“You have to be on a mission, whatever that mission may be,” Mark Cuban tells Fortune. Al Bello-Getty Images
The Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement has gained significant momentum in recent years, and it's no surprise why. As the cost of living has skyrocketed, wages have struggled to keep up and the job market has looked extremely bleak. With the growing dissonance between workers and bosses—due to everything from return-to-work mandates to poor team morale to cultural disagreements—there are those who are able to step up, increase their earning potential, and to get out of a rut I've never had more reasons to do so.
Then there are the workers who roll up their sleeves well into middle age and, in retrospect, wish they had taken part in the FIRE campaign. One of them is billionaire entrepreneur and longtime Shark Tank judge Mark Cuban.
In an email comment to Fortune reporter Will Daniel, Cuban advised against starting a business out of passion and urged workers to instead remain keen on money and building wealth. “You have to be on a mission, whatever that mission may be,” Cuban wrote. “My mission was to retire at 35.”
This is a mission that the 65-year-old Cuban clearly aborted. He still owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team – at least 27% of them -, still sits in the plush chair of ABC's Shark Tank, and just taped a series on MasterClass aimed at aspiring entrepreneurs. “Any good entrepreneur must be able to adapt to change in order to be successful,” he told Daniel. “Life is unpredictable and society and technology are constantly evolving.”
Appearing with Wharton psychologist Adam Grant on the Re:Thinking podcast in 2022, Cuban said that the main reason he hasn't lived the FIRE lifestyle – and hasn't hung up his hat yet – is because of this that he was just too competitive.
At 25, he was fully committed to the FIRE ethos, telling Grant that his goal of accumulating wealth as quickly as possible was the foundation of his every move. But as Cuban's career blossomed, his interest in gaining a foothold in power surpassed his interest in simply getting rich. “Every entrepreneur [in] The back of your mind says, 'I want to be the entrepreneur that revolutionizes and changes an industry,'” Cuban said. “What’s better than this?”
Look no further than Cuban's latest venture for evidence of this aversion to slowing down. In 2021, he founded Cost Plus Drugs, a company dedicated to eliminating unnecessary fees for essential medications – a middleman in the often thankless pharmaceutical industry. As he explained to Grant, Cost Plus Drugs is far from making money. It is his most direct way of bringing about positive social change.
If he had taken over the reins of Cost Plus Drugs at age 25 before selling his first company, he would have been fully focused on an acquisition, he told Grant. But today “is the limit of my next dollar [the minimum]. It won't change my life much. So my decision-making process is completely different.”
Cuban echoed that sentiment a year later in a CBS Sunday Morning interview. “When I was in my 20s, 30s and early 40s, it was all about how much money I could make,” he said. “But at this point in my life, where the next dollar I bring in is no longer going to change my life, my children’s lives, their children’s lives, the capitalist reward is making a difference.”
He once said that his goal with Cost Plus Drugs was to “simply drive the pharmaceutical industry so crazy that it bleeds.”
Perhaps not every young entrepreneur who registers for Shark's MasterClass is currently equipped for such a gigantic undertaking. For those just starting out, Cuban offers more measured advice.
On entrepreneur and VC Randall Kaplan's “In Search of Excellence” podcast, Cuban said success in business and life simply comes from effort. The willingness to do work “is a huge competitive advantage because most people don't do it,” he said. To be successful — on the order of $6.6 billion, Cuba's net worth, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index — you don't just have to show up on time or stay late here or there; It means being proactive, facing the tough problems, and going beyond the parameters of a given job.
Cuban means business; If young talent doesn't have that mindset, he told Kaplan, “Don't apply to me.” And definitely don't assume you're ready to retire.