MBA2299 Must Read: Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. A better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is a must read episode. On our must read episodes, I share with you a book that I've that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson. Now you might be thinking, Omar, what does the autobiography of Mike Tyson have to do with being a successful entrepreneur? Well, a lot. And here's a little confession. It took me a lot longer to finish this book than any other book I've read in the last 10 years. Not because it's boring or dragged. Quite the opposite. It's just that I had to put it down so much because the amount of challenge and disappointment and heartache and hardship that Mike Tyson went through was so hard to get through. And every time I picked it up, it reminded me of the entrepreneurial journey. The struggles, the doubt, the ups and downs, the discovering who you are and what you can do. There's so much to learn from his story. And of course, as a professional athlete, he will be also dipping his toes into business, finance, investment, you name it. But anytime you have somebody who is great at their field, Mike Tyson, considered one of the greatest fighters of all time, you can learn something. Success leaves clues. If somebody's great at something, you study them. And of course, nobody's perfect. And that's the point, as we'll soon find out. He's got his flaws, but we're going to learn what he actually has done right in his life, what we can learn from that and how we can apply in our own lives and business. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. The Undisputed Truth is a long, long book. Mike Tyson doesn't cut any corners or leave much out. The book starts from his childhood all the way until present day, when he published the book in 2013, which is about 10 years ago. The book was a huge success and was such a bestseller that Spike Lee made a film, a documentary out of it that won several awards. It also became a Broadway play. So the story is impactful and let me tell you why. I've read a lot of biographies, lots highly successful people, people that have done incredible things. But I've never seen a story of somebody who starts with so little become so successful. Mike Dyson started in the streets of New York and literally he lived most of his time and life on the street. He comes from a broken family with a lot of drug abuse, very little education, basically robbing houses to get by. Yeah, he is starting pretty rock bottom and you'd think he's a natural fighter, but he really wasn't. He really just fought to protect himself because he was scared and had no real skill. But a man by Cus d', Amato who was Mike's trainer and mentor, met him at the age of 13 and took him under his wing. Cus took him into his own home up in Epstein, New York, raised him and trained him to be a boxer. Now think about it for a second. You're a 13 year old young boy, you don't know what's going on. Some guy just decides to kind of quasi adopt you so they can train you, become a boxer. Mike Tyson admittedly says, this guy's crazy, I'm gonna rob him blind. Who would do something like that? He just never saw that kind of kindness or generosity before. So he just felt like this person's crazy. But Mike actually never robbed him. He actually fell in Love with Cus's kindness and mentorship. And he fell in love with the training and becoming an athlete. And for the next seven years, they go on a journey. Cus tells him, hey, you can become the heavyweight champion of the world if you just do what I tell you to do. If you believe in what I believe in, you can make it. And Mike believes it. Cus gives him confidence. Cus gives him a light of hope. He shows him what a new life could be outside of the streets and crime and all the things that he grew up around. And at age 20, Cus fulfilled his promise. Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight champion of the world, winning the title at age 20. Now, if the story just stopped here, it would be amazing, but in the book, it's about only 10% into the actual story of Mike Tyson. But just here, there's so much to learn here. How many of us are refusing to get help? How many of us are not getting a coach or getting a mentor to guide us and help us get that success, get that win, grow the business we want? So many of us are trying to just do it, us on our own, doing it without any help, without any mentorship, without any community. Finding a coach, finding a mentor, finding somebody that has been there before and knows how to do it and knows how to teach it is a cheat code. It helps you win faster. The other thing is that Mike Tyson did Nothing from age 13 to 20 than train day and night. Okay, he went to school a little bit from 13 to 18, but his full time job, his full time focus was becoming the heavyweight champion of the world. How many of us are going all in? How many of us are giving our full focus, eat, breathe, drink, everything towards our goal. That's how you succeed is where you say, there's no plan B. This is what I have to do. And I'm going to do it day in and day out. Every biography I've read has this commonality, has the story of focus, has the story of dedication, of sacrifice, of justice, going out and getting it. The problem that a lot of us have is we want to have it all. We want to kind of dabble in everything. We want to be good at this, that and the other thing, and also make a little money on the side here. And when the reality is our best chance is just to go all in on one thing and go day in, day out going after it. Why is it so hard to go all in? Well, I discuss it in tomorrow's episode, so tune in for that. What else do we Learn. Up to this point in the book, we learn that he trusts the process. He doesn't really understand why he has to do what he has to do, but he trusts his cus and he trusts the fact that this is the process it takes to become great. He doesn't understand why he has to work out these number of hours, why he has to eat this diet, why he can't hang out with his friends all the time, why he's got to stay out of trouble, all that kind of stuff. And because he's so young, it's kind of hard for him to kind of put the pieces together. But he trusts the process enough to just trust it and say, yep, I got to do it, that's it. Even though it doesn't make sense, even though I don't see results right now, trust the process. And a lot of us, we don't trust the process. We want to work on something for a little bit, then, hey, I don't see a lot of results, so let me just keep moving on. We like to dabble instead of saying, hey, I gotta trust the process and see this through. Once Mike Tyson becomes the heavyweight champion of the world at age 20, things get really difficult. Things get really challenging for him because he's on top of the world. He feels invincible. He's getting a lot of attention and attention brings problems. People trying to exploit him, people trying to take advantage, people trying to take his money swindle out of his hard earned cash on, you know, weird investments and weird business ideas, getting caught up in drinking and drugs and nonsense and all kinds of stuff. Why? Why does this happen? How do you go from being so disciplined and so clean and so mastering your craft and all that stuff to just chaos? Well, I can tell you, and this can happen to you in your business, in your journey as an entrepreneur, as soon as you start getting successful and your site starts popular, get ready for bots, get ready for attacks, get ready for hackers. Because when you were nobody and no one knew existed, you weren't really something attractive. What happens when you get a little bit of money and your business starts becoming successful? Maybe you're publishing an income report, maybe people start seeing that your business is growing. You're going to get bombarded. Your inbox is going to be blowing up with opportunities. And hey, I can help you grow your business. Invest in me. Here's a business idea. How about this crypto? How about this nft? You're going to start believing the rhetoric. You're going to start believing the headlines of the articles that people are running about you or the tweets that people say about you. You start thinking that, hey, this is your life now forever, and you're on top of the world. But what we forget is, hey, we didn't get there by being careless and obnoxious and reckless. We got to success by being humble. By keeping our head down, by focusing, by really worrying about the craft and the product we're creating and the business we're growing and the customers we're serving. By being conservative with our cash, by having a budget, by networking, by being a people person, by being kind, by being considerate. This is why they say success changes people. You gotta watch yourself before you wreck yourself when it comes to success in business. And the same happened to Mike Tyson. In fact, it happened several times where he was on top of the world, Lost everything when he left boxing, had to file for bankruptcy because he owed $23 million in debt to again today, being successful. But he finally learned his lesson. He is humble. He has a private life. He invests in things he only understand. He's built things slowly and steadily. He understands that even though he's successful now, it doesn't mean he'll be successful forever, though that keeps him hungry. And boy, did he learn that lesson the hard way.

