TrueValueMetrics ... Impact Accounting for the 21st Century

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PEOPLE MARK CUBAN Brian Tyler Cohen: Mark Cuban deals NIGHTMARE blow to Trump PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqDPrv8oFyY Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I have known the name Mark Cuban for a very long time, without linking the name to the many interesing and important things that he had done. So this was a useful introduction to him ... and a lot more imortant than I expected. I am particularly interested in his pharmaceutical initiative ... I need to follow up! Peter Burgess
Mark Cuban deals NIGHTMARE blow to Trump Brian Tyler Cohen Sep 16, 2024 3.21M subscribers Interviews with Brian Tyler Cohen INTERVIEW: Brian interviews Mark Cuban about Trump’s debate disaster, Elon Musk’s use of Twitter to spread disinformation, and what he’s doing with CostPlus Drugs to bring drug prices down. Check out Cost Plus Drugs: https://costplusdrugs.com/ For more from Brian Tyler Cohen: Order my #1 NYT bestselling book SHAMELESS: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/s... YouTube (español): / @briantylercohenespanol Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/36UvEHs Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0066rKC... Twitter: / briantylercohen Instagram: / briantylercohen Facebook: / briantylercohen Newsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-up/ TikTok: / briantylercohen Substack: https://plus.briantylercohen.com Suit by JB Clothiers: https://jbclothiers.com/btc Transcript 0:00 I'm joined today by Mark cubin thank you so much for joining thanks for having me so I want to start off with the debate because obviously that's the biggest piece of news that we're focused on right now do you think that Donald Trump made any inroads with those independent voters that he needs to be speaking to after the performance he handed in at this debate depends which way the lean right because there's independent but very few people are truly independent right um if you were trying to be objective about objective about it no he obviously did not but if you were looking for certain things um then maybe right because he was everything he is all the time so you weren't surprised yeah well in in a way if he is if he is who he is then presumably if if you enjoyed that you already are supporting him anyway well you would think so right but you might as like I had friends in Texas right because it's Republican and it's like well you know I I didn't see anything that would stop me from voting for him right so he didn't admit to too many crimes right he didn't admit to shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue I mean I mean I guess when the bar is is that low that like exactly right right but he 1:00 is who he is what do you think about the the implications of of being able to be baited so easily that all KLA Harris needed to do was dangle a few things out there a few crowd siiz a few rallies your dad gave you money and he would immediate and she would she would hook crazy yeah those are the kind of guys you want to negotiate against because you can be in a negotiation for any type of business or any type of circumstances and just hit them with something that's going to piss them off or freak them out and you have the edge right because they're going to lose some of their confidence and they're going to lose some of their objectivity and they're going to lose some of their minds so it's just it's a huge Edge well that goes against the message that he's trying to convey which is that um which is that you want him in the negotiating room against the tough Partners can you can you talk on that dichotomy there sure of course right I mean it's not like Putin or Z or any you know um leader of a nation state didn't pay attention right and didn't notice what happened and so of course now you might be more subtle in how you approach it um it could be like leaving something on a table in front of trump say Trump crowd size is down 30% you might not have to 2:03 say a word right it could be someone saying something to um one of the other people in the room right an assistant talking to an assistant boy we're really sorry to hear that hear that you know Donald Trump's crowd sizers have fallen and then just just sets everything off it's just so easy you know that's a problem Donald Trump also keeps talking about this idea that the way to handle the economy is by imposing tariffs and he's been corrected about this numerous times but one Hallmark of who Donald Trump is is that he never backs down and so and so because he said it once this is now his his position and he's going to stay with his position forever it's the Roy clone School of Management exactly right um can you talk about what will actually happen if tariffs are imposed as a as a principle tariffs can Encompass multiple things right so you know and he brought up in the debate look the um Biden Administration did not remove the Chinese tariffs that he already had in place and so it's not a bad thing to impose tariffs for um when there's a strategic need so if there's another country like China who is dumping particular um products whether 3:05 it's washing machines cars and they're or they're subsidizing the equivalent of dumping right so if that nation state is um providing money to the manufacturing or the only manufacturing so they're competing unfairly that's okay to impose tariffs on what doesn't work are Revenge tariffs and across the board tariffs those are a disaster because they affect every product so if he would have said um and even KLA if she would have said look tariffs aren't necessarily bad if they're strategic and that's why we didn't remove the ones that are in place but the idea of um taxing everything and anything specifically because I don't like the people were from or the country where it's originating is insane because that truly is the sales tax that Comm is talking about um and not only is it a tax um to be paid on that