Getting from Good to Great
Author Jim Collins writes about what it takes to go from good to great in his book of the same name. Collins talks about getting the 'right people on the bus', Level 5 Leadership, Confronting the Brutal Facts, and the Hedgehog Concept. While these may seem like random phrases, once you read 'Good to Great' you'll see why this book was a best seller. When I get side tracked about the pettiness that goes on sometimes amongst other coaches, I have to remind myself that I am not in competition with any other coaching company, but I am doing is trying to build a Good to Great Company. The other minutiae is just that.
As far back as I can remember I wanted to own my own business and have the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted. It started in high school when I started a landscaping company. I worked a few other part-time jobs on the side as well, but I always felt if I needed more income, I could pick up another lawn customer or I could work more hours at my other jobs. My landscaping job eventually paid for my college tuition. My other jobs included a Sunday morning paper route, life guarding and being in the Marine Corps Reserve. Add to this playing a varsity sport in college, and you could say I was pretty busy.
Coaching as a business is reliant on getting customers and that means getting people in the athlete pipeline. For the month of September, I set a goal of accomplishing six things. Each had to with getting athletes in the pipeline for D3. I made a list of all of our former atheltes, their contact info and the last time I had contacted them. Next I made a list of every athlete that contacted us in the last eighteen months. Combined these two lists added up to about 120 athletes. I sent a personal to each one. What happened? I ended up with about 8 new athletes for the D3 coaches. The next goal was to write an article for one of the major magazines. I contacted one of the editors with an idea for an article and we agreed on a January 2009 article that will appear in the leading triathlon publication in the industry. My 4th goal was to work on advertising. For the last two years I haven't spent a dime on advertising. You may think this is crazy or even self destructive but the only thing that happened was that our business grew. We didn't grow off the charts but we grew. Lastly, my fifth goal was to put together group workouts here in Boulder. Mission accomplished. From these few things which only took a matter of hours, I improved our stable of coached athletes. It's not always the big things that make the difference but the little things that are done on daily basis - building your business one brick at a time, taking the time to make sure each brick is level and strong enough to put the next brick on top of it. Repeating this process over and over is how a strong successful business goes from good to great.
