Business magnate, NBA owner, angel investor and self-made mogul Mark Cuban answers your questions from Twitter.
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00:00 I'm Mark Cuban, let's answer some questions
00:01 from the internet.
00:02 This is Mogul Support.
00:04 (upbeat music)
00:07 @YoungEntrepHub, what will be your best advice
00:12 to those who are thinking of leaving their full-time jobs
00:14 to become a full-time entrepreneur?
00:16 Save your money first.
00:18 Don't just leave unless you know what the hell you're doing.
00:21 We hear all these stories about all these people
00:22 who quit their jobs, started a company,
00:24 and made all this money.
00:25 What you don't hear are the stories of the people
00:27 who quit their jobs, started a company, and failed miserably
00:30 and are now working at a job they hate.
00:33 Before you quit, be prepared, know what you're doing,
00:36 save your money, have at least six months to live off
00:38 if you can, and then maybe you're ready
00:41 to start your business.
00:42 @AllenBramley, question, do billionaires create jobs?
00:46 The answer is no.
00:48 Entrepreneurs create jobs.
00:50 I'm an entrepreneur and I do my best to create jobs.
00:53 But the reality is, in order to become a billionaire,
00:56 the one thing you have to have is luck.
00:59 Any billionaire who tells you they could just do it again?
01:02 No, you have to be lucky.
01:04 Maybe you have a rich parent.
01:06 Question I get asked a lot is,
01:07 should billionaires pay more in taxes?
01:08 Fuck yeah, we should pay more in taxes.
01:10 I would not be in this position without this country.
01:13 Because nothing happens that's great,
01:16 whether it's healthcare, teachers, roads, you name it,
01:21 without people paying their taxes.
01:23 It may be painful when you write that big check,
01:25 but just think about how you got there.
01:27 One of the most patriotic things that you can do
01:30 when you're wealthy is pay your motherfucking taxes.
01:34 @JCBAYC, you have six months to make
01:37 as much money as possible.
01:39 All you have to start with is a phone and $500 in cash.
01:42 What are you doing?
01:43 JCBAYC, that is the best question I have ever been asked
01:48 in my entire adult life.
01:52 I am really, really, really good at sales.
01:56 I'm gonna find a sales job,
01:58 because I already know that if I'm onto my last $500
02:02 and all I have is a phone, I am going to get that job
02:05 and I'm gonna learn more about that industry
02:07 than anybody on the planet.
02:09 And I'm gonna set a commission as high as I possibly can.
02:12 And three months in, when I've demonstrated
02:15 that I am the best salesperson in the history
02:17 of that company, I'm gonna walk into my boss's office
02:20 and I'm gonna tell him or her,
02:22 you're either gonna pay me this amount of money to keep me
02:25 or I'm gonna start my own business selling this stuff.
02:28 That is exactly what I would do.
02:30 Everything always goes back to sales no matter what.
02:34 @AnneJane_1, if you buy shares of a sports team,
02:37 is it a gamble or an investment?
02:39 It's a gamble because you're a minority shareholder.
02:41 You have no rights.
02:43 @Mike25748592X, question, is the customer always right?
02:49 No, the customer is rarely right.
02:52 That doesn't mean you don't have to keep them happy.
02:54 Do customers make choices?
02:55 Of course they make choices.
02:56 We're all customers.
02:57 We know how we choose what we buy and what we don't buy.
03:00 But the reality is you don't spend a minute of your day
03:02 wondering what the next product should be at 7-Eleven,
03:05 do you?
03:06 The customer is not the one who comes up with the ideas.
03:08 It's the entrepreneur that comes up with the ideas.
03:11 @Ed_James_ wants to know, what are some great businesses
03:13 that people don't realize?
03:15 I'm gonna tell you a couple easy off the top of my head
03:17 that if I wanted to start a company,
03:18 I would seriously look at this.
03:20 Number one, Alexa.
03:21 Alexa has so many capabilities and so many people have them,
03:26 but they have no idea how to use any of the programming
03:29 or scripting capabilities of Alexa.
03:31 You can go and start a business where you could go
03:34 to your neighbors, to car dealerships, to businesses,
03:37 and show them for 50 bucks an hour or more
03:41 how to use their Alexa in their homes to save energy,
03:45 to save time in their businesses.
03:47 And two, that leads to the same thing happening
03:49 with large language models like ChatGPT.
