The Karate Discipline

I’m sure we all remember the movie The Karate Kid, an all-time classic. I watched a rerun a few months ago, and realised that each wisdom from Mr Miyagi is worth exploring – in a blog post or video. Karate means “empty hand” – and is a defense strategy. I did a bit of karate at school (many moons ago), and I got to yellow belt. Karate and martial arts teach us discipline. In business we also require discipline, and I think that as entrepreneurs we can learn a lot from these art forms.

Mr Miyagi says in the movie: “First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.” This is very important. In business (and in life, even) we sometimes put the horse before the cart. We don’t adhere to due process principles. We’re too impatient. Mr Miyagi’s anecdote is similar to Covey‘s “Law of the harvest.” You reap what you sow.

Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies as America’s top marketing executive, trainer, strategic consultant and motivation expert. He’s done work for Charlie Munger (one of Warren Buffet‘s partners), and has recently also started to do projects with Anthony Robbins. He has also studied and taught karate for 23 years.

Chet says:

The lessons we’ve learned about consistency have taught us that it is the only way to really improve anything. The secret to great accomplishment in karate is not in learning 4, 000 different moves. There’s aren’t 4, 000 different moves in karate. There are 12 moves. Becoming a master is not about doing 4, 000 different moves; it’s about doing 12 moves, 4, 000 times each. The same is true for all areas of accomplishment. Golf, tennis, sales, customer services, ALL areas of competency require repetition of fundamentals.

We need to apply this discipline to our businesses when it comes to Social Media. There are just too many tools and applications out there. And we cannot use all of them. Everyday we see people on Facebook and Twitter saying “try this new tool, this that new tool” – and for the average entrepreneur this is just as a liability on time. For most businesses, Social Media is a tool, it’s not their business. Social Media is our business – and more than just a tool – but I’m talking about those outside of this industry.

One Social Media tool is not enough though. Facebook alone is not enough. Twitter alone is not enough. LinkedIn alone is not enough. There must be a decent mix of online tools – a mix that’s right for your business. Not every business is the same. Once you’re identified the mix that suits your business, you have to be consistent in using those tools. Using a tool once every two weeks won’t result in any true value. Once per week is also too minimal. A few times per week is required, and with tools like Twitter, daily activity is required. This all might sound very time consuming, but it does not have to be. There are tools that can help you manage your online activity.

For example, here is how I use TweetDeck and HootSuite.

TweedDeck is essentially a Twitter tool, but I use it for more than that. I use it…

1. To track the people I’m following on Twitter and respond to them
2. To conduct multiple concurrent Twitter searches (for research and tracking purposes)
3. To track and respond to Facebook status updates
4. To track and respond to LinkedIn status updates

HootSuite can be used for a number of purposes, but I simply use it to schedule updates. I can spend around 10 minutes and schedule updates that will be broadcasted over one or two days. This is quite fun because even if I’m sleeping or in a meeting, my messages are going out to the world.

So I don’t even need to be on the actual websites of Facebook and Twitter, and I can still be managing my activity there.

It’s not about working hard so much. Sure we have to work hard, but we can be smart as well. And all of this can be fun, while still getting to business results that we want. But we have to remain disciplined.

Photo credit: andrew_mc_d