Resilience and Agility -Key Ingredients to Small Business Success

Welcome back to my INSIGHTS Blog and my interviews with Australian Winter Olympic Athletes.

Today’s interview is with Manuela Berchtold. Manuela is an Australian freestyle mogul skier who shows no fear in her world of sport and in the work of owning and operating a successful small business. 

Manuela represented Australia at the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics in the sport of Freestyle Mogul Skiing. Hampered by injuries after the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games, Manuela showed great resilience and determination to bounce back and return to the Olympic journey by representing Australia again at the Torino Games in 2006. Manuela put Australia on the map in the sport of Freestyle Mogul Skiing and showed what it means to be truly determined.

Manuela now runs a successful small business, High Country Fitness, where she leads her people with passion and an enthusiasm to improve the health and well-being of her community.

Her story is one of true resilience and ability to transform herself and her business. (IMAGE PROVIDED by STEVE CUFF and GETTY IMAGES)

How did the training discipline experience as a world-class athlete translate to and impact your ability to lead, perform and grow in the field of business?

I thought about this question for quite some time.  For me being an athlete, it feels like it’s been my whole life. Representing Australia from 14 years onwards, then competing in World Cups, World Champs, Olympics, from the age of 19 onwards. I believe this experience set me up to be resilient, strong, determined and disciplined with my training and what was being expected of me to reach the outcomes I wanted to achieve. 

As a high-performance athlete we always had a minimum number of performance indicators that we had to achieve, or in business terms, Key Performance Indicators. We had fitness tests and a number of other benchmarks that we needed to meet to make the Australian Winter Teams. I continually needed to strive, to meet those and get myself onto the team. 

When I finished as an athlete after the 2006 Olympics, I made myself a new goal that “I was going to start my own health and fitness business”.  I believe being goal orientated is very important in setting up your own business.  Knowing what you want to achieve and then working hard to achieve it.

I finished competing in February 2006 and by June, 2006, I had my gym opened.  I had been planning on how I was going start the business during my last year whilst competing as an athlete. I often laugh, saying "I never went to business school" but I was determined to not let that dissuade me from achieving my business goals. When I finished high school, I completed as much study as possible whilst training and competing including my diploma in massage and my fitness qualifications, completing much online. I attended university every now and again, as part of my massage diploma, however I didn't study a university degree. 

In the business world, I’ve had to find my own way but I also feel it's been a very natural progression as I feel that I'm a natural born leader.

I know what hard work's all about. And I also never, ever, ever asked my staff or my contractors or anyone in my team to do anything that I wouldn't do. I wouldn't ask them to get up at 4:30am to go to bootcamp if I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't ask them to scrub a toilet if I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't ask them to do certain things if I wouldn't do it. I believe personal and people leadership is key when running a successful business.  You need to be able to show empathy and sympathy where it needs to be shown and help guide people when they aren't naturally high energy or outwardly confident, which is needed in a business like mine. 

As an athlete you have so many setbacks and knock backs. Over the years, I had a coach tell me in the start gate that I wasn’t good enough to be here and not good enough to mix in with the best in the world. It's certainly hard to hear, but there are people like that out there. So do not listen to them! 

Not everyone knows how to get the best out of people in the world of athletes or in the world of business. I'm constantly trying to get the best out of my team to tell them they can do this, not to knock them over or down ever! I'm all about positivity and energy. And I believe that that's what makes you a good leader and that's what makes you resilient as well, because you've been knocked down, you've been told you can't do it, but you get back up and start each day anew.

You need to believe in yourself and know that you can do it! And I know it's more than self-belief. As an athlete with practice comes perfection, and I think that is the same with business. If you don't get it done right the first time, don't throw in the towel; practice and figure out a different way. I believe resilience in business is all about that. If one way won't get you to the end result that you can see so clearly in your mind, then find another way!

What do you know about the difference between athletic and business performance that you wish you knew about when you left sports competition?

I gravitate to mentors and other business people and like trying to share ideas. I really love collaborating. I love asking "What works for you” to see if that might work for me in my business.

I actually wish that I knew more about that when I was competing.  I grew up participating and competing in individual sports. I was competitive in little athletics, trampolining, mogul skiing, aerials and ballet skiing. Yes, we were in a team environment, but I was an individual sports person. If I let myself down on competition day or during practice, it was only me to blame. I did enjoy that about being an individual athlete, however when being an individual athlete you learn to rely on yourself, not really outsource or ask different people for too much input or help.

Whereas in business, I find myself doing that a lot more! I now wish that maybe when I was an athlete I should have reached out to more people. I should have thought to myself; "I could utilize those people a bit differently and make myself better there." 

I believe that you also come into your own as you get older and I think it's exciting. You seem to learn more about yourself, what your strengths and weaknesses are? You learn to be more comfortable in your skin and you realise that you can really achieve what you set out to do in your life and in your business. I know what I'm capable of, and I sometimes think, "I wish I had this belief and confidence back when I was an athlete." But I do know that the challenges and difficulties that I went through as an athlete have transferred into resilience in the business world.

Over the years I've not been very good at delegating but one thing that I don't do is micromanage. I won't be over someone's shoulders saying, "Oh, do it that way." I think for that reason I unfortunately don't delegate enough. So instead of delegating I spend hours and hours and hours doing things myself. 

So, if there's one thing I would like to have known 15 years ago when I established Snow Fitness and High Country Fitness, I would have learned the art of delegation a lot earlier, 100% a lot earlier. 

