5 Strategies to Win in Business

Boxing is widely regarded as one of the most physically and mentally demanding sports in the world. When preparing for a fight, athletes follow a carefully crafted regimen to give them the best shot at winning.

What will it take for you to win in business? What do you need to do to make sure you’re creating a professional life that allows you to fulfill your purpose and share the best of yourself with the world? There are plenty of people who will tell you that you can’t win. And without the right strategy, you probably won’t.

Here are five things to focus on as you create a winning plan for your business and your life:

Size Up Your Opponent

A boxer’s strategy changes depending on who they’re fighting. At any given time, you’re probably battling an internal opponent like a lack of confidence, fear of failure, fear of success, knowledge gaps or procrastination. Your internal opponents can be the biggest enemies of business success. Identify and address the root of the issue so that you’re not just winning a round here or there; win the fight.

Good boxers also develop the ability of keeping their emotions under control. There may be times when you don’t feel qualified to run your business or want to buckle under the weight of responsibility from your clients or employees. If you’re building your business on the side, you may feel like lying on the couch in front of the television after a full day of work at your “real job” instead of burning the midnight oil. You may feel like things are never going to turn around in your business and it’s time to throw in the towel. Until you have solid data to support your feelings, don’t let them get the best of you.

Address Your Deficiencies

Just like fighters, every business has an area of weakness.  However, allowing critical weaknesses to go unaddressed can sabotage everything you’re working so hard to build. Looks for ways to fix it, like streamlining or automating certain areas of your business or partnering with someone who is strong in the areas where you’re weak.

Assemble a Realistic, Yet Aggressive Business Strategy

Depending on where a fighter is in his career, the training plan can look very different. For a newbie, training may address conditioning and fundamentals, where an experienced boxer preparing for a prize fight will likely focus on very specific areas of refinement.

One of the things I quickly realized in working with my private coaching clients is that everyone doesn’t move at the same pace. What takes one person six months to accomplish in business may be completed in three weeks by another. When it comes to creating your business strategy and goals, resist the urge to compare your progress to someone else. If you’re working on your business part-time, it may take longer to see results than a full-time entrepreneur. The key is to keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and to stay committed to what you said you would accomplish, even if the timeline slips. Get Help with Your Strategy

Protect Yourself from Distractions

When a fighter is training for a title bout, they must go to great lengths to protect themselves from distractions that could undermine their progress. As you look to identify the distractions you need to eliminate, you may be thinking of common culprits like watching television or spending too much time online. However, the medical definition for distraction is “diversion of the attention.” A distraction is anything that diverts your attention from fulfilling the purpose for which you and your business were created.

When your life comes to an end, do you want people to remember you as someone who was never said no, or do you want to leave behind a legacy through your business that will be felt for generations to come? People will soon forget that you turned down a volunteer assignment or missed a few social outings, but they’ll always remember the impact that you made on the world by walking in your purpose.

Get a Good Coach

To expect that you can figure out everything you need to do, do it, and objectively analyze what could be done to improve your results is an unfair expectation of yourself.

You can’t see the picture if you are the frame.

As great as Michael Jordan was on the basketball court, he still knew that Coach Phil Jackson had valuable input from the sidelines that could help him win the game – even if Jordan had more championship rings as a player.

Stop telling yourself you can’t afford a coach. We find ways to invest in the things we care about.  A good coach can help you develop a winning strategy for your business, push you to accomplish more than you ever could on your own, provide an objective voice, and “talk you off the ledge” when you’re ready to give up.

 An amateur boxer may have his sights set on world championship bout in Vegas, but he’ll never get there without committing to the grueling conditioning schedule today. Don’t despise small beginnings. Your consistent efforts will yield a big payoff in your business if you remain faithful to your plan.

Need help with your plan, overcoming your opponents, taming the distractions in your life or closing your knowledge gap? We can help.