Cost Plus Drugs: EXPLAINED | Mark Cuban Full Interview

1. 0:00 – 8:30

   What is CostPlusDrugs?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings0:00

      (beeping) Three, two, one, zero. You have now arrived at your destination. Mark, this is such a joy to do. First, thank you so much for joining me today. I've been so looking forward to this one.

   2. MCMark Cuban0:15

      Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it too.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings0:17

      Well, I, now I've done many, many shows as you know, uh, and we always start with the story and the context, but this is just too exciting and, you know, we've, we've, we've done the context before, so I want to dive right in. You recently announced Cost Plus Drugs, and so for those that maybe don't know-

   4. MCMark Cuban0:31

      (laughs)

   5. HSHarry Stebbings0:31

      ... what is Cost Plus and why are you doing it, Mark?

   6. MCMark Cuban0:35

      Well, the first question, what is Cost Plus? If you go to costplusdrugs.com, the goal for us is to take generic drugs and be very transparent in what our costs and operation costs are and sell everything at a 15% markup. And from there, we add a $3 handling fee and a $5 shipping fee, um, and that's your price. And just the way the industry is set up, that price, not always but 99% of the time, ends up being lower than what you're probably already paying, and most likely it's lower than your insurance copay. And to answer your second question, why, because I could, you know? And it was the right thing to do.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:19

      Can I ask a bit of a weird one?

   8. MCMark Cuban1:21

      Uh-huh.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings1:21

      For me when I listened, I was like, "Why has no one done this before?" If they're generic drugs, what, why, why has no one done it before?

   10. MCMark Cuban1:28

       You know what? They've done it in a variety of ways, um, or tried, but the challenge is I get to f-... You know, I didn't bring on any investors. Um, I'm financing it all myself, and when you bring on investors or you run it to maximize or optimize your profits, you're gonna run it differently, and that's just not what we're trying to do. We're, you know, we have a very specific purpose, and that's to be the lowest cost provider of generic drugs, period, end of story, which means we're not gonna have all the bells and whistles that somebody like GoodRx is going to have. You're not gonna have, you know, you know, famous doctors writing blog posts to tell you about your IBS. And tho- those things are all great. I'm not, you know, diminishing them at all, but there are just certain people that don't need the bells and whistles. Their back's against the wall, and they need their medication as inexpensively as they possibly can get it, and that's what we're trying to solve.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings2:20

       Uh, listen, I, I, I totally get that. Can I ask, just to place some structure around it, in terms of the current ecosystem and how it's structured and why, like why are these drugs so expensive? What's the structure that makes them that way?

   12. MCMark Cuban2:34

       Because there's so many rules and regulations, which are a good thing. I'm not trying to say the rules and regulations are a bad thing, that like any business, people, you know, arb the system, right? They, they look at where they can find the weaknesses and where they can find the opportunities, and they leverage those. Just, you know, that's wh-... Y- you can't blame them for doing that. And so (clears throat) because you're trying to optimize your profits, while at the same time look like you're minimizing the cost to patients, you get these things called pharmacy benefit managers that are in between patients and, um, manufacturers and pharmacies and add a whole layer of complexity that, that's very difficult to fight through. And if you're an organization that wants to maximize your revenues and earnings, you have to deal with them. And if you wanna deal with insurance companies, that's another layer of complexity and administration costs, and we just avoided all of those. I mean, you know, you, you can't pay using insurance on costplusdrugs.com. You have to, you know, put in your credit card and pay that way.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings3:41

       Got you. Totally. No, it makes sense. Can I... How do you expect big pharma companies to respond to the, the massive price cuts? I mean, uh, it's incredible when you go to the site and see some of the savings that you can make. How do you-

   14. MCMark Cuban3:53

       Well, they'll match. Yeah, a lot of them will match. Some of them will ignore us. It depends on how big we get. You know, if, if we have 10 million customers, they'll pay attention to us. If we have a million customers, maybe not. You know, and there'll be times when there'll be PR and, you know, somebody will be talking about our pricing, and then they'll match, you know? And, and that's what we expect them to do. But again, I'm financing this all out of my own pocket. And so if it takes a little longer, if, you know, our revenues go up and down, that's not a problem, whereas for a company that's, you know, built through venture capital or a bunch of investors or is a public company, that's a real problem.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings4:31

       Can I ask, when did you first have the desire to do this? And I'd just love to understand, what does it take to set up a, a new age pharmacy, as you have done? Like what, what does it actually take? When did you have the idea?

