What Every Entrepreneur Should be Doing Right Now (from Mark Cuban)

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore
CC BY-SA 3.0

I recently viewed a webinar hosted by Entrepreneurs’ Organization featuring serial entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban. The webinar promised to be a “candid discussion on the state of entrepreneurship during this challenging season.”

The webinar lived up to its billing, and I want to share some of Mr. Cuban’s entrepreneurship advice with you, including the following: 

• Communicate in a brutally honest and authentic way with your employees, vendors, and customers. They are all experiencing the same things you are right now.
• Ask questions of others, and solicit ideas from individuals at all levels of your organization. The mentality of “this is the way we’ve always done it” may no longer be appropriate. It’s time to innovate.
• Learn something new. Learn how your in-home platforms, such as Alexa, can help you with your work. Learn about artificial intelligence and robotics. They are the way of the future, and we need them to compete with other countries. If you can learn how to do it at a lower cost, you can ease your reliance on offshore resources and start to control your own destiny. 
• Rather than letting your fears paralyze you, turn them into motivation. 
• Become an expert in the risks businesses are currently facing. Whether it be your employees, vendors, or customers, as we begin reopening, people will be trusting businesses with their health. 
• Get creative and become an expert in social distance planning. Come up with new ideas to do business in ways that people want. How can you do something and still make it interesting? 
• Treating people equally doesn’t mean treating them the same. Everyone within your organization has a different skillset and background that can contribute to the success of the business. You just have to find the appropriate fit.

And lastly, what would advice from Mark Cuban be if it didn’t include a sports analogy? So remember that all the great ones are the first ones in and the last ones to leave. There is someone working 24 x 7 x 365 to kick your butt