Nothing will ever feel hard to achieve if you can pull off one marathon and become a marathon entrepreneur.

Like many people, as a marathon entrepreneur, I spent much of my life working as a corporate team member for someone else. It wasn’t until I started to seriously train for marathons that I recognized that successful training in such a challenging discipline has many similarities to your professional life.

Not until I quit the corporate life and became an independent entrepreneur I found the balance between my work and the marathon training. Thanks to the online business, I could leverage two passions:

Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship = Marathon entrepreneur

It is a challenging journey, and the commitment has to be complete and genuine; otherwise, forget about it. With that in place, just stick to the following 12 tips for success, and we will soon meet lining up for a marathon race somewhere, in the online business world , or most probably in both places.

Have a Goal

Be clear about what you want to achieve and why. Running 26.2 miles (42,195 meters) or starting a productive business are not two things that happen on autopilot. Training for a marathon completely differs from a short, fun run.

It is another game searching for promotion in the corporate world rather than building up a business from scratch that will be a sustainable part of your business life.

If you have never run a marathon before, you will make many mistakes along the road. Don’t worry! It’s normal. The same will happen to your business. You will fail. Be sure, but it’s a natural part of the game. Read any book about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or any well-known entrepreneur. They are almost proud of their failures. Why? Because they knew that each failure was one step further to their final success.

In the same way, you need to stipulate an achievable but still challenging goal for your first marathon and be very clear on what you want to achieve in your business the first year.

Have a Plan

Ask anyone training for a marathon what they are doing on December 13. They can tell you the exact number of miles and what kind of training they will do that particular day. Why? They have a written training plan, of course. I have seen several times people lining up for their first marathon (yes, it’s easy to notice they are running their first marathon), and their training has not been very organized, so to speak. Usually, they start the race enthusiastically, but the medical staff take care of them somewhere between miles 15 and 20.

It can be tricky to have a detailed day-to-day agenda in your business, but you need to be able to specify what you will need to do month by month if you are going to be successful.

I have implemented the same discipline in my business as a disciplined marathon runner. I do not finish my week until I have my agenda filled with important tasks for next week. It helps me to plan my days ahead and know when to dedicate more time to my business before the week starts.

Get Started

This can sound a little bit weird. It’s just to start. No…! Nothing will happen if you don’t have a serious commitment in the form of a goal and a plan to make it happen. You will appear as the “new year committed” – people you will find on the 1st of January every year when you run out. Enthusiastic people sweat as they have never sweated before in their entire lives because they promised their families that finally they were going to get rid of that belly fat, not allowing them to use those clothes they could before.

It’s nice to see all types of people out there, but the sad part is that you know they will disappear from the running lane within the next 3-4 weeks.

If you have your plan, the first training sessions will be a few miles. However, your mentality is now focused on what lies ahead.

The same goes for your business. Step by step, you will build the foundation that will bring you to the final goal. Don’t forget that we are talking about a marathon race.

Build Good Habits to Become a Marathon Entrepreneur 

Many ask me, “How do you find time to train for a marathon?” It’s an excellent question. And the answer is that I wake up early. Sometimes I’m out running at 4.30 am, completely crazy, right? But the question to be answered has to be:

“What do you have on your agenda at 4.30 am?”

Probably nothing because you are sleeping. That’s fine; then there is an available time slot for the training. The answers would probably have been different if it had been at 5 p.m.

The same goes for an independent entrepreneur. You don’t have a 9-5 schedule to follow but an agenda with a “what-to-do list,” and when you are doing your work, it’s up to you. The only thing you have to watch out for is to look after that the tasks will be done. Nothing else! It’s all about habits.

Learn As You Go

A training diary is essential for any runner who takes it all seriously. Make notes of what went well and what you would change. In this way, you will learn where the winning path is.

When Thomas Edison made his famous 1,000 failures and finally found the correct metal for the electrical bulb, he registered each and every test that failed. This trial-and-error method was his route toward the final and correct solution.

In marathon training and business construction, the key to success is to test and test again, register everything, and, step by step, find the correct path by deleting all that fails and going deeper into activities that give the correct results.

Be Flexible

Goals, plans, and good habits will definitely be the most important cornerstones of your marathon training. But being too rigid will easily lead you into boredom, which will have a negative impact on your continuation. It is possible to be flexible without abandoning the main plan. Using new routes for your long runs, running with friends, and sometimes running alone are just a few examples of flexibility that are easy to implement.

As an entrepreneur building up your business, it is important to be open to flexibility. Examples could be benchmarking with friends and colleagues. Flexibility will always be an important ingredient in avoiding negative thoughts or getting stuck in your own frustration.

