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mark cuban

Mark Cuban speaking at a business roundtable hosted by the Kamala Harris for President campaign at Ocotillo in Phoenix, Arizona on October 19, 2024.

Knowledge is one of the only things people can’t take from you. You can lose your possessions, relationships, and money, but what’s between your ears is pretty much forever. The great thing is that we can continue learning new skills and information throughout our lives. However, some folks get stuck because they feel they don’t have the drive to learn new skills or the ability to develop them. A lot of the time, these barriers were built by our own design.

Billionaire Mark Cuban says the key to success is the ability to continue evolving and learning new skills. Cuban is an entrepreneur, investor, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and star of ABC's Shark Tank. In a 2021 interview with Men's Health, he explained the secret to his success.

What's the secret to Mark Cuban’s success?

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"When you’re first starting—you may or may not have a job, you don’t have any money, you’re [uncertain] 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. And the fact that I recognized that learning was truly a skill, and that by continuing to learn to this day, I'm able to compete and keep up and get ahead of most people. Because the reality is most people don't put in the time to keep up and learn, and that's always given me a competitive advantage.”


The empowering thing about Cuban’s advice is that it can help just about anyone, regardless of their economic status. In most cases, people can teach themselves valuable skills that can help them get a job or go out on their own with very little, if any, money. The key is to believe in yourself enough that you can learn the skill and to persevere, no matter the setbacks.

The problem is that we often hold ourselves back by telling ourselves that we aren’t smart enough or don’t have the talent to learn certain skills. When, in reality, we have everything we need to learn something new, we’ve just talked ourselves out of it.

What is a growth mindset?

Carol Dweck, a researcher who focuses on human motivation, says that it all comes down to whether we have a fixed or growth mindset. Those who have a fixed mindset and have a hard time picking up new skills believe that their skill set cannot be improved. They may think they're good at athletics but aren’t great at math, so they stick to sports instead of teaching themselves how the stock market works.

new skill, labor, woman in hard hat, drill press, factoryA woman in a hard hat.via Canva/Photos

However, other people, such as Cuban, have a growth mindset and believe they can expand and change beyond how they see themselves in the current moment. “There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens,” Dweck writes in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. “The hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.

Dweck believes that we can break into a growth mindset by harnessing the power of “not yet.” Let’s say you’ve always wanted to play guitar but told yourself that you’re “not musical,” so you haven’t picked up the instrument. The key is to say to yourself, “I’m not yet musical, but I have an eye on the goal of becoming so."

Adopting the “not yet” mentality helps you understand you're on a learning curve. "It gives you a glimpse into the future," Dweck said. Learn more about developing a growth mindset and achieving your goals in her TED Talk, “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve,” posted below:

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NBA star J.J. Barea took the team jet down to Puerto Rico on a humanitarian mission home.

In the wake of Hurricane Maria, he was looking for ways to help out.

Dallas Mavericks point guard  J.J. Barea recently asked his boss, Mark Cuban, for a huge favor. He needed to borrow the team plane.

Without hesitation, Cuban gave Barea the go ahead and with good reason: Barrea needed to get to Puerto Rico to help his family and bring supplies for others stranded on the hurricane-ravaged island.

Barea celebrates a basket during a 2015 game. Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images.


Carrying along 32 generators, 7 tons of water, 5 tons of food, and 1.5 tons of medical supplies, Barea set off for his home of Puerto Rico the morning of Sept. 26, 2017.

Surveying the damage from the air and on the ground, Barea was shocked by the level of devastation left by Hurricane Maria.

"It's like a bomb exploded," he told the CBS affiliate in Dallas with tears welled up in his eyes.

GIF from CBSDFW/YouTube.

Originally, Barea and his wife, Viviana, set out to crowdfund assistance for people on the ground in Puerto Rico — something people who want to do can still donate to. However, when the opportunity to make the trip down there himself came up, he jumped at the chance. His mother and grandmother, both on the island when Maria hit, rode back in the plane with Barea as did some friends and even a few complete strangers in need.

He's planning on making another trip in the next few days to drop off more supplies and offer on-the-ground assistance of his own.

Barea lands in Puerto Rico. Photo via CBSDFW/YouTube.

Puerto Ricans are our fellow Americans, and they need our help.

The majority of the island's 3.4 million residents were still without power as of Sept. 26, and many still don't even have access to clean drinking water. Our president doesn't seem entirely invested in getting them the help they need, and a number of bureaucratic hurdles — such as the Jones Act — exist that prevent those of us itching to help out from doing so.

Some, like Barea (via Cuban, of course) and Pitbull, have access to private planes they can use to help out during the crisis, but most of us don't. Thankfully, Melissa Locker over at Fast Company put together a quick list of things you, personally, can do and organizations you can support if you want to help those whose lives have been devastated by the storm.

"Puerto Rico, for me, is everything." GIF from CBSDFW/YouTube.

