46 Knowledge-packed Mark Cuban Quotes on how to not F*** it up
Billionaire entrepreneur, author of How to Win at the Sport of Business and down-to-earth investor on Shark Tank, Mark Cuban appears unable to keep his nose out of business. After a failed attempt at retiring at 29 following a successful sale of his first company Micro Solutions, Cuban is still a force to be reckoned with 30 years later.
Driven by the competitiveness, or “the sport of business” if you will, the highly intelligent and visionary entrepreneur seems to have at least one foot in the future, earning him a reputation of always staying ahead of the game – which is why he still gives the young entrepreneurs a good run for the their money.
Use these Mark Cuban quotes to get an insight into the brilliant business mind that made a huge profit by predicting the burst of the IT-bubble, while staying humble and being the first to admit that his thoughts are “not perfect.”
“Watching the best taught me how to run my businesses”
– Mark Cuban
“Relaxing is for the other guy”
– Mark Cuban
“It’s not whom you know. It’s not how much money you have. It’s very simple. It’s whether or not you have the edge and have the guts to use it”
– Mark Cuban
“The edge is knowing people think you’re crazy, and they’re right, but you don’t care what they think”
– Mark Cuban
“You have to figure out what works for you”
– Mark Cuban
“I had to kick myself in the ass and recommit to getting up early, staying up late and consuming anything I possibly could to get an edge”
– Mark Cuban
“Do we know what we are designed to be or do we find out through experience”
– Mark Cuban
“In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once”
– Mark Cuban
“Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your product or service”
– Mark Cuban
“It’s always better if you’re honest with yourself and anticipate where the problems could come from”
– Mark Cuban
“With every effort, I learned a lot. With every mistake, I learned what not to do”
– Mark Cuban
“Entrepreneurs have to be brutally honest with themselves and recognize where they have added value and where they have gone along for the ride”
– Mark Cuban
“You have to learn how to use time wisely and be productive. How wisely you use your time will have far more impact on your life and success than any amount of money”
– Mark Cuban
“I’m scared shitless of heights”
– Mark Cuban
“Everyday I look in the mirror and make sure I don’t pinch myself so I don’t wake up. I don’t take it for granted. All the time I say ‘Why me?’”
– Mark Cuban
“You learn in life that a lot of things are the result of effort, but some things, in terms of scale, are random”
– Mark Cuban
“I retired at twenty-nine, bought a life-time pass on American Airlines and my only goal in life was to party like a mad man and get drunk with as many people as possible. And I was happy right there. But when we started the streaming business, I knew it could be something big...”
– Mark Cuban
“Those back-to-back experiences confirmed what I already knew: That I was a shitty-ass employee and I’d better start my own business”
– Mark Cuban
“And that got us closed down... That was one of those kismet-things that turn out to be good for you, in the long run, because otherwise I still might be bartending and throwing wet t-shirt contests”
– Mark Cuban
“If you are ahead of the curve and you can anticipate where things are going ... anything is possible”
– Mark Cuban
“The last 9 years we have lived in a world were you put in data to get out data. If you wanted to find out about something you went to Google or some search engine or some source, and you put data in and you learn from what came back. Now, all that data is stale, and I think we are coming to a scenario where rather than us having to know and put in, and what’s smart in order to get a response that we hope is smart, there are sensors that are tracking things and giving us information”
– Mark Cuban
“I had been in the technology business for so long, I had seen the PC-bubble come and burst, I had seen the local area and wide area networking-bubble come and burst, it was no shock that the internet-bubble was going to burst”
– Mark Cuban
“We don’t sell wins or losses. The one thing you can’t control in sports is which games you are going to win or which games you are going to lose. But what I could control was the experience the fans have”
– Mark Cuban
“You always have to know what business you are in. Everybody thought we were in the basketball business. It’s an NBA-team; we are not in the basketball business. We are in the business of creating experiences and memories”
– Mark Cuban
“I’m a big believer that you always reiterate, you always learn, you always realize your business is evolving”
– Mark Cuban
“There is no law against stupid. I learned a long time ago – from talking, not from action – that you can’t beat stupid out of people, you can’t talk stupid out of people, you can’t expect stupid to disappear or dissipate. You can try to help people who are, and that is typically what I try to do when I find it in my organizations. But I also try not to be a hypocrite. I know I’m prejudiced, I know I’m bigoted, in a lot of ways ... but I always try to catch my prejudices, and recognize and be very self-aware that my stream of thought is never perfect”
– Mark Cuban
“Patent law holds us back, in every which way, shape or form. There is place for it, in physical products, in pharmaceuticals, but in software in particular, there is no place for it”
– Mark Cuban
“We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble – and that’s where the real bubble is – and the tuition bubble, we don’t have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck- chairs on the Titanic”
– Mark Cuban
“When you first start working for me, directly for me, I micromanage until I trust you”
– Mark Cuban
“I want the bad news first. I don’t want the ‘Oh, we hade a great week and Billy...’ You know, great, I’m sure Billy had fun. I want to read: ‘God damn it! We lost this sale, and here is why’”
– Mark Cuban
“I love to compete. Somebody out there is competing against me, and I want to kick your ass. I say it all the time: Business is the ultimate sport”
– Mark Cuban
“[Business] is the marketplace of ideas”
– Mark Cuban
“The reason I do Shark Tank isn’t to try take make more money of the deals, even though every deal I want to make money off of and even more so I want the entrepreneurs to be very successful and make money, but Shark Tank sends a message to everybody that the American Dream is alive and well”
– Mark Cuban
“I love the competitive aspect of it [business]. It’s like playing chess. Why do people play chess? Knowing the realm of moves? Even when you get to be a chess master, there are other chess masters you want to beat or outperform. And to me business is just a sport that I love to compete in; a continuous intellectual challenge that really motivates me”
– Mark Cuban
“Never settle. There is no need to rush”
– Mark Cuban
“I was poor as fuck living on the floor and I had already won. It has nothing to do with money. If you can wake up in the morning with a smile on your face, excited about the day, and say ‘you know what? I’m going to get it done to today! I’m going to do something I love to do’, then you have won”
– Mark Cuban
“Even when I had nothing, I had everything. Because I love to compete”
– Mark Cuban
“I like being involved in businesses where you are kicking ass”
– Mark Cuban
”If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail”“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
“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
“Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take everything away from you”
– Mark Cuban
“Learn to sell. In business you’re always selling – to your prospects, investors and employees. To be the best salesperson put yourself in the shoes of the person to whom you are selling. Don’t sell your product. Solve their problem”
– Mark Cuban
“If I can do it, you can do it”
– Mark Cuban
“In sports, the only thing you can control is effort. The same applies to business. The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort”
– Mark Cuban
“Effort is measured by setting goals and getting results”
– Mark Cuban
“I spend time in bookstores because one idea from a book or magazine can make me money”
– Mark Cuban