The Magic Formula for Running Your Online Business Like a Marathon Training

Your Online Business will be a success when you know how to train for a marathon

Marathon training shares the same strategy as your online business.

Don’t worry!

This article will not convince you to become a marathon runner. However, knowing how to run 42.2K (26.2 miles) without falling apart will be useful when creating your online business.

In a recent post, the word leverage was the glue between marathon training and entrepreneurship. In another article, we compare the similarities between the marathon and running your online business.

Searching around the Internet, you’ll find thousands of articles about the same topic. All analyses are valid, and the truth is that the list can be almost endless if you would like to compare the similarities.

After reading a lot of what you can find on the web and also compare with my own experience, this article will boil it down to what I call the “Magic Formula” for running your online business like a marathon training. It’s all from mindset to practical work, and using the formula will substantially increase your probability of success.

Like all formulas, and to more easily remember, it has its own name: B L A C K J A C K

Run Your Online Business and Marathon Training with Blackjack

It’s true what Larry Alton writes in his article: Business isn’t for sprinters. All that he mentions is correct, but let’s streamline the Blackjack formula and turn it into practical guidance for success.

Bulletproof Decision

Before 2009, I had never run a marathon. I had run several 10ks and even some half marathons, but never a full marathon. After nine years, I’m ready for my marathon race number 21 within a couple of weeks.

Why should you care about me and what I’m doing? Well, you shouldn’t, but with this introduction, I would like to share with you what made me make a decision—not a random New Year Resolution between joy and champagne, but a bulletproof decision.

When watching a race in December 2008 together with my youngest son, he suddenly asked me:

“Dad, are you in to run this race next year?”

First, you feel honored to be challenged by your son, 33 years younger than me, to run a marathon race. Then you get scared, or at least “shaky.” It took me a week or two to give my answer after investigating what it takes regarding time and personal effort.

When the decision came, it was a bulletproof decision. It was a decision where all aspects of the challenge had gone through an incredibly detailed analysis.

When starting my online business four years later, the decision was the same bulletproof decision. I now had learned from the decision to run my first marathon.

There’s nothing wrong with not entering, but failing to do so without a serious and well-thought-through decision is a failure.

Based on bulletproof decisions, I’m a passionate marathon runner and online marketer today.

Making the right decision is essential for running your online business and a marathon race.

Lock in your Commitment

With a correct decision, it’s much easier to take the next step: locking in your commitment. You must be committed to many things: your available time, family, and job.

Be honest with yourself and avoid creating false expectations. Training for a marathon race and running your online business takes time….a lot of time.

Your commitment should turn into something you feel is fun to do. Imagine being committed to something you don’t like. Life is too short to commit to something you don’t feel passionate about.

Once you have the commitment, write it down, like a pledge. When you need to motivate yourself, it’s a good idea to read your pledge, pump yourself up, and just do it!

Adapt your Goal Setting

Now we are into the more practical stuff, which will later be converted into a plan. When setting a goal, you must always do it from the end and backward.

When setting my goal for my first marathon, I dived into a training program with different finishing times and then figured out what training was necessary to achieve the goal.

My first marathon goal was to run the 42.2k (26.2 miles) in 4 hours and 20 minutes. I did it in 4 hours, 19 minutes, and 36 seconds, thanks to realistic goal setting.

The same pattern applies to your online business. My goal was to start out part-time and quit my corporate job within two years. I was able to fulfill this goal almost on time.

Professional goal setting isn’t throwing a figure randomly and seeing if you can make it. It’s detailed work based on all the variables you play with. As you can understand, bulletproof decisions and severe commitment are fundamental for realistic goal setting.

Check your planning

The good thing about a serious goal is that planning to reach it will be much easier. Start with the goal and work backward. The training program I used and still use makes it easy to specify all the training sessions based on your goal.

When qualifying for the Boston Marathon in 2012, I was invited to apply for a starting position at 3:54:00 in my age category. The training plan was created accordingly. I did the race at 3:49:47 and got my bib number for the Boston Marathon 2013.

