Our first guest is the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks
basketball team, and you can also watch him every week
on ABC's Shark Tank.
Please welcome, Mark Cuban.
How are you, Ellen?
I'm good.
How are you?
Killing it.
Killing it in paradise.
You sure are.
So everybody knows you from Shark Tank and owning,
obviously, the Dallas Mavericks.
But you have been a business man since you were how old?
You were a kid when you started out.
Yeah, probably 9 and 10 years old selling baseball cards,
and then 12 years old selling garbage bags door-to-door.
I've been a hustler as long as I can remember.
Yeah, so that was your mindset early on, right?
So who gave you that-- was that your parents who gave you
that entrepreneur mindset?
Pretty much my dad.
My dad did upholstery on cars.
And basically, he was always, if you want something,
you got to go out and earn it.
And so when I wanted a new pair of basketball shoes,
he hooked me up with one of his buddies
who set me up with his garbage bags.
And I sold them door-to-door.
And then from there, that gave me confidence.
And I've been starting businesses ever since.
You went to college, though, to study business, didn't you?
Yeah.
OK, so because you, obviously, knew
enough to get into technology early, early on,
and what were the first few companies--
which one made you the billionaire?
So the one that made me all the money was a company
called Broadcast.com that started off as AudioNet.
About 1995, I'd gone to Indiana University for business.
And a friend of mine from school, Todd Wagner and I--
yeah, there you go--
got together and said, you know, we
got to use this new internet thing
to be able to listen to Indiana basketball.
So we started a company called AudioNet,
which was the very first streaming company.
And then, we grew that, took it public,
sold it for a lot of money, and then the rest is history.
Yeah, a lot of money.
In four years, you sold it for a lot of money.
So because it's easy, I think, when you have
money to keep making money.
Because you have money to either invest or put in the bank
and earn interest.
But what do you say to people to just right away-- like
how do you get the money to even get there?
You know, when you're first getting started,
it's not about trying to raise money.
I think that's one of the mistakes people make.
I think you want to find a skill that you have
that you could sell.
For me, it was selling garbage bags door-to-door.
It was selling baseball cards.
It was something that I could do-- shoveling driveways.
You may be somebody that can make--
you have a skill at creating something.
That's what you want to do.
Find something you can do personally, and go out
there and find customers for it, and then grow it.
So that's what you look at also on-- because I
watch Shark Tank.
I love that show.
Appreciate it.
And I watch what you decide to invest in.
And obviously, you always invest in things
that you're interested in.
And even if it's a good idea, you
don't want to invest in it because it's really not
something you're interested in.
So can you tell right away when they tell you the product
that you're going to invest in it.
Or how do if you're going to make an offer?
The first thing-- and I'm going to give you a little Shark Tank
secret.
The hardest part of Shark Tank is going out.
So when somebody comes in, I look for reasons to go out.
And then if they didn't convince me
that I shouldn't go out because it's a great product,
it's unique in some way, or I love the entrepreneur
and think I can really help them grow the company, that's
what changes my mind.
And then if it's something that I really care about.
I mean, whether-- just whatever it is.
That's what gets me excited.
What did you invest in on that show
that you've made the most money?
Which company?
It was a company called Cycloramic,
and what they did was they started off
with an iPhone app that made your phone turn
to make panoramic pictures.
And then they changed the way the iPhone looked.
And this is a great story because the entrepreneur had
a great idea, made great money, then when Apple changed,
they had no business.
And so they pivoted to do something called
Computer Vision, and then we sold it
to a company called Carvana.
So now if you go to the Carvana website,
and you can spin the car on the webpage and open the doors
and look inside, that's from a Shark Tank
company called Cycloramic.
And that was just an incredible success,
where they went from almost being out of business
to selling the company for tens of millions of dollars.
Wow.
That's incredible.
Yeah, it was unbelievable.
Yeah, what a gig--
I mean, what a great gig you have because not only
is this something you love, but then you get to invest.
And these people come to you, which I'm sure
happens all the time, anyway.
Sure.
But what a great thing.
And then you just keep making more money--
just more money from that.
It's fun because the best part of the show
is that every day, kids come up to me or parents come up to me
and say, my kid started a business
because we've been watching Shark Tank,
and that really got them excited to be an entrepreneur.
You know, the people come on the show can be from anywhere,
any circumstances.
Some small town and they started in the garage made it to Shark
Tank and then made it big.
It's really exciting to be part of that.
You must be very hard on your kids
about them making their own money.
No, not really.
I try not to pressure them, but I
try to encourage them just to get into whatever they want.
