Golf and career transitions
- Candida Brush is the Paul T. Babson Chair of Entrepreneurship at Babson College. The opinions expressed are her own. -
For years I have been an avid golfer, spending as much time in the summer playing on a competitive team, in tournaments, or even just four holes in the evening with my husband.
As a professor of entrepreneurship, I’ve written hundreds of articles, books, and papers on these topics over the past 25 years. But, I have always wanted to write an article about golf!
With the downturn in the economy this past year, I started thinking about the parallels between transitions in playing golf and in career transitions.
Today, career management is even more of a challenge than ever. Most of us will work for an average of 10 different employers and our work will be interrupted either by choice (i.e. moving, return to school, family needs) or not (layoffs, downsizing, restructuring). Hence, the definition of career has changed drastically from climbing the career ladder to developing a portfolio of career experiences. In the words of professor Tim Hall, the new career is “boundaryless.”
Career transitions are even more uncertain given today’s environment and they engender a variety of emotions. As you move from job to job or project to project, you may miss what was, feel relief, insecurity, and have a loss of confidence, but, this might also be followed by new beginnings, exploration development and increased confidence.
Throughout it all you need to have a series of tips you can rely on to push through from one career position to the next, as you design your career in a way that makes sense for your personal definition of success. I find that golf is the perfect sport to gain insights in this area. Career transitions have a striking similarity to golf.
Entrepreneur needs to prove golf gizmo works
Tom Cannon has created an intriguing golf gadget, but if he wants to find a market for his product, the former NASA rocket scientist needs some hard data to prove BonusYards can help golfers add more distance to their drives, said experts.
The Maryland, Virginia entrepreneur hit on the idea after reading a story that detailed how a 45-degree angle – between the club and the ground – is the optimum angle for golfers to address the ball before teeing off (read original story here). The article suggested practicing in front of a square box, but Cannon thought there had to be a better solution. He went into his basement workshop and attached a carpenter’s level to a golf club that indicated when he was standing at the proper angle to the ball. The problem was the level was too big and heavy and it didn’t stay on the club.
Cannon eventually found a manufacturer in China and built a level that was small and light enough that he could fashion to a club, without it adversely affecting his swing. The plastic device resembles a child’s toy ring, with a flat coin-sized head that encases a bubble level that clips onto the top of the club, or grip, and includes markings to show when the club is properly aligned at a 45-degree angle.
THE PITCH
Cannon said he is targeting the 15 million “hardcore” U.S. golfers, who play a minimum of eight competitive rounds each year. “I’ve put it in the hands of several golfers and gotten positive results from all of them. Everybody loves it,” he said.
Cannon admitted that after all the trial and error that went into building BonusYards, his toughest challenge is simply to convince people that it works and to try it out.
“We don’t have a budget to pay for a high-profile golfer to endorse the product, but we believe once they start using it and know what it does, then we think we’ll build sales that way,” said Cannon, who has planned an initial production run of 2,000 units and intends to follow up with a larger run of 100,000 units, which he estimated would cost $200,000. He said while he and his partner can swing the cost, he would prefer to get some investors onboard. “One of our worst case nightmares would be to stimulate the market, have orders in hand and then be months away before being able to fulfill those orders.”
This is the lastest of many devices, my own experiences have been with a group that did motion capture and another that used a laser mounted on a practice club.
Neither of those things made a difference past the typical change that comes with anything that increasing your interest for a bit, and there is no reason to believe that this approach would be anything difference.
