“The tragedy of life doesnt lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach”
– Benjamin E. Mays
Tag: entrepreneur
Thoughts on Mark Cuban’s book: How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It
Overall a fun, quick read. I like the personal feel of hearing the story of Mark’s entrepreneurial journey. It is very clear, even from the title, that Mark is a very competitive person and sees business as the ultimate competitive sport. Mix that with hard work, not being afraid to fail, focusing on the customer, not getting greedy and oh yeah, more hard work…and you have the Mark Cuban formula for success.
Hard Work:
One of my favorite quotes on this tenant was, “The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.” This rang true with me. There are so many things out of our control. You can come up with the most perfect plan, but it might not survive contact with the real world. Something (or ten things) will come at you from left field. The only way to ‘win’ is to think on your feet and keep pressing through it with hard work and tenacity.
You better be putting all this hard work into something that you are passionate about and enjoy doing, otherwise you will burn out. Mark is passionate about business. Just read this section: “Relaxing is for the other guy. I’m fortunate. I have done well enough financially that I don’t have to play 24 × 7 × 365. I can and have cut back to 18 × 7 × 365. Family first, now. But in those eighteen hours, you can bet I’m competing and loving it. But that’s me. You have to figure out what works for you.” This resonates with me. If you are punching a clock and counting down the hours, you are in the wrong line of work. Do what you love and 18 hour days are nothing. “Once you have found out what you love to do, there is only one goal: to be the best in the world at it.”
No Fear
I call this tenant “No Fear” because Mark talks about taking risks, moving past failures and getting started before it’s too late. “In business, to be a success, you only have to be right once.” In other words, go ahead and go for it. Do your homework and don’t be stupid but at some point you have to just jump in! Once you are successful, it isn’t going to matter how many times you failed before. I remember reading a Fortune magazine with some list of 30 under 30 and it talked about how many times they had failed previously before they finally got it right. I think that people are so afraid to fail in business but if you think of any other activity in life; do you really expect to do it perfectly the first time? Leaning on Mark’s sports analogy, would you expect to win at tennis, golf, or basketball your first time playing? Even once you are experienced, business always has risks and you are not going to be right all the time. “No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and from those around you because … All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.” One of his favorite lines? “No balls, no babies.” It was advice from a black jack dealer and now he tells it to himself constantly to push him into action. “Once you are prepared and you think you have every angle of preparation covered, you have to go for it . No balls, no babies.”
Time is running out. We each are only given so much time on this earth. When it’s over, it’s over. What do you want to do today so that you feel at the end that you haven’t wasted it? “When I (hopefully) turn 90 and look back at my life, would I regret having done it, or not having done it…will I smile when I think back, or will I frown and regret not having done it? Success is about making your life a special version of unique that fits who you are—not what other people want you to be.” Again, another part of our fear is what others will think of us. What others want us to be or not be. Make your life about you and being the best you. That doesn’t mean being selfish, but rather knowing yourself and coming at things from your true self.
Another major reason that people fear getting started is the unknown. What if they start and then this happens or that happens. You have to embrace uncertainty in life. It is just one of the facts of life. Mark says, “Expect the unexpected, and always be ready. You don’t wake up in the morning with someone telling you that everyone is going to be selling lemonade so whoever sells the most wins. It’s the exact opposite. Life is unpredictable. You never know when a window of opportunity will open or close.”
Don’t get Greedy
“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered” This phrase has been around for a long time and is good advice. It basically means that you should be content with ‘enough’ because being greedy will ruin you in the long term. As with most quotes like this the hard part of putting into practice is knowing where the line between ‘enough’ and ‘greed’ is. To answer this takes not just a business mind but some emotional intelligence (EQ). You need to push hard enough to get yourself a good deal but also make it a good deal for the other side, i.e. a “win-win” solution. Mark illustrates what happens when you deal with a “hog”. “There is nothing I hate more than someone who tries to squeeze every last penny out of the deal. Who often raises the aggravation level to the point where it’s not worth doing the deal. Which also raises the dislike level to the point where even if a deal gets done, you look for ways to never do business with that person or company again.”
Another point that Mark touches on is debt. I am adding that to this tenant on greed because I think that many times it is people’s desire for more that pushing them into debt or too much debt in their business. If something is good, more is better. This is true but you also must look at the risk on the downside and this is where debt gets people. I will do a post at some point on debt specifically but Mark puts it pretty bluntly,”The greatest obstacle to destiny is debt, both personal and financial.”
Know Thyself:
It all begins here. See my last post for more on this tenant. Basically, know your strengths and your weaknesses. Mark says, “[its important to] truly know about ourselves. I’m one of the least organized people I know. Today, I have an assistant and others that help me run my life. If you ask me where I’m going to be in three days, I have no idea. I do know that I have a kick-ass assistant who is going to make sure that when I wake up that morning, I know where I’m going and how to get there.”
How do you get to know your strengths and weaknesses? There are many parts of solving that puzzle including self-evaluation, personality tests and people who know you well giving you feedback. This last piece is the one that Mark apparently relies on. He says that people cannot evaluate themselves. “The very worst judge of your abilities is you. Self-evaluation is never successful.” While it is true that we can be very blind to some of our own short comings, I think that you need to try to evaluate yourself while you also take into account feedback from people who know you well. This is how you can start to reflect and gage when you are falling short in some area or when you are killing it. The process of being self aware is constantly assessing yourself. I agree with Mark that you cannot do that in a vacuum. You need outside input to a gage a baseline for perspective. In addition, you need people to point out blind spots that wouldn’t have even been on your radar. See the Johari Window.
Focus on the Customer:
“Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service.” This reminded me of Jim Collin’s “Productive Paranoia” idea from his book Great by Choice. This is another way of saying, focus on innovation and customer needs. What is the next evolution of a product or service? How can get you change how you get the customer the product faster or cheaper? Never be complacent!
When talking about customer service, his words of wisdom are to “Treat your customers like they own you. Because they do.”
He goes so far as to “make sure that all the customer service emails get forwarded to me. If someone is complaining, I want to know about it, and I want to get it fixed quickly.”
He also mentions looking for points of friction in sales process and user experience. “In business, one of the challenges is making sure that your product is the easiest to experience and to sell.” Why make your life harder? Look for pain points. What is potentially confusing? What might hold people back? I am reminded of Amazon’s One Click ordering. Talk about making the buying process easy! It can be the simplest little details that cause customers to hesitate and make you lose the sale.
More Hard Work:
“It’s not in the dreaming, it’s in the doing.” It all comes down to execution. My Dad used to say that in life you have to be a “Doer” Another quote I like is “There are those who do and those who shoulda, coulda, woulda.” I think that comes from a Shel Silverstein quote:
“ALL THE WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDAS
LAYIN’ IN THE SUN,
TALKIN’ ‘BOUT THE THINGS
THEY WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDA DONE…
BUT ALL THOSE WOULDA-COULDA-SHOULDAS
ALL RAN AWAY AND HID
FROM ONE LITTLE DID.”
And the Final Ingredient:
In real life, no matter how hard you work and how well you plan, there is still an element of luck. But if you follow the other tenants outlined in his book and keep working hard it will eventually pay off and the past failures won’t matter. So remember, “You only have to be right once”!
KMN
KMN Blog 