Lex Fridman PodcastMark Cuban: Shark Tank, DEI & Wokeism Debate, Elon Musk, Politics & Drugs | Lex Fridman Podcast #422
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,090 words- 0:00 – 0:54
Introduction
- MCMark Cuban
The person who controls the algorithm controls the world, right? And if you are committed to one specific platform as your singular source of information, or affiliated platforms, then whoever controls the algorithm or the programming there, controls you.
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Mark Cuban, a multi-billionaire businessman, investor and star of the series Shark Tank, longtime principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and is someone who is unafraid to get into frequent battles on X, most recently over topics like DEI, wokeism, gender, and identity politics with the likes of Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Mark Cuban.
- 0:54 – 15:48
Entrepreneurship
- LFLex Fridman
You started many businesses, invested in many businesses, heard a lot of pitches, privately and on Shark Tank. So you're the perfect person to ask, what makes a great entrepreneur?
- MCMark Cuban
Somebody who's curious. They wanna keep on learning 'cause business is ever-changing, it's never static. Um, somebody who's agile, because as you learn new things and the environment around you changes, you have to be able to adapt and make the changes. Um, and somebody who can sell, because no business has ever survived without sales. And as an entrepreneur who's creating a company, whatever your product or service is, if that's not the most important thing and you're just dying and, and excited to tell people about it, then you're not gonna succeed.
- LFLex Fridman
But it's also a skill thing. How do you sell? What do you mean by selling?
- MCMark Cuban
Selling is just helping. I've always looked at it about putting myself in the shoes of another person and asking a simple question, "Can I help this person? Can my product help?" From the time I was 12 years old, selling garbage bags door-to-door and just asking a simple question, "Do you use garbage bags? Do you need garbage bags? Well, let me save you some time, I'll bring 'em to your house and drop 'em off." To, you know, streaming, um, why do we need streaming when we have TV and radio? Well, you can't get access to your TV and radio everywhere you go. So we kind of break down geographic and physical barriers. And, you know, Cost Plus Drugs. You know, what's the product that we actually sell? We sell trust. Um, in a simplistic approach, we buy drugs and sell drugs, but we add transparency to it. And bringing transparency to an industry is, is a differentiation, and it helps people.
- LFLex Fridman
Trust in an industry that's highly lacking in trust.
- MCMark Cuban
Exactly.
- LFLex Fridman
Okay. So what's, what's the trick to selling garbage bags? Let's go back there. At 12 years old, what, I mean, is it just your natural charisma? I guess a good question to ask, are you born with it or can you develop it?
- MCMark Cuban
Oh, you can definitely develop it. Yeah, I mean, because selling garbage bags door-to-door was easy, right? Because like (knocks on table) 12-year-old Mark going, "Hi, my name is Mark. Do you use garbage bags?" You know what the answer is going to be, right? "Can I just drop 'em off for you, you know, once a week? Whenever you need 'em, you just call and I'll bring 'em down?" "Sure." So that was easy.
- LFLex Fridman
But I'm sure you've been rejected.
- MCMark Cuban
Oh, yeah, of course. Not everybody says yes.
- LFLex Fridman
What's your per- what was your percentage?
- MCMark Cuban
I don't remember, but it's pretty close to 100%. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, okay, never mind. So that's why you don't remember. (laughs)
- MCMark Cuban
Yeah, right. 'Cause who's gonna say no to a 12-year-old kid who's gonna save them time and money? But, you know, typically in my career where I've started companies, it's to do something that other people aren't doing. Whether it was connecting PCs in, to local area networks in, at MicroSolutions and, you know, the salesmanship was walking into a company and just saying, "Look, talk to me and I can help you improve your productivity and your profitability. Is that important to you?" And the answer is obviously always yes. And then the question is, "Can I do the job and can I do it cost-effectively?" And so you didn't have to be a born salesperson to be able to ask those questions, but you have to be able to be willing to put in the time to learn that business.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
And that's the hardest part.