03:52 There's new features coming out in ChatGPT
03:54 and its competitors every single month.
03:56 So if you just get involved and stay ahead,
03:58 you're gonna be the person in demand selling your services
04:01 on how to prompt ChatGPT to help a business
04:04 or even to tutor kids on how to best use it for school.
04:07 @Cinemod is back.
04:09 If you could change one thing about the sports industry,
04:12 college or pro, what would you change?
04:13 Dumb question, I'd change the officiating.
04:15 @ashcryptorill, you think crypto is dead, yes or no?
04:19 No, hell no.
04:21 But I do think crypto has some problems.
04:23 Number one, most people when they think crypto,
04:25 they think speculation.
04:26 That's not what crypto is really about.
04:28 Number two, crypto is really about creating new applications
04:31 that make things better and easier.
04:33 What crypto is missing is that one application
04:36 that grandma really wants to use.
04:38 Think back to the iPhone, it came out in 2007,
04:40 but it wasn't until the best apps like Instagram
04:44 and Snapchat and Facebook went mobile
04:46 that the App Store and the iPhone really took off.
04:49 Crypto is still waiting for its Instagram moment.
04:52 It won't be all that much longer
04:54 where we'll be able to use an NFT as a ticket.
04:57 Once the ticket is resold, we don't make a penny.
05:00 The scalpers make all the money.
05:02 If that ticket was an NFT and it will be in the future,
05:05 every time it's resold,
05:06 the original ticket holder can make some money,
05:08 the team can make some money.
05:10 You can't do that with physical tickets.
05:11 You can't do that with traditional digital transfer.
05:13 You can do that when you turn it into crypto or an NFT.
05:17 When that happens, crypto go up.
05:20 @Blessin91077312, why do most businesses fail?
05:25 Number one, sales.
05:31 No business has ever succeeded without sales,
05:33 period, end of story.
05:34 Number two, preparation.
05:36 When you go to start a business,
05:37 have you done all the homework to know about your industry,
05:40 your competition, your products, the profitability,
05:42 your customer base, their demographics?
05:44 You need to know these things.
05:45 Three, effort.
05:47 It is not easy starting and running a business.
05:49 It's hard.
05:50 If it was easy, everybody would do it.
05:51 And four, brains.
05:53 You gotta be smart.
05:54 You gotta learn this stuff.
05:55 You gotta put in the effort.
05:57 You have to be curious in order to be successful at business.
06:00 You do these four things, Blessin, and you'll be okay.
06:03 Company doesn't do them, they're in deep trouble.
06:06 @Ghost93_X, everybody losing money in NFTs.
06:10 Why are you still here, LOL?
06:12 I got a handy dandy graph.
06:14 This is the NFT market, and this is the volume of sales.
06:17 Basically, it sucks.
06:18 You know how many other industries have sucked?
06:21 There was a time after the internet stock market crashed
06:24 where Amazon was selling for $5 a share.
06:28 Microsoft was selling for hundreds
06:30 of what they sell right now.
06:31 You ever been in the trading card industry,
06:33 that Mickey Mantle card, that Steph Curry card?
06:36 Goes up, goes down, go up, go down.
06:38 The same thing is happening to NFTs.
06:40 Now, there are some people that would tell you
06:42 that this is the best time, if you're an NFT collector,
06:45 to buy an NFT.
06:46 I'm not gonna tell you what you should or shouldn't do
06:48 other than to say, with NFTs, the best time to buy
06:52 is when you're a collector and you love the NFT.
06:55 Don't buy to speculate.
06:57 I'm gonna say it to you for the people in the back.
06:59 Don't speculate.
07:03 Yeah.
07:06 You know what happens to speculators?
07:08 They get their ass handed to them.
07:10 I can stare at my mutant punk all day long
07:14 'cause I collected it.
07:15 I'm not paying attention to all the things
07:17 that happen on a day-to-day basis, and you shouldn't either.
07:20 Because someday we're gonna turn around,
07:22 and you know what you're gonna say to yourself?
07:24 You're gonna say to yourself,
07:25 I should've bought those damn NFTs
07:31 when they were next to nothing.
07:33 @tamrshahan, what's something you wish
07:35 your younger self knew before starting a business?
07:37 I wish I would've known to respect the people around me
07:40 and to be nice to the people around me
07:41 that work for me more.
07:42 Because it's stressful starting a business,
07:44 and I think too often I took that stress out
07:46 on the people around me, and that was a mistake.
