Growing and sustaining profitability keeps a business in business. The question then becomes: “How does one grow a profit?”
Enter Mark Cuban
His first profitable business was selling garbage bags door-to-door at age 12. He went on to found and sell a startup worth billions, invest in and scale hundreds of companies, and turn an NBA franchise into a multibillion-dollar success story.
Mark’s core method for growing profitable businesses is: plan appropriately and the profits will follow. In this training, Mark gives your team a comprehensive understanding of the common problems that hurt a company’s profits. Then he teaches your team how to plan for potential problems ahead.
Here are some key learnings from this training.
Profitability Means Preparation
Everything impacts your bottom line: making the right hires, understanding your profit margins, growing without breaking, and knowing your competition. Mark walks your team through the essential questions leaders must answer in order to set a company up for success.
Growth Demands Flexibility
While alignment around core business goals is essential across any company, Mark teaches your leaders that business plans should be flexible. In order to grow profits, leaders must think through and prepare for problems that are inevitable yet not always obvious. Competitors may outspend you, the marketplace will fluctuate, and you could miss your quarterly goals. These usual suspects are things your team can plan for—and adapt to—if your business plan is both solid and agile.
Don't Assume Things
If you assume something won’t happen to your business, plan for the opposite, Mark says. His systematic way of thinking through future contingencies will help business leaders see what’s around every corner. These lessons are crucial to achieving sustainable growth, especially in a company’s early stages—or when a big pivot needs to be made.
Not assuming things also means knowing everything you can about your competition, your niche in the market, and your particular industry. Your leaders must track industry trends and insights, focus on your particular corner, recognize and anticipate customer needs, and know clearly what your core product is.
Mark’s energy around building profitable companies is contagious. He champions uncovering deep market insights and performing comprehensive analyses. Because of Mark’s focus on precision, his business plans can scale to plan.
Find Opportunities By Seeing Things Differently
Mark is famous for his ability to spot disruptive business ideas and execute them flawlessly. Along with defining your core product, his lessons in disruption can help leaders detect and assess new market opportunities—and choose how and to what degree your company invests in new sectors and technologies.
One example of Mark disrupting an industry is when the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, came under political scrutiny and was threatened. After digging into the potential market implications around the issue—and discovering that millions of Americans couldn’t afford their prescription drugs anyway—Mark became very clear about his new business goal. He founded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company to help people afford their otherwise out-of-reach prescription meds.
Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company is a disruptive business that makes life-saving prescription drugs affordable to millions. The company has grown drastically since its inception—with zero ad spend. This dynamic growth is attributed to Mark doing the research, being very clear about his core product, and intricately understanding consumer needs.
The above are but a few business essentials Mark Cuban lays out in his training. Your leaders will walk away with new business tools that can help them increase your company’s bottom line, outsmart competitors, and make better decisions every day.
Learn more about MasterClass at Work.
