Wrestling with Business – Applying Lessons from Training as a Professional Wrestler Manager
- Brainz Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Dean Page is a certified life coach who is a two-time American Taekwondo Association World Champion and a three-time cancer survivor. These unique experiences have given Dean both strong empathy for clients who are facing challenges as well as an understanding of the mindset of the high-performance individuals who want to be the very best.
What can professional wrestling teach us about business? In this article, we dive into five key principles learned through wrestling that can help entrepreneurs and professionals improve their performance, whether in leadership, customer service, or mastering the basics.
What do pro-wrestling lessons have to do with my business?
In your everyday business life, you may not be called upon to body slam a six-foot, 260-pound athlete, cut a promo to induce an audience to purchase tickets for a specific event, or even entertain a crowd that surrounds you from all sides. While you may not have to engage in those activities, you do have to manage business in a highly skilled manner, communicate to your customers the need for them to purchase your goods or services, all while navigating an environment where every business move can be immediately broadcast to a worldwide audience via the internet. While writing my article titled What It Really Takes to Succeed in Professional Wrestling, I realized that the same principles could be used to help ensure success in business and, in fact, life in general. So, whether your work attire is a singlet or a suit, let's consider these principles.
5 keys to successful business practices
1. Be coachable
“My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” – Steve Jobs
I stated in my article, 'What It Really Takes to Succeed in Professional Wrestling' that “Being coachable does not mean being a doormat or not having confidence in your abilities. In fact, the opposite is true. Being coachable means that you have the confidence in yourself to be open to constructive criticism and feedback regarding your weak areas. It reflects that you have the character to be realistic in the assessment of your current abilities, along with the motivation to make the necessary adjustments. It is one thing to want to be the best that you can be. It's another thing to be willing to accept critique on how to become your very best.”
Finding and developing several mentor relationships can advance you years ahead of those who don’t, simply by the nature of learning from their mistakes and building on their learning curves. How often have we heard individuals who are considered titans of innovation refer to “standing on the shoulders of giants who came before them”? Being coachable in pro-wrestling can mean improving from good to great and from great to excellent. The same is true for your business career. What are the takeaways from potential improvement areas mentioned in performance reviews or one-on-one managerial sessions? The bottom line is that feedback in areas of improvement can present keys to unlocking improvement in your overall performance, which will benefit you in the long run.
2. Master the fundamentals
“You must perfect every fundamental of your business if you expect it to perform well.” – Ray Kroc
It was not unusual to have a new, prospective pro-wrestling student go into the ring expecting to learn high-flying moves, only to concentrate on basic drills such as rolls, properly getting up off the mat, and the various “flat bumps.” The simple fact is that even the most gifted athletes who have flaws in these fundamental drills will find that weakness multiplied exponentially in actual matches.
The same is true in business, where it is an extremely competitive world. It is challenging enough when competing directly in areas of strength. Why would you want to hand your competition an opportunity for an advantage due to a weakness in basic business fundamentals? A simple search on the internet about business fundamentals will provide you with various categories of business that recognized leaders of academia recommend. Start with those and ask yourself, “Do I have a workable understanding of the fundamentals of this business category?” If accounting is a weak area, I’m not suggesting that you need to get your CPA, but can you read a balance sheet? Can you look at forecasts and projections and understand the inner workings so that you can detect unchecked optimism? Do you understand the fundamentals of marketing to recognize if that slick, new ad campaign will resonate with your company’s customers? Do you understand their demographics and what it is about your product or services that attracts them to your particular goods and services? I am a big proponent of delegation, but I always include follow-up. It’s pragmatic to have people who work for you who are more skilled than you are in some specific departments. It is also pragmatic to understand the fundamentals of those areas to ensure that they are, in fact, performing at their best and for the benefit of the overall company.
3. Pay attention to the little details
“How you do the little things is how you do everything.” – Sharon Pearson
A key component of pro-wrestling is the art of storytelling. In order to build a loyal audience following, the audience must become invested. A simple yet profound element of building audience investment can be enhanced by paying attention to the verbal and non-verbal cues that the audience is giving you. They are literally giving you a gift in that they are communicating to you in real time what is and what is not working.