product that's being imported but there's also an additional tax on the company because you have to deal with all the 4:00 administration of filing the forms for the tariffs or hiring a broker dealing with the recordkeeping so all these things particularly if you're a smaller company right becomes not just a tariff on the tax on the um buyer of the products but or a tax on the buyer of the products but also attack on the smaller company that's implementing it or even a big company for that matter we look at Donald Trump how he handled the economy when he was president um how he did impose tariffs how he basically dried up federal revenue Vues to pay to make those Farmers whole when when that trade War um kind of went South and so still you have a lot of people who look back at the Trump economy kind of with rose-colored glasses what do you say to people who say oh the economy was better when Donald Trump was president look we're always nostalgic right and the whole idea of being a conservative is to conserve what was already in the past right so it's not a surprise and you know you're not going to just all of a sudden get someone to change their mind if their mind is set on that but we I mean we can all give examples of scenarios where you know Eon you know if 5:02 you if you just want to do apples to apples the inflation rate for I think it was Obama was like 2.4% on average and then it went up to 2.9% um with trump it was either 1.4 to 1.9 or 2.4 to two whatever it is it increased right and so it's not like everything was perfect and you also had a situation where 2018 and 2019 he was asking for the the FED to reduce interest rates because he wanted to pump up the economy and he wanted more um QE quantitative easing well let me just tell you QE quantitative e easing is one of my friend says is Ubi for rich people right because when you push down interestate rates like that the value of of expensive assets just go up higher and more people can afford them and so while you had an economy where folks like me with a lot of money truly benefited and and there's an inflationary value to assets that we owned the people who do the work they didn't they didn't have have this big beneficial gain the tax rates didn't help them all that much right the um 6:05 prices um while they weren't high no one was put in a better position to succeed when you look at the business Community I think I think there is there is kind of this overarching belief that Donald Trump is better for business if by if for nothing else than the reason that he just says it a lot no that's it right yeah but if you look at small business applications for example right now they're the highest that they've ever been under the B applications under the B ation can you talk about the I guess the dichotomy between what Donald Trump is seeking to do and and and the purportedly Pro business ideas that he says he's putting forward with the fact that right now using this Democratic model is when we have the highest small business applications in modern American history so business can mean a lot of different things right it's a solo entrepreneur who comes on Shark Tank with just is the only person in the entire company had a dream and this is their American dream or it could be you know apple and and Nvidia and the 7:00 biggest highest market caps in the world right um Donald Trump certainly has made it made an effort to support those larger companies through lower corporate rates um through um other types of um opportunities that he's created for him but he's done nothing nothing for the small business person right you don't you hear KLA Harris talking about efficiency when it comes to starting a business you hear K Harris talking about raising the deduction from 5,000 which is meaningless number these days in starting a business to 50,000 right you hear um her talking about child tax credits with if you're starting a business and you can pay for child care for you know your children or child that allows you the freedom to go start a business right so she's talked over and over again about the um economic opportunities that she's trying to create for small to medium-sized business um and she's just used the term entrepreneurs and Founders over and over again you haven't heard that from Donald Trump at all whether he was in office or 8:00 since then that's just not in his DNA I asked a question on Twitter um had he ever invested in a startup or a company that didn't involve any of his relatives and nobody could give me an answer right I I didn't know the answer and I didn't know what to expect because there could have been 20 companies he helped somebody you know friends of his son friends of whoever nobody came up with a single company and to me that says volumes about who he is because I've kind of to me it's rewarding when I go out invest in startups right if I'm helping somebody else chase the American dream or reach the American dream that's why I do shark tank right to help all these companies it's a beautiful thing right that's what makes this country different than so many others he doesn't think that way and so he's not thinking in terms of smaller companies startups the Etsy companies the eBay resellers right he could care less and to me that's a great fail and while you know K on the flip side said okay we had 5 million or whatever business applications we're going to 25 million right that's what drives the economy 68% of jobs are from smaller companies is it 9:03 not just tax cuts for the top one half of 1% because you always have to ask you know what changes behavior and changing tax um corporate taxes from 21 changing from 35 to 21 okay you can expect some CH Behavior change changing from 21 to 15 but also putting constraints that it's only if you are not importing any products that's ridiculous right um going from 21 to 28 that's not going to really change anybody's Behavior yeah uh how cataclysmic is it that we have Business Leaders Fortune 500 Business CEOs for example none of whom have come out in