   16. MCMark Cuban4:41

       I started working on-

   17. HSHarry Stebbings4:42

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. MCMark Cuban4:42

       Yeah, I started working on healthcare issues probably four years ago. I really started diving in just, you know, back when they, um, the administration at the time was looking to get rid of the, um, Affordable Care Act. And I was like, "Okay, what would it look like if there was a replacement that was needed?" And, you know, I, I went through a bunch of things and got to understand the industry. I've paid for a bunch of studies that, you know, does things like compare, you know, why is it that... What are, what's the difference between the operating costs of a hospital in Toronto versus the operating cost of a hospital in New York? Just trying to understand why there's such a big price discrepancy, because in Toronto, you know, the, um, province of Ontario covers a lot of the cost, but they still have to write a check to the hospitals to get the services done. And the, the hospitals charge them far lower than you're gonna get the same service for in New York. And it's just, you know, there, there's some subtle differences in how the system operates between the two countries. And that led me, um, to look into other issues, and then I got an email from a Dr. Oshmytsky Alex, who's my partner, who's a rock star, and he had a compound pharmacy in Denver, and this was three, four years ago. And he was like, "Look, I, you know, I think there's a mo- some opportunities there." And, uh, you know, as we got corresponding, um, via email...... I, I asked him, I was like, "Okay, let's look at Daraprim," which is, you know, the Pharma Bros drug, right? And, uh, he just jacked up prices. And my first question was, "Could we just buy out, go to the manufacturer of Daraprim..." Well, my first question was, "Does he manufacture it?" And the answer was no. And I'm like, "What? You mean he just buys it from a manufacturer? Why doesn't somebody else just buy it from the manufacturer and sell it for less?" And he's like, "Because it's not a big enough market for everybody else." And I was like, "Wait, so maybe I could just go to the manufacturer, buy out a year's worth of supply and give it away, um, and just really fuck with Martin Shkreli." And the, the response was, "It's illegal to, to give away drugs like that. You can't just give it away, um, just to people who want it." Now there's foundations and stuff, but that's just another layer of complexity. So I was like, okay, well, if there are drugs that they can jack the price up for, there must be drugs that we can buy and reduce the price considerably and create a business that is self-sustaining, makes a little money so we can reinvest and just keeps on trying to push drug prices lower. And that was 2017 or '18, I forget, and, you know, the rest is history. That's when we started Cost Plus.

   19. HSHarry Stebbings7:06

       Can I ask, what was the most challenging element of starting Cost Plus? When you look back now over those four years to getting to where we are, what was most challenging?

   20. MCMark Cuban7:13

       Getting people to believe that we would actually do it and follow through. Because they get a lot of calls because it's an obvious opportunity for entrepreneurs. You know, price too damn high, sell cheaper. But there's a lot of complexity and regulation involved that takes a lot of money, um, just to get through and to, to build the infrastructure and the foundation for doing it. And, you know, I'm fortunate, um, that I could afford it and people knew who I was 'cause of Shark Tank, et cetera. And so when they heard my name was behind it, and that's one of the reasons I put my name on it, um, then they realized it was for real and there was money behind it, and that allowed us to, to do deals with manufacturers.

   21. HSHarry Stebbings7:52

       Can I ask, and I, and I hope it's not too personal. How much capital have you allocated towards it so far? How much do you plan to do moving forwards?

   22. MCMark Cuban7:59

       Well, I'm not, I'm not gonna go into details, but it- it's a lot that, you know... It- it's a lot. (laughs) It's not a little bit, uh, you know, it's not like, okay, I'm gonna take $500,000 and let's just get this shit started. It- it's, you know, it's-

   23. HSHarry Stebbings8:15

       Tens of millions.

   24. MCMark Cuban8:15

       ... yeah, tens of millions of dollars.

   25. HSHarry Stebbings8:17

       Yeah.

