4 Entrepreneurship Lessons I learned from boardsports
I love boardsports. Period. So far I have picked up Snowboarding, Surfing, and Surfskating, in that order. And probably I would pick up more boardsports in the future! There is something about putting yourself onto a piece of board and gliding on slopes, water, or land. It is exciting and the most fun solo sport I have come across.
As an entrepreneur, I realized some lessons in boardsports that I believe are profoundly applicable to running businesses. Here are the 4 lessons I learned and would like to share with you today.
1. Where you look is Where you go
I think this applies to almost all sports, but in boardsports especially, when you look somewhere, all your body parts are aligned to that direction: your shoulders, hips, kness, and ankles. Therefore, where you look determines the direction you go.
In business, when there are obstacles or challenges (like losing market share, losing deals, or running out of cash) the most natural thing for entrepreneurs to do is to focus on those obstacles.
Ironically, the more you focus on the obstacles and potential disasters, the more likely that those disasters will happen! Most accidents I had in snowboarding and surfskating resulted from me looking at obstacles, like trees, rocks, or cones. When I looked at them too much, I crashed into them! Similarly, in business, I often noticed that focusing too much on obstacles reinforces the chance of bad outcomes happening.
The better way is to look where you wanna go. If you want to achieve something, you should look at the path toward success instead of staring right at the obstacles. When surfskating, instead of focusing on the cones (and hitting them!), I try to focus on the path between the cones (which is where I want to go). In my day-to-day work life, I visualize and focus on “success:” for an entire day, a meeting, or even a 15-minute block of time. There is some evidence that visualizing success really helps you achieve it. You can watch more here in case you’re curious.
This doesn’t mean that you should ignore obstacles. Rather, you should be aware of them. Being aware of obstacles is not the same as focusing on them. For example, if you are afraid that a client would leave you, you need to be aware of the situation and understand why this might happen. Instead of worrying about the potential bad outcomes, focus on making the client happy and stay with you forever!
Focus on success. Be aware of obstacles. Find paths to overcome them.
2. Death by going slow
In the news, we often hear tragic accidents where drivers got drunk, drove too fast, and ended up in bad accidents. While these happen in boardsports too, you would be surprised how that many injuries, especially for beginners, happen because riders “go too slow.”
When you ride a board (whether it is on a slope, concrete, or water) carrying some speed helps you overcome obstacles and move forward in any situation. If you ride a surfskate and you run into gavels, you could either fall flat or simply go over the gravels, all depending on if your board carries enough speed or not. Most people I know who had serious injuries normally didn’t get them because they went too fast. It was because their boards were lack of momentum causing them to fall flat on the ground and got hospitalized for months.
We of course are aware of countless stories where founders grew businesses too fast made mistakes. But in today’s age, other key reasons why companies fail are the lack of “speed” for innovation and the lack of “energy” from management teams. They are too cautious and “slow” to respond to the fast-changing market. There are countless examples but classic ones are BlackBerry, Toy-R-Us, and Block Busters, to name a few.
Everything of course has a middle way. Being cautious is a good thing. But remember that being “too cautious” is also not so good. You could be dead by being too cautious!
3. Winning is Enjoying the game
This summer I was craving for the feeling of hitting the slopes but since I don’t foresee that Thailand will have snow anytime soon, I decided to pick up a new sport: surfing. I saw videos of people surfing I knew it was right for me! So I took classes at Khoa Lak and spent every single slot of free time out in the water, trying to get myself to catch some green waves.
It was much harder than thought! I envisioned myself spending the majority of time riding beautiful shiny waves, and even splashing some water from my foam board! Instead, here’s the reality:
- 40% of my time was fighting the damn waves, just to get myself out to the lineup!
- 40% sitting at the line up waiting for the right waves (which I mostly missed)
- 19% Paddling trying to catch the waves, and got wiped out
- 1% actually riding the wave!
Yup, that’s the reality.
At first, I was so pissed. How come this doesn’t match the picture I had in my head! But soon, I realized that the point of surfing is not just “surfing” but enjoying the game. Gary Vee, a really famous business influencer once said that to “win” in the entrepreneurship game, you need to enjoy the game. He said he enjoyed both winning and losing. He loves the game of entrepreneurship.
I didn’t really understand what he meant exactly until I tried surfing! You don’t surf to just “catch the wave,” you need to enjoy the process of being in the water, watching the sky, getting wiped out, hanging out with beautiful people at the lineup, and just sometimes, riding waves! And that’s why I don’t think entrepreneurship is for everyone. It’s hard! You should be in it for the game, not for the rewards.
4. Timing is everything
As I mentioned earlier, a good amount of time I spent surfing is “waiting for the right waves.” Besides paddling and fighting the waves, I think “reading waves” is the hardest part of surfing. Harder than actually standing on the board and surfing!
Reading waves is not just about “which wave to ride” but also “when to get on.” My teacher at the surf school tried to teach me how to read the waves but I could not really see the differences between “catchable” and “non-catchable” waves. However, this is one of the key parts of success in surfing.
If you try to catch the wrong wave, you would waste energy, and won’t go far. If you catch the right wave but too early, you can’t ride it. If you catch the right wave but too late, you got wiped out!
Reading waves in business is timing. Based on this TED talk, timing is the most important factor in a startup’s success. I would argue that it’s not only for startups but for any business. Reading the market is one of the core skills an entrepreneur should develop. It seems easy (you just look at Mega Trends and follow right?) but it’s not. So how can one develop this skill? I think the best way is to “be in the game,” try to catch waves and learn from successes and failures. Another way is to learn from other people’s successes and failures but I believe you need to talk directly to the persons that are actually in the business to understand what went right or wrong. It was a bit risky to jusy read stories in the news or on social media since there are so many nuances in these kinds of things.
I hope you learn something from these lessons and pick a board sport of choice!
Love,
Darin
