Determination and hard work are not enough to build a successful business. You also need a plan, the right people around you, and expert guidance. Adam Kushner learned that lesson while training for some of the hardest endurance events in the world, and he applies it to how he runs his business.
Adam is the owner of Business Actualization, a digital marketing company for auto repair shops, and an IRONMAN competitor who has also completed 50 mile races. In episode 18 of Maximum Octane, he and Kim Hickey explore the parallels between endurance sports and entrepreneurship, the importance of coaching, and why leaving your ego behind is essential to growth.
What You Will Learn
- Adam talks about his passage through the culinary industry
- The parallelism between entrepreneurship and endurance sports
- The drive and self-discipline needed to compete in endurance sports, and how it can be translated into business
- The importance of leaving the ego aside and accepting our weaknesses
- Adam’s most significant takeaways from participating in highly demanding competitions
Questions Asked in This Episode
- You competed in a pretty darn big competition. Could you talk a bit about that?
- Let alone to get in the mindset of this is, how did you start preparing for this for the long haul?
- Whether in business or our personal life, a coach gets you to set your sights on what’s possible and what you can do. Can you talk about that a little bit?
From the Kitchen to Marketing
Adam begins by sharing his path through the culinary industry before he moved into digital marketing. Like many entrepreneurs, he has worked in very different fields, and each one taught him something about discipline, customer expectations, and running an operation under pressure.
Restaurants and repair shops have more in common than people might expect. Both deal with tight timelines, demanding customers, unpredictable volume, and teams working under pressure in a confined space. Both depend on consistent processes to deliver quality, and both live or die by reputation and reviews. Experience in one often transfers well to the other, which may be why Adam’s perspective resonates with shop owners.
Entrepreneurship Is an Endurance Event
Around the 10 minute mark, Adam draws the parallel between endurance sports and business. An IRONMAN triathlon is not won with a single burst of effort. It requires months of planning, consistent training, careful nutrition, and the ability to keep going when everything hurts. Running a repair shop is similar. Success comes from steady, disciplined progress over years, not from one great month.
Kim asks how Adam prepared for such a long haul, and his answer centers on reverse engineering. He starts with the goal and works backward to define the training needed each week and each day. Shop owners can do the same with business goals. If you want to reach a certain level of gross profit in three years, what has to happen this year, this quarter, and this week?
ATI’s Are Your Goals SMART? and A Dream Will Stay a Dream Until You Make a Plan walk through how to set goals you can actually work toward.
Endurance athletes plan their training in cycles, building gradually toward a peak, with rest built in to avoid injury. Businesses can follow a similar rhythm. Instead of trying to change everything at once, owners can focus on one major improvement each quarter, measure results, recover, and then move to the next. That steady approach is more sustainable than bursts of frantic effort followed by exhaustion.
Endurance events also teach pacing. Going out too fast often leads to collapse later. In business, rapid expansion without the systems and people to support it can create the same problem. Growth that matches capacity tends to last.
Drive and Self-Discipline
Adam discusses the drive and self-discipline endurance athletes need and how those traits translate into business. Discipline is doing the work even when you do not feel like it. In a shop, that might mean reviewing your numbers every week, holding the team meeting even when you are busy, or making the follow-up calls that are easy to skip.
Discipline is easier when it is supported by routine. Athletes rely on training schedules so they do not have to decide each day whether to work out. Owners can do the same by scheduling their most important tasks, such as reviewing numbers, planning, and coaching employees, at the same time each week. When the habit is built into the calendar, it requires less willpower to maintain.
Discipline also means saying no. Endurance athletes often skip late nights and tempting distractions because they know those choices affect the next training session. Owners face similar tradeoffs: a side project that pulls attention from the core business, a discount that hurts margins, or a hire made out of convenience. Measuring each choice against the long-term goal makes it easier to decline the ones that do not fit.
Leave the Ego Aside
One of the most important ideas in this episode is the need to set ego aside and accept your weaknesses. Adam suggests starting by identifying and acknowledging what you are not good at. Once you accept those weaknesses, you can get help to improve them or delegate them to someone stronger. Pretending to be great at everything only slows you down.
For many shop owners, marketing, finance, or human resources are areas where outside expertise makes a big difference.
Ego often shows up in subtle ways: refusing to ask for help, avoiding feedback, holding onto tasks you are not good at, or blaming others when things go wrong. Athletes who let ego drive their training often push through warning signs and get injured. Owners who let ego drive their decisions often ignore warning signs in their numbers, team, or market. Letting go of ego opens the door to learning, which is the fastest path to improvement.
