Seven Business Lessons from Exercise – #76 Q&A

Back in March 2016, I upgraded my daily exercise routine with a particular system. At the end of 3 months, Trajan and I share seven lessons we learned, and how they relate to success in business.


1. Motivation vs Discipline. Motivation is a feeling and discipline is an action. Actions must always precede feelings for success. I talk about this particular difference back in video #67 too.


2. Record Keeping. It helps you see how far you’ve come, and what you need to work on. Peter Drucker says, “What gets measured, gets managed.”

In trying to remember this quote in the video, I poorly spouted off this awful version of the axiom: “The better you keep records, the more you’re going to …the better you’re going to do with whatever you’re keeping records of.”

Yeah, Drucker’s quote is better.


3. It’s equally hard for everyone. As we grow, the weights grow with us. Similarly, as we grow in business, we move from the $50 clients, to the $500 clients, to the $5000 clients. And each sale as we move up is equally as hard, nevertheless we do get better at it.

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased” – Ralph Waldo Emerson


4. Having Proven Systems vs Doing You’re Own Thing.

Are you experimenting in your business or are you taking a shortcut by using a proven system?


5. Exercise is great for mood. Some of my best business ideas come during my run.


6. We only have one life to live. Why play it safe? Why not get our body in as best shape as possible? And why not be the best person we can both spiritually as well as to others? And why not make our business the best we can make it? Why not be a bit more outgoing and make some positive changes in our business? Life is short. Build your life the way you want it, rather than waiting for it to just happen or come to you.


7. Little steps over time make big changes. Often in business we look for home runs. We can get discouraged when we hear of others getting home runs. But those are rare and only come from doing little things each day, like continually hitting singles (to continue the baseball analogy).

Little steps daily, over time, are what bring us our returns. A little bit of marketing, saving a little money continually, living below your means, be a bit more outgoing, tell a few more friends about how excited you are by your business, be a better photographer and shoot a little better every day – all of these things and more will change your business when you look back later.


For the particular ‘Body Beast’ workout we did, here’s the link. Note that it doesn’t have any cardio, so on top of this workout, I also added daily running or biking too.


For deeper training and full courses, check out the membership section of this site.