Brant Phillips Show 36: Run Your Business Like Mark Cuban

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Welcome everybody to the Brant Phillips Show. I’m Brant Phillips, and yes, this is the show dedicated to only one thing my friend, results, helping you create results in your life, in your business. Today, I’m going to talk about running your business like Mark Cuban. That’s right, running your business like Mark Cuban. Today, I’m going to start to showoff with a little bit of story time, a little Brant Phillip’s story time for you. I’m going to go back in time a little bit to when I had recently gotten out of college, graduated from college, I moved back to my hometown. My hometown is actually Dallas, Texas, not Houston like some of you may believe, but I was actually born and raised in the Dallas area, moved to Houston my freshman year in high school.

But anyways, I digress. After college, I decided to move back to Houston, and go hangout with some friends, and get a job up there. I became a police officer in the Dallas area. The only reason I’m sharing that story is because after I got back from the police academy, I began working. My parents came up to town. This was right after Thanksgiving, and I believe this was Thanksgiving of 1999. It could have possibly been 2000, but I believe this was 1999. My parents came up that weekend. I talked to my dad. I said, Dad, do you want to go to a Mav’s game. He’s like, yeah. That’s the Dallas Mavericks, so the NBA.

We decided to go to a Mavericks game. The Mavericks were atrocious at that time. They were the laughing-stock essentially of the NBA. They were, just year after year, the worst team in the NBA, or near the worst team in the NBA. However, things were beginning to change because they had recently been purchased by Mark Cuban, I think about a year before. I’m sure, I’m certain anyone listening to this show knows who Mark Cuban is, very extremely successful entrepreneur. I think he’s got a net worth of somewhere between three to four billion dollars. He’s on Shark Tank. I think he’s invested in maybe 100 companies on Shark Tank since he’s been doing that. Yeah, owns a lot of very successful businesses, very, very, very successful entrepreneur, and purchased the Dallas Mavericks around that time.

Here’s the story: My dad and I got some tickets. We got nosebleed tickets up at the third or fourth row at the top of the stadium, like super dirt cheap tickets because the team wasn’t good, but it was a holiday weekend, and it was actually pretty packed though that night. Around half time of the game, I told my day, hey, I’m going to go use the restroom, go grab some drinks, I’ll be back in a little bit. He stayed there. He didn’t want to go walk all the way down the steps and all that kind of stuff from the nosebleeds. I go to go to the restrooms, go to the concession stand, come back, and I’m walking up the stairs, and I’m like, there’s all this commotion going on up there.

I look, and who’s that next to my dad? It was Mark Cuban. I’m like, what in the hell is going on here? And so, Mark yells at me. He’s like Brant, what’s up, dude? I’m like, what’s up? I didn’t know what to say, like Mark Cuban is sitting here with my dad. He’s like giving me a high five. He’s like, come hang out with this man. And so, he hung out with us up in the nosebleed seats for a while, maybe five, ten, fifteen minutes, just hung out. The game had started. He’s yelling. There’s a reason he was up there. The game starts, and he’s yelling at the refs. He’s high fiving the fans, and just telling jokes, and just having a blast. After that, he ends up going around the stadium to other areas. He worked his way around the nosebleed section to just hang out with the fans.

The other part of that story was this, was Mark’s a pretty fiery dude. Those of you who know him, those of you who follow the NBA know that Mark’s a fiery dude. Around that time, he used to sit court side, but he was getting into it with the refs. He was yelling and screaming. He just an emotional guys. He’s an emotional dude, very much like myself. He was getting in trouble. He was getting fined. He was getting banned from games to the point where he couldn’t go to the game for a game or two, or something like that. He was getting fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, he started going up into the stands, partially because he didn’t want to get fined, and he could say whatever he wanted from up there because the refs couldn’t hear him. But the other reason was just to kind of get to know the people, like be with his people, his clients, not necessarily his clients, but his customers, the fans of his team, and just to be with them, right? Just kind of feel that energy, and connect with them.

There’s a lot of take aways from that lesson because I’ve never seen another NBA owner, or much less a professional sports owner, that does that. You see some things like this a little bit, kind of, sort of, with this Undercover Boss kind of show, and things like that, but Mark wasn’t disguising himself. He was right there with everybody. I think it’s really important. I think it’s really important to understand the importance of mimicking, and having that mindset of being a successful entrepreneur who doesn’t view themselves better than everybody else, right? This is a very pertinent lesson to real estate investors. It’s really important that you get on the level with the people in the nosebleed seats, so to speak.

Mark was wearing blue jeans and t-shirts. I got my picture taken with him, everything like that, that night. I’ll post it on my website specific to this podcast now that I’m thinking about it. Because a t-shirt and blue jeans kind of guy, and whether you respect everything he says and does, which you probably don’t, but that’s cool because guess what? He remains true to himself, and he gets on the level with the people in the nosebleed seats, and the workers, and just the average Joe people. I’ve seen this parallel in the real estate world with how certain investors treat their contractors, right?

I’ve seen this as a positive side, like we take really good care of our contractors. We take care of them, not only financially, but we have BBQs, we have picnics, invite their families out. We owner finance homes to a lot of our workers, but most important, we just treat them with respect. I see a lot of guys in this business, and they talk down to their contractors. They talk down to other people in their business to their employees. One, I just don’t respect that. Two, I don’t think it’s sustainable. You’re going to lose people. What are you building? Because, when you’re building and investing business, for me, creating net worth, creating cashflow, creating equity, and everything we do in real estate, it’s freaking awesome. But it’s so much more incredibly impactful when you’re doing it and you’re building a legacy at the same time, and creating genuine authentic relationships, right? At the same time, while you’re making money, you also have respect, friendship, comradery with the people that you do business with.

That’s the reason I’m sharing this story. It came up, I was sharing this story the other day in the office with some of my staff. I told them about when I met Mark Cuban because we were talking about Shark Tank, or something like that. I just started thinking about the story. If you want to be like the best, you need to think like the best, right? You need to do the things that the best do. So, that was some of the things that I was thinking about. I saw Mark Cuban, this dude, like I said, respect everything he says, or not, he expresses his mind, right? He expresses his mind, and he doesn’t seem to be worried about the consequences, right? To thine own self be true.

There’s things to take away from that for yourself. It’s like always be willing to express your mind and your thoughts, and not worry about the consequences, leave it all on the table, be willing to take risk. In other words, always be real and authentic. In another one of my podcasts I talked about, you do you. You just do you, and don’t worry about anything else. Don’t worry about the naysayers, my friend. You run your business the way, in your heart, you feel called to do, and you take the risks that you need to take, and you take care of the people. You take care of the people that are going to help you get there because you’re not going to get there alone.

And another thing about Mark, I’ll tell you, the dude, I just know that he works his ass off, he busts his butt. I’m going to share a little quote I found from Mark Cuban I found online. He says, “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do, or don’t do it.” So my friends, I know, why not be a little like Mark Cuban. Light a little fire, add a little realness to who you are, and your business, and don’t forget the little people, and my friend, I think you’ll be just fine. Well, that’s it my friends. Just begin taking action, and start taking action today in your life, and in your business, and once again, I thank you so much for listening to my show, my friends. I look forward to helping you create results in your life and in your business.