Five Unexpected Things Business Owners Can Learn From Sports | The Peanut Butter Cup Strikes Again
December 30, 2010 by Andrea J. Lee
Filed under Uncategorized
I know, with the holidays upon us, the last thing we need is another sweet, right? But this is too good a fresh combination to ignore.
Peanut butter cups are an important analogy for business owners who want to stand
out from their competition. To get heard by your customers and find NEW customers, it’s critically important to find fresh combination’s for your business.
Maybe you’re a car wash owner who now also offers dog washing. (The setup is the same, so why not?)
Maybe you’re a workshop leader who now also simulcasts your events around the world. (You’re already leading the event, so why wouldn’t you scoop up the extra registration income, right?)
Or are you a lemonade stand who now also delivers the lemonade from car to car in the lineup to get on the ferry, instead of waiting for customers to come to you?
Sometimes it’s the simplest of new combination’s that bring the biggest business breakthroughs. Once you start looking for the Peanut Butter Cup principle of business, you will start to see it everywhere…
Here are just 5 short slices of fresh wisdom from the sport world that are important for you to absorb for your business. They’re going to be part of an ongoing discussion and learning for business owners in 2011:
1. In sport, measuring is key. Everything is measured so it can be improved.
In ice dancing, how do the athletes know if they’ve improved? They can’t, if they haven’t measured every jump, every turn, every routine. If they didn’t care about improvement, well, they wouldn’t measure!
You care about improvement in your business, right? So…measurement — the statistics, if you would, of your business, are vital. If your business had a baseball card to its name, what would it say?
2. In sport, overexercising is killer. Working TOO hard is as bad as working too little.
Actually, it’s worse. Working TOO hard looks just like you aren’t working hardly at all. Think about it. Burnout, in your business, looks like you’re being a lazy slob, doesn’t it? So why burn yourself out? Why not instead work just enough to produce the result?
In sport, coaches and athletes concern themselves a GREAT deal about working too much, because there is so much at stake. Working too much today, or playing too hard in tonight’s game, could sacrifice the entire season and the run-up to championship!
You don’t see Lance Armstrong courting burnout during practice for a reason.
3. The big goal is essential. Not having a goal is anathema to a business.
You got out
of ho-hum, so-what, I’m punching a time-clock work so you could experience something different, right? So why are you – a little or a lot – feeling that ho-hum-ness in your business?
Could it be because you haven’t locked onto that big goal that makes you sit up and focus?
Do you think Olympic athletes would train as hard, be as dedicated, or as clear-eyed if they weren’t an Olympian? There’s a difference there that’s important to business owners.
What else can you learn from sport that would enrich your business? How deep does the analogy go? Can we squeeze more juice and smarts from the way we run our businesses by listening to the coaches of great athletes and championship players in all walks of life?
And click here to visit the Tour de Coach event information page, where we go deeper into the discussion about the Peanut Butter Cup of YOUR BIZ (Peanut butter) and Sport (chocolate). Be sure to watch the videos – especially the ones where Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong’s coach, speak out!
http://www.TourdeCoach.com