To me, if you can get excited--
the way to really be successful in my mind
is just being able to get excited
about something, that you wake up every day looking forward
to.
And then if you can get really good at it,
and you want to make money at it, you can.
And that's what I try to teach my kids.
Find something you love to do.
Yeah, and then they make you do TikToks.
So you tell them what to do, and then you do TikToks with them.
Oh my God, yeah, that's an adventure.
Yeah, there you go.
That's fantastic.
I love that.
Oh, that's awesome.
So I have to ask you really quickly-- we're out of time--
but what are your thoughts on NFTs
that everybody is talking about.
And then, you got into cryptocurrency and NFT's early.
So is that something that we should all be looking at?
You know, the thing about NFTs is they're just
digital collectibles.
Don't think about the technology at all.
It's just one more thing to collect.
Only it happens to be digital.
If you think about everything on your phone that you value,
particularly younger kids--
I mean, their most valuable possessions
are things on their phone, and NFT is just
a digital collectible that you can buy, hold, sell,
like any other collectible.
And cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency is just an asset to invest in.
Bitcoin is like a digital version of gold.
Ethereum is a digital version of a currency.
And then you got Dogecoin, which is just fun.
But the weird part about it, it went
from being a cryptocurrency joke to now becoming
something that's becoming a digital currency.
At the Mavs, we sell a lot of merchandise for Dogecoin.
And you should look at it for the Ellen Shop.
You guys could sell a whole lot of stuff for Dogecoin.
We sure will do that.
Mark, we're going to take a break,
and then we're going to get some money tips from you when
we come back.
We'll be back.
We're back with Mark Cuban--
very, very successful career made a lot of money.
So you say some of your tips--
pay off credit card debt.
Absolutely.
Because credit card interest expense is like 19% to 29%.
You're not going to make that in the stock market or anywhere
else automatically.
Pay off that debt.
All right.
Always save six months of expenses.
You never know what can go wrong.
We saw the pandemic--
crazy things happen in life, you want to have that cushion.
Yeah.
Invest in what you know.
Yeah, people try to get all fancy
and think they have a friend who knows this or that.
Stick to the things that you know.
And if it's something you're interested in,
find out more and see if it's investable.
Yeah, so my thing has been real estate.
I love real estate, and I love houses and design.
So that's what I've invested in.
But now, I'm interested in Dogecoin.
And I really want to know more about this.
So talk about Dogecoin.
It's crazy-- the craziest story ever.
So Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that
was created as a joke in 2013 by these two programmers, right?
And they just made it just to mess around.
And then, probably, two years ago,
people started talking about the meme online
and started buying it.
And probably, within the last six months,
a number of people buying it has just
skyrocketed into the millions.
And the value has gone up incredibly.
And I'll give you an example.
My son and I bought some for less than a penny.
Jake, who's 11 years old, bought $30 worth.
I think it was for less than a penny.
Then it went up to $0.06.
He bought a little bit more.
Then it went up to $0.40, and now it's about $0.26.
So the question everybody wants to know,
is Dogecoin a good investment?
And here's the reason I got Jake into it.
It's not necessarily the best investment you can make.
But you can buy it on Robinhood, and signing up and trading
on Robinhood is free.
So that's one thing.
The second thing is it's about $0.26 for Dogecoin.
So if you go and spend 5, 10, $15 dollars,
that's a better investment than buying a lottery ticket.
And you know what?
It could go up.
And the second part about it is if it doesn't go up
and you want to spend it, you can buy merchandise
on the Mavericks Store, hopefully,
soon on the Ellen Shop.
So it's also becoming a digital currency,
which is crazy if you think back to its origins.
But as overall, when someone brings up Dogecoin to you
and ask you if it's a good investment,
I would say it's not the world's best investment.
But it's a whole lot better than a lottery ticket,
and it's a great way to learn and start
understanding cryptocurrency.
And it seems like it's just going to keep going up and up?
I mean, there's no guarantee.
But one quick thing before we go.
So Robinhood-- if you go on Robinhood to buy Dogecoin,
they want your social security number.
I'm always skeptical about things like that.
I'm less concerned about that because there's something
called Know Your Customer.
They have to make sure you're not
a money launderer or fraudster, and so they
have to confirm your identity.
So they're pretty good at keeping it secure.
So I did it.
I didn't have a problem putting in my information.
All right, cool.
Well, I trust you.
Thank you so much for being with us, Mark.
Thanks for having me on, Ellen.
I really appreciate it and really enjoyed it.
It was great.
Thank you.
Yeah, see you soon.
I hope.
Shark Tank airs Fridays--
I hope so.
--at 8:00 on ABC.
We'll be back.