Baseball and Business – What do they have in common?

We recently took our son to an All-Star baseball tournament in Florida sponsored by Game Day USA and I have 3 takeaways from this weekend that totally related to my business!  I wanted to share these with you!

During the welcome speeches, the first coach said:

“Improve, listen and learn every day otherwise you waste the day!”

He was talking about baseball to the boys, but I immediately thought about what that meant for me and my business.  There is something I can improve, listen and learn every day in my personal life AND in my business!  Can you relate?

My first takeaway from this weekend – Our boys are 13 and are used to playing on a size ball field as 12 year olds.  The field gets bigger from 12 – 13 and again from 13 – 14.  The fields we were playing on this weekend were the same size as 14 year old and high school baseball players.  Our boys played on a field TWO sizes larger than they were used to.  One of the speakers said:

If you think you can, you will.  If you think you can’t, you won’t.

And guess what happened – most of the boys adjusted and did great on the bigger field!

In my business I realized that I said I can’t, I am not ready, I don’t know enough, maybe next week, more times than I care to admit.  It is so easy to let fear take over or make excuses or even avoiding doing things because of what I was telling myself!!  Be careful HOW you say things to yourself!!

My second takeaway from this weekend – Parents who coach their kids have a hard time letting other coaches coach their kids!  Each team had one professional coach and one or two volunteer coaches. I heard so many comments in the stands about how the professional coach was doing it wrong, or what he said is not what he learned from his dad (or a private coach).  There was pacing and lots of stressful body language!

Guess what?  The boys did just fine!  In fact, our team did amazing!!  This experience actually helped these boys prepare for high school baseball because this professional coach has more experience at baseball beyond age 14!!

It is hard letting go of control in your business.  Just like these coaches, I realized I was being a bit of a control freak and getting in my own way.  I finally found a VA to handle two tasks that were taking a lot of time I was better spend using on other tasks to help my business grow!  Baby steps are great and I am sure over time I will be able to let go a little more!!

My third takeaway from this weekend – some parents ruin the experience for their baseball player and ignore their other children.  Being a good sport in the stands and allowing your child to carry his own equipment and tie his own cleats is very important!  Watching parents ignore their whiny and bored children (non baseball players) and not living in the moment made me wonder – what parts of my business am I ignoring?  Am I really living in the moment?

You can spend a lot of money on courses (or baseball lessons) but what good does any of it do if you don’t live in the moment and enjoy the process?  What is the point of it all?

This one was deep – am I focusing on the wrong things?  When I spend so much time on one part of my business, what is happening to the rest of it??  How do I make sure I focus on everything?

For me it is my weekly planning – I do a 20-40 minute planning session every Monday and get everything scheduled out for the week!  Doing this consistently has helped me grow my business!!  How do you make sure you focus on everything?  If you want more information or help with your business, you can get on my waiting list for my coaching group HERE!

 

 

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