Business match fitness is a phrase I’ve coined from playing competitive sport.
When I played football, we used to talk about ‘match fitness’ as opposed to ‘fitness’. In pre-season training I’d train hard and get fit. But no matter how fit I got, I’d always be reminded each year after my first few football matches how sore I was.
The difference between fitness and match fitness is profound.
Fitness is a physical condition achieved within the boundaries of non-competitive simulated training. I built up aerobic capacity that allowed me to run, jump and compete in a training situation. But never at full capacity. No bruising.
Match fitness was only established once I competed for several weeks in match conditions, participating in a real competitive environment. I was running and jumping but getting bumped, tackled and hit physically. The contest was on and I competed at full capacity. The bruises were real.
Initially my body would be sore for days and I’d wonder how I’d get used to this throughout the season. But surprisingly after several weeks of playing competitive matches, my body would recover much quicker and by half-way through the season I would hardly notice soreness.
The transformation that occurred was moving from fitness to match fitness.
So what is Business Match Fitness?
Staying with the analogy, business fitness might refer to your passive activity. You’ve written your strategy, set up your admin and accounting software. You’ve established some business systems and created a series of documents and spreadsheets to record your progress. You feel fit.
But fitness won’t cut it.
You need to establish Business Match Fitness.
To establish Business Match Fitness, you have to attend the next twenty meetings. Win, lose or draw. You have to show up and play. You need to negotiate that contract, deal with that difficult customer and recruit that talented salesman. You must get up earlier, spend longer in that meeting and dig deeper to solve that challenging problem.
If you turn up ready and play every day for a period of time, you will become Business Match Fit.
But be aware. Once you’re Business Match Fit, you can lose it easily through hubris, laziness and lacking hunger.
So how can you maintain Business Match Fitness?
Make a commitment to ensuring that you participate regularly at the highest level in working on things that matter. You can’t abdicate or delegate everything in your business. Especially the key elements like relationships and delivering on your promise.
In leveraging your business and life, ask yourself what is the Minimum Effective Dose (MED)? The MED is the minimum amount of energy or output you need to expend to get the desired result. If that is a one hour conference call, do it. If it is allocating a day to deliver on the project, do it. If it is flying interstate to meet someone to have a courageous conversation, do it. Then stop, relax and recover.
Any why should you maintain Business Match Fitness?
- Because maintaining Business Match Fitness allows you to be as great as you can be.
- Business Match Fitness builds the engine that drives your core genius.
- Business Match Fitness allows you to endure when others tire or give up.
- Business Match Fitness allows you to demonstrate mastery when the moment calls.
- Business Match Fitness allows you to deliver a predictable outcome time and time again.
- And once you lose it, it can take a whole pre-season to get business match fit again.
If you want to work on playing a bigger game in business, contact me at darren@darrenkbourke.com
To start creating sustainable success in your business and life, download a copy of my eBook 'The Success Algorithm' which details my process to work less and earn more. You can get a free copy on the Giveaways page of my website. Plus some bonus videos from my Fourth Moon video series to reach your goals sooner!
All the best,
Darren K Bourke
