to this day, people ask me about the weight room that we had on the plane and just stuff like that where it's not only is it effective and improves outcomes, but it sends a message that, hey, this is what we're trying to do. This is our culture. We're going to win. We're going to support each other and I'm going to get you all the tools you need. Like even things like a nutritionist or preparing food for them, things teams didn't do back then. And it just made sense to me. Did you see the culture changing of the Mavs? Oh, like that. It was quickly. Oh yeah, we went, when I took over, we were nine and 23. What does that mean? Nine wins and 23 losses. Yeah, and we finished the season, the next 50 games, we were 31 and 19. Wow. Yeah. The next season? No, we're talking about that season. That season. So when I took over in January, the season runs towards April. When I took over, we had nine wins, 23 losses. And for the remaining 50 games of that season, we won 31 of them, lost 19 of them. Since you took over, the Mavericks had the second highest regular season winning percentage of any NBA team. The team went from 39% win rate to almost 60% win rate under you. The Mavericks made their first finals, but lost to Miami Heat in 2006. That was brutal, yep. And then the Mavericks won the NBA championship in 2011. Yes, sir. When you were 53 years old. And then you sold the majority ownership. 2023, yeah. But you still have a significant stake. 27%, yeah. I always find teams as like a great analogy for learning about how to build businesses, because it is, there's a scoreboard and you get the scores back quick. Whereas in business, there can be, it's kind of a bit more vague as to what's happening. Oh yeah, sure. Like there's always a new season in sports. You can make trades, you can cut people, replace them. In business, it's 24 seven by 365. It's the ultimate sport, which is, if you have competitive juices, business is the ultimate way to fill that need. Is there anything else you learned from Mavericks, the maths that might be applicable to building businesses or hiring teams or creating teams? I think you have to be innovative because it's so competitive. Things like using statistics. It's a quick story. When I was at Indiana, I snuck into the MBA program when I got there as an 18 year old. And I started taking MBA classes. And the first MBA class I snuck into was a statistics class taught by a guy named Wayne Winston. But fast forward six months after I bought the maths, whatever it was, and I'm watching Jeopardy on television. And he's on there killing it, right? Killing it. And then weeks later, I'm at Indianapolis where we're playing the Indiana Pacers. And I hear Mark, Mark, Mark from the crowd. And it's like, if I hadn't watched him on Jeopardy, I wouldn't have recognized him as my professor from when I was 18 years old. And we started talking and he started telling me about what he was doing with statistics for sports. And I hired him on the spot. And he became the first analytics person in the MBA full-time. And that helped us grow our way into winning games and winning championships or a championship. And the point to your question is you have to keep on innovating in sports like all businesses. You can't rest on your laurels. People don't like necessarily always like the idea of data and statistics, because it seems to be a threat against their instinct and judgment and creativity. No, it's true. Like the eye test versus the numbers. And you have to do both. You can't exclude one or the other. I mean, there are some players that just shoot ugly, don't make as many shots, but in aggregate, they impact winning a game and winning championships more than the guys who score 25 points. Tiffany. Uh-oh. I spoke to Tiffany. I'm joking. I didn't really. Oh, okay. I mean, it wouldn't be bad, but I was just like, okay, I'm surprised she talked to you. You nearly choked on your drink. Maybe I should have. You met Tiffany, I think in a gym when you were 39? Yeah, late thirties, let's say, yeah. You got married? In 2002. So I was 44. Three kids so far? So far. Yeah. No, I got snipped. Oh, okay. So total. How does that feed into everything we've talked about around happiness and meaning and purpose and success? Oh, it supersedes everything. Really? Yeah. I mean, you've got one part of my brain that is like business, business, business, business, you know, compete, compete, compete. And then you've got the better part of me that's my kids, my kids, my kids, and my wife. And they've just changed me for the better in a million ways I can't even describe. And there's nothing, you know, more important to me. Nothing. I may not be great as a dad, they'll tell you, you know, or a husband, but I do my best. Why is that so important? So many of us sacrifice relationships in the pursuit of- And I'm not saying I didn't, right? I mean, like when I had Micro Solutions, I was dating a woman and it was like, I mean, I was on a mission. I didn't settle down immediately in terms of, you know, family in front of business, but I got to that point. In hindsight, do you think it would have been possible to do both at the same time? Not as well as I did it. And I regret that in a lot of ways. Which part? The fact that I didn't do as many of the little events with my kids as I probably should have. I would tell myself, they're too young to remember, you know, and so I would go do what I needed to do with business, but in hindsight, I probably would have done more of that. Where does that regret come from? Does that come from you or does that come from them? No, I mean, they remind me of certain things for sure, but I think it's for me, you know, just in hindsight. And, you know, it took me a while to get there, but that's why I left Shark Tank, why I sold the Mavs, or a big part of it. I ask this for my own reasons. Obviously, I'm in the season of life where I'm about to have kids, hopefully Touchwood, and I hear over and over again exactly what you've just said from successful people. So when I ask, where does it come from? I'm like, does it feedback the kids give you when they grow up or is it just a feeling you have? Both. Both, yeah. I mean, because teenagers are teenagers. I mean, I'll never forget when my oldest, like she was 12 years old, I was saying something to her. She was like. And it's different for them, right? I feel bad sometimes because they're under a spotlight and, you know, I would always, with each