Read Mark Cuban on the value of hard work

Mark Cuban on the Value of Hard Work and Other Tips This Week

BY BRIAN PATRICK EHA| 17 hours ago|

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image credit: Vibe

A roundup of the best tips of the week from Entrepreneur.com.

Mark Cuban doesn't have much patience for dreamers. "Everyone has ideas, most don't do the work required to get the job done," the billionaire tech entrepreneur wrote this week in a question-and-answer session on social-news site reddit. He was fielding questions about what entrepreneurs need to know when starting a business.

One of his characteristically blunt pieces of advice involved encouraging entrepreneurs to skip business school. "I think an MBA is an absolute waste of money," he told reddit users. "I don't give any advantage to someone in hiring because they have an MBA." In lieu of an expensive graduate degree, Cuban recommends filling your knowledge gaps with free online courses. Last month, Entrepreneur.com mentioned some of these resources, such as those available fromUdacity and Coursera, in an article about startup tutoring platform InstaEDU. More: Mark Cuban: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Starting a Business

Find ideas by opening yourself up to diverse experiences.
Every entrepreneur knows the value of innovation, but sometimes the well of new ideas dries up. How to refresh it? Get out into the world and experience new things, says Andy Boynton, co-author of The Idea Hunter. "But your world has to be broad enough and diverse enough to feed you the ideas you need." More: How to Find New Business Ideas in Everyday Life

Use a lull in business to grow your intellectual capital.
Faced with a holiday slowdown, many entrepreneurs get anxious. Instead of getting your blood pressure up, relax with a good business book or look into professional workshops to grow your skillset in the new year. You can also take advantage of the slow period to set goals for the upcoming year. Just be sure to post them prominently so you can review them on regularly.More: How to Make the Most of Your Holiday Downtime

To attract hires, articulate a compelling mission.
Since startups typically can't offer salaries as high or hours as regular (and limited) as established companies, it can be difficult for them to attract talent. As an emotional draw to pull in employees, make a compelling case for why your startup is the place to be -- whether that's because it's doing good in the world or it's primed to make a bundle in an emerging market.More: 3 Ways to Recruit Talent for a Hungry Startup

Find a mentor who shares common ground with you.
The key to a successful mentoring relationship is finding someone who shares your values and with whom you have personal chemistry. Phil Morabito realized this when he needed advice on how to grow his Houston-based public relations firm. He found a mentor who worked in a different field but whose values lined up with his own, and they formed a personal bond. This sort of bond "is crucial to the success of the relationship," says Dr. Sharon Straus of the University of Toronto, who has studied mentor-mentee interactions. More: 4 Ingredients for Successful Mentoring Relationships

Mark Cuban on what entrepreneurs need to know before starting a business

Mark Cuban: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know Before Starting a Business

BY JASON FELL| Yesterday|

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Mark Cuban is known for being outspoken and no-nonsense when it comes to business. This week, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, investor and owner of the Dallas Mavericks participated in a question and answer session on popular social news site reddit where he discussed all things business, basketball and, of course, Shark Tank.

When starting a business, Cuban said every entrepreneur needs to know that it's not so much about having a killer idea as it is about being completely prepared to take a product or service to market. "Everyone has ideas, most don't do the work required to get the job done," he wrote.

Another thing aspiring business owners need to keep in mind: Sales are the most important aspect of a small business, Cuban wrote. "No sales, no company."

Below, a sampling of Cuban's points that were related to business and entrepreneurialism.

Related: Mark Cuban: Outwork and Outlearn Your Competition

On finding motivation as an entrepreneur:
I daydreamed for motivation. I didn't lie to myself and talk about my passions and how if I was passionate enough about something I could be successful at it.

I was lucky. I grew up knowing that hard work and smart work has a greater impact on results than being passionate about something.

On needing a master's degree in business administration to be good at business:
I think an MBA is an absolute waste of money. If you have a hole in your knowledge base, there is a ton of online courses you can take. I don't give any advantage to someone in hiring because they have an MBA.

