“I’m the one guy who says don’t force the stupid people to be quiet. I want to know who the morons are.”
― Mark Cuban
“Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we need to prepare for it.”
― Mark Cuban
“I personally think there’s going to be a greater demand in 10 years for liberal arts majors than there were for programming majors and maybe even engineering, because when the data is all being spit out for you, options are being spit out for you, you need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data.”
― Mark Cuban
“I don’t care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing.”
― Mark Cuban
“If you are good enough to compete for a top-level corporate job, you should be smart enough to know what the job pays the other gender and negotiate accordingly. If you are an employer, and you don’t pay an employee market wages, regardless of gender or orientation, you will end up with what you deserve.”
― Mark Cuban
“TV is no longer the best alternative to boredom. To kids not old enough for Snapchat, music is the best alternative to boredom. For Snapchat users, it’s the best alternative to boredom.”
― Mark Cuban
“Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is. Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world. Love what you do or don’t do it.”
― Mark Cuban
“What I’ve learned in these 11 years is you just got to stay focused and believe in yourself and trust your own ability and judgment.”
― Mark Cuban
“Leaders don’t look backwards to condemn what has already been done; they look forward to create a better future.”
― Mark Cuban
“I grew up in a working class family. People thought I might go work at a mill. My mom wanted me to learn how to lay carpet because she was concerned about my future. Nobody had high hopes for me. But I was a hustler.”
― Mark Cuban
“The number-one job of the hedge-fund manager is not to make sure that you can retire with a smile on your face – it’s for him to retire with a smile on his face.”
― Mark Cuban
“When you’ve got 10,000 people trying to do the same thing, why would you want to be number 10,001?”
― Mark Cuban
“I bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines and had a blast. The most memorable was going to Barcelona on a whim and scalping tickets at the Olympics to the Dream Team Quarterfinals.”
― Mark Cuban
“Entrepreneurs need to be reminded that it’s not the job of their customers to know what they don’t. In other words, your customers have a tough enough time doing their jobs. They don’t spend time trying to reinvent their industries or how their jobs are performed.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think he tries to be nice. But he has absolutely zero self-awareness. None. Zip. So we see the public Donald Trump, the candidate, as being different than the in-person Donald Trump.”
― Mark Cuban
“I love helping entrepreneurs. It’s something I really have fun doing. It’s like planting a little seed and watching it grow.”
― Mark Cuban
“I love entrepreneurship because that’s what makes this country grow, and if I can help companies grow, I am creating jobs; I am setting foundations for future generations. It sends the message that the American Dream is alive and well.”
― Mark Cuban
“Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefitting you and your family, but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make, the more of a financial impact you can have.”
― Mark Cuban
“If you can’t admit a failure, you’re not an entrepreneur. You are not a good business person. There’s nothing brilliant about what you are doing.”
― Mark Cuban
“In these times of the ‘Great Recession’, we shouldn’t be trying to shift the benefits of wealth behind some curtain. We should be celebrating and encouraging people to make as much money as they can. Profits equal tax money. While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don’t. I find it patriotic.”
― Mark Cuban
“Liquidity is a good proxy for relative net worth. You can’t lie about cash, stocks, and bond values.”
― Mark Cuban
“Sweat equity is the best equity.”
― Mark Cuban
“Whatever you are studying right now, if you are not getting up to speed on deep learning, neural networks, etc., you lose. We are going through the process where software will automate software, automation will automate automation.”
― Mark Cuban
“In my opinion, right now there’s way too much hype on the technologies and not enough attention to the real businesses behind them.”
― Mark Cuban
“I had a Taco Bell audition where I had to wear a huge sombrero and walk around like an idiot. I got call-backs for the movie ‘Twister,’ did small independent stuff that I won’t name. But it led to all my breakthrough moments on ‘Entourage.’”
― Mark Cuban
“If you think back to the first sporting event you went to, you don’t remember the score, you don’t remember a home run, you don’t remember a dunk. You remember who you were with. Were you with your mom, your dad, your brother, on a date?”
― Mark Cuban
“’Shark Tank’ is fun, but it’s all business. We use our own money, and the competition between the sharks is fierce. More importantly, it’s an opportunity to invest in businesses that are being watched and considered by millions of people every time it’s shown.”
― Mark Cuban
“Leaders are not dogmatic. They are principled and know that change is never easy, but when it’s necessary, they must lead.”
― Mark Cuban
“I believe that starting any business should be as easy as a 10-year-old starting a lemonade stand.”
― Mark Cuban
“You need to turn over every rock and open every door to learn your industry. This process never ends.”
― Mark Cuban
“You’ve got to be very cognizant of the correlation between social media links and business because they don’t always correlate as highly as people would like.”