Why Coaching Matters
Kim and Adam talk about the role of a coach. In sports and in business, a coach helps you set your sights on what is possible and holds you accountable to the plan. Adam notes that today’s auto repair industry is very different from 20 years ago, when it was intensely competitive and individualistic. Now, coaching companies and mastermind groups are easy to find, and owners can learn from each other instead of struggling alone.
ATI’s Top 5 Reasons Why Every Auto Shop Owner Needs a Coach and Peer Networking Groups are examples of the support Adam describes.
Coaching works because it adds structure, perspective, and accountability. A coach sees patterns the owner cannot, because the owner is too close to the business. A coach also helps break large goals into manageable steps and checks in on progress. Even the world’s best athletes have coaches, not because they lack talent, but because outside guidance helps them reach their full potential. Business owners benefit in the same way.
The auto repair industry now offers many forms of support, from formal coaching programs to peer groups and industry associations. Owners who take advantage of them often grow faster, because they learn from the experience of hundreds of other shops rather than relying only on their own trial and error.
Adam’s Biggest Takeaways From Endurance Racing
Adam closes by sharing his most significant takeaways from competing in demanding events. Among them: progress comes from consistency, setbacks are part of the process, and finishing is a choice you make again and again during the race. Those lessons apply directly to the long road of building a business.
One lesson many endurance athletes share is that the hardest part of a race is often mental. The body can usually go further than the mind believes. In business, the same is true during difficult periods. Owners who learn to push through discouragement, while still listening to real warning signs, often find they are more capable than they thought.
Another lesson from endurance sports is the value of recovery. Athletes schedule rest because muscles grow stronger during recovery, not during the workout itself. Owners who never step away from the shop rarely get the clear thinking that comes from rest. Planned time off, even a few days, can return a leader to the business with better perspective and more energy for the next push.
Applying Endurance Principles to Marketing
Adam’s work in digital marketing reflects the same endurance mindset. Online marketing rarely produces instant results. Search rankings, social media followings, and review profiles grow gradually through consistent effort. Owners who expect overnight success often quit too early, just before the effort begins to pay off. Treating marketing as a long-term training plan, with clear goals, steady effort, and regular measurement, produces far better results than sporadic campaigns.
That approach also requires accepting weaknesses. Most shop owners are not marketing experts, and that is fine. Recognizing that gap and getting expert help, whether from an agency or a coach, is exactly the kind of ego-free decision Adam recommends.
Train for Your Business Like an Endurance Athlete
- Write down one big goal for the next three years and break it into quarterly milestones.
- List your three biggest weaknesses as a business owner and decide where to get help.
- Find a coach, peer group, or mentor who can hold you accountable.
- Build one weekly habit that moves you toward your goal, and track it.
For more on mindset and goal achievement, listen to Mary Kelly in Turning Tiny Habits Into Massive Results and Don Walter in How to Create Achievable Goals for Your Business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is running a business like training for an endurance race?
Both reward steady, disciplined effort over a long period. An endurance athlete builds toward race day with a plan, consistent workouts, rest, and adjustments along the way. A shop owner builds a business the same way, through clear goals, daily habits, regular review of results, and patience. Neither succeeds with occasional bursts of effort. Both also benefit from a coach who sees what the individual cannot.
How do I reverse engineer a business goal?
Start with a specific long-term target, such as a gross profit level or number of bays in three years. Ask what must be true one year before that, then one quarter before, then this month and this week. Break those milestones into actions you can schedule, like hiring, training, or marketing tasks. Review progress regularly and adjust the plan as conditions change, just as an athlete adjusts training.
Why do auto shop owners need a business coach?
Owners are often too close to their business to see patterns, blind spots, and opportunities. A coach offers an outside perspective, helps set realistic goals, breaks them into steps, and holds the owner accountable to follow through. Coaches who work with many shops also bring lessons learned from others, which can save years of trial and error. Even very successful owners use coaches to keep improving.
How do I identify my weaknesses as a business owner?
Look at the tasks you avoid, the areas where results lag, and the feedback you hear repeatedly from employees or peers. Ask a trusted advisor, coach, or peer group member for an honest assessment. Reviewing your financial and operational numbers can also reveal gaps. Once you name a weakness, decide whether to improve it through training or hand it to someone stronger, such as a bookkeeper or marketing partner.
How long does digital marketing take to work for a repair shop?
Most digital marketing builds gradually. Paid ads can generate calls quickly, but search rankings, review profiles, and social media audiences often take months of consistent effort to grow. Owners who expect instant results sometimes quit just before the work starts paying off. Set clear goals, track calls and new customers by source, and give each strategy enough time to show a trend before judging it.
Resources and Links From This Episode
- Business Actualization website
