How an Aussie Olympian combines her interests and builds a business

Picture this. You’ve trained for years. You’ve just finished competing in the Tokyo Olympics. Your usual daily routine doesn’t stop. You’re go-go-go from the moment you wake up to when your head hits the pillow.

So what the heck do you do when you’re in quarantine for two weeks upon returning from the games? For a bunch of our Aussie athletes, they saw it as an opportunity to spend that time building their businesses.

It’s a lot harder than you think for many athletes to support themselves just through sponsorships and competing, so quite rightly, many athletes apply their dedication and resilience to other projects and businesses.

As proud sponsors of our Australian Olympic Team, GoDaddy helped make setting up the online presence for our athlete’s businesses simple and easy. Not to mention providing a worthwhile project to distract from the boredom of quarantine!

Now that they’ve been back from Tokyo for a little while, I thought I’d check in on a few of our Aussie Olympians, to see how they’re balancing their other business, with their training and competing, and to see what lessons they might have to share that we can apply to our own projects and businesses

You see, one of the hardest truths about being an entrepreneur is that it can get lonely.

I’ve seen countless business owners take on the whole weight of their business, feeling like they’re unable to share that burden or get it off their chest at all. It’s part of the reason I started my Mentored business, because there are so many entrepreneurs out there who don’t have a support network to lend them a hand.

Keesja Gofers is someone from whom we can definitely learn a few things about mental resilience. She represented Australia in Water Polo at the Rio and Tokyo Olympics, and as she describes it, she’s got the best job in the world.

To understand how she navigates through the challenges she faces, we first need to understand a bit about how she got to where she is, in her own words…

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Tell me a bit about Water Polo? How did you get into it? What do you love about it?

I’ve got three older sisters, and I was always getting dragged along to the pool to watch them play Water Polo. It’s a bit of a family thing as well, my fiancé is actually involved in the sport too! I remember when I was 6 I actually had to jump in the pool to make up numbers in my sister's under-14s team.

Was that the hardest moment in your career?

Oh definitely! I took a bit of a break after that experience haha! The thing I’ve learnt about challenges is that you can’t see them as a bad thing. They’re all good things in the long run. That’s my approach to it.

But I have to say, losing the Quarter Finals at Rio in 2016 was definitely my hardest moment. I had actually been dropped from the team six months out from the games, and told I had to change my position. That was hard. But we got there, and we made it through to the Quarter Final. I hadn’t even comprehended not being in the finals to be honest with you. We were right there at the end, and the thing we had all trained so hard for was within reach.

Losing that game was pretty hard to deal with.

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Failure stings. You don’t need me to tell you that. But you’ve got to take it in, and keep putting one foot in front of the other to move past it. The challenges you face, and more importantly, the ones you lose, should push you forward and show you what you need to focus on to be better for next time.

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So what’s the lesson here for dealing with challenges like that?

Getting the problem off your chest is big. It doesn’t matter if you’re not getting advice or any feedback back, it’s about clearing space in your head by getting stuff out of it. I think there’s a quote that says a burden shared is a burden halved.

That’s the same thing I apply in my business.

Tell us a bit about your business?

KGro is my little side hustle! I’ve learnt a high-performance mindset through training and competing, and I want to do my best in everything I do. So why not try and help corporate teams learn to do the same?

I’ve got a real passion for floristry, and I incorporate that into the coaching side of things. Bouquet-making is great for team building because when you’re working with flowers, it’s hard to make anything that looks bad! Everyone can take something out of it!

How does the discipline of training and competing carry over into your business?

That’s the hardest thing! When I’m training, I’ve got my teammates, my coach, and the other staff who are counting on me to get out of bed and get into my routine - which I love! A couple training sessions each day. Icebaths. Regular physio appointments. A huge focus on nutrition. It’s full on 24/7 athlete vibes, and easily the best job in the world.

When I’m working on the business however, it’s all me.?

There’s definitely days I don’t really want to get out of bed, there’s definitely motivational slumps, but I use the skills I’ve learnt as an athlete. I can’t go to the coach every second day and complain that I’m tired. I don’t have an option to give up on my team, so why should I give up on my own business?

I ask myself what rejuvenates me; going for a walk, meditating, that’s all important. I’m a big fan of to-do lists as well, so that always helps me get the ball rolling on what I need to do.

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There’s a couple of points from my chat with Keesja that I think are really critical if you’re in business, or if you’re thinking of starting your own.?

The most important, embrace the challenges. The more you face, the better you’ll get. But don’t deal with them alone.

Make sure you have someone to bounce things off, or someone to hear what’s on your mind.

Your interests and passions don’t have to exist in isolation. Keesja has managed to combine her passion for floristry with her coaching business, all at the same time as she continues to train and compete.