― Mark Cuban
“Traditional TV will have to innovate their TV delivery software in new ways beyond just offering their content in an app in order to change the viewing erosion of TV.”
― Mark Cuban
“Because if you’re prepared and you know what it takes, it’s not a risk. You just have to figure out how to get there. There is always a way to get there.”
― Mark Cuban
“Whatever you can say in a meeting, you can put in an email. If I have questions, I’ll tell you via email.”
― Mark Cuban
“It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.”
― Mark Cuban
“Being able to take a traditional cable-television subscriber and give them new widget type applications to me is huge.”
― Mark Cuban
“In my mind, a good leader would say, ‘OK, I need to sit down and talk to the guys who oppose me. Let me let them voice their opinions; let me get their thought process.’”
― Mark Cuban
“I’m a competitive person. Business is a much more competitive sport than any real sport. It’s 24x7x365. I’m a business adrenaline junky.”
― Mark Cuban
“My guiding principle and motivation was that I wanted to retire by the time I turned 35. There actually are two books that I bought and still have – Paul Terhost’s ‘Cashing In On the American Dream: How to Retire at 35’ and Andrew Tobias’s ‘The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need’ – that were my personal financial road map.”
― Mark Cuban
“Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don’t rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That’s your job.”
― Mark Cuban
“When you turn your team upside down and try to figure out what the culture of the team is, you take the greatest risk a team can take.”
― Mark Cuban
“Up until Trump announced his candidacy, the conventional wisdom was that you had to be a professional politician in order to run. You had to have a background that was politically scrubbed. In other words, smart people who didn’t live perfect lives could never run.”
― Mark Cuban
“I still work hard to know my business. I’m continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies, and I’m always selling. Always.”
― Mark Cuban
“I worked hard and smarter than most people in the businesses I have been in.”
― Mark Cuban
“With health care, despite the fact that we as a nation have already chosen to provide health care in one form or another to everyone, we have, until Obamacare, chosen to pick the least cost-effective means, a mix of private and public offerings, of providing that care. That makes no sense.”
― Mark Cuban
“Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write.”
― Mark Cuban
“Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing you can control in your life, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list.”
― Mark Cuban
“Part of the bigger problem with Donald Trump is, when you sit and talk to him one-on-one, he’s reasonable, he comes across as caring, he’s open-minded, but then, all of that just is thrown out the window when he tweets and when he communicates with the media – and when he communicates at all.”
― Mark Cuban
“Make sure you are the boss. I don’t think I would encourage executives that work for me to blog. There can be only 1 public vision for an organization.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think that any reporter or columnist will be a little more careful when doing interviews with me.”
― Mark Cuban
“Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.”
― Mark Cuban
“I don’t think there’s any question that the UFL or any other league that wants to challenge the NFL can have an impact. The demand for professional football is off the charts.”
― Mark Cuban
“I hate politics. It’s slimy. Any job where people pander for votes, I don’t like. The country has gotten so partisan that if you’re not on my side, you’re the enemy. The only thing I ever try to support is a third party, like Unity08. We need more parties and more choice.”
― Mark Cuban
“I’m not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling – sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think one of the biggest curses in the U.S. is that we have only two political parties.”
― Mark Cuban
“When I got to the Mavericks people were all giving me advice – change this, change that – and one thing that I didn’t do was fire anybody.”
― Mark Cuban
“But we have to ask ourselves, what’s the purpose of the stock market? It’s supposed to be a source of capital for growing business. It’s lost that purpose.”
― Mark Cuban
“The key is having great players. But there are a lot of teams that have All-Stars and haven’t been able to put it together.”
― Mark Cuban
“Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you’re doing against other people.”
― Mark Cuban
“I’m not against government involvement in times of need. I am for recognizing that big public companies will continue to cut jobs in an effort to prop up stock prices, which in turn stimulates the need for more government involvement.”
― Mark Cuban
“I’ve learned the number one job of a pro manager is not to win championships but to keep their job.”
― Mark Cuban
“If there was a template for success in sports, everyone would follow it. You do the best you can and trust the people you trust.”
― Mark Cuban
“In the past, people used to tell me to shut up a bit. But what I believe is to put out your opinion and let everyone else react. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think political people are afraid of me.”
― Mark Cuban
“Culture is very important to the Mavs. Your best player has to be a fit for what you want the culture of the team to be. He has to be someone who leads by example. Someone who sets the tone in the locker room and on the court. It isn’t about who talks the most or the loudest. It is about the demeanor and attitude he brings.”
― Mark Cuban
“What I do know, at least what I think I have learned from my experiences in business, is that when there is a rush for everyone to do the same thing, it becomes more difficult to do. Not easier. Harder.”
