The benefits of playing a sport and how it helped me run my business

Since an extremely young age, I’ve been a hockey player. I was born in Canada, but my parents quickly moved to New York where I grew up playing travel hockey and then balanced both travel and school hockey once I entered high school. Following high school, I even took 3 years off before going to college to play what is called “junior hockey” (completely normal in the hockey world, crazy for anyone who hasn’t heard of it.) During this time, I played hockey, tried to get recruited, and worked a part-time job. Following that, I finally went to Wilkes University where I was a member of the inaugural D3 hockey program.

Being a new team, we were overrecruited and the competition for spots to play started right away. On top of this, our coach was a member of the only family to coach at West Point in the last 40 years. As a result, I didn’t have what I think would be considered a “normal” college experience.

Before and after the season, our team had 6 AM workouts and practices. For the workouts this meant arriving 15 minutes before and waking up at 5:30. For the practices, we arrived an hour before, meaning most days of college, we woke up at 4:40 AM. As a result of this, I had a schedule and had to get to be on time in order to function well the next day.

Due to our coach having the background he did, we also had a couple of team rules we had to follow.

1. “Early is on time” : Also known as Coughlin time, we had to be at least 5 minutes early to every meeting otherwise we were late. With such a big team, most players arrived 15 minutes before to show their commitment to the program.

2. No Facial Hair: Every Monday we had to be cleanly shaven. Not a bad rule to have, but definitely a forgettable one early on. I had a lot Sundays where I was almost asleep then jumped out of bed to shave.

3. No Hats at meetings or in the classroom: To most people, hats don’t matter. To my coach, taking our hat was a sign of respect and we had to do it for every meeting or class we had.

4. Sit in the front: Another rule based on respect, our team had to sit in the front of the classroom for every in-person class we had.

These are the spoken rules I remember. While most revolved around respect, I learned extremely fast that having a good reputation matters. Our coach wanted the hockey team to be known as the best athletic team on campus, whether we had the best record or not. (We did)

More importantly than the spoken rules, we also had unspoken rules or things we knew needed to be done in order for us to play.

1. Get Good Grades: My coach knew we weren’t all 4.0 students. He also knew we weren’t idiots. He checked our grades out all of the time and spoke to us if there were issues. He believed that working hard in school could translate to other areas.

2. Go the Extra Mile: Everyone on my team knew how to work hard when we had a lift or practice. That was expected. What I learned set me apart from my peers was doing more. I was never the most talented player on any team I played on, but I did find ways to outwork others. Every day we had practice, I made sure I was the first on the ice and the last one off. After practice, I made sure to go to the gym and do my own workout, no matter if we had a team workout scheduled or not.

Through both these spoken and unspoken rules, I learned much more than I did in the classroom. I had to be disciplined, have a schedule, be respectful, and do everything in my power to make sure I played every game for my team.

Now that I’m done hockey and own a business, I’ve realized that owning and operating a business demands similar requirements to that of an athlete.

• I have to be disciplined: I write out a schedule every day and make sure I get stuff done when it needs to be done. I also go to bed early and wake up early in order to give myself the best chance at winning every day.

• I have to be willing to go the extra mile: There are 25+ cleaning companies in my area. I equate these companies to my old teammates. I need to do what they aren’t in order to succeed. For me, this includes fast response times, larger marketing efforts, and time focused specifically on connection building. I know cleaning companies have a bad reputation for being poor responders so I make it my number one priority to always pick up the phone or call back ASAP.

• I have to learn from others: Just like practicing in sports, I have to observe what others are doing and take action. On Twitter, I follow plenty of service-based business owners and I pull stuff from their tweets all the time. On top of this, I have done market research on all of my competitors and I know everything from their prices to the quality of their websites, to even some of their availability.

  While I’m not the best writer, the point I’m trying to make is business is like sports. You need to compete, practice, adapt, and learn. When I look back at my time at college, I remember what I learned from my sport and it’s easily transferrable to this new form of sport that I’ve taken up. I also encourage anyone who isn’t playing a sport or doing a hobby right now to pick something up. On top of the health benefits, exercise is a great way to build discipline and a schedule for yourself.

Cleaning Company Weekly Update

• Number of Cleanings: 13

• Total Revenue: $2,824.10

• Takeaways:

  • Hiring: This week was a big hiring week. I tried to bring on four new cleaners but ended up with two that I am very confident about. Both understand the system and are ok with the pay and the work.

  • A lack of cleaners: While I am hiring more, I’ve also been hit hard with cleaners being unavailable. I have one cleaner who has decided she wants to be an “eBay seller” and is only working one day a week. Another cleaner still thinks we pay hourly after 5+ conversations about her pay being a percentage of every booking. On top of that, a cleaner I thought was reliable skipped her cleaning Monday and has ghosted me since. Stuff like this is frustrating and makes me want to move to a business where I am in a bit more control. We’ll see what happens.

• Main Focuses:

  • Continue to build relationships: My outreach to real estate agents and property managers has really paid off. I am moving into a lot of Airbnbs and being referred to a lot of move-out cleanings. Since I had so many responses, I still need to go in and figure out how many people to get back in contact with. This is looking like the best way forward to avoid high lead prices.