'There's No Days Off'

What does it take to compete at the highest level? Billionaire Mark Cuban and NFL star Micah Parsons have the answers.

- JASON FEIFER

What drives people to greatness, whether on the field or as a founder? NFL edge rusher Micah Parsons has a two-word answer: In his first four seasons in the league, Parsons has been a standout player for the Dallas Cowboys.

We recently asked him which entrepreneur he’d most want to sit down with, and he named a fellow Dallasonian—billionaire tech investor Mark Cuban, who once owned the Dallas Mavericks and became famous through his role on Shark Tank.

We connected them as part of The Playbook, a series Entrepreneur cocreated with Sports Illustrated, where we pair entrepreneurial athletes with great business leaders. Our goal: Find out what it takes to succeed in two of the world’s most competitive fields of play—business and sports.

In this conversation, Cuban and Parsons talk about what motivates them, what keeps them focused, and the quotes that inspire them.

MICAH PARSONS: How did you get into technology?

MARK CUBAN: I got fired, basically. I was working at a store called Your Business Software. The more I got into it, the more I realized I could learn this technology stuff faster than most people. All of a sudden, I'm going out on sales calls. One day, my boss wanted me to come into the store. I'm like, “Look, I’ve got to go close a sales deal.” And he said, “No. You've got to come into the store.” I decided to close the deal. I bring him a $15,000 commission check—I figure he's going to be happy. He fired my ass right there and then.

I decided to start my own thing. I called it MicroSolutions. I was 24, and I didn’t take a vacation for the next seven years. To me, it was like a sport. I made sure that I learned it as well as, if not better than, anybody else. We built that company up to 80 employees, $30-some million in sales. Profitable. And I sold it to H&R Block.

PARSONS: So you did seven years of nonstop grinding.