Before Tim Ferriss....There Was Mark Cuban

And he was a whole lot more financially successful too!

I just read Mark's book on Kindle for something like $2 - How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It - and although a little short, I enjoyed reading about his feisty background.

Here's the money quote:

In sports, the only thing a player can truly control is effort. The same applies to business. The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.

I had to kick myself in the ass and recommit to getting up early, staying up late and consuming everything I possibly could to get an edge. I had to commit to making the effort to be as productive as I possibly could. It meant making sure that every hour of the day that I could contact a customer was selling time, and when customers were sleeping, I was doing things that prepared me to make more sales and to make my company better.

And finally, I had to make sure I wasn’t lying to myself about how hard I was working. It would have been easy to judge effort by how many hours a day passed while I was at work. That’s the worst way to measure effort.

Effort is measured by setting goals and getting results. What did I need to do to close this account? What did I need to do to win this segment of business? What did I need to do to understand this technology or that business better than anyone? What did I need to do to find an edge? Where does that edge come from, and how was I going to get there?

The one requirement for success in our business lives is effort. Either you make the commitment to get results or you don't.

See also - Marginalizing Mark Cuban.

Have To Pull For The Mavs...

The Dallas Mavericks won last night, taking a 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals heading back to Miami.

Last week, at Alfe's in Wildwood, NJ I was dining with my golf jabronis. Nobody there thought Dallas had a chance in the series - except for moi. In fact they looked at me like I was crazy when I said that Dallas would win in 6 games. (The series was tied 1-1 at the time.)

Whatever, it's not over by any stretch.

But I'm sure as heck rooting for Dallas - a pretty respectable bunch for the NBA in 2011. Yeah Jason Kidd smacked his wife around, allegedly, ten years ago....but who knows how crazed she (or he) really is?

I just don't see how anyone with an ounce of sportsmanship could root for Lebron. What he did last year was an outright act of anti-competitive collusion.

In fact, I'm surprised Congress didn't start investigating!

Mark Cuban, despite being an intellectually incontinent buffoon, is also a most deserving guy, IMO.

I've written a handful of posts on Cuban - start here - at the end of that post is a link to most of them. I even enjoyed reading them myself just now.

Mark Cuban - He Only Sounds And Looks Stupid

Rush Limbaugh recently tried to become a minority investor in an NFL franchise. Everyone got all hot and bothered....and he was booting out of the bidding process.

Mark Cuban, Aristotle that he is, weighed in:

The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems. Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in. Given that we will never know what the "next big issue" in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is, its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience. The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself, about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

Rush Limbaugh is going to SAY SOMETHING that will develop into a BLACK SWAN EVENT for the NFL?

A minority owner, for one team, will have the power to economically devastate the NFL with mere a movement of his lips?

Let's see...

NFL stars run dog-fighting rings (Michael Vick), they use steroids, they are aparty to murders (e.g. Ray Lewis), they can blow Super Bowls (Donovan McNabb with his 6 minute version of the 2 minute offense)....and yet the lumpen masses are out there the very next week, in the freezing cold, paying nosebleed prices, for the opportunity to cheer on their pagan heroes!

I think Cuban is waxing a bit hyperbolic here, if not outright lunatic.

And I won't even get into the delicious irony of the most colorful sports franchise owner we have seen in quite some time, pontificating on....well, you get the idea. Here's Sports Illustrated:

"The NFL isn't interested in having its own Mark Cuban situation, where [the Dallas Mavericks owner] is fined for something he said, but then pays the fine, moves on and doesn't care what he says the next time either. The league wants the focus to always be on the game, not the opinions of any particular owner."

I've written a few posts on the intellectually-incontinent Mark Cuban - click here.

It was interesting, humorous AND tragic to follow this whole Rush Limbaugh/NFL sideshow this past week.

The trivial battlegrounds Morons choose speak volumes on their character, or, I should say lack thereof.

