How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It

by Mark Cuban

little as I do, so if I just started doing what I told my boss I would do—read the manuals—I would be ahead of the curve. That’s what I did. Every night I would take home a different software manual, and I would read it. Of course the reading was captivating. Peachtree Accounting. Wordstar, Harvard Graphics, PFS, dBASE, Lotus, Accpac … I couldn’t put them down. Every night I would read some after getting home, no matter how late.

Decision time. It’s always the little decisions that have the biggest impact. We all have to make that “make or break” call to follow orders or do what you know is right.

I got back to the office, told Martin what happened at the bank, and then I realized what I had to do about all of this. I had to go back to work. What was done was done. Worrying about revenge, getting pissed at the bank and

your ass thoughts” were basically just a waste of energy. No one was going to cover my obligations but me. I had to get my ass back to work, and do so quickly. That’s exactly what I did.

Most people won’t put in the time to get a knowledge advantage.

actually wrote a letter thanking him for the great job he was doing, and … I’m embarrassed to say now, I told him that if he kept up what he was doing he was destined for far bigger and better things.

As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.

Lesson #1: Always ask yourself how someone could preempt your products or service. How can they put you out of business? Is it price? Is it service? Is it ease of use? No product is perfect and if there are good competitors in your market, they will figure out how to abuse you. It’s always better if you are honest with yourself and anticipate where the problems will co​me from.

But no matter how much I love to play the game or how involved and competitive I get during a Mavs game, it’s only a minor release. Real competition comes from the sport of business.

The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It’s 7 × 24 × 365 × forever. I love the sport of business. I love the competition. I love the fire of it. It’s the feeling of the clock winding down, the ball in your hands, and if you hit the shot you win … all day, every day. Relaxing is for the other guy. I may be sitting in front of the TV, but I’m not watching it unless I think there is something I can learn from it. I’m thinking about things I can use in my business and the TV is just there.

I fire the synapses to get an edge. That’s what success is all about. It’s about the edge.

The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought only a couple of hours had passed. The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there. The edge is knowing that when

the four girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer. The edge is knowing that you can fail and learn from it, and just get back up and in the game. The edge is knowing that people think you’re crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think. The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business. The edge is knowing that you are getting to your goals and treating people right along the way, because as good as you can be, you are so focused that you need regular people around you to balance and help you. The edge is being able to confidently call out someone on a business issue because you have done your homework. The edge is recognizing when

Every single day someone has an idea. Every day someone talks about some business he wants to start. Every day someone is out there starting a business whose entire goal is to beat the hell out of yours. How cool is that?!

The ultimate competition. Would you like to play a game called Eat Your Lunch? We are going to face off. My ability to execute an idea vs. yours. My ability to subvert your business vs. your ability to keep it going. My ability to create ways to remove any reason for your business to exist vs. your ability to do the same to me. My ability to know what you are going to do, before you do it vs. you, er, doing it! Who gets there first? Best of all, this game doesn’t have a time limit. It’s forever. It never ends. It’s the ultimate competition.

In sports, the only thing a player can truly control is effort.

The same applies to business. The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.

It meant making sure that every hour of the day that I could contact a customer was selling time, and when customers were sleeping, I was doing things that prepared me to make more sales and to make my company better. And finally, I had to make sure I wasn’t lying to myself about how hard I was working.

many hours a day passed while I was at work. That’s the worst way to measure effort. Effort is measured by setting goals and getting results.

If you can’t stand on your own, it’s impossible to successfully be part of a couple. I’m also a big believer

Never settle. There is no reason to rush.

The point of all this is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. 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 bus​iness is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

“Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.”