FYI: In this week’s “Masters in Business” podcast, I talk with Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, co-founder of Broadcast.com and a regular on ABC’s “Shark Tank.”
The self-made billionaire is outspoken about, well, everything. He sits in the stands with the fans at Mavericks games, yells at the refs and gets big fines, too. Cuban makes a dollar-for-dollar matching donation to charity for every NBA fine he pays. The fans love it.
Cuban tells the story of the time he called Ed Rush, head of NBA officials, “incapable of even managing a Dairy Queen.” Sensing a public-relations opportunity, a Dairy Queen franchisee challenged the Mavericks owner to manage a Dairy Queen for the day. He agreed, and when he arrived at 6:30 a.m. in the morning, there was a line around the block with people who wanted to buy an ice cream cone from the owner of the Mavericks. Cuban even got a thank-you note from Warren Buffett. (Dairy Queen is a subsidiary of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.)
The far-ranging conversation covered everything from the Securities and Exchange Commission, which Cuban called “an out-of-control regulator,” to marijuana, which he says should be made legal so the government can stop wasting money incarcerating pot smokers, to the NFL’s Roger Goodell, who Cuban says gets paid $44 million a year to be a punching bag so the team owners don’t have to be.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/11/masters-in-business-mark-cuban/print/