Mark Cuban On Blogs, Etc.

All of this I essentially knew, but Mark Cuban summed it up succinctly:

In the beginning , blogs were the easiest way to communicate an opinion. Then as with now, writing a blog doesn’t mean that anyone would take the time to read it, but sometimes people did.

Blogging today, is not the same as it was 5 years ago. In the early days of blogging, it served as much as mini social networks as a publishing tool. Many used blogs as a way to communicate with family and friends. I don’t see that as the case any longer. Social Networks have become the primary means of keeping in touch with those close to you. Friendster for a minute, then Myspace and now Facebook are the primary means for people to keep each other up to date. Pictures and privacy have made the biggest difference. Facebook its a quick and easy way to share pictures, videos and updates only among those people you want to see them. It has become a unique utility, which for many people eliminated the need to blog.

Beyond personal communications, blogs have also been used as a broadcast medium by public figures, consultants and corporate executives. Blogs have been the most expedient means to share a point of view, a quick thought , factual reporting and whatever else someone else wants to share to a potentially unlimited audience. RSS feeds have advanced so that it has become incredibly easy for people to subscribe to blogs and quickly determine from the RSS headline or full feed whether or not they want to commit to reading the full post. However that is changing as well.

Enter Twitter. Twitter has quickly changed the nature of "broadcast texting". While Blogs have been a great way to offer complete stories, Twitter, with its 140 character limit, by its nature is the best suited of options for short bursts of content. The size constraint makes “tweets” far less intrusive and easy to receive and read on a phone. Twitter works for what it is designed to do, however its future is not a slam dunk.
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Five years ago blogging was a big step. Now, the internet has become such a stable home and mobile platform for text and graphics, we are going to see a rush of derivative products that we will strain to keep up with, but benefit from as we integrate them

Off and on I toy with the notion of adding MySpace and Facebook dimensions to this blog but invariably decide not to. Presently, a *blog* more than fulfills all of my needs.

As one who's tried, quite unsuccessfully, to get many others to write and/or contribute to blogs, I say from experience that social networking is just *dumbed down* blogging. Facebook and Myspace are to the web what cavity-backed clubs were to the game of golf - open doors for the unskilled, lazy masses.

And who has time to write a blog anyway?

It's a whole lot easier to simply respond to the ramblings of others than it is to collect and articulate one's own thoughts. Not to mention, it's also a whole lot safer for one's own intellectual ego!

I remember at *math camp* some 18 years ago, at the end of the three week session, the director lectured us *geniuses*:

DrGeorge - Now you're all tremendous problem solvers....you're the best around at that....but how many of you know anything about *problem posing*?

I, and I am sure most of the other, much bigger geeks, were stupefied over this line of inquiry. While we learned how to rapidly solve all of the questions from myriad competitions over the last 20 years or so, we never once thought about where these problems originated from. Someone had to *pose* them, right? And a whole lot of deep thought must have gone into framing simple, original questions that invited attainable and elegant solutions.

Sunday night I got into bed with a sheet of paper on my nightstand. In no time at all I had 21 *blog ideas* scribbled down.

Not long ago, it would have taken me hours to brainstorm so efficiently - but over four years of blogging, of PRODUCING CONTENT, my creativity muscles have been found, awakened, and exercised.

It's in all of us. We've just been socialized to passively consume lessons, entertainment, news, and opinions.

As bad as our outsourcing of grunt work (cleaning, cooking, etc.) is, the outsourcing of our mind work has been so much more destructive.

I KNOW that I've gotten many of my readers to, if not venture down the homeschooling route, at least to give it and education in general serious consideration.

But I've been far less successful at inspiring others to write or even contribute to blogs. And that's a darn shame.

Because that's where it all started. I never even heard of homeschooling until my wanderblogging led me to an essay by John Taylor Gatto nearly three years ago.



Y'all need to break free and become the lead actor in your own play.