On funding tech startups:
There is a HUGE bubble in the Valley for tech startups. The valuations have gotten out of hand. When valuations go up beyond the reality point, the funding goes down.

It's almost become like the movie business was 10 years ago. There was so much dumb money coming in and so few actually making money that the suckers finally wised up.

On how many of Shark Tank deals wind up getting modified or canceled: 
We get the chance to do due diligence after the show. As a result you uncover things that were not brought up in the show, so it's not unusual for a deal to fall through in the DD phase. I have had things like people who never paid their taxes, people who lied on the show, people who didn't think that if they spent money on their personal credit cards it should be considered an expense. You name it.

There is so much pressure on the entrepreneur during the show that sometimes they say what they think we want to hear rather than the truth. The DD helps us separate the two.

On the most ridiculous thing pitched on Shark Tank:
The ion watch deal was pretty much it. You can't come on expecting to scam us. We will nail you.

On Shark Tank being scripted:
Shark Tank is not scripted at all. When the entrepreneur walks into the shark tank the ONLY thing we know is their first name. NOTHING else.

The only "scripted" part of the show is this. . . the producers tell us before every show. . . if an entrepreneur looks like they are going to cry, shut up and let them. They love tears. That's the only scripting.

Read How In 2013 Social Media Will Get Bigger

  

Topics >  Sales and Marketing >  Online Marketing >  Internet Marketing Strategies > 

Adam Bluestein

Dec 24, 2012

2013 Trend: Social Media Will Get Bigger

Facebook just hit 1 billion users. Brace yourself for the backlash.

This article is part of Inc.'s special report on How (and Where) to Make Money in 2013 (and Beyond). Follow the links at the end of the story for more game-changing trends, bold predictions, and hot markets to watch next year.
Remember everything you've learned about the power of Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites to promote your business? It remains true, with one caveat: In 2013, expect to see a backlash to the sheer massiveness of these sites--as well as the emergence of smaller-scale, niche networks. "In 2013, we'll see more users start to expect, if not demand, some tangible benefits in exchange for all the time they spend online and the personal information they're sharing," says Trendwatching.com's David Mattin. Adds Howard Tullman, CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, partner at Chicago High Tech Investors, and columnist for Inc.com: "Consumers are starting to understand the value of their information and asking to be compensated, whether with badges, rewards, preferred pricing, or discounts and perks." Tullman's prediction for 2013: "We'll increasingly see new kinds of virtual currencies and services--like Ticketmaster's Facebook app that lets you see where your friends are sitting at an event."
At the same time, the sheer massiveness of Facebook is creating opportunities for smaller-scale, niche networks. People aren't likely to flee Facebook outright, Tullman says, but they will increasingly augment their online social experience by using other networks whose size, privacy, and more customized parameters are better suited to specific tasks and goals.
Some good examples are Path, a free personal-social-network service that limits users to a 150-person circle; App.net, a subscription service that lets users create their own social networks; and NextDoor, a private social network that helps users connect with others in the same geographic area. MindMixer is a sort of virtual town hall that enables communities to define and discuss ideas. Yammer, meanwhile, helps businesses create internal networks.
The emergence of more and varied social networks will present a challenge to businesses accustomed to Facebook and Twitter. For one thing, many people use such networks specifically to avoid the increasingly commercial aspects of Facebook; in that case, you would be smart to start by limiting your presence to participation and listening, rather than selling. Eventually, however, smaller networks could become effective ways to reach specific geographic areas or professional groups, or build communities around a brand. The goal here, says Tullman, is less to attract new customers than to build deeper, longer-lasting, and more lucrative relationships with the ones you have. When you have that, word of mouth will naturally bring in the new business.

Read about these 4 tips to take your company to the next level

4 Tips to Take Your Company to the Next Level

Stuck at a plateau? Here are four things that could help your business reach new heights.

Courtesy of company

Finnegan's founder Jacquie Berglund (center) along with her growing team.

You've built a pretty good company. You're finally turning a modest profit. But now you seem to be stuck in a holding pattern. Have you reached your capacity or is there a way to take things to the next level?

