What Does Mark Cuban Say Is the Single Best Investment He Ever Made? The Same One Every Successful Person Makes

Mark Cuban has made scores of business investments.  

He made his first fortune launching and selling MicroSolutions, then doubled-down (okay, exponentially-downed) on Broadcast.com. He then paid $285 million for the Dallas Mavericks, a franchise that is currently worth approximately $2.4 billion.

Plus, he’s been on Shark Tank for nearly ten years. Yep: Investing in startups is one of his jobs.

So when Cuban was recently asked by Men’s Health to name some of the best investments he’s ever made, you would assume he would name a few business winners; he has plenty to choose from.

Nope. Here’s what Cuban said:

Some of the best investments I ever made were investing in myself, first and foremost. When you’re first starting, you may or may not have a job. You don’t have any money. You  at that complete uncertainty about your career. 

What I learned early on is that if I put in the effort, I can learn almost anything. It may take me a long time, but by putting in the effort I taught myself technology, I taught myself to program… it was time-consuming — painfully so — but that investment in myself has paid dividends for the rest of my life.

I learned that learning truly is a skill… and that by continuing to learn to this day, I can compete and get ahead of most people, because the reality is most people don’t put in the time to learn… and that’s always given me a competitive advantage.

You may not have the connections. You may not have the talent or skill. You may not have the experience. 

But what you do have is time: Time to inevst in yourself. Time to improve your skills. To improve your connetions. To gain experience. To improve your health and fitness.

To learn what you don’t know — because knowledge, once gained, is the one thing that can never be taken away. And is the one thing you can apply to the rest of your life. 

Investing in yourself will produce better long-term results than any other investment you can make.

If only because it’s the one investment outcome you can almost totally control.

Put in the effort, you’ll get a return.