Mark Cuban - Reminding Us He's Not A Total Dummy

A week ago, Mark Cuban asked his blog readers to post business plans that he would consider investing in. So far there are a whopping 1,418 comments - many of which take his bait and post their *best* business plan ideas.

Of course he listed 13 stipulations, and this clincher:

You must post your business plan here on my blog where I expect other people can and will comment on it. I also expect that other people will steal the idea and use it elsewhere. That is the idea. Call this an open source funding environment.

Now, what Moron, if they had a really good idea, why the heck would they advertise it to the entire world? Wouldn't an email be more appropriate?

So Mark is taking advantage of $$$$-dreaming kids. That post cost him nothing but a few minutes of time and now hundreds of ambitious Morons are sending him business ideas. Who's to say that if a really good one gets posted, that Mark himself won't steal it? Forget *other people* co-opting it!

Again, would you really want to invest in someone who's stupid enough to publish their plan? There's a bit of a conundrum for Mark.



But here's the best part that'll might blow y'all away.

Last year Mark Cuban wrote a decent post titled - The Best Equity is Sweat Equity:

The Rules of Success

As MicroSolutions became more and more successful, and as I paid attention to the common traits of businesses that I saw succeed and those I saw fail, I came to realize that there are “Rules of Success” that I saw in companies that excelled. Where companies failed to follow those rules, inevitably, they failed. I found myself checking with “My Rules” before I made decisions. When I traded stocks or considered investments in companies, I applied The Rules to their business before I made a decision.

The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are those that have been started with little or no money. Dell Computer, MicroSoft, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages. There weren’t 100 page long business plans. In all of my businesses, I started by putting together spreadsheets of my expenses, which allowed me to calculate how much revenue I needed to break even and keep the lights on in my office and my apartment. I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition and why my product and/or service would be important to my customers, and why they should buy or use it. All of it on a piece of yellow paper or in a word processing file, and none of it cost me more than the diet soda I was drinking while I was writing it up.

These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.

Investors don’t care about your dreams and goals. They love that you have them. They love that they motivate you. Investors care about how they are going to get their money back and then some. Family cares about your dreams. Investors care about money. There is a reason why venture capitalists are often referred to as Vulture Capitalists.

There are only two reasonable sources of capital for startup entrepreneurs, your own pocket and your customers pockets. I personally would never even take money from a family member. Could you imagine the eternal grief and guilt from your mom, dad, uncle or aunt because you blew your nephews college money or the money for grandmas last vacation...I can't.

You shouldn’t have to take money from anyone. Businesses don’t have to start big. The best ones start small enough to suit the circumstances of their founders.

As much as you want to think that all things would change if you only had more cash available, they probably won’t.

The reality is that for most businesses, they don’t need more cash, they need more brains.

Now, the date on the post is incorrect. It says it was posted in June 2004; it was actually posted in October 23, 2008. I have a pretty good memory, BUT NOT THAT GOOD.

If you read my post too fast you'll miss its point.

On one hand, Mark says never to take an investor's money; that investors will give you false confidence and could potentially *steal your dreams*.

Then, on the other hand, or, six months later, Mark tells you to send him your best business ideas; that he'll be that very *vulture* to steal your dreams; that he'll be that guy to give your business plan unnecessary and dilutive capital.

As I've said before, Mark Cuban is intellectually incontinent, a hypocrite, and an incorrigible wealth-chaser - though at least he's great blog material!

See also I Don't Blame Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban, Trader, Marginalizing Mark Cuban, Again, and Marginalizing Mark Cuban.

I Don't Blame Mark Cuban

The wires today were abuzz with the report of Mark Cuban being charged with insider trading. Four people emailed or messaged me within the first hour of the announcement.

Put yourself in Mark Cuban's shoes.

