So the World Cup has begun in Brazil and whether you have a team to follow or not there are still lessons to be learned from one of the top sporting tournaments in the world.

Passion

Football is probably the most popular sport on the entire planet. Across the globe supporters save their money, organise their time, and invest their passion in following and supporting their favourite team. This commitment is possibly one of the best examples of a niche made up of people with a passion. If you can provide this niche with a product or service that they value, you would have to be pretty poor at business to not make a healthy profit. It’s a perfect example of the advantage you have when working in a passion driven niche.

Setting Goals

The entire process of getting to the World Cup and progressing towards the finals is built around a definite structure. To get to Brazil each country has had to play qualifying matches and perform well in their own groups. There is another group structure when the tournament begins which then breaks down into a number of matches to determine the placement of the top teams. There is also a clear goal to aim for, in this case lifting a gold trophy at the end of the final game.

This structure makes the setting of objectives and the focusing of effort straightforward. Every team knows what it must do within each group, even though it may not be clear how to deal with opponents in individual matches. A long-term, overall plan with clear steps can greatly help us progress, even if we do not know how to perform all the steps from our current position.

Celebrating Goals

What would sport be without the celebration that goes with victory? Again it’s about passion, emotion and the rewards of success. Celebration is important because it marks achievement and also pushes us to commit to the next period of hard work so that we can experience victory again.

Working online it can be too easy to neglect celebrating our victories. Yet each step is an important part of the process that leads to success. Sometimes campaigns don’t go as well as planned, products don’t turn out as wonderful as you’d hoped and you have to remind yourself that there is progress amongst the setbacks.