MBA1918 Must Read: How to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban

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Mark Cuban's book How to Win at the Sport of Business is actually a collection of blog posts curated for this book. Now you might think, is this book going to be any good if it's just a bunch of blog posts? Let me answer that question and say, indeed it is. I had that same question myself, read the book and was pleasantly surprised about how insightful, how honest and how personal the whole book was, sharing his own personal experiences, his own stories, and how he got through the challenges he needed to get through in order to be where he is today. And that's why he starts the book with the concept of that there's only one thing in your life you can really control. You can't control your circumstances most of the time, you can't control your environment, the gifts you're born with. But the one thing you can control is your effort. And he says that if you give 110% at everything you do to help build your future, to learn, to grow, you will succeed. Because most people won't. Most people are lazy. Most people are not going to give 110%. So if you want success, then be willing to work for it. Work hard for it, day in and day out, regardless of the outcomes. And I love this message because I can testify to this. You know, I have really seen the moments in our career and our business where we really succeeded and is all due to just everybody on the team working as hard as possible. Of course you need breaks and you need to refresh yourself and recharge your batteries. But when you're not doing that, you need to be going full on, working harder, working smarter than your competition. There's a concept in this book that he reiterates several times and it's the concept that in business you only have to be right once. This means you can Fail, you can launch one product and fail, you can launch one business and fail, you can lose a client. These are not catastrophes. You will fail along the way. But in business, when you're building around an idea, you're building around a concept of service, solving a problem, all you got to do is be right once, you got to be right about this product that you're thinking about one time and then you have a successful business that you can carry on and do for the rest of your career. Or you can build to a certain point, sell it, take the profits of that business and start another successful business. So it's reassuring to hear that, hey, unlike other things in life where you have to be right more consistently, in business, you only need to be right once. In the book, he shares a lot of stories about his past, his inability to hold down a job, his experience in sales, and then starting his own business. And he says that most businesses don't fail from lack of opportunity, they fail from too much opportunity. They're drowning in opportunity. And what happens is that they think they have to do everything, oh, I should do this, I should launch this product, I should go after these types of clients, I should go after this niche in the market and they spread themselves too thin. He says before you go after other opportunities, win the battles you're in already. So whatever your business does, whatever customers you serve, you got to be number one there first. You got to make sure that you are winning that battle. And it's a, it's a well oiled machine. You have no issues in that sector in your business or in that arm of your business before you start branching out into new endeavors. As entrepreneurs, we're often attracted to the latest opportunity to opportunity in general, like, oh, this is an opportunity, I should exploit it, I should take advantage of it. He says these can be your demise. Don't take on new opportunities until you are a master at what you're already doing, that your business is running at a high level with your current offerings. One of my favorite chapters is called don't lie to yourself. And he says, don't lie to yourself because many entrepreneurs are delusional about their own skills. And in some ways he says that we have to be like, we kind of have to believe things that don't actually exist. We have to believe that they can exist and that's why we become entrepreneurs. But he says after some time, after you get started a while, you shouldn't lie to yourself about what you can and cannot do. Be aware of, of your strengths and Your weaknesses. Understand that you can't be great at everything. You might be great at a few things, and that's great, but you need to find other people to join your team that are great at different things. Don't think that you can do everything because you can. You can't do it at a high level. Be honest with yourself. And one of the best exercises I've done in the past is I actually list the things I'm not good at. You gotta be honest with yourself. What are the things that I'm not good at? Write that down on a piece of paper and be real. Don't make up stuff. Don't write fake answers like I work too hard. No. For example, some of the things I wrote down on my list is, I'm not good with operations. I'm not good with administration. When it comes to the details, I'm not interested. Really. I'm not good at it. I love accomplishing big tasks. I like going after big ideas and I like to be part of the implementation. I like to be a part of a course that we're building or part of the design of a new element in our software. But human resources leave policy, standard operating procedures, not my strength. I'm not good at that. So my business partner, my chief operating officer, Nicole, is great at that. We call her Eagle Eye for a reason, because she has an attention for detail. She knows how to do these things and she's very good at it. And that's why I partner with her, because she is really good at the things I'm not good at. And it wouldn't be possible if I didn't sit down and be honest with myself and list the things I'm not good at. The next chapter that follows this one is called the Best Equity is Sweat Equity. And he talks about, when you're starting a business, don't be so hungry for investors. Get some customers, get some momentum, have some numbers under your belt. And if you want people to help you in your business, don't think about money, think about talent. Get somebody to jump in and add their skills and do some work for a portion of profits or business. This allows them to have skin in the game and allows you to scale your business. He says most businesses don't have an economic problem. They don't have a finance problem. They have a talent problem. They don't have enough people, good, smart, talented people to take their business where they need to go. One of the most memorable chapters in this book is connecting to your customers, understanding who your customers are. Is super important. Mark talks about how important it is for you to talk to your customers regularly. Understand what they really like. Don't like Mark as the owner of a professional basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, even though he's a billionaire. When he goes to watch the game, a fair amount of the games he watches, he goes and sits in average seats. He wants to know what people are saying about the experience at a ball game. Is the music too high? Is music too low? Are the performances lame? Is the beer cold? Is the popcorn too salty? He wants to hear it from the people so that he can make decisions based on real facts, real feedback. Not hunches, not guesses. And this is exactly why we recently launched a free plan. This is the topic of tomorrow's episode, why we went from free trial to free plan for our webinar software, Webinar Ninja. And it all came from customer feedback. And I'll talk about how we got that feedback. What was that feedback like? And how we turned that into a change in our product. More about that in tomorrow's lesson. But the point that Mark is making is you need to be as close as possible to your customers. So you're not making decisions out of hunches or trends or fads. You're making decisions based on what your customers actually want.