You own a bunch of Mamma.com stock. They call you up and ask if you want to participate in another, dilutive offering (PIPE). Why are they raising more capital, you might ask? Why can't they get their act together? They should be able to fund growth from cash flow by now. This thing smells....so you think.

[Point of fact, EVERY SINGLE COMPANY that raised equity capital this year is trading below the *prints* - with the exception of Wells Fargo, for now.]

So if I'm Mark Cuban, I'm thinking I have to get out of this stock/investment. Is it technically illegal for him to sell now that he's learned of an upcoming PIPE? I'm no lawyer. I haven't the faintest idea. But such a law seems like veritable extortion.

Hey Mark, can you give us some more money ? No? Okay, by the way you can't take action on the knowledge of our upcoming dilutive secondary.

Can Mark even refuse the solicitation? How this works I'm not sure. Intuitively, it seems that by even courting existing investors for funds, Mamma.com was distributing inside information that rightfully should have been publicized first. Again, I'm no attorney - I'm just pointing out apparent inconsistencies.

So yes, if I'm Mark, I sell the stock. Worried about insider trading? No way. In the oft chance you ever get caught, you merely have to give back the profits - or in this case, the savings.

Don't expect for a second for Mark to settle on this one. He's a fighter; a self-righteous crusader if there ever was one. If anything, for a million or two bucks, I'm sure Cuban is basking in the notoriety of the moment.

Clearly, Mamma.com - which is now Copernic Inc, a bankrupt .28 a share company - clearly CNIC ratted Mark Cuban out. They're probably pissed at him; they probably blame his exit for their company's demise. Yes, this is how these clowns really *think*.

If this is indeed the law...if it's indeed true that large investors can't dump their stock before a dilutive print...

Then if I was such an investor, I'd be using caller ID to screen out management.



Okay, Forbes' article pretty much confirms everything (above) that I assumed about Mark Cuban. Who needs the news when I can infer the truth from blurry data points?

In the blog, Cuban writes, "I'm not going to discuss the good or bad of PIPE financing other than to say that to me it is a huge red flag, and I don't want to own stock in companies that use this method of financing.

"I don't like the idea of selling in a private placement, stock for less than the market price, and then to make matters worse, pushing the price lower with the issuance of warrants. So, I sold the stock."

Addendum - Cynics are alleging that this *case* is government retribution for Mark's new website bailoutsleuth.com that is seeking to shed light on, well, Wall Street's *bailout*. In less tumultuous times, yes, this is the crap they like to pull. BUT today I'm not sure the thugs are nearly coordinated enough to scheme for retribution. Make sure y'all check out that site - it's pretty interesting.

Mark Cuban, Trader

Apparently, Mark Cuban got LONG the market on October 8th. Here's his call - I'm Going Long Right Now.

He's posted his *buy alert* at 1:06pm, I am guessing he got long with the Dow roughly around 9,400.

From my prior post you can see what happened the very next day:



Looks like he bought some dividend players (energy?) and shorted puts on the Dow.

Ouch. Or should I say "early".

He says he covered his puts and didn't get hurt (how?).

I don't mean to suggest this guy is stupid with his money - it's quite the contrary.

The Dow closed at 9,034 today.

Marginalizing Mark Cuban, Again

Mavericks forward Josh Howard got into some trouble recently disrespecting the national anthem. On YouTube he was captured saying, among other things,:

"'The Star-Spangled Banner' is going on. I don't celebrate this [expletive]. I'm black."

Okay. Whatever. The geo-political views of one Josh Howard couldn't be less interesting to me.

However, I found Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's response pretty darn funny:

"That said, we will be going through some advanced communication-skill sessions together this training camp," Cuban said Tuesday. "I have explained to him that cellphone cameras are not your friend and that what you think you said on camera is never what people will hear when it shows up on YouTube or TV."

Now I have Marginalized Mark Cuban before. Notwithstanding his financial successes, he's a full-blown airhead.

Let me try to guess what will constitute *advanced communication-skill sessions* for Mr. Howard.

