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Success Story: Mark Cuban

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Rawr

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S928

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

It's always nice to hear someone talk about their success via first person, definitely grabs more attention. I found it interesting that he started his first biz at 12 selling trash bags, of all things. Yep, trash bags! Apparently, he's always had the entrepreneur spirit and he's done extremely well. He's definitely right: you only have to be right once.
 

WheelsRCool

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

From what I understand, he made $2 million from Microsolutions, bought a lifetime pass on American Airlines, and went and "invested during the day, partied during the night, had a freaking blast," to quote him. Then he got the idea to start a company that would broadcast radio on the Internet. He and a friend I believe started it up and called it Broadcast.com, they turned it into I think what was a $15 million a year company (might have been more, my memory is a bit foggy), but this was the height of the tech boom remember, so Yahoo! offered him $5 billion for it, which he sold and made about $1 billion off of I think.

Cuban was wise to the fact that the technology industry was subject to booms and busts, so he quickly diversified all his stock, so when the Dot Com bubble burst, his wealth was safe (one dude went from net worth $10 billion to $100 million, another guy went from $1 billion to negative $15 million, so Cuban was smart).

Then he decided to spend a few hundred million to purchase the Dallas Mavericks, which were a crap team, which he then turned into a quality team.

He also yelled to one of the referees (or whatever they're called) during a game that they "couldn't run a Dairy Queen," which upset Dairy Queen a lot, so they told Cuban they'd like to see him run a Dairy Queen. So for a day, Cuban went and ran a Dairy Queen :)

He has since started up some movie theaters I believe and also the first network devoted fully to HD.

His movie theaters are strictly HD, I don't know how this will work out for him as they say one unique thing about the movie industry is that it is incredibly difficult to improve on regular film. You can digitize movies in the sense of putting them on things like DVDs and such, but even DVDs are film movies placed onto the DVD. Actual digitally-recorded movies, the technology just may not be worth it, because film is so good already, and developing digital movie recording just may be too expensive and not show any improvement over film. Time will tell.

He also got into a stink with Donald Trump for awhile over something.
 

Rawr

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

MJ can fill you in more about Trump vs Cuban experience, but the basics are these:

Trump is all on paper. He continuously over-estimates his worth, for example - he has a building with his name on it, for which he got paid. But the building doesn't belong to him, yet he will list it as an asset at full value. (like 150mil for example).

Cuban constantly mocks Trump for this and actually wants Donald to sue him so all the financials are revealed. Let me just throw this out there- have you ever seen a Warren Buffet cologne? Or a Bill Gates watch line? I may be totally wrong about this, but I do not buy the incredible genius of DT to diversify his efforts in order to make an even bigger killing.
 

michael515

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

Cuban is the real deal. Gotta love his honesty about partying and having a beat up car and all the other struggles in the past. I respect him because he's real. He's a public figure and still is willing to admit to all this.
 

WheelsRCool

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

I respect Cuban as a businessman, and I respect Trump for being able to recover from $9 billion in debt.

As for his financials, well he says he can't reveal them or it would reveal crucial information, I don't know either way about that.

I have no problem with Trump putting his name on other products. That's up to him.

Look at Richard Branson. He has started hundreds of companies under his "Virgin" brand, from Virgin Records to Virgin Airlines to Virgin Mobile to Virgin Galactic now to a bunch of smaller, lesser-known companies.

As for Trump's fortune, well Forbes estimated it at $2 billion, he says it's $6 billion, so who knows.
 
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Z5 FILMS

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

i think the HD theater thing might take off. HD IS the future in my opinion.

As Wheels mentioned, film is already HD. Not sure what Cuban's HD theaters are about. I'm guessing it has something to do with digital. I dunno though.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

MJ can fill you in more about Trump vs Cuban experience

I really don't listen to Trump as a mentor because as far as I know, he wasn't self-made. If you gave me $10 million when I was young, I don't think it would be too difficult to turn it into $100 million in 10-20 years.

The real trick is starting with nothing and making something of it.

This is why I tend to listen to self-made entrepreneurs who start with nothing --- the entrepreneurs who have the grace of the lucky sperm club don't cut it for me. An aspiring entrepreneur with a mountain of bills and zero net worth should have mentors who have been down the roads they are now traveling. If you're looking to make a journey across the Sahara desert, find someone who's made the exact same journey ... not someone who was dropped-off 3/4 of the journey with a trailer of water as their safety net.

Aside from his horrific movie recently released, Cuban seems to me like a raw entrepreneur - buying and building businesses and adding value to lives/organizations. Trump is a great example of the power of branding ... his name is a powerful brand and he has it leveraged to the hilt - much like his real estate.
 
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Jbellefeuille

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

Everyone is right on the money about Trump - I recall my elementary gym teacher, he made everyone where grey basics, sweats, t-shirts, etc, no one could have a brand or they were docked points.

he used to say "Your body isn't a billboard" - Trump could use some of this advice, I have lost a lot of respect for him, the more I learn about him.

Trump runs a franchise period - educational is a term used loosely for his franchise, I also feel this way about the Rich Dad, Poor Dad guy.

The thing that they do is wake people up - which is where we all started at one point in time, unless of course your DT and your parents were rich.
 

fanocks2003

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

Donald Trump I have no respect for. As one of you said, he didn't start from scratch. Mark Cuban though is a great example of a guy who started from scratch and built himself up step by step. Mark Cubans blog is very interesting to read.
 

MrPink

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Re: Success Story: Marc Cuban

I wish he went into more detail about how he structured his business (legal, taxes). I felt the story was working crappy jobs, went on my own, had a business..

I guess this wouldn't be that 'exciting' for the story, but quite informative. (I will include it in my future rags to riches story, hehe)

Mr. Pink
 
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