― Mark Cuban
“Recessions are the best time to start a company. Companies fail. Others hold back capital. If you are willing to do the preparation and work, it is the best time to invest in yourself and start a business.”
― Mark Cuban
“I love to compete. To me, business is the ultimate sport. It’s always on. There is always someone trying to beat me.”
― Mark Cuban
“I create offbeat advice; I don’t follow it. I rarely take third-party advice on my investments.”
― Mark Cuban
“The first cities to create friction-free enterprise zones will get a lot of entrepreneurial traction.”
― Mark Cuban
“I look at my annual budgets for everything and anything, and I look to see where I can save the most money on those items. Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk – replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of – is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere.”
― Mark Cuban
“We can’t ever forget that the Internet now is just a staid utility. The exciting platforms are software applications that are very, very simple.”
― Mark Cuban
“Social media is just a platform. Twitter is a very simple and immediate broadcast platform. Facebook is a very personal, when it comes to friends and when it comes to fan pages, a little bit less but still somewhat personal way to communicate.”
― Mark Cuban
“What I’ve learned is that if you really want to be successful at something, you’ll find that you put the time in. You won’t just ask somebody if it’s a good idea, you’ll go figure out if it’s a good idea.”
― Mark Cuban
“For food service industry and retail, I’m for the minimum wage being increased to at least $12. Not for manufacturing. Software and robotics are going to revolutionize manufacturing in the next 10 years. In the meantime, we have to compete with overseas manufacturing.”
― Mark Cuban
“I would rather have the costs of consumer goods and restaurants – products we as consumers can choose to buy or not buy – go up and the need for public services go down.”
― Mark Cuban
“I liked Trump’s honesty because it was different and had a chance to change the business of politics. What I didn’t realize he was missing at the time was a complete and utter lack of preparation, knowledge, and common sense.”
― Mark Cuban
“I can’t say it enough that learning how to learn is one of the greatest skills anyone can have. It’s why I advocate that everyone go to college.”
― Mark Cuban
“I love being challenged and defending my positions and, when I’m wrong, learning from the exchange. It makes me smarter and better as a businessperson.”
― Mark Cuban
“I have been a proponent of dramatically expanding the AmeriCorps program. By increasing the pay of participants to a living wage, it can act as a jobs program that, rather than trying to predict what will be technically viable jobs, will value social support and provide jobs that make communities stronger.”
― Mark Cuban
“To be a billionaire, you have got to get lucky.”
― Mark Cuban
“I have always been selling. I always had something going on. That was just my nature.”
― Mark Cuban
“I am telling you, the world’s first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters A.I. and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think Amazon is the greatest start-up and the greatest company in the world. The way they are using new technologies is not just disrupting retail, it’s getting ready to disrupt everything.”
― Mark Cuban
“Technological change always accelerates. It never stagnates over time. Which means we are going to face the fact that, if nothing in the States changes, we will find ourselves dependent on other countries for almost everything that can and will be manufactured in a quickly approaching future.”
― Mark Cuban
“We have to face the fact that countries are going to lose jobs to robotics. The only question that needs to be answered is which country will create and own the best robotic technology and have the infrastructure necessary to enable it.”
― Mark Cuban
“Leaders don’t change their positions mid-debate. They welcome scorn from the masses because it creates the opportunity for dialogue.”
― Mark Cuban
“All TV is now digital. It’s a platform ripe for innovation; we just haven’t seen any beyond picture quality changes. That’s a secular problem.”
― Mark Cuban
“I used to drive around looking at the big houses, wondering how they got there. I used to love biographies about successful business people, wondering how they got there. You start to realize that if they can do it, I can do it.”
― Mark Cuban
“Staying true to who I am was tougher when I first got wealthy. Having great friends kept me grounded.”
― Mark Cuban
“I placed too much importance on comparing how much I had to others early on. Then I started realizing time was a far more valuable asset. When I started using money to create more time, I appreciated both more.”
― Mark Cuban
“I’m not a fan of giving to charities. I have a few I support, but the overhead and inefficiencies really bother me. Instead, I pay people’s bills and help solve problems.”
― Mark Cuban
“Nice goes much further than mean.”
― Mark Cuban
“After military service, the most patriotic thing you can do as a wealthy person is pay your taxes.”
― Mark Cuban
“When I die, I want to come back as me.”
― Mark Cuban
“The people I don’t like to work with are people like me. I need people who can complement my skill set, people who can do the nitty gritty with me.”
― Mark Cuban
“There’s no law against stupid – I learned that a long time ago.”
― Mark Cuban
“There are a lot of things I suck at. I’m not organized. I have to have partners and people around me who dot my i’s and cross my t’s. I’m sloppy. I’m a ready-fire-aim guy. I need to have people around me who aren’t.”
