The story of Mark Cuban

I’ve been wanting to post this for a long time: Mark Cuban is one of the greatest entrepreneurs in my eyes and is finally gaining the spotlight!

The owner of the 2011 NBA World champions, Dallas Mavericks, and a shark investor on ABC’s hit television series, Shark Tank, this $2.4 billion mogul explains how he reached the top, including what sacrifices he had to make, and what lessons he learned from having horrible bosses.

You can read all about it over here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2013/03/28/at-age-25-mark-cuban-learned-lessons-about-leadership-that-changed-his-life/

Key Takeaways:

• Made sacrifices early in his life by driving an old car that required an oil change every 60 miles, splitting a three bedroom apartment with several other roommates, and piling his clothes and other belongings in one small corner
• Was always entrepreneurial since his days working at Mellon Bank at Pittsburgh
• Would always take matters into his own hands and bypass the CEO of the company on sales he had made on his own(This belongs to the category of taking risks)
• Follows the mantra “Sales cures all”
• Started his first company, Micro Solutions, which grew into a company generating $30 million in revenue
• Sold Micro-Solutions to CompuServe, and then found another company called AudioNet, which later became Broadcast.com
• Purchased the Dallas Mavericks basketball organization

The key fundamentals here overall for Cuban or for any entrepreneur is that you must be willing to face setbacks and embrace risk. This is exactly how Mark Cuban got to where he is and this is precisely how you can get to where you’d like to go in life!

Overall I’d have to say that Mark Cuban has become one of my favorite entrepreneurs because of his ability to go that extra mile in making a sale and in embracing risk! And Mark Cuban is also a perfect example of how we should all learn from our mistakes when we’re young!! I do intend to reference Mark Cuban in future posts so be on the lookout.

 

Is there an entrepreneur that you have tremendous respect for? What are your thoughts on Mark Cuban? And what kind of sacrifices are you making or risks are you taking in achieving your goal? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below and please like this post! Thank you 🙂

The Entrepreneurs’ Nutrition

I’m baaaackkk! It was a long vacation from my blog but well worth as I’ve come back with more insight on entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets. From this point onwards the focus of my blog will be about the Entrepreneurs’ Nutrition. The Entrepreneurs’ Nutrition has to do with everything essential regarding entrepreneurship, from the way we tackle problems to best approaches in dealing with every aspect of an enterprise such as the finance, the operations, and the sales/marketing.

But most importantly, the focus will revolve around what it means to be a true entrepreneur and the resources we will need to acquire in becoming that true entrepreneur. And a true entrepreneur from my perspective isn’t just someone who takes out capital to start an enterprise in hopes that they can convert their passion into money, it also includes someone looking to lead a more fulfilling life!! Its a learning experience for everyone including me so feel free to pitch in thoughts and insights on the different topics that I propose regarding the entrepreneurs’ nutrition.

Look out for my next post!! And feel free to drop a comment below for what you’d like to see on this page 🙂

Living the 80/20 Way

Can you spell S-U-C-C-E-S-S. If so holler as loud as you can!! Living the 80/20 Way is a book written by Richard Koch and it is truly a wonderful book for the like-minded entrepreneur or any average individual looking to absorb the most of life.

I truly feel that after reading this book, with lots and lots of effort any like-minded individual can turn their life around.  A lot of us worry about making more money, achieving more success, and gaining more fame and feel that the route to such factors is to do more when this isn’t the case! Allow me to summarize the book in the form of bullet points.

• 20% of our efforts leads to 80% of the results. Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, & Michael Jordan are all examples of people who took the 80/20 route with extraordinary success. The point is that less is more. By focusing on only the things you love or are passionate about, you can get extraordinary results as well
• Take the 80/20 route in managing money, achieving success, relationships, and personal pleasures, etc.
• 20% of customers are what lead to 80% of sales for any business
• Decrease the clutter as much as possible, this includes buying only the furniture, utensils you need, downloading only the iPhone and iPad apps that you need, buying only the clothes that add meaning to your personality, and only participating in activities or hobbies you adore
• Thinking and concentrating about only things that matter and add zest to your life
• Figuring out what your happiness islands and achievement islands are, and camping out on these islands
• Determining what your 80/20 destinations are, and taking the 80/20 route to get there
• Less is more, less is more, less is more!!, Not more with more, LESS IS MORE!!

Need I say more, I may reference this blog entry or the concept in my future blogs, as this should be the path to success in any department of your life, not just working and making a difference in this world. Because the truth is that it is your inner peace, happiness, key relationships, who you’re with, type of friends circle, intertwined with passion of course that propel you to success aside from just working hard.

Working long hours is not for everyone and if you’re someone who realizes that working long hours is expending energy, CUT IT!!

If you are an advocate of the following statement: “Ultimately, we must all have 80/20 Vision!!!, not 20/20 Vision”, then please like this blog.  And if you have not read the above book, once again the title of the book is “Living the 80/20 Way” by Richard Kotz, then I highly suggest that you read it!

