A few weeks ago, a posse of Botterills (!) travelled to London to spend the day with Tom Daley. It was an auction prize that I’d bid for at a charity event some months earlier and there was much excitement, especially amongst the female members of the clan, as the day approached.
I didn’t go on the trip – the demands of the business precluded that but they arrived at the Aquatic Centre at Queen Elizabeth Park and watched His Royal Daleyness being put through his paces during his morning training – both in and out of the pool. It was, apparently, quite arduous stuff.
Afterwards, Tom gave them a tour of the facilities and then they all went and had lunch together at a nearby local establishment.
“What was amazing”, explained my daughter, Tabitha (13), “was how hard he worked”.
It turns out that Tom does two four hour training sessions a day, six days a week and is on the most restrictive diet. Permanently.
In the months leading up to competitions, his training regime is extended further and I found it fascinating that it was his work ethic and the amount of hours that he puts in that was one of the first things my family talked about when they came home.
Like me, you’re probably not surprised by this. You know the effort and work required to achieve anything worthwhile.
You’re aware that for every moment of glory or week in the spotlight, our leading athletes and sports men and women have spent literally hundreds of weeks striving away. Getting up early, suffering pain until they were sick, not going out or taking holidays…and all the while, NO ONE IS WATCHING.
The medals aren’t won in the glare of publicity and the roar of the crowd. They are won on those early mornings. Day after day. They’re claimed by the unrelenting, completely unglamorous, gut churning sessions with the coach and the trainer and, so it is with business.
I’m writing this article at 6.10am on a Wednesday morning. My 90 minutes will start at 7.30am as normal but I have to get this Circular written today and there ain’t no time in the schedule after 9.00am so, the day has to expand, backwards into the night, in order for me to get it done.
I’m not telling you this to brag, for I know for sure that you too have thrown late night sessions or endured early morning alarm calls but, this is the equivalent of our two hours in the pool or on the road before breakfast.
The difference between Sir Tom and you though is that he never trains alone. He has his coach alongside him making sure that he’s doing the right things.
Adjusting the programme, tweaking the focus, pushing him to work harder than he ever would if it was all left to his own devices and that’s our challenge as entrepreneurs. How to make sure that the things we’re doing when no one’s watching are the right things – the things that will get us the results.
Ben Hunt-Davis captured it wonderfully well with his story and phrase about, “Will it make the boat go faster?” Two years on from his first appearance at an Entrepreneur’s Circle National Event that phrase still resonates around our organisation – as it should around yours because, all the success worth having in business, just like in sport, is really won and achieved when no one’s looking. The analysis and tweaks to the Ad Words account that, cumulatively over weeks transform your campaign from mediocre to world class can easily be missed off today or not done.
No one will get cross or angry with you. No one will tell you off.
You will suffer no pain but the outcome will be mediocrity – because you didn’t do the right things consistently enough when no one was looking.
The same is true of the people who tell me that, “I can’t write good copy…” Neither could I or Mark Creaser when we started out but we invested hundreds of hours over dozens of weeks learning, practising, testing and, in that regard, (albeit without the six packs!) we’re just like Mr Daley.
And that’s the point you see. It’s not what you do or say in public that ultimately determines your place in the world rankings, it’s what you do and how you think when no one else is watching…
Have a great month.