   26. MCMark Cuban8:17

       And growing.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings8:18

       So how d- uh, that, that's kind of capital allocation. How do you think about time allocation? You know, you have so many different activities. How do you think about time allocation with Cost Plus?

   28. MCMark Cuban8:25

       Like, like I always do, I, I, I try to work with great people. I've learned my lesson over the years,

2. 8:30 – 18:43

   Hiring Tips

   1. MCMark Cuban8:30

      you know, that when you shortcut the quality of people, you end up hurting yourself. And now, you know, with, um, Alex, with Ryan Klein and others that are working, with David Chen and others that are at Cost Plus, it's just been insane how effective, how smart they are. I mean, I, I can't un- I can't overstate just how much of a rock star my partner Alex is. He is, you know, Dr. Osher Myski is just incredibly brilliant and gets this stuff done. And so it's not like I have to worry about the day-to-day details of the pharmaceutical industry. I can worry about, you know, marketing and connecting and getting in front of people and, um, understanding some of the, you know, the nuances of running this business while he focuses on the hard stuff.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings9:16

      Can I ask, I, and sorry, I didn't mean to use this as an advice session. I suck at hiring, Mark. Terribly, terribly, truly.

   3. MCMark Cuban9:22

      I'm not that good either, honestly. (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings9:25

      What, what have been, what have been some big lessons for you in terms of what it takes to hire really well and effectively?

   5. MCMark Cuban9:30

      You know what? The, the best line I've heard is hire slow, fire fast. Um, where you've really gotta take the time to dig in to understand. Because for me, I'm a salesperson at heart, you know, and when somebody walks in the door and they start selling me, I start selling myself on why they're the right person, because I don't like to go through the process of hiring, and so I just wanna get it over with. And that of- you know, in the past, stuck me with, you know, not as quality of people. Um, there are times when you can't avoid it, but what I've tried to do is, you know, I try to promote from within and find the people within the organization who are really good at, um, hiring people and understanding what's real and what's not, and let them take... I, I, I have no problem, um, delegating to people who are smarter than me or better than me at something. And I think that's really where I've gotten to in terms of hiring.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings10:17

      In terms of kind of the people that you bring on board, it's a case of like, you know, uh, you have two modes of trust. You either give them full trust and, you know, it stands to be lost, or you start with little trust and it stands to be gained over time.

   7. MCMark Cuban10:29

      Uh, I'm a trust but verify guy. You earn, once you've earned my trust, then I'll turn things over, but it takes some time. You have to produce and you have to show me that you can accomplish what you say you're going to accomplish. And once you do that a few times, I'm like, "There you go. Here's the keys to the car. Go for it."

   8. HSHarry Stebbings10:46

      When people don't hit your expectations... (sighs) The challenge that I have today is it's such a fluid job market. I worry that if you come down on them hard, then they're gonna leave. Um, how do you think about effective communication and feedback when they don't perform?

   9. MCMark Cuban11:01

      Well, context matters. Like you said, it's a different job market. So there's gonna be times when you've gotta bite your tongue because there's somebody that's in a position that you really, really need. And that, you know, honestly, that's 90% of the time that's come back to, to bite me, right? But, you know, uh, an order needs to get out the door, something needs to get done, but as quickly as I possibly can, I try to be brutally honest and just say, "Okay, here's the problem. Here's the solution. Can you do it? Yes or no? And let's be honest, because if you can't do it, you're gonna lose your job. If you can do it, let me know what you need from me to get the job done." And the more honest I am and, you know... Because look, when somebody's not doing the job, 75% of the time, they know it, right? And, and, uh, you know, the other 25%, those are the people who just love to create stress anyways and then they try to tell you they're solving the stress, right? And so I, I really divide people into stress creators and stress removers. And the stress removers, you do everything you can to keep them. The stress creators think they're stress removers, right? They create this big whirlwind and think they're the only one to solve it, and those are the people I try to get rid of as quickly as possible.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings12:11

       I, I totally agree with you in terms of stress removers (laughs) uh, being the, the halos. In terms of like, you know, when you think about goal setting, you know, with every business there's goal setting, there's OKRs. How do you think about setting objectives that are really ambitious and stretches, but also not too much of a stretch that they're unachievable? How do you fit the balance?

