Lessons from sport and alan jones

Lessons From Sport And Alan Jones

I was flicking through the newspaper on the weekend when I came across an article about Alan Jones.

The article covered a number of things, but there were a couple of things which stood out.

1. He always tries to empty his head so he is ready for the next, not the previous.

And I think that’s an important point for us as business people and entrepreneurs. Forget about the past, focus on the future.

Of course, we need to learn from our mistakes. But it’s all too easy to end up stuck in the past… thinking of the mistakes you have made… the money you lost… the things which went wrong… etc.

But where you focus your attention is where you will get results. So the only place to focus really is on what you want.

And we need to empty our minds from all of the other B.S.

Anyway, here’s the second point he made which I thought was quite powerful.

It’s about sport…

2. «It teaches you that you can’t argue with the scoreboard. It teaches you that you can’t always win, that you’ve got to learn how to lose. You learn to play by the rules, respect the other fellow and learn how to accept adversity and disappointment.»

Now doesn’t business do the same thing?

The scoreboard is how much you are making: That means no excuses, because the only thing that counts at the end of the day is the scoreboard. It doesn’t matter if you just lost that sale, if you should be doing better, the scoreboard tells the final story.

Just like in soccer, if you miss the goals by even a cm, it’s no goal vs. a big goal. And the scoreboard doesn’t argue.

And that’s why we always need to be improving ourselves.

What’s more, we can’t always win in business, can we?

Sometimes we implement a marketing campaign and it totally flops. Sometimes we have multiple losers and that’s okay.

You can’t always win. But you can always keep playing… going back for more and more to put it over the line.

And you’ve got to learn how to lose: I think the answer in the business world is to accept your losses, learn from them and move onto the next.

Adversity and disappointment come with the territory.

In fact, business can be compared to one big ball game.

But the problem is most people don’t know the rules to the single most important element to success: getting customers.

They try to cold call instead of attracting new customers via magnetic methods and they try to write pretty ads (or worse still, ads with their company name on top) instead of mastering the art of creating ads that sell.

Remember, the greatest athletes know all the tricks.

The best soccer players… rugby league players…Australian Rules players and teams have advanced plays which give them an unfair advantage over the average team or player.

Everyone knows the basics. But the key to being a true master is to take the mastery of your craft to another level.