favor of Donald Trump for a republican nominee for president this is the purportedly Pro business party for him to have no avowed support from any of these CEOs so I'll say this and it's a little bit off path from what you're getting to parties really don't matter right now in this election right I think we saw Donald Trump just take over the Republican party right Mitt Romney was the candidate before him he's 10:01 nothing like Mitt Romney he just took it over and made in his we're seeing the same thing with KLA right this is not about Democratic ideas this is about KLA Harris's values and relating to the American people the you know the opportunity economy that's what makes this so amazing and I think that's why so many big business people have gravitated to support the VP because they understand that kamla her values are what are going to make her different her values are what makes her stand apart from the Republican party and the Democratic party for that matter she wants to bring people together and that's so different from what Donald Trump wants and that's what companies need in order to be successful when there's partisanship and division it's hard to run a business I gave a speech this morning right we had a conversation and one of the things they said is don't talk about the election because we have Republicans that work here you know I should say Trump supporters and Harris supporters and she understands that and the CEOs understand that in order to be 11:05 Max optimally successful you need an United Country just not only from a sales perspective but just the culture of your organization you don't want to have to worry about saying the wrong thing because we are so partisan you want to be able to manage your business you know as a unified organization and that's becoming more and more difficult can you speak for a moment and then I want to move change topics here but speak for a moment on on what the volatility that Trump would bring how that how that kind of manifests itself in the business world if he doesn't know what what he's going to say next how are businesses going to be able to um anticipate or prepare for what comes next it's critically important to have some sanity and some reliability in laws and in regulations um you know and I will say I try to be as objective as possible Right what where Donald Trump is so you know when she talks about chaos that's absolutely right but you know KLA has some some work to do um in 12:02 terms of like Gary gendler at the SEC and maybe Lena Khan at the FTC but the good news is I think she recognizes that right she recogniz and she has said this out loud that she is for bright line regulations as opposed to regulation via litigation and I create that that contrast because we have no idea where Donald Trump is going and KLA Harris has recognized there are frailties and Imperfections in the current government and she's going to do the work to make it so that this is not only great for business but for the people who work for those businesses and have their own lives are trying to live so the flip side of these these CEOs and businesses that we've been talking about is the um Silicon Valley billionaires and a lot of them are going more and more not not only toward Trump but outspokenly toward Trump so what's driving this move to the right is it just money is it just tax rate or is it something a little bit more Insidious it's I don't know if it's Insidious but it's yeah it probably is first let me say there's a lot who are switching back they just won't say it 13:04 cuz I'm having those conversations yeah right because I think Joe Biden's administrator made a mistake where he would not even talk to people in Silicon Valley wouldn't even have a conversation KLA is the exact opposite right if it's not her it's people in her campaign that are talking to these folks who felt like if I can't talk to the administration at all you know how can I make sure that we're aligned well comma is having those conversations and I can tell you I've talked to multiple people who were on those lists of people who supported Trump who ain't supporting Trump no more but back to answer your question um I think they believe they can manipulate him I think they understand that he's so transactional and so devoid of core values that anything that they want they can manipulate him to get now it's a corollary to the old adult in the room with Trump thing but the bad news is we saw what happened to the adults who walked into the room they all turned on him right and I think a lot of Silicon 14:02 Valley has that arrogance um and I look most very successful entrepreneurs have that arrogance to a certain extent right and they believe that they can manipulate them and I think that's what's happening and is that is I mean you can draw a straight line from Peter teal to JD Vance to Donald Trump and and is that kind of does that fit into the kind of what exactly what you're saying yeah for sure for sure that is the influence that they're seeking I mean it's not like JD Vance I mean he's if he's funded by the Peter teals of the and then get into the White House it's not like Donald Trump has any long long held principles deeply held principles he's 78 years old right so if he does get elected then you know there's nothing that says he's not going to take you know a more accelerated path of um cognitive decline and so who's next in line right right and who you know who is that vice president beholden to you know maybe not overtly but come on I don't whether it's me or you or somebody invest in our business and gives us a start you're going to have an obligation to them at some level when you have this this group of of tech billionaires the 15:04 the Elon musks of the world the the Mark Zuckerberg's I mean you you got you got your for you you started off your your career you know in in in Tech um I guess I guess the question is how did you get out you know like is like like an escaping Amish Hotel California right but like these guys I mean you know you