Mark Cuban didn't always own NBA teams and billion-dollar businesses. Long before the Dallas Mavericks, long before “Shark Tank,” he was just a kid growing up in Pittsburgh, watching his dad grind out 60-hour weeks upholstering car seats.
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A Life-Changing Milestone
Cuban still remembers the moment he told his dad Norton that he had made $100,000 in a single year. “He cried,” Cuban said in a 2019 interview on “The Dan Patrick Show.” “He did upholstery on cars and I don’t think he ever made more than $40,000 in a year.”
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The money wasn't just a number. For Cuban, it meant freedom. For his father, it was pride. "It wasn't so much that it was hard for him," Cuban added. "But we would go out to dinner and he would still pull out the credit card. Even when it was my credit card, he gave me a death stare, like, ‘Don’t even think about paying.'”
The Lesson That Shaped His Life
Cuban also credits his work ethic and values to his dad, who gave him a key piece of advice when he was 14: “Time is your most valuable asset.”
“His time was never his own,” Cuban told CNBC last year. “He wanted me to create my own path.”
That mindset pushed Cuban to chase independence over a high-paying job. He wanted to control his schedule and never answer to anyone else.
Cuban started selling trash bags door to door at age 12, then stamps and coins. In college, he taught disco lessons for $25 an hour and opened a bar using the money from side hustles. His first big win came when he sold MicroSolutions for $6 million in 1990. Less than a decade later, Yahoo acquired his next company, Broadcast.com, for $5.7 billion.
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Still Just Dad
Despite the success, Cuban says some things never changed. His dad moved to Dallas after Mark bought the Mavericks, but kept his same humble approach. “I couldn’t get him to retire, and finally that was kind of the impetus for him to retire and come down to Dallas and live and just hang out and go to Mavs games,” Cuban said.
He never gave his dad one big gift. Instead, he gave him the option to go anywhere in the world. His dad took full advantage, cruising across the globe and collecting friends along the way. “I’d get emails from random people who met my dad on cruises,” Cuban told Patrick.
And at home? Cuban might be a billionaire, but to his kids, he’s still just Dad. “One of my daughters says, ‘You don't know anything about business, Dad,'” Cuban joked on Theo Von‘s podcast last year.
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