The whole time my wife and I were training for the Boston Marathon this April, we committed to diversifying our workouts. Our goal was to enjoy running Boston, then begin training for a triathlon.
At the time, this sounded really prudent. Rather than running 40–50 miles a week in marathon training, we’d swim a few days a week and also ride our bikes. As in most new ventures where you don’t have much experience, this was naive.
We started our triathlon experiment by registering for a race. Nothing like setting a deadline. The only problem? I didn’t know how to swim. I’ve been in the water all my life, but not freestyle swimming where you breath between strokes. I’d always hacked my way through. And I never swam for 400 meters at one time.
With the triathlon quickly approaching, I jumped in the pool and started swimming, badly. I couldn’t swim 25 meters without stopping — heck 12 meters was tough. Most of my laps involved choking on mouthfuls of water. I hated swimming, but I was committed to pushing through it.
That’s when I lucked into finding a coach. A friend referred me to a friend, and she agreed to take me on. Within two sessions I could swim 25 meters without drowning. That may not sound like much, but it was life-changing for me. Within a few weeks, I was able to complete the 400-meter swim in the triathlon without having to be rescued by medical personnel.
One of the other big challenges was finding time to train for three sports. Before, Kory and I ran. Our coach outlined what to run each day, and we ran it. No problem. Now that we were done with our marathon, we had to figure out when to swim, how far to bike, and still keep up with our running three to four days a week. In effect, we tripled our anxiety, because now there were three sports to train for. No matter what we did, we felt guilty for not training in one of the other sports. And we were exhausted all the time because we were always trying to improve.
That’s when we got another coach. She got an understanding of our goals and skills and helped us create a training schedule that fit into our schedule. This was especially challenging, because I’m traveling to meet with consulting clients a couple of weeks each month.
Good news — it all worked! With the help of experienced coaches, Kory and I completed our first sprint triathlon. Now we are planning to run several more in 2017. It’s all thanks to our coaches: one who helped me with the swimming form I needed to swim efficiently, and the other to give us clarity about what to do each day so we were improving without exhausting ourselves.
As you begin 2017, do you think you’d benefit from having someone help you with the tactics to stop your members from quitting? How about with creating project timelines and plans for your team, so time and attention is focused on your most important opportunities for improvement? It all begins with a call. You can schedule a complementary introductory call by visiting www.RobertSkrob.com/membership. During this call, we’ll create a plan for you to stop your members from quitting and hit your 2017 recurring revenue goals, as quickly and efficiently as possible. I look forward to speaking with you.
About Robert Skrob