- LFLex Fridman
I'm sure there's a skill thing to it, too, in like how you solve the puzzle of communicating with a person and convincing them.
- MCMark Cuban
Yeah, I mean, there's skill from the perspective that I read like a maniac. Then, like now, you can give me an example of any type of business and it'll take me two seconds to figure out how they make money and how I can make them more, um, productive. And I think that's probably my biggest skill, being able to just drill down to what the actual need is, if any. And then, you know, from there, being able to say, "Well, if this is what this company does and this is what their goal is, how can I introduce something new that they haven't seen before? And is that a business that I can create and make money from?"
- LFLex Fridman
So figure out how this kind of business makes money in the present, and then figure out, is there a way to make more money in the future by introducing a totally new kind of thing?
- MCMark Cuban
Correct.
- LFLex Fridman
And you can just do that with anything.
- MCMark Cuban
Pretty much, yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) And you think you're born with that?
- MCMark Cuban
No, I worked at it. Because, you know, going back to what I said earlier about curiosity, you have to be insanely curious because the world is always changing. My dad used to say, "We don't live in the world we were born into," you know, which is absolutely true. If you're not a voracious consumer of information, then you're not gonna be able to keep up, and no matter what your sales skills or ability are, they're gonna be useless.
- LFLex Fridman
What'd you learn about life from your dad? You mentioned your dad.
- MCMark Cuban
My dad did upholstery on cars, you know, got up, went to work every morning at seven o'clock, came back five or six, seven o'clock, exhausted. And I learned to be nice, I learned to be caring, I learned to be accepting. Just, you know, qualities that I think he really tried to pass on to myself and my two younger brothers, were just be a good human, you know? And I think, you know, he didn't have business experience, so as I got into business, he would just, you know, say, "Sorry, Mark, I can't help you. You know, I don't understand what you're doing." He never went, neither one of my parents had gone to college. Um, "You've gotta figure it out for yourself." But he was also very insistent that, um, he, you know, he worked at a company called Regency Products where they did upholstery on cars. And he would bring me there to sweep the floors. Not because he wanted me to learn that business, because he wanted me to learn how back-breaking that work was. I mean, he lost an eye in an accident at work, um, a staple broke.Um, and he... The only thing he wanted for my brothers and I was for us to never have to work like that, to go to college, to figure it out.
- LFLex Fridman
You said to be nice. That said, you also said that you... When you were first starting a business, you were a bit more of an asshole than you wish you would have been.
- MCMark Cuban
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Because I was more of a yeller. I was, you know, I didn't have-
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, really? Mark Cuban? (laughs)
- MCMark Cuban
(laughs) Yeah, what you see on the sidelines, you know, with me at a Mavs game, maybe a little bit. But I also didn't have any patience for somebody I thought wasn't using my kind of common sense, right?
- 15:48 – 26:13
Shark Tank
- LFLex Fridman
I think we'll find our footing and start celebrating greatness again.
- MCMark Cuban
Well, that, I mean, that's the whole reason I do Shark Tank.
- LFLex Fridman
That's true. That, that show celebrates the entrepreneur. That's true.
- MCMark Cuban
It's the only place where every single minute of every single episode, we, you know, we celebrate the American dream. And the reason I do it is we tell the entire country, and it's shown around the world even, we, you know, we're, we're amazing advertising for the American dream in I don't even know how many countries. But every time somebody walks onto that carpet from Dubuque, Iowa or Ketchum, Idaho, you know, that sends a message to every kid who's watching, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12-year-old kid, that if they can do it from Ketchum, Idaho, you can do it. If they can have this idea and get a deal or even present to the sharks and have all of America see it, you can do it. And that, I mean, I'm proud of that. Um, the 15 years of that is just, it, it's just been insane. You know, now kids walk up to me and go, "Yeah, I started watching you when I was 5 or 10."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MCMark Cuban
"And I started a business because I learned about it from Shark Tank."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
And so, you know, I think, you know, we're being cel- it celebrates it and we convey it. And I don't think it's going away, but there are different battles we have to fight to support it.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, I love even when the business idea is obviously horrible.
