You’ve owned your shop for years and are booked solid, yet you can’t take a vacation without constant phone calls and emails. Or maybe business has stalled, making the dream of a second location even further away. Sound familiar? Walter Bond calls it playing backyard business: lots of effort, no structure, no system, and no plan for how you’re going to win.
In this episode recorded at Super Conference in Orlando, Kim Hickey and Jason Patel sit down with Walter Bond, a former NBA player, keynote speaker, and business advisor, who has spent the last 25 years teaching peak performance to business leaders. As a professional player, he started for the Dallas Mavericks and played for Jerry Sloan. But life after basketball was harder. He struggled with a failed business and bankruptcy before finding his calling as a motivational speaker.
Walter talks about a pivotal moment that changed the trajectory of his career. In college, he played basketball and baseball, never focusing on one more than the other. A conversation with an assistant coach changed that. He realized that he had to make a choice if he wanted to go pro and dropped baseball shortly after. He connects that to shop owners who chase tons of good ideas instead of committing to one. He also shares his experience working with a brand coach when starting his motivational speaker journey. Though he had a solid image as “Mr. Accountability," his business wouldn’t move forward if he didn’t put the work in. After 36 months of calling 25 people a day, Walter had doubled his NBA income. His story shows the impact of investing in yourself and the value of good coaching, whether you’re on the court or in the boardroom. Today he uses both tools to help people push through the obstacles and reach their goals on the other side.
Tune in to episode 157 of Maximum Octane if you’re still chasing side projects instead of focusing on your shop’s future. Walter’s advice is to master the simple things. Marketing, sales, culture, onboarding, and training are all inside the box, and if you get those right, you won’t need to go looking for shortcuts.
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