Business schools teach a variety of subjects designed to equip students with the knowledge they need to start and run a business. For instance, if you were to go to business school, you would study useful subjects like accounting, entrepreneurship, management science, marketing, and organizational behavior. Naturally, business schools and books don’t cover topics not directly related to business. Still, many successful business people have found unusual life skills to be highly beneficial to their careers.
For instance, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chrissy Weems, and Ray Dalio attribute their phenomenal business success to things that you would never learn in business school because they don’t appear related to business at all. Let’s take a closer look at how their unusual interests had such a strong impact on their business success and how these interests or similar ones could help you, too.
Adopt a Sport to Improve Self-Discipline
Although Arnold Schwarzenegger made millions as a fitness icon and a movie star, he was a multimillionaire by the age of 25 because he also had a career selling real estate.
He bought and sold apartment buildings, rolling the sale of one building to buy buildings with more units. He first bought a 4-unit apartment building. After he sold this, he bought a 12-unit one. He then sold this to buy a 36-unit building. Later he sold this to buy a 100-unit building.
But it’s a mistake to assume that competitive bodybuilding served as a lucrative platform that helped him earn enough to buy his apartment buildings. When he was a young man, winning bodybuilding competitions did not pay as much as they do now. The sport was in its infancy then. Bodybuilding helped improve his self-discipline. The sport, he reveals in many of his public talks and interviews, gave him the discipline to push himself past his comfort zone.
Takeaway:
Consider devoting a few hours a week to enhancing your fitness levels. It doesn’t have to be bodybuilding: it could be any vigorous form of exercise that will increase your energy, boost your mood, and make you feel fitter and more focused. One reason many people shun vigorous exercise is not that they’re lazy but because they don’t recover well from their workouts. If this is true for you, there are many inexpensive and convenient therapeutic tools, such as a massage gun, at your disposal to relieve sore muscles.
Cultivate Soft Skills to Improve Business Relationships
Chrissy Weems, a co-founder of Origami Owl Custom Jewelry, an MLM jewelry company, attributes her rapid business success to her focus on cultivating emotional connections.
Takeaway:
Consider the soft skills you need to improve your business relationships. Besides learning to negotiate and sell, consider learning how to cultivate empathy and active listening. Improving relationships, of course, is not always easy, especially in the highly competitive world of business.
Study Mind-Calming Practices to Cope With Business Pressures
Ray Dalio has a net worth of about $16.9 billion and is famous for founding Bridgewater Associates. Bridgewater is currently the largest hedge fund in the world and manages $160 billion in assets.
But at age 33, he was so broke that he had to borrow $4,000 from his father to pay his family’s bills. During this time of crisis, he discovered the power of transcendental meditation, learning about it because of his interest in the Beatles. It helped him clear his mind and rebuild his fortunes.
Takeaway:
Consider learning meditation or some other mind-calming practice that will help you recover from business setbacks.
On the surface, pursuing the disciplines of bodybuilding, creating emotional connections with others, and learning meditation don’t appear to be related to business. But these or similar interests can teach you discipline, help you get along with people, and make it easier to recover from high levels of financial stress.
