How to lose weight and have a successful business
One day while having our daily lunch together at bidx, Leslie, our director, told me that he runs 10 kilometers every other day. For me, that was kind of impossible. I remember in my early 20’s, 4 kilometers was my only way to tell whether I am fit or not. I never went beyond that 4 kilometers mark. Obviously now, about 15 years later, I am sure I can never reach such non-realistic goal given my extra kilograms, or can I?
Two weeks ago I was able to run for 9 kilometers. It’s funny that the main two reasons for me to reach such goal were the following.
- I had an injury a month earlier, so I had to run a bit slower than I usually do, and thus I discovered the best speed for me to reach my goal without getting tired in the middle.
- The second reason, was a sort of envy-factor. I always thought, well, those numbers are only for athletes who spend big portions of their lives training, then seeing our director with his busy schedule, and who is about 10 years older then me, being able to achieve such target. It made the 10 kilometers target look more realistic to me then.
Later on, while running, I saw someone doing 2 sets of push-ups (press-ups if you are British) within each lap. You know, High-intensity interval training (HIIT) and such. I stole this idea from him, but I took it a bit easy, one set of push-ups instead of two. Then, I replaced push-ups with crunches every other day.
Photo by Nick Webb under the CreativeCommons license
In a very similar fashion you can approach your business. Innovation and creativity are always praised and seen as coming up with ideas no one ever thought of. Watching and learning from others is sometimes even frowned upon, and seen as imitation and mediocrity. It’s true that you shouldn’t copy your competitors. Nor should you be obsessed with their numbers, or else you will not achieve anything. But the moment you stop believing that some numbers are impossible, it is easier for you to achieve them. Market leaders and world records are good to help you push your limits beyond what you think you can do. Then, while doing so, feel free to copy others, but feel freer to copy them right-to-left, tweak their ideas, break them apart, mix them with other ideas from irrelevant fields and implement them upside-down if you need to. Just make sure you keep your eyes on your ultimate goals and be flexible in your route to it.
If you too have business tips that you’d like to share with us, and with the entrepreneurs on our business portals, please feel free to contact us, or maybe you want to check our Gateway Portal, meet the entrepreneurs, mentors and investors yourself and get some inspiration for your next big business idea.