Watch the Dallas-Fort Worth CBS news affiliate's report on Barea's trip below.

History's latest gladiator match took place Thursday when His Holiness Pope Francis took on His Hairpiece Donald Trump.

The pope and Donald Trump came to blows when, while flying from Mexico back to Rome, the pontiff said, "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian."

He didn't directly address Trump, who has famously doubled- and tripled-down on his plans to build the (biggest, best, most beautiful) wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the Vatican has clarified that the pope did not mean his comment as a personal attack on the business-mogul-turned-GOP-presidential-candidate.


But Trump was not happy about the comment.

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful," Trump fired back at the pope in South Carolina, where he was addressing a packed room at a golf resort.

Forget Batman vs. Superman. This is the best.

"And then he said I was 'disgraceful.' No, seriously! He actually said that," I want to imagine the pope said. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Of all the words to call the pope, "disgraceful" is certainly an interesting choice.

Coming from the Italian "disgrazia," the word "disgraced" in literal translation means "without grace" or "without the favor of God."

With all the resources available to me, a millennial with Internet access, I don't think I could come up with a more ill-fitting word to describe the pope than one with Italian origins that means "unfavored by God." It'd be like calling turtles "shell-less" or describing coffee as "constipating."

While I doubt Donald looks up the etymology of every word he slings out as an insult, it does point to an interesting trend of his.

Trump insults a lot of people, but he's not actually very good at it.

Besides tossing insults at basically every presidential candidate on the docket, not to mention the entire country of Germany...


...Trump has lambasted a huge array of public figures, institutions, companies, and even concepts. But his choice words consistently reveal some bizarre word choices.

Take this recent tweet referring to NBC anchor Chuck Todd:

Saying Chuck Todd "knows so little about politics" is really very silly.

Chuck Todd has been working in and around politics since at least 1992, when he worked for the presidential campaign of then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). After that, he was editor-in-chief of The Hotline, a political news briefing from Atlantic Media, for six years.

Thanks, Donald! Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

Todd also was NBC News' political director and chief White House correspondent, co-hosted "The Daily Rundown" on MSNBC, and currently hosts NBC's "Meet the Press."

So, while I'm not president of the Chuck Todd Fan Club or anything (It's a thing. They're called Chuckolytes. I'm hoping to run for treasurer.), I think it's safe to say the guy knows a little bit about politics.

How about this tweet insulting CNN's S.E. Cupp...

Cupp, the bespectacled CNN commentator formerly of MSNBC's "The Cycle," got her bachelor's degree from Cornell and her master's from New York University. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and many other publications.


Do these glasses make me look loser-y? Photo by Angela Weiss/Getty Images.

She's been an accomplished writer and commentator since the early 2000s. Oh, and she was also a professional ballet dancer for six years.

If Cupp is a loser, then you can go ahead and sign me up for loserdom as well.

Or how about when he blasted Sen. John McCain?

You may not agree with McCain's politics. But the guy has served in the Senate since 1986. He was in the Navy from 1954 to 1981. He was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and is chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

What did the orange man say? Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Real dummy.

Trump also used the same word for Arianna Huffington.

Maybe he's thinking of a different Arianna Huffington?

Because the one I know of was #12 on Forbes' 2009 list of the most influential women in media, as well as one of its 100 most powerful women in the world.

Huffington being a dummy at the Global Women Entrepreneurs Conference in China. Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images.

She's also an accomplished author, media mogul, and co-founder of the Huffington Post. What a dummy!

He called fellow billionaire Mark Cuban a "loser."

Love him or hate him, Cuban went from selling garbage bags to pay for sneakers at 12 years old to owning the Dallas Mavericks. That's the kind of loser I'd love to be some day.

Or the kind of "loser" that becomes attorney general of New York:


Either one would be fine with me.

I'd even be willing to wear a big hat that says "Loser" in big, bright letters on the front. Misspelled, probably, because I also want to be a "dummy."

But nothing beats my personal favorite: when Trump called actor Samuel L. Jackson "boring."

Seriously? Samuel L. Jackson? Boring?!

THIS Samuel L. Jackson?!


GIF via "Pulp Fiction"/YouTube.

The only way you could think Samuel L. "M*****f***ing" "Hold onto your butts" "What does Marsellus Wallace look like?!" "Say 'what' again" Jackson is boring is if you've only seen him in "The Phantom Menace."

I mean, seriously, do you remember when he got eaten by that shark?

GIF via "Deep Blue Sea"/YouTube.

(Spoilers. Sorry.)

The point is, we should all hope to be insulted by Donald Trump.

If he takes the time to berate your intelligence, merit, or ability, it probably means you're doing something right!

Personally, I hope Trump sends an insulting tweet my way. Maybe then I can finally live out my dream of becoming a millionaire actor, media personality, writer, and NBA franchise owner.

Just like all the other dummies and boring people.

GIF via "Pulp Fiction"/YouTube.

Tasty.