What’s the difference between you and the Olympic athletes that have been earning a spot on the medal podium in Turin, Italy these past couple of weeks?

The answer is very little. While you may have no interest in learning how to do jumps on ice or ski downhill at up to eighty miles an hour, you are more like an Olympic athlete than you realize.

The winter Olympics may be over for this year but next month and next year these athletes will be doing the same thing you’ll be doing. They’ll be pushing to distinguish themselves from their competitors and they’ll be working full time to beat past records and be the best. You’ll be doing the same.

Just like an Olympic athlete you want to beat the competition and take it your business to the next level. Isn’t that right?

So what’s the key to marketing your business like an Olympian?

I started skiing when I was four years old at Cannon Mountain in Franconia New Hampshire. (This was twenty years before Bode Miller was even born.) As a youngster, I was dubbed “Cannonball Cook” because my approach to skiing was to head straight down the mountain at top speed and then inevitably fall with an explosion of
snow.

I rarely took ski lessons, and then only because my parents insisted. I thought the way to learn to ski well was to watch other skiers who looked good and copy what they did. As you can tell by the nickname my parents gave me, I was wrong.

Using the ‘watch what others do’ approach my skiing improved marginally over the years and I became an okay intermediate skier. When I was in my forties, I decided that wasn’t good enough, I wanted to be an expert skier.

Finally after waiting decades I was ready to acknowledge I could use some help and that it was time for a lesson or two. What I discovered was that many of the techniques I’d picked up from watching others were outmoded or just plain wrong and were keeping me from being the skier I wanted to be.

Don’t make the same mistake with your marketing. Don’t waste your time copying others and only making marginal gains. Discover what actually works >>

From then on, I signed up for lessons whenever I could. My skiing has dramatically improved. Now I enjoy skiing challenging, expert terrain and am having more fun than ever.

After over a decade of regular instruction most people would say I’m an expert but I’m aware that there’s still room for improvement. Isn’t there always?

On a recent ski trip to Utah I spent a whole day with my friend and ski coach extraordinaire Peter Keelty, focusing again on the basic stance for carving clean turns. The result? I’m skiing even more smoothly with less wasted effort.

I’m not planning on entering the next winter Olympics in Vancouver and I doubt you are either but I do have a burning desire to excel, to improve at my sport and in my business. I bet you are the same.

Whether you’re managing a startup or have been in business for a decade, you want to maximize your profits and see your business grow. You may know many of the business marketing techniques that work, but are you applying them correctly and consistently? Staying focused on the basics of what works in marketing can help you double your business.

Don’t wait to take the next step and see your business grow. Why not find out what works so you can grow your business with less wasted effort? Start here >>