- MCMark Cuban
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
Just, just, just the guts to step up.
- MCMark Cuban
To be there.
- LFLex Fridman
To believe in yourself, to really reach. I mean, that's what matters. I mean, 'cause like some of the best business ideas are probably, uh, maybe even you on Shark Tank would laugh at.
- MCMark Cuban
Oh, for sure. You know, without question. The good ones, we're not gonna recognize every good one, and then sometimes we'll just motivate people to work even harder to get it done-
- LFLex Fridman
Yes, yes.
- MCMark Cuban
... 'cause of what we say to them, and, and that's fine too. You know, there's been great success stories that we said no to.
- LFLex Fridman
What stands out as like a memorable business on, uh, you've been pitched on Shark Tank? What, what's the best one that stands out in memory right now?
- MCMark Cuban
There's no best one, right? They're all different. Um, they're all best in their own way, I guess. The stupid ones and, you know... We haven't had any, you know, world or world-changing, earth-shattering ones, right? Because those aren't gonna apply to Shark Tank. They don't need us, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
You know, so we typically get businesses that need some help at some level or another. Um, but there's ones I've passed that I wish, like Spikeball. Do you know what Spikeball is?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
So it's this rebounding net that you can put on the beach and you have these yellow balls and you play a game of, you know, it's just a competitive game, but they're killing it.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
So if you go to beaches in New York or LA, you'll see kids playing it all the time. And it, it was a fun game, um, that I wish I had done a deal with. There's, and there's been others.
- LFLex Fridman
And you passed.
- MCMark Cuban
And I passed.... they, they were getting some traction and then they wanted to create leagues, Spikeball leagues, and they wanted me to be the commissioner. And I don't wanna be a commissioner of a new Spikeball (laughs) league.
- LFLex Fridman
So you have to kinda have this gut feeling of, "Will this scale? Will this click with people?"
- MCMark Cuban
Of course. Yeah. Can it be protected? Is it differentiated? Is it something that makes me think, you know, "Why didn't I think of that?"
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
Um, or is it just a good, um, solid business that's gonna pay a return to the, the founder, and may not be enough of a business to return to, um, an investor?
- 26:13 – 52:24
How Mark made first billion
- MCMark Cuban
- LFLex Fridman
Speaking of which, how did you make your first billion?
- MCMark Cuban
So my partner, Todd Wagner, and I, um, had... Would get together for lunches. And we were at California Pizza Kitchen in Preston Hollow in Dallas, and he was talking about, um, how we could use this new thing called the internet, this is late '94, early '95, to be able to listen to Indiana University basketball games.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Okay.
- MCMark Cuban
'Cause tha- that's where we went to school.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
And he was like, "Look, when we would listen to games, we would have somebody in Bloomington, Indiana, have a speakerphone next to a radio, and then we would have a speakerphone in Dallas, and, you know, a six-pack or 12-pack of beer, and we'd sit around listening to the game, because there was no other way to listen to it." So I was like, "Okay." My first company, MicroSolutions, you know, I'd written software, done network integration, and so I was comfortable digging into it. And so I'm like, "Okay, let's give it a try." So we started this company called Audionet, and effectively became the first streaming content company on the internet. And it... We were like, "Okay, we're not sure how we're gonna make this work," but we were able to make it work, and we started going to radio stations and TV stations, and, you know, music labels and everything. And, um, evolved to audionet.com, which was only audio at the beginning, to broadcast.com in 1998, which was audio and video, and became the largest multimedia site on the internet. Took it public, uh, in July of 1998. It had the largest first-day jump in the history of the stock market at the time.
- LFLex Fridman
(whistles)
- MCMark Cuban
And then a year later, we sold it to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in Yahoo! stock, and I owned, you know, right around 30% of the company, give or take. And so after taxes, that's what got me there.
