Remington Begg
It’s that time of year again- summer is over, kids are going back to school, and a huge percentage of Americans are gearing up to watch football. Football provides hours of entertainment every fall and winter for millions of fans, but it’s more than just a ruthless game. If you pay attention, it can also teach you some valuable life lessons. Translating these teachings to your small business will take your company to the next level. The Super Bowl? Probably not, but maybe operating in positive profits margins for the first time.
You Need Talent and Heart
Sometimes being good just isn’t good enough. Sometimes being great isn’t even good enough. You can be talented at something and have that natural ability but if you don’t care, you’ll never amount to anything. This is a great lesson for you to keep in mind during the hiring process. The best salesperson the world who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning won’t be bringing your company very many new customers. Likewise, someone who tries their hardest but doesn’t have the talent won’t perform at the top level. You need both.
Winning Requires Teamwork
You can’t do it all alone, no matter how much talent and heart you have. From day one in peewee football to the NFL, football players learn this lesson above all else. A great quarterback still needs the offensive line to keep him from getting sacked. In the world of business, it’s the same way. If you can’t work well with others or you try to do everything yourself, your business will eventually fail. You need to trust your employees, and they need to do their jobs in order for everyone to be successful. You win as a team, and you lose as a team.
Set Goals, Then Have the Discipline To Achieve Them
Football players and entrepreneurs should both have pretty lofty goals. Thousands of college players have the goal of making it to the NFL. Tens of thousands of high school football players have the goal of making it to play college ball. You can learn from that kind of ambition, but simply setting a goal isn’t enough. What do high school football players do to achieve their goal to play in college? Practice and push themselves. What do they do at the next level, to get to the NFL? Push themselves even further. It needs to be the same mentality for you.
You Can’t Win Every Time
This lesson could alternately say “nothing lasts forever.” There is no football team that has never lost, and there’s no business that has 100% of the market share. The New England Patriots won 18 consecutive games in 2011 but lost the Super Bowl, and no one will ever let them forget it. Even Google only gets 67.5% of internet searches. No matter how good you are, you will eventually lose at something, and you should be prepared for that. No one wins all the time, so it’s best to adjust your expectations accordingly.
It Matters If You Win or Lose
Just because you will eventually lose doesn’t mean you should be happy about it. In football, winners get paid more money. They appear in places like the Hall of Fame. They have Super Bowl rings. Losers do not have those things. By its very definition, football is a competition and so is running a small business. You can’t pay your bills if you’re always losing clients, and your doors won’t stay open for long if that doesn’t matter to you.
Scoring one touchdown doesn’t mean you won the game and winning one game doesn’t mean you had a winning season. It’s the same in business; scoring one new customer doesn’t mean you’ve put your competition out of business, and you can sit back and relax. Marketing your small business is an ongoing effort; there’s no offseason. With the right tools and knowledge, this marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Get help with using the inbound methodology for your small business by downloading our free eBook The Beginner's Guide to Inbound Marketing.
