6 Steps to Leverage Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship

Marathon running and entrepreneurship have more in common than 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 extensive group of baby boomers like me, marathon running and entrepreneurship probably do not fit into your familiar frame.

How were we educated?

Go to school, get a title, search for a job, and start climbing the career ladder. Building up your resume is how to carve 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 their work. 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, many 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 as kind of “weird.”

What Links Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship Together

Being out running at 5 a.m. is seen as strange by non-runners. The same goes for passionate entrepreneurs working around the clock, pushed by their enthusiasm for what they are creating.

There is much advice out there on how to be successful and happy in life. Much of this advice concerns the leverage effect in marathon running and entrepreneurship.

Become a self-expert

Figuring out and understanding yourself isn’t always easy. From childhood, we are brainwashed with certain ways of thinking, and it can be difficult to break that chain.

If you start training for a marathon race, you will need to 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 scary at the same time, but a vast group of the population fears their real passion. It can be due to influencers in society, education, or any other external source faking up your life.

Maybe you have certain qualities you are not entirely aware of.

Push your limits

No one can tell you better than yourself what you’re good at, what you’re not so good at, and the overall skill set you’ve gathered during your lifetime. Use it, push it, and challenge yourself.

My passion for marathon running teaches me to constantly plan for new challenges. It’s all about setting a realistic goal, preparing for it, and sticking to the plan.

Your entrepreneurship works precisely the same way. You will have a lot of hurdles on your way, but the final goal is so decisive that nothing can keep you from conquering every single obstacle.

Some people call us stubborn. I would instead prefer to use the labels passionate and goal-oriented.

Pushing the limits repeatedly is a typical characteristic of 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 that goes like this:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

So many examples from the sports world and the business environment show that Jim Rohn´s statement is nothing but the naked truth.

Networking is fundamental in all entrepreneurial communities. It is worth its weight in gold to exchange ideas, benchmark new topics, or get some support and help from others.

The same goes for marathon training. It’s a vast program you’ve in front of you, and you need to get input and feedback from other like-minded fellows to optimize your training best.

Marathon Running and Entrepreneurship are All About Goals, Planning and Execution

If the first three pieces of advice are primarily about the characteristics of people dedicated to marathon running and entrepreneurship, the following three are primarily about the “what to do” tasks to be successful.

Goalsetting

You probably knew it before, but it cannot be emphasized enough. Without a well-defined goal of where you should be heading, it’s like going out and searching for something you don’t know.

When the marathon season pauses during Christmas and New Year, I used to slow down my training (your body needs some rest, too) and prepare my running agenda for the coming year.

I usually run two or three marathons yearly, and my training goals will always focus on those essential races.

Your business goals for the coming year should undergo the same process. The vital thing is always to have measurable goals.

It’s incredible how my running and business processes always leverage each other. It’s almost like copy-pasting with different wordings and, of course, other numbers.

Detailed planning

To reach your goals, you need to plan in detail how to achieve them. You should establish the corresponding sub-goals every month, week, and day. It’s always easier to handle smaller sub-goals than big overall goals.

In both marathon training and your business, there are days when everything 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.

With smaller sub-goals, it’s much easier to make corrections and even changes in the planning.

Disciplined execution

All that has been 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, you could not meet a scheduled training session, or your sub-goal in your business that day didn’t happen. That’s OK. After all, we are humans and not machines.

What is important, though, is to catch up later during the week on what is missing. There is no difference between marathon running and entrepreneurship.

What to do Next?

If you already have the six steps in place, you are probably already running your own business. Maybe you also have other passions 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.

You must have the correct framework to leverage your business and your hobby. When in place, you can do whatever you want if you have the necessary platform and knowledge to support your passion and your life journey.

Watch the short video, and I’ll show you what I did to get this critical leverage.

If you want to try the same platform and system that allows me to do what I love the most every 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 have 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.