In the 21st century marketplace, you’re not somebody until you have your own reality show. In 2004 Cuban developed The Benefactor, an ABC show pitting 16 contestants in a series of tasks designed to highlight the skills Cuban identified as critical to success.
Want to turn your success dreams into reality? Here are 12 key factors Cuban the Benefactor says you must understand:

Time is the most precious commodity. Time is more valuable than money. How effectively you manage your time will have far more impact on your success than any amount of money.

No balls, no babies. This is a favorite expression of Cuban’s he picked up from a blackjack dealer. Once you’re prepared and you think you have all the angles covered, it’s time to step off the edge and take your chances. No balls, no babies.

Make work fun. During one stretch, Cuban went seven years without taking a vacation. But he still managed to have fun. Find ways – even small ones – within your hectic schedule to let off steam and release the pent-up tension.

Anticipation is key. No one’s going to wake you up every morning to explain precisely what you need to accomplish that day to win. Life
is unpredictable, but the folks who recognize that fact, and prepare for unpredictable events to occur, are more likely to get ahead.

Manage your fears. Fear can be a roadblock or a motivator. Cuban admits to having been fired from more jobs than most people have held. But it’s not the failure that defines you, he says, it’s how you respond to the failure…get up, dust yourself off, and go for it again.

Let your passion show. Don’t stifle yourself so that you never let your anger or frustrations show. If you believe strongly in something, but
others disagree, sometimes the only way to express yourself is by sharing your thoughts without concern for social niceties. By the same token, however, you can’t blame others when they occasionally do likewise.

Get up and go. There will always be days – particularly after setbacks – when you don’t feel like getting out of bed, when you’d rather crawl under a rock than show up for work.
These are the moments that define whether you really want to succeed. Recognize that we all have these days, then fight through them to come back stronger and smarter.

We’re all benefactors. To succeed, you not only need to be able to
get along with people – those people also have to feel like they’re
getting something out of the relationship. No one succeeds entirely on their own, so do your part to give something back to those around you.
It’s not whether the glass is half-full or half-empty; it’s who’s
pouring the water. This is another of Cuban’s favorite expressions.
The point is to seek every way possible to control your own destiny.
Of course this isn’t always possible, but there will always be ways
to maximize your advantages. Find them and then exploit them.

Dreaming is not doing. We all have dreams of success – whether
in business, in sports, as parents, and so forth. The difference is
what we do with those dreams. Whenever you catch yourself
daydreaming, stop and assess what you’re doing today to help
make those dreams a reality.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. This is just a fancy way of saying, “Don’t get greedy.” Sometimes in life you need to go for the jugular, but other times moderation is necessary.
It’s better to seek a true win-win from negotiations than to try to squeeze every last penny from a deal. You want your business partners coming back eager to do business with you again, not grousing about how you leveraged every advantage to an unreasonable degree.

You only have to be right once. The great thing about being successful is that it doesn’t matter how many times you fail along the way. Learn from the failures, take the learning lessons, improve what you’re doing, and then go ahead and fail again. Every time you try again you’ll get one step closer to getting it right.