Following up non-threateningly on the thread "Pro Income" here http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=1636632...
The cyclical nature of being an athlete and the attributes demanded of especially the working athlete – including a high level of organization, strong capabilities in forward thinking, goal setting and orientation, high energy, emotional resilience, objective detachment, and many other personal traits – lend themselves to success in many other life endeavours. To that aim, I think it’s possible to take what we do in sport and apply it to: Generate a better living from triathlon through discussion of various facets of professionalism Apply the non-physical skills and attributes you hone as an athlete to other facets of your life and living Achieve a more mindful, balanced approach to your broader life using your triathlon hobby/passion as a framework Create a community of athletes committed to achieving a higher level of professionalism for themselves, their sponsors and the sport as a whole
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- Background * * *
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My own experience as a full time working AG’er and professional triathlete was that top ten placings at various IM’s, standing on a professional ITU world championship podium (as part of the Canadian men’s elite team, 1992 Muskoka World’s) and several professional national championships (Canada long course, 1996 and 1999) didn’t really contribute a dime in income throughout the time. This was during the 1990’s and after some years of healthy detachment from the sport, it seems at a fundamental level not much has changed for the vast majority of athletes. At the same time, the professionalism of many races and governing bodies has improved, greatly in the case of the latter.
It appears that the problem lies not so much with a lack of opportunity available to professional and working AG triathletes to market themselves and seek sponsorship, but rather a lack of resources to teach them how to take advantage of the many opportunities that do exist. Let’s face it: Those drawn to a finance MBA are only rarely the ones drawn into competitive triathlon. Beyond the need to be competitive, the messages of life choices, values, work ethic, and other fundamental approaches to living life that enter triathlon are not always the same as those that create highly successful business professionals. Consequently, what the athletic community perceives to be acceptable conduct and presentation is often at odds with what serious sponsors expect, need or want. Managing a group of athletes, it has been said, “is like herding cats.”
During my time in the sport, I learned (without realizing at the time) that combining a full time job with training and racing as a professional triathlete honed the discipline, organizational skills, persistence and commitment required to succeed at a high level in many of life’s endeavours. Triathlon is unique in this regard because it offers a cyclical, mass-participation platform for people to experience a “fast track” approach to learning valuable life skills. Life is an iterative process, and our sport provides us a living laboratory in which to witness the effects of maturing and training our will, attitude, approach and orientation towards the end we have mind. With hindsight, it is clear that the end of becoming a better athlete transfers to the end of enlarging our lives, too.
What does this mean? To my athletes, I often liken the process of training for triathlon to the movie “Groundhog Day.” Each race or season can be viewed as a mini Groundhog Day in and of itself, since we get the opportunity to make changes to our bodies and attitudes and have the living laboratory of Race Day in which to witness the impact of the changes we have made. As a coach I see time and again (in 100% of the athletes I coach) that they approach the sport in the same way they approach their life, their job – forgetting that the sport doesn’t really care what their IQ is, what degrees they hold, how many people they manage, how many teenagers they parent, and so on. As a coach, my role often includes bringing an athlete 'round to the point of understanding that they have to make certain fundamental changes to their approach to training and racing if they want to improve or succeed at a higher level, much like the character played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day had to change himself to “get the girl” in the end.
John Steinbeck once said that we are “subject to the faults of our virtues.” Meaning that what makes us strong in one part of life can also be the very thing that holds us back in another part of our lives. Training for triathlon, expecially an Ironman – where the event is long and arduous enough to bring us face to face with our inner demons and shortcomings under duress – gives us the opportunity to find our faults and understand our nature better. The degree to which we want to take up this challenge is up to each of us individually, but a certain component of this opportunity fuels each of our desires’ to take on Ironman or similar endeavours. Who are we really? How do we change or live better with those aspects we don’t like? These are questions sport provokes and answers.
Like life, triathlon (and especially Ironman) has rules but no playbook. Once you “get” the rules, you inevitably improve. Learn the rules and follow them and you will be able to play the game according to your own playbook and succeed regardless. The fundamental nugget of truth in this process is that Those Who Listen, Improve. Why? Because listening implies a willingness to change, and conveys a strong character and ability to accept one’s faults and flaws – and a desire to change these to achieve one’s goal. Triathlon affords us the opportunity to dig deeper into ourselves, confront the mirror of our results and make the changes required to improve.
During the many years of training to improve at sport, if we are open to change and accepting our faults, we can use our dedication to hone to a very high degree the skills listed above. In my case, for better or worse, the qualities that made me succeed as a professional working triathlete in the end also led to a job offer in the highly competitive world of investment banking on no more than an English degree and my resume of athletic and personal accomplishments. I say “for better or worse” because big city life in London, UK at the age of 38, went against my basic nature and life values.
Consequently, since the job turned out to be strongly at odds with how I want to live my life I have since left, having learned another valuable lesson: That those “innate skills” are trainable and teachable, but only if they are applied at something you truly love doing. We label this “passion” whether rightly or wrongly, but what it boils down to is that if you are pursuing something that is in line with your core values and beliefs about what you want out of life, you can benefit from your training on a much broader scale. Triathlon training and competing becomes an education for the rest of life and the tools and abilities you pick up in your pursuit of sport become tools and abilities that you can apply to earning your living – at the sport, or after sport.
In other words, many “professionals” and Age Groupers in our sport are leaving a lot on the table approaching the sport the way they do (unprofessionally). You can get more out of triathlon if you are more mindful about how you approach the sport. In effect, training for triathlon can become “Training For My Life 101” and it can help you succeed outside of the sport, too.
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- Athletic Professionalism * * *
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Why does a resource not exist that helps athletes apply what they learn and do in sport in the business of making a living, either from or away from the sport?
I’m interested in helping establish a program to enable athletes to better exploit the time spent training, racing, living, breathing and eating triathlon in the pursuit of earning a living off it and enlarging their ability to succeed in life beyond the sport. Over the course of the next 12 months, I’d like to explore topics including:
Establishing a professional presence
Being proactive
Thinking like a sponsor: Be the sponsor.
Right appearance
Right speech
Common courtesy
Marketability: What do people want to see?
“Forget yourself”
Be the utmost in reliability
Achieve total accountability
Giving vs. Receiving
Your Job is…
Back yourself
Live up to it: No hollow words
The weekly haircut
Perception is everything
One look, one brand
Invest in yourself
Creating the brand of You
Your public persona
Using the Internet to your advantage
Letting the Internet use you to its advantage
Forum presence 101
10 Most Common Mistakes
Cover all the angles
Hire an expert
Bend over backwards for your supporters
Attention to detail
Understanding timeliness
The art of thinking ahead
Leveraging your efforts for your life
Understanding Failure: Failure is not failure. Failure is opportunity. What failure gives you
is the opportunity to think again, to redo, to re-approach, to refine.
The road to success is paved with failure. Our failures enable us to
improve ourselves in our pursuit of success.
100% Integrity. On Everything
Don’t commoditize yourself, your image, or your services.
The Secret is: Hard Work.
There is no such thing as “At all costs”
Any thoughts on the above as they relate to how we go about “being professionals” in this sport? What separates the following two athletes: one with stellar results and no real income from the sport and the other with decent to OK results who is making a full-time salary from the sport? Why do some apply their discipline to the athletic side of the sport and not to the business of being in business for themselves? Is it complacency? Is it laziness? Or is it something more emotionally complex, a question of self-confidence, self-belief and wanting to win on one’s own terms? Very often, success in endurance sport does not translate to success in business – why is this?
Let’s do some digging and find out!