That was the question facing Jacquie Berglund, founder and CEO of Finnegan's Inc. She'd started out in 2000 with a grand idea: create a local brand of beer and ale, and donate 100% of the profits to charity. "We do what Newman's Own does," she explains. The company was modestly profitable by its third year, and had donated a total of $150,000 to various charities by 2009. But that year, for the first time, revenues fell compared to the past. Berglund wondered if this was it or if there was a way to go from good to great.

Fortunately, one of Berglund's college friends was Buffie Blesi, a business coach and a franchise owner with AdviCoach, which provides counseling to small businesses. Berglund began meeting regularly with Blesi, and the two worked out a strategy to take a plateaued company to the next level:

1. Set specific long-term goals.

"We're creating a strategic plan that centers around her mission and then how to scale it," Blesi says. "What does she want to accomplish in two to five years? Next year? She sets quarterly goals and if there are obstacles, we spend time working through them."

Finnegan's revenues had hovered between $500,000 and $650,000 annually. Working with Blesi, Berglund set a long-term goal to increase that number to $1 million and to meet increasing goals for profits (and thus giving) as well. In 2011, the company gave away $45,000 and it's setting future goals at $100,000 per year and more. As of 2012, Finnegan's is Minnesota's fifth largest beer company.

2. Find a simple mission.

One problem for the business was not how much money it was donating, but how it was donating that money. "We were giving to dozens and dozens of very innovative programs that were working on poverty," Berglund says. But at the company's 10th anniversary celebration, as she tried to describe the difference Finnegan's had made, she found it was difficult to articulate. The company needed a more focused strategy.

Now, Finnegan's donates all its profits to a program that purchases produce from local farms and delivers it to food pantries. There are multiple advantages to this approach. It provides fresh fruit and vegetables to people who can't easily get them while supporting small farms in a tough economy. Also, Finnegan's can target its donations to specific locations, and can thus give back to the communities where its beer is sold, strengthening the connection between drinker and recipient. It's easy to track specific metrics--every $1 donated equals two pounds of produce--and that helps Finnegan's set financial goals.

Finally, because "turning beer into food" is an attractive proposition, Finnegan's is now able to form partnerships, for instance with a local pizza company that makes a donation for every large pie sold on a Monday, or a local liquor store that sells Finnegan's at cost. Some farms, too, are matching Finnegan's donation with additional donated food.

3. Get a simple message.

Now that Finnegan's had focused its mission, it was time for an equally focused message that would get the idea across quickly to the drinking public. "We connected with an ad agency and they created a visual that allows everyone to get it," Blesi says. The new Finnegan's graphic incorporates a shamrock with a halo floating above it and the slogan, "Here's to doing good."

4. Don't go it alone.

In order to meet its goals, Berglund knew Finnegan's would have to scale. Since the company uses a contract brewer, scaling production was no problem, but sales and administration presented more of a challenge.

"I was the sole employee until 2009," Berglund says. "I had bootstrapped and didn't have investment capital, and I was afraid to take the leap of hiring anyone else." Instead, she relied on the help of a network of volunteers. "With volunteers, we could only get to a certain level," she says now. "They were donating their time when they had time. We weren't optimized for growth."

So Blesi helped Berglund work through her fear of hiring by calculating how much additional revenue a salesperson could bring in. Today, the company has two sales representatives, a sales coordinator, and a volunteer coordinator who works with its volunteers. Berglund plans to hire two more sales reps in 2013.
Growing beyond a one-person company has not only helped Finnegan's reach donation goals, it's good for the company's long-term prospects as well. "Because Jacquie now has a team doing a lot of the work she used to do, visiting distributors and going door-to-door at restaurants and liquor stores--she can spend her time developing those relationships in the community," Blesi says. "That helps build beer sales."

This is why its important to never rush a business decision

Never Rush a Business Decision

If a potential partner pressures you to hurry up and decide, don't.

