Your success is directly proportionate to your ability to be incredibly honest with yourself

A few weeks ago I completed my first ever marathon. Crossing the finish line at the 26.2 mile marker was my gift to myself for my 61st birthday.

It’s likely I hold the distinction of being the last to cross the finish line for the 2015 Eugene Marathon and yet, as many of my friends and colleagues have said, “You finished.”

The challenge with believing finishing is as good as it gets is that I’m fooling myself to believe I did my best. Looking back I know I could have done a heck of a lot better. Here’s why…

From the start, I hired a coach to work with me. My coach recommended a three prong approach to the process. • Power walk training
• Healthy eating
• Resistance training

It didn’t take but a few training days to notice the number of parallels in training and completing a marathon to running a business. I became keenly aware as to why many people barely reach their potential in virtually anything they attempt.

In order to be successful we have to be willing to get really honest about what we are and are not doing to reach our maximum potential.

We also have to have a multi-prong approach to what we do. In business this includes product/service creation, marketing and sales. There’s more than just these three, but for the sake of this post, I’ll use the comparison of product/service creation, marketing and sales.

In addition, we have to manage our self talk. You know the talk… it’s that part of us that tries to get us to quit or to say, “What in the world were you thinking?”

Although I completed the marathon, I can honestly say I could have done much better if I would have balanced the three prong approach my coach recommended.

From the start my primary focus was on training every day to improve my time and distance with power walking.

Although I would occasionally eat the way my coach recommended, I wasn’t consistent. Nor was I consistent with the resistance training.

I wanted to do the “fun” stuff. How often do we see this in business? Entrepreneurs are often very creative individuals. We love coming up with ideas. We love mapping out those ideas, but more times than not the areas that are lacking are marketing and sales.

Entrepreneurs fool themselves into believing they are doing all they can to be the best at what they do, but fail to put as much effort into areas that may not be as much fun as the creation side of things.

One area that is crucial to our success is to have the clarity, energy and focus to get things done. Running a successful business is not just about creating ideas, it’s about implementation.

If we don’t have the energy for implementation we are shortchanging ourselves and our customers and clients.
One of the most immediate ways to improve our energy is to notice what we are putting into our bodies. It’s likely most people have heard, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

On the flip side, “Good stuff in, good stuff out.”