Small Business: Lessons from sports

Lisa Tamati. Photo / NZH

The tricks that worked on the field can work in the boardroom, too.

Setting goals, working hard, taking calculated risks and maintaining self-belief all contribute to success on the sports field. But they also come in handy in the business world, say current and former top level athletes who also run their own companies.

Ultra-distance runner Lisa Tamati planned to be an accountant but later became a goldsmith and now owns businesses spanning jewellery, events, PR, documentary production and online coaching.

She draws a number of parallels between the sporting and business worlds and says both require an ability to take calculated risks, cope with failure, face personal fears and set goals.

"You need to be able to set visionary goals, then break them down into the nitty gritty of what it will take to achieve them," she says.

"For example, if I'm going to run 222km over the two highest passes in the world in the Himalayas - which was a race I did - when I sign up I won't actually know how the heck I'm going to do that. But then you just break it down and work it out. Business is very much like that."

Awen Guttenbeil used to organise end-of-season trips away when he was playing for the Warriors and he draws on those experiences when running his sports travel company WHO Tours.

"I left school at 17 to live in Australia for two years, then came back to the Warriors for 11, then went to England for two so I spent 15 years as a professional rugby league player," he says.

"You pick up a lot of skills, but you don't always realise what they are at the time. I have friends who have really struggled when they retired, because they didn't have any formal higher education so didn't know what direction to go in. But there are a lot of useful skills you learn that people probably underestimate, like being able to connect with the right people to make things happen, being an ambassador for a brand and working in a team environment."

Dunedin-based Roy Hawker is a former professional rugby player whose sporting career included playing for Otago and Southland. He is the owner of media consultancy Hawker Media and also has a cloud-based marketing automation software firm called Amplifier.

Rugby to software might seem like a bit of a leap, but Hawker says there's a definite connection.

"We're a New Zealand software company that's brave enough to think it can take on the world, and I think that's an attitude you get a bit from being a New Zealand rugby player," he says. "Rugby is a particular area where New Zealanders believe they can be world beaters.