07:49 @earnestearnst4, name, image, likeness.
07:52 You get paid for that?
07:53 Dear God, what is wrong with the NCAA?
07:56 Earnest, you just busted your ass
07:59 for the first 17, 18 years of your life
08:02 to be great at something.
08:03 You get recruited by a school,
08:05 and somebody there wants to pay you
08:09 for your name, image, and likeness.
08:11 Now if that same kid was a violinist,
08:13 and they wanted to pay them to do an ad for violins,
08:16 you'd be like, yeah.
08:18 When an athlete makes it to the top at their level,
08:21 and an advertiser or a sponsor wants to pay them,
08:24 yeah, let them earn the rewards of their efforts, Earnest.
08:29 N-I-L, hell yeah.
08:31 @becomingamirror, who is the best shark on Shark Tank,
08:35 and why is it Mark Cuban?
08:36 I'm the best shark on Shark Tank 'cause I've been there.
08:38 I've been broke, I've been fired,
08:40 started a business with nothing,
08:42 built a business into something.
08:44 So when you're on that carpet pitching to us,
08:46 not only am I thinking to myself, will I invest,
08:49 but I'm also trying to come up with a way
08:50 that I can help that entrepreneur,
08:52 because I know the challenge, the pain,
08:54 the anxiety of running a business.
08:56 And if I can make your life a little bit easier
08:58 with a good idea, that's what I'm gonna do.
09:01 @turner_thinks, what is a business buzzword
09:04 that annoys you the most?
09:06 I'll go first, disruptor, cohort.
09:08 There's no reason to ever use the word cohort
09:10 when you can use the word group.
09:12 A cohort is a group of people, say group.
09:15 You sound stupid when you use the word cohort
09:18 because you're trying to sound smart.
09:20 Always use the simpler word.
09:22 @bashterminal, can anyone explain in layman terms
09:25 what is series A, B, C, D funding?
09:27 I don't know why people apply these letters.
09:28 It's just the chronological order in which you raise money.
09:31 That's it.
09:32 Series C, C, series A, series B, series C, series D.
09:35 That's it.
09:36 It can come from anybody.
09:37 It can come from mom, it can come from dad,
09:38 it can come from your aunt, your uncle, a venture capitalist.
09:41 What is venture capital?
09:42 Venture capital is a vulture that sits in an office
09:45 telling you how smart they are
09:47 and how they're gonna give you money
09:48 in exchange for too much of your company
09:50 to give you too little support
09:52 to end up trying to push you to do things
09:54 that you don't wanna do
09:55 just so they can get their money back.
09:57 But other than that, I have no problem with them.
09:59 @seawaring, what is the most common mistake
10:01 you see entrepreneurs make?
10:02 They focus completely on raising money.
10:05 The less money you raise, the better
10:07 because that's how you own more of your company.
10:09 'Cause when you raise money,
10:10 you have to give away part of your company.
10:12 So the biggest, most important rule is understanding
10:16 that raising money is not an accomplishment,
10:19 it's an obligation.
10:20 @mahavir_jin, what are the three daily habits or practices
10:24 that have significantly contributed to your success?
10:29 Read, read, read, read, read.
10:32 Gotta learn.
10:33 Two, be curious.
10:36 Shit changes, you gotta always be curious.
10:38 You gotta know what's up, you gotta stay on top of it.
10:41 Three, be agile.
10:42 Because the shit's changing,
10:43 'cause you're learning all the new stuff
10:44 that you're curious about,
10:45 you always gotta be agile and be able to adapt.
10:48 And four, ABS.
10:51 Always be selling.
10:52 You gotta always be selling
10:53 because that's the way businesses work.
10:56 You do those things, you're gonna crush it.
10:58 And the fourth, that was a bonus.
10:59 I said three things, I can't count.
11:01 @joebasshd, what is the difference
11:03 between cost per acquisition CPA
11:06 and customer acquisition cost, CAC?
11:08 Well, let's just start with cost per acquisition.
11:13 This is the amount it costs you to acquire a customer.
11:17 Then there is customer acquisition cost.
11:20 That is your cost to acquire a customer.
11:23 So the only thing missing between these two
11:25 is the equal sign between them to tell you
11:27 that they are pretty much the exact same thing.
11:30 Typically what happens is people will go
11:32 and advertise on social media platform
11:34 and they'll spend $1,000.
