Mark Cuban, Bobby Knight, and the will to win

As previously reported about eight times on the blog, I love Mark Cuban and pretty much everything he stands for. The other day he wrote a post about Bob Knight's record breaking win and how something coach Knight once said stuck with him:

When I was at Indiana you were on 60 Minutes. In your interview you said one single thing that I took to heart. I reminded myself of it while it was in school at Indiana. I reminded myself of it when I failed. I reminded myself of it before any of the many businesses I have started I will continue to remind myself before any of my endeavors going forward. Its also the best advice I've been able to give people of any age who ask me for advice.

You said, and Im paraphrasing: "Everyone has got the will to win, its only those with the will to prepare that do win"

Words for every athlete and those of us who partake in the Sport of Business to live by

And it's so true. I'm not going to pretend that I've been around the type of people Cuban refers to in the post, but I've been around a lot of immensely successful people and the one unifying characteristic that they all have is work ethic. I've also been around a lot of "wanna be" successful people that are all talk but won't take the steps necessary to turn that talk into reality.

I started noticing this in college - I was surrounded by people far more intelligent than me that had virtually no work ethic. The average SAT score at RPI was around 1350 when I started school way back in 2000. Mine was 1220. Most people there were far more intellectually brilliant than myself, but I finished at the top of my class mostly because I outworked them. I just read in their common data set that only 50% of my freshman class graduated within six years. Believe me, it wasn't because they weren't smart. Everyone there is smart. Unfortunately, most of them don't have the will to prepare. It's the one thing that college really taught me.

I saw the exact same at all my internships and at my job after school - there are so many people out there who WANT to be the best, and they are super smart, but they aren't willing to put in the work. I don't know how my business ventures will fare, but I do know that I've surrounded myself with people that have that same will to prepare that I do.

From what I've seen, I can't think of a better indicator of success than hard work and preparation. It's amazing how much one can overcome in intelligence, experience, etc if they have that single trait.