How Mark Cuban Turned His First $1 Million Into $1 Billion | GQ Sports

Hi GQ, I'm Mark Cuban and this is how I saved and spent my

first

million

and then

turned

it into a

billion

. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just a middle class kid. My dad upholstered cars. My mom did odd jobs while I remember she was hustling. I remember going to my dad while he was playing poker with his friends and saying dad, I need some new sneakers and he looked at me and looked at my feet and said those sneakers you wore, they work when you have a job, you can buy whatever you want. and one of his friends who had to be drunk was sitting at the poker table with him and said, hey, I have something you can sell.

I have all these boxes of garbage bags, why not? sell them in the neighborhood and then you can take the money you make and buy your sneakers he had these boxes that he sold me for three dollars I sold them for six but it was like this Hi my name is Mark Do you use trash bags? I have a great deal for you and every time you need garbage bags, all you have to do is call me, I will put them in the back of my car and take them right to your house, which was my

first

business, the first, probably the only door-to-door garbage bag subscription company in the world.

As I started to get older and got into high school in particular, I realized that high school was right up my alley and I wanted to learn everything I could about I started taking night classes at the University of Pittsburgh when I was 16 and then when I was 17 I dropped out of high school completely and went to Pitt full time, that's where things really started happening to me that I never thought about in terms of money, okay I need to make

million

s. I always thought in terms of time, it has always been my main motivation. How can I control my own destiny?

How can I control my own time? I started a company called micro Solutions and from there we just grew and I grew and grew and I ended up selling it and that's how I got my first Stacks so here's the summary of when I sold micro solutions for six million dollars so millions of dollars went to the employees, two million for a partner, I brought 2 million for myself, alive. as a student, but the first thing I did was buy a lifetime pass on American Airlines and just went around the world bringing friends and partying like a rock star.

Aside from the airpass, I wasn't just buying it, I was saving it. I could go out and buy a bigger house, buy a better car. I didn't care, it would have bought me that freedom. I never thought I would work again. I made a lot of money in the stock

mark

et. He was worth more than 20 million dollars in life. was good, then one of my friends from college, Todd Wagner, sat down with me and this was in 1995. He said, "You know, there's this whole new thing called the Internet, there's got to be a way to use this to listen to American basketball.

Indiana". I set up this website called audionet and the next thing I knew a video appeared and we

turned

it into a company called broadcast.com and so we started what turned out to be the first streaming company. On July 18, 1998, we went public and I'm thinking $33, I look at that $62.75, suddenly I'm worth over $300 million and I'm sitting there thinking, oh, if this stock price triples, I'm a

billion

aire. Well, we took that company and became the largest media portal on the Internet and Yahoo came along and made us an offer and suddenly the stock price tripled and I was a billionaire, we sold the company to Yahoo for shares and I had seen the stock go up and I had seen the stock go down and I told Todd, my partner, I told everyone who worked for us that there is a good chance because this stock

mark

et is priced so high that everything could crash, Don't worry.

Greedy Todd had the same pigs grow fat. Pigs are slaughtered, they are not slaughtered, so I put together what they call a caller and what it is. I sold some of the Yahoo stock upside I got and protected myself by buying put options. On the downside, three months later the Internet stock market crashed, it was called one of the top 10 Wall Street trades of all time and it taught me a big lesson when you just chase dollars it never works out well. I was worth a billion dollars. and it was the craziest thing i could ever realize that all i had to do was protect it and not get greedy and i would be set for the rest of my life we ​​talked about how i made and saved some money that i don't have a thousand millions of dollars here, but let me tell you how I spent them abroad.

The first thing I bought was the Gulfstream G5. Now I didn't just buy it. I am a technician. I go online and search for Gulfstream G5. I emailed the guy and asked: Can I do a test flight? The first time I have been on a private plane. Oh, sitting there and thinking, “This could be my plane,” so I stocked up on a few more and sent him a message. email that says made 40 million dollars. I will make the biggest online purchase in the history of the Internet to this day was buying that Gulfstream G5. What I want to plan because the most valuable asset you will ever possess is your time and the only thing.

What I can do is save time and get places and the second purchase was amazing. I paid $285 million for the Dallas Mavericks. I went to the opening night of season 99, the first game of the year was not sold out. I have a season ticket in the building and I'm a big Mavs fan. I look around thinking I can do a better job than this and then I realize I can put my money where my mouth is. This was early November for January 4th. He owned the Dallas Mavericks. so when I took over maps I didn't get a big office I didn't care about an office I didn't get a big desk I didn't care about a big desk we had a sales bullpen we called it the Fishbowl because it was in an open office with all these windows and we had eight nine any seller.

I put my desk right in the middle of them. I put a phone book and a printout of all our past clients and right there next to it. I just started dialing to try to sell the Mavericks, ma'am. I know you've been to a Mavericks game before, but now you realize that it's less expensive to come to a Mavericks game than to take your family to McDonald's. Not our tickets. It's eight dollars and McDonald's and a coke is more than that, why don't you come and try the first free game for me? I wanted everyone who worked with me to see that if I ask them to do it, I will do it.

The same thing I do with the people in the front office that I did with the players on the court we moved to a new Arena American Airlines Center I wanted them to feel good when they went to work we put PlayStations we put television screens Now, even Today, we updated it so we had Aroma because different Aromas impact you more before the game, when you're trying to promote yourself, versus after the game, the light impacts you more, all of these things that try to give our players an advantage to help us . win but also help them succeed if you run a company and if you can align your interests with the people you work with, things will work out for you and you know what's really great about owning a team, it's not so much. owning the team has small advantages, let's say you are losing one there are three seconds left in the game your team takes the shot for a chance to win the ball is in the air everyone holds their breath and when that ball goes through the hoop you see the players running out and the dogs piling on top of each other screaming and yelling and hugging and you see this big bunch of people, well I own the team, I can run out with them, no one's going to arrest me, it's my team and that's the most amazing part about owning the equipment, there aren't enough Stacks in the universe for what that was worth to me and that was my second big purchase, my third big purchase.

I need to set an example here and withdraw the money. because there was a lesson in my third big purchase, so one day one of my micro Solutions partners, Martin Woodall, comes up to me and says there's this amazing house that's about to go into foreclosure. The owner spent three years building it. the house of his dreams he, his wife and his entire family spent 25 million dollars to build this house, they only lived there eight months and then the stock market crashed and he had never sold a stock and that's why he had to get rid of his house.

Martin called me and said you can buy it right now, but you have to let me know today, yes or no. 12.5 million dollars. He had never seen the house. I saw some photos. I had never been there. I thought, yeah, I'm a billionaire. It was my reason I didn't buy it and it was an amazing house. I raised my three children there and they still live there, but the lesson is great. You know, you can never take wealth for granted. You can never think that it will always be that way. If so, if not, you can do it, but there are a couple of things you need to be able to accomplish.

Rule number one. Find something you can be good at and then be great at it. Second, you must know how to sell anything. you're good at someone is going to need that service someone is going to need that whatever you're creating but you have to be able to sell because you don't want to be in a position where you're dependent on other people number three, be curious and always learning because The only thing that's certain about business is that it changes every day and then the fourth thing, when you have that knowledge, when you have that ability to sell, when you know that, when you walk into a room.

You know you're better than anyone else in the room, that's when it's time to start a business, then you can start controlling your own destiny. Thanks to everyone at GQ for tuning in to see how I earned, saved, spent and then converted my first million. In a billion I'll see you at the home games I'll be there