10 Key Lessons From Mark CUBAN's Journey!

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Modeling the Masters. I believe that the fastest and most effective way to grow your business is to model the strategies of people who've already done what you're trying to do. So today we're going to look at how a young man went from selling garbage bags to becoming a billionaire entrepreneur, and a really outspoken one at that. This is a story of Dallas Mavericks NBA owner Mark Cuban and the top 3 lessons you can learn from his success.

Mark Cuban is the well-known, outspoken, and brash owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team who wears his heart on his sleeve and as a result is prone to many publicized outbursts. But the billionaire Cuban is also an entrepreneur at heart, having created more startups in his early years than most others in a lifetime. However, this is not the way Cuban started out. His upbringing was middle class, with a housewife for a mother and his father and uncle working in an upholstery shop. He began selling garbage bags to local residents at the age of 12, and this was the start of his entrepreneurship career. He graduated from Mount Lebanon High School in 1976, but not before establishing a reputation as a hustler. Looking back, Cuban guesses that his classmates would have predicted he would either wind up in jail or owning a business. Thankfully, it was the latter that would prove to be correct. Cuban got his first real job selling franchises for a company called Tronics 2000, a TV repair shop. He left after just 4 months when his idea to branch out into computer repairs was met with rejection. "They didn't see a future in computers," Cuban recalls. Unemployed, Cuban began to ask himself what kind of business he could start on his own. "I saw an ad for somebody selling powdered milk, and I thought, everybody needs milk, 'Like they need garbage bags,' he said. So Cuban created a company to sell powdered milk, but it was a self-admitted disaster. After 4 failed businesses, he began working for Your Business Software, an IT company, but was later fired. Cuban convinced some of its other employees to leave the company and join him in his later venture, MicroSolutions. It would be a systems integrator and reseller for various IT companies, including IBM and Apple. In just 8 years, the company had sold over 500 networks that ranged in size from 2 to over 1,000 users. By investing in cutting-edge technology and providing outstanding customer service, MicroSolutions had become a major player in the promising new IT industry. So major that in 1990, Cuban sold the company to CompuServe for $6 million. Cuban was 32 years old and a millionaire. He decided to take an early retirement, but it wouldn't be long before his entrepreneurial instincts kicked in and brought him back into the game. In 1995, together with college buddy Todd Wagner, Cuban created a company called AudioNet. Solely missing the games of their college basketball team, Cuban and Wagner created AudioNet, which used new streaming technology to broadcast sports games over the internet. In 1998, AudioNet became Broadcast.com and the company went public. At the time, it had the largest single-day gain in the history of the stock market. With over 330 employees, and annual revenues in a neighborhood of $100 million, Cuban sold the company to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock. In 2000, Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks for $285 million and immediately set out to revive the team. With courtside presence at every game and his outspoken and passionate nature, Cuban quickly became a fan favorite.

By not giving up and by bouncing back after lots of failures, Mark Cuban was able to go from selling garbage bags to becoming a billionaire entrepreneur and turn his life around. To help you turn your business around, here are the top 3 action items and lessons you can learn from Mark Cuban.

