As you may know by now, I'm a HUGE Sports Fan. And from "growing up in the Sports Business," I constantly equate Sports with Business. There are just so many similarities that the analogies are endless.

Case in point, I've NEVER been a huge soccer / futbol fan. But since my family and I recently moved to Spain to continue running our business and growing / learning / experiencing the world together, I've of course become interested.

In our new home city of Valencia, there is a 55,000 seat stadium within a 10 minute walk from our apartment, a dream situation I've had since I was a kid and saw the movie Tiger Town, where the main character, Alex, would RUN to Tiger Stadium from his home in Detroit to make it to the games.

That was SO COOL to me.

So my son, Max, and I walked to the game at Mestalla Stadium recently and bought tickets at the gate. What an amazing experience!

As I was enjoying the game, I couldn't help but start thinking about the similarities to running our business.

Way more exciting in person than on TV, the players showed ultimate control and patience.

Scoring was not abundant, the game ended in a 1-1 tie, but when each team did score, it took amazing teamwork, and man was it exciting.

It reminded me perfectly of how a successful service-based business (and likely product-based business also for that matter), needs to operate.

There needs to be thoughtfulness, control, patience and teamwork deployed on a minute-by-minute basis.

Any one slip up can cause a change in momentum or energy or both, that could cost your team from scoring / winning big.

Proper passing, footwork and execution are required play after play, and not to mention stamina.

STAMINA! How could I forget that one?

If you're in business, this should sound extremely familiar.

What also fascinated me about the game was the amount that all the players truly enjoy playing. Even the guys that didn't get in the game were on the sidelines doing warm up drills as if to silently tell all 55k fans "you'll see me in there someday."

The players love playing the game. Business owners need to love the process of operating. Love the process of building your services and products. Love the process of selling, the process of executing and the process of serving your clients and employees.

Having the patience, stamina, control and LOVE for playing the game like a soccer / futbol player is what we all need as businesspeople.

It is our best marketing. And we will win.

Hit me up with any questions anytime at paul@datadriven.design.

Thanks for reading, watching and listening, and have a great day!

KEEP MARKETING!

Paul Hickey, Founder / CEO / Lead Strategist at Data Driven Design, LLC has created and grown businesses via digital strategy and internet marketing for more than 10 years. His sweet spot is using analytics to design and build websites and grow the audience and revenue of businesses via SEO/Blogging, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, Social Media Content Marketing and Email Marketing. The part that he’s most passionate about is quantifying next marketing actions based on real data.