“Whatever you do, be different – that was the advice my mother gave me and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.” -Anita Roddick
I’ve always been a notable quote follower. Hey, who knows? It could be the very reason why I’m one incurable entrepreneur in the practice of coaching others who are just like me. Great minds really do think alike, it seems.
But then, that’s why I’ve always been a notable quote follower: great minds think alike. And it’s not simply because many minds think the same, because it also seems to me that the most influential people in history have been a very diverse group. However, there are certain truths, qualities, and ideas that appear to tie them together. So what is in the essence of having a great mind? I feel a quote bubbling up…
Great Minds Shine Lights
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “To be great, is to be misunderstood,” my inkling on the matter is that to be an entrepreneur is to aspire to greatness. In your own coaching and fitness business, being a natural leader, inspirer, motivator, driver, and sweat extractor -you’ve already embarked on this journey.
So in case you might feel as though you’ve lost your way, the office hours are getting long, your work/life balances are teetering, and your circadian rhythm has already gone and tottered, then here are four more notable quotes from great minds that might help shine a light on your way.
Efficiency Through Tech
“Attempting to succeed without embracing the tools immediately available for your success is no less absurd than trying to row a boat by drawing only your hands through the water or trying to unscrew a screw using nothing more than your fingernail.” – Richie Norton
Technology isn’t bad, vein, or wrong. Like a knife, it’s nothing more than a tool. And knives can help a chef cook a splendid meal, a surgeon save a life …and send an aspiring blade juggler to the ER with 14 stitches in his thigh.
In your business, don’t fear technology: use it. By its very definition, technology is there to make tasks cost less time, energy, and resources; so that means, it offers a gateway to efficiency. (Or what Steve Jobs might refer to as “a bicycle for the mind”.)
In my experience, it’s best to harness the power of tech in two main areas of your business:
- Accounting
- Marketing
Why? It’s because you’re a fitness trainer or coach, not an accountant or marketer. However, it’s those areas of your business, which are heavily dependent upon efficiency, regardless of that fact.
Leverage Through People
“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
-Zig Ziglar
This Zig Ziglar quote really hits home in my business, because one of my long-held sayings is that every business is in the people business. Humans are community-oriented creatures. Alone, we can barely survive. Working together, however …that’s when we thrive.
The best startup businesses, the ones that threaten Fortune 500 dynasties and challenge the status quo, simply get people on multiple levels. They know how to motivate people, because they know what people want. One of my favorite stories that illustrates this comes from a well-known company that’s barely 5 years old: Kickstarter. Just take a look at their anniversary video, and you’ll see what I mean…
Why was this video incredibly ingenious? Well sure, it is positively awesome that such an ingenuitive company made it past the 5-year mark with such success -but think about the desires of their customer-base. Anybody using Kickstarter is in the works of creating their own success story, and this video has ‘catharsis-marketing’ written all over it.
And the cool part is that they’re probably 100% genuine about their happiness in their company’s success, and in how their team feels more like a family than a group of employees -and also in how they’ve aided in the successes of their millions of users worldwide.
Let’s just say that Kickstarter certainly didn’t get there in spite of lacking people skills. No, you can tell that they generally appreciate people, because they beam with it.
Empowerment Through Knowledge
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
Every notable entrepreneur, great leader, and beneficially influential person in society: the Bill Gates’, the Steve Jobs’, the Warren Buffets, the JFKs, MLKs, and Mark Twains of this world, will tell you to do this one thing. It’s a thing that can be so difficult sometimes, but the more you do it, the easier it gets and more natural it feels: learn.
Knowledge is power, and the only way one can acquire knowledge is by being humble enough to realize how little you know -while being confident enough to know that you can learn anything you wish. The mind is an amazingly powerful thing, and it’s the primary tool that we trainers use to get a person in shape …and not muscles or diet. But like muscles, the brain must be used and exercised regularly. Let it sit idly for long periods of time, and it will grow weaker. Do the opposite, and it will grow stronger.
Napoleon Hill’s quote can apply to every human, but it’s advice that requires the prerequisite of a strong mind that learns constantly, never gives up, and is courageous enough to dream.
Energized Through Synergy, and the Cycle to Success
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
-Chinese proverb
Running a business is difficult, but I won’t even go into the hundreds of entrepreneur quotes, that talk about failure. It’s failure that gives us the friction needed to polish our lives and our businesses to a gorgeous mirror shine. Failure is not something to fear, because I believe that it’s what initiates our ‘Cycle to Success’.
In fact, failure is something that should teach you how to avoid it next time; and it should also teach you that you’re still here, warm and breathing, alive, and even able to pick yourself up in an act of refusal to give up. But doing this requires the ability to learn from the harshest of teachers -and if we can do so, then we’ll find ourselves able to learn wisdom and knowledge from any experience or person. Yet this also requires the humility to understand how vastly diverse people can be, and that “Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him,” (Thomas Carlyle).
Once we finally grasp our need for the ability to work with people, then we begin to grasp the notion that technology offers us a way to help better meet people’s needs and wants (including that of our own). It’s only when we don’t understand technology, then we fear it.
But because we’ve already endured failure, then we no longer feel this fear -instead, we only feel the will to learn… and the cycle comes around again.
It’s not long before this cycle begins to energize our lives, and that energy soon enters our small business –and that’s called, synergy!
Ok, you probably get my point, but I’m just kidding about my useage of the word, ‘synergy’. All this talk of business and success made me think of this movie clip. Enjoy, my friends…
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