Dallas Mavericks owner and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban is one of the world’s wealthiest people. A self-made billionaire, he told Home Business Magazine in an exclusive interview that aspiring small business owners should “be unique.” This is what he looks for when investing on “Shark Tank” – “uniqueness of the product and [the] entrepreneur.”
The practice of being unique has certainly worked for Cuban. He is the most-fined owner in the NBA – something he told Inc in 2014 helps grow his Twitter following – he was on the leading edge of the technology boom, and he has invested tens of millions of dollars into dynamic businesses on and off of “Shark Tank.”
Uniqueness was a constant theme of the interview. According to Cuban, business success is based around “knowing what makes you unique, making your customers happy, and always looking to improve.”
He also encouraged business owners to “know what makes your company excel and do more of it” to accomplish a high level of business efficiency. Cuban has publicly said on several occasions since 2010 that unless he’s getting a check from someone, he doesn’t do meetings because they are inefficient. He has the same view of phone calls.
“…I’d rather do 700, even 1,000 or more e-mails, than sit in long and tedious and boring meetings,” Cuban told Vanity Fair in 2018.
Cuban told Home Business Magazine that success also comes from “hiring smart people.” The greatest mistake small business owners make, according to Cuban, is “they don’t focus on sales. To solve it, be the best salesperson in the company.”
This advice is a regular theme for Cuban. At the 2015 CNBC/Inc iCONIC tour in Chicago, he urged new business owners to stop looking for help and mentors. “Get out there. Ready. Fire. Aim. Go.” He also said that colleges students should stop asking him and others to help them – “help yourself,” he told conference attendees.
Cuban’s final advice was to “read as much as you can and learn about as many [businesses] as you can” because “there is no one company” to look at for a successful model to follow. Cuban has certainly taken this model of education to heart – CNBC reports that he reads several hours per day to continue his own learning process, and at the iCONIC conference he said that business owners who aren’t the smartest person in a room about their industry are lying to themselves about their chances of success.
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