Cuban stopped by the Mixed Signals podcast to discuss AI, running for office, and how he thinks about branding.
As a business titan, former Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban is no stranger to the spotlight. He may even run for president. Yet for such a big name, Cuban is known to be incredibly accessible. He just appeared on a recent episode of the Mixed Signals podcast, where hosts Max Tani and Ben Smith noted that Cuban answered several of their emails in under a minute, a level of responsiveness that Cuban says is strategic.
“It depends on what’s going on at the moment,” Cuban says. When he ran the Mavericks, he blasted his email address on the jumbotron to encourage fans to send him business ideas and feedback. He says the idea for his medications company Cost Plus Drugs came from a cold email, and he started wearing merch with the tagline MFFL, or Mavs Fan For Life, when a fan signed the acronym in an email.
“All it takes is one good idea,” he says. But his doors aren’t always so open.
“If there’s nothing to promote, there’s no good reason to go talk, I’m saying no to everything,” Cuban says. “I try to time it to have maximum impact for what’s important to me at the time.
Smith notes after the interview that this podcast appearance is no exception.
“He’s an extraordinarily good salesman,” he says. “He must’ve mentioned Cost Plus Drugs like seven times in the course of this conversation. I mean, so impressive.”
Here are a few more insights, tips, and strategies gleaned from the episode:
Today, successful business people in all fields are active on social media. Cuban says a company’s online presence should depend on the clientele and how they want to be communicated with.
“The underlying principle in all of that is trust,” he says. “How does your business generate trust with its customers?”
Building trust is challenging. Cuban says the skill can be equated to maintaining a balance between transparency and self interest.
“If your customers believe that you’re transparent, showing your prices, your cost, whatever it may be, and that you don’t have an overemphasis on self interest—it’s all about me, you know, as opposed to it being about my customers—if you have that good ratio, then you’re going to be trusted,” he says.
Cuban says AI has changed the media industry forever.
“If you are creative, you can amplify that creativity because you’re not limited in time, funding or access to professionals like you were before,” he says, referring to resources like producers and engineers. He says he uses AI “all day, every day,” and he even thought about starting a podcast where he’d talk to Gemini, ChatGPT or Perplexity.
“[I’m] just trying to learn everything I can,” he says. “There are going to be two types of companies: those that are great at AI and every other company.”
Though Cuban admitted it’s hard to predict exactly where AI will go, he did make a prediction about how it will affect politics.
“What I will predict is every single voter for presidential and probably the lower races, starting in 2026, is going to ask ChatGPT, ‘Who should I vote for and why?’”
While Cuban’s name has been tossed around as a potential presidential candidate, he says the only way he runs is if Trump tries to stay for a third term.
“That’s a true threat,” he says. “Other than that, I’m not going to put my family through that.”