11:37 And after the week or whenever it is 'til it runs out,
11:40 they'll look to see how many customers that they have.
11:42 Let's just say they have 100 customers.
11:44 Then you just do the math.
11:45 1,000 divided by 100 gives you,
11:49 for all the math whizzes out there, $10.
11:52 Now what is that $10?
11:53 That's your customer acquisition cost
11:55 or cost per acquisition.
11:58 At Keep on Truckin' 78, as a business owner,
12:01 when is it time to call it quits, walk away,
12:03 give up, sell, move on, cut your losses?
12:05 You get the idea.
12:06 That decision typically is gonna be made for you.
12:08 You can't pay your bills, you can't pay your employees,
12:11 you can't pay your bank loan,
12:13 and somebody's coming in and telling you,
12:15 "Look, Mark, the game's over."
12:17 It's the worst feeling ever.
12:19 Just because the shit hits the fan
12:21 and things are going wrong, that's never the time.
12:23 You only close up shop when you have no choice.
12:27 Or if someone offers you so much money,
12:30 it's just like, "Hell yes," then you look at selling.
12:32 Are you ready to take another step in your life?
12:34 Is the most important thing to you running that business,
12:37 regardless of how much it's worth?
12:39 Or is there so much money involved here
12:41 that you can change your life?
12:43 Like when I sold my first business,
12:45 I retired and bought a lifetime pass in American Airlines.
12:48 The most valuable asset to me wasn't the money,
12:50 it was the time the money could buy.
12:52 You have to make your own decision
12:53 on what's most important to you.
12:55 At GI 167-288-93, did you ever want to give up?
13:00 What did you do to get out of the funk?
13:02 I remember when I started my first business,
13:04 I had no sales and I remember being terrified.
13:08 I mean, the anxiety was through the roof,
13:10 but I just reminded myself why I started
13:13 and reminded myself that I made a shitty ass employee.
13:16 I was never gonna be good at working for somebody else.
13:18 I was a lousy employee because I was a know-it-all, right?
13:21 I was an entrepreneur at heart
13:22 and I always thought I had a better idea.
13:25 I worked for a bank.
13:26 I called up an executive VP, said,
13:28 "We wanna have a happy hour.
13:29 "Will you talk about what it's like to work at the bank?"
13:31 I thought that was a really cool idea
13:33 and I was taking initiative.
13:34 My boss brought me into his office.
13:37 "Who the hell do you think you are?
13:38 "Who gave you permission to do this?
13:40 "You know, you just started here.
13:42 "What the fuck?"
13:43 I had a tear coming from,
13:44 I mean, I'd never felt anything like that before
13:46 and I just knew then that I was not destined
13:49 to be an employee.
13:51 @ObiRalKenobi, "Why the fuck is medicine
13:53 "so expensive in America?"
13:55 This is bull.
13:56 Yes, it is, ObiRalKenobi.
13:59 And what I've learned in disrupting industries,
14:02 when an industry's been doing it the same way for decades,
14:06 that's one green flag for me to get in.
14:08 When that same industry does everything possible
14:11 to complicate the business so no one else can get in,
14:15 that's a second green flag for me to get involved.
14:17 Third, when it's so complicated
14:20 but when you look at it, it's like,
14:22 this is a simple business.
14:23 You know what the prescription drug business really is?
14:26 Somebody makes the drugs, somebody buys the drugs,
14:29 someone prescribes the drugs, someone sells the drugs.
14:33 That is it.
14:34 That's the whole prescription drug industry.
14:36 And so when I saw that, I'm like,
14:37 "This shit's gonna be easy."
14:39 Not cheap, but easy to do.
14:41 And so we started CostPlusDrugs.com in January of 2022.
14:46 When there's an industry that's doing it
14:48 the same way forever, making things more complicated,
14:51 and everybody hates them,
14:53 that is the best place to start a business.
14:56 So you too can dunk on whoever you choose to dunk on.
15:00 So those were all the questions for today.
15:02 Thanks, there were some amazing questions.
15:04 I really enjoyed them.
15:05 If I can leave you with any words,
15:07 the only reason to consider being an entrepreneur,
15:09 starting your own company, investing,
15:11 is to make your life better.
15:12 Just enjoy your time, have fun, do your best,
15:14 good things will happen.
15:15 Thanks for watching, mogul support.
15:18 (upbeat music)