- LFLex Fridman
Well, there's a lot of questions there. So the technical challenge of that, you're making it sound easy, but, uh, you wrote code, but still, in the early days of the internet, how do you figure out how to create this kind of, uh, product, of, of, of just audio at first and then video at first?
- MCMark Cuban
A lot of iterations, right? Like you talked about. Um, we started in the second bedroom of my house, set up a server. I got an ISDN line, which was 128K line, and set up, downloaded, Netscape Server, and then started using different file formats that were progressive loading, and allowing people to connect to-
- LFLex Fridman
Okay.
- MCMark Cuban
... the server and do a progressive download, so that the audio, you can listen to the audio while it was downloading onto your PC.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, was it super choppy? So you're trying to figure out how to-
- MCMark Cuban
Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. It would buffer, it was, yeah, it was, it was, it wasn't good, but it was a start.
- LFLex Fridman
But still was good enough 'cause it's the first, kind of?
- MCMark Cuban
Yeah, because there was no other competition, right? There was nobody else doing it.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
And so it was like, "Okay, I can get access to this, this, or this." And then there were some third-party software companies, Zing and, um, Progressive Networks and others, that were, that took it a little bit further. So we partnered with them, and I started going to local radio stations, where literally, we would set up a server. Right next to it, I had a $49, um, radio, the highest FM radio that I could find. And we'd take the output of the audio signal from the radio, with these two analog cables, plug it into the server, encode it, and make it available from audionet.com. Then I would go on UUNET bulletin boards, I would go on CompuServe, I would go on Prodigy, I would go on AOL, I'd go wherever I could find bodies, and I'd say, "Okay, we've got this radio station, KLIF in Dallas, that's got Dallas sports and Dallas, um, news and politics." And if you're in an office, or you're outside of Dallas, connect to audionet.com, and now you can listen to these things on demand. And that's how we started. And it started with one, one radio station, and then it was five, then it was 10, then it was video content, then it... Um, the laws were different then, so we could, um, literally go out and buy CDs-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
...and host them, and just let people listen to whatever music. And we went from, you know, 10 users a day to 100, to 1,000, to hundreds of thousands, to a million over those next four years.
- LFLex Fridman
How did you find the users? Uh, d- is it word of mouth?
- MCMark Cuban
Word of mouth.
- LFLex Fridman
Just word of mouth.
- MCMark Cuban
Okay. Didn't spend a penny on advertising.
- LFLex Fridman
So the thing you were focusing on is getting the radio stations and all that.
- MCMark Cuban
Oh, radio and TV, anything, any content at all.
- LFLex Fridman
Did you pick up the phone? What'd you do... Uh, how'd you, how-
- MCMark Cuban
I would, I, I, wherever I could.
- LFLex Fridman
What-
- 52:24 – 57:49
Dallas Mavericks
- MCMark Cuban
- LFLex Fridman
In 2000, I think January, you purchased a majority stake in the, the NBA team, Dallas-
- MCMark Cuban
Uh-huh.
- LFLex Fridman
... Mavericks, uh, for $285 million. So, at this point, maybe you can correct me, but it was one of the worst performing teams in franchise history. Uh-
- MCMark Cuban
It's true.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) How did you, how did you help turn it around?
- MCMark Cuban
Um, I had this big tall guy named Dirk Nowitzki.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
And I let him be Dirk Nowitzki, right?
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MCMark Cuban
And I got out of the way. Um, but I think more than anything else, um, there was the turnaround on the business side, and then there was the turnaround on the basketball side. And on the basketball side, I just went in there, immediately said, "Whatever it takes to win, that's what we're going to do." Um, you know, back then, they had three or four coaches that were responsible for everything. And I was like, "Okay, we spend more money training people on PC software than we do developing the most important assets of the business." So, I made the decision to go out there and hire like 15 different development coaches, one for each player. And everybody thought I was just insane. But, you know, it sent the message that we were gonna do whatever it took to win. And once p- the guys believed that, you know, winning was the goal, as opposed to just making money, attitudes changed, effort went up, and, you know, the rest is history.
