Mark Cuban's first move after making $2 million was to take off his watch
American billionaire Mark Cuban, best known today as the former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a longtime investor on Shark Tank, has revealed that the first thing he got rid of after becoming a millionaire was not a possession he could not afford before, but the watch on his wrist. According to a Fortune report, Cuban said the decision reflected his desire to take control of his own time rather than live by someone else's schedule.
Speaking on a recent episode of a podcast, Cuban said that on the day of the sale he took it off his watch and swore he would never wear one again, because wearing a watch meant working on someone else’s time. Fortune says he made about $2 million from the sale, which launched him on the path to major career success.The watch came off the day Mark Cuban sold MicroSolutionsSpeaking on a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast hosted by Steven Bartlett, Cuban recalled the moment he sold his software company MicroSolutions in 1990 and became a millionaire.
“The day I sold MicroSolutions, I took off my watch and I said, ‘I’m never going to wear a watch again because that means I’m working on somebody else’s time,’” Cuban said.The entrepreneur reportedly made around $2 million personally from the sale, a milestone that marked the beginning of his journey toward becoming one of America's most successful self-made billionaires.Mark Cuban: It was never just about becoming richWhile Cuban's net worth is now estimated at more than $10 billion, he said accumulating wealth was never the primary objective.
Instead, his goal was achieving independence and having complete control over how he spent his time. “I just thought I hated being broke,” Cuban said on the podcast. “I wanted to control my own destiny. That was a big thing, and I wanted to be able to control my own time.”He contrasted his experience with that of his parents, who worked traditional jobs and were obligated to show up according to someone else's schedule.
According to Cuban, financial success represented freedom rather than luxury. The idea of controlling his own time became one of the guiding principles behind many of his later business decisions.The philosophy still shapes his habitsAlthough Cuban eventually softened his no-watch rule and now wears an Apple Watch for its health and fitness data, he said the thinking behind the gesture remains central to how he approaches life and business.
The billionaire also explained why he avoids wearing ties, saying personal confidence comes from freedom and independence rather than formal dress codes.“Why I won’t wear a tie? Swag isn’t how you dress,” Cuban said. “Swag is being able to tell somebody else how they dress.” His preference for flexibility extends to communication as well. Cuban has previously said he favours emails over phone calls because they allow him to respond thoughtfully and save time.
He has also spoken about avoiding unnecessary meetings, arguing that such habits free up hours in the day.An attention-seeking kid from PittsburghCuban’s drive started long before he had a fortune. He grew up in a working-class family outside Pittsburgh and told Bartlett he was the “fat kid” at school who would do almost anything for attention, including wearing a shirt with profanity on it and ripping a pair of jeans up to the hip and stapling them back together.
Even so, most classmates did not remember him after he became famous, and someone once circled the wrong photo of him in his high school yearbook. He said that insecurity motivated him because he wanted to prove people wrong.At Indiana University, which he described as a fresh start, he covered his junior-year costs by running a chain letter from his dorm. After graduating he moved to Dallas and sold software until his boss fired him, which pushed him to start MicroSolutions.From MicroSolutions to Broadcast.com and the MavericksAfter the sale, Cuban did not reinvest the money.
He said he did the exact opposite, buying a lifetime pass on American Airlines and travelling widely for fun. Much more money followed when he started Broadcast.com and sold it to Yahoo in 1999 for $5.7 billion in stock, which took his net worth past $1 billion. Cuban said that deal changed everything, because he no longer had to hustle and worry about what came next and could do whatever he wanted.That freedom let him buy the Dallas Mavericks in 2000 for $285 million, something he said he never imagined.
He sold his majority stake in late 2023 in a deal Fortune puts at $3.5 billion. Today he is focused on Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, which he started in 2022. The company sells generic and select brand-name prescription drugs directly to consumers and health care providers, cutting out pharmacy benefit managers, which tend to inflate retail drug prices.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient.
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