Cross-disciplinary & cross-industry learning and development gets you innovation.

Sometimes I come across as silly and people don’t take me seriously. When I take every single thing that I do seriously, that’s not going to phase me; it’s perhaps why I come across as silly in the first place — I don’t care.

I started swimming for a living 6 months ago, I’d go to my local pool and teach individuals. During that time I’d meet new people, who’d be doing stuff like accounting, law, marketing, and they asked me what I did and I said I was a swimming teacher because at that time that was how I was making money. It was funny, even for me because a week before I was in an office, but some of those people became my customers — you need to have humility.

I decided I’d stick to this, research the industry, become a qualified teacher, offer something different and build a small side business with it. I even found a swim startup that opened in a warehouse — my mind was blown I’d never seen anything like this. I worked with these people and through a partnership, I learned how to be a better teacher and I helped them with growth and digital technology. To be competitive you need to be able to reinvent and offer new angles in business — you’re not going to be able to achieve competitive advantage without this. I faced criticism initially from the industry because I had no experience, however, it’s because of this I had value to offer.

A Saturday in March the toll that the COVID-19 was having on numbers made it clear what was going to happen to SWYM. The next Monday the Government announced the closure of all indoor fitness facilities.

5 months in, having to stop swimming now is sad. I entered this industry knowing nothing about it and it has been rewarding — personally building up to swim 3 km’s and learning stroke technique, teaching people to swim and meeting and working with great people. I never imagined I’d do something like this so I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and I grew.

For me, this was also my transition into being an entrepreneur and that’s significant. There’s no one way to start a startup and from my experience, I have many critiques on traditional startup methodology that I‘ve read about and was taught in incubator/ accelerator programs. This is a pause on one chapter for now but it’s opportunity to offshoot and focus on another area of mine that’ll, in turn, strengthen this one.

#Humility #pushyourself out of your #comfortzone #cross-disciplinary #cross-industry #learning and #development gets you #innovation.