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Dear Norm,

I'm being pressured to make a quick decision about selling the rights to a pain-relief lotion I've developed. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I should be asking for. The lotion has been effective in treating myself and some of my patients. With the thought of selling it commercially, I contacted an entrepreneur profiled in Inc. who had done something similar. He introduced me to another person he felt could help me. I sent this second person a sample of my product, and he became quite excited about it. Three weeks later, he sent me an e-mail offering to buy half the business. He wants an answer right away. How should I proceed? And how do I value a business built around a product that is less than two years old and has sales under $5,000?

--Name withheld

There's a general rule to invoke whenever someone pressures you to hurry up and decide: Don't do it. I have never made a mistake by holding off and thinking through the best course of action. I have made many, many mistakes--including a couple that put my first company into Chapter 11--by rushing into decisions before I'd given myself a chance to consider all the relevant issues.

The writer--I'll call him Richard--had already made a key mistake in his eagerness to cash in on his new lotion. Even though he'd been told the product wasn't patentable, he'd sent a sample without first insisting that the recipient sign a legally binding nondisclosure agreement. So he has no protection against the possibility that his would-be partner might reverse engineer the product and manufacture it without Richard's authorization.

As for the value of the business, it has none--because it isn't a business. A product is not a business. You also need customers and sales. Richard has investigated how much it would cost to produce and package his lotion, and from that, he has come up with a wholesale and a retail price for it. But he has no idea whether anyone would buy it at that price, let alone how it would be marketed and distributed.

I advised Richard to send his suitor a nondisclosure agreement and refuse to discuss anything until it is signed. Only then should he take the next step of pinning down exactly what the suitor has in mind, what his financial resources are, and whether he can be trusted to deliver. In the meantime, Richard should research companies that specialize in marketing the inventions of others. And he should tread carefully, as this business is full of scam artists. But there are also companies with good reputations, and Richard should at least find out who they are and how they operate.

Street Smarts columnist and senior contributing editor Norm Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur who has founded and grown six businesses. @NormBrodsky

Read why over 300k Millionairs in the US can go off the cliff

More Than 300,000 Millionaires Could Go Off 'Cliff'

By Robert Frank | CNBC – Tue, Dec 4, 2012 11:24 AM EST

@cnbc on Twitter

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The cost of taxing the rich has become the central debate in the "fiscal cliff" talks.

But the costs of not getting a deal might be even worse for the country - including the wealthy, according to a new study.

The population of millionaires in the United States would fall by 315,000, or 6 percent, next year if the country goes over the fiscal cliff and the economy goes into recession as a result, according to a new study from WealthInsight. The total fortunes of millionaires would fall by $240 billion if the cliff's combination of tax cuts and automatic reductions in government-spending were to take effect.

If the United States can solve the cliff deal and chalk up 2 percent growth next year, the number of millionaires would grow by 230,000, and their combined fortunes would soar to by over $1 trillion, WealthInsight's study said.

(More From CNBC: GOP Quietly Trying to Find a Way Out of Tax Fight)

That sounds like good news, but WealthInsight, the London-based wealth-research firm, said that if the threat of the cliff didn't exist at all, the millionaire population would grow by 443,000 and their fortunes would grow by $1.6 trillion.

Still, even if the cliff is avoided, the solution could also drag down the number of millionaires.

"There also remains the possibility of a fiscal slope: a growth-sapping bargain which prompts a damaging degree of fiscal tightening," Wealth Insight said.

That uncertainty, along with looming tax hikes, will lead the wealthy to put their money next year into different types of investments. Alternative investments (hedge funds, private equity) will be the top-performing asset class for millionaires between now and 2016, according to WealthInsight.

Read about 10 Best Apps to help with your business

Do More Faster: 10 Best Apps & Tools

Five-time entrepreneur Frank Addante lists the digital gems that help him be organized and save time.

1.  Organize your email: Sanebox

Sanebox uses algorithms to organize your email into what's important and what's not. I was skeptical and had trouble giving up control of my inbox, but now I'm hooked. 

