That time I emailed Mark Cuban...and he actually responded 👀

I'm serious.

I was young and I had big dreams.

And like many young entrepreneurs with big dreams I was a little wild.

Unpolished, “green”, rough around the edges. Whatever you want to call it, I was a maverick on a mission.

I’d learned a thing or two about business from some books and classes.

But I wanted to hear the truth, the cold, hard truth about entrepreneurship straight from the shark’s mouth. So, I emailed Mark Cuban.

First I searched the web, digging up every email address I could find, and then I BCC-dumped them into an email (remember, I was, ahem, “green”).

I wrote this long, impassioned email that, in retrospect, was way too long and far too unprofessional to merit any kind of response.

And then, I hit send.

Off it went. Within a few seconds I got some bounce-back emails, as I’d expected, but then I noticed that one address didn’t fire back. Maybe I was in luck. Maybe he would actually read it.

I forgot about the email and went about my day like nothing would come of it. I was no stranger to cold-emailing successful people (who had better things to do than respond to some kid’s long, ranting email: War and Peace - Business Edition).

It was unlikely that anything would come of it. So, I shrugged it off.

Fall down seven times, stand up eight, right?

But then…ping! There it was. A reply in my inbox. From Mark.

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Surely it must have been his assistant telling me he was too busy to respond but that he “appreciated the message” (I’d gotten lots of responses like these over the years).

But then I opened it and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was actually him.

And he told me something that I’ll never forget. He told me something in response to my question, “what is your best advice for entrepreneurs?” He told something in 10 words that I still think about to this day:

¹

Ok - so technically it was more than 10 words (and some of the words are missing or misspelled (what was he doing while he wrote this?)).

But in my head I remember it like this: Find something you can do that makes you money immediately.

It seemed so obvious but also it flew in the face of “conventional wisdom” that so many entrepreneurs and gurus preached. “You need the right VC”, “You must have enough runway”, “Funding is critical”, “Hiring the right engineers is the most important part”.

What Mark was getting at was simple yet profound: perfect is the enemy of done.

It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in designing the most amazing logo or hiring the dream team or optimizing their website to death, but Mark’s message was clear: satisfy a customer want or need, bring in the dollars, and the rest will follow. All the other details aren’t important (until they are).

Remember, the first ever airplane wasn’t exactly a fighter jet.

Normal, everyday people have never had more resources at their disposal when it comes to building a business: Shopify, LegalZoom, Fiverr, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, etc.

The problem isn’t a lack of resources. The problem isn’t even a lack of money. The problem is a lack of focus.

Focus on the ONE thing that will truly propel the business forward. Full-stop. Period.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

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P.s. - Apparently I wasn’t as “special” as I’d originally thought. It turns out Mark’s email is pretty public and that he welcomes the 1,000 emails he receives from entrepreneurs every day !

1. The “From:” email address in this screenshot was pulled from this article