   11. MCMark Cuban12:30

       Well, you know, I'm not, I'm not big on business plans that say, "Okay, this year we're gonna do X number of dollars." I'm really, um, big on trying to be as efficient and as optimal as possible and, um... And so what I, I really try to do is say, "Okay, what can we be really, really good at and what does that accomplish for us and how can we do more of it and how much of it can we do?" And so, you know, with Cost Plus Drugs, the KPI isn't just sales, it's, okay, how much stress are we reducing for people? You know? And so again, we're not trying to optimize, um, revenues, we're not trying to optimize profits. We're trying to optimize how many customers that we have. How many, how many customers, repeat customers, can we get where they just give us their prescriptions because they trust us to lower our pricing every chance we get? And so if we're able to keep on lowering our pricing and expand our customer base, that's what I care about because I know, uh, you know, because everybody in the organization knows we're focused on being the low cost producer, that, you know, it's not like, "Hey, you know, let's go spend, you know, s- this amount of money in sales and marketing," 'cause they already know the answer is no. You know? They, they recognize that we've gotta be guerrilla marketers where our customers are our best advocates and if we keep our customers happy and more importantly... You know, and let me take a step back. Like I just had this conversation yesterday with, um, Ryan, and I was like, "Look, what is the, the zeitgeist of the pharmaceutical/drug industry? That prices keep on going up and every time prices go up, whoever's a patient for that drug, their spirit and their, potentially their health goes down. And if it doesn't, you know, their insurance rates go up or somebody has to pay for that." Right? You know, the way we're structured, we're gonna continue to try to push our pricing down so our marketing is going to be just twofold: announcing new drugs because people know that, you know, with our transparent pricing, it's cost plus 15 plus three- three dollars labor, five dollars shipping, period, end of story. So every time we add one, that brings in a new constituency of people who have that same, um, need for that medication who are gonna tell their peers 'cause, you know, you know with, you know, with your mom's condition that you know other people with the same condition and what they're going through, right? You've seen them at the hospital, you see them at the doctor's, they talk to each other, they're on online forums, so they're all gonna talk. So when I add a medication, that's our marketing. And then the second part is, um, if we're continually lowering prices, that becomes our marketing as well because if, you know, you, if every month, two months, three months, six months, year, whatever it takes for any given medication because our volumes are increasing, our efficiency is increasing, whatever it may be, we're able to lower the price of that drug. When the everybody is so used to prices just going up and we're pushing prices down, that becomes our differentiating factor, that becomes something that makes it worthwhile for our customers to tell their, their peers, their peop- other, um, or our patients rather, or the p- the patients who need those drugs to be... to tell others in similar circumstances. And so once you understand what your core competency is, once you understand why people are doing business with you, then you can focus on those things and if you do them really, really well, your business will grow. And for us it's drugs and low cost providing and adding more drugs and for somebody else, it could be cookies, it could be water, it could be whatever it is. But you know, with Shark Tank, you know, for those who don't know, Friday nights on ABC, um, you know, that's one of the challenges I always have with some of the companies. They want to just immed- they think it's about immediately spending marketing dollars, but it's not. It's immediately about knowing why people want to do business with you and what it is that's gonna make your, your product or service so compelling that people want to tell their friends. And when you're able to solve that problem, marketing gets a lot easier because you know what to tell people.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings16:35

       Oh, i- it absolutely does. I mean, one thing that, you know, I know from my mother's condition, as you said, especially the virality of online communities is incredible with a lot of these conditions. My question to you is, it could very easily scale very fast. Just from a practicality perspective, is there challenges for you in terms of, you know, supply and meeting demand given how fast it could scale and ramp?

   13. MCMark Cuban16:57

       Yeah, it is scaling very, very quickly. Um, you know, we're adding 10,000 accounts plus a day and we're already past 50 and, and you know, that's the value of having a great partner like Truepill. You know, we outsourced a lot of that. They already have the scale, they already have the ability to meet our pricing requirements, they're really, really good at what they do and they're, they're very f- agile, you know? It, it, you know, in what we're doing, agility is criti- critical because things can change on a dime and Truepill's been an amazing partner.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings17:25

       I do have to ask you, I always think about in businesses what gets easier with scale and what gets more challenging with scale. When you apply that to Cost Plus, what gets easier with scale and what gets more challenging with scale?

