Marathon running and entrepreneurship have more in common than what you think.
You need guts to practice marathon running and entrepreneurship at the same time. On the other hand, they have so much in common that leveraging the two activities will save you a lot of time and effort.
If you belong to the big group of baby boomers as I do, marathon running and entrepreneurship most probably do not fit into the frame you’re familiar to.
Go to school, get a title, search for a job and start climbing the career ladder. Building up your resume is the way of carving out your life to the best. You never really understand how crazy this is until you get smashed in your face with this marvelous quote by Warren Buffet:
“Taking jobs to build up your resume is the same as saving up sex for old age.”
The sad reality is that around 80% of all working people don’t enjoy what they are doing. When asking people why they are doing the work they are doing, most of the answers refer to external circumstances, like:
“Somebody told me, this would be a good career for me.”
“Once you reach a certain level, the salary is high.”
The list can be long, but in the end, you start a life race that isn’t yours.
So, what does it have to do with marathon running and entrepreneurship?
All leading entrepreneurs, they all have one thing in common:
They do their race!
Therefore, a lot of people, mostly the 80% group mentioned earlier, try to turn them down because they are different, they take paths no-one else does, and if you are different, people will view you like kind of “weird.”
What Links Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship Together
Being out running 5 AM is seen in the eyes of non-runners as something strange. The same goes for passionate entrepreneurs working around the clock, pushed by their enthusiasm of what the are creating.
There are many pieces of advice out there on what to do to be successful and happy in life. Many of this advice has to do with the leverage effect for marathon running and entrepreneurship.
Become a self-expert
To figure out and understand yourself isn’t always an easy task. From childhood, we are brainwashed with certain ways of thinking. It can be a difficult task to break that chain.
If you’re going to start training for a marathon race, you will need to really be honest with yourself.
What do I need to do? And the most critical question:
Am I willing to do it? Do I have sufficient passion for following through and making it happen?
What is your motivation in life? Strengths you find out by yourself. It’s curious and scaring at the same time, but a vast group of the population fears their real passion. It can be due to influencers in the society, education or any other external source faking up your life.
Figure out your strengths and weaknesses with this free test. Maybe you have certain qualities you are not entirely aware of.
Push your limits
No one can tell your better than yourself what you’re good at, not so good at, and the overall skill set you’ve gathered during your lifetime so far. Use it, push it, and challenge yourself.
The passion I have for marathon running teaches me whole the time how to plan for new challenges. It’s all about setting a realistic goal, prepare for it and stick to the scheme.
Your entrepreneurship works precisely the same way. You will have a lot of hurdles on your way, but the final goal is so strong that nothing can keep you away to conquer every single obstacle.
Some people call us stubborn. I would instead prefer to use the label, passionate and goal oriented.
To push the limits over and over again is a typical characteristic for people dedicated to marathon running and entrepreneurship.
Surround yourself with inspiring people
There are two possible reasons you´re not doing things:
- A) you convince yourself that you can´t do it.
- B) people around you tell you, you can´t do it.
There is a quote by Jim Rohn, going like this:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
There are so many examples from both the sports world and business environments, showing that Jim Rohn´s statement is nothing else than the naked truth.
In all entrepreneurial communities, the networking is fundamental. To interchange ideas, benchmark new topics, or just get some support and help from others, is worth gold.
The same goes for marathon training. It’s a huge program you’ve in front of you, and you need to get input and feedback from other like-minded fellows to optimize your training in the best way.
Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship is All About Goals, Planning and Execution
If the first three advice talks very much about the characteristics of people dedicated to marathon running and entrepreneurship, the following three are very much the “what to do” tasks to be successful.
Goalsetting
You probably know it since before, but it cannot be emphasized enough. Without having a well-defined goal towards where you should be heading, it’s like go out and search for something you don’t know what it is.
During Christmas and New Year, when the marathon season is taking a pause, I use to slow down my training (your body needs some rest also) and prepare my running agenda for the coming year.
I usually run 2 or 3 marathon races per year, and the goals for that training will always be with the focus on those important races.
In the same manner, your business goals for the coming year should undergo the same process. The vital thing here is to always have measurable goals.
It’s incredible how the processes for my running and my business always leverage each other. It’s almost like copy paste with different wordings and of course other numbers.
Detailed planning
To reach your goals, you need to plan in detail how to achieve them. For every month, week and day you should establish the corresponding sub-goals. It’s always easier to handle smaller sub-goals than big over-all goals.
In both marathon training and your business, there are days when all is going like clockwork. However, you will also face days when almost everything goes wrong. It’s a typical characteristic of marathon running and entrepreneurship.
Wirth smaller sub-goals, it’s much easier to make corrections and even changes in the planning.
Disciplined execution
All mentioned so far will be worth nothing if there isn’t any execution. You need to “walk the talk.” Disciplined execution, sounds like military drilling. And do you know what? It’s precisely what it is if you want to reach your goals. For any reason, it could happen that you don’t meet a scheduled training session, or that your sub-goal in your business that day just didn’t happen. That’s OK. After all, we are humans and no machines.
What is important though is to catch up later during the week on what is missing. There is no difference for marathon running and entrepreneurship.
From Here What to do Next?
If you already have the six steps in place, probably you are already running your own business. Maybe you also have any other passion in your life. In my case, it’s marathon running, but you might be a passionate golf player, traveler, surfer, scuba diver or something else you really love to do.
To leverage your business and your hobby, it’s essential that you have the correct framework. When in place, you can do whatever you want if you have the necessary platform and knowledge, supporting your passion and your life journey.
View the short video, and I’ll show you what I did to get this important leverage.
If you would like to try the same platform and system that give me the opportunity to do what I love the most every single day, CLICK HERE and register for the webinar to get all the information you need.
It changed my life, allowing me to be released from the 9-5 job and having time to practice my passion for running. It happens that people ask me if I´m an entrepreneurial runner or a running entrepreneur. My answer is always: YES!
REGISTER HERE, and you’ll understand what you can do when you finally find that little gold needle in the middle of a haystack.
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