Er,...Cuban will tell him to "shut up"???



Now I really don't think Mark, with all his NBA fines and other personal publicity problems, is genuinely qualified to teach *shut-up* courses. Furthermore, I don't think anyone who thinks what someone *said on camera...won't be what people hear* ought to be teaching communication seminars.

More appropriately, they ought to have their head examined.

Point of fact, I watched the Josh Howard clip and can tell you what made it so unpalatable was the entire lead-up, the full context of Howard's behavior that inquiring minds can thank YouTube for. We've had decades of *filtered* news and information; it's made us ignorant; and we're tired of it.

For sure, Cuban is doing his best at spin control; he's trying to protect the trade value of his player. Why? I just can't imagine that the fans in Dallas will be too pleased with Josh Howard given that he's has a few incidents recently.

Cuban couldn't have offered a more pathetic, transparent spin job. It reminded me of when Jerry Seinfeld crawled out of his hole to try and defend Michael Richards (Kramer) - after his political monologue.

The *spin* business is just one of many eradicated by the internet. Thank you Al Gore!

Marginalizing Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban recently posted a blog titled, Ripoff Commercials = Stupid TV Stations and Networks. Here's an excerpt:

How stupid can you be to run these commercials ? Do you not realize that its not a commercial for the product, its a commercial to reduce the value of the brand of your station or network ?

HDNet wont run informercials or any ripoff commercials. We don't need or want their money and I would rather go without commercials than run them. My viewers are my customers. For some reason that is a strange concept to stations and networks these days. They would rather squeek out a commission on herbal enhancement pills and end up with a poorer, upset viewer than run a show without commercial breaks. Thats ridiculous. Its a brand killer

How about this for a concept: If you havent sold a commercial, dont run a commercial. The lack of a spot will hurt your bottom line far less than running a spot to ripoff your customers

(In addition to owning the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban owns HDNet, a high-def television channel.)



Pardon the grammatical errors but such is par for Cuban's course. He's as intellectually incontinent as they come.

So Cuban is anti-late night-infomercials, big deal, right?

But consider another brouhaha that Cuban is currently embroiled in.

His film company is about to distribute a 9/11 conspiracy film titled "Loose Change". That movie promulgates, "that a corrupt faction within the federal government orchestrated the mass murder at the World Trade Center". (link)

More from that link,

Cuban e-mailed us: "We are having discussions about distributing the existing video with Charlie's involvement as a narrator, not in making a new feature. We are also looking for productions with an opposing viewpoint. We like controversial subjects, but we are agnostic to which side the controversy comes from."

Cuban is "agnostic" about the content of his distributed films?

So let me get this straight, he's oozing with ethics when it comes to putting "ripoff" commercials up on HDNet, but when it comes to the content of his films, he's resolutely non-judgmental.

Okay, one more quote from Cuban,

"I don't believe the movie. Not at all," Mr. Cuban explained. "But I do believe that lies in the shadows are far more dangerous than lies you can confront and refute. There probably will be a movie that responds to this one, and we would be more than happy to distribute it as well, for the very same reason."

So, the airhead is a self-serving hypocrite, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

I submit that there is a consistency to Mark's ruminations.

It's all about money. To Mark Cuban, ripping someone off is a crime (particularly one of his customers), but he thinks nothing of polluting minds and debasing public dialogue with lunatic propaganda. The almighty dollar trumps all. (not that there's anything wrong with that)

Cuban's does have some balls though. He pens near one blog post per week complaining about how YouTube isn't aggressively taking down "copyrighted" videos. You see, when it comes to Google/YouTube, he doesn't buy their "agnostic" stance toward content hosting.

Incontinence, both intellectual and the other variety, usually manifests in old coots. Imagine how leaky Mark Cuban is going to be when he is sixty or seventy.

Mark may be a successful guy; but he's a doer, not a thinker.