   15. MCMark Cuban17:37

       What gets more challenging is dealing with the manufacturers because not all, you know, not all might have the capacity and so you can't just assume that somebody can go from giving you a million pills to 100 million pills, and so that's the biggest challenge there. And in terms of what gets easier, you know, just the, the visibility and the recognition and, and the, um, the fact that people know who we are, right? You know, if you're doing... if you really hit scale, you're, and you're, you're ubiquitous among your potential customer set, you don't have to tell them, they're asking you how to do business with you and so that gets easier.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings18:15

       ... I totally see that. Can I ask, you know, if this, this could be an insertion point. There are many different aspects that are broken within the healthcare industry, insurance being one of them as well in many ways. Do you see this as kind of the insertion point? And how, d- do you plan to expand into ancillary businesses?

   17. MCMark Cuban18:29

       We gotta win the first battle we're in. You know, it's not like, "Okay, we can do X number of, of, um, prescriptions, uh, a day or week or month, and let's go into insurance." Because, you know, there's

3. 18:43 – 24:41

   Brand + Capital + Business Strategy

   1. MCMark Cuban18:43

      unfortunately an unlimited number of patients, and that number grows every day. And so, um, we've gotta win that battle first. You know, in terms of the insurance industry, the, the payer industry, and the provider industry, the hospitals, et cetera, their, their interests are not aligned with patients from a pricing perspective. You know, the insurance industry, there's this thing called medical loss ratio when you deal with Medicare, where you're supposed to spend 85% of your premiums on the, the care that is provided by providers. So an insurance company, if they bring in $100 in premium from Medicare, they've gotta, um, spend $85 of it through hospitals and drugs and whatever it may be. Well, if you think about it, that means they have 15% for themselves, and 15% of a bigger number is more profits for the insurance company, right? And so the, the providers, the hospitals in particular, you know, their alignment is higher revenues, and the insurance company, their alignment is higher revenues which is at the expense of the, either the insurance customers or the patients themselves, direct pay. And that's why if you go to a hospital website and you look at the pricing that they're supposed to, to put on their website, you'll see a, a variety of prices for this, you know. If, if there's a, a, a hip tra- uh, hip replacement and, you know, through insurance company A, it might be X dollars, insurance company B it might be X plus 20%, C, X minus 20%, and cash play- pay might be 50% of that. And so there's all these crazy things that, and games that are played, um, with the contracts between insurers and provider, or payers and providers, and that leads to a big problem with the healthcare system, which is, you know, effectively about 21% of all healthcare costs in the United States are for administration, which is just insane, which is one of the, you know... I'm not a huge fan of, of, um, Medicare for All or, um, single payer, simply because there, there's a variety of issues. I'm more a fan of a hybrid system where lower income people get, um, single payer and higher income people like me pay for what they use. Um, but at the same time, twent- you know, there's an argument to be made for them just by removing all the administration costs, because it's one single contract with the government. You know, you know, so you see like in the UK, there's a lot of good things in terms of what the cost is to consumers, but there's a lot of bad things in terms of availability and budgets and taxes and all the battles that go on there.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings21:22

      I, I totally agree with you there. Can I ask what... You've started many different very successful businesses. When you look at starting this, what have you done differently or the same this time from the past experiences starting many successful businesses before?

   3. MCMark Cuban21:36

      Um, it's pretty much the same. You know, a bu- starting a business is, you know, what are we trying to accomplish? Who's our customer? Why would they deal with us? How am I gonna f- f- fulfill it? How much money am I trying to make, if I'm trying to make money in, in this case? Um, and how, you know, who are the people to get it done? And the hardest part is who are the people to get it done.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings21:55

      Yeah.

   5. MCMark Cuban21:56

      And like I said-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings21:57

      (laughs)

   7. MCMark Cuban21:57

      ... uh, you know, I've, I've really been fortunate with Alex and Ryan.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings22:01

      When you look forward, say five years, where do you want Cost Plus to be then?

