I was recently reading one of my favorite publications, FastCompany, and came across the perfect topic for a summer article: Baseball! For those of you not familiar with FastCompany, it is a publication for businesses, so for them to be talking about baseball just seemed like it would be fun.
No surprise, the article was talking about the business side of Major League Baseball, but what really got my interest was not that they were talking about the importance of general managers, but the current GM of the Rangers has not played on a team since he was in the 8th grade! Granted Jon Daniels is only 30 and landed an awesome internship with the Rangers a few years back that lined him up for the job. Daniels just loved the game, and even though he did not make the freshman team back in high school, he still found a way to do what he loves.
I am all about taking what you love and figuring out how to make it more than just a hobby. But the more I was thinking about Daniels that more I admired him. He did not get to have his dream job of playing baseball, but that did not mean he did not get the career of his dreams. The time that he did not get to play ball and he went did other things, like majoring in business, which helped give him a new perspective and expertise that makes him so good at what he does now. It is the perfect example of, if you get lemons make lemonade.
You never know how two very unique experiences can relate to one another. Not only is this a good life lesson, but it is a good business and marketing lesson. We learn from experiences even if they do not turn out the way we expect them to. Some of our greatest business ideas fall flat on their face, but what we have done in the past and what we do while we are recovering can set us up for opportunities that we could never imagine. So even though times may not be as lucrative as they have been in the past, the worst thing you can do it to stop trying. This is a great time to try new out new ideas – you never know where they can take you!