- LFLex Fridman
So, the assets of the business here are the-
- MCMark Cuban
The players.
- LFLex Fridman
... the players.
- MCMark Cuban
Yeah, for sure. And then on, on the business side, the first question I asked myself is, "What business are we in?" And I really didn't know the answer im- immediately, but within the first few months, it was obvious that, you know, the, the entire NBA thought we were in the business of basketball. We were not. We were in the experience business. When you think about sporting events that you've been to, you don't remember the score, you don't remember the home runs or the dunks. You remember who you were with.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
And you remember why you went. "Oh, it was my first day with the girl who's now my wife," or, "I went with my buddies, and he threw up on the person in front of us." You know, "My dad took me, my aunt, my uncles took me." Those are the experiences you remember. And once, um, I conveyed to our people that this is what we were selling, that what happened in the arena, um, off the court was just as important as what happened on the court, if not more so. Because if, you know, mom or dad are bringing the 10-year-old, you have to keep them occupied.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MCMark Cuban
Because they have short attention spans. And so, you know, uh, I would get into fights with the NBA. You know, put aside the refs, but getting aside... in fights in the NBA, I would say the NBA ain't nothing but attorneys, right? Because they had no marketing skills whatsoever, and to their credit, you know, they realized that was a problem and started bringing in better and better and better marketing people.
- LFLex Fridman
So, part of the selling is you're selling the team, selling the sport, selling...... the people, the idea, the all of it, like just the-
- MCMark Cuban
Well, yeah, the experience. So if you, have you ever been to an NBA game?
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, Miami Heat.
- MCMark Cuban
Do you remember walking into the arena-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
... and you feel the energy?
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
Right? That's what makes it special.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, the energy is everything, especially playoff games, yeah.
- MCMark Cuban
Right, for sure, right? And even a regular season game, right, even against the worst team, you know, that's where we get, you know, because the tickets are, tend to be a little bit cheaper on the resale market, that's where parents will bring their kids. And so you hear kids screaming the entire game, and the parents are thrilled to death, right, they got to do something with their kids. The kids are thrilled to death because they got to see basketball, an NBA game, and scream at the top of their lungs. And, you know, if it turns out to be a close game and that ball's in the air, and if it goes in, you know, everybody's hugging and high-fiving people you've never seen before in your life. And if it misses, you're commiserating with people you've never seen be- That's such a unique experience that's unique to sports, and we never sold that. And that's exactly what we started selling.
- LFLex Fridman
I have to say, like just going to that game turned me around on basketball 'cause I'm more of a football guy. So basketball wasn't, like-
- 57:49 – 1:33:42
DEI debate
- MCMark Cuban
- LFLex Fridman
You've had a beef recently on Twitter, on X, with Elon over DEI programs. What to you is the essence of the disagreement there?
- MCMark Cuban
I wouldn't call it a beef, right? I, it's just-
- LFLex Fridman
It's a bit of fun?
- MCMark Cuban
Yeah. It's fun for me, right?
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MCMark Cuban
Um, I just, you know, it's his platform. He gets to run it any way he please. He pays for that right. And so I have total respect for whatever choices he makes, even if I don't agree with them. But because it's his platform, people are less likely to, um, disagree with him, uh, particularly somebody who's of, who's got a platform themselves. And so when we start talking about DEI, and it's just de facto racist, and this stuff, uh, stuff that I just think is nonsense, I have no problem, you know, sharing my opinion. Um, and, you know, if he disagrees, okay, he can disagree. I don't care, you know? And i- it's fun to engage, but he doesn't really engage, you know? He just comes back with snark comments, which is, you know, his choice.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, you, in your comments, well, you do a bit of snark too, but, uh-
- MCMark Cuban
In t- yeah, little bit. (laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) But you, you're pretty, um, let's say rigorous in your response. So there is some exchange of ideas. There's some snark, there's some fun, all that kinda stuff. And, uh, you do voice the opinion that represents a, a large number of people, and it's great. I mean, that, that's what's the-
- MCMark Cuban
Thanks.