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Discover is accepted at 99 of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. To wrap up today's must read episode, how to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban. A couple more takeaways I want to share with you and then give you a little something to look forward to when you read the book. He's got a chapter called it's okay to be a Whiner. He admits, I'm a big whiner. I whine about everything. And he thinks it's okay to be a whiner. Because whiners identify problems that can be solved, they find opportunities in the marketplace. The key is not just to whine about it, but to do something about it. If you're gonna whine about something, do something to make it better. Whiners say, why not do it this way or that way? And then they take action. Another chapter I absolutely loved was about the path of least resistance, reminding you that customers, when they're buying anything from you, a product or service, an online course, a coaching or whatever, they're always going to buy from the business that makes it easiest for them to buy. We're by nature going to go with the easiest path, the path of least resistance. If checking out, if buying something, if I have to contact you, if I go through a long rigmarole to figure out what your pricing is, people are just not going to do it. They're going to be like, pass next one. So look at your sales process. Is it a easy, smooth process that has zero resistance, zero friction? This is why when you sign up for any kind of app these days, they try to make it as easy as possible. Give me your name and email address and we're done. They know that people will always go with the path of least resistance. Remember that in your own business. Remember that in the way you deliver your products or services. Remember that in the way you sell your products and services. Most importantly, guys, there's so much I can share with you from this book, but I'm going to leave some for you to find out on your own. At the end of the book, mark shares his 12 rules for startups and then his 12 mantras for success. I think those two chapters alone are worth the read. They're worth the book. And it's one of those books that you want to go back to frequently to remind yourself of the golden Nuggets he drops. Thanks so much for listening to the hundred NBA Show. Make sure you pick up this book, how to Win at the Sport of Business by Mark Cuban. I highly recommend it. A link to the book is in the show notes. If you just go to100nba.net show you can find a link to the show notes right there. Don't forget to hit subscribe because you're not going to want to miss tomorrow's episode When I Break down exactly why We Launched a free Plan. Yes, a free plan. We are so excited that we launched a way for anybody around the world to sign up and do webinars for free over@webinar ninja.com this is a transition. We moved from free trial to free plan and there was a lot of thought and planning and work involved to do this. And I want to break down why we did it, how we did it, and what we hope it will mean for our business. And you'll get to learn if a free plan or freemium is a good move for your business. So hit subscribe so you don't miss tomorrow's episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I have a lot of respect for Mark Cuban and that's why I picked up this book. Mark Cuban did not come from means. He struggled, he worked hard, he sacrificed. He basically lived on the bare minimum to be able to give himself the opportunity to be successful. And he talks about this live below your means. And I can't agree more. As long as you do that, you give yourself flexibility. You give yourself a chance to take a chance on yourself, lowering your expenses and making sure you're not spending more than you make. Thanks so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

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