Jason Belmonte
is an Australian bowler who has singlehandedly reinvented his sport by
making one simple change: He rolls the ball with two hands instead of
one.
If you haven’t seen Belmonte bowl, check out his videos on YouTube
and elsewhere on the Internet. The ball explodes from his hands with
incredible speed. He puts so much spin on the ball that it seems to
make a sudden 90-degree turn before smashing into the pins.
People have been bowling for hundreds of years, but Belmonte seems to
be the first professional bowler to perfect the technique of releasing
the ball with two hands. It’s a change that is simple and revolutionary
at the same time.
We can all learn some important business lessons from him. Let’s take a closer look.
Lesson One: Find New Ways to Use the Resources You Already Have
Belmonte didn’t put microchips into a bowling ball, invent a laser
tracking system, or design new bowling shoes. He simply found an
entirely new – and pretty obvious – way to maximize his use of the same
resources that everyone else had.
Some very successful companies have that too. Amazon.com, for example,
didn’t invent customer follow-up. But they did take it to a new level
by recommending new products to customers, based on their previous
purchases. QVC didn’t invent television advertising, but the company
did find a powerful new way to use it, by moving it to center stage.
So find new ways to wring a more value from the obvious resources you
already have. Brilliant new ideas could be right in front of you – as
obvious as Belmonte’s two hands.
Lesson Two: Don’t Be a Quitter
Belmonte didn’t try his new two-handed technique for just a few hours. He invested years to discover its astonishing potential.
In this sense, Belmonte is a lot like eBay – a business that defied the
rules of traditional business because it had nothing to sell beyond a
connection point for sellers and buyers. In its early years, eBay was
declared dead a number of times by business experts. But the founder
Jeff Bezos proved them wrong. Instead of giving up, he refined his
business model until he worked out the snags and really got things
moving.
So remember that great ideas usually require hard work and development.
If you believe in an idea, have the resolve to follow it through.
Lesson Three: Don’t Let “Experts” Kill Your Ideas
According to an article on ESPN,
some highly respected coaches tried to discourage Belmonte from
pursuing his two-handed style of bowling. They wrote off his idea as a
dead-end that would cut his career short. But who is laughing at him
now? He has proved them wrong by winning a number of international
championships.
In that sense, Belmonte can be compared to BizUnite. One business at a
time, we are convincing our members that there is a new, better way of
doing business. Our members are sometimes a little skeptical at first –
until the day when the bottom-line numbers convince them that
cooperation is today’s key to profitability.
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