Being a Marathon Entrepreneur Plays To Your Strengths

In my marathon training, I prefer a disciplined and detailed training plan. Other people prefer to use a more “improvised” plan. Nothing is more correct than the other. It’s all about using a method that plays to your strengths.

There is no difference in business. I am an early bird and work more efficiently early in the morning, while other people stroll around like zombies in the morning, gearing up and reaching their peak efficiency in the evening.

We are all different and should always take advantage of our personal strengths.

A tremendous advantage of being an independent entrepreneur is that you can set up your own working schedule and do not have to adapt to the standard corporate 9-5 itinerary.

Ask For Help

Whether for marathon runners or entrepreneurs, there is always a wealth of experience in any community. People like yourself who have come a step further in their training or business, people who have failed the same way as you have; we are all there to help each other.

Whatever your goal is, there will always be people you can trust and ask to avoid pitfalls and instead find the necessary support. When needed, always ask for help!

Perseverance Is The Key to a Marathon Entrepreneur

The Key to a Marathon EntrepreneurAfter months of well-executed training, you feel that your marathon race will be one of the best ever, and suddenly, humidity, temperature, or whatever external factor turns your expected record race into something else. You must brush that result off as soon as possible and go for a new try.

The same goes for your business. Maybe you have worked weeks with many 10-15-hour working days to launch an online campaign, and then the campaign just didn’t take off. As in marathon training, with a detailed diary, you can now go back and find out why it went wrong or at least find a new path to try.

The key is to persevere, never give up, and try again with a new approach. Maybe only a few details of fine-tuning are needed.

Celebrate Your Success

With my entire body soaring, feeling my legs as if I never would be able to walk again, but with indescribable happiness, I remember as if it were yesterday the first time I crossed the finish line of a full marathon. You pick up your medal and your goody bag with the banana and other stuff, take photos, and feel the glory of your achievement. You have confirmed to yourself that it was possible!

After many hours of work building up the necessary structure when I started my online business, I still remember the day I got my first “lead” and, later, the day I got my first sale.

Both these events, the marathon and my online business, have in common that they follow the same pattern toward success. Celebrate success is essential for your motivation, and you don’t have to wait for the big wins in your running or business career. Try to find more minor achievements and celebrate all kinds of victories, no matter their size.

Surround Yourself With Positive People

Have you ever experienced in life that a person close to you always takes a negative approach to a topic, no matter what kind of activity?

“You can’t run today; it’s too cold outside,”

“It’s dangerous to run early in the morning….late in the evening….because of this…or that”.

I remember when the first steps were taken in the field of online business and when people, for the first time, were offered products and services online by using their credit cards, and many people argued that it would never be an important business.

The main argument was that,

“No one is willing to use their credit card to a vendor online they have never seen.”

Well, we all know that online business is a multi-billion business today, and the yearly increase is impressive.

Whatever activity you do in life, negative people will always be around, and you need to change that immediately. Look after the positive people around you who can motivate you, encourage you to go forward, or whatever other impulses suit your training and business.

Take The Rest Seriously

When starting a serious marathon program, it becomes very clear very soon what the key factors are to optimize the body for the upcoming marathon race. The necessary rest to recover from all training is essential for a successful marathon race later on. Training 100% of the time will sooner or later burn you out, and the probability of getting injured increases.

As a marathon entrepreneur, we know it is not a 9-5 job Monday through Friday. Often, you have to put in much more hours, especially at the beginning of your business. It can be many hours during a week, early in the morning, late evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays.

The beauty of being your own boss is setting your own rules and time schedule. This allows you to apply maximum flexibility in conjunction with all your other activities, like your marathon training. However, the same goes for your entrepreneurial activity as for your marathon training, and if you don’t get enough rest and sleep, you will burn out.

So, don’t ignore this part. When needed, take a day off to rest or to do something different that will allow you to recharge your batteries.

 

The perfect synergies for success.

These 12 synergy points between marathon running and entrepreneurship are only the most important among plenty of additional touch points.

In life, everything seems to be connected to each other in some way. In my case, I could not train as I wanted while I was still in the corporate world, which had a negative influence on my performance as an employee.

Once I decided to be my own boss, all the other bricks also fell into their proper place. Being the only person who decided how to organize my work and, at the same time, my marathon training, life suddenly became much better; it was less stressful and had a balanced harmony. In other words, the change finally gave a proper entrance to:

Freedom and a Happy Life!

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Jan O. Nilsson –How To Become An Invincible Marathon Entrepreneur. <== to the top of the page

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