According to billionaire Mark Cuban, the key to starting a successful business at a young age is to focus on tasks that you can accomplish independently with your own time and resources. He emphasized the importance of starting with what you already know and building on those skills and experiences.
Cuban shared this advice with a group of high school students at Lewisville High School in Texas, drawing from his own experience of starting his first side hustle at the age of 12.
According to Mark Cuban, the key to starting a successful business at a young age is to focus on tasks that you can accomplish independently with your own time and resources. He advises young entrepreneurs to sell products that are easy for them to obtain and easy to sell, and to focus on businesses that they can control and manage themselves.
Cuban learned this lesson at a young age, when he started his own business as a pre-teen by selling garbage bags door-to-door in a Pittsburgh suburb. He later sold a variety of collectibles, such as baseball cards, coins, and stamps, to help pay for his college tuition.
These experiences taught Cuban the value of starting a business with readily available resources and following his own advice for young entrepreneurs today.
Mark Cuban advises young entrepreneurs to start a business by focusing on tasks that they can accomplish independently with their own time and resources. He learned this lesson at a young age, when he started his own business as a pre-teen by selling garbage bags door-to-door and later selling collectibles to help pay for his college tuition.
He also worked as a bartender and taught dance lessons to make extra money. Cuban later shared his dance skills on “Dancing With the Stars,” where he finished 8th in the competition.
He advises young entrepreneurs to build a business around something they can make or a service they can offer to friends, family, and neighbors. Starting and growing a successful business is difficult, as roughly 20% of new businesses fail within a year of launching, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mark Cuban says that, starting a business and being an entrepreneur is not easy and requires hard work. He advises young entrepreneurs to focus on tasks that they can accomplish independently with their own time and resources and to build a business around something they can make or a service they can offer to friends, family, and neighbors.
To become successful, Cuban advises extensively researching your business plan and potential competition, seeking out funding, and creating backup plans to allow for flexibility if you need to adjust on the fly. He emphasizes the importance of putting in hard work, especially after you choose your business opportunity, as this can open up a world of opportunity for you.
“If you’re willing to take the initiative and start a business, anything is possible,” he said.