Growing
up in Pittsburgh, Mark wanted to be rich from a very young age. When his family drove by big houses, he
wondered who lived there and what they did for a living, telling himself that
someday he would have a house like that too.
Mark’s
father was the son of Russian immigrants, and worked as a car upholsterer. It wasn’t a glamorous or high-paying job, but
it kept his family fed and a roof over them.
He tried to instill in his son the same sense of having to work hard to
get anywhere. Once, when Mark was twelve
years old, he approached his father during a poker game and asked for a new
pair of sneakers. His father told him if
the ones he had weren’t good enough, then Mark could get a job and buy whatever
shoes he wanted. But one of his father’s
poker buddies had a suggestion: Mark
should try going door-to-door selling garbage bags.
Mark
decided to try, and sure enough, he was able to earn enough to buy the
sneakers. He moved to magazine
subscriptions next, getting better as he got more comfortable selling to
strangers. By high school, Mark was earning extra money re-selling stamps,
coins and baseball cards. He was a fast
learner, reading constantly, and in his junior year, he began taking college
classes on the side. He was in such a
rush that he skipped his senior year of high school entirely to enroll at the
university.
Mark
had chosen his school because it had the lowest tuition of America’s top ten
business schools. But he still needed to
pay for it. He made money giving dance
lessons, and even paid for one semester with a chain letter that brought in
over a thousand dollars. He also bought
a local college bar by selling shares to his friends, and when he wasn’t bartending
or spinning records, he was schmoozing and entertaining the patrons. People came to see him, and it was clear that
the bar made more when he was there.
After
graduating, Mark got a job at a bank, in the department responsible for
converting its processes from paper to computer systems. But Mark was always focused on the bigger
picture. He would send notes to the
bank’s CEO with ideas on how they could make more money. In an effort to improve morale, he started a
“Rookie Club,” inviting senior bank executives to talk to the company’s younger
employees. He even started an in-office
newsletter.
His
boss was livid, seeing Mark’s efforts as attempts to undermine his
authority. It was Mark’s first lesson
about the type of leader he did not want to be.
It was also all the urging he needed to make a clean break from
Pittsburgh and try his luck elsewhere.
Mark
drove to Dallas and moved into a friend’s three-bedroom apartment. The problem was, five people already lived
there, so Mark had to sleep on the floor.
He got a job selling software and had no fear of hard work. About nine months in, his dedication led to a
$15,000 sale for the company, which would earn him a $1,500 commission. But when his boss told him not to leave the
office to collect the payment, Mark decided to go anyway, confident the large
check would make the boss happy.
He
was wrong. When he got back, his boss
fired him on the spot, screaming about disobedience. It was an even more important lesson for
Mark, helping him decide then and there to avoid bosses altogether by starting
his own software company. He was
twenty-five.
Seven
years later, Mark sold his company, MicroSolutions, for six million
dollars. He went on to co-found
Broadcast.com, a multi-media company that was ultimately purchased by Yahoo!
for nearly $6 billion. Today,
Mark Cuban is a billionaire businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He is
the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, the Landmark movie theatre
chain, and the Hollywood production company Magnolia Pictures. His no-nonsense approach to business can also
be seen in his role as a "shark" investor on the television series Shark
Tank.
When
asked how it’s possible that he accomplishes so much in any given day, his
response is that he only works half days, and you just have to decide which
half to work, the first twelve hours or the second. Mark Cuban’s philosophy is simple: “Love what you do or don’t do it, and
remember, it’s not in the dreaming, it’s in the doing.”
Until next week...
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