Mark Cuban took off his watch the day he became a millionaire: ‘I wanted to be able to control my own time’

When Mark Cuban became a millionaire, his first move wasn’t to buy something luxurious. It was to get rid of something. 

“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 on a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett. He made about $2 million from selling that software company in 1990—a move that launched him on his path to major career success. 

Cuban, 68, is now worth an estimated $10.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. But he told Bartlett that getting that rich was never really the goal.

“I just thought I hated being broke,” Cuban said. “I wanted to control my own destiny. That was a big thing, and I wanted to be able to control my own time.”

His parents never had that option, he said: “They always were obligated to somebody else. They had to show up at work.” 

The former Shark Tank star has relaxed his watch rule now, sporting an Apple Watch these days for the data. But the idea behind the rule does still extend to how he dresses.

“Why I........

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