had you had Mark Zuckerberg who I think was looking for any excuse to support Donald Trump and and when we had the ass I know that if he's really supported Donald Trump right I know he came out and said you know that when Donald Trump unfortunately was shot it was tragic and he showed leadership and all that and that's fine I think he was just trying to create balance so he could just get out completely that was my interpretation Elon on the other hand on is all in yeah yeah elon's all in I mean that's why I like to with Elon on Twitter right because um excuse my French but oh it's all good we this is YouTube baby okay so um I think Elon again the same principle elon's one smart guy right and and I know he 16:00 believes he hasn't told me but I know he believes he's much smarter than Donald Trump if you listen to the podcast they did together right you can tell there were times particularly as they talked about the environment and nuclear right and Dei that I I could just see Elon rolling his eyes at that time right I got to ask you this about Elon because this is what kind of blows my mind if you are the the CEO of an EV company and your and your and your audience your uh your your uh consumer base is presumably people who buy EVS because they have some semblance of an understanding about climate change or whatever it is what what like how does that make sense from a business perspective to then get to completely red pill yourself to go all in to basically to to not only abandon your your core Market but then throw your weight behind a political party for whom climate change isn't even a real concern because having the power to manipulate the most powerful man in the world is far more valuable than any 17:02 amount of EV sales from Tesla just being able to be the Puppet Master yeah and he's already come out and said that he would work in Trump's Administration and that's fine right being you know trying to increase the efficiency I've had the same conversations with um the Harris campaign about okay what can we do to increase efficiency to make it easier for businesses etc etc right so that's all fine and good there's no knock on Elon for that but but you know if you're the wealthiest person in the world and you have control effective control you're the Puppet Master of the president the the most powerful person in the world oh my God that's about as intoxicating that is the def the definition of power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely yeah I mean that's why I mean I would if I was had the same goal I wouldn't care about my EV sales right I wouldn't care about my starlink sales you know and I know no one else is Laing Rockets like me look I give Elon as an entrepreneur entrepreneur he is the entrepreneur of Our Generation and maybe the entrepreneur for the next five 18:03 generations we don't know but but in terms of his quest for power that's different from being an entrepreneur and you talk about Insidious yes right you see it in Twitter you see it in his comments you seen his lack of responsibility I mean when you look at Twitter specifically right and if you don't want to go into a technical tangent just let me know no no keep going you're good um but the way Twitter's algorithms that he's published so far effectively work is Whoever has the most reach allows you to reach the most people who in turn reach more people it's like a tree right the tree algorithm and he knows that whatever he says and does reaches the maximum amount amount of people and the people that he responds to that amplifies what they do and so everybody on Twitter's got that foru page to the left right that they see first and if you just go and create a random burner account to see what's fed to you it's all leaning the way um Elon wants you to yeah uh you know he 19:02 he is a new surrogate to the Trump campaign but I think he's pretty quickly embraced a lot of the ideals of the Trump campaign anyway I mean just recently when Taylor Swift came out and endorsed Harris Elon appropo of nothing came on the Twitter and wrote fine Taylor you win I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life so I guess if Republicans are trying to beat the weird the creepy allegations the weird allegations perhaps coming on to Twitter and volunteering to impregnate somebody but you got you got to look for me okay I I'll I'll defend him a little bit there right so yeah it's kind of insane right but I sent Elon a text text one time I'm not friends I don't want to suggest we're friends right we just texted back and forth a few times and he had just had a child and I said congrats on your 90th child and his response was Mars Needs people right so that's just elon's sense of humor right I have no problem throwing Elon under the bus but I'll I'll save it for when it's truly deserved okay so Switching gears here a little bit I I do want to talk about Cost Plus drugs um first of all what is 20:00 it and how are you able to accomplish what you're doing so I got a cold email from a doctor Alex oshansky right he's a radiologist brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant person and he wanted to do what's called a compounding pharmacy where it's a pharmacy that can manufacture drugs that are in short supply and I said well you're thinking too small right you don't want to just do things that are that are on the shortage list what else can we do and it was right around the same time that the farmer bro Martin scy was going to jail and I asked him question um if this this dude right can increase the price of this drug called Derr by 700% or whatever it was right this is not an efficient market what's going on here and he started explaining what he did buying out the I'm like let me do a little homework so I did my homework and it was very obvious very quickly that the reason healthc care generally and the pharmacy industry specifically is so out of whack is because there's no transparency none like if you think if you get a prescription from the doctor um they say well what pharmacy