One special business lesson from Bubba Watson

On Sunday night UK time, American golfer Bubba Watson won the first major of the year, the US Masters and claimed one of the most recognisable pieces of sports clothing the green jacket. 

For non-golf buffs thinking of switching off at this point just hold on.  For those who prefer their movies, think of Bubba as Happy Gilmore, he hits the ball almost as far.  Bubba taught us all one of the most valuable lessons that anyone can learn in business.  Be that running one, or just playing your part in working within one.

Having finished the final round level with Louis Oosthuizen the two players went head to head on a sudden death play-off hole.  Having drawn the first hole, the players both hit horrible tee shots at the 2^nd play-off hole.  Oosthuizen got slightly luckier, his ball appearing in light rough with a decent chance of making the green on his 2^nd shot.  Bubba was in trouble, his ball landing well off the fairway in the trees with no direct sight to the green.  Oosthuizen 2^nd shot wasn’t great, but Bubba looked like he would need 2 shots to make the green.  Step forward Bubba who produced an amazing sliced shot that bent around the trees and landed on the green within feet of the hole. 

Thanks to that amazing shot he left himself 2 putts to claim the US Masters trophy and join legends of sport including Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Faldo, Ballesteros and many more.

So what can we learn from Bubba, apart from believing that even the impossible is possible.
 
Well, Bubba never had golf lessons, he hasn’t got a textbook swing, and indeed he never changes a thing if he can help it.  There is no sports psychologist, no entourage of highly paid coaches and fitness trainers.  In fact when he first showed any inclination for the game of golf, his father just told him to go out, swing and do his own thing.

Here is a man who in his own way, and with his own methods has developed a way to succeed.  His golf swing, as unkempt as his hair, has led him to one of the biggest prizes in golf.  So what can we all learn from Bubba?

He’s a man who works hard every day determined to succeed and he’s done it in his own way.

Networking doesn’t have to be a Nightmare

My last two major marketing tasks couldn’t be more of a contrast; old fashioned sweets and insolvency practitioners.


It’s two ends of a very interesting scale, particularly when out at networking events. In engaging networking terms it seriously is feast or famine. One of these subjects is guaranteed to ensure you find conversations ending very quickly with nervous glances over to the coffee table (or ‘excuse table’ for many of us), whilst the other means fending off questions fired in with machine gun-like regularity (have a guess which one is which – answers on a postcard).

Neither in their own way make networking an easy ride, especially when you are trying to maintain a golden rule of the art, be interested and interesting. I love meeting new people and yet the daunting environment of a networking event still gives me jitters. This feeling isn’t helped by the contrasting challenges presented by the two subjects, either getting the nervous silence (is he going to make me insolvent) or feeling like your subject is dominating the conversation. Believe me, as strange as it sounds having the subject constantly returning to your passion isn’t as great as it sounds when you are loving finding out about others.

It is a challenge that is often replicated by clients across many industries we speak to, in areas that they see as un-interesting, unsexy and therefore un-marketable. However as we always say, nothing is un-marketable.

The key to anything like this is approaching it as you would if you were face to face with your customer. If you were to have a conversation with them what would you say? What would you want that person to take away from the 1 min conversation that you had?

For me it always boils down to a few key things. I want people to know something about me and I want to know something about them. I’d like to understand how I can help them, and I’d like to give them an idea of how I could do that.

These are the things I always keep in mind when I’m meeting new people at networking events. And they can be applied as easily to your general marketing. Take the time to understand your customers, learn things about them, help them, make their lives easier in some way and you’ll find that marketing becomes that little bit easier.