Action item number 1: Know more than everyone else. If you want people to buy from you, they have to trust you. To get them to trust you, it helps to know what you're talking about. Take the time to research and know more about your industry than your competitors do. It'll give you an advantage when you're positioning your business, as well as convince buyers that they're going with the right person by choosing you. Throughout university, Cuban was a self-proclaimed party animal. He shared a 3-bedroom apartment with 5 other guys who all had a routine of buying cheap bottles of champagne to last them the whole night. Sleeping arrangements were determined based on how late they each got home. That all changed when Cuban landed his first job with Your Business Software. He was excited to be finally beginning a job that might actually hold a promising career ahead. But he was also scared. Instead of giving in to his fear, Cuban decided to do his homework. Each night he would bring home a different software manual and read it no matter how late it was. Soon Cuban found that he was not only actually able to adequately answer his customers' questions about the software, but he was also building a clientele. From internet streaming to basketball to high-definition television, Cuban did his homework to understand what his opportunities were. According to Cuban, "I've never worked with an IBM PC in my life," recalls Cuban. "Not a single time. And I'm going to be selling software for it. Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to read the frickin' manual. So people started really thinking I knew my stuff." Everyone has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in the industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea. Do your homework and know your business better than anyone. Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass. Action item number 2: Don't use shortcuts. You can speed up your entrepreneurial journey by modeling success, but at the end of the day, you still have to do the work. Successful entrepreneurs work hard. You have to work smart, but you also have to work hard. When Cuban first started his company, MicroSolutions, that was just about all he did. He sacrificed his personal life, his hobbies, and much of his own money in order to get this business on its feet. He didn't take a vacation for 7 years, and except for his 2 motivational favorites, Cuban never even made the time to read a fictional book during those 7 years. But for Cuban, there was no other choice. He knew that in order to succeed, he would have to work twice as hard as the next guy. It's this quality that Cuban not only tries to embody himself, but that he looks for in others when he hires. In order to succeed, Cuban stresses the importance of recognizing one's own strengths and weaknesses. There are no shortcuts to success. According to Cuban, there are no shortcuts. Everyone tells you how they're gonna be special, but few do the work to get there. Do the work. You have to work hard and try to put yourself in a position where, if luck strikes, you can see the opportunity and take advantage of it. There's always going to be someone out there that knows they have to compensate for maybe having less talent with harder work and preparation. Make sure you are brutally honest with yourself about who you are. You may think that you're more talented than the next guy, which is exactly what the next guy thinks as well. Work like there's someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you and play like it's your last chance to play. Action item #3: Learn from your failures. Failures happen to every successful entrepreneur. If you look back on the career of any famous entrepreneur, you'll find failures. Don't let failure keep you down. One venture might not work, but it doesn't mean you're not going to be a successful entrepreneur. Keep reaching out, learn from your mistakes, and start again more smartly. If you don't let failure keep you down, you will know success. Despite being a billionaire by the time he had reached his early 40s, Cuban's path to success was fraught with difficulties. From his futile garbage bag business to his failed powdered milk venture to being fired from his first real job, Cuban had experienced so much disappointment in his early years that even he was doubtful as to whether he would find success in any career. He was also cut from his high school basketball team and had numerous credit cards cut up in front of his face. He learned that you don't have to get it right the first time. Cuban never gave up on his dream of running his own business. He continued to work towards his goal and knew that it would only take one successful business to make up for all his previous failed attempts. Instead of letting his failures get the better of him, Cuban took each as a learning opportunity. According to Cuban, "Always remember that no matter how many times you get shot down, you will get smarter, better, and you only have to be right once to be successful. I'm always afraid of failing. It's great motivation to work harder." Rejection has only been a distraction, not a roadblock. Every no gets me closer to a yes was the saying I used to use. All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

So remember, know more than anyone else, don't use shortcuts, and learn from your failures. To finish up this video, I wanted to share one of my favorite true stories about Mark Cuban and some of his best quotes.

Mark Cuban had been failing at almost every career he tried before the age of 30. He would start a business and it would fail. He would get a job and then he'd get fired. He would go broke and stay that way until he found something that would pay the bills. According to Cuban, it was so bad that his parents were worried about what he was going to do for the rest of his life. However, that worry was not something that they coddled. They continued to push him and knew that eventually he would find his niche. He was struggling financially when he was fired from Your Business Software, but this gave him his first real business idea that worked. He would later say that his parents always made him work harder than everyone else and teach him never to give up. That's what he did and became a billionaire because of those lessons.

Thank you for joining me for another edition of Molly and the Masters. If you like the video and you want to see more, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a comment or a question, I'd love to see it if you want to leave it in the comment section below. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.