A Breakout Year

I am energized when taking on a new challenge. Six months ago, I decided to take on two of the biggest challenges of my life so far: leaving full-time work to start my own business and training for and completing my first marathon. I am proud to say that I ran my first marathon on May 5, 2024, here in Toronto! Reflecting on that experience, I do not think I would have been successful without also having the challenge of starting and building my business. 

The path has been daunting, and full of ups and downs. Sometimes, I needed to take a step back to move forward. For those who know me, I have always been competitive, looking for ways to maximize my days. I love the rush I get when I finish my day knowing that I accomplished something. So basically, I had many more chances of accomplishing something great every day. 

Like with any challenge, I did hit some roadblocks during these past six months. For example, in building my business, I got bad news or faced a full day of rejection, but I knew I could use that to motivate me to hit the pavement and have a successful training session. Sometimes I had a great workday making progress on my business but could not muster the energy needed to complete a training run. In all honesty, I can only remember a couple of days during the past six months when I had both a bad workday and a bad training day.

Through this process, I learned that parsing my days into manageable steps allowed me to build momentum to continue growing my business and keep up with the training I needed to accomplish. For training, it was a simple goal of running more km on the same day of the week as the previous day of the week, like running 21km on Tuesday and hitting 24km the following Tuesday. For my business, it has been simple weekly goals like gaining more followers on my personal and corporate LinkedIn pages than the previous week. I reach these weekly goals by posting three times and prospecting 75 new customers a week.

I do not think that I would have been able to maintain the intensity of training or building my business without having the other challenge to motivate me. These challenges I realize now created balance and built momentum; they were complimentary in every way.

The Decision

Some of you may be asking how I came to tackle these two challenges at the same time. I can say it was not a spur-of-the-moment decision; I had been thinking about starting a business for years and I have always been a short-distance runner, running under 10km, three times a week.

The decision to train full-time for a marathon did not come to me until a friend started training for the November 2023 Philadelphia Marathon. I decided then to take on a longer distance and race the half-marathon in Philadelphia. After training for and running the half marathon, I felt like I still had the energy to take on a longer distance. This pushed me to sign up for my first marathon in Toronto on May 5th, 2024.

As I was training for the half-marathon in Philadelphia, I was wrapping up working full-time having made the decision a few weeks prior to set out on my own. Entrepreneurship has always been an interest of mine and I have dabbled in a few opportunities to work on something on the side for most of my life. I was never able to fully commit to a business idea but in late 2023, when I was training for my half-marathon, I decided there was no time like the present.

Complimentary endeavours

I quickly realized how complimentary training for a marathon and starting a business were for me. I am always chasing the calm that comes with accomplishing something. I feel good when I see results from all the work that I have put into that something. Running a marathon is a significant test of physical fitness and mental strength. The training to go from under 10km runs to being able to run 42km, was long and gruelling, especially through the winter with temperatures hovering around -20C/-4F. Most of the time, I had some level of pain in my body, and I never fully felt healed let alone comfortable.  I was diligent in scaling up my training, researching the best ways of increasing my distances, paying very close attention to my nutrition and ensuring I did find time to relax and recharge. It was grueling, but I knew, it was worth it as I was chasing something that not many can complete.

On the business front, I created a routine where I was laser-focused in the mornings on writing out ideas and content, which is a big part of promoting my business. By the late afternoon and evening, I would be in marathon training mode. It was during this time that I let my mind wander and think about different approaches and solutions to move my business ahead, or new ways to reach my customers. 

Having such full days, I crashed hard every night. I slept extremely well, which was a welcome change from my previous self where I had trouble sleeping, overthinking the previous day's events and trying to come up with solutions for the next workday. With my long marathon training schedule, I was so physically tired that no level of overthinking kept me awake at night. As a result, I was able to rest and be recharged for the next day!

By taking on two difficult projects I felt like every day was special as I knew I would stretch myself either in training or in building my business.

Why?

Shortly after leaving full-time work, my wife and I decided to watch Simon Sinek’s ‘Why’ TED Talk. I knew that I wanted to do certain things, but I had trouble articulating the ‘why’ I wanted to achieve those things. We watched the speech several times before it sunk in, and I got to writing down my own ‘why’.

It became clear that I wanted my business to help my hotel industry peers whom I have worked alongside for my entire career. I wanted to create a solution that would give them a chance to shine and create more career-growing opportunities. Writing down this ‘why’ turned out to be a challenge itself as I wanted to get it right. But when I finally nailed it down, it served as a way to help me focus on the task at hand.