of them over and over, I would have the conversation. Look, if you go out and do something, or if one of your friends goes out and does something stupid, your friend did something stupid. If you do something stupid, it's on the front page of the paper and every social media feed around the world. And so I think that puts some unfair pressure on them, but I mean, I think they've adapted. They're great kids, don't get me wrong. They are amazing, amazing kids. And, you know, I can still tell you with absolute certainty that my favorite word in the world is dad. And they know I'm a crier. I can see it gets you emotional just saying it. Yeah, that's like every, that means a lot to me. Why? You know, as you get older, you start to recognize your mortality. And like with my parents being gone, I have their pictures, you know, in my closet and I say hi to them every morning and every night. And I want my kids to be the same way after I'm gone. I want them to be proud of me. I want them to, you know, remember me positively as much as possible. And I want them to carry on anything that, you know, we all can do together. I have no doubt they will be. I have no doubt they are. Who knows? Who knows? They're at that age where we can't have that, we don't have that conversation yet. As you look forward, Mark, you've talked about your mortality. You've talked about leaving Shark Tank, which I've just become a guest, a shark on the show, Unfillable Shoes. They told me you were great. Oh, good. Thank you. You're 68 now. Yeah, no, I'm 48. 48, you look 48 to be fair. I appreciate it, thank you. But you play a lot of sports still, right? So I see you playing basketball and stuff like that. What do you want to accomplish in this next season of your career? Cost plus drugs is the- Yeah, cost plus drugs. Obviously, I want to change healthcare in America. It's a mess. And you know, it was great when with the Mavs, someone would say, oh, great game or whatever. But when somebody walks up to me now and says, yeah, I got my drug from costplusdrugs.com, it saves me, you know, $1,000 a month, and now I can afford them. I mean, that's- It's really something, Mark. It's crazy. It's crazy that someone like you would commit your life to this, because regardless of what you've just described there, I think, personally, the biggest thing you're doing is just shining a massive light on an issue that doesn't want a light on it. Oh, and I'll fix it. I promise you I will fix it because there are three basically big companies that dominate all of healthcare. You know, hundreds of billions in sales. It's crazy. And you've got 67% of people who get health insurance from their employer get it through an employer who's self-insured. And I bring that up because that means they take all the responsibility for the bills, that employer does, which means it's their responsibility and who they hire to do all their insurance and take care of all that stuff. And so I just go door to door with these CEOs and I just give them shit left and right. And if I can get them to do the right thing to save themselves money. and improve the health of their employees and families, I'll get a win there, and I'll completely change healthcare in this country, and that's the mission. You and Trump have had a bit of an interesting relationship, rollercoaster relationship, but I saw you stood next to him talking about this initiative recently. Yeah, like anything that makes people healthier and saves them money on their healthcare, that's fine by me, I don't care. You can give me some shit, I don't care. You know, the goal is the goal, and the goal is to change healthcare in this country so that it is what it is, truly a right. And in order to do that, we're gonna have to make it so that those big companies no longer dominate the industry. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves the question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. Okay. And I only get to read it when I open the book. The question left for you is, this is a fucking unbelievable, it's an interesting one. What's the hardest question you weren't asked? What's the hardest question I wasn't asked? I'm not gonna ask you the question, just for the record. I mean, the family questions you asked, I mean, what hits you most emotionally, effectively, is the hardest questions that I don't get asked? Mark, thank you so much. Thank you for many reasons, for being a personal inspiration to me, because I remember multiple times where I stumbled across your life story or your work or your ideas at a critical moment that either gave me a bit more belief, that gave me some patience, that gave me some wisdom. But also, the other layer of context I now have is just having spent some time with you as a person. And one of the real things outside of the wisdom that I come away with and outside of the sense of purpose and family is the realization that you can be both very, very successful and you can be a good person and a happy person and a positive person. Let's not go too far. No, but that's how you feel. That's the energy you have. And obviously I've sat here with 700 people. So you get to see lots of things. So it's been a real pleasure and thank you for the inspiration. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. I really enjoyed it. It was great. Amazing, thank you. It takes a little bit of time to realize this as a founder, but once you do, it's something you can't unsee. That having the right systems in place to work with your business is critical. One that's helped me across all of my investments is NetSuite, the number one cloud financial system and sponsor of today's conversation. Through their streamlined platform, you'll find all of your accounting, finance, management, inventory, and HR in one place. And their technology has been a massive unlock for all of my companies, especially for my team at Flight Story. As over the last year, we've moved out of startup mode into scale-up mode. And that's the stage where we found it mission critical to use NetSuite. We no longer have to juggle multiple systems and having everything together has reduced the number of manual tasks. And of course, the number of errors. Over 42,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite. So if you'd like to learn how it can help your business, head to netsuite.com slash Bartlett and free download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's netsuite.com slash Bartlett.