Ready for the waves?

Last weekend I swam the 2km Cole Classic Ocean Swim, and despite maybe this looking like an attempt to get kudos, I realised there was some good business/marketing content in this…

(Just a pause waiting for you all to get over the shock that I found a link...)

I was only 15 minutes in and maybe 600m when I thought “f**k I don’t think I can finish this.”

I’ve never actually thought that in an ocean swim before, and I’ve dealt with some below-average conditions…

But this was different, the waves were HUGE and I was small.

Very small, I became more and more aware of how small I was in this huge swell the deeper I got into the swim… Sure there was plenty of people around me, but I couldn’t help but wonder how they weren’t freaking out by the size of these waves!

(And the reality is, maybe they were… who knows.)

I tried to get my stroke right but kept reverting to breaststroke, which I knew was slowing me down.

Then… That part of me kicked in, the suck it up and get it done… the part that knew I could do this, because I had trained to do so…

So I changed my stroke, instead of doing 1,2,3 breathe I started doing 1,2 to the left because the waves were to my right, it also meant I could get in more oxygen which would help calm me down.

In life, in business, in whatever challenges we sign ourselves up for in life we can’t know what conditions we will face, or how big the waves are.

Sure we can prepare, we can train, write the best plans, and create great mantras to motivate us, and keep us going.

But the reality is we never know the conditions until we’re in the thick of it.

I mean staring out from Shelly Beach it looked flat… I wasn’t mentally prepared for what I faced.

But I had what I needed in my toolkit to keep me going and shift my game plan when I faced new conditions.

How did I have a toolkit?

Because I knew the power of preparing for all the possibilities.

& it was the same when I ran my marathon… I only trained from 10-11am onwards, to ensure I always caught the heat of the winters day… preparing for a hot race day, if it were cool it would be a bonus. And hot it was!

If we’re constantly winging it, following trends, being influenced by external things and the next greatest fad in marketing and business, and don’t have a toolkit (a strategy) when the inevitable happens - and it will happen… It will be the thing that makes you a statistic.

Because even the best word-of-mouth or tactical marketing has its limits.

We know business is a challenge. We sign up knowing this.

But there are ways to make the ride a little smoother, and less stressful, even in rough seas.

There are ways that when it gets rough or we hit unexpected conditions it doesn’t affect us and cause us to pull out of the race.

Having a strategy, having that foundational work done.

It ensures that we know we are prepared for the unexpected because we know our brand and have it set up for the distance. It also ensures we don’t focus on who is to our left and right but rather focus on our race and the goal we have set.

If you think your business isn’t set up to weather rough seas, and that maybe you’d be calling on a lifeguard in the next unforeseen swell, then let’s have a chat…

I understand a thing or two about longevity and what it takes to endure sh*t conditions.

Bec

xx