Business Lessons from the Edge: Learn How Extreme Athletes Use Intelligent Risk Taking to Succeed in Business - Hardcover

Mccormick, Jim; Karinch, Maryann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071626980 ISBN 13: 9780071626989

Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

[BACK COVER] DISCOVER THE WINNING MIND-SETS OF EXTREME SPORTS ATHLETE-EXECUTIVES Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk jump-starts the world's hottest skateboard company with businessman/skateboarder Per Welinder, who recently sold his share of the company back to Hawk to focus on his thriving clothing line. Freestyle motocross star Carey Hart discovers that backflips in the boardroom don't fly, but sharp entrepreneurship turns his tattoo venture into a multimedia enterprise. Rodeo rider Ty Murray, "The King of the Cowboys," turns his passion for bull riding into a professional sports empire. Olympian bobsledder Gord Woolley prepares himself mentally every morning, whether polishing his runners or running his communications firm. Alpine climber Mark Richey learns to rely more on skills than tools to build his architectural woodworking business. Marathoner Quang S. Pham uses visualization techniques to go the distance as a runner and as a CEO in the pharmaceutical industry. Mountaineer Guy Downing climbs some of the world's highest mountains and makes a fortune on Wall Street. PLUS more career-building lessons from sports television CEO Gavin Harvey, skier and bobsledder Kirby Best, polar explorer Bill Baker, mountaineer and CEO Kevin Sheridan, skier and law firm founder Julie Pearl, CEO and race car driver Don Bell, and others [FLAP COPY] No guts, no glory. What does it take to succeed in business? Risk taking. Preparation. Self-confidence. The same principles that drive extreme athletes to the highest peaks of performance. This action-ready guide shows you how to capture the winning mind-sets of champions-for extreme success in business and life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jim McCormick is a full-time professional speaker, record-holding skydiver, and former COO for an architectural firm. He is an accomplished skydiver with five world records, and over 3,000 jumps to his credit.
Maryann Karinch is a literary agent and author of 15 books, as well as a certified personal trainer. She has over 650 skydives to her credit and is one of the few women to complete the inaugural Eco-Challenge in Southern Utah.

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Business Lessons from the Edge

Learn How Extreme Athletes Use Intelligent Risk-Taking to Succeed in BusinessBy JIM McCORMICK MARYANN KARINCH

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-162698-9

Contents

Chapter One

Grow Up to Be a Cowboy: Honor Your Passion

Passion: a person's deeply held desires, concerns, and beliefs. This is not exactly the dictionary definition of the concept, but it is the one I want you to keep in mind as you read this chapter.

TY MURRAY, PRESIDENT of Professional Bull Riders, is "King of the Cowboys." He is to rodeo what Wayne Gretzky is to hockey or Michael Jordan is to basketball.

Ty was not one of those kids who wanted to be a football player one week and an astronaut the next. In a fifth-grade essay about what he wanted to do when he grew up, he wrote: "I want to beat Larry Mahan's record," referring to the six All-Around World Championships of the rodeo legend who was his hero. Ty realized that dream on December 13, 1998, when he earned a record-breaking seventh All-Around World Championship title.

The passion for rodeo pumped through his body like blood, as it did with all of the other men in his life. His father and uncle, grandpas, and great grandpas—they were all cowboys and men Ty looked up to. His grandpas put on Wild West shows in the 1920s, so they knew the entertainment value of rodeo as well. It's a realization that drove Ty to form Professional Bull Riders, an athlete-owned organization that is successfully bringing "America's original extreme sport" to homes in America and abroad through Versus (formerly Outdoor Life Network) and Telemundo.

Ty has no trouble summing up why he has honored his passion ever since he can remember: "I have loved the cowboy life—everything about it—since the day I was born. There's no other feeling on this earth like making great rides on great animals." But it's more than that. It's not just what he does but what he is: "I don't care about going down in history as a great bull rider or bronc rider. I hope people will remember me as a great cowboy."