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Terms and conditions apply thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.

Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.

They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?

Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times.

With the Times. You're playing the loot.

Yeah.

And it sounds pretty good, right?

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson is a great book. It's a must read for sure. I listened to the audio version on Audible. It's not narrated by Mike Tyson. It's narrated by a voice actor. But it's really well done and it got me through the book because I love the story I love the learnings, but it was gut wrenching to be honest with you, because I'm not even skimming the surface of how difficult his life has been in poverty, in fame, in fortune, in every stage or station in life. And really, it's a story about continually to understand oneself, self awareness, self discovery. And we all go through this journey in life, okay? Some of us, we learn faster than others and find some peace in our life. And some of us were slow learners and we don't get peace until later in life. And some of us never learn and never have peace, which is really the point of the book. So if you want to be successful in business and in life and have that peace of mind to know that, hey, you're doing the right thing, then you're going to want to pick up this cautionary tale Undisputed Truth by Mike Tyson thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Hit those triple dots on Spotify or Apple podcasts or whatever app and make sure you hit that subscrib subscribe or follow button so you get our next episodes automatically. You also get access to over 2200 episodes in our back catalog by following our show. Go ahead and do that right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The reason why I love reading biographies is that there's so much to learn from other people's experiences and journeys and failures. They've already failed for you, so you don't have to do the same. Every time I listen or read a biography, I ask myself, how does this apply in my life to my business? What can I learn? How can I avoid this in my own situation? I don't just listen passively and pretend that this is not something that has to do with me. I don't just say, oh, that's that person's problem or problems in the past. I say, how could this be my problem? How could I fall into this situation? How can I avoid it? Hope that helps and hope to see you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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