- LFLex Fridman
... it's really beautiful. Uh, but just lingering on the topic, what to you is the good and the bad of DEI programs?
- MCMark Cuban
Really simple, right? D is diversity, and that means you just expand your pool of potential applicants to people who you might no- not otherwise have access to, you know, to look where you didn't look before, to look where other people aren't looking for quality employees. Um, that simple. And the E in equity means when you hire somebody, you put them in a position to succeed. The I, inclusion, is when you've hired somebody and they may not be typical, if you will, right? You show them some love and, and give them the support they need so they can do their job as best they can and feel comfortable and confident going to work. It's that simple.
- LFLex Fridman
So that's a beautiful ideal. When it's implemented, implemented poorly perhaps, or in a way that doesn't reach that ideal, do you see maybe when it's, uh, quota based, do you see that it can result in essentially racism towards Asian people and white people, for example?
- MCMark Cuban
There's a lot to unpack there, right? Um, so first, you can't do quotas. They're illegal unless the- you're, um, and I'm not the lawyer on this subject, but unless you're, you're trying to repair something that's happened in the past, like some discrimination that's happened in the past. So th- it's not quota based, and I think that's really just kind of a, a straw man that, that people put out there. Now, does that mean that there aren't DEI programs that are implemented poorly? Of course not. There are everything that's implemented poorly in one company to another, right? Sales, marketing, um, human resources. You can pick any element of business and find companies that implement it poorly. Um, but that's the beauty of capitalism in a free market, or mostly free market, where if you make these choices and they are the wrong choices, you're gonna lose your best people. You're not gonna be able to hire the best people. You're not gonna execute on your business plans in the way that we discussed, regardless of the size of the company. And it also, I think...... depends on where you're having the discussion. So when I'm in a different group of people off of X, the feedback's completely different (laughs) , right? Um, but to your question of reverse racism, yes, it happens. There's, I mean, 'cause people are people. There's no, you know, there's no human being that is 100% objective. And it's also, there's very, very, very few jobs that can be determined on a purely quantitative, quantitative basis, right? How do you tell one good jan- one janitor from the other, who's the best, right? How do you tell one salesperson that you're hiring versus another you're hiring 'cause they haven't sold your product yet, so you don't know. We talked earlier about firing people 'cause of you made mistakes. And, you know, yes, there's discrimination against any group, w- white, Asian, Black, green, orange, whatever it may be. But I truly believe that there's far more discrimination against people of color than there are people who are white. And I think it's, it's become a, a straw man that reverse discrimination because of DEI is, is prevalent or near ubiquitous.
- LFLex Fridman
Uh, well, much of American history was defined by intense radical racism and sexism.
- MCMark Cuban
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
But in the recent years, there's, uh, a correction, and I think the nature of the criticism is that there's an overcorrection where DEI programs at universities and companies are often, when they're not doing their job well, are often hard to criticize. Because when you criticize them within the company or so on, you can... They have a very strong immune system-
- MCMark Cuban
Right.
- LFLex Fridman
... whether you c- they c- if you criticize a DEI program, it seems like it's very easy to be called racist.
- MCMark Cuban
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
And if you're called racist or sexist, that's, that's a sticky label for some reason.