Leverage Your Passion to Build Success

Activities we care deeply about will often correlate with things we're good at. People who can craft an occupation that leverages their passion have an enormous advantage because they are now doing something they have invested themselves in as a part of their livelihood. That's tremendously energizing.

Mark Richey is an Alpine-style climber who has done first ascents as well as climbed famous and well-established routes on mountains like Everest. First ascent refers to the first modern recorded climb to reach the summit of a mountain or to pioneering a particular climbing route. Climbers and mountaineers who do first ascents are true explorers; their risk factor and the level of challenge they face is much greater than for those who follow.

Mark is president of Mark Richey Woodworking, a $20 million operation, and he sees a distinct correlation between the two worlds he explores:

"In the middle of the night we were still going up, and it was calm. Not a cloud in the sky. The stars came out—there were shooting stars. It was relatively warm for 20,000 feet. Steve [Swenson] and I were climbing in the darkness with our little headlamps. There was not another human being for who-knows-how-many miles around us. It was an extraordinary place. I will never forget that.

"How does that relate to my business? From day one we focused on the highest-end work. That came from training as an architect, but also from making fine musical instruments. I was attracted to really well-made things—things that displayed the utmost tradition of pride and great craftsmanship. Just to look at things that were well made—to hold them and touch them—gave me a great sense of fulfillment to know that I could make something that someone else could enjoy and appreciate.

"So from day one we built a culture in our company of producing the highest-quality objects and interiors and staked our reputation on that. We always come back to quality as one of the hallmarks of our mission in business. I'm as passionate about woodworking and architecture as I am about climbing."

Identify the things you are passionate about and then, to whatever extent possible, incorporate them into your career. If you can't do that, then at the very least find ways to incorporate them into your life. My father has loved trains since he was a boy. His father didn't see much future in a life on the rails, though, so he encouraged my father in a different direction. After finding ways to feed his enjoyment of trains, from books to trips, my father made a bold move when he retired and invested in a private railcar. He launched a whole new career by offering "rail excursions on the Scottish Thistle," which is more than a business that reflects his passion—the car actually symbolizes his passion.

When you don't find a way to incorporate your passion into your career, you can still achieve satisfaction as long as you have focus and direction about what you are doing. I have a friend who built a financially rewarding career in real estate; it's questionable whether he's even any good at what he does, but he does make money at it. He sends his kids to private schools, takes his wife on exotic vacations, and lives in a gated community full of McMansions. And I'd have to admit that he's probably happy, even though he didn't pursue his passion of serving in the ministry—which would not have given his family the prosperity they enjoy so much. He engages his passion for religion through service to his church and the way he raises his family. Is he as happy as he could be? No. He made the choice that his wife's passion for raising a family with everything they could need or want would take precedence over his own.

If you're conscious of a choice like that, you can make it with no regrets. But don't self- sabotage by accepting that situation rather than choosing it.

People might look at my career and conclude that I have a passion for public speaking, but I don't. Speaking is a tool to express my real passion, which is helping people recognize potential in themselves that they didn't realize they had. It creates a sense of fulfillment for me. Writing this book arouses the same passion.

Maryann is writing this book too, but the process of doing it engages a passion related to mine without being precisely the same. She is thrilled with learning and subsequently imparting that knowledge to other people. She has a student/teacher relationship with the world and has structured her career such that she can maintain it and enrich it.

Trust That the More Your Work Engages Your Passion, the More Successful You'll Be

Plenty of people have thriving careers and never feel a passionate connection to their work. They are not as successful as they could be, no matter how much they earn or how much corporate power they wield.

Skier Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions at Microsoft Corporation, is firm about the connection between passion and success: "A person without passion cannot be successful. No matter what you do, you need to be thinking about how you can change the world, how you can touch people who come in contact with your product."

Leadership requires passion, too, he believes, because leaders have the opportunity to change the lives of people they lead. The job of a leader is...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McGraw-Hill Education
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0071626980
• ISBN 13: 9780071626989
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 258
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: McGraw-Hill Education; https://www.mheducation.co.in/; ; Via Verdi, 8; Assago Milano; 20090; Italien