I went ahead and applied this to my training. I identified the ‘why’ I was doing it; I wanted to push my body physically and mentally but doing so in a healthy manner. By staying focused on the ‘why’, I knew I could keep up with my training. I kept reminding myself that by investing in myself now, I would be healthy to keep pursuing my other goals.

Motivation and tracking progress

Because I was tackling two demanding challenges at the same time, I had little time to waste. I needed to maximize and stay focused on trying to do something each day to build my business and train.

One of the things that I did was to wake up early to take advantage of the daylight. Winter in Toronto is no fun at the best of times, but when trying to train for a marathon, the very early onset of darkness made for challenging conditions to run in. So, I shifted my workday. I was up early to make sure I could train while it was still daylight.

I maximized my weekends to complete my longer runs. I reserved the weekends to train harder while giving myself a break from building my business. If I did have business ideas come to me during the weekends, I would make sure to note those down to tackle on Monday.

It was rare that I was up late during the week or on weekends. To the point I made earlier, I ended each day so tired that sleep would come so easily.

Tracking progress is important for any challenge. I made sure to do this for my business and I kept a weekly log of big events or conversations I had with potential customers or colleagues. I would plan my week out in advance working around personal commitments in the evenings. I made a point of ranking each week out of 5 based on the success I had and how hard I worked. I used this ranking to help me structure my next week to try to do a little better each week.

The same went for training. I was logging my daily run data to help me see my progress. My best week was when I ran a total of 106 km! Seeing my progress motivated me to add more km the following week.

Visualization

Visualizing what success looks like helps me a lot. It keeps me focused and on target.

There is no better time to visualize than when I am running; it provides tech-free time, away from my phone, computer and TVs, to zone out and visualize the next steps in building my product or moving around an obstacle. Running is almost meditative, where I clear my head allowing for new ideas to pop up. I get to visualize what my business could be and what I can do to get there.

I visualized my success in completing my first full marathon, picturing what it would look like and feel. Replaying each good training session would help me visualize the excitement I would no doubt have speeding toward the finish line and hugging my loved ones on race day.

In building my business I visualize having a team to support me, leasing my first office space, or standing on stage with a room full of people talking about the hotel industry. I turn these visualizations into goals and break those goals down into manageable next steps so that I can work to achieve those things.

Lessons learned

The last six months have been quite a journey. One thing that I realized was the need to organize my day into specific blocks of time where I am focused on the task or tasks, I have set for myself. Once that time is up, I move on to the next thing and focus on that. By managing my time this way, I can see the quick progress I have made and identify what I can do next time, to continue building on what I have accomplished. 

Success would not be possible without some failures. I had terrible training days where I was either too exhausted to get out the door or if I made it out, I would hit the pavement only for a short run and walk. Training through the winter also led to a few days where the snow was so bad that it was hard to stay on my feet! I also had days building my business where things were not working out as planned. I even had moments of self-doubt, questioning if what I was trying to build would attract customers. What was important to overcome those days was to celebrate the big and, more importantly, the small stuff that happened. I have always been a big idea person who visualizes the finished product before I even build it. By tackling these two big challenges together, I have learned that the big thing is built upon small things, small steps, and small achievements.  

Never go at it alone. I have gotten to where I am today because I have a support system around me. I am fortunate that I have an experienced running friend who would join me on my long weekend runs, helping pace my longest distances and motivating me to keep going. He gave me advice on how to reach peak performance on race day, and the best part was he was also there on race day to cheer me along. 

My biggest support has come from my wife, Louise who has been by my side from day one on both the business and decision to train for my marathon. She remained positive when I hit some training setbacks, reminding me that I needed some time to rest and heal. It was great advice as I could ease my mind and I always came back stronger the next day.

Turns out, I do not know everything about building a business. But I quickly learned that someone does, and I needed to ask for help from people who were outside my existing network. I was so surprised by how many offered their advice and time to help me or point me in the right direction. I think this is a good lesson for anyone undertaking a difficult task. Seeking mentors and taking their advice is important and is also motivational to keep you going.

What’s next?

Now that I have completed my first marathon, I plan on pursuing my other hobbies while my body heals like mountain biking and golf. 

Being competitive, I have set myself a new goal with running, beating my first marathon run time. The plan is to start back up with training later summer to get ready for the Detroit Marathon in October.

As for my business, I will take the extra time I have to deep dive into other products I want to build to create something special for my hotel peers. I have so many ideas and now I can unpack those and see how best to integrate them into the current business.

My confidence today is at an all-time high. Completing my first marathon has given me a great sense of accomplishment. I feel that I can take on any difficult task! While building a business is slightly different (there is no formal ‘end’), I have the energy and the desire to keep building. I think I am even more committed to seeing where this journey takes me.