I believe you learn from people that you admire and respect. I really gravitate towards successful business people like Mark Bouris and other business leaders like that. I've gone to one of Mark Bouris’s live seminars and read his books.  

I also think that providing strong leadership and being a strong role model for people that work for me and assisting them to strive to be their best is so important. 

Over the years I’ve learnt that with the art of delegation comes not compromising your business standards, just learning that other people will do things slightly different to you and that's okay. I know that I'm a perfectionist, but I also think that's what makes my businesses so great.

If I ask someone to do a word document and if it's not exactly how I wanted it, I'll say, " that's great” and be happy with it.

I'm not going to then spend another hour changing it. It's learning to be okay with little things that are not exactly as you would have done them, as long as the outcome is achieved. Getting your head around it that it's not wrong, it's just different to the way you do it. 

I’m happy to share my biggest learning is and has been with and around delegation!

Thinking about the biggest transition you've had to face in your career, what advice can you share with business leaders who are figuring out how to transform their companies?

I’ll use the example of the COVID Pandemic as a way to explain. That really shot some things into action for all of us in business. I think no one in the world right now can say that they were not affected by the pandemic in some way, whether it was positive or negative. And I think that at the very start, it was doom and gloom. 

We're a year and two months on now as it was the 23rd of March that I had to close my doors for three months, and that happened overnight. I knew it was looming and I knew that there were things that were going to have to change really quickly for me to save my business. We started putting different ideas and things into place pre-empting the closure. 

At 9pm on a Sunday night, Scott Morrison announced that by 12pm tomorrow, gyms, hairdressers, some other things were going to have to be closed!

For me the biggest thing was not shying away from change and springing into action immediately! 

So just after 11pm that night, I had an email out to my entire database saying; "If you would like to stay with us and continue paying your weekly membership, I know that I won't physically have the gym open, but I can guarantee you by the end of this week, we will have Zoom classes up and running." I didn't know how many I could promise. 

I also stated I would give them a personalized gym equipment pack. I take a lot of pride in knowing our gym members well. And so, Lachlan, if you would come to my gym, I would know that you would love using dumbbells, a kettlebell, a battle rope, maybe a yoga mat etc, so I put together about 10 pieces of equipment for everyone to take home and use for their membership.

The way that most gyms work these days is that weekly, you have a direct debit that comes out. So, if your direct debit was coming out on that Monday, I was unfortunately already on the back foot calling you that Monday morning, saying, "Your direct debit's already come out. Would you like to cancel it? Would you like to stay with us?" 

However, for the Tuesday and days following it was really good, I just ran the reports. Whoever's direct debit was coming out, we called them the day before and asked, "Would you like to cancel or stay?" 

It was honestly one of the most heartbreaking weeks of my life because I don't know the percentage, but I'm guessing 90% of people said, "We're canceling." It just seemed like a big slap in the face because you're trying to just save your business and "All I wanted was my business at the end of it and you're thinking of 13 staff members that you employee and what am I going to do?"

At that time, there was no talk about Job Keeper or any other small business support. 

For me, I jumped into action and on that 22nd of March onwards. I found my leadership and my resilience kicking in again. 

Big gyms across Australia, across the world were blanket freezing people's memberships. I just knew there had to be other ways to stay open and keep, even if small, an income trickling in. 

At the beginning I had maybe 20 or 30 people say, "We'll keep paying our membership. I'd love to come and get equipment. That's great."  This actually started a positive snowball effect and over the next two to three weeks many people contacted me and said "Oh, I’ve canceled my membership but I didn't realize I could actually have some equipment. Please sign me back up!"

The next week it was, "Wow you're doing 14 zoom classes a week. I can get online and do them from my home. Please sign me up." Then I suddenly thought, "I've got bikes. I've got 23 bikes sitting in my cycle studio unused. I'll deliver the bikes to everyone's house." We were then also able to do RPM classes via zoom. 

I went from rock bottom in that first few days to sort of an elated high on that Friday, Saturday, where I had the Zoom time table out that I was beginning that Monday. 

The highs and lows were constant and continual, and I just had to go with it all!

I know that was a really long-winded answer, but the best thing about this is that I probably related it to having a very debilitating ski injury when you are a high-performance athlete. 

I missed my very first Olympics due to an injury requiring a knee reconstruction. Yes, it was bitterly disappointing, however I just had to rehab, refocus and get back on track!

 Reflecting on that experience you just mentioned, if you had had to break it down to three key things about some advice to people who are trying to change and transform their business, three key words that you think you've used in your sport which you translated to here, what would they be?

 First, being able to adapt and adapting quickly. So, adaptability. I believe what comes with adaptability is thinking on your feet or thinking that it isn't just one way that's going to work. Experiment and innovate, that is adaptability!

 Secondly, would be believing in yourself! I believe that you always have a positive experience from positive things. You can't make a positive out of a negative. I mean, you can turn negatives around, but how are you going to bring positivity and energy into something that's really already negative and bringing you down and so think and look for the positivity in all of the challenges that you face.

 Finally, thinking about change and everything that I’ve been through in my sport and my business is the importance of your mentors and support network. Your support network!

Your team at work. Your team behind you. If you're a good leader and you present to them what you want to do, they'll follow you. One of the best books I have ever read was From Good to Great by Jim Collins. You get everyone on the same bus moving the same direction together and those people who want to be on the bus they're going to be on that bus; moving that same direction with you. People who don't want to be on the bus, it's okay, but they need to get off the bus. 

So, I think maybe that third one is leadership, and developing your team and support network.