Mark Cuban Success Story: From Sleeping On The Floor to Over 2 Billion Dollars

“When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there.”

-Mark Cuban 

Mark Cuban rose from being the guy who got fired by bosses to become the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks. This is in addition to having a personal fortune of $2.4 billion. He is a self-made billionaire, and as is with all success stories of the self-made filthy rich, his journey to belonging to the exclusive class of billionaires was no easy feat. Here is his success story.

Mark Cuban’s success story began in earnest after he decided to move to Dallas in his 1977 Fiat X19. This was after having been fired several times. He and his friends had to share a 3 bed-roomed apartment, and since they were six, some of them had to sleep on the floor. As he puts it:

“We had only three bedrooms and three beds. I slept on the floor. I had no closet and no dresser. I just stacked my clothes in a corner. The place was a dump, and we just destroyed it even more.”

Starting out, he worked as a bartender for some time. Thereafter, he got lucky so far as his employment search efforts were concerned and got himself a job as a computer salesman. It was however not long before he got fired from the job – again!

That was the turning point in his life. He then made up his mind not to deal with bosses again. His first major venture after setting for Dallas was a business under the name MicroSolutions. In his new company, Mark started out acting as a salesperson, a trainer and also a programmer. As for the programming, he had to learn by himself on the job.

A few years down the line, his determination, effort and willingness to innovate and quickly adapt to change turned the business into a company generating in excess of $30 million in revenues. He was finally financially successful.

But the Mark Cuban success story does not end there. He later sold his company to CompuServe and the capital he got from it enabled him to start a venture that made him a billionaire. That was the founding of Broadcast.com, a company that he sold to Yahoo! for over $2 billion.

He still actively invests. He no longer looks at the big houses to admire them. In fact, he once even bought a mansion worth $15 million without even having looked at it! He also doesn’t sleep on the floor and as he says, he loves his life and loves living. Mark Cuban’s success story is a true “rags” to riches story.

The True Rags To Riches Success Story of Andrew Carnegie

“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

-Andrew Carnegie

With a net worth of over $298.7 billion, Andrew Carnegie is certainly one of the richest men who has ever lived. This is by far no mediocre achievement for a man whose father could not find a job. In fact, by the time his father was on his deathbed, Carnegie was the only breadwinner for the family. He was by then 20 years old.

His rags-to-riches success story started after the family moved from Scotland in 1848. Shortly after settling in the country, he started working as a bobbin boy for a textile mill earning a meager $1.20 per week. His journey to success saw him tending to steam engines and boilers, becoming a messenger, personal telegrapher and working as a superintendent in a railroad company.

What is interesting about the Andrew Carnegie success story is that throughout the various stages in his early life, he continued to work despite the income from his investments bringing in more money than his salary. There was also nothing meteoric about his success story in that all along, he simply reinvested the money he earned.

By the time he formed Carnegie Steel, his wealth tube, Andrew Carnegie had invested in a sleeping car company, an oil company and various transportation companies among others. He later used his investments to form Carnegie Steel, a company which ended up making him the owner of the most extensive integrated iron and steel operations in the United States. He later sold his company for over $480 million.

The next stage of the Andrew Carnegie success story saw him devoting his life to philanthropy. He even wrote a book about it. Thanks to his determination, hard work and generous heart, we now have the Carnegie Hall, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh among many others.

His is a true rags-to-riches success story that shows that through sheer will and determination, any man or woman can rise to the top.

Andrew Carnegie Success Quotes:

“Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.”

"Anything in life worth having is worth working for.”

“The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.”

"Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.”

“Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.”

“There’s always room at the top in every pursuit.”