Even billionaires wish they could go back in time and give their younger selves some wisdom.
That goes for three of the world’s more popular business icons: Mark Cuban, Bill Gates and Ray Dalio. Each amassed their fortunes through entrepreneurship: Cuban built a startup that was acquired by Yahoo for $5.7 billion, Gates co-founded tech giant Microsoft, and Dalio created Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds.
All three of them have experienced the heights of success — and each has regrets about the paths they took to get there. For example, as Dalio wrote during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” Q&A in 2019: “The big message I would want to have given myself is: ‘Why are you so stupidly arrogant!?!'”
From pushing the people around them too hard to letting their egos get in the way, here are some of the mistakes the trio made, and the advice they’d give themselves if they had the chance.
Be nicer
Don’t pretend to be smarter than you are
Stay humble, no matter your net worth
“You can be worlds smarter and raise your chances of making better decisions if you could simply be humble, and worried enough about being wrong to have the smartest people [be] willing to disagree with you and challenge you, so that you could examine their reasoning.” — Ray Dalio, during a 2019 Reddit “Ask Me Anything” Q&A
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank,” which features Mark Cuban as a panelist.
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