   9. MCMark Cuban22:07

      I don't look forward five years. I look forward a month, you know. I look forward two years maybe in terms of what drugs are available or coming off a patent, um, or that we can add. But I'm, I'm not like, "Okay, five years, here's the big picture. Where are we going?" You know, when, when you're a new technology, like when we started the streaming business back in '95, it was like, "Okay, let me visualize." You know, we, we were the first to do streaming, and, uh, you know, people were like, "That's moronic. I can just watch television, you know. I can listen to the radio. Why do I need to go through the, the hassle of setting up a PC and a modem and all that shit?" And I was like, "No, you don't understand." When I started the, um, the first all high definition TV network, HDNet, like in 2001, people were like, "No one's gonna buy an HDTV. That thing you're putting on the wall is $25,000." I'm like, "No, you don't understand. The price is gonna go down, and yeah..." You know, so there's certain technology driven things, like with crypto now. How is the DAO gonna change how businesses are run? How, you know, what is proof of stake going to impact in terms of the insurance industry, right? If you have validators looking at, um, claims rather than a centralized, um, insurance company looking at claims, you know, with an optimistic roll-up, not to get too technical, right? You can have, you know, people who validate claims or re- um, pre-request and others who challenge them if they think they're doing it wrong, and, you know, and people get rewarded for offering those services. And that is going to be a much better approach to insurance than what we have now.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings23:39

       Yeah. No, I, I, I totally agree, and, uh, I look forward to a future where that exists (laughs) . I, I do wanna move into my favorite though, which is a quickfire round, uh, Mark. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts.

   11. MCMark Cuban23:50

       Let's go.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings23:50

       How does that sound?

   13. MCMark Cuban23:51

       Yep, let's go.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings23:51

       What do you hate, what do you hate most about the, the healthcare industry today?

   15. MCMark Cuban23:55

       Everything. (laughs)

   16. HSHarry Stebbings23:58

       If there's one thing-

   17. MCMark Cuban23:58

       You know, what I like the most, what I like the most are the doctors and the nurses and the people who work there. Their heart's in the right place, um, but I, I mean, I have some friends who are CEOs of hospitals, and I've told them this, "It's a shit show, you know?" You don't need, you know, all these...... building all these new buildings and buying all this real estate. And there's no, you know, line about your cost to, to do something. "Oh, our Medicare, you know, we provide Medicare, we lose 8, 9%." No, that's nonsense, right? And so, you know, there's just so much BS that's interspersed in all of it. Um, I respect the healthcare workers and have, you know, have real issues with the system itself.

4. 24:41 – 30:42

   AMA with Mark Cuban

   1. MCMark Cuban24:41

   2. HSHarry Stebbings24:41

      What have you recently changed your mind on? Doesn't need to be healthcare, but could be there.

   3. MCMark Cuban24:44

      Oh, a lot. I mean, it happens all the time. I'm a big believer in check your whole card, you know? Just because you start with something... There was, um... I got into a conversation with, um, a bunch of First Amendment constitutional lawyers on Twitter, and we were talking about Section 230. And, uh, I was never a fan of Section 230, and, um, we started talking about a- algorithmic amplifications on Facebook. Um, meaning that, you know, there's a lot of misinformation that gets, um, amplified, excuse me, just because more people are, are doing it. And so, you know, bad information gets amplified because it spreads more quickly. And I don't... I said initially that that should not be protected, and they made a really, really good argument while, um, that it's still protected under the First Amendment in the United States, whether it's algorithmically derived or some- comes out of someone's mouth. And so, I went from saying, "Okay, algorithmic a- amplification should not be protected," to, "All right. They're probably right, you know, as, as First Amendment constitutional lawyers, they know their shit and I didn't."

   4. HSHarry Stebbings25:51

      Tell me, you have a billboard in Times Square for Cost Plus. What does it say on it?

   5. MCMark Cuban25:58

      Um, we didn't pay for this billboard. You're hear... (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings26:02

      (laughs)

   7. MCMark Cuban26:02

      Go to Cost Plus for the cheapest generics anywhere.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings26:06

      I love that. What, what worries you most today, Mark? You know, we've seen stock market crash. What worries you most?

