'Shark Tank's' Mark Cuban Pushes His Kids to Learn This Skill

Though Mark Cuban of ABC’s Shark Tank has a full plate as a tech guru, film producer, reality star, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the billionaire is also a hands-on family man. Making time with his wife and kids a priority, the dad of three tries to instill strong values and a solid work ethic in his children.

With technology constantly evolving, Cuban sees mastering this skill as a profitable service and encourages his kids to become proficient in it.

Cuban avoids indulging his kids

As a massively successful business man who’s earned his riches through hard work, Cuban and his wife Tiffany Stewart refuse to spoil their kids, hoping to pass on lasting lessons on making their own way in the world.

“I’m not the dad that comes home with a ton of presents. I am the dad that says, ‘Pick that up. Take that; put it in the sink. No, you have to earn that,’” Cuban said, according to Business Insider. “I want them to recognize that the only thing special about themselves is what they make for themselves. They have to be themselves. They can’t be Mark Cuban’s or Tiffany Cuban’s son or daughter. They have to be adults and they have to carry their own weight.”

The Shark Tank star revealed that despite conquering many areas in business, there is one thought that truly scares him when it comes to his children. “That’s my biggest fear that they grow up to be entitled jerks,” he told Dallas’ WFAA in 2015. “It is the scariest thing in my life, ever. After their health, there’s nothing scarier. My wife and I talk about it all the time.”

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The next big business

Cuban is convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) will be the next big boom in the tech space and business in general. “As big as PCs were an impact, as big as the internet was, AI is just going to dwarf it,” he said, according to CNBC. “And if you don’t understand it, you’re going to fall behind. Particularly if you run a business.”

The basketball team owner makes a point of educating himself on the skill. “I mean, I get it on Amazon and Microsoft and Google, and I run their tutorials,” Cuban shared. “If you go in my bathroom, there’s a book, ‘Machine Learning for Idiots.’ Whenever I get a break, I’m reading it.”

With technology constantly evolving, Cuban encourages people to keep up with the changes so they don’t fall behind the times. “If you don’t know how to use it and you don’t understand it and you can’t at least at have a basic understanding of the different approaches and how the algorithms work, you can be blindsided in ways you couldn’t even possibly imagine,” he warned.

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Money-making skill

The Shark Tank investor revealed that ventures in AI are what he would get on board with today. “If I were going to start a business today, I’d build it around Alexa and Google Home,” he said in March, as reported by CNBC. “Alexa skills and scripting Alexa skills is really, really easy. But everybody thinks it’s really, really hard. And so that disconnect is a great opportunity.”

Cuban makes a point of motivating his kids to become fluent in this area of innovation, seeing it as a potential stepping stone to a profitable career. “So I told my kids [and] other kids, learn how to script, and just go get your neighbors and set up all of these Alexa tools and you’ll make $25, $30, $40 an hour,” he said.

Though the billionaire sees plenty of opportunity in this space, his time constraints prevent him from jumping in full throttle. “The good news of having had the level of success I have is obvious, but the bad side is I kinda lost that piss and vinegar because I can think of 50 businesses I could start right now… but I don’t want to give up time at home and all that,” Cuban told Arianna Huffington in 2017. “So that’s kind of the trade-off.”

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