if you and i were buddies in high school so they were 14 years old 15 years old and we
know each other would i bet on you being who you are today no chance really no chance tell
me why i mean i had my i had my good friends and you know we we hung out and i was a hustler
there's no question i was a hustler even in high school oh yeah and into business in a big way
um but i don't i don't think people saw to me it wasn't like people looked at me and oh he's
he's destined to succeed sometimes being young and trying things you're so naive and you don't know
any better all you do is learn and if you fail it doesn't matter and so whether i was 9 10 12 16 21
the failures were irrelevant and you know whether you're you know 9 12 16 21 22 24 you know i'm
sleeping on the couch you know i have a car with a hole in the floorboard you know i'm i'm living
like a bum and like a student and so what did i have to lose and so i think that influenced me as
much as anything so you know my dad was like go for it you know don't why not what have you got
to lose i've read your but you have the talent you know all these keys to success etc what would you
say is the number one reason why people fail not necessarily why they make it the complete opposite
right lack of brains lack of effort lack of brains lack of effort yeah they just they don't do the
work they don't learn you know when you walk in the room when you start a business and you start
to talk about somebody you're never in a vacuum with no competition you know unless you're just
extremely lucky and if there's going to be competition that means somebody else knows your
business as well as you do when you get started and if you walk into a competitive environment and
they still know more about the business than you do and more about your customers
you're going to lose and but most people don't consider that they don't do the work they don't
learn more about their industry they don't know even about their business i mean and
so you've got to put in the effort to know more about your industry than anybody else
and that's that's the brains part and that's the effort part as well because look if you're
competing with me you you better know what you're doing otherwise i'm gonna kick your ass
you know and you're not gonna outwork me and so you know the combination is usually what kills
businesses early on more than anything i was i was a business guy i was i was the guy reading about
business all the time reading business books all the time you know going to junior achievement i
was a junior achievement geek i knew i was wired to be excited about business how or why i don't
know but you know and there's certain guys they have the genetics to jump out of the gym right
certain guys you know that you know when they golf they have the muscle memory and and the discipline
you know dirk um the whiskey may not be the most talented guy in the nba but his discipline and his
focus to do what's necessary to be successful he's willing to do and combine it with being seven feet
tall and being skilled you know it makes him an amazing basketball player so it's understanding
what your skill set is finding the right place to use those skills and then going for it you
know will that make you 250 grand it depends if you pick the right industry but whatever industry
you pick if you outwork everybody if you try to be a little smarter than everybody if you try to be
a better sales person than everybody if you try to be better prepared than everybody you've got
your best chance because if you don't do it and somebody else does you know i have the same work
like someone's trying to take it all away from you you know work actually work like someone's
spending 24 hours working 24 hours to take it all away from you and that's kind of the way i look at
it i started my first business when i was 12 i was buying and selling um baseball cards buying
and selling stamps anything i could do to make money i was hustling and trying to do so i was in
the business but i not so much where it was all my friends were into it with me so they wouldn't know
baseball cards yeah baseball cards you name it i mean i grew up in pittsburgh and so i would
probably even less than 12 years old i would go up buy a bunch of baseball cards that i collected
and i would package i would say okay you're guaranteed to have a pittsburgh pirate
in this package and i would charge three times as much and i'd set up on this park bench down
in the park down in scott township where i grew up and um i'd have these little sales and it was
great i made money and i mean it was you know and i learned as much about business when i was
9 10 and 12 as i i learned any other time you went to iu yep right now you got a lot of people that
uh say forget about school you know drop out of school there it is you think they're ready
tell me why um if you're gonna have and run a business if you don't understand accounting you're
already behind the eight ball can't you hire a guy that's that knows that but then they still have
to communicate to you right i mean there's people that don't understand the the concept of you know
the difference between profits and cash you know oh your account might tell you you're profitable
but your cash is going down you know not understanding um the breakdown and when you don't
you think you need college to learn that yeah i think you do right because it may not for some
people look if you're so self-motivated that you can take an online course in accounting and teach
yourself everything you're way ahead of the game many ways but most people aren't i'm not saying go
to an expensive school i don't care if you go to a community college and take accounting and spend 99
bucks for the class just you know spending the money forces you to be more obligated to do it
but accounting finance lesser extent marketing sales of the school offers that these are all
that's the language of business and so while it's possible to teach yourself these things
and while it's possible to hire them when you're starting your own company you don't want to have