do you use no one discuss price right no one 21:02 discuss affordability no one discuss anything about whether or not you have to give up food or rent or daycare in order to afford your medications and so I was like okay we can really have an impact here let's create this site if the URL is available and it was cost plusd drugs.com and what we're going to do diff differently is when you go to the site and you put in the name of the medication we're going to show you our cost and then we're going to show you we only mark it up 15% and for mail order here's what you pay for shipping and handling and a pharmacy fee to look at and review it and for local pickup through our team um Pharmacy Network same thing right we charge $12 so that the um pharmacist gets paid when you add that together our prices were insanely lower than the incumbents presumably in in in a in a capitalist economy there would have been companies prior to Cost Plus that would have done that and yet it was completely in the opposite direction mean these people the Martin scres of the world were seeing how much they could squeeze and that's what it is the entire healthcare industry is an 22:00 Arbitrage everybody looks to squeeze something here something there something here and what's happened is it's fallen on just a few players to be to dominate the industry it's like 80 85% or more of um Pharmacy prescriptions and something similar not quite as much in the health care side and because like if you're running your business right and you're trying to buy health care for your employees whether you have 10 50 100 or a million right your core compeny as a CEO is not understanding Healthcare right and so these big companies come in and say we're the biggest right so and so does business with us we'll do business with us and they do I come in and say you're getting ripped off right Mr Cohen you're buying at a high price you're paying too much for your healthare here's why here's the transparency ask your current vendors your your Pharmacy vendors for transparent pricing and they can't get it and so now you're seeing a real switch we've only been shipping two and a half years and we have millions of customers and it it's just insane because people want to be able to trust Healthcare and to to this point they have not been able to are the big players not doing anything to stop you 23:05 oh yeah they're trying right like they're telling manufacturers not to to work with say how are you allow how are you able I mean I'm assuming they're not vertically integrated right the man they are we're not the Manu the the drug manufacturers and the drug and the drug retailers oh no no no no so those are not vertically integrated so so is anybody trying to stop you from reaching the the drug manufacturers oh yeah for sure yeah so there's things called Pharmacy benefit managers right yeah the pbms and the pharmacy benefit managers have relationships with companies and their insurers um and the Brokers that support them they have relationships with the manufacturers and what they're saying to the manufacturers are do not do business with Cost Plus drugs or what there's no or what or or the or what is from a manufacturer's perspective there's a thing called the formulary right so let's just say you're working for a huge company that has a a million employees and you have a drug that is used um for or whatever it doesn't matter right and they're and you have a competitor in that space they're going to say if you deal with Cost Plus 24:04 drugs we are not going to put you on our formulary which means your competitor has exclusive access to these millions and millions of lives so are you sure you want to do business with Cost Plus drugs now they don't put that in writing and they're not allowed to say it that's straight a trade but that's exactly what they do say and so how do you how do you overcome that so we go slowly but surely like one manufacturer at a time we started with generics and then we've got like 72 SKS from Brands and we'll keep on adding more so if you go to cplus drugs.com put in the name of the the medication and if we don't carry it then just make a request there's a form there to to request that um when we do add it you'll be notified because we went from 111 drugs when we started to 2500 now so we'll keep on growing and and is this happen this is happening in conjunction with the government also being able to negotiate lower drug prices they've only got 10 drugs right now the inflation reduction act but do you think that this between you between what we're with the inflation reduction act that this is going to lead to some type of kind of overhaul of at least at least the drug 25:04 Market I mean I'm I'm not so Del you know in healthcare too right so there's two pieces to that right there's the IRA the inflation reduction act which really because it's been in place the effort to create it was um ongoing from like 2020 before we launched so it's a response for the sit the the circumstances before we launched right and it was it's a great response for that but what's missing and what would reduce prices even more than the IRA is full transparency and so if every contract that has to do with healthare whether it's a state contract a federal contract you know your company right for your your employees if all those contracts with any healthcare related business were published and completely transparent the price of medications in this country would drop at least 30 to 40% extend that when one of my companies is trying to do this extend that to healthcare not just Pharmacy and the price of Healthcare in this country across the board drops 30 to 40% you 26:01 mentioned pbms isn't the job of pbms to do effectively what you are doing yes that's their state job right they they present themselves as being there to negotiate lower drug prices but but they're effectively but isn't isn't what's happening is that the companies are inflating prices so that the pbms can come in and bring the prices down to where they would