- MCMark Cuban
So you're getting into the culture of organizations, right, and leadership within organizations. And accepting any type of criticism, put aside DEI. When I criticized the referees in the NBA, I got fined, right? That was their ob- option. I knew what I was getting into, right? Not that they're completely analogous, but it's cause and effect. If I'm in a major company and I'm publicly criticizing or even internally criticizing a sales plan or a product, our product sucks, right? Where, like, there was a Google engineer that got fired for saying, you know, Google had AGI, right? And nobody believed they did, and they knew that created problems. Wasn't DEI related, but it was, you know, saying something publicly that was to the, in, in the CEO's eyes, to the detriment of the company, right? So I think those are all analogous. If you're trying to accomplish something within an organization because you think there's a problem and there's people speaking out saying, "Look, you, we're getting it wrong. I think I'm, I'm a victim of all this in the company," right? Then, you know, leadership has gotta make a decision. Do, do they agree or not agree? Are they right or are they wrong? Is it to the, the, positive, is it positive or negative to the company? And you decide. So, you know, this conversation that conservatives are being, um, silenced in organizations now, um, I just, I haven't seen it. You know, I've talked to... And then the other side of the, your question, I think, I'm packing it, is, um, what's driving all this? Put aside universities for one in- in corporate America. When I talk to people in corporate America about, um, DEI, they always start talking about ideology, right? And, like, I've talked to Bill Ackman, who you've had on, right? And when I asked him, "Well, Bill, you run your own companies. Who's telling you what to do?" "They are." "Who's 'they'?" "Well, it's the universities, you know, the people who have this ideology of DEI." I'm like, "Did they force you? Did they coerce you? Did, did you lose control of your company?" "No, it's not me. It happens to other people." Then I talk to other people, same thing. So I get, you know, uh, try not to go one-on-one and t- Twitter conversations on this topic. So in the DMs, I'll talk to people who are really f- um, conservative, and I'll ask the same question. Um, and I'll be like, "Well, who's forcing you to do this?" "Well, it's the ideology that's everywhere. You see it in, don't, didn't you see the Harvard thing, you know, and University of North Carolina?" I'm like, "I've never had anybody try to push me in this direction to do this. This was my business choice. I'm not trying to tell other people, 'You have to do this.' You make your own business choices." And so where companies have made their business choices, and if somebody doesn't feel confident or comfortable with it, they may feel they're being discriminated against. There was something I just read in the Wall Street Journal where the Wall Street Journal had a company interview two million people, right? And the difficulty in firing and how people, when they were fired, m- 40% of the people who were fired felt like it was wrong that they were doing a great job. Yet, they then I talked about the HR person going through the hassle of trying to explain to this person through performance reviews that they weren't doing a good job. Yet, the people still thought they were doing a great job, despite being told they're not doing a good job, right? So I see that as being an analogous to all this, you know, this huffing and puffing about, um, reverse discriminations and conservatives not being able to speak up. Because if 40% of people who have been fired don't believe they should have been fired, there's, there's a disconnect somewhere in how you think you're doing your job. And, um, if you just feel like, "I can't speak up because of it," um, because of you're white and that doesn't comport well with DEI programs-... a lot of things are gonna happen, right? Either you're gonna, that's gonna come up in your performance review. HR or your, your boss is going to have to address it in some way. It's gonna get to HR at some level and then decisions are going to have to be made. And comm- and you can't just fire somebody because they spoke up, right? Somebody's gonna have to communicate with you. And so I think a lot of... I just, I, I just don't trust the supposed volume that people say it's happening at, versus everything I've read and seen. And when I talk to people in positions of authority within organizations and ask them who's forcing them, you know, to implement these ideologies, nobody says, nobody says yes, that there is somebody. And, but on Twitter, it sounds great.
- LFLex Fridman
It is true for conservatives, but in general, you can sell books, you can get likes-
- MCMark Cuban
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
... when you talk about this ideology. And, and there's a degree to which is, is this woke ideology in the room with us right now? (laughs) Uh, meaning, like it's this boogey monster that we're all kinda, uh-
- MCMark Cuban
Or is it a positive?
- LFLex Fridman
I guess another way to say that is they don't highlight a lot of the positive progress that's been made in the positive version of the word woke, in terms of correcting some of the wrongs done in the past. So, but that said, you know, if you ask people in Russia, a lot of them will say, "There's no propaganda here. There's no censorship," and all that kind of stuff. It's sometimes hard to see when you're in it, that this kind of stuff-
- MCMark Cuban
For sure.
- LFLex Fridman
... is happening. It does seem difficult to criticize DEI programs, not horribly difficult, terrible, they're this monster that infiltrates everything. But it is difficult and it requires great leadership.
Episode duration: 2:13:14
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