How to Win at the Sports of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It (Book Review)

On my way to San Francisco, I picked this book from my personal library. It’s a surprisingly small and interesting book, and is compilation of blog posts from Mark Cuban — the guy who sold his company to Yahoo! for $5.7B in 1999 and is the present owner NBA’s Dallas Maverick.

Mark talks about his life experiences and learnings — particularly covering his early struggle and how to thrive in the dark days. The book is very concise and short, so even if you are not a reader, you’d enjoy reading these 73 pages. You can also get a free PDF copy of the book on the Internet.

Everyone would benefit from reading this book, but I highly recommend it to young entrepreneurs, university students, and recent graduates. The real world is very different from the world that educational institutions portray to young people. This book exposes your mind to the real world and gives you some direction on how to prepare yourself for it.

The book has good chunk of wonderful stories and motivational quotes. I particularly liked these three pieces:

This one is for the entrepreneurs:

“… it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and from those around you because …

All that matters in business is that you get it right once.

Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.”

This one is for the university students:

“You are still in school. You don’t need to have all the answers or focus on one thing. You should be trying a lot of things until you find the one thing you really love to do and are good at. When that happens, you will be able to focus.

Being focused at 21 is way overrated. Now is the time to screw up, to try as many different things as you can and just maybe figure things out.

The thing you do need do is learn. Learn accounting. Learn finance. Learn statistics. Learn as much as you can about business. Read biographies about businesspeople. You don’t have to focus on one thing, but you have to create a base of knowledge so you are ready when it’s time.

You never know when that time will come. But you can be ready when it does.. You never know, you might end up in the adventure business!”

And here is one for the recent grads (or young professionals):

“Start the day motivated with a positive attitude.

You are going to screw up. We all do. I can’t tell you how many times I did and continue to. It happens too often. But no matter what happens, every morning, the minute after you wipe away the crust from your eyes, remind yourself that you are doing to enjoy every minute of the day.

You are going to enjoy the twenty interviews you have. You are going to enjoy waiting in the heat for a roommate to pick you up afterwards. You are doing to enjoy realizing how frayed your collar has become and how sick you are of your one, lonesome tie. You are going to enjoy all the bullshit you have to deal with as you chase your goals and dreams, because you want to remember them all. Each and every experience will serve as motivation and provide great memories when you finally make it all happen.”