to spend money hiring an accountant right you've gone through all these classes if i don't have to
hire a lawyer to incorporate right you probably figure out yourself and so your cost of opening
up a business drops but even more important and all that that's that's the blocking of tackling
that's the language of business you know the thing i learned at indiana that was more important than
anything else i learned how to learn and learning became far more important to me because the one
certainty in business is that it's always going to be changing the if you're not always learning
if to this minute if i'm not continuously learning if i'm not just absorbing as much as i can absorb
someone else is going to kick my ass right so you talk about paranoia the greatest source of
your paranoia should be knowledge if someone else knows more than you do and if you're not learning
if you don't know the learn if you don't know how to learn if you don't have a thirst for learning
and acquiring information you're you're sol for every one of my businesses i said what would i
do to kick my own ass you're right so whatever business you have there's somebody trying to
put you out of business there's somebody trying to to take a bite out of your business and it's
better for you to figure out how they're going to do it rather than they do it um and so yeah that's
being paranoid and so you have to be paranoid you have to anticipate other people's next moved and
moves and you can't ever you know downplay the competition you know i was telling um i was at
a business plan competition this morning for at a college and they were kind of being dismissive
of the competition and so you can't ever do that you know they're out there trying to take you down
and they're not just going to sit still and if you're good really really good you're going to
inspire them to work even harder faster better and so you have to be you know very self-aware
of what you're good at and what other people are good at and you know a healthy dose of paranoia
makes a big deal i mean it's very helpful you know when i bought the mavs we we had no season ticket
holder base and so literally it was a matter of just putting a list of former season ticket
holders in a white pages back then you know on my desk next to my phone and making phone calls
you yeah me yeah because if i'm not gonna do it how can i expect someone else to do it right
so just get on the phone hey this is mark cuna i'm the new owner of the dallas mavericks you know i'd
like to invite you back it's not though this is my business you can't get regular sales kids or
something make those calls once they get to a quarter you you're a guy that's a billionaire
you're making those but that's all you know and that's fine and good right because everybody's
got their own goals right and but still i i don't want anybody at the mavs be able to say well he's
not willing to do the work right there's you know if i walk around i'm picking up all the
papers i'm not saying go get that picked up i'm like okay that's trash i'm picking it up um so
but in terms of speed of growth it's really you got to get that first customer first and then when
you get that first what did you learn reiterate get that next customer and then hopefully as you
learn more and more through the process then the next one the next one the next one becomes come by
fast how does one entrepreneur increase the speed of growing your business all right so how fast
can i grow yeah i mean it just depends you've got to know your own skill set right and you've
got to know how that fits within your company's life cycle um you know some companies are slow
slow grind and you just have to understand that and you've just got to bide your time and stores
until it starts to click and then grow with it quickly you know if you're trying to release a
product that needs to be ubiquitous you've got to go um as fast as you can and and then you
know release a product yeah yeah and and you know there's a lot of people say you know perfection is
the enemy of profitability right and that doesn't mean you have to wait till it's a perfect product
it really just depends on what the product is that you know a barber shop right is it an app is it um
a service is it a product but you know the the key is looking for the low-hanging fruit what
are the at what are what customers are willing to write you a check or commit to it you know so that
they're willing to integrate it into their daily lives or integrate it into their daily business
so so do you think like let's just say if we put 10 guys here you interview them
okay you could within a 5-10 million minute interview say this dude's not going to make
it as an entrepreneur yeah i mean i can i can typically tell right i can tell um but by um
their passion i can tell by their focus i can tell by their preparation you know there's a
whole realm of things in any business here you know here's here's the business you're in and
here's a thousand things that influence whether or not you're going to be successful and really to me
by you know through my experience in businesses i can put myself in his position and say okay
here are 900 of the thousand things he has to be aware of and then go through and ask
and by how many of those or her um issues they've been able to address already that
kind of gives me a sense of how hard they're willing to work you know and i can tell by the
questions they ask me so all i have to do is say okay what do you want to know and you know when
they start saying what should i do they ask you yeah yeah and that's fine right and i want them
to ask questions but you know people like to say you know the only stupid questions are the one
you don't once you don't ask and that's not right right because the questions you ask tell everybo
tell me tell whoever more about you than anything else you do because in particular tells me about
your preparation if you ask me questions about just basic things that you should have known
and you should have down to a science that's going to disqualify you almost more than anything
you