have been if they weren't just artificially inflated anyway and then they scrape some off the top so they get they get your homework yeah 100% right and so they manipulate I mean there is there's a whole trunch of people in the healthcare industry who exist only to to to to frame themselves to position themselves as if they're helping you but just to get paid just to take money they're not don't offer anything yeah you know so I've given many of speech to companies right and and I ask the question all the time because they they do contracts with pbms I always ask a question what is the one thing that a PBM the big biggest pbms do for you that's unique and you can't get anywhere else and I've yet to see anybody raise their hand yeah not 27:04 once there's nothing unique but what they do is you talked about what's called spread pricing right so they negotiate a lower price and then they get rebates off of those prices but they don't fully pass on the rebates and they keep a part of that rebate that's the spread that they keep but they tell but as part of that spread that they don't keep they pay it in the form they aggregate that in the form of a rebate that they pay upfront so if my company buys $10 million worth of drugs a course the over the course of the year and on top of that they're um they have a discount which allows them to make 500,000 they may pay me you know two million of that and scrape off 500,000 to a million themselves right but they'll tell me they're passing the whole thing on right right because they create all these subsidies in Switzerland and Japan and wherever just to be able to misprice things to to um corporations what's your what's your pitch to people who may not have heard of Cost Plus drugs who you know if you 28:01 if you want to tell them anything about it sure thank you um no matter what medication you you prescribe to even if you have insurance you probably have a co-pay go to cplus drugs.com put in the name of the medication and there's a chance that if even if you're insured we're cheaper than your co-pay or your co- insurance if you're not insured and you have to pay cash we're definitely definitely going to be cheaper than anybody else out there the other thing I said is very very important one of the things that the pbms do is let's just say you have um a prescription for elquist right and you want to go to your local independent pharmacist and because you've been dealing with them you know your entire life maybe or your family has and they and your your company pays whatever price for it the PBM will not reimburse the independent pharmacist for the full amount of what they paid their wholesaler for that drug so they may have paid $540 for that elquist your company may be paying the PBM $600 and but the PBM is only reimbursing the 29:02 pharmacy $500 so the pharmacist was losing on every brand subscription prescription that you're that's sent by your company and many most companies to that independent pharmacist which is forcing those independent pharmacists to go out of business it's striking to me that when when people say what would you do if you had a billion dollars and and when you don't have a billion dollars most people say that they would help people and when you do have a billion dollars what we're seeing is that most people don't see would you be surprised it's just that most people don't take credit right right or or I mean I'm being I'm being reductive like but you know we we do see the Elon of the world who have used their their their Capital right now and their voice to you know to platform disinformation and whatnot like and and kudos to you for for using the the platform that you have to to to solve one of you know the most pervasive and uh I'm trying I'm not there yet but I'm trying yeah I do want to go back to to politics for just a moment um you know one issue that we heard at the debate was Donald Trump uh airing this this piece of disinformation 30:01 that immigrants that Haitian immigrants are are eating pet dogs and cats we don't have to talk about that it's it's obvious that's nonsense but but the the Practical consequence of that is now we know that Haitian immigrants are keeping their kids home from school that there's um that that their that their homes and property is being attacked as the result of that and this is this is predictable right like we've seen when Donald Trump issues his claron call to his supporters January 6th it happened with Co and and the Kung flu that's what he was saying then then there was a spike in violence islamophobia right the whole nine yards anti-Semitism yeah can can you speak on on on just your reaction to that um as we as we see you know someone like Donald Trump use his platform not to do any semblance of good but but rather to kind of vilify people that he so that he can help himself politically yeah that's a Roy coh School of Management right you demonize and demonize and demonize and give credit to nobody else and that is is the antithesis of good leadership that's the antithesis of good character that's the antithesis of being ethical that's who Donald Trump is I've known 31:05 him for 25 years I'm never going to say we were best friends but he is the most unethical um lack character dishonest person I've ever done business with or worked with why does that matter though like people are going to look at that and say I don't care he's he's an but he's our he's my yeah yeah yeah character is Destiny right you don't know the one thing about the presidency of the United States you don't know what's coming next the past is no predictor of the future you have no idea what what the next problem is you have to deal with on a small or large basis like Co for that matter right and you want somebody who has character because that has empathy that has um a willingness to learn and understand um and you want somebody that is ethical when it comes to making difficult decisions I I can't even imagine why people 32:00 consider Donald Trump because of his lack of character and ethics