Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Anyone who has achieved success as an athlete will tell you that sports teach lessons that extend far beyond the playing field. If you want to succeed in a competitive business environment, there may be no better role models than elite athletes. What enables these people to achieve great things? What makes someone a winner? There is no single answer. Rather, it is a combination of things. We share five of them here. If you follow these lessons, you'll be on your way to mastery in the business world.
Related: 4 Productivity Tips From Extreme Athletes That Will Boost Your Business
Show utmost self-confidence
Champions have a strong belief in themselves and their ability to succeed. Importantly, this does not mean that they expect the journey to be easy. Most things worth acquiring require tremendous effort. Elite athletes invest “blood, sweat and tears” in the pursuit of excellence, and they are willing to make the sacrifice because they know it will pay off. Self-doubters abandon the trip if it becomes too strenuous or they encounter a few obstacles. Champions persevere because they believe in themselves to the core. This strong self-confidence becomes self-realization. If you firmly believe that if you keep grinding you will win, you will outperform your less confident competitors. The highest confidence leads to the greatest effort, and the highest effort leads to success.
Like a top athlete, a successful entrepreneur stays committed when things get difficult. Tomorrow's industry leaders will be those who refine their current pitches and marketing strategies until they achieve a breakthrough. Rather than being deterred by rejection, they learn from it, make adjustments and come back stronger. This willingness to learn and improve is actually another defining characteristic of champions.
Always try to improve
While elite athletes are extremely confident, they also have enough humility to know that they always have room to learn and grow. When they suffer a loss, they review game film to identify the mistakes they made and see where they need to make adjustments next time. Even when they win, they think about what they could have done better. They also look for input from others. When a trainer points out a flaw in their technique, they take the feedback and incorporate it into their training. They also look to teammates and even opponents to learn what others are doing well.
As an entrepreneur, if you lose business or find a competitor that has a larger share of your target market, look at what they are doing to be successful. Be open to learning and humble enough to seek help from others. Champions are usually their own harshest critics, and their high standards drive them to continue to improve. So try to keep moving up even after a few successes.
Focus on what you can control
Champions do everything they can to control the variables of their sport. Knowing that they cannot completely control the outcome, they do everything they can, including attitude, effort, and preparation. Entrepreneurs should do the same by analyzing their markets, rehearsing presentations multiple times, and scouting out both their competition and their potential customers. When meeting with a client, study them in advance so you can anticipate what questions they may ask and have powerful answers ready. Be obsessed with your preparation.
A corollary to this lesson is to focus your after-the-fact explanations on what you can—or could have—controlled. After a tough defeat, the champions don't blame the referee. Instead, they look at what they could have done differently so that the referee's decisions wouldn't have mattered. As an entrepreneur, be careful not to attribute poor results to luck or claim that things weren't fair. If you do this, you will lose motivation to make adjustments for next time. Instead, follow the example of a champion and know that there is always something you could have done better.
Improvise if necessary
While champions focus on what they can control, they also recognize that they cannot control everything. Rarely does anything go exactly as planned and the best artists adapt and improvise. Something can always go wrong, and instead of panicking, winners remain confident and make the necessary adjustments. Even if you work to control everything, you can accept the uncertainty of your sport – or your business.
Related: 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Pro Sports Teams
Be flexible
You may have noticed that the lessons described above contain some contradictions. Champions have great confidence but also believe they need to get better. They also focus on what they can control, but at the same time accept that they cannot control everything. Another key to success is adapting your way of thinking to the respective situation. Champions have the mental flexibility to do this seamlessly. Instead of looking for a recipe to follow every time, they embrace the flexibility needed for lasting success.
This willingness to adapt – to have an unfixed mindset – is the main premise of Extreme Balance: Paradoxical Principles That Make You a Champion, published by Entrepreneur Press. This volume, co-authored with elite athlete and coach Ben Askren and successful business leader Joe De Sena, describes how various champions balance conflicting principles to achieve success in their respective sports. It includes chapters like “I Think You're Good Enough and Think You're Never Good Enough” and “Preparing for Anything and Expecting the Unexpected.” These sections expand on the lessons described here—and many others. If you want to become a champion entrepreneur, this is a great resource to help you get there.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
