3 Business Lessons From Skateboarding. Our environment often greatly impacts who we are. Often, the things that we love doing help us become who we are. They contribute to the development of our different skills and views. One of the things I have loved for a long time is skateboarding. I started at 8 years old and quickly became hooked. When I look back, I already feel that it has had a big impact on the person I am today. This also follows through with the work I do now. So in this article, I will explore these 3 Business Lessons From Skateboarding: 1. Persistence is key. 2. Learn from your failures and 3. Choose whom you look up to well.
The first lesson that I feel is important is that things often aren’t as easy as you think they’ll be, so becoming good at them takes time. You often become interested in a hobby because you watch others and think that what they are doing is fun and/or you want to do the same. I even remember at a young age, walking past Southbank in London with my family and being amazed by the skaters. I was then given an old board by a mate. Thinking it was easy, I stepped on then immediately flew back and hit my head. Hitting my head did become a recurring theme. But this straight away gave me the realisation that maybe skateboarding wasn’t going to be as easy as others made it look. Instead, what came next was pretty painstaking. I was by no means a natural. Day after day I would go out and practice. Sometimes, I would manage something new after many tries. But then I’d try it again immediately after and it would be gone. So repetition was key. It’s worth noting that falling off is still a regular thing today, even after 10+ years. When you try something new that’s harder, there’s a likely chance you’re going to have some falls. Even doing a kickflip for the millionth time, I still will catch the board wrong and go flying. What’s the lesson from my rambling? Well, being good at something is hard. It’s a constant learning process. Many aren’t lucky to be natural so it takes real daily effort to get anywhere. Mistakes can be made at any level and with the best intention. I feel like these lessons carry through to work and the world of business. Getting anywhere takes time, a lot of learning and mistakes. The best businessmen make mistakes, they have failed. Yet how do they react when a plan hasn’t gone as expected? I will cover this in more detail in the next paragraph. So lesson 1: being good takes a lot of effort.
Struggling is part of the process in most of what we do. Is this a reason to stop? So far I have broken 5 bones with a couple of fractures as well. Yeah, it was painful, but I never once thought I was going to stop. Why? Because that wasn’t an option, I love skateboarding. This led to me skating with a cast on my arm multiple times, much to my mum’s anger at the time. Yet these accidents and injuries came with a lot of lessons. They help me with the way I go about skating today. I know what I enjoy and I know what amount of risk I’m willing to choose. For example, it’s our own choice how happy we are to push ourselves into doing things. No one wants to get injured, but when it does happen (which is something hard to avoid in skateboarding), it might mean you are more cautious about the way you go about doing something the next time. The same can be true in work, or our own entrepreneurial ventures. We may have some falls where things don’t go as planned, but we want to learn from them. Though not make them all we think about. Why? Well to illustrate this point, I want you to imagine driving. The rear view mirror is an extremely useful tool for looking behind to avoid a potential crash. But if you were to only ever look in that rear view mirror and never look ahead, you would never make any progress, and likely still end up crashing. In the same way, our past failures are a tool to help us make good decisions for our next ventures or how we might do things differently in the future, but they should not be all we think about. Lesson 2: Don’t become dejected by your failures, learn from them.
It might be encouraging though to know that you don’t need to break a bone in order to learn. There is a much nicer way. That is to learn from others. Everyone has at some point been helped by someone else. One thing I have observed by teaching skateboarding lessons is that you want to actually listen to those who know what they’re doing. You know what? You may have just read that statement and gone ‘duhhhh’. But when I was teaching a lot of skateboarding for work, I found this out to be true time and time again. I would start a new student up and before I could get them into good riding habits, I was often having to get them out of bad habits first. They had often got these from someone who had no idea what they were talking about. For example, a well-meaning parent will often help a child get started. But because of their limited experience and knowledge, the parent would get their children into a habit of riding that would mean less control, less stability and more danger. Everyone is happy to offer advice. But if they don’t know what they’re talking about and haven’t done it themselves, it can be detrimental to your success. So my third and final lesson is to learn from those who have achieved what you want. To follow a good example. Even choose a mentor that has already got to where you wanna go. Lesson 3: Learn from the best.
Even though skateboarding has taught me a lot and will continue to teach me lessons that can be seen in other avenues of my life, these were the 3 Business Lessons From Skateboarding that are currently apparent to me: commitment means quality, failures can lead to success and correct mentorship can create consistency. What about yourself, what lessons have you learned from hobbies that you enjoy that you never realised would be so practical or useful in your work now?
Want to learn how you can apply these business lessons to your marketing?
