Surfing's Kelly Slater has more world titles than any athlete in the history of any sport.
In four easy steps, I will explain how you can mirror his success in Business. Slater didn't obtain 11 World Titles by chance. It was a calculated journey with plenty of wise decision making.
Step one: Start relationship with Pamela Anderson.
In the same year that Slater won his first world title, he also dated Ms. Anderson, while co-staring in two dozen Baywatch episodes. This enabled him to inspire bitter jealousy in his rivals whilst climbing the pro ladder (remember this is 1992 we're talking about), which completely ruined their focus in competition and enabled Slater to win. If they weren't thinking about their surfing pal's relationship with Pamela, they were thinking of the next wise-crack joke to make, either way, they weren't focusing on winning. Because that's what Slater did.
Business lesson: Boost your publicity any way you can. Write to local papers with an angle, make a Youtube video, start a partnership with a bigger firm, sponsor a farmers' market, come 1st at a pub quiz and during your prize acceptance speech publicize your company like the winner you are. Publicity causes a ripple that moves outwards - the bigger the wave the more opportunities it's going to hit. Ryanair's zero budget, publicity-avalanche-causing local paper ad's are a contentious example.
Step two: Better every aspect of your game.
Slater won the next 5 World Titles consecutively by bettering himself in every tangible and intangible way he could think of. While other surfers were partying too hard, he utilized strange super fitness inducing diets. He made the road his home and traveled on a specially commissioned boat to every wave worth surfing, clocking up the 10,000 hours. He meditated, practiced yoga on Tahitian mountains, read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War, started surfing 'goofy' (with the wrong foot forward: think backwards) just to make it harder, and generally went harder than anyone else. He also dated Giselle Bundchen and Camaron Diaz, but that's beside the point - he focused on bettering every aspect of his game, not just his core competences.
Business Lesson: Have a holistically competitive product. Unless your customer service, your branding, your after-sales care, your customer journey, your operations et cetera are all on point, you're not going to annihilate all your competitors like Kelly Slater does - even if you do have a competitive product. Apple's success over the last 10 years isn't because no-one else makes mp3 players, its because overall they have cracked most aspects of their service, from design and aesthetics to after sales care. Even a new phone that sometimes bent in half couldn't stop their share price, because you know you can just pop into the nearest apple store, which will be near, and have it replaced.
Step three: Drink a beer while riding the barrel
Slater has huge brand appeal. His contract with Quiksilver broke all records, (an offer of $10m in 2010, which Slater turned down for equity) and his books and movies are more popular than anyone elses. This is because he stands out. A good example of this, although hard to believe, is when Slater got thrown a beer can by a fan from a boat while surfing in a championship heat. He caught it, then caught a huge barreling wave, disappeared inside the wave, and then got 'spat out' whilst drinking the beer, that he opened inside the barrel. To be fair, he did have something to celebrate, he had just scored two 10 point rides in one heat (when the maximum score is 10.00, and the system only counts two waves). This all happened while competing at a wave called Teahupoo, which translates as 'broken skull' in French Polynesian, because it breaks in such shallow water - straight onto razor sharp coral reef.
Business Lesson: Have a reason for people to talk about you, whatever sector you're in. Facebook acquired its first user-base not by competing directly with Myspace's product, but by being accessible only to Ivy-League students. Tesla gained brand appeal not by making mundane saloons, but by creating some of the fastest sports cars available. Their next car for example, the 'P85D' will match a McLaren F1's acceleration of 0-60 in about three seconds flat. Point-in-fact, the McLaren F1, when it entered the market, also had a talking point - its engine bay was made out of gold. In the original press release, McLaren proposed this was for its heat conducting properties, but as we all know, it was so that the car had a talking point.
Step four: Beat the kids at their own game.
Over the last 23 years Kelly Slater has slammed 3 generations of surfers, until they begrudgingly fall off tour, and the next generation of young hopefuls come to the slaughter. He recently beat surfing's newest prodigy, who is half Slater's age, at the kids own local break, on the final stop of the pro tour, by surfing younger than him. He learns each generation's school of moves, applies his own experience and determination, then does them better than the people that invented them. For example, the newest generation of surfers have taken pro surfing to the air, with new aerial maneuvers that now earn some of the highest scores. Slater posted a video the other week doing the largest and most rotated 'aerial' ever. No one even knew what to call it. He won 'best maneuver 2014' for it.
Business lesson: Adapt your competencies to beat the kids. Royal Mail's stock has taken a major dip recently because it isn't doing anything to keep up with competition. In an industry where leaders track your parcel to the nearest meter and send you texts when its about to arrive, Royal Mail's technology is ancient and mostly made out of paper. The lesson here is that you can use your experience and competencies to adapt. It will probably only be as hard as the first time you learnt how to do what you already do. Make an app, link a social media campaign to your website (if you haven't already), put a half pipe in your office to attract people that can, it doesn't matter, as long as you smash any young buck at their own game that tries to usurp the thrown. Like Slater.
End note: After tiring of winning at surfing, Slater is also attempting to succeed from utilising his sporting experiences within the world of business, by starting his own surfing apparel brand, called Outerknown. So far I must say, it looks well positioned. Wearing current Surf brands have the habit of making you look like a 13-year old journeying to the local swim-pool. Outerknown takes it's surf-lifestyle brand but mixes high quality materials, eco-friendly construction and classic/timeless understated styles = probably on to another winner.
So, get radical and have the best of luck implementing Kelly Slater's business lessons, I hope you will soon paddle into a giant wave, of profit. Cowabunga!
The opinions & conclusions expressed above are purely for the entertainment value of readers that are entertained. Despite being a surfer and studying an International Business Bsc, the author has no claim to being an authority on either surfing or business. The authors skills remain in web-design.
By Noah Robertson,
Works for OurFuture Webdesign - www.ourfuturewebdesign.co.uk
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