Mark Cuban Says You Don't Need To Have Life Figured Out By 22 — He Got Fired, Slept on the Floor, 'Partied Like A Rockstar,' And Still Became Rich

Graduating college might feel like stepping off a cliff. After years of lectures, finals, and ramen-fueled cramming sessions, the question hits hard: Now what? Billionaire Mark Cuban has a surprisingly chill answer—literally.

During a 2019 BOLD TV interview at the SALT Conference, the entrepreneur was asked what advice he'd give to young people, especially those stepping out into the real world for the first time.

"If I'm talking to somebody who's just graduating from college," Cuban said, "just say don't stress, right? You don't have to have all the answers. You don't have to have your chosen career. You don't have to know what you're going to be when you grow up. You don't have to be, you know, focused on adulthood. Just, you know, get a job. Just do something."

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Forget finding your life's calling by 22. Cuban's approach is refreshingly unpolished—because his own start was far from glamorous.

After graduating from Indiana University, he moved to Dallas. At night, he bartended. By day, he sold PC software—until he got fired from that too. So he leaned into what he could control.

"I was pissant broke, slept on the floor, got fired, was a shitty employee," he said. "Started the company, starved for a while, grinded it out, sold that company, used that money to buy and start another company, sold that company—partied like a rock star."

No apologies. No polishing the past. Just the reality of someone who figured it out by doing, not overthinking.

"I always knew I was an entrepreneur," he said, "but when I graduated from college in Indiana, I didn't know what I was going to do."

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"I'm just not employable," he joked. "So I started a company called MicroSolutions." It grew to 80 employees and pulled in $30 million in sales before he sold it. He used the money to buy a lifetime pass on American Airlines. "Traveled the world," he added, like that was just the natural next step.

But it wasn't luck or timing—it was curiosity and effort. "I was always trying to learn something new," he said. "Learning how to learn, to me, was the greatest skill that I got at Indiana."

That's the advice most people skip: learning is the job. Not knowing what you're doing? Totally normal. The trick is refusing to stay in that spot.

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For anyone flirting with entrepreneurship, Cuban didn't downplay the process: "If you have to ask if you're ready, you're not ready," he said. "If you think it's all about raising money, you're not ready."

You'll get an idea, he said. You'll Google it. No one else has done it. You'll tell your friends and they'll say it's cool—and then you'll stop.

That's the line in the sand. Most people freeze there. "That's where you've got to put in the effort to learn what to do," Cuban said. "Can you make a prototype? Can you find one customer that's willing to pay you?"

The advice wasn't glamorous. But it was real. "You just grind it out," he said, "and typically, good things happen."

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