What are the verbal and non-verbal cues that your customers are giving you? Are you paying attention to your “audience,” or are you too busy focusing on the work at hand? Simply put, it is far better to make needed adjustments along the way to ensure your customers are repeat customers than to find out their dissatisfaction after the fact. Many times, little nuances that seemed insignificant end up resonating with the audience. Whether it’s the John Cena “You can’t see me” or the Ric Flair “Whoo,” it adds to the audience’s experience. The question is, do you want your customers to want to do business with your company, or just “have to” do business? Because the odds are good that a competitor will eventually figure out how to lure away the customer who believes that you have a great product, but lacks customer awareness.
4. Repetition, repetition, repetition
“You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional.” – Joe Paterno
In the world of professional wrestling, muscle memorization is a crucial part of being able to focus on recognizing the unexpected opportunities to add extra value to the fan experience that often arise in a predetermined wrestling match. This is developed by repetition, but not just repetition alone. It must be repetition in doing things the correct way. Muscle memorization is either an ally or an enemy, and you are the one who determines which one it will be.
I would suggest that a business’s “muscle memorization” would be the mission statement that reflects the organization’s purpose, core values, and goals. It is from this that clarity can be found in those grey areas. If part of your company’s mission statement is to help the local region economically, then naturally you consider local vendors. If an aspect of the company’s mission statement is to be on the cutting edge of product development, then cutting the research budget would be ill-advised. Another aspect of repetition is quality. We have a mechanic that we have used for decades because of the consistency of their work. This can also mean inconvenience because of the waiting list to get in. We are not the only ones who recognize their level of excellence.
In professional wrestling, I have muscle memory that automatically ensures that I have my left foot forward and my hands up, regardless of the previous moves. In business, that may mean, regardless of the situation, always doing what is best for the customer.
5. The performance starts when you arrive in the parking lot, not when you go through the curtain
“You don’t build a business. You build people, and people build the business.” – Zig Ziglar
Pro-wrestling, at its basic essence, is the art of live storytelling. It is a live, very physical performance in which the goal is to entertain the paying audience. It is thus very easy for an athlete, or any performer, to focus only on the time from the opening of the curtain to the final curtain call. But the fact is that their level of professionalism is not just measured in the ring but also backstage. There are stories of exceptional, generational talents that were so good in the ring that their negative attitudes toward others were tolerated. Although it should be noted that even in their cases, once their ability to perform at a high level diminished, so did their support groups.
If you are blessed with the ability to provide exceptional service or have top-of-the-line products, it is important that, as an entrepreneur, manager, or business leader, you ensure that the entire operation is professional. How often have you heard of customers switching companies because “They have a great product, but they never meet their promised delivery dates?” Other red-flag examples are “I can never get them on the phone, and they don’t return my calls,” or “I had to wait until the receptionist was done taking a personal Instagram selfie before she acknowledged me.” I’m not suggesting that you can be exceptional in all areas, but I am suggesting that you and your organization should be professional in all areas. Maybe your schedule is such that you don’t have time for a phone call with a client today, but you can at least send a message to let them know you received their request and will get back to them as soon as possible. Being a professional isn’t just at the point of sale, but in all the processes leading up to it and the follow-up afterward.
Conclusion
Am I suggesting that if you master these five keys, you are guaranteed instant business success? No, I am not. I am saying that without these keys, your business journey will be more challenging and most likely hindered unnecessarily. The choice is yours.
Read more from Dean Page
Dean Page, Certified Life Coach & High Performance Coach
Dean Page is a certified life coach who is a two-time American Taekwondo Association World Champion, a multiple-time “Top Ten Competitor”, and a three-time cancer survivor. After suffering the side effects of "chemo brain", which affected his memory and the ability to learn, Dean determined that he would learn to learn again. He continued his education, graduating with a GPA that resulted in invitations for membership in multiple collegiate honor societies. These unique experiences have given Dean both strong empathy for clients who are facing overwhelming challenges as well as an understanding of the mindset of the high-performance individuals who are not satisfied until they are the very best.