   9. MCMark Cuban26:11

      Um, yeah, climate change more than anything. Uh, my kids are 12, 15, and 18, and I want th- you know, the world they live in and, and the world their kids live in, um, to, to be here. Um, and I'm not... I don't try to get into the argument of, you know, what exactly is happening with climate change. I look at it more as a, an issue of probability. You know, there are, there are climate change deniers and what I say to them is, "Do you believe that there's more than a 1% chance that you could be wrong that climate change is a thing?" And, you know, almost all of them will say yes. And then I say, "Are you willing to bet your, you know, bet your kids' future and their... your grandkids' future and their grandkids' future, um, on something n- none of us truly know for certain?" Um, I'm not, right? If it's greater than zero, that's too much. And, and so, you know, we all take risks in our lives, but never that type of existential risk, you know, about the, you know, what happens on the planet. And, and so, yeah, that's, that's probably what scares me the most.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings27:14

       What three traits would you most like your children to adopt?

   11. MCMark Cuban27:18

       Um, u- uh, loved- loving to learn. You know, I, I have the- I have these stupid sayings, right? So, I'll just tell you the sayings I give them.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings27:27

       (laughs) Yeah, I love it.

   13. MCMark Cuban27:29

       I al- you know, I, I talk about loving to learn. I talk about how you do anything is how you do everything, meaning you can't cut corners, right? If you try to cut corners on the little things, that's how you're gonna do the big things. And the one thing in life you can control is your effort. Another one is a person who doesn't read lives one life. A person who reads lives an unlimited number of lives. Um, I could go on for days (laughs) .

   14. HSHarry Stebbings27:55

       I love it. No, I'm totally, uh, with you in that respect. Okay, how would you describe your style of parenting, Mark? Uh, it's interesting. I have more and more p- I'm becoming like a parenting (laughs) expert.

   15. MCMark Cuban28:04

       Yeah, I don't think anybody's ever a parenting expert. But, um, you know, I've changed over the years as my kids have, have gotten older, obviously. Um, I try to treat them like adults, and I try to be a little bit silly at the same time. And I just try to, you know, be as available as I can. And, you know, in our family, my, my wife is the child whisperer. They'll tell her more secrets. And I'm the, you know, the logic whisperer. When it comes to things that are driven by logic, they'll come to me more. Not that my wife isn't logical, it's just I think that's how they look at me more. And so, that kind of pisses me off. I wanna be like the secrets, you know, parent, but my wife's kind of rolled into that role. So, you know, I try to be available, I try to be loving, try to be caring. Um, try to, you know, whatever they need me for, be there for.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings28:58

       What have you found is the, the secret to the best partnership in terms of your wife and a truly happy marriage?

   17. MCMark Cuban29:05

       She's right.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings29:06

       (laughs) Always, she's right.

   19. MCMark Cuban29:10

       Yeah. Look, I, I'm the luckiest motherfucker in the world. My kids are healthy, um, you know, I, I don't have to worry about the things I used to have to worry about. Um, it's really just about my kids more than anything else. And so, that reduces stress in a lot of ways, and that just makes it a lot of easy- a lot easier.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings29:30

       What would you like to do that you haven't done yet?

   21. MCMark Cuban29:33

       Change, you know, disrupt e- disrupt the healthcare industry, you know, dis- starting with generic drugs.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings29:39

       Which purcha-

   23. MCMark Cuban29:40

       To me, that's, that's an impact.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings29:41

       Which purchase has brought you the most pleasure?

   25. MCMark Cuban29:44

       My plane.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings29:45

       You could be anything. Your plane?

   27. MCMark Cuban29:46

       Yeah, 'cause-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings29:47

       Why?

   29. MCMark Cuban29:47

       ... t- time is the most valuable asset you don't own. And here I am sounding a little bit like a hypocrite talking about climate change, you know, so I try to buy offsets. I mean, there's this, these crypto tokens I'll buy that are carbon offsets, BCT and cli- CLIMA and others, MCO2, and just, you know, to try to reduce my guilt. But, um, yeah, time is the one thing you can't get back and, and a plane's been insanely bene- beneficial from that perspective.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings30:13

       Listen, uh, Mark, I always love our chats. I cannot thank you enough for me peppering you with questions and you being so wonderfully responsive. Uh, this means the world to me and I cannot wait for the future with Cost Plus.

Episode duration: 30:52