Tips: Trust it. Check @SaneLater twice a day, @SaneBulk whenever you feel like reading newsletters or promotions, and @SaneBlackHole for all the junk you never want to see again.

2.  Keep track of all your notes: Evernote 

Evernote stores your notes in the cloud, so you can access them from any computer or mobile device.

Tips: Use Evernote for both business and personal reasons. I take all of my business meeting notes directly in Evernote and scan or fax documents to Evernote that I want to keep. On the personal side, I take photos of wine that I like and store them in a notebook called Favorite Wines and keep copies of all critical identification (like my driver's license, passport, and insurance papers) in a notebook called Wallet.

Download App: iPhone | Android

3.  Store your documents in the cloud: Dropbox

Securely file away your digital documents in the cloud, so you can find and work on them from any computer or mobile device later.

Tips: I created two Dropbox folders--~Working Drafts and ~To File--and put them on my Mac in my Finder Favorites and on my Dock. I set the default sort order to be by Date Modified. This way, my most recent documents show up at the top of the list, and I can quickly drag or find documents there. I use ~Working Drafts as if it's my desktop and never actually store anything on my computer desktop. When I'm finished with a document, I drag it to ~To File, and every once in a while, I go into the folder to organize folders that make more sense long term. Note: I include the tilde (~) in the filenames so that, when sorted alphabetically, these folders always show up at the top.

Download App: iPhone | Android

4.  Prioritize your to-do list: Action Method

It's an online app that helps you organize to-do lists and track and delegate tasks.

Tips: Use Action Method's three color codes to set your priorities. Use orange for tasks that must be done on the scheduled day, blue for tasks that should be done that day but can push a day if necessary, and grey for tasks that you'd like to get done that day but will push if there are other deadlines. I follow the same color code in my calendar. The website is great, but definitely download--and set to open at login--the desktop, iPad, and mobile apps. Start every "to-do" item with an "action" word. The only negative about the Web application is that it can't be used offline. I use either the iPad or iPhone app while on a plane and sometimes will print a PDF of my to-dos before I take off and leave it on my desktop.

Download App: iPhone | Android

5.  Assemble your travel plans: TripIt

TripIt files all your itineraries in one place. You can even have it automatically send your itineraries to your significant other, kids, or always-worried mom. The Pro version alerts you of flight delays and gate changes.

Tips: Download the mobile app and put it on your home screen. Create a contact for plans@tripit.com and forward all itineraries to that contact.

Download App: iPhone | Android

6.  Automatically transcribe your voice-mail messages: YouMail

This voice-mail service transcribes your voice-mail messages and sends them to you by email or text (or both). The mobile app makes it easy to view, listen, read, and forward your voice mails.

Download App: iPhone | Android

7.  Consolidate your social network accounts: HootSuite 

This website allows you to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yammer, and others all from one place.

Tips: I tend to have pockets of time when I can read and post on social media. Try HootSuite's new "auto schedule" feature, so you can spread out your posts and don't flood your networks with many in a row.

Download App: iPhone | Android

8.  Communicate in real time with your whole team: Yammer

Yammer is like a private Twitter stream just for your company.

Tips: Get everyone in your company to sign up, and then use it as your main means of communicating information. This way, everyone will adapt to Yammer, because no one wants to miss out. Allow employees to post things that are "business" material and "fun" material. The fun material makes it more entertaining, and, in turn, the business material is more likely to be read.

Download App: iPhone | Android

9.  Stay fit: miCoach

Exercise keeps your mind sharp. The miCoach iPhone app acts like your personal trainer. I lost 20 pounds using it at home and while on the road.

Tips: Set up your workouts in advance. I selected Get Lean for running and Get Fit for gym workouts. Buy the heart-rate monitor and stride sensor; it's worth it. What gets measured gets done.

Download App: iPhone | Android

10.  Sleep better: iSleep

It's important to get a good night's rest. If you're like me, your mind is constantly racing, and the day's work never ends. The iSleep meditation app helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. It's particularly helpful when you have jet lag or can't fall asleep. I use the Deep Sleep playlist at the end of a long, stressful day.