Your online business works the same way. Your goal decides what kind of planning you need to do. To make it easier to reach your goal, find a business coach, or as I did, join a system that gives you all the tools you need.

Keep on with Hard work

When training for a marathon or creating your online business, you will face a lot of ups and downs. That’s the way life works. Further, you will like some training pieces more than others.

My preferred training is interval training, which involves a lot of speed, followed by long weekly runs. My nightmare is hill training. However, all these disciplines are necessary; you have to do them. You can always mix them during the week, but they all must be done.

We all have different methods for optimizing motivation to execute the various parts of the training, and the only non-existent alternative is to skip the training.

The same applies to your online business. I don’t like to keep track of the traffic to my websites very much, but you know it’s essential for your business, and you have to do it.

Returning to your passion for your online business or marathon training, can you imagine if you don’t feel passionate about it? How should you mobilize to do the “boring” stuff if the passion isn’t there?

To keep on with hard work, you must have a burning interest in what you’re doing. Otherwise, you will be an “expert” in finding reasons not to do it.

Jump for Joy on the Race Day

I will never forget the first marathon race. You had prepared for a year, and now race day was here. You prepared everything as if you were going to make a flight to the moon. Nothing was missing.

The start shot, and here we go. What an emotion! Absorbing all advice from runners with more experience, you focus on one thing: keep the pace!

The “wall” is coming at kilometer 28 (mile 17.5). You know what to expect, but this is worse. All the hard work and disciplined training give you the courage not to throw in the towel. To have fun on race day is your pre-award for all your hard work to be where you are.

After training and building my sites, the first ad campaign on Facebook was a similar thrilling event. The leads started to come in, the first sale was made, and here we go. It’s time to “hit the wall!” Your Facebook account was suspended for violating Facebook’s rules.

Your training and obtained experience tell you what to do next. After a few days of interruption, the Facebook leads started to come in again. Practice, hard work, and confidence always give you the tools to make the necessary corrections. To give up is the only non-existing option.

The joy of running your online business as a passionate entrepreneur, combined with your other passion for running and training for marathons, allows you to live a lifestyle you previously thought was earmarked for the so-called gurus.

Acknowledge your Reward

The first time I crossed the finish line and got the medal for 42.2 kilometers was a moment of reflection. To enjoy the reward is an essential part of the journey.

In the same way, I can still remember my first lead and my first sale. These experiences confirm that the business you’re creating actually works.

Always assign sufficient time to reward yourself. It doesn’t have to be big things. Even small daily achievements should be subject to a reward. You deserve it!

Care for Rest

Taking a break from training and the work you love could be one of the most challenging things to do.

Fortunately, I’m using a very professional training program for my running, where one or two days are assigned to rest. After a while, you learn that your body needs to recover from hard training to grow your muscle optimization. Sometimes, you hear about people having low performance due to overtraining.

The same goes for your business. Even if you love what you do, you need to distance yourself from your work. Dedicate time to your family, rest from your work, and do something else. You will notice that your level of performance will rise when starting up again.

If you’re running your online business, as I do, you can be very flexible. You can combine your work and travel. You need to bring your laptop and connect to the Internet, and you’re in business no matter where you decide to be. Traveling the world with my wife without losing the grip of my business is priceless. As a passionate marathon runner, the combination with your online business allows you to live a lifestyle that was impossible just a few decades ago.

The 20 marathon races held so far have been in 5 different countries, and 5 of the 6 majors are already done. With Boston, New York, Chicago, London, and Berlin, there’s only the Tokyo Marathon left to tick off.

Without your online business, this journey wouldn’t be possible.

Keep up and Repeat

Everything changes over time. Your decision and commitment today will not be 100% valid one year later. Therefore, it’s important not to see your decision and commitment as something static.

As the classic saying goes:

Rinse and repeat.

Circumstances of any sort can change how you modify your decision and commitment. The worst thing you can do is continue the same path if you feel you have difficulties committing yourself to the mission.

If you want to build your online business like I do, click the banner below. If you would like to get help with your training program for running a marathon, drop me a line in the contact form on this page, and it will be a pleasure to assist you.