As the 2010 Winter Games wind down, it's time for Olympians to plan their next move.
“In training, it can get so micro you're only thinking about this five-minute piece you have to do let alone the one you have to do a minute after that, never mind dinner and laundry and what am I going to do after the Olympics?” rower Kyle Hamilton says. “When you're in the moment you're in the moment.”
Mr. Hamilton was a star of the Beijing Summer Olympics, a member of the men's eight team that won gold. He and fellow gold medalist, coxswain Brian Price, were torch-bearers for the Winter Games, and they passed it to the next generation of rowers.
When Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Price and a third world-champion rower, Jeff Powell, ended their competitive rowing careers, it didn't mean they were ready to stop competing, or to stop thinking like athletes. They combined to create Podium First Consulting, a Victoria-based enterprise devoted to transmitting the lessons of Olympic excellence to young athletes and to businesses.
“It's something we wanted to pursue at the level we're used to pursuing things,” says Mr. Powell, who was on gold medal-winning world championship teams with Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Price in 2002 and 2003.
Champion athletes making the transition to the business world often do “very, very well,” says Charlene Zietsma, assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship in the University of Victoria's Faculty of Business. “The qualities that make an athlete strive to be a champion are the same qualities that make a good entrepreneur.”
Ms. Zietsma says those qualities include passion, focus, discipline, deliberate practice, persistence, the ability to delay gratification, as well as teamwork and leadership abilities. “And rowing is one of the most demanding sports when it comes to teamwork.
“In addition, champion athletes pay close attention to their external environment; they can predict the competition's moves and change their own strategies to stay out front.”
Athletes who become successful entrepreneurs “have a deep knowledge of their sport” and use that to excel in business. Ms. Zietsma cites Nancy Greene's success with Sun Peaks and other ski resorts. She makes reference to several other athletes who have succeeded in business in addition to Ms. Greene, including Mario Lemieux, Donovan Bailey and Wayne Gretzky.
But some, she adds, fall into the “success trap:” they've won big in their athletic endeavours, they assume they'll be successful in other areas, and they fail to seek out the strategic, marketing and human resources expertise their businesses require.
Podium First thinks it has what it takes to avoid the trap. “There's an experience with excellence (among the three partners),” Mr. Powell says, “so Podium First was created to transmit that experience with excellence to people who are motivated to the same kinds of success.
“Many of the same factors are at play in the boardroom just as they are in the locker room.”
Canada's Brian Price, Jeff Powell, Adam Kreek, Andrew Hoskins, David Dave Calder, Kyle Hamilton, Ben Rutledge, Kevin Light and Joseph Stankevicius of the men's eight row to victory during semi-finals at the World Rowing Championships in Milan, August 28, 2003.
The Podium First plan to transmit knowledge about excellence is three-fold: Offering guidance and assessment to school athletic programs, teaching self-assessment through seminars, and providing mentorship. Its clientele ranges from individual athletes, to private schools and post-secondary institutions, to corporations “looking to develop a culture of excellence,” Mr. Price says.
“There's accumulated knowledge here that's based on experience rather than theory. It was learned in about the most competitive environment you can imagine.”
