How Mark Cuban 'Gets Shit Done' and Stays Productive The billionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank star minimizes these two things to tackle more tasks in less time.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Mark Cuban invests in "100-plus companies." He owns a pro basketball team. He's married with three young children. There's also this TV show he's on that you may have heard of.
The 57-year-old celebrity tech mogul didn't make it to the top slowly trudging forward. He started young (at 12, in fact) and quickly worked his way up, from employee to entrepreneur to millionaire to billionaire. As he told us on the set of Shark Tank last week, he "gets shit done." And a lot of it, though obviously not entirely on his own. He has employees, advisors, assistants and a nanny, too.
Related: Mark Cuban's 12 Rules for Startups
Even with hired help, Cuban still controls his daily schedule, right down to what he calls the number-one key to his productivity: minimizing phone calls and meetings whenever possible.
"I don't like to do a lot of meetings and phone calls because of the productivity hit," he tells Entrepreneur. "Only if you're writing me a check, I'll do a meeting. If there's a problem and we need to solve it, I'll do a call. Other than that, I keep communication limited to email. It's more efficient."
Related: Shark Tank Star Mark Cuban: 'Money Can't Buy Happiness'
To stay on-task and to maximize his efforts, expertise and time, he focuses on the fires he has to put out first. "With my investments, I want the bad news first by email, and if it's bad, I'll jump on that," he says. "For the good, well, that's what I expect. That's why I invest in you. I don't spend time on good news because there's nothing to fix."
To see Cuban in action, check out Shark Tank's Season Eight premiere on your local ABC station. It airs on Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. ET.
