Watching the Australian Open whilst writing this (and not
enjoying it as much as usual with the early demise of Roger Federer) I pondered
one of the tennis commentators’ most regular questions; who is the greatest
player of all time? My vote, of course,
would go to Roger, but not just because of his wonderful tennis, but more his
incredible fitness (only recently has he been known to have been injured) and,
even more importantly, his ability to stay driven and to work so hard day after
day.
We discussed something similar over Christmas when one of my
family, a soon to be retired opera singer, explained her early giving up as being
due to her not wanting to keep travelling, keep practicing, be away from home
so regularly and battle to stay healthy – of course, she still loves to sing. Whilst everyone else expressed their
sympathy, I said that I thought that her world was not so different to mine –
which generated quite a lot of debate, not least because in a family of
academics, performers and doctors, I am probably the only one that knows what
it feels like to run their own business..! And as I am often saying, no-one can imagine what it is like to sit in
my chair, unless they have sat in a similar one!
A while ago I attended a conference on ‘leadership’, where
one of the things we discussed was the stress involved in running a business,
and how, then, to manage it. At one
point, the lecturer asked us what we thought the average age of the top 50 most
successful companies in the world was, to which we mostly answered between 50
and 100 years old. In fact the answer
was 15, which was, initially, a surprise.
However, having discussed this in some detail, it made
sense; even the most successful companies were started by someone, and what was
proven in our discussions was that very few people can continue building and
running a company for any significant length of time before the stress starts
to take its toll and they start looking at ways out – merging, selling, closing
down, changing course or handing over the reins to someone else.
My own company will be 25 years old this year, and whilst,
of course, it is nothing like the sort of companies that we discussed at the
conference, it still manages to cause enough sleepless nights for me to go
through phases of wanting to get out in some way; and over the years I, too,
have found it difficult to stay driven, to keep travelling, ‘practicing’,
battling to stay healthy and so on, but it is no easier to give up on business
than it is to give up on sport or music; we just have to find ways to manage
what we are doing so that we don’t burn out.
I have tried a few methods over the years – not all of them
good! But generally I find that whacking
a tennis ball gets rid of quite a lot of stress, and there is nothing like
running as a way to see a new place (or, in my case, to pick up marketing
ideas... seeing what other companies do to promote themselves is an endless
source of inspiration!).
Let’s hope that we are all able to sustain our enthusiasm as
we go into 2015.
