It’s almost 2016, and that means it’s another Olympic year! As the world’s finest athletes prepare for Rio de Janeiro, we think now is the perfect time to set goals for the upcoming year so you can reach your personal medal stand! Think of it as your very own Biz-Olympics.

Here are some tips on how to take inspiration and lessons from how athletes set goals, train, and win, and apply them to setting goals (and winning!) in your own practice.

Get Inspired
Les Sweeney: The first step in going for gold is setting your vision. What will the big finish look like? What do you want to celebrate? What great performances inspire you? As therapists, many of us take our inspiration from our clients—think about that favorite client of yours, that elderly woman who makes the effort to receive massage. What heights will you reach this coming year, and how can her story help you improve? What do you want to achieve that will make her say, “That’s my therapist!”?
Goals will come soon enough (like in a few paragraphs), but motivation is more than a goal—it is what drives you to get up and do the work every day. What motivates you?

Choose Your Event
Kristin Coverly: Now that you’re inspired and ready to medal (thanks, Les), it’s time to choose your event—or the area(s) of your practice you want to improve, change, or add to. Olympic athletes—and you—can use a few different strategies to choose events. The most logical is to pick something you excel at, or have some natural talent for, and work to get even better at it. I refer to the other as “The Jamaican Bobsled Philosophy.” Pick something you don’t know anything about and have never done before and put your heart and soul into doing the best you can (and most likely inspire a heartwarming movie along the way).
How does this apply to you and your practice? Well, when you’re choosing your events for the upcoming year, why not go for a decathlon and select a mix of areas to work on? I’m doing this along with you this year, so as I’m planning my Biz-Olympics, I’m going to enter myself in a few different events: one I want to get even better at (client education) and my “Jamaican Bobsled” event (a new modality—still to be determined). How will you choose your own events? Dream about what you want your practice to be and then analyze what you need to strengthen, improve, or add to get there.

Set Goals
LS: See, I told you goals would come soon enough J. Goals are where you get more specific—in the Olympics, a 1,500-meter runner might say, “I want to make the semifinals,” or, “I want to medal.” Every runner wants to win gold, but we know only one gets to. Not everyone at the Olympics is a threat to win a medal, and many set personal goals that might not include appearing on the medal stand. However, goals have a neat way of driving you to excel. My classmate in college, Paul Ereng, qualified for the Seoul Olympics in the 800-meter run, but he was not expected to contend. They forgot to tell Paul; his epic finishing kick pushed him past the top three runners, and he won the gold medal.
Will you go for the gold medal this year or just be happy to be in the race? There is no wrong answer—it’s your race. But take some time to think about what you want to achieve—and be specific; your goal needs to be measurable. Who knows, you just might surprise yourself. But be careful—there is a cost to realizing your dreams. After the Olympics, everyone noticed if Paul showed up late for class.

Get a Coach
KC: Olympic athletes don’t make it to the Wheaties box on their own. Nadia Comneci had Béla Károlyi, and the Miracle on Ice hockey team had Herb Brooks, right? Every athlete has a team of people helping them through every step of the process. Same goes for you. As you’re setting goals and creating change, be sure to surround yourself with your own success pit crew. Who do you need? Your perfect team will vary based on your goals: some of your Biz-Olympics events might need support from an accountant, or practice bodies, or a strong mentor. Form a wellness crew, too, to help you stay emotionally and physically strong and balanced as you create these changes in your practice and life. Ideally, you and a colleague would be teammates in this process and support each other as you work on your individual goals throughout the year.
Bottom line: identify the areas in which you need support and don’t be afraid to ask for help!

Create Your Training Plan
LS: One of the most useful sayings I’ve ever heard (I know, I think I’ve written this before, but it’s still awesome) is, “Fail to plan, and you plan to fail.” I heard this when I was a kid, and in spite of the potato salad between my ears at the time, it sunk in, and has made a world of difference in my life. At the Olympics, four years of training culminate in an event that can be as short as 10 seconds! If you have that much at stake, there is no doubt you need a good plan. Especially when you consider you not only have to be good enough to advance, but also need to save some in the tank for the next event.
Here’s my two cents on this as it relates to therapists: organization/planning is a more important skill than technical knowledge in terms of practice success/development. I don’t care if you’re the next Ruth Werner in pathology; if you can’t structure your time and your practice properly, you’re sunk. Whether you are an employee or an independent practitioner, your ability to structure and organize treatment plans, schedules, and marketing efforts is critical. No—make that essential!

Passing the Tests!
KC: Believing you have the skills to be an Olympian is one thing. Passing the tests to prove you’ve got the right stuff is another. One of the ways athletes prove they’re ready is by qualifying at the Olympic Team Trials. Get inspired by this and create your own version of the team trials for yourself along the way. Take those goals Les mentioned earlier and break your large goal into smaller, more attainable and measurable goals with dates along the way. So with my “Jamaican Bobsled” event of learning a new modality, the ultimate I’m-running-the-victory-lap-with-the-flag-draped-over-my-shoulders goal will be to incorporate the new modality into my practice in a dazzling and exciting way. My smaller Olympic-Team-Trials-type goals will be to enroll in continuing education classes, give a certain number of hours of practice sessions by a certain date, etc. If your gold-medal goal is to get better and more comfortable with networking, a trial-level goal might be to practice your introductory elevator speech with people until you feel comfortable saying it to a stranger (while maintaining eye contact).
Setting and completing smaller goals and tests will give you opportunities to realistically check in on your progress and celebrate the small victories along the way.

Win!
LS: In the Olympics, winning means you beat others—you finished ahead in the race, earned the most points, or shut down your opponent. The good news in massage and bodywork is that winning is not a zero-sum game; my success isn’t your failure. So to “win” means you have met your objectives (perhaps fully, but even partially is worth celebrating). Winning means you set that goal, kept after it, and are satisfied with your effort and results. And you’re able to look back at your inspiration and see how it helped. For us therapists, the Olympics are every year, every month, every week. We can always set that new goal, train for it, and work with our coaches to get better. And another event is right around the corner.

Catch the Spirit
KC: Fast-forward to the end of this process: it’s Biz-Olympic Games time. Picture the heartwarming backstory video Bob Costas will play just before your event airs, so that all of America is weeping and rooting for you. What do you want that story to be? Now, do the work to make that story true.
Catch the Olympic spirit! Allow yourself to be inspired and excited about creating goals for your practice and life. Then, put time, effort, and heart into them so when you’re standing on the podium with that gold medal around your neck and the anthem plays in the background, you can truly feel proud of what you’ve accomplished.

Les Sweeney is ABMP’s president. Contact him at les@abmp.com and read his blog on www.abmp.com. Kristin Coverly, kristin@abmp.com, is the manager of professional development at ABMP and teaches workshops for therapists and instructors across the country. Both are massage therapists with business degrees who care about you and your practice. Want more? Check out their ABMP BizFit video tips on www.abmptv.com.