Mark Cuban Started His Entrepreneurial Career Selling Trash Bags As A 12-Year-Old

The billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star "Shark Tank" investor got his first lesson in entrepreneurship at just 12 years old.

Cuban tells Bloomberg's Barry Ritholtz in a recent episode of the "Masters in Business" podcast that he asked his dad for a pair of expensive sneakers. His dad was playing poker and drinking with a few of his buddies, which happened to work perfectly in Cuban's favor.

He tells Ritholtz:

My dad said, "Those shoes on your feet look like they're working pretty well. If you want a new pair of sneakers, you need a job and you can go buy them."

And I'm like, "Dad, I'm 12 years old, where am I gonna get a job?"

And one of his buddies popped up... He said, "I got somethin' for ya! I've got these garbage bags I need to sell. Why don't you go out there and sell these garbage bags?"

...It was a box, right? And they were just flat. They were 100 for six bucks, what I sold them for - they cost me three bucks, so I made three bucks a box.

And I would literally go door to door to door: "Hi, does your family use garbage bags?" And who could say no? So that's where I learned to sell. Literally. Every objection [I'd reply], "Of course you use garbage bags, and I bet you pay more than six cents a piece."... So, I went on from there.

From that point forward, Cuban never stopped hatching business schemes.

The highlight of his young career, he says, was as a college student in 1979 when he was a disco instructor who exclusively taught young women. The bulk of his students were in sororities, and he charged $25 an hour ("Twenty-five dollars an hour! I would do that job today," Cuban says).

You can listen to the full podcast, via Bloomberg, below: