Mark Cuban Quotations | Page 2

If you're looking where everybody else is looking, you're looking in the wrong spot.

My first company was MicroSolutions. I worked 20 hours a day. I didn't take a vacation for 7 years. I didn't even take the time to read a fiction book. It was all about work. When I sold it, I promised myself I would never wear a watch and only wear a suit to weddings, funerals and to meet the President.

Just watch. Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way. I'm just telling you, when you've got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That's rule No. 1 of business.

Most people think it's all about the idea. It's not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea.

I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion,

To retire by the age of 35 was my goal. I wasn't sure how I was going to get there though. I knew I would end up owning my own business someday, so I figured my challenge was to learn as much as anyone about all businesses. I believed that every job I took was really me getting paid to learn about a new industry. I spent as much time as I could, learning and reading everything about business I could get my hands on. I used to go into the library for hours and hours reading business books and magazines.

Sometimes the best properties aren't necessarily the biggest properties.

Yes. And release prisoners who are incarcerated for pot.

Business is a sport and I want to win. I want to kick your ass. I may not win every game. But I certainly am going to try.

Today is the youngest you will ever be. Live like it.

Forget about finding your passion. Instead, focus on finding big problems.

It's not whether the glass is half empty or half full, it's who is pouring the water. The key in business and success at any endeavor is doing your best to control your destiny. You can't always do it, but you have to take every opportunity you can to be as prepared as-and ahead of-the competition as you possibly can be.

If given a choice between investing in someone who has read REWORK or has an MBA, I’m investing in REWORK every time. A must read for every entrepreneur.

I know I'm prejudiced, and I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways,

Business is the ultimate sport. In business, as in sport, the one thing you can control is effort.

Success is about making your life a special version of unique that fits who you are - not what other people want you to be.

As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.

Even when I had nothing, I had everything. Because I love to compete.

Never follow your dreams. Follow your effort.

If Ayn Rand were an up-and-coming author today, she wouldn't write about steel or railroads, it would be Net Neutrality.

One thing we can all control is effort

Expect the unexpected, and always be ready - everyone has inside them what it takes to be successful. You just have to be ready to unleash it when the opportunity presents itself.

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.

Credit cards are the WORST investment that you can make.

It's not the dreaming, it's the doing.

My businesses are usually built around challenging conventional wisdom, so I tend to gain by taking the other side. It's been very profitable and entertaining for me

I was a beast in college. I worked hard and I played hard. I was relentless learning about business. I actually snuck into MBA classes my freshman and sophomore years. I wanted to challenge myself to see how I compared to the smartest kids at Indiana University so I was 18 and pretended I was an MBA student.

Never settle. There is no reason to rush.

Sports, music, movies - basically, fans of any form of entertainment don't do a resume analysis before picking their favorite.

You need a place where you can explain yourself. You can write as much or as little as you would like, but the words will be all yours. You can create the context. You can make sure that all issues are addressed. You can take issue with individuals or the media as a whole. Your words, your message.

As far as businesses, I was always hustling. I had to pay for my own school. I got 20 bucks every week or 2 from my dad and that was it. So I had a "whatever it took" attitude.

Do the things that make perfect sense to you, [and] don't be afraid to shout it from the mountain tops just because it's outside the box or against the grain in your industry. More often than not, you're probably going to be right.

Having the ability to be brutally honest with yourself is the greatest challenge you face when creating a business model. Too often we oversell ourselves on the quality of the idea, service, or product. We don't provide an honest assessment of how we fit in the market, why customers will buy from us, and at what price.

The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It's 7 × 24 × 365 × forever.

If you are active online or texting, there is a good chance I could look at what you do and know more about you than your family.

Executives should blog if they have a vision they are trying to communicate, or if they are very visible in the media.

The new moron in town is Chad Ford of ESPN.com.

I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't fail ... a lot. The good, the bad, it's all part of the success equation.

I don't think people realize the risks they face every time they create a text, or post on a social network. Unless you expressly make the effort, everything you do online, including texting, has a shelf life of forever.

One problem people have is that they lie to themselves. You may think you are more talented then the next guy. Which is exactly what the next guy thinks as well. Rarely is talent enough. You have to find ways to make yourself stand out. You do so by playing to your strengths and making people aware of those strengths. 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.

There are no shortcuts. NONE.

Most people think money is the key to reducing risk. Prepartion is.

Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.

Never settle. There is no need to rush.

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.

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.

Business is the marketplace of ideas.

When you first start working for me, directly for me, I micromanage until I trust you.

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.

I'm a big believer that you always reiterate, you always learn, you always realize your business is evolving.

I can turn an idea into a business before you know it's going to be important. My first step will blow by you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You learn in life that a lot of things are the result of effort, but some things, in terms of scale, are random.