― Mark Cuban
“I try not to be an ideologue about anything. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’m willing to evolve.”
― Mark Cuban
“I believe in lower taxes. I believe in more efficient government. I believe in reducing bureaucracy. I believe that we shouldn’t have lobbyists who can go in or former government workers who can come back and lobby.”
― Mark Cuban
“If you break your finger, that’s on you, right? But if you get a chronic illness, if you get a serious illness or life-threatening illness, that’s something I think we should all share the cost in because we all face the same unknowns and the same risks.”
― Mark Cuban
“When someone has to go to the hospital because they don’t have insurance – and by the way, I think the insurance companies should be out of the mix altogether – but when someone needs health care, and they don’t have the ability to pay for it, in our communities, we end up paying for it one way or the other.”
― Mark Cuban
“When you look at ‘policy wonk’ in the dictionary, the one picture you won’t see is Donald Trump.”
― Mark Cuban
“Donald Trump I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw him.”
― Mark Cuban
“Donald Trump has got unlimited number of insecurities. But the No. 1 one thing, I would say, is his insecurity with his intellect. There’s a reason why he always refers to where he went to college and, you know, that, ‘I’m a smart person.’ You know, it may be narcissism. But I think it really reflects an insecurity.”
― Mark Cuban
“Owning a popular sports team is very different than any other type of business. They don’t throw parades when Apple has the biggest quarter in corporate history. People don’t call and email asking for anyone from the team to come visit their sick child. They don’t cry as they request a jersey of their child’s favorite player to be buried with them.”
― Mark Cuban
“You’ve never heard me talk about politics all that much, and it’s just – I can’t think of anybody more dangerous as president than Donald Trump. I can’t think of anything worse than with him not having a clue. I mean, could you imagine somebody who doesn’t read and doesn’t learn trying to deal with the day-to-day changes and challenges of that job?”
― Mark Cuban
“At least before my hip replacement, I had a quick first step. I could get by you off the dribble. My business game is the same way. I can turn an idea into a business before you know it’s going to be important. My first step will blow by you.”
― Mark Cuban
“When you post something, when you text something, you lose ownership of it when you hit enter or send. Who you send it to, where you post it, they take ownership of that information whether you like it or not. Unfortunately, you don’t lose responsibility for that text or post.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think what has allowed me to be successful is that I can absorb more information than most and drill down to the key business elements of that information and make faster decisions. And of course, I truly try to enjoy every minute of my life. I can never understand why anyone wouldn’t.”
― Mark Cuban
“I was born to sell it as a kid. I think it’s partially innate, and partly it’s because my parents were always very clear: if I needed anything that wasn’t a necessity, I was going to have to save my money and buy it myself. That meant not only did I have to buy basketball shoes, but I had to figure out how to pay for college as well.”
― Mark Cuban
“I knew how to sell. I felt confident I could run a business. I was willing to outwork anyone. I wasn’t afraid to live like a student on next to nothing. So that meant I had absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
― Mark Cuban
“None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses.”
― Mark Cuban
“Anyone who says he is an expert in the market is lying to you. There is no such thing.”
― Mark Cuban
“I have stocked shelves, waited on tables, and bartended. I have been a salesperson at many levels. Each giving me a unique view of what made a company successful and, even more importantly, what made a company fail.”
― Mark Cuban
“Every job in a company is important. Unless you experience a wide range of those jobs, I don’t think you are as well prepared to start and run a company as you could be.”
― Mark Cuban
“If the pitch starts with a sob story, I’m out. If the pitch talks about personal issues, I’m out. If the pitch starts off with how big the market opportunity is, I’m out. If the pitch tells me what is unique about the product, how it can make a profit, and it’s an area where I have expertise, I will read on.”
― Mark Cuban
“I think people are tired of politics as usual. We’re tired of everything being scripted; we’re tired of every comment being politically correct.”
― Mark Cuban
“If I ran as a Dem, I know I could beat Hillary Clinton. And if it was me vs. Trump, I would crush him. No doubt about it.”
― Mark Cuban
“I’m not cut out for politics.”
― Mark Cuban
“Someone is out there looking to put you out of business. Someone is out there who thinks they have a better idea than you have. A better solution than you have. A better or more efficient product than you have.”
― Mark Cuban
“I know that I’m not perfect. While we all have our prejudices and bigotries, we have to learn that it’s an issue that we have to control, that it’s part of my responsibility as an entrepreneur to try to solve it, not just to kick the problem down the road.”
― Mark Cuban
“There is so much partisan and tribal politics, from not just those seeking office but potential voters as well, that we never get real attempts at solutions to problems.”
― Mark Cuban
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