Persistence is a key quality of successful golfers, whether playing at the local course with friends or competing in the PGA Tours. Entrepreneurs can learn from golfers who win despite the odds, or because of them.
Golfer Sam Snead racked up numerous wins including 82 PGA Tour victories, 3 Masters Golf Tournament wins, 3 PGA Championships, and 1 British Open. He seemed liked a natural born golfer, and yet he wrote, “I’d like to have a quarter for every shot I hooked with my natural grip before I developed the unnatural grip that let me hit them straighter.” Though great golfers have ability, they are also motivated and persistent. When Sam Snead passed away in 2002, he held the honor of winning the most PGA Tours of any golfer, and that record has not been surpassed yet.
Persistence seems to be something all successful golfers have in common. Kevin Steelman was the Winner of the Tampa PGA Championship in March 2013, but ten years ago he was a caddy on weekends at the Whisper Rock Golf course in Scottsdale, Arizona. During those ten years, he lost all his money and his financial backers because of a poor golfing performance in tournaments. During one lucky chance to play a practice round with golfer Mike Weir, Steelman realized he could learn to play just as well as the then current Masters Champion. Steelman’s March win was his 153rd PGA start, netting him $990,000 in winnings. “It just shows you…determination, hard work and keep chasing your dreams and you never know what will happen,” was his comment.
There are many such losing-to-winning stories in golf, and persistence is the common thread. Mike Thompson was a surprise winner of the 2013 Honda Classic golf tournament. He played against the world’s top players and had never won a PGA Tour tournament before. Just two weeks before, he had come in last at a tournament and his coach offered to quit and take the blame. Thompson’s answer: let’s work harder.
Business and golf have a lot in common. The current business “course” seems to be all rough and sand traps and very little green. Europe is back in a recession. New job creation in the United States is at its lowest since 1979. There is a continuing credit crunch, increasing regulation, and undependable financial markets. Yet, entrepreneurs form the backbone of economic growth, and the most successful keep a personal vision in their sights at all times and persistently pursue that vision no matter how rough it gets.
Kevin Plank, founder of Under Armour, is a good example. Kevin Plank sweated a lot as a Maryland football player and decided sports people needed a shirt that was sturdier, water repellent, more comfortable, and, most importantly, cooler. By his own confession, Plank was a mediocre student. However, once he had a mission to develop a no-drip t-shirt, Plank never lost sight of his goal. During his last few months of college, he went back and forth between college classes and a tailor shop to test fabrics. Once he graduated and had his first shirts in hand, he started pushing sample shirts on football playing friends and driving up and down the East coast selling the shirts to college athletic departments. A friend, Jim Druckenmiller, became a back-up quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, and promoted the shirts to other professional football players. One day, Jeff George for the Oakland Raiders, appeared on the USA Today cover wearing an Under Armour shirt. Plank thought that would be the break he needed. Instead, he only got three calls, and one was from his mother.
Instead of giving up, Plank said he realized at that point that “every day was a new one – one which required real work.” In 1996, Plank reported $17,000 in sales. In 2012, Under Armour reported $1.835 billion in revenue proving that Plank’s vision of staying focused on the end goal of developing the “biggest, baddest brand on the planet” is working.*
Sam Snead, Kevin Steelman, Mike Thompson, and Kevin Plank could have quit. Snead knew he could develop the right swing, but it required thinking outside the box and doing things differently, even if uncomfortable. He practiced until he got it right. Steelman saw himself as a champion, so he kept playing despite financial problems. Thompson could have easily quit after numerous losses, but he just knew if he worked harder that it would pay off. Plank believed he had a great product, even if few were buying it, so he kept selling.
Only Chicken Fingers
Persistence coupled with a vision of success is a powerful formula. Brilliance, education, and superior skills only have value if they are used, and that takes persistence. Yet, persistence will only develop if you are passionate about the vision. In business, failure to some degree is inevitable. It may be a missed revenue goal, a denied bank loan, falling market share, failure to earn a promotion, trouble getting a new business started, loss of a job, or a thousand other barriers to success. How you respond to those events will determine where you go from that point forward.
Todd Graves and Craig Silvey enrolled in class at Louisiana State University that taught budding entrepreneurs how to write a business plan. The plan earned a B- from the professor who said a chicken fingers restaurant would never work. They tried to find investors and were turned down multiple times. Having no luck raising money, Graves spent the next few years working at difficult jobs as a boilermaker in a Louisiana oil refinery and then as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. With money saved, Graves and Silvey got an SBA loan to open the first Raising Cane’s in 1996. Currently, Raising Cane’s restaurants are operating in 18 states in over a hundred locations. The company has stayed true to its original concept of the simple menu the professor said would never work – chicken fingers, fries, and coleslaw.
Persistence in golf and business brings results. It has been proven many times. Read the stories, think about your own vision of success, and then get busy making it happen. The only real roadblock is in your mind.
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