7 Steps Exceptional Athletes Teach Us About Exceptional Entrepreneurial Success

1. Choose Your Specialty

An exceptional athlete wouldn’t participate in multiple sports, she would choose one in which she could leverage her gift! If she spread herself too thin, among multiple sports, she wouldn’t know how to train, how to focus, and she would never learn how to be her exceptional self. Could you imagine Olympic Gold Medalist Lindsey Vonn training simultaneously in downhill skiing and basketball? It wouldn’t happen!
It shouldn’t happen for you either. If you want to be your exceptional self at what you do focus your energy on ONE specialty. By doing so you’ll simplify your business, focus your energy, learn, grow, and expand so that hopefully one day you can fully experience yourself as the exceptional magical person you are.

2. Learn, Train, Practice

It takes time to master a craft, sport, business, and anything else worth pursuing. Some would say it takes a life time.
The idea that practice makes perfect applies here however why not look at it with a slightly different twist… practice allows you to know yourself, your limits, your strengths, and your brilliance. Without a practice, how will you know your SELF and what you’re really made of?
Learning, training and practicing are vehicles that help us know who we really are. They are the vehicles that help us discern which actions work and which actions don’t. They help us connect with the finer elements of BEING our exceptional selves. PRACTICE is an important part of the sacred journey.

3. Get Out There

And then there comes the day when there is no other thing to do but take action. Get out there. Give what you’ve been training for a whirl!
The day comes when you must take the stage, write the article, make the offer, ask for the deal, network, position yourself as the expert…and the list goes on!
By doing so you learn much more than you ever will by not getting out there. Would Michael Jordan have perfected his game if he only sat at home thinking about winning championships?
Your products and services will get better as a result of your mistakes. Don’t be afraid of making them! Do the best you can right now, learn, grow, understand, be willing to take a risk. And as you do…

4. Measure As You Go

Remember: what seems impossible today becomes possible tomorrow but you’ve got to know where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going. Measuring your stumbles and successes along the way will help you do exactly that.

5. Get Back Up When You Stumble or Celebrate Your Success

You’ll win some and you’ll lose some. It’s just how it goes! In fact, your willingness to lose will free you from the need of NEEDING TO win.
When you stumble, or fumble, or wipeout, there’s really only one option if you’re committed to being your exceptional entrepreneurial self… you brush yourself off, get back up and strap on the skis for one more run down the mountain.
If you should have the good fortune of succeeding then be sure to celebrate. Shout hurray. Laugh. Go out to dinner. Pop open the bubbly. It’s OK to love succeeding. You deserve it so live it up, and then…

6. Fine-Tune Your Skills Even More

If you’re committed to being your best you’ll naturally look at what you can do better the next time. You do this not because you’re driven so much by perfectionism (well, maybe we all are just a little), rather you do it because you’re driven by how good it feels to feel yourself as exceptional!
Once you get a taste of how good the flow feels it’s natural you would want to experience it more and more. Fine-tuning is something that will help you create success even faster next time.

7. Try Again

Because there will be a next time, right? If at first you don’t succeed you must keep on trying because that’s who you are and how you do things.
Keep going. Keep practicing and getting out there, taking stock, licking your wounds or celebrate your successes and then…

Repeat Steps 2-7 often.

Why? Because, it’s how exceptional entrepreneurs are built, just like it’s how exceptional athletes are built. No matter what your calling, business, dream…you get to decide exactly how you want it to look. The steps you take are the steps I will take, the difference is what we each infuse into those steps. You’ll do that your way and I’ll do it mine. In the end though we are part of a community, doing it together, learning from each other, holding each other up and ultimately celebrating the journey.