because when that tough time comes to make a decision he's only going to listen to himself and we've seen how that works out we saw it worked out on the debate right if he's not going to listen to anybody for a debate right and when he's trying to convince people to vote for him when you have 40 or 44 cabinet members disavow him and say you shouldn't vote for him when you have you know former pres Republican presidents and senators and current Senators come out and saying don't vote for him that is not a man of character you know they would have given him the benefit of the doubt if he if they believed in his ethics or his character or that he was honest and that tells you all you need to know you don't want somebody like that making dealing with the uncertainty and I and as bad as lack of Ethics lack of character lack of honesty is the fact that he makes no effort to learn anything this is one of the few human beings on the planet that get Dumber in front of our face every single day it's not like you can't think of one thing where it says I think you know that's 33:00 really smart right or or that's really nuanced or he really understood that topic with some depth yeah not one time and that's what's so maddening and infuriating about the whole thing and I get like I had a friend when he first ran I said how can you vote for this guy and I told him stories that you know experience I've had with him goes Mark let me tell you something I've been voting for politicians my entire life you know what they've ever done for me nothing I don't want a politician anymore and there's some people that get just glom on to that so strongly they don't care about anything else but the flip side of that is isn't he the the worst manifestation of all of the things that they hate about politicians yeah of course he did nothing for not only did he do nothing for for the working class for the regular class but he got into office under the pretense of actually helping those people there was no infrastructure plan there was no there was no cheaper and more comprehensive healthcare plan was no uh job boom I 34:00 literally in in 2019 I was working on a plan a predecessor to um Cost Plus and I went and sat in the Oval Office with them right and tried to pict them I talked to um a variety of people around in the hhsa and it it was it my plan still needed a lot of work for sure but I tried to explain it to him it's like anything else with Donald just he's not going to try to get into any details but to your point right he's he's he's the type of salesperson so if you don't look at him as a politician and you just look at him purely as a salesperson you know he's the type of salesperson that will say anything to get the sale we've all had to deal with them right yeah and that's who he is but he's a good salesperson and he will he will connect to you at a visceral level and understand what your fears are and sell you on fixing those fears and then he'll amplify those fears you know oh your computer's going like in technology your computer's going to 35:02 crash you're going to get hacked hacking is the worst it's ever been by my software right that's who he is it has nothing to do with whether or not the software works but if I can get you to become afraid of Haitians of black people of Jews whoever it is trans people gay trans people whatever right anybody then I can sell you on the fact that I'm your guy because when you're selling something that is isn't discreet right it's more General like cyber security right or fear that you know um your your community is being taken over by these immigrants that's the easiest sale in the world and that's why so many people follow him because if I tell you you have more reason to be afraid and then I give you reasons why you can be more afraid and even if I don't tell the truth about how I'm going to fix it if I lie my ass off and you know I'm a liar but hey at least you're 36:00 giving me a shot to fix it whereas kamla is Joy she's hope and I think and I believe and and I hope that people are ready for the change that they're tired of just being demon of everybody around them being demonized right and that the number of people who have been been demonized speak to the people around them and get out and vote and say look it's time to change I think so long as they can keep certain people afraid of other people keep them distracted so that nobody's paying attention to what's happening at the top can you talk to the speak on this idea that if you're appealing to rural white people um who who are are lower class or working class this idea that the that the the group that they need to be afraid of most or the group that's taking from them is immigrants and so kind of creating class Warfare or or demographic Warfare sure can you speak on that because of course a strategy that they rely on so so and they do it well right and they do it 37:01 well unfortunately it's like the boogeyman right the boogeyman exists right it's like why are scary movies so successful right because if you don't if your life doesn't really connect you or give you experience with things that are different it's easy to be afraid of but is there one pie and if somebody else is taking from that pie no of course not that's not the wayal to you no of course not it's not a zero sum game right that's what I'm getting right it's not a zero game and that's to to kamla's um you know that's what KLA is trying to explain right it's an opportunity economy where if we can grow the economy so that everybody benefits there's nothing that can happen there's nothing that a Haitian can do or anybody can do for that matter that's going to stop an entrepreneur for being an entrepreneur right right you can't stop me I don't care who the you are right if if there's a good business you come on Shark Tank and and it's a great idea and a great opportunity and there's product Market fit doesn't matter Nothing Else Matters we are going to kick ass right not all of them are going to succeed but the idea that that