“Do your homework and know your business better than anyone,” says Cuban. “Otherwise, someone who knows more and works harder will kick your ass.”
Throughout university, Cuban was a self-proclaimed party animal. He shared a 3-bedroom apartment with 5 other guys who all had a routine of buying cheap bottles of champagne to last them the whole night. Sleeping arrangements were determined based on how late they each got home.
That all changed when Cuban landed his first job with Your Business Software. He was excited to be finally beginning a job that might actually hold a promising career ahead, but he was also scared. “I have never worked with an IBM PC in my life,” recalls Cuban. “Not a single time, and I’m going to be selling software for it.” Instead of giving in to his fear, Cuban decided to do his homework. Each night, he would bring home a different software manual and read it no matter how late it was. Soon, Cuban found that he was not only actually able to adequately answer customers’ questions about software but he was also building a clientele.
“Turns out not a lot of people ever bothered to RTFM (read the frickin’ manual), so people started really thinking I knew my stuff,” says Cuban. He had never been interested in IT before and knew next to nothing when he began, but by doing his homework, Cuban became one of the best salespersons at the company and gained the confidence he needed to eventually go off on his own.
Cuban’s goal was to retire by the time he reached 35 years old, although he wasn’t quite sure how he was going to do that. “I knew I would end up owning my own business someday, so I figured my challenge was to learn as much as anyone about every and all business,” he says. “I believed that every job I took was really me getting paid to learn about a new industry. I spent as much time as I could learning and reading everything about business I could get my hands on.”
When Cuban wasn’t working, he could be found in the local library reading business and technology books. It wasn’t an innate talent that took Cuban to the top, nor was it an ingenious idea that no one had thought of before. Instead, Cuban credits his success to this willingness to put in the extra time to learn about the industries.
“Most people think it’s all about the idea. It’s not,” says Cuban. “Everyone has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in the industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea.”
From Internet streaming to basketball to high-definition television, Cuban did his homework to understand what his opportunities were. “Most people don’t do their homework about their business and industry, so there is usually a place to sneak in and do something a little different,” he says. “There is very little knowledge that can’t be obtained through effort.”
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