If you are not reading, you are falling behind.

I’ve been following Mark Cuban for a number of years. I didn’t agree with his approaches to everything but he certainly shows some great examples of hustle, creativity and leveraging his opportunities. Plus his blog – Blogmaverick always kept us amused in the Toronto office.

With his presence on Shark Tank, his notoriety from owning the Dallas Mavericks and other social media interest, he is out there a lot and accessible to hear his point of view.

He’s the first one to tell you, he was at the right place at the right time with the success and sale of Broadcast.com. He said “if he had to start over, he doesn’t know if he could make billions again…but he could certainly make many millions.”

One of the things that drives his wife crazy is that he spends up to three hours per day reading. It’s his competitive advantage. He consumes knowledge and is able to leverage it well for competence and gain. Mark Cuban knows his strengths.

When he started his first computer business setting up operating systems back in the 90’s, he gained customers before he actually knew how to install the software. He just figured it out. He literally read the manual on DOS (old MS Disk Operating System) because he didn’t want to screw things up for his customers and wanted to make sure he knew enough to be coherent when talking to computer companies. With all his self study and installing of networks he soon realized very few people had the discipline to learn as much about his focus area.

He never looked back from there. To this day, he says people are rarely willing to put in the level of effort he or other really successful people do. It’s attainable but you have to really want it.

It’s never been easier to attain knowledge. Podcasts, audio books, books, articles, blogs.

Even if you get one good idea per book (and I bet it’s at least 5-10), are you doing the work necessary to put yourself in the game?

Here are some books I think drive a lot of value!

Colin’s Reading List

Colin