person is going to 38:04 take away from you is insane right but I understand why it resonates with people because look I've been broke I've been sleeping on the floor I've been you know Five Guys in a three-bedroom apartment and when you're in that circumstance it sucks right and if somebody tells you it's not your fault that it sucks it's these or them or those you know it's better than admitting you know to yourself that okay you know I've got it hard and that's just my life yeah right when the upside there's the American dream and I don't know the right rhyming word for you know American Horror Story right but if people believe their own if if there's a book I read in high school called why man Rebel and I I kept I stole a copy from the library and ended up buying it right um and what it says was when when individual people's expectations for their own lives are 39:03 high and they underperform those expectations they fill the Gap in somehow right and you can't if you can't fill the Gap in with achievement then it's got to be someone else's fault and if someone else is telling you you're right that lack of achievement that you have it's not just that's just the way life is it's not okay we'll try to help you right it's not we'll give you the resources so hey we pay for child care we'll give Your Child Care Credit so you can go out and work so you don't have to work a second job right or you can spend more time with your kids and that creates a virtuous cycle for Education right no if it's like no it's not your fault and and what what better messenger for it's not your fault than the guy who has refused to take uh accountability for anything in ever he's the victim always right which is also infuriating right that like that is I always find that so fascinating that this is a party that the Republican party is predicated so a aggressively on this idea that that these are alphas these are the tough men these are the these Donald himself as a strong man and yet he is a he is 40:05 wallowing In Perpetual victimhood always right and again I don't it's just Donald Trump Donald Trump captured the Republican Party the Republican Party does no no longer exist other than a fundraising vehicle right right and this is who he is he is always the victim it's the Roy con you know School of Management right it's never your fault it's the Communist part that's that that is the most insane thing right so I had this conversation with a friend he is reinvigorating the McCarthy Playbook from 1954 or 55 all the while attacking communism as if he's protecting everybody from it yes like you know are are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist party no in social media it's not even a question anymore it's not even a Black List it's a hate list you are Comm KLA Harris you know communist Harris right you know all all the name call all the hate he doesn't even ask the question he just says you're like so if I say something 41:02 negative about him I'm a communist I'm a Marxist all this other ridiculous nonsense that just makes me laugh but that's what he does it's the Roy con Playbook and you know it imploded on Roy con you know he didn't win the McCarthy trials he got you know do you have no shame we are about to have our do you have no shame moment led by comma Harris and people will recognize that yes as a country we do have shame we are self-aware we do care we are empathetic and those are go hand inand with leadership you can be strong you can be bold you can be decisive you can fight right you can demand the best right and you can you can stand up against our greatest enemies alone or together he can't uh I would have a lot of very upset people if we didn't end on Shark Tank sure so uh best and worst day on Shark Tank the best days are um anytime I close a deal right because the 42:06 when you agree to a deal walking on that carpet and pitching a podcast let's say right yeah they're terrified right you know they're prepared and it's their a baby but it's scary yeah and so there and you've got five people there P you know just nailing them with question after question after question and when they get through that and it's a business I like and you walk up there and you give them a hug and shake their hand that's the best moment the worst moment is when I have to listen to Kevin go on and on and on about royalties just the same over and over again and by the way those episodes are much longer than we get than the I mean each episode might be each deal might be 10 to 14 minutes um on TV but in real time they can go the short ones are 30 minutes and the longest ones can go 90 minutes wow H why did you decide to leave um family you know my kids now are 15 18 and 21 and we shoot in June and September and so when they were younger it could be like wait till dad's done Shooting Shark Tank now at 43:02 this age as teenagers and 21y old they're like no dad you're working on my schedule or you're not coming and we all won't have time to see you and so yeah I don't want to miss those years all right well I know that you've gotten this question a lot but what's your biggest piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs you just got to grind right so um you've got to be curious you have to always be learning you have to be agile cuz changes all the time and you have to be able to sell because if you don't if you're not the best salesperson for your product or service your company then something's wrong you have to love it and believe in it so much like you do with this podcast right you have to just know that it is so important to you that you're willing to walk up and talk to anybody because you're helping them by telling them what you do well thank you for for being here thanks for being an inspiration for generations of people and thanks for the work you're doing with Cost Plus drugs as well again I'll put the link in the post description of this video mark cubin thank you for coming on that was a lot of fun thank you

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