We all know or have read about someone who has been burned on social media. We have taught our kids not to post pictures publicly that could impact their future, but we have not yet taught ourselves that texts, messages and social media posts could be used just as maliciously or with as much downside as pictures.

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?'

I'm scared shitless of heights.

Everyone is passionate about something. Usually more than one thing. We are born with it.

I just try to have a good time, enjoy my family, enjoy my life. I was having a blast when I was poor, and I'm having maybe a little bit more now that I've got something in the bank.

There is very little knowledge that can't be obtained through effort. With knowledge you can determine the state of any business or opportunity and find a course to gain an advantage.

Every kid thinks they have something special about themselves. Every adult thinks they have a big idea at some point in their life. Rather than pursue every thing they possibly can to prepare themselves to enable their idea or special talent, they tend to wing it and make excuses.

Know your stuff. Have an angle. Know how to grow business, how to develop products, have patents and an undeveloped market that could be huge.

It's always the little decisions that have the biggest impact.

Being successful entails being able to not only get along with people, but also to give something back

I'd rather be tired than broke!

I learned how to become wealthy because I asked the right questions when I was broke.

Don't get caught up in how many hours you work. Judge success based on having goals and measuring your results. Hard work, and lots of it, is certainly needed, but focus on what you get done.

Culture is very important to the Mavs.... It isn't about who talks the most or the loudest. It is about the demeanor and attitude he brings.

I love helping entrepreneurs. It's something I really have fun doing. It's like planting a little seed and watching it grow. Any time I can help somebody, that's a good thing. It's fun. If I get to make some money at it, it's even better.

If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

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.

Everyone has ideas. The first step is to learn more about your industry than anyone in the world. Otherwise there is a good chance that the lady that knows it better than you is going to kick your ass. Then you just have to go for it. No excuses. Just work your ass off.

A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it's okay to buy for your own employees, but if you really think people are going to wear your branded polo when they're out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.

It doesn't matter where you live...It doesn't matter how you live. It doesn't matter what car you drive. It doesn't matter what kind of clothes you wear.

To me business is a sport. I love knowing that 24x7x365xforever I'm competing with people I don't know. To build my businesses. To come up with new ideas. To come up with better ideas. That motivates me.

With Android I get to choose from many different products from many different phone manufacturers. With iOS, I get what Apple gives me. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not always the best fit for my personal or business communication needs.

When I started writing this blog more than years ago, it was in response to traditional media's habit of twisting interviews to fit the headlines they wanted to create.

While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I don't. I find it patriotic.

Nothing can kill the future dreams and goals of a new graduate than 50k of debt like an anvil over your head. I got to Indiana University not because I visited the campus and loved everything about it. I picked Indiana University because I saw a list of the top 10 business schools and it was the cheapest.

Sales is the most important aspect of a company, which in turn is about how well you treat your customer and stay ahead of your customer's requirements.

Tech stocks were the cubic zirconium of the market. They looked good and were sexy, but they just were a way for the company selling them to make money. That's always going to be transient in terms of the stock market. What's real is that companies have to compete. Technology used well is a great tool to enable that if only because most companies dont use technologies well.

The Higher Education Industry is very analogous to the Newspaper industry. By the time they realize they need to change the costs to support their legacy infrastructure and costs will keep them from getting there.

All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal.

I never look at the glass as half empty or half full. I look to see who is pouring the water and deal with them.

Find something you love to do. If you don't make money at it, at least you love going to work.

Focus on building the best possible business. If you are great, people will notice and opportunities will appear.

Don't start a company unless it's an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it's not an obsession.

The stock market's handling of new technology is kind of a joke. We have seen CNBC, CNNfn, Bloomberg, and the like turn into home-shopping networks for stocks. Fund managers and analysts go on TV and sell what's shiny and easy to sell.

I love to compete. I want to get out there and kick your ass in the business world. That is what inspires me.

I'm always afraid of failing. It's great motivation to work harder.

Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is.

One thing I learned in the NBA is that the No. 1 job of a general manager is to keep his job. They are only 30 positions where you make millions and hang around with basketball players all day.

There is only one thing in life you can control: Your own effort.

I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren't much more than baseball cards. They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for it.

It is called working your ass off. The difference is what you are willing to sacrifice. For every writer who wants balance in their life, there is a guy like me who gives up a lot to make their dreams come true. There is always going to be someone out there that knows they have to compensate for maybe having less talent with harder work and preparation.

When you hit send on a text or tweet, you lose ownership of it - but you don't lose responsibility. Every text you have sent may have been saved and could be out there waiting to be used in ways you didn't imagine. Even the most simple of posts can be used out of context, often unintentionally, and change your future.

If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face, white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere, I'm walking back to the other side of the street, and the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of.