What’s your 80/20 destination? Feel free to leave a comment below explaining it. I’d love to hear from you all!!

Investing for everyone including DUMMIES!

Alright so I’d like to make a clarification. After my previous blog, I experienced a chill flowing down my spine as I realized that perhaps the percentage of people that engage in investing is pretty small. It seems that so many young professionals, as I, abhor finance, therefore we avoid activities that involve budgeting expenses in Excel files or designating a certain amount for each category of expense. I just wanna say this: “I HEAR YA”. Red flags are constantly raised on this subject but believe me if you’re into starting a business or getting involved in any type of business related venture, be it consulting, or any type finance, sales or marketing type positions, then learning investing will only help develop such skills as it will guide you through certain concepts that can accelerate knowledge base and decision making. Issues such as on how stock price can affect the profitability or whether a business is an actual commodity and how to determine whether it is.

For instance, if you’re a financial consultant who specializes in advising non-profits and small corporations on how to control their budget and how to manage the various type of assets while managing liabilities, you would have to understand  quite a chunk of the investing arena and how the markets can be impactual in such scenarios.

If you’re a sales & marketing professional, naturally you would have to understand the market you specialize in, as well as the markets your serve and how to investigate the key performance metrics to know whether a product would do well in a particular market. Studying the growth rates and the charts, graphs associated with it in-depth may not be necessary but it can help.

Furthermore, if you are a serial entrepreneur, committed to making money or conveniencing the citizens of your community or the world, then technically what you are doing is you are investing your money. And so investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or real estate can only instill in you these business blocks of what it takes to actually invest your money in a start-up or franchise, or if you’d like to be the owner of a gym, restaurant, apartment complex. Just my thoughts….

Other than that, even if you’re not into business. You may still want to consider looking into investing as a viable option for accumulating bucks either for that sexy Camaro that’s been you’re dream car for sometime or a house by the beautiful lake side. Who’s knows you may even fall into the rythym.

If you agree with all of this or are an active investor, please like or retweet my post. Muchas gracias ;)!!

 

The act & art of investing

Investing is a very excellent skill for people to acquire, especially if you’re one of those individuals looking to save up for grad school, your future kids college tuition, or that new sexy Lamborghini you’ve been wanting to afford. I feel like it’s skill that all business professionals, marketing professionals, and entrepreneurs should at least attempt to master. Now just remember two important details: Reading as much as you can, and knowing what to read! Lot of people who get their foot into the door of investing have a tendency of speeding things up. They get so ambitious and greedy that they just enter the game without learning the instructions. While you may be a quick learner, there are a lot of factors in considering when deciding whether to invest in a particular stock. One common mistake is investing based on emotion. For instance, if you’re a Starbucks lover, you invest in Starbucks without thinking about whether you could lose your investment. There are so many people that had a profound interest in investing who simply pulled the plug one fine day after they had lost so much money and became discouraged!

The three documents you will have to read prior to investing are the following:

1. 10-K Report(Annual Report)

2. 10-Q Report(Quarterly Report)

3. 14A Proxy Statement

And while reading these documents, only observe the key performance metrics in deciding whether to purchase a stock or not. A few of the stable stocks that are out there right now are Google, and Apple. However, that doesn’t mean you should just blindly invest in these stocks. My advice to novices interested in investing are to read books on how to invest thoroughly but when it comes to reading the above documents, make sure you only take a look at the right performance metrics such as price/earnings ratio, net profit, shareholders statement, etc.

We all can’t be the next Warren Buffett, but we all can become shrewd investors and make an ROI(Return of Investment). Good luck!! And I’ll post more tidbits on this topic later.

Following your passion is the best medicine ;)

This is advice that I actually churned out on my own. What can I say, I have a knack for words. And this piece of wisdom does carry a lot of weight and common sense if you observe closely. A lot of us get into that 9 – 5 routine not willing to plunge into risks which could be what we’re truly passionate about. Some of us are just wired that way like me for instance. I cannot accomplish a task unless I’m truly passionate about it or it’s mandated to be done. When we engage in jobs or activities we are not passionate about, they become nothing but energy drainers. Well I say that we figure out what these energy drainers are and flush them down the toilet because if you’re interested in achieving success in life whether it’s in your professional life or personal life, then you need to participate in activities that bring out your natural abilities.

I worked as a fundraiser and as a timeshare salesman for several years and a one crucial lesson I learned was you must be passionate about what you are selling or what you are trying to raise funds for. Both activities constitute a business activity and whenever you engage in a business activity you must be passionate about it considering all of those long hours you will have to put in maintaining and growing your business. The other lesson that I learned was persistence. Sales is the lifeblood of any business so if you want an intact business at the end of the day you will have to be persistent in generating as much sales as possible!

Going back to the topic of passion. I feel that you must constantly speculate  your passion, figuring out what makes you truly happy or truly tick, and go after it with all you’re muscle. Passion is what keeps us going in this world. What’s your passion?